Category: Flash fiction

This week we started going back to the office 2 days per week, by department. Our biometric finger print access has been disabled to reduce the number of touch points around the office, so there is no longer an accurate recording of our comings and goings. This piece was pulled from memories of jobs I have hated (only two as I recall – although neither was in a biscuit factory!) and as a result, I have kept the promise to myself that is expressed in the final line.

She pulled the buff time-card out of the rack on the factory wall and punched it into the clock. Her tardiness was recorded in red, adding to the columns where black digits made an infrequent appearance.   

She hated this job and couldn’t motivate herself to make it to work on time. Each day when she woke up she did an inventory of her arms, legs, fingers and toes, her ears, nose and throat, checking for any ailments that might warrant her calling in sick. 

Her personnel file showed a woeful attendance and time keeping record and the supervisor never missed an opportunity to remind her of the fact, but still they kept her on. Few people were desperate enough to perform the repetitive task of plucking misshapen biscuits off the line.

She vowed she would never in her life again take a job she didn’t go to with joy in her heart.

Right now it is freezing cold in Johannesburg, and unseasonally grey and miserable. Our winters are usually bright and sunny, so these last few days prompted me to post this piece that I wrote as a warning against sun worship.

The sunshine had always lifted her spirits. She questioned why she’d been born in the northern hemisphere. She preferred to imagine herself a native of a sun-soaked island in the Caribbean where the weather never changed. She was convinced she had Seasonal Affective Disorder – as her moods swung from euphoric highs down into despondency with the fluctuating weather of her grey northern home town.

At school, she defied the headmistress who told the girls that only ‘mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noon day sun’, sitting out on the field during lunchtime. Her grandmother – from the same generation as the school principal – told her that a lady was always ‘ pale and interesting’ but she saw nothing attractive about being white and insipid.

Back in the day she had slathered herself with pure coconut oil on the beach, in the garden – wherever she was when the weak British sun poked out from behind the clouds. She would move around, following the trajectory of the sun, and like a sunflower tilt her head in the direction of its rays.

When sunbeds were a thing, she was a regular visitor to the salon, her only concession to the harmful UV rays a special pair of goggles. She loved the tan, her skin glowed and she felt more alive.

But what had enlivened her was now taking her life from her. Cancer had pocked her face, arms and legs and would kill her in a matter of months. 

So 300 words on the subject of Men & Women doesn’t go very far when you think of everything that’s been written on the subject of Venus & Mars. Quite fortuitously, this iconic track came on the radio as I was contemplating my story using this particular prompt…so with thanks to The Kinks for the inspiration.

I elbowed my way through the mass of people. I was utterly unused to city life, having left home only a week before. The music, dim electric candle-light and dense smoky atmosphere were disorienting. I stood alone in a dark recess.

A tall, dusky beauty sashayed up to me. She leaned her head on my shoulder and whispered in my ear. Her chocolatey voice was low, but I heard her ask me to dance. We swayed up close to each other, and she squeezed me tightly, almost crushing my spine.

The combination of her sexy, feminine movements and husky voice was intriguing and intoxicating. She was strong and determined, passionate and intense. We moved off the dance floor, found an empty booth and slid in. The waiter raised his eyes at me quizzically as we ordered a bottle of champagne which we finished without exchanging any more words. Pulling me closer to her so that I was almost on her lap she whispered, “Won’t you come home with me, little boy.”

I looked deep into her eyes and felt myself falling for this magnificent creature. If her intention wasn’t already clear, she murmured, “I can see that you’ve never kissed a woman before, so tonight I’m going to make you a man.”

Taking me by the hand, she led us through the undulating crowd. I felt woozy and uncertain. I stumbled, falling to my knees, but she picked me back up in her strong arms.

Outside, in the cold light of the dawn, I looked harder at the women with whom I was surely falling in love. I could discern a faint but unmistakeable dark shadow of stubble under what I could see now was heavy make-up.

“What did you say your name was?”  My voice cracked.

“Lola”, she replied.

‘Glue’ was a sticky prompt to work with (Seriously?- Ed) but this story came to me from the recesses of my memory. I’m sure I read it somewhere…

Finding a seat on the 07h39, Bob cast a look around the carriage. He was unaccustomed to anything other than strap hanging the entire journey into Waterloo, and so rarely brought his own reading matter. Today was no exception.

He surreptitiously glanced at his neighbour’s newspaper. The neighbour quickly executed an efficient refold of the broadsheet, with the well-practised skills of the seasoned commuter, who keeps his elbows tucked tightly in and his reading surface as compact as possible. The neighbour also repositioned his shoulder, the better to exclude Bob from rubber necking his £2.50 Telegraph.

Just then, both men caught sight of the same article. Bob sniggered first. The man laughed out loud and in an uncustomary gesture, expanded the page and held it out between himself and Bob.

Soon, tears of mirth were rolling down their cheeks.

A 39 year-old man from Halifax had reached into his bathroom cupboard during the night seeking relief from his painful haemorrhoids. What he mistakenly picked up and duly administered was however, a tube of superglue, the report read.

So a couple of posts ago I wrote about a wedding that, perhaps fortunately, had to be cancelled due to current circumstances, but which was probably doomed long before COVID19 scuppered it!! Still on the wedding theme, here are two pieces specifically on dresses…one responded to the prompt ‘Plunge’ and the other to ‘Fitted’. The former speaks to my guilty tv viewing pleasure and the latter is about the ordeal of making sure my own wedding dress (back in 1996!) fitted on the day…

Choosing the Right One

They sat in a silent row, my mum, my gran, my sisters and my best friend.

Boredom and irritation were beginning to show. They fidgeted and no longer laughed and joked, exchanging only hushed whispers.

The woman gave me a sympathetic look but carried on doing her job. She yanked and tweaked, pulling in and letting out where she needed to.

This time as I finally emerged, I could see their faces light up immediately. With the exception of my gran, they all beamed, and my mum discreetly wiped away a tear.

‘So, this is the eighth, and hopefully the last,’ I said, feeling confident.

‘Ah love that’s magnificent,’ said mum

‘Yes, yes!’ Exclaimed my sisters and best friend simultaneously.

‘Very nice, but you’ll need a plunge bra with it,’ said my gran.

We all laughed.

‘So, are you saying yes to the dress?’ asked the long-suffering bridal consultant.

A Dressmaker’s Challenge

Ours was a crazy whirlwind romance. A chance meeting in Berlin in March and a series of magical weekends in European cities in spring as he continued his travels. A long visit to South Africa in August clinched the deal. By October I had sold my apartment, quit my job and days later was in Johannesburg.

A year later we flew back to London to get married. I was one of few brides whose figures got fuller as her wedding day approached. The dress was cunningly designed to disguise my growing bump. It was hot in Johannesburg and I sweated as the seamstress pinned and tucked, making alterations here and there to make sure it fitted perfectly on the day.

‘Butter’ was the inspiration for this short, sensual piece.

The sun’s rays filter through the window and the light curtains move gently. The clock says 12 noon. I slowly lift my head off the pillow and take in the room.

The breakfast tray is tumbled at our feet. The golden slab of butter is now pooled in its porcelain dish, no longer holding the weight of the silver knife which has tipped and lies to one side, its blade oily and glinting.

Warm doughy croissant crumbs and a coffee stain on the duvet tell the story of a langorous breakfast hours earlier and our indifference to tidying it up before we fell into a fitful, sated doze.

A trail of clothes which begins at the bathroom door with my jeans and her blouse and which ends in a discarded heap of tangled underwear tells of the night’s activities which gave us our morning appetite.

I look over at my wife and see a languid smile spreading across her face. The sheet has imprinted itself on her cheek and her hair is mussed up, making a messy golden halo around her face.

I make the smallest move to reach for her.

Love is a crumpled bed on a Sunday morning.

I just heard a piece on the radio from three different couples who had to cancel their wedding ceremonies due to the current lock down, so decided it might be quite timely to post these two stories back to back. They were written for ‘Shattered’ and ‘Pitch’.

The reality slowly dawned on her that the wedding would have to be cancelled.

First, a third of her international guests were grounded, unable to fly in. Then, the 100 people at one gathering rule fell way short of their 250 invitees. Now the lock down was putting an end to everything that she had been dreaming of since she was a little girl.

She reflected with horror at the hours spent on meticulous planning. Colours, themes, tasting menus, sifting through photographers’ portfolios for the one who could best capture her day, dress fittings… every last detail had been put into place.

Shattered, devastated, she wept and howled.

“As I see it,” observed her fiancé, “all you ever actually wanted was a wedding and not a marriage. I see that now. So, this might be the best time to tell you that I don’t even want to reschedule. It’s over.”

And the Groom’s point of view…

The pitch of her voice reached a crescendo as hysteria over the wedding mounted.

First, international friends began cancelling forcing them to make daily adjustments to the numbers. Then they were restricted to 100 people only, so they culled the guest list further, Jeanne insisting everyone was invited for a reason. There was nothing superfluous about a single detail, she shouted.

Now the wedding could not go ahead at all. She screeched about her carefully selected menu, paired with boutique wines, about the photographer whose skill with lighting was legendary and who was going to make her look like the most beautiful bride ever.  

It had all spiralled horribly out of control with Jeanne fulfilling her own every whim.

And then there was the dress…

The dress was the pièce de résistance. He hadn’t seen it, but knew it was the price tag that would bring tears to his eyes when he saw her at the altar, not her shining radiance.

“As I see it,” he observed, “all you ever actually wanted was a wedding and not a marriage. I see that now. So, this might be the best time to tell you that I don’t even want to reschedule. It’s over.”

You can imagine on a writing site that the prompt ‘Font’ would elicit many clever stories personifying Sans Serif, fighting in CAPITALS, falling in love in flowery letters, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to match some of the other authors and so went with a story that takes place around a baptismal font.

The wind blew in through the porch of the draughty old Norman church, which had been the Borthwick’s place of worship for generations and whose patron saint gave the male heirs their names.

The Sunday morning service concluded, the family moved to cluster around the old stone baptismal font. The entire clan was gathered, in their finery, to formally bestow their ancestral patronym on the newest member of the centuries old dynasty. They had all been christened in the same place and all had worn the same elaborate lace gown.

Will and his wife stood nervously together with the godparents, two male and one female as tradition prescribed for a boy.

After intoning the prayers, the vicar asked, ‘What is the name of this child?’  He held his arms out to receive him.  

Will stumbled, ‘W-Wilfrid Dunstan Oswa…’

‘You coward,’ hissed his wife, stepping forward. ‘Kyle, his name is Kyle.’

As the world searches for a vaccine against COVID-19, we should be grateful for the eradication of so many childhood illnesses, thanks largely to school innoculation programmes, which I remember well. I have a pathological fear of needles and always dreaded the line up outside the ‘san’ or, more often, the principal’s office. Here is a 75 word piece, written for ‘Vaccine’.

The girls were lined up on the bench outside the principal’s office.

Some were more accustomed to being there than others.

Today, however, it would not be the stern reprimands of Miss Riley that would sting, rather any pain was going to be inflicted by the school nurse.

The office had been transformed for the school vaccination programme.

Sleeves rolled up (usually forbidden) they edged along, proffering their upper arms.

Swab. Jab. Move on. Repeat.

This piece was written for the prompt ‘The most beautiful’. It made me nostalgic just writing it.

She hoarded buttons, twine, sweet paper wrappings and cellophane, pretty packaging and glossy magazines and kept them in a special box that they hauled out on rainy days. They would stick and glue and make models and collages which now adorned the shelves and walls.

Sometimes they would dress up and she kept a musty chest full of squashed hats, cowboy waistcoats, pirate eye patches, swords and capes which they would don, transforming the playroom into make believe galleons, saloons and spaceships.  Furniture was dragged around, dens were built and strange names, voices and accents adopted.

Occasionally they would bake where she directed his creativity a little more closely, not wanting to waste gallons of milk, pats of butter and bags of flour, but their favourite was always chocolate Krispie cakes, which he managed without too much supervision.

She adored the little years when he was receptive, responsive and gleeful. He listened and learned, regurgitated funny things he heard that made them laugh. He could keep himself amused for hours on end in his own world, safe in the knowledge he could explore literally and figuratively as far as his imagination allowed.

And then he went to school, leaving the magic world she had created for him behind. He came home with a new vocabulary, new songs she hadn’t taught him and new artwork in whose creation she had played no part.

He had been an only child and now he was flourishing and it was the most beautiful thing.