The red trees, so handsome in the setting sun. Some hoofed animal trots away and the birds chirp lazily as roosting time draws close. The light! Gorgeous! Perfect to take her picture. “Come on, my love,” I say. I can tell she’s tired but we have come so far for this backdrop; the still lake, [...]
Marvin the Marvel takes Browning’s advice, ‘a man’s reach should exceed his grasp’, a little too literally. Alas, all his vaulting ambitions are matched by a capability only adequate to plunging off the end-of-the-pier – where he belongs – into the murky depths below. Stick to children’s parties and seaside resorts, is my advice [...]
Nar: The pale men burst out laughing again. The young man tried to control himself but it was impossible. Their laughter was contagious. Voice: Faggot… Piece of bread… Look at the faggot with his piece of bread… Let’s kill him…
He never could understand water. Anyone would have said that there was nothing to water, simply that it was water. The thing that no one understood about his interaction with water was merely that he didn’t know what it looked like. It was clear, his father had told him and it makes you wet. But [...]
“You’re coming to Vincent’s retirement do?” Marie-Louise asks, peering over my shoulders as I stamp and sign the minutes describing my latest additions to the file I’m working on. “Oh that. Right. Give me a second…” I finish off my last signature, a scrawled ink monstrosity. “…Done.” Castle Gormenghast now carries my seal of sorts: Marek [...]
Stupid early morning flights. Stupid consideration for others, leaving her alarm clock tucked away under her pillow, so as not to wake the guests with which she shared the small, sweaty hostel room in Seville. And now she was stuck here, all on her own in this foreign country, for two whole miserable [...]
Each bleep, chirp and ring, each cheery 16-bit melody brought back the shape and never-quite-forgotten texture of afternoons and weekends more than two decades past. It felt a little like inhabiting an old skin, feeling out old, dusty corners of the mind that had long lain unused. The familiar rhythms hardly even needed re-establishing: jump, [...]
These stories are all true. Except for the ones I made up. *** Dining at a somewhat up-market restaurant in Palace Square in Valletta, I open the menu, to find scrawled over the items a handwritten note, which reads “This is my written notice. I Quit! Fuck you!” followed by the almost illegible signature of [...]
The worst part is putting everything into words. Trying to, at least. Pictures too, they just aren’t the same. Conversation worked, sometimes, though you’d have to be the extra-sensitive kind to listen to Herman for long enough without either scoffing or allowing your eyes to glaze over as you think about something, anything, other than [...]
“At times like this I miss the old days,” he says as he wakes up, yawning and stretching. His eyes are still stuck closed from sleep, and his mouth tastes dry and bitter. “How so?” she asks before emerging from the shower, steam trailing behind her. “I… had a dream. About the birthing days of [...]
