If your phone just pinged an alert, then it’s probably warning you about a fast-moving creative front incoming for this month’s Furious Fiction challenge!  

Here were this month’s prompts:

• Each story had to take place during an EXTREME/UNUSUAL WEATHER EVENT.
• Each story had to include something being lifted.
• Each story had to include the following words: ZERO, ZIGZAG and ZOOM (longer variations accepted).

HOW ABOUT THIS WEATHER?

There’s no escaping it – wherever we go, whether you like it or not, there is always weather. And this month, we asked you for the weirdest, rarest or just plain peculiar weather events as the setting for your stories.

• It was a whiplash of atmospheric proportions – from blizzards to heatwaves, snowstorms to sandstorms, floods to droughts, fires to hail. Some historically accurate, some entirely made up (and others inspired by Dorothy and Oz!).
• We even had a touch of the biblical. Fewer locust plagues than expected, but Noah certainly featured in a handful of fun stories – you’ll see at least one of them featured below in the showcase.
• And then there were the downright wacky. From raining men (hallelujah!) to frogs falling from the sky and extreme errr ‘weather’ in public toilet cubicles. Things got messy!
• Metaphorical storms also popped up in some clever ways – those storms raging within ourselves. Well done if you took your weather event to more abstract places!
• Zoom calls haven’t featured so much since the pandemic, while batteries ran to zero and lightning zigzagged across the sky. As far as things being lifted, well tornadoes saw to that, while hot air balloons featured too.

But when the dust, snow or raining men settled and the clean up began, there was one story standing unscathed amid the rubble. So congrats to this month’s hilarious Top Pick: It’s Raining Men by Athena Law.

You can read it below, along with other shortlisted stories that survived intact from the category-5 judge-storm. As always, thanks to all who submitted stories – let’s do it again next month!

AUGUST TOP PICK:

IT’S RAINING MEN by Athena Law, QLD

“Hallelujah!” shrieked Gladys, shoving Susan away from the cabin window so she could get a better view. Below, the main deck of the Silver Viking cruise ship was chaos, as rescue crews assembled and passengers got a looky-loo. Because as far as Gladys could see, muscular bodies kept dropping from the sky and splashing into the sea.

“Forget that vitchyswazz – Man Soup is on the menu tonight!” Gladys shrugged off her robe to reveal a gold pleather bikini.

“Pass my leopard-print kaftan,” she ordered Susan, slathering Juicy Tube on her lips, and clipping on large gold hoops. “Get the girls from next door, meet me downstairs. I’m volunteering for mouth-to-mouth duty!”

As Gladys zigzagged down the passageway, wobbling on her new wedge espadrilles, she wondered if there’d be an adoption program for the new arrivals. Surely there was some maritime law to cover this eventuality?

“I”LL TAKE THREE!” she shouted as she swept out into the pool area.

Thwop. An Adonis hit the deck in front of her. Chiselled, bronzed, and blond.

“Mother Nature, bless you!”

He opened his blue eyes. Bluer than Morrie’s Viagra pills, and gazing into her soul. Gladys wanted to kneel—give him the full Florence Nightingale—but her knees weren’t up to it.

She bent forward instead, smiling seductively.

“Of all the over-fifties cruise ships in all the seas of—”

Adonis groaned, rolled over, and vomited on her espadrilles.

“No worries!” Gladys trilled. “I was going to give these to Esther anyway. Speak of the devil!”

Esther was zooming across the deck on her mobility scooter, clutching a first aid kit, followed by Susan and June.

Gladys waved them away. “This one’s mine! Get your own!”

Thwop

Thwop

Thwop

“There! All yours!” Having successfully diverted the girls, Gladys grabbed at a passing staff member. “Can I please get mine seen to? He needs the all-clear before I take him home.”

A shadow fell across the deck.

Everyone turned and gaped as a huge ship, twice the height of the Silver Viking, slid right up beside them.

“This is your Government! Prepared to be boarded!”

People in slinky black scuba suits (very Sean Connery in James Bond, thought Gladys approvingly) swarmed down ropes with stretchers. Silently and efficiently, they began stretchering the men away.

They approached Adonis, but Gladys threw herself in the way. “Please, no. He’s mine, I’m adopting him.”

A man in black grasped Gladys’ shoulders, gently lifted her up like she weighed nothing and moved her away.

“Oh my,” she said, fanning herself with her hand. “That was so…zero zero seven. Can I buy you a drink, sailor?”

But Adonis was strapped and loaded, and the Sean Connery was leaving.

“I have a stash of West Coast Coolers in my room!” Gladys called, but he didn’t look back. In a moment, they were both gone.

Ah well. She didn’t really want to share her stash anyway. And hopefully Morrie still had some little blue pills left when she finally got home.

FURIOUS THOUGHTS:

Yes it’s raining men, and naturally the song must be taken completely literally for the very best comic effect. The sight of Gladys in her gold pleather bikini as she swoons over Adonis (who looks like he just came down in the last shower) was a retina-burning riot. As for ‘thwop’ – could that be the perfect sound effect for a man falling from the sky? “Eyes bluer than Morrie’s Viagra pills”… okay, you’ve sold us on it. The excitement from Gladys, Esther, Susan and the other ladies is hilarious from start to finish. We’ll take three.

TAX DOESN’T HAVE TO BE TAXING by Scott Davies, UK

The thing about rain in England, is that it will get you very wet with very little warning. One minute you’ll be enjoying a pint in the beer garden, the next you’ll be wringing out your underpants in the bathroom.

The thing about rain on the planet of Zagtoplin is that it will melt the skin off your bones and file your tax return incorrectly. Both of these things make it incredibly difficult for the tax office to collect any taxes and have therefore caused the tax office’s bank balance to drop to zero.

But this isn’t about the rain on the planet of Zagtoplin. The rain only falls once every twelve months anyway. Traditionally on the day before the tax office’s self assessment deadline. Which of course, is today. Rather, this is about the hairy creatures that zigzag across the plains of Zagtoplin surviving, breeding, eating strange berries and crossing their fingers. All the bog standard stuff new civilisations get up to.

More specifically, this is about one particular hairy little fella named Zoom. A silly name, even by the low standards of Zagtoplin where the most popular food, a small rodent that is difficult to catch, even harder to swallow, and must be paid for monthly on a Direct Debit whether you eat it or not, has been dubbed the ‘British Broadcasting Corporation’.

Zoom did not work for, nor consume, the British Broadcasting Corporation, but he paid the bill every month anyway out of fear that The Man might knock at his door to inspect his kitchen larder, as he was legally entitled to do.

What Zoom did do was dig. He so loved to dig. The smell, the texture, the small wriggly things he found. Oh, what a joy it was to be alone in his hole. Just him and the tormenting things that whirled around in his mind. He liked to call them his ‘thoughts’.

Ah, his shovel and his thoughts.

Yes, he was a simple fella, and that’s all he would ever need. His shovel, his thoughts and—

THUNK.

That’s the noise his shovel made just now. It went THUNK. It was quite an unusual sound. Usually the shovel went SQUELCH. But today it went THUNK.

Zoom did not like the noise THUNK. He liked the noise SQUELCH.

He tried again but the shovel repeated itself. “Thunk,” it said.

He moved the dirt around with his fingers and realised to his dismay that this thunky thing wasn’t made of mud. It was made of wood.

He used his shovel to dig a trench around the wooden box, which was the length of a Strudelflank and about as deep as his back leg. The lid of the box had a hinge along the back and a handle at the front, which he lifted.

As he lifted the lid, his face glowed in the warm light of the boxes content.

And this is how Zoom found his tax rebate.

But don’t tell anyone. Mum’s the word.

FURIOUS THOUGHTS:

With a quirkily comic voice reminiscent of Galaxy hitchhikers or dungeon crawling folk, this tale of the extreme weather on Zagtoplin was one of few stories to be set on another planet. It also kept us guessing about just where it was going, which turns out to be everywhere and nowhere. Delightfully silly, with a memorable narrative voice and world building, this piece provided a real palate cleanser amid the floods and fires!

WORTH SAVING by Ananya Bhai, USA

I miss her. I miss seeing her in person. I miss the way she would make me laugh without even trying. I miss the way the world seemed to slip away when we were together, how even when nothing was funny I would be rolling on the floor. I miss how I teased her relentlessly, but she would never run away, except for the one time she pretended to.

I miss her even more today, when the horizon has vanished entirely behind a dense, suffocating curtain of rain and the unyielding storm has battered the windows for hours, loud enough to drown out everything else. The emergency alerts that keep lighting up my phone tell me to evacuate immediately, but all I can think about is how much I wish she were here to make fun of the overly dramatic wording.

“Grab what matters!” my dad shouts from downstairs as my phone notifies me that it's on 10%.

I pull open the bottom drawer of my desk, looking for a charger, and something catches. I tug harder. An old notebook slips free and lands at my feet.

It opens by itself.

The deep blue ink is instantly familiar. Tiny zigzag doodles crawl through the margins, weaving around half-finished equations and inside jokes that make perfect sense to only us.

I miss her voice. I miss how my phone would chime with another voice memo or Zoom call link, and I'd drop everything just to hear her laugh before she even started talking.

As I slide the notebook into my backpack, the wind lifts our neighbour's patio chair into the air, tumbling it end over end down the flooded street. For a moment I clutch the notebook a little tighter, irrationally convinced that if I let go of it too, I'd lose her all over again.

Hours later, we're sitting on folding chairs in an evacuation centre while rain hammers relentlessly against the roof. My phone finally catches enough signal for our messages to load.

I open our messages. For a long time, I simply stare. Then I begin to type.

I don't know if this is weird to send, but I miss you. Knowing you made me happier than I ever told you.

My thumb hovers over Send.

Before I can decide, the screen flickers.

Battery: ZERO.

My phone dies in my hands.

I search my bag for the charger I'd been looking for all afternoon, but it isn't there.

So I sit in the dim light of the evacuation centre, the notebook resting on my lap, the rain still drumming against the roof, and my unsent words trapped inside a black screen.

Maybe I'll charge my phone tomorrow. Maybe she'll read the message. Maybe she won't. For now, all I know is that I still remember the way her pen wandered into little zigzags whenever she was bored, and that memory alone is enough to make me smile. Perhaps that was worth saving.

FURIOUS THOUGHTS:

After a few comedy examples, this piece is living proof that something more heartfelt can be found in the heart of a storm. Moments of stress can bring memories and emotions to the surface, and here, in particular, we loved the narrative voice, dropping us into the middle of the chaos and giving few clues as to the identity and location of the person who is being missed. (The word prompts melted seamlessly into the story too.) By the time we reach the evacuation centre, we’re invested in this half-a-relationship and the way that an absent one can zigzag their way into someone’s heart.

THE BREWING S###STORM by Susan McLaughlin, VIC

“Noah, can you do something about the groundhogs?”

“Eh?”

“Sort. Spey. Separate? We’re only three weeks into the loading schedule and we’re already running out of room. They’re worse than the rabbits… and your sons.”

“My sons? They’re our sons, Dear, and why can’t Dezra do it? I’ve got my hands full with this mammoth manure.”

“Mammoth manure! That’s all you ever talk about. I told you to load the larger animals last. Stable them on the lower decks at least, but no, you wanted to give them fresh air and cognitive enrichment. And now the enriched results are dripping through three decks and onto the lamas’ heads. We’ll never get THAT out of their fleeces.”

“But I…”

“Mizariah offered to sew water-proof whale-leather nappies, but you said No, you needed her down in the spider room. And you know she’s an arachnophobe! Zero empathy. And zero planning. Scrap the room, Noah. A few free-range Huntsmans zigzagging overhead might control these blowies.”

“But…”

“And why can’t we talk about the real elephant scat in the room? The big stinker.”

“Which is?”

“Your boss gave you incomplete instructions.”

“My boss? He’s our boss, Dear, and you better be careful or he’ll smite you.”

“You smite be right, or you smite be wrong, Husband… but either way DO SOMETHING about those bloody groundhogs, OR I WILL! Tap-tapping away with their endless weather updates. It’s doing my head in. ‘Shadow today.’ ‘NO shadow today’. ‘Six more weeks of rainfall.’ Why did anyone think teaching morse code to forecasting rodents was a good idea? Do they think we can’t see the waters rising? A blind mole can see there’s a not-so-flash flood coming. And I’m not talking about the outpouring of mastodon-bladder contents. It’s been raining cats and dogs for weeks.”

“That’s just the rotten floorboards, Dear. Yesterday I dodged a dingo and almost stepped in a poodle. Dezra got a cheap deal on the cedar, I think.”

“Cedar? A blind badger could tell you it’s untreated pine. Uph! Throw Dezra to the Komodos. Neanderthals and corruption are synonymous.”

“Don’t be silly. We need his hundred men to finish the boarding.”

“Men? You mean apes. WE should have caged the neanderthals with the chimpanzees and rangas. They’re hardly human.”

“NOAH!”

Noah and his wife paused their bickering. Had the hairy ape heard?

“The boatload of dino’s are here,” grunted Dezra.

“The dino’s? I’d forgotten about them.”

“Are you serious?” asked Noah’s fed-up wife. “You wasted all of yesterday unloading a galleon-full of macropods, monotremes, and other Aussie critters, only to re-load them on the ark this morning. Now you’re going to repeat the madness with the dinosaurs?”

“Well Dear…”

“NO!!!” shouted a supportive but pushed-past-her-limit wife. “Dezra, you’re fired.”

“But…”

“FIRED! You can board the dinosaur boat, or you can drown, but you are NOT sailing on THIS ark. Now lift this half-eaten unicorn carcass and take it with you. It’s your fault the lions were doing zoomies yesterday. Balsawood pens? Seriously!”

FURIOUS THOUGHTS:

Is there any bigger weather event in all history – and one ripe for storytelling potential – than a six-week rainstorm that sees two of every animal crammed together into a boat? No, we didn’t think so, and it’s probably why we had some brilliant storytelling versions of that scenario this month (shout out to Jane H’s pirate arrrrrr-k too!). Here, Noah’s wife acts as the voice of reason to her bumbling husband's ill-conceived plans. We’re even willing to look past the fact that dinosaurs and humans weren’t around at the same time in the name of comic value and Biblical bickering!

A SLIGHT CHANCE OF FURNITURE by Claudia Nicholson, Greece

The Bureau of Impossible Weather was having a difficult morning.

At 9.03 a.m., it began raining chairs.

Not hailstones shaped like chairs. Not chairs blown loose from a rooftop.

Actual chairs.

They fell from the sky with considerable confidence.

I watched one crash through the skylight and land neatly beside the coffee machine.

‘Bit early,’ Mr Gale, my supervisor, noted.

I checked the weather report.

‘Forecast says zero chance of precipitation.’

‘Typical.’

Another chair smashed through the roof.

Mr Gale sighed.

‘Could you file that?’

I looked at the chair.

‘What category?’

‘Furniture. Atmospheric.’

I made a note.

This was my first week at the Bureau. Previously, I had worked in the Department of Ordinary Weather, where the worst thing I had dealt with was a thunderstorm that had arrived seventeen minutes early.

Impossible Weather was tricky.

We had files for raining frogs, sideways snow and the infamous 1987 incident when a cyclone of puppies and kittens zipped through a small village in Wales, causing havoc for six hours.

A chair whistled past the window.

Then another.

Then I counted forty-three more.

‘Why chairs?’ I asked, looking at my supervisor.

Mr Gale shrugged.

‘Could be atmospheric pressure.’

‘Could be?’

‘We don’t like to speculate, Ms Raine.’

He handed me a clipboard.

‘Go outside and count them.’

I stared at him.

I briefly considered asking whether my job description covered this. Then I remembered I was still on probation.

‘During a furniture storm?’

‘It’s important to maintain accurate records. You’ll find a regulation protective helmet and cricket bat in the cloakroom.’

‘Try to keep chair destruction to a minimum, Ms Raine. Recycling and all that.’ I heard him call to me as I rummaged for the equipment in question.

Outside, chairs were bouncing off the pavement. They came down in a strange zigzag pattern, narrowly missing pedestrians and occasionally hitting parked cars.

Keeping one eye on the sky and the cricket bat at the ready, I counted.

One hundred and twelve.

One hundred and thirteen.

One hundred and fourteen.

Then one chair rose from the ground.

I stopped counting.

It lifted slowly into the air, turned ninety degrees, and hovered.

Mr Gale, holding an umbrella with reinforced steel, appeared beside me.

‘That,’ he said, ‘is new.’

The chair began to zoom upwards.

‘Should I report it?’

‘Yes.’

‘To whom?’

He considered this.

‘Someone in Impossible Weather.’

‘We are Impossible Weather.’

‘Then consider it reported.’

The chair vanished into the clouds.

We stood in silence.

Then something enormous blocked the sun.

I looked up.

Thousands of chairs were falling towards us.

Mr Gale frowned, then checked his watch.

‘Tea?’

‘Absolutely.’

We ran for the door.

Behind us, the weather continued to fall.

Somewhere above the clouds, something very large gave a worrying creak.

***

(Please note: No animals were harmed in the creation of this tale. For furniture, however, no such guarantee can be made.)

FURIOUS THOUGHTS:

Three chairs for this story, hip-hip… Ahem. This month, when we challenged writers to perhaps invent some extreme weather, the chances of furniture falling from the sky was a distinct possibility. We loved the distinctly British nonchalance with which this department goes about its job – a resigned bureaucracy in the face of the ridiculous. The result is of course chaotic and dead-pan, but it’s the consistency of the rock-solid characters in the middle of it all that keeps this piece from devolving into total nonsense!

THREE LITTLE PIECES by Joo-Inn Chew, ACT

The wolf of the wind huffed and puffed and blew my house down. Tore off the roof and hurled it into the raging night. Ripped timber boards and spun them zigzagging into the howling sky. Blasted windows into jagged shards of glass. Lifted furniture like feathers, like it had zero weight, and smashed the chairs into the bed into the table above our heads, crashing alongside the thunder, shattering wood and raining broken pieces down like hailstones.

We crouched, me and the children, in the stone cave of the great hearth. Cold ash under our trembling bare feet. Hoping stone would hold. Hoping something would. I clutched them to me as the wolf ripped our home apart. My daughter shook. My half-grown son babbled fear sounds from long ago. They clung to me as the walls disintegrated around us, lightning striped the sky, and frigid pellets of rain lashed our skin.

The wolf did not devour us that night. He blew our house down and then stalked away over the horizon with the thunder. He left us alive in the ruins. After a while we dared to creep out of the hearth. We stood upright and breathed in ozone. We let ourselves zoom in to the debris around us – broken cups, sodden picture books, mangled toys and torn pyjamas. All the little pieces.

The other houses in the town had been spared. The wolf did not come for them this time. Our neighbours ventured out and strolled past, pretending to be walking dogs or collecting bins. They peeped through the splintered beams and eyed the schoolbags and shoes in the rubble. Thanked God for their intact homes. Counted up the reasons why. We pretended not to see them, drew our damp dressing gowns around us and started picking up what we could salvage.

Over the hills, the sky lightened. The earth dried, and so did our skin and hair and tears. Birds began to sing.

We stood close together and watched the sun rise.

FURIOUS THOUGHTS

Part fairytale and part disaster aftermath doco, this story uses its words in a lyrical yet laser-focused fashion. From the title and mention of the ‘wolf’ that huffed and puffed and blew their house down, we have a fantastic metaphor from the start. But these little pigs are in fact human, sheltering in their ‘stove cave’, and as they pick up the pieces of their broken lives, we are given a tour of a town coming to terms with nature’s random game of chance. Just 330-ish words, but it never feels like we’re missing anything. Beautiful, tragic, yet hopeful.

JUMPING FOR JOY by Melanie Hawkes, WA

Today might be my lucky day. My owners have forgotten to tie me down again and this wind is getting stronger. They're not even home to do it now.

I'm sick of being neglected in this big, barren backyard. I used to see the kids out here and occasionally they'd jump all over me. That's exactly what I was made for. Yes, one kid did fall off and hurt themselves, but that wasn't my fault. They tried a double backflip; of course that would end badly. But I was blamed and pushed up against the fence, so no other kid could fall off me again.

The rain is heavier now. I'm getting soaked, and it's running all through me. For my age and neglected state over the past few years, I'm in pretty good shape still. I only have a few rust spots.

The fence is rattling a lot with this wind. I just need a big gust to push me back onto my feet. In these storms, I've heard the Free Trampoline Index can get as high as ten. Some lucky family can get me instead of this one here. They have had zero cares for me since the incident, so as far as I'm concerned, they can go and get stuffed. They haven't even looked after the garden here, so it's all one big sandpit.

Yay, a big gust has blown the fence over so I'm upright again! A loud crack of thunder has made all the dogs bark, and the lightning is turning the night sky into daylight. I've been waiting a long time for a storm this severe. I'm praying this will be the day I grow wings and fly.

Another wind gust and a part of me lifts up, but I drop straight down again. Then my other side lifts, and before I know it, I'm zooming through the air like a bird. The view from up here is incredible, like a miniature village below.

But like the people who had jumped on me, I know that everything that goes up must come down. Another crack of thunder and I start zigzagging my way back to Earth. With a thump, I land upside down on some soft grass. The garden here is well kept, and there's toys scattered throughout. This place looks better already. So much better that I want to jump for joy.

As the storm passes and the sun rises, the people in my new house stir. I hear the pitter patter of young feet.

“Mummy, Daddy, look,” a girl says. “A trampoline!”

“Can we keep it,” a boy says. “Please?”

FURIOUS THOUGHTS:

We had a lot of perspectives this month – from the storms themselves, to pets, houses and more. But to have a story told from the perspective of a trampoline is brilliant, especially when one of the prompts calls for something being lifted! Trampolines are indeed often found strewn across the neighbourhood after a high-wind event, so we loved the journey that this story (and character) goes on. It definitely had its ups and downs!

THE WORLD INSIDE THE FOG by Will S, VIC

They say the fog will clear today.

I don’t like that.

I like the fog.

I set my coffee down and cast my eyes over to the window. A bead of water waltzes its way down the inside of the pane, zigzagging through the drops of condensation hugging the cold surface. Beyond the glass, the fog hangs like a white cotton bedsheet on a clothesline, slowly shifting as the morning rolls through.

Warm light from my living room lamp casts a welcoming glow across the space; the soft hum of my gas heater provides a backdrop to the otherwise peaceful quiet.

The fog is certainly thinning; slim rays of sunlight permeate through its pearly veil and dance across the floor rug.

I haven’t left my apartment in three years now; I’d stopped going outside a couple of months after the heavy fog had set in.

It had been a relief. Before the fog, my world was inconsistent. Loud cars zooming past on the street, bright lights constantly cascading across my vision, the constant prickling feeling of irregularity that eats away at you.

Looking out at this white haze, I like to imagine my space is all that exists anymore. My apartment, suspended in zero-gravity, pipes and all, floating through space inside a big white cloud.

The fog had made it easier for people like me, people who liked a quiet life.

Society was already on a trajectory toward supporting insular individuals before the fog had rolled in. Increasingly affordable home delivery services, the uptake of working from home arrangements, endless libraries of entertainment without having to place a foot beyond your doorstep. The fog had accelerated that transition tenfold.

A dark shadow zooms by my window. I recognise the familiar whir of the delivery drone, but I had never seen the machine in such detail before. The fog has thinned to the point that I can see the propellers spinning on the furthest rotors of the drone, usually an impossible feat from this distance.

I chuckle at the irony of now experiencing a lifting fog, the clichés. It is supposed to represent an epiphany, an intense moment of clarity after a period of confusion or melancholy. I’d never felt I had more clarity in my life than these past three years, in my world inside the fog.

The white veil continues to thin. Eventually, I can distinguish between the white of the fog and the concrete of the pavement two floors below me.

A young boy riding a bike with training wheels comes into view, his father walking closely behind him. His father gestures for him to slow down, indicating the fog has not yet cleared enough to trust him going much further out of his sight.

The boy looks directly up into my window; I am taken aback by the intensity of his eye contact. He smiles and cautiously lifts a hand away from the handlebars to give me an enthusiastic wave.

I hesitate, then wave back.

FURIOUS THOUGHTS:

A little over half a decade ago, a different kind of fog settled across the land. And for many of us, when it finally cleared, we may have felt much like the hesitant narrator in this story – having become accustomed to life in our warm, safe cocoon. (In fact, years later, many of us still haven’t fully gotten used to the world again.) Here, metaphor aside, our character grapples with a literal lifting fog and the irony of returning to a land of clarity. The small moment with the bike-riding boy is a lovely touch – a toe dipped back into a world they had found a way to live without. Excellent storytelling in the big moments and small.

A FORK IN THE ROAD by Madeleine Armstong, UK

It started with a shower of spoons in Scunthorpe. An old man got hit on the head and got taken to hospital, but it was presented as an amusing item at the end of the evening news. I sipped my cocoa, watching amateur footage of tea, dessert and soup spoons zooming down from the sky, clanging off the pavement, making spiderweb cracks in shop windows.

After turning off the telly I gave it zero thought, but the next day the deluge moved south. It reached me by mid-afternoon, when I was just about to head to Tesco with my wheelie trolley. A smattering of teaspoons zigzagged onto my lawn, obliterating my dahlias. I thought I might brave it, using a tray as a shield, but the silverware got bigger and heavier, until it was smashing potholes into the road. My teabags would have to wait another day, but I felt sorry for those who had to get home from work or school.

The 6 o’clock news featured dashcam footage from the M25: cars piled up into concertinas, their bodywork ripped apart like toys destroyed by a toddler god. Another shaky video showed a woman hoisting a child into her arms and running, an umbrella tucked under her chin, protecting them from the worst of it, until a ladle smashed through the flimsy fabric and knocked them to the ground.

That night, I couldn’t sleep for the sound of metal striking metal through my shuttered bedroom window.

Stay inside, we were told the next day, every TV and radio channel blaring the same alert. Wait for it to stop. But the spoons kept pouring down – and, midway through the second day, were joined by forks. These pierced even the heavy-duty garden parasols that the brave – or criminal – had taken to carrying with them. I peeked through the crack in my shutters, watching them march down my road, carrying their looted spoils. I didn’t have much food left, and nearly shouted down to one lad, to ask if he’d sell me a loaf of bread. But I didn’t want them knowing I was in here, alone.

I fell asleep exhausted, my stomach gnawing at me. The third day, I awoke to a now-familiar tinkling; more cutlery slammed into the ankle deep pile in my front garden, showing no sign of stopping. The radio said that soldiers, with helmets and protective gear, would start bringing supplies to the vulnerable, but when I tried to call the helpline it was engaged.

I really needed a cup of tea and a slice of toast. There was nothing else for it; I had to go outside. I stuck a colander on my head and put on my thickest coat and gardening gloves.

Just as I opened the door and took a step into the storm, knives began to fall.

FURIOUS THOUGHTS:

The cutlery is coming! The cutlery is coming! Pun lovers unite, for a fork in the road is quite a wonderful mental image. And speaking of united things, writers from the United Kingdom seemed to love this month’s challenge – the undisputed heavyweight champion nation of discussing weather? Everything about this story is absurd in all the best ways possible. From the alliterative shower of spoons in Scunthorpe to the hilarious carnage up and down the country. (Also funny was the mention of colanders – put to use by many Britons in August during the solar eclipse!) And as for that ending, it was the cutlery equivalent of waiting for a break in the weather, only to step out into the heaviest downpour of the day. (Let’s just hope they were butter knives first and not cleavers…) By all accounts, a fitting end to this month’s showcase! 

THIS MONTH’S ‘LONGLIST’

Each month, we include an extra LONGLIST (approx top 10%) of stories that stood out from the submitted hundreds and were considered for the showcase and deserve an ‘honourable mention’. Remember, all creativity is subjective, but if your story made the list this month, take a moment to celebrate!

THIS MONTH’S LONGLIST (in no particular order):

• ARRRRRR-K by Jane Hodgkinson, QLD
• THE DAILY FORECAST: MEN by Defne Oykum Ozcimen, Germany
• MEDEA’S CHOICE by Kari Trajer Morgan, UK
• A LONG JOURNEY by Chris Tattersall, UK
• ONLY THE RAIN REMEMBERED by Diane Lee, SA
• UMBRELLAS DON’T CAUSE RAIN by Carley Johnson, QLD
• SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL by Heather Maywald, SA
• SWEETHEART by J.G. Cushnan, UK
• THE STORM by Lula Mulligan, NSW
• CLIMATE GAMES by Mona Treme, QLD
• BROTHERS/FISHERMAN by Richard Diss, WA
• EVERY STORM ENDS by Lucy Scholfield, NSW
• A LIE IN THE SILT by Raymond Brunell, USA
• THE LAST FLIGHT OF THE FIREHAWK by Kasper Grey, NSW
• HEAT by Dreena Collins, Jersey
• WHAT THE RAIN KNEW by Jiya Sharma, WA
• MOUTHFUL OF MAYBES by Izwazi Azelass McNorton, Malaysia
• HAZARDOUS WEATHER OUTLOOK by Andrea Cavedo, USA
• A TYPICAL EVENING IN CHEWANDSWALLOW by Michelle Dornish, USA
• THE HEATWAVE ELEVATOR by Christie Mack, NSW
• EVER THUS by Tim O Tee, UK
• TOGETHER by Sudha Ramnath, India
• GRACE by Marta Miszczak, USA
• A SNAPSHOT OF TRACY by Simone Busch, QLD
• DUSTPRINTS by Robert Hanover, USA
• WHAT THEY DIDN’T TELL FROSTY by Jenny Lynch, WA
• JUST ICE by David Hollyman, NZ
• MELLOW YELLOW by Wendy Stackhouse, WA
• THE UNKINDNESS OF RAVENS by Chris Sadhill, USA
• JUST US by Paula Cattoni Henry, QLD
• UNDER THE WEATHER by Meryl Broughton, WA
• WHAT REMAINS by Brad Campbell, NSW
• FROM THE WEST by Ange McCormack, NSW
• DECISIONS by Eoin Liehr, NSW
• THE WEATHER IS CHANGING, DAD by Ria Frost, Ireland
• THE WEIGHT OF RAIN by C.R. Masters, NSW
• NEW BLUE by J.J. Silkwood, Switzerland
• AT THE STATION by Stelle Shumack, NSW
• EARTH CHAT, AUGUST 2026 by David Wilson, VIC
• TRUST AND HOPE by Jacqui Doyle, QLD
• ASSIGNED by Angela Nieve, WA
• THE BUSKER IS GONE by Robyn Considine, NSW
• ZERO COOL by Macarius Abatania, WA
• FLOOD by Kay Northbridge, UK
• CONSTRUCTION PROJECT by Dennis Callegari, VIC
• SOUND OF THE RAIN by Marcus Caravella, WA
• HIGHWAY TO HAIL by Grace Braeburn, ACT
• THE DAY THE SKY TILTED by Dayle Anderson, VIC
• A RAINY DAY AT DOWNING STREET by Latesha Hearth, NZ
• SIGN FROM ABOVE by Candice Tan, NSW
• IMPERMANENCE by Mel Jade, QLD