Ellie’s love life is suffering from the soundtrack in her head. The music scares away her dates. They can’t hear it, but it bothers them nonetheless. Perhaps it’s her humming. Or sometimes, the way she holds an expression a little too long as she surfs an unheard crescendo. Her stubborn pace to a particular rhythm. …
There’s a gateway to hell in the men’s room at Cory’s Pub. It’s in the second stall, and you have to shut the door and sit on the toilet for it to work. One minute you’re squatting on the Jon, the next you’re in the underworld. I went there by accident the first time. I …
‘I learned Twinkle Twinkle Little Star today.’ He picks me up with ease and sits me on the stool with the cushion so I can reach. ‘Let’s hear it then.’ With his hand on my shoulder, he watches as I clunk my little fingers across the keys. They move awkwardly and I tie myself in knots as I tap out the uneven …
A man I once knew used to take me to Madame Jo Jo’s in Soho. His place wasn’t far away, just behind that telecom tower in Tottenham Court Road. After our Friday night frolics, he’d pinch my cheeks till they were rosy as a rag doll’s, then untie me from the bed. I’d jiggle my …
Old cement dust left her hands stained white, but she couldn’t leave a mark on the concrete. She smoothed out the ledge of the tower landing as if it were the bed sheet she tucked back every morning for fear of wrapped knuckles and dirty looks. Hospital corners pulled tight as a choke hold. A …
Of course there was a cruelty to it, I see that now. It was like someone had yanked the veil from our playground pecking order: a densely banded arm confirming top tier status, the outcast as exposed as their own naked skin. At the peak of the craze we were looming five hours a day …
My legs tremble as I stand on the platform at the fringe of the sea. The wheel-mounted cubicle was drawn across the sand for me to change within. As my first venture in the bathing-machine, it feels much as any strange event; a tentative toe in new waters. I blink against the salt-sting, straighten my …
I wake to a star bouncing on the bed. The alarm on my phone sounds, the car horn alert. The star startles to the ceiling, its four points bursting into five. I silence the ooga ooga and the star descends and sways, a hypnotic astral pendulum. It darts off one revolution and hovers above the …
Hello, my name is Carriage Number 78464. How am I looking today? That’s what it says on the sign over there. Have you seen it? I think it’s supposed to present a friendly face to the customers, help them to feel relaxed, at home. It’s not a very friendly name though, is it? They could …
There are many ways to shave. In or out of the shower. With or against the grain. Standing beside your dad as you are initiated into the world of adult responsibilities, or dripping foam onto the keyboard of your laptop as a burly man on YouTube guides your strokes, wishing you had the kind of …
They say that you know something’s right by the way it feels. So when I pick up this can at a stranger’s house on a Friday night, I know it’s the one for me. The can opens up easily. It doesn’t try too hard to be sweet, but isn’t at all flat. I’m naturally drawn …
The groom will puff circles of smoke above the heads of Imran and Madien, raising a cloud that’ll add to our fuggy minds as we, Jay’s friends from University, an all-boys group, will stare ahead into an imagined horizon. Jay’s bride-to-be will be missing, not even a shoe left behind, and a house full of …