Category: Snap Fiction

Meg Pokrass is the author of six flash fiction collections, an award-winning collection of prose poetry, two novellas-in-flash and a forthcoming collection of microfiction, Spinning to Mars, recipient of the Blue Light Book Award in 2020. Her work has appeared in Electric Literature, Washington Square Review, Wigleaf, Waxwing and McSweeney’s. She is the Series Founder and Co-Editor of Best Microfiction.

Rosie Garland writes long and short fiction, poetry and sings with post-punk band The March Violets. Her work appears in The Guardian, Under the Radar, Spelk, Interpreter’s House, New Flash Fiction Review, The Rialto, Ellipsis, Butcher’s Dog, Mslexia, The North and elsewhere. New poetry collection ‘What Girls do the Dark’ (Nine Arches Press) is out now. Her latest novel The Night Brother was described by The Times as “a delight…with shades of Angela Carter.” In 2019, Val McDermid named her one of the UK’s most compelling LGBT writers.

---

Alaska is so close to magnetic north it skews the compass

Today I went out and thought of you and then came back into the house, fingers already numb. I opened the curtains and made some coffee. It’s late in your day, but knowing you, that’s exactly what you’re doing right now too.

I see you in a warm scented café, wondering what coffee drink to order, because everything, you think, sounds too good. You’re still you in your afternoon and I’m still me in my morning, even if our coffees are 7 hours apart. It will stay that way until you fly to me and we live the same day, but it’s not going to happen any time soon. It’s fine.

I work in a bank and I sit at a desk and talk about the weird fake carrot juice at Safeway with my secretary, Carol. It’s unfortunate, Carol says, but it’s crazy here, in the snow, and too damn cold.

So, I freeze and feel stupid, and think of you smiling and telling me love is a burning spark even in Alaska, a million miles away in the frozen tundra. When it gets quiet enough inside my head, I can reach out my hand and there you are, with your coffee in my bed and I know this is not an ordinary day. The days are never regular with you in them.

Hundreds of miles above Alaska, swifts drift into a trance: brain half shut, half open. With bird alchemy, their automatic navigator makes course corrections: adjusts for height, distance travelled, distance yet to go. Suspended out of the reach of thermals, they coast the troposphere, wings stiff as airplane models dangled from the bedroom ceiling of a homebound child. When hungry, they wake in the same position and descend to feed, snipping insects from the lower part of heaven.

Today was warm enough to go outside and stay there for a few minutes. I ate a donut, icy jelly in the center, which is the cheapest and easiest thing to eat on the go. I will never eat salad again, I think, at twelve dollars for a head of iceberg. I imagined walking next to you on an ordinary day in your ordinary city. Do you remember the dog we met near the bridge? The Saint Bernard puppy called Blossom we swore would change our lives?

I think about this when I’m frozen raw and worrying about my neighbor. She keeps inviting me to come for a beer and to see her new dog. She says I’d like her fireplace, it’s wide enough to fit a sofa. In the evening, I smell scorched furnishing through the wall, and that worries me too.

How lonely are you, I wonder, in your fine apartment with electric heating you only need to switch on two months in a year. As a fool, I reply, as alone as you have always been in this world. It was never different. You could always make me cross my fingers and make a wish. Like a pied piper you lured me away to somewhere you were not and here I am, wondering how to get home.

---

You can access more of Meg’s writing via her website, http://www.megpokrass.com/, and more of Rosie Garland’s work is accessible through her own website, http://www.rosiegarland.com/.

Nettie Thomson is a Wonky Weegie living in Ayrshire with her husband, parrot and several chronic conditions. Her short story collection And The Angels Cried and Other Stories is available on Amazon; you can find more fiction and poetry at NettieThomson.com. 

---

Erosion

She can taste salt in the wind that whips her bare legs, purpling them like the heather that clings to the thin covering of soil on the slope. She’s out of breath. She doesn’t remember the climb to the cliff edge being such hard work but it’s been years since she was here last. Not since she submitted her PhD, not since she took soil samples, measured its depth, recorded the flora that grew therein. Not since she measured the distance from the trig point to the cliff edge and compared it to the feet and inches of past researchers and recorded the changes she found.

Erosion.

She doesn’t need a tape measure to know things have changed.

There’s a photograph in her purse. She’s in jeans and a fleece, smiling. Keith’s arms encircle her like a tropic, enfolding her in his passion. During that last field trip they’d brought heat to the cool, damp Scottish nights, their tent pitched a modest distance from the others. No one was surprised when they announced their engagement just a few months later. Their
wedding was small. Keith wore a kilt, she had heather in her bouquet, and their nights still pulsed with the heat between them.

This morning, Keith’s lips barely grazed her cheek as he grabbed his rucksack and left to teach his 9am class on glacial erosion at the university where they met. Her cheek still burns with the coldness of it.

Entropy.

She wonders if he likes the attention his students give him. She’s seen them place hands, unmarked by age spots and dry skin, on his arm. He’s never asked them to stop. And at the faculty’s Easter drinks last Friday, she saw him lay his hand on the thigh of the grad student who had cosied up to him in the pub all night.

Heat, like all energy, can’t be destroyed, she thinks. It can only be changed into something—or someone—else.

She walks to the edge where the sky meets the horizon. The view over the North Sea hasn’t changed for millennia, but looking down she sees the new talus formed from old cliff. Everything changes, she thinks. Cliffs, glaciers, relationships. One day the place where she stands will fall too. She doesn’t know what will change next but thinks she’ll stay there and wait to see.

Robert Steward teaches English as a foreign language and lives in London. He is currently writing a collection of short stories, several of which have appeared in online literary magazines, including Scrittura, New Pop Lit, Across the Margin, Adelaide and The Foliate Oak.

---

The Bloods

I’m not scared. Why should I be scared? It’s just a blood test. A pinch, a prick, a slight scratch as the nurse says. The smudge of red lipstick on her tooth doesn’t fill me with the greatest of confidence. Let’s hope she’s more adept with a syringe than makeup. The thought gives me the jitters. I should’ve made a run for it in the waiting room, should’ve rebooked it for another time, kicked it into the long grass. But my name flashed on the monitor with a piercing SCOTT PARKER, PLEASE GO TO THE TREATMENT ROOM over the intercom.

‘Is it just a cholesterol check or the full bloods today?’ the nurse asks, interrupting my self-reproach.

‘The full bloods.’

Two whole tubes of blood. How big I can’t say. Never dare look. Just hear her change the vial.

‘Which arm would you prefer?’ She pulls on a pair of latex gloves as if she’s about to commit murder.

‘This one’s fine.’ I roll up my sleeve. Offering her the closest is simpler. Less risk of… I don’t know. What could go wrong? She can’t find the vein? She breaks the syringe? She goes berserk and stabs me to death? Irrational, really. I suspect I’ve got trypanophobia—a fear of injections. I display all the symptoms: sweating, shaking, dizziness. Affects people with a sensitive temperament or trauma. Certainly had my share of negative experiences in this doctor’s surgery. Can’t count the number of chocolate biscuits I’ve demolished to save me from fainting. Once I actually went completely blind. Couldn’t see my fingers or anything.

‘I’m just going to disinfect the skin.’ The nurse swabs the inside of my elbow with alcohol.

My vein hides at the touch and a firework fizzes through my chest. I try to distract myself by focusing on the room: the medicine cabinets, the vaccine refrigerator, the examination couch. But it doesn’t help. Everything reminds me of the sharp stainless-steel hypodermic needle, which in my mind is the size of an Olympic javelin.

‘There you are,’ the nurse says, slapping a plaster on my arm.

What? But I didn’t feel a thing. All that carry-on for nothing!

‘Thanks.’ I inspect my arm, incredulous.

‘You’re welcome.’ The nurse smiles, tossing her gloves into the bin.

---

You can find more of Robert’s writing via Twitter.

Kirsti Wishart’s stories can be found in The Seven Wonders of Scotland anthology, New Writing Scotland, 404 Ink, The Evergreen and a quiet grove in Edinburgh’s Botanic Gardens (courtesy of the Echoes of the City project). She was awarded a Hawthornden Fellowship in 2013 and in 2018 was a finalist in the Scottish Arts Club Short Story Awards.

 

---

 

Vapour Trails

 

The global shut-down of social media channels led to different modes of communication being developed. For those members of radical or subversive groups, older codes were researched and given life again. In coffee houses and bars, fans made a reappearance; the number of folds exposed, taps to the cheek and chin, the rhythm of waving all resulting in meetings being arranged, warnings being issued. Handkerchief sellers experienced a surprise uptake in trade. Suit jackets disappeared from charity shop racks as the angles of triangles and the colours displayed in top pockets became significant, telling others which particular offshoot of the anarchist, techno-luddite, post-modernist terrorist group you were a member of. Florists began to receive orders for unusually archaic arrangements of heather and lilies, bouquets not seen since Victorian times but tweaked to convey slogans later unleashed by
graffiti artists on the streets. Origami night classes sold out. Letters written under the wings of a swan could be rearranged when the paper was folded into the shape of a flamingo, revealing the name of the latest politician who should be targeted in a silent watch campaign. MPs would open their windows to discover a silent crowd staring, unnervingly united in their muteness. Retired naval commanders found themselves being asked about Morse code
sequences during previously lonely nights in the corners of pubs.

The authorities cracked down, raised the prices of coloured card, banned the sale of multi-coloured torches that made excellent signalling devices. Milliners were monitored for the feathers or tartans that decorated hat bands, revealing those whose protected heads carried subversive thoughts. Baristas learned to spot the darkened bags under the eyes of officials in disguise and modified the swirls of espresso decorating the surface of a latte accordingly; a nervous shake of the wrist made sure the latest gathering place for a conscience-raising event wasn’t revealed accidentally in the fronds of a foaming fern.

The restrictions increased to nearly all forms of extraneous decoration, anything that wasn’t purely utilitarian disappearing; window boxes, candles left lit on windowsills, the way blinds were left three-quarters open, all became sources of suspicion. The Secret Opposition found it increasingly challenging to connect; cells became isolated. The authorities claimed victory in newspapers that were laminated, making them difficult to cut and fold into messages contradicting their contents.

Such constraints only increased anger, however, which fuelled new levels of ingenuity. Had they been paying attention, officials may have noticed how busy newly-opened vaping shops had become. They might have monitored more closely the after-hours tutorials given on the modification of devices and breathing methods developed so that beautifully elaborate plumes could be produced: curlicues, cloudy ribbons and tendrils in which hidden letters would drift. Dyes could be added to produce rainbows that vanished as soon as they spread, colours matching the walls behind which covert gatherings would take place.

And adding to the messages were the scents produced; pomegranate, watermelon, candyfloss and gin and tonic being puffed out to arrange a rendezvous, a demonstration, a newsletter, a riot. The clouds continued to form, adding a concealing layer of smog to the city until one evening the square before City Hall filled and filled and filled with people breathing like dragons, becoming ghostly in their self-created fog.The authorities trembled behind closed doors.

But those locks, the hastily arranged draft-excluders—they can’t hold, can’t stop the reek of gunpowder, blood and flares seeping through the ventilation shafts, turning their vision misty as though cataracts are forming. Smoke blurs the portraits of their glorious leader, the bitter tang of freedom tickles their lungs, catches their throat, voices choked by coughs that leave the taste of burnt flesh.

---

You can reach Kirsti and keep up to speed on her writing via Twitter.

Annie Gough is a born and raised Michigander currently living in Scotland. She has an MLitt in Creative Writing from the University of Stirling, and has had work featured in Untitled, With Passengers, The Cauldron and Dark River Review. When she’s not writing prose, you can find Annie exploring Scotland’s many trails or pouring pints.

 

---

 

Fancier’s Lung

 

It was nicer than his house, friends said. Varnished timber paneling, maroon shingled roof, mesh enclosures jutting out of windows like miniature sunrooms. And he’d have to agree–Christ, he spent enough money on the loft. It was nicer than his house, and it was killing him.

His mouth was sore and mucousy on the inside, the burn of the rum lingering at the back of his throat. He lifted the dust mask to scratch the bridge of his nose. It felt like wearing a muzzle–not protecting him from the world, but protecting the world from him.

The sun shone between the pines with a freckled glare. People would be hillwalking today, cycling, taking their dogs to the park. Normally he would’ve taken the birds out, driven into the hills and released the batch to fly. They loved racing in conditions like this. As long as they didn’t get snatched by a hawk or shot down, or jolted by a telephone wire. They were sometimes daft, but more importantly, loyal.

He never got mad at his birds. It wasn’t their fault they sometimes couldn’t find their way back or didn’t win. They had made him quite a bit of money, truthfully. Enough to pay for their home.

His friends told him to get rid of the pigeons when Teresa left. That she left because of the birds, their stench. But at first, she had liked them too. She said she thought it was romantic that they mated for life and raised their chicks together, and that the female would race over mountains and forests to get back to her partner. Teresa said that he needed to study up on his pigeons’ commitment to a relationship. But from where he was standing, so did she. Who was the one who left and never found her way back?

If he was going to do this, now was the time. The sun was so bright, reflecting off his white dust mask and the slim metal bridge, it made him dizzy. Or maybe that was just his body deteriorating from the inside out. People would think there was a bonfire or a barbeque. Somebody enjoying the outdoors on such a fine day.

There was the occasional pint with the boys at the pub, but he did right by his body. Except for the loft. The hours spent inside, scraping and scrubbing the coops, murmuring and humming to the pigeons. Christ how he had loved them.

He picked up the petrol tank and walked inside. The smell, like vinegar and mildew, just how Teresa had described. The coops were all empty and clean, as if he had just built the place. He sprinkled the petrol about the wood, careful not to step on the limp grey bodies piled where he had left them hours before. Looking at them was too difficult; if there weren’t so many with necks cocked at unnatural angles, he could’ve pretended they were sleeping in one big birdy pile. There must’ve been an easier way to do it, maybe fill the loft with gas or poison their feed. But he needed to touch each one for a final time. He lit a match and tossed it in the corner, then left.

The grass was damp from the morning’s rain under his feet. It would dry up soon enough, but hopefully not too quickly. He took a few strides then turned around. He took off his mask and watched as the flames grew from the inside out, reaching up to the unfiltered sky.

---

You can find more of Annie’s writing via her blog and you can contact her via email.

Lexie Angelo is a Canadian writer and poet. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in Communications from Royal Roads University and completed a literary residency at The Banff Centre. She moved to Edinburgh to pursue her postgraduate degree in Creative Writing and is currently working on her debut novel.

 

---

 

The Niskala

 

I see it clearly now. I didn’t before. Stringy, matted black hair. Captain Willow. She snuck up on me. Ooooh I hate her eyes. I want to gouge them out with a spoon. Suck on the lenses and feel the tension of each orb explode between my teeth. I want her dead, dead, and dead again.

I mustn’t lose myself. I am a stowaway. Yes, that’s it. If I’m found, I’ll be dead before I see my Niskala again. I am sick for her. I would rather die at the bottom of the sea tethered to her weathered planks than live a thousand years without her. She knows I’m near. We are connected by blood and vein and sinew. I can taste this familiar sea. The weather is a witch’s brew of squid and rotten snails. The clouds are so thick I could eat them. But I want to eat those wicked beady eyes instead.

My crew is dead. I watched their limbs fall into heavy waves. No, you fool, they are putting up a good fight. Guns crack. Smoke curls into the mist.

“Kill as many as you can, Snake!”

“Orda, it’s twenty souls or the locker for you!”

Harhahrhar!

“Save Captain Willow for me. I’ll slice off that fine head of hers. Her stringy black hair will make a fine wig for Pug.”

“You hear that Pug?”

Harhar!

“You’ll get new eyebrows from the hair I’ll be pulling out of my teeth.”

We’ll be at port soon, Niskala. Willow hung from the gibbet. A thousand more kegs of gunpowder, I’ll order. And haul more treasure from the sea. Curse you, Willow! My knife, if I had it, would be plunged ten inches through your back. The first snap of your spine will be the call to dinner. The second snap, the call for wine!

Someone is coming. They say I was captured. Lies! I am aboard a vessel now. I’m hidden under cotton, wheat and iron ore. Choking down rats, and urine and sea. I lost the Gunsway, the Merchant, and the Eastern Revenge. But I won’t lose you, Niskala. She snuck up on me. I thought she was the Greynest. The flags were green. Gannet shouted. “A Clipper! Three masts, a square rig, and forty gunners.” The wind turned easterly when the flags went black. I’ll eat your heart, Gannet. I’ll eat your heart for losing Niskala.

---

Lexie can be contacted at www.millionsofpages.com.

Daniel Adler was born in Brooklyn, New York and has also lived in Portland, Oregon. He studied at New York University and is currently pursuing an MSc in Creative Writing at The University of Edinburgh. His fiction has appeared in BlazeVox, The Opiate, ThoseThatThis, Five2One, and elsewhere. 

 

---

 

 

Sacrifice

 

The man woke the child while the mother was still in bed. “Where are we going?” the boy asked, his voice heavy from sleep.

“We have a meeting,” said his father. “I’m making breakfast. Get dressed and come downstairs.” The boy groaned and rolled over. “Come on,” said his father. The boy sighed and threw back the covers, swinging his legs onto the floor. His bones ached; he was growing. He picked up the pants he had left at the foot of his bed, put on yesterday’s t-shirt one arm at a time, and stood, the floorboards creaking under his weight.

The boy’s father stood over the stove. Eggs spat grease, a bowl of oatmeal steamed on the table. He slid an egg from the pan onto a plate and brought it to his son. The boy took the spoon from his oatmeal and dug at the yolk, letting it run over the white, brown at the edges.

“We have a long day,” said his father.

“Where are we going?” asked the boy again.

“You’ll see.”

The morning was still purple. Despite the boy’s coat, he shivered as he opened the car door and waited in the silence. His father slammed the door, blew on his hands, buckled his seatbelt, and turned the key in the ignition. At the light before the entrance ramp to the highway the boy reached to turn on the radio, but his father said, “No music. Too early.” The light changed; the car lunged and did not stop accelerating until the road was passing underneath its wheels at sixty miles an hour. The boy closed his eyes. When he woke large shrubs had replaced the forest, the sun was high and mountains stood on the horizon.

“We’re going to the desert?”

“We’re in the desert.”

“What are we doing?”

“Changing something.”

“What do you mean?”

“I–we have to change how we do things.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ll see. Be patient.”

“Is it a surprise?”

“Yes,” said the father, but his gaze stayed straight ahead. The boy stared at his father, mouth ajar and then looked out his window.

Soon the car began to climb. The desert became a sandbox, the sky turned gray, and on the side of the road snow patches grew into fields of white, piles higher than the car. They slowed and crunched gravel on the shoulder. The father turned the keys in the ignition, clicked his seatbelt and opened the door. “Come on.”

The boy inhaled the cold air. His father moved to the backseat and the boy ran to a boulder and scuttled to its sloping crest. From here he could see the back of the mountain, a landscape of rock and hardy plants that gave way to more forest. He recalled a mountain goat he had seen once standing this way. When he turned, his father was at the foot of the rock holding a gun.

“Trust me, son,” said his father, cocking it. “We have to believe this is for the best.”

“What’s for the best?”

“The other night I had a dream. God came to me and said, ‘Take your boy into the mountains and sacrifice him to me. And if he believes, if he really believes, then you can point the gun at him and pull the trigger and everything will be made right. I will come to your aid and fix everything in my name.’ Now don’t be afraid. Just believe.”

“Believe what?”

“Believe that everything will be all right. That it will be okay, that God will make it right.”

“Does Mom know about this?”

“Your mother and I are being run into the ground, boy. Every month the bills come and we pay them with credit. It’s getting worse. We can’t feed you, we can’t buy you clothes for school, we can hardly live. But if you believe, if you really believe, then it will be okay. Now I’m going to come closer, so that when I pull this trigger God will have no objection, he won’t be able to accuse me, I’m not going to let anyone accuse me of not believing. Think–do you really want to go on living this way?”

The boy backed away.

“Please, son. Stop. Just trust me. Trust that you’ll be okay.” Tears of fear streaked the boy’s cheeks. “Don’t cry, don’t be afraid, trust me. Make it easier and get on your knees.” The boy backed up but there was nowhere to go but down. “Please,” said his father. “Nothing bad will happen if you trust me. I swear.” The boy looked into the gray sky, as if for an angel to come save him. His father was only a few paces away, the gun at his side. “Listen to me, it’s for your own good. It’s for our good.”

The boy gulped and wiped his tears with the back of his hand. “Okay,” he said, taking a knee. The stone was sharp through his jeans.

“Thank you,” sighed his father, the gun cold on the boy’s forehead. “Now I’m gonna count to three. Nothing is going to happen, I need you to believe that. Because if you don’t…” The boy could not control his tears and he quivered like a lamb. “Look,” said the man. “You gotta say it to believe. Say, ‘I believe I will live and everything will be all right.’ I’ll say it with you–”

“I believe,” said the boy but his voice trembled and cracked. “I believe I will live and everything will be all right.”

“Now really mean it,” said his father. “Say it again. Say ‘I will live and everything will be all right.’”

“I will live and everything will be all right,” said the boy.

“I will live and everything will be all right,” they repeated together.

“Okay,” said his father, “keep saying it.”

The boy went on, “…and everything will be all right.” And then his father pulled the trigger.

---

You can follow Daniel via his Twitter, @DanielRyanAdler.

 

 

Sheena Kamal was born in the Caribbean and immigrated to Canada as a child. She holds an HBA in political science from the University of Toronto, and has most recently worked as a researcher for the film and television industry. Her debut suspense novel Eyes Like Mine has been sold in over a dozen countries and is published in the U.K. by Bonnier Zaffre.

---

 

Uncovered

 

They stared at the face, uncovered.

That’s her, said Esme.

Don’t be daft, said her husband. He walked away from the body on the slab.

Esme did not follow him. She confirmed her daughter’s identity to the police and got a cup of peppermint tea from across the road before going back to the car, where her husband waited.

The car ride back home was tense.

He made their afternoon meal, as he always did these days, but left the stir fry on the stove before she came down from her shower. Esme heard him in the basement, puttering around. He came upstairs with his golf clubs, announced he was going to play a few holes, uh huh, and left. Refusing to stay, refusing to grieve a daughter he didn’t want to say goodbye to.

She had expected something like this. He had been having an affair for three years now. She had become suspicious when he took up cooking and golf almost simultaneously. She’d canceled his golf membership after one year, and he still hadn’t noticed.

Nicole had told her that he was cheating, which Esme had denied, of course, because it wasn’t any of their daughter’s business. Besides, it was better this way. Imagine if he had taken up cooking and then stuck around to harass her each afternoon?

With Nicole gone, Esme was free. She loved her daughter, but when jewellery started to go missing, when her husband began sneaking money from their account to give to Nicole, when Nicole began running away from home whenever the mood struck, when Esme had come home early one day to find her teenaged daughter’s beautiful face buried in some jock’s crotch, her lovely dark hair held up in a sweaty male fist… it was all too much for Esme. Her life in this country was a joke. This was not the dream she’d had when she moved up here, at first taking a job as a maid. It had seemed a stroke of luck that she met her husband right away, in this very house. He had been married to someone else then, but he was open to straying and had never changed.

Esme got her suitcase out from storage and packed clothes that were lightweight, brightly coloured and in breathable fabrics. When the cab came to take her the airport, she made sure she had the deed to the land back home and all the proper information to access her accounts. She had always been good with money. So much so that her husband never noticed how much of his she took over the years. The sum was nothing to him, but amounted to a small fortune where she was from–and she knew how to stretch a dollar, especially on her island, where she could live like a queen.

She left, thinking of the young woman on the slab. Her husband was right. It wasn’t Nicole. But the life insurance company didn’t have to know that. Her daughter was still alive somewhere and, Esme knew, would come looking for her if she ever came to her senses. Maybe they could make new dreams together, if it wasn’t too late.

---

Sheena can be reached via her Facebook page.

Samuel Best is a Creative Writing graduate from the University of Strathclyde and has been published in British, North American, and Scandinavian magazines. His debut novel Shop Front was described as “a howl and a sigh from Generation Austerity” and he founded the literary magazine Octavius.

---

 

The End

 

We’re stood out in some field in the middle of nowhere, maybe a mile or so outside town. I mean, a mile isn’t that far, but tonight we could be on another planet for all the life around us. We’re sharing a bottle of rum, drinking it straight in mouthfuls that make us shudder. Above, the sky burns as meteors leave lightning trails. In the middle of town a crowd gathers; we might even be able to see them from here, if we looked. Your teeth chatter and I pass the rum over.

‘Will there ever be anything so beautiful again?’ you ask, letting the bottle hang from your hand.

I reach over, my fingers grazing your skin, and you go to pass the spirit back. I set it down amongst the grass and it tips over. There isn’t much left to spill.

Standing back up, I take your hand in mine and squeeze. Our eyes are still fixed on the sky, a hundred bone-white needles piercing the night. I don’t really know what to say to you, and that doesn’t matter. What matters is that we’re here now, seeing this. The sky is on fire and there is no future beyond us. Our eyes sparkle and blaze like little stars, and when we blink the whole world goes black.

---

Samuel Best can be reached via Twitter, @samuelboag.

Tom Gillespie is a Scottish-born writer now living in exile in Bath, England. His debut novel, Painting by Numbers, was a Finalist in the People’s Book Prize for Literature, 2013. His short stories have been published worldwide. He is currently working on his third novel and also on a collaborative arts project with fellow Scottish writers and artists. He is a graduate of Glasgow University, and alongside his writing habit he works as an English Lecturer.

---

 

Where Was I?

 

That’s where ah wis but ah’m no there noo. Must be six months or mair. Keep up. Where the fuck’s yer heed? Ah’m oot at Struthers an’ Tipp noo, where Big John works. Oh come on, ye know Big John. John wae the dug wae wan ear. Whitshisname? The cunt that borrowed yer golf clubs an’ never gied ye them back. Him. Anyway. It’s no that bad up there. No a lot in it tae be honest. Ah’m oan wan o’ they new flexitime contracts where they can gie ye the shunt whenever it suits them. Ah’m no that bothered. It’s no like ah wis the fuckin’ CEO at ma auld place, an’ their pishy contract wasnae worth the shite it wis written wae. Who wur they kiddin wae their fuckin’ package o’ fuckin’ benefits shite? The work’s fine an’ the team ah’m wae ur awright. An’ at the end o’ the day, a blocked shitter is a blocked shitter. Com si com sa.

So where huv ye been hidin’ then? Huv ye been a naughty boy again? Mary said she saw ye in Asda wae anithir wummin. Ur you an’ Carol oan the scrapper? If yis ur, yer in big trouble, young man. Ye’ll be hard pushed tae land anyone else daft enough tae pit up wae your pish.

Did ah tell ye ah goat ma results back on Tuesday? The doacter says ah hufty cut doon on the smokes afore he’ll refer me tae the hoaspital. It’s anuff tae drive ye tae an early grave. He’s pit me oan they stupit patches an’ the gum, an’ ah’ve boat wan o‘ they plug in peace pipes but ah canny work the fuckin’ thing. Ah’ll be fucked if ah let that stuck up overpaid ringpiece tell me whit a should an’ shoudnae dae wae ma ain fuckin’ lungs.

Still, needs must an’ awe that.

That reminds me. If yer efter a bit o’ cash there might be sum work goin’ up at Struthers an’ Tipp. Don’t gie me that look. Ye don’t need tae know anythin’ aboot plumbin’, they’re always efter folk tae clean oot the tanks at their plant at Uddingston. If ye let me know where ye ur noo, ah kin pass oan yer details, if ye want me tae. Just gees a ring when ye get hame.

---

You can learn more about Tom’s work at his website, tom-gillespie.com. Tom can be contacted via Facebook, email (tom@tom-gillespie.com), and Twitter (@tom_gillespie).