Flash Fiction

The art closet is always locked at lunch but one day they find it open. They spill the glitter from tubs onto pages. It’s an avalanche, scree from magical mountains.  They blow it off the tops of their thumbs and watch it mushroom, suspended temporarily; it drifts through the air as if there was fairy warfare. They spread it out on the page and drag their fingers through it until it’s a whorl, the thumb print of a giant. Their teacher calls. Panicked, stumbling into the closet. So this is how it feels to be in a snow globe.

There’s not a lot of places to go in this town. There’s an industrial estate, warehouses blotting the horizon.  We went drinking there as teenagers, joked about climbing the cranes. During the day it held none of the same appeal. During the day it was just ugly, not dangerous. Dangerous. I can’t go back. Danger used to excite me, not frighten me, not remind me. We always drank too much. My mam wheels me by on the foot path, we can’t avoid going by that way as there’s not a lot of places to go in this town.

You sewed a button onto your coat, one which didn't match the others. I imagine you could have imagined a button falling off when it didn't. Maybe a button had fallen off another coat and you forgot which one. We laughed at first. It was funny, nothing to worry about. Then you tried to boil milk in the kettle, you picked up the remote control like the telephone, you went into the Garda station to buy your bread.  A soft grey round button among shiny black ones, you pull at it now as if it reminds you of something.