Twin Gullies and the Flaramel Can

“Hey Gwyn, Jill told me it’s time for your breast rake”, said Nate approaching her as she was returning books to the lower shelf.  She turned to face him, and rose from her crouched position giving him a generous view of her bountiful cleavage.  Her name tag may have stated ‘Gwyn Tulllies:  Librarian’ but seeing her this way always made him think ‘twin gullies’ the way the fabric created caverns around her chest.

“Sorry Nate, what was that?”

“I mean your rest break,” he replied as he felt blood diverting to two separate locations, uncertain of whether he was more embarrassed by his burning cheeks or the other.

 

Always possessing a nervous disposition, books offered refuge since his school days and now he was fortuitous enough to experience the other side of the library desk.  His attempts at developing more confidence by joining the school production was dealt a setback when in a critical scene describing the solidarity amongst the revolutionaries for change and the burden it had upon them, the intended message was lost when the character Pablo suggests to his compatriots that we are nothing but an ‘assemblage of dreamers and weighted hankers’ which Nate earnestly declared as “hated wankers.”
 

Enduring months of reliving his embarrassment and retreating from social engagements, Nate enjoyed helping his mother bake every Saturday morning and creating desserts.   He would seek out every recipe he could from every source available and the library became a resource from which he could tweak old dessert recipes from old books, long since forgotten as the internet emerged. 

Gwyn continued returning books back to the shelves, Nate noticing Decadent Desserts in the title she had in her hands and immediately followed with an Abbi Glines romance entitled Take A Chance.  He had everything bar the ray of light spilling over the title as if it was a sure sign from the Lord God Almighty himself.

“Have you ever tried crème caramel flan Gwyn?” he asked gesturing towards the previous book.

“Can’t say I have, are you offering?” she added in a way that Nate didn’t know how to take but he’d come this far.

“My place tomorrow, I’ll whip one up and if you don’t like it I’ll do all your returns for the next week.  Deal?”

Gwyn arrived and Nate promptly invited her in to his compact apartment.   He opened the pinot gris and they enjoyed conversation over the evening learning more about each other as the evening went on. Gwyn excused herself to use the bathroom and noticed the framed newspaper photos and homemade montage hanging on the wall about some cooking competition revealing the story of one Nathaniel Crocker who made it to second place in a televised cooking show.

“I had no idea,” she said when she returned.

“About what”?

“The cooking competition.”

‘Oh that,” he replied, “yeah, I did okay then a knife injury damaged the nerves in my right hand and I couldn’t do it anymore.  Mum was really proud and made up those frames for me.”

Nate served the caramel flan in the bowls and presented one to Gwyn. It was without doubt, the most beautiful dessert she’d ever tasted and within one mouthful, she knew she’d be on the issuing desk for the next week.  She moved toward him as he raised the dessert spoon to his mouth resulting in a sweet yet all too brief lip contact containing both him and the dessert.

“Now that’, she said softly, “was a pash in the flan.”

Andrew Hawkey

I stand with Standing Rock

The mere sight of the fascist goons gave Ambrose the heebie jeebies. How absurd would it be to travel all this way and get caught up in someone else’s battle – beaten or shot for sheer curiosity? God damn America!

It had seemed a good idea to catch some history in the making. Only rarely did everyday life seem to intersect with the flows and twists of history. Ambrose had not burst through the Berlin Wall in 1989 nor stood before a tank in Tiananmen Square. In 1984 he had been to a political meeting in Christchurch held by David Lange. That seemed a touch of history. In 2010 he had had morning tea with Jacob Zuma. Did that qualify?

Bumming round the US in the days of its decline was not a way to be in at history’s high points. But perhaps … perhaps in South Dakota, perhaps in the lands of the Standing Rock Sioux, perhaps here the tide of history was beginning a new wave where indigenous peoples and ideas of environmental stewardship would defeat the forces of greed and rapacity.

It turned out to be unbearably cold. It also turned out to be altogether more terrifying than Ambrose had hoped. It also turned out to be, in hindsight, a flash in the pan, only a moment of hope before the fascist, loofah-faced, shit gibbon lurched out of the swamp, grabbing power and pussy on the way to a policy of environmental destruction and ‘eff you’ to everyone except the fossil-fuel industry and Saudi despots.

But, for a brief period of about ten minutes …

The fascist goons – armed; helmeted; visors down; their faces blank, reflective perspex – stood in a line behind a strand of wire keeping the indigenous people off their land – state power resting solely on the ability to bash citizens with wooden sticks or spray poison in their faces or, with the slightest provocation – please provoke me – to unleash a spray of bullets.

But: ‘Whenever righteousness declines and unrighteousness prevails, I embody Myself. To protect the good, to destroy the wicked and to establish dharma, I come into being from age to age.’

God descends.

Suddenly a great cry went up. People on the top of a nearby bus were yelling and ululating and pointing, punching the air, and then Ambrose heard and felt the trembling of the ground as the buffalo herd swept over the ridge – the avenging wrath of God come to save His people: the day of glory, day of dread and anger and justice.

Tatanka, the Buffalo Nation – courageous, invincible, provider of all, connection to the Creator – returned.

But still, later: the President’s soaring oratory – ‘I am pleased to announce that the Dakota Access Pipeline is now officially open for business – nobody thought any politician would have the guts to approve that final leg. I just closed my eyes and said, “do it”. And, you know, when I approved it: it’s up, it’s running, it’s beautiful, it’s great, everybody’s happy.’

Barnaby McBryde

This pure luck

A fluke, pure luck. If Sonia had planned this photo, had framed it, metered it, the image could not have turned out better.   It had been taken by a serendipitous and unfamiliar version of herself : Curious Sonia, Artistic Sonia. Romantic Sonia. That was one of its small miracles.

An evening in a Tuscan village. Two lamps, one above the other - the nearest, a white hot flare against the sky. The other, honey warm like a lover’s secret, hangs from delicate wrought iron drawing the eye to a corner where a steep lane bends to the right. Stone walls in terracotta hues glow in the lamplight and fade to shadow. Even now, Sonia can still feel the rough surface of the alley walls radiating the stored warmth of an Italian summer day. In some places the walls narrowed to the width of her outstretched arms, and as she walked she could brush the stone with fingers of both hands as people had done for hundreds of years before.  There’s a single window, like a closed eye, in the wall of a house, as if the village was devoid of life. Yet out of shot, she can picture the old woman in black sitting at her open window overlooking the piazza, watching the activity, silent and inscrutable.

A concert event was being set up as Sonia took the photo.  Rows of white folding chairs were lined up on uneven cobbles, a rickety scaffolding built as a stage for the orchestra. The bustle was nothing to do with her. She relished being able to turn her back on it and focus only on the photo opportunity.

Yet even as she marvels at the image, she acknowledges the metaphor, the cliché. Framing tiled roof peaks, beyond the mystery of the unknown path before her, the evening-blue ridge line of the distant hills, as familiar to her as the Taieri and the Maungatua, calls her home. She resists, strains against it. What did she expect, Sonia wonders?  That she could leave life behind unreservedly? Beyond this village that was like nowhere she had ever been, as real as the hills, was life waiting to be resumed. Not yet, not yet.  For now, there was only this fluke, this pure luck.

Rosemary McBryde

Dissocial media

Sergio had been putting off going upstairs to management for most of the morning. Board meetings at Facebook, Inc. were usually magnets for ridiculous ideas. Another simple development that will cost far more programming time than these suits realise, he thought. But Mike was a pal, and often ran things by him before his latest pitch.

Mike was pacing when Sergio arrived, and skipped the pleasantries. “OK, Serge. Facebook stalking meets virtual reality porn.”

Stunning. “What are you on about, Mike?”

“Do you realise the potential of a VR headset and a few dozen photos? Tinder was a flash in the pan, Sergio. Instagram, Snapchat -- just big wankstations. There are thousands of douchebags out there scrolling Facebook dick-in-hand!”

Is he pitching simulated sex with your Facebook friends? “Uh, Mike, are you pitching simulated se--”

“Think about it! VR porn is widespread in Japan. God knows we’re complicit in building a generation of socially inept fantasising jerkers -- why not capitalise on it?”

Sergio saw his logic. Japan was done with romance; it was becoming a national epidemic. “That’s your consumer market… Why would anyone sign up to be someone’s wet dream?”

“Oh come on! Online karma is a priceless currency. Social media whores have a Pavlovian response to the likes accumulating on their asscheeks. You may find this in bad taste, but you’ll be called a prude in two years.”

Sergio sighed. I shouldn’t be working for these people. “Christ. Well, logistics?”

“Here’s the strategy: Hi, Sergio’s wife. Facebook is introducing new features to bring you and your friends closer, blah blah, click to enable simulated intimacy, option one to approve requests, option two to be available to all. Be a star.”

“You’re a piece of shit, Mike.”

“I’m changing the world for 82k. ‘Piece of shit’ that. Thanks again, Sergio!”

Brendan McBryde

Idioms

“A flash in the pan is worth two in the bush…” she taunted, bringing out tea.

“No, Mom, not quite….”

“A fly in time saves nine?”

“Almost…..have a seat and let’s enjoy our tea.” Assisting her mother to the mahogany writing table where the woman usually sat, she remembered when they would bat idioms back and forth, each trying to outdo the other in their knowledge of the language, the battle won only by who broke out laughing first.

“Don’t count your rainbows before they hatch, Sweetheart…”

“No, Mom. I won’t. So how are you feeling? Are they treating you well here? It looks comfortable….”

“Oh it’s just fine, dear! No use crying over spoiled milk anyway. We’ll be just fine.”

It was hard to believe this frail, steely blue-eyed woman had once been CEO of their busy household, hosting monthly dinner parties for 20 foreign dignitaries while keeping track of two young children. Recently she had begun to write, page after page, every day at the same time at this mahogany table, the only piece of furniture she insisted come to the nursing home with her.

Her memoirs, the younger woman had assumed. She was eager to read them, as the woman never shared much - except her love of the English language, which she keenly shared with whoever would listen.

“Besides, another day another dollop!” she added happily, turning her shiny face towards her daughter, smiling so brightly it made the younger woman weep. “Can I have a dollop please? I love my dollops.”

“Yes, yes you do Mom. Hang on a minute.”

“What’s going on here?” the male voice interrupted with a stark sternness.

The younger woman pushed past the stony face of her brother as she walked to the kitchen.

“Mom. You gotta stop this. You know better. This is ridiculous. Give me that stupid paper…”

He reached across the mahogany desk where she sat and grabbed the lined paper onto which she had poured her remaining memory.

The elderly hand came down upon him.

“Haste makes weight!” she cried.

“George! What are you doing?? Leave her be.” The younger woman returned with a scoop of Haagen Daaz vanilla ice cream and set it before the graying woman, now gazing out the window.

“What is this crap she’s writing, anyway,” he muttered.

Peering over her shoulder, through the scribble on the wrinkled page beneath her resting hand next to the china teacup, he saw only one line, written time and time again.

“You go your way, and I’ll go mine. “

Jasmin Webb

Te Whetu

You would be surprised at how hard it is to kill a man. It takes skill and poise and practice and rage and fear to kill a man with a taiaha. To use a musket takes a more calculating way of thinking.

I knew a man who refused to even touch a musket – the weapon of the coward, he said. He was right of course, but … compromise: in the end you do what you can to do what you must. I signed their treaty. Only the shadow of the land would Kuini get! It didn’t take long before Kuini stepped out of the shadows.

So, yes, I used the aliens’ weapons – I thought we could defeat them that way.

A musket does not like the damp, but if you keep the black powder dry, tamp the right amount behind the ball, load enough into the pan …

The difficulty that day in the bush near Waitotoroa was that when the flint hits the frizzen, the spark is visible and the flash that flies sideways from the pan is very visible and the flash from the muzzle – even more so. To snipe as I did that day you must move as unseen as a ghost and as fast as the wind the instant you fire to avoid the flash giving away your position.

I had rage in my heart that day – at Ngatapa they shot 120 prisoners and threw them over the cliff, at Pokaikai they bayonetted the people as they slept while the chief negotiated peace, we knew their officers nailed the severed ears of our dead to their doorframes – but it was a cold rage, a hopeless rage.

To kill nine men with nine balls is something any marksman would be proud of. A feat! And always undetected by the terrified aliens who must have thought some demon hunted them.

When the ninth fell, a rainbow appeared in the sky – vertical like the post of a meetinghouse and it pointed to Parihaka.

The father of my wife said it was a sign of peace. Perhaps he was right. I would have fought them when they came, but instead Te Whiti o Rongomai – father of my wife – bade us offer no forceful resistance.

I am an old man now, and emotional with the emotion of old men. Sometimes tears dribble down my cheeks. No enemy will eat my flesh. Soon I will begin the journey north to the tree and down its roots and off across the ocean to Hawaiki. How I loved this world and how I regret living to see everything of worth in it destroyed. The father of my wife said, ‘I have a uniform, distinct path that I travel continuously – peace and goodwill to men is the password. The wayfarers are clothed in love and charity; the end of the journey to those who enter it is joy everlasting.’

Maybe he was right. It seems not. Perhaps we will not lose the next world.

Dhiraja

A flash in the pan

Anyone sane would have regarded the matter as a selfish act. And if they didn’t, the piles of paper in front of the door, just begging to be ripped into pieces, would convince them. Or maybe, the angry mob with weapons of all sorts would.

But we were not sane.

The idea itself had seemed impossible at the time. To be in charge of food supply for the one organization that caused terror in the name of their faith. Initially, everyone had questioned how. And slowly, the universe started giving us the answers.

We lured them in, we allowed them to believe we were of the same faith; that we believed in what they believed in, whatever that may mean. We told them the only way we could contribute best, however, was with food

We convinced them that we were all cooks; we all had experience in numerous places.

And when they asked us why, our reply was simple: to help.

They believed us.

So for the first week, we did supply them with food. The best food we could create, with recipes new and old. We served them all three meals, with uncountable snacks in between.

They liked us.

Their fancy reached its peak as we signed a contract which stated that we would be in charge of their food supply every day for the next few years. They cheered as we agreed, smiling. When they were done congratulating us, thanking us, then we got started on the real plan.

They came in the dining room, happy, after a long day of slaughter. They told us all about it, how they sliced the throat of the man who wrote about the war. How they took what they wanted. How the killed who they wanted.

We smiled at them, serving the regular supper one by one. We smiled at them, and they in return showed their teeth, too. They asked us what they would be eating for that night, to which we only replied with a smile and a wink.

We waited as they ate. We made sure to add any food they wanted. We made sure their glasses were never empty. We reassured them that there was enough food for a thousand more men if needed, and they were pleased to hear this.
  

At the end of the night, like clockwork, their heads fell on the table.

We ran, as fast as we could, through anyone that tried to stop us.

So here we were, smiling, in a circle. In the same room that had initially started our success. We were waiting.

We waited for whomever to come in, with any type of firepower they possessed. We waited for the door to be knocked down, to be shot through.

We waited, smiles still plastered on our faces as we shared the same meal we had served them, because we knew that we had succeeded. 


Katya Tjahaja

June

June 22 is Flash Fiction Day- apparently that is the official literary name for what we create, dear contributors.  To mark that occasion, the Artistic Director wishes to inspire us with "A flash in the pan". Hmmm... make of that what you will.

I look forward to your contributions on or before 30 June, as usual to rosemary.mcbryde@gmail.com.

Happy writing!