by IB | Mar 23, 2025 | Featured, Flash Fiction
Fisherman After a long, dreich day in the firth – soaked gansey, torn gloves, a few sorry mackerel dangling from the lines – I hauled up on the beach. Thick smell of wrack. Bird cries. Night. I lit a kerosene lamp, stood at the sea’s edge,...
by Helen Ivory | Feb 7, 2025 | Featured, Flash Fiction
Flower tongue Daffodils hate being shoved in corners. When forced they emit a peculiar scent, part butter, part ulcer. I wear yellow shoes because I don’t like corners either but I am frequently left in them, and so I exude a peculiar smell. You...
by Helen Ivory | Feb 1, 2025 | Featured, Flash Fiction
Chiaroscuro A line of blue hills in the distance is contoured like a monumental sentence… – Ciaran Carson He began his day as he’d always done—by fetching up the milk from his doorstep, putting the kettle on and tumbling Darjeeling leaves...
by Helen Ivory | Nov 14, 2024 | Featured, Flash Fiction
The Hardee’s Coffee Club I’d seen them all humped over at a table slurping coffee in a mostly empty Hardee’s at 6:30 a.m. in my hometown when I ran in and ordered a bacon and egg biscuit with hash browns and a diet coke because the drive-thru had...
by Helen Ivory | Nov 6, 2024 | Featured, Flash Fiction
Gone Fishing I bounced past the other boy in the bedsit balancing on the balcony. I’d just woken up. He’d been pulling fishing line out of his mouth for sixty-three days now and the floats had just stopped. ‘Not sure how much more I’ve got!’ and...
by Helen Ivory | Sep 13, 2024 | Featured, Flash Fiction, Prose
After the Tribe When she left, the winds picked up and the bloated sun filled the horizon with fire, the sky turning ochre. She hurried in the heat, leaving behind what she called a tribe, not a homeland. She still remembers the scale of the...