My short stories have been published by Open Pen, Mycelia and Shooter. My next collection, Nature Rules, OK? Is out in 2020.
Extracts
1. Scroll ~ Published by Shooter
The first time I saw her, I was sitting on the top deck of the number 19 bus. The journey had been like any other. I sat there, staring at the sunrise, a cat, another cat, a workout class where none of the women were sweating, another sunrise, another sunrise and there she was, smiling at me in a swimsuit. I don’t know why I stayed with her. It was her expression. Inviting. Or it was her hair. Blowing. Slightly.
I tapped the screen to go to her profile. @oluceps. Who? Maybe I’d met her at a party. Maybe I just followed her because Laura did and Laura always follows girls from places like L.A. that live these beautiful, thin, effortless lives. Yep. That seemed right. I tapped back and scrolled on. More cats, abstract tree, selfie, selfie, selfie, Ed and his new girlfriend. Yuck. Unfollow. More girls working out. Still not sweating. Cat in a pram? And there she was again. Staring at me. This time she was in a coffee shop. Limp palm leaves waved over white tiled walls. A blackboard spouted ambiguous coffees. I recognised it. From somewhere. And there she was, just staring at the camera. But this time her eyes were searching. Looking for something. She looked uncomfortable. Actually, she looked awkward. Maybe it’s a new thing I thought, the #awkwardselfie. I got distracted as I Google searched, how to take #awkwardselfie? only to be jolted back to where I was as the bus halted in traffic outside Piccadilly.
I looked up. And I looked out of the window at the bright flashing lights. Coke. Coke. Coke. Coke. Coke. God I’d love a Diet Coke right now. I looked down at my phone to check the time and found myself seamlessly scrolling, grumpy cat, cat in a hat, man being attacked by cat, funny joke by @thefatjewish, Kayne doing things, sunrise, sunrise, sunrise. And there she was. Sat on a long blue couch. It reminded me of something I’d Pinned on my Dream Home Board. I looked at the untouched copies of lifestyle magazines neatly placed beside her, the soft grey cat laid across her lap. And then I looked at her. Really looked at her. Her eyes were blank. Bored. Instinctively, I lifted my thumb to double tap the image, when the cat jumped off her lap and scattered off. Nothing else moved. I waited for it to loop round and the soft grey cat to reappear. I waited. I tapped the screen. I waited. Some glitch. Bloody phone. I scrolled on through landscapes and seas and birthday parties and holidays and cats and cats and there she was. This time she was sitting at a table. It was a dinner, or a party. It looked quite perfect. White linen strewn over distressed wood with pink peonies gracefully bowing to plates of chanterelles. I looked around the table to see who she was with, but they were blurred or with their backs to me. Hers was the only face I could see. And she was on her phone? She was on her phone. At dinner. God. Why was no one talking to her? She moved again. The picture moved again. Ooh, this was one of those things Laura told me about, some art thing where something moves but everything else stays still. I watched. The light from her phone illuminated her thumb. It was lapping the screen and she was in the fast lane. Up and back and up and back and up and then I saw her. A girl on a bus. And back. Up and back. Up and I waited for the video to loop. I waited. I waited. I scrolled. I restarted. I watched. Nothing. She was just sat at the table. On her phone. Again, I clicked on her profile. Everything I’d seen was there. This beautiful, effortless life. So familiar. But as I scrolled through her pictures all I could see was how lonely she was. Even around people she was alone. Furiously I scrolled and scrolled, looking for some clues to who she was. But the places. So familiar. I couldn’t pinpoint them. A place that looked like any other. She was everywhere and nowhere.
“Excuse me,” The lady next to me indicated that she needed to get off. I grabbed my bags, hurriedly. Dropping my phone into my pocket. I sat back down. Quickly. And pulled it out again to find her. I tapped. Opened. Scrolled. Searched. Scrolled. Restarted. Nothing. I could not find her.
I thought about the girl often. When I ordered ambiguous coffees in white tiled coffee shops. At night, when I lay in my apartment listening to my cat scratching at my new vintage couch. And when I sat with my friends over a linen strewn dinner table - oh wait that’s my phone - sorry - what? Oh yes. And when I sat with my friends over a linen-strewn dinner table. There she was.
2. SPARKLE SLOTH ~ Published by Shooter
Will was sat on the loo playing Sparkle Sloth on his phone. In fact, Will had been sat on the loo for fifteen minutes playing Sparkle Sloth on his phone. He didn’t really have any reason to care about being late for his clients. Because he didn’t really care. People spent a long time in the loo. It was none of their business anyway. Not even when he had excused himself, left his editing desk and taken his rucksack with him. No one questioned if he was going home. They were too busy on their phones to notice.
Sparkle my little sloth. Sparkle. He said to himself. In the loo. This was the latest game to top the App Store and the World was playing it. Mums had forgotten to pick up their kids from school. Kim Kardashian had already tweeted her highest score. Andrew Marr was a fan. The rules were simple. Don’t wake the sloth. The sparkle part was the noise the sloth made when he snored. Winkle-tinkle- tinkle-t ing. Winkle-tinkle- tinkle-t ing.
Winkle-tinkle- tinkle-t ing. Winkle-tinkle- tinkle-t ing. He snores. You watch. After the Sloth has had enough sleep, you move up to the next level, where he sleeps again. It took great skill to play. Patience. Waiting. Not doing. There were high scores. And higher scores. In fact, no one had reached the highest score. That was the aim, you see. Every one's aim.
There was a knock at the bathroom door. “I’m off now, Will. The guys are still in the edit suite”,
“OK, thanks” he shouted back. “I’ll be a minute”.
But he wasn’t a minute, Ten, twenty went by. Winkle-tinkle- tinkle-t ing.
Winkle-tinkle- tinkle-t ing. One hour. Winkle-t inkle-tinkle-t ing. T wo hours.
Winkle- tinF UCK. His phone died. FUCK FUCK FUCK. For the first time in two hours, he looked up. And he looked in the mirror hanging opposite him. God he looked tired. Yellow. Older. FUCK. It’s time to go home, he thought. It’s time, for once, to go home on time. He went to stand up, but he couldn’t move. His legs wouldn’t move. He couldn’t feel anything. FUCK. He started to slap them. FUCK. Nothing. Panicking now, he tried to roll forward. To roll his whole body forward. FUCK. Nothing. He was stuck. He was stuck on the loo. “I’m stuck on the fucking loo”, he thought. He thought about other things too. About his job. The job which meant so little. The job that gave his so little time to spend with the people he cared for. He cared for Sarah. Sarah who would leave real food for him when he got home, although he always ate whatever over-priced-over-salted-crap the clients had. Because it was there. Because they paid and he was broke. Too broke to buy a house. A house that he wanted to live with Sarah in one day. One day when he might have time. Time to talk to Sarah about having a house. A house with two bedrooms. Bedrooms with beds. Beds they could sleep in. Sleep together in. Sleep together instead of just lying next to each other. The other on the phone. On the phone playing Sparkle Sloth. Sparkle my little Sloth. Sparkle. Winkle. Tinkle. Winkle. Tin...
They found him in the morning. Sat on the loo. Trousers around his ankles. What peace, they thought, as they watched him, eyes closed, winkle-tinkle-tinkling.
3. PLEASE SHOWER BEFORE ENTERING THE POOL ~ Published by OpenPen
I’m going to tell you a secret, I pee in the public showers at the swimming pool.
It all started when I attempted butterfly stroke and swallowed half the slow lane. In the showers, I stood under the running water and an uncontrollable urge came over me. It just shot out. Fast. Warm. Wobbly. Across the steam, I looked at the other swimmers busy squinting for their miniature shampoos. The trickle down my leg got stronger.
It quickly becomes a habit. I’d lather with the strongest smelling soap I could find and watch the yellow stained foam flow past abandoned conditioners and down into the hair clogged drains. I’d hold conversations with other swimmers, locking my eyes with theirs as my toes giggled.
One day, I am at the pool. In the shower. In the middle of a gloriously large release when “excuse me”. I freeze. Clench. My shower stops. We both dribble. “I’m awfully sorry but could I borrow some shampoo?” asks a man in incredibly tight red trunks. “Of course,” I say as I pass him my miniature bottle. We strike up conversation. I push the tap again, stand with my back to the slippery tiles and let go.
He waves to me from the fast lane. I swim on my back, floating my breasts above the surface. We rest at the end of the lane for casual chats about the weather and laugh at the sleeping lifeguards. Sometimes he comes into the slow lane and we float together. Weightless. Side by side. Like manatees.
Three weeks after we first met, he invites me to dinner. We meet outside the pool and see each other in clothes for the first time. His shirt matches his trunks. We laugh about the lifeguards.
The restaurant is steady. Hard lighting strikes the sharp corners. I feel giddy on solid ground and reach out for his arm. He takes mine. Wine flows. Food pours. We both choose lamb. He orders extra asparagus. I drink too much. The colours splash on our plates. We eat. We drink. We flip our feet together under the table. Outside the restaurant, he plants a slippery wet kiss on my cheek. We arrange to meet the next morning underwater. I float home.
I arrive at the pool to find he has already entered. As I walk in I see him powering up and down the fast lane. Every third stroke his face surfaces and I try to catch his gaze. He does not acknowledge me. I wait till he reaches the end of the lane but he flips himself over and swims on. I slip my body into the water and escape under its pearly surface. As I glide forward, the hangover clinging to my back slips off and falls away. I close my eyes. Last night drifts into the distance. I come back up and see two eyes twinkling at me through steamy goggles.
We float together until it is time to get out. We head to the showers. I always arrive at the pool wearing my swimsuit under my clothes, but in my giddy getting ready, I realise I have forgotten to pack both my shampoo and my pants. He suggests I borrow some. I notice a clump of hair stuck to the tiles. Pushing the tap the hot water runs it away.
“I had fun last night” he whispers through the running water. His expression is so joyful that I quiver. We are lost in the moment. But as he holds my gaze, a salty sulphuric smell slowly fogs my nostrils. I am reminded of asparagus.
I look down to see a yellow trickle flow down his right leg into the hair clogged drain. I can hear his toes giggling.
1. Scroll ~ Published by Shooter
The first time I saw her, I was sitting on the top deck of the number 19 bus. The journey had been like any other. I sat there, staring at the sunrise, a cat, another cat, a workout class where none of the women were sweating, another sunrise, another sunrise and there she was, smiling at me in a swimsuit. I don’t know why I stayed with her. It was her expression. Inviting. Or it was her hair. Blowing. Slightly.
I tapped the screen to go to her profile. @oluceps. Who? Maybe I’d met her at a party. Maybe I just followed her because Laura did and Laura always follows girls from places like L.A. that live these beautiful, thin, effortless lives. Yep. That seemed right. I tapped back and scrolled on. More cats, abstract tree, selfie, selfie, selfie, Ed and his new girlfriend. Yuck. Unfollow. More girls working out. Still not sweating. Cat in a pram? And there she was again. Staring at me. This time she was in a coffee shop. Limp palm leaves waved over white tiled walls. A blackboard spouted ambiguous coffees. I recognised it. From somewhere. And there she was, just staring at the camera. But this time her eyes were searching. Looking for something. She looked uncomfortable. Actually, she looked awkward. Maybe it’s a new thing I thought, the #awkwardselfie. I got distracted as I Google searched, how to take #awkwardselfie? only to be jolted back to where I was as the bus halted in traffic outside Piccadilly.
I looked up. And I looked out of the window at the bright flashing lights. Coke. Coke. Coke. Coke. Coke. God I’d love a Diet Coke right now. I looked down at my phone to check the time and found myself seamlessly scrolling, grumpy cat, cat in a hat, man being attacked by cat, funny joke by @thefatjewish, Kayne doing things, sunrise, sunrise, sunrise. And there she was. Sat on a long blue couch. It reminded me of something I’d Pinned on my Dream Home Board. I looked at the untouched copies of lifestyle magazines neatly placed beside her, the soft grey cat laid across her lap. And then I looked at her. Really looked at her. Her eyes were blank. Bored. Instinctively, I lifted my thumb to double tap the image, when the cat jumped off her lap and scattered off. Nothing else moved. I waited for it to loop round and the soft grey cat to reappear. I waited. I tapped the screen. I waited. Some glitch. Bloody phone. I scrolled on through landscapes and seas and birthday parties and holidays and cats and cats and there she was. This time she was sitting at a table. It was a dinner, or a party. It looked quite perfect. White linen strewn over distressed wood with pink peonies gracefully bowing to plates of chanterelles. I looked around the table to see who she was with, but they were blurred or with their backs to me. Hers was the only face I could see. And she was on her phone? She was on her phone. At dinner. God. Why was no one talking to her? She moved again. The picture moved again. Ooh, this was one of those things Laura told me about, some art thing where something moves but everything else stays still. I watched. The light from her phone illuminated her thumb. It was lapping the screen and she was in the fast lane. Up and back and up and back and up and then I saw her. A girl on a bus. And back. Up and back. Up and I waited for the video to loop. I waited. I waited. I scrolled. I restarted. I watched. Nothing. She was just sat at the table. On her phone. Again, I clicked on her profile. Everything I’d seen was there. This beautiful, effortless life. So familiar. But as I scrolled through her pictures all I could see was how lonely she was. Even around people she was alone. Furiously I scrolled and scrolled, looking for some clues to who she was. But the places. So familiar. I couldn’t pinpoint them. A place that looked like any other. She was everywhere and nowhere.
“Excuse me,” The lady next to me indicated that she needed to get off. I grabbed my bags, hurriedly. Dropping my phone into my pocket. I sat back down. Quickly. And pulled it out again to find her. I tapped. Opened. Scrolled. Searched. Scrolled. Restarted. Nothing. I could not find her.
I thought about the girl often. When I ordered ambiguous coffees in white tiled coffee shops. At night, when I lay in my apartment listening to my cat scratching at my new vintage couch. And when I sat with my friends over a linen strewn dinner table - oh wait that’s my phone - sorry - what? Oh yes. And when I sat with my friends over a linen-strewn dinner table. There she was.
2. SPARKLE SLOTH ~ Published by Shooter
Will was sat on the loo playing Sparkle Sloth on his phone. In fact, Will had been sat on the loo for fifteen minutes playing Sparkle Sloth on his phone. He didn’t really have any reason to care about being late for his clients. Because he didn’t really care. People spent a long time in the loo. It was none of their business anyway. Not even when he had excused himself, left his editing desk and taken his rucksack with him. No one questioned if he was going home. They were too busy on their phones to notice.
Sparkle my little sloth. Sparkle. He said to himself. In the loo. This was the latest game to top the App Store and the World was playing it. Mums had forgotten to pick up their kids from school. Kim Kardashian had already tweeted her highest score. Andrew Marr was a fan. The rules were simple. Don’t wake the sloth. The sparkle part was the noise the sloth made when he snored. Winkle-tinkle- tinkle-t ing. Winkle-tinkle- tinkle-t ing.
Winkle-tinkle- tinkle-t ing. Winkle-tinkle- tinkle-t ing. He snores. You watch. After the Sloth has had enough sleep, you move up to the next level, where he sleeps again. It took great skill to play. Patience. Waiting. Not doing. There were high scores. And higher scores. In fact, no one had reached the highest score. That was the aim, you see. Every one's aim.
There was a knock at the bathroom door. “I’m off now, Will. The guys are still in the edit suite”,
“OK, thanks” he shouted back. “I’ll be a minute”.
But he wasn’t a minute, Ten, twenty went by. Winkle-tinkle- tinkle-t ing.
Winkle-tinkle- tinkle-t ing. One hour. Winkle-t inkle-tinkle-t ing. T wo hours.
Winkle- tinF UCK. His phone died. FUCK FUCK FUCK. For the first time in two hours, he looked up. And he looked in the mirror hanging opposite him. God he looked tired. Yellow. Older. FUCK. It’s time to go home, he thought. It’s time, for once, to go home on time. He went to stand up, but he couldn’t move. His legs wouldn’t move. He couldn’t feel anything. FUCK. He started to slap them. FUCK. Nothing. Panicking now, he tried to roll forward. To roll his whole body forward. FUCK. Nothing. He was stuck. He was stuck on the loo. “I’m stuck on the fucking loo”, he thought. He thought about other things too. About his job. The job which meant so little. The job that gave his so little time to spend with the people he cared for. He cared for Sarah. Sarah who would leave real food for him when he got home, although he always ate whatever over-priced-over-salted-crap the clients had. Because it was there. Because they paid and he was broke. Too broke to buy a house. A house that he wanted to live with Sarah in one day. One day when he might have time. Time to talk to Sarah about having a house. A house with two bedrooms. Bedrooms with beds. Beds they could sleep in. Sleep together in. Sleep together instead of just lying next to each other. The other on the phone. On the phone playing Sparkle Sloth. Sparkle my little Sloth. Sparkle. Winkle. Tinkle. Winkle. Tin...
They found him in the morning. Sat on the loo. Trousers around his ankles. What peace, they thought, as they watched him, eyes closed, winkle-tinkle-tinkling.
3. PLEASE SHOWER BEFORE ENTERING THE POOL ~ Published by OpenPen
I’m going to tell you a secret, I pee in the public showers at the swimming pool.
It all started when I attempted butterfly stroke and swallowed half the slow lane. In the showers, I stood under the running water and an uncontrollable urge came over me. It just shot out. Fast. Warm. Wobbly. Across the steam, I looked at the other swimmers busy squinting for their miniature shampoos. The trickle down my leg got stronger.
It quickly becomes a habit. I’d lather with the strongest smelling soap I could find and watch the yellow stained foam flow past abandoned conditioners and down into the hair clogged drains. I’d hold conversations with other swimmers, locking my eyes with theirs as my toes giggled.
One day, I am at the pool. In the shower. In the middle of a gloriously large release when “excuse me”. I freeze. Clench. My shower stops. We both dribble. “I’m awfully sorry but could I borrow some shampoo?” asks a man in incredibly tight red trunks. “Of course,” I say as I pass him my miniature bottle. We strike up conversation. I push the tap again, stand with my back to the slippery tiles and let go.
He waves to me from the fast lane. I swim on my back, floating my breasts above the surface. We rest at the end of the lane for casual chats about the weather and laugh at the sleeping lifeguards. Sometimes he comes into the slow lane and we float together. Weightless. Side by side. Like manatees.
Three weeks after we first met, he invites me to dinner. We meet outside the pool and see each other in clothes for the first time. His shirt matches his trunks. We laugh about the lifeguards.
The restaurant is steady. Hard lighting strikes the sharp corners. I feel giddy on solid ground and reach out for his arm. He takes mine. Wine flows. Food pours. We both choose lamb. He orders extra asparagus. I drink too much. The colours splash on our plates. We eat. We drink. We flip our feet together under the table. Outside the restaurant, he plants a slippery wet kiss on my cheek. We arrange to meet the next morning underwater. I float home.
I arrive at the pool to find he has already entered. As I walk in I see him powering up and down the fast lane. Every third stroke his face surfaces and I try to catch his gaze. He does not acknowledge me. I wait till he reaches the end of the lane but he flips himself over and swims on. I slip my body into the water and escape under its pearly surface. As I glide forward, the hangover clinging to my back slips off and falls away. I close my eyes. Last night drifts into the distance. I come back up and see two eyes twinkling at me through steamy goggles.
We float together until it is time to get out. We head to the showers. I always arrive at the pool wearing my swimsuit under my clothes, but in my giddy getting ready, I realise I have forgotten to pack both my shampoo and my pants. He suggests I borrow some. I notice a clump of hair stuck to the tiles. Pushing the tap the hot water runs it away.
“I had fun last night” he whispers through the running water. His expression is so joyful that I quiver. We are lost in the moment. But as he holds my gaze, a salty sulphuric smell slowly fogs my nostrils. I am reminded of asparagus.
I look down to see a yellow trickle flow down his right leg into the hair clogged drain. I can hear his toes giggling.