12+   Episode 96 (28 July 2024): I open my eyes, blink and try to focus on the bright lights set into the white ceiling flying past overhead. I hear beeps and muffled voices. It feels like I'm strapped to a camp stretcher, but it's moving. I'm on a hospital gurney. What happened? I want to ask. But there's a tube down my throat, and I can't talk.

Listen now on Acast

I wrote The Light Above for the March 2024 Furious Fiction, the Australian Writers' Centre's 500-word flash fiction challenge. The brief for March was that each story had to include: 

• A character who revisits something 
• The same colour in its first and last sentence
• And the words CAMP, FAST and SPARK (longer words retaining the original spelling were permissible).

 Please note: There are spoilers in the story insight below.

Revisiting a Place

When I started writing the story, I planned to have my character revisit a place, like their hometown, after a long absence. But I've drawn from the deep well of this autofiction for several other stories—I left my hometown, Perth, Western Australia, in 1983, when I was twenty-one, over 40 years ago. Instead, I switched on the "bright white light" of a near-death experience and the "place" became the afterlife … or life, depending on how you read the story.

I didn't make the Writers' Centre's showcase or longlist for March, which left me feeling a "little low". But fellow Furious Fiction writer Judd Exley, with whom I shared The Light Above, lifted my spirits (pardon the pun) with his enthusiastic feedback:

"Oh man, oh man, did I love that story. That was brilliant, utterly brilliant."

So, I picked myself up, revisited the story, rephrased a few passages, tweaked a word here and there, and shared it on Tall And True, my forty-second (official and unofficial) Furious Fiction since April 2020.

No Time to Reflect

As I wrote in a 2020 blog post on Tall And True about the challenge, by its name and nature, Furious Fiction doesn't afford writers time to reflect on their writing. 

Consequently, the story I've shared on Tall And True differs from the one I submitted to the Writers' Centre. But The Light Above respects the criteria and word-count rules, and the judges would still recognise it and, hopefully, agree that it's a better story for my reflection and edits.

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I hope you enjoy listening to this short story episode on the Acast player (above), the podcast website, or all popular podcasting apps, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube. You can read The Light Above and my selected short stories, blog posts and other writings on Tall And True. 

You can also buy my short story and microfiction collections from the Amazon Kindle, Apple Books, and Kobo online bookstores.

The next episode of Tall And True Short Reads will be released shortly. In the meantime, please check your feed or the podcast website, TallAndTrueShortReads.com, for earlier episodes from all four seasons. And follow or subscribe to the podcast and rate and review it via your favourite podcasting app — doing so helps share my storytelling.

Finally, please share this blog post and podcast episode with family and friends and spread the word about Tall And True Short Reads and the Tall And True writers' website.

© 2024 Robert Fairhead

N.B. You might like to read this post introducing Tall And True Short Reads - Season Four.