1. Jellyfish congregate in blooms at certain times of the year.
Too numerous to count, they drift towards him on the early morning current. The amoebic group meanders down the street, nowhere to go except home now the clubs are shut. A couple of individuals break off to stare at a shop window before rejoining the amorphous mass. 2. Jellyfish don’t have brains, hearts, or lungs. The hen party is music-deafened, dance-weary, alcohol-numbed. A brief rain shower has left them bedraggled, satin and sequins clinging to arms and legs, hair draped in dripping seaweed strands over faces, dribbling down necks. Glitter-covered plastic tiaras cast dim reflections on the wet tarmac. Their near silence is intimidating, but there is no escape route, so he stands still and allows them to flow around him. Continue reading ... |
France, November 1916
My dearest Elsie I hope this letter finds you well, as it leaves me. I'm still in one piece, so I can't complain, in the circumstances. He scratches urgently at his groin, where the lice that nest in the seams of his uniform have emerged to feed. His skin is thickened and discoloured in places, and his underwear is flecked with dried blood. He stamps his feet to get the circulation going; numbness gives way to the tingling of trenchfoot, but warm, dry boots and socks are a distant memory. There is no point complaining. Things are relatively quiet in this part of the line. There has been some respite from the thudding bombardment as the main attack has moved further south. He can still hear the wailing as the shells go over, though, the crump as they land, the screams of wounded and dying men. Continue reading ... |
It is a long way to fall. Surveying the cliff from the bottom – the fractured rockface, the narrow ledges, the scrubby vegetation –had made him dizzy. Now at the top, as he stands on the edge, the sweat collects, cold and clammy in the folds of his neck, trickles down his spine. A sudden gust of wind ruffles the grass, and he sways, not from the force of the breeze, but because fear has squeezed his bones into paste.
Now he must step into the void, into the nothingness. He walks backwards until his heels hang over the edge. The earth is fragile, frangible. His weight dislodges a small rock; he imagines it smashing against the unforgiving cliff face, imagines sharp slivers of stone flying off as it tumbles end over end, imagines it being whittled down until there is nothing left. He listens but doesn't hear it reach the ground. Continue reading ... |
'It'll be a once in a lifetime thing. The ultimate sensory experience.' Gerald is bouncing on the sofa like an over-excited puppy. 'I'm only the third critic to be invited to review The Götterdämmerung. It's such an honour.'
Genevieve is less enthusiastic. Everybody is talking about the latest dining sensation, but nobody she knows has actually eaten there. If she's honest, the initial euphoria of dating a famous restaurant critic has begun to pall. Continue reading ... |
Click: 06.33
“Did you ever…?” “Yes. In 2004.” David cuts the question off before it can be asked. “Is it as bad as they…?” “Worse.” “Do we know who’s driving this year?” “No, but I’ll look after him. Poor bloke.” Tom shrugs on his heavy wool coat and waits by the door, clinging to the last moments of warmth and light before he has to step out into the early morning murk. “It’s nearly time, Tom. Ready?” Continue reading ... |
The club only ever had two members: Eric and me. There were plenty of other weirdos at school – techno-geeks, nerds, gamers, Goths, those who went geocaching in the woods at weekends or played the glockenspiel in the school orchestra. There were even a couple of stamp collectors and a lone plane spotter. But we agreed that although they were all outcasts in their own way, they weren’t in our league.
Eric and I started partnering up in lessons, mainly because nobody else wanted to work with us. ‘We misfits have to stick together,’ Eric said. Continue reading ... |
Ninety-seven. That's the number of times he's apologised to people for the things he's done. He wrote them all down, counted them. He's probably forgotten a few. Or a lot. They added up to nothing, in the end. Saying sorry is only meaningful if something changes.
Eighty-nine pointless promises to his wife, his son, his mum, that he would give it up, get help. Looking back, he realises he had no intention of doing either. They say you can't start to get back up until you've reached rock bottom, and he never did. Until tonight. Continue reading .... |
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Maybe it will be today. The steam organ on the carousel wheezes and groans into life and the procession begins, glinting gold in the mid-morning sun. Marie-France puts down her newspaper and stares out of the window of her first-floor apartment in the Place de l'Espoir, over the tops of the umbrellas, past the coffee-sippers and croissant-nibblers, to watch the horse trying to catch up with the seashell carriage, pursued by the vintage car, chased by the fire engine with the clanging bell, followed by the tractor and the motorbike and the helicopter escaping from the tiger.
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From far away her longing reaches me in my dreaming. I find her sheltering from the afternoon sun in the sparse shade of an acacia, trickling handfuls of red dust through her fingers as she thinks of me. The air is as heavy as wild honey; towering thunderheads herald the arrival of the short rains. Even the insistent cicadas are stilled, and in the sudden silence I sing her my song, implanting myself in her soul.
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Monday – Make packed lunch for Conrad's school outing.
Realise you forgot to ask whether this is a triangle sandwich week or if we've gone back to squares, and whether crusts are acceptable or not. Tuesday – Phone the school to find out who has Conrad's blazer. He came home from the trip wearing a jacket that has seen better days and is at least three sizes too big for him. You understand how Conrad would find this entirely normal, but how would the teachers not have noticed? Continue reading .... |
“Your offer sounds interesting, but could we just run through the details again?
“As I understand it, I let you cut out my tongue with a pair of scissors in return for a bottle of poison. If I drink it my tail will divide into a pair of legs and feet. “Will it hurt? I have a very low pain threshold. “What? Every step I take after that will be excruciating too? You didn't mention agony the first time round. On the other hand, I'll be able to dance with him. And I guess it is a small price to pay to get a soul and go to heaven. “Just a couple more questions. If I can't speak, how can I tell him I love him? And how am I supposed to take my wedding vows if I can't say 'I do'? Continue reading .... |
The photograph, faded and discoloured, has resisted the efforts of the heavy books to iron out its creases, flatten its crumpled corners. She cannot recall how it felt to be that laughing ten-year-old, eyes squinting in the sunlight, hair lifted by the breeze from her shoulders into a golden halo. That was in the Before. The pull of the picture brings her here, into the shadowed alcoves of her mind to probe the memory of the day when the Before became the After, to examine it, to test whether its potency has diminished over the years.
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They took her on a Wednesday. She was resting in the shade of the willow, lulled by the gentle music of the brook, when the blackbird’s song changed to a harsh alarm. Clumsy feet trampled her basket, crushing her collection of roots, seeds and berries, and rough hands seized her, binding her wrists and shoving her back along the path to the waiting cart.
Alice was not surprised; they had been watching her, waiting to catch her doing something that would confirm their suspicions. Ever since her sisters had come into her dreams, whispering words of warning, she had tried to be careful. Continue reading .... |
The stench of stage fright is unmistakable. The prickly top note of sweat blended with a sour, rank bass note of terror wafts from stage left across to the dark corner where I hunch over the script like a carrion crow, unseen but all-seeing. I sense the thumping of her heart, her rapid breathing, the sweat on her palms, the effort it takes to unstick her tongue from the roof of her mouth, and the clamminess of her skin, transformed from whitewash pale to a glowing pink by the layers of grease paint.
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Lying in the grass, love-sated and pollen-doped, she shades her eyes against the morning sun and points to a towering white cumulus. ‘I would like to live with you in that castle,’ she says.
‘It’s a fortress. There’s no way in,’ he says. ‘You could make one,’ she replies. He stretches out his hand, sculpts turrets and crenelations; his right forefinger creates a pair of iron-bound gates. ‘Look, there’s a rabbit!’ She points to another cloud, her voice shiny with wonder. He reaches up, cups the rabbit gently in his palm and rests it on the grass between them. It lies still while she strokes its ears and quivering whiskers, then lollops away into the undergrowth. ‘How did you do that?’ ‘It’s magic,’ he smiles. ‘I’m an enchanter.’ Continue reading .... |
We could always tell when Mum was getting ready to leave us. The days leading up to her absence would be marked by a frenzy of cleaning, cooking, tidying and organising.
Once, I asked her where she was going. She grinned and said, 'Just a night out with the girls.' 'Can I come too?' I asked, but without any real expectations. 'One day. When you're older.' 'How old?' 'That depends on when you're ready. You'll know.' 'But how...' She gave me a look that choked the words in my throat. Continue reading .... |
The hunk of bread is stale and dry with a pale white bloom over its surface, but Malachi snatches it off the rough wooden trencher. One corner has a small growth of blue-green mould. He will save that bit until last. He breaks off a small piece with his filthy fingers and pops it onto his tongue, waiting for it to soften in his mouth. Such teeth as he has left are too rotten to chew.
He relishes the myriad flavours spreading over his taste buds and sighs with pleasure as he contemplates the swollen corpse in front of him. Ignoring the elderly widow weeping noisily in the corner, he leans forward and whispers into the dead man's ear. 'I shall enjoy feasting on you this night.' Continue reading .... |