As some of you know, I sometimes play a bit of Flash Fiction over on Anna Spargo Ryan’s blog.

Here is my offering for this week’s prompt:

All of you were watching her as she stood at the bar with her friend, her back bare, save for a whisper of fabric. Her hair was slashed so short you could see the delicate indentation where her spine met her skull.  You could imagine cradling that, allowing your fingertips to meet at that fragile secret.

You gulped down some fortitude and elbowed your way free of your pack to breathe into her ear, “Your back looks amazing in that top, your skin is like caramel.”  The words sounded wrong even as they left your mouth but you meant it.  You wanted to run your hands all over her skin, feel it ripple beneath your fingerprints.

She giggled a little and turned her back to you, half smiling now,  a come-on.

You ran your knuckles along the bumps of her spine, tracing the S-shape, flitting so lightly she wasn’t sure if it was a touch or a puff of a breeze.  She arched slightly, feline for a beat, and you knew that this night you would make your love.  This nighttime would never be over, yet over all at once, such was the fallacy and the trickery of the satin blackness that now cloaked you both in a private world.

The bar-crowd became hazy and their sounds were muted, as only the two of you existed, under your cape.  You became invisible, and indivisible in a way that you would never quite do, in the slap of daylight.

…From The Ashers

As you may know, I sometimes play a bit of Flash Fiction over on Anna Spargo Ryan’s blog.  Here’s my latest, in response to the prompt:

The rain spattering on the half-moon of the canvas beat out a groove that was like a blogger starting a new post- beginning slowly, then increasing in speed and intensity as she found her rhythm, then being joined by eight then thirty-two then hundreds of bloggers, all trying to get their posts published first.

He listened to the warm puffs of the children’s breathing among the breaks in typing, as the rain ebbed and then grew and then ebbed.  They always loved listening to their children make their tiny snuffles.

He composed the sentence in his head first before trying it out in the air.  It sounded good, so he let it mix with oxygen.  Turning on his side he said, “What was rain for, if not a kiss under its dark canopy?”

He knew she would laugh and say, “Wanker” as she always did with his poetry.  And then they would kiss and kiss with mouths turning up at the corners as they laughed at him a little, but mostly just laughed together.  He always knew how to make her laugh.  And she always knew how to laugh.

He reached over to touch the warm edge of her smiling mouth with his thumb, to feel her smile as well as hear it, as he said again, “What was rain for, if not a kiss under its dark canopy?”

His hand fell into dense darkness and cold.

She was not there to call him a wanker.  The rain was for his heart.

Some of you may know I play a little thing over on Anna Spargo Ryan’s Blog called Flash Fiction.  The prompt this week was: “They ate grapes together under the fog of afternoon.”

Here it is:

Of all the types of fog, afternoon fog was the worst.

Morning fog was kind of expected, and was somehow deliciously painful.  Morning fog could bring with it a pain like a knitting needle to the temple, or a dull burning of the intestines.  It married with a mouth that felt full of breadcrumbs, and a tongue one and a half times it’s normal size.  But morning fog had a smell of repentance to it, and with that, re-birth.

Evening fog was to be coveted.  It was light and fizzy and full of promise.  Evening fog was the gauzy beginnings of a fun night ahead.  The slight blurring of reality that came with the fog was welcome, as it buffed his sharp edges, made him more interesting and outgoing and helped him fit.

Afternoon fog was the worst.  It held hands with an overwhelming fatigue that made his steps heavy and slow.  It smelt of shame and denial and furtiveness.  He knew his eyes would be shifty, and she would try not to notice, but she would, and they would scream at each other.  And that would only make the fog clot.

She had set up a makeshift picnic on the balcony to welcome him home.  A sense of celebration, now that he was no longer drinking.  She had laid out the bright yellow tablecloth of hope and prayer, with a platter of strawberries and grapes and water crackers and brie.  He sat down next to her and she smiled at him, her face a moon of optimism, and he knew he couldn’t tell her. Not today.

So he fought the fog, and tried to feel as sober as the atomic strength mints he always had pushed hard into his cheek.  She moved the platter forward toward him and  just looking at the over-ripe strawberries, on their way to liquid, and the dried edges of the brie, made the hot bile sear the back of his throat.  She must have been sitting her a while.

He swallowed hard, and tried to relax his jaw muscles, reaching for a grape, fighting away the fog of two vodkas at lunch that had become seven.  She smiled again, wider this time.  She really did want to believe him, believe in him, even when she knew she was holding onto the balloon of a lie that would either deflate or burst, depending on how she nurtured it.

He forced is own marriage-dependent smile, and they ate grapes together under the fog of afternoon.

As you know Flash Fiction is a fun thing we do over on Anna Spargo-Ryan’s Blog.. Today the writing prompt was a soundbite (and I have no idea how to copy it over to here for you) but to me, it sounded like someone walking through crispy Autumn leaves.. Anyway, here you go:

They walked down the wide street, hand in hand.  He was holding a little tighter, but that was alright, she was used to that.  He didn’t want her flitting off anywhere.  He could tell her heart wasn’t one that could be subdued by responsibility or convention.

The anaemic Melbourne light tried to scare away the chill that always came with April, but it was too depressed to make much imprint.  Her heart had more weight than it should have for this time of year.  Usually she had until at least June until it became too heavy to hold up, but this year it had come early.

To send the feeling scurrying, she ran to the gutter where the Autumn leaves were thick and crisp, and started kicking them up.  They flew into the air like Monarch butterflies on their first flight.  Orange-yellow wings flapping, trying to lift the heaviness.  Some of the wings caught the light.  Some were just covered in gutter-sludge.  She giggled.  She felt some extra room in her chest.

“Don’t do that”, he said.

She looked at him, eyes a question-mark.

“You’ll get that gloop everywhere.”

She looked at him, eyes a question-mark.

“And you don’t know what’s underneath all those leaves, there could be a rock or something.  You could hurt your toe.”

She looked at him, her eyes a sagging question-mark.

They walked on.  Her in the leaves, him on the road.  They didn’t hold hands.  She sighed with her mind.  It was time for an Autumn leaving.