They came up the hill: the brakes shrieking, the dog barking, my mother holding high a three- quarters empty bottle of whiskey outside the camper van window. I didn’t want ...
If she’d asked me for the potion on any other day I’d have handed it over, pressed it into her
hands with my mouth almost crescented, not quite smiling but ...
I drank your double cream some time ago. The remains now stand upon the sill, in an artisan pottery bowl, clotted. Don’t plead with me with those big spaniel eyes. ...
There is a tiny Chinese man living in my iPhone.
Dapper and smiling, he makes smaller iPhones out of little tiny screws, miniature panes of glass.
...
The remote is right there with Morgan in the reclining chair, but in the end it’s Dan who gets up and walks across the break room to switch off the ...
Have you thought about it before, what Ophelia is offering? Certainly. You talk about it all the time at the pub; you, Romeo, Othello, and ...
Always Kissing, a touching piece of Flash Fiction that will make you wonder, what’s hidden behind the smiles of your neighbour.
“Man and wife stand at the doorway, shoulder to ...
I take off my clothes. Not how you remove them in dribs and drabs; I remove everything I can in one glorious blitz of movement.
...
Ladder to loft catches cobwebs in sun’s rays and the caked dirt of decades sits behind fresh splinters. Pity the pale skinned girl and the walk to come later, slip-on ...
I ask if you want to go inside and get something hot to drink. I read that they do good coffee near here. You shake your head and bend down ...
“What the fuck?” he says. “What d’you do?”
“It’s a warning label.” A kid’s last chance to prove himself. But can he keep out of trouble?
...
‘When Miguelín was three years old, a demon possessed him, but nobody noticed because the unclean creature didn’t force the little boy to do cruel things, to speak in a ...
‘At first I didn’t miss the girls. I used to get jealous of the way they were treated special, and that they got to go places with the uncles … ...
‘For as long as she could remember Penny had her bag packed ready, just in case. It just made good sense. ‘ A girl dreams of escape but who will ...
‘We gather our clothes and move from the tall oak groves to the sleek grassy slope and sit cross-legged, arching our spines and letting our long straight hair settle into ...
‘I stay on the boat all day. I tell myself I’m sailing the Berlin Wall, though I now know the Spree doesn’t divide
the city that way. ‘
...
‘He doesn’t watch the clock. That’s not how he was made. He picks up the telephone and dials round his regional reps. They’ve nothing to report that they hadn’t already ...
‘It was one of them electric cigs. Not the oddest curio Mab’s brought in, I thought. Until I took a long, hefty drag and inhaled every particle of dust the ...
Desire, sexual tension and violence conspire to frustrate one couple’s relationship in this edgy little tale from Ian Shine.
...
“The hedgerow clipper raises his shears. The blades scrape and snip. Thin limbs topple from their perch and land like gauntlets at the pimp’s feet.”
...
