How I happened. He’s read up on all the research. Found proof that it’s nothing he did wrong. There was a storm, he always starts. His eyes get that crazy ...
I have this dream where you die. I’m not told directly, but the information skips around the city in whispers and murmurs, nothing yet confirmed or denied. Continue ...
If she glanced outside would she give a horrified little gasp or a slow, appreciative smile? Continue Reading Existing Somewhere on the Outskirts of Reality
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Thomas keeps finding squashed snails on the pavement and crying. He thinks the shells look like the smashed faces of porcelain dolls and the slug part like smeared tar. ...
Socialising made her feel dishonest. Small talk made her mouth metallic. Men’s eyes swarmed. Continue Reading Tetra
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Carina brought down the moon. It wasn’t so hard. It was just a matter of thinking, because if you think about something hard enough then it’s almost as if it’s ...
At book launches, Naomi watched as the poet joked with his entourage, introducing them to important people. She stood aside not knowing what to do with her hands. ...
I didn’t care particularly for Gilbert Nene. I didn’t bother to attend his funeral, but then I think he would have preferred me not to in any case… ...
Mass was getting heavy. Father Higgs wagged his finger from the pulpit while Mrs Lamb called us all “Fucking sheep!” from the back. Continue Reading Possession
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Who had to trust those same rich, foreign students; who asked them to cover for him at borders, at checkpoints; who hid in the bus bathroom, where he would hold ...
In the morning the street outside was barricaded, a constable in his khaki uniform and white gloves diverting all traffic around the Bourgainvilla Hotel. Continue Reading A Most ...
At this end fashionably dressed women walk their woolly disobedient dogs. At the other is the cottaging bog and people coming out of the bushes at you with knives and ...
People leave in tears almost every evening. “That piano,” someone said once. “It’s like it’s reading what’s in my blood.” Continue Reading The Piano Whisperer
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The accumulation of sweat on the upper lip, the gasp, the pressure, the aching lull of blood that rises, hot face, hard skin, hot mouth, open mouth, ragged breaths… ...
Plaice. Flounder. Skate. Trout. Seventy-five pence a pound, flat-eyed in pools of murky water. Continue Reading Fishmonger
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Sitting on a train, yellow platforms of our memories flashing between tunnels of black. Eyeballs straining from the brilliance of us, back there. Continue Reading Black and Yellow
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The room played broken tunes on her bones. Her feet got lost inside her shoes. She found herself trapped in the long emptiness between two chairs. Continue Reading ...
Sad women are everywhere, they haunt the earth like a stone turning over and over; resting now, now picking up speed. Continue Reading The Thing Perhaps
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Francesca’s parents were Christians so they’d rung up and complained. There’d been an assembly. And every time Miss Morby said “misconduct,” her lip curled up to one side and she’d ...
Obligations, unfinished chores, filled her head like a cloud of gnats. She closed her eyes, took a breath, and released them all back to the ether. But when she looked ...
