Tag: Flash Fiction

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The Stowaways.

With the cook’s head turned, I stuff hot sausages into my pockets. The grease soaks the lining, searing my skin as I slalom through the rust-run container stacks to find them. Clambering, I hoist the tarp and make my offering. It appears that the stowaways are displeased. Others have already brought sausages this morning. I vow to do better at lunch.

It seems the pair, domiciled in the starboard lifeboat, are now the shared secret of all. Over weeks, they grow corpulent, and their salt-ravaged rags dissolve round plump bellies and pie crusts. Given spare uniforms, lest they catch cold, they start to patrol the decks during daylight hours, pointing at slicks requiring a mopping. As the junior rating onboard, I slosh the grey head where I am told.

Now openly eating in the mess and, having no duties to attend, they tarry all evening, winning money at cards. Their victories include the allocation of a cabin, swindled ingeniously from the drunken purser. In their new quarters, the skipper and his circle gather each night to smoke cigars and gulp port. They become central to the floating social scene with their wit and winning manner. From our hot bunks, their bold gurgles of joy stretch into our uneasy dreams.

With the headcount discrepancy realised, we hear that all will be righted at the next port. I watch agog as they descend the gangplank, carrying the duffle bags belonging to Cristanto and myself. They say it is the least that they can do.

Leaning over the salted rails, Second Officers Nitin and Moksh wave blissfully as the ship bellows and departs the dockside. Crisanto and I watch, blinking in shock, before slinking into the souks of Marrakech. Perhaps tomorrow’s ship will take us, or maybe we will hide in its lifeboat.

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A Flash Fiction -Bursting Rockets and Flying Sprockets

Across the darkening locality, dogs bristled, cats spat, and a particularly devout parrot squawked violently about the end of times as the rosary slipped through its talons.

In their distant, warm beds, dozing citizens tutted and tossed, serenaded by the whizzes, whistles, cracks and booms of what would be a long and fondly remembered event.

Those that had ventured forth, and there were legions, were being treated to a fantasmagorical display that, in turn, brought choral oohs and aahs from the assembled throng.

Chief Fire Officer Ludlow, convinced that all were safe and nothing more was to be done, motioned to his crews that they may now remove helmets and enjoy the unfolding spectacle. More than one took the opportunity to disappear into the queue created by one entrepreneurial member of the townsfolk, who had taken it upon herself to swing by with her salivatingly welcome hot dog van.

Meanwhile, Mr R.J. Beardsley, experiencing something of a busman’s holiday, considered that his tenure as senior health and safety officer at the factory was coming to an end. Poring over the gleam of the tablet, the risk assessment, although it had considered the potentiality of an errant firework, had always quantified it, as it turned out, with an underestimated probability.

Indeed, the site’s fire truck, parked near the gunpowder stores, had always been deemed a great bonus. Mr Beardsley pondered the irony whereby the explosion of the shiny red appliance had first ignited the gunpowder and set off this entire sequence of events culminating in the melting of his safety brogues.

Meanwhile, at the airport, the flight of Mr Wise, proprietor of this family-run business, was cancelled by smoke on the runway. With police entering the terminal, the flaw in his plan became cruelly apparent.