Posts

Legend Tripping

Image
  1. Most of the children of Carlin High School were engaged in the usual playground activities, girl gossiped rapidly sounding like a thousand busy typewriters; youthful first years laughed and chas ed each other around the yard, burning off energy; older kids from the rough end of town hid behi nd the toilets, smoking weed. Steven was sitting alone, perched on the fence like a hawk, watching all the normal mayhem when he spotted Simon Anderson take a nosedive onto the concrete. The boy just went white and dropped, and even though the other kids were making a godawful din, Steven definitely heard Simon’s skull crack like a heavy egg as it smashed onto the ground. The noise was a sickening, hollow sound that made his heart jump in his chest. He immediately jumped off the fence and rushed to see if the older boy was alright. In the seconds it took him to move to where Simon was, there was a large crowd around Simon, some girls were screaming, an older boy was shouting, “Get a...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Night Jogger

According to a manual on fitness that Tam once read, it was best to exercise in cold weather. He had taken that advice to heart early on in his attempts to shed the excess pounds he'd collected when the wanton behaviour of his 20's had become the unhealthy habits of this 30's. He lacked the confidence to go to a gym and the discipline of a strict fitness regime but was motivated to go out at night jogging mainly as a respite from his wife and children who he'd also collected in his late 20's. His route was a couple of miles down the long main road near his house and through the old industrial estate with it's endless stretches of high red brick walls and long abandoned factories. He took some aesthetic pleasure from the area. The empty silent streets, the darkness of the economically dormant estate and the austere functionality of the dated and vandalised architecture seemed to Tam to hold a kind of stark, haunting beauty which he considered satisfyingly...
Post a Comment
Read more

Glamour Girl

The party was in full swing, all the girls were dancing, some of the boys were too, though most stood propping up the bar and looking at the makeshift dance-floor with that kind of detached amusement guys always have before being dragged onto it by booze, pills or the occasional demanding woman. Kay and I had arrived half an hour before which became the subject of several dirty looks and whispered bitchiness. It was understandable, Kay was hot, gorgeous and wearing a thin tight red dress that left little to the imagination while it clung to her bountiful, perfectly placed curves. She was over six foot in those killer heels she wore and had long, gleaming, straight black hair which was woven into a plat. She looked like a supermodel, like someone who should be in a five star hotel or a luxury yacht. She looked completely out of place amongst all us chain-store frumps that hired out places like the bowling club for our friends birthdays. It was Doreen's night, her thirtieth ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Living Room.

Despite Malichar Street having recently been the beneficiary of some renewal schemes which turned the old ramshackle street into a trendy urban hub, the building at Number 65 was left untouched. It stuck out like a sore thumb amongst all the “gourmet” burger joints, designer boutiques and bars with pretentious names. It was an ugly, dirty building of the Victorian era, replete with rows of tiny boarded-up windows, rotting exterior paintwork and holes in the plaster that looked like the place had been shelled. Laughlin, who worked at one of those pretentious named bars -The Whistler's Redoubt- thought it an eyesore as he stared out at it every day through the smoked glass but there was nothing to be done. The council had marked the building “listed” which meant it was left for time to let it crumble. It was one of those addresses that was so out of place in such a hip area that it drew the eye; an incomprehensible brick lump amidst the aluminium and glass fronts. For six mon...
Post a Comment
Read more

Bed Socks

She was finally rid of him. She couldn't believe her luck. As Gwen watched him walk out of the flat, bags packed, she felt elated, two fucking years she'd wasted on the rat and then he goes and fucks Karen? The two of them could burn in hell. He gave her a little hang-dog look as he turned the stairwell. She almost giggled. Gwen slammed the door shut in his sickening face, leant against it and laughed. It was an expression of pure relief. She'd felt him less as a boyfriend and more of a dead weight she carried, now he was gone, finally gone, she could get on with her life. First of all, she decided, she would clean the flat from top to bottom, to get rid of his lingering presence; the smell, mostly. Twisting her hair back into a ponytail she marched into the kitchen and from one of the drawers pulled out a roll of black bin bags and began, systematically, to remove all physical trace of the clown she'd lived with. His shitty pretentious fair-trade organ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Hen night

The ritual was to begin at half past seven, though some of the more zealous adherents pre-loaded themselves w ith J aege r shots and lines of cocaine while they adorned the giggling would-be bride with the standard ceremonial accoutrements. It was important that she look the part. The location had been booked well in advance, a cheap function room above a seedy pub in the City's south-side. There had been recent attempts to gentrify the area, when the west end became too expensive even for the types who would normally live there. The area was not one for change and house prices, which were once rivalling the better areas of the city were in now in free-fall as the area reverted to its old, dark ways. In they came, in groups of twos and threes, young women with fake tans, cheap jewellery and almost incomprehensible voices that could chisel diamonds. Most of the cult were already out of their minds well before the dancing started. Pills were popped, glasses of coke wer...
Post a Comment
Read more

Popular posts from this blog

Crossing The Border

It was Driffield who made the call. The kid couldn't have been older than fifteen but he was already making a name for himself. How the hell he ended up knowing Waterhouse was something I never asked. Still, he did, and Waterhouse had been quite the rising star since the twins and their firm got banged up, two years earlier. “ Waterhouse would like a word, at the Acorns, soon as you like.” is all he said. It was the last thing I needed but I'd been around the block often enough to know saying no to violent narcissists was never a good idea. I was also curious. I'd been out of the game since before Rachman gave Ronnie and Reggie Esmarelda's to look after. Why would someone like that be looking for someone like me? The answer was simple. So it seemed. “ Those fakkin' Jocks need put in their place.” Waterhouse had said as he stood outside the Acorns, a Rothman's wobbling up and down between his lips as he spoke. He was a big bloke, too old for the hippy ...
Read more

From "The Cycle of The Sisters": Cailleach.

She sighed a cold white blizzard over the hills and glens. A freezing static, a swarm of ice crystals that clung to every living thing, suffocating it, drinking in the life and warmth and leaving only the silent empty paleness of death across the land. Under the frozen blanket she had woven nothing stirred. It was a web of which she was the centre. Through the eyes of a dying doe she saw the prey approach. A small red thing riding along the poisonous tarmac that had tracked out of the city into her pristine and unclaimed domain. She had been waiting for it. The deer finally died, her vision flitted, she was looking from elsewhere, down over the carriage the creature drove. It unwittingly crossed over the border of the real and into her territory without even realising it. Cailleach smiled and felt her stomach growl in anticipation. Adam did not know when he had left the house. He'd been in another fury with Lesley and the kids and stormed out, that much he reca...
Read more

The Scheme

Nineteen eighty nine, a number, another summer; sound of the funky drummer ubiquitous on the radio. Gordon Harper drummed his fingers against the wheel in time to the tune. It was a nervous staccato, no doubt about that. As he sat parked on Casgairt Road he wondered if he should just bolt. He'd a couple of grand left in his savings, and could be on the next flight to Chilé or Singapore, could be anywhere but here. He threw his cigarette butt out the window and immediately lit another. This was going to be a bad job, that became apparent as soon as Skinny's name was mentioned. When Dunkie mentioned that nutter he should have said “I'm out.” He didn't. No, he didn't want to look like a shitebag in front of the big boys. If he had any real stones he would have told Dunkie to take a fuck to himself. Instead he was sitting with a fucking shotgun under his seat waiting for that nutjob Willie Barr. Total... Fucking... Nightmare! Once more he sucked on th...
Read more