Cherrypicked stories

Cherry

What's left of it

She finds it difficult, now
Cherry

An Experience.

I asked Jonesy that night, what was it like, to know that you're dying. "It's great. He told me. Because every moment, from now on, will be cherished. Every laugh will be beautiful. Every kiss will be the sweetest. Every tear will be the hardest.
Cherry

Life is swell

When she was small and weak and white, he was like her shining knight. Hymns and prayers were sung nightly and God was still seen as Almighty: life was well Now she is big and strong and tanned.
Cherry

Quite Intelligent Pigs (mark 2)

I remember when Carmel, my wife's pet pig, showed great ingenuity in digging a tunnel to break out of her pen. She had even found the house key that was hidden beneath the plant pot. I spotted her trying to snuffle past the bouncer at The Barony Pub. She'd ransacked our trot-in-wardrobe: got trussed up in an Ascot hat, two pairs of heels, smelling of Gaultier and swill.
Cherry

Victoria Ward

This Poem has Temporarily Removed
Cherry

Prologue

The prologue to a book I started to write about 10 years ago but never got round to finishing. Sort of a comic fantasy thing involving the Horsemen Of The Apocalypse and a time machine.
Cherry

A Door (a play)

My entry for the next issue of Fuselit (theme: "Adore")
Cherry

Do you want to?

'Do you think I am fat?' Clara's voice sounded anxious. 'Well of course you are. But it's normal, you are pregnant after all,' John replied. The table fell silent. Most of the women were looking at their plate or at Clara, awaiting for her reaction. Sarah turned towards her brother and raised her eyebrows.
Cherry

My Android Hairdresser

She makes the usual small talk: "So, what is it like to have feelings?" I say you can easily chalk up most of them to strange swellings
Cherry

The Four Moments of Growing Potatoes

Poem has been temporarily removed and will be re-posted in October 06
Cherry

A love letter

A love letter My love, I promised I'd write. I've been well since that night I touched your breast, your thigh, And heard your sigh, My love. What now? That night was short, A simple snapshot caught
Cherry

A Novel: Signs Following (Prologue)

A mere dot on the state map, Dearing was more a religious cult with a sizable tract of cooperatively owned land than a community. Although it contained a bank, a general store, and a doctor's office, Dearing's population consisted of retired carnival freaks and their offspring for the most part. The good doctor, Rudolph Morton, had traveled with, practiced medicine on, the occupants of Dearing for many years, and had delivered most of the babies.
Cherry

LOCAL POET SLAMS PRESS

In case you haven't guessed, this is a hate poem about the local press. LOCAL MAN IN LOST TUPPENCE MISERY RESIDENTS SLAM NEW HOUSING SCHEME SCAMPI BINGE ENDS TRAGICALLY LOCAL PARAPLEGIC'S KUNG FU DREAM
Cherry

My Life Oy Vay 9 (Diary Of A Drunk)

My Life Oy Vay 9 Ex girlfriend phoned me after we spent a couple of days shagging and drinking together, after which remorse and a hangover set in. I told her it will never work between us because we always end up getting rat-arsed and ill. And one of us will die prematurely. Can you do that? Die before your time? It's one of the great ontological riddles of our time. So she accepted that I was right and left. So she called two days later when I was rattling like a pair of maracas. She said "Goodbye Stephen I said "Oh yeh goodbye. I put the phone down. I thought that she was just coming to terms with the separation, then I thought is she going to jump out of the window? But the way I felt at that moment I really couldn't care.
Cherry

I want a landscape that looks like its lost

I tell him that most days the sky is white,
Cherry

Purple Hat

She's bought a purple hat. But why??
Cherry

A Vickey Kind of Girl

He's good-looking, about thirty-five, and wearing a snug blue uniform. The intense stare directed my way tells me that he's curious; I suppose it's not very often that a small town cop finds a woman alongside Dogwood Avenue alone at midnight.
Cherry

A Linear Equation of Nebulous Portent

She struggled at first, still refusing to look at him, her heart thundering loud enough for Tillman to find its cadence and work within its beat. Her eyes on him and filled with approval was his only goal.
Cherry

The Shawl

I talked about needlepoint with a man from Kashmir.
Cherry

Jigsaw

Framed on a wall, a pretty picture with a piece missing;

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