Watch out for new David Gaffney stories coming up in the following magazines

 

                          

                           Hiss Quarterly

Aesthetica 

 

Cent 

 

Litro 

 

Succour

 

Trespass  

 

Penpusher  

 

Riptide  

 

Dont

Check out my story about David Cameron in the new anthology BAD IDEA

Hear my story Previously Loved read aloud as part of rethinkdaily's sharp things compilations

Read a couple of my stories in the Art of Tying Knots, a new compilation by FLAX in Lancaster here

 

Here's a few of my ultra-short stories -  you can read more if you buy Sawn Off Tales or Aromabingo

 

Happy place

He hated grocery shopping, hated the time it took. But he came up with a method. People bought the same things, more or less. So he would look for someone of his type, sneak up behind them and roll their fully-laden trolley off to the checkout.

It made life interesting. Often there were things he would never have bought; once there was a fat orange pumpkin.

But today he was in trouble. He had been stealing mostly from women because he liked the sense of order to their selections, but his victim had spied him and was stomping over. There were women's products in the cart, so it was going to be difficult. He decided to pretend he knew her.
'Darling, I'll just get eggs'

All mod cons

Jake invented a prescription glass windscreen for his car so that he could drive without wearing his corrective lenses. He enjoyed the feeling of freedom - no plastic pads digging into his nose - and it had the added advantage that car thieves couldn’t drive the vehicle unless they happened to have the same degree of myopia.

Jennifer needed a lift. However, she soon began to complain. She couldn’t see, everything was blurred, and to stop herself being sick she had to stick her head out the window like a dog.

‘You idiot,’ she said to him when he dropped her off.

He wouldn’t ring her again. A permanent relationship would mean grinding the windscreen to suit two different people and he could imagine the arguments – it would be the self-cleaning bed-sheets saga all over again. He went to bed, turned up the shipping forecast and drifted to sleep.

Last to know

 He showed me the back of my head in a mirror and I nodded.

‘£6.50 then,’ he said, and pressed the foot pedal. The hydraulics sighed as I sank to the floor. 

‘I normally pay five.’

He indicated the price list. ‘It’s been £6.50 for a while’

‘Yes, but. . .’

What had happened? I was regular. Only new customers paid full. It was never spoken of, but that was the system. The barber could tell that someone else had cut it; the blending between the longer and shorter sections was poorly executed.‘Look me in the eye,’ he said,  ‘and tell me you haven’t been to anyone else.’

‘I haven’t been to another barbers in years.’

The barber sucked in his lower lip. ‘So we’re talking home clippers.’

‘Yes,’ I said, and felt my cheeks redden in shame.

‘Ok. Call it £5.50. I know you won’t do it again.’

Cica lights 

Mum and Trevor were getting serious, what with her new glittery top and the way she stroked the sleeve of his knobbly jumper like it was a hamster. But you can put up with that. When he bought me new trainers my heart sank. The box declared in scrolly italics, Clarks, and when I lifted the lid, pink lights winked through tissue and my worst fears were confirmed.

Cica Lights.  A Nike copy with pathetic flashing bulbs in the heels.

I was dead if I wore them. Like the boy who wore a Blue Peter T shirt on non-uniform day and had since developed a stutter and started hanging with the science-fiction lot.

So I told Trevor about the nights my Dad stayed over and Trevor stormed out taking the shoes with him. 

My mum was insupportable. But relationships come and go. Your choice of trainer leaves an indelible mark.

The world won’t listen  

Lucy screeched to a halt, jumped out and stomped down the street. I sat for a time watching her diminishing figure in the mirror then decided to catch her up. As I walked I noticed a sign in a shoe shop window; THIS IS NOT THE RAILWAY STATION and began to think about handmade signs. A lot of annoying things have to happen a lot of times to persuade you to make a sign. Company-made signs are obviously not good enough to communicate what the public need to know. They always have to get out their marker pens.  Here was another, on a cake shop door; WE DO NOT SELL PIES.

I caught her up at McDonalds (NO ROLLERBLADES) and followed her into the toilets where she sat down and cried in a cubicle. Blu-tacked above a murky mirror a sign said THE TOILET BRUSH IS FOR STAFF USE ONLY.

Potato smiles

When Debbie left I ate nothing but potato smiles with no-frills ketchup. One day I looked at the fluffy orange discs grinning up at me and decided to save one. I stuck it to the wall next to my bed and it cheered me up. The next day I saved another, but I’d had one of my funny days, so I stuck this one upside down, to make a frown. I did this for years and the pattern reminded me how well I was doing.

The man from environmental health had a big oblong body built for blocking doorways. ‘The neighbours are talking about a smell,’ he said.

I locked the door and made him sit whilst I removed the smiles and heaped them on a plate in front of him. The sauce bottle was rimmed with decaying ketchup scabs. I squeezed, squeezed hard till his plate was full.

The kids are all right

When I heard about the boy whose parents dressed him as a girl till the age of 12 I thought, lucky kid. My parents dressed me till I was 13 as popular crooner Perry Como. They even encouraged me to carry, but not smoke, a beautiful briarwood pipe and I would stab the air with its stem to emphasis a point and suck on it when deep in thought. Yet I wasn’t unhappy; it was normal. My cousin had it much worse, as Max Bygraves.

One day I was house-training the dog. The sleeve to Swing Out Perry was on the floor and before I could stop him Engelbert squatted and squeezed a neat little turd right in the middle of Perry’s polished inane features.

The next day my mother let me have my fringe cut like Dave Hill out of Slade. Kids have to be allowed to express themselves.

We are the robots 

She was the third girlfriend to ditch me this year. ‘We went to this club,’ I told Gary, ‘and at the end of the night she’d completely changed. She was distant, hostile.’

He looked at me over the rim of his spectacles ‘Did you dance?’

‘Well,’ I poked at a beer mat. ‘At one point I did throw a few shapes.’

He tilted his head towards me.  ‘Did you do the robotics?’

‘Definitely not.’

‘What was the music?’

‘Eighties techno’

Gary removed his spectacles and rubbed his eyes. ‘How many times have we been through this – you hear the music, you do the robotics.’ He picked up his coat. ‘No woman will stand for it.’

Later I was on the floor. A moog bass line squelched, a metallic snare ripped the air, I was part of a machine, a valve in the heart of a bleeping gnashing metal beast.

You know, quiet

The room he was given had seven wardrobes. Seven. At night the wardrobes oppressed him. Dark brooding figures shuffling closer to his bed, faces glowering out from the whorls of polished grain. The landlord wouldn’t let him get rid of them. They were classic. Solid. So he had to think of a way to use them. The TV fitted into one, Hi Fi in another, cooking equipment in a third, and various bits and bobs in the rest. But he couldn’t think of anything to do with the last one. Then one night he dragged his duvet into it and had the best night’s sleep ever.

He decided to stay in the wardrobe. He would move in a radio, and would eat there too. Eventually he would get six more people to live in the other wardrobes. Because he was the last person to keep himself to himself.