October 2007
11 posts
The Goodbye
‘I’ll give you a minute,’ said the woman in white. She left the room. Claire put her head down on the steel bench. It smelt like hospital grade disinfectant and was cold enough to hurt her ear, but it was worth it to be close to him. Her cat. Her best friend. His grey fur was a matted mess along his back, where he could no longer groom himself, and his eyes were sinking back in his head....
Leg
It was like no meat she had ever tasted. It was the same colour as veal, but with none of the sweetness, the melting mouth feel. She had paid half a million dollars for the privilege of her plate at this exclusive dinner party, but the Pièce de résistance was tough at best. ‘What cut did they say this was again?’ she whispered to the gentleman by her side, a Japanese tycoon. ‘I believe it is part...
Hide and Seek
There was a sound, a loud banging at the bedroom door, as though someone was closing a car door in quick succession, over and over, and screaming, ‘Mary! Mary! Open up you fucking bitch!’ Mary didn’t open the door. She was too busy trying to hide her feet under the skirts of her long evening gowns. It was like hide and seek, only when she was a kid her nose wasn’t pissing out blood, and she...
Based On A True Story
I have nothing to write tonight, Melissah typed. She pressed enter and leaned back against her soft pillows while she stared at the blank word document. In the background, her Adium window flashed. She clicked on it, bringing it to the front. Write about me! Josh had written. ‘Yeah,’ she said out loud. ‘Because that worked last time.’ She typed: I can’t write about people. He asked why; she didn’t...
Megadik
Mikey sat in a corner of his bedroom, surrounded by a moat of his own vomit and covered in Veronica’s blood. In fact, there was hardly a corner of the room that wasn’t smattered with gore or bile or pieces of torn entrails. The bed was the worst, of course. That was where Veronica – what was left of Veronica, lay on either side of the bed. She had been torn in two. Between his legs, Mikey’s...
The Hole
There was a hole in the face of the earth, eight feet across and endless. There had been no crash in the night, no bright lights, no suspicious sounds or sights or smells; just a hole where there had been no hole the night before. Lou and Des peered down into the hole. Lou was shining a light down there, but they couldn’t see the end. They were silent for such a long time, as though they were...
Capturing a Moment
She was teetering on the edge of a cliff, sixty feet above the stony shore. The ocean winds were riding the sharp edge of the cliff, whipping her hair around until it looked like a blonde aura around her face. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. I thought of everything I could write about this. ‘Please, no,’ I said. ‘I’m—’ The wind came up and nearly pushed her off the edge. ‘I’m sorry.’ I saw her step...
Goodnight Teddy
When Teddy’s mother described her son, she used words like ‘sickly’ and ‘not doing well’ and ‘I don’t know how long’. She said them in whispers when she thought he was asleep; she didn’t want him to know she said them. He knew anyway. He was tired and it hurt to breathe. He often woke up gasping for air, like Elizabeth had. She was dead. Mother said Teddy wouldn’t die, but he, at Seven, knew...
Gary's Eyes
She was staring at him, comparing him to Gary. The eyes were the same haunting blue, but that was all. Gary had been dead for nearly two months now, and she still saw his face everywhere. ‘Are you OK?’ He must have seen her staring. ‘I’m fine,’ she said. They introduced themselves. Then she accepted an invitation to dinner. Then they went to her place. Then their mouths were together and she was...
Babies for Breakfast
Katie pushed her breakfast with her spoon, driving the smooth skinned fruit around her plate in wobbly circles, leaving a trail of red, like watery blood, on the shiny white surface. ‘Eat your breakfast, Katie,’ said mummy through a mouthful of toast. ‘It looks like a baby.’ Mummy looked up from her newspaper. She moved her eyes from her daughter’s round face to the blood orange half on the plate....
The Portsmouth Shape
In the grey town of Portsmouth, where a dirty concrete wall kept the dirty sea at bay, was a Shape. It was like a plate metal tail or a horn or a topsy-turvy smoking pipe that had fallen asleep on a Y-shaped pole with its yawning mouth staring down at the saturated ground. Sometimes the Shape would make a mournful sound all on its own, like it was crying for home and murder. The children, who had...