Tag Archives: flash fiction

Pi

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After the first time I’d nicknamed him Pi because the sex was over in 3.14 seconds. He improved but the name stuck. He became my constant. Whatever circles I moved in there was him. Me plus him, it should have been a simple equation. So why was I making it complex ?

Algorithms. Regression. Correlations. I close my eyes and the maddening march of numbers fill the darkness. I see structure in the noise and make connections. Form from the apparent chaos. I want it to stop. To trip an off switch and for the structure to dissolve, to shut down my highly prized mind. Algorithms to give way to baser rhythms.

I remember his touch on my skin and how those nights had been filled with a different darkness, absent of structure and analysis. Instinct and emotion and pleasure. I’d been afraid of it, of course, unable to break it down, to analyse it, to model what he might do next. He always did something thrilling next, something unexpected, something that made me lose the sense of who I was. I ached for him those nights. Ached in the pleasure of him and ached in the pain in not understanding him or, specifically, what he was able to provoke in me. No reason, no structure, no control.

So do I have to let him go because I can’t let myself go ? Must I regress to regression and models and statistics ? Me minus him, another simple equation. Would he be there tonight ? On the periphery of the room, marking out the radius of the latest circle I was moving in ? If he was could I calculate the probability that he’d end up back in my bed ? The odds had always been good. Constant.

There he is. I detach from a conversation about causal relationships and statistical significance and cross the room to him. Me plus him. Let’s keep it simple. I’m there in one, two, three… just a touch over three steps. Let’s call it 3.14.

 

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This is story 32 in a series of 42 to raise money and awareness for the mental health charity Mind. My fundraising page is here and all donations, however small, are really welcome: http://www.justgiving.com/42shorts

There’s a whole untapped market where sex and maths collide. Isn’t there ?

The cowgirl and the counsellor

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I was late for the appointment. It had helped to talk about him at first but not anymore. I felt like lately Claire didn’t want to talk about him; she wanted to talk about me and I wasn’t interested in that. Or didn’t want her interested in that at least. I was my own puzzle to solve.

Her room was bright, pastel painted walls, a large print of Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” hung above a walnut coffee table atop which sat a box of tissues, a sketching book and a selection of pencils in a jam jar. Claire was sitting forwards in her chair, smiling, and beckoning me into the room. It always struck me as odd. This incongruous, boxed off oasis of peace in an otherwise sterile set of shared, serviced offices. Grief counselling and therapy alongside A-Z MiniCabs, LB Accounting, and Mitchell & Hobbs Solicitors: wills and inheritance a speciality. That always struck me as particularly unfortunate and Claire hadn’t found it funny in one of our early sessions when I’d asked if she picked up many referrals. I always felt like she was testing me and I was failing. Maybe I’d just wanted to test her for a change.

“Sorry I’m late” I offered. She just broadened her smile and shook her head, gesturing at me to sit down. I perched on the edge of the armchair that was reserved for the unwell, the soft chair to sink into and surrender. I could smell her herbal tea. The more the room screamed calm at me the more I felt on edge.

“How are you ?” asked Claire. “It’s been some time…”

“I’m fine,” I replied, too quickly. She pursed her lips and inclined her head, expecting more. “Really. I’m sorry I’ve missed a couple of sessions but I think that just shows that I’m doing well. I haven’t needed to talk to anyone. No offence.”

“None taken. I’m glad to hear that you feel you’re doing well.” She fell silent. I knew how this worked by now; early on I used to hate the silence and would desperately fill it. Stories of growing up, memories of Dad. I would tell her I felt sad if I thought that was what she wanted to hear and other days I’d tell her it was getting easier, that I thought I was getting better. I did feel sad. But not in the way that I could tell Claire even if I’d wanted to. I don’t really have words for how empty everything had felt after he died, how numb. When I was little I broke my arm, fell off a swing in the park, and the pain was so intense at first that I blacked out. When I woke up in the ambulance they must have given me something because everything was duller, I could still feel the sensation in my arm but it was like I’d been separated from it. They stopped me feeling it because I couldn’t cope with it. That’s what the sadness felt like now: if I try to really feel it then I can’t deal with it. There’s just too much of it and so I try to stay separate from it. Claire cracked first. “I’ve been reading back through my notes and it struck me that we never really talk about the reason you’re here.”

“I don’t understand what you mean ?” I replied. I started to fold my arms but forced myself to leave them open, any change in posture usually provoked a flurry of note taking from Claire as if my innermost thoughts were laid bare by the position of body parts. We had spent twenty minutes in a previous session debating my fingernails, bitten to the quick. She saw some conspiracy of anxiety whereas I was pretty sure it was just because I couldn’t play the guitar with nails. Eventually I’d confessed to a concocted feeling of restlessness as she’d become increasingly interested in how I felt when I played music. I think I’d made the mistake of saying that I needed my fingertips exposed to connect to the strings, that in a funny way I felt connected to myself when I played. It was too close to the truth and so I’d deflected her with a lie. The pain isn’t separate when I play.

“We never talk about how you feel about your dad’s death,” said Claire. I held her gaze, fighting the urge to look away, to twist and hide in my seat. This was unusually direct for her. Perhaps she was as tired as I was of dancing around each other. Perhaps she’d given up trying to coax me out and had settled on a full on assault. She broke eye contact. “I’m just trying to help you Emily. Grief is a complex thing, it can eat you up without you even realising. I’m worried that you’re not…”

“Not grieving ?” I interrupted.

“No,” she said. “I can see that you’re grieving. You’re hurting so much that I think you’ve shut yourself off from feeling anything much at all and that’s a part of grieving. But it’s not a part you can stay in forever if you want it to get better.” She was looking straight at me again now and this time I did look away. I knew she was right. Maybe that was why I kept coming back, despite my deflections and defensiveness she kept on trying and, at times, she seemed to find me even as I tried to keep myself hidden.

“I… I don’t know how to do it,” I whispered into my shoulder.

“There’s no right and wrong way. You don’t get an instruction book. They don’t even give me one and I’m supposed to be helping.” I looked back at her. She was leaning forwards in her chair looking intently at me with a worried, weary smile. I smiled back at her.

“So what do we do now ?”

“I think now we try and do this a different way. Write me a song. Forget about today, we can just have a cup of tea and chat about the weather.” She must have caught the look on my face. “Don’t worry, you don’t have to have the herbal stuff. Come back next week, bring your guitar, and write me a song. I’d love to hear you sing. Deal ?” I was scared but curious. I thought I knew what she was trying to do but the quickening in my pulse when she’d asked me to write a song was the most alive I’d felt in weeks. Perhaps it was time to stop hiding.

“Deal.”

 

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This is story 31 in a series of 42 to raise money and awareness for the mental health charity Mind. My fundraising page is here and all donations, however small, are really welcome: http://www.justgiving.com/42shorts

This is probably the last we’ll hear from Emily’s story (as spread across the previous three posts, Concrete Cowgirl, Broken, and Heartbreaker) for a while. Largely because I haven’t written anymore of it… However, I think she’s okay in Claire’s capable hands for a while. This one’s for anyone that’s ever sat in a therapist or counseller’s room and wondered how the hell they try and explain how they feel. I was spectacularly bad at it !

Heartbreaker

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There was only one album I couldn’t bring myself to break. Ryan Adams: “Heartbreaker”. That’d be about right. It was his favourite and even though, right then, kneeling there amid splintered vinyl and ripped sleeves I hated him, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Hated him and still loved him. Heartbreaker.

I had stopped crying by the time Mum got in from work, heard the key in the lock and listened to her moving through the hallway into the kitchen. A tap running. The click of the kettle. The soft tear of her opening that day’s post, probably another reminder of how much we owed. How much things cost. I thought about cost as I looked down, again, at the letter in my hands. The one that had slipped silently out from between the rows and rows of records, undisturbed since he’d gone.

Dear Emily… please forgive me…

Fragments were all that stuck. I hope one day you’ll understand. Look after your mum. She loves you. I love you. Keep playing. Keep singing. He’d even made that stupid joke. Our stupid joke. Two kinds of music Emily: country and western. I didn’t think I’d ever be able to forgive that. What was that other thing we used to say ? All those songs are about escape, that was it. This can’t be what he meant ? Can it ? We were supposed to escape from everyone else, not from each other. You and me and Mum. They were about hope.

Look after your mum.

“Emily ?” Mum was calling from the kitchen. The kettle had boiled and she must have made her tea. “You here love ?” I didn’t answer but her voice was enough to loosen the numbness, to bring me back to the room. I rolled onto my side and pulled my knees up to my chest, choking back the huge sobs that were rising up inside me. I didn’t want her to hear. “Emily ?”. More urgent now, footsteps approaching, padding up the stairs.

She loves you. I love you.

The door swung open and bumped against my feet. Someone was calling my name, pushing harder at the door. I felt my body slide slightly on the broken, shining, black records strewn around me and then there was someone next to me, arms around me, whispering my name over and over, pushing my hair back from my face. There was a moment then, just the briefest moment, when I felt like a child again; like someone else would make it alright and knew what to do. Knew. I pushed her away.

“You knew.”

She opened her mouth, covered it with her hands, tears tracing her cheeks and onto her fingers. She was shaking and simply opened her arms towards me, her face contorted with shock. She pleaded.

“I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know.” Her arms were still outstretched. “Please Em. I didn’t know. I didn’t want you to find out this way.” It hurt too much to look at her. She didn’t move, didn’t try to stop me, as I pushed past her out on to the landing and down the stairs. I pulled on my coat and dug my feet into an old pair of trainers, laces still done up, before opening the front door. Escape. That’s what all those songs were about. Escape but not hope.

 

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This is story 30 in a series of 42 to raise money and awareness for the mental health charity Mind. My fundraising page is here and all donations, however small, are really welcome: http://www.justgiving.com/42shorts

This is a bit more of Emily’s story (from previous two posts, Concrete Cowgirl and Broken). I am still undecided whether Emily gets to tell her story in the first person or whether it falls to me in the third. And I’m still not sure if she has a happy ending…

Broken

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Now you’re broken and you don’t understand…

Emily stopped flicking the CD cases forwards and looked up, inclining her head slightly to listen. She gripped the last album she’d reached in her idle browsing. It was that Fleet Foxes record she’d read about; another folk record about family and death. Like she needed another one of those. The song that was playing over the shop’s PA had just been part of the background noise until its chorus had cut through into her consciousness. She glanced up and down the aisles of the shop, the tips of her fingers whitening as she clenched harder on the CD. That chorus was so direct and she knew that voice. There was an honest simplicity to it, a yearning ache that spoke to her. Who was it ? What was this ?

Something’s mixed up and something’s gone…

She couldn’t catch all of the lyrics but some of the phrases stuck. Some of them were like salt water washing out an open wound. Into the second verse she realised that it must be the new Tift Merritt album, Dad had played the first two so often that her voice was like an old friend. Or a ghost. It wasn’t a voice she’d heard for a couple of years; it had been consigned to a small stack of his vinyl that she hadn’t been able to face yet. Her mum had wanted to clear them out but she’d begged her to keep them and now they gathered dust next to his old record player in the spare bedroom. Sometimes she’d thumbed through them and once she’d pulled one from its sleeve but the warm, rich smell of the wax had brought too many memories flooding back. There was nothing in that pile of records past 2006. Tift was still singing. He definitely would have bought this one.

And it’s these most loved losses are the hardest to carry…

The song was reaching its finish but Emily wouldn’t hear it. She felt a tightness in her chest and was suddenly short of breath. The strip lighting in the store was too bright and the D-E-F section in front of her blurred as she blinked back tears. The shelves and shelves of CDs that had initially welcomed her in now felt cold, all hard edges and smelling of cellophane wrapped plastic. Feeling sick Emily turned for the exit.

She stumbled out into the shopping centre and an alarm sounded behind her, red lights flashing on top of the tagging gates either side of the doors. She was still holding the Fleet Foxes album. Heart racing she ran back into the shop and replaced the CD on the first rack she came to. Her hands were shaking and she managed to disturb the fragile equilibrium of the display, four or five CDs and a piece of moulded plastic proclaiming ‘sale’ clattered to the floor. Emily fled not hearing either the continuing echo of the alarm nor the quietly optimistic final line of the song:

I think I will break but I mend

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This is story 29 in a series of 42 to raise money and awareness for the mental health charity Mind. My fundraising page is here and all donations, however small, are really welcome: http://www.justgiving.com/42shorts

This picks up Emily’s story (from previous post, Concrete Cowgirl) a bit further down the track. The lyrics are from Tift Merritt’s song “Broken” and no copyright infringement is intended: in the unlikely event that Tift or anyone from Fantasy Records a) reads this and b) objects then I’ll happily alter it. And I’ll double my total fundraising take for Mind. I am a massive fan and only borrowed the words because they help me tell fictional Emily’s story.

Concrete Cowgirl

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Emily lay perfectly still, flat on her back, and stared up. Straight up, unblinking, arms stretched wide, palms pricked by the blades beneath her hands. Soft when she was still, sharp if she moved. At the furthest reaches of her peripheral vision she could see the fuzzy green of the grass that was cushioning her head; otherwise nothing but a widescreen panorama of blue. A plane, too distant to be heard, crossed overhead and Emily watched it: a roughly doodled arrow sketched across the sky. She twisted her head to follow its trajectory but her view was broken by the cow, the sun reflecting back off its glossy, painted surface. It shone in a way that a cow shouldn’t. Emily became aware of the thrum of cars on the dual carriageway again.

“Moo,” she whispered, rolling onto her side and propping herself up on her elbow. The cow stared blankly at her, its mournful face forever frozen in concrete. Emily watched as a fly landed by its ear; there was no twitch of the head, no reflexive swish of its tail. She closed her eyes and heard a gentle buzz that receded to silence as the fly flew away before an angry exchange of car horns from the road broke the quiet. She opened her eyes and sat up, brushing grass from her arm and inspecting the dimpled imprint it had left on her elbow. As she pushed her way up to standing she caught sight of the cow’s feet, cemented into the ground, rooted and anchored in place. “You’re not going anywhere either,” she said.

A long chain of daisies snaked away from Emily’s foot, the result of a patient entwining as she had idled away the afternoon. She picked up the chain and held it draped around the cow’s neck, a cheery white and yellow garland to brighten up her bogus bovine companion. Dead wildflowers to decorate something that had never been alive. She tried to tie the two ends of the chain together but her fingers, usually so nimble, couldn’t work the delicate strands and the chain came apart in her hands. She was left clutching two or three daisies threaded together and a smattering of stray petals, like elongated white tears in her hands.

Emily stuffed the remnants of the daisy chain into her jacket pocket and patted the cow on its head; soaked in the afternoon sun it was warm beneath her hand. “I tried,” she said. Turning away she began to walk across the field, back towards the adjacent road, quickening her step as she saw a bus in the distance. She couldn’t make out the number but they all ended up in the same place. The impassive cow watched as she broke into a run. Had it been able to lift its head it would have seen a fading vapour trail high across the sky, the only sign of the plane that had slipped from view.

 

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This is story 28 in a series of 42 to raise money and awareness for the mental health charity Mind. My fundraising page is here and all donations, however small, are really welcome: http://www.justgiving.com/42shorts

I acknowledge this one is not quite a story but more a hint at one untold (which I know and will one day try to write) but I saw the old concrete cows in Milton Keynes again recently and dug this out. There is something distinctly odd about them. I wrote this piece a while ago as an exercise in a creative writing course I was taking. The tutor suggested I take the “like elongated white tears” simile out. I am bad at killing my darlings so it remains for now but let me know if it’s surplus to requirements !

The Ex in Existential

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With a casual air I pulled the book from my bag and held it open in front of my face, pretending to be engrossed as I picked at my lunch.

She usually came in about now.

Peering over the top of the pages I had a perfect view across the canteen; she couldn’t pick up her food without passing my table.

Mentally I rehearsed.

Oh hi… yeah, good thanks… oh this ?… it’s Camus actually… you too ? I know… I feel like he really understands the human condition.

This would definitely work.

I remembered her room at University back when we’d been a thing, she had that artsy French cat poster and the giant Michael Stipe.

Le Chat Noir: that was probably it.

And then she was here, stopping, staring curiously at me, presumably not realising that not only do I speak French now but that I’m also an existentialist; that this kind of cosmopolitan intellectual elan can’t be carried off just by sticking a picture of a scrawny moggy up on your wall and smoking roll ups under the sensitive gaze of REM’s lead singer.

She spoke: “Did you know you’re holding your book upside down ?”

 

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This is the 24th story in my series of 42 short stories to raise money and awareness for Mind, the mental health charity. If you liked it and wanted to donate or find out more then please visit my fundraising page here: www.justgiving.com/42shorts

This one was just a bit of fun. An exercise in a recent writing group class to do something in just ten sentences. I may have cheated a bit with the semi-colons, colons and ellipses…

Hibakusha

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“I will not go there.” Miyoto folded her arms across her chest, pulled them tightly against herself. She turned her back on the doctor and stood gazing out over the hospital gardens. The room was silent save for the distant sound of the ferries shuttling up and down the river.

“We can do no more for you my child” said the doctor. “You have come so far but I can’t help you now.”

“I understand.”

“The Americans. Their hospitals, the equipment… There’s more that they can do…”

“I will not go there.” Miyoko turned and lifted the sleeve on her gown, up to her shoulder. Her arm, from elbow to neck, reaching onto her cheek, was an angry red, skin still raised. “If Japan can not take this from me then I will wear it.”

“And yet they call you…”

“They call me hibakusha” she spat. “Of course they do. They always will. My own people ashamed of us, frightened of us.”

“They project their own shame and fear on to you I fear.”

“I will bear these marks but I will not bear their shame for them” answered Miyoto. “Better to be called hibakusha than the other. What are they being called ?”

“The maidens” said the doctor softly.

“The maidens. Hiroshima maidens” hissed Miyoto. “The women too burned, too ruined to marry and yet somehow supposedly made whole. Made into maidens.” She turned back to the window. “I will never abandon my country the way she has abandoned me and I will never hide what the Americans did to us. How dare they offer to heal what they inflicted ?”

“I see that your mind is made up” conceded the doctor. Miyoto, without turning, nodded her head and listened as his footsteps receded. She waited until she heard the door click behind her before gripping her hands across herself, clutching at her burns. She let the tears run freely down her face.

“They will never touch me” she murmured. “I am Miyoko Matsubara, I am hibakusha, and they will never touch me.”

……

This is the nineteenth story in my series of 42 shorts that I’m writing to raise money and awareness for Mind, the mental health charity. More an excerpt than a full blown story – needs a little more colour but I thought I’d post it as is before I potentially revisit it. Miyoko Matsubara was a survivor of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and refused to go to the States for further medical treatment. My portrayal of her here is entirely fictional. If you’re interested in donating to a great cause then please visit my fundraising page. https://www.justgiving.com/42shorts/

Orphan

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I wanted to bear it for them, for all of them I guess. They were always worried for me after it happened but the truth was that I didn’t remember it. Not consciously. Sometimes I’d wake in the night, sheets tangled around me as if I’d fought something, suppressed something. I’d wake shouting and crying, opening my eyes to banish the memory. I would open my eyes and forget. Or bury. Perhaps it’s all the same ? I needed it gone to be strong enough to bear everyone else’s pain and burdens again.

There’s enough to go round here: the scared and lonely and helpless. The adults look after us but I know they don’t really understand, not in the way that we experience it. How can you know what it is to be ripped from your parents as a child unless it has happened to you ? So I choose to bear it because I understand all too well. I comfort Jack when he sits on the end of his bed and sobs, whispering assurances in the dark. I read to Sophie, always the last book her Ma read to her. She knows it by heart – it is part of your heart I tell her – but I read it anyway. I change Luke’s sheets in the night when he wakes wet and embarrassed from another nightmare. I pass them to one of the adults so that he doesn’t have to. Sometimes I swap them with mine to spare his shame. I’m so full of it now, so removed from any previous sense of being happy, being alive, that I’m numb to taking on their burdens. Perhaps they’re right to worry about me. It wasn’t always like this. After the accident, when I was first taken in, I was afraid and angry. They called me orphan. I hated that word. I wouldn’t be defined by what had been taken from me, by the absence of something – or someone – and so slowly I reshaped myself by what I could take. And all there was to take was pain and desperate, desperate longing. Yearning sadness. I took it and, at first, it cost me. Reaching out to the others, taking their wounds as my own, was like a constant reminder of my own loss until, eventually, it got lost. I lost my loss. I always liked how that sounds and sometimes I even convince myself that it’s true. All that sorrow disappeared beneath each gesture of kindness, each of the burdens that someone else could lay down and I could carry. Eventually I figure I will disappear completely, replaced by what was left of the memories of distant guardians: dead and gone.

I bear it all, each one of my brothers and sisters known to me, each one of them mine to carry. Mine to guard.

I have orphaned my own sadness by claiming theirs.

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This is the eighteenth story in my series of 42 shorts that I’m writing to raise money and awareness for Mind, the mental health charity. Guess it was more of a point-of-view character piece than a full blown story. If you’re interested in donating to a great cause then please visit my fundraising page. https://www.justgiving.com/42shorts/