I worked for two years in a mental hospital. Not a hospital, a shelter. We got drug addicts, schizophrenics, people in trouble. I liked it at first, I liked talking to people, but it only paid four quid an hour. (more…)
On the bus, Andrew Porter took up an entire plastic double seat, making it sweaty and sticky.
Andrew Porter was a fat man. He was so fat people laughed at him as he walked on the street, when he sat in the bus, when he moved or talked or smiled. People laughed. He got off the bus, 501 to Brighton Road, and walked to his office. People laughed and laughed and pressed their sides in pain. His enormous tree legs shuddered. His fleshy neck wobbled. Breathing hard, sweating in his fine cotton shirt, red face. At his work the security guard looked away. (more…)
Zoe walked to the corner café every morning for breakfast. She usually ordered raisin toast, cut thickly with a lot of melted butter. Sometimes she ate an egg, or a muffin or a cheese roll. She sat at a small metal table outside, the same table every day. Dew dripped from the passing cars.
(more…)
My father saw a cyclist riding on his street.
He was walking to the letterbox, poor Dad. He thought it was a strange day. (more…)
Published in Imago, Vol 11 No 2 1999
Harriet was in the shower one day when she saw that her left breast was changing form. She dropped the sliver of soap on the shower floor and cupped the breast in her hand, eyeing it doubtfully. (more…)
Published in Hecate XXV/ii 1999
In bright sunshine, Harriet wandered along the footpath to the group of shops near to her home. She walked past a long glass window with Zak’s for hair scrawled in flamboyant fluorescent script. She stopped and looked in the mirrored door at her own orderly face, her shadowed mouth and dark hair. (more…)