I was chasing an escaped, psychotic, naked midget with a thick black beard across the car park. Sprinting, breath burning in my lungs. He was always a foot in front and I just couldn’t quite reach him. Me, in my light blue NHS issue tunic and navy pants. Black boots. Him, in his birthday suit, […]
Samuel Dorner was eight years old when he witnessed his first public hanging from the withering execution oak tree on a dry, dusty afternoon. The hanging man swung like retribution’s pendulum and the youngster, having scrapped hard with the other children for a front row view, took a good long look into his lifeless bloodshot […]
He stared up at the moon in the crimson sky. He lowered his head and squinted at the syringe as his fingers drew back the plunger. Golden liquid rushed into the barrel from the steel tin. He slowed his breathing and took off the wrist watch the Department had given him for his twenty years […]
When the sky cried tears and washed away the blood he thanked it knowing it had heard him. He’d kissed them goodbye with bullets of love. Up close and personal. They never even saw it coming. It was done before they could have even envisaged it in a nightmare. Their faces were a picture, their […]
“You’ve got an ugly pair of coconuts!” I sing with a wolf’s grin dripping indignation. I watch his micro facial expressions. Light flush to the surface of the cheeks, a flicker of the eyes as they dig into my stare, scanning for what I know. “You feeling alright Doctor?” He says through a fragile smile. […]
Saturday night, quarter to twelve, last stop The Rat’s Haven at the top of Market Street opposite the sandstone obelisk. That’s what it’s known as locally. Not it’s real name, obviously. Not rat as in James Cagney either. Rat as in filthy sewer dweller with a tail. A proper dive. The kind of place you […]
