Competition Fourteen Highly Commended: He Will Understand Eventually by Fhionna Mac
The place she’s moved to is a dump. Plaster lurches from the walls to escape the grip of something sinister. The ceiling fan rips its wires free and dangles horrifically, bent arms reaching out for a saviour. She wishes she could take it back; beg for his forgiveness, festering with a newfound honesty.
She does not cry. She feeds her daemons with scraps she finds in the freezer, scrapes and scratches at the hardened mounds of frost to find the good stuff buried deep behind another person’s pop tarts crammed with something pink. She heats some greyish flesh in the microwave, stabs it lethargically with a fork. How could she have been so stupid? Soon aphotic echoes curl around her mind, squeezing themselves into every nook and fissure.
But forgiveness lingers in the sepia folds of happier memories, happier places; the lily festooned paper of the covered bedroom walls she shared with him; the park bench on Denver, as strangers smiled in their direction, in the primrose yellow sunlight, as he held her hand and kissed her parted lips.
Remorseful prayers creep onto her muscled tongue at night; well-practiced. Whispered words absorbed into her flesh; inky bruises staining alabaster skin. She lays in guilt-soaked sheets as motes of torment thicken the air, dancing in a knowing way. In supplication, she covers her head to avoid the dread that lingers just above her.
On the seventh day she will try again; try to raise herself, stand tall, stammer an apology. He may listen as she lays her sorrow at his feet. He will hold her trembling hands then touch her cheek gently; he was never there; she needed someone.
Fhionna Mac lives at the beach, in the west coast of Scotland, with her partner and many dogs. She started writing in 2020 and is due to complete her MA in Creative Writing with the Open University, in September 2023.
Fhionna has been known to show great excitement when her stories have been published. Inelegant cartwheels were witnessed when her works appeared in online journals, such as, Free Flash Fiction (FFF), Haunted Waters Press, and Flash Fiction Magazine (FFM). Her work, most recently, has been published in the 2023 Hammond House Anthology.
Fhionna’s short stories have been short listed in various competitions, including:
Flash500, Bristol Short Story Award, Fish Publishing, Oxford Flash Fiction Prize, Quiet Man Dave Prize, Globe Soup (online), FFM (online), Free Flash Fiction (online), and the Hammond House Publishing Prize.
Photo – Bed Sheets by Hayley Finn
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Beautiful…I love the sentence when she ‘scraps, scrapes, scratches…’
This is prose but must be read as poetry.