Short Stories from cutalongstory.com

In December 1900, three lighthouse keepers on a remote Scottish island - battered by Atlantic storms and the intense emotions of confinement - disappear without trace, leaving an enduring mystery in this most mysterious of places.

Ducat, Marshall and MacArthur - Principal Keeper, Assistant Keeper and Occasional Keeper, stout men all; he knew them - Ducat, Marshall and MacArthur seemed, though he could not possibly credit it, to have disappeared into the briny silence.  Vanished.  Spirited away, on some rogue cloud or the topmost spike of a vast passing rogue wave, unseen in the charts, unsensed in any mariner’s lowest troughs of sleep.

There was, he realised, one tale which might yet yield its secrets: the logbook.

...

Nothing was recorded for December 14th; no space, or torn corner, no tea-stained portion blotted down or overwritten, or simply torn free for whatever inconceivable reason.  Simply nothing.  The white space was given over to the following day, as though 15 followed 13 in every diary in the world.

As he read the short (and hopeful?) note, Moore’s veins seized as though some hatter had broken through and squirted them full with mercury.

December 15th, 1 p.m., it read.  Storm ended.  Sea calm.  God is over all.

Nothing else was there in the ledger - he flipped about with shaking hand, back and forth, hither and yon, hoping against hope – but nowhere in any ledger, log, record or other mark of passing time recorded in any lighthouse in the world could such an entry occur.  Moore sat back, astonished.  A runnel of sweat descended from the nape of his neck, wicked away into his undershirt like the pass of a child’s hand through an outdoor tap.

£2.49 Added

Increasingly adrift in life, a man reflects on his relationships with the people closest to him while he ponders a solution to his disquiet.

God is Over All

James Roderick Burns

£0.99 Added

In December 1900, three lighthouse keepers on a remote Scottish island - battered by Atlantic storms and the intense emotions of confinement - disappear without trace, leaving an enduring mystery in this most mysterious of places.

Fleeing an abusive relationship, a young woman returns to her hometown and her bereaved mother.

***Please Note: This story is also available in the collection "Indelible and Other Stories".***

Connie had come home with good intentions. Noble even. People would tell her what a good daughter she was. More than that, what a good soul. To come back from living in Italy to look after her still grieving mum? Well now… Many of the neighbours spoke of her as they might a saint, their own grown and moved away children nothing but ungrateful wretches in comparison. No one looked further than that though. They all thought she’d been in some kind of paradise. As if shit doesn’t still happen in places where people might think of going on holiday; where the wine is local, the buildings pretty and the mercury capable of topping thirty degrees Celsius without it making the newspapers. Not that she could look down on them, she’d arrived in Naples with the same naive prejudices, after all. A rose-tinted view that was only extended by the fact she was teaching little kids. Little kids being, by and large, sweet – at least to adults. And so it took her a good while to realise that bullshit is bullshit wherever you go, whatever the weather. Speaking Italian helped, but as it turned out she had only learned it well enough to be lied to and believe it. She wondered whether she’d have been such an easy sell if the same patter and promises had been made in her own language. Maybe so. Maybe not. These things tend to depend on the talent of the teller, and Luca was not without skill in this regard. Still, in her gut she knew after about four months that things weren’t going in a good direction, but by then it was too late. She was hooked. After all, it had started with a colpo di fulmine. A thunderbolt. The kind of thing that makes you think it’s the best thing that ever happened to you, that beguiles a cynic, that makes a sceptic believe in fate. That was before the gaslighting, the cheating and the threats. That was before the pregnancy scare. Before Luca’s hand firmly around her throat in the middle of what the local police later described as a “lover’s tiff” made everything all the scarier. She’d then come to think of the sensation as something altogether more sinister by the end. Stregoneria – black magic. The arrival of her period two weeks later came as a reprieve. The day after her aunt called to tell her just how badly her mum was doing.
That had been four months ago. Long enough that being back in her hometown no longer felt temporary. Long enough that any hopes that her being around would help straighten her mother out were already in vain. Long enough that the supermarket job she’d picked up to tide her over was starting to pull her under. That and the rest of it...

Hocus Pocus

As the city swelters in a heatwave, an unfaithful husband makes his way home to a wife whose eyes are no longer closed.

***Please Note: This story is also available in the collection "Indelible and Other Stories".***

Ramón drains his drink, lays his hands palms up on the bar and surveys the damage to his inner arms. Bites pock the skin, about a dozen in total, their pattern reminiscent of bombing run photos he once saw in a war documentary. The main cluster is grouped around his wrists where the skin is thinnest. And the itching… Hijo de puta, the itching! He fishes out a piece of ice from his drink and runs it along the inflamed and broken skin, back and forth until the patch is numb and the ice a memory.
       The old guy tending bar takes his glass and catches his eye. Otra? Why the hell not? He knows what he’s going home to. Rushing isn’t going to make it any better. Besides, this place has an air conditioner that actually works. The one in his own apartment broke down a couple of days earlier, just in time for the biggest heatwave Guadalajara had seen in the last fifteen years. Timing is everything.
       A fresh scotch and ice appears in front of him and he picks it up, gratefully, letting its cool heat fill his mouth along with a fresh piece of ice that he crunches between his teeth. Bliss. The simple joy of not being on the verge of heat stroke. What a difference it makes. Case in point, he was pretty sure that if his air conditioner had been working, none of this would be happening. Luisa told him to just get the guy over to fix it as soon as it had happened. He should have listened, but he didn’t want to pay the call out fee for what was probably something simple. Besides, he’d have been an easy mark in this heat. He’d heard stories of people being charged five times the usual. No, no, fuck that. He tried himself, but the effort was token. He doesn’t have the mechanical gene and he explained this to his dad when he tried to get him round to fix it. Puro pedo, the old man had said, bullshit, there’s nothing genetic about it, you just learn.
       Or you don’t...

£2.29 Added

Fleeing an abusive relationship, a young woman returns to her hometown and her bereaved mother.

***Please Note: This story is also available in the collection "Indelible and Other Stories".***

Itch/Scratch

Twelve stories for anyone who's ever been burned.

Errant husbands, doomed newlyweds, bruised boxers, abandoned wives, damaged former-soldiers and, of course, the ghosts of the ones that got away - these are just a few of the protagonists that feature in a collection of stories and vignettes that explore the dark side of love. Ranging from the visceral to the tender, each deals with what can happen when the light of its promise gives way to the dark of its night. How it can injure, corrode and corrupt. What it does to us and what it can make us do.

***Please Note: Three stories from this collection - "Glass Jaw", "Itch/Scratch" and "Hocus Pocus" are also available separately on this site.***

The following extract is from the story "Needs":

Henry was sitting on the edge of the hotel bed, trying to occupy himself while he waited. This mostly came in the form of glancing over at his companion, taking care not to do it so often as to seem impatient. She was at the dresser, tapping on her phone. Usually this might have irritated him, but the room was basic and if you wanted a little musical accompaniment to the evening’s events then technology would have to be given its due.
        He tilted his head to stretch his neck a little, trying to loosen up, rolling his shoulders, feeling, no, more than that, hearing, the muscles click as he did so. So much for enjoying the anticipation, he thought, and half-wondered when he’d last felt like this. He cast his mind back a moment, back over what had gone so fast but somehow seemed so long ago. He briefly saw himself, another strange room, a teenager, waiting. But no. No, that wasn’t quite accurate. Just a pose he adopted for his friends, and at least a couple of them had probably been telling the same lie. Henry himself had turned twenty a relative innocent and had remained so until his wedding night later that same year. A one-woman man. It was the kind of thing people now might call sweet, quaint even, if he ever told them. Which he didn’t. He never spoke about stuff like that. Sometimes he wondered if things would have been different if he’d been born later, but he knew himself to be a romantic and by this reckoning he’d have probably been the same whatever his generation. He’d never know for sure, of course. You get the times you get, but he had no regrets. Not about that, at least. And anyway, things were different now.
       His mouth was dry, so he took a drink from the glass of water she’d left on the bedside table. On putting it back he found he wasn’t sure what to do with his hands, and so settled for clasping them together in his lap, the fidgeting of his fingers continuing regardless. He chuckled to himself, Man, you have it bad today. Then the answer to his earlier question came to him unbidden, the last time he felt like this: this same day last year.
       “Henry?”
       He looked over in the direction of her voice.
       “You ready?”
       He nodded.
       “Good,” and with a dramatic flourish, she tapped the phone one last time. The bluetooth speaker synced, the music started, and a swell of strings suddenly filled the room, followed by Sinatra’s unmistakeable tones. The sound of better days. Henry closed his eyes, and let the music glide over him, taking him away as he internally sang every word, each note coming out pitch-perfect, aided by the benevolent acoustics of his memory.
       She walked over to him and he opened his eyes, taking her in. Tight black dress, high heels, hair just right - shoulder length, tousled slightly. Old school sexy. New school as well as far as he was concerned. She looked…terrific. The word had long been his premiere compliment of choice and he could think of none better now. She gently motioned for him to get to his feet and guided his hands, the left to her waist, the right raised, interlaced with her fingers. She pulled him in close and he accepted the invitation. And then they danced, gently swaying together, their bodies slowly beginning to move in unison. He closed his eyes again and kept them that way, going with the motion, feeling the weight of her head as she rested it on his shoulder. The tension that had been so palpable in his muscles just moments before, slowly fading as the trumpets sounded and the tune reached its crescendo.
       And then the song was over.
       She stepped back. “You’re improving.”
       “I just didn’t step on your toes this time.”
       She smiled, her gaze finding his eyes and holding his look...

£1.49 Added

As the city swelters in a heatwave, an unfaithful husband makes his way home to a wife whose eyes are no longer closed.

***Please Note: This story is also available in the collection "Indelible and Other Stories".***

Indelible and Other Stories

Everyone knows it will happen. But who do we blame? Ourselves? Each other? Me? You? Them?

Dad used to deny there was a problem. Mum just ignored it. It was a lifestyle-threat, and the only thing worse than that was some bloke with a badge and a stutter turning up on your doorstep and trying to sell you cleaning equipment. One evening Dad came in, threw a copy of The Daily Mail on the table and said: “There, it’s all bollocks! I knew it!”

£7.49 Added

Twelve stories for anyone who's ever been burned.

Errant husbands, doomed newlyweds, bruised boxers, abandoned wives, damaged former-soldiers and, of course, the ghosts of the ones that got away - these are just a few of the protagonists that feature in a collection of stories and vignettes that explore the dark side of love. Ranging from the visceral to the tender, each deals with what can happen when the light of its promise gives way to the dark of its night. How it can injure, corrode and corrupt. What it does to us and what it can make us do.

***Please Note: Three stories from this collection - "Glass Jaw", "Itch/Scratch" and "Hocus Pocus" are also available separately on this site.***

The following extract is from the story "Needs":

Honour Thy Father and Thy Mother

A boxer finds himself taking a beating in the early rounds of a prize-fight, but his opponent isn't the only thing he's fighting.

***Please Note: This story also appears in the collection "Indelible and Other Stories".***

The bell saves me though I barely make it back to my corner, my weight collapsing onto the stool so hard that I almost slip off it. Jesus, that last one caught me good. Spiteful shot, just under the ribs. Everything else falls away when you can’t get enough oxygen into your lungs.
Well, almost everything…
Tony immediately steps into the ring and takes out my mouthguard. He starts talking but I’m not hearing a word. Too busy trying to breathe. A minute’s not going to be long enough.
He sees it now and says my name. And again. The third time gets a response. I look him in the eye and manage a couple of nods, but I must look glassy ‘cos he isn’t fooled. And there ain’t no dressing up what’s happened so far...

£0.99 Added

Everyone knows it will happen. But who do we blame? Ourselves? Each other? Me? You? Them?

Glass Jaw

After a sealing a deal that is going to save his year, a salesman finds his good run continues during a boozy card game with colleagues. But the hangover is coming...

Craig Flynn knew a little something about being a prick. It wasn’t his default setting, and it wasn’t necessarily his go-to, but he undoubtedly had it in reserve for when the occasion required it. And though it could come in many forms, the one he was currently leaning into was a sensation he recognised from childhood, the quiet glee of having power over another. By way of example, exhibit A would be the way he used to torment his younger brother when they were kids, over-reacting to the slightest provocation and picking fights he knew he couldn’t lose. The death-throes of these tussles would invariably take on an aspect of ritual; the bigger boy sooner or later pinning down the smaller, channelling his weight through his knees into those skinny unformed biceps – every slight shift of his weight dialling the pain up or down. Usually up. And then would come the coup de grâce. He would dangle a long line of spit from his mouth, letting it stretch downward, zeroing in on the grimacing face below. His brother would twist and turn and even beg a little, but that only sealed his fate. As sure as night follows day, the spittle always found its target.
The bastard gene is what Flynn came to call this inclination, a seam of which ran through most everyone, to his mind. Playground bullies, street thugs, concentration camp guards, CEOs and despots – they were all carriers. Perhaps even the odd sales director too. Flynn, of course, had managed to control his own tendencies as the years passed. He had to; a mere mortal like him. It didn’t come easy, but most of the time he was just about smart enough to know when to fall in line and shut the fuck up. Yet, every now and then he'd remember that distant boy, and he felt more than a flicker of him now as he raised Mark Patterson again and saw that he really didn’t want to play anymore...

£0.99 Added

A boxer finds himself taking a beating in the early rounds of a prize-fight, but his opponent isn't the only thing he's fighting.

***Please Note: This story also appears in the collection "Indelible and Other Stories".***

Animals and Children

A married woman sits in a hotel bar on the verge of starting an affair. The rest should be simple.

Beneath the table, where nobody could see, Beth slipped off her right shoe and tentatively tried to move her big toe. She felt the pain spike for a few seconds before slowly settling back down to the steady pulse that had dogged her throughout the day. Dan had left an old wooden toolbox in the hallway, another refugee from his half-hearted bid to clear out a storage unit that had belonged to his late grandfather. It was just the latest addition to the long line of crap that was now being “temporarily” stored in their flat, further reducing the already limited floor space. He’d left it there the night before, and she’d seen it, complained about it, and was to all intents and purposes thoroughly aware of its location. Yet in the hurried fog of a morning that had followed a night of troubled sleep, she’d forgotten about it, just for an instant. In the seconds after cracking her big toe on its bracketed corner she felt pain rush up her leg, a screaming dull burn. And though she had technically done it to herself, she was in no doubt as to where the blame lay. Dan had been still asleep, cocooned and oblivious under the covers, until the moment he was woken by a torrent of invective the like of which he had never heard from his wife before. She let it all hang out, all the wretchedness and frustration that had built up inside her over the past few months. Every bitter passing thought, sharpened to a dagger and spat out at her hitherto sleeping husband. Dan had just stared at her, bemused and drowsy. He didn’t know what had happened or where this was coming from. But then there was a lot that Dan didn’t know.
She left the shoe off and gently rested her heel on her overnight bag, toes pointed upward. Satisfied that no further knocks were likely, she let her eyes wander around the hotel bar. The place was about three quarters full, the rumble of conversation two drinks louder than when she’d sat down. There was a business park nearby, the scene of a conveniently scheduled out of office meeting that afternoon, and she wondered how many of the drinkers were actually guests. She couldn’t really tell, and this was fine as it meant the same applied to her, as long as the bag wasn’t in view. Sean had checked in earlier and had no such qualms about being noticed. He was at the bar, making small talk with the girl serving him. Beth observed her reaction with interest – the involuntary grin, the widening of the eyes, the slight adjustment of the hair. Beth had seen it before. Hell, she’d done it before. And recently, as far as he was concerned. And despite the long hiatus the old steps had come to her again easily, as if she were a resting dancer waiting to hear the right notes...

£2.49 Added

After a sealing a deal that is going to save his year, a salesman finds his good run continues during a boozy card game with colleagues. But the hangover is coming...

This Isn't Me

Are you an ideal employee? Do you know the route to success? Are you S.M.A.R.T?

If so, there’s no need to read this satirical take on the world of work and the decline of the contemporary university.

S

M

A

R

T

Charlie, the trainer, wrote the word vertically down the whiteboard.
Dr Oscar Redman looked round the room. There were academics, cleaners, administrators, technicians, gardeners and security staff: a wide range of university personnel were present. The top brass had decided that all employees must attend the Performance Assessment Training Course, in preparation for the implementation of the Annual Review.
Oscar had never had an annual review. Never. Performance assessment? That was what teachers did to schoolchildren, wasn’t it? It was what bullying managers did in businesses to instil terror into their workers. As an academic, it seemed to Oscar highly undignified.

£2.49 Added

A married woman sits in a hotel bar on the verge of starting an affair. The rest should be simple.

S. M. A. R. T.

13 Tales of loss and longing.

They meet unexpectedly. They are both alone and no-one else is nearby.
He said, I’ve missed you.
She said, was I the target?
He said, you know you were.
She said, well, perhaps.
He said, there’s no perhaps about it.
They looked at each other. They waited.
He said, you moved. That’s why I missed.
She said, you took me by surprise.
He said, liar.

(from Flesh Wounds)

£0.99 Added

Are you an ideal employee? Do you know the route to success? Are you S.M.A.R.T?

If so, there’s no need to read this satirical take on the world of work and the decline of the contemporary university.

The Collector of Secrets (and other revelations)

Who are the Boetmen? What are the Boetmen? What do they do? Take a journey into the world of eco-horror In this terrifying representation of toxic masculinity.

In comes the dinner, uplifted by firm female flesh. The men make noise of welcome. Onto the tables are laid pontoons of coalfish, horse-mackerel and herring. In come platters of gummy shark, garpike and whiting; salvers of slimy yellow eel, dogfish and black bream follow. Steaming soup of fishgut, heads and bones and floating fish eyes fill tureens upon the tables. Fistfuls of bread are torn from trenchers topped with loaves, then dunked in oily broth or stuffed with sliced fish gut and roe. Men cram full their mouths, lick dribble from greasy fingers, belch, slurp, munch heartily. Soup and slobber run in rivulets down wiry beards.

The women serve. The men eat. The former is a pretty sight, the latter not so...

And then to whoops and cheers in comes the sacred delicacy: egg-cup o’ cod is placed before each man. Soft boiled egg topped with salt and sliver of rarest cod – all golden dripdown. Each man pauses. Some look up to thank their Maker. Then, eggs held aloft, they slurp down slimy yolk-soaked cod. Some suck at shells to gain the final morsel. Other stick lewd tongues into the cavity. All is eaten.

£1.29 Added

13 Tales of loss and longing.

The Boetmen

18 year old Jemima is still grieving over the death of her mother and unborn sibling two years before and still arguing with her father about her dreams of moving away from home and going to university. We walk with her and best friend Monica as they walk to work and find an empty pram. This triggers a lot of upset in Jem and we hear about what really happened to her mother.

The town is creeping forward and we can see people arriving for the morning shift. A school bus comes by and kids from my old school have pushed themselves up against the windows the same way we used to do – waving, shouting, making silly faces. I’m only eighteen, but school seems a different world now and I wonder how long it will be before I completely forget all about that world and my nascent academic plans are crushed. It’s nearly two years since my carefully packaged dreams were placed into a permanent limbo. I count the hours, I mark the days, the earth spins, my hair grows, everything is moving, but in my world nothing important ever changes. It’s not normal. I’m still waiting for normal to return.

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Who are the Boetmen? What are the Boetmen? What do they do? Take a journey into the world of eco-horror In this terrifying representation of toxic masculinity.

Pram Pusher

Yasmin Keyani

£1.29 Added

18 year old Jemima is still grieving over the death of her mother and unborn sibling two years before and still arguing with her father about her dreams of moving away from home and going to university. We walk with her and best friend Monica as they walk to work and find an empty pram. This triggers a lot of upset in Jem and we hear about what really happened to her mother.

What the story of St Clare doesn't tell...

In this poem, Alwyn Marriage suggests that St Clare (1194-1253) may be a rather more interesting figure than history suggests.

Clare Offreduccio (Chiara) was a normal, healthy and enthusiastic teenager until she was swept off her feet by the dashing young Francis, whom she heard preach with passion. Abandoning her previous life to follow him, she devoted herself to a life of chastity and charity. Images of St Clare in art tend to depict her as an icon of humble obedience and purity, but there may well be more to the story than that.

While not wishing to diminish Clare's genuine piety and good works at all, this story suggests that Clare's obvious love of St Francis was more full-blooded and passionate than the official stories have suggested, and that ending up in a convent was not quite what Clare had in mind.

(Please note: This is a poem, rather than a story)

Boy Beautiful;
Oh, my boy beautiful.
My study in brown
but no, not mine,
not then, and certainly
not now.

He caught religion
like the chickenpox;
I watched it spread
through all his being,
and willingly breathed his germs,
greedy to share his joy and suffering.

Chiara

Alwyn Marriage

£0.99 Added

What the story of St Clare doesn't tell...

In this poem, Alwyn Marriage suggests that St Clare (1194-1253) may be a rather more interesting figure than history suggests.

Clare Offreduccio (Chiara) was a normal, healthy and enthusiastic teenager until she was swept off her feet by the dashing young Francis, whom she heard preach with passion. Abandoning her previous life to follow him, she devoted herself to a life of chastity and charity. Images of St Clare in art tend to depict her as an icon of humble obedience and purity, but there may well be more to the story than that.

While not wishing to diminish Clare's genuine piety and good works at all, this story suggests that Clare's obvious love of St Francis was more full-blooded and passionate than the official stories have suggested, and that ending up in a convent was not quite what Clare had in mind.

(Please note: This is a poem, rather than a story)

“When she first arrived they said nothing to her, they just looked. An ordinary enough woman, halfway through her life perhaps … modest and respectful, but they were shocked at this female on her own… She said her village had been wiped out in a mudslide, she alone had survived… The gods favoured her, then? No, she said, just lucky.” (from Too Much Too Soon)

Across twenty bite-size flash-fiction stories of no more than 500 words each, the reader can travel from Pre-Conquest Latin America to Post-Catastrophe Britain; or see inside the mind of Don Quixote’s horse and the mind of an impatient would-be suicide bomber; or meet the mythological character who delights in other people’s dilemmas and the woman who decided not to tell the world about her supernatural experiences. Perhaps you will find the answer to questions you never thought to ask: What was the real effect of The Great Plague? And how did British cities end up with such woeful transport provision?

If you get annoyed when others try to tell you what to feel, you’ll sympathise with Jeffery in “Che Bello!” And if some people just leave you exhausted but you don’t understand why, you’ll sympathise with Eddie in “Is This a Law of Thermodynamics?”

The On-and-On Tin

In 1628, the English physician and anatomist, William Harvey, discovered the circulation of the blood. This story explores whether this great leap in medical knowledge might also be seen as a metaphor for something even more surprising.

William Harvey Esq was at his desk when God sidled in. Ungreeted, indeed unnoticed, God cleared the dirty coffee cups from the table, tidied up the tobacco pouch and ink - well, then set about laying a fire in the hearth. Still William Harvey’s head was bent in concentration over his papers: God is, after all, very easily missed.

It was Spring 1629, the year after Harvey’s momentous book, On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals, had exploded into the medical firmament to change the shape of that intellectual space for ever. Thought by many to have been born with a silver spoon in his mouth, Harvey had never experienced what it was to be penniless and unknown. After medical training in the finest institutions in Europe, he had married the daughter of Queen Elizabeth’s physician and was now, himself, personal physician to King Charles. Perhaps such a charmed life should have been enough for him, but his daemon of intellectual curiosity had led him through circuitous paths until, at the heart of the labyrinth he had had no option but to challenge the age - old wisdom of Galen by publishing his own revolutionary theory that in all animals, including humans, the blood is pumped around the body by the heart...

£1.99 Added

“When she first arrived they said nothing to her, they just looked. An ordinary enough woman, halfway through her life perhaps … modest and respectful, but they were shocked at this female on her own… She said her village had been wiped out in a mudslide, she alone had survived… The gods favoured her, then? No, she said, just lucky.” (from Too Much Too Soon)

Across twenty bite-size flash-fiction stories of no more than 500 words each, the reader can travel from Pre-Conquest Latin America to Post-Catastrophe Britain; or see inside the mind of Don Quixote’s horse and the mind of an impatient would-be suicide bomber; or meet the mythological character who delights in other people’s dilemmas and the woman who decided not to tell the world about her supernatural experiences. Perhaps you will find the answer to questions you never thought to ask: What was the real effect of The Great Plague? And how did British cities end up with such woeful transport provision?

If you get annoyed when others try to tell you what to feel, you’ll sympathise with Jeffery in “Che Bello!” And if some people just leave you exhausted but you don’t understand why, you’ll sympathise with Eddie in “Is This a Law of Thermodynamics?”

William Harvey's Visitor

Alwyn Marriage

£1.99 Added

In 1628, the English physician and anatomist, William Harvey, discovered the circulation of the blood. This story explores whether this great leap in medical knowledge might also be seen as a metaphor for something even more surprising.

A young couple are taken on a life-changing journey. A story based on real events.

Captain Parker took us aboard his ship in 1847. That winter, the Caribou did not arrive and the seals had come late. Many of our people had eaten their dogs and twenty had died of starvation. When Captain Parker gave up his store of whale fins and flippers there was much fighting, but our elders made sure all had their share. The captain and the ship’s doctor had learned Inuktitut and conversed with the elders of our tribe. When he spoke of taking some of us to show to his people, my father offered me and I was accepted by the captain as I was young and healthy. He promised my father that he would tell his people of the plight of our tribe. He said we would bring back many riches and the goodwill of great people. They would send men to build settlements and we would be helped by them, just as the Inuits of the East were helped by the Danes.

The captain wanted to take a female too, and after inspecting some of our younger girls he chose Uckaluk. He said it would be proper for us to be married before the journey. The weather was becoming unfavourable for setting out to sea, he had to hasten the start of the voyage, so we began our life as man and wife without the blessings and customs of our people. Captain Parker performed his own marriage ceremony on board the ship. Home was far away only minutes after the Truelove set sail for the land called England. The sea was wide and long...

Esquimaux

Lillian Aldus

£0.99 Added

A young couple are taken on a life-changing journey. A story based on real events.

A young woman tries to escape her stifling and superstitious community.

Emily hadn’t wanted to come to the memorial service, but Ma Kearney had insisted. It wasn’t easy to refuse, after all William had been her only son. ‘Six daughters before my lad was born but I never really knew what it was to be a mother until I held him in my arms.’ This had always been her introduction to any discussion about William Henry Kearney. There was certainly no great love lost between Ma and her daughters. Emily’s sisters-in-law were respectful enough toward their mother, and one or other of them could always be counted on to do their familial duty in times of need, but the relationships between mother and daughters were cold, they acted at best like polite acquaintances. William Henry senior had died soon after William was born and if Ma ever missed him, she kept it to herself.

Courting Will had been a long process. Molly Kearney had a reputation for scaring off any prospective brides she found unsuitable, which was any girl her son had showed an interest in before he met Emily. Rumour had it that more than one poor girl had been chased out of the house by Ma brandishing a broom, and occasionally using it with some force, for simply talking too much, or smiling at or laughing along with him. Even girls who were friends of her daughters were not tolerated often within Ma’s walls. She maintained that there were enough people in the family that any other company was not needed...

The Swan

Lillian Aldus

£0.99 Added

A young woman tries to escape her stifling and superstitious community.

London in the eighteenth century is no place to raise a child alone, without money or a place to live. Lili knows that the only hope her son has of living a better life is to take him to the Foundling Hospital where he might, if he's lucky, find a place in Mr Handel's famous choir.

('Mr H's Angels' was shortlisted for the Cinnamon Short Story Prize in 2014)

Lili is small and the muscle in her arm stretches and aches from carrying the baby all the way across London. He is tied to her waist by a shawl, the fringes of the cambric blending into her dress so that, from a distance, no one can even see that he is there.

She wears her best dress, yellow sprigged muslin with pink roses woven into the linen. An old dress of her mother’s, patched and darned but kept fresh with lavender and rosemary picked from the Physic Garden on a clean dry day. The heat of her body warms the cotton so that she fancies she can smell her mother rising from its creases and folds. She has to catch herself to remember where she is and that her mother has been dead some three years now and is not here to help her. She is only aware of the smell of the baby, milky and sweet, melting into her skin as she hurries through the crowds, down towards the river and on into the shock of the city.

The raised stones in the lane at Chancery make her stumble, jagging the thin leather of her shoes. She puts a hand out to the wall to stop herself from falling but no one even notices, busy as they are – the pedlars and river hawkers, the rouged and hennaed girls with their long and violet silent eyes, minding their own business. She knows this part of the city as well as they; here she can whisk between horses and people like air, skitter across roads and mud, jump away from trouble if she has to. It’s when she goes north and west that she is less certain of herself, where the boundary between river and city leads to fields and pathways that she can no longer recognise, but this is where she has to go. She can’t turn back from her purpose now, not even if she wanted to...

Mr H's Angels

Jo Reardon

£1.29 Added

London in the eighteenth century is no place to raise a child alone, without money or a place to live. Lili knows that the only hope her son has of living a better life is to take him to the Foundling Hospital where he might, if he's lucky, find a place in Mr Handel's famous choir.

('Mr H's Angels' was shortlisted for the Cinnamon Short Story Prize in 2014)

Nigel is long past his peak, and a string of trivial incidents during a boozy day at the pub bring it home to him. Memories of times gone by are of no solace when you don't get the respect you think you deserve.

“Once I roared out of the dark days of winter like a young lion, stored up the triumphs and heat of the spring and summer to see me through the coming cold and dark.”

Tell Us a Joke

An ambitious artist seeks to reconnect with influential figures from his past.

After his fourth year in business William experienced a sense of having arrived at a longed for destination. He didn’t feel certain of anything beyond the hour he was in but considered that he’d survived, even grown, in the competitive and fickle world of art.

He opened his studio not sure and not caring if he could succeed. There didn’t seem to be any other choices open to him that meant anything and he was at a precipice, ready to throw himself off.

The famously difficult first year of fragile trading that saw so many businesses fail, came and went. He ate frugally, bought nothing that wasn’t necessary, worried a lot. Doggedness hauled him to art shops and workspaces, where he introduced himself to people who made decisions about the flow of money. Fear made him gate-crash meetings and network in a manner more aggressive than was natural for him until the months were punctuated by commissions and a growing stream of bookings.

Although he continued to struggle to pay for food and rent he approached his second year slightly ahead with regular work and many of his resources paid for.

When word got round better commissions followed. A few galleries bought his paintings, city views that were stark to the point of abstract, snapped up by trendy urban dwellers and art collectors who reckoned on him being the next big thing.

And he taught, grateful for the flow of money from frustrated painters and pleasure seekers. Business acumen followed. He was an artist who wanted to eat as well as create. An adult who needed more than the air that got him through the experiments of his studying years.

Nonetheless, his survival was an achievement, however much doubt nibbled around its edges…

£0.99 Added

Nigel is long past his peak, and a string of trivial incidents during a boozy day at the pub bring it home to him. Memories of times gone by are of no solace when you don't get the respect you think you deserve.

The Prosperous Dutchman

Ahead of a visit from her returning sister, a woman considers the effect of her father on their family.

In the wedding photo on Ruth’s sideboard Mum is at the back of the crowd of relatives. I have to pick the frame up and bring it close to my face to see her there, behind Graham and Julie, slight with her hair cut short and that pale blue dress she liked so much. Da’s at the front of the picture, bold and bluff with pink cheeks and his paunch, standing where the best man should have stood if Da had had any decency, which he didn’t. The photographer tried to tell him but he’s not a man for taking advice he didn’t ask for.

‘I never get tired of looking at that photo.’ Ruth takes it off me and wanders over the faces with smiling eyes. ‘Ahh, your Mum.’ Her face crunches up with sympathy. ‘I wish she was here now.’

‘Me too.’ How I wish. It’s good of Ruth to have us all round for Adele’s visit. She has a big house and a big heart and she knows it’s what Mum would have wanted.

Ruth’s eyes zoom in on Da in the photo and she pokes him in his belly and frowns. I nod in agreement and she replaces the photo frame precisely over the space it left in the dust. ‘I know he’s my brother but.’ She stops. That’s what everyone always did when it came to Da; they stopped. Fear of rousing his temper, of him hearing from miles away, the way a dog hears a fridge door open. Fear of the repercussions for my Mum. But Mum’s not here anymore and all that silence never did her any good...

£0.99 Added

An ambitious artist seeks to reconnect with influential figures from his past.

Family Gatherings

A collection of eight short speculative fictions with a Lake District flavour.

Despite the distortion of the fish-eye lens, Terrence could see quite clearly who was standing in the corridor. Maurice looked no older than he had all those years before. He hadn’t even put on weight. His hair was still dark and full, and cut in a classic, almost archaic style. He looked like the 1940’s matinee idol he’d always modelled himself on.

Terrence had not lost the plot, he reminded himself, though his hair had thinned, and his figure was wiry rather than slim, worn away rather than honed. Chickens had come to roost, he thought.

Maurice was looking directly at the little lens of the spy glass. Could he see Terrence’s own eye looking back? His hand rose and lost focus, and the doorbell rang softly once again. Terrence closed his eyes briefly before opening the door.

Terry?

Maurice.

I expected staff.

There is no staff, only me.

Hard times. Hard times. Well, aren’t you going to invite me in? Of course, you are. Maurice stepped past him into the hallway. Terrence glanced both ways down the hall, closed the door and followed Maurice. To the right, he said. Into the lounge. Through a picture window a bare and narrow balcony was not softened by a parched palm tree in a plastic pot, the thin browned leaves of which quivered like dark knives. Beyond them the ruins of Tower Bridge could be seen, emerging from dark waters like a piece of last century art.
Maurice turned from the view and smiled. Terrence passed behind the counter of an open plan kitchen and drew from a cupboard a bottle of real scotch. Not all bad then...

£0.99 Added

Ahead of a visit from her returning sister, a woman considers the effect of her father on their family.

Days to Come

Back in the early 1970's, three ten-year old friends go up town to cause trouble.

The first thing I heard from outside was half-shouted laughter. Shadows moved on our wavy glass. The aluminium letterbox flapped as I wrenched the rain-swelled door open. I knew who it’d be. The time was right.

“Comin’ up tahn?” One of them asked, grinning, the other thinking it with a half-smile but looking sideways down the street, uneasy. Kev was always like that. Like all the worst of his past was about to catch up. Happily uneasy though. Adrenalin always flowing. Always on the watch for opportunity . . . Mark grinned again, twitching his arms in his cherished plum and black PVC jacket. He often claimed it was leather, I didn’t mind. My uncle had reckoned leather was silent: “PVC sounds different,” he’d asserted dismissively, probably narked at being shown-off through a gap in the curtains, asleep on the sofa, some weekends back: “That’s my uncle!” I’d announced outside the house to a few mates. But what did he expect, my mother’s brother? At least I’d said it with pride. It wasn’t as if you could see anything but his head. Up in London he worked at Heathrow, and this fact along with the rarity of his presence, made him a minor god . . . and basically, (dog ends circulating in his mug of cold tea), he always lounged till noon on Sundays when he stayed with us; delaying till the whimsy to rise overcame his inertia. Only then, after occupying the solitary bathroom for what seemed hours, would he be ready to head to the pub – him and my dad. Oblivious of time, there they’d soak until the Yorkshire puddings sank and our dinner was dead. Dinner my mum made specially for his visits...

£2.99 Added

A collection of eight short speculative fictions with a Lake District flavour.

Clouds of Glory

Lawrence Freiesleben

£0.99 Added

Back in the early 1970's, three ten-year old friends go up town to cause trouble.

Everyone hits Paul Doe, the teacher's pet. But what happens when you don't?

I hate geography. Meacher gives me the creeps. He has a high eye-brow smile that is permanently slapped across his boat-race, like he’s posed for a picture and the flash has frozen him in time or a cow-prod has taken him by surprise. He’s got sharp little pincer teeth that threaten to punch holes in your neck if you don’t know a stalactite from a stalagmite. You can hear, then feel his smile before peering up to find him leering down at you doodling in the textbook.

The clock-hand is limping by like a crippled tortoise and it’s freezing in 2B. Snow settles around the window seal and icicles have begun to appear from the top of the arched frames. Still too long to go. My mood doesn’t change when Paul Doe pipes up with his usual arse-kissing comments.

“Carbon dioxide from burning fuels causes global warming, a process capable of changing the world’s climate significantly.”

Fucking text-book whore.

“Pikey.” Someone whispers.

No-one likes him. He has a stale damp smell and his skin looks permanently dirty, like one of the oily rags my old man uses to check the car before we drive down to the caravan at Walton-on-the-Naze. I love it down there, mainly ‘cos it ain’t here...

Grow and Warm the Earth

Greg Lawrence

£0.99 Added

Everyone hits Paul Doe, the teacher's pet. But what happens when you don't?

A woman leaving town decides to have a farewell drink with her ex-partner.

Just one drink to say goodbye, you’d said. Half an hour, tops. I’m off tomorrow. You’re not naïve enough to think that if he comes it means he still cares. That idea is on a par with telling yourself that if all the traffic lights turned green on the way here, he’d fall back in love with you and beg you to stay. Stupid. And they all turned red...

Broken

Anne Jenner

£0.99 Added

A woman leaving town decides to have a farewell drink with her ex-partner.

Memories around a short-term summer job years ago still linger.

You’d be a fool to risk it these days, with no witnesses and only memory to guide you. All you can recall are little details, as sharp as a story painted on shattered glass. The summer of seventy-six you took a temporary job with a film company working in the English Lake District.

If you’d got the camp-fire going by the time the runner arrived, you’d maybe sit down together and share a joint – and that doesn’t mean of meat – and a can of beer. The runner was an Ozzie named Ben, which he pronounced Bin and he took the view that ‘you deserve it mate, stuck out here all night long’. Then he’d look around a bit and say, but mate, there’s no-one partying in Ambleside either, which you knew wasn’t true. When you think back it seems like it went on all summer long, but in fact you were only there for four or five nights and once or twice the runner and you talked about Stephanie...

Shooting Stars

K-chik: the lock gave two distinct metallic clicks and we entered the holiday cottage. Outside the day was dying and a streak of orange pasted the horizon above the town. The cottage was nothing more than a tiny one-bedroomed terrace, but from the window lay the estuary, sparkling a rainbow of lights reflecting from the water-front restaurants, stretching out into the vast and darkening sea...

£1.99 Added

Memories around a short-term summer job years ago still linger.

The Locksmith

A soldier home on leave sees things he cannot quite believe and finds his wife in a strange, compromising position.

"The Boathouse Café had an air about it that suggested sea and sand. If it had been inland patrons would have drank their coffee, eaten their scones and felt nostalgic for the beach without knowing why. It was the décor, Phillip decided. Crisp white walls, low beams, driftwood picture frames, and a candy striped canopy over the ice-cream booth outside. He ordered a fried egg and sausage bap but the assistant with a tattoo on her boney arm, written in a script he couldn’t decipher, informed him that it was after eleven o’clock. They didn’t serve breakfast after eleven, but since when had fried egg and sausage become solely breakfast food? Had he been away that long? If he decided to take the next tour – Middle East, Mosul or Marshhad no doubt – would he come back to find soup sold at lunchtime only or teacakes served only after three in the afternoon? The girl’s lip curled when she spoke to him as if he were the hundredth person to ask for sausage and egg that day. Did she have no respect for a uniform? For all he knew she might have thought his clothes were fancy dress and him, just another case of too much sun to the head. The sun had a lot to answer for in these parts..."

£0.99 Added

The White Dog Of Barafundle Bay

Lynda Nash

£1.29 Added

A soldier home on leave sees things he cannot quite believe and finds his wife in a strange, compromising position.

"The Boathouse Café had an air about it that suggested sea and sand. If it had been inland patrons would have drank their coffee, eaten their scones and felt nostalgic for the beach without knowing why. It was the décor, Phillip decided. Crisp white walls, low beams, driftwood picture frames, and a candy striped canopy over the ice-cream booth outside. He ordered a fried egg and sausage bap but the assistant with a tattoo on her boney arm, written in a script he couldn’t decipher, informed him that it was after eleven o’clock. They didn’t serve breakfast after eleven, but since when had fried egg and sausage become solely breakfast food? Had he been away that long? If he decided to take the next tour – Middle East, Mosul or Marshhad no doubt – would he come back to find soup sold at lunchtime only or teacakes served only after three in the afternoon? The girl’s lip curled when she spoke to him as if he were the hundredth person to ask for sausage and egg that day. Did she have no respect for a uniform? For all he knew she might have thought his clothes were fancy dress and him, just another case of too much sun to the head. The sun had a lot to answer for in these parts..."

Colin is an estate agent with idiosyncrasies and a hatred of cats - which drives the narrator to despair.

"When we met, Colin was thirty-five, an estate agent with a collection of vinyl records that stretched from floor to ceiling and a head of hair like Lee van Cleef. For the first few months we were together Colin adored me. He adored my turned up nose, my wonky smile, the way I read a map upside down. Quirky he called me..."

Spooning With Colin

Lynda Nash

£0.99 Added

Colin is an estate agent with idiosyncrasies and a hatred of cats - which drives the narrator to despair.

"When we met, Colin was thirty-five, an estate agent with a collection of vinyl records that stretched from floor to ceiling and a head of hair like Lee van Cleef. For the first few months we were together Colin adored me. He adored my turned up nose, my wonky smile, the way I read a map upside down. Quirky he called me..."

What is a princess to do with unwanted male attention? Perhaps the dark spirit of the river can help.

(This ebook also includes an additional story)

Everybody knows that a princess is bad news, especially to her father. That was the thought that occurred to King Cympo in the two seconds it took him to fall from the battlements of his castle onto the very hard courtyard below. However, such a thought was unfair as a large part of it was his own fault.

A few months earlier he had said, “My dear, I want you to marry Count Gwenki.”

“He’s a pig.”

“Maybe so, but he is also an extremely noisy member of my council, probably earns more than me and certainly has a bigger army.”

“I’d rather die.”

Princess Cadarn chose not to die immediately but stormed up to her room, slammed the door and threatened not to come down until her father had changed his mind. The king had no alternative but to forbid any food or drink to be taken up to her until she became more tractable.

A fearsome two days followed, during which the palace servants tiptoed around quietly, as if someone had died. Then the princess summoned the cook, ordered two breakfasts and the king arranged a date for the Count to visit.

When Cadarn saw the Count she realised that she had been wrong in thinking him a pig. He was more of a weasel. He was tall, thin and his eyes were constantly darting around as if looking for prey...

The Nixie

David Phelps

£0.99 Added

What is a princess to do with unwanted male attention? Perhaps the dark spirit of the river can help.

(This ebook also includes an additional story)

From a gently insidious dystopian future, a woman looks back on her life and the true love she knows she missed out on. Finally, she remains undismayed, confident that the human span isn't everything.

Along a lane threaded through the night… threaded through space: so the colours and shapes had sung for over forty years. Of daylight inside darkness. Of reassurance. Of permanence beyond the transitory. Though its mysterious and variegated surface could not alter, its effect each day, was often subtly different.

Kathleen had never tired of this painting, and it always narrowed the distance in years and personal space between her and the painter she’d once known. Several times they’d met when they were young, and so close in mind had she felt, that to her they’d stayed friends in a hidden parallel ever since – despite only an occasional letter to break the silence. Perhaps the song of these colours and forms welled from sentiment? Perhaps she’d buried her love in this painting… and its shifting planes, stood in for the man who would rarely have claimed more than partial responsibility for the work he signed?

Moving away from the dark glass, her reflected face left the rim of the impulsive, breathing world beyond – a landscape frequently more promising than the intermittently anxious horizons outside. Passing an empty, unexpectant chair, she had only wished before nightfall, to check the latch. Now, she needed to open the door, to renew her faith in the real world.

Along a lane threaded through the night… threaded through space: so the colours and shapes had sung for over forty years. Of daylight inside darkness. Of reassurance. Of permanence beyond the transitory. Though its mysterious and variegated surface could not alter, its effect each day, was often subtly different.

Kathleen had never tired of this painting, and it always narrowed the distance in years and personal space between her and the painter she’d once known. Several times they’d met when they were young, and so close in mind had she felt, that to her they’d stayed friends in a hidden parallel ever since – despite only an occasional letter to break the silence. Perhaps the song of these colours and forms welled from sentiment? Perhaps she’d buried her love in this painting… and its shifting planes, stood in for the man who would rarely have claimed more than partial responsibility for the work he signed?

Moving away from the dark glass, her reflected face left the rim of the impulsive, breathing world beyond – a landscape frequently more promising than the intermittently anxious horizons outside. Passing an empty, unexpectant chair, she had only wished before nightfall, to check the latch. Now, she needed to open the door, to renew her faith in the real world...

Lullaby

Lawrence Freiesleben

£0.99 Added

From a gently insidious dystopian future, a woman looks back on her life and the true love she knows she missed out on. Finally, she remains undismayed, confident that the human span isn't everything.

A reunion with an old flame leads Meg into an adventure where she meets with both success and catastrophe.

Meg ran with abandon, uncaring of kerbs, of hedges overhanging the pavements, disregarding cars, crossing junctions, running until her legs ached and she collapsed, heart pounding, onto a bench looking down at the dark water of the river. Her hair a mess from the rain, she gasped for breath.

‘It can’t be. He would never have hurt anyone,’ she sobbed. Yet he had hurt her, not in her body, but with the long lonely hours she had waited for the telephone to ring, pretending to her husband she was reading a book, to his pleasure as he thought her ill-read; fearing he would ask her about the book on which she had no opinion or interest. Her then husband was not Oswald, it was her first marriage to a much older, professor of a subject so arcane she had never understood its purpose, the husband that had left her a childless widow at thirty-five.

The picture on the screen was ‘Danny’, she knew it in her heart. Only she called him Danny, the young man who had come to the university knowing nothing of life, shy and nervous, whose delicate fingers could spin a cricket ball to such effect he was in the university team from the moment the coach saw him bowl a few balls in the nets. Danny, that far-off figure seen from her picnic place on the boundary on warm summer days; yes, he had hurt her when he took up with the rich set and went off to heaven knows where with nubile young things ogling the lovely stranger that had come to town...

Danny's Island

Chip Tolson

£0.99 Added

A reunion with an old flame leads Meg into an adventure where she meets with both success and catastrophe.

In the morning, we fooled around in bed.

In the afternoon, Colin packed his bags again.
‘I’m leaving,’ he said.
‘Colin, please,’ I said.
‘Stop smothering me!’ he bawled, rousing Bert from his basket.
‘Please Colin, just take your pills, eh?’
‘Fuck the pills!’ he shouted and that got Bert barking. Then Colin said something about us having good sex, but a bad relationship.
I said, ‘Have you been reading The Lady’s Digest again?’
And that’s when he really lost it.
Before he left he said, ‘You kill me. You absolutely fucking kill me.’
But if Colin doesn’t take his pills he’s killing himself...

Pills

Joseph Lavelle

£0.99 Added

A handy beginners' guide to invisibility. "First, remove all colour from your wardrobe – especially white; white is eye-catching and stands out in a crowd..."

How To Become Unseen

A Danish painter is driven into exile by his father. But he can never escape the chains of the family's dark secrets.

I watched the face of the man who could destroy me and, even then, I remember thinking what a fine composition this room would make. The mighty bookcases indistinct in the darkness, the fire in the grate, illuminating the faces of the two men drinking but clearly having no care or regard for each other.

I had never been good enough for my father but I could always trust my younger sister to act as a bridge between him and me. It was to her that I could show my paintings, before my father destroyed them.

When my father insisted that I go into the family business, that was when I knew I had to leave. But at regular intervals I would row over the lake to see her when my father was away. When she told me he was making her marry his old business partner I wanted to go and confront him but I did not really have the courage and was too easily persuaded by my sweet sister not to do anything.

On the night of the wedding I stayed on the other side of the lake, looking at my old home lit up in festivity. As the music died I rowed over to where I knew my sister would be waiting. That night we said our last farewells, for the next day she would be leaving for Copenhagen. I knew the composition we made was beautiful.

Angrily I threw myself into painting, feeding on my melancholy. I tried a palette of blacks and greys but could not cope with these. Instead I painted the summer fields of my childhood, all greens and yellows and a bright blue sky. I despised my weakness. Even more so when I was taken up by the London art market, my bright daubs becoming popular with the bourgeoisie because enough influential critics liked them...

£0.99 Added

A handy beginners' guide to invisibility. "First, remove all colour from your wardrobe – especially white; white is eye-catching and stands out in a crowd..."

The Night Study

David Phelps

£0.99 Added

A Danish painter is driven into exile by his father. But he can never escape the chains of the family's dark secrets.

A collection of twenty five flash fictions. Most of these were written during 2016/17 although a handful date from earlier. The Flash Fiction label is a mixed blessing, not least because it doesn’t seem to have settled down yet into any specific meaning. Discussion centres around that word flash. American originators of the term meant the flash of a single white page being turned. Some writers I know feel the story should have some sort of jolt, or flash, at the end: Ta Dah! All except one of the stories here are less than 500 words. Other than that, they are simply short stories, as varied as any other group of stories I might produce, joined perhaps by the one facet I look for in all short stories, however long or short, that they have a narrator who knows why he, she, or it, is telling the story!

It frightened him when she walked out alone like that in the early evenings and in the mornings.

Sometimes he watched her from the upstairs windows, a flickering upright between the hedgerow trees beyond fields. She ranged a little further every time, in widening circuits of the empty space between them.

Sometimes he tried to follow her, though not to catch her up, and by the time he’d put his coat on and the heavy shoes – the fields and tracks were often wet and muddy after rain – she was too far ahead for him even to be sure that he was following; not merely walking in his own unravelling circles.

Sometimes, when walking out like that he knew that she was one side or another of him, perhaps ahead, and felt they were like planets in their orbits, or rather comets. Their orbits were not perfect circles around the house, but stretched, elongated ellipses.

Sometimes when he walked, searching for glimpses of her through the trees along the rides and lanes, he would glance back towards the house and see it setting like a sun, glinting in the early morning light or lit with yellow panes at evening in its deep cut windows...

Twenty-Five Tenpenny Tales

A young footman's eyes are opened to the reality of life when he takes up a position working for a glamorous couple.

(This e-book also includes the story "What Have You Done To Your Hand, John?")

When Frederick came home from work one day there was a strange bike leaning against the porch. He cussed; the last thing he wanted was having to be polite to visitors after a hard day in the fields.

As his eyes became accustomed to the gloom of the kitchen he found himself being stared at by a middle aged man. He was wearing a better suit than normally seen in the village and the best china was out.

“They said you were a beanpole and they didn’t lie.” said the man approvingly. It was a local accent but flattened into slightly more refined tones.

His mother sprang up from the table and rushed over to him. “Fred, this is Mr Bishop.” Her voice dropped. “He’s butler at Stapleton Court.”

“Sit down lad. I’d like a talk with you.”

All Fred really wanted after the day’s work was a lie down but he dutifully sat at the table and drunk his tea out of a small cup.

“You’ll of heard of Captain Croft?”

Fred nodded. Captain Croft the Great War hero. The man who had charged the Turkish guns at Suvla Bay and won a Military Cross. People said that if he had been killed it would have been the V.C. and his death would have bankrupted the estate with death duties. But he was alive and people were still being employed.

Mr Bishop put down his teacup. "The Captain’s gone and got himself married to a film actress over in Italy.”

His mother put her hands to her mouth in horror but Mr Bishop only smiled.

“No Mrs Merriman, it’s all right. She’s English. A Miss Elizabeth Dale if you’ve heard of her. Can’t say I have. The captain’s only following in a family tradition. His father spotted his wife on the West End stage. The captain saw Miss Dale in Presteigne Village Hall, on a film, decided that was the woman for him and went off and hunted her down. I don’t think she put up much resistance. Father is a chemist I am led to believe.”

The two older people considered in silence the way the world had gone to rack and ruin since the war...

£2.49 Added

A collection of twenty five flash fictions. Most of these were written during 2016/17 although a handful date from earlier. The Flash Fiction label is a mixed blessing, not least because it doesn’t seem to have settled down yet into any specific meaning. Discussion centres around that word flash. American originators of the term meant the flash of a single white page being turned. Some writers I know feel the story should have some sort of jolt, or flash, at the end: Ta Dah! All except one of the stories here are less than 500 words. Other than that, they are simply short stories, as varied as any other group of stories I might produce, joined perhaps by the one facet I look for in all short stories, however long or short, that they have a narrator who knows why he, she, or it, is telling the story!

The War Hero the Film Star and the Footman and Another Story

David Phelps

£0.99 Added

A young footman's eyes are opened to the reality of life when he takes up a position working for a glamorous couple.

(This e-book also includes the story "What Have You Done To Your Hand, John?")

A collection of almost true stories concerning the doings, nefarious and otherwise, of the unique people of Erris, where the next parish west is America and where nothing is quite as one might expect.

Erris is a land on the edge of northern Europe and one of its least inhabited regions.

It is regarded as a mysterious land alive with legends; legends which have been preserved and embellished through the centuries by its uniquely independent people.

In his book ‘A tour in Ireland 1775’ Richard Twiss wrote’ I did not visit Erris since it is inhabited by some form of savage native and there are no roads.’ The people are far from savage and these days Erris has a few roads.

Erris has vast stretches of unspoilt bog land, golden beaches and coves, secluded bays, crystal clear streams and lakes magical landscapes and spectacular cliffs.

Gaelic dialect is spoken by some as their first language but when strangers are around the craic is in an English which can be pure poetry. Erris is a land of turf smoke, good strong tea, Guinness, Whiskey, both legal and illegal, soda bread, warm hospitality and a great welcome for strangers lucky enough to visit what used to be known as the back of beyond.

The back of beyond it is no more, Knock has an international airport and even Belmullet has a death defying airstrip for bold pilots.

The main highway has improved thanks to the European Union and there is even a fine golf links and a luxury hotel in Belmullet. But most of all, Erris is the sum of its people.

Long may they thrive...

Home to Roost and Other Stories

JD Mac Namara

£1.99 Added

A collection of almost true stories concerning the doings, nefarious and otherwise, of the unique people of Erris, where the next parish west is America and where nothing is quite as one might expect.

Morning walks, an irrational fear, and a story of past, lethal transgression revealed.

A few years ago I took a cottage in West Cumbria for a week to get some peace and quiet while I worked my way through a large number of documents. I'd been called in as a specialist by the legal team of a multi-national that was defending itself against a negligence claim. Finding the smallest shred of evidence to suggest that the so-called victims have contributed to the disaster can save you thousands in damages, tens of thousands, millions even, if it's a class action.

The cottage was one of three old quarrymen's cottages sitting on a hillside beyond Rowrah in the back of end of nowhere, where the remains of old railway lines wind their way between the rounded foothills of the English Lake District. I worked long hours that week, breaking off for a sandwich at lunchtime, and driving down to the local pub for supper, and then doing another couple of hours before I turned in. One treat I allowed myself was a brisk walk in the mornings, after dawn, but before the sun had crested the curved summit of the hill behind the cottage...

Contributory Culpability

During her anniversary holiday in Egypt, Judy decides that one honeymoon is one too many, and it's time for a change.

Muttering under her breath, each angry phrase driving her forward, she marched through the lobby and out of the door. What an anniversary. Call this a second honeymoon?
After just a few steps, her forehead started throbbing and a wave of nausea pressed against the back of her teeth. Behind her, the door swished open and the cool breeze of air conditioning hit her legs. The concierge called, ‘Taxi, madame?’

Swallowing the nausea, shaking her head, she kept walking across the hotel forecourt. Ahead, the tops of the Pyramids were just visible above the line of stationary traffic. The stench of diesel burned her nostrils. Perspiration trickled between her breasts and her sunglasses slipped down her nose.

A wizened man in a galabeya blocked her way. ‘Carriage, lady?’ She followed the reins, held in one hand, to an emaciated horse.

She stepped around him. ‘No, thank you.’

‘Pyramid? Sphinx? Special fix price.’ He walked beside her, yanking the horse along behind him.

She stepped off the pavement, weaving between vehicles, losing his voice in the cacophony of revving engines, blaring horns and shouting.

It felt so different to the first time, their real honeymoon. Everything had changed. Or perhaps not. Maybe it was her memory that had changed the original, coloured it in with a rosy tint, like touching up an old photograph. Whatever made her think a second honeymoon could save this marriage? The belly dancing outfit was the final straw. It was over.

Time to call time. At the thought of calling time, she pictured Kevin as she had left him, slumped and scowling, in the balcony bar.

The whole thing had been a mistake...

£0.99 Added

Morning walks, an irrational fear, and a story of past, lethal transgression revealed.

Second Honeymoon

Kate Mitchell

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During her anniversary holiday in Egypt, Judy decides that one honeymoon is one too many, and it's time for a change.

Memories of her disappeared little brother won't let Nadine go.

I killed my little brother. When he was two, and I was six, I crept into his bedroom and suffocated him with a pillow while he slept.

‘No you didn’t, Nadine,’ said my mother, ‘It’s a dream.’

‘It’s a dream about guilt,’ my psychiatrist said, patting me on the knee. ‘You mustn’t blame yourself, my dear, it wasn’t your fault.’

On Tuesdays, I go to the Community Clinic for my weekly meeting with parents who are thought to present a risk to their children. Publicly, it’s called a ‘parents’ support group’ so they have a cover story when they come into reception. But these mums and dads are under no illusions; they watch me scribbling notes and know my risk assessment will dictate their future. If they give the right response, the courts may grant them a family life; the wrong answers and they won’t see their children again; something in between and they could get one afternoon a fortnight at a contact centre where, corralled by cuddly toys, they will try to engage their little strangers in a parody of play, under the watchful eye and busy pen of a social worker. While this process grinds slowly forward, the children who are being protected will metamorphose into sullen teenagers with unmet needs who will probably follow the pattern of their parents, having children of their own who will be in need of protection; and the cycle will start again...

Sand

Kate Mitchell

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Memories of her disappeared little brother won't let Nadine go.

Dan has persuaded Amanda to accompany him on a cruise of the Faro Islands, to see the eclipse. But are they being followed? In this chilling tale, we find Dan must make hard decisions, in order to safeguard his marriage.

It’s our first night on board so we dress for the occasion; me in my best bib and tucker, and Amanda wearing her plungiest neckline with the white gold pendant I bought her for Christmas. We’ve barely sat down to dinner when I hear, ‘I don’t believe it!’ which makes me think of that character on TV, but the chap bouncing towards us looks too young to remember the sitcom. He stops in front of our table and smiles at Amanda. When she doesn’t speak I look at her and see she’s staring down at the table. The skin on her neck is a mottled pink. Perhaps she’s seasick, but we’ve barely left Newcastle and the North Sea is like a millpond.

Thinking this must be an acquaintance of hers, I stand up and hold out my hand. He grabs at it with a sort of damp, two fingered slide, saying, ‘Felix, you must be Dan,’ while his eyes slip over me and back to Amanda. He says, ‘Fiona, look who it is,’ and I notice a young lady has joined him. She smiles politely, with a little shake of her head. ‘It’s Amanda,’ he says, ‘You remember –’

She clearly doesn’t but she’s polite enough to say, ‘Of course, how do you do?’ Amanda ignores Fiona’s outstretched hand. To make up for my wife’s unaccountable rudeness, I take Fiona’s hand and squeeze it warmly, and introduce myself. She’s a pretty thing, tall and slim, looking as though she’s poured herself into that black sheath of a dress. I check whether Amanda has noticed the effect this girl is having on me; she generally does and we’d have a chuckle about it, later. But Amanda looks as though she’s about to faint.

Without invitation, this Felix seats himself opposite Amanda, babbling on about ‘amazing coincidence,’ and laughing. He seems a bit over-excited but I’m used to that. I’m guessing by his age that he’s been in the trainee programme at Amanda’s practice. The young ones do tend to go doe-eyed around her...

Eclipsed

Kate Mitchell

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Dan has persuaded Amanda to accompany him on a cruise of the Faro Islands, to see the eclipse. But are they being followed? In this chilling tale, we find Dan must make hard decisions, in order to safeguard his marriage.

Opportunity could be about to knock for a young musician.

He almost turned back at the door, almost turned back at the sight of the vast ballroom, a sea on which floated a flotilla of circular tables draped with white cloths and sentinelled with serviettes. Cutlery glinted while in the middle of each table swelled a balloon shaped vase in which swam a solitary red flower, like a blood clot. Seagull waitresses busied themselves round the tables, darting forward to straighten a fork, polish a glass, tweak a cloth. Double swing doors banged open as waiters strutted through with trays held aloft; pans clattered in the kitchens; a distant radio played. He picked up his guitar case hoping to leave before being spotted.

‘There you are, darling! You’re late but not to worry. You can set up over there.’ The woman bearing down on him was a huge bird of prey, a fabulous mythological one with a shiny dress in tropical blues and oranges swaddling her substantial figure and feathers pinned in her hair. She made a vague gesture towards a small raised area at the side of the room and her several bracelets jangled, ‘There’s sockets if you need to plug in your amp or whatever it’s called. Hope you won’t be too loud. I think we agreed some background music as people come in and then one or two numbers between courses. Nothing too intrusive. I can always signal if it gets a bit much.’

Background Music

Sue Wilsea

£0.99 Added

Opportunity could be about to knock for a young musician.

On the road, escaping from a confrontation a young man unexpectedly returns home, but when his friend retells the story, does he get it right?

Billy and Geoff had gone down to London, with a few of the others. They were staying over in somebody’s house, so they were on their best behaviour. But the folk they were staying with turned out to be OK. Because no-one had eaten yet they all went down the local pub, which served chicken in a basket which was all the rage in those days.

Now, Billy was having difficulties with his woman at that time, and Geoff was fooling around with anyone, on account of having comprehensively fallen out with his own woman a few weeks before. So, what with the drinks, they were getting on each other’s tits. Then Geoff started giving Billy hard beans about the way he was treating Sam – that was Billy’s woman – and saying that if he wasn’t careful somebody else would do the Doctor John on her, somebody else will, you know? So Billy told him he could effing well have her, and he took himself off into the night...

Dawn Chorus

An estranged daughter goes to her father's funeral.

I am sitting on the fourth step curling my toes around the stair where the carpet is worn; the naughty step. I was left there once, forgotten; so I’d picked at the wallpaper. And here it is now, the same ripped hole.

It’s almost time for my father’s funeral. A man who insisted on a vertical burial underneath a tree. This, of course, is understandable – he was a sixties teenager and wore a garden in his hair.

I now imagine his body being lowered into a hole feet first, then being covered with soil, then being topped off with a baby oak. I can see the roots winding themselves around his neck.

While picking at the wallpaper, once again – it’s been twenty years – I hear a van arriving. So, rising from my naughty step, I turn and give it a little pat before descending to heaven knows what.

The van is yellow like my plumber’s, except this one has REBIRTH IN EARTH written on its side – thankfully with no painted flowers. Dad is inside the van, inside a cardboard box painted blue with lots of clouds on it. It looks like a screensaver...

£1.99 Added

On the road, escaping from a confrontation a young man unexpectedly returns home, but when his friend retells the story, does he get it right?

Rebirth in Earth

Alyson Morris

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An estranged daughter goes to her father's funeral.

A young girl's ghost friend turns out to be a liar.

(A story for readers of 9 years of age or older)

It all started on a Friday in February when I stayed home from school with a bad cold. I’d had my twelfth birthday the week before and I’d got a chill at my ice skating party. The rink was a temporary one put up in the town centre each year from November through to February half term. My birthday had been the last day. At least it hadn’t snowed, I could remember at least three birthdays when my celebrations had been cancelled because of the weather. So, I was off school and for the first time I was alone in my house for a whole day. Mum and Dad had gone to work and my younger brothers were at school, even though they’d made a drama of coughing and spluttering their way through breakfast as they made a play to stay off too.

I think that buildings sound different when people go out and they’re empty, or almost empty. I was still there of course, but I was tucked up on the living room sofa and lying quite still. I heard the central heating pipes knock and moan gently as the hot water passed through them. The clock on the mantelpiece quartered the hours into minutes and seconds with brisk, quiet ticks. The eaves dripped and splashed as ice melted in the reluctant, shy sunshine of the early spring day. I watched a spider as she spun her web in the corner of the window that looked out onto our garden and I swear I could hear the silken skein being stretched into a silvery geometry all of its own. The fridge buzzed and slept and buzzed and slept as the thermostat regulated the temperature. I was mesmerised by the insistent hum of home and the liquid gurgling of my gut. I’d slept the night before with my nose blocked and my mouth open and swallowed a lot of air that was now singing its own tune. I must have drifted off but then my doze was interrupted and I sat up with a start.

Do you believe in ghosts? I didn’t think that I did, but it’s hard to explain things any other way. I’d been woken by a breathy, little voice that said, ‘Alice, please play with me, please.’

At first I thought must have dreamt it, but I heard it again, this time a bit louder, ‘Alice, please play with me, please.’

I looked towards the brightness of the window and my eyes were blinded by the glare, I looked back into the room and colours danced in front of me...

Beware Green Eyes

Ceinwen E. Cariad Haydon

£1.59 Added

A young girl's ghost friend turns out to be a liar.

(A story for readers of 9 years of age or older)

With a subtle spice of gingerbread in the air, a lonely woman walks where the wind guides her. A suburban fairy tale, reminiscent of Shirley Jackson's early works.

Back then they were hers, the twins, and not their father's. There comes a point in most boys' lives when they learn to hate. Besides, her sons were clever from the outset: they knew better than to listen to fairy tales...

Voiceless It Cries

SG Fisher

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With a subtle spice of gingerbread in the air, a lonely woman walks where the wind guides her. A suburban fairy tale, reminiscent of Shirley Jackson's early works.

In his sixth bizarre adventure Hugh (and his brother who is also called Hugh) face their nemesis. This mysterious master villain has already stolen all the gold from The Bank of England and all the paintings from Buckingham Palace and now Hugh (and Hugh) have to prevent the villain from... well, they don't know what to prevent unless they can crack the villain's mysterious coded riddles. According to Hugh (Hugh's brother) a total twit is needed. Confused? Read on...

Hello reader. I guess you've never heard of a Ten of Spades Detective before, or even an ostrich detective. You've probably only heard of Ace Detectives, run by my annoyingly brilliant brother, who confusingly is also called Hugh. I call myself a Ten of Spades Detective because I take on the jobs the Ace Detectives leave behind... or can't be bothered with. Luckily, I’m occasionally helped out by my unofficial side-kick Gary Apparently, and by the use of my brilliant and original disguises… Well I thought I looked like an almond slice that time anyway… The jobs I've had have led me into a few unusual situations. Let me tell you about one of them.

Tuesday 9.23 a.m.

I was sitting at my desk ready for work, appreciating the fact that my desk was sitting at me, also ready for work. I hoped it had enjoyed its evening off the night before, like I had. However, for the desk that meant enjoying being in the same place as it was all day while we were sitting at each other ready for work (or actually working) but without us both sitting at each other being ready for work (or actually working.)

The phone began ringing so I presumed that the desk and I would soon be working rather than being ready for work (or enjoying time off not sitting at each other.)

I answered the phone.

“Hugh McPearson Detective Agency…” I began. “All Mysteries solved for a small few plus exp…”

“Oh, forget all that baloney!” interrupted a voice I recognised. “Particularly your ludicrous claim to be a ‘detective’ – someone should have you up for abuse of trade’s description – your claim’s an insult to we real detectives! You should describe yourself as ‘Hugh McPearson Totally Incompetent Twit’.

After a while I recognised the voice denigrating me. It was my brother the so-called ‘Ace Detective’… Well to be honest the actual Ace Detective.

“Hugh!” I declared when the penny finally dropped. “Why have you called me?” Despite his opinion of my competence – or rather lack of it – as a detective, Hugh had never bothered to call me just for the purpose of insulting me. Normally he saved up a year’s worth of insults for our annual family dinner at Christmas. I think mum and dad were finally getting fed up with it.

“I need a total twit,” replied my brother curtly.

“What?” I responded. Hugh seemed to have graduated to a higher level of brotherly abuse than usual but I still had no idea why he’d really called me.

“I need a total twit,” repeated Hugh. “The villain I’m trying to catch is completely unpredictable – I need someone who might be on the same wavelength as them. So I need a total twit. Obviously I immediately thought of you.”

“Let me get this straight…” I replied, trying to get things clear. “Despite calling me up out of the blue and insulting me, you actually need my help.”

“Yes… you’re the biggest and therefore most completely total twit I know,” replied Hugh. Grudgingly, he continued, “Please will you help me?”

There was a long pause. Hugh had never used the word ‘please’ in any sentence addressed to me… except possibly “please, go away” or “please, get out of the way” … although the word please was generally missing from those sentences in any case...

Hugh McPearson and the Confounding Riddles

A woman in a controlling marriage is liberated by an unfortunate turn of events.

I have my routine… Wednesdays, I dust and do the midweek wash. Thursdays is market day; I take the bus into town and shop for the week. Fridays, I bake and prepare food for the weekend. Weekends used to be busy. When Samantha was younger the three of us used to go for days out, a picnic in the park, a trip to the zoo. She was all blue eyes and blonde curls then. And her clothes were pink, she wouldn't wear anything else. As a teenager, it was black, her whole wardrobe. Now at weekends I usually potter around the garden. Samantha's out a lot. And I'm not sure what Tom does half the time, apart from taking all day to read The Sunday Times. Mondays, I strip the beds, clean the bathroom and the kitchen, but Tuesdays are my favourite; bin day. I wait for Tom and Samantha to leave the house and I hoover; the whole place, from top to bottom, emptying the bins from each room as I go. When I hoover, I tune into the sound of the bits of dirt as they are sucked along the aluminium tube. I find it satisfying, comforting. Like listening to rain. Dry rain.
That Tuesday, I started in Samantha's room. Her room is always a challenge; discarded garments, shoes. Used tissues and make up wipes surround the bin. Every surface cluttered like a beach in Benidorm.'

‘I don't like coming into your room,’ I tell her. ‘It's like an obstacle course, I don't know how you can sleep in here.’

‘CBA, Mum,’ she says. ‘You're OCD. A clean house is a life wasted.’

That morning, when I finished her room, I took the hoover and her bin to empty into the wheelie bins. As usual, I sorted the rubbish; plastics into brown, cardboard into green, paper into blue and general rubbish into black. But, the black bin was missing; the third time in as many months. Twice before, I'd complained to the council and ended up having to pay forty pounds for a replacement. Things have changed in our street. There was a time when I knew everybody. Not now...

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In his sixth bizarre adventure Hugh (and his brother who is also called Hugh) face their nemesis. This mysterious master villain has already stolen all the gold from The Bank of England and all the paintings from Buckingham Palace and now Hugh (and Hugh) have to prevent the villain from... well, they don't know what to prevent unless they can crack the villain's mysterious coded riddles. According to Hugh (Hugh's brother) a total twit is needed. Confused? Read on...

Bin Day

Wendy Gill

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A woman in a controlling marriage is liberated by an unfortunate turn of events.

A story about friendship, loss and seemingly supernatural forces that may or may not be the product of a disturbed mind.

I came to in my own bed, as the August dawn was breaking. I sat up slowly, and next to me on the camping mat on the floor, was my best mate, Shell. The pain behind my eyes made me shrink from the light as I tried to remember the night before. We’d been on the beach, just the two of us. No wait, her brother, Ben, had been there as well. He’d been in a bad way. He’d lost his place on the ‘Back to Work’ scheme for turning up late three days in a row. That meant his benefits would stop. We’d gone out to the local dunes at Druridge Bay, with cans of Magners to try to cheer him up. And, if I’m honest, to keep an eye on him.
I stumbled out to the bathroom and heard my mum call,
‘Jo, I’m off to get the bus to Newcastle. Could you give Shell’s mum a call, she wants to know where Ben is. ‘Bye, love.’
The front door slammed shut. Ben. Where was he? I remembered his face twisted with gloom and booze as he’d told me and Shell to get lost and go home. He wanted to be on his own. At the time I’d thought, ‘Sod you.’
Me and Shell’d been rock solid with him and he’d brushed us away like we were nothing. Just flies on his face. Shell must’ve thought the same.
‘Come on, he’s one stupid shithead,’ she’d slurred. Then she linked her arm into mine and yanked me away towards our estate. ‘We’re not the problem here, he is.’
‘Too bloody right,’ Ben yelled after us. ‘Too bloody right, you’ve caught on at last.’
The wind picked up as we walked away and drowned out the sound of his voice. I don’t know if he said anything else. We swigged the dregs of our cider as we swayed back home, tearful but sure we were right to leave him to stew in his own bad temper.
After a quick pee, I guzzled tap water from my cupped hands and splashed some on my face. Then I zombied back to my bedroom and lay back down on the bed. A crow squawked outside my window and the screech split my head in two. I buried my face under a pillow but it made no difference, the pounding didn’t stop. I must have dozed off again because the next thing I knew it was midday. The hangover was still alive and vicious in my skull and part of me wondered if I was dying. Then the recollection of my mum’s words brought me out of myself. ‘Could you give Shell’s mum a call? She wants to know where Ben is...’

Reaching You

Ceinwen E. Cariad Haydon

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A story about friendship, loss and seemingly supernatural forces that may or may not be the product of a disturbed mind.

In his fifth inconsequential adventure at the request of the Prime Minister our hero attempts to save the nation by uncovering the heinous villain behind the production of Agreement Gas, which very dangerously makes everyone agree with each other! In the course of his adventure he becomes the first ostrich to fly - downwards to go upwards as well as upwards - disguises himself as a corner flag and becomes one of the first ever to sit in a spell. To find out more... read the story! How simple could it be!

Hello reader. I guess you've never heard of a Ten of Spades Detective before, or even an ostrich detective. You've probably only heard of Ace Detectives, like my annoyingly brilliant brother, who confusingly is also called Hugh. I call myself a Ten of Spades Detective because I take on the jobs the Ace Detectives leave behind... or can't be bothered with. Luckily occasionally I’m helped out by my unofficial side-kick Gary Apparently and by the use of my brilliant and original disguises… Well I thought I looked like an almond slice that time anyway… The jobs I've had have led me into a few unusual situations. Let me tell you about one of them.

Wednesday 10:32 a.m.

I was thinking it was about time I redecorated my office, it was beginning to look a bit shabby. I was wondering what different colour to paint it. I was trying to work out whether if I changed the colour of my office, my office would like me to be a different colour as well. How could I ask it? Would it want me to use paint as well or clothes dye? I was just beginning to get very worried and upset about not knowing the answers to these important questions when the phone rang.

"Ring, ring," it rang as it always did when it rang. As I answered the phone I wondered if you could get a phone which went "Rang, rang," when it ringed.

"Hello," said the telephone. "It's the Prime Minister here."

"CLONK!" I said. Well I didn't exactly say "CLONK!"… that was the sound I made as I fell over. You’ll probably be amazed to learn that the Prime Minister didn't phone me up every day so I was a bit surprised. Actually he'd never ever phoned me up before so I was a LOT surprised.

"Are you sure?" I asked stupidly, as I was still in a state of shock.

"Well, I'm pretty sure," replied the Prime Minister, a little tersely. "I live at number 10 Downing Street and work at the Houses of Parliament."

The Prime Minister sounded tired and irritable. I imagined being Prime Minister involved you being tired and irritable quite a bit but I couldn't believe I'd asked such a stupid question. I was determined to say something appropriately profound and sensible as soon as I could, to reflect the privilege of being called by the Prime Minister but I was still confounded and disorientated by this unexpected call.

"Thank you for calling the Hugh McPearson Detective Agency. How can I help you, Sir or Madam?” I replied nervously and as you can see even more stupidly. “I think it's great what you've done for the carpet industry by the way." I added hoping I'd slipped in a suitably sensible comment that masked my nervous slip up.

"The carpet industry has gone to the wall," replied the Prime Minister sounding even more weary and aggravated. I couldn't understand why – that sounded very clever. If people put carpets on their walls it could save the industry. I wondered whether to put this proposal to the PM… I decided not to…

"Anyway, the reason I've called you is because the country needs your help," continued the Prime Minister.

"Certainly, sir," I said saluting, even though the Prime Minister couldn't see me salute. "How can I help?"

"Well something very odd is happening in parliament… Everyone is agreeing with each other."

"That certainly sounded unusual, I thought politicians disagreed with everything other politicians said, even ‘good morning’."

"Of course at the moment it makes my job a lot easier,” continued the PM. "Usually I can't get a thing done without everyone else disagreeing with me. But for one thing it's nothing like as much fun not arguing with everyone else about everything; more importantly though I'm worried that one of the daft MP’s, of which there are plenty in parliament, will make a crazy suggestion and everyone will agree with it."

I could understand what he meant. The MP’s from the Purple Party wanted everything to be painted purple, cars, houses, pavements and even cats. What if everyone in parliament agreed with them? It occurred to me that my office would look nice in purple – but not if the whole world were purple as well!...

Hugh McPearson and the Agreement Gas

“So, you don’t believe in vampires?”
I shrugged nonchalantly: did he really expect me to believe in vampires? This was the 21st century.
“And do you believe in God?”
The old man was getting tiresome. This job was going to be more tedious than I’d anticipated.
“No I don’t believe in God and I don’t believe in vampires.”
“Yet you seek them out?”
He turned and patted one of the two bloodhounds sitting by his side.
“I’m interested in contemporary cultural phenomena. I’m a journalist, doing a story on cult groups, hence my interest in your Primave Society, Mr Faust.”
“I see.”
I took out my notebook and pencil. “Does Primave have a meaning? Is there some Italian connection?”
“All things have meaning, young man.”
“And is Nero Faust a pseudonym? It’s not your real name, is it?”
“Names are just convenient labels. And all names are chosen, the only question is by whom. Take your name, for example. A famous, dare I say, notorious one: Mr William Van Helsing.”
“I inherited my name, Mr Faust. It’s useful: my editor lets me write about all things spooky, weird and wonderful.”
“Yes, the name intrigued me and I must confess it is why I accepted your request: we do not in normal circumstances allow outsiders to partake in the gatherings of the Primave.”
He paused a moment.
“So, are you the grandchild of the famed Professor Abraham Van Helsing?”
“Grandchild? A great, great, great grandchild, I think. He’s been dead a hundred years.”
And then Nero Faust did something strange: he leant towards me and with a long fingernail moved the hair that hung down over my forehead to one side, and started at me intensely.
“Yes, I see the resemblance...”

£0.99 Added

In his fifth inconsequential adventure at the request of the Prime Minister our hero attempts to save the nation by uncovering the heinous villain behind the production of Agreement Gas, which very dangerously makes everyone agree with each other! In the course of his adventure he becomes the first ostrich to fly - downwards to go upwards as well as upwards - disguises himself as a corner flag and becomes one of the first ever to sit in a spell. To find out more... read the story! How simple could it be!

I don't believe in vampires

A multi-generational story, set in a tower block in London, told from the POV of a brick in a wall.

At eight by four inches, made of a mixture of clay, sand, lime, a touch of iron oxide and magnesium, fired that distinctive bright-red colour (the heat in those kilns can reach up to three and a half thousand Fahrenheit), I was what people called a common building brick. But I never took no offence; I had no airs or graces. Like the other ten million commercial bricks fired in this factory each year, I was destined for a long, productive working life. Unity is powerful. And whether I ended up as part of a new hospital or new school or new whatever, the sum is always greater than its parts.

My story begins in earnest in April of 1964, when I was proud to be included in batch number 117, reserved by Lewisham Borough Council. After firing, we were stacked on wooden pallets, rows and rows of us, like soldiers waiting to go into battle. Day after day, the lads speculated as to where we were headed, and what we were gonna become. Back then, I guess we were all idealists, determined to help make the country great again. Rationing was a thing of the past. Industry was on the up. We were as close to full employment as we were ever gonna get. There was a new sense of optimism in the air. And in our own small way, we wanted to represent traditional values: hard work, endeavour, spirit, all the things which made England what it was: Empire, we'll fight 'em on the beaches, Britannia rules the waves.

Imagine our excitement then, when we learned that we were gonna be part of the Jubilee Gardens regeneration programme, a landmark scheme, whereby local government provided funding to build affordable housing for the hard-working people of south-east London. At the time, Lewisham was one of the most deprived areas of the city. Brick by brick, we hoped to breathe new life into the community, like a concrete phoenix rising from the ashes.

The day we arrived on site, most of the exterior construction work had already been completed. I remember being loaded off the back of a trailer, two dozen pallets of bricks bathed in warm spring sunshine, looking up at that imperious grey tower block, all sixteen floors of her, and feeling such a sense of excitement, knowing I was gonna be at the very heart of something like this, something good and worthy, something which would stand the test of time.

By pulleys, we were winched up the side of the building to the eleventh floor. From what would soon become an open-plan front room and kitchen area, you could, through the gap left for the balcony door, see right out over the estate, over the other two tower blocks then in construction, and the children's play area, the swings and slides and climbing frames which had just been sited below.

There were still lots to do to the interior, mind (and that was what me and the rest of the lads up here were destined for: the front room wall) – permanent flooring needed to be laid and the walls plastered. Two brickies, Harry and Eric, were hard at work, like shining examples of what I've just been talking about – about what made England great. Both in their mid-twenties, pouring with sweat, with rough callused hands, they took such pride in what they were doing. They wanted to be the quickest, the best, to lay more bricks in one day than all the other brickies put together. All the time they encouraged each other – Come on, H, another fifty before we knock off for lunch, eh? – smearing trowels with a layer of cement, with one fluid flick of the wrist, like poetry in motion, like each brick was their own personal work of art. And for that reason, I felt a true bond with 'em, like we was kindred spirits, that like the building itself, we represented something special, something to be admired...

£0.99 Added

“So, you don’t believe in vampires?”
I shrugged nonchalantly: did he really expect me to believe in vampires? This was the 21st century.
“And do you believe in God?”
The old man was getting tiresome. This job was going to be more tedious than I’d anticipated.
“No I don’t believe in God and I don’t believe in vampires.”
“Yet you seek them out?”
He turned and patted one of the two bloodhounds sitting by his side.
“I’m interested in contemporary cultural phenomena. I’m a journalist, doing a story on cult groups, hence my interest in your Primave Society, Mr Faust.”
“I see.”
I took out my notebook and pencil. “Does Primave have a meaning? Is there some Italian connection?”
“All things have meaning, young man.”
“And is Nero Faust a pseudonym? It’s not your real name, is it?”
“Names are just convenient labels. And all names are chosen, the only question is by whom. Take your name, for example. A famous, dare I say, notorious one: Mr William Van Helsing.”
“I inherited my name, Mr Faust. It’s useful: my editor lets me write about all things spooky, weird and wonderful.”
“Yes, the name intrigued me and I must confess it is why I accepted your request: we do not in normal circumstances allow outsiders to partake in the gatherings of the Primave.”
He paused a moment.
“So, are you the grandchild of the famed Professor Abraham Van Helsing?”
“Grandchild? A great, great, great grandchild, I think. He’s been dead a hundred years.”
And then Nero Faust did something strange: he leant towards me and with a long fingernail moved the hair that hung down over my forehead to one side, and started at me intensely.
“Yes, I see the resemblance...”

The Tower Block

Neil Randall

£0.99 Added

A multi-generational story, set in a tower block in London, told from the POV of a brick in a wall.

Double the rent or half a flat. Your choice.

‘Bit of building work, Miss. George sent us round.’

George is the landlord, and for a moment I entertain some unlikely concepts. Things like upgrade and home improvement run through my mind, pushing darker thoughts down.
There are two of them, both men obviously. They troop into my flat in a pile up of battered metal boxes and lengths of sawn timber. One is older, in his 50s, sort of lumpy, not fat but fleshy with exaggerated features. His shoulder length hair is slicked back to the point of recession. The other one could be my age, but is probably younger. He has that gaunt look acquired through serious and dedicated smoking, yellow fingers and teeth to match. They are both in white overalls, though the younger one has somehow rolled his down and is wearing them like hipster jeans, an inch of toned stomach between the waistline and his black tee shirt. He grins lopsided when he catches me looking.

They start in the front room with a line drawn down the middle of the bay window. The column of concrete which divides the four panes is struck through in no time, but then the radiator underneath poses a problem, and they are seized by a fit of contemplation. There is a lot of head shaking. Teeth are sucked, pencils gnawed. They unroll a set of plans, consult in mumbles and hisses. More head shaking, loud exhalations through pursed lips. I try to get a look at what’s on the paper, but from my tentative perch on the sofa, the maze of lines bears no resemblance to my mental framing of home...

Cut Back Flat

Andy Gaskins

£1.29 Added

Double the rent or half a flat. Your choice.

If the public don't have the discipline to watch what they put into their mouths then the state is just going to have to do it for them...

The lines are always long but no one ever complains about that. It’s to be expected. After all, this service is provided by the government. More than that, it’s for our own good. I shuffle along in the queue. The girl behind the plexi-glass window sees me out the corner of her eye and continues to monitor her customer’s products but I know she is thinking about me. The way she purses her lips gives away her disgust. The buzzer sounds and customer 4572 inserts his card into the payment slot. No unauthorised items. His units are deducted, his items are dispatched into suitable biodegradable packaging and off he goes. Relief obvious on his jowly face...

Checking Out

dc lauf

£0.99 Added

If the public don't have the discipline to watch what they put into their mouths then the state is just going to have to do it for them...

Looking for a fresh start, Maison moves to a remote country village. But instead of finding the peace and tranquility she'd hoped for, she discovers something rather more sinister in the shadows of England's green and pleasant land.

She let go of the tree then looked at it closely. It was gnarly and seeping sap but just a tree. She moved around the trunk, her boots sinking into the soft earth. As she touched the ridges and bumps she expected to feel the reassurance that the tree was ordinary and the same as all the others, but instead she felt sick, a wave of revulsion washing over her as she moved away from it. Instinctively she wiped her hand on her parka. At first she didn’t understand what she was feeling but then she saw it. Gouged deep into the wood was the outline of a face, eyes fixed down and staring directly at her...

The Green Man

dc lauf

£0.99 Added

Looking for a fresh start, Maison moves to a remote country village. But instead of finding the peace and tranquility she'd hoped for, she discovers something rather more sinister in the shadows of England's green and pleasant land.

Helen is someone who takes hosting Christmas very seriously. Everything is planned to the last detail. But things don't always go the we plan them to.

“It will be fine darling, stop stressing.”

Helen knew she was driving Jake mad with her worries about Christmas. She must try not to fuss. “I’m not stressing. Honestly. It’s just that with your whole family coming… And there’s so much to do. And your mother is so good at entertaining, and cooking…” She trailed off, thinking but not adding, and so good at criticising, and knowing better, and pulling rank and making me feel small.

“Yes,” said Jake, “but she has nothing to do but worry about matching napkins and the latest fashion in hors d’oeuvres. You have a full-on job and patients to worry about.”

"It was the first time she and Jake had hosted Christmas. Usually they went to New York and had a picture-perfect festive celebration with absolutely everything working like clockwork. The decorations were always colour-themed. So far they’d had a silver and blue Christmas; a black and red one and last year candles, crackers, table decorations and napkins were all green and gold, the wine glasses rimmed with a green ivy motif under a heavy gold band and the champagne had flecks of gold leaf floating in it. Even the soap in the loo was green and shaped like a Christmas tree. It sat in a gold dish..."

The Best Laid Plans

Prue Leith

£1.29 Added

Helen is someone who takes hosting Christmas very seriously. Everything is planned to the last detail. But things don't always go the we plan them to.

Terrible things happen down by the river: it is a place of despair where humans do their worst to each other. Yet it is also a place where ghosts can be laid to rest. In this story, originally published in Umber (2011), the voices of a bereaved 60 year old woman, a teenage boy who’s lost his way in life and a murdered Viking are woven into a dark story of revenge and tragedy.

It was such a very wide river that only when the sun came up did Ivar realise that they had left the open sea. There was little wind so he ordered the sail to be lowered and the oars to be pulled. Always at this point he imagined his snekkja as a creature miraculously transformed into another; with a butting full sail it was a galloping stallion but with oars splayed out from both sides it became some exotic insect scuttering across the surface of the water. Either way it was magnificent, big enough to carry thirty men and supplies with ease but small enough to move swiftly and secretly onto enemy lands, its prow like the arching stem of a deadly flower, ready to spit venom. Their intended destination was at least one more day’s travel and the men would be expecting an uninterrupted sail there but, spotting a small indentation on the left hand side of the river, Ivar ordered his men to pull towards it. From a distance it resembled a fingernail, a white crescent of sand not big enough to accommodate his party, but as they drew nearer he was glad to have followed his instincts. There was space enough for the men to get some exercise and spread themselves out after food had been found and eaten. The high riverbanks were fringed by dangerously dense forest, meaning a permanent guard would need to be mounted, but there would be animals to hunt there and maybe fresh water. Anyway, his men would prove better warriors for a break. Ivar removed his gauntlet and put his hand on the side of the boat, his ritual whenever he made a strategic decision. Already the wood was starting to absorb the early morning warmth and he was comforted by the familiar feel of the grain against his palm. The ship was a living thing, stretching now as it woke up, gently creaking as it flexed its muscles.

Of course he realised that some of his men were complaining at the change of plan but nothing would be said to his face. They knew better than to question his orders and anyway what choice did they have so far from their own land and with nothing between them and death but trust in his authority? He also knew that others would secretly be relieved, the inevitable delayed.

Ivar watched Mordi as he only pretended to put his weight behind hauling the boat up onto the shore. He was the strongest man by far, with massively broad shoulders and sinews like twisted hanks of rope, but he was also the most volatile – a born troublemaker. The timbers groaned as the hull stuck in the mud and, moving swiftly forward, Ivar leant over the side and switched Mordi with his leather strap. He’d meant only to catch him a warning blow on the shoulder but at the last moment Mordi turned and the strap caught him across the cheek. Their eyes locked and seeing not only shock, but hate glittering there, Ivar was surprised. He had never considered the man’s hostility to be personal and he, Ivar, treated his men far better than many he knew. Already a curved red weal, an obscene smile, was erupting on Mordi’s face while a vein throbbed in his forehead like a worm under the skin but it was only superficial and would heal...

By the River

Sue Wilsea

£0.99 Added

Terrible things happen down by the river: it is a place of despair where humans do their worst to each other. Yet it is also a place where ghosts can be laid to rest. In this story, originally published in Umber (2011), the voices of a bereaved 60 year old woman, a teenage boy who’s lost his way in life and a murdered Viking are woven into a dark story of revenge and tragedy.

Morgan is concerned about her mother...

I glance at my watch. It’s just turned 10:00 on this gloomy autumn morning and I breathe a sigh of relief. I don’t start work until 12:00, so perhaps I can relax a little. I open my diary and read the handful of names there – all very familiar bar one, a new client and my last counselling appointment at 6:00 o’clock this evening.

Swallowing the knot of tension in my throat I unlock the metal cabinet and rifle through files for the case notes I’ll need later on. With coffee in hand I ease myself into my comfy old armchair – I’m in a bit of a daze and sit twisting strands of hair round a finger and chewing the inside of my mouth. It’s hopeless trying to focus on these scrawled notes when my mother’s anxious face keeps intruding. She’s been living at the Cloud 9 care home for a few months now and in that time her memory seems to have gone downhill rapidly. It’s probably just the effects of the move, but it’s a real worry and as her only daughter I feel totally responsible for her. This parent, child reversal thing is a steep learning curve.

Honestly, sometimes it feels as if she’s actually behaving like this on purpose, as if she’s punishing me for persuading her to make the move. She’s always been a little self-centred and at times is capable of being rather manipulative. I usually deal with this fairly well, but I can hear that familiar refrain – after everything I’ve done to try and make you happy, this is how you treat me! I’m not quite sure if these are my thoughts, or indeed my mother’s, but then this is how it is...

Cloud 9

Naomi Richardson

£0.99 Added

Morgan is concerned about her mother...

A story for 8 to 11 yea-olds. Having eaten some of the wizard's magic jelly, which was supposed to make him sing better but didn't, King Popple spends every day making up football results. Meanwhile for a not unrelated reason everyone has purple wax constantly dribbling out of their ears and all the children under 5 think they are cows. Hopefully the chamberlain might have a useful idea...

The poor queen's nerves were strained to the limit so much of the time that some of her courtiers thought they might spring apart with a loud twang like an overtightened violin string. She was undoubtedly beginning to look much older than her age.

The delicate gifts she and her husband received from other kings and queens were all placed on top of the mantelpiece over the fire in the throne room. There was only one problem. The mantelpiece was very old and rickety. The slightest knock could make it shake in an unpredictable way and one of the vases or cups or whatever would fall off. Even a loud noise, like a door banging in the distance, could get the mantelpiece shaking and items falling.

Unfortunately, the king had eaten some magic jelly the wizard had made. It was supposed to make him be able to sing better but hadn’t and now he was suffering the unfortunate side-effects of the wizard’s disastrous concoction. The king had become too distracted to order the repair of the mantelpiece or to realise that if one of the china gifts were to fall off and break it would be likely that some form of unpredictable disaster would fall upon the kingdom. This was because all the gifts were imbued with magic and if they were broken, the magic contained within them would be unleashed randomly and uncontrollably. Instead, due to the side-effects of the jelly, the king just sat on his throne all day making up football results or reading them out once the Royal Newspaper arrived on Saturday evening...

Unusual Results

Some things are better left unfound.

After weeks working offshore and away from his wife, a man waits to be reunited with her in a hired cottage. However, she's running late and into the void of her absence comes a feeling that something is wrong, and a persistent chill that won't just leave him be.

Mark yawned, sipped his fourth cup of coffee of the night and found that familiarity was breeding contempt. This instant shit was just about tolerable out on the rigs, but he’d hoped for more from his first night of leave in over six weeks. Some company would have been a start. Kate was supposed to have been there well before him, making the place homely, stocking the cupboards with fresh food, good wine, good beer and he had hoped, good coffee. Not that he gave a shit about groceries at the moment. She was late. Really late. The supposedly cosy interior of their rented cottage was seeming lonelier by the minute and the empty chair on the other side of the kitchen table just amplified the effect. The nature of his work meant they had to deal with long periods of separation at times but it was an agreed rule that neither of them would ever lengthen that absence if it could be avoided. More than that, the thing that was really nagging at him was that generally Kate, like many so others he supposed, was barely able to let a minute pass without checking for or sending a text, yet she was now some ten hours late and he still hadn’t heard a thing. He glanced at his phone again, just in case, and tried not to notice that the clock on his phone read a little past four am. There was currently no signal. Not even the single rogue bar that had been teasing him throughout the night. A flash of thigh here, the promise of mobile coverage there. He traced the grain of the table with his finger and once again tried to run through the list of benign yet logical reasons as to why his darling wife was almost half a day late. Traffic was an obvious possibility or perhaps she’d got lost and decided to stop off somewhere for the night. Maybe the car had broken down and a kindly AA employee was at this very moment organising a replacement so that this lovers’ reunion wouldn’t be ruined. And then came the drunk drivers, faulty brakes, crazed hitchhikers and multiple car pile ups...

£0.99 Added

A story for 8 to 11 yea-olds. Having eaten some of the wizard's magic jelly, which was supposed to make him sing better but didn't, King Popple spends every day making up football results. Meanwhile for a not unrelated reason everyone has purple wax constantly dribbling out of their ears and all the children under 5 think they are cows. Hopefully the chamberlain might have a useful idea...

More Than Cold

It’s early 1950’s and 4-year-old Ruth is embarking on a new phase of her young life. She’s off to live at the seaside, with her great aunts, Constance, Rose and Pearly Trice. The story covers the next few years of Ruth’s life as she struggles to come to terms with the mystery surrounding her father and the bewildering behaviour of adults.

Ruth sits crossed-legged on a bed upstairs. Fido is standing stiffly to attention beside her. He’s a new toy – a pale blue and white knitted dog she’s been given just this afternoon. Ruth and Fido are getting to know one another and she is telling him about her train journey earlier that day.

“It took a very long time”, says Ruth, “and the train was this big”, holding out her arms, “and ever so loud”, covering her ears and screwing up her nose. “It makes lots of different noises”, she tells him. “Sometimes it sounds like a snake, Hiss-s-s-s, like that, and sometimes it puffs like a dragon – puff-puff-puff”.

Fido’s black button eyes tell Ruth that he is all ears. She continues in a singsong voice, “The train sings clickety-clickety-clack and moves like this”. She sways and bounces up and down on the bed – she wants to find out if Fido’s up for a bit of rough and tumble. “And it whistles – Whoo-whoo!” Corn coloured ringlets fall over her eyes and nose as she slides dramatically from the bed, landing with a loud thump on the scuffed varnished floorboards.

“Be quiet up there”, snaps a sharp voice from downstairs. She thinks this voice probably belongs to one of the aunts – it certainly isn’t Mummy. Ruth decides she isn’t going to cry and picks up Fido, who has also fallen off the bed and needs a hug. Holding Fido makes them both feel better, so she continues in a whisper. “We sat in a room on the train with a man and a lady. It had big red chairs and mirrors and pictures on the walls”.

The stuffy carriage had reeked of wet, rubbery raincoats and cigar smoke and when Ruth held her nose and said “pooh” out loud, Mummy had muttered, “be quiet” rather fiercely and “Be a good girl now!” – and so she was. When they arrived at Broadstairs station, there was a big black and white notice on the platform and Mummy told Ruth the King had died. Mummy seems quite upset about this, but Ruth doesn’t think she knows him...

£2.49 Added

Some things are better left unfound.

After weeks working offshore and away from his wife, a man waits to be reunited with her in a hired cottage. However, she's running late and into the void of her absence comes a feeling that something is wrong, and a persistent chill that won't just leave him be.

The Daddy In The Box

Naomi Richardson

£1.29 Added

It’s early 1950’s and 4-year-old Ruth is embarking on a new phase of her young life. She’s off to live at the seaside, with her great aunts, Constance, Rose and Pearly Trice. The story covers the next few years of Ruth’s life as she struggles to come to terms with the mystery surrounding her father and the bewildering behaviour of adults.

Where the Four Winds Meet is the first novella in a Trilogy. This story reveals the emotional journey through time of one man as he tries to discover how his biological father really died.

‘I’m fifty-two years old and today I saw a picture of my father for the very first time. Can you imagine how that feels?’

Bobby is about to open Pandora’s Box to unlock the secrets of his past – but is he prepared for the turbulent secrets which are about to be revealed about his biological father?

‘You know when I was in Germany? A woman came to me and she said, “‘Your husband’s given me a baby as well.’”

How will the two immensely different scenarios, one good, one bad, impact upon the present and especially upon his two sons, a moody wannabe rock star and a ghostbuster who falls for a mental medium?

‘He was a wonderful man you know, your father. Such a lovely brother to have.’

Bobby uncovers what he believes is the truth and resolves to let the past go – until it surfaces once more to haunt him.

Bobby was two years old and in a room with two men. He was being swung from one man to another and spun in the process. He was screaming for them to stop spinning him around but they wouldn’t. They swung and spun, swung and spun until he was so dizzy he couldn’t see. He was hoarse with pleading for them to stop but all he could hear was their laughter and the swish, swish of that grotesque white clock with a pendulum that was moving in time with the swings. Swish, swish. Back and forth, back and forth. They didn’t stop until he was almost physically sick.

***
June 2011

It was a very old photograph, a black and white, head and shoulders shot of a young man in a soldier’s uniform. The dark beret with its central emblem was pulled down to one side over his right eyebrow, obscuring most of his forehead and right ear. The visible eyebrow was thick and black, sloping upwards to create a devilish look reinforced by the brooding dark eyes and moustache. He had a wide, curving mouth with straight white teeth and a dimple in his chin. It looked as if he was wearing a dark necktie and jacket with fur lapels.

Bobby’s features were all twisted as he looked up at his wife Amanda. His left eye throbbed like a heart. ‘It’s him,’ he said. ‘It’s my father.’

The coffee table in front of him was laden with neat piles of old black and white photographs which puddled over onto the floor. He frowned as he concentrated, tiredness flushing his high cheekbones with colour. His pupils were like black pinpricks against brown velvet. The irises were flecked with red as dark as the glass of red wine he clutched in his right hand. He pushed his grey-tinged hair out of the way with impatience, but it continued to flop stubbornly over his craggy features. Frosted light cubes like glacier mints were strung around the conservatory ceiling, a legacy from Christmas. Amanda had liked them so much they’d kept them up all year. The reflections in the glass transformed the darkness of the back garden into endless duplications of tiny bright squares, hanging like curved necklaces.

Bobby waved the photo in the air. ‘This photo wasn’t there this morning.’

‘It must have been,’ Amanda said.

‘It wasn’t. I looked through all of these photos and selected the ones I wanted to keep. I’m telling you, it wasn’t there.’

‘What wasn’t there? Where have all these come from?’ Will, their eldest son, stuck his tousled head round the door, spoon suspended in mid-air above a half-empty jar of jalapenos, blue eyes popping. His barefoot, broad frame followed. Will shared his father’s sloping eyebrows and the dimple in his chin, but otherwise looked nothing like him.

‘They’re old photographs from Gran’s house,’ Amanda said.

Son number two entered, wearing only a pair of jeans and holding a bowl of cereal. At sixteen, Mattie strongly resembled his father, with his deep-set brown eyes, wiry dark hair and square jawline.

‘It’s proper crap, clearing out her house and she isn’t even dead.’ he said.

‘Well, the stuff’s no good to her anymore,’ Bobby said. ‘She can’t even remember who I am nowadays.’

‘There are shedloads of those photos, maybe you missed it?’ Will asked.

‘I went through each one.’

‘Then how did it get there?’ Mattie positioned himself on the wooden floor.

‘I don’t know. Have you even been out of your room today?’

Mattie shrugged and began to roll a cigarette...

Where the Four Winds Meet

Arlene Pearson

£1.99 Added

Where the Four Winds Meet is the first novella in a Trilogy. This story reveals the emotional journey through time of one man as he tries to discover how his biological father really died.

‘I’m fifty-two years old and today I saw a picture of my father for the very first time. Can you imagine how that feels?’

Bobby is about to open Pandora’s Box to unlock the secrets of his past – but is he prepared for the turbulent secrets which are about to be revealed about his biological father?

‘You know when I was in Germany? A woman came to me and she said, “‘Your husband’s given me a baby as well.’”

How will the two immensely different scenarios, one good, one bad, impact upon the present and especially upon his two sons, a moody wannabe rock star and a ghostbuster who falls for a mental medium?

‘He was a wonderful man you know, your father. Such a lovely brother to have.’

Bobby uncovers what he believes is the truth and resolves to let the past go – until it surfaces once more to haunt him.

An unlikely candidate for a superhero but this seemingly innocuous plant thwarts various nefarious plots, in particular one to take over the drones used by the armed forces. A story aimed at 10 to 13 year olds.

It looked like they’d just executed the perfect crime. Being light but agile, the three gymnasts-cum-felons had been able to actually swing along the tops of the frames of the paintings in the gallery. They swung from painting to painting, like apes swinging from tree to tree, without setting off the alarms fixed behind each painting that went off if anyone tried to pull them off the wall.

They then formed a triangle around the small sculpture that was the target of their robbery, each of them hanging gracefully from the frame of three different paintings. Each one of them then single-handedly extracted an extendable metal device from the small rucksack they each wore on their backs. Clicking certain buttons caused each metal arm that they held to slowly reach out towards the sculpture. When all three metal arms were resting gently against different sides of the sculpture, the thieves alternately clicked two other buttons on the devices they held. One caused a kind of metal scoop to slowly lift the sculpture from the podium it was displayed upon. The other caused a small metal weight to be deposited on the podium, underneath the sculpture, as the weight of the sculpture on the podium was slowly reduced. The thieves knew that the alarm underneath the sculpture was pressure sensitive and that if they just lifted it off the podium, the device would be activated. The weight of the little metal disks exactly matched the weight of the sculpture and as the sculpture was raised bit by bit the weights were added one by one to keep the weight on the alarm constant.

When the sculpture had been raised completely off the podium, by about four centimetres, and all the weights deposited in its place, one of the thieves clicked another button on her metal arm. This released a thin strip of metal that wrapped itself around the sculpture, a bit like the long tongue of a frog whipping itself around a fly. She then retracted the metal arm, bringing the sculpture slowly towards her. She then put the sculpture and the metal arm into her rucksack. When her two companions had also replaced their metal arms back in their rucksacks, all three of them swung back the way they’d come, to the tiny window through which they’d entered the gallery. Most people would have found it impossible to get through this tiny window but the gymnastic thieves were so small and flexible they could slowly manoeuvre themselves out of it by twisting their shoulders and hips in almost inhuman contortions.

From the window they could swing over to the stairs of the fire escape and by rolling over a rail they ended up standing on the first floor platform of the stairs. They then lightly tip-toed down the stairs down to the alley-way at the side of the gallery. They then began gracefully jogging up the alleyway to the main road that went past the front of the building.

It was just as the three women were emerging onto the main street that the three graceful gymnasts all inexplicably tripped over.

None of them afterwards could recall or understand why they’d all simultaneously fallen flat on their faces. Almost before they’d painfully hit the pavement, the tendrils of the strawberry plant, sticking through the cracks between the slabs in foot-catching curves, disappeared once more below the ground. What the thieves noticed, as did several passers-by, including an off-duty policewoman, was the famous sculpture rolling out of one of the thieves’ rucksacks and along the pavement.

Agile though they were, only one of the thieves managed to slip away from the scene without being caught. The sculpture was retrieved by a teenager who happened to be passing by eating a burger...

Superhero Strawberry

Living alone, currently unemployed, behind with the rent and with only sour milk and mouldy cheese left in the fridge, Henry Merriweather tells himself that “It’s just the usual modern male condition.” Mundane matters don’t concern him greatly because he is on a mission to form a union with his dream woman, the Queen of Clubs. From the standard deck of playing cards. A taut, witty and moving urban fantasy.

Henry Merriweather had been playing Patience for two hours. He shuffled the pack again, flicking the edges of the two stacks and then gradually re-uniting them. It had taken him ages to master this trick. At first he had been all fingers and thumbs but now he was as adept as any croupier.

He was somewhere around thirty; possibly nearing forty. Or maybe he had already crossed even that threshold. It depended on his audience: welfare benefits official, local council departments, potential employer or possible girlfriend.

He was seeking his perfect woman. He assumed that most men were doing the same. Some were seeking a harem.

His desk was the best item of furniture in his bedsit. Henry kept it neat and tidy. There were containers and a wire rack for all the necessaries such as pens, A4 paper, small scissors, large scissors, staples and so forth. A few years ago he’d obtained some home-based, pen and paper work, mostly simple accounts and book-keeping, but even that had dried up of late. The wicker basket by his feet was full of perforated newspaper pages. There were always adverts to reply to, of one sort or another.

He believed he was close to finding his perfect woman. But that was only chapter one. How to encourage and maintain reciprocal feelings in the chosen maid... that would be a much greater undertaking.

*

He awoke early, checked his post for junk mail (four pieces) and job offers, love letters and thousand pound donations from forgotten relatives (zero on all counts). Then he settled back down to a game of Patience. The cards still felt warm, as if they’d retained his life essence and kept it burning through the night like the Olympic torch. There was sour milk and stale cornflakes to consume, otherwise there was nothing to do except shuffle, deal and explore the pack until he could be bothered to go out and pick up a copy of the local weekly advertiser.

Both the computer and the TV were defunct; the corners of the room were either dusty or mouldy. He was a week behind with the rent and if he went out shopping this would drive him further into debt. There hadn’t been anyone serious in his life since Sally. The newspapers were full of child abductions and showbiz titillation. His few books were dog-eared and overly familiar.

“It’s just the usual modern male condition,” he muttered to himself.

Even the playing cards were starting to show signs of wear. He arranged them all face up. The picture cards retained a certain brightness. As a child, he had often passed time arranging them into mismatched royal families and romantic triangles. The Kings were all solid, dependable types with worn faces and grey hair. The Jacks were moustachioed smoothies, lager lads who would inevitably barge you out of the way at a party in order to start chatting up your girlfriend. If you had a girlfriend. If you ever got invited to parties. The Queens, though... Henry supposed their attire was based on Tudor fashion and portraiture. They reminded him of a book he’d read at school about the six legitimate wives of his kingly namesake...

£2.99 Added

An unlikely candidate for a superhero but this seemingly innocuous plant thwarts various nefarious plots, in particular one to take over the drones used by the armed forces. A story aimed at 10 to 13 year olds.

Queen of Clubs

Allen Ashley

£0.99 Added

Living alone, currently unemployed, behind with the rent and with only sour milk and mouldy cheese left in the fridge, Henry Merriweather tells himself that “It’s just the usual modern male condition.” Mundane matters don’t concern him greatly because he is on a mission to form a union with his dream woman, the Queen of Clubs. From the standard deck of playing cards. A taut, witty and moving urban fantasy.

With fourteen fingers, blue hair and a name that sounds like a sneeze, Mrs Kachunka is no ordinary dinner lady. She has a strange eyeglass that puts people's minds in a spin. Theodora thinks she's great, but Thomas won't have anything to do with her. Mrs Kachunka, however, is not easy to ignore! A junior novel with chapters aimed at 7 - 10 year olds.

Class Five had just lined up when the woman unlatched the gate and walked across the playground.

People turned to watch her. It would have been difficult not to. Even the caretaker's cat stiffened and nosed at the air.

Class Five began muttering, "Who's she? Who's she?"

Simon shrugged and tapped his forehead. "Some loony..."

"Bet she's a clown," said Amanda. "Hope she comes to us."

"Hope she doesn't," said Simon. "Boring. Boring."

Miss Fielding frowned. "Come on, you lot," she said. "Manners. It's rude to stare – you know that."

"But she's got blue hair!" shouted Thomas.

"S-s-sh," hissed Miss Fielding. "Maybe she likes it that way. Maybe you'll dye yours blue one day."

Thomas touched his pale, untidy fuzz. "No I won't," he said loudly. "My dad wouldn't let me."

Simon groaned. "Your dad, your dad..."

"That's enough," said Miss Fielding. "Let's go in."

Amanda turned and pointed. "Look! Snowball likes her."

"So what?" said Simon.

In the corner of the playground, the woman was speaking to the head dinner lady.

"I saw your notice," she was saying, tucking a braid of sea-blue hair under an orange wool cap.

"What notice?" said Mrs Harries warily.

"About needing extra help..." The woman smiled down at the white cat who was now sniffing delicately around the hem of her skirt.

"Oh yes," said Mrs Harries, staring at the strange green bloom on the visitor's plum-brown skin.

"I can help with school dinners..."

"Oh yes," said Mrs Harries, frowning at the frayed and dangling lining of the baggy tweed coat.

"And with playground duty..."

Mrs Harries watched with distaste as Snowball rose and rubbed herself against the woman's lumpy canvas boots.

"And school trips..."

"Got references, have you?" said Mrs Harries suspiciously. "Worked with children before?"

"With all kinds of beings." The woman smiled and held out her hand, enclosing Mrs Harries' cold pink fingers in a warm, furry grasp."Kachunka," she announced.

"Bless you!" grumbled Mrs Harries.

"Mrs Kachunka."

Mrs Harries quickly withdrew her hand. "Oh, pardon me, I'm sure."

Then Mrs Harries counted. She counted again to check.

"Too many," she said.

"Oh, not for me," said the woman. "I can cope. I like children."

"Fingers," said Mrs Harries, pointing.

"Oh those..." And the woman spread her russet green hands.

Mrs Harries stepped hurriedly backwards. She could clearly count fourteen downy fingers, each one tipped with an ivory point. Wasn't natural, she thought. Wasn't right.

Mrs Kachunka smiled. "And you have?"

"Ten," said Mrs Harries firmly. "Like everyone else."

"Oh dear," said Mrs Kachunka.

Mrs Harries looked down at her own hands. "So what's wrong with ten?"

"So few..."

Mrs Harries coughed. This was getting ridiculous.

"Are you one of our parents?" she demanded.

The small whiskers on Mrs Kachunka's downy cheeks twitched with amusement. "Do I look like one of your parents?"

"Can't say that you do," said Mrs Harries gruffly. She was beginning to feel cross. Someone was trying to make a fool out of her. Well she wasn't having any. No one could make a fool out of Mrs Harries. Blue hair? Had to be a wig. Green whiskers? Stuck on with some kind of glue. And those extra fingers? Plastic, probably. You could buy things like that in joke shops.

"You're one of them actors, aren't you?" she said disapprovingly. "That's what you are. Didn't fool me though... not for one minute." She sniffed. "I'll take you to see Mr Carey. Got an appointment, have you?"...

KACHUNKA!

Enid Richemont

£1.29 Added

With fourteen fingers, blue hair and a name that sounds like a sneeze, Mrs Kachunka is no ordinary dinner lady. She has a strange eyeglass that puts people's minds in a spin. Theodora thinks she's great, but Thomas won't have anything to do with her. Mrs Kachunka, however, is not easy to ignore! A junior novel with chapters aimed at 7 - 10 year olds.

“Many who waded through the water coloured it with their blood, wine-red – a new meaning for the wine-dark sea of legend…”
The battle of Marathon, fought in a time of treachery, danger and intense fear and superstition, was a military disaster for the Persians. But it was not the end of danger for Greece, and the courier’s famous triumphant journey, commemorated in the Olympic race, carried a frightening secret:
“His own shadow, long and thin in front of him, was like a rope pulling him towards Athens; as he neared his destination so it gradually shortened, so the sun rose, so the enemy fleet moved towards Phalerum.”

What of the Athenian runner himself? Surely, there was no way he could have known how his feat would be celebrated: “Thousands upon thousands of people running. In all the known world, and even lands beyond.” He would surely not have known or cared how fast he was running. And he would not have been able to predict that two messengers, not one, would be named in the annals.

Or would he?

No One Ever

A young boy wanders through a crumbling wasteland looking for his sister.

Ellis stared at the tobacconist. “Come over here," the old man said again, and rolled his wrist to beckon the boy. “I won’t hurt you.”

Ellis took a step closer, enough to bring him within reach of the front of the booth, a cramped shrine dedicated to smoking. The tobacconist’s hand shot out and took his wrist. “Are you lost, boy?”

“No, sir.” Ellis wasn't looking at the man’s face, he was hopelessly trying to prise open the leathery fingers that held him tight.

“You look like you’re lost."

“I'm not lost. I know my way home.”

“Don’t be too sure.”

Ellis stopped struggling and looked up. “I'm looking for someone,” he said.

“There’s no surer way to get yourself lost. Do you have family? Do you remember them?”

“Of course, sir. I have my mother and my brothers and sisters. It’s my little sister I'm looking for, Dianne.”

The tobacconist lifted Ellis and pulled him close, as if he might be about to drag him all the way over the counter. His breath was sour. “You listen to me, boy. You’d best run along home fast. When did you last see your little sister?”

“You’re hurting my arm.”

“Pain is the best way to remember. She’s gone, boy."

“She’s not gone.”

“I can see you think I'm right. She’s not the first is she?”

Ellis wriggled and looked around for help. Grown-ups passing by ignored him. “No,” he admitted. “No, she’s not.”

“And you remember the others?”

“Yes, yes I do. Please, Sir, let me go. Please. Of course I remember.”

“There’s no of course about it, no of course at all. You have a gift, and a curse. Your mother doesn't remember?”

Ellis remembered the empty bed, and the plate, and no-one else understanding his questions or his pain. He shook his head.

“And your father?”

“Please let me go.”

Without loosening his grip, the man reached under the counter with his other hand, and pulled out a wooden box. He opened the lid and instead of cigars there were chess pieces. “You go to look for her, boy, but she’s gone. Take this.” He pressed a chess piece, a knight, into Ellis’ palm. “Take it and look after it. If you get lost, or if you forget, remember me and this booth when you look at the piece. Do you understand?”...

£0.99 Added

“Many who waded through the water coloured it with their blood, wine-red – a new meaning for the wine-dark sea of legend…”
The battle of Marathon, fought in a time of treachery, danger and intense fear and superstition, was a military disaster for the Persians. But it was not the end of danger for Greece, and the courier’s famous triumphant journey, commemorated in the Olympic race, carried a frightening secret:
“His own shadow, long and thin in front of him, was like a rope pulling him towards Athens; as he neared his destination so it gradually shortened, so the sun rose, so the enemy fleet moved towards Phalerum.”

What of the Athenian runner himself? Surely, there was no way he could have known how his feat would be celebrated: “Thousands upon thousands of people running. In all the known world, and even lands beyond.” He would surely not have known or cared how fast he was running. And he would not have been able to predict that two messengers, not one, would be named in the annals.

Or would he?

Broken Link

PD Jennings

£0.99 Added

A young boy wanders through a crumbling wasteland looking for his sister.

Anna Maria is an opera singer who, following an accident, has forgotten how to sing. She starts to find her voice again in the most unlikely place and with the most unlikely people, in a place of sanctuary where the strangest character of all is a young boy whom only she can see.

As I move through the wood, the pylons above my head tick like giant cicadas in the damp late August air. It’s almost dawn, still dark and everyone else is sleeping, apart from the devout few who get up every morning to pray or to do whatever it is they do to save their souls, our souls. We are the outsiders here, the ones who are sick, who came here for healing. I hope they pray for us, I know we need it.

Since the accident I feel safer in the dark, before the daylight finds me again. There’s no one here, no sound but my own breath biting back at me, my soft footfalls echoing my thoughts, repeating the fears that haunt me now wherever I go.

Every day I come this far and no further, to the bend in the path that leads to the lake. I don’t know what lies beyond the bend because here the path swoops downwards into the trees and doesn’t invite further trespass. I hear the water of the lake lapping, a large lake which I have glimpsed from the verandah of the house, but have never seen completely. At first, I thought there was no way down to the water, but then I discovered the path, the twisting turning branches above it, the trail of pale stones and the violet lilies rising up from the reed bed as the lake grew closer. Like a yellow brick road, it seemed I had to follow it. It was to be the beginning of my journey.

A sound startles me – the swans coming to life, the low thrum of their wings beating in time to the blood in my heart. I watch them disappear over the trees, the walls, and on towards the flat marsh lands and the sea which I know is only a heartbeat away...

My Mind's Eye

Jo Reardon

£1.59 Added

Anna Maria is an opera singer who, following an accident, has forgotten how to sing. She starts to find her voice again in the most unlikely place and with the most unlikely people, in a place of sanctuary where the strangest character of all is a young boy whom only she can see.

Except for the duck, the wedding was unremarkable.

It was a celebrity wedding, but all the usual things happened, and in more or less the correct order. The caterers were too early, none of them spoke English, and the flowers were late. The best man – who was not Rowan’s best man but the brother of the bride – pretended to lose the ring. Gloria had a last minute fight with her mother over her intention to honour, but not to obey in her wedding vows, and one of the bridesmaids ate too many chocolate muffins before the reception and was sick.

The duck had been there since the early morning. Gloria told Rowan that she had seen it from her bedroom window. She’d woken early because the new wind-chimes in the Versailles potted orange trees had disturbed her. The duck had been swimming in lazy circles on the turquoise surface of the swimming pool and, apart from noting a pleasing splash of bright orange against dark aubergine that might have a place in a colour scheme somewhere in their new ranch house, she gave it not a moment’s more thought.
This was a mistake because the duck was entirely responsible for what happened, even if Rowan now felt he owed it a debt of gratitude.

The wedding took place in the open air and landscape artists had been busy for several weeks creating a ‘unique betrothal space bursting with never-to-be-forgotten features’. Nearly three hundred guests had been invited – the duck was not one of them – and almost all had accepted, fearful of being left out of the society columns...

Water off a Duck's Back

Sarah Passingham

£0.99 Added

David wants to give his wife Kate everything she didn't have before meeting him: security, a nice home, another baby. He wants to be a good step-dad to Josh and erase the memories of Tom, Kate's first love and Josh's father. But none of this seems enough for Kate and after the birth of their daughter she slips into depression, her only solace the run-down summerhouse at the bottom of their garden. When David discovers what he thinks is her betrayal he sets out on a path of destruction.

(The Summerhouse, a novella, was shortlisted for Gateway's New Fictions prize in late 2014)

As an animal would its territory, Kate marked the summerhouse with her scents: coconut and vanilla body lotion, coffee and cigarettes, a citronella candle used to deter bugs, the new wood of pencil shavings mixing with that of the rotting window and door frames. Some smells she carried with her all the time – I could tell where in the house she’d been by sniffing the air for the musky aroma of joss sticks which clung to the materials she wore. Her skin always tasted of coconut and her hair of smoke.

She hadn’t used it at first what with feeling so lousy throughout the pregnancy and I was all for pulling it down to tell you the truth. But she got so upset if I so much as hinted at it that I learnt to steer clear of the subject. You couldn’t see the summerhouse from the house so it didn’t matter that much, I suppose, but it bugged me that she could get so worked up about what boiled down to an ugly, damp outhouse obviously built by some toff so he could sneak out and screw one of the maids.

As for what the place looked like, there were the rather pathetic ethnic touches – the Peruvian prints, mobiles of the planets, an old CND necklace hung on a nail, a Friends of the Earth poster curling at the edges, an ashtray filled with badges Save Water – Bath with a Friend, Free Nelson Mandela, A Woman Needs a Man like a Fish Needs a Bicycle. Then there was the general muddle: books stacked on the floor, boxes of papers, cushions, candles, basically just clutter and mess. Josh was the only one who could tease her about it,

‘I bet it’s dangerous too.’ He was sitting on the floor, his back against the settee on which Kate was lying.

‘Josh! Don’t be so silly, how can my summerhouse possibly be dangerous?’

‘All those candles. Some of the windows don’t have all their glass and wind could blow in and fan the flames. We were learning about oxygen and naked flames in Science today.’

‘Well, don’t worry my darling. I’m always very careful.’ She flung her arm over the arm of the settee and ruffled Josh’s hair.

I loved listening to exchanges like this. I loved watching her taking pleasure and pride in her son. When she was in one of her states she’d accuse me of being jealous but I honestly wasn’t. I didn’t mind staying in the background, quite content to sit in my armchair with a glass of wine and the evening paper or a book. Of course I only pretended to read because that meant I could watch and listen.

‘Why don’t you get David to build a proper extension to the house?’

‘No need.’

‘And that paraffin heater whiffs.’

‘I like it there. You know I need to be separate from the house.’

Then Josh, seeing that the laughter had gone and that her eyes had begun to darken, her eyelids fluttering, backed off, ‘Course you do, Mum. Only teasing.’

Both Josh and I were skilled at picking up on these almost imperceptible signs: the slightly increased pulse in her throat, the stroking of her cheekbone with her forefinger. Danger signs. The texture of the air would change. My grip would tighten on the stem of my wineglass and the paper’s print would blur. Not that I’ve ever taken drugs, but what I felt is what I imagine the experience of being high is like, a sort of sharpened sensibility. I’d become aware of the pattern of the cushion fabric, its red and gold brocade melding into a bloody emblem of pain, I’d hear the movement of the wine in my glass as it became thick and clotted and it was if I could smell my own sweat, my own piss and shit churning inside me. I realise that sounds fucking ridiculous but she and I were so in tune, that’s what it was like...

The Summerhouse

Sue Wilsea

£0.99 Added

David wants to give his wife Kate everything she didn't have before meeting him: security, a nice home, another baby. He wants to be a good step-dad to Josh and erase the memories of Tom, Kate's first love and Josh's father. But none of this seems enough for Kate and after the birth of their daughter she slips into depression, her only solace the run-down summerhouse at the bottom of their garden. When David discovers what he thinks is her betrayal he sets out on a path of destruction.

(The Summerhouse, a novella, was shortlisted for Gateway's New Fictions prize in late 2014)

When Naz opens an old bottle he finds on the beach, he gets the shock of his life: out comes Azrael, the Djinn, who has been trapped inside for thousands of years by a magic spell. The spell can only be broken, and Azrael set free for ever, by smashing the seemingly unbreakable bottle. Azrael demands Naz's help to do it. The two set out on a hilarious quest which includes a steamroller, a purple toad, a snooty girl and a troupe of Boy Scouts. All the while, Naz tries to stop Azrael causing too much mayhem, and it isn't long before he wishes he'd never met the Djin at all.

Naz and the Djinn is a fun-filled read which offers a modern twist to a traditional tale and will delight readers from 7-11.

It’s not fair! I’m in trouble I haven’t done anything! All I did was find an old bottle!

There was a storm last night. I like going on the beach after a storm. The sea washes up all kinds of stuff – driftwood, bits of rope and nets, shells, seaweed. You never know what you’ll find. Mum was pushing my little sister in the buggy and she said I could walk on the beach if I stayed close and didn’t pick up any nasty rubbish. There was a steamroller up there mending the road, and my little sister wanted to watch it. I mooched along, keeping an eye out for treasure. It was mostly broken floats and sandhoppers. I was just about to give up when I saw something red and round and shiny in the sand. I bent down and tried to pick it up but it wouldn’t give.

I brushed the sand away, put both hands round it and pulled. Up came a weird-looking bottle. It looked very old. The glass was scratched and milky; so I couldn’t see inside. The red shiny thing was the stopper.

I pulled it. It didn’t move. I twisted it. Nothing happened. I twisted it the other way.

One, two, three – out it came, with a great whooshing noise! A big purple cloud appeared over my head! I started to run but my legs were all jelly. Then, a LOUD voice boomed out.

‘What is your wish, O Master?’ Then it muttered, ‘So soon! It is but five hundred years since the last time!’

‘Oh no! Mum! Help!’ I squeaked. I tried to push the stopper back in, but my fingers were too shaky. The cloud shrank and dropped down beside me. It was a man wearing a purple robe. On his head was a gold turban fastened with a red jewel as big as an egg. He knelt down and bowed until his nose touched the sand.

‘Azrael the mighty Djinn, at your service, O Master,’ he said, ‘your wish is my command!’

‘Sorry – what?’ I said.

He sat up and stared at me.

‘Make thou a wish,’ he said, slowly, ‘And I shall grant it – is that beyond thy power of understanding?’

‘Wow!’ I said, ‘You mean it’s like Aladdin?’

‘May his name be ever remembered and honoured!’ said the Djinn.

‘So can I wish for anything?’

‘Yes,’ said the Djinn, ‘the fairest princess in the land...’

‘No, thanks! We’ve already got one. My little sister is all the princesses I can handle.’

‘A palace wrought of gold?’

That sounded neat. But I didn’t think my mum would want all that polishing. And what if people came round and tried to nick bits of it? Nightmare!

The Djinn was drumming his fingers and whistling through his teeth.

‘What thinkest thou of riches, then?’ he said.

‘Great idea!’ I said. ‘Could I have lots of pounds, please?’

‘Pounds? What is that?’

‘Well, it’s – money.’

‘Listen and hear, O my Master,’ said the Djinn grumpily, ‘I can offer thee sacks of gold pieces from the treasury of Suleiman the All-powerful. I can offer thee chests of priceless gems from the secret caves of Fatima the Beautiful. Of pounds I know nothing.’

‘Everybody knows about pounds,’ I said, ‘even my little sister!’

‘And has thy little sister been shut in a bottle for two thousand years?’...

Naz and the Djinn

Sandra Horn

£0.99 Added

When Naz opens an old bottle he finds on the beach, he gets the shock of his life: out comes Azrael, the Djinn, who has been trapped inside for thousands of years by a magic spell. The spell can only be broken, and Azrael set free for ever, by smashing the seemingly unbreakable bottle. Azrael demands Naz's help to do it. The two set out on a hilarious quest which includes a steamroller, a purple toad, a snooty girl and a troupe of Boy Scouts. All the while, Naz tries to stop Azrael causing too much mayhem, and it isn't long before he wishes he'd never met the Djin at all.

Naz and the Djinn is a fun-filled read which offers a modern twist to a traditional tale and will delight readers from 7-11.

‘Beyond Her Scream’ is the story of a mother-daughter relationship strained by the effects of FGM. It is set against a background of cross-cultural differences and contrasting worldviews. It contains some graphic descriptions which may not be suitable for younger readers.

The sound of her scream stung my mind like a cat-o’ nine tails. Agony. I’d subjected her to such agony. No-one should ever have to endure that, let alone one’s own daughter. It had seemed like the right thing to do, the best thing to enable her to win a good husband for herself as the best men would only want one who was ‘clean’ in this way. Now, such logic seems hateful to me. Why? Because I have seen the effect that the cutting has had on her and feel like Dhegdheer (1), all bound up in cruelty and predatory instincts.

What to do?

Asli came to me while I was sewing in my room and stood to one side waiting while the machine whirred over the gown I was mending. “What do you want?” I asked, the impatience slipping out. I could smell the sourness of her breath as she spoke up.

“Would you mind babysitting for me tomorrow night, Mama? I really want to go to the student’s ball. It’s the last chance I have to hang out with my student friends before graduation.”

I pursed my lips, letting her know of my disapproval. Even without saying a word I was able to maul at the scars in her heart. I didn’t consciously want to keep hurting her, but her desire to win my approval confronted an obstinate streak in me. “Do you really want to go and spend time with all those kaffirs, drinking themselves stupid and throwing themselves at each other?”...

Beyond Her Scream

Katherine Blessan

£0.99 Added

‘Beyond Her Scream’ is the story of a mother-daughter relationship strained by the effects of FGM. It is set against a background of cross-cultural differences and contrasting worldviews. It contains some graphic descriptions which may not be suitable for younger readers.

Hear the tale of how the camel came to get its hump, told by a mother antelope to her young son.

"Once upon a time, a beautiful antelope was strolling through the Sahara desert with her young son. They were extremely hot, so decided to seek shelter from the sun beneath a rather large palm tree. In the distance, surrounding a cluster of cactus trees, were a group of large biscuit coloured animals with man-made seats strapped to their backs. The son watched as they munched on the spiky leaves, while the men that were with them chatted among themselves. It was the first time that the young calf had ever seen such a sight..."

The Cathalump and The Lemal

Kelly Marsh

£0.99 Added

Hear the tale of how the camel came to get its hump, told by a mother antelope to her young son.

"Once upon a time, a beautiful antelope was strolling through the Sahara desert with her young son. They were extremely hot, so decided to seek shelter from the sun beneath a rather large palm tree. In the distance, surrounding a cluster of cactus trees, were a group of large biscuit coloured animals with man-made seats strapped to their backs. The son watched as they munched on the spiky leaves, while the men that were with them chatted among themselves. It was the first time that the young calf had ever seen such a sight..."

Set in Edinburgh's 'Sick Kids' Hospital, this heart-warming seasonal tale tells of a cleaner's interest in the Ebola crisis during the festive season in 2014, a seemingly lonely young girl, and the connections his kindness enables.
‘I held the tip of the pen against the window. Jeez, I’d not drawn a thing since primary school. It was a bit squint but you could tell it was a star. The expression on her face didn’t change but I saw a wee click in her eyes. I started on a Christmas tree.’
A story written as part of Linda Cracknell’s writer’s residency at Edinburgh’s Royal Hospital for Sick Children, illustrated by Cate James. All author’s royalties go to the Sick Kids Friends Foundation http://www.edinburghsickkids.org/ Scottish Charity No. SC020862.

Do They Know it's Christmas?

Linda Cracknell

£0.99 Added

Set in Edinburgh's 'Sick Kids' Hospital, this heart-warming seasonal tale tells of a cleaner's interest in the Ebola crisis during the festive season in 2014, a seemingly lonely young girl, and the connections his kindness enables.
‘I held the tip of the pen against the window. Jeez, I’d not drawn a thing since primary school. It was a bit squint but you could tell it was a star. The expression on her face didn’t change but I saw a wee click in her eyes. I started on a Christmas tree.’
A story written as part of Linda Cracknell’s writer’s residency at Edinburgh’s Royal Hospital for Sick Children, illustrated by Cate James. All author’s royalties go to the Sick Kids Friends Foundation http://www.edinburghsickkids.org/ Scottish Charity No. SC020862.

Ten flash fictions of last words, last actions, and last loves.

Wilson didn’t know he had only one week to live, whereas Seymour had been warned that he would die within the year. He was already too ill to drive, so he asked Wilson to take him to see her.

Wilson was reluctant, but they had been friends for decades.

Take a week’s leave, Seymour said.

Wilson’s wife, knew the value of friendship, and she told him to get on with it. You never knew what they meant by ‘within the year’. Why, it might happen the next week, who could tell?...

Final Accounts

Mr Sproutface and Mr Wibbleton, committed jumper wearers, museum visitors and lovers of minestrone soup, are looking for a way to escape their work in the circus. One afternoon, while sitting in a puddle of spilt breakfast cereal, they decide to follow their dream and bring cheese to the people of Basingstoke. However, the modern world is difficult. Sometimes, one faces problems that cannot be fixed with a list and a damp cloth. Whether it is cheese-dinosaurs, bakers intent on World Domination, missing hamsters or being locked in a trouser museum, non-adventures are never far away.

But for every problem, there is a solution. And as long as Mr Sproutface and Mr Wibbleton have their jumpers, a bowl of minestrone soup and each other, they will find a way to keep their dream alive. This story is aimed at children between 7 and 11 but there's plenty for adults to enjoy as well.

A small man, wearing a dark blue jumper, was sitting at his kitchen table, eating his breakfast and looking at his watch. For the past few minutes, he had been going through the same routine: a spoonful of cereal, a look at his watch, a spoonful of cereal and another look at his watch. From a distance, he looked like he was playing a slightly milky drum.
“Mr Wibbleton, you are late for breakfast!” shouted the small man eventually.

Another man, in an equally sensible (but purple) jumper, came in to join him. He seemed in some distress.

“Mr Sproutface,” he said, “something bad has happened.”

Mr Sproutface preferred, as a rule, to finish his Rice Krispies before hearing bad news, but he saw the problem at once. “Mr Wibbleton,” he said, “you are mono-socked!” It was true. Mr Wibbleton had a smart blue sock on his right foot but his left was bare. He said nothing.

“Mr Wibbleton, have you been filling your socks with nuts for the pigeons again?” asked Mr Sproutface. Mr Wibbleton shook his head.

“And you haven’t made a new version of Harold the Amazing Sock-Dog?”

"No. Certainly not. Harold is still living with his friend Susan in a cupboard in Yorkshire. He writes to me every Christmas,” replied Mr Wibbleton sadly.

“You do realise, Mr Wibbleton, that we have to be out of the house by nine o’ clock if we are going to get to the East Sussex Museum of Surprisingly Small Furniture,” said Mr Sproutface, looking at his watch again.

“I know. And I really wanted to see their exhibition of deceptively small chairs,” said Mr Wibbleton.

Mr Sproutface decided that dramatic action was required. He grabbed a pen and pencil and began to write. 30 minutes later, the two men had compiled a list.

POSSIBLE LOCATIONS OF MR WIBBLETON’S SOCK
1. Mr Wibbleton's chest of drawers
2. The washing machine
3. The laundry basket
4. Mr Sproutface's chest of drawers
5. (For use only in emergency) Sofa: sides, back and underneath cushions
6. Indonesia (see note a)
7. East Sussex Museum of Surprisingly Small Furniture (see note b)

Notes:
Place where sock was made. Sock may have returned there if homesick
Sock may have gone on ahead on its own, possibly with a view to meeting us there.

“Shall I start with Indonesia?” asked Mr Wibbleton. “If I hurry, I may make it there and back in time for lunch.”

Mr Sproutface thought this unlikely and suggested that they start at the top of the list…

£1.99 Added

Ten flash fictions of last words, last actions, and last loves.

The Non-Adventures of Mr Sproutface and Mr Wibbleton

Nick Lovering

£1.99 Added

Mr Sproutface and Mr Wibbleton, committed jumper wearers, museum visitors and lovers of minestrone soup, are looking for a way to escape their work in the circus. One afternoon, while sitting in a puddle of spilt breakfast cereal, they decide to follow their dream and bring cheese to the people of Basingstoke. However, the modern world is difficult. Sometimes, one faces problems that cannot be fixed with a list and a damp cloth. Whether it is cheese-dinosaurs, bakers intent on World Domination, missing hamsters or being locked in a trouser museum, non-adventures are never far away.

But for every problem, there is a solution. And as long as Mr Sproutface and Mr Wibbleton have their jumpers, a bowl of minestrone soup and each other, they will find a way to keep their dream alive. This story is aimed at children between 7 and 11 but there's plenty for adults to enjoy as well.

An unexpected twist in the closing frames of an old home movie sends Rose hurtling back to her childhood - a time and a place where no one else's parents were divorcing, and where stepmothers were as exotic as shop-bought cake. Revisiting her memories of glamorous part-time fathers and fortnightly treats, Rose unpicks the unspoken adult acrimony, and the childish confusion:

"Each time they were returned to her with their bounty she was tight-lipped and unimpressed, flattening their ebullience to a shapeless guilt, their double bind of love and loyalty teaching them early to suppress their enthusiasm in her company."

Dual Carriageway is about parents and children, and how complicated it all is.

Rose has no idea what she is about to see. She half expects the projector that balances on a pile of telephone directories to chew up the spool of Super 8 film before she gets a chance to find out. Turning the table lamp off, she flicks the switch. The length of white feeder blanches the wall before soaking it in the purple-brown hues of sixties film stock. Two little girls on the steps of a caravan. Rose leans forward. She recognises herself not with any rational sense, but with a pang of protective love for the three-year-old who grins at her from the living room wall. She and her sister Alice walking along a windy promenade. Alice has on a red jumper that Rose remembers wearing herself some four years later. She can feel it prickly on her skin; trace the pattern of snowflakes with her finger...

Dual Carriageway

Claire Collison

£1.29 Added

An unexpected twist in the closing frames of an old home movie sends Rose hurtling back to her childhood - a time and a place where no one else's parents were divorcing, and where stepmothers were as exotic as shop-bought cake. Revisiting her memories of glamorous part-time fathers and fortnightly treats, Rose unpicks the unspoken adult acrimony, and the childish confusion:

"Each time they were returned to her with their bounty she was tight-lipped and unimpressed, flattening their ebullience to a shapeless guilt, their double bind of love and loyalty teaching them early to suppress their enthusiasm in her company."

Dual Carriageway is about parents and children, and how complicated it all is.

A woman and her young daughter are invited for morning tea at a the home of her ex-husband and his new wife. A story about the distance between how people want things to be and how they really are.

The four of us sit under Sally’s pergola having morning tea – an attempt to be civilized and mature. There is a slight chill in the air but a stream of sunlight weaves through a tangle of aged wisteria and knotted grapevines above us, warming our heads and chests. And as if orchestrated by Sally herself, birds flit and sing.

But morning tea is a bad idea. It is Sally’s idea and they are her words: civilised and mature. I looked them up in the Oxford before I came, like research. I memorized the meanings, to be clear about what Sally meant, to stay focused, to stop my eyes and mind glazing over.

Civilised: polite and good mannered. Mature: having reached an advanced stage of mental or emotional development characteristic of an adult.

I breathe them in, try to fathom them, convince myself that they are real. Pete and Sally. They are sitting opposite me in a blur of sunlight and bright orange silk, intensely familiar and intensely strange.

I try to stay focused on my little girl. Jessie. Her cheeks are pink and small and round like perfect little plums resting on her bones. She’s smiling her fresh, uncultivated smile, not yet given a conscious thought, tested before a mirror, stretched or picked at. She’s feeding the dog with crumbs from her scone and the dog has a similar quality. Saliva drips from its jowls, tail waving madly. I can’t remember its name.

I wouldn’t have thought of staging something like this, wouldn’t have wanted it. But Sally put an image in my mind, which raised the temperature of my blood – an image of Jessie (my Jessie), familiar in Sally’s home, calling out to her, using words that are meant for me, just for me. I can’t imagine it, but this is the picture that Sally has drawn in my head. And given I’ll be spending so much time with Jess, she said, I’m sure you’d like to know what kind of woman I am. You never know, she said, we might become friends.

Well, I can’t stomach it. I feel sick, quite physically sick...

Morning Tea

Rebekah Clarkson

£1.59 Added

A woman and her young daughter are invited for morning tea at a the home of her ex-husband and his new wife. A story about the distance between how people want things to be and how they really are.

A young girl from a poor family walks to and from her job in a factory in clothes ill suited to the cold winter weather. Her father, despite their lack of money, thinks something should be done about this.

The siren sounded the end of another long working day. Mary pulled her brown woollen cardigan from its peg and wrapped it around her thin body. It did little to keep out the biting December winds. Her shawl kept the chill from her ears though, as she hurried her familiar route home through the main street. Keep your head covered for modesty and warmth her mother had always said. God forbid I should need modesty. I could dress like the gentry and no fella would look twice, Mary thought as she wrestled with the weather. The neighbours were always standing, arms clasped across their bosoms, shaking their heads at the poor plain child as she passed. Still, wasn't she a grand help around the house they muttered. Lately, Mary had tried to smile a little more and make friends at the factory but they all had busy lives going to dances in their grand clothes. All her money went to her mother. At only 15 she was the eldest of nine and every penny counted. Their father, God help him, was sickly and couldn't work. “Is that you Mary?” Her mother called from the kitchen. “Warm your hands a little then come and give me a hand with the washing.” The heat from the peat stove reddened Mary's hands and put small dots of pink on her hollow cheeks...

The Green Coat

Sheila Ryan

£1.59 Added

A young girl from a poor family walks to and from her job in a factory in clothes ill suited to the cold winter weather. Her father, despite their lack of money, thinks something should be done about this.

Yasuko works in a brothel in Tokyo. One night she is visited by a new client...

The front door was already closed against the storm, and I thought I was finished for the night. Crossing the landing, I was on my way to borrow a jar of face cream from Mayu, when I heard the bell. Then, Mama-san’s fulsome stream of welcome: of course it was not too late, it was her pleasure, she had the prettiest girls, as well as the most refined and cultivated... Her tongue ran on. That meant a stranger. How old? I paused, silent-slippered, at the top of the stairs. From here, you can see, in Mayu’s words, ‘close enough to spit’. Older men are generally sent my way. The ‘traditional’ clients, Mama-san calls them, those who like my tiny, doll-like feet and hands, and want to kid themselves they’re connoisseurs of high culture. I can even perform a tea ceremony and, in theory, play my late mother’s ancient koto, although I’ve not fitted the pick on my finger since I first left home. Fortunately, no client has ever asked me for that form of entertainment.

I leant over the balcony and saw the newcomer in all his foreshortened portliness, as the maid relieved him of his raincoat and a soaking hat. The overhead chandelier shone on his damp pate as he wiped his spectacles on his handkerchief.

‘Yasuko!’

‘One moment, Mama-san.’ I slipped back to my room to shed the light robe I’d thrown over my kimono, and by the time I was descending the main staircase, the visitor had been made quite at home, perched at the bar with a whisky...

The Lacquered Box

Elaine Ewart

£1.59 Added

Yasuko works in a brothel in Tokyo. One night she is visited by a new client...

How will Graciela cope with the spells and the men now Granny is gone? Bring on the Iguanas....

"The alarm snake swayed above her bed.

He hissed until Graciela opened her eyes, then spiralled back into the roof. Job done.
Graciela could take her time in the mornings now there was no old woman to clean up. She fetched water and washed, lifting her hair away from her neck and spearing it with pins of shell. She struggled into the blue cotton dress and wrapped her shawl around herself, so that nothing could move. The straw hat, big as a planet, waited on the rocking chair. Granny’s voice whispered, Wear the hat, Graciela. Wear it as your crown."

Our Lady of the Iguanas

Christmas goes terribly awry for a Hessian Colonel in America.

“Plus de vin, Monsieur le Comte?”

“Ja, Bitte! Eh, pardonez-moi… Qui Mademoiselle, s’il vous plait.

Colonel Count Karl Emil Ulrich von Donop was once again mesmerized by the visage and cleavage leaning towards him, pouring the wine into his crystal goblet. It all seemed as if it was a storybook fantasy – the crackling fire keeping out the damp December cold, the holly (for which the little village was named) decorating the mantle and table pieces, candles all aglow – and a young hostess who could fill Greek goddesses with envy. Christmas had not been this comfortable since he left his home in Hesse-Kassel years ago.

“Non ‘Mademoiselle,’ Monsieur le Comte. ‘Madame’ s’il vous plait.”

The Colonel spoke only a few words of English, and no one around but his soldiers spoke his native German; but he was fluent in French, and this young lady’s French came out like little Christmas bells tinkling. The sound was as soothing as the excellent Bordeaux he was sipping...

£1.99 Added

How will Graciela cope with the spells and the men now Granny is gone? Bring on the Iguanas....

"The alarm snake swayed above her bed.

He hissed until Graciela opened her eyes, then spiralled back into the roof. Job done.
Graciela could take her time in the mornings now there was no old woman to clean up. She fetched water and washed, lifting her hair away from her neck and spearing it with pins of shell. She struggled into the blue cotton dress and wrapped her shawl around herself, so that nothing could move. The straw hat, big as a planet, waited on the rocking chair. Granny’s voice whispered, Wear the hat, Graciela. Wear it as your crown."

Mount Holly

David Churchill Barrow

£1.29 Added

Christmas goes terribly awry for a Hessian Colonel in America.

Laxmi, a girl from the lowest caste of a village in the remote west of Nepal, is told that she is the unlucky kind. But, resourceful and fiercely protective of her sister and niece, she is determined that low birth will not ruin their lives. All profits from this story go to aid work in Nepal.

There are two kinds of people in this world. Those that take life into their own hands, and those that have life taken from them. I am Laxmi, named for the goddess of beauty, love, wealth and luck. What more can you ask? From her four hands, lotus blossoms sprout and gold coins pour down. Today, my two hands are dirty from scrambling up a cliff, but in one fist I clutch a wad of rupee notes pulled from my father’s body.

Yesterday two men came from the land office to measure out the fields around our village and record ownership. The measuring was simply done, and after that they spread out their books at Dal Ram’s teashop to discuss the question of rightful possession. I slipped into the knot of people gathered around them. The men sat cross-legged on the string bed, leaning their backs against the wall, swatting idly at the sluggish flies. In the heat of the afternoon the thatched veranda gave ragged shade.

“There are two groups of people in this village,” said the long thin one, writing precise figures in his notebook. “The Thakuris and the low caste.” Everyone pressed in to see: farmers, sweaty and smelling of earth, women carrying babies on their backs in fraying shawls, and wriggling children with chapped faces and dusty hair.

We are the low: damai, kami, sarki, the tailors, the ironmongers and the shoemakers. Because we work with the skin of the sacred cow, we are untouchable. The one blessing of these steep slopes is that cows slip and fall and die. That is when we move in. We skin the carcass and dry it for our leatherwork, boil the bones for glue and eat the flesh. We are reviled for it, but we eat the cow or starve. The Thakuris – who wear these sacred skins on their feet – are high caste and live in the top row of houses...

Untouchable

Merryn Glover

£1.99 Added

Laxmi, a girl from the lowest caste of a village in the remote west of Nepal, is told that she is the unlucky kind. But, resourceful and fiercely protective of her sister and niece, she is determined that low birth will not ruin their lives. All profits from this story go to aid work in Nepal.

How do we cope with loss? If we don't cope, can we ever come back? An exploration of grief.

The day it happens she climbs into bed and stares up at the ceiling. Her mouth opens and closes silently, her fingers scrunching up the duvet crushing the petal patterned cotton.

Time has been discontinued and minutes fuse into hours with barely an acknowledgment. She sits, cradling a cup of tea. A hand begins to rub the small of her back, her mother's hand, comforting hands that remind her of sunny summer gardens. Not now though, no gardens. Her mother is grieving too, she knows this because her pain is so big that she cannot conceive of anyone else not feeling it. She hears a gasp, a choked sob and then her mother’s arms encircle her. They have just been given the news...

How Quietly Things Fall

Hannah Glancy

£0.99 Added

How do we cope with loss? If we don't cope, can we ever come back? An exploration of grief.

March 2015 marked the opening of the first annual KalliKids Short Story Competition. With help from KalliKids' ambassador and best-selling author, Joanna Rees, we set "Shine" as the theme and gave entrants the freedom to adapt "Shine" to whatever it meant to them, with a limit to each story of 500 words.
We received over 500 entries from children throughout the UK, and were delighted to read such a creative mix of short stories with themes ranging from singing competitions to doomsday thrillers. We were captivated from start to finish.
The 12 stories included in this book are the winners and runners-up from each age category, a real achievement for these truly talented young authors.
Thank you and well done to all the children who took part, and the schools that helped to make this competition so special.

Kallikids Short Story Competition Winners 2015

Kallikids

£1.99 Added

March 2015 marked the opening of the first annual KalliKids Short Story Competition. With help from KalliKids' ambassador and best-selling author, Joanna Rees, we set "Shine" as the theme and gave entrants the freedom to adapt "Shine" to whatever it meant to them, with a limit to each story of 500 words.
We received over 500 entries from children throughout the UK, and were delighted to read such a creative mix of short stories with themes ranging from singing competitions to doomsday thrillers. We were captivated from start to finish.
The 12 stories included in this book are the winners and runners-up from each age category, a real achievement for these truly talented young authors.
Thank you and well done to all the children who took part, and the schools that helped to make this competition so special.

Sadie is on holiday on the Island of Oriskay with her grandparents. She desperately wants adventure. When she meets a boy called Dorset, together they stumble upon a secret message in an ancient burial chamber. Then, adventure comes Sadie's way.

The burial chamber leads to runes and the runes lead to bad guys and the bad guys lead to...well, you can read it to find out if you like.

Sadie and the Lost Treasure was inspired by the landscape and heritage of the Orkney Isles, off the north coast of Scotland. The story is intended for readers aged 9-12 but readers older than that may like it too.

Sadie and the Lost Treasure

The story is about urban alienation and redemption and focuses on a despondent young woman whose life changes following a freak zoological event.

You’re up early?

Robert’s voice broke behind her against the demi-silence of a city dawn. Sarah watched his reflection in the window, his big frame moving silent through the apartment. I couldn’t sleep, she replied without turning around.

The lights were still off, she liked it that way. And although the sun was up, the cool blue light of breaking day/fading night remained predominant. The tall buildings adjacent, and the masses of cloud dragging their slow veils of rain over the streets below, kept the more garish light at bay.

Her eyes were fixed on the bird’s nest which clung desperate to a nook below the roof of the building opposite. Tiny beaks chattered out of it constantly while their parents moved in a seemingly constant cycle, falling from the nest into the concrete canyon below, wings and tails pivoting to its strange winds. Then they’d return a short while later – scrappy looking things hanging from their beaks. And as soon as one returned, the other would disappear whilst the little beaks kept squawking.

From the kitchen came the crackle of radio and then a song, something like Mulatu Astatke but she couldn’t be sure. Coffee smells came floating out with the tune and Sarah turned from the cityscape for the first time in what could have been hours. The soft yellow lights of the kitchen made her eyes wince. What have you been doing all this time? Robert asked without looking, aware of Sarah’s thin presence hung in the doorframe.

Just watching, she answered. The city is so beautiful at night.

Robert didn’t seem to hear. As he cracked eggs into a bowl Sarah thought about the little beaks chiming from the building opposite. He looked up, eyes catching for the first time on that blue April morning. Omelette? he asked, seeming to nod at the cooker hob, on which a thin ring of flames flickered expectantly...

£0.99 Added

Sadie is on holiday on the Island of Oriskay with her grandparents. She desperately wants adventure. When she meets a boy called Dorset, together they stumble upon a secret message in an ancient burial chamber. Then, adventure comes Sadie's way.

The burial chamber leads to runes and the runes lead to bad guys and the bad guys lead to...well, you can read it to find out if you like.

Sadie and the Lost Treasure was inspired by the landscape and heritage of the Orkney Isles, off the north coast of Scotland. The story is intended for readers aged 9-12 but readers older than that may like it too.

Feathers

L J Shaughnessy

£2.49 Added

The story is about urban alienation and redemption and focuses on a despondent young woman whose life changes following a freak zoological event.

It's Hallowe'en and the residents of Sexton Way gather for a street party. Both the living and the dead.

The food was laid out half way down the street, on tables that had appeared from various gardens the minute the road was closed. Another neighbour who helped run the local playgroup introduced Melissa to the young mums in the street. They had organised a rota to keep a watchful eye on the bouncy castle and marshal the queue for the apple dooking. The guy from across the road was a DJ, which explained a lot, and he had set up his sound system for the dancing.

Adam charged himself with being chief barman and bouncer. He placed the booze table near the coned ‘Private Party’ barrier, with the logic that if all the men were hanging about there, opportunist gate-crashers were less likely to try their luck.

At the other end of the street the rusty gate to the graveyard remained padlocked, but failed to keep out the ghost hunters who, despite video cameras with night vision, caught nothing of the inhabitants as their spirits rose to join the party. Drunken teenagers though, looking for a smooth tomb on which to set up camp, were not too far removed from their spiritual life to be unaffected by the movement, and one stopped, shivered and said:

'Cos' it felt like my granny was watching me, that’s why. Now, come on, let’s go somewhere else'...

Sexton Way

Colette Coen

£0.99 Added

It's Hallowe'en and the residents of Sexton Way gather for a street party. Both the living and the dead.

When George agrees to transcribe the memoir notes of his neighbour, Mrs Moretti, he uncovers much more than just the ramblings of a gentle old lady. Was Mrs Moretti an accessory to a notorious crime forty years ago? And is George in danger now?

She arrived on a Sunday, standing on my doorstep dressed in a smart tweed jacket and skirt like the Queen at some minor local engagement. I almost wanted to curtsy and give her a bouquet. She introduced herself as a member of the local Neighbourhood Watch. I hadn’t seen her before and certainly didn’t know her name until she told me. It sounded like Moretti. She spoke in a quick bright voice like a small chitter-chattering bird, her silver haired head bobbing and her hands waving like little wings getting ready to fly.

‘It’s about watching our own houses and also watching other peoples,’ she said and I could tell my wife Liz was trying not to giggle.

‘Brilliant. We like watching houses, don’t we George?’

We took the paperwork she left and immediately forgot her.

A month later my marriage broke up and Mrs Moretti appeared at my door carrying a tin of biscuits. ‘I saw her leave,’ she explained smiling ruefully like someone who has accidentally smashed your plant pot. And that seemed to fit. I was the owner of something broken in the way my wife had left me. She had been a whirling dervish of disappointment that smashed our marriage to smithereens. Mrs Moretti’s rush to commiserate could have been seen as odd, but she was supposed to watch the neighbourhood, wasn’t she? I invited her in and made a cup of tea...

Mrs Moretti's Memoirs

Yasmin Keyani

£1.59 Added

When George agrees to transcribe the memoir notes of his neighbour, Mrs Moretti, he uncovers much more than just the ramblings of a gentle old lady. Was Mrs Moretti an accessory to a notorious crime forty years ago? And is George in danger now?

A mobile phone in the wrong hands, can lead to who knows what messages in the wrong ears...

When Jerry arrived home alone everyone assumed they’d had a row.

Where’s Phil?

He decided to stay on for a day or two, Jerry said.

Nobody who knew Phil was going to take that at face value, least of all Steph. For a start, there was the money. Phil was very good about money. Steph wouldn’t have had it any other way. They were living on half the national average wage, and living better than most. That required discipline, planning. Spontaneity was out of the question. Another couple of days was another hundred quid, and Phil hadn’t budgeted for another hundred quid, as far as Steph knew. It wasn’t like Phil to make high handed decisions without a discussion first, without an agreement...

Personal Calls

Meet, for the first time, David Good, Private Investigator. Plying his trade in 1980s South London, the PI with pliable morals, a taste for blondes and a full-on sense of humour, turns out to be a big softie as he takes up the challenge of sorting out yet another domestic mess.

Having discovered that one Alice Jones, a young woman with a well-developed taste for strawberries, has a varied and not entirely honest life, he quickly finds himself wrestling with emotions he’d prefer would go away. As it is, they leave him confused and struggling to work out what he should do with the woman.

Join Good on this little jaunt through South London and ask yourself what you would do next.

£1.29 Added

A mobile phone in the wrong hands, can lead to who knows what messages in the wrong ears...

The Strawberry Girl

Ben Westerham

£0.99 Added

Meet, for the first time, David Good, Private Investigator. Plying his trade in 1980s South London, the PI with pliable morals, a taste for blondes and a full-on sense of humour, turns out to be a big softie as he takes up the challenge of sorting out yet another domestic mess.

Having discovered that one Alice Jones, a young woman with a well-developed taste for strawberries, has a varied and not entirely honest life, he quickly finds himself wrestling with emotions he’d prefer would go away. As it is, they leave him confused and struggling to work out what he should do with the woman.

Join Good on this little jaunt through South London and ask yourself what you would do next.

'Nancy liked the idea of listing the qualities she wanted in a man.' 'Desperate times called for desperate measures, so maybe it was time to try internet dating.'
Single at twenty five, and without a man in her life, Nancy is persuaded by a friend to try internet dating. She makes a list of all the things she wants in a man for the website, and arranges a date with Neil, who ticks all the boxes. But Neil stands her up because of a family emergency, and Nancy meets Tom, who doesn’t tick any of the boxes,

The List

Denice Penrose

£0.99 Added

'Nancy liked the idea of listing the qualities she wanted in a man.' 'Desperate times called for desperate measures, so maybe it was time to try internet dating.'
Single at twenty five, and without a man in her life, Nancy is persuaded by a friend to try internet dating. She makes a list of all the things she wants in a man for the website, and arranges a date with Neil, who ticks all the boxes. But Neil stands her up because of a family emergency, and Nancy meets Tom, who doesn’t tick any of the boxes,

One dollar! It is an insult. I won’t pay, I tell you, I won’t...

The Dollar

What do you do when you can't find a mutually convenient date? Wouldn't it be good if you could time travel just a little? Unless it got out of hand of course...

“Well, it would be pretty impossible to get everybody to agree on a date,” said Katie. “There’s over forty of us now. Not even those of us here can agree.”

Clive looked up at the twelve of them sitting round the four tables of the King’s Arms. The beer was going flat. A waste of real ale but it had only been bought as an excuse to sit at the tables for over an hour. He took a sip of the amber liquid. It tasted good but it was tepid now. Even getting the committee to agree on a date for the annual meal out was proving extremely tricky.

“Yes, but how many people have got iP 759s?” said Jake. “Most people now, right?”

“Yeah, but,” said Dawson. “They creep most folk out.”

Jake laughed. “Well they just need to get over that. It’s not really a big deal at all. Look. It’s just like saying you’re going to the pub on Monday night. So, you leave the house at 7.30 Monday but get to the pub Tuesday evening. When you leave, you go back home late Monday evening. You’ve aged no more than normal. You might even look a bit young to the Tuesday night crowd. The pub is no longer just on the corner of Butly New Road and Donald Street. It’s now also 26 January 2143.”

“It’s not natural, though,” said Dawson.

“Neither is farming, email or even the basic mobi-com device,” said Jake. “But could you imagine life without any of those?”

Several of the people round the tables mumbled…

£0.99 Added

Extra Dimensions

You could smell them, the people who lived in the underpass. The stench hit you before you were even within 200 yards of them. There must be about fifty there now. More arrived every day.

You could smell them, the people who lived in the underpass. The stench hit you before you were even within 200 yards of them. There must be about fifty there now. More arrived every day. Bob was used to it though. This was the only route into town now that he couldn’t renew his transport chip.

It got worse the nearer he got to them. Even he, hardened as he was, had to hold his breath and rush through them. He knew never to indulge in eye contact. Keep looking at the ground. That was the trick. This was fine until he tripped over what he had assumed was someone’s bag. Then the outer cover fell away, revealing the corpse of a new-born baby.

The mother locked eyes with him for a moment and he couldn’t help but hold her gaze.

“Sorry,” he mumbled.

Two dark eyes looked into his. Why? She blinked and nodded slightly. You too?

Bob shuddered inside and hurried on.

The still-functioning ATM was on the corner of Park Road and the Avenue. There had been a bank there once but it was a smart Italian restaurant now. Even today it was packed with diners in smart casual. It was all still working for some then. At least they’d left the cash machine there. There were fewer and fewer of them these days.

There was no queue. Bob took out his debit card and slid it into the slot.

The words Processing Your Details flashed on to the screen. Next, Enter Your Pin.

Bob tapped the day and month of his first girlfriend’s birthday on to the key pad. The machine clicked and whirred for several seconds...

£0.99 Added

What do you do when you can't find a mutually convenient date? Wouldn't it be good if you could time travel just a little? Unless it got out of hand of course...

Access Denied

The partition doors. The other side scored with a frenzy of deep, narrow lines. Like the scratches of lunatic hypodermics.
The message. That insane message.

£0.99 Added

You could smell them, the people who lived in the underpass. The stench hit you before you were even within 200 yards of them. There must be about fifty there now. More arrived every day.

Pricks of Conscience

Phil Emery

£0.99 Added

The partition doors. The other side scored with a frenzy of deep, narrow lines. Like the scratches of lunatic hypodermics.
The message. That insane message.

Continental Army New Windsor Cantonment, Newburgh, New York: Mutiny is in the air during the late stages of the American Revolutionary War. "By the winter of 1782-83, tension had reached a dangerous level. The future of the Republic was in doubt." U.S. Army Field Manual 1, Chapter 1.

Major Sam Shaw didn’t think much of the month of March. It seemed like it couldn’t make up its mind betwixt the muck and mire brought on by a sleety rain, or still another “sick-of-by-now” snow storm. It was bad enough back home in Boston, where you had to keep switching from hitching up the sleigh to the buggy and then back again, but here with the cold wind coming off the Hudson and down Butter Hill into the cantonment at New Windsor, it seemed like Ol’ Man Winter was long on leaving. Of course things were nowhere near as bad as they were that winter at Valley Forge, or the record cold of Morristown two years later. None of his compatriots had to roast and eat anyone’s old shoe lately, thank the good Lord. Food supplies were coming in, even if the pay wasn’t. And hadn’t the “world turned upside down” when they crushed Cornwallis at Yorktown? Yet all the huzzahs that made their throats sore had faded to the meekly-asked “What now?”
Oh well… At least there were these comfy artillery officers’ messes at the Ellison House, he thought as he sat content in the window seat, warm from the fire and full from the just-finished meal, staring at the odd patterns the sleet made on the glass. And there was Henry; large, loud, lovable Henry although Sam was careful to call him “General Knox” when others were about. Sam smiled as he remembered his mixed feelings that Christmas long ago in ’75 when he found out he’d be serving under him. Sam came from – well, “higher society” than Henry, though both were Bostonian, born and bred. Would Henry resent him? Boston was peculiar that way quick to throw off the yoke of British aristocracy, but just as quick to create and preserve their own. He’d always admired Henry, even if he had to keep quiet about it around his parents, who might frown upon an open friendship with some “Scots-Irish ruffian.” He’d snuck out to watch the boys engage in their usual riot on “Pope’s Night,” and he saw how the mighty Henry had rescued the South End Gang’s cart when a huge wheel came off by grabbing the axle and substituting his massive frame in place of it. Oh, how they all cheered…

The Hand of Providence

David Churchill Barrow

£1.29 Added

Continental Army New Windsor Cantonment, Newburgh, New York: Mutiny is in the air during the late stages of the American Revolutionary War. "By the winter of 1782-83, tension had reached a dangerous level. The future of the Republic was in doubt." U.S. Army Field Manual 1, Chapter 1.

In his fourth inconsequential adventure Hugh McPearson teams up with his side-kick Gary, apparently to solve the problem of the stolen school bell, which means that neither the teachers and children can go home. Their adventure involves a skating rink, a snoring headteacher and several chapters from a book explaining how to cope with the old cars teachers drive. (Book 4 in the Hugh McPearson series).

Hello reader. I guess you've never heard of a Ten of Spades Detective before. You've probably only heard of Ace Detectives. I call myself a Ten of Spades Detective because I take on the jobs the Ace Detectives leave behind... or can't be bothered with. I can understand why. The jobs I've had have led me into a few unusual situations. Let me tell you about one of them.

Wednesday 10.41 a.m.

I was sitting by my phone wondering why beetroot is purple and not yellow and whether the world would be drastically different if it were when the phone rang.

“Hello” said the telephone when I answered the call.

“Hello” I replied still distracted by my beetroot quandary wondering if a detective ostrich in a parallel universe containing yellow beetroot was answering a similar call.

“It’s me” said the telephone. That didn’t help me in the least. I was always being called by hundreds of “It’s me’s” and they all had different voices. I decided to be awkward as it seemed unlikely that my caller would have any opinion about parallel universes and yellow beetroot.

“No, I’m me” I said.

“Pardon?” said the telephone.

“I’m me” I replied. “You must be someone else who isn’t me.”

“Noo… I’m the me I am… and you’re the me you are… We’re both “me’s” but not to each other… only ourselves” said the phone.

That was such a clever reply I decided to stop being awkward. The beetroot question could wait.

“That was a very clever reply” I said. “I’m the “me” called Hugh McPearson Ten of Spades Detective. Which “me” are you?”

“I’m the “me” called Gary, apparently” said Gary Apparently.

“Not the very same Gary Apparently who helped me solve the gobstopper mystery?” I asked.

“Well the now-slightly-older-than-before-so-not-quite-exactly-the-same-but-very-nearly Gary Apparently yes” replied Gary with impressive accuracy.

“How can I help?” I asked.

“It’s like this” said Gary. “I’m calling from school because none of us have been home since Monday and it’s Wednesday now. While we were having assembly on Monday morning a witch flew down and made the school bell vanish with a spell. It reappeared on her broom and she flew off with it. Everyone here is exhausted. The teachers have been doing their best to teach us and we’ve been doing our best to learn. But because we haven’t got a school bell none of us can go home. We’re all going crazy. I’ve sneaked out of yet another art lesson to call you from the Headmaster’s office.”

“I wondered about that snoring I could hear in the background.”

“Yes the Headmaster’s asleep as usual. He fell asleep before Monday’s assembly like he normally does and he hasn’t woken up since. He still doesn’t know that the school bell’s been stolen.”...

Hugh McPearson and the Vanishing School Bell

A date from hell; a camping trip with freshly-caught meat on the menu; a Spanish lesson concerning the futility of life; an alcohol-fuelled dream or was it reality?; a secret assignation at a graveyard; the nosy neighbour who found more than he expected; the hair of the dog that wasn't a cure; the effects of the moon on a near-empty beach; exploring an alien landscape - a new collection of nine stories with a theme of horror running through them.

£0.99 Added

In his fourth inconsequential adventure Hugh McPearson teams up with his side-kick Gary, apparently to solve the problem of the stolen school bell, which means that neither the teachers and children can go home. Their adventure involves a skating rink, a snoring headteacher and several chapters from a book explaining how to cope with the old cars teachers drive. (Book 4 in the Hugh McPearson series).

Countdown and Other Horror Stories

I heard the sirens in the night.

I said this to Annabel Grainger’s mum later that morning, as we both stood outside what remained of the primary school. She was looking with dismay across the car park at the smouldering rubble of the old red brick building as I struggled to remember her name. This was a regular problem; I had known and spoken to this woman for as long as our children had attended the school, but rarely were Christian names ever uttered and too many years had now passed to deem it acceptable to ask.

The fire had apparently started around the back of the school, she told me, near the kitchens. Arson was already being suggested.

Why would anyone do such a thing? Annabel Grainger’s mum asked. I said nothing. Annabel was dressed in her school uniform as though she believed classes would carry on despite the disruption of a catastrophic fire.

I went to this school myself, she added. So many of the parents had.

The school was at the heart of the village, behind the shops. Everyone had turned out to see the burnt-out site: the blackened roof that had collapsed into the main hall, smoke drifting up into the white-blue October sky...

£1.59 Added

A date from hell; a camping trip with freshly-caught meat on the menu; a Spanish lesson concerning the futility of life; an alcohol-fuelled dream or was it reality?; a secret assignation at a graveyard; the nosy neighbour who found more than he expected; the hair of the dog that wasn't a cure; the effects of the moon on a near-empty beach; exploring an alien landscape - a new collection of nine stories with a theme of horror running through them.

The School Run

Gareth Hill

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A collection of a dozen stories with a romantic theme - although all is not always as it might first seem. The subject matter covers wedding anniversary surprises, prom night, an anticipated proposal, double-crossing and backstabbing, love overcoming time and mortality, mistaken identity, someone who is not as sweet as appears at first glance and a harsh payback for an innocent misdemeanour of youth.

Inglorious Sunset and Other Stories

Ten stories rooted in the world of science fiction - What if Hitler had died of a childhood ailment? Can you really change your destiny? The horrors of more than half a century earlier revisited; childhood games across time and space; the girl who wasn't there; an affair that wasn't what it appeared to be; a cinema visit with a difference; strange beasts on an alien world; a cyclical life; the man in the moon bides his time.

£2.49 Added

A collection of a dozen stories with a romantic theme - although all is not always as it might first seem. The subject matter covers wedding anniversary surprises, prom night, an anticipated proposal, double-crossing and backstabbing, love overcoming time and mortality, mistaken identity, someone who is not as sweet as appears at first glance and a harsh payback for an innocent misdemeanour of youth.

What If and Other Stories

‘Sealed With a Kiss’ is a collection of ten crime-based short stories covering topics including a social media reunion that doesn’t end as expected; a chance meeting in a bar with tragic consequences; wife-swapping with a difference; a teapot that delivers a cocktail of death; the heightened senses of a young sergeant sniff out the criminal; somebody at the library has something other than reading on their mind; a volcanic eruption scuppers best-laid plans; a gamble to replace misappropriated funds that doesn’t pay off; an old lady who mistakes people and doesn’t appear to know what she’s doing; and a flash of light for an over-bearing partner.

£2.99 Added

Ten stories rooted in the world of science fiction - What if Hitler had died of a childhood ailment? Can you really change your destiny? The horrors of more than half a century earlier revisited; childhood games across time and space; the girl who wasn't there; an affair that wasn't what it appeared to be; a cinema visit with a difference; strange beasts on an alien world; a cyclical life; the man in the moon bides his time.

Sealed With a Kiss and Other Crime Stories

Providence is a collection of three short memoirs. The stories reveal a mother haunted by the loss of her family. Her child becomes a woman, shaped by the loss of her ancestors, deepened by the compassion for the suffering she witnessed and the resilience that grew from it.

My family was comfortable with silence perhaps more comfortable with it than not. Astrid's parents would talk to each other at the dinner table baring their lives and thoughts while we wiped the tomato sauce off our faces with our sleeves or the other kids fought over the remaining spaghetti bolognaise. At their kitchen table I heard strange things and ate strange things. Astrid's Grandparents were called ‘Oma’ and ‘Opa’. It was only years later that I realized that this was because they were her father’s parents and these titles meant ‘Grandma’ and ‘Grandpa’ in German. At the time I thought these elderly people who always said "almond" at the end of grace had very strange names. Astrid's father Heinz spoke with a thick accent. I was fascinated as I listened to him speak his tone plucked chords somewhere inside me that stirred memories that belonged to my mother's lost childhood. Sometimes I felt a little frightened of him I wasn't sure why he had the sweetest and most patient nature. I was in awe of Cooky Astrid's mother. Her direct no-nonsense assertiveness was the antithesis of my mother's social nicety and won her the affectionate but undisclosed title of "the Cookie Monster." Once she said to me that it was about time that I learnt to play instead of presenting myself as a miniature adult. I was really hurt at the time and ran home. As I grew older I came to respect what Cookie said to me. Her bluntness blew away the cobwebs of the secrecy that I carried and made me feel safe...

£2.99 Added

‘Sealed With a Kiss’ is a collection of ten crime-based short stories covering topics including a social media reunion that doesn’t end as expected; a chance meeting in a bar with tragic consequences; wife-swapping with a difference; a teapot that delivers a cocktail of death; the heightened senses of a young sergeant sniff out the criminal; somebody at the library has something other than reading on their mind; a volcanic eruption scuppers best-laid plans; a gamble to replace misappropriated funds that doesn’t pay off; an old lady who mistakes people and doesn’t appear to know what she’s doing; and a flash of light for an over-bearing partner.

Providence

Lara Bardsley

£0.99 Added

Providence is a collection of three short memoirs. The stories reveal a mother haunted by the loss of her family. Her child becomes a woman, shaped by the loss of her ancestors, deepened by the compassion for the suffering she witnessed and the resilience that grew from it.

Agent Reid and Agent Slade work for The Agency, an international organisation responsible for the security of the world's leading nations. The future is in their hands.

Our Future Present

Daniel Touré

£1.59 Added

Agent Reid and Agent Slade work for The Agency, an international organisation responsible for the security of the world's leading nations. The future is in their hands.

Some people you just shouldn't push.

It was the Head Gardener’s fault. There was an aggressive man. He was always going on about something. He was always going on about keeping your tools clean, and no use you sniggering either. He would just lower his head and hold a thirty second silence and then say, very quietly, and without a trace of irony or humour. I don’t know what you mean by that. Then he’d start up again.

The tools with wooden handles were all polished with feed grade linseed oil. We used an old leather glove that was so impregnated with the stuff that often you didn’t have to add any fresh. You just rubbed it up and down the shaft like you were giving a long slim cock a long slow wank. It was quite therapeutic.

It needed to be, working with that man...

B Movie

At the end of a long hot summer holiday, as family conflicts simmer, the unexpected appearance of a stranger tests and then shatters the bond of friendship between two boys.

Excerpt: ''During the last summer holidays before I started secondary school, my father decided to dig a pond in the back garden. I think my mother must have encouraged him, because she loved animals and wild flowers. Large yellow and white dog daisies sprawled over the rim of the broad earthenware vase on the sill behind the sink, competing for space with the bamboo wind chimes that tinkled whenever the window was open. Even when my mother wasn't washing up, she'd often rest her hands on the edge of the draining board and watch as a robin or some other feathered visitor plucked a nut from the wire cylinder that hung from the bird table''.

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Some people you just shouldn't push.

Hollows

Stephen Tyson

£0.99 Added

At the end of a long hot summer holiday, as family conflicts simmer, the unexpected appearance of a stranger tests and then shatters the bond of friendship between two boys.

Excerpt: ''During the last summer holidays before I started secondary school, my father decided to dig a pond in the back garden. I think my mother must have encouraged him, because she loved animals and wild flowers. Large yellow and white dog daisies sprawled over the rim of the broad earthenware vase on the sill behind the sink, competing for space with the bamboo wind chimes that tinkled whenever the window was open. Even when my mother wasn't washing up, she'd often rest her hands on the edge of the draining board and watch as a robin or some other feathered visitor plucked a nut from the wire cylinder that hung from the bird table''.

Paul Marshall appeared out of nowhere. The hazy autumn sky had just started to darken, and I was sitting in the bus-shelter killing time.

White Rabbits

Stephen Tyson

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Paul Marshall appeared out of nowhere. The hazy autumn sky had just started to darken, and I was sitting in the bus-shelter killing time.

A woman waits for her friend on a station concourse even though she knows she will never arrive. Winner of the 2012 Waterstones' Crime in the City Competition

The four faces of the old Central Station clock seemed to be suspended in time as well as from the roof; the dark hands stuck agonisingly a few minutes short of eight.
‘You got the time?’

Laura turned and looked at the guy standing in front of her.

‘You’re standing under a clock,’ she said, not even trying to mask the disdain in her voice. ‘Look up.’

‘That’s no whit am asking, hen,’ he said. He reached out to touch her arm but his aim was off and he staggered slightly before regaining his balance. A couple of drinks after work turned into a bender, she knew that story.

‘You got the time?’ He raised his eyebrows, gave her a sleekit grin. Two girls beside her laughed. It was alright for them, safety in numbers, not vulnerable like her. ‘Piss off,’ Laura said. Then she turned to the other girls and laughed too. That always got them. He slinked away, just another tosser in a suit that didn’t fit any more...

Platform Souls

Colette Coen

£0.99 Added

A woman waits for her friend on a station concourse even though she knows she will never arrive. Winner of the 2012 Waterstones' Crime in the City Competition

A Fan Fic based on The Red Queen from Lewis Carroll's 'Alice In Wonderland'; The Red Queen has forever had a reputation for being heartless, yet is that truly what she is? Does she not perhaps care for the people who have grown to loathe her?

The Queen In Red: Welcome To My Truth

Liam A. L

£0.99 Added

A Fan Fic based on The Red Queen from Lewis Carroll's 'Alice In Wonderland'; The Red Queen has forever had a reputation for being heartless, yet is that truly what she is? Does she not perhaps care for the people who have grown to loathe her?

A family's new life in Australia is threatened by a bush fire, but this is not the first time the family have had to run from fire. This story won the Eileen Gilmour Creative Writing Competition in 2009

Mum used to watch the evening skies so carefully, judging the weather, hopeful of getting me out from under her feet. I don’t know why she did it ‘cause every day, come hail, rain or shine, I was sent out.

‘Red sky at night is the shepherd’s delight.’

‘Red sky in the morning is the shepherd’s hut on fire.’ I would mumble in return.

She doesn’t say it anymore, not since we moved here, and neither do I. The red dust, the red skies, night after night, no longer worthy of comment. Unremarkable that is until the night that the sky turned not just red, but orange and yellow and black. Crackling and spitting, raising the already unbearable temperatures to a furnace.

We like our barbecues here, or dad does, gives you a chance to meet people, he says. But the sheep were being roasted where they stood: the neighbours too. The smell of burning flesh making our saliva flow and our stomachs retch...

Red Sky at Night

Colette Coen

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A family's new life in Australia is threatened by a bush fire, but this is not the first time the family have had to run from fire. This story won the Eileen Gilmour Creative Writing Competition in 2009

What would life be like if Religion was banned...?

The August Attempt of Sherbourne Clay

M L Archbold

£1.59 Added

What would life be like if Religion was banned...?

If somebody gives you something, is it wrong to want to keep it? Especially if you find out it wasn't their's in the first place? Sometimes there is only one solution.

Two Wrongs

Stephen Gage

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If somebody gives you something, is it wrong to want to keep it? Especially if you find out it wasn't their's in the first place? Sometimes there is only one solution.

A young woman discovers something that threatens the family traditions that keep her safe.

By eight in the morning the west coast sunlight pouring through the windows made the kitchen look as though it were noon. Magali was cold. Her sneakers felt damp and she’d thrown a jumper on over her t-shirt to keep the chill away.

2kg of beef shoulder
4 garlic cloves.

She knew the recipe by heart and pierced the meat, inserting garlic into the wounds.

The previous night she hadn’t slept. The Garniers were notoriously light sleepers and she alone needed alarm clocks in the summer as well as the velvet dark mornings of winter. There was a reason she knew how to sleep. She now knew that.

She placed the meat into the marmite that her grandmother had used. Grandmother? It was battered, but holding out, made, as her grandmother told her, by craftsmen.

There were countless tasks to do during the picking days but she stood in the kitchen, listless, her arms folded and her hands tucked inside the sleeves of her jumper.

Never watch water boil. Her industrious grandparents wasted neither food, time nor money. She considered this as she stared at the water in the pot until it finally rippled and puckered with heat. Ordinarily at this point in the making of the soup she’d be taking butter from the fridge so that it could come to room temperature and be easy to spread. And the bread. If she wasn’t early all the boules would be gone and that, with its hard crust and pillow interior, was what the team of grape pickers preferred. Year on year the same family members eating in the courtyard, the same grape pickers. Every year the rituals lacing her more firmly into family traditions. She’d spent her life being shown those traditions and quite soon would be expected to carry them on...

Winemakers' Soup

I should have left the house earlier. There’s nowhere to park. The streets near the church are full of cars – you were always popular. By the time I find a spot in a side road I’m late and I start to run, but I’m quickly out of breath and my doctor’s warning comes back to me so I have to slow to a jog. That really makes me feel old - that, and going to funerals. If I’m honest I didn’t want to come, but it seemed important. It seemed necessary...

£1.29 Added

A young woman discovers something that threatens the family traditions that keep her safe.

Mixing Memory and Desire

So as I stood there, outside the chemist’s, my mind was wandering in and out of all the usual thoughts and memories, some good, some not so good, and passers-by would drop their coins in and take poppies, and then suddenly I was aware of a young lad in jeans and a grubby tee shirt, bobbing up and down in front of me. He looked about nineteen or twenty. He was everything David never was at that age – scruffy, dirty, agitated and threatening. I was quite scared when I saw him. I’d heard about some kids in the area stealing from old people. I think it was in the local paper...

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Remembrance

A macabre tale inspired by the haunting artwork of Andrew Kinsman.

A clown. It stared out at her from the window of Oxfam and wouldn't let go of her gaze. Not that his eyes were fixed on hers, no one's eyes ever were. Instead, they stared at the delicate bubble that glinted in unseen light, forever trapped in time. Or perhaps he stared off into the far distance at the horizon beyond her shoulder, or at a disappearing memory of a happier time before he was trapped in his gilded cage.

She opened the door and walked in, her nose automatically wrinkling at the stale smell of an accumulation of unwanted things.

“How much for the clown?” she said.

The elderly woman, fastidiously marking the page in her crumbling book with a crumbling finger, looked at her, perplexed.

“In the window there,” she said, turning and pointing.

“Oh, you mean the painting.”

She nodded.

The elderly woman shrugged a crumbling shoulder. “Five pounds?”

She raised her eyebrows but didn't argue. Wasn't art supposed to be expensive? “I'll take it,” she said.

With one hand, the dusty ancient scrabbled around on the cash-till desk until she found a scrap of paper and methodically tucked it in between the pages of her book until it almost touched the spine, then she slowly closed it. A few moments later she was shuffling out from behind the desk, one hand still clutching it for balance.

“Oh, I can get it,” the much younger woman said, suddenly feeling embarrassed that she hadn't thought of it before.

“Thank you, dear.”

“It's no problem,” she mumbled, covering the distance between the cash desk and window in a few paces.

The back of the painting was nothing more than rotting sheets of thick paper held in place by discoloured tape. When she clutched the sides of the frame to lift it she noticed how cold it was; not surprising considering it had been sitting in a window during a British winter. By the feel of it, the frame was wooden and painted gold, but as she lifted it from the shelf she gasped a little in surprise...

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Bubble Juggler

Maria Herring

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A macabre tale inspired by the haunting artwork of Andrew Kinsman.

The past isn't necessarily done with.

The stranger walked into the bar-room just after six. Bernard didn't usually talk to strangers. He rarely spoke to anyone. Darkness had already fallen, for it was early in the year. Shadows had built themselves a wall to enclose the whole village. Inside the pub the lamps had been lighted and the uncurtained windows had become black mirrors...

Out of the Wood

Once upon a time, deep inside the forest lived a little white mouse called Morris. He was a very young mouse with a long white thin tail, little pointed ears and long whiskers growing out of each side of his nose.

£0.99 Added

The past isn't necessarily done with.

The Adventures of Morris Mouse

Once upon a time, in the countryside, by a stream their lived a family of frogs. There was a Mummy and Daddy frog and two small frogs who were their children.
The two small frogs were called Franni, who was a girl frog, and Freddy who was a boy frog.

£0.99 Added

Once upon a time, deep inside the forest lived a little white mouse called Morris. He was a very young mouse with a long white thin tail, little pointed ears and long whiskers growing out of each side of his nose.

Franni and Freddy

An old man living in the mountains finds an injured dog

£1.29 Added

Once upon a time, in the countryside, by a stream their lived a family of frogs. There was a Mummy and Daddy frog and two small frogs who were their children.
The two small frogs were called Franni, who was a girl frog, and Freddy who was a boy frog.

Little puppy dog

King Neptune had been kidnapped or stolen! In his third adventure can Hugh rescue the King of the Sea? Bet he looks daft in a diving suit! (Book 3 in the Hugh McPearson series).

Hello reader. I guess you've never heard of a Ten of Spades Detective before. You've probably only heard of Ace Detectives. I call myself a Ten of Spades Detective because I take on the jobs the Ace Detectives leave behind... or can't be bothered with. I can understand why. The jobs I've had have led me into a few unusual situations. Let me tell you about one of them.

Tuesday 10.13 a.m.

I was sitting at my desk wondering if flowers can sing but that maybe we can’t hear them. Has there been a flower equivalent of Elvis Presley I wondered. If so what happened to it? Was it sold in a florists or put in someone's hair at a wedding or squashed to keep in a book? I was so wrapped up in speculation about the fate of this theoretical musically gifted plant that the phone rang several times before I noticed it was ringing. I snatched up the phone as quickly as I could. Too quickly. It flew out of my wing.

“Hellooooo… clonk,” said the phone.

I picked the phone off the floor.

“Sorry about that,” I said. “I dropped the phone.”

“You were too busy thinking about singing flowers weren’t you?” asked the phone.

“How did you know that?” I demanded.

“Oh, we octopuses are clever that way. Besides which, flowers can’t sing, they can only hum,” replied the phone.

“Oh…” I said, disappointed to find out about the limited musical abilities of flowers. “Anyway who are you?”

“I’m named Grabyatight, which I’m afraid to say is not a very original name for an octopus. Most of us are called that.”

“How did you know when your mum was calling you in for tea then when you were a young octopus?”

“Why do you think we develop our psychic skills of knowing what someone else is thinking?”

“I see,” I said. “Anyway Grabyatight, why have you rung me?”

“The sea creatures need your help. King Neptune has been stolen!”

“You mean King Neptune, King of the Sea?” I asked.

“That’s right. One minute he was sitting on his throne and then the next moment he was gone.”

“That’s terrible,” I said. “I’ll come and help you. I’ll be over in fifteen minutes and an ostrich straight away.”

“I was wondering when you’d get to that favourite catchphrase of yours,” said Grabyatight. “I’d give yourself half an hour – you’ve got to put on a diving suit first.”

“Oh yes,” I replied. “It’s a while since I did some underwater detective work...”

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An old man living in the mountains finds an injured dog

Hugh McPearson and the Stolen King Neptune

In his second adventure Hugh McPearson seeks to find out why all the bread is disappearing from Mr Jones' bread shop overnight! Master of disguise he may have to take on the appearance of some form of confectionery... (Book 2 in the Hugh McPearson series).

Hello reader. I guess you’ve never heard of a Ten of Spades Detective before. You’ve probably only heard of Ace Detectives. I call myself a Ten of Spades Detective because I take on the jobs the Ace Detectives leave behind… or can’t be bothered with. I can understand why. The jobs I’ve had have led me into a few unusual situations. Let me tell you about one of them.

Wednesday 9.43 a.m.

I was sitting at my desk minding my own business, when the phone rang. At least I thought it was my business I was minding, it was certainly somebody’s. I answered the phone.

“Hello,” said the telephone.“I am Mr Jones, the baker. I’m calling because my loaves keep vanishing overnight. I spend all evening baking them, put them in my shop overnight and in the morning they’re gone. I need your help.”

I couldn’t believe it! I hadn’t even had the chance to speak yet and I could use my favourite catch phrase straight away! “It’s all right Mr Jones… I’ll be over in fifteen minutes and an ostrich straight away!” I declared proudly.

“Ah, yes!” replied Mr Jones. “I’ve heard about your catch phrase… I hope you’re better at catching criminals than your catch phrase is at being catchy.”

I couldn’t quite understand Mr Jones’ harsh criticism of my catch phrase for despite holding the phone with one wing I was already preparing for the ‘being over in fifteen minutes’ component of my catch phrase by dusting down my notebook and jauntily donning my favourite hat with my other wing. As ever the ‘being an ostrich straight away’ portion of my catch phrase had been catered for the instant I had uttered it.

“I’m on my way…” I said.

“Now that…” said the telephone in Mr Jones’ voice as I put down the receiver and dashed across town...

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King Neptune had been kidnapped or stolen! In his third adventure can Hugh rescue the King of the Sea? Bet he looks daft in a diving suit! (Book 3 in the Hugh McPearson series).

Hugh McPearson and the Vanishing Bread

Set in the mid 1960s, Tim Bristow is a teenager who cannot make a decision for himself and always does what his mates want to do. Religion, sex and the idea of the body have their part to play in this tale.

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In his second adventure Hugh McPearson seeks to find out why all the bread is disappearing from Mr Jones' bread shop overnight! Master of disguise he may have to take on the appearance of some form of confectionery... (Book 2 in the Hugh McPearson series).

A Garden Of Love And Paradise Along The lane

A poignant story of how a broken piece of porcelain and a biscuit tin crammed with packets of seeds allow a couple to confront the tragedy in their lives.

He takes up his spade and digs deep, he heaves up the soil and grunts as he turns it over. He breaks up the clods and sees something white in the dark earth, he pulls his spade aside and suddenly there she is: red rosebud lips, hair the colour of straw, and a bonnet gilded with gold. He picks her up and lays her in the palm of his hand, there’s only her face and her bonnet, the rest of her is broken away. He rubs the dirt off her face with his finger and puts her in his pocket. He thinks of the others he’s unearthed and taken home. She washes them in Fairy Liquid, and arranges them on the dresser in the kitchen, Ladies of the Soil, she calls them.

He shades his eyes and looks across the bleak allotments at three black silhouettes working on their plots, bending and straightening as if genuflecting to the land. The soil is dark like furls of chocolate. Most of the plots have been abandoned already, they sit strangled in weeds, their sheds falling apart, waiting for the diggers, waiting to be transformed into a new housing development. There’s a bonfire, he sees a thin line of smoke going straight up into a sky so blue and clear it makes his eyes ache. Red apples hang like ornaments on leafless trees. It won’t be long before she hears about the allotments. He breathes in the cold air, thinks he might make a fire later and tackle the nettles, watch them burn...

£2.99 Added

Set in the mid 1960s, Tim Bristow is a teenager who cannot make a decision for himself and always does what his mates want to do. Religion, sex and the idea of the body have their part to play in this tale.

Ladies of the Soil

Gill Blow

£1.59 Added

A poignant story of how a broken piece of porcelain and a biscuit tin crammed with packets of seeds allow a couple to confront the tragedy in their lives.

Sometimes you just can't see the big picture. It's all too confusing and you need to put a bit of distance between yourself and what you're trying to see. I could see you, but things still weren't really clear.

Monet painted the same things over and over again. Honestly. He would line up a dozen or so canvasses and then paint basically the same scene on each of them. He’d be working on them all at the same time, going around and maybe making one a little lighter or darker, or changing the angle ever so slightly, but it was pretty much the same thing, over and over again.

I know this now, because I’m cultured. I went to the big exhibition in town. I bet that surprises you. You always said I wasn’t cultured enough, and I didn’t understand the sort of things you liked to do.

‘It’s just the same thing over and over again with you’, you used to say. ‘Try something new. There’s so much you don’t know.’ Well, now I know that much.

In one room at the exhibition there were dozens of paintings of water lilies, all the same unless you looked very carefully, and then you could make out slight variations in the colour or the shapes. In another room there were about twenty views of London Bridge all painted as Monet had looked out from his hotel window. I could just imagine him standing in his room, moving from one canvas to the next, adding a bit of paint here or there, and painstakingly building up the pictures, all of the same thing.

He must have been very patient. Not like you...

The Monet Exhibition

“LAPIS LAZULI,” HE SAID. “That my name.” He was not of this world, never from Earth. Not with those eyes, no. --------------------- This is a work of collaboration by Eugen Bacon and E. Don Harpe.

He sat next to me, chewing popcorn and laughing, laughing, laughing at the jokes of a stand up artist at the gay pub. The comedian was doing a “Who is this guy?” feature, was rolling on a new gig, a Bill Clinton impersonation that worked so well it warmed patrons with mirth on that night of howling storm and feral wind. The performance was funny, so funny it almost brought the house down. And the decidedly beautiful alien chap beside me laughed heartily along with the rest of the mob.

An alien? you quiz. Surely, but not what you may think.

He was not odious, not at all. His mouth was sensual, seductive. He was an insightful creature, I could tell, one to be handled with care if I decided to try and get any closer to him...

£0.99 Added

Sometimes you just can't see the big picture. It's all too confusing and you need to put a bit of distance between yourself and what you're trying to see. I could see you, but things still weren't really clear.

Lapis Lazuli

E. Don Harpe

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“LAPIS LAZULI,” HE SAID. “That my name.” He was not of this world, never from Earth. Not with those eyes, no. --------------------- This is a work of collaboration by Eugen Bacon and E. Don Harpe.

There you are, minding your own business, trying to get this jigsaw started and there's a knock at the door. Who is this strange woman? Actually, she does look a little familiar, and she seems to know who you are. But you have to be careful. Don't trust anyone. Even the inanimate objects are out to get you...

This is how it begins. There's a boy, about nine or ten, sitting at a large mahogany table in the dining room of his house, absorbed – and I mean absorbed – in a large jigsaw puzzle, the pieces of which are spread out in front of him. There are French windows in the room which open onto a fine, mature, traditional English garden and it may be that the sun is shining on a pleasant summer's day but the boy doesn't notice. He is only concerned with the pieces on the table in front of him.

Some of the pieces have been put together and a framework is gradually taking shape into which the picture will eventually fit. However there are still many pieces to sort and they lie in heaps, grouped by colour, as the boy continues to sift meticulously in his search for straight edges. The dominant colour within the broken framework is still the rich brown of the mahogany table, but the boy is not disheartened.

This is how it begins: a boy obsessed with jigsaw puzzles. It doesn't matter why he likes them so much – I'll deal with motive later. Let us simply say that he is obsessed. But there is a problem. He has searched for them once, twice, again, but he cannot find them. What should he do? It is of course possible to continue regardless; to ignore them; to pursue his methodical task; but they should be here. Where are they? Where are the corner pieces?...

How It Begins

“LAPIS LAZULI,” HE SAID. “That my name.”
He was not of this world, never from Earth. Not with those eyes, no.

---------------------
This is a work of collaboration by Eugen Bacon and E. Don Harpe.

He sat next to me, chewing popcorn and laughing, laughing, laughing at the jokes of a stand up artist at the gay pub. The comedian was doing a “Who is this guy?” feature, was rolling on a new gig, a Bill Clinton impersonation that worked so well it warmed patrons with mirth on that night of howling storm and feral wind. The performance was funny, so funny it almost brought the house down. And the decidedly beautiful alien chap beside me laughed heartily along with the rest of the mob.

An alien? you quiz. Surely, but not what you may think.

He was not odious, not at all. His mouth was sensual, seductive. He was an insightful creature, I could tell, one to be handled with care if I decided to try and get any closer to him...

£0.99 Added

There you are, minding your own business, trying to get this jigsaw started and there's a knock at the door. Who is this strange woman? Actually, she does look a little familiar, and she seems to know who you are. But you have to be careful. Don't trust anyone. Even the inanimate objects are out to get you...

Lapis Lazuli

Eugen Bacon

£0.99 Added

“LAPIS LAZULI,” HE SAID. “That my name.”
He was not of this world, never from Earth. Not with those eyes, no.

---------------------
This is a work of collaboration by Eugen Bacon and E. Don Harpe.

Crippled? Fuck that. Her right foot drags like a dog’s leash. Her right hand has muscle to lift a metal crane. Ivy Freeman is a powerhouse to reckon with. As far as serial killers go.

Ivy Freeman felt invincible.

Something taut and sweet spread adrenaline through every tip of her. Her heart pumped like a sprinter’s foot.

It was more than enjoyment; it was obsession.

She gazed at a shooting star as it cut across a grey and indigo night. She stood in open moonlight, felt wings of fireflies stroke her cheek and knew she had found new heights. Curled right there at her feet lay the tortured body of Welfare, her first grown female.

* * *

Penfold had it all. A beach, a forest, Surrey Hills and Shanty Town.

Not incapacitated by polio that shortened an arm and a leg during infancy, Ivy grew up with a mason father. He smoked like a broken car, built muscle for his construction site by beating his drug-choked wife, Fran.

For all his early goings and late comings, they lived on the dole. Couldn’t afford the SUVs that Ivy glimpsed streaming down Surrey Hills. Funny how the council thought a communal centre for private and public residents at the lip of Surrey Hills and the toe of Shanty Town would bridge the gap between the two communities.

It didn’t...

Shanty Girl

Eugen Bacon

£0.99 Added

Crippled? Fuck that. Her right foot drags like a dog’s leash. Her right hand has muscle to lift a metal crane. Ivy Freeman is a powerhouse to reckon with. As far as serial killers go.

The spray of the sea brushed his face like the soft caressing fingertips of a beautiful woman. His ship, the Red Shadow, was making good time as it cut through the sea’s waves, sending up small geysers of salty water. The open sea, a brilliant cascade of sparkling azure gems, lay before him and a healthy gust of wind was filling his sails. Captain Devon Harrad smiled to himself. Perfect conditions, he thought, at this rate I’ll make port before the week is out and have this cargo unloaded and my hold full of gold.

With that thought filling him with confidence, he turned from the prow and walked down the starboard side to inspect his ship. A grand ship it was, or maybe he thought that because it was his, every captain loved his own ship and every captain worth his salt knew everything about it, from the hull to the crow’s nest. At least, the smuggling captains did.
Devon’s Red Shadow was a beautifully streamlined vessel, its red tinted wood on deck and hull giving it the name Red. The Shadow part came from its slim and sharp body, a body that was well suited for speed and evading. Attributes that Captain Devon Harrad took full advantage of. Yes, Red Shadow was born for this sort of work. But, of course, all this was for nothing without a good crew. You could fawn over the most beautifully crafted and sculptured ship all day, but without a crew it was a lifeless husk. A lifeless husk, the Red Shadow was not.

Everywhere Devon looked seamen were working hard, tightening the rigging, scrubbing the decks, steering the ship, it was a seemingly chaotic display of sweat and muscle, but was what kept the Red Shadow afloat. Devon was fiercely proud of his crew, though he would never tell them - get it into their heads that they were valuable and it could give birth to all kinds of egotistical notions, the worst of which would be mutiny. But he wasn’t worried: Devon had been running with this crew for seven years, their loyalty had been tested time and time again. Those that had been true to him were the crew of the Red Shadow. Those that had tested his authority were the denizens of the murky deep.

Pleased with how things were going up top, Harrad made his way into the bowels of the ship; he walked past the men’s dorms, a long hallway of criss-crossing hammocks, like spider webs. The spiders that inhabited these webs were a bit bigger than your average arachnid, not least of which was First Mate Esor, a tall well muscled behemoth of a man. He sat sharpening his huge cutlass, the hardened knots of sinew on his arms lending strength to the whetstone he so diligently ran down the smooth curve of his blade.

Seeing the captain, Esor returned his cutlass to the heavy sheath at his waist and rose to meet him. Shirtless, Devon could see the many badges of honour Esor had received in his service. A veritable road map of healed scars blanketed his chest and arms, the worst of which ran through his eye, turning it into a milky dead marble. He could have covered it with his long black hair but Devon encouraged him to wear it tied back. “A man shouldn’t be ashamed of who he is,” he had said at the time, and there’s a man who most will think twice before trifling with, he had thought to himself.

“I don’t expect any trouble on this job Esor,” said Captain Harrad, eyeing the newly sharpened blade of his First Mate...

The Wandering Woman

David Collinson

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The Weather Man's mouse has to find a wife for the Weather Man, but...............

A Wife for the Weather Man

A. J. Norton

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The Weather Man's mouse has to find a wife for the Weather Man, but...............

The therapist has been looking at some of the stuff you’ve written and you sit there in the classroom reading his report. You’re an out-patient now - have been for a while. You turn up to clinics, appointments, take tests, report on medication, attend review meetings, get measured for devices and aids, talk to physios and psychologists.... it’s a kind of progress...

Like a Virgin

Al McClimens

£0.99 Added

Hannah is on her way to the bus stop when she is accosted by a man offering her eternal life. Once she gets over the surprise, her feelings are decidedly mixed

There was a man on the doorstep, hand raised to the bell. Hannah glared, annoyed, but triumphant at preventing the completion of that move.

‘Well? What is it? I'm on my way out.’

God-squad? Market research? Another charity collection? The man smiled winningly. Not a charity then.

‘Good morning. I'm from Tante Rouge.’

Selling. Hannah pushed her way onto her doorstep, pulling the door to behind her, making considerable show of the three locks that must be secured.

‘I'm not interested, and I have a bus to catch.’

She started down the path, noticing irritably that the man had left the gate open. The man followed, undaunted.

‘As I was saying...’ he tried.

‘Shut the gate behind you,’ Hannah snapped. The man obliged, the slightest shadow of a crease appearing between his brows, just for a moment.

‘Mrs Brown...’

‘Don't Mrs Brown me, young man,’ Hannah said, in a tone designed to curdle a cow's udder. She turned her back on him and started to walk towards the end of the road, and the bus stop.

Well researched, this one, checking up names before he came to do his pitch.

The man watched Hannah retreating, at an unexpectedly swift pace. He looked at his watch, knowing perfectly well that the next bus had been cancelled.

‘Don't you young man me, Mrs Hannah Elspeth Brown,’ he muttered, pulling his jacket tighter at the neck, feeling rain on the way. He was intrigued that Hannah was passing for a married woman, and yet had kept her maiden name. Besides he was not young, even by Hannah's standards, and was not quite sure he ever had been.

What had happened, he wondered, when had Hannah's life lost its excitement, its edge?

He had not really expected Hannah to recognise him. As far as Hannah was concerned he did not exist, had ceased to exist more than fifty years ago. He could not expect Hannah to know him, but it still hurt. For three years Hannah had been his joy in life, his reason for existence. It had taken a lot of work to find her again. Where was the girl who had laughed at making the choice between becoming a world class physicist or a successful dancer? He had been warned to expect changes, but this was so far from his expectations that he wondered if he had made a terrible mistake. When he was asked to choose, there had not been a moment's hesitation. Hannah Brown had been lurking in his heart and mind ready and waiting to be offered this opportunity – but not this Hannah...

Tante Rouge

It wasn't fair. Sam wanted a puppy so much it hurt. His friend Harry had a chocolate Labrador called Buttons that he walked to school on a red lead. Sam didn't have any pets, not even a goldfish and his Dad didn't live at home with them any more. As he said, it wasn't fair....

£1.29 Added

Hannah is on her way to the bus stop when she is accosted by a man offering her eternal life. Once she gets over the surprise, her feelings are decidedly mixed

A Dog for Sam

A coming of age tale...but what kind of age, and can this boy bear it?

It was the scarf. They said the desk had been cleared but a bit of dirty-looking tartan still poked out under the lid. The desk had been moved to the side of the classroom but with its back to the wall, so you could still sneak a glance at the scarf. During the last two days of term, he found it harder and harder not to.

‘Away with the fairies again, Paul?’ Mrs Watton’s voice wasn’t unkind, hadn’t been at any time throughout the year. Without resentment, Paul turned back to his book. But he still saw the scarf like a pattern behind the words he read, and his heart was still on fire...

*******

The kids scattered at the summons for tea. Once it was issued, front windows were slammed all along the street. Two brothers wrestled at their gate-post to see who’d be first to shoulder the back door off its hinges and forget to wash his hands. One boy, as usual, had to be called three times.

Only Paul was left, looking down at his shoes and the small ridges in the concrete road, wondering if the press of his feet had made the road go like that. From an open window somewhere came the song everyone was singing or sending up. Someone saw someone else’s love yesterday and she told them what to say. Say-ee-yay. It seemed to Paul that the flock of Yeah, yeah, yeahs made the day very different, like strange birds on the roof-tiles. I could fly away with them, he thought.

A horn sounded and he turned to see Mr. Phillips’s Ford Anglia, light-green, nipped little angles. Smiling, Mr Phillips gestured that Paul might like to step aside. The car crept past and Mr Phillips gave him the kind of wave that Mrs Watton had given him earlier that day, at the end of the school year. He’d seen his mum doing something not dissimilar, when they were seeing off some relatives at the station. Vaguely he supposed that it was one of the many things he’d be doing sometime. Adult things. A special energy would flow into his hand when he reached an age he couldn’t imagine, and before he knew it he’d be waving with assurance in clothes he’d chosen himself. But he couldn’t see himself getting to that.

£0.99 Added

It wasn't fair. Sam wanted a puppy so much it hurt. His friend Harry had a chocolate Labrador called Buttons that he walked to school on a red lead. Sam didn't have any pets, not even a goldfish and his Dad didn't live at home with them any more. As he said, it wasn't fair....

'Give You A Game?'

Michael Thomas

£0.99 Added

A coming of age tale...but what kind of age, and can this boy bear it?

This is it, you can stop – Jim said to the driver. Strangely, the taximeter showed forty-five, the same as his age. He scratched out the money from the pocket of his jeans. The old man thanked him for the large tip, too happy to get rid of him.

Jim watched the black cab as it was cutting the soil, but finally made it and arrived back on the road. It gained speed from there on and following the curve of the landscape disappeared behind a green slope. Only then he turned towards the broken skyline.

His legs felt leaden with the tiredness of a night spent in the pubs. They were pulling him down making the struggle with the mud nearly impossible. After a few steps up on the slippery surface a strong wind caught into his jacket. The smell of the icy north stiffened his nostrils. The rebelliousness of nature annoyed him. Rage screwed up his acidic stomach.

After a few more yards gained against the sticky soil he arrived at the end of the field. He stopped on the last glistening patch of grass, then carefully balanced his way onto the very edge of the crumbling rock band...

Fly!

Csilla Toldy

£1.29 Added

A hard-working weather man, angry cat and dog and a lazy mouse- says it all...

The Weather Man's Mouse

A. J. Norton

£0.99 Added

A hard-working weather man, angry cat and dog and a lazy mouse- says it all...

Nobody knew exactly when or why the war started. Some people thought it was Fred's earrings, but it went back a long way before that.

They’re having one of them scarecrow festivals round the village. That’s a new thing, but it didn’t half take me back – more than forty years, if the truth be told, to old Joby. He had the fanciest scarecrow you’ve ever seen, bar none, and all because of the feud between Gracie Phelps and Bella Baxter.

Some people thought Fred’s earrings had started it, but Joby reckoned it had been simmering away for years before that. They’d been like chalk and cheese since they were at school: Gracie was as neat as nine-pence and always won the prize for needlework; Bella looked like something out of the ragbag even then, but she could run and jump and climb like nobody’s business, and she always had a crowd of boys round her, torn stockings or not. But things really kicked off the night they both turned up to the Carnival Queen dance in near enough the same frock. They did no more than glare at each other and turn their backs at first, but then old Fred, who’d been courting Bella, mistook which was which from the back. ’Course, he’d had a few. He did no more than go up and give Gracie a cuddle. Bella, she slapped him and then her and went off home in a black stew. Poor old Fred, wouldn’t say boo to a goose, didn’t know what hit him. Gracie clung onto him after that, and she had him to the altar before he knew what day it was. Bella kept her reputation for being a bit lively until Bert Baxter married her. That’d be enough to dampen anyone’s spirits, that would. They might have settled down as young married women after a while, but of course they ended up on opposite sides of Bitter Hill, and that didn’t help...

The Gracie and Bella War

Sandra Horn

£0.99 Added

Nobody knew exactly when or why the war started. Some people thought it was Fred's earrings, but it went back a long way before that.

Will felt like he was getting closer to understanding what they meant, in a way. He would sit on the grass and look up, watching, listening and letting their truth come to him. If he forced it too much, it would not be the truth. That mattered.

Jackdaws

If there is ever an anthology called, "Forgotten Animal Voices Through History" then this story will narrowly miss the cut.
Robert Burns gave an empathic, if presumptuous, perspective; time to hear from the mouse himself.

£0.99 Added

Will felt like he was getting closer to understanding what they meant, in a way. He would sit on the grass and look up, watching, listening and letting their truth come to him. If he forced it too much, it would not be the truth. That mattered.

From a Mouse

Strange goings on at the parish church. Good Friday's not so good.

£0.99 Added

If there is ever an anthology called, "Forgotten Animal Voices Through History" then this story will narrowly miss the cut.
Robert Burns gave an empathic, if presumptuous, perspective; time to hear from the mouse himself.

Thrice Deny Me

A story about the plight of the many children working in the fireworks factories of India. It is important that the voices of such people are heard through literature.

I stood at the doorway as I heard my amma pleading with the man.

‘I have two more mouths to feed. You know that I’m working in houses as a maid, and I can’t do any more. Please give me more time.’ Her voice shook as she implored.

‘Then that rogue of a husband of yours shouldn’t have taken a loan. I’m no charity. The full amount tomorrow or else you’ll be out of this miserable hut,’ he roared, his moustache quivering. He strode away; his menacing look burned my face. I ran and stood beside my amma, tugging at her sari. She was shaking her head, her voice reaching a keening that I had heard four years ago when my father had drowned in the river.

Suicide, shame leaving the family destitute – words I had understood with creeping fear. My little brother came running and tugged at my sari. I put an arm around him.
My amma beat her chest and cried, ‘What will I do? God help me. Someone help me.’

I said gently to her, ‘Remember amma, when I joined the match factory, Mani, the gaffer said he’d give you an advance if you let Ram work there? You didn’t want to take him away from the school, but we have so much work now, and they are looking for extra hands. I know he’ll take him. Let’s go right now, we can’t wait any longer.’

My amma sat on her haunches. Her sobs were quieter now, and her face crumpled with deep lines. With little energy she wiped her tears and her nose on her sari. She nodded and got up slowly. We walked the two miles to the gaffer’s house in the blazing sun...

£0.99 Added

Strange goings on at the parish church. Good Friday's not so good.

Boxed In

Leela Soma

£0.99 Added

A story about the plight of the many children working in the fireworks factories of India. It is important that the voices of such people are heard through literature.

A college drama student finds himself in the lead role of an improvised omnibus production.

Box of Bananas

David Sebastian

£0.99 Added

A college drama student finds himself in the lead role of an improvised omnibus production.

Returning home to his Fenland bungalow after a round of golf, widower Harry Smith discovered a hand-written note on his door-mat. It was from Juliet Dejardin, Secretary of the local Garden Club.
In the note, she wrote ”Dear Gardener, you are obviously a talented gardener...” and she wondered if he would be prepared to enter his garden in the Village Open Garden Day event. Harry wasn’t a “talented gardener”, or indeed a gardener at all; for that, he employed a local handyman. However, he decided to make contact with Juliet Dejardin. Could that be the start of a romantic friendship? Harry was soon to find out....

I Can't Tell a Plant from a Weed

Danny Mac Cullough

£0.99 Added

Returning home to his Fenland bungalow after a round of golf, widower Harry Smith discovered a hand-written note on his door-mat. It was from Juliet Dejardin, Secretary of the local Garden Club.
In the note, she wrote ”Dear Gardener, you are obviously a talented gardener...” and she wondered if he would be prepared to enter his garden in the Village Open Garden Day event. Harry wasn’t a “talented gardener”, or indeed a gardener at all; for that, he employed a local handyman. However, he decided to make contact with Juliet Dejardin. Could that be the start of a romantic friendship? Harry was soon to find out....

Ted Woods awoke, perspiration pouring from his brow. He quickly looked around the bedroom, nothing had changed. The room was as it was before he went to sleep the previous night. It was seven in the morning, too early to get up, so he turned over and went back to sleep. It was then his nightmare began....

Nightmare

Danny Mac Cullough

£0.99 Added

Ted Woods awoke, perspiration pouring from his brow. He quickly looked around the bedroom, nothing had changed. The room was as it was before he went to sleep the previous night. It was seven in the morning, too early to get up, so he turned over and went back to sleep. It was then his nightmare began....

There was nowhere to hide from this sightless pain that struck me to the ground, in fear of my life.

Dark Veil

Danger, drudgery; male solidarity and female oppression summed up life in the colliery villages in County Durham during much of the nineteenth century.

£3.99 Added

There was nowhere to hide from this sightless pain that struck me to the ground, in fear of my life.

Coal Is Our Life

£2.49 Added

Danger, drudgery; male solidarity and female oppression summed up life in the colliery villages in County Durham during much of the nineteenth century.

A Wooden Shed

Auto Pilot

Africa and a Hippo named Nelly

£1.99 Added

A Wooden Shed

Cabbages

My work and the people of Russia

£1.99 Added

Africa and a Hippo named Nelly

The Road of Bones (The Kolma Highway)

An Igbo tribesman in the Congo Tulu Hills

£2.49 Added

My work and the people of Russia

Whistle to the Wind

A struggling writer's interest in an abandoned car reflects how small his life has become. That is until the car starts to beckon him in the dead of night.

It was still there. That car. It had been parked up now for five days at least, even over the weekend when I had expected it to disappear. My father thought I was obsessing. Maybe I was, but we live in a cul-de-sac, we know everyone, everyone knows us. More to the point, we all know one another’s cars. And this one certainly didn’t belong to anyone we knew. True, people regularly used our road to park up for the day as they caught a train on the nearby branch line into the city, but they soon moved on, like ships in the night. Or in our case, cars in the street.

“Why does it bother you?” my father asked as I peeled off my wet clothes from yet another rain soaking on the exposed field with my dog Bryn.

“It doesn’t” I replied, as an obvious contradiction, “it just seems a little odd that’s all”. Clearly to him it didn’t. He gave me a slightly concerned look and went back to watching the latest news report about the awful gas explosion at an engineering works a few miles away, which had killed four people. Terrible though it was, it was days ago. He can be a little voyeuristic; I knew it wouldn’t be long before he would be watching yet another documentary about a mid-air collision that had killed several hundred passengers, or something about a bloody battle in World War Two.

His concern about my interest in this parked car ran a little deeper than I was at the time prepared to recognise...

£3.49 Added

An Igbo tribesman in the Congo Tulu Hills

Wendy's Gift

Paul Ariss

£1.59 Added

A struggling writer's interest in an abandoned car reflects how small his life has become. That is until the car starts to beckon him in the dead of night.

A collection of three disturbingly dark flashes of fiction, Insomnia, In The End and LOL.

I can't sleep, I'm blaming the medication, one of the side-effects. Night after night with scarcely a wink. I have tried everything, believe you me, exercise machines to build up a sweat and wear myself out, meditation to a point of total relaxation, even god forbid, camomile tea. Nothing works. Well, drugs … but I am told they are contra to my medication and the thought of overdosing trips me out. So, I don't sleep, bottom line. They say it can drive you crazy. “What's new?” I laugh it off but of course they're right.

It's an old house, you know how it is when you have time to stop and listen to an old house? It's noisy. It speaks...

A Flash In The Dark

Rosie Cullen

£0.99 Added

A collection of three disturbingly dark flashes of fiction, Insomnia, In The End and LOL.

Consuela exacts a unique revenge on her philandering husband Arturo - inspired by a true story!

Consuela stirred the onions, they were turning perfectly translucent in the pan and releasing an aroma which had always given her pleasure. Consuela added freshly chopped garlic, chillies and herbs. Then the ripe and juicy tomatoes which she had grown in her own small yard. Gradually pouring the stock into the mix she sighed deeply in anticipation. The creatures must be cooked slowly, very slowly until drowsy – not too hot or fast, that was the trick.

Tonight of all nights he must not be late.

The door banged open behind her and Arturo staggered through into the bright and orderly kitchen. Consuela had timed the meal perfectly. Her husband had spent just so much time in Fernando’s Bar after his shift working on the railroad. She could envisage him, rolling his foolish eyes at Mariequita behind the counter and laughing at his own jokes and innuendos. And then his hunger had brought him home for his supper as she knew it would, as it always did. He inhaled deeply of the garlic sauce and Consuela knew that his taste buds would be aroused, his appetite ravenous...

Snails A La Mexicana

Rosie Cullen

£0.99 Added

Consuela exacts a unique revenge on her philandering husband Arturo - inspired by a true story!

Alice has grown tired of life.

At eight a.m., on the morning of the last day of her life, Alice Calder stood shivering in the outdoor pool of the Madeira Heights Hotel. Refracted by the water, her bony, thread-veined legs appeared even more ugly than usual. She remembered herself many years ago, resplendent on the beach at Nice in a high-leg black bikini. She sighed for what once was.

‘Morning Mrs Calder.’ Peter the pool attendant waved as he tossed blue and white striped cushions onto sun-loungers.

‘Morning Peter.’ She took a deep breath and launched herself onto her stomach.

Kick, pull, breathe.

She submerged her head as she swam, despite not having a swimming cap on. Wet hair, she’d catch a chill.

Didn’t matter.

The temperature would play havoc with her already stiff hips but, for once, she didn’t care.

Kick, pull, breathe.

So liberating to swim without having to hoard her dwindling energy reserves for later, the next day, the day after that.

She moved well for a woman of eighty-three, her neat, steady breaststroke practised every day at home. Ten lengths before breakfast in the heated pool in her conservatory.
As she swam, she thought back to the night of her sixtieth wedding anniversary. Was it only two months ago? Only two months since the decision was made?

She recalled the care with which she’d set the table. Two crystal wine glasses, two sets of her best silver, polished. Chicken breasts wrapped in Parma ham from Marks and Spencer – Julian’s favourite. After serving dinner, she filled the glasses with Sauvignon Blanc, then sat back and stared at her husband’s empty place.

Poor Julian. She prodded at the chicken with her fork but couldn’t bring herself to eat it. She did miss him. She gulped back her wine and reached for his. Everything in moderation, Julian liked to say. She finished his glass too.

Afterwards, she teetered to the kitchen and retrieved her husband’s medication box from the cupboard next to the fridge. She lined up a parade of bottles in front of the kettle and inspected them. The tablets were nearly a year old now but they should do the trick...

Waste

Tracey Emerson

£0.99 Added

Alice has grown tired of life.

A young mother ponders her life during an outing with her daughter who has special needs.

April is rearranging her knickers. In the queue at the garden centre cafeteria. Her hand is right down the back of her tracksuit bottoms, tweaking and twitching and pulling the gigantic pants up and up and up.

‘Leave those for now, sweetheart,’ I say.

Around us it’s all understanding smiles and knowing looks, but we’re holding up the line. Behind us, a garden centre worker in green dungarees is itching to get at the bacon rolls.
‘What do we fancy today?’ April is nearly blind and hasn’t spoken a word in her entire life, but I ask anyway.

She remains engrossed in her underwear, lifting up her jumper now and pulling at her grey, fraying bra.

I snap. I grab her hands away and pull down the jumper...

April

Tracey Emerson

£0.99 Added

A young mother ponders her life during an outing with her daughter who has special needs.

A woman begins an affair with a man she meets while visiting her mother at a residential care home.

Grace sees him for the first time on a Sunday afternoon at the Seaview Residential Care Home. He is wrestling a magazine from a shrivelled, silver-haired woman in the TV lounge.
‘Let go, Mum,’ he says. ‘Please.’ He is tall, and his full head of black hair contains only a few streaks of grey. Fit and muscular in his jeans and navy blue sweatshirt, he radiates vitality amongst all the weakness and demise. Grace hovers in the lounge doorway, forgetting she was on her way to the garden for some fresh air and a break from her own mother.
‘It’s mine.’ A man with a long, white beard points at the torn magazine from the prison of his beige armchair. Lisa, one of the care assistants, pats him on the shoulder.
‘She doesn’t know what she’s doing love. She doesn’t mean it.’

The mother lets go of her shredded prize and strikes her son’s face.

‘Get off me, you little cunt,’ she screams. Then she stops, as if her batteries have run out and falls to her knees. She glances around the room and seems shocked to find herself there. The sobbing starts. Frustrated, childlike sobbing.

‘It’s okay. I’ve got you.’ Her son reaches down and scoops her up. Grace steps aside as he carries his mother out of the room, accompanied by several longing sighs. A warped version of the famous scene from An Officer and a Gentleman.

***

She returns to her mother’s room.

‘I’m back,’ she says.

The boxy room is a pharaoh’s tomb, a stop-gap between worlds, crammed with treasured possessions – family photographs, a stack of Daniel O’Donnell CDs and a collection of crystal swans. A brass carriage clock provides a loud, second by second reminder of lost time from the bedside table.

Her mother lies motionless in a narrow single bed. Eyes closed, mouth open, each breath accompanied by a frothy, gurgling noise, as if she is drowning. The chest infection she developed three days ago might still result in an admission to hospital, but so far, so good. Grace has slept on a fold-down bed beside her mother for the past two nights. She is tired and fragile and longing to get back to London. She is dressed in the same jeans and black polo-necked jumper she arrived in on Friday. Her armpits are sticky and odorous. Her dark, curly hair is greasy and tied back in a ponytail. All she wants is a hot bath and a large glass of red wine.

Seaview

Tracey Emerson

£0.99 Added

A woman begins an affair with a man she meets while visiting her mother at a residential care home.

From between the pages of the very last book I picked up, fell a sheet of paper. Stained manila with ragged edge where it had been ripped from a journal. The network of creases, suggestive of the roads and railways on a map, showed that once torn from its source it had been crumpled and perhaps thrown across the room.

From between the pages of the very last book I picked up, fell a sheet of paper. Stained manila with ragged edge where it had been ripped from a journal. The network of creases, suggestive of the roads and railways on a map, showed that once torn from its source it had been crumpled and perhaps thrown across the room.

It seemed strange that it had been unfolded and pressed carefully between the leaves of this heavy hardback.

Before replacing the book I tilted it to view the gilt on the spine, then moved closer to the long window to catch the light. “An Act of Cruelty by R.T. Booth.” Neither the novel nor its author’s name meant anything to me but I noted on reading the blurb that it described itself as “A murder mystery set in Elizabethan Lancashire.” Any interest I may have had in the book faltered and I placed it back on the shelf, disturbing the film of dust outlining where it had previously stood.

I blew at and tugged away the cobwebs which had attached themselves to my face while I handled the book. I looked down at the green, leather-topped desk realising that I had not returned the sheet of paper.

I read it with the absent mindedness you might apply to reading a cereal packet or a milk carton while you wait for the coffee to kick-in. Except in this case, the opening paragraph shocked me into reality better than any espresso could.

I had hoped him dead...

Between the Pages

Roland Glover

£1.29 Added

From between the pages of the very last book I picked up, fell a sheet of paper. Stained manila with ragged edge where it had been ripped from a journal. The network of creases, suggestive of the roads and railways on a map, showed that once torn from its source it had been crumpled and perhaps thrown across the room.

A woman finds escape from her tortured life in a mysterious flight of fancy.

Leaving the ground is never easy, and staying up there is even harder.

The sheer effort of will required just to stay even a few feet in the air, is immense, but once you’re up there off the ground, moving through the ether, it’s lovely, it feels right.

You have to keep at it to maintain any height; gravity never stops pulling you downwards, so you’re forever adjusting your trajectory, willing yourself up, up...

Fight or Flight

Roland Glover

£0.99 Added

A woman finds escape from her tortured life in a mysterious flight of fancy.

When I first saw the beach hut I realised it would probably be more expensive than a two bedroom town house. I pictured the agent’s face; the mocking laughter, shrieking down her phone to colleagues; ‘She thinks she can afford a beach hut!’

I’d been looking for a place to buy for ages. The woman in the estate agents had terrible acne, so it was hard to concentrate on her words, but she was almost laughing when she told me what my budget would buy in the town. ‘A garage …’ she said dismissively.

‘I don’t drive’, I said.

‘No’, she said, looking at her nails, or her watch, or her phone or something, ‘No, you don’t understand, it’s what you could afford, a garage, you’d have to live in it.’

‘Some garages can be really nice though’, she added, as an afterthought.

She agreed that this wasn’t ideal. But in the current market…it was really all I could hope for. She took a call from a much more lucrative buyer while fingering her spots and ran away from me, hoping that I wouldn’t bother her again.

I had a house already. A small, terraced house that I loved, but for some reason, I hadn’t told the agent this. The reason I wanted somewhere else was for my lover.

There was really no need to buy somewhere else; I had no husband, or partner, boyfriend, girlfriend, intrusive animals or anything like that. But I had a small daughter and the idea of bringing Lovely Man into our domestic life unnerved me to the point where I wanted another place where we could just be together. Occasionally. So, the garage without windows didn’t really appeal, nor did the dank basements from Psycho that she’d shown me.

It had to be somewhere…special. Different. I just wanted something for myself. Somewhere not filled with primary coloured plastic toys and covered with food stains and paint handprints. Somewhere you could imagine yourself having sex and not worrying about the shopping you hadn’t done or the state of the carpet.

That’s when I saw the beach hut for sale. For Sale, No Agents, All Enquiries Carefully Considered, the sign said. I liked that, the way they’d worded it. It was impeccable; painted in blue and yellow stripes, and it even had little curtains at the windows. Useful, those little curtains…. My first thought was Wow! And my second was, but what’s wrong with it? And then my heart dived when I realised it would probably be more expensive than a two-bedroom town house. I pictured the agent’s face; the mocking laughter, shrieking down her phone to colleagues; ‘She thinks she can afford a beach hut!’…

The Beach Hut

Anna Reynolds

£0.99 Added

When I first saw the beach hut I realised it would probably be more expensive than a two bedroom town house. I pictured the agent’s face; the mocking laughter, shrieking down her phone to colleagues; ‘She thinks she can afford a beach hut!’

Gary is a wannabe film maker who is on the verge of losing his girlfriend. He is drinking in "last chance saloon" unless he can get the famous horror film actor Illych Krotowsky to be in his film, but is the man still alive?

Ghost Of A Chance

The second of two companion stories about people returning to their south-coast hometown. Both have disappointments and something to conceal.

Lesley is wishing that she hadn’t cropped her hair. Long hair would be useful now. Also, it is thick hair, perhaps unsuited to cropping. She had hoped that it would make her resemble anyone cool with pixie-cut hair. The obvious one was Audrey Hepburn in Funny Face or any of those models younger than herself by a decade. But on her it just seems to stick out and gives her an uncool big head. Actually, it doesn’t look too bad in the reflection in the window. It would have looked better if blonde (with roots) or dark, but it is auburn.

Just a moment ago, she saw Tony go into the Co-Co café. Her stomach jolted and her mood had spiralled downward. She hates that lack of control, that knowledge that she is now going to be miserable. Half-an-hour earlier, emerging from the City Lights Boutique (carrying a newly-purchased pair of ballet pumps in soft dark suede) she has already seen Ally go into the Co-Co, carrying some shopping – one bag obviously groceries, but the other a very large item obscured from view. Before that sighting, she had herself intended to get her lunch in Co-Co, which she far preferred to the café in which she is now sitting. But Tony frequents Co-Co and she would feel like a stalker (although there is no real reason why she should). Good thing she hadn’t gone in there though, or she’d have been trapped now, trying to be jolly; friendly and jolly and happy like it was all fine and she didn’t care. Now, here she is in the Acorn café opposite, surrounded by old people, with a flavourless sandwich and a double espresso she doesn’t really want. She feels displaced not only from him, but from what she considers to be her own territory. She also feels like a lightweight, with her expensive, showily packaged, purchases.

Today is a bright sharp day – blue sky, few clouds – the sort of day she loves, with all the promise of a new year; she should be happy. Sitting in the high window seat, she is terrified of being seen by them but she has to have an unimpeded view; she needs to be sure…

£1.29 Added

Gary is a wannabe film maker who is on the verge of losing his girlfriend. He is drinking in "last chance saloon" unless he can get the famous horror film actor Illych Krotowsky to be in his film, but is the man still alive?

Flatland (2) Lesley

The first of two companion stories about people returning, in disappointment, to live in their south-coast hometown. Both have something to conceal.

He’d been standing like that for twenty minutes, on the beach, leaning against the sea wall, staring out to the island three miles across the blue-grey water. He liked the picture he had of himself in his mind’s eye. A classic photo, one of those black and white arty French jobs from the ‘fifties, standing there on the beach, in profile, solitary against the skyline, muffled against the cold, squinting, smoking a roll-up. The day was bright enough for the island’s main town to be just visible – trees, a spire, some impression of houses, perhaps. Years had passed since he last crossed the water to visit relatives in their over-furnished houses. The relatives were long gone. Gone to Heaven via Devon, he thought – or was it something his mother would have said? Probably.

Aware of a prominent stone pressing between his shoulder-blades, he shifted his position, allowing himself to slide down the wall toward the large shingle, gingerly checking for used condoms and dog-shit before sitting. But his luck was in – it was clean. The shingle was still as hard on the backside – the only sand being closer to the shore – but he managed to create a tolerable indentation. The January sun was already high at 10:45 a.m. in an almost cloudless sky. He hated the winter and found the existence of regions of blank, white, frozen waste proof that there was no God. The days were getting longer, though, at least there was light at the end of the tunnel, at least it wasn’t November…

£1.29 Added

The second of two companion stories about people returning to their south-coast hometown. Both have disappointments and something to conceal.

Flatland (1) Tony

Following an argument with her husband, Cara decides to take a walk in the park. There she meets an elderly man. The two begin to talk. Their conversation reveals startling insights and a troubled situation left to wither in the past.

£1.29 Added

The first of two companion stories about people returning, in disappointment, to live in their south-coast hometown. Both have something to conceal.

A Walk In The Park

Daniel Touré

£1.59 Added

Following an argument with her husband, Cara decides to take a walk in the park. There she meets an elderly man. The two begin to talk. Their conversation reveals startling insights and a troubled situation left to wither in the past.

Charlie Carbunckle, an obsessive pigeon fancier, suffers the loss of one of his birds and the blame falls at the feet of his son Seamus.

Seamus flings the front door open and drops his backpack. The two pigeons roosting on top of the grandfather clock take flight – around the foyer and living room – unsettling the other twenty-six pigeons lounging around the main floor of the house.

"What the?" Seamus says, ducking and waving his arms. "Mom?"

He surveys the living room: the couch is covered in plastic and on the back of the sofa four pigeons sit preening. The bookcases serve as roosts. A red chequer perches atop a lamp, two on the fireplace mantle, and one on the stairs. The rest scuttle around the hardwood floor pecking at bits of food and grit.

On the coffee table, the expensive one that Liz insisted Charlie buy for her last Christmas, the one from Restoration Hardware made of teak, the one she doesn’t let anyone even put a glass of water on, sit three large bowls: one of bird seed, one full of grit and another with water, the water having been turned a piss yellow from the addition of liquid vitamins.

The table is covered with a sheet of newspaper, but the pigeons have moved it so it half the wood is exposed. Seamus looks at the surface and sees several hardening shits.
Mom's not going to take this well.

He sneezes and then suddenly the smell of the room is inescapable. It's no longer the vanilla scented candles from the dollar shop around the corner, it's a stench of shit and bird dander that Seamus has never encountered in such force before. There have been days when the heat and humidity of the Toronto summer have caused the pigeon loft out back to emit wafts of stink, but nothing like this.

He plugs his nose and opens the two windows in the room. From underneath the side table, he hears a familiar cooing, and a pigeon scuttles out, chased by another – obviously male. His tail is fanned out and he circles her, cooing enticements. Eventually she relents and bends down; he jumps on her back.

Seriously? Seamus thinks. I come home to pigeons fucking in the living room. Child Services wouldn't even know where to start...

Eggbound

Gillian Best

£0.99 Added

Charlie Carbunckle, an obsessive pigeon fancier, suffers the loss of one of his birds and the blame falls at the feet of his son Seamus.

A sinister man gets more than he bargains for when he makes a move on a young woman in a bar.

Mac spots her straight away. She stands inside the door for a while as if trying to make up her mind whether to brave the journey to the bar. It’s a short one but the place is rammed with a mixture of office stragglers who, for their own reasons, are in no rush to go home, and those seriously cool types: the sort that make a real effort to look as if they’ve made no effort. Although he finds this a bit pretentious he has no real problem with it: we’re all pretending to be something, or someone, that we’re not...aren’t we?

The bar is all brick walls and dark wood, stripped floors with furniture that’s been knocked around a bit. It feels old school but if you look closely enough you can see and smell its newness; it’s not only the customers that are phonies. To add to the authenticity the DJ has been playing old soul and blues for most of the night; now he’s upping the tempo with seventies disco complete with flashing lights.

Mac watches her scanning the crowd nervously, probably looking for her date, he reasons. He can’t be sure if he’s caught her eye but, if he has, she shows no interest. It takes her a good ten minutes to decide it’s worth staying; plenty of time for him to make a full assessment. Roughly late twenties, she’s just pretty enough not to be plain. Her hair is that nondescript colour somewhere between blonde and brown and she’s wearing the kind of cheap, throwaway clothes you can buy for the price of a couple of drinks. She blinks and twitches as the DJ’s spotlight hits her, a mouse in a short skirt and heels. Looking uncomfortable in its glare she finally moves towards the bar…

Easy Meat

Hazel Ward

£0.99 Added

A sinister man gets more than he bargains for when he makes a move on a young woman in a bar.

A flash fiction - a man is ominously pursued. What is he fleeing from? What is following him? Will he manage to escape?

He can feel eyes on him. He looks around, peering warily over his shoulder at strangers bustling around him. It’s busy, he feels crushed and needs to get off the main street. Fewer people to look at him. Less risky, he thinks...

Black Cat

Two sisters, one sister quiet and assuring and one sister a little overwhelming and demanding.

£0.99 Added

A flash fiction - a man is ominously pursued. What is he fleeing from? What is following him? Will he manage to escape?

The Blatherskite

A 5 year happy marriage ends in disaster

£1.99 Added

Two sisters, one sister quiet and assuring and one sister a little overwhelming and demanding.

A Fatal Blow

A young Arab woman is to be married to an older man already with wives and children. He crosses the desert with his family to the town of Asyut where she sits on the roof tops crying in vain.

£0.99 Added

A 5 year happy marriage ends in disaster

Adel's New Bride

The best promises are very hard to keep.

The old man is waking the old woman with the resolute tap he perfected during the war. She’s been expecting the tap for a week or more. At once, she gathers herself. She must prepare to move, these days. When all her strength is mustered, she pushes back the eiderdown, lowers her legs and carefully places each foot into slippers she knits for them both every year. She sniffs the air. Without touching the shutters she gauges that it’s dawn. It’s not cold, though. Summer has reached the farm.

‘Coffee, Joska?’ She’s standing by the range, still warm from the night before.

He’s going to refuse, as usual, but the diminutive of his name, not usual, catches at him. He’ll take the coffee today. Perhaps its bitterness will help. What nonsense, he thinks. Of course it won’t help. Nevertheless, he drinks the coffee, the scour adding to the sickness in his throat. He wipes his mouth. She’s never been a good coffee maker.

His wife doesn’t light the lamp, not out of economy or in deference to today’s business, but because she’s spent so long in this kitchen she no longer needs her eyes. She moves around with blind confidence, familiar with every mote of dust in the cupboards and every tear in the cloth over the chest under the window. She usually smoothes it, that cloth. Today she must steel herself to touch it. There’s nothing wrong with the cloth, or with the chest on which, for years, they’ve sat of an evening. What’s in the chest is a different matter...

£1.59 Added

A young Arab woman is to be married to an older man already with wives and children. He crosses the desert with his family to the town of Asyut where she sits on the roof tops crying in vain.

Wearing Silk

Katharine Grant

£1.29 Added

The best promises are very hard to keep.

The first time Leila was about to have sex with Norman he asked her if she would do something for him.

Here we go, she thought, preparing for whips, or him wanting her to piss on him. Men were so predictable.

‘Put your swimming costume on,’ he said.

The costume was damp and smelt of chlorine. A Nike black all in one, medium high gusset, sports back, neoprene, no nonsense number, it chafed her vagina. Hard making love in such a thing. But it seemed to do the trick for Norman. He became quite red in the face. At the last minute she unrolled it, as if it was an especially tight condom. That episode should have warned her.

Their first meeting had been so hopeful. They’d bumped into each other at the swimming pool café, and it seemed churlish not to sit together after swimming in adjacent lanes. Then they got talking. The after-swim coffee became regular...

Medium High Gusset

One morning when I got up, my dad was still at home, dressed in a tight, shiny suit. I’d only ever seen him in that suit on Sundays.

‘Is it Sunday?’ I asked.

He shook his head.

‘Don’t you have to go to work?’

My dad was always at work.

He continued reading the paper, so I grabbed his legs and hung on. He turned a page of the paper. I breathed in the smell of something sharp and unfamiliar, but I couldn’t resist looking at the sheet he was reading. That’s how I’d learnt how to read, from the back of his newspapers.

I always asked him questions about what I read:
‘What’s agrarian reform?’
‘What’s full capacity?’
‘What’s permanent revolution?’
‘Who was Stalin?’

But this time, before I could read very much, my mother waddled down the stairs, legs apart.

‘Leave your father alone.’

Something else was different. Elsie Mac, our neighbour from over the road, was rushing around in our kitchen. She handed me toast. I had to get off my father to eat it. She had her hand on my mother’s arm. Then she smiled at my father, showing yellow teeth. But her eyes weren’t smiley.

‘It’s all right; I’ll stay with her, George.’

He flinched. I’d never heard her call him George before.

‘You take the girl out. Enjoy yourself.’

Something was wrong. My father didn’t like Elsie Mac, or any other women in the house. When Elsie was around, he said my mother ‘Never got anything done.’ He’d once called Elsie an ‘Interfering old busybody.’ Why was Elsie here?...

£1.29 Added

Junction Ahead

When I saw that the Mammy was appearing in our town I wanted to go and see her. I was beginning to forget what a mammy was, but I knew that to have one was important to a boy. The teacher used to show us pictures of mammies in a book. She said mammies were always kind and rosy cheeked and held your hand.

‘A mammy is someone who belongs to you,’ the teacher said.

All I remember is a smell.

I don’t care if Mrs. Busby does take some of my wages off. I’ve got to see the Mammy, to prove those boys wrong, the ones who said that the Mammy was a mermaid and couldn’t breathe air, and that her skin had become all wrinkled from being in the tank and that she had forgotten how to talk and that she didn’t love us anyway.

In the city centre fair there is a helter skelter and a big wheel and a shooting gallery, but I run past all them to stand outside her tank. The tank is wide enough for her to swim a few strokes. I watch her sweep the floor of her underwater house with a broom. There is a cooker in the corner of the tank, just like in a real kitchen. You know it’s pretend, but when she touches it, it goes whoosh with the water as if it’s lighting up...

£1.29 Added

Exhibition Notes

When she was seventy four my mother began corresponding with an elderly Scottish widower called Robert who was working on a maths problem.

She got a ticket to the university library. A tiny woman, my mother: young people towered above her.

‘But they showed me how the computers worked, how to scan in books,’ she assured me on her regular phone call.

I imagined they treated her as a member of a rare species, surprised to find her in their territory. She soon spent days immersed in Californian maths and physics journals. Amongst the formal jargon were spattered Californian idioms: gotten, freshen up, dude.

Robert, seventy six, had a house full of books and journals. Since his wife died, he’d given up vacuuming. After four years the dust settled, he told her. Yet the picture he sent her of himself was fuzzy, as if he was in his own galaxy, at the top of his old creaky house.

‘Numbers; matter; creation: that’s what he’s concerned about.’

I stifled a laugh.

Next time I visited, she had ditched the Black Forest Gateaux, and was growing bean shoots on saucers, and eating quinoa. It tasted like shit. I spooned in flourless soy teacake. She said she had to look after her health now, couldn’t talk for long, she had to get back on the computer. Referred to a world-wide network of maths and physics freaks labouring over the problem. Except she called them colleagues. My mother had colleagues?

‘No one has ever been able to crack this problem. People dream of doing so. They talk about it at Maths Conventions. There’s one coming up. I’m thinking of going.’
A sharp pain gashed my stomach. She was uprooting us...

£1.29 Added

Collision Theory

Amongst those items recovered was an album of faded photographs. Sepia toned faces gazed out at him from foxed pages decorated with roses and twining tendrils of honeysuckle. The cream boards that formed the cover had pulled loose from their binding and flopped limply as he removed the book from the evidence bag and lay it down on the wooden table of the interview room. It was, he thought, a sad little volume, filled with the faces of the long dead, stiffly posed and their eyes gazing from the book at a world so changed it made him wince to think of it.

The young man accused of theft sat opposite him, blank eyed and sullen. His chair had been pushed back from the table and his long legs stretched beneath it, the air of studied nonchalance designed to make him look hard, though all it did, to Colm’s practised eye, was emphasize how scared this kid was.

Colm checked the tape and announced himself and the others in the room for the benefit of posterity, then, gently, careful not to dislodge any of the fragile images, he began to turn the pages of the book.

“Where’d you get this, Michael?”

The boy glanced at the book, a mere flick of his eyes sideways and down.

“Where’d I get what?”

“It’s an album, Michael. Family pictures. Someone’s grieving for this loss.” He paused, again noted the swift sideways look, but aimed at him this time and not the book upon the table.

“Some old book?” the boy said boldly. “You going to charge me with stealing some old book?” He jerked upright and then sat forward, pushing the album back towards Colm.

“Well, no,” Colm said. “I thought we’d charge you for the video camera and the bits of jewellery that we found first, but I’d like you to tell me about the book. Call it curiosity.”

“The boy shifted awkwardly He was baffled by this, Colm knew, by his interest in some tatty old album full of people who’d most likely been dead even before the lad was born.

“It’s me auntie’s, ain’t it?” he said at last.

“And which auntie would that be, Michael? Your auntie May that lives in Galway or your auntie Joan that married the teacher and won’t have anything to do with your lot now? Colm shook his head and allowed the creases on his ugly face to compose themselves into a look of deep sorrow at the boy’s situation.

“Your mam told me you were going straight, Michael. She told me you’d even got a job. What was it, Michael, couldn’t earn enough honestly, you had to make a bit extra thieving from those who worked hard for the things they’ve got?”

“What, like that scrappy old thing? Look at it. It’s filthy dirty and falling to bits.” He lunged forward and gave the book a shove that sent it to the floor, the poor old covers flapping and flailing in flight and the back one breaking away as it hit the floor.

Colm crossed the room and bent to pick up the book, an anger burning in his chest that was quite out of proportion to the boy’s action.

“It’s people’s lives you’re wrecking,” he almost shouted at the boy. “People like the ones here in the book. Ordinary working folk that can’t afford what your thieving costs them, never mind thinking what it’s costing you, lad.”

“Like you care.”

“Like I care!” Colm sighed and returned to his seat, placing the book closed once more upon the wooden table...

£1.29 Added

Stealing the Dark

Jane A Adams

£1.29 Added

Have you ever wanted to change the past? Sarah did and what's more she found herself in the privileged position to do so. Will it turn out to her satisfaction, though?

Funny Old World

A man has an encounter with his doppleganger and sees himself in a different light. Their meeting has a knock on effect for not only him but his wife too. His wife begins to warm to this stranger to devestating effect.

Jason hauled the trolley case from the pavement into the boot of the car.

“I’m looking forward to getting home and into my own bed.”

Carly’s voice startled Jason from his exhausted trance.

“Too right” he mumbled, too tired to animate his mouth. “I’m not looking forward to the drive though.”

“I’ll take over after…” Jason looked up, sensing Carly’s disquiet.

A man stood not 100 yards from the car on the opposite pavement. Jason stumbled backwards readying himself to run. He backed into the wall of the hotel behind him, hands either side of him, spread flat against the stone, searching for solidity, certainty, normality.

Every detail of this man’s face, his hair, his vintage Belstaff Jacket, his skinny chinos, his body shape, were all familiar to him, frighteningly familiar. Like looking in a mirror or seeing yourself unexpectedly on TV. Jason was looking into his own face. He was seeing himself. But this was no mirror; this was a real, solid double...

£0.99 Added

Have you ever wanted to change the past? Sarah did and what's more she found herself in the privileged position to do so. Will it turn out to her satisfaction, though?

The Man Who Met Himself

Roland Glover

£0.99 Added

A man has an encounter with his doppleganger and sees himself in a different light. Their meeting has a knock on effect for not only him but his wife too. His wife begins to warm to this stranger to devestating effect.

Someone has been vandalising the road signs around the village of Shilbottle.

The day after the great storm, Miss Prendergast sent out Milo Patrick to see what damage it had done to the roads around the village.

‘Make sure you get any blockages shifted by dark. Business might wait a day – it was a big storm, after all – but don’t take any longer than that.’ She stood in the doorway in her tweed suit, drumming two fingers on the lid of a paint can, awaiting a response. He took off his John Deere cap and scratched around the bald spot, then settled it back into its accustomed groove.

‘Well, Miss P, I’ve quite a bit to do in the village, y’know. I – ’

‘I want them clear, you understand? Smooth as ice. And the signs perfect too.’ She drilled him with a meaningful look and turned on her heel. He listened to her footsteps receding down the floor he’d mopped that morning, then shrugged on his coat.

* * *

Though roads and verges weren’t his job, strictly speaking, it was clear as he walked the village that no one else had been out to inspect them. Milo thought he might get some satisfaction dragging the few downed trees clear of the footpaths, clearing mud and twigs from the drainage channels along this stretch of the A1 (oddly, it never seemed much of a priority for the DoT) and generally restoring some semblance of order. He had a panel of glass bricks to replace in the village hall, and the floor to wax for the pie and pea supper at the weekend, but thought he could see to those with a few hours extra tomorrow and the next day. He wouldn’t see them in his pay packet, of course, but there were still compensations to being outside and away from the chemical fug, the polisher shaking his forearms long after he’d finished.

Nine Signs to Shilbottle

James Roderick Burns

£0.99 Added

Someone has been vandalising the road signs around the village of Shilbottle.

Life and all its daily pleasures, hopes, frustrations - and poetry - as the years pass in a small New York state community.

1

It was ten thirty in the morning, time for coffee and donuts, but Dustin Roberts had other things on his mind. He had slipped out of the prefabricated office unit and onto the shop floor twenty minutes ago, putting up the small satin ‘Java-time!’ banner beside his computer like a friendly mailbox flag, and locking out the screen. Now a cartoon Japanese gentleman in a bamboo-print kimono alternately smiled and frowned at the empty office. Wanda was out for the morning and Steve, the techie geek in charge of the processing software, away at a conference. Dustin wouldn’t be missed.

2

By the smallest of six wood saws on the shop floor he paused, looking around. The clock he carried in his head was ringing insistently. Time to be back at the desk, Dustin. Work calling. But he stood next to the silent machine anyway.

They had shut down production till lunchtime and the saw beneath his fingers had cooled in the morning air. It felt solid and slightly oily, damp where sawdust had stuck to the metal guides. He rubbed some in his palm.

While he typed, they sliced tree trunks into precise slabs and square sections like outsize matchsticks.

3

Though he couldn’t get out on the floor when they were in production, he would sometimes slip up onto the observation platform to watch the logs rattle in from the yard, their great blunt cigar-like shapes naked as pencils in a sharpener’s mouth, then the grip of the rollers guiding each under the blade, extractors sucking away sawdust. By the time they had ground through the process there was a stack of uniform timber in the holding bin. He smiled – nature into art – and sighed, turned back to the office.

‘What is your command, my master?’ asked the Japanese gentleman.

4

As the tree fell, miles away in the centre of town, Bobbie switched on the TV for the evening carols show. She was an early riser, so were the children, but it should be finished by midnight and – well, it wouldn’t seem like Christmas without the Mormons.

She took eggnog from the refrigerator. Bobbie didn’t drink much but holidays always seemed to make them act a bit out of character. Toni had been asleep for an hour, Adam for two, and Weemie since seven o’clock, but still she could feel something bubbling under the surface. Excitement, most likely. Just that.

5

Toni was full of candy and sweet dreams of the boy next door. She never worried about gaining weight, or blemishes, as her body seemed to magically extract what it needed from the food she ate. Twizzlers, pizza, even those weird hotdogs, all sticky with sweated onion, she snuck out of 7-11 with a Super Big Gulp to go; nothing affected her. She ran through life burning calories like a spelunker’s flare. He liked that, Tommy next door, caving – pushing himself through tiny little eyeholes in an upstate cave system every weekend. She smiled and turned over in her sleep.

6

Under the covers, Adam unfolded his legs to make them come back to life. His dad had approved this particular book – not that it would have stopped him, Adam working for neighbours to fund the things that really mattered – on the grounds that it was ‘educational’, about history and whatnot, and better than reading straight comic books. That was how he talked: ‘On the grounds that …’

Adam hated his dad sometimes but loved him, too, especially when he wasn’t with those idiot poetry groupies. He found a cool spot in his blanket and sighed. The torch blinked back on...

The Haiku Master

James Roderick Burns

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Life and all its daily pleasures, hopes, frustrations - and poetry - as the years pass in a small New York state community.

Cassandra asked for admission to the literature club of the university and was warmly welcomed by everybody. We liked newcomers. We liked to believe that we were expanding and it meant joy to have a new companion who shared our sophisticated passion.

Cassandra was a pale faced, pretty girl. She had long, brown hair, a little bit Jewish looking face with a characteristic, noble shaped nose, but I could only suspect this, for she never talked about her back-ground. Her big intelligent eyes made a disturbingly brisk, even too clever impression, and any time she started to explain something, they jumped out of her face, mesmerising her listeners. This might have been the cause, as I believed, that she was favoured in most of our discussions. Her presence often created an austere atmosphere within the group. She had some wild air around her that revealed hard-ships in her circumstances or past experiences, but she was the youngest in the group, she could have become the pet of the club with time, if she had been more patient, or had had more faith in herself.

The boys were very pleased with her, especially one of them. Chris studied at the Faculty of Medicine, his main interests were science and new technologies, not literature, but he enjoyed our group meetings. I always thought that he only joined us on a holiday-basis. He must have found compelling, the irresponsible play we often experience in the company of artists and bohemians. We provided a safe environment for him, in which his first romantic attempts at writing poetry were respected and not laughed at...

Cassandra

Csilla Toldy

£1.29 Added

A young man follows a young woman out of a tube station.

We were pressed side by side, wedged between enormous suitcases belonging to two tourists who glared at each other over our heads. As the carriage swayed round a bend in the tunnel, I grasped hold of the young woman’s arm to steady her, but she did not thank me, or even raise her eyes from her newspaper. I could smell her perfume. It was Chanel No. 5; I was sure of it. It was a sickly sweet relief to the nostrils in that sweaty carriage. My thigh was hot where it touched hers and beads of perspiration trickled down my forehead. I wasn’t used to travelling on tubes, or of the close proximity of strangers. Most passengers alighted at the stop before and the girl moved to sit down on a vacated seat, leaving me to mop my brow and recover my equanimity...

The Proximity of Strangers

Lisa Samson

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A young man follows a young woman out of a tube station.

An old woman trapped by floods.

The blackberries have ripened too quickly this year and the best ones are hidden under bramble leaves and nettles. Dark clouds are gathering so I have to be quick, and I get stung and scratched right up my forearms. On the way home the rain falls in sheets over swamped fields where seagulls circle.

At home, I rub fat into flour and watch two flies buzzing around the blackberries as the radio announces that a woman in Wales climbed onto her roof to escape the raging river below her. I imagine her fingers white at the knuckles, desperate tentacles clinging to slippery slates as she waits for emergency services.

Later, my stings tingle under long cotton sleeves, as the bloody juice squirts into Ingrid’s face, then dribbles down her chin and onto her cream blouse. We’ve got the telly on, and we’re watching a man stand helplessly by as his dog is swept to its death in a surging stream that was once a woodland path.

“It’ll get worse before it gets better,” I say, “mark my words.”

“Nice bit of crumble,” she dabs at her purple lips, staining her hanky with scarlet drops, “better than Co-op.”

I’m dying for a cigarette but Ingrid doesn’t like me to smoke in front of her. When the news presenter announces that low-lying areas of Yorkshire are bracing themselves for the rivers to burst their banks, Ingrid rises all in a fluster...

Waterlogged

Lisa Samson

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An old woman trapped by floods.

A story about a grudge match that invokes a background of class as competition, strong passions and a sought-after revenge.

Night Fight at the Zoo

Silver Surfing classes can have unexpected consequences, as Jean and Sam discover in this story of love and loss.

£1.99 Added

A story about a grudge match that invokes a background of class as competition, strong passions and a sought-after revenge.

The Jeanie-Pink

Caroline Boobis

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Silver Surfing classes can have unexpected consequences, as Jean and Sam discover in this story of love and loss.

Propelled thousands of miles away by childhood grief, Trish's search for happiness takes some unusual twists and turns.

The Healer

Caroline Boobis

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Propelled thousands of miles away by childhood grief, Trish's search for happiness takes some unusual twists and turns.

Jake escapes his old life only to discover that things may not be what they seem on the idyllic 'Black Isle'.

Black Isle Secrets

Caroline Boobis

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Jake escapes his old life only to discover that things may not be what they seem on the idyllic 'Black Isle'.

A boat trip on the fens with the ghost of Conrad.

We were holidaying on the river. The brochure had described it as a cruise. To be honest, it was really just a week long piss-up, downing tins of beer as we drifted between one riverside pub and the next. Well, what else was there to do? Our vessel required no especial skill to master. At the flick of a switch and a puff of black smoke, the engine would cough into life, like a smoker choking on his first fag of the day. The tiller appeared to be nothing more than a steering wheel transplanted from a car. Besides, it demanded very little attention – the convoy ahead ensured that you rarely travelled above five miles an hour and the channels for the most part were dead straight. And there was nothing to look at. The banks had been raised against the threat of flood and since the surrounding countryside was flat it was almost completely hidden from view. The occasional stunted willow or bungalow roof stuck its head above the trench, but that was all. The constant traffic had put flight to all the usual riverside fauna – ducks, water buffalo or whatever – and the oil residues had seen off anything that may have lurked in the water. So that was it, really. There was nothing to do but drink until we reached the dismal seaside resort to which all the waters seemed to flow. And when we arrived? There’d be nothing to do but drink…

We’d picked up the boat at one of those forlorn little towns by the river – dead out of season, comatose at its height...

Horror Story

Paul Sutton Reeves

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A boat trip on the fens with the ghost of Conrad.

A flash fiction story - someone is hiding in the maize fields, someone who needs help.

Ants trail across my arm, an army of purpose, and instinctively I shake them off. The traitor bird, alert to my shifting, startles and lifts. Voices, sharp in the distance – I claw the earth, frantic – then still. A whistle: harsh, inevitable. Steps vibrate about me, grass rustles and I discover an unexpected, desperate, passionate, belief in god...

Is Nothing

Tasha has just moved into her new house, hoping for friendly neighbours. Instead she is faced with Satanic Snarl.

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A flash fiction story - someone is hiding in the maize fields, someone who needs help.

Satanic Snarl

Nancy Charley

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Tasha has just moved into her new house, hoping for friendly neighbours. Instead she is faced with Satanic Snarl.

Twelve workers trapped underground working on a momentous project. But 'God' has other ideas.

In the beginning was the word and the word was...

We heard it before we saw anything, a scraping of stone upon stone before the blackness arrived suddenly and heavily and with a terrible thud.
In the beginning was the word. And the word was...

God was in his office. We used to call him ‘God’ because he was all knowing, all seeing. He was Godfrey Rodgers and a right prat to boot. He was ‘Management’ in a jacket and one of those ‘new boys’ whom modern politicians adore. He was King of his castle alright.

‘I’ll turn the lights out on you lot,’ he used to say and we’d urge him to do just that, we liked to see just how far we could push him. And, on that particular day, that’s just what he did, Mr ‘oh so high and mighty’ had the last laugh. So when he did cut the power it actually looked like he might have had some of his own after all. He switched off all the lights and took everything he could carry with him. He even moved the huge stone bench and locked it in place so that no-one could contemplate escape and then he left us underground to perish. He could be such an ignoramus when he put his mind to it. So there we were, twelve of us in total, seven men, three women, two children, all of us left in utter darkness; deep beneath the earth and waiting. At first we didn’t take it seriously, he’d often turned the lights off for ‘a joke’, but this time it was different...

Exodus

Angela Huskisson

£1.29 Added

Twelve workers trapped underground working on a momentous project. But 'God' has other ideas.

We lived in Sliema at 197 Prince of Wales Road in a two storey apartment reached from a ground floor staircase that curved high and tight upwards. There was a graceful banister that ended in a tight curl at the bottom and it was my ambition to slide down its entire length, but it was forbidden. What if I fell off? What if my little brother copied me? One day, I promised myself, when they are all out except for Tessa, the maid, I would do it. Sometimes I slid one bare leg over the polished wood and felt it glide under its own weight but I daren’t shift my body weight across the centre. I just knew I wouldn’t be able to resist the urge to do it and the marble floor beneath was very hard. Graham had dropped a Dinky toy from upstairs once, not entirely accidentally. It was a breakdown truck and the crane section had bent so he bawled until Daddy straightened it out. Not a mark on the floor though.

This day, I was sliding down the stairs with the top half of my body providing the limiting friction, but my feet on the steps. I had done it several times so I had worked out just how much weight allowed the slight loss of control that made it exciting. A couple of times I had overdone it and spun round, nearly falling backwards down the steps but I had been agile enough to catch the banister with my hands before I went too far. My mother appeared at the top of the stairs.

‘Vivien, I’m going to the shop. Do you want to come?’ she called down to me.

‘Can I stay with Tessa?’ I called back.

I knew that Tessa would be here cleaning all morning, moving from room to room with her bare feet slapping on the stone floors. She had horrified my sister and thrilled me by standing on a huge cockroach on the upstairs landing...

Octopus

It was sweltering in the NAFFI hut. Father Christmas sat sweating, legs akimbo, showing his navy drill shorts and bare legs under the long red robe. He wore huge white plimsolls. His legs were damp and covered with ginger swirls of hair, and his white beard had slipped sideways so you could see his stubbled chin and the spray of freckles beneath. I noticed that his hands were huge, not, I was sure, the size of hands the real Father Christmas would have. I knew that the Royal Navy Children’s Christmas Party did not feature the real Father Christmas but a volunteer rating who received an extra rum ration for his trouble. This Father Christmas was a pretence for the benefit of the younger children. I was nine and didn’t require such charades.

However, the false Father Christmas had just called my name and he did have a parcel for me in those lumpy hands, so I stepped forward to take it. He straightened his beard and tapped his knees.

‘Hello, Vivien,’ he said, glancing quickly at the writing on the parcel. ‘Have you been a good girl this year?’

The other Father Christmases hadn’t asked questions. They just handed over the parcel and said ‘Happy Christmas.’ This one was hanging on to my parcel waiting for me to sit on his knee. Other children, further on in the alphabet than V, were starting to nudge me forward, impatient for their own presents from the sack. I took a deep breath and mounted the platform. His knees were open and the red robe sagged between them so I perched on one knee, holding out my hand...

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Spit and Promise

My mother always said I didn’t notice much but in those last weeks in Malta; even I felt urgency like a held breath over everything. My sister and I were despatched to our room to clear out just about everything because of the weight restriction on the plane and we fell to quarrelling about whether her ballet books were more important than my drawing books.
‘Do be sensible, you two. They won’t let us on the plane and then what?’ Mother warned darkly.

‘Where will we go? We don’t have a house in England any more.’ I asked, picturing us wandering the streets in search of shelter.

‘We’re going to Grandma’s to start with while we wait for a naval house in St Budeaux.’ Mother snapped, far from happy with the plan. She and Grandma didn’t get on.

* * * * *

I had been six when I last saw Grandma but all I remembered was the smell of mint imperials which she sucked one after the other, and the look of damp face powder that clung to her thin-skinned, blue veined face. I was ten now and ready to remake her acquaintance, but what I really wanted to see was her inseparable companion, Polly the parrot, who was ancient, fierce and ugly and who could reduce a wooden cotton reel to needle thin splinters in half an hour with her chisel beak. I could sit for hours watching Polly pacing up and down her perch, dipping her silver grey head to some rhythm only she heard, stopping to crack open a sunflower seed from time to time...

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Grandma and Polly

‘I don’t want to go.’

I was adamant, inclined to render myself boneless, sink to the floor and become lead. My mother glared at me.

‘You’ll get your socks dirty if you lie on the floor. And we are all going.’

She would have sounded cold to a stranger, but this was an old tactic of mine that was exhausting its credibility. Perhaps I had been overusing it. I was nine after all. My Father looked in.

‘Come on, Skins – I’m going to get the car. Do you want to come?’

He was irresistible, my Father, when he called me ‘Skins’ and invited me to do something just with him. I got up from the floor and brushed myself down.
‘Me, Me’ my brother tugged at his shorts hem. I frowned fiercely at him from behind Dad’s back.

‘Not this time, you help Mummy with the picnic.’ Dad said.

Me and Dad walked up to Frankie Borge’s garage to collect the hire car. I hoped it would be the little red open top four-seater that we often took to the beaches.

I loved the rush of warm wind in my hair and the suck of the leather seats on my bare legs but Frankie handed the keys of the heavy Triumph Mayflower to Dad. He looked up at the perfect blue sky, saying confidently, ‘Rain coming.’...

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Catacombs

I tipped forward, one leg curled round the metal bar and the sky spun under me, rocking into place at my feet. I hooked my free leg onto the bar, trailed my arms close to the ground, blew my hair out of my face and examined the world upside down. I had finished my story and been allowed out of class early so I was temporarily queen of the climbing bars and all I surveyed. The vast sandy parade ground of RN Verdala was my sky and I could see the two storey flat-roofed classroom blocks in each corner of it on the periphery of my vision, pale honey constructions the same colour as the ground, in which my classmates laboured under the cool eye of the real Queen.

Her portrait adorned all the classrooms, a beautiful young woman in a white satin dress with a blue sash and a diamond star, and an even shinier diamond tiara. She had two children, Charles and baby Anne with the platinum curls. Our headmaster, Captain Morgan, saluted her portrait whenever he left the room. We sang God Save The Queen on special days, her birthday, Malta GC Day and if anyone died, though hardly anyone did. She was like a fairy or Father Christmas to us. We never thought of being Her in our pretend games; to do so might have brought down some awful un-stated retribution, worse than Captain Morgan’s occasional roaring fits…

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Pinky Pants

Theresa says the Virgin in the Church of Saint Agatha has been seen weeping. Theresa is very excited. She calls her ‘Santa Agatha.’ It is Saint Agatha’s Feast Day on Friday and the procession will pass up Prince of Wales Road, where I live. This is destiny because Friday is my birthday so I must have an affinity with Saint Agatha. Theresa has asked if she can watch from our balcony and my mother, who is kind to our Maltese maid, has said yes. She herself will stay in the back garden under the apricot tree, away from the noise, but she says I can watch with Theresa if she doesn’t mind. Theresa has been telling me about it all morning. I had to follow her from room to room as she dusted and swept in order to hear the whole story. Theresa likes to work on all fours so, quite often, I found myself facing her huge bottom and the hard grey soles of her feet while she talked.

The statue that weeps will be placed in a barrow full of flowers, offerings and prayer slips and will be pulled by penitents all the way from the church to Sliema Creek. (This is why Theresa wants a good viewing point; she is too fat to walk the four miles in the midday heat even in February) Once there, the creek fishermen will ask for her blessing on their boats. Theresa has told me that Saint Agatha is the saint you pray to for protection from fire, and she is special to bell-makers. (I will ask Daddy why fishermen pray to Saint Agatha when Saint Andrew is the patron saint of fishermen.) There will be musicians and a choir, and best of all, a procession of nuns. How many, I ask shuddering with anticipation.
Maybe twenty, maybe more, Theresa guesses. I can’t wait to see that many.

I am going to be a nun one day. I haven’t told my mother and father yet though it was our trips to Mosta Dome and the Catacombs at Rabat that gave me the idea, so really it was their doing. My mother finds visiting Maltese places uncomfortable (she’s happiest in the NAAFI stores because they look like English shops) so I shall have to introduce the idea carefully. Ever since we came to Malta and I first saw nuns at close hand I have known that one day, I would dress in a swirling black robe with a belt made of beads, wear a silver cross and a bright white wimple and be a Bride of Christ. They were so calm and mysterious, murmuring to each other, eyes downcast unless they were in church, when they exuded something I later knew was ecstasy...

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The Feast of Saint Agatha

A bowl of freshly picked tomatoes. That’s all it took. Just carrying them from the larder to the kitchen filled her head with sensual images, square white buildings, bright paper kites in the deepest blue sky, tanned faces, ramshackle single decker buses, a different colour for each destination. Blue for Rabat, green for Sliema, mustard yellow for Bershibuga. She didn’t know the spellings, just the Moorish sounds. The images were also aromatic. Dust, garlic, engine oil, donkey dung and fresh tomatoes. She was again an English child in pale cotton clothes tumbling in a kaleidoscope of cultures.

But what Pamela remembered most vividly about that time in Malta was discovering vomiting. Her discovery occurred one day when she wandered outside her legal play area, which was 50 yards up and down Prince of Wales Road, measured from her four white front door steps. She was eight years old and wandered off-limits often, much to her mother’s loud dismay, but everything beyond 50 yards was so interesting, unlike everything inside it. Of course the kite shop next door was a wonderland but the owner, a swarthy Maltese man she imagined was called Mario, did not encourage her penniless visits...

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Tomato Sauce

Poor Keith, nothing was too good for his special valentine.

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Happy Valentine's Day, Darling!

Taking tea with Marc Bolan in a cafe somewhere in London

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Poor Keith, nothing was too good for his special valentine.

Taking Tea With Marc Bolan

Lynda Nash

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Taking tea with Marc Bolan in a cafe somewhere in London

I was sitting with Sal in the Strawberry Fields café on Penny Lane. Sal of the orange hair, black leggings and red lipstick. Sal, with the dark voice, who I fancied something rotten. Sal, who scared the shit out of me...

I was sitting with Sal in the Strawberry Fields café on Penny Lane. Sal of the orange hair, black leggings and red lipstick. Sal, with the dark voice, who I fancied something rotten. Sal, who scared the shit out of me. The café had that late afternoon listless feel to it. Rain battered the windows, twisting the Methodist church opposite into strange shapes. No blue suburban skies that day. Oh, and no roundabout either, just a triangular traffic island. And not even a shelter in the middle, just a sort of cabin with grime-smeared windows, peeling paintwork and a faded sign saying SERG ANT PEP RS. It’s been closed for years.

It had been Sal’s idea, apparently, the book club – Paperback Writers – her name, of course. Only no books were allowed, just stories. She held court at three o’clock every other Monday, for reasons best known to herself and, as far as I know, never explained. Which, basically, meant no one turned up except students and people who didn’t work on Monday afternoons. Or at all. So it was mostly students. And not many of them. There were slatted wooden chairs and small tables you could pull together according to the size of the group. In one corner were mock-leather armchairs round a mock-teak coffee table, strewn with trendy magazines. Framed posters of American Jazz musicians and singers were hung around the walls. The teas and coffees were all Fairtrade; Sal wouldn’t have been there otherwise...

Closing in Five

Colin Watts

£1.29 Added

I was sitting with Sal in the Strawberry Fields café on Penny Lane. Sal of the orange hair, black leggings and red lipstick. Sal, with the dark voice, who I fancied something rotten. Sal, who scared the shit out of me...

A tale of a strange and yet compelling woman, an enigma who draws in her 'carriers' to do her bidding. But all is not how it seems as she spreads her poison. But her trail is already of interest.

Ms Wright, Dee Wright. That was her name; thin, pale and some might even say ‘interesting’. I suppose the first word to describe her would be ‘striking’, but that could have just been a trick of the light. Eyes which appeared like quicksilver, glaucous, but in reality were of the palest violet. She worked at night and slept all day and perhaps that explained her strange pallor. No-one knew about her links to the spiritual world at the time, but one did note the men. She was always with men, not apparently of a passionate nature but surrounding her, like moths inhaling her light. And such a strange light too, but attractive in that compelling manner which was hers alone.

She rarely spoke, she rarely smiled and she was seldom sighted with the same man twice. Of course I often wondered what the attraction was and that’s when I did a silly thing- I decided to follow her. It was a cool evening, getting dark early now, when out of sheer cat like curiosity and because I really had nothing better to do I slipped into the shadows and trailed her. Her heels click- clacked all the way down Main Street and then she took a left into South 31st. She drew her soft coat to the stem of her body, the collar fluting prettily around that long neck, hair swept up as if dressed for a special occasion. She didn’t wear jewellery, she wasn’t the type.

She worked in an all-night dispensary, an ordinary looking place caught between buildings. I spied her through the tiny window while she worked busily concocting, making notes, steadily engrossed in study with spectacles perched on the end of her long nose. And then she turned a full ninety degrees on her stool and was suddenly heading for the rear door towards the street. Following a short interval she returned, head down, and continued studiously with her work. And at that precise point I entered the dispensary and began to peruse the shelves. I spied a bored looking ugly young man seated at a desk so I marched straight over and asked to see the pharmacist: her.

‘Just a moment,’ he said. And then there she was materialising right in front of me. Ms D. Wright spelled her badge. I made up some cock and bull story about a headache, temperature, painful joints, that sort of thing.

‘Sounds like a touch of the ‘flu,’ she drawled, all flat vowels. ‘There’s a lot of it about.’ She waved a hand idly at a bank of cold remedies.

‘Not a lot to worry about at your age I shouldn’t think’ she said, ‘but check out emergency if things start to feel worse or you get a rash, that sort of thing. Always best to err on the side of caution. But if I were you I’d go home, keep warm and take plenty of fluids.’

She looked weary, her translucent skin sharpened by the harsh shop lighting, bluish smudges reflecting from high cheekbones. She didn’t look at me directly, I was of little interest to her, but I caught her scent and gagged a little on its sickly notes...

Ms Wright

Angela Huskisson

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A tale of a strange and yet compelling woman, an enigma who draws in her 'carriers' to do her bidding. But all is not how it seems as she spreads her poison. But her trail is already of interest.

A flash fiction set on a porch in Illinois

The crows mock and the hammock rocks as evening comes in to land. The thunderheads smoke with unspoilt rain, and the wind-chime idles into a John Cage moment, tinged with a last, doleful, hollow note...

Prairie Rain

This is a new adult story about a student called Nicky. She juggles caring responsibility challenges alongside attempting to have a social life.

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A flash fiction set on a porch in Illinois

The Real Me

F. Linday

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This is a new adult story about a student called Nicky. She juggles caring responsibility challenges alongside attempting to have a social life.

A forty-something man attends a friends funeral up North, and has a strange encounter with an old lover, and with the local characters...

Johnson rapped hard on the mahogany bar, skimming his knuckles, and he bit his lip impatiently. He wanted to curse as the pasty young barman slowly shuffled toward him, all skinny arms and bony elbows and hard-bitten fingernails. The kid feigned a half-smile and looked up at the ceiling.

‘What can I get you?’ He asked, as if he didn’t care, his accent thick and Lancastrian.

Johnson wasn’t in the mood. ‘We’ve been here for four hours, and this is our sixth pint – so what do you think?’

The kid scowled and shrugged his shoulders. ‘Same again? Three pints?’

The pints were pulled, and Johnson threw his money on to the pitted counter too loudly while eyeing the kid under a set of bristling eyebrows. He knew he could carry off a pretty fearsome look when pushed to do so.

Back at their table, Howard was trying to strike a match on a beer-coaster. ‘I’ve a photograph back home,’ he said sadly. ‘Malcolm’s fortieth. He shaved his head if you remember, and Jenny drew a four zero in large red felt tip pen on the back of his skull. He enjoyed that – turning his back on everyone.’

Howard shook his head, and looked at his too-shined shoes. He was over-dressed for the pub, with his double-breasted mohair suit impeccably pressed and his hair gelled like a film star. ‘Too young …too young,’ he said.

Endings

Geoff Poundes

£1.29 Added

A forty-something man attends a friends funeral up North, and has a strange encounter with an old lover, and with the local characters...

Bill keeps seeing the same woman on his way to and from the train - at least, he thinks she's the same woman...

‘You’re about to lose your keys,’ Bill said as he strode past the blonde with the vivid pink rucksack. She started and pulled back against the cemetery railings, one hand splayed against the stone and brick pillar, the other against her chest. This drew attention to the extraordinary length of her fingernails. Bill blinked: what kind of job could you actually do with nails that long? They were real too, yellowing and dirty, curving implausibly. They made him feel queasy. He pulled his eyes away from her splayed fingers, to her shock of hair: bleached, up-combed, back-combed, sprayed; one single lock of pure white waved up and away from her temple. It made the rest look brassy. Heavy black eye makeup and purple lipstick, and a nose ring with a chain, which attached to another ring in her ear.

In the second it took Bill to take all this in he had turned completely to face her, still walking, backwards now.

‘Sorry, didn’t mean to give you a fright,’ he said, ‘but your keys are falling out of your pocket.’

She patted herself down and rescued the trailing keys.

‘Hey, thanks!’ She called after him.

Bill shook his head, waved vaguely, and walked on. There was something familiar about her. He set his mind to work on it and, hitching up his backpack, heavy with cakes and wine, he lengthened his stride.

He had to scuttle over the bridge to make the train.

Elsa Lanchester, he thought as the train pulled out and he rested his backpack against the grab pole, Bride of Frankenstein. He grinned to himself, and then straightened his face as he noticed the pinstripe leaning against the opposite door glaring suspiciously.

At work, Bill settled down at his computer and a particularly tiresome bit of code, which kept him busy until lunchtime. Lunch was spent in the company of Jas and Darrell, his immediate co-workers, consuming the wine and cake along with their usual wraps from the Prêt on the corner. It was an awkward gathering; no one quite wanted to wish Bill a happy birthday under the circumstances...

Eye of the Beholder

Hell hath no fury like a mountain underestimated, and on one bleak spring day just about everyone underestimates the Old Woman, with disasterous consequences.

Starkridge nestled into the lower slopes of a mountain known locally as the Old Woman. It was a place for those who appreciated scenery, and were oblivious to comfort; the mountain was riddled by potholes, rough water and sheer drops.

If you had a good sense of direction and there was a clear day, you could see to... Without question a place to look out from, not to look at; a landscape with a sinister personality of its own, that might make the imaginative uneasy.

Totally dominated by the Old Woman, it was perhaps inevitable that Starkridge should support a thriving mountain rescue service. People were always falling foul of the Old Woman; she had opinions, and ways of dealing with people who crossed her.

It was not easy for a mountain to have a concept of time; but in the general way of things, the Old Woman had been around long enough; relatively young in the measuring of the cosmos, but ancient beyond all reckoning to the life that crawled upon her slopes. She had seen things, heard things, and drawn her conclusions. The Old Woman had a way of making her opinions felt, and ways of interfering when she felt like doing so. She was a mountain to be reckoned with.

In this joyless spot, beguiled by who knows what opium sullied fantasy, a Victorian playboy had built his mock-baronial hunting lodge. It was a modest building of only twelve bedrooms, a turret and generally gothic design. No one quite remembered what had become of this son of the industrial age, but he had not survived to enjoy his creation for long.

A series of short-lived tenancies had each ended in disasters of various kinds, and the hunting lodge had been empty for several years, falling into an attractive decay, when it once more became a centre of activity, and a new source of irritation to the Old Woman.

The new owners, the Randall family, had gradually recovered the hunting lodge from the brink of dilapidation using a substantial redundancy payment, an ill-judged loan from a novice bank manager and fanatical vision. Their intention was to turn The Hunting Lodge into an hotel.

George Randall had fallen for the Lodge's air of genteel roguishness and decay. Once the decay had been seen to, the thin layer of mellowed charm was ruthlessly excised and the Lodge was neither genteel nor roguish. It regained the eager, insensitive brashness of its youth and no amount of work or money could convince him that the house would regain the grace he had once imagined it possessed.

George had been fooled by the mountain. It was one of the Old Woman's mists that had provoked his romantic imagination, making the Lodge seem so sinisterly desirable. It was fortunate that Mr Randall could laugh at the crass vulgarity of the Victorian architecture, but in his heart he knew that the Lodge lacked that vital ingredient, atmosphere, with which to carry off its own peculiar style.

Paula Randall had imagined that working together would bring George and herself closer, that they would develop a rapport here in the wilds, with only their own company, that had been lacking in their previous executive existence. She was quickly disabused of this notion. She felt the Lodge to be a millstone about her neck, always making demands. She had done what she could to make the house comfortable, overcompensating for the bleak locale and draughty rooms by running the central heating almost constantly and several degrees higher than strictly necessary. Her chief ambition, apart from leaving the Lodge altogether, was to be able to fit secondary glazing.

Paula had enjoyed the renovation; she and her elder daughter had worked together, doing as much of the unskilled work as they could. She justified this as a cost cutting exercise, but would not have missed it for the world. Apart from the pleasure of knocking damaged plaster off the walls, it had finally given her an opportunity to get close to Karen. Working together, choosing carpets and bedspreads, there had been a semblance of the family spirit she had always hoped for. It had been short lived. As soon as the work was completed, Karen had gone, with much relief and never a backward glance, to college...

£1.29 Added

Bill keeps seeing the same woman on his way to and from the train - at least, he thinks she's the same woman...

Starkridge

Into the labyrinth, two strangers go...

The brighter the sunlight, the deeper the shade.

The roads diverge beyond the bridge. The wedge of land between is crowded with dog-leg lanes and alleyways. Tall and narrow buildings jostle for air space above and obstruct the thoroughfares below. No straight line crosses from one side to the other. All paths are forced to twist and turn; down side-alleys, beneath brick arches and along dark tunnels, following ways that subtly, secretly conspire to turn the traveller back, or lead to dead ends. In that labyrinth of doubt and uncertainty you surrender all sense of forward motion, exist in a nightmare where the world moves around you, but you are fixed in unspecified space...

£1.29 Added

Hell hath no fury like a mountain underestimated, and on one bleak spring day just about everyone underestimates the Old Woman, with disasterous consequences.

Cat Alley Blues

When Daniel finds two runaways hiding in his cellar, he is charmed by their youth and innocence. As he soon learns, however, Imogen and Leo are hiding a dark secret. LOVING IMOGEN is a novella of approximately 32,000 words.

Rosemary is for remembrance, they say, and it is true. It is unfortunate, then, that it reminds him only of his folly.

For folly it certainly was. Only a saint or a simpleton would leave his door key beneath a plant pot, and since he cannot believe himself a saint he is forced to conclude that he is a fool. He could blame his forgetfulness, his habit of losing things, and a childhood spent locking himself out of the house, but none of these excuses would allay his foolishness. It is surprising, perhaps, that nothing worse happened – the newspapers carry breathless reports of violent robberies and assaults every day – but horror, he has learned, can come in some rather beguiling forms.

He is older now, and at least marginally less foolish, and day and night he keeps the door locked, and the windows fastened. Charity collectors, political candidates and religious visitors all get equally short shrift when they call, which they rarely do – word has spread, perhaps, that the cantankerous old fellow at 10 Riverview Terrace is unreceptive to their various messages. No one, he thinks, has cause to visit him now. He has retired from his teaching job. He has no close family or friends. He holds no particular religious or political convictions. He is not without charitable instincts, but instead of making small donations during his life he has resolved to bequeath a large sum to various good causes in his will. There is no one else to whom he might leave it, after all.

And so here he is, amidst the debris of a spent life and a dead love, an ageing man for whom no one cares.

‘An unenviable position,’ he admits, standing by the kitchen door and watching the dusk gather over the hills. ‘Most unenviable, indeed. But I must have seen it coming, mustn’t I? Even at my happiest, I must have known that it would end like this. And yet the knowledge did nothing to stop me. Stop talking to yourself, you fool,’ he adds, and falls silent.

Taking refuge in the past, the common consolation of old age, is not easy in his case. His life has contained little of glamour or glory; it has, on the contrary, been entirely ordinary. His early ambitions all withered, one by one, as he confronted the fact of his own mediocrity. In the end, he settled for a quiet life in a sleepy town, just as he settled for teaching the great works of English Literature rather than writing them. Love? He enjoyed a few little affairs, none of them very abiding or satisfying. They all let him down in the end, as surely as life and circumstances and his own character failed him. In short, his has been a humdrum life, led by a commonplace man.

Except for Imogen, that is. Only she ever seemed likely to temper the base metal of his life with gold, and even she proved false in the end...

£0.99 Added

Into the labyrinth, two strangers go...

Loving Imogen

Mari Biella

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When Daniel finds two runaways hiding in his cellar, he is charmed by their youth and innocence. As he soon learns, however, Imogen and Leo are hiding a dark secret. LOVING IMOGEN is a novella of approximately 32,000 words.

Ten Flash Fictions, from 449 to 96 words short. Illicit affairs and railroad crashes, murderous spouses and vengeful neighbours.

When her train came in, Barton told himself, he would find the words.

The station was all but deserted at that time of night. The cafe and the coffee bars were shuttered. There were very few people about, and all of them clustered near the main entrance, waiting for trains or people on trains, or for things known only to themselves. A member of the emergency services in a peaked cap and wearing something that looked like a yellow life jacket had strolled through, equipment reminiscent of rescue gear dangling from his belt. It was nearly midnight, and neon lights blazed under the Victorian glass canopy. It would be tomorrow soon, and tomorrow would be another day.

Barton walked to the end of the platform, which stuck out pier-like into the sea of darkness where coloured lights glimmered like marker-buoys. One thing is always like another. He could not find the right words though, which would be like the truth, and what he needed to say.

When her train came in, he told himself, the right words would come too, as if they had also been carried in under the harsh light of the glass canopy, out of darkness...

A Feast of Flash Fictions

Lucy wakes on a house she does not recognise, next to a man she doesn't know. It is only when Mrs McCready comes to the door that she begins to understand what has happened, and how long ago...

Lucy woke feeling weak, but no longer ill. There was sun behind the thin curtains for the first time in days; she could feel it on her shoulder. She pulled the covers up a little, burrowing into the pillow, preferring the warmth of the bed to the weak comfort of the wintry sun; not really ready to wake, not ready to admit she was feeling better, and would have to go to work.

Alister felt her stir. He turned to look at his wife, smoothing her hair away from her eyes.

‘Morning,’ he said.

Her eyes flew open, no longer half asleep, and a look of puzzlement and fear passed across her face.

‘What's the matter?’ he asked, laughing.

Lucy's heartbeat slowed again. Why be afraid of Alister? She rubbed her eyes with a hand that shook a little.

‘Sorry. Still half asleep, I didn't expect you to be there.’

Not the precise truth. She had not expected anyone to be there, she had forgotten his existence. Perhaps she was not well enough to go to work after all.

Work? What work? she asked herself, the image of grey desk and filing cabinet fading into absurdity. Lucy had never worked. She had married Alister straight out of school at sixteen, looked after his ageing father for fifteen years, and when he died, they had settled down to having babies. Three so far, all boys, thank God. It was the only way to justify that long wait.

It was strange; she could remember nothing of those fifteen years, other than the basic fact of their existence. Her swift explanation each time someone asked why she had waited so long to fulfil her function, her stammered, Alister's father needed looking after, was not fleshed out in her memory. She knew that Alister's father had been called Ralph, and that he had eventually died of cancer. There were photographs of him in every room, so that she could convince herself that she remembered what he looked like, but deep down she knew that she did not remember his face, or anything else about him.

Lucy would not dream of telling Alister about her faulty memory, he might start thinking it was time to trade her in for a younger model. She wasn't doing badly really. Twenty-five years of marriage behind her, and no sign that his eye was wandering. A man as successful as Alister would not normally be expected to keep an ageing wife, it could be seen as a sign of weakness. Of course, having the children late helped. He would have a hard time getting out of their contract if he decided he wanted a new wife before Jonathan was at least sixteen. So she had a clear ten years yet...

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Ten Flash Fictions, from 449 to 96 words short. Illicit affairs and railroad crashes, murderous spouses and vengeful neighbours.

Deja Vu

Two goddesses meet on a beach.

I seem to have had my eyes shut for some time, now. I listen to the waves, quiet ripples about my ankles; heavy sucking roar further out. I breathe in time with the heavier sound – slow, deep. The salt kicks in at the back of my throat, replacing the thicker sharper taste that had been there moments before. There is the merest suggestion of another roar; somewhere in the back of my mind – lion or motor, or whatever it is – it fades. I clear the smoke from my lungs, the stench from my nostrils; the bile from my throat. Sun on my shoulders, zephyr against my face, neck, hands; almost stirring the hair slicked back against my skull. One more deep exhalation: Time to open my eyes.

‘Hello.’

She stands beside me, looking out to the clear horizon. She does not turn to look at me as she speaks. I did not hear her arrive. I check up the beach; there are no obvious footprints, no shoes kicked off next to the high leather boots I had been wearing moments before. A little shorter than I, she stands calf deep in the water, once white trousers rolled up almost far enough to not get wet; getting wet. Her arms are crossed beneath her breasts, not defensive, but relaxed, the sleeves of the faded orange kurta also rolled. Her hair is not quite blonde, and just long enough to catch up in a band at the nape of her neck; hardly worth the trouble. There is a lot about her that seems marginal; almost this, not quite that. Almost beautiful; she is not quite ugly. She turns her head, and her eyes are – almost – the colour of the sea. Not the sea where we are now; a colder, more northern sea, is reflected in her eyes...

£1.29 Added

Lucy wakes on a house she does not recognise, next to a man she doesn't know. It is only when Mrs McCready comes to the door that she begins to understand what has happened, and how long ago...

Glory, or Hope

Danny P. Grunch had no sense of rhythm and about as much melodic movement in his body as a school of barnacles stuck to the bottom of an upturned boat. He thought he could dance - he couldn't - until he went to Africa and met a Witch Doctor...

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Two goddesses meet on a beach.

Danny's Dancing Legs

Ray Lawrence

£1.99 Added

Danny P. Grunch had no sense of rhythm and about as much melodic movement in his body as a school of barnacles stuck to the bottom of an upturned boat. He thought he could dance - he couldn't - until he went to Africa and met a Witch Doctor...

Jeff had betrayed Sandra in the worst possible way and now he wants to come back!

Another Broken Heart

Jael tells what really happened when her husband Heber's old mate Sisera dropped in. Not quite what you read in the Song of Deborah.

Well, what was I meant to do? Heber was off watering the goats, wasn't he? There I was struggling to get the damn tent up and trying not to knock over the jars of milk, me having milked the wretched goats before Heber sauntered off to the river. Anyway, there I was, with this tent almost up, when who comes by but Heber's old drinking pal, Sisera.

Now we don't exactly get many visitors, not since Heber got so cantankerous and decided we could manage better on our own, away from the rest of the Kenites. He never was all that hot on family, a bit of a loner, except when it came to chatting up strangers at markets. You should see some of the shifters and losers he brings home with him, claiming them as life-long buddies. There's definitely something not quite the shekel with my husband, but there you go...

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Jeff had betrayed Sandra in the worst possible way and now he wants to come back!

Judges

As Carol looked back on that terrible time she soon discovered that she was not alone.

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Jael tells what really happened when her husband Heber's old mate Sisera dropped in. Not quite what you read in the Song of Deborah.

The Power of Love

A grieving woman looking back on happy times and in the process discovers something which she never knew which finally gives her the peace she desperately needs.

£2.49 Added

As Carol looked back on that terrible time she soon discovered that she was not alone.

Love Is All That Matters

We had been so happy Phil and I but now something seemed to be tearing us apart - it was more than I could take, I had to do something about it and soon!

£2.49 Added

A grieving woman looking back on happy times and in the process discovers something which she never knew which finally gives her the peace she desperately needs.

Having It All

Keith's obsession with naming things, and with Gerda the newspaper seller outside his office, leads him into danger.

Keith had a good view of the upper storey and roof of St. Gerda's church from his office window. When his eyes grew tired of the flickering of the computer screen, he would lean against the coolness of the glass and gaze at the worn, acid-stained stone. If he squinted sideways, he could see the top of Gerda's head and a blur of burgundy red from her coat. Not that she ever glanced up; why should she? All the same, he gained the impression that she knew Keith was there, watching her.

He called her Gerda, having no idea what her name might be. His secretary claimed that this was a sign of insecurity; that Keith had an obsession with owning things, a need to name them, even the computer, which was called Maurice. Given this habit, the woman selling papers by the church gate had no hope of remaining anonymous. However, in this instance naming her did not satisfy Keith's impetus to own.

Keith chose ‘Gerda’ partly for the church, but also because she reminded him of an illustration of the girl in The Snow Queen. Bundled up in layers of clothes against the ice cold, her dark plaits on her shoulders, and that curiously angry innocence of the very young in her face. The illustration might have been of the Robber Princess, but as that character lacked a name, Keith had chosen to ignore the inconvenience of that possibility, and the newsvendor remained Gerda.

Keith passed her every day, going to and from the station. He used the churchyard as a short cut, stealing a few moments peace from the rush hour cacophony, before crossing the road to the office.

When it was warm enough, Keith took his sandwiches across the road, to eat his lunch in the slip of park which replaced the graveyard after the blitz disturbed the burials, astonishingly leaving the church itself untouched. If the bench nearest the gate were free it was possible, on a late lunch break, to get a little sun and to watch Gerda furtively...

£2.49 Added

We had been so happy Phil and I but now something seemed to be tearing us apart - it was more than I could take, I had to do something about it and soon!

All Hallows

A fairly tale for adults and older children - Sybil tries to get Amelia to sleep - a long, long sleep.

Amelia couldn't sleep. She lay in petulant discontent; eyes fiercely open, just daring sleep to lull her into unconsciousness. Sleep, naturally, had more sense than to tangle with her.

‘Count sheep, darling,’ her old nurse, Sibyl advised, trying for a reasonable tone despite her intense irritation.

‘That makes me hungry.’

‘Don't be perverse. You are only awake because you ate too much in the first place.’

‘Tell me a story, Nana,’ Amelia whined, doing her best to sound as though she thought Sibyl's stories quite the best in the world, which, coincidentally, she did. Flattery always worked on Sibyl, and anyway, she hadn't anything better to do. The other option would be to join the gathering of younger adults, who had no interest in the tales of an ancient nanny. Amelia appreciated her where the others, with their thin veneer of uncertain sophistication, despised.

‘Very well,’ Sibyl said contentedly, settling beside her charge, ‘but you must promise not to interrupt.’

The sun sank slowly below the whale humped cliffs. The bullfrogs joined the cicada's continuo. As the shadows merged into dusk, a lone figure on the cliff top turned in valediction to the red stained sea. Below her on the wave caressed strand the others of her kind waited in silent anticipation. Her liquidly beautiful voice rose into the waiting air...

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Keith's obsession with naming things, and with Gerda the newspaper seller outside his office, leads him into danger.

Tales Told Before Cockcrow

A daughter's loyalty to her family is tested.

Granny taught me to dance as soon as I could stand straight, and it is Granny I hear when I dance.

As soon as I stopped growing, Granny trained me for something else. Her black agate eyes watching me; fierce eyes: watching.

And now I am trained; I am honed to razor sharpness, like the tines on my comb; an assassin: I am my Grandmother's weapon, her gift, her honour, her absolution, her revenge. And I will be your death.

And now I am here, dancing, with you...

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A fairly tale for adults and older children - Sybil tries to get Amelia to sleep - a long, long sleep.

The Red Dress

A fairy tale for adults and older children, in which a tailor meets a very large cat, and tries to sell her some clothes.

Once upon a time, a long way off, but not as far as all that, there was a queendom ruled by cats. These cats were particularly large, magnificent, and beautiful. They did not know they were beautiful because no one had told them, and being modest, each thought she was the only ordinary moggie in the world; they hadn't invented mirrors.

These cats were matriarchal and although it was technically a queendom, and although they felt they ought to have a queen, the actual qualifications for queenship were lost in the mists of time; they didn't have history either.

What they did in practice was to take turns at being in charge, which was unusual because most cats really like bossing other cats about, and wouldn't normally give up the game once they had the power...

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A daughter's loyalty to her family is tested.

The She-Lord and Her Tailor

Little did Mark know that a walk along the dockside would take him back to the bad old days in more ways than one. This is a tale of loneliness and retribution.

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A fairy tale for adults and older children, in which a tailor meets a very large cat, and tries to sell her some clothes.

The Abyss Of Loneliness

When it’s our birthday, when the ice breaks and the spirits burst through, you have to dodge out of the way and cover your head so they don’t hiss sharp into your ears or quick-grab your tongue. If they get your tongue, you end up babbling like a prattaloon for days and people laugh and throw things at you to shut you up. Dilip got a broken nose that way last year, when a shelly-pot hit him. If they get in your ears, you’re stuck listening to the flap-mouthing the babblers made all the years before, and that’s worse because you can’t shut them up and the spirits can be a bit choosy about how long they leave you with the racket. But you have to keep your eyes wide open because they want you to watch them while they dance and dive and scorch the air and cut sizzling streaks into the ice. You can blink, just so long as you don’t linger. Blinking is okay...

£1.29 Added

Little did Mark know that a walk along the dockside would take him back to the bad old days in more ways than one. This is a tale of loneliness and retribution.

Spirits of the Freeze-Sea

‘Lazy, idle, unreconstructed encumbrance,’ she remarked to the air. ‘Useless git!’ she added with satisfaction. Alice was peering down from the upstairs window at her sagging husband cocooned in his sagging lounger out on the patio.

‘If I’m lucky, I’ll make sixty; if not, it’ll be sixty-five, ha ha!’ was Frank’s standard response to any cajoling about getting fit or ditching the booze. Then he would eye the bottle on the table by his chair and reel it in with a practiced digit. Plenty of time for a snifter before supper.

Alice’s mobile rumbled in her pocket – a text from Dorrie wanting some company at the fitness centre. She glanced down at the moderate sized bum-bag that used to be her toned abdomen. She should go, work up a sweat, spruce up the muscles that once underpinned the taut torso of her youthful body. But her eye wandered over to the tiny alcove that passed for their domestic office and a biscuit tin slunk into view. Bugger it.

She headed for the computer, flicked some switches, and waited for it to dredge up the couple of bits of office software its previous owner had blessed it with. A chocolate chip brownie made its way into her hand and offered little resistance as she bit into it…

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Dog Day

Much has been written about the effects of the millennium bug...I was responsible for saving my crew from this dreadful disease...

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Milo and the Millennium Bug

A Ship's doctor's trials and tribulations.

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Much has been written about the effects of the millennium bug...I was responsible for saving my crew from this dreadful disease...

The Medicine Man

2012: Alarming intrusions

‘Stop it right now, you dizzy tart!’ Marissa Nalletamby is giving herself a telling-off in front of the mirror. ‘He’s married, you’re married, and you barely know him.’ She pokes at her hair with the end of a comb, ‘And did I mention, you barely know him?’ Last night’s dream had been a doozer. Samuel had leaned so close to her ear, she could feel his breath. She had leaned back into his chest, his arms had been around her, they had gazed out at an idyllic seascape, like a pair of young lovers. Then he had unbuttoned her blouse, lingering over each pink pearl fastener and punctuating its freedom with a butterfly kiss to her neck. His long fingers had crafted a macramé of silk touches that ran down her body, over her waist, and down towards the gossamer skirt that was beginning to drift away on the honeyed breeze. Surely now … But the inevitable interruption cut in; this time a fire alarm, clanging its Freudian disapproval and transforming mercilessly into her ridiculous mouse-eared alarm clock. She allows herself a private chuckle. Her stab at moral rectitude is struggling, and her body overrides it with a wistful sigh that steams up the cold glass on the wall. She scrapes at the fog with her sleeve, and growls at her reflection, ‘Grow up,’ she tells it, ‘You’ve parent stuff to do.’

1999: The legal alien

They met, the two couples, at a New Year celebration, partying like it was 1999 because the world’s mileage was about to click over into a new millennium when the sky would fall in, if you believed the doom-mongers. They had chatted briefly – …nice area ... convenient for the station … but drifted away as the commonalities dwindled. Still, Marissa found herself curiously drawn to Samuel, whose slight but distinct distance set him apart from their Chardonnay-swigging crowd. Not particularly reserved herself, Marissa cavorted and caroused, laughing more loudly than was entirely merited, and engaging in some juvenile hi-jinks left over from everyone’s undergrad days. Samuel watched quietly from the sidelines, glass of tonic water in hand, and with the faintest of smiles that seemed almost fatherly.

As she waggled her tush to ‘The Birdie Song’, and pogo’d enthusiastically to a raucous punk track, Marissa sneaked glances at Samuel. Sometimes he would be looking at her. Mostly he wasn’t. Mostly he seemed to be in another world, somewhere intellectual, sober, more transcendent. Marissa’s imagination, somewhat alcohol fuelled, assigned to him the role of alien visitor – distant, detached, observing their child’s play with benign humour, and placing it in a context of worlds seen and experiences lived that were beyond primitive comprehension.

‘The Man Who Fell To Earth!’ she giggled, recalling an old sci fi film.

‘Who?’ This was Marcus, her husband.

‘Samuel – not of this world really, is he?’ chuckled Marissa. ‘Don’t look!’ she hissed, as Marcus started to wheel around. Instead, they both pantomimed covert peeks and armed fantasy phasers as they prepared to repel an alien invasion of suburban Surrey. Then they subsided into a deep sofa, and yuk yukked their way to the bottom of another bottle of plonk.

2001: Art for arse sake

Marissa’s next encounter with Samuel was at the village fete. She in charge of a stall exhibiting the products of the local art and photography group, and hoping to offload a few items on passing punters. He a passing punter paying respectful attention to the wares as he followed his wife dutifully around the festive encampment. He wouldn’t buy any of this if you threatened to cut off his arm! Marissa watched as Samuel made dignified and polite perusals – a slight incline of the head here, the faintest curve of the mouth there – while Rita, his wife, waxed lyrical on the captivating atmosphere generated by the use of this or that lens or paint medium. Samuel responded with understated nods, and a range of nonverbal packing that served to keep his (plainly superior) views to himself. Marissa shuffled awkwardly to one side as his small procession arrived at her corner of the stall. She made a stab at a sales pitch...

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A Ship's doctor's trials and tribulations.

Fete Accomplice?

From riches to rags in Los Angeles

It began with a red geranium. Having imagined the geranium into being she (let’s call her the writer) couldn’t just leave it. The plant had to have a pot; a ceramic pot, red to match the colour of the geranium. But where was the pot? Sitting on a window sill? Yes, a kitchen window sill. She could see the light streaming through the window setting the geranium on fire...

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Red Geranium

A young Cuban chambermaid who dreams of becoming a poet

Dalila dreamt. She dreamt of many things but most often Dalila dreamt of sitting on the sea shore watching the surf curling over the sand. In her dream she had a notebook and pen and as she listened to the whispering wash of the advancing and retreating waves she was writing of her life as a poet, a poet like the Cuban hero, José Martí.

The sea was a long way from the Hotel Habana Libre. Not physically of course for the sea could be seen from the windows of the seventh floor. If she had time to stop as she polished the glass, Dalila could see the wide sweep of the Malecon, the long finger of land on the other side of the harbour with its fort and lighthouse and the open sea beyond. No, the sea of her dreams was an impossible destination for a Cuban chambermaid who was also a single mother with aging relatives to care for...

£1.29 Added

From riches to rags in Los Angeles

Suenos

Lenny Waterman thought he could throw his voice. He couldn't - as a Ventriloquist he would have given Archie Andrews palpitations - and then he met with a mysterious old Romany lady who gave him a gift that would change his life forever...

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A young Cuban chambermaid who dreams of becoming a poet

Dummies Don't Talk

Ray Lawrence

£1.99 Added

Lenny Waterman thought he could throw his voice. He couldn't - as a Ventriloquist he would have given Archie Andrews palpitations - and then he met with a mysterious old Romany lady who gave him a gift that would change his life forever...

When you were a child were you told to be good or the bogeyman would come and get you? Susan was, and it left a great impact on her life. Now she has to clear her dead mother's house and face up to her childhood fear.

This story shared Third Prize at the Ingrid Pitt Queen of Horror Festival, Hastings, in 2012.

Just an Ordinary Shed

A last ditch attempt by King Louis to defeat the British and take control of Jersey. A fictional tale of the invasion, organised and led by a notorious mercenary and the bravery of a fouteen-year-old boy.

£1.29 Added

When you were a child were you told to be good or the bogeyman would come and get you? Susan was, and it left a great impact on her life. Now she has to clear her dead mother's house and face up to her childhood fear.

This story shared Third Prize at the Ingrid Pitt Queen of Horror Festival, Hastings, in 2012.

Promises

Annette O. Liron

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A last ditch attempt by King Louis to defeat the British and take control of Jersey. A fictional tale of the invasion, organised and led by a notorious mercenary and the bravery of a fouteen-year-old boy.

Students take gap years between A levels and university - I took mine when my wife left me for the milkman...

A Sheila called Sheila

Was he making up the numbers at dinner, or was he really there for her?

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Students take gap years between A levels and university - I took mine when my wife left me for the milkman...

Serendipity

This story is about a pensioner waiting for the Estate Agent to show him around the house he was born in.

Reg stood at the front door and watched the for-sale sign flap about in the breeze and thought maybe I should have waited. But Reg couldn’t wait. He had already been waiting for far too long. His hand hovered over the letterbox and he remembered the key on the piece of string hanging behind it; but people didn’t do that now. Someone might break in and enter. Reg felt his hand reach up, out of habit and lift the letterbox flap; just to renew the memory.

He still had the door-key. Sixty seven years he had kept it. Reg took it from his wallet and looked at it. Gold. Well not real gold. Gold colour. He felt its texture its shape. He had kept it for luck, after mummy …his mother had … gone. He tentatively placed, key to lock. (It wouldn’t fit, that only happens in fairy tales). Reg felt his heart miss a beat as the whole length of the key slipped into the lock. But it didn’t turn and he wasn’t upset. Reg was used to disappointment…

£1.99 Added

Was he making up the numbers at dinner, or was he really there for her?

Waiting for the Agent

Barbara Hawthorne

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This story is about a pensioner waiting for the Estate Agent to show him around the house he was born in.

This story is about the women's marches in the 1970's.

Eunice never thought that flashing blue lights and blood would re-unite two friends. But this was the 1970s and the red-light district of Soho, London, on the women’s march. A man outside a clip-joint made a gesture with his hand hovering in silhouette.

‘Your butcher’s shop’s open,’ a woman shouted.

‘Close the porn shops,’ said another. Clean up Soho.

The line of women shuffled to a halt. Someone at the back shouted, ‘Bastards,’ and the refrain was taken up. Women in voice were pushed forward from women at the back, against the line of police. Batons raised. Protecting the sex shop. Stewards tried to intervene. The street was narrow…

Reclaim the Night

Barbara Hawthorne

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This story is about the women's marches in the 1970's.

Sometimes Abel might feel uneasy about a roping if, say, his victim was young and misguided, or an abused female. But mostly he couldn't give a damn. He couldn't afford to. It was a job that had to be done, and done well; a skill; a craft.

Cheat the Hangman

I sit here, watching, waiting for everyone to come. Behind these bars, my life is never ending. I see them come, I see them go. No one escapes my attention.

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Sometimes Abel might feel uneasy about a roping if, say, his victim was young and misguided, or an abused female. But mostly he couldn't give a damn. He couldn't afford to. It was a job that had to be done, and done well; a skill; a craft.

The Trap

Tony Lawrence

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I sit here, watching, waiting for everyone to come. Behind these bars, my life is never ending. I see them come, I see them go. No one escapes my attention.

A young girl goes missing; by nightfall the operation to find her is called off, but one friend cannot rest and what she finds will chill you to the bone...

The house was like Grand Central, a constant flow of bodies, tea making, subdued chatter that clanged in my head. I was sitting next to Sue, both sipping hot chocolate, exhausted, when the bell rang again. I felt the tension zap through her, as it did every time. Her red eyes full of dread and hope, scanned each newcomer. With every disappointment, she sagged a little further, her smile wavering. I ached with her.

This time, the caller was in uniform. I shivered, despite the hot chocolate. The room fell silent. Coughing, he turned to Sue.

‘I’m sorry Mrs James, it’s too dark out there now.’ My surprised eyes flicked to the window. Where had the day gone? ‘ We’re going to have to call it a night.’
Sue gaped up at him. Her hand felt like ice as I touched it.

‘But she’s only eight-‘ She choked on a sob. I rubbed her arm.

The policeman placed a kind hand on her shoulder.

‘We still hope she might find her way back on her own. We’ll start up again at first light. Of course, if you hear anything…’

Tears leaking down her grey cheeks, Sue gave a nod. The policeman retreated, probably as worn as we. Sue seemed to become suddenly aware of her surroundings. Draining her mug, she switched on the lights, frowning around the room.

‘Where’s Molly?’ Sue’s elder daughter had been out with the search parties all day. The neighbours stared around, scratching heads.

‘She was with me and Edna for a while. Then she said she had an idea and went off…’

‘Went off!’ The strain cracked in Sue’s voice. Poor girl, she had been through so much, and now this.

‘It’s alright Ma, I’m here.’ Molly emerged from the kitchen. Her jeans were splattered with mud, her long hair in wet snakes around her drawn face. Sue fell into her arms. Molly met my eyes over her shoulder, flicked back toward the kitchen. What was she trying to tell me?

‘I think we should thank all these kind people for their time today and let them go home, eh, Ma?’

Nodding, the weary neighbours gathered their coats and with sympathetic touches, filed out into the drizzle. Should I go too? I hovered in the kitchen doorway, not wanting to be in the way. With Molly in her clutches, Sue seemed oblivious to my presence.

‘C’mon, Ma, you’re worn out. How about you climb into bed and try a nap? Linda’s here too. We’ll be here to watch out for her…’

Cuckoo Spawn

Gill Hollands

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A young girl goes missing; by nightfall the operation to find her is called off, but one friend cannot rest and what she finds will chill you to the bone...

"But I've not done Indian," I told Karen. And besides, the boys are not from India."

"It's all the same to them," she said, her cheeky blue eyes sparkling with self-confidence. "Just whip up something hot. They'll love it."

Wrong Again, Karen

Helena a professional assassin, was angry and impatient to be back in London. This latest job - all the meticulous planning wasted for no reward, someone was going to pay.

With one professional and practised sweep of her grey eyes Helena checked out the VIP lounge at Barcelona airport then lowered herself into one of the smart leather chairs. She sat well away from everyone else and sipped her strong espresso. No one noticed the business woman in her navy suit. But if they were observant, they might recognise this season’s designer silk scarf by Ferragamo and shoes that were handmade. Not the obvious outfit for an assassin. But then Helena did not conform to the stereo-type glamourised by TV and films, depicted in black leather and boots. She looked down on the crowd below; the executive lounge was built a level above the main concourse with full length plate-glass windows, completing the sense of voyeurism. Helena was angry and impatient to be back in London. This latest job – all the meticulous planning wasted for no reward, someone was going to pay.

The day before she had taken the Eurostar from St Pancras to Gare du Nord crossing Paris to Gare d’Austerlitz and caught the overnight train to Spain. Helena often travelled by train, security was less stringent. It also gave her time and space to go over all the details of the hit. As she lay in the compartment she let the rhythmic sway of the train form part of her mental shut down exercise, clearing her mind of all extraneous trivial matters.

From the Franca train station in Barcelona, it was a short walk to the rendezvous point. Even this early in the morning Helena could feel the beginnings of the heat of the day as she entered the narrow winding streets of the Gothic Quarter. It took ten minutes to reach the Cathedral. She was early. Inside there was an aroma of incense and candles. She walked up the south aisle pausing at one of the small side shrines to the Virgin Mary. Helena was not religious – how could she be in her line of work? But whenever in a church she lit candles. She put five euros into the box and took three candles. One for her father, killed by a bullet in Northern Ireland, one for her sister, who had swum out to sea too far and one for Jack. She bowed her head in the merest gesture to prayer. This done she walked on through the choir stalls and turned right into the cloister. Here there was dappled shade and the sound of water. She leant over the stone balustrade and breathed...

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"But I've not done Indian," I told Karen. And besides, the boys are not from India."

"It's all the same to them," she said, her cheeky blue eyes sparkling with self-confidence. "Just whip up something hot. They'll love it."

The Female of the Species

Joanna Sterling

£1.59 Added

Helena a professional assassin, was angry and impatient to be back in London. This latest job - all the meticulous planning wasted for no reward, someone was going to pay.

Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Doctor Dominic du Mortier and I am a hundred and sixty one years old. No no, stay where you are please. It’s not that I’m unwilling to shake your hand, please don’t think that. It’s really more a case of my being unable. Permit me to explain.

I am beyond reach. And behind glass. And a rodent. Nothing special you understand – just a Rattus norvegicus, or a common brown rat to you.

Oh yes, and dead. Did I mention that?

A Rat's Tale

G Mills

£1.29 Added

Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Doctor Dominic du Mortier and I am a hundred and sixty one years old. No no, stay where you are please. It’s not that I’m unwilling to shake your hand, please don’t think that. It’s really more a case of my being unable. Permit me to explain.

I am beyond reach. And behind glass. And a rodent. Nothing special you understand – just a Rattus norvegicus, or a common brown rat to you.

Oh yes, and dead. Did I mention that?

Maureen the Assistant Librarian has spent a night in her suburban garden, having drunk too much champagne at a high class midsummer party in the Holland Park garden of her work colleague Adrian, whose style, wealth and exalted friends raise the question of why he is still working in the Library. As the perfect midsummer night passes into dawn and Maureen thinks about the events of that party, her solitary existence seems to be coming to a crisis – but someone - or something – has followed her home and is in the garden with her.

Nearly dawn. What time is dawn in Midsummer? She had left her watch on the kitchen table before coming out into her garden last night. Now she cannot move from her seat under the cherry blossom tree.

Silence – a miracle in these parts. Then, from above, (somewhere in that wretched overgrown bay tree that will have to be pruned) a burst of a blackbird’s throaty song, raucous in her ear, a reminder that the world will wake and expect something of her. She can’t feel her feet. How long is it since she has felt them? Her left buttock is similarly absent, pressed for so long against the cold grey stone of the garden seat. She shifts experimentally, feels the unsettling crawling tickle of limbs returning to life. She won’t move yet. She doesn’t want to, because then she will have to think thoughts that require strength she does not have and cannot believe that she will ever have.

At midnight, Maureen’s senses were anaesthetised by all the champagne she had drunk at the party. Actually, she had a capacity for wine that her friends and workmates would never have attributed to her, when mother was in bed, or, as was now the case, away on her respite fortnight in The Willows NHS Trust Care Home. Last night, however, Maureen had been given some of the best champagne she had ever tasted – real quality, with none of the chemical aftertaste of the cheap booze she bought for herself on the way home most days, in the grubby Mart outside the tube station.

She had expected that her own garden (her mother’s garden and the garden of her childhood) would compare badly with the one in which she had wandered until midnight; but it had just felt safe and neat and fragrant. That, at least, was a mercy. There was the white rose that she had planted two years ago. There was the lavender, honeysuckle and something else emitting a pure white smell. Jasmine? The garden gave her a simple sense of achievement. She felt pleasure, too, in noticing the emergence of things she hadn’t planted. They must like it here, she thought. Then there were the relics of mother’s efforts. She didn’t have the heart to dig them up (they had earned their place) but she disliked their bright colours and municipal park arrangements, comparing them unfavourably to the delicately-hued and stylish planting that she admired in the magazines and had just been coveting in Adrian’s garden...

Leaving The Garden

Jodie's surprise family holiday to a Greek island

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Maureen the Assistant Librarian has spent a night in her suburban garden, having drunk too much champagne at a high class midsummer party in the Holland Park garden of her work colleague Adrian, whose style, wealth and exalted friends raise the question of why he is still working in the Library. As the perfect midsummer night passes into dawn and Maureen thinks about the events of that party, her solitary existence seems to be coming to a crisis – but someone - or something – has followed her home and is in the garden with her.

The Dolphin Bracelet

It's only the intrepid who venture into the world of arranged romance. Amelia casts her fate to the winds of change and learns that not all migrating birds make it home safely.

First you meet someone. This is not by chance. It is with as much deliberate intent, with as much absolute need as an exhausted migratory bird looking for a spot to funnel down through the thermal column for respite. Like the bird, you are guided by visual landmarks, olfactory clues, you detect magnetic fields. In this you are helped by internet dating.

You try not to think too much about what your mother would say. Technology has moved on since her day when such things were not done. It was fate that you relied on then and if it let you down and all you met were losers or no-one, you looked fate in the face and said so be it.

Nowadays you have options. Your friends have pointed this out. Why not, they say, what have you got to lose, you just never know. So you take their advice even while noticing they’re not taking it themselves...

£1.99 Added

Jodie's surprise family holiday to a Greek island

Taking Your Clothes Off in the Dark

Anne Jenner

£1.29 Added

It's only the intrepid who venture into the world of arranged romance. Amelia casts her fate to the winds of change and learns that not all migrating birds make it home safely.

Emmy is singing as I try to get her supper into her. I’m singing too, but she’s singing for Jesus in a cutesy, trit-trotty kind of way. I hover the spoon in the air, and wait for her to take a breath. Pop it in/swallow it down/good girl. I wipe her mouth with my pinny. Shouldn’t really but it saves time. All those doors to lock and unlock just for a flannel.

‘Jesus loves her, Jesus loves her, Jesus loves the murdering bitch.’ Emmy chuckles to herself in that private way only people whose heads are somewhere else can do. She hunches up on the bed and grabs her knees; pulling them up to her chin, and hugging them like babies.

‘Pretty boys,’ she says; and bites into her knee cap.

‘Eric, in here now!’ I yell, hoping Eric is within ear shot and not having a can’t-be-arsed moment. Meanwhile, I start singing again; if Emmy picks it up, I’ll have a strap in there quick as. Eric will have the needle. When he’s not selling stuff he’s nicked from the patients’ lockers, or running bets on who’s going to kick off, Eric isn’t a bad nurse.

There’s a rumbling, echoing sound in the corridor, like a synchronised stampede. Steel capped boots, several pairs. Eric has brought the cavalry. Seconds later, Emmy is wrapped, strapped, and taking delivery of a bolus of antipsychotics in the backside. Her head is hanging over the edge of the bed like it doesn’t quite belong to her; and the scabby skin she’s torn off her knee is hanging from her front teeth like an old curtain; splotting drops of bloody saliva onto the lino. Emmy convulses and throws up the supper I just spent an hour getting into her. There’s more blood, and a few bits of stuff I know I didn’t give her. Emmy’s been gouging again. ‘Exorcising my sins,’ she calls it. Well, she has a few, that’s for sure. Looks like she didn’t hit an artery though, or Jesus might have got to show his love in person...

The Justice Box

Ursula has taken a job as an intern, working for a world famous artist in Tuscany. But he has a beautiful wife. Soon Ursula is locked in a triangular relationship and she dreams of mythical beasts emerging from the pine forests.

In the dawn light that sharpened the edges of things, foregrounding the mountains against infinity, Val went down to the studio, stared critically at the clay form he’d shaped the previous day and then, clenching his massive hands into fists, he flattened it. The physical action of pounding the clay back into an abstract mass raised his blood pressure, making a vein at his temple thud against his skull. He did the same thing every morning and the ritual gave him an odd, destructive satisfaction. There was no longer anything else; the material that oozed and sucked between his fingers no longer gave him that childlike feeling of delight in its endless possibilities. Once, the clay had seemed an extension of his imagination, shaped and formed by the strength of his will. Now, it was merely a recalcitrant terracotta mass that took all his strength to handle.

Afterwards, breathing hard, he went to stand in the open doorway gazing out into the courtyard, where the early light reflected in pools of rainwater on the terrazzo tiles. In the centre, on a block of uncut marble, stood the statue of Europa being carried off by Zeus disguised as a bull. It was a sculpture Val had executed when he was forty and, every day, he looked at it to remind himself of what he was capable of.

‘Why did you want to depict a rape? ’ the girl had asked when she first arrived. ‘And by an animal at that? Even if it is mythical. It’s not a very nice subject.’

‘It’s not about sexual politics,’ Val had argued impatiently. ‘It’s about form. Do you know how difficult it is to get the bull like that with his hind legs reared up to lift the girl? And to make it work from every angle? Of course it’s only a two-form statue; the Greeks did three – almost impossible. But perhaps I’ll do three before I die.’...

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Three

Henry Swail went missing years ago in peculiar circumstances. No one knows why he left or where he is now. Officially, he’s presumed dead. But who is this strange man asking about him?

‘Why do you want to know about Henry Swail?’ The girl in the library asks me. Her blue eyes are fixed unselfconsciously on mine.

What am I to say? How do I explain why I’m following his trail? I hardly know myself. It’s as though I have to check out what still exists of him, to find out what he was really like, so that I don’t have to be like him. It’s important that I don’t make the same mistakes, because, of course, he made them, must have, or he wouldn’t be where he is now, would he?

Google his name and you come up with headlines like this:

‘The Search for Swail’. Daily Express, Jan 2005.

Has anybody seen Henry Swail? Since his disappearance a year ago, dozens of sightings have been reported. One couple said that they’d seen him on a beach in Honolulu, others have met him in a bar in Madrid, seen him driving a taxi in Los Angeles, running a restaurant in Sydney. If they’re all to be believed, every major city on the planet has its Henry Swail.’

There are two photographs; one of Henry on his wedding day, his collar-length seventies hair blowing in the wind, the bride cropped to a blur of white lace at the edge of the frame, and a more recent image of a balding, paunchy figure leaving court in a suit with his hand held up to protect his face from the camera. I can’t help thinking that, out of the thousands of photographs of Henry that must exist in the press archives, it’s a peculiarly unimaginative selection...

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Ursula has taken a job as an intern, working for a world famous artist in Tuscany. But he has a beautiful wife. Soon Ursula is locked in a triangular relationship and she dreams of mythical beasts emerging from the pine forests.

The Absence of Henry Swail

Kate is a jazz singer, living happily with her musician husband. That is, until Maggi comes to stay.

The pianist is behind the beat. It annoys me that he can’t keep time, but I can’t get anyone else to play for the money – a straight fifty each and a few free drinks. And no-one listens anyway. The smart set come to meet each other and observe the weird and exotic who drift in off the Soho street. It’s really a high class pick-up joint, full of post-yuppie girls in deliberately tatty designer clothes, chatting up men with wind-blown hairstyles in over-large jackets. You can smell the Porsche’s and BMW’s illegally parked on the pavement outside.

One of the girls has draped herself over the corner of Henry’s piano, dogging him up with her eyes. No joy there. Henry’s one of what Simon always sarcastically refers to as the V.H.M.s – the Very Happily Marrieds. Musicians with wives and mortgages and small offspring who divide their spare time between IKEA and the garden centre.

Nine o’clock on a summer evening in the Café Lafayette. Just coming to the end of the first set. I turn to take a sip of mineral water to soothe my smoke-roughened throat and catch sight of myself in the mirrored surface of the wall opposite. A slim girl on a high stool with a long bony face and long reddish-brownish hair I only just recognise as me; above her, the golden holograms of the brass ceiling fans rotating at full speed; behind her, the circles and squares of an art-deco window frame. A yellow raincoat is walking past with a black and white umbrella.

After a while the yellow coat edges into my view of the bar. It’s Maggi, shaking the damp from her bobbed black hair. The sight of her paralyses my throat just for a moment...

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Henry Swail went missing years ago in peculiar circumstances. No one knows why he left or where he is now. Officially, he’s presumed dead. But who is this strange man asking about him?

Jazz Cafe

Ellie works in a mortuary and lives on the premises. And then she falls in love with someone her employers consider totally unsuitable.

When I was six, we went to live in a two room shack out the back of the funeral home. A bedroom for my mother, a bedroom for me and a lean-to made of packing cases and corrugated tin to hold the stove and an old table. We kept the milk and the frozen goods in the ice box in the mortuary. My mother had the rooms free because she cleaned for Mr Moeran who had the funeral business. I used to go with her into the chapel of rest and help her polish the caskets. Some of them were ebony black like grand pianos, and some were the polished, red wood of rich people’s dining tables.

The most expensive were great satiny coffers bulging at the sides in wavy panels that held the dust, and a domed lid that had a cross in the centre with carved rays of light falling away from it right to the edge. The lid was in two sections so that you could open the top half to look at the face of the dead person. They were all lined, depending on the price, with either frilled cotton or cheap satin my mother ran up in the evenings on an old treadle machine in her room. I would hear her after I went to bed, shrrr, shrrr, shrr, hour after hour; shucking the material up on the thread so the frills fell just right and then, shrrr, shrrr, shrrr, again, until I fell asleep.

The bathroom was through the mortuary where Mr Moeran put the stiffs out on the slab to do his vampire bit with the syringes and the tubes and the formalin, dressed up in overalls and a huge rubber apron. There was a glass case with a light inside that held all his surgical instruments. If I wanted to use the bathroom at night I had to walk through this room in the dark, but it never bothered me. Kids at school used to say, ‘Isn’t it kinda weird living with all those dead people?’ But I never minded. They were like friends. Four or five days they were there and I got to know them real well...

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Kate is a jazz singer, living happily with her musician husband. That is, until Maggi comes to stay.

Living With The Dead

Aine is a wet nurse on a big estate in 19th century Ireland and her life is in danger unless she can escape. But how can she leave the child? And where is she to get the money to go to America.

Two months ago Jack Farrar left for America. His brother wrote to say that there was good work to be had in New York and no one cared where you said your Sunday prayers. So, as soon as Jack got his half year pay, he was off. ‘Come with me,’ he said. But how could I, placed as I am? And he will be much missed. We’ve been good company since he came to work here two years ago from his lordship’s Killarney estates, having fallen out with the steward there.

Jack was not approved here either, though he worked hard. I heard Mr Lines tell him that he served with a bad grace and should show more gratitude, though what Jack should have been grateful for he didn’t say. Jack made some retort I couldn’t hear and Mr Lines rebuked him in a tight voice, saying that he should keep his politics to himself.

Jack gave me some hard words too before he left. ‘You’re a fool Aine,’ he told me, ‘Save yourself while you still can, for no-one else will. Not almighty God and certainly not that bag of shite on his gilded throne upstairs.’

His lordship’s not a bad man, I think, but just what men are, and as much a slave of what he was born to as Jack Farrar. And not as free, for he can’t take ship and sail away from his great estates and his many relations and their demands. For myself, if I had his advantages, I would get rid of the Lady Margaret, but he dotes on his mother more than he does his wife, who is a pale, limp thing with more pedigree than purpose. This phrase, springing so readily to my mind, gives me a pang, for it is stable-talk and one of Jack’s expressions...

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Ellie works in a mortuary and lives on the premises. And then she falls in love with someone her employers consider totally unsuitable.

Pearls

How do people become the way they are? Old age disguises stories of long ago which the young could never imagine. Why does Mabel especially drink when the black thorn is in bloom?

Aunt Mabel was an alcoholic; that much was true. As a child, I would think of her as old; nothing less. To a ten year old the trembling, the forgetfulness and the flighty, short laughter all came under the term of ‘old woman’. She had wrinkled skin and white hair, she forgot how old I was and she would sometimes call my mother by another name. She wore a tangy odour which (as I grew older) I would decipher as alcohol. She had the perpetual shakes but despite all this, she was firmly in the camp of the civilised alcoholic; no crude vodka bottles hidden behind the toilet cistern, no embarrassing habits of wetting her bed or vomiting inappropriately. She simply drank in the morning, drank with a bite of lunch, after eating, mid-afternoon and so on.

Aunt Mabel wore a thin veil of distraction and nothing seemed to truly touch her. Childless and having never married, there were no other people in her life apart from our family and a neighbour who called in once a month to check ‘she was still alive’, (her words). She worked in her garden, she drank, she read detective novels, she drank, she listened to Vera Lynn and Peggy Lee and she drank until she fell asleep.

We would visit Aunt Mabel four or five times a year, they were duty visits but usually a bit more fun than any other of mum's relations. It was the spring visits I remember most, in April and May when the trees and flowers were bursting out all over the countryside. As I grew older, I realised that in these months Mabel would be noticeably drunker…

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Aine is a wet nurse on a big estate in 19th century Ireland and her life is in danger unless she can escape. But how can she leave the child? And where is she to get the money to go to America.

Sloe Gin

Fritha Waters

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How do people become the way they are? Old age disguises stories of long ago which the young could never imagine. Why does Mabel especially drink when the black thorn is in bloom?

This is the story a day in the life of eleven-year-old Sara. Like thousands of other children in southern Africa, she’s an orphan, and she’s looking after her younger brothers and sisters. A kindly nun, Sister Constance, is due to visit the family today – but she’s late, and Sara is getting worried. Will she come? What if she doesn’t? Why hasn’t she come? What will the children do if Sister Constance doesn’t turn up?

It’s still dark.

Sara wants to turn over and go back to sleep, but she can’t because her sister, Agnes, is spread out like a goatskin all over the bed.

What’s woken her? She hears it again, the cock crowing next door. Soon, it’ll be time to get up – but maybe not quite yet, because the cock often crows while it’s still dark.

Sara closes her eyes and tries to sleep, but she’s cold, because Agnes has most of the blanket and, anyway, she wants to pee. Also, she has to admit that it is not so very dark outside, after all. There’s no doubt, morning is coming.

I need more sleep, Sara thinks. I wish the others would go to bed early, so I could, too.

But going to bed is sort of lonely, with no Mama to tuck them up and say goodnight. So they stay up late and play, even though Auntie Next Door (who is not really an auntie) scolds them, and says ‘Be quiet over there!’

But they go on, anyway, until they are too tired to stay up any longer. And then Sara has to sing to everyone so they can go to sleep, and then she has to mend Agnes’s school shirt, because it is falling to bits. So it’s hard to get up in the morning.

On the concrete floor beside the bed, Little Sister moans. Sara sometimes feels bad about Little Sister. She would so like to sleep in the bed, too, and she wouldn’t take up much room. It must be cold and uncomfortable down there. But Little Sister wets the bed, and no one wants to share with her.

Sara sniffs to check if Little Sister’s blankets are wet. No, she can’t smell anything, except the wood-smoke from next door. So it really is time to get up...

Waiting for Sister Constance

Jenny Vaughan

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This is the story a day in the life of eleven-year-old Sara. Like thousands of other children in southern Africa, she’s an orphan, and she’s looking after her younger brothers and sisters. A kindly nun, Sister Constance, is due to visit the family today – but she’s late, and Sara is getting worried. Will she come? What if she doesn’t? Why hasn’t she come? What will the children do if Sister Constance doesn’t turn up?

At one time, the only place to go on a Saturday night was Dan's Diner up by the freeway – or ‘The Dude’s Joint’, as us kids all called it. By eight, the place would be packed, jukebox pounding, drinks flowing non-stop, and dollar bills queuing to be crammed into the cash registers. There were other places to go of course; but the ‘Joint’ was the 'in' place. Dan was on our wavelength and, besides, his parking lot was hidden behind trees and high shrubs, which meant that the evening might only begin in the bar – if you know what I mean.

We seldom drove away before one in the morning. Most of us lost our virginity there. I know I did; to some pesky old boy from Maine; a good for nothing trucker who never did come back with that ring he talked about.

I was born and raised in the town. It’s a church community; Bible Belt, people say: all honest God-fearing folk who get together every Sunday to sing his praises. We were brought up to love our fellow man – well some, you’ll understand – and have respect for property, the other god in our lives...

The Good Book Says

Minsky wasn't used to doing runs. He was getting too old for anything these days but when the boss said run he was only too happy, whatever the consequences.

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Minsky's Run

A bad day at work gets out of hand.

The noise from the burglar alarm was beyond the threshold of pain as Mark pushed open the door to be hit with the stench; the unmistakable smell of cat’s pee and worse. His nose and eyes ran at once. It was dark in there but he was able still see a little. The hated thing brushed past him. Thank god he was wearing boots. He tried to scream and slammed the door shut and leant against the wall, slipping slowly down onto his haunches. His stomach contracted in, forcing his chest out and the air to scour down to his lungs...

£1.99 Added

Minsky wasn't used to doing runs. He was getting too old for anything these days but when the boss said run he was only too happy, whatever the consequences.

Stress

Anne Colledge

£1.29 Added

A bad day at work gets out of hand.

Margot could have danced, but she bashes away on an old typewriter in her husband's carpet business. Feather's Carpet Empire had never amounted to much, and had her husband listened to her, things could have been very different. But, one day, she hears a voice from the fire escape...

Mrs Margot Feather types on the old mechanical typewriter with her hands high, as if she is playing a piano.

‘I could have danced,’ she says to her husband, who is studying a batch of new headed notepaper with his half-frames, ‘But instead I bash away on this old machine. Why can’t you get me a computer?’

Mr Feather replies, ‘What use is a computer to me? And besides, your feet are not the feet of a dancer, but curiosities of medical science.’

Mrs Feather pulls the paper from the machine making a ripping noise like a chiropractor’s manoeuvre.

Mr Feather looks over his glasses. ‘Be careful with that letter. I hope that you lined up the heading. The letterheads were expensive.’ He leans across their facing desks and takes the letter from his wife. ‘There is a comma missing!’

Mrs Feather pushes herself round in her swivel chair, stretching her cramped feet and sighs.

‘A computer would have spotted that. And I could have corrected it before printing it out and thereby wasting your expensively headed paper.’

‘I’ll put one in by hand. You can make us some tea!’

With difficulty, Margot stands, her posture as exact as she can manage. Her high-heeled shoes are not sensible for a lady with toes that cross one over the other like chopsticks. She teeters into the kitchen behind the shop. The kettle and the microwave sparkle in the shabby little room. An assortment of cups and mugs are neatly stored in the battered cupboard. Ordinary ones for every day. Special crockery for important visitors (hardly used) and some expensive biscuits (for the important visitors) past their use-by date...

The Emancipation of Margot Feather

Elizabeth Stott

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Margot could have danced, but she bashes away on an old typewriter in her husband's carpet business. Feather's Carpet Empire had never amounted to much, and had her husband listened to her, things could have been very different. But, one day, she hears a voice from the fire escape...

It was Cormley Crag's gruesome history that kept the faint-hearted villagers away. All stayed tight-lipped on the subject - except old Norman.

Norman's Dog

He was the ultimate superhero, but the age of heroes had dwindled away and it was time to learn the truth from a ghost of the past.

In his Antarctic Citadel of Justice, surrounded by the artefacts and mementoes of an astounding career, The Mightiest Man In The World sat upon a throne of glacier ice and toyed with the hem of his scarlet cape.

As he gazed absently around the vast chamber hewn by hand from the solid rock of the Vinson Massif, his eyes alighted upon the quarter mile wide alcove of granite shelves bearing the keepsakes of his wondrous life. Dr. Malevolent’s death ray; the meteor plucked from the sky just before it could demolish a major city; the busts of his most persistent foes moulded in the gold he had extracted from seawater; countless medals and awards…The mind that retained all knowledge became lost in reminiscence.

He had first come to the public’s attention in 1956 when an Antarctic geological survey team discovered him locked in suspended animation deep within the Beardmore Glacier. Thawed out and found to be clad in a form fitting red, white and blue costume of unknown origin and impervious material, he had awoken with no recollection of his past, and yet his vastly powerful mind had soon absorbed every detail of the world into which he had, effectively, just been born...

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It was Cormley Crag's gruesome history that kept the faint-hearted villagers away. All stayed tight-lipped on the subject - except old Norman.

The Mightiest Man In The World

Christian Green

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He was the ultimate superhero, but the age of heroes had dwindled away and it was time to learn the truth from a ghost of the past.

Benny Green is worried - passengers are vanishing from his taxi cab and the Police are getting interested. Where are they vanishing to? Benny is desperate to find out...

One Of My Passengers Is Missing

Ray Lawrence

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Benny Green is worried - passengers are vanishing from his taxi cab and the Police are getting interested. Where are they vanishing to? Benny is desperate to find out...

The mutt from the Dogs' Home becomes a hero.

The bit of everything dog

The statues from the Minster roof come to life one night!

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The mutt from the Dogs' Home becomes a hero.

Once in a blue moon

Ruby meets the neighbours including the rabbit.

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The statues from the Minster roof come to life one night!

It's what I want

A coming of age story about a young boy, his greyhound and first love

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Ruby meets the neighbours including the rabbit.

Stanley and Nat

Anne Caldwell

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A coming of age story about a young boy, his greyhound and first love

Ditch is a soldier-turned-club owner. His spoken word venue is the place to go in F23. The law don't like it. Ditch doesn't care. Spoken word will prevail.

Friday Night, Club West

A retired soldier and widower visits a war grave and so discovers the identity of his father.

Yesterday I had come to the end of a long road, a bitter journey, I now recognised, that began on the day of my birth. There along a neatly swept cinder path, was mute confirmation that possibly a closure was in sight.

In the course of my work I had visited many commonwealth war cemeteries and so became familiar with the standard shaped headstone. Unusually, however, this one stood alone with alien dignity amidst elaborations of carved angels, unreadable inscriptions and rusting ironwork. It preserved a crisp, clean-edged and disciplined presence close inside a low boundary wall that seemingly prevented the whole place becoming a part of the foreshore that stretched towards the low-tide margin of the English Channel.

At my feet a hero was represented. He had lain undisturbed for two generations, a warrior as brave as any of the thousands who had stormed those implacable beaches sixty years ago. Like them his approach to this place would have been as an enemy and the defenders would have received him accordingly...

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Ditch is a soldier-turned-club owner. His spoken word venue is the place to go in F23. The law don't like it. Ditch doesn't care. Spoken word will prevail.

Requiem

Edward Cartner

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A retired soldier and widower visits a war grave and so discovers the identity of his father.

If you've ever sat in a doctor's waiting room, wondering how long you are going to have to wait and what you're going to catch whilst you're waiting, then this is the story for you...

The Waiting Room

Jeremy wonders if he's going mad. Everybody else can see reporter Jill Gibbs on the TV. Why can't he?

When it first occurred, Jeremy Burton failed to recognise the thing as a phenomenon; in fact, he simply put it down to a cock-up at ITV – another broadcasting gaffe. The newsreader said they were going over live to the Guildhall where Jill Gibbs was about to interview the visiting Irish bishop. What Jeremy then saw was a shot of the steps outside the building with the bishop standing alone. There was no sign of this Jill Gibbs person, though that, in itself, was hardly unusual; media people were often not in the picture. But what did seem odd was that the little fat Wicklow man was answering questions; questions that, apparently, only he could hear. Bad milking, presumably.

The incident would have passed without comment had Curtis not made some passing reference to the recent bombings later the same evening. He and Jeremy were having a quiet beer in the Prospect and, as was their wont, the two were mulling over international affairs and putting the world to rights...

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If you've ever sat in a doctor's waiting room, wondering how long you are going to have to wait and what you're going to catch whilst you're waiting, then this is the story for you...

Jill-in-the-Box

See the hand a citizen has to play when he becomes too big for his small town, and, according to the local authorities, stands in the way of progress by his action.

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Jeremy wonders if he's going mad. Everybody else can see reporter Jill Gibbs on the TV. Why can't he?

Three-Card Brag

Daisy unwittingly stumbles on the preparations for a terrorist attack and this leads to her finding out far more than she needs to about the relationship between her mom and the leader of the bombers.

It all came back to me years later when the wrong men were appealing for the third time. I’d missed the first two trials, working hard on the bar exams, and besides, I’d had my TV knocked off in a break-in one Christmas. But now an ITV reconstruction brought me back to 1974, the gingery men with their wavy, shoulder-length, slightly dirty hair, long leather coats and platform shoes being dragged off to the cells. Seventies footballers or pub bombers, they all dressed pretty much the same. It’s a measure of just how wrong the wrong men were, that the six main characters didn’t remind me of anyone, just three old men, older than my dad anyway, and three thick set Irish hard cases. No it was the actors playing the police officers and the journalists who brought back the memories and made me think of the gangs of blokes who sat around our kitchen table drinking over-sugared tea made with sterilized milk while they waited for my father to open his wallet. Scruffy, paint-spattered men who distracted me from my homework and made my mind wander to the Bay City Rollers, Gordon Hill and the pristine copy of Tammy waiting on my bedside table.

As I watched the handsome young men playing the police officers I was reminded of the sun bronzed labourers who had visited us in the autumn of 1974 and as I looked at Martin Shaw’s bright blue eyes, I saw Michael leaning down to talk to me in the garage, and I just knew it had been them. I’d never took much notice of Martin Shaw before, I thought the Professionals was slightly dubious and besides when it comes to Seventies cop shows I’ll always be a John Thaw/Dennis Waterman kind of girl. But here was Martin Shaw playing a serious role and I had to take him seriously, particularly those eyes; Michael’s eyes.

At eight years old I loved the Rollers and the Villa (Gordon Hill was the exception to my Villa players only rule), and each week I read every word of Tammy, and Jackie if I could get hold of it from my older cousin, but never till I’d finished my schoolwork. But when these tea-drinking, long-haired, foundry-smelling crew with impenetrable accents distracted me, I’d end up showing off my new Bay City Rollers game or my shiny plastic Aston Villa baseball cap or even performing an Osmonds number on the recorder for them. Most of the Irishmen were off the minute they got a sub from my dad; they didn’t even stay to finish their tea…

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See the hand a citizen has to play when he becomes too big for his small town, and, according to the local authorities, stands in the way of progress by his action.

Never Said A Word

Ian Cassidy

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Daisy unwittingly stumbles on the preparations for a terrorist attack and this leads to her finding out far more than she needs to about the relationship between her mom and the leader of the bombers.

Following the death of her husband Nellie makes a return journey to one of their favorite haunts, only to discover it is not the same without him.

With Vic going as suddenly as he did we were doing things together right up to the end. Creeping infirmity never had the chance to limit our leisure, our social life was not gradually curtailed as our faculties diminished. Wonky knees and worn out hips didn’t constrain us to the garden centre and bladder weakness didn’t confine us to activities within a safe distance of a change of underwear. Failing eyesight didn’t stop Vic driving although that would perhaps have been a blessing, even in his prime he was never more than competent behind the wheel and by the end he little more than downright dangerous.

The final trip we took together was to Ludlow Castle to the Shakespeare Festival held in the grounds. A matinee performance of As You Like It, excellent, atmospheric and then an early dinner at the Feathers.

It would be no understatement to say that Vic was not the Bard’s greatest fan but he was content to snooze the afternoon away in the sun. Happy if I was happy and happier still at the prospect of rounding the evening off with something more to his taste...

Disappointed

Ian Cassidy

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Following the death of her husband Nellie makes a return journey to one of their favorite haunts, only to discover it is not the same without him.

My first impression of the cruise liner was of a great white block of flats...

Follow the Brolly

Big JUNE lives alone in her childhood home, a large house in suburban South London. She has been there since 1954 and no-one has re-decorated since 1973. Anyone noticing June thinks she’s odd; people keep their distance. One day, a stranger - a young woman called Lottie - walks in uninvited and starts to ask questions. Over the months, June and the house seem to reveal their secrets. June loves Space and especially, the star of the TV Sci-fi programme to which she is addicted. Lottie helps June to transform her life, build her telescope and finally prepares her to leave to pursue her dream. But where has Lottie gone?

I seen her in my street around two months before it started. I should say ‘saw’. I do know how to speak properly, but I like a bit of rebellion, even now.
It started back in April. It seems a like a lifetime – only four months, though.

She was in my alleyway that morning – up the side of my house. She’d been coming closer, like some stray dog that’s gradually getting more daring, circling around like she was drawn to me. Punk, she looked like a Punk, or whatever they call themselves now if they have funny dyed hair and torn clothes. Deliberately torn, that is. Don’t know if they still call themselves that, probably not. Don’t know. She was small, thin, with a pale face, heavy dark eyes and a red mouth. Young, she was, and quite pretty under it all; like a pixie.
My house was the only one in the road not in flats or with a fridge in the forecourt. Not that I’ve been that particular, a few weeds in my front, but I always cleaned. Well, I cleaned the bits I could see.

She was peering through my kitchen window. I was leaving for work. Not long been back since Mum died and they give me funny looks at work so I weren’t – wasn’t – looking forward to going. They tried to seem ‘caring’ because these days they’ve got to tick that box, so then it’s all right to treat you like shit. Nothing you could put a finger on – just looked right through me...

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My first impression of the cruise liner was of a great white block of flats...

Into Space

Stop, Look and Listen is a short collection of flash fiction pieces. It features Escape, a story about a son who wants to keep his parents together for the sake of his father, Mannequin, a creepy tale about a husband and his wife's disappearance, as well as the titular story Stop, Look and Listen, an exploration of life through instructions.

The collection also includes other pieces by Akeem Balogun that have appeared in various publications throughout his writing career.

Stop, Look and Listen is an enjoyable read that will appeal to all fans of the short story form as well as to any reader who is entertained by writing that is precise, fun and thought-provoking.

My work colleagues tell me to stop smoking. They say it’s detrimental to my health. “Do you want to see your future kids grow up?” they ask me. “Do you want us to stand next to you on the lunch break?”

I was pulled over by the police and told to stop speeding. “You could have killed someone,” the officer said. “There’s no way a child could have survived a hit at that speed.”

A few of my friends and I were leaving a clothing store when security stopped me on suspicion that I had stolen something. They took me to one side, looked into my bag and checked the items against my receipt. They let me go once they saw all of it was on there...

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Big JUNE lives alone in her childhood home, a large house in suburban South London. She has been there since 1954 and no-one has re-decorated since 1973. Anyone noticing June thinks she’s odd; people keep their distance. One day, a stranger - a young woman called Lottie - walks in uninvited and starts to ask questions. Over the months, June and the house seem to reveal their secrets. June loves Space and especially, the star of the TV Sci-fi programme to which she is addicted. Lottie helps June to transform her life, build her telescope and finally prepares her to leave to pursue her dream. But where has Lottie gone?

Stop, Look and Listen

Akeem Balogun

£1.29 Added

Stop, Look and Listen is a short collection of flash fiction pieces. It features Escape, a story about a son who wants to keep his parents together for the sake of his father, Mannequin, a creepy tale about a husband and his wife's disappearance, as well as the titular story Stop, Look and Listen, an exploration of life through instructions.

The collection also includes other pieces by Akeem Balogun that have appeared in various publications throughout his writing career.

Stop, Look and Listen is an enjoyable read that will appeal to all fans of the short story form as well as to any reader who is entertained by writing that is precise, fun and thought-provoking.

A small time shop keeper brings his crooked ways to a provincial town, introducing his customers to boozing gambling and sex.

The grocer’s shop where my grandfather committed most of his later crimes was pulled down shortly after he died but as shop-keeping was not his first choice of career he would not have been sorry to see the wrecking ball do its work.

His life sentence of greengrocery without parole had been foisted upon him by the Jockey Club following his warning off in the spring of 1955 and try as he might he was never truly at home in the uptight world of provincial, suburban commerce.

After what had gone before selling Bramley apples and Brussels sprouts was always going to be too tame for him. His working life began with a bang of primitive poison gas when he left the poverty of rural Ireland to join the British Army who promptly shipped him to Iraq where he witnessed the Kurds getting their first taste of British chemical weaponry. This was quickly followed by a disagreement with his sergeant-major that lead to a lengthy spell in the glasshouse which was memorable only for the brutality, the bad food and a foul mouthed encounter with T.E. Lawrence which culminated in a one sided exchange of homophobic insults.

His inevitable dishonourable discharge saw him back in England and on the dole. With steady employment thin on the ground he tried his luck on the racetrack as a bookmaker and he was moderately successful until restrictions on gambling imposed following the outbreak of WWII threatened to rob him of his livelihood. A lesser villain may have found DORA’s draconian measures too much, not my grandfather he simply carried on regardless...

Find The Lady

Ian Cassidy

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A small time shop keeper brings his crooked ways to a provincial town, introducing his customers to boozing gambling and sex.

A macabre and dark psychological thriller, ‘The Shadows’ tells the story of Jack, a young and disturbed mobster, living in a hellish world where he is fighting to find answers, fighting to find out what happened in a past that he dare not speak of. With rivals wanting him dead, and his grip on reality ever weakening, Jack must seek to save his life and save his mind before he descends into madness or is buried in his grave.
“This is not a normal time, and this is not a normal place . . .”

The Shadows

J A Pritchard

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A macabre and dark psychological thriller, ‘The Shadows’ tells the story of Jack, a young and disturbed mobster, living in a hellish world where he is fighting to find answers, fighting to find out what happened in a past that he dare not speak of. With rivals wanting him dead, and his grip on reality ever weakening, Jack must seek to save his life and save his mind before he descends into madness or is buried in his grave.
“This is not a normal time, and this is not a normal place . . .”

He was supposed to be the one who finds the criminal. Instead he becomes a victim but learns a lesson.

Streetwise

Al Gore, the Internet, the Algonquin Hotel and perhaps some misconceptions.

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He was supposed to be the one who finds the criminal. Instead he becomes a victim but learns a lesson.

Just a Toenail Away

There's a fragrance in the air as I stand under the big sky spanning the driest state in the Great South Land. As the scorching north wind whispers around me stirring the leaves of the gums and the mallee the scent of eucalyptus drifts past my nose and I am surprised to feel a sense of homecoming...

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Al Gore, the Internet, the Algonquin Hotel and perhaps some misconceptions.

Under The Big Sky

Lynn Todd

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'The Colour of Haze'[is] about the Nazis [and] is especially pungent. Every kid knew there was a row back then but didn't know what it was about. The past can be disturbing for children, too. - Trevor Reeves, Southern Ocean Review

The Colour of Haze

Jasper Brown is an average bloke, with an average life. All this is about to change when he meets Poppy Winters.

Jasper Brown, by his own admission, was a fairly ordinary bloke. He had a good job, that he would best describe as ok. His circle of friends was an eclectic bunch of people, who were nothing out of the ordinary. Jasper knew what he liked, and seldom got it. He was happy with this.

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'The Colour of Haze'[is] about the Nazis [and] is especially pungent. Every kid knew there was a row back then but didn't know what it was about. The past can be disturbing for children, too. - Trevor Reeves, Southern Ocean Review

Poppy Winters

Jason Moody

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Jasper Brown is an average bloke, with an average life. All this is about to change when he meets Poppy Winters.

Have you ever attended one of those popular ghost hunting events? You might think twice after reading this little tale of paranormal retribution, especially if you are a councillor.

The Curse Of The Theatre Royal

A duologue between adolescent twins: same life but very different experiences.

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Have you ever attended one of those popular ghost hunting events? You might think twice after reading this little tale of paranormal retribution, especially if you are a councillor.

The First Cut

The contents of Auntie's beaten-out, oversized handbag contain a closely-guarded secret...

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A duologue between adolescent twins: same life but very different experiences.

The Weather House

Betrayal rocks Lynn's marriage, but the other woman is not quite what she expected...

The distant receiver clicked down. The vacant buzz flooded my shocked brain. What should I do? I stood at the window, heard his shout goodbye. I couldn’t respond. After a puzzled moment, the door slammed. I watched red tail lights disappear down the drive; a couple of demonic eyes.

I could feel my years of trust cracking like the sagging garden wall. I stared out at the leaning willow with its undermining roots. That was me, knocked sideways. No longer could I believe his tales. Every time he took a call, I would be straining to listen. Every time he went out, I would wonder who with. I dropped the second handset as if it were a snake, cutting off the hiss. He was my best friend, my other half. We couldn’t go on as normal. Not now. I would have to have it out with him...

I watched a white feather fluttering in the breeze outside. That’s how I felt, suspended, helpless. I was waiting, shaking, with his customary G&T when he returned. My stiff smile had been primed with two glasses of sherry. He entered, sheepish, offering guilty flowers, a peck. Small talk was out of the question; I’d stewed too long. Sweating, I went straight for the carotid.

‘I heard your call last night, Jeff.’ The perfume from his neglected flowers caught my throat. I hated this. I’d never thought it would happen to me. Fool…

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The contents of Auntie's beaten-out, oversized handbag contain a closely-guarded secret...

India

Gill Hollands

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Betrayal rocks Lynn's marriage, but the other woman is not quite what she expected...

An extraordinary personal encounter on the New York subway.

Bagman

A landlord takes a special interest in the new tenant of a Highland croft.

The first proper snow came today. Icy winds blew and the skies darkened to gunmetal grey. The wind sliced and hurled the snow around until all went white and the clouds were spent.

When I was a lad and living in what is now her cottage, the snow would start at the end of October. The Ben, over the way, would show the first sign of winter. I’d wake up and smell the air and think: ‘That’s it then, there’ll be snow on the Ben’ and I’d open my thin curtains, score zigzag lines through the ice on the inside of the window, and see the mountain white, proudly hailing winter’s arrival. And there the snow would stay until April or May and sometimes, there’d still be white patches showing in June. Nowadays, it seems, the snow comes when it chooses.

When she came here, I found myself missing life more than before. She has a vulnerability that makes me want to look after her and keep an eye on her. That’s why I stay around. Well, that’s what I tell myself. Better to think that, I suppose...

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An extraordinary personal encounter on the New York subway.

The Landlord

A D Muir

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A landlord takes a special interest in the new tenant of a Highland croft.

The manically-depressed iceberg has few friends among the polar bears at the North Atlantic Bar.

Thaw

I walked away alone. Tears sprung quickly but not unexpectedly to my eyes - I realised I was now alone!

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The manically-depressed iceberg has few friends among the polar bears at the North Atlantic Bar.

Early Days

Peter's quiet night in is high-jacked by a complete stranger...

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I walked away alone. Tears sprung quickly but not unexpectedly to my eyes - I realised I was now alone!

Basil

I looked out over the restless sea my mind fighting through a haze of confusion. Was this the same view I shared with Jeff for all those years? We had been so happy in this place never suspecting that such evil lurked close by!

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Peter's quiet night in is high-jacked by a complete stranger...

A Tormented Soul

The triangular craft hovered unnoticed over the wooded area the lights necessary for navigation still unseen by those below.

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I looked out over the restless sea my mind fighting through a haze of confusion. Was this the same view I shared with Jeff for all those years? We had been so happy in this place never suspecting that such evil lurked close by!

An Encounter Too Close

Do you believe in fate or that things happen for a reason? No? Well neither did I until one day.....

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The triangular craft hovered unnoticed over the wooded area the lights necessary for navigation still unseen by those below.

A Light in the Darkness

A young woman’s way in and out of a brothel. (This story contains adult themes and explicit sexual references.)

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Do you believe in fate or that things happen for a reason? No? Well neither did I until one day.....

Soul Kill

How a nosey GP finds his satisfaction for a happy ever after. (This story contains explicit sexual references.)

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A young woman’s way in and out of a brothel. (This story contains adult themes and explicit sexual references.)

It's All in the Nose

a woman's revenge on the men who betrayed her.

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How a nosey GP finds his satisfaction for a happy ever after. (This story contains explicit sexual references.)

Widow's Peak

Passion in a time of revolution. (This story contains sexually explicit references.)

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a woman's revenge on the men who betrayed her.

Mangrove on Wenceslas Square

A lifetime of adventures with Ben, the leprechaun...

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Passion in a time of revolution. (This story contains sexually explicit references.)

An Imaginary Friend

Atop a hill, overlooking the city of Goodwin, was a single, solitary, black rose. It's delicate petals shimmered in the afternoon sun, and they danced in the gentle breeze. Just below, sat a small woodland which sat to the west of the impressive city...

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A lifetime of adventures with Ben, the leprechaun...

The Black Rose

Jason Moody

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What is the price of fame?

Success

‘Share a woman with me…’

Philip’s tongue touches the tip of his wife’s ear as he whispers his request through whisky-scented breath. He can’t see her face as his nose nuzzles against her hair, as her reaction slowly creeps into her expression, but he does feel her tense and her attempt to pull away from his embrace. He holds her more closely and laughs softly.

‘Philip!’ she rebukes. But, he thinks, this time her tone is less censorious than usual.

He clasps her shoulders and gently pushes her away so he can look into her dark eyes. She is a beautiful woman and he is lucky to have her. However, they have been married for nearly ten years and the early spark, the early fission, has undoubtedly depleted. And here he is a healthy male that she, has lately been less than eager to satisfy.

‘Catherine, you know I love you and always will. Won’t you consider it at least? I’ve never strayed and I don’t want to now, but I need well, more – just this once?’ He tries to sound cajoling, to make his eyes pleading, wide and puppy dog.

Catherine pulls away. She takes her wineglass from the kitchen worktop where it is sitting amongst the debris of their recently prepared dinner. She holds the glass to her lips, pauses, then sets the glass down sharply. It shatters...

£2.49 Added

What is the price of fame?

Adult Entertainment

A D Muir

£1.29 Added

Set in Northumberland, the Charlton's, a family of tenant hill farmers, struggle to survive against folk who wield the power to control their land usage.

Going Backwards To Go Forwards

Jamie Mullen is caught in the middle of the wheeling and dealing among Irish Travellers who have returned home for Christmas.

£1.29 Added

Set in Northumberland, the Charlton's, a family of tenant hill farmers, struggle to survive against folk who wield the power to control their land usage.

The Travellers' Man

Will this be his last bounty? Gilman must decide after capturing an outlaw who claims he is not the man. Before he can decide what to do, another bounty hunter turns up unexpectedly.

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Jamie Mullen is caught in the middle of the wheeling and dealing among Irish Travellers who have returned home for Christmas.

The Bounty Hunter

A wartime evacuee's story

“Stick ‘em up”. Diane wanted a banana. Her brother wanted a sister. Her dad wanted a boy. Her mum wanted eight candles. Then war broke out. Diane buckled the holster around her waist and cocked the gun, like she had seen in the Westerns. She examined the reel of caps and put the silver sheriff’s star on her chest. ‘You won’t blow them all out.’ Diane rattled the handcuffs. Her brother would make a good prisoner.

One day the radio played, The National Anthem. Their father told them to stand up. War had been declared. Somebody had waved a piece of paper to say so. Diane thought this might be an opportunity to use her gun. But nothing happened...

£2.99 Added

Will this be his last bounty? Gilman must decide after capturing an outlaw who claims he is not the man. Before he can decide what to do, another bounty hunter turns up unexpectedly.

Yes, we have no bananas.

Barbara Hawthorne

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A wartime evacuee's story

A man walking his dog on a stormy beach hears a cry for help. Or is it?

David would have preferred to take the winding cliff top path, but the pummelling side-wind was so fierce that it could have almost knocked him off his feet even down on the beach. ‘I’d get no views today, anyway,’ he muttered to himself.

The sky was a straining deep grey, bulging with dark menace, and the rain fell as sharpened needles, seemingly attempting to pierce his icy cheeks. His waterproofs rustled angrily as he scraped each leg against one another and walked as fast as he could. His feet sank heavily into sand that had developed a dirty, murky sort of colour, as though the blackness of the unseen rocks below his feet were beginning to seep and stain the earth.

His faithful retriever Shirley padded on ahead of him, knowing by their enduring habit that they must complete their daily route, an unavoidable ritual, but discerning that the quicker they completed it the sooner it would all be over and she could resume her warm fireside rest. He watched her seeking out scents with her nose to the ground despite the miserable weather, purely from instinct. He raised his head occasionally, feeling the prickling rain and spray against his skin, his eyelashes laden with water drops. The returning grey tide seemed to him a bleak tumult and the sky looked as though it was merging entirely with the water, until you couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began...

The Whispering Cliffs

Did Zack still love Greta? Had too much water passed under the bridge. He'd only know if he saw her again...

£0.99 Added

A man walking his dog on a stormy beach hears a cry for help. Or is it?

Zack's Progress

When feisty 35-year-old Jane decides to confront Fear 37 she soon finds herself adrift in a sea of chaos. In a rundown hotel in Dawson Creek, Canada, to achieve her goal she must contend with crazed middle-aged bikers, drunk oil workers and a hippy called Ralf. Will she survive to face Fear 38?

And so I get to Fear 37: Starting a conversation with a stranger. Actually, in coffee shops or movie queues or waiting rooms or even at the supermarket checkout I'm fine. I can do it anytime with anyone and it's no big deal, enjoyable even. But in a bar or a tavern or a pub or a bierkeller or even just a hotel lounge and that's it, I can't do it. Probably I can get through life perfectly without ever having done it, but it twists me up inside when I'm sat in one of those places and can't do it. That's because I know I'm not doing it out of fear, rather than choice, and like the man sorta said, there's nothing to be more afraid of than fear itself.

It's obviously not because I'm shy. It could have something to do with concerns over rejection, a little like my election thing. Or it could be that by me making the first move, I will never know if he or she is capable of making the first move, and therefore I can never really be sure if they are the kind of person worthy of my attention. (I have no time for wimps!)

But mostly I think it's because through a small, simple act I could be setting off a chain of events that will lead to disaster for all concerned. I don't mind doing something big and complicated that ends in disaster, as the outcome fits the cause and could have been foreseen. Like setting up a new business providing mobile fish pedicures to women in retirement homes, only to find the fish have picked up a bug that gives the old dears septicaemia and you end up dealing with a class action suit. Unlucky, but not unpredictable.

Doing something really small and getting that kind of result – such as leaving the butter out for two minutes on a hot day while you answer the phone so that a fly can land on it and get stuck, then not noticing the fly as you butter your toast, then getting food poisoning so that the next day you can't make a job interview so you don't get the job, and don't find any others and end up running out of money, losing your house and then being divorced by your husband/wife who was depending on you to be the bread winner – that really scares me. It drives home we live in a chaotic world where small actions can have totally unpredictable results. The idea that the principle of proportionate cause and effect we live by is little more than an illusion gives me the willies, and I don't want to be reminded of it by talking to some redneck stranger in a bar.

It goes like this: start a conversation in a setting that's not alcohol related and it's no big deal, just adults exchanging information or passing the time. Even in a sea of chaos there's zip chance of anything bad coming of it...

£2.49 Added

Did Zack still love Greta? Had too much water passed under the bridge. He'd only know if he saw her again...

The Buttered Fly Effect

A Republican soldier returns in spirit to the battle grounds of the Spanish Civil War.

The mountains are like blood. Not new blood, red and shocking, but congealed and rusted, like an old wound. Lit lurid by the aftermath of dawn, they rise up from the sea, rounded and brooding, silent as the grave. Spain, land of my birth, blood of my blood. I have returned. I have come back. I am home.

Then the concrete quay, a flurry of signs, new roads, mist rising from the valleys as the Basque territories unfurl into the morning, unfolding in crumpled layers like a bale of chiffon. The mountains now are soft and green, no longer the ferrous red of the coast and the sky is like pearl. The hills remain, but industry has receded. The Ring of Iron, they called it then, has powdered into rust, and nature has reclaimed its own. Pit-heads are heaps of stone and furnaces lie cold. The ravages of war have healed long since, moss crept over stone and door-frames...

£1.59 Added

When feisty 35-year-old Jane decides to confront Fear 37 she soon finds herself adrift in a sea of chaos. In a rundown hotel in Dawson Creek, Canada, to achieve her goal she must contend with crazed middle-aged bikers, drunk oil workers and a hippy called Ralf. Will she survive to face Fear 38?

Return Journey

Brenda Ray

£0.99 Added

A Republican soldier returns in spirit to the battle grounds of the Spanish Civil War.

It’s hard to describe what it was that made Grandma’s house so spooky, but as long as I could remember, something permeated the house with a sense of unease.

56, Stroma Road was tall and narrow, one of a row of four, built just before the First World War. It was not the best of times. My mother said her first memory was the sound of sirens, then the great dark shape of a Zeppelin filled the sky. Perhaps such memories record themselves in the bricks and plaster. Or perhaps it was the layout of the house itself, with its dark middle room, or the echoing quarry tiles of the kitchen and scullery, or the cold dark pantry, which had a distinct depression in the middle of its tiled floor. Or perhaps it was the attic, reached by a narrow staircase from the bright, light end of the house close to my grandparents’ bedroom. There’s something about an extra floor that disturbs, especially when it encloses strange shapes shrouded in old sheets, and boxes of photographs and documents full of family secrets. And the feeling, even in the most innocuous of rooms, that someone might be up there...

Esme

Brenda Ray

£1.59 Added

Choosing when to die can be a tricky business for all concerned.

The boy yawned loudly then started energetically picking his nose as the middle-aged man in the tweed jacket sat close to him.

“So can you tell me what five x plus two x would be?” asked the man, Donald, pointing with his fountain pen at the mathematical expression he'd just written in a notepad. Tall and thin, he had to fold himself up like an origami bird to fit next to the 15-year-old, Freddy, at the small desk in the corner of the bedroom.

After a minute of head scratching and further nose picking, along with long sighs and low groans, Freddy replied, “Seven x?”

“No need to be so unsure. Yes it is seven x. Well done.”

It had only been a few days since the last tutorial, when they'd spent two hours going over the basics of algebra, which Freddie appeared to have picked up quite easily. So that the simple task he'd just completed shouldn't really have presented any kind of difficulty, with no sighs or groans required. Donald then wrote another expression – three x times eight x – and asked Freddy to simplify it, quietly praying he would give the correct answer of twenty-four x squared.

“Eleven x,” he immediately said.

Donald's lower right eyelid twitched for several seconds. It was obvious he would have to go through the basics of algebra with Freddy once again, watch him pick them up with surprising ease once again, and desperately hope it wasn't all gone from his mind the following week.

“Good try,” Donald said with the calmness of a Hindu holy man. “But this time we are multiplying, which will give us an x-squared term. Remember we covered that last time, and the time before that?”

"Did we?" Freddy replied, with an expression that hovered between puzzlement and indignation.

Donald had been tutoring in maths and science for four years, and had proved quite adept at it, with students achieving far higher grades than their parents and school teachers ever expected. But even so, he hated the work and couldn't wait to quit it permanently…

End Date

When global disaster strikes everyone's faith is tested

The Reverend waited for the muffled thumping sounds of people in heavy coats settling on old wooden pews to finish. Then he took a slow breath and said in a soft voice: "You have come here today to praise God. And my job should be to lead you in that act, and by so doing help to deepen your understanding of the Almighty. But I must now inform you that I will not be able to perform that function, not today nor at any other time. That is because when I woke this morning I realized, with iron certainty, that I no longer believe in a deity of any kind."...

£1.59 Added

Choosing when to die can be a tricky business for all concerned.

Faith

In the near future, telling the truth is no simple matter. The Truth Tank - ultimate confessional or portal to hell?

It was just before five and looking like a dull end to another working day when Giles clapped his hands and shouted: "Gotcha!"

"Finally found one?" said Parker, turning around on his stool.

"I think so," Giles replied. Looking at the jagged peaks and deep troughs of the graph on the screen in front of him, he could tell immediately banned substances were present in the blood sample under analysis.

"I'm always amazed that these athletes still believe they can get away with it," said Parker. "I suppose they think they're so much better than us. But muscles, stamina and a boundless ego are no substitute for a good chemistry degree and a gas chromatograph. Anyway, that's us done for the day. Fancy a quick drink before the slog home?"

Ten minutes later the pair had taken off their white lab coats, secured the small laboratory and were sat in a nearby pub. As Parker put down his bottle of beer, he blurted out, "After all these years I still don't understand how they can do it. How can they live with themselves deceiving people in that way? Surely no amount of glory can make up for the guilt they must feel at having cheated. Carrying something like that inside me everyday would make me permanently miserable."

Giles shrugged and said he guessed they just find a way of justifying it to themselves. This prompted Parker to launch into a mini-tirade on how despicable drug cheats were, until he realised he was straying into a sensitive area for Giles, namely lies and deceit...

£0.99 Added

When global disaster strikes everyone's faith is tested

Truth Tank

A one night stand in a seedy hotel leads to an unexpected encounter and stretched boundaries. Would you meet Mr Husband?

Light snow causes heavy delay leads to a fresh-meat tryst with a fellow traveller in a leatherette airport hotel. It's an indifferently sinful experience – blame the minibar – that will lead to a definitive story...

£0.99 Added

In the near future, telling the truth is no simple matter. The Truth Tank - ultimate confessional or portal to hell?

Edinburgh Contradictions

A jaded city commuter and office worker is unexpectedly invited to 'break free' from the herd. His joy is short-lived and he is quickly returned to the treadmill. He will never meet her like again. There will be no repetition - or will there?

At midday I pause reluctantly on the edge of the abyss yet know that in a few hours all will be reversed. Then I will ascend to poor, diminished liberty; no different to any other working day.

There is no counting the number of times I have stood on this escalator in company with other automatons: waxworks shunting along relentlessly like food cartons on a filling conveyor. Every one of us remains obediently on our personal moving platform and descends or ascends one foot at a time to the metronomic beat of the supporting rollers.

The way is steep and, it is said, deepest of all in the city, but each day with clunking efficiency it transports tens of thousands of us with the same impersonal, indifferent boredom that we display.

I have yet to take the alternative staircase, despite many vows to improve my fitness. Perhaps to do so might introduce a welcome hesitancy in my progress as I pace a slow measured tramp downwards...

£0.99 Added

A one night stand in a seedy hotel leads to an unexpected encounter and stretched boundaries. Would you meet Mr Husband?

Up The Downstairs

Edward Cartner

£0.99 Added

A jaded city commuter and office worker is unexpectedly invited to 'break free' from the herd. His joy is short-lived and he is quickly returned to the treadmill. He will never meet her like again. There will be no repetition - or will there?

The end is coming. Act accordingly.

The clock stopped at 11:00am, precisely.

The laptop exploded.
Our fridge freezer malfunctioned, starting a flood in the kitchen.

Radio 4 News interrupted the afternoon play.
‘An unexplained electrical force,’ they said.
‘It’s global warming,’ said Lulu. ‘You watch.’

That was yesterday.

Today’s our fifth anniversary.

I’ve just woken up.
In the bath.
Slumped.
Cold.

The bath water is red.
Lulu is blue.
The slash to her wrists tell the story…

Priority Lives

David G Allen

£0.99 Added

The end is coming. Act accordingly.

Angel returns to the island she grew up on, searching for answers, trawling through memories of catastrophe. Is her father still alive? What happened to him? Will she find the answers she seeks or open a whole new can of worms?

The keel ground on the stones. I leapt out into warm shallows like glass, eager to relive the idyll of my youth, touch the mossy wall of my memory.

My eyes scanned the barren expanse, the blackened distant hills. Nature had long dispersed the acrid stench that I recalled, the sky innocent of clouds. The cool wind reminded me it was still Spring, not the scorching summer which had often chased me into the sea. I stepped from the licking surf, trying to work my rusty, inner compass. The landmarks I remembered were gone, replaced by cold, crusted tongues of black magma reaching for the sea. Was I doing the right thing? Sighing, I trod into the heavy boots I carried, ready to take on the angry rock.

Clambering over the jagged humps I became aware of the clatter behind me. Glancing back, my partner Josh, had taken down the mast, stowed the oars.

‘It’s OK. Go on. I’ll catch up!’ He flapped a hand, bending back to his task. I clambered over the rocky runs, like the long, knotted fingers of a hand. Between were thin slivers of green, tenacious twigs struggling to survive in the scorched soil. One caught my eye, a small silvery bush, faded flowers still clinging to the branches. Touching a leaf, I remembered my mother planting it. Papa had brought it down the mountain for her, presented it with a kiss...

A tear burned a track down my cheek, stinging in the wind. I hadn’t realised how much this wound still hurt. The sound of Josh puffing as he heaved the boat up the beach, jerked me back. Clenching teeth, I moved on.

In the next ravine were more plants I recognised; my mother’s herb garden, running rampant. I rolled a soft mint leaf in my fingers, sniffed. Immediately, I was back there in the kitchen, gentle hands guiding mine as we kneaded bread, watching her chop with swift, nimble fingers...

The Heel

Gill Hollands

£0.99 Added

Angel returns to the island she grew up on, searching for answers, trawling through memories of catastrophe. Is her father still alive? What happened to him? Will she find the answers she seeks or open a whole new can of worms?

A victim of an attempted gang rape wreaks an appropriate revenge.

Nick took no notice of the two builders loading tools in the back of a battered van. Seconds later his world went black as a hood was pulled over his head. Simultaneously, both arms were wrenched behind his back and he was pulled backwards into the van.

“Right, Bill, now tip that bag of cement forward onto his legs while I tie his arms," said Dave.

Nick was twisting and turning furiously. Muffled obscenities came from the hood. But with arms tied tightly behind his back and his legs pinned under 50 kilos of cement, he was helpless. Nonetheless, he continued to scream and shout, contorting his body in all directions.

"We'd better encourage him to stop that, don't you think, Dave?" said Bill grinning.

"Reckon so," Dave replied, grabbing the ends of the cord which was threaded round the hood. "Can you hear me in there? Can you breathe alright?"

"Sod off," came the muffled reply.

"You'll change your mind soon – this bag‘s airtight."

Dave tied the cord quite loosely. "That should quieten him down a bit."

For a few seconds there were cries of "You bastards! What the bloody hell are you doing?" but the fight for air soon took over. Nick's breathing got heavier and heavier and faster and faster. Every time he breathed out some air escaped but as he tried to breathe in, the plastic lining sealed off any fresh air. Very soon the hood was collapsing tightly on his face as he tried desperately to breathe the little air remaining. Dave waited until Nick's efforts became slightly weaker before loosening the cord...

A Fit Punishment

Marvin Douglas

£1.99 Added

A victim of an attempted gang rape wreaks an appropriate revenge.

A monstrous hybrid has taken over the planet in pursuit of her creator, whom she now holds in her grasp, the last human on Earth.

Monolog

Elinor Perry-Smith

£0.99 Added

A monstrous hybrid has taken over the planet in pursuit of her creator, whom she now holds in her grasp, the last human on Earth.

In this first earth-shattering adventure of many, Hugh McPearson "Ten of Spades Detective" (embarassingly his brother is an Ace Detective) seeks to solve the mystery of the disappearing layer in some school children's gobstoppers! Curiously this fascinating case failed to make the front pages of the national newspapers... or any pages come to that... (Book 1 in the Hugh McPearson series)

Hello reader. I guess you’ve never heard of a Ten of Spades Detective before. You’ve probably only heard of Ace Detectives. I call myself a Ten of Spades Detective because I take on the jobs the Ace Detectives leave behind… or can’t be bothered with. I can understand why. The jobs I’ve had have led me into a few unusual situations. Let me tell you about one of them.

Friday 11.03 a.m.

I was sitting at my desk, wondering if my desk was also sitting at me, when my phone rang. I felt grateful to the person who invented bells because otherwise I’d never notice when someone telephoned me.

“Hello,” said the telephone in a young voice.

“Hello,” I replied. It was too early to think of a clever or original reply.

“We need your help,” continued the young voice. “We’re having problems with our gobstoppers!”

“OK,” I replied. “I’ll be over in fifteen minutes and an ostrich straight away.” I felt great! I’d used my favourite catch-phrase almost straight away! It also avoided any embarrassment; it seems that not everyone expects an ostrich to arrive fifteen minutes after they’d phoned for a detective...

Hugh McPearson and the Gobstopper Mystery.

The expensive German kitchen drawer opened smoothly to yield a vegetable knife. She tested it on her fingertip: she wanted to, her best friend did it, but she but was sickened by the rapid gush of red . . .

Cecile screwed the card and the fat cheque from her dad into a ball and tossed it into the fire. She watched it smoke, flash orange then shrivel to flakes of black. It was her fifteenth birthday, but there was nothing to spend money on, trapped in the tin pot village where Auntie Sally lived. No-one had bothered to visit during her pregnancy, and a month later she handed the squalling four day old bundle to the social worker.

‘His name is Henley,’ she told the shrew-faced woman and watched numbly as she walked away with her son. She allowed her aunt to lead her out of the private hospital to her car. The sixty miles of the A34 from Winchester to Oxford were chock full with bank holiday traffic, and her anxiety increased as the green road signs showed the miles tumbling down with each junction they passed. When they arrived her stepmother tried to give her a hug which she shrugged off and the only acknowledgement from her father was when he said, ‘Looks like we’ve got away with this Cecile, just make sure you stick to your story, okay?’

The baby was never mentioned again.

The expensive German kitchen drawer opened smoothly to yield a vegetable knife. She tested it on her fingertip: she wanted to, her best friend did it, but she but was sickened by the rapid gush of red. Instead she chose a parmesan grater and rubbed it out of sight against her inner thighs; she had found a new comfort.

£0.99 Added

In this first earth-shattering adventure of many, Hugh McPearson "Ten of Spades Detective" (embarassingly his brother is an Ace Detective) seeks to solve the mystery of the disappearing layer in some school children's gobstoppers! Curiously this fascinating case failed to make the front pages of the national newspapers... or any pages come to that... (Book 1 in the Hugh McPearson series)

Henley to Brighton

Gilly Goldsworthy

£0.99 Added

The expensive German kitchen drawer opened smoothly to yield a vegetable knife. She tested it on her fingertip: she wanted to, her best friend did it, but she but was sickened by the rapid gush of red . . .

Moving into your first flat with a lover is a stressful time, but when precious objects become damaged, there'll be tears before bedtime. Thank goodness for the Bronte family band!

The boxes are breeding, transforming their beautiful minimalist flat into the packing department of a large warehouse.

Luke’s in front of the computer, browsing YouTube, while Katrina does her best to draw order from chaos. Hearing Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights for the fifth time, Katrina snaps.

She drops a pile of DVDs on the plastic-wrapped sofa and marches through to the study.

Luke turns to her with a grin, pointing at the screen. ‘She’s the reason I never got around to reading your favourite book. It took her five minutes to tell the story. Why did Emily Bronte have to go on so long?’...

Emily Bronte Unbound

Stephen Shieber

£0.99 Added

Moving into your first flat with a lover is a stressful time, but when precious objects become damaged, there'll be tears before bedtime. Thank goodness for the Bronte family band!

There centre stage she stands like the star, she always knew she was and waits silently for her applause now please!

Applause now Please!

Deborah M.Hodgetts

£1.99 Added

There centre stage she stands like the star, she always knew she was and waits silently for her applause now please!

In July 2010, this story won first prize in the Unique Writing Publication's 'Love' competition.The non fiction prose tells of family love and the heartache around miscarriage. The tale is hopeful and honest. Family humour has to click in as does the acceptance of support on many levels. A tale of faith.

Love

F. Linday

£1.29 Added

In July 2010, this story won first prize in the Unique Writing Publication's 'Love' competition.The non fiction prose tells of family love and the heartache around miscarriage. The tale is hopeful and honest. Family humour has to click in as does the acceptance of support on many levels. A tale of faith.

This is a coming of age tale of Yuliya which raises awareness of child abuse in Eastern Europe. Young Yuliya prays daily for deliverance from her life of servitude to her family. She dreams of going to college and one day marrying Branimir - a gypsy youth. But when her father's debts are due, he arranges for her to be taken by his unsavory associates as payment of those debts. Her mother calls upon Branimir and his family and it is with them that Yuliya's prayers are answered.
(Provocative)

Off the Beaten Track

F. Linday

£0.99 Added

This is a coming of age tale of Yuliya which raises awareness of child abuse in Eastern Europe. Young Yuliya prays daily for deliverance from her life of servitude to her family. She dreams of going to college and one day marrying Branimir - a gypsy youth. But when her father's debts are due, he arranges for her to be taken by his unsavory associates as payment of those debts. Her mother calls upon Branimir and his family and it is with them that Yuliya's prayers are answered.
(Provocative)

My father was a painter and decorator. An artisan, he called himself, in his effusive moments. What he meant was that he slapped up posh wallpapers in houses he quietly lusted after.

He was a man of modest ambition. Towards the end of their marriage, my mother struggled to conceal her contempt. Sometimes, she spat in his tea and stirred it in with a spoon.

‘Think that milk’s off, Maureen. Me tea’s all frothy.’

She moved out the day puberty arrived. I heard the door click shut, but was mesmerised by the ugly bumps on my balls. I didn’t get out of the bath, didn’t see where she’d gone. She left a note, but it only said that she was off in search of a less normal life. I knew exactly what she meant...

Being Normal

Stephen Shieber

£0.99 Added

When Jack Black, Rat-catcher and Mole destroyer by appointment to Her Majesty Queen Victoria, comes to visit he brings hope and love for broken heart

The nine o’clock chimes ebb away from the grandfather clock I’ve been dusting. It is a sneezy job and not one I enjoy, but now the dust in my nose is replaced by the scent of violets. Such a sweet, springtime smell. It lifts my spirits, makes me want to laugh, until I realise where it is coming from.
Mrs Havelock is standing behind me, waiting impatiently. She is always quiet as a mouse in her soft leather shoes and has been known to like catching servants out.
‘Morning miss,’ I say quickly, holding the duster behind my back.
She eyes me beadily, ‘Eliza, a Mr Black will be here later this morning. Ask Cook to put aside a slice of pie and a glass of beer for him. I do feel a complimentary tray of wholesome fayre would reflect well on this house. I did tell her last night, but you know how contrary Cook can be.’
I nod. If ‘contrary’ means she won’t do as she’s told and will throw a ladle if provoked, then contrary she surely is. I do hope Cook, or Missus B as she likes to be known, is in a good mood.
‘And get Rupert up and dressed and ready to receive Mr Black. When you meet someone who works for Queen Victoria, you really must make the very best impression.’ She smiles at the thought of our Majesty.
I nod again, ‘Indeed Miss.’
‘And ask Mr Black to leave his bill,’ she takes up her bag and adjusts her bonnet, ‘I do hope he can help dear Rupert.’ Her face suddenly squeezes like she’s chopping onions...

Jack Black, Rat-Catcher

Yasmin Keyani

£0.99 Added

When Jack Black, Rat-catcher and Mole destroyer by appointment to Her Majesty Queen Victoria, comes to visit he brings hope and love for broken heart

The search for a lost book changes lives forever.

I was dozing when the train jerked to an abrupt halt. The newspaper slid off my lap and, as I fumbled around on the filthy floor to retrieve it the lights flickered, went out for a second, then recovered their unforgiving glare.

The train was silent. I was hungry and tired and hoped we hadn’t broken down. I’d read the paper and struggled with the crossword at the beginning of the journey and my bored gaze now wandered over the shabby seats and littered floor. Then my eye was caught by a book lying under the next seat. How had I missed it when picking up the paper?

Stretching my shoulders, I looked at my reflection in the window against the dark night. How would someone outside see me? Fortyish, receding, an air of responsibility, probably a lawyer – which is true – or, heaven forbid, an estate agent. An predictable boring man with a boring life. Surreptitious glances at other reflections revealed only a couple of fellow commuters further along the carriage: one asleep and one tapping earnestly on a laptop.

After a few minutes more tedium, I reached out with my foot and dragged the book over. It had an old fashioned matt blue binding with the title, “The Antidote”, in gold lettering on the spine. I opened it and was surprised to discover crisp white leaves and, as I flicked to chapter one, the unmistakable new book smell that enticed me to read on...

Changing Lines

Beryl P. Brown

£0.99 Added

The search for a lost book changes lives forever.

An old-fashioned ghost story, stranded by heavy snow, a group of friends at a village pub pass the time telling stories.

The blizzard resulted in a lock-in. The Druid’s Head was at the edge of the village, a good half a mile away from the first houses. At eleven Ryan, its landlord, looked out of the window at the thickly falling snow and declared we’d all freeze to death if we tried to walk home. Settled by the fire with freshly poured pints, someone said we should pass the time telling ghost stories. And so, as the blizzard rattled at the windows, five grown men set about trying to scare each other silly.

Most of the tales were bad movies re-located to the Devon countryside, deaths foreseen, cannibal farmers, The Honiton Witch Project and Ryan’s nonsense about the poltergeist that drinks all his profits. No-one was in the slightest bit frightened, but it was fun and even as the snow stopped, we lingered. Alex, our local teacher, went last, seemingly reluctant to join in when normally you couldn’t shut him up.

‘There is one story I could tell,’ he said when pressed...

Footprints

Erinna Mettler

£0.99 Added

An old-fashioned ghost story, stranded by heavy snow, a group of friends at a village pub pass the time telling stories.

Brian Finnegan hates parties, but tonight the party is for him - and he has to make a speech.

The restaurant the entertainments committee had chosen for the Department’s annual hello/goodbye dinner was an odd one, or so Finnegan thought. Housed inside a tall, narrow box five storeys high that was painted black inside and out, it seemed to Finnegan to consist entirely of a staircase off of which, at each level, a few small tables and their accompanying chairs had been set. The staircase was badly lit so that Finnegan, whose eyes did not adjust well to subdued lighting these days, missed his footing twice on the way up.

He had come from one of the part-time teaching jobs he did to supplement his earnings from his full-time post. After the coming autumn, what he got for the part-time work, together with his meager pension, would be all he had to live on, for Finnegan, this year, numbered himself among those whose time it was to say goodbye...

That Good Night

Clive Collins

£0.99 Added

Brian Finnegan hates parties, but tonight the party is for him - and he has to make a speech.

They had always said that when one of them died the other would go to the funeral. nothing would stop them. When her first love dies prematurely she fails to keep her promise. Or does she?

Angie was aware that the group was beginning to flag and that the tea and coffee were sitting there waiting to be consumed.

“We’ve got it ready,” the events manager at the hotel had said. “It will keep hot. You can take your break whenever you like.”

Now seemed like a good time. “Okay folks,” she called. “I think we can have a rest now. Do come and get yourselves a drink. Looks like they’ve provided us with some nice biscuits too.”

She glanced at her watch. My god, it was exactly quarter past three. How had she known? It would just be beginning now.

She remembered all those years ago when they’d decided to split up. Well, he’d decided they should or rather his mother had. His cousin had got a girl pregnant and she didn’t want the same thing happening to him. If Angie was honest, it had been a good thing, splitting up. She soon found out that it had been the idea of having a boyfriend she’d liked at the time. She’d actually been happier that summer, single again, than she had been since the Christmas before when they’d got together.

They’d made a good show a trying to remain friends. “I’ll come to your funeral if you die before me,” he’d said.

“And I’ll come to yours if you die before me,” she’d said.

Duplicated

Em has fallen for her BMX instructor.
When he does the dirty, she turns the tables in spectacular style.

I hit the ground in a tangle with the bike. One of its wheels is still spinning, almost touching my face. Jeff peers down at me through the spokes. ‘Hard luck, Em,’ he says ‘Don’t overstretch. You were strong until you decided to go for the victory wheelie. And it’s a long way down when you biff like that. Try to keep more air between you and the bike. Steel’s a lot harder than grass.’ He reaches out to me.
Normally I wouldn’t take a hand from anyone but what’s happening with Jeff makes him different. I feel those luscious brown eyes look into mine as he helps me up.
‘How’s about we head back to the workshop?’ he says in the soft voice that curls my toes.
‘Yeah. Suits me.’ I try to sound casual. ‘But I don’t want the lesson to stop with my biff. You get up there and kill it again for me.’
He pedals in a quick tight arc, half the length of the run-up I need. Take-off is effortless...

£0.99 Added

They had always said that when one of them died the other would go to the funeral. nothing would stop them. When her first love dies prematurely she fails to keep her promise. Or does she?

Em Pulls a Stunt

Frank Woods

£0.99 Added

Em has fallen for her BMX instructor.
When he does the dirty, she turns the tables in spectacular style.

A memoir piece told in the historical present about a drug fuelled night during the nineteen nineties.

Something’s not quite right tonight but I don’t know what it is.

The back bedroom’s packed with nine lads and three girls from school. The glass panels in the window frame are sweating like we are and the music’s pumping. A strobe light’s appeared from nowhere and it matches the beat from the Prodigy tune on the stereo.

You’re no good for me, I don’t need nobody, don’t need no one.

It’s Friday night and the party’s just getting started. I have no idea what time it is. I know it’s been a long week, we deserve this.

Crooked Teeth says to me, ‘These trips are fucking mint.’

‘I know,’ I say, straining an ear towards the door.

My buzz is being ruined by an annoying thought that something bad is going to happen. It’s not paranoia or anything. There’s a corner of my mind, a dark area that senses violence when it’s in the air. And it’s working overtime tonight...

Milk Crates For Fists

Adam Glennon

£0.99 Added

A memoir piece told in the historical present about a drug fuelled night during the nineteen nineties.

An injured climber shares a gully with a dislodged boulder.

Runner-up in the John Muir Trust Wild Writing Competition.

I began to check through the possibilities for both of us. Yours were limited. Stay or move. Mine were limited. Hold on or fall. We were like strangers who are thrown together by fate into an intimate embrace.

Boulder

Frank Woods

£0.99 Added

An injured climber shares a gully with a dislodged boulder.

Runner-up in the John Muir Trust Wild Writing Competition.

Seven days into the end of the world, there was a crisis meeting in Hell.

This was a rare occurrence. A crisis meeting implies of course that a crisis had taken place, and needs to be resolved in some way. The usual reaction to a crisis in the Seven Circles was a street party. Today, the corridors of Pandemonium, the capital city of the Underworld, were flooded with panicking souls, bustling demons and sweating monsters of all shapes and sizes. Nobody was quite sure what to do, as none of them had been through this before, or at least not for centuries. Many simply tried to look busy, and eviscerated anyone who asked too many questions...

Crisis Meeting in Hell

Jonathan Macho

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When Ellie Smith went in search of her real family she did not expect to acquire a whole village.

Restoration Project

Janet Gogerty

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When Ellie Smith went in search of her real family she did not expect to acquire a whole village.

‘Jane will not be joining us this evening.’
The guests looked up in surprise as Professor William Montecute entered alone though the double doors.

Jane

Janet Gogerty

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‘Jane will not be joining us this evening.’
The guests looked up in surprise as Professor William Montecute entered alone though the double doors.

Two sisters try to survive in a post apocalyptic world overrun by the terrifying Evacuators, but the resistance is after them...

Run. Hold on to Lizzie’s hand. Don’t Look Back. Look back and you’re dead.

“Alana, I’m tired. I can’t keep going.”

I look down at Lizzie. She’s running alongside me, but her knees are buckling, her thin frame visibly straining with exhaustion. As we run, I scan the street. Just in front of us, a few feet to my left, a shop has collapsed but there’s a gap leading inside. We can shelter there for a second and, thanks to the rubble, we can hide. Diving beneath the doorframe, we settle inside. I shield Lizzie. The room’s empty. I crouch down and brush a lock of hair out of her face. It’s thick and knotted. She does the same for me, and smiles weakly.

“Hey smidge, how you holding up?”

“I’m so tired,” says Lizzie. “And my head hurts. Can’t we stay here?”

“You know we can’t, smidge, it’s evacuation day. No one survives evacuation day standing still.”...

Evacuation

Andrew Davis

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Two sisters try to survive in a post apocalyptic world overrun by the terrifying Evacuators, but the resistance is after them...

When Jake Lewis phoned his wife to tell her he would be late home from the office, he had no idea about the unnerving experience that was to confront him.
Having missed the last train out of Euston to Watford, he waited for the first morning train. It was at the Station that he noticed a young girl of about twenty who looked as if she belonged to another age. At her side was a small black haired dog. Where was she going, and why the black haired dog? Jake’s unnerving experience was about to begin...

The Girl On The Train

Danny Mac Cullough

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When Jake Lewis phoned his wife to tell her he would be late home from the office, he had no idea about the unnerving experience that was to confront him.
Having missed the last train out of Euston to Watford, he waited for the first morning train. It was at the Station that he noticed a young girl of about twenty who looked as if she belonged to another age. At her side was a small black haired dog. Where was she going, and why the black haired dog? Jake’s unnerving experience was about to begin...

A flash fiction story about transition

Trafalgar Square

Emma Bolger

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A flash fiction story about transition

An encounter with someone looking for guidance

Between Control Panels and Conveyancing

Emma Bolger

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An encounter with someone looking for guidance

Institutionalisation.

When I were little my mum and dad had to take me to the doctors because I was in a world of my own. School noticed it. Nat would ‘drift away’, they said. The doctor just said it was growing pains and I’d grow out of it in time. I wet the bed a lot; slept on a rubber mattress wired to an alarm.

When I was a bit older I had a kind of fit and I went into hospital. One night I were throwing my arms round and screaming. I don’t remember it but my mum and dad, they went to fetch a neighbour, she were a nurse, I think, and I got admitted. The doctor said it was schizophrenia. I had ECT there. But I was young and can’t remember it too well. There was a woman nurse: she were nice. The wards was named after trees. My ward was called Hazel. My brother Bert was on the same time as me but he were on Beech ward. They had to lock their kitchen windows up wi’ bars cos lads were getting out of the kitchen. Running away. He told me about it...

All I Can Remember Were Tablets

Al McClimens

£0.99 Added

Institutionalisation.

What if zombies weren't all mindless brain sucking monsters? What if zombies had thoughts? Even memories? What if zombies were much the same as you?

I wish I could remember.

In fact I wish I could do lots of things, but it’s the memories I miss the most. I mean, I think I had a family, before everything happened. I have vague recollections of something, but I’m not sure anymore if they’re my memories, or something I’ve made up.

I can’t even tell you my name, or where I live, or whether I’m alive.

You see, I’m what most people would call a zombie. Technically I’m undead.

I’m not rotting, I’m not dying, but I’m not really living.

See I’m new to all this.

Maybe I’ve got all that to look forward to, or not as the case maybe.

I wish I could tell you about myself, but like a said before it’s the memory. Nothing past about twenty minutes ago, just the occasional flash, like a broken video, but I don’t even know if they are real.

I’ll tell you very quickly about what happened, before I forget.

There was a virus, a bug. Spread like wildfire. Almost all of us got it. And that, to be honest, is all I know. There are many of us, most in a worse state than me, but all of us need one thing to survive. Human flesh...

A Middle Class Zombie

Alistair Canlin

£0.99 Added

What if zombies weren't all mindless brain sucking monsters? What if zombies had thoughts? Even memories? What if zombies were much the same as you?

A battle with anorexia, through the eyes and emotions of the sufferer. The story takes a surreal angle on the battle with the condition

Sharp jagged edges, angles and points, that’s what the world sees. That’s what I’m judged on, but I see something different, I see a curve, a bump, a fold, a crease. What I see I hate, what I see I want flatten. What I see is not me.

It’s as if an alien, a beast, has infected my body, taken it over and is now controlling, turning my body against me, and only I can see.

Only I can see what it’s done; only I know the truth, only I know how to beat it.

Starve it out.

Simple plan.

And sometimes it works, like any battle there’s any good days and bad. Some days I’m on top, other days it has me beaten hands down.

Today I’m winning, nothing for 36 hours, no fuel for the beast, no ammunition for his battle. It’s a tiny victory, but a victory none the less.

When I step out of the bathroom my mother looks at me with a mixture of disgust and pity. She doesn’t understand. No one understands.

I can feel her eyes bore into my back, she wants to say something, I know she wants to say something, but I’ve heard all the words before they don’t have any effect anymore.
She just doesn’t understand…

Acid and Blood

Alistair Canlin

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A battle with anorexia, through the eyes and emotions of the sufferer. The story takes a surreal angle on the battle with the condition

A girl takes a shortcut through the woods, but soon feels she is being followed.

The wood was almost pitch black, the occasional shaft of silvery light broke through the dense canopy.

She was already regretting taking the short cut.

The dead leaves under her feet crunched as she walked. It was the only noise that could be heard.

Her breath wisped out in front of her in small clouds, seemed to linger for a moment then drifted off into the silvery shafts of light.

She tried humming to herself, to break the eerie silence, but her voice seemed to hit an impenetrable brick wall and fell flat in front of her.

She quickened her pace...

Shortcut

Alistair Canlin

£0.99 Added

A girl takes a shortcut through the woods, but soon feels she is being followed.

Not one inhabitant of Bois-Bezolles remained unshocked by Frederique’s suicide. As news spread around the village, disbelief became anger at such an outrageous lie. What was the truth?

Frederique’s body lay just fifteen metres down from Vieux Pont, limbs spread like a broken egg, caught on the branches of a tree that had been plucked from the banks in the previous month’s storms and washed down river, easy as syrup. And here she was, a gelatinous mass held by leaf and branch. An ugly sight indeed.

No amount of firemen or ambulances could save her, and that, according to her note, was what she wanted. The exact wording was not disclosed, save to the few who were involved in the enquiry which took place behind closed doors, provoking further outrage amongst the villagers who maintained that the death of such a prominent citizen deserved a public hearing.

Whatever the official verdict, the ongoing debate as to the truth of the matter stretched into months, and in some quarters, years.

Most believed that the trouble stemmed from Frederique’s last but most notorious love affair. Prior to that she had lead a steady, though, some said, colourful life running the village store, and remained a popular member of the community.

People hinted, however, that she was not a good business woman, but then it was generally agreed that making money out of a village shop these days was no mean feat.
“Everyone goes to the supermarket,” exclaimed Monsieur Lozier, as if he was the first to think of it.

“Only donkeys shop in the village,” remarked Monsieur Pepinard. “Just look at the prices they charge!”

Yet Frederique LeBon’s quaint little shop, with its narrow doorway and alley-like rooms stretching back into three dimly lit sections as if stretching back into a different era, was seldom empty for long.

“It’s everything but nothing!” Madame Claire used to say cattily. Her husband owned a specialist pork butcher’s in the larger centre of Dompierre. “You go for bread and she offers you only one type. You go for orange juice, she gives you a carton half-filled with sugar. As for her coffee...“ And she would purse up her lips as if she were about to spit a mouthful of it out, wave her hand high in the air dismissively and then burst into cackles of laughter.

It was the men who leapt to Frederique’s defence...

In the Air

Adrienne Silcock

£0.99 Added

Not one inhabitant of Bois-Bezolles remained unshocked by Frederique’s suicide. As news spread around the village, disbelief became anger at such an outrageous lie. What was the truth?

Paulo is determined to start a book business in the old Portuguese market, but it looks as though the odds are stacked against him. That is, until a stranger arrives in the village.

Eyes turned and lips unseamed when Paulo first walked into the covered market carrying what looked like a large suitcase and a fishing stool. He unclipped and opened the trestle table and unfolded the little canvas chair. He set them at the edge of fish stalls slithery with sardines, bream, horse-mackerel and eel, by stalls piled high with the season’s oranges and lemons. Noses peered from behind mountains of bright green cabbage and golden squash, craned over bunches of red radishes the size of golf balls.

Some ridiculed him directly as he unpacked his bags of books and began to lay them in neat rows upon the table. Others stood in small groups, muttering, heads nodding in his direction. Unperturbed, Paulo continued to arrange his wares...

Piri-piri Sauce

Adrienne Silcock

£0.99 Added

Paulo is determined to start a book business in the old Portuguese market, but it looks as though the odds are stacked against him. That is, until a stranger arrives in the village.

Rosa has devised her own solution for combating poverty on the Ria Formosa, where morals are compromised with a strange take on community salvation. When the Englishman arrives, things begin to alter, but with an ironic twist.

The Englishman had been watching Rosa for some time. He watched from afar, through binoculars, in green waistcoat and wellies. Just another bird-watcher, as far as Rosa was concerned, not suspecting for a moment that the focus was upon her.

He watched as she stood outside the door of her shack, dressed in a milk-white blouse, starched and pressed, buttoned up to the throat, and dark skirt, immaculate and shapely over her thighs, the hem a sharp line, cutting away at mid-calf. Hair brushed tight into a pony tail, away from her beautiful features, not a strand spared the ferocity of her comb.
He watched as Rosa waited for the men, her formal greeting as she showed them inside, only ever one at a time. He had walked past often, on his way to the salt pans to study egret and spoonbill, dipper and stork, could just make out the young girl inside, lying naked on the bed in the half-light, lean and quivering, trying desperately to smile, sensed fragrances of lavender, lemon and thyme emanating from within. He’d hurry his pace, lest Rosa suspect he was interested.

He watched as she pushed the door to, and stood, her hand against the wood, her sensuous lips moving soundlessly. Later he found out what she prayed...

The Lovely Water

Adrienne Silcock

£0.99 Added

Rosa has devised her own solution for combating poverty on the Ria Formosa, where morals are compromised with a strange take on community salvation. When the Englishman arrives, things begin to alter, but with an ironic twist.

A man, his life and the moon.

He was named Arthur James for his father, but to his mammy he was, and always would be, Jimmy.

It was his mammy claimed him. She would walk him out in the big pram to one park or another and in every season of the year. Out late with him she would stop sometimes, the park gates clanged shut behind her by the parkie and then the rattle of the chain between the bars and the snapping of the well-oiled lock. Dark in the winter when they took their way homewards and darkling in the summer and it must have been then that Jimmy first saw the big pale thing up in the sky and heard his mammy name it for him, though if that were so he had no remembrance of it.

What he remembered was her singing to him of the moon, remembered the sweetness of her voice as she formed the words, “I see the moon, the moon sees me”.

“Can the moon see me, Mammy?” he would say. “Can it really?”

She would answer that, yes, the moon could see him. “For there’s a man in the moon, Jimmy. Look up now and you’ll see him, too. He’s smiling at you.”

“But what of the old woman?” he would say, rehearsing again the little conversation he and his mammy must have had a thousand times.

“And what old woman would that be?” his mammy would say. “It’s a man up there, not a woman, young or old.”

“You know, Mammy, her as got tossed up in the blanket.”

“Oh, her! Well now…” And then there would be one rhyme or another about the old girl.

At home sometimes, in the afternoons if the weather was such as to keep the two of them in the house, Jimmy would fetch the old books from out of the cupboard under the stairs and his mammy would read to him. He liked her to read the poem by Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson, which was how his mammy called him. It was her way, just as it was her way to say “pome” for poem, so that, when Jimmy went to school, he was chastised by the teacher for favouring his mammy’s way of speaking and not the teacher’s.

“Has the clock a face, Mammy?” he would ask after listening to the poem and his mammy always answered that it had and a pair of hands besides. Then, before he could say more, she would read him the “pome” again.

He had not been long at the school when his mammy was sent for by the teacher and given what for because Jimmy was that tired in the morning hours he could scarce keep his head up from off his desk.

“James tells me you take him to the cinema at night, Mrs. Mooney. Is that true?”

His mammy said it was a case of yes and no. “Some nights, yes, I do take him to the pictures. It’s for the company, you see, his daddy never being at home. But it isn’t every night. I haven’t the money for one thing.”

When they went to the pictures in the week it was somewhere local, somewhere they’d no need to lay out money on ‘bus fares to get to. The farthest they ever ventured was the Trocadero, which stood on a sort of island across from one of the parks they had lingered in when Jimmy was still in his pram. To get to the Troc they would walk through the Gough Road allotments and then cross over Coleman Road, passing a public house on the way there, and passing it again on the way back. The Full Moon the pub was called and the sign that stood on top of a tall post in front of it showed the name and a painting of a big round moon looking down from a cloudless sky on a village by the sea...

Now the Moon

Clive Collins

£1.59 Added

A man, his life and the moon.

A society 'gossip' writer follows up a chance meeting and then witnesses the accidental death of his subject. He determines to honour with the dead man's estranged family the 'Six Degrees of Separation' theory.

The man waiting at the top of the slipway was an icon for outdoor health: bleached denim, scuffed canvas boots and a banner of yellow hair streaming in the wind. He stood beside a dusty quad bike and lifted a slow one-handed greeting.

‘Thursday, then?’ I queried of the boatman, as I clambered out of the launch.

‘That’s right. Unless I hear otherwise.’ The man made the universal fist-to-ear phone gesture. ‘Or the weather closes in.’

The denim man joined us and leaned over to shake the skipper’s hand. ‘Thanks, Ben,’ he grinned. ‘Thursday?’

Meanwhile, much hung about with holdall and laptop, I had reluctantly stepped into an inch or so of crystal clear water that slurped up and down the sloping concrete...

Six Degrees

Edward Cartner

£0.99 Added

A society 'gossip' writer follows up a chance meeting and then witnesses the accidental death of his subject. He determines to honour with the dead man's estranged family the 'Six Degrees of Separation' theory.

The arrival of DS Stephen Forest on her doorstep, takes Grace by surprise. A police investigation into the murder of a local surgeon, and a middle-aged, middle class woman living in rural respectability, seem unlikely to be connected, an impression DS Forest appears to share, at least initially....

Reasonable Doubt

The automatic sprinkler fizzed and the sauna was re-filled with the scent of Norwegian fjords. More people came in. It got busy. I lay back and tried to recreate the candyfloss but it wouldn’t come so I listened to the drone of inane conversations around me.

They say taxi drivers get to hear a lot of stuff. Maybe they do. But just lie back in a busy sauna with your eyes closed for half an hour and you’ll hear plenty. Dates, dreams and dares. Exes and excuses. Shopping and shagging. Work and wages. Sad really. Half of them don’t even know they’re alive...

£1.99 Added

The arrival of DS Stephen Forest on her doorstep, takes Grace by surprise. A police investigation into the murder of a local surgeon, and a middle-aged, middle class woman living in rural respectability, seem unlikely to be connected, an impression DS Forest appears to share, at least initially....

Candyfloss

Al McClimens

£0.99 Added

A short story about the suspicious death of a new born baby.

Thursday 13 June 2013.

It was still dark, almost dawn and a faint, mewling cry floated across the empty street. A moment later the front door of a scruffy terraced house opened and a boy came out to stand on the pavement, his phone to his ear.

It was just after six a.m. when the call came through from the station. Detective Inspector Beckett, in his running gear at the door of his Churchgate Street flat, groaned. A resolution made yesterday to run each morning was going to be broken before it began. Those extra inches on his waistline wouldn’t ever get shifted.

‘I’m on my way. Just give me time to change. Where? At the West Suffolk Hospital. Ok, I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.’

As he dumped the running shorts on his bed and put the unnaturally white new trainers in the wardrobe, he caught sight of himself in the full length mirror by the door. Middle age was catching up with him. Never a babe magnet even when he had more hair and fewer spare inches, it would be a struggle to get Sarah to even look at him. Ridiculous at his age to have a school-boy crush on a woman, someone he’d only so far passed a few words with at meetings, but she was smart, good looking and smiled at lot.

My Funny Valentine and Chet Baker on the trumpet accompanied him to the hospital. The sound was turned up too loud. Perhaps he was going a bit deaf. Yet another sign of increasing age. His thoughts strayed back to Sarah. Maybe she wouldn’t look at him twice but it didn’t stop him waiting around the courthouse if he knew she was the duty probation officer or trying to start a conversation with her at the Police and Probation Liaison meetings. He turned into the almost empty hospital car park. The call had said suspected murder. It was going to be a long day...

Rock-a-bye-baby

A woman is abandoned by her father as a baby but he is never really out of her life.

She had seen her father on several occasions. Once, on the terrace of an hotel in the town where he sat with a statuesque woman who rested a cigarette between her orange segment lips and glowed in expensive clothes. Brigitte was walking by on her way to a friend’s house and had been attracted by the lilac dress the woman wore. It was slim fitting and elegant, tailored to fit her curves and angles, made in mercerized cotton that shimmered in the afternoon. She had long legs, intricately crossed, and sat tilted in the chair like something architectural and divine.

It was only through the striking woman that Brigitte noticed her Father. He was impeccably dressed. Manicured and buffed. A gentleman. Brigitte wondered how he would feel if she were to step out and declare herself. Reveal her fawn coloured socks and dry knees under the hem of a grey pleated skirt; the woolly jumper too stifling for a day that had turned out sunny. She knew it was him because she had seen pictures of him in the town paper standing outside his shop. She also kept photographs of him behind the picture of kittens that hung in her room. They shared the same blunt chin and hair that waved and curled of its own accord.

Her mother told her she was never to enquire about him, however obliquely. He had left and he was to be forgotten. It was simple for her but Brigitte burned to know the other half of who she was and how he could have looked at her, when she was three months old and by all accounts delightful, and left...

£1.99 Added

A short story about the suspicious death of a new born baby.

Photographs of Her Father

A day in a Magistrate's Court

Does someone say ‘Silence in Court’ before we enter? It is said in the crown court before the judge enters but possibly not in the magistrate’s court although Rob, the usher, always says ‘All rise’ in a very theatrical way as we ring the bell to signal our arrival. Rob likes to be dramatic. He used to be in an amateur dramatic group and it suits his flamboyant personality.

It was a Wednesday, which should have been a Youth Court but the lack of any willing or unwilling young offenders meant an adult trial had been listed instead...

£1.29 Added

A woman is abandoned by her father as a baby but he is never really out of her life.

Silence in Court

Set during Ireland's ill-famed Celtic Tiger era. A job must be done, a contract must be honoured...

Philpot was doing his accounts. Invoices, receipts, cheque stubs and bank statements were arranged in neat piles on the dining room table. He was totting up yet another column of figures, meticulously aggregating his expenses, when he heard a rumbling outside. It was a truck’s engine, labouring as it climbed the steep hill leading to his home.

The noise died away and he expected to hear his doorbell at any moment, but no one rang. Eventually he cursed and went to the window. Peering out into the dark winter’s night he could see no sign of the truck or its headlight beams.

‘Idiot,’ he proclaimed. ‘Gone to the wrong place now most likely.’

He grabbed his fleece and went outside. It was cold and the nearby trees swayed in the wind, their branches making a rustling noise. At his front gate he unhitched the latch and walked out to the centre of the road. Almost immediately, further uphill, he saw a faint light near where the road turned into the quarry.

Approaching he could make out a man’s silhouette. The driver was talking on a phone and the phone’s queer light was partially illuminating the truck’s cabin; newspapers and paperwork of all sorts were jammed along the dash.

Philpot knocked on the side window. Immediately the driver gesticulated at him but continued speaking into the phone. Philpot rapped on the window once more. This time he received a thumbs-up signal that said plainly I see you, I see you. But the driver continued with his phone conversation.

Shaking his head Philpot cursed and decided to leave. He retraced his steps, closed his front gate firmly and returned inside. Fuming, he sat down to his accounts. He had just restarted his calculations when the bell chimed. He went to the door and yanked it open, ready to let fly about appointments and punctuality and keeping to your word. But abruptly he stopped.

The man who stood before him, though stocky and tired-looking, had an extraordinary face. It was covered in beautiful golden freckles. Philpot had never seen such a display: they decorated his pudgy cheeks, his forehead and the bridge of his nose. Even his chin and neck were dotted with with gold.

Before he could think what to say, the workman thrust his mobile phone up between them like it was a piece of evidence in a court case and said, ‘The wife. Wanted to know where I was and how long I’d be. Good thing someone is checking up on me, I suppose.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Philpot weakly.

‘Is it around the back then?’ the workman asked. Philpot nodded. ‘I’ll go ahead so and get my gear unloaded and I’ll be back in the morning to start. Will you be here or should we go through it now?’

Finally, Philpot reacted. ‘You’re lucky,’ he snapped. ‘I will be here in the morning. I do quite a bit of work from home.’

The workman stared. He had heard the brusque tone and a look passed over his face. ‘Okay,’ he said and turned to go. Then abruptly he asked, ‘Why is it exactly I’m lucky?’

Philpot hesitated. Although confrontation was his forte he had suddenly lost his appetite. ‘Just that we don’t have to trudge around that back area in the cold and dark right now.’ He gesticulated at the night. ‘Don’t you see how dark it is?’

The workman shrugged. ‘Makes no odds to me. If you have a good flash lamp we can go now and that way I won’t have to be bothering you in the morning when you’re at work.’

Philpot stalled. He was a worrier by nature. He wasn’t happy to have the job looked over in the dark. He didn’t want any mistakes and he didn’t want any misunderstandings…

£1.59 Added

A day in a Magistrate's Court

Don't You See How Dark It Is?

Kevin Doyle

£0.99 Added

Set during Ireland's ill-famed Celtic Tiger era. A job must be done, a contract must be honoured...

After three weeks at her new school Jasmine is still an outsider, ignored by her classmates. The unusual pet she brings to school changes things dramatically!

It seemed to the children in her class that the new girl Jasmine was a bit strange.

The children didn’t know it but after about three weeks of her starting at the school her teacher, Mr Barratt and the head teacher Mrs Cooper, were slightly concerned that she didn’t seem to be gelling with the other children. From the children’s point of view it was quite understandable that none of them had really made friends with her, though she seemed pleasant enough and no one had cause to dislike her.

She was just a bit different.

For a start she told the class when she introduced herself to them that she and her parents were vegetarian. To most of the children that was a bit of a clue that she was slightly wacky. And what kind of name was Jasmine anyway? Apparently Jasmines were some kind of flower but none of the children had heard of them before.

It was true that her parents seemed quite cool, her mother, April, wore orangey-brown trousers and boots – the kind people mending the road would wear for goodness sake – and tie-dyed T-shirts that reminded the children of the tie-dying they’d done in Year Three and weren’t at all like the trendy brand-name clothes the rest of the mum’s wore when they picked up the children after school for what was admittedly a daily fashion competition. Most controversially of all it was soon obvious that she-didn’t-shave-her-underarms! Ugh! Cave woman or what?...

The Egg

When my father's brother came to visit, he filled our entire room. My grandmother's eyes would disappear in her thick brown wrinkles and often my mother would sing. My father would sit on his low stool by our window and carve as he listened. Sometimes his shapes would take meaning and turn into a cup or a bowl. But other times, especially after he’d been in to the village, the shavings would quickly disappear, slice after slice dripping from his fingers to the dirt floor, his hands left holding a figure with many arms or legs, heads and mouths–but always without eyes.

A long time before, my father's brother had brought me a goldfish from one of his travels. Every time he came to visit, he would bring a bigger bowl and every time after he left, my goldfish would grow. We would sit together on the floor by the door and I would hold the larger bowl as he slowly poured the water from the old into the new. My fish would flap and swish at the last moment before he leapt in, flashes of gold glinting in the sunlight as he claimed his new home in the churning water. I never named him. He was too beautiful for any word that I could think of.

I remember that visit as I remember his last. Crystal clear, like my goldfish’s water when it has just been changed. I can almost see through it, see through every bit of it to the room behind. The visits in between are all muddled and muddy but the day he brought my goldfish, he told us a story about a panther...

£0.99 Added

After three weeks at her new school Jasmine is still an outsider, ignored by her classmates. The unusual pet she brings to school changes things dramatically!

Goldfish Man

Janna Grace

£1.59 Added

Julie's husband is a drunkard and vicious bully, she is terrified of him, but there comes a turning point....

The Turning Point

Alberta Wood

£1.99 Added

Julie's husband is a drunkard and vicious bully, she is terrified of him, but there comes a turning point....

They had a rented cottage with a rowing boat all to themselves in the north of Scotland but the first trip out on the loch had to be weathered in more ways than one.

When they walked down to the boat, the sun was already out. She could see the hills reflected on the surface of the loch in shades of pink and brown, blurred softly at the edges like a watercolour wash.

“Look at the hills. They’re all fuzzy in places,” she said, “like fur on a mole’s back.”

He busied himself with the oars while she sat and watched him. It was so wonderful to be able to sit still and look at him. There were so many things that she wanted to say to him; small tender things.

“It’s good to get away, isn’t it?” she said. “Escape for a while? Why don’t we try to cross the loch? Row all the way to the other side?”

“It wouldn’t take us very long” he said. “Then we would have to double back.”

“We could stop somewhere and picnic.”

“I thought we might go up the river that feeds the loch and see where it goes.”

“It looks very rough at the bridge where river meets the loch.”

“It’ll be fine,” he said. “I’ll row through that patch. You can take over later on.”

The bridge, that once connected the path that ran past their cottage to the land on the other side of the river, had collapsed into the water long ago. Tangled metal sprawled from the bank below the cottage and the water writhed and foamed around it in swathes of grey-green and silver. He manoeuvred the boat past the ruin of the bridge and towards the first bend in the river, where it was calmer. The boat creaked along in an easy rhythm. Water dripped noisily from the oars as they rose...

Upriver from Bridge Cottage

A young boy experiences something out of bounds which has more than one reason to be kept secret

It was a Friday, and began much like any other day after the monsoon, with a cool blue mist spreading out over the river in loose strands. But after school and the long journey back, the sun glanced off the river as if it was a mirror. He had eaten almost a third of the new loaf wrapped in a cloth on the car seat, unable to ignore its warm fragrance as he sat staring out of the window. He rewrapped it carefully, believing no-one would suspect him.

Friday was the day his parents spent in town. It always seemed a longer day than most, as they were rarely back before seven. Often he was already in bed when they returned and he was only dimly aware of his father's face pressed against the mosquito net, the tap of his mother's shoes as she crossed the marble floor.

The house felt empty, as it always did on a Friday. The rooms were cool and dark, the shutters fastened against the sun, though right angles of white light forced their way in at the corners...

£1.59 Added

They had a rented cottage with a rowing boat all to themselves in the north of Scotland but the first trip out on the loch had to be weathered in more ways than one.

Rice

Bella takes a bus ride and struggles with her feelings when someone sits beside her.

She waits for the bus to start and while she waits she watches people getting on.

Bella walks down the length of the bus and sits on the left-hand side behind two women. One of the women smells strongly of perfume; not the soft, powdery kind that Bella likes but the dense, cloying, jasmine or gardenia kind. She feels sure that the woman’s companion must be holding her breath. Bella sits back a little and turns to look at the shelter as the bus pulls away. Hers is the only bus stop on her road that has a shelter. She finds the great swirls of pink graffiti covering the panes of glass oddly affecting. Joe, the marks seem to say over and over. Joe. She has never known a Joe but she knows what it is to ache for a boy, to roll his name around in the back of her mind and throat, to breathe it in and out...

£1.59 Added

A young boy experiences something out of bounds which has more than one reason to be kept secret

Bella's Journey

A woman visits her daughter who has a job that she doesn't approve of, one that brings all her fears to the fore.

Laura holds her mobile phone close to her ear and her eyes scan each side of the road. As the car slows she catches sight of her daughter standing on a corner, waving. She looks thinner. She is up on her toes, her whole body stretching, leaning out past the row of cars.

“There she is!” Laura says to her husband, pointing to the right.

The car turns the corner and follows the girl as she walks down a row of modern terraced houses and stops at the last one. Laura gets out of the car and hugs her, while her husband parks the car carefully in the space opposite. The girl feels fragile in her arms but, despite the loss of weight, her eyes have a new sparkle and the dark blue, roll-necked, jumper she is wearing has turned them to indigo.

“You look much better, Anna,” her mother says.

The front door opens, revealing a knot of young people crowding the opening between the kitchen and the hallway.

“Come in, come in,” Anna says in a new, animated voice. “This is my friend Jane.”

Laura takes one of the plastic bags her husband has collected from the boot of the car and steps into the house.

“Ah, yes, hello Jane.”

“And this is Ray, who lives upstairs and this is Steve, who’s just visiting.”

“Hello,” Laura says, smiling at them both.

“And this is Mark,” Anna says, at the sound of rapid feet coming down the stairs. “Mark, this is my mother, and Jack, my step-dad.”

Mark leans forwards and shakes hands with each of them.

“It’s great to meet you, Mark. I’ve heard all about you.” Laura says. He looks gentle; Not Anna’s usual type...

£1.29 Added

Bella takes a bus ride and struggles with her feelings when someone sits beside her.

The Visit

He was twenty-seven. She told him she worked in a boutique but that, actually, she was a writer. She said it was her way of making memories. There was the possibility that she would stop one day. She told him about the place she grew up. Its vast sky. The boats on the river.

He lived in a council house with his mother and father. She stayed when they were on holiday. In his room, a three quarter bed, a wardrobe with a mirror and a poster of Bob Marley jamming for all time. They danced to ‘No Woman No Cry’. He used to grind his teeth at night. She thought he was eating sweets.

The next summer they went to Greece. She bought a backpack like his but smaller. They took the ferry from Piraeus as far as Santorini. Mules clattered up the steps and on the cobblestones. He bought her earrings with black centres like fish eyes, glassy and turquoise as the cubicle they showered in. Cold water searing their backs. Small bells tinkled. The future opened like a clam...

£1.59 Added

A woman visits her daughter who has a job that she doesn't approve of, one that brings all her fears to the fore.

More Important Than Love

A man struggling to get over his girlfriend leaving, turns to eBay auctions as a source of comfort, what he finds is quite unexpected though.

He had looked at the screen for so long now that when he turned his attention to the room around him, everything was smudgy and made of shadows. The air was thick and warm; his living room was a static page.

He pushed back his chair and sipped at the tepid beer. He didn’t know how long he’d made internet auctions a habit, but it made sense to him, in his new world without her. Only this kept his body and mind operating on a level which shut her out. For the time being anyhow. EBay; a whole world of other peoples stuff, and more besides. He didn’t like to ponder the thought too long as it made his head reel – thousands upon thousands of objects and things; bits and pieces and odds and sods, all of which would probably find another home, but all the time there were factories and individuals still churning everything out…These thoughts would make him feel a little nauseous – but at least it kept her out for a time.

He kept scrolling down the screen to see what which auction was ending soonest… pictures caught his eye; there were trainers, a bookcase, a china boat. A water fountain ‘not great condition’…it didn’t matter, there were five bids on it with two minutes left to go… yes, this one would do, he could do it again. He flexed his fingers and typed in £20 as his bid, knowing that he didn’t even like the thing, didn’t even want it, you’ve been outbid! The computer answered jovially, Don’t let it get away!...

£1.59 Added

Supply and Demand

Fritha Waters

£1.29 Added

A man struggling to get over his girlfriend leaving, turns to eBay auctions as a source of comfort, what he finds is quite unexpected though.

A small boy plays in the falling snow. He tries to understand his broken life. He doesn't cry, but you might.
Shortlisted for the Fish Short Story Prize

He knows the words the lady says. But what does she mean? That’s where it all goes jiggly. Does she try to mix him up? He doesn’t think so. That would make her a bad person and he doesn’t think she’s bad. He doesn’t like her but Daddy does. And whatever else Daddy’s done he wouldn’t like a bad person, he’s sure of that.

He looks down at his new wellingtons. When he’d asked Mummy to buy him a pair she’d said she couldn’t yet, but his red ones were still very good. Red ones are for babies, he’d told Mummy. No, firemen wear red ones, she’d said. He didn’t think it was true – if he said that in the playground they’d likely laugh at him, the way they laughed at his red wellingtons. But he didn’t say anything to Mummy in case she got another worry.

And now this lady’s bought him a new pair. Shiny, green and yellow in the thick white snow. Snow Leopards she says they’re called. Snow Leopards?

He explores the crisp unbroken surface, deliberately places one foot then the other, swivels his head from side to side and listens carefully to the sound of his new boots...

Fallen Angel

Frank Woods

£0.99 Added

A small boy plays in the falling snow. He tries to understand his broken life. He doesn't cry, but you might.
Shortlisted for the Fish Short Story Prize

September 10th 2001 - Chris and Annie are on the final leg of their road trip around the USA. Heading towards New York, the frayed edges of a relationship spawned from post-graduation euphoria are beginning to show as they confront the end of their summer and the swan-song of their youth. Aware that their lives are going to change, they face up to an uncertain future, completely unaware of the global events into which they are about to be propelled.

The deer.

It stares, transfixed; hypnotised by the on-rushing headlights.

On instinct Chris pulls down hard on the steering wheel, into the outside lane. The rear-view mirror suddenly awash with white light, the car behind almost on top of them, its horn loud – menacing. He swerves back inside; the deer, its trance broken, bolts into the trees and the safety of the forest. They fishtail then straighten up, as the other car speeds by; two red lights disappearing into the darkness. Annie’s head jolts against the side window, waking her. Simon & Garfunkel play on the stereo.

It’s late, past midnight. They’ve been on the road more than eight hours.

“What’s going on,” she asks.

Chris’ heart, hammering behind his ribs, throbbing up into his ears, competing with the music, blending with it. The road again quiet; no cars, no animals, no threat. He sucks in air, tries to catch his breath, regain his composure. Cool trickles of sweat leak from his armpits, inch down his side. He sees the exit sign. Sees the little pictures on the bottom corner, familiar visions of civilization; Golden arches and Motel 6. Eyes heavy, blinking – glancing across at his girlfriend, nodding back towards the road, towards the blackness beyond the arc of artificial light ahead. Simon & Garfunkel singing Richard Cory.

“We’re coming off here,” he says, another large sign looming up out of the darkness.

“Human again,” she says “You going in? It’s a good shower.”

Ten weeks on the road. They’d become shower connoisseurs; fierce critics of bad plumbing.

“Maybe.”

“I think you should.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

She smiles, joins him on the bed, leans over and sniffs the air.

“Nothing.”

She’s wrapped in a white towel; her face glistening with moisturiser. He likes seeing her like this, seeing her the way no-one else sees her.

Another Night, another motel. After a while they blended into one. Straight from the movies. The first, after they left New York, was a two storied L-Shaped building on a side road close to the Interstate. They joked about the paper stretched over the toilet, the cellophane wrapped cups; joked about Norman Bates. They re-enacted the shower scene with a toothbrush, Annie squealed, laughing as he made the eek-eek sounds. She pulled him into the shower, soaking his t-shirt, kissing him under the jet of water. They had sex in the shower, later, in the bed. In the morning, they heard the pleasured cries of a couple in the room next door and laughed, aware that they must surely have been heard as well.

They’d left England at the start of July, new lovers on a whim of post-graduate liberation.

Ten weeks ago, 29 states ago. It felt longer but not long enough.

“Whatcha watching?” she says.

Their day had begun in Tennessee. Somewhere outside, beyond the trees and the six lanes of I-95, was Washington DC.

“Not sure.”

A chat-show host he didn’t know talking to a celeb he didn’t recognise. Staring at the screen without really paying attention, his mind elsewhere. He’d been listening to Annie in the bathroom, to the sound of the water, imagined her, head tilted back, eyes closed as the warm stream poured over her body, running through her hair. The brief contemplation to move, to go and join her; stopped by the thought that his appearance wouldn’t be welcomed. They were on the final leg; the journey north. In the morning they were heading back to New York. In a few days the flight back to England. Back to reality, as his dad would’ve probably said. He didn’t want to think about it...

Last Day of Summer

Gareth Hill

£0.99 Added

September 10th 2001 - Chris and Annie are on the final leg of their road trip around the USA. Heading towards New York, the frayed edges of a relationship spawned from post-graduation euphoria are beginning to show as they confront the end of their summer and the swan-song of their youth. Aware that their lives are going to change, they face up to an uncertain future, completely unaware of the global events into which they are about to be propelled.

A story about links and how many you can find. A sort of 'Spot the Difference' in prose.

Marilyn Spencer changed her name years ago but from what she couldn’t quite recall. It seems odd to be looking at it all now as if from so very far away. ‘Spence’ they’d called her in what she had renamed The Adoration Years.

Her father, absent, had always called her ‘his little princess’ and that had kind of stuck too.

Princess in Trouble screamed the cheap tabloids; Princess on trial and then simply Princess Dead. ‘Lived her life like a fairytale,’ they cheeped romantically.

‘More like a f...... nightmare,’ said those who knew her.

I suppose it all really got started, the bad press that is, when she married that upstart husband of hers, Henry ‘The Ape’, and he was pure Neanderthal...

Marilyn Spencer

Angela Huskisson

£0.99 Added

A story about links and how many you can find. A sort of 'Spot the Difference' in prose.

Apparently, this story was going to be 'disqualified with merit' from an Earlyworks Press competition...but that was too ridiculous...so they gave it Second Prize! It's on of the stories in Talking To Owls (Pewter Rose Press) and you can hear it read on Vimeo.

Two men in badly fitting suits came into the bar and walked over to my table. They said, are you the writer?

I said, I’m a writer.

They said, you wrote a story called The Cover Story?

I said, that’s right.

They said, that’s a strange story.

I said, it’s science fiction.

Is that a fact? the big one said.

I said, I wrote it for a competition.

Now where did you get an idea like that from? the little one asked.

I said, where do any ideas come from? And he looked at the big one.

Where indeed, the big one said, and they both looked at me...

The Cover Story

'Keeping up with the Joneses' goes completely out of the control and Mrs Jones and her neighbour Mrs Jones try to out-do each other with ever more extreme consumerism!

It started like this. A Mrs Jones lived next door to Mrs Jones. So to be more accurate, it didn’t start like this because of course they didn’t move into their houses at exactly the same time. One Mrs Jones came first, a Mrs Isobel Jones. As was her habit whenever she moved, while she was getting to know her neighbours she spied around to see what they had, to make sure she owned better things than they did. On the whole, she was delighted. On one side of her lived a retired couple who’d seen enough of life, including hardship, not to be in the least bit bothered about baubles and trinkets, on the other a couple she considered very odd as they were far more interested in doing things, like taking their children for walks and visiting old people than buying things. As far as Mrs Jones was concerned they seemed like a couple of grown up hippies. The thing that annoyed her most about both sets of neighbours was the fact that none of them showed any interest (or more specifically jealousy) when she announced to them that she’d bought a new designer dress or bedroom carpet or had had an outrageously expensive hairdo.

It should be noted that Mrs I Jones didn’t come on her own. Mrs Jones had a husband and several children but she mainly only had the husband so he could go to work to earn money for her to buy things with and originally she’d only had all her children so that she could show off by having more children than anyone else living around her. They also came in handy for buying things for, such as clothes and trinkets that she could adorn them with so that she could make everyone around her see what a wonderful mother she was by not just buying bling for herself. Sadly, other than using them basically as living coat hangers Mrs Jones didn’t have much use for her children and took absolutely no other form of interest in them whatsoever, so rather than ever doing anything interesting with their parents (their father was always out working) the children had to amuse themselves. This usually led to them fighting with each other and screaming at each other, which Mrs Jones found very inconvenient. What was the use of adorning the house with living manikins if they were forever squabbling with each other? So Mrs Jones would chase her children out of the house so they could go and fight and scream elsewhere and would only let them back at mealtimes or when there were people visiting that she wanted to impress...

£0.99 Added

Apparently, this story was going to be 'disqualified with merit' from an Earlyworks Press competition...but that was too ridiculous...so they gave it Second Prize! It's on of the stories in Talking To Owls (Pewter Rose Press) and you can hear it read on Vimeo.

Mrs Jones lives next door to Mrs Jones

This story is about proportionality.

The taxi rank was tucked against the wall downhill from the station. Two women laden with shopping bags were climbing into the last taxi. Manx loitered awkwardly on the pavement, waiting for the next one to pull up. A little man with bird bright eyes followed him down and stood beside him.

You must be a clever bloke, the little man said, pointing to Manx’s briefcase, and staring into his eyes.

Not especially, Manx said, feeling uncomfortable.

Oh, I’m sure you are, the little man said, still staring and stepping closer. I bet you’re very clever indeed...

£1.29 Added

'Keeping up with the Joneses' goes completely out of the control and Mrs Jones and her neighbour Mrs Jones try to out-do each other with ever more extreme consumerism!

The Turkey Cock

For nearly all her life, Marion has dreamed of the North Woods and eating maple syrup, snow-frozen into Jack Wax, but an innocent trip turns into an obsession.

‘This is it,’ Glynn says as they stop the skidoos and the whine of the engines evaporates like mist on the hills. ‘This is the sugar bush.’ He turns to look at them. ‘You ready to start tapping?’

Tom says he’s happy to wait where he is; he has his new Luger binoculars and is hoping to see a bobcat, but Marion follows Glynn and Sue as they walk in amongst the sugar maples to look for trees to tap. On this bright, clean morning, she feels as if she’s found the place she was meant to be; where her soul fits as snug as a bung in a brandy barrel.
Glynn gives Marion a cordless drill and guides her hand. He shows her how to push a metal tap through the bark and attach a line of plastic tubing which snakes along the ground like a web of translucent veins connecting each tree, gathering all the sap into a holding tank outside the sugar house.

It’s all so very different from the pictures of horse drawn sleds and a smoking sugar shack on the maple syrup tin that Marion has in her house in England. When she’d poured the last drops of syrup on her porridge, she had carefully washed it clean and placed it on the mantelpiece of the room where she keeps the accounts for a dozen local, muddy farms.
For nearly all her life, Marion has dreamed of the North Woods. From her first wondering taste of maple syrup as a child – a present from a Canadian airforce officer, a friend of her father’s from the war – she has been obsessed by the subtlety of its flavours, its purity and the trees from which it comes...

£0.99 Added

This story is about proportionality.

Jack Wax

Sarah Passingham

£0.99 Added

For nearly all her life, Marion has dreamed of the North Woods and eating maple syrup, snow-frozen into Jack Wax, but an innocent trip turns into an obsession.

A visit from a stranger forces a lonely woman to confront the debris of her life.

The ringing of the doorbell startled Judith Hallam out of her reverie. Sitting in the winter sunshine slanting through the large bay-window, gazing distractedly at the faded wallpaper, she had drifted into thinking about the telephone call from the estate agent that morning.

“Mrs. Hallam, I’m sure you’ll be pleased to hear that we have a viewer for you. It’s very short notice, I know, but he’s only in the area for today, so would this afternoon be convenient…?”

Naturally, she had jumped at the chance, but how curious it was that, as she roused herself with an effort and rose stiffly from her favourite overstuffed armchair, she could no longer recall the name of the man who was coming to view her property.

Her large Victorian semi-detached had been on the market for two years. There had been a handful of viewings, but no offers, and no interest at all in the last six months, despite the low asking price. Judith wasn’t really surprised. She had to admit that the place no longer offered much by way of warmth or homeliness. It lacked… what do they call it?… kerb appeal. It was too neglected for that. Perhaps today’s caller might be a property developer; she had to admit that surely no-one else would want to buy the house.

Judith shuffled along the hall to the front door, wondering how long she had been sitting in her chair, lost in thought. She seemed to do a lot of that these days...

View By Appointment

Christian Green

£0.99 Added

A visit from a stranger forces a lonely woman to confront the debris of her life.

Trevor is a superhero, however he is also a spider so his superhero powers are in proportion to his size. Trevor and his friends come to the aid of the owners of the house they all live in when Mr and Mrs Fairbanks are persecuted by Mr Bartson of Bartson Holdings U.K. (Ltd) and his heavies.

Trevor was a superhero. Not it must be said a superhero like other superheroes. You see despite his superpowers he could be crushed to death by a child stepping on him, or more likely a cat catching him in its claws or a sparrow hawk in its beak.

So by human standards Trevor was a bit of a superhero wimp. However if you happened to be a butterfly, bee, mouse or shrew you were likely to think that Trevor was wonderful as well as incredible.

You see Trevor was a superhero spider. He had powers beyond those of normal large British spiders. Most large British spiders have the ability to keep the numbers of flies in the house down and to scare most humans out of the room they are in. They can also put humans off having a bath, if they happen to be having a rest by the plughole (one of their favourite resting places).

For Trevor, the danger of being walked on by a child was fairly slim as he lived in a cottage with a pleasant elderly couple, Mr and Mrs Fairbanks. Mr and Mrs Fairbanks did have a daughter and indeed three grandchildren, effervescent with spider endangering energy but they all lived in Australia and showed little interest in visiting Britain. So Mr and Mrs Fairbanks saved up their pennies and went to visit their family about every two years, leaving the cottage to Trevor and his friends for three weeks. Actually the house always felt very empty without them, as it did when any of the other occupants of the house were away, or just asleep for the winter, like the dormice.

The danger from cats and birds of prey, on the other hand, was much greater. One cat and one sparrow hawk in particular passionately loathed and despised Trevor with deep, burning, fearsome hated.

The cat was unimaginatively called Marmalade by its owners. Only it seemed because it was ginger in colour, not because it was sweet in any way. Its animal name was Terror-Claws, which was a much more appropriate name for it. It actually lived in the cottage backing onto the house three doors down from the Fairbanks, however it terrorised the gardens of all the ring of houses that backed onto each other. Even the few other local cats were terrified of Terror-Claws. Most of the local humans, who could be so stupid in other ways, decided not to buy a cat themselves once they’d come across “Marmalade”. A few of the humans were even scared of her when she hissed at them, as she did at everyone apart from her owners and she only didn’t hiss at them because they fed her...

Trevor the Superhero Spider

A story of love and loss, and new beginnings.

“Let’s carve out our name here,” she said, breathless in her excitement. “It will remain here forever.” She took out her nail file and waved it in front of his face.

He laughed and grabbed her hand. “We can’t do that. It’s called vandalism. Soon the whole wall will be covered in initials and love declarations. This is the Taj, not a blackboard.”

“You’re so boring,” she pouted. “I love you. You love me. I’m sure Shah Jahan would have approved.”

He pulled her closer to him. She nestled in his arms, caressing him, feeling his light kisses on her neck. They stayed hidden from view, away from the crowd strolling on the grounds.

The evening swept in from across the river. Parrots hurried over the turrets, flashing emerald glints in the setting sun. The haunting sound of the muezzin’s call to prayer floated through the air. The Taj Mahal glowed gold. It was closing time, and people walked towards the exit gates. Their feet dragged as if their souls did not want to part from this marble promise of undying love...

£1.99 Added

Trevor is a superhero, however he is also a spider so his superhero powers are in proportion to his size. Trevor and his friends come to the aid of the owners of the house they all live in when Mr and Mrs Fairbanks are persecuted by Mr Bartson of Bartson Holdings U.K. (Ltd) and his heavies.

Marked

Susmita Bhattacharya

£1.59 Added

A story of love and loss, and new beginnings.

This school story quickly darkens into a battle of wills with disastrous consequences, all played out in the context of the entire planet. Voices interchange: narrator, first-person protagonist and a chillingly unidentifiable presence.

Run. Run down all the Americas. Find what waits. Square up. Do what you can’t help. You too. Follow. Seek and hide. Feel fear, feel wonder. Beauty awaits! Triumph awaits!

I could have been a historian. Properly. A contending voice in the pages of journals that matter. I could have run a b&b in Nether Stowey. Stowey. Stowaway. Out of sight. I could have done both. I can organise, I can feel my way round time. Elizabeth Ferguson, historian-landlady: that would have got attention – of the shallower kind to start with, no doubt, but I could have made that work for me. Is it a historian? An historian? I’ve never known. That’s precisely the kind of worry that stopped me going there. To proper history. To Nether Stowey. I always see a little ball of fluff with a whistle twice its size, tooting in the silence. That’s how worry goes. So – teacher-training instead and, Lord, it was desperate. Who were those people with their folders and colour-codes? What came after was worse. Then, briefly, it was wonderful. And now, God help me, it’s this.

2.

Coarsely she complained, calling them the work of nutters. Even so, Phyllis Erika Welford lived with the sentiments in her school reports. This was just as well, for, in her five years at Belvoir School, those sentiments followed her tirelessly about. Belvoir School prided itself on how it tagged its girls’ development. When new index-systems were devised, Belvoir set its shield and Latin at their head. When spread-sheets appeared – and, in time, someone who understood them – those same trademarks wavered on a computer screen’s margin. None of this, however, could capture the likes of Phyllis.

Still, she progressed in her way. Seasons changed, and she graduated from indifferent through sullen to fractious. Negative always lurked somewhere, like a disappointed mum. Mathematically able, except when asked to be, Phyllis once gathered all her reports together, graphing the increase in negative from her first year to her fourth. The curve rose entrancingly to the top right-hand corner. Phyllis at eleven was 42% negative; by fifteen, she was romping home with 87. She laughed at this: no, cackled, like a witch in Macbeth who had weirder doings in hand than bamboozling a thane. She was her cackle.

She soon disposed of ‘Phyllis’, regarding herself as sharp, knowing – as Phyll. One hastily cancelled report dissented, preferring to call her a lump of lard. And there was something lardy in the sight of her up at her boarding-house window, barracking the comprehensive kids who passed below, mad for a response in kind, even a venomous look. When she got either, her eyes would mist like a boozer’s. Then some elder would arrive, dressing her down, sometimes attempting Belvoir’s motto. Phyll would roll away from the sill, choose sullen, confrontational or another mood officially inscribed for her and depart, cackle brewing…

Phyll and Fog

Michael Thomas

£0.99 Added

This school story quickly darkens into a battle of wills with disastrous consequences, all played out in the context of the entire planet. Voices interchange: narrator, first-person protagonist and a chillingly unidentifiable presence.

A Polish mother tries to make friends with other parents by hosting a dinner party. In spite of her planning, the evening does not go as Vik expects.

Placing the lilies in the centre of the table, the pink petals curled like tongues. The stamens waved and Vik knew to keep them away from the napkins folded into crowns. She didn’t want the linen marked, at least not before the dinner guests arrived. Taking a step back, she admired the table: the crystal glasses blinked as sunshine streamed through the patio windows, the place-cards indicated where each of the guests should sit. Vik had gambled on the best people to invite, keen to get into the group of parents at the playground gate. It was no fun standing alone while others chatted. Andy and Trudy lived a few doors away, so that was another reason to ingratiate. Ellen and Stuart were the parents of Lewis, the boy Damian gravitated towards each morning at drop off.

Vik had selected dishes that could be made in advance, and a casserole was simmering in the oven. Raw beef was sliced in the fridge, ready to make carpaccio and the apple pie with its lattice top was cooling in the dish. Serving fresh bread with szmalec was an after-thought, but one that would go down well with the men, judging by the way Simon lapped it up. It was a small reminder of home, her father’s restaurant in the mountains...

Social Surfing

Gail Aldwin

£0.99 Added

A Polish mother tries to make friends with other parents by hosting a dinner party. In spite of her planning, the evening does not go as Vik expects.

Aliens on the Underground...

"London Transport would like to apologise for the delay on the central line this morning. This is due to the discovery of a nest of… um…"

The message clicked uncertainly into hissing.

The listening intensity of the passengers increased as they waited, but the driver did not continue.

Ade closed his eyes, waiting for the inevitable explanation.

A couple of lanky adolescents in school blazers eyed each other and started giggling.

‘Nazis?’ said the redhead.

‘Vipers?’ responded the blond, although they both knew what had been found.

The train idled a few more feet into the tunnel.

The nests had been appearing, quite suddenly, for a couple of weeks now: when the cleaning gang had gone through at four am one Wednesday there was nothing there; the next day at four-ten, there they were, looking as though they’d been there for weeks.

The nests themselves were built of the typical slurry of jetsam – cigarette ends, plastic water bottles, coke tins, sandwich wrappers, gum, dropped pennies, expired tickets and lint.
The first nest had taken the cleaning gang by surprise and they had turned and marched back out of the tunnel, and up the static escalator at Bond Street, to where they could phone their shop steward.

As Ade said, ‘Rats is one thing, but those things are above and beyond the call of cleaning.’

And the rest of the cleaning gang had nodded emphatically and taken up positions of heroic resistance. Health and Safety was invoked, and their manager called the RSPCA to remove the offending brood.

The RSPCA came, looked, and climbed the escalator to call the Zoo.

The Zoo came, examined, and trudged back to street level where, after some hesitation, they called David Attenborough.

David Attenborough came, viewed and leapt up the still static escalator two steps at a time. He put in a call to a friend at the Metropolitan Police, and after some consultation, a further call to Immigration, who refused to believe him, and insisted on calling back in case he was really someone from Dead Ringers playing them a line.

What Mr Attenborough said, once immigration were convinced he really was who he said he was, what he said, and he should know, was:

‘These animals, if indeed they are animals, do not originate on this planet.’...

We Apologise for the Delay

Theresa and her sister share a red coat and a deep loss. Years pass until one evening, as the rain lashes down, an unexpected visitor arrives at Theresa's door. Memories and secret sorrows seep once more into their silent lives.

“Let go.”
Theresa could barely speak. Barely breathe. Her father’s hands had no warmth in them as they gripped her throat. Fingers laced in bitter pine from trees felled that morning. A long, cold morning, working side by side in a frosted silver forest, chopping and stacking wood.
That afternoon he’d been to town to sell the logs for firewood. He swallowed his small profit in Flynn’s. Soon after he returned home, his breath rancid with porter and rumour, to squeeze the truth from his thirteen-year-old daughter.
“Name him... Now. The fella who did this to you!
Say it, or I’ll kill you.”
He shoved her roughly against the rose-petalled wallpaper. Theresa’s head slumped beneath the Sacred Heart. Her face pushed upwards. She saw His blood dripping. The votive candle illuminated His face as her own face turned blue.
Time and dust sparkled slowly as her eyes began to close. At last her brothers crashed into the room. Booted voices stampeded around her as they wrenched her father off. It took three or four of them to drag him beyond the outhouse by the pigsty.
Soon afterwards her father drove the donkey in against the hedge, shaving the chins off the wild crimson fuchsia. The neighbourhood could hear the roar of him, as he tried to manoeuvre the cart down the old road into town.
She lay on the cold stone floor, dribbling spit and gasping for air. The pot of stew bubbled on the range. Various brothers and sisters entered and swiftly left the room; the thud of their shoes, voices hushed, as if she were a corpse laid out for a wake. Only Josie, her older sister, came to stroke her auburn hair...

£1.29 Added

Aliens on the Underground...

Say Nothing Till You Hear More

Marie Alvarado

£1.59 Added

Theresa and her sister share a red coat and a deep loss. Years pass until one evening, as the rain lashes down, an unexpected visitor arrives at Theresa's door. Memories and secret sorrows seep once more into their silent lives.

Amber didn't like the house. The frontage faced north and two large conifers cast a sterile shadow. The beams were faded, the chimneys pointed to the sky like accusing fingers, and the roofing oppressed the aged dormer windows that sat in their rimless sockets gazing out a shadowed world through leaded frames. Yet she'd never really had a particular reason to dislike it, until that is she saw the woman with the baby at the window and heard its feeble, sickly cry.

Shadow's Keep

A disabled girl's view on her parents trying to run a small-holding in Norfolk.

It was me shoving myself out, then changing my mind, then trying to get back, then coming out backside first, that started it. I dislocated Mum’s pelvis, and tore her – about three inches, for it was just before we all went decimal.

She said: You were dark purple, and you already had six teeth.

Dad said: Shame about the things you didn’t manage to grow.

No mid-wife available – they said. They never come out to anyone who lives in the lanes. It’s as if all of them at the Norwich & Norfolk Hospital sit on their hill-island surrounded by faded maps labelled Here Be Dragons. After all, every ambulance driver has his memories of returning, palsied and mute, after hours of wandering lost in lanes so narrow both hedges squealed along their sides; of wincing at every blind corner – expecting to be impaled on the bale-prong of a tractor… or the horns of the Minotaur. The lanes are as bad as any Cretan maze to them, for each endless hedge stands higher than their quavering blue top-light, and is rooted in a landscape so flat the Earth doesn’t even dare curve here. How is a body ever to find their way out?

And it’s true – we are difficult to find. Even I get lost – frequently – on my way back from school. It’s as if any homing radar I have was faulty from the off. I am a Friday model – slammed together just before knocking-off time in my genetic factory. But, in terms of my homing radar, I choose to think it is deliberate sabotage...

£1.99 Added

Amber didn't like the house. The frontage faced north and two large conifers cast a sterile shadow. The beams were faded, the chimneys pointed to the sky like accusing fingers, and the roofing oppressed the aged dormer windows that sat in their rimless sockets gazing out a shadowed world through leaded frames. Yet she'd never really had a particular reason to dislike it, until that is she saw the woman with the baby at the window and heard its feeble, sickly cry.

Something Vital Fell Through

Char March

£0.99 Added

A disabled girl's view on her parents trying to run a small-holding in Norfolk.

George Tiller can't bring himself to open the box of his wife's belongings, neither can he compose himself to pray - but what he can do is perform a miracle...

Reverend George Tiller couldn’t compose himself to pray. His mind kept sliding away to other things: the stiffness of his knees as they pressed against the prickly texture of the rug beside the bed, whether or not he should throw out the yoghurt in the fridge, how much water he should give the tiny evergreen hedge which he had planted at the end of the garden. He spoke the words as always, but couldn’t empty his brain of the jumble of everyday worries that threatened to overwhelm him. He lowered his forehead onto the bed as he used to when he was a child saying his night- time prayers. The familiar, slightly singed smell of the woollen blankets did nothing to soothe him. He gave up.

With a sigh he raised himself slowly to a crouch, and then levered himself upright by leaning one hand on the bed and the other on the box at its foot. It was months since he had moved to this house in the market town of his childhood but this box had never been unpacked. It had seemed improper somehow to stow it away in the loft, yet too risky to open it. He knew what was inside so well, had relived the day he packed it so many times, that there was really no need to open it. He even knew the order in which the items lay; the brush and mirror set with their red silk backs embroidered with little birds, black plastic hairdryer, pillbox with tiger-eye lid. Beneath these lay the CD player with Chopin’s nocturnes still inside, bed jacket, nightdress. Last things. No, he decided yet again, best leave the box exactly as it was...

The Quality of Mercy

Judith Allnatt

£0.99 Added

George Tiller can't bring himself to open the box of his wife's belongings, neither can he compose himself to pray - but what he can do is perform a miracle...

Tom keeps on seeing them. But are they real? What do they want with him?

The china dolls, that’s what Tom called them. And this one was the scariest he’d seen yet. The abstract pattern painted all over her looked like Chinese writing and was in threatening red with the odd streak of yellow and a few lines of black. The Welsh cap was almost pointed and the bustle was a bit bumpier than usual. If she’d been human she would have had a huge bum. But it was the eyes that really freaked him. None of them had eyes, actually. There weren’t any features on their faces, though you could see clearly where the eyes were supposed to be and you knew they were looking. This particular babe’s were burning holes in him.

He’d started seeing them about a month ago. The first had been in the self-checkout area at his local supermarket. She’d been kind of gentle with the hint of a pale blue willow pattern. He’d thought it was some sort of art-work but then its head had swivelled round as he’d made a mistake scanning his pitta bread. Then there was the one at the Albert House car park. She was covered in navy polka dots. After he’d bought his ticket she followed him back to his car. The one at the library had seemed officious. The criss-cross olive green and mustard pattern reminded him of tweed. She’d not moved when he’d put his books down on the counter. Seconds later, though, when he’d checked back to make sure that she was still there, that he wasn’t in fact going mad, the books were all stacked neatly on the returns trolley.

Now this one was watching him as he filled in his tax return...

China Dolls

A couple of runaway teenagers create a secret world...
in a suburban cinema.

Brian woke from a dreamless sleep. He lay still for a few moments, blinking and yawning, running one hand through his long, greasy hair. He wondered vaguely what time it was.
He pulled off the musty smelling blanket and sat up, so that he could stare around at the gloomy, trash-littered confines of the platform. Above him, the screen towered, huge, blotchy and dead now that it was devoid of sound and image. Tonight it would come alive again.

He sighed and glanced across at Julie. She was still asleep, her face buried in the crook of her arm. She was wearing several old jumpers and this made her body seem more bulky than it really was. She complained of the cold all the time lately. Her straight mousy hair was so greasy it seemed to be plastered to her skull.

She don't tak e care of herself no more, thought Brian.

She moved in her sleep, disturbing the wrappers of several chocolate bars, scattered across her blankets and the crackle of foil woke her. Her large blue eyes stared at Brian for a few moments and then flicked away, as though she hardly cared whether he was there or not. She muttered something beneath her breath then buried her face in the pillow of old sacking.

'What's up?' Brian asked her good-naturedly. 'Still tired?'

'Don't feel well,' she replied, her voice as resentful as that of a little child. 'Been sick again.'

Brian frowned. She was always being sick these days and indolent as she was, she rarely even bothered to get up and move to one of the unused rooms. The floorboards around the bed were stained and sticky. Honestly, it was all a bit much. Julie was fourteen years old but sometimes she didn't act like it.

'A bit of exercise, that's what you need,' observed Brian reproachfully. 'I'm going down to get some scran in a minute, you should come along for a change.'

'Don't want to.' She sat up again, pouting at him. She began to search disconsolately through the sweet wrappers. The edge of her blanket had fallen down to reveal the incongruous curve of her belly, tight against the fabric of her blue dress. Brian chuckled.

'You'll have to give up eatin' all that choccy,' he observed. 'You're gettin' as fat as a pig.'

She directed a scornful glance in his direction and rubbed her stomach ruefully. 'I don't eat all that much,' she said.

'Bit of exercise. Do you the world of....'

'Oh, piss off Brian!' In the gloom, her white face looked abruptly rather startling. She kicked aside the blanket and got to her feet, went to glance down through the gap between the edge of the platform and the screen. From here, you could just make out the first few rows of stalls far below. Sometimes, when the films had started, you could make out a few people sitting in those seats, kids usually. They’d be eating popcorn or ice cream and generally, they’d have their feet up on the backs of the seats in front. But it was early yet and the place was empty. The music hadn't even started...

£0.99 Added

Tom keeps on seeing them. But are they real? What do they want with him?

Dream Factory

Philip Caveney

£1.29 Added

A couple of runaway teenagers create a secret world...
in a suburban cinema.

An elderly woman takes her wheelchair-bound husband on a mysterious journey at dawn - but why? Transit is a tale of the power of life-long love, set against the incomprehensible vastness of the universe.

The alarm sounds at 3:53am. Technically, it is set for four o’clock in the morning, but Sheila’s life-long habit of setting clocks a few minutes early gives her a small advantage against the rising sun. She draws herself up in the darkness and takes in a deep breath before rousing her husband, Richard. As he wakes his blinking eyes look startled and glassy in the grey dawn light.

‘What time is it?’ he asks.

‘It’s early.’ She replies softly, before switching on the bedside lamp. He does not react. She adds more firmly, ‘Come on, love, you don’t want to miss it, do you?’ Richard looks at her face vacantly. Does he remember, she wonders? She pulls on her warm clothes as quickly as she can, and runs her fingers through her practically-cut, silver-grey hair. There is no time to worry about appearances. She crosses to his side of the room and helps him to manoeuvre himself into an upright, sitting position. She edges his shoes onto his feet, pulls a fleeced jumper over his head and feeds his arms into its sleeves. His body is heavy and barely responsive, although he holds himself upright – he has some sovereignty left in his muscles...

Transit

A mother narrates the sad and peculiar tale of how her young daughter's body gradually disappears from her own eyes - everyone can see her daughter, except the daughter herself.

Her toes were the first to go. I could see them perfectly well – everyone could, except her. But the fact that we could see them was little comfort to her, with her peculiar blindness. We thought that she needed glasses – what a shame it is for such a young girl to need them already. Pretty, too. The optician denied us that comfort: nothing wrong with the eyes. Perfect vision. The teachers supposed it was a coquettish ploy for attention, that my reserved little girl privately craved gawping spectators. I tried to explain that she was frightened by the attention it caused. Deluded mother, they thought. I lavished her with attention, hoping that it would help: I circled around her, my eyes always on her, developing a sixth sense for her every movement. I came to believe her, in a way. The tears and terror were real enough to me.

She cried when she bathed. We had to make sure that we filled the bath with foaming bubbles so that she wouldn’t be afraid of her missing feet. The frothy lightness veiled her truth from her, at least for a brief evening respite. ‘I can see them in my socks, Mummy!’ she would exclaim joyfully as I dressed her, wriggling her toes wildly. She was thrilled by the sight of their movement, proof that she was not disappearing altogether. She became increasingly uncertain on her feet when she walked, feeling herself to be hovering precariously even when she could see her shoes. I held her hand as often as she would let me, but even frightened children will fight for sovereignty. Doesn’t every child want to be a grown up?...

£0.99 Added

An elderly woman takes her wheelchair-bound husband on a mysterious journey at dawn - but why? Transit is a tale of the power of life-long love, set against the incomprehensible vastness of the universe.

Behold

A French toilet, a jealous husband and two dogs.

Gaston handed the English woman two squares of toilet paper in exchange for a franc. She was amused.

‘We don’t have toilets like this in England’ she said ‘So I’ve heard’ he replied.

She waddled through to the women’s cubicles, her buttocks swaying beneath a bright red sarong. Gaston imagined a plate full of sliced tomatoes. Not the little perfect ones you get in packets but the huge, meaty deformed ones.

His mouth watered as the English woman came out of a cubicle and went to the sink to wash her hands. He watched her sniff at the vase of the flowers his wife had placed above the basins and chuckle to herself in the mirror. She couldn’t see him looking at her , Gaston sat with his back to the women’s section, a security mirror placed on the wall opposite enabled him to see through the open entrance.

He felt a squirt of warm liquid on his sandaled foot and looked under the table. Jezebel looked up at him with malevolent eyes. The Yorkshire terrier (trust the English to breed such a disagreeable creature), wore a pink bow on her head, having returned from a morning’s pampering at ‘Little Darlings;’ a dog grooming parlour on the Rue D’Antibes.

Gaston’s foot throbbed with a desire to kick the little abomination from here to Dieppe but the return of the English woman stopped him.

‘May I take a photo?’ she asked.

‘By all means Madame’ he charmed.

Jezebel’s entrance signalled the imminent arrival of his wife Isabelle, so he decided to be attentive to this woman as he knew Isabelle would dislike her immediately. She flashed him a well preserved smile and asked if she could take a picture of him holding the ‘sweet little dog’ against a backdrop of one of the posters of film stars in the ‘foyer’ as his wife called the entrance to their public toilet. She chose Gerard Depardieu of course. Isabelle was most particular that the posters should be of French movie stars and Depardieu seemed to be the only one that foreigners recognised.

Especially the English; a particularly insular race...

£1.29 Added

A mother narrates the sad and peculiar tale of how her young daughter's body gradually disappears from her own eyes - everyone can see her daughter, except the daughter herself.

The Fate of Dogs

Tess Hudson

£1.59 Added

A French toilet, a jealous husband and two dogs.

A chance meeting in person develops over an email conversation.

From:gill.hardcastle@adh.freedom.com
To:whostheman@fasttmail.co.uk
Sent:Thursday, June 12, 2007 11:32 PM

Subject: Apologies

Dear Who’s The Man,

I have just arrived home riven with guilt at my earlier behaviour towards you. I should certainly not have said that The Garden at Dawn bore no resemblance to any work that Rothko had ever completed or even contemplated. Nor should I have expanded my ill-considered opinion by adding that any comparison with Rousseau’s finely comic jungle paintings was laughable. I will not blame the sauvignon blanc as I have passed the age for blaming poor behaviour on alcohol consumption which, just for the record, was moderate in any case. Rather, it was my perhaps my interest in you and your opinions that pushed me to challenge you until what might be considered to be the point of rudeness.

Suffice it to say, I apologise fully for my remarks which, even had you not been the artist, were inappropriate to make to a stranger, although to call you a stranger seems odd as I feel I know you better than someone I just happened to meet at an exhibition this evening...

Lifetime

Ruth Brandt

£0.99 Added

A chance meeting in person develops over an email conversation.

A Midwestern farmer comes to terms with his daughter's weight problem.

They sat either side of the kitchen table, he and Lou, as if there was something to discuss. Sunlight and the reproachful clucking of the chickens came in the open window. The only sound inside the house was Pearl’s laboured snoring, echoing from her bedroom along the tiled corridor to the kitchen. Each breath was gasped into her throat like air was in short supply. It was exhaled in long wheezing growls each ending in a silence. The silence was sometimes too long.

‘You OK to go with her in the ambulance?’ he asked Lou, when a new breath began.

‘You ain't coming?’

‘No.’

Lou spread her hands on the table and studied her bitten fingernails. ‘OK,’ she said.

‘Lou -’

‘What you gonna do?’

‘Fix the fencing? Book the combine.’

She nodded.

‘Nothing I can do if I come, Lou,’ he said.

‘Nope.’

When he went outside to the light, beyond the sound of Pearl’s breathing, it was as unnerving as swimming out of his depth. But it was the hospital’s business now. Nothing he could do. He loaded some wire and tools and climbed into the ute; sat there blank for a minute, then drove right on down to the fence by the highway. He could see the ambulance arrive from there. He worked automatically. After a while he saw it heading back toward town. He put his tools in the ute and walked into the field...

The Corn

Jane Rogers

£0.99 Added

A Midwestern farmer comes to terms with his daughter's weight problem.

Sarah, haunted by an episode with a man in a tower block lift, had an unusual New Year's resolution to make. She needed to set things right. She couldn't risk loosing everything she'd worked so hard to achieve and she could only see one way forward...

A Final Resolution

A husband waits for his wife to return home. He is cross because she's late and he needs the car but - perhaps there's a good reason that she is late home...

Where was she this time? It was always the same when he wanted to go out. Promises. Yes, I'll be back by then. And then he'd be waiting and looking at the clock and reading the small ads in the Evening Telegraph even though there was nothing he wanted – except to hear the car returning.

As ever, his feelings were a mixture of annoyance and anxiety. What if..? And the anxiety heightened the annoyance because he was irritable at being made to worry, like the mother who scolds her child with the words 'Just think of all the worry you've caused us.'

He looked down the road again. The conifer trees at the edge of the path were just visible. It had been dark for some time. Lights and engine noise awakened his spirits. But it was the wrong noise: the car went straight past. How much traffic there was whenever you were waiting for someone!

He noticed the coleus needed water. It always needed water but he couldn’t bring himself to attend to it now. Waiting paralysed his ability to do anything else.

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Sarah, haunted by an episode with a man in a tower block lift, had an unusual New Year's resolution to make. She needed to set things right. She couldn't risk loosing everything she'd worked so hard to achieve and she could only see one way forward...

Late Home

Trevor Millum

£1.59 Added

A husband waits for his wife to return home. He is cross because she's late and he needs the car but - perhaps there's a good reason that she is late home...

A grandmother ponders the way her grand-daughter is learning to assess the world. This story owes a debt to Tove Jansson.

Once Lucy was walking, the pair of them went often to the park, moving at the child’s speed. The park was ten minutes distant, for an adult, but at Lucy’s pace these journeys were so slow and wayward that necessities like drinks, snacks, and toilet stops had to be organised along the way. Rituals must be observed: every concrete bollard surrounding a parking area must be patted with both hands, by both of them; the low-hanging beech must be hidden under; doorsteps on the street must be stepped up onto and down from; leaves must be plucked from specific hedges and saved in a pocket to take home. The budgies in the park bird-house must be ritually greeted through each of the six wire panels that enclosed them. The little girl’s eyes were instantly attracted to anything bright or out of the ordinary. Her grandmother observed with some sadness how quickly the child learned what must and must not be picked up. Shiny silver foil, drinks cans, ring pulls, cigarette butts – almost immediately, it seemed, Lucy knew that these were all dirty rubbish not to be touched. Whereas a flower or brightly coloured leaf was to be admired and exulted over together. ‘I don’t want her picking up old cans or sweet wrappers,’ the grandmother said to herself, ‘so why does it bother me that she has learned not to?’...

Learning

Jane Rogers

£0.99 Added

A grandmother ponders the way her grand-daughter is learning to assess the world. This story owes a debt to Tove Jansson.

The closeness between her brilliant, beautiful mother and her talented, intelligent daughter re-enforces a woman's sense of her own inferiority. Add to this her lifelong horror of bats, and things go from bad to worse.

I have been a failure all my life. Ask my mother. Well, you could have asked her, if she hadn’t died last month. Ask my daughter. My lovely, beautiful, clever daughter Anya, who has inherited my mother’s house. Just ask her.

My mother was Lucy Gilmour. You may have heard of her. She was a costume designer; she was responsible for some of the most gorgeously colourful creations to be seen onstage in the last forty years. Swans, firebirds, trolls, princesses, vampires and chimney sweeps, mythical beasts and twinkling stars, my mother costumed them all. I am not artistic. My mother, being kind and forbearing, never articulated her disappointment to me – but disappointed she surely was, to have spawned such an ugly duck. She must have hoped for hidden depths. But I have hidden shallows.

I was conscious of disappointing her as a child; half conscious, a tang that tainted my days. Over the bat, for example; the bat we saw on holiday. My first bat. We were in Ireland, at the sort of self catering place my parents always took, remote and draughty, picturesque. While my father brought in the bags, I ran up to the bathroom. But there was something in the sink. Something deformed. It lay splatted there, violently black against the white porcelain. I cried out and my mother came running.

‘A bat! Oh sweetheart, it’s a beautiful little bat, look at its ears, they’re almost translucent. The fragile bones in those wings – how marvellous to see one up close like this.’
My father pronounced it dead. He wanted to wrap it in newspaper and put it in the bin. But my mother needed to sketch it...

The DNA of Bats

Jane Rogers

£0.99 Added

The closeness between her brilliant, beautiful mother and her talented, intelligent daughter re-enforces a woman's sense of her own inferiority. Add to this her lifelong horror of bats, and things go from bad to worse.

A young girl's coming of age in her father's homeland.

When Lali stole Dad’s money, she also stole my childhood. I was on the trip of a lifetime. My Dad’s family, tucked away in a little town in India, might as well have been on a different planet. I’d never seen them, until that summer when Dad managed to save money for ‘the trip’ he had been preparing for ever since I could remember.

We arrived one hot sweaty night. The air was so muggy I felt I was breathing something solid. It buzzed with insects; the mosquitoes at once attracted to our smooth pale skin. Mam was quiet, and that was unusual. She looked straight ahead, ignoring the bustle and noise around us in the railway station that smelled of strong chemical and piss. I could see she was nervous. I pulled my overnight case, its spotless candyfloss pink looking proud amongst the dusty, battered suitcases piled carelessly on top of porters’ heads.

We spent the first night in a hotel in Delhi, before the train journey onto Dad’s hometown. Mam was finally excited, as she’d never stayed in a hotel before. A room with ‘Ateched bathroom and running hot water’ as the advert promised. We took endless cold water showers, just to cool ourselves. The hot water, supposedly a selling point, was wasted on us. We lounged on the crisp cotton sheets and ordered room service of big tandoori chicken legs and real naan bread, and watched Indian telly...

The Summer of Learning

Susmita Bhattacharya

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A young girl's coming of age in her father's homeland.

A new lighthouse keeper receives a mysterious visitor.

At first I missed corners. Dust rolls round in ever-increasing balls until they snag on a table leg or encounter a drip from a spray-soaked window. Salt creeps in crystalline spirals. Cobwebs are precarious, anchored across arcs, but a cobweb here must be as tough as the nets the fishermen fix along the shore.

In a lighthouse at night, up in the lightroom, you exist for one second out of four, a speck caught in a giant’s torch beam.

You are never alone there. You, closest to the limelight, the moon eye, are the envy of thousands – I may say tens of thousands – of unrequited night flyers. At each flash through a given pane, you may witness a crowd of small bodies hurled against the glass. The panes are drifted with moth dust, edges thick with wings, legs, tributes left to the light. The spiders, crouched in their reinforced swags, are fat. Bats feast and fall away, dazed with their own gluttony...

Salt Stain

Zoe F Gilbert

£0.99 Added

A new lighthouse keeper receives a mysterious visitor.

I am wearing my smartest clothes for my mother’s funeral: grey trousers and white shirt without the tie. She meant to give me cash for shoes...

Wearing White Plimsoles

Alison Stewart

£0.99 Added

I am wearing my smartest clothes for my mother’s funeral: grey trousers and white shirt without the tie. She meant to give me cash for shoes...

What if the dead could apologise for leaving you?

"The first thing you have to take in – if you're fairly young, that is – what you have to try to imagine is a world where people never heard anything from anyone among the departed. There was no message, not of any type… So, from a world in which there was no such communication, to one in which sooner or later just about everyone would get word. When the phone calls started it was amazing…"

Messages

A chance meeting between John Lennon and Philip Larkin in a motorway service station cafe in 1966.

Somewhere in South Yorkshire Dylan began moaning and folded over in the back seat.

‘Stop the car,’ yelled Lennon. The chauffeur glanced nervously over his shoulder.

‘I’ve got a van right behind me – there are some services coming up.’

Lennon rolled down the window, hoisted Dylan up by the collar and forced his head out the limo. They heard an anguished bark, then Bob hurled a stream of puke into the rainy night. When he’d finished Lennon dragged him back inside, leaving the window open to help disperse the dense cloud of pot.

‘Well done Bob,’ said Lennon, ‘you’ll feel much better for that me old son.’

Dylan slowly listed to port and slid into the corner. On the other side sat Donn Pennebraker, who was making a film about Dylan’s tour of England called ‘Something Is Happening.’ He chopped the air with his hand and Robert Van Dyke, watching from the passenger seat, lowered his microphone. The chauffeur indicated and began slowing down to take the slip road into the services. Donn switched off his camera and laid it on his lap; Lennon leant closer and asked him, ‘Did you manage to get that? Or shall we ask Bob to do it again?’

The toilets were on the bridge over the M1; Lennon and the chauffeur hauled Dylan up the long flight of steps, the two film-makers following a few paces behind, their heads down, muttering.

The strange trio in front attracted curious stares from the passers-by. The chauffeur in a smart grey suit, his peaked cap gradually being dislodged by Dylan’s arm. Bob’s blue navy jacket buttoned up to the neck, blank white face framed by Rorschach inkblot hair, his Wayfarer sunglasses slowly slipping down his nose. Lennon, looking cool and commanding in his black jacket, black button down shirt and black jeans, was giving a running commentary for the startled businessmen and gawping suburban couples...

£0.99 Added

What if the dead could apologise for leaving you?

Elsewhere

Ray French

£0.99 Added

A chance meeting between John Lennon and Philip Larkin in a motorway service station cafe in 1966.

'A brief study of bitter pride, it's a remarkable example of economical writing, painstaking in its attention to detail.'
Nicholas Royle, Time Out

He watched her cook. Marvelled at her lack of order, her arms flailing, long feet planted, clothes bespattered and askew. Pots and pans teetered high at her elbow. Tomatoes, aubergines, onions and peppers; a rainbow mountain range spilling accidental foothills on the floor. He despaired at her want of skill, that a daughter of his should display such lubberliness.

Completing the task, she slid his plate towards him. He made a backwards movement born of countless lapfuls of steaming food. A slop found his thumb. A cinder of irritation caught, flared and was quashed. He sucked burnt flesh and oregano.

They ate. He listened to the timely tick of Smith’s of Ipswich while she turned the pages of a novel, hissing heat through her teeth. A meal taken, not in silence, but un-conversationally. Her opinions were not honed to his taste; more snatched from the supermarket queue or condensed from the fog of talk-radio...

The Engineer's Daughter

Sarah Passingham

£0.99 Added

'A brief study of bitter pride, it's a remarkable example of economical writing, painstaking in its attention to detail.'
Nicholas Royle, Time Out

Clara is in a box waiting to be found. She listens to the words outside the box and the words in her head as she waits for Jasper. But who is Jasper and will he get to her in time? Why is she in a box and why can she not speak out?

Girl In A Box

Clare Shaw

£0.99 Added

Clara is in a box waiting to be found. She listens to the words outside the box and the words in her head as she waits for Jasper. But who is Jasper and will he get to her in time? Why is she in a box and why can she not speak out?

A boy is traumatized by what a haircut reveals.

Barbers incarcerate you. That’s a fact, whatever the hairstyle, however free the expense. The mirrors pen you in – your life there in front of you, inescapable; the profiles either side; and all those hideous, misbegotten, views from behind. Those are the ones I fear most; those are the ones that keep me coming back for more – the rear view mirrors, the past creeping up on the future. But I've made provision. I've bought my toupee. I'm ready for it when it comes.

Hamlet hit the nail on the head. There's a divinity that shapes our ends right enough, rough hew them how we will. Too right! Baldness – enough to put the fear of God in any man. What will the thinning strands uncover – the boy beneath, stripped of his manly prime? Even more, or younger still: a cradle-capped fontanelle and womb-print, my mother's final signature – the birthmark on the crown of my head; a nipple in shape and contour, a nipple in dreaded colour, and right behind my old soft spot. I've only to think of it, to touch it accidentally with the comb, and all the pain floods back, together with the faces – Jimmy Beal pointing, Trudy laughing (Oh, Trudy!), and Taff Thomas turning from the blackboard and aiming his chalk with such wicket-to-wicket precision, such well-cut malice.

It's really no wonder I've taken to words rather than numbers.

Taff Thomas strode across the playground on the first Monday of every month with a new short back and sides, the points and precipices sharpened, his masculinity reborn. Everyone knew he'd much rather be playing cricket than teaching us the whys and wherefores of sines and cosines. And everyone knew his throwing arm gained accuracy from a haircut. Freshly groomed, he swivelled on less than a sixpence, launching his chalk with flat arm throws and a long-off relish. Direct hits were assured...

The Barber's Victim

A mother, recovering on a psychiatric respite ward, recalls her own mother and her 'other mother', and sees vivid glimpses of hope in the past and present

The staff nurse calls me.

‘Come on, Sara!’ she says, poking her head round the door. ‘You're keeping the doctor waiting.’ The door slams behind her. She hasn't seen the red splashes on the mirror and on the tiles. They have good mirrors here, crystal clear; good mirrors and white tiles. Not all mirrors make me look like my mother – the same dark eyebrows and crowded teeth, the curled up nose and rounded lips. The mother I love. In some mirrors I can't even see myself.

I have two mothers. Sometimes they get confused in my mind. I'm not mad, at least that's what I tell myself when I look in the mirror. I have black shoulder length hair, like the mother I love. I have two clear memories of her – two pictures – that is all. In the first she is standing at an ironing board, pressing backwards and forwards, a white shirt sleeve hanging down, almost to the carpet. She's not looking at what she's doing, she's not looking at me. I'm scratching at the iron's wire down by my legs. I'm six, at least that's what I think I am. She's talking. Reading from a book. She says … I can’t remember what she says, but she’s reading from a book and ironing, all at the same time. Then she looks out of the window. Still talking. Not to me, she’s reading. Talking to herself. I must be six, or thereabouts.

In the second memory she's standing by a wall of rinsed blue tiles. It's like the swimming baths, but there aren't any towels or costumes. I'm seven, maybe eight. She looks lost, can't see, like she's searching through a thick fog. I want to shout out – ‘It's all right Mummy, I'll get the costumes.’ But the man ushers us out to the door and someone grabs my hand. Did he have a white coat? The man. There was something white against the blue of the tiles. I can't stop thinking, I want to run to her, to shout, but my mouth won't open, my legs won't move. Part of me is crying, but not my eyes...

£1.59 Added

A boy is traumatized by what a haircut reveals.

Some Mothers

The habit started when he was seven.

A ball, thrown hard and long and with unforgiving inaccuracy by his father, was not retrieved from a neighbour's garden. His father shrugged, a fractional gesture that summed up the lowly value of the lost ball.

‘Shall we get that ice cream now?’ said his father, knowing full well what the answer would be. Though only seven years old and unable to define the word ‘bribe’, he realised the loss was incurred by his father's embarassed refusal to knock on a door and request the ball's return. He also speculated that any balls that sailed over fences or hedges might be imbued with magical powers. He was sure they gained a life of their own, became in some way free and were prone never to return. When he was nine Eileen Docherty moved into a house on his street, and he fell in love with numbers...

£1.59 Added

A mother, recovering on a psychiatric respite ward, recalls her own mother and her 'other mother', and sees vivid glimpses of hope in the past and present

Erratics

A boy happens upon a furniture-maker in his workshop while waiting for his sister to finish her violin lesson; it's a meeting that will change them both.

What do you think you’re doing?’ I say. He just stands there leaning over the split door; doesn’t run away, doesn’t say anything. Kids are always snooping around, coming down the lane on their way to the woods. They run off when they see me. They look at me as if I’d eat them alive. This one’s wearing his school uniform. Eleven, I’d say, twelve at the outside; his green and black tie flapping in the wind. I press the red button and the lump of oak on the lathe whirs and slows. Still on the threshold, I’ll say that for him; waiting until he’s invited.

I go over and unlatch the bottom half of the door: the workshop used to be a stable; I keep the top half open to let a bit of air in. There’s a lot of dust in this job. It kills your sense of smell. I look at him, trying to catch his eye. He looks in a way that makes me wonder, makes me think I’m not there. He looks everywhere but at me.

‘What do you do in here?’ he says. His voice echoes around the rafters. It’s not often I get a visitor; not here, not in the workshop.

‘Come in, if you like. Have a look,’ I say, ‘Have to take that tie off though.’ If there’s a rule worth having it’s that one: no loose clothing of any description. ‘Before you know it the circular saw will have it,’ I tell him. ‘Or else it’ll get wrapped around the lathe. And you’ll go with it.’...

£1.29 Added

Violin Lessons

A gun fires in the dark, but who is it? And what is she aiming at?

I aim into the night and fire. Crack … like a nut. The door opens before the echo dies. A double kernel. You both step out onto the decking; gawp into the dark, both of you in your white dressing gowns, like snowflakes in summer. I can’t tell you apart, but I hear you.

‘What was it?’

‘A shot.’

‘A shot?’

‘She shot my chimes.’

‘Who did?’

‘Who’d you think? Look.’

‘Never knew you had any chimes.’

‘I know it’s her. Look.’

‘If it is, even if she did … she’ll come round, eventually.’

The chimes interrupt you, like drips of water. A trickling pause...

£1.99 Added

A boy happens upon a furniture-maker in his workshop while waiting for his sister to finish her violin lesson; it's a meeting that will change them both.

She Shot My Chimes

It was after midnight in the communal bathroom that I caught Aggie wearing the English woman’s pyjamas.

Aggie was a thin, blonde haired woman in her fifties, with an attitude. Every day I passed her as she smoked long, expensive looking cigarettes outside the front door of the hostel. She never acknowledged me, although I’d stayed at the hostel often, sometimes for two weeks. At breakfast, she sat by herself in the corner, and tilted her body against others. Held herself proudly, but trembled at times. Always the same corner.

If anyone took Aggie’s place, while they were up collecting breakfast she’d move their crockery and cutlery to another table. No one ever argued.

Aggie stood out from the other long term residents, who mostly had a hang dog, apologetic expression, and flitted round like ghosts, late at night. They were old and unbeautiful in the midst of young travellers. Aggie was defiant; she wanted to be noticed. Her hair was bottle blonde, dry and stringy. At mealtimes I never saw her eat more than a slice of toast, yet she drank cup after cup of black coffee. I didn’t blame her for not eating. The food looked appealing, but the cereal tasted dusty, the French toast was over sweetened cardboard, and the self-service waffle machine offered up waffles that were salty and sugary at the same time, and left you feeling empty. Every morning some rookie would forget to oil the machine before they cooked a waffle, and the staff would come out from the kitchen and scrape out the burnt remains...

£0.99 Added

A gun fires in the dark, but who is it? And what is she aiming at?

As If She Was Coco Chanel

When Dee began asking people to repeat themselves, and started saying ‘What?’ a lot, it took her a while to realise what was going on. With the kids left home, she was enjoying herself again. Sex was not a problem. Once you let men know you were available, they weren’t fussy. The best ones were short-sighted, and didn’t seem to mind varicose and thread veins, hairy chins and dyed hair. Plus, the fact that you couldn’t see further than them, seemed to be an advantage. They just wanted to know that the important parts were in working order. But when she couldn’t hear the phone in different parts of the flat, and missed the beginning and ends of words, she knew that joy was departing from her life. Birdsong. The doorbell. The music on Radio 3. The concerts she went to twice a year by the sea. The nuances of people’s words. Missing the joke. A gradual descent into silence...

£1.29 Added

Divine Hearing

This is the story of two characters in a small town in Wales who only meet once, with shocking consequences.

The town sits under grey granite scree: its roofs glimmer like the teeth of a saw, cutting deep into the outcrop of the mountain. The quarries lie dormant: no millstones grinding, no wailing sirens or belly blasts. Only a dirty green grass silently reclaiming the pits of dust and sweat...

Before he reached school age his father sat with him at the bench nearly every day. They modelled little animals and people from spare lumps of muddy clay – lions, boys and goats, and a girl they named Rhiannon in honour of their new home. Like all the others she found a space in the kiln for the biscuit firing but went without colour or glaze. The joy lay in the mud, and in the wheel: spinning, splashing, bowls rising from nothing, strange shapes giddily pirouetting. The water, warm to young hands, chiselled the arthritic joints of his father, so even then it pained him to play with his son. Even then, in the slime of his daily work, his father's hands ached for the wheel to slow and for the water to stop running.

When she was a child, her dad read from his most precious book: of moonless night in a small town, starless and bible black. And he told her it was off to the south – this sloe-black, crow-black land – as if grey, the slate grey of their town, was a shade closer to heaven. He sang to her in his halting asthmatic rasp of princesses and princes, and of Y Ddraig Goch, the dragon on the mountain who guarded the valley. He told her of a time before the quarries, of the farm on the mountain, with his father, and his father before him. But when she asked why he kept the shotgun in the wardrobe, he gave no farmer's talk – of pests and crows and rabbits – but said it served to keep the Devil and his witches at bay...

£1.29 Added

Land of Their Fathers

A Soviet composer is trying to write the perfect Socialist Realist symphony, before a knock on the door.

Opening, Fig. 1: 6/8 Adagio, C Minor, pianissimo-possible rising to pianissimo, and gradually to piano: low strings, contra-bassoon, symbolising Tsarist regime; tetratones protesting on Bb clarinets, symbolising oppressed proletariat...

... or perhaps not tetratones: that might sound too dissonant, too much like he is revelling in discords, too – God save him – bourgeois-formalist. Even worse: it might sound like he was associating the progressive forces of proletarian defiance with Western modernism. Govno. Shit...

£1.99 Added

This is the story of two characters in a small town in Wales who only meet once, with shocking consequences.

Must Sound Genuine

Jonathan Taylor

£0.99 Added

A Soviet composer is trying to write the perfect Socialist Realist symphony, before a knock on the door.

A story about Derek, Stockhausen, electronic music, and the ducks in Acton Park.

Derek came in from the cold and sat on the bed.

Derek got up from the bed and went to make a coffee.

Derek gave up making a coffee and sat back on the bed.

The kettle boiled, unregarded...

Kontakte

Jonathan Taylor

£0.99 Added

A story about Derek, Stockhausen, electronic music, and the ducks in Acton Park.

A future without money ... in which chocolate can be significant.

Billy Elkins pressed the send button. He watched as 500 messages made their way to members of the Ambosso Advertising Group and thought it just a little ironic that the people receiving the message were seen as clients and that indeed the company he worked for was called an advertising company. Since the Bank Dissolution Act there had been no actual competition and no need to advertise, really, except by the people who needed work doing. Which reminded him. He must find someone to paint his bathroom ceiling. He would add that to Monday’s list. He suspected there would be a long wait.

Still, that was him done for the week. Since he was obliged to work until he was 68, he was at least grateful that the demands of Ambosso were not too onerous, that he got to work in a pleasant office and that even as a bachelor, he was allowed a two-bedroomed apartment.

“Coming for a drink?” asked Ronnie Parkinson, his colleague at the next desk. Ronnie was the same age as him but had been with Ambosso two years longer and seemed to know so much more about everything.

Why not? It would give him a bit of the old Friday night feeling. It wasn’t the same, now, though, when you didn’t have to stop to think about whether you had enough money left to buy beer and you only had to worry about whether the pub actually had any. Still, chances were, if they didn’t have beer, they’d have something...

Chocolate

Did Jo really kill Simon?

Jo looked down at Simon’s body, which lay naked and splayed against their bedroom rug. Kneeling, she ran her hands over his cold, coarse skin. It had always been coarse; that brownish hair, thick upon his arms and legs, felt rough in contrast to the fine shape of his torso. Hmmm, that body, she thought, Simon had a beautiful body, even in death.

Jo had met Simon at a gym. Thinking that a fitness centre might help her meet ordinary men, she had savoured the time she spent on the running machine looking out for a man who wasn’t another lovey. Now, as rain dripped loudly down the windowsill making her aware of her own dry cheeks, Jo bent down and kissed him. She then attempted to rub off the lip-glossed stain, leaving a heart-shaped smudge on his cheekbone. That gym was where it had all started, and now it was the end.

Moving to the window and with toes sinking into the high weave of their cream rug, Jo contemplated removing the blood. Was it like wine? White wine is supposed to remove a red stain. Perhaps salt would be better, or maybe vinegar?

The view from the back of the house was long, green and deep. A remote place they had both worked hard for. Simon even harder she felt, especially during those months before buying the land. ‘A lucky break,’ he had claimed, adding something about a property sale and some bonus money. A large sum came their way and she had never asked questions, despite a need to...

£0.99 Added

A future without money ... in which chocolate can be significant.

Simon's Body

Alyson Morris

£1.29 Added

Did Jo really kill Simon?

A futuristic tale inspired by the story of Pygmalion.

When Sven first suggested that Galatea become a human fossil she had some misgivings. She had accepted that her heart was broken beyond repair (even had the guarantee not run out) but she still couldn’t quite contemplate yet the reality of her imminent death...

Human Fossil

Denise Hayes

£0.99 Added

A futuristic tale inspired by the story of Pygmalion.

Dating is different in a dystopian world...

I can tell by the glint in her left eye that the Light Blue by the bar is interested. Sensory reactions in relevant regions of my anatomy suggest that the attract-signal in my own eye has been activated too. It’s possible to short-circuit the trigger effect but I feel like some company tonight.

We find a room in a nearby encounter-block. The entry doorpad scans the bar-code on our palms and we’re in. As transitory rooms go it’s okay. The infobox shows radiation levels are low. An anti-bacterial cleanse took place only six hours ago.

The Light Blue smiles at one of the wall vodcams and slowly removes her clothes. Her languorous progress adds a beguiling old-style touch that is cosily erotic. She whispers ‘Lights low,’ but before the dimming is complete I say, ‘No. Half-light.’

It’d be a shame not to appreciate the work that’s gone into her. I’d guess that her breasts are by Cassandra Cross at Larolle; elaborate aureole patterns around perfectly symmetrical nipples. Her taut stomach is as white as crack with no tell-tale speckles of radiation damage. An exquisite accomplishment. Time to look closer...

Bar-code

Denise Hayes

£0.99 Added

Dating is different in a dystopian world...

The darker side of creative writing circles...

Vicious Circle

Phil Emery

£0.99 Added

The darker side of creative writing circles...

An account of being, loss, and the sea.

Something is blooming, affixed to this underwater cliff, holding tight with tiny creeping roots, clinging to a crevice, a bloom, a frond, some strange fruit.

Something is blooming: here, where the indigo tide sweeps in and sweeps out, where the moon pulls the tide in its silvery way. Always.

Where the ocean is deep and quiet, and only the sound of my heartbeat can be heard, there is a flowering of sorts. I close my eyes and wonder if the strength of my imaginings has caused this, if dreaming can take shape when water and light are just right. I wonder this as I spread my hands before me and watch the silver sacs of air trail from my fingertips, ten pearls the size of pigeon eggs. Count them!

I travel deeper into the blue

Marin.

I made it up myself; I say it out loud, as if to speak her name will bring her into my grasp. Marin.

Sometimes I say it, like the French, marine, marine, marine speaking it softly so the waves don’t hear me say it, but they drown out the sound anyway...

Marin

Fiona Edmonds Dobrijevich

£2.49 Added

An account of being, loss, and the sea.

How can Maya survive in a world where humans are on the verge of extinction and chumps – genetically-modified chimps – keep people to do their dirty work?

With a quivering intake of breath, Leopold touched the introduction button and the feelizone wrapped around him. She was just as promised, and within minutes he was satisfied. Her name was Victoria and she was cute and sassy so he stayed in the zone for a chat and promised to meet up again soon. When he pushed the dome up, though, he realised that he’d forgotten the ejaculator cap again and the screen was covered in his mess. He groaned: humans didn’t like that sort of thing and Maya, his new human, was particularly fastidious.

She sponged the screen with disinfectant, sighing loudly. ‘Do you have to do this all the time?’

‘Why shouldn’t I?’ Then he smiled. ‘I think you’re a little bit jealous. I think you’d like me to do it with you.’

‘In your dreams.’ She dropped the sponge into the recycle chute and took off her rubber gloves.

‘Cos I’m a chump?’

‘Cos you’re a slob. And, yes, because you’re a chump.’

‘Cos you’re too good for me?’

‘Cos it’s unnatural, that’s why.’

‘What’s natural? Anyway, we’ve got the same DNA.’

‘With important exceptions.’ She gathered up the cups that he’d left lying around the room. ‘To be honest, you’re just not my type.’

‘What’s your type then? A bald-arse, I bet. A hairy-faced short-armed human?’...

Something Missing

Clare Chandler

£0.99 Added

How can Maya survive in a world where humans are on the verge of extinction and chumps – genetically-modified chimps – keep people to do their dirty work?

My older sister, Minnie, and her new husband, Sax Smithers, whom she met six months ago, are going to show up half an hour late for their wedding reception. They get held up on the way to the American Legion because all six guys from the pharmacy, where Sax sorts boxes of pills, want a ride, right then, in front of Shepherd of the Hills Methodist Church, in Grandma Tillie’s brand new 1983 Cadillac convertible. Then, Minnie, excited not just about the wedding, but also about her graduation from Smoky Ordinary High School yesterday, smuggles me into the passenger seat, ignoring what Mom and my stepdad Frank and Grandma Tillie have said over and over about my heart.

“Okay, Sheryl,” Minnie tells me. “Slouch down in the seat, and nobody’ll know.” Minnie’s best friend, Gina Potts, is in the driver’s seat. On the front steps of the church, Frank is hugging the pastor again, and Mom, who’s still in the doorway, is too weepy to see us. Minnie, behind me, pinches my cheek and then snuggles up to Sax as if leaning forward from their back seat perch to talk to me has kept her away from him for too long. Sax smiles with his eyes closed.

My heart brought Minnie and Sax together; it’s how they met in the first place. My heart is built backwards with a hole in the middle of it. The pharmacy where Sax works and where I pick up my heart medication after school on Wednesdays is next to J.E.B. Stuart Jr. High; I just finished the seventh grade there. My stepdad Frank makes Minnie pick up my medication sometimes, when I’m too tired, and that’s how Sax recognized her and felt all right talking to her that “destinied” (as Minnie says) Sunday morning at P&W’s Eatery, where Minnie waits tables. Now, she always says to Grandma Tillie, who wanted Minnie to study court stenography at the community college, “See Grandma T? You can make your future anyplace. I started making mine December 30, 1982, at a restaurant on Coover Street.”

About my heart: It keeps me from riding in airplanes because the air is too thin, and Mom, Frank, and Grandma Tillie keep me from riding in convertibles, too – or pickup trucks or hayrides – because Mom says it’s not good for me when the air rushes past and makes me catch my breath. My heart also keeps me from running, biking, or swimming, but I can walk far enough and can play badminton in the backyard. I can beat all comers at badminton...

A Happy, Safe Thing

The footpath gallops ahead like a dumb dog, disappears around bends in the forest. This has been Alexander’s first real hike, a hard scrabble – scuttling along in a crouch at times as if he might find grips on the flat rocks. His assistant at work would have loved some photos.

Now that he’s made it – almost made it – this easy wide dirt path where he and his sister Marietta started hours ago, where families had pushed all-terrain strollers, seems embarrassing somehow. A bird chirps sweet, trilling notes. The watery quality of the sunlight suggests cocktail hour. Through gaps in the trees, the gravel lot materializes, but there’s no blotch of red. Marietta’s car should be visible. Shouldn’t it?

“Hold on,” he calls ahead to her. He spins around. “Is this where we started?” He knows it is, even with the trail deserted, other trekkers probably at home now firing up their grills for the Fourth of July like normal people.

“You did it, big guy!” she says, brings fluttery hands to her cheeks as if someone has proposed. He resents her surprise. His wife, his ex-wife, began to talk to him like that after they had stillborn twins last year. Like he was a little bit of an idiot.

Yet he hopes Marietta’s sunny affection is sincere, the desire a hum in his chest. Since Alexander’s divorce, his sister has stopped visiting him up in Baltimore.
Surely in another minute, that stupid Dodge Omni will flicker into existence between the trunks. Pulling ahead of Marietta, he breaks into a trot.

“You’re running!” she calls after him, and picks up her pace to a jog.

When he bursts from the forest, he stops short at the edge of the gravel clearing as if it’s a cliff. Empty. A gray sea of rocks. A spray of broken glass.
Marietta emerges beside him. Her smile drains away.

“Gone,” he says. He points to where the car had been, to the parking space she managed to grab hours earlier, when the lot had been full. The trees block the waning afternoon light like a leafy gang of thugs. “My briefcase,” he whimpers.

The proposal for the Jamieson account, a proposal he insisted on creating himself instead of letting his staff handle it, was on his laptop. Worked on it for three straight days and didn’t get around to backing it up. He’s been doing bone-headed things like that ever since this new woman, Nichole, materialized – she shares his table sometimes at Common Ground, an over-crowded coffee shop. It seems impossible that such a thing can happen after he drove his wife away with his drinking and insults, drove her right into the arms of Jimmy Yang, a hotshot systems specialist at a competing agency.

He walks the perimeter, as if he might find the car hiding behind a stump. His chest expands with air. Alexander blinks away the doctor’s thick fingers, the way they worked tubes up the twins’ noses. He thinks about the dangers of breath. What if his lungs bulge through the gaps between his ribs, press until the bones snap?...

£0.99 Added

Little Big Show

How he had knocked, Francine could not guess. But here he was. Or at least here was his head. Floating in the hallway outside her apartment, as if it had wafted over on the aroma of Mrs. Singh’s stir fry. Here was the sun-kissed face from his Match.com profile. The broad forehead and faintly hooked nose. Somehow, though, it had seemed like the head would be attached to an equally rugged, sun-kissed body. Had it been presumptuous to assume, at the very least, a torso?

The two of them blinked at one another. Why hadn’t she thought to use the peephole? Then again, would that have painted the picture? Maybe the best thing to do was to back into her apartment, real easy, pretend she hadn’t noticed anything out here, go back to listening to big band music in the living room and waiting for her date to show up – her whole date.

“You can’t send a guy flirty emails for two weeks and then close the door in his face just because he’s different,” he said. He slurred his words, and he sank as if deflated, hovering over the carpet. Against its Persian pattern, he was like a genie. She caught a glimpse of his bald spot – another thing the photo didn’t reveal. No wishes to be granted today, it seemed. Down at shin-level, he tilted his face to look up at her, eyes bloodshot.

“Are you… drunk?” She felt a flush of shame about their electronic repartee, the quick-fire IM chats about politics and old flames.

“I don’t know why I bother with dating,” he muttered.

It now seemed significant that he’d left blank all of the slots for physical characteristics on his Match.com profile. Francine had assumed that he was simply too busy (i.e. successful) at his job as a trial attorney to bother. Or at worst, that he was unusually short. Which would have been okay – Francine had dated a jockey once, when she lived back in her hometown of Smoky Ordinary, Virginia. But this...

“Listen, Frank – I’m sure you’re very nice …” she said, feeling a little like she herself were the one deflating toward the floor. Their names – Frank and Francine – wasn’t that supposed to be a sign? Wasn’t that destiny?

“Don’t say it – don’t say I’m a great guy. Just put your lips together and blow,” he said. “Like Lauren Bacall.” And then he sailed upwards, toward her. She flung her hand out for protection and managed to palm his chin.

She had ordered To Have and Have Not on Netflix when he’d said it was his favorite movie, excited to watch it again, but this wasn’t quite how the romance had unfolded between Bacall and Humphrey Bogart. Her arm shook, such was the force of Frank’s approach, beard stubble scratching against the tender center of her hand. He smelled like whiskey...

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Somebody for Everybody

Valdur – with his impossible wingspan – reached into the taxi, all the way across the passenger seat, and placed his hand on the Russian cabbie’s shoulder.

“Don’t!” I said. The traffic light had just turned green. “If he drives away, you’ll break your arm.” Behind my brother, I bent down and waved. Maybe I could defuse the situation with my vaguely Russian looks. I was boyish and gangly, not yet shaving daily like Valdur. But the cabbie only directed wide angry eyes at me, his jaw muscles tensing like he had marbles under his skin. The cars behind the taxi honked.

“Come on, man, give us a ride,” Valdur said, in his even, sunny tone. He always sounded the same, whether he was talking to our former social worker, Allison, or he was celebrating yet another of his personal bests for the Druid Park High School Terrapins basketball team. He had a voice like a man with a yacht, a man with no worries except for deciding how many hours to nap in the sun. “We have money,” Valdur told the cabbie, revealing the wad of bills in his other hand, money our mother had given us from the cash register of Karu International Food Mart, which she owned.

The cabbie responded the way all cabbies, store clerks, and restaurateurs responded to us, regardless of shoulder manhandling or Russian-ness – he pretended to be busy. He flipped on the “occupied” light and punched the gas, the engine roaring in a startling burst. And then he became a tiny toy cab on the horizon, or at least on the horizon of 22nd Street and the Baltimore sky, the shrinking sound of his music, the only evidence he’d been here.

Valdur, who had withdrawn his hand at the last second, lost his balance and now sat in the road, smiling. He shrugged. “I tried,” he said. I reached down to help him up, all seven feet of him. He was the only person I’d ever known who was taller than my own six feet and nine inches. And we were both still growing. I figured I might catch him because, even though our mother had started us in school the same year, he was ten and a half months older. Every night, I sneaked into the kitchen and polished off whatever milk was in the carton, and I ate my mother’s verivorst, her blood sausage. I thought tall thoughts...

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Half a Brother

For ten years, Karaoke Night at the El Corazon Disco Lounge had been Veronica’s special time with Joe. He came along for moral support, sitting in the front row, sipping Jack Daniels, beaming up at her, nodding his head to the music, snapping his fingers like he was in a jazz café instead of a square cinderblock honky tonk that attracted the down-and-out and the dangerous. He was the one who encouraged her. He was the one who pointed out that she was actually earning fans at Karaoke Night. And to tell the truth, he was the one who emboldened her to start a band, The Lonesome Rangers, which was now, confounding every expectation, becoming something big.

Tonight, she was without the band, with only the karaoke machine, here to sing “Angel from Montgomery” to Joe, something she had done every Tuesday since his death. Singing to him made her hover on the edge of herself, like nothing mattered except the words, forming them into the most perfect shape she could – so maybe Joe could hear them.

Bit Riley, the bartender, introduced her and the music started and people hushed each other, every seat taken at the sea of cabaret tables in the center of the room, many of the men straddling backwards chairs, baseball hats tipped up. As Bit left the stage and Veronica approached the microphone, she squeezed his thick wrist, always expecting somehow to feel the tattoos there, like Braille. “Thank you, Sugar,” she said to him, and he flashed her a rare smile...

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Karaoke Night at the El Corazon Disco Lounge

During intermission of the “Tosca” benefit performance, ex-President Clinton, without Hillary, stepped outside the door of his Kennedy Center box, wondering what it would be like if someone shot him, maybe in his good lung, or maybe, if the attacker had lousy aim, even in the groin. He waved and sidled over to the people that had gathered on the other side of the velvet rope; at his first step toward them, the people broke into applause. He shook hands and stood in one place for a good three minutes, something that always made the guys on his Secret Service detail twitchy. Surely a non-lethal gunshot wound – one intended to inflict pain instead of death, which a lot of shooters do, according to the guys – would distract him from the sick, heavy feeling in his chest, like his organs were being squeezed between two pieces of Amazonian timber.

This morning in New York, his doctor’s cold stethoscope, pressed hard against the site of last week’s surgery, had felt as weighty as a beam. “Well, I’ve taken a good long gander into the abyss this time, haven’t I?” he’d said. He’d shifted on the exam table, the paper sheet crinkling beneath him. “The bypass wasn’t enough? I had to drive by for another look? Well, that’s me all over, Doc,” he’d explained, laughing, which made his pectoral muscles ache as if he’d bench pressed too much.

“Please don’t speak until I’m done with this, Mr. President,” the doctor had said.

He nodded. “I always drive by for another look,” he’d finished, more quietly. He’d wondered if the sound of his heart racing was as loud to the doctor as it was in his own ears. He winked at his assistant, who was sitting in a green vinyl chair in the corner, talking on her cell phone to her assistant, confirming the arrangements for the flight to Washington and for her pre-session briefing with key Democratic House members.

She didn’t acknowledge the president’s wink; she said he only winked when he was nervous. She had no patience with nervousness. She covered the mouth piece of the phone and sighed; the president braced himself. But she only said, to the doctor, “Please feel free to tell him to stop being so ridiculous.” The sunlight, a little weak and watery, shone on the left side of her face. Her eyes were so blue.

The doctor stood erect, looked at the president’s assistant, who was talking on the phone again, and then he looked right at the president’s face; the stethoscope still dangled from his neck. The doctor’s dark hair was tousled and he was rugged and handsome except for his discoloured skin and teeth, which suggested a habit of cigarettes and whiskey, maybe bourbon, and there was something slightly unsettling, wolfish in his unremitting eye contact. The president found this look all too familiar...

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An Airtight Box

My father, appliance repairman Ed Hart, had been dating a reporter from the local news for over three months, ever since he and my mother separated. They met when Channel Four’s "Eye on You" News interviewed me at the Northern Virginia Sixth Grade Science Fair about my winning project, The Worm Farm – a kitchen composter made from a recycling bin filled with dirt, biodegradable household trash, and a hundred worms. She said she liked the way Dad sat off to the side of me holding his toolbox ("Just in case Old Bessie throws a rod – or a worm, as the case may be.") It showed, she'd said later, after the cameras were off, her hand on my shoulder, that he didn't mind letting someone else be in the spotlight. "You seem so comfortable with yourself. Most guys don't like being behind the scenes," she'd said. "What's your secret?" And then she gave him her phone number.

But now it was April and there was no time to lose. I wanted my dad to propose before summer, before too much time passed.

"Dad?" I was lying on the floor watching TV at his apartment in the new Willow Landing housing development, where I was visiting for the weekend. Over on the couch, he looked up from his sewing; he was mending a tablecloth my mother had let him take after that day in February when she told him he was too selfish to live with other people. She said he was an immature boy who got married before he knew his ass from a hole in the ground and that he'd probably be happy to have one empty affair after another for the rest of his life...

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Experiments

Set during the second world war, Isabel does not understand why everyone seems to be so uptight. The war to her is just an inconvenience. When Edward asks her to write to him at the front, all she can think of is to copy out some of Browning's letters. When Edward credits her with the maturity she does not possess, this changes everything.

We have always avoided conflict in our house, as if fearing a faintly raised voice or a critical comment could bring the bricks of our home crashing down to the ground, and our family in disarray. My mother reminds me that shouting is for fishwives, not ladies. Walking on eggshells and swallowing back anger is a way of life and it has saved us from unpleasantness. But what I am about to write, here in Daddy’s office, will cause our first family argument, of that there is no doubt. Stiff lips will weaken, and a pretence of peace will whittle away.

I blame the war. Not just because that started the chain of events leading to this letter, but because it allowed conflict to seep into everything. I was almost unaware of its impact at first, probably because I was dreadfully busy getting ready for the season. I’d been going absolutely frantic trying to get some frocks made for the Borrington’s weekend party and all I got was ‘Don’t you know there’s a war on.’

I shouldn’t have been surprised – I have always found sarcasm to be the prerogative of seamstresses and their ilk. And now, on top of everything, I’m constantly having to help Mummy who’s become frightfully distracted since Daddy went away. One day, I found her crying in the pantry. I couldn’t for the life of me think what was wrong...

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Vicar Up The Tree

Clare Shaw

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Set during the second world war, Isabel does not understand why everyone seems to be so uptight. The war to her is just an inconvenience. When Edward asks her to write to him at the front, all she can think of is to copy out some of Browning's letters. When Edward credits her with the maturity she does not possess, this changes everything.

A rebound relationship fills with complications that are going to hurt.

I met him at the Art Gallery. That gave me the most options. Thing is, if he stood me up in an Art gallery no-one would know. I would look like someone browsing and thinking. I was browsing and thinking right up to the moment he was due.

It was a hot day, over thirty degrees, which is the signal for people to strip or wear gaudy, flesh revealing clothes. I was in Finnish Glass, people watching, casting an eye over scorched flesh, when he approached.

“Nettie?”

It was disappointment at first sight but I was drifting and didn’t bother to say. We shuffled into Urban Landscapes, his hands, stuffed into his pockets let everyone know this wasn’t really his scene. I peered up close to Canal 1991. Oil on canvass by Jock McFadyen (b.1950) and found it easy to understand. I was at the ‘welcome’ door for once and tried to tell him but he didn’t get it and the buzz went flat. We moved along to the gallery cafe and sat drinking milky coffee from 1950’s retro cups.

We dated a few more times. He liked to take photographs of graffiti on buildings. Sometimes we ate fiery curries in tiny, brightly lit cafes. Not long after he moved in. Like I said, I was drifting. No priorities or pressing matters to ward him off with. Besides, I fancied a bit of company on the journey downstream...

White Goods

Young people who find solace in a vintage shop in a town that seems to be developing around them without including them.

When Doris died in the flat above her shop, camel coated property developers came and clucked around the pavement, measuring windows and sniffing the air. Her neon sign, Doris’s Knits, hinted at goods once sold beyond the mail cluttered door by the mythical fashionista. Her era, folded into time, was as irretrievable as Greek Mythology and she too in recent years was only known only by occasional sightings of a time ravaged arm retrieving mannequins from her window.

No new tenants appeared in spite of the vast to let sign at the upper windows. Things stayed still, waiting for Inga and Salvatore to trumpet by, many Sundays later, in a red Austin Maxi.

When they moved in, the eyes of the town feasted on the contents of their removal van. Passers-by surveyed Salvatore, flashing his good looks and nimble handling of heavy of furniture. They blinked wondrously at Inga’s snowflake grace...

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A rebound relationship fills with complications that are going to hurt.

Rockabilly Quiff