Friday 8 April 2011

Loyalty

The bullet took off half my face, from the left corner of my mouth up to my forehead. The fire took care of the rest. When they found my body five months later there wasn’t much of me left. A charred husk. I looked like the sausage that fell into the barbecue. Poking around, as detectives do, they discovered my wallet outside in the grass. The cash was gone, as were my bankcards. All that remained of my life, my identity, was a supermarket loyalty card. It didn’t return my name to me. All they could ascertain from the card was an inventory of my last shopping trip: shaving foam, six beers, a loaf of bread, and some triple A batteries.

2 comments:

John Wiswell said...

Wow. My word verification? "TRUMAN."

Concise and powerful. You hit the strongest note with the "supermarket loyalty card" - the resentment and irony read so strongly there, especially potent for such a small story of his demise. Very good work.

Sam Pennington said...

Fantastic piece, very neatly written cramming so much into so few words. I loved this xx