Homecoming I’d say I proved you wrong, Father. I’d say your expectations of me came up short. You said I could never survive without a man to define me; said I could never exist without his protection, his touch, the submission he would demand. But that was before the law brought me to task for my youthful indiscretions. Dragged from my husband by the conscription squad for service in the Public Regiments, I was condemned...

I slept fitfully, mind full of images, half-formed dreams mixed with memories. I knew nothing of what lay beneath the city streets, so I tried not to fear it. But the faces stalked the bulkheads of my mind, harshly exposed and fuzzy, interspersed with abrupt stabs of static, as they had appeared on the television screen. My watch read just before seven when Alison gently stirred me. I came to and looked into her soft feat...

Note: although this can be read as a stand alone story, it works best as a follow on from 'Kon Tiki', to which there is a link below. Hope you enjoy.2: ASYLUM Through the view screen in his private quarters, Major Redford was cursed with a bird’s eye view of the undulating, writhing mountains of flame-coloured gas banking up against the containment field. In twenty four hours the situation had deteriorated rapidly; now on...

In the mountains high above Rio, safe from the chaos on the streets far below we watched as the containment field in the sky above us finally began to falter and die. Beyond it, vast, unknowable tendrils of orange gas, each one the length of a hundred cities end to end, crept and slithered across the sky, like wildfire, flanking our world, preparing to consume it. In the distance the elemental rumble of a million thunders...

SUNSET HIGHWAYS   Encounter I If this works for you, please leave a comment as I just damn well love reading them! I walked towards the little prefabricated, single storey dwelling encircled by bay trees at the far end of the street where, for the last two months, I had lived. In the heat and humidity of mid-morning there were few sounds, bar the gentle whisper of the corn fields beyond the houses. I made my way quickly a...

Exposed to the problems I was having adjusting to civilian life, a good friend of mine had kindly given me access to his trendy, faux-alpine ski chalet in the Cairngorms. He chucked the keys at me, told me to go there, take Rebecca, ski, watch TV and have sex. We needed it. Our relationship was strained and running out of steam. I was distracted and evasive about my business, my activities, my life in general. Rebecca was...

THE ARROGANCE OF YOUTHThe year was 1993 and it was the best and worst of times. The best in that I was young, free and single. mortgages, commitment, financial uncertainty and the concept of ‘fitting in’ were like distant fictional concepts to me. Cheap booze, acid, badly rolled joints and unprotected sex were the reality. It was the worst of times in that faceless club-land dance anthems replete with jingly electric pian...

RELATIONSHIP ADVICE The weather was flat calm and damn hot, the scenery, rolling, wild and as ruggedly beautiful as only the North West of Scotland can be in late summer. It was my first proper holiday in years. I had not long returned home from a taxing six month work assignment that had turned into nearly seven long ones and while it had certainly been hot, there wasn't much relaxing or unwinding to be had. Now, I was o...

SAVAGE LESSON It is one of the unalterable facts of life that women are mysterious. There is no point in trying to rationalise, trying to account for or predict every facet of their behaviour because whatever you think you know is liable to flip over on you revealing a truth you never guessed at. Let me put it another way: You know in those naff horror films where someone looks at their reflection in a mirror? Then they p...