(2) “Come on, sleepyhead, let’s get you upstairs.” The first thing I became aware of was the sound of my sister’s voice, soft in my ear. My nerves caught up slowly, and in time I felt the lounge carpet scratching at my cheeks, the building agony in my face and stomach. She tugged at my sleeve, rolling me over. The light burned. Had I fallen asleep? “What time is it?” “Two in the morning.” I couldn’t open my eyes, partly because of the ligh...

  The Visitors Had he wanted to romanticise, or to dramatise, he would have decided that the dreams woke him, but he knew it to be untrue. He woke to the hot, pervasive sun, to the taste of gravel and its numbed imprint upon his face. To the acrid smell of stale urine, and the sound of the passing crowds. For a moment he lay, though unaware that he lay on the ground, his slow mind stuck in the warmed cushion of sleep. He tasted blood and instinct took over, hand moving to his face. A sn...

Judgment Michael Black had nothing of value to say anymore, if he ever did, and the verdict was far from conclusive. Hard to say when his head became so devoid of creative ability, when the funny stuff ceased to be laugh-out-loud and all the tragedy of the world became infinitely sadder. Every morning he came around in his junk wrapper carpeted hellhole, with the damp patches that caused the wallpaper to peel and the air so textured with dust he could taste his own skin, and wondered how he ...

Cold Enough To Snow (1) You’re born in Brockmoor, and you’re born alone. You grow up lonely in the hopes that one day you’ll find another isolated soul, so you can grow absent together while furthering the species – push the button, empty the shredders, ring up the tills and chase that promotion. To pay for the privilege of living in a town that orbits its own sun, full of lives that move in swampish circles, if at all. It came to me when I was twenty-three, in one of those precious moments w...