steve coel
An 11.59 Publication
Experimental Short Fictions - Steve Coel. Text + Images - Curated by An 11.59 Publication, Birmingham
Apples and Pears
Apples and Pears
Got another letter today.
Don’t know who from. Don’t know where from. It’s just
another reminder. Just like the all the others.
Then.
Times were different and some say if you remember
what you were doing you weren’t there.
But I remember.
It was great.
Saturday nights dancing at the ‘Apples and Pears’
with all the other Mods and then off we’d all go Sunday morning, to Southend or
Margate, for a laugh.
But for me it only took one big mistake to make all
those good things stop and that was seeing that stupid card in the pub window
down the Old Kent.
All it said was: Fence wanted. Ask for Chick any
Saturday afternoon before closing time. Cash paid.
So for a dare the next Saturday, after listening to
new singles with the girls down Woolworths, I went over there and asked for
Chick.
Didn’t really understand what it all meant back then.
Do now.
So anyway I got another letter today.
Don’t know who sends them or where they’re from but I do know why they’re sent and I do know why they’re sent to me.
Now.
Down the market this afternoon people commented about
my sixties hairstyle and how it suits me, some even asked after mother.
But I don’t like talking, never did, so I just got on
with things. I mean; after all those years inside I’ve learnt to keep myself to
myself. And as for mother, well least said really.
So here I am.
I keep myself clean and live off the money I got
given on release. It’s what they owe me after all, seeing as how I’ve kept my
mouth shut all these years.
So when each new letter, like the one today, comes, I
read it just once, and put it away with the others.
There’s no way round it, I am what I am, a rich women
with no life.
Pity mother isn’t alive to share it with me
really.
Apples and Pears [ Draft ], from Tin Collector [ A Series of Micro Flash Fictions ] by Steve Coel, 2015.
Cycling for Happiness. An 11.59 Publication.
Cycling for Happiness
By
Steve Coel.
In all fairness she'd expected the water to be pretty cold. After all, it was November and the summer hadn't been anything like she had hoped and she knew well enough that what her family really needed was to get some sun on their bones. But there you go, what you gonna do about it?
So, even being short of money and that, she'd taken them all away for the weekend for a treat, the break she reckoned would do them all a bit of good.
c. Steve Coel [ 2015 ]
Houses were mostly boarded up it being out of season but she had managed to book them into a side street B and B. Thing is the rides on the front were all boarded up for the winter too. As a result the kids were generally pretty miserable, but they say that a change of scenery can put a lot of other things in the shade.
So they say.
Like i've heard that if a car drives on to your foot adrenalin gives you the strength to pick the car up so as how you can move your foot to safety. So I've heard.
Still, no-one's really sure where she got the strength to go into the water with the kids like that.
Cycling for Happiness [ Draft ], from Tin Collector [ A Series of Micro Flash Fictions ] by Steve Coel, 2015.
An 11.59 Publication.
A version / draft of this microflashfiction story appears in the April 2015 UK Edition of flashfloodjournal.
Shopping Trolley. An 11.59 Publication.
Shopping Trolley
By Steve Coel.
Like a dream it was just now, watching you walk barefoot and unconcerned across the wet road, it being early morning and all.
You must have started the evening with shoes, but there you go.
No CCTV to follow your every movement.
Not here.
Not yet.
But you're being watched my friend.
Trust me, you're being watched.
c. Steve Coel [ 2015 ]
Yeh it's quiet around here.
Well apart from the splashing water from the broken guttering and the occasional gun fire.
Odd that.
The guns usually start later, at a more sociable time like.
No real point. No-one to frighten see.
This time of day is just showing off.
So what the fuck you think you're doing around here this early in the morning is beyond me.
But then I'm not being paid to think or worry about stupid little fucks like you am I?
Oh well better get on.
Now, if I can just get this knife a bit further in I can
be on my own way as well.
Now, if I can just get this knife a bit further in I can
be on my own way as well.
Shit, was that gunfire again?
Shopping Trolley [ Draft ], from Tin Collector
[ A Selection of Micro Flash Fictions ] by Steve Coel, 2015.
An 11.59 Publication.
Walking Backwards. An 11.59 Publication.
Walking Backwards.
By Steve Coel.
Our hero figures that if he hangs around by the tube station long enough then it stands to rights that some pretty lady will eventually notice him, like what they see, stop and start chatting to him.
That's what our hero figures anyway.
For, [ if the truth be known ], our hero is genuinely trying to stop the rot of a miserable existence.
Ugly and simple is the unfortunate combination our hero inherits from a bully, he will never meet, who dated his unwilling, frightened and lonely mother briefly at an evening class.
However; after several saturdays standing around outside the tube station, mainly spent chewing his favourite gum and trying to read the free newspaper, our hero is now beginning to think that this particular idea might lack merit.
Yes, he has been spoken to.
Not by pretty ladies.
No.
The PCSO's simply wondered if he was, well, simply lost.
c. Steve Coel
The hostile newspaper vendor, on the other side of the entrance to the tube station, who keeps telling him to 'fuck off', doesn't really count in his overall estimation of things.
Now our hero decides, [ even though the initial fire has most definitely not been his fault, he'll blame the vendors cigarette and not his ], it best if he goes the long way home. That way he can avoid all the fuss and give himself some time to come up with a new and even better way of meeting some pretty ladies.
Walking Backwards [ Draft ], from Tin Collector [ A selection of Micro Flash Fictions ] by Steve Coel, 2015.
An 11.59 Publication
Evolution - A brief history of Micro Flash Fiction.
Evolution.
Part 1.
Merry Christmas, Mother.
Merry Christmas, Ma.
Hi Mommy, Mommy - and a hot cha cha!
[ HM Walker / Laurel / Hardy ]
Part 2.
A Merry Christmas husband;
Happy New Year's nigh.
I wish you Easter greetings;
hooray for the Fourth of July!
[ HM Walker / Laurel / Hardy ]
Part 3.
For sale: baby shoes, never worn.
[ Hemingway ]
An 11.59 Publication
Day
Day
Be prepared.
I had the idea at the top of the hill as I walked past a
corner-shop.
corner-shop.
I had been walking for over 2 hours.
By the time I'd reached the used car sales pitch, on the next
corner, I was definitely mulling it over and re-shaping it. This
meant that I thought the idea was probably worth writing about.
Across the road now and under the railway bridge I'd shaped and
formalised it some more. Opposite the empty park, free from
distractions, I contemplated the ideas relevance and originality
and was really pleased with it.
It had a simplicity that I liked.
Simple style, simple language, no messing.
I resolved to sit down later and draft it.
So.
I can remember where I had the idea.
But for the life of me I can't recall now what the hell it was
all about.
Anwastad Strydoedd *14, 2014.
[ For Michael in Stourport ]
[ For Michael in Stourport ]
steve coel
In the same week I saw four writers, I vaguely know, at work.
One was writing in a cafe at the local arts centre.
Another in the Co-Op canteen around the corner from where I
currently live.
Both on lap tops.
Writing away.
In public.
Another was in a coffee shop, doodling mostly, and the last,
busily sat scribbling away in the pub.
This public writing seems to be OK for some.
Some biographies I read seem to make this quite clear.
Is it some form of new performing art perhaps?
Of course it could be they've got no where else to write.
I know how that goes.
It could be they pick up on the sounds around them and write
where they need too.
Or even when they have too.
Like the 150 metre / 260 yard episode.
I could have stopped at the bottom of the hill, written my notes
and then been able to take it to the next stage.
I didn't and therefore I can't.
Manifesto for the New Writing.
Keep
it
simple.
steve coel
An 11.59 Publication
Cais Archif
Sometimes you just get to thinking about people and places you used to know well...
[ From Sept. 2009 ]
*****
Oct. 2014
I still keep coming across really great writers of micro-fiction on my travels.
New art, new writing, new ways of thinking creatively.
ALL committed to making a difference.
Respect to you all.
Tidal Movements
Mono / Tidal Movements [ 2013 ]
steve coel
Tidal movements
Walking across the field that afternoon the man and his daughter had come across the young man picking mushrooms. They greeted him simply, commented about the chill, damp day and continued on their walk. The younger man returned to his now shattered day dreaming while the man and his daughter continued on their way, concluding a queer conversation about the animals they had carefully placed on the opposite side of the valley that morning. Later that week, in the local newspaper, the man and his daughter spotted a picture of the young man and a short report about his tragic accident at sea. They smiled at each other with relief, recalling the conversation they’d had with him. They also spoke briefly, and secretly, about his sad ending and then continued constructing their models for the valley.
From Stubborn Lines c. Steve Coel 2013
An 11.59 Publication
steve coel
An 11.59 Publication
The House
The House.
South London - 1988
Row after row after row
all completely empty.
Once they had people living in them,
they don't any more.
They're not very nice houses.
Rooms small,
stairs
narrow
and walls
too thin.
The garden is tiny
the road that passes the front door
is very busy and dangerous.
This house is cold and damp
window frames rotted
water drips everywhere
floorboards warp and sag.
This house is twenty years old.
The House - The Fingers Give Lace [ 1997 ]: c. Steve Coel
An 11.59 Publication
c. SBUKARTIST - Happy Valley Series [ 2013 ]
Always Raining
[1]
It always rained.
It never stopped.
It rained so hard that umbrellas curled and died and young boys disappeared into puddles so deep that monsters lurked in the depths and rivers broke their banks and washed away innocent villages.
So memorials were built and from shallow pockets coins and notes were found.
Erected outside pubs and parks, market places and banks, needles of granite reminded people of the guilt and waste, of young men, wise before their years torn from bosom and coal fire.
And years passed, and young men died, old.
[2]
The wide open, free spaces of childhood when everything and everyone is big and breezy.
The long grass, the hollow tree that becomes a castle and fortress, the ocean of pond and its wild animals.
And then; narrow streets, noisy with old women washing and gossiping, and old men coughing and smoking and staring.
Brown and grey, memories frizzle and fry with bacon and eggs on open fires and rain that never stops.
Crack, crack, pain and metal and blood.
Dyfyniad - Mud On A Plate
An 11.59 Publication.
c. Steve Coel 2010
Say That Again.
Say That Again.
steve coel
steve coel
Penarth to Lavernock [ For Terry Setch ]
c. Steve Coel / Two Voices
c. Steve Coel / Two Voices
[ Book Cover Abstracts - Weekend Pass [1998] c. Steve Coel ]
An 11.59 Publication
Microflashfiction - Steve Coel
leather jackets and holy shoes
PAGE 1
Cracking bodies lying on wet grass and cider bottles in hand and
pocket.
Dotted around the church benches and full bins, brown anoraks, knee
length leather jackets and holy shoes.
Busses queue as gasping pedestrians run with full shopping bags and
buskers blow and sing. Builders shout, machines grind and grunt as
dust falls on sheets and skips fill with metal.
Rucksacks on backs - young girls wander into shops as stylish
haircuts argue with boyfriends in doorways.
brasluniau
Hay on Wye
steve coel
Sleeping in the city library young men hide from the rain. Coffee
and sandwiches, buskers juggling with fire.
In cellars and high places newspapers and books new suits, broken
heels, bus passes.
Movement around the inner city, dictated by jostling crowds and
pushchairs. Nobody shouts, yet the noise is relentless -
consistent, persistent and painful. No cars. Where are the sharp
sounds? The clutter and cluster of metal and music.
All style and posing - small groups and men rifling through bins
throwing new found bread to the pigeons.
People like ants in corridors and alleys, frightened animals,
glimpsed in corners.
Light fades and night settles quickly.
brasluniau
Hay on Wye
steve coel
Closing down sales.
Empty offices crying out to be filled and young workers walking the
streets at mid-day trying to think of something to do.
The scene repeated - day in, day out. Year in, year out.
Relentless like a cold stream down a mountainside.
But a stream always ends in a dirty pool. The pool never deepens it
just thickens like pea soup. Salt is added, then too much pepper
and the taste is bitter, sour and scours the roof of the mouth. It
discolours teeth, staining them and finally gums bleed. Blood pours
out of the mouth and spills onto shirt fronts and carpet.
And still the pool thickens - until it dries and becomes a solid,
immovable mass.
Without veins.
Without organs.
Without feeling.
Without movement.
steve coel
brasluniau
Hay on Wye
steve coel
An 11.59 Publication
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