Uncle Henri By Sylvia Petter
Everyone in the village was talking about the man who’d asked the little girl to accompany him to the park. Someone had heard him say: “Come with me.” And they’d seen the little girl hesitate and then put her hand in his. They’d watched him go down the street and round the corner and when he was out of sight, they still saw him, hand in hand with the little blonde girl. They saw him lead her over behind the garden house in the far corner of the park and they saw him bend down, stroke her hair, unbutton her coat, untie her shoelaces. And it all became almost too much. Then the man yelled, and the little girl screamed. So they called the police.
As they dragged him away someone took the little girl aside. That was the last she ever saw of the man. When he got out a few months later, she heard that he’d shot himself.
The little girl is grown up now. She sits and stares at old photos of her uncle Henri. She still blames herself for that day in the park. That blame followed all her growing up. She couldn’t understand then, and still can’t even now, what all the fuss was about. Shortly after they took Henri away, she’d noticed how her godfather, even her own father, wouldn’t pick her up or hug her when other people were around. It was as if that sort of thing was suddenly forbidden, forever. She used to thrive on hugs from those she loved, wanted them, wanted the world to see.
Today she finds it hard to make contact. She fears that once she does make it, they'll take it all away, just like they took away her uncle Henri. She remembered how they’d skirted the garden house, how he’d opened the top button of her coat to give her more room to move, how he’d fastened her laces, and yelled “Here we go!” He’d pushed her so high on her favourite swing that she’d felt she was flying and had screamed with delight. It had been the last happy day of her life.
In Plain Sight By Sara Kirkpatrick
He piled his library books on the counter, waiting as the assistant scanned them. He could have used the self-service but wanted this minor human contact; he’d decided to savour interactions with strangers on this, his last day. Like the bus driver who’d driven him to college. As it happened the library assistant – ‘Evie’ – didn’t even look at him.
Ticket cleared, he left the library and paused at the top of the stairs. He momentarily considered his tutorial but what would be the point? He hadn’t done the reading anyway. The Common Room? But someone would come over, and what was there to say? Emma might be there. He worried about people misjudging his actions and attributing more significance to their break-up, when actually the strongest feeling he’d had was surprise. Emma hadn’t broken his heart, she’d just…. disappointed him. Would she be affected by thinking she’d caused this? Hopefully no. Adjusting his rucksack he walked downstairs and left the building, not looking back as he loped into town.
The sky was clouding over and the morning’s warmth had built a heavy heat. He had hoped for sunshine but perhaps this was more appropriate.
He was thirsty - beer, maybe? He’d imagined whisky. Both? And cigarettes: 10 Marly reds. Approaching the station he scanned the crappy fence, found a gap and squeezed through. He settled on the grassy embankment out of sight from the path and opened his supplies. He checked his watch; he must wait for dusk and the Express.
But he drank too much, too quickly and fell asleep. He awoke as the train approached and tried to scramble down towards the track. Too late, he lost his footing, stumbled and lurched towards the train, achieving only a glancing blow that nevertheless chipped his right elbow. The rushing rattle of the train filled his ears as its velocity sent him wheeling away from the tracks. No thoughts, no pain. He sank back into darkness, amongst other, more usual trackside items like broken trolleys and single shoes, as a gentle, invisible rain began to fall.
Little Man By Angela Readman
The boy was odd. He only said stuff his father had. Even before that, he was funny. The stuff he wanted wasn’t like other kids. Velvety rabbits escaped his teeny interest. He grabbed pens from betting shops and Argos. Car keys and beer cans were magnets. Women laughed. He pinched their bums, ‘Just like his daddy, eh?’
His mother took no notice. Babies grab stuff, it’s their thing. When the boy started talking was a shock.
‘Mam-me, say Mammy,’ she said.
For days the boy looked like he might speak, then, looked like he’d thought better of it. Burped. Other mother’s looked at him and said, ‘Still not talking? By now mine was ...’ Older women were kinder, ‘Better a late talker, than talk bollocks.’ The kid’s mother carted home her buggy like a runner-up trophy. She broke words into bits and pointed them out.
‘Dog-gee, Bird-ie, Mam-me’
The baby scowled, opened his mouth.
‘Bookie.’
She clapped and told everyone her son’s first word was ‘birdie.’ She didn’t consider she may have misheard until his second.
‘Pint.’
Then, the third.
‘Tit.’
She chopped bite-sized food onto his blue plastic dish.
‘Where’s my tea?’ he said. ‘Call this pie?’
Mother’s get used to lots of things, I suppose she was immune to it until they went to his gran’s.
‘Shite,’ he said, sucking eggy bread.
His gran blushed. The mother went colours. She’d no idea where he picked it up, she said. She put the TV on a diet of purple dinosaurs. Things got worse.
The boy finger-painted at nursery, but didn’t get on well with others. ‘May I?.. I’d like.. Please’ weren’t in his vocabulary. When kids did something better than him he said, ‘Posh tosser.’ If someone snapped his crayon he said, ‘How’d you like a pair of size 9’s up your behind?’ Looking at him it was hard to imagine, sleepy and chocolate mouthed, his mother picked him up. The teacher had a word.
‘How can he ‘threaten’ anyone with size 9’s? Look at his teeny feet,’ the mother said.
She strolled home recalling what the teacher quoted him as saying. The words were familiar, the meat in boy’s father’s favourite anecdote about growing up. His dad used to say, he said, ‘Watch it, son, how’d you like a pair of size 8’s up your behind?’ One day, he told his girlfriend, he finally replied, ‘How’d you like a pair of size 9’s up yours?’
The mother gave her boy his bath, put him in pyjamas and held him in her arms,
‘There’s nothing wrong with you,’ she said, ‘my little man.’
Her son reached up, pulled her hair.
‘Miserable cow,’ he smiled.
She tucked him in, looking for tiny details as a door into how to love someone for the things he didn’t say. The sun filtered through cotton curtains. The cot made stripes on the boy’s sleeping face. She tried hard to memorise the smell of his hair. She knew she’d need it like bread. The next day, the one after, she’d eat up tiny details, to see beyond the things he said, did.
Unexpected By Scott Williamson
He knew he had to die someday – just not like this.
The lightning flash tattooed a jagged white scar on his eyeballs and ignited a clump of tall gums trees in the centre of the park. Overtures of thunder rumbled ominously in the distance.
The homicide detective tripped on a slab of uneven concrete and lost sight of the killer. The detective was tall, lean and enjoyed a challenge. The killer wasn’t going to get away.
From behind a thicket of lantana bush a blood curdling scream pierced the silence. His finger instinctively found the trigger of the Glock.
The detective rounded the lantana and the killer came into view, his bloodied arm held tightly around a girl's chest as he shoved a thin bladed knife against her ribs. She reminded him of his twenty year old daughter: the same brown hair, the same pleading look he had seen a thousand times. Her fear was palpable, tears ran down her cheeks and mixed with the dust at her feet.
His mind flashed back to the log cabin at the edge of the park, where he had stood only m
inutes before. His heart twisted at the image of a girl with long brown hair lying in a pool of blood, her porcelain-pale skin bruised black and blue.
Not this time, he thought to himself as his finger tensioned the trigger. Five pounds of pressure is all it will take to make sure this girl survives.
No hesitation.
The flash from the muzzle of his Glock lit-up the surrounding lantana as two well-placed shots smashed into the killer's chest. The killer slumped to the ground as his eyes glazed and rolled back into his head.
The girl sobbed uncontrollably and fell to her knees. Her tears refracted the fading sunlight as they rolled down her cheeks and into the dust.
A police siren wailed not far away. Confident his shots had hit the mark he turned and waved at the uniformed cops running toward him.
The cavalry had arrived, but not soon enough.
A sharp pain in his back sent small shots of electricity shooting through his body. Seconds passed and the pain became more intense.
Warm blood trickled down his back and soaked the top of his pants. A rookie mistake, he should never have turned his back on the killer until he was sure the bastard was dead.
His head began to spin as he crumpled to his knees. Numbness replaced the pain as his eyes blurred and the sound of the sirens became muffled.
He slumped forward as a tear escaped his eye and ran down his cheek. Memories of his beautiful wife and daughter flashed before his eyes and he felt a chasm open up in his heart. The sense of impending loss was unbearable; he thought of his daughter. His little girl shouldn’t have to know her father was murdered.
Another twist of the knife wrenched his mind back to the park. With his last ounce of strength the detective turned to face his killer. His heart took its final beat as the incomprehensible reality smashed him in the face.
The girl he had just saved twisted the knife and said,
"You murdered my father."
Master of the Universe By Jim Dunkley
I’m effin ungry,
I been ungry all day.
Why shouldn’t I effin eat?
I’m sposed to be on an effin diet,
cos I’m so fat.
My care worker says I’m a borderline diabetic.
Terry, my bruvver, he’s dead thin,
but he’s in the nick
They can’t put yer inside fer being fat,
not yet, anyway.
I was on remand once fer shop-lifting
but I only got a warning.
My mam talked to them,
told them I’m e.s.n.
Educationally Sub-Normal.
I ain’t, but I let everybody think I‘m thick,
I let them think that when I was at school,
yer see, I know their game,
trying to get you to fit in,
toe the bleedin line.
That’s all they want.
But not me, I’m different
I sussed that out the day I was born
I knew it on that orrible day
when mam squirted me out into the world,
but I didn’t cry.
They expect yer to.
One of the nurses picked me up, slapped my arse,
and said ‘He’s an ugly little git.’
A very nice welcome, I don’t fink!
And what’s the effin difference if your face is bleeding ugly?
Steven Hawkins ain’t exactly a good-looker, is he?
So I decided there and then that no-one was going to tell me
how to live my life.
Yer see, it suited me in mam’s womb.
Cosy, comfortable,
every bleeding thing laid on.
I needed for nothing in there,
and I don’t need nothing now,
just to live ‘ere with mam,
and that’s my choice,
I chose to live with me mam in a council flat
on the 19th floor of a tower block in Hackney.
That’s how I like it,
And I chose to do lousy at school,
and I chose to be obese,
so I can’t go out no more.
I’ve got me mam.
And she does everything,
she even wipes my arse,
cos I’m too fat to reach.
And mam and me, we’re appy as Larry on benefits
for my disabilities.
Cos I’m too thick to work.
Of course, Mam’s thick.
Everyone’s thick round here.
They didn’t choose it,
they just slipped into it because they never had a chance of being anything else.
I did,
but I chose to do eff all.
There was dad,
but he was a right bastard.
Used to knock me about cos I’m thick and ugly.
He hit mam too,
blacked her eyes.
And I couldn’t have that.
So one day when he was in the bath,
with a radio plugged in and perched on a stool nearby,
I pushed it into the water with him.
Fizz, fizz, fizz!
They said it was an unfortunate accident.
What they didn’t realise is that everything is an unfortunate accident.
Stephen Hawkins talks out of his arse.
Well, he would if he could.
There was no Big Bang.
I worked that out years ago,
when I was in the slow-learners class at school.
They thought I spent hours doodling on scraps of paper,
but I was doing the maths.
I worked out that the Universe doesn’t exist,
It’s just a thought in my head.
An accidental thought.
So everything we experience ain’t actually there.
Know what I mean?
So when I look out the winder, down at the streets of Hackney below,
with kids rioting,
burning cars,
smashing up shops,
stealing trainers and Iphones,
it’s only like a thought in my head.
And I’m in control of it all.
I am the master of the Universe.
Robbed By Valerie Sirr
So I watched the Cookstown100 and the camera and the whine of the bikes sped me down country roads like I was there. One of the riders did a highside – man and bike separated and crashed like two lovers after passion. He rolled and picked himself up.
I necked another Heineken picturing myself, helmet in hand, stepping up for my trophy. I finished off my beer then headed down the club.
I bumped into Hammy from Shorts.
He said, “Don’t walk in with me. They’ll think I’m goin’ for a drink with me Da.”
“Go and shite,” I said.
A good night was had with the lads from the Tool Room where I was made redundant.
Sauntering past my ex’s gaff knowing fine rightly my bike was in her fella’s shed while they were away in Lanzarote, her eyes shrank me again: ‘He did you a favour buyin’ your bike.’
I was down that side passage, like a rat up a spout, cupping my hands on his dirty shed window in the moonlight. She’s a looker, my bike, but I could see he hadn’t washed or polished her.
I strapped on his crappy lid, fishing in my pocket for my spare key.
Braking and kicking her down the gears I peeled off the slip road and on to Shane’s Hill. I blasted along the half-mile stretch of country lane, attacking each bend: correct entry speed, wee nudge of counter-steer. Leaning over, gliding through until the exit point, opening the throttle.
The back wheel squirmed and shot me out off one corner on to another bend. The sheer precision of it!
On up the hill the noise of the engine screamed through the throaty exhaust. I gagged from the stench of fertilizer in the air.
The blood banged in my ears when the rear tyre slid u
nder me.
It gripped again.
The bike shuddered. She sent me bolt upright, hard and startling, lifting me up and over. Easy! I told myself and my limbs went loose. Let go, I told myself, but it was like being tasered. I was out of it.
I heard the impact – the bike ripping through hedge, the whack of my helmet on hard ground.
I came to, lying on my back on the road like I’d landed in another life. The road shifted. It spun about me.
I closed my eyes and let go.
I came back. Heaviness. Then panic. Then pain. I moved my hands, then my feet, my arms, my legs. I pushed at the base of my helmet. My hand kept missing. I heard a guy say,
“Leave it, man. The ambulance will be here soon.”
People stood about. I was feeling a bit high.
One wee lad pointed his phone at me, saying, “He went over the top! Like somethin’ on Moto GP!”
I felt young when he said that. I felt like my head had been cleaned out with degreaser, making room for someone better - A contender.
First published in The Irish Times, January 11, 2012 after which rights reverted to the author. The piece also appears on Flash Fiction Day’s (UK) website.
A Peel By Oonah V Joslin
Jake stood on the pile of steaming, wriggling, foul smelling something-or-other. It emanated a persistent displeasing sough, occasional sob-like intakes and lamentable exhalations; whimpers of piteous despair.
“Get on with it,” urged his personal demon.
Everyone in the line had one to keep them to their solitary task.
“What is this stuff anyway?” asked Jake.
“You want to know? Spent souls. These are nearly burnt out but not quite – never quite. Not squeamish surely, Jake? You who spent such effort in cutting up your victims surely can’t have reservations about shovelling a few million depleted souls!” Minor Demon Datchet laughed. He enjoyed this work.
“So they’ll soon be gone once and for all?”
Datchet detected a note of hope in Jake’s voice. “No. They’re still useful. We have chambers lower down where dispossessed souls can suffer things you can’t even imagine – yet. They’re being processed here for transfer there. Now, shovel!”
The work was incessant and hot. Jake tried not to think about all the things he couldn’t imagine but he could imagine quite a bit and it offered him no comfort.
“Can I get some water?”
“Sure you can. Two month’s walk that-a-way,” Datchet chuckled softly, “there’s a pond of sorts. Of course it may have dried up in this heat or the water may be a bit saline but I couldn’t say – never tasted it.” He took a swig from a blackened flask. “Thought Bourbon was your poison, anyway.” Then he upturned the near empty container and the final drop of liquid burst into flame on the ground. “Aw!” said the demon.
“Curse you!”
Datchet guffawed.
Intermittently a bell rang somewhere way high up – Jake had no idea how deep this place was. “What’s the bells for?”
He had been in Hell for just long enough to find the bells somewhat irritating – increasingly so in fact. It was dark down here and they sounded so very bright; a little louder, yet more distant every time. It reminded him of something he couldn’t quite grasp.
“Another soul released from purgatory,” said Datchet. “They celebrate ‘Upstairs.’ You know the old saying – ‘Every time a bell rings some angel gets his wings?’ Not entirely untrue.”
“So there is hope,” said Jake.
“This ain’t purgatory buddy and you’re no angel. You’re all the way down!”
“So how come I can hear the bells?”
“To remind you what you missed – what you messed up – what you refused. And then of course there’s…” Datchet planted a thought.
“My mother. She used to take me to church. They had bells that sounded just like that.”
“You’re mother. She’s up there now but you know what? She’s not looking down. In fact she’s so blissfully happy she has forgotten she ever had a son.”
Jake aimed his pitch fork at the demon but Datchet just laughed and laughed and a bell sounded again, and again; higher, louder, farther.
Jake took up his pitchfork again and turned to his task but again he heard the sounds of souls and broke. He threw his head back in a cry of anguish but could give no voice to his plea. The bell sounded once more; intolerably loud, intolerably bright. A pearl of water fell on his parched tongue and on the demon ‘til he fizzed away, screaming all the while. Datchet had overplayed his card.
There are no tears in Hell but Heaven always hears her children cry and a single drop of rapture can become a cataract bearing down; a force that even Hell cannot withstand.
Future Tense By Iain Pattison
Douglas Jennings swallowed, mouth parched. He looked longingly at the water fountain across the control centre but knew he daren’t leave his post; not now; not when the telemetry from the probe was due any moment.
“Excited?” a voice behind him asked.
He flashed a thin smile to his female assistant.
“Terrified, more like. I can’t stop shaking,” he confessed. “I keep thinking of all the hundreds of things that could go wrong.”
“It’ll be fine,” Marie insisted, motioning to the rows and rows of terminals, all manned by intense looking boffins. “The best brains in the country have worked day and night on this for two years. We’ve had enough funds to run a banana republic and unlimited access to the latest mathematical and engineering breakthroughs. It’ll work, trust me.”
Douglas hoped so. It was more than just their jobs and scientific reputations on the line. If the project failed, their angry critics would use it to attack NASA; arguing that the Space Agency had lost its senses and should be wound up.
He shivered, remembering the Washington Post headline three months before “TIME TO END THE MADNESS!” and the thunderous attack:
“Professor Jennings is deluded if he thinks his hare-brained rocket scheme will succeed. It is not just impossible, but is an irresponsible waste of taxpayer dollars at a time when our nation is crippled by recession.”
Yes, it was expensive, Douglas told the various Senate committees, but the possible rewards were incalculable. It would alter everything, how the human race lived, how they viewed the future, whether they should strike out to colonise the stars.
“I cannot deny that the research is theoretical and hugely controversial,” he’d conceded. “But it could be the most significant breakthrough in history.”
That had won the philosophical debate, but there still remained doubts over the cutting-edge technology.
Staring at the terminal, he ticked off every worrying variable. Success depended on the hyper drive performing perfectly, on the probe surviving the immense acceleration forces, and on the returning info stream cutting through the swirling solar interference.
And then there was the almost mystical science; accurately interpreting radiation decay, ion disturbances, gravity fluctuations, planet drift, the expansion of matter, radio wave distortion and numerous other factors. All to calculate one thing, the rate of entropy gripping the cosmos.
A beep interrupted his troubled thoughts. The telemetry was coming in! He yelped in relief as bursts of numbers and algebraic symbols raced across the screens.
Marie grinned.
Then almost instantly, she frowned.
“This can’t be right,” she hissed, fingers clicking across her keyboard.
“What’s the matter?” he asked, elation evaporating.
“It’s the prediction figure for the collapse of the universe. The data says it will end in 12 billion”
“What? Millennia?”
“No…”
“Centuries? Years?”
“No,” she gulped. “Nano-seconds.”
Twelve billion nano-seconds! That was ridiculous, he told himself. It was only
a fifth of a minute, for heaven’s sake!
“Let me have a look,” he snapped, pushing her out of the way. “It’s simply not possi-
The Girl in the Mirror By Laura Huntley
The doctor had called it Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Nina had called him an asshole. She didn’t care for labels. Just for the girl in the mirror. Oh, the irresistible, voluptuous girl in the mirror. Nina watched her intently, privileged to gaze upon her hypnotic beauty, the way she curled the end of her long, black hair around her finger, the coquettish kohl eyes with lashings of mascara, the hidden cheeky dimples as her soft pink lips slowly smiled.
Nina kept a close eye on her, held her stare as she brushed her hair, kissed her gently on the mouth, licking at her glassy tongue. They brushed their teeth together in an intimate silence; they read the same literature spread on identical beds.
The girl in the mirror matched Nina’s desires; they reached their happy conclusion at precisely the same moment, spurring one another on, seducing, teasing, arousing. Nina’s boyfriend, Raymond, had loved it at first, bending her this way and that, the mirror capturing unique angles like they were starring in their own sex show, different, kinky. But Nina hadn’t given a tiny damn, her eyes had ignored Raymond, erased him from the scene. It was all about the girl in the mirror, her perky breasts, her heavenly curves, the splendour, the perfection.
So Raymond had gone, and posted an anonymous letter to her doctor’s surgery, outlining Nina’s obsession, on his way out.
Nina had been upset, fat salty tears raced down her face, her voice caught in her hoarse throat as she tried to explain and ultimately failed. She’d ended up in a rage, stamping on a box of latex gloves, screaming a string of expletives and being escorted out of the building by a bulky, bald man who had laughed in her face. She would never be able to make them understand.
She cried herself to sleep that night, distraught, resigned to the fact that people just couldn’t be trusted. And as she finally drifted off into a peaceful slumber, the girl in the mirror stepped out from the glass, lightly stroked Nina’s hair and kissed her on the forehead.
The Circle By Vicki Griffin
I sat in the circle like I had done every week and listened as everyone said their piece. This circle was supposed to help, supposed to iron out our differences and was supposed to help us all to find peace. ‘We all know that you’re the trouble maker.’ Bianca chipped in but a cold stare from Sally shut her up.
‘I have something to say.’ Gypsy said brushing her scarlet hair off her face.
‘Sit down. You know the rules,’ the mediator spoke sternly.
‘Go on tell.’ Bianca retorted’
Clearing my throat I started first, much to Gypsy’s disgust. ‘It all started about two months ago. I started to feel light-headed in class and when I arrived home all the milk in the fridge had curdled.’ I listened as they scoffed but I continued on. ‘Someone had placed a sachet of dried herbs at my door and when I touched them I burnt my hand.’ I offered my red hand as evidence
They all looked at each other suspiciously except for Sally who twirled her silver pendant amongst her forefinger and thumb. The mediator stood and moved her chair back against the scarlet wall. ‘That will be all today girls. We will meet at the circle tomorrow. ’She said politely.
The chairs were placed in the circle again as we took our seats. ‘Okay girls hopefully today we will accomplish a solution to the problems you are all experiencing. Who would like to go first?’ The mediator moved slightly forward on her seat. No one spoke. ‘Sally how about you? What’s been happening in your life?’ The mediator asked.
Sally smirked and looked at all of us before focusing her strong gaze on the pendant which hung from her neck. ‘I take insult that someone would think I have been causing trouble. I do not live in a house that faces away from the road. Just because I dress differently doesn’t mean anything! Last night I found a dagger under my front door mat the blade pointing into the house what does that mean?’
The mediator stood. ‘Girls, that is quite enough for today.’ She said.
‘Wait, ‘I called excited. I dug deep into my bag and pulled out a container of salt and small pebbles I had bought along. ‘Just to be sure I want to sprinkle salt and place some pebbles in front of everyone. It is said that a witch cannot cross the path of salt or pebbles. The pebbles drive her crazy because she has to keep counting them over and over.’
Like a thief in the night I sprinkled salt at the feet of the entire circle and a small mixture of pebbles around the chairs my own included. We all sat there waiting for the first one to move. Gypsy had been quiet all day not uttering a sound but now she stood head held high and back erect as she stepped through the salt and pebbles. Sally followed. The mediator stood then stopped fear etched on her face. She looked at us. ‘Oh please girls. This is so silly.’ We waited but she didn’t move.
‘She’s the witch. ’Laura screamed on the verge of hysteria.
Bianca quickly withdrew a mysterious package wrapped in black from her dilly bag.
She held the mirror up to the face of the mediator. Her screams filled the room as she dissolved into a pile of salt.
‘Great work girls! Who do we invite next to the circle?’ I asked as we all hugged each other.