I can’t stop staring at her mouth. Lipstick feathering into the strained sympathy lines there. Like the lines on flower petals, to tempt the bee. Her cheap pink words – nothing medically wrong, just keep trying – aren’t exactly sweet, more like slogans on sad tee-shirts.
The café hostess hesitates about giving away a prized outdoor seat, but Christine’s raised “don’t-fuck-with-me-right-now” eyebrow gets her a patio table. A harried waiter slaps down a menu. Christine scans it for anything fitting her doctor’s recommendation.
Kate is not ‘imagining it’. There are small tufts of pale fluff on her neck, and no, it’s not ‘just a tissue in the washing machine’ as John suggests. There’s nothing drifting off his shirts, nothing clinging to Ella’s favourite black top, Josh’s Minecraft t-shirts. It’s more solid than tissue, just on her clothes. And only she can see it.
Sara Hills is the author of The Evolution of Birds (Ad Hoc Fiction, 2021), winner of the 2022 Saboteur Award for best short story collection. Her stories have won or placed in the Quiet Man Dave flash nonfiction prize, the Retreat West quarterly prize, National Flash Fiction Day’s micro competition, Bath Flash Fiction Award, and The Welkin Prize. Sara is the judge for the 2023 New Flash Fiction Prize.
We are pleased to announce the following shortlist for our annual NFFR Flash Fiction Prize. Stories will be featured the upcoming summer issue (due out about August 1).