Triangular Cider
by Alan Murphy
The apples had grown queer that season, more triangular than round and of otherworldly hue. Ox Murphy blamed the rain, bellyaching that it had fallen at a funny angle. Should the cider taste triangular or otherworldly, autumn would be lean in the orchard. Wee Nathaniel dragged the season's inaugural keg into the ramshackle pantry, and dutifully suspended a dampened cedar ladle approximately three and a half inches from his father's jaw.
Ox caressed the ladle with pursed lips, suctioning a microscopic bead of auburn moonshine onto his palate. His reddened jowls grew and shrank with blowfish exaggeration, swishing the saliva-dominated brew to the gummiest nether regions of his mouth. With a last melodramatic gargle, Ox stretched and recoiled the braces of his dungarees triumphantly, thrusting himself into a flawless and lasting Jitterbug to the rhythm of Nathaniel's clapping.Four hours and half a keg of cider later, Nathaniel's palms were raw. Having long since exhausted the full Jitterbug repertoire, Ox had resorted to cross-pollinating the dance's purity with rogue elements of Rumba and sloppily executed Neoclassical Ballet. Both men agreed the celebration had run its course, and Nathaniel returned the keg to the cellar whilst his father wheezed from his exertions.
Fidgeting the smouldering embers from his fireside rocker that eve, Ox mused that he couldn't quite recall where or when he had learned to dance, particularly in such exotic stylings. Nathaniel, starfish-spread amidst a fluffy sheepskin rug, murmured that he similarly couldn't remember being able to clap rhythmically before that afternoon. By dawn, the cider had mysteriously evaporated, and impromptu bursts of percussive dance were seen less and less in the Orchard, if indeed at all.
Alan Murphy is the best-selling author of nothing whatsoever. This is something he hopes to remedy in the coming decades, if not sooner. He has been known to occasionally lapse and try his hand at sombre, weighty scribblings, but mostly he knows his place and sticks to humour. He recently placed runner-up in the Fish Publishing 2008 One Pager prize, and he will shortly be hawking his debut novel to anyone with a printing press. There are plans for two more novels currently fermenting in the crawlspace between his ears.