Setting the Scene

Setting the Scene.
An exercise this week in my online flash fiction course was to describe a boy playing football on the street. And introduce drama. Well,  I have no football know- how, so had to research this and beg the men in my life to edit it.... So here goes.

Injury Time

Ninety minutes gone and into injury time. Let’s finish it!

Jamie Healy takes the ball on the right wing. He’s fouled. Why doesn’t the referee blow his whistle? Ball lands near no-go area. Jamie has already lost three balls to road traffic accidents. Two were flattened outright and one was chipped from car to car until it was finally struck by an oncoming SUV. Not even defibrillation could revive the squashed pigskin. 

Healy sprints down the pitch that is wedged between Toners’ front yard and his own, the neighbour’s row of trivet demarcating the touchline. The fans are speechless.

Lionel Messi tackles Healy and regains the advantage. Messi dribbles, but Healy tackles, and with a scissors kick, flicks the ball back to his co-midfielder. The Oaklanders are on their way to the Champions League final! Barcelona fans are resigned.

Two minutes to go.

Fourteen metres from the goal Jamie Healy strikes. Great chance for the home team! But the ball ricochets off the post. Healy dives to intercept its trajectory towards the open road where tea time traffic is building.

One minute to go.

Busquets gets possession of the ball midfield. He shouldn’t even be there. He feigns, dribbles, does a one two with Rakitić and finds Messi with a sublime ball. The Barce fans are on their feet.

Come on ref! Blow the whistle! Time’s up!

Healy intercepts the low cross from Messi, feints a kick pass, blindsides Vidal and with an instep drive shoots the ball past Terstegen. What a goal! It ricochets off the post for a second offensive. What a chance! But Healy back heels it over the crossbar and the young Oakland striker watches the ball sailing out of play across the goal line towards oncoming traffic and lunges. The final whistle blows.

Words 298

Copyright with Cathy Leonard 2019

Sharing Space

Week One of flash fiction course was focusing on memories. 
Week two- Setting, even if it's just implied or hinted.
Here's an exercise that came out of that.

Does she mind him being home all day?

He hasn’t deleted all of her from the den…yet.

Her stained glass mosaic of a woman holding the moon still leans against the window, daylight flooding moon and woman rapt in the figure of infinity,  her purple skirt caught in the throes of flamenco.

But her old books with their musky scent of wood and vanilla have been replaced by his swimming trophies, gilt faded, silver tarnished, oxidized, rotten to smell, sandpaper to touch. Liffey Swim Team Prize 3^rd 1986. Seiko Men’s Open-Swimmer of the Year 1990. O’Brien’s Water polo Tournament-Most Valued Player 1978.

And the roll top of the desk beneath the trophied shelves no longer flutters and clicks, expanding and contracting like an accordion. He prefers it left open.

On the filing cabinet a stapler, a paper puncher and calculator have supplanted her tin box collection, Farrah’s Original Harrogate,Valroble Extra Virgin, that used to waft out the aroma of nougat and olives and travel.

And her postcards of El Cordobes, bicycles arched over the Herengracht, laundry strung from balconies on a Venetian canal, posted to herself from European mini-breaks, no longer bolster the filing cabinet’s gable wall- stripped back now to reveal scratched metal and adhesive strips, remnants of earlier takeovers.

Her walking shoes and dog paraphernalia are no longer stacked in the grate of the cast iron fireplace, flanked by art nouveau ceramic tiles. It is deemed obsolete, ecologically endangering and currently on auction on E-bay.

But the sky behind the mosaic woman-moon is cracked. The type of slit that could slice the top off unsuspecting flesh and it’s a question of how long… before he decides that a brazen woman is the last thing he needs in his retirement.

Does she mind him being home all day?

Copyright with Cathy Leonard 2019

The Greening of Big Bessie

It had been a dare. Much like the others. The tip offs. The phone calls.

Not meant to cause harm. They chose him because of Joxer, the mongrel. He was to wait till midnight, slip up the entry, placate Joxer, scale the side gate and do the deed.

They didn’t say they’d be there too.

The light from Big Bessie’s bedroom cast a spotlight onto the footpath as he crept up the gable length entry. Big Bessie with her big ears who could swot a boy with the back of her fingernail. He should have waited longer, but they’d said midnight. They hadn’t reckoned on the maiden aunt.

He heard Joxer shaping up, a low growl that would soon escalate to a high pitched bark. But the mongrel must have smelt him or something, the way dogs do, the way they know it’s not the enemy. Poor bugger! He reached the dog and palmed out his offering. Enough goose fat to have him farting for days.

Sure enough the washing line was strung with laundry as they said it would be. Monday. Wash day. Prod and Teague sheets like shrouds. Strung out for half a mile along the row of council backyards.

He prised the lid off the can, watched it flip in the air, land on the mongrel and set him off yelping.

Shutters clicked. The boy crouched. Eyes panned from her watch tower. They hadn’t thought enough about Big Bessie.

He heard the whoosh of the blinds raised and the metallic rip of a window flung ajar.

“Get the hell outta there, ye fenian bastards!” she roared.

Figures sprang from the shadows. The boy and paint pot were upended and Bessie Johnson opened her back door to a green boy, a green backyard and a green dog.

Copyright with Cathy Leonard 2019

Multiplication

Next!

Seven sevens?

Forty- nine!

The teacher’s stick waves like a baton in an orchestra

Is there a rhythm to multiplication tables?

Agnes Donnelly falters on seven eights.

Agnes is five students down the line.

Two whooshes, the rise and fall of the baton,

The descent- of shorter duration.

If teacher side-angles the stick

And your hand makes contact with the edge

The slap is searing.

Agnes lets out a wail.

Her left hand cradles her wounded palm

She raises it to her lips and tastes blood.

Next!

Seven eights?

Fifty six- like a greyhound out of the trap.

The cane dances to the tune of a Strauss’ waltz.

Next!

Seven nines?

Alice Casey never knows

Her palms are hardened to the cane

She says if you rub vinegar on them before the performance

You feel nothing

The baton descends

Silence

Next!

Seven nines?

Two classmates between me and the cane

Seven ones is seven

Seven twos is fourteen

Seven threes is…

Sixty-three!

Seven tens is easy

Seven elevens is easier

Next! 

Seven twelves is me.

Add seven to seventy- seven

Seven fours is…

seven fives is...

A warm trickle between my thighs

The teacher is pulling out my hand.

My arm is numb. My fingers clenched

She is prising the fingers out one by one

But they curl inwards again

She is standing at her full height

The trickle has reached my knees, my calves

The baton dips but the knuckles dive

The swish of loose sleeve

The back of her ringed hand 
Strikes my cheek bone

Seventy seven plus seven is eighty- four

My ears are ringing

Too! Slow!

Copyright with Cathy Leonard 2019

The Nun Story

WEEK ONE OF MY COURSE IN FLASH FICTION.

I HAVE TO DIG INTO MY MEMORY BANK AND RECALL EARLIEST MEMORIES, 

MAX 300 WORDS

“When I grow up I want to be a nun like Audrey Hepburn in The Nun’s Story,” her composition began.

Sarah loved the echoes from the stairwell in the great hall of the convent where the polished mahogany reflected the votive lights around the statue of the Virgin. Here Sarah’s eyes followed Mary’s gaze towards the angel who was hovering over her left shoulder. Sarah could not see Gabriel but she knew from Mary’s face that the archangel was delivering tidings of great joy.

The rustle of a nun’s rosary or the scratch of her slippered feet on the marble tiles always scuppered Sarah’s contemplation of the Annunciation.

She would join the Mercy order and, like Audrey, go to the Congo and convert souls.

She told Sister Jacinta this in her composition.

The novice would surely love the story.

Monday morning and the copy books were sitting in a pile on Sister’s desk.

If hers was near the top it was a bad sign, as the novice always gave back homework in ascending order of merit.

She heard the slippered feet, the rattle of beads, the swish of the nun’s habit; but it was Mother Superior who bustled through the door.

“Sister Jacinta is unwell, girls. Let’s stand and say a prayer for her recovery.”

Perhaps Sister Jacinta hadn’t read her composition after all?

Had she been struck by some missionary disease, like leprosy?

Had she even been to The Missions?

Sarah wanted to run and kneel at the foot of the Virgin and beseech her to intervene, but the older nun was already handing out the copies.

When she opened hers she read, “I love your composition, Sarah,” written in the novice’s hand.

By break time the news was out

Sister Jacinta would not be taking her final vows.

Copyright with Cathy Leonard 2019

The Gathering

March 2003

Sand dusted skies behind me

Storms in the offing

I drive eastward to you

angsting about minor transgressions, venial sins. You want a confessor

On TV ward screens war whoops are rising to a crescendo. Iraq is on the brink 

There’s a bus bomb in Haifa. A car bomb in Cúcuta

I tell you that Moses’ tablet didn’t outreach to your sins

You are adamant

North Korea is testing short range missiles in the Sea of Japan. 

Castro is re-elected. Chirac is visiting Algeria to make atonement

We don’t talk of funeral plans, cremation or burial or hymn sheets or readings

How do I say, “Mother, you are dying”?

You know

I know you know

The unspoken muffles the spoken

Sars has hit Canada, UN personnel are withdrawn from Iraq. Missile strikes begin

You ask, “Is it happening?”

Meteorites are exploding over Chicago, Illinois, the Mid West

The sky is raining fragments of shattering stars. The storm has arrived

and you are slipping away

 Copyright with Cathy Leonard 2019

Warclouds

Northern Ireland circa 1962

Pagni's wife would jiggle and shuffle the bag
as she added salt and vinegar
like sand sifting, boulders shifting
invisibly towards landslide.

I ate from the sodden bottom of the pack
as I stood at the corner of the Square
watching cats in McAleer's basement window

Overshadowed by the stolid Ulster Bank
and further back the Royal Ulster Constabulary
and higher still the razed ground of O'Neill's Castle
where rain clouds were once again gathering.

Copyright with Cathy Leonard 2019