Stories Category

Beethoven’s Big Day

May 7, 1824. Beethoven wakes up, always at the same time. His head is heavy. It feels like red wine from yesterday evening is still swirling about inside him. He struggles out of bed, opens the window and looks out. Yes, the bells are swinging back and forth, yes, he cannot hear them. He remembers […]

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Snow White – in the mirror

The mirror’s version of Snow White

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Nihal – a poor man

Nihal knows that ruthless rain is finding every little hole, crack and crevice in the roof and walls of his tiny hut on the bank of the smelly canal that marks the city’s southern boundary. On his haunches in the middle of the single room hut, he regards his wife and four children, bunched up […]

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Keyboard Capers

Piano competition

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Confronting violence

I walked along a footpath on the side of a suburban road in the heart of Colombo. I glanced at my watch and looked up at the sky, splashed with vivid red, orange and yellow, the colours of sunset. At six-thirty, night had begun to elbow out dusk. It wouldn’t take long to complete the […]

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The Tall Man by Chloe Hooper

A book that removed the bandage from modern Australia’s festering sore. In 2004 on Palm Island in Australia’s deep north, 36-year-old Cameron Doomadgee was arrested for swearing at a white police officer. Forty minutes later he lay dead in the jailhouse. Police said he tripped, but his ruptured liver could not be attributed to a […]

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Cricket under my skin

All about a lifelong obsession

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Elizabeth

Elizabeth is a tall, stately Englishwoman. She is not young; she is not old. It is difficult to place her age. The harsh climate has creased her face and blemished her white skin, but it does not mask a glowing serenity. She speaks English with an accent that reveals a privileged, upper-class background. Her grey-streaked […]

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Maurice

In the mid-eighties I found employment in a large accounting office. On my first day, early on a Monday morning, I was shown to my desk. There was hardly anyone about, but Maurice was in and he came over. Maurice would have been forty-five. Coke bottle glasses dominated his oval, academic face. His hair had […]

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Flash Fiction April 2022

A hint, maybe? That his criticisms punctured her self-worth. No, if he loved her he’d support her, unprompted. Marsha grasped the handles of her packed suitcase and walked out. Forever. House, car sold, cat put down, all for a dream life ten-thousand miles away promised in an internet romance. Pyrite, not gold, awaited her at […]

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