Big congratulations, Suzanne Greene, winner of the 2024 Pokrass Prize prompted by the photograph by Louella Lester, above. As well as here, ‘Something Like a Promise’ will also be published in the violet coloured Flash Fiction Festival Anthology, the final book of the rainbow series of festival anthologies, later this year. You can find out more about Meg Pokrass’s prompt and read her general comments about the submissions here. Meg’s comments about Suzanne’s piece are at the end of the story.
Suzanne Greene
Something Like A Promise
Lawrence and Emerald Pilcher miss their city friends so badly they invite them upstate for an orgy. It’s a great success. Okay, there isn’t much actual sex, but they’ve been partying with the same set since the 1960s and they’re used to disappointing each other. The important thing is they’re all envious of the Pilchers’ retirement idyll. ‘Oh, my heart!’ cries Buffy Blennerhassett. ‘All this beautiful wood!’
Lawrence describes the family who previously lived in the sprawling clapboard house. The father deserted them to become a resident Hermit for a tycoon with an English-style country estate in San Antonio. Then the mother turned into a statue on the kitchen floor and the children – all named after the kids on ‘The Waltons’ – had to feed her SlimFast from a watering can to keep her alive. Lies of course, but Lawrence enjoys testing his friends.
Next morning he sits scowling in the kitchen as the friends emerge, grublike, from bedrooms and sofas. Away from the metal pulse of the city they seem greyish, unthrilling. Buffy bounds in and kisses Lawrence on his bald patch. He jumps up and goes out back. He and Emerald have been planning to show their friends the path through the woods to the lake, but too bad. He hasn’t taken to nature as much as he thought he would after reading the blurb on his copy of ‘Walden’ but at least today the birdsong doesn’t scrape his nerves, and when he emerges from the trees the haze of sun on the lake offers something like a promise.
Lawrence walks to the end of the small fishing jetty and stares down into the sullen brown eye of the lake. He wonders how it feels to drown.
An ambulance siren pierces his thoughts. He starts to run towards the house, then asks himself why. Who’s the ambulance for? Buffy? Chuck? Jim? Any of them? No huge tragedy. Not at their age. It could be Emerald, of course. What would he do without her? Move away from here, for one thing. To the coast, maybe. They’d understand each other, him and the restless soul of the sea. For a while anyway. He slows right down. Poor Emerald. Maybe he’ll make more of an effort with her. Maybe he’ll clean up the house, trim back that darned creeper, let the light in. Maybe he’ll let the creeper flourish, swallow him whole.
Meg’s Comments:
“Something Like a Promise” is a story of a stale marriage unsuccessfully revived by an orgiastic reunion of old friends. The story is so perfectly strange, unpredictable, and original I reread it a number of times for the sheer pleasure of reading. Though slightly less haunted than the other entries, the author’s wildly original writing charmed me deeply as it is both darkly funny and masterfully told.
S.A. Greene writes short fiction in Derbyshire. Her work has appeared in lovely places including Janus Lit., trampset, Maudlin House, Flash Flood, Free Flash Fiction, The Phare, Ellipsis, and Mslexia. A lot of her stories have tables in them. Usually kitchen tables, but also dining-room and picnic. One story featured a blue sponge (as well as a dining-table) and it made the Wigleaf Top 50 longlist in 2022. She’s a Resident Facilitator at The Flash Cabin, and tweets at @SAGreene1.
