Flash Fiction

1. 1st Place
2. 2nd Place
3. Joint 3rd Place
4. Joint 3rd Place

1st Place

‘Breaking Bread’

Carolyn Jain       

The long walk up the hill, red brick semis taunting her, a gut punch of brazen familiarity. The same carefully tended gardens. Roses and pansies, well behaved and orderly. Net curtains. A suburban study, immutable, yet subtly altered.

The sight of his old car in the drive angers her.

Why has she kept it? She’ll never drive it.

She takes a moment to breathe and studies the low ornamental wall in the front garden. Remembers those Sunday afternoons, the two of them hauling stones from beaches and ruined buildings, hefting them into the boot and sitting in all weathers eating great wodges of homemade bread, slices of processed cheese and picallili.

‘Hi, Ma.’

They can’t get the conversation going. On the third glass of wine: the blurt.

‘It was only ever the two of you. Your secret signals, the jokes only you two got ……’

‘But you were never interested in anything we did. All you cared about was your magazines and phoning your sister.’

Rancour sours the food. They go to bed bitter and disappointed.

Early, noises from the kitchen waken her.

Can that woman never relax? Lie in, even on a Sunday?

Her mother pounds, stretches, kneads.

Wakening again later, the smell reaches her. In the kitchen, the bread sits on the table between them.

‘I thought maybe we could go for a picnic.’

‘Have we any cheese?’

'You could drive.’

 ‘What about picallili?’

2nd Place

‘Tatty Little Rainbows’

Nichola McCluskey         

Sylvia leaned forward in her armchair to lift the china cup from a mismatched saucer, peeping from behind the blinds at her-across-the-road.  She was sitting hunched over on the doorstep, sucking one of those plastic stick things and sending clouds of smoke up like a factory chimney.  Puff the Magic Dragon, Sylvia called her.  It was the kiddies she felt sorry for, she thought, grimacing as she sipped her tea.  She was forced to have it black because the milk had gone off and she couldn’t get out for more.

The two children were trying to tape a picture up in Puff’s front window.  They were fat little things, always in gutties and tracksuits though she had never seen them do much running.  She had never seen hide nor hair of a father either but you’d hardly blame him.  At the weekends Puff was still in her pyjamas at lunchtime.

She had come into Sylvia’s garden the other day.  ‘Can I get you anything from the shop, love?’ she’d shouted through the window, giving some cock and bull story about neighbours looking out for each other.  Sylvia had said she didn’t need anything thank you very much and made sure she locked the front door.

She watched as Puff went back into her living room and stuck the top of the page to the glass, smiling as the children clapped.  Sylvia pushed the cup away and tutted.  They hadn’t even managed to colour in between the lines.

Joint 3rd Place

‘Do you know how essential you are?’

Sarah Ruckchati

Hot wax crawled down tall white candle. It paused halfway - around the same time you started talking. Do you remember how you sat in the worn-out armchair? Legs twisted up underneath you, periwinkle shoes with daisies on the toes kicked off on the floor. I thought they were a bit childish; you were almost eleven. You were ranting about how there were never any black characters in your books and how when you asked the librarian for a book written by a non-white woman, she laughed at you, then said, ‘what does it matter?’.  It mattered to you. I could tell by the wild motions of your arms when you spoke, by the deep ridges between your eyebrows when you paused to think and by the eager look in your eyes when you waited to hear what I thought of your story. I must have disappointed you. I didn’t say what you hoped I would; it wasn’t true. I didn’t say that it was all ok, that everyone got treated how they deserve, that there were tonnes of books by black authors and that you would get every single opportunity that you deserve. Do you remember that you cried? I’m sorry. Did you know that I felt guilty, but relived? The tall white candle had continued to drip while we talked. Leisurely white wax had pooled down on the round black saucer it sat on top of, nearly concealing it completely. That was until you stood and blew it out.

Joint 3rd Place

‘Essentials’

Aideen Ellison

 She wasn’t sure what woke her. Not the heat, she was used to the stickiness and stench of bodies stacked around her as they restlessly twisted within tortured dreams. Neither was it the persistent plopping of water seeping steadily through fractured plaster into the metal bucket. She’d grown accustomed to that sound. Found it almost comforting. Sitting upright in the pitch-black night, she rubbed her eyes with balled-up fists, leaning forward to listen, an uneasy panic thickening around her.

Exhaling at the reassuring familiarity of her mother’s arm at her waist and whispered words in her ear, the white beam of a torchlight abruptly shattered the velvet darkness with shards of glittering brilliance. Dazzled and bewildered, there was only time for a strangled yelp as she was torn from her mother’s grasp. Shocked, she struggled wildly, betrayed by her long hair which wrapped and wound itself around the dimpled buttons shining on the sleeve of the grey giant towering above her. Hiccupping in terror, she was dragged through the door, the harsh, guttural tone continuing to bark orders, as those brutally woken from their slumber hurried to comply.

Not feeling the pain of her scraped knees as they bled against unyielding stone, she crawled frantically towards what she would later remember as the last time she saw her mother. Pale, scrawny arms, reaching desperately past the flapping red, black and white flag that billowed against the open-backed truck, screaming hysterically at no-one in particular,

‘She’s mine, she needs me!’