Shame-Shadow-Threads by David Hartley
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. They let this one loose in an old…
Tigress, in a Cell, Somewhere in France by Emma Venables
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 caving in. No. Oh, how I curtail your…
The Era of Content by Catherine McNamara
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 nuts. They stopped pretending they were speaking to…
That’s where the life is by Emily Harrison
‘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 practice,’ she states, while her fingers tease the…
Portrait of the artist as an out-of-shape middle-aged failure with an expanding waist, receding hairline, shrinking horizons and the feeling of living through the Beginning of the End Times (again) while struggling to make sense of a world he has long since given up even trying to understand by Terry Holland
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 Burden. Sometimes it’s almost tolerable; forgettable even, for…
Digging Up the Past by Michael Mcloughlin
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 was. It was hard looking into those eyes,…
The Peculiarities of Yearning by Stephanie Carty
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 won or been shortlisted in competitions including Bristol…
Tom’s Diner by Rachael Smart
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 I have been conditioned to serve time rather…
Time Tide by Amanda Saint
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…
Discarded Treasure by Malina Douglas
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…
We All Fall Down by Charles Prelle
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…
The Mayor’s Bride by Noémi Scheiring-Olah
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…