Cheryl picks me up at the corner of Queen and Duke on Saturdays at three. It just makes sense, she said not long after we met. I’m going right by there anyway. It was my bus stop to Freeport, only now I lean out of the Plexiglas shelter and give a little wave, so the bus doesn’t stop. Today he pulls in to drop someone off. My face is red. It’s stupid how ashamed I feel about that dismissive wave.
All Stories
The Caste of the Executioner by Samuel Pothecary
I
It was unseasonably damp in The Skirrid Inn on the night of 17th June, 1724. A tremendous storm had struck during the day, clearing the early summer humidity and setting the scene for a dramatic couple of days in the small town of Knaresborough.
Ooame by J C Weir
It was almost dark. “Ooame desu ne,” said Yumiko Sakuragawa barely audible, as she gently placed the final two bowls amongst the myriad of others on the small table, and took her place on the tatami mat floor opposite her husband. He sat with his gaze fixed through the open shoji doors, beyond the polished pine veranda, out across the patchwork of rice fields, colourless now in fading light and heavy rain. Two weeks ago he would have said, “It will be a good crop.” The temperature and the humidity were favourable. But he had become uneasy. It was near the end of tsuyu, the rainy season, but the old man in his ninety one years, had never lived through a downpour of unceasing weight. Such rain is not sympathetic to rice saplings. Since morning stories he had heard when he was young, that the old people told, of a deluge that washed away the rice and the villages, had come to him. He nodded pensively. “So desu ne. Ooame desu.” Yes. Heavy rain.
Flesh of An Unwanted Fish by Tom Sheehan
Armand Tollbar remembered everything Clara said, on and off the pillow, in the bedroom and out of it. These days that had become a tough assignment for him, for while the memories were rich and repetitive, he now knew, deep down in his body, without a paucity of doubt, that the river was getting polluted. For the two of them there had always been a minor division: she loved the house, he loved the river.
The Birds by Adam Kluger
Clint Cherbouger was not an ornithologist. He liked birds for the most part. Mostly ducks. Pigeons were kind of gross and there were too many of them.
Literally Reruns – Where Cherubs Sleep by D M Gillis
We thought we had mice in the catacombs of LS Towers but no – no need for the cheese and cats – it was Leila on her quest for gems. Here is another one that she has rootled out: Continue reading
Week 236 – A Gang You Don’t Want To Be A Leader Of, A Stephen Lynch Song And Non-Specific Perving.
Well here we are at Week 236.
This is one of my favourite weeks as it is ‘Bonnie Baby’ competition week in my local press. Please don’t think that I’ve been influenced by the duet of Gadd and Harris’s ‘Two Little Boys I Love You Love’.
I like to study all those angelic faces and try to work out which ones will become serial killers and which ones will leave their elderly parents in a puddle of urine?
