They crouched to peer beneath the stairs, their eyes reflecting the light like stars in the darkness. Not that anyone noticed. Not that anyone cared...
No one had while they lived, why should they care now? Now that they were as insubstantial as the breeze that leaked through the wooden boards that made up the house. No one knew where the breeze came from, only that it chilled them at odd times of the day and night. When it was especially windy outside, the skeletal trees would scrap against the house with gnarled limbs that stretched out like fingers. It...
The bird landed, not with a bang but with a whimper.
Who would have thought that the poor little thing had so much to lose? She flew around the room, narrowly missing walls, windows, and draperies - but not the hands and heads of her human masters, must to their consternation.
Plop.
The whimper from the frustrated housewife echoed through the room, and she sighed as she put Pearlie-bird's favorite toy back in her cage. Then with one long glare at her feathered nemesis, she went to get a wet towel to save her favorite sweater.
Pearlie-bird, appeased, returned to...
“Send me a picture.” he’d said. Well, typed. It was that kind of initial flirting request. She had responded with a
:-)
a
:-P
and a
<3
and then, eventually, with a selfie.
Analysis of the GPS data encapsulated in the header file, compared with a record of CCTV locations, and her smiling face as a search parameter from stored footage, provided her entry point to the location. Cross-matched with the stored WiFi coordinates her smart phone had used to send the file, the exact location was confirmed. The “Le Poursuivant”
Inspection of the blurred background of the photo matched...
The writers club - writer's club? writers' club? - started amicably enough. Geoff (Murder Mysteries and Historical romps) had searched his family tree back to the 1500s. Seranne (interesting name. A story there...) was nervious that we'd fit round the long raised table, with laptops and notepads, etc, and threw the odd curt look at the young couple inhabiting the corner, uninvited, and unaware. Jen set to work, with numerous hand written notes, while Rachel tapped discreetly away on her duck egg blue Huddl; only the second I'd ever seen not forlornly sat on a Tesco back shelf. Non-fiction and...
It was rather like being a ghost. Vicarious snooping. A social media haunting (stalking?). The only way to keep in touch with the untouchable children, who were no longer part of life. Maybe, the FaceBook groups should have been diplomatically UNLIKEd, given that they were only there because of previous parental responsibilities. Or the Messenger App blocked, due to ocassional earthquake requests, unsettling and unfooting in their simple, direct, but untimely demands.
Finding out a once was daughter has the lead in her drama group's next production, via accidental browsing of a stream. Realising another was home from university, only...
The conversation lasted two words: "Too much." Too much pain? Too much regret? Too much suffering. And who's? From twenty nine hour a day parenting to none, in the space of one brief, bitter phone call. "We don't want to live with you, Dad. We want to live with Mam, fulltime." And then a long overdue pause of a pregnancy, waiting for the response. Not sure if it would be explosive rage, reprisals and recriminations, or sad acceptance. All that came was the dialing tone. It spoke more eloquently than any words would have done. One more abandonment, in a...
“Pob lwc.” the elder of Saint Joseph’s had wished me, after his strange warning. I presumed he meant for my first Mass to be held, as traditional, at Midnight on Christmas Eve. It went well, the service, with a fuller than expected attendance, to see the ‘new man’, I presumed.
Later, sat still in just the candle light, I sighed, thinking I’d found a final home. It was then that the Bwgan Fawr sighed too. A man of middling years, he seemed, from one of the middling centuries, but as translucent as chip paper fat.
He pointed at the great...
I couldn't sleep with her next to me. So cold. Her skin. I had to pretend she was still alive. There was no way that I could imagine she was no longer going to be waking me up with her laugh, kissing me when I refuse to get up for the alarm, tickling me when I roll back on my side and try and get a few more moments in bed, before the inevitable morning routine for work.
She was lying on her back, no longer looking at the mirrored ceiling, but deep in her thoughts. I convinced myself they...
Once in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway. She was hoping to catch a cool breeze as well as a paying customer as the slinky dress billowed behind her. Cigarettes were sexy again, and with lung disease the least of her worries, she inhaled with abandon. Another night, another John...
But tonight was different, because as she bent to tap the ashes from her cigarette, she saw a green cloth protruding from behind the fake potted plant near the doorway. Curiousity getting the better of her, she pulled aside the leaves to find the...
“The entire shell is Chronium. That shields the op…”
“You mean chrome. Chromium?”
“Ahem. Crow NEE Uhm. Chronium. As in Chronos. Yes… so, it shields the operator from time partic…”
“Chronons, right!”
“Ye… Look are you going to kee…”
“…p interrupting? No. Sorry. Just. Just excited. Distracted. Do carry on…”
“Right. I know you created the concept, and were very keen to be the first test subject, but the engineering team has had to adapt a great deal of the original design. Are you su…”
“Yes. Totally re… Damn. I did it again, didn’t I?”
“Let’s just get you inside,...