'Growth' by Allison Renner

Bought plants at Marton’s Nursery, brought them home. Digging grass took hours, then tilling soil: clean slate. Body sore, meaning time for rest. Laying on the garden bed, I planted myself.

Roots twined around me, tickling. Arms too heavy to lift. Legs deep below ground. Flowers sprouted, drank rain and shared nutrients. Days passed, months, years. Life felt better outside. It began feeling like there was more out in such a world, well beyond what society thought of as living.

'Abundance' and 'Scarce' by Abida Akram

Abundance            

The first warm ray of the sun and wild buttery daffodils and bluebells bloom everywhere. A spring opera of blackbirds, house sparrows and chiff chaffs wakes me. Sap starts rising, trees start greening their heads.

In the growing woods birdsongs compete, willow warblers and swifts, in matings, warnings, gossiping about goings on in the season, whilst cabbage-white butterflies  drift and flit like wedding confetti.

Grasses grow tall in the heat, swaying gently with whole worlds for tiny insects. Streams and rivers meander, carving out messages to the sea about abundance and ripeness in summer. 

Scarce

Your kiss is cold as the moon. The look in your grey eyes as distant as the stars. The words that come from your red lips drop like dead black flies.

Each time I pull away, you gift me buttery daffodils and my boundaries melt again. Then you freeze and push me away again, so, there am I building walls back up, feeling blue.

I need to become a brave traveller with a green backpack prepped for the wild outdoors. With the hope that out there - the air is warm, breathable and can revive me again.

'East Los Payday on Sixth Street Bridge' by Michael R Evans

Rich people built it with big loopy things, crazy bright lights to show off for the Olympics. We did a quick takeover with bikes and low-riders. Juanito’s a wiz and opened a panel to put copper wires in my pickup until every LED goes dark. Gonna get Itzel and the kids a place across the LA River by them tall buildings.

'Musings for Carvings' by Birgit K. Gaiser

Zitko Iliev.

Rada engraved each letter carefully into the ring of blue marble. Eventually, all stones would line up, forming two faces, features represented by different-coloured materials. 

Ivelina Ilieva. Black granite. Grainier texture. Extremely hard. 

Which made this job much harder. That bloody award-winning memorial design was even more clever, and irritating, than its designer.

Jakov Mrdjan. White alabaster. Easier to carve.

Admittedly, Anton Mihaelov possessed some positive qualities, being passionate about his work. Creative. Talented. Decent-looking, one might say. Endearing. Sometimes, incredibly frustrating. 

Twice she thought he’d ask her out, but nope. Nothing.

Danijela Pavelec. Grey soapstone, softer still.

Somewhere, a mobile buzzed. “Phone, read message.”

“Do you fancy dinner tomorrow night? AM

“Should I Respond?”

“Yes.”

“Please speak now.”

“Finally, exclamation mark. RK”

'Beryl' by Emily MacDonald

I tried flattery, charm and witty jokes, but Beryl’s face remained solid, impassive. I never once cracked her grim resolve. Any upward twitch of her lips was quickly arrested and deposited for safe keeping. 

She pursed thoughts deep into her apron pockets, extracted red and black pens to annotate her accounts and bundles of keys to lock away her approval. She’d fold her arms, her skin puckered and thin as the bank notes from the days takings­—elastic snapped, bound and ordered. 

I smarted to learn she laughed behind my back until I realised there’s a difference between winning and earning. 

I stopped trying to gain her approval and realised she liked me so much more. But by then, I found her too mean, too measured, too calculating. I felt richer for stealing her affection and seeing how little it was worth.

'Celebrations' By Melissa Flores Anderson

The morning is foggy and their families complain that they made the trek to San Diego hoping for warm weather. Lilly promises the gray skies will turn and the sun will come out. And they didn’t travel all this way for a beach day. Jack runs down the stairs in a collared shirt and dark pants, without a tie, because like his father, he does not like formal wear. Mick has a collared shirt on, too, for the dual celebration.

In the parking lot of the high school football stadium, Lilly helps Jack into his robe and evens the honors stole he wears over the blue gown, signifying his academic achievement. 

“This is only the first of more graduations to come,” Lilly says. “College, then graduate school, and maybe even a doctorate. Dr. Jack O’Connell.”

“Or maybe he’s heading to the 2036 Olympics, but no pressure,” Mick says, and squeezes his son’s shoulder.

At home, Jack has a letterman’s jacket for his athletic achievements and he’s earned a scholarship to run track and field in college. They send Jack off to line up with his friends, a last hurrah before they head into the graduation ceremony.

As she watches Jack leave, Lilly holds Mick’s hand. In the bleachers, they sit, with his parents on one side, hers on the other, Jack’s cousins and her sister and brother-in-law in the row in front. Today Jack graduates high school, but Lilly and Mick are also celebrating their 20th anniversary. There was a time when Jack was small that Lilly was sure they wouldn’t make it, but now as she watches him cross the stage, the past is a blip and the future stretches out before them, full of possibility.

'Meet the family' by Birgit K. Gaiser

 

“Velika? That’s unusual. Are you foreign?”

“I –"

“She’s a doctor, mum. And I love her.”

'Panta Rhei, Dear Sweetsalt' by C. Oulens

River on edge. Skylarks thumb the mudmotherbed. The sea’s whalemouth awaits sweetsweet heartrickles. Lose it. Floose it. Goneunder. O dear sweetsalt!

Mudlarking. Larkskying. There—there goes the neverquitegone, brushing my face. Mud for my feet. And you—you wait.

'The Brainy Battle' by Rathin Bhattacharjee

“Is the river shallow or deep?” The mighty King, standing on the bank of the river, asked his Minister.
 
“Not more than 5 or 6 feet at the most, My Lord.”
 
“What might be the distance from this side to the other?” The mighty King, running his hand over his bearded chin, asked the Minister.
 
“Nearly hundred meters, Master.” The Minister replied in a trembly voice. He was never sure of his master’s intentions.
 
“Not very far away. If we want, our soldiers can easily swim across and attack them, right?”
 
“That’ll be risky, Master, as they’ll be protecting their territory like hell from the other side. Our soldiers will be massacred in the river itself.”
 
“Hmn…..Tell our soldiers to go rest right now.” The King pondered over for a few minutes before adding, “They’ll have some serious work to do in the evening.”
 
The King returned to his make-shift tent.
 
As the evening descended, the soldiers of The Island Kingdom, numbering over not more than a few hundreds, got back inside the kingdom, happy in the knowledge that the invading King had finally given up and was thinking of going back.
 
The King’s plan worked to a T. The taller and more powerful shoulders stood side by side forming a line, holding the flattened planks over their heads. Some one thousand shoulders crossed over led by the King.
 
There was no fight. By the time the Island Kingdom fell, the victorious sun was crackling out in the eastern region.

'Robot Wars' by Geraldine McCarthy

Eithne remembers the evening he proposed on the beach – the sun a blaze of orange between sky and sea – and how he’d promised fireworks. She now stands rubber-gloved at the kitchen sink, wrist-deep in scalding water, ankles tingling after a 12-hour shift. Outside the window, the souped-up lawnmower passes by at speed. She hadn’t programmed it for today.  Between palpitations, she rips off the gloves to phone her daughter. After six rings, it goes to voicemail. Soon Eddie will return, reeking of whiskey, leather jacket unzipped.  ‘I’ll set that shagging thing alight,’ he’ll roar. He’d bought it for her birthday, but she couldn’t manage it – couldn’t cajole it, or say she didn’t mean it, or promise it would never happen again.  

 

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Prompt #17 involved choosing five words from a FlashFlood story.

Source text: 'The Real Sound of Music, Hillview Rest Home, August 1992' by Kate Axeford