Nathan stood outside next to the elevator. We see each other sometimes across the floor while he smokes a rolled-up cigarette and sometimes drinks and I take out the leftovers.
‘Three weeks without a kiss,’ he said to me the last time I stood there last summer with my black bags, ‘but at least I don’t stink like you do right now’ and through the smoke he’d laugh, coughing roughly in the yellow glow.
He was dead before his eyes closed. That they closed was a blessing, the whole thing was so devastatingly awful that to have him slumped in the seat with staring eyes would simply have added to the nightmare.
Freddie knew there were some people you could disrespect and others you had to treat with reverence. He was in a restaurant looking at a man sat at the bar. He knew instinctively that this was a man who was not to be fucked with.
He looked back down at his bowl of spaghetti and ordered his wife to do the same. She did but every once in a while peeked up at the man from the corner of her eye.
She had a bad feeling about him.
Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. I’m a string tied too tight on a harp close to breaking; the tired glow left after a flame; the last paint on the brush colouring the wall of my life and I look to you. Against you I’ve sinned and done what pains your eyes. Lord, turn your face away from my sins but don’t deny me your face or take away the Holy Spirit. Questions and lack of answers have plagued me in a lifetime lived in your honour. However, a lifelong devotion is outweighed by a single misstep. The path to salvation is through you and your son. A kind eye towards friends and foes are not the path; only the submission to your glory is. Continue reading “Pater Noster by Tobias Haglund”
I would like to get a few things off my chest. I have been asked so many times why I do this. Most of the twats have some knowledge and will always use the healing argument. Well, I am about to explain. No-one else, only me. If you want to know about anyone else, ask them. I would say that your training days have put you close but not quite right. I hurt myself to experience controlled pain. Have you ever hit a wall after you have stubbed your toe? It is something like that. I can’t suffer the pain that is in my head but I can handle the cuts and blood from my arm. Maybe you are right, it does give me release from the problem for a few minutes or hours depending on how ragged the cut is. But please don’t insult me by saying if I watch the wound heal, I am envisaging myself healing, that is a pile of crap. My pain doesn’t go! So no amount of crusty scabs are going to make me feel any better.
Continue reading “Suicide – My Note, My Plan by Hugh Cron Adult Content”
I withhold tears as I peer into the furious blue eyes of my runaway lover. His rugged, masculine body is chained to the behemothian memorial stone of a literary legend, yet his murderous vows continue to escape effortlessly. I murmur wryly as I brush my fingers across his exposed nipples and entertain an intense bombardment of blissful necrophilia fantasies.
“What a waste all of this is… I am breaking off another physical relationship and degrading a historical artifact simultaneously. Where did we go wrong, Ed? Why are you acting like such a monumental tosser!?”
Continue reading “The Whereabouts of Mrs Trisha by W D Frank – Adult Content”
Lissa felt old. Her bones were tired and her soul weary. Mama and Baba had been long gone and she had spent countless years alone in the dark, cramped place where they had all existed.
The three brief occasions when she had gone “up top” were her dearest memories. In the deep of the night, when the gangs roamed outside the draughty windows and the spotlights from the Enforcer’s wagons slid across the walls, scaring the cockroaches and scorpions, she would close her lids and take her thoughts to the sun-kissed meadow and the startling blue of the sky.
“Lissa, wake up.”
The child opened her eyes, night goggles hid her father’s eyes, mirrored ovals glowed on his face. “Come on my love, get up”
“Baba, the siren didn’t sound, we are early.”
“Yes, but it’s time.”
“Michael, she’s frightened, don’t alarm her.”
“Hush woman.” The tall figure turned to his wife, he reached out, the gesture softening the impact of his words. “Are you ready?”
“I am.”
“Bring the clothes for Lissa, don’t forget the gloves and the headset.”
The nags were against me. Six races. Six bets. All blown out before the finishing line. I’m going to change bars, I told myself, this place is bad fucking luck for me. Superstition and gambling become more impassioned bed fellows the worse your luck is – and mine, mine hadn’t seen anything to show for it in months.
I sat at the bar in the Front Page cursing my luck, cursing the Racing Post, cursing the barman who had talked through the back page of form listings and most probably caused me to rush to a decision when time and a clear head was required. As the stranger pulled up a seat beside me I cursed him too. Wednesday afternoon, quite possibly the quietest time in a bar’s week and in a room full of empty, cold seats this prick parks up alongside me.
Continue reading “The Front Page by David Louden – Adult Content”
Michael peeled an orange for me. Late summer or more properly early autumn and we had rented a villa in Greece, seven of us all from the same year at uni. A research trip, nominally, but the sunshine and the pool and the late warmth were a bonus. Paul didn’t come, he had been seeing practice all summer with a large animal vet near home which resulted in tickets for the races, tickets hard to come by and therefore precious that he didn’t want to waste.
Michael and James arrived later, driving a silly little hired car. They brought with them laughter and cheap wine.
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