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Fiction, flash fiction, Stories

“An Evening in Ash Rose Hollow Town” by Tommie Flannery Baskis

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The whirring, high pitch tones of the Cicada, rise to a vibratory fury and descend as I watch the mist settle upon the summer fields. Milkweed floss has gone to seed out by the barn, white flurries dance upon the electric aether, ahead of the approaching storm.

I wander through the lush and timeless countryside, where mimosa blossoms release their sugared fragrance cooked by a fiery sun. A peregrine falcon soars from a space on high; overseer of the rolling hillside.

Melodic voices float upon the breeze, as Mennonite women share stories and laughter, hanging their laundered clothing, the wind will press and dry into shape. Cotton and linen, sun faded and warmly fragrant from nearby honeysuckle and pine trees.

In the old house, thunder rumbles the wood clapboards as they settle and shift the dust through rays of light, pouring in from the open windows of the parlor.

The women folk make iced lemon and watermelon waters which are stirred with patience and long spoons, into perspiring glass jars. The humming of the evening porch gossip, as loved ones gather sharing stories of the day, will linger into the late-night until the vibration of silence, is the only sound to be heard.

Blackbirds among the cornfields swiftly take flight, trailing a dusty path towards the lavender heaven above. Those that have secrets, will find haven in Mabel Rue’s tobacco barn, deep into the tree line, where dusk moves like a velvet shadow over the living things.

The lace hem of my soft, cotton dress and bare feet, show a shimmer of dust from walking the back roads winding down into Ash Rose Hollow. I gather wild plants and berries, in Caedmon Blackwood’s meadow, to make remedies and salves. Walking back to our town, I see horses languish in the field, with the last heated moments of the day. Gray bats swoop and ascend in a blur of movement in the twilight; upon unseen things in the air.

In the evening, I bathe in dandelion and chamomile blossoms collected in the afternoon heat. The gurgled sound of water from the spigot echoes off of the steamed walls as I place my cotton gown on the linen cabinet, lined with faded Christmas cards from days gone by.

The blossoms are quick to release their fragrance, rising with the steam. The scent is intoxicating and sharp, like buttery mint and sweet ripe apples. The warm current moves the flowers to the calm rhythm of my breathing.

The moon’s light settles upon the handmade quilt my grandmother made for me when I was a child. The linen and satin patchwork are faded now, like my memories of her. Touching the mingled fabric that she touched, I can imagine her stitching patiently with her nimble hands, is the only connection that I have been left with.

Years ago, I found a sepia print of her in the attic. Lovely and timeless, she stood in her youth. She had gossamer hair and winter blue eyes, looking at someone who knew how to make her smile. The kind of smile, that could make the thorniest man unshackle the taut binds around his heart.

Combing through my bathed hair, I look through a window upon the shadowy forest. I see Caedmon’s two-story Federal house. The white painted bricks, have blistered and faded through the seasons. It has the appearance of a sugar dusted, gingerbread house standing tall among the pines.

A greasy oil lamp burns on a rickety table, on the upper back porch. I see his sturdy frame, silhouetted against the moonlight. His pipe smoke is a rising phantom, glowing and taking form upon the air. His stare penetrates through the nightfall, like he is expecting something to come his way.

I think he secretly watches me in the mornings as I gather herbs and berries from his fields.

I watch him, too…

I reminisce the day’s moments, hiding memories in an imaginary box, like sacred treasures. I listen for the distant and resonant shrill of the night train whistle. Bellowing across the fields, minutes before the town’s clock strikes the hour of a new morn.

Haunting lullabies, are carried upon the wings of Nighthawks and Whip-poor-wills, as the townsfolk fade into the shadows of slumber.

Tommie Flannery Baskis is a published author and photographer who specializes in distinctive vignette essays, fiction and nonfiction historical stories.

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“Bat in the Attic” Flash Fiction by John Brantingham

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In the morning, Charles smells a combination of diesel fuel burning and something dead, probably a deer or a raccoon out in the woods. The thing of it is that he starts to panic in the way that he did all those years ago when he got out of the war, and he was just back and didn’t know how to deal with the memories, so when he gets to the hardware store, before he opens up, he has a long and calming draught of the bourbon he keeps in his office even though it’s not quite 9am. It helps him to numb out a little. Just a little. Just enough.

He pours a little out of the bottle into his coffee cup because that seems more dignified than pulling at a bottle, and leans back in his chair to see a bat hanging on the far end of his office. His hardware store is in a converted house, and his office is in the attic, and he’s had bats in here before, but he thought he’d sealed the place. Somehow the little bastard found its way in, so he goes downstairs where he keeps a .38 behind the counter and comes back up and shoots it, the smell of the powder, the sound of the shot bringing him back to that space again, so he takes a long drink straight from the bottle, before he puts the weapon on his desk and sweeps the carcass into a dustpan.

When Cindy, the woman who usually runs the cash register comes in to work and opens the place up, she asks him, “What’s that smell?”

Charles sniffs his hand. “Gunpowder. There was a bat in the attic.”

“So you shot him?”

“Seemed the fastest way.”

She laughs. “Well you better not let Henry know you shot a bat.”

Charles knows that he should chuckle with her, their inside joke that Henry, his teenage boy, loves awkward little creatures like bats and toads a little more than is normal even for boys, but her statement burns at him a little. It brings him back to when he was a lieutenant, and he’d watched a man get shot, and he’d ordered his private to retrieve the body, and the private said that the field was probably being watched by snipers.

The private had probably been right, but in a reflex, Charles had pulled his pistol and was about to threaten the eighteen year old kid with it, when a captain told Charles to stand down, and he did. He spent a day and a half thinking about shooting that punk kid who had been right, the scene playing over and over, him raging harder and harder every time he did. 

That’s what he’s feeling now, and his son is going to be here in the afternoon for the chores that earn him his spending money, and that drives Charles into his place of rage too, so he goes back upstairs and picks his pistol off the desk. He comes back down and gives it to Cindy. He says, “I need to take the morning and maybe the rest of the day off.”

“Where are you going?” Cindy asks, and it’s an innocent enough question, but it feels like insubordination.

He says, “I’m not sure, but I might not be back until tomorrow.”

Cindy waves, and Charles leaves, not going home but off somewhere to another town where Henry will not be.

John Brantingham is the recipient of a New York State Arts Council grant and was Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks’ first poet laureate. His work has been in hundreds of magazines and The Best Small Fictions 2016 and 2022. He has twenty-two books of poetry, nonfiction, and fiction. Check out his work at johnbrantingham.com.

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“Beethoven in Indiana” Flash Fiction by Zvi Sesling

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It is three a.m. and I have been driving thirteen, fourteen, maybe fifteen hours.  I have passed through West Virginia and then, Kentucky, which was the last time I stopped to eat. But now in the middle of the night there are no signs for restaurants or gas stations so I decide to get off the main highway and continue along on a backroad into Indiana. 

It is a pitch black night on this lonely road so I stop, get out to relieve myself and take a sip of bottled energizer to help me stay alert. I keep driving and now I am in the middle of Indiana. I decide to turn on the car radio where that I figure the music will help me stay awake as long as it is loud and noisy.  To my surprise the radio pulls in Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony. 

My New York snobbishness tells me that I did not know they played Beethoven in Indiana. I would have figured country music, Hank Williams, Willie Nelson or Dolly Parton.  But no, it is Beethoven on this Indiana station.

It is dark country in Indiana at 3 a.m., not like New York which stays alive twenty-four hours, lights make it seem like day time, especially in Times Square. But out here the night is black with no road lights so I have to stay alert. I would not want to hit a deer or a bear or even a coyote.

 I slow down for a minute, take another shot from the bottle of energizer liquid, swallowing a long gulp.  

The thing about these Indiana hills is that they are blacker than the night. They are just dark hulks. There are houses but they are spaced far apart and no lights are on at this hour. There are no towns, no gas stations no truck stops or diners. It is so dark even the moon sleeps and stars do not twinkle. You would think out here in nowhereland the stars would command the skies. A full moon would light the world.

It is kind of scary being all alone on a dark country road so I pump up the volume and slow down a bit to conserve gas but keep driving as Beethoven’s storm rages then calms and ends. The announcer is about to name the orchestra and conductor, but a rock station from somewhere takes over and a different announcer says, “That was Twisted Sister” as a faint morning light takes me head long through rough farm land.

Zvi A. Sesling, Brookline, MA Poet Laureate (2017-2020), has published numerous poems and flash fiction. He edits 10 By 10 Flash Fiction Stories. His flash fiction books are40 Stories (with Paul Beckman), Secret Behind the Gate and Wheels. Sesling lives in Brookline, MA with his wife
Susan J. Dechter.

Please share this story to give it maximum distribution. Exposure is our authors’ only pay. You can also help our contributors gain exposure by linking to them and to RFM’s homepage.

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“Free Birth” Flash Fiction by Sarah Das Gupta

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It was hot in the Indian sunlight although it was early December. The students were sitting exams in stuffy classrooms where the ceiling fans whirred like dying insects. The rooms had a teacher’s desk raised above the level of the pupils. Girls bent over their papers, writing frantically. Every so often, a hand would shoot up for another sheet.

Sitting at the high desk, I noticed that every time I climbed down to hand out paper, I doubled up with a sharp pain which was increasingly hard to disguise. At eight and a half months through my second pregnancy, these spasms worried me. I certainly did not want to be the first member of staff to give birth in a classroom. I believed in practical work and class involvement but a demonstration of childbirth seemed to be stretching things too far.

 Moreover, I was teaching in a convent school run by an order of nuns dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, so I probably couldn’t rely on much assistance. To my relief, the bell rang for the end of school. Most teachers welcome the bell, especially at the end of a long, humid day. In this case I had been praying for it.

The students in their starched white blouses and red skirts, streamed out through the gates. With difficulty, I threaded my way through the crowd and luckily flagged down a taxi.By this time the spasms were more intense, making me bend over. I could see reflected in the driver’s mirror, his puzzled, anxious expression. I counted off the familiar landmarks, Lower Circular Road, Kolkata (Calcutta) Rugby Club, Kwality Restaurant, at last the turn into Ballygunge Place.

The taxi came to a rattling halt as I fumbled in my bag for the key. As it happened, the door was opened by our Nepalese ayah. Taking one anxious look at me, her usually unflappable character quickly changed. Despite her efforts, she couldn’t disguise the panic on her face. My Bengali was kindergarten level and my Hindi, non-existent. However, no words, whatever the language, were needed to explain my doubling up with pain every ten minutes.

I too was near panic as I weighed up my options. It didn’t take long; the choice was limited. My husband, a journalist, was away on an assignment. My own family were thousands of miles away in leafy Surrey. I understood from the ayah’s limited Bengali, that she was not up for the role of mid-wife. She wanted me in hospital as soon as possible but it was far away in Alipore, another part of the city. I had no transport.

I went out into the street. Total darkness hit me like a brick wall. No street lights, curtains tightly pulled. The usually busy city, silent. Rather belatedly, I remembered that India was at war with Pakistan over the future of East Pakistan, soon to become Bangladesh. Not the best night to look for a taxi.

Anti-aircraft guns lit up parts of the city with brilliant arcs of light. The silence was unnerving. Kolkata is rarely silent: the roar of traffic, the impatient hooting of horns, the rattling of trams, must make it one of the noisiest cities on earth I thought the chances of finding a taxi in the circumstances were nil.

Just at that moment, a battle scarred, black and yellow vehicle, lights dimmed, was crawling  down the street. Even from several yards away, I could hear a strange tapping noise from the engine and a general rattling as if all the bodywork were loose. As I raised my arm, the taxi came to a noisy halt. The driver was a Sikh, his turban just visible in the darkness. 

Pointing at my obviously pregnant figure, I whispered, “Forest Nursing Home, Alipore,” before the next spasm gripped me. I collapsed on the back seat. The stuffing was sticking out from the plastic covered seats as well as a few rusty springs. A few moments later, I considered jumping out. The taxi was swooping backwards and forwards across the road like a drunken seagull.

Somehow or other, we eventually crawled through the hospital gates. I was quickly ushered into a lift by a nervous receptionist. The nurse, took one look at me doubled up in pain, before hurrying me into a delivery room. After a quick check-up, she commented with barely concealed annoyance, “You’ve come far too early. You might as well go home.”

The night sister suddenly appeared. She had hardly begun her check-up, before she shouted, “Get this patient ready now. She’s about to give birth any minute!” 

I had hardly got into bed, before I was holding a tiny, pucker-faced daughter in my arms. My own doctor rushed in, red-faced and flustered.

“Don’t think I’m paying you. I delivered her myself!” 

Sarah Das Gupta is a writer from Cambridge, UK who has also lived and worked in India and Tanzania. Her work has been published in twenty countries from Australia to Kazakhstan. It has appeared in over 200 literary magazines and anthologies including ‘The New English Review’, ‘ Moss Piglet’, ‘Songs of Eretz’, ‘Quail Bell’, ‘Waywords’, ‘Cosmic Daffodil’, ‘Dorothy Parker’s Ashes’, ‘Hooghly Review’, ‘Meat for Tea’, ‘Rural Fiction’ and many others. This year she has been nominated for Best of the Net’ and a Dwarf Star’.

“Free Birth” appeared originally in Juste LIterary Magazine.

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“Put the Pig Back in the Barn!” Flash Fiction by Dan Fraleigh

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As children we can often recall that pinnacle moment when the power between the child and the parent shifted. For some of us, it has never happened, but for those who can recall that place and time it is often revered as life changing. 

My mother’s father, Lorne Brennan, was a tortured man. He decided to trade in his lucrative career on the CP railway to acquire a small gentleman’s farm in Caradoc Township. The end result was questionable at best. What the hell was he thinking?! 

Fast forward… My mom, Mary Jo, was the 12th and last child…her mother, Ethel, was a stoic farmer’s wife…there was never a lack of food or love ..perhaps more for some than others; but every family has it’s unique dynamics.

Mary Jo was brought into the world on February 12th, 1934…it was a bitter cold morning with snow dusting the inside of the master bedroom window sills where her elder sister, Loretta, was the acting mid wife. Ethel was 42 years old and this birthing experience was not new to her, but in fairness..thankfully, it was her last. The delivery was unremarkable and Mary Jo, nicknamed MJ, was wrapped in a blanket and trotted down to the kitchen and tucked neatly into the warming oven. Ethel informed her second oldest daughter, Loretta, (already a mother herself) that she would tidy herself up and be down shortly to nurse the newborn. My mom would recall years later that her mother’s philosophy was that if MJ didn’t survive and had passed on in the warming oven Ethel would have been sad but in her next breath would have said: “we will bury her later, there are chores to be done.”

MJ’s  life was fair but difficult. She felt her mother loved her but her memory of her father is conflicted. “I was one more mouth to feed and girls were helpful, but in his mind, boys were the true asset of a troubled and aging farmer who required their manly toil on the land.”

At the tender age of nine MJ was seasoned to her father’s hot Irish temper. She recalled her dining room error when she inadvertently reached for a piece of pie before her elder brothers had had an opportunity to have a second piece…a house rule. In a split second Lorne pushed back from the table and grabbed MJ by the shoulder. On the wall in a very conspicuous location he reached for the family hickory switch. With the skill of Zorro, Lorne switched my mother’s legs until blood filled her shoes. Everyone was frozen in fear. Even her elder brothers, who were larger than life, remained firm in their chairs. A memory MJ remembers with puzzlement.

The next day her older sister (by 4 years) Elyse lent her younger sister her treasured nylons to wear to school so the evidence of her whipping would be hidden from her fellow classmates. It took weeks for the scars to mend but the emotional wound would never heal. MJ was determined that her father would never bring physical harm to her again. She was prepared to take an “eye for an eye” and she felt Lorne knew his rage was unjustified and reprehensible….but the reoccurring question was…where was her mother in all this chaos? A question that has never been answered…MJ does recall that her father never raised a hand to her mother and that her father’s rage was channeled for the most part at her and her elder sister Jean who she recalls Lorne saying: “She is not welcome here anymore.”

It was mid afternoon in late August of 1945 and MJ was home alone with her father. He was busy in the barn while she was tidying up the kitchen and washing garden vegetables for her mother who was away that sunny summer day visiting neighbours with sister Elyse. 

MJ could hear a loud commotion from the barnyard and raced out to see what was going on…to her dismay, her father was wielding a large mallet and threatening a stubborn hog that was being difficult to load on the trailer. Maybe the pig new that it was a fateful trip…Mary Jo ran between the frightened animal and Lorne..eyes locked, she firmly told him to put the pig back in the barn and if he bludgeoned the helpless creature it would be his last act of rage…MJ gave him the ultimatum..”put the hammer down, put the pig back in the barn, take it to the butcher another day!” Lorne complied without speaking a word – the sword had been drawn and for the very first time she saw fear in her father’s eyes.

Mary Jo recalls that in her heart she was prepared to kill her father that afternoon rather than see him torture the stubborn pig. And from the tender age of eleven the scales of power had shifted and their relationship would change forever. Lorne had met his match in this feisty young girl…..and her life as she knew it would never be the same. 

Dan Fraleigh resides in London, Ontario Canada. He is a real estate agent by day and at night and enjoys writing poems and stories. His writing has appeared in Literary Yard as well as Istanbul Masticadores.

If you would like to be part of the Rural Fiction Magazine family, follow this link to the submissions guidelines. 

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