Category: Fiction

  • Celestial Eclipse

    Celestial Eclipse

    By Isobel Hinds-Brooks. Science tells us that an eclipse is a moment where the sun and moon are perfectly aligned. However, many years ago, during a time of superstitions and “signs”, it was seen as a bad omen. The idea of one celestial somehow blocking the other was a sign of incoming Armageddon. Thankfully, this…

  • Predetermine/Redetermine

    Predetermine/Redetermine

    A story about AI teachers, resisting destiny, and being different

  • Lavender

    Lavender

    The story is set against the backdrop of the Sri Lankan Civil War (1983-2009), a brutal conflict between the government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), fighting for an independent Tamil state.

  • A Guest in the House of Illusion

    A Guest in the House of Illusion

    A story of thwarted desire, set in an undefined past, at a villa on an island in the Aegean, amid a bohemian coterie dominated by Myrto, a brilliant, provocative, ageing libertine who is about to meet her downfall.

  • Reaching for the stars

    Reaching for the stars

    ‘Everyone’s getting pretty antsy.

  • After six o’clock.

    After six o’clock.

    This short story emerged from the act of trimming nails after 6 PM, a practice surrounded by Sri Lankan myth and familial wisdom.

  • After the Apocalypse

    After the Apocalypse

    It’s a cold morning, when a breath can be condensed by the chill and dark grey clouds cover the ground from sunlight.

  • The Good News Call Centre.

    The Good News Call Centre.

    How are you this blessed day?’

  • Mothman

    Mothman

    by Jack Morley.   ‘Ma’am, would you please breathe for a moment.’ ‘Sorry, this is just all very overwhelming,’ she says. ‘I’ve never had to give a statement to a police officer, let alone the Sheriff.’ She pulls a tissue from the box sitting on his tidy desk. ‘Just tell me when you’d like me…

  • Sense and Insensibility.

    Sense and Insensibility.

    by Jane Downing.   The traffic was as unremitting as the winter damp. Ellie missed the turn-off, forcing the technology into a hiccoughing insistence it was recalculating. Eventually their rental filtered off the motorway, where the roads were quickly narrow, countrified, and quiet. As far from the sunburnt country of dusty plains they were visiting…

  • Heavenly Morsel

    Heavenly Morsel

    by Vanity Conroy I have met my God and I fear He does not look favourably upon me.   I met him in 1954, when I was eighteen and wearing my mother’s old clothes. I was helping my father at the farmers market when he approached my stall. The sun shined a halo in his…

  • Tree Dwellers

    Tree Dwellers

    By Abhishek Udaykumar   It wasn’t till that evening that the Coca-Colas were back on the shelf and we had a reason to walk up the slope. A litchi[1] tree hung from the sky and a woman washed vessels in the thicket. The occasional pickup trucks surprised me like sudden glyphs appearing inside a familiar…

  • Black As.

    Black As.

    By Keren Heenan   She’s all sharp angles and dark and heavy brooding, anyone can see that. As soon as she opens the door and thumps herself down on the seat, turns to the window and scowls out at the landscape as if she holds it responsible. For something. Anyone can see. She’s a mood…

  • Empty

    Empty

    By Taj Martin   They made me return to the studio from the hospital. Apparently, I had made a remarkable recovery. My plain room, with the view of the garden, would be occupied by someone else. I knew that when I inevitably returned, the chances of getting the same room were slim to none. I…

  • Darwin, with Archie.

    Darwin, with Archie.

    By Charlie Gill   In Darwin, when it was too hot outside, we’d lie on our beds and watch reruns of A Current Affair. Smug journalists in shirtsleeves would loiter outside brick-walled homes to confront “the country’s most contemptible characters”: conmen, hoarders, addicts, bludgers and battlers and thugs. When the door swung open, they’d spit…

  • Religion

    Religion

    By Peter Dellolio   THE CEMETERY GROUNDSKEEPER, annoyed at having his peaceful day interrupted, chased the pack of noisy boys away.  If they were not visiting a relative or friend who had passed on, they had no business there.  A fat wooden slingshot, protruding from the back pocket of the nasty, fatuous ringleader, betrayed the…

  • The Flynn Effect

    The Flynn Effect

    by Ib Svane On the Swedish west coast, where the Skagerrak meets the Kattegat, is a fjord called Gullmarsfjorden, or Gullmarn. At the mouth of the fjord is the island of Skaftö with a marine laboratory called Kristineberg. It has been there for a long time, but a few years after the discovery of the…

  • SpaceTruck: 1999

    SpaceTruck: 1999

    By Tim Augier An emerald shape streaked across the inky void of space. Impressed against the black canvas sporadically populated with far-off twinkles of white, a boxy, unnatural, object. It almost looked as if someone had fused a semi-truck with some kind of rocket. Which, in essence, they had. Inside the cab of the SpaceTruck™,…

  • Rise and Fall – A Cheerleader’s Triumph and Tragedy

    Rise and Fall – A Cheerleader’s Triumph and Tragedy

    By Mia Suda The club pop music blared from the speakers during the transition between setting up the next dance team’s routine from the previous one. Elara could feel the mounting tension rising within her bones. Soon. She will be going into the warmup room. Soon. Those sixteen minutes would fly by. Soon. Those blinding…

  • Wilt

    Wilt

    By Ella O’Neill Lisa arrived home to her small flat at about six in the evening after a slow day at the office. She just felt off and couldn’t quite explain it. It was as if her footsteps dropped a little louder today, each step felt a little heavier than usual. She turned on her…