Liars' League

Slide Show by Alan Graham

Slide Show MP3

Read by Gloria Sanders

The main lights go down and the projector whirs into life. “Are you ready?” my partner asks.

“Oh yes,” I grin excitedly and a button clicks on the laptop. Suddenly the white bedsheet that my partner has hung up as an improvised screen is filled with the first slide of a Powerpoint presentation. In big, bold, red letters it reads “St Valentine’s. A Day for Love”

There’s another quiet mouse click and a large question mark suddenly appears at the very end of that sentence. I “ooh” sarcastically as the presentation swiftly moves on to the next slide.

“Little is known about the actual St Valentine.” My sweetheart reads the slide’s text as it appears in bulletpoints in front of me. She’s donned her glasses and is clearly using her office voice. “Indeed, it is thought by some scholars that the person himself is an invention. The most likely candidate for the real life Valentine was a rather unremarkable bishop in the city of Terni in Italy. It seems that the one interesting thing he ever did was to get tortured and martyred by the Roman state. On February the fourteenth.”

Father Figure by J. A. Hopper

Father Figure MP3

Read by Rich Keeble

Emily wasn’t sure what first attracted her to him: perhaps it was the secure, well-paid job as an architect: perhaps his gentle, slightly pompous sense of humour. It could’ve been the way he was always getting into funny scrapes: nothing major, just falling into a bush or something, putting up a shelf wrong; the sort of thing that could happen to anyone, but which only endeared him to her more.

Was it his obvious love of the children, how effortlessly good he was with them, even when they were clearly driving him mad? She’d found it wincingly poignant when the kids baked him a cake because he had to go to work on his birthday. She’d sat there with actual tears in her eyes, worrying a discarded Heinz baby-biscuit between trembling fingers like a rosary. Nobody’d ever made her a cake when she had to work on her birthday, which was pretty much every year, and now Mark had finally pissed off back to his ex-wife, probably nobody would. 

Three Months by Caroline Hardman

Three Months MP3

Read by Clareine Cronin

My arrival was carefully planned. I wanted to slip into the church quietly, after most people had already arrived, but didn’t want to get there too late. So just to be safe I caught an early train then hung around in the station cafe for a while. As I entered the churchyard one of the ushers – no-one I recognised – came towards me.

“Bride or groom?” he asked as he handed me an order of service. The ribbon binding it was exactly the same shade of blue as his tie.

I paused for a moment. “Bride,” I told him. If anyone asked, I could always say there had been a mistake.

We entered the church together and both scanned the wooden pews. It was hard to see much – my eyes hadn't quite adjusted to the dim light – but it was obvious that one side of the church was much fuller than the other. 

“Would you mind sitting on the groom’s side? Space is tight and since you’re on your own …”

Tasting the Rainbow by Alejandra Zannier

Tasting the Rainbow MP3

Read by Keleigh Wolf

PART 1. MOIRA

In the very last house on the very last street of a very small town lived a woman named Moira Sinclair. The house, once as nondescript as a house can be, had gained notoriety after Moira moved in. The locals (not so fondly) referred to it as the ‘house of black and black’. In a sea of candy-coloured picket fences, flowery bushes and even a red awning or two, Moira’s house stuck out like a sore thumb. A depressing, colourless sore thumb, that is. At the time of the sale, the house – neglected for years by the former owner – was in dire need of a new coat of paint; but to everyone’s chagrin, Moira decided to paint it in shades of black and blacker black.

Moira, as far as her appearance was concerned, was a person of monochromatic inclinations. She highlighted her paper-white skin with charcoal rouge and smoky eyes that went just right with her jet-black hair, and a wardrobe which could only be described as: ‘the coal collection’. But contrary to popular belief, Moira wasn’t a morose person obsessed with death. She was, simply, colourblind.

A Kiss A Day by Liam Hogan

A Kiss A Day MP3

Read by Sophie Morris-Sheppard

“Gis a kiss!” the third of the trio of dinner jackets hollers as I pass. I pause, my stiletto staccato silenced. Pause and turn.

I’d ignored the wolf whistle from the shortest of them, hair thinning, face gleaming with an alcoholic sweat despite the cold, dress shirt open at the neck to reveal, of all things, a vest. Gave a small smile at the caddish “Hello!” more for the nostalgic echo it inspired than because of the easy-on-the-eye black guy who probably doesn’t know who Terry Thomas is. Was.

They’re staring back at me, these three over-dressed goons, the Northerner to the fore, half surprised I’ve stopped, half expectant. Expecting what? A put down? A casually thrown expletive? It’s more than a month after Christmas, New Year is a distant memory. Why the monkey suits? Do they work for some company saving money by having their annual bash in the cold, grey beginnings of the year? Or perhaps they’ve been to some industry award ceremony, the free alcohol cutting through the tedium of the speeches, before continuing on at a pub that doesn’t allow vaping, forcing them outside to ogle girls walking by?

The Tell-Tale Art by Andreas Paraskevaides

The Tell-Tale Art MP3

Read by David Mildon

Gliding, paper-thin, through the spaces between raindrops. Sliding, whisper-slim, through the folds of mental landscapes. Sustained by stolen memories. Nourished by fragments of self.

Antiquity’s legendary lost libraries would only contain a sliver of the knowledge we possess. Our halls of records are made of living recollections and life-altering sensations. The constantly reworked landmarks in the road map of the soul. That first playful stare. His lips on your neck. The deathbed's trivialities. The moment of unexpected triumph. The comforting trauma. What gets you out of bed. What needed to be said.  All gone. All ours. You'll forget so we'll remember.

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