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Short Stories

The world’s unhappiest billionaire was born on 12 April 1974, in a hospital in Vienna. He was named Markus. His mother was named Katja. His father remained at home. Home was number thirty-seven Neugrabenstrasse, an inauspicious flat on the top floor of a Viennese suburb. The flat may as well ha

It's March and still the snow is falling, thick sooty flakes of it. It settles on heaps of slush, growing out of the ground like mould. Treacherous grey puddles line the road and a passing lorry leaves Vasilisa drenched. The driver speeds away and Vasilisa gives him the finger. She knows that in his

The rough clay figure of a turtle that looks at Rosemary from the shelf above her desk is a gift from her daughter after returning from her year abroad: ‘Here, this is for you, Mum. I bought it in a village near Quito.’ The girl’s round face looks up at her from the floor where she has b

They’ll be painting the park fence soon.  It could do with a new coat. They do it every now and then. There must be a list of fences they have to paint pinned up on a wall somewhere. They probably do nothing else day in day out but paint fences. Not exactly an interesting life, painting park fenc

'Clumsy Bitch.’ Struggling with her defeated umbrella, Anita had rounded the corner of Quay Street and collided with a similarly encumbered commuter, his face hardened into a discontent not solely the result of this encounter. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry. Sorry I couldn’t…’ she offered to hi

'Mum! David’s kicked the ball into the tulips!’ Spring 1965. I am seven. And a bit of a snitch. Upstairs, a curtain is scraped back and Mum appears, wagging finger completely at odds with the twinkle in her eyes. David gets away with murder now. Which is very annoying to my seven-year-old

It wasn’t until she found the arm on the kitchen table, wrapped in a length of muslin up to the wrist, the hand exposed and the index finger pointing at her usual seat at the kitchen table, that Lucy started to have suspicions. Joe came down for breakfast five minutes later, groggy with sleep and

The rain ran down Dave’s nose slowly and then dripped, noiselessly, on to the mud he was moving about on. Sometimes the rain also went down his back, somehow having got inside the inadequate anorak he was wearing. And it also crept deviously into his shoes; starting at the toe, it felt like it was