The Ten: Has someone…

“Has someone drank my pint?”

“I dunno, don’t look at me….bird’s shouldn’t drink pints anyhow, don’t look right”

Now many painters have attempted to capture that fleeting impression of intense pain, that moment of sheer agony that can cut across a man’s face when caught in some painful crisis thrown at him by an unforgiving world. Photographers taking pictures in wartorn tragic circumstances have frozen images of excruciated and contorted features upon the faces of many a person, yet there is something horrifically unique about the expression on the face of a man who is having his testicles squeezed with a vengeance by an irate Becca. Danny had just discovered this and was manifesting just such uniqueness and, perhaps, in his mind he was beginning to regret his last comment...more

The Ten: They all think…

They all think Mikey’s mad, but Mikey isn’t mad. Let me tell you about Mikey. Mikey’s the kind of guy who has too much energy to contain in a smaller than average frame. Always on the move, sitting at the pub table, legs jittering, fingers fiddling; Mikey has a way of converting beermats into…well, into bits. He looks around while you are talking to him, like there are other things he should be doing, if only he could name them. Looking around for other people he knows and Mikey knows everyone. He’s a sound bloke.

I first met him peeing up the door of a bank after closing time…more

Ghost story: The Diary of Captain Fiske-Bowen

I sit in stillness, the heavy silence of a full moon night. I sit in my study, in my battered and well-used Queen Anne Chair. I sit. I sit with a loaded army issue Webley in an uneasy palm. I sit, waiting….more

Ghost Story: Last night’s beat

It felt like one of the coldest nights he had ever experienced with that sense of stillness, the timeless quality one sometimes senses on a frosted, silent night. It was silent, very silent, not one sound issued from any direction. No iron of horses shoe on cobble, no rattle of wheel and no human voices. Sergeant Dunn stood pondering his present situation with the reasoned logic of his profession and it left him with a modicum of mental discomfort. All he wanted in the world right now was the sight of a Hansom cab trotting its way home to come round the corner, but no cab came. Nothing came. Just the all encompassing silence…more

Ghost story: The Second Pot of Tea

One’s expectations alter during war time; the uncertainty of it all I suppose. Each day lived without any high hopes, when reaching the end of each day was accomplishment enough. One thing I would never have expected, in time of conflict or blissful days of peace, was to see a spectre in daytime…more

Ghost story: Blood will out.

“Well, at least the rain held off”, Jess offered, almost apologetically.

The drive home from the cemetery had been conducted in awkward quietness and her innocent attempt to break the oppressive silence had resulted in an increasingly heavy atmosphere made worse by the fact that the rain she had so, obligingly, mentioned now began to thrash down as if to spite her. It fell in large drops that splashed on the road and streamed down the windows relentlessly. She caught herself noticing Jack’s reflection in the glass, distorted by the rain that attacked the outer surface so that his whole demeanour seemed to be made of tears, the tears he refused to shed in his anger and grief. Why do men refuse to weep, she thought. more