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I take a deep breath, wheeze a little from the dust, "Take this road," I say, Harich just bounds around me, skipping over the coon tail straps of his pack. "It's all part of it, part of the whole damn 'moth-candling' thing." Harich grunts, slides off into the edge and kicks up dust into the hot dry air. The desert waits out there, wide, silent, watching. I spit the dust from my mouth, "F' Chris'sake Harich!" Harich falls back to the middle of the road, drops to all fours, wide squat nose tru...

Love is Leaving Jones, dark of a crisp December morning slipping the leash on Olwyn's neck, she’s leaving the harbour of Jones still sleeping behind this dawn steamer, urgently breathing scattering frost like scarred dreams breaking, tolling the quiet pavement, waking the light and the ready to rise, as street lamps are failing, a street at a time switching to grey from bright concrete yellow she crosses the road to the gate and goes in, stands for a moment to study the grass and the marks in...

Artus with ladder Below, where houses brace their shoulders against the spiral of streets that wind around the small hill on which the village finds itself, caught between the weight of Chateau Laroque and the stutter of the sporadic, boulder-strewn Dure-Place river, shutters are closed to baffle the height of the sun. Artus deHoro moves silently among the pavements and the cobbles that litter the roadways, punishing the tyres of lazy cars that, lost, occasionally make their way through the o...

The man sat by the edge of the dune, digging his boots into the sand and trying for one last time to feel a part of the earth, but finding himself slipping away. He lay back, relaxed, allowing the night wind to tousle his hair; the air to condense cold and pale upon the silver suit. The night itself was quiet, except for the wind keening sand across the margin, rustling the drying kelp, and beneath it all the indecent lap, lap, lap of waves careless upon the shingle. He fastened the neck sea...

Red-Stripe Candy “Libby!” Virna Morrell occupied the corner by the slatted french window like a jewelled ornament shrouded in black lace. As she spoke, only her lips moved, only her breath scattered dust motes in the bracketed light. “Comin’ Miss Virna.” Libby’s voice carried in from the kitchen on a wave of cooking smells. There was cabbage, and all kinds of green stuff fresh cut from the garden that was hemmed in by weeds and brought closer to the house each season, now that Hemmings was s...