Mushrooms and Monsters
Manus Gloriae In graveyards we live, so you can thrive. But you flee — to your Tarshish perhaps, quailing round Joppa’s piers. Why? Because we’re pallid? Because of cousins like ‘dead man’s fingers’? Or because we thrive in fields that refuse to give up their dead? Wild candles five, within each a wick unlocks the night, to set you off …
300 Word Nightmares
Missy and Jess
Missy’s Last Day Out Jerome and Missy stood in the derelict Museum of Mankind. Beyond, terraformed terrain rolled away as featureless as the controlled weather the lizards loved. Missy peered into the exhibition cabinet: Christmas cards: c.2013 ‘Will it snow this Christmas, daddy?’ Her dimming eyes searched his for fragments of hope; fragments that over time coalesced into faith. ‘Yes.’ …
Municipal Misgivings
Dustmen The dustmen come every Friday. Residents put their trash out the night before. We neither see nor hear the bin men, but the Council ensures our refuse is taken to the dump next to the old Art Deco cinema. I saw Old Lady Slippers and her ancient husband in the new movie at The Gaumont this week! They disappeared …
Shadow Laughter
Erwin’s Catch 22 That bloody interfering woman drove him mad. His temporal microscope and paradigm shifter had been moved so he nosed around them. Nothing. ‘Darling, have you seen the compsognathus?’ he shouted.His wife entered with a cloth and bottle of Singularity-Be-Gone. ‘What, dear?’ ‘The dinosaur.’‘It was weeing on the Wedgwood. I popped it into that box of yours.’He looked …
The Ejection of Anima
Open Casket Did she just wink?Something about her beauty was…off.The beryl of her eyes?The barest invitation of a pout? That wasn’t it.Nor was it the chatoyancy of her skin.The hair, perhaps? Ethereal waves that might carry you off without an anchor.No.The tilt of the nose, then?Just a nose…But, sixteen eyelashes twitch, release themselves and crawl down her cheek.Ah yes, the …
In Gothikas Res
Catching the Scythe When full moonbeams hit St Barquistes, listen.The stony buttresses live; not only flesh can pass away.In the gloom of grief, under black rainbows, the gargoyles sing: some in Hebrew, some Latin or French; others still, Aramaic.But heed their canticle; listen for names.And if any named are those you love, spend time with them while you can. Be …
The Herald
Man used to fly, but no more; not since The Shift. Then, am I not a man? Alone, naked, and illustrated in script, but a man all the same. As The Shift razed civilisation, I rose; a traveling man with only inks and an unshakeable task to record, but a man all the same. I soar with the Trade Winds …
Stone Snitch
Childhood memories often come complete with a hazy, nurturing comfort, but even the best ones carry a burdensome, bittersweet aftertaste.I’d forgotten all about that summer in Kent at the Bloemfontein House, and the foul drinking water. What I do recall is Rex Bloemfontein’s diaries. Slick, greasy things bound in a cheap, ersatz leather; wild cursive loops and bowls exalting his …
The Catch
Whilst the North Sea commits suicide over the rocks of Northumberland, the town’s fishermen repair their nets and pots. It’s hard to figure the coarse, knotty meshes piled at their feet for the silken webs the men back home spin over their heads; like the most skilled pizzaiuolo, my fellow Florentine’s artistry set their nets so delicately on the Arno. …