#SelectedFlashFiction – January

We’re delighted to present a remarkable piece of flash fiction selected with great care by our esteemed editors, Lucy Aur and Elizabeth Kemball. Crafted with meticulous attention to detail, this work captures the essence of the fleeting yet impactful nature of the genre. It embodies our commitment to delivering high-quality, thought-provoking literature that resonates on multiple levels. We invite you to immerse yourself in this narrative and join us in celebrating the infinite potential of the written word.

Javeria Hasnain

Biography of V 

V thought that if her best friend abandoned her without an explanation, it would change her. Her best friend abandoned her without an explanation. She thought that if her uncle were to die from cancer, it would change her. Her uncle died from cancer. She then thought that if her boyfriend broke up with her the very next day her uncle died, that would definitely change her. You can come out of one dereliction unscathed, at most scarred, but not two, simultaneously—like a country suffering from famine and flood at once. Her boyfriend broke up with her the very next day her uncle died. Her father told her to get married to his friend’s son. At least it would change V’s environment. She will be away from Karachi, in a new city, or perhaps a new country, overlooking a new river. She got married and moved to New York. Her husband took her to the Brooklyn Bridge, a gigantic mud-colored, rusted architecture suspended over the East River. V thought all water looked alike, as if all belonged to a single source. V’s friends, who had been married, told V sex changes everyone. V had sex with her husband and found it to be quite average. On phone calls home, her mother told V that if she birthed a child and became a mother, it may change her. It had certainly changed me, V’s mother said. In exactly eight months and twenty days, V gave birth to a beautiful daughter and became a mother. Her husband suggested she try for another child—maybe a son could change her. In the next nine months, she birthed another child—a handsome boy. Now a mother to two nipple-sucking toddlers, V got busier than the President’s Chief of Staff. She didn’t find an idle minute to think about her disposition. Because of this neglect towards her own body, V reached menopause much earlier than most. She consulted her mother, who told V about the hot flashes, the irritability, and the sicknesses—how it can change even the most stubborn of women—make them humble, or humiliate them. V found the circumstance to be rather preferable, seeing as it made her undesirable toward her husband—a condition finally made mutual. Amidst several small and large-scale diseases, grief of losing parents, financial concerns, visa restrictions, V and her husband raised their two children, sent them to good schools then colleges, then when they came of age, married them to the one they loved. V and her husband lived to cradle and babysit their grandsons and granddaughters. One night, V was tossing in bed, unable to sleep. She didn’t want to wake her husband, who always had sneezing fits if he ever awoke in the middle of the night, so she got up and left the room. On the dining table were a couple of pencils and textbooks. V thought to write. It changed everything.