Stories | Gerry Roberts

The Tall Man by Chloe Hooper

Posted on June 4, 2024 Leave a Comment

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 […]

Cricket under my skin

Posted on May 6, 2024 Leave a Comment

All about a lifelong obsession

Elizabeth

Posted on May 3, 2024 Leave a Comment

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 […]

Maurice

Posted on May 1, 2024 Leave a Comment

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 […]

Flash Fiction April 2022

Posted on May 5, 2022 Leave a Comment

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 […]

Tea planting and motorcycle mayhem

Posted on November 22, 2021 Leave a Comment

My short-lived tea planting career

Flash Fiction April 2021

Posted on May 2, 2021 Leave a Comment

Thirty-word stories, each one using the bolded word as a prompt. With furtive glances, she took in the greased black hair, manicured pencil-line moustache, blazer and cravat. But the sight of his trouser crease, knife sharp, dead straight, impeccable, transfixed her. We watched the storm develop from a line on the horizon to dark, rolling, […]