Barry Lee Thompson

short fiction

  • TONGUE | from Roomers #62

    1978, a birthday party. One of those once in a blue moon family dos where a local hall gets hired, there’s catering, a DJ. The adults end up drunk and misty. Someone overdoes it, creates a spectacle. There’s a fight. No blood’s spilled, but there’s harsh words, someone gets upset, there’s tears and the gin

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  • Front of the house

    Look at him working. The way he smiles at every customer. He’s impeccable. But when he goes to his room at the back, at the side of the kitchen, the smile is gone. He sips clear liquor from a teacup, swears under his breath, and watches everything through the small glass in the door. When

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  • Laundry

    Laundry

    There are too many choices, and he can’t decide, so in the end he stays home and does some laundry. He sits outside on the battered chair and watches the washing drying on the line. While he watches, he smokes cigarettes and drinks milky coffee. He’s forgotten the ashtray so he flicks the ash onto

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  • Number 58

    It was a short-term lease, and now their couch is gone from out the front. Some nights they’d sit there in underwear, onesies, crazy hats; talking, but only to each other, and smoking and playing. And by early morning the night’s detritus of notebooks, clothes, packets, bottles, would be strewn in still life over the

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  • Gin and It

    Gin drains her glass, and winces. ‘That was too sweet,’ she says. He’s standing an arm’s length away, polishing the bar. ‘You were smacking your lips earlier,’ he says. ‘Well I’m not smacking them now,’ she says. ‘You mixed it too sweet.’ ‘I always mix it the same,’ he says. He moves further down the

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