SHORT STORIES
The following extracts are from a work in progress,
101 Short Stories
by Lee James Broadwood.
Extract: ‘The Box of Kisses’
The hardest thing to get rid of was the box of kisses. Every time he blew me a kiss, I held it awhile till its red coloured my cheeks, and then hid it away. Buried deep into my wardrobe, under my clothes, collected in an ornate wooden box, I hid them so that nobody could open the lid and let them out.
Extract: ‘She’
Extract 1
The bottle she rests upon her stomach is filled with clouded urine, but the slits on her wrists ooze the sweet and blissful fragrance of bluebells. She sweats a salty blood which drops from her brow to her prepared tongue below.
Extract 2
As she lies on the cold stones of her garden floor, in the house she has built from scattered twigs, she loses herself to the hums of a bumblebee catching fire in the hay.
Extracts: ‘Fever’
Extract 1
The butcher's cries were weak, they say, trickling slowly from his thin, blue lips, and the doctors were unable to discern the blood of his gums and his peeling flesh from his mouthful of bludgeoned meat.
Extract 2
The merchant barely looks at me as I drop my coins into the bucket of ale beside him, his own invention to cleanse everything others have held. He believes the spirit works through the hands and the feet, blackening everything the host body should touch. As my hand lowers towards the bucket, my fingers crack open and spill their blood. Scratching seems to have worsened it.
Extract: ‘Scarlet Harlots’
Down, down the scarlet river falls, down the mountainsides and across the cliffs. In a clearing, a stretch of silver birch trees, mouths open, waiting, still.
The sky echoes the landings of crimson drops and changes its colours to match. The harlot observes the ebbs and drops, mouth open, waiting, still.