Henry Brodie looked out at the audience as he sang and saw his dark reflection in their adoring eyes.
Later, one person screamed, high-pitched, as he stepped off the roof of the multi-storey car park. Nobody saw him land. They identified the body as his twin’s.
The birds fell, one by one. At first Ian thought they were diving but they were not, they were falling, some backwards and down as if cuffed from the sky, wings spread like crucified angels, others tilting and tipping, heads heavy with emptiness, falling and falling, wings folding. Their distant fall ended somewhere through the shimmering air. He thought of stories that had started and stories that would never. His story ended.
(www.paragraphplanet.com 21 October 2013)
Franki’s friend learned too late not to trust autocorrect. “Two hours to kill at Luton airport” became “Two people to kill at Luton airport”. Blue lights, shouting, lying on the floor, a kick to the head, falling down the stairs, found innocent but dead.
-Come up on stage to read the next line in our crime and thriller show!
-But it just says ‘BANG!’ It just says-
-Yes, yes, it does.
-So why did you do it?
-Not why, how.
-We know how.
-No, if you’re asking why, you don’t know how. Look at them and you’ll see.
-Them?
The fame, the glory, a moment in the sun. That’s why I’m doing this. I may be tomorrow’s chip paper but your blood’s my salt and sauce.
My granny used to taste my hair to see if I’d been swimming in the sea instead of going to church. Now, when my partner’s lips touch mine, I wonder, fleetingly, what they might discover.
Stevie googled “how get blood out bin bags canvas holdall”. He realised his mistake when his question autocompleted and his phone and his doorbell rang.
Imagine a sad voice.
The saddest thing you’ve ever heard in the saddest voice you’ve ever heard.
Feel your heart tear.
Hear the words ‘But I believed him….’
In the old days, before the trouble, the calming, the fake peace, the taking up again, in the old days, in Franki’s shaven head and tanned days, he’d stood outside a bar, near his friends but not with them or of them.
A slight young man, dark skinned and bearded, walked up to him and spoke to him in a whisper. Franki didn’t understand the young man’s language so continued to look down the road, arms folded, clicking his tongue once. The slight young man nodded, walked away and didn’t look back.
It was night; the bar was the only light that showed in the town.
One of Franki’s friends walked quickly up to him now.
– Did you understand what he said?
– No.
– He said he recognised you. He asked if you wanted to go with them to steal sheep. He said he would fetch a gun.
Franki fell from the clouds with surprise but kept silence.
– We need to go before he comes back. With the gun.
If the slight young man came back with the gun, there was no one to meet him.
The next day, Franki left the island, still in the old days, before the trouble, the calming, the fake peace, the taking up again, the old days.
simonsalento 