Debut Flash: 'The Sound' by Kasia Kalinowska

When the car flew off the bridge, I marveled at the texture of the paint strokes delineating the horizon from the sunset. We had a lot of time then. As gravity tugged gently on the vehicle’s undercarriage and our bodies in turn, making sure we didn’t achieve escape velocity and beat Elon to the moon, my eyes were transfixed. The angle at which they viewed that magnificent work widened as our slope into the Long Island Sound increased. Rise over run, but we couldn’t manage either. I dreamt it would be bees or the surgeon’s knife. I think I prefer the view.

'The Egg Cycle' by Michelle Christophorou

Soft-boiled with soldiers;

Easter chocolate hunted in the garden; cream-filled meringues (8th birthday party);

Basque-style baked (first Spanish holiday);

whiskey sours; raw with chilli, vinegar and Worcestershire sauce (never works); caviar, declared disgusting (but better than oysters);

three-tier wedding cake;

poached (quail’s) with black truffle, steak tartare, crème brûlée;

fried most Sundays (full English breakfast);

pastel-coloured macarons (attempts to cheer after hopes end in hospital);

in a petri-dish;

soft-boiled with soldiers;

hard-boiled (2 x school packed lunches); empty nest;

almost-gone, with a side of night sweats;

gala pie, barely touched (funeral tea); quiche Lorraine, serves one;

scrambled;

soft-boiled with soldiers.

'Middle Ages' by Kim Magowan

My step-daughter Sallie is studying the Middle Ages, and I’m explaining to her the concept of cause and effect. “Okay, it’s like this,” I say. “When you tell your mom that your dad and I drink too much, the effect is that she becomes hysterical, and the further effect of that is I question your maturity and stop letting you have sips of wine at dinner.”

“I get it,” says Sallie. “It’s like, you go to some microchip conference three years ago, and think my dad is cute, and the effect is he bails on us. And suddenly we’re broke because he’s busy buying you those million-dollar light fixtures, so no one can afford the one decent school where all my friends happen to go, so I’m stuck at a shitty school with paranoid nuns who sniff me all the time.”

“Sniff you? Why do they sniff you?” I say.

“We can’t figure out if it’s to check if we’re smoking pot or if we’re wearing perfume. Sister Agatha disapproves of perfume. Or has an allergy or something. As if any of them would know how pot smells.”

There are times when I want to leave Ross, who can be a selfish prick and who is, as my mother used to say, “set in his ways.” But my step-daughter, wiry and sharp-edged as a twisty tie, is my favorite person in the world.

---

First published in Wigleaf (March 13, 2019).

'Continuator of Shadows' by Mandira Pattnaik

The price of shadows is just sixty-five. Worn out or leather-bound. Adori sells them per-piece basis, not by kilos, and they sell briskly at the weekly Mumbra market, two or three by the same buyer to hang by the doorway or keep under a lover’s pillow.

She’s done when dusk comes measuring the spread of the shanty-shop by which she spreads her wares, and finding none, hides his shame under the covers of night.

At that point, Adori moves back-and-forth, back-and-forth, the way the breeze would sway a rope swing. She makes sure the shadows are not trailing her home, for she’ll take none of them to her toddler kids.

At home, the kids are hungry but sprawled on the floor, sleeping. Hugging and kissing their foreheads, she lies beside them, forces a sleep. She must wake up early to cut and carve new ones to sell. If she had more talent, each one would be life-sized, three-dimensional, good enough to place on the cot, or the spare armchair by the window, as good as alive, friendly and caring. For now though, they only glide and gutter, dance at fancy, caress a lonely one.

The Collector comes knocking when it’s barely dawn, and her shadows are still unfinished.

‘How much?’

‘Six for the price of one.’

She answers, barely audible, for she’s scared of his wrath. It’s a ransom to keep her on this planet. for he can make her children begging orphans.

‘I’ll have them.’

He slides the coins from under the door sill and whistles past as a sudden gust to take somebody else’s soul.

'The Power of Negation' by Ian O'Brien

He is talking about the power of negation when the call comes. ‘Negation: defining something by what it isn’t, what is absent, what it lacks.’ An extract on the board from Wordsworth’s ‘Prelude’ that he’s scrawled from memory: No familiar shapes remained… Of sea or sky, no colours of green fields, the word ‘no’ underlined. The knock at the door is light, apologetic. The receptionist waiting, another colleague standing behind, ready to take over. The pupils, allowing the fracture in the lesson to widen, fill it with voices.

The strangeness of the school carpark full and silent, empty cars filling with sun. The world outside ticking over in its rhythm, a woman hanging washing in a garden, a window-cleaner taking down a ladder. The strangeness of the car at this time of day, a sense of the world going on around him at a distance, without him. The motorway at noon, stretches of daylit road, the tarmac exposed to him. Voices on the radio, presenters he doesn’t recognise, the news coming on and again that feeling of the world moving without him. He isn’t frantic, he doesn’t speed.

In the hospital carpark he switches off the engine and again there is that heavy silence. Not sound removed but instead filled somehow, trespassed. He moves through the corridors lightheaded, finds the ward. She is broken in the bed, eyes creased, hands folded. She apologises and he is angry with himself for not saying that it isn’t her fault, for not saying anything. He holds her and she is like glass.

Leaving, he will use the lift and on the floor below a new family will get in with bright balloons.

In the classroom, not realising just how much she is helping him, a girl wipes the whiteboard clean.

'Brittle' by Tracy Fells

The bird raises its head and the apricot flush of chest feathers is unmistakable. A sparrow hawk. It’s caught a starling; pinned the fledgling, screeching like a banshee, to your lawn. The noise carries through the open window to where you stand with hands stinging in a sink of hot water.

On dry Sunday mornings your father took you fishing on the coast. It was your job to pin the flexing shrimp, piercing the hook down the opaque gullet and out through the curve of its tail. Protest tears were futile, falling, along with the shrimp you clumsily dropped, into rock pools. The fish responded better to live bait, he lectured. Life was tough, nature cruel, and even girls couldn’t afford to be soft.

The hawk is solid sinew and muscle, a female who will have her own chicks to feed. Your father died a year ago, yet his voice is still in your head. Brittle, and brutal as the raptor’s killing beak.

Too bloody soft.

You slap the window, hard and loud. This small act of defiance feels good. The sparrow hawk glares up at you, then takes flight. Your legs wobble and shake, crumpling you to the soap splattered floor. The tears come hot and fast like summer rain. Outside the starling gang is raucous, squawking tunelessly. You imagine the iridescent hooligans jeering insults, or perhaps praising their resurrected youngster like a Homeric hero.

'Abutment' by DM O'Connor

I don’t know if death is freedom but waiting for it ain’t. Imagine yourself inside another. Imagine a bridge, left half-built, abandoned by civil engineers, rusted by promise. The check’s in the mail. Even excuses grow extinct or gills. You forgot the password account number had a bad connection didn’t want the bridge built anyway. One should not stand close to edges. One should subvert shame. One should forgive all wobble.


Stand in the shin muck. Say it’s a Sunday morning. Mass bells clank from the village steeples, guppies suck hair, you’ve brought a picnic, a rod, a loved one or two or you’re alone back to abutment floater bobbing, not a bite to worry about—and, there always is an and—you eye the arch, a story, anything to gain purchase for the climb, which seemed a cinch last time you were here. Not for the first or last time your mind and body separate. Yes, there is a troll asking for a toll. Yes, he’s ugly and always male and hard to understand doesn’t mean well. You think you are being tested. Why do you say this to me?


That support presence behind you has sunk. Sandy bars shifted. If it was only money, we could bridge banks, throw a dance party, savour jabber, shoot the breeze, evolve properly.