The first time Grace Jones screamed about her alleged rape wasn’t while it was allegedly happening. It was when Jakes Ngcobo, the nurse, walked into her room one morning.

   She shouted inarticulate words. Jakes couldn’t decipher them but he could tell they were directed at him and that she wanted him out of the room. When Marius van der Velde, the manager of the retirement home, finally managed to calm her down to a level at which she was vaguely comprehensible, she told him she had been ...

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Dear Martha

 
I thought about writing to you once before. Well, my therapist suggested it. I didn’t really see the point. She said letters don’t always need to be sent, sometimes they’re more for the writer than the recipient, and it might help me to process what happened. Might help me get over it, she said.

I didn’t want to get over it. Still don’t know if I do. It would be easier. I could get on with my life. I could feel light again. But, I don’t know if I want to let it go. Mayb...

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It was the worst of times, it was the best of times. It was a time for grieving, it was a time for rebirth. A time we’d never want repeated, a time we’d later yearn for. 

People were dying. But, people were living. Not in an affirming or exhilarating sense; rather, in a slow, mindful, present sense. Between the fear and anxiety and stress, there was generosity and creativity and hope. A feeling that things could be different; a belief that they must be different; and that this was the oppo...

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On Monday, April 20^th, Johnny B. Goode, armed with a handful of co-conspirators, crowbars and a small arsenal of rocks and stones, drove to a now quiet arterial road, barricaded it, and waited. They didn’t have to wait long, and when the truck came, they pelted it with stones. The windscreen cracked in several places and one rock penetrated the driver’s door window, injuring and terrifying the driver. They cranked the back doors of the truck open and found exactly what they were expecting...

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Eleanor Rigby waits at the window. No one has passed yet today, and it’s already after 11. Perhaps she missed someone when she was in the kitchen or the bathroom. But the block of flats is in a quiet road; even in normal times it can be hours between pedestrians. Cars don’t count because she’s on the fourth floor; too high to be able to see the drivers. So she has to content herself watching branches in the breeze and bees and butterflies and birds, which, she’s sure, there are more o...

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Major Benjamin Balthazar Heraldo Ignatius Tom checked into hospital on March 28th. For a week he’d had a dry cough, slight fever, lack of energy and, over the last few days, some difficulty breathing. For a while longer than that – a few years, perhaps, by his observation – he’d also suffered from a somewhat scattered mind; not confused, exactly, but lacking in clarity; and that had made it hard for him to know what to do, especially with so much information – so much uncertain info...

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I have decided to stop counting my rejection letters. Partly because after 20 it's too depressing, and partly because it's now easier to keep track of the number of publishers I haven't (yet) been rejected by, which are now in the single figures.

To make myself feel better, and to remind myself that I can indeed write, I hereby present for your perusal a previously published short story. It ran in a now-defunct magazine called "Itch", a rather long time ago.

When I was a boy, I used to go into ...
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About ten or eleven years ago, I wrote a story and entered it into SL magazine's short story competition. To my surprise, it came third. The judge was none other than Mr. JM Coetzee. A tough critic, conservative with his praise and a man of few but well-chosen words, his only comment about this story was that it was "told with some poignancy".

Anyway, an old pal, a great support and the author of far more famous blog than mine suggested I put the story in my own blog. Actually, it's hidden in ...
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