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Reviewed by C.R. Hurst for Readers' Favorite
Fate’s Timepiece by Saleema Ishq delivers an edgy mind game in flash fiction form. In it, a young woman named Lili is haunted by a recurring dream about a menacing, faceless figure who pursues her through the endless corridors of an art museum, as she keeps time with an old pocket watch while searching for an elusive something or someone. It is not until she visits her mother and looks through a box of mementos left to her by her recently deceased grandmother that Lili learns how her family has dark secrets which may very well help her understand whether she is the hunted or the hunter.
Saleema Ishq is especially good at creating anxiety and tension with her fluid sentences which kept me on edge throughout the story. The reader never really knows how much of the drama is in Lili’s dreams or if it is some supernatural phenomenon. I also enjoyed the story’s brisk pace in which the author swiftly reveals each piece in her puzzle of a story until its dramatic conclusion, making it truly flash fiction. The style of the story reminded me of the classic television series, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, in which the master of suspense introduced a twenty-minute episode of cat-and-mouse to his audience each week. Even Fate’s Timepiece’s ending has a Hitchcockian edge to it. I was never really quite sure how much of it was real or how much it was simply Lili’s unending nightmare.
