Tag: Fiction

Love Handles

It was around census time that he decided to take things into his own hands. Change the situation for good. He’d cleared the kitchen table after tea one night and was stooped over the purple form, staring at it, tormented by the very first question. The cat hopped onto the table, feigning support.  Here we…

Payment to the Ferryman

It had probably started when they saw the golden bird hanging in the sunset over Manukau. Hovering like a fantail, but so much bigger. It was full of people who would never know how magnificent it looked. The cars would surely have been tiny black metallic ants below them, glinting yellow in the light of…

Thursday

Chris says that making these calls, the same ones every day, has made him lose track of time. ‘Is it Friday?’ he will say. ‘Feels like a Friday.’  I tell him like I do every week that, ‘No, it’s Thursday.’  Gene eats the same meal at his desk without fail at 1pm. And Chris asks,…

Please accept this as my notice of resignation

When you get the job, everybody tells you that you are doing so well. You did it!  On your first day, you are led around the open-plan office and everybody introduces themselves. The fifteen names roll around in your head like marbles, and they give you some papers to file. You flit around the shelves,…

Shui Gui

If Val could’ve been anyone, she would’ve been Anya. On the first day Val met her, seated next to each other by luck of the alphabet—Langford, then Liu—Anya had shaken her hand. It was a firm grip, one of old money and future expectations. Val had squirmed in her second-hand uniform and hoped that Anya…

Sound of solace

Newly solo at 30, I move into a one-bedroom unit. There’s a connecting wall with another apartment. First night I notice it, then it continues on and on, the neighbour’s radio is on 24/7. Finally, I knock on their door to complain. A woman, maybe 20 or 22, invites me in to apologise. She’s in…

You, Plural

You start the car and drive slowly, carefully. It is something-very-late-o’clock, you think. But, she is pregnant, and she needs—she says she needs—ice cream and pickled beetroot. You’re tired, but you’re a good person, you think, and anyway, when the baby is here, this time of day will be normal, won’t it? There is a…

Acquiescence

  Nadia sips her coffee and gazes out at the steely grey morning. She glances at her phone one last, depressing time. ‘Wildfires in Rhodes as well,’ she says. ‘Dubrovnik. Southern Italy. Northern Algeria. The whole Mediterranean is on fire.’ Across the table, Lloyd shakes his head, pushes the sleeves of his faded sweatshirt above…

Memory Parlour

1 Down South Lane, tucked away behind Oxford Street, was Jenny’s memory parlour. A remorseless stream of traffic cut through Levin down State Highway 1, beating it into place — lest it slink off when no-one was looking. Few of these travellers ever made it the short hop over to South Lane, though. As the…

Aquamarine

Sometimes it seemed as if Eugene was bigger than his body. When he swept his wings past the shelves in the lounge, books fell to the floor and startled him. When he chuff-chuffed around the dining table, his foot caught on a chair leg and sent him sprawling. Sometimes, burning round the racetrack from the…