I worked for Hart Zehen when I was sixteen, rising at four in the morning to bake bread. It was a great paycheck but my social life, such as it was, suffered. On the positive side, my muscles grew and I learned more from Hart than I might have expected.
Continue reading “Breezy and the Six-Pack Sneaker by Mitchell Toews”
A few things have really annoyed me this week and hence this inspiration. I decided to write on what annoys me most. I have a list, but will go for the doozy annoyance. I hate everything from Romance Novels to Polo-necks. I hate Gok Wan, cockatiels, most TV, Bieber, Sainsburys, South Ayrshire Council, Pizza, itchy trousers, mobiles, enthusiasm within the workplace, management, ratatouille, folks that read papers that they haven’t bought, politicians, the monarchy and sheep…To name but a few. But my biggest bug bear is adverts.
“Whatcha reading?”
“Moby Dick”
“Yeah, I like that one… read his others?”
My expectations and excitement were dampened by the cold coffee and replaced by a creeping realisation of an inevitable disappointment. I kept glancing around as people rushed along the pavement, but it was late – she wasn’t coming. We agreed to meet at the Café at half past six and in my jacket pocket I had an envelope with five hundred Euros in fifties, which I promised for the final payment for her painting. A piece of art that I found hypnotic, it was a scene depicting a battle of female sexuality and a vision of erotic conjecture. I couldn’t help myself, I had to have it. Last night, I paid her a deposit of three hundred Euros.
The pain jerks me up from the dark, spills bright red across my memory, shakes me in time to the artillery shells exploding around us.
##
Voices, mumbling medical jargon, the hum, and clicking of some electronics, antiseptic smell. Bright, bright too bright, I close my eyes tight.
##
My arm. They amputated my left arm below the elbow. Shit. I reach across my body and touch my new left forearm and hand. A prosthetic, but it feels, feels flesh like, like dead meat.
He wakes with a start. The mug is there as always but the message this morning reads like some terrible urban legend.
Your wife is dead it says.
Squirrel was a little under average tall and railly. Mostly crooked teeth. Reddish hair, oily. Everbody started calling him Squirrel back in high school. He didn’t mind so much. Better’n Twerp from earlier on. One night Squirrel goes to the Tap Bar, and Big Ed’s wife, Ellie Lynn, is there without Big Ed. Ellie Lynn looks like she’s had a few so Squirrel goes an sits by her. Ellie Lynn seems real happy for Squirrel to buy her a few, and he has a few himself. Well, to cut to it, Squirrel and Ellie Lynn end up closin the place and goin to his truck to get at it. After finishin, Squirrel says to Ellie Lynn “Let’s do this again sometime, wanna?” Ellie Lynn don’t say nothin. She just gets outta Squirrel’s truck and walks off laughin and pullin up her pants.
It was on a summer night that Suki jumped out of that train and into that basement, not a winter one. She remembers the stale cigarette smell, still feels it scratching the back of her throat as she talks about it.
Continue reading “Suki’s Unabridged Journey to The Train of Thought by Sharon Mertins”
It was darker now, he wouldn’t have believed it possible. It was, deep, impenetrable and velvet. For the first time Tom was afraid. When the others had suggested the trip it sounded like fun. A chance to explore the newly discovered pothole, to be the first and so have their names in the journals as the original team opening up a new cavern, shining light on the newly opened place. He wasn’t very experienced and found the roping complicated, he had done it wrong and it had stuck twice on the trial run, the rope catching in the pulley but they told him it would be fine. He knew that they were finding him irritating, they were all so much more experienced but hey, that wasn’t his fault. Anyway in the end it hadn’t been fine, it had let him down and as he began to slide into the smaller cavern, pushing and slithering on the loose gravel at the head the damned thing had failed tossing him end over end into this pit.
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 