Edition 3 - August 2023
We are delighted to bring you 11 more fantastic stories this month. The theme was open for this edition yet we saw a lot of stories that had the same feeling of loss, loneliness and separation running though them, the sense that the narrators don’t feel quite at home in their world. As we find ourselves living in times where everything is changing so fast, it seems our stories are reflecting the ways we all try to adjust and make a way through while creating connections and finding love.
These 11 talented authors have captured this essence of our times in these stories and we hope you enjoy them. Please share them widely if you do.
Amanda Saint
Editor
Things Mayumi’s Mother Packed In Her Bento Box
Mayumi’s mother packed her lunches like gifts; folding loneliness into fabric printed with cherry blossoms that fell onto rice balls wrapped in nori. Mayumi prised them apart to find the umeboshi, which she swallowed whole, as if its squishy centre held meaning. Her friends trapped their jealousy in plastic lunchboxes with Disney princesses.
Temporal Origami
We meet at the points that are now. Alpha and Omega. Standing within the ring of megalith stones, on the dust of desert plain. The force that compels our quest, loads the air. The pendulous sun is split on the horizon, golden light making the mountains sharp in relief.
How To Paint a Portrait Of Your Lover
Encourage your chosen subject to adopt a relaxed pose. This will feel strange to them at first, but in time will become completely natural to the point where they will take your presence for granted and pay no attention to your endeavours. Focus on your subject’s best features. A three-quarter profile is more flattering than a full-face portrait, which c…
Snake Haunted
Serena’s father takes her to the reptile house, his favourite place, on her seventh birthday. Perhaps because it is a gray, drizzly morning and they are the only visitors, it’s more special to be sharing it with him. “Since I was your age, I’ve loved snakes,” he says as they walk to the row of glassed-in snake homes. But this smile contorts as he clutch…
Mary From Hull
While your corridor sleeps off a collective hangover you spend Sunday in your room, trying out your new personality in front of the mirror, nonchalantly chewing imaginary gum until your jaw aches, twisting your lips into sneers, smirks and seen-it-all smiles.
An Orange Fruit Will Ripen In Its Own Good Time
Mama stacks the babies in orange crates, out back. She keeps ‘em dry in hessian sacks and packs ‘em tight, sometimes three to a crate, sometimes only two. Mama says that stops ‘em wailing too much and wakin’ the whole goddamn neighbourhood. Some of the babies ain’t ripe yet, their skin mottled green. Others are good and done, pink-plump, blossom sweet, …
The Impact Of Falling
Icarus comes to me broken. All of them do. Feathers plume from his sculpted shoulders, wing-torn, pebbling the hallway like half-hearted offerings to the gods. His head is concave, a dent the shape of the corridor doorknobs. Scars like waves etch across the remains of his cheek.
Smoked Out
The fish arrive through the letter box. Yes, they’re dead. Not swimming in a plastic bag of tepid tap water or stuffed replica, trophies of a flyfishing trip. Not a side of salmon or potted anchovy paste trussed in the dry straw of a Fortnum’s hamper, but real fish, with bones and heads, tails, and fins still intact.
The Impossible Party
You said you wanted a party in one of the golden post-boxes they painted after the London Olympics. You said ‘I’d like Andy Murray mum, but really any would do.’ So I looked into it and saw that yes you could hire them for parties and events, and was outraged, like properly outraged, to find there are two for Andy Murray – one in Dunblane (understandable…
Another Door Closes
I’m sitting jammed between the window and four gossiping students consuming drinks with fifteen-syllable names. Looking up from my laptop, I take another sip of my black coffee, inhaling the gentle buzz of the busy coffee shop. I’m about to return my fingers to their tap dance when I hear it. Your deep, full-bodied laugh, somewhere at the counter’s far …
The Shrew
Really, I should feel guilty for killing the old man. He gave us shelter and food for almost thirty generations. Well, there you are, I can’t unbite what’s been bitten, not that I’d want to, and there’s never a right or wrong time for that sort of thing. Also, you know, it was mostly his own fault anyway, with his drinking and his childish tantrums.