fiction
-
Steven was regarding his reflection in a battered old mirror which was fixed on the wall in the corner of the shop. He was holding an old rolling-tobacco tin filled with tarnished keys, and not so much feigning interest in the tin and its contents, but using them as props, to allow himself this opportunity…
-
Roscoe tells me he thinks I’m getting better. I don’t know why he brings it up like that, from nowhere. It starts me thinking. I don’t feel much better. I haven’t been comfortable going out after dark for months. I count back. Three months? Four? ‘It’s all ended well,’ he says. ‘Has it?’ ‘It’s…
-
We’d bunked off school that afternoon. Me and Pauline were lying in the tall grass. Henry was sitting away, with his back to us. For ages I looked, at his dark hair, deep black, almost purple, like a crow, and the whiteness of his neck, like ice-cold milk. His head was down, and he was…
-
One time after school, I’d gone back to Yvonne’s place. We sat in the living room, watching television. Mrs Morelli brought us cups of tea and slices of fruit cake on a tray decorated with labels from Italian liquor bottles. After she’d put the tray onto the coffee table, she lit a cigarette with the…
-
We were in a seafood restaurant. Herman was chewing a mussel, over and over. I asked him if it was okay. ‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s tough. Like meat. I want to spit it.’ ‘Then spit it,’ I said. I looked around for him. ‘No one’s watching us.’ ‘A pity,’ he said. Why, he asked, did…
Barry Lee Thompson 