Midday at the Oasis | Fiona McKay

I slide my tortoise head up out of my folded neck, up and out into the world around me, forced to hear the sounds I usually muffle down to inaudible levels, manageable levels. I slide my head out on my turtle neck and slowly scan around me, looking for the jungle-threats - tigers, lions, panthers, all the cats – that inhabit the high street. I inch my way out into the human traffic and slowly make my way past the loud portals of Zara and Tesco, easing along with my hard shell a carapace around me, a bulwark, until I reach the lush grove of Starbucks, where we have arranged to meet. 

The parrakeet behind the till squawks beakily at me while I look over the never-ending list of festive drinks, make a random choice of syrups and toppings and healthy 2% milk, and pay. I slide slowly to the collection point, hunching back down into my protective outer self, letting the bone and keratin shield me from the jazzy shriek of Christmas tunes and the wrapped pile of shoppers bumping each other like drifting jellyfish – soft but lethal. 

I scan, scan, scan the horizon, takeout cup in hand. A table of middle-aged hyenas eyes me, hungrily, as I pass them, warily. I zigzag past, hoping to confuse them, evade them. They let fly some lethal comments, but I’m too quick for them, and they miss, falling harmlessly on the parquet floor, where they are swept up with the rubble they resemble. 

I see an anxious rabbit at a table alone in a grove of trees, and I sniff over nervously, not wanting to startle or be startled. You blink at me owlishly, surprised by the thing you’ve arranged, and I

slide my hot cup onto the table and sit down. We smile, tentatively, and ignoring the foraging all around us, the screech of mating calls in the air, we begin the process of shedding our hardened outer layers to let each other see the soft animal within.

Fiona McKay lives and writes beside the sea in Dublin, Ireland. She started writing Flash fiction in 2021 and is also querying a novel. Words in various places, now or soon, including: FlashFlood Journal, Sledgehammer Lit, Tl;dr Anthology, Reflex Fiction, Retreat West, Cranked Anvil Anthology, Janus Literary, EllipsisZine, Scrawl Place, The Birdseed. Nominated for Best Microfiction. Tweets at @fionaemckayryan