
The Untold Magic of Beachcombing by Kate Axeford
My breath is jagged, but we can’t stop now. This beaut of a coastline stretches before us, there’s miles left to be explored. The ocean’s a sorceress, she conjures up…
My breath is jagged, but we can’t stop now. This beaut of a coastline stretches before us, there’s miles left to be explored. The ocean’s a sorceress, she conjures up…
To begin with, nobody noticed the pattern. They only noticed that their kids, their older kids, were going missing at an alarming rate. Everyone was alarmed but the parents with…
“You two would make the cutest kids,” the nurse said. She helped me transfer my husband – post-anesthesia and on painkillers after his septoplasty; the world still spongy to him.…
Dr Martinelli sits behind his desk, stiff as a new-ironed soldier guarding a barricade. She sits, facing the man who isn’t a proper doctor, to her husband’s left, as always.…
You were my first crush. With your long hair and olive glow. Exotic. Not like the fen boys in class with their shaven heads and acne. I looked for you…
I talk to writer Gaynor Jones about entering and judging flash fiction competitions. Gaynor also reads two competition-winning pieces: ‘It Was the Horse That Killed Her’ by Matt Kendrick, and…
Imagine this. You are wandering without maps in the dark forest as twilight creeps in. You are sinking in the snow of a Siberian wasteland. You are drowning in an…
On the bus to her mother’s funeral, and Maizie forgot to bring money. No point to turn back now. Already Ohio. Maizie has no credit card and no friends to…
I do my best to smooth the duvet, its creases swirling like milk hitting coffee. The body in the bed isn’t helping. The dead woman’s beads – borrowed, amber, still…
We sit cross-legged on the polished parquet floor, the teachers on red plastic chairs at the ends of our rows. We chat quietly to our neighbours while we wait for…
As soon as April had a handle on the alphabet, her parents delegated her education to books. On her fifth birthday, they chucked an unwrapped dictionary at her and instructed,…
The doctor’s sentences pulse with medical terminology. His voice sounds distant and distorted by the pumping of blood through my ear drums. The room begins to spin. Here comes the…