Fiction
Courting terror
He clipped her with the edge of his headlights
on the grassy knoll beyond the hard shoulder, as his car chugged along like a mechanical
tortoise. The man braked and reversed. She froze in the beam like a terrified
rabbit quivering and he glimpsed the raw fear in her owlish eyes. He opened the
door and was assaulted by the young woman’s loud screams, which were muffled
somewhat by the sheets of falling rain. Read on and
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Losing face
Sven pushed the stop button midway through his twenty-two minutes of shame.
He could not bear to watch a moment longer. The memory, caught forever in all
its ugliness and pain on DVD, had earlier been broadcast for the whole world to
see – particularly the world that mattered to Sven.
Chapter 1 – Phantom friends
Chapter 2 – Skin therapy
Chapter 3 – A date with Miss Piggy
Chapter 4 – Gas particles
Chapter 5 – Delhi departures
The dead don’t protest
In this short play, Malak and Salem, fleeing a demonstration broken up by police, take refuge inside a tomb in Cairo’s city of the dead. Confined together too close for comfort, they have to come to terms with their situation – and each other – until a dangerous stranger appears… Read on
The seasonal realist
The cockroach makes its way casually up his neck. His body convulses in disgust. It walks along the crack running down the middle of his face – resplendent in its brown armour, its glory redoubled by the reflection of its underside. It pauses two-thirds of the way up as though it is waiting for something to happen. The mystery behind the pause lasts only for a moment. Another cockroach appears at the bottom of the mirror and races up the glass, following the path of the first cockroach. The drowsy-eyed observer concludes that the pursuing cockroach must be the male… Read on
Tormented lover
I hate You. I love You. I resent my dependence
on You. I despise my fear of defying You. Yes, yes, yes, is all I can hear
myself say. I have struck no from my vocabulary. With every passing
moment I find it harder and harder to utter that, in theory, simple two-letter
word. You, You, You. Everything revolves around You. You are my North, my East,
my South, my West. I am only secondary. For two decades now, I have been fading
– losing substance. Subsumed by You, subservient to You. Losing it up above,
gaining it round the middle – I am growing to resemble a hairless pear on legs.
I am no more than a shadow of my former self; a shadow, no, an extension of…
You. You. According to YOU! Read on
A severe case of
amnesia
I am in my dark office. It is nearing the end of my day. Another long, fruitless day spent waiting for that elusive creature – a case. It has been several months since my last one and that was a simple case of abandonment by a son of a bitch – literally. I was commissioned by this lady to find the dog who walked out on her. Read on
Deserted post
Somewhere
in the vast Egyptian desert… Somewhere in the middle of nowhere… Somewhere amongst
the yellow dunes and shifting sands; amongst the thirsty, parched, and cracked
land – there lies a solitary watch post. A token marker left by man in this
great and insurmountable void, as evidence that it too one day is conquerable. Read on
Ambush
Somewhere
in the sprawling metropolis the mob lies in wait. Ready for the ambush.
Concealed in the consuming crowds. Unbeknown to the naked eye, but we know they
are there – a brooding swarm itching to pounce. Read on
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