Tag Archives: motherhood

Shooter Flash: “Winter Camp” by Gary Finnegan

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The middle distance absorbed her gaze. Her sleeves, her nerves, frayed. Moths had chewed holes in the coats of the children; the children had eaten nothing for days. Days had been given to a journey, to the mantra, ‘Things will be better when we get to the camp.’ 

Now, her five-lined brow, like sheet music without a note, knew hope was a hollow lie. To be hungry and afraid and uncertain and on the move was the second-worst state of being. Hungry, afraid, uncertain and stationary was worse by miles. 

‘Did you wash those hands,’ she said, clawing at the paws of the youngest, fussing at a tap. ‘Got to wash those hands every time here, okay? Every time. Or you’ll get sick, like her.’

She nodded towards the next tarp, the day-old home of a family nursing a preschooler through the vomiting bug that was pinballing its way through the camp. 

Her own youngest straw-haired child stood passive and slack as her mother worked the gaps between the child’s fingers with a cement-coloured flannel. 

‘Did you change that vest,’ the mother asked. ‘Gotta change damp vests or you’ll get sick.’

She was curt, she knew that, but child management was the only available task and had to be done with vigour. It was, she reminded herself, in the children’s interests that their mother maintained standards. If you slid into apathy, you accepted death’s call.

The child was silent, and had been since they arrived. The three of them – the father having stayed behind – filed down the line until they reached an unribboned tent. There they tied the piece of cloth collected at the gate around a pole ‒ their claim on nine square metres of shelter, open on one side to the brown dust and ceaseless flow of human anguish. 

‘When is food coming, Mom?’

The older child, listless now, spoke for her sibling, spoke for everyone in the camp. The mother changed tack, opting not to lie, not to say, ‘Soon, love, just wait another while.’ 

Instead: ‘I don’t know.’

Would it have been better to stay and spend their hope under a familiar roof? As she wondered, an unwelcome competitive instinct surged within her at the sight of more new arrivals. ‘They need to shut the camp,’ she exhaled in a whisper. ‘Place is full.’

How many could be fed here? How many could make it across the border when it reopened? Who would decide who stayed, who went, who ate, and how much? 

She could do nothing. And it killed her to seek help while wishing it were denied to others.

‘Come here to me,’ she barked at the eldest child. ‘Those socks need changing.’ 

*

Gary Finnegan’s fiction has appeared in Litro, The London Magazine, The Phare, Roi Fainéant and Flash Fiction Magazine. He is the winner of the Frazzled Lit Short Story Award 2025 and received an Agility Award from the Arts Council of Ireland in August 2025. He has an MA in creative writing from Maynooth University and is working on a novel. 

Shooter Flash: “Red Light Green Light” by Johanna Bernhuber

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Mornings were always rushed, but Angie was particularly antic today – racing around, playing, not getting dressed when asked for the twentieth time. Susan had ten minutes to get her to school and she wasn’t even dressed yet herself.

“Come on!” she bellowed, as Angie tore past wielding a set of streamers like the Olympic torch. “Get dressed now!” And before she could push it away: You little shit, she thought. 

Delete, delete, delete, she thought frantically and froze. She could hear nothing but the sound of Angie playing, still not getting dressed.

Susan hurried to the bathroom and looked in the mirror, peering closely into her eyes. Her heart seized when she perceived, deep within the right pupil, a speck, not of green, but of red.

She ran into Angie’s room, where the child was finally struggling into her sweatshirt. Susan grabbed her slim, warm body and hugged her tightly. “I love you,” she said. “I love you so, so much.”

“Mom!” Angie protested, squirming. “I’m trying to get dressed!” But her little face was smiling, and when she finished pushing her arms through the sleeves, she threw them around her mother’s waist and returned her hug.

Maybe it’s alright, Susan thought, stroking Angie’s smooth hair and dropping a kiss upon her head. It was just a small blip. Maybe nothing will happen.

“Come on,” she said gently, kissing her one last time. “We’re going to be late.”

Together they got up and got ready to leave, Susan gathering Angie’s backpack, water bottle and jacket while Angie strapped on her shoes. She threw on a long coat over her pyjamas. The house looked like a hurricane had hit it, but Susan resolved to tackle the mess later, once Angie was safely in school.

They reached the door, opened it, and were halted by a man dressed in gray on the doorstep.

“No,” Susan gasped, clutching Angie. 

“Mrs Harber,” the man said. “We received an alert of a verbal infraction.”

“No,” Susan gabbled, “it was nothing. I was just trying to get Angie dressed and now she is, you see, and we have to get to school. She’s late as it is. We must get going, will you please let us by?”

“Verbal infractions need to be followed up,” the man said, waving forward a woman, also in gray, who waited behind him. “Let’s have a little chat.”

The woman held out her hand to Angie. Susan hung on.

“You musn’t,” Susan gasped. “She’s very well looked after. I look after her, all the time, every day. I love her, you mustn’t take her.”

“We just need to speak with your mom,” the woman said to Angie, ignoring Susan. “You come with me. I’ll get you a special treat, would you like that? But come now otherwise you might get into trouble, and you don’t want that.”

Angie looked up at Susan. Her hazel eyes, always so beautifully clear, shone with worry. Her mouth quivered. “Don’t worry Mom,” she whispered. “It will be ok.” She eased from Susan’s arms and went with the beckoning woman, who led her to a van parked on the street in front of the house.

Susan tried to go after her, but the man in gray blocked her path.

“Shall we?” he said, gesturing into the house.

Susan sobbed, Angie having melted from view, and turned helplessly to retreat into the house, collapsing on the nearest sofa. The man perched on a neighboring armchair and leaned forward.

“Mrs Harber, I am Agent Blain,” he said. “Do you know why I’m here?”

“Yes,” Susan said, miserably. “But it was only a split second, a careless moment. I was frustrated. It didn’t mean anything. I love my child, more than anything. It was just a moment.”

“Mrs Harber,” the agent said, “life is made up of moments.” He paused. “That’s why moments are important. Do you feel unable to perform the day-to-day duties of motherhood?”

Susan shook her head vigorously. 

“No, not at all. I mean, I’m fine – I’m in control. I’m happy.” She smiled awkwardly, against the tears. 

“You may think it’s just one thought, but our research shows that actions – negative actions – don’t occur without the negative thoughts that precede them. With right thinking, right actions follow.”

Susan nodded, kneading her hands in her lap.

“It won’t happen again,” she said hoarsely. “It’s never happened before.” Forcefully, she pushed I’m not lying I’m not lying across her brain.

“It’s true this is your first infraction,” said Agent Blain, standing up and adjusting his jacket – the one all agents wore, with the high, circular collar. “And as such we will return your child to you, with a warning. But we will, you understand, have to take some precautions. Including placing you under elevated watch.” He moved to the door and, as he opened it, Susan could see the woman in gray leading Angie back up the path to the house. 

“You’d better get this one to school,” the woman said, releasing her with a pat on the back.

“Yes of course,” Susan said, flooded with relief. “Right away. Thank you.” She knelt down to hug her daughter close, but felt Angie stiffen.

“Are you ok?” she asked, pulling back to look at her. In the background, the agents’ van pulled away from the kerb. Angie looked slightly dazed.

“Why did you think that?” she whispered.

“Oh sweetheart,” Susan said, feeling stabbed through the heart. “It wasn’t about you, it wasn’t. It was just – you weren’t cooperating, and I felt stressed. I didn’t mean it. It wasn’t something I said.”

“But you thought it.” Angie’s voice rose.

“That’s not the same. You can’t always control your thoughts.” She hesitated, then added, “But we do have to try.”

“That’s what the lady said.” Angie looked up, frowning, and met Susan’s gaze. Looking into her eyes, Susan caught her breath.

Deep within Angie’s right pupil, surrounded by the soft flecked gold of her iris, glowed a bright speck of green.

Which then, within Angie’s accusatory face, abruptly flicked to red.

* 

Johanna Bernhuber is a psychologist who has written for the Chicago Sun-Times, and has published short fiction and non-fiction in Whitefish Review, Ginosko and Denver Quarterly. She has three children and lives in Illinois with her husband, one dog, and too many books.

Unsettling Tales Scoop 2023 Short Story Awards

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Alice Gwynn has won the 2023 Shooter Short Story Competition with her eerie, twisting tale, “The Ones Who Came Before”, while Edward Barnfield has come runner-up with his dystopian fiction, “Isolation”.

Shooter’s readers and judge, editor Melanie White, appreciated Gwynn’s atmospheric tale for its evocative descriptions and skilful handling of plot twists in a story with deeper undercurrents of identity and loss. Gwynn, a British ex-pat who lives in New Hampshire in the US, said via email that a trip to the UK last year inspired her piece, which is set in the grounds of an ancient castle. Gwynn writes flash fiction and poetry as well as short stories, and has previously published work in Prachya Review, Grey Sparrow Journal, Consequence Magazine, Wilderness House Literary Review, and elsewhere.

Barnfield achieved second place in the competition with “Isolation”, a subtle dystopian fiction with creeping menace that contest readers found particularly convincing. Barnfield, a researcher living in the Middle East, has had work published by Roi Fainéant Press, Ellipsis Zine, The Molotov Cocktail, Third Street Review, Galley Beggar Press, and others.

In addition to the contest winners, two writers gained honorable mentions for their stories: Bethany Wren, for “Rosemary, Patron Saint of Honey”, and Joe Wheelan, for “Unravelled”.

Both “The Ones Who Came Before” and “Isolation” are available to read on Shooter’s website, while Gwynn’s story also appears in the Autumn/Winter 2023 issue of Shooter, which is themed “The Unknown”. Print copies of the magazine can be ordered at the Subscriptions page.

The 2024 Shooter Poetry Competition will open early in the new year, while the 2024 Shooter Short Story Competition will open mid-year. Until then, prose writers are welcome to submit flash fiction and non-fiction to the monthly Shooter Flash contest on a rolling basis. General submissions for Shooter’s Spring/Summer 2024 issue will open to all in the new year.

In the meantime, happy reading, and happy holidays from Shooter Literary Magazine!

Shooter Flash: “A Good Son” by Sarah Macallister

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Peter couldn’t come home for Christmas because his wife dragged him to her family. Susan always played the victim, but she was no wilting flower; she was a parasitic weed.

My son used to be an easy child. No tantrums. Other mothers had to tear themselves away from their children at the school gates, from guttural sobs that made your ears bleed. I pitied those mothers, who’d failed where I’d succeeded. 

I remember the first parent-teacher meeting. Mrs Forsyth sat across from us, wearing a frown and short hair. She reported that our son had stamped on another boy’s head. Peter never behaved that way at home. I knew it must be a mistake. At other parent meetings, we heard that he pulled hair, hit, stole food, and peed on a girl’s coat. Mrs Forsyth clearly didn’t like him, so I moved him to another school. After that, there were no bad reports. 

I started as keys jangled in the lock. Harold whistled and threw open the front door. 

“Something smells good! Baked a cake?” He squeezed around the table and pulled me into his stout stomach. Fruity hops blossomed from his mouth.

“Been at Dopey Does?”

“Don’t you mean The Staggering Stags?”

We snickered together, as if this was the first time we’d made this joke. After I knotted my pinny, I glugged oil into the frying pan and ignited blue flames. Bubbles frisked in the oil and I slid raw meat to sizzle. I laid the table with chutney and a vase of dried honesty. We tucked in. Harold drank another pint and the amber beer glowed while he tipped back his head.

“Heard from Peter today?”

“No, he’s too busy. Working late, poor boy.”

Cake for pudding. Harold poured custard over his bowl. Steam spiralled while he rummaged for a spoon, clanking the cutlery, and shaking the table as he shuddered the drawer shut. I ate mine with a dessert fork.

Not long after Harold climbed into bed, he was foghorn snoring. The harder I tried to ignore it, the more frustrated I grew, until tears streamed into my pillow. Rain lashed the roof and windows, the wet whipping of a cat o’ nine tails. The doorbell rang. 

I swiped my cheeks and flurried downstairs in my nightie. I clicked the hall lamp. My neck shivered as I reached for the handle. It was so late. Who could it be? An outline blurred in the pebbled glass. A man’s height.

“Mum?”

Only Peter. I fumbled to unlatch and clasp the handle, ready with my welcome smile. My thoughts drifted to the kitchen. I opened the door and threw a glow into the seething chattering darkness, which swallowed it whole.

Rain-dark hair plastered his scalp and he looked white, sick. As I fell back to let him enter, my smile fixed, he planted himself on the threshold and leaked on the flagstone floor.

“Peter, are you alright?”

He shook his head and shuddered within the sodden coat. His eyes wouldn’t meet mine.

“You’re cold,” I said, desperate to shut the night out, but Peter only stood by the door and twitched.

“Come in, love.” He shuffled forward and I sealed us safely inside. I trundled off to the kitchen and flicked the kettle to boil, tipping bags into red cups. I wondered whether to give Peter some cake.

“I made a mistake.” Peter spoke slowly, each syllable dropping like the rain. He hovered under the kitchen doorframe, coat on and dripping wet. I could not make the kettle boil any faster. I didn’t know what to do with my hands, so I turned and smiled.

“What?” I asked, but I didn’t want to hear. “Wait, let’s get you dried off first.” I wanted to scurry for towels and clothes, but Peter was blocking the doorway as he answered my question.

“I made a mistake.” His voice broke and a croaking, throaty gurgle slithered into my kitchen, raw like uncooked meat.

“Oh, everyone makes mistakes, darling. Now let’s get you warmed up with a nice cup of—”

He looked me right in the eye.

“A mistake,” he spat back at me. “Susan’s gone.”

Something unfamiliar crawled across Peter’s face. A sneer. He was sneering at me. 

Boiled water steamed from the kettle, its innards raging with bubbles, until the dainty click snapped it off. I turned my back on Peter and poured the tea. 

“Would you like your bag left in?” 

He didn’t reply, so I took a teaspoon and squeezed the bag against the side of the cup before fishing it out. I was meant to say something. My pathetic mother, he was thinking, who can’t face reality, whose eyes are cross-stitched shut. I didn’t know what to say. 

I held the scalding cup against my palm, so the handle faced Peter. He could either take it, or watch my face strain to remain calm as hot china burned my skin. He took it like a good son.

*

Sarah Macallister has a Natural Sciences PhD and is now embarking on a second PhD in History of Art. Besides academic publications, she has had short stories published by Impspired, Flora Fiction and Literally Stories.

Shooter Flash: “The Silence” by A S Partridge

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The baby was crying. Again. Susan had just sunk into sleep ten minutes before – blessed, blackout unconsciousness – and was now wrenched back to the surface by those piercing, incessant cries.

“No,” she moaned, pressing the side of her face deeper into the grubby warmth of her pillow. Laundry, among other things, was overdue. “Shut up.”

I can’t take it any more, she thought, groggily, as the cries escalated. It was the four-month sleep regression. Apparently that was a thing: sleep regressions.

Something that had not been a thing, for Susan: The Golden Hour. Her son, instead, was whisked straight to NICU and intubated through a perspex box. Another thing, but not for her: The Letdown. In Susan’s case it applied purely in the emotional sense – no breastmilk, no oxytocin hit. After weeks of squeezing and pumping, she’d accepted defeat and resorted to formula, despite the exhortations of a parade of nurses, breastmilk advocates and healthcare visitors. One more thing, for the record: a Partner. No dad’s better than a bad dad, Susan frequently told herself. Plenty of women struggled with unhelpful mates, she knew; but in her alternate universe, in the dead of night, there was a pair of hands to lift the screaming baby from its cot and remove it, somewhere else, out of earshot.

The baby continued to cry, louder now, no doubt needing a nappy change, a feed, a cuddle. It was incessant, relentless. “Shut up!” Susan yelled, shoving back the bedclothes and propelling herself upright. One sleep cycle was all she needed, a straight ninety minutes, then she could cope. Just one. On top of four months of broken sleep, it had been several nights in a row of waking hourly. Hourly. Her brain felt scrambled, swollen, bulging within the confines of her overheated skull.

She stormed around the bed to reach the cot on the other side, her vision swimming in the dark. The lump of her child lay within, wailing mouth aglow in a shaft of moonlight slanting past the edge of the blind. Seized by fury, Susan gripped the wooden edge of the cot. “For the love of god,” she screamed, for the third time, “shut up!”

The silence fell so immediately that Susan took a moment to register it. Then she wondered if she was, in fact, dreaming, or if she’d had a stroke. Had she fallen instantly deaf? For there lay her child, mouth open, the image of a squalling infant – yet no sound emerged.

Shocked by an icy jolt, Susan reached in and picked up the boy. He remained frozen – not just mute, but stock-still, a stone statue in mid-scream.

“Jakey,” she said, clutching his swaddled body to her before holding him aloft in the moonlight. “Jakey! Wake up!”

She pressed her ear to his chest and there, fast and soft, fluttered his heart. Raising him to her face, she felt the whisper of his warm breath upon her cheek. She sank onto the bed, cradling his small form – her darling, her beloved. The room whirled, so quiet that Susan could hear a faint ringing, like tinnitus.

She drew back and placed the baby gently on the bed, unwinding the folds of his swaddling cloth. His fists lay tightly balled, bent legs stiff in the air. Mindlessly Susan changed his nappy and flashed onto the memory of changing a plastic doll in prenatal class, a class that purported to prepare you for everything yet only proved, in retrospect, to prepare you for nothing.

With the baby clean and wrapped up again, Susan gathered him to her chest and slid back into bed. His mouth remained open wide, soundless; body warm yet unmoving. Susan drew the covers over them both and leaned back into the pillows. Tucked up warm with the curled animal of her infant at her breast: this was the dream of motherhood, the very picture of parental bliss. The maternal fantasy, the ideal.

The silence was a gift, surely. It couldn’t last long; ideals never did. So Susan resigned herself to sleep, and sank numbly into blackness. Reality would return soon enough. It had to.

*

A. S. Partridge has published poetry, flash fiction, and short stories in numerous magazines including Aurora, Malahat Review, Popshot, Scribble, and others. She lives in Edinburgh, where she is working on a satirical novel about motherhood.