Stories

Landscape photograph of a medical waiting room where seven people sit beneath a digital clock frozen at 10:47. An elderly woman watches a cloudy fish tank with three goldfish circling. A woman in a purple cardigan stands with a handbag, a child kneels on the floor with a wooden block, a man in paint-spattered overalls enters Room 3, and a magazine lies on the floor while others scroll on their phones.
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The Queue At 10:47

Posted on by Mike

Margaret has been watching the fish tank for forty minutes. Three goldfish circle endlessly. The water needs changing.

“…said it was benign but I don’t trust…”

The woman in the purple cardigan shifts her handbag from one knee to the other. She’s been doing this every few minutes. The leather handle has left a red mark on her wrist.

A child drops a wooden block. It rolls under the radiator. His mother doesn’t notice. She’s staring at her phone, thumb scrolling, scrolling.

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wo skeletal figures face each other beneath a luminous dome of concentric lines, their bony hands clasped together. Orange dahlias bloom abundantly around them against a dark teal background, while flowing golden-orange waves ripple across the foreground.
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Until Death Do Us Start

Posted on by Mike

Sarah found Marcus in the Gardens Between, where the newly dead learn to let go.

“I’ve been waiting,” he said, extending skeletal fingers she recognised instantly, the same hands that had held hers through forty-seven years of marriage.

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A Cosmic Divorce

Posted on by Mike

The trouble began on a Tuesday, though it had probably been brewing for ages. I noticed it while making tea. The kitchen light flicked on, but instead of filling the room, it cowered behind the cupboard, shivering like a nervous cat. The shadows, freed from their usual discipline, sprawled wherever they pleased, a long, sulky smear under the toaster, a rude blob on the ceiling, a jagged sliver draped dramatically over the fridge.

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Seventeen Minutes

Posted on by Mike

The queue moved one pace forward every seventeen minutes. I counted. Always seventeen. Never sixteen, never eighteen. The woman in front of me wore a grey coat too large for her frame; the sleeves swallowed her hands. She kept them tucked inside anyway.

A child, perhaps seven, stood two places ahead. His mother held his wrist so tightly the skin around her fingers turned white. He did not cry. None of them cried any longer. The sound had been removed from them before they reached the gate.

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The Lights Dimmed Thoughtfully

Posted on by Mike

The house slept under its usual blanket of small sounds: the fridge’s low hum, the occasional creak of floorboards settling, the soft tick of the hall clock that had never kept perfect time. At 2:17 a.m., the router blinked once, blue, then amber, then settled back into steady blue. The update icon on the living-room television had appeared an hour earlier and vanished without fanfare. No one stirred.

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