Because of the Christmas Competition, we need to focus on Classic 75-100 word stories.
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It flutters across
my line of sight leisurely, taking me away. When you first look at me you might think
here's a person who's lively and crazy. But looks can deceive, as you will soon see. because I'm both house-proud and lazy. I'm aware that clutter's a symptom. of issues that might be quite grave. But the remedy here was so simple, I brought in a lady called Maeve. With a broom and a feather duster, she is quiet, her experience shows. I could, of course, give her a Hoover. But that would just spoil my repose. Walking down dirty streets of windblown litter
tramps folded like used newspapers in doorways forgotten remnants of a brighter more promising past turning by the Red Lion towards the duck pond firemen clean their gleaming red engines shining my memory Whiteway; the pop factory road by the bomb damaged buildings dressers hang over broken stairways their drawers askew mirrors with their forgotten images of a cracked yesterday being careful not to pick the fallen ornaments from shattered roads lest you bring more than treasure away, with someone's past Solicitors office with a larva lamp window, watching the blobs swim the old pub with its roaring train sign, black beamed Tudor style sweet shop and bakers with its smells of fresh baked delights approaching the flats, which watch Bedfont Lane along its length wondering what its like to live in the clouds? A transient sheet of white
covers the verdant grass as a robin flickers away from the semi-barren birch. People scrape ice from cars irritable and taken by surprise but I peer at this world with wondrous eyes my breath rolling like ectoplasm with drowsy three-quarter moon now fading in an azure sky as the rising sun creates jewels on fallen golden leaves. In this wintry weather I cannot but thrive and my, does it feel good to be alive. No matter where my drabbles take me
No matter where my stories roam No matter where my poetry’s published Friday Flash Fiction’s my literary home. I love your stories, poems, and comments Sue, Sandra, Sankar, Sivan, Candace, Guy, Jim, Don, Daniel, David, Marjan, and Fliss Then there’s Pamela, Peggy, Padmini, Alyce, Kate, Elizabeth, John: Fridays don’t get any better than this! If I didn’t say your name, dear ones Please know I love you, too Just being mindful of the road I trod I don’t want to overstep my bounds or break a triple-F rule And face Ringmaster G’s ferocious firing squad! Yarn over chain two
Tucked into my safe space making gifts There is satisfaction in the plying of the hook The play of colours The pride of creativity Yarn over chain two Chant it so the daily numbers can't intrude Louder to help silence my thoughts And ease the pain of separation Yarn over chain two Still, dark shadows slip into my safe space My hands create While I unravel It is a beautiful azure morning:
the meandering Wye reflecting the sky and high up in the ether a peregrine glides and I yearn to drift to the white cliffs. Its wings of magic are extended, a sight to savour with awe. They were hunted close to extinction but now numbers are ascending which is a rare success for nature, a magnificent creature truly a feast for the eyes gliding gracefully as it searches for prey both beauty and the beast on this fine day. Succumbing to the darkness
unleashing its wrath upon the earth, the sky ceases resistance, the sun being clouded over with a blinding veil, the mist descending down like a hungry beast, and eating up the trees from the top, which are being wildly pushed on by strange winds and rain to uproot them, and fighting back with everything they’ve got to win the battle, and will win because they’ve been pumped with the belief that they might win because they’ve weathered the most, and will survive this one. But, will they? Nefertiti upon a whim, loved a man once I thought was him
he would made those Nile smiles and kept his court with crocodiles that man was full eighteen years and kept his conscience with his peers he who was wise before old Rome, and amused himself with palindrome her beau was a king of a desert realm, bought her presents made of elm would this mystery be found in a harem, or in the palace of Tutankhamen? You have memory of what I wrote,
not about you, but about someone else, on a piece of paper, then torn and crumbled, but later reconstructed by you to reveal what I scribbled, illegible and unreadable, but meaningful to me, a recollection seeming real in my mind, but fabricated differently in your beyond broken mind hoping for a miracle cure, but twisted up in knots by jealousy and hatred. The World War One veteran watches morosely as the synagogue burns, the holy place he has frequented man and boy. It feels like his soul is burning as he wipes away a tear fearing there is much worse to come. It is November 9th, 1938 and ugly voices cheer as Jewish businesses are destroyed by fire and people murdered on the street. The veteran fought for his country yet suddenly he is loathed now called by the most horrific names, yes, his soul too is consumed by flames. Caterpillars hide among foliage
European pied flycatchers are hungry They search for dinner A beautiful travesty marked our introduction
impressionable youths lost on diverse journeys united in a common conundrum of displaced energy spent repairing broken hearts & former loves, ignoring possibilities skeptical of outcomes; we’d gather under blue moons to romanticizing pretense, Blanch DuBois cautious—avoiding light, concealing truths; the Avalon Ballroom offered psychedelic flickers muted luminescence that strobed over our bodies as they throbbed in time to Janis, the Cream & Jimi Hendrix, exquisite notes falling like diamonds tossed in an abyss, tinkling out of sight when a sex, drugs, & rock ‘n roll fix ceased to be enough & we watched Timothy Leary followers as they “dropped out” forever, picked up a rifle, graduated from college, or ceased to dream. It is early morning and the tide
has deposited a body on the beach along with seaweed and a log. Did he die by accident, natural causes or design? The papers will inform us to be sure, maybe show a photograph, tell his age, so sad but soon people will turn the page. But at this moment seagulls swarm, a feast on this blustery day before a dog owner arrives who at first imagines a dummy now it will always haunt her dreams. It is truly a desperate sight yet the sea roars...indifferent to her plight. Why climb a mountain,
or sail around the world, or fly rockets to the moon? Why dam a river, or clear-fell a forest, or harvest the ocean to extinction? Why mine minerals from mother Earth's guts to fulfil our wildest dreams of comfort and convenience? Why? Because we can. Remember; Ma shouting you in for tea, a beef dripping sandwich
Remember; The recruiting sergeant weighing you up "you sure your 18 lad?" Remember; Boot camp and the 'naming of parts' sister steel, strike hard! Remember; Troop ships where mules squealed and troopers puked in the dark Remember; A planet of morass who's muddy footprints, owners already 'gone west' Remember; Scrabbling like an animal, nails snapping and digging, away from the leaded rain Remember; Long marches, wire, night patrols, more wire, whizzbangs and bleeding hands Remember; An extra stripe awarded for being the only one left Remember; Mons-Cambrai-Passchendaele, wasting a generations promise... Remember; 17 million dead, churned earth fertilised with sweat and desperation Remember; A land unfit for heroes, no work-no food-no legs-no mind? Remember; Financiers arranging gold coins upon a polished counter, into ranks... Remember; And never forget! A man on vacation just couldn’t have fun.
The water left running would cost him a ton. He phoned his dear neighbor, “To my house please run.” The neighbor gladly said, “Consider it done.” “I give you my promise, so worries have none.” In spite of the promise, no doubts went away. So he got on the phone and called the next day. “Is the water turned off? Is that what you say?” The neighbor assured him: “It’s already done.” “Go back to relaxing and worries have none.” He phoned the next day: “Perhaps you have goofed.” “So do me a favor, please send me some proof!” The neighbor, insulted, just could not conceive. Why this man kept calling and would not believe. (CLICK!) The elder was a fool to drive on down
The path with such abandon. Hatred weighed His soul, his pride, his ever-present frown. What he could feel instead had he delayed! The muse he sought was hidden from his sight Because he placed his faith in faraway Mechanical irrelevance 'til night, Internal monologue to pass the day. He did not find his muse 'til she found him. Imagine what the fool had thought of that! So old in years, and miles, and yet too dim To sense her presence like a pyrostat. And at their winding journey's hasty end, They part as like a farewell to a friend The sun appears from
behind fluffy white clouds that float across the sky  [Photo credit: Yi Chang] In the photograph is the post office in Sibu,
with post boxes built into the exterior walls, one – P.O. Box 242, in the top-centre row of the wall facing the side road – my father rented for his entire life since as far back as my memory, which he would check daily, as if it had to be checked, encouraging me to try to open while growing up in the 70s from needing to be lifted to standing on tiptoe and reaching it, which was to me the address I wrote on envelopes of letters for home when living abroad in the 80s to inform about address change, acceptance to university, first love, which was stubbornly used as the address to receive exam results even when I was thousands of miles from home, but only few miles from the campus where I went daily, which has been providing generations of my family with a treasure of memories and experiences over decades. How can I miss what I never had, relate though I've never lost?
Feel cheated by a life I've never lived? I may as well be a ghost. I'm afraid of what I don't know. I'm closed and have no faith. I've avoided the world and all it holds. I may as well be a wraith. I float, spin, there's no anchor. Try to keep me in chains if you dare. If you have to hold me by force, I may as well not be there. There's no joy, faith, or passion. I have no dreams, love, or ties. A wraith, a ghost, a passing thought, who's born, who breathes, then dies. Bruised clouds tumble down the sky
as a rainbow appears across the city where the spirits of the departed wander. The sun bursts through a dark blanket transporting the church into a glorious gold as the bells ring on this Sunday morning. The autumn sun illuminates a spider's intricate web where a doomed fly is trapped, seagulls screech as they drift by. There's a fresh aroma in the air of fauna and flora after the storm as raindrops drip like tears from verdant trees and I relax...under a cooling breeze. The quiet air around us should define the space
that enables those who write for pleasure or for gain, to reconcile each action outwith this simple ethos, permitting a breath, caught in wonder, to remain. Our fingers, tapping, can bring to life fragile thoughts, pause again while they rise as soft grey smoke, then fade. We feel frustration when we cannot keep these forms, captured inside the many, varied worlds we've made. Though by the act of grasping tightly, holding on, we nullify the contemplative space we need. The smoke descends, not light but thick and smothering thereby allowing negativity to breed. That space within is ours to gently mold and meld. In turn we shape and solidify the space without. Our thoughts can eddy, lap the shore then dissipate allowing positivity to flow throughout. They will be very busy today,
the bees, When the fall temperature reaches 80 degrees. |
PoetryThis is the section where fiction prose becomes something else. We still expect the poems to be short, though – sonnets, perhaps, or around that length at the very most. 
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December 2021
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