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.
My grandfather drove the same car for 70 years.
A Sunbeam 14/40 Tourer, bought second-hand in 1933. It never broke down, never stalled, never even needed an oil change. It stood by him all his life, finally giving up on the very same day he died.
Even surrounded by newer models, he stayed faithful. Every weekend, he’d wax, polish and tune.
Until one day his eyes wandered to a curvy young Lexus, and the engine stopped.
On the outside lane of the M11.
I can’t prove it was a crime of passion, but I’m still selling that car for scrap.
Mrs Potts’ house was burning down, and she didn’t seem to notice.
Just like every evening, she sat in her rocking chair reading a book. Except this time, flames were creeping up the curtains.
Then, just like every evening, at 8:00 she made tea. Except this time, the cooker was melting.
We phoned the fire brigade, but couldn’t go in. The house was far too dangerous.
And now it’s a blackened shell.
But still, every evening, Mrs Potts sits with her book. Then, at 8:00, she makes tea.
We’d lived next door to a ghost for the last five years.
Hell was invented in an Edinburgh pub in late 2009, over a bottle of Glenfiddich 21.
“Dude, can’t be done. People aren’t that dumb.”
“Seriously.” Gabriel leaned forward. “I know this guy who works in Saatchi and Saatchi. It’s all branding.”
Michael raised an eyebrow. “So, we just arbitrarily assign a load of us some scary name, and say ‘oh look aren’t they bad’. Regardless of… facts.”
“Yeah.” Gabriel snorted. “Hey, let’s make Lucy their king!”
“Free will, dude. Not happening.”
“Free, but pliable.”
“Next round says you’re wrong.”
“Done.”
Gabriel vanished, then reappeared. Michael readjusted to the timeline.
“Damn.”
—–
This article turned up in my Facebook feed, and that inspired this one. Language affecting how we think is fairly well-documented – back in uni I did a presentation on how to teach maths to people whose number system was entirely relative – and if you want to see an example closer to home, you don’t need to look further than Strivers and Scroungers.
They called it ‘hole punch’, because after drinking it, that’s all your memory had left.
It contained everything from the top shelf, most things from the back room and one ingredient outlawed since 1987, when Terence Stokes, Her Majesty’s Inspector, took a tentative sniff and spent the next two years rocking back and forth and muttering about cabbages.
“Sure about this?” the bartender asked.
The man looked up, with eyes that had seen Hell. “I wanted to be an astronaut,” he said. “Today, I adjusted our paradigms to empower blue-sky oversight and enhance our deliverables.”
“…I’ll make it a double.”
Grandma said: “If you can make broth, you’ll never go hungry.”
That’s the kind of thing you say, when you don’t have to live on broth.
When the sun went out, the plants died, and other things started to grow in their place. Slender, wiry stems. Black, oily leaves.
They’re too chewy to eat, so I boil them into soup. Tastes foul. Some days, I prefer hunger.
But that’s over.
Yesterday, a man came to my hut. He wore yellow plastic, and said “Christ, I didn’t realise anyone still lived surfaceside.”
He wasn’t from around here. Now, I’ve got meat.
We have a ritual, Saint Valentine and me.
Every year, on February 14th, he goes out to the allotment to check on his bees. Then he’ll drop into mine for a brew.
He brings a pot of last summer’s honey, and we have it spread thick on bread.
“No card this year?” he asks.
“No,” I say. I think of Stephen. Can’t stop myself.
“Good,” he says. “He was a lying sod.”
“Still… kinda miss him… today…”
“Don’t. Today’s about doing what you love. Maybe people. Maybe bees. I always preferred bees.”
The honey smells like flowers, and tastes better.
—–
This one is dedicated to the patron saint of beekeeping. Originally I was going to end with a joke, but I ended up… not.
“A cow.”
“I know, isn’t it amazing! Now we can have milk and butter and cheese and little baby calves!”
“I know what a cow is, Terry. It’s just not what I was expecting.”
“No?”
“No. See, when I said to sell our magic bean harvest to the wizard for a large bag of gold, I thought you’d come back with a large bag of gold. Not a cow.”
“But… look, I met this guy…”
“Like the guy who sold you the Rialto Bridge last week?”
“Er… yes. Very like him. Might actually have been the same guy.”
“Jesus, Terry.”
—–
This one was from the prompt ‘magic beans’. Jack knew what he was doing.
On Jimmy’s 16th birthday, he was taken to the Type Machine.
“I don’t want to do this.”
“I wouldn’t worry,” said his father, puffing on his pipe. “You’re a big lad, you’ll probably be a Jock. Jocks get Cheerleaders.”
Jimmy looked at the ‘Who Will You Be?’ pamphlet. “But none of these fit. I like science and football.”
“I know, son. That’s why you need a Type. To stop nonsense like that.”
The scientist adjusted his black-rimmed glasses. “The Machine has finished analysing your tests. You can go in now.”
Jimmy entered the metal room, wondering who would come out.
Like so many people, Thomas Delaney was concerned that no-one would remember him after he was gone.
Just another man, in just another office.
He needn’t have worried, for the very next day he was struck down by a frozen stuffed guinea pig, falling from an airplane’s hold at thirty-eight thousand feet.
People were talking about that for ages.
Unremarkable as his life – if not his death – may have been, Thomas did teach one very important lesson.
By someone, somewhere, you will be remembered.
So it’s not being forgotten that anyone should worry about. It’s what you’ll be remembered for.
—–
This one came from the prompt ‘stuffed guinea pig’. Don’t think there was anywhere else I was ever going to go with it.
There was a cheeseburger on the lawn again. The time-travellers had been back.
I met one once. I tried to talk about the future, but he insisted ‘I iz from now times’. I told him we didn’t spend our entire waking life photographing cats, but he didn’t believe me.
I can’t help but wonder what’s going to happen. Rome left behind the colosseum. Hammurabi left behind his laws. We’ve left behind… lolcats.
I’m going to write a novel. Something to show there’s more to us than a meme.
But first, I need to upload this picture of Trouble being cute.
—–
I will upload a picture. There’s just so many to choose from…
This one was from the prompt ‘cats and cameras’.