Flash the Court

Tag: Flash Fiction

  • “Rules of Serving” by Coleman Bigelow

    “Rules of Serving” by Coleman Bigelow

    A close-third dual narrative allows a writer to tell two sides of one story, delving into the age-old question: Is the grass indeed greener on the other side? “Rules of Serving” by Coleman Bigelow is a playfully rendered flash fiction that explores the rather serious matters of divorce and desire. See if you can catch every cleverly nuanced double entendre.  —Court Harler

    As Georgina pours more wine and pulls the plastic off a fresh pack of Parliament Lights, she wonders what game her handsome neighbor will be playing solo tonight. The clanging of a horseshoe answers. There’s something oddly satisfying about the sound of metal hitting stake. She sips and stares at the river that borders the backyards of all the tightly packed properties on Arbor Street—a collection of multifamily houses also known as “Divorce Row.”

    Freddy has recently bought an entire collection of lawn games at an estate sale. He hopes one of his two daughters will want to play if they ever come to visit. His neighbor is dragging a lawn chair around and cigarette smoke wafts above the dividing fence. Freddy ponders whether she’s sending him signals. He’d first encountered her as she was stretching on the front steps. Freddy was carrying a depressingly small bag of single-man groceries from his car and he thought he’d noticed her performing an extended hamstring stretch. Just as he was about to go inside, she’d shot him a sexy, big-toothed smile. Now, she’s always coming out back when he does, and no children have come to visit her either.

    Georgina’s tired of driving to different towns to meet men who glance at their phone before sitting down. Now, whenever she hears her dark-eyed neighbor popping open a beer, she does a silent “cheers.” She feels like a stalking cat. Pictures them both prowling their side of the fence, keenly aware of the heat and life bleeding through.

    Her neighbor must have been hitting whiffle balls because there’s one on her side. Her fingertips are just high enough to reach above the fence top.

    “Lose something?”

    “Oh, thanks.” His bushy hair grows visible, then his fingers are taking the ball, grasping her hand. Holding it for a just a moment.

    Freddy’s grilling steak and thinking of sex. He misses cooking for more than one. His ex didn’t care for red meat, but she loved when he cooked. While he waits for the coals to get hot, he grabs a badminton racket and starts wandering, ponging a shuttlecock up and down.

    “Okay, this is getting pathetic,” Georgina chides in a sultry tone. She presses a hand against the fence. Rubs her fingers against the splintering wood. “You can’t play badminton by yourself.”

    Freddy lets the shuttlecock drop. “You’d be surprised what I can do by myself.”

    Georgina flushes. “That may be, but some things are better with a partner.”

    “Fair enough,” Freddy replies, returning to the grill to blow on the coals. “Do you like steak?”

    “Is the Pope Catholic?” Georgina winces after unconsciously reciting one of her ex’s favorite retorts.

    “Great. Come on over,” Freddy says, trying not to sound too thirsty.

    “I’ll bring some red wine.” Georgina prays her offering will pair well.

    COLEMAN BIGELOW’s writing has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions, and Best Microfiction; and longlisted for the Wigleaf Top 50. His latest game-themed flash fiction collection, These Stories Are Catching, is available now from Bottlecap Press.

    Featured image by Saif71.com, courtesy of Unsplash.

  • “Genuine Badger” by Elizabeth Rosen

    “Genuine Badger” by Elizabeth Rosen

    “Genuine Badger” by Elizabeth Rosen is a story within a story within a story. The writer of this powerful flash fiction frames recent events with those of the past to convey a cautionary tale that, on the surface, seems about a very determined honey badger. But really, it’s about…no, I’ll let you find out for yourself. The direct address of the second person only adds even more strength to the multilayered narrative.  —Court Harler

    Listen. Before you do that again, let me tell you a story. It’s about a honey badger named Stoffel.

    Stoffel could escape from anywhere. My college roommate Ava and I used to watch videos of him outsmarting his zookeepers time after time. This was when things got really bad for her. If it was just her boyfriend raising his voice, calling her a stupid bitch like you do to me sometimes, then we’d get stoned and give each other manicures or watch rug-cleaning videos instead.

    The zookeepers, they kept taking more and more away from that little badass badger to stop the escapes. First his badger girlfriend, who he was in cahoots with, then whatever implements were in his pit: a rake a landscaper had left behind by mistake, a tire. None of it stopped Stoffel. He found a way to use whatever was around to concoct a new escape route. And every morning, those zookeepers would peer over the railing to the pit below and see that their honey badger was missing again.

    It made Ava smile. The smile would make the bruising around her eye look like a regular shadow instead. Like how she looked her sophomore year, before the boyfriend.

    One day, as we sat on the couch we’d saved from the street, I took her arm. I pointed to the bruises there and said she had dark stripes just like Stoffel did. But she just drew her arm away and stared at the video screen. She didn’t answer at first, but then she said, “They always catch him and bring him back, don’t they.” It wasn’t a question.

    I called the cops once, even though Ava told me not to. Said it only made it worse for her. And it did. So I just kept playing those Stoffel clips when she came home bruised and ashamed. I hoped she would take courage from them. But of course, she didn’t. Sometimes I wonder if the last thing she felt before that final punch to the head was relief that she was finally going to be a genuine badger. Anyway, I hope it wasn’t just fear.

    See, I thought about Ava last night after you pushed me, and I think maybe she paid attention to the wrong things about Stoffel. Because badgers aren’t just escape artists, are they? They have claws, and teeth. They are smart, and tricky.

    Raise your hand to me again. You’ll find out.

    ELIZABETH ROSEN’s stories have appeared in journals such as the North American Review, Baltimore Review, Gargoyle, and Pithead Chapel, and been nominated for the Pushcart, Best Small Fictions, and Best of the Net awards. Colorwise, Elizabeth is an autumn. She mourns the loss of Tab and still wants her MTV.

    Featured image by Ellie Eshaghi, courtesy of Unsplash.

  • “May the Circle Be” by Maximilian Martini

    “May the Circle Be” by Maximilian Martini

    In “May the Circle Be” by Maximilian Martini, readers of this flash fiction are asked to consider unspeakable tragedy. How does the survivor survive, day by day, only going “round and round and round,” endlessly circling her incomprehensible grief? A laundromat’s washers and dryers come to symbolize the cycle of life, the horrifying futility of living and dying. —Court Harler

    Her stomach is open as her wide-opened eyes. Laundry takes all night. The windows are walls that double the room, making two dozen washers and dryers, echoes of echoes. Her four dollar bills transform into a box of soap and suds in hot water that spins and spins. It takes her two machines to clean her clothes and his clothes and the baby’s cutesy little outfits, pink and white and soft. The baby didn’t have a lot of clothes. She was supposed to outgrow them so fast. They will be clean now. They shouldn’t be dirty ever again. Dirt comes in, dirt goes out. Stains come to stay. Money only ever goes out. Life should be so clean. Making a lesson of it doesn’t help.

    The wreck made standing hurt. Plastic chairs are nailed to the floor. Sitting in them grinds her busted discs. The man sleeping on the couch has a bad smell. Dust bunnies congregate everywhere in pools of detergent except right before her washers, spinning and spinning, hurricanes on the weather channel, crossing her eyes. She sits on the floor with some relief.

    She scoots in toward the washer on the left. One at a time is better. One is all it takes to be completely in love. Clothes smash against the drum. They’ll never get out that way. You have to lean in.

    The round window of the washing machine is warm and resonant against her forehead. This close, the spinning clothes take up everything: white and dark blue and the littleness of pink. Yawning had become blinking and then honking and screeching, the windshield exploded and then they were all spinning against each other, all three of them bouncing around the truck, between the walls, colliding like shoes in a dryer of metal and wheels and bones, tiny baby bones, colliding straight from the earth to death.

    A bell chimes overhead. Her eyes pop. Sleeping guy is gone. She’s more alone.

    One time, just once, she bangs her head against the glass on the door of the washing machine. Her neck aches and her discs grind. There’s something good about it, though, like parts sliding into place. The clothes go round and round.

    One time, just one more time, harder, she bangs her head. There’s too much noise to hear anything. Round and round and round.

    One more time now she throws her forehead into the machine. Her body goes through the circle of glass, first her head and then her shoulders, which drag in her busted discs and dirty legs and all of her ruined body into the wide-open drum. The water is warm and the clothes are soft, spinning, unbreaking, grasping at every loose arm, every tiny beanie and sleeper, tangled in his coveralls and her scrubs and the baby’s little onesies and pink booties that she’ll never wear again, they’re all together, more folding than breaking, more drowning than breathing, she’s very nearly through, almost in.

    MAXIMILIAN MARTINI writes, teaches, and sings in Chattanooga, Tennessee. His work has been published by Bending Genres, trampset, Walnut Street Publishing, and FlowerSong Press, among others. He is an artist with River to River Community Records.

    Featured image by Scott Evans, courtesy of Unsplash.

  • “A Boy Wants His Mother” by Lisa Thornton

    “A Boy Wants His Mother” by Lisa Thornton

    “A Boy Wants His Mother” by Lisa Thornton is a moving flash fiction with a circular structure. Thornton uses third-person narration to allow the point-of-view character, a grieving grandmother, to ask the difficult questions about her daughter and grandson. In fact, the story hinges on questions. What can be done, when the situation seems impossible?  —Court Harler

    What should a grandmother say to the classroom teacher when she calls in the middle of the day on a Tuesday? Or the school secretary on a Friday morning? The words Carline Elementary appearing on her phone screen while she is buying Cheerios or pairing small socks.

    Should a grandmother tell them that a boy sits and stares? A boy throws his cereal, milk arcing through the kitchen before the bowl bangs on the linoleum. A boy slams his head against the wall in the hallway, leaving a dent in it and white paint in his curls. A boy runs up the stairs and down the stairs and up the stairs and down the stairs until his face is red and his breath comes in spurts. A boy slams his bedroom door. And slams. And slams. And slams.

    Should she tell the school about when her daughter drops by, always unannounced, always sorry, always happy to see them, sometimes during Jeopardy and sometimes on a Saturday, and a boy runs to her like a magnet drawn to its opposite? About when he attaches himself to her arms and her waist and snuggles up against her on the couch where they stay for hours, legs intertwined, his sweaty hair stuck to her face, their chests moving up and down in unison as this beloved stranger shows him videos on her phone of people falling down, people walking into pools, people falling off skateboards. Should she describe the sound of their braided laughter drifting up the staircase like some kind of sweet-smelling soup that she knows will go cold?

    They should realize that a boy wakes. Always the next morning or the morning after and looks for her. A grandmother listens to his bedroom door creaking open, his footsteps down the stairs. She pours his juice. She feels his eyes spy the empty couch. She sets the table with napkin and spoon. She hears his feet pad down the hall. She hears them pick up pace to the bath. She sets his cereal at his place and stands straighter, centering herself in front of the sink, each hand gripping the edge of the counter. She looks out the window at the hickory tree and sees her daughter when she was the boy’s age. Before the bad times. Before the lying, the crying, the inpatient stays. Back when her curls were easy to manage. A grandmother hears the boy run into the kitchen and stop. She hears him behind her, searching. She is aware that the back of her head tells the boy all he needs to know.

    What should she tell the school when they call? Alright, she says to the principal, to the licensed behavioral therapist. He’s hitting again, their cool voices deliver. We can’t control him. They don’t ask why, just can she pick him up? They call her ma’am, but he can’t stay. What should she tell the world about her grandson when no one is asking the question?

    LISA THORNTON is a writer and nurse. She has stories in SmokeLong Quarterly, Pithead Chapel, and other magazines. She has been nominated for Best of the Net, the Pushcart Prize, and Best Small Fictions. She lives in Illinois and can be found on Bluesky and Instagram @thorntonforreal.

    Featured image by Sascha Bosshard, courtesy of Unsplash.

  • “Director’s Cut” by Kathryn Kulpa

    “Director’s Cut” by Kathryn Kulpa

    “Director’s Cut” by Kathryn Kulpa is an experimental flash fiction that explores interpersonal dynamics from multiple angles. These dynamics are illuminated in the sentence structure itself: the (mostly) unpunctuated tension between direct and indirect dialogue; the free-flowing inner monologue of the young narrator. And there’s a subtextual story haunting the narrative present, which manifests organically, tenderly, through stream-of-consciousness style.  —Court Harler

    A fake knife can cut you just like a real one. I didn’t know that until now, my blood seeping into the pool of ketchup mixed with acrylic paint on the floor. My arm throbs as if the severed hand lying on the ground is my real hand and Jonathan just keeps shooting.

    Great shot, he says.

    The color’s off, I say, because even with a big painful slash in my arm I see my blood is darker, less orangey, but Jonathan says they swirl together and the effect is mesmerizing.

    Gore is easy, he says. Beauty is difficult.

    Also freaking painful, I say, and walk off while he’s still filming, which I know he hates because he loves long takes, but I’m not getting septicemia for his slasher-slash-art film. Jonathan’s mom asks how the movie’s going and do I need a cup of tea and I say no, just the bathroom. I pull my sleeve down because I don’t want her to see my cut and freak out. She’s kind of a hypochondriac, talks about germs and how you should always close the toilet seat before you flush or else you’re spraying “atomized waste particles” into the air. Which I can’t stop thinking about every time I use the bathroom at school where the toilet seats don’t close, and now I have to pee but I hate using the bathroom at Jonathan’s house because it’s so close to the kitchen and I keep thinking his mom can hear me pee so I run the water full blast and then I see I’m dripping blood on her floor and on the toilet seat and my pants, even my sneakers are red, how could there be this much blood, did Jonathan nick an artery with the fake knife, could he have subbed a real one, but that would be a messed-up prank even for somebody whose favorite movie is Blood Feast, and then I realize it’s not from the cut and I’m bleeding like Carrie, hemorrhaging, how do I clean this up? Will Jonathan’s mom think I’m pregnant? Having a miscarriage? I’m scrabbling under the sink for pads, stuffing Kleenex in my pants, Jonathan’s mom knocking on the door and me hanging onto the sink hoping this dizzy feeling will pass because I’ve only ever acted faints, never done one, and she puts an arm around me, asks if it’s like this every time and I say mostly and she asks have I told anyone, which of course I haven’t, in middle school my dad asked if they told me about “that stuff” in health class and I said yes and that’s the last time he mentioned it, and she asks are the cramps bad and I nod and she says it’s endometriosis, she has it too, and then I’m in bed, sweatpants, heating pad, and when Jonathan asks can we get back to filming we give him the look and send him to the store for ice cream.

    KATHRYN KULPA is the author of A Map of Lost Places (Gold Line Press) and For Every Tower, A Princess (Porkbelly Press). Her stories are published in Best Microfiction, Boudin, Flash Frog, Ghost Parachute, matchbook, New Flash Fiction Review, and Trash Cat Lit.

    Featured image by Eric TERRADE, courtesy of Unsplash.

  • “Five-Star” by Vallie Lynn Watson

    “Five-Star” by Vallie Lynn Watson

    Sometimes it’s difficult to define why a flash piece works so well. It just hits you hard, in the gut. “Five-Star” by Vallie Lynn Watson is one such flash fiction. Maybe it’s the cheek of the narrator, or the cheese as a multilayered metaphor. Either way, this piece will make you smile, and squirm.  —Court Harler

    The hotel is fab, he had said. Not fabulous. Fab. Did I want to go into a room with a guy who kept saying fab? The more he said the word, the unlikelier it all sounded, but then he surrounded the word with other words like champagne, fromage, and salmon.

    So I followed him, tottered down the sloped cobblestone to the shoreline, and then, I saw that he was right. The hotel was fab! An ocean liner carved into the cliffs.

    “I want one of those rooms,” I said, and pointed to the top, balconied floor.

    “Fab!” he said.

    When we crossed the threshold and were in the room, I looked for you in the closet, our old tradition, but of course you weren’t there.

    Then I looked out of the porthole, swept my eyes along the sparkling water of the channel, across the sparkling water to the other side, swept my eyes up to the sparkles of the stars, but I didn’t look for you in any of those sparkling places, either.

    When I turned my gaze back to the room, he was on the phone, saying something like Camembert. When he hung up, he beamed and said, “Fab!”

    I squealed lightly, because I knew he’d like that, and while we waited for room service, I skirted around him, grazing and nipping, flitting and dipping, and then the room service guy knocked on the door, surprised but delighted to see me in my current state. 

    When it was just two of us again, he said, “Fab,” and fed me cheese, let some warm Brie drop onto me, then gently teethed it off. Then he was less gentle while I sipped champagne and watched him be less gentle, then I turned the giant diamond on my left hand inward, into my palm, and scraped it across the top of his head, drawing a red line through his balding spot, drawing a little blood, and then I leaned down to lick the blood from his head.

    “Fab!” he said.

    VALLIE LYNN WATSON is the author of the novel-in-flash, A River So Long (Luminis Books); her work has recently appeared in Midway Journal, Moon City Review, and Bending Genres. Watson teaches in the MFA program at McNeese State, and edits the magazine Boudin. She is an avid sea glass collector. Find her on Facebook @VallieWatson.

    Featured image by Jez Timms, courtesy of Unsplash.

  • “Carrion” by Oliver Cubillos

    “Carrion” by Oliver Cubillos

    Nature can soothe, but it can also disturb. In the new flash fiction, “Carrion” by Oliver Cubillos, nature presents itself as a harbinger of—death? destruction? or perhaps even, desire? The “you” of the piece seems to not know what’s wanted, asking the reader for the answer.  —Court Harler

    It’s the second time this week. On the curb by the driveway. Laid out against the concrete. You notice the skull from far away. A trail of ants stretches from yard to street. All marching. There’s a cluster of feathers. Black feathers. There’s something warm in your throat. You swallow it down. One gulp. There’s nothing to be afraid of. Two gulps. The ants have journeyed far and wide for this. Food for the colony. You wonder if this crow knew the other. An opossum or seagull or skunk. A roadside corpse. You can’t possibly remember. That was long ago. This one’s different. You take another glance. Three gulps. There’s a Dixie cup and candy wrappers in the gutter. All those birthday parties. Years of piñatas. It occurs to you that all birds end up flightless. On the ground. It’s late spring. Fog rolls over the hills. There’s a dark stain there on the pavement. All around the body. The messes these sidewalks have seen. Popsicle stains or dog shit or chalk. You suppose it’s time to clean it all up. What a pain it was last time. The boys did it for you. The sky blossoms with dark gray. There’s storm clouds rising. You feel it start to rain. There’s water in your shoes. You watch as the skull and blood and all those littered feathers are swept away in the gutter. The dead crow’s beak tilts upwards like the mast of a schooner. It crests over a wave. Then another. You watch until you can’t see it any longer. Eventually it carries on.

    OLIVER CUBILLOS is currently pursuing an MFA in creative writing at Colorado State University. His work is published in Heavy Feather Review, BULL Magazine, Expat Press, Bright Flash Literary Review, and elsewhere.

    Featured image by Antoine Pouligny, courtesy of Unsplash.

  • “The Bus” by Callin Naddy

    “The Bus” by Callin Naddy

    “The Bus” by Callin Naddy is a horror story, a love story, a ghost story. What the second-person narrator “can’t remember” will haunt the reader as well. Note the crafted use of poetic devices: the rhythm of repetition, the bold and impulsive imagery, the blend of interiority and exteriority. This flash fiction provokes a physical journey into the psychological unknown.  —Court Harler

    The coins jangle into the farebox, and you wipe a sweating palm down your pantleg. Your hands draw back into the cavern of your pockets, gaze dropped low, fidgeting the plastic cap of a bottle, as you slink to the next closest seat.

    It takes two stops for the cap to loosen, for your fingers to stutter inside the red-stained plastic casing, for your weeping skin to exhale against the pills.

    The bus windows dye the city the same red as your palms. Or the pills. One by one, they slip onto your tongue, and the hair of your spine erupts. They taste of his pebbled flesh, and that’s fine. He’s still yours, isn’t he?

    Only, you can’t remember. You know he told you he couldn’t do it anymore, over the sweat of your stained bedsheet, and you said he’d threatened that before. He said, “This time, I mean it,” and watched you paint three more pills across your tongue.

    You blink, and the memory bifurcates. He peers like Jesus from the bus’s crimson-stained glass, a concerned tilt to his mouth as he gazes down on you, then the bottle. It is not mercy; this is the gaunt skeleton of his need to help, full-bodied and breathing, his fingers kneading the soft skin of your collarbone then digging deeper until—

    You swallow the pills before his memory taints them. They scavenge your throat, your esophagus, the turmoil of your stomach until you can’t remember what you, communal, did. You can’t remember what you, singular, did. You conjured the severed vein of his carotid across your eyelids each time he vanished the pills, like you might not notice their gaping wound, and now your gaze ekes past the other version of him in the window, neck seeping as he stares past you, laid bare and quivering beneath your body.

    The bus screeches to a halt, and you slam against the seatback. The knife struggles through his neck.

    Another commuter offers their hand. You do not immediately recognize the danger, but then the knife yanks again—into you—and the dual image in the window splatters. His cruor glistens between you both.

    You freeze, wait for them to notice: Jesus gazes down at you, only he is not Jesus any longer. You always knew he was not, and now his crucified blood lies hot on your palms. His empty promise breaks from your lips.

    Another pill slips through the cracks. The bottle is almost empty again, and finally, the blood slivers away—

    you feel it still.

    You cannot remember which is true.

    CALLIN NADDY writes fantasy novels and short stories. Her short stories have been published in Belladonna’s Garden and pinky. Her nonfiction has appeared in the Sioux Falls Argus Leader, EDDA, and Co.Milesplit. Find her online @callinnaddy.

    Featured image by Aleksandr Popov, courtesy of Unsplash.

  • “The Girl Who Broke Every Omen” by Hana Xen

    “The Girl Who Broke Every Omen” by Hana Xen

    In “The Girl Who Broke Every Omen,” Hana Xen lends new nuance to the objective correlative. Omens of folklore are reframed as their literal objects, instead of their actions or outcomes: broken mirrors, spilt salt, dead crows, and fallen ladders. Xen’s narrator invites the reader to explore the possibilities beyond the traditional conception of superstition.  —Court Harler 

    The first omen I broke was a mirror, and I swear it screamed.

    A thin, silver sound, high and startled, before the glass webbed into fractures. My reflection split into a dozen versions of me, each one staring with a different expression: warning, pity, hunger. One shard caught the light just right and made a tiny rainbow across my wrist. It felt almost deliberate.

    I should have looked away.

    I leaned in.

    Bad luck did not come.

    Something else did.

    The next omen was the salt. The shaker toppled from my hand, spilling white grains in a crooked, broken circle. A boundary. A warning line.

    I did not throw any over my shoulder.

    I stepped through it.

    Something stepped with me.

    At first it was only a second set of footsteps, slightly behind mine. Then a breath on my neck when I turned off the lights. On the third night, I saw her in the corner. Girl-shaped but wrong. Spine bent. Fingers too long. Eyes reflecting moonlight like wet stone.

    Not a ghost.

    Not me.

    Not not me.

    She pointed toward the window.

    A crow lay there the next morning, neck snapped clean, wings arranged like an offering. No blood. No struggle. As if it had been removed carefully from the sky.

    After that, omens cracked around me like knuckles.

    The ladder in the alley fell the moment I passed beneath it.

    Doors sighed open before I touched them.

    Streetlamps guttered when I smiled.

    People began stepping away from me in public. They did not know why. Instinct, maybe. Animals sense rot before it blooms. My stomach twisted sharply the first time someone flinched from me. I told myself I was fine. I probably wasn’t.

    Then the moon split itself open, rending into a thin crescent. A curved blade hanging above the rooftops. The night went still. Even the thing in my corner held her breath.

    She was not haunting me.

    She was studying me.

    Growing clearer each time an omen broke.

    Growing closer.

    The holy water incident happened after a stranger saw something behind me. He flung the bottle at my feet like he was trying to snuff a fuse.

    It burst.

    The mist rose cold and metallic.

    The girl inhaled.

    The man’s face twisted. He ran without looking back.

    I did not chase him.

    I turned to my shadow instead.

    I should have run.

    She smiled with all my teeth.

    I break omens now because they break first.

    Because something in me is waking.

    Because warnings were never meant to save girls like me.

    Only to announce us.

    HANA XEN writes mythic and historical fiction shaped by folklore, from eerie flash to hybrid narrative prose. Her work has been long- and short-listed in writing contests and appears in anthologies and literary e-zines. She believes folklore isn’t superstition but documentation, and lives in the Midwest with a healthy skepticism of both curses and social media.

    Featured image by Jeroen van de Water, courtesy of Unsplash.

  • “Precious Alchemy in the Margins” by Denise Bayes

    “Precious Alchemy in the Margins” by Denise Bayes

    In her new flash fiction, “Precious Alchemy in the Margins,” Denise Bayes offers the reader a feast for the senses: the warmth of “the fox’s fur,” the slime and slither of the “molluscs,” and the mystical sound of “creatures gather[ed], playing instruments.” And in secret spaces, in “the marginalia” and “the cloisters,” sharp reminders of the unrequited, or the “lured,” refuse to remain unnoticed, shimmering “golden” like tempting treasure.  —Court Harler

    Clever Foxes

    Mosaic gold glints on the fox’s fur, tin and sulphur fused in magic by medieval scribes. I unfold from my study of the manuscript, blink into the darkness of the college library. Memories of my Reynard, the russet warmth of our undergraduate love nest.

    Fighting Snails

    In the marginalia, humans battle slimy molluscs. We always lose to the crafty creatures.

    They remind me of her.

    I remember her arrival at college, a Fresher slithering her way into the midst of our Medieval group, flattering him with her fake enthusiasm for Chaucer. How she listened wide-eyed to his words, flicking flirtatious glances at his golden hair.

    She lured him from me on silver threads.

    Bands of Animal Musicians

    In The Book of Hours, creatures gather, playing instruments. Scholars say they show the world turned upside down.

    My world turned upside down.

    Try for Fellowships, she told him.

    Academia is hungry for your words, she whispered.

    His head turned towards the glittering dream.

    The day they married in the College Chapel, I cloistered in the library until the last chords of dance music died. Trampled home across a carpet of crimson confetti.

    Warrior Women

    Now I head to my study through the quad, past the latest huddle of alumni reliving their glory days in noisy reminiscence under the curve of the cloisters.

    I freeze at the sight of him. My Reynard.

    His hand runs in a remembered swirl through tawny hair, now flecked with grey. My fingertips flinch, recalling the coarse texture beneath my palms. I remember his warm breath against my bare neck.

    He looks up just then, across the courtyard, straight into my eyes. The air shivers golden between us. 

    I step onto the manicured lawn, passing the sign.

    ‘Fellows Only.’

    I know he follows my every footstep.

    DENISE BAYES’s writing has appeared in New Zealand’s Micro Madness, Oxford Flash Fiction Anthology, Free Flash Fiction, National Flash Fiction Day Anthology, 100 Word Story, Thin Skin, Temple in a City, and Underbelly Press. Denise lives in Barcelona, Spain, with her husband and a cavalier called Rory, who is usually under the desk. Find her @deniseb.bsky.social.

    Featured image by kevin laminto, courtesy of Unsplash.