It’s all change! In the next couple of weeks I will be moving over to a new website, where I will be blogging (aarrgghh!) as well as sharing my stories. I’ve moved! I’m not completely sure how I’m going to set it up just yet. At the moment I haven’t got any flash fiction over there, but I may well change that. I will keep this site for a time, whilst I ponder.

The plan is to collect the best stories here and publish them in some form, perhaps as an e-book, or a printed collection. So this site is going to be taken down as soon as the new site goes live, so I can do some work on that. Just playing it by ear at the moment.

I’ve loved having this space, and sharing my writing with you all.  Thank you so much for your support over the past few years. I’ll let you know as soon as the new website is live, and I hope to see you over there.

Much love,

xxx

Knock.

Knock.

You put your eye to the door but there is nothing except an eye looking right back at you. And there is your heart going

Knock.

The telephone on the kitchen table. Your mobile phone, under a pile of clothes on your bed. What you really want is a weapon. What you really want is courage.

So you wait behind the door, you wait and do nothing. And then you think, the window. It’s going to come in through the window.

And you hear the sound of its fist on the glass.

Knock.

But you don’t dare to move the curtain and look. You don’t want it to see you.

Knock.

If you just keep still, maybe it will go away.

Knock.

Maybe it will try someone else tonight.

And when it stops knocking, you wait

and wait

and finally you work up the guts to push the curtain aside and there is nothing out there.

But you see it.

(Reflected in the glass.)

It’s behind you.

Knock.

I want what knives want.

His trainers are luminous white, and his fists are white, too; the bones of his knuckles push against his skin. He steps towards me, fists roaring, eyes wide.

Knives sing in sharp harmonies, a metal symphony, a chorus of desire. Open the drawer and out they will fly, up over our heads, to rain down upon us in a piercing storm.

Her Mother said she was more trouble than the stupid dog. She put her hands on her hips and stood with her feet wide apart. Her legs were bare and hairy, and she wore big boots of leather without the laces. The bad little girl stared at the lolling tongues of her mother’s boots.

‘What’s wrong with you?’ Said Mother. ‘What have I told you about stealing?’

The little girl shrugged and tried to look innocent, but there was apple juice running down her chin. Her mother sighed and said, at least the dog doesn’t tell lies.

So she told the girl to go and sleep in the dog’s bed, and she told the dog to come upstairs and sleep in the girl’s bed, and to put its head on her pillow, and wear her clothes and play with her dolls. And the girl slept on a blanket in a corner of the kitchen, and had nothing but a bone to play with.

Now, the mother was a very busy woman. The next day, she forgot to swap the dog and the girl back to their normal places. ‘I really must remember to do that,’ she thought, making a mental note of it. But tomorrow came, and the next day, and somehow it slipped her mind again. Besides, the dog was so happy to sleep in a real bed and wear real clothes, and it developed quite charming manners. Meanwhile, the girl grew very gruff. She wet the bed and chewed the furniture and howled all night long.

After a while, the mother felt it would be a shame to swap the dog and the girl back. The dog was no trouble at all. It was getting very good reports from school. On the other hand, the little girl was growing more vicious by the day. It would never do to try to force it into a blazer or give it books to read. It would eat the books and tear the blazer apart.

In the end, it was too wild to keep in the house. The mother threw it out into the snow, giving it a kick with her big leather boots. The bad dog whimpered, and ran away into the forest. And the little girl sighed, and licked her paw thoughtfully, and stayed sitting out in the yard until the bad dog’s howls could no longer be heard.

It wakes me from sweet dreams. It goes off in the middle of my favourite television programmes. I have tried picking up the air, pretending that there is a receiver in my hand, saying hello? hello, who’s there? but I end up feeling stupid, and anyway the telephone still rings and rings, all hours of the day and night.

My housemate doesn’t hear it. I ask her, didn’t it keep you awake all night? And she gives me that look, that tolerant smile. I’m not crazy. It’s just the ringing phone is driving me that way.

What do they want, that’s what I’d like to know. I’ve got an answering machine set up in the hallway, but there are never any messages on it. I’m considering having a phone line connected, although surely that could only lead to more confusion.

The worst thing is, I always feel that the phone is ringing for me. That it wants me, my voice on the line. That it is ringing to tell me something important, something I should know about my life. If only I could get those messages, everything would be all right. The damn phone would stop ringing and everything would be fine.

At three-thirty, a bell rang, and a few minutes later, the girls came out of the gates. They were in uniforms, bottle green and gold, with socks up to their knees, and blazers with misshapen pockets, carrying notebooks, conkers, sweets, strawberry lip gloss.

As soon as the girls walked out of the school, the boys started their calling. They whistled and shouted hello. They thrust their hips at them, rubbed their crotches and laughed, as the girls scurried away in groups, holding each other’s arms.

When Tara Longmore walked out of the school gates, fat and bubbling out of her uniform, the boys set off barking and howling like dogs. Tara laughed at them, the merriment shining in her face, and the boys decided to teach her a lesson. They walked behind her down the street, calling her, making animal noises. Tara walked at her own pace, swinging her schoolbag and humming. At the end of the road, they cornered her, circled around her and started their taunting.

“Why are you so fat?” They wanted to know. “Fat pig dog, woof woof.”

But Tara smiled, her white teeth glowing in her pink mouth.

When the first boy touched her, pushed her from behind, her face changed. The smile became a snarl. She whipped around to face him, and the nasty laughter died in his throat when he saw her. She was bigger than him. Bigger, taller…and what sharp fangs she had for a little girl. And what long claws. And was that blood on her muzzle?

“I’ll eat you all up,” growled Tara. And she did, every last bite.

Bread dough, grey and salty, was wedged beneath her hard nails. Soil and fat and bits of grit were under there too. She could gouge a hole in your cheek with her pointed little finger, or scratch the dog’s neck, there boy, good boy, you like that don’t you?

I slept on the floor with the dog, or sometimes in my mother’s feral bed. She slept fast, holding the whole world still between her muscled thighs, and in her arms I grew breathless and thin, stretching out in a vapourous trail to the stars. There were billions of stars. All of them had mothers like mine.

The dog cried in his sleep and I stroked his ears. Softening his pain to two silken points above his head. When I cried, the dog sang in a low whisper like my mother’s green Sunday voice: there there child. We are nothing, sang the dog, we are only passing through. Into the empty heaven we hurtled.

Each woman has a team of girls from the village. Strong girls, good runners. They train for this all year. When the wind lifts, the Lady Mayoress blows her whistle, and the girls run as fast as they can over the grass, pulling the women behind them on their white ropes. Soon the women are stumbling and out of breath.

The fat one is the first to go. She trips on a rock. A big gust of wind catches her, and throws her up into the sky.

Everyone cheers. She waves at the crowd, smiling beautifully. Higher and higher. Her dress glints in the sun.

The thin one takes longer to lift off. She flies along behind her team, only a foot above the ground, her feet pedalling away. The runners shout tactics, change course, and the woman swings out to the left, gets the wind underneath her. At last she sails upwards with a delighted scream.

The women dip and turn, swoop and pirouette. Children clamour to hold the ropes and fly them in the blue sky.

We watch them for a long time, until our eyes are tired from the sun. When the wind drops, the teams let the ropes run like water through their hands. The women fall out of the sky, beyond the hill, out of our sight.

She has nooks and crannies. She has ghosts that walk through walls and chill your bones and turn the milk. They steal her handbag and her teacup. They cloud her eyes and tremble her fingers.

The shadows fall upon her arches and skylights. The cold gets into the corners. In distant rooms, children are playing, their laughter and shouts growing ever more faint.

Someday soon all the doors will swing shut, and ivy will grow into the bricks. The curtains will fall and the carpets will rot, and the rooms will be perfumed with mildew, and silence.

Where are you now? What do you see?

It smells of onions and red wine. Half-cooked chicken legs swim in the burgundy brine, across the linoleum. The dinner is splashed over the walls. It’s in my hair.

I can feel it scalding my skin.

It’s all right. Remember, you’re in control.

He looms above me. Curls his lip up in contempt. He wants me to get up so he can kick me down again, but I can’t move. Something has broken in me. My will, perhaps. He has won, I think, and with that thought I experience a lifting sensation. I float up to the ceiling, I drift back down again like a feather. Up and down, on every breath.

I am aware of his boot poised over my temple, the piston stamp of his hatred, the smell of boot polish and leather.

Come back into the present. Come back. Tell me how you feel.

I feel like setting the kitchen on fire. I am explosive.

Okay, I’m going to count back from five…

From my position, lying stretched out across the ceiling, I can watch him killing me. His mouth is pursed in concentration, then opens to let out a grunt of satisfaction as my skull crunches under his boot.

Four… three…two…

I let myself drift down from the ceiling. I whisper into his ear.

“You can stop now. I’m dead.”

…one…

He stops stamping, and puts his hand on the wall, as if to steady himself. He looks around for the source of my voice, and I laugh. He startles, and slips on the wine-dark, blood-wet floor.

…one… you’re back in the room… open your eyes…Please.

I open my eyes. There is a pain in my head like I’ve never known before. It is searing my skull in half. I don’t think I can move, but I try, pulling myself up on the counter, knees wet and warm from the dinner spilled over the floor.

He is lying on his back, with a chicken leg next to his head. I am hallucinating, perhaps. A desperate urge to lie down and sleep fills me, but I refuse it, and keep crawling, inching towards the door.

Now that I am free of the boot, I’ll never lie down for anyone again.