Last night, Monday, June 22, I was invited out to be a guest reader at the celebration of Flash Fiction Day. There’s a competition and short-listed entrants (and some long-listed one) read their entries. There’s also some guests reading from their own published work — even if they weren’t part of the competition.
I debuted a brand new piece that I wrote specifically for this reading. It’s called And What’s Wrong With That? I’d like To Know. And you can listen to it right here.
Here’s the text if you’d like to read along, or read it as a text-story only:
I guess I’m pretty normal really. I mean I like to drive around roundabouts dozens of times. I like to have tea and coffee in the same cup. At the same time. One pill makes you larger. And one pill makes you smaller, right? The ones my mother gave me didn’t do anything at all, but that’s because they were placebos the doctor ordered. I started in on an apple each day after I found that out. What else though? Um, I like to dance like no one is watching. And the way I manage that best is once a week or so I’ll be in the elevator and stop it somewhere between the 12th floor and the first, and then I’ll put my headphones in and just really get going, locking in with the bass line from Silly Love Songs. Ah, Wings, what a band? I wonder if the singer ever did anything else. I can listen to that song ten times in a row. Which is one way to kill an hour. Another would be with a knife in its side while you held its neck back, I spose. But yeah, nothing out of the ordinary for me really. I like to read hardback books about Spina Bifida and I try to keep up with my taxidermy correspondence course. Which is getting harder these days with the cost of couriers..and the boxes getting bigger. And it can be hard to find low-flying birds to kick out of the sky, or rabbits to run over second time around. Still, swings and roundabouts eh. Sometimes I put a packet of biscuits out for the mice. I dot them around the room, space each biscuit a few inches apart — those ones with the sugar on top. It means we can all live together, but they won’t come into the middle of the room and disturb me from watching the cricket. I keep a close watch, though I doubt he’ll move. The glass has been over him for months now. And nothing. Silence. So I’ll probably stop reading the Iliad aloud. I mean it’s all Greek to me, anyway. But what about you? What are you into? And what would be your idea of something to do to make a great first date?
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