Friday Flash Fiction - week 32

Such a Perfect Day

This is going to be the best day of my life, Rachel murmured. Looking at herself in the mirror, she stared at the reflection and didn’t recognise herself. Her hair, which normally fell in soft waves around her face, was scraped back and lacquered into a tight bun; her freckles were almost hidden under a thick layer of tinted foundation; her eyes, usually make-up free, had almost disappeared beneath the endless lashings of sparkling eye shadow and liquid eyeliner. Worst of all were the pink lips. Rachel hated pink. 

Her fiancé’s sister, Joanne, walked into the room in an off the shoulder fuchsia floor length dress. How had Rachel let her future sister-in-law talk her into such a hideous outfit? 

“You look fabulous, darling!” Joanne gushed. 

Probably in the same way she’d let her talk her into the make-up, Rachel thought. “Thanks.”

“Simon is going to be so impressed!”

If he is, thought Rachel, then he’s not the man for me. “Great.”

She blinked quickly, hoping to stop the tears, but a few escaped regardless. 

“Don’t cry, darling!” Joanne put a thin arm around Rachel’s shoulders. “You’ll ruin your make-up.” 

“I will, won’t I?” As Rachel lifted her hand to wipe away the tears, she heard Joanne shout. 

“Stop! Don’t ever, and I mean ever, rub your eyes. Always dab with a clean tissue. Don’t you know anything?” 

“I guess not.” 

“Well, I can teach you,” she said dabbing Rachel’s face gently. 

There was a knock at the door. 

“Ladies, may I come in?” Rachel’s dad poked his head around the door and then walked in. He was wearing a morning suit with a white rose in the button hole. 

At the sound of his voice Rachel started fighting back the tears again. “Hi Dad.” 

“Joanne, love, could you give us a minute. Father to daughter, you know?” 

“Of course, of course.” She gave them both a smile before tottering out on her six inch heels. 

“Now tell me. Are you just upset about the colour of that lassie’s dress, or is it something more serious?” 

Despite everything, Rachel smiled and thought again about Joanne in that ridiculous dress she couldn’t sit down in. 

“It’s something more serious.” 

“Well then, I guess I’d best pull up a pew.”  

Laura Besley

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Flash Fiction diary

I'm part of an online writing community, Writers Abroad, and every Monday someone posts up the Monday Muse. It could be a picture, an opening line, a few words to use. This story was written from that exercise and I was given the opening line. 

If you missed the fifth installment of Flash Fortnightly on the Artipeeps website last week, click here for 'The Almost Perfect Plan'. This piece started out with the line: We definitely hadn’t thought about all the blood. Initially I had planned to use that as the opening line, but that’s the not the way it turned out. I love it when the story has different ideas to the writer. The story always wins!

A couple of weeks ago I set up a facebook author page and I've already had loads of 'likes'. If you haven't yet, I'd be very grateful if you could 'like' the page! Click here for Laura Besley Writer. 

I've also stepped, rather gingerly, into the 21st century and have set up a twitter account! If you'd like to follow me, I can be found bumbling my way through this technology @laurabesley 
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Flash Fiction is short enough to read whilst you're waiting for the kettle to boil. It's fairly quick to write too, but with it being so short, every word has to count. 

On 4th May 2012 I decided to embark on a project: to write a piece of Flash Fiction every day. I'm hoping this will keep the creative juices flowing and ultimately help me hone my craft. Every Friday I'll be posting 'the best of the week' onto my blog for you to read. If you have anything to say (good or 'constructive'!), I'm open to comments.  

Thanks, as always, for reading.

Foreign Encounters

Foreign Encounters: A New Anthology from Writers Abroad

Online writing group Writers Abroad are proud to announce the publication on their new anthology, entitled Foreign Encounters. An encounter can be a chance meeting, a planned get-together or even a confrontation. This collection of 38 short stories, 41 non-fiction articles and 16 poems features a variety of foreign encounters: with family, friends, lovers, animals, cultures, or just with one’s own prejudices and preconceptions. Contributors live in, and have written about, more than 50 countries across every continent.

Foreign Encounters is the third anthology published by Writers Abroad (Writers Abroad Anthology of Short Stories, 2010, and Foreign Flavours, 2011), an online group of ex-pat writers. All the contributors are, or have been, ex-pats living in places around the globe. Author Julia Gregson, a former ex-pat whose bestselling novel East of the Sun won the Prince Maurice Prize for romantic fiction, has written the foreword. 

All proceeds from the sale of this book will go to Books Abroad, a charity which coordinates the donation of free books for schools throughout the world, believing that education is a crucial aspect of human progress. The charity celebrates its 30th anniversary this year and has supplied over 1,600 schools with desperately-needed books. 

Foreign Encounters is available from Lulu, price €9.99 (approximately £8.00) plus p&p.