Around the world there are various enclaves of desperation. Where desperate conditions force choices on those who live there and desperate strangers seek to take advantage of that. Well, I say ‘desperate’ strangers but perhaps that’s too generous a judgement, perhaps cruel or manipulative or malicious would be better words […]
Short Stories
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The weeds had overgrown his eyes again. It happened from time to time. He’d have to sweep them away sooner or later. But the struggle to master seldom used muscles and limbs to the task was more effort than living with a denied sense. That the green tendrils had slowly weaved […]
‘Go off, kill them, you know what they’ve done.’ J stared at himself in the reflection of a shop window, running the words through his head. He did know what they’d done and they did deserve to die. He’d said it himself enough times. Words though, just words. Easy to […]
Amidst the crowd of millions stood one person. Ignored by those around them their anonymity cut deep. Not that the others weren’t equally blacked out within the mass, it was grey day after all. And they’d not gathered for each other, not as individuals at least. They’d simply come seeking the […]
The face in the mirror was that of a corpse, he could see that. Healthy enough at first glance, drawn perhaps, aged to every one of its fifty years with with the slow proliferation of wrinkles spreading from a heavy brow and grey hairs dominating a jaw which had once […]
Are you active or inert? They’d pared the greeting down to its bare bones. Perhaps to save time, time being at a premium in those days. But just as likely because no one wanted to hear the positives any more. They were a sensitive spot. ‘Are you good, well, happy, […]
It was almost done. Although ‘almost’ could mean a lot. A year, ten, twenty – they could all be near the end. But it was certainly a long way from the start now. A long way from those initial taps of the hammer and the first few chips of stone […]
Draining the poison was a relief. The resentment she felt about the process was a minor price to pay. It dehumanised her, the procedure, it left her vulnerable. A feeling which, with the poison in her, would have been a problem. But as it was funnelled away from her blood […]
The bodies were lined up in neat ranks. The idea was to stop you from noticing that they used to be human by piling them with all the efficiency of lumber in a yard. Someone, somewhere had taken the time to issue an order about it. Someone who’d never walked […]
She was turning into Forrest Gump, it was worrying. Not least because Tom Hanks freaked her out, she strongly suspected he was secretly a psychopath. He had that look about him, for all the saccharine emoting he’d probably still kill a man for cutting in front of him in a […]