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 readingThat 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 readingIt’s been four o’clock forever here. An almost endless afternoon spinning off into the distance, only concluding when the skies darken, and rain falls like frozen droplets of spite on the bald patch at the crown of my head. If they named this spot “Ennui”, I would not be more surprised than I already am. So complete is its banality, it vies with “a rural bus stop” for the listless black hole Victor ludorum.
André Gide once said, “One doesn’t discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore.” Gide has clearly never set sail for Gowerton.
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Alyria stood, tears pricking the corners of her eyes.
“Fuck,” she whispered.
All the sacrifices she’d made to get to this point, all the favours traded, the coin expended, the hard graft… it was all for nothing. Before her, the ruins of the gateway taunted, its rubble strewn over twenty square metres. With a wordless, throat-ripping howl, she sank to her knees.
Even the breeze through the dusty ravine seemed to mock her, whispering “too late, too late, too late” over and over until it became almost torturous.
Three long Earth years she’d travelled to get here, following rumours and sotto voce conversations in bars she thought she’d never get out of. The laser pistol at her hip had seen more use than she’d hoped – slavers, kidnappers, and perverts had all stared down the barrel, and more than once she’d barely escaped with her life.
And all for this. For nothing.
Continue readingDear Harriet.
I guess this is it then, the end of the line.
You know why I hired you? Because convincing a halfway decent person to go out with me is an impossibility.
Recall Sam Jackson yelling and waving a gun in some poor bastard’s face. All the poor bastard can do is say “what” over and over again because he’s too terrified to even think.
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Fortuitously, the window was wide open when Greg hurled Alexa through it.
‘I’m so bloody sick of that voice that knows everything and patronises me and drives me completely round the bend. Good riddance. I hate you, Alexa.’
Poor Alexa. She had understood that things were not going too well, but this was beyond bad. Leaking and whining she fought her way, with the remains of her power, to a small grove which offered a bit of protection.
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Randolph Crow remembered his boy Martin as an excited ten-year-old, leaping out of bed Saturday morning and hurrying to the local library two miles away, before returning arms loaded with books on moths and roaches. His bedroom was transformed into a museum of mounted bugs.
An obsession that, Martin’s old man noted with some relief, was replaced with a love of chemistry in his teen years.
At an age when one should be sullen and moody, Martin had the bright-eyed look of a curious toddler, treating the world like a big playground, his bedroom now a laboratory of powders and test tubes.
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Light from the hallway shone through the glass of the door. A signal to say it wasn’t safe. She turned away straining to stay calm when time was running out. The next place was easily a mile away. Not too far in daylight, but in the dark and with what she carried under her cape it would be difficult. Nudging the weight into a different position, she cautiously moved on, her arm numb. The road was quiet, but sensing danger, she slid into the shadow of the wood. It wasn’t much safer. If she was caught it would be said that a woman alone at night was asking for trouble.
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