Clarke My Words

Kenny would always remember with perfect clarity the first time he fell in love. He had been fifteen years old and walking to the bus stop one morning on the way to school with his friend Maggie, who had lived down the road from him where he grew up. It was a strange and memorable day for a number of reasons, not least of which being that the pair were only just returning to school after their town had been lashed by the tail-end of a hurricane a few days before. Though much had been done to clean up the mild devastation, there remained plenty of evidence of the weather system’s passing. Absent tiles marred the uniform roofs like missing teeth, while light-coloured strips below their lips spoke of gutters ripped away. Too many twigs and branches littered the ground, and the crushed iron railings at the edge of the park spoke of fallen trees that had since been removed. All the way to the bus stop he and Maggie had talked in hushed tones, paying unconscious reverence to the subtle but ...

Ted could hardly believe his luck when he spotted the camcorder at the car boot sale. He'd been keeping an eye out for a Full HD device for months and had seen the Acorn H3 on a couple of websites. It had always been way beyond his price range but suddenly there it was, sat innocuously between a grimy TV/VCR combo plastered with Alf stickers and a tattered and sun-faded VHS Thorn Birds box set. A Post-It note had been taped to the side of the camcorder with one hastily scrawled word. "Defective". "What’s wrong with it?” he asked the woman stood behind the table. She leaned in closer to Ted and brought with her the sharp aroma of cheap perfume coupled with a musty tendril of last night’s wine. “What’s that, sweetheart?” “The camcorder. What’s wrong with it?” She looked at him blankly for a moment and then followed his gesture. “Oh that,” she said pursing her lips in distaste, “that thing never did work right. My Dale was forever fiddling with the damned thing, sayin...

It can be quite difficult moving to a new town, particularly if you don’t know many people in the area. When I first moved to the city I quickly realised that because I had so few companions to call upon, I had inadvertently become something of a commuter hermit. I would scuttle from my flat to work and then right back again at the end of the day with very little deviation. In a bid to break out of this downward spiral, I developed a morning routine that initially made me feel wonderfully metropolitan but soon grew to be a tiresome waste of time. Rather than eating breakfast at home of a weekday morning, I would head to a cafe somewhere near my place of work for a cappuccino and a muffin. In order to keep this routine spontaneity fresh I changed the cafe I went to every week and after a couple of months settled into a rota after returning to the very first cafe I had visited. After all, there are only so many eateries within walking distance of work. This comfortable rut had an unfor...

[Just a quick note to preempt any confusion, this short story was written to be a part of the Machine of Death Volume 2 anthology . Unfortunately it didn't make the cut so I thought I'd publish it here. Enjoy!] To whom it may concern, I remember once hearing a story about a man whose cause of death slip read “Ripcord Malfunction”. This man had never been near a parachute before he received the prediction and had had no real plans to go looking for one in the future. His father clapped him on the back and laughed, “that should be easy enough to avoid, eh?” The story goes that this man, still just a boy of course, retreated to his room and thought long and hard about his prediction - I mean, who doesn’t? He thought about all he would need to do to put off his death by keeping himself away from the possibility of a “Ripcord Malfunction” for as long as possible. Basically, he would have to stay away from planes. And also lawnmowers. For that matter, any petrol-driven p...

The early morning light seeped gently into the room granting the scene a dappled luminescence that seemed almost magical to him. He hadn't been able to sleep, which was unusual for him. He usually slept like a rock for a solid eight hours a night. But tonight had been different. Tonight he had felt happier than he could ever remember and had lain awake willing time to stop, listening to the deep regular breaths beside him. In a slow and controlled movement, keen not to wake her, he turned and raised himself slightly to look at her. All that was visible, burrowed into the duvet as she was, was her nose, mouth and her right eye. Even this much was partially obscured by rogue strands of her shoulder-length brown hair. He reached out a hand and delicately brushed her hair from her face. She flinched slightly and retreated further into her sleep-hollow. "You're not watching me sleep are you?" she asked without opening her eyes. Her voice had only the slightest trace of gro...

There once was a young gopher named Timmy whose bright, eager eyes saw nothing but beauty everywhere he looked. He had an insatiable thirst for knowledge and loved nothing more than to go for long walks with his mother, discovering more and more about the forest. One day, because Timmy had been very good and had kept his room nice and tidy, Timmy’s mother agreed to take him on a walk. Timmy was overjoyed and practically dragged his mother away as they said goodbye to papa and set off from their den. As they walked, the young gopher chattered at his mother with a seemingly endless stream of questions about the oaks and the dandelions, the butterflies and the reeds. He eventually broke away from his mother who, weary of being tugged this way and that by her excitable little boy, let him go with a quiet warning to stay where she could see him. Deeper and deeper into the forest they went, Timmy scampering gleefully back and forth around the comfortable amble of his mother. He would run to...