The Toaster Mistake I felt the damp wood on my forehead, even this far into the fever I could still distinguish the grain of the Darlington oak as Albert’s front door. My lips quivered silently. Warm rain plastered down the toupees blonde hair onto my face. I husked in air sharply, blowing it out softly and nubbing my lips. I heard muffled movement inside the house. A passing saloon car ripped over the wet road behind me. I breathed out again. A latch near the top of the door was snapped back and a throat was cleared. A pause ensued. “Have you got it?”, a voice hushed I thumbed the toaster “Yes…”, I mouthed, but no sound came out.. My vision became creamy and hard, like the raw face of a divorcee. I felt nausea. Iron in the roof of my mouth. I was going to blackout again. The door slid across my face and the brown cabin porch came rushing up to meet me with a bang. In the darkness I waited. I felt a sense of consciousness. A few noises, a metal hammer on a concrete slab in the distance. I awoke on a hill-rom hospital bed. A sellotape sticky mouth and hot dribble. My sight was fuggy but I recognised his shape, leaning against the radiator. “Albert?” I hooted softly. “No darling. Albert’s not around much anymore.” His long Texan drawl. “Cedric?” I gradually sloshed out. “Hello Bonny, my lovely old bonny” He replied. His thumbs were firmly lodged in an brown workman’s tool belt round his waist, just above his pink lycra shorts. He unthumbed one to raise to his plastic cowboy hat, he pulled the peak towards me. “Good to see you bonny gal” My arms were fastened to the bed with neckties, the left was a dark green with little cricketers and cricket stumps. The right was a speckled pastel yellow. My mind washed and sucked itself out. A lavatory flushing. Leaving nothing but silence and the smell of lemon detergent. The smell of futility and a very real, almost white, crisp death. “Oh god, please don’t” I emptied. And horned, and honked.. And Ahhhh’ed out like a deep retch. “Please.” “I’m afraid you got the wrong one love, easy toaster mistake. But this time, its … well.. you know..” A spasm of anger came over me, I writhed like broken pigeon in a cars grill. Like a fox lit by head lights and plastic Sainsbury’s bags around strangling hands. “Just die.” Then I calmed and started babbling quickly and quietly at him, he walked towards me, a mothers voice, meek and pathetic. Then. It was strange. I think I even started laughing a little. I think I felt warmth and love for him as he approached. Like it was a naughty trick a partner might play, before grabbing you and tickling and laughing and tousling. And you collapse and breath out long and hard through a smile. And all you want to say next is that you love them. Pause. Blink. No, you REALLY love them. Is that ok? In a faux-offended way. And they laugh and say that it is. And you smile to yourself and felt such a throaty happiness that it feels as though you’re straining some kind of cord connected to your heart. And you feel sick with love. And you want to cry.