Tag: Story

Only You

Lori Cramer

Only you could say a thing like that at a time like this. I fix my gaze on the frayed brim of your baseball cap, avoiding your expectant eyes as I ruminate on my response. But truth demands expression, so I blurt it out: “I love you too.”

Lori Cramer’s short prose has appeared in The Cabinet of Heed, The Drabble, Flash Fiction Magazine, MoonPark Review, Truffle Magazine, and elsewhere. Her work has been nominated for Best Microfiction. Links to her writing can be found on her website. She tweets (@LCramer29). 

What Went Wrong

Sean Cunningham

What went wrong was that, many years prior to my birth, the planets were situated in such a way that – with hindsight – was perfect for me. As it stands, I was born wrong.

What went wrong was that, when I was younger, I believed too much in everything and too little in myself. I would tell people my name and they would correct me: No, your name is Scooby, or, No, your name is Spud. And it’s true, I was and I am Scooby, I was and I am Spud.

What went wrong was that, when I was younger still, I shared my jam tart – unprompted – with Human Jenny, and the both us began to expect this.

What went wrong was that, at some point, I started reading about how China was like the universe in the way that its borders were always expanding. This was due to large-scale dredging of the seafloor in order to attain material resources for the manufacture of artificial land. By 2045 it will be the largest nation on Earth.

What went wrong was that, long before any of this happened, I dreamt it all up whilst asleep on my cloud, and I have been in a constant battle between remembering and forgetting ever since.

What went wrong was that we began to establish rituals and traditions that we would participate in on certain days of the year for the purpose of celebrating arbitrary milestones and events.

What went wrong was that – if you will, please, turn your attention to exhibit A – as you can see, the instructions were utter nonsense.

[Exhibit A appears to be a nonsense arrangement of cut-up, handwritten words, titled Instructions]

What went wrong was that, after some good, hard thinking, I came to the conclusion that Jenny had been right all along.

What went wrong was that I added too much salt and too much sugar.

What went wrong was that I gave up on you – you never gave up on anyone, anyone at all. All I had to do was pay attention for five fucking minutes – minutes that I need now.

What went wrong was that I overheard things that I should have, about people I will never know.

What went wrong was that – if you will now regard exhibit B – there was never any way in or out. And it could be said that this was the main thing.

[Exhibit B is a seemingly slapdash drawing of a maze. There are entrances and exits, but there are no entrances or exits]

What went wrong was that it all came down to a choice between now and forever, and still I’m not sure it could even be called a choice.

What went wrong was that I said to myself, You can do this, but couldn’t hear a word.

What went wrong was that, as predicted, the ice caps melted. They flooded everything but China’s artificial coast, making it the largest nation on Earth.

What went wrong was that you asked me to be succinct.

What went wrong was that we insisted that everything was happening in slow motion – but we can’t live in slow motion.

What went wrong was that – please ignore exhibit C – we were led to believe our default position was being in the right.

[Exhibit C is a photograph of a photograph of an apparently nuclear family of ‘crash test dummies’]

What went wrong was that I stopped sharing my jam tarts.

Sean Cunningham is a writer of very short prose and poetry, from Liverpool. His work has appeared in publications such as Fugue, Ellipsis Zine, Bending Genres, and Breadcrumbs, among others. He can be found on Twitter (@sssseanjc).

Flamingos in Plastic Heels

Sarah Leavesley

Since having children, I often feel like my brain has turned into a Jabberwocky nonsense and déjâ-vu machine. But there’s no way I can ever have seen a pink flamingo crossing the road before. I mean, what the… I bleep the swear word out of my thoughts, as Tilly tugs my hand.

“Come on, Mummy, we’re going to be late again!” Tilly skips on ahead, then turns to look back, her too-big school jumper drifting off her left shoulder.

I sigh. What I wouldn’t give not to rely on cheap chain stores and others’ cast-offs! Still, second-hands are environmentally friendly, while my kids are bright, respectful and reasonably tidy. That’s what counts, right?

“The others will be playing without me,” Oscar chimes. “They’ll have gone in by the time we get there!”

That’s when it comes to me, the déjâ-vu of my flamingo – the six mothers that gather at the school gate every morning, all feathers and flounce with their long-legged elegance, plastic heels and expensive Radley handbags. Every morning, I shuffle around their flamboyance, flustered by the way they eye up the other mums from the looped-necked height of their immaculate grooming.

But not this morning. I let determination power me as I glide towards them. They’ve kissed their beautiful angels goodbye and are preening their perfection.

“Oh, look,” I say, bending down suddenly while they’re busy beaking away to each other. “I think you dropped this Primark receipt.”

I hand the crumpled scrap of paper to the snootiest, then turn away to watch Tilly and Oscar half-skip, half-fly, to their classroom like chirpy robins. For the first time that week, I smile a smile that doesn’t feel tired.

Sarah Leavesley is a fiction writer, poet, journalist and photographer, with flash published by journals including Fictive Dream, Ellipsis, Jellyfish Review, Litro, Spelk, Reflex Fiction, Flash Frontier and Bending Genres. She also runs V. Press poetry and flash fiction imprint. See more on her wesbite.

When Water Returns to the Salt Edged Shore

Jenny Wong

Lungs sputter, barter water for air. 

Pupils cringe at their re-introduction to morning sun.

The swimming instructor watches my struggles, tinted in the orange-dawn glow. When I gasp back onto soft sand, he picks away at my body with his words. The weak bend of my joints. The shallow shelf of my breath. His arms stroke skyward to demonstrate how his swimming prowess overshadows mine. 

His body will wash up three days later, spine bent, a breached reminder that finless, warm-boned curiosities are no match for the underneathness of unsettled sea.

Jenny Wong is a writer, traveler, and occasional business analyst. Lately, her writings have been more about indoor things, but she still dreams about evening wanderings around Tokyo alleys, Singapore hawker centres, and Parisian cemeteries. Recent publications include Truffle Magazine, Second Chance Lit, and Flash Frog. She resides in the foothills of Alberta, Canada and tweets (@jenwithwords).

Timimoun

Linda McMullen

“…like a retreat,” you insist, gesticulating, as we land at a naked airport kissing the Saharan rim.  

I conclude that you’d meant for us to go to Tunisia. To deconstruct my failings. Reconstruct five years.

Then/or failing that, to take refuge in touring Star Wars locations.  

You’ve taken us a little to the left. Not for the first time.

The Algerian villa owners offer sweet mint tea. They ask no questions.

We drive wordlessly into the dunes. We tiptoe amid ancient cities smothered in ochre dust. Perfection – once.  

You offer me a sand rose.  

It crumbles in my hand.

Linda McMullen is a wife, mother, diplomat, and homesick Wisconsinite. Her short stories and the occasional poem have appeared in over ninety literary magazines. She received Pushcart and Best of the Net nominations in 2020. She may be found on Twitter (@LindaCMcMullen).

The Touring Test

E. F. S. Byrne

Dad got into the car, started the engine and put the air conditioning on. He knew how hot it would become.

Frustratingly slow, the family followed. Lucia, Rosalia and Jimena piled into the back, a shower of squeals, elbow attacks and general mayhem. Finally, his wife struggled into the seat beside him, handbag still open, keys falling out, telephone bleeping.

“Are we ready?” Dad asked, trying not to lose his patience.

“Go, dad, go.”

Dad went. They hit the highway and sailed west.

“I’m hungry.”

“Stop it.”

“Leave your little sister alone.”

“Turn up the music Dad.”

The back seat rocked with chatter and the jingle of cheap jewelry. The smell of strawberry chewing gum stuck to the air. The swirl of growing banter and rising irritations made it difficult to focus on the road.

“He’s not my boyfriend.”

“He is.”

“Dad! Slow down!”

Dad lifted his foot, ground his teeth, and stared at his girls in the rear view mirror. Come on, he thought. Give me a break.

“Push over.”

“Why am I always in the middle?”

“Stop it!”

Their father tried to crowd them out, bite his tongue, focus on the traffic. He loved their excitability, but feared their wrath, the arguments when emotions boiled over.

“Not far to go.” He sounded cheerful, encouraging. He knew he was lying.

“It’s mine.”

“It’s not!”

“Girls. Please!” Their mother tried to keep her voice down. “Let your father drive in peace.”

“I’m hungry.”

“We’ll stop soon honey. Just let your father concentrate.”

“Are you concentrating dad?”

They all laughed. They liked making fun of dad, watching him grow red until the veins on his nose bubbled.

“We love you really dad.”

“But I’m still hungry.”

“Manolo! Slow down!”

His wife reached a hand across to pat his knee.

“They’re not back there.”

The woman sighed, eyes squirming with escaping tears. She withdrew her fingers. “They’re gone honey. Slow down.”

Tenderness laced her words, but Manolo was still staring into the rear view mirror at the speed cop and flashing lights. Sirens blared. Manolo swerved again. She was right. They’d gone. There was no turning back. He put his foot down.

E. F. S. Byrne works in education and writes when his teenage kids allow it. He blogs a regular micro flash story. Links to this and over fifty published pieces can be found on his website. Follow him on Twitter (@efsbyrne).

Untameable

Zahirra Dayal

Sundays smelled like burnt hair because that was when you had your hair tamed. First, your aunt took your wet hair and marshalled it with crocodile-teeth hair grips. Then, she released each small section from the mouth of the crocodile and aimed the Philips blow dryer like a gun at close range.

The stretching and pulling squinted your eyes. You heard the sizzling of your singed curls. The burnt smell floated around the room and into your nose, making your nostrils flare. You sat frozen to the stool for the hour it took to wage battle with Mother Nature. After your hair was blow dried, you studied the flattened version of yourself in the oval mirror of her oak dressing table. You felt the distance widen between you and the girl in the mirror. 

“That’s better,” she said, smoothing down your brown hair with the coconut oil spread like butter on her palms.  

You could feel the edge of your freedom 

“I’m not finished with you yet!” she snapped, sensing you were about to fidget. 

You didn’t move, supressing the raging restlessness that flowed through you. She divided your straightened hair into two, rolled it into four balls which she fixed with triangular pins that dug into your scalp. Last, she put a brown stocking over your head and told you not to take it off to seal in the straightness. She was terrified that rain, humidity or any form of invisible moisture would undo all of her work in an instant; so precarious is the nature of blow-dried hair.  

“Be careful with it or it will turn frizzy and wild again,” she warned before you broke free and ran outside to play.

Now that you own your hair and your Sundays, you wash it and leave it to dry naturally. It grows bigger as the moisture evaporates. A tangled mass of untameable brown curls rises to frame your face. The woman in the oval mirror smiles back.

Zahirra Dayal is a writer and language teacher living in London. She has also lived in Zimbabwe, South Africa and The United Arab Emirates and draws from these diverse experiences. She has stories in Fahmidan Journal, Ayaskala, Small Leaf Press, Opia, Odd Mag and Melbourne Culture Corner. She tweets (@ZahirraD).

Two Stories

Martha Lane

This is a story about making popcorn

I had a silicone contraption for the microwave. But it, or the machine, bust. A kilo of kernels mocks me for surrendering to whiny cries at the shop. He wanted pop-pop, he wanted pop-pop, he wanted, he wanted.

He wants.

I want to stop making it in a pan, bopping belligerent fingers away.

‘Hot,’ I snap.

The golden pebbles burst, bright white clouds. Cumulus climbing, rising. Rolling.

The boy’s hunger is climbing. Howls rising, he’s rolling.

I consider burning his precious treat.

But I want peace.

I offer him the bowl, a ceasefire.

‘Pop-pop drop.’

It’s seconds before white clouds clutter a linoleum sky.

Birds? Here, sir. Bees? Here.

Abigail’s tooth came out in the night. She’d spent all morning waggling her slimy pink tongue through the gap. Showing anyone who couldn’t think of an excuse to get away fast enough. Moving up and down the queue like a flamingo, parading. The teacher blows his whistle, and we bustle into the classroom. Fold ourselves into the seats. Human origami.

Abigail stays standing, thrusts her gums in the teacher’s face.

“Have you been kissing boys, Abigail?”

She flushes. Her giggles ripple through the room. I concentrate on my shoes, look at where I’ve picked the stitching away, so only a shadow flower remains. Elbows dig and lips smack until the teacher calls for quiet.

Abigail flutters to her seat. Even toothless, she is very pretty. In the corner of my workbook a swarm of bees appear, stings glinting. I try not to think about Abigail kissing boys as I dig my pencil deep into the paper, wondering how hard I’ll have to push to make it crumble into dust.

Martha Lane writes in short bursts between wrangling two small children. They are an inspiration and hinderance in equal measure. Her flash has been published by perhappened mag, Bandit and Reflex Fiction, among others. She’s incredibly bored of lockdown. She tweets (@poor_and_clean).

This thread

Elizabeth M Castillo

I weave it round and round my hand. It is fine, and bright, and surprisingly resilient. Its taut lines catch the smallest hint of the day that threatens to break at my bedroom window, and I twine it tighter, lacing it like macramé between my fingers and thumb. I hold it fast, more so than I ever have before. I will not let it slip through my fingers. This time, I will not let it go.

For the past ten years it has been there, crumpled in my pocket, occasionally getting caught on my cuff or wedding band as I rummage about in there, looking for some, very likely unrelated thing. At times I imagined I felt it tugging gently at me, as if to remind me it was still there, waiting patiently to be taken up with force. With purpose. With an end.

But sometimes, life goes quiet, and the strobe lighting and bedlam are gone for an instant, and I am left with nothing but to take stock of myself. In those moments I would remember it there, stuffed unceremoniously away in the recesses of my pocket, in the recesses of my memory, and my heart. Left there, as something that is of little consequence, but persists nonetheless. Without food, nor air, nor light, and yet, somehow, still living.

It is terribly fine, and terribly fragile, and for the best part of these years I feared it ended in emptiness. Nothing there. Nothing on the other side. A memory perhaps, of classes and dresses and hopefully a little laughter, but nothing more. How could there be? There was only ever one side to this thing. I looked, and I looked, but there was no trace of anything, or anyone, at the other end. 

But just like the untamed beast that it is, my heart decided it was time to take things into its own hands. After a short labour it gave birth to a story, and with it, a small flicker of hope and its fraternal twin; a tiny drop of madness. Then I looked. I looked once, I looked again, and I looked one more time for good measure. I traced this soft, silken thing as it stretched perilously across the Pyrenees and the peninsula. It tunneled its way under the ocean, battling through the Amazon brush, braving the Atacama desert, scaling the Andes and plunging fearlessly into the restless city streets until it came to its final destination at the other end of itself.

I pull it tight, tight across my palm, and close my fingers over the dent where it is almost cutting into my skin. I hold fast to it, bringing my closed fist up to my cheek where I rest my face against it, as sleep claims me once again. I have tamed both my hope and my madness, and the threat of emptiness on the other side has left. And at such close quarters, with it so tightly wrapped around my fingers, I am sure to feel the slightest pull, the smallest tug, any movement on the other end of this terribly fine thing. 

It is the thread that anchors me to the end of the earth, to the corner of the world, to where you are.

Elizabeth M Castillo is a British-Mauritian poet, writer and language teacher. She lives in Paris with her family and two cats. When not writing poetry, she can be found working on her podcast or webcomic, pottering about her garden, or writing a variety of different things under a variety of pen names.

I trust you now, can you tell?

David Tay

It’s been 8 years since I was here, here at the barbershop a couple blocks from home. I used to call it the “cut hair shop”.

She cut more than my hair though.

What she wielded wasn’t so much a buzzer as it was a lawnmower. Too loud. Too close to my face. And then the scissors. Snip, snip, snip. What if she cut my ear? Snip, snip, snip. She never did cut me, but I’ve left the shop with my skin red and burning. Mom said that I always left the place in tears.

But how do you cut someone’s hair when they’re kicking and screaming all over the place? When they’re crying before you can even get to work? Like they don’t trust you.

Now I’m here again, eight years after. I hear a familiar chime as I open the door. She hasn’t changed, not a single bit. Silent and strong as I remember. She studies me, gestures to the seat. Does she recognise me still? Is it because of the mask?

“You’re so big already” she says. I smile beneath the mask, and I hope she sees it in my eyes.

How long? Do you want a fade? You want your sides shaved? The usual.

She plugs the buzzer in. BZZZZZ. Good old lawnmower.

I close my eyes. It’s a bit of trepidation. But really, it’s to show you that I can sit still now. I trust you. I trust your hands. I trust your juddering buzzer and your sharp scissors.

I stiffen as the buzzing closes in on my ear.

My eyes are shut.

Hair falls on my shoulder and my feet. The strands that spill in front of my eyes tickle, itches. Not going to scratch it. Not going to interrupt your work. Obediently, I tilt my head as you pin the flap of my ear to get to the sides.

Are you smiling? I can’t tell with my eyes shut. I trust you. I trust your hands. Your cold blade doesn’t frighten me anymore.

That one hurt a little. I wince, twitch, but I’m not kicking and screaming in the chair, am I?

Yes, I’m heading back to Singapore next month. Yeah, my brother’s already working. And yeah, time really does fly, doesn’t it?

David Tay is a Sarawakian studying in Singapore. His writing and photography seek to capture the emotions felt in the unconscious everyday. Find him on Twitter and Instagram (@oidavidah). ‘I trust you now, can you tell?’ is a work of creative nonfiction.