The heavy rain continued to beat down on the windshield as Brian Brannigan drove his well-worn pickup down Montgomery Street. Running a hand across his crew cut, the sandy haired nineteen-year-old took a moment to glance at the clock on the dashboard. The clock read ten to eight and he knew he was going to be late for work yet again. That this time it was ha...
CHAPTER 1 The bitch, thought Freddie Johns. The young woman he'd banged overnight was no longer beside him. He felt the sheets and they were cold but then she'd been cold. She wasn't in the bathroom and he checked his pants thrown on the floor and sighed. His wallet had gone. God what's the chances of connecting to a woman these days that you could perhap...
Laura Black had the air of belonging to someone else when Mark Andrews saw her again after three long months. She was sitting on a bench overlooking the bay when he eventually spied her out. He'd walked to the top of the road, past the many guesthouses and up onto the headland in the hope of catching a glimpse of her. He knew that she used to like to sit the...
"We have lingered in the chambers of the sea By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown Till human voices wake us, and we drown." TS Eliot "…Prufrock" Part I: The Book of the Grotesque When we arrived at the airport I found the sunlight that bathed the terminal halls claustrophobic. I put on my sunglasses and sought a dark bar in which Sel...
This story recounts six intense days in an unfortunate girl's year-long quest to find a way home. It is not part of a series, the full story of Kira's quest has not been written; in fact I have only a faint idea about how it began, and no clue how it ends. Of course, if inspiration strikes I may some day return to Kira and her strange fate. Reader beware: T...
The high green grass parted as a shadow of a figure crept through them, quickly, yet as silent as a hawk. The grasses became trees, an endless jungle that could overwhelm a seasoned explorer in minutes. But the jungle, in all its glory could not overwhelm one of its own; the jungle could not overwhelm the shadow, or one born of shadow. The darting shadow mov...
Big Mama asked me: "Are you gonna have a problem with killing a friend of yours?" "Depends on which friend." "A Yakuza gang member on the management fast track." "It's not a woman, is it? I've got enough contracts out on me without the government getting in on the act." The Government of Greater Good frowns on killing females, but men are fair game. "C...
CHAPTER 1 Between dates, yet again, Ray Haig wondered which was worst -- being divorced by your partner who found she had the hots for someone else, or coping with the aftermath? Being told the deteriorating marriage was over had come as a shock but the shock soon faded and gradually his good mood returned. Once the dissolution was in effect, he'd assumed w...
Each New Year's Eve, I sit down with my diary and write out a list of things to look forward to over the next twelve months. I prefer not to call them resolutions. Mostly they are needs, which I turn into opportunities to look forward to. That way, even the shitty ones have a positive spin to them. And there can be a lot of shitty ones! I also look back at...
Robert quietly filed books away. That was what he did and that's what he was good at. In fact, that's all that he was good at; a glorified sorting algorithm in a library no one really cared about. There was little praise and glory to be found hiding in untraveled corridors, witnessed by nothing more than the old dusty manuscripts and hardbound books which co...