Fiona McKay

Listen to Fiona read her story

That long-ago morning, Kate hadn’t been able to figure out the bruises. The headache was another matter. John was happy to remind her of the cause.

‘You insisted on another cocktail, Kate. I warned you.’

Warnings, red and flashing. Listened to. Unheeded. Bruises, purple and black, the skin grazed pink and yellow. Two different kinds of pain. And a third.

‘You don’t remember falling? I had to practically carry you back to the room. Not very ladylike, Kate.’

Five small round bruises on her wrist.

That long-ago night before, a wet haze of memory, even then. 

Now, Kate is awake, some noise has disturbed her in this strange place. In her mind, she walks the alleys of the gothic quarter, comes out, always, at the cathedral, the square, the hotel. Is that where she fell? The noise of now is louder, insistent. The cobbles are under her feet again, the last negroni surging through her blood, the sky ripped open by forks of incandescent light, rain slashing through the squares. Had she run, deafened, in the storm? In the hot, wet night?

‘Those shoes aren’t appropriate, Kate. You can hardly walk in them.” 

Maybe the crying is her? In the now there’s also pain, and noise. Heat all over her, the iron tang of blood in the air. The cobbles under the thin leather soles of her high-heeled sandals, the unexpected rain wetting her feet, toes sliding as she runs. Why won’t he slow down? Wait for her? The alley is barely wider than her outstretched arms, mediaeval, she remembers, gothic, she remembers, the walls of the alley stretching high above her head, growing, growing, blotting out the light, the moon, the next turn, that’s where he must have gone, just around the next turn he’ll be waiting, he’ll take off his jacket, hold it over both their heads, put an arm around her to steady her. What’s one more drink, among friends? On a hot wet night in a strange city.

Now, the noise is too loud to ignore.

‘You agreed to this, Kate. We talked about this. You knew what I wanted.’

She’s in a narrow bed, not the vast white wastes of the one she shares with John. The cries, the pain, the blood. Everything leaks: breasts, eyes, memories. A white figure appears at the foot. The cries reach a zenith. The figure moves, white wings pulsing, pulsing to Kate’s side. “You need to feed her,” it says, coming into focus. A woman. 

“Here, take her and I’ll help you get her latched on. You can hold her across you like this, or some women find the rugby ball hold better. You’ll work out what’s best for you and this little scrap. What’s her name?”

“Ella,” Kate says, the past gone in an instant, the now stretching forward, ever-present, never-changing. Blood and tears and milk and bruises. A flutter of white feathers on her pillow. 

Fiona’s prompts were: A Thunderstorm, an Angel, and a Contusion

She said of the challenge: “I’m delighted with what the prompts, well, prompted for me – I managed to get something that had been all vibes in my head for years, onto the the page!! Without your prompts, it wouldn’t exist.”

Fiona McKay is the author of the Novella-in-Flash The Top Road, AdHoc Fiction (2023), and the Flash Fiction collection Drawn and Quartered, Alien Buddha Press (2023). She was a SmokeLong Quarterly Emerging Writer Fellow in 2023. Her Flash Fiction is in Bath Flash, Lost Balloon, Gone Lawn, New Flash Fiction Review, Pithead Chapel, The Forge, Ghost Parachute, trampset and others. Her work is included in Best Small Fictions 2024. She lives in Dublin, Ireland with her husband and daughter.
She is on X (formerly Twitter) @fionaemckayryan