Edition 4 Prompt – The Butterfly Effect: One Moment Changes Everything

Just A Second
by Eliza Shallard

She was laughing. Her dad was hysterical and she was laughing. The highway at night was a lights show, the kind of twinkling shit on postcards. She loved it. She was laughing.

Then she was standing on Ben’s doorstep.

“Naomi it’s 6am. Come in, crash on my – you okay?”

Naomi collapsed into him, mumbling about not wanting to crash anywhere.

“I closed my eyes… the truck was going so fast and my dad…dad, Ben…”

The dawn light was aching and so was she. Through the tears, she was laughing. She was hysterical.

“Everything is going to change now isn’t it?”

The Butterfly Effected
by Jacob Sacher

If I flap my wings harder. Will he notice me.

If I flap my wings faster. Will he touch me.

If I flap my wings sexier. Will he kiss me.

If I flap my wings lovelier. Will he love me.

If I flap my wings nicer. Will he marry me.

If I can flap my wings truer. Will he then care for me.

If I can flap my wings swifter. Will he stop hurting me.

If I can flap my wings better. Will he stop breaking me.

If I can flap my wings. Will I be able to fly away.

Property, Pain & Public Transport
by Rebecca Poynton

Automatic doors come to a close before your eyes. You slam your hand against the bright green button, but you know you’re too late.

The train pulls away from the station. Loose pages of your literature essay flap feebly in the cool autumn breeze.

You check the train schedule.

You check your watch.

You sigh.

You sit on a bench.

As you slump there, dread seeps from the pit of your chest down into every numbed crevice of your miserable, Monday morning limbs.

You think to yourself,

“Damn PTV. Damn the English department, and damn their institutional mistrust of Turnitin.”

The Scourge of Blindness

by Ellie Taylor

A flash of a tiny pale palm glitters in the oceanic graveyard.

It was a famous summer afternoon, pale aunts lathering tanning oil on their arms, pot bellied uncles

watching snags on the hotplate, elder cousins laughing and leaping from the pier into the swallow.

A lifeguard reclining in his perch, peeling tin foil from a cheese sandwich and flicking the crumbs from his breast.

A mother and father hiding out in the carpark, glaring narrowly, arguing about kindergarten waiting lists and the bloody life insurance.

A young couple who would no longer be parents when the hand descends underwater.