Liars' League

Last Rites by Jess Worsdale

Last Rites MP3

Read by David Mildon

We were bowling down a bóithrín with Springsteen on the radio when we hit the cow. It was me and Cian and Rob in the back, Aidan driving and no-one in the front because he’d said it would be a distraction and besides, he needed space for the suits. We’d always relied on Eoin to protest this kind of behaviour and when no one said anything I abruptly realised how coltish our friendship now was, and wondered whether we’d ever be able to rebalance it. Still, it was cosy, the three of us sharing warm elbows and nips of whisky like auld ones on a park bench. Aidan drank nothing except peppermint tea, which he’d brought in a monogrammed flask with a self-conscious and challenging air about him that none of us rose to. A pink winter afternoon and the smudged grass and hedgerows whipped by as we rolled west into the cowboy sunset.

It had been Aidan’s idea to drive. This time of year and the coaches were full of Midlands shoppers on pilgrimage to the sales both ways along the M6. At this short notice it’d be cheaper and anyway it wasn’t often that all of us were back together so we might as well make the best of it.

Namaste Bitches by Ana Soria

Read by Keleigh Wolf

Casper was always trying to fix me. He left flyers for divination therapy and female-only fasting retreats tucked inside my boxes of sugary cereal. My inbox was clogged with emails from him linking me to articles with titles like; “How I Overcame My Rage with The Help of Rose Quartz.” Casper had a well-paid job at an architecture firm, wore Japanese knitwear and owned a kitchen appliance for every eventuality. I was five stone overweight and had recently been fired.

For the past week I had been pretending to get ready for work, waiting for Casper to leave, then ordering takeaway falafel and masturbating on his Egyptian cotton bed sheets. I watched so much porn that the people on screen became irrelevant; reduced to a series of plucked and greasy orifices positioned in increasingly ridiculous poses. I spent my days with numb fingers, chasing those fleeting seconds that gave me an escape from the tightness in my chest.

The Poetry of Jenny by Gerard McKeown

The Poetry of Jenny MP3

Read by Zach Harrison

Jenny was still emoting about her poem. The poses of the others in the circle told me her poem was important, vital even. Jenny had brought up her poem when talking about how she’d recently gone off anything that tasted of oranges, because she was peeling one when she was alone in her house, and she’d a papercut she’d forgotten about on the tip of her index finger, and when she pierced through the peel into the soft squishy pulp, the sting of the juice entering her papercut reminded her of the pain she’d felt arguing with her mother. And how she wished their relationship wasn’t so dysfunctional, because she’d never have another mother-daughter relationship in this life, as she’d chosen not to have children this time around, and she started thinking about the pain of childbirth and her periods.

That’s the point I zoned out and started thinking how boring the night was, and how I probably wouldn’t keep in touch with these people after I went to university. My recounting of a funny sketch from television the night before had fallen out of my mouth like a yolkless egg. 

Olena's Scalpel by Alan Graham

Olena's Scalpel MP3

Read by Patsy Prince

The envelope arrived at Olena’s desk at 12.01 exactly. It had all the markings of important and urgent work. She opened it carefully, and inside found a single photograph.

It was an image taken just outside the Party Congress Building. There were two men in the centre, seemingly overflowing with happiness at some glorious news. A banner above them declared the cause of their jubilation; apparently the nation had constructed a record number of tractors that year. The two men themselves she recognised instantly. One was the Great Leader, the Dear Father of the nation. The other was Konstantin Gregorin, chief minister in a dozen departments.

A note was also inside the envelope. It read simply “No more Gregorin.”

No East or West by Mark Sadler

No East or West MP3

Read by Silas Hawkins

I strongly believe that it was not a unification.

A unification is born of diplomacy and compromise. What happened in East Germany was defeat, followed by surrender to a conquering imperialist power. The wall dividing the city of Berlin was pulled away in pieces. Hands, that were pre-conditioned to taking what they want, disregarding any greater good, reached through gaps in the barrier to plunder our resources. The night it happened, I witnessed a procession of tractors from our side disappearing forever through one of the checkpoints, into a cloud of deafening music and smoke.

In those times, when the east was still the east, I was happier, and thinner. Now I am miserable and I don't know the reason. The hairy slouch of my belly disgusts me.

Counterfiction by Tim Aldrich

Read by Tim Larkfield

Dear Mr Aldrich

Thank you for the submission of your short story ‘Led by Donkeys’ to Counterfiction magazine. I can speak not only as editor of our august periodical but for each of the judging panel in welcoming the appearance of your unique voice to the world of counter-factual speculative fiction. There was much debate and one might even say passion around the table as we discussed your work; so engaged, indeed, were the judges that they shared some detailed feedback which I copy below.

I would start however by thanking you for not setting your story within one of the now very tired scenarios such as John F. Kennedy surviving his trip to Dallas in 1963, the success of Hitler and Nazi Germany against the Allies after 1944, and - curiously - had the People’s Princess not taken that ill-fated journey to Paris. In contrast, your tale felt fresh, imaginative and very contemporary. The absence of airships alone made my day.

Latest event: BEFORE & AFTER on Tuesday 9th April at The Phoenix

As Brexit looms (or does it? Who knows ...?!) we selected six superb stories of change & choice to distract you at our BEFORE & AFTER show on Tuesday 9th April. There were escapes and tipping points, cats and cows, sex and death, poetry and fistfights, yoga and porn, the Berlin Wall and a fishtank full of ghosts. And it was STILL only £5 entry, which includes a programme, our infamous book quiz, and free birthday cake because we are 12! Here's the podcast and here's the YouTube video playlist. Enjoy ...

WINNING STORIES for BEFORE & AFTER
Last Rites by Jess Worsdale, read by David Mildon
Namaste Bitches by Ana Soria, read by Keleigh Wolf
Counterfiction by Tim Aldrich, read by Tim Larkfield
The Poetry of Jenny by Gerard McKeown, read by Zach Harrison
No East or West by Mark Sadler, read by Silas Hawkins
Olena's Scalpel by Alan Graham, read by Patsy Prince

As usual, doors open at 7pm for a 7.30 start and tickets are a fiver on the door (currently cash only, sorry, but there's a cashpoint across the street). Drinks and food are available at the bar throughout. There's no pre-booking, but tables for four or more can be reserved by calling 07808 939535.

The venue is the downstairs bar at: The Phoenix Pub, 37 Cavendish Square, London W1G 0PP

Accessibility note: Access to the basement is via stairs: there's no lift, sadly. The Phoenix is 5 minutes' walk from Oxford Circus tube station, which is on the Victoria, Bakerloo and Central lines. 

N.B. Our images above come from the lovely kids' book Before & After by Jean Jullien - do check it out & buy!

Rowly's Rabbit by Graeme MacFarlane

Dec 09 Rowly's Rabbit

 Read by Paul Clarke

The rabbit was dead, to begin with. There was no doubt about that.  Dead as a door-nail, dead as the dodo ... But Rowly had no desire to continue the Dickensian litany of what the rabbit was as dead as: it was dead, and it was Christmas Eve, and he was half-cut and wholly in despair.

Rowly had bought the rabbit last night, on a whim, as a gift for Betty, who'd done what nobody else of his wide and varied acquaintance had wanted to, and given him a bed over Christmas after he'd been thrown out of Mrs. Pandry's lodging-house for non-payment of rent. Admittedly, Betty was away was visiting her parents in Somerset over the festive season; but that, Rowly felt, argued even more strongly for her sweet-natured charity in trusting him.

Lili of the Valley of the Shadow by Derek Ivan Webster

Lili of the Valley of the Shadow MP3

Read by Alex Greenhalgh - full podcast here.

The woman at the store assured him there was nothing to be ashamed of. He was almost fourteen and it was natural that he would be exploring these things. That she was dressed in a leather harness with studded choke collar didn’t prove as distracting as the pale curves and bulges of her barely covered skin. She wrapped his purchase in a black satin bag. It just fit in his backpack.

“Don’t worry about the sign. You can come anytime.” She patted him on the head and he was almost comforted. “No judgements here.” It was the glimpse of her nipple that sent him running for the door.

Fish-fish by Cherry Potts

Read by Math Jones - full podcast here (fourth story) 

She has a small cloche hat pulled down so tight it’s a wonder she hasn’t ripped the rim. He has his hair plastered to his head so smoothly that Joel half expects beads of Brilliantine in the crease at the back of his neck, but despite this they are immaculate, both wearing some fabric between velvet and moleskin that shimmers and tempts the fingertip to explore its textures.

Joel shows them to a booth at the back of the room, with a mirror behind them, which will allow him to keep an eye on them without quite staring. He cannot fathom what it is that draws him. They could be sister and brother they look so alike, round-eyed, broad-cheeked, flat-nosed; his wonderful whiskers the only feature that truly distinguishes them one from the other, but the way they behave with each other is not sibling-like. She gazes and gazes, her round eyes drinking him in with something like awe, and he caresses her with his glance. It is barely decent.

The Wicker Heart by Alan Graham

Read by Peter Kenny - full podcast here (last story)

“Nervous?” my girlfriend asks, briefly taking her eyes off the road ahead to look at me and smile reassuringly.

“Of course.” I reply. Or at least I try to. Seeking to hide my nerves, I make a real effort to sound calm and overdo it. I end up just making a slight gurgly noise.

“My parents will just adore you,” she declares.

I don’t believe her for a second. “I’ve always been bad with parents, that’s why I said the first time we meet needs to be a quiet affair. Somewhere low-key. Like a Burger King.”

She sighs loudly, “You were not meeting my parents at a Burger King.”

The Red Satin Flag of Resistance by Mark Sadler

Read by Silas Hawkins - full podcast here (fifth story)

Gerald and Kathy's forbidden love existed in defiance of a powerful dating algorithm, which had declared them mutually incompatible.

They first met in the lobby of the Wayward Hearts dating agency, where they were waiting to be provided with the identities of their ideal partners, selected for them through the impartial medium of computer software. A conversation concerning a rise in parking charges had quickly blossomed into friendship. They had departed prematurely, walking away hand in hand, to the horror of the agency manager, Lynda Jolly, who ever since that day, had been determined to correct this cosmic imbalance.

Soul Searching by Liam Hogan

Soul Searching MP3

Read by Keleigh Wolf - full podcast here.

The first thing Tammy did on getting back to a guy’s flat was to check on the state of his soul.

If it was listless and lethargic, or worse; aggressive and ill-controlled, if it was poorly housed, moulting, or just plain sick, then she’d make her excuses and be out of there as fast as she could.

It would be a lot easier if men carried their souls around with them as she and her girlfriends did. The idea of going anywhere without her soul filled her with dread, a panicky feeling that soured food, wine, and conversation. Men obviously didn’t feel the same way and it was rare to catch a glimpse of their soul before they’d be trying to show you a whole lot more besides. Men even left their souls at home when they went to work, which always astonished Tammy. How could anyone go that long without their soul? How could a soul go that long without company?

A Shared History by Seth Marlin

Read by William Teller - full podcast here (fifth story)

In the years after your retirement, you’ll continue to make regular visits to the cafe where your wife once worked. This will be one of the two indulgences you still allow yourself. One such occasion will fall on a snowy afternoon in early February – you’ll push the door open with a jingle, stomp off your boots, unwind the scarf from around your neck. The transition will fog your glasses, imbue the scene with a glow like nostalgia. The establishment will be nearly empty, save for a few patrons working on laptops. The young woman behind the bar will be following their example, her attentions drifting between screen and page. She’ll look up from her own work as you enter, will smile and push back from the counter. “Mr. Simmons.” This will not be your real name.

Valentine's event: Love & Lust on Tuesday 12th February

The six pulse-pounding stories for our Valentine's event, LOVE & LUST featured pagan bonfires, lustful teens, scarlet knickers, ill-advised one-night stands, fish suppers, sex at the Imperial War Museum and - naturally - the end of civilisation. The YouTube playlist is here and the full podcast is here, for your audio-visual pleasure ...

WINNING STORIES FOR LOVE & LUST

A Shared History by Seth Marlin NEW AUTHOR, read by William Teller
Fish-fish by Cherry Potts, read by Math Jones
The Wicker Heart by Alan Graham, read by Peter Kenny
The Red Satin Flag of Resistance by Mark Sadler, read by Silas Hawkins
Soul Searching by Liam Hogan, read by Keleigh Wolf
Lili of the Valley of the Shadow by Derek Ivan Webster, read by Alex Greenhalgh

As usual, doors open at 7pm for a 7.30 start and tickets are £5 on the door (currently cash only, sorry, but there is a cashpoint across the street). Drinks and food will be available at the bar, though there are also free Loveheart sweets and the infamous interval quiz features swoonworthy brand-new books to be won! There's no pre-booking, but tables for four or more can be reserved by calling 07808 939535.

The venue is the downstairs bar at:

The Phoenix Pub
37 Cavendish Square 
London 
W1G 0PP

Accessibility note: Access to the basement is via stairs: there is no lift, sadly. 

The Phoenix is 5 minutes' walk from Oxford Circus tube station, which is on the Victoria, Bakerloo and Central lines. Map here.

Mr Cromerty of Boston by Richard Smyth

Mr Cromerty of Boston MP3   Full podcast here: (3rd story)   Bonus Xmas podcast story here!

Read by David Mildon 

Outside, a cold, clear evening, men going about bundled in woollens, steam rising from a rubble of horse manure in the road, the air steeped in stovesmoke – a hard frost in the night mail, if I am any judge. Inside, a table by a fire, ink and a pen, two heaps of paper, a mirror trimmed with a little holly. A glass on the table beside the paper, and in it a measure of bourbon whisky.

Between them the fire and the whisky almost keep the cold at bay.

It’s queer to think that before last spring I had barely ever written a word (aside from the dry documentation I assembled, the legal letters I drafted, the contracts and covenants I compiled in my work at at the real-estate office). Oh, as a young man I had attempted poetry, awful stuff, as young men do, but I always knew I had no aptitude for it, and soon gave it up. And then in more recent years I never seemed to have the time.

Now – tonight, last night, the night before that, a string of nights and days reaching back into darkness – time seems to be all that I have.     

Santa: Judgement Day by Dennis Zaslona

Santa - Judgement Day     Full podcast here: (5th story)       Bonus Christmas podcast story here!

Read by Rich Keeble

‘Merry Christmas, motherf**kers. Here I co-ome!’

The wind ripped away Square Jaw’s yell as he dived from the stealth bomber and into the belly of the Mexican night sky. Two thousand feet below, the lake was a silver puddle, a second moon. S.J. hugged his Takana sniper rifle tighter to his chest. He was diving into the moon, a Christmas eve angel of death. A Wenceslas warrior. ‘Yeeeeha!’

At eight hundred feet above the villa where Hector Cabello and his cartel leaders were gathered, he pulled the release ring. But before the canopy fully opened, his feet smashed into something solid. His knees jammed into his chest and he was slammed onto on his back.

For a moment he just lay looking up at the stars while he caught his breath. His legs were bent so far over his head that his knees were touching his ears. The moon swayed as the platform, or whatever it was he had landed on, gently rocked. Absurdly, he thought he could hear the snort of animals and the tinkle of bells.

Christman's Present by Lauren Van Schaik

Christman's Present MP3

Read by Lois Tucker

Inside, Christman’s department store was shimmering and the same, smelling of wax-polish and tinsel. I wasn’t sure why I’d brought Sinclair here – a drunken impulse, maybe – but I’d always loved it: the chill marble of the first floor, how my pumps clinked on it like teacups. How the glass cabinets glimmered and mirrored into forever. The necklaces, draped on velvet hillsides like the Hollywoodland sign; the hundreds of gloves folded in prayer. I used to think they got Christmas from this place. At least my Christmas morning stockings from Aunt Mill always came in the same battered Christman’s box. But the stockings, always worsted and thick, not silk, were never from here; I’d never known the dress that was, that had come in that box when it was new.

I’d only been to Christman’s for the first time with Inez, when we were thirteen. I remembered it as clear as today. She’d bought a broderie blouse with money her parents had given her. The blouse was beautiful, and cool as a dollop of sour cream on the baked potatoes we ate in the third floor café afterward, tucked among her boxes. The whole time, I hadn’t known where to put my hands.

Gluten Tolerant by Mike Clarke

Gluten Tolerant MP3

Read by Amy Neilson Smith

‘Fuck you, Jack. Merry Christmas.’ That’s what I should have said.

Instead I mutter ‘See you later, then – at home’ with a calculated passive-aggressive cutting edge. It’ll be wasted on the pissed-up arsehole.

We’re in Bermondsey, last Friday before Christmas. Done the Beer Mile. Again. With mates – mostly Jack’s. You know the place – a mile-long strip of craft breweries under the railway arches? If you’re too basic to know it then you’ll never work for my PR agency.

Jack swears virtually all his social media deals are sealed here over a pint of craft IPA on a Friday afternoon. All free-range and fair enough. But the evenings inevitably end with contracts celebrated at someone’s new-build flat in Rotherhithe or Limehouse – the boys in a daze of drugs and videogames and their bored girlfriends bonding over competitive stories of sex and shoes.

Not this time.

The Man Who Brought Gold by Mark Sadler

The Man Who Brought Gold MP3

Read by Sophie Cartman

From a seam of molten gold, on the wounded bed of the Adriatic Sea, a curl of magma, drawn from the earth on a serpentine current, was warped into a bottom-heavy S-shape. It hardened as it cooled on a rising stream of bubbles; breaking the surface a few minutes after it formed, where it assumed the bobbing silhouette of a swan in profile. By late afternoon it had entered the Venetian lagoon, nudging itself unnoticed along the battered walls of the interior canals that reflected murky cross-sections of buildings, garnished with Christmas lights.

A pair of large hands, the colour of mahogany, the flesh welted with buried shrapnel, reached down, raising it from the channel, water pouring from the honeycombed rock.

The man's name was Melko. The object that he held was called a lava swan. He had lived in the city long enough to know that the people considered them lucky and displayed them in the windows of their homes and businesses. He left it leaning upright against the green door of Della Cava, a seaport vintner that traded medicinal wine, made from salt grape. Wiping his scarred palms on his trousers, he ambled across the plaza towards a pair of towering double doors made from dulled, embossed metal, with a smaller wicket gate for pedestrians inset at the bottom.

My favourite Christmas story: Mike Clarke on Posy Simmonds's "Cassandra Darke"

My Christmas story is both very new and very old.

It’s new because the book, Cassandra Darke by Posy Simmonds, was only published on 1^st November this year (sorry, only a few sample pages can be found online). It’s old because it’s inspired by (if not a faithful reworking of) the classic seasonal story, Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol.

Cassandra Darke is also a graphic novel. Actually, novel might be pushing it a little as, at under 100 pages, it can be read in the time it would take a long short story. But it is told mostly with pictures – and wonderful ones they are too.

Cassandra herself is a curmudgeon on a par with Ebenezer Scrooge – a wealthy septuagenarian West London art gallery owner. She’s as mean towards others as Dickens's protagonist, but her solitary Sloane Square existence is considerably more indulgent – she has a cook (whom she reprimands for being “heavy handed with the dill”) and polishes off bottles of Chateau Haut Brion during weekday dinners.