Snakes and Apples, published in Mslexia, April 2007.
I sometimes think that keeping a garden must be the greatest gift you can ever give your future self. And the greatest act of faith.
It’s November now; there was a hard frost this morning and when I went outside the grass crackled and broke beneath my boots like spun sugar. The earth clawed at my fork and the cold bruised my hands as I packed the ground with bulbs.
All I see now is black earth and dead leaves. I have to imagine the first green shoots nudging the soil aside in February, that sudden shift when winter seems to loosen.
But I’ll never see it. I don’t even now who will.
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Love and War, published on Tales of the Decongested, March 2007
Would it surprise you that I miss those times when we conspired against each other?
An office can be a lonely place. Sometimes it depresses me to spend my days cheek by jowl by inbox with people who know nothing more of me than surfaces. It is easy to feel invisible and insubstantial – so unregarded that one could simply float away.
But back then there I had you, my enemy. We knew each other so very well – yours was all the intimacy I needed.
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Astronomy for Beginners, published in The New Writer, November/December 2006
It’s been 11 days now. Nobody says it yet, but they think she’s already dead.
At first it was just a short news story tucked away at the end of the programme. I would have missed it if it weren’t for the photograph, a slightly blurred picture, her face in profile. I recognized it immediately, with that heightened awareness one has for something already seen.
Mr Hitchcock Blonde, published in Litro, no.29, November 2006.
Hugo wakes with a kick and a gasp, his blood thudding. Vapour trails of a dream thread through his mind but dissolve before he can catch the taste. Outside a breeze shivers through the branches of the cherry tree. Beside him Eve’sbreath is soft and serene, untold sights fluttering behind her closed eyes. Hugo inhales and holds the air down for a slow count before breathing out, then sneaks another look at Eve to check that she is really asleep: she has not moved.
Under the duvet Hugo curls the fingers of his right hand around his left wrist until the bones grate together. Now his fingers are digging into the softer flesh, pushing past the tendons. He feels a pulse fluttering wildly.
Read more: pdf.
mysteriousdeaths.com, published on Pulp.net, April 2006.
The funerals started as a joke. Maybe the joke was in bad taste or maybe it was only Julian and me who found it funny. Whatever.
Read more: html, pdf.
