Do you remember the night you went out, and all the cats were there? I can remember everything you told me, and you know that’s not how I usually am. You came in and sat right where you are now, and I was up on the chair. You waited till the programme finished, then you asked if you could turn it off. There was still a bit of cold in the air from you coming in.
Continue reading “The Cats’ Game by Ross Hetherington”
Take this down, Brother Slycup.
Beggars can be choosers. The procedure is very simple. Apply to the skin a generous layer of fatty soap, sprinkle with vinegar, wait a minute or two, and, tantara: there it is – as any mirror to hand will confirm: your face is a veritable mass of yellow pustules. Then all you need do is develop a graveyard wheeze, adopt a drool, take up trembling, swivel the ol’ eye and speak a little bedlamese. Trust me, hearts will move, stones’ll weep.
Continue reading “Sunday Whatever – No Mean Mercy by Geraint Jonathan”
I was pleased the butcher knew my face.
For months I’ve been coming here, wanting him to look at me, to really look at me, watching the sinews in his forearm tighten with each effortless chop of the cleaver as it neatly parts a chicken’s neck from its body, or a pink cutlet from half a ribcage. He carries himself with such grace, his every move unhurried, as if the world outside, with its fuss and hurly burly, is of no concern to a man who functions by his own imperatives, and in his own time.
Continue reading “Smile if you’re not wearing knickers by Peter Arscott”
Tonight Jack would talk to the ghost. He took to the street. The warm wind is blowing on his face. Splash—pound—Nikes scrape the edge of a curb. Whoa that was close. He lets his mind wander down into his feet. His mind is splash-pound.
Continue reading “Are You Going to Kalamazoo? By Christopher Ananias “
Stuart died in prison.
That is wrong,
Stuart was killed in prison. He was stabbed with a blade between his ribs.
None of these sharpened toothbrushes or pieces of wood or shards of glass, an actual knife. The investigation is ongoing. Some poor dweeb will probably lose their pension over that.
Did Stuart deserve to be murdered? Opinions vary. Some would say he was a bad guy, others would say he did what he did to survive. I suppose it depends on their involvement with him.
Continue reading “Stuart by Hugh Cron – Adult Content.”
Though the supermarket stayed open twenty-four hours a day, the photo counter closed at ten. Most people, Kroger believed, did not need rolls of film urgently developed in the middle of the night.
Continue reading “A Candid Exchange by Brian Hawkins”
Every night the pictures on his lampshade came to life. Rodeo cowboys on galloping stallions threw ropes at the moon.
The boy’s sister once called him “Nutsy-Crackers” because of the strange things he was always seeing. Later she shortened it to just Crackers.
In the middle of the night, he lifted the window (quiet as a thief) climbed out and lowered himself to the ground, praying that the weight of all the coins in his pocket wouldn’t rip through the material. The rest of the house slept.
Continue reading “The Old Fisherman by Joe Ducato”
The Montagues’ and Capulets’ disapproval of an ill-fated union was mirrored by the opprobrium this couple aroused in their Australian families. She was practical and ambitious while he gave imagination a free pass, a kind of poor man’s negative capability. What he wanted to do and what others wanted him to do, were not the same. Feeling hounded, they found work together in the U.S. Always happiest when fleeing responsibility, the sheer glorious relief, he hadn’t faced this fact yet. Without telling any relatives, they left their troubles all behind, or so they thought. When the U.S. didn’t work out, visas cancelled, they crossed the Atlantic.
Continue reading “Death in Damp Bracken by Ian C Smith”
The art of projection, in this instance, involves an ingenious contraption that allows me to float above ground while speaking grave truths to those I’ve been hired to frighten. Or to comfort. Or to confuse, as the case may be. Sometimes silence is all that’s required, but silence of a special kind, needless to say, the kind they call ‘loaded’, the kind that towers, or otherwise makes a portentous impression. Ghost is what I do. It’s a living, if you’ll pardon the expression; and a good one too, in that those who require my services, being usually very rich, pay very well. I’m familiar with the interiors of castles, manor-houses, hunting lodges, theatres, the odd inn. I’m given the requirements, told what manner of ghost it is needs to haunt the place, and adapt accordingly. Doubtless, to your bodily eyes, at this moment, I appear little more than a tallish man, bearded, bald and middle-aged, but trust me, when I’m clad in dusty servant’s garb or bedecked in faded finery, my face moon-pale, I’m altogether more imposing, unsettling – especially if observed from a short distance. Should a haunting entail my having to speak, I learn the words given me, no matter the language, and intone or croak or mutter or bellow in whatever accent is most appropriate. I’ve made cryptic pronouncements in Old French, I’ve made cryptic pronouncements in Latin; I’ve cursed in Swedish, foretold ill fortune in Gaelic. I’ve been a judge who was hanged for murder, I’ve been a minstrel who drowned in a moat; I’ve even been a dead gravedigger, one said to haunt a particular cemetery adjacent to a certain cathedral. It wouldn’t do to be too specific. As I say, ghost is what I do. But never, never have I knowingly been party to any kind of plot or conspiracy or such like. My involvement in matters was always necessarily limited to brief appearances, a few words here, a protracted silence there. I was not privy to the wider machinations of those who engaged my services.
Continue reading “Apparitionist by Geraint Jonathan”
I don’t know why she says what she says but I know she’s crazy and that’s why she keeps a locked chain across the refrigerator door. I pick the lock, same trick every morning. Grab butter. Eggs. Spinach. Tomatoes. Whip up the ingredients. Fry the oozing mess in a pan. Slap the omelet on a plastic plate. The kind of dish that won’t shatter when Mother slams it against the kitchen floor, when her blurred eyes widen at the biting rats that make her panic and scream and clamp down tighter to save the pieces of her scattered life.
Continue reading “Once Bitten by Renee Coloman”
literally stories 