Fiction

Gideon’s knife moved softly, swiftly, over the white card. My hair was wet from the post-work shower and I stood way back so as not to splotch my husband’s work. It always looked less like cutting and more like stroking.

It was one of those grey days when even the best plans seem ill fated, Monday and the school holiday. Mum and I were going shopping. She particularly wished to buy me something for the disco on Thursday. I think she felt, having been ill for months, she had neglected me.

The classroom was devoid of its usual liveliness and chatter. The stillness of the air seemed to have had a soporific effect on its occupants. Even the gecko suspended upside-down on the ceiling was stationary. A thick blanket of heat engulfed the room, making it oppressive and stifling.

On the spur of the moment, Scott decided to take a leave of absence from his job, to see Goya's giant tapestry cartoons, among the jewels of the Prado Museum in Madrid. Since his mother's funeral, two months before, he'd been finding it difficult to sit at his cluttered desk.

Samira wanted me to say yes. She’d asked if I could accompany her to an exhibition later that day. Though this was the kind of thing I hated, it was impossible to say no to Samira with my head resting on the softness of her thigh, with her hands twisting my hair into Bantu knots.

Ray … 1. Ray and I got suspended from school for a whole week and we were the only two kids around to enjoy it.

New Delhi and Kot Badal Khan, India; Lahore, Pakistan, August 1967 … Poor Raju was having the same dream again. In it, he was once more the boy he had been, aged seven years old. “Water, water!” he demanded in his child’s piping voice, tugging at the man’s arm.

In exactly two months, it would be her ninety-ninth birthday. This they murmured repeatedly, although sometimes she thought it had been only once. Between bouts of dozing, her eyes wandered over the walls and ceiling, often returning to a tiny wisp of abandoned cobweb in one corner.

Almas’s mother, who’d been dead for nearly two years, had never really panicked for the sake of her daughter’s love life.  She’d always said that Almas would wake up one day and find herself in love. An eternal optimist, and unusually romantic for an Ethiopian of her generation…

Chicken a bawl … We used to keep chickens in the backyard. They came to us by way of My Uncle Sam’s Ford Cortina; yellow exterior, black roof and two furry dice hanging from the rear view mirror. Class.

Things Lost by Ioanna Mavrou … Things Lost, a preliminary report, scribbled on the margins of a Cyprus Airways magazine page I should remember to tear off before landing: Ten dollars on a book I don't feel like reading at all, not just on the plane, but possibly ever in my entire life.

Owen had first seen her through glass, and from that angle she was distorted, belly distended as if in pregnancy, face and hips widened.

Durban, 1885 … MR KUMAR, a merchant from India, paced up and down behind the counter of his store on Water Street, blowing on a sheet of parchment and waving it in the air.

I feel as though I’ve been awake for hours or that I haven’t slept at all. But I must have. I was thinking of what you told me once about the solar plexus.

The Cheekovit … The child is eavesdropping on her parents again. She’s seated cross-legged under the dining table, monitoring the situation in the kitchen. TUK-TUK-TUK. Tuk-tuhtuhtuh-Tuk. Tuk-te-Tuk-te-Tuk. That’s her father pounding onions and chillies for a sambal.

The clock says twenty five past one and the moon is full. The wind rustles the trees of our leafy suburban street and the Count in his dark cloak keeps staring lecherously at my neck from the binding of Stoker's Dracula. All we lack now is a wolf to howl.

Day in Cycle: 1 … Chance of Love: Medium … When I touch my girl’s face I could swear the bones beneath the skin aren’t the ones I gave her. ‘Lemme take your bag,’ she says, dragging it and me through the chaos of the place.

Camilla (a journalist) and Ablah (a cosmetic doctor specialising in facial rejuvenation) are having an interview chat in a spare room at Ablah’s clinic. Ablah: I’d estimate you’re thirty-three years old, from the depth of the fountain of lines between your eyebrows.

Jo Stones has lived in South London for thirty-four years, having been born and bred in Sheffield then New Zealand. She returned to study as an adult, graduated with a degree in film and works as an archivist for Film and TV.

Twilight had come and passed over his shoulders and bent head, like a crow. *** … Ali stood on the promontory watching his house burn down, a terrestrial crown of flame within the dark blue heavens.

Ollie was just about to jump when he heard footsteps walking towards him across the stone bridge. Standing frozen on the wall, he never considered anyone approaching at this time of night. Ollie never moved and kept his eyes on the fast flowing water below while he waited for the person to pass.

‘How do I look?’ She asked looking at the mirror inside the fitting room. I was standing outside, looking in the same mirror.

1. IT DIDN’T SEEM TO MATTER THAT THE FIRST GIRL WENT MISSING WHILE HE WAS STILL AT SEA.

Riley stepped outside the shebeen. Steam was coming off her body. She pulled the grey rabbit-skin jacket around her. Her brown face was bloodless, leeched by the airless underground club. Five o’clock in the morning and she’d had enough of the dub and skanking.