Fifteen years as a beat cop in Minnesota had helped prepare Tony O’Malley for days like these. He pulled the collar of his old sheepskin coat further up around his ears and hunched his heavyset shoulders against the biting wind whistling across the sound before him. He sat back against the hood of the old Buick, muscle memory instinctively patting at his chest pockets for a packet of cigarettes lo...

Standing on the short, granite plinth, her eyes rapidly flicking between the other contestants, the suddenly sinking realisation she had made a terrible mistake hit her hard in the pit of her stomach. Wanting nothing more than to bend over and vomit onto the moist, morning grass before her, she managed to keep her composure, not wanting to show any sign of weakness before her peers. The knowing lo...

The damp timber of the quarterdeck groaned beneath us as we lay together, each gasping for breath, his head heavy on my lap. Brushing the dark, lank hair from his still face, I noticed the scar again. Running across his cheek, it had been there since we were children. Though now faded in the twenty years which had since passed, and partially hidden under the matted hair of his beard, I would alway...

“Hey, hey! Wait!” I gasp, holding up my hands, damp shaking palms out towards the bulk in front me. I swallow hard, trying to catch my breathe. Salty sweat mixing with the undeniable iron tang of blood in my mouth. Wiping a wrist across my forehead, I glance towards to door. It’s too far. Though the adversary standing before me was of an intimidating size, clad from head to toe in the instantly re...

He knew they called him The Fishmonger. Never to his face, he smiled, proud at the reputation he’d acquired over the years of building his business. Señor was all the few people who spoke to him directly would dare to say. Except his mother, god rest her soul. Even until her final days, she’d called him Miguel, after his paternal grandfather. In truth, he had been a fisherman, following in the foo...

It was the snow he couldn’t get used to. Growing up, he had never experienced such freezing conditions. Sure, they had snow in the mountains, but he was from the coast. He’d spent his younger days on the beach, skipping school to make extra money from the surf tourists that rolled into town each day. Why did I choose this place, he thought, as he hunched up his shoulders. He’d been here nineteen y...

He loved her. He always had. Since before he had built up the courage to start their first conversation, he’d felt something like never before. He’d noticed her a few weeks before, at the counter in the coffee shop. She was so beautiful. Her hair was what had attracted him. Bright auburn. It was out of a bottle, he’d been annoyed to discover later, but it was what had first caught his eye that mor...

Murder, sexual assault, arson; those were the only crimes that really made the news, he thought as he tapped at the keys on his laptop, absentmindedly staring out the window at the midsummer night sky gradually darkening over the city far below. His was different, not even an issue to most people, he mused, as he once again transferred the full amount into the off-shore account for his associates,...

He’d walked down this path so many times in his life, he would struggle to remember how many if asked. He could remember the first time. It was just after he’d moved here with his Mum, in the spring. He remembered arguing his younger brother, Tom, on this very path not long after. He’d punched him. Hard. Mum had been so angry when they got home, she had sent him upstairs whilst she tended to Tom’s...

She’d waited a long time get to this point, debating with herself over and over, internalising the conversation until it felt like she’d already uttered the words she was about to say to the man she’d loved for over 50 years.

“I’m leaving you” she said, not looking in his direction as she placed the morning coffee pot on the table between them....