Win A Year's Food (Flash Fiction)

17/10/2014

360 Words

The 365 loaves of bread were offloaded in the afternoon. Helen stood in her kitchen doorway watching the delivery van rise on its shocks as the weight of the crate was transferred onto her lawn. Not quite what she had imagined, but who can look a gift horse in the mouth?

The delivery man released the hydraulic lift control, stepped around the crate to check all was well with the package, and turned blankly to Helen. His job was done.

She smiled back at him with a tentative hand-raising. What the hell was she supposed to do now? 700 grams times by 365, equaled 255 kilograms. That was four times her weight. Twice that of her husband, Jacob. “Win A Year’s Food” it had said. Apparently people live on bread alone.

The man retracted the machine arm, closed the back doors and hurried back into the van off to his next delivery.

The package remained on the lawn.


She didn't even eat regular brown bread. She can give some away. Charity maybe? That really does defeat the object of winning something. She had heard that ducks shouldn’t be fed bread. Anyway, one shouldn’t encourage that amount of airborne droppings.

It’s not like a loaf a day would last a year. She shuddered at the thought of a year’s worth of green mould festering and turning to liquefied sludge in her pantry. Her freezer was barely big enough for the Texan steaks her husband loved so much.

Either the marketing department of the local paper hadn’t thought this completely through or they were taking the mickey out of their readers.

Helen thought about the newspaper for a moment.

Their offices were slightly out of the way to her job at the roofing company. It would only add another five minutes on and she could cope with twelve months of deliveries. And from what she remembers of her visit to the premises a year or two ago for quoting, the mail container at the security booth could fit a loaf of bread in it rather snugly. Maybe squeezed in a bit.

Suddenly she felt the physical motivation to drag the crate into the garage.

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