Liars' League

Worms' Feast by Peter Lachaise

 

Read by Alistair Cope

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.

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.

Haiku Short, Parakeet Prawns, Konichiwa Peter by Lee Reynoldson

 

Read by Silas Hawkins

I often dream that I am Japanese.

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

Candyfloss by Maria Kyle

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.

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.