Spaghetti Wednesday

cropped-bugs

Nan plonked the bowls down on the table.

‘What is it?’ Flora asked.

Nan sighed like she did every Wednesday. ‘Spaghetti.’

‘Again?’

‘Again.’ She watched Flora push strips of Kraft cheese single into the sauce. Flaccid worms curled through a brown swamp, swirling with radioactive orange. She hated cooking.

‘What’s this?’ Flora held up a blob pierced by a fork tine.

‘Nothing,’ said Nan. ‘Just eat it.’

‘I think it’s an insect.’

‘It’s not an insect.’

Later, scraping the left-overs into the bin, Nan pretended not to see the pairs of tiny pincers, hooked legs and cooked eyes staring up at her.

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You can blame the picture this week on Doug MacIlroy and the choice of it on Rochelle Wisoff-Fields. Click here to read more Friday Fictioneers stories, and here to join in.

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This week, Our Endless Numbered Days has been picked as one of Isabel Costello’s thirteen Hot Fiction Picks 2015. If you visit her website you can enter a competition to win your choice of one the books listed. (UK postage only.)

Short story: Food

grapevine2bgoo11

 

For almost a week in April or perhaps May – I had long lost track of the months by then – we ran out of food. The snow had melted but the cruel earth still refused to yield and no animals struggled in our traps.

I dreamed of Ute’s apple strudel as plump as a breast under a peasant’s blouse, and when I woke the phantom scent of cinnamon and pastry continued to tease me.

A mile from the cabin, we found a bed of heather which an insect had colonised, laying its grubs in gobs of spittle. My father and I ate them all.

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This is a 100-word piece of flash fiction based on the picture above. It’s actually a summer re-run…our group mistress, Rochelle Wisoff-Fields is on holiday, and so has suggested that all us Friday Fictioners can also have a week’s holiday and dig out our story from August 2012.

This scene, changed and expanded, actually made it into my novel. I love the idea that all these flash fiction pieces, mine and other people’s might have a life beyond our weekly writings.

To read more of what has been written in response to this picture click here. Or to join in and write your own, visit Rochelle’s website, here.