Dromineer Literary Festival Flash Short Story Competition Winners 2011
FLASH SHORT STORY COMPETITION was judged by Vincent McDonnell
1st LOST FOR WORDS by Hedy Gibbons Lynott from Co Galway
Lost For Words
That morning you followed Dad round the back of Liz Garvey’s farm and heard them yelling at each other; him calling her his whore, her telling him what to do with his dick. I bet you didn’t even know what she meant; you were that kind of innocent. The sudden quiet, the moaning and gasping: You thought Dad was killing her? Ejit! Then you peeked over the window-ledge. And there they were stretched on the long scrubbed-white table, him on top of her, she nuzzling his neck. Until he looked up and saw you.
That was the time you started getting up early. It was a good time, you said, for ‘doing things’ - writing poetry, making a story. I remember how a shaft of sunlight caught you that morning when you slipped in the scullery door. You put your wellies under the bench hoping Mam wouldn’t notice you’d been out across the Long Fields. But she noticed your white face. And said you’d better have your breakfast.
I waited for you after school, big sister, with your long fair plait, thick as a rope, swinging down your back. We chattered nineteen to the dozen walking home - Sr. Bernard’s temper, Carrie Johnson’s new dress, the school books we were getting. It was when we pushed the door open that the talking stopped and we went into the silence.
….
Up to that time Dad called you his special girl. He stopped speaking to you then, slicing through the space around you, his eyes dead coals in a grate when they lit on you. Or was it you that stopped speaking to him? It was about the time Mam’s laugh went missing, too.
You’d come into the kitchen around five-thirty. The rest of us were helping Mam with dinner.
‘How’s the homework going?’ Mam asked, taking soda bread out of the oven and tapping it with her knuckles. Then she’d wrap it in a tea-towel, and put it on the windowsill to cool.
‘Have this now, before your father comes in.’ her eyes on the plate she was loading with food, shuttling between range and sink, not looking at you.
You’d slide along the bench into your place, and eat up.
‘Nearly finished? Good girl. You better get back to that homework. No burning the midnight oil! A growing girl needs her beauty sleep.’
And you’d vanish through the kitchen door carrying in the air around you something that the creak of a floor-board, the tick of the kitchen clock, even the chink of a cup against a saucer, might shatter.
Later, I’d watch you go outside to take big gulps of air and I’d follow you. Your fingers were gentle as you brushed my hair out of my eyes. I wanted to stand there forever, you stroking my hair. Sometimes I felt you tremble. It felt like fear.
I used to wonder what there was to be afraid of. You were old. Thirteen. They called you a ‘free spirit.’ Dad ignored you. Mam smiled and stuffed your mouth full of food. I missed you. That morning of your eighteenth birthday when we found your note on the kitchen table I wasn’t really surprised. You’d left us long before that. All these years not knowing why.
Until a month ago, you were on your way to receive a writing award. When the police came they said you’d died instantly, skidding into a big tree as you rounded the bend. You’d named me next-of-kin. Yesterday, I started clearing out your flat. And found your diary.
2nd COFFEE BREAK by Lucie Kavanagh from Co Mayo
Coffee Break
It’s raining but Martin, barely covered by the edge of the gazebo, hardly seems to notice. We come out here with our coffees every day and talk about our mothers.
“Sure it’s poison, that stuff,” he says.
“It’s her only chance,” I tell him.
“If that’s her only chance, then take her home.”
“She’s only 60. She wants to fight it.”
“I’m 60.” He sighs and stares beyond me to the car park where doubtlessly he has spend the same hours as me trying to find a parking space.
...............................
It’s raining but Martin, barely covered by the edge of the gazebo, hardly seems to notice. He’s had a hard night. His mother has dementia and doesn’t sleep much. She stands at the window in her room and tries to smell the sea. He explains to her that it is beyond the city, just over the hills but she thinks she is in her bedroom at home, listening for the waves and the tide coming in. He and his mother have always been together, looking after each other, looking after their little house on the edge of the Connemara coast.
““Fourteen of us, she reared. All her life, that’s what she’s known,” Martin says, “I’ll take her home the minute she’s strong enough.”
I tell Mom about Martin and his mother and their house by the sea and we both hope she will get home to it soon.
“If it wasn’t for the buildings, you could see the sea from outside her ward,” Mom says, in short months, a veteran of every aspect of this particular building.
..........................................................
It’s raining but Martin, sitting barely covered by the edge of the gazebo, hardly seems to notice. I watch his face, the exhaustion beyond exhaustion, the deceptive energy that cons your body into constant movement.
It’s been a bad night. When we get up to return to our respective parts of the hospital, I squeeze his hand and tell him that hopefully tomorrow will be better.
The next day in the canteen, he is surrounded by silent men and women. He beckons to me.
“Sheila, Nora, Kit, Patrick, John, Colm...” I lose track of the names as we all shake hands. There’s an uncomfortable shuffling as they stand and start to make their way towards the door. Martin turns to me.
“She won’t get home.”
“She’s home with all of you there.”
“Fourteen of us, there are.”
“She did a good job on you all.”
“How’s your mother?”
“Not too bad.”
He looks hard at my face. I try to smile.
“She’s coming home, Martin. No more chemo. She wants to be at home.”
Suddenly his arms are around me and we’re clinging to each other like children. Then he’s enveloped in his family as they make their way towards the lift.
I sit down uncertainly. Martin is gone and suddenly I feel as if I’ve reached the top of a queue that for once in my life, I had no wish to rush.
I have to return to Mom. There are occupational therapists to see, prescriptions to fill and packing. She is desperate to be out of here now.
But I walk behind Martin and his family. I take the stairs and wait until they have entered the ward. I walk to the end of the hallway, to the big window. I press my face against the glass.
It’s true. If you look very hard over the buildings and there is no mist, you can see the faint sparkle of the sea against the skyline.
3rd DUST by Elizabeth Power from Galway City
Dust
The owner of this loot is a bird of a woman with hair flicked out and a black band to keep it neat. She winces at my scrutiny.
‘Fuck off out of my cupboards and get your own story. I’ve enough to deal with,’ she says, pushing an avalanche of runners back in the press.
I run out of words and call a friend for help.
‘It’s crap,’ Joan sighs, when I read an extract. ‘What’s the exercise called?’
‘For Sale. Baby shoes. Never worn. 300 words.’
I don’t like her pause.
‘Just how much avoidance went into that?’ she enquires.
‘Huh.’
‘Go write the story’ she instructs.
I pass the baby shoes each day on my way to the bathroom. There they sit, smart navy blue with a green tartan trim, on an upstairs window. Occasionally, my finger checks for dust in the cracks of the leather.
She is dust now and I no longer want to dig her up and polish her bones like they do in Thailand.
I met a woman from Pettigo who dug the dead child up and brought him home. Went down to the grave and shoved a shovel into the earth and started to dig. And kept digging. It must have taken awhile and I don’t know how she got the box up but she did. Then she took him out of the satin wrapping and brought him home and put him in the bed beside her. Her husband took it hard, coming in the back bedroom of the cottage and seeing the dead child propped up in the pillow like that.
‘Aye. What did they expect but? When I woke up from the drugs they gave me, the funeral was done and dusted.’
I get a cloth and polish the shoes and want the ground to spit her out. I want to split the clouds above my head and grab her back. I want to shake the trees that she might fall like an apple into my arms.
By the time we reached the hospital she was dead. The song ‘Going on up to the spirit in the sky’ played on the tannoy as we came through the door.
The electric bulb had blown in the mortuary and a priest held a torch while I washed and laid her out. There was an overwhelming smell of apples. I was calm, elated even. I put on the white dress that Ann had ironed that afternoon and I picked up the shoes. Smart navy blue with a green tartan trim. Navy to go with her navy blue eyes.
I hear a whisper, ‘I’m walking the blue sky now, Mama. I don’t need the shoes.’
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