Category: Friday Fictioneers
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A NEW SHANGRI-LA
At the end of the rough track through the mountains there was only inhospitable forest on steep hillsides. The young monk Lopsang watched mystified as the village elder Tenzin propped up the sign with twigs. ‘Why are we warning people away? There’s nothing there.’ The wise man finished his work. ‘Because if we tell them…
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FORCES OF ATTRACTION
Always gazing up at the stars, that was Charlie’s problem, dreaming about particles, planets and the cosmos, absorbed in studying the gravitational pull of black holes and their theoretical evaporation. Larry stamped his feet, shivering in the cold air, watching Charlie adjust the camera pointing up at the clear night sky. ‘Seriously, this is how you…
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A NOS MORTS
The bugle sounded, the flag was lowered. Feet shuffled on gravel. The silence was broken by the diesel engine of a barge. They didn’t close the canal anymore. Some her mother had nursed back to full health, some never recovered. One her mother married. Twenty years later she was alongside her mother as men repeated…
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BELIEF
Jimmy shook his head as he saw the kid walking up to the gym through the deep snow. ‘You didn’t have to come in today, kid. No one else did.’ ‘Weather’s not gonna stop me.’ He walked off to get changed. ‘You know Rocky was made up, right?’ Jimmy called after him. Jimmy had seen…
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WITHERED ROSE
She had withered over the cold winter. The gradual process of ageing had taken its final undignified collapse. Francis wheeled her mother outside into the garden, where the morning sunshine had evaporated the dew and birdsong brought promise of the arriving spring. As the rays of light beamed over the frail figure, the hunched back…
Iain Kelly 