Timeline: FlashBack’s Thirteenth Season
It’s the end of our thirteenth season, so we’d like to take the opportunity to pause and celebrate the pieces we’ve published this year. In case you missed them, here they are, and of course you can find our entire back catalogue indexed by year over at our Timeline.
We’ll be back towards the end of April with an all-new season of historical shortform work, as well as the dates of our next submission window.
Huge thanks, as always, to all our writers, readers and everyone who has sent us work to read. (If you’ve sent us something and haven’t heard back yet, we’ll be with you soon.)
And now, without further ado, are our latest offerings….
Season XIII
3,000 – 2,000 BCE: Enkidu’s Harlot by Patience Mackarness
Back then I was a legend, at the top of my profession. They called me queen of harlots. When rumours of Enkidu first reached the city of Uruk, I was planning my retirement. I had servants, gardens, a house overlooking the Great River with terraces and fruit trees.
1066: Harald Hardrada Intensifies by Lindz McLeod
History would like us to remember that Harald Hardrada died on 25th September 1066, the heels of his blood-soaked boots drumming a faint tattoo on the ground.
History would like us to forget that Hardrada resurrected precisely one week later.
1600s: Fragments by Katie Oliver
Eve has been informed by her mother of what is to happen: there can be no negotiation. She smooths her brown dress over her knees, focusing upon the weave of the linen; the pulled threads and the darned patches. She thinks about her mother wisping a stray hair away from her forehead: You’re turning out beautiful, Evie duck.
October 1898: A Despicable Article by Lourdes Mackey
You asked how it began Alice. Well God and His Mother knows that from the very minute Ned Kelly opened his eyes as a babe in Beveridge till the day they were closed by the hangman in the Melbourne Gaol the traps were dead nuts down on him and all the Kellys, never once letting up on the stain of Da’s bondage in Van Diemen’s Land and dragging it through the family like a black river of contagion.
1920: All the King’s Puppets and All the King’s Strings by Avra Margariti
King Alexander dreams of puppets. Stringed dolls of tanned wood and fabric-scrap fatigues fighting losing battles for freedom. You must never forget that we are foreigners, his father used to say before his exile, but you must make your Hellenic subjects forget.
31 August – 1 September 1923: Haori by P Akasaka
If an apprentice could wear a haori coat, what could we, the seamstresses, wear? There’d be nothing left, said Little Plum.
1939–1945: Half Past Two by Genevieve Allen
The street outside was dreary in its emptiness. He couldn’t recall seeing it crowded since the local lads had left to a chorus of cheers, waving and songs nobody had sung for over two decades.
26 July, 1956: This is not a story about my grandfather by Salena Casha
As it lay there amongst the wreckage, the suitcase reflected that it had not been in expected company during either the journey or now. In fact, it had made the immigration upon the SS Andrea Doria alone. Pre-boarded days ahead of departure, it had no knowledge that my grandfather had journeyed to Rome for a final goodbye.
Photograph of armillary sphere via depositphoto, ID 35054589.