'Waiting: Leaping' by Laura Cooney

Waiting

We waited for a long time, barely touching, by the side of the river and the boats kept passing the pontoon. I sometimes wonder if it was a timing issue with us, and if it was, why didn’t one of us, just stop? We were passing, passing and always missing the boat. We had a chance to get on, that once. We visited the top deck and for whatever reason, I can’t understand, we disembarked after a while aboard. And went back to the riverbank to wait again.

Leaping

One day we’ll meet on the banks of the Styx and you’ll take my hand and you’ll say you’re sorry and our regret will finally be consolidated. Neither of us will have a piece of jade so, this time, we won’t wait for the boatman. And not blinking; we’ll finally leap, with abandon, to the other side.

'Spit and Crackle' by Marie Little

Crackle

Jo peers through broken glass into a bare room. She is eleven again. Mum has piled the fire high. Jo chucks sweet wrappers onto it; Mum tells her off each time. Dad’s slippers are empty, under his chair. A newspaper is folded, unread, on the seat. Mum wears a half-pinny, and streaked mascara. Jo in pyjamas, her head full of questions; their shapes linger on her lips but don’t break free. Something from a lost year plays on the radio. Far too upbeat, flippant. The fire crackles and spits. A sob escapes.

Spit 

Mum is chucking sweet wrappers onto the fire; it crackles and spits each time. A glass breaks. Jo, eleven, in pyjamas, her head full of something playing on the radio. Free and upbeat. Her lips are wearing flippant shapes. Mum tells Jo off, “Don’t!”. A folded half-question escapes from Dad: their broken years have piled high. Slippers on, under the chair. His newspaper unread on the seat again. Mum peers into her empty pinny through streaked mascara. She is lost. A room, but far too bare. A fire. A sob. Jo lingers.

Country 1912-Town 1916 by Rachel Canwell

 

Country 1912

In the glade they rest as one. Curled like commas, just beyond the sound of the bugle and thundering hooves. Three of them, fur red-bronzed and gleaming; all ribs and muscle. Young, male; each pushing at the edges of their prime.

One by one they have retreated to the den, as the cleaning feels too big without her. The rustle of leaves suddenly too loud, the fallen log towering and uncomfortably dark.

So they push in deeper, coil limbs and tails tighter. Drifting together towards the known comfort of sleep.

Burnished brothers jolted back by the ring of a single shot.

 

Town 1916

It’s dark as she leaves the cab, and steps into a city night that’s falling fast. Dropping edges of air,  cold and sharp.

She hurries over the pavement sleek with gas light and late afternoon rain. And hunches her shoulders, letting her chin sink low into the comforting folds of her fox-fur wrap. It’s warmth is a distraction; is enough to stop her eyes wandering up to her son’s window. Closed tight for months, it’s glass  mirror-dark.

Taking care on the steps, she enters the black white marble hallway, where to her surprise there is no to greet her. No servants, but unexplained silence.

The scent of lilies.

And a telegram, face upwards on the silver post tray.

Pairings by Davena O'Neill

 Communion 

That day I wore my hair in a high bun, pins scraped across my scalp. A small lace veil flowed to my neck, wide forehead tanned and shining, eyes bright and full of mischief.

That day I wore a gap-toothed smile, posed angelic, face turned to the light, rosary beads clasped between gloved hands.

That day I wore my sister’s dress, white lace and satin, ending at freshly scrubbed knees. I stood between my parents, a hand of each in mine, chin up, proud, unknowing. He stood facing forward, lip curled. She stood slightly turned, cheekbones sharp as a slap.

 

Funeral

Mother wakes me with the opening of the bedroom door. Standing Garboesque, announcing, “She is dead”. Covering my head with blankets, nervous smile crossing my lips, I bite down, bury my face in the pillow. When I look up the doorway is empty.

Later, she stands, back rigid, face dry. I rub against her, catlike, marking territory, waiting for the hand through my hair to claim me, calm me. But hers remain folded. I follow her gaze, spring sunshine dulled through smudged windows.

The coffin is placed between unlit candles. A bouquet of white flowers offers sweetness where none remains

'Art Across the Ages' by David X Lewis

Making Art with the Grunts

BCE 61,978, Cáceres, Spain*

Grunt wakes when sunlight pierces the cave. He forces himself on his mate, rolls off when he’s done, pisses outside, dons his bear-skin, grabs a sharpened stick, goes hunting.

Mrs Grunt (let’s call her that) tidies their bed, pisses outside, slips on her goat-hides, goes gathering. 

The sun at its zenith, Grunt returns with a rabbit. They dissect it with a flint, kebab it over a fire she’s kindled, eat it with berries she’s collected. Her palms go red as he guzzles from them.

Stomachs full, they sleep spooning like bear-cubs.

He wakes from a dream, grabs her right hand, presses it against the cave wall and strews her fingers with black ash. 

Mr and Mrs Grunt gaze at their handiwork and are happy.

*A hand stencil in Cáceres is listed as the oldest example of cave art.

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Making Art in 2022

CE 2022, Ferney-Voltaire, France

Adam and Eve buy an abandoned house used by teenagers to enjoy sex, drugs, rock and roll, etc. They force the trespassers to leave.

One youngster expelled from paradise scrawls on the garage door: "Closed by fascists." Others leave handprints in red and black that cost time and money to remove.

Keen to foster the creativity of his three-year-old daughter, Adam clears the garden of used condoms and spliff butts, unrolls surplus wallpaper, opens two pots of finger paint. His little marvel dunks her fingers and splays them on the paper, left and right in red and black. 

She beams with pride and claps her artist’s hands.  

'First Love and the Useful Pot' and 'What Survives' by David X. Lewis

First Love and the Useful Pot

The school bell rings. "I’ll walk home with you today," Sheila says. I’m pleased. Yesterday she went with Andrew, who lives down our road.

The lollipop lady sees us to Muddy Alley. I’m carrying a bag with a birthday present for Daddy. It’s a Useful Pot like Eeyore’s in Winnie the Pooh. I made it in Arts and Crafts. 

Three teenagers from the Big School come towards us. One spits. Another is smoking. The third grabs my bag and dashes it to the ground near some dog poo. The pot breaks. 

Back home, Sheila comes for tea. Mummy says she’s just made a cake with candles for Daddy, but that she’ll bake two small ones specially for us while I make another Useful Pot.

"Cheer up," says Sheila. "We’ll do it together. You and me." 

That’s when I knew I wanted to get married.

*

What Survives

November 26th. The hospice calls. I should come urgently. Usually I get the bus. This time I call an Uber. Grey, damp weather. When we arrive, it’s pouring. I don’t have an umbrella.

Sheila is scarcely breathing, her jaw slack. I hold her hand, whisper her name, then remember I’ve promised to play her out to a song Lizzie has recorded. Thank the God I don’t believe in that I’ve remembered my phone. I place it on her breast and press start. Minutes later Sheila gasps and is gone.

Back in the flat she bought after we divorced, the stench of illness and cigarettes hits me hard. I make the first calls, send emails, begin a desultory rummage as executor.

I tumble upon love letters more than 30 years old. And photos of when we were happy and beautiful. What was that Larkin line about what survives of us?

'1916' and '1914' by Lucienne Cummings

 1916

‘Might he not really be ill?’ asks the Sergeant. ‘These trenches are rife with disease.’

‘Nonsense,’ says the Major. ‘Now get up!’ He barks at the Corporal. Corporal Legacy gazes up at them both from his bed, like a summer cyclist caught in snow. ‘Don’t leave me Sweets!’ he cries, reaching out for hands that are a world away, if not in another dimension. ‘I’m coming home!’ 

No one visits Corporal Legacy’s grave now – with its white stone still standing to attention – not five miles from the spot where he fell.

*

1914

The might of Miss Moore’s pen is never disputed. Whereas the headmistress’s staff liken the school to a coalface, she thinks of it more as a series of trenches – in the style of a ha-ha – which prevent students straying from the path of learning. Now she sits at her desk, poised to add a black mark to yet another pupil’s record. Legacy was a middling sort of student, but with the broken inkwell incident he will become a failing one. Miss Moore’s gaze falls upon the newspaper headline War in Europe Threatens as she dips her pen in the ink. When they leave in summer, pupils like Legacy will have other uses for the sort of discipline she has provided, the sweets of which will be survival. 

For an instant the dimensions of the coming conflict alarm the headmistress, but at the stroke of her pen, all is calm.

'This Earring has Two Parts' by Katie Willow

Like an earring back flipped askew before being placed on the post I met you. I’m the butterfly and you are the jewellery, a dichroic glass chandelier fastened with silver wire. All these facts are important. Some goddess’ finger is always nudging me closer to the ear, closer to you. And I whisper, unsure if you hear me. If the gait is perfect, a glint of you swings into view, or just a refraction of your colours on neck skin. The memory of your intricate beauty keeps me. I don’t know if you even realise I’m still here.

I feel you hanging on, the grip has always been wrong, but I feel you trying to stay. I know you can’t see the way I am now. Your questions are complex, searching for answers I may once have been able to give. This heart’s desire is bread and water. Sunshine. I try to show you the light whenever I can, but some days my energy has drained. One day the compulsion won’t be there, and you’ll slip and we’ll see if I can stay up here on my own and if you’ll fall or fly away.

'Chickens' and 'Ducks' by Emily Macdonald

Chickens

We agree to keep chickens, anticipating a regular supply of speckled brown eggs. The debate about the size and style of the hen house becomes protracted, a battle between Sandie and Craig but all decisions are reached by democratic vote, a community rule.

The argument continues, but Sandie finally concedes to Craig after days of sulking, as he is the one with the practical skills.

I help Craig, following his instruction over a few spring days. The birds peck at each other, and to my disgust, stab and splatter the few eggs they lay.

We take advice, research protein, and calcium deficiencies, but one poor hen becomes so victimised, she loses more than half her feathers. She struts looking half-plucked, ready for the table. Sandie, vindicated by the hen’s distress, says she knew she was in the right all along.

Eggs still turn my stomach.

*

Ducks

I have some brief experience of domesticated birds. My father once bought ducks to keep the grass down. I was grateful for the arrival of a pair of Khaki Campbells, as the mowing of the half-acre section around our house was my responsibility. The smell of fresh cut grass with the fetid sweet undertones of spliced dog faeces still transports me back in time.

The ducks shovelled under the grass with their bills, turning the lawn into a pitch of mud and slime. The female nested, aggressive in a bed of verdant mint until she paraded her brood of downy ducklings.

Most of them drowned, unable to escape the sheer sides of their slippery pond. The pond was a salvaged plastic fridge liner sunk into ground. The sharp-edged spade used in the digging cut through the roots of the bountiful passionfruit vine and its leaves curdled, as it withered then died.

NFFD 2022 Prompt #15: Pairings

 

Pairings

This is National Flash Fiction Day's eleventh anniversary, so this year, all our prompts have something to do with the number 11....

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To mark our ten year anniversary last year, NFFD hosted our first ever novella-in-flash competition.  To celebrate our eleventh anniversary, we're launching the winning novella, Sybilla, by Joanna Campbell.

While writing an entire novella-in-flash is a bit ambitious for a project with a 24-hour turn-around, we can at least get you started....

For this prompt, write not one but two separate flashes of up to 150 words each (shorter is more than fine). Both flashes should be completely separate, stand-alone pieces, but there should be an element that connects them.  Maybe the main character in the first appears in the second.  Maybe they take places in exactly the same location, 11 years apart.  Maybe they each involves the same selection of strange, unusual words....

If you haven't already bought a copy, you can find Sybilla in the National Flash Fiction Day Bookshop.

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If you’re submitting this to us, make sure to note that this is a response to Prompt 15: Pairings.

You can submit responses until 23:59 BST on Sunday, 19 June 2022 for a chance to be published here at The Write-In.