Worthing Flash

How to make a Crock of Gold plant magic beans. fertilize with Rocking Horse Manure By morning you have a ladder to cloud-cuckoo land. Ascend stairway Let your heart sing. Walk to the edge of the world. Mount a Pegasus. steer Pegasus toward the crack of dawn. Prize open the crack, behold the riches inside. Grab hold of them Run for dear life. Fast as your legs can carry you Don’t let the burden of guilt weight you down Hold on to your dreams You are back at square one, with a pot of gold you never really deserved. and a tale to tell. Richard Stephenson

Cemetery At Dusk by William Kitcher I tried to pass the cemetery but Sheba strained at her leash, dragging me inside. I tried to resist but she was too strong, and pulled me as the sun set behind the mausoleum. She descended a hill and I staggered behind her. Her leash came out of my hand and she ran between gnarly trees. I caught up with her. She was sitting next to a brand-new headstone. Chiselled into it was my name and last Saturday’s date. I shook uncontrollably and stared at it. A lump came to my throat and I cried again. “I miss you, Grandpa.”

Budding "Let's meet and talk about it, but not tonight," he said. "Tonight's my first shift at the steelworks." "Right," she said. "Tomorrow night, then, in the bar." March 29th 1971. On the television screen, slaughtered bodies on the fields of My Lai. A boy, bullet ripped. An open basket, bloodied. He was grimy, thirsty when he arrived. A drink, a tacit assignation with the future, and then out into the frosty Sheffield air - a clean dry burn, the tiny needle fibres, deadly arrow tipped, embedded in his pleura, a future efflorescence, a fatal flowering over fifty years of friendship.

She did not know where to begin. She could spin a coin, stab a pencil into the map with eyes closed or visit Simone, the card reader. She did neither. She sat lonely in the house and dreamed but her dreams were stubborn and did not deliver. Months later the police found her paisley scarf tied to the branch of a hawthorn tree close by the river. People claimed they had seen her. In Tulsa, Alice Springs, Skegness. She would have white hair now. She might have drowned. No one suspected the truth. That she vanished into her own dreams.

The Crayon Heart In the footwell between his feet Nigel sees the wrapper with the crayon heart he’d drawn. They stop outside school. “ Out!” barks his father, residue of the row. “ Where were you last night?” his mother had asked, “With that slut in the pub, again? I know her smell.” The police called early. Had Nigel seen Mandy? “ Yesterday after lessons. We played on the swings. She went home over the fields. It’s quicker that way. I gave her my chocolate.” Mum will know what to do. So he nudges it under the seat as he gets out. Breaking the ice “ Morning!” the lonely man says in the lift on his way to work. “ Evening!” on the way back. They nod, murmur sometimes, look away. As most do not meet his eye and look at the floor, he decides to put on one brown shoe and one black. “ Morning!”. The woman looks up. “ Morning,” she replies. “Do you know you’ve got a different coloured shoe on each foot?” “ No….how does it go?” he asks. ...

WHEN WILL YOU COME The bell rang for a long time; I was running out of the coins calling my mother. Finally, a calm, fragile voice, she whispered, “Son, when will you come?”. Words didn’t come out from my throat. From that moment, every sleepless Gulf night was filled with longing. Each passing day felt endless until I was ready to fly. Then came the pandemic plague and flights were stopped. I finally reached home. Holding my fathers thin, bony fingers, tears streamed down my face. Overwhelmed by love, relief and exhaustion, I queetly drifted into sleep beside him. RAJAN V KOKKURI