I’m totally thrilled and excited to say that my latest short story, The Locust Theorem, has just been published by Fairlight Books. It’s online, it’s free to read right here, and is a lovely bit of sci-fi fun to get you through to the weekend.
The story takes about twenty minutes to read and follows Andy Anderson, a struggling geneticist trying to come to terms with the loss of his girlfriend – and if that doesn’t grab you, here’s an excerpt:
The first indication I had that something might be wrong was the day the builders came. They had set up scaffolding outside the hotel and, as Su was passing under it, one of them dropped a knife. It sailed four floors down, point-first, straight towards Su’s face. She looked up just in time for it to hit her. There was a sharp sound, like a blade against granite, before the knife fell to the ground and clattered away across the forecourt. Su was shaken but not hurt, aside from a light red irritation that bloomed in a line down her face.
The hotel manager was furious and the builders shuffled apologetically, but I was put on edge by the experience, which apparently no one else had seen. Under duress from Su, I tried to write it off as a happy freak accident, but even if I stopped talking about it, I couldn’t drop the incident. When we made love, I noticed how tough and tinny Su’s eyes had become. Over the next week, her skin grew hard and cold, as if in rigor mortis, but with a sense of the heat below the surface. When I asked her about it, she told me I was imaging things.
Then I caught her with her fist around the bar of the electric heater in her room. I cried out, snatched her hand back for her, held it close to my chest and inspected it for burns.
‘Nothing. There’s nothing there…’ [READ MORE]
A huge thanks to all the lovely folk at Fairlight Books for publishing the story, particularly Urska Vidoni who edited so kindly and thoroughly with me.
If The Locust Theorem has whet your appetite and you’d like more stories, not to fear: Fairlight Books have commissioned a piece of flash fiction from me as well, The Cloud Loom, which will follow soon. Watch this space…!