National Flash Fiction day

I've just learnt via The Domesticated Bohemian that today is National Flash Fiction day  so although I haven't signed up for it I thought I'd do my bit by posting my Thinking Ten piece for today, the prompt for which was the opening sentence of this:   

As yet unexploded

The letter lay unopened on the table.   And it smelt.   It smelt of her, the distinctive, pervasive and ridiculously expensive smell of her.

Of course I hadn’t opened it.   Had had to fetch the meat tongs to pick it up from the doormat and lay it on top of the double-paged pizza flyer that had accompanied it, to avoid contaminating the table, so averse to touching it had I been.   And then I'd needed to sterilise the tongs, dunking them in the dregs of the boiling water left over from my breakfast coffee, only just resisting adding bleach and disinfectant because I didn’t know which would be most apt and anyway thought I’d been told, once upon a time, that the two together gave off poisonous fumes or something.   Just like the bitch to try to kill me off, no matter how third-hand, how tenuous the possibility!

Stupid of me, and over-reacting since the postman would have handled it last, and before him goodness knows how many others since it left her grasping fingers, nails no doubt as expensively polished as the rest of her.

And there was no need to open it.   I knew what it said because, in typical belt and braces fashion (and a small twitch of a smile here as I momentarily imagined her in plain black elastic braces before, unavoidably, the elastic turned to silk and became diamond-encrusted) the bloody woman had also phoned.   Left a message, giving date and time and, as per usual, a reminder about her dietary requirements.

No, no need to open it, but this time I’d be the one to take action, the one to leave.  He could take time off work and look after his bloody mother all on his own.