‘SPAGHETTI JUNCTION’ - FRACTURED LIT
I was honoured to win the 2020 Fractured Lit Flash Fiction Prize, judged by Megan Giddings.
I had been snow-drifting through December, on slow trains and delayed buses, ending each day with a long icy walk past other bodies, also losing grip.
I could not get home that night, none of us could; Spaghetti Junction had filled with snow. We decided to camp at the office.
The heavy snow was unexpected. It had been mild that morning. Warm enough for icicles to ding from the roofs, impale children through their tiny soft skulls, kebabs of blood and hot chocolate. I hoped for such things then. I still do. To fill up the corners of my grey days with blood, circle them red.
I’d started Temping the August of my eighteenth birthday. I gifted myself the stationery cupboard, a bag full of paperclips and Post-It Notes. Theft, plus small chugs of Vodka made the hours chain together into long silver lines, of days and weeks, months I could pin-number from a wall.