Category: Flash Fiction
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1808: Dead Men Don’t Drown
Dead Men Don’t Drown: #3 (catch-up with all episodes here) Episode #3 The charity van arrives just after ten, driven by a narrow man with a nose sharp enough to open letters and eyes that know the profitable function of grief before I have finished carrying the boxes to the gate. He lifts the flaps…
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1108: Dead Men Don’t Drown
Dead Men Don’t Drown Episode #2 Three months ago this cottage still listened to my grandmother; now it belongs to me, though at times it feels like arriving halfway through a conversation she started with the walls some eighty years ago. I’ve learnt the house wakes early, long before I’ve slept enough, but I manage…
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0608: Jimmy Barglefloop
The Legend of Jimmy Barglefloop a six sentence story Everyone assumed Jimmy Barglefloop carried a magnifying glass to search for rare things, but when someone asked, “What do you do all day!” he slipped a smiled into his reply, “I just notice stuff.” All day he wandered marshes enlarging dew on spider silk, warts on…
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0408: Dead Men Don’t Drown
Dead Men Don’t Drown Episode 1 Two ceramic Staffordshire spaniels on my grandmother’s windowsill spent my childhood combing the sea beyond the harbour wall, their glazed eyes fixed beyond a window etched white by salt; one would think they expected the tide to bring somebody back. The sea never stayed outside, its salt creeping into…
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3107: Dead Men Don’t Drown
Dead Men Don’t Drown: Epilogue A Six Mystery Every family spins a yarn and learns to live inside its shape, each retelling pulling the ends a little tighter… until someone starts bending the floorboards. My name is Fenella, and my story begins beside the sea, where salt settles into windowpanes and door hinges alike, preserving…
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3007: Dead Men Don’t Drown
Dead Men Don’t Drown A Liturgy for an Unraveller(for those who stop accepting the family yarn) I. The Thread That HoldsEvery family has a story,a yarn spun so long and so oftenit becomes indistinguishable from truth. It is the tale told at gatherings,the narrative that keeps the peaceby keeping certain doors closed. You were raised…
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1607: Six Sentence Story
Red Planet Every Saturday her mother wound damp strips of cotton through her long black hair, and by morning the curls sprang free, dark and shining, as though each had dreamed all night of dancing. She tied a bright red balloon to the end of her ponytail and stepped into the morning with it tugging…
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0807: Six Sentence List Poem
The Colour of Thunder a list poem of six sentences THE COLOUR OF THUNDER the colour of thunder isdaybreak,the blue shinein a crow’s feather. a boatwithout water,a skinned knee,sunburn. a preacherwithout a pulpit,the snapof a wet towel. the prickof a rose’s thorn. the blue noiseof a siren. we call itthunder. Previous Instalments – For the…
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0507: Six Sentence Poem
Two Six Sentence Poems: Thunder I. Thunder Thunder wilts through July’s green oak.Distance beyond distance.Sun-bleached blue.We renamed the cloudless sky Thunder.Its heat soaked into the flagstones.Then again, it rumbled —the long arm from a constellation. II. Thunder Cloudless all afternoon.Thunder somewhere beyond the hills. The flagstones giving backeverything the sun had taken. But no storm…
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0207: Brigid’s Diary – A Six
The Epilogue: A Return to Thyme Brigid and Felreil left Room 215 as they had entered it, by the hidden closet, with the good sense not to ask whether one century had finished or merely misplaced them in someone else’s plan. The bellhop-automaton raised a final card, though neither of them paused to read it;…
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