'The Portrait Confronts the Artist' by Cheryl Snell

 

Where is my belly? I blacked it out. What about the kit and caboodle inside? That, too. It was just a jumble of beginnings. Did you see the second brain they say lives in the gut? No. That is a controversial theory, like climate change and evolution.

Scraping the canvas raw, the artist says, This is just not working for me. He puts the putty knife down and looks for the image that has slipped through to the underpainting. Complaining from deep inside the dark smudges, the portrait can be heard to say, Why do you always go too far?

'Finding Your Letter Again' by Patricia Bender

 

Your letter, from the day everything felt silver, shimmers. Burnished details from Fugard’s play, “The Train Driver,” glow just as when we sat in those theatre seats. How real the story’s anguish felt. How deep the demand for compassion.

We talked for hours with other audience members over coffee in the West Side Diner. Other diner patrons hearing our spirted talk asked about the play. Soon we were all together, the cook with his arm propped up on the delivery window shelf, the waitresses in shocking pink smocks, the cashier, her smooth black hair piled high and threaded with rhinestones.

'Omphalos or The Navel of the World' by Lynda McMahon

 

I am Woman. At this stone my sight is strong. I dedicate myself to it. Sacrifice myself.

I am Woman. They are Man. They fear me for I see things of Truth. They think I am mad. Hope I am mad.

I touch the altar; feel the living stone. They wait for signs. I see signs as easily as I take breath.

Because I am not Man I anger them. Woman cannot see God. Woman is base. Woman is Other. I see God here because I am Woman. Here at the Omphalos.

'The Hedgehog Recovery Centre that Changed my Life' by David Lewis

I bought a house in France to escape my divorce. Clearing around the hut in the garden, I disturbed a hedgehog and two hoglets. The mother carried one away. The abandoned one mewled.

Outside the village I’d noticed a signpost with a hedgehog and the words Centre de

Récupération.

I nestled the hoglet in an empty Typhoo box and set off for what must be something like the RSPCA. Weren’t the French wonderful!

The centre turned out to be a bog-standard recycling place. But a Frenchman invited me for coffee, saved the hoglet, smoothed out my prickles.

Married me.

'A Lone Tear Trickles' by Catherine O’Brien

A lone tear trickles but she pleads and her mother reads on. She is enraptured as words drip from her tongue. She is more coordinated than her mother but more likely to fall.

Words uttered don’t hold their shape, having as they do, the life expectancy of spun sugar melting on the tongue. This sharing of their brief existence is unclothed by other concerns, forgetful of formless invitations.

These written words have the storage properties of an airtight container. They are always there even if some are placed on ice from time to time. Their style is every wardrobe’s nightmare.

'An Orderly Queue' by Lyndsey Croal

 

You ask them to form an orderly queue, but ghosts have a habit of disorder. They don’t yet understand their forms, drifting into one another, limbs flailing like a bloom of jellyfish. One by one, you call them forth to assign their hauntings. You send a man to his former home, to whisper within walls. A woman will go to a lighthouse where she’ll sing across crashing waves, a new local tale unfolding. Then a girl steps forth. She’s more whole than the others, and you remember when it was you standing there, waiting, nervous. Finally, your replacement has come.

'Vaccination' by Molly Lanzarotta

 

Listen honey, listen girl, don’t marry your first boyfriend. A man is like a missed bus—don’t run after it, another one will be along in a minute.
 
Don’t look at me like that, I’m not your competition. Don’t ask me, “Like what?”
 
What I’m saying is, don’t fold your arms, don’t shut your brain, don’t cross your legs for the rest of your life.
 
Your mother always warned you to get your shots, about the danger of getting lockjaw, or measles, or meningitis. I’m telling you: don’t let your life get lockjaw.
 
Think of my advice as inoculation.

'Eleven-e-rife' by Lauren Selcouth

Have you ever had power over someone? She thinks she’s better than me. I’m a mass of frizzy red hair, clothes more C&A than D&G—average Jo.

I used to dread these ‘let’s do coffee’ mornings. I’d talk about our lovely holiday in Tenerife and she’d always have been somewhere better.

Then one weekend her Brian bumped into our Mary on a stag do and shared more than a karaoke stage. Now her little digs prickle only Brian as he reads my face - will I tell?

But where would the fun be in that.

'Combustion' by Shirani Rajapakse

 

Anger swirled, turning her hair the exact shade of burning flames. They didn’t see fire shoot out of her scalp and cascade down her shoulders. They were so engrossed with their conversation and the guilt of what they’d done that they never noticed. Just like they never detected her slipping something in their drinks.

They began to disappear. Color drained from their skin and hair. It reached everything they touched.

Soon they became line drawings, scribbles in someone’s notebook.

Kayla changed with them. She didn’t want anyone to suspect anything. Not until she had them completely under her control.

'A Prayer of Fresh Fish' by Maria Thomas

She smooths her hands down the vertical stripes of her alb and begins the invocation.

“The perfect batter billows like a pillowcase in the breeze.

Effervescent, bubbles swell and burst crater-like on the surface. Mercurial hops complement the aluminium bite of the ocean-deep.

Beer and flour are chilled numb, sculpting unbearable lightness - the marble veils of Bernini are neither so gossamer, nor so ethereal.

Cod should be thick-fleshed and chalk-white - the length of a hand, the depth of a Hemingway.

Beef dripping injects an umami twist, unctuous, luxuriant, transforming good to glorious.

Frying temperature, no-more-or-less than 1. 8. 5. A fork should fracture the amber crust with a ricochet; saltwater steam should rise, ambrosial, heavenly.

The sacraments: triple cooked chips, sulphuric peas, malt vinegar, clouds of salt. DEMAND SCRAPS.”

'for those who left' by Louise Hurrell

Your palette sits where you kept it, paint drying in its box like the tears on my tender cheeks. Some of the colours, like my emotions, are all mixed up.

‘Never too old to learn something new!’ you had said brightly, waving the set. An eightieth birthday present. That was a week before you left, sleeping in your bed.

I mentally paint your portrait: your smile, your dimples, your kind brown eyes. All of you. It hurts but I do it. I sketch every detail as I carefully pick up the art supplies and tuck them into my bag.

NFFD 2022 Prompt #9: A Picture is Worth...

9. A Picture is Worth...

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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A picture is worth way more than 100 words, but for this writing prompt, 100 words is all you have!

Below are eleven images that our National Flash Fiction Day Artist-in-Residence, Jeanette Sheppard, has made for our anthology covers and website, or has shared with us as writing prompts.  Pick one (or more) of these pictures for inspiration and write a flash of up to 100 words.

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If you’re submitting this to us, make sure to note that this is a response to Prompt 9: A Picture is Worth...  When you're sending in this response, make sure you tell us the number of the image you're using!

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