Major change this year. I discovered a different version of myself. One who seems to write a blog too. And set in somewhere I used to live!
The events are so close to reality in places, down to mirroring the dates of our own reality. But of course, this cannot be our world.
And by the end the bridging story continues. It feels like there are dimensions piled on dimensions.
Does our flash fiction form dimensions elsewhere?
I flopped over the final card.
All fifty-two and the jokers lay in a messy pile on the counter top. One knock and they will scatter like broken petals over the fireproof office carpet. I scoot them into a rough pile. Toppling them would be like ripping down a painting in a church.
The presentation of this story confused me. Multiple references to blogs, links and phone taken photos suggested website posts. But the cards are tactile originals, not facsimiles, daubed with paint and blu tac and scarred with biro.
And where is Clifton? Is Bristol real or fictional? Were these the proofs for some kind of abstract writing guide?
Someone needs to make a documentary or pen a newspaper article about all this stuff. But I still cannot get a grasp on what this place was for. If this was someone’s warehouse, why is there a lack of signage? If this was a business, where was the logo for a props department or publishing house? Where do they do they paperwork?
All this reading was thirsty work. I looked for a kitchenette, a drinks machine. A bathroom. Past a wall of framed, water damaged papers was a small paint-spattered sink, the kind with the long hose like nozzle curling round in a U bend. I turned the blue tap, and a thin dribble of water hit the ceramic. I stuck my head under, and licked at calcium infused droplets.
One more. One more before heading home. Snow still battered the ground in silence, and the darkness summoned the street lights. I was in no less trouble if I read one more.
On a nearby table sat a white binder surrounded by photos of the moon. Many folders line the office, but what caught my eye was a letter slipped under the front plastic.
Hi Archie,
I hope you are well.
Found this when we cleared out your mother’s place. It is not like her other pieces of work, and although we are considering the options in terms of publication, I thought it best to send to you first.
Please let me know if you have any thoughts, or if the contents rings any bells. Happy to have a chat any time.
Best wishes,
Barbara
I sat in a W shape against a magnolia wall, and began.
This piece of flash fiction took inspiration from shuffling my cards for a full hour, and sorting them into four piles. I had forgotten how much mixing so much cardboard hurts your hands. Melancholy overtook me in the last thirty seconds. My unique order is gone.
I based this story on that sense of loss, and the stacked piles of cards resembling lost Mayan temples. The golden monkeys appeared on their own.
The extract below is from the penultimate task of the Butter Mouse's book. In my copy there are a handful of scratchy question marks scrawled into the margin with a felt tip pen. Maybe someone tried to complete the year long challenge, decide nothing was happening, and gave up with weeks to go. What a shame.
A mist descended on Clifton this week. Photos of the bridge smothered in clouds dominated social media threads and local news sites. This was the perfect time to visit the cliffs near the Observatory. A place where you look over the whole of the city, and watch the area on a camera obscura. Last time I was here a giant flashed across the sky. And that was before I got the suit. You can visit his cave if you want.
Had a full blown freak out that the Butter Mouse was a mere street performer, and nothing more. That these visions were nothing more than my misfiring neutrons. I referenced my card against the chart, hoping that significance would stitch together in front of my eyes. But they were words in a book written in dead ink.
