Flash fiction

He lives in the cupboard. He comes out when mother cooks on the gas stove. My mother is always fully engaged in conversation with whatever she is cooking. A stranger might think she is talking to me, as she is using my name. But she never looks at me, and she doesn’t wait for me to respond.
“Nobody could have known, could they, Grace?” she says. “As long as it doesn’t happen again, Grace.”
“Your father will be upset if you let him down, Grace.”
She looks at the fried eggs the whole time. Her voice flows over me, as the little figure climbs up the tea-towel, and runs along the countertop. He somersaults into the sink full of water. Makes faces at my mother. Imitates her cooking eggs. He knows he went too far.

The kitchen is painted what my mother calls a “cheerful yellow.” I think it’s like being trapped inside the yolk of an egg. Flypaper with black fly corpses, like sprinkles of pepper. The little figure is made out of matchsticks, if you’re wondering. A red head and a skinny body. One snapped stick for arms, one for legs. He doesn’t have a name (he’s not the sort of friend you call. More the sort that turns up and then something goes wrong).
I smell smoke. I’ll have a bath. Matchstick man won’t follow me. He doesn’t like water. He’s climbing up my mother’s back and I wonder if he’s doing it to cheer me up, or if he just likes having an audience. He might not be my friend at all.

If it hadn’t been for him, I wouldn’t have set the church on fire.I wasn’t trying to burn it down, I was playing with matchstick man. I’d never heard him so happy as he stood on my shoulder, watching the flames.
There have been lots of fires.
“A vessel for evil,” is what the priest called me. Mother gave out to him. I’d done wrong, but she stood up for me.
Matchstick man is making fun of her. I don’t like it.
Where did he go? Take your eyes off him for a minute…. Everything looks okay. Ma had turned off the cooker, and the toaster is unplugged. I get up to lay the table and check in his cupboard. He’s not there. I feel a tiny movement on my back. I turn to look around at Da, who doesn’t do much except sit and stare since the accident. Too much smoke. The doctors said his brain is damaged. He’s staring at me. Or rather, he’s staring at a spot just over my shoulder. When Ma has sat down and the clatter of plates has finished, I can hear heavy breathing from my shoulder.
A lot of fires we’ve had around here.
Da’s eyes are bright.

The injury was worse.

Ellen felt better.

As blue seeped up her arm, she felt strong.

Jack was struggling against it.

He had tried a tourniquet, talked about cutting off his arm. Now he rocked in the corner.

The undead were shambling around. Their prey had escaped.

Ellen and Jack were turning, but still human. Go out now and they’d be eaten.

Ellen wanted to be complete. Didn’t want to be one of the legless who dragged themselves along the ground, late to every meal. She wanted to prey.

Her arm felt hot and itchy. The bite stung. Her mouth was bitter.

It should have been a simple mission.

Their hide-away was around the corner, a mile down the road.

They’d holed up at a rundown gas station. The previous owner had been security conscious. There were metal shutters, a hidden cellar, and plenty of canned food and shotguns.

Ellen reckoned they had taken him in the sudden storm of infection that had destroyed the world overnight. (His rifle behind the counter. A mess of blood around it. He’d shot. And missed.)

He’d been scratching at the door when they’d arrived. They’d let him out and been holed up since. Three months.

Ellen wanted to get out of the place more than she wanted to scout for fresh supplies. Had talked at Jack until he’d been convinced (Wasn’t any less fair than him talking at her for three months. He’d lost his nerve, couldn’t bear for her to leave even to go to the toilet.) He wouldn’t be scared much longer.

In the dark of their shelter, the back of a van free of the undead, she could see his arm throbbing.

The veins pushing to the surface.

It looked painful.

It felt painful.

But it would make her stronger. When she woke up, she’d be one of them.

Jack whimpered to himself.

Praying.

What would happen when there was no fresh meat left, when everyone had turned?

Fresh meat? She meant people, right?

People like Jack who’d never done her any harm.

She’d rip them apart.

“Jack?”

His wet eyes looked in her direction.

“When we come back…”

His eyes cleared. Expecting her to say something to make it all better, to fix things. To tell him it wasn’t all bad.

She knew what to say. There was only one thing.

“When we come back.” Her eyes started to close. The itchy heat had reached her heart and her brain. “just do… what everyone else does.”

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This is an older piece, from way back in January in 2020. Hope you like it!

The names of the crew replaced those of the actor’s onscreen, and the snotty punk music changed into an orchestral score played on a synthesiser.
“These are the guys who make the film, you know.”
“I know, Mal.”
“The actors just do what they’re told. Or, you know, try to.”
The Slaughters of Christ was being praised—on genre websites—with single-handedly bringing back Nunsploitation movies. Mal didn’t like it.
The deal was, we took it in turns. I watched the auteur-director-drivel films he chose and he watched the films I chose. Admittedly they weren’t art but at least something happened in them. Mal wanted to be a screenwriter-slash-director. I wanted to be a screenwriter-slash(haha!)-actor.
“I could hardly see the final scene, the lighting was off,” he said.
“Sure, Mal.” He was right, but that was clever. They didn’t have the budget for convincing effects for the, what would she be called? the Boss Nun? the Nun Queen? to morph into a demon and eat all the naked younger nuns in bright light. Besides they were in a cave, why wouldn’t it be dark?
“I suppose we’re watching Slaughters of Christ, Part 2: The Nunnoning, next time you pick a film?
“Sure Mal,” I said. “And before that we’ll watch Bearded Mumblecore Monologue, Part Whatever, when you choose.”
He tilted his beer bottle to get the last warm drip of beer. “I’m going to bed,” he said.
I turned in too. I had my script almost finished. Tomorrow. Then a quick second draft and start submitting it. It was good. It was going to start me on the road to success and the fist of many busty Hollywood wives.

I couldn’t sleep. Whenever I was just drifting off, Mal intruded. He pointed at me and laughed getting closer and closer, until I could feel the heat of his breath. A nightmare. He was going to make more money than me. He was a better filmmaker. He was a director. I woke covered in sweat. He was in the doorway, watching me. “Sleep well?”, he asked.
I shook my head.
“All those cheap horror films are giving you nightmares,” he said. Then he continued talking about how men went to the hairdresser more often than women, even though they supposedly cared less about their appearance, and a guy he went to kindergarten with, who might be gay, not that it mattered but he was allergic to avocados, and being creative shouldn’t be about ego although how can it not be?
I woke up with a start, covered in sweat.
“Sleep well?” he asked. Then he told me about a documentary he’d seen. About how pigs were raised for slaughter, in darkness but with some kind of UV light, but they didn’t get a tan, wasn’t that strange? And palm oil was used in biscuits and ice-cream, which meant it was soft and crunchy, and he wanted me to help him take a new profile photo for Tinder, because cats were no longer in, like they used to be. Why didn’t people eat cats, if they ate dogs? Everybody thinks dogs are dirtier than cats but nobody eats cats, so maybe it’s a cultural thing.
I woke, covered in sweat.