Accio World

We all know about lightning. That sudden searing flash of light and heat, an instant release of energy that thrills the onlooker in its immediate and glorious destructive display, so quickly over with it needs an accompaniment of drum-roll thunder to keep the audience alert for its reappearance. It’s magnificent at a distance, terrifying when […]

Muse

The pen scratched on the page. The words crawled slowly in the wake of the nib. They were weak and empty things, and there was no life in them. I looked down at what I had written and sighed. “It was a dark and stormy night…” A trite sentence, the latest in a series of […]

sin.dex

Asmodeus, a great king, strong and powerful, was supposed to have appeared with three heads (bull, man, ram). It had taken weeks to beg, borrow and steal the ingredients for the incense. It had taken days to obtain candles – real candles – from the undermarket: Unregistered products were forbidden by the Syndic.

Apparition

Edmund Jenkin was not an old man but he was weary and reaching the end of his resources. He had been waiting for his caller who was overdue by an hour and he was worried. The weather was bad but that was not what concerned him. What concerned him was that the time was bad, […]

The Cure

Eddie was a bright guy. I met him at college where he was studying literature and poetry and he had a real passion for it all. He had a gift with words and loved a well crafted phrase loaded with booby-trap cleverness.

Landslide Victory

Do you remember when you were a child? Alone and hungry and crying for a mother that was beyond hearing?

Magic Dragon

He was sitting untouched by the noise and movement around him, day-to-day face glued to his head, perfectly convincing. His hands moved over the keyboard, marionette appendages on strings of habit.

First Page

The House of Stories

I wrote this ten years ago (heavens!) as part of a Phantom of the Opera fan event. It’s a short piece of fiction set during the formative years of the eponymous character and is connected to the character of the novel as opposed to any of the movie or theatrical interpretations. It is also the […]

“You’re a shaman, Harry”

“I’m a — what?”