an argument by Daniel Payne
Shortlisted in the third Lunate 500 competition
‘The Lunate 500, our semi-regular flash fiction competition, in which we challenge entrants to write (to a set theme broad enough to allow for creative freedom but narrow enough to, well, you know, make it have an actual point) a five hundred word piece of flash fiction… is definitely something that exists. A Thing. (People still say that. Yes. We know.) But. Please ignore Daniel when he says he’s ‘decided’ to simply write this story that very conveniently meets our competition guidelines and — oh! coincidence! — sneaks its way onto the shortlist. Seriously. Who’s kidding who? For meta or worse, we cannot and will not encourage this kind of thing. Who the fuck knows where it will lead?’
Lunate editors
***
I’ve decided to write a 500 word flash fiction inspired by the prompt ‘other people’ which will cover the imaginary subject of my boyfriend's death.
However the twist is that he both exists and doesn’t.
I appreciate that's confusing.
To keep the reader on board I will ensure the narrative is fresh enough to maintain interest but not so fresh that it becomes too weird. An example of the story keeping that balance is when Mum
after dinner
made me a milky coffee
even after I’d explained I don't like it milky
and then I said
how I wished that
instead of acting out aggressive feelings she might have towards her children by making deliberately bad coffee for them
that she should instead
just go ahead
and express those impulses explicitly.
She turned to me coldly
without missing a beat
all deadpan and confident
and said
I
FUCKING
HATE
YOU,
DANIEL.
I have told you that memory before, Jack, so you remember. You've sneaked up on us, which is very much your style. You can be the man who will kill my boyfriend.
Good. Now we have a plot.
You have a dirty laugh, Jack. It’s somewhere between
let’s fuck
and
I want to kill you
which is partly the reason why I stopped making jokes in your presence and also why I couldn’t help myself be so goddamn hilarious.
After we split up you got creepy. I’d be walking in a place that has nothing to do with you and you’d appear behind me, whispering something. I’d turn around and you’d drop off the horizon. Reappear in my dreams.
I know words are at a premium here but my actual boyfriend, outside of this story, whose name is really Jack, asks me what I’m doing.
I explain I’m writing something for a competition and I’ve imagined an ex-boyfriend killer called Jack but I’m not really sure where to go next with the plot, especially with only 170 words left.
We have an argument.
He gets defensive about why I’d give an imaginary stalker his name. He takes it personally.
He’s standing on the balcony, sulking and smoking.
I hate Jack. It’s like he’s murdered the perfect boyfriend I deserve to have but cannot get. He carries the corpse of it on his shoulders; crushed by the weight of all the things I’ve ever desired. An imagined dead man I measure Jack against.
But when the measuring is done?
All that is left that is real -
is Jack.
When I'm less angry I should rewrite this and flesh the idea out better. Make it hit the reader sideways so they leave the story thinking
this is a radically honest take on what it means to love other people
Instead I finish it here by pushing my actual boyfriend off the balcony, since this is exactly what he deserves. I note what shape his limbs make when they land from this great height. A reddening starfish with bits missing.