Hilary Ayshford is a former science journalist and editor based in rural Kent in the UK. She writes flash fiction and short stories and has been nominated for Best Of The Net and Best Small Fictions. She likes her music in a minor key and has a penchant for the darker side of human nature.
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Author bio

When you ask me to marry you, I won't say yes. Not at first. I'll make you wait, tease you with the possibility that I could refuse. 
But you'll probably ask me somewhere I can't say no 

The Perfect Ceremony of Love's Rite

He hesitates. His finger hovers then presses firmly. The screen shrinks to black, the fan breathes its last. The room is silent, the desk bare, the filing trays empty.

The Retreat

Winter is her time: time to revel in the cold, to dance on the drifts and glide on the wind. Seven long months Yuki-onna retreated with the thaw to her ice cave above the snow line. Now she returns with the first winter storm, ready to hunt, to feed.

Snow Woman

It was what anyone would have done. 

The woman walking ten yards ahead of me dropped to the ground. She made no effort to save herself, just face-planted straight into the pavement. People flowed round her motionless body like a river ...

The Bystander Effect

He'd always meant to learn to use the washing machine in the flat, but the instructions were a foreign language. His lack of domesticity was one reason she said they were incompatible. That, and his poor communication, his reluctance to commit 

Rinse and Repeat

There are only three customers in the taproom of The Siren’s Revenge, seated round a heavily scarred oak table, each intent on the dominoes lined up before him. One clacks a tile down triumphantly, glances up at the stranger hesitating in the doorway

The Siren's Revenge

Henry screws his eyes tight against the glare of the lights. He can feel everyone looking at him expectantly, but panic has stripped his mind bare. The hairy dressing gown that used to be his grandpa’s feels scratchy on his bare arms ...

Next Year Henry Will Go Back to Playing a Sheep, Says Mrs Bottomley

“Come on, Fergus, let’s do it!” Callum is quivering with excitement.
“I don’t know.” Fergus rubs his rump reflectively against a gnarled pine trunk. “Two against one. It’s not very sporting.”
“Yeah, but he’s got a gun.”
“True. Okay, follow me.”

Open Season

Know this: We are not gone. If you try, you can feel our touch in the petals of a flower or in the breeze that ruffles the grass and the leaves. If you look hard, you can see our reflection in the clouds and the lake.

All You Need to Know About Ghosts

France, November 1916
My dearest Elsie
I hope this letter finds you well, as it leaves me. I'm still in one piece, so I can't complain, in the circumstances.

Between The Lines

It is a long way to fall. Surveying the cliff from the bottom – the fractured rockface, the narrow ledges, the scrubby vegetation –had made him dizzy. 

Over The Top

A brief rain shower has left them bedraggled, satin and sequins clinging to arms and legs, hair draped in dripping seaweed strands over faces, dribbling down necks. 

Five Fascinating Facts About Jellyfish

Click: 06.33
“Did you ever…?”
“Yes. In 2004.” David cuts the question off before it can be asked.
“Is it as bad as they…?”
“Worse.”
“Do we know who’s driving this year?”
“No, but I’ll look after him. Poor bloke.” 

Passing Through

Eric came to school wearing a dress, kitten-heeled shoes and a smudge of eye shadow. He’d let his hair grow over the summer, and it now skimmed his shoulders. She wanted everyone to call her Tallulah.

Misfits

Dessert – a sharp raspberry sorbet with a jelly sphere on the top – is somewhat disappointing, according to Gerald. Sorbet shows no real culinary skill, he says, and the gelatinous globe tasted of very little.

Dining in the Dark

Tempus Fugit

Ninety-seven. That's the number of times he's apologised to people for the things he's done. He wrote them all down, counted them. He's probably forgotten a few. Or a lot. They added up to nothing, in the end.

Decline And Fall Of A Man In His Prime

Gradually add darker tones and shadows to give depth and definition. Observe how flesh is not a single colour, but a rainbow of reds, yellows, blues, browns and purples. 

How to Paint a Portrait of Your Lover

The carousel slows, creaks to a halt; the steam organ sighs and groans out its last breath. In the silence, the women wait, each hoping to see her daughter emerge from the far side of the square, wave and call out “Maman, c'est moi”.

Maybe Today

From far away her longing reaches me in my dreaming. I find her sheltering from the afternoon sun in the sparse shade of an acacia, trickling handfuls of red dust through her fingers as she thinks of me. 

The Song of Me

Monday – Make packed lunch for Conrad's school outing.

Realise you forgot to ask whether this is a triangle sandwich week or if we've gone back to squares, and whether crusts are acceptable or not.

To-Do List for the Last Week of Term

She makes for the furthest recess, where light never reaches. Fingertips skim names and dates, summoning images of people and events long since banished to the oubliette of her mind.

Turning the Page

My husband was shrinking. His clothes seemed to fit more loosely, and he was as tense and uptight as a cashmere sweater washed at 90 degrees for an hour.

Ghost in the Machine

It was a small step from wise woman to witch. One short sermon was enough to turn the minds of the entire congregation. God visited pestilence upon the village as a punishment, said the priest. 

Tears and Smoke

She stumbles and almost falls onto the stage, propelled by the hand of the stage manager between her shoulder blades, and stands frozen, a plump, quivering gazelle transfixed by the stare of the voracious audience. 

Be Careful Whose Toes You Step On When You Tread the Boards

The sky darkens as he grasps the sun and squeezes dribbles of honey and melted butter onto her lips. The intense sweetness burns her mouth.

In the Shadow of Cloud Nine

The hunk of bread is stale and dry with a pale white bloom over its surface, but Malachi snatches it off the rough wooden trencher. One corner has a small growth of blue-green mould. He will save that bit until last.

Bread and Relish

Around her right wrist the girl on the train has a bracelet made of human hair. The narrow braid gleams with shades of brown and gold, auburn and grey, black and ginger. I can’t take my eyes off it.

Tug of Love

Vivienne is pregnant. She shares her news with the office before she's even taken off her coat. People crowd round her. There are hugs and kisses and even some tears. Sarah calls congratulations across the room but doesn't move from her desk.

Bearing Down/Bearing Up

Taking Tea with Great Aunt Elspeth

For weeks the sun, like a huge white marble, hung in the sky; any clouds were as fleeting and fluffy as marshmallows. It was a summer as wild and carefree as white bedsheets flapping in the cooling breeze.

The Phone Box at the End of the World

My husband gave me this electric Spiralizer for my birthday. I had been hinting at gold hoop earrings, but anyway. 

Courgetti? Forgetti!

Exposition

She was conceived as Beethoven's “Appassionata” played softly in the background. Her father was a viola player and her mother a cellist, and it was hard to tell where making music together ended and making love began.

Sonata Dolorosa

I am deeply asleep when the phone rings, and it takes me a few seconds to shake off the disorientation and calm the pounding of my heart before I can answer it and it is Mrs Williams who lives across the hall you and she thinks you might have been

Rude Awakening

Me.

You. 

We two. 

Together as one. 

Till death us do part. 

Or until one of us has had enough.

Or perhaps we will be the lucky ones who grow together, not apart.

Fibonnaci's Wife Figures Out Love

You wake in a parallel universe, where the sun rises in the west and sets in the east, and your husband gets up first and brings you breakfast in bed. Your children are in the kitchen eating porridge, which they hate, 

If You Take a Trip Through The Looking Glass

I have a new friend! I open my eyes and he is there on the pillow, near my nose, staring at me. He’s very shy. As soon as I move, he’s gone. I shall call him Archie.

Beelzebub

You press the flush but instead of swirling away the water rises steadily up the sides of the porcelain bowl and in your head the fear begins to swell because none of the magazines tell you what to do in this situation...

Welling Up

Tiffany is just sliding the fish fingers under the grill when strains of Je T’aime Moi Non Plus sound faintly from the other room. She runs to grab the phone from Shannon, her five-year old daughter, who is about to start pressing random buttons.

Unfinished Business in the Boudoir

Tiffany is just sliding the fish fingers under the grill when strains of Je T’aime Moi Non Plus sound faintly from the other room. She runs to grab the phone from Shannon, her five-year old daughter, who is about to start pressing random buttons

At last he returned. His tide-tumbled, surf-soaked body washed up seven miles down the coast, weeks after the wreckage of his boat came ashore.

The Sea Change

The death-shrieks of the trees summoned Nemi. At the bottom of the ravine, the monster lay on its back, ticking as its metal carapace cooled.

The creature hung upside down, eyes closed, breath rattling. Diamond chips of glass sparkled in its hair.

Selected work