Cherrypicked stories
Artifice
That day we wandered onto a film set - remember? Under the arch and through the bright sheen of the afternoon flickering off the river, in a moment smothered
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- 7 comments
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- 3465 reads
End of days 14 (Epilogue)
The final chapter. The pit closes, the celestial city appears and the world begins to end. All fine then (or possibly not).
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- 11 comments
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- 3743 reads
Voice in the Garden
Night in an isolated house and something unresolved.
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- 4 comments
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- 2022 reads
A TREK NEVER TO BE FORGOTTEN
It's very strange, the people you meet while walking alone.
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- 25 comments
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- 10547 reads
Journey To Hell
I struggled back to the phone box, only to find it occupied by a woman who clearly intended to spend the next two and a half hours talking absolute bollocks !
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- 4 comments
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- 1241 reads
I Can't Believe I Can't Believe It's Not Butter.
This now has a different ending to the one I originally posted. It's about a neurotic housewife's analysis of what she believes to be a superior spread.
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- 12 comments
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- 4647 reads
The Ancestors Breeze In
What is that windsong you're singing? I can almost hear you through my tears Just as you gust outside my window. Urban wind, but seeming to bring Tales of praries, mountains, valleys.
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- 6 comments
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- 2775 reads
The truth
I want to feel the past in my life but there's something
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- 11 comments
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- 5283 reads
Re-apply
Correction: this story is not included in My Baby Shot Me Down, a Blinding Books anthology, but you can still buy the anthology! http://blindingbooks.com/?page_id=350
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- 9 comments
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- 4605 reads
Risk Street6
moving backwards to go forward
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- 4 comments
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- 1317 reads
Heartsease
It was a bad time. I… Susan… That is, my wife, she… She died. Wife. Such a simple four letter word; looking at it, it doesn’t really seem to do justice to what she was.
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- 14 comments
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- 5492 reads
Sepia Days
A fleeting smile of recognition...
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- 28 comments
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- 8356 reads
Beachcomber's Love Song To The Sea
His sea trilby tethered with rope, hair threaded with underwater green. His sea breeches, a silvery shade of brown (fish-skin perhaps) washed by coral-fronds.
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- 6 comments
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- 1578 reads
Transmutation
Poem. inspired by Uz and Them, Tony Harrison
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- 11 comments
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- 3752 reads
31 Falkner Street (14)
The engagement
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- 1 comment
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- 832 reads
The Academy Award's Prayer
Our Godfather, Who art in Heaven’s Gate, Halloween frame by frame. The Lion King come, The Fly will be done. On Film as it is in Camera. Give us this day our Internet Movie Database
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- 9 comments
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- 2651 reads
A Private Grief
It's my party and I'll cry if I want to!
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- 12 comments
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- 2887 reads
There Ain't Gonna Be No World War Three, Chapter 13
13. Sibling Rivalry "WAS im NAMEN des TEUFELS -"
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- 1 comment
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- 706 reads
There Ain't Gonna Be No World War Three, Chapter 12
12. Jagdkameraden
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- 1 comment
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- 808 reads
Redondo Rose
She was seventy-four years old and the last forty of her years had been spent in total retirement.
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- 838 reads
On A Sunday Walk
An eruption of geese came yelling off the pond as if a bomb had dropped. Too soon for migration, more like a gang-fight or playground ruck, low and startled, almost in touching range,
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- 9 comments
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- 4490 reads
31 Falkner Street (12)
Good morning
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- 1 comment
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- 898 reads
31 Falkner Street (11)
Kath
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- 1 comment
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- 972 reads
The Bobtail
My fine-spun self is shrouded; Shielded from approaching storms, By guilders shade now tainted; Upon my gentle dancing form. The dark-ground is my comfort, Cupping my cavorting feet;
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- 8 comments
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- 2011 reads
LILLIAN AND THE ITALIANS.4
Andrew's business partner tells Lillian what has happened to her son.
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- 3 comments
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- 1209 reads
31 Falkner Street (10)
Just another day
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- 1 comment
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- 882 reads
Only A Little Lonely
It starts there in the quiet; in the quiet and the cold Descending like a shadow, seeping slow into my soul. Resigned and mute, I feel it come, a thief into my home,
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- 7 comments
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- 1560 reads
A Meeting
Fumbling fog-blind through the woods I felt a heavy shift, a movement nearby pacing me to its own rythmn. Wrapped in thick grey nothingness a breathing thing waiting now.
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- 7 comments
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- 3236 reads
A Little Help
“I am the APRS5000,the latest, greatest thing in domestic appliances".
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- 4 comments
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- 2322 reads
Saints Of Satan Chapter Eight
Before long we had reached the borders of the northern region, the tell tale signs in the wilderness confirming that we were nearing our destination.
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- 4 comments
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- 1201 reads
The Dare and the Dark
We’d been smoking behind the assembly hall for a while after detention - not talking much, just leaning up against the wall trying to pretend we were cool -when Jake turned to me with that annoying
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- 3 comments
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- 934 reads
Mexico
the love of a beautiful woman on a beautiful day lights up the dark years long after she has gone
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- 8 comments
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- 4190 reads
Now or Never 7
The tail-end of treatment and back into the big bad world
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- 4 comments
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- 1199 reads
Out Of The Mists Of Dreaming
She came not out of the golden skies of the mornings, but out of the heavy mists that haunted our dreams.
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- 2 comments
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- 1248 reads
Celestial Puppeteer
The devil never really need fear For good is good for which it adheres If right is wrong and wrong is right It's finally time to call this fight. A no holds barred, jugular throat spar
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- 2 comments
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- 1041 reads
31 Falkner Street (9)
‘Your road is really scary.’ Kerry told me. I felt insulted. ‘How is it?’
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- 713 reads
Counting backwards from ten
Anyone who's lain on a gurney and had nothing but a hospital gown between them and the knife will get the title......
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- 3 comments
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- 1681 reads
The Guinea Thief - Chapter 13 - the merciless
Jack and Delphine visit Robert on the prison hulk
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- 1 comment
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- 870 reads
Waiting for the Sun
The Santa Ana winds were thunderously howling on Venice Boulevard, but the slippery streets were nonetheless at ease with the silence of the moon.
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- 2 comments
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- 856 reads
Who'll Pay the Piper?
“Piper Alpha...one hundred and sixty-four missing...”
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- 19 comments
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- 4285 reads
31 Falkner Street (8)
My name is Ella and I am 31 years old.
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- 844 reads
Timeo Danaos et Dona Ferentes
While I alone traverse the walls
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- 1 comment
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- 823 reads
What would Junie B. Jones do?
"Mr. Jacobson sniffs little girls' bicycle seats," eight year old Benjamin Carter announced cavalierly as though the topic made for polite dinner conversation.
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- 4 comments
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- 3070 reads
31 Falkner Street (7)
Night out
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- 1 comment
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- 666 reads
Whore
With the cool night air caressing her forehead, she reassures herself that she is still here.
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- 12 comments
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- 3857 reads
31 Falkner Street (6)
Paddy
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- 1 comment
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- 1043 reads
End of days 13
A story in 200-word chapters. At the far end of an asylum, the celestial war reaches its conclusion.
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- 11 comments
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- 3928 reads
Yellowstone
Shoveling snow from abandoned rooftops in Yellowstone would do me. That kind of raptured loneliness, wrapped in a blank white silence, the world a crisp new page
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- 4 comments
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- 2555 reads
100 Stories for Pakistan
My attempt. Any help or suggestions-grammar, word choice, spelling- gratefully received.
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- 6 comments
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- 1751 reads
31 Falkner Street (3)
The barbeque
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- 4 comments
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- 1966 reads
The Brimstone Canary
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- 3 comments
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- 1962 reads
First All-Village Orgy Advice
‘If in doubt, always grease the wallaby first,’ wise words, I’m sure you will all agree.
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- 2 comments
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- 1534 reads
31 Falkner Street (2)
Anna
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- 8 comments
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- 3369 reads
Not Even a Rose
This is the same world in which Sylvia Plath retired her pen (In a confessional oven); Nothing is perfect: Not even a poem.
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- 5 comments
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- 2036 reads
The 4 Mirrors
There was once a wealthy merchant of Lovingia who owned a fleet of trading ships and used them to transport fine fabrics and spices and other exotic goods from far and wide.
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- 4 comments
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- 2321 reads
A Strange Case Of Infidelity
There’d been a time, a long time ago, when Crayton West had wondered at the meaning of life; the summum bonum as they say on old Earth but this quest for meaning or the good life had not lasted long
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- 1 comment
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- 1885 reads
Dear Maria: Chapter 3
She was the only one who ever came into the office anymore.
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- 4 comments
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- 2143 reads
Dear Maria: Chapter 2
Oh no, this is just the beginning of this game, Maria. There is much more pain to come than that. That was only a fraction of the suffering you have caused. Are you ready, Maria?
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- 6 comments
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- 2270 reads