Martin Kettle, formally of Stoneyclough but now resident of Penn Beacon, was stood on a table in the Eight Kings. He was taping the fourth corner of a large poster of Bob Dylan's face to the wall at the end of the bar. "No, no, Sam," he was saying. "It's ‘uff’, not ‘ow’. Stoneyclough." He … Continue reading The Bristol Arm.
Fish Man squats Fatima Mansions, a tumbledown townhouse on Pentonville Square. The building is in all day shadow behind iron tooth-pick railings on a scrap of dirt. The windows are boarded and the front door padlocked. But the board at this window, here, is a sham. It is nailed once at the top of the … Continue reading The Hollow Men.
1 Time passed like what it does waiting for dinner to cook and then PING, one day, a Tuesday or a Monday or something, the ugly folk of Twelve Shitty Acres got a break. One of them, an orange coloured dolly who went by the name of Lil-Let, came home with a little stapled book. … Continue reading Twelve Shitty Acres.
1 He came back this time as a monkey: a macaque with a vague longing; an ache for a mate, for a cloud-capped, snowy mountain to retreat to, for the hot water springs there to bathe in. He hummed, as best he could remember them, the birdsongs from the ever-after. He came back. And, for … Continue reading As Thin As Holy Bible Paper.
Louella looking out the no-one-can-look-in glass. Everything inside the car defined. Everything outside blurring. Towns appear and disappear. Endless dual-carriage and fields. There is motion. There is none. There is heat. Burning Spear on repeat. There is no sickness. No one spoke as they drove west. They stayed the night at a clean hotel in Meredith. … Continue reading Aces, Fruits & Ingots.
He woke beneath a kitchen table. Scattered crumbs rose like far-off prairie mountains on the tiles. Through a slice of window he could see a deep crusted snow, shining on a rooftop. The sky held more snow. He was wearing someone else's jumper. Heavy, handwoven, Hebridian: blue with a daisy motif. He stared at the … Continue reading The Kiss.
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