Fiction

Click on the title to read the full story.

SURVIVING by Mick Armstrong

It was through heavy eyes that I scanned the small dingy room that was to change my life. After finishing the last shift of a week of nights in the prison, I suddenly felt the early morning tension of being the only man in a Rape Crisis training day, “the enemy within.”

It seemed okay to miss a day's sleep. After all I would have a couple of days off after this. But, it had been a tough week and sleep was now trying to invade all my senses. Every bone ached with the desire to slip under a duvet and sleep for a week.

LILO IS A FAT COW by Lucy Douglas

Leila loved bed. She loved bed more than anything else in the world, although she also loved sofa, and was really quite attached to the plush seats at the back of her local cinema.

DUE CARE AND ATTENTION by Sara Innes

From the corridor I catch a glimpse the Carnegie’s cat as he lounges, a sprawling unapologetic puddle warmed by the afternoon sunlight flooding in onto the busy carpet. The soft orange stripes gently rise and fall, almost imperceptibly, as he purrs. Contented and uncaring, he squanders time between meals by napping and taking occasional comfort breaks, through the cat flap, in the shrubbery. I watch the sleeping animal and sigh.

THE DEATH OF BECKY by Julie Myatt

Cheryl sat at her dressing table gazing at her reflection. She placed the pads of her fingers on her cheeks and pulled down. There were mud coloured smudges under her eyes.

‘How am I going get rid of these dark lines under my eyes, Farrah.’

Farrah stared back at her with her cold azure eyes and said nothing. A non-smile on her flawless face. 

CORNERS OF THE ROOM by Yvonne Crossley

Lynne kept his bedroom meticulously tidy and clean. She paid special attention to the eastern corner: dusting the wooden dragon regularly, never placing a candle or water near it, not even a painting of water, for she knew the east was home to the green dragon. And its element was wood; whose natural enemies were fire and water.

COLD FEET  by Anita John 

He had to look again when he saw them. The feet. They were pale and naked. In a place they shouldn’t be. On a train. Resting on the top of a seat, five places down from him, displayed like a flag for world peace. Like two doves on a black shed roof, one folded under the wing of the other. Looking at him. Watching. Challenging. He shifted in his seat. The big toe of the right foot was waving to him. He looked away. Embarrassed.

THE HALLOWED CHIEF by Julie Myatt

His face lifted allowing the piping hot water to prickle onto his flesh; it was deliciously painful. Scrubbing furiously at his skin with an exfoliating sponge was deliciously painful too.  He had bought the sponge because it was made from twigs and it had originally been used to bathe sacred chiefs. He enjoyed scuffing his skin until it bled and he saw himself as being hallowed.  

Returning to the bedroom he gazed down at the young woman’s naked form and smiled; she looked so peaceful. He perched on the side of the bed and swatted away the blowfly that had settled on her eye duct. Gently he ran his fingers over the red marks on her neck gazing at her with his head cocked to one side.

ROUTINE by Georgina Phillips  

Radio pings into life - 6 o’clock in the morning, another dark, cold start, trudge down the road, stumble into potholes, buttock-clenching fear of falling on the ice and doing in the knee again so that by the time you reach the foot of the road every muscle is screaming, tensed and aching.   

WHAT’S THE POINT? by Georgina Phillips 

Why write a family history?  Is it because we are so scattered these days, the diaspora of economic necessity?  Do we all feel the need to provide ourselves with some solid foundation by tracing our roots? My dear mother is now aged 96, very frail, and I regret not embarking sooner on this journey of discovery.  Born before World War I into an age now forever lost she was the second youngest of seven surviving children.  Her parents were born in the 1870’s, and had their first child fourteen years before her birth; thus, she has little recollection of her oldest siblings.

PRODUCTS PAST by Georgina Phillips

I was going to write about Mum’s indispensable companion, slayer of foreign bugs and beasties, so dear to her that it travelled back from Malaya, only to languish in the garden shed. However, Pam Ayres beat me to it when she immortalised it in the following memorable verse: “My Mother had a Flit gun…” 

AUTOBIOGRAPHY (AN EXTRACT) by Mick Armstrong 

Senior School wasn't really much of a learning environment for me. A prime example was the technical subjects.

Our woodwork teacher, the aptly named Mr Woodham was at the point of despair with my lack of skills, so, after yet another mistake in cutting a joint into a piece of wood, he sent me outside to run round the playground. However, I couldn't see this as being any kind of punishment. From then on I made sure I made a mistake early on in every woodwork lesson ... after all I love running.