Sample:
My short stories explore life, death and everything that goes with it. They re stories about the universal aspects of the human conscience. We’re all trying to get somewhere or achieve something and our biggest obstacle is usually ourselves. They are brief and to the point but say so much more. What I try to achieve with my writing is to boil down what may seem complicated to the inescapable facts to demonstrate that most situations are only as difficult as we make them.
An Exercise in Futility is a prime example of this. In the story a person runs away from her friends, paranoid that they don t care about her because she is under the influence of heroin. While she reflects on her reasons for running away, a friend also contemplates this, abandoned behind. The runaway reaches the south coast and determines to return as the effects of the drugs wear off. She arrives back late at night and apologises. The person left behind also does. They realise that is what they should have done to begin with. Neither narrator has a specific gender. It’s a technique that demonstrates that there is little difference between the male and female minds, and where important emotions are concerned, we are all just human beings.
An Exercise In Futility
I turned my back on people. They’re not real anyway.
I woke up in my car again. This time it was a Travelodge car park somewhere in the Midlands.
I have only one goal at the moment: head south.
It was Monday or Wednesday. It wasn’t raining but heavy clouds hung overhead and there was moisture in the air.
The clock on the dash told me it was quarter past two in the morning. Been meaning to fix it.
People aren’t logical. Birds are logical. Head south for the winter.
I brushed my teeth in the service station bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror.
I’m no person. I’m shallow and I only think of one thing.
I flap my wings until I’m high enough to let the wind carry me.
When I’m on the road the clouds ripen and drop from the sky. My wipers can’t cope with the spray from the lorry in front of me. I nearly drive into the back of it.
I’m getting slower and slower by the day. If I keep getting slower I’ll never make my destination.
I keep driving. I’m high enough to let the wind carry me.
***
You said you couldn’t trust us. You said we weren’t real.
You said you wanted to be happy and we didn’t want that.
I’m sorry because I know I got you into this.
Why won’t you come back? Why won’t you even call? Why didn’t you tell anyone where you were going?
I’m sorry if you thought you couldn’t trust us.
I went into town but soon left. My heart kept leaping every time I saw someone who looked like you. My heart got tired from all the leaping.
The flowers you bought me are dead but their scent remains in my room. I’ve kept the window and the door shut to keep it there.
We’re all worried about you. I don’t know if you know that.
I’ve given up trying to understand what’s going through your head.
***
According to the clock on the dash it’s just hit midday. In the dark, the lights of the Big City are ahead of me.
I turned the heater off because the warmth was sending me to sleep. I don’t want to stop driving yet. My breath comes out in clouds. My fingers are white and blue on the steering wheel.
There are only love songs on the radio. I listen to the silence of my engine and my car tires arguing with the road. I make conversation with the voices in my head. They ask me what the hell I’m doing.
They’d never understand.
***
We used to talk all the time.
You said no-one knows you like I do.
***
It was a Tuesday or a Thursday. It was already getting dark. I must have slept all day.
If I drive all night I should make it to the coast by sunrise.
Or in a day or two I could make it home.
I filled up on petrol and brushed my teeth in the station toilet. I came out with a fresh pair of wings. The attendant eyed me suspiciously as I paid him for the fuel and breakfast.
As I drove down the slip road it started to snow. Light autumn snow like spring blossoms.
In the Spring I can fly home.
Winter’s early, maybe Spring will be too.
***
I can’t stop looking at the empty spot on the street outside our house that you left.
Hope you’re enjoying your holiday because I’m not. Everyone asks about you.
I don’t know. I don’t know anything.
***
Sunrise was at seven in the evening by my clock. I sat in my car and watched the unbroken blue sky all the way to where it met the sea. The orange slice of the sun was appearing. I breathed in.
There was nowhere to brush my teeth here, so I just got out the car and faced the sea breeze and just watched the sun rise.
It was a Wednesday or a Friday. I m pretty sure it was a Wednesday. That means I’m back to where I started.
The air’s so fresh here. It clears my head. The wind’s blowing against me. If I flew, I wouldn’t get anywhere.
It doesn’t matter. I m tired of flying.
***
Our friends have all gone home. They’ve given up on you.
I know it’s no longer us. It’s just me.
From the bed I can see through to the bathroom. I can imagine you brushing your teeth at the sink.
I can see the innocence in your face when you’d turn to smile at me.
No-one smiles anymore.
***
Only when you’ve put hundreds of miles between you and your mess do you realise how fucked up things have become.
Life seems to be a perpetual sunset. The sun sits there just above the sea and it’s not moving.
And the goddamn clock is still wrong.
I see your face. You’re looking at me looking at you and it makes me smile.
I’m suddenly not sure who you are or if you re real.
Which one are you? There were so many of you.
I’m shivering. It’s night but the sun won’t set.
***
I flushed the drugs away.
I’ve been here too long. The cold tiles are making my backside hurt and I know the toilet bowl won’t regurgitate anything. I know you re not coming back. I know I miss you more.
And I might as well sit here, because moving won’t accomplish anything.
When you were around I felt like I was experiencing the truth for the first time. You were untainted, unbiased, un-fucked-up by the world.
I was selfish to change that. Maybe you’re right. Maybe we aren’t real. We’re just fucked up human beings. You were something greater, something pure, something holy.
You were right to fly. You don’t need us. You just need your wings.
***
When day came the wind wasn’t blowing. Rain fell.
My back ached. My wings were clipped. My mouth was dry.
I wasn’t sure where I was but I knew the way home. I fiddle with the clock on the dash but can only guess what time it is.
When you can’t fly, you crawl. I thought about the long drive home. I felt dread, but it was too late for dread. All we can do is crawl. We crawl all our lives and in the end have nothing but the journey.
The rain stopped. Then started, just a few spots. Then stopped. The wind blew at my back.
***
You silently climb into bed behind me and put your arm around my waist. You seem lighter than I remember.
You breathe in slowly and exhale gently but say nothing. My back is to you. Your warmth is pressed against me.
“Sorry,” you say.
I turn to watch you watch me and smile.
“Me too,” I say.
If only we’d said that in the beginning.
