Writing & Other Things
She could feel Katie hovering around, pretending to be doing something. Making out that she hadn’t noticed the box, the gold ribbons, the silver paper, her secret activity in the corner of the room.
Until curiosity and impatience won out as usual.
“Is that for me?”
“Yeah.”
“Can I see it?”
“No! It’s a surprise.”
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There was a sign by the door. A small blue enamelled metal plaque. One of the corners had cracked, and a crust of rust had started to flake about it.
Judy stared at it, trying to imagine whoever it was that had placed that sign there, so straight and perfect. She wondered what they would think if they were to see that rusting corner now. Would they be disappointed, try to repair it, take it down and replace it with a perfect, fresh new one?
She would leave it as it was. She liked the sign, liked that small imperfection. It made the door less intimidating.
Continue readingSomeone had forgotten to clean away the bowl of fruit. It was easy to have missed it I suppose, that one orange lying there in the glass bowl. It was only when I walked passed it and caught the faint whiff of mould that I noticed it. Saw that it had been left there to rot, all forgotten and blue, so that now, if you picked it up, it was almost powdery, just a sphere of disintegrating greenish blue dust.
Ordinarily, it was something I would have paid no attention to, would have ignored, perhaps passing only to see if the bowl itself, was something I could take with me. The orange itself, would have failed to register.
Continue readingPerry Johnson stood at the bus stop waiting for the number 89. Every workday evening he did this. The six twenty-five bus home was his.
He liked the regularity of it. This waiting around at the same time, same place. Regularity was a thing Perry enjoyed, something he needed.
If you’d asked him why he liked it, why it was he needed it, he’d probably have explained that he was not the type of person that thrived in chaos. He needed a purpose, some structure to his day if he was to see any sense in it. By way of explanation, he would no doubt have left it at that. Perry was a man of few words.
Continue readingIt was her hands that triggered it.
The way they were folded over one another as though she was clutching at herself in disbelief or shock.
It was strange to see how smooth the skin was. It looked plump and youthful, pumped up with a chemical waxiness that allowed the death to somehow drain from it, but at the same time remain there.
That dead grasp of her hands. I’d seen it once before, only then it had been a fleeting thing. A stiffening, uncontrolled scratching, a reflexive clutching at sheets. All rhythm, all movement frozen. Little pinpricks leaving us rigid and taut. Each gasp a brief prelude to all of this.
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