
Holy Smoke by Ben Tufnell
When Blake died, I saw his soul emerge from his body. At least, that’s what I assume it was. He took a final breath, a laboured drawing in of air, and when he…
When Blake died, I saw his soul emerge from his body. At least, that’s what I assume it was. He took a final breath, a laboured drawing in of air, and when he…
I flip my dampened pillow and stretch my arms, the bed too wide for one. Through the window, starlings punch the sky in a liquid mass. A blood-orange sunset edges the treeline.…
I’m six years old when I see the poltergeist. My father is long gone, and my mother is watching TV, and my brother is upstairs, clashing He-Men together in violent plastic battles.…
[CW: Grief] “Strictly speaking, water doesn’t belong to the rivers or the oceans. It belongs to the mountains from which it ran.” She nods. She knows this but a brain isn’t rust-proof,…
All of the characters in ‘The Art of Escapology’ are escaping, being escaped from or helping others to escape. Some have a physical need to escape – from abuse, imprisonment, pursuers or…
No silver bells for pretty maids in my eyrie of iron-tongued giants. I was molded in their humped likeness, but my voice was a broken clapper, a tortoise’s lurching cough; the music…
The Royal College of Music, a mile from your house, requests to keep windows closed to reduce sound transmission during the mourning period, for their Patron, Her Majesty the Queen; to keep…
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 freedom but…
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 missing kids…
“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. I propped…
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. It’s where…
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 at indie…