Red Card

by Mark Swain

A tragi-comic short story that examines the delicate balance between success and failure.Pat Carmichael was a charismatic and talented footballer with a promising career in the British Premiership. With rugged good looks a Porsche, a pretty wife and a glamorous lifestyle he was envied and desired by all and sundry. The media loved his cockiness as much as his skill on the ball. At 27 Pat had the world at his feet, but a crippling knee injury brought it all to a deadly halt. In no time the media, his fans and friends had forgotten him. Depressed, Pat turned to drink. Within a month his wife was at the door with suitcases packed. “I fell in love with Pat Carmichael the footballer,” she said, handing him the front door keys. “I’m not interested in being married to Pat Carmichael the unemployed drunk with sick in his beard.”Nearly two years later Pat is living in a bedsit and in debt. Drink, gambling and the divorce settlement have eaten through his entire fortune. Paying someone to kill him is looking like a good option. Does any of the bravado of the old Pat survive?

14 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 8, 2014

About the author

Mark Swain has a low boredom threshold. As a child he was something of a fantasist and compulsive liar. This, he says, has fitted him well to fiction writing. He has spent his life living around the world, collecting experiences via numerous jobs and several changes of career after initially attending Art College in Hastings, UK. He has only had one wife, however (25yrs) and they have 3 grown-up children. Mark became a full-time writer in 2009 after his young son persuaded him to take 10-months off to cycle 10,000-miles to Japan. It released him from running his successful management consultancy company. It also resulted in a prizewinning short story, published in 2010 followed by his first book - Long Road, Hard Lessons - in 2012. With a diverse kit-bag of memories from an eventful life and an out of control imagination, he has since published a book of short stories and has several other books as work in progress.