Alan Beard

Greggs cheese and onion pasty missing one bite in one hand, mobile in the other. Three buses go by, each with huge pictures of Jennifer Lawrence’s face on their sides, going round Cotteridge roundabout in procession.

The beggar gets all my change, £3.50, says someone stole his cup with all his money in, shows me his leg wound – deep hole on his shin, red raw, as if cut and then scraped out – I give him another fiver.

‘Now he was just chatting shit like a chatshitting machine.’

‘Another day in the domestic trenches,’ he used to say to her, and now regretted it. Regretted all that he had managed to do to her, to encumber her with the tawdry mess of himself.

His wife took to wandering out of family gatherings, found walking by the river smoking cigarette after cigarette.

Beautiful Cotteridge.

Loses his phone, loses his mind on Kings Heath High Street.

The woman shouting in the pub, want a wee wee-wee, and sliding through the group; the young man, baseball capped goes round kissing the many sat down bald men on their heads. Thin, wee, wiry, dead set, surely aimed, heading for the loos.

Every list he had to go through twice; as for a menu, he could be reading it all night. He wanted everything.

Rise rise rise from crap-ness to at least not-badness.

‘Seen Phone-a-Friend’s jumper?’

In Cotteridge a thin black bloke in dirty clothes shouts My Name is Terence at a shopkeeper, through the open door and then tells the rest of the street what his name is.
And topples over, people go to his rescue, although not you.

Spends a whole dream night searching for it, in cases and boxes, inside lorry cabs where the driver sleeps in the back. Hey, I shout down a dream tunnel, do you know the title of that story? Whole lives, civilisations depend on me remembering it.

The earth a round ball like a head shaggy with rocks and seas. Blue, deep oceanic eyes. A brain of molten lead. Nods its head at the sun, the slanting light.

Inside the insane comfort of a dream I live in a massive house with basements and attics, and endless corridors that merge with an airport and you can hop on a plane within minutes of leaving your bed.

Peter Michaelson traversed the streets of his borough daily, through park, along canal, cutting through the shopping centre all the while waiting like a passing fish for the stab of a giant heron. Gobbled down a spasming neck. Humans too would eat you up, he thought, if they could get away with it.

large family meeting, greeting, working their way round to ensure they don’t miss anyone, everyone gets a hug or a squeeze or a kiss, a word of comfort in the ear before moving back to assess, stood in a circle the better to see & compliment each other on their health & the growth of their children

I have new flash fiction - The Clarity - up at @flashfictionnorth.bsky.social www.flashfictionnorth.com/recentfiction

Girl with a paper gold crown, brandishing a feather, magicking the things she touches with it, bin, a passing dog, mother’s shopping bag. Orchestrating the world around her to make grownups vanish.

The fierce waitress - do you want a dessert? - becomes glum when we say we do.

[Train] Woman in beige. ‘Lee: how old is he now?’
‘12’
’12! Last time I saw him he was 6. Little man, now?’
‘Yes.’
‘Bet he’s a mate. Little mate hanging with you.’
‘Oh aye. Some cheek though.’
‘Oh does he go up against you now?’
‘Yes.’
‘Need to put him in his place now and again.’
‘Yes.’
'You bet.'

A baby in a pushchair tries to hand us a fir cone.

Thank you for featuring my piece!

Christmas haul!

Thanks Tracie!

So pleased to have a new microfiction at @fictivedream.bsky.social
my first publication since my book launch www.floodgatepress.co.uk/books
Thanks FD!

A satisfying night out for him: witnessing a raging row, later he’d cuckold the husband and laugh all down the lamplit street, stolen music in his head. If he could he’d steal the flavour out of coffee. He’d stolen the essence of people and left them crumpled, windless, made off with their souls.

So happy to be amongst this lot!

Thanks Laura! You’re a good ‘Un.

Christmas reading sorted thanks to Alan Beard's latest collection "Afternoon Drinking" (Floodgate) @alanbeard.bsky.social #newbook #shortstory#fiction. And here's the title story. Please click on the link and enjoy fictivedream.com/2025/04/13/a...