O:JA&L Flash Discourse: Fiction
Chris Cottom
LILY
Mum forgets to wake me so I’m late for work and completely forget it’s Flower Friday. On my way past Staff Pensions, wrinkly-crinkly Mr Curbishley sees I’m bloomless, pulls what he calls a gardenia out of his own display, and proffers it like I’m the Queen of the May and he’s Jack in the Green. I’d ask him to weave it into my hair, give the tongue-waggers something to wag about, but he’s so wibbly-wobbly he’d probably stick it up my nose. Central Accounting smells like Mum before a night out because Miriam’s gone full window-box in front of our filing trays. When I suggest a risk assessment in case Mr Penhaligon signs a crocus instead of a cheque request, she doesn’t even smile and heads off at lunchtime to the garden centre with the other girls, leaving me alone with my low-calorie meal deal. I’m feeling pretty miz when who should appear but Mr Curbishley with a riot of flowers, which he names for me one by one: columbine and snapdragon, sweet peas and field poppies, lavender and love-in-a-mist. When he says they’re for me ‘from an admirer’, there’s a twinkle in his cataract-cloudy eye and I can’t help bursting into tears and telling him how unhappy I am in Purchase Ledger, and he says his department’s looking for someone to train up, to take over when he retires. Then he looks around the empty desks and says, ‘You’re a lily amongst brambles, Charlene. A lily amongst brambles.’
About the writer:
Chris Cottom lives near Macclesfield, UK. His work features in 100 Word Story, Fictive Dream, Flash Frontier, Leon Literary Review, NFFD UK, NFFD NZ, Oyster River Pages, Roi Fainéant, The Lascaux Review, and elsewhere. In the early 1970s he lived next door to JRR Tolkien.
Image: Lily (AI-assisted digital image) by O:JA&L staff creative. 2025. Public domain via Midjourney AI.
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The Buttonhook Press Masters Series: Brian Clements on Prose Poetry
With an Interview by Associate Editor Pamelyn Casto
The Buttonhook Press Masters Series: Mark Budman on Flash Discourse
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The Buttonhook Press Master Series: Peter Conners on Flash Fiction
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The Buttonhook Press Masters Series: Maxine Chernoff on Prose Poetry
With an Interview by Associate Editor Pamelyn Casto
The Buttonhook Press Masters Series: Pedro Ponce on Flash Fiction
With an Interview by Associate Editor Pamelyn Casto
The Buttonhook Press Masters Series: Tom Hazuka on Flash Fiction
With an interview by Associate Editor Pamelyn Casto
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