Laura stood at her window in the forest hut watching a jaundiced sky. The bats and the crows flew in uncertain directions at dusk. There was a blaze over the tall gum trees. Laura couldn’t figure out what it was. The telltale sign from the yellow sky suggested the end of time. The blaze continued to grow high, then higher. The creatures of the forest, the possums and the dingoes and the Tasmanian tigers ran amok around the bend, deeper into the forest. The stifling air made Laura cough up phlegm. Distant cries of human voices carried distress. All Laura could see was an engulfing fire, fire which overwhelmed her and the bush rapidly. Trees and houses and the animal habitat burnt to a cinder in this inferno. It burnt for days on end. It burnt without ebb. It still burnt, a permanent haze descended from the sky; it darkened the forest. There was no reprieve, no lights, but an all-consuming darkness of fire sparks like ubiquitous fireflies.
Mehreen Ahmed is an internationally acclaimed author. Her book The Pacifist was selected as Drunken Druid’s Editors’ Choice for June 2018, while her book Jacaranda Blues was selected for The Best of Novels for 2017: Family Novels of the Year by Novel Writing Festival. Her flash fiction “The Portrait” was chosen to be broadcast by Immortal Works’ Flash Fiction Friday in 2018. “Bats Down Under,” one of her short stories, was selected by the editors of CafeLit for The Best of CafeLit 8 in 2019. She has published with Literary Yard, Furtive Dalliance, Cambridge University Press, Routledge and many others. Her works have also been nominated for prestigious awards.
