The Cool Box
by Nod Ghosh
Ross opened the cool box and removed remnants of his wife’s wedding gown, a pair of pliers, the telephone from his grandmother’s hallway, a light moment, two books of paramount importance, his daughter’s milk teeth, effervescent conversation and a piece of sky, the tenderness of his mother’s bosom, the sweat of children running from parents shot by insurgents, a medley of vegetables, the disappearance of two American teenagers, refusal to use dental floss, a holiday in Tyneside, the temperamental nature of a wolf’s disposition, his brother’s charm, latex gloves, his drama teacher with the blood disorder who walked on crutches after bleeding into his knees, a deformed cactus, the visages of two cats, disparaging and cruel, an engineer’s rule, Bach’s cello suites No. 1-6, a Mexican wave, ten pins, all the reports he’d produced in the last hundred and fourteen months, a dinosaur tooth, non-iodised salt, a mission to eradicate multi-drug-resistant organisms, a punnet of strawberries, the plagiarism of fools, dormant mushroom spores, a glass table he had coveted but never bought, dielectric grease at three hundred and nineteen dollars for ten millilitres, a tablespoon, a symphony of simultaneous orgasms, cream, manufactured dreams available on-line, developmental delays, a red squirrel from France, two plastic wine-glasses, seven long-playing records he’d never owned, a tomato, mustard, meringue nests, soft cheese, a low-carb sandwich for Rita, and he still couldn’t find the paper plates.
‘Are you sure you packed them?’ he asked.
Rita’s hair blew across her eyes.
‘Here they are.’ She pulled out a pack wrapped in plastic. ‘Honestly, I don’t know what you were thinking. You seemed lost.’
An invisible comet may or may not have streaked across the sky.
‘They were right in front of you’.
About the Author
Nod Ghosh lives in Christchurch, New Zealand. Nod’s work appears in anthologies: Love on the Road 2015 (Liberties Press), Landmarks (U.K. 2015 NFFD), Sleep is A Beautiful Colour (U.K. 2017 NFFD), Horizons2 (Top of the South NZSA), Leaving the Red Zone (Clerestory Press, N.Z.), and various publications. Further details: www.nodghosh.com
Born in Nottingham, David has a degree in English from the University of Warwick and an MA from the University of East Anglia. He lives with his wife and children in Eneriz, a village near Pamplona, Spain, where he works freelance as a language trainer, course writer and translator. He has written across many different forms, both poetry and prose, and is currently finishing a novel set in early Victorian Nottingham, based on the life of Bendigo, a champion bare knuckle boxer who later became a preacher.
Melissa Goode’s work has appeared in Best Australian Short Stories, New World Writing, Split Lip Magazine, Atticus Review, Cleaver Magazine, Pithead Chapel, Litro Magazine, and Jellyfish Review, among others. One of her short stories has been made into a film by the production company, Jungle. She lives in Australia. You can find her here: 
We were inspired to launch the inaugural novella-in-flash award by reading the excellent guide on the subject, My Very End of the Universe published by Rose Metal Press in 2014. Meg Pokrass’s flash novella, Here, Where we Live is one of five novellas in this book and she also has a craft essay in the book. The novella-in-flash is one of her favourite emerging forms, and we were thrilled when she agreed to judge the first competition.