Two-toke pass: Now Then magazine

I've got a story in the Manchester edition of Now Then magazine alongside my Flashtag cohorts.

My short piece Two-toke Pass is a sweet little wordplop about a landlord, someone's flatmate and the destruction of the entirety of existence. It's 168 words long.

It's the first Manchester edition of a magazine that started in Sheffield. Now Then Manchester also includes stuff from Manchester Mule and Manchester Scenewipe. The design, it has to be said, is proper right gorgeous.

Get your virtual hands on a copy here, or use your real hands to find a free print edition in venues across Manchester from tomorrow.

Lady Gaga extends her telescope: a video short story

Libraries that no longer exist

Hayle Library: wheeled down the road by monkeys

Brigg Technical Library: lack of interest

Dawlish Library: confusion

Romsey Library: annexed in putsch

Saint Barry Norman Library: fear by paper cut

Newton-Le-Willows Library: offensive stained glass

Filton Library: now sells tanks
Continue reading somewhere on the Paraxis Library Wall »

Quickies: Short Stories For Adults

The bird catcher

Alexander said guard the church. I guard the church.

Next to the church stands a thicket of wintery trees, petrified, trunks silvered with what looks like ash from the war.

The church is half built. Until Alexander told me to guard the church, kids with spindly legs climbed the stonework in dirty school shoes, bed sheets bundled under arms...

Continue reading at 330 Words »

Lists of occurrences in the first married days of Robert and Susan Furniss

A list of occurrences on the occasion of the first married day of Mr Robert Furniss and Mrs Susan Furniss. Written by Mr Robert Furniss.

1. Informed Susan of homosexuality.
2. Long silence over cooling toast at hotel breakfast. She ate fruit, I had full English.
3. Lost glasses case in hotel room. Susan unconvinced about importance of loss. Reminded her of hassle to replace case. She reminded me of cost of wedding.
Continue reading at Word Gumbo (1.2mg PDF) »

Well

What do you call a stinking, dirt-smeared hole in the earth whose only contribution to fiction is as a device allowing stupid boys or hapless puppies to drown in its hidden watery depths or die of isolated starvation?

“Well” is the word you’re looking for. Wells kill children. They kill puppies. They also provide valuable drinking water for some of the most vulnerable people in the world, but for the purposes of me painting wells to be humanity’s greatest threat, LET’S PRETEND THAT NEVER HAPPENS.
Continue reading at We Hate Words »

The yarning of good whum

When I grab your body in my eye sockets, in my mind I french my fallals until my groobs burst.

I'd like to lish all over your gizzles, dangle you good and proper. We'd waltz a smooshing croon-song and mouth-slide each other heavenward. Upstairs to beddies, light down, trousers akim.

The folly of Clegg McNolly

Vomit.

There is no better word to describe the way words poured from the fingertips of Clegg McNolly, as he hammered his novel from his guts to his typewriter while dressed only in a bathrobe and a single sock.