Sixty second stories
FLASH FICTION FIRST PRIZE
Nearly New
GREGORY JACKSON
A few days after I returned home from hospital a man came to our door asking if we would like
to sell our new baby. He was courteous and not at all pushy. He wrote down a ballpark figure and
said I should talk it over with my husband. I know it is impolite to mention money, but the figure
he offered was considerable. We are not wealthy people. We have large monthly commitments
on the house, the car, two credit cards. We have the additional costs associated with a new baby.
That night, my husband and I discussed the matter.
My feeling was that it would be wrong to sell the baby as we were still getting used to it and
it to us. My husband agreed, noting also that it was practically new. ‘Nobody sells a car straight
off the forecourt,’ he reminded me.
But over the months to come I questioned our decision.
When the baby woke screaming in the night, fists balled with rage, or when it was overly picky
about my cooking, I had my doubts.
One day the man came back to our house. ‘Well?’ he said gently.
I brought the child to the door, thinking we had a deal. But the man started backtracking, talking
about wear and tear and how the thing was no longer new. The figure he eventually suggested
was much lower than before and we sent him away empty handed.
‘Hush now,’ my husband consoled me. ‘We can wait.’
Sixty second stories
FLASH FICTION SECOND PRIZE
Girls
ARTHUR WANG
“Boys, and with them the ideas of boys (ideas leaden, reductive, inflexible), enter the house.”
Rick Moody, “Boys”
Girls walk home, girls walk home. Girls walk home from the bus stop, wearing dresses picked
out by their mother. Girls walk toward oncoming traffic, as they’ve been taught. Girls walk
home alone, and men in nice cars stop and tell them what they’re doing is dangerous.
Girls keep walking, and men put their cars into reverse, and ask if they want a ride home.
Girls keep walking and say, no thank you, we live just down the street. Girls walk home with
Indian burns on their forearms; girls saw boys giving them to each other and wanted to know
how they felt. Girls walk home, thinking of a time when people still touched: moms kissed
dads, girls played tag, boys crawled under the table and tickled mom’s legs, saying,
so smooth. After a party, girls walk home along the highway. Girls walk home, afraid they’ll
be hit by drunk drivers, afraid they’ll be grounded. Girls walk home, scraping their thighs
against rusted guardrails, wondering about bacteria and headlights, lockjaw and locomotion.
Girls walk home, faces flushed, and think about mothers who stay up watching old movies
when girls are out. Girls decide to start crying when mothers flick on the light. Mothers have
always loved sisters more: beautiful, popular, younger sisters who were also at the party but
planned ahead and made up a story about a sleepover with girls.
Sixty second stories
FLASH FICTION THIRD PRIZE
Number Forty Three
JACKY TAYLOR
Even the air outside is thick with the stink of it. The door swings open and the shriek
of a thousand banshees explodes; he feels he’s fallen into the pit of the damned – squawks,
squeals and a frantic scritch- scratching all over the place.
There are cages everywhere. Zebra Finches, dozens of them, coralled in breeding pairs
bouncing ping-pong from perch to perch. Cockatiels with teddy boy quiffs, grimy doves,
lovebirds necking in perpetuum and macaws manacled to wooden poles. There must
be hundreds of the bloody things.
He counts them, puts the number of cages down in his book then spots the largest one of all
tucked in a corner. There’s a blanket, colourless and hole-pecked, heaving in a breathy cycle.
Whatever’s under there is huge, massive. Jesus, he jokes to himself, it must be a bloody vulture.
As he edges closer it launches itself at the bars its cover slipping to the bottom of the cage.
Screeching in front of him is a boy: grimy, matted and naked, flapping his arms as if they were
wings. Over and over the boy flings himself against the bars while the man freezes then tries
hard to get a grip. He utters a few words to calm the child, but as soon as he starts speaking
to him the boy chirps.
Sixty second stories
HIGHLY COMMENDED
The Time It Takes
PETER HOWE
He stood with it in his hand, waiting; even when young he’d been a slow starter. He was
aware of her – an empty space inside, which was at the same time a weight. The stream
started, a clear arc onto the side of the bowl – he’d always been shy of hitting the water and
making a noise. Shuffled half a step to his left, edging away from the window, in discomfort
at being near it, at even coming into the bathroom at all, surrounded by the tasteful blue paint
she’d chosen. He looked sidelong at it, the large, low window which opened onto the fire
escape. The liquid poured satisfyingly out of him; he groaned. If sex was a small death, then
pissing was a miniature orgasm – a little bit of your soul got free. She liked to lie out there
on a towel, reading; her exquisite body in the sun. He would ask if she minded him using the
bathroom. Urinating near her, feeling male, slightly aroused, also clumsy, dull and dirty.
He finished in a dribble, the last drops. The hollowness inside him had shifted, removed itself
to outside the window. He would paint it, the fire escape, maybe put down a piece
of decking, some plants in terracotta pots, more new curtains that this time he would choose
himself. He shook himself, just slightly swelled, soft and warm in his own hand; still plenty
of life left in him.
Sixty second stories
HIGHLY COMMENDED
Monster Hospital
SOPHIE MACKINTOSH
They scream from a distance, legs broken or missing. You can almost hear it. You hum sirens
between your lips and tidy the bedspreads. Be good. Rest.
Your sister watches from the side. She plays the nurse and resents it, but you’re older, with
hair growing in darker every year, though the sun still bleaches the ends. Getting taller and
your jeans tight at the cuff, you now have a faint awareness of your body, no longer brushing
it off like the pollen that stains when you cut through fields. In the gaping space of the barns
where bats and swallows shit their guano everywhere you stare down the palms of your
hands until your skin is unfamiliar, running home spooked.
Some patients have wings beaten to tissue. Others are pinioned by rocks, abdomens seeping
out a pungent, petrol-coloured blood. Your sister drips sugar water over them as you take
up tools; toothpicks and grass-blades. Some drink while others drown, face-down in their
medicine. The ones damaged beyond repair have their flickering bodies fed to the rest.
Your ears redden in the sun and later you’re in trouble for your sister’s skin, worse than yours.
You should look after her. You should know. What you do not know, yet, is that one day
you will not even tread on spiders. Your hands will cup the bluebottles that hurl themselves,
fuming, at your windows; you’ll release their bodies outside with a sense of atonement that
you cannot place.
Sixty second stories
HIGHLY COMMENDED
Popping Your Cherry
SARAH TAYLOR
So he asks me one night, shall we do it duck? An’ I sez, go on then, we’d better had.
Any road up, we coun’t do it there and then because we ant got no whatdoyoumacallems.
So the next Sat’day his mam was aht and I gus round. His mate Dean’s gorr’im him the
jonnies, ant he. So we’re on the settee, gerrin started, like. And then, his bloody lurcher’s
in the room, sniffing all ovvah. I’m not doin’ it wi’ that bogger in ’ere, I sez. I’ll put her aht,
he sez, and he jumps up with his jeans round his ankles and his John Thomas aht and
he hops ovvah to French windders and chucks a bone up the yard. What’s up wi’ you,
he asks, looking mardy. I tell ’im, you look a right turn-on like that. Not. And he sez, come
’ere you. And he starts hoppin’ after me like he’s in the three-leggered, with his Levi’s hoadin’
his feet together. Aren’t you meant to tek your shoes off forrit, I shouts from behind the china
cabinet. But he’s fallen ovvah, ant he, and he’s on his back like a turtle on a beach of orange
Axminster and I’m screamin’ wi’ laughter cus he looks such a daft sod. He pulls his jeans off
then and sez, come ’ere my beautiful, sweet lass. And he picks me up and carries me ovah
to’t settee. And then he pops me cherreh.