Category: Free

Free flash and short fiction by Simon John Cox.

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Atoc

Simon John Cox

Inside the box is a large glass case, almost as large as the box itself, and inside the case is a shrunken figure. It looks like a mummy, but it is unlike any that I’ve ever seen before. The position is all wrong, for a start: it is sat upright, hugging its knees to its chest, and its chin is perched neatly upon its folded arms. There are no bandages; instead it is naked apart from a perished woollen loincloth, a couple of dull gold bracelets and a woven headdress tied with feathers made almost translucent by age. Its dead skin is the miserable grey of wet slate, and dry black fingernails protrude like chips of bark from its fingers. Worst of all is its face, from which two black pebbles stare dully out of the puckered sockets of its eyes above a collapsed nose and two desiccated lips that have shrivelled into a cruel grin.

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The Reality Machines

Simon John Cox

See the green door? The little green door like an entrance to a hobbit hole? Padlock, veins of lichen running up it like rust? Yeah? See the stones on the ground? The paving stones that look like broken toffee? Stand on them. Stand on them, hold your breath and try to feel. With your feet, try to feel with your feet. It’s difficult at first, but just wait. It’s there, underneath. You can feel it. It being vibrations. Big, sticky, echoey vibrations, like the ground itself is kind of simmering. All the time. It’s like a kind of energy. Don’t stand on it for too long, though. It’s no good for you. It’ll mess you up.

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After Jeff Goldblum And The Ripples In The Water

Simon John Cox

The old Cannon Cinema was where he went on his first ever date. A girl who drew bouncy cartoons called him up one day and said to him do you want to go to the cinema with me, and he said yes without even thinking, without even checking what the film was, and when she called him a day or two later and told him that they were going to see Jurassic Park he still said yes, said it twice in fact, even though he’d already seen it and he knew which of the characters would be crushed and torn apart and eaten.