Category Archives: Flash Fiction

The Park Bench and the Downpour

creative writing, Flash Fiction, poetry, ,

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As the day passes before you, you sit longer than you had planned

on the most servant park bench.

Then, subtly, a lost shadow whispers into your ear, It says, shame about the

cats and dogs. You haven’t the heart to tell it that it hasn’t rained for days.

Meanwhile, time must be folding inward; squeezing itself until a residue from

a meaningful downpour leaps from your chin.

You remain seated on the bench getting wet, and as you do, you’re

unknowingly and repeatedly shapeshifting; into every person who has ever sat

there for exactly the same reason you do.

Lost Gravity

creative writing, Flash Fiction, poetry,

When I walk on the pavements that knit together my small town, I occasionally hover, fleetingly and quite randomly above the colourless concrete.

Recently, I stood still behind a tree and measured approximately one centimetre of nothing between my feet and the inevitable, and for those seconds I did not wonder how, all I asked was… why? Until, my feet felt firmly on the ground.

Room Service

creative writing, Flash Fiction, short stories,

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Jon White was alone in his bed sleeping; his only support was his new memory foamed mattress. At 3.05 he awoke with urgency, needing the bathroom.  He hadn’t yet seen, encountered, the heart pulsating shock, which was; the dark figure standing, facing the opposing wall.

A totem in the blackness, she stood in the centre of the room; silent, motionless with no acknowledgement of her surroundings. Jon’s only thought was for the sweet blessed relief he would feel in the bathroom.

He grabbed his duvet and purposefully flung it away from his tepid body. Now, exposed to the arctic impression of the bedroom, the atmosphere in the room sent Jon’s skin temperature to plummet; tightening around his bony adolescent frame like an invasion. With his skin no longer flexible and encasing, Jon not only felt the harsh cold but increasingly ill, only once before had he felt this sick; when he was witness to his father’s death.

Little Stone

creative writing, Flash Fiction, short stories,

You chose a beautiful stone; held its smoothness, smothering it entirely for

safe keeping, your lucky stone.

Then one day you skimmed it across an ocean. Never did it stop, that little

stone, not for one second, for it was unable to sink for fear of never being

found again.

Alone, it skimmed, alongside container ships and fishermen, over dancing

shoals, around islands, deemed lost.

It played with sea monsters, memorised the coordinates to shipwrecks and

lost aircraft.

The little stone also survived the greatest storms and skipped through

waters as flat as a mirror.

Only then did it pause for reflection. Then on it went, to find a perfect beach to

settle on.

On the beach, it rested, hopeful for another hand, your hand,

the Holiday Stone.

The Witch

Flash Fiction, short stories,

“Daddy … Daddy!” I hear the fear in a small, distant voice.

Suddenly I am half awake.

Then I hear, “Daddy!” and the voice, less small and no longer distant.

I bolt upright in my bed; groggy, confused, heavy, drugged by my sleep.

“Ok, Ok, I’m coming I’m coming, what’s the matter? I’m coming!” I reply.

I take a glance at my wife’s uninterrupted sleep, I can’t see her, more feel her… She is there. With my eyes, not yet adjusted to the dark, I step out of bed and stumble clumsily. Using my left thigh like a blind man’s stick, I bounce, to and fro from the edges of my bed.

Until, eventually, I make it somewhere near my bedroom door, and I grab at it with more luck than judgement. I find the handle and pull the door open with more force than necessary. Gingerly I step onto the landing and find my son opening the door to his bedroom to meet me.

“What’s the matter darling?” I ask with whispered concern.

“There’s a witch in my room!” he whimpers. As I kneel down to his eye level he walks into the top of my shoulder and nuzzles his cheek into mine, I rub his back.

“A witch, Oh, there’s no witch,” I whisper calmly into his ear. There’s a temporary hush in background noise, then I notice the wind rush, buffet our house. I acknowledge the weather for the first time; it’s invisible force throws smaller unknown objects into the much larger and more guessable ones.

“It’s just the wind,” I say.

I kiss him on his cheek; looking over his little shoulder and into his bedroom, I notice something strange moving in my son’s bed.

Whatever it is writhes like a large worm, slithering in the darkness, I stare, panicked by its nonsense until the duvet cover falls away, exposing a face, it has my son face, no, it is my son.

In bed, my son calmly asks me, “Daddy, what are you doing?”

I’m unable to answer, for my shock injects itself into my rapidly beating heart, pumps a poison round my veins, I rot internally and then in no time at all, I pass out.

Shock of a Fairground Fire

creative writing, Flash Fiction, poems, ,

I could just make out the rotating horses, hear them; braying in the fire, leaping above an abusive smoke.

It seemed that despite the ever loosening grip on their painted reigns, the deafening funfair did not cease to roar upon it, with hellish flames.

Accompanied then by sounds of yesterday’s children, I witnessed the horses escape to the fields of evergreen.

I and them, together, they then turned and shared my shock of a fairground fire; hungry for what remained of their vintage carousel.

Noise War

creative writing, Flash Fiction, poems, short stories

A dog raises his head and barks while a man drops his head and shouts.

The dog barks and lifts its head as the man continues to shout.

Near-bye, a waiting car, its engine revs in frustration, the man shouts at

the car.

The dog continues to bark at the man, at the car, at itself.

Then, across the road, a woman, from her house, opens a window, and she

shouts from afar.

The man looks at the woman and shouts while the car engine revs that little bit

louder.

When a child is heard crying, the car then screams with revs while the

dog proceeds to bark at everything.

The woman in the houses’ phone rings. Her ringtone replicates the

the sound of a barking dog.

She answers her phone and says, “Hello?” Suddenly a temporary silence

deafens the neighbourhood; shortly before everybody feels the drum of

mysterious aeroplanes.

The Caretakers Moon

creative writing, Flash Fiction, short stories

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On a moon coloured in pastel by Martian gods, is a shed with a caretaker as secretly ancient as he his obvious in youth.

With every rotation of his moon, he leaves his shed to stand in perfect black shadow, precisely the same time as a series of planetary alignments allow a galactic causeway showing him his journey from where he once came.

The Caretakers causeway; interrupted by comets as they so travel, rolling silently at their own individual speeds. He recognises the subtle differences within their empowering thunder; with giving each broken star his full, undivided attention, they speak of their magnificent beginnings.

The continuous comets with their immeasurable tails sweep up the remains of lost satellites, so crude in their making, harbouring evidence that nothing ever happens like the scientists say (but some are closer than they think!).

The Caretaker, having lost his home in such unexplainable circumstances, he then transmits his sorrow through dark space matter to create positive universes.

Over, around, between and through time The Caretaker regenerates, flesh to matter, it is then he stares at a cluster of irregular stars as they near. Suddenly he is with his predecessors; a vanguard that smothers the entire surface of the moon with their vaccine.  Linking themselves together by heads they spin cycle the moon into a devastating and most wondrous nebula.

Meanwhile, on a quieter side of an opposing Moon, is another shed entrance that shares the reflection of everything, in times past, present and future. One message clearly resides by every communication possible, ‘Please take care!’

It is then, out of the shadows of planets, a new caretaker makes his way.

 

Brainwashed

creative writing, Flash Fiction, short stories,

The last man to find Denholm didn’t know what to think. Denholm, on the other hand, is the very word think, having done nothing else for centuries. Denholm stores the answer that everyone craves; the meaning of life.

Denholm has currently outlived, destroyed and humiliated seven generations of voluntary human vessels. These vessels have physically transported and slaved themselves through injury and neglect over countless, irrational commands.

One thing is for certain, Denholm always remains, with one desire, however painful, inevitable exclusion from society is; endeavouring to revolutionise the backward world he was forgotten for dead in.

Now, decades after his last walking/talking case of limbs, Denholm senses a new visitor tapping inquisitively at his encapsulating tank. The clear fluid gently caresses as it ripples with subtle response, Denholm swells and thinks, ‘everything will be different this time.’