It’s not always possible to fly he said, showing her the bicycle.
Category Archives: Written
Stuff that I have actually written – stories, reviews, that sort of thing.
The Months – A Bestiary
January first, cold and hard. January is a killer, his sin is neglect; set to face the new year, pining for the old, he never looks down at those he freezes.
Everything is fine.
It started small, but fire has a tendency to spread. It crawled over desks and chairs, jumped gaps, dug its feet into sallow, stained carpets. Soon it filled much of the building. The alarm had been wailing ineffectually for a while, pulsing and bellowing as if the sheer volume of it could smother the flames.
"I’m not going to lie," he said, watching from across the street. "This wasn’t in the plan."
Falling
“So how long have you been falling?”
“TIME IS MEANINGLESS IN THE ETERNAL VOID! WHEEEEE!”
“So a while then?”
Continue reading Falling
Heritage
“There’s a journey we must go on!” I declare; finger aloft, coat billowing about me, eyes alight with possibility. “And no delay!”
“Can’t. Busy.” Comes the mouth-stuffed reply. I deflate. My coat sags, grips my body like a dying swan.
After the fall
“I loved that house,” said Jack, staring at the ruined roof. At his feet, animals milled around in unknowing condolence.
Continue reading After the fall
A Little Hoarse
“Well?” he yelled from his spot on the village green (In truth more of a village brown, carpeted with crisped grass and churned mud). “Is it a crime? To be a horse? To be a horse head on a stick in a bin? Is it?”
To begin with.
“And there’s no way to appeal?” The figure shook its head. Marley fiddled with a lock, licked his dry lips. It had seemed, at the time, the sensible option. Christmas Eve, how many years ago? Too many to count now. Another dozen, another score of links on this chain. He could count them later.
Among friends
She had lived with the pigeons for so long now she had left behind all memory of her life as a human. All she knew now was the beat of wing on hot summer air, the nervous stuttering grab at abandoned food, the snug reek of the night’s roost. She tended her fellows’ gnarled and broken feet, smoothed their grease-ruffled feathers and reassured them in whatever jabbering language pigeons used.
Wu’s World.
Dr Henry Wu, geneticist, strolled into the InGen labs. He was fashionably late and everyone in the lab resented him for it.
“Hey team,” he called. “We’re going to make miracles today!” The small crowd of lab-coated scientists barely glanced up from their work. They made miracles every day. Last week they had hatched a stegosaurus from an egg made of genetically-reworked human bone. Not because they should, but because they could. Wu glanced at the noticeboard, with its unofficial lab slogan IF WE CAN, WE SHOULD. He nodded, satisfied.