Let me cut straight to the chase.
I am not, nor ever have been a fan of the “beautiful game”. I was never born into a football family. My old man’s thing was religion not sport. So, Continue reading Abide With Me by Ian Ayris – Review & Interview by Jason Michel
I had a puppy. Once. Long time ago, when I was a kid. Me dad bought it back from the pub on a Thursday. I say Continue reading Secret by Ian Ayris
I been freezin me bollocks off waitin for him to tell me. Freezin me fuckin bollocks off. He better not let me down. Not Continue reading PMM’s Birthday Party! – Snowflakes in the Dark by Ian Ayris
Monday. The doctors’ surgery on Bennett Street. The place is heaving with the ill and the frail, the skiving and the mad. The loud-mouthed receptionists keep order, spitting bile at anyone with the temerity to question their authority.
Coming out of one of the doctor’s rooms, inching his way towards the receptionist’s desk, Mr Henderson Flint, leaning on a zimmer. Henderson Flint. Five foot two of crumbling humanity. Henderson bloody Flint.
One of the whip-handed receptionists. Weary. Exasperated.
‘Can I help you, Mr Flint?’
This one, worse than the rest. The Dragon Lady.
‘Busy today?’ Henderson says, cheerily.
‘Yes, Mr Flint. Now what is it you want?’
A disdainful glare cuts him off at the knees. Henderson feels the tension in the air around him rise. He leans into it, resting on the front bar of his zimmer. Holds the glare of the Dragon Lady with one of his own.
‘I need you to phone me a ride home,’ he says.
People been going off edge of these cliffs sixty years, and probably sixty years afore that. Forever, probably. When the wind’s up, and it’s howling, these cliffs ain’t a place to be. There’s one, two a month, go over sometimes. They put a railing up couple years back. And a sign. But it don’t help none.
Jonathan Sideboard trudged up the garden path, through the snow, to the front door of his house. The funeral had gone well. Well enough, it had to be said. His late father, Ernest Sideboard, eighty-four, was six foot below ground. Six whole feet separating him from the surface of the earth. From Jonathan. And a funeral couldn’t go Continue reading Cold By Ian Ayris
Mr Archibald Lever was a modest man. Unassuming, even. He had the semi-detached house, the two point four children, the Nissan Micra. He was a thirty-year man at the bank, a job he’d had since he’d left school, and he had a dutiful wife by the name of Audrey.
He was happy. Pretty much.
But something bubbled within him, something dangerous, something ugly. A Continue reading THE ARGUMENT BUNNY By Ian Ayris
PULP METAL MAGAZINE 