The old man told me: Night after night the moon kisses the sea to hide her pale loneliness. Then, from behind the thinning clouds, the stars appear. Several fall and disappear, but if you watch closely, one, always one, flies across the face of the moon. She turns her head and a night breeze rises, follows the star and he rides the night wind with the moon. For a night at least he is hers and she his. And that is what you must live for.
Short story
It’s all about Euan
Euan was Scottish and Mimi was French. When they got together their friends called it a clear case of bilateral nominative determinism.
At first they always agreed in first person – Euan said ‘aye’ and Mimi said ‘oui’.
But then, then.
“It’s all about Euan, isn’t it?”
“Oh, very funny. Mimi Mimi Mimi, that’s all I hear.”
They were a contrapuntal couple until the centripetal became centrifugal. Euan said ‘aye’ and really meant it: Mimi said ‘oui’ but it never was again.
Secret
Green was the colour of the angels as they swept down, swords trailing sparks which tumbled like falling stars and settled in our upturned eyes. I do not know why they left the children alive; we did not deserve it.
Many years later, when the red sky had returned to morning, my grandmother, just before dying, whispered to me the secret of the family.
With my sister I went to the forge on the bank of the shining river and in the ashes found my sword. I shook off my cloak and unfurled my green wings. The sky closed forever.
First published on http://www.101fiction.com 01March 2015
See you later
Steve thought he’d spice up his walk by imagining Neil was a bloodthirsty zombie. “See you later sucker!” he shouted. He turned, ran, fell.
Mother Jarvie pushed her bicycle
Mother Jarvie pushed her bicycle along the street that was now part strand; she could not have pedalled through the sheets of sand the night’s storms had lifted across the road, shingle spattering and cracking the windows of the fisherfolk’s cottages. The road was ridged with grey-gold sand, as if the beach were edging away from the roiling sea.
She pushed on, her thoughts lost in the sea, in the past, in the howling of the long ago storm when her Peter had been dragged to the seabed, dragged down and bounced against the sand and slicing sharp rock and spat out peaceful, drained, to the waiting beach one Sunday morning. When they slowly lifted the weed from across his thin white face, she fainted dead.
She pushed on. The sea would not stop her, the sand it had thrown would not stop her. Her arms burned, her back ached, pain filled her head from jaw to crown but on she pushed. People watched in silence from behind loose windows, sheltered from the constant wind. The sky was black.
She pushed on, in her basket the scraps of bread she would throw to the sea so it would never again take a young one. She pushed on.
First published https://flashfriday.wordpress.com/2015/01/23/flash-friday-vol-3-7/#comment-25519
23 January 2015
The Janitor
Bruno pulled the rake through the clodded sand. It stank of iron and ammonia but at least now the flies had stopped their gorging; now they no longer funnelled fatly up around Bruno’s face when he disturbed them. He sweated and choked in the smoky still air. He swallowed, hawked and spat, then swallowed again when he saw what his rake had dragged up. The lion’s tooth caught the light from the guttering torches around the arena.
He picked up the tooth and turned it over in his hand. It was jagged at the base so it was broken, it had not just dropped from the jaw of one of the older lions, the ones who were too tired to attack until starved and tormented with long stabbing spears. One of the traitors must have fluked a lucky blow before he met his divine punishment or perhaps the lions had butted heads in the ripping and rending of flesh, the cracking of bone.
Bruno slipped the tooth into his pouch. He would hand it in to his gangmaster when the sand in the arena was ready for the next day’s bloodletting. It might be worth an extra piece of bread. He spat and began to rake again.
First published http://www.flashfriday.wordpress.com 16 January 2015
Sam died just outside the ladies’ changing rooms
Sam died just outside the ladies’ changing rooms, sitting on one of those padded plastic benches where the bored husbands wait to say everything looks lovely. He was watching a woman walk by carrying champagne flutes and a Christmas sweater when the pain started and his heart stopped. None of the men noticed anything different until Felicity emerged in her potential party dress and, smiling apologetically at those who had survived him, gave the slumping Sam a poke.
The commotion in the department store exploded then soon calmed; they almost seemed used to it. Inside Felicity’s head the commotion lasted much, much longer. Hours later she found herself sitting on the edge of her bed, her sensible coat draped around her bare shoulders. She shrugged it off. Somehow she was still wearing the sparkling black party dress. She stood and looked at herself in the mirror, turned one shoulder and reached round to pull down the zip. It had jammed. She almost, almost, called out for Sam then cried as if she would never stop.
Scratch and lick
Boy meets girl and girl meets boy.
Honey, perhaps undercut with a lemon premonition.
Girl and boy turn and walk away.
An aftertaste of old saccharine.
Boy and girl, alone; girl and boy.
Thick curtain odour of whisky, rum and yesterday’s cigarettes.
Girl and boy catch glimpses across a crowded room.
Memories of rich red wine in glinting glasses.
Boy and girl leave crowded room, alone.
Eyestinging chilli till the morning light but no vinegar dream regrets.
Or perhaps, perhaps, a flavour.
Flames danced
The stranger looked past Kelly as the fire cleaned, hollowed, scoured the building. Flames danced in his dark eyes.
Kelly could not look away. The flames flickered higher and higher, the spinning blue lights behind her lit and shadowed his face.
Later, the sun coming up behind him darkened his face. The fire was dead but still they stood there, flames in his eyes still flaring.
He pulled the hood closer. He lifted her cold hand to his lips and blew gently on it. Time stopped. Blackness.
The stranger’s fingers were still linked with hers, the sun still rising. He began to walk away from the black dead building. Kelly followed and they ran side by side, fingers still locked together.
On the wasteland beyond the not yet burnt buildings they stopped, breathed heavily, the flames in Kelly’s eyes reflected in the stranger’s.
“Gonna do another one the mornin’?”
“Aye.”
“One! Two!”
The wheels of the roller-coaster car creaked as the boys stepped off the ladder. They brushed the old birds’ nests from the faded shallow seats and wedged themselves in. “One! Two!” What looked like miles below, the first fire trucks arrived. The car lurched forward. Timmy saw his mother’s face.
simonsalento 