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Dragons Awake!

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“Steve… Steve…Steve…” Steve opened his eyes and saw beige canvas. Oh, yes, he was taking time out from his work as an environmental biologist to assist his uncle, a renowned palaeontologist, on his latest dig. Uncle John had high hopes for the bones they had started to uncover yesterday. “Steve…” His eyes travelled around until they focused on what was standing beside his sleeping bag. No, he wasn’t awake yet; he was still dreaming. A very small dinosaur was there in the tent with him. And it was calling him by name! “Steve, pay attention! This is very important day for both of us. Although your uncle thinks I’m a dinosaur, I’m actually a dragon.” The apparition carefully unfurled its wings and let a brief puff of smoke out of its nose. “See?” “This is the best dream I’ve had in a long time! Do tell me more.” “You’re not dreaming, Steve, you’re awake and I’m the ghost of the dragon whose bones you and your uncle started to dig up yesterday. I died here a long time ag...
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The Broken Nutcracker

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I used to visit Aunty Sash on Saturdays. My mother was glad to have a ten-year-old out of the house for the day. I enjoyed it because Aunt Sash fed me on cake and Corona which was a kind of lemonade in those days. She couldn’t move around very much so she would sit in her chair and tell me all the scandalous things my mother used to get up to when she was younger. Then she would go on to the extraordinary behaviour of her neighbours. It was only later that I realised all this jiggery pokery came from her imagination. One day there was a broken nutcracker on the draining board. She said she had broken it trying to crack a peach stone. Aunty Sash did not particularly like peaches and I later found most of them wound up in the bin. “Why are you trying to crack peach stones?” I asked. “Can you just pop to the shop and get me another nut cracker and then of course I will tell you.” I brought the new nutcracker and she got me cracking the peach stones. That nutcracker soon broke too and I he...
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Silly Questions

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Marcelo Medone “Why does the moon float, Mum?” “I don't know, son. It's just hanging in the sky. That's all, my dear.” “And why doesn't it fall?” “Because it's always been there, even if sometimes we don't see it.” “Always?” “For a long time. All of our lives.” “But that's not always.” The boy looked at his mother with a resigned expression. He put his head on the pillow and covered himself with the blanket. When she was about to blow out the candle, he took her hand and looked at her in anguish. “Why do things fall to the ground and not come up by themselves? Why can't we fly like birds? Why do apples fall from the trees?” he asked. “Always asking silly questions, Isaac. You'd better worry about useful things.” Mrs Newton kissed her son on the forehead, blew out the candle and left her son's room. Isaac looked at the full moon through his window and said to himself that maybe he wasn't asking silly questions.
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Publishers are averse to the use of Artificial Intelligence. The piece of Artificial Stupidity which I find most annoying is Grammarly. It started out as a way of correcting grammar. It then decided it would write my stories better than I could. Anything I could do, Grammarly could do better. Take any piece of poetry or prose and subject it to the Grammarly treatment and you will see what I mean. All of the major speeches in Shakespeare are all wrong and Grammarly could improve on them. It could do the same to Jane Austen and Charles Dickens. Or you could just delete the pompous smug app and have done with it. To contribute to #worthingflash, send your masterpiece to worthingflash@gmail.com and it will be considered for publication.
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Not the Marrying Kind

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I am a serial romantic junkie who savors independence. Not a winning combination, I know. Two incompatible yearnings which have collided numerous times throughout the decades of my life. Did each of those six men get down on one knee to propose marriage to me? I think so but honestly some of it is a blur. I wish I could smell, taste, feel and listen to those proposals all over again. Occasionally, I test myself, check on whether I can list them all from marriage number one when I was nineteen years old through number six when I was – oh, never mind about that. But to my surprise, each time, I manage to get the husband sequence exactly right, a good sign that I am staving off dementia at the age of – oh, never mind. The thing is when people hear that there are six husbands behind you, unfortunately, you can rarely count on remaining credible. So, I rarely mention it. Good thing I have a couple of post-graduate degrees under my belt, including study at Oxford University and Columbia G...
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He Let Himself Be Buckled In

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Lavina Blossom lavinadblossom@gmail.com               He allowed himself to be strapped into the back seat. His torso was now firmly attached, which was what they wanted, to hold him down. He gave in to it. They said, relax. He tried, although the belt was tighter than necessary. And why just the torso. What of his limbs, what if he was jostled around so sharply his brain impacted his skull. That could happen to babies shaken too hard and it could happen to old men. And his neck, what about that? He had a long thin neck, few muscles to protect the upper vertebrae. He would have liked to protest now, but it was too late. They were in motion. He supposed that he would soon find out if this was enough protection, given the rapidly accelerating thrust of the car, his son-in-law pretending he was in a race. He must believe this belt was enough, even though he had doubts, which were rising in proportion to the speed they were g...
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Magic Else

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Magic Else It started out with card tricks. "Pick a card, any card." Else could tell you which card you had in your hand. She could tell you if she was wearing a blindfold. "How did you do that, Else?" "It's a kind of magic," she would say. She also dabbled in herbs but this was mainly for cooking. Our vicar's name was Green and he was sick to death of jokes about Cluedo. Then one Friday morning Else, who was his cleaner, found his body in the library. There was no sign of injury apparent on the body of Rev Green and Else was not aware of any health problems. He was young (well, fifty) and he regularly exercised. Before calling the police, Else reached out with her feelings to people in the village and used the force, or something, to produce a list of suspects. The first was the landlord's son, Tommy. Tommy was always asking Else for something or another. She had an inkling about what he was after. Tommy suspected the u...
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