I think about amputation, a lot. Not the sort carried out by a scalpel but by the jagged blade of fate, leaving me immobilised, an inmate in my own home and haunted by a phantom limb I didn’t know I had. And so here I am, full of emptiness, tired by inactivity and blinded by a porthole to another self. A self that isn’t me.
Continue reading “Breathe by Leon Coleman”
She shrieks, and the noise echoes through the vast space and up towards the high, glass roof. She is half running, half tottering through Glasgow Central Station wearing a pair of siren blue stilettos. They clatter. A huddle of lads, all pastel shirted up for a night in the town, look over and stare. She throws her arms around me as if it’s a feckin lover’s reunion. ‘Bernadette. Oh My God,’ she squeals. ‘You haven’t changed a bit.’
Continue reading “One Treacherous Evening by Claire Deans”
The turbulence on the plane makes my skin creep. I hate airplanes, motion that I can’t control. Two lanes down I see the back of a punk’s rainbow colored mohawk. What makes someone decide to get a haircut like that? The air hostess is giving him some advice about transferring at the airport. He’s transferring, he wouldn’t be allowed in Doha looking like that.
Continue reading “Creep by Boshra Rasti-Ghalati”
With time and reflection comes meaning, or so I’ve heard my therapist say many times. But what she doesn’t understand, even with all her schooling, is that despite all, a person can never go back in time to seize an opportunity, to rectify a wrong. At least within the luxury of these solid walls, and as is usual at this time of the night, when all is quiet, and neither breath nor movement intrudes, I can remember the facts as they suit me.
Continue reading “The Incident with the Knife by Monika R Martyn”
Marin walks between the tanks, soft blue light pooling at her feet. Schools of fish flit back and forth to some unspoken rhythm. It’s early evening on a Wednesday, after the post-lunch rush. The aquarium is a welcome escape from the jostling and rudeness and ghastly chaos outside. Most families are probably having tea now or taking kids to clubs, or whatever it is families do.
Continue reading “Last Night at the Aquarium by Leila Martin”
My nails are dirty. Always have been.
A constant reminder to Irma that I wasn’t good enough for her.
Continue reading “Strangerman by Arthur Davis”
Hoors!
Dirty fucking hoors!!
Hoor-maisters…Dirty fucking hoor-maisters.
Clatty bastards the lot of them.
Continue reading “Do The Right Thing by Hugh Cron – Warning – Strong Adult Content”
He tossed a noose of thin wire over the head of the jailer when the jailer leaned too close to the bars of the cell. Moments earlier he’d unwound the wire from the heel of his boot, pulled it taught at the jailer’s throat, demanded the key to the cell, got it, unlocked the door and brought the jailer into the cell. Pulling the wire tighter until the jailer was dead, he walked off into the night taking his own weapons with him.
Continue reading “Scrawleg and the Turban Man by Tom Sheehan”
He couldn’t remember much, not even his own name, but what he could recall from the previous evenings jaunt with the ever elusive they, the them that had occupied his thoughts for as long as he could remember, came in silent camera flashes that appeared somewhere behind his eyes; the men in the masks and all the pretty butterflies floating in silent dances that tickled his face and arms.
Continue reading “The Truth Will Set You Free by Alex Sinclair”
Sir Walter Alistair Remington had a fantasy. It was no small thing; he would have to wait until parliament’s summer recess to fulfil it. In the meantime, he’d try to satiate himself with his usual habit.
Continue reading “Right Honourable Friends by Thomas Lawrance”
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