WELCOME TO MY FLASH FICTION PAGE
NONE OF THESE STORIES IS LONGER THAN 1,000 WORDS AND SEVERAL ARE SIGNIFICANTLY SHORTER.
WHY NOT PUT YOUR FEET UP AND READ ONE IN YOUR COFFEE BREAK?
FEWER CALORIES THAN A BISCUIT!
And, if these are still too long, take a look at my 99-word micro-fiction on the blog
If you WRITE flash fiction, you might also find this post by LC Lara useful
NONE OF THESE STORIES IS LONGER THAN 1,000 WORDS AND SEVERAL ARE SIGNIFICANTLY SHORTER.
WHY NOT PUT YOUR FEET UP AND READ ONE IN YOUR COFFEE BREAK?
FEWER CALORIES THAN A BISCUIT!
And, if these are still too long, take a look at my 99-word micro-fiction on the blog
If you WRITE flash fiction, you might also find this post by LC Lara useful
Hiroshima Maidens
Now we are friends, I want to see you smile again. I want to feel your laughter fizz around my ears. I want your gaze to brim with gratitude. I want you not to flinch at my approach.
Published May 2021 by Free Flash Fiction
Now we are friends, I want to see you smile again. I want to feel your laughter fizz around my ears. I want your gaze to brim with gratitude. I want you not to flinch at my approach.
Published May 2021 by Free Flash Fiction
The Power of Verticality
I had a husband once. Sisters. Friends. One by one they fell away, like petals from a daisy. She loves me. She loves me not. She comes. She goes.
She.
Published on StoryChat, April 2022.
I had a husband once. Sisters. Friends. One by one they fell away, like petals from a daisy. She loves me. She loves me not. She comes. She goes.
She.
Published on StoryChat, April 2022.
Dark Roots
After the fire, she had nowhere to go, so she filled two carrier bags with clothes and blankets from the charity shop and installed herself in the foyer of the bank. The security guards were tolerant, bringing her cardboard cups of strong coffee, its bitterness screened beneath a cap of frothy milk. They drew the line at the dog, however ...
Published May 2021 by Free Flash Fiction
After the fire, she had nowhere to go, so she filled two carrier bags with clothes and blankets from the charity shop and installed herself in the foyer of the bank. The security guards were tolerant, bringing her cardboard cups of strong coffee, its bitterness screened beneath a cap of frothy milk. They drew the line at the dog, however ...
Published May 2021 by Free Flash Fiction
With your hands
When this is over, will you remember
How you spilled from your shelters
Paused on your doorsteps
To pledge your support
Your loyalty and gratitude
With your hands?
Published April 2021 by Café Lit
When this is over, will you remember
How you spilled from your shelters
Paused on your doorsteps
To pledge your support
Your loyalty and gratitude
With your hands?
Published April 2021 by Café Lit
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A Postcard from the Past
Ms Thompson – Ruth to her lover, colleagues and friends – has set aside the afternoon to sort through old documents. Her retirement is some months away, but decommissioning thirty-five years’ professional paperwork requires a string of afternoons. A secretary could dispatch it in an hour, consigning it sheet by sheet to the shredder, but Ms Thompson feels obliged to examine every scrap. She’s determined to disengage from social work as conscientiously as she began her career. Published on StoryChat, January 2021. Click the title to see the story/ Click the image to see a summary of the discussion. |
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Because Bellyache
Because Babycham. Because Elvis. Because she wore a miniskirt and push-up bra.
Because boys can’t help themselves. Because her star sign. Because she couldn’t risk him walking another girl home.
Because she’s no better than she should be. Because everyone else did. Because once he got started it would be rude to interrupt.
Published September 2020 by Free Flash Fiction
Because Babycham. Because Elvis. Because she wore a miniskirt and push-up bra.
Because boys can’t help themselves. Because her star sign. Because she couldn’t risk him walking another girl home.
Because she’s no better than she should be. Because everyone else did. Because once he got started it would be rude to interrupt.
Published September 2020 by Free Flash Fiction
Bridging
The river divided them, but their paths crossed each morning on the bridge linking north to south. Tramping to his office in the financial sector, it was her yellow scarf that first snagged his attention. Hurrying home from ironing sheets at the laundry, she noticed his mop of hair untamed by the comb peeking from the jacket pocket of his grey suit.
Published August 2020 by Free Flash Fiction
The river divided them, but their paths crossed each morning on the bridge linking north to south. Tramping to his office in the financial sector, it was her yellow scarf that first snagged his attention. Hurrying home from ironing sheets at the laundry, she noticed his mop of hair untamed by the comb peeking from the jacket pocket of his grey suit.
Published August 2020 by Free Flash Fiction
Crossing the Line
There are lines so wide, so deep and dark, no-one warns you to avoid them. They reckon you already know. Where I come from, those lines read murder, caning kids and thievery. Taboos are different here.
Published February 2020 by Fictive Dream.
Beyond the tipping point
We stowed the first one under the rose bush; Mike swore the blooms that year were the best he’d ever grown. We dismantled the swing to bury the second, the kids too fixated on their screens to care. But I drew the line at disturbing the patio. It would take more than a few corpses for me to forego sitting with a gin and tonic as the sun spilt orange light across the sky.
Published February 2020 by Eunoia Review
We stowed the first one under the rose bush; Mike swore the blooms that year were the best he’d ever grown. We dismantled the swing to bury the second, the kids too fixated on their screens to care. But I drew the line at disturbing the patio. It would take more than a few corpses for me to forego sitting with a gin and tonic as the sun spilt orange light across the sky.
Published February 2020 by Eunoia Review
No Vacancies
The straps of our backpacks bit into our sagging shoulders as we left the reception of yet another cheap hotel. It seemed there wasn’t a vacant room in the entire city; not within our budget, anyhow. So our spirits soared when a woman beckoned from an alleyway. “You need room? For tonight?”
Published February 2019 by Fictive Dream.
The straps of our backpacks bit into our sagging shoulders as we left the reception of yet another cheap hotel. It seemed there wasn’t a vacant room in the entire city; not within our budget, anyhow. So our spirits soared when a woman beckoned from an alleyway. “You need room? For tonight?”
Published February 2019 by Fictive Dream.
Return to Paradise
Five years I’ve been away. Five long years from boy to man. Five years acquiring a gentleman’s education in that cold country Father still calls home.
Published February 2019 by Foliate Oak
Published February 2019 by Foliate Oak
No Hard Feelings
Ellen would not have followed the path if she’d known it would lead to the graveyard. All those dead people lovingly remembered; all those people who were probably right bastards when they were alive.
Published by Sories for Homes, October, 2017. (Re-edited version appears along with forty-one others in my first short story collection, Becoming Someone.) |
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Ghost Girl
The other children threw rocks at me, but that was all right when Mama was there to wipe away my tears.
Published by Spelk Fiction, September, 2017. (Re-edited version appears along with forty-one others in my first short story collection, Becoming Someone.) |
I Want Doesn't GetI wanted cheesecake and a chocolate fountain but I didn’t want to pop the button on my best black skirt. I wanted a bronze plaque on a bench beside the bowling green and souvenir service sheets on embossed paper with a photo at the front.
Published by Spelk Fiction, February, 2017 and again in November, 2018 by Tales from the Forest. (Re-edited version appears along with forty-one others in my first short story collection, Becoming Someone.) |
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Out of Her Element
Down she went and down, hand under hand on the guide rope. Where it petered out, she nudged the dial on her buoyancy vest and waited for her husband to emerge from the fog of churned-up sand.
Published by Halfway Down the Stairs, June 2016.
Published by Halfway Down the Stairs, June 2016.
If You Could Do This One Last Thing for Me
You saved me a seat in the lecture hall, because my bus was always late. You persuaded the corner shop to stock gluten-free croissants, so you could serve me breakfast in bed. You cheered louder than anyone at our graduation when I got the trophy and you just scraped a pass.
Published by Pygmy Giant, May 2016 – comments welcome on the website.
Republished January 2020 by Wink
Published by Pygmy Giant, May 2016 – comments welcome on the website.
Republished January 2020 by Wink
All the Time
Trina gulps her coffee and bites into her toast (the teeth-tingling strawberry jam negating the virtue of the wholemeal bread and thereby triggering the guilt that she never really took advantage of that introductory offer at the gym).
Published on Flash Fiction Magazine April 2014, where your comments are welcome.
Published on Flash Fiction Magazine April 2014, where your comments are welcome.
Plastic
Of course, he'd always known the day would come when youth would mock what he had cherished. The clothes in which he'd swaggered down the street. The melodies through which his lust rolled over into love. The idiom that spoke his pleasure, fear, distaste. He'd always known, but now he felt it. Now it hurt.
Published by The Treacle Well, January 2014 and as a podcast reading at Manawaker Studio June 2020.
Comments welcome on my blog post on allotment gardening or on Dirt under the fingernails
Published by The Treacle Well, January 2014 and as a podcast reading at Manawaker Studio June 2020.
Comments welcome on my blog post on allotment gardening or on Dirt under the fingernails
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A Place of Safety
When she saw the mess they'd made of the flat, the woman posing as a social worker was quick to act. A glance at the figurines in fragments in the fireplace, the disembowelled television, the trail of blood-red ink across the floor, and she'd whipped out her phone.
Published by Pygmy Giant, December 2013 – comments welcome on the website, or alternatively on my blog post on disorientation. (Re-edited version appears along with forty-one others in my first short story collection, Becoming Someone.) |
In Praise of Female Parts
At school they showed us how to put a condom on a cucumber. You turned to me and said, Urgh! Could you imagine taking a thing like that inside you?
Published in the USA by Quality Women's Fiction, July 2008 and again in December 2013 by Red Fez Comments welcome on the blog post The embodied you and me (Re-edited version appears along with forty-one others in my first short story collection, Becoming Someone.) |
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Peace-and-Quiet Pancake
He shakes his head almost before I've finished speaking. It's his standard response these days: if in doubt, say no.
Published by Flash Fiction Online, November 2013 Comments welcome on the website or on the blog post Whose story is it anyway? or on Food in Fiction See also my post on Norah Colvin's blog Examining praise: Stephen Grosz – the third instalment! |
No Milk or Sugar
Stiff white hairs sprouted from her chin and a splodge of dried-out breakfast cereal graced her lapel like a brooch. The dominoes were scattered pell-mell on the table: a three and a one abutting a double-six would never have passed muster in the game she'd taught me.
Published by Flash Fiction World , July 2013. Republished on Flash Fiction Magazine April 2014.
To comment on this story, please do so on the publisher's website or at my blog post on dementia or on disorientation in general.
Published by Flash Fiction World , July 2013. Republished on Flash Fiction Magazine April 2014.
To comment on this story, please do so on the publisher's website or at my blog post on dementia or on disorientation in general.
The Japanese Garden
I want to ask Wilma whether she fancies one of those bamboo water-features where the water goes round in perpetual motion, but she's intent on telling me about some woman at work who was having an affair with a neighbour right under her husband's nose.
First published in print in 2007 by Carillon and now online by Fiction on the Web, July 2013, where you are welcome to leave comments or, alternatively, you can do so on the blog at Is Writing like Gardening or at Food in Fiction
First published in print in 2007 by Carillon and now online by Fiction on the Web, July 2013, where you are welcome to leave comments or, alternatively, you can do so on the blog at Is Writing like Gardening or at Food in Fiction
Betrayed
I used to pride myself on being a sound judge of character. That was before I got embroiled with Whitney.
Published by Flash Fiction World , June 2013, and again on Flash Flood for National Flash Fiction Day, 21 June, 2014
To comment on this story, please do so on the website or call in at the blog.
Published by Flash Fiction World , June 2013, and again on Flash Flood for National Flash Fiction Day, 21 June, 2014
To comment on this story, please do so on the website or call in at the blog.
All Night, the Babby
Ma takes vodka to help her sleep through. I said, Why divn’t you give some of that to the babby?
Published by Pygmy Giant, November 2012
To comment on this story, please go to the website or call in at the blog.
Published by Pygmy Giant, November 2012
To comment on this story, please go to the website or call in at the blog.
Bathroom Suite
I did not go to school today but you must not worry. I am not sick.
Published by Pygmy Giant, November 2012 and in an Hungarian translation, August 2013.
Comments welcome on the site or on annecdotal, Who Gives a Shit for World Toilet day, where some of the issues behind the story are explored.
Or see here for an uplifting real-life antidote.
Or this post for yet another angle School: a suitable place for fiction?
Published by Pygmy Giant, November 2012 and in an Hungarian translation, August 2013.
Comments welcome on the site or on annecdotal, Who Gives a Shit for World Toilet day, where some of the issues behind the story are explored.
Or see here for an uplifting real-life antidote.
Or this post for yet another angle School: a suitable place for fiction?
Yoko Sits Silently on Stage While the Audience Snips off Her Clothes
Canny job that, I thought. Sitting on your backside watching people look at paintings. A uniform with gold buttons and epaulettes.
Published by Pygmy Giant, May 2012
Published by Pygmy Giant, May 2012
Getting It Together With Elvis
After the party, when she saw their toothbrushes kissing in an old mug on his bathroom shelf, she felt all shook up. The bristles of her pink toothbrush enmeshed with the chewed hairs of his blue one was too much too soon.
Published by Pygmy Giant, June 2012
You can comment on this story on the website or on my blogpost A Flash (or Two) of Musical Inspiration.
Published by Pygmy Giant, June 2012
You can comment on this story on the website or on my blogpost A Flash (or Two) of Musical Inspiration.
And the Winner is ...
It is said that when someone is drowning they see their whole life pass before their eyes. I once had a boyfriend who was obsessed with that idea. He wanted to know what it would feel like, what thoughts would go through a person's mind when they came to watch the ultimate biopic.
I ditched him, of course.
Published by Foliate Oak in 2009 and nominated for the Pushcart Prize and again by Flash Fiction Magazine in January 2015
To comment on this story, see my post 5 Writers on Failure
I ditched him, of course.
Published by Foliate Oak in 2009 and nominated for the Pushcart Prize and again by Flash Fiction Magazine in January 2015
To comment on this story, see my post 5 Writers on Failure
The Wilsons go Shopping
I had been trying to get a system going -- a bag for the vegetables, one for baked stuff, another for booze, and so on -- but it doesn’t work; Dad’s too chaotic ...
First published on beat the dust, June 2008, now revived on Flash Fiction Magazine March 2014, where your comments are welcome.
You might also like to see my blog post Good Grief for Writers that connects with this story.
First published on beat the dust, June 2008, now revived on Flash Fiction Magazine March 2014, where your comments are welcome.
You might also like to see my blog post Good Grief for Writers that connects with this story.
George and Pat For Ever
Shh, it’s okay: the long-ago voice of her mother when her screams had summoned her to banish a childhood nightmare.
My first fiction publication: January 2007 in Pen Pusher
Now revived by Fiction on the Web, October 2013, where you are welcome to leave your comments
You might also like to see my blog post Good Grief for Writers that connects with this story.
Now revived by Fiction on the Web, October 2013, where you are welcome to leave your comments
You might also like to see my blog post Good Grief for Writers that connects with this story.
