Challenge #8: Write a magical realist story featuring a mentor character in which there is no direct dialogue.
When Grandmother calls, she says that everything will turn out alright in the end. I haven't told her that the wolves are at the door.
Metaphorically and literally.
I'm not sure which concerns me more.
At first I thought that it was stress. You worry about a thing—about next week's work rota, about making ends meet—and you start to see it as an animal skulking about behind the railings across the road.
Then you realise that there really is an animal, and you think that it's a fox.
Then you hear the howling, find the claw marks in the wood.
***
When Grandmother calls, she says that everything will turn out alright in the end. I haven't told her that the wolves are in the stairwell.
Nobody else seems to notice as they step over them or squeeze by. Perhaps they think they're just somebody's dogs. Perhaps it's simply easier than acknowledging that they're there.
While the sun's up they just sit there, lounging on the stairs.
I don't look at them after dark.
***
When Grandmother calls, she says that everything will turn out alright in the end. I haven't told her that the wolves are in the flat.
They're drinking all the milk and using all the broadband watching Breaking Bad.
But I do tell Grandmother that she was right all along.
Things are easier now the rent's split twenty ways.
CZYTASZ
Blunderball
HumorYour mission, should you choose to accept it, is to read these 31 very short stories written for Flash Fiction Month 2018. Some follow the adventures of spies and secret agents, more of them don't, and most are very, very silly. This book will not s...
