My friend Roland came round on Saturday. We were going to watch football on telly but it was half-time before he arrived.
Clearly, he hadn’t shaved for a couple of days and by the state of his hair I don’t think he had washed. He might have been wearing yesterday’s clothes.
‘I’ve only just got up,’ he said and I asked him if he had been out late on the town. No, he said, he’d stayed home and played games on his phone.
He hadn’t had breakfast so I made him toast. He woofed that down and then asked if I had beer. ‘Why didn’t you get some on the way here,’ I scolded, and he said he couldn’t be bothered.
We cracked open cans and he told me he had to do a piece for his writing group. This is a thing he has to go to as part of his probation.
Roland said it was about the Seven Deadly Sins and he had to work out which of them most applied to him. ‘Seven Deadly Sins?’ I asked, ‘Like Murder and Adultery?’ and he said no, I was thinking of the Ten Commandments and the Seven Deadly Sins were pride, greed and he started to list them but trailed off.
While Roland set the beer can on the carpet, laid back on my settee, scratched his chest and tried not to fart, I laughed, ‘We all know which is your most Deadly Sin.’
‘Yes, Lust,’ he replied lazily.
Click here for more stories involving Roland
Words: Richard Rooney
Illustration: A.I.
Flash Fiction 250
Flash Fiction 250 