'Freedom from Time' by Molly Lanzarotta

In every age, a mature woman of experience is eyed with suspicion, called names (but “Wise” is not often one of them). 

She recounts: “There’s a pull, a push.”

We listen, in a hush.

 

“Our cycles,” she says, “the moon.” Then whispers, “New rules soon.”

 

“Light, its speed, will not budge,” might say the professor, a decisive judge.

 

The reporter: “Truth is not a perspective.”

 

The officer: “Time is a detective.”

 

“Laws are unchanging, inscrutable,” says the minister, mutable.

 

The philosopher: there’s no “yes,” no “no.”

 

The up-and-coming starter-upper says: “Let’s go!”

 

But that wise woman of every century: when she spotted accepted truth, that old dragon, she slayed it, soon as she could see it.

 

I asked her, “Can you tell time?” so she told it off, and so it stayed, like truth and the dragon, slayed. Time—no longer fate—reduced to this lesser state.

 

Time turned off, so: there is no mystery, no history. What then of you and me? You sing, “I love you to eternity.”

 

But time, ended, its arrow, bended to an arc that peters…stutters…derails. Where is the fact that never fails?

 

In truth, then, love must subdue all, of a moment, and our story’s rise and fall.

'The Girl Made of Colors' by Allison Renner

Once upon a time there was a girl with colors on her skin. Pictures and patterns raced up and down her arms and legs.

Some people smiled at the vivid images, walked away from the encounter wondering what pictures might show up on their own skin if they had her confidence.

Others gave her a disgusted look, wondering why she would go out in public like that, thinking she should cover herself with garments that prevented her from being seen.

But the girl was oblivious to these reactions. She went through her days in a blissful blur of color, thinking only of how much she loved her skin and what she would draw the next day, after it all washed off in the bath.

'Beans for the Giant from the Boy who Missed his Dad' by David X. Lewis

Dad came home drunk again. Mum kicked him out. The cupboard was bare, except for a bag of dry beans well past their use-by date. Mum told me to go foraging.

I swept the beans into my hoody and wandered into the lane, hoping to sell them for some cows — the opposite of what Beanstalk Jack did in a story Dad told me when I was young. 

Nobody was interested in giving me anything for them, let alone a cow or two. Until a giant strode into the lane from the forest. "I’m hungry," he roared.

"Would you like some beans?" I asked.

The Giant said yes, he would plant them and grow a beanstalk to climb back to his mother. He gave me a fat white goose in return.

I took the bird back to my Mum, who strangled, plucked and cooked it.

I was sad, because the way it nuzzled me with its orange beak reminded me of how Dad tickled my chin with his yellow fingers whenever he returned from the pub.

'Busted' by Jackie Sullivan

 

Once upon a time I was blasted from the land of nod by the cacophony I’ve learnt to my cost portends disaster.
I rushed outside, down the path to our secret cove and there, in a pool of moonlight, was Marshy, wiping spectacles hanging from her sheet metal body with its froth of pink net poking out.

Our inaugural flight was hair-raising. Clutching on as she dodged shooting stars wasn't easy.  I’ve got a bad feeling about this, I thought.
"I wish we were anywhere but here," I whispered.

"That wasn't clever, wishing out loud!", she hissed.

"I wish I was clever enough to get out of this!" I hissed back.
"Oh you want to be clever, do you?”

Abruptly I found myself in an auditorium packed with people hanging on my every word. Perched on a stool, leg-like things crossed, sat Marshy in intellectual mode.
There was nothing for it but to bluff. Glancing down at the opening page of the document I read: ‘Westphalian Reservoir Analysis: Ad-lib lecture to Postdoctoral groups’ and fainted.

On reviving I found we’d been rumbled, and worse, Marshy dousing me with water.
"I've seen humans do that," she whispered, adding "we'll escape in masterly disguise!"

 “I wish I was home!" I yelled, trembling. 

I was still trembling back on the beach, having evaded capture.
But we’d been captured by iPhone

"Look!" Marshy said ecstatically. "We're in the papers! Only no-one will know it was us!"
I admitted she was probably right; our disguise wasn’t pretty. The headline read, "Imposters with club feet escape on a tandem".                                                                                     
What was strange was, the image of me riding pillion seemed to have vanished in a puff of fairy dust. 

'Cinderella 2.0' by David X. Lewis

There’s a bang on the door. It’s after midnight. "I’ve lost my key!"

I run to unbolt. Cindy’s in a state. Hair everywhere, lipstick a mess, tears pouring down her face. And she’s wearing only one of the pink Nikes she bought last week. 

"What the …?"

She flops on the sofa. "Why did he have to behave like that? Oh, Buttons!"

She calls me Buttons because I wear jeans without a zip.

"You mean wotsisface, the banker wanker?"

"He called me a cocktease because I say on OKCupid I might have sex on the third date." She’s still crying. "It was only our second, but he was counting the one on Zoom. And then he leapt on me like a wolf."

Cindy’s been on dating sites since breaking up with Jack. She tells me how handsome the men are, how much they earn, even how good they are in bed. I hate hearing all that. But then they dump or ghost her, or she dumps them, which makes me feel better.

I sit down, pretending to sympathise. She lets me give her a sideways hug. 

Some people have to meet many wolves and kiss lots of frogs to find their prince, I say. 

"How many girls have you kissed to find your princess?" she asks.

I say I’m waiting for the right person. Then I gaze into her eyes and plunge. "But maybe I’ve found the right person already."

Cindy goes silent, kisses my forehead and goes upstairs to bed. I think I’ll never wash my face again.

Tomorrow I’ll retrieve Cindy’s shoe, and next week is Valentine’s Day. I’ll write her a card. I know you’re not supposed to, but I’m going to sign my real name with two kisses. 

After that we’ll live happily ever after. 

'An Apulian Fairtyale' by Julia Ruth Smith

There was once a young woman who got into such trouble that all she could do was sleep. She slept for eleven years. When she woke up, the only answer was to sell her town house and move to the country, taking her dog with her.

The dog was a good cook and moreover was adept at reading fairytales out loud, possessing a soothing lyrical voice. The living was easy. They ate excellent turnip top pasta with spicy green capers, washed down with good local wine.

One day, a handsome count saw them dining in the shade of an almond tree. He fell in love with the woman’s beauty and their simple life; vowed to give up his riches to lie in her homely bed listening to the dog read “Rapunzel”, their teeth black with olives, their hearts full of joy.

They ate through the day and romped through the night until the comely woman’s woes had vanished into the clean Mediterranean air.

They’re living there still as far as we know, which just goes to show that happily ever after is a four-legged friend, some noble nooky and a plate of delicious homemade pasta.

'Luna' by Kathy Prokhovnik

Lie down Luna. I’ll tell you a story.

Once upon a time there was a woman who wanted a baby very much. Every full moon she would call, ‘Oh moon, bring me a baby.’ But the moon would just frown.

One evening, she was sitting glumly on the hillside. An echidna scurried by, a snake gliding behind. The woman jumped up and scared off the snake. Then she heard a little voice. ‘Thank you,’ it said. The echidna was looking up at her. ‘What gift can I give you in return?’ She told the echidna of the one gift she wanted. It nodded, and whispered in her ear.

The next day the woman made an enormous pile of branches at the top of the hill. As the full moon rose she raised her arms. ‘Oh Moon,’ she said, ‘I challenge you. Whoever is still shining brightly in 12 hours time can demand anything of the other.’ The moon bellowed with laughter, but bobbed in agreement. The woman struck her match and the fire burnt bright. The moon shone, lighting up paddocks and soft-flying owls, while the woman piled logs onto her fire. As the moon slipped over the western horizon it looked back and screamed. The fire was as bright as ever.

The next night the woman called out, ‘You must grant me my wish!’ and the moon bobbed.

When the woman’s baby was born, she called her Luna.

Go to sleep dear Luna, and I’ll stroke your spines.

'A Mother's Worry' by Lorraine Murphy

"Once upon a time..."  the dreadlocked play-therapist in ethical cotton trails off as Rosemary bashes a square peg into a round hole. “Sweetie, do you know the story of Hansel and Gretel?”

“Does a bear crap in the woods?” The peg lands with a thud.  

“Mmm, interesting.” The therapist scans her notes. “What do you feel the bread crumbs represent?” 

Rosemary rolls her eyes. “Duh! It’s obviously a metaphor for the false perception of control and the folly of being good." 

The therapist whispers to me. “Nothing to worry about here, Mum. Rosemary is highly intelligent for a six-year-old.” 

Rosemary squeezes a doll’s head into a tiny box. 

I shudder. 

'When Little Red Riding Hood took Jack into the Woods' by David X. Lewis

Jack lived in the village. Little Red Riding-Hood lived in the forest. They met on the common, danced round a Maypole and drank cider.

"Come with me," cooed LRRH, dragging him into the woods.

Jack’s mother had warned him to beware of the forest. He dropped sandwich crumbs as markers in case they got lost.

The path veered. Light and birdsong faded. LRRH led him to a cottage, unlocked the door.

"Isn’t it pretty?" she growled, pulling Jack onto a blood-stained bed with claws where finger-nails had been.

Jack was lost, and the crumbs couldn’t help.

'Wood Torn' by Lauren Davis

As she sleeps, out of her mouth grows an evergreen. She wakes with needles on her chest, roots deep in her throat. Pollen stains her black hair. She now speaks only the language of native thrushes. She’s unable to scream. Her jaw aches. Her neck aches. She grips the tree, stumbles outside. An owl lands on her branches, watches her drop to her knees. How did it find me, she thinks. The forest creeps forward. The swallows are flying home. Pinecones at her hips. When her jaw splits open, still she sings.

'A Midsummer’s Front Lawn' by J. B. Stone

When there are no children at play, turning cul-de-sac pavement into street hockey exhibitions.

When there is no middle-aged dad mowing grass blade after grass blade to appease the false gods of neighborhood ordinance: another realm appears in the dry-heave summer air. The ornaments plastered across every front lawn start to unravel from their inanimate states.

The lawn gnomes awake from statue to flesh, flip open synthetic boulders like miniature speakeasies, dispensing tubs of magical booze, and galivanting around carved shrubbery with pitchers of mystifying lager and ale. Making lines of fairy dust to snort until their noses turn into gumdrops. A flamboyance of plastic Flamingos join in the party. The moon shines like the universe’s answer to spotlight.

Pinwheel flowers bop their tops and sway their petals like the scenery of an old MGM cartoon. Their stems grow crazy-straw roots and raise like the hands of churchgoers praising their God.

Stone mason frogs with painted skin and adorned in vaudevillian outfits, leap from once-bolted- down pedestals, fix their bowties, but loosen their belt buckles, grabbing a treasure trove of ingredients from a mini-fridge hidden in the hollow of an oak tree.

The red and green polka dot mushrooms then unchain their bodies, and crawl out of the dirt like babies from an earthy womb, sprouting arms and legs, swaying and breaking to the beat of nearby house parties from afar, trying to mimic the heartbeat that finds life in every soiree within a 10-block radius.

When the street-lights are out and these little hubs of suburbia resemble dormant, ghost towns.

Where the only light left comes from the window views of dinner affairs and absent parent house ragers: a menagerie of creatures run an all-night carnival of tacky art imitating even tackier lives.

'Red brews love potion #22' by Maria Thomas

At midnight Red takes her penknife and forages braces of brown-capped mushrooms, slicing bone-white flesh and organza gills into crescent-moons, before adding them to the fermenting mixture in the copper-bottomed cauldron.

The potion - eye of newt, snakeskin slithers, mermaid scales, fragments of a love poem written on almond paper, six drops of bad blood – is squeezed with drops of longing, dashes of desire and stirred effervescent. She adds sprinkles of spirulina, pinches of chia, handfuls of goji. It’s not traditional, but it might help the taste, and they’re superfoods anyway.

Red dances beneath super-moons, undulating like a cobra, hood raised, sidewinding across the dandelion lawn.

Wolf dances beneath super-moons too.

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Red meets Wolf – where else - in a bar. Wolf’s sitting by the door drinking Old Fashioneds, collar of his coat raised like the Fonz. Wolf wants, in exactly this order:

a fire-engine red Pontiac Firebird,

a cabin by a lake where he can spend his days hunting and fishing, and

a girl with curves and strawberry curls, seeking foolery, not fondness.

Red wants love, love, love, the whole shebang, hearts and flowers, true romance, a love story, the full freakin’ fairytale.

She recognises Wolf. He’s hungry. He’s thirsty. He wants.

One drop, two drops, three. That’s all it takes to fell Wolf. Three drops stirred into an Old Fashioned like sugar, then Wolf to recognises Red too, looking at her like dawn breaking.

Outside a fire-engine red Pontiac Firebird waits, trilling impatience. They drive out of town, top down, wind blowing the sticks out of their hair, hand holding hers holding the stick-shift.

Red’s ready, ready to shake this dust-domed, dust-doomed town off her shoes and fly.

In a Gladstone bag lie flasks of love potions #23, 24, 25. Red hopes she won’t need them.

NFFD 2022 Prompt #2: Once Upon a Time...

 

Once Upon a Time...

 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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Although our 11th National Flash Fiction Day Anthology contains all manner of stories, styles, genres and themes, the title conjures fairy tales and fable.

Just for fun, we challenge you to run with this and write your own fairy tale or fable.  It can be set 'once upon a time' or be a modern day (or future!) rendering.

And, of course, if you don't yet have a copy of this year's anthology, you can find it at 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 2: Once Upon a Time...

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