Short stories

SHORT STORIES

When The First Husband Dies Young

First published: X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine

People seem so taken with the exquisite agony of it all, they keep telling you how they feel your pain. But how can you? you think. I don’t even know how to feel it myself...

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Photo by Félix Prado on Unsplash

Photo by Malaya Sadler on Unsplash

Active and Passive Voice

First published: Pithead Chapel

We might call example [7] an instance of the passive-aggressive voice. This is not strictly a grammatical category, of course, though the behavior was very real and endlessly repeated.

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Afterword

Published: The Haven | Medium 

Were it not for my pulchritudinous Pamela-lama-ding-dong, this book might well have been titled Shall We Head Down The Big Asda On The Roundabout Via The Pet Shop So You Can See The Hamsters Son? (Also I Need Some Red Bull). 

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Photo by Félix Prado on Unsplash

Photo by Malaya Sadler on Unsplash

Uncle Jack And The Turkey Funeral 

First published: Sandstone Press

Of course I was struck by the absurdity of improvising a homily to a turkey. But with so many familiar faces present I took to remembering other - more conventional - funerals, and all those who had gone before us that we might never see again.

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Extreme Bathroom Survival With Bear Grylls

First published: Slackjaw

With a careful bit of foraging, the bathroom does yield a few edibles. By grating this Lemongrass Zen Bodywash Bar from Habitat Botanicals on a pumice stone, and mashing in a little Lotus Herbals Fresh Apricot Scrub, I can make quite a respectable chilled soup.

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Photo by Malaya Sadler on Unsplash

Photo by Félix Prado on Unsplash

Photo by Clem Onojeghuo on Unsplash

The Virtual Writer 

First published: Sandstone Press

Are you up for this, Jon? Do you really want this, Jon? Because if we shake hands now, there’s no going back. We didn’t get blood out or anything – we weren’t the type – but we did a lot of mutual chest-stabbing of an intense pub kind...

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Staircase Words

First published: Ellipsis Zine

The whole exchange, especially the attendant’s implacable attitude and his blithe discussion of such awful things in front of his children, left him deeply troubled, as if in some obscure way he’d been accused himself.

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Photo by Malaya Sadler on Unsplash

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