© Evan Woods 2025
A friend asked me to write a short story featuring her… so I turned her into a nutcase.
Steve and Lola had been together for many years. He worked six days a week as a mechanic and she looked after their house. Their relationship had levelled off, becoming what some might call static.
Lola was tiny and curvy, Steve was tall and gradually widening. Occasionally he would attempt something sweet such as cupping her face, kissing her and running his fingers through her curls but to Lola these small attentions somehow seemed dutiful nowadays rather than romantic and their sex life was – well, mostly about Steve, not that she minded; Lola wasn’t unhappy with her life in their household. Steve wasn’t pushy, he expected only for the house to be reasonably tidy which was fine by Lola because she was a bit of a tidyness freak. And he enjoyed her food more than his own, although she suspected he was just trying to get out of cooking.
But in this long-term reality Lola felt more and more unfulfilled as time went by. Steve spent most evenings flat out on the sofa after his dinner and shower; the fun activity of taking showers together had faded into memory. He was never outright nasty or made digs at her, he wasn’t the type, but he seemed to be generally disinterested in her day and never chatted about his day anymore. Once upon a time they’d laugh together as he related the antics of some of his customers like the ones who ‘knew how long a job will take’ and the look on their faces when they found out how wrong they were.
But still, Steve wasn’t a bad man and she didn’t have a bad life, did she?
Then there came a day – something different from every other day – when for no apparent reason Lola woke up with the feeling of being seperated from the world. Steve had eaten breakfast before Lola awoke. “I didn’t want to disturb you on your birthday.” He gave her a cuddle, threw on his work togs and departed for his garage.
Yes that was her problem, a birthday. Another bloody year gone. Steve had left her a card on the other pillow. Somehow it seemed a bit pathetic.
Lola busied herself round the house with her normal day. A perfectly normal day. Why did it have to be normal? She went through her tasks with no feeling for them, no memory even of what she was doing. She turned the telly on for company and when the news came on she started preparing their dinner. “What’s today? Oh yes, Wednesday. Pie and mash tonight. Yes, pie-making time.” She always made her own pastry from scratch and cut up the meat to cook her pies and to be fair to Steve he wouldn’t have known where to start.
She went blindly about her preparations, every now and then realising that she was staring at the tiles on the wall behind the counter. They had a zig-zag pattern, a visual rhythm that got on her nerves. She hadn’t noticed that before. Lola felt a little surprised that her dinner prep was going as… normal. There was that ‘normal’ again.
Steve arrived home at his usual time. As always. He was very reliable like that. He gave Lola a peck on the cheek. “Evening babe, I’m knackered. How’s dinner looking?” He dumped himself into a chair at the kitchen table. Lola noticed the small detail of dirt under Steve’s fingernails. Very romantic, she thought.
“Here you go, pie and mash. Enjoy.”
“Ah thanks! I hope you enjoyed your birthday, Lola.” Steve started in on the pie. Lola watched him forking up mouthfuls while she barely pecked at her food.
Under her breath she muttered “why am I cooking on my birthday? I must be cracking up.” Steve didn’t hear her. She felt no taste for her dinner and walked behind his chair to put her prep cutlery in the sink.
“Oh yeah, this is an okay steak pie Lola!”
Lola dropped her pans in the sink. Without even thinking about it she snatched up her serated meat-cutting knife from the carving board and swung round, plunging the knife into Steve’s left ear up to the hilt. Letting go of the knife she stood back, curious to see what happens next. “I wonder why I did that?”
For a moment she studied a bubble of her own blood on her thumb which she’d caught on the little angled part of the blade where it mounted in the hilt.
As for Steve, with the insertion of the knife he felt a sudden intense cold inside his brain and his head snapped back. His vision went awry, he was seeing a spinning multi-coloured kaleidascopic image of the kitchen then he flopped forward onto his dinner plate, staring through rapidly blinking eyes across the remains of his meal, not knowing what had happened. Blood pulsed from his ear, dribbled down his face and mingled with the mashed potatoes. He couldn’t move, he’d gone into shock and important parts of his brain had been severed.
Lola looked on without emotion, her head tilted to one side for a better view of Steve’s face. He looked like he was still alive. Delicately she fingered the knife handle, grasped it tighter, twisted and wriggled it to tear his brain up. She had to make sure, it just wouldn’t be right to leave him untidily alive like that. Lola withdrew the blade with blood and little bits of brain clinging to it. Steve’s ear gave a final pulse of blood and he sighed out and died.
Lola went back to the other side of the table, sat down and started on her dinner. Somehow it tasted better now. “it wasn’t just an ‘okay’ steak pie.” Sudden rage twisted her features and she screamed “IT WAS STEAK AND KIDNEY PIE!”
Poor uncomprehending Steve.
Poor mad Lola.
Evan Woods 