The nail in the wall
IT WAS SUNDAY. MÓNICA WANTED to hang a picture on the wall, a small Walter Lazzaro reproduction, and I didn’t want to. The wall wasn’t actually a wall, but one of the four square columns that delineate the perimeter of the room. It’s a narrow column, but wide enough to hang a small picture on...
Present perfect
“IT’S ABOUT TIME WE ACKNOWLEDGE IT: people are not very good at remembering things the way they really happened. If an experience is an article of clothing, then memory is the garment after it’s been washed, not according to the instructions, over and over again: the colors fade, the size shrinks, the original, nostalgic scent...
Sunbleached
“WE’RE GOD’S BEAUTIFUL CREATURES,” the vampire said, something like joy leaking into its voice for the first time since it had crawled under this house four days ago. “We’re the pinnacle of his art. If you believe in that kind of thing, anyway. That’s why the night is our time. He hangs jewels in the...
Under the circumstances
SWEET AIR, DIVINE LIGHT! How long have we waited for this happy sight? This ancient city, its sun-baked streets, the Acropolis in the distance, raging with light. We are here, so it begins. The first night. Everybody orders wine. It comes in little jugs called carafes. Red or white, it doesn’t matter. We simply ask...
The short story vs. the novel
SOME WRITERS BELIEVE short stories are harder to write than novels. They may put this down to every word having to count in a short story, while in the novel the narrative is allowed to meander. Although this is true to an extent, it would be foolish to think the novel is the easy option,...
A perfect life
THERE WAS SOMETHING WRONG with the garden. You couldn’t see it, nothing was obvious. There were no strange plants organised in certain shapes, or sinister looking growths and weeds; the paths were orderly, and the lawns. Roses grew, and pinks, in the places that had been set there for them, and in autumn, berries came...
Dark, ingenious and daring: Pretty Ugly by Kirsty Gunn
THE WAY PEOPLE TALK ABOUT short stories often inclines to silversmithing analogies: burnished, finely wrought, beautifully crafted. That, or Fabergé eggs. And we say short story collection rather than group. Collection suggests careful selection from an array of available possibilities, white daisies on a vast lawn. In the afterword of Pretty Ugly, a collection of...
Homunculus
“Her hair was blonde, but more white-blonde than yellow, see?” Charles focuses on where the man’s shaking finger stabs the photograph. Its subject is wrapped in a red sundress with daisies vivid enough to be real raining diagonally across the fabric. Strands fly loose from her ponytail like wisps of raw cotton in the wind....
A summer night
I WAS APPROACHING ST. VITUS CATHEDRAL from the Old Castle Stairs. Night had fallen, and the first stars were appearing in a clear sky. The chancel – a black silhouette of columns, flying buttresses and pinnacles – rose before me. The castle’s courtyard opened up to my left. The place was deserted and so quiet,...
Arianespace
IT’S THE LAST ONE IN THE VILLAGE. RUMOUR HAS IT she’s outlived most and chased away the rest, that’s how they talk about her in these parts, where her first name is all that’s needed: Ariane. According to the police report, she is ninety-two years old, and what I hope, as I park my car...
Spooky houses with eerily lit windows
The image is instantly recognisable to horror fans: a foreboding house, a darkened sky, a single illuminated window. Maybe a figure stands silhouetted against the window’s yellow glow. Maybe the house is in a state of disrepair – forked cracks at the foundation and creeping vines strangling the porch rails. To me, a lifelong lover...
Anita and happiness
Pablo detested Anita because he couldn’t prove what he’d suspected ever since they’d met: that she was an alien. He hated her name because it wasn’t Ana, plain and simple, Ana with real problems like cellulitis, unpaid bills or anxiety brought on by the knowledge that human beings are a mere parenthesis between two unknowns....
