Joe waited until he was home alone before opening the bag. He dropped it on the kitchen table over a touristy place mat and scattering of unopened envelopes. His sweaty fingers gripped the zipper and the canvas spilled apart into …
Mary, Mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells, and cockle shells,
And pretty maids all in a row.
The car pulled up outside the entrance and three siblings stepped out into the hot sunshine. Sharp light …
The Promotion
Interview room 341 is very small and dark, like a segment cut from a corridor. Harry notices the odd ratio of wall to door to window as he automatically moves towards the one empty chair. An inspector sits …
I am
The car jolts and rocks along the track, as though dragged by chains to a chased beast.
I am the beast.
The indistinct greyed-over bogs and swollen rivers coming down the hills whish by the windows
I am …
The Mistake (a very short story)
Wasn’t like the daydreams at all. They chased me up Taylor’s street and left down St. Kilda’s Avenue and over the grassy wall into Finny Park where the trees were just beginning to leaf …
Dr Malthus and Dr Richards were very excited about something. They leaned over each other to get a better look at the microscope.
The film crew, squashed along the other side of the capsule, paid them no attention. They had …
“It’s the wrath of God!” cackled wiry old Mrs Deacy with a smack of her stiff walking stick on the linoleum. “Settle down please, Mrs Deacy,” said Frank McDonagh. “It’s the same spring tide as every year, just coincident with …
After washing my hands with warm water I squirt disinfectant gel on them from the plastic dispenser that hangs on the wall, and stand looking in the mirror while I rub them dry. Looking older? Surely, but it’s so hard …
When the branch of the beech tree broke Morris fell down in a heap next to the trunk. He lay there and stared at the sky. “Stupid branch!” he cursed upwards. The tree was unmoved, its leaves shivering in the …
Burgundy. Cabernet Sauvignon. Merlot. White, red, rosa, bubbly. Brian bought 500 grams of dry fusilli pasta in Dunness Stores before going to the Dole Office to sign on. He should have gone earlier; it was overflowing when he got to …
Jamie works in one of those offices down on Abbey Street. It’s a call centre or something: the European office of some American tech company. Anyway he’s been there over a year now. Most of his gang are in Australia, …
Rainy Day in Renvyle
Rain sweeps across the wide open,
Clouds rolling in from the west,
Tears from the sky set in motion
Blown by a wind that won’t rest.
Ceaseless the changes chase over,
The shelterless landscape at speed.…