Earth has been dead for a century, and all humans with it. Or so we believe. All that is left of the final expedition is our colony of souls on Mars. Only mouths are we. Who sings the distant heart which safely exists in the centre of all things? That is the question we ask […]
Tag: Prosery
Evening Class
The card on the noticeboard offered an introduction to crystal healing and dream interpretation. Aisling wrote the address in her notebook and returned to the house she shared with three students. She wouldn’t tell them. They would only laugh at her in the same way as they did at her herbal teas and potions. That […]
Star Watcher
After watching the stars all night, she was still out there, in the frozen outdoors, tracking a comet across the sky. It was slow-moving, not as bright as she expected, and then it changed course, heading towards her. The light stopped in mid-air, pulsing a shade of blue she’d never seen before. She thought, “I […]
Catkins
Nula had been disappearing into the night regularly since the miscarriage. He reassured her that everything was going to be fine, but the sleepwalking hadn’t stopped. He was going to find out where she went. Euan gave her a head start, pretending he was asleep, and he just remembered to grab her thick coat and […]
Giant
I’m trapped between mature queen beeches, beneath the litter of their crunchy mast. Their silver trunks are adorned with stag-horn lichen and bracket fungus, a tiny fairyland. Me, I’m a giant, one of a circle of stones haunting the landscape, a left-over from a long time ago. Sometimes the great bones of my life feel […]
The Kind Ghost
‘I knew we had a ghost,’ the writer said from her armchair piled with cushions, feet warming by the fire. ‘How’s that?’ ‘When we moved in, neighbours told me about a soldier who was killed in the Great War but returned to watch over his daughter, to whom he told stories. She became a writer, […]
Something in the Walls
“There’s something in the walls,” she said, grabbing my hand and pulling me through the front door. We stood in the hallway, listening, my mother with her ear against the wall. Outside, the wind was dancing a mazurka, spinning branches in its embrace, lifting the door knocker and tapping to come in. “See,” I said. […]
Ogden’s Extraordinary Observatory
Posters were plastered all over town, filling us with expectation: ‘OGDEN’S EXTRAORDINARY OBSERVATORY – ONE NIGHT ONLY’. We had to go. It’s in an abandoned factory that was closed when we were children, the year my best friend Rachel discovered astronomy. I’m glad I remembered to bring a torch. Ogden is a creepy man, clown-like […]
After the Smog Came
Nobody listened to the warnings, so when it came, it was a shock. The atmosphere was so badly poisoned by toxic smog from burning forests, exhaust fumes and waste, it leaked into space and discoloured the face of the moon. It just disappeared. After a number of years, older children had forgotten about it and […]
A Pocketful of Time
Their childhood pockets were always full of stuff: fluff-covered sweets, stubs of pencils, rubber bands, and tiny plastic figures from breakfast cereal, their currency to trade and play with on a rainy afternoon. That afternoon, when it is over, said and done, it was a time – and there was never enough of it […]
