The Hoarder

The kitchen is stuffy, the window so crusted with finger-marks, grease and dust that it makes the trees outside look like photocopies of themselves. 

 

The floor is scattered with debris - breadcrumbs and fragments of crisps, tea leaves, curled up rocket, maybe a seed here and there – a forensic free-for-all.

He hoards food. The table is piled high with bread, some recently bought - others, encased in plastic, bloom with green spots of mould. There are rolls, flatbreads, pittas, cut loaves and pastries. Cookies, cheese biscuits, gluten-free biscuits, chocolate chip biscuits. Gingerbread stars in a large red plastic tin. Two tubs of butter. Tabasco sauce. A large packet of sugar. A toothbrush. A jar of pickles. A honeydew melon. A mug containing cold tea. 

 

Do not dare not look inside the fridge. It is taped closed and dirty whirls mark its edges. 

 

I do not judge. I only wish for rubber gloves, cleaning fluids and rubbish bags. As for what he wishes – I know he wishes for his country back, for the war never to have started, for his mother and sister, for a past that was different. 

By Bronwen Griffiths. 

Bronwen Griffiths is the author of, A Bird in the House, 2104, Not Here, Not Us – stories of Syria, 2016, and Here Casts No Shadow, 2018. Her flash fiction, short stories and poems have been widely published.  She now lives on the East Sussex - Kent border.