I see the guitar case first, full more of hope than of the hard currency of shining coins. The kid sits on the pavement, half-hidden in the shadow of a low granite wall. He’s doing a pretty fair rendition of Hey Joe, working a beat-up acoustic guitar. The thing needs new strings, but he’s getting it done. That strange magic, the universal language of rock lyrics, washes away the kid’s Austrian accent. The chords walk down the neck, Joe kills his woman, the crowd ignores the kid.
Steam played across the water’s surface in lazy swirls, nudged by the breeze and stretching away like cigarette smoke. Behind the hedge, lips pressed to her kneecap’s polished, taut surface, she could taste salt on her skin and, somehow, it mingled with the vision of dragon’s breath steam above luminous water to punch a sudden ache in her throat. Smelling chlorine, she longed for the sea, for sand that grew cool as she dug her feet deeper, and her father’s hand on her bony, eight-year-old spine, walking her towards a quiet tideline.
The grass was wet round the back of the job centre; ten am here was a damp ass and frozen toes. Stella pulled a 70cl bottle of Gordon’s Sloe Gin that she didn’t pay for out of her bag, slotted it between her thighs, and rolled a cigarette she didn’t plan to smoke.
Part I
November 29, 2018, 10:31:03 a.m.
Interview room at the Sports League of America (SLA) headquarters in Dallas, Texas. The room has video and audio recording equipment, a conference table seating twenty, water in plastic bottles on ice with glasses and napkins. In attendance is a court reporter, a camera operator, Elsa Dayton, Chief Investigator for the SLA; John Henry Brown (JHB), running back for the Kansas Kings; Abigail Thornton, attorney for JHB, Tucker Borden agent for JHB
Lawrence Seymour, a chronic asthmatic, died on the floor of his parents’ bathroom on the day of the party celebrating their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary.
A bedraggled and harassed Leila Allison threw this message as she galloped passed on a wild looking steed. She had scooped up Mourning Becomes Her by Frederick K Foote and this is what she said:
Continue reading “Literary Reruns – Mourning Becomes Her by Frederick K Foote”
Here we are at Week 206!
Like ‘Gremlins – The Next Batch’ – We’re back.
As in ‘Poltergeist’ – We’re here
And like ‘The Fly’ – If you send us Romance, I’ll ‘Be afraid, very afraid.’
I’ve been watching a few films lately, just to get the days in.
It was good to see the old site creak back into life on Monday.
Continue reading “Week 206 – Returning, Shitty Tinsel And A Lactating Dilema”
He walked, alone. The city opened to him.
Continue reading “In the Dying Light by Alexander James Neuse”
Tom was stranded by the roadside thirty miles north of Ti Tree. His supplies, which had been meager to begin with, had diminished to a few tins of bully beef and half a canteen of water. He had felt no misgivings a week ago when his ride, a Land Rover from a local cattle station, melted into the desert, but he knew he would soon have to decide whether to continue on to Darwin, still three hundred miles north, or return to Ti Tree for as long as it would take him to replenish his supplies and then hitch another ride north. The thought gave him the first sense of anticipation he had felt in days, a small thrill of novelty that persisted even though he knew the option was false. It had been two days since he had seen a vehicle traveling in either direction.
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