Travelling | Short Story

In Hong Kong there exists such a thing as a ‘coffin apartment’. Relative poverty and a live-to-work ethos have resulted in people existing in 18ft-squared apartments with plywood walls and shared bathroom facilities. One imagines flickering strip lighting, warped walls, and the sound of muffled sobs during the long nights.

Frank’s bedsit is nowhere near this bad, but neither is it much better. The square footage is bigger but there is, Frank imagines, the same sense of claustrophobia, the same feeling of a life built on foundations too flimsy.

Frank puts down his briefcase and his samples and empties his carrier bag onto the formica sideboard. A sweaty ready meal, a dog-eared Metro, and a £4.99 bottle of white wine.

He feels around for his mobile phone and places it on the worktop. No messages, no voicemails, no missed calls. The screen stares blankly back at him, as does the microwave clock and the light on the television. All on standby.

Mobile phone on a worktop

Frank is dog-tired, his suit wrinkled from hours spent in his car, his clutch foot aching. Frank knows that he should call, that the kids’ bedtimes are fast approaching and that Christine won’t answer the phone to him after eight o clock. He knows he should call.

Something stops him, though. It is the same thing that makes him pause every night. Frank looks forward to the calls, he really does, but he can’t help but feel that within those conversations – in Jack’s recounting of spelling test glory and in Penny’s eaten-all-up dinner – there is a fading, a distancing. Frank can’t help but feel that each call reinforces his not being there, that each conversation is imperceptibly more forced, more stilted.

It has grown gloomy in the kitchenette as evening draws in, but Frank’s tired eyes are tugged by crows’ feet and his mouth curves suddenly as the phone buzzes to life and the walls of the apartment melt away.

*Thanks for reading, folks. Image courtesy of pxhere. My recent short stories include ‘The Young Man from Number Twenty-Seven‘ and ‘Sense of Community‘.

Matthew Richardson is a writer of short stories. His work has featured in Gold Dust magazine, Literally Stories, Close to the Bone, McStorytellers, Penny Shorts, Soft Cartel, Whatever Keeps the Lights On, Flashback Fiction, Cafelit, Best MicroFiction 2021, Writer’s Egg, Idle Ink, The Wild Word, and Shooter magazine. He is a doctoral student at the University of Dundee, a lucky husband, and a proud father. He blogs at www.matthewjrichardson.com.

Doctoral Research | Update

It’s been a little while since I last updated on how my professional doctorate is coming along. I’m researching policing service provision for Gypsy, Roma, and Traveller groups in Scotland and the rest of the UK. I’ve had some really great data from both a policing perspective and from Gypsies, Roma, and Travellers in Scotland. When I last blogged, I was just finishing up my interviews.

Continue reading “Doctoral Research | Update” →

Excessive Dislike of Extraneous Noise | Article

After a long dalliance with the idea, I recently bought myself an antique typewriter on Ebay – a 1935 Remington Model 1. The purchase was somewhere between a harmless indulgence (my perspective) and a desperate reach for a threadbare writing stereotype (also my perspective). I will admit to daydreams of tinkering with the type mechanism, of slowly bringing the antique machinery to life, of clacking out short stories and articles a la Hemingway, freed from the tyrannical leash of internet-enabled smartphone or laptop.

The Remington duly arrived, all black and silver keys, pockmarked chrome, and decayed rubber – a true relic of pre-war administration. My nascent dreams of amateur tinkering were however soon under threat from a formidable supporting literature discussing carriage returns, ribbon spools, and platen knobs. I began to understand that this was a precision instrument, built in an era where precision, craftsmanship, and longevity mattered; it was not long before I concluded that the Remington Model 1 was far beyond my technical nous.

Continue reading “Excessive Dislike of Extraneous Noise | Article” →

Sense of Community | Short Story

These flats were quite the thing when they were first built – waiting lists as long as your arm, polite enquiries with people whose cousins’ brothers worked at the council and might be able to put a word in. These flats were the place to be back ten – kids running up and down the hallways and in and out of each other’s houses. Everyone looking out for one another.

Of course, nothing stays the same for ever. People move on and people move out; at least, people moved out around Irene. The folks next door had a family, and once Tommy started working on the rigs, Sheila wanted something to show for looking after the kids herself. Out they went to Clarkston or Eaglesham or some other swanky place on the south side. Raymie and Mags left for the Costa del sol when his retirement money came through. There was talk of letters and twice-yearly visits, but apart from a postcard twice a year nothing came of it. Plenty had dies, of course. Irene had lost count of the funerals she had attended at the church down the road; she was on nodding terms with the minister despite not being a great believer herself, and knew what sandwiches to avoid at the funeral dos afterwards.

Continue reading “Sense of Community | Short Story” →

Deep and Doused | Haiku

We’re into the depths of winter with some haiku this Sunday morning…

A bare tree bough set against a grey sky

Deep

A new year tundra.

Tree, roots locked and wind-shivered.

Life sits deep within.

An extinguished campfire

Doused

Flame-gnawed tree limbs and

Cinders nudged in night breezes.

Night-doused and dawn-brushed.

*Thanks for reading, folks. Images courtesy of Circe Denyer and Daniel Smith. My recent short stories include ‘The Young Man from Number Twenty-Seven‘ and ‘Plausible Deniability‘.

Matthew Richardson is a writer of short stories. His work has featured in Gold Dust magazine, Literally Stories, Close to the Bone, McStorytellers, Penny Shorts, Soft Cartel, Whatever Keeps the Lights On, Flashback Fiction, Cafelit, Best MicroFiction 2021, Writer’s Egg, Idle Ink, The Wild Word, and Shooter magazine. He is a doctoral student at the University of Dundee, a lucky husband, and a proud father. He blogs at www.matthewjrichardson.com.

The Young Man from Number Twenty-Seven | Short Story

Half a mile in and the bed-borne grogginess is starting to wear off. The frost is laid thin on the ground, not much more than a translucent smear on the pavement, and certainly not enough to slow his stride.

Trainers hitting tarmac provide the only real noise of the pre-dawn – muffled thumps on top of that unearthly, silent roar of a day not broken, of a world not yet roused from sleep. The man’s fingertips are numb, but already the pleasant ache of muscles working warms him from the inside.

Black and white photograph of a man jogging on a road

The real warmth, however, comes from the few dull, window-warped ensuite lights shining out into the darkness. It comes from the odd car ticking over in a driveway, pluming exhaust fumes into the morning as the frost creeps back from the windscreen, from the flickering blue light playing onto drawn living room blinds as some night owl slumbers in front of MTV-left-blaring.

It comes from the knowledge that he, and he alone, runs the streets at this hour.

Continue reading “The Young Man from Number Twenty-Seven | Short Story” →

Spidered and Still | Haiku

We’re ice-bound in Scotland at the moment – some appropriate haikus as follows…

Frost patterns on glass

Spidered

Spidered creep across

Night-chilled glass, untouched by the

Hill-hidden sunlight.

Red bird on a feeder in winter

Still

Frozen and fat balls and

Frost-fingered nyger, hanging

Still, in the chill air.

*Thanks for reading, folks. Images courtesy of Marco Verch and Chiot’s Run. My recent short stories include ‘Night Out‘ and ‘Plausible Deniability‘.

Matthew Richardson is a writer of short stories. His work has featured in Gold Dust magazine, Literally Stories, Close to the Bone, McStorytellers, Penny Shorts, Soft Cartel, Whatever Keeps the Lights On, Flashback Fiction, Cafelit, Best MicroFiction 2021, Writer’s Egg, Idle Ink, The Wild Word, and Shooter magazine. He is a doctoral student at the University of Dundee, a lucky husband, and a proud father. He blogs at www.matthewjrichardson.com.