Short Fiction ~ Damyanti Biswas

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(Third Prize, Strands International Flash Fiction Competition -6)

The dust-colored feathers, the plastic halo, the ragged wings wavering in the night breeze. She wears them as if they grow on her, not jammed up by her mother last minute, pinned together with clips and staples that pinch at the softness of her underarm, the curve of her buttocks. They scratch at her shoulder bones, her collar, from which her neck rises like a turtle’s from its shell.
Sakhi waits at the alley to jump into the halogen-lit stage made of piled-up cardboard, gaudy carpets sent in to the neighborhood dry-cleaners, shiny pieces of stars scavenged from piles of discarded Christmas lights. The air carries the smell of drains mingled with incense from the Shiva temple. The blue-painted, tigerskin-clad Lord made of stone watches the play put up in His honor. Sakhi wrinkles her nose against the sweet reek of cannabis her younger brother has lit up to celebrate the Lord. She holds her legs against the urge to pee. The breeze under her torn beaded skirt is clawing, cold.
Fairy Goddess Sakhi will leap in on reedy legs, pretend to fly, dispense boons. She will be raised on the large, bony shoulders of her brother and his friends, whizzed above the ramshackle stage, till her dizzy feet hit solid ground again. Once free, she would run back to her unsmiling mother, hand over a few limp banknotes, and beg for the wings to be taken off.
For now, Sakhi hovers at the edge of light, half-lulled by the drunken songs that jangle in from the stage. Unable to rise in the dank air, they fall about her, like links on a shackle—heavy, unyielding—wrapping about her as she listens for her cue to launch into air.

Damyanti's short fiction has been published at Litro, Bluestem magazine, Griffith Review Australia, Lunch Ticket magazine, Atticus Review, and other journals in the USA and UK. Her work is available in various anthologies in Asia, and she serves as one of the editors of the Forge Literary Magazine. Her debut crime literary novel, You Beneath Your Skin, was published by Simon & Schuster India in autumn 2019.

Short Fiction ~ Alexis Wolfe

(Honourable Mention, Strands International Flash Fiction Competition -6)

Most passengers have already retired to their cabins or berths. But the band are still performing and Henry is a night owl. Sixty-something, my dear husband sparkles with an energy almost rivalling mine, despite our thirty-year age gap. We take a table near the stage. I watch the band, basking in Henry’s warm gaze, suspecting he’s commenced undressing me in his mind. When I’m naked, he often says there is nothing he would rather look at and I find it holds for when I’m clothed too. I'm wearing the black dress he bought me in London, perhaps deep down I suspected that he’d choose tonight to surprise me with something gold. The bracelet glistens. Lucky girl, lucky girl, tinkles the piano. Thankfully, the up-tempo rhythm and Henry’s mild hearing loss prevent him overhearing the man from the neighbouring table, muttering ‘a fool and his money.’
 
The vessel lurches violently and I grab Henry’s forearm. Bottles of fizz pirouette across tables. The band ends one number and begins another. Henry anchors me closer to him. I bury my head into his neck and feel him swaying gently to the music. Officials shout: Women, Children, Lifeboats.
The buffoon from the adjacent table shakes my shoulder,
“Miss … Go!”
He grapples with my wrist, but I push him away. The violin has got his number, what an ass, what an ass, it trills. I see a small red clutch bag float past our ankles. We ignore the chill of rising water, and raised voices coming from beyond the ballroom.
“It’s not too late,” Henry speaks softly. I look up into his green-grey eyes, stroke his beard. I tell him to pour us more drinks.
 
The cellist doesn’t stop despite the icy water swirling around his kneecaps. The music is somber, slower now, even more beautiful echoing off water. The cello tremors sacrifice and honour, sacrifice and honour. It's hard to tell if it's the ship or the water or the music which is making us sway.
“You could still have many years,” Henry whispers. A lone shoe sails past.
“We both go down together,” I tell him.
Yellow spotlights illuminate the musicians’ calm faces. Still they play on. Henry cradles me in his lap, my head tucked under his chin like a fiddle.
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​Alexis Wolfe lives in Berkshire, UK. She has been published in The London Reader, The Wild Word, Spelk Fiction, Lucent Dreaming and New Flash Fiction Review. Her writing has been shortlisted in various competitions and has won the RW Creating Characters competition, 1000 Word Challenge and London Independent Story Prize.  Twitter: @LexiWolfeWrites  www.alexiswolfe.co.uk

Short Fiction ~ Paul Beckman

​(Honourable Mention, Strands International Flash Fiction Competition -6)


I feed the birds—woodpeckers, hummingbirds, grackles, and sometimes the herons. I don’t actually feed the herons they feed themselves by spotting my koi pond while flying over.
I love deer and they pass through our yard going west in the morning and east in the evening. They also feed themselves on the flowers my wife plants, the trees, and then I had an epiphany and put out a salt lick next to the stone wall between my house and my neighbors. That kept them from eating our plants and flowers but not from inviting every deer to the salt lick party.
My husband was proud of the salt lick but after a bit the deer started in on the plants again. Every day after work he bring home flowers—some in pots, some cut and some still in a clump of dirt.
Yesterday I made him an apple raspberry pie sugared on top to show him my appreciation. It was to be my surprise dessert. The police got to our house first and showed me pictures of my husband pulling flowers out of roadside gardens, taking potted flowers off porches, and small trees in pots from local nurseries.
Since I didn’t know what time he’d be home I offered the officers a cup of coffee which they accepted and kept looking at my pie cooling on the window sill. Without asking, cop #1 opened drawers until he found a cutter and forks and then since my cabinets had glass doors he easily found two dessert plates.
He handed everything to his junior officer and told him to bring back healthy slices of pie. Then, he decided that milk would go better than coffee and found some in the refrigerator, dumped his coffee in the sink and rinsed the cup before adding milk to the mug. The both wolfed down the pie with mmm  mmmms and lip smacks and went to the counter for seconds. They offered me a piece and I said sure and I took milk also. We were down to one quarter of the pie when my husband came home and walked into the kitchen and the cops, like the deer, got spooked and ran out the back door.
“Pie?” I asked my husband and he said it wouldn’t go with all the vodka tonics he had at a wedding he passed in the park so I took half and saw the cops sneaking towards my window sill forks at the ready. I closed the window and asked, “Well dear, how was your day?” He answered by handing me a nosegay that he was hiding behind his back.

​Paul Beckman’s latest flash collection, Kiss Kiss (Truth Serum Press) was a finalist for the 2019/2020 Indie Book Awards. Some of his stories appeared in Spelk, Necessary Fiction, Litro, Pank, Playboy, Thrice Fiction, and The Lost Balloon. Paul curates the FBomb NY flash fiction reading series monthly in KGB’s Red Room.

Short Fiction ~ Rachel J Fenton

                                                         
​(Honourable Mention, Strands International Flash Fiction Competition -6)

My neighbour waits for her husband by the tree at the end of their drive. They have no car. She has parked herself there. My neighbour is about seventy, is making art out of stillness, but has a level of fitness I am enviable of in my thirties. My neighbour’s husband is maybe a decade older than her, has a physical inability to look anywhere other than at the leaves she is pointing to.
The tree is the same as those growing in their other neighbour’s property, on their left; there’s no other living thing in my neighbour’s back yard. Mine, on the other hand, is a right meadow of wildflowers: scarlet pimpernel, herb Robert, daisies, black medic, birdsfoot trefoil, vetch, and purple clover, like dropped candies in the overgrown grass, though I don’t need to know their names to know they don’t belong here, were brought over with people like me then left to grow wild. I like the vetch with its curling tendrils like beautiful miniature stairwells. I notice beautiful differences in all the leaves. But I have no trees.
My neighbour’s husband is almost at the end of their drive. My neighbour is still pointing to the leaves and is now shouting. Her husband shakes his head, turns, and walks back to the house. When he has gone inside, my neighbour takes hold of the tree and shakes it, shakes, shakes, shakes it with all her might, then assumes a calm pose. Her husband returns a minute later, wearing a hat. The hat has ear flaps, thick and fleecy, that remind me of my ex-husband’s dog. My ex-dog. No one who happened upon this scene would believe my neighbour is capable of hating a tree, except me.
My neighbour points to the leaves now all over the drive. Her husband nods and walks on. My neighbour bends, picks up the leaves one by one, walks to the fence separating our properties and drops them on my side. 

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Rachel J Fenton is a working-class writer from the north of England, now living in Aotearoa New Zealand. She won the University of Plymouth Short Fiction Competition, came second in the Dundee International Book Prize, has been shortlisted for the Strands International Flash Fiction Competition, nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and was recently nominated for the Best Small Fictions Anthology.