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
Beginnings in the crags, where the mist skeins slide over rubbled morain, where the clouds purple and brood. The water is nowhere and everywhere, tinkling and spidered under the stones, the little rivulets caught between plains of sky and scree.
Continue reading “Dropping | Creative Nonfiction”
We’re into the depths of winter with some haiku this Sunday morning…
Deep
A new year tundra.
Tree, roots locked and wind-shivered.
Life sits deep within.
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.
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.
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”
We’re ice-bound in Scotland at the moment – some appropriate haikus as follows…
Spidered
Spidered creep across
Night-chilled glass, untouched by the
Hill-hidden sunlight.
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.
Bobbing, just down there to the left.
It’s the time of the day that I resent. I need to finish walking the dog in fifteen, leave the house in twenty-five, be at the train station for six-thirty, into the office and at my computer for eight.
That’s enough, Charon.
There will be questions, that’s the problem. People following procedure, people showing initiative-
Enough, I said.
Continue reading “Plausible Deniability | Short Story”
It’s grey skies and a chill wind in Scotland as we head towards the year’s end, so here are a couple of moody haiku…
Coal
A year’s fag-end gloams,
Underlit by coals, over-
hung by mauve smoke skeins.
Continue reading “Coal and Curl | Haiku”
Eight bells, and stepping out of taxis, the sharpeners, the cashpoint visits, nervous chittering and you look fabs, and backslaps, bouncing on the balls of their feet as they wait for some straggler.
Nine, and the rush of warm air from the pub, the I’ll get us a tables, and this one’s on mes, and at the table it’s coats on the backs of chairs and seat swapping and the tacky surfaces, the beer mats flipped and everyone finding their places in conversations.
By ten the latecomers have arrived with embarrassed excuses and never mind you’re here nows, the finding of extra chairs and sorry is anybody sitting here, the tray of shuddering shot glasses that someone’s ordered on the sly, the this is how it started last time, the bonhomie a little less forced.
Continue reading “Night Out | Short Story”
We’re in the middle of a cold snap in Scotland, as you might be able to tell…
Caster
Caster dusting on
Bin lid and bough, sill and stoop.
Open, winter skies.
Continue reading “Caster and Creak | Haiku”
RECONNAISANCE REPORT – URGENT STOP
PLANET 4662/1183J/983!/11C STOP
FOR IMMEDIATE ONWARDS TRANSMISSION TO TRANSGALACTIC ANALYSIS CENTRE STOP
FAO ADMIRAL PEATY STOP
MA’AM STOP
AT THE MEDIAN LARGE SENSOR ARRAY YESTERDAY 2526HRS A NOTABLE OBSERVATION WAS MADE STOP
AS PER PROTOCOL WE ARE NOTIFYING YOU AS THE OBSERVED OBJECT AND PHENOMENA MEET THE CRITERIA FOR IMMEDIATE FLAGGING MEMO 62 V.3 REFERS STOP
Continue reading “Planet 4662/1183J/983!/11C | Short Story”
Loch Ness Monster, stamped long
Across a once-round coin.
A penny,
Pressed into nothing,
Into something more than money.
What route to the heavy, glass-bound rollers?
Which grasping hands, dark pockets, upholstery crevices before
Arriving iron-smelling, earth-born, newly pressed again?
How many through my own fingers
From museums and galleries,
Raucous funfairs and till-chimed gift shops?
Lost, slipped behind dust-bound bookshelves
Or down churning gutters beneath rumbling, work-bound feet.
That fate perhaps,
But for now a clammy, toddler’s hand
An o-shaped mouth,
A treasure, gleaming gold.
Continue reading “Loch Ness Monster, Stamped Long | Poetry”