Front Cover
“Warning: This Card May Contain Peanuts.”
Inside
Picture of a cheeky monkey. Crumbs.
“You’re Younger Than You’ll Ever Be Again. Make The Most Of It. Like This Monkey.
Congrats on another year, mate, or whatever. Who gives a crap really?
See ya at Cole’s tomorrow. Two for one drinks! B.”
Envelope
“Return To Sender.”
A wet stain.
Ben sighed. It was hard to keep his homework on track. He looked at Dad and his sister crowded next to him. Piles of books balanced on the toaster and hob. A tangle of cables like liquorice laces threaded with post-it-notes and pens.
Dad grunted as the car repair estimate hit his email. ‘It’s going to cost us a seatbelt and a tyre,’ he said, ‘I’ll look for another garage.’ He started tapping on his laptop, whistling through his teeth.
Checking his notes, Ben’s words and diagrams swam and scrawled over the pages. Reverse transcription. Polymerase chain reaction. It was like a spell, an incantation to take this virus away. How many times would he need to repeat them to have effect?
‘Not enough signal,’ said Janie, closing her laptop. Tutting she picked up her book. Ben smiled, at last some peace. Janie’s bookmark, a flimsy receipt, had been subsumed by her book. A frantic fluttering of pages to establish her place made her grunt like Dad. Tapping her front teeth with her pencil she underlined text and muttered the words.
Mum arrived home. ‘Shift up you lot, I’ve got a zoom meeting in 10 minutes.’
Ben spread his fingers on the smooth comforting wood of the table. Count to ten.
The brightness of the orange of Aperol Spritz (difficult to describe) spilled all over the train ticket (you remember the exact moment, the exact table, the exact smile), the ticket all soggy and you trying to explain to the ticket inspector that accidents happen (the exact look on his face) and how, sadly, the journey ended (don’t they all?) and, by the way, what was the point of letting it dry and using it as a bookmark for “Pinocchio” which you read, for the first time, in Italian, on that 16:40 Frecciarossa from Udine to Brescia, and how a Season’s Greetings card falling out of a magazine and the word pumpkin written by your three-year-old filling up an entire A4 sized sheet of copy paper have no place in this story (story, really?), whereas How to Make Paper Butterflies does, really does.
Scraps
Scraps was the second National Flash Fiction Day anthology, published in 2013. In a nod to this past title, have a rummage through your home and find some scraps of paper. These can be old grocery lists, scribbled notes, food packaging in the recycling bin, or any old, unwanted paper that has already served its purpose.
Write a flash incorporating text from at least three different scraps that you find.
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If you’re submitting this to us, make sure to note that this is a response to Prompt 4: Scraps.
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.