Underwater light flickers and dapples the sea floor, glowing through seaweed drifting in the current. Miles of sand undulate into shadow. The goggles bite hard into Colin’s cheekbones and behind his ears, but they do not leak. Colin swims deeper, releasing bubbles as he descends.
His chest tightens but the sand is close now. He stretches his fingers out.
Continue reading “Hold Your Breath by Sarah Macallister”
Q never swerved to avoid a beast on the road – dead or alive. He would drive through it with an iron fist, as if fur and soft tissue were nothing. A mental illustration of focus, a kind of road karate like the art of board breaking. Always direct your power beyond the wood stack. A fox, a kangaroo – he had a bull bar and was not squeamish about death – an emu once near Broken Hill, had snapped a rabbit’s neck.
Continue reading “Swerve by Tamara Barrett”
When my head hurts, the shiny brass kettledrums play late into the night.
At first, I tried not sleeping. One day without sleep left me feeling a little unsteady; after two days I was getting stupid. By the third day it got bad—“all of the above” as they say on multiple-choice tests with little black dots that have to stay in the circles and hurt my eyes—plus, I felt like my head was filled with Rice Krispies. After that it just felt like my brain was deep-fried.
Continue reading “Seizure Fugue by Max Klement”
Three mummers scurried down Halstead Lane. They huddled together, a mass of grey and brown rags, buckets hanging off their elbows and pockets bulging with brushes and cloths. Somewhere in the folds of their shapeless rags, each one had a tin cup half-filled with their earnings of the night. They moved with little stubborn stomps, their buckets and coins clinking with every step, determined to keep their footing on the ice-slicked pavement.
I’ve decided to do a few of these. Now if you think they will be deep and meaningful with an in-depth synopsis you are reading the wrong review.
I will try to take these another way – I want to go off the cuff, not look back at plot and technique but simply to tell you why these have stuck with me. I will give you as much info as I can about the book, but it will be at the best, a bit sketchy. Fuck, a few of these I’ve read over twenty years back! That’s the point!!
…It is why they have stuck with me that I want to explore. And if they tweak your interest – So be it.
Continue reading “Auld Author – Meat by Joseph D’Lacey – by Hugh”
The colony looked like it would sink into the bog of permafrost underneath it but it never did. It towered over a carpet of arctic lichens and scrubland like an apparition of a place imprinted on time and existence, the view around it never changed. The steel fence coiled around the brick edifice like a drunken domino line of panels knocked and dented askew and topped with a rattle of barbed wire. And the place spoke none of its inhumane ordeals.
Continue reading “This Way to the Warden’s Office by A.V. Pankov”
Death loved Life, and she loved him, too.
Life was everything and nothing. Her skin, translucent and radiant, was the sun, and her shining eyes the millions of stars. Her small mouth was the clouds and her hair was the singing forests. Life sang, passionate and golden, and green was brought to the world. Life wept, and water nourished the land. Life slumbered, and there were nights of twilight.
Continue reading “To Wilt by Djordje Negovanovic”
Frequent visitors will remember Freshta our brave author from Afghanistan. We are pleased to present another piece from her series ‘Black Oranges‘
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I was more gloomy than ever. As my steps drew closer to the house, the warmth slapped on my face, a slap exactly like the one of the man whose beard is black and white, like our TV and like my shoes and like me and my black and white life. At the same time that his fingers imprinted, my broken pride mixed with happiness and shame as a five-finger image on my cheek, I was a light year away from happiness. I absorbed the grief, or no, the grief was absorbing me. What does it matter, whether I absorb it or it absorbs me, I was the loser and that’s it. Grief followed me all over Mustofiat to Sufi Abad, as if I had killed its lover, or was in debt to it. It was following me, I could feel it struggling until suddenly, with its own permission and not mine, grief left my eyes, turned on my cheeks, rolled itself over my cheeks, lower and lower, so my mouth became salty and life became colorless as death. Through the capillaries to my heart it spread like a corona deep into my being. Grief made me cough so much that tears reached my nose and started pouring out my eyes like Niagara Falls. I didn’t want grief to be spectacular, and for this I raised my head.
Continue reading “Why by Freshta Azimi Ayeh”
It came to us in our dreams.
That’s how it passed, jumping from person to person, dream by dream. Some were lucky and woke with just a mild fever, but others weren’t so fortunate. They were never the same again following that dream, and sadly, some never woke at all.
Continue reading “The Dog in Our Dream by Chris Farrington”
