'What a Difference Two Years, Six Months and 15 Days Makes' by Madeleine Armstrong

The first time I saw you, you were a screaming, red-faced mess. I didn’t want anything to do with you.  Everyone talked about love at first sight – the great love, the best love – but I felt nothing.

The next six months passed in a fog. By the time I began to emerge into a new, half-lit world, you were sitting, almost crawling. Sunshine spilled out when you smiled, or so everybody said. I waited in vain for that pull on my heart, the one I’d heard all about.

Your first word was “Daddy”, which wasn’t surprising. As more colours began to seep into my life, I yearned to join your little club of two, but I didn’t have the password. I’d missed the induction and I couldn’t do anything right, so I did nothing at all.

Sleep training tears failed to move me. Your first steps raised merely a shrug. Every day I trudged through a long, dank tunnel, and every night I dreamt of clawing my way through clods of wet earth.

I don’t know when things started to change. It happened so gradually I didn’t notice until one day I
looked at you and felt soft instead of hard.

After that, when you clung to me I clung back, a drowning woman who’d finally found land.

Early this morning you burrowed into my bed, and I was almost blinded by the light shining from your eyes. I tickled you, and your laugh was a chisel cracking my frozen heart wide open.

“Again, Mummy. Again.”

Now I’ll never stop.

'Hum' by Willow Woo

The black curtains open onto a white screen, and I see myself sprinting into the NYC marathon finish line, hands triumphantly in the air. I am humming, a sound as powerful as a scream, but it will be drowned out by the speakers blaring that iconic Rocky song. I hum when I'm elated or in need of a reset. Exhausted, exhilarated, and achingly sore but infused with earned endorphins, my public facade, a shield I’ve worn since childhood, has melted away.

I continue to hum in my space even after you find me in the crowds.

You toss a disgusted look. Your voice changes to match. You shoot, “Are you humming?”

I freeze. I'm still high on my finish, unaware the music has stopped, and I am humming so loudly. Exposed. I’ve dropped my act for the first time in my 27 years of faking it. Am I flailing my arms like I’m swimming on land? I look to my left hand and then my right. Arms are down. Phew. It’s just the hum, but I no longer want to stop.

Surprisingly, when I hum louder, I float up, and when I hum as an alto, which I did in chorus class, I lower. When I hum faster, I move faster; the same is true with a slow hum.

Heads turn to stare.

You screech, “Stop! Your hum is giving me a headache!” 

I hum louder. You cover your ears as I rise with my booming hum. The arms of the people pointing look like chopsticks as I rise higher and higher. My hum blends with the wind. I pass the tallest skyscrapers and then the Statue of Liberty, where I gently high-five her torch while embracing my hum, a breath I kept in for way too long.

'Magnificent Cure for Insomnia' by Donna M Day

Dear One,

Imagine, if you would, the most wonderful sleep, as long as your heart desires and in the softest bed, even fit for a princess, you might say.

You have doubtless heard tales of poisoned apples and nasty peas, but this solution has been tailor-made just for you and features no malicious fruits or vegetables at all.

Dear One, you need only take up the marvellous underrated hobby of spinning cloth and be a little careless around the needle.

Sounds dangerous, but I promise you it is not, at all.

Perfectly safe for a perfect slumber.

Sweet dreams.

'It’s A Numbers Game' by Kate Axeford

It will take precisely eight months and four days for Cerys Evans to get over her son’s appearance on Britain’s Most Bungling, as four million viewers watch the ninety-six nails of Cardiff’s police stinger shred every tyre on Cerys’s Cortina. But as Kyle is dragged out in a swirl of blue lights, only Cerys will recognise how it’s the laddered leg of her 60 denier chocolate tights, squishing Kyle’s face into a bank robber’s scowl.

But like so many mothers, she’ll blame herself, ‘Where did I go wrong?’

Yet four months later Cerys will overcome her self-berating, do a V-sign to the neighbours, take a train and three buses to get first patted down, sniffed by a Spaniel, so she can confront her son across a numbered table.

But is it the lump in her throat that stops her accusing the pasty-faced lump in his bolted down chair?

And instead, Cerys weeps, head in her hands.
 

What did she do to cause this?

But fresh from his course on community reparation, Kyle tells Cerys how he’s sick of both stigma and the mother-blaming narrative, but having dropped out of school and been raised in an area of high deprivation, he’s learned, statistically, he’ll make at least one bad decision.

‘However,’ Kyle whispers when the screws aren’t listening and he hisses to Cerys how the cocaine was never found after the Feds ribboned her tyres, yet it’s still in its biscuit tin, buried in a hedge at the back of the Co-op.

And now Kyle’s had the time to calculate how that stash of powder is more than enough to buy them a new start, so when Kyle comes out (in eighteen months, twelve days and thirteen hours) Cerys had better get thinking what she’d like to pack

for Barbados.

'Reports On The Academic Progress Of Abigail Partridge' by Alison Wassell

Reception

Abigail is a lively, curious child with a real zest for life. It has been a pleasure to teach her this year, although she does need to learn to sit on her bottom and listen to instructions.

Year 2

Abigail is a capable, intelligent girl whose progress has, sadly, been impeded this year by her tendency to spend too much time staring into space and too little focussing on the task in hand.

Year 6

Unfortunately, this year Abigail has become rather sullen and argumentative in class and under-performed significantly in her Key Stage 2 SATS which is a pity, as I feel she has a great deal of potential. Hopefully, the move to secondary school will bring about a change for the better.

Year 9

Abigail who? Persistent absentee. Disruptive on the rare occasions she bothers to turn up.

Home-Schooled Poet Wins Major Prize

Abigail Partridge’s learning difficulties went undiagnosed for years and were often dismissed as bad behaviour. In desperation, her parents took matters into their own hands. Now, this talented and inspirational young woman has the world at her feet.

'The Perfect Job' by Stella Turner

I was in meltdown like the snow at the side of the stream. To be fair I was always in meltdown whatever the season. If I wasn’t fretting the small stuff, the large stuff was chasing me with big cudgels in my nightmares. I was a bundle of neuroses but no one knew neither my friends nor my perfect fiancé and certainly not my boss who seemed to delight on insisting that I met the impossible deadlines. I’d smile, grit my teeth and achieve.

I dragged his body from the boot of my tiny little car. I’m still amazed I managed to squeeze his frame into it. Thank God for his scrawny, tiny statue. He looked quite peaceful for someone that had experienced major trauma; death. I smoothed his hair back into the fashionable style he liked to wear. That much I could do for him. I left him sitting on a little bench at the side of the calming water, well it helped to calm me. When I feel at the height of my anxiety I imagine myself sitting beside water listening to its rhythm as it flows towards the sea. I put the best ever suicide note in his pocket. My many talents never fail to impress me. Maybe I should think about writing a bestseller?

At the funeral, his mother noisily sobbed. It took all my control not to shush her. I held her hand tightly and sobbed myself with restrained decorum. I read the eulogy with the accomplishment of a Shakespearian actress. Maybe I should audition for The RSC?

The wake was inspirational: he held my hand promising me the earth once I’d grieved. I need to google the appropriate time I can stop the pretence and marry my perfect boss.

'Belonging' by Anna Peter

The ball flew into the air, knocking things off the table. The ayah shook the laughing child – his face turquoise blue, arms pink. 

Neels was rivetted. The superintendent gestured angrily to her assistant to shut the door. 

“Was that the child you were going to show us?” Neels knew he was.

“No, Sir. We have…  a different one for you!”

Neels glanced at Leslie. “What’s wrong with that child?” Their friend Prasad had told them they could choose a child, he’d arrange things. They had been in India for four years, so it meant a bribe.  

“Er… he was returned. Too naughty. You won’t like him.”

“Please ask him in?” Leslie looked at Neels. 

“No!”

“You have other parents?”

“No… But we cannot have children returned. It is difficult… for them...”

“Maybe he should decide,” Neels moved to the door and called out. The ayah stopped. Neels knelt and took a pink hand. He smiled and was rewarded with a shy smile. 

In Neels’s accented Hindi, they had gone for classes as soon as they moved to Mumbai, he said, “Would you like to join our family?” 

The ayah tutted. The child looked at him carefully, reached for Neels’s pen and clicked it open and shut. Neels continued to smile. The child touched Neels’s face, rubbing in wet paint, even though the ayah scolded him. When she shook him, Neels put his arm around him. 

Neels prayed to the God he had stopped praying to when their little Jakob died. It was when they had joined Prasad at the orphanage, to serve a meal in his father’s memory, that they had seen the little boy. 

Suddenly he pressed into Neels, his eyes on the pen, but his body stiff with uncertainty. Neels bit his lip. Thank you, God.

A Sense of Security by Sravanthi Challapalli

 

Anita was taking a break from her job as Supplies Manager in a large printing press to help her daughter prepare for some exams. She had grown to dislike her home. The entire building was splattered with pigeon shit. Her own windows and sills were no exception. The building was full of barking, mewing, growling, spitting, hissing pet canines and felines. Their behaviour often irked other neighbours, who would then themselves bark, growl, mewl, spit and bite — the police had been called in, on occasion.

The building reeked of them all — dogs, cats, humans. Her home smelt of incense sticks, incontinence, old-people things, curry, sickly-sweet detergent and overripe fruit that existed in the hope of being eaten one day. The cloying, soapy smell of floor disinfectant being swished around attacked her from the lobby below, bringing on a flurry of sneezes. Her husband had taken to installing room fresheners that emitted a puff of jasmine or lavender every 20 minutes. She did not tell him she found them no better than the other smells that assailed their abode.

Today had been a bad day. She had visited the salon to escape the chaos of her home but a dead rat somewhere was stinking up the place. She had returned, shoulders drooping, only to see her daughter studying with a vanilla-scented candle for company. It revolted Anita but also made her crave dessert.  She bolted into her room and inhaled long and hard. The smells continued to hound her. She drew the curtains, switched off the light and still not satisfied, covered her face with the newspaper that was lying on the bed. Aha! Now, wasn’t that the best smell ever, just like a breath of fresh air?

When Your World Is in the Palm of Your Hand by Sreelekha Chatterjee

 

As I step outside the car, a vibrant green tumult of cool wind welcomes me to the meadow. Everything remains the same as before. Yesterday’s gale hasn’t altered a thing. Disheveled boughs neatly straightened, thickets naturally clipped into shape.

I notice the candy still tucked in the palm of my hand. While storming out of the house, my 6-year-old daughter gave it to me.

“Lemme know whom you wish to erase.” She said, securely holding an eraser in her left hand and pointing to her pencil sketch on her scrapbook page—papa, mama, herself and her grandparents. A smile bloomed on my lips. God knows what she made of the reddened eyes, heated discussions, sobs and noisy tears that happened from lack of appreciation, unmanageable work deadlines, relentless stress of family expectations.

Alone, miles away from my daughter, I hold the candy in my hand, feeling her soft touch as if I am holding her hand or rather she is holding mine, her miniature fingers integrating in the palm of my hand like the jigsaw puzzle joined together. I pop the candy in my mouth—zingy and tangy senses burst out like a childhood memory.

I adjust my hand, my index finger now in action. The setting sun folds in the palm of my hand and so does the distant landscape. The camera fits exactly in my palm like my world. My mere palmful—aching, borne down beneath the visceral burden, while the mind feels feathery, shrinking spirit exorcised. It’s time to move homewards.

'Sounds of Thank You' by Karen Walker

Home—oh, too soon!—with jars full of Grandpa's cottage. The first time without him there. He didn't feel up to going.

 

Helen lives across the hall from him at the seniors' residence. This Christmas, we'll give her jars of sweet corn sizzling over the campfire. Such a patient lady. Smiling like she's never heard Grandpa's tales: the time a bear knocked on the cottage door, how he was stuck for days during the blizzard of 1994. Many times she's seen his photos. Sunrises and sunsets. Us snowshoeing. Us splashing in the lake. 

A nice college student serves in the residence's dining room. Caitlin? Carrie? Cassidy? Grandpa can't remember her name, just that she always says, 'Take your time, Mr. Hewes.' He likes her smile and wonders at her black nail polish.  Laughs about the zombie costume she wore at Halloween. We'll give her a jar of hoots, another of wind whoosh in dark treetops.  I'll thank her and finally learn her name. 

On Christmas Eve, over we'll go to see Grandpa. Ellie will bring gift-wrapped cricket chirp she caught late one night. Long, long after her usual bedtime, she'll tell him. From me, jars of his great-granddaughter boohooing when her marshmallow caught fire and giggling at Peter’s silly ghost stories. 

His room full of our first trip without him, I'll ask him to reconsider: please come to Christmas dinner. There'll be the stomp of snow off boots at the door and the ping of the oven timer: the turkey's done! Pop, pop of Christmas crackers. Grandma's old china clattering. He'll recognize the pattern. And leftovers—gingerbread, sugar cookies, a fancy tin of us all singing 'We Wish You a Merry Christmas'—to take back to his room.  

Please come, Grandpa. I think he will. 

NFFD 2024 Prompt #11: A Breath of Fresh Air

 

 

Prompt #11: A Breath of Fresh Air
AIR 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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Write a flash with a genuinely happy ending. 
Of course, how you interpret 'happy ending' is up to you!  

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If you’re submitting this to us, make sure to note that this is a response to Prompt 11: A Breath of Fresh Air.

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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Photo by Saad Chaudhry on Unsplash