Ellie works in a mortuary and lives on the premises. And then she falls in love with someone her employers consider totally unsuitable.

A futuristic tale inspired by the story of Pygmalion.

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!

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.

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...

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.

A little girl's First Communion day - when temptation arrives in the form of a bag of sweets