When I go to war, I borrow a flak jacket, a big blue thing designed for men. It squashes my shoulders, metal plates pinning flat my chest, breasts yielding to the weight of them. Androgenised.

But I wear the body armour because I’m told it will keep me safe, if someone shoots from a distance. I wear it because I’m told these are cheaper than the ones for women. I wear it because I’m told there are more male journalists on the frontline than women, because men are better at the warry stuff, and women more lightweight.

I wear it because the man in the equipment stores tells me all of this, and because he’s not the only one.

I wear it because I don’t want to rock the boat and give the newsdesk another reason not to send me to do this job. I wear it because I’ve told them I am the best ‘man’ for the job. I wear it because I want to be part of the solution and not part of the problem, as if my gender might be classed as anything else.

Deep in the belly of the building, where they keep the cameras, tripods and satellite phones, the team first aid kits, generators and batteries, the man looks me up and down, hands me the canvas bag with the body armour and a helmet, and whistles through yellow teeth.

‘We don’t get many girls going to war.’ He stinks of fags and coffee, holds out a cracked biro in his fat, stained fingers.

‘I’ve checked the plates. They need to come back exactly as they are. Sign here.’

I press the pen hard and leave an imprint on the desk.

Later, I sit by the wall in the bowels of another building, where the stores have been looted, where nothing remains but rubble and the smell of shit and fear and sweat and how long will this last and I wonder if the scar of my name will still be there when I get back. I hear the crack of gun fire, and remember what he told me – that if I could still hear it, I would be fine.

The whistles and whines get closer and the ground starts to shake, but I wonder if it is just me shaking, in my too big turtle shell which creeps up my body and covers my mouth, muddling my senses, exposing my womb to the world.

I am silence.

I hear the sound of boots and deep voices, checking the doors. Opening, closing, opening, closing. I cross my legs, pull my helmet down to hide my face, hope the jacket shields my gender. I know none of this body armour will protect me if these men target me point blank.

 

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I stumbled across an old wrestling match on YouTube one night. It was this cage match and these guys were bleeding all over the place. The one guy used a chair leg in the other guy’s eye; blood was everywhere. Again and again, holding the shard there, pressing. It was the damndest thing I ever saw.

I figured it might be fun if maybe I showed the match to my roommate. Or better yet, maybe reenact it. He needed a hobby anyway – all he ever did was lock himself in his room and play video games. I went to a thrift store and found a really cheap chair with wobbly legs for a couple of bucks. I carried it home under my arm.

He was home – I smelled the pot and the pizza rolls he always cooked. I kicked his door in and he and his girlfriend were in his bed. Perfect. I told him to hit me with the chair. He laughed but told me to fuck off. I tried to tell him that it would be fun, but his girlfriend told me to get the hell out. The room reeked of pot and I hated the smell, so I took the chair and I smashed his bong with it.

That got him up. He took a swing at me so I dropped the chair and got him in a headlock. His girlfriend yelled at us to quit. My roommate saw the humor in it and got a handful of pizza rolls and tried to shove them in my face. I bit his finger and then he backed off, so I picked the chair back up and swung, but he ducked and the damn thing broke all over the wall. We fell back on the bed and knocked his lamp over. It was an excellent time. It felt like we were fighting for the big gold belt.

I lost my footing and fell on top of his coffee table, breaking his XBox. That one got him riled up. He tried to grab my leg so I tried the headlock again.

A few minutes later though, there was a knock at the door and it turned out to be the cops. I guess the neighbors weren’t entertained by classic professional wrestling. I wasn’t done yet. I picked up a chair leg and I ran out into the living room. I pointed it at the cop.

“Have you ever seen Tully Blanchard?”

I was still telling them about it when they gave me the name and number of a counselor. They wished me luck as they left. I turned back to my roommate and his girlfriend, but he was already closing the door. I guess it was a tie.

I slid some money under his door for a new XBox and threw the chair away in the dumpster down in the parking lot. I went back into my room and got YouTube up to watch another match.

 

Kevin Richard White is a Contributing Flash Fiction Editor at Barren Magazine with numerous publications. He lives and heavily drinks in Philadelphia.

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The boy hides in the closet when his own smell is too much. His skin carries traces of every mistake he’s made. His parents haven’t noticed, but other kids have. At school he disappears in the back of class to avoid spitballs and whispers, speaking only when the teacher calls on him. He hasn’t wet himself for a long time, but kids never forget.

Grandpa’s suit hangs in the hall closet among raincoats and winter jackets, shrouded in a heavy scent of tobacco and leather. The boy doesn’t remember his grandfather, even when his mother shows him a photo of a big man holding a tightly swaddled baby. That’s you and Grandpa, she points to the pink-faced bundle in the man’s powerful arms. Such a fine man. The boy is third in his family to carry his grandfather’s name, a long string of consonants he struggles to pronounce. A long time ago, his grandfather fought in a war, returning with a chest of medals. Studying the picture, the boy searches for his grandfather’s bravery, but the old man’s dark eyes focus on the sleeping baby.

Sitting cross-legged in the closet, the boy drinks in damp wool and muddy boots, his hands finding the coat in the darkness. Someday he will wear this suit. Raising himself on his knees, he runs his fingers over the thick weave of the jacket, then into a pocket, hoping to find a watch, a penknife, some clue his grandfather left for him. His hand always comes up empty.

The smell grows stronger, but no one at home detects the stench moving to his clothes. At school the jokes become louder. His teacher doesn’t hear the whistles and slurs. When he comes back from recess in tears, she stops him. Are you ok? What happened? He shakes his head. Nothing, I fell down. Wiping his nose on his sleeve, he wonders what his grandfather would say. What would he do?

The boy leaves school early. No one is home. He sets a glass of water from the kitchen on his nightstand before carrying the suit to his bedroom. It’s heavier than he imagined. Undressing, he folds his jeans and tee shirt, then slips into Grandpa’s suit. The boy has grown in the past six months, but the suit’s still too big for him. The jacket cuffs fall past his fingertips, the trousers balloon around his ankles. He’ll never fit.

He breathes in his grandfather’s man smells. Climbing into bed, he reaches for his water, the bottle of pills from his parents’ bathroom. Hands steady, he shakes a fistful of capsules into his palm. He slips the note into a pocket and closes his eyes. Make me smell like Grandpa, he whispers, waiting for darkness.

 

Phebe Jewell’s recent work appears or is forthcoming in Monkeybicycle, Spelk, Ellipsis Zine, Crack the Spine, New Flash Fiction Review, and Brilliant Flash Fiction. A teacher at Seattle Central College, she also volunteers for the Freedom Education Project Puget Sound, a nonprofit providing college courses for women in prison.

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I scooped a starfish marooned in the gale, nestled it among the glossy rocks; then returned to the Sesotris. Winds licked her from all sides; the cyclone hadn’t let up even the next day and she had lost her longboat and cooking coopers. Scads of birds — hawks and nightjars — from forested nearby islands, lay strewn on board. Under leaden skies, she knifed ahead; passed north of Enaani lighthouse at her full 19 knots. Thiger, one of her lower deck hands said — I’ve never seen these parts this rough, and he’d know; I’d seen Thiger in here before, serenaded him with a thousand frozen wavelets. He was one of four-hundred-twenty-six soldiers of the 80th British Foot Regiment, that had set sail from Sydney barracks, called on Timor Islands for replenishments, and was due to dock at Calcutta in a week.

The tempest picked up; the stormy night poured like tar; Sesotris trembled from stem to stern; quarter boats and meat boxes were thrown down the hatchway. Thiger saw a spark; so did I. There was a metallic-sounding heavy slamming that reverberated through her body, like a whiplash. The lower deck crew labored to seal leakage. Kitchen-hand Wei with Raen and Sou struggled to save provisions from getting spoilt.

Thiger saw a vessel shadowing Sesotris. So did I; only about a mile away, shaped like a dugong. Or was it steered by a drunken helmsman?

Sesotris ran aground; barged on to the soft surface of a mangrove swamp. Howls of crew sounded above the roar of wind. It should be now. Now! Now! I shouted. Thiger, Wei and soldier Samson, breathed in the stink of seaweed mingled with salt. I shouted again, Thiger, come to me! Brine stung their eyes, noses, mouths; flashes of lightning illuminated them. I never knew if they realized.

Oh! They scrambled to de-board, but precious moments having been spilled, the island inhabitants, more beasts than men, like big mastiff dogs, drenched and aggressive, began to surround the ship. Thiger shouted — Cannibals! There were more flashes of lightning and the four-hundred-twenty-six of them stayed put, huddled on the deck, wet to the bones and clenching teeth. The vessel held stable for the rest of the night and beyond the night, into days of which I lost count. The islanders kept vigil; waiting to raid; while the soldiers ate only morsels of food; hoping to be rescued. When water ran scarce, a riot broke out. A picket opened fire and I saw Thiger falling by the stern, neither writhing in pain nor bleeding. Sou stood stoic and dumb, though he was hit by fire.

The ocean raged; a homogenous mass; amalgamation of sky and earth. Sesotris dissolved in the gray morass, fed by hopelessness. Fringes of days bled in the horizon.

One of those days, the carpenters wanted to resurrect the only boat and worked through the squall. David, hoisted on the bridge, pointed to the vessel I’d seen earlier, in spite of the feeble light, with the same insignia, cried — Sail! Sail! I scampered to catch a glimpse as it appeared to anchor. The soldiers on the upper deck went into commotion; fluorescent yellow sponges glistened in their torchlight as they watched a stream of particles, hazy and random, floating around several forms that alighted — I call them forms because they were hardly humans, swathed in cloth of various hues. The soldiers sounded the distress bell but the forms appeared not to notice the stranded ship and began to offload crates of rum, shiny golden horses that limped and a dozen horribly bleating calves, before they strode to their vessel and melted into the darkness.

A dawn, in several, bloomed. The storm was spent, but four-hundred-twenty-six people stayed assembled close on the deck, fearful of the marauding islanders. They peeped over the port and woke up to a frosted dream. A soundless shriek perforated their muffled selves.

I lay curled up between the rocks; waited for the moon, waited to withdraw from the shore and back to mid-sea where my siblings, calmer and gentler, waited for me. Four-hundred-twenty-six souls alighted on the soft white sand carrying their famished bodies and found among the crates, a huge rock tablet erected with their names.

 

Mandira Pattnaik writes flash and poetry. She considers herself lucky to be featured in Eclectica, MadSwirl, FewerThan500, (Mac)ro(mic), Lunate and DoorIsAJar.

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J

Splayed on the druid’s slab, she sacrificed me to the god of Please-No-More-Banana-Sandwiches. Cathie worked out the staging and chanting. Felt I needed to tell her my actual virginity not up for surrender, you know? A herd of cows gathered round the granite to watch, trapping us for an hour past dinner. She was like that.

Hiding from the rain in a barn, we shrieked as hay bales toppled on a secret. Twelve years old and ought to have suffocated. A farmhand appeared to swear at us. Proper F-word swearing. No tv allowed at her house, Cathie with her vocabulary pronounced the entire episode both epic and gothic. Claimed she peed her pants. I don’t think she did.

J

U

At dawn, we snuck out and met up across the fields, off to find a Maxwell castle. Not the one that’s apartments now, not the House of Elrig either. There’s an older one, all ivy-wrecked turrets stuffed with ravens. She wanted to take out the board. I said no way, too creepy. We trudged back in a soaking mist, both of us to a scolding.

Allowed out again on a final, final warning, we scrambled up the Painted Hill. The bleached dry bones of an elm wood became Graveyard Number One. Over and down to Monreith bay, back-floating in St. Medan’s tide pools. Anemones swayed flower-hair to our hands.

She imagined me Ophelia until my feet wrinkled and the shivers started deep in my stomach.

Honest Cath, I might really die, let’s go.

J

U

D

I couldn’t play her beautiful corpse, neither could full sun chase off her ghouls. Cathie would drop into the slimmest of shadows, a boulder overhang, fold out the chessboard and flip it to the black side.

On a shot glass, her hand guided mine round the nail-varnish alphabet. She did the incanting and pushing. I blew away sand.

Spirits, whom do you seek?

Always

J

U

D

Y

She’d have me ask when would her sister die, when would her stepfather die? When would she die? The answers never clear DFC—NEV—1AP until her hand, too tight, would cramp on mine and overturn the glass.

The following summer, our holiday weeks didn’t overlap. The summer after, the same. I suspected my mother. Cathie wrote. I replied, until I didn’t.

We heard what happened from the folk who rented us our chalet.

Now, when the corvids break the air, my fingers still twitch. I dropped myself into a shadow last summer, flipped my tablet beside a rookery and said right then, on you go, what’s the handle now, your true spirit name? I/she/we typed

H

E

K

A

T

E

I googled her surname. He’d passed away. He was her father, her real dad. Pre-deceased by his eldest daughter, estranged from his surviving daughter.

From intense personal tragedy, critics drew a hastening in depth and maturation of his oeuvre. They waxed. In paraphrase, a thematic obsession developed and expressed as an infinite, bitter dialogue with an ephemeral counterpoint.

Ah Cath.

 

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I haven’t been here yet, but this is what I imagine it will be like. Dark as ink from waking till sleeping, with an occasional reprieve when the sun lifts its lead-heavy head. Fissures of aurora borealis dancing above bare-branched trees as ice crystallises in the air. Eyeballs rolling in the fight not to freeze; skin tightening; breath blooming like fog.

Laughter – awkward, as I try to understand this alien place where myths create a richer backdrop than the cityscape where we fell out of love. You, at ease? Or uncertain too, embarrassed by the suddenness with which you left me behind.

I’ll meet you at the hotel you’ve recommended, a boutique one that exploits its eccentricity to holidaymakers who regards it as ‘quaint’. By the time I reach you, I’ll have travelled from the airport to Reyjavik, by winged chariot perhaps – although my funds are limited, especially in this climate.

The volcano slumbering nearby, an ever-present danger, grumbling quietly through its dreams.

Every cell of me will be tingling from the extreme temperatures. I can’t even anticipate the cold that awaits. During a winter stroll on Clevedon Pier, when sea battled wind and my nose was crimson, I asked: “Is it like this?”

You’d beamed at my naivety. “It’s more like when the shark bites the legs off the girl in Jaws and she doesn’t even know until she reaches down, feels the sliver of bone…”

Hmm, inviting.

I’m the kind of person who is always cold – who can sit indoors on a relatively mild day with the central heating switched on, and still shiver. The idea of your sub-zero homeland makes me nervous – I’m already bracing for the shock.

In just a few hours, I’ll be standing in the hotel foyer, scrabbling through pockets for a lip balm, when I’ll feel your gaze fall on me. My suitcase at my feet, coat half unzipped, I’ll cease my searching and raise my head.

But I know I’m not travelling in hope of reconciliation. You made that all too obvious in your tentative email – your painfully polite request for us to meet up so you could apologise in person. You offered to come back to England, but in an abrupt way that made it clear you’d rather not.

“It’s one of the steps,” you told me in our first Skype chat since you left. “I have to make amends. I’ll pay for your flight, Steph.”

My sister looked at me hard as she dropped me off at Bristol airport. “There’s no such thing as a free trip,” she warned me. “You don’t want to do something you’ll regret. Tell Arn you have your period.”

I laughed. “What? Nice to see you, Arn. By the way, I’m on the blob.”

She nodded. “More reliable than contraception. More reliable than that man after he stomped on your heart.”

“My heart’s just fine,” I assured her.

The phrase rang in my head all through security, passport control, queuing for overpriced airport coffee. It’s drumming now with the rhythm of my pulse as I stare out of the oval window at the cloud-rippled sky. My heart’s just fine. My heart’s just fine. One two, one two…

I sit in my cramped airline seat and imagine Iceland’s enduring night – the magic of easing into darkness, no expectations of dawn until spring. Natural human needs for sunshine suspended.

The acceptance of it must feel like surrender. In England we fight against the cold, the rain, the shortened days. We whinge about needing to switch on electric lights at 3 or 4pm. Every dreary dawn is a disappointment. How much happier might we be to let our shadow-side out, rightful and at home, instead of fearing the dark like children?

If I think of it like that, I can see why you snapped, packed and departed. Your culture and mine are at odds when it comes to elemental things like seasons.

But people do make it work. They have lifelong love affairs despite fundamental differences. Your shame should be less about failing than for your willingness to give up on us so easily.

It’s not like we‘d need to live together, or even in the same country. There’s email, FaceTime and all those other modern conveniences. This flight, for example, takes just a few hours.

If I come all this way and you really do only want to apologise in person, face to face, breathing the same air and close enough to touch, no problem, I tell myself. But deep inside my chest, I feel something smouldering: a hibernating dragon preparing to stir. The naivety of hope isn’t always a bad thing, and in this case, that hope has a heart of fire.

*      *      *

The truth, of course, could not be more at odds to my imaginings. My chariot is, after all, a coach and then a mini-bus; my views sunlit and slanted with drizzle. Daylight comes late here, but dusk little earlier than in England.

The biggest surprise is the country itself. No trees, few houses, but tourists – so many tourists – all clamouring to see the sights.

And you, where are you? There’s a message at my hotel – an apology that I suspect, lips pursed, might be the first of many. Wasn’t the whole point of this trip your opportunity to say sorry? You’re busy at work, but will see me in the morning. You have sights to show me that you’re sure I’ll love.

What makes you think you can guess what I love?

I unpack my case, peel off my clothes and redress, adding the armour of a vest and thermal leggings beneath jeans, a long-sleeved top and the thickest sweater I own. Outside, the rain has stopped and thermal-heated pavements are already drying. A promising snowflake swirls past my nose.

By the time you arrive the next day in your four-by-four, snow is declaring itself the natural state of water here; rain was the anomaly.

Your eyes are the same, almost, although the creases around them seem deeper. There’s a fresh clarity in the way you look at me, as though I’m no longer blurred.

I turn my face away, ducking your gaze.

“Steph,” you say, and I shake my head. A honk of laughter escapes my throat, warding off storms of emotions threatening to descend.

You’re wearing a wool sweater that looks soft to the touch. For an intense instant, I want to rub my face against your shoulder – feel your knitted fleece against my cheek, inhale the lanolin. Instead I present my hand, firmly formal, reining in my beam. You blink, but shake it, agreeing to boundaries.

You tell me we’re going to feed the Icelandic horses.

“But I don’t like horses,” I protest, as we drive through the pewter pre-dawn light. It’s already 10am.

“You’ll like these horses, Steph,” you say, “They’re not a bit daunting. Vikings only brought what they could fit on the boats, and smaller animals allowed more space for alcohol.” You wait for me to join in with your amusement, but I’m only up for a smile.

Memories of nights waiting for you to come home in pieces crowd my mind. My stomach lurches as though it’s on castors.

Throughout our drive from Reykjavik to Þingvellir National Park, you’re quieter than I’m accustomed to. Your profile is sharply offset by the snow beyond, your lovely face tense.

The snow holds more colours that I would have thought possible – curves painted with blue and purple shadows, convex swoops gleaming gold.

At last the silence is too much. I say one word, aware of how heavily the two syllables sit between us. “Rehab.”

You inhale, your focus flickering from the road to me. Somehow your expression is one of relief. “Long time,” you say. “Long time coming.”

“Difficult?” I ask, reduced to one-word-at-a-time questions.

You nod. Your eyes return to the windscreen as you negotiate a patch of black ice. I flinch from the glimpse of unearthed pain boiling beneath your retinas.

“Necessary,” you say.

Rather than bringing oats or hay, you pull in at a bakery and buy dark bread that makes my nose twitch.

“In England we feed bread to ducks,” I say. “And hedgehogs. But we’re not meant to. It’s bad for them.”

“We don’t have hedgehogs here,” you say, missing the point deliberately, I think. “Probably because we don’t much have hedges.”

The horses’ muscled bodies form a snow-matted wall, protecting against the worst of the weather. “They have a hierarchy,” you say as we approach, bread in hand. “This one at the front is the leader. That one alone over there is the outcast.”

The loner, I think. “Poor thing. Or maybe he chooses that,” I suggest, and look you in the eye. I see your jaw clench, then release.

Sensing our lapse in attention, the horses lunge forwards, lips quivering and teeth exposed.

I jump back, and narrow avoid face-planting into a ditch.

You catch me by one arm. “Careful, Steph, the little folk will have you.”

“Who?”

I know the answer – who in Iceland could not? But I suspect it will please you to tell me.

“The elves. It’s like politics in Britain. It’s always those who don’t own up to their convictions who are the loudest complainers about whatever goes wrong. Here, every bad thing is the fault of the little folk.”

I glance around us, and at this ice-white landscape where trees determinedly fail to flourish. I recall your favourite riddle on that subject, shared during a night of whisky, rum and tequila slammers overlooking Bristol harbour. “What should you do if you’re lost in an Icelandic forest? Stand up!”

It’s the differences I like, I want to tell you. The differences between your sense of home and my own. I can see that you’re better, I want to say. I trust in your recovery.

But I don’t want to press the moment to shattering point. “Take me to see the geyser,” I say instead. “The one every other geyser is named after.”

You shake your head. “That one is snoozing these days. His cousin Strokkur is awake though. We can go there.”

So that’s where we drive to next, through hail and wind and the ice that’s slowly thawing between us.

We talk about weather, and the English way of filling silences with talk of the weather.

“In England there is always drizzle,” you say. “And you always need to discuss it.”

“Only because it’s constantly changing.”

“Oh yes, such dramatic change! From light drizzle to heavy drizzle to the kind of drizzle that somehow is lightest of all and yet makes you soaking wet.” You laugh and I laugh too, hearing fondness in your words.

“Mizzle,” I say, presenting the word shyly. “I think it’s a mix of drizzle and mist.”

“Mizzle,” you echo. “So many different words for rainfall.” You sound delighted. The ridicule I became inured to in your drinking days has filtered away. I allow my habitual anxiety to loosen its knots.

The sun creeps out and blue light particles ignite in the sky.

Geothermal heat unleashes lurid green algae, ochre, and a dense peaty brown with shades of purple and gold. A paved track leads through the blue-white snow, with rivulets steaming on either side. A group of sightseers cluster ahead.

You stride onwards as I slither carefully behind.

Everyone is staring at a single fathomless pool. The water is too opaque to see through, but I have the sense of something curled up deep, scales protecting it from scalding temperatures.

I think of the fissures scarring this terrain, hidden beneath the veneer of snow. A small gratitude wells in me.

The pool’s surface begins to slip and slide. A low rumble creates miniscule waves. Strokkur shoots up – a column of energy striking the frigid air. In an instant, it collapses. The crowd cheers.

Show over.

“How’s that for timing?” you exclaim, and I spy a glimmer of your old joyful self. My insides churn, but I match my smile to yours and take your hand in mine.

 

Judy Darley is a British writer who can’t stop writing about the fallibilities of the human mind. Her work has been published in the UK, New Zealand, US and Canada, and performed in Hong Kong. Judy’s short story collection Sky Light Rain is out now. Find Judy at http://www.skylightrain.com  and  https://twitter.com/JudyDarley.

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One hour to midnight. Soon the church bells would peal across the town heralding first-footers along the streets. They’d knock on doors, call out Happy New Year, deliver small gifts of coal, coins and cake. May you always have a fire in your hearth, money in your pocket and food in your belly. They’d be welcomed into houses through the front door and given a glass of sherry and a mince pie before leaving by the back door. Every year Cynthia looked forward to the tradition and the company, though each year the cleaning got harder.

She knelt back on her heels, surveyed the half-scrubbed floor and wiped her forehead. She’d been cleaning since six this morning, but she still had the inside windows to wash and the kitchen benches to scour. Her mother used to say she’d die of shame if Cynthia opened the door to first-footers before the whole house gleamed. She’d impressed upon Cynthia the importance of ridding the house of any trace of dirt from the old year. If she neglected to do this, her mother warned, bad luck would follow. When Cynthia’s father fell down a mine shaft, her mother blamed Cynthia for failing to demolish a cobweb in the kitchen.

After the funeral Cynthia’s brother offered to take over his father’s first-footing role. His flaxen curls alarmed the neighbours who argued that first-footers had dark hair and such a departure from tradition was asking for trouble. The librarian advised them to read local history to learn how these superstitions arose. She added that rampaging Vikings were unlikely to put in an appearance so it would be safe to welcome first-footers of all descriptions. However, the neighbours’ doubts were confirmed when Cynthia’s brother died of pneumonia a week after his night of first-footing. His mother blamed Cynthia for forgetting to defrost the fridge.

For fifty more years Cynthia was meticulous about cleaning every part of the house before midnight. When her mother died last New Year’s Day the neighbours blamed it on the new trend of female first-footing and predicted the end of the world. Cynthia saw no point in mentioning that her mother had died in bed with an empty whisky bottle.

Cynthia rubbed her aching bones and surveyed her half-scrubbed floor, reflecting that now her mother was gone, there was nobody left to see or care what she did. She stopped scrubbing, washed her hands, set out the sherry and mince pies, switched off the lights, lit a candle and placed it by the window. Then she lay on her sofa and dozed until midnight.

She woke to the sound of peeling bells and waited for the crunch of footsteps on the snow, laughter, the creak of garden gates being unlatched, the splashes of light across the dark night as neighbours opened their doors to call out Happy New Year. In the lengthening silence she watched the flame of her candle burn low and heard only the beat of her own heart.

 

Sandra Arnold‘s most recent books are a flash fiction collection, Soul Etchings (Retreat West Books, UK) and a novel, The Ash, the Well and the Bluebell (Mākaro Press, NZ) which were published in 2019. Her flash fiction and short stories have been widely published and anthologised. www.sandraarnold.co.nz

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The Captain worked shirtless in the hot sun digging post holes for a new fence. His next door neighbor, Iron Mike, would come over watching. The Captain worked hard, digging the first hole deeper. After his second pass with the spade, digging down, loosening the earth, He was using the clamshell digger to pull out the earth when Iron Mike began urging him loudly to stop, because what he was doing was wrong. The Captain stopped, caught his breath, and said to Mike, What’s the matter, Mike? The hole’s a foot down already. If I’m doing this wrong, how can that be?

You did the hole already. There’s dirt from it there you put. Then you just went back to do it again. Why again, when it’s dug once?

I—uh, oh. Okay. I need to go back and do this again and again, until the hole is deep enough. I’m not doing the whole thing all over again.

Yes you are, Captain. I don’t want to argue, but the answer you just gave contains the words I need to go back and do this again and again. Did you not say those words?

The Captain gripped the long poles of the clamshell digger harder, putting into the grip what he did not want to put out his mouth over Iron Mike—please observe, that at this point, his obedience to the third rule of thermodynamics which is the total amount of energy in a closed system cannot be created nor destroyed but only changed from one form to another—that is true, Mike but I also added after the words, until the hole is deep enough. How about that? That make it better? he asked—and, surprised at his patience in correcting simple Mike, he leaned on the diggerpoles with a casual smile, awaited Mike’s answer, and each instant of waiting intensified his compassionately understanding and comforting—comfortably pillow-soft mildly waiting superpatient and harmlessy bland, blank face, into which Iron Mike softly oozed, Oh yes, that makes sense Captain. I realize I was the party in error. I half-listened to your sentence. I jumped to a conclusion. Probably due to the track record you have in failing to accurately answer my questions today, I just leapt to the conclusion that each one in succession today will fail as well and it’s probably best, since I am so conditioned, and know that when one is conditioned to operate in a single given perceptive mode, from word one to word n of any given conversation, consisting of more than three conversational exchanges, its best for me to withdraw from the playing field for the day have a few good meals some nice wine and an on-demand movie tonight, of at least three hours’ duration, followed by at least the classically correct eight hours of sleep, the hot morning shower, the walk around the block, the positive benefits of which would be enhanced by the accompaniment of a leash-trained healthy dog, if one is available, and then back home, a light low-carb breakfast, and I will come meet you here again tomorrow at whatever o’clock sharp I observe you continuing your work from any room of my house with one or more windows facing your yard—uh—I will meet you and we can try again to get the talk off on some different foot than we did today, ‘cause I don’t like doing things wrong, Captain. Please use your tools some more. I need to fix mistakes right away—in that I know I am much like you, Captain—I know you and I are so much alike. I learn how the tools work when I watch you. That’s why, when you come out to do a job I like coming over. I want to learn what all the tools do, Captain. I like to be with you Captain. I like it very much. Someday I want to know as much about tools as you. The things you do make me think and think, Captain. I can’t learn tools no place else, Captain. Like what you said that seemed so simple—right tools for the right job you know that old saying—you said that Captain. Hey. Yes, you did. Listen. I never heard that one, that was a good one Captain, a really really good one man o’ man—hey. Use that one there. What? I never saw that tool before Captain. Use that one. Use any tool at all, sure. Any one of which you will. Just say some more to me Captain.

I need some more said to me very bad.

Where’d you go to Captain?

I need some more said to me very bad.

 

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Smoke rises from the fire pit, curling into snakes above their heads. Sounds from the black of the forest make Harry flinch and spin his head like a baby owl. He is the only boy to turn his back on the heat of the flames. Robin holds the tin close to his thigh. Their fears, written on pieces of paper in spider writing, coiled tightly inside, ready to burn, sending a spiral up to their ancestors. If a great grandfather can take the thoughts that keep them awake at night, they might sleep easy. Harry wonders how many of them have written about the accident, about how Ed had died on the tracks that night last winter as the mist descended. They all carried the belief that it had been their fault, that they had killed him. 

“What if it doesn’t work?” asks Tony, rubbing his hands together. 

“It has to,” says Fred. He stabs the fire so that the smoke twists and dances until it reaches a point in the sky where it vanishes. 

“Did you hear that?” Robin asks. He rubs his knees, as though summoning something; a genie, or courage perhaps.

They all heard it; a voice from the point where the smoke vanishes into the darkness. 

“What if it’s Ed?’ says Tony.

“Or an ancestor? Someone who is angry?” Robin is shivering but it’s not cold.

“Did we kill him?” asks Fred. “I mean I don’t know if it was our fault or his.”

“What if we all die, too, you know, as punishment?” says Tony. He does not look up.

“It was only a dare. He was meant to get up. I didn’t tie the rope to the tracks tightly. I really didn’t. He was meant to get up,” says Robin. He starts to cry, and the crying gives way to shaking. They hear a sound like thunder and a voice, but they cannot discern any words. The fire goes out.

 

F.C. Malby is a contributor to Unthology 8 and Hearing Voices: The Litro Anthology of New Fiction. Her debut short story collection, My Brother Was a Kangaroo includes award-winning stories, and her debut novel, Take Me to the Castle, won The People’s Book Awards. Her stories have been widely published both online.

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Mum said she could go to the party. This is very rare. Mum thinks she’s too young, only just 13, but it’s Fran’s 16th birthday party and Mum caved after Fran called, begging for her favourite little cousin to come.

The entire city is sweltering with heat so she puts on her denim skirt with a t-shirt and conceals her shiny nose under a puff of Mum’s heady beige powder.

Fran lives a few streets away and Mum and Dad agreed that she could go on her own but that Dad would pick her up at 11.

She enjoys the solitary walk, the warmness of the evening on her bare limbs, the hum of the busy streets, the smell of food and cigarettes emanating from the nearby cafes. Somewhere, someone is playing the saxophone, and long, weepy notes float in the balmy air.

Moments later she rings Fran’s doorbell. Music and specks of conversation seep through the door, followed by an uneven clattering of high heels. Fran greets her warmly, her clammy arms around her, before abandoning her in the middle of the lounge to welcome more guests.

A couple of girls stand by the buffet and she smiles at them, but they only stare, long enough to make her uncomfortable, before going back to their conversation.

She pretends an exaggerated interest in the CD collection, looking at each one of them for far too long, drinks a soda, bubbles too quickly chugged stinging her throat, and eventually sits on the edge of the sofa, clutching a plate of untouched sandwiches. On the wall clock, only five minutes have gone.

Just as she decides to go, the tall guy comes and sits next to her. “I’m Lily’s brother”. Ensure of who Lily might be, she just nods.

Soon they are talking and laughing, and the seconds on the clock rush around. Someone dims the light and changes the music and they start dancing, barely moving to the rhythm of an unknown song. The two girls stare at her again, but this time she doesn’t mind.

He’s holding her tight against him, and she likes this long, musical hug. She’ll have to ask Fran what this song is.

His face comes closer to hers there are small flecks of green around his dilated pupils. She hasn’t kissed very much before. She’s learned the technicality of it with her childhood friend a couple of years ago, the unromantic experience providing much giggly. And her boating buddy kissed her on the last day of the holiday, his sea-salt lips on hers leaving her feeling tingly, trying to put a name on the warm, bouncy feeling in her stomach.

“Come”. He takes her hand and leads her to Fran’s room, closes the door and kisses her again, his tongue insistent. His moist hands move slowly down her back, pressing her against him.

They are underneath her shirt now, unclasping her bra. His fingers press too hard on her breast before making their way up her dress. And there is a growing bulge in his trousers. The bulge rubs on her. Up. Down. Up. Down. Rub. Rub. Small grunts come from him while she stands there, not knowing what to do.

So she just keeps kissing.

She doesn’t know what this feeling rising inside her is. It’s not the tingly warmth from the summer. It’s more like a heavy, crushing sensation. Maybe that’s normal?

She doesn’t know, so she just keeps on kissing.

Her name is suddenly shouted in the corridor prompting him to jump back. He pulls a strand of her hair behind her ear, gives her a smile and a wink as she battles her bra clasp. She shyly smiles back, trying not to look at those hands, now rearranging his trousers.

She and Dad silently walk back. The saxophonist has stopped playing and the cafes are clearing tables.

 

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Everything is too neat.

Boxes taped shut and stacked into corners, clearly marked so the movers will know which box goes to which house. God forbid that one of us will end up with something that might remind us of the other.

Even the garage is swept clean. Only a half-full trash bag dangles from a nail. He must have forgotten to toss it. More likely, he left it on purpose, like an accusation: “Thanks to you, rubbish is all we have left.”

He’s the one who prefers booze over me, so why am I left holding the bag?

I drop it into the back seat of the car, go in to recheck each room one last time. Throw up in the bathroom. Am tempted not to flush.

It’s taken ten years to come to this. Ten years of begging, cajoling, shaming, screaming, threatening, lecturing—my voice becoming like the adults’ in the Peanuts cartoon: wa wa wa waa. But I couldn’t shut the fuck up. Didn’t get it—that words are no match for a fight with an addict. I should know; I’m as addicted to him as he is to scotch.

In the den now. I can picture him stacking wood in the fireplace on a Saturday night, sweet smear of old soot across his nose. He can turn our favorite room into a cozy patch of heaven, and every time, I think the same fool thing. How can he want anything more? He lasts an hour before his nightly rendezvous with a better lover. I let the fire die.

In the kitchen now. Blueberry pancakes sizzling cheerfully on a Sunday morning. Today will be a good day, you’ll see. But when ‘60 Minutes’ tick-tocks, he’s been out for two hours, a string of drool pooling onto the leather sofa. I pull a blanket up over his face. He might as well be a corpse.

In the bedroom now. I find him unresponsive on a Monday afternoon. Call the ambulance. This will be the day, you’ll see. There’s no deeper bottom. He’s drunk by noon on Thursday.

That’s when I tell him: “This is it. I mean it this time.”

He snorts. Tosses back another shot. “Don’t let the door hit you on your way out.”

Front porch now. Pulling the door shut for the last time. It doesn’t hit me. You’d think there’s a point in there somewhere. It’s lost on me.  

 

Traci Mullins, a non-fiction book editor by day,discoveredflash fiction in 2017, and it’s been a love affair ever since. Her stories have been published in three anthologies, Panoply, Spelk, Fictive Dream, Flash Fiction Magazine, Flash Boulevard, Blink-Ink, Dime Show Review, Ellipsis Zine, Cabinet of Heed, Fantasia Divinity, and many others. She was named a Highly Recommended Writer in the London Independent Story Prize competition.

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