Invitation Despite the bathroom being fully enclosed with no natural light, Elle knew the sun had gone out because Jamison told her and she listened to him, he had form. One Christmas when she was six, he whispered that Santa … Continue reading Invitation
The sea had embroidery at its edges. It cast a frill of pretty ruffles over the pebbles and sank like fine silk in between them before the giant in the deep ocean turned over in his sleep and drew it back. Sometimes, the sea came in as light and instead of weaving threads in and out amongst the grains of sand and bits of shell, it picked out clefts and promontories, little islands in miniature and brightened them out of the shade. When it did this, Josie looked for the inhabitants of the islands, crouching close and lifting small stones … Continue reading Not blue, not fresh, not ever free
All creatures … As the snow began to fall on her upturned face, Addie remembered those winters when it had been possible to think of spring. Not now though. Not since the impact. How many megatonnes had gone up? She couldn’t recall, and anyway, what did it matter? Addie pulled the perspex snow screen down over her eyes and the connecting buff up over her nose, clipped the two together with a solid clack. She tapped at the thermometer gauge on her wrist – minus 40oC; balmy, she thought, trying to raise a frosted eyebrow in an ironic arch. ‘Mush! … Continue reading All Creatures
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
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
The ambient light is the colour of swamp fog; I am suspended from the ceiling in a net like a balloon at a solstice party; and there is a worm in my mouth. This has to be the mother of all hangovers. The worm is squeezed into the space between my upper and lower lips like toothpaste, sealing them shut as effectively as a dollop of glue. There is no smell – earthy or otherwise – and mercifully no taste either, but I have not yet been able to evict it. I have tried blowing but this just puffs out … Continue reading Sequenced Heir, Nipped Rind
Spirits of the Freeze-Sea is the story of the dreadful consequences for Izzy and her sister Shalla when Izzy forgets she mustn’t close her eyes to the ice spirits. Told in three parts, Spirits of the Freeze-Sea brings together All the Birthdays*, Dancing to the Wild Ice**, and the new Shalla’s First Ice Shatter. Available for eReader download from Cut A Long Story, price 99p. Full story below. Spirits of the Freeze-Sea *All the Birthdays When it’s our birthday, when the ice breaks and the spirits burst through, you have to dodge out of the way and cover your head so they … Continue reading ‘Spirits of the Freeze-Sea’
Another little dose of weird: After a while, with the streets and parks getting less cluttered, it started to look as if some cosmic recycler had dropped by to tidy us up. So then people stopped using the bins and just hung about with their cameras waiting for their banana skin or whatever to take off. Read More: http://zouchmagazine.com/puddles-like-pillows/#ixzz2dFpRSbtW Zouche has been away for a while but now it’s back with its lovely graphics and varied content and I’m delighted to be back too [see A Tale of Two Sixties 2011]. Continue reading ‘Puddles like Pillows’ in Zouche Magazine
Dr Suzanne Conboy-Hill 