Rust-orange scales litter the ground beneath the pine – sign of the squirrel’s search for the sweet seeds found tucked beneath the cone’s thorny lobes. The scales fall like heavy snowflakes, twirling and seesawing to the forest floor. As I raise my eyes to the bushy-tail sitting astride a pine limb, I’m thankful he’s ignorant of my presence and his certain death. He’ll feel no pain, for I don’t miss.
Not anymore. Continue reading “The Old Man by Scott Sharpe”
I was sat at a table in a service station café off the M20, on route to Dover, waiting for Angelika to return with the coffee. The seat beneath me was small, with a round foam cushion and flat metal back. Outside, through the window that stretched the length of the cafe, I could see our campervan parked in the rain. In the dim morning light it appeared grey. We’d been on the road since six, as the sun bled into the sky, and had made good time. We were twenty miles from Dover when the temperature gage hit the red and the warning light came on. Continue reading “Dover by Michael W Smith”
There are some lives that don’t begin in earnest until they are almost over. Time is almost used up before the moment is reached, the decision taken that will give life some meaning. Until that moment, only holiday snaps show that time has moved at all. Children grow up, then move away and there are no more holidays, no more snaps. Time passes unnoticed. Continue reading “Friday by Jane Dougherty”
Final credits. Show’s all but over. One last tune from Ed’s iPod and the crematorium doors widen. I’m going where the sun keeps shining, through the pouring rain. Randall lurches outside, wobbles in a thank-god patch of sunshine. Going where the weather suits my clothes. The family shuffle themselves into a line-up: the deceased’s mother reaching just the shoulder of the deceased’s wife. Ed’s brother next? Very tall and looks a little like him. Ed’s children, the daughter only up to her uncle’s waist. A face she loves interrupts the protocol and the little girl’s smile slashes the dark fabric of today. Ed’s son, adolescent and alone at the end, arms meshed over the outrage in his gut. Here now we see the stiff bar chart of the family, offering some kind of analysis. Continue reading “Post by Jenny Morton Potts”
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