"Kiss" drabbles by Neville Hunt

Last kiss

Kiss #6

He was lying in the hospital bed, breathing, but no other living signs of the father I'd known. A cocktail of drugs had kept him that way, gone away, miles away, thank goodness. It was down to me to take our mother home... home to what? Time to say goodbye. I leant over and kissed his forehead.

"Goodnight Dad, God bless you," matching the familiar bedtime ritual we all knew, except in reverse.

I was shocked when his eyelids instantly flicked open, revealing a final acknowledgment, beyond consciousness. I never saw him alive again, but how could I ever forget?

A kiss too far

Kiss #5

With less than a year between them, Paul and younger sister Karen were always close. Ying and yang people said; Karen open, fun, gregarious, while Paul was quiet, thoughtful and brooding.

When teens arrived, Karen, forever popular, would drag Paul to all her parties. While she sparkled and danced, he stuck to the wall like Blu-Tack. She decided to tutor him on girls. What makes them tick.

It was awkward when, at 16, in one of her ‘tutorials’, he grabbed Karen, forcing his mouth on hers in a clumsy kiss, confessing his love.

He couldn’t live with her rejection.

Unwanted kiss

Kiss #4

His kiss was far from welcome. It was intrusion of the worst kind. It was rough and I was far from ready for it. How could this man believe his advances would be wanted?

Had I inadvertently given the wrong signals? Was I dressed too provocatively? Was I secretly flirting with him? Had anything I said been risqué and given him the come-on? Was I ‘asking for it’?

How come I’m thinking like this? Am I giving him the benefit of some spurious doubt? I do feel guilty for kneeing him in the nuts though. But not that guilty!

Mwahh!, Mwahh!

Kiss #3

The French kiss the cheeks, while, due to a general lack of savoir faire, the Brits kiss the air. Listen out for the ‘mwahh!, mwahh!’ sound effect; it's a sub-text. To the mwahh-er, it might possibly be a futile attempt to hide embarrassment, but more likely it’s a public display of self-importance.

Janet, whose cheekly air was displaced and whose ears were marred by 'mwahhs', described it as at best mildly irritating, at worst, insulting. On that basis, Sophie had probably insulted everyone she had greeted at the party. How could she be so pretentious? Beats moi!

Stolen kiss

Kiss #2

There was nothing tentative about that kiss, the overture to stolen passion. The intensity was reciprocal, the power was consuming, the finale was inescapable. It was as if each of the performers wished to devour the other. The ingredients for this potpourri were a cup each of biology, opportunity and lack of fulfilment... and the passion runneth over.

The mutuality of attraction, the timing and the finality of the first act made repetition inevitable. But this was no work of genius, it was a prelude to lives upturned, love’s destruction and crushing disharmony.

And all it took was a kiss.

First Kiss

Kiss #1

Shy, tentative, it might not have happened but for proximity and the unconscious signalling between the two youngsters. What was it that prompted the contact? Was it the boy’s hesitancy, rendering him unthreatening, was it the imperceptible tilt of the girl’s head, the dilation of her pupils, the boy’s half-smile or the way that their eyes locked together so briefly, only to flick away instantaneously? Was there a simultaneous, barely audible intake of breath by both?

Maybe a serendipitous confluence of them all? It needed no courage. It mattered not that neither knew what to do.

Ah, I remember.