Frances Gapper

Now it’s not safe to go out, they order bottles of guaranteed healthy air and crave injections of fresh young blood. She buys him a million-year-old whelk shell. Holding it to his ear: I can only hear my tinnitus, he complains. Maybe that’s all anyone ever hears, the air inside their heads going woowoo and shush shush.

Frances Gapper lives in the UK’s Black Country. Her micros ‘Plum Jam’ (FlashBack Fiction) and ‘She’s Gone’ (Wigleaf) appeared in Best Microfiction 2019 and 2021 and ‘For a Widow’ (Twin Pies) will be in Best Microfiction 2022. Her story Lawn placed second in the University of Kent Fiction Prize 2021.