This odd little snippet of mine just appeared in Oddity. https://theoddmagazine.wixsite.com/oddity-26/odd-shorts

This piece has won 3rd place (and some money) in the annual Peter Cowan Writers Centre 600 word Short Story Competition.

At the end of the word

The man had sensed the teenage boy was out there, even before the dog smelled him and hunted him into the clearing, nipping at his heels.

‘Call your bloody dog off!’ the boy snapped.

The man looked at the dog and it sloped off to drink water from a tin bowl.

‘You oughta have him chained up.’

The man turned his back on the boy and went to sit in the old armchair under the lean-to veranda. He took a sip of tea from his enamel mug, picked up a book, opened at it the page marked by a feather and began to read.

‘Can I have something to drink?’

The man didn’t look up but nodded in the direction of the rainwater tank. A tin mug dangled from a rusty chain on the tap.

‘Jesus, mate, I’m not that desperate. What about a coffee?’

The man continued to read.

The boy began to walk towards the house. The dog moved into his path, with its lip curled and emanating a guttural sound. The boy groaned before moving towards the tank.

When he’d finished, he sat on a tree stump and looked around the clearing. Apart from the small house, there was a chook run, a veg patch enclosed by chicken wire, and an outhouse.

At dusk, the man put down his book and entered the house, leaving the door open. Shortly after, a light appeared in the window and wispy smoke began to emerge from the chimney.

The boy ventured as close as the dog would allow him and called out ‘Any chance of a feed?’

Just before dark, the man appeared, dropped a blanket on the armchair and put a plate of steaming stew, with a spoon sticking out of it, on the veranda floor. The dog emerged and settled on a pile of hessian bags between the chair and the door. The man returned inside, closed the door with the thunk of a heavy bolt and the light was extinguished.

The dog allowed the boy to pick up the plate and sit in the chair to eat. After eating, the boy stared briefly into the total darkness. He closed his eyes and wrapped the blanket tightly around his thin frame.

…

The boy woke to the sound of caroling magpies and a vehicle navigating its way up the twisting track to his house. The man was up. He pointed to the bush and the boy took off.

When it arrived, a Police officer stepped out and said ‘G’day. Sergeant Cameron Thomas, Yarra Valley Police. Just wondering if you could help me.’ The man said nothing.

Thomas produced a photo and showed it to the man. ‘Recognise this lad?’ The man’s face remained immobile.

Thomas noticed an ancient and battered Land Rover. ‘Do you have drivers licence?’ The man retrieved a wallet from his back pocket and extracted a plastic card which he proffered to Thomas. He wrote down the details in his notebook, took a photo of the card with his phone and returned the licence to the man.

Thomas climbed into his vehicle and started the engine but before he drove off he said through the open window, ‘If you do come across that young bloke, be careful. I think he could be dangerous.’

After Thomas left, the man returned to his armchair on the veranda, picked up his book and apart from turning the pages, he and his dog sat perfectly still. They knew the boy would not come back.

I’m very pleased to have two flash fictions up on Unlikely Stories today. No payment but free to submit. They’ve been around for 25 years and have a substantial audience. (Some of you will have seen an earlier version of ‘Seeing red’.)

https://www.unlikelystories.org/content/seeing-red-and-the-interview-youd-love-to-see

Pleased to have this story published by Havok Magazine as part of its Wacky Wednesday series. https://gohavok.com/

I am delighted that the wonderful Sari Botton has published this mini-memoir of mine in The Oldster Magazine. I’m even more delighted that she paid for it. 🙂

https://oldster.substack.com/p/boys-driving-around-in-cars

I’m very pleased that One Wild Ride has published my piece on writing about older people and it’s accompanying flash fiction piece ‘Signing off’. https://one-wild-ride.com/2023/04/06/doug-jacquier-reflection-on-writing/

Delighted to be included in Issue 22 of Impspired, based in Lincoln in the UK. https://impspired.com/2023/04/01/doug-jacquier/

This piece has just been published by Flash Frontier in New Zealand.

Adam lived in a weatherboard cottage, surrounded by his apple orchard.

Sales of his annual apple crop were declining due to the perfect storm of the market’s demand for certified organic versus the demands of their Japanese customers for unblemished perfection. As Adam’s hitherto simple life began to unravel, his nights became increasingly apocalyptic.

His nightmares always began with a tympanic pelting storm besieging his eardrums akin to being duct-taped to AC-DC’s concert amps, punctuated by thunderclaps of Biblical proportions and the sound effects of Cyclone Gabrielle.

The overflowing water flooding into his brain began to short out his synapses and sizzling spark-fests criss-crossed his lobes in a chain lightning reaction.

The ventricles of his heart began to sport stalactites, transported via the ice in his veins, and driven by the Antarctic blizzard invading his gasping mouth.

He loved God but now saw him as a sadist.

Then, miraculously, a new day dawned in his head and the Sun came out, heralding the arrival of Eve, carrying a backpack, and asking if he had any work available. Adam was immediately smitten and invented a job on the spot, with no idea how he was going to pay her.

He needn’t have worried because Eve immediately took stock of the situation and re-positioned the business as ‘Hissy Fit Cider – The Asp-irational Drink’ and she appeared on the label, picking apples, naked.

Now Adam welcomed the cyclone of orders that kept him up all night.

This piece has just been published in Syncopation Volume 2 Issue 2

Mervyn Martian and Edgar Earthling discuss music

MERVYN: Edgar, what are you doing?
EDGAR: I’m writing a song.
MERVYN: What is a ‘song’?
EDGAR: A collection of words set to music.
MERVYN: What is ‘music’?
EDGAR: It’s an arrangement of sounds that is pleasant to the ear.
MERVYN: How is that done?
EDGAR: Usually they’re produced by instruments.
MERVYN: What, like a microscope or an odometer? They don’t make sounds.
EDGAR: No, a different type of instrument. They’re built from wood and metal and are made to
be strummed, struck, or blown to make sounds. Unless of course they are electronic instruments
that can be programmed to imitate other instruments.
MERVYN: You have already invented a machine to replace all the others, but you still
manipulate the old ones?
EDGAR: Yes. Most people prefer that form of music.
MERVYN: You prefer a primitive, imprecise form of noise-making? Why have your people
never evolved?
EDGAR: We’re working on it. In the meantime, I’m writing a song.
MERVYN: With sounds that are pleasant to everyone’s ears.
EDGAR: Not everyone. Some people like sounds that other people hate. Musical sounds go by
various names, like classical, rock, folk, blues, country and so on. There’s even a form called
jazz, although there’s still a debate about whether that counts as music.
MERVYN: So where do you get the words for these songs that some people will find musically
unpleasant?
EDGAR: Some people write about love, some tell stories, some just make up nonsense words.
The possibilities are endless.
MERVYN: So, these words are not always about anything real?
EDGAR: Correct.
MERVYN: Meaning most of them are lies.
EDGAR: Well, that’s one way of looking at it.
MERVYN: And what do you do with these songs when they’re finished?
EDGAR: We record them, so anyone can listen to them. Or we perform them live.
MERVYN: And do all these recordings get listened to?
EDGAR: Some a lot, most hardly ever.
MERVYN: What will your song be about?
EDGAR: About a man who has conversations with a Martian.
MERVYN: But that’s not a lie, it’s true.
EDGAR: Only if I write a song about it, Mervyn.

Bloom have been kind enough to publish my story ‘Speaking Ill of the Dead’. https://bloomsite.wordpress.com/2023/02/28/bloom-creative-writing-speaking-ill-of-the-dead/