The phone woke Sheila and she wrestled with it while trying to switch on the bedside light.
Before she could speak a breathy voice slobbered, ‘Are you wearing knickers?’ She glanced at the clock radio; it was fifteen minutes past midnight. ‘What colour are they?’
Sheila let the handset slump, disconnecting the phone. It wasn’t the first dirty call she’d had, and she wasn’t alone among women in the village. Before she fell back into sleep the voice kept running round in her head. He had tried to disguise it but she was sure she knew it.
Then in a dream she recognised the voice. He was a local shopkeeper called Harris. Even in her dreams Sheila bristled at the hypocrisy: Harris was famous for fire and brimstone moral preaching at the chapel.
The big topic at her monthly Book Club wasn’t the latest pulp novel, it was the sex pest. All the women had gotten a call and when Sheila told them about her dream there was an audible gasp. Of course, Harris. It was definitely the loathed, oily, little shopkeeper who had a poster of the Ten Commandments prominently displayed alongside a No Credit Given notice in his shop.
They rejoiced at the ruin of the hated prig after police arrested Harris and he was jailed. His chapel disowned him and the women hounded his mother out the village.
Sheila slept soundly, until the phone rang one night and the caller asked, ‘What colour knickers are you wearing?’
Words: Richard Rooney
Illustration: A.I.
Flash Fiction 250
Flash Fiction 250 