MIR Editor

I was in bed with Julia Roberts, drinking wine at her Hollywood mansion in Notting Hill. She wore the slinkiest black underwear and kept touching me. When I leaned in to kiss her, she did not reciprocate, just froze for a couple of seconds, then moved away, kept talking as though nothing had happened.

Twitter Envelope He came to like a submarine creature breaking the tension of the water. It was morning. He couldn’t remember going to bed. Not because he had been drunk or exhausted the night before – he had been neither. But the edge of his memory had snagged on something, stopped abruptly around 10 pm.

THOMAS MCCOLL LIVES IN LONDON, AND HAS HAD POEMS AND SHORT STORIES PUBLISHED IN MAGAZINES SUCH AS ENVOI, IOTA, BARE FICTION, FICTIVE DREAM AND SMOKE: A LONDON PECULIAR. HE HAS HAD TWO COLLECTIONS OF POETRY PUBLISHED: ‘BEING WITH ME WILL HELP YOU LEARN’ (LISTEN SOFTLY LONDON PRESS, 2016) AND ‘GRENADE GENIE’ (FLY ON THE WALL…

I sat chewing my fingernails at the back of the room while Courage scrawled on the chalkboard. Give dem dignity with an onrabull death. Her letters were large and unwieldy. Despite her diminutive stature and dimpled cheeks, when it came to fighting, she was the best there was, so her crimes against spelling could be…

We knew they would come; it was only a matter of when, so we responded quickly to the alarm. I took my position at the upstairs double-glazed window – the guest bedroom at the front of the house affords a panoramic view to the west. That was one of the selling points when we bought…

Passing over the Ouse and through the town square, Lana reaches the heavy church door and pulls the iron handle towards her. Not knowing what she is looking for, she meanders through the church – its innards now a vintage store. The altar houses a collection of pottery from the 60s, whereas the nave, pews…

You stand transfixed, hugging the cork bark of the Baobab tree as warm liquid drips down your legs, staining your white socks yellow. You want to bend down and scratch because it’s itchy, but you are frozen to the playground. You watch them form a circle around you. The revulsion in their frowns and screwed…

The first time the man arrives at the ballet studio, the girls ignore him. An embarrassing father come to watch a class, probably, or a friend of Miss Maisie. In the cramped corridor of a changing room, the girls are more interested in staying warm, twisting their hair into tight knots at the base of…

My father left Damascus like a lover creeping from his mistress’ bed in the dark of night. He didn’t even look back towards her as she slept unawares. He left her, but she had her revenge, as she would haunt him throughout the years. “I arrived in London amidst the smog of the 60s,” he…

Johnny Pulp sees his name tattooed all over the Lower East Side. On doors and walls and up the sides of fire escapes, there he is. He’s still somebody else the first few times he sees it. Still carrying the name he picked up in some other living city. He knows that if Johnny Pulp is tagged…