The Winner of the Flash Fiction Competition 2018

1st Prize

Gordon Aindow

Gordon Aindow is based in Preston, Lancashire. He writes short stories and poems with an emphasis on life, landscape and love, capturing the fascination and poignancy we can find in situations all around us, if we look a little harder. He belongs to two local writing groups, ScRibble and Damson Poets, which help to keep up the momentum. Some of his short stories have appeared in the Lancashire Post newspaper.

Gordon has been involved with events at the Harris Museum in Preston where poets created and performed a response to artworks and photographs, and with Lancashire Archive Office in creative writing projects to commemorate local and international events, such as World War One and Victorian Literary Lancashire. He has performed at several spoken word events, including What's Your Story, Chorley?

For his short stories he came second at Preston Literary Festival short story slam and was shortlisted at Chorley (both 2017); he was also shortlisted at Bedford International Literary Festival (2018) and came third in the Hammond House International Literature prize (2018)

Since 2015 he has been highly commended in three international poetry competitions (Wirral, Yeovil, and Wells), and was shortlisted and published as part of Momaya Poetry Competition, USA, 2018.

 

Voicemail

I’ve never been very good with numbers. More of a words or pictures kind of person. I think that’s how I tend to locate things in my head. But now I can’t get a number – mobile number – out of my mind. I dream about calling it. Who’d have thought it? Now I’m like Stephen Hawking: numbers, bloody numbers. Or rather, one particular set of numbers.

Cold for the time of year. November. Early frost. His car, John’s car, hit a patch of ice and skidded into the tree. A beautiful big beech tree. I like trees. Not the bloody tree’s fault; it’s just standing there like it’s done for – what – a hundred years? Nobody’s bloody fault at all, but here we are months later, a dead son. Try making some sense out of that, and when you do, if you do, let me know. I think I’d like to hear that.

We’ve talked of course, Helen and I, and Claire. It’s not like we’re closed up; we’re quite a talky family really and we’ve talked about the accident and John. Plenty of ‘John would have liked this or that’. Oh John… John… I do miss you. I miss every bloody thing about you, son.

So:

Counselling: not so good. Too many clichés…’How does that make you feel?’ Come on!

The vicar: alright, kind, not too heavy on the God stuff…yeah, she was ok.

Standing looking at trees: surprisingly good. Odd really, given the circumstances. But like I said, not the bloody tree’s fault.

I started ringing his mobile phone one Thursday. I would normally ring on a Thursday to see if he fancied Saturday’s match. His voicemail kicked in and there he was, kind of, and I could hear the smile in his voice and the slight uneasiness too of leaving a message. And so I’ve kept on calling to hear his voice and there he is. Oh, I know it’s not him, not actually him, but in a way it is, you see. Well it’s not Stephen bloody Hawking is it? It’s John’s voice and when I hear him I can see him and I wonder what he was doing on the day he left the message. So I call him up, the only number I can ever remember, and sometimes I just listen quietly and sometimes I tell him how much, how very much I…well, you know…