Last Breath in Sutherland

These short stories powerfully evoke Scottish landscape, history and architecture. With a keen sense of the past impacting on the present, they are gripping and often moving. The author was a winner of the WH Smith Young Writers’ competition in 1991, judged by then Poet Laureate Ted Hughes, and has wanted to publish a book of his own short stories ever since. Some of these stories have been previously published on www.cazart.co.uk. ‘The News From Moidart’ was previously published in issue 6 of the magazine Random Acts of Writing in 2007, ‘We Are For The Dark’ won third prize in a writing competition run by the Isle of Mull-based newspaper Am Muileach in 2007, and ‘Ask For Me Tomorrow’ was highly commended in the Highlands and Islands’ Short Story Association (HISSAC) competition in 2008.

Collaborators

I was unsure if I could trust our new friend. Her eyes glittered coldly across the campfire. My Lancaster was gone, with half my crew. Just Bob and I...

State of Independence

David MacLeod tossed aside his tricornered hat as he walked into the bar. ‘Good afternoon, Mrs Fox,’ he said to the landlady. She nodded back,...

Big Yellow Taxi

‘The Council voted for what?’ asked Joni sharply, coming home and draping her school tie over a chair. It was May, and it was raining. Summer seemed...

Recovery Position

I don’t want to let her go. The machine keeps her alive… just. The odd flicker I see in her face, and no-one else does. There is that necklace, with...

Hunter, Gatherer

The man whose skull had a certain impact, and now resides in the British Natural History Museum, known as the Cheddar Man, once strode the wild woods...

Bone of My Bone

'She's facing due east,' I said, wiping my hands of the familiar dust as I stood up in the trench. Dee shrugged, still further down in the trench. '...

Axe

I’m a cut above, you know. I may have left my silk robe at the Palace, but my dignity is intact. I prayed this morning, for the last time. I tried to...

We Hold These Truths

‘We don’t tend to have gargoyles in Scotland,’ I said. ‘The theology’s different.’ Dee was just getting out of her side of the car. She squinted up...

Bubble and Squeak

‘How much is it worth again, Pa?’ ‘Ten cents, and no more. That’s enough for you.’ ‘Is it enough for you as well?’ ‘Never mind your cheek.’ Tommy...

The Kingdom of Heaven

‘Hear us, O Lord. Have mercy.’ The words in Latin echoed around the clearing. Brother Andrew looked over at the freshly-dug mound of earth. All...

Charnel-House

‘We live, and learn.’ Haddon stood at the foot of a corpse, his breath rasping through the long, beak-like mask. He almost gagged on the sweet herbs...

A Twist In Her Sobriety

It’s all about mood. The colour of her eyes, the sound of her voice, her folded arms, the shadow of the old railway viaduct… that mood, on a clear...

Ask For Me Tomorrow

March Rain spilling down on the edge makes a mockery of my work. This is the open space I chose, a green rectangle opened up, the standard size. I...

The News from Moidart

‘The news fae Moidart come yestreen Will soon gar mony ferly, For ships o’war have just come in And landed Royal Charlie.’ The sun lit up the country...

Muckle Flugga

Joiner turned his bruised face to the light. ‘We must get it going,’ he shouted above the storm. Henderson scowled, his face grey in the fading...

We Two Are Coffins

My loved one went ahead of me, in the plague. I could not stop loving him, even though he grew black boils and sweated and called for his mother,...

A Black Bridleless Horse

A Black Bridleless Horse ‘Can’t you feel it?’ said Caz, shivering as she turned her back on the railway track. It was a railway track no longer in...

An Island of Talking Heads

Caligulus Minus shivered as he boarded the trireme floating off the Gaulish coast. He looked back at the shore. ‘I don’t like it,’ he said to Sextus...
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Cherry

Flowers at a Grave

‘Oh, look, there are flowers at his grave,’ said my aunt dismissively, suddenly reaching for her handkerchief. We stood in the graveyard, on a bright...

Happy Death Men

‘Have ye got it?’ MacNeil emerged from behind a gravestone, lugging a form only too like himself, wrapped in coarse sacking. The Edinburgh scene was...

Let Her Go Down

The tide runs at me. This is the end. The old lady beneath me shudders. I instructed the crew to abandon ship some time ago. There is no-one else...

Lighthouse

I put the body in the corner. It was only decent. He was my friend. Or he was, before we argued. I found hammer and nails, and prepared a coffin. I...

After the Funeral

I stumble away from the graveside, with the support of my friend. We walk towards the gate in the churchyard, under a louring November sky. ‘I’ll...
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Loch Leven

Such idolatrous nonsense. Still she holds onto this pretence after her disgrace, as a fallen queen. Flowers in the dirt. I detest her popish...

Moon Dance

We achieved blast-off at 08.15 hours EST. We drove from Jacksonville down to Cape Kennedy, in Florida. We were well provisioned on the remains of...

New Kid on the Breeze Block

Mel Gibson’s face stared out of a poster over the foyer of the MacRobert Centre, at the University of Stirling. The would-be Guardian of Scotland’s...

Scramble

I keep her picture here, in my wallet. My American girl. Not so much a GI Jane as a filing clerk, who came in with the Yanks. There she is, in her...

Sea Henge

The sea is where one life ends. The life of the land surrenders to the sea, is taken over and rinsed out into the tide, the endless horizon. When the...

Martyrdom

They took her to the water, the wind blowing in their faces. This was the authority of King Charles II being enforced: bringing those obstinate...

We Are For the Dark

The rays of the setting sun fell over the shrine of Columba. Brother Peter looked up from his garden, moved as he often was by the simplicity of the...

Last Breath in Sutherland

The sun bleeds away over the horizon, taking our lives with it. It goes west, leaving shades of red and gold across the heather that fade to black...