Every day we can’t wait for The Show to come on. We rush through our days, come home, eat a hasty meal, sometimes with our little tin tables in front of the wall screen, salivating for The Show to come on. No matter how bad our days have been our smiles pop, our hearts fill when we see Bobby’s smile and Angela’s poofy hair, and little Max tripping on the dog in the doorway, and our laughter escapes us with no effort of our own. When we see that little Chip the cocker spaniel is okay, we together breathe a sigh of relief, and everything is okay in our world for that moment, that instant. We have our Show, and we know everything will be okay.
Category: Flash fiction.
Witches, Inc. by Monica Sharp
Early lunch now. The café is packed with students and workers sitting on chairs and chatting across tables. People just finishing a morning in the office or in the classroom. The roar inside is like a seashore, rising and falling, laughter, a hissing Marzocco machine, tinkling spoons and cups, white plates streaming out of the kitchen.
I order the carnitas with watermelon radish, and why not, a glass of prosecco with lunch. Sunlight glints off the river. Pedestrians shiver outside, leaning against lamp posts coated in rust. The wait is long here. It always is. The place is too popular.
Take It Easy by Gabrielle Showalter
Everyone figured she would break up with him. She had a swim scholarship to that big school out west, and did he even get in anywhere, anyway? There were jokes he would follow her to college. Set up a sleeping bag outside her dorm. Nah, they’ll be over well before then, people said.
Graduation came, and in pictures he stood off to the side, unsmiling but just within frame.
Prodigy by Sara Dobbie
The piano arrives in a flurry of men pushing, pulling, and shouting directions. They heave it onto a dolly and up the front steps. They guide it through the doorway, then carry and lift and shuffle all the furniture to position it as the focal point of the front room.
In the back room, Clara hides in a corner and eavesdrops. She listens to her mother say, “This is what Clara needs. A hobby. A purpose.” Her father agrees, “Yes, this might help.” Help with what, Clara scoffs. Help diminish her propensity toward solitude? Help transform her into a different girl? Nothing could help Clara fulfill her mother’s expectations.
Room by Alison Wassell
You are compact, says the estate agent, a glorified cupboard say your owners. You are the custodian of cardboard boxes and unwanted wedding gifts. You are magnolia.
You are papered in pink princesses. Cartoon character curtains hang at your window and a homemade mobile of cotton wool clouds and knitted rainbows is suspended from your ceiling. You are filled with laughter and lullabies, crying and crises, the gurgling, giggling growing of your girl.
Calypso by Judith Meikle
I go swimming three times a week. Mostly I walk to the leisure centre. If it’s raining I get the bus although I really don’t like to. I feel the stares. People can be very judgmental. They think you’re lazy. Look at that great whale of a woman they whisper. If I were that size, I’d be walking, they say. She wants to get some of that blubber off, they snigger.
Ice Houses by Zary Fekete
The pilot talked over the in-cabin speakers, and I mostly let it wash over me. Those of you sitting on the sun-side of the craft, please keep the windows darkened. In the event of a sub-orbital flight-failure, blue lights on the floor will illuminate the path to the eject capsules. Etc. Etc. The only time my ears perked up was when she mentioned the approach toward Saturn. This would be the longest flight I had taken so far, and I wanted to hear the recommended gravity settings.
I looked out the window as the craft took off, and, in the split second before the acceleration into the slip-space portal, I saw several white lakes dotted around Duluth come into view in the distance, their waters frozen in the dead of January, variously peppered with little black ice-fishing houses. I smiled. In my mind I saw a young boy, holding his father’s hand as they walked across the frozen surface toward their ice-house.
The Train at Platform Seven is Calling at all Stations by Joyce Bingham
The repetition of my commuter journey lulled me and took my mind to distant shores, but muscle memory kept my feet on the right path. As every morning I wondered how I got here, remembering nothing of my way. A cold fog swirled, swiping at my ankles as I entered the wide station concourse.
I headed for the usual platform, the first train of the day, busy and teaming with stress, leaching out of the seats and into the air like the haze on a marsh. People streamed through the ticket barrier, carrying cups of coffee, hauling luggage and trailing their anxiety behind them. The herd moved to the next platform, the clomping heels and squeaking wheels diminished, only I walked to platform seven.
Weeds are Just Plants in Places They’re Not Wanted by JP Relph
Trying to thrive in hostile places; unwanted, despised. Some are brazen, resolute in their right to be. Bursting from cracks and last year’s baskets, slithering through flowerbeds like venomous snakes. Others are timid, quietly seeding in shadowy hollows, in long grass. Hiding their delicate leaves, their pale flowers. Trying to live unseen, be unobtrusive. Trying to live.
Idle Ink 