Kathy Sharp's Blog - Posts Tagged "flash-fiction"

It had been an interesting job, he thought, as the train rumbled up to the platform. Unusual. Sort of weighty. He picked up the case carefully, checking the latch. It wouldn’t do to have this lot spilling all over the place. Amazingly heavy, this haul, with all the little boxes and things. But it was satisfying to be able to deliver the complete set.
Aboard the train he settled with the case between his knees. No point in risking it falling out of the luggage rack. People tutted and pushed past, but he ignored them. Cross looks couldn’t bother him, not when he was so close to completing this commission. Delivery on time, as agreed.
It was odd, he thought, the things people collected. And how much they were willing to pay for them, too. Locating all the components of this particular haul had been a job for a skilled thief – an organised professional with international contacts, no less – certainly not for the merely light-fingered. Oh dear me, no. This series of thefts had been a work of art, carried out worldwide to a very tight timetable. There had been a carefully thought out programme of additional thefts, too, to prevent the police identifying a pattern too quickly.
He lifted the case again. Reassuringly heavy. Well, it would be, since it contained a complete set of Olympic weight-lifting medals. He shook his head, and rubbed his hands in anticipation of a handsome payment. It was amazing what some people collected.

Kathy Sharp is the author of fabulous fantasy novel Isle of Larus http://tinyurl.com/olfyskv and the exciting sequel Sea of Clouds http://amzn.to/1wYCPH0

“It’s a calamity, Mr Partridge.” Mrs Shrubsole was making no bones about it. “Just like his father, that boy. And to think we kept him away from it all this time.”
“But surely,” said Mr Partridge, “it isn’t that bad? Once we’re beyond the early stages – an asset to the community in the long run.”
Mrs Shrubsole was having none of it. Old Partridge was elevating the whole thing into an artistic matter. But then he was nearly deaf. All those years with the brass band had wrecked his hearing.
“It’s the early stages I’m worried about,” she said. “His father used to bring the plaster off the ceiling, regular, with that tuba. That’s why we locked it in a trunk in the attic. Locked it, and threw away the key, Mr Partridge.”
Young Ernest had come running in all excited. Mr Partridge, the music master, had invited him to join the band. Mrs Shrubsole had frowned, and fearfully asked what instrument the lad proposed to play. Perhaps it would be only a triangle. But it was a faint hope. “No,” the boy had said, “I wanted a trombone.” Mrs Shrubsole shuddered. “But my arms wasn’t long enough. He’s giving me a cornet to start.”
So Mrs Shrubsole had gone to have a few choice words with the music master. “Well, it’s done now. But you know the boy’s as tone-deaf as his father, Mr Partridge.”
She turned to leave, and then paused and added, “So he’ll be practising at your house.”


Kathy Sharp is the author of fabulous fantasy novel Isle of Larus http://tinyurl.com/olfyskv and the exciting sequel Sea of Clouds http://amzn.to/1wYCPH0

“And this used to be such a pleasant neighbourhood.” Mrs Churchill bristled with indignation. And so did her dog, baring its teeth.
“Hush, Charles,” she said sharply, before a growl could develop. The dog sat down obediently.
“They tell me I am guilty of common assault,” she went on. “Me! A pillar of the community. But it was entirely that policeman’s fault. I am not guilty. It was a misunderstanding.”
The dog grunted, clearly in agreement.
“Hush, Charles. My dog was fully entitled to bite somebody trespassing upon my property. That’s why I keep a dog. The man was skulking around my front garden. Looking for his helmet, he said. Young lad from down the road threw it over the hedge, he said. But how was poor Charles to know that?”
Charles assumed a hang-dog expression.
“So when I heard the yelping – you don’t expect policemen to yelp, do you? – most undignified – I naturally rushed outside, and I just happened to have the skillet in my hand.”
The dog stared up at her in blatant admiration.
“And so, when I found a man in my garden attacking my beloved dog, I acted immediately. There was no intention to knock him out cold – but I was concerned about poor Charles. He broke a tooth on that brute’s ankle, you know.”
Charles looked down modestly.
“At any rate, I’m sure the magistrate will agree I was within my rights. And I shall be suing the Police Force for buckling my skillet, too.”

Kathy Sharp is the author of fabulous fantasy novel Isle of Larus http://tinyurl.com/olfyskv and the exciting sequel Sea of Clouds http://amzn.to/1wYCPH0

“I don’t talk about it,” said the old man. “Painful subject. Distant past.”
The younger man began to apologise hurriedly. “Should never have asked… most regrettable… Forgive the intrusion…” He gathered his things and prepared to leave, but the old man went on.
“It’s an innocent looking object, isn’t it? Watch and chain. Old-fashioned nowadays. Worth – well – not very much. Especially with the dent in it, and so on.”
He looked down at the fractured glass of the watch. “Horse’s hoof did that, you know. My grandfather’s watch. I knew I’d inherit it. One day. So I reckoned it’d be in order to borrow it. In advance, as you might say. To impress a young lady. Did impress her, too. She held it up to hear the chime. But it slipped out of her pretty fingers. Pity we were on top of the omnibus at the time. Open-topped, they were, in those days. Watch fell right out, down to the ground. Straight under the coal merchant’s cart. Great big feet those horses had. Well, I left her, ran down the stairs two at a time. Raced back down the road. And there was the watch. Buckled. Glass broken. Got a thrashing from Grandfather, I did. That young lady – she found someone else – chap with his own watch, I suppose. Unhappy memories. But when my mind wanders… Still works, you know, the watch. It’s measured all the time between then and now. But as I say. I never talk about it.”

Kathy Sharp is the author of fabulous fantasy novel Isle of Larus http://tinyurl.com/olfyskv and the exciting sequel Sea of Clouds http://amzn.to/1wYCPH0

When the old barge sank, it had blocked the river. The end of the road, indeed. Not that it mattered greatly. The steady silting-up had prevented the bigger boats navigating this far anyway. Year by year the mud-banks grew and the old river shrank between them. What had once been a little port, only a short distance inland, had now become inaccessible to most shipping, deserted by the sea and now reached only through the long meanders of the river. Ulmport, these days, was no port at all to speak of.
Small boats still braved the mud-banks, came up with the tide, unloaded their meagre cargoes and drifted back down again when the tide turned. There was a certain amount of local traffic, with produce arriving from the farms both upstream and down. Enough to make it worthwhile maintaining the ferry. But all in all, Ulmport had the air of a place that was losing its purpose in life.
“ ’Tis fit for nothing here but pleasure boating,” said Eric the Ferryman. It wasn’t entirely true, or not yet. “Enough work on the ferry to see me out, though.” He said it often, and it was a comfortable thought. It was shared by Eric’s twin, Burto, who scratched a living helping to unload the boats when they came in. There would be enough work to see him out, too. But after that, well, who could tell?
A troop of small boats was making its way upriver. Burto could see the sails as they tacked laboriously, coming upstream with the flood tide, zigzagging through the marshes.
“Two hours,” thought Burto, “And they’ll be here.” Time to round up a bit of extra help. A couple of the farm lads would come and lend a hand for a small consideration. It was a while since so many boats had arrived at once in this sleepy place. Burto rubbed his hands in delight. Ale tonight!

Kathy Sharp is the author of fabulous fantasy novel Isle of Larus http://tinyurl.com/olfyskv and the exciting sequel Sea of Clouds http://amzn.to/1wYCPH0

Miss Burrage wasn’t much of a looker. She knew it, of course. With the casual cruelty of youth, the boys had called her porridge-chops. Porridge Burrage. She had learned to live with it. And what did it matter, after all? She was an artist. Art was her life, and suffused her soul. No matter, really, that she had to support herself by teaching it to clumsy, soulless children, and classes of silly, chattering women.
But Miss Burrage had a bit of a secret. Well, semi-secret. Bluebell Wine was her support in all adversity. She decanted into a pretty bottle decorated with lovingly hand-painted labels. These gave it an air of wholesomeness, she thought. Perfect calligraphy and the matchless image of the bluebell, painted from life, no two ever the same. The wine itself was colourless, so she occasionally threw in a bit of indigo or Prussian blue from her palette, so it lived up to its name.
“I don’t really drink,” she told the occasional visitor. “It’s for medicinal purposes only.”
And, indeed, she partook of the Bluebell Wine from a tiny, elegant glass. It was a bare thimbleful at a time, at least when others were present. She had an equally elegant, but much larger glass for use in private. A measure or two never did any harm to her artistic imagination, and she used it freely. It was always available, and it never called her names. Whatever happens, she told herself, I’ll always have my Bluebell Wine, my faithful friend and unfailing support.
Some people, had they known just how much Bluebell Wine Miss Burrage got through, might have said she had something of a problem. Miss Burrage would have disagreed. The only problem she had was finding discreet ways to get rid of all the empty gin bottles.


Kathy Sharp is the author of fabulous fantasy novel Isle of Larus http://tinyurl.com/olfyskv and the exciting sequel Sea of Clouds http://amzn.to/1wYCPH0

The yacht Narcissus chugged serenely up and down the river in an irregular sort of way. This was on account of her considerable age, and that of her owner, too. She was a steam yacht – or, at least, that was what he liked to call her, in much the same way he called himself a commander. Nobody knew if he really was, or had been, any such thing, but he looked the part with his grey beard, pop-eye pipe and just the right sort of peaked cap.
She wasn’t very big, the Narcissus, but the funnel gave her the look of something far more grand, as did the pair of stripes painted along her old white hull, stem to stern. Stripes of black and daffodil yellow, the latter the only obvious connection with her name.
Then one day the news floated down that the old commander had been found stone cold dead in the cockpit, hat formally in place, pipe in hand and unfinished measure of gin by his side. Just the way he would have wanted to go, people said. But it meant the Narcissus was no longer the elegant steam yacht of her master’s imagination. She was an unwanted, weather-beaten old relic, and up for sale, too.
When she finally reappeared at new moorings she was sadly changed. The daffodil yellow stripe had been painted out, and so had her name. She had been rechristened the Cindy-Lou. This was a terrible affront to the dignity of a vessel that had been so much a man’s boat, everyone agreed. And so did the Narcissus. Her ancient planks cracked and sprang apart in protest, and she sank at her moorings, as if to say – no more. Not worth repairing, really, they said, and she was broken up. And that was the end of it.
Or should have been.
Sometimes, just sometimes, people swear they have heard the steady chug and chuff of her steam engine far out on the marshes, still happily carrying the commander upriver, a ghostly yacht with her daffodil yellow stripes.

Kathy Sharp is the author of fabulous fantasy novel Isle of Larus http://tinyurl.com/olfyskv and the exciting sequel Sea of Clouds http://amzn.to/1wYCPH0

Miss Euphrasia Higginbottom had just walked into the doorpost for the third time that week.
“Don’t you, think, Phrasie, dear,” said her companion Mrs Ainsworth, “that it’s time you equipped yourself with some spectacles?”
But Miss Euphrasia would have none of it. “I have my eyebright remedy,” she said, “I swear by it.”
Mrs Ainsworth was privately inclined to swear at it rather than by it, and said this was just so much eye-wash. “Perhaps a discreet lorgnette…?”
This suggestion was met with a disdainful snort. “I have perfect eyesight,” said Miss Euphrasia, and walked into the doorpost again as she swept out of the room.
The eyebright drops were administered to each eye, just as the herbalist had recommended. Refreshing for the kidneys, too, thought Miss Euphrasia, as she took a swig for good measure. An invigorating concoction, indeed. And it was not alone. A positive pharmacopeia of remedies had accumulated in the past year. Mrs Ainsworth had warned her to have a care, to put her trust in the good Doctor Badbury rather than that herbalist fellow. But no, all advice was ignored, and Miss Euphrasia asserted that they all Did Her Good.
On the day of the Great Misfortune, as Mrs Ainsworth liked to think of it, there had been another incident with the doorpost, and Miss Euphrasia had withdrawn to her room to find the eye-drops. Well, such a commotion! Wailing and howling, she was. And very ill indeed. Doctor Badbury was summoned this time, and gave a great speech on the folly of self-administered cures. Miss Euphrasia cursed him in a most unladylike fashion, in between dabbing her streaming eyes and having recourse to the sick-bowl.
It remained unclear which of the many remedies she had so trustingly dropped into her eyes and swallowed, too. Suffice it say her imperfect eyesight had led her to mistake the label. The remedies were removed from the premises, and a pair of spectacles acquired.
Mrs Ainsworth showed great forbearance in omitting to say I Told You So. But she couldn’t resist a distinctly smug smile.

Kathy Sharp is the author of fabulous fantasy novel Isle of Larus http://tinyurl.com/olfyskv and the exciting sequel Sea of Clouds http://amzn.to/1wYCPH0

Florence thought it was a terrible colour, and very unflattering for a person of her complexion, too. But Eugenia insisted upon it, and that was that. Foxglove pink. Horrid. Poisonous, even.
They had bought a bolt of this evil pink silk, for the gowns. Maids of honour at the wedding. Florence had held it up against her face and gazed into the mirror. “It makes me look jaundiced!” she wailed. “Eugenia has done it on purpose. She never wanted me at her wedding.”
She was still sulking about it when the stuff had been cut and worked upon by the seamstress. At the first fitting she peered at her reflection and scowled. The gown was elegant in style – but that colour! Florence simply couldn’t smile in it.
Florence’s mother told her in no uncertain terms that petulance suited her even less than foxglove pink – and that it wasn’t foxglove pink at all, it was pale rose, and that she should put a little discreet rouge upon her cheeks and make the best of it.
“Ill temper and sulking make your face look pinched, child. What will the gentlemen think? No-one will notice the colour of your gown if you smile. So smile. Your second cousin Clarence will be there and he will be looking for a wife.”
“I couldn’t give a fig for second cousin Clarence,” said Florence, still piqued.
But, oh dear me, when second cousin Clarence hove into view at the reception it was a very different matter. When she had last seen him he had been a lanky schoolboy – but now, he was a most agreeable young man. How she smiled. How she flirted.
“What a very becoming colour your gown is, my dear Florence,” he said.
And Florence began to think foxglove pink might have its merits after all. Indeed, she might well choose to wear it for her own wedding.


Kathy Sharp is the author of fabulous fantasy novel Isle of Larus http://tinyurl.com/olfyskv and the exciting sequel Sea of Clouds http://amzn.to/1wYCPH0

“He can’t possibly do that. He’ll be a laughing stock!”
There had been much talk of this kind since Reggie, dozy article that he was, had come into a bit of money. A bit – well, quite a lot, if truth be told, though he was vague about the exact amount. Typical of Reggie, people said – comes into a fortune and doesn’t even know how much. The consensus of opinion, though, was that there was enough to set him up for life, properly invested. And what does the fool do? He buys himself a racehorse.
“So what have you named this nag, Reggie old boy?”
“He’s called Pink Gladiolus.”
“Ye gods! You can’t call it that!”
“It’s Latin,” said Reggie, disappointed with this reception. “It means a little sword. I thought it sounded positive. Thrusting. And I have heard you chaps speak of the Pink Gladiolus, whatever it is, in terms of great approval.”
Too much education and not enough sense was Reggie’s trouble, people said. The Pink Gladiolus, in point of fact, was a club of rather questionable reputation known to all the young gentlemen, although not frequented by Reggie himself.
Reggie looked hurt – wounded, even – but at heart he was smiling. The racehorse was, for him, a mere distraction. He had known people would laugh at that name. It was all part of the plan. Placed it firmly in their minds. He had bought the Pink Gladiolus Club very secretly. And he planned to take a great deal of money from all his laughing friends in the gambling den he proposed to set up there.
Acting like an idiot could be very profitable, and he had played the part a long while – which was how he had come into the ‘bit of money’ in the first place.
Reggie kept up the pretence. “You’ll change your tune when Pink Gladiolus wins the Derby,” he said, sulkily. How they laughed. But however the horse fared, Reggie knew he’d be winning the jackpot shortly.

Kathy Sharp is the author of fabulous fantasy novel Isle of Larus http://tinyurl.com/olfyskv and the exciting sequel Sea of Clouds http://amzn.to/1wYCPH0