All stories

Just in case

by Jenny

I pushed open the door of the common room and spotted the boys playing bloody knuckles by the Coke machine. Eggsy looked up, saw me and nudged Finchley.

“Oi oi” shouted Eggsy “you heard who this one’s asked out then?”

Finchley’s head snapped round to look at me. He’d taken me under his wing and he seemed to feel strangely proprietorial.

“He’s asked out Harriet Peters.” Eggsy hooted with laughter, spraying crisps over the table with tuna mayo breath.

“Really?”

I nodded “Yeah, why not? She’s fit.”

Finchley put a paternal arm around my shoulders and leaned in.

“Listen, you’re new here. There are some girls it’s ok to fancy - like Lisa. She’s fine. Or maybe Helen Cleaver at a push. But Harriet? You don’t wanna go near her - she’s fucking weird.”

“Andrew Jarvis says that he went out with her once and then tried to finger her - took her behind the thistles on the rugby pitch,” brayed Eggsy. “Said he nearly lost his hand, mate. Said she’s got fucking teeth down there.”

Finchley pushed Eggsy away impatiently.

“Shut up dickhead. Whatever you think, she’s weird and if you go out with her, people will think you’re weird too. That, my friend, is the last thing you want.”

I shrugged and stood up to get a can from the machine. This school was nothing like my last place. Even the sixth formers seemed like kids here, and they treated girls like they were some kind of alien species. But sitting with Finchley and them was better than having to sit alone.

When I called at Harriet’s that evening she slipped out without saying goodbye to her parents. She had dark eye make-up and long black hair. Her top had cormorants printed up the back and she looked pretty. We walked down to the rec and I bought us a bag of chips to share.

“You’re brave,” she said with a teasing smile “asking me out. Social suicide for the new kid.”

I shrugged and didn’t answer.

“It’s ok, I know what they say about me. And I know why. Andrew Jarvis is an arsehole. Wouldn’t take no for an answer and couldn’t admit he’d been overpowered by a girl when I broke three of his fingers.”

She giggled and I laughed too.

“This place is pretty different from my last place,” I told her. “Some of the lads are right arseholes.”

“Understatement of the century.”

We walked around until it got dark and then I kissed her under the streetlight outside her house.

“Do you want to come in and listen to music? My parents are out…”

Her eyes looked incredible in the streetlight. I noticed how closely the cormorant shirt followed the lines and curves of her body.

I followed her in and the place was dark, it seemed her parents really were out. I felt my heart hammering in my chest as she led me up the stairs to her room and pulled me inside with a mischievous grin. She didn’t switch on the lights and I felt the warm press of her body against mine.

But despite myself I felt my ears straining to catch the muffled gnashing of tiny teeth in the darkness, just in case.

Ooo, what a lovely bunch of cobbles

by James

Hospitals were a great place for people watching, and in this one Edward had struck paydirt: the maddest and baddest and loudest family of misfits he ever had seen grace the waiting room of any emergency department. He couldn’t quite get them straight in his head. The large Latino looking woman with the huge hair and the majestic gold hooped earrings was the lover of the little guy. But…then, wasn’t she also carrying on with the large black guy, who also somehow appeared to be her long-lost illegitimate son (adopted), and who also happened to be his own uncle – was that right?

Thistle sighed for the fifth time, and then decided to give him a good poke in the chest.

‘Shut up going on, will you? I’m worried about what’s happened, what with Stuart, and the injury. Do you think they’ll be able to reattach it?’

Edward winced, and crossed his legs compulsively. ‘Whoa back there. Let’s not talk about detachment. The worst he’ll get is some bruising. Heavy bruising, yes, but at least everything’s still connected where it should be.’

Thistle made a small noise of frustration. ‘I’m not talking about Stuart and his…you know. I’m talking about the door handle you broke trying to get into his room. What if they won’t give us back our security deposit?’

‘That’s cold.’

‘But do you reckon they’ll keep our deposit?’

‘I think that’s long gone, right around the time of eighties party night. Honestly, cormorants, what were you thinking?’

‘I was thinking I had to get my flock of seagulls haircut spot on so I could win the prize. Which I bloody did.’

‘Of course you bloody did. All the other entrants legged it when they copped a load of razor beaked seagulls pecking at the poached salmon.’

Thistle folded her arms across her chest and harrumphed. She muttered, ‘Would’ve won anyway.’

The double doors leading into the waiting area were thrown back with a crash that turned every head in the place. Edward perked up. It was the pneumatic blonde that he’d seen in the car park throwing a vodka martini into someone’s face. She stalked through the waiting area sashaying her hips and sat herself down in the chair next to Stuart. She sighed theatrically. ‘What a day! What a night! Would you believe that I just met my evil twin sister for the first time and now they want me to donate bone marrow to save her life? Honestly, you could not make this up.’

Edward nodded along. The blonde lowered her designer sunglasses to peer over the top of them at him. A faint hint of disgust was showing in her face. ‘What are you in for? It’s not some poor person’s disease is it?’

‘Not me,’ Edward said. ‘Here with a friend. He…uh. Well. His special friend is of the inflatable variety, and he fancies himself a bit of an inventor. I think he used an old vacuum, and bits from a pasta machine. Let me put it this way. Have you ever heard the phrase vagina detanta?’

Kill Phil

by Russ

You harlot!’ the man announced, his tight jeans not straining even slightly.

‘What did you call me?’ returned the indignant woman with the flushed neck.

‘You harlot!’ he repeated, this time adding a strange sort of underarm flourish, as though reaching to perform a gynaecological exam on an invisible giraffe.

‘How dare… what makes you think...’ the woman flustered.

‘You h…’

‘I’m sorry,’ she turned to the group stood hunched together in the dark. ‘Is this really the script? He just keeps repeating… and nobody even says ‘harlot’ anymore, especially not in...’

‘Just read, please.’ The instruction was barked by the guest director.

‘How could you do this to me?’ the man continued before his scene partner had even reset. He removed his fingers from the imaginary animal’s cavity and touched the back of his hand to his very real forehead instead. ‘As if it wasn’t enough to emasculate me once, you had to...’

‘Emasculate you?’ she wasn’t reading, she was flicking through the pages in confusion. A bead of sweat trickled from the man’s pulsing temple.

‘When we consummated our...’

The woman mouthed the words back in disbelief. She knew this episode would be different, but. Her eye caught the row of three taxidermied cormorants which had been placed in the background of the set, begging only more questions to which she could find no answers.

‘When you severed me. That night. Gelded me with your… your,’ he gulped and looked nervously to the side. His hand, now hanging pointlessly in mid-air, was shaking. He cleared his throat. ‘With your toothy tuppence, your gnashered gash, your serrated snatch, your…’

‘Woah!’

‘Your cuspidioed c…’

‘I said, woah.’

There was an audible gasp of relief from the interrupted orator. His face was reddened as if thistles had been dragged across it.

‘Is he claiming, and please give me a second to try and express this correctly. Is he saying that, on our wedding night, my vagina bit his dick off?’

There was a murmuring in the shadows which, after a moment, was silenced by a deliberate cough.

‘Yes,’ the guest director spoke firmly in a nasal tone. ‘That is exactly what he is saying. Because that is what it says in the script. Do you have a problem with it, dear?’ His tongue followed the last word out as if he was gagging on it.

The woman touched her fingers to her temples and took a deep breath.

‘And what else have I done?’

‘I’m sorry. What else...?’

‘To make him call me a harlot three times in a row?’

Just then, Ross Kemp appeared from the darkness. He wore only a large white pair of boxer shorts. A thick circle of red liquid was soaked around the crotch.

‘Quentin,’ he called out, before realising her was interrupting. ‘Sorry Steve, Letitia.’ He nodded politely before turning back to the director. ‘Quentin, are you sure about all this blood? It’s pretty graphic for tea time.’

The guest director dropped his head into his hands and mumbled.

‘Motherfu…’