Flash Fiction Friday

Image: wodumedia.com

The Captain’s Return

Just as the movie got to the good bit, the first dull boom rang out. Barron stiffened in his chair. The hairs on his arms lifted right up, like they were listening; every muscle was taut.

‘What the…’ Barron put his steaming bowl of noodles down and hit the Pause button, trying to breathe quietly. Just as he swung his legs off the desk, the second boom shattered the stillness of the sleeping station.

‘Hell. Just my luck,’ he muttered, heaving himself to his feet. He’d been looking forward to the solo graveyard shift all week. Just him, the silent monitoring station, and the howling Antarctic outside, it had sounded like heaven on earth.

Boom.

He shrugged into his jacket and fumbled through the piles of documents and readouts for his flashlight. He dallied – just for a second – in front of the gun locker before swinging it open.

Boom.

The door was a long dark corridor away. He clicked the flashlight on. Its beam shook a little, but he stilled it.

Boom.

Something – something heavy – was pounding on the door.

He unsealed it with numb fingers, his weapon a reassuring weight at his side. It hissed open to reveal a fur-clad figure, his eyes like lost stars in the bitter darkness.

The stranger lowered his seal-skin glove, swaying on his feet. ‘I told my men I would be some time,’ he said, in a voice like the Aurora’s hiss. ‘But I’ve finally found my way back.’

Barron dropped his flashlight as the long-lost explorer stumbled into his arms.

(The above story is my Flash! Friday entry for this week)

 

Tamara de Lempicka’s painting, ‘Jeune Fille Vert’
Image: internaute.com

Jeune Fille Vert

So I saved for a green silk dress, second-hand, and stole Mama’s white gloves. She hadn’t worn them in years, and I doubted she’d miss them any more than she’d miss me. The dress was nice, but it wasn’t exactly like the one in the picture. It didn’t have a ruffled neck, or a bow at the shoulder. Come to that, it wasn’t quite the right shade, either – it sort of made my skin look mouldy. In a certain light, though, I looked all right. I’d pass as a fine lady on her way somewhere grand.

I found a hat at the back of my closet, more cream than white; it had a brim, at least, perfect for spying on the world without it hitting your eyes. The girl in the picture didn’t show her feet, so I just put on my black patent shoes, the ones I normally kept for church. Today, though, I left my socks off. It looked better. My feet would get sweaty, I knew, but I figured it couldn’t be helped.

I’d even found a small valise, an old-fashioned one. It wasn’t in the picture, but I thought it looked pretty. My things didn’t all fit inside it, but it hardly mattered. ‘They’ll give you everything you need in the hospital, girl. You’ll have more’n enough,’ Mama’d said. Mama never lied. Well – she always spoke the truth, but she didn’t always speak it with a good heart.

I checked my wristwatch. They’d be here to get me soon. I took a final look in my dusty old mirror; the glass was browned and blooming, but I could see enough to know the dress clung tightly in places that were new, and hung baggy in places that were old. I took a breath and watched myself, wondering. My hair, completely the wrong colour but at least it curled like the picture-girl’s, jiggled when I moved my head. My heart was as quiet as a sleeping baby.

Sort of what got me into this mess in the first place, I guess. My heart, and a sleeping baby.

Then, a flicker in the mirror told me they were coming. Angled right, my warped looking-glass was kind enough to show the road.

My valise was light. I threw it, and it landed in the bush, just fine.

I slipped my hot feet out of my shoes; they followed the valise out the window. My soles gave better grip on the downpipe. I had to grab my hat with one hand as I neared the ground, but I managed pretty well.

I didn’t wait to hear them ring the bell, or to hear Mama’s holler. She’d be mad to lose the money they’d have paid her for me.

Then I ran, just like the girl in the picture’d said. Run! she’d whispered, with her scarlet mouth. Run fast!

I didn’t slow until I’d reached the cover of the trees, as green as my green dress.

 

Image: indulgy.com

 

Unforgettable Things

These are the things I can’t forget: I was hurt, I am getting better, and I have to take my medicine.

They bring my medicine twice a day, and the glass – they call it that, even though it’s made of plastic – is pink. I think I like that colour. The glass holds the water (not too much!) that I need to make the medicine go down.

Sometimes the nurse sings a song as she hands me my medicine, and my pink glass, but I can’t remember what the words mean any more. I like her voice, though, so I don’t mind.

They are nice, the nurses.

At least, I think they are.

I can’t forget these things: I was hurt, I am getting better, and I have to take my medicine.

I remember other things, sometimes. I remember eggs, and how fragile they are, and how you have to be so, so careful when you carry them. My unforgettable things are like eggs, the doctor says. I stroke them gently and keep them safe, and carry them around inside myself so carefully, in case I drop them.

I was hurt, I am getting better, and I have to take my medicine. The doctor says if I repeat it to myself, it’ll stick to my brain like glue.

I don’t know what’s happening when the nurse wheels me into another room. This room is small and has a broken TV, and its window looks out over the carpark. The nurse says I need a bit of privacy, but I prefer the big room, where everyone else is. It’s warm, and it has a window with a view of the garden. But I have to go into the small room. I don’t know why. ‘Just for a while,’ they say. ‘Not for long.’

I’ve been in here before. I think it means I’ve done something wrong, but I never remember what.

So here I am, in the small room. It’s cold. It’s raining. There are a lot of cars in the carpark. I try to count them all, but I lose my place when someone comes in.  A Visitor. A gust of air follows them through the door. Inside it words are carried, carefully and gently, just like me and my eggs.

The words are another song. ‘Happy Birthday to you,’ they say. They sound happy. It seems wrong. I don’t know why.

‘Sorry!’ says the Visitor. ‘I’m just looking for the loo?’

‘Happy birthday to you!’ say the words again, and the world cracks.

‘Happy birthday,’ roared the fist. ‘Happy birthday!’ whined the belt as it flew through the air. I remember the buckle opening my face, digging into my head. I hear crunching, and snapping, and breaking, and I remember screaming I remember…

‘Come on, darling,’ says a nurse. I see my pink glass and my pills. My throat hurts.

I must remember: I was hurt, I am getting better, and I have to take my medicine.

 

 

 

Wednesday Write-In #60

This week’s words for CAKE.shortandsweet‘s Wednesday Write-In were:

storm warning  ::  performance  ::  insomnia  ::  turn  ::  stop

I didn’t use the words themselves, but instead let the images they created in my mind lead the direction of my story. This one comes with a warning to anyone who has suffered from serious illness or who has been bereaved through serious illness.

 

Image: book530.com

 

Storm Warning

 

It had started with a strange feeling in her jaw, just at the top of her neck. It was a soft, tender spot, not really sore to the touch but almost, like it was testing the water and seeing how far it could go. She’d lie awake at night, sleep teasing her from around the next corner, never letting herself believe it was such a tiny thing, barely there at all, which kept her eyes from closing.

At work, the students noticed a new and greater emphasis on colour. She began to wear more purple and red, and everything sparkled; when it was remarked upon, she loved it. Her lipstick shade had stayed the same since 1973, but now she went out of her way to buy tube after tube of gaudiness, and she had a generous hand. She started focusing their classes on Surrealism, Fauvism, Pop Art – all bright, all vibrant, all fleeting.

‘You look great!’ they’d tell her, meaning every word. ‘Who’s your new man?’ She’d just purse her lips and raise her eyebrows, and sashay away with a panache she’d never felt in her youth.

But her new man came to her in the night, sitting by her bedside with a twinkling eye.

‘Are you ready yet?’ he’d ask.

‘Not yet,’ she’d answer. ‘One more day.’ He’d leave her with a smile, but she knew he’d be there when she needed him.

When it became obvious, the laughing eyes around her turned horrified.

‘Why didn’t you say anything?’ ‘Why didn’t you see a doctor?’ ‘Are you crazy?’

She tried to tell them she had no regrets, but they took that as further proof of her incapability. She pleaded for peace and quiet, but they wouldn’t hear of it. They started to insist that she get help, and did not listen when she told them of her happiness.

So she took her lipsticks and her Gombrich and she walked into the whirlwind. Her new man followed shortly after. With a smile on her face and her best dress on, she finally took his hand.

Tipping Point

Do you think there’s an actual point at which you just can’t take any more bad news?

Image: scq.ubc.ca

I’m a bit of a news junkie. I like to know what’s happening in the world. Most mornings, the first thing I do is turn on the radio to get the early news bulletin so that I can get some idea of the shape of the day. Lately, though, all that’s been happening is one horror after another, culminating this week in one of the saddest news stories I’ve ever heard in my country, a story which will stay at the forefront of my mind for a long time to come. I’m just not sure I can take any more news which breaks me open like a sledgehammer to the chest, and I wonder if I should just stop taking it all in, for a while at least.

I know, before anyone suggests it, that I have a cheek to write a blog post like this when none of these dreadful news stories are about me directly and they have no personal impact on my life – and believe me, I’m aware of how lucky I am – but as a human being who is engaged with the world and who has empathy for her fellows, it does affect me. I have wept painful tears this week at the needless loss of life, the horrors perpetrated on children by their parents, the dreadful sorrow of those left behind after an accident, the waste of humanity that occurs whenever power structures begin to rumble into place and governments rise or fall; I’ve wept because it’s always the powerless, the average person, the individual like me, who is crushed beneath the wheels of change or between the teeth of revolution.

It makes me afraid that one day I won’t be the lucky one any more, and that one day it will come for me, too. It makes me afraid to live in a world where these things can happen. It makes me wonder what I can do, if there’s anything at all, to help.

I am a person with a limited set of skills. I can’t change the world through politics or diplomacy, or with money or influence; all I can do is put words together into sentences, and hope they’re good enough to read. But if everyone did what they could – in fact, if everyone was permitted to do whatever they could, however humble – to add their thread to the picture, then I think we’d be in a much better position. However, because there are so many in the world who are not allowed to add their voice to the collective melody, it’s even more important that all of us who can do something actually do it. I am a privileged person – free, healthy, and protected – and I owe it to those who possess none of these gifts to do whatever is in my power to make the world better for those who will come after us.

I may never be a successful writer, but I hope I’m a successful human being. That, after all, is the most important thing any of us can do.

I hope everything in your corner of the world today is good, and peaceful, and happy, and I also hope that tomorrow, I’ll be in a more positive frame of mind.

Image: welcometoourreality.blogspot.com

 

 

What in the World?

This morning, we awoke to news of a further explosion in the United States. A fertiliser plant explosion has destroyed homes, businesses and lives in the town of West, near Waco, in Texas, and has caused an unspecified amount of deaths and injuries. Of course, when we hear ‘Waco’, we think of the horror that took place there twenty years ago, almost to the day; it almost seems unbelievable that an explosion would happen in the same area now. I’m praying that it turns out to have been caused by an explicable, understandable and ‘ordinary’ thing – I’m praying that it turns out to be accidental. Between the horror at the Boston Marathon, American politicians being targeted with ricin-laced mail, the war in Syria, the situation in North Korea, and so many other things… What in the world is going on?

It’s hard to keep your head on straight when the news is bursting out all over with stories of inexplicable cruelty and (seemingly) mindless savagery. When you realise that there are so many people in the world who are denied even the most basic chance to live their life as they would choose, perhaps because their country is embroiled in war, or ensnared by poverty, or both, it makes the choice to be a writer, for instance, seem at once completely frivolous and vitally important. Frivolous because I am in the fortunate position of living every day without the threat of destruction, and vitally important because if we are not creating, then what’s the point of even being here, on earth, in this time and place?

The more I hear about destruction and death, and the more news I watch about dictatorships and terrorism and war and imposition of unfair laws on a populace struggling to survive and military posturing with no thought to the safety of the people… well. The more I feel that creating something – no matter what it is – is the most important calling a person could have. How else will we fight off destruction and dark-hearted sorrow? Not with more aggression, more terror, more fear – but with light, and laughter, and song, and new life. It’s at once the simplest and most difficult thing in the world.

Image: warchild.org

I’m not really making a whole lot of sense this morning. My flu is still not entirely gone, and I am very tired. I’m almost three-quarters done with my redraft of ‘Eldritch’, which is great, and I learned yesterday that another of my short stories has been accepted for publication; I’m also (possibly) shortlisted for another competition. My database of stories written and submitted is looking nice and fat and healthy, and I’m pretty happy with what I’ve read of ‘Eldritch’ so far. Of course, it’ll need at least one more going-over before I’ll be happy to send it anywhere, but I can actually see it happening now – it seems real, achievable, and within my grasp. I am going to query a novel with agents and publishers. Even getting to this point is a dream come true.

But, sometimes, when you turn on the TV or search the web for news, and you realise just what some people are living with and dealing with on a daily basis, you would have to stop and wonder: ‘What is the point? What difference does it make, to anyone but me, that I’ve managed to achieve these tiny things?’ But I have to believe that creating something, writing a story that might bring some laughter and happiness into someone’s life, or giving a hug when one is needed, or sending support to a friend in need, or even just caring about what happens to other people, makes a difference. If I didn’t, I’m not sure what would keep me going.

Sorry for the depressing post today. I’ll try to be all about the kittens and the sparkliness tomorrow, okay?

Image: blogs.warwick.ac.uk

 

Horror

I’ve never been to Boston. I’ve never been anywhere in the US, for that matter. But Boston is a place which lives large in my imagination. When I think of America, I hear the Boston accent. I think of the streetscapes of Good Will Hunting, the pubs and the wide avenues and the laughing people. People who are proud of their heritage, particularly if it’s Irish heritage.

Image: blogs.uprm.edu

News footage of yesterday’s bombing of the Boston Marathon showed a fire truck parked not far from the finish line. Doctors, first responders, rescue personnel, police officers, the wounded and the terrified, thronged around it. From the ladder on the back of this fire truck a flag was flying; not the Stars and Stripes, but a flag that seemed so at home in this most Irish of American cities. It was the tricolour – the Irish flag. My flag.

The news from Boston was horrifying enough without the extra knowledge that some of the bereaved parents from Newtown, Conn., whose children were lost last December in another tragedy, were seated near the Marathon’s finish line. The twenty-sixth mile of the Marathon, as far as I know, was being run in memory of those who were killed in Connecticut. Injustice piled upon injustice for these familes, and the rest of us left to question: ‘Why? Why on earth, why would anyone do this?’

I would feel sympathetic and angry and horrified and sorry for those caught up in a tragedy like this no matter where it had taken place; my heart would’ve gone out to the victims, and to the brave medics and ambulance and fire crews regardless of where they were. But for some reason the fact that it was Boston which was visited by this terrible darkness makes it worse. The fact that a sporting event was targeted, an event in which people test themselves to find out what they’re made of, also makes it worse. The fact that it was a sporting event on a holiday in Boston, a day when families are out in droves, where children are off school and celebrating the onset of Spring, a day which should be full of joy, makes it worse. The fact that people who’ve already seen unimaginable tragedy should be caught up in it makes it worst of all.

Like everyone else, I’m trying to keep thinking about the massive response given by those who ran to help, those who ran straight towards the danger in order to find out who they could assist. I’m trying to think about the response on Twitter in the aftermath of the bombs, where people shared that they had room for a stranded runner to spend the night if they needed, or the numbers for people to call if they wanted to try to find a loved one, or how to donate blood in order to help. I’m trying to think about all the thousands of people who survived, and who will survive, due to the heroism of doctors, nurses, first responders and ordinary citizens. I’m thinking about how this Boston Marathon really showed what the people taking part in it were made of – not just in terms of their athletic ability, but in terms of their courage and compassion, too.

If there is to be any sort of ‘happy ending’ to this story, it should be that the majority of people are still good, and they still care, and they still want to help others. Their instinct is still to run towards those who need assistance, to try to think of ways they can help, to try to anticipate needs and fill them. No matter what happens, we need to hold onto this. Everyone has a role to play in making the world a more peaceful, and less horror-filled, place. Whether this is something as huge as drafting the law or keeping the peace, or simply being kind to every person you meet, makes no difference. We’ll never get there unless we are all pulling in the same direction.

Let’s all pull together on this one. Take care and have a happy Tuesday.