HILARY AUSTIN
Dip Hyp CS, Adv Dip CP
SHORT FICTION
The Last Visit
Won third prize in the 2021 Writers Bureau Flash Fiction Competition.
I hate hospitals. It’s the smell, that nauseating blend of disinfectant that overpowers vomit, excrement and the depths of human suffering. Today though, there is no smell. Much more bearable somehow.
Sackcloth and Ashes
Won first prize in the 2008 Writers Bureau Short Story Competition.
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‘The great black bird launches into the air, wings outstretched, a ghostly silhouette etched against the winter sunset. It glides over the fence and touches down in the stubble field beyond the motorway. As it lands it transforms into a car. A small black car. The shriek of twisting metal shatters the stillness of the bleak landscape.’
I loved Sackcloth and Ashes because I didn’t see the unnerving and heart breaking ending coming. It was a real shock, amazing and repelling me in equal measures as I realised this seemingly ‘small everyday tale’ had become a deeper, more chilling, bleaker, old testament-style narrative. It had woven a brooding and disturbing spell around me without me being aware. And the narrative poses fundamental questions about moral responsibility, the dangers of blind and unquestioning faith and the nature of justice, asking who will judge us more harshly than we judge ourselves?
Critique by Competition Adjudicator, Iain Patterson.
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Green Eyes
Published in Herts & Minds Anthology by Hertford Writers Circle 2019.
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‘Even from a distance Becky could see how good Emily looked today; shiny blonde hair reaching almost to her waist, size eight skirt hitched up above her knees. Bitterness rose in her throat and she almost gagged.’
Under The Chestnut Tree
Published in The New Cauldron, small press magazine for writers – 2007
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I saw you waiting by the gate and a wave of emotion washed through me. You looked like a young thoroughbred again, your bright bay coat a shining mixture of red and gold, your black mane and tail thick and glossy. You had been restored, like a masterpiece in the finest canvas.
Maybe Tomorrow
Published in The New Cauldron, small press magazine for writers – 2006
The sun blazed down from a cloudless sky. The large expanse of beach was littered with colourful towels and windbreaks; vivid reds and greens bright against the yellow sand. Parents dozed in the heat and children played in the water and made sandcastles. Seagulls soared on the warm thermals and squabbled over crusts of bread left by careless holidaymakers.