Macleans College student wins Flash Fiction writing competition
Posted on August 24, 2023
This week Year 13 student Yiyang Cao (Batten House) was announced as the winner of the annual NZATE Flash Fiction writing competition.
Flash fiction is a short story genre that aims to have a big impact on the reader in relatively few words.
The judges deemed Yiyang, a key member of Mrs Snell and Mrs Scrymgeour’s Writing Club, had done just that with her piece ‘reduction, reaction’, awarding it first place in the senior category.
reduction, reaction
Ma’s face, always smudged out of focus. Even as a child, you’d been confused by a world of towering aisles and headless women, running and clinging to the wrong hem. Now sitting on the new La-Z-Boy recliner, the one son-in-law had bought, you wondered if your vision had begun to match too.
Half watching news, half transfixed by some horrible pop-up ad – civilisations down the drain – trying to toggle the split screen, the way daughter had taught. Goodbye parents chat, hello Dr Safari. One last glance at inane conversation, big letters and smiling face icons.
While daughter was in hospital, son-in-law had posted to check term dates, if this navy shirt looked black enough for the production. Then both went away, sitting the month at mother-in-law’s house, so you asked questions for them. Summer was out, but replies kept surging sluggishly in. So slow you’d switch to watching news. NBC instead of TVNZ in America with the in-laws.
Still the same, similar enough in conception. The table man, a set face interchangeable with another. Seated woman, either tanned like a russet potato or pale as the girls Ma used to lament about.
In old age, she’d travelled from country to country. Always loving the island of her birth, but it was in Dōngnányà that she could walk into a crowd, never to be found. You’d accompanied her on one such trip, only to become lost on entry. Panic stricken, looking in all directions– how’d you lose her so fast? Reduced to a child again, stumbling in search of Ma, a pace too long and fervent for stubby legs to keep up. Tender recollection, if it wasn’t for the terror.
Now every sun dark grandmother was her, every wrinkled limb eaten up by a vibrant jungle of pattern print.