'Margot MacDonald's Favourite Lesson' by Laura Cooney

The spring breeze blew through the open window disturbing the jotters on the desk. Mrs MacDonald was in the middle of an experiment, and let them fall to the floor with a slap. She glanced at them momentarily before looking back to the metal in the flame. 

Magnesium burns brightly when it is on fire and Margot MacDonald gripped the tweezers tight having expounded her favourite lesson. She found that she couldn't quite bring herself to let them go. 

She sighed, to mark the end of a long morning and looked round the room. The first time you give a first year a bunsen burner, there is always a need for the fire blanket. This Margot had to hand, just right there on the desk. She was tired of the routine. Tired to the bones. Not even magnesium held light for her now. But, nevertheless, the script must be followed and, remembering that safety was first, she told Amanda Reid that the blanket was there. Amanda was sensible. She’d know just what to do when it came to it. 

So it came to pass that in the moments after the experiment, and right on cue, Stuart Petrie set a small fire on his desk. Afterwards the students reported that the fire was followed by the crash at the window. Though some remember this part differently and said it was almost eerily silent, apart from Stuart's screams at the other side of the room. 

They said that half the students ran to Stuart with Amanda to douse the flames on his left arm while the other half ran, just in time, to see Mrs MacDonald hit the biology lab roof below. The tweezers she had been holding lost to the undergrowth. Magnesium, an element they’d remember.

'Bright Lights' by Donna M Day

'Richard William Whittington, get out of here! Lay your filthy paws on my daughter again and...'

Young Dick never heard what the baker said next, as he tripped over a small tortoiseshell cat, cracking his head on the dusty road.

The cat’s mew was drowned out by laughter. 

Dick pounced on Robert, the leader of the pack, but was quickly put down by the others.

‘Get out of here, Dick,’ growled Robert. ‘Don't ever lay your filthy paws on me again.’

Young Dick was done with these dusty streets and village kittens. He was going to journey to London, where the streets were paved with gold and a young man could make his fortune overnight.

The little tortoiseshell cat trotted along behind him, out into the great wide world.

As night fell, snowflakes began to drift onto Dick Whittington and his cat, and he decided to find an inn where he could spend the night.

Noticing his feline companion for the first time, he tried to shoo her away, but she ran inside as soon as the door opened and settled by the fire.

‘No animals,’ growled the innkeeper, but the cat pounced on a rat lurking by the coal scuttle.

Dick Whittington and his cat received fish for her hunting efforts and in the morning, they continued to London, where the streets were not paved with gold.

They wandered through the dark streets, with only the lamplighters for company. Shivering, Dick suddenly slipped, cracking his head on the muddy road.

Ears ringing, he looked up at his cat. Her bright green eyes shone like gold in the lamplight.

Looking at the murky, deserted streets around them, young Dick had an idea.

Cats’ eyes might just be the bright lights that would lead him on the road to fame and fortune.

'Fertilizer is $19.97 at Home Depot' by Christina Tudor

My wife and I decide I have the stronger stomach for pregnancy. She’s always a little bit queasy. It would be like being on a non-stop zero-gravity ride, she said. The doctor goes on about implantation and fertilization. I feel like a yard that needs tending to. I joke that fertilizer costs $19.97 at Home Depot. Nobody laughs. After the doctor confirms the pregnancy is viable, I dream that I’ve swallowed a handful of nickels. I cough them up, spit them into my unsuspecting hands. I laugh in my dream. I laugh myself awake. My wife stirs beside me, asks what’s so funny. I hold my palms out to her that moments before were full of nickels as if to say here, take them. 

'I Bequeath to You' by Sally Simon

When my lungs no longer take in and expel OXYGEN, and the 21 elements that make up this human flesh cease to orchestrate themselves into mobility, I will leave behind to you, my beloved, the following….

*The sun and moon salt and pepper shakers, the ones we bought at the antique shop in Aguas Calientes on our tenth anniversary, and filled with salt from the Maras mines because we thought it was cool, but not cool enough to ever use.

*The box of #2 pencils in the top drawer of my writing desk (please throw out the old, nubby ones and start anew); they are full of possibility, and really that may be the best thing I can leave you.

*The 1928 buffalo nickel my father left to me. The one that he gave to me when his father died. The one that I would have given to a son, if we’d had one. 

*The copper bracelet adorned with native symbols I never wore. I know you bought it for me out of love; you thought it had healing qualities because the woman at the reservation told you so. Told you that it would take away my pain. I should have worn it, even just once. Maybe just to see if she was right.

*The silver money clip with my initials etched into the metal. The one you gifted me the night before we wed. The one I kept in my pocket for 47 years, every day. The contents never mattered, only that it was from you.

'In My Element' by Liz Gwinnell

You never heard of Americium? Well hell it’s about time you did. Let me introduce myself. Element 95. At your service.

I was discovered in 1944 but kept secret for a long time.  My creation was hectic, chaotic, a monster baby so unpredictable scientists nicknamed me Pandemonium. What do you expect when you’re created from a bombardment of high energy neutrons? Eventually I broke away from my Uranium parents and so did my sister Curium, Element 96. 

Occasionally we meet up, exchange stories – hers about space travel, mine bemoaning the human and smoke.  We are revolutionaries, pioneers. We influence your worlds without you even knowing we exist.

Burned the toast? Need to fire up your Sat Nav? Here we are, at your service.  Want to know about my alpha particles? How I send them out slow, real slow, letting them ride the waves between positive and negative? And then you go and leave the grill on or burn the toast and all hell breaks loose. The smoke disrupts my flow. And sets off your smoke alarm.  And then I gotta save your life. Jeez. So many times it's a false alarm, so many times.

My sister has no such interruptions up there in outer space.  Nothing violent, nothing intrusive. She is the Element that fires up the satellites you take for granted, satellites powering up your phones, your SatNavs, your everything. 

I say to her, I say, mix it up a little! Get disruptive! Have some fun! Have you seen how much they rely on you down there? But she just looks at me with that cool space look of hers and drifts on past another black hole.

Well, gotta go. Someone’s just turned on the grill and you know what that means.....

'Diamond in the Ruff' by Willow Woo

Since I was little, dogs were everything to me. I dreamed of becoming a dog doctor.

So, at 32, I returned to university to fulfill Biology, Chemistry, Organic Chemistry, and Physics requirements to apply to veterinary school.

Biology was breezy fun.

But my brain rejected balancing equations and grasping Chemistry concepts. Tutoring and study groups were futile. I read the textbook over and over. The pressure transformed into migraines.

I cursed my former teachers, who assumed I was gifted at science and math due to the slant of my eyes and who let me flounder.

After lingering in office hours for years, a new Chemistry professor asked, “Have you been tested?” He handed me a pink sheet and sent me to the Learning disabilities office.

Diagnosis: Central auditory processing disorder (CAPD) = the ears work fine, but the brain cannot process what is heard. But I had graduated from the #1 public university at 21! And it felt like climbing quicksand.

More testing revealed Autism, ADHD, and OCD.

I returned to Chemistry class and flunked the final.

After 6 attempts and 2.5 years of trying to pass, I tried to rinse off my monumental efforts at failing. As my periodic table shower curtain fluttered from the steam, I pressed my pinkie on Atomic Element #6, Carbon.

Fact: 80% of veterinarians have depression and commit suicide at alarmingly high rates. Euthanasia as a necessity contributes.

Chemistry was the blockade, but I had lied to myself about accepting euthanasia. I could never administer death shots to dogs.

It takes 1 to 3.3 billion years of pressure and heat for carbon to naturally turn into a diamond. I had only been trying for 2.5 years. But now I was a shiny, sparkly diamond shimmering in my neurodivergence.

So, what would I transform into next? 

He(2) is lighter than air by Sumitra Singam

 
He is lighter than air, and being with He is like floating, floating, while He holds you tightly by a thin string that He jerks now and again, to pull you back, to remind you to land once in a while, to bathe, to eat. He is lighter than air, He makes you feel like every curve, every fold, every spare tyre is insubstantial, that you have no outside lines at all, no borders, no limits. He is lighter than air, and he enters you with breathtaking pleasure, the friction at the outside edge of sense. He is lighter than air as he fingers your mouth, your teeth brittle from want, your tongue, cracked like a drought riverbed. He is lighter than air as he Michelin-mans the oxygen out of your alveoli, as you purple deliciously, as you deflate into him. He is lighter than. He is lighter. He is.
END

'Their Jaws Were Hanging' by Rachel Burrow

You could see them in the dark, with their little faces glowing. Glowing green on the slab. The products of Lucifers. Tooth-picked by physicians, curious to investigate the bulbous phenomena of the girls from the factories. White phosphorus workers, no jaws wagging, just sagging, and gaping. Struck, burnt and misshapen - the matchstick girls.

NFFD 2024 Prompt #10: Flash Chemistry

 

Prompt #10: Flash Chemistry
ELEMENTS prompt C

Welcome to The Write-In!  This year, we're celebrating the 2024 National Flash Fiction Day Anthology theme of The Classical Elements - Air, Earth, Water and Fire. Throughout National Flash Fiction Day, we'll be posting one time-related prompt on the hour every hour from 00:00 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, 16 June 2024....

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Choose an element from the periodic table. Write a flash where that element is important to the story.

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If you’re submitting this to us, make sure to note that this is a response to Prompt 10: Flash Chemistry.

You can submit responses until 23:59 BST on Sunday, 16 June 2024 for a chance to be published here at The Write-In.

You can claim the badge for this prompt by visiting the badgifier here (hosted by the NFFD website).

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Periodic Table image by Sandbh via Wikimedia Commons