“Get your head down and try and sleep.”
“Have you ever murdered anyone?”
“No.”
“Then you’ll not be able to appreciate how difficult it is to ‘Get your head down’.
He left the room and shut the door nodding as he walked along the corridor.
“Fair point!”
It was a typical Friday night at the Planet Bar. Money rubbed shoulders with money. Ladies preened and giggled over the top of cucumber daiquiris and rosewater mojitos all the while seeking out new targets, fresh wallets. The men played their part. Laughed a little too loud when needed. Stepped out for smokes. Drank their Johnnie Walker Blues. Ordered more with practiced flickers of fingers. In the midst of this maelstrom of entitlement and low grade sexual minestrone one man patrols his bar, an oasis of calm in an otherwise…
“Miss Auder.”
“Your honour?”
“Could you please remind your witness he is in a courtroom, not in his study writing a failed novel.” Continue reading “A Few Dead Men by Nik Eveleigh”
I was fifteen, it was April and the summer had started early. My mother gave me ten pounds to run to the parade of shops at the bottom of the Oldpark Road to buy two steaks and some mince to fry into burgers for the dog’s dinner. Dragging myself away from the television I threw on my trainers, laced up, pocketed the banknote and walked down to the bottom of The Bone. I passed many people, they all knew me. I said hello to them all before suddenly someone was calling my name from outside the Suicide Inn.
Continue reading “The Greatest Cock that Ever Lived by David Louden”
I had an artist friend, described creativity as a need to get back to the point of origin; tie up loose ends. He lived with a woman hooked on heroin. She despised me without knowing who I was, described me as the type of man she detested. In slack moments she’d smile.
“I see you now. You can’t hide.”
May this year was freezing. No snow just cold nights. Raw days. I went to the allotments every morning to check on the hens. Feed them. I don’t go any more. They’re all dead. A virus Harry sez.
When I used to walk down to the allotment along the narrow paths The Gardeners keep free of weeds the frost made that sound under my feet only walking on frost makes. Crunchy-crackly Jen calls it, like she would know.
“Pines everywhere. And we have been driving in this stinking Volvo for three hours without a break.”
“A much needed coffee break, indeed!”
Joe tapped the car window a few times. A clear blue lake could be spotted behind the pines, but Joe turned his head and just missed it. He turned on the radio.
“Listen. What the hell is he talking about? Is he talking Elvish?”
“No I don’t think it is Elvis, it sounds Swedish to me.”
Ulriksberg 4 km.
“Drive towards Owhlricksburgh. It must be Norway.”
Another week has passed and I still haven’t grown younger. Santa’s not paying his dividends. I guess I’ll live. Speaking of living (cheapest segway possible or maybe it’s segue – the one with the wheels): We Lived by our Adam West started the week. Once again we are engulfed with interest – yes it’s a fire and war reference – into the historical fiction which Senõr West delivers so well.
Midas Brown stands at the door of his shack and spits into the rain. When the storm broke an hour ago removing the oppressive heat of the day Midas was a happy man. Now, on reflection, as he scratches his sunken belly and listens to the water drumming against the iron overhang, he would gladly take the early evening sauna over this big shitty noise.
He digs around the cracked remains of a lateral incisor, works a sliver of tobacco loose and spits again. He knows the storm outside will pass soon enough.
He is less sure about the storm within.
They were running everywhere, the children. There was this confident little girl running around, Judith, the one who’s name we wish we’d have thought of before Jennifer was born. She ran around within that, wearing this little pink polka dot dress. It was the kind of thing that if Patricia were here she’d talk about how she wishes she’d have been able to give it to Jennifer for Christmas and talk about how it would have suited ‘ours more’. Patricia wasn’t here today, she couldn’t be. The agency was taking off and at least one of us had to be there to man the phones and those phones had been ringing lately. It was finally working. That dream we’d had was getting there and was breaking the wall that had stopped it for the last five years. But she’d have been jealous of that kid of all things.
Sylvie looked down at the dishes. In the slightly greasy water her fingers disappeared under the foam. The light sparkled and popped as tiny globes exploded and infinitesimal rainbows vanished in the blink of an eye.
She had always loved bubbles, the luxurious bath type ones that wrapped you in a quilt of scented foam. The ones children, and sometimes Sylvie herself, made blowing through a plastic ring, and the sort that floated out of wonderful bubble machines. Of all the things she wished she had, and there were many, a bubble machine came pretty high on the list.
literally stories 