There’s 3 books of these stories available on Amazon. Put your e-mail address in the box below and I’ll send you the first one for free, as a PDF.
Not only that, you’ll get new stories as I write them. That’s about one a week, at the moment.
And they’re more fun to find in your in-box than more ‘BUY MORE STUFF!’ messages too.
For all those of you who TWITTER, I have acquired one. You can follow it using that little icon in the top-right.
To be honest, I use Twitter far more for reading stuff rather than posting my own, so I’m not really sure how to handle an active account. For now, expect DIVERS and GLORIOUS ENTERTAINMENTS from the GREATEST in SPECIFIC-LENGTH FICTION.
And possibly also velociraptors. I’m developing a bit of a thing for velociraptors.
God made man in his own image. Old bastard never did have much of an imagination.
But it’s a chore, building a universe. Make a billion planets and anyone’s going to think, eventually, that no-one’ll notice if a few of them look… similar.
Still, when the first extra-solar planet you reached had its own Africa, questions got asked.
You found patterns. Layers. But you never grasped how deep they went.
Own image, remember? The whole universe came from the brain He copied, to make yours.
Look up, you don’t see the stars. You see the inside of your own head.
“I’m a foot model.”
“Foot… model?”
“Yeah. For catalogues.”
Emma put on her best oh-Jesus smile. Another long day at the job centre. “OK, James. And why can’t you do that any more?”
James looked uneasy. “I lost my toes.”
Oh. Jesus.
“You lost them?”
“It wasn’t my fault! I tripped and – ”
“You know the policy, James.”
“No! I can still work, I can do hands! Look at them, don’t they look alive?”
He was still protesting as security dragged him off to the incinerator.
She’d never understood why they let zombies into the labour pool to begin with.
Matt poked Jamie with a stick to make sure she wasn’t dead.
“Hey!”
“You’ve been staring at that page for an hour.”
“I was just…” she sighed. “It’s that point where everything seems hopeless, like the hero can’t possibly win.”
“They’ll come up with something.”
“Yeah, that’s the problem.” She put the book down. “Things like this make us believe the cavalry always turns up just in time. But in real life, the bad guys have the money and the power and there isn’t any cavalry so they just beat you. How can we fight that?”
Matt shrugged. “Try harder.”
“Razzers, check out the ride!”
The Mad Monk spat out his toothpick. “You can just go out and buy a new Impala?”
“What can I say, man, I fell in love.” Constantine looked up from behind his pink sunglasses. “And apparently the compound interest on the wealth of the Byzantine Empire is quite considerable.”
Rasputin climbed in the passenger seat. “So, Woodstock? Or go see how much Presley’s fleeced out of Vegas?”
“Woodstock, man! Peace, love and Bob Dylan!”
“Dylan’s not playing.”
“What? Jerk. I’m gonna have him fed to the lions.”
“Take the hippie out of Byzantium…”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
—–
This story is from the prompt ‘new love, Bob Dylan and a 1969 Chevrolet Impala’. Since that’s clearly nowhere near enough stuff for an entire 100 words, I put in Constantine, Razzers and Elvis as well. You might remember them from Viva Las Vegas.
This is a guest story by Faith Cusgroy.
—–
When Carol was a child, things she read came to life.
“Carol! Put that book up!” Her mother yelled the night she evaded a warlock in the hall.
“Mom, she’s doing it again!” Her siblings complained as they squashed pixies against the car windows.
Carol read anyway.
As she grew older, distinguishing between life and fiction troubled her. Even so, she cried as her husband boarded up her library, but eventually, she forgot.
When she turned 81, Carol’s grandson and his daughter, Beatrice, visited her. Beatrice read The Secret Garden aloud, handing Carol flowers from the garden now and then.
Madoc and Cai ran to see who would be king.
The monolith had been erected by the Old Men, thrust into the hill like a sword.
The story said once, the land was empty. So the Old Men raised this post, and from here England sprang. If you were first to touch it in Midsummer sun, one day you’d rule.
So Madoc and Cai ran.
But when they got there, a scrawny girl sat against the rock.
“Too slow,” she said.
Madoc cursed and spat, but Cai asked “Who are you?”
“Arfa,” she said. “And I’m going to be king.”
—–
This story is from the prompt ‘being first to post’.
I read ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ and, inspired, beat my housemate to death with a cricket bat.
I buried him beneath the floorboards, and waited.
But there was no sound. No badump badump betraying my guilt. When eventually he began to smell, I threw his parts into the river.
I was too late. The house smelled of decay, no matter how much I scrubbed.
The new tenants, when I could stand it no more, didn’t seem to mind.
I’ve had 5 houses since. In every one, the stench rises from the floor, and I find my gaze drawn to the river.
This one is the very first guest post on this site, by K M Ross.
—–
It had been a lark photographing my Uncle Jim with his old 1940s circa box-brownie, and fun developing the film, till a ghostly image of a young woman somehow superimposed itself over my uncle’s features; checking the negative confirmed the filmy spectre was real.
The apparition looked frightening. Chills ran up my spine.
“Uncle Jim,” I asked, “Do you know who she was?”
The air inside my darkroom tensed.
Jim gasped, “Esther …”
His face became ashen. He clutched his chest, and fell dead.
A cold and eerie breath whispered, “You broke my heart Jim … revenge is sweet …”
This is my street-lamp. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Under this lamp, I first kissed David, after he walked me home from Harry’s Bar.
Under this lamp, I asked him to move in.
And now under this lamp, I fix his picture. He went to buy milk, never came back.
And I wonder: was it me? Did I say something, do something wrong? Did he meet someone else?
They found a body in the woods. Decomposed, unidentifiable. Right height.
It probably wasn’t him, I think, as I pass his face in its patch of light.