Dire Log

‘We’ve been much in need of a biblical plague for a while.’
‘We have?’
‘Of course – it’s the perfect thing for keeping all those lazy buggers on their feet.’
‘What lazy buggers?’
‘The general public.’
‘Bugger that.’
‘That’s what got us here.’
‘What?’
‘Buggery.’
‘Sod that.’
‘Yes, that’s what I’m talking about.’
‘What?’
‘Sodomy.’
‘What in buggery’s name are you talking about?’
‘We live in Sodom and Gomorrah.’
‘Where’s [...]

Grit- Hangover

Fairweather friends were not something he was interested in any more – they left him with a sense that he had been fucked over and that there was a debt unsettled; it was something he was uneasy with. He knew people and that was as far as it went – as far as he was [...]

Tales Of The Knotlands: Nor Witch, Nor Folk – 1. Which Lights?

1. Which Lights?
The witchlights burned bright; skulls burned black, stripped of skin, and used to hold small pots of oil that were lit to keep the witches away. She’d travelled about three days by foot to get there and it made her nervous to see the lights still in evidence. Hopefully they wouldn’t try to [...]

Grit: Allowance

He pressed the muzzle into the back of her neck – he was watching her face in the mirror and he saw her bite her lip because it was hot. He’d just shot it into the air to put the shits up her and he knew it had worked. Her eyes were liquid but he [...]

Rhett Herring 1: Have Faith

They didn’t believe me when I told them that I had found Jesus masturbating in the vestry – I said I had kicked the dirty fucker in the nuts but he must have crawled away.They sent me to Heil Mary – the result of a genetic experiment combining strands of DNA from the mother of [...]

Fluid 1

Kent had to stop before the dogs collapsed — dangerous as it was for him to do so; weighing it up against trying to cross the flats without a sled team though it seemed the best option. Traversing the salt flats where the lakes had once been was always difficult and required far more water [...]

Grit: Sonshine 1

Twenty years ago he made a mistake – another mistake; some of them evaporate in an instance and the rest of them hang around to dog you ever after. Grit tried not to make too many mistakes because the ones he did make were fucking momentous. How the hell could he shake this one off? [...]

Grit: Fix 1

He looked into his son’s hollow eyes; saw the pooling fetid blackness of a decayed dream there and knew that without doubt it was his fault that the kid was so irredeemably fucked up. He was not a good father and he never had been – he hadn’t been interested; hadn’t wanted him in the [...]

Grit: Total Fuck-Up 1

A job gone bad – you can tell pretty quickly when something is going to go pear-shaped. He’d had a bad feeling about this one from the get go and he knew he should have just handed back the money and walked away. What had kept him there? Professional pride, greed, something else? Shit, he [...]

Grit: Bling 1

This was his first time in New York and he liked it – liked the size of it; liked the loudness of it. He sensed that the place had some kind of kinship with London; wondered whether that wasn’t true of all these big places. He wasn’t sure yet about the flashiness of some parts [...]