It’s the best time of the month, time to read and vote for your favourite story!
The 10 shortlisted stories in the March Monthly Micro contest are now ready for voting. Congratulations to everyone on the list.
You can read and vote until 23.59 GMT on Monday 25th March and the winners will be announced on the 26th. The prompts was LIE and we loved the miriad ways these stories interpreted this. Hope you like them as much as we do!
DRAFT COMMS Stringer 09.03.24 (F-drive)
Dear Ms Stringer
I write in my capacity as Complaints Officer, Utopia Plus Pty Ltd (Trading as Trevor’s Timepieces). The Store Manager indicated you are barking mad expressed concern because your Santorini Sun timepiece is not fully automatic. You also asked ad nauseum to speak with imbecile Trevor. As my colleague explained, Trevor’s Timepieces is a company name only. Rather than “Trevor” being too “gutless” to come out and face you, I can assure you, Trevor simply doesn’t exist.
As our budget-friendly range, Santorini Sun timepieces are priced from $20. Our battery-free range, E-Motion, starts at $325. If you would like to return your cheap and nasty timepiece, I can organise a refund. Alternatively, the original purchase price could be deducted from an E-Motion upgrade.
To discuss these options Karen, please feel free to ask someone who cares contact me on 1800 393 624.
Yours sincerely
M. Bezel
Funny Bones
Our milkman has a peg leg and a black beard. You can hear his clink stomp up our path every Monday and Friday. Ma says he’s a pirate, recently returned from the High Seas.
’Don’t fill the child’s head with lies.’ Da says. ‘He lost his leg in the Army. Your Ma thinks she’s funny,’
Ma tuts and puts the milk in the fridge.
She is funny. Everyone but Da thinks so. She’s got funny bones, the neighbours say and I see the Jolly Roger flag, grinning. The milkman—call me Stan— laughs hardest of all. He’s a man with a glint of no-time-to-lose.
Da doesn’t know we’re in a house under siege.
Clink stomp clink stomp clink stomp.
I Took The Truth With Me
Grandma was a liar. We all knew, having heard it said since we were children. Her tall tales were family folklore. Do you remember when Granny said she’d won a race with a wolf? When she said her comb, iridescent with pearls, was a gift from the sea wife? When she whispered to me one storm-scudding night that I was a changeling,
gifted?
We were taught to laugh and tut at her fancies. I would watch from my corner as her cheeks flushed into pink peonies and knew the mockery hurt. I took to sitting with her, capturing her stories in yarn and silks.
On the day she breathed her last a wolf howled in the woods like an inconsolable lover. The sea rose up, a woman shaking out voluminous skirts, petticoats frothing over the harbour wall. I packed our tapestries, opened the door and finally unfurled my wings.
On Lying Down and Looking Up
During the interview, they ask her if it happened in his childhood bedroom or in the Canuck laundry or in the ACME backroom. They don't ask if she lay down herself or if she was on her back for other reasons, like reading Emma or sleeping off a hangover. They don't ask if the linted feathers from the pillow pinched her shoulder blades or if the ground left marks in unexpected places like the soles of her feet.
Instead, they tell her what happens to girls who lie. How some set of faceless and “countless” women put the truth on its back.
How, if it was them in that basement, they wouldn't have gone lying down.
Basement, she repeats. That’s oddly specific.
They exchange a look and bear down and, like she did then, she pictures snow angels, arms sifting feathered dust as they try to remember how to fly.
Thank You!
Mum told me to write a stupid thank you note because you asked me over to play with Tori. First of all, we’re almost 14—we hang. Second thing, what’s with the note—I’m not one of those loser fucking Bronte sisters. What’s next, ringlets and fireside needlepoint FFS. Mum drives me batshit—that’s the one thing I have in common with Tori. You and Mum keep friggin’ gratitude journals. Tori and me are just grateful we can talk about how shit you are. You should tell Tori it’s rude to read when she has a visitor. Didn’t talk for over two hours. I lip-synched Anti-Hero on Tik-Tok. And those high-fibre, vegan muffins—deadly little cannonball fuckers.
That feels better...anyway...
________________________________________________________________________
Thanks for having me over Mrs Rafferty. It’s always great to have time with Tori and I
loved those yummy muffins.
See you next time,
Ruby xox
Then and Now - Hot and Cold
THEN:
They said he was hot-headed, but knew it was underlaid with the word excuse. They turned away from the incremental steps they witnessed, confining them to their imaginations. They avoided each other’s eyes. When he told them she had left him, they believed him the way eight-year-old children believe in Santa Claus.
NOW:
The Police call them cold cases, the ones when all viable leads have been exhausted, the disappearances still unsolved. But then, a new lead might come out of the blue, a body discovered, sometimes no more than a skeleton.
They will see it on the TV, and their guilt will keep the answers zipped inside their lips, and anyway, they’ve not seen him for years. But they will go to bed that night and, in the blackness, will break into a sweat, feel the hot and the cold of it.
The Small Deceits of Daughterhood are A Practised Art
You won’t remember how I fluff your pillow, set your pearls straight, place your rosary in your arthritic hands, their praying done. You won’t remember how you mistake me for your sister, ask me,
“Nellie, what have you done to your hair, what will mother say?”
You won’t remember how you cradle my child and think she is me. You won’t remember how you sing When Irish eyes are smiling to her, softly as moth’s wings, as you stroke the dark slick of her hair. You won’t remember how you tell me my long dead father will be home soon,
“Nellie, I must dash, Paul will be wanting his tea on.”
You won’t remember how I tell you,
“No bother Nora, Paul will be through the door soon.”
You won’t remember your smile; how my small deceit creases your face with peace, as you ease back, awaiting my father’s homecoming.
The White Lie
I said the colour was lovely. My opinion wouldn’t matter, would it? Also, to be honest I was fed up looking at Bridesmaid dresses. I was hungry and slightly drunk from the bucks fizz the wedding boutique offered us.
“Does it look like baby vomit?” Helen fingered the frothy off-yellow lace on the gown.
“No” I lied for a second time. “It balances the green.” This was true, it did indeed take the eye away from the pea-green dress.
Helen rightfully looked dubious.
“I love it!” A big fat lie now.
“Very elegant.” Simpered the sales assistant, who was probably hungry and fed up with Helen’s dithering as well.
“See.” I beamed. “It’s gorgeous!”
“Would you wear it?” Helen asked.
My stomach rumbled, The Queens Head would stop serving food soon. “Absolutely!
That was months ago. Before Helen asked me to be her bridesmaid.
Things I’ve Learnt Since Becoming A Mother
How to conduct a hamster funeral. How to dig a hole in the frozen November ground.
How to reassure your neighbour that you aren’t a serial killer when they find you with a spade in your hand in the garden at night. How Guns n Roses really weren’t kidding when they said it’s hard to hold a candle in the cold November rain. How to order a hamster gravestone from Etsy (that Etsy really do sell hamster gravestones). How to re-bury the aforementioned hamster when the cat digs it up. How to dig a deeper hole in the frozen November ground. How to hold a small life in its final moment. How to hold a child as they realise death is not an abstract thing. How helpless my son looks as he realises, I can’t make everything right.
How to pretend that I still believe in heaven.
Things My Teenage Son Tells Me About What Happened That Day, on the Top Deck of the Number 22
He’s foetal beneath his bedsheets. They were mucking about, he says. They snatched her satchel. Her coloured pens were a spilled rainbow rattling in the aisle.
He tells me Scott put his hand on her thigh. That she stood, swaying on the moving bus. That it was Ritchie pushed himself against her as she reached, stumbling, for the bell.
He tells me it was at that bend in the road where the lamp-posts stop, where the hedgerows grow, where the traffic speeds up.
He tells me the shock of the headline: Fatal Hit and Run, her school photo beneath, quotes from her parents, perplexed at why she was walking home. His voice pillow-damped, he tells me she always sat in the same seat. That she smiled at him once. That he told them to leave her alone.
And because he’s my son, I have to believe he’s telling the truth.
It really was difficult to choose. Fabulous stories. Congratulations to everyone on the shortlist. 😀
Congratulations, everyone! They're all fabulous stories.