Lidless Eyes That See

By Geneve Flynn

We are silently going mad, the boy and I.

The first sign was when he brought me the red silk handkerchief. It was folded and tied like the most perfect furoshiki-cloth wrapping, as if he meant to give me something precious, something with meaning.

Here is what I found instead. Seven pieces of a broken denture, fragments of palate glistening pink as freshly chewed bubble gum, and wire that still shone gold, cradling teeth as jagged and yellow as fossilised popcorn.

With a wordless cry, I crushed them under my boot, grinding the molars to ochre pebbles and chalk. He did not seem to mind, and returned to picking his way carefully through the ruins of the supermarket. (Continue Reading…)

Bring Them All Into the Light

by Dan Coxon

Heathen

They’re on holiday when he sees the cottage. Julie and Nico are bickering in the back seat, Maggie searching through the glovebox for something – anything – that might shut them up for five minutes. He rubbernecks as they pass it at speed, pulls into a lane half a mile up the road.

“What are you stopping for?” Maggie asks, feeding an audiobook into the stereo.

“Nothing. Just want to check something out,” Rob replies.

He almost misses the cottage again, but the For Sale sign peeks above the dry-stone wall just in time, alerting him to hit the brakes. There’s a gravel layby for parking, so he pulls into it and kills the engine. The building is only small, walls of piled stone, a thatched roof that looks mouldy in places, sticking up in tufts like a hairstyle gone wrong. The front door is painted white, worn away to the bare wood in patches. There’s a large garden at the rear, sweeping away from the road and partway up the hill behind it. He thinks he sees a path and a gate. A trail leads up the slope. (Continue Reading…)

The Cask Of Amontillado

By Edgar Allan Poe

The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could; but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge. You, who so well know the nature of my soul, will not suppose, however, that I gave utterance to a threat. At length I would be avenged; this was a point definitively settled—but the very definitiveness with which it was resolved, precluded the idea of risk. I must not only punish, but punish with impunity. A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser. It is equally unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong.

It must be understood, that neither by word nor deed had I given Fortunato cause to doubt my good will. I continued, as was my wont, to smile in his face, and he did not perceive that my smile now was at the thought of his immolation. (Continue Reading…)

Phoenix Claws

Lee Murray

A block from the Jade Garden restaurant, I reached out and grasped Fin’s arm. “Hang on.” So many boyfriends had failed; I wasn’t going to let it happen again. I made a fuss of straightening his collar, smoothing the flannel fabric over his weekend sweater. “You know to hold your rice bowl, right? Thumb on the lip, fingers underneath.”

He grinned. Rolled his eyes. “Yes.”

“And your chopsticks—”

“Don’t cross them, don’t stand them up in the rice, and remember to keep my hand palm up when I’m using them,” he intoned in his best Victorian schoolboy. “I offer to pay, even insist a bit, but not too hard, because your dad has to take the honours. Otherwise, he loses face and has to hara-kiri himself on a butter knife.”

Not exactly. Hara-kiri was Japanese, not Chinese. Nevertheless, Fin was the one. I knew it. This uneasiness was just normal new-relationship jitters. (Continue Reading…)