Stories in Golddust Magazine, Literally Stories, Idle Ink, Writer's Egg, CafeLit, McStorytellers, Whatever Keeps the Lights On, Flashback Fiction, Down in the Dirt, Close to the Bone, Shooter, Soft Cartel, Fiction Junkies, and Heavenly Flower Publishing
Garth has an unusual talent and like all unusual talents, it doubles as a curse. That’s the way it’s meant to work isn’t it?
You see Garth can predict how near something is to breaking. That rusty swing in the park? Still 21,638 arcs left before the iron oxidises enough for that bottom-left link to come away from the seat. That toaster? Only 252 more slices of burned-black toast (that’s the way that Garth likes it) will pop up from that old, chrome warrior. Continue reading “Countdown”
Brokeback Mountain
Annie Proulx
Fourth Estate Publishing
GPB 3.99
‘Dawn came glassy-orange, stained from below by a gelatinous band of pale green. The sooty bulk of the mountain paled slowly until it was the same color as the smoke from Ennis’s breakfast fire. The cold air sweetened, banded pebbles and crumbs of soil cast sudden pencil-long shadows, and the rearing lodgepole pines below them massed in slabs of somber malachite.’ Continue reading “Book Review – Brokeback Mountain”
I was one of those kids that put batteries in their mouths. I used to like the big 9V bad boys. The ones that give you just a hint of a tingle, going right to the root of your tongue. That’s how it started.
It was the choking hazard rather than the electricity that concerned my parents. Didn’t bother me, though. Every time they would extricate a saliva-covered Duracell from around my gums, I would wait until they left the room before slipping it back in again. Buzzzzzzzzzz. Eventually, once they could safely disregard my swallowing the battery, they let me be. It was just a phase, and better a little sulfuric acid than LSD, right? Continue reading “Building up Resistance”
All the Light We Cannot See
Anthony Doerr
Fourth Estate Publishing
GPB 8.99
‘So how, children, does the brain, which lives without a spark of light, build for us a world full of light?’
Continue reading “Book Review – All the Light We Cannot See”
‘Madam…’
She is rocking back and forth in the bus shelter. It is four in the morning.
‘…the shapes,’ she mutters, hair falling over her face. ‘The shapes they were twisted into…’
‘Madam,’ says the paramedic as he puts down his medical bag and rifles for a notepad. ‘My name is Gary. We’ve received a call from a member of the public. Can you tell me your name?’ Continue reading “Bloody Furnishings”
Ellipsis Three
Compiled by Steve Campbell and Amelia Sachs
Print edition: GBP 5.00
Digital edition: GBP 3.00
Ellipsis ‘Three’ is, unsurprisingly, the third digital zine produced by Steve Campbell and his team of editors. It is a collection of forty-five pieces of flash fiction, with a limit of three-hundred words or less to test their submitters’ pith and discipline.
What results is the perfect coffee table magazine. Five minutes to kill until you leave to pick the kids up from school? Desperately fighting off the weekly house clean? Then Ellipsis is your friend.
Some of my highlights are as follows…
15:40
It occurs to me that I have never seen 15:45.
It’s a bit strange, because time is kinda important to me – almost a deity. It isn’t even as if 15:45 is a particularly unmemorable time, or that I am unable to assign a previous appointment or life event to it. I literally cannot remember ever seeing those digits on my clock. Continue reading “15:45”
You sit there like a mother hen, all your little chicks around you.
You’re at the head of the circle. Circles don’t have heads, but you are indisputably at it. Maybe it’s the teapot and tray of biscuits placed proprietorially at your feet. Maybe it’s the way that the ‘Tifton United Church’ mural sits directly above your head, like you’re the centerpiece in a postmodern interpretation of the sodding nativity. Continue reading “Knit and Knatter”
There it stands. My cathedral. Quite literally the pinnacle of my career. It was once a spectacle. A reference point for others to navigate by. It is there, they would say, so I must be here. Now my chimney is doomed.
Standing above the crematorium at Hopewells Hospital, the stack was a landmark, but also so much more. It was a portal into another world. People would start their journey at its base, lumpen masses waiting for transcendence. They would end it ethereal, curling around its blackened rim before being tugged away by the breeze. Used by thousands, beloved only by its creator, it stood to serve, not only pointing the way to heaven but giving its users primary ignition on their ascent.
The locals gather around it now, baying for its demise on their plastic garden chairs. There were no crowds when it was completed, but tearing something down? Why not make a day of it, and bring the kids too?
A crass countdown begins. I planned every brick in that tower and yet I, and it, are denied the dignity we provided for so many. The loudspeaker echoes off its façade – a noble final defence against the inevitable.
A button pushed. A guttural rumble. A rush of rubble and dust mushrooming towards the earth.
***As always, I’d be delighted to hear your thoughts/feedback!***
It’s really not so unreasonable, darling.
Every icon is defined by their attention to detail, by the emphasis they put on minutiae. By their idiosyncrasies.
Cleopatra used to bathe in asses’ milk. Phoney? Maybe so, but it demonstrated a willingness to go beyond what was thought reasonable. It demonstrated an inclination towards virtuosity.
Like Cleopatra, my face is my fortune, and whilst she could innovate using donkeys, these days going within a kilometre of a dairy product in New York City is enough to get one court-martialled for crimes against ethical wellness.
No. Nowadays we are forced to go further. Which is why I’m sitting in the first class lounge at JFK Airport waiting to fly to Frankfurt for no particular reason. Usually I have photoshoots to attend, ad campaigns to launch, skincare products to front, but when I’m not working I like to fly east.
Why east, I hear you ask as you thumb through the latest magazine with my face on it, as you devour every last scrap of gossip on a celebrity website. Because, my little pimple-faced, crows-feet-creased sycophants, the earth spins counterclockwise. A couple of long haul flights every week, and I’ve put miles on my odometer without tyres having touched tarmac. For every week you are getting burnt to a crisp by UV rays, I spend only six days. Whilst I am not turning back the clock on ageing as such, I am jamming a collagen needle in the cogs, all the while racing towards a rising sun.
What age, they’ll ask.
How is it done, they’ll wonder.
Well that’s how – with a T-Rex-sized carbon footprint and enough face cream to re-enbalm old Cleo herself. I’ve done more orbits of the earth than a GPS satellite. It’s called dedication, darling.
And they say you don’t require brains to be a model.
***As ever, all comment welcome!***
Matthew Richardson 