If you’d like to be included in this slot, please get in touch: estherchilton@gmail.com. Poems can be up to 60 lines and prose 2000 words. If you’d like to add a short bio and photo, then great. All I ask is that there’s nothing offensive.
This week’s guest is a writer whose work I always enjoy reading. You may have seen her entertaining responses to my weekly challenges. Please welcome Nicola Daly. Here, she’s written a gripping piece of flash fiction.
At Last
By
Nicola Daly
‘Who are you? And why are you here?’ Your face is etched with distrust, your voice suspicious.
‘Remember me?’ I step from the shadows and pull back my hood.
‘I…I’ve never seen you before.’ You shrink into the armchair.
‘Perhaps I need to give you a little reminder.’ I edge closer. Your eyes widen and you give a little hiss. ‘Thirty years ago. A failed algebra paper.’
‘B…Bovington-Smythe?’
‘The very same,’ I say. ‘You had me expelled. Remember?’
‘As I recall, you cheated. And lied.’
‘I did not cheat or lie,’ I say.
‘Nonsense,’ you huff. ‘All schoolboys lie.’
‘But I didn’t,’ I whisper. ‘And now I’ve found you. At last.’
Your eyes dart around the room and you run your tongue over chapped lips.
‘Do you want to know what happened? After I was expelled?
Huddling into the armchair, you give a feeble nod, the scrawny, parchment-like skin of your chin flapping like a rooster’s wattle. I rest my foot on your hassock and lean forwards. Behind me the pitiful fire crackles.
‘When you had me expelled, the shame killed my father,’ I say. ‘Ostracized and with no money, my mother fell ill, and she too passed away leaving me to look after my three little sisters. I tried. I really tried. But what can an eleven-year-old boy do? One by one they entered the poor house, and one by one they died.
‘And you knew it was the other boy who cheated, your favourite. And now that I’ve found you? Well, I’m here to do my job. It’s a grim job, but…’
I pull the scythe from the folds of my cloak. You suck in your breath and fear floods your eyes.
‘Your time has come,’ I grin and raise my arm. ‘I shall enjoy this.’
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Author Bio:
Mum to two daughters and an aging black lab, Nicola lives in north Cumbria close to Hadrian’s Wall and the Scottish borderlands. Mentored by Esther with the Writer’s Bureau, she is working on her first novel, a teen coming-of-age with a mix of murder, intrigue and betrayal set on a 1920s archaeological dig on Hadrian’s Wall. Her flash fiction story ‘At Last’ was included in the ‘Paul Cave Prize for Literature 2024 Anthology’.
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Esther Chilton 
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