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Short Stories

I am forty-five now, and have been getting work done since I was thirty. At first, I hesitated, because the face – my face, everyone’s – seemed too near the self to be meddled with. Those hollows at the temples, the mouldings of socket and cheek, are portals to the brain, the mind. And each wr

This is the place: four fields in the shape of a rough parallelogram. On her left, one part of the closest field is enclosed behind wire mesh. A path runs through long, wet grass towards a gate in the fence. Ahead of her is an open-fronted barn with a caravan parked inside it, a chimney rising from

She lay on a sun lounger in the garden, the morning sun wrapping her in its rays and whispering her to sleep. Clear thoughts were transforming into the figures and shadows of dreams. She was about to succumb to the final pull of slumber when a cool darkness blotted out the patterns that had been dan

The car, an old black Vauxhall Corsa – here called an Opel Corsa – was much lower to the ground than she’d expected and she’d landed too heavily in the driver seat. She went to check it was in neutral before turning the key, only to find that the piece indicating the numbers had fallen off t

A wave rolls, like a lumbering seal. The sea is a stretch of grey mounds and I wait for the next one; lazy, easy, barely moving. How I envy it. The water swells like a soft inhalation and yawns up the beach. Sums up Clenton-On-Sea, really. My head’s banging. I got up at the crack of midday, mas

October floated like a glacier into town. Abigail remembered the chill from her childhood, but memory alone could never summon its sensate richness: the sawdust-dry air, the biting wind that snaked up your sleeves no matter how you held your arms and the leaves that crunched like brittle insecuritie

Staff Notice Above all else, maintenance of the Plate Policy is critical. It is imperative not only for the smooth running of the breakfast service but also in setting a moral standard. When moral standards are allowed to slip in any group of individuals thrown together through necessity rather t

I sit inside and wait for summer to be over. Sometimes I sit upright in bed and read a book. Fully dressed though, as if I were about to go out. It’s all too easy to fall the long, hard way into bad habits. Sometimes I sit in the bath, the water cool on my skin. I light a candle and pretend it is