The dusty shop is small, almost empty, and in need of repair and resupply. Peeling paint and dust is in abundance. The burly shopkeeper is reading a day-old paper and smoking a cigarette. He regards me warily over the headline. “What do you want, comrade?” “Cigarettes,” I say hastily. “I want cigarettes.” Having never smoked […]
Daryll Smyth discovers a threat in his cash ‘n’ carry.
“Put the gun down and lay on the floor, now!” “What?” I blinked but I was looking through glitter. “Put down the gun!” The man sounded angry. There was screaming and sirens too. “Gun? What gun?” The glitter cleared and I was surprised to see a squad of heavily-armed police pointing their weapons at me. […]
Perched atop a battlement overlooking the primary target’s residence, the black-clad sniper brought the trinoculars up to his face and scanned the pitch-black courtyard far below. There was nothing to see through the two regular lenses, and nothing to sense through the third psychic magnifier either, save for the fuzzy patch of friendly life coming […]
Pearce twirled his umbrella as he paced across the mesh floor. Far below him, millions of rats swarmed over everything, oblivious and uncaring about Pearce passing above. Using a flashlight, Pearce peered through the floor, looking for a particular rat amongst the horde, one that had been causing trouble recently. One of his colleagues walked […]
“Christian my boy, check this out,” said Peter, double-clicking a video file on his laptop. Christian watched the clip over his boss’ shoulder, recognising the sultry pop star but, naturally, not the song it belonged to. “The inverted cross, numerous references to the single eye, the pyramid…. we’ve certainly dropped a bollock,” said Christian. “One […]
My grandmother Velma Grant died on the 15th April 2016 from complications arising from colon cancer. She was 86. She was cremated on the 6th May 2016 at Westerleigh Crematorium outside of Bristol. Velma was the most cantankerous, hard-to-please, and emotionally-volatile person I’d ever met. She could destroy the atmosphere in a room without saying […]
I took the week off work after Easter and started to archive the many many notebooks I’ve got. Most of them are recent and full of vague ideas and writing exercises, but I found two books that surprised me; one was a book of my Chess games from when I used to play for the […]
I was a massive fan of Star Trek The Next Generation. Although I have fond memories of watching TNG late at night on Sky One, I was old enough to recognise that some of the better episodes conveyed some important messages about life. One of the most important messages was about working as part of […]
I used to live in an area of Bristol called Crew’s Hole, which was a valley tucked away on the outskirts of the city centre. There’s a pub, still there, called The Bull, and the landlord was an absolute legend. As I was young at the time, with a modest amount of drinking stamina, I […]
Apparently the universe is expanding faster than the speed of light, but nothing can move faster than light within the universe, which means that the universe fabric is a medium, which means we should be able to “hitch a ride” by holding onto it, although this would mean travel in one direction only. It could […]
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