Short Stories With Caroline

‘I’ll pay whatever you ask, you have to help me.’ A distraught Aileen begged, tears trickling to her chin. I signalled gently with my arm for her to take a seat and nudged the  box of tissues closer to her. Taking a gentle deep breath in and out, I sat down on my  slightly more comfortable and marginally higher chair. Not wanting to break her flow,  and in the hope that she might be able to give me some insight as to why she was in my  office at 10.30 on a Wednesday morning,

Stealing kids had happened by accident. A leftover one in the backseat of a stolen car had started it. When Helena handed the 4x4 over to Paulo and mentioned the five-year-old, he raised an eyebrow, licked his lower lip lasciviously and added an extra hundred to her share.  It was only as she went to step away with the cash that she realised with sudden clarity the most likely next outcome for the child. Reluctantly dropping her hand from the exit door handle with a sigh, she

Alastor’s remaining eye opened wide as the blade sliced through his windpipe then pinned him across the tiller, separating two vertebrae of his thoracic spine. Lifeblood seeped from his throat into a hovering pewter bowl until it overflowed, dripping to the deck. A sail flapped as a fresh breeze began to stir the plate-glass sea.  As the moon slid out and up from the mist hovering over the water, Verity became visible, hazy like dust. A halo of light from behind her head lent

'Doomed, doomed from birth!' Dora repeated the phrase to herself for the umpteenth time as she walked up to the cash till at her local...