fiction
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Are you there, Uncle? Can you hear me? It’s late. There’s someone on the phone. An unexpected caller. They say they’re approaching the house, and they may not be alone. http://www.inshortpublishing.com/shop1/uncategorized/interrupter/
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I’m waiting for the tram, at the junction. Waiting where the streets cross, and the lights change, and the cars stop and go in regular patterns, repeating over and over. Passengers stare and I stare back, like we’re sizing each other up. My tram’s late, so I have to keep waiting. And all the time…
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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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It’s the usual cafe, every Saturday. Today, Aaron asks for a banana milkshake, and his brother says he’ll have one too. “He always has the same as me,” says Aaron. And it’s true, the brother always has exactly the same, whatever it is. “Why do you have to copy me?” says Aaron, riled by his brother’s…
Barry Lee Thompson 