In July, we posted a pop-up flash fiction contest where participants had only 48 hours to write a 1000-word max, bicycle-themed body horror story. Tiffany Michelle Brown read through 88 submissions and the decision was not easy.
The winning story is: “Langoustine Bouillabaisse” by Aled Turner.
This is what Tiffany had to say about Langoustine Bouillabaisse: “[the] prose is beautiful and brutal and experimental and poetic. And goodness, the body horror. I love that [Aled] leaned into an experience that was weird and greasy and erotic and psychological and visceral. … [Aled’s] submission was creative, stunningly written, and truly horrific.”
Congratulations, Aled Turner!
“Langoustine Bouillabaisse”
by Aled Turner
II
I’d sat at the kitchen table with six or seven relatives, a few strangers, chasing both langoustine and diced fennel around a ceramic bowl with a bouillon spoon, a fish fork—quite the task for someone without a tongue, an upper jaw, mandibles—though it was all I could eat in the moment, a good half-hour of black grease traipsing down my chin, slewing past my shoes to the linoleum. I hadn’t noticed, no one had, not until mother abruptly downed her cutlery with a sharp intake of breath, asthmatic, reaching for her bronchodilator, two drags of epinephrine, politely gesturing to the woman who is fucking my brother to leave the kitchenette, each drag of inhaler drawn out as to steady her nerves before berating me in front of the household, all while feeling comfortable doing so; and the woman, who appeared from beneath the table, buttoned up her blouse as she stood, rounded her hair into a loosely set chignon and left, in her own time, veering out of sight via a laminated door. Mother stood at the helm of the table, seized up, those close skittish as she spoke with a mouthful of poultry, brisk mid-air gestures, a biting of her lower lip. “What on earth have you been eating now?” she spat, looking in my direction, unfurling her tense, emaciated arms as to offer me a handkerchief, one that is passed around the table before reaching my weak grasp. Brother spooning vats of cherry blancmange into his mouth, chugging a whole glass o’ wine before joining the girl who was sat in the living room with her hands set firmly in her pockets. Those at the table awaited a response, cloth gelatinous around my flatware, thickly formed clots of both fuel and sputum soaked in cotton: “I—I haven’t eaten anything remotely outlandish,” I signaled with both hands, a tinge of uncertainty that had my mother looking at my father who then looked at sister and so forth. “It’s not what you think,” I beckoned, “I haven’t relapsed, if that’s your assumption,” though I couldn’t prove otherwise, and the kitchen stank of lubricant and WD40™, an array of waterproof emulsions. Those at the table who understood sign language knew I was chatting shit; mother appeared queasy, disheartened. The smell only made me both apprehensive and salivate further in wanting to chomp down on the saltshaker, fidget in my seat, a heavy onset of perspiration swarming neatly at my brows, crawling past my lids, which led me to stand and spew a miscellany of fabrications straight from my fingertips. “Squid ink,” I lied, compiling in that moment all foods I knew to be black. “Raw liquorice, sesame seeds, lentils, er—fungus mushrooms and ripened juniper berries.” Wiping away the inklike emollient present at my neck, my chest, and the strangers nodded, as had mother, momentarily satisfied with my answer; that or none of them were prepared to witness my deception, each of their stomachs rumbling, which left me unequipped, left me coy, so I sat as I had done so previously, tilting away the bouillabaisse, banqueting in silence.
I
I’d spent the guts of three weeks navigating my mouth around the old, rear cassette of a bicycle. I hadn’t thought of it as peculiar. I kept it to myself for the most part, the metal known on occasion to lacerate both my lips some, tear through my buccinator muscles, maim certain glands and mutilate my face in all the wrong places, though I hadn’t minded. I’d lied to those around me, happy to do so with sudden holes in my cheeks, silver tire spokes puncturing each part of my pharynx; the psychiatrist placing before me a tub of ice cream and a lone handlebar, an aluminium of sorts I could smell beneath the padding, dribbling as I consumed three scoops of buttered pecan, spending the entire challenge facilitating the handlebars’ metallic elements, sweet and incredulous on my tongue. Later shovelling tablespoons of paraffin into my mouth whilst ogling at the bicycle, enraptured in the shed for hours on end as my siblings congregated in the living room, completely unaware of the situation. Nothing big, I thought, ripping free the alloy with my large, blistered hands, mere steel sprockets; besmirched cogs won’t go amiss. Stuffing the smallest prong in my mouth and leaving it there until regurgitating it out. The bicycle soon a carcass—a husk, as I’d become—an antiquated vessel. The saddle falling into my hands as I sniffed it, nestled deep in the outhouse, sandwiched between a stack of lawnmowers; large, cylindrical tubs of pesticide and vegetable topsoil manure. I stank of unspecified solvents, perhaps sweat or other substances, eventually prizing myself free, standing at the garage door in nothing but my underwear, collecting the brown, greasy saliva that had yoked at my chin, chomping on the axle whilst showering, breaking molars on bolts and silver cleat rivets that stuck in my gums. Cumming, wet dreams throughout the night of the bicycle’s argent, leaden components. I hadn’t a logical reason for why I’d wanted to eat it. Something to chew on, I thought, as mother sat me in the vestibule, my trousers affixed with two leather belts, which failed to keep them at my waist, flailing at my feet, her food no longer able to nourish me as it once had. “What is this?” she asked, presenting a sole, masticated cap in her palm. “I found this in your lunchbox, though it’s thoroughly chewed. Care to give me an explanation?” I didn’t have one, and chew I did. I kneaded the rubber at every opportunity and consumed nothing less, locking doors behind me, fingering at the silver, pulling at the chainrings, widening my mouth around the crankset, sitting on my knees licking at the pivots, a set of oleaginous screws I’d adjust with my teeth and spit to the dark.
Aled Turner is a Welsh writer based in Manchester, UK. He writes unconventional poetry, fractured prose and he is also an MFA candidate at Kingston University. His work will soon be published at Broken Sleep Books. You can catch him on Twitter/X at @AledTurner.
For updates on the next Flash on the Fly Contest, subscribe:
Death Knell Press 
Congratulations!
LikeLike