FLASH IN A FLASH

THIS IS WHERE FLASH FICTION SHREWSBURY WRITERS PRODUCE STORIES ON THE NIGHT. ON A GIVEN THEME - OR INDEED NO THEME. ON THE SPUR OF THE MOMENT. AS IT COMES OUT.  

On Wednesday 16th April, photographs from the link below were used as inspiration for 100-word [hopefully] pieces of flash written in the white heat of the moment. The photos are taken by Asher Svidensky.  Here's the link to his blog, which tells the story behind the photos and is well worth a read.  [http://www.svidensky.com/post.aspx?id=18] The photos below come from that blog.  Here are our pieces of flash. The first was written on the night, but not read out. The second wasn't written on the night, but immediately afterwards:

FLIGHT, by Penelope Simpson

Wide, wide sky; wide open eyes and mouth. Breathe fat cold slices of air cut clean from the ice slide over my heated cheeks, subdue the throb and drum from my heart, full with waiting, and steady my arm numbed by the weight of my Zelda silently hooded and stilled. She quivers, aware and attuned to my pulse, awake with the eyes of her fellows. Each of us paired, pinnacle high and poised ready for the flash of fur, a scurry of paws, for flight. 

Down there on the plain, the beetle crawl of stern-faced, hard case uncles and brothers shrunk now to specks I can crush under one thumb. Zelda tenses, a shrug of shouldered wings and, cooled now, my mind slips behind her eyes.

There, there, a dot and we spread our wings, feel the catch of the wind and soar leaving flesh, rock and waiting behind, we become an eye, one mind and talons that kill.

© Penelope Simpson 2014

GIRL WITH A BIRD, by David Davies

Show me how to fly.

Wind blows cloud ships today scouring also the landscape into angular lunar shapes, drives the beating wings and the rope's pull from your half-size hand, but the bird's muscular upper body makes its own way with enormous flapping push and pull diving into clear morning air, soaring easily against the earth's pull and yours. 

Such a conjoined movement and a shared aim in view to lean, dance and fly. A majestic killer strikes for you.

UNTITLED, by Pat Baines

That face. 

ALWAYS DREAMING, by Pauline Fisk

She had a dream. She'd always fancied being a free girl in the world, riding buses on open roads, or bicycles, or trains to foreign places on iron tracks.  It wasn't like that though in her dream. The world was mountainous. Snow capped. Never ending beneath the widest of skies. She'd thought it would be peopled, but there was only her. The only girl in a wilderness - the only girl in the history of the world, holding a golden eagle on her wrist and hunting with it.  Watching it fly. Welcoming it into her arms when it returned, its day's work done.

In her dream, the eagle was a magic bird that every night when darkness fell curled up and died.  But every day it came back to life. And, when she ran with it, the girl felt strangely alive.  She'd raise her arms and it would unfold above her head like angels' wings protecting her.  In those mountains, beneath that vast expanse of sky, protected by her very own savage beast that extracted life mercilessly, that girl felt safe.

But when she awoke and the dream was just a dream and she was an ordinary girl in an ordinary world with rows of houses beyond her window, of rooftops dark in the night, hemming her in - and how was she going to get out of here - then the girl felt anything but safe.

But mercifully she was full of dreams.  And when she dreamt again, she was safe.  She was always dreaming.  Night and day alike.  It was what she did.

Copyright Pauline Fisk 2014

UNTITLED by Peter Shilston

My eagle is called Genghis Khan, which means Lord of the World. Genghis Khan is my ancestor. He and his mighty sons and grandsons, Ogedei and Hulagu and Kublai, once ruled over all this land and far beyond; further than even an eagle can fly. And now my eagle,who is also called Genghis Khan, soars over the land, a lord of the sky, the mightiest of birds: none can withstand him. And yet he always returns to me; just as every Mongol lord carries in his heart the snow-covered mountains and deserts of his homeland, and always returns to them. What is the rest of the world compared to them?

     

My eagle is called Genghis Khan; he is the lord of the skies, but always he returns to me. I am still young, but some day I too will soar above all the world, as my ancestors did, but always I shall return home.

(Copyright: Peter G. Shilston, 2014) 

UNTITLED, by Martin Needham

In the high dry deserts of Central Asia, life is tough and the 

people tougher. Iskander was as though as the come. He 

practised martial arts bare chested on the roof of his 

ancestral fortress. He stood unflinching nose to hooked 

nose with the giant eagle he had raised from a foundling, as  

it sank mighty iron talons into his arm. Initially it was a 

surprise when he spoke of the fairies but these were no  

bottom of the garden fairies; these tall, angelic ice queens, 

were raised on the rocky glacial wastes of Nanga Parbat, the 

killer mountain. Starved of fresh mountaineers they had 

now resorted to scavenging morsels from the geometric 

skylights of local homes.  

Copyright Martin Needham

THE EAGLE AND CHILD, by Geoff Rodgers

There is a tale, not so often told, of a child found beneath an eagle's nest.

The child is dressed in fine clothes with gold bracelets and is said to be the child of nobility.

The story goes that the King, perhaps even King Alfred himself, despairing that his wife could not give him a child, took the child has his own and raised it as his heir.

Upon his deathbed he confessed.

Throughout the land you will find Public Houses bearing that name “The Eagle and Child’.

But imagine, if you will, that such a discovery never took place, that the child was nurtured by the eagle until he grew to be a boy.

Each day the eagle would search for food, returning to the nest to feed the child.

Each day the boy would forage in the forest searching for food and shelter to protect himself and the bird.

The boy knew no different,  this was his life.

All he had to remind him of that which he had no memory of, his heritage were the bangles that he had once worn as a baby.

The bond between the eagle and the child grew stronger, like a brother and sister.

There was joy in his eyes as the bird flew out into the wild blue yonder soaring, swooping and returning with grace and elegance.

There was wisdom in her eyes as the boy grew, learning how to become a man.

There is no Fairy tale, no Prince Charming, no long haired Princess in a tower that slept for a hundred years and was  lost at midnight leaving behind a glass slipper.

There is a baby, who became a boy, who became a man

There is an Eagle, who is free to fly.

Copyright Geoff Rodgers 2014


On Wednesday 18th June, we produced flash on the spur of the moment on the subject of Rules, using the photograph of a mattress beneath one of the bridges in Paris on the Seine as our bouncing off point, each of us being given an emotion to work from and a Rule to be broken:

DOING PARIS, by Penny Simpson

Under the bridges of Paris with you, without you, with nowhere to go. 

Under and over the river; in and out of bookshops, cathedrals, carpet shops, art shops, museum gift shops. Shop, shop shopping. Left right bank hopping.

You wanted a coffee, then you wanted lunch, you wanted da Vinci, you wanted Van Gogh, you wanted a life just like George Sand, her chaise longue.

You asked what I wanted so I bought, from a junk shop, a small naked lady to fit in my pocket. It saved me carrying any more bags.

We climb up and up to the view from the top with the world at our feet. This is where we belong.

“Are we done here? There’s lots more to see. Come on.” 

“What’s the rush. Let’s just stroll along by the river, watching the flow.”

My feet ache, my mind’s numb, my senses absorbed when, under Pont Neuf, like a mirage, a bedroom appears. Bright stripy colours, simple and neat. I am overcome by a desire to lay down and rest. 

Here at last is something I want.

I WON'T REPEAT THAT AGAIN by Pauline Fisk

The night began with beer and ended with blood. In between there were rats and there was rain.  I hope you’re listening. I know the rules of writing. I won’t repeat myself again.

The fight was over a certain lady without clothes.  Where she’d put them no one knew, but she stood there shivering in the rain, and the more the beer went round the less folks cared about her shivers or anything else.  

You can’t sleep beneath a bridge, on a mattress in the rain, without a certain degree of anger coming in. Forgive me. I know I shouldn’t, but I have to say that again. You can’t lie on a mattress in the rain,  surrounded by drunks, without anger coming in.  Rats. Naked ladies. Beer. Drunks. Rain.  Blood.  Ahh. I can’t help repeating myself again!