flash fiction

Dates to watch out for

The start of the year has seen some more writing make its way into the world – a flash piece on attending Pride for the first time in Turnpike Magazine (available now), a second set during the inside out hours of a rainy night in the Spring edition of Capsule Stories, out March 1. A journalism piece on documentary filmmaker Mariah Garnett’s Trouble, screening as part of the Glasgow Short Film Festival (GSFF), will appear in the Skinny March edition.

Thanks to Femspectives for screening Glue in their Made in Scotland strand this month. Glue has since been accepted into CineQ (16-26 March) and Roze FilmDagen (13 March, Amsterdam) film festivals. The film will also be a part of the GSFF Cafe Flicker made by women night, 19 March.

Will update if and when there’s more to share. Thanks for reading!

Slipping

Slipping
Peering, leaning, circling, nearing, the deep dark of the hole in the ground pulls at my shoelaces. I jerk my foot away but it’s not far and my torso barely turns. It knows what’s down there, which is why I won’t run.
Smiles were nice for a period of time but then they started to feel strange on the inside of my mouth, like a bit of food that won’t be chewed and has to be spat out. Happiness didn’t fit on my face, even as a mask it was the wrong size and the elastic dug into my ears.
EC Nov 2019
Pic from auntyflo.com

Gutter 18

It has been a delight and the highlight of my year – being published in Gutter Magazine. They have published work by so many writers I look up to, so to be in their company is immense. This edition also came with a supplement called The Freedom Papers, with some essential words on the subject. Together this edition was the most successful publication at the Edinburgh Book Festival.

My story is called Flying Saucers.

Gutter 18

 

 

 

 

Skye High

The sun burns the back of my neck, but the sky looms sea blue and I take the hint. Grains of sand increasingly cake the cracks in my feet, and I hanker after the water.

It’s been a long day and it’s only noon. We set out early, and slowly marched North. The Highland mists sank murky to greet us, before clearing a path as we crossed the bridge to the Isle. Inwardly eager to get digging, outwardly tired, faces slumped against the minibus windows. Our view of vast lushness, the reward for all the rain, plays pretend. I’m promised tropical seas, that if I “didn’t know any better would have me convinced I were at the equator”. Or so I’ve been told.

Left, right, left, right, one after the other, steady and rhythmical, and ready for a rest. A cool saltiness crackles in the air, and the crest of the sand bank beckons.

When I read about the island as a child, I asked, much to my parents’ amusement, “What are the Brothers pointing to?” “No”, replied Mum, patiently, “the point belongs to the brother.” Leaving me to wonder what point the brother made or owned, at Rubha nam Brathairean.

The pool of water soaks and covers my toes, reaching a few inches deep. It doesn’t carry the coolness all around me quite yet, but it will.

It starts to rain, as soon as we dock. I fetch my mac out of my backpack. It sticks to my skin all plastic and yellow. The tide may turn yet though, the breeze is brisk, and shaded clouds move fast above me, as if they’re late for something too.

The tide has turned, it’s coming in, those few inches now chase my knees.

It’s not quite the quicksand of childhood scares, but still it’s unexpected when my booted foot sinks. The tide is only just receding, and the land it leaves behind is sopping. There’s a leak in my boot, too. The sea, rinsing and washing clean each day’s detritus, has its own secrets. Jagged rocks on the tidal platform shine black and glint, tricking my eye. Over there, by the edge, there’s what looks like a wide circle, with smaller dots around and ahead of it. Like carefully laid out settings for stones. Or, toes. And it’s not alone.

 

Sand and Snow

“Today it snowed on the beach. Weighty hefts of white fell, politely asking the sand to make way for their arrival. It was a sunshine kind of sand, golden from a distance, but when you got up close, when you scooped the grains out of your pocket, and shook them from your shoes, different colours started to appear.

The frozen air saw the flakes gather for warmth before they would soon melt back into the earth. Their unique patterns lay hidden to outside eyes, reflected only by a twinkling.

Under thickly splashed lines, grit and shell and seabed by turns fragmented and whole, buffed and shimmering, met the finest points of infinite stars fallen from the skies.”

EMC

Photo author’s own

In Plain Sight

She felt the ground soften under her feet. It mulched and shifted under sole. Made small by her surroundings, branches reached, waving leaves at the clouds as if in conversation.

Holding onto peeling greening bark, she supported herself. With a cautionary tilt of her head through long brown hair, Laure paused and checked it really was clear, that she was alone, that no-one could see, and began to cry. The well she thought she’d exhausted the day before had refilled of its own accord.

The monster in her heart found its voice in her tears. Air couldn’t reach lung before what remained was expelled. The deficit made her head light and she sat before she fell. Her heart stopped. Not of excitement or fright. She thought this must be what it is to break, to be snapped underfoot.

Trying to count breaths in and out, rhythmically, she reached an uneven compromise. Her hand rested on the half submerged roots of the tree she had chosen, arching into the ground. Blurred branches hung over and above her, a drooping canopy, diffusing sunlight through the green. Raindrops began to fall, bubbling in the puddles at her feet. Some were burst by sharply pointed strikes. They swam into the gully of the roots.

One brisk eye rub and the canopy came into clarity. The criss-cross of intersecting branches looked like it formed a letter. Laure reasoned the shape existed independently, and she only noticed it because it reminded her of the first letter of an important name. A reflection of how her mind was focused on it, searching. She was reserved for that name, it was ingrained, and every object became a mirror of it.

To make sure it really was there, she leaned away from the trunk slightly, knees still bent, to trace her fingers over it. Sure enough, one slope connected to a pinnacle met by another slope, and crossed in the middle, marking the letter A.

The wind blew in and around the leaves as further letters began to form. Branches lay across each other, giving — to As and Ts. Looping round, buds provided the . to is and js. The canopy yielded, lowering. It bent and undulated, pushed out of place. As branches tried out new shapes, they began to find new formations. The canopy of letters began encircling the central trunk, encasing Laure underneath. Temporarily shocked, panic erupted until she noticed that she was not being pinned but enveloped. The part of the trunk she had been sitting on sunk back to create a concave nook of a hollow. She sat in it.

Although contracted, there were still gaps between the leaves. Laure risked a push of the woven structure and found it pliant. She could hide here, and no-one would know. If she wanted to leave, a push and a squeeze under the periphery and she would be free. She pulled it closer.

EMC

Photo by the author. 

 

 

 

Pencilled In

My submission to the University of Aberdeen’s Book Week Scotland Flash Fiction competition.

———

The blankness was intimidating. White vastness like untouched snow. Not a mark, an indentation, or a print. Except for her. This was square one. Of how many squares there might be she didn’t know. She hadn’t seen any others.

She looked at the shadows and lights of her arms and used them as a guide. A drawing from life, still. Finger outstretched, she daubed graphite liberally in front of her. Softly edging out fine lines in a pattern, cross-hatching. This would create the wall. The scale of it made her nervous, but false confidence took hold. It was better than none.

She began to push the lead into the paper with increasing force. When removed to create highlights it would leave a starker contrast. The background had to be not just dark, but like the midnight hours. As if you had your eyes closed with your hand on top too. Her arm was moving quicker and quicker against the resistance of the paper, when it moved. Jolted right in front of her. She froze immediately.

Deliberately slowing down she resumed with conscious care. A crease in the newly drawn wall was throwing the evenness of her lines off. With some more shading in exactly the correct place perhaps she could trick the eyes. Peering very closely, finger all that was separating her nose from patterns in rows, she pushed. It was one push too far, the weakened structure broke, a rip taking a trajectory of its own accord, rapidly splitting all the way down to the ground. Through the space, a solitary eye blinked directly into hers. “I think I’m your neighbour. I drew the square next door?” Like lifting up a bedraggled, loose piece of wallpaper she pulled the paper away and saw a stick drawing in their own line drawn home. Their uncomplicated circle face with oval eyes containing another circle each, and dots for the pupils, nodded her in. She stepped through the paper, careful not to smudge any of herself on either of their designs.

They showed her round, pointing out the garden, sharing ideas, and patterns. They were taken aback at her own appearance. She had worked on herself before her surroundings, creating more depth and detail, practising. Then she had turned outwards, drawing whatever felt right and true. “I’m more words than drawings,” they said. Smiling sympathetically to themselves. They handed her a book. “I wrote that. All from my own imagination.” She gladly took it. She had never seen a book before, and didn’t know what it would contain or if she could make sense of it. Slipping back through the tear in the wall, both agreed to keep it there until she had made her own door and outside, to see if she could get round that way. Until then, she would leave a small gap in the paper rip.

She rocked herself in her newly drawn chair. Ankles rotating in gentle motion, she set out to discover her book.

The story was inspired by the image above, ‘Wood cut ‘October’ by Eric Ravilious from Almanack 1929 Watt 686 209 Lan a