Flash Fiction: The Final Touch

Cold air slapping at her face, Georgie’s warm fur beneath her palm, a guiding hand upon her elbow as she ascends the three steps to the doctor’s room. These are the things that contact her skin. These are the things that touch her now. In a distant story, she recalls plump baby flesh against her own, tiny fingers wrapping hers. Later, those fingers sticky with jam, grabbing at her hair, a snotty nose pressed into her neck. Clammy little hands always clutching at her skin, prickling along limbs, when all she wanted was to be clean and touched no more. She remembers touch. But can’t decide if she misses it. Licking a tongue over dry lips, she recalls, somewhere in those foggy way-back days, the smoky press of her husband’s bristly kiss, his hands against her nipples, thighs. And cold sleepless nights. Awake, with a kaleidoscope of worries streaming through bedroom shadows: money, children, work. And that huge-mouthed eyeless monster of fear: fear of everything. Fear of nothing. But her husband’s warm chest spooned into her back confirming that, at least, darkness could be shared. And still, sometimes, she endures the icy indignity of the speculum, latex-gloved fingers, or a cold hand cupping her withered breast. She’s refined the shut-eyed separation of mind and body to a numbing drone. Now she can even hum it loudly enough to block out the doctor’s voice.

‘Mrs Williams? Can you hear me? We’re finished here. You can get dressed.’ If she keeps her eyes closed a little longer, she might find herself back in her first bedroom, mother strumming the hairbrush through her long fine hair. Always holding the hair gently away from her scalp to work through knots. Then the tingling rhythm of twenty strokes. She’d count them softly, relishing each caress. If she squeezes her eyes tight, she can peer into that old feeling like reading a faded page from a fairy-tale.

Now, the brush of a cashier’s hand, a perfunctory Christmas kiss upon the cheek from a son living interstate and a daughter-in-law that never really liked her, seem to be the breadth of what touch means. But she still has Georgie. Grey and arthritic like her, he curls into her side and they breathe into each other. Reminding each other of life, love, and the comfort of touch. They walk slowly, stiffly along the windy foreshore where her neighbours often smile and cry, ‘Oh, Georgie, you are getting old.’ And in the gasp of unrelenting chill and thoughtless words, she shudders, knowing one day soon Georgie’s fur will lose its warmth. He is her last. Too many pained farewells for too many loyal companions.

When she wakes, and the world is still asleep, she might pad out to the kitchen, Georgie at her heels, to boil tea, gaze into the lonely black street and listen to the clock tick. Often it is then, in that still, waiting dark, that she is touched again. It tightens at her throat, floods her limbs, and throbs like a rock trapped inside her heart. The thunderous joy and sorrow of it all. Every day, every year, everything melding into one.

Georgie, head cocked, watches as her shoulders shake, and she lets water trickle down her cheeks. Whistling through her bones, the bloody chambers of her heart, the thud and ache, remind her that she is simply waiting for the final touch.

By Kate Maxwell. She is yet another teacher with writing aspirations. She’s been published and awarded in Australian and International literary magazines such as The Blue Nib, The Chopping Blog, Hecate, Blood and Bourbon, fourW, and Bright Flash Literary Review. Kate’s interests include film, wine and sleeping. Her first poetry anthology, to be published with Interactive Publications, Brisbane is forthcoming in 2021. She can be found here.