flash fiction
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‘In here,’ he said, grabbing my hand, and leading me up a dark flight of stairs, then another, and another, until we’d climbed so high I could feel the building sway. He unlocked a big metal door and pulled me into the room and said, ‘This is Ernie.’ It was an ugly thing, squat and…
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Although he hadn’t been asleep, Michael felt rested and much calmer. The room was still and peaceful, and lit by a bleed of sunlight around the edges of the curtains. He was lying on his front, and he turned his head and looked across the bed, into the mirror in the wardrobe door. Just behind…
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‘What if someone sees?’ I said. He told me not to worry. ‘No one here cares,’ he said. I wasn’t convinced. A man with a dog was walking at the water’s edge, headed in our direction. I sat up. ‘Can we wait?’ I said. ‘Just till he’s passed?’ ‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘I recognise him.…
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All I wanted to do was lie in the thick late-afternoon light and watch the spider in the corner of the ceiling, and listen to the cars passing outside the window, and drift in and out of sleep. But of course I couldn’t. Not while Melissa was there, threatening to talk about every little thing…
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I try to change the subject. I talk to her about the beach – a place she likes to be. She once told me she’d like to die on the beach, in the sun, as people walk by. No one would really be sure if she were dead, or just sunbaking, she said. I told…
Barry Lee Thompson 