short stories

Ideas that won't grow any more at the minute.

Kenny

It's not often you look at someone and know they could kill. Realise immediately they're way beyond the idle, macho threats that disappear with the rage that uttered them.

A House Somewhere

Is betrayal a modern disease we can expect to see more of?

Bug

He would immerse himself in the more respectable bigger prize. Their life and all the nooks and crannies within it.
Cherry

Danny Differ

Danny Differ could grow a beard at 13, which he often did. I was a year older and struggling to get my bumfluff seen. He looked like he was from the fair or a modern day pirate, the girls loved him.

Dean

Dean insisted wherever he was at midday he dropped his trousers to get some air.

Floored

They were just small mishaps at first. Those tiny hiccups that cause an easily fixed and shrugged off disruption.

The Loss in Every New Beginning

The night brought peace, a temporary ceasefire. I woke to find the snow rushing silently to lay its wall-to-wall carpet. My first thought was take off the ring and throw it as far away as possible.
Cherry

Ringing the Changes

She'd wanted one for ages. There was no avoiding and no denying with adverts everywhere, that they were beautiful. But too expensive to buy right away.

The HR Manager

Until The Big Boss arrives and ignores her. Which she hurries to remedy by offering tea, breakfast, enquiries about his journey, help invading Poland...
Cherry

Jamie

He always tried too hard to play a part, needing other people to give him a stage. We were the theatre, but he was the lead actor.
Cherry

Ethnic Cleansing

She was always in. Confirmation leaked through by way of the dull, whiny hum of the stretching hoover, the dizzying spin of the washing machine or the clinking as she squeaked the duster round again.
Cherry

Steve from Research

He was on the train when he first felt it. Like a softening that lowered him further into the seat on the long, sapping journey. It wasn't a worry at first.

Henry Mention. Cardboard Box Supplier to the Masters of the Universe.

That's what my new business card says. They can't get enough of 'em. The factory where what they are made has had to open through all the weekends these last few months to keep up with demand.
Cherry

Namesake

Marrying a dwarf had shrunk his expectations. Friends, arranged the blind date where he'd nearly missed her in the bar, hidden by the grown-up sized world.
Story of the week

Marcus

...it was a nearly a draw in the 'who sounded most pissed when saying goodbye' competition. His mum and dad edged it though.

Robbing Peter

It was around the time I'd got into debt buying Marxist literature. I intended to sell it on, without profit, but couldn't even give it away. Nobody believed in politics anymore.
Cherry

Game Show

“You've got to do it. Give it a go, you never know what might happen”.

I'm not paranoid but...

It said it in the papers. Bubonic plague. That's what they called it. Like in the olden days.

Manson Strikes Back

"You have to go and see her now Paul. She said this minute".

£1 off with this flyer!!!!!!!!!!

All workplaces have one. Like a health and safety requirement. Someone in a band you can't avoid. They tell you flyers have been left on reception and promise to see you there.

That same old road.

I walked that same old road again today. The one I thought I'd left behind when I ran away. The one I'd walked too many times back then. This time it...