The tree has cancer. God gave the tree cancer. Perhaps he was bored, or drunk, or both. God did the gardening one day, then went for a walk. Along the way, he got distracted by this, that and the other, and his mind drifted. It’s been drifting ever since, and now we’re all just traces… Read more

She’s not long gone from this world. Perhaps little more than an hour. When she comes around, her heart feels heavy—so heavy it’s almost as if it’s escaped her body and is sinking through the bedroom floor. Attached to a thin strip of flesh, it swings to and fro from her chest like a pendulum.… Read more

Stirring, then subsiding, she purrs before kicking the sheets off the bed. As she does so, the mist recedes, and her pale body shines beneath the light bulb above. Curiously, she doesn’t remember switching it on. Listening out for the sounds of others, she can’t make out whether or not anyone is in the house… Read more

She wishes to shower, but decides it’s too cold to get undressed, so instead sticks her head under the tap in the bathroom sink. It’s not very ladylike. After several seconds, she resembles a drowned cat, and when she applies too much shampoo to her hair, it foams out of control and gets in her… Read more

Beneath a green sweater in the shade of a carousel, the nipples of her breasts resemble aged sycamores, and her tongue the fork on some biblical table seating thirteen monoliths smeared with sin and black lipstick. I’m afraid of what she means to me. I’m afraid of the sun. Throughout the years that are now… Read more

Getting to her feet, she downs the last of the coffee before lighting a cigarette. She’s not supposed to smoke inside the house, so she opens the window. Sucking in and then blowing it out, the smoke escapes only for the wall of mist to hurl it back at her. If she squints, she can… Read more

And the choice of black coffee… No, it certainly wouldn’t do. The old woman who once owned this house who may or may not have existed would almost certainly have been a tea drinker. She would have drunk tea poured from a kettle adorned in one of those brightly coloured cosies, the kind her grandmother… Read more

Holding the cup in both hands, she blows upon it with a gentle breath. Through the window, a sharp breeze comes in uninvited, playing with the curls of her hair. Bopping up and down upon her slouched shoulders, the jangly movement resembles a puppet on a string. Ironic really, as she sees herself as a… Read more

The orgasm sucks her in, chews her up, and then gobs her back into the bathroom. For the merest flickers of existence, she’s out of this place—as out as she’ll ever get without dying, that is. Gawping open-mouthed at the smoke-stained ceiling, the shit slips out of her arse, leaving her feeling as light as… Read more

Sure enough, the cheese hits her in the guts before the kettle has time to boil. Clutching her belly, she has the sudden urge to rush to the bathroom, and yet the shapes in the steam have her captivated. She’s not religious—much to her mother’s eternal disappointment—but the imagery is biblical. It always is. From… Read more