Short Stories Creative writing compiled and edited by Ade Jackson

Positive ........by Phil Emberton

Think positively, I said, leaving the pub alone and stepping into the bite of that slow black October night, that kind of thing doesn't happen round here.
It was the worst kind of attack he could imagine, he said. My bravery was commendable and by apprehending my assailant I had prevented the certainty of more assaults. I found little comfort in this.
The tests on the syringe came back positive. My attacker confessed to the police he had been seeking to avenge 'his injustice', and defiantly rued his untimely capture.
His sentence won't slow my slide to an early grave, but I can see his point of view...

Dumb Animal ........by Gary Smillie

'Animal Hospital', Wednesday night T.V. We listen to the commentary: 'Trawling house to house, day to day, He's been knocked down along the way.' The body on the television's flea-bitten and stray. Its coat knotted and muddy grey. Its nervous, twitching limbs are splayed. But it's not underfed or out of shape and from the look of its once proud collar, inscribed with care, is runaway. Not abandoned - importantly.
'It brought it on itself,' I say, 'Untrustworthy animals, cats are. They stay until they go one day to where the milk is creamier. To fresher cuts and plusher rugs, warmer fires and bigger chairs.' She flashes me clear distaste that lingers as something close to hate. Something sour hangs in the air. But far too tired, she returns her eyes to screen, watches the vet approach with a needle.
Soon the creature wheezes soft to sleep, and it's as much as she can do just not to cry. (Not looking my way deliberately.) The others in the room all sigh in sympathy and synchrony. The operation ends successfully. Warm smiles are thrown around - my side of the lounge snubbed icily.
Later I'll say nothing. I'll leave the room, the house, and walk the streets. To take the rain and dull tar scent. And watch the cars roll up and down, knowing I need an accident.

Perfect Day ........by Ade Jackson

A perfect day for bill posting. Stark winter sunlight, not too much wind, no thunder or lightning, no miasma of the plague. While I pour another cup of water into the bucket of paste to stretch it the extra mile, miraculous sunshine blazes through the dirt on my windows. If I wasn't a gnat's breath short of clinical depression I'd be whooping.
By the time I set off down the street the sun's already beginning to fall behind the Cathedral, burning out the contours of the bell tower.
Fireworks crackle and scream. Bonfire night's getting close now and there's rockets zapping back there over the Avenue. I'm just passing by the Earl of Wessex when Dozey lurches out into the street in a coat nine sizes too big for him and an old floppy hat falling down over his face.
'See you, Kid...' He hiccoughs convulsively and a fine thread of saliva bungy - jumps from his mouth to less than an inch away from the street then half way back again. His eyes are glazed, semi-dead floaters. But they still partially flicker with that old combustion of sympathy and rage.
'You mind n' ... mind y' look after yourself, y' get me? That's all, son…all you's got t' do...'
I knew him in a past life. The two of us working the kitchen of a Tex-Mex eatery down the business end of town. I was on the dishes, punishing a bad back in the steam rising off aluminium sinks built for midgets. Dozey'd been there a while. He'd been promoted to the food counters, and spent all night singing tunelessly to himself, happily chopping up meat and vegetables with a variety of meticulously sharpened knives. Just after midnight my second day, Vicente the maitre d' sweeps into the kitchen and snaps something haughtily at Dozey and our hero opens the fella's left cheek with a bread knife.
'Yeah, you too, Dozey. Look after yourself.'
I briefly touch his arm and pass on up the street. His voice follows me like a take-away wrapper in a breeze.
'Nah, I'm fooked, me, kid. Fooked. Space vampires! They got their daggers in me bowels. Don't let 'em get ya, kid!'
The sunshine's getting sketchy, grey clouds buffeting over the river and the distant bronze of the Liver birds. I'm picking up speed, trying to get warm as I swing down towards the Chinese arch. The ripped and stained plastic bag I'm trying to hide the glue bucket in keeps brushing a cold smear of paste across the leg of my jeans.
It's busy in town, which is all to the good. I've already seen two panda cars and a brace of bizzies on horseback, so by the law of averages I should be safe for at least forty minutes (not that the law of averages has ever held much jurisdiction round here).
Students laughing, bullshitting in their street gear that can't camouflage their accents. All togged-up so like the scallies it's hard to tell the difference. From fifty paces you can't tell if you're about to get slashed by a flick-knife or the edge of a loan cheque.
Then there's all the beggars and the Big Issue sellers. My people. Fools for God, dogs for dope with their broken teeth and diseased legs, their lies and their gaping flies. Some other kind of beautiful. It's easy to pick out the ones that're dying even faster than I am, not so easy to imagine where the fuck they go then. Their own abandoned city maybe - hobbling through eternity, doing their skaghead shuffle, halfway between a moonwalk and a lurch. Trying to cadge off each other because there's no one else there to give them a thing. Either that or they get sanctified by poverty and manage to yell their way to Heaven through the eye of a silver needle. All the Hep Cats with their Hep C antibodies careening through dirty blood. I can't help myself - I love them all. All those who've fallen in love with the patterns of their mistakes, those no longer welcome at the asylum, all the loons that keep on shouting even when no one's there.
In the back street behind the Krazy House I bend down to slosh some more of the gunk onto my brush and catch a pungent blast of urine. All these arse-end doorways serve as unlicensed pissoirs to the lurching hoydens and drunken revellers that batter around the night, marking out damp, smelly stations of the cross. These steaming doorways, man, they've all seen more dick than the great whore of Babylon. But it’s me that gets to bend over and inhale the acrid marrow of their bones, their spent pennies, their gushing libations offered off a cocked leg to the dog-watches of the night. I'm an expert. I can tell what they've been drinking from the crabbed reek of the half-dried pools of urine: brandy, gut-rot, tequila, tabasco, lager, lighter fluid, petrol, nail varnish remover. Acid rain.
The streets are so elemental even the night can't help pissing itself.