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
Just now, while you’re walking through the park, if you look up at the right-hand corner of the third floor of the hospital, you’ll see her, Bryony. You know she’s seen you; she has keen eyes and a sense for the coming and going of things. Back in her early twenties, when she was studying
He arrived on Nathan’s tenth birthday. It wasn’t a shock; it was as if Nathan had been waiting for him to appear all along. It had been a nice day, a little chaotic, but nice all the same. After opening the presents and tucking into a mountain of sandwiches, at three o’clock they cut the
Surrounded by bamboo trees, Molly lounges in her stained oak rocking chair, observing her spotted male cat and wondering which Goddess showered the boy with the gift of true patience. But not the kind exhibited by humans, who simply fall into a momentary lapse of reason and stare with vacant eyes at their immediate surroundings.
Too possessive to be a friend. Demanding to the point of being an acquired taste. He calls my name and expects me to come running and even if I close my eyes and try to ignore him, I hear him and feel him. God, I hate that. He never stays in the morning. That side
About two thirds of the way through ‘The Fabric of Tombstones’ there’s a line – short and sweet though it is – that perhaps sums up what we should expect from B.F Jones’ debut flash fiction collection. ‘All these souls, here momentarily, before going there permanently, trying to get on with their lives and make
The world was ruined, but I was the only one who could see; the sky bright red, buildings burning. Streets and buildings on fire. But the world seemed normal to everybody else. Overgrown carousels with faded creatures and bumper cars mocked with the inability to move, carrying instead a ride into fear. The wind rattled
“Fifty-fifty,” says the oncologist after some consideration. “Bloody hell,” says Doug, even though he’d asked. Of course he’d asked. Doug the gambler, the chancer, the fly-by-nighter. This time, more than any other, he had to know the odds. Because this time, they were his. He was the fighter in the ring facing a stone-cold ruthless
