Competition Thirty-Five Highly Commended: Dreams of Camelot by Joanna Miller

All that summer, they lived the American dream, cruising hot Buffalo nights, high on life, guzzling happy hour one-dollar drinks. When fall’s exuberance left her breathless, he took her to the Albright-Knox. Stilled by Jackson Pollock’s tangled webs, she introduced him to the Pre-Raphaelites and The Lady of Shalott.

Come December, he chained the car tyres, and they journeyed to his folks’, talking about their future together.

“Don’t look,” he said. On the highway, clusters of dilapidated shacks scarred flat farmland. Here, poverty dead-eyed them through the glass.  She turned away, unnerved by sunken lips and hollowed cheeks.

At the exclusive country club, his parents welcomed them, ordering maple syrup pancakes.

“Maybe we could go skating,” she said, enchanted by the lake view outside the picture windows.

“No, too dangerous. Last year, the ice shelf gave way—swallowed a girl whole.”

Instead, she followed his ski tracks through silent woods where snowshoe hares and deer hid, watched the sun drybrush its monochrome landscape, transforming ice to diamonds.

“There, and there.” He pointed out the hidden dens where he’d spent his youth, marking his territory like the coyotes.

“Listen,” he said, cupping a hand over his mouth.

An eerie howl encircled the fir trees. When the wild answered, she shivered.

“I’ll be back,” she promised, crying in the airport lounge. “As soon as the visa’s renewed. Look after my things.”

But within months, her letters dwindled. Much later, on mauve Somerset evenings, she’d light a joint, dream of Camelot again. Then memories would spin her back to that downtown apartment with its rickety fire escape, and those times he taught her to make eggs the way they did at Freddie’s Diner, standing close, so she could feel the hardness of him, telling her to flip the bright, sunny side over easy.

Joanna lives in Derbyshire on the edge of the Peak District with her partner, three dogs and a cat. Her micro and flash stories have been listed in various competitions, including Edinburgh True Flash Fiction Award, Fish Flash Fiction Prize, Tadpole Press 100 and the London Independent Story Prize. She has been published by Bath Flash Fiction, Writing Magazine, the Scottish Arts Trust, Free Flash Fiction, Wildfire Words FF150 and WOW! Women on Writing.

The Lady of Shalott is a painting (1888) by the English painter John William Waterhouse, in the public domain

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