Pignus

by Jez Patterson

Like most things in life, Ekram had discovered, the ways of getting it wrong dwarfed the ways of getting it right. It therefore paid to go with what you knew. Paid quite well, he hoped, as he travelled across town to check out the pawnshop Shami had told him about.

Times were hard. Shami’s mother had gone to the shop with a silver picture frame her mother had left her. Shami didn’t know how much his mother had got for it, only that the weird owner had forbidden her to take the photo out, insisting that leaving it in increased the value. The picture was of Shami’s dad, taken before the cancer stretched him about every which way and then discarded him: skinny and boneless.

Shami just had his mother now and government benefits definitely didn’t stretch every which way. Ekram had known him since primary school and they still crashed at each other’s places: Ekram grateful for a decent meal, Shami for a space on the bedsit floor to get away from his mother’s tears and complaints.
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