First runner-up for the 2019 Raven Short Story Contest, MFC Feeley captivated us with a story that, while only five hundred words, bursts at the seams with ache and desire. With brevity and depth, ‘Dannemora Sewing Class’ weaves together two very different lives.
Judge JJ Lee had this to say:
‘Dannemora Sewing Class’, a very short short story, daringly makes a section and POV break in the middle — and it works. The focus is on a single interaction, and we discover through the POV switch that it has ramifications. The story demonstrates the writer’s skill and ability to inhabit characters with realistic diction.
Enjoy this brief but powerful excerpt from Issue 26, Spring 2020.
Dannemora Sewing Class
by MFC Feeley
She leans across him to adjust the thread’s tension, and he drives his nose into her armpit. His slow blooming smile doesn’t alter his features but suffuses them with warmth. His eyes drop to breasts and bounce back; he mouths the word ‘bobbin’, lips bouncing on the b.
It’s the first time he’s spoken to her. Angie feels a tingle. His foot lifts off the pedal. Angie watches his hands, clean but discoloured from years of labour, pinch a wrinkle bunching under the presser foot and rub it away. He traces a circle where the wrinkle had been and prods the centre. Angie sucks in her breath. He resumes his seam, the faintest twitch tugging the right corner of his mouth.
Angie reminds herself what those hands have done, why he is in prison. As he smoothes the coming seam, she loosens the fabric stuck to her flesh where his nose drove in.
She brings her lips together in the b sound. Zippers are tricky. A zipper will keep him in line.
To find out what happens next, pick up your copy of Issue 26, Spring 2020 here!
And, on 1 September, the 2020 Raven Short Story Contest opens! Why not put your own pen to paper for a chance at the $300 top prize and publication in Pulp Literature Issue 30, Spring 2021?
MFC Feeley wrote a series of ten stories inspired by the Bill of Rights for Ghost Parachute and has published in SmokeLong, Jellyfish Review, Brevity Blog, Liar’s League, and others. Feeley has been nominated for Best Small Fictions, Best Micro-Fictions, and The Pushcart Prize, and was an Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award quarter-finalist. More at MFC Feeley/Facebook and on Twitter @FeeleyMfc.
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