'That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.' by Asha Krishna

Aldrin was watching the night news splash the TV footage while announcing an elderly Armstrong’s death. It was not a small step though. It had defined Aldrin’s entire life. At every public appearance, he was introduced as the second man to walk on moon. Even after all these years, it grated on him.

He knew he was not easy to be with, his ex-wives would vouch for that. But back then, his attitude had almost cost him a place on the mission. It was his crew commander, Armstrong who refused to let him go after all the training they had been through. Looking at his boss’s face on TV, he realised he never understood this man who he’d called his friend in public for so many years.

How could you not share your life-transforming experience with the nation?

Unlike a reclusive Armstrong, Aldrin was always eager to share his stories with the public. But he always stumbled when he came to the bit about the engine switch that snapped, jeopardising their homeward journey.

Only the two of them knew what exactly happened on board. Aldrin knew his version would sound hollow. After all, Armstrong’s was the face and voice that sculpted history.

If only he had been allowed to step out first…

It had been more than four decades since they’d first made the landing. Now, Aldrin could tell the story the way he wanted. 

The phone rang just as the news ended and he hoisted himself off the sofa with purpose.

'The Eleventh Union' By Dipika Mummery

It was supposed to be my greatest moment. The greatest moment in our country’s history. 

I was ready. More than ready. I’d done all my training, went through the simulations so many times that I woke in the night to find my hands in the air, performing operations on an imaginary dashboard.

So, I couldn’t believe it when the doctors told me what they’d found on my x-ray. Four days before launch, they told me I couldn’t go. They would send someone else instead.

I watched it all on TV, the moment that should’ve been mine. The preparations, people scurrying around the spacecraft like industrious mice. The interviews: how long it would take to get there, how comfortable it would be, living on the new space station, how the cosmonauts would eat and relieve themselves. The laughing replies, the indulgent words for the children watching at home. 

They should’ve been mine.

Something tightened in my chest when they launched into a new chapter of our history. I almost thought that the doctors were right. That it was best not to go. 

But my heart said otherwise.

The shivering started when I heard what they found twenty-three days later: three corpses floating in the sea. Blue bloodied faces, the air sucked out of them on the way home. I shivered and shivered and couldn’t stop, not until I went to bed that night and wrapped the duvet around myself.

I couldn’t imagine what they must have looked like, dead. I could only see them as they were, living, breathing, laughing about space toilets. 

And it wasn’t what they thought it was after all - the shadow on my lung, the one that kept me on Earth. It was just an allergy. I could’ve gone after all. 

I could’ve made history. 

'Ways I Can Become Famous in The Guinness Book of World Records' by Emily Macdonald

1. I can eat boiled eggs like Cool Hand Luke, popping their smooth domes into my mouth, down in one, swallowing like a snake.
2. I can have the world’s longest snogging kiss with my boyfriend. I practice on my arm, sucking and squelching to leave raspberry red marks. I imagine holding him by his sticking out ears if he tries to pull away or grabbing onto his red-brown springing hair.
3. I could star jump in the garden, bounce with my arms and legs stretched in synchronised motion: up, down, in and out, up, down, in and out.
4. I could put on all my clothes. Starting with my vests and school shirts and then my handknitted woolly jumper. Mine my brother’s and then Mum’s.
5. I could free wheel the furthest on my brother’s three gear push bike. I plan the route, seeing my smooth unbroken ride, winding weeeeeeeee from the peak of Long Lakey Fell.
6. I could keep my hand touching Dad’s Rover car. I think this is easy until I consider I might need to pee, and what would happen if he needed to drive to work.

I think of the eggs and my stomach swollen and distended like a too tight balloon, and the sulphur burp that would turn off the boyfriend I don’t yet have, and the too few clothes in our musty wooden wardrobes and how my brother doesn’t have a push bike though he’s begged and begged for one, and how Dad doesn’t have a Rover car because he doesn’t have a job and how I can still star jump on the street—we don’t have a garden—but I can jump and jump and jump until I reach the stars.

'1979' by Shahema Tafader

‘No way, you can actually carry that thing in your pocket?’

‘Oh yeah,’ Tiger said, smirking. 

He was in the school playground surrounded by eight boys - three from his own year, the rest from the year above.

‘Check this …’ he said as he pushed his finger down on the button with the symbol of two arrows pointing backwards. The twin circles visible through the Walkman whirred as they spun. 

‘What’s it doing,’ said a boy Tiger didn’t know. 

‘Rewinding - it’s gna play the track again.’

‘Woa,’ the boys said together. 

‘Now listen,’ Tiger said as he handed the headphone over to his friend. 

His friend placed the large ear cups over his ears. His eyes widened and froze there for a few seconds before he smiled. Bobbing his head, he snapped his fingers to the beat in his ears. 

‘Yo, lemme listen,’ another boy said. 

Tiger handed him the headphone and watched as amusement crossed his face too. Like that, each boy took a pass, before the bell rang, calling them back to class.

As the boys headed back indoors, Tiger looked around, checking for any teachers. Then, he climbed over the gate and landed in the park next door. He put his headphones on and walked away, bobbing his head to the sound of Michael Jackson’s, Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough. 

'The Pit of Despair' by Lena MacDonald

8th January 1972, the night before the morning after.

The clock on the mantelpiece chimed seven times. Each one cleaved through the silence of the evening, the gentle ticking having long been ignored. As the final note dissipated, she looked at him sitting forward in the chair, his head in his hands.

Her brow furrowed. A dimple appeared in her cheek as she pursed her lips. There was nothing she could say to ease the tension of the moment, or the situation they found themselves in. Instead, she left her own seat and knelt before him, placing her hands on his forearms.

For a moment, he didn’t respond. Her eyes took in every wrinkle on his hands, clean and scented with Imperial Leather, the shadows of coal dust lurking under neatly trimmed nails. She ran fingertips over his cool skin, feeling the hairs flatten then bounce back up as the pressure ebbed and flowed. Goosebumps followed in her wake.

He dropped his hands, revealing a face lined with misery. Tired eyes, red rimmed. He stared over her shoulder, to where a hand-painted sign leaned against the wall. He reached for her, taking her soft hand within his calloused palm. He exhaled deeply, shoulders sagging. Finally, their eyes met. In that moment, no words were spoken.

In eleven short hours, he would get on the bus. When he stepped off at the other end, he would stand shoulder to shoulder with his fellow miners, signs held aloft, a determined chant filling the air. And they would march. Heath be damned, they would march.

'3rd October 1943 - Eighteen Hours of Rain' by Lindsay Bamfield

“The rain started in the early hours of 3rd October, and went on for eighteen hours. Never damn well gave up. No matter because us troops of the 11th Brigade (British 78th Infantry Division) had to wade across the Biferno River to meet up with the Commando Brigade and the Special Raiding Squadron who’d landed by sea. The bloody rain wasn’t going to get us any wetter, was it? But it bogged down the supply vehicles alright, up to their axles in mud, they were.

“The commandos had already secured the harbour, got into the town and pushed out to the perimeters controlling all the approaches and that took the Jerry bastards by surprise. Major Rau was captured in his pyjamas. Made our day that did. That and them driving straight into our commando ambush. Stopped a lot of their vehicles that did.

“And that evening, still raining like buggery mind you, was the sea-borne landing of the 36s and they bulldozed fords for our supplies to get through. And that was my twenty-fourth birthday. Wet and wetter.

“We did come under heavy counter attack in the following few days but all in all Operation Devon, the Battle of Termoli, was considered a success. We got them on the run. But you know, even the good outcomes leave widows and orphans. Thirty-two of our men killed, another eighty-five wounded and twenty-three missing. I never knew what happened to them. I was lucky. Never forget, our triumphs weren’t triumphs for everyone.”

'For Whom the Bell Tolls' by Maria Thomas

Dense fog rolls in from the coast, cloaking everything in impenetrable grey, as you navigate the car through the winding country lanes. It is so opaque, so difficult to see more than a yard ahead, that you should be driving more slowly, with greater care, but your panic, your desire to flee, has made you foolhardy, and you press the accelerator to the floor.

Your hands are sticky on the wheel and you hold your gaze firmly at eye-level, avoiding the sight of the viscous vermilion coating them. You endeavour not to inhale the metallic scent filling the air, like fear, like doom.

In the distance you hear the knell of a fog bell, as you misjudge the bend, as you feel the car leave the road and fly towards the crags that border it.

'Nature Notes – Downtown Dallas 11/22/63' by Rachel Canwell

Driving past a grassy knoll, we suddenly found ourselves awash with unexpected flowers.

A backseat of ‘drifting pink blossom’. 

Such was Lady Bird’s observation recorded for posterity.

Although those closer to the root disagreed. Recalled peonies; perhaps roses. Sudden buds, becoming over blown and blousy. 

Blooming red. 

NFFD 2022 Prompt #8: Living in the Past

Living in the Past

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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Write a historical flash based on something that happened exactly eleven years before you were born.

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If you’re submitting this to us, make sure to note that this is a response to Prompt 8: Living in the Past.

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