Fiction Archives | Giramondo Publishing

Your basket is empty.

Fiction

Lately, I was scared around Elena. At the same time, I never wanted her to know just how deranged she made me, so in moments like these I became unresponsive and obtuse. I hunched my shoulders and let my face go slack; I looked a little dim. I couldn’t help picturing myself as Gerard Depardieu. It was oafish, I knew, but so far I hadn’t landed on a better invocation.

Each mouthful was the same, another northern Italian dish informed by butter, challenging her imagined ideas of this country. She hadn’t felt anything in Milan yet that she hadn’t already felt at home. But when she got to the bottom of the plate, she had the thought that to be a tourist is to be a spectator, and that to be a spectator means making a wordless oath to passive observation. Which was a role that Helen had never respected in anyone she’d ever known.

That’s it. Enough! I will no longer say hello to the man from the piazza. From now on, I will turn my head, or pretend I haven’t heard him greet me, or I may even glance at him with a disgusted expression. That’s what he deserves. He thinks he can make a fool of me. I met him right there, in front of my building on the corner of a small piazza.

‘I’m going to clone Rick,’ she once said to Megan. ‘Just give me a strand of his hair and I’ll make a duplicate.’ But that kind of talk made Megan nervous. Not that Jamie had any intention of cracking on to someone’s husband. But now, sitting on the edge of the bath, Jamie was careful to keep space between Rick and herself, to keep the conversation light.

She turned towards Didier but tried to avoid looking at him. He bent his hair into her face as he kissed her neck. Then he pulled off her jumper. Her arms collapsed though the sleeves. She had retreated to the furthermost point of her mind and it was from there that she heard him as he busied himself with her zipper: a vagueness, a proximity only. She felt the sly removal of her underwear with some surprise. But how the surprise? What was she thinking?

The flat was dark and the light on the landing went off automatically after twenty seconds. At first, because of the darkness, I didn’t realise she was naked. You’re going to freeze, I said when the landing light came on again and showed her standing there, very straight, thinner than before. Her stomach and legs, which I had kissed so many times, looked terribly helpless, and instead of feeling drawn towards her, I was chilled by the sight of them, as if I were the one without clothes.

The Levys tried to live with Villana, and without their mother. At first, there was some pleasure to be found in watching Villana navigate domestic life. She laughed like she was being murdered. She ran like every bone in her body had been broken. She sang like a collapsing star. She tore the mattress in the guest bedroom open and slept inside it, her wretched body compressed and folded up among the springs.

What I am about to tell you is the truth. I witnessed it with my own eyes; and I am a reliable person. I have often been complimented on my reliability. I have won awards. I would not have obtained my present job – as the senior public relations officer for a respectable company that makes chemicals and plastics – if I did not appear to be trustworthy and believable.

About fifteen months ago, I became determined to realise a dream I had – to be a guest star on The Muppet Show. I had already spent a few years watching The Muppet Show and fantasising that I was the person being surrounded by Muppets and singing with them. Now I wanted to see if I could actually appear on The Muppet Show. So I set about contacting the producers of the show and thus entered into a protracted series of secret negotiations with them.

For a moment, the scholar looked at the blank sheets of paper from where his writings had now disappeared. He had written some serviceable prose to theorise about the rhyming patterns in a volume of classic Confucian poetry, but Wu’s beauty was better formed and more persuasive. The scholar put down his brush and walked over to Wu, who smiled and raised his head to meet the scholar’s kiss.

Simone couldn’t read Englishmen. Men of any nationality for that matter. Andrew was relatively simple. Always happy to be enthusiastic about Simone, provided she was enthusiastic about him. Otherwise, bets were off. Now Simone found herself with mixed feelings. Big Ken would disappoint her if he made a pass, yet she would be equally disappointed if his obvious attraction to her wasn’t charged with the man’s characteristic hunger.

I would like to state, for the record, that Dr Routledge did not ask me to send this email, nor ask that I intervene on his behalf in any way. I write to you of my own accord, for the simple reason that I would not be the student, nor the person, I am today, without Professor Gavin Routledge.

The finale was majestical. Dearo, dearie, the explosion was holy in its glory. All of it was gone. The whole mine, pride of the banana state, ended up looking like a big panorama of burnt chop suey. On a grand scale of course because our country is a very big story. Wonderment was the ear on the ground listening to the great murmuring ancestor, and the earth shook the bodies of those ones laying flat on the ground in the hills. Then, it was dark with smoke and dust and everything turned silent for a long time.

How to believe in a God who brings suffering into the world and grants us peace without considering our sorrows, thought Jacinto, tottering like a small child. In one hand he held a half-empty bottle of rum and in the other the revolver he took from his mother. More than thirteen years had passed since his father died; in all that time he had never felt as alone as today, when Francisca confessed to him on her knees that the child wasn’t his and she was carrying a monster in her belly.

The kangaroo suddenly stood up, shaking the car heavily as it rose. It stood a good two metres above the bonnet and leered through a bloody eye at them, bleeding mouth open, showing enormous yellow rat teeth. Samir, Amin, Ilham and Zeen screamed and slammed back rigid in their seats. The kangaroo raised its fists and began beating wildly at the bonnet. They could feel it kicking and tearing at the radiator.

‘I’m home!’ he announces, mock-joyous. He steps and gestures, uncoiling his left hand towards her. He is both the Kelly boys, Gene and Ned. Luisa says nothing to him. She smirks at Sam’s dance, but she refrains from telling him out loud how lacking in grace he is. She could have said something, but his moves weren’t that bad. She would have been lying. Instead, she talks to someone else.

1
2
3
→