Flash Fiction 2021 Summer Collection

  • The Taste of Shoe Polish

    Henry Monxton spent a lot of time arranging all the cans and packets in the kitchen cupboards so their labels were exactly parallel and facing outwards. It had driven his first wife mad. Wife number two, well, not much is known of her apart from Henry shaking his head and saying to whomsoever should enquire,…

  • The Sweet Smell of Success

    His beautiful face contorted like a reflection in a Hall of Mirrors, spitting his hateful words ‘old, talentless and so boringly predictable.’  He had told everyone I was his ‘Next Big Thing’, pushing me to constantly audition, until my deep bass-baritone voice was destroyed.  I’d wanted to please him, to make him keep me, but the grand opera…

  • Marginalia

    Mouse-like, she lived on the fringes of polite society. She was one of the the overlooked, ignored, unremembered and to others, unremarkable.  The last to arrive, the first to leave. “A bus to catch,” she’d murmur, gathering her beige handbag and creamy leather gloves, buttoning her tweed coat. No one offered her a lift or…

  • Blooming Hell

    Envy consumed him. He lay motionless in bed, longing for sleep that refused to arrive. He had turned the spare bedroom into mission control, creating exquisite storyboards of garden designs, works of art in themselves. At work, he had received his final warning for being ‘on planet chuffing Titchmarsh’ and if he used the ‘chuffing…

  • Three for Two

    Always a family affair, today there were three generations behind the stall, including a woman in her late 20s. A toddler in a torn skirt tugged at her dad, telling him in her inaccurate and swoon-worthy vernacular about her grazed knee. Her relish for the bloody mess was more life-affirming than most things round here….

  • Near the Edge

    I bought a window box, painted it sage green like the style mags said.  Planted multi-coloured pansies and red geraniums.  You didn’t notice.  I added a windmill.  It whirled and twirled in the breeze.  Irritated the hell out of the neighbours.  I swapped it for a gnome.  Not ‘on trend’.  You still didn’t take any…