Sitting in the campervan staring at the sea she no longer gets in because Ned isn’t with her, Ava feels a throbbing in her lip at the same time as a faint ticking starts up inside her head. She pulls the rear-view mirror round to look and there’s a miniature grandfather clock embedded in her …
White frothing water surges over boulders down the seam of the valley. “Take it away,” she murmurs over the noise. Bitterness has eaten holes in her like moths. She feels spools of ache wound tight within. The woman picks her way down the shepherd’s path, flat shoes and black stockings poking out of a calf-length …
The fragments of their lives settle in grimy heaps like fallen leaves. A ragged pair of football boots, melted DVDs, blistered photographs. They remind me of artefacts from Pompeii or Herculaneum. I say this to the boy, but he simply reminds me that he is dead. I fold the seared remains of his school uniform …
The villagers gather like crimson clouds over the cobblestones, looking up at the Mayor’s gleaming-granite balcony, thirsty for blood. They call her The Eighth, The Pure, The Hope, The Youngest. Anything, but her name. They’ve given their fattest swine, sweetest wine, their life’s harvest, and their wives, waiting to wash the stained sheet by the …
Lealeh’s hair is snow white. Snow white and wrapped in a hair-net. A hair-net that glitters. Glittery studs in her ears. Her ears are small and elegant. Elegance of her fingers, wrapped around the cigarette holder. Her cigarette holder is long and silver—she blows in delicately, then exhales. Exhaling, she says, “I was addicted as …
Look, I know it ain’t much, a bottle of fizzy pop, nabbed after last night’s shift at the Golden Dragon, but your mom’s got foil, paints borrowed from working today’s kids’ club, and paper, all crinkly like, for flames from them thrusters – bog roll’s ours, at least – and I know it’s not the …
When she picked me up from arrivals for the first time, she was wearing a soft jeans-coloured overall amounting to little more than a tank top and shorts. Her bare arms and legs were golden brown, her breasts girl-like, free from constraints and, from what I could perceive, evenly tanned. It was the summer of …
The Skipper yells at Gilligan and you know it can’t be good, but you’re okay with it because getting off the island is the last thing you want to see happen. In the background, the Major drops a duffel bag by the door as Sis goes for a new hula-hoop record in the front yard. …
His name was Carl. Her name was—I’m not sure what her name was. She was the barista who worked Sunday mornings. That was all I knew. Helen. Or maybe she just looked like another woman I knew, either in real life or from a movie or a show, whose name was, in fact, Helen. She …
Some homeschool days, the lounge is a sea, stairs a snowcapped mountain, bathroom a jungle, Mum and Dad’s bedroom a sun-seared dessert… The stories in The Stairs Are a Snowcapped Mountain speak of togetherness and separation: how we strive to connect with that one person who could save us, and how we attempt to save the people …
After her husband, Bryan, calls her toxic and walks out for good, Crystal cleans. She dumps stacks of his mail and papers into a huge black trash bag, including his car registration, the one two weeks ago he claimed she’d thrown out. His accusation had kept her from sleeping and at 2 a.m., she’d risen …
Make the paper by hand, sieving the pulp between mesh, hang to dry. When it accepts the ink, transcribe the poem you wrote to declare your feelings as you started courting. Look for a T-shirt – something that reflects you both – but you can’t settle on just one in-joke. Buy an e-gifted sheep for …