Frances Gapper

Act 1. Anton Chekhov beak-raps the glass roof of Dad’s passion project / our house and shits on it. “We should never have adopted that seagull,” says Helena, my stepmother. 

Possibly orphaned or abandoned by his egg mum, Anton Chekhov followed us home from Scarborough. Instant theatricals, i.e. Dad pointing a gun (an antique army pistol he found in a box while demolishing the loft to create airy space) at our wild and messy friend. But Helena, who holds placards at anti-war demos, threw herself between man (who lowered his firearm) and bird (who flew to next door’s gazebo). Current location of Dad’s rusty collectible: top of back garden wall, separated only by a nettle-filled ditch from the Rec with its roundabout, swings and slide. Uhhh, public safety issue?

The truth is I don’t care, because I’m dying. Dying of love. As I tell Helena: “I love him. I love him. I love him.” Meaning Trev, the art shop owner who sells Helena’s watercolours at a 100% mark-up. 

Pushing back her rich mane of dark chestnut hair (mine is wispy and mousy) Helena says she thinks age differences are terribly romantic. And that I’m old enough to get married, with parental consent. “Of course he’ll adore you. He’ll kiss your hands and feet, and say I worship you, my darling.”

Act 2. Biro-annotated old scripts of stage plays clutter the footwells of Helena’s vintage blue Mini. She drives and I grip my knees, hoping against hope. Our avian chaperon shrieks doleful forecasts from an overcast sky.

Act 3. Me: parked with Diet Coke in a window seat of the Cat ‘n’ Kitten tearoom opposite the Cherry Orchard art shop, its olde-worlde bay window framed by scaffolding. In dusky depths Helena charmingly tilts her head, works her matchmaker magic. Trev strokes his adorable goatee. Anton Chekhov, sidling crabwise along a tube, peers through the glass.

Fuck. I mean Oh No! 

Alarmed Helena flees the establishment, pursued by devilish Trev. Our feathered knight swoops and divebombs, leaving Trev blood festooned and heartbreakingly resembling a werewolf. 

Act 4. We accelerate home again. I cry while Helena trots out the platitudes. “He doesn’t deserve you. Life will improve, I promise. You’ll find someone truly lovely.” Anton Chekhov flaps off and away.

Act 5. Anton Chekhov is dead. According to Dad he shot himself by accident, while playing with the gun on the wall. However, I don’t believe Dad’s version of events. Anton Chekhov was not in a playful mood. At his funeral, Helena recites winged words from a play called The Seagull, written by another Anton Chekhov: “into stones, into water, into clouds”. Balletically lobs our hero into the ditch, where he’s swallowed by nettles. And goes to wash her hands.

Frances’s prompts were: During a Building Remodel, an Unlikely Hero, a Firearm

Frances Gapper’s work has appeared in Your Impossible Voice, Atlas and Alice, trampset, Splonk, Wigleaf, New Flash Fiction Review, Fictive Dream, Forge, Gooseberry Pie, Literary Namjooning, Trash Cat and other publications, as well as four Best Microfiction anthologies.

Read more from Frances:

Here on Trash Cat Lit – ‘All Hail the Earwig‘
Impossible Voice – ‘Husband, In My Dream‘
Fictive Dream – ‘Saturday Girl‘