“Shit,” Max’s voice rings around the small room.

I can feel my chest tightening and my heart beating too fast, it sounds like a whooshing in my ears. I don’t have many fears but the dark is one, and it has got worse since I found those things.

“You okay?” Max asks.

“No,” I whisper, crouching in a ball on the floor and hugging my knees to my chest.

“What’s wrong?” I can hear him moving around and searching for something on the shelves.

“The dark,” I whisper, and to my ears it sounds lame. I know there are only the two of us here, yet I’m petrified of what is going to happen, that something is going to reach out and grab me.

Max doesn’t say anything, but I can hear him moving away from me and pushing things around the shelves. Finally he gives a small shout and…

Kate Murray is an artist and illustrator who specialises in figures and pencil work. She graduated from Derby University as a medical illustrator but has left that side of the business to pursue her work with figurative and children’s illustration.

Kates’s work features as the cover an frontcentrepiece in the upcoming Twisted Tales Anthology, Published by Raging Aardvark Publishing.

She has kindly agreed to be interviewed about her inspiration and work.

What are you working on at the moment?

I am currently working a set of picture books for children. They range from the moon losing the stars to a story about a little boy on a monster hunt. I write the picture books as well as illustrating them, and I love telling the story with both words and pictures. I am also working on the illustrations for the short story anthology, ‘Shadows Close’, which is due to be published…

Twisted Tales is an annual flash fiction competition celebrating (Inter)National Flash Fiction Day, published by Raging Aardvark Publications. Judged by a panel of experienced short story writers and editors, submissions over the last three years have been extremely high quality; making the job of the judge a difficult one. Authors are drawn from around the globe and stories ranging from lighthearted tales of childhood memories, to gruesome stories to make the reader shiver.

The Twisted Tales collection of flash fiction explores the twisted existence of love, family and relationships as characters seek a sense of self and identity. Flash Fiction  as a form, requires the writer to choose each word with the intention to portray dozens of emotions and images. Whilst twisted doesn’t necessarily mean morbid, its edginess can be whimsical, playful or disturbing. Our selection of twisted tales explodes out of the page and drags the reader…

Emmaleene Leahy is from Ireland. Her fiction has been published in FlashFlood the National Flash-Fiction Day journal, 2012, 2013, 2014, Cake.shortandsweet issue 5, Wordlegs: Post-Tiger Stories,Three Broken Ribs, Eating my Words, 2014 National Flash Fiction Day Anthology, The Scum Gentry and Boyne Berries (Forthcoming).

Emmaleene’s  flash fiction, Jake’s Kite, is one of the 13 chosen by a panel of judges to be included in the upcoming Twisted Tales Anthology, Published by Raging Aardvark Publishing.

 She has kindly agreed to be interviewed about her story and of her writing.

Title of Flash – Jake’s Kite

 What was your initial motivation or prompt to write this story?

I wrote this in response to a prompt with cake.shortandsweet where five prompts appeared on a Wednesday and participants posted their story within 24 hours.

The five words that appeared that week were:

 hideout  ::  transitory  ::  share  ::  full bodied  :: …

“I’m not the monster,” Dee says, and for a moment I know what she is talking about. I mean the real monsters are outside or even the man in front of me. He was part of this, but still I can’t trust her.

Maybe it is the desperate look or the fact she finds it difficult to look at me, her gaze sliding over mine as if she has something to hide. Fully dressed I look behind her at the lengthening shadows.

“What did you find?” Max asks, looking at me, but not turning his back on Dee.

“Well, they are there.”

“What?” Dee shouts, shocked. “You talked to them?”

I nod. “And a guy who offered us help.”

“Who?” Max asks, eyes narrowing in suspicion.

“Well,” I say. “That’s the problem. His friends are at the Tate Modern and he said they would escort us to the WHO. He…

After the computer screen goes blank I sit for a moment. I am trying to gather myself. Honestly, I am so scared I don’t know if I can go back. But then do I have a choice. As I sit I can hear a scream in the distance. It is identical to the one I heard in the hospital.

“Oh no,” I whisper and flinch because I hadn’t realised I was going to say it out loud. Now fear has me in her grasp, but I am more scared about waiting here than moving. I wonder if I ought to go quietly and sneak or if an all-out run would be better.

Another scream echoes through the building. It is getting closer. I glance out of the window and see the rapidly retreating light. I’m going to make a run for it. Pushing back the chair I barrel out of…