Storgy Flash Fiction 2019 E-Book

Storgy Books

• Herausgeber: STORGY Books
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Seitenzahl: 83

Beschreibung

The Storgy Flash Fiction 2019 Anthology contains the finalists of the 2019 STORGY Flash Fiction Competition and includes the following stories: 

All The Shuttered Things Blooming
by Selma Carvalho

American Religion
by Luke Kuhns

WINNER
Apocalypse Vodka
by Donna Greenwood

Calithea
by Tomas Marcantonio

Crisis Actor
by Rick White

Devotion Take Me
by Emily Harrison

Ghost-Sex
by Adam Lock

Home Time
by Tony McDonald

How Your Birthday Unfolded
by Alexis Wolfe

Ink Stain
by Tucker Lieberman

Late Night TV
by Thomas Conaghan

Leave a Little Light on
by Mark Nelson

Little White Lies
by Wiebo Grobler

Moving South
by Simon Billinton

Oceans Apart
by Hannah Storm

Puddles
by Colin James

Relative Claws
by Eleanor Hickey

Rituals in the Dark
by Laure Van Rensburg

Sink
by Dani Smotrich-Barr

3rd PLACE
Sponging
by Wayne Turmel

Superstition
by Jude Higgins

The Cage of Extinction
by Sebastian Collier

They Care For Me
by Randall Perry

To Cloak
by Rick White

Today The Trees Are Bending
by Rick White

Tumour
by Nicola Ashbrook

Undocumented Movements of A Lost Canary
by Phil Olsen

We Die In The Mangroves
by Andrew Boulton

We Only Need One
by Laure Van Rensburg

2nd PLACE
Window Seat
by Gareth Durasow

Leseprobe

STORGY FLASH FICTION COMPETITION 2019

STORGY BOOKS

Nicola Ashbrook

Dani Smotrich-Barr

Simon Billinton

Andrew Boulton

Selma Carvalho

Sebastian  Collier

Thomas Conaghan

Gareth Durasow

Donna L Greenwood

Wiebo Grobler

Emily Harrison

Eleanor Hickey

Jude Higgins

Colin James

Luke Kuhns

Tucker Lieberman

Adam Lock

Tomas Marcantonio

Tony McDonald

Mark Nelson

Phil Olsen

Randall Perry

Laure Van Rensburg

Hannah Storm

Wayne Turmel

Rick White

Alexis Wolfe

Copyright © 2019 by STORGY®

All rights reserved

Cover art by Anna Jeffery

Cover design by Rob Pearce

STORGY.COM

First Published in Great Britain in 2019

by STORGY Books

Copyright © STORGY Ltd 2019

STORGY

LONDON

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the express permission of the publisher.

Published by STORGY Ltd

London, United Kingdom, 2019

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Typeset by Tomek Dzido

Ebook ISBN 978-1-9998907-6-6

Contents

STORGY

Tumour

Nicola Ashbrook

Sink

Dani Smotrich-Barr

Moving South

Simon Billinton

We Die In The Mangroves

Andrew Boulton

All The Shuttered Things Blooming

Selma Carvalho

The Cage of Extinction

Sebastian Collier

Late Night TV

Thomas Conaghan

Window Seat

Gareth Durasow

Apocalypse Vodka

Donna L Greenwood

Little White Lies

Wiebo Grobler

Devotion Take Me

Emily Harrison

Relative Claws

Eleanor Hickey

Superstition

Jude Higgins

Puddles

Colin James

American Religion

Luke Kuhns

Ink Stain

Tucker Lieberman

Ghost-Sex

Adam Lock

Calithea

Tomas Marcantonio

Home Time

Tony McDonald

Leave a Little Light On

Mark Nelson

Undocumented Movements of a Lost Canary

Phil Olsen

They Care for Me

Randall Perry

Rituals in the Dark

We Only Need One

Laure Van Rensburg

Oceans Apart

Hannah Storm

Sponging

Wayne Turmel

To Cloak

Today The Trees are Bending

Crisis Actor

Rick White

How Your Birthday Unfolded

Alexis Wolfe

ALSO AVAILABLE FROM STORGY BOOKS

ALSO AVAILABLE FROM STORGY BOOKS

ALSO AVAILABLE FROM STORGY BOOKS

STORGY MAGAZINE

Tumour

Nicola Ashbrook

I’m calling her Helga: an aggressive name for an aggressive tumour. It’s been twenty-seven days now, since I found her and I’ve been almost entirely devoured by fear. I keep checking my body for holes because surely her propaganda maggot army will have burrowed right through somewhere.

They’ll get her out, they’ve said; excise her. I keep thinking of what they’ll do to her then. My favourite option is incineration – every distorted cell conflagrated to non-existence – because even though she isn’t metastatic, she’s taking over. It’s as if Helga is the first lady in my life now – the prima – instead of me.

I’m barely a person since she took residence; a mere set of blood results, a cross on a chart, a provider of tissue for biopsy. Eradicating her is everyone’s priority, yet I’m fading while she parades in my limelight.

My fingers hover over the undulating and pitted welt where my left breast should be. It’s part of me – I should touch it – but I keep thinking an alien has embedded itself in my thorax. I’m repulsed at the otherness where nothing should be.

I force myself to place a fingertip on the first stitch site. The sensation goes through me, like nails on a chalkboard, and I think I might vomit.

I cover my asymmetric self and lie down.

I know Helga has gone, she must have, but she’s haunting me. I see her every time I look in a mirror or see my naked flesh. She’s my first and last thought of each day and about fifty times in-between. Others see her too – I catch them with their concerned faces, their furrowed brows, their fussing. They know she’s gone but they fear her return. They fear the ways she’s damaged me.

I suspect I may have gone with Helga – into obliteration – and all that remains now is the husk of my body occupied by the ghost of that toppled prima donna.

Strips of nectarine paint the petrol sky. A light breeze fans my hair as we meander along the dockside. My new dress hugs my reconstructed bosom and it’s like I’ve been put back together. I’ve been to the hairdresser and the nail bar. I’ve spent most of the day looking in the mirror and, I realise now, She didn’t look back.

Drew holds my hand, a little tighter than he used to, and I look up at him in profile. He’s still handsome, if a bit greyer. His hazel eyes catch mine. We pause.

The lights of the bars behind him, on the other side of the sparkling water, glow halo-like around his face. He strokes a stray hair from my cheek, gently kisses me.

I try to store the perfection of this moment in my mind’s eye.

“It feels like you’re back,” he whispers.

“I am,” I say, smiling; the first and only lady in my show at last.

Nicola Ashbrook

HIGHLY COMMENDED

STORGY FLASH FICTION COMPETITION 2019

Nicola Ashbrook is a new writer from the north-west of England. She is supposed to be re-drafting her first novel but has accidentally started an all-consuming love-affair with flash fiction. Long-listed Reflex Fiction, short-listed/highly commended Retreat West.

@NicolaAWrites

www.nicolalostinnarration.weebly.com

Sink

Dani Smotrich-Barr

“I mean maybe I’ll just move to Ohio,” you tell your friend Sam one morning over brunch in a diner, with the exact same energy that you would say, “maybe I’ll kill myself.”

“There’s a pretty cool music scene in Columbus now, you know. You should move with me.” Sam, a onetime LA girl who is moving to New York, looks horrified.

“You know what these pancakes would cost in Ohio?” You press on. “10 cents. You know what rent is? A dollar.”

She flicks her straw wrapper at you. “Shut up.”

You sip your orange juice out of the flimsy plastic cup and talk about the different rooms at your friend’s party last night, and how none of them were quite right. Neither of you can figure out why it didn’t work, whatever that means. There were enough people there that you liked or felt alright about, just enough people that you knew or didn’t. It was a good house that generally had good energy, and yet nothing seemed to move in the way that it should have to have been considered a good party.

You woke up the next morning needing to pinch or purge something out of your body in a way that you hadn’t before, not in a way that you could so specifically identify. Head pounding, you went to the bathroom to drink water, and decided to shower to try and wash something off. Suddenly with the mirror un-fogged you could no longer pretend like it was a hangover that had started that morning. It was an itchiness, almost. It was the desire to peel off all your skin until you could uncover something underneath. It was the fear that you wouldn’t be able to find anything.

In the mirror you tried pressing on your collar bone, just a little. Nothing gave.

“…and then I was like, it’s clearly not a date, you know, like, I feel like he’s chill like that, like he just wants to hang, but what do you think?” Sam finishes. There are a lot of things that can’t easily be fixed for both of you, but to voice jealousy at the concreteness of her issues, their apparent possibility for resolution, would come out callous.

You have a hard time focusing on what she is saying. You concentrate instead on the texture of the mayonnaise, how nauseous it makes you feel to look at its oozing gooeyness. It feels like pus and vertigo. The inside of your stomach. You want to grab it from her and throw it across the room. You want to smear it on the walls and make everyone notice that things are not good. That it’s fucked up to dip your fries in mayonnaise like it’s just the same as ketchup.

Dani Smotrich-Barr

Dani Smotrich-Barr is a senior studying English and History at Wesleyan University. Dani is an Arts Editor for the Wesleyan Argus, has interned for the Prague-based publication 'Transitions Online,' and is currently a fiction/non-fiction reader for Bodega Magazine. She has work published or forthcoming in Vagabond City and Cease, Cows.

www.dsmotrichbar.wixsite.com/dsbphotography

Moving South

Simon Billinton

It was on Saturday 25th January, 2042, that the people of Britain left and moved south. The Great Drizzle that had started in 2021 had finally worn down their stiff upper lips. Saturday was the preferred day, as Sunday was looking a little chilly. Sandwiches were made, tea was thermosed and umbrellas readied.

King William and Queen Catherine led from the front, in a carriage decorated with left-over coronation bunting. The good and the great and everyone in between followed behind as the British exodus began. Through the Channel Tunnel they streamed with arms entwined and songs flowing from their hearts as the tidal wave of people emerged into France. Down through countryside, cities, and towns they journeyed, observed by the French populace with a collective gallic shrug and a look in their eye of ‘Zees crazee British.’

Over the Pyrénées and into Spain they strode, when one afternoon, the rain did indeed fall on the plain, but ever ready, the British popped open their trusty umbrellas for what they hoped would be the very last time. The friendly Spaniards helped tremendously in ferrying the expats from the south for what they also hoped would be the very last time.

Westward they continued into Portugal with cheery waves for their oldest allies. What now of that friendship, pondered the Portuguese, surveying these millions bound for their coast. It was one thing to be friends in war and peace, another to be neighbours.