Worthing Flash

The kitchen is stuffy, the window so crusted with finger-marks, grease and dust that it makes the trees outside look like photocopies of themselves.    The floor is scattered with debris - breadcrumbs and fragments of crisps, tea leaves, curled up rocket, maybe a seed here and there – a forensic free-for-all. He hoards food. The table is piled high with bread, some recently bought - others, encased in plastic, bloom with green spots of mould. There are rolls, flatbreads, pittas, cut loaves and pastries. Cookies, cheese biscuits, gluten-free biscuits, chocolate chip biscuits. Gingerbread stars in a large red plastic tin. Two tubs of butter. Tabasco sauce. A large packet of sugar. A toothbrush. A jar of pickles. A honeydew melon. A mug containing cold tea.    Do not dare not look inside the fridge. It is taped closed and dirty whirls mark its edges.    I do not judge. I only wish for rubber gloves, cleaning fluids and rubbish bags. ...

Over time without measure, for indeed time was not yet born, over distance unimaginable, or perhaps densely confined within an atom’s core the attraction grew. In the dark - for light, too, awaited birth In the heat – or in its absence the attraction grew. Tighter and tighter the embrace, deeper and deeper the thrust and pulse, all into nothing, nothing into all until where there was nothing, there was all. The climax hurled stars screaming across the all. When? Where? How? All we know: it was the biggest of Bangs and we are its children. Patricia Feinberg Stoner follow my mewsings at  http://www.paw-prints-in-the-butter.com laugh with the ladies at   https://youtu.be/_70Qys5zOpc see my books at  https://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B00O36LKRE

“Passengers for flight EZY8691 to Las Palmas please make your way to gate 69. The flight is ready to board”. In my chest my heart was thumping with excitement.   It is incredible that people around me could not hear the noise it was making.   “This is my flight.   I am going to Gran Canaria”. I thought with exhilaration whilst making my way to Gate 69. I had finally managed it.   It had taken me 6 months of savings to afford a break in Las Palmas.   This was my treat for my 50th birthday and I will be celebrating it in Spain. I still had difficulty realising that I was at Gatwick Airport, on my own, ready to board a flight to a destination I had never been to.   If it had not been for the documentary I had seen on the special beaches and the sand dunes in Las Palmas, I would never have thought of going there. Not mentioning the unusual night clubs with the flamboyant characters that performed there every night of the tourist season. I...

by Sarah Starr (Inspired by and in memory of Grenfell) Air It snowed the day I wove her golden braids, black ribbons twisting through her luxurious mane of flax. She held her head proudly, but sadness curtained her dark eyes. The sky, still grey from soot and ash held the further surprise of frosted sugar as I led her prettily from her home. I remembered the day my sister had leant over the railings far above me, her hair the same hue, her laughing eyes obscured from my view. She enjoyed affecting flight, arms outstretched to that same sky, then blue as cornflowers and with the promise of endless summer days. That was when bees had circled the tower in search of nectar and pollen for their hive. Seeds drifted on silent thermals with only the birds for company. She saw me way below her and ran inside to meet me. Fire But soon a dreadful, fateful day exploded. When no rain or snow came forth to quell the burning tongues that mocked and flailed against stone...