Flash Fiction

Below is a link to my third prize winning flash Fiction at the Bath Flash Awards October 2020. Just click on the link. All the winning flashes are free to read on-line.

Jan Kaneen Oct 2020 Third Prize

Dangerous things, windows – for their transparency and fragility – so tempting from the outside in. I should know, I spend my life looking through them.
I’m doing it now, as I write this blog, staring into secret cyberspaces, into brave new bedrooms. There’s no harm. It’s only looking. Anyone can do it. It’s easy as breathing, getting permission for Remote Administration Tools. I sneak my requests in on free downloads – movies or short stories. People never check the links they click. Have you any idea what you agreed to, when you started reading this? For all you know, my RAT just ran up your digital drainpipe, and is taking control of your webcam and microphone at this very nanosecond.
It’s a great hobby, especially when you work from home, or live alone. I’ve five windows open tonight. My favourite, let’s call her, ‘Window-one,’ has been tap-tap-tapping at her homework for hours, dull-faced, like faces are when they think no-one’s looking. I love that lack of expression, it speaks of intimacy.
She’s stopped tapping now, leaning deep into her screen, revealing downy skin on her upper lip, the silky curl of her pinkish fringe. I move closer in, my face millimetres from her delicious pixels. We exchange an ecstasy of eye contact made all the sweeter because she’s unaware. It’s so intense I’m almost glad when she pulls back, coquettes her head to take a selfie, then smiles as the responses bing, tweet and snapchat in.
Just looking was never going to be enough though.
Dangerous things windows. You never know what might try to crawl in, through the tiniest crack. I’m biding my time, waiting for one to widen. I only need her name. My her-tailored avatar is waiting, two clicks away from transitioning into her actual world.

If you’ve got the nerve after reading that, just follow the links to read some more of my flashes (don’t worry Breaking Windows is all fiction!) It won the Zero Flash comp in July 2017.

The story below won the Flash 500 comp at the start of 2020 and was published online in January 2020

https://flash500.com/what-went-through-my-mind-when-i-first-read-about-the-butterfly-effect-in-chaos-theory-the-phenomenon-whereby-a-minute-localized-change-in-a-complex-system-can-have-large-effects-elsewhere-by-jan-ka/

The Never-ending Story

Published February 24th in Fictive Dream as part of Flash February

The story here, Ten Green Bottles, came second in Molotov Cocktail’s Wild Flash Competition in August 2019 https://themolotovcocktail.com/vol-10/wild-flash/ten-green-bottles/

The story here was published in October 31st 2019 as part of the Monster Competition at Molotov Cocktail https://themolotovcocktail.com/vol-10/flash-monster-2019/climate-change/

The Arnolfini Funeral Flashback Fiction 1st July 2019

How to Sacrifice Your Life in the Line of Duty and Still Go Uncommemorated on War Memorials, Flash Flood June 15th, 2019 https://flashfloodjournal.blogspot.com/2019/06/how-to-sacrifice-your-life-in-line-of.html

My socially phobic inner voices as evoked by the prompt ‘doors’, Micro Madness June 7th 2019, https://nationalflash.org/micro-madness/

Unpunctuated Osmium, Reflex Fiction, June 26th 2019

How To Keep the Hunger at Bay, Writers HQ May 2019 Comp Short List

Six Things I’ll Have Done by the Time you Wake Up, Ellipsis August 2018 and finalist in the National Flash Fiction Day Drabble Competition 2018 https://www.ellipsiszine.com/six-things-ill-have-done-by-the-time-you-wake-up-by-jan-kaneen/

This story was longlisted for Reflex Fiction’s summer competition in June 2018