What's The Worst... Chapter 03

Trisha looked toward the clock again. She could still only just make out the time through a blurry haze of tears and lack of focus. She growled and cursed,

“Aarrgghh, these bloody lenses…”

For a brief moment, the dish containing the second lens was in dire jeopardy and could easily have found itself tumbling through the air on its way to a bin. However, dishes tend to have a more “I’ll sit here until something else happens” approach to life so it stayed.

Clare would be here any minute now, even allowing for her punctuality aversion syndrome.

Trisha removed the troublesome lens from her eye again; in itself a fraught procedure given the length and finish of her fingernails.

It had taken several false starts due to snags, breaks and other assorted manicuring disasters, but yesterday the appointment and the fingernail condition had all perfectly aligned to allow her to get a long awaited French polish.

Now, the end of each finger and thumb was adorned with a hard, well defined, nicely squared off nail; definitely not the ideal implement for gently pinching a soft contact lens out of your eye.

She doused the lens in saline solution once more, rubbed it gently, held it up to the light to make sure that it wasn’t inside-out or torn. Carefully she placed the lens back on the end of her finger and brought it back up to her eye….

DING DONG!!!!

“Aarrgghh, the bloody door bell..”

Trisha placed the lens back into its dish and replaced the lid on both.

She ran down stairs, wiping her eyes as she went,

DING DONG!!!!

“Alright,” she cried out, “I’m coming…”

The front door was at the bottom of the stairs. Through the frosted panes Trisha could make out a brightly coloured shape, probably lime green and orange,

“Yep, that’ll be Clare, looking like a bohemian impressionist version of a pumpkin.”

Trisha reached for the door, turned the key in the lock and released the deadbolts. As she opened the door a voice from the shape called through,

“Wotcha lazy, what time of day do you call this???”

“It’s not that late!!!”, Trisha retorted, fully opening the door and beckoning her friend in,

“I bet you think it’s only nine o’clock, dontcha???”

“What???”, Trisha was slightly bewildered, but that seemed to be a fairly normal state when engaged in conversation with Clare…

“Last Sunday before Halloween!! What does that tellya?”

“I don’t follow?”

“The clocks, the clocks…” Clare paused, staring into Trisha’s face, looking for the signs of light dawning, listening for the delicate ping as the penny dropped, but, no, nothing was catching… she continued,

“Last Sunday before Halloween means the clocks went back an hour last night!!! Summer is officially over and the nights have drawn in!!!”

“Oh shit!”, it was a dim light, but it had finally dawned, “we’re late then?”

“Yep, true to form, we’ve messed up again!!”, the sunny, cheery tone in Clare’s voice was supported by the beaming grin.

It may be a small victory for anarchy over authority, but the single full revolution of a minute hand is still a statement of non-compliance.

“So much for breakfast then, and I guess glasses it is.”

At which point Clare’s face suddenly became serious and she stared once more into Trisha’s,

“So what’s wrong with your eyes then, they look terrible?”

Trisha cast her eyes briefly down and with an imperceptible shake of her head said,

“Nothing, just my lenses playing up….”

At that Clare turned and set off past her car,

“Oh yeah, and we’re takin’ the bus… forgot my sunnies and driving in this is a pain!!!”