MAN MADE FLASH FICTION BLOG

Not bad, not bad at all, thought Justin. The mobbed precinct had proved a rich hunting ground.      With the stolen cash and phones now tucked safely inside deep coat pockets, he tipped the unwanted wallets, purses, ticket stubs and other detritus into a nearby bin.      But he did pause briefly over a photograph of a young girl. It was stapled to a yellowed newspaper clipping. He must have lifted her mother's purse.      Too bad, he muttered, tossing them into the waste as well, it's a rough old world .      As he readied to leave, Justin spotted an open door - S urely an invitation for any thief , he thought . It was the entrance to a low-rise building, one he'd never noticed before. He went over.      Nobody there, but on the floor just inside lay a velvet pouch containing what felt like small stones. Soon a dozen blood-red rubies sat in his palm.      My, oh my,...

Rifling through your scant possessions, I unearthed the secret. In taking flight that darkened stormy night you were actually saying adieu forever, n 'est-ce pas ? Now hurtling towards inevitability, finding love's old sweet song through a myriad of half-truths and tales untold, you left me drowning in floods of tears. But be careful what you wish for, my lovely; tender is the night, and my platitudinously purple prose, barely meretricious let alone meritorious, continues. Pretentious, moi?     CC BY-ND 4.0 Russell Cavanagh Ecclesiastes 12:8 (KJV) "Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher; all is vanity."  

The barmaid stole a glance at my wedding ring as I picked up the two pints then gave me an enigmatic smile. She was a looker for sure, no pun intended.      "It was Alice suggested the Canny Man," I told my friend Jimmy as we turned to look for a free table. "She's got her sister and some friends coming round for a girlie night in and wanted me out of the house."      Jimmy laughed. "Of all the people, Ross," he said, "I never reckoned you to be one for getting hitched and settling down."      "No, me neither," I said, fingering the shiny silver band gracing my third finger, still light-headed after the recent event.      "Alice is a nice lady, you're a lucky man," he said. I believed him.      We went on to discuss other topics, such as the state of the world, updates on what mutual friends were up to, memories from our time together at college, the usual. Beer and conversation both...

I'm sipping it slowly, thinking he's stood me up, that I made a mistake. Wouldn't be the first time.      We women know we're the prize of Creation. Sure, some of us might think we fall short of the ideal, don't meet the standard suggested by this world, perhaps believing ourselves too fat, too thin, too tall, too short or just plain ugly. But there's bound to be a man out there somewhere, a soul who will show interest nonetheless. It's just a matter of patience, of waiting.      Many years ago I learned to keep my ears open and my mouth closed. That made me feel more intelligent, reserved. More importantly, it also meant I could listen to what a man's words revealed about himself, his personality, about how he really regarded me.      This guy Ross seemed warm and pleasant last week when we met in the local library. By chance, we were both asking the library assistant about requesting the same novel, a newly published CRIME ...

Tim "The longer I'm in this game the more I realize that quantity ≠ quality," moaned Sue, combing her close-clipped nails through short gelled hair, taking care neither to stain her Dior neckerchief nor smear her Holland Cooper tweed jacket.      "Doesn't it depend on context though, on what your criteria are, or do you just mean poor writing skills?" said Tim, eir sperm-donating partner.      "It's a bunch of stuff," said Sue, "such as reliance on tedious tropes, purple prose, not checking spelling or grammar, being utterly unaware of filters and redundancies ... and all the bloody rest."      "Talking about a specific project?"      "These people seem to think it's OK to type whatever comes into their heads then send it in as if it's worthy of serious consideration," she complained. "It wears me down."      "But surely the work of a commissioning editor fundamental...

I find a few particularly interesting facts as I skim his patient record. This guy isn't one of the usual compliant fools I deal with on a daily basis.      First off, he didn't respond to any of our letters offering flu shots to the over-60s. In fact, he doesn't seem to have taken any of the covid jabs either. These facts alone should tell me all I need to know about Ross Cameron.      But secondly, he wrote in recently asking us to stop sending him letters about bowel cancer screening and requests for stool samples. What does he know?      Thirdly, he requested some time ago that we don't share his medical data with Google or any of the other tech companies. Indeed, on recent visits here he's even asked that the doctor or nurse seeing him doesn't use the AI assistant designed to help us record and store notes.      This man is a fruit-loop. An anomaly. Potentially a serious problem.      As ...

My name is Adam Cain. I'm seventy years old and live in Edinburgh. I've something that needs to be said.      When I was a boy living in East Lothian we were very poor. My mother, a single parent, was too proud to claim National Assistance and instead opted to do back-breaking agricultural work.      During school holidays she would send me off to spend the day with the families of her friends until she returned home late each afternoon. I found this arrangement dismal and disorientating, shy lad that I was.      Then late one summer she asked if I wanted to make a few bob working in the fields. Being used to enduring poverty, always making do with second-hand clothes, receiving pre-owned birthday presents, getting my meagre pocket money by returning glass juice bottles for the deposits, I jumped at the chance.      Next day I was on the coach with a team of pickers, all women, rattling along farm roads surrounded e...

Little sl*t sent me a text saying need some daddy . And now looking down at the street I see her walking her pit-bull and heading towards my stair. Unlike those other slags who've turned prematurely into crones, Seona still has a nice figure, slightly boyish, and a pretty face - that is, if you don't look too closely.      Seona knocks, and I unlock the door. She then waltzes through until she's in my bedroom. Her twenty-three years to my fifty-two, skinny jeans and p*nties now at her ankles, she kneels over the edge of the bed. This piece of our business won't take too long.      And now seated in the living room she rolls a blunt as I go and put her package together: Ket and an assortment of jellies - the usual mix - I got from my main supplier only yesterday.      I tell her, "Usual deal. Skim what you want for yourself and charge the punters whatever you like - so long as I get my grand by the end of next month." She's...

"Indira, get the passports ready," said Kash as they approached the gate. His wife complied, and soon they were through and heading for the luggage carousel.      Once outside at the taxi rank they savoured the warm Italian afternoon. Soon they'd be sitting down to eat at their hotel.      "It was a good summer this year Kash, certainly by Scottish standards," said Indira.      "Yes," laughed her husband of almost sixty years, "a mild summer in Scotland is infinitely preferable to baking in Mumbai, just as a warm Indian winter beats freezing in Britain."      Both long retired, Kash and Indira lived on multiple pensions earned working in the UK and in their native country. As usual on their seasonal changes of residence they were making an en-route stopover in Europe, this year Rome. It had become a routine they both prized greatly.      After dining at the hotel the couple sat out on their ro...

Read along while you listen to Canadian story-reader Heather Sherman's treatment of my slice-of-life flash-fiction  Obituary : 😎 The original story, as written: Doob was a soak who drank alone at his regular barstool in his local, where today the dark interior contrasted with a warm sunlit afternoon outside. He had extended his lunchtime drinking, skipped returning to work, had told his employer he would be out of the office to follow up an unspecified list of potential new prospects.      Donald O'Brien hated his job, hated his life.      Looking straight ahead he saw himself nursing his whisky and beer in the mirror sat behind the optics. This ritual he would repeat until, probably some time mid-evening, he would stagger back to the empty home he no longer shared with his wife.      Now well into his early thirties, Doob's hair had thinned and jowls were becoming noticeably pronounced. The creased suit he wore was just as sha...

"Who was that?"      "A blast from the past, Jim London," said Ross, putting down his mobile with one hand and scratching his head with the other.      "You were pretty abrupt with him," said Lesley.      "Yeah, well, fell out some years ago."      "Where did you know him from?"      "When I lived in England. We had one or two common interests, one might say."      Ross was clearly agitated by the call. He'd hoped for a relatively uninterrupted afternoon with his visitor.      "What's he like," said Lesley.      "A unique blend of considerate, kind-hearted, and supercilious dickhead," declared Ross.      "Being a wee bit judgemental there Ross?"      "Nah, just lived experience and keen observation."      "So what was he after?"      "Just what you heard. He's comin...

Two men met me at Central Station. One stood almost a foot taller than the other. I couldn't determine their ages.      My journey in from the coast had been uneventful - isn't that what they say? - and I'd hoped to spend a few hours wandering round the city centre browsing second-hand bookshops, seeing if any of my street friends might be about.      I wasn't at all aware of ever having met either of these two men now in front of me. Their appearance was entirely unexpected.      "Why did you come to Glasgow, Ross?" the taller one asked as his companion turned to observe a crowd of arrivals over on the next platform.      "Boredom," I offered. "I just needed to get away from my small town, to get some city-centre buzz." I had no idea why I was even talking to these guys. And yet, why did it at the same time seem so natural?      "You almost caught us off-guard," said the taller one. "We...

This particular morning, on a Sunday as it happened, I followed my usual daily routine: prayer, Bible, breakfast, all before deciding how to spend another day alone. And as the late summer morning smelt fresh from the previous night's rain, and with the sky promising to brighten, I decided on an early walk.      What better way to start a new day , a new week ? I thought, heading towards Main Street and the promenade beyond. Life's joys, even in this troubled world, tend to be simple when one lives in a small coastal town.      The streets were eerily quiet, and I realized that no traffic moved: no aged drivers heading early to the supermarket, having risen after a sensibly sober Saturday night; no boy racers tearing up the town's back roads in 1.2 litre dinky toys that boasted fancy tires and chrome exhausts costing more than the actual cars, neds and chavs burning off what alcohol and other drugs remained in their systems from the previous ni...

I froze. It was gone. I'd only laid it down while I stopped to survey my new location. But someone had just lifted it from right under my nose and now all the secrets it contained were in hands unknown. I hoped it was them who took it and not some hapless street thief looking for a way to finance their next fix.      It became crucial for me to get out of public view. I needed to avoid CCTV cameras, step away from passers-by and go somewhere I could think. On finding a busy cafe, I ordered coffee and took a corner seat well back from the plate window and the glare of the street outside.      The papers it contained were innocent enough, just fake contracts waiting to be signed by equally fictitious companies. Nothing damning there. But the laptop was an entirely different matter. Sure, it was encrypted - but if it was they who'd now got their hands on it, the game would be over for me. And if it was anyone else took it, they'd eventually be targete...

John climbed the unlit staircase with caution. A smell of old polish filled his nostrils, adding to the damp odour rising off his lambswool.      The top step was the only one out of the entire flight that had creaked and John now turned to search for the right room: It surely had to be the one spilling light out from beneath its oak-panelled door.      He found the door unlocked and walked in, his breathing still labouring after the stair.      Inside what constituted a library sat a man huddled over an old colonial style desk upon which he dealt cards to himself. A cheap cigar hung from his bottom lip. He didn't look up.      "You bring it?" the man grunted.      "Sure," said John. He took off his hat then reached into his inside pocket to pull out a long slim package.      The man gestured towards a cracked leather chair sat opposite his own. "You ready to play?"  ...

Saturday night and Rock Ridge Saloon was in full swing. The ladies from upstairs were plying their trade on the cowhands gambling and drinking away their wages. In the corner a honky-tonk player rattled the keys. The hubbub suggested a good night being had by all.      Then suddenly a cowboy burst through the swing doors shouting, "Big Mongo's a'comin'! Big Mongo's a'comin'!"      Silence hit the room like an express train.      "Big Mongo's headed this way, and he's mad as hell," panted the cowboy.      Everyone in the room drained their drinks and made for the exit.      A few minutes later as the saloon owner finished closing the shutters and made to bar the doors, a huge beast of a man, seven-foot-six at least, barged his way in.      "Whiskey and a small beer," barked the hulk.      "Mister, you can have a whole bottle of whiskey and as much beer as you want. C...

Thing is, this pandemic didn't in fact infect a single living being, certainly not anyone that anybody knew personally. The alleged virus didn't seem to exist anywhere other than in the media, in the mouths of politicians and the so-called scientists, and, of course, in the minds of gullible citizens.      Indeed, the only people suffering injury or death turned out eventually to be those gullible citizens who had taken the jabs, aka the needle, aka the poisoned spear.      Meanwhile, those who resisted by refusing the spike and disobeying orders to stay at home suffered zero unusual symptoms - except perhaps struggling mental health as the world went insane before our eyes. Nonetheless, we dissenters were vilified across all strata of everyday society.      The whole thing was a clear and obvious hoax. It was a charade, a cynical exercise in manipulating the masses worldwide. It was a criminal act of a government occupied b...

"Is it me or is everything getting more miserable by the day?"      "In what way?"      "It's one step forward, two steps back all the time. Whatever I receive in one hand gets taken away by the other, like my life is being manipulated, as if everything's being controlled at every turn."      "Who do you think is behind this?"      "The same people trying to burn the word down right now? I dunno, there does seem to be a connection."      "Every war, if that's what you mean, is certainly a blood sacrifice, one that's part of a greater ritual. Misery makes this world go round - or, rather, flat, ha ha."      "Meaning what?"      "Do you believe there are 'chosen people' carrying out the will of some greater being, on behalf of something in the spiritual realm?"      "Eh ... it does seem that way ... Hey, wait a minute ... You mean ...?" ...