'Lamu' by Noel O'Regan

“ As Aisling drives, Noah struggles to match the abandoned streets that now stream past his window with the city he has experienced the past few days – gone is the feeble crawl of traffic, the strangling smell of diesel, the stutter through roundabouts where knuckles harried closed car windows, and hands offered roasted corn on a stick, fresh mangoes, pineapple, and, one time, a kitten.”

Photo by Miville Tremblay, via Flickr.

The August 2017 Long Story, Short offering, 'Lamu', is by Irish writer and Sean Dunne Young Writer winner Noel O'Regan. Join hopeful but uncertain Noah on a road trip with a former flame through Kenya, as they skirt the boundaries of reconnection and dissolution. READ 'LAMU'.

The Frieze of Life by M.S. Pallister

Seven in the morning, I came down to the reception with a duvet wrapped over my pyjamas. The heating in my room had stopped working, again.

'What's the nature of your complaint?' asked the receptionist.

'You're joking, right? I was down here three times yesterday.'

She stared at me, unflinching.

'The nature of my complaint is that my fingers are too bloody numb to type a text to my ex-girlfriend.'

A story of gentle humour and humanity to cool you off in the July heat! M.S. Pallister brings her readers to wintry Oslo in 'The Frieze of Life', where a lovelorn man wanders the Munch museum, dines with strangers in hotels, and spends long afternoons in coffee shops waiting for his last love to come back into his life. READ 'THE FRIEZE OF LIFE'.