All in all, and pretty much no matter how you looked at it, it had not been a good year.
In March, he had been dumped by Ron, exchanged it would seem for a younger shinier model. He had asked Ron what on Earth he and the twenty-year-old would talk about, and Ron had said, “I don’t want to talk with him.” Continue reading
Perry looks at the roses, starts to turn away, and then hesitates. A cliché, expensive, impermanent, sure… But it would be good to arrive with something.
Yet they have the whole weekend together. He will have time to find her something nice. Something meaningful. He steps to the left, merges back into the flow of commuters and continues to be swept towards the Circle Line. Continue reading
“Cute,” he had said – it was true, that was the word he had used – and it would probably haunt him to the grave. The gay guy who thinks the dormice are, “cute,” would be his handle for evermore, at least within the bounds of this tiny village. Continue reading
“Combining” by Nick Alexander © 2008 – All rights reserved
Sleep evades me. The wind is hurling itself, invisible battalions crashing against the shutters. I imagine that the subsonic thuds are the lines they show on weather maps, smashing to smithereens, cartoon style, on the walls of the building, hopelessly, pointlessly. Continue reading
“Californian Haggis” by Nick Alexander © 2007 – All rights reserved
It is colder up here than he had thought it would be. Of course, he knew that the Poconos were gonna be cold in winter. He had those photos of he and Gina with the snow-capped mountains in the background to remind him of that. But he had somehow romanticized the idea of the cold and in doing so had reduced it to crisp glittering frost and whisky nightcaps and log-fires – images which have nothing to do with the dirty melting sludge outside his doorway, or the fact that he can see his breath as he tries to get the damp kindling in the fireplace to light. Continue reading
“Cold Turkey” by Nick Alexander © 2007 – All rights reserved
It never ceases to amaze him, that thing that life does, how quickly it can switch from one state to another.
A year ago, for example, he had been happily married – and that was no cliché: he had been married, and happy with it. And then one Friday evening he came home, and life did that thing that it does. Continue reading
“Cold And Dry” by Nick Alexander © 2007 – All rights reserved
Kelly lowers the final bag of shopping into the boot of the car and stretches her back which – at the mere thought of unloading at the other end – is starting to ache. She turns to the caddy for the wine. The shopping is heavy, but it is the wine – four bottles in each mini-crate – that she hates carrying the most. And she’s sick of shopping which is unusual for her, but Christmas, well, the list just goes on and on. Continue reading
Alice stares at the Christmas lights, reflected and flashing on the shiny streets of the city below, then she pulls back her focal point and watches as the droplets of rain chase each other down the pane.
“Eight million…” she says quietly. Continue reading
I sat at the edge of the sea today,
And watched the constrained stillness,
I wondered where it came from,
Wondered what the agent of calm was. Continue reading
Nick Alexander 