'For Him' by Debbi Voisey

She didn’t expect it but it came through her window through a chink in the curtain like a crack of thunder or a flash of lightning brought by a bird with black feathers and a beak so sharp it made pin-prick indentations in her chest her heart her mind which was filled with emptiness or cotton wool or sharp tacks that rattled and hurt but not as much as when He came all puckered and screaming and doughy and soft and warm and vulnerable like a delicate glass vase from Murano which was where they were when He was made one drunken night in the city that had gentle waters lapping at its sides like a lover promising the world but breaking it into sneaky little pieces that came away and drifted into the Adriatic Sea just like her dreams of being something anything a long-term wife shattered into tiny fragments of ambition hope togetherness love and bobbed like flotsam on a choppy ocean and what was left of her could do nothing but wait for time to finally settle and show her the beauty she was promised would one day come while she held his head in one hand and his safety and future in another because she was all he had and every crack of thunder and every flash of lightning and every black bird with a sharp beak was her foe to fight for him

'Breathe' by Donna M Day

 

the first time I saw him was among flotsam of a shipwreck and I needed to be near him to breathe every part of him in so I went to see the witch who took my voice for three days and she gave me a tail but no gills so I couldn’t get near him and just floundered on the surface forcing that anchor of a tail back and forth as fast as I could just to stay afloat and alive before sunrise on that last day which signalled my last chance to be with him for always and breathe in his beauty and his love and I felt myself caught tight in the reckless net of desire and swallowed a lungful of air before throwing myself below the surface where salt filled my eyes with fire and I couldn’t find him and my scream as my shimmering tail shredded into two useless legs filled my lungs with water as he grabbed me in his strong arms and I saw that the smile that had hooked me was a wreck of pointed teeth but I had been right about one thing because with him I could breathe and he hauled me to a cavern filled with his collection of sailors and pirates where I was the only female and I have been here for so long I have lost count of the breaths and I want to go home

'Sweet Nothing' by Marie-Louise McGuinness

I only said ’I love you’ because you said it first, I couldn’t leave the air empty and say nothing, though nothing would have meant more, nothing would have been the truth, but nothing would have hurt you, nothing would have buried you deep in heavy self doubt, nothing would have pierced you sharp with lightning blue heartache, so I said I loved you, I protected your feelings by not saying nothing and now, despite your words, I know you don’t love me, if you loved me, you’d have said nothing

'Inheritance: A story in pseudo programming language' by Elisa Rivera

 class Woman

Public complexArray society-expectations;

Private list trauma;

Stack cultural-guilt;

    public Impregnated (int age, char education)

         for every judgement loop

Mother = young(age);

        Decisions = education (none); #hence always bad

Woman struggles++;

end loop

    public Working (int salary)

for loop into infinity

         Woman salary < Men salary;

never-ending loop

class Daughter extends Woman 

    public setBetterFuture(int money, char education)

         Woman = daughter = no Money;

setBetterFuture = no chance;

   public startFamily(int attempts)

for each attempt loop

if partner like mother

Reject; 

if partner is abusive

Woman(Daughter) trauma;

Woman(Daughter) cultural-guilt; 

Daughter < mental health;

else 

Daughter blames Woman; 

end if;

end loop

'Hell Hath No Fury' by Suzanna Lundale

“Are you coming out? Only they were expecting you 10 minutes ago…”

Selene snarled and demanded, “Is he here?”

“I don’t know, Sel, maybe? There are a lot of pe–”

“Then go find out!” She considered throwing her glass at closing door for effect, but it wasn’t empty, and she didn’t like to waste to last of whatever she was drinking…

The door opened, and Simon, looking paler, stuck his head in, “Okay, so, he’s here, but–“

 “But?”

“Well, he’s, uh…he’s not alone; he, uh, brought a guest? A, um, a guest who…wri –”

“Are you asking me, or telling me?”

“Telling? And also, aware that you’ve always loved that scene from A House Broken? The one where Arlene throws a glass at the door as Dean walks out? Right before her monologue?”

Selene’s laugh, when it came, was sharp and bitter, but she stood with a smooth, almost queenly grace, and purred, “Well, Simon, what do you think? Should we let my perfidious ex-agent have all the fun, showing off his new star author?”

“Uh…no?”

“Good lad,” she exclaimed, looping her arm through his and adjusting one of the sparkling pins in her hair and added, “Now let’s go show these people why they’re already dying to buy my next book!

'This Is the Part I Skip In My Fantasy' by Valerie Hughes

After three years of nothing, I crossed the street, looked up, and his eyes were there so we had to stop because when we knew each other, we hadn’t known each other in the city and then there we were, smoke spiraling out of manholes, and we tried to politely hug because as kids we found any reason to touch—a chin on a shoulder, a tracing of the bones in our hands—and there was the time too that I laughed until I gagged when he puppeteered the frog we were dissecting or when I dumped a bag of chips on him—all jagged crumbs—but instead of talking about that at coffee, (days paused via work emails with apologies of lateness or a lie of food poisoning in my case) we talked about the sex we’ve had and the cities we’ve slept in so at first we were a bright liquid pour of honey but then he was brusque to the barista about his burnt matcha and I mentioned the crush I had on the chemistry teacher and I showed too many pictures of my dog because he said, “You’re still pretending to be happy” and his smugness brought us back to the old things—that last fight of defiant accusations—and the honey turned hard in the jar, resisting anything sharp and our intensity was met by the same onlookers in high school, all of them consumed by the urgency that yes, they are in love, but with him I was a kid in adult clothes and the honey jar’s amber was hardening and we looked at each other with a nauseating knowing: one of us needed to break the glass

'Trick or Treat' by Allison Renner

We gathered together on Emily’s driveway before trekking across her yard and down the sidewalks, heads on swivels, looking for houses with porch lights illuminated, the promise of sweetness within, everyone laughing and naming their favorite fun size candy so they didn’t notice when I kept walking, walking, walking, a little Wonder Woman determined to leave the villain at home and make somewhere else, anywhere else, my lair, even if I’m scared of the dark and don’t want to step out from the golden glow of this streetlight—

'Should I have known' by Melissa Anderson

That we would start out joking publicly about grilled cheese sandwich competitions and music albums, and then the first time he slipped into my DMs, he would say something completely inappropriate about liking the taste of his sexual partner’s sweat and I  wouldn’t really know how to respond to that so I would make a joke about pheromones and then he would tell me this sob story about being alone and being in pain and I’d try to cheer him up even though it wasn’t my job because I’ve always had a thing about trying to fix people, probably because I hide all my broken pieces, and then I would try to find out something true about him and instead of telling me his real name he would tell me about a nickname he got in college and he wouldn’t know that I’d already figured out his real name and read some of his old pieces in the NYT and determined that I was a better writer than him and when I tried to turn our private conversations to writing he would always turn it into some sexual innuendo and then I would get something published that had one racy scene in it and he would ask me about what happened next for the character and when I wouldn’t entertain it, he would get mad and stop talking to me for days and then he would come back and tell me he liked my new profile picture and pay me some compliment and I would ask him if he liked me and he would say yes and then he would drop out of my feed for a week and I would think he was really sick and then I’d realize, no, he had just blocked me?

'Unsettling Consequences' by Emily Macdonald

I swat, irritated by the persistent fly and though I miss, I disturb it enough so it flies off-course and careers headlong into the intricate web and the hospitable spider, alerted by the disquiet in its strings, spins its closeting spirals, trussing up fly for later safe-keeping-eating but the eagle-eyed bird swoops low on its crow-black feathers and greedy gulps the two-for-one lunch then pauses—considering the wriggle and tickle surprising its gullet—not noticing the cat, who slinks on its low-slung belly before pouncing, claws distended, to pinion the fruitless beating of wings, arousing the dog from his cock-eyed slumber and excited, dog chases the cat—jaws snap— worrying and bothering it from side to side, distressing the bellowing ring-nosed cow, who snorts and tramples and stamps his hooves in the ground, upsetting the horse who kicks and whinnies, and rears to unseat me, so I’m thrown high from its back to lie flat, breathless and dusty, and quite, quite still, disconcerted by the chain of events, stunned, silent and stupefied, and I lie there and listen, hearing every dust particle drop back to the ground and I hear, the growing insistence of the fly’s buzzing whine and I swat, irritated by its droning persistence, I swat, and I swat, and I swat!

'Between the Lines' by Shareen K. Murayama

There’s a line in my journal called “The Secret to Stronger Relationships,” but the page is blank,
and I’m wondering if I lost something important, family ties, or secrets—I recall being brave less
than five times in my life, like when a mahimahi concedes, you’re supposed to stab its gills with
a knife over and over to suffocate it quicker, it’s called being humane, but when is not being able
to breathe kinder…I stop reeling when I remember love is eternal, when the leader kisses the
top of the rod, and I pull line over line trying to determine which of us is stronger, so I use two
hands, cleave a wide arch over the railing, until something deceived is caught, pulled out of its
comfort zone before you stun it, billy clubbing its apex above the eyes, as it spasms, its body
folds, almost jackknifes, like two hands in prayer, and I can’t help wondering if it’s figuring out
how to get out of this situation, if it remembers landing on a sun-fried deck, twisting, catapulting
into the Pacific cool waters, finning away, faster, deeper into the channel’s darkest blue where
you drop the aluminum club that’s still clanging in my head, the club keeps ringing, it’s a tool,
once a burglar's crowbar, but police have used it to take things, too–Tyre Nichols, George
Floyd, Andre Hill, Freddie Gray—their colors so vibrant greens and yellows, cool blues and
silver, like you never wanted them to be caught because you can’t help wondering why driving a
car or walking on the street can be fatal, so you hope no one catches anymore fish, killing their
chromatophores, the cells that produce their colors, you never want to stand next to something
caught and say nothing, not come to its aid

She’s on Her Own With The Kids All Day and He’s Called to Say He’ll Be Late Home (Again!) by Mairead Robinson

 

a buzzing fly can drive you mad especially one that lands to sting-bite a bare arm, a bare leg, on a prickle hot soon-to-storm day like this one with the kids playing Lego on the living room floor and the TV blaring cartoons even though there’s a garden with a swing and a trampoline and every conceivable entertainment while she tries to think straight, tries to catch herself like a floating thread so she can reel herself into view, but at each glimpse the kids come with scissor voices wanting food or drink or he did this and that’s not fair and she becomes the gritted teeth arbiter of Lego battles and there’s this damn fly, so she rolls a magazine and thwack! but it veers in its fast-forward life where she’s elephant cumbersome in its buzz-fly-bug-eyes, fractured into mosaic, where thousands of her loom and galumph like she’s underwater and that’s how she feels today, every day, and it’s the buzz the constant buzz and it comes again so she swipes and says shoo fly and wonders do flies even have ears? surely not because if they did wouldn’t their tiny fly brains be driven mad? driven insane with the roar of it the never-ending roar and wouldn’t she want to land and sting-bite a bare arm a bare leg too, just for the peace? but it never stops never stops buzzing and there’s a sweat on her top lip from the heat, from the warm as blood rain that won’t come that won’t come from pregnant clouds and if only there’d be a white crack lightning to zig-zag and sting-bite the sky and blind everyone, blind everyone - herself, the kids, him, the fly - into that stark stunned breathless counting of seconds,

of silence,

before the storm

'All That Love' by Sravanthi Challapalli

There are so many photos of you, albums and albums of them, forty in all! Right until the time you celebrated your 30th wedding anniversary, long after people had stopped printing the pictures and limited them to their mobile phones! I can almost hear Dad singing Ol’ McDonald in his own way to get you to laugh and pose: “Here a click, there a click, everywhere a click click!” Of course he would! You were the firstborn, the first grandchild, you even had to be the first of just two girls in a brood of male grandchildren, didn’t you? “Girls lend beauty and grace, though they are ours to keep only for a short time!” grandmother would pronounce, sniffling at the thought that daughters were a loan to be returned and repaid rightfully to their marital homes …

Hah! Trust you to find a husband willing to live in yours! There’s his silly face, all proud and smiling, sitting in one of those awful throne-like red faux leather chairs so typical of wedding receptions in the Nineties, and you in your fair skin, with your sheets of glossy black hair, in your mauve silk sari — of course you wouldn’t wear pink or red, you had to be different, and your grin so bright like the place didn’t need any electricity! Yes, it’s all there!

Everyone – everything – loved you: The termites left your photos alone and attacked mine! Why wouldn’t they? Mine were still in paper packets, while yours had been categorized by year and occasion and preserved in impenetrable plastic boxes! There aren’t even that many photos of me!

I know your explanations: “Our parents were older by the time you came along 13 years later; But there are several photos of you too, you’re actually counting? They gave you so much … All the toys you wanted, the dolls, the gadgets, the expensive education, the car (which you wrecked), this house, the husband you wanted, who wanted a very big dowry …” 

Yes, yes, I know but those are all … just … bits of brick, metal, things which could be bought for a price! What I wanted was the smile that bloomed on Dad’s face when you came for the holidays, Mom’s happiness when your sunny presence pierced the black cloud I seemed to carry around me —I wanted them to feel that way about me! When the blind ingrate you are now accuses them of doing more for me, I could have burnt your photos and revelled in the sight of them curling up and crumbling but I chose not to ... In each picture, a few pricks with a needle, under your ear, on your cheek, in your eye, in your heart, concealed to the world but visible to me, I content myself with that!  

'The Never-Ending Questions' by Kristina Thornton

Are you dating anyone nice … why are you always working … why do you wear so much slap … do you think he’s the one … when are you moving in together … will you say yes, if he gets down on one knee … when are you getting married … did your uncle’s invite get lost in the post … why is your veil doing that … do you want children … when are you going to start a family … are you going to do it naturally … are you breast-feeding … are you tired … are you sleeping when the baby sleeps … are they good … when are you going to give the little one a brother or sister … do you think you’ll have another … how do you cope … why is your kitchen so messy … how are you going to lose the baby weight … why don’t you wear make up anymore … why are you staying at home … what do you do all day … why are you going back to work … won’t you miss them … are they walking yet … are they talking … how are they doing at school … what are their grades like … why is she so quiet … why is he so boisterous … why is he wearing that … are they going to college … are they dating anyone nice?

'#Hamletemergingwriter' by Karen Walker

The prince bleats, 'To be, or not to be' and everyone rebleats though there's blood on Hamlet's sheepish hands, but not one red pinging heart actually cares, asks what's up — what's  got ya goat? — or suggests resources because, OMG, just give him a quill, get him an agent, and suddenly Hamlet is dusting and steam cleaning the castle's red-stained rugs ahead of this weekend's six-word intensive writing retreat: 1500 krone per night, double occupancy with  buffet breakfast, ghosts, and break-out groups!

(A version of this piece appeared on Paragraph Planet on Jan 20 2023)

NFFD 2023 Prompt #2: Period!?

 Period!?

 

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 does not use a full stop or period as a punctuation mark.  You can use any other end punctuation you like, or none at all, as long as you avoid the '.' mark.

What about ellipses you ask?  Oh, sneaky.  Go on then.  If you must.

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If you’re submitting this to us, make sure to note that this is a response to Prompt 2: Period!?

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).