FLASH FACTOR

FLASH FACTOR

Tuesday 17 July 2012

This came runner up in the Write Invite Live Flash Fiction Competition last week (7th July 2012)

Fairground Attraction

You spin me. Kaleidoscope. Colours whizz and whirl. Are they in my head? My eyes forced shut. Pressure. Speed. Your arm brushes past me. Leather, soap and fags. My senses reel. Is this for real? 

Fame - your aim. The rungs on the ladder snap. But you keep climbing. This circus rung - waltzes on. My roller-coaster ride to heartache.

I try to share - be part of your aim. But the baby sleeps.  The mobile will have stopped now. i sense his whimpers in sleep. Guilt burns but I don't return.

And as the bar digs into my waist - you suck me in. 

But your eyes miss nothing - opportunity is out there. Believe me - you say. Just the Start and Dare to dream. Clichés slip syrupy from your lips. I want to lick, taste them, believe in them. But my purse is empty and the telephone line is dead.

Robert de Niro, Tom Cruise, John Travolta. You adopt the swagger. Say its in your veins. Comb back - rock back, And the girls smile. I see. I know. I hear. Ego rides high on your fun, fair fame.

So you smile. You react. Give them what they want. Music crashes on each upswing. Drum beat on the curves.

Candy floss sticks to my face., Just a girl really. But not girly. Not pink, Not stilettoed. You laugh. At me.

My tears are in the next car. With the yellow dress. Your Waltzing Matilda. That's where your eyes set. Sun set. Radiate affection.

I'm cold. Out cold. The stars dim.

And you just my fairground attraction.

Saturday 14 July 2012



This was my very first win over at Write Invite - the weekly live flash fiction competition. I hope you are enjoying my new blog. It has taken me some time to get around to it. Please say hi - oh and tell your friends. Larissa x


Weather's Fight

The sky that day was tired. Mile after mile it carried its sorrows. Burdened with woes - longing to skim the heavens with lightness in its heart.

Hovering over the parched landscape it felt the pull of the earth and the slip of space as the weight of its depression became too great.

Within moments the dark skies wept raindrop tears. And now that it had started there seemed to be an ocean of misery falling from its cotton wool heart. The relief was immense. Surely the land would listen to its sorrow.

The land was saddened by the sorry story the sky told and soaked up its pain with pity. For had not the sky kept the land bathed in sunshine for what seemed like an eternity. Surely the land owed the sky a canvass to cry on. And so as the tears fell the land drank with sympathy, quenching its thirst.

The wind watched this friendship with envy. No one ever appreciated its virtues. For when he blew everything took shelter and left him to rant on his own. Anger festered  until he could hold his temper no longer. In fury he battered the sky and the land's friendship. Gust after gust he bullied the land into a frenzy with bullet like tears.

The land and the skies were left berated and spent.

Fuelled and fulfilled the wind drifted off to a whisper. His fight was over, until the next time. 

Friday 13 July 2012


 This came runner up in the Write Invite Competition. The prompt was 'just one more thing'


The Yard Misses You


The sun is shining in the yard but light fluffy clouds cast a shadow over my head - or was that your absence? You see my dear, one can know something is going to happen, one can plan for that eventuality, but nothing can prepare for the reality. Nothing prepares for the feeling of emptiness.

I've got my boots, the duster and polish. And if you were here you would be telling me off for sitting in my stocking feet - tip toed in the gravel. I've even made myself a cuppa, but it's not the same. Too much milk I think, I don't have that sleight of hand. You always told me off for that too. Far too much polish on those boots.  A terrible waste, you would say. But you always patted my shoulder as you went back to your own chores. Your bite was that of a pup  and I have been blessed. There's many a man had to sleep with a Rottweiler.

You would have been hanging the washing out today. The wind is fresh, blowing the trees in the copse, terrible it is. I can hear it playing the leaves. I can hear you singing - that soft Irish lilt that used to make my own heart sing. You were happy in your work, never complaining all these long years.

I like to remember you bustling around in your skirts, seeing to the chickens, seeing to the kids, seeing to the farm hands and mostly seeing to me. I never made it easy, you used to scold. But I'm a plodder lass,  there's never been hurry in my bones. Life's for appreciating, no use hurrying around.

The yards is scurrying with activity this morning. The cat's had her kittens and the geese are hissing proud. And Nip, well he's running wild lass. But despite all of it,  the yard misses you.

That's why I'm polishing my love. Smearing my boots in the thick black paste - bulling them until I can see my sad face. The smell is strong in my nostrils.  It's the smell of normality.




This won the Write Invite live Flash Fiction Competition on the 16th June 2012

Secret Corridors    


I never quite realized just how much stress I had been under. I just sort of got on with it. I didn't kick up a fuss, wail out my woes, paint out my pain on the washing line. I didn't let my troubles go viral - for what would have been the point. It was my fault anyway I'd decided, and with that thought I had kept my head lowered when I collected the morning paper and gave Toby a  discreet show and tell when I left him at the school gates.

The skies were eternally black, and Ted's reign in my life was for life. I poofed the cushions on his throne, polished the jewels on his crown and I knelt by his knee wearing his authority on me like a heavy robe. He was my master and I wasn't to forget it.

But in secret corridors I dreamed. I dreamed of strolling on the shore, tiptoeing through the froth on the sand.  I dreamed of another's touch. An altogether gentler touch, one that was welcomed and longed for, and one that left no purple bruises and bloody lips. One that whispered out love on my skin and warmed the stone that had replaced my heart.

In the secret corridors the clouds rolled away, blue replaced black, joy replaced fear and someone else replaced Ted. In the secret corridors all was fresh, like cotton sheets on the washing line, all was peaceful like sitting in the church and praying - in the secret corridors I didn't need someone to rescue me.

But that was all they had been - corridors - a place to escape to. And was it worth it, for when I emerged with hope burning in my little stone heart the clouds had rolled back again, the cotton sheets were soaked with tears and all I was left with was prayer.