Witches Sail in Eggshells Flash Fiction Competition

Strangers on a train. Inches apart. They talk until Berwick, touch at Carlisle, kiss at Stoke. Lust-crazed by Birmingham. A cramped, frantic fuck between Coventry and Milton Keynes. Madness. They part with a sheepish grin and a handshake at Euston. Two hours later, they meet again – at the interview.

If the kids weren’t flinging each other around like angry kites, or screaming for more popcorn, Amy would have time to finish editing that last draft. Grasping their tiny arms and hoisting them over her head she felt their warm giggles tickle her face.

The stories would have to wait.

It’s their fear I want; to taste its fetid saltiness in the wake of their frantic run. I want to hear the blood thump against clotted veins and their heart erratic in its bony prison, valiantly aching to break through. It’s their eyes wide in their final moments; my satiation.

The new family had a rented moving van trickling boxes onto the grass. The mom pointed directions. My father
watched from the window and his red face gave me a stomachache so I left out the back door into the sun. When they said hola I thought it meant love.

You waited eleven years to ask me and when you did, I was in a corner. I could have run, maybe I should have lied, but that day, for some reason I had courage and I answered. Truthfully. No, she is not yours.

You knew already, and you turned away.

He hand-shapes glass lampshades on a pontil iron. I wanted a beanie pendant for the hall. Its undulating surface reminded me of polished stones ribbled with sand. His wife was all bingo wings and linen. My tattooed biceps stole his heart and broke it. Stained and blown.

Sticky tape dangled above, quietly capturing flies. You used to think the hollow end was where wishes came from. Just in case, I wished you wouldn’t move to the city where they didn’t swarm.
I learnt wishes, like flies, strung together and died slowly. Leaving a raft of silver corpses.

When you flew to Australia my plan was set. Before the harbour, bridge and albino turtles, I would ask you there.

One slip, snap, my plan and ankle lay broken on a hospital trolley. Distraught, I blurted it out, you said yes.

On the planned night in Sydney it rained.

She wiped away eyeliner and mascara with a cotton pad; massaged cleanser into her face, removing foundation. If he wanted to know what she was made of, she would show him. Make an incision, peel back the skin. Expose the muscles beneath with their constellation names: levator superioris, zygomaticus minor.

Through this hole the world moves past as though I am travelling in time. They zip back and forth and back. They say I am missing things…like people, like things, like love. I had those once, that’s why I’m here, staying still, travelling in time while the world moves past.

I’d give him wings allowing him to fly out of his diseased mind, if I could. I’d say, “Fly Dad… Fly! Go where you’re free to remember, where you, not dementia, choose what to forget.” I’d watch you soar, dipping and diving, catching loose feathers for keepsakes when they fall.

Clive likes a sharp crease in his trousers.

Linda, Clive’s wife, is afraid of the trousers. They hang menacingly: double-edged like trouser swords.

Linda startles.

‘Are you incapable of a simple task?’

She holds up the iron; a lump of polyester fused to the plate.

He is so cutting.

One reads ‘justice’, another ‘revenge’. She picks them from the damp concrete with fingers that could strangle. She sees words glowing crimson – ‘anger’, ‘loss’, ‘grief’ – and sweeps them into her tidy pile, too heavy to lift. She sits with the weight and scans the steps for ‘forgiveness’. It isn’t there.

She stood isolated. He had lied. Their whole life was one big lie. Now she was done with him. Only one last visit. She would not forgive him. She caressed her stomach. She knew she wouldn’t tell him. It was her secret. It was her way of making him pay.

Cupped hands keep it dark. Calm the heart. It thumps rapidly against fingertips. Light as air. Boney legs collapsed against my palm. I close my eyes. If I keep still I can forget. Do you wish you could fly? I asked him. I open my hands. His silence flutters upwards.

They were young, but not carefree. Never that. She the rich man’s daughter; he the cook’s son.

He gifted her a rose quartz pendant. She wore it every day, until she married someone “more suitable”.

Once smooth, a crack now runs the length of the heart-shaped stone, splitting it apart.

Nowadays, Sven and I can walk across a raft of silver corpses to meet for morning espresso, the path quite blinding if the sun’s out. Today’s my turn to go to him, bagels in a bag, but I’ve news to share, and the fish shift and slide beneath my feet.

It’s served up in pieces, ruby red. Tossed with dry noodles, scallions, ginger. Mother fishes for jewels, dredges up a haul of choice cuts for me. As I slide tail-flesh from shell, she teases meat from the shy hollows of claws and legs. So much work for a single mouthful.

She spooled molten glass from the crucible, like dipped honey from a pot, and filled it with her breath.
So malleable in the beginning, she thought, as she shaped a glowing heart.
If it cooled too quickly, the cracks would show. But then, some things were made to be broken.