Corn Flakes Town is Burning

by Kate Horsley

The week after her dad’s funeral, Cassie tells me I should buy her orange cellophane and better scissors. We drive through the dark in our pyjamas looking for big Tesco’s, and in my head I’m talking to Tim like always. The next day, Pudding Lane stretches the length of the kitchen, mini packets of Corn Flakes painted as timber-frame houses on the banks of a tinfoil Thames. Cassie sits in the middle, cutting cellophane flames. I lean back into the sofa’s forgiving squash, resting my eyes, waking up when Cassie needs me to glue – the only job I’m equal to. The postman knocks and Cassie races back clutching a wodge of letters to drop in my lap, edges curled the way paper does before it catches. She’s weaving lolly-stick frames for piss-drunk mullioned windows, sharpying a Londoner with Xs for eyes, tucking a lick of flame into black curls that remind me of Tim’s. I open a letter from the family court, from Paula, Cassie’s real mum. We glue the last screaming people to brown-crayoned river boats. In the diorama that used to be our kitchen, I sit, not talking to Tim, just me and the Corn Flakes fire of 1666. I read the court letter twice, picturing Paula, whose blue eyes Tim told me Cassie has, brightening our doorway in a pink dress, swooping Cassie’s bag over one arm, and Cassie’s so happy, she forgets to hug me goodbye. She really got stuck into this one, Tim, I say, inching my chair closer to Pudding Lane to look for the man with the dark curls. There he is in the bakery window, the woman beside him slight and stoical, a short figure in front of them with ponytails like Cassie’s, all three watching as the fire eats everything.

About the Author

Kate Horsley’s first novel was shortlisted for the Saltire Award. Her second was published by William Morrow. Both have been optioned for film. Her recent fiction can be found in SmokeLong Quarterly, The Cincinnati Review, The Citron Review, The Vestal Review, Wigleaf, Moon City Review, and Flash Fiction Online. She has been shortlisted for the Bath, Bridport & Oxford Flash Fiction competitions and won a highly commended prize in the June 2026 BFFA. She’s on the editorial board of Best Small Fictions, is the co-founder/editor of Inkfish Magazine and Press, and lectures in creative writing at the University of Hull.