Billy
by Clodagh O’Brien
Billy knows when it’s time to get up. He doesn’t need a clock or a watch or a radio. Billy just knows.
Billy takes Weetabix from the shelf and drops two biscuits in cold milk. He stands in front of the microwave and pretends the light inside is lightning.
Billy yells goodbye to his mother and cycles to school. He has tied strings to the spokes, so when he goes fast it’s as if he has tails.
Billy sits in the front row in class. It means he can see everything on the board without squinting and gets to taste chalk dust.
Billy eats lunch at the end of the playground. He shares his sandwich with a squirrel that lives in the triangle of a tree.
Billy cycles home the long way so he can ride over all the bumps. He stays in the middle of the road even if a car beeps.
Billy measures out spaghetti and puts it in water with salt and oil. He stands above it until the bubbles come.
Billy goes upstairs to eat. He feeds his mother with a teaspoon and tries not to get Dolmio on the duvet.
Billy washes the dishes with bleach because there’s no washing up liquid. He leaves them to dry the way his mother taught him.
Billy does his homework on the coffee table with a wonky leg. He writes slowly so the pencil doesn’t jiggle and he has to start again.
Billy sits cross-legged in front of the television and looks at himself. His nose is getting bigger and his hair longer.
Billy puts on his pyjamas and makes sure his mother takes her pills. He kneels in bed and makes a steeple of his hands. Billy tells God he hates him and goes to sleep.
About the Author
Clodagh O’Brien writes flash fiction, short stories and the occasional poem. Based in Dublin, she has been published in Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine, Litro, Literary Orphans, Thrice Fiction, Visual Verse amongst others. Her flash fiction was highly commended at the Dromineer Literary Festival and shortlisted for the Allingham Arts Festival. She loves writing in bed, and realises there are too many books to read before she dies. You can find her blog at: www.clodaghobrien.com and tweets @wordcurio.
Peter Blair lectures in English Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Chester, where he leads the MA Modern and Contemporary Fiction and teaches on the MA Creative Writing: Writing and Publishing Fiction. He is co-editor of Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine (
William Davidson lives in York and works as an English tutor for deaf students. His stories have been published in Synaesthesia Magazine, Cheap Pop, The Puffin Review and in the anthology Solstice Shorts (Arachne Press). Lyme Regis was listed as highly regarded in the Brighton Prize 2015. He is in the W9 Writers group, led by Susan Elderkin. He tweets 
Eileen Merriman’s work has been published in the Sunday Star Times (NZ), Takahe, Headland, Flash Frontiers, and Blue Fifth Review and is forthcoming in the 2015 Bath Short Story Anthology and F(r)iction. She was commended in the 2015 Bath Short Story Competition, was awarded third place in the 2014 Sunday Star Times Short Story Competition and has recently won the 2015 Flash Frontier Winter Writing Award. In 2015 she was awarded a mentorship through the New Zealand Society of Authors for work on her YA novel ‘Pieces of You’. She tweets 
Sarah Henry is a high school English teacher living in Fort Collins, Colorado. She enjoys writing flash fiction because of the challenge it provides of saying so much in so little. Two of her stories, “Violet and Gray Teeth” and “Phyllis” have been shortlisted in Mash Stories Competitions 5 and 7. Her story “The Shadow Figure’s Philosophy” won The Other’s Award for Needle in the Hay’s writing competition, and her try at cyberpunk climate fiction, “Batteries,” was shortlisted there as well. She tweets 
Damyanti’s short fiction appears at Bluestem magazine, Griffith Review Australia, Lunch Ticket magazine, The First Line, Ducts.org by New York Writers Workshop, and other journals in the USA, Singapore and India. She’s featured in print anthologies by Twelve Winters Press, USA (Pushcart Nomination), and by major publishers in Malaysia and Singapore. She’s currently hard at work finishing her first novel. She tweets at