FLASH FICTION
Less that 1000 words
WISHING FOR WINGS
Reading Time: 2 mins
Her birthday was in one month and she knew her perfect present. On Saturday mornings Susie would visit the pet shop pretending she was at a zoo where the animals were safe in their cages. She had no fear of rats and stroked the bunnies long ears, but she was fascinated most by the budgie. Painful songs at odds with bright colours. On Saturday mornings budgies were never picked by the children, going to single old ladies instead. Susie wanted a beautiful budgie to sing sad songs to her secrets, so she plucked out her pale eyelashes and with every lash she wished for a budgie on her birthday. The long month passed and on her birthday and to her shock in the family room Susie saw the brightest, loudest budgie she had ever imagined. It really was a shock because Susie didn’t remember telling anyone her wishes. The budgie’s cage was later set in the corner in Susie’s bedroom. But soon, the budgie stopped singing. Susie thought it was because she now knew all the little secrets that Susie couldn't share. She felt guilty for the budgie’s sadness and opened the window to let her fly off. Later Susie realised, she would never fit in outside.
NAE NITHIN FUNCY
Reading Time: 3 mins
Bob was married to Marge for 54 years and it all started in a place like this. Time changes places of course but the reason why people came to the place was the same. Or so he thought. He couldn’t quite put his finger on what he needed to change, he didn’t know the words. Bob needed a hair cut but normally Marge would have spotted it, long before he ever needed to think about it. But the night before when he was clearing the bathroom of things he didn’t know what to do with Bob caught his reflection, someone he didn't recognise in the mirror. He had asked his granddaughter what to do about it in his own way.
“And fit’s yer pally Sandy deein’ wi herself these days? She wis gan to cut hair if I min' richt.”
“An apprenticeship?” He scoffed. “It wisna ca’ed at in oor day. Yi started sweepin the fleer and fan yid a handle on that brush yid move on up to the next brush.” Bob thought he was funny. Marge would have giggled. Chanise just looked confused.
“Och weel ma quine, so langs she keepin hersel’ oot o trouble. So, eh, fits the name o’ this placey she’s got hersel’ an apprenticeship then?”
Curl Up and Dye. He felt uneasy when he later looked the number up.
Bob was sitting in a chair too high, resting his feet on a footrest for the first time in almost 55 years. Everything was different to how he remembered. Of course the tools were all different but he had expected that, the tools of his trade had changed in 55 years as well. But Sandy’s brush didn’t even have bristles, it looked like a window cleaner she was dragging across the floor. And there wasn’t any newspapers. Only magazines without stories and pictures of people’s hair. Bob had never really thought about his own hair, never mind other peoples. He noticed that he couldn’t read the front page of the hair magazine he was holding when he looked in the mirror. You see, when you look into a mirror everything shines back at you the wrong way round.
Normally, Bob watched the telly when Marge was cutting his hair. No fuss. He hadn’t looked into a mirror for this long in almost 55 years. Of course, back then when he'd looked in the mirror it wasn’t his face he was looking at. It was hers. “Nae nithin funcy,” he’d said and from that day forward Bob didn’t need a mirror to know his hair was tidy and on special occasions that his tie was straight. He just needed to look into Marge’s beautiful face.
Now, looking into this mirror in this salon and all these years later Bob shed a silent tear finally accepting that Marge’s face would never shine at him again. Neither the right way round nor the wrong way round.
DRESSING IN GOWNS
Reading Time: 3 mins
Yesterday, I sat in the soft pink dressing gown I’d been wearing for 21 years which I’d bought for my hospital bag. It was the most important day of our daughter’s life so far and excitement rippled through the house, washing over us all. Our young son pretended not to care, but for the first time I’d ever known, he and his father had shined their shoes together. Then he strangled the dog with his new tie. My husband was lost in a torrent of wires. He had spent weeks telling me about a camera which would film the occasion to perfection. He had been very impressed when he finally treated himself to the lavish purchase to mark this special day. But excitement made him forget all he’d read in the manual. I remember thinking I was in charge of hair and make-up and I thought she was going to make us late. But when I saw her in the doorway I realised I was only responsible for my own hair and make-up and I wasn’t in charge at all. She was all ready to go. I was falling apart with each advert for baby milk and wiping my snotty nose on the sleeve of my pink dressing gown. She entered the absolute antithesis, poised in swathes of black and wearing my lipstick much better than I ever did. She shook her head at me, not disappointed and helped me pin up my hair.
Have you ever seen a mother duck take her ducklings to water for the first time? Taking a confident step into strange depths she knows they won’t hit the rocky bed. Looking back at her brood on the bank a few tentatively hop in, bouncing along beside her. One is over-zealous and takes a running jump, going under before bobbing to the surface and finding balance. Three, more stubborn. Fluttering along the edge trying to nudge one another off. One finds his badge of courage and tries to dip a webbed-foot. He slips and goes under. When the final two see him bob to the surface they follow; one with reckless abandon the other with imagined self-assurance. The mother duck is not surprised when all her ducklings make it.
This morning I plunged my hands deep into terry towelling pockets, looking for comfort but finding tissues with hard edges. My fingers search for the thread which has been loose for years. I am only vaguely aware I am pulling when the thread finally gives way. I smile. I am glad of the pressure I applied for so long, it wasn’t easy to break. I know that what will now start as a little hole will grow into a gaping cavity as my fingers mindlessly search for that familiar thread to pull. I feel goosebumps beneath the fluffy fabric as I draw figures of eight on my leg. Perhaps now that Lucy has fled, it is my time for a new gown.