FLASH FICTION
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Signal Fire
We met in Ye Olde Blossom in Soho in 1964. She drank G&T. I had real ale. It wasn’t our time. So we wrote globe-trotting letters. I bought bamboo, I wrote, from Brunei. I have bamboo too! she replied, from Bangladesh. Now, every melocanna bambusoide around the world is flowering. I’ll call her.
I Know Whodunnit
It attracts flies and tourists. Both delight in the putrid smell. Children crane their necks to its three-metre inflorescence. Armchair botanists admire the plaque- Amorphophallus titanium– world’s largest flowering structure. Professor Barfoot, (parasitic smug bastard), world expert in corpse flowers, is missing. He’s stuffed inside the massive petals. My special brand of gardening.
Monocarpic Endings
The agave plant on my dining table wasn’t there last night. The Botanist’s calling card, a countdown timer. I have his attention now. Flowering its first and final bloom- an odd yellow blossom, disproportionally tall. Three weeks at most, and it will perish, and Viola Fugret will die too, unless I find her.
Death Bites
My stalker, Chastity, is an attractive brunette, generously-bosomed. We fucked once. Did I drink her blood? I forget. I found the recipe on VampGoogle. RepelloJuice: horehound, groundeswelge, tetterwort… Here’s Chastity now, clinging like sweaty underpants. I waft my wrist under her nose. She bites. Faints. Dies with my blood on her tongue. Bugger.
50 WORDS OR FEWER
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Theme: Under the Sea
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Shift Change
“Ahoy.”
Yawn. “Ahoy.”
The submariners change shift.
“All quiet?”
“Colossal squid. Kraken. The usual.”
Passing smiles.
*
The sonar calls out. Blip.
Replies. Blip.
A steady pulse.
Blip. Nothing. Blip. Nothing.
Something.
Big. Bigger. Here.
Metal screeches. Smoke screams. Water sears.
Sinking; a crumpled tin of baked beans.
All quiet.
