Annus Horribilis and a Blue Fiat Strada by Emily Macdonald
When the Fiat breaks down—as it often does—I think, in my bad luck, I might be lucky. Stuck in a no-parking zone but right opposite a garage with its whining-pop sound of…
When the Fiat breaks down—as it often does—I think, in my bad luck, I might be lucky. Stuck in a no-parking zone but right opposite a garage with its whining-pop sound of…
When he is at his most human, the minotaur is overcome with shame. Follow the thread and we’ll find him, hunched at the join of two walls, snout pressed to the brick.…
You rip my claws from me. One by one. I snarl but I don’t rear. You smirk, never one to show your disappointment, your desire for more. More agony. More pleading. More…
At the end of the day everyone stopped. They stopped screwing around behind their partners’ backs. They stopped leaving them for other men and women. They stopped picking up STDs and going…
‘The trick,’ she says, ‘is to loosen the roots. It helps with growth.’ I glance at the kid. He’s watching the display intently, a crease between his eyebrows. ‘Loosening roots is good…
I can’t remember how long it’s been there. Probably forever. A constant weight on my shoulder – sometimes the left, sometimes the right; always there, always pushing down. I call it The…
I’ve found some decent-sized nuggets over the years. But today I’m not detecting in the goldfields. No, I’m about fifty kilometres south along the Old Melbourne Road. That’s where he said it…
The Peculiarities of Yearning is a collection of flash fiction and short stories that uses strange scenarios to explore how human longings are repressed and revealed. This collection includes stories that have…
He pours already boiling water from a kettle to a pan for eggs. I tell him I’ve not seen it done that way before. Saves time, he says, and I explain that…
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…
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…
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…