I met him on the road to everywhere. Windows down, the summer kissed air tumbled around me. Cat's eyes stretched away ahead into the unseen distance - an invitation of infinite possibility. He stood half in shadow at the edge of the empty tarmac. Solitary in the twilight. I stopped and asked him where he [...]
Tag: short story
Wild & Improbable Tales – Diminished
The old gods are not dead. You might see them, strolling amongst us. No longer robed in power but clad in fraying knitwear and scuffed shoes. They make their homes in unlikely places - the wreck at the end of the pier, the lean-to behind the power substation on a run down estate. Nothing grand [...]
Wild & Improbable Tales – Reclamation
It only took a handful of years after the fall for the wild to reclaim the land. It crept and wrapped itself around the hostile world. Mother Nature embracing her unruly child, turning rebellion into submission. All we had built with such disregard crumbed to dust, subsumed by the earth. What is the work of [...]
Wild & Improbable Tales – Dream Catcher
Your fairy tales have it all wrong. I am the Master of the Spindle and I spin not from straw but from magic. My silks are not of gold but of stardust. I spin nets to catch dreams from the night and jewels from the morning air. I spin swathes of silken lace fine enough [...]
Wild & Improbable Tales – Prayer
Dawn mist creeps up the valley, diffusing the gentle warmth of early day across the ochre earth. The Adhan dances from mountain to mountain, carrying softly, coaxingly through the still, sleepy air. I am a stranger in this land but it calls me still. A tender hand on my brow, my shoulder, welcoming me home. [...]
Wild & Improbable Tales – This Too Shall Pass
Frost clings to the ground. The cold still holding the world in its grip. Breath plumes in clouds from the mouths of passersby and tears freeze on cheeks. These are the days of deepest sorrow. But look - there - a glimmer in the blackness. A gleam of starlight reflected in ice, the twinkle of [...]
Wild & Improbable Tales – Play On
The record had played itself out hours ago but it spun tunelessly on. The rhythmic scratch and bump of the needle a counter point to their slow and steady breathing, whispering through the quiet dark. No words passed their lips, no flitting shadow broke their gaze. Gentle fingers on warm skin was all the language [...]
Wild & Improbable Tales – Which Way Up?
All it took was one step, one sip, one tumble down the rabbit hole, one big shrink spurt for everything to change. It always struck me as strange that a nonsense world could make so much sense. Even the vicious queen in her house of cards is not so bad as she seems - after [...]
Wild & Improbable Tales – Death Becomes You
"Death becomes you, my dear..." Her whispered words were cold against my cheek; her embrace a steely grip wrapped in cashmere. She stepped away, still holding my shoulders in her iron talons. Her cherubic face tilted as she regarded me, the ghost of an enigmatic smile tugging at the corners of her lips. Blinking, I [...]
Wild & Improbable Tales – A Ghost Of Warmth
At first, it looks like a room full of people. With a languorous certainty, they circulate, moving like the inexorable grace of a glacier, the entrancing dance of the fire. And then you notice something strange: there are no heads, no hands, no legs. They are a sea of jumpers and sweaters, moving as though [...]