Tuesday Poem: Flash Fiction Dead Space

Dead Space

Catch the boy out there standing like a bird with one foot tucked behind a calf looking at the sea. He isn’t at soccer practice. He isn’t on the scout tramp to Chatham Creek. He isn’t playing Dead Space 2 while Bridgie practices her scales. Up and down, up and down. The boy, Jesse, is allergic to scales and allergic to Bridgie who squeaks like a bird when he interrupts her. Dead Space 2. Necromorphs for god’s sake. I need to concentrate. 

          But she just squeaks and then she squeals and then Mum comes wiping her hands on a tea-towel, and she wants to know where he got the damn game from. Then it’s all over red rover, as his dad says, and he’s outside, like his dad usually is, smoking, except Jesse’s not smoking because he’s run out of smokes.  

           Catch the boy before he leaves. Not the boy leaving. The father leaving. Country Road bag in hand – Bridgie’s bag for sleepovers. He says to the boy, ‘Bye, Jess’, and he says to the boy, ‘Be good for your Mum.’ 

           And his dad puts down the stupid bag, and the look on his face is that sort of look he gets when he comes home and it’s his birthday and Mum’s made a special dinner. Hopeful. Or something. He blinks too much, thinks Jesse, his breath smells like shit. When his dad hugs him, Jesse puts his foot down so he won’t topple. The scales have stopped. Jesse thinks of Necromorphs. He smells sweat and smokes. That’s how Necromorphs would smell, he thinks. And they’d blink too fast. His father used to play the piano. He bought the piano for Jesse to play but Jesse didn’t want to play. He just didn’t. 

Mary McCallum 

Dead Space isn't a poem, not really, but as Flash Fiction, it's a comely blend of poetry and short fiction. Three hundred words only and a lot of fun to write. More fun to discover my story was placed third in the National Flash Fiction Day Competition, June 22. It came in after the winning story by Frankie McMillan In the nick of time, a deer, and Rebecca Styles' second placed story Parade, and was read at a NZ Society of Authors open mic evening in Wellington last night. 

Congratulations to Frankie and Rebecca and all those short and long-listed. Thanks to Tuesday Poet Michelle Elvy for encouraging me to enter with her fabulous flash fiction facebooking. And thanks to the kind donor who has given some money so the winners get a cash prize - how good is that? 

I decided to enter the competition the evening of the deadline, and had a sentence in my head and went from there. As happens with this sort of approach, I didn't know where I was headed or where the Necromorphs came from (they do exist, in a game called Dead Space - but what are they doing here? and they are so right.) The point of view veers back and forth a bit from the boy to the dad. If I'd had time I would have worked at making it more consistent, but in fact I like the inconsistency and uncertainty now, and it works better with paragraphing, which wasn't in the original - becoming more like a play. 

Tuesday Poem:Clicks

Okay, I lied. This isn't a poem exactly although it has the stuff of a prose poem about it.  It's a Flash Fiction story I entered in the recent National Flash Fiction Day competition. 

It didn't win. Oddly enough someone called Janis was a runnerup for the national prize and then won the Wellington regional one, so you could say I was onto a winning idea at least! Might even shimmy along for a while on her fabulous coat tails...  (I should say I did not in any way have this Janis in mind when I wrote about Janis and Tommy and their little problem.)

Congrats to you Janis Freegard (also a Tuesday Poet) - I'm really looking forward to reading your story, I know it will be a treat - and to the other winners, bravo. Here's mine...

Clicks

Janis made him listen to the clicking sounds in the kitchen wall. They stood face to face, their noses almost touching. He could smell the Brussels sprouts she’d eaten for dinner. Her lips were tight on her teeth when she spoke.

‘What is it?’ she said.

He listened. It was silent at first, then there was a small click, and another. ‘It’s nothing.’

Janis emitted a click of her own. ‘It’s not nothing, Tommy, but I can’t think about it now. I’ve got work tomorrow. I’m off to bed.’

It was three days of this before he got the electrician in. The wiring was fine, it seemed, but mice were mentioned. Tommy went out and bought traps and a tin of poison. He laid them strategically then poured himself an early beer.  They didn’t listen to the walls that night, and Janis laughed at something on TV. When her mouth was relaxed, it reminded him of that actress in Friends.                         

A week of traps and he didn’t catch one mouse. The clicks were louder and more frequent and Janis spoke stiffly again. She said that Bill at work had borer, and then she went off to read in the bedroom.

The next day, Tommy bought a pest bomb. He sat smoking outside while it did its thing, but afterwards the clicks were even more frenetic. They made him think of Janis typing up his CV for the job applications. She was Jennifer Aniston every day back then. He called her Janiston for laughs. Her hair smelt of frangipani. 

Tommy got the axe from the garage. It didn’t take long to demolish the wall, and the ones either side for good measure. Then he waited, one thumb on the blade, the other clicking time with the clock.

Mary McCallum

Tuesday Flash Fiction: Lashes

   c2011 Helen Reynolds

Lashes by Mary McCallum

The art of mascara isn’t hard to master. It just needs a firmness of touch, and a wiggle before the brush leaves the lashes. I’ve applied it on the run: on the toilet, eating breakfast, driving to work – one hand on the steering wheel, one on the mascara wand, both eyes on the road. I swear, I’d only look in the rear vision mirror once or twice to check I hadn’t missed anything.                                                      

         That last time was different. Something scratching – a dislodged lash? The mascara clogged on the brush. I remember tipping the mirror and looking deep into the weeping white of my eye.                
         The flash of yellow came out of nowhere. Tiny candy-pink tights cartwheeling. One shoe. On the bonnet, the daisy from the little yellow hat. That’s all I see now, and I refuse to frame it. I can’t. No more black plasticky lash-paint for me.                         

         Lashes, only lashes.

 _____

It's National Flash Fiction Day on Friday and there's a prize (or two) at stake. Sadly, I didn't make the shortlist in the NFFD competition but others did. 

Just in case I get a NZ Society of Authors regional prize, I won't post my submission here until later... this is another piece of flash fiction I posted a little while back - half the length of this week's competition. The drawing is by my friend Helen Reynolds. 

Check out the Tuesday Poem hub which is all Flash Fiction this week thanks to NFFD organiser Michelle Elvy who is also a Tuesday Poet - and there are more flashes in the TP sidebar. FF is after all the love child of poetry and fiction. 

150-word stories

I am really enjoying the challenge of writing 150-word short stories for the BNZ Literary Awards (once called the Katherine Mansfield Awards) this year. The 150-word category - called 'flash fiction' in the States - is a new one, and a groovy concept. For a start, you enter the story on Facebook, and there's a groovy little inspiration tool with random phrases (or there was, can't find it now...), an 'inspiration gallery', examples of other short short stories, and an unfolding 'twitter tale' to get the juices going. This category also has a groovy judge in Graham Beattie.

It's certainly caught my imagination. I've written two so far and found the exercise not unlike doing a sudoku puzzle or cryptic crossword - it challenges and sharpens the mind, and is surprisingly satisfying. Maybe it's just me and my easy distractibility - but one short story idea I've had for awhile, that I haven't managed to get down on paper, has now found a home, and others are lining up ... However, the first 150-word story I wrote last week began from an overheard phrase and an associated idea, and then just unfolded on the page much like a poem (with hours of editing afterwards.)

In fact my novelist friend Thom Conroy says, the 150-word story is a category for a poet (at least one who also likes dabbling in fiction.) It certainly has to have a narrative - albeit concentrated down to the nth degree - but at the same time, as with poetry, economy of language is the key. Each word has to pull its weight and most are freighted with meaning. At the same time, the story needs to have 'space' in it to make it feel like a story not a poem. I guess I mean the reader doesn't need to feel the weight in each word - an unfolding narrative feel is the key.

It's like a tale told over a beer, a joke. It also reminds me of some of the excellent prose poems floating around at the moment. Poet Airini Beautrais is particularly good at them.

Flash fiction has interested me for awhile - in this busy era overloaded with apps, I think it may well  find its niche. Why not give it a go? And if economy is not your thing, there are always the other awards to enter... Go here.