De-blog

I hear the front door close, the clang of your keys as you drop them into your pocket. My peaceful afternoon is about to end, just as soon as you’ve taken off your shoes, checked the mail, poked your head into the sitting room, slammed the kettle with your dismay and laid your disbelief upon the naked kitchen table. I can almost hear you tally your point score as you climb the stairs to my studio—THE attic, as you call it—and I should brace for your arrival, but I don’t give a damn. That creaky top stair denies you your stealthy approach, yet I act as if you will still catch me unawares. The square of blue above my head holds my attention, patchy and ragged as if the skylight were a giant phone and the sky a wash painted by a clumsy finger. “I bet you do that all day.” I fake a start, as usual, and spin my chair so my back is fully to you. If you could manage as much as a civil ‘hi’, I’d respond in kind. But the kindness has all gone. We are embittered, estranged echoes of our past....

He’s a fast-talking, dishevelled inventor trapped in a world he never made. She’s a transdimensional renegade magician’s assistant trying to make a difference in a man’s world. Together, they fight crime! (inspiration: http://theyfightcrime.org ) (Flash Fiction, written for the Sparkly Badgers.) *** The audience oooh’d as Pretendo circled the wooden crate, his final sword raised. Bend, flick, recoil… The blade flashed under the spotlights and plunged, piercing the lid, dead centre. As one, the audience gasped and held their breath. Beneath the crate’s false floor, Shula waited out the seconds, knowing she’d be stuck a good while yet. Pretendo loved to drag out the sword removal part of his act even though the audience was only interested in seeing his ‘assistant’ emerge unscathed. He was a fake. All magicians were, but that was beside the point. Pretendo wasn’t actually a magician. He was a thief on the run, and he shouldn’t have made it this far. Shula had flagged his pas...

A Hiding Behind The Couch flash fiction, written for the Sparkly Badgers. Theme: extreme weather (British style ;)). *** A pink straw sunhat dropped onto the patio table. Iris glanced up from her magazine as Pauline passed between her and the sun—not that it mattered when she was under an umbrella. Pauline gingerly lowered herself onto the other recliner and lifted the hat, revealing a bottle of sun lotion—no, make that oil. “Bloomin’ hot, in’t it?” she said. She flipped the lid and upended the bottle, generously greasing her left arm, then her right. “Here we go. Back in 1976, we was frying eggs on’t car bonnets… ” “Well, we was!” “Aye. You told me last time we had a heat wave.” About ten years ago, if memory served. Pauline squinted with one eye shut, checking her arms were well coated before she squeezed dollops onto both thighs. “Nowt wrong with making the most of it.” “You could’ve just had a barbecue, love.” “I don’t think they was invented then, but that wer...

I wrote the opening paragraphs as the start of a story for the Take a Chance anthology , but I didn’t get any further, and it’s been loitering on my computer since, so I thought I’d throw down a few more words (577 words in all) and share it. That was the first time Robbie saw him. He remembered the smell of the dirty rain that pelted the streets and his stinging cheeks, the heavy grey sky draped over the world like an unwashed blanket, the wa-wa of the music and the beeps and the clicks, the spiralling zooming lights that seemed a million times brighter in the dead cold of the wet November afternoon. And he remembered him—the boy in torn tracksuit pants, too-big t-shirt and trainers with no laces that flipped and flopped until they were finally flung aside. Robbie wasn’t allowed in the arcades. When he’d told his parents about the Saturday job in the fish and chip shop, it was the first thing they’d said. Not ‘well done’ or ‘good for you’. Do not— we repeat —do NOT go in th...