Category: Flash Fiction
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1702: Ash and Interleaf
Part 2: Of Ash and Interleaf — from Brigid’s Diary: Paris, 17 February 1833 The pages between here and the turn of the Seine have been removed, fed to the fire, their spines cracking like small bones. Felreil says Paris is a danger made of touchpaper and of men who read silence as a lip-wet…
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1002: Six Sentence Story
Passport Interrogation Part 1, Calais, 12 November 1830 The paddle-wheeler pitched us into France; the quay fatigued by tides, received us without welcome, smelling of coal and old salt. Under a dripping lamp the policeman collected our passports like birds he meant to keep, and we surrendered them as one surrenders breath to winter. Felreil,…
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4 Feb: Six Sentence Story
Brigid’s Diary: Prologue Brigid’s Diary: Prologue — 12 November 1830Note: Set before the dated pages that follow. We left England before the crows could count us, a small arithmetic of breath and bread. The field-reapers and threshers learned new names for old hungers; men with clean hands arrived asking who tended the sick, the broken…
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0302: Six Sentence Story
The Tidal Deconstruction of a Beach I. (The Taking Tide)The first pull doesn’t cleanse — it draws out the salts of pretending, the bitter, crusted lines worn too long like old salt on skin. It siphons from your marshes without asking, leaves you stinging and unarmoured, wondering what else you’ve been built from. And in…
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2701: Six Sentence Story
A View on Voyeurism Louise’s kitchen window faces two houses: Alison’s, her husband, a retired podiatrist, and Jean’s — her husband lies face-down between the hydrangeas and the electricity meter. Southeast Ambulance Service stands with him, or rather does not; the defibrillator is put away, as if it’s a game they lost interest in playing.…
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2101: Six Sentence Story
Untitled In the church across the road, up a hill too steep for cars when it snows, they gather every evening — always the same few — coats damp, smelling of wool and fish. They sit on worn pews, reciting worn prayers, asking for health, or pardon, or nothing they can name, until twilight and…
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200125: Six Sentence Story
Dancing with Lions — Part 2 Brigid arrived home from the Six Sentence Café and Bistro in a rainstorm designed by and for fish; the gin was still amusing her, but even so it was an impressively Dickensian squall. She went straight to the kitchen, reached for a frosted mug, dropped in two scoops of…
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1301: Six Sentence Story
Dancing with Lions She anchors her black stiletto heel to the bar stool; the ritual wait for a man that doesn’t exist, polishing the fantasy of him until it shines. A muffled laugh works loose, a private rebellion echoing in her throat — the kind you make when a voice you invent leans in and…
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0701: A Six Sentence Story
Clinging to Small Solid Facts in Six Sentences We talk about Venezuela, as if naming it might steady the water, and I drift in the jacuzzi like a bubble, briefly convinced of my own shape. I mention that Einstein had flat feet — facts don’t ask questions because saying something solid feels like ballast against…
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30.12: Six Sentence Story
It Sings at Night At dusk, on the edge of a pond bordered by palms and deciduous trees that have forgotten how to lose their leaves, a call rises only at night that sounds like a woodpecker at work. There are, however, no woodpeckers in the forest of Anapoima, Colombia. This is a goatsucker; a…
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