Short Fiction

Maurice is a short three part children’s story by a writer who remains best known for the gothic horror of Frankenstein. I came upon Maurice by accident and I can hazard a guess that I am not the only gothic fiction reader who wasn’t aware…

You're here on Headstuff having a poke around, so I'm going to assume that you love to read and learn about new things. May I ask you something personal? Why do you read? And what criteria do you use to select the books you read? All…

My lover Venus and I were sitting on our front porch, enjoying a gin and tonic and staring at the sky, when we saw a small speck moving across the face of the sun. I didn’t think much of it at the time. However, later that evening, the…

45 years ago today, man walked on the moon for the first time. And quite frankly, it feels like everyone’s been banging on about it way too much ever since. The moon this. The moon that. Oooh, isn’t the moon wonderful? Isn’t the moon…

The note flapped from the letterbox, not even pushed in far enough to fall through and land with a flutter on the spiny welcome mat that collected stray mud from the soles of our boots. Written in thick black marker pen…

They descended on the abandoned car dealership on the outskirts of town, their headlights flashing in the window of the empty showroom and the sign that read ‘Byrne’s Motors – New & Previously Enjoyed Cars’ faded through neglect to a…

Easy does. Mirror. Signal. Manouevre. Thread the steer wheel through my hands, pull into layby. Then sit with car purring underneath me like, how you say, a sated tiger. A piece of sweat run down my forehead. I wipe on sleeve so it not…

Fourth Class. “D’yeh wanna play chasin’?” He looked up at Max. Max was usually mean; he didn’t want to be tricked. He looked around Max. David, Séamus and James were among the group standing at the door waiting for him, they were…

I’ll tell you all about the fella who lived around the corner there. Gary Traynor was his name. Gary Traynor lived most of his life in, in terror. Now, it was a sort of irrational terror that was based heavily on disgust. To be particular,…