Ghosts

Michael Kent could see ghosts.
He couldn’t hear them, though.
He took lipreading classes to learn to communicate with them.
It turned out they were racist.
Even for the 1800s.

Cream

The anti-ageing cream worked. Steve Harrington, civil engineer, 35, stared into the mirror. The face of a seven year old stared back. He had only applied the cream to his face. The effect was unsettling, a boy's head on a flabby, adult torso. He had a meeting with the Sakamoto Corporation at 12. Should he apply it to the rest of him, to even it out? He settled for applying a fake moustache.
If anything, it made his face look younger. 

Boneless

"Boneless Apples," the packing said. "£3.75". Steve Prentice didn't realise that apples could contain bones. But now that this packet had introduced the possibility of it, was he willing to pay extra to ensure that his apples contained no gristle? He was. He placed them in his basket, next to the free range grapes and low fat lightbulbs. 

Product Recalls

1) Tesco is recalling  its own-brand 500g bags of lentils.
They may contain broken glass.

2) Asda is recalling its own-brand 500g bags of broken glass.
They may contain lentils. 

3) Persil is recalling its three litre bottles of non-bio fabric detergent. There is a manufacturing fault in the packaging, which means that the user is likely to lock eyes with their reflection when pouring, and reflect upon the fact that life is transient, morality socially constructed, and that they spend their Saturday afternoon not seeing elderly family members or basking in the company of friends, but comparing the labels on different bottles of fabric softener. Full refunds will be given.

Short Story: The Man Who Broke the Fetish Engine

Publication news: a story what I wrote appears in the latest issue of Popshot (The Fantasy Issue). The idea for this one came from browsing Amazon. I've bought enough stuff on there that the algorithms which predict my purchases have become disconcertingly accurate. The recommendations show me what I genuinely want to buy rather than what I think I want to buy or what I should probably buy... and to be honest, it's not a flattering picture. This story was an exaggeration of that idea, featuring a machine that offers you up the fantasy you really want (not the fantasy you think you want). 

That famous saying

Nature abhors a vacuum.
Dyson hates a hoover.

Stone

Alan Morningside was turning to stone. He'd looked at a gorgon, but over a slow dial-up internet connection. He'd closed the browser as soon as he'd realised what he was looking at, but it was too late. His fingers had ossified. His toes felt stiff. His shoulders felt heavy. 

The stone-ness spread slowly. He quit his job, and did his bucket list. He rode a horse. Saw the pyramids. Sank with dolphins. 

And here he was, four months later. The savings had run out, and the stone extended just past his wrists. Was it wrong to wish it would happen faster?

The Umbrella

David Blake turned into an umbrella. His parents were disappointed, but not surprised. For months now, he had been changing – limbs lengthening, voice deepening, and skin covered in a slick of grease which seemed to bubble up from the surface. The umbrella seemed like a logical climax to that unsettling precursor.

The umbrella was many things that David was not; neat, quiet, and useful. It sat politely at the dinner table. It didn’t rant about the climate emergency.  It didn’t scream that Conservatives were killers and it hated, hated, hated them.

The Blakes continued as usual, dropping David off at school, and collecting him at four from the same kerb. The other parents looked on with pity. They were skeptical. “He’s not an umbrella’, they said. “He’s run away. The umbrella’s what he left behind.” But David’s parents knew the truth.

He was an umbrella now, and it was something of an improvement.