Much
to my surprise and delight, two of my micro fictions (150 words) won the weekly
Ad Hoc Fiction contest in December and January. Here they are….
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| Picture credit: Amnesty UK |
Hindsight
They cartwheel through his dreams, legs splayed, eyes open.
Sometimes together, sometimes one at a time. Fabric unfurls around them, golds,
blues, reds and greens. When he wakes, heart fractured, he can still see the
colours on the back of his eyelids.
In the early morning darkness he walks to the restaurant, his
hands in his pockets, cracked from hours in the cold soapy water. He’s left
Tariq asleep on the mattress in the sitting room at his sister’s house. Later the
boy will watch cartoons on TV and laugh. He’s already forgetting his mother and
sisters.
When the great wave came, he caught Tariq by the belt, but
Meyra and the girls in their silky hijabs slid through his hands like fish. He still
feels the boat buck and plunge beneath him as he walks, wishing now he’d pulled
Tariq close and tipped them both backwards into the vast dark water.
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| Edward Hopper "Nighthawks" |
Nighthawks
She slips onto the next stool, lips as red
as her dress.
“Buy me a cuppa coffee, Mister?”
I tip my hat and nod to the boy behind the
counter. The urn spits and steams. He stares at her breasts as he sets the cup
down, his acne raw under the fluorescents.
A whisper of silk on silk as she crosses
her legs. She holds up the coffee to warm her face, though the day’s heat lingers,
even at the witching hour.
A lone
car passes up Greenwich Avenue. I offer her a Marlboro but she shakes her head.
“You got any dough?”
I reach in my pocket and hand her a fold
of greenbacks, no questions asked. She holds it up in the fingers of one hand, then
looks out through the plate glass window to where someone stands watching, his
cigarette glowing in the hot feral night.
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