Flash Fiction Honourable Mention

Posted on April 26, 2016 by Bella Basura

The results of the Short Tale Shrew Spring Micro-Fiction competition was announced today. The remit was to write a 100 word story on the theme of Rebirth, the winning entry was In Microcosm by Matt Wyles. Read it here

Although my story – Film Night At The Rebirth Convention – didn’t win, I was given an “Honourable Mention” and had my story printed on the Short Tale Shrew website. (You can find it if you keep scrolling down from the winning entry.)

Here is my 100 word response to my (nearly) winning story, it’s called…

Gizza’ Job

Last Rose
by Bella Basura 2016

…ninety-eight, ninety-nine, one hundred!

Exactly one hundred English words – remit met, mission accomplished.

A mere smear of short story, a literature in miniature, a fleeting of fiction.

I am giddy in my 100 word hubris – I dream fame for my flash-fiction, imagine professional success, a regular column in a weekend national, a steady income for writing. Sold out fold out, international filler, syndicated, vindicated, a meme beaming out virally into an endless network of recognition,
a cyber celeb,
and known in print, media-whore, desperate.

I think I’ll approach Short Tale Shrew in exactly 100 words.

See what they think.

Other Flash Fiction

My Image Gallery

From The Short Answer

Posted on April 12, 2016 by Bella Basura

Majhanashoppinglist
– Bella Basura 2016

The Tibetan Book of Home Economics

Thus, when I wander in Samsara in the realm of the wrathful food emporiums, the supermarkets of the bardo of eternal price confusion, may I not wander aimless to decide between one 200gm tube or two 100gm tubes of toothpaste. May Majhanashoppinglist and his consort Sensiblebugettingbhava go before me and carry me through the fearful towers of the checkouts. Thus, may I not be attracted by the bright flashing colours, shiny celophane, BOGOF and price slashing, but may the clear pure green light of the Exit shine before me and lead me to the eternal bliss of exiting the carpark.

Bella Basura
April 2016

Bella Basura’s Collection of 100 word Flash Fictions – The Short Answer

Other images in my Gallery

Fish Mythology – Flash Fiction

Posted on March 23, 2016 by Bella Basura

Finally, I have managed to capture in words my tumultuous feelings around the death earlier this year of my one-time Hero, freak out to the Teenage Moon Dream oh yeah! – David Bowie. The piece is a 100 word Flash Fiction story, that has a specifically East-Anglian setting because I live in East-Anglia.The piece, Fish Mythology, is sub-titled “if David Bowie had been born an Eel instead”

Fish Mythology By Bella Basura

Here Eel Bowie-Fish fell, brandy-drunk, face down in the Ouse.
Down where Bulrush buds waver in clear still water, beneath we writhing bottom-feeder shoals, we elvers and catfish, he deep under layers of earthy mud, dark dead debris.

Here in leaf-litter and rot lies the corpse of old Eel Bowie-Fish, who lead us to conquer the Isle of Ely, on the Fen he crawled on his fins, on the floodplain he walked on his tail, like a bishop, into the Cathedral, resplendent in his flowing robes.
But here lies Eel Bowie-Fish , decomposing in slow-motion undulations, while we pick his bones white.

Bella Basura’s in progress Flash Fiction Anthology – The Short Answer

Bella Basura
Feb. 2016

Flash Fiction, again

Posted on March 6, 2016 by Bella Basura

A Complete Unknown.
Photo by Bella Basura 2011

No Direction Home
By Bella Basura

Speared awake by shafts of stupid sunlight falling across my hangover face. My eyes are cracked open to an unfamiliar room. Washed up, face down, stranded at the high tidemark of last night’s intoxication.

Lying on a bare mattress, fully clothed, in a curtainless unoccupied room, no furniture.

Sitting up dizzily, I view dozens of big see-thru plastic bags piled against the blank walls. Evidence bags wadded full of incrimination.

Where the hell am I?

Lured by voices in the corridor, I turn to see a sign on my door.
In childish scrawl it reads “Welcome to the Plague Room”.

The Short Answer – Flash Fiction Anthology by Bella Basura
Gallery – Photos, collages, talismans

100 word fiction

Posted on February 16, 2016 by Bella Basura

Skull Girl Grimace
Photo by Bella Basura 2015

Ennui
By Bella Basura

I passively follow Qwerta to the beach, golden sand tumbles onward in rolling dunes, down to the sea. Momentarily I glimpse a vista of the deep oceanic horizon, blue with distance, then we dip down into a hollow, a machete is thrust into the sand.

Qwerta grasps the machete, but it stays fast, Excalibur in stone. She tugs, tugs, her maximised stealth leeching into the landscape. Sudden Manga wingedsnakebat creatures attack her kneecaps. She soaks the sand, beating out her life in numerical units. FAIL in red. Disappeared.

I pick up the machete and mouse-click back to the encampment.

Flash Fiction Anthology
Image Gallery

The Short Answer

Posted on February 3, 2016 by Bella Basura

Further Flash Fiction by Bella Basura
from the proposed Anthology – The Short Answer – short stories of 100 words in length.

Auntie Shocked Sees The Light
Photo by Bella Basura 2013
Still from “Abandoned Video” With Phil MFU

Precog Moment

Shaking firm hands with poker-faced thank-you-for-your-time, I close the door behind me.

Standing waiting for the lift down, I depressingly relive the interview.

I see myself lurching, a raddled old maid in rouge and blotchy mascara, wearing a charity-shop power-suit, manoeuvring square shoulder pads into a diminishing round hole. I trail mendacity and inappropriate extended metaphors across the interview room carpet. Bluff and fluff falling away. The interviewers look at me, disappointed in their expectations, they recoil, their faces cave in and close.

Instantly, I know it’s over, even before I mention my criminal record and false identities on Facebook.

More Flash Fiction
More Images

Fiction Flash No.2

Posted on January 26, 2016 by Bella Basura

Weird Winter Wishes
Photo: Phil MFU
Cambridge 2012

Calm Time Charmed
by Bella Basura

It seems I have been here a year, living in this charmed place, a sleepy little bower in the bosom of paradise.

Here, time moves so slowly that it feels never-ending. There, out in the real, grey world time turns gyrations, so that at the intake of a breath galaxies burst into being, only to recede into cosmic void at the beat of the outbreath.

So that by the time I make up my mind to return,
hundreds of thousands of years have passed, and I suspect,
everybody has evolved into a future-race of super-bellicose giant killer-crabs,
walking sideways, angrily.

More Flash Fiction

More Images

New Flash Fiction

Posted on January 19, 2016 by Bella Basura

A Year In The Murder Flat – Bella Basura 2011

Living at Death’s Door
By Bella Basura

At first the landlord didn’t tell us about the murder,
we found out after the lease was signed,
we’d already moved in.

In the end, I read it in the local newspaper,
she’d lived in the flat across the landing,
her husband stabbed her in a frenzy,
she escaped him but died in the stairwell.
I carried the constant knowledge that the woman had bled out on my doorstep.

The morning of the murder, he told me later,
the landlord had hidden in the bathroom.
The woman had died screaming and banging on a door nobody dared answer for fear.

Other Sculptures

Other Flash Fiction

Bella Basura online

don't dream it, be it

Category Archives: flash fiction

Flash Fiction Honourable Mention

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From The Short Answer

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Fish Mythology – Flash Fiction

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Flash Fiction, again

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100 word fiction

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The Short Answer

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Fiction Flash No.2

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New Flash Fiction

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