It’s scorching outside, so I thought I’d write a flash fiction piece about summer and childhood memories and all those lovely topics that bundle together so well, mixed with a little adult pessimism. Oh, I’m eighteen now – this is my first blog post that has been written while I’m an adult! Very exciting. But anyway, please enjoy this short flash fiction piece!
Heatwave
Not every summer is the same, but you wish they were. One look out of your kitchen window brings back the world of childhood that you so miss, and have realised that you’ll never get back. Take a step outside and breathe in, deeply – that is the whiff of summer holidays when your parents packed you off to France and you never wanted to look back. School was a distant thought and you could barely hold a pencil by the time you returned, but you didn’t care. You didn’t know anything, then. Thoughts entered your mind and disappeared as quickly as you could blink – except for during staring contests, of course, as that would skew the simile.
You slather your arms with that creamy, not-quite-white sun lotion and remember fighting against it as a toddler. It felt wet and weird on your nose, so you wanted none of it. One summer, you burned. It wasn’t a direct consequence of your tantrums, no, but it taught you more than you’d ever admit. That peeling skin, blister red, and the endless torment of needle-like pain… No, you’d never go there again. You’d wrinkle your nose and fuss, but you always secretly wanted the protection from the relentless sun. That was too much of an enemy; you couldn’t even bear to look at it, let alone fight it. Even now, you watch its rays cascade into your small kitchen and gaze wondrously at the fruits of its power.
This summer is like those summers. They replay like nostalgic short films in your mind, again and again, as you reach for the ice, then the tap. Last summer wasn’t the same. It was an endless torrent of tropical rain that you didn’t remember from your younger years, so it felt all foreign and weird. Alien, even. The summer before, you were nose-deep in work and barely had time to leave the house, let alone enjoy the sunshine. Children didn’t work, or they didn’t when you were growing up, so that mismatched with your sun-dappled memories too. Altogether, adult life is a disappointment dressed in paperwork and purple-black smudges beneath your eyes, and you desperately want to dive into those memories that smell like France and taste like hard, red ice cream, but you can’t. You know that summer will end and the heat will disappear. You can see yourself shielding your head and bag from the rain as you board the bus, day after day, once summer ends and the holidays disappear and you have work to do and places to be.
The child within you is crying, but only because you’ve dropped your ice cream cone on the floor. The adult within you wants to sigh but doesn’t want to appear discontent to the outside world, so you keep it all inside and pretend that you’re enjoying the sun through a tired haze of not enough sleep and never enough sleep. When it all becomes too much, you stand up, put the glass of ice-water down, and pull the curtains across the kitchen window. You can do that, now. You live alone. If you want it to be winter in your little kitchen, then you can make it be so.
Enjoyed the flash fiction piece? Why not check out my latest short story collection, Everything Under The Rainbow?
(available on Amazon!)
Oskar Leonard 