You’ll have to choose.
“Who said that?”
You did.
“No I didn’t. Who is taking the piss?”
…Mirror, mirror on the wall…We all know the rest. You said that. Do you deny it?
“No. I was only mucking about. For fuck sake I was only having a shave.”
You should never muck about with your soul. You are in trouble now! You’ll have to choose. One of three. If you hurry you will be able to stay but if you don’t…Well…
Alfie.
Jean walked over to the carry-cot.
“Ugly wee bastard, isn’t it?”
Graham began to laugh, “That’s whit you get when you shouldn’t have weans.”
She stared into the cot, the kid was sleeping.
“Do you mean about Kylie being a lesbo?”
“Aye. Why did she get herself pregnant, I take it wis fur the money?”
Jean pulled the shawl over the kid.
“Naw! Did she no tell ye?”
Continue reading “Alfie by Hugh Cron – Adult Content. This may be unsettling for some readers.”
Jenny looked down at Rob’s sleeping face, his open mouth dribbling peaceably onto the pillow that supported his head. She was dressed, breakfasted and ready to go. She was ambivalent in the mornings. Her husband could not win, although he did not know it. She felt resentment if Rob didn’t get up to mark her departure to the office. She needed him to fuss over her a little, and pay attention to her comfort: a reward for her stalwart commitment to the daily grind of work? On the other hand she valued quiet and solitary mornings when he overslept, listening out for signs that he was stirring and willing him not to. She planted a light kiss on his forehead and tip-toed out of the bedroom.
“We’re all going to Disneyland in the summer! That is six months from now! So I want you to mark each day off so we know how close it’s getting.”
The three children screamed with delight. They ran up to their bedrooms to look out some calendars and to chat and get excited as little children do.
She sat. Never said a word. Asking about how they were going to afford this was a bad idea.
He smiled at her.
“Well, you can tell everyone what I am doing for the kids. That’ll shut your mother up.”
She nodded, trying to hide the swallow that relieved the lump of dread in her throat.
***
Literally Stories began and ended the week with concise short stories, on the theme of loss. There wasn’t a great deal of cheer on offer in between either and yet we trust all the stories – as they say –struck a chord.
Resonated.
We have five more lined up for next week but first here is what you had to say about this week’s specially selected tales.
“Please. Can you stay just a little longer?”
Ella holds my palm to her cheek and smiles. Her radiance pushes through the withered dilution of her past glory and warms me as her skin no longer can.
“I’m lost without you.”
“Hush.” She lays light against me.
“I’m sorry. You should have had so much more. So much more than I…”
Ella raises her head and grips my hand in hers. “You were always enough for me Charlie. Always. Don’t ever think that.” She is crying now. “Promise me.”
Margaret Dawson had sold linens at Macy’s for fifteen years, hating every day of it, every customer she served, and every other sales clerk, when she met her husband, Donald, a kind-hearted Manhattan policeman who patrolled West Harlem.
Marriage did not change her discontent and the birth of a premature and severely disabled baby named Bertie brought her to a simmering rage.
Matty wasn’t a very good friend. We’d sit up late and watch these old movies in black and white and sometimes all-new colour and even though I sat right in front of him, he’d throw popcorn and pillows at my head and the feathers would fly everywhere. My mother couldn’t deal with the mess and I always took the blame for him.
When she left home Briony hadn’t meant to leave so – well, quite so permanently. She went to the shop to buy a cabbage. A medium sized drumhead was what she had in mind, although in fairness there was an option for cauliflower. Dinner was beef, already in the cooker, rich and redolent, herby and delicious. Beef, Beef in beer for Dick and to go with it mashed potatoes and cabbage. His favourite.
Continue reading “Just Going for a Cabbage by Diane M Dickson”
Life: what is it all about?
I’d left for the party minimally drunk and maximally desolate. Eva and I had argued earlier. “Laurie,” she’d said truculently, “why don’t you want to go? Who stays in on New Year’s Eve? Jenny and Pete are our oldest friends. But maybe you have your own reasons?”
literally stories 