Gaslit

The chimes of the clock ring out over the fog. Shadows stretch from grey buildings over grey streets. The Thames winds under bridges and past docks, murky water seeping up the bank. The stink hangs over the city, a smell of people and industry and waste, a stench that worms its way into the bricks....

A Little Splash of Colour

Almost everything in the room was green, from the emerald tiles to the olive chairs, to the lime table, to the virescent curtains. When Lady Sinclair chose a theme, she committed. The two interruptions to the colour scheme – a splash of red and a deep, metallic grey  – would ordinarily have been welcome additions,...

After the Rain

The sky was a miserable grey over the abandoned, rain-drenched pier as she stood on the very edge, looking into the beckoning deep, feeling the damp in her bones. At the last moment, she took a breath and looked up to see a sky lit up by the shimmering bands of a rainbow. She walked...

The Abbot’s Afternoon Off

It would be five hundred years that Thursday since the monks had begun their long watch of the Sleeper Who Must Not Wake, keeping up a constant chant and a constant vigil. Since in those five hundred years (give or take a day), the Sleeper had done nothing of interest and shown no sign of...

The Pub of the Ancient Mariner

The pub  is off a side street between a takeaway and a cramped alleyway. Step through the door and hear the ring of an old ship's bell and see something beyond imagining. A whale skeleton stretches across the ceiling, vast and white and overwhelming. Tanks flutter with bubbles and sealife churning and creeping amongst strands...

Equine Conversations

There was once a girl who could talk to horses. This would have been a better gift if horses had anything interesting to say, but horses were not renowned for their conversational skills. She did enjoy telling them who to kick. This is for Three Line Tales, Week 186. Thanks to Sonya for running the...

Numerology

They make their mark, beneath broken glass, while the alarms sound. One keeps watch for police with itchy trigger fingers while the others laugh. Numbers have meaning and theirs mean this: that the world is over, that meaning is over, and they will make something new. This is for Three Line Tales, Week 185. Thanks...

After the Crash

The crash left him gasping burning air, his head aching, scrabbling to tear himself free of the chair. Above, silhouettes gathered, their faces hidden in shadows. A flag waved overhead, but with the light behind it, he could not tell whether it was theirs or the enemy's. This is for Three Line Tales, Week 183....

The Old Man in the Small Town

Mr. Ulysses seemed an ordinary man pushing the far end of his fifties. He waved to his neighbours on his way to the grocer's, read his newspaper on the porch in the mornings, and fished in the afternoons. You could almost overlook the bullet holes in the door of the seaplane if you didn't know...