I discovered yesterday that my story has been shortlisted for the Lunate Fiction Flash Prize, judged by EllipsisZine Editor, Steve Campbell. Very exciting news!
Flash Prize Longlist
Another story was also published today by Lunate Fiction – A Place of Unfinished Sentences
A Place of Unfinished Sentences
The woman sitting opposite me looks like the guy I used to date. Her face is angular, her eyes fixed to the page of a book I cannot see. I wonder why she reminds me of him, and whether her features are particularly masculine, or his more feminine; maybe both. The door clunks back into the frame of the train’s carriage. A thud as it stops makes me jump and a man with a trolley walks through and scans the seats.
“Tea? Coffee?” he asks, glancing at the ex-boyfriend lookalike.
“Neither,” she says, her eyes remaining fixed on the pages in her hands.
He looks at me. “Coffee, black, no sugar,” I say, without waiting to be asked. He lowers his shoulders, exhaling slowly as he pours me a cup from a large metal coffee pot. Steam rises from the spout, the scent of it licking at my nostrils. Saliva fills my mouth in anticipation….continued at Lunate.co.uk
And, in case you missed this one, Do You See Me Coming, was also published in July at the new Burnt Breakfast Magazine.
Do You See Me Coming?
Do you see me coming, when the days are short and the nights feverish, when the family gathers round, wondering whether to call the doctor or let you slip away, peacefully. Do you see me coming when the flicker of evening light reminds you that your ancestors are beckoning you home. You think about your childhood and remember days where you came inside, covered in dirt and Mother shooed you away with a flap of a hand, and the smell of creosote where Father had painted the fence. You loved the smell but you weren’t supposed to. It was toxic, you were told, but you also loved the hot scent of tarmac. You always liked the things that you weren’t supposed to. You remember the way the swallows came in to nest then left, like Father, when I had come to him, too. He saw me coming. The rest of you only saw me leave, taking him with me …. continued at Burnt Breakfast
F.C. MALBY 