Flash Club April Flash Club 2020

[Barbara]

Hi all

I hope everyone is safe and well.

Let's have a topical prompt.

Prompt: Stuck in a cabin.

Make it funny, thoughtful, murderous, spacey, romantic, or simply vent your thoughts and feelings - basically anything you like.

Word Count: 300 - 400

As always, use the writing prompt as well as the word limit given to write a piece of flash fiction. Entry is open to all members. Feel free to enter more than one. The only rule here: we ask you not to critique any of the entries.

To take part in the competition, simply post your entry below.

Towards the end of the month, I will close the thread and open a poll so you can vote for the winner.

That's it. Any questions, PM me.

See you next month.

Stay safe and well!

 

[Matthew Snoding]

#Mandydream

What’s up my followers, my beautiful flowers? My beautiful brave #Mandarmy. Well, here we are, all on lockdown, shut in our little homes, or even our cabins, I know some of you live in a cabin - and I'm specifically looking at you @Kelvinstrummer35. But don’t worry WE. ARE. GOING. TO. BE. OK. I’ve got my food in the cupboard, I’ve got my flashlight, in case the power goes, ‘cause, I know they said that won’t never happen, but you never can tell can you? Like @Stacey12@home says – best to be crying over over than dying over under. Thanks Stace, you’re beautiful. What else have I got? I’ve got the internet still, and that is the most important, singularly the most empowering, ‘cause it means I can reach out and touch you all. Well, not touch you in the real sense, if you know what I mean, but most importantly, touch you with my mind and heart.

So . . . so sorry I’ve been a bit, you know, slack with my little vlogs, my little pieces, lately. I mean, I’m sure you’re all wondering, how’s #Mandydream dealing with the apocalypse? And you know. I’m OK. I’m OK. Putting on a brave face, because that’s the face you have to wear don’t you? I mean, it’s what people expect. And you can’t disappoint people can you? They’re sharing your dream . . . even when . . .

And I know some of you have been pinging me with all questions about my mum.

All about my beautiful. Brave. Mum.

She died.

Sorry to say, she died. She died last Tuesday and my dad’s been in absolute bits because, like, he’s useless without her, I mean, yeah he can fix a plug and programme the SKY+ but for everything else, he’s just like a body without a bone and there’s literally nothing we can do and there’s that word again I’ve been thinking about lately – nothing – and like, first mum was there, and then she got ill and then there was nothing. Nothing. And me and my brother, we don’t know what to do, we’re lost . . . . we are lost we are lost we are lost . . . where did I hear that? . . . It's funny what you forget . . .

And this disease, this virus, whatever it is, you think it isn’t coming for you. You think you are strong, you think you’re special, I mean we all do. And we all were. But there’s no special anymore. Just people, doing what they can. Giving love where they can. Getting on where they can . . . But sometimes . . .

Be vigilant my #Marndarmy, sending good vibes, see you on the other side.

#RIPMum, love you forever.

#Mandydream #Mandynightmare.

 

[Katie-Ellen]

Very good, Matthew,

 

[Matthew Snoding]

Very good, Matthew,

Thanks very much.

 

[P C Lieunoir]

Warning: Strong Language from the start

Like A Warrior​

‘Will you kindly try a little harder Pershore?’ said Lord Farquar. He pulled his cigarette from its holder and crushed it out in Pershore’s ear. ‘You’re a fuck-up. What are you?’

‘I’m a fuck-up, sir.'

‘What kind of fuck-up?’

‘A useless fuck-up, sir.’

‘Correct.’ said Farquar. ‘Now go away. And remember, next time: bow, scrape, toady, ask what I require, assure me you will fetch it, toady, scrape, bow, leave. Clear?’

‘Clear, sir.’

‘Good.’

Farquar gazed beyond the elegant panes of his drawing-room window towards NTL56. A rather beautiful planet, he thought. More beautiful than Earth, if one were truthful. But dull. Terribly, awfully, desperately, dull. So dull that on occasions during this posting it had occurred to Farquar that unless one took care, one might easily go mad. Thank heaven for Guenlievel. Just, thank heaven for her.

Guenlievel Farquar looked up from her Harpers & Queen.

‘Darling?’ she said.

‘Yes darling?’ said Farquar.

‘Pershore’s dripping.’

‘Is he?’

‘Yes. On the rug.’

‘So he is. Good heavens Pershore.’

‘Yes sir?’

‘You’re dripping on the rug.’

‘Yes sir. You knifed me, sir.’

‘I don’t think I did.’

‘Yes sir. Yesterday. You used the paper-knife.’

'Are you certain?'

‘Don’t argue with the servants, darling,’ said Guenlievel.

‘Well for heaven’s sake, Pershore,' said Farquar, 'clean it up.’

‘No, sir.’

Guenlievel lowered her magazine. ‘I beg your pardon Pershore.’

‘I apologise, Madam, but I am unable to do as his Lordship asks.’

‘Why ever not?’

‘The master’s knife, Madam. It has damaged my abdominal articulation. I can no longer perform cleaning duties.’

Guenlievel slammed down her magazine. ‘Farquar!’

‘You bloody little shit Pershore,’ said Farquar. He strode to the fireplace and pulled a broadsword from the chimney-breast. 'You utter, utter shit!'

‘Leave the room Pershore,’ said Guenlievel. ‘Get out. Now!’

‘Sir,' said Pershore as he turned to go, 'I must remind you, I am the last operational Pershore on this station.’

Farquar ran across the room swinging the broadsword above his head like a warrior from the old Hollywood movies.

The blow went clean through Pershore’s neck. Micro-tubes exploded from the top of his chest. Stinking bio-fluids fountained, splattering the room. His head bounced off the window.

Farquar breathed sharp breaths. Points of colour appeared on his cheeks.

Guenlievel put down her magazine. 'Genius, Farquar,' she said. 'Complete genius. You make the foulest mess imaginable and simultaneously destroy the only means to clean it up.' She went to the fireplace and lit a cigarette. 'Is this how you want to live? Is it? In shit? Running around, playing with swords in shit? Who do you think you are, Robert the Bruce? Vlad the fucking Impaler? Look at you. You’re pathetic. A loser. A nobody. You’ve got us posted to the most shit-awful backwater-'

Micro-tubes exploded. Bio-fluids fountained.

‘You can shut up too,’ said Farquar.


THE END

 

[echo.]

Cucumber

Trevor Norris was a killer with a beard like Father Christmas.

The afternoon I met him, it was my first day in prison and his last. We were out in the portacabin by Farms and Gardens and he had a cup of tea and arthritis. He told me about the cucumbers they’d grown over the summer.

‘Quite a crunch, these have, a real crunch.’

I nodded along because I hadn’t met a murderer before and I didn’t know how to respond to the word crunch when he was serving life for caving a man’s head in. The cabin had a fair few tools about. But he didn’t stick a rake down my throat and pull up my insides like old leaves, so I kept nodding.

‘What you in for, kiddo?’

‘Didn’t do anything.’

I wondered if Trevor Norris counted out his years in cucumbers, if he tallied up his sentence in dried seeds laid out on the windowsill in sets of five. If he grew them longer with the passing years, or shorter to match the time that he had left. I wondered if you could purposely grow short cucumbers. I didn’t know much about gardening.

‘Beautiful place,’ he said before I left, eyes out in the sunshine, as if he couldn’t see the ten foot walls and razor wire or hear the screaming from the seg. ‘If I could last my time just in this cabin, I’d be happy. Could stay in here forever. Wouldn’t mind that.’ He stared at me. ‘Stay out your cell as much as you can.’

It was nice enough, before the walls. Sometimes there were ducks.

Then he waved bye bye, and when he killed himself that night I wondered, if they’d locked him in the portacabin rather than the cell, would he still be alive? Was it the cold stone that made him die, or the cage on the window, or the lunchtime baguette that never had the right filling? Was it the lack of cucumbers? With the right things to keep you company, maybe you could be locked up and content, all at the same time. I felt it sometimes, as the weeks went by. Fleeting, but alive. If it weren’t so totally out of keeping with everything I’d been told, I’d say it could only be described as happiness.

Maybe that was all it took.

Just tea, sun, and cucumbers.

 

[Emily]

It’s early. Early-morning-early. Deafening-bird-song early. And it’s time.

My woman and I are locked in a battle of wills. She’s saying: It’s bloody early, you woke me up. But I just give her my big, brown puppy-dog eyes and she tells me I’m adorable and I know she’ll let me go.

You see, I have to share this stretch of road with a Class A Dickhead. While the rest of the country are stuck in their cabins, rarely venturing out these days, this prize idiot in his souped-up tricycle likes to practice his motocross, full throttle, before dawn, on our road on his way to “work”.

Yeah, “work”.

To make matters worse, I’ve caught him chatting up my woman at the gate more than once. The last time, I was hiding behind the hedge listening to his shite until my eyeballs ached from rolling. There he was, in the middle of this sales pitch:

“It’s loike, the most physically demanding sport in the world. So, y’know, loike, anytime you want to watch some elite athletes duke it out, loike-”

At this point I had to run at him, telling him and his stupid haircut to Fuck Off and he was all:

“Hey buddy, calm down, I’m just, loike, well… hey, see ya around, yeah?” as he hopped onto his crappy two-wheeler and zoomed off in a cloud of dust and fumes.

But I digress.

My woman said she’d give me two minutes. That’ll be cutting it fine. Out here on the road, head cocked to one side, the commencing roar of engine cracks the calm and I sprint; breath puffing out like bursts of cloud. Hair streaming, nostrils flaring, hear the acceleration.

Run

Run

Run

The engine is a thundering growl, louder by the second. I crouch.

Ready.

He rounds the corner and I leap. The bike leaps. Saliva spray sparkles in the silver shadow. We eyeball each other mid-air. He’s mouthing something as he sails through the air, the destination of his flattening curve: the ditch.

There’s a grating percussion of brambles and nettles and metal but I don’t wait, I can hear the hoarse, annoyed whisper of my woman.

“Mutley!” She tries to whistle. She’s an awful eejit, but I still love her. “Where are you, bold dog? Mutley!”

I dash along the road, tongue joyously flapping and cannonball into her waiting arms.

 

[Hannah F]

STUCK WITHOUT SHOES​

Dear Diary, I’m stuck in a cabin. I mean, I’m always stuck in a cabin when we’re on a ship – I’m not allowed to go for walks in case I meet strangers – but, this time, I’m stuck on the bunk in the cabin. Because I’ve no shoes.

I thought they couldn’t take me back if I didn’t have shoes and I could stay in Grandma’s house. I knew they’d get angry, and they got very angry when they looked everywhere and still couldn’t find them. But it would have been worth it if I could have stayed in Grandma’s house.

They didn’t push a stick down between the two parts of the radiator like I had to make sure one shoe was well hidden, and they didn’t rummage for the other shoe in Grandma’s compost bag in the greenhouse. They didn’t look under the gravel in the drive for one of my slippers or under a cowpat in the field for the other one. I hid them in different places, you see, so if they found one, they mightn’t find two, and I could stay at Grandma’s. I pretended to search as well, they’d have got even angrier if I hadn’t, but I didn’t go near those places.

It didn’t work. I didn’t get to stay at Grandma’s. Dad carried me to the car and threw me onto the back seat. He carried me to this cabin and threw me onto the bottom bunk. He threw me so hard, dear diary, that I nearly hit my head on the way. And now, Mum’s carried me to the toilets, and that was the worst part because her bum’s so big she couldn’t close the door and everyone saw me on the toilet. Mum said they all knew I’d been bad because they could see I had no shoes on. I tried hard not to look at their faces, but I did and they were scowling at me. I’m not going to go to those toilets again, so, you see, dear diary, I’m completely stuck in this cabin now.

When we get home, Dad’ll have to carry me to the shops to buy a new pair. I hope I get the shiny, patent leather ones like Courtney wears because, apart from you, dear diary, she’s my best friend. It’ll be fun if we both have the same shoes.

 

[Barbara]

April's Flash Club is now closed. To determine the winner please cast your vote here.

 

[Barbara]

And the winner of April's Flash Club is @Emily.

Congratulations. You deserve a round of clapping.

Please put your hands together here.