People Math by Sally K. Lehman

People Math

The People magazines are old ones. Last week’s edition which didn’t sell and have to be trashed or recycled or sent to places where George Clooney’s most recent breakup hasn’t been heard about yet. Maybe Utah.

I step forward.

1 person + full bags = 1 step closer to the cash register

Grocery store mathematics.

A woman in jeans and sweatshirt lifts the pile of old People and I smile. Bob always tells me not to smile at strangers. It’s not that he’s wrong; it’s just what I do.

“I have to restock today,” the woman says to me.

“Quite a few left,” I say.

I take a step forward. Long lines at Safeway this afternoon.

“I’m not supposed to be here,” she says.

“Oh?” It must be the raised eyebrows. I can’t trust my eyebrows not to give me away.

Conversation + 2 eyebrows up = Interest

Human reaction math.

“My father is dying up in Bremerton and he’s asking for me.” She hugs George Clooney’s face to her chest. “But no one would fill in for me.”

“I’m so sorry,” I say.

If he was here, Bob would look away now.

I think about those moments when my sisters and I first knew Mom would die, how we stood, how we followed her with our eyes as she moved. I remember the grimace on her face each time, the grind of her teeth.

5 adult daughters + 1 terminal diagnosis = frustration

Mom is dying math.

The woman collecting the magazines says, “All I can hope for is enough time to drive up before Dad’s gone.”

I step forward again. She moves with me. Lines do not wait for human tragedy. I shift the red basket from my right hand to my left.”Do you have many more stores to do today?”

“No,” she says, “this is the last. But I’m worried about getting there before dark.”

I nod. We all know the fairy tales. Dark is when bad things happen. I look to the glass doors and the afternoon light.

19 months + 10 days = barely past the first year

Mom died math.

“It’s still pretty early,” I say. I step forward.

“I’m just scared,” she says. She takes more People from the next checkout stand. More George Clooney to her chest.

We look, two-eyes-to-two-eyes, and I see that soul-deep fear. I’ve known that fear. I’ve lived what she’s living. My hand comes up, lands on her forearm.

5 fingers + 1 forearm = Comfort

People math.

This is where Bob would understand.

“Don’t worry,” I say. “I’m sure you’ll make it.”

We smile the meek half smiles of people who lose parents but have to continue on with life.

“Thank you,” she says. And her eyes slightly shine when she turns away.

And I step forward.

 

About the author: Sally K Lehman is the author of the novel In The Fat, which was published through Black Bomb Books in 2015. She currently attends Wilkes University in the Maslow Family Graduate Creative Writing Program. Her work can be found in The Coachella Review, Lunch Ticket, and several other literary magazines. She lives in the Portland, Oregon area of the USA.

If you’ve enjoyed her story, please let her know in the comments below!

 

Sally Lehman

Forgetting flash shortlist

Thanks again to everyone who wrote and sent in their stories for the March themed flash comp. Your stories are definitely not forgettable!

We’ve read and re-read the longlist and now have our shortlist. I will be reading these final 11 again to choose the winner and two runners-up. Results will be announced on May 31st.

Forgetting Flash Shortlist

  • Amy Drake
  • An Odyssey
  • Burning Bright
  • Captivity
  • Forget You
  • Freedom
  • Hope You Find Your 90
  • Hospital Ward Flora
  • People Math
  • The Frog Prince
  • Unforgettable

We’d like to give a nod to the following stories as well, which received a vote from at least one of us for the shortlist even though they didn’t make it through to the final.

  • A Time To Every Purpose Under The Heaven
  • Ghost Passage
  • Gone, But
  • Just A Rock

 

The next themed competition deadline is 24th June 2018 and this time we want stories inspired by the theme of reunions. Enter here.

If you sign up as a Retreat West Author Member then you can get entries to these comps, and others, included as part of your author benefits, as well as lots of other great stuff. And if you sign up before the end of May, you’ll also get entered into a prize draw to win free courses and critiques.

Themed Flash Longlist: Forgetting

Many thanks to everyone that entered the Themed Flash Fiction Competition: Forgetting. The standard of entry has been very high and it’s not been an easy task to come up with the LongList.

Readings are done anonymously until the shortlists are chosen. Only then do we learn who has written what, so only the story titles are listed here. Congratulations to all the writers who see their story titles below!

Longlisted Stories (in alphabetical order by story title)
  • A Time To Every Purpose Under The Heaven
  • Amy Drake
  • An Odyssey
  • Burning Bright
  • Captivity
  • Coney Island Baby
  • Christ Is Risen
  • Ghost Passage
  • Gone, But
  • Freedom
  • Forgetting
  • Forget You
  • Hope You Find Your 90
  • Hospital Ward Flora
  • I Sky Seeing
  • Just A Rock
  • Origins Unknown
  • Memory Bank
  • People Math
  • Proof Of Innocence
  • Scrabble
  • Shedding
  • Slipway
  • Song Of Little Stork
  • Tear Down The Sky
  • That Kid
  • The Frog Prince
  • The Last Encampment
  • The Square Root of Joy
  • The Things That Make Me Forget
  • Trying To Remember
  • Unforgettable

Well done to all of you!

As we re-read the stories for the shortlist, we’ll be considering:

  • Is it a complete story?
  • Is it an original story idea?
  • Language used – Is it beautiful/clever?
  • Does it make you feel something?

We aim to announce the shortlist of ten on Thursday 24th May.

Best of luck to all!

The next themed flash competition deadline is 24th June 2018 and the theme is Reunions. Retreat West Author Members can get entries included as part of their membership.

 

Somewhere in Dubai, a Maid Considers Colors by Christina Dalcher

Somewhere in Dubai, a Maid Considers Colors

Christina Dalcher

Mam wears black and Sir wears white and Mam is white on the inside, like the center of an ice cube, but Sir is dark dark dark like the spot Rosanna’s mother calls the sin on your soul, and once, when Rosanna asks Sir why all the men in this desert place wear white, he tells her they do this because it is cooling in the heat.

“But the women wear black,” Rosanna says.

“They are used to it,” Sir says. “It is the right color for them.”

#

Three young men stand in line at the supermarket, tin lunch pails hanging from brown hands. Smells of meat and fish on their clothes remind Rosanna of her island’s food, but not quite. The laborers take care not to look Mam in the eye as Rosanna unloads two trolleys full of: Kleenex, diapers, a white cheese product sold in glass jars, ten packages of flat bread, and the fish that will take all afternoon to clean and all night to scrub from fingernails. They take less care with Rosanna, roaming over her with small black eyes. Each man exchanges ten dirham for a bottle of skin whitening cream. Rosanna cries on the inside, knowing they have wasted their daily pay.

#

The Russian girls are impossibly tall and unnaturally blonde and their limbs glisten with suntan oil in the next yard over. When she first spotted them, Rosanna called the Russian girls the milky ones in her own language. Today, as she hangs out four baskets of Mam’s laundry to scorch dry on the villa’s roof, the Russian girls are no longer  bleached pale, but the color of polished copper, very much like Rosanna. One raises a hand and waves. Rosanna waves back over the wet bed linens, looking at her chocolate skin against the backdrop of snowy cotton, wondering what the right color is.

#

There are no pigs in the desert, but when Rosanna closes her eyes after another day of washing and wiping and wishing, she dreams of the sows waiting for her at home. Black ones and white ones and pink sucklings, all covered in the same wet sludge. A pig is a pig is a pig, she thinks, no matter how thick a coat of mud it wears. One day, when her work is done and she returns, she’ll tell the pigs this. They are, Rosanna believes, intelligent creatures.

 

About the author: Christina Dalcher is a theoretical linguist from the Land of Styron and Barbecue, where she writes, teaches, and channels Shirley Jackson. Recognitions include The Bath Flash Award’s Short List, nominations for Best of the Net and Best Small Fictions, and second place in Bartleby Snopes’ Dialogue-Only Contest. Find her work in Split Lip Magazine, Whiskey Paper, and New South Journal, among others. Her feminist dystopian short story “Vox” will be published in Upper Rubber Boot’s Women Up to No Good anthology in early 2019. Laura Bradford of Bradford Literary Agency represents her novels. www.christinadalcher.com, @CVDalcher.

Black-themed flash comp shortlist

Many thanks to everyone that sent in their stories for the black-themed competition. I really enjoyed reading them all and if you didn’t make the long or shortlist this time, keep on trying! Judging is still anonymous until the winners have been chosen and notified so please don’t let us know which story is yours if it is on this list. The longlist is posted below as well.

Shortlisted Stories (alphabetical order by story title)
  • Backlight
  • Betsy Black
  • Black is the Purest Sound
  • Blackout
  • Burnt Lungs
  • Somewhere in Dubai, a Maid Considers Colors
  • Space and Time
  • The Game of Murder
Longlisted Stories (alphabetical order by story title)
  • Backlight
  • Betsy Black
  • Black Angel 17
  • Black Art
  • Black is the Purest Sound
  • Blackout
  • Burnt Lungs
  • Five Hundred Year Decomposition
  • Free the Black Swan
  • Gap Year
  • Not Him
  • Somewhere in Dubai, a Maid Considers Colors
  • Space and Time
  • The Game of Murder
  • The Roulette Table
  • This Light’s My Due

Well done to everyone on both of these lists. Winners will be announced soon.

The next themed flash competition deadline is 31st December 2017 and the theme is WHITE. Get all the info here.

Ticking by Gwenda Major

Little things used to annoy me  medichecks, crowded transtubes, that sort of thing.
But not much gets to me these days.
To be honest I can’t remember when I last went out – by that I mean away from this place.  It’s quite remote here.  Two hours on foot to the nearest habitation cluster.Fifteen minutes by transpod.  Of course when I came I wasn’t alone and we wanted to be away from the crowds. And now there’s just me I find I’ve got used to it.  I couldn’t even start to think about leaving and my transpod gave up ages ago anyway.
The dronedrop brings my supplies every two weeks and I imagine they’re still deducting the cost from my credits.  I remember signing something before we came so I probably agreed to all sorts of things. The days can be quite long but I’ve got a system.  In the mornings I tidy up indoors. In the afternoons I go outside, breathe for a while, watch the sky. There are all sorts of things up there these days but I’ve rather lost track of all that.  
In the evenings I work on my paintings.  Not many walls left to cover now.  While I’m working sometimes I find myself whistling. Which is why I wasn’t really aware of it in the beginning.  The ticking.  At first I quite naturally assumed it was my wrist-timer, a relic of the old days.  I put it to my ear and listened but the sound didn’t seem to be coming from there. Just a gentle tick-tick-tick.
For a few days I thought it had stopped but then when I kept really still and listened,there it was again, tick- tick-tick.Then I began to wonder if the ticking could be some sort of insect  a survivor, living in the fabric of this place. They still used wood back then. I lay on the floor and listened to the walls, pressed my ear to the doorframes. Nothing.  It was only when I stood up and moved around that I could hear the sound  tick-tick-tick.  
This morning I woke up late  the synthisun was already high and shafts of light were streaming into my room. After tidying up I opened the door to go outside as usual. The air felt good  cold and clean.  The sound came with me  tick-tick-tick.  It was just as I stepped outside that the truth dawned on me and I wondered why I hadn’t thought of it before.  It’s obvious really  the ticking is me.  I stood quite still outside the door while the beauty of the thought struck me.And then a few minutes ago it stopped.  Tick-tick-……  So I’m holding my breath and I’m waiting

About the author: Gwenda Major lives in the South Lakes area of the UK. Her passions are genealogy, gardening and graveyards. Gwenda’s stories have featured in numerous publications. She has written four novels and two novellas; three have been either longlisted or shortlisted for national competitions.

Gwenda has a website and blog at www.gwendamajor.wordpress.com