I live in a paint factory. After the working day, I rub myself clean with white spirit and hide in the darkness until the others are gone.
It has been this way since Susan’s passing. She was my landlady, but also my partner. I used to wake to her salon-tanned silhouette as she slipped from the bed to pull the curtains on a welcoming rosy dawn, or depressing grey day.
When she died, they put her in a wooden box, and took the sky away with shovel loads of dark brown earth.
Her son, a puce man, catching the fresh green scent of money, wanted me gone. I refused. I’m big, and the first bully boy went off with a bloody nose. But when he came back mobhanded, they made a sorrowful black bruise of me.
Chucked out, I’d just a backpack full of laundry to call my own. I gravitated to the factory, to my twilight life, and found inspiration.
Alone, I lay down large sheets of paper. Senses smoothed by smoky brandy, I pour emulsion rainbows, rivers of gloss, on the paint splattered floor. Naked, I roll in creative birth, press my hands, my feet, my body, against the papers.
By morning the paint has dried. I slip the images into a cardboard tube and post them in my lunch hour. The art dealer thinks I’ll have a colourful future.
By day Mark Dalligan is a City banker but he shares his body with a writer who has started to emerge at night. He’s having some success, with work taken by Boston Literary Magazine, LitBits, Apollo’s Lyre, Bewildering Stories, MicroHorror, Static Movement, Clockwise Cat, Ranfurly Review, Twisted Tongue, Delivered and EDF.
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25 Responses to “RAINBOWS • by Mark Dalligan”
Comments
« KRUPPER AND JONS • by Kevin Shamel | Home | STRANGE CONNECTIONS • by Tom Williams »
November 8th, 2008 at 1:03 am
Troublewith blank space?
November 8th, 2008 at 1:23 am
Ooops, cleared that up.
November 8th, 2008 at 3:22 am
Oh, yeah? “She wasmy landlady” is still there.
November 8th, 2008 at 4:05 am
Too many distracting typos and missing words to keep interested. Sorry.
November 8th, 2008 at 4:11 am
A colourful flash, Mark! I really liked it. Good writing and some memorable phrases.
Looks like some non-printing characters are still eating up a couple of spaces, as in wasmy, but it didn’t detract for me.
November 8th, 2008 at 5:09 am
Glad you liked it Bill.
Cheers
Mark
November 8th, 2008 at 5:52 am
I’m sure you’ll have a colourful future
November 8th, 2008 at 6:00 am
Interesting contrasts and boldly brief, Mark. I liked it!
November 8th, 2008 at 6:17 am
intense…heartbreaking, typos didn’t take away from the story line. Thanks!
November 8th, 2008 at 9:11 am
I was impressed by the poetry of this story as well as the phrasing. This is talent!
November 8th, 2008 at 9:37 am
Ooh, I love this story! I love your writing style and really like the plot! Five out of five for me!
November 8th, 2008 at 10:03 am
How sad for Susan that her son was puce, but we can’t choose our family can we?
I loved your sad, color-filled story, Mark.
November 8th, 2008 at 11:03 am
Strange and beautiful. Well done, Mark.
November 8th, 2008 at 9:13 pm
Very poetic piece of flash fiction.
November 9th, 2008 at 12:21 am
I like this story a lot, Mark. So much in his rainbows.
November 9th, 2008 at 2:53 am
Thanks for commenting everyone.
Cheers
Mark
November 9th, 2008 at 8:59 am
Wonderful writing, Mark. Lots of writers can either do “words” or “story” but you do both, with aplomb, and colour, and humour, and style. Wish I could’ve given it more than five stars!
November 9th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
Thank Sarah.I think more than five stars would have made it a firework – quite seasonal.
Cheers
Mark
November 9th, 2008 at 8:55 pm
There is a big difference between poetry and random words. I think this story is an example of the latter. It seems that the writer attempted to use as many descriptive words as possible in the shortest amount of space, disregarding sense or reason. How can green be a scent?
November 11th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
Hi Laura,
sorry this didn’t work for you. Regarding ‘green’ being a scent, I was linking up the traditional colour of money and the fact that people, like the puce son, can ’smell’ money. It didn’t seem too big a step to assume a sort of synesthesia.
Thanks for reading.
Cheers
Mark
November 12th, 2008 at 7:52 am
The scent of green was something I liked. The story was oddly reminiscent of Jim Carrol’s “me myself and I” which is a favorite of mine. I think I just would have liked it developed a bit more, maybe from micro flash to flash, to really put in the colors as character and connect them to the relationship with his boss/landlady.
Either way, I totally dug it
November 12th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
Hi EL,
glad you liked it.
Cheers
Mark
November 14th, 2008 at 1:55 am
Wonderful, Mark.
November 15th, 2008 at 12:20 am
Glad you liked it Jennifer.
Mark
February 4th, 2009 at 12:57 am
I think this story is perfect just the way it is. You have a magical touch with words. When I was reading this I felt like each word was absolutely important in it’s own right and non were wasted.