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    How the World Turns (and Other Stories)
    How the World Turns (and Other Stories)
    How the World Turns (and Other Stories)
    Ebook91 pages1 hour

    How the World Turns (and Other Stories)

    By Colin Garrow

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    About this ebook

    He thinks that when he walks, his own feet propel the earth: that his movements keep the world going round. Literally. Each stride supplies the momentum for another motion forward, the ground shifting backwards beneath him, away into the distance.
    Except, when he stops walking.
    But then, it's quite possible that the earth doesn't need to move all the time, that in fact, it could probably manage quite well, hanging around, as it were, while he sits in the Cafe Noir, sipping his cappuccino, listening to the idle chittering of the waitress birds.

    (from ‘How the World Turns)

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherColin Garrow
    Release dateAug 2, 2015
    ISBN9781311712011
    How the World Turns (and Other Stories)
    Author

    Colin Garrow

    Colin Garrow grew up in a former mining town in Northumberland. He has worked in a plethora of professions including: taxi driver, antiques dealer, drama facilitator, theatre director and fish processor, and has occasionally masqueraded as a pirate. All Colin's books are available as eBooks and most are also out in paperback, too. His short stories have appeared in several literary mags, including: SN Review, Flash Fiction Magazine, Word Bohemia, Every Day Fiction, The Grind, A3 Review, 1,000 Words, Inkapture and Scribble Magazine. He currently lives in a humble cottage in North East Scotland where he writes novels, stories, poems and the occasional song.

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      Book preview

      How the World Turns (and Other Stories) - Colin Garrow

      How the World Turns (and Other Stories)

      By Colin Garrow

      Distributed by Smashwords

      Copyright 2015 Colin Garrow

      Smashwords Edition, License Notes

      This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favourite eBook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      Contents

      The Shed

      Trepanning for the Common Man

      Bed, Death and Breakfast

      The Hermit

      Last One In

      At My Table

      How the World Turns

      The Girl Across the Street

      Where He Left Them

      Her Ready-to-Wear Life

      The Candidate

      If the Worst...

      A Note on the Stories

      Other Books by this Author

      Connect with Me

      About the Author

      The Shed

      (First published in ‘Scribble Magazine’)

      ‘Tom, Tom, it's Waxy Tom,’ the voices ring out behind him. ‘Waxy Tom, Waxy Tom...’ He turns suddenly and makes as if to spit at the two boys.

      ‘Wouldn't dare,’ one of them taunts. ‘I'll get my dad onto you...’

      ‘Really?’ Says Tom. ‘Well, I'll get my dad onto you and my dad's bigger than your dad and...’ but they've already lost interest.

      As he starts up the path to the front door, a movement catches his eye. In the house next to his, a woman instinctively drops the net curtain and steps back into the safety of her own living room.

      Tom can't resist a smile. Neighbours.

      He steps inside the house and puts down the suitcase. An odd smell hangs in the hallway. It reminds him of a great aunt whose council flat stank of bodily fluids and old food, and who hugged him interminably between huge gorilla-like arms. He opens a window pushing it wide, and stands for a moment, breathing.

      A pile of letters: bills, junk mail, lie on the hall table. Protruding from the heap is a note scrawled in long looped handwriting. Tom fingers the note, the agent's condescending tones echoing as his eyes flicker over the words. Her bill will be forwarded in due course, along with the spare keys, thank you and best wishes for the future, etc.

      Tom walks slowly through the house, touching, sniffing, tasting its familiarity. Upstairs, he slides and slaps a hand along the railings on the landing, like a child rattling a stick against a fence. Each room reminds him of someone or something, an event, an argument, a tension, an excitement.

      Pulling the kitchen door shut behind him, he steps out onto the cracked path and takes in the jungle that used to be garden. Only the shed looks intact. Time was you couldn't turn your back without something getting nicked, or when it couldn't easily be carried off, hacked to pieces just for the hell of it. Tom checks the shed windows, tugging at padlocks, yanking them this way and that. Safe enough, he decides. He stands for a moment, studying the shed door, the keys handing idly in his hand. Eventually, he reaches out and cupping the rusting lock, eases the key into place and rotates the machinery into its open position. The padlock swings loose and drops to the ground with a thud.

      Moving hesitantly, he pulls the slatted wooden door. The hinges whine and grate in their holdings as it swings wide. Big hands splayed against the doorframe supporting his weight, Tom leans forward, peering inside. Slants of light glimmer through the ill-fitting planked walls, disturbed flecks of dust eddy into falling lines like miniature waterfalls. The rug, dark crimson and speckled with oil, lies diagonally across the floor. In one long slow movement, Tom lifts a foot and steps into the centre of the rough textured fabric. Slowly, he lowers himself into a cross-legged position on the floor. Resting his hands on his knees, he closes his eyes and begins to remember...

      The sun is high and warm when Tom emerges from the shed. He breathes slowly, thankfully. Taking a pouch from his inside pocket, he begins to roll a cigarette. He rests one hand easily by his side and smiles at the memory of a small boy in the bus queue that morning, who'd watched wide-eyed as Tom held the delicate paper between two fingers, dragged a dozen shreds of tobacco into the waiting channel, and like the cleverest machine ever, rolled one perfect cigarette with less effort than another man might extract a ready-made straight from the packet. Not exactly a worthy skill, he decides, licking the gummed paper. You'd never make Prime Minister with a hand-rolling talent.

      He taps the small tube gently on the back of his hand and flicks it up into his half-open mouth. His other skill. He inhales deeply, smoke easing down his throat like some achingly desirable fusion of need and satisfaction.

      Built from railway sleepers in the days when trains still ran past the bottom of the garden, these days you'd never guess there'd ever been a railway line there. New bungalows overlook the house now. Neighbours Tom hadn't bargained on can see straight into his living room. Her next door has the right idea—net curtains. Too late now though. Strange that no matter how hard he's tried to leave the past behind, it always manages to jump right back at him like a yo-yo. The shed

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