Amen by Alva Holland
A bottle of holy water from Lourdes sat on the floor of the cloakroom, just inside the door, untouched by anyone except Ma who used it to refill the tiny china containers…
A bottle of holy water from Lourdes sat on the floor of the cloakroom, just inside the door, untouched by anyone except Ma who used it to refill the tiny china containers…
I did feel special with his little hand in mine; warm and trusting as dough. On fine days we’d cross the coast road to the beach his family owned. He had no…
I sat in my bathing suit on the damp sand. Cold, green, foam-edged fingers of brine beckoned me forward; I was ready for my final swim. * I’d known `The Change` was…
Everything makes Andrew laugh – the menu, a wicker basket of small seeded loaves, the sommelier who invites him to taste the wine. He laughs when a waitress strafes the fawn tablecloth…
All the other kids call him the snake. At first behind his back, but now to his face. At lunch times he performs his routines beyond the view of the staff room,…
Dancers have short life spans. The second time you come back from surgery with one leg buried in plaster and hunger in your eyes, you tell me this again, like it’s become…
Along the long-abandoned harbour’s deserted warehouses each dilapidated red-brick building had once had a numeral whitewashed roughly on its wall, up to 13. They believed the unluckiness of 13 was eliminated by…
They decided to rent out the farmhouse to the daughter of their best friends. The young woman had been a charming, mischievous child always twisted around her mother’s legs, and had studied…
The snow-white hydrangeas will turn blue and fly into a million pieces, in a miraculous yet predictable process—almost science, but not what you’d think. Through the thin lace of the kitchen curtain,…
The bar was getting crowded. Boisterous, tipsy, some of them sloshed, none of the customers at The Eagle looked exactly happy to Paul, but maybe it was his mood. He’d had it…
I don’t remember whose idea it was to call the exorcist. How anyone knew who to call. My dad had been telling us about the strange things happening at night. A bright…
I wake in my mosquito net cage. The morning din has begun: disco music blasting from the kiosk across the street, motors roaring, the berserk cries of the fighting cocks my uncle…