Author: Suzanne Conboy-Hill

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Dog Day

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

The bumble bee, a young drone, dipped towards the pond, took on ballast and made its way over to the clump of dandelions by the fence. The other drone, Alice’s husband Frank, watched lazily and aimed a desultory flick at a hoverfly positioned just above his head, and buzzing as it appeared to give the person in the lounger a multifaceted once-over. Middle aged, over weight (not obese, he would argue when challenged), and thinning on top, Frank was in the process of decommissioning his youth and taking on an identity loosely recognisable as early-onset decrepit geezer. Redundancy had stolen … Continue reading Dog Day

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Cat Nav

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

Suzanne Conboy-Hill ‘Now you’ll come in at night,’ Joe told Roscoe, the big, orange, cantankerous-looking tabby he was trying to stuff into a carrier. Not flippin’ likely, said Roscoe, although of course he didn’t because he was a cat. Instead, he arched his back, flipped his bottom over Joe’s arm, and catapulted himself onto the dresser, the top of which was crammed with Joe’s mother’s precious ornaments. He skipped across the figurine with the peach crinoline and skidded the china egg full of earrings and little gold studs into the framed picture of Joe’s mother smiling at the glazed face … Continue reading Cat Nav

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Drop Dead Gorgeous

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

Friday Fiction Halloween Special! I first met Dillon when my dead Gran tripped me up in front of him. There was me, meandering along the sea front watching small dogs on extending leads crochet themselves into yapping compounds each time they encountered others of their ilk; and there was he, arrowing through them, the sleek lycra-ed warp to their woof. I was ok but he landed up in hospital with several broken bones and his bike was a write-off. Gran beamed like it was her birthday and she’d knocked back her celebratory bottle of whisky all in one go. I … Continue reading Drop Dead Gorgeous

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The Problem with Temporal Asynchronicity By Suzanne Conboy-Hill

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

Continued from Facebook: Every so often we get a chance to pull the plug on some puny species that has far too much to say for itself, gets into scraps over its parochial borders, and then starts to leak out of its playpen to bother everybody else. This job was a gift.We dropped the first spout into the middle of the Atlantic and left it there, like a bracket with lightning at one end and spray at the other. It got no attention at all the first couple of days, but when it was still there at the end of … Continue reading The Problem with Temporal Asynchronicity By Suzanne Conboy-Hill

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abuse, fiction, short story4 Comments

Lovely girls – continued

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

Content warning: story concerns neglect and abuse of people in long-stay learning disability institution. Amy watches the door; that grimy finger-stained gobbed-on portal to fleeting respite from the ward’s stink. The stink that makes her eyes water and saturates her soul. She tries to shift her bottom; to hold her limbs still for just long enough to hover briefly above the puddle of cold pee that has settled in a trough of rucked up rubber sheeting. No luck, she sinks back. Flails back, in truth; arms threshing, mouth grimacing and spit flying, onto the wet sandpaper of the twill draw … Continue reading Lovely girls – continued

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No/rmal

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

Two thirds of the way through a painting degree with the Open College of the Arts, I needed some text to insert into a large painting/collage illustrating the idea of rifts. Previous pieces in this series have been geo-political, socio-political, and imagined; this one is about mental capacity and health. I’ve spent my professional life as a clinical psychologist working with adults with intellectual disabilities. When I began in the 1980s, they were still ‘mentally handicapped patients’ housed in huge, bleak, emotionally barren institutions. The classification was an improvement on previous terminology, much of which has found its way into … Continue reading No/rmal

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Art from words/words from art – liminality

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

Here the Magic Must Be The river was almost at its zenith, that tipping point between the heaving press of the sea from the coast and the thundering weight of dark, fresh water draining from the hills. It glittered and sparkled along its banks as if strung with fairy lights. The woman twiddled her handkerchief until it knotted and then pushed it into her pocket. Twice a day, every day, all of heaven and earth balanced here on this point, she thought. For reassurance, she felt for the handle of the knife that sat quiet next to the handkerchief and … Continue reading Art from words/words from art – liminality

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