Archive for the 'Short Stories' Category

Lizzie’s Baby

21Oct09

Published in Sein and Werden and performed at Short Fuse Leicester 20 October 2009.
Lizzie’s Baby 
Even though it was all of ten paces from her room to the baby’s room, Audra felt as if she were running uphill though shoulder-high water against the current.  The baby was crying with high-pitched insistency.  Audra stumbled, scrabbled back, not [...]


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First and Last and Always

08Jan09

I have a map inside my head.  A map of either brilliant or first-and-only versions of various songs.  It starts: Hamburg “Sister Ray”, Newcastle “Nine While Nine”, Blackburn “Stairway to Heaven”, Wembley “Temple of Love”, Brixton Academy “Ribbons”…  OK, I’ll be the first to admit I’m a fanatic.  How many other people would seriously get [...]


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Someone Else’s Wallpaper

19Jul08

A horror story originally published in “Not for Bedtime” (Infinity Junction).  Wallpaper can’t grow roses, can it?

Someone Else’s Wallpaper

“I swear I can smell roses,” Charlotte muttered to herself, but as she looked round the room the only roses she could see were crowded on the wallpaper climbing around a green trellis design. A masculine attempt [...]


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Soft Focus

10Jul08

A horror story: Sarah’s idea of doctoring her cheating lover’s contact lenses so he can see her rival as she really is doesn’t go to plan.  Originally published in Unhinged.
 
Soft Focus
Sarah put the radio on so that she didn’t have to focus on her own thoughts.  She cursed, regreting telling Nick about ‘Project Fun’.  She [...]


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Restoration

10Jul08

A regal ghost haunts Sudeley Castle as narrated by a Victorian teenager.  Won runner-up Prize in Writing Magazine’s Annual Ghost Story Competition.  Originally published in The Book of the Dead.
Restoration
I wish Katherine Parr had been buried with her first husband in the Royal Vault at Windsor, instead of at Sudeley Castle, where my aunt is [...]


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Chaff

08Jul08

A horror story, originally published in The Dream Zone #8.  
Chaff
I saw St John the Baptist again today.  Can in hand, he was weaving down Grafton Street, a pocket of silence in the Babel of languages around him.  As he walked, the tourists parted to left and right, their glances looking through him, or skittering [...]


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The Red Chair

08Jul08

A horror story: a woman becomes intrigued by a man who pushes round an empty, red-framed wheelchair.  Published in Terror Tales (UK) and Storyglossia (USA, online).
 
The Red Chair
As I push my dark brown fringe out of my eyes, I notice him push a red-framed wheelchair with a cushion in the seat along the street past [...]


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