—Welcome to Large Burger. Where the burgers are large and the smiles are on the house. Can I take your order? —Do you have a chicken? —We offer a range of chicken options including our signature Ranch Wagon and Ultimate Chicken five-piece dinner. Chicken sandwiches are also available in nugget form, with a variety of…
Tag: Short Story
Quicksand
I was on my way to the butcher’s when I stepped in quicksand. I hadn’t really thought about quicksand in years. Maybe Indiana Jones or one of those Humphrey Bogart movies where he’s a boatsman, and he wears a hat. I imagined the sand’s texture to resemble grape jelly. It’s actually more like the inside…
The Death of the Motherless Kitten
I saw it from across the road, while waiting for the green man. It was mewling for its mother. Lost, I thought. Everybody, in their suits and ties and pencil skirts, turned to look, but they never slowed their strides. A mother and child might have stopped for a few seconds, passingly interested. I probably…
But Always Meeting Ourselves
The time machine first arrived during the summer. I was outside, mowing the lawn, when it insinuated itself into the shrubbery. The time machine was a tall yellow cylinder, like a can of pop someone had stretched. I remember it smelt like the carpets at my grandmother’s house, which I had crawled across as a…
Nothing, Shadows
I was lying alone in a double bed, doing terrible things to a pair of knickers. The house was the student house of White’s girlfriend – the room an absent house-mate’s. Every few minutes an ambulance would roll past in the night, turning the room into a silent disco, red and blue. Whenever this happened,…
Where There’s Smoke
You’re eighteen and have just finished your first semester at an expensive liberal arts college in Vermont. You’re back in Minnesota for Christmas. Your parents are sixty miles away at the outlet mall, buying discounted Gap hoodies for your many cousins. You refused to go, claiming a sore throat. It’s twelve fifteen. You have just…
Anglesey
We sleep with most of our clothes on: tired, drunk, unsure of undressing in front of each other again, but it’s too hot. I’m too hot. “You said you’d go through with this,” he says. I did say it. I agreed, because I’m convinced if he said jump, I’d land on my feet. But the…
Let Me Show You
I call in sick. But I’m not sick. For god’s sake don’t lose this job my wife says as she leaves. Someone needs to be in I say. A man has arranged to view our apartment. I clean. I stuff clothes into drawers. Throw toys into boxes. I vacuum and spray perfume. I try to…
Crash & Fly
Airplane Steel body. A coffin in motion. Can be torn apart like a child’s toy. Acronym names. Machines. Cold blooded. I never thought I’d get on one again, step across the threshold to the rows of seats and feel that plastic air breathing on my neck. I look out the small window, press my forehead…
Sweepers
Manhattan. They bought the island for beads and built it up into a forest of steel and glass. I used to spit in executives’ cobb salads at the cafeteria, listen to them talk about eating little companies, and look out over their shoulders at all the buildings spiking up, gray, white, and shining, like they…