Tag: Short Story

My father killed himself, drowned in the lake at the bottom of the quarry, the week after my mother died. His pockets were full of rocks, and one lonely shell. He left me a note, in his bag on the shore, and a request for his ashes to be scattered on the sea.

Once, before she was my mother, my mother played violin in a local orchestra. She kept her instrument, took it out at holiday parties, her hands gliding the bow over the strings with magical quickness, chin proud, elbow bent just so. In fourth grade, our school offered free music lessons to anyone who wanted them,…

I grew up in a house that sang. Its walls, wrinkled and grey, blended into the overcast sky like an old photograph left too long in the sun. To the neighbours, it was just another tired building, its shutters hanging loosely, its roof patched in places where the wind had been cruel. To me, the…

The United States has only four percent of the planet’s population but a full one-quarter of its economic output, which is wealth for all intents and purposes. Pundits and laymen have offered various explanations, both scholarly and emotional, divine intervention frequently mentioned among them.

Look it, have you ever woken in the dead of night? It’s so dark that for a second, just a split second, you think you’ve died. And you’re so scared. And you lie there, and you feel so horrible and so… alone, and all that crap, you know? Yeah, well, with every step I took,…

I chose to come back to myself on Thursdays because who the hell would choose to live their life only in the first half of the week? All that expectation, Monday morning dread, realising you’ve got a whole week ahead of you of zero lie-ins and a to-do list as long as your arm. I…

Somewhere in a quiet, forgotten corner of Edmonton, somebody or something rapped on the door of Mr Thomas, the sort of man in his mid-70s who had retired long ago but had never really ceased working. It was a knock with no voice: a flurry of light raps might betray a nervous insistence, while heavy…

We wanted to be gypsies, the raggle-taggle vagabonds of folksongs and fairy tales. We wanted to meander through the countryside in brightly painted wooden caravans on wheels, pulled by thickset ponies with shaggy coats and fringed feet, to sleep under the stars and cook food on an open fire, lit by lanterns glimmering in the…