Based in Norwood, Ursula Pflug is the author of the critically acclaimed novels Green Music (Edge/Tesseract) and The Alphabet Stones, published by Cobourg’s Blue Denim Press and currently shortlisted for the 2014 ReLit award. Her first story collection After the Fires (Tightrope) was shortlisted for The Aurora Award, and her second, Harvesting the Moon has recently been released by boutique genre press PS in the United Kingdom. Her latest novel is Motion Sickness.
Ursula’s award-winning stories have been published in genre and literary venues in Canada, the US, and the UK. She is also an editor, reviewer, creative writing instructor, and playwright. Her edited books include They Have To Take You In and The Playground of Lost Toys, co-edited with Colleen Anderson and slated for a fall 2015 release from Exile.
She is co-teaching a “Writing Speculative Fiction” Continuing Education course this spring at Trent University.
Motion Sickness is a flash novel consisting of 55 chapters of exactly 500 words each, accompanied by a dark and whimsical scratchboard illustration by former Peterborough illustrator S.K. Dyment.
The novel follows one young woman’s humorous and poignant misadventures in the worlds of employment, friendship, dating, birth control, and abortion.
Smart, engaging and well-written, this novel will be of particular appeal to young women dealing with the responsibility of reproductive control, finding their way in the world of creative work, and the social life of a young single person.
Motion Sickness is available at Chapters Peterborough (873 Lansdowne St., Peterborough) and online at Chapters Indigo or Amazon.
An excerpt from Motion Sickness (Inanna Publications, August 2014)
Chapter One: It Turned Out, Bewilderingly, To Be Yet Another Laundromat
The stairs were much more difficult on the way up. Why were the mornings that you needed elevators most the same ones you were staying somewhere there weren’t any?
The two women were still in bed. Disconcertingly, the one named Valerie slept with her eyes open. The other one had rolled over. Her arms were askew and her hair was sprayed all over her face. Her name was Penelope, Theo remembered. They’d all three jammed together at Bill’s, the after-hours club. He set the tray of coffees down. He took his shirt off because it was hot and put it down on the wood floor. He poured cream and sugar into his own coffee and sat down on his shirt beside the bed, watching Penelope try very hard not to wake up.
“Aspirin?” she finally asked.
Theo headed for the bathroom, returned with aspirin and a glass of water. He knelt clumsily, poured out two pills and placed them into her hand. It curled around them hesitantly, unbelieving. He drew the other hand out from where it lay atrophied under the covers and pressed the cold glass into the hand’s fingers, hoping to jog their digital memories.
She opened her eyes and looked wonderingly at the tiny white objects in her hands.
“Aspirin,” said Theo very firmly. “What you asked for. A minute ago. Remember?”
She smiled, swallowed the aspirin, handed him the glass and sank back down into the pillows.
“Coffee?” he asked.
Penelope finally sat up. “You play a mean bass.”
“Thanks. But how do you take your coffee?”
“Regular’s fine.” She still looked terrible, in a wonderful sort of way. Theo was beginning to wonder how he had spent the morning in the same bed with these two women and not done anything other than sleep. Something to do with the volume of alcohol consumed, possibly.
He stared at the dirty window, a crack running diagonally from corner to corner. He let his eyes
zoom and focus past the sooty smudged pane, to the new green leaves on the sumac tree outside. Trees Of Heaven, their roots, like black walnuts, poisoned everything in their vicinity.
They really wanted to survive.
He looked at the sumac, remembering how he had studied Penelope and Valerie’s faces while all three rode the morning’s first streetcar through what still appeared to be night. He had been reminded of something he’d wanted since childhood but had never been able to define, and had certainly never experienced.
I’ll know it when I see it. And last night, he had.
At last Penelope took the coffee from Theo but kissed his fingers before she returned them.
It wouldn’t matter if they never spoke of it. Even if he never saw her again, the gift would remain intact.
