short fiction
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‘None of this is real,’ he said. ‘Didn’t you know that? Did nobody ever tell you?’ ‘They told me other things,’ I said. ‘Stories and rules. But not that. These trees, and the sky: they’re real, aren’t they?’ ‘None of it. All of it doesn’t exist. It’s a confection; as real as a puff of…
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There was that time in Bournemouth. One of the summer holidays of guaranteed sunshine. I was about six years old and one afternoon I had my portrait done by a woman near to the beach. It was done in pastels, I think. It must have been pastels because they smudged, and if you rubbed a…
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When he’s nostalgic, it’s pale blue, like seaside houses. Distant seagulls in morning harbours, old-fashioned cream cakes, and the damp wood of rickety beach-huts. Relaxation is liquid green, like late-summer afternoons. He hears the lazy buzz of insects in the settled heat, and tastes the sweet anticipation of the evening to come. When he’s anxious,…
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She buys cheap shampoos for the smell. She’s got bottles of the stuff. It hurts your nose to sniff them, they’re all so chemical. I came out of the bathroom saying that I didn’t know how she could use that cheap shit, that I was surprised her hair wasn’t falling out. ‘I’ve told you,’ she…
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Everything was just as it had been the last time he’d come, except he couldn’t see her sculpture. He looked around as if it might have been blown down the road. He stopped a woman near to the Arts Centre, and said, ‘What happened to Forward Surge?’ She arched an eyebrow, and her eyes followed…
Barry Lee Thompson 