'The Red Butterfly' by circlesunderstreetlights

There’s a man at the top of the stairs, and he smells like rotten meat. When he’s really angry, the whole house shivers. I keep my eyes on the ground and my hands on the door frame when I go from the kitchen to the lounge, and back again. I don’t want him to see me. I don’t want to know if he’s looking at me.

I think he blames me. The red butterfly appeared nine days ago, just after seven in the morning. I woke up early again, needing to use the loo for the third time since the night before.

The heating wasn’t on but the bed was warm. Finally, though, I couldn’t wait, and that’s when I saw it. A red butterfly, rich in colour, beautiful in its symmetry. The crawling in my belly moved down my thighs and buttocks, became a pain that doubled me over. The cold air was a slap on the back of my legs where the nightshirt stuck and I reached for the phone.

Back from the hospital, I went straight to the sofa and lay in the blankets that someone had placed there. The cushion under my face smelled fusty and the TV was too loud, so I switched it off. I waited for the high whistle of electricity to fade and, when it didn’t, yanked and wiggled the cord until the plug dropped down behind the cabinet.

The whistle continued. I threw the blankets off, glared at the TV. My belly felt bruised but I thought a hot cup of tea might help. The kitchen’s only across the way. I took one, maybe two steps, enough to reach the kitchen door before the cold feeling hit me, a dragging feeling near my bladder that sent spiders up and over my skin. In front of the window, at the top of the stairs, was a man.

He’s not an ordinary man. I knew straight away he was there about the butterfly. I could feel how angry he was without even going back out to the stairs; shivers of rage were rolling off him. I didn’t make tea.

I think it took me hours to move. When I finally stepped back through the door, I could tell he was still there but I didn’t know if he was looking at me. I noticed the smell, then, a sickly sweet, cloying smell that’s become more foul in the days since. Sometimes I smell that smell and hear the whistling and it becomes overpowering, and I retch.

I sleep on the sofa, now, when I sleep. I go to the kitchen when I have to and I can tell, now, just by the amount of light that shows round him from the window that he’s starting to come down the stairs. I dream about the red butterfly and, in my dreams, it stinks, filling my nose with its filth. I think about the shivering man and wonder what will happen when he reaches me.

'Safety Catch' by Andrew Boobier

You and I both know this isn't going to work out. I've read many encyclopaedias & I have the feeling that's anathema to you. You're looking for a story, a little Velcro hook that snatches the imagination and whips you up into a flight of fancy or creates an imaginary space where some kind of character (you can’t help but admire and love) develops and where some important moral dilemma is played out. Frankly, that's all old hat. Things are a tad more self-reflective, ironic, sui generis, nowadays. I'm bored even talking about it, and I can see you nodding off already. I know I'm taking liberties; I've no idea who you are or what you're thinking. You might be the kind of person who isn't even shocked by my taking this gun out of the drawer. It's a Glock 17, 9x19 calibre. Black plastic body. The most widely used pistol for law enforcement agencies in the world. This is due to its reliability, low weight and above-average magazine capacity (17 rounds). It weighs less than 32oz and fits so snugly in the hand—my hand—it feels like an extension of the arm. Don't ask me where I got it. I haven't got a license and the serial number has been filed smooth away. It's untraceable. And that makes me think language itself is little more than a series of traces, marks, and scratches on the surface that can easily be erased. Writing's just another code, a form of encryption, something to be broken, deciphered & reconstituted. What's all this got to do with a gun? I'll tell you. No, I'll show you: The man writing puts down his pen and places the loaded gun gently into his mouth and grips it with gritted teeth, biting into the tactile polymer stock. The index finger of his right hand squeezes the trigger fully rearward so that it retracts and releases the striker. The safety catch is off.

'Riding the Carousel' by Tracy Fells

I let Andrew have the aisle seat to stretch his legs. Boxing Day and the cinema is full. Half an hour into the film an attention seeking mobile starts up. It sounds close. Our neighbours start to fidget. 

            Leaning sideways I nudge my son. “Is your phone off?”

            He grunts. My translator is playing up, so I’m not sure if that’s teenage-speak for “Yes Mum” or “P-off, you sad old cow”.

            When Andrew was born I’d thought becoming a parent was like jumping onto a fairground carousel, relentlessly spinning, only to find you can never get off again.

            Twenty minutes on and the mobile trills again. Irritated murmurs trip along the rows, it seems the afternoon house is packed with snake charmers. I hear: “how inconsiderate”, “sssh” and the sharper “turn it off, you moron”.

            This time I interpret his answer. “I haven’t brought it with me,’ Andrew hisses. Since he’s been surgically attached to the new touch-phone - a surprise present from Juliet – I find this hard to believe.

            Every five minutes the ringtone chirps. It sounds even closer. A man taps Andrew on the shoulder from the seat behind and growls an unpleasant suggestion. The mob is curdling around us.

            “For God’s sake, switch it off!” My voice squeaks horribly loud just as the soundtrack softens. And then I see it – flashing like a beacon. The mobile has fallen between our seats.

            Earlier in the coffee shop, sipping sickly sweet lattes, Andrew chastised me for not “making an effort” with Juliet. Apparently I’d get on really well with her. I guess we’d have some common interests: like sleeping with his father.

            My hand retrieves a glossy pink touch-phone. It’s stopped singing to begin a tremulous rumba. I clamber for the exit; head down I start to run. Angry snakes chase me all the way to the swinging doors.

            In the foyer I spy an usherette. “Somebody’s lost this in the auditorium,” I gush. “Good job I found it; thought we were going to get lynched back there!”

            The girl’s eyes blink like a stoned rabbit, but she takes the phone.

            As the film ends I prod Andrew from his seat to quickly merge into the crowd. Elbows jab and vile comments whisper behind us as we jostle forwards.

            In the coffee shop Andrew had announced he was going to live with his dad and Juliet. Six months to start with, to see how it worked out.

            Outside the streetlamps glimmer.

            “Are you going to say sorry?” Andrew’s voice is teenage tart with a dash of hurt.

            “For what?”

            “You never listen to me, do you?” The accusation hangs in the air like our frosty dragon breaths. I lift the fringe from his eyes, revealing a shock of pimples. He flinches, pulls back and strides away.

            I used to paralyse myself imagining the carousel could ever stop. And nothing had quite prepared me for the devastation of being asked to leave the ride.

'Pig' by Marybeth Rua-Larsen

 She insisted on calling it pig, and even now, she refused to eat it.  After their divorce and the lengthy custody battle, we thought she’d leave behind every reminder of him and his peculiar views, but this was the one thing to which she held true.  Pork was forbidden.

            He’d always said that pigs were filthy animals.  They rolled around in mud and shit.  They ate mud and shit and anything else they could inhale.  He’d banned all pig and pig products from the household.

            He’d grown up on a pig farm.  He’d fed them, wrestled them into their pens, slaughtered them for sale, and boiled them into blood pudding.  When they met, she could smell it on him, though he’d showered twice and splashed on after shave.  She should have taken that lingering stench as a sign, but she didn’t.  This, she thought, was a man so low she couldn’t help but lift him, and when he asked her to elope, she squealed a yes that jolted him into severing all contact with his parents and sister in a final butchering of his former life.

            Six years and three kids later, he was jobless and unemployment had run out.  He was never happy, and she couldn’t make him so.  He didn’t want to go to the local community college and retrain in another career (After pigs, who would have me? he said). He couldn’t slice meat at the local deli (too many memories).  Every job had an unacceptable pig association.  When he walked out of his first therapy session (that shrink had beady eyes), she took the kids and left.   

            We asked her why she didn’t stock the fridge with the pickled pigs’ feet she’d loved as a child, or why she hadn’t already set a rack of ribs ablaze on the grill now that he was gone.  She grunted and looked away, then admitted that one of the kids had sprouted a tail, another’s feet were cleaving into hooves, and the third had two pink triangles budding near her temples.  Soon they’d have to gather the straw, sticks and bricks and commence building. 

'Not Sleeping' by Fiona Ritchie Walker

In my own room I’d have picked up the clock, squinted at the luminous dial, the chameleon hands. But I’m six thousand miles away in a new time zone night, which is why there’s a hotel phone close to my face. I’m looking for hours and minutes, find buttoned numbers, hash tag, asterisk.

My body clock’s gone off. Even my stomach’s growling. Somehow last night’s three courses have been digested by my old time zone body leaving my stomach, taste buds, brain all crying out for food.

There’s nothing to eat in this room. No kettle, coffee or tea. No sugar sachets to rip open, pour onto my waiting tongue. Only clothes in my suitcase, documents in the carry bag, not even a stick of gum. So I sit in the darkness, holding the phone. It keeps my hands busy.

I lie. It’s not completely dark. I can see shapes rising up. Here is the chair with yesterday’s shirt snowdrifting across it. This could be a crouching dog, though I know it’s my case, top half open. And here in my hand, curved like driftwood, warm like a stranger’s shoulder, is the phone. It wants me to dial that familiar number, so I do. I cut off the buzz of the live line with my thumb. The buttons click into silence. Nothing rings.

In the house, in her time zone, it’s just getting dark. The heating’s on too high because as soon as the sun goes she says she starts to feel the chill. The fridge is filled with too much milk. She says she forgets I’m not there but we both know she hates to break her routine. Two cartons on the way home from the office, never a large one, she says it won’t stay fresh.

She’ll have to make hot chocolate, use it up. She’s thinking about it now, how it will taste. She pours the milk high above the pan, watches it fall, white chiffon, watches it splash, spilt emulsion. Watches it bubble, agitate, make heat flowers.

She leans her head against the door, not because she’s tired, but to watch it roll and boil. She sprinkles the dark powder over, makes islands, picks up the whisk and beats a figure of eight with a little twist at the end. I love watching her wrist, it’s like it’s dancing.

She should switch off the gas but she doesn’t. She drops the whisk against the side of the pan, waits. Everything’s circling up. Soon it will froth and foam.

She rubs her eye, yawns, daring the hot, the wet to erupt on her clean stove. It looks like she’s forgotten but when the milk blows high she snaps off the gas, jerks the handle like it’s a naughty kid, pours the frothing river into the white mug with the sailboat on the side and flips the pan into the sink.

A whole mug of sweet steaminess and I will drink none of it.

'Closed Season' by Brindley Hallam Dennis

You might not think of it today, but in winter rain inundates the terrace, and a cold wind blows off the mountain, sweeping the residual summer heat out to sea.

Frost grows on the stones, like pale lichen. They bring in the statuary then, all those smug and unabashed, and naked, cherubs, the sylphs and satyrs.

And the women of flesh and blood who cross-leg the Art-Deco chairs and lean against the balustrade overlooking the bay, exposed, but not to be stared at, they too have gone away, and the blue sky has brought down its grey shutters, and the waiters have been sacked, until spring. They have headed north, to deeper snows, whiter frosts and ice blue skies beneath a bright sun.

A few of us stick out the grey, wet months, clean, even into the awkward places, the unseen corners, the surfaces that cannot be seen until you are on your hands and knees, on your back.

We lift the carpets and beat them. Dust does not fly as it would on dryer days, but falls sullen to the stone, from which it must be scraped rather than brushed, washed rather than blown away.

We net a cleaner's haul too, of what's been lost, overlooked, dropped, forgotten, cast away. Jewellery sometimes, wedding bands. Underwear, almost always a disappointment. The most appalling clothes. Jogging pants. Cotton Ts. There are the usual toothbrushes, combs, cosmetics. Cufflinks every now and then – rarely a matching pair. Earrings. Occasional tissues, used; sometimes bloody.

Hastily stashed joints; rarely, a book with one page folded down; letters that might incriminate in the wrong hand. Buttons fallen off, pulled; too much food and wine; enough lust.

Once a dress shoe, a man's in a single lady's room. Imagine him in the dawn's slanting light, limping away. Dried tears on the pillows are too faint to see.

We look for money; small denomination coins. Someone, whom you never meet, but hear of down the chain, is always said to find a folded wad that will not be reclaimed. Most common of all, I doubt you'll guess, chargers for mobile phones, computers, cameras, other toys.

Everything that we can lift, take down, un-string, unhinge, un-hang, we wash or wipe or brush, or throw away. Rain stipples the windows where the view is best. We watch the raindrops gather like a crowd, and then disperse.

Open the FlashFlood Gates!

Welcome to FlashFlood, the pop-up journal for National Flash-Fiction Day 2012.


Over the past 7 days we have gathered flash-fictions from over a hundred writers from around the globe and brought them here to let them loose on you, our beloved readers! There is everything here: happiness, despair, love, life, death, and cake . You name it, we probably have a story about it.


These tiny gems will be appearing every ten minutes or so, all through the day, right up until midnight, courtesy of a sterling team of editors (and me). So, sit back, strap in, and prepare to be deluged by a veritable flood of flash-fictions!


Calum, Susi, Shirley, Nettie, Caroline, Susan and Cassandra.
The FlashFlood Editors