Worthing Flash

I looked at the opening I had created a few moments ago. It had caused me pain and sadness but it had also taken determination simply to carry out my decision. There was no going back. I felt there was no other option. Truly I was not sure how it got that far in the first place. I was only in my twenties, where had it all gone wrong? When had this feeling which permeates my life started weighing on me like a boulder? What had led me to this momentum day? I thought back to a younger me, at 9 years old. Finding out that the hero I worshipped and had put on a pedestal had fallen from it with a big bang. My dad, my hero! Well, how would I know at 9 years old what having a nervous breakdown means? What did I know about mental health? I just could not believe that this man, in my eyes always tall, strong and whom I loved, was the same as this whimpering, crouched up, crying man, rocking in a chair. This man who had fathered 3 children was now a child himself, unexpectedly req...

Whether you are under house arrest, self-isolation or working from home, the C virus has a lot to answer for. Still, people are resilient. My son tells me that everyone in the world seems to want to WhatsApp or Skype him. We are working hard on getting an elderly relative to understand how to make video calls on WhatsApp so it is an educational time. Even the humble telephone can help us to keep in touch. I will renew my request for people to email stories to me at worthingflash@gmail.com. Now is as good a time as any. The stories need not be about isolation of course, something completely different will lighten the atmosphere. The blog will be regularly publicised on Facebook and twitter #worthingflash and by old-style email. I have told the U3A that I will take a decision about the 4th July event in June when we have a clearer idea. I would like to meet you all (OK our overseas writers may be unable to come) but I am not going to be reckless with anyone's health. Those...

Vishwas visits only on weekends. Those three days we become a real family. But the Sunday night is always tough on all three of us. We were in Chandana’s room, tucking her in bed. A full-day outing and lots of her favourite food were making her drowsy. "Dad, are you leaving tomorrow?" "Yes." "Supreet’s dad also comes on Thursday and leaves on Monday. But he’ll not leave this Monday. Supreet is getting operated on Tuesday." I flinched. But she was absorbed in the thought. "So cool, na? He’ll get ten days off from school! So nice, na?" "Those ten days won’t be fun, Chandana. He’ll be lying in the hospital." "Yes! But Mom, he’ll get a huge TV with all his favourite cartoons and a games console, too! He can play any time he wants!" She clearly remembered. "Dad, will they cut him? Will there be blood?" "It’s time for bed! You got an early football practice tomorrow!" VIshwas was swift to chan...

House manager Morgan came into my room. He sniffed the air and looked disapproving. “Mrs Towne,” he began, “The Cobra Committee has issued an edict that there are to be no more visitors.” I didn't mind. Old age had picked off my friends and family like a sniper. “And you cannot go out,” he added. “You'll just have to wait here until you die.” He smiled to show it was a joke. Hilarious. I was truly isolated now. The other residents were deaf or dumb or their brain was out to lunch, or all three. Then the telephone rang. Derek McMillan Pot Pourri - a collection of short stories and flash fiction by Derek McMillan, edited by Angela McMillan

We are made of star stuff; every fiber, every organ—Lung, Liver, and Heart. If the Heart is connected to the Stars, then perhaps we should be more keen to follow its whims. Often, the Heart knows what the mind doesn’t. Ever had the inexplicable urge to try something, without any logical thought to justify it? That was your Heart, calling out to you without a voice, aligning you with what the stars have written for you. Trust it, even when it’s scary. The Heart knows better than us, my indoctrinated peers, what we were born to do. It was forged in the Stars, after all, where they say our destinies are written. There, the Stars inscribe into the Heart a prophecy, before creating a vehicle for it to drive, a process we call Fate. More of an outline than a fully-written story, Fate is neither strict nor understood; we do not know Fate, but Fate knows us. Unfortunately, us being the lost travelers that we are, we wander into the tangled web of conformity before we realize it. It...

The memory of her miserable adolescence haunted Olivia Metzger. She could not forget the braces, the acne, the ineptitude that plagues those unfortunates who inhabit the lowest levels of every high school’s rigid social hierarchy. Worse still, she had no mother, no loving arms to enfold her, no warm cookies at the end of a trying day, no model of American womanhood to which she could aspire. She had only her father, a vintner by vocation, a surly man who spent his days sequestered with his grapes in an attempt to avoid the suspicious eyes that still followed him when he appeared in public, a result of his wife’s untimely demise. Shortly after Olivia’s birth, Mrs. Metzger’s lifeless body was discovered on the kitchen floor, a bottle of her husband’s wine in one hand, an empty glass in the other. The autopsy results were inconclusive and the question remained. Was her death by accident or by design? So Olivia slogged through high school, isolated and forlorn, until Whitney, Ashley ...