F is for Flash Fiction

Thank you, Kerrie, for hosting the weekly Crime Fiction Alphabet.

Flash is glimpses of angst, paranoia, dark humour - anything that lurks beneath the suburban facade.
I have read the second half of Cathryn Grant´s collection, "Flash Fiction for the Cocktail Hour", and again I will share a couple of quotations with you.

Get the collection for free - for a few days. 

Sitting with the Dead
The narrator, an old woman, meets her grandson´s fiancé, but is less than thrilled.

"She wore a dress with thin straps over her creamy white shoulders. Each time she reached for her wine glass, the strap on the left slid down her arm. The side of her breast popped out like the egg white emerges from a crack in a boiling egg - a silken bubble."

Besides, young Clara is a medium, conducting séances for money. A despicable practice as the dead should be left alone. No spoilers, but this particular story is among my favourites.

Out of Options.
Ah, black garbage sacks! I wonder what is in them in real life, but we all know what to expect when we come across them in crime fiction, don´t we?
Karla the caretaker doesn´t like dead bodies, but when she sees something sticking out of one of those black sacks in a dumpster, it seems she has no choice. Lovely (dark) twist.

Reverberation.
A sinister story about fireworks, but as always full of fine little observations about human beings and their priorities, "The carbonation sizzled against his teeth, probably rotting them away while he stood here doing nothing but wanting to kill someone." 

Latest news: see the winners of Cathryn´s give-away