Author: Suzanne Conboy-Hill

Black Cat Stories: hard to home and just as likely to honk in your shoe as purr in your faceLeave a comment

Drosophila Melanoghastly

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

She opened the lid of the sink-side depository into which peelings, vegetable off-cuts and abandoned fruit were placed in the interests of her personal composting crusade. It had been recently emptied and a squadron of disenfranchised fruit flies scrambled and took to the air, wheeling around in search of suitable pay-dirt. A banana skin! They descended. ‘Death by drosophila!’ she thought, a smile creeping sideways onto her mouth and occupying a good two thirds before slipping off as the thought of cooking dinner for six re-surfaced. What was it about husbands that enabled them to forget their wives’ culinary ineptitudes … Continue reading Drosophila Melanoghastly

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Prune-Ella, Queen of the Dessert

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

Cynicism. A withering of the heart through repeated, constant, undeserved criticism of genuine and meritorious effort? Well not desolation or abuse that’s for sure; those give rise to defeat, hatred, uncomplicated self-destruction by the slow degrees of personal deconstruction. No, cynicism has a sense of survival to it, vengeance even. It is veiled power, happy to bide its time, content to stalk its target until the moment and the words are most apposite. Cynicism is miserable nastiness out in a posh frock and allowed to mix with its targets. Ah but bitching, that’s a much more entertaining option. Perhaps bitching … Continue reading Prune-Ella, Queen of the Dessert

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Marmite: an inadvertent exercise in perspective writing

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

Narrator ‘I hate it, it’s horrible!’ ’There’s nothing wrong with it. Get it down or there’s no afters’ ‘But Dad!’ ‘Sammy, I’m warning you!’ ‘Jason says it’s witches’ poo!’ ‘Samantha!’ (‘Samantha‘– that meant trouble) ’Finish it now or you go to your room with no TV, understand?’ Sammy’s mouth turned down at the edges. Her bottom lip started to protrude and quiver. Her shoulders started to chug up and down and her fists tightened on the Sunday tablecloth. She sucked in a huge breath though distress-flared nostrils and she howled. It was an eyes-screwed-up, face the colour of the abandoned … Continue reading Marmite: an inadvertent exercise in perspective writing

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Gross Expectations

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

Eloise hoisted open the flimsy door and paused on the threshold, screwing up her nose and holding onto the urge to vomit. Somebody already had, it seemed, and she surveyed the cramped and stinking landscape with a tactical eye. How to accomplish the necessary without acquiring more sewage than she was hoping to leave behind? Not for the first time, Eloise wished Glastonbury had a Business Class section. ©suzanne conboy-hill 2009 Continue reading Gross Expectations

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Mismatch

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

Andy wriggled in his seat, stretching his legs, or trying to, in the cramped space that was Dress Circle. In his head he tried out phrases such as ‘Well, who’d have thought a Carstairs play would turn out to be this tedious!’ and ‘I’m happy to cut and run if you are!’ but one glance at Alison, leaning forward as far as possible and with eyes like saucers, told him that this was already a non-starter. He grappled for a substitute. ‘I think my bleep just went off’ he hissed to Alison’s shoulder. ‘Ssssh!’ she hissed back. Then ‘How come? … Continue reading Mismatch

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A very particular view

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

We thought they’d never get this far; that they’d self-destruct or get bored. Or just take long weekends to go shopping in Wal-Mart or Ikea and leave the ‘where do we come from’ pile of shit alone. I mean, we gave them enough scripts, and plays, and performances, and fables to keep them occupied. Or so we thought. The heretics, smug bastards, have been banging on forever about how, all the time we were busy putting together some flat-out awesome scene, like the aurora borealis for instance, they were niggling away at the cosmic onion and peeling bits of it … Continue reading A very particular view

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A Woman wants

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

She wants the body of her love to hold her body and gentle it to ecstasy.   She wants him to hold her heart, freely given, and protect it next to his.   She wants him to listen to her mind, to nurture its freedom and join it in its discoveries.   She turns, restless, while his sweetness rests elsewhere.   © suzanne conboy-hill 2016 Continue reading A Woman wants

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The Handover

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

‘I don’t have time for you to die,’ Sarah grunted, delivering a hefty thwack to the chest of the man with the grey face and bluish lips. She called out to the room, ‘Action stations: fluids, paddles, let’s go everyone.’ The new SHO bounded over; a leggy youngster with arms like string, he seemed to be everywhere at once connecting things, inserting things, extracting samples. In short order, the monitor beeped and a green light hopped encouragingly across the screen. Sarah relaxed, surveying the aftermath of the resuscitation which her SHO and one of the nurses were already clearing up. … Continue reading The Handover

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Sydney’s Solution

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

Sydney leaned back on the door of his converted garage and shook his head. The thudding and hammering from within was beginning to irritate him but it was in a good cause because it would be short-lived, and it would put an end to the screeching and whining noises he had tolerated in this house for as long as he could remember. He had thought about it carefully: some solutions were fast and furious; like race horses or dogs, they were out of the starting gate and galloping away full pelt to the finish line with no time to consider … Continue reading Sydney’s Solution

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Philosopher Stoned

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

He is brazenly, brilliantly, brassed off by the polished politics of the righteous right. He heats arguments on pupils bright as buttons of molten jet in eyes alive with intellectual trickery. He rolls concepts and ideas over the strop of his tongue like globules of mercury, loosed from the tedium of measurement. His love of chase is betrayed by tiny garnet blushes on nose and cheeks; cooing infants to his icy fire of victory. He scrubs the thoughts of neophytes with the steel wool of Socratic questioning. Deftly iterating incantations of hegemonies, he hides exquisite diamond cuts in the woollen … Continue reading Philosopher Stoned

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