Flash Fiction


THE NUTCRACKER - PART 1 by JL Williams

You are walking around the biggest toy store in the world. You see high up on a shelf the most beautiful nutcracker. His white beard juts out stiffly from his wooden face. He has round red cheeks and heavy black eyebrows that make him look fierce. A velvet jacket in navy with gold braid, crimson waistcoat, brown breeches and white stockings up to the knee. His black leather soft-soled slippers are just visible poking over the edge of the shelf. You decide to climb the shelves as if they were a ladder to get closer to the nutcracker. As you climb many toys fall off the shelves. It is very difficult and your hands get dustier the higher you climb. The climbing seems to go on forever. You finally reach the top shelf only to discover that the nutcracker has moved. He is now poised in the rafters of the toyshop’s ceiling ten feet away.

You venture out onto the rafter on your hands and knees. You can smell the timber of the rafter, like an old boat. The nutcracker faces you and leers. A strange mixture of anger and pain fills your heart. You proceed forward on the rafter, trying not to look down hundreds of feet to the floor below. Occasionally you cannot help but look down and each time you do you see the tiny rows of shelves extending outwards in every direction on the great shop floor. Every time you raise your eyes the nutcracker has moved another ten feet away. You travel for ages like this, moving in no discernible pattern, never coming to a wall or window. Just rafters to traverse and miles of shelves below in every direction.

The nutcracker is sometimes turned toward you, sometimes turned away.

By JL Williams, Copyright 2008. All rights reserved.





Flash Fiction