Flash Club April Flash Club 2021

[Barbara]

Happy April everyone.

Thank you Emily for your guest hosting last month. It was wonderful to see such varied entries.

This month's Flash Club is now open, and I have upped the wordcount to 500 (yay!) because .... we’d be delighted to feature your entries on our new podcast Short Story Hunters podcast, which will give you an additional platform. But if for any reason you don’t want your work featured, simply let me know. So get writing, ladies and gents. Your stories may just become part of the show.

To participate, use the writing prompt as well as the word limit given to write a piece of flash fiction, then post below to make your entry. Please make your entry anonymous by clicking the anonymous button, but if you forget, don't worry, that's okay too. (Note: Guardians can see who posts.) So take a risk and try something new.

To make the Flash Club the special place it is, we need your votes. You can vote by clicking 'like' or 'love'. If a piece grabs you, please hit the 'like' button. If a piece sweeps you off your seat, please hit 'love'. At the end of the month, I will count up the votes. In a tie, 'Love' will trump 'like'. The entry with the most votes will be the winner. Please don't vote for your own. The Flash Club isn't about about winning. It's about trying something new. It's about grabbing readers with words, and gaging the response. Self-votes don't show if the writing works for the reader.

The most generous voter will get a mention. At the end of the month I will announce the most supportive Flash Voter who will get a special shout-out. The prize? Kudos. And please don't just hit every entry to ensure a win. That's not helping the author. The voting is designed to help writers gage the effects of their work.

And please keep to the word count. Writing to a specific brief is good practice. I'll be strict be strict

when it comes to word count. Those entries over the limit won't be in the running for the top spot. They will be left up, but they can't win. You don't have to use up the full limit. If you want to say something in only 10 words, that's perfectly fine.

The competition is open to all members. Feel free to enter more than one. The main rule here: we ask you not to critique.

This month's wordcount is: 500

Here is this your prompt:

Memory lane. He pulled up at the curb of his childhood house. Nothing had changed after all these years. The sculpture was still there on the front lawn, mocking him, reminding him of where it all went so very, very wrong.

 

[Barbara]

Note: if you'd rather keep your writing spontaneous and in the spirit of flash, and if you prefer for your work not to be featured on the podcast, simply post here as normal, then send me a PM, telling me not to include it. Sometimes it's nice to just be flash and free.

 

[Anonymous]

IN MEMORY​

He pulled up at the curb of his childhood house. Nothing had changed after all these years. The sculpture was still there on the front lawn, mocking him, reminding him of where it all went so very, very wrong.

Or rather, nothing had changed on the outside because the interior remained as destroyed and crumbled as his heart, his mind, his senses.

His second wife, Penelope, had been the perfect antithesis to his first wife: vivacious, the jewel in the crown of every dinner-party, and for Rupert, the love and sex he’d yearned for throughout his first marriage.

It took a few months, a few months of bliss before Lady Rochet the first (deceased) made it known that no other woman would take her place. But those few months ended. Abruptly:

Rupert waited at one end of the table for Penelope to sit down. A normal breakfast on a normal day. But as soon as she did, the table between them splintered, sliver-ware clattering to the floor, quince rotting as it tumbled, tea staining the Persian rug. Then Penelope’s chair collapsed, leaving her sprawled in a heap of food-stained skirts.

Everything Penelope touched or passed disintegrated. The house turned into waterfalls of wood-shavings, crumbling plaster, smashing china, shattering chandeliers – glass baubles scattering like diamonds from broken necklaces. Rupert grabbed Penelope’s hand, dashed towards the door.

Then woke up, wedged under fallen blocks of decorative column.

He’d suffered concussion, bruising – spared death by his first wife to ensure he would remember forever Penelope’s dust-covered face, motionless in her silent, wide-eyed scream.

*****​

Seven years later, with deep breath, Rupert opened his car-door and stepped onto cobbles his feet hadn’t touched since that day. On the other side of his shining silver, open-roofed MG, the priest opened the passenger-door, prised his black-cassocked form out of the seat and strode with swinging thurible to the mansion-steps.

Rupert held another breath as the priest chanted to the devil to leave and to Lady Rochet to let go.

Absolution. Released from her torture.

Still chanting, and with thurible puffing frankincense, the priest opened the mansion-house door, stepped over fallen columns and looked up to where sunlight shone through slats of damaged roof. Rupert gazed at the sunlight too and slowly released his breath and smiled. He could rebuild the interior. He would rebuild it. This house. Himself.

“It is done,” the priest said, descending the steps. “Your first wife is now free.” He strolled to the sculpture. Of Lady Rochet the first. “A lovely gesture.” He stroked the stone foot peeking from under folds of sculpted skirt.

The foot stamped on his hand. The body bent, lifted him. The thurible fell.

Rupert leapt into his car, sped down the drive, Lady Rochet’s face in his wing-mirror, watching – the woman he’d murdered, commissioned a sculpture in her memory. Over her grave.

The engine cut out.

The priest had vanished. The sculpture wore black.

Lady Rochet, no longer made of stone, stepped down from the pedestal.

[499 words]

 

[Anonymous]

Drive

He pulled up at the curb of his childhood house. Nothing had changed after all these years. The sculpture was still there on the front lawn, mocking him, reminding him of where it all went so very, very wrong.

Perturbed, but not really knowing why, he pulled away. It took some time for his wife to ask what was going on – she imagined that she knew him well and liked in her way to give him time to explain himself, to let his thoughts formulate themselves in his mind so that they could emerge, fully formed, into an explanation, that they wouldn’t waste time going through any preliminaries while he searched for the right words.

After they had driven in silence for the next ten minutes (she checked her watch), she decided enough time had passed, and so asked him what he was doing.

He explained that he needed a bit more time. He explained that there were a lot of things to work out, that it was better for everyone if he just drove for a while as he considered what he needed to consider. He asked her to trust him, and he gave her a smile that she didn’t find reassuring.

At that point, the teenager in the back, their daughter, extricated herself from her headphones and demanded, in a deliberately incurious way, to know what was going on. Her mother told her to ask her dad, and her dad told her to relax, they were going on a drive.

They joined the motorway, and started to head north. They were wearing barbeque clothes, because they were heading to a barbeque, a family reunion of sorts.

After another twenty minutes, the wife said that this was probably enough time and that they should perhaps turn around. She worried that they would be late, that people would in turn be worried about them. She started to spark at him, in that way of hers when he was doing something she didn’t approve of. Not shout, but punch out the words, quick and direct. She told him to turn the car round right now and get them back to where they were going. She said he was acting like a baby, a child, a spoilt little brat who didn’t give a damn for anyone else around him, who never did. She took out her phone. I’m calling the police, she said. Without taking his eyes off the road, he reached out, snatched her phone from her and threw it out of the window.

They drove on for hours through the flat plains and up to the mountains, his wife and daughter taking turns to shout at him, plead with him, shout again. His daughter punched the back of his seat, his wife tried to snatch the keys from the ignition, but still he drove.

Finally, the car rolled to a halt in front of a glacier which shrank between two mountains. He opened the car door, got out and began walk up the glacier pulling on his ‘hail to the chef’ apron he had bought for the occasion.

(479 words, not including the prompt)

 

[Anonymous]

Knowledge is power

He pulled up at the curb of his childhood house. Nothing had changed after all these years. The sculpture was still there on the front lawn, mocking him, reminding him of where it all went so very, very wrong.

How was he to know that it would tip his mother over the edge, or that there was even an edge she was teetering on the brink of. He had striven so damn hard to capture the very essence of his father, working long nights for weeks, closeted away in his makeshift studio. It had been the first sculpture he’d created outside of art college and was supposed to launch his career. Although intended primarily as a gift for his mother in memory of her beloved husband, he’d also dared to dream about the commissions that may roll in after people walked by and saw it.

How was he to know about the years of abuse she’d suffered under his father’s hands. On the surface she had always seemed fine. Her charade had been convincing. He wasn’t to know that she’d finally snapped, that his father’s death hadn’t been an accident after all.

How was he to know that the unveiling would not launch his career but launch his mother off a cliff instead. The letter she’d left behind explained everything, including the guilt that had slowly chipped away at her facade from having to look at that bloody sculpture day after day after day.

Now he was an accountant, moving from one form of creativity to another. This career allowed him not only the anonymity he desired after becoming a much publicised orphan, but also gave him the comforting reassurance of the mundane and predictable. Here, there was nothing unknown. And this way he’d managed to make the money that had finally enabled him to buy the place back.

Having just picked up the keys, he’d arrived with no luggage, just the sledgehammer that he lifted out of the boot of the car. He strode purposefully over the grass, imagining the neighbours lace curtains twitching with curiosity. The first blow didn’t do any damage. He’d failed to judge it correctly, hadn’t accustomed himself to the weight, so it glanced off the sculpture with a dull thud. He adjusted his stance and moved his hands along the handle to balance the load. The second hit was much more productive and caused a crack to burst through the centre. It only required two more blows to shatter it completely, reducing his father’s effigy to a pile of unrecognisable rubble. Having constructed it, he knew where the weak spots were.

He returned to his car, satisfied that he’d finally avenged his mother’s death and could maybe now quieten his own guilt. Before driving away he called the estate agent, instructing her to put the house back on the market. He did know that he never wanted to live here again.

448 (without prompt)

 

[Anonymous]

Memory lane. He pulled up at the curb of his childhood house. Nothing had changed after all these years. The sculpture was still there on the front lawn, mocking him, reminding him of where it all went so very, very wrong.

Lloyd could still see the chip in the red gnome hat, from where Freddie had thrown it at him, striking the cement divider of the driveway instead. So many misunderstandings had led to that point. So many years passed before he had been able to unravel them all, and figure out why things had gone to Hell between them.

He had wanted to surprise Freddie, with the app they had brainstormed together. Surprisingly, their drunken ideas actually held water, and Lloyd had managed to make it happen, with a few sober changes. It was a ridiculous, useless app, but Freddie would find it hilarious.

High school kids have a funny way of twisting things. Lloyd asked two people not to tell Freddie: word got around that he had gone behind his back. By the time Freddie heard, the story had grown exponentially.

"How could you!" Freddie had screamed over the gnome. "You stole my idea!"

"It wasn't just your idea!" Lloyd couldn't help yelling back, defensive. "It was ours!"

"I'm not selling out, going behind your back, claiming it's mine!" Freddie had hollered back, fists clenched, red-faced.

"Who's selling out?" Lloyd was confused, but Freddie's anger was contagious.

"I guess you have a price tag now. I hope you choke on the money!" Freddie stalked back into his house.

Lloyd had stared at the gnome, lying in the grass. A chunk of red lay nearby. Not such a fun joke.

They spent the rest of the summer avoiding each other, then went to college in the fall and easily disappeared from each other's lives.

At the five-year reunion Lloyd finally managed to put the pieces together. Lydia had told Marley that Lloyd was making the app to surprise Freddie. Marley had told Dakota, and that Lloyd said to keep it a secret. Dakota told Stephanie that Lloyd was keeping the app from Freddie. Stephanie told John that Lloyd had sold the idea, and not to tell Freddie.

It continued; no wonder Freddie was so angry.

Freddie had come into town for the reunion as well, refusing to be chased away by the 'Benedict Arnold of drunken apps', as he told Kaitlynne. Lloyd finally cornered him.

"I didn't steal your idea, I didn't sell it to anyone. No one would have bought it; it was useless and dumb." He had told Freddie.

He looked angry at first, firing back, "obviously you never made a million dollars with it." He eyed Lloyd's plain clothes, his beater parked outside.

"No." Agreed Lloyd. "But I've looked into it. There aren't any apps out there like it. And now? I think there may be a audience for it . . ."

So now, Lloyd sat in front of his parents house. He waved as Freddie came out his own front door. Lloyd got out of his nearly new car, and admired the front yard decorations.

Displayed behind the gnome was a giant yard sign reading:
"$$Congratulations Boys! Happy 1 year app anniversary!$$"

(Word count: 494 w/o prompt)

 

[Anonymous]

He pulled up at the curb of his childhood house. Nothing had changed after all these years. The Sculpture was still there on the front lawn, mocking him, reminding him of where it all went so very, very wrong. There was no security system, no guards, no gate protecting the first Sculpture—the origin of the greatest amassing of wealth in human history.

Nobody knew it as the first.

When the Sculptures hit the market, this house was but one of the many foster homes he had passed through.

But not to Jacob.

The house had been the stage of the only happy time of his younger years. Her house, his beloved foster sister’s house. Discreetly bought several decades ago—painted new, well-preserved, lawn regularly mowed. The only discordant note; the rusting, ugly pile of metal Jacob now stood in front of.

He snapped open a hidden keypad—10062035, her birthday.

The horrific screeching of rusted panels being forced to move put Jacob onto his knees, hands over his ears; as a supplicant refusing to hear the truth.

It was a broken, crying old man, who stepped into the Sculpture. The familiar interface buzzed and lit up, as Jacob sat down in the inner sanctum of the machine. He spared the slightest smile of pride over his creation’s longevity.

His first Sculpture had been a mockingbird—her wish, his gift.

He swiped the landscape program into action. The transition began to spread slowly; as potent as ever. The landscape changed from dominant green to a multitude of light purples, blues, electrifying reds, and hot yellows. Next came the beak, the vocal cords, the lightness deep into the bones. The feathers rustled with the breeze; he could feel them in his skin, calamus as nails, the warmth of the plumulaceous, and the flexible sharpness of the barbs.

He was a man only in reason; all bird otherwise—and he took to the sky.

He felt the wind currents, the ups, twirls, cones, funnels, and the rotating cells propelling him forward, higher, faster. He sang with the voice of a bird, of freedom and happiness.

Humans had always tried to escape the limitations of their bodies; now they could be any other animal. And nobody wanted to be human any more.

Then he stopped beating his wings, gliding effortlessly. As only the creator of the Sculpture could, he forced a pocket of his mind to separate from his bird body. With immense effort, and not negligible pain, he moved his human arm. An alarm harmed his sensitive bird ears, but his instinct to cover them lacked the hands to do so.

He immersed himself in the Sculpture experience, fully a bird again.

The world was addicted to his Sculptures … at the cost of his foster sister. She had died inside that very one, before Jacob had created the safety protocol. His crime hidden behind her weak heart; his wealth built on her corpse.

He folded his wings and plunged to his death.

 

[Anonymous]

He pulled up at the curb of his childhood house. Nothing had changed after all these years. The sculpture was still there on the front lawn, mocking him, reminding him of where it all went so very, very wrong.

His phone buzzed a reminder that his flight would leave in about in hour. He should really set off about now. Traffic could be unpredictable.

Getting out of the car, he crossed the hot black top street, dodging a delivery truck, and stood before the low chain link fence flicked with rust. Weeds shot up along the short cobblestone path leading to the house bisecting the brown rectangular lawn. How absurdly small it seemed to him, like a glorified playpen. drab, sun bleached, dingy little facade.

He blinked in the hot sun, uncertain , having wandered here in a daze, pressed on perhaps by nothing but mindless routines of habit, long dormant, suddenly activated. He merely stood there stupidly.

It was only the sound of the glass shattering that broke the noonday stillness. The grass swayed in the breeze, indifferently. Then the screams, coming from within the little house, began. The words were indistinct, but the gist of it was there was a man and a woman, and from the sound of things it was quite a row.

"Hello," said a girl standing in the yard, small and dark. He started. She was clutching a doll under one arm, a dirty, smudged little doll he had seen on sale on tv. She was perched on one leg, the other curled around with the tip of her black buckled shoe touching the ankle of her other foot, a precarious position that made her seem like she would tip over at any moment.

"Shhhhh," the girl said, with a little finger to her lips. She stole a look back at the house, from which the screaming had not stopped for even a moment. Looking back at him, she held up her doll to his face.

"Emily likes you," she whispered. "Can you take her?"

He looked at her, at the doll, at the house, and put a finger to his chest uncertainly. The girl nodded vehemently.

"She doesn't like it here," she said, cupping a hand. "She wants to run away, far, far away."

"To where?" he said.

"Anywhere. I can't go with her. I have to stay." She had not blinked once, not the whole time she had spoken to him. Still she held out the doll from her chest with both hands. After a few seconds the insistence of those two eyes got to him, and he took the doll from her.

"I have to go," he said but the girl said nothing, only looking at him silently, as he walked to the car, as he pulled into the street, still as as statue.

On the way back to the main road, he passed a police car. Probably someone had lodged a domestic complaint.

 

[Anonymous]

Diggory’s journey brought him home. The shock of finding the house pickaxed his midline. He grasped his heart. And there it was. A sensation of iced melt-water flowed numbness into him. On the outside, hot tears blurred the sculpture’s vivid outline. Seven-years-old when he was taken. He stroked his hand, loose skin wrinkling over prominent cords. Adults look, but the child sees.

The sculpture’s milky limb stretched to the height of his once bedroom window. It terminated with something hand-like. A gentle twist near the top, a dancer’s gesture. From the cupped palm, parasols of cows parsley shaded the lawn. Not real flowers. It was all part of the design. Natural on the oblique. Different enough to be aberrant. It wore the sheen of bone china. Except it wasn’t.

Diggory could not be sure that this was the real road, the real house. The air, static. Birdsong, absent. Ditto people; movement. He might just have well been standing in a photograph. And a photograph compels one to look back.

***​

He had looked out on a summer evening sky. Silky bands of lemon-green and turquoise melded with indigo, darkening the roofs opposite, and drawing his child’s eye to a hole in the lawn. The kind of hole whose surface shifts like water under a starry night. It made his tummy jumbly. Had it appeared before he looked out or because he had looked out? Not knowing what to do, he got back into bed.

The next morning, he ignored his cornflakes and went straight out into the garden. Grass trembled around the hole although there was no breeze. The hole swirled with blue and white. It didn’t look like a hole. It looked round like a ball.

Daddy came out with his rotary mower. He smiled at Diggory and mowed, pipe in mouth. Cut grass and tobacco carried ribbons of scent. Daddy shaved off the top of the hole. Fine shards of blue and black mixed with the cuttings. It revealed a white dome of white, like the top of a boiled egg.

That night, Diggory woke from a dream he was having about cornflakes filling the hole and milk splashing in. In the dream, he sat cross-legged on the grass and ate with a spoon. Spoon to mouth; mouth to gullet; gullet to belly. Sweet malty spoonfuls. Cornflakes softened, jaundicing the milk.

Stars and universe drew back, pressing him to the earth, eye-level with the hole where something formed. Diggory wanted mummy, but the ground had swallowed most of him. His legs kicked in nothingness. If he dreamt, he could not wake. If awake, sleep could not deprive him of the vision of the featureless face, formed of milk, that rose to look at him.

Hope. Pray. Wonder, said the bubbling lips.

Diggory’s child-curious mind leapt to wonder.

The head burst, foaming the milky seas, forming anew on Diggory’s awe. It enveloped the little boy, and took him away.

And now he was home. Wasn’t he?

(497 exc prompt)

 

[Anonymous]

A late entry

He pulled up at the curb of his childhood house. Nothing had changed after all these years. The sculpture was still there on the front lawn, mocking him, reminding him of where it all went so very, very wrong.

Here is what he thought:

Pages from dirty magazines found in the park. He thinks of falling into nettles, the salty chaos of a nosebleed, the shock of a football in the face, the nosy turmoil of a bird in the house, all feathers and birdshit, whoops and flaps. Think of shops closed on Sundays, pubs closed in the afternoon. Chemists, banks, all only business hours. Get everything before the weekend. Think of conkers on shoelaces. 'Mines a ninety-niner-er', whatever that meant.

The statue.

Think of white dog shit, too many puppies in the house, the wet, meaty chunks of pedigree chum, winalot, and someone daring to taste it on a slow November evening. One TV, three channels, then four, then five. Think of being home from school, sitting by the gas fire with lit log effect (boringly made by plain old lightbulbs), surrounded by dogs and cats. Think of the dogs, standing on the windowsill, knowing it was time for the car to pull up. Waiting.

The statue.

Think of a numb pain in the feet that one day, shoes too thin, socks too thin, meltdown in the supermarket. Think of cheques, of cash only signs. Think of beered up men, threatening in their bulk, spilling out of pubs after lunch, ready to operate heavy machinery, to carry bricks, to drive trucks. Think of the IRA, Shergar the racehorse, impressively grimy London on day trips. Humid buses, the rain rising like steam from the passengers. The peculiar way a voice travels on a bus.

The statue.

The quiet, furtive nights. Rough hands.

The statue. Think of anything but this.

The statue. He could see it through his window when he was told to face that way. The way it hurt. Shush. We all have our secrets.

And that vicious bloody night when he fought back, when he said no.

Think of anything else. Salt n shake crisps, skips, fry’s chocolate cream, Turkish delight, marathons, twixes, mars bars. Think of shreddies, cornflakes, ready brek.

Think of all this, not of the other. That’s how I’ll get through the day.

He takes a deep breath, head full of pointless images, and steps out of the car.

 

[Barbara]

And we have a three way tie between:

@Hannah F and @J Babo and @SteveWhy

But @J Babo has one extra 'love' so he'll get the gold trophy.

Congrats, Babo and Hannah and Steve.

A special mention goes to @Galadriel for being the most prolific voter. Thank you, Galadriel, for your support.

And thank you all who participated. Fabulous stories all round.