Martin Porter

Egg and Sausage in the Backseat of a Car

The sky is the colour of baked beans, not canned but oven baked, mixed with beer or something stronger, half digested, then rejected in the corner against a chipped brick wall which has seen better times, and worse.

He has been awake for a couple of sunrise hours, but not long enough to comb or even pull his fingers through his hair. His car is skewed against the gutter, passenger foot well cluttered with empty boxes of burgers, stale buns, crushed plastic and greasy newspaper, back seat full of crumpled girl.

He met her last night, worse for wear. Well, he was. She was, probably, if only he could remember. She looked stunning, like the polished glass of a full bottle on the way to empty. Both thought it too good a chance to miss. They dined on wine and take-away; mostly cheap wine, from the feeling in his head.

He promised her breakfast if she stayed the night. He longed for two eggs on a plate, she wanted sausage and some bread. She accepted, but he cannot quite recall. He remembers little, these days.

She fumbles the window winder and he staggers to open the car door. She falls forward and slumps in the gutter, propped against the fender, smiling in a vaguely friendly fashion at him.

 Fifteen minutes later, he is crumpling an empty can, having washed two sunny-side ups down his throat. She ate the bread and is still chewing the knitted gristle of a shallow fried bratwurst. His stomach always refuses that sort of food in the morning. He leans over to kiss her, but his guts are not co-ordinating with his lips anymore and he paints the paving with the abstract colours of another dawn.

And, like the dawn, she is gone.

Martin Porter is a writer born in Jersey CI, now based in New Zealand. His writing has appeared in journals and collections in the USA, Europe and New Zealand. Martin was the winner of the Channel Islands Writers Competition (poetry section) 2005 and the Northland (NZ) Libraries 2012 and 2014 Flash Fiction Competitions. His flash fiction "Splinters" received a Pushcart Prize nomination in 2013 from the "Flash Frontiers" blog.