She’s been crying since dawn. The girl Lennie’s man has knocked-up and discarded at Lennie’s front door.

If Lennie had a barb wire mouth, she might say it’s embarrassing. All the crying. Instead, she’s given the girl a box of tissues and told her to take a seat. 

Lennie is surprised about the situation in a way that disappoints her. Her man rubs himself over women like a fox in dog shit. She should have seen this coming. 

*

“How’s the lass?” Jean asks, through the whip of sea air. 

It’s four weeks later. The baby is due soon.

Lennie has called Jean every night, cord curled around her fingers to cut off blood supply. Jean is Lennie’s closet friend.

“Keeps saying she might run away.”

Below them the sea front is boys. Their baggy clothes make them look like bare-necked turkeys. They tramp along the promenade. 

“Can’t be easy,” Jean replies. 

Lennie has let the girl stay. She’s just seventeen.

If Lennie had a tar heart, she might have told the girl to ‘sling her hook.’ But Lennie had a daughter of her own. 

“Called her dad again.” Lennie stubs out her cigarette. Heel twist. Tarmac crunch. “He said she can only come home if she gets rid of the baby.”

Lennie doesn’t mention that the lass threatened to take her life. That she told her dad (and Lennie, since she was eavesdropping) she would jump from the heavens of the cliffs. 

It’s too close to home. 

“Forcing her to have an abortion this late on.” Jean sniffs. “Could you even?”

With boots too big for him, one of the boys on the promenade swings his leg up goose-step high and kicks a pigeon along the path.

“I know,” Lennie says. A cheer rings out. Lennie can see a severed head. Guts on the concrete. “Horrible bastard.” 

*

“You won’t do it?” Lennie asks. 

The girl is fused to the sofa, sad as skimmed milk.

“Do it?”

“What you told your dad the last time he called. Jump.”

She’s threatened it twice more since. 

The girl says she won’t. Not really. She thinks Lennie’s man will come back and this will all be solved.

If Lennie was a saint, she might hold back from saying that her man is long gone, and even if he isn’t, the girl won’t get anything from him. 

He is disappointment made flesh. 

“You don’t know that,” the girl says.

“I think I do.”

*

The girl goes into labour in the dark lull after midnight. Ambulance called. Delivery slow. 

If Lennie had dust for a spine, she might have crumbled under the cut of it all. The girl and the baby and her man gone missing. 

Instead, she pulls her daughter’s clothes from the loft – the miniature knitted boots, the little blue leggings – and brings them to the hospital. 

 

This story won first prize in the Amok themed quarterly flash fiction competition

About the author: Emily Harrison has spent the past two years studying for a Creative Writing MA and now she’s not sure she has any creativity left. She has had work published with X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine, Ellipsis Zine, Barren Magazine, STORGY Magazine, The Molotov Cocktail, Litro, Tiny Molecules and Gone Lawn to name a few.

They shut down the amusement park when beavers ran amok among the rides. Threatened with lawsuits, the manager barked safety exits through a bullhorn. Alan howled and dug in his heels as his mother yanked him away, bumping and scraping him along the sidewalk; his father would take care of him once they got home. They flagged his chart in the ER when they x-rayed his arm. Mother crimsoned. Nurses looked her up and down. Outside, flat tails SPLAT! to distractwhile webbed paws zip the boy away to grow a thick, insulated coat. To learn how to plug leaks.

 

This story was runner up in the Amok themed quarterly flash fiction competition

About the author: Mikki Aronoff’s work appears or is forthcoming in New World Writing, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Tiny Molecules, The Disappointed Housewife, Bending Genres, Milk Candy Review, Gone Lawn, and elsewhere. She has received Pushcart, Best of the Net, and Best Microfiction nominations.

The sky was full of dragons. Ridge-backed and horned, fanged and scaled. Dragons with tails, long and spiked, coiled like ammonites. Dragons of alabaster and anthracite, pewter and basalt. The sky was full of dragons, bulkheaded and angry.

The sun was blistering, oppressive, the air heavy, heavyweight. Insects dive-bombed the lake – wasps, ants, grasshoppers, beetles. They didn’t creep, or crawl, they launched, they tumbled and piked and somersaulted. They swam, they flailed and they drowned.

Danny lay in the long grass. He was half and half – sleeping and awake, anxious and calm, ecstatic and furious. He lay in the long grass and waited.

Sophie lay in the long grass. She was half and half – sleek and sticky, excited and weary, wary and hot, hot, hot.

Danny watched Andy approach. He knew where Sophie lay. He knew through the taste on his tongue, the scent in his nostrils, the vibrations in his groin. He knew why Andy had come, knew what Sophie had offered, knew what it might cost her, them, him. Knew as a grasshopper knows when to drown in a lake.

Andy lay in the long grass with Sophie. Lay in the long grass on Sophie. Lay in the long grass in Sophie. Sophie moaned and Andy moaned, and in the long grass close by Danny grew as angry as bulkheaded dragons.

A large flat stone found its way to his palm, maybe it was basalt, maybe not. It was flat and ridged like a dragon’s tail, and heavy, heavyweight, fierce. Danny picked his way through the long grass towards Andy and Sophie, the rock, basalt maybe, firm and fierce in his hand. Sophie barely had time to scream as the storm broke, as the thunder blasted and the lightning cracked and the rain tumbled from the sky like basalt.

The dragons roared and Danny roared with them, and the basalt fell and fell and fell.Afterwards as calm as the eye, Danny lay in the long grass, watching the rain wash blood from his hands, staining the earth red, waiting for the storm to return

 

This story was runner up in the Amok themed quarterly flash fiction competition

About the author: Maria Thomas is a middle-aged, apple-shaped mum of two. She has work in EllipsisZine, Funny Pearls, Levatio, Fiery Scribe Review, Paragraph Planet, VirtualZine, Free Flash Fiction, Punk Noir, Roi Faineant Press, Cape Magazine, Story Nook, WestWord Journal and (upcoming) Punk Monk and Yuzu Literary. Maria won Retreat West’s April 2022 Micro competition. She can be found on Twitter as @AppleWriter.