Alexei Stepanovich signed his name with a flourished S on the gilded, yellow note-pad. He was disgusted by his name and much preferred everyone to call him “Sue.” As such, every time he was forced to sign a notepad, an image of his own mild face or the bare breasts of a middle-aged woman, he always signed…
Life is seeing a woman in a white dress, that touches the dirty pavement, stumble drunkenly down the road at midnight. Life is finding solace in the quiet moments, in the peaceful parts, the tops of unused industrial stacks or at the end of the garden, where an old tree stands. Wondering to itself, observing…
At the end of the each month we round up the girls and slaughter them. They’re not really girls. You’ve got to be careful using such absolutist language. These are our jiggling jigglers. They jiggle for you, they jiggle for me, for us. People are easily offended, especially when we tell them that we…
Open up your gut, says the doctor. I peel it open with my bare hands, my fingers right through the skin. It’s like putty, really mushy. Open, open, my belly opens like a mouth, a toothless mouth. Did you ever make Plasticine animals when you were younger? I didn’t. I watched someone else. My stomach…
You’re just a blur, a smudge. Something that used to be. Faded wallpaper between cracked plaster. It’s green wallpaper and sometimes I see your face in it. I see your face in everything. When I dream, I dream about your shape, your figure. You are indiscernible. You are just a shape. There’s no definition, I…
You could hear her crying, all through the night, if you passed over the bridge on the way out of the village, past the old chapel. Wailing she was. Like a ghoul. We tried to get through to her, but she was whispering to herself, talking to the walls, sat on a rotting pew, in…
Recognize that it doesn’t matter if we spell it recognize or recognise or worship one god or another. Simple words are often the best in complex times. via the Daily Prompt
Derek the hound had the scent. I followed him with a torch through the copse of trees behind the Leary household. Mr. Leary had vanished two days before. Mrs. Leary said her husband had run away with the car and the cash from the safe underneath the bed. We’d found the car the day before.…
Grandma is ill again. She dips in and out. Today she’s told me to take Ginny out of the house, because the air is stale, and the house smells like dust. I ask Ginny where she wants to go and she says, not far, because Grandma is ill, so we decide on the corn-field behind…
She’s sitting there, eating tinned peaches. This is something we do every week. I drink tea, she has peaches, sat at a table in our favourite cafe. Today feels different. Next to the bowl is the book I gave to her last week. She hasn’t put it down. I’m in two minds. We don’t speak…
Seal Matches 