Sam Skelton
MICROFICTION
A FEW THINGS ABOUT NEEDLES 1. The woman enquired if she might have a local anaesthetic before the facial needles were inserted in to her cheek. The doctor had previously explained that the facial needles might need to ‘move around’ so they could ‘access other parts of her face’. The doctor listened to her request then answered that the needles for the anaesthetic were ‘unfortunately much thicker’ than the facial needles. The woman imagined there would be anaesthetic in facial needles if the situation was reversed. The procedure went ahead without it. 2. Veins can look alive when they are dead. If they’ve been pricked enough times, they will trick a phlebotomist. They will say; ‘Ah that looks like a good one’ then try two times to find a line in with the needle. ‘Sharp prick’ they’ll say, ‘sharp prick again.’ They will fetch another phlebotomist to try two times again. This can continue until all the phlebotomists have had a turn. Your arteries hold a funeral for your veins and sprinkle the ashes on your bed. 3. There are stories about needles where princesses spin wool and are induced by magic to prick their fingers. Then sleep for 100 years. You wonder if you will sleep for 100 years. It is difficult to remain awake. There are cords winding your arms and torso. There are needles pricking holes in your skin. Maybe you got it wrong and you’ve been spinning the wrong wool for the magic to work? Then you remember that princesses have no agency to wake themselves. They rely on a stranger to kiss their perfect faces. You whisper for the nurses to prop you up and bring some strong coffee. Your face will be no- where near perfect ever again. It’s going to be a long wait.
AFTERWORD There is always the possibility that any reader presented with any printed fact will argue that the fact should be, in fact, a fact. I am prepared to listen to the argument presented to defend this position, but I would like to point out that any fact carries the possibility of rendering itself fiction. The world was flat, fact, and now it is round. The celestial heavens were spheres of glass containing divine light, fact, and now the night is full of stars. The Great Wall of China could be seen from the moon, fact, and then we went to the moon. A linear advance through time, whether actual or perceived, invites reflection on what was presented as certainty, what we thought was true but often wasn’t. Reality changes under our feet all the time. The past seen in terms of now, is a fictional visit to what originally seemed fact and with each fictional visit, each return trip, we can rewrite the canon of truth and all its associations. The round world sees the flat world as foolish. It jeers at the sailors navigating away from perilous edges on the horizon. The divine light focuses its full intensity on Edwin Hubble and multiple galaxies appear in the glass eye of his telescope. The Great Wall of China gazes longingly up at the Moon but the moon is not interested in old fashioned structures bound by gravity. Facts from the past huddle in the corner waiting for someone to laugh at them. They sit at the back of class, keep their heads down in case they are called to give an answer or made an example of. They get used to rejection and loneliness. I hope you will forgive me for journeying backwards and forwards between todays potential facts and the abandoned facts that now look like fictions. For sweeping them all in to one big pot, giving it a good stir and not attempting to compartmentalise truth. The stories I have written have grown from my memory which is unreliable at best and writes alternative narratives, that my entire family dispute, at worst. I cannot guarantee the facts. I cannot promise any of it happened at all, but please permit a little leeway, a more circular route between past and present because people have navigated the globe using only star light and the position of the moon. Fact. And I believe it’s still possible to sail stories over the edge of the world.
ACADEMIA I read in an academic journal that a researcher had copied out an entire text of a novel, renamed it and called it his own. The artefact was apparently judged as original and marked on its own merit. I lie in bed and consider copying out one of my lecturer’s essays and submitting it for marking. I wonder if they will recognise it or if it will just become mine.
ANTS Numbers didn’t consider himself an outcast. He was a proud Myrmica Ruginodis and lived in a small nest of 2,673 other equally proud ants, who were devoted to their queens and had made their most recent home close to the riverbank. In general, Numbers would have continued about his and the colonies business, barely taking a break for rest, in an uncomplaining and resourceful manner, but the most recent events could not be ignored. The entire riverbank insect population had excluded Numbers and his colleagues from the ceremonial interring of snail and ladybug. They had been outcast by the other inhabitants of the riverbank and their behaviour was almost unforgivable. Neither Numbers or any of his fellow ants had received an invitation either verbally or through insect mail to the funeral. As if this was not slur enough on the ant community, which indeed it was, Numbers was now observing spider and his compatriots preparing to do battle with two humans seated on a blanket no more than eighty ant paces from his cherished and beloved nest without one single thought of safety for the queens. There had been no contact from the other insects, definitely no consultation and absolutely no risk assessment of any sort. Numbers was beside himself with fury, his abdomen had indeed turned an even deeper shade of red than the maroon he habitually sported, and his antennae were vibrating with rage. How spider had masterminded such a plan without including the ant fraternity was quite beyond his comprehension. They had suffered equally with the loss of three worthy worker ants when the humans disrupted their delivery line. The untimely death of Pythagorus, Trig and Sine had caused an emergency diversion of the queens’ eggs to their alternative nest with all the inconvenience that entailed. Most importantly of all, were ants not in constant danger as careless human feet continued daily to tread a circuitous route in parallel to the riverbank? Clearly snails and ladybirds had suffered too but did ants not matter at all? Numbers had taken the only action that he considered to uphold the respectability, hardworking ethos and moral value that ants lived by. He had issued his instructions to the nest just as soon as he was aware of the other insect’s intent to attack the picnicking human couple and the nest had worked collectively with a methodical and mathematically impressive zeal that was incomparable in the insect world. Numbers anger diminished with each stone that was laid and was replaced with a burgeoning pride that swelled his thorax and calmed his mandible, which he had up this point been unconsciously grinding horizontally from side to side. The work was being quickly completed according to instruction and soon not only spider and the other insects that had rejected and overlooked their inclusion, but the humans who had caused such upset and misery in the first place would stand corrected and educated in proper behaviour. This would be a lesson in inclusivity that would go down in the annuls of history and none of them would ever forget. Piles of precisely placed stones lay no more than fifty ant body lengths from the humans sitting on their rough picnic blanket of woven cotton, and Numbers watched as one of the humans leaned forward noticing the constructed piles of stones in the grass and beginning to take in their significance. Wasps and bees circled overhead as spider marched with a plethora of additional crawling insects towards the newly built installation, bypassing the humans and trying to make out what was now going on. The human looked again, let out a small gasp and jumped to its feet, snatching the blanket and beckoning to the other human that it was time to leave. The picnic was hastily tipped out of the blanket and sandwiches and boiled eggs tumbled on to the grass. The insects scrambled to follow and one bee nearly met his end in the confusion by dive bombing straight in to the river but was luckily rescued, only in the nick of time, by an ant bridge hastily constructed to haul him out. Later that afternoon after Spider had whistled the now dispersed insects back to the riverbank, Numbers and Spider made amends. Spider swore a solemn oath never again to exclude the ants, and they all feasted on the spoils of the disowned picnic. Satisfied Numbers headed over to take one last look at the stone piles before ordering its deconstruction. He would have liked to leave it there for posterity, but he knew it would only cause complications. As he stood there proudly, with all six legs planted on his earth, he focused his eyes firmly on the stone piles glittering in the last of the afternoon sun’s rays. The stone message glinted back at him. A N T L I V E S M A T T E R Numbers supervised as the words disappeared back in to random stones dotted along the river’s edge and nodded contentedly at his fellow ant’s achievement. The job was done, work was returned to normal operation and Numbers headed back home at a pleasant sedentary pace muttering long live the queens over and over in to the falling dusk.
LITTLE MOUSE You find a dead mouse in the middle of the path while walking your dog in the woodland. It looks unscathed apart from stiff legs set at awkward angles. Its eyes are wide open. It is very tiny like one of those felted mice that you can buy in bohemian craft shops. You are unsure what action to take, you don’t want to feel its deadness but decide to move it. You balance and lift it on two small sticks and place the body under a milky shelf of fungus growing out at the bottom of a dying tree. Your dog has waited patiently throughout this miniature funeral. He snuffles in the winter leaves and sniffs the sniffs that dogs like to sniff. He is an old dog and while you watch him, you imagine his body cold and stiff rotting under the fungus with that little mouse. You decide you’ll cremate him. Then the dog finds some cat shit to eat so you hustle him away and continue your walk.
The following pieces are part of a diptych entitled LUCENT DREAMING. Both were published in XXXX name of publication in 2025
RECOGNITION 1. In 2019 I take a trip abroad for a holiday. On the way back, at Gatwick Airport, I stand in one of the long lines at passport control. My family are before me and pass through. When I get to the scanner, I stand on the designated markings and wait for the gates to open. A red light flashes. The passengers behind bristle. I try again. Red again. I call to a woman sitting on a grown up high chair in a blue and red airline suit. “Excuse me. I don’t think it’s working.” “Try again.” “I already did.” Everyone in the line can hear me. “I’ve had an operation on my face since the photo was taken.” She replies: “You shouldn’t have chosen it then.” I shouldn’t have chosen it. What choice did I have? I had cancer on my face. It’s not a choice to have part of your face scraped off. You think I wanted this? She means the passport control line with facial recognition. “No, I’m sorry. I didn’t realise.” She sucks her teeth. “Please can you help me out of here.” With reluctance she ushers the queue to the side. I back out face down, saying sorry repeatedly to tutting passengers . I am apologising for my face. 2. In 2021 I buy a new mobile phone with facial recognition software. To set it up it scans your face several times. Thereafter whenever you want to ‘open’ your phone it gazes at you and allows access. This phone has only seen me with my scars. It has registered them as my authorised image. On the days when my face no longer feels like my own, I open my phone repeatedly to check if I am me.
FACE I am sitting in front of my mirror. Not just any mirror but one carefully chosen; deliberately aged, slightly distressed, with a sepia hue that banishes stark outlines. My image, in particles of light, streams towards the glass then bounces off the smooth surface. Everything in front of the mirror is reflected backwards, retracing the path it travelled to get there. This is how mirrors really work. My reflection is not reversed or switched left to right, up or down. It is inverted front to back. I am coming and going at the same time. My face was. My face is. My face was. Is again. I observe this visage, deliberately obfuscated, arriving and departing in my antiqued mirror. But it is a trick: I am not seen, then unseen. My face is constant in its adoption of my selfness. My old image was so familiar I just didn’t feel it. This new one, stitched to me with needle and thread, feels like an unrelenting stranger. This face is a narcissist so concerned with who sees it, how it is interpreted, what it represents. It imprints itself on my unwilling mind’s eye, cracking its way through the glass when all I want is my old image back. But perhaps I am too unkind. What was and what is, the past and the present, seeks unity, consolation, acceptance. I try to meet my new face without judgement, but I am girding my body and whispering reassurances to the rest of me that not everything has changed.
ONLINE DATING He bought all the books she mentioned in her messages. They sat in a pile by his bed. He didn’t read the books but instead dipped into them to send her thoughtful quotes. She imagined him a literary man. He imagined her seeing the books on his night -stand and fucking his brains out.
WALK IN THE DARK Take a walk around the block my creative writing tutor suggested. Walk and see what you notice. Re-examine that familiar environment with senses that penetrate the familiar. Maybe experience it from a psycho-geographical perspective. Its eight o’clock at night. Its October. It’s dark outside. I lace up my boots and drop a little curtsey to male privilege, that fickle guardian of safety and I stride in to the night. I am woman. I am alone. I will not be beholden to the fear that my sex is conditioned to deserve. Leaves on grass, on earth, on stone, coat the path before me. I crunch as I tread, alerting demons who were sleeping of my latent presence in their scape. Raising blood smeared muzzles, wiping empty eye sockets with tallowed claws, they crouch and listen, expectant. They are deciding if I am worthy of their attention or just another intruder at the boundary of their dream. The path becomes slope shifting forwards and down. Unshorn privet fronds out leafy arms to catch my hair and stroke my arms in unwanted embrace. I will myself inwards to inhabit less space, to lessen myself and pass unnoticed, un-fondled. I do not want to be touched. I did not invite this attention. I am speaking a no that is no. That is no. That is no. The demons rise. My pace quickens, unconsciously at first, but treading ever quicker into dissolution of time and place. The night envelopes all the parts of me. I exist in a space that is neither here nor there, neither ground nor sky. The black cloaks itself over and under my skin. It prickles the heat of the air in my lungs. I understand the demons were never intending to let me pass. I have evaded them too many times before. This time they will not relinquish their hold. I stop. I consider my options. There is no point in going on. There is no need to move at all. The demons draw close enough to stroke and I realise, with a torchlight clarity, we belong to each other. I am woman who grew them, who birthed them in their privileged lairs. We are family of tooth and claw. I turn and smile in to the nothing of this furred black night. It is time for them to meet their mother. I lick my lips in anticipation of the taste of their blood.
YOUR GRANDFATHER DIES eventually. He spent his last years daubing his windowsills and everything else with watercolour paint on fine paint brushes, talking about the war and oiling things he shouldn’t have. His carpets were coated with inches thick pipe tobacco. You kicked your way through it like autumn leaves as he called you his princess and asked you if you were courting yet and when you would get married. You cry. Your mother cries. You fish the standard black dress from the back of your wardrobe. Your grandfather is to be buried in a grave already paid for. When you get there, it hasn't been dug out long enough. He was unusually tall and you watch as gravediggers are called and set about trying to shove your grandfather’s coffin into the too short hole. You cover your mouth and blink your eyes. While you are waiting you hear a woman laughing. It’s an hysterical laugh that everyone is pretending not to hear. You realise that woman is you. The gravediggers are jumping up and down on the coffin to force it into the hole. You are snorting with laughter. There are tears rolling down your face. It is the funniest thing you have ever seen.
