Category: Flash Fiction
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9 June: for Unicorn Challenge (flash fiction)
The Rise of Crows She knew something was wrong in her head when they started perching on the windowsills, and on the roof and fence. Crows, thick as blackness on the overhead lines. One two three four … six twelve twenty on the clothesline. Like worry beads. Crows in the field crawing at the cows.…
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26 May: for 26.05 Unicorn Challenge
A Spar and Rigging Some days he wanted to stay. Other days he just stared at the bridge. Portree could do that to you. Summer turned it oddly condensed with holidaymakers. They filled every table and every bed. July. August. Like a restless meridian. He compared it to living underwater. An aquarium. And God disowned…
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21 March: for Fandango’s One Word Challenge – Flash Fiction
THOSE KIDS And I say, The same kids who spray painted the pedestrian overpass are probably the same ones who poured Fairy liquid detergent into the fish pond, killed all the fish. A right luminescent stink on the hottest August day on record according to that weatherman on telly who looks like a skinny elf.…
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17 January: dVerse Prosery (Flash Fiction)
Stitched Up We measured moody clouds by hand widths, and when we bored ourselves of that, we played cops and robbers. We pointed fingers at each other, and then blew smoke off our fingertips. You made siren sounds. I was the bad guy. It was always me falling down dead. And Mum sat on the…
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21 August: That Old Photo
Note: this is pure fiction based on an image at Café of Imaginary Dreams. That Old Photo: Ekphrastic Prose On the right is Jeff. Granny S named him after Jefferson. Not that Jefferson. Jefferson Street, where she worked as a waitress on Saturday afternoons, where Grandpa S always came in for his regular burger with…
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15 Aug: Prose #FFFC
Another Song A passer-by offers confetti cubes of stale bread, casually thrown into the thicket of wings, and the air is trampled. What does it mean, all that hysterical noise that shakes the air, those elbow wings cutting sunlight, and enfolding space. Birdsong echoes against the clouds. Shrieks that cling as if by claw. Its…
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2 August: VV Anthology
Ten Minutes on the Central Line (445 words, 2min:53sec read) I’m always amused when someone offers me their seat. On a good day, it’s easy to forget that I’m old. Why would I do that, I said to my doctor when he asked, Don’t you ever look in the mirror? I decline the offer of…
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21 May: 2Cellos & Playing at the Ritz
2Cellos and Playing at the Ritz Mum paid for my piano lessons, but I paid for them with fingernails clipped to the quick (a classmate said, Eeeow, you chew your fingernails. No, I said, I play the piano). I practised two hours a day. An hour before school, and an hour after. The piano was…
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16.02.22 dVerse Prosery
Fish Moon New Year’s Eve means cod. Always has. Alway will. So we head for the harbour. The whole family, and a few who aren’t, squeezing into the old Volvo, always bits of Pop’s job in the back. Trowels rough with mortar, buckets, crusty boots, white overalls. Pop’s a bricky. Bricklayer. Muremand. We race down…
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15.02.22 Flash Fiction
The View We’re back. Forty-five years ago we sat here at this same table, same window, he and I, waiting for the 15.10 ferry. Always the same ferry. Two of them, running back and forth, back and forth. Connections, you know, making connections to the train. The train to visit family. The train to the…
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