{"id":4748,"date":"2013-06-22T09:00:59","date_gmt":"2013-06-22T09:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=4748"},"modified":"2013-06-24T13:32:03","modified_gmt":"2013-06-24T13:32:03","slug":"to-celebrate-national-flash-fiction-day-some-flash-from-its-director-calum-kerr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/to-celebrate-national-flash-fiction-day-some-flash-from-its-director-calum-kerr\/","title":{"rendered":"To Celebrate National Flash Fiction Day, Some Flash from its Director, Calum Kerr."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Smells as Sweet<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

He said it with flowers: one dozen red roses to smother love and patch a broken heart. It wasn\u2019t enough. A thousand roses wouldn\u2019t have been able to stem the pain that he caused.<\/p>\n

But that was twenty years ago. I was a different woman when Facebook told me that Roger Smith had sent a friend request.<\/p>\n

It came as a shock, seeing that name on my computer screen. I didn\u2019t even have a computer when he left me with nothing more than a handful of thorns.\u00a0 Seeing his name appearing like that, as though it was just any other name, caused me to draw in my breath and bite my bottom lip.<\/p>\n

I stood up from the desk in the front room and walked through to the conservatory. I gazed out, over the order of the trimmed lawn, past the disused but still-loved climbing frame and swing, to the deep rose-beds at the back. They were in full bloom: oranges and yellows mixed with purples and whites. No reds.<\/p>\n

I thought about Bill and the kids, and the way that time passes. It doesn\u2019t heal wounds, like they say, it lays plasters over them. And all it took was a name on a screen to rip the plaster off and restart the bleeding.<\/p>\n

Well, I decided. I wasn\u2019t going to allow this.<\/p>\n

Back at my computer, I searched for what I needed. And before I clicked on the \u2018Ignore\u2019 button, and the \u2018Block\u2019 button, I made sure I\u2019d posted a picture on his Wall of a suitably bloody bouquet.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Calum Kerr<\/strong> is the author of 31<\/a>, Braking Distance<\/a>, Undead at Heart<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>and many short stories and flash fictions. He is a lecturer, an editor, and is the Director of the UK’s National Flash-Fiction Day<\/a>. His new flash-fiction collection, Lost Property<\/em>, from which Smells as Sweet<\/em> is taken,\u00a0 is out now.\u00a0 Order your copy here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

                            Smells as Sweet     He said it with flowers: one dozen red roses to smother love and patch a broken heart. It wasn\u2019t enough. A thousand roses wouldn\u2019t have been able to stem the pain that he caused. But that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4748","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4748"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4748\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4750,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4748\/revisions\/4750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}