Category: Six Sentence Story
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1111: A Six – SSC&B Alcove
Strikethrough #5 A Forest Gone I settle in with a mug of breakfast tea and Mimi’s cake, and begin editing my notes: the small forest of birch and oak beyond the village is gone, leaving only stumps leaving the pale wounds of stumps where the trees once held their ground. When last I was here,…
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1011: Dead Men Don’t Drown
Dead Men Don’t Drown: #14 (catch-up with all episodes here) Clive doesn’t look surprised when I return with Jacob Macleod’s ring in an envelope, which is either professional discipline or proof that solicitors are born knowing how badly families behave. He opens the insurance bundle again, dips his pen though he has nothing to write,…
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0911: The Liturgy
Liturgy for the Lie That Kept the Children Fed I. The Sin That Has No NameThere is a sinthat the catechism does not list. It is not theft, though something is taken.It is not adultery, though a bed is left cold.It is not murder, though a man is buriedin the silence of his own wife.…
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04.11: Dead Men Don’t Drown
Dead Men Don’t Drown: #13 (catch-up with all episodes here) I write Mairi on the back of an electricity bill, then Mary beneath it, then cross both out as though ink can be bullied into telling the truth. The names look almost alike if I want them to, near enough for a husband with salt…
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03.11: The Liturgy
Liturgy for the Fragments That Will Not Fit(for the questions that multiply in the silence) I. The Moulding of Reasonable ExplanationsShe tries to build a storyfrom the pieces on the table:the ring with Mairi inside,the spiral lock in its sealed envelope,the photographs that will not speak,the dogs that face the sea. Perhaps Mairi was a…
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0211: A Six – SSC&B Alcove
The Heist a double Six this week The Heist — Episode 6: Another Door in the Wall The gargoyle on the right is still quibbling with the Soup Gobbler on his smartphone — “no, not that wall, the other wall” — when the signal breaks into static and dies exactly as we step through the…
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28.10: A Six – SSC&B The Heist
The Heist (episode 5) Dinner with the Soup Gobbler “I took it from a reclamation yard on the East Side,” the Soup Gobbler says when Chris admires the long wooden table, dark and scarred enough for a medieval feast; “you mean an antique shop,” says the gargoyle on the left, grinning, “you filched it from…
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27.10: Six Sentence Story
Of Wood and Biblichor la bibliothèque – l’Université de Montpellier It’s a strange wistfulness, old libraries. Outside, the heat made the cobbles seem to rock underfoot, and sometimes the sun struck my eyes so directly that I went momentarily blind; but inside, the air was cool and loose, light met the floor at different angles,…
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27.10: Dead Men Don’t Drown
Dead Men Don’t Drown: #12 (catch-up with all episodes here) I obey the conservator for exactly twenty-three minutes, which is long enough to find an old manila envelope, write DO NOT OPEN on it in block capitals, and place the spiral lock inside as though firm handwriting has ever saved a woman from herself. The…
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26.10: The Liturgy
Liturgy #12 for the Name She Has Never Heard(or for the toast burnt twice, and the ring that tells a stranger’s story) I. The Lock She Does Not OpenThe conservator’s voice stays with her.Do not open it, not yet, not like this,and so she does the hardest thinga curious woman can do. She protects her…
