The unit occupies an annex towards the back of a Victorian building, around the backstreets of Waterloo. The floor exists in a state of perpetual disrepair, with lino torn up on the steps and corridors, faded public notices peeling on the walls; an air of an abandoned school in a nuclear zone. Desks are arranged … Continue reading The Unit of Disaster Management
Category: Fiction
Lunatic Hopes
‘They have the most lunatic hopes, these beasts; they’re just fools, utter fools. That’s why we like them; they are our dogs; finer dogs than any of yours . Watch this now, a camel died last night and I have had it brought here.’ Jackals and Arabs, Franz Kafka
Things We Lost In The Fire
'In the darkness, in among the barely visible vegetation, the fireflies shone. I hate when people call them lightning bugs; firefly is a beautiful word. Once, I caught a bunch of them in an empty mayonnaise jar, and I realised how ugly they really are, like cockroaches with wings. But they've been blessed with the … Continue reading Things We Lost In The Fire
Cloth
As we boarded the train, I noticed the white of a dog collar under the man's scarf. Yet moments earlier, I had watched as he stood at the centre of the doors, impeding the passengers who needed to alight from the train. We sat down at the same bank of seats, and during our short … Continue reading Cloth
Bones
‘We all walk over bones in this city, it’s just a question of making holes deep enough to reach the buried dead. I have to dig, with a shovel, with my hands, like a dog. Dogs always find bones; they always know where they’re hidden, where they’ve been abandoned, forgotten.’ ‘No Flesh Over Our Bones,’ … Continue reading Bones
Particle Physics
'Vorster watched the paraplegics racing their wheelchairs around the basketball field. Two years earlier, while driving home one evening, he had seen Cosmos 253 breaking up on re-entry. For half a minute the sky had been filled with hundreds of glowing fragments, like an immense air force on fire. Vorster stood up as the audience … Continue reading Particle Physics
The Dog, the Dog
'Anyway, just at that moment, while I was still running around, I heard one of the women say, Jesus, the dog, the dog, and I thought of telepathy, I thought of happiness, and I was afraid that the woman who had spoken, whichever one it was, would go out and look for the dog.' Roberto … Continue reading The Dog, the Dog
Louisiana Loses Its Cricket Hum
'We who were not there cannot possibly understand how they came like flies: swarming up all of a sudden and buzzing over the horizon, thickening the sky with their heavy shadows. We were playing poker at Jimmy's-beer sweating, fans going round and round, the sound of pool clicking the moments by. Everyone admits it: we … Continue reading Louisiana Loses Its Cricket Hum
Ballard Heights
‘Later, as he sat on his balcony eating the dog, Dr Robert Laing reflected on the unusual events that had taken place within this huge apartment building during the previous three months.’ High Rise, JG Ballard
Make-Believe Streets
‘It is exceedingly thoughtless to send a young boy out on an urgent and important errand into a night like that, because in its semi-obscurity the streets multiply, becoming confusing and interchanged. There open up, deep inside a city, reflected streets, streets which are double, make-believe streets. One's imagination, bewitched and misled, creates illusory maps … Continue reading Make-Believe Streets
Absence Club 