Exams - Flash Fiction

Zoe sat shredding the serviette, the coffee forgotten, cold in its polystyrene cup. All around other students swarmed in and out. Their chatter a rising crescendo, fading away as the swarm departed. She thought she might die from the noise, it seemed so alien to her. So much chattering and laughter. The remains of the serviette twisted tight in her fingers. She clung to it as if it alone could stop her from falling apart.
A buzzer sounded. The harsh claxon drawing the swarm suddenly away. Alone, Zoe slumped into her seat. And the tears came. 

No mackintosh required.

Saturday 22nd June was the second ever National Flash Fiction Day.
To celebrate it, I invited Amy Mackelden to run a Flash Workshop in the library.

Cue a deluge of 'fnar fnars' and grubby old mackintosh jokes. You can come to your own conclusions as to whether the joke or the mackintosh was grubby! I have heard such jokes in some form or other before and am well used to dealing with them - hey! I'm a librarian, when it comes to nudge, nudge and wink, winking I can out-innuendo the best of them.

A flash workshop is not about learning to lurk in a grubby mac and, with sudden and surprising alacrity, to jump out and reveal your hidden attributes. But in actual fact, I find that there is a similarity. Flash fiction wraps a story up in a few well chosen, well placed words. It either wraps you in a familiar cardigan, comfortable and relaxed, or it presents you with a grubby mac, alien and perturbing, hiding who knows what? In either case, just as you are thinking that you know exactly what's what, flash whips open its chosen vestment and reveals something unexpected.

And it has to be said, our workshop surprised us! Innocuous everyday objects revealed deep dark secrets! Who would have known that Amy's pretty box might contain a clutch of macabre treasures! Holly Golightly's underwear, Schroedinger's cat, severed digits and unsavoury pickles, parallel worlds and alien universes. All these and more lurked quietly in the box waiting for their moment to jump out and surprise us!