These three stories received a Special Mention in judging of the May26 quarter of our Flash Fiction Prize. Youth Custody by Peter Moody, The Museum of Extinct Emotions by Aarnav Nair, and Saved By A Sandwich by Hannah Retallick.
Youth Custody
by Peter Moody
It was the second week of the Autumn term at School. Under the lid of Arthur’s locker was stuck a calendar for 1955 with just seven days crossed from the seventy till Freedom Day, the morning when the end of term would bring the longed-for train journey to liberty and release from servitude.
But for the moment as he stood in the line with six boys at the end of a corridor. He noticed the corner of a window where a spider crouched at the edge of its web, waiting to pounce on a hapless fly that had strayed too close and was trapped. Suddenly it scuttled across, immune to the sticky strands that had enmeshed its prey. Eight legs hugged the insect, but no love embrace this. Doomed, the fly ceased its struggles, surrendering to the inevitable, to be sucked dry, for that was how it was in the world of flies and spiders.
Through the window he could see the boys of the cadet corps, marching back and forth, bellowed at by a master, endlessly repeating the pattern. It was starting to rain, but that didn’t mean no games, just that the field would be deep in mud, clinging to booted feet, pulling at every sticky step the cold drizzle, soaking shivering shirts.
Inside he could hear the shouts of boys; it was recreation time, up to the bell for study time, then the bell for bedtime and too short a gap till the bell for rising time. It was sixty-three days till release time, release to bell-less freedom. That was how it was in the world of boys and masters.
Another joined the end of the queue, a new boy, cast out from his warm home to be held here till the term’s sentence was complete. He was too young to know to disguise the fear in his eyes, a rabbit in a snare every moment predetermined, no escape from what awaited him when the last boy before him had left.
Striding purposefully a gowned figure swept past the line and through the door at the corridor’s end closing it firmly. A red light above the door. Not much time before Arthur would stand, before that door, not long before the light turned green for him. A boy entered and the line shuffled along. Five minutes and the first emerged blinking rapidly and swallowing as he passed the line, head down not meeting eyes.
Later in the dormitory, hot and sore sitting on his bed, he surveyed his little world. A bed, a locker, a scrap of thin rug. He’d done the hospital corners specified by the master, but that morning had been caught out with his bedspread wrinkled ‘making the place look untidy’ and he’d taken the consequence. He’d make sure that didn’t happen again.
Next morning, he crossed another day off the calendar, sixty-two left.
The Museum of Extinct Emotions
by Aarnav Nair
The museum’s most popular exhibit was heartbreak, followed by shame, followed by rage.
James stood in the doorway, watching a woman remove the neural interface headset with trembling hands. The woman’s face was wet.
“Are you alright?” James asked.
The woman touched her cheeks, seemed surprised by the moisture. “Is this normal?”
“Crying is a common physiological response to the mourning simulation,” James said.
The woman nodded and left, still touching her face like it belonged to someone else.
James reset the exhibit, queuing up the next archived memory: Woman saying goodbye to dying mother, Tokyo, 2087. The museum had hundreds of thousands of recordings, each one a preserved moment of authentic human anguish from before the Correction. Before humanity had decided, collectively and gradually, that certain emotions were too dangerous to keep.
It had taken three generations. First came trauma treatments for abuse survivors, merciful interventions that no one questioned. Then behavioural modifications for violent offenders. Then genetic consultations for prospective parents: Would you like to reduce your child’s predisposition toward rage?
Each step seemed reasonable.
By the time James was born, the modifications were standard. He had never felt jealousy, never known rage, never experienced grief.
When his mother died in a transit accident, he received the notification on his way home. The house still smelled like her morning coffee. He sat on their couch and waited for something to happen inside him.
Nothing did.
But later that day, cooking dinner alone, he felt the absence. Not of his mum, he remembered her clearly and fondly. But of some response to her absence. A space where feeling should exist, but didn’t.
He began staying late at the museum.
At first, he told himself it was just work, just ordinary diligence. But inevitably, after the last security guard made their rounds, he found himself in the grief room.
The first time, he chose a simple recording: Man at funeral of his child, Stockholm, 2091.
The neural interface settled against his temples. The archived memory loaded.
And then-
It was like being torn open. The man in the memory stood beside a wooden box knowing that his five year old son was inside it. The grief was physical, a crushing weight on his chest, a blackness that swallowed all the world’s colour.
James gasped when the simulation ended. He sat in the dark museum, his heart racing.
He went back the next night. And the next.
Mother holding stillborn daughter, Kinshasa, 2089.
Old man learning his wife of sixty years has died, Mumbai, 2094.
Each archived sorrow was unbearable. Each one contained something else beneath the pain: a desperate, clawing love.
Gradually, through repeated exposure to these borrowed sorrows, something woke in James, the archived emotions began to resonate with his own absent loss.
One night, sitting at home, James began to cry.
They weren’t simulation tears. They were his.
Saved By A Sandwich
by Hannah Retallick
The woman told every passer-by that she was saved by a sandwich and always carried around a jar of peanut butter in case something happened again. It kept everyone away. Who would want to be around some old bird who muttered about a sandwich being the greatest superhero?
Well, you might have learnt something, heard a fascinating story, if you’d listened past in case something happened again.
You were walking your dog, striding along, almost too absorbed in yourself to notice the small, hunched figure whose legs barely touched the floor. The moment she spoke, you bristled and accelerated, as though trying to avoid a beggar. But she wanted nothing from you, apart from for you to hear her.
Rewind. Shall we try that again in a parallel world? You were walking your dog, striding along, and you saw a strange old woman sitting on the wall beside the main road – the road that’s asking for accidents with its junction, new corner shop, and sharp bend no tourist expects.
The old lady asked if you’re allergic to peanut butter. When you told her yes, a little, she moved the pot to the other side of her and advised immediate evacuation. Her hand was a stop sign, reaching toward you. Horror was etched into her lined face. Go, go.
Because here’s the thing: she could tell a bad man from a good man, and you were a good man. A single glance was enough. A prickle in her spine would have signalled the contrary, and… well…
Thirty years ago, the chairman stayed behind, insisting on helping her lock up the townhall. She was in the kitchen making a peanut butter sandwich to gulp down before heading to chapel for choir practice. She had just taken a thick, sticky mouthful, when he cornered her against the counter. Prickling spine. His hands grabbed her waist, and he forced his mouth onto hers before she could resist. He tasted it immediately, pulled back, but the peanut butter had already passed from her lips to his. Within seconds his throat swelled, and she froze, watching him claw his collar, his face distorting.
That’s the gist of the story she would have told you.
And then, she would’ve looked up, examined your horror, wondered if it was too much for you to process on a Monday winter morning. She needn’t have worried. You never stopped; you never heard her story.
It didn’t affect her, because you were just one of many, a trickle of inattentive pedestrians, walking their dogs, jogging, chatting on their phones. They were eyes down, so focused on ignoring her, that none of them saw: the man in a white Volvo who underestimated the severity of the corner, the cyclist who was checking Google maps, the bus whose driver always waved to the woman who was as consistent as his own timetable.
She saw it clearly.
And here was a new story to tell. This time, you will stop. You will all stop.
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