Category: Short story

This is the sign.

Sam, seven hundred and twenty days now haunched on the blue blanket in the abbey square, the railings of Saint Hilda's shoring him up. He arrives every mid-morning, avoids touching the crowd on the streets with a nimble dance step, a side step, a series of hops and feints and bounces. He lays out his … Continue reading This is the sign. →

Behind the curtain

Rabbit gazed with fairly no unease, like this, over the awkward shapes issuing, one by one by one by one from her own soft mouth and she sounded (to these hot ears) to be speaking from just behind the curtain; almost-present. She roller coasted her eyes around her nose and I liked it. So, she … Continue reading Behind the curtain →

The Bristol Arm.

[I'm reposting this from a couple of years back as it's Bob Dylan's birthday today - keep on keeping on. Peace x]   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 … Continue reading The Bristol Arm. →

First the milonga, then the tango.

All the guests had left the table, and indeed the bright room, to dance to a quintet that had struck up, with some vigour, a milonga out in the blue stone courtyard beneath the carved moon. Their chairs were left all at odds, scattered, vacated; pushed away from the table. Only the two of them … Continue reading First the milonga, then the tango. →

Mirror (8): Pale Airman.

8      [photocopy of a snapshot] I cut Lillian's hair every twelfth week, dry it every sixth. It grows. I cut it. I dry it. It has become grey by increments; city pigeon to autumn noon, fading print to cigarette ash. Each accretion of tone slowly highlighting further her pink brittle cheeks, the pools … Continue reading Mirror (8): Pale Airman. →