Before the flood we made our own sandbags. Filled old hessian sacks with sand until our hands became orange and our backs ached. Our patch of lawn gained a flamingo – an escapee from the wildlife centre – who eyed us suspiciously. The radio burbled out updates until there was nothing to hear but fuzzy static. Granny appeared from upstairs clutching a figurine of some saint that was meant to save us, and walked right past the pygmy marmoset sitting in the fruit bowl. She smiled serenely at us like we were packing for a holiday, as she watched us shovelling. All afternoon we laid the sandbags at the front of the house, ignoring the meerkats on the trampoline. They stood like sentries watching us until Jake threw them cheese cubes and they scattered. Mum said we would regret throwing away good food. Have we done enough? I asked Dad and he said that the time for doing enough had been twenty years ago and he was sorry that this is what it had come to. At dusk Granny placed Saint Florian on the highest point of our barricade and went to bed, mumbling a loop of prayers. When the waters returned it was almost a relief. The otter swam out the door with the current that surged up through the drains, while the marmoset shrieked and threw tangerines at us in disgust. The flamingo’s legs buckled like willow branches and disappeared into the torrent. I like to think the pelican placed Granny’s statuette in the dry cave of its huge beak and flew somewhere safe. So that’s what I told her in the morning when she and the meerkats appeared for breakfast, all of them nodding, palms pressed together in prayer.
Catherine Ogston has had flash fiction published by Bath Flash, Reflex Press, Flash 500, TL;DR Press, The Phare and others. Upcoming in Best Microfiction 2025. Longer work has been published by New Writing Scotland, Leicester Writes Short Story Prize, Scottish Arts Trust, Fabuly and others. Short/long listed at Exeter Novel, Caledonia Novel, Kelpies Prize and others.
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