Read & Listen
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Curated
Short Stories

Even in the open sunlight, the barrier rock seemed very wide and very heavy; tons of rock pressed down on where he would go. If he died there, he would lie until one day — perhaps not before next year — those big boys would swim into it and find it blocked

sailors and streetwalkers, a hard-boiled lot, suddenly took to raving and exaltation, tears and teeth­gnashing as they tore out the noble gladioli, bloodied their hands on rose stems, pulled up tulips with their bulbs, bit off carnations, passing them along from one to the next, hand to hand, and by the armful. Up grew a mountain of flowers and greenery, a stake of tulips, hydrangeas, and roses, a charnel house of gladioli

Her apartment is painted white, a white bordering on cream; the bedlinen is white, the towels in the bathroom and kitchen are white. Lydia says she can’t bear any other colour, not on the furniture or on the walls

We read the details of new random crimes with heightened compassion and dread. Some of us had more sex than we’d had in years. Others didn’t have any, and couldn’t fall asleep either. All they could stand to do until midnight was stare at the TV and wait for one of the smaller children to cry out for them, convinced the one‐legged shoe‐grabbing demon was back and had just crept into their room