Jan 18

‘Like Suicide’ by Jack Swift

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I’d only been waiting five minutes when the black van skidded into the space next to my car sending chips of gravel flying across the paintwork. The natural inclination to anger did not dissipate despite knowing the unimportance of a car in consideration of what would happen inside the house behind me. Mike (“Mike”) opened his car door and twisted ninety degrees to face me.

“Hot, isn’t it?” he asked.
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Jan 16

‘Like, What Do You Do All Day?’ by Denise Sodaro

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Tiffany tossed her blonde hair so that it cascaded in front of her, over her right shoulder. She combed her fingers through it and examined one end closely. Split ends. She decided that she would have to have a treatment. Split ends always led to the frizzies on a humid day. Next she examined the nails on her left hand. She held her hand out in front of her, turning it over, bending her fingers towards her. Her nails were still in good condition and the bright red polish wasn’t chipped. Satisfied, she decided that she could wait a few more days for a manicure.

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Jan 16

‘Vampire Envy’ by Julia Bohanna

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In the last couple of wearisome centuries, I have become extremely tired of my brother’s various affectations. For a start, ages ago he changed his name by deed poll to Drackula when some fat, short-sighted fool remarked on his resemblance to the most famous vampire of them all. It had to be with a “K” you understand; you don’t mess with a brand name like Dracula unless you’re a vamp who wants to be turned to dust by the Elvis of the underworld. So then, geared up with his pretentious moniker, he then wasted many a good hunting night sitting sewing red silk linings into a selection of our mother’s black capes. If that sounds bad, you should have seen the state of him when he insisted upon dying his straggly hair with an ill-advised concoction of blackberry juice, bat’s blood and alcohol. Then there’s the pretentious coffin behaviour. It’s a well kept secret that we vampires favour a little more comfort in our boxes, such as pillows, cushions or even a sneaky duck down duvet. After all, there is nothing better to induce a foul mood than rising from a lengthy daylight sleep with aching vertebrae. Still, he’s a fashion victim of masochistic proportions, my brother. You open the lid and there he is on stark bare wood, with his arms folded across his chest like some joke corpse. Now, I just have to look at that cadaverous face and carved cheekbones that could cut through a dog’s eyeballs, to realise that he is in fact becoming a caricature of himself.

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Jan 13

‘Snippets’ by Amsel von Spreckelsen

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—The Day-to-Day Life of a Faceless Man—

‘The day-to-day life of man is repetition and cliché. Does this then mean that in your usage cliché is cliché? Over-used to the point of meaningless. Or did it never really fit in the first place?

Take a man, he works in an office and travels there every morning on the underground system. ‘It’s all been done before,’ I hear you cry, but can you not see that it makes no difference? The man will continue to travel to his office job by the underground in the morning, and return to his family in the evening. He will still wear his suit, and so will thousands like him. You cannot change that life is a cliché, but you can and you must with art. The man in the suit knows that his life is interchangeable with the man sitting next to him. You, the ‘artist,’ should know that you too can be swapped around and the world would not notice. Everyone is a cliché that has been done to the death. Your job is to allow us to forget that, for one moment, and experience something new.’
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Jan 13

‘Happy Shopping’ by Robert-James Barker

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“Wormwood” she says “I crave the bitter taste of Wormwood Malachite”. Malachite Jones, me. A florid name for someone very drab, all mousy browns and parchment skinned. I can only imagine that when, as a squalling babe fresh to the world my parents (beautiful people both) hoping to bring some colour into my life named me after that glimmering green mineral.

They failed. twenty six and still drab, always trying to affect a manner of faded glamour but never looking anything but wrong. But in my mind, oh in my mind I am technicolour. If the real world is black and white my imagination is the twister that takes me to OZ.
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