English Creative Writing Bolton, Manchester, Bury: The onion.

You may not know this but onions do have a heart. In fact  they know far more than we give them credit for as this story will show.

Tony Cliff was suffering. His team was  losing, his favourite dog grew  older and his wife Amy never spoke except to ask ‘Alright?’ whilst looking over his head at something else.

Tony’s life had taken a wrong turning somewhere and he was lost.

He told his friend Simon  that  his head felt like boiled cabbage but what could he do?  Just make yet another mug of tea. Wash up. Find the remote again. Walk his dog.

Tony felt doomed,  trapped in a world of ‘alrights’ without end.

Then one day, out of the blue, he caught a cold. It was winter, so he took to his bed with more tea, plenty of tissues and poundshop lemon flu powders.

‘ Alright?’

Tony bit his lip, sniffed and asked if he might have  a raw onion sandwich, please. 

It would help with his bug.  His head hurt. His throat hurt.

‘Alright?

He dozed off. A few hours  later he opened his eyes,  and there  by the side of his bed on a small plate, sat a large white onion, plain, proud and pungent.  It felt too cruel to just eat it like an apple, and as it most definitely wasn’t a sandwich,  Tony inhaled a few times, wiped his eyes and went to sleep.

The next day he woke up and found he could swallow more easily, his head didn’t ache,  and even the sun was shining a little on his front garden.

The house remained quiet all morning, with only his beloved dog Oscar for company. Tony assumed everyone else  had  found things to do. 

For the first time in years Tony felt happy and he even smiled as he ate his cereal in peace. 

Yet just as he began reading  the back page of the news paper,  he heard a sound coming from upstairs, a sound coming from his bedroom.

A voice.

‘Alright, alright?  

The voice grew  more desperate.  ‘Alright?  Fainter still. ‘Alright?

Tony climbed the stairs. No body there.  He  scanned the room. No one there either. 

How strange. Weird, he thought. 

He turned to leave, then heard a whisper, a small hoarse voice calling.

‘Alright?

‘Al-right?’

Tony smiled.

All right! It cried.

‘All right! ALL RIGHT! ‘

It was the onion of course, looking fuller, was the right word  replete?

And somehow Tony felt that now it was All right. He understood. Perfectly.

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A day or two  later, when the onion stopped speaking,  Tony  placed her  gently  in a very special green bag, in his dark grey bin for recycling. He even shed  tears and said a short prayer. 

Time passed. Tony redecorated. A banner in Tony’s living room window now proclaims ‘Vegetables are  for LIFE!’

Oscar  has a new companion called Milly, and Tony takes them both on long hill walks, whatever the weather. 

He whistles.

Simon says Tony’s a changed man.