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What is a Day in Your Life Like? #WriteBravely

Write Tribe Day FoxToday is the fourth day of Write Tribe Festival of Words. Yesterday’s prompt was “write about a place, real or virtual,” and today’s is “write about a day in your (or someone else’s) life.”

I’m going with fiction this time, In the Fox’s Parlour, a piece of flash published in the Jet Fuel review, and nominated by them for the Pushcart and the Best of the Net.

Here’s an excerpt– for the entire piece, click here.

In the Parlour of the FoxWe’ll meet outside the city at noon, wheelchairs clanking, and I’ll teach you how to make out with a fox. Foxes have longer tongues than women. They will reach into your throat, down to your stomach. They’ll extract your truth, pleasuring you the while.

If you’re in pain, they’ll find its hard ball, stroke it till it dissolves on their black tongues. Don’t be afraid, they will do it at noon, under a tent of prayer flags strung together on three bamboo sticks. Three is magic: you, me, and the fox.
 
Your family tells you be thankful for what you got, of the way you can paint tracks on sand with your wheelchair. I’ll show you how to dance, walk on your palms, your head, your wrists. Who needs feet?

I like to think of it as a story of hope amidst despair, of taking refuge in the fantastical when the real becomes too much, of the descent (or ascent) into our animal selves when we’re pushed to the edge, when we’re pitied, reviled, rejected. This flash is the day in the life of two people on wheelchairs.

My days are not very interesting, so I chose a fictional day in the lives of fictional characters.

What is a day in your life like? Do you read or write Flash Fiction? What do you have to say about ‘In the Fox’s Parlour?’


I co-host the monthly We Are the World Blogfest: I’d like to invite you to join, if you haven’t as yet, to post Fvourite Placethe last Friday of each month a snippet of positive news that shows our essential, beautiful humanity.

This monthly event has brought smiles on the faces of a lot of participants and their audiences, and somewhat restored their faith in humanity. Here’s a sampler. Click here to know more. Sign up here and add your bit of cheer to the world on the next installment of August 25th!

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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.

I appreciate comments, and I always visit back. If you're having trouble commenting, let me know via the contact form, or tweet me up @damyantig !

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30 Comments

  • hilarymb says:

    Hi Damyanti – mind opening piece … ever since we had the Paralympics here and we have the Help the Heroes Games and now the Special Games – it’s opened so many eyes as to what can be achieved … and seeing people from broken war-torn, poverty ridden countries achieve is wonderful … so often they give back to us through their joy of being alive … cheers Hilary

  • I work five days a week in front of a computer, go home to a boarding house and sometimes watch TV while I surf the net with my laptop. On Friday nights, I get on the bus and go home to my family. I mostly just stay home except when I need to do grocery. I often don’t do anything out of the ordinary. On very early Mondays, I board the bus again to go to work.

    The more interesting part of my life are the dramas I always have to endure, especially with relatives. I don’t really write about them to keep what little peace there is.

  • You tease us so cleverly! I will have to bookmark this and come back for the whole story when I have a bit more time to read and enjoy it thoroughly. I’m so glad you’re having success with your fiction!

  • Wonderful flash piece, Damyanti. My days are pretty ordinary, but not so inside my head. The well of the imagination is bottomless if we only take the time to tap into it.

  • I am at a loss for words .It shocked me an saddened me.Thankfulness is difficult in these times.

  • Apeksha Rao says:

    Loved it! Such a poignant piece. So many adjectives to describe it… Touching, brave, upbeat, foxy!

  • Vinay Leo R. says:

    “I’ll show you how to dance, walk on your palms, your head, your wrists. Who needs feet?”

    That’s definitely hope. 🙂 I liked that.

  • Now that is an attention-grabber. Who could stop reading after that excerpt?

  • Mummasaurus says:

    The excerpt alone is so intriguing – makes you want more.

  • Glynis Jolly says:

    Most of my days are mundane with a routine I rarely waver from. I am an organizing freak so the scheduling of my days suit me.

  • Awe! Such an intriguing tale. Brilliant.

  • pjlazos says:

    Brilliant piece and so evocative.

  • Rajlakshmi says:

    Now I really want to read more about that story. What a fantasy!! Totally enjoyed reading this 😀

  • cath says:

    Great flash, thought-provoking. Love the ending.

  • Inderpreet says:

    My gosh! What a vivid imagination! Where do you think up such ideas? 🙂

  • Modern Gypsy says:

    Very powerful story – loved the imagery of our descent into our animal self – the wolf makes such a powerful symbol for that!

  • BellyBytes says:

    My life is often more fascinating than fiction and a day in my life is any day more entertaining than a pointless Indian Soap Opera on TV. I often feel that with my imagination and my real life experiences I can write the mother of all pot boilers with intrigue, humour and inanity in good measure

  • Zainab says:

    That’s some story!!! My days are pretty uninteresting but I couldn’t think of something as great as your story 🙂

    • Damyanti Biswas says:

      Zainab, it was based on a photograph, and came to me in one seating– I dreamt it while awake, really. I guess I write a lot of flash, and practice helps me improve my craft.

  • That is an amazing story. You had my mind whirring and searching for all possible meanings for every writer has a purpose. I was attempting to climb into your mind to read your thoughts as you put pen to paper, to see the pauses as you reflected and watch as you discarded words and substituted others in their place. But your purpose was revealed at the end and left me with only the question, why the fox?

    • Damyanti Biswas says:

      Foxes embody physical or mental responsiveness, and an increased awareness– and in some cultures, they’re shown to be the sensual, crafty, females who see through deception. A fox can be swift in tricky situations and is associated with nocturnal activities and dream work.

      To me, they’re as close to women who make a business of their charms, as they are to healers, and that’s what I needed for this fantastical day out for these two characters without legs, hope, or kinship. I’m not sure I can, or want to, break down the story– what I meant for the reader to feel is not important either– each reader will take different things away from it. Gad that it made you question, delve and sense– that is all that I’d love for this story to achieve.

      • Wow, that’s so interesting. I wonder how I missed that in my 20 years in Bharat Mata. I I really like these kind of discoveries. 🙂

  • That excerpt is like poetry – a deeper meaning than I can fathom.

    • Damyanti Biswas says:

      Flash is closer to poetry than narrative, and that’s one of the reasons I love the genre.

  • Bhavya says:

    It does symbolise hope. All is not lost as long as you are alive.