Tumescent Moon

He was walking up to the porch of the house, but this time as he fumbled in his pocket for the keys the door opened to reveal an elderly gentleman in evening dress. "Welcome," he said, "Allow me to conduct you to the ceremony." "Ceremony?" "Yes, indeed! They're all waiting for you, you know. Just follow me." And taking him by the elbow he led Todd down the hallway. But the hallway was not as he remembered it: pale pink, bright and bare. This time it was dark and sombre, with what appeared to be framed religious prints lining the walls. And it was long: they walked down it for what seemed like hours, seeing no sign of the stairs to the upper floor nor the doors to left and right which should have led to the study and living room. But just as Todd was beginning to despair of ever reaching the end they finally got there. Ahead of Todd was the door to the kitchen. "Here we are," said the gentleman, gently nudging hi...

It was the mid-morning of a particularly grey and clinging November day that Todd Ravenhurst crunched across the damp gravel of the drive that led to the house. He paused for a moment, a laptop under one arm, as he contemplated the storm-battered, squat Victorian edifice that he'd purchased on a whim some six months earlier. "Fuck!" he muttered under his breath in satisfaction, "you're ugly." Yes, he thought to himself, two storeys of what must be one of the most depressingly hideous failures of the architectural imagination to be found anywhere in the world, set in bleak and despairing moorlands. Perfect! He'd read about the house in some throwaway magazine - an article entitled Houses Of Doom, or something equally uninspired - and although the article was clearly unadulterated piffle, he'd been sufficiently intrigued by the account of the suicide of the previous three owners, and the gloom that seemed to emanate from the photograph which accom...

CAT LOVER BY JOHN MCCONNOCHIE Can you hear me out there? Can you hear me now that I am unhusked emptiness, now that I am merely a flicker of light at the back of an eye? It was her eyes that captivated me from the first, those fathomless black wells of sin floating in the liquid amber of her irises. I had seen the advertisement - `Pedigree Kittens For Sale’ - in a local paper and, because I had always liked cats, and because I craved companionship - a release from my loneliness - I gathered up my small courage in my hands and phoned. She had my heart from the first; there was something about her - some indefinable grace and delicacy, and of course those eyes - which set her apart from her brothers and sisters, and looking at her I was reminded of the time when I had found a tiny black kitten wandering lost and pathetic and, ignoring my mother’s warnings of disease and the ruin wrought by claws on furniture, had installed it in my room and tended to it for a whole weekend. How eager...

The Raggy Man by John McConnochie The Raggy Man hurried to answer the bell which was tinkling over the doorway of his shop, 'Mortimer's Second Hand Goods'. His name was Mortimer, but everyone called him the Raggy Man and he had not been addressed by his real name for a very long time. The name Mortimer was dignified, befitting someone possibly shabby yet still genteel, whereas he was simply old and smelly and decayed: his body as noisome and decrepit as the ragged old clothes he wore. It was lunchtime and the sign in the window quite clearly said 'Closed', so the visitor must be one of the Raggy Man's very special ones, and he thrilled with anticipation at the thought of the pleasure which was to come. The Raggy Man opened the door which led onto the narrow, dark back-street in which his shop was the only remaining inhabited building. He peered into the gloom of the overcast day and there espied the most favoured visitor of all. "Young Tommy!”, he cr...