Liars' League

Worms' Feast by David Mildon

Worms Feast

I was tired.

Aching, sluggish and extremely hung-over. A succession of dive bars and dank hotels in piddling European towns had not quenched my thirst.

London was a bust. Our friends were all, in fact, hers.

My feet were treading cobbles. Cobbles meant picturesque. Picturesque meant tourists. I lurched down a small road, looking for somewhere which didn’t speak English. It’s important to stretch the budget when you’re low on funds and have forgotten which city you’re in.

They Live in the Clouds by Michael Spring

Read by Alex Wilmott

The sandwich would hardly have been hallucinogenic. Made by Jimmy's fair hands the night before and before we'd started to argue, it was tuna and tomato, on granary, no mayonnaise, no butter. Jimmy always said that vine tomatoes set off the flavour of the fish, which he grilled with a little fresh ginger, allowed to cool and then sliced.

It was more than a good sandwich, it was an exercise in the art of food. But, as I told Jimmy, he had his work/life balance all wrong if all he could think about was making lunch for the next day, and investing so much time and energy into it. "Dave," he said to me, "It's all about caring, and maybe that's something you wouldn't understand."

Well, that was the start of some pretty hot words and by the time we'd finished, you'd have thought the universe was falling in. All from that one remark. We slept in separate rooms that night.

Haiku Short, Parakeet Prawns, Konichiwa Peter by Lee Reynoldson

Haiku Short Parakeet Prawns Konichiwa Peter

Read by Silas Hawkins

I often dream that I am Japanese.

My mornings are cold, dark, tea-swilled, burnt-toast mornings.

In my Japanese dreams, I glide through Tokyo's electric nights waiting for the sun to rise. I am old, serene, patient. I have seen many things. Many beautiful things in my Japanese dreams, but I have yet to see the blossoms fall.

My world is street-lit and red-bricked. Wet, fag-butt-littered, chuddy-splattered streets drift by as I'm bus-shook to work.

Dumped out, spewed into an industrial estateland, I'm fag-gasping into the factory that owns my soul, shrinks my aching Western heart.

Candyfloss by Maria Kyle

Candyfloss

Read by Dave Zezulka

Used to be, every other night I saw her. Sometimes every night. How'd I know it was night? Everybody dreams at night, don't they? Night-time was for her and me and the banal monsters and the uncanny clowns and the people you know with the faces you don't. Carnevale.

So yeah, every few nights. The dark would come out like a fox from the shadows and so would she. And there I’d be, waiting for her. Always.

There were some bizarre scenes going on back then. All sorts of weird shit with Escher hotel corridors, strange meals that refused to be cooked, and mice, for some reason. Fucking mice everywhere: underfoot, overhead, swimming in the stews and slumping out of the soufflés, skittering down the walls like rain down a windowpane.

A Nearly Done Thing by Kathryn White

Read by Susannah Holland

I imagine my mother before I was born, when she knew I was there swelling inside her. She is a young woman, a girl really, eighteen, fresh off the boat and wandering alone in London, a head full of Duran-Duran, neon lights and growing worries. Her name is Siobhan and I hold her in my mind's eye, watching her movements and her fears and her plans. She does not see me watching her because I am not yet born. But I am there all the same, questioning her, wondering what she will do as six weeks tick to ten weeks and her problem grows bigger and bigger.

Twelve years later, when I am a young girl who talks too much and asks Big Questions, she will tell me a secret that silences us for days. I remember her now, confessing: "The truth is, I never thought I'd have you. I was so young, God, it was stupid, stupid." Then: "Sure when I came over to London, I came here to end it." And she will turn away from me and wallow in her daily stupor of halfs and shots.