Writing – Dividual Notes

Barely Casting A Shadow

Reflex Fiction is a quarterly international flash fiction competition for stories between 180 and 360 words. In May 2018 Reflex Fiction published their first anthology titled “Barely Casting a Shadow” and it’s great to be part of it with my story ‘The Jump’. Barely Casting a Shadow features 161 stories from 138 fiction writers in…

The Jump

“Why don’t you take the kite out?” says dad. I look at my brother, who shrugs. Outside, trees bend in the wind. We have been moping around the house all morning. The novelty of the summer holiday has worn off...

A Slack Rope

I travel from place to place. I settle for a while. I am settled, for the moment. I think about travelling to new places and also places I have been. A few places have felt like home. I belonged there. I keep memories of these homes like souvenirs, and every now and then I unpack…

Fairy Bridge

For a quiet moment the bridge stands empty, its stone untouched by curious little fingers, its moss unpicked...

Bonhomie

A few days after Felix Baumgartner calmly plummeted to Earth at 843 mph, in Carrick it seemed like the rain was determined to out-plummet him in a race to oblivion. It rained so hard it shook every last leaf...

Keshcorran

Our house sits a few miles south-east of the mountain, Keshcorran. Viewed from this direction the mountain is a lopsided mass, like an over-ripe pear or a scoop of ice-cream melting in the sun...

Landmarks

These streets are familiar, the cobblestone patterns and manicured roundabouts, and the people zipping past on bikes, chatting and quarreling like birds...

The Wire Fence

You move less. You hover by the wire fence. The other children maul and romp. You watch the ground, scuff gravel, step a little dance between the pieces of flattened gum. Your mouth shapes words. You shrug and nod. Your fingers never leave the wire mesh, anchored at arm’s length. You remind me of myself.…

A Hard Goodbye

I parked the car and got out. The road wound farther down, dark and empty, to a small town. Clouds brooded overhead, and a cold wind flicked across the barren hill. I took the spade from the backseat and fetched Fizz in his shoebox. Scrambling across...

Apricots

Alan hands out apricots from a sticky plastic bag. We jaw them for a while, pulling sour faces in the fire light. When we...

Field of Play

Our neighbour lives in a beige two-storey house ringed with sheds at the far side of an L-shaped field. Our garden sits in the crook of the field, a square patch of neatness amid the ungrazed grass and budding ragwort. As winter fades to a...

Igor

Igor had been on television, on a talk-show. He had sat beside his mother who translated for the talk show host. The audience had seemed amused. Soon afterward...

King David

David reached under the bed and pulled out a wooden box. It was small and plain, a cheap little box with a cheap little clasp that had been opened so many times over the years that it didn't close properly, as if resigned to the fact...

Mirror

She excused herself and hurried upstairs. For a moment conversation waned, as the diners adjusted to one less opinion, but someone quickly plugged the gap and...

The Crow

As soon as the crow arrived the little birds fled, flitting on jagged trajectories out over the fields beyond the garden. The crow seemed not to notice this flurry of...

Late for a Wedding

Ruth reached into the glove box and pulled out the wedding invitation. “It definitely says three o’ clock,” she said, offering it to Abe. He took...

Ladies Brae

We skip and scrabble over the rocks that pile up in the bend of the river. My younger brother leads the way. He finds all the best footholds and...

The Red Curtain

Billy took Nelson to see the old haunted house. It stood on a hill on the outskirts of town. They jogged up the street but slowed near the top. The house was long, tall...

Agoraphobia

I caught the fly between my finger and thumb and immediately wished that someone had been looking, for I do not often move so deftly. I watched it wriggle, between my finger and thumb, and hoped it wasn't injured..

Beach Day

The beach was a shimmering golden crescent gilding a mile or so of bushy wild-land through which a dozen narrow tracks threaded criss-cross down to the sand...

Autumn Leaves

Squeezed between the gable ends of two separate but similar estates, the forgotten and untouched patch of grass slopes down to a bend in the river...

A Nice Surprise

The pony picked its way carefully down the valley’s far slope, grazing tufts of grass as it passed. Felipe and I stood perfectly still, almost holding our breaths...

The Hare

The hare broke cover and scampered across the road, passing in front of Damien’s bike. He braked hard. Alice braked too. She lost her balance and toppled sideweays into her cycling companion...

Park Moment

I sat opposite the swing sets, watching the kids from the terraced houses behind the park make like monkeys, bawling, hitting out at each other as they pounded circles on the astroturf, lights flashing in the heels of their shoes as they played war, spitting, carousing, just acting crazy because it was outside and a…

A Long Walk

It’s our first walk of the new year so I decide to take the long way: a six mile track curving up through the hazel wood, the lake spread like a mirror on one side, the hard ground crunching underfoot all the way to a rocky, treeless ridge, then zig-zag down to the car-park again...

Boys

Daylight lingered around the wood, as if kept in place by a spell, but between the trees the light quickly faded. The boys felt alone. Not free and independent as they had hoped. Just lost and forgotten.

Stranded Flesh

The first report came in at 5 a.m. The second, ten minutes later. And the third just as the harbourmaster hung up on the second. Something was crossing the shipping lane. A wreck, perhaps, or an iceberg...

Pastry

‘You never look where you’re going,’ said the mother to her little boy. He had tripped over the kerb, and she picked him up and slapped the dust out of his coat. It was a Saturday afternoon and the pavement was full of shoppers...

Mother

I had wanted to knock like a friend, with a take-it or leave-it nonchalance, but of course I knocked like a mother, my fist swaddled in thick concern...

Being Good

Daniel is sick. For as long as she can remember. He walks with a limp and coughs at night. It keeps her awake. Although it has only recently begun...

Room for Thought

A wall is warm and upright by virtue of its background. A dark room, though lighter than another, near, though further than a third room with fewer walls and therefore colder, grows steadily larger, though smaller than its cousin who sits on this or that committee and is electrically charged...