“So where can I be, if not here?” “You can be wherever you want, as long as it isn’t here.” “They said the same thing over there, and there.” Rix pointed over the road to another paved plot of land, identical to the one he was on, identical to most […]
Short Stories
87 posts
This one’s dedicated to the dead who became the truth they were attempting to report. There are plenty of hacks in the world but, hidden amongst them, are some individuals who realise the value of truth and sacrifice themselves to it. The truth had to get out, that was the […]
Tamsin rammed her fist against the wall and immediately regretted it. The wall was made of bricks, her fist was not and she was fairly sure she’d broken a bone or two in the unequal contest between the two. But for all the Cocaine and PCP coursing through her system […]
The building was toppling over. Or he was. The difference between the two was hard to judge. Granted, buildings tended not to fall over of their own accord. In fact they seldom did anything beyond standing there indifferently, especially where so much effort went into protecting the immaculate sense of […]
In the act of judging I think we pretty much lose completely the capacity to observe ourselves. Refugees, immigrant crises, sinking boats, aid efforts, denunciations, attacks, insults, defences – we always have something to project outwards, seldom any reflection upon our own behaviour. For better or worse. — Which was […]
‘Mercy, mercy, mercy, mercy…’ It was all he could hear. The screaming from the family in front of him had stopped, the shouted insults and encouragement from the men behind him had faded into nothing. He could still see their mouths move, all of them, almost in slow motion as […]
He refused to look at me. I stared, I hated, but he refused to see. I lived through my eyes, for those long minutes. I tried to leave the rest, to let him have it so that whatever he took wouldn’t be me. I failed. For all that I placed […]
“We must believe!” The crowd was ecstatic. Five thousand of them stood before him, evolved, or devolved, into one terrific collective mass. Faces eclectic and varied as only humanity could be but morphed into uniformity by the moment, sweating, heaving and moving as one delirious whole. It was almost a […]
The room was perfect white. Not spacious or sparse, simply white, the detritus scattered around it’s interior sterile and blank in design but stiflingly busy in practice. Ingenious décor for a jail cell, the sole occupant thought to himself. The whiteness would deny rage, if he’d been willing to express […]
They made up a surgeon’s hand. Dissecting concrete housing blocks and perishing tarmac roads, slicing away incongruously overgrown marks of humanity to remove the infected tissue of life. A healing process, they said, the men and women who orchestrated the diggers, cranes and wrecking balls with balletic elegance. From their […]