Flash Fiction Competition #WEEDS

Happy to win (joint) third place in Watford Writers Flash Fiction competition last night on the theme "Weeds". There was an eclectic mix of takes on the theme, from parenticide by weedkiller to the throwing off of "widow's weeds".

Here is my entry, THE WOODS.

The Woods

It’s late and we are in the woods.

I have a terrible feeling like roiling waves in the pit of my stomach.

But Lorna is my best friend, and though I can’t forgive her, I can’t walk away.

Deeper into the woods we walk, thistles and nettles clawing at my bare legs. Our feet crush stalks. A bramble runs a ladder across my skin. In front, the torch beam judders this way and that. My breath is loud in the vastness.

The torch stills.

“Here.”

“How—”

It doesn’t matter.

I hold the torch and she starts to dig. Soil, stones, bits of tree root. The ground is tough and dry and she pants.

And then: scraps of a plastic bag.

I can barely look.

Something hard.

A flash of white beneath the mud like the glint of teeth.

In another life, in another time, we are digging holes in the sand, making a moat. The water rushes in from the sea. We bury each other. We are laughing.

I shiver.

One by one she gathers the bones of the body of the baby that never breathed.

The spade clangs on stones as she smooths the ground over. Soon enough this patch of brown will be covered by hungry weeds again.

We walk.

Past the bulldozer.

Back to the car.

She is quiet.

We were never here, this never happened.

In the morning I will never see her again.

We drive to the quay. There is a westerly wind tonight, the tide is rolling out into the blackness.

The world will never know that my best friend and my husband made this child.