Short stories

Cherry

Maud and Joseph

"Every time it rains it feels like I'm being cleansed! Shouts a man with a guitar, beaming round at the people with umbrellas and hoods hurrying past him. I wander past with my hands in my pockets, rain bouncing off my head. The man is standing with his bare feet apart, grinning straight ahead. He sees me watching him and jumps up, clapping the balls of his feet together in quick succession. "I'm learning to do three! He says, slapping his feet together twice before they land back onto the cobbles. "I'll do it! "I hope you do. I say, without stopping. "I'll call you Mary! He shouts, rain dripping off the end of his nose.
Cherry

Baby

I smile like suicide just isn’t an option and when the baby, finally, uncertainly, gives in and smiles back, I am disappointed with it afresh.
Cherry

Bone

I'd like to tie a piece of string around my parakeet's foot and carry him along with me, like a balloon, but he can't bear it.
Cherry

Bright like Quartz

The white points of her knuckles are bright like quartz sticking out of heather where she’s holding on so hard and I think about her little skeleton underneath that rosy flesh.
Cherry

Impress Me With Your Cartwheels

A very drunken man has just left my bar. I accidentally gave him alcohol before I realised how drunk he was. He looked at me too intensely as if he'd forgotten himself. His mouth twitched like there were words inside that wanted to come out.
Cherry

Finding Zen in Bum Woods

Where's my Zen, hmmm? Where's my fucking Zen? She was speaking out loud now. And why the fuck not? she thought. What is there to stop me?
Cherry

The Importance of Gestures

Pissmop has been brought back from the dead and this time he's a twinkly eyed, silver fox. I never saw the man he grew into but I can guess he was nothing like this.
Gold cherry

She Perfected The Filthy Glare

“And then I do this,” she told him when they got home, flicking her hair and sitting astride him. “You'd better not do that,” he said afterwards, collecting his pants from under her pillow.
Cherry

My Dad the Pussy

I see the spanner just before it connects with my dad’s head, feel the jolt of it through his arms as he tries to lift me off the floor.
Story of the week

Mint Sauce in the Beans

“Five minutes,” I promise and my brother asks me if that’s all I can say, and I tell him, no, that isn’t all I can say, I can say dickhead as well. Dickhead.

Don't tell mum: Part 1

The black floor is painted with tippex and poster paints: CF loves ML, EH loves ML, KA loves ML. It is a time in our lives when we all love the same boy and there is no problem with that.
Cherry

The twins

They are not Roy Chubby Brown, not Jim Davidson, not Victoria Wood: they don’t travel around the country from palledium to hippodrome alone.
Story of the week

Wasps

I just sat there the whole time, listening to the Eastenders theme tune with a straight face like one of those comedians who never laughs at their own jokes.
Cherry

Medusas

I didn’t kiss Odgeir because I fancied him, but because I knew other people fancied him.