“Hiya, I’m Miles. 6’2”, beer-bellied, broad with full Ned-Kelly beard. I have a Sinead hairstyle (vale Sinead), lots of wigs but love my Dolly and Cher the best. Dusky Rose and Magenta are my fav nail colours, always one Crypt Black. Lotsa frocks, stylish suits, evening wear of course, red pumps and my C-F-M-Boots, fishys, sheers, with nice tasteful jewellery, accoutrements and rings. But sometimes, just trackies, plaids and Uggs. Don’t like much fluff and flounces. I’

Absent Absent Hollow? No. Gone Girl, alone? no, just invisible, not fully present, but mostly, just not. Absent "oustay oo-senta" in...

He sat, a stool staring out across the wide green valley. Mountains each side creating a V of green amidst almost vertical slopes of rock. Sheer faces standing over the valley succumbing its existence. He wandered what had happened in the green Shangrila over its eons? So many tragedies and glories had been fought for and die here, now part of the soil, enriching the green so bright in the sun it almost hurt his eyes. He drifted back into memories of past. The battles

Muffling dawn stirs, settles a cold mist and bows the soft brome. The village bodach wheezingly, struggles onto one elbow, shakingly dropping back to his fliuch pillowcase and damp sheets. Breathing is now like sucking mead through rough linen damask. Eyes demented red and bulging. Hands shaking ‘ta crith air’ as his heart beats the rattle of a demonic bodhran. His bleary eyes search and cry out for his sweet Roisen but she left with Manannan mac Lir a long time afore

They stepped forward one and all to help where they could. The others couldn’t be there. They had a different purpose. The monster that tore them apart, had pushed them together. It was big, it was cruel, and it was unrelenting. Tiring days and late nights. They shared the knowledge that they were as good as the others, and that they could do what the others could do, and that they were equal or better than equal. They could do anything. They toiled and they provided fo

Cockatoo listens. Yaris serpentine belt shrieks. Plaintive song to one.

She was to blame, the siren. It was her fault. She lured them into things they didn’t want to do. They didn’t want to hit the rocks, but she made them do it. They didn’t want to see other women, but she made them do it. She was a siren, who gave them the excuse they needed to do what they wanted, but once it was done, they needed someone to blame and it was she the siren. She was to blame for their pathetic weakness. She looked on with disgust. No accountability, no r

Those damn sirens! Just when I had gotten into the swing of mopping decks in the relative freedom of mere shackles—sans being tethered...

Red heat blisters skin unless wrapped in heavy woollen greatcoats, shields, and gloves. Goggles and ear muffs unable to stop pain. Giant brick-lined iron ladles slop molten steel across the foundry. Massive gloves and coats, aprons, thick face shields struggle. Red-glowing iron bars snake through ramming, compressing, shuddering mill-blocks squeezing thinner and longer. Standing on guides, men push flaming bars through the next guide, furnace, mill-block. Raw coal at

Heat and flames burning bushy eyebrows, aromatic smoke wafting, Nandolnd, the crumpled gnome, moves the long-handled broadtruele inside his 400-year-old cob oven to allow his loaves equal touching of the muffled flames. “Glonadir, my son, it’s our family honour to create the hleifr for our village.” He slides the pole in practiced thrusts, a blade of grace, to keep the bread moving inside the hearth. With gnarled knuckles glistening, the best loaf flings from the oven m

Two days until my wedding. I cannot move from this house. The locks are bigger than my head, the windows high out of reach, so high they look out above the winter sky which crawls along the ground outside. Snowflakes fall in the room and they do not melt on my hand when I catch them. When the light fades the locks churn and turn, the door opens, the shadows gather into the form that is the Beast. My heart is frozen, else I would dissolve in fear. One day before my wedding

Roger hates birthdays. He is "given" his own cake, but then forced to share. (And a special variant...) Vesna likes birthdays. She is...

Snow on Barrington, landscape remembers canvas, age-old crown of white.

Atmospheric water vapour, frozen into ice crystals, falling in light, white flakes piling up at the front door. A mass of flickering white spots streaming across the television. John Snow misleading everyone with elaborate and insincere words whilst eating a dish of vanilla snow and spraying the room with frozen gas of carbon dioxide. He pulls another line of cocaine from the glass table, sucks on an advocaat, lemonade and ice snowball cocktail and shakes his snow-globe

We don’t know where we are. Something was chasing. Is chasing, but in all this white it will be chasing forever. Cold without end. Immobility creeps in at the fingertips, crawls out of the eyes. Ice crystals branch out from pulmonary arteries. Numbness is a force that radiates from us. All is still, even the endless whirling flakes, in their ceaseless quest, static. The Inferno’s ninth circle is a frozen lake. Oh, we know. Traitors gnawing on each other’s heads - of no co

Why is nature so cruel? Who knows. But is it? I don't think so. Take the trees. They aren't cruel. Take the sea. It's only cruel if you're in it when you shouldn't be. Take the sun. Nope only if I get sunburnt, but that would have been my own stupid fault anyway. Ahh take the animals…only really if you're the prey, or if you're a cat. Cats are definitely cruel and they are a composite part of nature. They’re congruous. Take the crows yep, they are; but most of all, and

The party was in full swing. Mark was dancing on the table as expected, Jo was sick in the corner, Cath was running around checking everyone was ok, John was lying on his back not giving a damn. Nothing different to usual. John was Cath’s husband and he was a lazy, controlling man. He called out to her to clean up after her friend Jo, then get him a beer. Cath did as she was bid. Others were there but they were sycophants. Sucking up to John because he was a minor TV celebrit

I don’t know what and why people do things? They just burst out with some rigmarole, some pansy-arsed drivel and expect people to believe what they say no matter how stupidly inaccurate it may be. Well, it must be inaccurate if I don’t agree with it. It must be codswallop if it doesn’t balance with every little thing I propose. Why else would God and the laws of nature ever give me these absolutely wonderful thoughts, if they weren’t perfectly true and correct? Nature ju

1. Nature, Nature, Nature… My nature The world’s nature… Your nature, You’re natural, What’s Mother Nature? -is it innate? -is it on...