'Linda' by Martin Stewart

His father rubbed his back.
‘Now, son, I know you’re upset, but don’t say things like that. This is what it’s all about.’
‘Is it? This pain?’
‘No, son, the good stuff before the pain; holding hands, kissing and cuddling. All the good stuff.’
The boy sniffed.
‘Why did she dump me though, Dad? I thought everything was okay. I thought she liked me.’
The father smiled knowingly.
‘That’s the way of women, son, you never know what they’re thinking until it’s too late.’
‘You always know what mum’s thinking.’
‘Ha! Not really, son, ask your mother- she’ll tell you that’s not true. It’s just a matter of guessing right.’
The boy sat up now, dragging a crusty sleeve across his top lip.
‘Do you remember what this was like, Dad, when you were younger?’
The father’s eyed glazed.
‘I do, son, I do,’ he said. ‘Everything is perfect. You lie together until the birds are singing outside your window and the nights still seem too short. You feel a jolt of electricity each time you touch and your hearts beat as one; you want your souls to be entwined so that you can realise your love’s possibilities- a love greater than flesh, greater than spirit. A love beyond the reach of time. You can lie and stare at her face for hours; her skin a perfect canvas waiting for the paint of your kisses, her taste the finest wine. It’s the smell of her hair in the mornings, and her heartbeat under your hand when you lie together is the heartbeat of the earth itself.  When you’re with her you’re never alone. All your experiences are shared; everything you see, she sees. Your lives are one; two people joined by a love so strong that from the other side of the world her love can bring you home.
‘But when you break apart her heartbeat is only for her; the canvas of her skin waiting for the paint of another man’s kisses, and where before you couldn’t slake your love no matter how you tried now you’d give anything just to taste her kisses’ wine for one last time.
‘Once you break apart your experiences are your own again, and isolation mocks your every step. So you just stay in bed and cry and say her name to yourself over and over again.
‘“Linda,” you say. “Linda”.’
The boy wailed and sobbed, his body racked with grief, his spine arched with force of his tears.
He struggled to force out some words. The father leaned in attentively.
‘Who’s Linda?’ whispered the boy.

'Trieste Spam' by Simon Lavery

M.K. ‘Don’ Strachan was living in Trieste; its name signifies ‘marketplace’, which explains why most foreigners go there – they usually have something to sell.  His grandfather knew James Joyce in his Berlitz days there, or so he claimed; they used the same optician and used to (dimly) see each other there sometimes.  Stanislaus and Jim would join them for drinks together in the waterfront bars; his grandfather always paid. 

Don was an amateur semiotician.  He was working on a book: Spam as Signifier-the semiotics of junk mail.  When he finished his day-job as a clerk in a bank he would resume his academic work; he avers that junk emails are the most textually rich e-messages that we receive.  We should prioritize them and consign to a ‘junk’ folder all the emails we receive from known sources: friends, work colleagues, family.  Spam, he believes, is the found poetry of the digital age, the electronic equivalent of the ‘words of the prophets’ that are ‘written on the subway walls’.  Spam is the expression of the zeitgeist, not junk.  That is Don’s argument, and he refines it every night in his lucubrations.

He has never received dubious emails from helpful-sounding Nigerians claiming that he has a long-lost bank account that has just been discovered, and that if he will only send his own bank’s details he will receive a large sum of money.  He does, however, receive phone-calls in Italian telling him that he could make five thousand euros from his recent accident.  He is considering an extra chapter on the linguistic strategies of cold-callers, with particular reference to their opening gambits.

Once, in an idle moment in the bank, he composed a spam message of his own on his iPad and sent it to his work email address.  When he opened his work email account remotely that night when he returned home, he feigned surprised delight. 

'Yellow Ball' by Mandy Huggins

Maurice Matthews stood at the kitchen window, coffee cup in hand, and surveyed the clipped and manicured garden that his wife had bullied into submission. He yearned for a cottage garden; one that would offer herself up as a louche maiden, long stems swaying in the gentle breeze, scattering petals untidily across mossy paths.

Meredith Matthews swept into the kitchen and broke the spell; observing, not for the first time, that if he didn’t get a move on he would be late for work.

As he pushed his bicycle down the path he noticed a lone daisy that had dared to rear her pretty head at the edge of the lawn. She was only half awake, and the undersides of her slender white petals were stained pink. Maurice was not a gambling man, but if he were, he would have considered it a safe bet to assume that the tiny flower would be despatched to daisy heaven before he returned from work.

However his wife had not yet spotted the horticultural transgression, intent as she was upon the ginger tom cat that had leapt onto the roof of the garden shed. As quick as lightening she took a yellow ping pong ball from the basket on the window ledge - one of many that were there for that specific purpose - and threw it at the cat through the open kitchen door. The ball missed completely, glanced off the shed roof and sailed over the high hedge into the road. 

As Meredith reached for a second ball, she heard the squeal of brakes, followed by a dull thud. Not having her outdoor shoes on she was forced to go into the hallway to fetch them before she went to see what had happened in the street.

At the open doorway to the living room her eye was caught by a rumpled anti-macassar on Maurice’s chair back. She went in to straighten it and noticed that the crocheted cloth was looking a little worn. The decline of the anti-macassar was something that Meredith was still struggling to comes to terms with. It had become nigh on impossible to find them in the shops, and she was seriously considering crocheting her own.

She spotted a few other irregularities in the room. There were crumbs on the carpet by Maurice’s chair arm, and a rug fringe that had been kicked askew.  Engrossed in their correction, Meredith did not hear the ambulance pull up in the street outside. She did not see Maurice lifted onto a stretcher, his unconscious mind replaying a scene where a small yellow ball hit him squarely in the eye and sent his bicycle careering into the path of an oncoming car.

Eventually Meredith went into the hall for her sensible outdoor shoes. As she tied the laces, Maurice took his last breath in the back of the ambulance, and was carried upwards, unresisting, to a garden more lovely in its tumbled abandonment than any he had ever seen.

'Escape' by Cathy Bryant

I had been warned about the Enchanter's gifts - they always came with a sting in the tail. Yet how else could I escape from the castle dungeons? I needed his help if I was going to get away safely and reach my forbidden love, the young prince. He did not know I had been imprisoned, I was sure - he had sworn to marry me, and he would have rescued me if he had known what they had done to me.
So when the Enchanter had come to my cell and made his offer, I couldn't refuse.In exchange for my secrets - and a quiet, almost invisible kitchen maid in a castle knows many, you can be sure of that - the enchanter bespelled the guards long enough to give me a cloak of total invisibility.
"You cannot be seen, heard nor felt while you wear it," he explained. "Are you sure you want it?"
I nodded eagerly.
He smiled darkly and left.
After donning the dark, slithery garment, it was a simple matter of waiting until my disappearance was noticed. The guards rushed in and stared stupidly about the cell; I swept quickly out. The Enchanter was right - I was soundless as well as invisible.I raced up passages towards the royal apartments. On the way I passed the Enchanter's room.
I slipped in to thank him, and found him at his desk, poring over an old parchment. I tried to unfasten the cloak - and it wouldn't come off. It was stuck fast. I called, but the Enchanter couldn't hear me. In a panic, I knocked over his ink-pot, just to get his attention.
"Ah, it's you," he muttered. "Yes. I heard the alarm. I suppose you want to know how to get the cloak off."
I did.
"It will fall off when you are with your one true soulmate," said the Enchanter somewhat sadly. Perhaps he was lonely. I wrote my thanks in spilled ink, and sped on winged feet to the prince's chambers, dancing unperceived past the guards.
And there He was, and I gazed at him with the full force of my love and joy.And he couldn't see me at all...
I begged and pleaded and called; I caressed him and shook him and clutched at him, none of which he could feel; and I tore his clothes, which frightened him. But it was no good.
And not a soul can hear me now, as I weep my broken heart out.
I am trapped in loneliness and silence forever.
I haven't escaped at all.

'Farmyard' by Sal Page

He holds the gun to his head. Alice stops walking. Her blistered heels throb. He looks right at her. Defiant yet resigned. From the house behind him a dog barks. Alice pulls off her rucksack and fumbles for her phone as his body slumps into the slurry with a squelch. Her own blood pounding in her ears, Alice makes the call. A lady called Pat tells her it won’t be long. Pat’s kindness makes tears prickle in Alice’s eyes. She blinks furiously. She can’t look back at the farmer, if that’s who he is. Was. She stares at the cows in the barn, chewing and blowing out clouds of steam. They gaze back with intelligent curious eyes. As the paramedics appear in the yard, Alice wonders if the farmer was incredibly cowardly or terribly brave.

Welcome to Issue 2

Hello and welcome to the second issue of FlashFlood, the National Flash-Fiction Day journal.

Yes, I know NFFD was back in May, but we thought we'd do it again to remind you about us, and to let you know that we are starting our plans for next year. We're hoping that it will be even bigger and better than this year (if that's even possible!) and we need your help to do that.

So, if you want to keep in touch with NFFD2013 goings on, please send an email to nationalflashfictionday@gmail.com and we'll add you to the mailing list. If you are willing to go one step further and offer to help out on the day (22nd June), organise an event, or can link us up with arts organisations or even, dare we say it, sources of funding, then we'd love to hear about that too.



With the submission period being only a week, we've had our work cut out to sort through the entries for this edition (so apologies if you feel we were too curt in our responses, this was simply caused by busy people trying to get a job done!) and I need to give especial thanks to the editorial team: Shirley Golden, Susi Holliday, Susan Howe, Caroline Kelly, Cassandra Parkin and Nettie Thomsom. They've done a great job and I'm sure you'd want to join me in thanking them. 

 But for now, enough of that, we have over 80 wonderful stories coming to you all day long, posting reguarlarly to this blog right up until midnight tonight. So sit back, grab a drink, and enjoy the cascade of wonderful fictions that will be coming your way in a moment.

Calum Kerr
FlashFlood editor and Director of National Flash-Fiction Day

Issue 2 is coming...

Welcome to FlashFlood an international flash-fiction journal created by you and edited by a team of volunteer editors on behalf of National Flash-Fiction Day. We're pleased to launch a second issue for your enjoyment, to appear next Friday - 12th October.

The aim is simple, wherever you are in the world, we want your best flash-fictions. The word limit is 500 words, but that's the only rule. Any subject, any genre, any style, any perspective, anything as long as it's flash.

Submissions close at the 23.59, 10th October (BST), so don't delay.

The stories will be posted regularly throughout the day on Friday 12th October, providing you with a constant diet of brand new flash-fictions to fill your day.

Please paste your story into the body of your email and send it to flashfloodjournal@gmail.com. (A maximum of 3 pieces per author, please.)

We can't wait to read your work!