I am a great fan of flash fiction – it is always great fun! When I am teaching writing, I often set a 300-word flash fiction challenge with a starting line.
Just to prove stories with the same starting line can produce completely different tales, here are three of mine, which I wrote for the same competition, entitled The Weekend.
See if you can guess which one was the winner!
THE WEEKEND (version 1)
THE weekend didn’t turn out as I expected.
With trepidation, I left my sullen daughter, Tamsin, in charge of our house in Cowes.
I hadn’t seen Roger in five years, but he met me at Waterloo Station, as charming and warm-hearted as ever. He proceeded to wine me and dine me. We chatted easily.
He was the favourite of my four husbands. Regretfully, I wondered why I left him – husband number four turned out to be a louse.
Roger asked after Tamsin and I admitted I was having a hard time with her.
“She’s put on tonnes of weight, she dresses in horrible baggy clothes and she hardly ever speaks. She stays in her room most of the time playing awful music and she doesn’t seem to have any friends anymore.”
I sighed heavily. “She was going out with some lad, but that finished about six months ago and she has been weird ever since.”
“She’s growing up,” he said mildly. “What is she now, 16?”
I shook my head. “19”.
“Where have the years gone?” he said sadly as we wandered back along the platform.
“You’ll cope, Diana,” he said, kissing me goodbye. “You always do.”
Arriving home, I put the kettle on and called up the stairs to Tamsin.
The music was off. A strange mewling sound met my ears.
“Tamsin, if you have gone behind my back and got a kitten, after all I said about living on a main road…” I bawled, stomping angrily up the stairs.
I stopped abruptly. The bed was covered in blood. Oh my life, what had she done?
But Tamsin had a nervous smile on her face and a newborn baby in her arms.
“Mum.” Her voice trembled. “I just didn’t know how to tell you…”
( 297 words)
THE WEEKEND (version 2)
The weekend didn’t turn out as I expected.
My elderly father-in-law was getting on my nerves. My wife had insisted he had to move in with us after the nursing home kicked him out for bad behaviour.
Now all he did was make my life a misery.
Instead of praising my bold attempt to be a house-husband, all he did was sneer or pick arguments.
“What kind of a man forces his wife to be the breadwinner?” was his favourite line to his various fancy women.
The truth was Ruth had a better job than me, so it made sense for her to keep working. She said she was happy as we were.
Today, Harold was being particularly picky. I hadn’t put enough sugar in his tea. I had lost his spectacles. I’d mixed his pills up. I didn’t have time to take him into town, so he had called Elizabeth – fancy woman number three.
Grumble, grumble, grumble – ooh, I could murder him!
My five-year-old twins, Aiden and Ben, were playing cars in their bedroom.
“Boys,” I called, as an idea formed in my mind. “You could drive your cars along the landing.”
Ben piped up: “Mummy says not to, in case someone falls over them.
I winked. “Just this once – we’ll make sure we clear them away before Mummy comes back.”
Luck was on my side. Danny from next door asked if the twins could come round and play and off they went, leaving the cars at the top of the stairs.
“Harold!” I called. “Elizabeth’s here.”
He stalked out of his room across the landing and – crash, bang, wallop!
I heard his neck snap as he fell and a smile spread across my face as I watched his blood pool on the hall floor.
(298 words)
THE WEEKEND (Version 3)
The weekend didn’t turn out as I expected.
I was browsing in a second-hand bookshop when I found a copy of the racy book I was looking for. I picked it up, opened the cover and gasped –
Scrawled across a graphic photo of a naked couple was a truly shocking inscription.
It read: Neil De Souza, I want you to do this to me! Love Lucy, Christmas 2011.
There is only one Neil De Souza on this island and he has been married to me for the past five years.
My blood boiled. Who was Lucy?
I took the book home as evidence. I left it on the kitchen table, so he would see it and know I knew. My respectable GP husband – carrying on with some filthy-minded floozy!
On arrival home, he immediately flushed when he spotted the book. “It isn’t what you think,” he spluttered.
“Pig!” I screamed, battering him with my fists. “How could you do this to me when I am heavily pregnant with your child?”
“Sit down Jen,” he said. “Lucy’s not that sort of woman.”
“They all say that”, I spat bitterly, feeling woozy.
“I shouldn’t be doing this – patient confidentiality,” he said as his laptop blinked into life. He started calling up files.
“Lucille Elizabeth Harding”, I read, “Psychiatric report.”
Words leapt out of the report, written by a well-known expert. Delusional was a common description.
“Lucy’s a nutcase,” Neil said softly. “She took too many mind-bending drugs in the Sixties and she thinks I’m a fashion photographer and she’s Jean bloomin’ Shrimpton, or Twiggy, or some other top model.”
“The Sixties!” I snorted. Lucy was 71.
I laughed. It was a ridiculous scenario, but I realised my darling husband was telling the truth.
Then my waters broke!
(297 words)
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