Victorian Girl

"it must have been hard to win the presedensy what with all the reasoned dibate you had to do on television"

New story Victorian Girl, as performed at Sadcore Dadwave in November 2012, now up on the video page of this site.

I died once during the war

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Slow journey

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Brillenda picks up

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My pockets are for tissues #3

Dear Frances,

Aside finding in my pockets the butchered corpse of Philip Schofield, a bloodied axe, a badly-penned sketch of the butchered corpse of Philip Schofield, and a chainsaw bearing your name smeared in blood, Coleen Nolan's been sick in the pool.

Words cannot express how furious I am with you, Frances. Shop receipts, packets of sweets: no room for anything.

You left me no choice and that’s why I did what I did.

I skinned your dog. I filled your dog’s skin with bits of Philip and now Dog Skin Phil carries my keys and my housing forms and my tissues and my coins. I don’t need pockets now because of Dog Skin Phil.

You should see him swim.

Sometimes I look at my family and wonder what life would be like if they were all dead. I have nowhere to put that thought, Frances. Nowhere at all.

Yours sincerely,

Elizabeth Tent

My pockets are for tissues #2

Dear Frances,

And my hands. My pockets are somewhere to put my hands. I put my hands in my pockets because, Frances, sometimes I like to put my hands in my pockets.

Thanks for your help with the Tuesday class this morning, but it wasn’t necessary. Attendance was poor and one of the children was sick in the pool.

When I went to get a long-handled net, you put a severed finger in my pocket. If this is Philip Schofield’s finger, I’m going to be furious. Numbers are down, Frances, and the numbers we do have spill their stomachs or stick photographs of Coleen Nolan in the lockers.

There are many things I keep in my pockets that I haven’t mentioned yet: coins, travel cards, hastily-scrawled unattributed telephone numbers.

Coleen Nolan in the lockers, Frances.

I don’t want to have to write to you again.

Yours sincerely,

Elizabeth Tent

My pockets are for tissues #1

Dear Frances,

I am writing this letter of complaint because you keep leaving things in my pockets.

At first it was a joke like the time I lost my swimming costume and you hung it from the diving board, or the time I was doing practice swims and you replaced the chlorine with iodine, or the time you made your dog a costume using the skin of my cat.

But now you are putting things in my pockets. I need my pockets for important things like keys and housing forms and tissues and I know tissues are not important but this whole thing raises crucial hygiene issues.

This morning I found in my pockets a bad biro drawing of Philip Schofield with the old black hair he doesn’t have any more.

Please consider this as a cease and desist.

Yours sincerely,

Elizabeth Tent

Barnable Spoon

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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

Eh? (aka Richard Hirst Will Not Co-Operate Even When You Offer Him Puppies)

Note: This could be about anyone. It just so happens I've used the name of Richard Hirst, who did rather well in the 2011 Manchester Fiction Prize. Except, well, despite a reference to his wonderful drawings of cats, it's not him really. I read this story to Richard Hirst on the Bad Language stage in August 2012.

A tidy cul-de-sac lined on both sides with driveways so regular, you could slide a tab along the road and zip it right up. Shorn lawns bordered by paving scrubbed magnolia.

Suburbia.

Lost cat signs in Helvetica; lunching on bruschetta; elbow patches in leather.

Here, said Richard Hirst.

The first house had colourful window boxes. The doorbell chimed Casio Big Ben. The woman who answered was all pearls and pleats highlighted with cerise eye shadow. She was Lucinda Cooper, retired nurse, not bad at whist. Richard Hirst knew everything.

I’ve been expecting you, she whispered. Her cheek was the colour of bruised apple. She angled her face away.

A Facial Sonata (50 Shades of Grey remix)

Friction

Creepy Geoff came round, rubbing the teacups and wiping his legs on the door frames again.

We hid the best china in the stair cupboard, but it wasn't long before he was in there, rattling his elbow along the corrugated plastic of the hoover tube.

[read the rest of this in Adropiean Galactic Lego Set Blues]

At the foot of the rock

Zouis lived under the waterfall, his head in a permanent deluge as the sun bounced rainbows out of his ears.

Sometimes he lay on the rocks to dry on the violet banks of the river. With his back arched and toes curled, he swore he could feel his wrinkled skin flapping in the breeze.

When they moved the waterfall because it wasn't quite positioned to match the tourist guides, Zouis scooped puddle water into his face.

But it wasn't the same.

Zouis packed his possessions into a matchbox. He walked the path that led down the river that led to the desert.

The desert was large, yellow and dull.

He starred angel shapes into the burning sand and flecked off the skin deadened by heat.

The sun seared into the back of his brain all the craziness of humankind. Uninvited circles blocked his vision and he waved helpless arms to get rid of them. He tried to vomit the last contents of his stomach but he wretched until blood painted his chest. He licked his lips red raw.

Zouis collapsed at the foot of a rock at the foot of a dune taller than any waterfall he had seen.

He looked at the blue sky blurring now to grey and let his imagination deluge ice-cold colours into every pit of his body. He imagined and imagined until tears fell from his eyes.

The tear water formed momentary pools before steaming into the wind.

Zouis curled his toes. He was a waterfall again.

Eyeball scrawls: Invisible Animal Man

 

I have a new story called Invisible Animal Man.

Here is an excerpt:

I never knew loneliness until the animals stopped looking at me. 

You know how you can be at a party and still feel lonely? Imagine the same but with an ocelot snubbing you at the buffet. 

I tried lying in their troughs. Coming at them from unusual angles. I waved my arms as if my shoulder sockets were magic eightballs. Hey animals. Hey.

[read the rest of this in Adropiean Galactic Lego Set Blues]

I remember when this was all fjords

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Luke's daughter answers the door

I knock on the door. My knuckles against the varnish is the most contact I have had all day with anything that does not belong to me.

"Is Luke there?" I say.

Luke's daughter is topless apart from a sash she has made from bin liners. She performs some kind of ritualistic dance while leaning on the door to keep it open. It looks like she has oil on her forehead.

Italic Xmas micro fiction

Micro-fiction as tweeted on Christmas Day 2011.

Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house was a thickening layer of carbon monoxide.

Christmas was cancelled because Santa's contract didn't require him to cross a picket... (by @guygarrud) 

Santa slumped against the Christmas tree, presentless and sodden in port.

Protagony: for National Short Story Day

Name of protagonist squeezed in early, short description, something about the weather. One facet of character explained through action, or no facets through inaction, or both or neither. Foreshadowing loomed: maybe a cloud or a baby.

A capacity for a better life

Simon rubbed his hip on the rough stone of the hotel building.

This used to be bigger, he said. I'm certain this used to be bigger.

The hotel entrance led to a lobby flattened by strip lighting. The receptionist was a hefty woman with a cigar between her fingers.

This used to be bigger, he said. She looked at him as if he was a scab she had just picked off her elbow.
Simon stood in the lobby listening to footsteps come and go. He brought up a contact on his mobile phone then dialled.

It rang out. He left the hotel.

Simon stood on the street. This used to be bigger, he said as he pressed his body into the side of an ice cream van. This used to be a bigger van.

He stood on the beach .He lay face down in wet sand, the tide lapping into his ears. The sea, he said in a muffled voice. It used to be bigger.

  Simon had a long phone conversation with his girlfriend. You didn't answer when I called before, he said. All he heard back was the sound of her typing, the sound of her shuffling papers and the sound of her eating a tangerine.

Simon stood on a pavement. He pushed his tongue against the glass door of a Waterstone’s. He pushed until it hurt.

Have you got any height charts, he asked the twitching bookseller behind the counter. What's a height chart, said the bookseller. You know, like you have for children.

The bookseller looked sad, as if he was unsure of where he was.

Simon dialled again. He pressed the phone into the side of his head until it became an oblong extension of his skin.

This isn't working anymore, he told the phone. We used to be something else. Something bigger. He looked at the sky, wondered what it felt like. We used to be bigger, he said.

All he could hear was the sound of sucked citric juices and the tap tap tap of a Samsung laptop. She hummed absent agreement. Vague platitudinous vocal shrugs.

(Text updated: August 2012.)