FlashFlood

Saturday, 15 June 2024

'When there’s a question you cannot ask without destroying everything' by Carsten ten Brink

       Maureen was already there when I arrived at Sam’s Deli, where we’d first breakfasted together, after an all-nighter in the law office. The bars had long closed and it was close by, the pancakes generous with syrup, the coffee strong.
       It was no longer convenient. Equally inconvenient, we’d agreed, the location settled after a good-faith negotiation.
       She was sitting in one of the niches, away from the windows. Her hair was still hickory, the colour I guessed from a bottle, and clean but now reached her collar, something she’d not allowed it to do when we were married. She brushed the fringe above her eyes aside twice as I approached. She stood up – she wore an outfit to wear in front of juries, the navy one I had given her – and kissed me on the cheek with dry lips. She smelled of breath mints.
       Maureen had a large black coffee, the saucer surrounded on the plastic table-cover by paper ribbons shredded from Barbie-pink sweetener packets and overlapping, imperfect circular scars left by hot plates. She held the cup tightly with both hands as if needing its warmth.
       ‘Hi, Mac. You’re looking well. How’s Brian?’
       ‘Excited. Can’t wait for his week with you.’
       ‘Good.’ She stared into her coffee.
       ‘Are you OK? Don’t worry if you can’t put up a tent – he’s been practising,’ I said. ‘Be impressed.’
       She smiled briefly.

       ‘It will be fine. I’ll be fine,’ she said. ‘You can trust me.’
       ‘I know,’ I lied, looking into her lawyer eyes.
       ‘Is that why you wanted to meet? To check up on me? It is, isn’t it?’
       ‘No. It’s not that,’ I said, my excuse ready, ‘I wanted to talk about his birthday.’

       When she had gone I took a sip from her cup: coffee and sweetener, nothing more.

Carsten ten Brink was born in Germany, raised in Australia, Japan and England, where he now lives. He is a writer, artist and photographer.

'Punctuation' by Anne Howkins

Her abandoned paperbacks sulk in accusing piles, spilling their chapters onto bare floorboards. A few words cling defiantly to the well-thumbed pages, the rest relinquish their attachment to the paper.

He slumps on the sofa, ignoring the restless fiction. In the loveless dark inconsolable rivulets of Times New Roman trickle towards him, inch by sullen inch. They demand attention, yearning to be re-animated by a reader. Sometimes he runs his fingers through the streams, panning for happiness, letting misery drift by. When he closes his fists the brittle letters shatter. Black dust drifts, covering everything, like a fingerprint dusted crime scene.

Paragraphs decay, breaking into sentences, then phrases, to pool darkly against skirting boards and chair legs. He doesn’t notice the full stops, dots and commas rolling around, eventually settling into the indentations her red stilettos left in his newly stripped floor a lifetime of loss ago. The brackets and ampersands form a trail of curls drifting across the floor before they slip through gaps in the boards. As structure vanishes the words blur into a stream of unconsciousness.

When he drags himself off to his solitary insomnia, silverfish feast on book glue. Blank pages liberated from their spine slide into slippery traps for his bare feet. Woodlice cluster, gorging on the sheets until the pages resemble lace doilies. In the gloom the floor shimmers.

He ignores the threatening manila accumulating in the hall. There is no heat or light in the house, and the log basket contains nothing but woodlice and mouse droppings.

The cold drives him to burn her books. He rakes through the ash each night, hoping to find the vestiges of love, forever, happy, as the skeleton pages disintegrate.

Without the punctuation of her, he can make no sense of the world.

Punctuation was first published by Reflex Fiction in their Summer 2021 Anthology.

'One Does Not Simply Walk out of Prairie Village, Ohio' by Amorak Huey

An almond-shaped hole in the clouds just above the horizon & the setting sun glares through in a million reds & pinks like flame, like a warning, like the eye of Sauron keeping watch over the corn fields.

We’re in my truck smoking behind your grandpa’s barn & you’re talking about how we’re Sam & Frodo destined for greatness in a land far from here & me, I’m just trying to keep you alive because I know the protagonist talk is momentary, a buzz of grandeur brought on by the weed & soon the sun will set behind your bright eyes & darkness will creep in from the depths & you will remember where you live & the names people call you & how you — you! — became an issue in the school board election.

They’re stupid and afraid, I say & you say, mmm, who isn’t.

If only they could see you the way I see you right this second: eyes half-closed, your head leaned against the passenger window, the last sigh of sun lighting you up like an angel. Your voice is so very far away when you say we need to destroy that ring, Frodo, & we would save the world.

Normally I would laugh at this & say obviously I am Sam & you are Frodo. You would laugh back & we would be laughing together but I make no sound. I am transfixed by your face, golden in the temporary light of an ending day.

Amorak Huey is author of four books of poems including Dad Jokes from Late in the Patriarchy (Sundress, 2021). Co-founder with Han VanderHart of River River Books, Huey teaches at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. He also is co-author with W. Todd Kaneko of the textbook Poetry: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology (Bloomsbury, 2024).

'Kev Woz Here' by Emily Macdonald

We all know a Kev. Face like a dog chasing a car. He’s the guy who stands too near, who laughs too loud and too late at the jokes made about him. He’s the fall guy, the goober, the one who stands outside the principal’s office for baring his butt from the back seat of the bus.

Kev carved his name on the desks and wrote on the walls. He wasn’t a guy to figure you don’t sign using your real name. He would flick floppy hair from his eyes, and smile his goofy lopsided grin, and I’d like the light in his eyes, but I’d never smile back in case someone saw me.

It was the Bretts, the Scotts, the Deans and the Dans we saved smiling for, while Kev bought the beers, nicked the smokes, rolled the joints, and got caught in the process.

I’ve seen ‘Kev woz here’ all over the world, even scrawled over a Spanish municipal map in the mountains above Cabra. I reckon Kevs are the kind of guys who keep signing their names hoping for someone to think they’ve been places, had a good time, and stuck one finger up in the process, and for sure, I smiled when I saw it.

Last I heard, the Kev I knew was driving a forklift somewhere west of Point Chev and doing 200 hours of community service. But in the Sierras Subbeticas, I signed my name next to his, bared my butt and stuck up one finger, just for him.

Emily Macdonald has stories published in anthologies including the Bath Short Story Award 2023, and online journals such as Fictive Dream, Flash Frontier, Free Flash Fiction, Raw Lit, Roi Fainéant and The Phare. Her collection of driving related stories, Wheel Spin and Traction, is out now with Alien Buddah Press.

'When the Solid Gives Way' by Kathleen Latham

The dog trotted onto the frozen pond to fetch an errant stick. That is how I picture it, at least. The boy trudging along the snow packed shore. The arc of the stick against crystalline sky. The dog tracking its path, eager paws scrambling. The bounce of the stick—once, twice—spinning and spinning. The dog’s oblivious disregard of depth and strength and gravity. I picture the boy’s measured steps forward, hands outstretched like the blind. Imagine the plunge into needle-fingered cold. Heavy boots. Heavy coat.

Later, the dog came back alone. Sodden and shivering, fracturing our lives like ice.

Kathleen Latham is a poet and writer living outside of Boston, Massachusetts. A Highly Commended winner of the Bridport Prize for flash fiction, her work has recently appeared in The Ilanot Review, New Flash Fiction Review, The Masters Review, Fictive Dream, and others.

'When the Solid Gives Way' was previously published in 100 Word Story, September 4, 2021.

' "What about Mummy’s saris?" I ask my father after thirty years' by Arti Jain

‘Tsk…later, eat these first…’ Daddy points to piping hot samosas. ‘Got them specially for you.’

It’s been thirty years. He doesn’t know I’ve turned gluten free.

I ask again.

‘We must’ve given them to the maids or something…it’s been thirty years.’

‘Not even one?’

‘What use is hoarding rubbish? Tsk.’

It’s been thirty years and I remember how Mummy’s wine-red Banarasi silk, her light-as-air-pineapple-yellow chiffon with silver gota patti and her favourite moong-green crêpe de chine made me feel when I wrapped me in them, secretly—as a child, as a teenager. Back when this was home.

Daddy’s new wife offers me chutney.

Arti Jain is a poet, an award-winning spoken word artist and an author. She lives in Doha, Qatar. Her work has appeared in The Kali Project, Kindle India Magazine, Gulmohur Quarterly, The Hooghly Review, Muse India, Poems India, Tape-a-Tale, Epistemic Literary and BTWN. She has authored two books: And all the Seasons in between (Ukiyoto Publishing, June 2021) and Don’t Climb On The Bullock Cart (Parakeet Books, U.K. 2023). She writes and performs poetry in English and Hindi.
Instagram:@arti.a.jain Twitter: @artijain28

Debut Flash: 'Family Weekend' by Marlee Gaitanis

Dad’s in the hospital again and I’m stapling a bright green, sparkling letter ‘Y’ onto a cork board for a bunch of snotty college kids.

It’s his own damn fault, and it’s the third time this year so the news hadn’t been as jarring as the first time, but the pit in my stomach remains as endless as it’s always been.

The doctor says he needs to stop drinking, or make his peace with God.

One of my residents, Jada, rushes past with a short “Hey Kim!” and a poorly concealed white claw tucked into her jacket.

“Hey.” I mutter, but she’s halfway down the hallway, giggling. I wonder when her liver will give out.

Mom called last night when he was admitted. “Your Dad’s in the hospital.” Her voice was devoid of anything but its usual smoky tiredness. The kids were yelling in the background.

I knew what she was going to ask me before she was able to draw the heavy, rattling breath to say it.

“Can you come over? Entertain the kids while I figure this out?”

Yeah, right. ‘Entertain the kids’ means I’ll cook them the first homemade meal they’ve had in months and try to get them to bed before midnight. ‘Figure this out’ means she’ll sit in the lumpy leather armchair in the living room and try to drink herself sick enough to join him.

I told her I’d drop by this weekend. She hung up without an ‘I love you’.

The next staple- a ‘D’ this time- is more forceful than the last few. I step back to admire my work. The cheerful, sparkling words “Family Weekend” arc over a myriad of smiling stock pictures the university had provided me.

Marlee Gaitanis studies and writes underneath the thick canopies of Tallahassee, Florida, her hometown. Having just recently rediscovered her love of writing, she’s been vigorously putting pen to paper, hoping to attain a level of prowess that will allow her to follow her dream of becoming a published author. When she’s not behind a keyboard, you’ll find her going toe-to-toe with a heavy bag at her kickboxing gym or becoming the next great detective on her Nintendo Switch. Find her on Insta @marlee.gaitanis