OPEN DAY AT THE BOTTLE FACTORY – DAVID SHOWS HIS DAUGHTER THE PLACE WHERE HE IS GOD

Alison Wassell

David narrates the creation story. Sand, soda ash, limestone and cullet make liquid honey in a hell-hot furnace. He waves a proud arm at the end product, one made earlier, a multitude of milk bottles, ghosts of the terracotta army.

It is, he says, a triumph of man and machine, and he is the man who keeps it all going. Emma raises her sceptical eyebrows above her safety glasses. He shows her the stool where he sits. “Perhaps one day you’ll get a chair,” she says, watching him shrivel before her.

It will take her twenty years to be sorry.


About the author: Alison Wassell is a flash fiction and short story writer, published by Reflex Fiction, Bath Flash Fiction Award, NFFD, The Cabinet of Heed, FlashFlood Journal and various other places.