Cherrypicked stories

I wonder if salmon taste whisky A dead sheep melts into the sand

Mum stood at the door looking anxiously, first at the clock, next at Gillian's hemline. I think it was just starting to dawn on her that perhaps there was another kind of party after all. 'Have fun,' she said with a shakey voice, her hands clasped tight by her navel. I waved goodbye and we headed up the road.

Wake like adrenaline

Teach me please, the theology of fingertips

200 words.

Vicky is walking through a narrow mews she has taken quite by accident. She is only a few minutes from the club but feels lost; it is as if miles from anywhere. She comes to a stop outside a shop and gazes up at a little black dress that is short, sleeveless, unassuming. Like me, she thinks. The thought whisks away as her curiosity moves from the dress to the mannequin wearing it. She has long brown hair, brown eyes and sulky lips like she's been waiting for a boyfriend and has reached the moment when she knows he's not going to show up. The mannequin's head is turned to one side and she has one leg slightly raised, as if she has better things to do than just stand there.

"But why me? I asked. I was sitting at the desk on the opposite side of The Captain. The Captain was a large corpulent man given to sudden bouts of anger. The other officers said it was best to butter him up, but I had always found him very fair, without having to slip into unfeigned sycophancy.

I've been reading Roald Dahl, and this is a tribute to his story, Lamb to the Slaughter. 1,700 words.

Day 12. Standing in the Supermarket Queue Behind April and Destiny. You know, the public really lets me down every time. I've been trying lately, of course, to open myself up. I find myself staring at parents, mothers, fathers my age, old couples, little children, babies going by in strollers and bjorns, etc. I don't know what I'm looking for, but I figure if there's something I need, I'll recognize it. I get a lot of empty smiles in return and sometimes I lock horns with the little devils and there's a moment. That happened the other day at the Jons market, standing in the line behind10 month old twins. One of them, the one blithely referred to as April, was stuffing her fat cheeks full of her stubby hands, while clinging to the bosom of her mother or her aunt I couldn't tell the two women apart. The other one - and I'm using their real names here that I overheard - Destiny, could barely hold her head up. Something was clearly wrong. Her eyes were dull and nothing grabbed her attention. She wasn't nursing or sleeping, she just hung there, suspended on the shelf of the other woman's breasts, neither smiling or crying. I looked at her caretakers, whose eyes were also dull and limned with heavy eyeliner. Each of them was very overweight, dangerously so for such young women I would think and in neither case was it child rearing fat. I listened to them speak about the prepackaged, salt laden food substitutes they were buying. Then they talked about the soap opera that afternoon while they swayed in the line like lowing cattle. I wandered into the future with them: bad health, bad habits, bad TV, bad diet, bad grammar, kids with bad porn actress names and bad boyfriends and suddenly I found myself having to hold back a tear because they were so beautiful, so stupidly unaware and beautiful, that I almost couldn't help myself.