Fiction

Before earth, sea and sky, and before this community, I commit to protect the deep legacy from human disturbance, and to protect the world from the legacy, through the ten thousand years of its danger. I will preserve the records, knowledge and memory of this repository and what is buried here. This is my turn…

I watched images of a pouting statuesque beauty burst in two dimensions, frolicking inside the framed void, peering nonchalantly into the private room. Between flashes of the red swirling backdrop, I cast my eye over the nightstand, harbouring detritus of a life I knew too well: gin bottles, a candy storefront line-up of pills, Pepto-Bismol…

If you take a walk through one of London’s many parks, the chances are you will see a parakeet. Indeed, the likelihood is you will see dozens of the things, caterwauling amongst the trees in rowdy flocks of yellow and green.

It’s another sellout crowd for Hugh Briss—his third in as many days at the famous Club Comedia. His set, titled ‘Laughter for a Lifetime’, consists of only one joke—not a particularly funny one, and one that isn’t even originally his, so they say, but according to the critics it’s all in his delivery. See, he…

Most people don’t live in a building with a Wikipedia page, or in a flat that would bankrupt you to rent, a flat that needs three boilers to heat, a flat that should normally be owned only by overseas oil barons. It squats across the top three floors of an old Georgian building plastered with…

They can only see me if I let them, not like Emma, she doesn’t like to be seen. When I was little, before I moved here, I lived in a big house in the countryside.

Their fight will begin after dinner, once the plates are in the dishwasher, the surfaces wiped. This is unavoidable.

In The Villa they now wore grey jumpsuits, Velcro fastening, staff and guest alike wore the same. Ignatz alone wore a white jumpsuit. Everyone looked similar, although Garry Gold smelt very different.

“Little old ladies…they should be taken out and shot.” Flecks of saliva spat from his mouth as he banged down the discoloured telephone.

When we finally found it in the corner of the downstairs loo – the dead mouse – the children covered their noses with their sleeves and refused to eat breakfast in the kitchen because of an alleged lingering smell.