The Shine Journal
Exceptional Flash, Poetry, Art and Photography!
Glue
by
Anna Caro
Brian was old now, rapidly approaching retirement; certainly too old to be doing this. But the children – and he thought of them as such because they were younger than his own, even though most were well into their twenties – were watching him intently as if he were to impart some ancient wisdom, as if the pot he was stirring contained some magic potion.
The tiny, androgynous looking one with pink hair and eyebrow piercings had perched herself, uninvited, on the bench, pushing sugar and coffee jars to one side to make herself more comfortable. Under her arm she held a roll of A3 posters secured with a rubber band. She worked as a receptionist – though Brian couldn't imagine where, looking like that – and she had said she could steal photocopying when her boss was out on lunch. It seemed more civilised, though perhaps less exciting, than staying up all night turning the drum of a duplicator until your hands were turquoise up past the wrists and you were intoxicated on the fumes.
The others looked more normal – half a dozen of them in standard student dress of jeans and t-shirt or thin jersey. He hoped they had remembered to bring something warmer for their night-time 
expedition, but then he supposed that at that age one didn't feel the cold. One, who introduced herself as Janine, seemed almost too smart in black pants, a cream blouse under a red v-necked sweater and her bobbed hair tightly clipped back on either side.
The lesson began; under his instruction Janine boiled water and Dan – tall and all in black – sifted the flour, mixed it up with a whisk. Brian brought out the secret ingredient: clove oil.
“Stops it going mouldy”, he explained, squirting it into the mixture.
“You’ve been doing this a long time,” came the voice from the bench, stating the obvious. Brian nodded. Then he nodded again. Then he started to tell them stories; about sneaking round the streets at night, about charging against the police – and that one time they managed to get them caught in a fishing net. He told them about how they believed they were changing the world, and about the betrayal of friends, and how their shoes were always, always caked white with glue.
And they listened, and they laughed, and it wasn’t out of politeness. He was enjoying himself more and more, even if the story about commandeering a cement mixer wasn’t strictly true. They told him, in their turn, about the march last Saturday and how good it felt, and how angry they were, and how lampposts were so hard to climb, and how impressed they were that anyone could have co-ordinated anything without email lists and text messaging.
The paste was declared ready and they took buckets in pairs, divided the glue up, pouring it carefully to avoid splashing. They selected their routes and set check-in times, and as they left the pink haired girl leapt up and punched the air. “Are we going to stop the war?” she screamed rhetorically.
Brian smiled to himself. “Perhaps not. But we've made some damn fine glue.”
MOTIVATION: I wrote "Glue" to explore intergenerational relationships, and how people can bond over in seemingly unlikely ways.
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