A fly landed on the bottom of the saucepan that was resting on the drainer. Which was allowed. Because it was on the bottom of the saucepan, not inside it, unlike the fly that had greeted Cora when she’d opened the butter dish on Tuesday morning. It had been dead on its back, right in
Me and Shady Granger playing grownup. Me and he. Just past 12 years old. Me chugging an empty whiskey bottle and him fake-smoking a cigarette. Pretending we are like our own parents. His family came from over there. Forbidden part of town. Part of town where the poor folks live, my daddy always said, and
After departing in a blaze of mediocrity, Graham Vasey returned to St. Joseph’s Junior School only twice in his life. The first time, it was being renamed the Graham Vasey Junior School, in dedication to his Booker Prize-winning success. He had sprung from such humble origins; he thanked his schooldays, in several interviews, as a
You’ve just walked in the door, stripped off your Lycra and turned on the shower when you see it: the toe. Not an ordinary toe; not a toe attached to a foot attached to a leg attached to a body. No. This is a severed toe. Freshly severed. It’s upright and propped against the wall.
The Respondent routinely makes lewd remarks about the physical attributes of other women, which makes the Petitioner feel disrespected and unattractive. “I heard him on the phone to his brother the other day talking about our 16-year-old dogwalker. He said: ‘it should be illegal for her to saunter into my house with such a perfect
You take the back roads because the motorway scares you, especially at night. Your wife says, “Really? We’re doing this? You can’t drive in a straight fucking line?” She checks her watch and folds her arms noisily. She apologises to everyone when you get there. “I’m not pointing the finger at anyone,” she says, pointing
You show me the mouldy, rotting body of yet another Siamese Fighting Fish so we stop drinking and head off. In the pet shop we stop to talk to the yellow and blue macaw which answers to the name Pauline Conway. ‘What a disgrace. It’s too big for that cage. We’d do a better job,’
He came into the room and he had no idea that he wouldn’t be leaving, at least, not the same way in which he had entered. It wasn’t that kind of room. The kind a person can just up and decide to retreat back the way they came. She was already there. Sitting. Believing. That’s
The blubber-oil lamp flickers against a wall of ice and snow. Illuminated figures loom large like shadow puppets; huge and misshapen. Their dance, dark and muted, whispering from the shadowlands. It reeks like the campfires of my youth, but here the smoke is heavily infused with brine and grease. They begin quietly and without fanfare.
Josephine cooked the fish I did not want as I stood on the back porch smoking. The garden was alive and moved with unusual sounds. The wine tasted like metal on my tongue, cold red, that’s how she drinks it and that’s how it is. Ice ice baby. The forty degree heat sizzled my cool
