The Press Gang

This piece was written for the Six Sentence Story challenge, with the prompt word of 'distraction'. Davo and his retired mates were watching the TV news at their local pub when a report on the bushfires included a reporter shoving a microphone in the face of a woman whose house had been destroyed, killing her …

Driving yourself to distraction

Bernadette finished primary and secondary school without learning to read (just like her parents), so she couldn’t get a drivers licence or read the labels in the supermarket, but she got a job in a factory when she was 16, until a robot replaced her, so she decided to have a baby. Fergus was 19 …

The myth of Hamish

My entry in this month's Blog Battle with the prompt word of 'myth'. (Revised version of an earlier story.) It was Hamish who first noticed it. We were sitting in the back room of the abandoned offices that were our temporary home when he said ‘You know, we could be brothers.’ I was a little …

Sunburnt London and the cunning cabbie

This is my first overseas trip beyond Asia and my first chance to meet face to face with some of our sister organisations from other countries. We land as the sun is rising in a clear sky. I take the shuttle bus to my hotel on the South Bank and along the way get to …

Angus finds love

Angus Hardy’s heart beat only for the imported American teacher, Miss Anderson. Her Southern accent, as thick as honey, tantalised his pubescent ears and left him silent and still in his appointed place in the classroom. Her green eyes, set in her lightly freckled face, mesmerised him. He imagined they were looking deep into his …

Shout

This piece has just been published on StereoStories . Marysville Hotel, Victoria. 1977 By the time I met the Australian rock legend Johnny O’Keefe in 1977, I was working as a roadie for a middle-of-the-road pub band. They played the classic hits that suburban and country audiences wanted to hear. Hardly rock and roll heaven but …

Remnants from remnants

This piece was written for the Six Sentence story challenge , with the prompt word of 'remnant'. The Oldie Curiosity Shop differed from the other antique, bric-a-brac and charity stores that lined the seafront in the rapidly fading village of Underconstumple in the designated tourist zone known as the Fossil Coast, in that it rented …

The contractual proposal

This version of an earlier story is for the monthly Blog Battle Challenge, with the prompt word of 'proposal'. Flynn had inherited the family farm and it had never occurred to him to do anything else. His father had been a hard and harsh taskmaster and he found it difficult to recall any words of …

The extraordinary abstract … thing.

When it first appeared at the Spendthrift Mall, few people paid any attention to it. Most assumed it was some sort of promotional gimmick and continued their beeline for the supermarket or the specialty shop they came to visit. The sitters were the first to notice. The older folk just wanting to get out of …

For whom does the dead ringer toll?

It was Hamish who first noticed it. We were sitting in the back room of the abandoned offices that were our temporary home when he said ‘You know, we could be brothers.’ I was a little offended, given I’d maintained some level of decency in my attire and appearance in my fall from grace and …