Fiction by Terri Mullholland
The wooden owl her dad carved and painted for her when she was a child still sits on the fence. The once bright colours now so faded that from a distance, and without her glasses, it looks as if it might fly away at any moment.
Her dad was always making something from wood, things for around the house, coasters, a spice rack, a chess set. He even made her a Noah’s ark, complete with two of every imaginable animal. Every weekend, he’d be there in the shed, whittling away, carving, shaping, chiselling, sanding, bringing each piece of wood to life.
The door would be ajar, and she’d creep in, sit on the floor and watch him.
He was a quiet man, never one to chat or whistle or hum while he worked, and not one for small talk. But during those hours in the workroom, watching his hands craft and sculpt, she felt close to her dad. He spoke to her through those silences they inhabited together.
She’d sit at his feet and play with the wood shavings that lined the floor, beautiful paper-thin coils of wood. If she found a perfect spiral that seemed to go on forever, she’d put it in her pocket, take it up to her room to wonder at alone. She’d carry pieces in the pocket of her school cardigan, a talisman against the bullies.
Her fingers would worry the coil away to nothing. Then she’d have to go back to the shed for a new piece.
He stopped making things from wood long ago. When his hands became stiff and clumsy, when he had too many accidents, and her mother said enough.
Two young men came to dismantle the shed; his tools were packed up and sold. She was glad he never lived to see it all go.
She wishes she could still go back for one last perfect spiral, one last lucky charm.
Now, years later, every pocket is full only of sawdust.
Terri Mullholland (she/her) is a writer and researcher living in London, UK. Her flash fiction has appeared in Litro, Flash Fiction Magazine, Every Day Fiction, Toasted Cheese, Full House, Severine, Tether’s End, The Liminal Review, and Analogies & Allegories Literary Magazine. When she is not writing she can be found curled up with a good book and a cat.
