Worthing Flash

If she mentions that cattery again, I shall deposit something on her precious white rug.      I'm sick of her prattling on about needing a break. What about me? Discarded like an old toy. Hasn't she heard of animal rights?      Believe me, I'd leave tomorrow but some fool would bring me back. Then worse still she'd be slobbering all over me.      She's pathetic. Never gets my food right. I want fresh food, preferably alive, not jellied mush.  And - listen to this, she imagines by shaking a box of dried revolting pellets which resemble rabbit's unmentionables, that I'll come running. Wrong again.      As for the company she keeps, she needs her head tested about a certain obnoxious creature. My claws are razor-sharp, so HE's about to have his private parts scratched. I won't be called a mangy old  tom in my own house. she didn't hear him but I certainly did and I neither forget nor fo...

  Daffodils, a silver shoe and a peach sit on a packing-case before a group of elderly artists. Thea daubs lines on paper, tongue resting on her bottom lip.        Remembered scenes flicker in her mind: flowers in a milk bottle, table covered in newspaper, underwear steaming on a clothes-horse by a range. Thea, the land-girl, prizes beet from frost-bitten ground, steamy breath mingling with morning mist.      Her party shoes had been red, not silver. The girls helped colour each other’s legs with cold tea. Sometimes there were nylons if they danced with Yanks from the air-base, big and blond with wandering hands.      Joshua was different, his shy smile and teeth white in the moonlight as he walked her home.   She shouldn’t have let him touch her but she loved him, his skin dark, his hands black velvet.      ‘You have such pretty ankles, Miss Thea,’ were the first words he’d cr...

by Rajan V Kokkuri I searched for my old friend Sunny's telephone number in my old diary and got it. Sunny used to work in Kochi. Sunny was one year senior to me during my college days. I was happy I got the number. It is for a long time I called him. The bell was ringing and there was no answer at the other end. I was about to ring off the phone. Suddenly I heard a boy's voice at the other end. "Hello" I was happy finally; I am able to hear someone, "Can I talk to Sunny? "Uncle Sunny Passed away in 2001." I could not get words to talk further. "Oh, I never knew." "How about his wife and children?" "Yes, they are here, aunty got a job in his previous company Cacil in Kochi." I called Sura immediately. "Sura, did you know that Sunny passed away." "No, I never knew." We both spoke a lot about our college time. Sunny used stay in Barely Street, Bangalore with h...

There was gloom in Mission Control. Opportunity was dead. After 15 years of Mars exploration, the plucky little rover stopped communicating on in June 2018. On February 13t of the following year, NASA announced that its mission had come to an end. Now Curiosity, launched in 2011, would take up the baton. Then, at two o’clock on the morning of February 14 th , a solitary computer blinked into life. When the scientist whose computer it was logged in some five hours later he gasped in disbelief, then gave a whoop of exultation. This is what he read: Hey, NASA. I hear y’all have been worried about me these past few months, so I thought I’d touch base one last time. I’ve been up here 15 years now, and I’ve been pretty busy sending you pictures of where I’m at. And thanks for giving me the credit for discovering water on Mars, it’s nice to get a bit of recognition for a job well done. I haven’t seen any signs of actual life, though, and I have to admit it was getting ki...