The Pygmy Giant

Moving day

2008-10-29T13:06:00.003Z

Well... That's it.

The Pygmy Giant is dead; long live The Pygmy Giant - now at

http://www.thepygmygiant.wordpress.com

Tomorrow our new and prettier incarnation will be sporting the winning piece from our birthday competition.

Watch that space.

Goodbye from here. Hello from there. And thank you for a very fun first year.

Road Rage

2008-10-27T11:54:00.002Z

by Bob Clay

"Turn right now."

Who is this silly tart in that Sat Nav box that keeps giving me orders ? "I'll turn when I'm good and ready, and not before." Hah, that's telling her.

"You have missed your turning, stop and do a U turn as soon as possible."

"I'll bloody well do as I please and you won't have any say in it. I don't take orders, especially from bossy women. Up yours." Oh yes, I was starting to enjoy this.

"You have deviated from your route, you should do an immediate U turn."

"I deviated cos I'm a deviant, I'm free, I don't take orders from anybody, especially a stupid bloody bint who lives in a small box. I make my own decisions and go where I please, something a being who lives in the tight confined world of a printed circuit board could know nothing about." I glanced at the Sat Nav smugly, challenging it to defy me.

"You should stop immediately. STOP NOW!"

I laughed, loud and hard, but I should have listened, because while I had been talking to the bitch, a petrol tanker had suddenly braked to a halt in front of me. Just before I hit it, I'm sure I heard her laugh back.

Bob Clay lives in Cornwall.

Inspiration

2008-10-24T14:09:00.003+01:00

by Yaja Kindermann

“I’m going to leave that cling film on.”

“Why? Winter’s over. It makes your window look dirty.”

“No it doesn’t.The sun makes it look like ice.”

“You’re mad, mad and cheap.”

“No I’m not. I’m a writer. Even that orange is a fiery planet to me.”

“And me? What am I?”

“My inspiration of course!”

“I love you.”

“See.”

Yaja Kindermann is from Herefordshire.

Scratches of Hope

2008-10-22T14:31:00.003+01:00

Aimee Wilkinson

Her back curved in a C with age, she bends over and scratches. Behind her, a queue of people line up and wait. I just want to go home, but the unstamped letter in my hand prevents me. The air in the Post Office is thick with sweat, stifled by the smell of stale deodorant. I watch as a wisp of grey hair falls from her bun and her brow furrows. She peers up at the sales clerk and orders four more. Total jackpot: six million.

The people in the queue shuffle their feet and sigh collectively.

Her hand trembles as she pays with a crisp ten pound note. She receives no change. Using a yellowed fingernail she scratches again, discarding each card on the floor in turn. One of these days she will win back all the sacrifices she gave throughout her life. She will win back her lost years and her forgotten home. But not today. The last card falls from her fingers and she moves on. Pocketing her hope with the remainder of her pension. Saved for a day much rainier that this one.

The queue shuffles forward and forgets her.

Aimee has recently had a short story published by the small publishing house 'The Time Travel Opportunists' and lives in Derby where she is currently working on her first novel.

in the past people wore 16 hole ox-blood doctor marten boots

2008-10-20T13:15:00.002+01:00

by Richard Barrett

this first line came to me waiting for the bus in Eccles,
opposite the wetherspoons
(the idea for the rest of the poem fell into place pretty
quickly
(although I wasn't to pick up a pen again for three days
(and only then after discussing the idea with my mate
(taking his bafflement as a sign of encouragement I
resumed)
I worked very hard on this line
this line too also took a lot of effort
(I couldn't make my mind up about it
(I read it and reread it several times, before deciding
it was okay)
I worked very hard on this line
(although really it was just an earlier line which i'd
cunningly reused)
I worked less hard on this line
(I thought I'd ask someone at work for some input
(then I decided I wouldn't)

*

showing the finished poem to a few people
here and there
the consensus seemed to be
it isn't so much a poem
more just a list of

shoes

Richard Barrett likes to listen to The Fall and drink Stella Artois. His blog can be found here.

Competition reminder

2008-10-20T13:07:00.002+01:00

Just a lil reminder about the birthday competition/party game due in at the end of the month...

Non-fiction, something to do with birthdays, by October 29th. The original post is here.

"The first thing ever published here was a splendid piece of short non-fiction by Bob Clay. I think it would be fitting, therefore, if the first thing to be published over on our new site, on our birthday, was another piece of short non-fiction. So - you've got until October 29th to write and send us something, and the pick of the bunch will be the birthday piece. And just to make this a little more fun, it has to have something to do with birthdays, and be under 800 words as usual. Go to it!"

I wish I had a top hat

2008-10-16T20:18:00.003+01:00

by Sally Cook

'Why did you do that?' you are saying. Actually, saying probably isn't an accurate enough description. I'd like to get this right. For the record. It's more like squealing, a sort of strangled squealing. Your face is red. You are practically snorting with disbelief.

'Why did you do that?'

I am calm. I am holding the mop, head down, in my right hand, arm extended to the side, legs crossed at the ankle, like a cabaret dancer about to perform a routine with a cane. Where's my top hat? I don't have a top hat. Or even a cane. I wish I did have a top hat, I think. It might lend the occasion a sense of ceremony.

On the floor at our feet, between us, surrounded by the shiny wet kitchen tiles, is your open laptop. Your laptop is made of white plastic. Your laptop is awash with dirty water. It is standing in a small grey puddle. There are particles of dirt and gravel and bits of food and hair that were trapped in the mop on the keyboard. It looks a bit like the beach when the tide goes out, not pretty like sand and shells and seaweed, but filthy like nappies and plastic beer can things and bits of polystyrene. For a moment there is no sound, and we both gaze at the computer, which sits there, inanimate and sopping, an innocent bystander caught in the crossfire, really. I feel sorry for the computer. Sorry, computer, I think.

Then there is a rattle and a clap and a miaow and Nellie, our one-eyed cat, appears from between your legs. She winds herself proudly in slinky figure-of-eights, around your legs, the laptop, and my legs, loving us, purring loudly, oblivious. She doesn't seem to find it odd that there is a wet laptop on the kitchen floor. She loves the wet laptop with as much devotion as she loves us. Man, woman, wet computer: all are equal in Nellie's eyes. Eye. She leaves through the door behind me, stalking off, tail in the air, to lie on her woolly cat bed over the radiator in the hall. I have tried to learn dignity from Nellie. She is very dignified. There are small, wet cat footprints on the floor in circles around you, me, and your laptop.

I mopped your laptop. I mopped it vigorously. I mopped it really thoroughly and hard; so hard that the screen fizzled and went dark. I mopped up the email that came this afternoon, that email about thank you for the flowers, they are beautiful. I wonder what kind of flowers they are. I wonder if they are gerberas, because I like gerberas and you don't know many other kinds of flowers. I wonder where you bought them. I pass the mop handle from hand to hand, a bit like Gene Kelly in Singing in the Rain. I whistle a couple of bars of Singing in the Rain and tap one of my feet experimentally.

You stop doing nothing and start moving, crouching, picking up the laptop, cradling it like an injured child, setting it gently on the kitchen table, dripping grey liquid everywhere in dot-dash trails, like blood. You dab at the laptop with a tea towel, and the room smells like disinfectant and stagnant water. You're making a low, moaning sound. I shake my head, sadly. I'm no expert, but even to me, the prognosis doesn't look good.

You are pressing the 'on' button again and again. Holding it down for a long time. Holding it down for a short time. Pressing it hard. Pressing it gently. Nothing is happening. The screen is blank. You look at me, and there are tears in your eyes. Your face is shiny. 'It's wet,' I say. 'It won't work because it's wet.'

'I know it's fucking wet, you mad bitch. For fuck's sake, why did you do it?' You ask in your new strangled voice. It's really unattractive, that voice, I think.

I have my answer prepared. 'I want you to leave,' I say. I am still calm. I try to imagine what it would be like to have botox injections in your whole face. I have no expression. Like a balloon. I look at you levelly, and the penny drops.

The confusion in your eyes is replaced by sudden comprehension, which is replaced by panic, which is replaced by fear. The whole gamut of guilty emotions, one after the other, like a kaleidoscope, or still-frame photography of clouds moving across the sky. Obvious as a written confession. Or CCTV footage.

Or, a secret folder of love letters in your email account, that you carelessly left logged in when you went to work, early, and in a hurry. Presumably, to order the flowers.

Sally Cook has a blog at ninechainstothemoon.blogspot.com and helps organise the manchester-based reading night there's no point in not being friends with someone if you want to be friends with them.

Wish you were here

2008-10-13T12:20:00.001+01:00

by Pat Tiger

I sit decked in stripes – yellow, blue, green;
a radio plays Elton’s Healng Hands.
Unscrewing the flask I think about
how you always asked me to do this.
I do it automatically now – remembering
that your sandwiches were the best
and the serviette you always included
made things so fine …

Pat Tiger writes short stories and poetry.

This Was a Love Story But Now I'm Not Sure

2008-10-09T13:25:00.002+01:00

by Emily McPhillips

How you were when we met was never a problem.

I loved you for it.

Your faults were not imperfections to me. They were like the freckles on your nose that came out in the summer. They were mostly hidden, but I knew that they were there. If I looked closely enough I could always find them, but they had charm about them now, they belonged to you, and you being you was an excuse for many things.

I wish I had enjoyed you more. I wish I had licked your every pore just because you were mine, and I could.

I felt like I had found a new planet when I had met you, that I would never be able to find again; it was one of those once-in-a-lifetime moments. It was my secret and it was exciting. The night sky looked more active than ever. Daylight didn't exist for the first few months I knew you. Romance works better at night. We would talk until daybreak.

I haven't heard your voice in over three months. I worry that my memory will fail, and I'll create an image of you that never existed. I wonder if I got so used to you that you began to not exist at all. I am pawing at my skin, I am pretending my hands are yours; I am trying to remember the exact way you held me.

I can't recreate any of this on my own.

I am thinking of placing an ad in the paper. I am looking for a substitute love. I am writing my advert, and I am throwing it in the bin before I read it over. I am still in love. And I am joining your freckles together like a dot-to-dot.

I am hoping that joining your freckles together will translate into a plan, and this plan will make everything make sense again. Your freckles will tell me what the problem is, and they’ll teach me how to fix it, because some part of you must be feeling as lost as I am. I can't remember the pattern of your freckles. I can't remember the last thing you said to me. All I can remember are feelings, giant feelings that have eaten up everything else about you.

I am in bed and I am looking out of my window. The sky is coal black. My eyes are fuschia red.

On my bedroom ceiling our relationship plays out like a silent movie. It is a love story that follows all the simple ideas of other love stories. I watch it like I am watching a foreign film without subtitles, vaguely understanding it, but feeling like I am not completely in on what is happening. This doesn't feel like this is my love story anymore, this feels like something completely different to that. I am wondering when did something so simple become so complicated.

I feel quiet and sad. I imagine I feel like how one of those cat ornaments whose head bobs up and down without really wanting to might feel. I would like things to stay still for a little while, just to give me enough time to feel steady about things again; but things are whizzing past me in speeds that are like light-years, as I begin to try to work my way backwards to the things I used to know.

Emily McPhillips blogs here

Wonderland

2008-10-06T14:35:00.000+01:00

by Fiona Sinclair

Illuminated photographs of lily ponds
invite us to drown our sorrows.
A rolling frieze of old masters manifests
then dissolves like hallucinations.

This is a waiting room for patients
whose affliction has turned them inside out.
Despite the walls attempts at tranquillity
our symptoms like unruly pets will not be house
trained.
Economy of space means that comfy seats
are placed uncomfortably close.
Visitors know madness isn't contagious
but even the outpatients can be unpredictable.

The woman's bulk is not loss of control
but a massing of strength.
She is painted in colours that nature warns
are dangerous, aggravated by a comedy hat.
In her urgency to organise her weekly medication,
she overwhelms a small table, loudly tabulating her
days.

The elegant man, dressed to confuse, is betrayed
by the querulous monologue into his phone.
Suddenly, he demands more than
silent agreement from his listener,
instinctively half turning his body in
a semi observed cue for privacy,
he blatantly extorts loyalty with a clichéd phrase
that is an implicit threat to them both.

I marvel how, beneath the rubble of his personality,
he can still estimate his worth high enough
to expect such extended credit.

Empty Nest

2008-10-03T22:21:00.002+01:00

by Avis Hickman-Gibb

I am no longer of substance. Now I float through the days like gossamer. Once I connected in this world; I laughed and cried; had joys and sorrows. I cast a shadow when the sun shone my way. Lived my life amongst the minutiae of every day. When my children called me Mother I cared for them, and performed all their small personal tasks - as mothers do.

When the wind swept through my life I presented an impediment to its flow. But in recent years, I have felt a change of direction in this existence. I no longer have an umbra of substance. I am a pale copy of what I once was. Every day I slip further toward transparency. My purpose is depleted; my chicks all gone. I wait for a second lease; wait for the next generation to begin. To give my life substance again.

It doesn’t matter. I don’t matter. I no longer feel of matter.

Avis Hickman-Gibb lives in Suffolk with her husband, one son and two cats. She’s had stories in Every Day Fiction, Twisted Tongue, The Pygmy Giant, BackhandStories, Boston Literary Magazine, Short Humour, The Ranfurly Review StaticMovement, Microhorror, Bewildering Stories & The Shine Journal. She’s currently working on a book of short stories and a novel but is addicted to writing flash fiction.

October: Birth and Rebirth

2008-10-01T21:22:00.006+01:00

Greetings, you talented bunch. And you, you readers of impeccably good taste.
As has become tradition, I would like to welcome you to a new month.
Happy October.
I quite like October.
Anyway, October is, for The Pygmy Giant, a month of medium-large significance. Anybody know why? Come on, hands up. Oh, sit down. Anybody else know? Put those pogs away. No?
Yes! That's right. October marks The Pygmy Giant's first birthday!
Can you believe it, hasn't he grown, I remember when he was this big, yadda yadda yadda. But yes, it's true. October 30th was the date of our first publication, and I'm getting nostalgic just thinking about it.
So.
Two things are happening to mark this auspicious day.
Firstly: We are moving house. Don't worry, we're going to a better place. We'll be here for one more month and then on October 30th will make the move to a larger and better decorated home at Wordpress. All the current contents will be coming with, so your work is not going to disappear into the ether of the interweb.
Secondly: There will be a party game. The first thing ever published here was a splendid piece of short non-fiction by Bob Clay. I think it would be fitting, therefore, if the first thing to be published over on our new site, on our birthday, was another piece of short non-fiction. So - you've got a month to write and send me something, and the pick of the bunch will be the birthday piece. And just to make this a little more fun, it has to have something to do with birthdays, and be under 800 words as usual. Go to it!
So enjoy October - there's lots of good stuff in store; I know because I read your emails. I sometimes read them too slowly. Apologies for that. Oh and while you're here, please have another look over the submissions guidelines, because they have changed ever so slightly, mainly to stop the inbox getting so clogged.
Thanks as ever, your imaginary friend,
Mel
PS if you didn't read Jenn's rather nice article about the online lit scene at Vulpes Libris, here it is.

The Loner

2008-09-29T15:52:00.000+01:00

by Leah Armstead

You shrug off conversation as if it's a fussy coat
too tight around your chest, hampering breath.

It's easy to see your mouth as a sliver of moon
hidden by clouds that filter out brightness.

In perpetual silence you've found a way
to fade from focus, to receive vague notice.

They call you a loner, but I've been with you
alone, heard your wit and insight, know that

your silence in a crowd is as necessary
as stone walls that keep a garden intact.

Leah Armstead lives in Aberystwyth and has had poems published in Ragged Raven, Leaf Books, Recusant, and Pipeworks among others.

Who are you kidding?

2008-09-27T12:06:00.003+01:00

by Yaja Kindermann

At first it’s quite innocent.

But it soon becomes very sordid – very, very sordid, and it all begins with a carrot.

You think that what you’re doing is okay; that every woman does it – at some point. That it’s just normal behaviour. But you’re wrong and you know it.

You’re just deceiving yourself.

And when you feel guilty enough, and dirty enough, you switch the CD player off and turn the volume up on the kid’s T.V. programmes instead – for comfort – for vindication whilst you’re doing it.

If it happens on a Sunday, there’s no more ‘Steve Wright’s Love Songs’ during the session – oh no. You feel too guilty. So you switch on ‘The Country File’ programme instead and mute it because if you can’t hear them, they can’t see you.

The carrot soon progresses to a cucumber but it’s only when you dip the end in low-fat salad cream, that you know you’re really finished. Soon, what’s left of the French-bread ‘sandwich’ and curled up vol-au-vaunts from the day before is history – kids stuff. Ten more minutes and you’ll be deep frying a rich tea biscuit and pouring custard over it that hey, you’d made up without even knowing.

You curse the manufacturers of crisps for making them too ‘sharp’ then realise with fraying innocence that if you weren’t cramming two twenty-eight gram bags in each cheek, perhaps they could be forgiven. And all the while you’re blaming the carrot that had been left on the chopping board since yesterday. The carrot that made you do it, the carrot that’s making you think, ‘What happened? Where did I go wrong?’

Things were going so well when you first got up and began focusing on the day ahead. But the thought soon leaves you because there’s still a half eaten terrine of pate to get through to help you forget. You suddenly remember an actor once saying that the best way to avoid over-eating is to watch yourself doing it in the nude. Well more fool him. Clothes only restrict your ever expanding stomach.

And eating standing up doesn’t count apparently. So you try your best to rise from the counter, but your stomach’s so full, you’re doubled over and your size ten figure now resembles one of those pregnant models on the cover of a magazine.

Then things get really sordid.

Stuff you’ve dropped on the kitchen lino during the savage attack on a packet of frozen pastry suddenly looks very appetising. And isn’t that a strip of charred potato hanging off the edge of the chiller compartment? Without thinking, you hoist yourself up to it and catch sight of yourself on the steel flap, but as you snatch the potato with your teeth, the only thing that manages to pass between your lips is a painful groan.

What could be jam, jelly or juice is dripping off your chin. Your hair is littered with cake, bread and other suspicious looking crumbs and there are strands of chive poking out from in between every second tooth. You can’t swear on it, but something that looks like marmite is smeared across your face. You should feel terribly guilty, but instead the only thing you’re wondering is whether or not eating frozen chips could kill you.

And all because of a carrot.

Supplies are getting thin so you fall back onto your arse and survey what’s left of the weekly shop. You stare blankly at one egg, some left over ‘dip’, and a piece of broccoli cowering in the corner of the salad tray. It’s amazing how quickly your imagination can outstrip anything Jamie Oliver could cook up.

As you struggle to your feet, your stomach suddenly feels a lot better after the little sit down, and you eye up a bag of flour and bottle of olive oil on the side as if you were a sex maniac.

You spy a raisin on the floor and your mouth drools. You must keep going. If you stop now, you’ll realise that you’re still wearing your dressing-gown and haven’t even made it to mid-day. But you know that tomorrow will be different. You know that tomorrow you’ll be good. So you turn the frying pan on again, reach for the broccoli and give yourself a pat on the back for looking to the future.

Yeah, right.

Yaja Kindermann is from Herefordshire.

Tarot

2008-09-24T14:15:00.001+01:00

by Nick Allen

Elizabeth draws a card, looks concerned.
“How old is your daughter?”
“Seven,” says the young woman.
“Listen, you must be sure she can swim before her ninth birthday. Do you understand?”
The young woman pushes £30 into Elizabeth’s hand, rushing to leave.
Elizabeth smiles. That line always works.

Nick Allen is a mental health nurse living and working in Manchester. He is a member of a local creative writing group and also participates in an online writers group.

The Magic Hour

2008-09-22T14:19:00.002+01:00

by Oonah V Joslin

‘and then the clock struck midnight and the pumpkin coach became just a pumpkin and the mice, just mice and all her lovely clothes turned to rags as she fled the castle,’

‘except for one glass slipper…’ intoned Peggy sleepily.

‘I’ll read you the rest tomorrow night. Now be a good girl and go to sleep.’

Peggy turned over and imagined midnight magic.

At New Year when she was eight, her mother put her to bed a bit later than usual but staying up so late had made her cross and she argued to stay up later still – ‘til midnight. Her mother said it was only one day to the next so why bother? She might not stay up herself. Midnight would come and go. One minute to…the hour…one minute past, same difference. There was no magic in it. And she ushered her up stairs.

Peggy longed to stay awake until midnight and she tried. She tried. To see that single moment when darkness must surely be darker still, and ghosts could come out of hiding. But she was always so sleepy and watching the clock, now she could tell the time, only soothed her with its tick-tock lullaby and her eyes would shut of their own accord and that magical moment would be lost.

On her tenth birthday, Peggy forced herself to sit awake on her bed. She watched the clock for a few minutes to midnight. Then she slipped out into the summer garden wearing only her nightgown and slippers to see what kind of creature midnight was; and whether things would change.

From the darkness of the hedge, shiny eyes peered out. Peggy stood very still, arms held close about her shivering body. The eyes darted away followed by a stiff tail. Moments later, something else moved across the stones – a toad, perhaps. What if there was a rat? A sudden breeze ruffled the hedge and made a shushing noise like a giant’s hand sweeping across its leaves. Next door’s cats yowled and scrammed and screeched and made her jump. The sound of grunting over by the flower pots drew her gaze. A hedgehog was snuffling for worms. A caravan of snails climbed up brickwork, leaving a moonlight trail. Stars glinted, clouds scudded and the moon shone blue and wide-eyed. Jupiter sparkled brighter than any other point in the sky. Peggy knew about Jupiter. Teacher said Jupiter had a day that lasted only ten hours so Peggy wondered whether it was midnight there too but she couldn’t figure it out. None of them, the animals, plants, stars, seemed to take much notice of the hour. It might have been just any time.

Perhaps mother was right and midnight’s only midnight only by our clocks, - like the big one on the church steeple. But grown-ups like to measure things and then they pretend the things they measure are real, when it’s the Sun and Moon and animals that are real.

And now today was tomorrow and nothing had really happened at midnight. In fact Peggy just wanted to get back to her warm bed and go to sleep.

“Peggy, get in the house at once, you’ll catch your death! Don’t you know it’s after midnight? What are you doing out there anyway? One of these days, the bogey-man’ll get you!”

Bogey man! Adults could be so… silly.

Oonah V Joslin is a newly established writer living in Northumberland. For more information and links to her work, see www.oonahs.blogspot.com

On leaving

2008-09-20T17:32:00.003+01:00

by Richard Barrett

forewarned, act surprised, bought for that

the card, half an hour ago when heard

a meeting or announcement soon, in all likelihood

applications finally paid off it'd seem, but

keep it to yourself, let him break the news

I'm shocked, I know, never thought he'd get it together

sufficiently to go, congratulations though

of course, have to be pleased for him, sad as well

but, anyway…good afternoon, can I take

your National Insurance number please?

HEO position, Oldham, Middleton area

just informed, couldn't be more shocked

maybe a month, you'll be taking us to the pub?!

oh aye! Look, he's going red! How happy is he?!

understandable – getting out of here! seriously

: well done, yeah – nice one…

…you okay? I think I might cry, I mean

my first boss, never before had a job, knew

nothing about rules of work or the office, he

taught me all that stuff, end of an era,

exactly! I agree! didn't want to say as much

for fear of…appearing sad? yeah, don't be so

soft – we'll all be thinking that

except her, maybe but, who'd want to be her?

doesn't care

about anyone – except herself, need to go home

I'll email you, wondering how to admit

my love

Richard Barrett lives and works in Salford, enjoys the music of The Fall, and yesterday bought a biography of the writer Patrick Hamilton; what he's read of it so far has been 'quite good'.

Eggs

2008-09-17T21:40:00.002+01:00

by Crispin Best

There are six eggs in the pan. I fill the pan with cold water from the tap until the eggs are covered. I place the pan on the gas.

After two minutes, I remove an egg. This egg is chosen at random. I hold it. If you hold an egg up to the light, you can see the inside. I do not do this. This egg is cold. It is not cooked. I removed the egg too soon. The insides are clear where they should ideally be white. The yolk is feeble. This much I know.

I wait a further minute. I remove a second egg. This egg is also chosen at random. It is also not cooked. The insides are once again clear. The insides seem more viscous this time. I wonder if this is perhaps my imagination. For later reference, I give this egg a viscosity score of 6 out of 10, where I imagine the standard viscosity of an uncooked egg to be 5. I rough out a chart and write this score in a small pad that is sitting on the countertop near the toaster. I use a clicky pen. The pad says ‘recipes’ on the front cover. I ask the pad to forgive me.

I wait a further minute. I remove a third egg. This leaves three eggs in the pan. I am using a teaspoon to retrieve the eggs. Bear this in mind. This egg, which has been chosen at random, is also not cooked. There is some evidence of what-looks-like peripheral coagulation in this egg. All the same, I decide to give this egg the same viscosity score as the previous egg. I don’t deal in half marks. This egg is warm. I have touched the egg. I blow on my fingers to cool them where the egg stung me. With the fingers of my other hand, I click the pen.

I wait a further minute. I remove a fourth egg. It dries quite quickly. This egg is partly cooked and has been chosen at random. There is evidence of a reasonable amount of congealment. The yolk, however, still quivers in a small see-through pool. This is not ideal. Opacity is ideal for eggs. This much I know. The insides of the egg are extremely hot. They drip down the dark pink palm and fingers of my right hand, my egg-crushing hand.

I wait a further minute. I remove the fifth egg. I smile. I am confident. I swaddle the egg in a paper towel. My face is upside-down in the spoon. I lop the slender end of the egg off. This egg is cooked. The yolk is soft and penetrable and lies snug in the white. The egg’s shell is very hot. I am eager. I feel my head nodding on my shoulders. In my haste, I neglect to give this egg a viscosity score. I sprinkle salt on my toast soldiers, which is a secret of mine. I dip the soldiers in the egg. The yolk yields. I eat.

After finishing, I wait a further minute. I remove the sixth egg, which is the final egg. I place the egg on the chopping board. I turn off the gas. I swallow saliva and put my ear close to the hob. There is no sound, which is ideal. I pour the hot water from the pan down the plughole and place the pan in the sink. I examine the final egg. This egg is overcooked. The yolk is churned, its colour unimpressive. I smash the egg three times with a rolling pin. I wash my hands, roll down my shirtsleeves and fix my tie in the mirror. I set off for the big conference. I can do this. I know I can do this.

Crispin Best was born in 1983 and lives next door to the house in London that he grew up in.

High Visibility

2008-09-15T10:03:00.002+01:00

by Rosie Sandler

The big wheel had been still for about half an hour when the lights went out in all the pods. It had happened again, then: he’d been forgotten. Dermot sat down on the bench in the middle and stared out. The lights of London spread before him like something he ought to care about. Instead, he was fighting a sudden urge to go to the toilet.

Dermot could recite a list of places in which he had been locked at closing time. They included Santa’s grotto in Hull, a train outside Inverness and a department store toilet in Liverpool; at least he’d been able to urinate in that one without worrying. He sighed and looked about him for a suitable receptacle. In the absence of anything better, he took a half-empty water bottle from his bag and aimed into it, splashing his shoes and the bottom of his trouser legs. He screwed the lid back on to the bottle, then wiped his shoes with a tissue, turned up his damp trousers and began to plan the time ahead.

He could easily pass an hour identifying landmarks by their illuminated silhouettes; Canary Wharf, with its flashing beacon, would be a good starting-point. Another hour could be spent finding ways to traverse the pod without touching the floor with his feet. He was emptying his pockets in search of a makeshift dinner, when the capsule lit up and the wheel crept back into motion.

'I’m so sorry about that!’ blustered the attendant when he reached ground level. ‘We’ve never left someone onboard before.’

‘You remembered about me?’

‘Of course. Well – one of my colleagues did.’

Dermot had gone from inconspicuous to memorable in a turn of the wheel. He stumbled home, hoping it would never happen again.

Rosie Sandler's stories have been published in 34th Parallel magazine, The Local Writer 2007 collection, and an anthology of flash fiction called Jealousy (published by slingink.co.uk). She has been shortlisted for competitions in the Essex Chronicle newspaper and Essentials magazine. You can read more of her work here.

Day Tripper - First Class

2008-09-12T20:56:00.001+01:00

by Pat Tiger

A’m sitting ‘ere in mi Blackpool deckchair
Flask an’ cream crackers tucked under mi feet.
A quick smoke fer now but maybe later
Some er that candy floss – just fer a treat.

‘Ave fetched mi wireless – can’t miss two thirty
A quid each way on that young day tripper.
If ‘am in wi luck at York then likely
I’ll pay fer a go on yon big dipper.

Seein’ as it’s warm a’ll tek off mi waistcoat
Can’t wait fer look on them young uns faces.
They’ll ‘ave a reyt laugh when a’m parading
Mi’ brand new yellow an’ red striped braces.

Off wi mi cap – now where’s mi clean ‘ankie?
I need it to stop mi getting sun stroke.
‘Ave thought about inventer er tissues
I reckon he must be a reyt daft bloke.

It’s folk such as ‘im that’s angling fer change
Sure as eggs is eggs he’d not be seen dead
Wi’ flimsy Kleenex, knotted in corners
Just try keeping one er them on yer ‘ed!!!

Pat Tiger writes short stories and poetry.

Battling for Gucci

2008-09-10T13:05:00.004+01:00

by Jennifer Walmsley

It knocks, banging away in my mind, the one question that has plagued me since yesterday, 'What if I fail?'

I lie awake in my sleeping bag, rigid with cold. Darkness envelopes me. Other bodies shift. Murmur. Fart. Snore. I'm suffocating on a cushion of navy blue that is covering my face, protecting my chapped lips.

Dawn arrives on a drizzle of icy needles. Tension ripples through my body as I scamble up and out of my uncomfortable bed and note a queue of hard nosed hopefuls behind and in front of me.

I'm longing for a pee and, trying to distact myself from the thought of release, mentally hum, 'I'm Singing In The Rain,' but others, having no discretion, release their load of flasked tea and coffee like a stable of raddled horses.

Now a cry goes up and, like a Mexican wave, arms rise with echoing cries of, 'The doors are opening!' And, like a herd of wildebeest, we charge towards those doors, bodies pushing, hands shoving as we tumble, stumble into the warmth of Debenhams.

Avoiding the lift and escalators, I charge upstairs to the third floor, hearing others charge after me and, sprinting through to the accessories department, breathlessly I reach my goal.

There it is, the Gucci handbag I've yearned for. It hangs just a few feet away. Throwing myself forward, I make a grab for it but another makes a grab for it too. We tussle and, the tall woman, built like a wrestler, yanks at a strap but the bag, unable to withstand such brutal force, rips asunder.

A stunned, silent moment passes. Then with a roar of bereavement, I kick out at my opponment, catching her on the shin and she, in retaliation, with a fake jewelled fist, punches me on the nose.

Jennifer Walmsley was born, brought up and still lives in Wales. She's had short stories published in women's magazines, Welsh literary mags and various webzines.

In That Gaze

2008-09-07T19:47:00.003+01:00

by Leah Armstead

One face among

many---delicate

as a serpentine

moonray,

utterly empty,

a secret face,

mouth open

as the night is

but mute---bears

candle-lit eyes

witnessing

the world

without interest.

Lost poems mean

nothing.

Friendships pale.

There is just seeing:

meaningless.

If only my gaze

could be met and

my name called out,

and to know that it

mattered, did not

need alteration,

as from a high altitude

landscape unfolds

leaving no doubts,

no question at all

that it should

or could be

anything other than

what it is.

Leah Armstead lives in Aberystwyth and has had poems published in Ragged Raven, Leaf Books, Recusant, and Pipeworks among others.

My Boss is in the Photocopier

2008-09-05T21:28:00.003+01:00

by Jenn Ashworth

All I know is that when I got to work there was something tapping behind the panel you have to take out if you want to clear a paper-jam, and the woman who answers the phone told me not to touch it. I knew it was the boss because her desk was empty.

I sat at my desk and tried to go on as usual. I make tables. I copy words from one document and retype them into a grid. You’re not allowed to cut and paste, and they can tell if you do it. They’ve rigged up the computers so they make the noise the computer on Family Fortunes makes when the contestants give the wrong answer.

I typed between the lines of the table until lunch. The tapping inside the photocopier grew louder. People ignored it, but they angled their bodies away from it whenever they had to use it.

Towards two, the tapping grew weaker. The last tap, was at 3.08. People are slacking off now. Three of the typists are making a massive rubber band ball. I am thinking about clocking out an hour early, but I’m not sure.

Jenn Ashworth is a compulsive liar and a collector of cacti.

Preacher Man

2008-09-03T14:49:00.003+01:00

by Joshua Seigal

Mr Garritty was a teacher of mine, a red-cheeked theologian

and a God-fearing man. He’d engage us in discourse in broad

Scottish brogue and traverse the arguments through

knowledge’s caves, helping us look up to see the sun.

He’d draw snaking diagrams in spiders on the board,

and pick at our bones for answers, one by one. Finding

fallacies like polyps on our nascent tongues he’s steer us back

onto reason’s path. He seemed to have an answer for everything:

He was studying at Cambridge for a PhD

on Thomas Aquinas, was familiar with

evolution as well as myth. He would sit

with me after hours in his study, chewing

over the twigs of Descartes and Derrida;

discussing whether or not God exists.

I have since found out that he became a priest.

I want to fire questions like bullets as he kneels in a pew,

to ask, as he crosses his heart with his kindly fingers,

and you believe a virgin gave birth to a child,

and that some beneficent teacher watches over us?

You mean to say that when we die we’re not dirt in the ground,

and that God splayed open the sea to let the mortals pass through?

I’ve since lost faith in reason.

Joshua Seigal studies philosophy at Univeristy College London. He is a featured poet at Poets' Letter Magazine.

Red, White and Blue

2008-09-01T19:42:00.003+01:00

[Welcome back. We've missed you. Here's something ridiculously British to start off September -Ed.]

by John Richie

Blue's red and Red's true blue. Me I'm White. Reg White, not to be confused with Reg Dwight who changed his name to Elton John and who is a good six inches shorter than I am. Not that that has anything remotely to do with anything, but it makes a good chat up line. Or so I like to delude myself, not that it has ever worked, other than with Gloria from down the chip-shop and by all accounts she's not too choosy. Red supports the Blues, Birmingham City that is, not Chelsea. And of course, Blue supports Red or at least licks his face when he passes out from too much lager, or whatever was on offer. Blue is a Red Setter, Red is a copper-knob from Wallsall, and I'm his mate.

I wouldn't be bothering you with all this but we are enjoying our fifteen minutes of fame. Well actually we are savouring our last thirty seconds, so I had better be quick.

It was last week that we were down the Post Office getting our Giros. Not Blue of course, he gets a pig's ear or some such from the abbatoir. But he comes along for the ride so to speak. Well there we all were, waiting in line, each minding his own business according to his lights. I was trying to see down the cleavage of the woman buying stamps, Red was doing his football pools and Blue was licking his balls.

Next minute, all hell breaks loose. These two lads in anoraks grab the handbag of the woman buying stamps and push her backwards over onto me. I miss a heaven sent opportunity when I grab her round the waist but we both go over anyway. Red reaches out to try and grab me and inadvertently clothes-lines the lad with the hand bag. As he goes down his foot catches Blue in the ribs and throws him right in the path of his mate who is making a run for it down the far side of our queue. He trips over Blue and goes head first into the door frame. That's him out of the picture. The other bloke is just trying to roll away from all the feet that are kicking him when Red drops on him from a great height. He kicked Blue and that is all the incentive Red needs for a quick bit of GBH. Blue, who thinks the whole thing is a game invented for his benefit, barks, growls and grabs bits of anorak which he chews on with enthusiasm. With the help of a couple of Army lads who were just out of training and keen to work off a bit of testosterone we soon had the The Artful Dodger and his mate looking decidedly worse for wear and threatening all and sundry with legal proceedings.

Well of course it was all for show. It turned out the pair of them had only been out of Borstal a week. The Magistrates gave them both six months and me and Red fifty quid each. We got our name in the local paper and Blue got his picture on the front page. The lady with the handbag gave us both a tenner and put Blue's behind the counter at the Butchers. Actually, that's not all she gave us, and I didn't even have to use me chat-up line.

John Richie writes for fun. Which is just as well as nobody will pay him.

we're all going on a...

2008-08-15T17:05:00.002+01:00

So long for two weeks.
Use them to write stuff.
Make an appointment to come back in September.
Write it on your hand and then don't wash for a fortnight.
Adieu.

The secret pleasure of anger

2008-08-15T16:45:00.002+01:00

by Fiona Sinclair

At first, she experimented with outlawed words,
whose pronouncement was God’s forbidden language,
until all the words became blunt.

Once she unleashed an exhilarating curse.
Her reckless aim proved a lucky shot, piercing
the heart of a stranger’s worst fear.

Yesterday, swollen with much rage, she
gave voice to Munch’s scream but learnt
that her rage has the power of hydric regrowth.

Now fantasies of cartoon violence
riot through her mind; whilst overlooking
your bad manners, she is hacking off your head.

Soon she will lose herself in the moral blind spot
of her fury where virtual violence will
no longer satisfy the secret pleasure of anger.

Then carrying her anger like a homemade bomb,
triggered at the slimmest provocation,
she will sacrifice her dignity in a public frenzy
more shocking than squatting in the street.

The GastroPods

2008-08-13T12:58:00.004+01:00

by Sarah Hilary

It only took a week from the day they moved in for Rosemary and Basil Woodruff to get nicknamed The Gastro Pods.

Vera at number twelve declared it, ‘Invasion of the ruddy body-snatchers,’ and everyone glowered when the pub door got painted with Farrow and Ball, a colour called Arsenic. ‘I’ll give them bloody arsenic,’ said Jacob Lovage.

Jacob was the village window-cleaner. Never mind he was knocking ninety and drunk from eight in the morning to nigh on midnight. ‘I’ve had this job since I was a nipper.’ It was the nips that bothered the Woodruffs. ‘Health and safety,’ said Basil, eyeing Jacob’s ladder with disquiet.

It was bad enough when they knocked through the nook. ‘Open plan!’ scoffed Primrose Sorrel. ‘Bother that! I want my quiet corner back.’ When they painted the bar in shades of heliotrope, the village elders had all sorts of a fit.

The final straw was when Basil started messing with the menu. ‘Fennel in the shepherd’s pie? Not on your nelly!’ Things’d been better in the old days, when Cicely was in the kitchen and you knew what was what even if you couldn’t taste it because of the pipe smoke.

Fact was, the Bull’s was the only pub in Chervil-on-the-Woad. Where else could they convene to thrash out issues like the closure of the post office or the banning of traffic in the high street?

Day eight of the invasion, Jacob Lovage scaled a barstool, spindly-legged steel affair. ‘Must’ve cost a mint,’ he reckoned of the refit. ‘Hurts my arse,’ he complained of the stool.

The ladies started arriving. ‘Evening, Primrose.’

‘Hallo, Vera.’

‘What's on the menu today then?’

‘Chicory and dill soup, would you credit it.’

They wouldn’t have minded so much if the Woodruffs were buying from the villagers. ‘I’ve a back garden stuffed to the gennels with flax,’ moaned Myrtle Feverfew. ‘You and me both,’ said her sister, Marigold.

They fell silent when Rosemary came through from the kitchen in a Cath Kidston apron, carrying a casserole dish wreathed with steam. ‘Beef carpaccio with wild rocket and parmesan dumplings!'

‘I’ll give her rocket,’ Jacob muttered, ‘to the bloomin’ moon.’

‘Where’s the darts board?’ Peter Marsh enquired.

‘My husband’ll explain,’ said Rosemary.

Basil emerged from the kitchen with a lavender chef’s bandana around his head. Peter jerked a thumb at the newly-violet wall. ‘Darts board?’

‘Ah,’ said Basil sagely, ‘demographics said the way to go was mahjong.’

‘Do what?’

‘Mahjong. The tiles are in here,’ he produced a calico bag with a drawstring neck. ‘You’ve got your dragons and flowers, seasons and winds –’

‘That’ll be the chicory.’ Jacob barked a laugh.

‘You’re pulling my leg,’ said Peter. ‘No darts board? It’s called the Bull’s Eye, for god’s sake.'

‘Oh we’re changing that!’ Basil rattled the bag. ‘As of Monday, we’re The Cowslip.’

Jacob spat his pint and fell off the barstool, getting a nasty bruise on the way down.

‘Hold still,’ soothed Rosemary, ‘I’ll fetch the arnica.’

Sarah Hilary won the Fish Historical-Crime Contest with Fall River, August 1892. Her story, The Eyam Stones, was runner-up in the Historical Contest. Both stories will be published in the Fish anthology 2008. MO: Crimes of Practice, the new Crime Writers’ Association anthology, features Sarah's story, One Last Pick-Up. Her work has appeared in Literary Fever, Every Day Fiction, Ranfurly Review and Zygote in my Coffee. Sarah lives in the Cotswolds with her husband and daughter.

Beyond the Border

2008-08-07T13:14:00.004+01:00

by Rosie Sandler

It’s neither grey nor quite black. It feels like grit rolling between my fingers, tastes of the ashes on my school-boyfriend’s tongue, the dust that is everywhere, seeping through our clothes and graining our hair.

When I ask for water, they laugh, their throats full of this gravel and nothing to wash it down. Never enough to drink, they show me, miming the rain that doesn’t fall, the rivers that have deserted, leaving their banks to crumble.

We start to walk again and as we trudge, I have a sudden sense that all the ground is treacherous, that the lines that knife it might gape suddenly. I lurch, clutch at my neighbour’s arm, and she pulls away, snapping at me from inside her headscarf. She has a baby. I see it now. It is too small, too quiet, a grey rag wrung out and draped against her chest.

‘I’m sorry,’ I tell her, and she nods at my tone.

We have so many languages between us, but not one that works.

The others have come to terms with our plight. They know the conflict is no longer between armies, but between the earth and the sky. There seems no likelihood of armistice.

My feet are bleeding – the only liquid in this dry place. My shoes are shreds, and all my belongings paid my way across the border.

We keep moving. Only when night forces our submission do our thoughts catch up. We have left so much behind.

Rosie Sandler's stories have been published in 34th Parallel magazine, The Local Writer 2007 collection, The Pygmy Giant, and an anthology of flash fiction called Jealousy (published by slingink.co.uk). She has been shortlisted for competitions in the Essex Chronicle newspaper and Essentials magazine. You can read more of her work here.

Summer Slackness

2008-08-05T13:08:00.005+01:00

Greetings, you giants in small clothing.

I would like to take the opportunity of this very rainy day to welcome you to August.

We've had so much good poetry and fiction in recently that I can only assure you it's going to be a great summer chez The Pygmy Giant. Dear writers, I've been greatly appreciating your combination of sharp humour and breath-catching poignancy. Since I never introduced July's contents, I'd like to give an honourable mention to Avis Hickman-Gibb, whose The Power to Decide did, in so few words, leave me gasping. Truly a tiny, giant piece.

I'd also like to put in a word of apology for not managing to post every other day throughout July - house-moving chaos has put a proverbial spanner in the works, but I hope normal service will be resumed before long. Also an advanced warning that The Pygmy Giant will be taking a complete break in the last two weeks of August. Use that time to go outside, paint your nails forty times, ride an ostrich, whatever you like - just make sure you come back in September!

Keep visiting, keep commenting, keep sending stuff in, because the in-tray will eventually be ploughed through!

Enjoy everything. Yours sporadically, Mel.

Elvish Ain't Dead

2008-08-01T23:03:00.004+01:00

by James Edwards-Smallbone

The psychiatrist paced down the seemingly endless grey corridor. Despite the best efforts of a team of decorators the relentless dinginess clung to the mental health centre (they were officially discouraged from using the 'A'-word) like a leech, sucking away any last watery remnants of joy. He approached room 42 and lifted a medical chart from its hook on the bland wall, acknowledging the tired looking nurse with a tipping of his glasses.

"Good Morning."

"Morning Dr. Glossop."

"And how is the patient today?"

"Very disturbed I'm afraid sir, he was raving all night. Dr. Tanner was forced to administer sedatives."

The doctor's pristine brow furrowed, wrinkling the skin over his bald head and displacing his horn-rimmed spectacles. "What a pity, when we were making such excellent progress." The nurse nodded with the jaded sympathy of one who'd seen a thousand such tiny tragedies. "Very well, you'd better let me in."

Keys jingled in the lock like fairy bells as the nurse opened the door of the padded cell. An atmosphere of restful, sterile calm washed out over the psychiatrist and he entered, a reassuring professional smile pasted over his features.

"Hello Mr James, I'm Dr. Glossop." No reply punctuated the vacant silence. "You remember me don't you? I've been visiting for ten months now. We've been talking about Terrapposita." Stillness. "Edward?"

"Hmm?" The man looked up at last. That is to say his face looked up, his eyes appeared to be focused somewhere else entirely. "Oh hello Dr. Glossop, I didn't hear you come in. I was just talking with Sycamore." Not for the first time the psychiatrist scanned the empty room. There was evidently no-one present but the two of them.

"Miss Sycamore is here now?"

"Of course! You just have to know where to look, how to look."

Glossop sighed inwardly but tried not to let it reach the surface. James was a difficult patient who clung to his delusions more firmly than most.

"We've been over this rather a lot, doctor," the man added reproachfully, "it's all there in the book if you're still unclear."

Ah yes, the book. He'd read it cover to cover a dozen times or more in an effort to understand the root of the author's delusions. "You'll be pleased to hear it's selling well, Mr James."

"Sales don't matter Dr. Glossop! What matters is that people know Terrapposita exists and how it can be reached." Glossop adjusted his glasses with an incredulous cough and scratched his nose as he always did when considering a thorny problem. "I'm not mad you know."

"Of course not Mr James," the psychiatrist responded in a conciliatory tone, "you're simply here to recover from a stress-related mental episode". Glossop's bedside manner was legendary, a fact to which many of the more suggestible nurses could attest. The patient however had lapsed again into silence, cocking his head like a dog listening to the distant call of its master. Somewhere out in the corridor a bell clanged ethereally.

"I'm afraid I have to go doctor, the Bell of Oakholt is striking noon."

"That's the lunch bell, Edward," Glossop snapped, letting terseness overcome his measured tones for an instant. He was beginning to take James' lack of progress as an affront to his professional skills. "I'll see you again this afternoon". The author however had returned to his previous catatonia and Glossop turned back into the corridor with another practised frown. The nurse had vanished to be replaced by a burly orderly who had somehow crushed himself into a narrow wicker chair and was engrossed in a thick, colourfully bound tome. Glossop leaned inquisitively over his shoulder.

"It's Terrapposita sir, by Edward James. It's very good. I'm reading it for the Richard and Judy book club."

Glossop's scowl could have iced over active volcanoes. He preferred biographies; at least the characters in those were real. "Come on," he growled, "I've got Napoleon and Julius Caesar to see before lunch."

In the silence of his room Edward shut his eyes and calmly counted to seven and a half before opening them again to a view of a beautiful wooded hillside.

"Who were you talking to?" The speaker chirped with a high musical voice which exuded warmth and friendship as she pushed white-gold hair back over her large pointed ears with dainty elfin fingers.

"Dr Glossop," the author replied distantly.

"From the book?" The voice was laden with apprehensive concern.

"From Earth."

There was something like fear in the creature's huge almond eyes as she took his hand with her own, gloved in exquisite pearl dragonscale.

"You shouldn't say such things, Edvardion. Earth is just in your imagination, it isn't real..."

James Edwards-Smallbone (and no, he did not make that name up) is somewhere between Baloo and Brian Blessed and writes to get rid of ideas that are taking up valuable brain space.

Gérard

2008-07-28T11:28:00.002+01:00

by Josh Seigal

The stars fall from the sky at night.

Gérard walks the streets.

He hears no one’s name in God’s

cascade of judgment;

he measures his progress

by joining up the dustbins.

I once saw him pick up a

cup of coffee and drain

it on a street corner.

The trees extend their skeleton limbs,

as Gérard walks the streets.

Someone once loved him but

no one can remember her name.

He finds joy in the contours

of the faces of passing strangers.

He sits at the world’s breakfast

table each morning.

The sun paints its pastel

smudge across night’s canvas,

as Gérard walks the streets.

Josh Seigal studies philosophy at Univeristy College London.

Fishy Story

2008-07-26T12:15:00.003+01:00

by Bob Clay

It was still alive!

Startled I took the paper bag from under my arm and gripped it like a golf club, but the fish wriggled again, so hard it made me jump. I'm all for a fresh fish for dinner, but this fresh?

The paper fell away and I gripped harder. I'd swear the fish looked at me, a look of desperation and fear. Then something incredible happened, from it's sides, small hands emerged, tiny dark fingers that wrapped around mine as if trying to free itself from my death-grip. This was not a fish from some exotic ocean on the far side of the world. This was something from somewhere much, much further away.

Its eyes rolled toward me again and as well as the fear, I saw something else, something like pleading. I could feel the slender little fingers weakening, and its struggling becoming weaker.

I started running, down through alleyways, across an old allotment to burst out on the tow-path of a canal. I swung hard and high and threw the fish into the water. For a moment it lay on its side, and I felt a sudden deep sadness, but then it levelled up. From its head a large silvery red mane rose up, followed by a great feathery swirl that ran bright scarlet along the length of its back. I'm sure it looked at me for a second, then disappeared into the depths, a brilliant silvery red flash in the murky water.

Well my little friend, I don't know what you are, where you came from, or how you'll fare in the canal system of an industrial city. But it has to be better than a fishmonger's slab, or a paper bag under my arm.

Good luck.

Bob Clay lives in Cornwall, and claims there is an element of truth to this story....

Point of Balance

2008-07-22T23:31:00.002+01:00

by Fiona Sinclair

Locked in a day of institutional order,
language reduced to acronym and cant,
we closed our circle against the frenzy of conspicuous
activity and planted nostalgia around that shabby table.

Time and place and understanding were aligned
again like a gymnastics display team.
Exhaustion was democratising, even the shyest
contributed to the blackboard humour.

Understanding that our actual absence
would rupture the school time table,
We holidayed on alternative afternoons,
giving ourselves a second wind for the last lesson.

Inevitably our point of balance teetered.
Even then some were planning their escape.
The ambitious slowly peeled off their disguise.
Politicians clustered like toadstools.

The rest of us succumbed to institutional moaning,
our banter was replaced by recreational slander.
The incorruptible went to earth,
encountered only at meetings or in corridors.

Our table was turned over to model teachers
who worked through lunch.

The power to decide

2008-07-19T22:38:00.006+01:00

by Avis Hickman

I am standing here at the window of this dismal sickroom, looking down at the children playing in the garden. The sounds of their laughter float up into this overheated bedroom – intrusive, jarring; full of life.

I don’t know how long I’ve been standing here – minutes yes, but not hours; there aren’t enough of those left. I ache to slow down time - extend these moments indefinitely. But I don’t want any more suffering.

I’ll have to tell them to be quiet, again; they have no concept of what is going on up here, and maybe that’s for the best. The harsh sound of laboured breathing competes with their laughter from below. It’s an uneasy amalgam, which adds to the sense of dread, bubbling just below the surface. Concentrating on practicalities, I’ve made sure the pain is arrested and soothed. In the end, this is the most important. The only thing left I can do.

Now, there seems not enough time left to say goodbye; I wish there were more. As the breathing slows and quietens, I feel a sudden surge of panic and want to call back my actions. I don’t want to be left bereft - an orphan. Turning my head, I watch as the seconds tick away, and I become the oldest generation.

I am still standing at the window, hypodermic in hand, when there is finally only the children’s laughter to be heard.

Avis Hickman-Gibb is a newly established writer, living in rural Suffolk, England with her husband, one son and two cats. She’s had stories published in Every Day Fiction, Twisted Tongue, The Pygmy Giant and Shine! You can find links to more of her writing here.

She walks in beauty of the night before

2008-07-15T21:38:00.003+01:00

by Louise Halvardsson

She walks in beauty of the night before
wearing winter on the first day of spring
Straight out of bed with an aching head
wrapped his coat around her dress
and stuck her hands in gloves too big

She walks in beauty of the night before
unwashed hair slaps her face
distant traffic tickles her ears
It wasn't for him to take
it wasn't for him
did he even take it?

She walks in beauty of the night before
stops and checks her knickers in a public toilet
drops his coats and gloves too big
But him who made her smell
is left in bed and in her head

She walks in beauty of pleasure to come
shares an ice-cream with the sea gulls
but she can't eat away the taste
It wasn't for him to take
it wasn't for him
it didn't even hurt

She walks in beauty of something lost
carrying the memory of the night
her head is getting light
it wasn't for him to take
but he was there
and someone had to be the first.

Louise Halvardsson was born in Sweden in 1982 but moved to England in 2001 because she fell in love with Brighton.

Glencoe Stone

2008-07-10T14:08:00.002+01:00

by Gordon Christie

I picked up a stone, just a few inches across, which must have lain for millenia in the cold, clear (I've never seen clearer outdoors) burn which alternately flows and tumbles from the falls at the head of Glencoe in Western Scotland, down towards the lochan. Until yesterday I had never been near that burn. Like most people I had stopped at the car parks and gazed in awe. Yesterday I walked the jumbled scree, tough grass, heather and occasional thistle patch that jostle for life, warmth and space there.

How the stone got there, one among millions, whether it has been moved by the force of water when the burn was in spate during stormy weather, whether it was part of a larger boulder split down and cracked by Nature, will never be told. It's entirely possible that it was deposited by a glacier during the last Ice Age.

What has it witnessed this humble stone? Has blood flowed over it in this, the Valley of Death? Did it "see" innocent families die from violence or cold when the Massacre took place? Like the glen itself, it tells no story. It is silent and in its own way, I think, majestic.

A tiny mountain.

I can't describe its colours adequately and the photo which I took doesn't really show them.

I thought I would keep it but it does not seem to "belong" here on Scotland's east coast, where I live. It is as much a part of Glencoe as the mountains themselves. It belongs in the fractured west where the bare bones of the Earth give scant sustenance to the sheep - descendants no doubt of those that were brought to this country a couple of hundred years ago, displacing the people during the "Highland Clearances". Descendants of those people are now scattered across the globe but when they see pictures of this ancient land of Scotland, many of them are still "called".

They may not return here, but this stone will return to where I found it.

I will take it there and think of the millions of other stones all over the world that have silently witnessed, and continue to witness, human cruelty.

Gordon Christie lives and works near Edinburgh, and writes because some people say that he can!

All Solitude

2008-07-06T22:18:00.003+01:00

by Sean Hewitt

Tonight it didn’t take much drink

Before the world started spinning.

Along with a pulsing headache

Came out words before time to think,

An uncontrollable grinning

At some blundering, drink-fuelled mistake

And out of the bar on the wet

Pavement, more come falling out

Of wide, dark, bouncer-guarded doors

All running just in time to get

The last train home, back about

Familiar rooms and messy floors.

On a building are words, bony

Above stark posters for strip-clubs

6.9 million people live

Alone in Britain. Are you lonely?

And as more come out of the pubs

Arm in arm, leaning in to give

One last goodnight kiss to new friends,

My eyes focus, the carousel

Stops. Those graffitied, scarring words

Have chiselled some self-blunted ends,

Shocked me into sobriety,

Left me stumbling across the curbs.

Sean Hewitt is a 17 year old poet from Cheshire who is currently studying A-Levels with aspirations to become a full-time writer post-university.

Scarecrows

2008-06-28T17:19:00.001+01:00

by Jenni O'Connor

The wind gusted in, ripping through the old Hessian potato sack holding the scarecrow together. Wisps of straw scurried away, leaping and twitching into the darkening sky. ‘Ow!’ he cried as a chunk flew from his cross-branch, leaving a sleeve flapping. ‘That was my arm!’

Rain followed wind; fat, heavy drops hard as boiled sweets. The scarecrow’s weight doubled as water soaked into thatch and sacking. He had been carelessly thrust into a furrow in the field, and icy water needled his base. ‘Now I’ll get frostbite, for sure,’ he thought, trying to wriggle free.

At last! The right-leg branch broke free, followed by the left. ‘Damn you, I’m leaving!’ he bellowed into the vengeful storm. One tottering step after another, he stumbled out of the field and down the lane, ignoring the disbelieving, frightened glances from gaping passersby. Heading – he told himself – anywhere but here. Heading south.

Jenni O'Connor is an aspiring novelist with one travel novel and one thriller under her belt; she lives in hope of these being published and meanwhile spends her spare minutes writing flash fiction to keep her brain cells moving!

Twin

2008-06-23T19:48:00.002+01:00

by Rosie Sandler

A hard, sharp, agonising thump. Not the playful kick of my twin’s soft foot – something colder, crueller, malice aforethought. Then our world is tumbling downwards, our mouths silent Os of pain. A wail from outside: our mother’s voice. We know it as we know the gurgle of her innards, the thud of her heart, the warmth of her blood.

‘Don’t hurt my babies!’

My twin nudges me in the head. I shake off the knowledge of our shared hurt to retaliate: I stretch out an arm, poke a finger up his nose. He jerks, knocks me with a cornered elbow. I grin, gurn, wriggle, jab him with a splayed hand. But something is different today, off. His aim is skewed. As he comes back at me with his fist, it misses – my twin never misses.

How did it start? Like it always does: long division repeated until two commas grew. We swam like fishes, bobbed like apples in a barrel. From circle’s end to circle’s start, we knew everything and everything knew us. We stretched from jumping beans to bouncing babes until the space ran out. Now, it’s our game of pokes and pinches that passes the time.

So here we are, low down in darkness, my mother, my complement and me. More pain? No, it’s quiet: maybe he’s gone. He, her lover, who sends stress messages streaming like virus through the ether. We close our eyes when we sense him, ball our fists into our mouths and curl up tightly. He has been here: see the damage he has done, our mother on the floor, weeping; me with an ache still nudging at my body; something lop-sided in the way my twin takes aim. We have no space here, no turn-and-see, only the shared closeness of the warmth and the light-dark pattern through her skin.

She wails again, a deeper sound, and we reel together, until my upside-down is almost downside-up and she takes a breath before our world closes in. Look how close the sides are. Pulsing, pulsating. There's no way out bar one and that’s the one I’m heading for. I wasn’t ready. We weren’t ready. Twin, kick me again. Tight fit, head down and turn.

Slither and slide, squeeze and squirm. Slap into the bright. There she is. Scoop me up and hold me? Or wait for more? I open my mouth, say his name, ‘Twin.’ But they are turning me, twisting me, wrapping me up, saying, ‘Shhhhh.’ I try again, ‘Twin.’ But someone is holding me too tightly. There is sobbing. There is a wail. The voice I know as well as the gurgle and the thud and the warmth of her body.

I am held out to her, but she is sobbing and wailing, hands flapping, so they snatch me back. I am passed around. And then I see him, lying still. So this is what we look like: blue as the sea – the first water of all. They pick him up and he is leaving – where are they taking him? No silent scream this time, but a roar in my head, wrenched from my lungs, filled with this new, suffocating air. First there was the circle. Then there was you: my shadow, my mirrored self, my circle’s end.

It is cold here and very quiet. I wish you were here.

Rosie Sandler's stories have been published in 34th Parallel magazine, The Local Writer 2007 collection, and an anthology of flash fiction called Jealousy (published by slingink.co.uk). She has been shortlisted for competitions in the Essex Chronicle newspaper and Essentials magazine.

The Circus People

2008-06-20T13:56:00.002+01:00

by Joshua Seigal

Jessie is two, she’s scared of me –
my hands to her are ursine paws,
my beard is tangled foliage
wrapped around a stony jaw
and when I smile at her my teeth
seem sharp, my eyes are dark, I try
to offer her my paw. She cries.

This reminds me of a programme
I saw, about circus-people.
One had a bulbous foot-long nose,
one had strange bubbles on his skin,
but the one who the children were
really scared of had claws for hands.
He said to the kids, “I don’t bite”

but still they wouldn’t go near.
Jessie is two, I’m five-foot-ten,
looming over her, a bumbling hulk.
I see her eyes wide open with fear
as I wait for the door to chime
and the ringleader to take me away.

Joshua Seigal studies philosophy at Univeristy College London.

Starlight Star Bright

2008-06-18T11:26:00.006+01:00

by Avis Hickman

Maia sat on the steps of the orphanage, hunched over to avoid the hard brassy sun and the hot sandy breeze. She wanted a new mummy, too. Why couldn’t she have one – it wasn’t fair.

Maia was wearing her Sunday school best dress; the one with only two patches in it. And she had braided her hair as her old mummy used to – before she’d gotten too sick to care. Maia was desperate to have a new family - just like he did.

If she wanted it enough - perhaps she would get her heart’s wish? So Maia sat there on the steps in the hot dusty afternoon with her eyes tight shut, rocking herself backwards and forwards – and concentrating.

She sat there until the sun set, and the air chilled, and the birds settled in the trees for the night. When Maia finally opened her eyes it was dark. The first thing she saw was the bright evening star shinning up in heaven – right next to where her mother was. She was still just sitting here on the orphanage steps, and there was still porridge for supper.

But her brother was gone, and she had a rock for a heart.

Avis Hickman-Gibb is a newly established writer, living in rural Suffolk, England with her husband, one son and two cats. She’s had stories published in Every Day Fiction, Twisted Tongue, The Pygmy Giant and Shine! and has up-coming stories in Bewildering Stories, The Ranfurly Review and The Boston Literary Magazine. She is currently working on a book of short stories and is addicted to writing flash fiction. You can find links to more of her writing here.

November 1958

2008-06-15T17:05:00.002+01:00

by Gordon Christie

We knew the sound of the iron wheels on the cobbled street and we ran to the corner to see the arrival of the Watchman's Hut. Like a dull battleship grey version of a gypsy caravan but with small iron wheels, which were out of date even then. Lorries arrived and quickly the men unloaded their tools. Great hammers which surely only some mythical warrior could wield, battered shovels, crowbars and spades. Somehow mounds of hardcore and tarmacadam appeared, a brazier was lit and old battered syrup tins with twisted wire handles were produced from within war relic gas mask satchels. Tea! And what we called "pieces". There was no other name for a sandwich as far as we knew and generally they were jam.

Silently we watched, our eyes devouring every mouthful that was taken. We were never starving but we were always hungry!

We were ignored. A bunch of half frozen children huddled on a street was nothing unusual. Some still wearing their summer "sandals" which had to wear out before winter shoes were bought from St. Cuthbert's Co-operative in Bread Street. It had the mysterious, at once frightening and exciting foot x-ray machine which allowed the snippy assistant to see that your feet had "space to grow" when encased in the unforgiving new shoe.

They had come to take down the old ornate iron street lamps and replace them with modern concrete ones which glowed orange, not yellow/white. The new ones had upturned metal saucers for "hats".

But after tea, when we were once more out in the street, was when it all came alive. The men had gone but the site had to be watched and the Watchman was in his Hut! The brazier now had its own dry patch of ground in what had become a dark, snow covered site and we, always silently, gathered round it. The Hut had a door that was in two halves, like a stable. The top half was open and there He could be seen, half-dozing, with a newspaper and a pipe. Paraffin lamps marked the edges of the site and protected it from the odd car.

He stood up, opened the lower half of the door and nodded towards the bench! Without hesitation we filed in and the smell of a coke fire instantly filled our nostrils, replacing the mixed smells of winter and tar.

"Sure, it's too cold to be out there." No-one answered. A piece appeared from a tin and was divided equally among us. Honey! There was a first time for everything. Tea was shared from one tin - hot and impossibly strong. "Stewed" we called it.

No further words were spoken until we left - we always knew when we had to be home.

For two whole weeks this ritual took place (with different fillings for the piece). The cold was so bad at times that your feet would stick to the pavement if you didn't move them but it mattered not to us, sitting inside on the tar stained bench with its old cushions of no particular colour. Eventually, he told us stories, this old Irish gentleman. Tales of his childhood in Ireland. We watched his eyebrows and smelled his tobacco, his coke fire, the dusty tar and paraffin atmosphere.

And we knew what it was to be happy.

Gordon Christie writes because people tell him that he can (for which he thanks them) and that these memories are important. Living near Edinburgh.

The Commuter

2008-06-11T13:04:00.003+01:00

by Jenni O'Connor

Freezing gusts swipe at already-icy legs; the train is late again. Choo-choo! It squeals as it limps in; a grubby two-carriage apology, inadequate for the rush-hour squeeze. The waiting crowd jostles, crowding the doors. They open with a rusty squeak; a stinking fug pre-empting the exodus. For the fifty leaving the train and heading home, there are a hundred hoping to board. A disembodied voice echoes down the gusty platform: “Will passengers travelling to Bristol stand back and wait for the next train.”

The woman is lucky; she gets on. She spots the last seat, by a window, access blocked by a large, balding man in a shiny suit who has dedicated it to his briefcase. Nobody has challenged him, despite the crush. “Excuse me,” she glares, stumbling over his legs. Those left standing glance over, then look down. Nobody talks or smiles. In these moments, my life disappears.

Jenni O'Connor is an aspiring novelist with one travel novel and one thriller under her belt; neither have yet been published but she lives in hope, and meanwhile spends her spare minutes writing flash fiction to keep her brain cells moving!

A Small Glitch

2008-06-09T10:41:00.003+01:00

by Bob Clay

The others at the table leaned back, most of them looking at me. At the top end were the ministerial types, then the uniforms, then various levels of secretaries and executive lackeys. But this was science, so they were all passing the ball down to me.

I looked at the single steel blue eye of the alien at the top of the table. He had spread large shimmering sheets on the table top. They were covered in strange diagrams and hieroglyphics, all in minute detail. I didn't have a clue what they meant.

“Let me see if I understand this, “ I said to that large blue eye. “You are offering us an interstellar drive?” The alien shifted, as if uncomfortable.

“No. Since there is no way of exceeding the speed of light, you have to travel to the stars the hard way, and spend years doing it. What we are offering is an intergalactic drive.”

“If you can travel to other galaxies, surely that's the same thing?” I asked. Again the small grey body with its embedded eye seemed to squirm in discomfort.

“Well, there's a problem with this system. It only operates for the Planck Time or more, upwards from a billion trillion trillionth of a second. Since there is no smaller length of time than this, the minimum distance you travel is about three million light years. You simply cannot use it to travel a lesser distance.”

I sat back utterly astounded. “You travel to another galaxy in a tiny fraction of a second?” I beamed. “Why not just offset it slightly and travel back? That way you could get to stars nearby to Earth.”

Now the alien really looked uncomfortable. “Well that is the problem, “ he said, almost sheepishly. “There is no coming back. The drive in effect quantum tunnels into another universe, similar to this one according to the mathematics, but a different universe all the same. Since we estimate there are several trillion universes similar to this one, or even more, the chances of tunnelling back into our universe are too remote to be considered. You would go to another galaxy, just not one in this universe.”

I pondered this for a moment. “You're telling me this would be a one way trip? A total shot in the dark? To all intents and purposes, you would disappear forever?”

The alien nodded, a curiously human gesture.

“But that makes the drive virtually useless," I said.

“Yes,” he replied, and started to gather up the detailed sheets. “But believe me, you would be surprised at how many still want to go.”

Bob Clay lives in Cornwall.

British Summertime

2008-06-07T10:03:00.004+01:00

A slightly belated welcome to June (felt like saying it while it was sunny).

Before I take to the river on a punt, I would like to thank everybody for answering the call for some non-fiction with (I think) some of the best writing we've seen so far at The Pygmy Giant. When you read a story that touches you, and then realise that it really did happen to somebody, it gives your insides an extra twist.

Thanks to Emma J. Lannie, who floored me in particular. And there is more non-fiction to come, amongst everything else, throughout June.

Keep writing all kinds of things! Fiction, non-fiction, poetry... And thank you for reading.

Anywhere But Here

2008-06-05T22:29:00.002+01:00

by Claire Morris

The last thing I want to be doing right now is writing poetry.
It’s the first time since last summer the sun has shone and I’m writing poetry!
Why, when I’ve spent weeks escaping the cold and rain under my duvet,
Must the sun insist on shining when it knows deadlines are only days away?
I aim for a compromise, drag my work outside and set up camp at the bottom of the garden.

Except, it’s not working.

The birds chirp and tweep, mocking me with their laughing songs,
Flitting back and forth... back and forth... back and forth over the wall,
Making it look so easy to just fly away...

But no, I have to write poetry.
My phone beeps; invites to pub lunches and picnics,
Temptations of road trips to the beach.
I’d give anything to be anywhere, anywhere but here,
To be laughing with friends,
To be driving full speed with the windows down and the music up high,
To dangle my feet in cool water,
Hot chips, cold beer and melting ice creams.

But no, I have to write poetry.
Why must I be working when the air is filled with the babble of children?
Indulgent afternoon play from tired teachers taking any excuse for a break.
I wish I was them again, swarms of butterflies in chequered summer dresses,
Excited, flying free from winter’s cocoon of grey.

But no, I have to write poetry.
I’d welcome any distraction, accept any chore, just so long as it would get me away from here.
My car's looking dirty, perhaps I could wash it?
And then of course dry it, and wax it, and hoover every corner inside?
Why stop there?
I’ve been meaning to clean the kitchen and de-frost the fridge,
To polish the windows and vacuum the stairs.
There’s weeds in the garden, and socks to be ironed, and the spice rack needs to be alphabetised.
But no, I have to write poetry.

Perhaps I’ll just make a quick cup of tea...

Claire Morris is a second year student from Bath who's desperately trying to disguise her often weird imagination as genuine bursts of creativity - is it working?

String Vests Are The New Black

2008-05-30T19:40:00.004+01:00

by Emma J. Lannie

When your boyfriend dies you will lean against the wall, unable to support your own weight. After a while, you will slip to the floor and fold in on yourself, as though letting your body keep a body shape is too much now.

You will be aware of a noise, a low guttural moan that months later you will realise was coming from you, from somewhere inside that never learned to speak.

You will shut out everyone you know except his best friend, and you will ask this friend to tell you, over and over, things your boyfriend said about you, how he felt. Later, you will find yourself in bed with this friend, with the both of you trying desperately to reach inside the other, trying to snatch out fragments of who he was.

You will never talk about this.

At the funeral, all the seats will be taken by people he worked with. You won’t recognise any of them. He didn’t socialize with people from work. They are all strangers. You will stand at the back of the crematorium next to the tape deck. You will be standing with his friends, with people who loved him, wondering why these strangers from his workplace have taken up all the seats.

None of you will be wearing black. As previously agreed. In the seats, the people from the place where he worked will have got it all wrong, they will be cloaked in it. One of his friends will be wearing shorts and a string vest. He will do this out of love for your boyfriend, but none of the people in black will understand this. They will tut and mutter about disrespect.

The man will fumble with the cassette. The song is a song that meant a lot. You will cry uncontrollably for the next hour, even when the funeral is over, even when you’re under a tree in the Peace Garden feeling a lack of everything.

It will pass.

For the first year you will feel as though you are walking through treacle. You will kiss a lot of boys. Some of them will fall in love with your sadness. You will be indifferent.

After a few years, you will meet someone else. You will love him in a way you never could before. You will love him knowing that life goes on, no matter what. And all that fear will be gone.

Emma J. Lannie is a pop-loving librarian who blogs here, although lately, she has been spending a lot of her time at www.elevenpenceperbookperday.blogspot.com - the interactive library novel.

Final Curtain

2008-05-27T15:08:00.002+01:00

by Rosie Sandler

The next big wave brought a body and Lillian Ashby made as dignified an entrance as she ever had in life.

‘Always has to be the centre of attention, doesn’t she?’ said Margot, looking up from her book and jerking her head towards the vision in white. Irene nodded and adjusted her straw hat, whose torn brim wasn’t giving enough shade.

‘Last week it was that opera song after dinner,’ said Margot, settling back in her deck chair. ‘Oh – and don’t forget her dance at the Easter party.’

‘I liked that poem she recited on Pancake Day,’ called Barnabas Foggatt, who was standing a few feet away, gazing out to sea. ‘What was it again? Something about a boot.’

‘Not a boot, Mr Foggatt, a boat,’ said Margot.

‘A what?’ He cupped his hand round his ear.

‘A boat – you know, a thing you sail in.’

‘Oh,’ he laughed. ‘I thought it was a bit strange, for the poet to have gone to all that trouble about a boot… It’s lovely here, isn’t it? Just look at the way the sun sparkles on the water.’

‘Shouldn’t someone do something?’ asked Irene, adjusting her straw hat again.

‘About what?’ asked Margot.

‘About the body.’

‘Well, she’s dead, isn’t she? I should think it’s a bit late to do anything now.’

‘Well, perhaps we should tell Mrs Simpson, or one of the nurses.’

Margot sighed and glanced around. ‘Mr Shaw!’ she called. ‘Could you grace us with your presence a moment?’

Gregory Shaw heaved himself out of his deck-chair and hobbled over; his cheekbones were flaming from their exposure to the sun.

‘Mr Shaw – have you seen that?’ Margot waved a limp hand towards Lillian’s form.

‘Oh, my goodness. I haven’t got my glasses,’ he rummaged in his pockets. ‘What is it? Some type of fish?’

‘You could say that,’ said Margot. ‘It’s an especially cold one, called an Ashby Flapper.’

Gregory stiffened and put his glasses on. ‘Good gracious. Poor Lillian. Has anyone told Mrs Simpson?’

Margot yawned. ‘No, not yet.’

‘Right, well, I’ll get on to it right away.’ He headed slowly up the beach, towards a group of people in pale-blue shirts. Margot and Irene watched him go.

‘Where’s he off to in such a hurry?’ called Barnabas.

‘To get Mrs Simpson,’ said Margot. ‘Lillian’s performing again.’ She gestured vaguely in the direction of the body.

‘Is she? I’ll go and take a look,’ said Barnabas, striding off.

‘What a shame,’ said Irene after a moment.

‘What?’ murmured Margot, returning to her book.

‘Well, it’s just… she was going to perform that piece from Hamlet for us on Saturday.’

‘Oh, yes – Ophelia, wasn’t it?’ Margot sat up in delight. ‘What an idea, for an octogenarian to play a young girl. Wasn’t Gregory Shaw going to play Hamlet?’

‘Yes, I think so.’

‘Well, I think she’s played Ophelia to the hilt, don’t you?’ said Margot, looking over to where a futile resuscitation attempt was now underway. She took a small tin of boiled sweets from her bag and held it out to Irene. ‘Blackcurrant or Lime?’ she asked.

Irene watched the figures moving around Lillian’s prostrate form, then turned her attention to the sweets. ‘Ooh,’ her fingers hovered over the tin. ‘Blackcurrant, I think, don’t you?’ she said.

The Job

2008-05-22T20:18:00.003+01:00

by Jenni O'Connor

The clack of computer keys fills the room; quiet, busy and studious. A muted giggle erupts; an email joke someone chooses not to share. Papers are shuffled, reports generated; a strident voice echoes down the phone. Sounds of stifled bitching, sandwich munching; an identity lived or a slow, living death?

Jenni O'Connor is an aspiring novelist with one travel novel and one thriller under her belt; she lives in hope of these being published and meanwhile spends her spare minutes writing flash fiction to keep her brain cells moving!

Afterlife

2008-05-20T20:15:00.003+01:00

by Alison Bacon

"Inferno in Town Centre".

The headline in the local paper is arresting, the pictures nothing less than apocalyptic. Flames stream skywards above the silhouette of blackened masonry. Further down the page, workmen perched on cranes pick over the carcass of a church. I have kept the cuttings in our wedding album because it’s the church in which we were married, and exactly three months later it burned to the ground.

Thirty years on, the newsprint is yellow and ready to fall apart, but the images remain, a disconcerting souvenir. I pick out the once familiar outline of the lantern roof and the empty tracery of windows that told stories in stained glass. But the camera has missed something, or maybe it didn’t survive. At the top of the path and next to the door there used to be a bronze plaque showing the burning bush, and underneath the motto of the Church of Scotland: Nec tamen consumebatur, “nor yet was it consumed”. Ironic, you might say, since despite the heroic efforts of the minister and the fire brigade, St. Paul’s Parish Church was consumed entirely.

The facts of the case were soon established. The seat of the fire was a neighbouring cinema, closed for redevelopment; the culprits kids with nothing better to do. But fire conjures up the wrath of God. When it strikes a church, it touches something deeper than our everyday religion. I look beyond the facts and the wedding photos, and question what was lost when the church burned down.

I’m not looking for faith, because the church of my childhood was not, as I recall, about faith. It was about arriving on time and sitting still during the sermon. It was getting a prize every year for regular attendance at Sunday School, a prize that was nearly always a Bible. It was people who sat every week in the same seats, wearing the same clothes, until changes in the weather and the hymn sheet nudged them into next season’s wardrobe. It was Brownies, Guides and Christmas parties, all in a bare church hall with splintery floorboards and metal stacking chairs. It was knitted dolls and stewed tea at the Sale of Work in November, the throat clenching terror of singing in the Christmas Nativity Play, and, on the third Saturday in June, weather permitting, coloured streamers trailing from the window of the swaying double-decker bus that took us on the Sunday School Picnic. It was something other than home or school, but connected to both. It was a third of my childhood.

As teenagers we longed to cut the chains, but in a time of limited affluence our options were limited. The sixties saw us languish under the passionless neon lights of Youth Clubs, Fellowships and Saturday night badminton. There a few of us found God, and the rest of us bided our time, knowing escape was at hand in the shape of that ultimate ticket to ride, a student grant. For those of us who returned, after university, to knock at the door of the manse requesting a church wedding, it would mostly be our last visit. By now we had got out from under. We set off for new and distant lives, leaving behind the families who had nurtured us, and the church, that in its old-fashioned, closeting way, had nurtured them.

Since it’s been thirty years, I think I can risk going back. The changes to the town are predictable: strands of retail development join the dots of what used to be rural communities; the old town centre is preserved in the black and white lettering of a Heritage Trail, but lacks its old sense of purpose. The church has never been rebuilt, but curiosity drives me to the place where it stood. I arm myself against disappointment, anticipating a leisure club, a wine bar, a recycled row of charity shops. But when I get there I find none of these. In fact I find nothing at all. The site has been commandeered, as empty spaces are, by a few parked cars, but there are no marked bays, no council notices, in fact, no signs of life. I find this gap in the brickwork strangely satisfying, and think of R.S. Thomas’ Via Negativa, where God is in “empty silence … in the darkness between stars”.

The empty space in front of me defines a childhood, and gives home to the ghosts of an extended family that left its mark on a restless generation. I wonder if the church still owns the land, and, if so, why they haven’t marked the spot. They could have used the plaque that stood by the door, the one of the bush that burned but was not consumed.

Alison Bacon has been writing for five years and is still working on the second novel, the clutch of blogs and the golf handicap. You can visit her here.

Taking More Bread & Butter With It

2008-05-12T12:13:00.004+01:00

by Geoff Stevens

Looks can be deceptive

peaches and cream complexion

sponge cake lips and glace cherry eyes

breasts shimmering like jelly

blancmange belly and thighs

a bowl full of calories

sprinkled with hundreds and thousands of lies

not a girl to trifle with.

Geoff Stevens is the editor of Purple Patch poetry magazine and a widely published poet and artist.

Snowdrops

2008-05-09T21:15:00.004+01:00

by Rosie de la Mare

Many years ago, Mrs Droop had set herself a task: to tend to the snowdrops that appeared annually in the flowerbeds bordering the patch of grass in front of her dingy council flat. Snowdrops are for life and Mrs Droop wanted them to outlive her.

She loved seeing the hoods pushing through the late winter snows, and then wake up at dawn one morning to see the drops had appeared. Some years the flowers would show before Christmas and Mrs Droop would just stand by her sink, mug of coffee in hand, and stare out at them. For her they represented purity.

But this evening she had watched young Davey Brown ripping a handful of her precious flowers and shoving them in Donna White’s face, saying “’ere Don? Fancy a shag?”

And so Mrs Droop set herself another task.She would add more colour to her flowerbeds and watch the local youth bloom.

Rosie de la Mare lives in West London and discovered two years ago that writing flash fiction was a brilliant outlet for all the weird thoughts and sentences that wake her up in the middle of the night.

The Future Of The World Writ Small

2008-05-06T23:01:00.002+01:00

by Peter Wild

At first, Street thought it was something to do with his pronunciation. He tugged his fur-lined collar free of his mouth and drew a shallow breath, the cold killing.

– Qamutiik, he said more slowly and then gestured, his hand skimming the plain of snow and ice ahead of them. Qimmusiq.

The Inuit didn’t follow the path of his hand, folded his heavy arms about his chest, slowly lowered his swollen eyelids once, as if in assent, but still didn’t move.

– Ah-ka, the Inuit grumbled, duskily.

Radford emerged from behind the sledge, clapping his gloved hands together.

What’s up, old man? he said, chipper.

Street turned, briskly, as Radford continued, saying, We should be getting on if we’re to make Bathurst in good time.

Mm, Street answered.

Ahead the other guides were starting to move off, as if the appearance of Radford was all they were waiting for, which annoyed Street no end.

Mulark, Street said, clapping the Inuit hard upon his shoulder. Una Soona?

Still nothing. Mulark glowered. Street grew red in the face. Radford, knowing Street’s temper as he did, took a step back, felt supremely conscious of the sounds his boots made in the snow. Crunch crunch crunch.

Ki-mook-sick – Street began only to have the Inuit they knew as Mulark push him to the ground.

Well, I say – Radford intervened, Street thrashing in the snow, a fine, bright powder rising in the air like kettle steam, the Inuit guides ahead drawing pause, Abu Lak in particular locking eyes with Radford, their conversation of the previous evening, the stuttered warning, the dangers, revived for each.

Street was raging, clumps of snow patching his hair and eyelashes and arm and trouser leg. He clambered to his feet and snatched at the dog whip Mulark held looped in his hand, the two of them tugging back and forth, Street easily desperate, Mulark implacable, statuesque.

Radford tried to play the peacemaker, raised a hand toward the only other Inuit close to them, Amoqlu-Arm-Ik, but Amoqlu-Arm-Ik was as cold and faceless and blank as Mulark.

George, Radford said forcefully; and then – George! – more vehemently. But George Street took no notice. He’d managed to wrench the dog whip out of Mulark’s paw and he was attempting to thrash the man with it but the two of them were barely a step apart and so the whip had no force, no swing, no power.

Radford entreated the other guides, despite the fact that, with the exception of Abu-Lak who was clearly maintaining his distance, they knew not a word of the mother tongue between them. Ick-a-yung-ga, Radford yelled. Ick-a-yung-ga!

Nobody moved, bar Street who flailed at Mulark again and again, uselessly, with the handle of the dog whip.

Enough was enough, Radford concluded and stepped towards the argumentative couple with his hands raised like a lay preacher, his intention being to bring the matter to a swift close.

Now, now, Radford said, his voice firm, his tone even. This has gone –

And then he stopped, the tip of a spear protruding from the centre of his chest, surprised that anything could pierce the bone at the centre of a man’s chest, surprised at the fact he was surprised, turning, gruff Amoqlu-Arm-Ik loosing his hold on the shaft of the spear to face him.

Behind, Street roared, a high-pitched shriek as of a girl of fourteen.

Radford fell to his knees, the warmth blossoming beneath his buttoned up jacket, the contrast with the snow, the marrow warmth and the bone-chill. Awe-struck, upon his knees, gazing up into the heartless alien eyes of Amoqlu-Arm-Ik.

There was a kerfuffle, of sorts, as Radford drifted backwards and was then persuaded to fall to his side by the length of spear running through him. Street was running, his feet and ankles disappearing into the drift as he made his way around the head of the dog pack, the dogs quiet and silent as the grave. Mulark trailing him slowly, no need to hurry.

Amoqlu-Arm-Ik placed a foot upon Radford’s chest, pushing the spear all the way through from the other side. When enough was through, he gripped the shaft just below the head and jerked it out.

Street was yelling. Radford couldn’t really hear. Something bloody –

And then Amoqlu-Arm-Ik threw the spear a second time and Street was silenced as well.

Both men, Abu-Lak later told the police sergeant, Edgerton, were still alive when their throats were cut. They were left to bleed to death on the ice by the lake.

*

Wasn’t until two maybe three years later, 1912 or something, that Edgerton and his men caught up with Mulark and Amoqlu-Arm-Ik and by that point the crime was old news.

Stern words were exchanged in a mixture of tongues and then a warning was issued.

That was the thing with crimes that took place so far North. You couldn’t legislate.

Peter Wild is the co-author of Before the Rain and the editor of The Flash, Perverted by Language: Fiction inspired by The Fall and The Empty Page: Fiction inspired by Sonic Youth. You can read more at www.peterwild.com

Come what May

2008-05-04T11:56:00.004+01:00

Greetings everyone,

Firstly, The Pygmy Giant would like to apologise for the recent delays to this service; these are due to lots of bank holiday weekend train travel leading to very little time spent in a house.

Secondly, happy May! I live in Oxford, which is probably the only place in the world that actually celebrates the beginning of May with quite some enthusiasm.

May here has in store a lot of great new flash fiction from the likes of Peter Wild, Rosie de la Mare, and plenty of others. We would like to put out an appeal, however for something a little different...

TPG has never been very high on its non-fiction content, so for the month of May we would like to challenge you to put pen to paper (and fingers to keys) to jot down for us some true-life stories. What weird, or funny, or touching, or terrible, or thought-provoking things have happened to you or those you know? Craft them into a well told tale of under 800 words, and we'll try to put them up during the month of May.

Enjoy,

Mel for TPG

Highflier

2008-04-29T22:32:00.005+01:00

by Angela Wright

"What attracts you to this job, Ms Adams, and what qualities would you bring?"

"The salary attracts me, firstly. It would enable me to sustain the standard of living I'm looking for. Qualities? Clearly, my level of physical attractiveness is high, and I know how to use this to my best advantage."

"A good answer, Ms Adams. How do you see the company expanding under your direction?"

"I have a hands-on approach, you might say, in all my business dealings. Increased revenue tends to come as a natural consequence of my personal attention to the client's requirements."

"A clear, concise response, Ms Adams. Do you have any questions for us?"

"Yes. Will there be an apartment in the city?"

"Evidently you are a woman with well-defined priorities, Ms Adams. Impressive."

Angela Wright is a middle-aged woman holed up in the Highlands seeking adventure and inspiration in the wilderness.

Between the Cracks

2008-04-26T11:50:00.004+01:00

by Bill West

And then she was gone.

It wasn’t far for George to walk home; turn left out of the hospital, down to the War Memorial, left past the cemetery, right at the traffic lights, third on the right, Moonrise Terrace. Mum had reminded him on every visit, as if he hadn’t known by now. He noticed his shoes were a bit scuffed and dirty, and he needed a shave. He avoided all the cracks between the pavements.

Every day at the same time, he returned to the hospital. The first time the bed was empty. He sat beside it anyway. Another time there was a lady in the bed who he didn’t recognise. While he sat beside the bed, his hands clasped over his paunch, she talked on and on, her mouth all floppy, but he couldn’t understand what she was saying, so he went to the cafeteria and had sausage and chips, but no beans. He put a handful of coins on the counter and the fat lady took some. After a while there were only enough for biscuits, then nothing.

The fat lady told him he smelt bad, that he should wash, put on clean clothes. So he went home.

There was a worse smell at home. But now she was gone he could watch television on the small black-and-white portable that he’d found in the cupboard under the stairs. Eastenders made him nervous, but he liked the idea of a launderette. Perhaps he could find an old lady, full of quotes from the Bible like Dot Cotton, who would clean his clothes and tell him the right things to do. He left the TV and the radio on, for company.

Then the lights went off, and the television wouldn’t work. The smell got worse and his tummy hurt, even more than when he ate beans, and he ran out of toilet paper. Then there were the rats.

Then Royston arrived. He knocked at the door, smiled and said, “You managed to slip between the cracks.” and filled in some forms. George thought he was in trouble because he let Willy, the goldfish die. Men came and cleaned up the house.

Royston took him everywhere. “We’ll soon fix you up!” He showed him how to get money, how to buy food, even got him a job, meeting and greeting outside the offices where Royston worked. That’s where he met Dorothy who was clever but couldn’t walk. She let him push her wheelchair sometimes, so long as she steered.

It's hard to push a wheelchair when you're trying not to step on the cracks.

Bill West lives in Shropshire. His work has appeared in Every Day Fiction, FlashQuake, Mytholog, Heavy Glow, Boston Literary Magazine, Right Hand Pointing, Shine and other places.

G&T

2008-04-23T17:43:00.005+01:00

by Geoff Stevens

In the tropical glasshouse
at the Botanical Gardens
hair corkscrewed against the domed roof
you are outshone by the sun's intensity
as it gilds the skylit segments
that glisten around your face
mud-cracks your complexion
into many isolated facets
like the geometrical islands of paint
induced by the drying out of ancient masters.
You are an oil painting
desecrated by time.
But I do not mention it to you
merely take you by the hand and lead you
into the bar for restoration -
mine not yours.

Geoff Stevens is the editor of Purple Patch poetry magazine and a widely published poet and artist.

Don't You Go Closing Them Baby Blues

2008-04-19T12:52:00.005+01:00

by Avis Hickman-Gibb

Josie stood inside her sanctuary, her breath coming in great, raw gasps. She listened - Uncle Danny was stumbling along after her - and cursing something terrible.

“Wait’ll I get my hands on you, you little bitch! You’ll find out what you’re made for!” he growled, slashing through the undergrowth, drunk and nasty. The blood from his bitten hand would be dripping onto the leaves around.

Josie stuffed her bare arm over her mouth, trying to block out the sounds of her whimpering. She’d been all alone in the house with Uncle Danny, and him drinking and watching those nasty films on TV. Momma was at work, as usual. But it wouldn’t have mattered - Momma never believed her anyway:

“Uncle Danny loves us both, you just remember that. He’d not hurt a hair on your head, child!” Momma had replied last time to Josie’s complaints about Uncle Danny - about his awful temper and his over familiar hands. “He just likes a cuddle from his best girl - that’s all.”

Josie leaned back against the inside of the hollow oak tree, tears squeezing out from beneath her lids, and wished her Daddy was here. He’d never say she told lies; he’d defend her. He was a hero - everyone said that. But he was out in Iraq, and very far from home. Josie knew when he did return, she’d live with him, and they’d move far away from Momma; and Uncle Danny.

Now, looking down at her hands, Josie remembered her Daddy teaching her how to use this gun.

“... hold the butt steady with both hands… that’s right... then aim… point it low… lower than you want... it kicks up right at the end... then squeeze the trigger and keep looking! Don’t you go closing them baby blues!”

Taking a steadying breath, she aimed at the entrance and waited for Uncle Danny to appear and snarl, “Peek-a-boo!”

Avis Hickman-Gibb is a new writer, living in rural Suffolk with her husband, one son and two cats. She gained a BSc. in Environmental Chemistry more years ago than she cares to admit. She’s had stories published in Every Day Fiction, Twisted Tongue, and Shine! and has up coming stories in Bewildering Stories and The Boston Literary Magazines.

The Metal Man

2008-04-14T16:32:00.004+01:00

by Adham Smart

The metal man cut his teeth on a blade of grass.

He bled like a chimney, dribbled purple death

into the mud of moss. Slowly, his teeth melted

down to the gums, and the fizzing noise they made

will keep your children awake for weeks.

Adham Smart is a writer from South-East London who likes to pretend he is a foreigner in his spare time. He also thinks Pomegranate is pretty cool.

Brain Drain

2008-04-12T13:16:00.006+01:00

by Alison Bacon

On the train most people, like Simon, carry an extra brain. Tucked under an arm or slung casually over a shoulder, it’s a more useful accessory than the old-fashioned integral kind. Battery powered or attached to the mains, it needs no shot of caffeine to kick it into life, nor six hours of sleep to refuel. Best of all, when it’s not needed, you can simply shut it down.

Of course, these brains, being visible, are also fashion statements. The girl in the white wool coat keeps hers in a Gucci pouch, and clasps it to her like a soft-skinned daemon. Further along the carriage, an aging Apple Mac is carried by the wearer of denim who’s reading Silent Spring. Impressive styling, if you go for that kind of thing. Simon is proud of his own brain. Smooth and shiny, he knows it cost more than the others. It’s powerful and compact. It fits in the palm of his hand, or hides in the pocket of his suit without spoiling the cut.

He gets off at the station and slides into the silver saloon that’s been controlling its climate all day long, just for him. At home, Olivia greets him. She’s wearing Agnes B. and a frown. His brain has somehow failed to remind him of a dinner date. ‘You’re late,’ she says, and smoothes her discontentment with a deft stroke of Rouge Noir. At the party he’s greeted and seated and given a drink, but feels out of sorts, disconnected. At the black glass table adorned in white sushi, someone asks him a question. His mind is a blank. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says, ‘I was miles away.’

He can’t imagine what’s wrong, until his wife waves a dismissive arm in his direction.

‘You’ll have to make allowances for Simon,’ she says to the others, ‘I think he left his brain on the train.’

Alison Bacon has been writing for five years and is currently working on a second novel, a clutch of blogs and a decent golf handicap. Some success in all departments but no (print) publisher as yet. You can visit her here.

Devil Island Disks

2008-04-09T18:36:00.002+01:00

by Oonah V Joslin

“Welcome again to Island Discs. Today we have Lucifer.”
“Don’t call me that; makes me sound like a box of matches!”
“Anything you say…Satan then?”
“Beelzebub, Satan, Nick..whatever….”
“Okay, Nick. Do you enjoy your work?”
“It ain’t the same as it used to be…not as much fun. In the old days people was pious. It took effort to make ‘em stray. Nowadays they’re at it before I even get there. I even had to lay staff off.”
“That must have been galling. What is your first choice of record?”
(Adjusting his scrotum) “‘Great Balls of Fire.’ - reminds me of the good old days.”
“Who is the person you’ve most enjoyed welcoming to Hell?”
“I’d have to say Jesus. He didn’t stay long you know but it was nice to see him; knew his father well back in the old days. We had a nice chat. Other than him, ordinary people - not your Napoleons and Hitlers - they always act like they run the place.”
“And your second choice of record …?”
“Barry McGuire’s ‘Eve of Destruction.’ I always look forward to that!”
“What would your ideal island be like, Nick?”
“Somewhere cool with lots of cats. The Isle of Man, say. I like cats. Cats are selfish and you know the old saying about a cat’s chance in Hell.”
“And your third choice…?”
“Has to be, ‘Cool for Cats.’”
“Do you have a favourite TV program Nick?”
“Never miss, ‘Songs of Praise’!”
“Really? You like hymns?”
“Hell, no. But I love vanity! All them good Christians neglecting their own churches just to get on the telly - best clothes, best facial singing expression? It’s one of my most refined temptations. They don’t even see it – too busy watching themselves.” (Shakes his head and chuckles.)
“So your next piece won’t be a hymn then?”
“Well kind of an anthem really; ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’. I got news for you folks! I just love all that misleading, mushy, feel good stuff don’t you?”
“Absolutely.”
“Wrote most of ‘em personally you know. Do I get the credit?...royalties?...zilch!”
“That does seem a shame.”
“Which is your favourite deadly sin, Nick?”
“Well, that’s a difficult choice. I’d have to say - plain old fashioned pride - seems like a virtue see and it always comes before a fall.”
“You chose, ‘Jezebel,’ as your next disc. Why?”
“She threatened violence! You ever met that gal? She’s a demon!”
“All jobs have a downside, Nick. What’s the worst aspect of your job?”
“Downside,” (laughs) “I like that. I never get to meet the nice guys. He gets first pick, always. Plus, most people get to retire, take holidays…me? ....it’s never ending!”
“And your next record…?”
“Chris Rea – Road to Hell.” (Sings) “‘This ain’t no technological breakdown….This is the Road to hell.’ Paved with good intentions!”
“What do you love most about your work?”
“The shock on their faces - ’specially the religious ones - popes, archbishops and the like. Kills me!”
“Do you have a favourite type of music – Jazz maybe, Rock?”
“Anything by Stockhausen.”
“Stockhausen it is, then.”
“What about sex, Nick…..?”
“Here and now?”
“No I mean…..did you invent sex?”
“Wish I had! It’s not an issue with Upstairs and me. You’re just like all the other animals - it’s a functional thing. Why you get all worked up about it…who knows?”
“So there’s no Mrs. Satan?”
“After what Eve did to you lot?”
“Your final two recordings won the Eurovision Song Contest, Nick…is that coincidental?”
“Nah, we use ‘em to torture the damned so I kinda like ‘em… and they say the Devil has all the best tunes!”
“A favourite book Nick…”
“The complete works of Poe… love, ‘The Red Death,’ and can I have the Screwtape books instead of the Bible anthology? Never did get to meet Jack Lewis - pity that.”
“One luxury?”
“Tobacco and pipe - it’s my one vice! I ‘m not even the worst there is any more! ‘Sic transit gloria mundi,’ eh?”

Oonah V Joslin was born in Ulster and lives in the North East. She writes mostly flash and poetry but is working on a series of stories she'd like to see as a real, honest-to-god, book. She won the MicroHorror trophy 2007 and most rerad in Every Day Fiction in January. She has a cover mention in Twisted Tongue issue 9 and is shortly judging a poetry competition for The Shine Journal. BUT she's a reclusive wee soul. You can get links to all her work at http://www.writewords.org.uk

The Stair

2008-04-07T23:22:00.001+01:00

by Sammy Jay

I climb the stair,
Work backwards from the edge,
Despair’s edge, this overhanging ledge,
Biting the teeth of words.

Dead ledge of dead rose petals,
And a sunken sun -

Work backwards,
The stair,
Drug politics,
Colours,
All a whirl.

Aggressive with the edge of words
Vicious in biting thoughts,

Back to leaning back against the bulge
Of bulging wood.

Back back,
Among the deeply felt and fleeting garden,
Fleeting, veering in parrot cries,
Quicksilver eyes, and a world
Of laughter.

Voices and laughter in the glade,
A fungus genesis.

Back back back but before
Before - the swirling journey and the walk
Through sirens, sea girls, iron and summer wine,
Drug politics within the whine
Of sirens and the wind.

A world of no discernible rhythm in the line of trams
And formless shapes.

Back back back back to childhood,
Infant eyes - colours,
An array of newness,
That wide amaze of sky.

In that beginning, in that garden,
Ringed within a raven world
There is a life

At odds with nothingness and dissipation,

At odds with the approaching black,
Fighting with white light,
A vibrant, living arsenal of colour.

All in that first glance,
Before the deep divide and dance
Along the line, before the trance
Of wires, blood and steel,
There is a loving, fighting feel,

All in the eye
Of the child
At the beginning.

Sammy Jay is a 1st year English student and is (wrongly) convinced that he is Shelley.

A Series of Awkward Moments

2008-04-03T16:16:00.006+01:00

by Richard Rippon

I should have known it wouldn't work out.

My Dad had always warned me about hiring tradesmen from adverts in the paper, but the boiler had given up and it wasn't getting any warmer. When the doorbell rang, I was in the process of putting on a fleece to stave off the perpetual chill. I opened the door and at first I thought I was the object of a trick, then the voice, deep and gruff with a slight Welsh accent.

"Alright mate, you rang about the boiler?"

I had to drop my eyes several feet to see him. A short haired dog, black, tan and white looking up at me with large brown eyes. My mind flashed back to the advert. Free estimates, 24 hour callout and, what was it, Corgi something?

After an uncomfortable pause I let him in and lead him to the kitchen.

"Would you like...erm," I began.

He cocked his head to one side quizzically.

"...a cup of tea?" I finished.

"Yeah mate, that would be good."

He already had the cover off and was prodding various components with his screwdriver in an exploratory fashion. I got on with making the tea. When it came to handing it to him, I had another awkward moment. I didn't know where to put it: on the bench, or - more traditionally for a dog I thought - on the floor. He seemed to sense my quandary.

"Just there mate, s'fine," he said around the screwdriver in his mouth and nodded to the bench.

I decided to leave him to it and removed myself to the TV. Not long after, the living room door nudged open and his little snout appeared.

"Think I've got that sorted mate. It was an 'O' ring, but I had one in the van."

"Great," I walked after him into the kitchen. The long-silent boiler was now humming merrily and the radiator was warming when I touched it.

"I've popped the invoice on top of your microwave there," he said as he collected together his tools. I picked up the stub of paper and looked at the bottom line.

"£55!" I said, "for a washer? Are you sure that's right?"

"Including callout, yeah," he barked. "You find another guy cheaper round here. I've done you a favour there."

It didn't feel like it. I grudgingly found the cash from a combination of my wallet and the wife's handbag. I handed it to him, the little runt, and he was out the door, without another word. I slammed it behind him.

My Dad had been right. However, as the house slowly warmed, I felt comforted that despite the cost, it was one less job on the list.

I walked into the chaos of the dining room. Horizontal wooden lats could still be seen through the aborted plaster job. Amongst the abandoned plaster bags were banana skins and discarded teapots. Another thing my father says, which has proven to be true: if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.

Richard Rippon writes stuff. He has appeared in a number of online literary magazines (including Monkeybicycle and Word Riot) and in print (Skive Magazine Issue 7). Contact him here.

The marmot you've all been waiting for

2008-04-01T19:17:00.005+01:00

Well, it was a difficult challenge, some might say a little too ridiculously difficult, but several brave souls rose to the challenge of combining obscure furry rodents with understated snorkelling, with rather impressive results.

The mystery panel of judges managed to almost completely differ in their opinions, which just shows that a panel was a bad idea and that it was a tight contest. Below are the stories we thought to be the best of the bunch, with some truly ingenious shoe-horning in of the required vocabulary in a 250 word limit! Enjoy. Very nearly taking the coveted prize were Mark Perry's The Perils of Poor Dental Hygiene ("like snorkelling through lard" might be my all-time favourite simile) and Avis Hickman's impressively succinct Absent Friend. But just pipping them to the post and taking home Five English Pounds of book tokens and the prize of intellectual satisfaction was the following tale by James Edwards-Smallbone. If you didn't know, I don't believe you would be able to tell that he was trying to include any difficult words in the slightest, and to manage that and raise a smile at the same time is good going.

Well done to you and to Chazubel.

Chazubel Brown, Marmot Entrepreneur

by James Edwards-Smallbone

As the great rodent philosopher Voletaire once said, "it's not easy being a marmot". You see we larger rodents occupy a peculiar niche here in Terrafauna. Our smaller cousins are thinkers, the Canids warriors, the Avians priests. But us? Well, we dance on the cracks. Selling to some, stealing from others and all with an understated grace.

Of course this gets us into trouble sometimes - take my current indisposition for example. You see that enraged fox attempting to throttle me? I took the opportunity to liberate a few of his shiny gold crowns, all in jest of course but judging from the pressure on my windpipe he isn't seeing the funny side.

My eyes bulge in response to his merciless azure glare. My lungs burn, drowning in their denied exhalation like someone snorkeling with a blocked pipe. And then in a sudden puff of pistol smoke it's over. The fox's paws fall away and he slumps sideways with an uncomprehending gurgle.

Before me a friendly weasel face forms from out of the powder smoke and he lowers his pistol, a slight smirk lingering below his whiskers.

"You took your sweet time!" I gasp between breaths, gulping in the smoggy air like a bewildered newborn.

"Spot o' grief wiv the law Chaz, 'ope you ain't too worse for wear."

Too breathless to reply I simply glare at my scruffy accomplice. No, it's certainly not easy being a marmot, but as I weigh up the day's golden takings I know it's worth it.

The Day Job

by Daniel Hill

The lagoon was bright blue and the sun was shining, the little boat worked its way out into the lagoon, making a heavy job of light work. It had needed a new throttle for quite some time but since the discovery Gary hadn’t had time to fix it, he also hadn’t been snorkeling for a long time, and his only hope, apart from the site being intact, was that he didn’t look too marmot-like on his return. He envisaged a graceful entry to the water but knew this wasn’t likely. The boat slowed down, and it’s sole member anchored near the reef which was flourishing with colour and life, the reef had been an understated and underprotected part of the archipelago, but Gary was one of many who had fought for; and gained protective status for it. He prepared himself, then engineered his drop into the water, he wasn’t entirely happy with the entry, but he still remembered enough to look respectable. He swam a little and gained his bearings, the reef was to his right and the discovery had been made a couple of metres in front of him, that was when his snorkel filled with water, naturally, he panicked, thinking he was in trouble he swiped at the soft sand below him and pushed up, he reached the surface and coughed up the water he had inhaled, he didn’t know what had happened, all he cared about now was the shiny dubloon in his hand.

The Perils of Poor Dental Hygiene

by Mark Perry

There's a party going on in my teeth. I haven't slept for three days. Performing even simple tasks requires great effort like snorkelling through lard.

I'm sat in the dentist's chair. He reaches for a couple of shiny dental implements before his upside-down face leans closer. As soon as I open my mouth a deluge of funk hits him full in the face. He can't resist a quick dance with the dental nurse, before apologising and regaining his professional composure.

"Ah, Marmots." He says in a surprisingly understated way. "When was your last check-up?"

"Over two years ago." I mumble

"And do you floss regularly?"

I shake my head.

"Hmmm, that's how they build up. They've burrowed quite deep but we shouldn't have much trouble shifting them."

He gives me a painkilling injection and asks me to wait outside.

My face numbs and music leaks from my mouth as I struggle to keep it shut. This irritates the other patients. They stare at me but say nothing.

After twenty minutes I'm called back in. The dentist reaches for his drill. It produces a high pitched whine, the kind of noise you'd hear if you tried to throttle a tiny mouse android.

The drill falls silent. There's a brief pause, before hundreds of worse for wear Marmots stampede out my mouth. They rush into reception and continue off down the road.

"Right," says the dentist "We'll see you again in six months."

A Story

by Simon Thomas

Don’t call me Marmot. I’m nothing like one. Not remotely stocky, wish I were sometimes. I’d rather you got me confused with David Mamet, but I’m nothing like him neither. M’name’s Mamot. James, if you must know, but everyone calls me Mamot – everyone who calls me anything. Yes, I was at the beach 22^nd January – beautiful day. I’d call it understated or luminescent, only I’m no ponce. Sand was shiny, sea was shiny. Whole bloody lot looked like someone had been at it with polish. Hurts the eyes, to stare at it for too long. Addictive, though, staring until it hurt just too much, then blinking, and seeing the light still, burned into the back of my eyelids.

I did think I was alone, at first. No reason why anyone else should be there – sunny day, but January, and middle of the afternoon. Most people at work, earning their crust. Paying my way, suppose you’d say. First I knew of him was some splashing – quite a way out, but waves were gentle, so I knew it was a person. Or animal, could’ve been, but it weren’t. He were having trouble, could see that, splashing around at full throttle but in trouble nonetheless. Been snorkelling, turns out, hadn’t he? And didn’t know how. Shouldn’t never go out alone, especially if you don’t know how. Brought it on himself. And yes, I watched him drown. Perhaps I could’ve done something. But not doing nothing ain’t a crime, is it?

No further questions.

Absent Friend

by Avis Hickman

I had a pet Marmot once, but he was a lot of trouble. Always wanting more – y’know? So I took him snorkelling at the seaside. And anybody who tells you they are gentle creatures is lying!

It was a definitely understated victory getting the mask on him. All he wanted to do was to stare into the shiny eyepiece and admire his lustrous coat. I just wanted to throttle him!

He left me in the end – just burrowed away.

I miss him.

One day left

2008-03-30T22:14:00.001+01:00

24 hours remain to submit a 250 word tale for the March Challenge :o)
The prize has been bought...

Hawking - Master of the Universe

2008-03-27T13:04:00.001Z

by Avis Hickman-Gibb

He is soaring above with Angels; consorting with quasars; riding the solar winds from Antares, Aldebaran, Rigel; Andromeda.

Deep in the core of a blackness, spectacular gravity pulls sparks down through the nuclear fire, and he dwells amidst the eddies - revelling in the pull of the strange. Then on, and passing into the perfect null of the heart lying there.

This is a consciousness so real - he could touch the fragrant rings of Saturn; leap upon the fiery skin of Betelgeuse; dance within the inner ring of the frozen rim of a galaxy’s hub.

An existence more valid than the earth-bound body giving him thought; anchoring him tightly.

Eyes closed in concentration, in inner space - he is singing magnificent trills of perfect harmony; performing a ballet of fluid movement easily executed within the shells of the simplest energy form; flashing glorious colours through dark matter - trembling iridescence against an ink black void.

And always, seductive mathematical equations bubble through his mind – glowing in their clarity, radiant jewels of understanding rippling down to a meticulous recording of facts, theorems, hypotheses, and probabilities. The beautiful mechanics of the universe, laid bare at his feet.

Immortality is in the unravelling of a string.

Avis Hickman-Gibb is a new writer, living in rural Suffolk, England with her husband, one son and two cats. She’s had stories published in Every Day Fiction, Twisted Tongue, and Shine! and has up coming stories in Bewildering Stories and The Boston Literary Magazines. She is currently working on a book of short stories and is addicted to writing flash fiction.

My Boss Is Amazing

2008-03-25T10:24:00.004Z

by Jenn Ashworth

I am going to follow my boss home in my car. I am going to drive past where she lives and watch her park. Then I am going to drive around the corner and park my own car somewhere secret. I will get out quietly and decorate the car with leaves and litter plucked from the hedges. Then I'll sneak into her front garden and wait behind a rhododendron until she gets tired and goes upstairs.

When that happens I'll move quietly and break in. I'm planning to get one of those tools that cut glass out of windows in perfect circles. I'll take some putty, to replace it after I'm done, of course.

So I'll get in, and spend some 'me-time' in her kitchen, mainly touching things or moving them slightly. I might get carried away and break three wine glasses. I'll have to do it safely, and silently. I think the best way would be to wrap them in a tea towel and crunch the bulb of the glass under my foot. I'll put them in the bin afterwards.

I'm hoping I'll get the chance to walk around downstairs for a while. I'm planning to pull all the leaves from her houseplants and arrange them in circles on her sitting room rug. I'll hide her car-keys at the bottom of a vase. I'm pretty sure I'll have to leave a pair of my socks inside the washing machine. If I have time, I'd like to swap all the CDs around in their cases, cut the roses out of the wall paper, open the champagne and keep the cork safe in the cistern of the downstairs loo.

Maybe, after all this time, she'll be asleep. I hope so, because there are a few other things I wanted to do and I had almost resigned myself to saving these for a second trip. If there's a hall mirror, I'll draw a Fire Risk Assessment on it with a lump of butter. I'll make her a bunch of origami flowers from this month's figures, and scatter them on the stairway. I'll fill the pockets of her coat with frozen peas, and pour Brazil nuts into her shoes to the point of over flowing.

I love my boss. I try every day to be a good employee. To demonstrate my 'commitment' and my 'leadership focus' and my 'sales index capability'. My boss is amazing.

Jenn Ashworth is a compulsive liar and a collector of cacti.

One week left!

2008-03-24T13:16:00.002Z

Dear all, there is one week left for you to enter the March Challenge! Take ten minutes, jot something down, and you could win the first prize we have ever awarded. So have a go and give us a laugh - we'll be even more impressed if you manage to write something incredibly moving using the words below...

Here's a reminder of the rules:

Members of the Facebook group have kindly provided us with a selection of nouns, verbs and adjectives, without really knowing what they were signing up for. So here's the challenge - you have until 31st March to craft and send us a very short story of 250 words or fewer (!) which contains the all of the following words:

Trouble
Marmot (look it up)
Throttle
Snorkelling
Understated
Shiny

Any genre will do. Putting the words in the title doesn't count! Send all your submissions to thepygmygiant@gmail.com and if there are a lot of good entries we'll put them all up on the page.

The one deemed the best by an uneducated mystery panel of judges will win a PRIZE worth perhaps as much as Five English Pounds. Yes, it's true. And you'll find out who won on April 1st. No foolin'. Go to it!

Mary in the Morning

2008-03-23T15:42:00.003Z

by Mel George

All the world was white and numb
Soundless, colourless, meaningless now.
A festival danced around the house
But not for her – she wondered how
Any of it had ever seemed real.

Yesterday played across her eyelids
With every blink, she saw again
Her master, healer, Lord and friend
Bleeding, choking, convulsed with pain
And felt her own. Her death in his.

That Sabbath long she fought against
The thoughts and dreams that came
Unbidden every second minute:
Lazarus rose – could not the same
Happen now? Cruel nightmares of hope.

That second night passed slow as the first
The sleepless minutes stretched and grew.
At last, before the sun she rose
And ran to the only place she knew
To him who was her meaning, her home.

She had tended him so often
And now he needed her once more.
She would help; yes, one last time.
She wouldn’t leave him, he could be sure.
Her delay had been against her will.

And now her act of love prevented –
That empty tomb, the final blow.
Stunned and crushed, when all was done
She stayed and wept; nowhere to go.
She spoke with angels and didn’t care.

The gardener was suddenly there.
She cried for him to bring her home.
Please, oh please just tell me where…
And then he spoke one word alone:
‘Mary.’ And the morning came.

Mel George lives and ponders in Oxford. Wishes you a wonderful Easter.

Coloni

2008-03-21T10:45:00.007Z

by Adham Smart

Adham Smart is a writer from South-East London who likes to pretend he is a foreigner in his spare time.

Red

2008-03-19T12:50:00.004Z

by Emily McPhillips

I bought the red shoes because they were the ones you pointed out, the ones you said would suit me. "Why the red," I asked, and you said, "Because you like red. You wear red a lot. They'll match your red coat." I was wearing my big red coat, my winter coat, the one two-sizes-too-big for me. I didn't buy the shoes that day, I went back to the store after we'd broken up and I looked through the shop window, and breathed onto the glass, and drew a heart in place of where your face should have been. I bought the shoes and put them on; I left my old shoes there, in the fresh-smelling cardboard of the shoe-box. My new red shoes matched the shade of my lipstick, and matched the colour of my winter coat, that I remember looked so nice hanging on the back of your bedroom door. I held the shoes up to my ears when I got home, and I could hear the conversation we had by the window of the shoe-store; I could hear it through the ears of a child who hears the sea in the shells they have collected. I dressed for bed, in warm pyjamas that I had left to dry on my radiator three days ago. I kept my shoes on, curling my toes into their rounded ends, looking for any part of that day that I might have missed. I fell asleep with the tinted hue from my bedside lamp glowing against my face, and how I wished that this glow was the shade of our lips finding each other in the night. When I closed my eyes more tightly a drift of red spots floated along, and I felt everything slow down; like traffic slowing for a red light.

Emily McPhillips was born in 1985. She lives in Manchester. Take a look at her fanzine 'Ministering to a Lunatic' here.

Morose I am because a rose is a rose

2008-03-17T10:23:00.002Z

by Daniel Hill

Morose I am because a rose is a rose,
fed up of being labelled just another one of those,
to think we’re all alike proves to me lame,
even a rose has no two thorns the same.

So, do I have to have stubble on my face,
before you go out of your way or your place,
or a car with a big bank balance to show,
before you realise how little of me you know.

Yeah I’m tipsy what else can I say,
I usually don’t write poems in this way,
but it all just hit me stanza and verse,
along with these wounds that are too deep to nurse.

So now I sit to wallow in grief,
aimed at the moment I lost self belief,
but Shakespeare I ask do you quiver asunder?
Oh I forgot, you're six feet under...

Daniel Hill is a writer from Bristol who is currently exploring the different types of writing that exist. Would probably be famous already if he weren't such a procrastinator...

Stays Up Past Midnight Raking The Drive

2008-03-14T11:35:00.004Z

by Jo Horsman

Oh, for Christ’s sake - just leave her to it – she’ll get bored. Tired – hopefully!

Marilyn spends all bloody day doing unnecessary things before moving into the night.

Yes, raking the driveway. No, it didn’t have gravel before. That came yesterday.

You’re welcome to try. She’s armed with that thing.

Jo Horsman writes about people doing their own normal things. She's been published in Litro, Tales of The Decongested, Leaf Books.

The Pie

2008-03-11T20:31:00.001Z

By Mark Perry

There's a pie in the middle of the road. It sits boldly on the dotted white line unfazed by the passing traffic. No foil dish weakling, it demands respect. This is an "Alpha" pie. Given antlers it would rut with the best of them.

Driving home from work you pass the pie. It intrigues you. You wonder how it got there: how it positioned itself so perfectly. You pull your car over to the side of the road and get out. As with all pies its contents remain hidden; imprisoned behind thick pastry walls and sealed shut with a rugged golden crust. You stand on the kerb trying to visualise what's inside. Nothing fancy, probably something traditional given its rustic good looks.

As you cross to the middle the sunlight intensifies. It reflects off the pie's glazed surface causing you to shield your eyes. You feel reverential, as if approaching a holy artefact.

You bend and try to pick up the pie but it's too heavy. Perhaps it's someone's idea of a joke: fixing it to the road. But if that was the case you should at least be able to tear the crust and sides away. You strain some more but eventually give up. Steam rises from two slits cut into the pastry top. You kneel down and inhale but the pie is odourless.

Drivers honk horns and shout obscenities at you as they speed past. You realise you're on all fours in the middle of a busy road, nose pressed against the pie crust. Embarrassed, you try to stand but can't lift your head. You're briefly aware of an astonishing gravitational force before you're sucked face first through the two small slits and into the centre of the pie. Your body is shredded. Only pink pulp remains.

The pie now has its filling. It walks to the other side of the road and waits to be picked up by a supermarket delivery van.

Mark Perry lives and works in Manchester

The Challenge

2008-03-09T20:45:00.004Z

Hello folks, and a belated welcome to March. Thanks for reading and writing and allll your wonderful submissions. There's some great flash fiction in store for the rest of March, but poets, brush off your quills and stop staring epically into the distance - we need you to write something down and send it in to us, please!

Anyway, March at The Pygmy Giant brings with it a little spring challenge... Members of the Facebook group have kindly provided us with a selection of nouns, verbs and adjectives, without really knowing what they were signing up for. So here's the challenge - you have until 31st March to craft and send us a very short story of 250 words or fewer (!) which contains the all of the following words:

Trouble
Marmot (look it up)
Throttle
Snorkelling
Understated
Shiny

Any genre will do. Putting the words in the title doesn't count! Send all your submissions to thepygmygiant@gmail.com and if there are a lot of good entries we'll put them all up on the page.

The one deemed the best by an uneducated mystery panel of judges will win a PRIZE worth perhaps as much as Five English Pounds. Yes, it's true. And you'll find out who won on April 1st. No foolin'. Go to it!

Sprung

2008-03-08T19:46:00.002Z

by Sammy Jay

Welcome to the world!

Shambling as a fresh foal
over fresh fields of Elysium.
I took breath,
gave time and smiles - fine times,
with a perfect west wind skirting the track
and the sun setting beyond barbed wires.

The sky gives a giving glow,
nudges us lightly to the brink -
night out, lights out, and I shall see
everything.

Spring has brightened my gagged spirit,
and given it voice. So as spring turns
to summer, as we foals learn to gallop the plains -
laughing out loud -
I shall sing it all - like Orpheus, leaving the dead lands.

Sammy Jay is a 1st Year English Student and is (wrongly) convinced that he is Shelley.

Apathy

2008-03-06T21:37:00.009Z

by Jack

I’m finding it tough going at the moment … this keeping awake business. All I want to do is fall asleep. Every time I sit down; five minutes of watching the news and I’m off, sound asleep. Two paragraphs into a book and bang; I’m in dream land.

‘I think I need some exercise, some fresh air,’ I said to Mrs, who for three or four seconds held a fork full of chips half way to her mouth while someone in neighbours said they didn’t love such and such anymore.

‘Are you saying I’m fat?’

She looked at me with her accusing defensive manner with the fork still in limbo. I sighed, then grinned inanely.

‘Not in a facetious way, darling.’

‘Humph,’ she retorted as the chips finally made it to their penultimate destination.

‘How about, you and me go for a walk later?’ I said on my way to the kitchen carrying my empty plate. Mrs followed with hers and put it in the sink along with other dirty dishes.

‘Well?’ I said snapping the yellow marigolds on like an expert mortician.

‘It’s raining outside,’ she said while scraping something into the bin before placing another plate into the now foaming sink.

‘Oh, is it?’ I said, genuinely disappointed while twitching my nose. Why is it, every time I put rubber gloves on my nose gets itchy?

She left to watch the rest of Neighbours.

I rubbed my nose on my shoulder to stop it itching, and continued tidying up. I returned to the lounge just as the six o’clock news started, and handed Mrs her cup of tea with a Blue Ribbon. I sat back down with mine and looked at the paper’s TV section to see what was on the box later; nothing, I might have known.

‘One hundred channels, and not a thing to watch,’ I said for the umpteenth night in a row. She sighed with what sounded to me like ‘you are now boring me to tears. Will you stop bloody moaning please?’

‘We could always try some sexercize?’ I said looking at her with a hopeful twinkle.

‘On a weeknight ... you and me ... and ... sex?’ she scoffed somewhat quickly, like it was a well prepared statement.

‘I’m all for experimenting,’ I said still hopeful. ‘Having two shaves in one week won’t kill me, will it?’

‘Feel free to experiment on yourself, lover-boy.’

The Ice maiden raised her eyebrows, a false cheesy smile followed; a double whammy. Her feelings towards mid-week sex were made quite clear.

‘Bitch,’ I muttered under my breath. Not too low, I wanted her to hear what I said.

‘Away you go for a pint. And stop being so … annoying!’

She stroked the remote she had primed on the arm of the chair in readiness for the evening’s soaps.

‘I might just do that,’ I said victoriously. I disguised the inner joy, and stopped myself grinning with an apathetic yawn.

Jack, you managed that situation quite well, I thought as I closed the back door on my way out.

Jack writes about his non-existence and mundane surroundings while hoping that one day he'll find it's all been a bad dream, and he is in fact a muti-millionaire who lost his memory in a boating accident. More of Jack's pathetic life can be found here.

wind him up and watch him go

2008-03-04T19:38:00.003Z

by Sara Crowley

He hits me. Whump. A punch in the stomach. I slap him hard across his cheek. It stings my hand. I want his face to crumple and the tears to come because that signifies the beginning of the end. It takes longer to get there these days. When he was a baby even a cross voice would cut through his tantrum and halt him. Then it was threats: you won’t go here or do that, and there’ll be no T.V., no sweets. Now he doesn’t care what he loses.

Mick and I have sent him to his room every day for a month, banned him from telly, play station and music. We’ve taken all the toys and clothes and stuff out of his room. (This after he trashed half of it, threw Chloe’s `The tiger who came to tea’ tea set against the wall, thump, smash, toppled the wardrobe. For one moment I didn’t know if he was underneath, it all went so quiet.) It makes no difference.

Dan flings one of his long legs out and in: a jerky movement that indicates the start of the storm. His arms join in, and his voice, louder and louder. He stamps, his face flushes, the tips of his ears scarlet with fury. The senior paediatrician told me to look out for that, red ears means he has lost control, and there’s nothing to do but wait it out, which sounds fine when she says it.

The psychologist said that Dan wants to be a baby again, that’s when he felt safe and cared for. We are to wrap him in his blankie and fetch him his teddy. I should whisper to him and soothe him to calmness. But he’s ten now, tall, gangly, strong with anger.

I send his sister Chloe for the quilt and Boo the bear, and I do whisper, I whisper “Shut up you fucking little shit head,” over and over through my clenched teeth.

Supermarkets are the worst, all those people staring in disbelief at this big boy, stropping his way around and whining in his baby voice. I don’t get embarrassed any more, although I do wish I had cards to hand out or something. I could get some printed: “He has special needs, all right?”

We did the reward system, stars on a chart for doing well. But a week is a long time to him, and he could never make it. We ended up just doing days, and made the tasks really simple, but even then he failed.

We tried talking things through, but he’s not very articulate. If only they made emotional Sat-Navs or something, to guide me through the tangle of his mind.

He’s my boy, my beautiful boy. When he sleeps my heart swells with love.

When I got the knife out, I thought it’d scare him into stopping, and it did. He looked terrified. Which goes to show doesn’t it? He is in control of it if he can stop just like that, eh? I just need to keep on finding ways to scare him, and then we can get some peace.

Sara Crowley blogs at A Salted.

The Iscariot Beetle

2008-02-27T14:21:00.001Z

by Adham Smart

tunnels nooses from loose earth
and finds discarded coins, bearing the face of an emperor
whose rule came to be regretted.

Adham Smart is a writer from South-East London who likes to pretend he is a foreigner in his spare time.

A Fresh Start

2008-02-25T13:21:00.002Z

by Ingrid Best

In the seconds after his head hit the wall at the bottom of the stairs, narrowly missing her neatly folded pile of clean washing, there were no angry accusations. Instead she heard only silence. An aeroplane passed over the house and the cat flap flipped open and shut in the wind. His eyes stared forwards, neck bent, long thin legs stretched out.

Feeling the draught upstairs, she climbed the ladder and swung the loft door shut before edging her way downstairs. He had already taken the boxes down, but never was one for finishing a job.

In the kitchen she reflected on her husband’s sad accident while she sipped white wine and varnished her nails. They had been separated for over a year, and he had lived with his mother until she died a few months ago, leaving the inheritance to be shared amongst her three sons. After her death they had decided to make a fresh start. He agreed to pay off the mortgage and put the house in joint names, while she finished her relationship with the Welsh actor and stopped reading The Guardian and writing to the Death Row prisoner.

You just never know what a day holds, she mused, as she removed her wedding ring and poured herself another glass of wine.

Ingrid Best lives in Hounslow.

Free

2008-02-23T21:07:00.004Z

by Ruth Jones

Holding his hand out, he smiled.

“When I tell you, run!"

“But why?”

“Just run.”

The wind whipped through her hair, the sea air filling her lungs. The gentle rustle of leaves in the trees and the seagulls soaring overhead, the warm sun bathing her skin; life was perfect. Gripping his hand she grinned back, her heart filling with joy.

“Ok.”

“Run!”

He took off, running through the grass. She started running too, as she was half dragged along. They ran closer and closer to the edge of the cliff until he swerved off course, narrowly missing the drop.

Collapsing on the floor, he pulled her down with him.

“Never forget how you felt today. Never forget how happy you are at this moment. When things get tough, remember this!”

Without warning, he jumped up and ran off into the field, before doubling back towards the edge. He built up speed, head down.

“Paul? What are you doing?”

He didn’t reply and just kept running, pushing towards the edge, getting closer and closer until…

“Paul? Noooo!”

Sarah jumped up, went to the edge of the cliff and looked down, down to where the body of the man she loved was lying. Or at least should have been.

Looking down at the rocks, Sarah gasped. There was nothing, just rocks. So where had he gone? And why did he tell her to remember this moment?

* * *

The sun filtered through the blinds, filling the room with a warm glow. Gradually Sarah stirred, blinking as she opened her eyes. The memory of her dreams came flooding back, the same dream she had every night. The meaning of the dream always remained unclear, the exhilaration felt as she ran towards the cliff, the heartbreak as she watched Paul disappear down and the confusion as she realised that he was gone, not dead, just gone.

Her phone started to ring, the screen flashing on her bedside table. The lit display read ‘Paul’; she smiled, happiness filling her heart.

“Hey sweetheart!”

“Hey Paul, you all right?”

“I’m great, you?”

“I’ve only just woken up! What you up to?”

“Not much, wondering if you were free tonight. I’m thinking we go to the cinema, maybe grab some food first. Sound like a plan?”

That was the last time she spoke to him.

* * *
A shadow passed overhead, steadily circling. Sarah looked up, curious as to what it could be. Paul was there above her.

“Come join me.”

“Paul, what are you doing? How did you get up there?”

“I’m free, I’m happy.”

* * *

She clutched onto the flowers, her heart in pain, not wanting to let them go, just as she hadn’t wanted to let Paul go.

In reality, he hadn’t flow into the sky, but had gone into the ground. He died young, but was free from the pain. She knew that the only place she would be with him was in the silent hours of her sleep. But she also knew that one day she would join him, and fly. Until that day, she would stare at the sky, watching for every shadow, knowing that one of them would be Paul, watching over her.

Ruth Jones is a second year Biochemistry student, originally from Bristol, now living in sunny Portsmouth, who writes for fun, instead of revising…

Yet to be Seen

2008-02-21T20:48:00.002Z

by Daniel Hill

You didn't know how your love would affect me, you didn't know how I'd react,
But now I think the results are plain to see, almost as matter of fact.
It has me thinking of you night and day, and any other time between,
I think I love you more than you realise, but that is yet to be seen.

I'm desperate to prove myself, because I've not had a chance yet,
Everytime I speak to you I feel better, and after we finish I feel in debt.
It hurts to know that you aren't mine, and that he can hold you tight,
I wish you were here by my side, and that you were in my arms tonight.

I can't change the past, otherwise so much would be different,
Those we love would last, and my crying would not be imminent.
Into the future my love and I go, I love you forever and anytime between,
I think I love you more than you realise, but that is yet to be seen.

Daniel Hill is a writer from Bristol who is currently exploring different types of writing. He started writing poetry in 2004 after reading The Rose That Grew From Concrete and has won the only competition he has entered so far. Would probably be famous already if he weren't such a procrastinator...

Gap Years

2008-02-19T22:47:00.002Z

by Sian Cummins

For whatever reason, the Accommodation Office have put me in a flat with people who are a year older than me. That is, they finished their A-Levels over a year ago, not a few surreal, short weeks like me. That is, they have all had 'gap years'. All seven girls that I share with (sure I put down 'mixed flat', but hey) are twenty, or nearly. I just wanted to get on with it after college; the leaving home, the degree, the drinking and the sexual lunacy, enough of an adventure I would have thought. But clearly this lot didn't think so.

It's been fine so far. Enjoying the course and the people. The place is OK as well, considering it's the cheapest self-catering and the room's really small. They're mostly nice girls, not really my type of people, but inoffensive and I've got friends on the course. It's just the way they bang on and on about their years 'out'. Not Linda the girl from Belfast, she just worked in the civil service, though she does treat me like I'm a lot more than a year younger, which is laughable really. It's mostly the two with the identical pictures on their pinboards, Cathy and Louise. The flat below me, all boys, one of the mums gave one of them enough frozen dinners to last every night of term, anyway, one of them told me there's one the same in his flat. All smug and tanned, just because they went time travelling on their gap years. Both have the same pictures, posed in exactly the same way, same shots of themselves in front of the half-built Empire State Building, same gang of gormless backpackers at Victoria's coronation. If you ask me it's a cliché and they only ever go to English speaking eras anyway, but they think it makes them deadly experienced and serious. Isn't it a bit sick, going to poke around London in the Blitz? But they're like, it's humbling and it gives you a real sense of your own mortality and how lucky you are, etcetera. Anyway, the tourist trails don't take you within five days of an actual raid and nowhere where there's dead bodies. Oh well, whatever does it for you I guess. We get on OK when they concentrate on the present for five minutes. We had a great piss-up the other night. It could be worse - this guy I know from the Met lives in a private house and it's haunted, I mean OVERRUN with ghosts and the landlord refuses to do anything about it.

Sian Cummins lives in Manchester, in a writers' haven with a blocked toilet.

Ode to the guy I always see on my way to work

2008-02-17T17:40:00.003Z

by Mel George

I trail you to work every day,
Then back again all of the way,
But we’ve never broken

The barriers and spoken;

I rather think we never may.

I’m used to the back of your hair,

And that brown coat that you always wear.

Do you go to work?

Or just hang out and lurk?

If you live here, I’ve not worked out where.

I see you more often than friends

Whom I only meet at the weekends,

So it seems quite a shame
That I don't know your name

And I feel like we should make amends.

I wonder if you passed me by,

Would you nod to me or catch my eye?

The truth is, you're British -

You’d just become skittish

If one day I stopped to say ‘hi’.

Mel George has changed jobs and now no longer stalks this guy every morning. They retained a British silence until the very end.

Quiet Time

2008-02-13T14:38:00.001Z

by Emma J. Lannie

I have never been that great at Maths. Everyone thinks I’m in here listening to music, which is partly true. But I am also not here at all. I am somewhere else entirely. Mine is the only door that has a lock, apart from the bathroom and the toilet. The toilet definitely used to be a cupboard. It has one of those locks that would have taken a key way back when. Now it is just a slide lock, a metal one, although it’s pretty much unnecessary. There’s no way anyone could burst in on you. The space is so small that you have to sit on the toilet sideways, with your knees against the door. There would have been an outhouse. The toilet would have been a cupboard.

There are no great calculations. I know where I want to go. That’s enough. Whenever I come by a new possession, I get rid of an old one. Sometimes, if I’m feeling generous, I will give a thing away. Most of the time I sell my things, though. I am on the purple star on ebay. I have 99.9% positive feedback.

I like to listen to jazz, the drum kind. It’s the kind of sound I can get right inside of. But it has to be loud. Sometimes I feel like I am in the film Rumblefish. Sometimes I can be up here and hours pass without me realising, and then I have to go downstairs and apologise to my girlfriend who has been waiting for me in the living room. I don’t feel so bad if my housemates are in. At least then she will have had company. My housemates are usually in. They haven’t got a clue about all this.

I don’t have a wardrobe. This isn’t Narnia. It’s good when it happens, but I couldn’t explain the equations. Sometimes I see them in chalk on a blackboard, but it’s always right in the back of my mind, somewhere near learning to ride my bike, and when I try to think about it clearly I just get rows of x’s and tiny number 3’s. None of it makes sense. But it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t make it not happen.

The first time it was just about sounds. It was about the beats getting so loud that the room no longer existed. Later, I would turn my key in the lock and step out onto the landing, not really believing in the floorboards anymore. But it would all be unaltered. The weight of me still creaked the wood on the first step, the bannister still wobbled.

After that it was easy. Music is such an explanation. If people think you are sitting in your room alone, they let all kinds of thoughts get into their heads. But if they think you are listening to music, well, that is perfectly normal. It is acceptable behaviour. The time is always about two hours. If you put a CD lasting roughly an hour on repeat, no one will notice after just two listens. It doesn’t begin to sound familiar till at least the third go. And even then, who questions that anyway? Pick something unfamiliar, something without choruses and actual recognisable structure and you’re laughing. Jazz.

They think I am listening to jazz. They smirk about it and call it my Quiet Time. I think they are part-smirking at their cleverness at calling it the opposite of what it is, and part-smirking because they think it’s hilarious that I require this time on my own. My housemates don’t think I know about any of this. They think I am just in my room. They don’t even wonder where the things come from. They assume money has changed hands and everything belongs exactly where it is now.

All I do is broker the deals. I set them up. I write the notes. They are things that I want. And sometimes when I get them, I decide I don’t want them after all, and then I pass them on. But the ownership scratches an itch in me in a place that tries to be just feathers. Even if the thing is just mine for one minute, it still counts.

The best thing of mine is this watch. I’d wanted it since last week. When I wrote the note it was ten years ago, although the watch is a lot older than that. It’s been through wars. The note finally became an idea at the start of this month: three-day auction. It didn’t matter about the money. The money is always just a formality. What matters is it belongs to me. It is mine.

Emma J. Lannie is a librarian with a penchant for bourbon creams and fizzy pop. You can read her blog here.

The Errorist

2008-02-11T12:26:00.000Z

by Adham Smart

sprawled in the bad air of
his creation.
He left his alarm-clock
spitting irregularly, left
his walls dripping
with blind fear, left his
bed broken in two halves.

He left in a blunder
of apparition, of flying
paper cranes
that opened paper wings
over his streaming face,
and made nests of
car-crash relics;
hubcaps and broken glass.

Adham Smart is a writer from South-East London who likes to pretend he is a foreigner in his spare time. He also thinks this website is well cool.

I am awake

2008-02-08T19:09:00.000Z

by Sam Oborne

I am laying on my side in bed. I am on my right side. I am leaning on my elbow. My face is pressed against my palm. It is early in the morning and I can hear people moving around in the house. Behind me in the bed is my wife. She is laying on her back and her mouth is a little open. She is snoring.

The bed is actually an airbed. It was hard last night, but now it has sagged, so the bed is really the floor. The floor is hard, in a different way to how the bed should be hard. Not a good hard.

I hear my wife roll onto her side. She stops snoring.

The people moving around in the house are our friends. They are married too. One of them is half Portugese, or something. The other one is from Surrey. The hard floor we are on is their hard floor.

I hear my wife moving a little. Her lips make a sticky sound when she opens her mouth. Outside, a bus goes past. I move onto my front and lean on both my elbows. I press my face into the mattress, which is really the carpet.

One of our friends is in the kitchen. I think it is the one who is a little Portugese. It sounds like he is putting cereal into a bowl and then putting milk onto the cereal. I lift my head up and move onto my left side. Now I am facing my wife. She has her eyes closed but I don't think she is asleep. I lift my hand and poke her in the stomach. She doesn't move. I poke her again.

The person moving around the house who could be our friend who is a little Portugese is now eating the cereal. I can hear the crunch.

I poke my wife again. She opens her eyes. She tells me to stop it. I ask her if she thinks we should get up. She just looks at me. I say that our friends are up. She shuts her eyes. I move onto my back and look at the ceiling. The ceiling is white. Our friend who is a little Portugese opens the front door of the house. Our friend who is from Surrey kisses him goodbye. He leaves the house.

Outside, a car alarm goes off. My wife is snoring again. I close my eyes.

Sam Oborne is from Kent. His blog is here.

Rhododaktulos Eose: A Digital Dawn

2008-02-05T21:50:00.000Z

by Sammy Jay

That rosy fingered dawn of ancient times,
- When bold Achilles lived and killed and died,
And was and is remembered, - now rises
As Argive Helen charmed the world and drew
Forth the superlative from air and bound-
ing sea and bounding hills of fire - the top-
less towers! Ah how they felt the touch of that
Bright dawn of rosy fingered beauty which
Would be their ruin and their keenest joy.

She drew the hearts of men to jump themselves,
Burning to burst into blue vaulted vacancies
And yelp a cry of mystical desire,
Of hope, of love for each high mountaintop
Which swung a swathe of sweeping light
So beautiful it made the very sands
Upon the blooded strands flow of own
Mysterious accord, and whisper 'yes',
and dancing move into the moving sea.

But now the dawn is fingerless and dead,
The steel cold mind of man has plucked the rose,
And I must dream a dream of joy, and sigh
For those, who, dreamless, slumber in their beds.

Sammy Jay is a 1st Year English Student at Christ Church, Oxford, and is (wrongly) convinced that he is Shelley.

Eternal Eleven

2008-02-03T12:11:00.000Z

by Sophie Playle

-- eleven and the bell rings. Everyone shoves their things into their bags, ignoring the teacher struggling to talk over the noise. Paul cries out and runs from the classroom. He jumps over a tripped kid, and skims past the technician who storms round the corner with trays of glass beakers stacked in her arms. He rushes through the doors before the wave of students arrive on the way to their next class.

A girl with short blonde hair is waiting by the lockers and just as she opens her mouth to speak Paul gives her a quick kiss but doesn’t stop, calling back, ‘No I didn’t finish the science project and I can’t come over tonight!’

He makes his way outside and runs across the playing field. A rugby lesson is just beginning. Paul splatters through the mud, ducks to avoid a ball. ‘Clarkson!’ yells Mr. Jacks. But Paul doesn’t stop.

His lungs are burning and the irrational panic is bringing tears to his eyes. He clambers over a fence and into the churchyard. Perhaps if he gets far enough away, if he could just get away – anywhere! Quickly! But no – he can hear the grinding in the belfry and the church clock strikes --

Sophie Playle is a student at UEA trying to learn a little about literature and creative writing, in between sleeping and taking long naps. The voices told her to start a blog, because they were tired of listening to her rambles.

A ramble through February without a compass

2008-02-01T18:43:00.000Z

Well folks, a little Happy February. It's possible nobody else has wished you that today. I feel they should have done.

Another big thank you to all our new readers and all our new writers, and to the talented individuals who have sent in wonderful new pieces in their droves.

You really should drop by here as often as you can in February. If you do, you will get to read some brand new short fiction ranging from the true-to-life to the surreal; the observational to the fantastical, from authors Sam Oborne, Emma J. Lannie, and Ruth Jones amongst others. You will also be able to enjoy some more of Sammy Jay's absorbing poetry, alongside new stuff from poet Adham Smart.

Apart from that, you will have to wait and see; we like to be able to publish something new every other day, which makes TPG a little like my bank account. What comes in just about manages to cover what goes out, usually. Actually, it's doing quite a bit better than my bank account on that front. But if your fabulous work thus far is anything to go by, the end of February here at our little home should be every bit as enjoyable as January has been.

Taking off my tiny but respect-filled hat to you,

Mel

P.S. Ah yes, look up "The Pygmy Giant" on Facebook. I'm sure it'll come in handy one of these days.

Vegetable Love: In response to Carol Ann Duffy

2008-01-30T13:39:00.000Z

by Ally Temple

Not an onion.

But a mushroom.

Your love springs up from the forest floor overnight

Velvet underneath.

Comically robust,

Yet your flesh so easily violated.

And if incorrectly chosen,

Intoxicating.

Ally Temple is a student.