The bow scrapes across the strings, tentative at first, and faltering notes tumble into the twilight. As the prelude gives way to the melody, the bow glides back and forth, and delicate fingers caress the neck of the instrument. I remember those fingers, so long and pale, even in life. The violin sings its mournful […]
Flash Fiction
Your Money or Your Life: A Free Story
I crouch in the bushes at the side of the road with only a dead body at my feet for company. I nudge the corpse with the toe of my stolen boots. It rolls into the ditch behind me, hitting the frost-frozen earth with a hollow thump. Good riddance, if you ask me. The full moon gazes […]
Free Flash Fiction – ‘Pipers Piping’
A piper sits in the square, huddled on the corner of a monument to a forgotten City Father. Passersby see his threadbare stockings through the holes in his battered boots, and they shake their well-coiffed heads. Pipers are not welcome among them, it seems. They tut at his moth-eaten tunic and mutter among themselves about […]
Ghost Train – Spooky Fiction set on the London Underground
The train lurches out of the Tottenham Court Road station and rattles east. Elsa flicks from her Kindle app to the clock – another ten minutes and she’ll be at Liverpool Street. Plenty of time to catch the train to Stansted before her flight to Naples. The train slows and rumbles to a stop. Elsa […]
Free Short Story – Abandon Hope
The church bell stopped tolling two days ago. Mother thought it meant that the distemper had left us, and would plague our city no more. Father thought that the churches had become overwhelmed, and we would be left to rot in vast pits sunk into rotten ground. Father was right – even now, I can […]
The Foundling, a Short Creepy Tale
I rise at 5am, as I do every day, and I make my rounds of the dormitories. They are empty now, and it has been many years since children laid their heads there. It never hurts to inspect them nonetheless. Glass cases now occupy the rooms, detailing the daily routines of the children. Printed text […]