Liars' League

Nipped by Joshua James Jordan

Read by David Mildon (final story in podcast, at 1h 27m 40s)

Life #1

My mother chased after some alleycat purring like a little slut. She abandoned me in a parking lot. I walked around mewing like the little idiot I was. A Humvee rolled in & over me. That's when I learned what I looked like inside-out.

Ghost

In the Old Lady's living room, I pawed at the little plastic ball filled with my catnip. The nip inside had dried into crisp, shrivelled, brown leaves. Probably not even a split second of a high in there. I swatted at the ball again, and it rolled a few inches. The leather couch was covered in scratches. It's not my fault the Old Lady never got me a scratching post. I had needs.

Two Down by Hannah Noyce

Read by Kim Scopes (4th story in podcast, at 1h 0m 55s)

She smiled to herself as she descended two flights of stairs to the basement bar. He had been mysterious about the location of their date, insisting on giving her only an address. In spite of herself, she had resisted the urge to Google. Now she saw why. They had bonded over their shared love of cryptic crosswords, and he had chosen a place called “Two Down”.

She was careful to hide a pang of disappointment when she saw him – his crooked smile was a little less endearing in person – but he stared intently at her, and she felt a flutter at the thought of his excitement. She looked good tonight.

Little Man by Rhys Timson

Read by Tony Bell (3rd story in podcast, at 32m 40s)

The confession of the great alchemist Hieronymus Trithemius includes the admission of many heinous and horrifying acts: dissection of corpses, conversing with demons, and folding down the page-corners of borrowed books. But the transgression that most interested my master and myself was the creation of artificial life, or homunculi, in the alchemical laboratory, a sin most grievous against the design of the Almighty.

Trithemius’s confession, alas, provides only tantalising hints as to his process for the creation of homunculi, but during the lengthy passages he dedicates to the sin of self-abuse, he reveals the key ingredient man must supply. Though not, sadly, the volume.

Family Recipes by Lisa Farrell

Read by Gloria Sanders (2nd story in podcast, at 17m 30s)

It started out as a game. My sister had found a purplish flower hidden in a tangle of weeds, and we both recognised it from the illustration in one of Mother’s old books. She didn’t say anything, just held the greenery at bay and eyed it greedily as though she wanted to taste it herself. She knew it was wolfsbane, same as I did. A purple death, potentially. Always was her favourite colour, though it suited us both, or so Mother used to say.

While my sister harvested her find, I hunted further, hacking away the strangling vines until I found a treasure of my own. Spotted stems that I disturbed, and then a scattering of tiny seeds, each strong enough to kill a man. I wasn’t keen on sharing, and we fought there among the overgrown greenery, scratching and biting like we were kids again, rolling over berries that stained our shirts red.

Bag of Bones by Angelita Lapuz Bradney

Read by Margaret Ashley (1st story in podcast, at 5m 30s)

The next-door neighbour is punching her husband in the garden. High-pitched grunts dart through the window like punctuation marks. He’s got pads strapped to his hands. Now and then he shows her how she should move her feet, push from the shoulder, swivel her waist. They wear t-shirts in the same faded blue. After a while they swap over. Now she’s holding the pads and he’s hitting her. When he makes contact her arm moves back, as if on a spring. Jab jab jab.

It’s been six months since they moved in. They still have that newlywed smugness about them. Reality hasn’t yet sunk in, with familiarity breeding contempt and resentment spreading like a bed of nettles.

This Big Future by Elizabeth Stott

Read by Clive Greenwood (5th story in podcast, at 1h 17m 50s)

Jenny calls me on the landline, our old number.

‘Pick me up,’ she says, ‘I can’t seem to find my way home.’

She sounds frightened, young, lost. But she was all of these things in the end. The end, her end. She was 28.

‘Where are you?’

I can ask nothing else. I hope that the call doesn’t wake my wife.

‘Everything looks different. The roads have changed. I’m on the school side, coming from Brow Lane. But it doesn’t look right. It’s so dark.’

The roads were changed years ago. We got a by-pass. She couldn’t have known.