SUPPORTED BY UNITED AGENTS The White Review Short Story Prize is an annual short story competition for emerging writers. Established with support from a Jerwood Charitable Foundation Small...
She slides it into her mouth. She lets it grow heavy, take on warmth, breadth and shape, push...
Elia was going to be posted to Iraq next month to work for Doctors Without Borders and this evening had turned partly into his Goodbye Party Currently he was talking about a murder by ‘defenestration’ – there was the murder and then there was the word His way of telling the story was staled with rehearsal, I suspected it was his latest silence filler and we were not witnessing the debut performance John recalling enough of his lone semester at Institut Francais cut in with, ‘oh of course la fenetre! It makes parfait sense’ while swirling his wine glass – a parody of himself It was hard to believe that I had once had a crush on him A while back he told me that he was ‘so jealous’ of me being ‘SO unencumbered by the history of art’, of my ‘authentic atavism’ in relation to my short videos The more time passed the more grating I found that comment His paintings made me think that he was just another person stuck in competition with Rembrandt, propelled by ego and a love of sepia Under his leadership the conversation moved on to the origin of the word ‘essay’ and the current state of the form Sibs walked in with June He had a moustache and a goatee but his wiry pube-beard was better suited to a close stubble or to being clean-shaven He said that he was ignoring us for the past couple of weeks because he had been on a ‘mental health break’ He was freshly out of rehab where he had been sent after spending three days high and drunk and excited The morass of apparent laziness and irresponsibility that rose to the surface suppressed any real concern that anyone but his long-suffering mother could muster for him Elia and John started playing chess on an ornamental set I was thinking of leaving Earlier in the evening this party and my life had seemed full of possibility Now, neither did I’d felt on the verge of something momentous, a vague invincibility but it was fast dissipating along
‘I’m sorry,’ I say, looking straight into the gold flecked eyes, ‘I can’t see another way.’ The round eyes...
Hydnellum Peckii
I used to own the sweetest, smallest compact mirror It was barely bigger than my
thumbnail, which meant you could digest your face in pieces: an iris, a nostril, one freckle
alone in a sea of skin, the corner of your mouth I found it in an antique shop, buried in a
cardboard box full of old rings, chipped enamel, lockets with their mouths firmly shut,
battered gold plate spoons, and semi-precious gems clouded with age My hands came away smelling of metal It was silver, round, and on the top sat a tiny solid silver rose The compact mirror was the only thing I owned that I truly cherished My sister-in-law broke it She said she was just looking for something, a brush or whatever, even though my hair is too thick for brushing and therefore I do not own one Seven years bad luck to break a mirror, especially if the mirror was mine I took the glass pieces and ground them up using the pestle and mortar we had in the kitchen until the glass was quite fine and then I sprinkled it in my sister-in-law’s tuna sandwich that lunchtime I liked to picture the insides of her all cut up and bleeding with a hundred tiny incisions
Agaricus Bohusii
The trees look as if they are growing small pale green shrivelled hands There’s a bite
on my arm: the soft part just up from my wrist, when I turn my hands so that my palms face the sky A red bud, pink blossoming outwards I scratch it until I bleed I like the sound bites and spots make when you pop their pus-filled heads Yesterday I helped cook chili con carne, which was always my husband’s favourite meal, although here the chili isn’t real Neither is the carne The meat, in fact, comes in metal containers with thick foil lids You peel them back like opening tins of cat food It is a weird hybrid of actual animal and meat substitute It tastes like nothing at all, for which we are all truly thankful If they were
