The Biscuit Factory

Short Fiction ~ Cath Barton
​

Honourable Mention, Strands International Flash Fiction Competition - 20 

Joe knew. By the time they were seven years old like him, all the kids in school knew that bad things had gone on in the biscuit factory, though there were different stories about exactly what.
            Joe and his friend Simran went to the factory on Sundays, when Joe’s parents had fallen asleep in front of the TV after lunch. Simran would be waiting for him at the end of the street. His parents served food at the Gurdwara every Sunday; so long as he was in his room studying when they got home he knew they wouldn’t worry about him.  The boys cycled up the gravel path from the river as far as the wood where older kids went to drink cider on Saturday nights. Here the path became a rutted track, and Joe and Simran got off their bikes and pushed them up to a bush where they knew they could hide them. Then climbed over the wire fence that was supposed to keep people out of the factory.
            They’d explored the whole site that summer, forensically, sharing out the treasures they found, bits of coloured glass, odd-shaped rivets and dried-out frogs. Most things in the factory had been trashed or burned long before, but one Sunday they opened a door they’d overlooked till then, onto a room that was untouched. A table laid for tea, with fine china, including a tiered cake stand. Mice had got in, of course, and left their droppings where the food had been.
            ‘Let’s sit here,’ said Simran. ‘I’ll be the king and you can be–’
Before he could finish his sentence there was a bang from beyond the door. They looked at one another, hands across their mouths. There was nowhere to hide in the room. But there were no more sounds, no approaching footsteps.
            ‘Must have been a ghost,’ said Joe, when he dared speak again. His friend nodded, then slid off his chair and moved towards a cupboard on the wall. He pulled on a knob on the cupboard door, but it didn’t shift.
            ‘Locked,’ said Simran. ‘There must be something really, really valuable in there.’
He had watched a lot of Kung Fu films, said he could kick off the lock. After five minutes the lock was still intact and the boy was hopping around the room with a sore foot.
            ‘My go,’ said Joe, putting his fingers under the left hand side of the cupboard and pulling. The wood splintered and came away with an explosive crack.
            The two boys froze, but there was no sound from outside the room. Joe went to the door and opened it to check. The only thing he heard was what he took to be the fluttering of birds’ wings up in the blackened rafters.
            Meanwhile Simran was peering into the cupboard. It was full of packets of biscuits, the colours of the pictures on the cardboard still bright. The contents had, they discovered, turned to dust, but in a dark corner they found two little mice, huddled together, mummified. They took one each for their treasure boxes.
            When the boys had left the factory the ghosts of their future selves drifted into the room and sat together at the table enjoying the memory of their childhood explorations in the ruined factory, as the mice of ages scuttled in the back of the broken cupboard. 


~

​Cath Barton is an English writer who lives in Wales. She has four published novellas, most recently The Geography of the Heart from Arroyo Seco Press. A pamphlet of her short stories, Mr Bosch and His Owls, is published this Spring by Atomic Bohemian.

---