'Off Piste' by Donna M Day

             I used to love off season but now there’s not a single flake of snow left on this planet, the season will never be on again.

            My Dad says I should make the best of it, but cosy armchairs, copious amounts of hot chocolate and cable cars are useless when the coldest days are 32º.

            I fill the bath with ice, lay down and dream of snowmen and slaloms

'Let’s Pretend to be Romans whilst No-one is Around' by Tilly Greenland

Turkey is still open over winter.  Beaches and resorts are deserted and the raucous noise of holidaymakers has long since subsided.  Life goes on, peacefully.  Shopping arcades and markets, city centres and ancient wonders still welcome visitors, although not many from foreign lands.

I love visiting the old ancient cities around Selcuk; pretending to be a Roman to amuse myself and wondering what life was actually like.  Ephesus has too many barriers, many more than there used to be, keeping you to the main areas.  A long time ago I walked to the end of the arcadian way, right out into the sea.  But the sea wasn’t there.  It hasn’t been there for centuries.

Prienne is a better place to pretend to be a Roman.  It’s much more available.  A road leads down from the town on the side of the mountain, all the way to the harbour below.  Boats no longer dock.  There is no sea there anymore, either.

I debark the imagination boat and walk up the main road towards the town.  There’s no-one else on site so I can be a Roman all I want.  Walking up the main road there are so many people on the brightly coloured street.  Market stalls, shop fronts, so much noise.  The smell of food cooking, being sold from baskets and vats, fruit sellers offering slices to tempt you.  I take a quince from my bag and sit down to watch.  Plastic bottle replaces earthen ware as I sip my water.  The rain starts now so I head upwards, underneath the trees that grow in the middle of the road, brushing past bushes that now live where the people once did.  At the top of the road there are two original ancient market stalls.  It helps ignite the imagination.

'The Pleasure Beach Closed the Day We Arrived in Blackpool for Our Honeymoon' by Katie Willow

We caught the last minutes of operation, but already the feeling of shutdown had settled and we didn’t ride anything despite the lack of queues. Everyone working there looked tired and ready to leave—some already had; strings of once-bright light bulbs hung dull and lifeless. At the fast food place they had run out of napkins and ketchup and half the menu. We wondered when the cut off date for ordering had been, how many days had the essentials been deemed non-essential. 

We went back to our hotel room which had been upgraded from a double to a superior family room with a playstation and extra bunk beds. We were young enough to think this was cool, but old enough to decide this change had been more convenient for the staff. The corridors were eerily quiet, even in the early hours when the hen/stag parties of Blackpool would normally be dragging themselves back to their beds, laughing, squealing and shoving like kids on a school trip. A goodbye of sorts, some of them more ready than others. 

The next day the wind shocked us with its vigour, and forced us into side streets, hanging on to each other to stay out of the road. These streets were quiet, inhabited only by the few locals who knew which shops would still be open, and charged past the closed ones with stubborn determination, desperate to get home to their teapots. But we were thinking only of the wind which took our words away but reminded us of Tintagel and the last time it had forced its way into our bodies. When it felt like our love emerged, trembling; forced from our cells by the invading air and unable to hide anymore.

'Summer Break' by Melissa Flores Anderson

Dennis walked across the Paseo, the sun reflecting off the glass walls of the student union and radiating off the brick walkways. He checked the time on his phone and saw he’d missed the three-hour window when the sandwich shop on campus was open. He couldn’t even find a soda or a coffee at the university anymore as the Associated Students had voted to eliminate vending machines to promote better health. But at 2 p.m., he desperately needed a jolt of caffeine or sugar or something to remove the sour taste in his mouth so he could get through the next three meetings on his calendar.

He cut between the science building and the parking garage to the convenience store across the street. He lingered in the candy aisle staring at the chocolate and caramel and gummy confections, then instead picked up a bruised apple to go with the giant diet cola cup he’d filled up. His phone pinged and he saw Mindy’s name flash across the screen. 

Mindy had encourage him to make the move from tenured professor to administrator four years ago. The extra pay could get them a home loan before they got priced out of the market. So he took the job and salary increase without thinking that he had also traded away his summers off, his engagement with students in the classroom, his peace of mind, the chance at a sabbatical every five years. Now he paid the mortgage while Mindy sent him pictures from France of her with the kids, and told him she couldn’t wait for him to join them for a week in July.

He slipped the phone back into his pocket as walked to his office. He had 15 minutes before his next meeting.

'The Fluke' By Eileen Frankel Tomarchio

 

She does pretty well on balmy days in February, March. The flukes. Like her. Winter-weary Manhattanites down the shore for a summer taste always stop at her impromptu boardwalk venue. They smile over her painted clamshell necklaces displayed on faded beach towels. They’re quick to pay because they pity her. She in her tattered Save the Whales t-shirt and peasant skirt, sitting on a cat litter tub. Her aged yet ageless face.

 

Some of them linger when she says she was born over three hundred years ago, in 1717. When she offers her life story, they look trapped and scared, but also mesmerized. Left a nobody’s babe on the steps of the Friends Almshouse in Philadelphia, raised by a Quaker tavern-keeper who re-settled here at the Western Ocean with transplanted New Bedforders. A young woman unable to keep well the virtues of silence and stillness. A regular on the whale hunts, as skilled with the harping iron as any man.

 

Fewer still hang around to hear her tell of how she fell asleep in her dory while a-fishing in the sea one day. How when she awoke and paddled ashore, she found herself in this alien place, three centuries gone. No cause, no answer.

 

The fluke day done, she packs up and goes home to the in-law suite she rents from a kind librarian at the local historical society. Her earnings aren’t what she gets cleaning houses, schools, and offices, but dearer somehow. People listened. Sometimes the librarian invites her into her warm TV room where they binge on pizza and Outlander. The librarian doesn’t pity her at all.

 

When she goes to bed, she dreams of the poor beasts she once speared, towed, and flenched. Dreams she’s inside the belly of one of them, waiting to be spat out.

NFFD 2023 Prompt #18: Off Season

 

Off Season

Welcome to The Write-In!  This year, we're celebrating the 2023 National Flash Fiction Day Anthology theme of time.  Throughout National Flash Fiction Day, we'll be posting one time-related prompt on the hour every hour from now until midnight (BST), for a total of 25 prompts in all.  You have until midnight on Sunday (BST) to submit your responses for possible publication here at the Write-In.  We'll start posting responses on Sunday, 25 June 2023....

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Write a flash that takes place at a location during an off season.  Perhaps it's a seaside resort in the winter, a ski slope during a summer heat wave, or a children's theme park during term-time.  Whatever the case, try to make the location and the off-seasonness feature prominently in your story. 

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If you’re submitting this to us, make sure to note that this is a response to Prompt 18: Off Season.

You can submit responses until 23:59 BST on Sunday, 25 June 2023 for a chance to be published here at The Write-In.

You can claim the badge for this prompt until 23:59 BST on Sunday, 2 July 2023 by going to the here (hosted by the NFFD website).