Flash Fiction

“No, you definitely can’t see the Big Dipper from Dunsandle, but you can see the Southern Cross alright!”

She didn’t acknowledge me, but I knew she’d heard and understood.

I looked down at her again.

“You really are a cutie,” I cooed.

Still no response; her fuscous eyes staring, fixating on the galaxies high above, pure amazement on her face.

I’d only just met her.

I’d just popped out of the Hall to smoke a durry and take a piss. I’d walked around the side of the old wooden building towards the domain behind, peering into the windows as I went by. I’d briefly watched Athol Simmons in the Hall Office, trying his hardest to familiarise himself with Glenys Hollis’s topography. While Athol struggled to unhinge Glenys’s bra, the Kirwee Cooees played their interpretation of Lonnie Donegan’s “Cumberland Gap”. It seemed way too appropriate.

I kept walking, nearly tripping over…

Come gentle night!

“The battle between light and dark, good and evil is as old as death itself.”

Ramiro smiled, “Surely you mean life; for, without life, there can be no death.”

The old exorcist chuckled. “You are mistaken, young man; but it goes with your age! Death walks with and then stalks us all; and it is possible to be both alive and dead, or should I say, dead and alive.”

“This is the wisdom I seek, Monsignor, the reason I have come to see you. As an exorcist, you tread the fine line between the living and the dead, the saved and the damned.”

“Then tell me, my son, how can I help you?”

“Forgive me, Monsignor, I think I have fallen in love with an Aswang.”

“This cannot be so Ramiro, you come from a long line of mortals…

Uncle Gregory (aka The suicide tree)

He had come to cut me down.

I watched him approach. Weighed down by more than the chain saw he shouldered, his force evaporated space in front of him. Yet, I could see gravity taking its toll, grinding him closer to the ground, the sky pressing, squeezing, flattening him.

I saw tears in his eyes, anger in his cheeks. Early morning vapour exploded from his lungs, flumes of expelled air as vigorous as dragons’ breath, as powerful as a training horse. This man was on a mission, and I knew what it was.

He had come to cut me down.

Unafraid, I welcomed him. With a subtle cold breeze blowing, I beckoned him closer, sympathetically throwing golden leaves before him, laying a soft autumnal path. As usual, there were no birds to frighten into the skies. Superstitious and afraid; they had not rested, roosted…