Visiting Lenin’s Tomb

by Kathryn Aldridge-Morris

Tiyshe! No talking! The soldiers put fingers purple with cold to their cracked lips. You are here to pay homage! Da zdravstvuyet Leninizm! But this is your ex-husband’s house, not the dim lit mausoleum on Red Square, and those guards, eyes the colour of dill, mouths downturned sickles, your daughters. How they’ve changed but not changed since you were disappeared, and he threatened to section you, should you ever return. Exiled to the end of the Piccadilly Line, sixteen stops away from their entire childhood. Move along! Dvigatsya! You want to slow, to take in the red granite walls, the unfamiliar family photos, the smell of wet overcoat, but a celebrant with cyrillic curls for a moustache tells you to wait outside, it’s for the best, they don’t want a scene, and as you reach Lenin’s tomb —some honeymoon—you don’t yet know you’re shuffling through the few remaining days of Gorbachev’s Russia. You oblige and stand in the snow, but your nerves are in insurrection. How dare this stranger—yet another man—stand between you and your daughters? You grip the letters you’ll give them today, letters to you from their father, letters that prove the mind-games and control; control over what you wore, where you went, who you saw. You were a good mother! You did try to see them! The hearse pulls up, his coffin flanked by the floral tribute he picked out himself: BEST DAD. A crowd swells at the foot of Gorky Street. In weeks a drunk will climb on top of a tank to declare a new era, but for now your daughters turn their backs on you, light Kino cigarettes and leave iron blue contrails that dissipate in the cold Essex air.

About the Author

Kathryn Aldridge-Morris’ flash fiction and essays have appeared in Pithead Chapel, Fractured Lit, Stanchion Magazine, Paris Lit Up, Flash Frog, Splonk, New Flash Fiction Review and elsewhere. She has won several awards, including The Forge’s Flash Nonfiction competition and Manchester Writing School’s QuietManDave Prize, and her work has been selected for the Wigleaf Top 50. She is the recent recipient of an Arts Council England Award to write her novella, and her debut collection of flash fiction, Cold Toast, will be published by Dahlia Publishing in spring 2025.

There You Are

by Alys Hobbs

You wake in the carpark of a long-forgotten Little Chef. In the chain-link there are clumps of things that once had feathers and tails and chickweed is coming up through the cracks in the concrete. You wake in a layby. You wake in a cul-de-sac to a hob-knuckled rapping, but no-one is there when you open the door. You wake in a Stopping Place. You wake at the edge of a bare-plucked field with your neck in a knot, forgetting where you were. Sometimes when you try to sleep among the sweet-sour smell of yourself you pretend it’s not cars rushing by but the ocean rushing in, picking you up, bearing you off. You wake by a reservoir and rain is falling or the trees are shedding their needles in the coming of winter or someone is tapping, tapping on the roof, calling you out. In a drive-thru bin you purge your flotsam; the cans, the tins, the clusters, the clods; the dried-out wet-wipes, the gummed-up noodle cups, the buttons and bones and bottle caps. You wake in the crook of the woods, your fingers working deep under the seat-covers like you’re digging for something buried in the damp. You wake in a Welcome Break and the moon is a hot-white hangnail and you taste salt in the split where your mouth used to be. You wake by a lakeside. You’ve been here before. You wake in the quiet. You’ll go here again. You wake in the thin light to the sound of geese leaving. The windows are so fogged with your own breath that you can’t look out, but you think it must really be something to see.

About the Author

Alys’ writing has featured in anthologies including The Fiends in the Furrows (Volume 2), Egaeus Press’ Unquiet Grove collection, and Kandisha Press’ Under her Black Wings – as well as magazines and journals such as The Ghastling and Popshot. She collects interesting rocks and bones, loves to cook and finds inspiration in folklore and liminal spaces.

There Are Times When We Talk Without Talking

by Samantha Kent
Her nieces arrive first. All three of them, mid-twenties, clad in looping scarves and the guilt of being absent since their mid-teens.

Then her son, his eyes trained on the notices pinned to the walls, on the white rectangle of sky out the window.
His pregnant wife, his pretty daughters, their vitality as sharp and painful as a knife.

Finally her husband, back from pacing the sterile corridors. Knuckles white, eyes red, fingers tobacco yellow.

The room is warm – nauseating – but her feet, she says, are cold.

One by one her visitors ask if she’d like another blanket. One by one they are informed by the others, in jovial tones, that she already has three, ten, a thousand.

Over her dying body – because it is dying, now, the doctors are sure – the visitors draw a line around the thing they can’t face talking about and take a step further back for good measure.

You’re how old? Wow. How’s big school treating you?
That’s frustrating. Do you think your buyers will stick around?
No time off in between jobs, no. If only!
They loved it. They’re definitely cruise people now.
He’s good. Just hungover, or he would have come along too.

Every now and then the visitors force themselves to look down at the woman propped up against the pillows, to return her slumped and crooked smile.

It is easy to wonder how she might be feeling, beyond the icy feet and the aching lungs and the wounds from the failed cannula. But it is hard – it is impossible – to ask.

In time, snow begins to fall, and conversation turns to the weather.

About the Author

Samantha Kent is an Associate Creative Director and aspiring novelist (aren’t we all?). She lives with her husband and cat in suburban Berkshire, enjoys hiking and escape rooms, and eats faaar too much chocolate.

GODETIAS

by Gemma Church

Eight letters.
I’d never heard of GODETIAS until I started listening to Countdown. Never watched it neither cos I was at school… or bunking off, if you want the truth.

Anyway, two contestants (complete nerds) pick nine random letters. Then, they’ve got to get the longest word in 30 seconds while the Countdown clock ticks down.

Sounds dumb, right? But I’ve learned loads of new words.

GODETIAS comes up a lot because certain letter combos are more likely.

ASTEROID.

RODENTIA.

ORDINATE.

Eight letters.

Popular and anagrams of each other.

FAVOURITE.

Nine letters.

Claire’s the favourite. She’s smart. Went to uni. Left me with…

RELATIONS.

The most popular niner.

PHYSICIAN.

Nine letters but rare.

They came into my room today, RELATIONS and PHYSICIAN.
I was annoyed cos they turned the TV off.

PHYSICIAN spewed out loads of (nine-plus) words that I couldn’t understand. I stopped listening, cos I was pissed about missing the end of Countdown.

When PHYSICIAN left, RELATIONS started arguing. Again.

The worst thing was, I had to lie here, listening to the same old…

BULLSHIT.

Eight letters.

Countdown allows swear words, if they’re in the dictionary.

VEGETABLE.

Niner. Not popular. What RELATIONS called me.

But they’re wrong. I’m still in here and I’ve found something I’m good at and I’m going to go on Countdown and prove that I’m no…

WASTER.

Six letters. Crap Countdown word. But everyone’s FAVOURITE word to describe me.

Want to know the worst bit about lying here?

Claire hasn’t visited.

That’s hit me hard.

Harder than when Claire blocked me on her socials.

But not as hard as the tree that I drove RELATIONS’ car into.

I just wanted someone to see me.

Now, I’m trapped in my head.

Listening to Countdown.

Praying Claire visits and, maybe, brings me a bunch of GODETIAS.

About the Author

Gemma lives and works in Cambridgeshire with her husband, two sons, and one dog. She loves all things science fact and fiction with two degrees in physics and currently leads content at a quantum computing company. She has an Undergraduate Diploma in Creative Writing from Cambridge University, studied at The Faber Academy and is working on a sci-fi children’s novel with The Golden Egg Academy. Gemma’s SFF short stories appear in numerous publications. She is also a very proud Countdown teapot owner and discovered the word GODETIAS (amongst others) during her spell on the show. Find her @gemmakchurch.

He Owed Me

by Hannah Retallick

When he died the man owed me £35 in petty cash and that was my first thought when I heard about The Accident, a collision between a camper van and lorry on the A55 which proved fatal for both drivers, the lorry man being the one who owed me £35, a twinkly-eyed neighbour, a single forty-something-year-old called Luca who smelt of cigarettes and bacon and always told me he loved my hair like that, like however it happened to be, up down blonde curly red straight black crimped, and we were starting to know each other quite well because he had got into the habit of rushing up to my front door and saying he needed to borrow some change to give as pocket money to his niece or for carpark tickets or for slot machines, so I would do the neighbourly thing and pluck coins from the dusty dish in my hallway, saying, ‘Here, hope that helps’, not knowing if I’d ever get it back but making a mental tally as though I needed to know how grateful he should be to me, and it was the selfishness of my first thought when I heard he’d died that meant I couldn’t bear to go to his funeral, crumbling under the weight of guilt, because £35 doesn’t matter in the face of death, and as the weeks passed I purged those thoughts completely and stopped torturing myself about the petty debt and my own failings and just wished I could ask Luca whether he really did love my hair like that, like however it happened to be, or whether he meant something else

About the Author

Hannah Retallick is from Anglesey, North Wales. She was home educated and then studied with the Open University, graduating with a First-class honours degree, BA in Humanities with Creative Writing and Music, before passing her Creative Writing MA with a Distinction. Hannah has gained recognition in many international competitions, including receiving Highly Commended in the Bridport Flash Fiction Prize 2022 and winning the £2000 Edinburgh Award for Flash Fiction 2024 – the biggest flash prize in the UK. Her debut short story collection, Something Very Human, is being released by Bridge House Publishing in November 2024. https://www.hannahretallick.co.uk/about

A Cock Among the Bathers

by Sara Hills

Tomorrow at the Tate Modern, while she’s studying Cézanne’s bathers, Jake will take off his pants. Jake, who’s old enough to know that public indecency’s a crime, old enough, sure — but still young enough to be stupid, reckless because he thinks he’s in love, thinks he can win her over if he makes a scene. And before she can grab his arm and say Jake, stop! he’ll have already left his smalls on the wooden floor, and he’ll stand full buck with arms outstretched, trying to achieve, well… bathing, she’ll guess, like one of Cézanne’s malformed women, oyster-white with willowed backs and tree-trunked hips, except Jake’s not a woman — he’s told her as much, said she can’t keep crying her heartbreaks, oppressing him with her problems unless she’s willing to see him as more. And of course she knows he’s a man, it’s his performance schtick she can’t take — his spotlighting, pushing, trying too hard — like tomorrow, at the Tate, when he’ll slip from his smalls before gobble-eyed children and gasping mothers with eye-covering hands, before men muttering Mate, you can’t! and What in God’s name! and Jake’s grin, his pearlescent grin! and his outstretched arms and his fur-tufted ass, cleft as a Cézannesque peach, and the Sir! Sir! from the gallery attendants and the neon security-ites with their walkie-talkies and Jake’s eyes pleading, pleading for her to see it as more than a scene, as a shared story, an anecdote for later, when they can say Remember the time at the Tate? like it’s enough of a something, and though he’ll be singing as they drag him away, tufted cleft in retreat, something falsetto or operatic about love, about water, second chances and firsts, the heat of her hand still echoing on his arm, despite herself, goddammit, she’ll laugh.

About the Author

Sara Hills is the author of TThe Evolution of Birds (Ad Hoc Fiction, 2021), winner of the 2022 Saboteur Award for Best Short Story Collection. She has won or placed in the Smokelong Mikey, 2023, QuietManDave Prize for flash nonfiction, the Retreat West quarterly prize, National Flash Fiction Day’s micro competition, Bath Flash Fiction Award, and The Welkin Prize. Sara’s work has been selected for the Wigleaf Top 50, The Best Small Fictions, and the BIFFY 50, as well as nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best Microfictions, and Best of the Net.

Driving my Seven-Year Old Nephew to Visit His Mother at Rehab

by Emily Rinkema

It’s his turn, and from the back seat he tosses out an easy one. “Would you rather eat a mile of garbage or a mile of worms?” I make eye contact through the mirror, ask some follow-ups: how fat are the worms? Fat. Are they alive? Yes. Would I have to eat everything in the garbage, or just the food-ish things? Everything, he says.

“Easy,” I say. “Worms.”

It’s a game we’ve been playing together since he could talk, since he started spending nights at my apartment, since he learned about worst case scenarios that didn’t involve choice.

I give him one I’ve been saving: “Would you rather drink a cup of your own pee, or half a cup of a stranger’s pee?”

He squeals. “My pee,” he says, and then, “Gross!”

We are a few minutes away now. I slow the car and turn onto an unmarked road. The first few times here we drove right past. When we get there, I’ll wait outside while he sits on a couch across from my sister, supervised, and she’ll cry and ask him questions that all end with the word me. He’ll spend the two-hour drive home silent and I will hate her for it, then hate myself for hating her, unsure which is worse.

“My turn,” he says, his voice low. “Would you rather have me live with you forever or have your arm chopped off with an axe?”

“Another easy one,” I say. I wink at him in the mirror, but he’s looking out the window. He looks just like her. I wonder which would hurt more, the blade severing the limb, or the moment just after, when you realize what’s been done.

About the Author

Emily Rinkema lives and writes in northern Vermont. Her stories have appeared in The Sun Magazine, SmokeLong Quarterly, Phoebe Journal, and the Best American Nonrequired Reading and the Bath Flash and Oxford Flash anthologies. You can read her work on her website (https://emilyrinkema.wixsite.com/my-site) or follow her on X or IG (@emilyrinkema).

On Friday Nights in May I Sit Quietly with a Friend

by Catherine Ogston

The faerie man is sitting next to me, just like last Friday and the one before that, while forest insects buzz and flit and the evening sunlight touches the nodding bluebell heads. So many dogs he mutters, as yet another runs past the signs telling their owners to keep them on a leash. A man walks on the path, a tripod and Cyclops-eyed camera tucked under one arm, followed by another. How about one of them, the faerie asks and I wrinkle my nose. The faerie hands me a bluebell and tells me that turning it inside out will win me the heart of my true love and so I try peeling the soft trumpet-headed petals but they tear like damp paper and fall groundward. Better keep practising, he tells me although we both know the heavy-scented flowers are about to sink down into the forest floor for another year. Last week the man versus bear debate came up and before I had completed my explanation the faerie man told me, with unsettling adamance, to always choose the bear. In his nimble fingers the delicate petals bend and fold obediently. Your sweetheart’s name starts with M he says and I sigh, ask him to do another one because I’ve had it with Marks and Mikes and Martins. No do-overs he tells me and we go back to sitting in silence, only the whisper of the leaves and ferns in our ears. One of the photographers strides past and the faerie says, maybe he is M and I reply that maybe he is a worse option than the bear. How can you tell asks the faerie and I agree, how can you ever, ever tell?

About the Author

Catherine Ogston lives in Scotland. Flash pieces have appeared in anthologies by Bath Flash Fiction Award, National Flash Fiction Day, Reflex Press plus others. She placed first in TD;LR Press 2022, Flash 500 in Nov 2023 and won the Scottish Association of Writers Flash Fiction trophy in March 2024. Catherine has been shortlisted twice at the Bridport Flash Fiction Prize and received a Pushcart Prize nomination. She also writes short stories and longer YA fiction. On X @CatherineOgston

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