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Life and Soul, by Isabel Evans

17/9/2021

 
That hollow feeling. The bleak emptiness of the evening spreads ahead as inviting as drenching rain on plastic, as warm as the wind whipping through the bus shelter.

Janine teeters balanced on her stilettoes and applies herself: black and red, glossy slashes, again and again. She’s putting on her game face. To be who everyone thinks she is. Ready to rouse the troops and lead the way to the next dire, smoky, dark, smelly nightclub, with its impenetrable noise, its groping hands. And then the next, and the next…

Onwards to a final outpouring of vomit on some cold, grey pavement.

It’s who she is.

It’s who she’s not.

But for a trance-like moment at the end of the evening she’ll finally be in the place she wants to be. Nowhere.

“Ready Janine?”
“Yeah – let’s do it.”

Her lips stretch sideways in a wide rictus slash: the silent scream her friends think is pleasure.

She’s a laugh. She’s up for it. She’ll do… anything to fill her void.

She’s the life and soul.
​
Sue Clayton
18/9/2021 06:19:41 am

A well told portrayal of a lonely soul hiding behind a false life of gaiety.


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    Longer Friday Flash Fiction Stories

    Friday Flash Fiction is primarily a site for stories of 100 words or fewer, and our authors are expected to take on that challenge if they possibly can. Most stories of under 150 words can be trimmed and we do not accept submissions of 101-150 words.


    However, in response to demand, the FFF team constructed this forum for significantly longer stories of 151-500 words. Please send submissions for these using the Submissions Page.

    Stories to the 500 word thread will be posted as soon as we can mange.

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    One little further note. Posting and publishing 500-word stories takes a little time if they need to be formatted, too.
    ​Please note that we tend to post longer flash fiction exactly as we find it – wrong spacing, everything.

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