THE FORK OF FOREVER

RACE TO THE RAINBOW BRIDGE (Flash Fiction)

No idea how I made it here. Without my shoes! Last thing I remember is the vet's voice:

"I'm sorry. We did all we could."

Here's his lead. In my pocket. I fly that dog like a kite. He weaves in and out the bollards and lampposts like French knitting.

I know it's here somewhere in the wood. Our wood. Mine and my lad's. Between the Horse Chestnut and the beck. Between the dell and the darkness. The Rainbow Bridge.

I'm scuffing leaf litter from my paws. Everything's gathering on my soles as I run. Seeds, dead things, lichen, carapaces. Did I say paws?

If I can make it there before he comes, bounding, baying, I will throw myself in his path, block him and baffle him from crossing. He'll mop my tears with his loppy tongue. He knows me better than my shadow. Better the shadow than the space.

I'm limping, now. Thorns and nettles. It must be here. Has to be! What if he's there already? Now I'm sliding down scarps, colliding with hazel and bramble. Ricochet echo off the wind turbines. Scent of oilseed chasing us across the folded fields. That copse where the cuckoo surprised us.

My feet, finding themselves in my shoes again. The carpet with the corporate logo under me. Worming powders and pet insurance.
"He was lucky to find his forever home with you."
I was the lucky one.

Staggering, now, not haring down all our dreams. Our old walk feels wrong. Tilted, somehow.  Leads were never meant to be so slack. Collars so empty.

How can I ever go home without him?

HE CAME AGAIN TODAY

He came again today.

Lingered opposite my window, segmented and framed Piet Mondrian-wise by the grid of panes.

Eyes flick from his handheld gadget up and down my street, swinging right through me like a feather-light axe.

Looking for someone?

Pacing the pavement, holding his scrolling screen like a dowsing rod.

The wifi hotspot sizzles round him, riffling the interwebs in and out of his shadow.

Secure connection.

His fingertips, sensitive as some sightless masseur, skitter through cogs for settings, email, like, share, tweet, read more, meme.

Then he's gone again.

Till next time.

I will glimpse him, breaking his stride to gather the googleable, the encrypted out of ether.

Wondering if he sees me seeing him.

Hypoglycemic

Here's a humorous piece of flash fiction I wrote and which I'm sharing to mark 32 years of being a Type 1 insulin junkie diabetic.

Except that this isn't actually fiction. I inhabit this kind of parallel universe at least every month or so.

For all you diabetic Type 1s out there - enjoy the familiar feelings here.

For all you readers with a fully functioning pancreas - welcome to my crazy world!


Yes - the lack of paragraphs and punctuation below IS a reflection of the hypo state of mind.


This for me is what a hypo/low blood sugar REALLY feels like.

Dribbles and Dabbles with Drabbles

Dribbles? Drabbles?

Not altogether gobbledygook if you bear with me!

When you're writing, "dribbles" often describes the fragmented way the storytelling progresses: a dribble of inspiration here, a dribble of frantic scribbling there, seasoned with a dribble of banging your head on the keyboard!

"Drabbles" on the other hand, are a method I find useful to help pull my "dribbles" of creativity together along the writing journey. I hope this idea may help you, too. Sometimes when those "dribbles" seem to be drying up, a "drabble" or two can prime the pump and get your story-brain refreshed, released and ready to weave those words into gold.

I'm reaching the tipping point of my new novel. The research is done. The plot is arced. The procrastinating side-projects are frustratingly complete. The blind alleys of my storyland are cordoned off with Hi-Vis "Do Not Enter" tape. The characters are alive in my head. I can hear what they'd say and picture the situations they're about to get themselves into. The sense of place just off the Yorkshire Coast is so real to me I can smell the seaweed and feel the spray stinging my characters' skin and the change of light before dusk. I've chalk under my nails from clinging onto the sheer cliffs in my imagination. I'm raring to go! My first draft is beckoning me to plunge over the edge of those risky still-blank pages and swim for dear life to the shore at the end of the tale.

So, when your dribbles run dry, maybe it's time for a dabble with a drabble!

The wiki says: Drabble: A drabble is a short work of fiction of around one hundred words in length, not necessarily including the title. The purpose of the drabble is brevity, testing the author's ability to express interesting and meaningful ideas in a confined space.

In other words, flash fiction. For me, it's just a great way of getting my writing flowing whenever it stalls. If I have a scene from the novel that's in my mind for later, getting in the way of the current plotline, a "drabble" dealing with that character, that plot twist, that conflict, that setting, is a way of getting creative instead of blocked. Maybe the seeds from the drabble will be grist to the mill of a new story, an unexpected turn, a deepening of some exchange within the book. It doesn't even have to be connected. A drabble can get you writing again when you're overwhelmed. It's non-threatening, expendable, achievable almost anywhere, anytime. It's that blank page clothed in purpose, colour, forward motion.

It can even become a part of your work in progress. It can ignite a dormant creative spark. It can be your own private pool of light-bulb moments. It can be a short holiday break for your imagination to go exploring again before coming home rejuvenated to the work in hand. It can be just what you need it to be!

Wishing you joy and word-woven blessings, whether you're a fellow writer, reader, a fan of GOATSUCKER HARVEST or you've just wandered in to do a bit of procrastination from your own personal challenges today! Welcome!

"Tropical Storm Zeta 2005" by NASA image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team, Goddard Space Flight Center 

Here's a quick 102-word drabble I've written which may or may not get its seat at the banquet in my WIP:



Waves roll upside down, sucking the sky beneath through lips like a dolphin's. Head spinning now.
A guillemot skittles out of a cliff-face inverted inches from her nose. A vortex of fish oil tang closes her throat. 
"Did you see it? Careful! Sit down, you'll have us overboard!"
Disembodied voices far above.
"Below, I mean..." Trying to correct herself, steady herself. The strap creaks. Too much give in it.
Blood-singing, suffocating closeness all around, yet the salt spray's icy, flinging itself down in an arc and falling back upwards into stormclouds.
The scream seems to be her own as the sea explodes.

Like Joyce Barrass - author on Facebook
Follow me on Goodreads
Find out more on Joyce Barrass's Amazon author page
Follow me on Joyce's Twitter
Joyce on Google +

HYPOGLYCAEMIC

Here's the third instalment of my unplanned series "Writing wot I wrote about being Diabetic" posted this week. Writing this one started as a distraction activity from writing shorts and pitching to Womags and Competitions, but a few fragments here did lead to a story with a plot, so it was worth it.


This one's a piece of flash fiction under 500 words. Except that this isn't actually fiction. I live this at least once a month or so.
For all you diabetic Type 1s out there - enjoy the familiar feelings here.
For all you readers with a fully functioning pancreas - welcome to my crazy world!


Yes - the lack of paragraphs and punctuation below IS a reflection of the hypo state of mind.


This is what a hypo/low blood sugar REALLY feels like.

The blood glucose monitor reads 2.2.

No symptoms but I’m flying. Suddenly everything is cinnamon and dimity and I’m giggling till my two green eyes merge into one and start looking at the rocks and the rhythms between the surface of the salt waves and the myrtle green mist skimmed by rattling chocolate buttons and frogmarching steeples with clock faces I can’t make out. My mother is here. I can nearly see her and if I really concentrate I’m certain I can walk straight over the concertina chopsticks lining the path but they keep on moving to the centre and fanning out like a cartwheel of lemon juice and tripping me up. Did you know the days of the week are like a clothes line? It’s so obvious now. Monday, Wednesday and Friday are all on a level, with Tuesday and Thursday drooping between them, fixed in place by invisible pegs that ring low like a Rioja glass pinged by a fingernail with chipped purple varnish. The weekends join the other days together like an ornate but functional belt buckle. I’m sweating and trembling. I feel like I ought to strip off all my clothes but I wouldn’t trust myself to know where to stop and my flesh, all yellow and honeycomb inside would slip from my bones like a buzzing net negligee and what would the neighbours say? That makes me laugh more and I’m wheezing and hooting and stuffing the dry cushions into my mouth but you can still hear me because you’re saying so with a very serious expression and I laugh even harder and my forehead seems to have something arch going on with the carpet. I can’t move my eyes or my lips. Someone must have moved them just beyond my bodyspace and I’m thrashing about making sand angels on the floor and everything is gritty like the white noise when the radio is off the station and my synapses keep fizzing with static till the budgie makes the cage bounce as it nods its head faster and faster. There’s gurning and gargoyles or is that just me? I’m not getting any feedback and woolly seething serendipity is blocking the pores in my eardrums, stopping me coming up for air. It’s making no linear logic but I can see straight to the heart of truth like an arrow tip through a sappy apple. Somebody’s ravishing my lips apart. The sugar tastes like apricot petrol and burning rubber but at last I’m surfacing.

The monitor reads 4.1.

        I ache to go back where it all made sense.