—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…
Category: Fiction
After the Parade
Glass crunched under my mum’s car tyres as her Corsa crawled up the road, which had been clean when we drove down it a few hours earlier, before the parades passed through. As the wheels rotated I felt each chip of glass dig into the hard rubber, tearing at the air inside. The tyres fought…
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…
How I Tried to Be Kind
a. I wanted to be kind but all I could achieve was cruelty. I wanted to be kind to the friend who had been dumped by a guy she thought she would marry and grow old with, only to realize all he wanted from her was sex; I acted concerned and hugged my friend and…
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…
Theme Park Love Story
The new boy, Tom, was leaving. This came as a surprise to Rose and Jake. He’d only been there a season. Tom worked with Rose and Jake as pirates. The first thing he’d said to them was that Jake was “a very apt name”. The second thing he said was “Shiver me timbers shipmates, that…
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…