fiction
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Sometimes I wish there were a bed at the library. In a corner, out of the way. Or not a bed exactly, but something bedlike. A pile of cushions would do. A place set up for a drowse. For half an hour. Or twenty minutes should be enough. The length of a tea break. Time…
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Each morning for breakfast Flick orders a cup of black coffee with a piece of sweet egg-toast. Today, for the first time, the two sisters in the cafe were friendly. Their eyes crinkled with joy, and they asked him if he was enjoying his morning. ‘What’s wrong with you two?’ he said. ‘Every day I…
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The heat came early in the morning from nowhere, and by the afternoon it was pressing down on all sides. The first day of summer, I called it. Roddy said it was just a phantom. We closed the curtains and sat around without clothes. My back was slick with sweat, and the backs of my…
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I put my book on the sand, lay back, and looked up at the clouds sliding across the sky. At the edges, they swirled like ink in water. After a while, these movements began to have an unsettling effect on me. I felt as if gravity might suddenly fail; that the earth would lose its…
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In the end, you do some laundry. You sit outside on the battered chair and watch as the washing dries on the line. While you watch, you smoke cigarettes, and drink coffee. You flick ash on the ground. You remember how you used to drink your coffee black and long because that’s how they drank…
Barry Lee Thompson 