Tag: Story

Believe Me

Suzanne Hicks

I’m fairly certain that I once saw a giant snowflake, large and lacy white like the intricate ones you crocheted that adorned the tree at Christmas, except this one fell from the sky, the size of the tip of a pin at first but as I watched out the window it grew and grew until it was the size of my hand, and even bigger until it was the size of yours, and in that moment I thought it was the most amazing sight I’d ever seen, which it was until you took me to the restaurant by the river to eat fish and hushpuppies dipped in honey as we sat outside and I stared at the long outline under the murky water and reached out for your hand as I whispered, Nessie, and I’d never been so scared until the day I realized you were the only person I could tell something like that to who would believe me, because you did, didn’t you?

Suzanne Hicks is a disabled writer living with multiple sclerosis. Her stories have appeared in Milk Candy Review, Atlas and Alice, Maudlin House, Roi Fainéant Press, New Flash Fiction Review, and elsewhere. Find her online and on Twitter (@iamsuzannehicks). 

The New Highway, 1972. Walsh Norrel. Black and white photograph.

Mia Kelly

I was marching with the Right to Grow Movement of the 2060s—swishing a homemade flag, everything wet from the thaw. We were scattering seeds from stolen pouches. We expected a police blockade. Failing to encounter trouble, we were more unnerved than emboldened.

Instated in this gallery, Norrel’s photograph makes the highway worth admiring. Fresh asphalt, granular and shining. A gelatin silver sky. It’s a century before our seeds and graffiti, and a flock of blossoms have alighted on the branches of a tree. Razor wire gathers on a wall.

Mia Kelly is an emerging writer working from Boorloo/Perth, Western Australia. She has been published in Westerly and Pulch.

Except, Grass

Zary Fekete

It’s time to cut the grass.

Except have I spent any time to consider each blade? Never mind each blade, have I spent time thinking about even one? Was I there, down on my chest in the black earth, to see the first moment the tiny, green tendril touched the outside air? If I had been and if I had stayed down there, what else might I have seen? I would have seen that first tendril joined by a chorus of others. I would have seen small burrowing ants marching through the forest of green stalks, following the pheromones to their maze somewhere else in the yard far below. I would have seen the dandelion which grew next to the green blade, temporarily shading it from the sun while the breeze flew across the fields.

I could have stayed there these past weeks and been a part of that smaller world. Smaller but no less vibrant and busy than my large one, in fact, perhaps more busy and in many ways more important. That smaller world touches the whole spinning blue globe in more vital ways than does my feeble meanderings through newspaper headlines and internet search terms and generally useless scrolling.

It’s not too late. I could do it. The black earth is down there waiting for me.

Except I might get my hands dirty…

Zary Fekete grew up in Hungary, has a debut chapbook of short stories out from Alien Buddha Press and a novelette (In the Beginning) coming out from ELJ Publications, enjoys books, podcasts, and long, slow films. Twitter: @ZaryFekete.

Dendrology

Allison Renner

She wasn’t sure if she was looking out or they were staring in, watching her stay in one place for so long she put down roots, felt each skin cell harden and become rigid, causing her to stand up straight—her mother would be proud—and look straight ahead. With a quick glance you’d think she was brimming with confidence, regal, but closer inspection shows her eyes darting back and forth, trying to see everything as if that would prepare her for what’s to come, when the ground crumbles between her toes and she’s the only thing left standing on the landscape, and even then she is slowly wasting away.

Allison Renner’s fiction has appeared in Ellipsis Zine, Spartan, Six Sentences, Rejection Letters, Atlas and Alice, and Misery Tourism. Her chapbook Won’t Be By Your Side is out from Alien Buddha Press. She can be found online and on Twitter (@AllisonRWrites).

Table manners

Tayiba Sulaiman

There’s rules at home, but not like yours. No knives or forks or elbow bans. Our rule is that when offered food, you always take what’s nearest to you, not what’s tastiest, biggest, best. We don’t scour a plate for the biggest slice, never reach across for the richest pudding. We take what’s closest.  

After tea, we’d sit at your feet to eat the fruit you’d peel for us – a love song in Vitamin C – and we’d climb under the table to play that game, waiting together for unwitting segments of tangerine to come calling. You’d say one of our names, then slowly lower a piece into view, singing to what I realise now is the tune of ‘How Much Is That Doggie In the Window?’: 

IIIIIIIIIIII’m only a poor little baby orange, 
I hope you’re not going to

– eat me! 

On the last two words, each piece would be snatched down and devoured, and every time we’d fall about in peals of laughter amongst the crumbs. 

So we terrorised the local fruit bowl, grew almost as fast as the price of fresh produce, and read in the papers of the people eating at high tables with blunt silver knives. In my mind’s eye, we sit at their feet, watching them reach over platter after platter after platter. Even despite the angle, it’s not a flattering view. Instead, I imagine you up there, peeling tangerines just out of sight. You, asking us to wait our turn. You, asking: how much is that world in the window, where we cry tears of laughter when our siblings get their share? I know it is real, I saw it – the gold in your hand, the gold in our mouths. I know that world is real because I saw it under the table. 

Tayiba Sulaiman is a writer and translator from Manchester. She works at a literary agency in Oxford and is currently completing a translation mentorship with the National Centre for Writing. 

Unpardonable

Lucy Goldring

The Brian Blessed belch I once found hilarious is reverberating around my parents’ tiny dining room and I catch your expression which says ‘yes-I’m-burping-without-restraint-because-I-reject-society’s-arbitary-conventions-and-don’t-care-if-I-am-embarrassing-you-because-I-am-being-real’ and your forearm is crumpling my mum’s best napkin and it still bears the lyrics of adolescent rebellion and as the flabby bass note sustains the room shrinks and shrivels and it’s not my family’s revulsion I feel but my own despair curdling in the warm juice of your gob-hole and if you will never meet me halfway I may as well stay where I am and where are your principles now you’ll accept work from ‘any-posh-cunt-stupid-enough-to-fork-out’ and I hate you using women’s body parts as shorthand for vile people and you are powering the belch through to its foghorny climax and your moth-eaten Anarchy t-shirt is clinging to your second trimester beer-baby when I’m the one who should have a bump to nurture rather than a man-child who suckles himself nightly on homebrew and conspiracy theories and homebrewed conspiracy theories from the safety of a skip-dived swivel chair encrusted in crow shit which is the only thing you have contributed to our so-called home and your booming Brian bugle is diminuendoing and the ribbity undernote is moving to the fore and as your lungs finally empty I realise the burp is not the only thing to have tapered off and a foggy silence reclaims the air and I think about my cosy teenage bedroom and Mum’s spag bol and later I will tell you if you really want to live in an echo chamber how about an empty flat with dodgy wi-fi and a crap-stained plastic throne and then my once enchanting man you can sit on it and swivel down down down into the murky depths of your very own lonely rabbit hole.

Lucy Goldring is a Northerner hiding in Bristol. Lucy has a story in Best Microfiction 2022 and features in Dr Tania Hershman’s 2023 charity flash anthology. She’s been shortlisted by the National Flash Fiction Day three times and twice selected for their anthology. Find her on Twitter (@livingallover) and her website.

Two Stories

Lizzie Eldridge

Snapshot

I was a bonnie wee lassie growing up in Glasgow. My Dad taught me not to be sectarian when it came to football. Hatred doesn’t mix well with anything, he said, passing me the ball in a moment of shared joy. I was a bonnie wee lassie with a Dad who showed me how to live.

Lament

Bagpipes are traditional at a Scottish funeral, but I’d never buried my Dad before. Melodies aching of bleak hills and glens left me standing, alone, by a cold mountain, scanning the empty landscape to find him there again.

Lizzie Eldridge is a writer, actor and human rights activist from Glasgow. She has two published novels, as well as poems, CNF, stories and flash fiction, and she cares deeply about language, truth and social justice. 

Two Stories

Cathy Ulrich

Where They Found You 

That part of town where the snow never melts all winter. Cackle-crows chatter something that could be your name. Your body a prayer. Your body a comma, a hyphen, a dash. When I knew you, your hands were never colder than mine. 

Other Worlds Than This 

After their son dies, Helena’s husband becomes an astronaut. Finds a spacesuit online, buckles the helmet over his head. He sits on their rooftop and stares up at the stars, mumbles. Helena thinks he must see their son’s face there. She is in the quiet kitchen, holding an empty plate and a naked fork, listening to the scrabble of her husband’s hands digging into the rooftop tile. He is talking about building rockets, she thinks, he is talking about taking to the sky. 

Cathy Ulrich doesn’t know anybody with hands colder than hers. Her work has been published in various journals, including Black Fork Review, Wigleaf and Pithead Chapel.

N Judah St.

Lu Knight

When everything feels wrong, you try to fix it – or move on or even ask for help. They prepare you to problem solve all throughout your school years – trying is better than giving up and giving up is better than admitting that you need help – because who would want to help the little dirty girl that’s been on this bus for hours on end?

I’ve watched adults come and go and come and go. I’ve watched them drag their noisy families up the stairs of the bus as their children point fingers at me. I’ve counted the times we passed N Judah Street. Seven times I’ve thought about getting off this bus. Seven times I’ve remained on this bus, digging my nails into the skin of my hand.

Lu Knight is a creative writing student at Appalachian State University. 

Sirena

Isaiah Duey

Dear Kuya,

Papa told me a story about sirenas last night. He said they wreaked havoc after setting foot on human land and should have just stayed on the sea. He said being with them is contagious, that I could get their fins and that’s bad because their very existence is a sin. Are fishes sinful, too? Is that why people eat them? I don’t think I’d fancy sirenas for dinner because I actually like the luster of their tail. I think they shine in the moonlight or when the moon pulls the tide, though I’m not sure. But I don’t tell Papa about this, Kuya. Because sometimes I’d hear him pray I don’t get fins. He said he can already see my skin having flecks of scales on them, and that I might have been infected so he’s started a treatment to get rid of them. He lets me take swigs of his beer, like a man he said. I’m guessing beer is some sort of medicine, but I’m not sure about this either, Kuya. I still like chocolate milk best. On days the sun accents my scales, Papa would scrape them off my face like prepping a tilapia to be fried on a skillet. My face, arms, and legs burn from all the scraping, Kuya. But Papa said we must do this to make sure I don’t leave for the sea, too.

Anyway, enough about me. What’s it like in the sea, Kuya? I hope you’re having fun.

Your brother,
Chito

Isaiah Duey loves mermaids and the stories they hold. Her work has appeared in Five Minutes, 101 Words, and Versification. She hails from a country in Southeast Asia where she lives with her calico cat named Anya.