It was a hollow victory, Hugo thought as he tucked into his last meal. Now that the initial excitement of escaping the care home and boarding a plane to Switzerland had worn off, the stark finality of death began to sink in.
After all his dear friend Ron had done to help him – booking the Dignitas appointment, fetching his passport, lying to the staff and Hugo’s family, and driving him to the airport – he felt bad even thinking like this.
Continue readingMy first game was not going well.
“Terger?”
Me ….“Wiktionary’s definition is ‘a person who teases, taunts, aggravates, angers’”.
As organiser and chair of the scrabble tournament Bryn bristled with self importance…. and incredulity.
“Translated from Norwegian! Come-on Charlie. You know the rules.”
Using a practised left hand to flick through the T’s of the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary, his right hand twisted first one greasy handle, then the other, of his handlebar moustache.
Continue readingSure, I regret working with Harlan Ray.
His studio had posters of naked women on the walls, empty beer cans littering the floor, and the company line was “Harlan Ray is God”. Should have quit when the guys dubbed me a faggot for choosing to go to the ballet rather than a football game. Well, it was winter, and I’d rather be in doors.
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UPON BEING NAMED INDIA’S most wanted criminal, Fariha went to her local shop, where she bought a bottle of bleach to drink.
She stopped briefly to look at the rack of newspapers and her worst fears were confirmed. The Mumbai Mirror – a newspaper she had previously contributed articles to – had launched a hate campaign against her. Other papers carried headlines and stories pertaining to Fariha’s crimes. These included the assault of a friend from her university days; her suspected role in the murder of a Bollywood actor; and her involvement in a conspiracy to detonate a bomb in the US embassy in New Delhi shortly after 9/11.
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In memory
of all friendships
lost to silence
. . .
“Hey.” Sent.
Sitting in her half-lit bedroom, Kate kept staring at the phone screen. It was more than a year between their last “goodnight” and today’s message.
Continue readingFleeing Fern ran along the animal tracks she knew so well. Undergrowth lashing her legs, the tree branches closing in on her hair and skin, Fern was oblivious to the pain or the sound of the mob bellowing behind.
”Find the witch, before she puts the curse on someone else.”
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Annus Dominus 1287. Western Gate, Swansea
John lifted his eyes from the gibbet and groaned at the stench. The De Braose family had trusted him with captaining the hanging party: he could smell a traitor and a murderer. William, as leader of the Oystermouth Castle Revolt, was both. If the cross beam had not buckled under the weight of that other Judas, the second hanging would have been avoided; John would have had the time to take his victuals – time denied due to William’s obstinacy in reviving… twice.
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An unexpectedly early inheritance: poor Aunt Hettie shouldn’t have died so early, and Janine hadn’t considered the implications. However, hearts wear out, and as a result, Janine now owned a largish suburban house and just enough income to enable early retirement from a dull, mid-rank civil service post. Janine stepped out of her job and (at last) from an unsatisfactory marriage, kicking them both aside like dirty clothing. Free!
The house had a lovely garden backing on to a small copse. There was ample time in Janine’s rethought life to take on beekeeping, two hives of bees soon making good use of the garden.
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Winchester Hall had seen better days. Not especially photogenic or a marvel of design, it nevertheless stood proudly between tall oak trees whilst a meandering river coiled around it.
This site was infamous for the legend of Lady Elaine Winchester, accused witch who was rumoured to haunt the grounds.
“Of course,” the groundskeeper informed me, during our steady trek up to the property, “the witchcraft charge was all hogwash. Her accuser, Simon Mathers who was just eyeing the estate, cooked up the witchcraft crap, and after he had her hung, brought the house from her dissolute and estranged son. Oh, and before she died, she vowed to kill any descendant of Mathers who’d dare step foot in her house, and to do everything in her power to help her descendants reclaim their ancestral home. Do you know what happened next?”
Continue readingThe boardroom was silent for a full minute following Lisa’s presentation.
It was Callum, one of the Runners in the TV company, who broke the silence. “You’re the producer so you know best…” he said.
A bit over-confident for one so young, Lisa thought. But he had the good grace to blush when he spoke, which was kind of cute, so she let him continue.
“…But what sort of person would want to watch a football match like this?”
Lisa peered over her glasses and allowed a smile to spread across her face. “Exactly,” she said.
*
Continue readingHe heaved, sweating, and pulled another door from the wreckage. Crouching down behind it he hoped to gain some respite from the carnage that surrounded him. The curly-haired man closed his eyes and breathed deeply hoping to recentre himself.
When he eventually opened his twitching eyes he spied the remains of his guide a few feet away.
Carefully dodging every spike and shard that threatened his feet below, he eventually reached the guidebook and with trembling hands scrambled to find the right page. It was useless; he already knew he had gone too far and there was no turning back at this point.
Continue readingSamson was fucked.
Ankle deep in thick mud, his t-shirt, jeans and even underwear were soaking wet, all thanks to the remorseless grey clouds spewing down their cold, cruel, bullets of rain.
And the ominous rumble of thunder served as a reminder that he was ideal target practice for lightning bolts.
But Samson grinned, staring at the solid structure of the library’s clocktower off in the distance. He was going to return the library book in his backpack on time.
Continue readingThe ambulance outside alerted two of the neighbours.
‘Is Janice OK? Mrs Hughes asked. ‘She’s been looking very drawn.’
‘I saw her come to the door. I think it’s…’
‘Alex?’
‘Janice told me he’s been worse lately,’ Mrs Phillips said.
‘That overdose. Last summer, wasn’t it? Do you think he…?
Mrs Phillips clamped her lips together. This isn’t suitable conversation her stiffly proper expression seemed to say.
/
Eirlys was everything to him. He watched her grow as a baby, kept an eye on her schooling. On her reaching puberty he became over-interested, you might say. When she had boyfriends, well he had jealousy like a bridge has rivets. Eirlys’ marriage left him grey somehow, his spirit seemed to have drained from him. But he had the blues in him right from when we first dated, just kids. He was prone to them. Having a daughter gave him some relief, I suppose; her leaving home extinguished that. I tried to help him but his empty heart wouldn’t let me in. I’ve been expecting this ever since last summer. Longer, really, if I’m honest.
Continue readingLeela stared at the white plastic stick, silently begging the Hindu goddess of fertility for two blue lines. But once again, Parvati was not playing. Leela pulled down the waistband of her jeans examining her pockmarked belly. Countless tracked cycles and three rounds of IVF, each preceded with the optimism of ‘this time!’ followed by a dream shattered. Grief, despair, jealousy, overwhelm and other inexplicable emotions joining the rollercoaster on each trip.
“This time we’re done” said Rahul, “IVF has decimated our sex life. And in case you’re wondering, I can’t countenance surrogacy, it’s rent-a-womb exploitation on steroids and I won’t be part of it. I’d prefer a puppy, much less trouble.” he concluded.
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Feeling vaguely sophisticated, Janelle sipped her chilled Chablis in Sydney Airport’s business lounge.
Life is good. Basically it’s just a series of decisions… and consistently making the right ones, she mused, recalling the roller coaster of the last six years.
Continue readingMum’s crying again. That’s how my days go now, thinking she’s talking to her comatose son, but in reality I’m right here, locked inside my own body, fully conscious but unable to move or speak. I braced myself for her routine onslaught of confessions as she wiped the tears from her eyes and adjusted the stiff hospital chair.
“Oh, Danny, it’s just so hard,” she began, her voice cracking. “I’m working night and day, and when I’m not working I’m cleaning. I love Mark dearly but I wish he would just once take something off my shoulders.”
Continue readingEveryone said Christopher was in a good mood in the week leading up to the presentation. This sullen, moody boy, often muttering to himself now walked with a spring in his step, wore a smile on his lips and went so far as to ask people about their day.
Odd because, rarely in the three years working for the company did he speak in full sentences, usually making do with nasally monosyllabic grunts and somehow, he now spoke in full paragraphs with a happy tone.
Continue readingYoung Tommie Lewis was the apple of his mother’s eye, always a dainty boy with short dark hair, a little snub nose, large spectacles and a skinny build. School days were hard for Tommie. Sports day he would run, his arms and legs spinning as fast as he could, but he always came last. Nobody ever picked him for football. He usually sat on the sidelines wishing he could be first at something. In the juniors gymnastics became the bane of his life. Once he was made to climb the monkey bars. Getting to the top he froze. A teacher had to climb up to fetch him, handing him the rope to lower himself down. Poor Tommie just slid down the rope, causing blisters on his hands and legs; his mother played merry hell. So Tommie was forced to join the girls away from hazards.
Continue readingWhat with the encircling memories crowding in, Engineer Ozob completely forgot to recalibrate the composter. The consequences, cataclysmal, are well-documented in the journals recently unearthed, an appropriate descriptor, given the tons of earth mixed with meteor fragments that had entombed the Obmil Annals. 110 year-books, carbon-dated 5630 AD to 5740 AD, then silence.
The previous evening, prior to Ozob’s dream, Deputy Toidi had reported, “Composter one’s out again.” with that smug look that said “You must have it done it wrong again.”
“I’m onto it. Good timing; a new rubbish cloud is orbiting.”
Continue readingBefore she died and came back to haunt me, I lived with my mother for two years. They wouldn’t let her out of the hospital bed until they knew she was coming home to someone, and my father had the foresight to die a decade prior. I asked her doctors for a care package. No result. When they told her this, she took it to mean that no one cared.
Behind the dusty velvet curtains in my mother’s spare bedroom was a streetlight bright enough to seep around the edges and keep me up all hours of the night. At four o’clock I’d stand in the window and watch the rain fall like knives and write descriptions in my head of the garden, four metres square of concrete jungle. To the song of her snoring I’d walk along the landing and trace my fingers along the bannisters, planning how to photograph the woodwork for the house listing. When I spoke of my mother, the neighbours’ mouths gaped, horrified at my exasperation, and I made a mental note to warn the next owners they could never be honest.
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