Stories

A selection of Sam’s published short fiction

From on a distant ridgeline:

Just before he backed into the tree, the father swore.

From the hard bed that his father must have slept on, Felix
could see across the bushland that circled the edge of the old
miner’s cottage and spread down to the narrow slash of
harbour separating their side of the peninsula from the town.
He closed the paperback—marked with his father’s name in
pencil on the inside cover—and shook the sunlight from his
eyes. Josh, he said, and turned away from the window to the
other bed. But his little brother wasn’t there.

From Come the Tide

I feel LIKE I’m sending out a message in a bottle. Looking into
the Indian Ocean from the wide window on this little island, I
have no idea if you will ever get this messy note—or if you do,
why you would want to reply. I hurt you, and I don’t expect that
you’ve forgiven me. But there was a time when I felt that I could
share anything with you, and so I’m reaching out, scratching out
letters on a digital note that I’m hoping will float its way to you.

From the Web

An Experience — Fairlight Shorts

And you’re happy to work? she asked, repeating my phrase back to me. Yes, I said. I’ll be coming from a competition and just want to take a week somewhere quiet before classes start again. What kind of competition? I hoped my impatience didn’t carry down the line. Freediving, I said. She gave something like a snort. Isn’t that like drowning, slowly? 

Small Homes — failbetter
It all began with a different conversation, in a different city. I came home from school to find that you had hidden your toy—a small woodland creature, a bushy-tailed squirrel—in the vase I’d made with mum.

Why is it in there, I asked. It’s a little home, you said.

Cliff People — Wildness

This country is too flat, she tells me. Maybe it’s because of all the people—like they’ve trampled out all the interesting dips and curves. Maybe it’s the weather. The weight of all that gloom. She has a point; when you’re used to mountains, meadows look depressed.

Atlantis — Headland

His voice was familiar, the way a hot bath feels. But it took me a moment to place his face. I hadn’t noticed him enter the café; now he had one of my tea bowls in his hand, turning it as if to catch the light. It looks like pottery excavated from a tomb, he said, something you’d find an ashy body clutching in Pompeii.

Which Way to Ithaka? — Storgy

For a moment, everything around me was atremble. Desk, chair, pencils, mug, the framed posters on the office walls (sunrise behind the pyramids, sunset over Santorini)—all hummed and vibrated. Even the glasses quivered on my nose. Long after the chatter stopped, the air still shook a little.