'Golden Threads' by Amy Wilson

This is why I love coming to restaurants by myself; nothing else gives me such a great opportunity for people watching. Take the couple at the table next to me, now. They’ve clearly been together for a while, and they’re past that ‘gazing lovingly into one another’s eyes’ stage of the relationship, but I can see that the first blooms of their infatuation have deepened into something stronger. The strong, golden thread stretching between them tells me everything I need to know. 

They have other threads of course, everybody does, and if I wanted to I could pick anybody in here, take any thread and follow it back to someone in their lives; a mother, a brother, even someone less significant like an old schoolfriend. 

The stronger and brighter the thread, the more significant the relationship. And the couple in front of me shine so brightly that it comes as no surprise to me when he draws the small, velvet box from inside his jacket pocket.

I turn away, smiling, and find someone else to watch.

'Visible Kaleidoscopes' by Sarah Oakes

Ever since I was little, I have seen kaleidoscopes. They would cloud my vision, when I closed my eyes, a sea of shapes that twisted and turned like a maze. They would dazzle me with their vivid vibrancy, intricate patterns painted in every shade of colour. And no one was ever the same, a myriad mystical dance of circles and squares against canvases of blue, red, green, orange, purple. But when I opened my eyes, they would vanish, like ghosts.

They followed me, through adolescence. Everyone said they weren’t real. No one else could see them. They would laugh, say it was just my imagination. But I know what I saw.

I still see those patterns. And not just at night anymore. It’s all the time. Each day, I gaze through a sea of shifting spots that glimmer like jewels. And I see the flashes, small semicircle slices of light that appear and disappear, swimming across my sight like fish. With no warning, the flashes will flood my vision, before disappearing into the mist as if they were never there. They’ve got worse this year, growing brighter, growing more intense. The other night they flocked like a swarm, green circles dancing on a canvas of aquamarine. But I don’t mind the kaleidoscopes. They’ve been there for as long as I can remember. 

I know it sounds absurd. But I know they’re real. Others like me say they saw them, as children, before any diagnosis. They were a sign I couldn’t read. A warning, of what was to come. And one day, these kaleidoscopes will vanish too. The black hole that bides its time at the back of my eye will consume them, leaving only darkness and shadows behind. And I will dream, of those kind kaleidoscopes.

'God’s Eye View' by Nicola Godlieb

Like the time I was five, pouring litre-milks into a patch of soil, mixing up a grey slough with a wooden spoon. Then I’d cracked in two eggs, and the pearling liquid pools sunk into the mud like sick eyes. I’d lain flat and imagined looking back up from the ground through runny yolks. By the end of the day I’d decided this was the view that God saw. Not lofty through clouds, but up at us all. Lidless and missing nothing.

I slide out of bed so my head’s on the floor, kick out like a Deity from the skirting board. From here the lower wall’s scuffed in darts. I thumb-nail more ridges to the shallow flock, its seventies blowsy roses look fleshy. I grab an edge and tug. Under are different flowers. Symmetric and orange.

I slide palm-down into the kitchen, see dried chips and drips of green. As I move around the floor bits of old food fill up my hair like a cosmos, marmalade stickies my ears, yesterday's toast lies broken around me like meteorites. 

Under the table I can see scratches gathered at edges, like a nervous kid’s been counting off time, waiting for when no-one's looking. 

'Rainbow Days' by Rachel Canwell

My calendar is a rainbow. Each separate square coloured according to rules that even I barely understand. 

I can’t explain how I know which specific shade to choose, which way to go, how I categorise each day. But there is always something. Something about the way the earth moves on a given day. The way the wind brushes against my cheek. The way food sits in my mouth, the way it tastes. All these things are ways that claim my choices. 

I have no say in the colours I choose. They come to me unbidden, unlooked for and unrestrained, ready to paint my life like graffiti on my soul. 

It is a gift, I hear, to live inside the rainbow. To be able to taste the tang of neon and run shades of teal through your toes. 

But, when dressed in pearls and lace, you find the champagne you sip tastes and stains like midnight ink, it’s hard to find the joy. 

NFFD 2021: Prompt #12

 

Sleep is a Beautiful Colour

Sleep is a Beautiful Colour was National Flash Fiction's sixth anthology, published in 2017.  It is also the motto of all of us NFFD volunteers, and therefore worth celebrating with a prompt.

Write a flash in which a character perceives or experiences non-physical things, ideas, or concepts with one or more of their five senses.

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If you’re submitting this to us, make sure to note that this is a response to Prompt 12: Sleep is a Beautiful Colour.

You can submit responses until 23:59 BST on Sunday, 27 June 2021 for a chance to be published here at The Write-In.

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Past National Flash Fiction Day anthologies are available at the NFFD Bookshop.