Short Stories and Plays

Short tales that need no elaboration

Cherry

Is This Yours (Ten)

Jim led with his left forearm. Although he couldn’t see the rod he’d been beaten with he assumed the guy had it secreted somewhere.

42” Flat Screen Plasma TV £399 or nearest offer (2)

“To be honest if you’re a little strapped I could put it up for you”

42” Flat Screen Plasma TV £399 or nearest offer (3)

The office looked as organised as Boris Johnson’s vocabulary.

42” Flat Screen Plasma TV £399 or nearest offer (4)

My flat was one of three within a large semi-detached property, and though it hadn’t the most cordial of demeanours, it was clean and, for the first time since I had set foot in Choppingchurch, it f

42” Flat Screen Plasma TV £399 or nearest offer (6)

Leaving for Shade in the Choppingchurch rush hour had little effect. Three cars comprised the longest queue I encountered and only because they were following a mobility scooter.
Cherry

Ahasuerus (A play) Act II

Act II Afternoon (Inside the camp)

Ahasuerus (A Play) Act III

Act III (Night-time) (Inside a barrack in the camp)

Ahasuerus (A Play) Act IV

Act IV (Six months later) (Morning) (Liberation)
Cherry

The Last Rites of Horace Tees

A nod to M R James, Dickens and Aeschylus. Vengeance as a pincer movement, before and beyond the grave.

Litter (A play) Part 1

Everyman gets hot
Cherry

Lenten Observance (A play) ACT I

No goodies, no baddies except the villain intolerance.
Cherry

Lenten Observance (A Play) Act II

Act II Scene I Act I The sitting-room Easter Saturday a year later Afternoon (Mark is watching football on TV)

Lenten Observance (A Play) Act III

A hospital ward Easter Sunday, a year later
Cherry

The Bastard - He Doesn't Exist

Work in progress - inspired by Sam
Story of the week

Is This Yours?

I was going like the clappers trying to get this into the serial comp and now its off. Never mind here's the first bit
Cherry

Is This Yours? (Three)

Jim stood trembling. This was totally unexpected. It had only been 20/1 in the paper. He’d tried tipsters in the past but you were lucky if they offered you something running at double odds.
Cherry

Is This Yours ? (Five)

These days technology has replaced the humdrum.
Cherry

Is This Yours? (Six)

Jim was in transition. He was resident in a kind of no-man’s land between mawkish self-pity and euphoria.
Cherry

Is This Yours? (Seven)

Jim wandered back toward the walls of the shop. Simultaneously Bob came out from behind the counter and onto the shop floor.
Cherry

Is This Yours? (Eight)

Jim entered a large department store and turned his own mobile on. He tried Cassie but he couldn’t get a signal.
Cherry

Is This Yours? (Nine)

Not at first though.
Cherry

Take the next road on your left (1)

“Take the next road on your left and follow it for three hundred yards” she said.
Cherry

Take the next road on your left (2)

It was not an unhandsome face I recalled, even though I’d only seen it for a moment and that appearance was rather two dimensional being flattened against my windscreen.

Take the Next Road on your Left

Where are the police when you need them?

Take the next Road on Your Left (4)

“Who are your buddies?” “Sorry” “Your mates” “I don’t follow…” “Name” “Joe…er…Phil…em…Andy…” “How many names you got?” “Oh my name”
Cherry

Take the Next Road on your Left (5)

Years ago when I was 8 I wanted some sweets. I wanted sweets that badly I went to my mother’s purse and took out 10p.

Take the Next Road on your Left (6)

I was pleased with the hiatus. As a man of discipline the last few hours I’d felt like a neurotic in the middle of a disaster scenario.

Take the Next Road on your Left (7)

“Where the fuck are you?” Hardman bellowed into the mobile so stridently that his bark bounced off the walls of the narrow corridor inside the police station, “We’re 45 minutes behind.
Cherry

Take the Next Road on your Left (8)

She didn’t look like Val, but had that same smile, somewhere between doting and condescending. How long had it been since that final farewell?

Take the Next Road on your Left (10)

Sparta General Hospital loomed into view as I turned the final corner from Erin Street.
Cherry

Take the Next Road on your Left (11)

I felt like a directionless mouse being drawn by the scent of a huge wad of cheese in one of those scientific experiments and being driven insane because it can’t get where its nose wants to lead it

Take the Next Road on Your left (12)

“Adeona” said Tudor “Let me introduce you. This is Charlie; but of course you’ve already met”

Take the Next Road on your Left (13)

“Who’s been a silly boy then?”

Take the Next Road on your Left (15 and Epilogue)

He was slim, wiry and not very tall and yet he propelled himself out of trap three like a doctored whippet.

The Mezzotint Chapter 2 - Hope

Most people walk through doors - few have the doors melt around them. The latter are proprietors of bodies that simply diffuse the banality they...

The Mezzotint Chapter 3 Harriet

After Creest left the village hall he decided to take the longer route home following a brook that straddled the northern perimeter of Greeven. After...

The Mezzotint Chapter 3 Harriet Part 2

‘You asked me why she did it Professor. That, I’m afraid, remains unanswered. Sam was a bright little thing. She had very blonde hair and deep blue...

The Mezzotint Chapter 3 Harriet Part 3

The Vicar discharged a tremulous, exhausted sigh, as if he’d just extracted himself from a lengthy session in the confessional with a particularly...

The Mezzotint Chapter 4 Dinner

The cottage Hope Lincoln had rented was one of those picture postcard dwellings that tend to validate an English sentiment that infests itself in...

The Mezzotint Chapter 5 - Part 1 Hope Disappears

Creest saw nothing of Hope Lincoln over the weekend after their dinner date. He was surprised, and more than a little disappointed, after adding an...

The Mezzotint Chapter 5 part 2 Hope Disappears

‘I have a confession to make’ Creest said ‘As good a place as any’ It was a cliché but the vicar sensed a slice of banality was a requisite to...

The Mezzotint Chapter 6 Dorian Gray

They polished off the Shiraz between them content in the knowledge that, as elderly gentlemen, three glasses of a good red was not only an equitable...

The Mezzotint Chapter 7 Pentimento

‘I can’t really think of any parallel at all, certainly in my experience, but to be sure I would have to adopt the same tactics as a barrister’ ‘I...

The Mezzotint Chapter 8 Revelations

Creest made his way from the campus and walked slowly down Gower Street towards his hotel. He always booked the Russell when in London. He loved the...

The Mezzotint Chapter 9 The Mezzotint

Creest woke up in a white world. His ears registered a bleeping noise like a satellite beaming signals back to earth. ‘Maybe I’m beyond space. Is...

The Seeds

They slide over the patch of smooth grey slate encircling the orchard. ‘Once this wall seemed impassable’ Bertrand muses, nostalgia shimmering in his...