The Unexpected Arrival of the Black Guy

When I told him I’d chosen him as the character in a story, he chuckled and dug his fingers into his bush-like hair. I could feel his right leg vibrating against the table, sending splashes of my tea onto the wooden surface.

 “Call it the unexpected arrival of the black guy,” he said.

The sun had painted the sky orange and pink with wisps of white cloud when Laura’s trip back to the University of East Anglia began. The walk to the train station wasn’t a particularly long one, but that day it seemed to take hours. Laura’s travel case weighed a tonne, and even with the two of us dragging it, the twenty minute walk was verging on forty.

 “Fucking shitty wheels. Waste of money, this case,” she cursed as we dragged it over the icy ground. The case groaned in response; a gritty ripping sound that tore through my ear drums and made me cringe. We were silent for a while, as the frosty wind ripped through our coats and scratched at our skin. Pulling my scarf up over my face, I grunted and forced myself through the wind. The case gripped the earth as we heaved it up the curb and we heard a pop. The second wheel had broken and my right arm was beginning to ache with the strain. By the time we reached the station, I’d switched arms more times than I could remember.

“I can’t believe I’m not gonna see our Gaz for six months and he hasn’t even come to say bye,” Laura sighed as we waited on platform one. The train left in ten minutes. “He just sent me a text asking where we are. I told him what time my train was at yesterday. He’s at ours.”

I sighed, “that’s shit” – and it was. We’re pretty close, the three of us. We even bought each other the exact same Christmas presents, just in different colours – you know the saying, great minds.

The sky grasped our attention as we waited. Stars were beginning to crawl into sight as orange faded to blue. It matched my mood as the clock counted down to the departure of my twin. Looking over to her, I saw that she was as miserable as me. She looked up and shrugged at me in understanding. We went back to watching the stars. The train was waiting at the red light when we heard him.

“LAURRRAAA,” he called in his classic Tarzan expression. His brown afro bobbed up and down as he ran, flailing his arms and legs in the air like a clown. It was clear by the colour of his face – red, rather than his natural caramel brown – and the heaving of his breath that he’d ran the entire way down from our house. 

“Bet you didn’t expect to see me here.”

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The Unexpected Arrival of the Black Guy was published by InkTears in February, after winning an honourable mention in their annual flash fiction contest. 

Other winning stories can be found here: InkTears2