'The Phoenix always tries to rise' by Saddie Hopes

 

Hey, this is a pretty striking image,’ he said, admiring the photograph showing a waif-like-girl, holding a rose, standing in rubble. ‘Looks like a destroyed building or something?’

‘Oh yeah. That’s one of Rania Matar’s. I discovered her on Instagram. After the Beirut explosion, in 2020, I believe,’ she says.

‘Yeah, I remember. A massive explosion in the port area. I heard it was improperly stored and forgotten explosive chemicals, Ammonium Nitrate maybe, that blew up.’

‘Stinks of incompetency, neglect and, maybe corruption,’ she sighs.

‘Probably all the above. Sadly common. Caused a huge amount of damage. Still being supposedly investigated and protested,’ he says, shaking his head.

‘I think I saw something about some rebuilding too,’ she adds. ‘Actually, that is what the photograph is about. It’s called ‘Hope and Destruction.’ Phoenix rising from the ashes and all that.’

‘Or trying to rise, when they let her,’ he scoffs.  

'The End' by Allison Renner

From a room away, I hear him try to place the glass on the counter silently. I hear the crack of the ice tray, the suck of the fridge as he pries it open. Like I won’t know what he was doing. Having a newborn had heightened my senses while it seemed to dull his. I feel alert about everything going on in the house at all times.

I close Elijah’s door behind me and tiptoe towards the kitchen, pausing in the hallway. My doubts catch up to me as I realize I’m doing something similar. Staying quiet, sneaking around in deference to the sleeping baby. Maybe that’s all he’s doing and I’m overreacting.

The floor creaks and James turns to face me, deftly positioning his body to hide the glass and the bottle of rum. My anger floods back. “You’re out!” I whisper as loud as I can.

“You’re crazy!” he exclaims in his overly-loud, already-drunk voice. “This is coming out of nowhere!”

I point at the almost-empty bottle. “What about when I confronted you about the last bottle? Or the one before that? What about our breakup last year? Get out!”

“But we have a family now, baby!” He steps towards me with his arms wide. He stumbles and falls onto me. I can’t breathe and I think it’s due to the fall before I realize his hands are around my neck. I gasp and shove at him. I think of Elijah and strength surges through me. I knee James and roll away, run down the hall, lock myself in my son’s room.

“It was an accident,” he pleads, right outside the door. “I’m drunk, I’m not thinking, “I’m sorry!”

“I’m calling the police,” I whisper.

'Safety Treads' by Molly Lanzarotta

He was pasting these sand-paper things on each step, and I said, what now?

Nonskid strips, he said. For safety on the stairs.

 

Did he mean: for the climb, for security, to hide wear, to prevent a slip, to delay the fall, to slow progress?

 

To stop yourself, Dubliners-like, halfway up the spiral in a shaft of filtered sunlight. To arrest your foot, keep you aloft, never to depart, an agoraphobia-in-motion of motionless caution, frozen forever on the way, never ascending or descending, arriving, or leaving.

 

But all I said was, oh.

 

Then I took his hand and said, let’s go float the Amazon, the Yangtze, let’s climb the Himalayas, the Dolomites, the Alps, let's ride bikes down the Great Divide, hike the Appalachian Trail. Let’s launch into the Hundred Mile Wilderness, let’s zip line, let’s sky dive, let’s hang glide, let’s base jump.

 

He gazed at me, then eyed the safety strips. But he didn’t pull his hand away.

 

I said to him: You know what they say. You could always play it safe, go nowhere, then slip in the shower and demise that way.

 

Right, he said. But I got some for the shower too.

'The 11 Hour Road Trip' by Sudha Subramanian

“The roads are super-duper," the driver, declared. 

His white teeth, clean-shaven cheeks, and the long horizontal lines of sacred ash on his forehead had us believe him.

We cozied up in the back seat of the blue sedan. The engine revved up to life and skirted along the lush paddy fields and mango groves. The blue canvas and the dull rhythm soon lulled us into a world of dreams.

A loud thud threw us in midair. The car climbed up a mound and landed with a jump shaking us back to reality. Our eyes opened to arid terrain. The verdant fields had given way to cragged sides along with the stone-paved ground. The sedan jiggled and bumped as it found its path to stay on its fours.

I grabbed the paper map fluttering next to me. Lines dotted with deep red flames on tips of triangles, crisscrossed and disappeared into nothingness.

A dull hiss pricked my ears. An ivory face with bloodshot eyes, stained yellow teeth, and no hair sneered at us while two hands were at work on the wheel. Cold gripped our hearts. 

“We always fight these unearthly things with a knife”, I remembered Grandma’s words. I fumbled into my handbag for the Swiss knife. The creature whimpered and flew out of the window.

“Grab the wheels," I called out to my husband while I switched on Google Maps in the car. It was going to be an 11-hour-long journey to our destination.

“Saw how I fought it off with a knife," I laughed.

“I thought the iron nail I held out did the trick," my husband chuckled.

Somewhere I thought I heard a hiss at the back of the trunk.

Or maybe I was imagining it.

'The Kite' by Laura Cooney

The kite tail flutters.

I look, I see, I feel. Everything.

The kite, flits, whipped by the storm in my head.

I’m at the strandline and cannot bridge the expanse.

Not with this flimsy plastic.

The wind rises, quivering, unbearable.

And then, my soul fleeing to be done with it, 

I let it go.

'Rose Quartz' by Anne Daly

The bathing suit is not kind to her, the bite of its hemline sinks deep into her flesh. Her

stomach cascades into currents that ripple with each movement and the stretch marks on

her thighs are silt marks left by the tide. Our boy doesn’t notice, of course. He shouts with

delight at each rising wave, calling to his mother to watch him as he jumps against them.

Water laps at her ankles as she looks on, I cannot see her face.

I think of when we first met, how she held the scent of rosebuds on her skin. She was

silicate of the gentlest kind, a diffraction of frost captured pink. Her voice was country-fresh

and she touched me with the tenderness of a newly cut stem.

The sea glints crystalline and curves an alloy around the briolette of her hips. She turns to

me and smiles. The sky paints amber above her. I feel something. Not the desire of old, but

something elemental. It is a layering above the ashlar of my bones, fissured yet intact. It ties

me to her, this armature of blush woven glass, veined and imperfect, that rises from the sea.

So, I stay and wait, to feel the fizz of mineralite skip against my lips once more.

'It Was a Mean Night' by Kathy Prokhovnik

It’s a mean night out on the streets and I’m not sorry to reach my destination. If one more trickle of rain makes its way down my neck I’ll be listed as a waterfall feature in my own apartment. I push through revolving doors into a gloomy hotel foyer. Empty. The chandeliers twinkle in the vaulted ceiling a long way up. The place gives me the creeps. A clock ticks out a rhythm of missed chances.

I can’t see a clock.

I check my pockets, pull out my police ID and the note that I’ve already memorised. Hotel Metropole. Check. Anonymous phone call. Check. A sighting of Rudi Galludi, safe-cracker and sapphire thief. Check. I flip my wallet to the photograph and look for the millionth time at that face, chin propped up on rough-knuckled hands. For the millionth time it somersaults my heart.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

A noise, no more than a scuffling mouse. In the mirror behind the counter I see someone finishing a grand jeté that lands them behind the column closest to the door. I know that leg.

‘Rudi!’ I call. High above us the chandeliers rattle.

It could be comedy as he pokes his face out, eyes popping. It could be romance as I feast on those eyes, that hair, those lips. ‘Helena,’ he screams, ‘get out! The safe. It’s going to blow.’ 

 

He’s rushing for me but the blast hits first, blowing me and the revolving doors out into the erupting night.

'Pet Peeve' by Shahema Tafader

James crossed out the word ‘their’ with a red pen and dug a trench in the paper as he did so. 

‘They’re, not their,’ his teeth gritted. 

Only three papers in and he felt more coffee was needed. Coffee, a cricket bat and a ball. No … a rock. One he could pummel into powder, or at least bruise the wall with. 

Cross. Cross. 

‘They’re. There. Two. Too.’ 

The paper ripped in several places, making the red ink appear like blood seeping from a wound. He stabbed full stop after full stop before throwing the pen against the oak table and thumping his back against the chair. 

Breathe. Breathe. 

Now would be the time for some fresh air.

NFFD 2022 Prompt #1: Reactions!

 

Reactions!

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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Sodium has an atomic number of 11, and it's so highly reactive, it's never found on its own in nature, only in compounds with other elements.

For this prompt, write a flash that involves some sort of huge reaction.  This doesn't have to be a chemical reaction; it can be a unexpected emotional response, stock market fluctuations, a literal explosion, or whatever else you can come up with.

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If you’re submitting this to us, make sure to note that this is a response to Prompt 1: Reactions!

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

 

Image by Tor Paulin via Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)