Night storm. Tree falls. In the morning swingball stands disdainful, tosses its haughty mane. Of a single dog-chewed tennis ball on a frayed fluorescent nylon string. Tree stays down. Lies with lime-green plastic bats on the grass-green grass. Vanquished. Drums its twigs on the neighbour’s fence. Fence tilts but doesn’t fall. Tree sighs and settles. Waits.
Based on original observation by @johnhiggs
In the flooded days, with electricity gone, the villagers turned to folk music for strength, acoustic. Toes tapped, splashily.
Juanì opened the single tap. The pipes shook the loose tiles above the bath, covering the sound of the drums welcoming the saint’s day. Thin clay water poured, then cleared and began to swirl the red dust away.
Juanì fit the broken tile onto the grate and the bath began to fill. Thin dust rose and fell in waves in the water. It sparkled in the light between the roof and the wall and settled in forbidden river beach patterns. When the fresh welcoming water was deeper, the sand would feel reassuring beneath his feet.
The water crashed down like the Angeles cascade, a twisting splitting splashing rope. The tank on the roof must be nearly empty with the rains now so close. Sweat washed streams of dirt from Juanì’s forehead, his temples, and he wiped it away, shook his fingers away from the bath. The water was nearly enough.
He closed the tap and the clear water slowly stilled, a single green filament of weed settling on the rippled sands around the grate.
Juanì pulled off his father’s shirt and his brother’s shorts and stepped into the water. He saw his feet, his ankles, his shins, his calves darken. He sat down, closed his eyes. He stretched out and lay below the water, bubble breathed out through his nose. The drums of the saint’s day grew louder and became the drumming of his mother’s fists on the door.
The door swung open and slammed against the bath. His mother’s mouth was open, black. The rain on the iron roof drowned out her cries, begging forgiveness from the saint, begging him to give back what only he could. The golden red fish hung, nearly motionless, in the clear still water, eyes blank.
Also published on http://flashfloodjournal.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/the-saints-day-by-simon-williams.html for National Flash Fiction Day 2014
Madeleine licked, crunched, swallowed an iced birthday biscuit. And another. Father had said no cake so she sat alone and ate birthday biscuits. The sweet licking, the soft crunching, the gritty swallowing, she loved it, over, over and over. Until later. Then no more iced biscuits for ever. She remembers.
The man who helped pull my car out the ditch wouldn’t take any money. Not a cent. Just my little finger to wear on a string round his neck.
She paradiddled, paradiddled, stamped, stamped. She turned on her heel and flamencoed her hand. Light flashed. A shuffle, a shuffle. Her wide wide smile was toothy and white. One more box step – or two, too fast – then stamp! The knife missed the target but hit the man cleanly. Jazz hands!
Some mid-season tourists were hanging around in the Gardens, waiting for the explosion. It was a couple of minutes to one and that was all there seemed to be to do. The locals were busy with their voting but the shops were open and you could still buy tartan towels and travel rugs.
Jan had sold the experience to the boys as an explosion rather than the One O’Clock Gun. She’d get them to look up to the castle and see the smoke before they heard the bang. But it was five past, ten past, now and the boys were getting bored. Just a couple more minutes, she told them, the soldiers must be having their dinner. And then – it was strange – she heard the explosion but didn’t see the smoke. She wondered why the gun was so late – 13.14, she remembered later – and the boys gave a little cheer.
After the boys had gone to sleep, she went down to the hotel bar. And that was when the gun sounded again, just before quarter past eight. The windows shook and rattled and Jan screamed a cut-off scream into her drink. She worked near the embassies and had been on edge for twenty years. ‘Colonist!’ A man at the bar spat. Jan had no idea what he was talking about. He carried on.
‘No more bowing down to the rich man’s whims and wishes, that’s what it means.’
The barman: ‘Unless they’re Scottish, I suppose. The rich men. Then we’d have to bow and scrape.’
‘It’s started, no matter how the vote goes. Hear the glorious guns of Bannockburn and Independence Day?’
The next day Jan bought shortbread and a Jimmy Shand CD. She was at Waverley in plenty of time but there were no trains south.
(First published in The List magazine’s referendum special 23 January – 20 February 2014)
http://www.list.co.uk/article/58010-flash-fiction-new-writing-inspired-by-the-2014-scottish-independence-referendum/
Got up in the half light. Found half a mouse on the bathmat. Stepped over it. Found another mangled corpse on the living room carpet. Didn’t know we had mice. Remembered, too late, we don’t have a cat.
On my icy late way home, in the orange urban light, I drop my chips. Bag splits; chips spill. Fortunately, the pavement has been salted. Dino was less lucky. He dropped his fresh-shucked oysters on the freshly gritted hill.
The shark and the seahorse eyed the sea of conversations, who and how to join. Currents of unvoiced thoughts swayed weeds.
simonsalento 