Here is a selection of flash fiction (stories of under 300 words) on a winter theme from local writers who attend courses at The Reading Room in Ulverston.
Its writers include published authors and poets as well as developing writers. For more information about Reading Room courses go to www.zosiawand.com and click on The Reading Room page.
Nancy Versus The White Witch by David Clancy
When I was eight I lived in a cul-de-sac where it was always winter, but never Christmas Day. All the other children in the street were girls.
This was a bonus. You see, I wasn’t one for playing five-a-side, I much preferred a good dressing up box, and I’d rather have played Lucy than Mr Tumnus. I also fancied the man from Atlantis, and loved ABBA, knitting and Narnia.
My grandma used to come and stay with us for December and we’d make trifles, do cross stitch and sew clothes for wooden peg dolls. Over this time I neglected my cul-de-sac girls. “Is Lucy Pevensie coming out to play?” they would say, shivering on the doorstep.
I’d reply: “Not today, you silly little Faun. We would get turned to stone.” Then I’d go back in the living room with the gas fire, and snuggle up to Grandma Smith. We’d eat tangerines with her crocheted blanket over our legs and watch Paint Along with Nancy.
This didn’t always work, if my mum heard them knock. She’d shout: "Yes he is,” and hand me my wellies. Then she’d zip up my parka and throw me out the front door. To play with my friends. In the snow-filled Land of the White Witch.
(David is a hairdresser who writes in his spare time. Mainly short plays and even shorter stories. However, he is working on a novel that will be completed as soon as he works out how to be more disciplined. He also contributes to the Westmorland Gazette’s View from Hoad column).
Frost Patterns by Chris Hayes
The boy woke. He was wonderfully warm in the bed, the weight of three blankets and a heavy eiderdown comfortingly protective against the winter chill in the bedroom.
The end of his nose was quite cold, as was one ear – the other was held snugly into the soft pillow by the weight of his head.
If he breathed hard he could see his breath steam. There might have been a frost. He moved to the edge of the bed, extended his arm from beneath the bedclothes and pulled back the curtain.
Sure enough, the inside of the window was coated with a glistening, feathery pattern of ice. It appeared to move about and change tones from silver to grey to white as he moved his head. He stared, entranced, for some minutes.
He dropped the curtain when his mother entered the bedroom bringing the early morning tea. She would return shortly with a small bucket of warm water and a shammy leather, to wipe the ice from the window before it melted and formed puddles on the sill.
He smiled to himself. If it was cold enough he would be able to watch the patterns reform on the not-quite-dry glass after she had gone.
The Raven’s Spell by N. P. Arrowsmith
In a world without laughter, a strange noise wakes the people of an ancient town. The residents are accustomed to the oppressive cackling of ravens, but tonight, all is eerily quiet—except for the solitary call which stirs something strange within the people’s hearts.
The townsfolk, wearing thin rags, grumble as they emerge from cold homes to silence the call. Barefoot, they tread on frosty cobbles and walk beneath icicle archways. The residents do not work together, and consequently, they are poor.
Dim streetlights cast narrow alleys in a glow devoid of colour. Tall, stone houses funnel the townsfolk towards the square. The ravens sit still, no longer cavorting atop the antiquated rooftops and steeples.
The strange chuckle multiplies, more residents wake, and miserable faces begin to crack. Another new noise is heard—a jingle.
Streets branch off the town square like tentacles, and from each, people converge. At the centre is a man with a bushy, white beard and a bright, red suit. He wraps each resident in thick clothes, hands them slippers and a small bell, and embraces them with a warm hug. He spreads his joy and soon the whole town is awake and in merry song.
There is music, colour and mouths that curl curiously at both ends. The ravens flee; their gloomy spell is broken. The jolly man leaves on a peculiar chariot, but he is not forgotten.
In time, the clothes perish and the slippers crumble, but they work together to make new ones. The true gift was kindness. Every year, the new community celebrate with a great festival because now they know happiness and cheer and laughter.
(N. P. Arrowsmith is a budding writer and aerospace engineer from Lancashire. He enjoys writing mystery, horror and dark fantasy. Many of his stories are set in the fictional county of Deaconshire which is heavily inspired by the Lake District).
New Year Cheer? by Marion Brown
I don’t know why I lit the candle in the window. It melted the lattice of ice on the glass until I could see my own ghostly reflection.
Night had fallen like a hammer. When I reached out my fingers to find the matches, they seemed to ripple through liquid not air. When the fire finally took, damp wood spitting in protest, I sat cross legged on the threadbare rug, hypnotised by the dancing flames.
The walk to the cabin three frozen days ago had been brutal. I’d waded through chest deep snow, my body breaking the drifts like a bow wave. When I’d looked behind, the wandering trail was already filling in behind me, cleansing the landscape of human presence.
I’d come to the cabin to find myself. Why had I ever thought that was a useful phrase? I planned to write in my journal, to restore myself. But the pages were blank or covered with childish noughts and crosses. I didn’t enjoy my own company after all.
Now it was New Year’s Eve, when the old year pivoted into new. Perhaps I’d lit the candle as an SOS.
When I heard the thud of hoofbeats, a sound that should have been smothered by the deep snow, a shiver burrowed deep into my bones.
The door latch rattled. I had not thought to lock the door. A flurry of snowflakes whirled in the air as a tall stranger stepped over the threshold.
‘Not a night to be alone,’ he said, a slow smile spreading across his face. As he closed the door the candle spluttered and went out.
Lamplight - Anonymous local author
January 4th, it had rained ceaselessly since New Year and the holly tucked behind the clock was looking as tired as us. We were exhausted with feeding our stock, struggling through mud and getting knocked down by hungry sheep at the troughs.
That day a gale blew up and just after supper the lights went out. Six o’clock, too soon to go to bed. We lit an oil lamp, put candles in strategic places and found a torch.
We couldn’t read by the dim light so we got out an old chess board and arranged the pieces, put another log on the stove and poured tots of whisky. We had just made a few moves, I was losing already, when we heard an engine outside. The dog barked, someone knocked at the door, a man in streaming waterproofs who said he’d come to mend the line. We peered at the squall howling up the yard, the torrents splashing from the gutters.
“Surely you can’t go up the poles in this?”
But he turned and disappeared into the deep darkness of the fields. We returned to the 19th century glow of the lamp, the whisper of the wood-stove and the comfort of hot tea.
My chessmen had been decimated and the game was nearing its conclusion when the lights snapped back on. The harsh brilliance invaded the room, quenched the oil lamp, and scoured the space that had felt so mellow and soft.
After we had thanked the engineer, fed him tea and cake and waved him on his way we went inside and turned off the lights.
A Proper Blizzard by anonymous local writer
We’d been dizzy with excitement all day, skidding round the playground catching snowflakes on our tongues. After dinner they told us the buses were coming for the village children and we rushed to squeeze into our damp coats.
As the double-decker crept up the hill out of town the blizzard eased revealing a Brueghel landscape of snow-quilted cottage roofs, drifts running up to wall tops, pigs making grubby tracks round their shelters. Crows tumbled across the sky.
Then we hit the drift. The bus buried its nose in the snow and the engine died. We watched our driver, thigh-deep, forge his way up a farm track and disappear. Nobody moved, it went quiet, somebody started to cry.
A tractor grumbled in the distance, then closer, and we saw our driver sitting on the mudguard. Shovels appeared, and sand. Chains were fixed, our driver swung into his cab and we cheered as the bus jerked forward. On the far side of the drift the farmer unhooked us and we inched homewards, frozen and frightened.
I decided that the bus was not the safest place to be. So I got off long before my stop reasoning that I could follow the bridleway home between the fields. The snow had drifted up to the hedge and I waded on, fell, got up, pulled at my damp mittens and fell again. By now my hands were red and painful, there was snow in my boots and socks and my bare knees were sore. There was nothing to do but stand and cry.
“Jesse!” I saw teenage sister lunging towards me, “Why weren’t you on the bus? The others got home ages ago.” She rubbed my hands and dragged me after her, home, to tea by the fire and a telling off.
Manoeuvres by Zosia Wand
The linen cloth cracks the air, hanging above our heads, like the wings of a great white bird. The gossip and fighting over gifts and delegating of tasks sink into a hush as it descends.
My mother’s hands ground it, palms pressing out the ripples to the table’s edge. It is pinned in place by my grandmother with a ceramic bowl of vegetable salad we diced together the night before. Two egg halves eyeball us. Plates the size of the dinner trays, decorated in elaborate sequences of cold meats and cheeses, quickly cover the white expanse.
“I’m not a great fan of pickles for breakfast,” you whisper as my mother emerges from the kitchen with roll mop herrings, pickled cabbage, pickled mushrooms and pickled beetroot.
Women’s voices hang like notes on a stave. Aprons are removed, dresses smoothed, lips moistened, chairs pulled forward. The vodka is passed to you, the only male, British, but you will have to do.
You unscrew the top, filling glass after glass with a trembling hand as they watch in silence. A droplet falls on the cloth. The damp mark spreads like an echo.
Glasses filled, the chatter resumes. Bread is shared, platters passed from hand to hand.
You take some time to return to your seat. You place a bowl and spoon on top of your plate. The noise around the table fades until all we hear is my mother, teasing the child beside her. She is the last to notice the multi-coloured cardboard box which has invaded her immaculate stage. She stops talking.
You shake the cereal into the bowl. My mother looks at me with the tiniest movement of one eyebrow. You remove the top from the milk bottle and pour.
War has been declared.
Snap, crackle, pop.
Migration by Chris Hayes
It is always cold here, even in these milder regions, when they come. In their thousands, from the even colder northern lands where they spend their summers, nest and rear their young.
They travel at high altitude and often at night, in long lines, each individual displaced slightly to the side of the one ahead so as to avoid the worst of the turbulence caused by their wingbeats.
As they fly, they call continuously, maintaining contact in the darkness of the sky. When they approach their destination, they gradually slow and lose altitude until they reach a critical point at which they begin to break formation and side-slip through the air until they finally land.
(Chris Hayes grew up in York and then studied Zoology and Psychology at Bristol University. Now retired, he has had a varied working life including the police service, mental health work, and working in industry and for the National Trust and the RSPB. In addition to writing, his interests include birdwatching and photography. He is currently working on a crime novel).
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