Go to Pieces

Go to Pieces
by
Steven Hunley

The breakup started wimpy and ended tragic.

They’d been going at it hot and heavy for months. In the back room of the Odeon recording studios where they both worked. On the marble bench in the British Museum in front of the red granite statue of Ramses, while he recited Ozymandias by Shelly with his best Richard Burton imitation.

On the tube after work. In the Wimpy bar around the corner. He watches while she carves up the burger properly with a knife and fork, unlike crazy Americans who eat burgers with their hands.

Thousands of kisses exchanged, hundreds of promises handed out like cheap Chinese candy.

Then out of nowhere they broke up, she broke them up, and he fell apart at the seams.
While he sat despondent and blue, she received tickets to a Peter and Gordon concert, a gift from the producer for a job well done, and a bonus, since she’s leaving because she wants a new job where she can do “something significant and meaningful.”
This may be good, seeing her at work is always the worst part, the part where he acts so spastic he could be a zombie, and many co-workers are convinced he’s moon-struck at best.

In a week he decided he was over the worst of it. He’s mistaken, even though the constant thoughts of her that ravaged his sleep had lessened. Each meal he ate alone no longer reminded him of candle-lit dinners he’s shared with her. When Big Ben sounded at 2:00 AM it no longer taunted him about what they were usually doing, making wild passionate you-know-what, a four letter word that many find hard to deal with. But that was only because he was numb. And he was desperately wrong.

He’s unaware, dumb to the world around him and ready to end it all by jumping off Waterloo Bridge, not unlike the movie with Vivien Leigh.

He’s posted his good-bye notes to everyone that matters. He’s asked a neighbor to take care of the cat. Just off work, and usually on his way home, he turns to the right instead of the left and makes his way to the bridge. He’s filled with emotions and begins to choke up. The wind is gusting like crazy causing his tie to flap annoyingly against his chest. He attempts take off his tie, and finds he can’t get it unknotted, his hands are uncontrollably shaking. So he loosens it instead and fails to unbutton his coat for the same reason.

“So what,” he thinks, “I’ll go down in style. The water will soak in the coat and make it as heavy as chains on my body, like a burial at sea.’

Half way across the bridge he stops and faces the river. It’s leaden and cold and fast moving. He stands up on the barrier, and notices the spikes on the ironwork only come up to his ankles. Standing on his toes like a doomed ballerina, he looks right and left, then down at the menacing river, and ponders the shoreline, the solidity of Saint Paul’s Cathedral, and within seconds… because there isn’t much time left…the fragility of his ethereal existence.


“This should be easy.”

Closing his eyes he leaps into the void, but not far enough.

His back is scraped by the iron points, causing his muscles to spasm as his back forms an S curve, bringing his neck closer to the spike.

But he lives.

At the back of his neck his tie is caught by the point, and although it nearly strangles him, it saves him long enough to be helped off, by a burly dock worker and his skinny wife, who are eating fish and chips while watching the sun go down, because it was suggested by a friend in their neighborhood named Chutney as “good for the digestion.”

An ambulance driver arrives on the scene, dressed up funny, as if she’s just gone to a concert. She has, it’s the ex- girlfriend who was working the late shift on her new job when she got the call. They pack him up in a stretcher and cart him off to hospital, I say to hospital, not to THE hospital, because for some reason unknown to me, that’s how Brits say it.

Do they hook back up? I need to go to U-tube and grab more inspiration.


©Steven Hunley

http://youtu.be/H_aayewNyq8

http://youtu.be/mmVKZa74a7Q

sweet fast little read. Love the Rhythm! This also reads like a good outline and could be extended by adding more details of their personality. Although you have given him some identity through his personality type (a romantic softie at heart) , we know nothing about her. And I could be interested in knowing their names.

her new job was as an ambulance driver? I would say the universe (or whatever) wanted her to help save him....so if you plan on continuing the story....maybe they do get back together?

yes, it needs more details but personally, discussing the issue involved, I think that nothing in the world, nomatter how hard and tough it is, should make us think of killing ourselves, yet it is a good piece of writing

One thing I've learned from reading you, my dear Steven, is how important it is to write a really, really good first line.

Thank you for sharing.

Regards