-FICTION IN A FLASH-
Helen Laycock
100-words
I have had many 100-worders published on CafeLit and my flash fiction appears in The Best of CafeLit 3, 4, 5 and 6
Here's a sample, but please go to my Tiny Tales website for many, many more...
Bare
Like puppets, shadows polka’d up the walls and across the table as the stumpy candle flickered in the jam jar, its veins spilling into a waxy puddle.
Edward stared at the paper in front of him. It was dying. Parched, jaundiced and, undoubtedly, jaded, it curled self-consciously, like Eve covering her nudity.
His pen reclined, nonplussed, in the criss-crossed cushion between thumb and forefinger.
Forty-three days he had sat like this. For forty-three days he had floated in the vacuous space inside his skull. A moth clicked against the glass. Swooped. Erupted. Still Edward was unable to write anything.
Bluebell Wood
Like tinkling bells, the children’s laughter pealed in rounds and seemed to float through the spaces like pastel bubbles. They wound between the trunks which stood like wizened sentries, ancient and knowing, hunching aching shoulders and splaying weary limbs.
Little Amy trailed behind, latching onto fleeting glimpses of colour. She was reminded of brushstrokes, ribbons and fairgrounds…
Accompanying her, her right leg, the uninvited party guest, the hanger-on; she dragged it through the papery leaves and tried to pretend she was one of the group.
The knuckled root clasped her ankle with bony fingers and pulled.
Then she was gone.
Cold Heart
‘Mrs Radley, you really should open your windows more often. Look at the flies.’
I opened a window.
‘And get some air freshener. It smells so - ’
My face contorted.
‘You’d feel a lot less lonely if you made a bit more conversation. Sometimes I feel as though I’m talking to myself.’
I flicked the duster along the back of Mrs Radley’s chair. Specks settled on her soft white hair. I swiped along the arm and around her mottled hand.
Mrs Radley was grinning at me. Her dentures were on her chest and a bluebottle was regurgitating on her left eyeball.
Dead Silence
He was such a grouch.
Sitting in that wing-back with his broadsheet whilst she padded around in slippers… shushing her as she struggled to emit the tiniest spritz of Pledge… tutting as she slapped the cushion she wished was Harry. Those grooves between his eyebrows like sunken staples…
The corners of his mouth looked as though they had been caught on fishing line.
Agnes brandished the duster feverishly across the mantelpiece and sang. Loudly.
Whoops!
Once she had picked up the pieces of the urn, Agnes watched Harry swirl inside the drum of the vacuum cleaner.
‘Bloody racket!’ she mimicked.
Dishing it Out
Mary scooped a handful of gunk out of the waste disposal – onion skin, flaccid, black lettuce, strings of carrot peel and a melded mush of cornflakes, all bound together with bluish mozzarella.
A bit like John’s eyes.
The blob sat heavy, like an overfed toad, in the palm of her Marigold and it was with a significant amount of force that she bowled it into the pan.
Thwack!
Having rubbed a potato around the toilet bowl, she chopped and added it, then tipped in the water from the dying carnations.
Cheap. Just like Kiera.
John enjoyed his soup that evening.
Filling the space
It was the red hat that gave him away. I would have recognised it anywhere.
He had his back to me, but I knew it was him standing there, fishing, near the bridge. Fishing had been his life.
I recollected his smile… those dimples, those twinkling eyes! Now that I’d found him, I knew I just couldn’t leave.
I straddled the fence of number forty-seven and scooped him up in my arms.
‘Time to come home, Norris,’ I whispered, kicking the head off one of hers as I leapt over the fishpond with the gnome she had stolen from me.
A Charming Visit
Old Mother Tattersley’s dappled hand gripped the willow twig. As she stirred, she hummed steadily. Not a tune, more the score of a bumble bee.
The acrid steam spiralled, its droplets pocking the gnarled beam; simultaneously, the left shoelace of Reginald Tait unwound serpent-like.
Mother Tattersley’s drone strengthened. Miniature wings flashed in the steam, disappearing like falling glitter.
Inkblot wound around her, purring. Leaning over the pan, she drew in a lungful of magic and blew.
Outside, Reginald Tait stooped towards his shoelace. The icicle hanging in the eaves plummeted down.
No road would be built through Mother Tattersley’s house.
Searching
The full moon made a bright hole in the black sky as Laura stepped out, bare-footed.
‘Jasper,’ she called softly, her feet flattening the cool grass as she trod.
Where was that cat?
Laura stopped.
The muted miaow had come from inside the weeping willow which, in the darkness, stood hunched and caped in the centre of the lawn.
She fed her hand through the rattling curtain and parted it, clutching her belly, still aching with six years’ loss. An eerie child, luminous, translucent, hollow-eyed, with flint-sharp cheekbones, sat cross-legged, cradling the black cat—Richard’s idea of compensation.
Spectre-cle
Pippin. Her favourite carousel horse. Tendrils of his pewter mane curl like piped icing all on one side of his proud neck, but his head is dipped in deference. The rows of little greying teeth are parted in what she believes to be a secret smile.
Astrid’s arms envelop the little boy who clings tightly to the pole, a giant birthday candle. She breathes in his skin, his hair, his very essence and smiles at his laughter, as free as floating bubbles.
And, as the seasons pass, Astrid rides. Each little child that passes through, passes through… and replenishes her.
Vacation
Dorothy Anderson loved and feared the sea in equal measure. She whiled away long summer days in a striped chair, placed in the doorway of her candy-coloured beach hut.
Today, her pleasure had been derived from watching a family, the parents relaxing in deckchairs, the little girl building and decorating sandcastles, and the boy digging.
The tide was rushing in as they left, and Dorothy was in a hurry to get her feet wet, just up to her ankles – her early evening ritual.
When the family returned the next day, the deep, deep hole had gone. And so had Dorothy.
Sea Souls
Like a giant palm, the wave capped my head and plunged me beneath its surface, intent on consuming me.
I tumbled, salt- and sand-blinded.
It churned and pummelled me until I was spent.
The dappled light became my sky as I drifted down, relinquishing myself to the depths.
Flashes of luminescence confirmed that I was passing – but, through barely-open eyes, I saw lanterns encircling me, caught flicks of rainbow shimmer. White faces lit with eyes of emerald and aqua loomed and retreated.
A streak of energy fizzed through my body. I thrashed my tail and, as they disappeared, sped behind.
Night Geometry of the Dark Mind
If the night is a spillage, then the moon is a peephole and its glow is chalk dust.
Raphael nodded acknowledgement three times in succession.
The clouds are widows and the stars ice chinks, the planes gemstones and their trails grazes.
Raphael lowered his chin.
And the branches – mazes.
The chimneys are Lego and the wood smoke chiffon, the houses packets, the cars cane-toads, the cats thumbprints…
Murder was furthest from Raphael’s wondrous mind as he stood like a stone angel at the dark rockpool next to the bulky boulder.
He wiped his palms on the gravestones…
Horse teeth.
