Category: Black Cat Stories: hard to home and just as likely to honk in your shoe as purr in your face

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

Promotion

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

Fliss compressed her short, squat, frame further into the burned out hollow of the hull, shoving Hennessey’s evacuated carcass aside and flicking indeterminate debris casually off her weapons harness. She holed up to consider strategy. Fliss was a soldier; a grunt on the peri-solar defence ring where killing aliens, not caring platitudes, got you through a shift. She looked down at her uniform, or what passed for one after this morning’s skirmish, and scraped off the residue it had collected from the blast that took out her unit’s communications array. Most of her squad had gone with it and some … Continue reading Promotion

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Five Shades for Greg 

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

I pulled him closer, my hands almost greedily devouring his body. I had to get this right. I had to make these darned things fit around the bulging muscles of his arms and, oh my, the bulging muscles in his thighs. I would think about his bulging manhood later, right now I had to concentrate like I’d never concentrated before. I pressed my lips together into a hard line and rolled my eyes. It was going to be hard, very hard – and that was a promise! I smothered a smirk. ‘Stand up, Greg,’ I ordered. It felt very nice … Continue reading Five Shades for Greg 

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Dissolution

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

The threads bend back on themselves, sweeping through time, dipping into tiny pockets of experience and breathing out again into the emptiness. The artist whose threads they are and whose speck of life has held them together asks the scientist ‘What is this?’ and ‘Where is it going?’ But the scientist keeps her counsel. Tugging on theoretical principle and marshalling empirical evidence, she is silent. It will come right, there will be an algorithm. The threads gather pace, gather new threads; hundreds, thousands, billions, and weave themselves together around the hundreds, thousands, billions of dreamers and thinkers and existers and … Continue reading Dissolution

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Last Man Standing

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

They didn’t kill me, just made me wish they had, bastards. We were all there that day, lined up ringside waiting for the off. It was top billing and we were crackling with anticipation, the scent of victory already creeping up our noses and fuelling our self-belief.  Our man was big. The biggest. I mean really big. So big their man couldn’t even reach him never mind hit him. So what, that it was barely a competition? All we cared about was winning. We had bets, we’d make a pile. We’d get the hell out of the gulags and away somewhere warm … Continue reading Last Man Standing

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An older tide, touched

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

So they walk; ancient crystals of silicon counting the millennia between their toes. For the moment, they are silent. All that could be said has spun away to echo across time in infrasonic broadcast, pulsing its message  from the inferno of inception to the deep, dark, thundering conclusion. But then: Where did we come from? The beginning. Where are we going? The end. Those are our questions too, or would be if we had any place in this way-station. What lies between? I don’t know. What is ‘I’?   Older than the seeds of life carried on meteoric messengers, newer … Continue reading An older tide, touched

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Yesterday was the best day ever

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

It was the day mum and me had just been to the big shop in town to get my senior school uniform and even the smell of it was thrilling. I couldn’t wait to wear the dark green winter skirt, scratchy or not; and the satchel – well that was glorious! All shiny leather with new, stiff straps and brass buckles. We hurried off down the high street towards the bus stop, mum putting her purse away and me thinking about the bubblegum in one pocket and the thirteenth birthday lipstick Gillian had given me in the other. What was … Continue reading Yesterday was the best day ever

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Bad Apple

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

Ollie was sitting on the sofa, watching TV, when he first noticed his hand disappear. He was about to scratch his nose when there it was. Or rather, there it wasn’t. Right up to his elbow, it wasn’t. Then, back it came, just as suddenly. It looked a bit electrical around the edges, but otherwise … Ollie held it up to his face, palm first, and spread out his fingers. All accounted for; although the end of his index finger had a slight glow to it, he thought. He pressed his palm up against his nose, and sniffed. Chocolate and … Continue reading Bad Apple

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Letter to a child

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

To Whom it May Concern You are not my son. I am not your father. You trod a path that is alien to me. We are not family. You took household commodities and fashioned out of them violent and indiscriminate death. No son of mine would do that. No son of your mother would do that. No son of any Lord that I know of or that I can imagine would do that. You are not my son, your mother’s son, our Lord God’s son, nor any son of this beautiful, wonderful humanity of which we are part. You are … Continue reading Letter to a child

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Worth Repeating

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

‘Tick tock, tick tock’ ‘Gimme the keys, fucking moron!’ ‘…and as the Prime Minister’s car pulls away…’ ‘Tick’ ‘Gaffer tape, Jimmy’ ‘Gaffer tape’ ‘Jimmy. Moron’ ‘Telephone number 0767453. Tick’ ‘Pete’s place, Greenwich’ ‘Bertie likes his cheese! Clever Bertie!’ ‘ARMED POLICE! COME OUT, PUT YOUR HANDS WHERE I CAN SEE THEM! COME OUT NOW!’ ‘Any sign of the hostages, Mike?’ ‘No, nothing. Just some bloody bird squawking about gaffer tape and Greenwich’ Continue reading Worth Repeating

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Reunion

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

Out on the terrace of their friend’s rather magnificent home following their 10 year class reunion, Damian stole a glance at Sonja, her dark hair pulled back and plaited so that her neck and shoulders were exposed. She was statuesque, Athenian, he thought, drawing uncertainly on a largely forgotten classics module at university. Tonight would be the night. Definitely. He had seen how she looked at him, confirming his view that, even at school, there had been a special ‘something’ between them. Once, giddy with a raft of successful exam results in their hands, they had taken over her parents’ … Continue reading Reunion

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