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A for Any Other time: atozchallenge

So the A to Z challenge roars off!

As followers of this blog know, I’m going to write a piece of flash fiction each day based on a picture prompt and a story starter, chosen from suggestions sent in by bloggers. Spent the whole day with hosting duties, visiting dozens of awesome blogs, and now for my post:

Today’s prompt is courtesy A to Z Challenge participant Donna B. McNicol, who’s been unflinching in her support for us in our #atozchallenge campaign on Twitter.
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Any other time she would have passed right by. She never stopped to notice little odd things. 
 But this wasn’t any other time, nor any other day. It was the day her life had turned upside down, all without her noticing– she now had no home, no family, no job, no identity. No one recognized her, or paid attention, let alone talk to her.
She turned at the face, a blob of putty with eyes and nose and mouth in a snarl as it stared out at her from the wall next to her neighbor’s backyard. Aren’t you a strange one, she said, your face plastered into a wall?
She wondered why she did not smell the fresh-mowed grass, nor heard the car that pulled up in the driveway in a house ahead of her.
Shocked, she saw the snarl move in answer to her mostly rhetorical question. No stranger than you.
And why might that be? said she, hands on hips, determined to have her first conversation of the day, and win it. She had always won arguments before.
The snarl curled to reveal a smile of plastered teeth, Because, unlike you, I know I’m dead. Don’t worry, you’ll learn.

She sank down on her haunches, playing her day in her head. It is never too late to notice little odd things, she muttered, settling down to sort out the first argument she could not win.

Damyanti Biswas

Damyanti Biswas is the author of You Beneath Your Skin and numerous short stories that have been published in magazines and anthologies in the US, the UK, and Asia. She has been shortlisted for Best Small Fictions and Bath Novel Awards and is co-editor of the Forge Literary Magazine. Her literary crime thriller series, the Blue Mumbai, is represented by Lucienne Diver from The Knight Agency. Both The Blue Bar and The Blue Monsoon were published in 2023.

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