'Darren' by Sarah Snell-Pym

Darren sat and watched the sky, he often did. It helped him dream and think of the past times when he was happy, when the world had seemed to be on his side. But that had been a long time ago now and he hadn't been left with much, just the clothes on his back and the train ticket. Ah yes the train ticket. It had been a golden egg, though he hadn't thought so on the long journey as he'd watched others eating and drinking.

He'd got no money and no hope and he had no idea why he had gone to the station and gotten on the train and even less of an idea what he would do the other end. He had been pretty sure he was in trouble; he was in debt so deep and had dragged others with him. Then in desperation he had thought to claim on insurance for a small fire that he had orchestrated. But it had gone wrong and the whole lot had gone up and he knew with a sinking feeling watching the firemen that they suspected him.

And so he had boarded the train and it had taken him to the Lake District and there beneath a dark blanket of sky he had decided to become a non-person.

No money? Who cared? He'd been sure he could find something and that he had. First it had been an old barn and then when he was turfed from that six weeks later he had found a hollow tree the size of a small (very small) room. Then when he thought the Woodland people had found him he'd moved on.

He'd been malnourished by then but had not cared. Then he'd found the campsite and had showered and washed the tatters that were his clothes. He’d slept the first night in the toilets and then had found an abandoned tarp the next day. The campsite wasn't manned and only asked for donations and he had the tarp. He made a shelter and then? Then he was camping and there were fires permitted and people left their wood behind, bits here and there, and often they didn't want to take excess food home.

And so Darren had lived at the campsite and spent the days walking the barren hills. But his mind niggled. He remembered the before and it seemed to him he was never warm now, never not hungry and he wondered sometimes if prison was better than this but the purple clouds and green hills had him captivated. He shivered and wrapped the old tarp around himself in the hope of some extra warmth.

That night he sank into the warmest of sleeps, one he would not have awoken from if the farmer who ran the campsite hadn't been collecting the money from their box.  When he awoke Darren wasn't sure he was grateful.

'Eric' by Darren Seeley

Everyone said Eric was too nice.

Every afternoon he would walk through Victory Park to his favourite bench by the pond and bougainvillea.  From his vantage point he watched the birds come and go across the water.  He would doff his cap to passers-by and smile and make funny faces at the children in prams.  

On Sundays, he collected lists from the elderly people in his building and spent the day doing their shopping, making sure they had everything they could need.  Mrs Wilberforce said he was like the son she never had.

It had been years since Mary had gone but he still felt her inside, giving him strength. They said he'd never quite come to terms with it, never looked comfortable again in his own skin, which like his overcoat on his ever diminishing frame had become too big for him.

Alone at night, he sat by the kitchen table and scratched at the coffee stains and pushed crumbs into the gaps where the wood was split. His hands trembled, trying to get at something and though he didn't know it, all the while he made a low humming noise with his lips as if he were unconsciously trying to dissolve the silence and fill his head with something other than his own thoughts.

Eric would imagine Mary opposite him, smiling over the top of her cup and reading him crossword clues from the newspaper. Her brown hair would fall around her face and even now he would reach out to touch it, gently, feel it slip around his fingers and watch her lips purse coyly as she shied away from his attention.

Eric thought Mary was beautiful, and when he looked into her eyes he found answers to questions he didn't even realise he had asked.

He didn't do crosswords anymore, hadn't for a while.  He wasn't able to concentrate so much these days, and the last time he'd held a pen in the post office, it had shook so much he couldn't write his own name.  He found it difficult to remember things.

But Eric used to be a fireman and there he had learned how to do CPR.  Two weeks ago, a man had collapsed in Victory Park.  Eric remembered everything, and down on the grass, surrounded by a small crowd of concerned onlookers, he had saved the man's life. For a moment he believed that Mary hadn’t died in the car he was driving and finally he could live in this world again without drink and be good for something, rather than nothing.

'Staying on Track' by Angela Wooldridge

The quiet carriage, with its view of the driver leaning casually against the controls didn’t have the crowd Peter needed to lose himself in.

But there was less chance for a knife in the ribs.

He concentrated on looking inconspicuous, acutely conscious of the papers taped to his chest, crumpled and clammy now after his flight. He could only pray the ink hadn’t run.

He looked back at the driver, at the unnatural angle of his head and a chill of disquiet shuddered down his spine. With no driver to negotiate the complicated track system it was only a matter of time before the train derailed.

Tension thrummed through his body and a bead of sweat trickled down his face. The poor bastard next to him must be near dead from exhaustion not to notice, but that was what years of fear and repression under Hitler had done. These people had shut themselves off from the horror around them, but it wouldn’t stop them from denouncing him to save their own skin.

That was what he and others like him were fighting so hard to stop, why the papers plastered to his skin were so desperately important and why nothing must prevent him from completing this mission.

It was also why he couldn’t sit by and watch all these people die without lifting a finger to help.

As he moved, his neighbour’s hand shot out and clamped around his arm, pinning him back into his seat.

Icy blue eyes glared into his. “Do not move.” The man hissed.

Peter strained against him. “You don’t understand.”

“Yes. I do.” 

The man shifted his arm to display the design on his inner wrist.

The Unbroken Circle. Suicide vigilantes, they only received the tattoo when assigned to a mission they wouldn’t return from.

The man nodded. “The guards in the next carriage must not reach their destination.”

“Kill them then.” Peter gritted his teeth. “You don’t have to involve the rest of us.”

“It must look like an accident.”

“Look,” he tried, “we’re on the same side. I’m on an important mission.”

“As are we all, my friend. You will stay here with me.” The arm clamped back across him.

“Bloody fanatics.” As he threw himself against the other man, the door at the far end of the carriage snapped open.

Hope flared briefly in his chest, then fizzled out and died.

It was the Sector Commandant, flanked by two officers.

They were looking for him.

Blue-eyes shouted and launched himself down the carriage, as did several others who had been seated quietly.

Peter took advantage of the furore.

It didn’t last long. The guards from the next carriage soon overpowered the dissidents.

“Driver,” ordered the Commandant. “Stop at the next station to dispose of these prisoners.”

Peter turned and saluted, bringing his fingers to the brim of the driver’s hat, then leaned casually back against the controls.

'The old violin' by Cath Barton

I’d always been told that it was a very old, very precious instrument. I’d been told that my grandmother had played it in Vienna. That I was lucky to have it. That I was really, really lucky to have it.

I hated that violin. It sat in its case, wrapped up in an old yellow silk headscarf, and mocked me. I swear that it talked at night. The wind carried the voice of the old violin to me even when I wasn’t at home. It was a rebuke from the past for the things I would fail to achieve in the future.

If I had practised. If I had tried.

“Just tried for your grandmother.”

“Why should I?” I had said as a child. “She was a witch.”

My mother had never forgiven me for that. She had worshipped Grandmama. Who had been so brave. And so beautiful. So very beautiful.

I couldn’t see what was beautiful about her. The picture that my mother kept was grey. Grey with age. I hated her. I hated everything and everyone old. I was never going to grow old and I didn’t want the violin mocking me.

So I smashed it. I opened up the case, shook the instrument out of its protecting scarf and flung it across the room. It didn’t make a loud noise. It didn’t make the kind of splintering noise I expected. It was more like a series of little sighs. Like a very old cat which no longer has any strength in its back legs or energy to do more than crawl from one sleeping position to another. That violin had, I realised with a shudder, been alive. And I hadn’t just smashed it. I had killed it, just as if I had killed an old cat.

A kind of terror descended on me and I saw my grandmother standing in the corner of my room. She started walking towards me. She was asking for the violin. The violin which I had killed.

Grandmama was going to get me, so I fled. I fled into a part of my mind where I cannot fail. I am content now. My mother has not forgiven me but it doesn’t matter. I am happy here. I have a cat which visits me. Except she is getting old. And today she started sighing, just like the violin did. So I put my hands round her throat and I squeezed. Squeezed until it was over. All over.

'Drawings' by Jade Kennedy

It started quietly on an autumn morning when the mists hugged everything to them and left nothing untouched. As the leaves fell taking a song from the weather, so too did the ink fall from her skin, those interweaving roses and ivy, thriving with leaves and hidden birds lost its place in her delicate frame and slowly started to fade away, falling from her in graceful reverence almost like a sensual dance.

More ink faded away. Her finger tips dripped dark reds and blacks leaving a trail of feathers, leaves and petals when she walked. She gave away those last birds and roses to others in the small hope of saving them, but they all wept through her fingers like sand, like so much lost time.

The draining of colour and all that adorned her didn't stop with her skin. Her hair became as dull and brittle as ash, her beautiful blonde colouring being carried towards the clouds by a storm over a river silvered with fish. Lips that lost their pink joyful tint were replaced with a grey hue rich in melancholy. 

 Within three days she stood before a mirror and watched her tears wash away the hazel from her eyes - a white canvas, beautiful, plain and colourless. Holding her hands to the sky she called on the gods that took her beauty and that which coloured her soul. Feeling her dry skin, as distant and lifeless as a broken shell - now, all that she is would have to come from the inside.

Welcome to the 2014 National Flash-Fiction Day edition of FlashFlood

Hello, and welcome to another edition of FlashFlood.

This time we are publishing to celebrate the 2014 National Flash-Fiction Day which is, well, today! More information about that can be found over on the blog at http://nationalflashfictionday.blogspot.co.uk/, and if you feel like writing something today, you could doworse than to check out The Write-In.

But as for this issue, well, we have had more submissions than ever before - somewhere in the region of 550 - making it a very hard job to pick the stories. We are going to bring you 144 of them - one every 10 minutes for the whole 24 hours (so apologies to anyone on Twitter who follows us, or who has liked our page on Facebook; you are going to be swamped!)

We have every kind of flash-fiction: happy, sad, scary, funny, experimental, single-sentenced, tweet-length, introspective, extroverted, and all of them wonders to behold.

The first one will be along in just a minute, but I need to take time to thank the editors who did such sterling work: Susi Holliday, Susan Howe, Caroline Kelly, Katharine Kerr, Amy Mackelden and Cassandra Parkin, who make editing this journal a thing of joy. (And a wave to our usual editors Shirley and Annette - hope all's going well with you!)

And thanks, of course, to you, dear writers and readers. Without you, this would be 144 blank pages.

So, sit back, relax, grab your oxygen tank, and prepare to be flooded.

Happy National Flash-Fiction Day, everyone, and Happy FlashFlooding.

Calum Kerr
Editor and Director of National Flash-Fiction Day.

FlashFlood 2014 in Full Spate!

Can you believe it's been an entire year since we took over the blogosphere with our flood of flashes? Well, it is, but now we're here to do it again, and the journal originally created for National Flash-Fiction Day is now ready to receive your submissions once more.

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 are now CLOSED.

The stories will be posted regularly throughout the day on National Flash-Fiction Day itself, Saturday 21st June, providing you with a constant diet of brand new flash-fictions to fill your day.