God was killing me. On a diet of fat mince. And sliced white bread. Doughy and wet. Wrapped in greaseproof paper. Stop it running away. Sterilised milk. Tasted of rice pudding. But didn’t go off till next day. If it didn’t get too hot. Furniture scavenged from derelict houses. Burnt-out or abandoned buildings. Fine old…
Toughened glass seemed to slide back on a cushion of air, into a hallway with the lights all dimmed. A reception desk rested in the shadows, an empty seat behind, and a ball-point pen with the cap off lay at an angle next to a pad of forms, half a cup of long-cold tea evaporated…
She is descaling a moist piece of seabass into the kitchen sink with the back of a knife. It’s his favourite, blackened bass and fresh peas. She’s much calmer now. Subdued. Crammed to bursting with emptiness, and a slight blur at the edges of everything she sees. Stomach a little queasy, nervous. Her hands are…
Nothing wrong with borrowing other people’s life guidance principles. There are plenty of others with sufficient intelligence to learn from. You just have to hunt through a lot of haystacks to find them, and there’s a mountain of sifting to do before you’ve found the really usable information. Quite early on, I latched onto ‘the…
It was the saddest thing in the world, held like a worthless scrap in the palm of your hand. It was all you had. Your last seconds of me, cheap and easy. It cost you dear. You ran down the platform with it in your grasp, slowing, stopping where the platform tipped into the grass…
Ah! This fickle race! The shelf-life of an idea is five minutes, and then it has run its course. Everything has its implicit use-by date, it’s five minutes from now, and if it’s not past yet, then you’re chasing it, hoping to see it off and land the next fix of fresher than fresh novelty.…
Damn my eyes on the front of my head, leading me on. Damn my forward pointing feet. Damn the horizon never reached. Damn the sun with its repetitive days, all the places and faces touched but not held. Damn all the happiness, cracked at the weld. Damn my eyes on the front of my head.…
nicolsonbrooks 