Competition Eighteen Highly Commended: Perfectly Portioned Victoria Sponge by Maria Thomas

Later, you’ll sit at the kitchen table gazing at the perfectly portioned Victoria Sponge your daughter made and wonder why you didn’t say ‘yes, of course’ when she asked if she had time for a second slice.

Later, you’ll glance your palm across white cotton cloth, feeling atoms of cake beneath it, before clenching a fist and slamming into that perfectly portioned Victoria Sponge, watching as cake and cream and jam fly around the room, onto the tiled floor, shattering completely, as flesh shatters completely when two tonnes of metal slam into it.

Later, you’ll crash your fist into that sponge and watch as cake and cream and jam fly onto the tiled floor, and you’ll do that to stop yourself screaming, but then you’ll scream anyway, you’ll scream, and you won’t be able to ever stop screaming.

Now, you tell her ‘no’ when she asks if she has time for another slice of perfectly portioned Victoria Sponge.

Now, you usher her into her coat, busy her out of the door to hockey, or netball, or swimming, watching with your hand raised in farewell as she pedals her bike around the corner and out of sight.

Now, you wonder as you gaze down the empty road at the space she just occupied, why, when she asked if she had time for another slice of perfectly portioned Victoria Sponge, you didn’t say ‘we have all the time in the world, my love.’

‘We have all the time in the world.’

Maria Thomas is a middle-aged, apple-shaped mum. Maria recently won Oxford Flash Fiction competition and her story ‘Following the Siren Song’ was named Best Speculative Fiction by the Welkin Writing Prize. Maria also won Free Flash Fiction’s Competition 13, Retreat West’s April 2022 Micro competition. She was a finalist in the London Independent Story Prize (LISP) 2022, and second place in Propelling Pencil. She can be found on Twitter as @AppleWriter and Insta as @AppleShapedWriter and @appleshapedwriter.bsky.social

Photo by James Petts on flickr

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