3WW CXIXX

I am writing a short story, using word prompts from 3WW and adding only 100 words each week. As it’s some time since I last posted, I’m including the first two posts as well as the new one.

Pierre stumbled downstairs. The knocking on his shop door was insistent.

‘I’m coming! I’m coming! Keep your shirt on,’ he cried.

She was leaning against the wall, shoulders hunched forward as she gasped for breath, her clothing in disarray. At the end of the street the rabble’s uproar was swelling.

‘You’ve got to let me in.’

‘No got to about it. I don’t know you from Adam…or Eve,’ he replied.

‘Oh I think you do.’ She was more composed now. She looked him straight in the eye.

‘Don’t you remember when I had to validate who you were?’

He stood eyeball to eyeball.

‘No I don’t remember, and to be candid, I really do not know who you are.’

While he was talking, she had levered herself off the wall, slithered round the door post, and neatly ducked under his outstretched arm, taking refuge inside the shop.

‘Come in and shut that door,’ she hissed.

His impulse was to drag her outside again, leaving her to the mercy of her assailants who were approaching fast; instead he obliged.

It was as if she could read his mind. ‘All the risk I took for you, you lily livered coward. It’s Camilla, as if you didn’t know.’

burden, natural, ubiquitous

Pierre was in a quandary: should he admit that he had been lying or should he continue to bluff it out; denying all knowledge of her had seemed the natural thing to do. Unwelcome memories surged and threatened to swamp his consciousness; memories of a time when he, Pierre Sauvignon, was an ubiquitous presence in the town. Of course, he had been known by a different name then. He was a fool to think that he could drop his guard: he would never be completely safe; the burden of his past was too great. She said was right: he was a coward.