The Shortlist is here!
Welcome back to the Monthly Micro Competition. Congratulations to everyone who made it and commiserations to those who didn’t. The prompt was the picture above, and the word limit was 150. You can read the shortlist and vote for your favourite until 23.59 GMT on Monday 23rd September and the winners will be announced on the 24th.
A Day In The Life Of A Fisherwifie
Three boats swung out wi’ the tide, anchoring far apart and casting their nets. Near yin boat, a wifie’s heid popped up fae the watter. She smiled. The fishermen looked at yin another in surprise, then shrugged and tossed a lifebelt. She slipped it ower her heid, still smiling. The fishermen hoiked her on board and there she lay, fir she had nae legs.
Her tail, muscled, spiny and thick flicked out to slice and rift – a quicker death than that afforded the fishies. She skited the bodies into the sea, donned a fisherman’s cap and jaisket, and rowed fir land.
She lured the villagers to shore wi’ her haunting song, and by hook or by net she ensnared them, smacking heids aff the side o’ the boat, filleting, paring, sparing nane.
When the ither boats returned they saw an emptied village; they saw the flick o’ a meaty tail clapping against the waves; but most of all they saw a pulp of trimmings and guts, heaped on the rocks like fish spoils.
A Fear Of Open Water Or, Perhaps, Something Else
Together, you take the sailboat out on the pretense of fishing and then strip down to your long johns. You curl your arthritic toes around chapped wood and dare him jump. It’s how Byron learned to swim, you say. And how Shelley learned to drown, he replies. We’re not young anymore. He eyes the water, distrustful, but for you, death is still a far thing. The air whistles, and then, you’re under, toes scraping sand. You find purchase and break like a wave, sea salting your throat, your beard. He leans toward you through curled hair as if to offer a hand. It’s dangerous, this game.
What he doesn’t know is someone else, long ago, taught you how to swim.
“Don’t you trust me?” you ask, treading, but he hesitates long enough for cold to settle on your bones. You let the answer sink silently in the bream.
Calmer Waters
We’re going on a boat ride, I tell the kids early that morning. They’re excited as I bundle them up in warm clothes, hurry them away from the stench of the campsite. I try to make it a game, I spy through the half-lit fields, but Ali’s little legs are flagging as we crest the hill and watch the sun spreading pink fingers across the bay. Families huddle on the shingle, where I hand a man a fat envelope; all I have. Aisha’s mouth is a stoic line when she sees the dinghy red and rocking, but Ali cries, clinging to me. We’re going to a better place, I say, carrying him through the freezing surf, the briny tang mingling with the stale odour of unwashed bodies. A place of calmer waters, where fishermen sing as they haul in their catch.
I’ll Be Back
The frost-ruby sun creeping over Skull Crag catches Catriona serenading the unsullied
morning.
‘Massive halibut shoals in the Minch.’ father had said.
Shin deep in glacial brine, she harvests the razor shells herded into the gaunt shadow
of the Devil's Knuckles by the looming daylight.
‘Calm seas, don't you fret. I'll be ashore before you can fill two buckets.’
Back aching from scooping tightly sealed clams one by one into her calf-skin sack,
Catriona straightens for a stolen moment to check again for father's missing boat.
Every muscle below her knees is numbed by the out-flowing current, her fingers the
same blue as her reddened eyes.
‘Your mother’s eyes.’
Catriona squints over at the row of five overflowing metal pails on the beach before
scanning the unbroken horizon.
‘I’ll be back my girl. I’ll be back.’
Ripples
The fog swirls. Shadows coalesce into shapes.
A sailboat appears.
Two grey men lower a grey sail, then silently cast a net over glass-like water. It’s a charcoal sketch of an autumn lake scene, awaiting the colour of the vibrant oils.
Standing to take a photo, my rocking boat sends ripples towards the dhow as it retreats behind the cloud curtain.
I row to shore with a sense of trepidation. I’m drawn like a moth to the amber glow of a lakeside pub. A fire crackles. The barman pulls my pint.
‘Fishing, you say?’
‘From an old sailboat.’
‘Must be tourists.’
‘They looked professional. Used a net.’
‘Can’t be.’ He holds my gaze. ‘No-one has fished these waters for a hundred years.’
I swipe photos on my phone. But all I see is an empty mist-shrouded lake.
Then I remember. The sailboat left no wake. The net rippled only time.
Something To Talk About
Two months after the divorce Dad picked me up from work and drove us along the coast to where they brought the sharks in for slaughter. On the beach I sprayed him with fistfuls of sand. He laughed and came crashing into me, forcing me onto the ground. I laughed then, too, although the bruises were already forming on my back. He said he wanted to do something about the sharks. What if we grabbed them as they were being thrown back? Went into the city and put them on CEOs’ desks to be discovered in the morning. Give them something to talk about.
It’s been a week since Dad last picked me up from work. A text said he had to move away, that he was sorry. Now I go down to the beach at night and watch the carcasses floating out to sea.
Strange Tranquility
In the tiny waiting room there is a picture of fishing boats on a calm sea. It was like that when we sailed, but in the flush of a red dawn, the wind increased, flicking spray from breaking waves that stung our faces and made Saafa wake and cry. Then a grey vessel suddenly ahead, and the outboard roaring as we turned away, the inflatable rolling, screams, the shock of cold water, darkness - for a terrible second I lost hold of Safaa, grabbed her again, struggled kicking into the light, and there was Tareq. Desperate cries all round us, but we could only help Saafa, supporting her between our
life jackets, her panicked gasps that wrung my soul.
I push away the memories as a woman comes over, says they are ready for us now. Oddly calm, already reprieved, we lead Saafa forward to learn our fate.
Still Life
With a flick of the brush the jaundiced morning sky is complete. I have smartened our
rags, smoothed the water and painted allies, not thieves, to make it more palatable for
richer parlours.
I trace my hands’ silvery scars, remembering the flash of iridescent scales as the fish
thrashed about our feet in the boat, my palms stinging as the net sliced into soft skin
while we tugged and pulled the wriggling weight on board. Samuel and his brother
hadn’t fared so well even with their sails taking them further out, but they still claimed
half our catch for ‘steadying our boat.’ Pa had given me that look – the same one he
gave me when I told him I preferred the smell of oils and turpentine to fish and brine.
Painting my name with pride, I accept the growl of my stomach as penance for my
shame.
Still Life With Stickup
“Ahoy. AAA road, er, water service.”
“Took you long enough.”
“Sorry. Message in a bottle can be slow this time of day, you should check the tidal
charts. Or use the gulls next time.”
“Noted. Anyway, hand over the strongbox, please.”
“Ah. An ambush. Kind sir please read the sign.”
“Drivers do not carry any guilders. I see.”
“Indeed. Plus, there are two of us. And we too are armed, Delft is not what it used to be. By the time you fire and reload your flintlock one of us will have shot you down.”
“I did not realize there would be two of you.”
“Yes, you paid for the upgraded elite Knickerbocker level package.”
“Ah well at least there are no witnesses, otherwise I’d be in Dutch.”
“On the contrary my fine Heer. See young Vermeer on the shore working away
furiously, we are being painted right now.”
The Boaters
I know that scene. It’s lived in my father’s shed these many years. The image is serene,
boaters in the distance bringing down the sails in the balmy sunset. They look to be coming to shore after a day out fishing or sailing around the coast on a Sunday afternoon. My father is a painter. It soothes his crippling anxiety. He painted this scene as though he were not on that boat. As though he was watching from the shore, imagining he was out fishing with his brothers. Or out for a Sunday sail with my mother and me. As though we were picnicking on the sea. Feeding the fish. Watching dolphins. Soaking up the sun. As though we weren’t almost drowned and lucky to have arrived in Australian waters. Boat people. Arrested. Incarcerated. For our trouble of trying to stay alive by coming here.
The Sea Chest
Put down the axe and step closer.
Look past my rough edges.
My scars tell a story of voyages on rough seas, of card games lost and won, of drunken fights, of being hauled from one port to another, of sultry nights in brothels – the resting place for the buttocks of his favourite – that feel of quivering flesh.
Lift up my heavy lid and find painted inside on the rough wood a picture of my master’s ship - see how the sails unfurl from her masts. I was his prized possession.
Inhale. Have you caught the scent yet? There’s camphor of course – not so pleasant I agree.
Breath deeper, that’s right, nutmeg – just one of the many precious cargoes I carried.
The axe glints in your hand.
I beg you to reconsider.