Tag Archives: flash fiction

But I know we’ll meet again some sunny day

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Image: Sid Vicious / Ebet Roberts / 1978

“The Laurels Residential Care Home is pleased to announce that the Space Kids will be here on 8 June 2045.”

The pending arrival had been flashed onto the wall of every bedroom. Old people liked it when the Space Kids came. They came across the fields on Ducati Thrust Bikes, not a sound, and only the shaking of the hedgerows gave any indication that they had arrived. They gathered in the ChatGPT room and shouted for everyone to leave their pods. The Space Kids had brought holograms of dead stars and allowed them to mingle with the residents. Patrick Swayze and Kurt Cobain chatted with them, Prince and Amy Winehouse waltzed around the room, Bruce Willis cracked jokes, and Michael Jackson reeled off poetic verses from Thriller. But their favourite time was when the Space Kids fired up the ‘retro spectro disco’ where the likes of Pulp, Oasis and Take That got them all dancing. Towards the end, there were traditional food dishes like Big Macs, Nando’s Chicken and Pepperoni Pizza with Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream to follow. It had an emotional ending when the Space Kids paid tribute to the home’s oldest resident who was treated to a Sid Vicious avatar singing a punk version of We’ll Meet Again. There wasn’t a dry eye in the place.

The boy in the alley is like a ghost of last night

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Image: Cecilie Harris

He sits like a ghost of last night, knees raw, boots scuffed, a slouch that says he’s seen too much for someone too young to carry it. The alley’s a graveyard of pallets and metal, the air thick with the stale breath of kegs that haven’t been touched since the last fight or fuck. The wall at his back don’t care who he is, and neither does the city — just another boy in borrowed clothes, dragging the hem of his story through concrete and piss. His eyes don’t beg. They dare. As if to say: I’m not lost — I’m choosing to stay gone. Everything here’s worn out —the barrels, the bricks, the boy. But there’s poetry in the ruin, and he knows it. He’s not posing. He’s waiting. For the light to change, for someone to look twice, or maybe just for the silence to settle in enough to sleep.

You had your chance and you didn’t want it

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Image: Archer Iñíguez

He stood next to his girlfriend and I couldn’t help looking at him. Discreetly like. But Matchstick Man had clocked me and looked at me like I’d done something incredibly bad. I wanted to shout, “Fuck you, Matchstick Man, you had your chance!” Instead, I went bright red and looked at my phone where an app nudged a virtual taxi nearer towards me. Sometimes thinking about it is better than doing it.

A little boy’s story is the best that is ever told

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Image: Archer Iñíguez

Little boy, full of excitement, runs down the hill, his parents far behind. His legs go faster than they can carry him and I fear he will fall. But he is too young to recognise danger and is safe for now. He heads to the sea, with its tiny cottages with smoking chimneys, fishing boats, and ice cream. His parents smile as he tries to hurry them along. This is a moment that this little boy may or may not remember. But when he is old, and his parents are long dead, he might sit where I am now, and watch other little boys doing the same as he did, and know that he had a wonderful childhood.

That Moment / Actually, I do happen to resemble a hallucination

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Image: Archer Iñíguez

A baseball cap and a touch of peach fuzz on his chin. He sat at the bar and I saw flashes of flesh around his ankles. At that moment, he might have been the sexiest person in the world. But then he started talking to somebody who wasn’t there, and argued with somebody else who wasn’t there either. He didn’t say anything to me and I WAS there, but I was grateful for that.