Short Prose
By Caldwell
Mini tales
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- 1305 reads
Barcelona - a moment
Old witch of the barrio.
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- 3011 reads
Understanding doesn't come with age
The cashier, 'Debbie' her name-badge read, waited. Sitting in the trolley my patient little boy, waited too. I fumbled with my purse dropping my change on the counter.
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- 1107 reads
TSSB 1979 - Competition Entry
What is that in the blue and yellow cape?
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- 5 comments
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- 2946 reads
Monday morning's inner voice
You sit there, slumped in your chair, eyes glazed as you stare at the mountain of tasks before you. From above, I watch you, observing the weight you...
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- 1708 reads
Plenty
Well, there you have it. Standing at East Croydon with my shopping, train that should whisk me to Redhill in all of seventeen minutes. Seventeen! But...
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- 1752 reads
The Calculator (IP)
The tram was packed, as always, a shifting mass of humanity wedged together on their way to somewhere else. A family sat near the front, the parents...
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- 2751 reads
Pipe dreams
At 7:00 a.m., my alarm erupted with its usual enthusiasm, which was met by a groan from the other side of the bed. "I slept so badly," my beloved...
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- 1320 reads
My Grandma, Mai Mai Gee (IP)
When I arrived in Myanmar, the familiarity was immediate and overwhelming. I saw my grandmother in the old women who passed me by, their longyis,...
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- 611 reads
In Suspension
This week I gradually came to understand that I had become unwell. It's odd because it has coincided with the weather: the meteorological kind and...
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- 1408 reads
Off the rails (IP)
I did not come to Dr. Jennings of my own volition. It was my wife’s idea, and she insisted upon it with such an air of resolve that I had no choice...
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- 1826 reads
People say I'm a dreamer
You meet Walter Mitty at a nondescript café on a drizzly Tuesday afternoon. He’s wearing a beige cardigan, slightly wrinkled, and looks like the kind...
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- 354 reads
I lit a thin green candle
I remember when my half-sister came to stay, seven years older than me and full of energy, like a whirlwind dropping into the quiet rhythm of our...
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- 1781 reads
Out of the cold
Amsterdam's wind, slicing through November, carried a chill that clung to every exposed surface. The city’s canals and cobblestones seemed complicit...
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- 575 reads
A toast to all the shamans!
Our visit to the Saatchi Gallery had been unexpectedly emotional. An exhibition themed around flowers—automatically romantic, explosive with colour...
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- 4 comments
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- 310 reads
Labyrinthine Apparition
I find myself in a building that resists definition—part university, part manor house, a place with too many corridors and too much history. The air...
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- 219 reads
Harrow left behind
The bell above the door chimed with a sound so soft it seemed embarrassed to be heard. Ian stepped into the antiquarian bookshop like a man slipping...
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- 208 reads
Collateral
Detective Leon Mercier had been deep undercover for almost a decade. So deep that sometimes he forgot who he was supposed to be. He lived a life...
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- 194 reads
The Shellsuit
All my adult life, I’ve carried a complicated relationship with my father. At first, I thought the solution was distance—emotional, then physical. I...
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- 296 reads
Burma under occupation
In April 1942, my uncle Eddie was seven years old. His father, my grandfather Archibald, was the superintendent of stores with the Burma Oil Company...
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- 428 reads
Ken Market
Kensington Market used to sit at 49–53 Kensington High Street, a three-storey indoor maze of stalls and dreams. Between the ages of 16 and 18—1988 to...
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- 530 reads
Oh I do like to be...
We spread our towels over pebbles and dream of sand. Windbreakers flap like prayer flags, and the sun, though pale, burns with quiet malice. Children...
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- 726 reads
Jasmine Tea
The call came early on a Saturday. My sister. Panicked. She’d rung our mother and found her breathless, confused, whispering in a voice that no...
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- 1 comment
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- 128 reads
The Gesture
This story contains reference to suicide and mental illness. It doesn’t take a tragedy. Not always. Sometimes it’s a drip from a ceiling, a broken...
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- 4 comments
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- 181 reads
Le magnetiseur
When your child’s skin is red and cracked and nothing works—not creams, not oats, not changing his diet, not even the sea (which did help, but was a...
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- 93 reads
Massage Parlour
I generally don’t go in for spas or massage. It’s the pampering that puts me off — the soft music, the hushed tones, the candles. I don’t like being...
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- 76 reads
The Flying Brick
I’d been scouring AutoTrader for weeks — every spare moment, even before I passed my full motorcycle test. What I really wanted was one of those...
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- 3 comments
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- 87 reads
And Yet I Still Watch
I scroll through YouTube’s endless thumbnails and I am bored. Bored of the screaming, the sensationalism, the world set permanently to crisis pitch...
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- 79 reads
Froggy Came A-Courting (And So Did I)
There’s an old English folk song I half-remember from childhood — “A Froggy Went A-Courting.” It drifts in with its lilting tune and strange courtly...
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- 47 reads
Bastille Day, Barbecue Smoke, and the Weight of History
It’s Bastille Day. All across France, sausages sizzle on supermarket grills, fireworks crack like toy guns in the evening sky, and municipal...
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- 109 reads