In a midlife crisis, if I die aged 120 that is. I’ve recently taken up writing again under my pen name of Niall Etheridge. See https://nialletheridge.co.uk. I’m drawn to short stories and write terrible poetry, maybe I’m part Vogon?
In a midlife crisis, if I die aged 120 that is. I’ve recently taken up writing again under my pen name of Niall Etheridge. See https://nialletheridge.co.uk. I’m drawn to short stories and write terrible poetry, maybe I’m part Vogon?
Blood Moon
You saw me standing alone
Without a clue where to start
Without a song of my own.
Blood Moon
What’d you howl to your mates for?
It’s not the thing I signed up for
When I became your chauffeur.
I drove you to the Gardener’s Arms
With your oh so resistible charms.
Six pints of Brewdog later
They didn’t have to persuade yer,
I was ready to drive you back
But you wanted to hang with the ...
I came into the world 12 January 2023, not pink and vulnerable, with sobs and tears, my mother holding me to her breast - but full grown, bearded, scarred, with a distasteful vaping habit.
It’s best that I explain myself. I’m Jonathan, pleased to meet you. Some three months previously my life was very ordinary. I received the letter in the middle of a stack of mail. No, you misunderstand me. I ex...
The New Ohio River glistened pinkish in the harsh sun, but it’s banks were green and teemed with wildlife. “It’s beautiful, but it’s a little off, don’t ya think?” said Troy Aryeety. He drew the last sip of ersatz spring water from an ecobox. He screwed it up in his hand and dropped it on the grass. A dozen shiny beetles descended on it and began to gulp down its protein remains.
The Ohio river w...
Take the metro. Buy a coffee. Ride the elevator. Face the day. Don’t miss a beat.
Same ol’ same ol’. It was a Tuesday, 9.25am. I nodded at Gayle on reception and sleepwalked to my desk. I put down my bag next to an identical bag, hung my jacket next to an identical jacket and went to the bathroom. It was while peeing my brain began to process the caffeine. I zipped up, zipped back and at my desk ...
My name is Castor, my brother is Pollux. When we were children, we were happy; now we are adults and as you know, adults are not happy. We were born in Eindhoven, Holland. We are twins. In our language we say "twin" not "twins", because "een tweeling" is a closed set: two people joined in a common noun.
Our parents were circus people, engaged on an endless perambulation from town to town. It beca...
Belly full round, forty weeks of silence
Between mother and child, husband and wife.
Children not seen and never heard
Become generations who keep their peace.
Unspoken silence breeds deeper hells
Than screaming terrors spawn.
So barricade yourself at night
Door shut tightly, might the monsters come....
“S.A.R” it says on our red jackets: Search and Rescue. Well we found it, now we rescue.
Nobody knows where they came from, or why they’re here. Two weeks earlier, they appeared all around the planet, and I mean appeared. Three hundred and fifty saucers announced their arrival in an instant above cities, oceans, forests and deserts - splitting the air with a giant thunderclap, ball lightning and t...
PROCRASTINATION, noun, UK /prəˌkræs.tɪˈneɪ.ʃən/ US /proʊˌkræs.tɪˈneɪ.ʃən/
the act of delaying something that must be done, often because it is unpleasant or boring.
I can do anything, *anything*. The secret is having something more important to do. Take writing: if I have a tax return to complete, I become a million monkeys clacking away at the keys. No problemo.
But today I have a deadline. T...
As a young woman, I wanted to enter the world of antiques. In this as in many specialisms, a practitioner gains success through hard work and luck. I had plenty of the former and, up to now, none of the latter.
By the age of twenty, I had served my apprenticeship, if you will, at dealers first in Margate, then in London. But in five short years, my mother became an invalid, and being the only chi...
I am Alfred Borden, the Professeur de Magie conjured into life by Mr Priest in his novel ‘The Prestige’. Perhaps my reader will stop here to avoid the slightest spoilers but I will only hint at them.
- - -
This will be my final escape - to my island then my eternal rest. I’m not fleeing, except from myself, but I will never catch myself now will I? What is on my inventory, what shall I ask the s...