The red lunchbox

An original fictional sample story.

The house at half past five belonged to the refrigerator. Its motor hummed while I tied my shoes, filled my flask, and tried to open the cutlery drawer without waking anyone. Upstairs, my family slept through a part of the day I knew better than they did.

I had started the early shift three weeks before. My partner handled breakfast and the school run, and we had become efficient at exchanging information beside the kettle. Library day. Swimming bag. The permission form was on the counter, beneath the bowl that should not be moved because it contained a growing bean.

Our daughter was seven. She said she didn't mind that I left before she woke, then asked on four consecutive evenings whether I would be there in the morning. Both things could be true. I knew that, but it did not make the question easier to answer.

One night, she left her red lunchbox on my shoes. Inside was a folded piece of paper: a drawing of me with an enormous flask and a very small head. “For your break,” she had written. I put it in my coat pocket and looked at it beside the staff-room microwave, where everyone was discussing the weather.

The next morning, I left a drawing in her lunchbox. It was a terrible cat. I labelled it in case there was any doubt. When I came home, she informed me that it looked more like a potato wearing headphones. She had shown it to her friend, who agreed. I accepted the review.

We began leaving each other pictures. Hers became increasingly complicated: a dragon driving a bus, a house on the moon, our neighbour's dog elected mayor. Mine remained technically limited. I could manage a reasonably convincing sun and a fish that only sometimes resembled a shoe. Some mornings, when I was running late, I drew a single star.

There were still days when the arrangement felt hard. I missed a breakfast conversation about a loose tooth and the morning she finally learned to do her own ponytail. A drawing did not replace those things. But it gave us something to begin with when we found each other again at the end of the day.

Last Thursday, I opened my coat pocket and found a new picture. It showed two lunchboxes, one red and one blue, connected by a long, looping line. I asked what the line was when I got home. She shrugged, as though the answer were obvious. “That's us talking.”

Illustrative photograph for an original fictional story. Photo: Dana Sarsenbekova / Unsplash.