Tag: Women

Flash fiction. by Idle InkApr 6, 202411:30 am

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.

Flash fiction. by Idle InkApr 6, 202411:26 am

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.

Flash fiction. by Idle InkFeb 3, 20249:30 am

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.

Fiction by Idle InkAug 5, 202311:01 am

Bad Fruit by Catherine Roberts

Falling in love is like lighting a scented candle. You spend years in the dark and suddenly everything is filled with light and the sweet smell of berries and roses. But before long, it’s snuffed – a part of you forever melted away until the wick is lit again. This can only happen for so long until you’re left with nothing but a pool of cool wax.

After the first few loves of my life, I only had boyfriends I couldn’t stand. Jake with the specks of toilet paper stuck to razor cuts on his chin, or Troy who peed in the sink while brushing his teeth for “convenience”. There was always an urge, squirming, eyeless and hungry, under the surface of that once-sweet fruit. To feel more.

So, I started crashing funerals.

Fiction by Idle InkAug 5, 202310:56 am

Movie Magic by George Nevgodovskyy

I could always spot the look. That glint of recognition. A sideways glance, a tinge of embarrassment. Most people crumble – unable to separate fiction from reality. You’ve thrilled them. Aroused them. You’ve made them sob violently in an empty theatre. A matinee.

They’ve even modelled themselves on the characters you’ve played. The way they speak. The way they dress. That’s why most can’t resist the urge to approach you. Make sure you know they exist too.

Aren’t you that actress from –

I just loved you in –

Essay by Idle InkJul 13, 202312:35 pm

How to inherit storytelling by A.J. Akoto

*All italics in parentheses are excerpts from Unmothered, A.J. Akoto’s debut poetry collection, published by Arachne Press in July 2023.

My mother dreamed me before she even knew she was pregnant. The message of me came from her grandmother. Her dead grandmother. Woman to woman, across realms, whether real or in the imagination-soaked field of my mother’s subconscious, they communicated. I sometimes wonder if my mother and I would talk more if one of us were dead (Dreams are a gathering place,/ after all. Is she meeting me/ where she can?). Then again, the silence between us is so populated – by memories, stories, aunts trying to push me into contact – that it makes me question what it really means to no longer talk to someone. Especially when that someone is your mother.

Fiction by Idle InkJul 1, 202311:24 am

The Taxidermist by Alison L Fraser

It was not abnormal for taxidermy to be around the apartment, but it had been a long time since Ruth had last seen it. Not since her mom died, she thought, and she brought a few to a consignment shop, the type of shop that loved to decorate itself like a hunting lodge. But there the bird sat on the askew toilet lid, statuesque. The kestrel’s body was firm, heavier than it could have been when it was alive. Ruth gently lifted the taxidermy creature off the toilet, its beak unaligned appeared to be mid-joke.

Flash fiction. by Idle InkJun 3, 202311:56 am

The Next Scene by Deborah Shrimplin

When Kaye noticed her brain was struggling to remember the most basic nouns (she was told this happens to most seniors) she decided to take up writing. Writing was supposed to be good for her senior brain.

Last night, Kaye had written the first few scenes of a story she thought had wonderful potential. This morning she is sitting at her computer rereading it. She questions, “What would happen next?”

Born in Fire

Flash fiction. by Idle InkMay 6, 20239:26 am

Enough by Angela M Cowan

We’ve been mingling at this benefit for two hours now, and no one has noticed I’ve not said a single word.

No one ever does. They all watch Robert, with his movie-star smile and his bleached teeth and his calm, caring aura that can charm ten grand out of a man’s alligator-leather wallet without so much as a blink. All while I, the very picture of the devoted wife, smile and keep my lips pressed tightly together, doing my duty.