2nd Place in the Cambridge Flash Fiction prize 2024
Words and Sayings I’ve Actually Heard Spoken Out Loud During my Sixty Years on this Planet Arranged so as to Illustrate the Toxic / Lethal / Invisible Continuum they Help Perpetuate
Congratulations, is it a boy or a girl? So strong and handsome. What a powerful grip / pair of lungs. Going to break some hearts someday. We’ve brought a lovely blue Babygro / car / football. Brave little soldier. Proper little lad. Slugs and snails and puppy dog’s tails. Leave him alone you’ll make him soft / namby-pamby / mollycoddled. Look at him, running to mummy. Crying like a girl. He doesn’t need a dolly / hug / cuddle. It’s only a scratch. Big boys don’t cry. Put your face straight. Soldier on. Big girl’s blouse. Fairy-weakling-sissy-puff. Tough it out. Jog it off. Suck it up. Man up. Be a man. Man’s man. Hard man. Real man. Tough guy. One of the lads. Boys will be boys. Play the field. Sow wild oats. Pull the pig. Love them and leave them. Pussy whipped. Grow a pair. Show her who’s boss. Bitch-slut-bike-whore. Smile sweetheart, it was only a joke. Bit of banter. He only picks on you because he likes you. Don’t be so sensitive. You’re over-reacting. It’s nothing a good shag wouldn’t sort out. Don’t you worry your pretty little head. You’re so much prettier when you smile. Princess-diva-drama queen. Keep your voice down. Shut your mouth. Little miss perfect / bossy boots / know-it-all. That skirt’s too short / tight / slutty. You’re not going out looking like that. She wears the trousers in that relationship. It’s just not ladylike. Come-fuck-me shoes. Mixed messages. Such a prick tease. Don’t get drunk. Be more streetwise. Stick together. There’s safety in Numbers. Walk in pairs / where the lighting’s good. Don’t wear headphones. What was she wearing? Why was she even out that late? She brought it on herself / should’ve known better. A woman’s place is in the home. At the end of the day, she was asking for it.
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Jan Kaneen is a working class writer originally from Bolton in Lancashire who now lives in the sunken washes that are the Cambridge Fens where she writes unsettling stories and worries about the cost of living and climate change. Her short and shorter stories have won prizes in places like Bath Flash, Molotov Cocktail, National Flash Fiction Day, Ellipsis Magazine and Flash 500. Her Bath prize-winning novella-in-flash which was shortlisted for the Rubery Book Award in 2024, is available here from Ad Hoc Fiction, and her short and very short story collection, Hostile Environments is forthcoming from Northodox Press in August 2025.