Flash Fiction appears on our daily Life&Culture pages. Here is a selection of your stories

Dog Pound

by Madeleine D’Arcy

I LIKE to think I’m a decent man.

So when I see the young lad sitting on the bridge, begging, I feel sorry for him. It’s a cold morning. A fierce wind blows across the gloomy river. His sign says: I need €30 to get my dog back.

Please help.

“Why?” says I. I’m 70. I have time.

“The cops took me terrier,” he tells me.

The police arrested him for begging, the night before, and sent his dog to the pound. There’s a charge of €30 for every day the dog’s there, he says. He needs the money fast. Otherwise, he tells me, he’ll have to pay €60 tomorrow, €90 the day after. After five days the dog will be put down. He looks as if he’s going to cry. He must act fast, he explains. Otherwise he’ll never see Spike again. I give him €30 plus money for the bus. I’m not rich – I’m a pensioner – but I had a dog myself once.

Then I go to the police station.

“Is this the kind of carry-on our forefathers fought and died for?” I roar. “Never in my life did I hear the likes of it. To take a dog off a poor young fella that has nothing . . . Like bleddy loan sharks. This country’s a feckin’ disgrace.”

“He’s a chancer,” explains Sgt Devine. “That fella has no dog.”

I go out to my local that night. There he is, the same young lad, sitting up at the counter with a tough-looking girl, and they’re downing pints like billy-oh.

I wait until he’s gone to the jacks, then I head over to his girl.

“How’s yer man’s dog?” I ask.

She looks surprised. “Dog? He ain’t got no dog.”

“You sure?”

“’Course I’m sure.” She looks at me as if I’m cracked.

“My mistake,” I say. I go back to my pint and wait.

A short while later, he’s perched up on his bar stool again. I go up and tap him on the shoulder. When he turns round I say, “I’ve no money left. Can you buy me a drink?”

“Fuck off, old timer,” he says.

So I hit him.

A good one, in the face.

I feel like Cassius Clay.

Uproar. Blood. Curses. Cops. Never been in trouble all my life until now, age 70, when I’m arrested and end up in the cells.

Sgt Devine turns up and drives me home.

“No lasting damage,” he says. “Don’t worry about it. I know you’re a decent man.”

“I’m not worrying. I’m not sorry. I decked that young fella good. Shot him right off the bar-stool with my fist.”Hah. There’s life in the old dog yet.

How We Work

by Ethel Rohan

I FOUND Sarah’s doll inside the fridge, the toy broken into shiny pieces and her hair plucked, eyes gouged. I called Sarah into the kitchen, the doll remains now scattered over the counter. An arm of sunlight covered the mess, as if to console the toy, and ribbons of steam rose off the refrigerated body parts like smoke signals.

Sarah blinked her large eyes, feigning innocence. My voice climbed; why would she do something so terrible to a toy she loved? The baby kicked at my lungs, as if to force its way into my chest and out of my mouth.

I knelt down, eye-level with Sarah.

“Are you mad at the baby? Is that what this is about?”

Those amber flecks flashed in Sarah’s eyes and her cheeks warmed.

“No.”

“Why’d you break your doll? Tell me, please.”

My face this close to Sarah’s, I remembered the long-ago confession box and my little-girl face so close to the priest’s darkened head, only the golden grille between us, his breath sometimes tinged with fruit pastilles or mint chocolate. How I’d sweated and sickened every Friday night, worrying over what sins I could make up to tell the priest the next morning, and laughing, raging, at the idea a child could be so bad she’d have to confess to the priest and do penance to God.

Sarah wouldn’t tell me where she’d hidden the doll’s hair and eyes. Blue eyes, I remembered, the blue-black of mussel shells. I assured Sarah her daddy and I had enough love for both her and her new brother.

“You know that, don’t you?”

Sarah nodded and shoved her finger up her right nostril, her fingers skinny, unnatural, like rabbit bones. I pulled down on her wrist. She launched into her now daily interrogation and demanded to know the intricacies of the human body.

“What’s behind our eyeballs? Under our skin? Inside our bones? In our marrow, blood, muscles . . . ?

“How come the roots of our hair don’t strangle our brains?”

“I’ve told you all this already. Stop!”

“Why can I feel my heartbeat in my belly?”

I insisted she take a nap.

Three hours later, Sarah remained in her room and my delight in her silence turned to prickles of unease at the top of my spine. I found her sitting on her bedroom floor, stabbing tiny holes in her cheeks and forehead with a pen, and spilling threads of blood.

I rocked her in my lap.

“I want to know how we work,” she said. “Then I can fix you when the baby makes you broken.”

I rocked Sarah harder and murmured reassurances. The baby attacked my insides again and I struggled to keep the pain out of my voice. My fervent murmurs flew back at me in the small room, like a draught that chills, like rain that needles, echoing the priest’s long-ago absolution inside that coffin-like confessional, right down to the notes of disappointment and distrust.

Smoke and Whiskey

by Lillian Cohen-Moore

DAD WOULD take us to Grandma McMullen’s once a month, on the weekend, always on a Sunday. By Sunday we were crabby and tired, and he was about ready to give us back to Mom for the week. So we’d drive outside town to where the hills were brown, and the only colour was her orchard.

Dad had gone down to the store, and my sisters were playing in the pool, when Grandma poured herself a glass of something brown and awful-smelling, and sat next to me on the couch. When she lit her cigarette, I could see the shadows move.

“Why’d you come here from Ireland, Gramma?”

“Because bad things happened, and my father wanted me to go someplace else.”

She blew smoke at the shadows, and they seemed to shrink.

“Like what, Gramma?”

This time it was a pull off the tumbler, short and hard. She held her cigarette like movie stars hold them in old movies.

“I killed a man. Not that leaving helped anything.” She muttered something in her glass, that sounded dark and angry. I got up from the couch to escape the smoke, peering at the shadows.

“Don’t you go touching them!” Her voice was sharp and choked as she got to her feet.

“Little girls shouldn’t play with them.”

“With what, Gramma?”

“The ghosts of dead men.”

Stockholm Syndrome

by James William Anthony

I CAN’T remember when the abuse started, but I fear it will continue, at least for some time.

And they find it funny. I thought they cared for me, but they care more for my abuser. I am pulled and pushed. I am smacked and grabbed. They laugh. They laugh! And do they reprimand him? No! They wash and feed this stumbling demon that would seek to destroy me.

Still, even in the height of my rage, if they cry walkies I forgive them immediately. I can’t help it. I love walkies!

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