Another month, another dose of short fiction.
You can read the winners and shortlisted entries on the AWC Furious Fiction page or just settle in here with my 500 words. The requirements were that the story: take place in an airport, include the word ‘spring’ and include the phrase ‘it was empty’.
I went for a little bit of post-apocalypso fun…
Departures are bickering hard when I paddle over to Inashnal. It’s how they spend their time. Arguing and watching and waiting for something to happen, somewhere to go. Sitting, always sitting, in their endless rows of seats.
“We’re in the bloody bay,” Gammy Owen roars, because he thinks being loud is the same as being right.
Vespa just rolls her eyes but Hakim can’t help himself.
“River,” he mutters. He should know better. Gammy won’t let no-one else have the last word.
River? Bay? It doesn’t matter to me, nor to the water. The moody bay heaves, sighs salt and tosses her seagrass hair. The river runs, gravy thick and mud-silted, indifferent to our struggle to evade his embrace.
I bite my tongue and wait to be noticed, while Gammy shouts tides and channels and things he knows nothing about. The walkway casing is cracked, but solid enough to hold the stink of rot and mud. I shift my feet and the wet carpet sucks at my thongs like it’s hungry.
I know better than to go through the Gate without permission, though.
“It’s thirty-eight klicks–” Gammy yells.
The nearest McIntyre woman interrupts him.
“Yeah, whatever,” she says, unclipping the barrier. “Here’s Tula from Control. What’s news?”
Even Gammy shuts up then and they turn to me, eyes shining in the light from the broken windows. A few get up from their seats and shuffle closer. I stay by the Gate.
“Domestic,” I say. “The Forties Hub collapsed last night. There’s at least a hundred and twenty-five dead.”
They groan together and the building joins in. Maybe it feels the other terminal’s weakness as its own, since neither was meant to stand in ten metres of water.
Gammy Owens is the first to find his voice. He always is.
“Too many in there,” he gripes. “Too much weight with the spring rains. If it weren’t–”
“Truck got swept down the river,” I say. “Hit the satellite arm by Gate Fifty full on. Smashed the support.”
“Because we’re part of the river,” Hakim says softly.
“Salvage on the truck?” Vespa asks.
“It was empty,” I lie. No use getting them worked up. “Spread the word?”
I wait for Vespa’s nod, so I can tell Nan they’ll let the rest of Inashnal know.
There’s a grim silence, then Hakim says, “Trade?”
We haggle over the usual exchange of the fish I’ve caught and the eggs Nan wants. He passes them to me, once I’m in my kayak, then puts his hands on his hips and glares at the horizon. The water covers everything, except for a few skeleton trees and Control, which rises from it like a wizard’s tower. It’s been this way since the seas rose and the sky fell.
“Bloody river,” he mutters.
I push off from the rusted back of a sunken plane before I turn and shout, “It’s not a river, mate, it’s a bloody sea.”
Word for Wednesday goes piratical for ITLAPD.
Crossing the Lines by Sulari Gentill has recently won the 2018 Ned Kelly Award for the Best Crime Novel. Deservedly so: it’s clever, entertaining and a great example of how metafiction can be fun. It also packs a punch for writers learning their craft.
Sulari knows how to have fun – in fiction and outside it. That’s her, on the left – with Christine Wells on a panel at GenreCon in 2015 – admitting she writes in her pyjamas while watching old Midsomer Murder shows. She’s obviously had some fun blurring the lines between herself and her character Maddie, who’s also a lawyer turned writer who writes crime in her pyjamas.