Everyone knew Gadu told lies. But no matter. He was an artist, and while nobody believed he’d run a cocaine factory in the Bolivian rain forest whilst living with an uncontacted tribe or been chief stone mason during the reconstruction of Mostar’s Stari Most, his stories were hilarious.
Continue reading “The Lives of Gadu Tom Phillips”
“What’s it like, being imaginary?” asked Lisa Hannigan.
She sat cross-legged on the edge of her bed, gazing down at her imaginary friends, Sally and Qney, who mirrored her posture on the carpet below, knees tucked neatly beneath their chins.
Continue reading “Imaginary Friends by Gareth Vieira”
I once shared a cell with a con from Detroit named Marty Ballantine. He had a blazing shock of red hair and was tall and looked more like an ex-basketball player than the head of accounting until his firm realized he was skimming. He had a young girlfriend on the side, an expensive marriage and mortgage, and combined with greed, he got caught. Big surprise. I couldn’t really picture him in a blue suit and red tie, slaving away at debits and credits. But his orange jumpsuit went well with his red hair.
Continue reading “Killing Time by Michael Loyd Gray”
As a schoolboy, Sam Groat had played in the same boys teams as a previous captain of West Bromwich Albion; his teammates from back then had all agreed that Sam had been the better footballer. His mother was an anarchist refugee from the Spanish Civil War. His father was killed in his car by a drunken plastic surgeon attempting an emergency plane landing on the B5032 outside Kirk Ireton.
Continue reading ” The Questing Knight by Michael Bloor”
It was in the eighth year of her life that Becky truly became obsessed with The Tall Man. His coming, his arrival, was all she had to fear in the world. He could be upon her at any moment. Becky turned her mind away and sat Indian-style on the floor, playing with her dolls. She wondered if she would ever feel safe.
In my quest to find something interesting to say in Hugh’s absence this week I did a quick Google search for the significance of the number 179.
As you can imagine the results were thrilling.
I can confirm 179 is a prime number – an Eisenstein Prime no less as it is indivisible even by complex Gaussian integers, and Chen Prime because it is 2 less than the next prime number.
Continue reading “Week 179 – Borders, gateways and tales to tell our children”
Right now. Right at this very moment. The moment we are sharing through the medium of a page and the words it contains a man is washing blood from a nine inch blade. His hands are shaking and not just from the chill of the brown water that alternately dribbles then vomits from a rusting tap.
The bathroom is stark. You know the type. Single, naked bulb throwing diseased shards of light into your brain, alive with a frequency on the ragged edge of your hearing. The floor tiles might be white under the patina of despair, shit and god knows what else. The ones on the walls are much the same but with more graffiti to hide their shame. The mirror above the sink keeps showing the same re-run of a man washing a knife. He looks familiar but he’s changed. Hollowed out. He has no idea why he is cleaning the knife but he doesn’t stop.
literally stories 