{"id":743,"date":"2010-07-14T17:43:44","date_gmt":"2010-07-14T17:43:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=743"},"modified":"2010-07-14T17:43:44","modified_gmt":"2010-07-14T17:43:44","slug":"new-flash-fiction-by-jac-cattaneo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/new-flash-fiction-by-jac-cattaneo\/","title":{"rendered":"New flash fiction by Jac Cattaneo"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Rain That Falls<\/span>


I\u2019m drenched, but she\u2019s holding up well. The beach is jumping with splashes, more lively than the sea with its waves pulled back to a whispering line. Today she\u2019s going to be washed away by raindrops. Identical twins they called us, Alana and Rosanne, though we never were the same. Now she\u2019s sand. I make her every day. <\/span>
          Not identical. Rosanne with dolls, me with finger paints. Rosanne making mudpies, me climbing trees. During holidays at Scarborough, Whitby, Blackpool, she built sandcastles while I tussled with the surf. This summer I\u2019ve been to all those places, to form her body from the beach. I went to art school. Rosanne took a gap year. While I was in London, she was knocked off her bicycle. On the pavement outside our home, Rosanne bled away. <\/span>
          Yesterday, in Blackpool, the sky threw a sheen of blue across the sands. By the time the families had left the front, the tide was rushing in. She didn\u2019t last long. I watched from the promenade where we used to eat ice cream, waited for the sea to cover her over. <\/span>
          Today, in Morecombe, her arms look like pitted stone. Dad said it always poured whenever we came here on bank holidays. Now her hands are going. I want to say goodbye, but it\u2019s hard to speak, these days. The sea creeps towards us, murmuring. The clouds are so low I can\u2019t tell whether it\u2019s dusk. A hand on my elbow. <\/span>
          “You remember.” A Chinese woman, hair pasted to her face, pointing at the bay. “You remember them.”<\/span>
          Oh. The drowned cockle pickers. <\/span>
          “No. This is my sister.” The rain has blurred Rosanne\u2019s shape. Her feet have disappeared. \u2028    <\/span>
          The woman nods at the sea, its waves louder now. She puts her arm around my shoulders. Pulls me back towards the shore.<\/span>



* Jac Cattaneo<\/span> is an artist, writer and lecturer living in Brighton.  Her short stories has appeared in a range of anthologies and journals. This story was first published in volume 3 of <\/span>Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine<\/span> from the University of Chester.<\/span>

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The Rain That FallsI\u2019m drenched, but she\u2019s holding up well. The beach is jumping with splashes, more lively than the sea with its waves pulled back to a whispering line. Today she\u2019s going to be washed away by raindrops. Identical twins they called us, Alana and Rosanne, though we never were the same. Now she\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"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":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}