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Prophesy
Posted on November 25, 2014 3 Comments
Larni’s fingers grip the steering wheel, knuckles whitening. Nanna didn’t sound well on the phone. She sounded old and tired. A large shape on the road catches her eye. A full-grown wedge-tailed eagle picks at the bones of a mangled carcass, the latest road-kill victim of a hurtling road-train. She doesn’t have time for this.
Ladoo lies and love
Posted on October 9, 2014
“Can you guess how old I am?” she giggles, shoulders back, a few stray white hairs escaping the tight bun at the back of her head and snaking around her high cheekbones. The only lines on her face are the creases at the side of her mouth as she smiles. “Come, tell me. Can you […]
Wonderland Falls
Posted on October 5, 2014
Alice stands facing the door, her hand quivering the key to the lock. The weighty shawl of barely acknowledged memories shifts uncomfortably across her shoulders. Were her white linen and lace wish-memories usurping the real events that occurred in this place? Her mind tumbles, stumbles, hurtles backwards through blurred images, pitching and tilting through […]
Hide And Seek
Posted on October 5, 2014
Marli sits in the dark, her knees drawn up to her chin, her breath coming in short sharp bursts. She is certain he can hear her heart beating; it’s hammering so loudly that her ears are reverberating. Her chest aches from where her knees are squeezed in tight by her arms. She makes herself as […]
Rotting Fruit
Posted on October 4, 2014
Like rotting fruit she hung from the branches of the tree. Arms aching, tear-stained face, knees scraped. How long had she hung there? She had run, the gang of kids behind her, laughing, taunting, cruel adult-child voices rising in derision.
The Tooth Fairy
Posted on October 4, 2014
Glimmer waited till the room was perfectly still, dark as pitch, and she could hear the child breathing steadily. Wings beating rapidly in a continuing figure of eight, an infinity of flapping, she hovered above the sleeping child. She’d once seen a hummingbird hovering for nectar at a honeysuckle, body perfectly still, wings beating furiously, […]
Gone Troppo
Posted on October 4, 2014
Jack set off for the deli and his paper. It was always the same at this time of year; the air, pregnant with moisture, waiting for her waters to break, ankles swollen, and lumbering with each day. Everywhere he went, Jack ran into yet another pressure-cooked person, red-faced, puffing, sweating like they’d just come out […]
Thin Blue Line
Posted on October 4, 2014
She sat at the laminate table, head in her hands, completely spent. She had cried a lifetime’s quota of tears and there was no moisture left in her. She had become a desert of emotions, devoid of even the ability to smile wanly at her friends’ efforts to amuse her. The trajectory of her […]
Water Wings
Posted on October 4, 2014
For as long as she could remember Miriam had been “slowpoke”. The early polio, and later callipers on her legs had given her an awkward gait. She had tried to fit in with the others, waddling eagerly behind the tumbling, giggling group of friends.
First Day Blues
Posted on October 4, 2014
The key turns smoothly in the lock. She listens for the familiar click as the bolt draws back. Her hand reaches for the knob. A gentle turn and push. The door opens on the quiet dark beyond.
Asha Rajan 