FLASH FICTION SECOND PLACE
Amaya and the Kite, by Kik Lodge
Amaya goes out to buy tinned tomato soup and sees the kite. A big flapping yellow thing.
It flies across the green and down to where the cockle lady feeds the ducks.
At the tail of the kite is a girl who’s younger than Amaya, and the girl likes the kite—course she likes it because it’s windy. Kites love wind.
The little girl’s dad is on his phone and looks over at her from time to time, like Amaya’s dad does at home, except hers is always on the settee; hers is never out and about.
The cockle lady throws breadcrumbs and says hi to Amaya but Amaya is too wrapped up in her own business to say hi back.
Amaya doesn’t ask the little girl if she can hold the kite, at no point does she ask anyone for anything, and she doesn’t steal the kite either; the little girl just gives it to her, and Amaya has to run because that’s what you do with kites.
Kites need to fly furiously, more furiously than the clouds. This one is sun-drop yellow, summer-sarong yellow like her mum’s who’s six feet under and fast being forgotten.
When you’re flying a kite, you don’t care what’s happening on the ground, because you’re running and watching it stretch and flap, so Amaya doesn’t notice the bikes and passers-by along the river, or the corner shop man who’s come out of his shop because he wants her dad to cough up and pay his tab, or the red-haired lady pulling her trolley who always says I do worry about you, pet, and she never understands the point in worry when no-one ever comes and gets her.
People don’t understand that when you have a kite in your hand and you’re running, like Amaya is now, you don’t see the road and the moped and the little girl behind you who didn’t actually die in the end, and the cockle lady shouting watch it! because you’re looking up at the furiously yellow kite, so furious it’s overtaking the clouds.
Kik Lodge is a short fiction writer from Devon, England, but she lives in France with a menagerie of kids and cats. When she is not writing, she is not exercising either. Her flash collection Scream If You Want To is out with Alien Buddha Press. Erratic tweets @KikLodge.
