Bob Hawkins nudged his empty pint glass across the beaten copper of the barroom table. Opposite him sat Jim “Kipper” Jones, whose weather-beaten face was an object lesson in why digging roads through West Wales winters was no career for an aspiring film star, especially not after thirty years. Bob was no picture himself, either. His lived-in face topped a scrawny frame wrapped in a Gannex mac two sizes too big, fished from the back rail of an Oxfam shop fifteen years earlier.
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You’re the Villain in Someone Else’s Story
09/04/2012
Mildred Addams is an eyesore! Did her mum marry a gorilla? She’s a girl from school, built with the size and dimensions of a stone boulder, so shave her head and plonk her outside a nightclub and you’ve got yourself a bouncer. I swear if I pull down her knickers I’ll see her willy.
Anyway, come lunchtime, whilst me and my girlfriends are hanging out by the picnic tables, she’ll be there, eating by herself, her miserable stink putting me right off my lunch. Delia tells me to ignore her but I’m going to give it to golem girl someday.
Continue readingTHE ART OF CHAOS
Hearing the side gate opening, Mavis sighed. What’s happened now? Mitzi, Mavis’ poodle, raised her head and groaned, and disappeared behind the sofa. Puffing into sight was Eva, her daughter-in-law with the twins in their buggy. Thankfully they appeared to be asleep.
She stomped in: ”You’ll never believe what your waster of a son has done now!”
Continue readingCreation
‘Jed Newton. The hospital? Yes that’s right the wife’s on the list. We was told she’d be a proper good match in the right circumstances but… What? An opportunity has…? I’m not following you, mate. Listen now, she was informed the chances weren’t great due to the rarity of… What? A dying woman has what…? Are you saying Tracy can have her womb transplant?’
/
Continue readingGood in Taffeta
It was after the phone call informing me of the sixth divorce that I looked into my family history.
Sure enough, my mother confirmed I’m from a long line of bad-omen bridesmaids. We stretch out through time like twisted trees in a forest. Every single union attended by one of us as part of the wedding party has ended, sooner or later, in divorce.
But damn, do we look good in taffeta.
Continue readingA SPECIAL GIFT
Adam Taylor bounced out of the office, a ruggedly handsome man. His life revolved around getting that sensational story that would guarantee his fame and fortune. Life had other plans, he would become famous just not in the way imagined.
Adam had been working on something secretly for months. He was getting close and the lady Audrey, his snout, promised it was the real deal, she had inside information. Walking to the quiet gardens in Kensington he smiled to himself. At last it was going to happen. He was writing the story in his head.
Continue readingBad Fairy
It was here, in this very spot, that I met him last year. I was taking a cigarette break in between tooth-collecting stops, admiring the view of the town below.
Only one house was close enough to see inside – log fire burning, Christmas tree aglow, presents piled beneath it. A couple clinked wine glasses on a squishy sofa.
‘Cheers!’ I muttered, raising my cigarette aloft. I had my own present haul in a bag beside me. I’d only taken a few gifts from the children’s stockings while I grabbed their teeth. I called it a Christmas Eve bonus, although it was mostly tat.
Continue readingLiberation
‘Bring the traitor in,’ the major said.
Flaming orange hair topped his rugged head. Next to him sat the captain, his blue eyes chill discs. Fire and ice together hunkered behind a desk. A youth in khaki pushed in a tall man, his hands tied behind his back.
‘You’ve been found guilty of treason,’ the major said. ‘You will be executed by members of the people’s liberation army immediately. Any last words?’
The man spat on the floor in contempt and was dragged out.
Continue readingSoulless Wretch!
Kevin Bentley is an evil, soulless wretch, and has caused me nothing but pain, misery and utter suicidal despair.
We were once (I thought) best friends. I remember the first day of school, a frightened Kevin stood all alone in the corner of the playground and only I cared enough to talk to him. Our first few years of friendship were great, we would hang out at each other’s homes, sit next to each other in class, share our toys and video games but alas then puberty arrived and although it was remorseless to me, (my nickname was pizza face) it transformed the runty Kevin into an adonis, and that’s when his utter cruelty began.
Continue readingDick Bullet – Private Dick
I got a call from this broad come August. Can’t complain because I can’t choose my clients. Said she got a case of the usual, good for nuthin’ hubby making excuses on where he kept going at night.
I’m Dick Bullet, private eye, got a cheating wife/husband and/or business partner then I’m the sap who sits outside of their house for days, hoping to snap up the incriminating evidence.
This Mrs Mallory may have been a goddess of the silver screen forty years ago, but Old Father Time is a mean old man and chips away at anybody’s good looks. Where she was once stunning with eyes sharp enough to pierce diamonds and legs slender than a snake, practically death and sex wrapped in one tight glove, now she was like a dried raisin, those dark eyes had gone greyer than a rain cloud, her hair was whiter than the north pole and her skin sagged worse than a mattress left out in a forest.
Continue readingAfter Happiness
The rain was falling hard on the esplanade. The view from the apartment of sea and beach was obscured by mist.
‘How is he?’ Karen asked her mother.
‘He’s been in a temper since we moved here. Now he’s bitter as well.’
‘Bitter with you?’
‘With me, himself, everything.’
‘Doesn’t he have any interests apart from…?’
Continue readingVox Pop
Although my journalist’s style guide has a whole section on avoiding clichés, I’m excited to share with you my awesome journey towards local newspaper stardom.
Earlier in the week prospects had seemed to be shifting downwards. An editorial encounter, at which I had intended to pitch an investigative project about vaping in schools, brought this well and truly home.
The drift of this went:
‘.…local rags can’t carry reporters with airy, ill thought out ideas…..where’s the research? ..by election coming up….get out on the streets and ask people how they think life can improve …if anyone mention vapes, that’s a bonus for you. ’
Continue readingMY PERFECT LIFE?
Prison counsellor Richard Wilson peered through thick lens glasses at prisoner Wilf Watts, a small scrawny old man with a full head of silver hair, his eyes appearing open and honest. Wilf had been sentenced to four years for offences that lead to him being a local hero within the prison. Leaning forward Richard asked, ‘Would you like to explain the circumstances that led to you being here, Wilf?’
Wilf settled back in the armchair, thinking for a moment: ”It’s like this, you see my wife died last year. Wonderful women she was, my Margey. We were married for over forty years, she did everything for me. Sold our home as I couldn’t live there without her, bought myself one of those mobile homes and travelled all over. It is what she wanted. Found it a bit lonely to be honest. Then some bugger stole it, I lost everything and had a hard time getting even a little bedsit. The police were useless, didn’t do a thing, the insurance company gave me the runaround.
Continue readingEasy Money
My Dear Clatterworthy, inspiration – wouldn’t you agree? – is a stick of dynamite up the buttocks, a jug of icy water in the face, the unexpected rainbow, a yellow sun on a freezing winter’s day. Latterly its song has been reduced to a whisper but then, blow me down like a bark in a Gower gale, didn’t I hear that my fellow versifier, T.S. Eliot, had written a whole book of poems on the subject of – cats.
Now there’s a tidy idea, thought I to myself: popularity, a seaful of sales, and no need to draw deeply from inspiration’s well. Easily done, you could say. And out there are surely more cat lovers, their caterwauling pets inhabiting smoothed and ironed bungalows or furry flats, than are readers of rhyme. Wouldn’t such folk drool over further pages on paws, or tales about tails in feline feminine rhymes?
Continue readingWhen the phone rang
Colin ‘Corky’ Yates lived alone; alone enough for a ten-year-old boy. Since his mother’s death two years earlier, dinner was prepared by the housekeeper, and he spent his evenings doing homework, listening to the radio, and waiting for his father.
Corky didn’t mind. He just missed his mum.
One evening, while doing his homework with the radio on, he paused as the announcer signed off, “If you have a problem, get in touch with Doctor Parkham, on …”
He jotted the number down.
Continue readingThere is no infinity.
The dead body after being held up to the mirror did indeed have a reflection, an infinite number of them as a matter of fact. The police were amused by the two-mirror illusion. The frantic scrabblings by the bedside were dismissed as the ravings of madness.
The cause of death was determined to be that of a heart attack brought on by stress. That’s how the story ended.
*
The infinite mirror trick is a lie. You know how it goes, you stand between two mirrors facing each other and you’re greeted by an infinite line of yous, disappearing into the horizon, but in truth mirrors don’t reflect 100 percent of light, so each repeated reflection is a little dimmer than before. So if you strain your eyes long enough, you can see your reflections disappear into blackness.
Continue readingWannabe
That old ad is doing the rounds on social media again. It has always haunted me, but after the day I’ve had at work, I’m regretting my life choices more than ever. I indulge myself by dialling the number.
“Is it too late?” I’ll say. I sigh when a recorded message tells me that my call cannot be connected.
I know exactly where I was on Friday 4th March 1994. It was mum’s fortieth birthday, so I had trudged into town after sixth-form college to browse the shops for a gift.
The mirror had caught my eye immediately amongst all the other bric-a-brac, emitting a soft golden glow under the lights. It had been relegated to the back of a shelf behind five dusty dolls, which I ceremoniously brushed aside.
Continue readingBlink
“Did you see that?”
The man before me was a horror. It’s pale face was twisted in anguish like a Halloween mask held to the fire. It scratched at it’s scalp, at the visible, glistening wounds that ran like muddy rivulets between tuffs of matted hair. It’s eyes, milky and dull, were set deep into it’s skull. It’s jaw hung slack. Teeth haphazardly stacked like a tombstone lying abandoned upon a vandalised grave. A monster. Always watching. I hated it.
What was it’s intentions?
Continue readingThe Messenger
The robin is perched on the railing of the balcony outside. I can tell without even looking out there. I’d know its song anywhere, though I wouldn’t have expected to see one here, at this time of year, and in this idyllic holiday cottage where I’m staying. I smile to myself and finish making my morning coffee. I picked up these coffee beans in the local market yesterday, and their chocolate-rich aroma fills my nostrils as I stir in the milk, the spoon jangling pleasingly against the china cup.
A robin used to arrive in our garden every year on the anniversary of Grandma’s death when I was a child. Mum would ask me to help write a newsletter for the bird to take to her, wherever she was, updating her on all that we had been up to that year. I used to love sticking in photos and drawing pictures of all the activities we had done and all the holidays we had been on.
Continue readingI’ll Sacrifice Sid
‘Morning, my lovely, I’m campaigning on behalf of the Resettlement party. You’ve heard of us? But of course. Who hasn’t? We’re setting the pace, aren’t we? We’re on all the front pages. Can Resettlement rely on your vote?’
‘Well I don’t rightly… I mean who are you going to…?’
‘If you’re born here, you’re OK. You’re in, you’re one of us.’
‘And if you’re not…?’
‘You’re looking at a package to help you return from whence you came. A tidy sum.’
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