Cherrypicked stories

Cherry

The Invitation

It was only after clicking 'Send' that Rebecca realised what she had done.
Cherry

Cathedral Crib

Thee plaster figures, minimal, modern on thy knees before the crib and after midnight mass, an exodus trails remnant candlewax.
Cherry

Stepping out in to the street, the front door kettle clicks closed

Stepping out in to the street, the front door kettle clicks closed At the market she buys six leaf clemantines and sits by the pond, par peeling them thinking, they're a lot like options. She performs procedures,
Cherry

I am cultivating a fear of my face

I am cultivating a fear of my face, I find in particular it's the side streets with the lip line gutters that keep me moving past shop fronts, particularly fast. To try to keep it clipped I've made a map of all the places I find friends;
Cherry

Sammy's Mammy will ghee us mince and tatties for our tea

Everybody calls me Gegsy, everybody except for my Mammy that is, she calls me Greggor. My Mammy is a actress, she's been in a lot of toothpaste adverts. Every time my Mammy takes me to school people nudge each other and say ooh there's that woman from the toothpaste advert.
Cherry

Oneshot

The memory she perceives as a puzzle of irregular pieces that can be laid out and gathered in, then laid again in immeasurable patterns. Tonight, now, in her fur, she journeys to Nepal where William's blue eyes hypnotised the natives and Oneshot's hot blood united them in a way that was more profound and sacred than the vows they had exchanged at the little Norman church in St Nicholas at Wade. William had seen the leopard first, a fully grown male striding without fear through the clearing. He held his finger to her lips, pointed: He's yours, Charlie. Aim for the heart.
Cherry

A gentle novel in twelve paragraphs

Call me Doug. Not Douglas. Call me. Look me up. Combatting xenophobia. They wear speaker cones for hats in China. They eat rice with their hands like a JCB shifts dirt into a skip. They play some snooker too, to feed their families.
Cherry

I Once Went To Prison

IT WAS a December. I distinctly remember it being cold, which given the month, was not a surprise. What was a surprise was that I was naked, with blood on my chest. It was not my blood. It was the blood of an ape, whose body I had just effortlessly cast through the window of a jewellery store.
Cherry

Delivery

Rathbone held the apparatus up, pointing it at the high ceiling. "Roll your sleeves up, gentlemen."
Cherry

Dunford Bridge

A small settlement at the end of the Woodhead tunnel on the former Manchester to Sheffield railway line, electrified in 1954 and closed in 1981.
Cherry

Ghazal 13

You off-shore, you wishbone, oh sleepy Gestapo. The tide was against us when you suggested a dip. Oh slipstream, oh yielding, oh off-duty lifeguard. I expected the stairwell to be the first place they'd look.
Cherry

Conversations With Raul

In which the narrator has four conversations with Raul, two short and two long, and one conversation with a girl, the details of which are not given.
Cherry

Pongo #32

Casenotes (Found playing in subject's room on night of disappearance. Song is "Pickstar by The Dentellas) Hey, hello! You seen my name? It's hanging off the gallows and it's running in the rain.
Cherry

Pongo #31

Martaro I show her inside in soft focus, the black lines around the furniture trembling before me. Five years of just internet chatting and she pops up now, all coffeecup eyes and treacle hair, the same as ever. I knock a pile of post onto the floor as we pass.
Cherry

Empty Space

200 words.
Cherry

British Gas

I wondered if she lived alone in a flat above the cinema. I wondered if she was able to use the gas for her own purposes - for cooking or giving birth perhaps. I wondered if she liked Maltesers. I wondered if she liked snogging. I'd be having an online relationship with her next. I had to stop. When you give up smoking you're supposed to say "I've stopped". That's what Alan Carr says. And for some people it's all about him. What had happened to those innocent days when you called a sex maniac a sex maniac? Had everything been poisoned like the seagulls? Addictions and half-hearted biology. Sugar rush - blood sugar - contact addiction - contact lenses. He would have liked that one as well. It felt good not to share suddenly.

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