Category: Fictional Stories

A rich old man died leaving two sons.  For some time the two continue living together in the traditional Indian way, in a single joint household, a joint family.  Then they quarreled and dicided to separate, dividing all the propery between them.  Everything was divided fifty-fifty, and thus they settled their affairs.  But after the…

Isa knows this is not her home. Whatever the young girls with tattoos and piercings tell her, their names peppery on her tongue. “You live here now, darling. You’re safe with us.” This is not her home and she will not stay. She is a serial escapee though never got much further than the bus…

In their miniature world, cramped between wooden crevices of a make-shift dugout, the ants busy themselves with homemaking and egg laying, ensuring their lineage. “Come on lads, let’s all pull together, we can get this done today!” They carry their dainty furniture, food and precious eggs purposefully back and forth, undisturbed by the mayhem around…

On the forklift truck on a grey morning Boz had a dream.  It was always the same dream; he was a man of stubborn allegiances and wild expectation. His luck would turn and he would retire to the seaside, the English seaside. He’d been happy there. Not so much the overpowering smells of vinegar, frying…

Warm, five o’clock, Scottish, June sunshine bathes my old ripening skin as I sit here by the Harbour Cottage Art Gallery, overlooking the deep muddied channel of the river. A faint smell of diesel is in the air. Fishing boats are queued up, blue and white, some a little rusted, moored and waiting. Empty lobster…

[How to let a reader know from a one-sided conversation on the phone what the person at the other end is saying.  The obvious ploy would be to have the recipient of a phone call continuously repeat what the other is saying. But this may abrade the reader with such an obvious and redundant repetitive…

Six in the morning and the heat was already rising in waves from the earth. Runnels of sweat ran down the faces of the two passengers swaying to and fro in the rickshaw.  Crows cawed ominously and flew down from the trees, scavenging the streets for carrion. A cow ruminated at the side of the…

A story of overcoming fear in your workplace, and in your heart. Excerpted from Jaiya John’s new book of healing, Your Caring Heart: Renewal for Helping Professionals and Systems. Online where books are sold. Harriet Tubman was a baaad woman. She didn’t play. One story I appreciate telling about her (creatively adapted, of course) is a story of…

  He realized with a start that he was staring at people. “Mustn’t do that” he told himself “…people might think you are strange”.  Sitting in the café in the corner, his favourite place where he felt (erroneously) that he could see but not be seen, he drew his eyes down to his flat white,…