Fredrik Fernandez

Fredrik Fernandez sneered into his black coffee. The whole proposition was ridiculous. Yet he was obliged by bonds of friendship and honour. He had no option other than the one which, given other less strenuous circumstances, he would have avoided with great care. However his other options would signal an end to any sort of companionship between himself and Madison. Of course, the friendship would continue, but it would never be the same. There would always be an unbreachable distance between them, and since this was the one friendship of his existence, he didn’t want to screw it up. He didn’t want to go to the trouble of finding another like minded individual, establishing a dialogue and befriending them. His social skills weren’t up to this, not since last summer.

So shackled by friendship Fredrick waited, with his coffee and buttered toast, for Madison to arrive. He did so promptly at seven o’th’morning clock, trailing Mia and a trunk. This did not brighten Fredrick’s mood, he did not appreciate the early morning, nor did he appreciate the unexpected inclusion of Mia. She did not fit into the plan, and Fredrick was a man who liked to stick to the plans, no matter how foolish those plans were. Mia’s relationship to the plan was comparable to taking a square peg and attempting to ram it into your ear. Upon arriving Madison helped himself to Fredrick’s sparse kitchen, emptying the contents of his liquor cabinet into a bowl of cereal.

And thus it came to be that the overly drunk Madison, the reluctant Fernandez and the ill fitting Mia, situated around the trunk, contemplated the task in hand.



Fredrick first met Mia at her wedding to Madison. It was a small service, complete with vicar and church, attended by only the closest of relations. This extended to Fredrick and Heinrick, Madison’s dog. At the time Mia was fifteen and had been plucked by Madison from her previous life of suburban monotony. Fredrick took an instant disliking, as did Heinrick, both subsequentially urinated on Mia, Heinrick on the Honeymoon and Fredrick when she had been stung by a jellyfish.

Mia was now sixteen and had adopted a disconcerting fascination with her own death, disconcerting to Fredrick; Madison seemed more interested in his own pleasures. Her frequent proclamations of imminent doom appeared to have no effect on Madison, Fredrick believed that he didn’t care about her at all, she was merely another symptom of the persona Madison project, one of thorough disreputability.

She was a stubby, rotund blond girl, she would never be called a woman, completely unsuited to the name Mia. Her parents had had illusions of an idyllic family with engaging children and had decided upon exotic names for them. Mia was the eldest and her brother, Philippe, was the youngest of the two children. Fredrick could only theorise that her marriage to Madison was some sort of attempt on her part to compensate for her complete lack of character.