Our focus is narrow. What’s there? What’s there? Adjust and scan. We see. Organism. Alone. Watch. ‘What the…?’ Neela blinked, trying to penetrate the darkness. Nothing. Sit up then. Crack! Her head smacked into something hard and she dropped … Continue reading Specimen
All creatures … As the snow began to fall on her upturned face, Addie remembered those winters when it had been possible to think of spring. Not now though. Not since the impact. How many megatonnes had gone up? She couldn’t recall, and anyway, what did it matter? Addie pulled the perspex snow screen down over her eyes and the connecting buff up over her nose, clipped the two together with a solid clack. She tapped at the thermometer gauge on her wrist – minus 40oC; balmy, she thought, trying to raise a frosted eyebrow in an ironic arch. ‘Mush! … Continue reading All Creatures
‘The seats are elegant,’ she said, stroking the plush upholstery and leaning slightly forwards to avoid creasing the cream lace antimacassar draped behind. A proper lady would just lean back, take it for granted, stretch her creamy throat and tilt … Continue reading Red is for Go – full story
Winter 1969 Emmy is singing as I try to get her supper into her. I’m singing too, but she’s singing for Jesus in a cutesy, trit-trotty kind of way. I hover the spoon in the air, and wait for her to take a breath. Pop it in/swallow it down/good girl. I wipe her mouth with my pinny. Shouldn’t really but it saves time. All those doors to lock and unlock just for a flannel. ‘Jesus loves her, Jesus loves her, Jesus loves the murdering bitch.’ Emmy chuckles to herself in that private way only people whose heads are somewhere else … Continue reading The Justice Box – full story
Full story. I keep thinking we should have left it to die, you know, rather than do what we did. Seal it back up, let it go wherever it was going, let someone else find it, not us. What wouldn’t I give for it not to have been us. But there we were, limping back from a SNAFU’d mission that had almost bankrupted the government, when up pops ET in a leaky can that needs fixing. From global embarrassments to galactic heroes in one go; we could see the ticker tape and the medals, the books, the films of the … Continue reading Baby Bird
The bumble bee, a young drone, dipped towards the pond, took on ballast and made its way over to the clump of dandelions by the fence. The other drone, Alice’s husband Frank, watched lazily and aimed a desultory flick at a hoverfly positioned just above his head, and buzzing as it appeared to give the person in the lounger a multifaceted once-over. Middle aged, over weight (not obese, he would argue when challenged), and thinning on top, Frank was in the process of decommissioning his youth and taking on an identity loosely recognisable as early-onset decrepit geezer. Redundancy had stolen … Continue reading Dog Day
Where Things Come From The tomatoes are from Italy; sun blushed plump red plums. They are clicked into the basket. The aubergine is from Greece – sleek, like deep dark velvet. Goats’ milk: this is from a place where the … Continue reading Where Things Come From
Suzanne Conboy-Hill ‘Now you’ll come in at night,’ Joe told Roscoe, the big, orange, cantankerous-looking tabby he was trying to stuff into a carrier. Not flippin’ likely, said Roscoe, although of course he didn’t because he was a cat. Instead, he arched his back, flipped his bottom over Joe’s arm, and catapulted himself onto the dresser, the top of which was crammed with Joe’s mother’s precious ornaments. He skipped across the figurine with the peach crinoline and skidded the china egg full of earrings and little gold studs into the framed picture of Joe’s mother smiling at the glazed face … Continue reading Cat Nav
Friday Fiction Halloween Special! I first met Dillon when my dead Gran tripped me up in front of him. There was me, meandering along the sea front watching small dogs on extending leads crochet themselves into yapping compounds each time they encountered others of their ilk; and there was he, arrowing through them, the sleek lycra-ed warp to their woof. I was ok but he landed up in hospital with several broken bones and his bike was a write-off. Gran beamed like it was her birthday and she’d knocked back her celebratory bottle of whisky all in one go. I … Continue reading Drop Dead Gorgeous
Continued from Facebook: Every so often we get a chance to pull the plug on some puny species that has far too much to say for itself, gets into scraps over its parochial borders, and then starts to leak out of its playpen to bother everybody else. This job was a gift.We dropped the first spout into the middle of the Atlantic and left it there, like a bracket with lightning at one end and spray at the other. It got no attention at all the first couple of days, but when it was still there at the end of … Continue reading The Problem with Temporal Asynchronicity By Suzanne Conboy-Hill
Dr Suzanne Conboy-Hill 