New flash fiction: ‘Helena’s Tasting Party’

                                                                 Helena’s Tasting Party

Helena is here: at a gourmet food-tasting party, hosted in an expensive apartment with lake views on two sides. She is dressed for cocktail-style social action but surrounded by people she has never mixed with before. The “slightly weird” colleague who offered to get her an invitation is over at a table stocked with rows of small bowls full of colourful dips and designer sauces. Someone engineering this production really pays attention to catering: so many details are included, so many options provided, but there is no clutter anywhere. Waiting staff have a spooky knack for anticipating guests’ choices.

She is annoyed to note that despite not being even nearly as sleek or conversational as her, Glen is obviously at home in this settting. In their office world, she has overhead him talking about role-playing games. It stirs strong suspicions.

‘So, can I get you a drink? A plate of samples?’ A strong, young voice; still, she struggles to not assume that the man who owns it is trying too hard.
‘Not yet, thanks, but can you tell me how my colleague over at the dips table fits in here?’ Helena likes her drinks neat and her answers even neater, whenever possible.
‘You don’t have much time for fantasy fiction, do you?’ Dafydd the stranger likes to test reactions of anyone who looks over-confident about their ability to interpret unspoken social cues. He hasn’t met an example like Helena for a fair while. Helena just wishes she’d accepted a drink.
‘No and not interested in starting now’. ['Good thing Cassie isn't here now -she'd nag me about being unforgiving.' ]
‘If you were, it could help explain a little about why Glen fits in. He’s not naturally “one of us”, but it’s good to know him.’ He leaves that with her as he goes to get her a drink, taking a chance he’ll get it right after being trained by the waiting staff.
Glen is back beside her seat, with a full plate, extra fork and servietttes for both of them. ‘Thought you could use some of these morsels. Sorry for being away so long.’
‘No matter; thanks for the food’. She finds some flavours that promise to improve her workday lunches if she can get them at a deli.
‘Looked like Dafydd was throwing you a surprise question or two’.['Wtf? When did Glen the role-player in disguise become a sharp reader of body language?' Helena really wants that drink and wishes she'd never let one of her closer friends talk her into saying yes to this...event. ]

Too late for any more answers or questions -the host, even weirder in his own way than Glen or Dafydd, is persuading everyone to move out to the balcony for his sunset-viewing ritual. Two minutes later, with a drink even she admits is a perfect choice, Helena finds some relief in the natural spectacle and takes a micro-holiday from being critical.

Back indoors after dark: Helena and Dafydd are enjoying a mutual-irritation/flirting contest and Glen is keeping out of range while he also tries to assure the host that they won’t involve anyone else.
Helena suddenly crosses an unknown personal boundary by simply not knowing enough about these people. Glen hasn’t managed to intervene in time – he saw the essential warning sign but has missed the chance. He also missed every earlier chance to drop any discreet hints about the presence of genuine mysterious capabilities and some disturbing secret lives.

All the fun stops. Instantly. Possibly even faster than that. She can’t even see Dafydd now, but looks at where he just was…sees a small three-tailed orange lizard on his chair.
‘Didn’t see that one coming, did you?’ Even if Glen had said something, Helena’s intense contempt for fantasy fiction would have reduced it to nothing, so she is totally unequipped to deal with small talking lizards the colour of Subtly-muted Umbrian Orange tiles she recently had installed in her bathroom. She just shakes her head, stays quiet and aims a panicked look at the host and Glen, for any kind of help. No conditions, just help. A quick exit is her no.1 choice.

‘How about we try a quiet lounge bar, somewhere else?’ Glen the “slightly weird” roleplayer from her office life, finds a voice that has the right kind of helpful sound, so she follows him out of the circle of
confused guests, out the front door and stays silent in the lift. She is still silent when he leads her out to the footpath and points towards a bar across the road. A nod will do, so he gets one.

The best news of the night suddenly become clear to her: despite fititng in with the unsettling party scene and being a friend of a guy who changes colour and grows three tails when he’s really pissed off, Glen is showing no signs of changing into a lizard. He might even turn out to be a reasonable lounge-bar date.

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I wrote the piece of flash fiction above earlier this week, for a facebook friend. It was written in one night, very soon after being at a national Speculative Fiction convention, Conflux6, in Canberra on the October Long Weekend (3-5 Oct.)