Finn Kelly
Stories (3)
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Not Here For The Fish And Chips
People said all sorts about the shark that supposedly turned up somewhere along the coast of Devon, England. “Circling Devil’s Point,” they said, “looking for a meal.” It was a great white, it was a bull shark, it was a dinosaur; the rumours twisted and grew and spread as far as Cornwall, where the summer season was just beginning and the tourist industry really didn’t need Jaws keeping wealthy Londoners from spending their big city money on overpriced ice-creams. Patient zero of the rumour seemed to be a fisherman local to Plymouth who drew a small crowd of mildly interested middle-aged men with his energised account of a very interesting day at work.
By Finn Kelly5 years ago in Fiction
Don't Eat The Cake, Red
There were seagulls hovering over even this part of town. I was down in my alley waiting, this quiet gutter of the hotly packed city centre, and up above between the gap of blue and white between two high blocks of cement there were several gulls squawking and flitting between windowsills and roofs. I noticed them then because if you wander closer to the river or the seafront you have to keep an eye on the sky if you want to walk away without a nasty white surprise on your head, and even the sound of cries and wings makes me tense up and cautiously raise my eyes. I positioned myself in an alcove of the right hand building. An old friend of mine was introducing me to someone shortly in a café across the street to set me up with a job, and making first acquaintances with a bucket of bird muck dripping from your forehead is never the way to go in my business.
By Finn Kelly5 years ago in Fiction
The Heart In My Hand
Monday night, and I got my agenda. In the mail, hand delivered, like every week. My brief enclosed - faces, disputes, relevant spots on the public consciousness. Not-quite-Monday-evening-television-news level information; security level 4 or 5, I can never be sure. Somewhere just above where the average citizen sits, brewing up unsettled thoughts about this or that word in the newspaper, where I may sweep in and smooth over those cerebral wrinkles with a calm hand on the shoulder and a laugh. A familiar routine, and one that I had maintained this Monday evening up to the swift whisper of the package in the door. Sitting in the near darkness, face in full blue illumination of the Monday evening news, bi-weekly standard-issued glass of wine tight in my hand, a perfect stony calm, then the footsteps of the courier and the rattle, swish and heavy smack of the dense envelope. My exterior barren of reaction, I finish my wine - a bitter, weak white, ice cold in my hand - and retrieve the package from the doormat to review this week's agenda. Then - as the last vestiges of a grey day in the city fade from the window - I get to work.
By Finn Kelly5 years ago in Fiction
