Flash Fiction 2017

Flash Fiction Shortlist 2017 FFLas

FLASH FICTION 2017

FLASH FICTION 2017

An Introduction to the 2017 Flash Fiction Shortlist It is universally acknowledged that a picture is worth a thousand words. However, for the Percival’s sixth annual short story competition, we called upon aspiring writers to submit up to 800 words, taking inspiration from one of the eight pictures shown below. Those who submitted the most imaginative and compelling stories were shortlisted by the librarians and the winner chosen by acclaimed author Clare Furniss. Barney Pite’s short story What Happened to Dad was chosen as the overall winner and it is printed at the start of this collection, followed by eight runners up. Each story is printed alongside the picture that inspired the writing.

-The Percival Librarians “Congratulations to all the students on an incredibly strong selection of writing, I really was astonished by the quality of all these pieces. Well done everyone!”

-Clare Furniss, 2017

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FLASH FICTION WINNER 2017 What Happened to Dad by Barney P I never knew why my mother loved TV Talent shows so much. She’d sit there, bathed in blue light in the living room, dead still. One of my earliest memories is the sound of applause, spreading through the walls like wind, as I sat on the rough carpet, exiled. The moon is watching.

We lived in a rough neighbourhood back then, although I didn’t know it at the time. Our roof leaked and the boiler sometimes broke. My mother was always telling me to be careful about talking to kids on the street.

I remember when I first saw a needle. It was lying on the corner of the road and I picked it up, looked at it briefly, sniffed at the narrow tip. It smelt like vinegar, looked kind and harmless. Before I could bury it away like treasure my mother saw what I was doing, took it from between my fingers. I saw it again, once.

She used to take me walking in the woods beyond the interstate, holding my hand as I kicked through leaves, broken fragments. The sky is an artist’s pallet. We always followed the same route, tracing this one path while she’d tell me about how she met my father here, FLASH FICTION 2017

beneath this big old tree. Thick branches spreading to the sky, shadow patchworks on the ground, where the light crept through.

He’d come out at night, my father. Late on he’d crawl out of the room on the top floor, ask me a couple of questions about my day, smile, rub my hair a little. His hands, fingers, would quiver and shake as he tried to look me in the eye, his tiny son. I wondered what he’d looked like when he was a boy in Ohio, broad shouldered, long blond hair, blue eyes, before he’d first felt bliss. He’d come to the city when his father died, hatchets unburied. Maybe he was looking for something.

My mother planted flowers in the backyard, from seeds she kept in little plastic bags. In the summer months, when light spread across the roads and the air was thick and hot, I’d sit out on the porch and watch. I imagine the heat as a drumroll. She smiled at me, fingers caked with mud as black as tar. Told me it was going to be alright.

If I could go back, just for a day, or an hour, I’d pick a day like that in June, push away the creaking door, look out onto the backyard, into the trees that swayed like windmills. I’d go up to the bedroom where my father spent his life, eyes stupor-filled, ask him to come outside with us. The leaves and branches rustle, a haunted chiding. Sometimes the problem is that people just can’t see, just don’t know what it is they’re missing. They say you have to want to get clean, want to stay clean, but I don’t think that’s true. You have to want to live a life that’s worse, to live with something lesser, something still and quiet.

I found him dead one winter’s day, more grey with snow to come. It was raining, and my clothes were damp, hair clinging to my skin like paint, bones chilled. I was twelve. He was lying on the sofa in the living room in the TV’s glare, unwatched, and I called his name, twice, walked over, shook his arm. It was red and swollen. There were needles on the floor, a candle.

People said all sorts of things about my father. But could you, if you saw him lying on the couch, vacant stare to no-one, blue skin? My mother tearing down the door, lifting up his limp shell, wailing to the dead silence? What would you say?

She used to sit on the sofa where he’d died and watch TV Talent shows, breathing in and out, in and out. I never saw her cry.

Judge’s comments: “…the style of this piece was so assured. It told a moving and emotional story in a spare and understated way. I also loved the way Barney had written a piece that contrasted with the picture he’d chosen - it’s a beautiful setting but a dark story. I felt this contrast really made the description of the idyllic woods where the mother and father in the story had met especially powerful and was an original approach to the task set.”

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FLASH FICTION SHORTLIST 2017 Ophelia by Charlie S Afterwards, when they had told her family what had happened, and given them time for both grief and rage, they would say that it had been a tragic accident. They would whisper in the halls and corridors and at the funeral that an unfortunately unstable girl found herself in a situation in which she didn’t know how to act. Those who had been there wouldn’t mention what they knew: that instead of quick, her death had most likely been agonizingly prolonged, or what they had seen: the brick that she had tied around her ankle with a rope so tight that it cut off the blood supply to her foot before her heart ceased to supply blood to any part of her body.

The one thing that no one would mention was that it had possibly been the most beautiful day of her life, the day that Ophelia strolled down to meet the river’s edge. The sky had been the purest icy blue that she could ever remember it having been. There was no wind, and without her swaying her way through the grass and reeds it could almost have been as if the world was frozen still. Nobody was there to hear the gasp that freed itself from her lips as her bare toes made their first contact with the water. Nobody was there to see the wispy trails of her white dress as they brushed against the river’s surface and turned dark and heavy as they drank instantly from it. Only she took the time to notice the dust decorating her fingertips from the rust-coloured weight that she had selected to bring with her. She had been the only one there to witness her struggle to inch forwards into those FLASH FICTION 2017

deeper places where the rocks had been worn smooth by the torrential pouring of water as pale as her slowly moving legs.

She paused a moment to admire the bright forget-me-nots growing in the distant shade of the opposite bank before she took a solitary step and plunged suddenly downwards into the water. The brick was wrenched from her numb hands by the current and she was pulled along with it as the taut rope between them dragged her downstream. As it collided with the hidden obstacles in its path, her body instinctively curled up into a mess of limp acute angles. Nobody was there to hear her silent, underwater screams. The cold water prised open her jaw and flooded down her throat into her lungs. Somewhere, between that dark world of clawing fingers and panicked bubbles, and the place where the river widens and calms its raging torrents, she was lost.

Afterwards, it was a newly wedded couple out for an evening stroll who were the first to see her, floating like driftwood down towards the sea. It was they who called for the boat and they who waited to watch as she was clumsily retrieved from the water. She was splayed out victoriously on the deck like a gigantic white fish, still wet and dripping. She was cleaned and dried and a fresh lilac dress was slipped over her body. They covered up the scars and bruises plastering her face. When they laid her down in her casket and took her to the church, everyone commented on how she had kept her beauty in death. The mourners spoke of how she must have appeared mermaid-like in her last moments, singing nursery rhymes as she drifted along in the water. Her brother stood before the room and delivered a eulogy that proclaimed her virtues and made vague literary allusions; he had not spoken to her in two years. Nobody noticed the boy at the back of the room, whose black clothes for once did not make him stand out, who left before the speeches had finished and before the first cup of wine had been crushed to go and cry outside. Only he noticed the bright sunshine and the songs of the blackbirds in the hedgerows.

Judge’s comments: “Ophelia, was absolutely beautifully written and a really interesting take on Ophelia’s story in Hamlet - it was very moving and I particularly loved the last two sentences.”

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FLASH FICTION SHORTLIST 2017 Untitled by Beth A Charlie had always thought that scratching on the cell walls were he ever imprisoned would be pointless. What would be the point of knowing how long he’d been there? Wouldn’t it just make him go insane when, as he awoke, he counted after hours to 24,293 and knew that somewhere far away his friends would be growing old, and the wrinkles on their faces merely represented the number of decades they had not thought of him?

And as the wrinkles reached his own face, he would wonder for the 121,465th time how the hell he ended up here, trapped forever, childish thrills equalling a life sentence of insanity. After all, children are supposed to have fun, supposed to play outdoors, supposed to feel the sunshine surrounding them like a mother’s embrace. So how could enjoying those childish pleasures lead to the loss of it all?

Suppose he had been out, alone, simply playing in the woods as boys do, and he had fallen over. Next thing he knew he was in a cave, spacious and cool, with a faint ray of sunlight shining through a crack in the ceiling. He had to squint to see the edges. He would find it exciting at first, like a game, waiting until he heard the familiar call of his mother, probably angry with a hint of relief that he was not lost after all. Charlie supposed that after 24,293 scratches on the wall, he would not remember the sound of his mother’s voice.

He would find a stream, of course, and a mysterious source of food that was replenished in the short hours he slept each day, the eerie noises of his prison making him restless. By winter, the crack at the top of the cave would no longer be visible, and then it became impossible to determine when the night had even begun. In his mind’s eye, he could picture FLASH FICTION 2017

himself lying on the mossy patch in the corner, wondering yet again how he ended up in this reclusive hole in the ground, the ground he had once skipped and jumped upon with his brother.

Every once in a while, in Charlie’s imaginary confinement, he would hear a sound other than the dripping from the ceiling and his own ceaseless inhaling and exhaling. The blood would come rushing to his ears, a feeling of adrenaline he had not felt in 24,294 days or more, and he would shout with all of the breath he had in his lungs. After a while his shouts would become exasperated, then angry, and finally he would give up; the breath gone from his lungs and the relentless sound of his heavy breathing would be the only thing ringing in his ears.

There would be days when he would think of his family, his friends, even his teachers. His sister would be old now, with children and grandchildren; nieces and nephews he would never get to meet; great-nephews who wouldn’t know his name; great-nieces who wouldn’t even know they had a second great-uncle. His friends would have married pretty girls he would never meet, and his parents - he almost choked over the thought - his parents would not recognise him, if they were even still alive.

There would not be any mirrors in the cave. No way for Charlie to see his face as it grew through manhood and into his old age. It was odd to think that if he saw his own face after all those days, he would not recognise himself. His own face, the only one he had ever known, was long gone in those very first scratches. That face would not be able to reach the scratches he made now.

Now, Charlie reached up to touch his face. It was hard to tell what he found. Was it the smooth, bare skin of a child or the shrivelled, decaying flesh of a pensioner? He held his hand up to the sliver of light coming from the crack at the top of the cave and tried to make out the terrain of his skin, but the light was blinding. He shielded his eyes with his arm, an action he hadn’t had to do in what felt like a long time. As he looked up and his eyes adjusted to the sunlight, they met someone else’s. He had supposed that he would forget what it sounded like, but as the sound echoed around the cave, he knew exactly what it was.

“Charlie? Charlie!”

It was barely a whisper, filled with all of the anger and relief he had imagined over all those days. He could no longer hear his breathing, all he could hear was his mother’s voice, as smooth and soft as the flesh on his face.

Judge’s comments: “Her story about Charlie being trapped in a cave blurred the lines between what is real and what’s imagined very cleverly, and told a whole life story in so few words. I also loved the unexpectedness of the ending.”

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FLASH FICTION SHORTLIST 2017 Find Me by Alramina M The enchanted forest beckoned me into its pulsing heart. How could I resist such a lush Garden of Eden? The deep, haunting ballad of its ancient song called out to me. As old as Adam, the forest was still steeped in plushness and opulence.

With a light heart, I plunged into the over-arching vault of leaf and limb. It was not what I had expected. The exquisiteness of the dawn’s light had not yet lanced to the lush, green sward. Because of this, hoods of black shadow hung in the groves.

Coils of vaporous mist enwrapped the shaggy heads of the oak trees. They writhed around them like a conjuror’s milky smoke, sensuous and illusory. Sieves of mist caressed the lichen-encrusted bark. Adding its phantasmal gas to the damp breath of the forest, it glided with deadly intent. It deadened sound, haunted glades and poured into empty spaces. A sepulchral silence overhung the hallowed ground where the trees dared not grow. It almost felt like I was being watched, and even at one point I caught sight of it, but it quickly vanished in the mist, as if it wasn’t even there. Nothing stirred, nothing shone, nothing sang.

A hollow echoing, like the hushed tones of a great, slabbed cathedral, entombed the wood.

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Then a finger of supernal light poked through the misty mesh. It was followed by a whole loom of light, filtering down in seams of gold. Like the luminal glow of the gods, it chased the shadows, banished the gloom and spilled into spaces where the mist once stalked. I suddenly felt an immediate ease, as if something was holding me back, but I broke free. The fluty piping of a songbird split the silence just as the forest became flooded with light, and it seemed as though there was no haze at all. A fusillade of trilling and warbling detonated all around me as the primordial forest came alive with the troubadours of the trees. I darted between shafts of lustrous-gold light as I went, admiring the butterflies. They pirouetted in the air, their wings a-whirr like little ripples of silk. They were of colours I had never imagined of, not even from my fantasies. It was more than just heavenly mesmerising.

The glory of the forest was revealed in the birthstone-bright light. Almond-brown trees stood serenely, awash with a tender glow. Their bark looked like riffled toast and gems of amber clasped their crusty exterior. The first blush of the morn gave the leafy bower a green-going-to-gold complexion.

Idling past suede-soft flowers, I caressed them softly, getting tingles in my fingers. My ears perked up at the metallic, tinkling sound of a stream. It flashed with a tinsel tint through the lace of leaves. When the trees parted, I could see it was sliding into an infinity-pool. The pool looked like a polished mirror of silver, with skeins of swirl-white twisting slowly on the surface. A shiny spillway led to a choppier pond. Boulders colonised the edges of the pond, buffed with pillows of moss. They caused a rocky gurgling as water met stone; a swish, a clunk, a swell and a clop. Sweet fragrances, alluvial and palliative, seemed to flit in and out of my awareness. Sight and smell vied for attention in this soul-enriching dream world.

I put my back against a knobbly boulder, leaning my head against the mossy pillow. I closed my eyes, let my stream of consciousness take hold, and drifted into infinity.

One question that bothered me was, what is this place and how did I get here?

Judge’s comments: “Her piece was full of beautifully lush, poetic description, conjuring up the mood of the setting perfectly.”

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FLASH FICTION SHORTLIST 2017 Ma Vie en Rose by Eleanor C She ran through the wood, cracking branches underneath her bare feet. The long stick she had picked up a few yards back was held like a lance, and she charged into any offending bushes that might have been a knight in a past life. Her short hair flew behind her, unable to keep up with her unsteady but determined footsteps. She twirled, dodged and prowled around trees that hundreds of children had prodded at before. Her childhood was one of sunlit happiness, and in later life she would reflect on the blissful simplicity of it. Her days were spent in school, and the evenings playing dress up or imaginary families. Like every little girl, she was dying to be mother, and her weak-minded friends were relegated to being her daughter or - God forbid - her husband. She wore her fancy dresses on decidedly dull days and immediately made the next hour infinitely more enjoyable by being a Lavender Princess, imagining her cheap dress flowing behind her like it was made of precious silk. She imagined wings sprouting from her shoulder blades, and flying off into the trees beyond.

Other days, when Mum or Dad weren’t looking, she’d dash into the woods by her house and play at being an Amazon. Her wild war cries resonated among the old oaks and gently fluttered the occasional leaf. Her childhood was not remarkable, her imagination more so.

Any pile of leaves could be a much-needed antidote that would cure her imaginary mother who looked suspiciously like Cinderella - from a life-threatening illness. The muddy puddle that she jumped into was really the leavings of a leprechaun party (most likely Guinness).

Her mind did not linger on the details, rather moved onto the next adventure. Her small FLASH FICTION 2017

hands gripped her older brother’s wooden sword with surprising strength and jabbed it at her arch nemesis - who looked suspiciously like her Maths teacher. Next, the sword left forlornly on the ground, she smashed a long branch and golden sparks flew up in the air, transforming her into a warrior princess. Her pale skin was riddled with tattoos, stretching from her bicep to her wrist, and twirling along her twig-like forearm. Her red skirt was no longer stiff and cumbersome; it was made of animal hide and she collected the skulls of her enemies around the belt. Her playing had no purpose and her mind no limits. She was allpowerful in the make-believe world, a God. She spent the afternoon in that world, in her wood, staring at bluebells and wondering why on earth they were called bluebells - surely they were a most decided purple? When it grew dark, she did not cry like her brothers did, but instead lay on the grassy banks and watched the sky. She watched for so long that her parents came rushing out with torches and gave her a relieved telling-off for forgetting the time. She only gazed back and pointed wordlessly to the stars, as if she could show them her world, not theirs. But her world was veiled with innocence, and her parents could not breach it - for if they could, it would spoil the magic.

Her father, who always caved first, smiled and heaved her onto his shoulders so they could watch the world turn together. As she slowly dropped off to sleep, her mother brushed a stray strand of hair from her forehead, and placed a tender kiss on the soft skin. With drooping eyes, she wished the pixies and elves goodnight, and promised she’d see them very soon.

Judge’s comments: “Elly’s piece really captured the joy and freedom of being a young child. The character of the girl in this piece came across very strongly, she felt like a fully-formed person - …impressive in so few words.”

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FLASH FICTION SHORTLIST 2017 Wolf by Matt C The rumours of a thief with a bicycle spread slowly through the sleepy village, cast between households like washing lines by stern matriarchs, and passed around the fishing boats like a cigarette. Their simple dreams were filled with clicking wheels and shadows, and they woke to the taste of a stranger’s breath on the air.

The blue eye of the bay had opened in the morning, and the boats floated lazily. In the plaza stray dogs lay in the sun, panting like the sea. From the boats, the village seemed to tumble into the water, narrow cobbled streets of grubby charming houses and dusty shops, the shore littered with broken nets and young lovers. On a balcony which overlooked the sea, a wire of a man slept stretched between two chairs, a hat shading his eyes, a necklace swinging from his fingers in the breeze which came off the sea. Below, a black bicycle rubbed its handlebars against the house, huddled like a stray cat in the doorway.

The man woke and hung his shirt on the washing line above the street and went inside in his vest. The house was dark and shuttered and quiet. He sat on the bed and put the necklace on the bedside table and read the paper and tried not to think. * That year the spring came early and thawed the ice, and filled the riverbeds with mountain water. In the trees a bronze wolf lowered its nose to the floor and sensed the water and felt that it was faster and stronger than the spring before. Soon the men would come.

The wolf began to climb the mountain, and the forest became thin and the sun became strong and the days became weeks. The night buried the mountains under a quilt of stars, FLASH FICTION 2017

and the wolf wept for his pack and the mountain water rushed away towards the sounds of the men’s voices and the men rose earlier than the sun.

One morning the wolf rose and the sun also rose and the men had risen already. They were too close to give him up. It was spring and the men never gave up in spring, only in winter when the bronze fur was warmer across his shoulders than theirs and mountain water did not fill the night with footsteps. The wolf wept for his pack, and mountain water filled his ears and nose and eyes and mouth and soaked his bronze fur and the men came and shot him on the riverbed and his body floated down towards the sea. * The man was shaving in his vest in front of a dirty mirror. He saw a face that had lived too carefully, beard mangy and brown and flecked with grey, cheeks pinched by remorse, eyes hanging on in quiet desperation. He saw hands that had not lived carefully enough, the scars like riverbeds cut through the valley of his palm and he remembered their banks breaking with blood and he washed them in a basin of mountain water.

The man finished shaving and dried his hands and went back into the dark room and ate without tasting and read the paper and tried not to think. He looked at the necklace on the bedside table and for the first time he noticed the pearls and remembered the pale smooth neck and the lovely face and the powerful father and he knew that men would come back for it, and that they would kill him slowly. The man went out onto the balcony and felt the breeze which came off the sea and wept.

There was a knock at the door and the sound of men’s voices in the hall.

Judge’s comments: “Matt’s story was very original and I loved the way he interwove the stories of the man and the wolf - no mean feat in so few words! The style of this piece was very impressive with some great turns of phrase. I loved the rumours being ‘cast between households like washing lines by stern matriarchs and passed around the fishing boats like a cigarette.’.”

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FLASH FICTION SHORTLIST 2017 Cold by Isis S It was cold. Cold to the point of numbness. Numbness to a level of extremes.

Everything had stopped. I couldn’t hear my heartbeat. The little reminder that I was still alive. It was gone, yet somehow I knew I wasn’t completely dead. At least not yet.

I could still see, but only a monochromatic blur of blue. It was a sight I had never seen in The Before. It was empty of life. The feeling of isolation was familiar, and my sole reaction was to cry. With each tear I shed, memories from The Before flooded back into my mind. However, just like my vision, they were hazy.

The last thing I could remember about my life in The Before was water.

The sudden feeling of suffocation threw me out of my daze. I was caught in an endless current constantly pushing me further from where I needed to be. I could feel again, I could feel my lungs fill with water. My desperate attempt for air rejected. Darkness was hiding behind the blues of my surroundings, waiting for my moment of weakness to encircle me. I hopelessly surrendered, and gave myself to what I believed was death. Yet I was entirely wrong.

I had prepared for the end, but was awoken by the cold. A recognizable cold, dancing around my skin. The cold of water. I opened my eyes, revealing a world of colours.

A recognisable world. The world from The Before. From before the events that took my life away. I took a moment adjusting to the change of atmosphere. The change from desolation to life.

I was overwhelmed with the sense of familiarity as I awoke in the water of a river. I could see the overgrown path I used to walk every weekend, leading up to the bank of the stream. Cradled by the sound water, I could hear the singing of the birds, even the distant FLASH FICTION 2017

sound of children playing. But the chatter of children grew louder; the soothing melody flooded by their cheers and shouts. Vulnerability travelled through my body, I felt exposed. I desperately hid under the river, using the water as my shield. It gave me an odd sense of comfort, like a mother’s hug. I waited an hour for the children to pass, not once coming up for air. It was eerie, knowing I had to breathe air, but remaining underwater. Almost a paradox between my mind and body.

The sound of children’s voices dissolved. I broke the surface of the water, expecting myself to gasp for air. I didn’t. I never took a single breath of air. I stood silently in the shallows of the river, absorbing my setting. My feet slowly sinking into the mud below.

Everything around me looked so alive, yet I had an unnerving awareness that I wasn’t.

I remained the river’s. Never leaving its grip. Once I tried to walk on the river’s shore, to explore the world of The Before. But a piercing pain erupted inside of me. It felt wrong, like cutting off a piece of my body. I never tried leaving the river again.

Time went by, days, maybe years, I could never tell. I got used to the children that would come and go. They never seem to see me but they still never came near me. They were frightened by the water, sometimes I was too.

But then something changed.

A little girl walked through the forest, alone. Usually they walk with others for safety. But she was different from the others, she was not afraid. She walked towards the edge of the river, close enough for my fingertips to graze her. I lured her into the water, grasping at her with my cold blue hands. She obeyed my demands, and fell into the river. An inhumane hunger enveloped me as she joined my world. My hands found themselves around her neck, and without any thought I pushed her into the deep abyss below. She didn’t struggle, not once.

I was tired, tired of being trapped in the prison between life and death. Tired of being bound to the river, to what should have been my death. The little girl’s soul left her body, and I followed. I looked back to where I had been lying, and saw her little weak body left in my place.

She was cold. Cold to the point of numbness. Numbness to a level of extremes.

Everything had stopped. She couldn’t hear her heartbeat. The little reminder that she was still alive. It was gone, yet somehow she knew she wasn’t completely dead. At least not yet.

Judge’s comments: “Her story…had a dark twist while creating a wonderfully dreamlike atmosphere for the reader. I really liked the way the ending echoed the opening.”

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FLASH FICTION SHORTLIST 2017 A Light For When All The Other Lights Go Out by Joseph A The cavern was vast, vaster than the widest cave he’d been down before. He looked up, and the sun shone on the rock he was standing on, but he could see no rock walls around him only walls of darkness, rising from the invisible floor to the ceiling, which seemed almost to be closing around the small hole he’d entered into. And yet, down here, in the midst of all the darkness, the rock he was standing on was not dull grey, or absent black, it was a vibrant green, covered in the grass of nature growing and blooming upwards. The sunlight coming through the hole in the ceiling near the roots growing down made this cave different. Not just its vastness, but its attunement with nature - the blooming flowers that began to come up. This cave was old and undiscovered, a hidden gem amidst the forest that it seemed as though none had stepped in for who knows how long.

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He ventured deeper down, out of the lush, green, comfort and into the darker depths.

Turning on the headlight he had around his head, he viewed ahead at the path. The air was damp and murky, and the darkness seemed so absolute, it consumed and removed much of the light. There was water on the ground in small depressions in the ground, cold little abysses of water so filthy the bottom couldn’t be seen, as if perhaps, if you stepped inside, your foot would plunge down rather than touch the expected base. Around the stalagmites and the stalactites taller than man, and so sharp they were capable of impaling someone upon them if they fell down.

As he delved deeper into the unknown, brushing aside fallen vines and stepping around bulging rocks, he saw his first example of fauna in this cave. A small spider scuttled across the ground, moving each of its segmented legs in order. It was black, but compared to the blackness around it it stood out as though it were yellow. The spider scuttled towards a web - a small fly was already caught in its snare. He thought to himself that though the spider would certainly be happy, he did not want to be the fly.

He took another step into the darkness. Now, all he could see by was his headlight, peering out in the small space in front of him. There was less grass here - fungi, and on the ceiling, bats, all hanging upside down, their membraned wings curled around their small bodies, and they were sleeping. He decided it was for the best for him not to wake the bats up, lest their awakening bring about his unfortunate demise. Stepping forward yet again, the darkness seemed to overtake him, as the light he had followed from his head had vanished in an instant. He peeled the headlamp off and looked at it and realised it had. He turned around, violently, trying to peer back. In the chaos, the screams and shrill shrieks of bat flooded the cave, yet another cloud of darkness.

But, even as the headlamp faded, there was new hope. For in the headlamp’s shine, the last beam of light from the surface had not been seen - but now, it was visible. The last remnant of sunlight, a sole beam of light, flew down and illuminated one small thing. A fly, in a spider’s nest. He noticed something else, as well. Something he had not seen before. On the ground, beneath the spiders nest, there were many oddly shaped rocks. But now, with the sunlight gazing upon them, these were no rocks. They were bones. Slowly, the sunlight seemed to fade away, as though something slow and unmovable was moving and obstructing its path. He was left, all alone, in utter darkness.

Judge’s comments: “Joseph…used descriptive language extremely well, giving the reader a real sense of growing unease as the story developed.”

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FLASH FICTION SHORTLIST 2017 The Man and his Piano by Will F Raymond had never seen the shop before, though he assumed that it must have been there for years, it certainly looked as if it had. The dusty cobwebbed windows and peeling paint screamed something of an old storefront left for decades, maybe run by the same family for generations. But the issue was that no matter how old it looked, the building didn't appear to be there yesterday. It appeared just to pop into existence overnight but looking as if it had been there forever. Maybe Raymond had just missed it, but again it was hard to miss, the whole grim brooding nature of the place seemed to attract the eye like a magnet. Its bold white lettering that read “music and macabre” overshadowed the whole High Street with its demand for attention. In the window an enormous harp stood, the paint peeling off it like the dead skin of the snake. He decided to investigate.

A rusty cow bell rang as he entered the crowded shop.

“Hello, sir,” Raymond jumped half out of skin as a slender grey figure stood over his shoulder.

“Oh… hello, how did you move so quietly?”

“It’s a surprising skill of the musical to be so silent when we want to. Now sir, what can I interest you in?”

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“Well I’m just browsing at the moment.”

“That’s good sir, make sure you see our full range.” the grey figure said this as if he was going to leave Raymond alone but instead he remained static and even appeared to press closer to him. “Sir, if you’re not looking for something in particular I might have something special.”

“Okay, what is it?”

“A piano, sir, suits a fine lean figure like you” “Well, I’m not sure if I can afford a piano.”

“Sir, take it as I a gift, I can’t image it with anyone else, why it was almost made for you sir.”

“Really?” asked Raymond and the man nodded and pointed towards a handsome looking grand piano in the far corner of the shop. “There is not any kind of catch, not going to be great at first then I discover a terrible flaw that makes me regret taking it in the first place?”

“Sir,” said the grey figure, scandalized “do would you think that I would make a very expensive piano just for you that would have some kind of fault or catch? Why would I do that sir, there’s no trick. Why would I go throw such expenses to anyone and create consequences I probably would never see? Now sir, I must insist that you give it a try.”

Raymond moved nervously towards the piano.

“You know I don’t really have any clue how to play.”

“Sir, we all know how to play. Once you put your heart and your head into the piano, anything can happen. Let the music consume you. Just run your hand across the keyboard and see how it feels, we need not take it further than that.”

Raymond smiled nervously and sat down in front on the long line of intimidating looking keys. He placed hands on the keys, and something amazing happened.

Raymond started to play, beautiful music. His hand moved less from the instruction of thought but through pure emotion and ran up and down the twenty eight key in a wave of notes Raymond never knew that he knew to play. He was swirling in the noise of a kind he had never felt before, each chord chiming in the centre of his very being. He crashed his hands so passionately down on the keys that he felt that they hurt.

But they were hurting, something had gone wrong. Very wrong. The keyboard had opened up before him in a wide mouth. The keys were not keys anymore by twenty eight FLASH FICTION 2017

shining teeth sinking into his hands. He was bleeding. He was being dragged into the blackness of that open mouth. A clashing cacophony of ivory crunching up bone as he fell face forward into its open jaws.

There was a horrible musical chewing noise as the last of Raymond was lost to the depths of the instrument, the grey figure looking on with a sly smugness in his thin eyes.

“There was no trick sir, I just wanted to eat you” and the piano wriggled as if giving a large swallow and gave a twangy belch.

Judge’s comments: “His brilliantly creepy The Man and his Piano made me think of Tales of the Unexpected or Inside Number 9 with a killer twist (literally!). The dialogue worked very well and the dark humour throughout - typified by the belch of the piano in that perfect final line - was absolutely spot on!”

FLASH FICTION 2017