12 Steps
"Oh, hello. You’re new." "Yes, I thought it was time to, uh, try to. To take steps." "Well, you’re in the right place, steps are what we take! But we’ll get to that. Have you got yourself a drink?"...
View ArticleIn my beginning is my end.
He looked up, and God answered. The buildings about him spun; his head remained a still spot in the centre of the city’s merry go round. The light of the Sun bore down on him, squinting shut his eyes....
View ArticleHeritage
“There’s a journey we must go on!” I declare; finger aloft, coat billowing about me, eyes alight with possibility. “And no delay!” “Can’t. Busy.” Comes the mouth-stuffed reply. I deflate. My coat sags,...
View ArticleYou never forget.
It’s not always possible to fly he said, showing her the bicycle. She laughed, hands covering her face, shoulders shaking. Her eyes peeped between her fingers. Can we fly on that? she said, eyes...
View ArticleDivinity
They were just diving. Jumping from the edge of the boat, they giggled and gurgled, collapsed, foaming, into the cooling sea. One of them essayed a clumsy somersault, another simply fell as if pushed....
View ArticleLimbless Trees
Pig of a day, thought Marty Sinclair as he made his way down the back stairs of the precinct and out into the blazing heat of the lot. He turned it over in his memory. The woman, crying cold tears. The...
View ArticleTaking A View
“It’s rubbish, though, isn’t it?” “What’s rubbish?” She sat up. Her sunglasses were pointless in the dimming light so she pushed them up to nestle in her salt-tangled hair. “This,” he waved a hand....
View ArticlePre Cards
“Keep writing,” the tone wavered between hope and command. “No. No that. It wasn’t that.” She flipped past another postcard, reached for a cigarette and took a shaking drag. It had been two weeks, both...
View ArticleFifteen Love
“No, Daddy,” a face appears over the net. There is a certain combination of weariness, exasperation and indulgence that can only a small child can bring to bear on its allocated grown-up. “You aren’t...
View ArticleYour lucky day
“It’s bad luck to kill a crow,” the voice is low, female, inflected with an accent I can’t place. Lancashire somewhere. It’s harder to identify as it’s muffled by, I see as I look up from the black...
View ArticleA Quiet Place
The soft vegetable stink of leaves reached him before his eyes opened. He was in a wood, the back of his head resting uncomfortably against the exposed root system of a fallen tree. Movement brought...
View ArticlePennies
When I was young I was happy, not by accident but by design. I smiled, huge and broad, at anyone who passed me in my pram. I was wheeled around the streets by the youngest of the family, the pram old...
View ArticleFrom Heaven
There were no fires that year. It was hot, sure, but something in the city conspired to keep the combustion only in the heads of the citizens. Minds burned up and burned out; it was a season of high...
View ArticleThe Chamber
More quickfic. This is a very silly prompt. “Look, I’m not saying it was the best decision – only history can judge that. But it was the decision I was determined to make, and I believe it was the...
View ArticleMeet me here.
What, this came out as poetry? Clearly some sort of mistake. Meet me by the Christmas tree oh! Meet me there Meet me in the town square under the baubles beneath the lights deep in the pine-scent...
View ArticleDew
So early in the morning it was still night, out in the deep grass where the deer have held court since the days of the Tudors. The mist dragged across the world, milky white cataracts. What we were...
View ArticleLosing grip
Gravity is such a weak force. Anyone could defy it with the least effort, pulling bodies free with every step. Yes, we sent rockets pummelling out of the atmosphere on columns of concentrated fire, but...
View ArticleSettled Dust
Takes a lot to get me to notice things. I’m hoovering the rug one morning and it didn’t even occur to me that there was no table on it. What had happened to the coffee table? Then I started thinking...
View ArticleAll the fun.
The lights burn holes in your eyes if you stay out too long in front of the curtain. They say you can tell the long-time performers by the glimmer of darkness nestled in their gaze; the spots have...
View ArticleSeeing Things
“Mate,” he said, not looking at me. “Mate, come on. It’s just up here. In this pond.” Pond, I thought. Maybe that’s a local name because it looks like a lake to me. But then again, I’m no fisherman. If...
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