In The (Mostly) Real World
Short Stories and Doorways
Knut accidentally started a cult and now he’s trapped by it. Two of his followers have ambitions for the group which threaten his position…
‘The world’s souls were already in the ether, disembodied in the cloud, all just waiting to learn how they could become an army.’
(15-minute read)
While working on a government programme to give elderly people robot companions, Ben uncovers a sinister plot…
‘But what if the companions learn terrible emotional habits and develop into resentful sons and daughters who murder their parents?’
(5-minute read)
A woman finds herself alone in the Omani desert…
‘She had the feeling of being upside down, of falling toward the blue wastes, accelerating at the speed of gravity so that she felt no friction.’
(5-minute read)
Every Spider is an Individual to Himself
Waking to a magical mist, Nic skips school and discovers a different way of thinking about what to do with his life…
‘Something happens…it’s like I see the individual particles that everything’s built from and it makes my atoms fizz too.’
(10-minute read)
In a close encounter with a crow, Helen finds herself part of a two-thousand-year-old fable…
‘A flying piano, he stroked the air with his fingered wings, playing a tune she couldn’t hear. Yet she did hear something.’
(10-minute read)
Distressed by his emotional tangles, a man visiting an exhibition in Margate searches for a message…
‘This snag told him something about himself. Why this need to sink into a vision, to surrender?’
(5-minute read)
A short story in response to paintings by Pippa Darbyshire.
Survivors of a climate catastrophe find reasons to be hopeful…
‘Gorse isn’t obviously inviting but if you risk a prickle you’ll be rewarded. Coconut, can you imagine? I like to glimpse the time before. Reminds me to hope for an after.’
(1-minute read)
First published in Lemon Tree Writers’ 30th Anniversary Anthology 2023
In a ruined city, a man searches for his lover’s cat between the shifting planes of his new reality…
‘With my head on aboutways, half past three behind the curtain, flower motifs clock the day. I am subject to a new rhythm. Bella’s cat dictates the play. In this disintegrating reality, slices cut by caffeine open doors.’
(2-minute read)
Written in response to Marc Chagall’s painting of the same name