Guest Rules
Guest Rules By Lorna Easterbrook I’m seven years old. I think. They can’t be that long married, my uncle and his new wife, because they don’t yet have children. So I’m somewhere between six and eight. Let’s call that seven. We’ve gone to see them in their new house. I think it’s their birthdays, so […]
How Much Rain Can A Cloud Hold?
How Much Rain Can A Cloud Hold? By Laurie Bolger She wants to be the girl in the passenger seat, feet up on the dashboard, playing with the radio while he drives. Outside, the glass is clinging to a thousand little drops. She tries her best to count them before the windscreen wipers quickly flick […]
Felt
Felt By Claire Hart In the end, we just don’t fit. Like my favourite jumper, too many times through the wash, we restrict my movements and itch my skin. The first morning I notice, the excuses come: the weather too warm, my breakfast too large. It’s me―not it. Not us. Nothing has changed, we say; […]
One To Four
One To Four By Catherine Edmunds Rachel is curled in the big red armchair, listening to Haydn string quartets and reading about a container ship full of cannibal rats that has run aground in Plymouth. The rats sit around a table, this is it, guys – last supper, and tuck into each other with tiny […]
Handkerchief
Handkerchief By Sarah McPherson Nanny Susan says lying’s a sin, and people who sin go to hell. Julie knows she means when they die, but she still thinks sometimes about a big red devil, like in the cartoons, coming up out of the ground to carry people off. Even the sky looks angry today. Rain […]
Good People Make Bad Couples
Good People Make Bad Couples By Marina Rubin Flora was getting married. Neither she nor her fiancé wanted to get married but their relationship was like a suitcase of unnecessary things in that Ukrainian proverb: тяжко нести, й жалко кинути. Too heavy to carry but oh, such a shame to drop. And then, on some […]
Digging
Digging By Katya Bacica I discovered a tree stump. To think I would start afresh with this garden, me standing proudly at the edge of the grass, looking over what I thought was rich, dark, deep soil – not empty, just waiting. The opposite of empty, in fact. Pregnant. But I shoved the spade in, […]
Evening
Evening By Sam Howroyd She smiled with her mouth shut. He grinned back a spread out smile with his mouth wide open and his teeth glaring in the sun like he would eat her. She kind of stepped back, kind of stopped, kind of looked frightened. He didn’t notice it, or acted like he didn’t […]
Demonstrating Change
Demonstrating Change By Cherry Potts The crowd was quiet now, shuffling uneasily before the enormity of the gates and the dark-clothed, plastic-shielded, bright-helmeted wall defending them. Hesitant quiet, pregnant quiet; the drumming and whistles had petered out, the cheerful shouting and chanting was extinguished. As one, the police line stepped forward, locking their shields together. […]
Anomic Aphasia Or All The Words I Used To Know
Anomic Aphasia Or All The Words I Used To Know By Elaine Mead We found it funny at first. You knit your eyebrows together in amusement as I describe the large white block, the placid rectangle, the cold cupboard in the kitchen. You mean, the fridge? Your eyes twinkled. I made a joke to mask […]
