“Viewing hope in a winter sunrise from cosy hibernation. Drawing me out into the crisp new morning”
Amanda Young BA Art and Design Practise, currently studying MA Illustration. Her work aims to make an emotional connection with the viewer, giving them a sense of time and a place. Instagram: @amandayoungart
Pink Fiction by Emily Macdonald
Mary is barefoot and cold in her nightdress. She stands with her hands on her hips, assessing the mess. The upturned chair, the splattered table, shattered glass, the direction of travel from his furious flung fist.
Outside, the morning shines pink. A landscape of sweet early love. An oyster shell sky spins off pristine snow and the scant ice-tipped trees and bracken reflect a soft pinkness too. Tender and fragile. So easily broken.
Mary turns from the window, shrugs off the view though she longs to run outside, to feel the coconut ice crunch under her feet, to lie in the flushed snow and let its soft marshmallow blanket her in.
Sunlight glints in sharp shards on the floor and she marvels at the red of it, though knows it’s blood spilling from a cut on her foot.
The kitchen clock ticks over the hour. Mary calculates the minutes left before he will wake, how long she has to right the mess, to stem the blood from the cut, wash, dress and prepare for him, to make his next meal.
She looks out of the window again, considers the pink fading to grey. The icy landscape is bleaching colour, becoming weary, half-hearted, a day done before it’s begun.
She sighs, aligning herself with the view, then ties up her unwashed hair and tackles the tasks that need to be done. When she hears the first cry from his cot, Mary thanks the sky for hiding its iridescent display. When he wails louder in the shock of wakening, stirred by hunger and the damp in his pants, she curses the sky—praises it too—for hiding its sweet temptation, allowing her to tackle another long day of loving him.
Emily Macdonald has won and been placed in several competitions, including a shortlisting in the Bath Short Story Award 2023. She has work published by Fictive Dream, Reflex Fiction, Lucent Dreaming, Crow & Cross Keys, Ellipsis Zine, Free Flash Fictionand The Phare amongst others. Her flash fiction collection of driving related stories Wheel Spin and Traction is out now with the independent Alien Buddah Press. X: @ek_macdonald, Instagram: @macdonald8017 & Bluesky: @ekmacdonald.bsky.social https://www.macdonaldek11.com