By night they came, six masked figures armed with chainsaws and handsaws, spreading through the garden like a poked ants’ nest. Their targets were eleven apple trees, two pears, one plum, one morello cherry, one gage and two damsons. The ground was arid, the grass yellowed by the August drought. The leaves gleamed silver in […]
Fiction
Sibilant Sunday
Spreading When Mr Andrews showed me how to prepare a sandwich. Like this, he said. And then I tried, myself. Got some butter on the end of the knife, not too much. So it could be managed easily. Smoothed it evenly over part of a slice of bread. Got some more. Mr Andrews took the […]
Shared Room on Union
They were parked on Union, in front of her place, their knees locked in conference around the stick shift, Janna and Justin talking, necking a little, the windows just beginning to steam. We’d better stop, she said. I should go now. It was one a.m., a Thursday night turned Friday morning. Squads of drunken students […]
Five Hundred and Forty Meals
One A small café, lunchtime. Ryan sits alone, chewing on the inside of his cheek. He watches people as they pass him by, looking for her. Short, blonde, very sarcastic: that’s all the information James has given him. Ryan is thirsty, but he thinks it best to wait. Polite. ‘Hello.’ A woman, short and blonde. […]
All that Jazz
It may have been in Ronnie Scott’s — Jack Bruce storming his way through a driving ‘Politician’— or it could have been in the Bricklayer’s Arms at a Curved Air gig where only the naked drummer was more drenched than myself but on one of those sweaty nights it had occurred to me to try […]
Three Stories
Economics I stole Mrs. Gavinchy’s car. I didn’t know it was hers, I robbed it from the multiplex carpark because Harvey Slade bought scrap metal and I thought if I gave it him for free maybe he’d take me out for a drink or whatever. But when Harv saw the car he was all, I […]
Backstroke
It was the year loneliness broke my back. September 2007, and I’d only been in town three weeks. Fall was the season I associated with Boston, so why not build the city into my plan? I’d finished out my job at the ‘word firm’—that’s what we called it, the editors. My ‘word tools’ thesaurus project […]