Sally Jordan - Onions

First Prize Winner in Dumfries & Galloway Arts Association Flash Fiction Competition 2006. Read by Jules Horne.

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Onions

There is a woman crying and chopping onions. She cries for dead babies and the pained, crooked lives all around her.

Along her window sill a line of mice watch the brown papery skins flutter to the floor and wonder at the woman’s great sadness.

Outside the window, two swallows sit in a lilac tree. Soon they fly away to Africa where they tell other birds that in Scotland there is a woman chopping onions who cries so hard that a river has formed at her feet, flows out of her door and away over the hills.

Word gets around.

All over the world women chop onions… for pilau and dall, to melt onto beefsteaks, to stew with chicken, aromatic with garlic and thyme. Everywhere animals and birds watch the women’s tears drip and puddle and are humbled, that these people who have ravaged the planet for so long should prove to be so unhappy.

The women cry on for the dead babies and the pained, crooked lives all around them.

Then the food is cooked smelling of earth and plants and hunger.

To eat is to hope.

Tomorrow women will chop onions again.


© Sally Jordan 2006

Alexander Berry - Climbing to the Scottish Poetry Library

Joint Second Prize Winner in Dumfries & Galloway Arts Association Flash Fiction Competition 2006. Read by Robin Dalgliesh.

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Climbing to the Scottish Poetry Library

Her buttocks hypnotised me. They were perfectly formed, sheathed in a light tan summer skirt, attached to a pair of well-formed smooth legs. The sling-back shoes finished off a picture of sensuality and sophistication. The owner of the buttocks walked three steps ahead of me, that July afternoon, heading to the Royal Mile from the low level of Waverley Station.

Funny how each cheek moved independently, like identical twins who had fallen out and were not talking to one another. Briefly I glanced above the muscular beauties and saw a trim waist. Her blouse was sheer Shantung silk, sky blue in colour with a rolled collar, dark auburn hair cut close and short like Audrey Hepburn from the rear. I should have stopped and lit a cigarette but no – the baser me took over. I’m afraid the buttocks had bewitched me.

My mind’s eye pictured her bikini line, then went too far and saw her Brazilian, then saw her commando - that’s when I tripped.

The pain from the broken cartilage of my nose nearly made me faint. Through watering eyes I saw her beside me. She held my hand and whispered 'Hell mend ye, ya fuckin’ auld pervert.'


© Alexander Berry 2006

Janette Walkinshaw - Shoes

Joint Second Prize Winner in Dumfries & Galloway Arts Association Flash Fiction Competition 2006. Read by Jules Horne.

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Shoes

Chrissie’s right shoe developed a hole. Fortunately the weather was dry.

She hated the public ordeal of buying shoes. Who ever had the confidence to ask for a private fitting room?

Her sister, who worked in a shoe shop one summer, told her the girls never stooped down to help customers try on the shoes. The smell, she said.

Chrissie blushed for her swollen ankles, her bunion and support stockings.

She disliked self service shops where you browse through single shoes on racks, make a choice, and stand on one foot to try it on, blocking the aisle. She went there once, and the very idea put her in a panic.

One Sunday she went to church and knelt in prayer. Not for Chrissie the modern half crouch. She was kneeling properly. Thus the soles of her shoes were exposed to the stranger who sat behind her.

As they left the church he pressed some banknotes into her hand with the words “Buy yourself some new shoes”.

When he was out of sight, she dropped the money in the Steeple Fund collecting box.

In the matter of buying shoes you’re embarrassed if you do, and embarrassed if you don’t.


© Janette Walkinshaw 2006