We’re pleased to announce the winner of the October WWWC: Susan Hobson. Responding to the prompt ‘one long, lost weekend’, Susan’s eponymous short story is a curious little tale of guilt and loss.

Read her winning entry below.

 One Long, Lost Weekend 

The weekend was over. 

Gary sat on the couch, hunched over his whisky glass. The police had gone, scornful incredulity barely reined in. He couldn’t blame them. He found it hard to believe himself, and he had been in the middle of it. 

He picked up the bottle, poured more into the glass. Watched his hand shaking. He’d never drunk so much as he had this weekend. 

Vaguely, he remembered plans he had made. A long weekend, no work for three days – a great time to catch up with his mates, unwind, relax. Only… 

Another memory barged past that one. The row. Emmie yelling at him, calling him selfish again, packing up the children in the car, driving off. He was pretty sure he rang her afterwards, but she blocked his calls. He tried ringing round her friends, family, even her mother, but none of them had seen her. Probably just as well, at that point. He was annoyed with her. Actually, he was angry, even furious. Incandescent. How many times had he taken his turn at looking after the kids so she could go and do whatever she wanted to do? She wasn’t being fair. He hated unfairness. 

So, he went with his plans. She’d be back, when she calmed down. In the meantime, he wasn’t going to waste his weekend, was he? Funny how little he could remember about the rest of the day. There was a bar involved, he was pretty sure about that. Maybe several. There was a girl, too, he thought, dyed hair, cat-eyes. He couldn’t help being attractive. Anyway, he only flirted. He was positive about that, absolutely positive. Even though he could barely remember her – what was her name? Shelley? Susie? No, it had gone. Names weren’t that important, after all. 

To be honest, Saturday was a blur. These things happen. To be even more honest, Sunday was not much better. He knew he had slept like the dead, and then woken up on the couch still feeling like death, with the hangover from hell. And he knew he had thrown up, because despite his best efforts, the smell still lingered. 

Actually, he had been quite glad that the kids weren’t around to witness his moment of weakness. A man likes to feel that his children look up to him. And they would have said … well, he’s not sure what they would have said. Dom, the scruffy, shaggy one, never spoke to him much anyway. Probably would have escaped to his room to play on his computer. Or his PlayStation – or was it an Xbox? Couldn’t remember exactly what devices Dom had at the moment, even though he had paid for a succession of them. Couldn’t have his kids going without, after all. And Allie – what was she, ten? eleven? – she was forever babbling away to her mother, but he couldn’t imagine her talking to him if she had seen him like that. She would have just looked at him, and somehow that would have been worse. He would get them both really nice presents – that would fix it. 

So, he didn’t remember much about Sunday either. Only that the house was empty. Too empty. All the times he had wished the house could be quiet, so he could think, and then, when it was quiet, he found his head was empty too. Must have been the booze the night before. Only one cure for that. That’s when he opened another bottle of whisky. 

There was something wrong with the house. He kind of noticed it on Sunday, or maybe he only became aware of it today (Monday – he was sure it was Monday already), or maybe he was just confused. No, he definitely started seeing it yesterday, because he remembered now, he remembered settling on the couch to watch the sport, glass in hand. Only, no matter how he clicked on the remote, he couldn’t find any sport. Or a movie. All the channels except for the kids channels and the nature programs seemed to have disappeared. Weird. 

There were a load of other things that had vanished, too. Had Emmie sneaked back in and cleared things out, taken them away with her? Only, it wasn’t her things that had gone. Her spare keys were still in the bowl by the door, but his keys were missing. Photos displayed on the walls had been moved around, and though all the pictures of Dom and Allie that Emmie had taken were still there, the few photos he had taken were all gone. So was the wedding photo. The kids’ bedrooms were untouched – did Dom really keep his room in this state? – but his bedroom (his and Emmie’s) had been … rearranged. 

Her clothes were still hanging in the wardrobe but his had disappeared. The bed was still there but the sheets – the ones they had slept in last week – had been stripped. There was no sign of them. He’d even checked the laundry basket, and then the washing machine and the dryer (it took a while to work out how to open that). And there weren’t any clean sheets in the cupboard either, not to fit his bed. In the end, he spent another night on the couch. 

This morning, he had tried contacting her again, but no answer, and again he drew a blank with her friends and family. He wasn’t even sure what some of her friends’ numbers were. He started to imagine her caught up in some traffic accident, in hospital – maybe worse … He called the police. Two officers, a man and a woman, turned up at his door. He told them his wife had gone off and that he was worried for her safety, and his children’s. He told them she (or some persons unknown, but obviously it had to be her) had broken in and removed things, random things that belonged in the house. Belonged to him. He showed them a list – quite a long one by now. No, there was no sign of a break-in. Yes, she had left in response to a row. No, there was no evidence that she had wilfully damaged anything that didn’t belong to her. 

It was when he tried to explain about the sheets and the missing TV channels that the officers exchanged glances and told him they’d be in touch if there was any news. Then they left, taking one last look at the whisky bottle. He wondered if they had smelt it on his breath. 

Gary sat on the couch, hunched over his whisky glass. The weekend was over.