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.
No-one deserves to die like that.
Pulled from her carriage, her skin torn away, the wreckage of her burned in the name of God.
Maybe they did it because of fear, because she was a pagan, because she was a woman who dared to think.
But if they did it for silence, they did it wrong.
The next day, there was just one word on the streets: “Hypatia…” “She thought that…” “Hypatia always said…”
Her killers were condemned, shunned like lepers. But I can’t help thinking: if we’d listened before she was a martyr, maybe she wouldn’t have become one.
—–
I’ve taken a couple of liberties with what actually happened, but the horrific details are intact. Here’s a bit more information about Hypatia.
On summer evenings, I like to sit in the garden and watch the fairies play over my prize azaleas.
I say ‘play’… what I mean is they’ve got a bitter territorial dispute going back generations, and every night they come out to drench the flowerbed in pixie blood.
Last summer, they tried to broker a peace. Asked me to mediate. I was flattered, but it wasn’t right for me to get involved in their affairs.
Talks broke down, and I felt a bit guilty digging in the wreckage the next morning.
Not too guilty, though. Those azaleas don’t fertilise themselves.
In an old oil lamp, passed down to me by my uncle, lives the world’s most rubbish genie.
I wasn’t asking for much… just wealth, power and for Scarlett Johansson to find me stunningly attractive.
What did I get? The phone number of a decent tailor and a book about getting a work ethic.
“What do you call that?” I asked.
“Everything you need,” he said. “What more do you want?”
“Money! Respect! Scarlett Johansson wearing something red and slinky!”
“Just like that?”
“Yes!”
He looked at me. “Kid, I granted your wishes. You want miracles, go talk to Jesus.”
A deer and a dollar was what Tim had
Don’t ask me why, the man was mad
He had more dollars once, but now? Bereft
After buying the deer, just one was left
But was he sad? No! It would seem
He had a money-making scheme
He put the deer out to stud
Thinking it ran with thoroughbred blood
Unfortunately, Tim did find
It simply was not girl-inclined
But do not fear, my noble friend
This tale indeed has a happy end
For the deer brought home a mate, it’s true
And Tim – poor soul – is now Tim Buck Two
—–
The prompt for this story was ‘Timbuktu (with apologies to Ogden Nash)’. Ogden Nash was far better at writing doggerel than me, and I am indeed very sorry.
“Listen to that.”
I listened. A muffled tolling, from where I couldn’t tell.
“Saint Peter’s bells. Washed away two hundred years ago, they were.”
I reeled in my line. I didn’t want to fish for a bit, just listen to the bells and the creaking boat.
“Once,” he said, “I fished far out. Caught a dogfish. Had an arrowhead in its belly.”
“It’s amazing to think people used to live down there,” I said. “Then the sea came.”
He shrugged, gestured to the lights on the coast. “What amazes me,” he said, “is that they seem to think it’s stopped.”
—–
This one is from the prompt ‘impermanence’. Most of the stories here are from some prompt or other, I just keep forgetting to mention it.
Despite all logic and good sense, the man stomping down the road from Glenridding was refusing to give Magpie his signet ring.
“Be off with you! Damned creature!”
Magpie cocked his head. “Geez, who stumped your wicket?”
The man slumped onto the verge.
“I can’t write. I’m just not inspired. I can’t make it happen.”
“That’s it? That’s your problem? Look around you – there’s barely a cloud in the sky, the daffodils are all dancing… life’s not so bad, eh?”
The man stared. Then got up, and ran back to Glenridding, pausing only to hang his ring on Magpie’s beak.
Ten years ago, we woke up, and everything was black and white.
No-one knows why. The colour just faded away.
Except for one flower. One single stem.
It’s red like sunsets, red like danger. Blood and velvet and roses and wine.
It was found a few years after the fading and placed, with much fanfare, in the State Museum.
My kid, Katie, has never known colour, so I took her to see it. We waited in line for hours, and suddenly it was there. Shining, brilliant. I blinked away tears.
Katie screwed up her nose. “Eww,” she said. “That’s disgusting.”
—–
For anyone who’s read my longer piece Your Life, in Black and White – this was the story I originally had planned, but couldn’t work out how to tell.
She drinks Gin Fizz.
It suits her. It’s sharp, bubbly and curiously old-fashioned.
She says things like ‘delightful’ and ‘top hole’ and ‘Abyssinia, darlings’. Wears pillbox hats and waspwaist dresses.
It’s an affectation. She makes up a personality for us. We thought she didn’t have one of her own.
But on the day the war came, the day the bombs fell on London and left our city a mess of smoke and concrete, she was the one who took us and led us from the wreckage.
Gin Fizz isn’t just made of sharpness and bubbles. It’s built on raw spirit.
One afternoon, I started walking, and didn’t stop until I reached Copenhagen.
London was too big. It stifles, chokes like a pillow.
Copenhagen seemed the place for a new start. I liked sea air, and the story of the little mermaid.
But it seems London wasn’t my problem.
I lean on the harbour wall, missing my mother tongue and imagining the smell of chips.
The mermaid statue shows her human, but naked, staring wistfully out to sea, and I think yes actually I understand you.
Once a mermaid, always a mermaid. Wherever you may be, half of you won’t belong.
And finally, I am at peace.
I close my eyes. For the first time in longer than I can remember, I smile.
It took forever. It seemed that all around me there was busyness, clutter. But I have restored order. No more distractions.
I turn myself inward, concentrate fully on nothing but being. I can stretch my senses to the edge of creation, because I am all there is.
I feel a tingle, a fizz against my form.
I feel…
My eyes slam open, as around me the firmament boils with new matter.
Another universe.
Bugger. Here we go again.