Puppy Love by Steven Lemprière @stevenlempriere A dog has entered my life; they’re a rescue and, like me, someone dumped them. She’s a bitch, and calling your name — another commonality — will see …

Most of Mia's classmates had four grandparents; a few, two or three. Mia just had one, hard-shouldered and wooden, her seventh birthday present. "It's a grandparent, and," her mother announced, "it doesn't have batteries; love is all it needs." Carved from oak and polished to a weathered sheen, it had smooth, rounded edges. On one side, an old woman's face emerged from the grain with deep hollows for eyes and a thin smile that didn't reach the corners.

By Steven Lemprière

The Only Crime Is Getting Caught

Most of Mia’s classmates had four grandparents; a few, two or three. Mia just had one, hard-shouldered and wooden, her seventh birthday present. “It’s a grandparent, and,” h…

A flash fiction website for writers and readers. One 75 word tale published daily. Plus author interviews and writing group map

Welcome to this issue of The Hoolet’s Nook . Each piece gathered here reflects the spirit of what we hope the journal continues to be—a space for stories and poems that sparkle, resonate, and...

Outings with grandad, just me and him, are fun; today, the Natural History Museum. He calls it the dead zoo. It’s kind of true, what with dinosaur skeletons, Neanderthal bones, stuffed animals and...

A flash fiction website for writers and readers. One 75 word tale published daily. Plus author interviews and writing group map

Wexford summers. Cousins. Some removed, others should be. A bruising stick-and-ball game settles scores. Red Lemonade, 99s, ice-cream wafers, crisps and slap-up feeds. Ravenous teams jostle, devour…

Her once lithe frame, now a shrunken sarcophagus laden with heartbreak, bears witness to the life it once embodied. Discarded soiled panties chronicle an event ciphered in blood-red dots, a...

Three’s Company by Steven Lemprière Sophie took the last of her husband from the freezer. A muscle that should, like other hard-working cuts of flesh, become mouth-wateringly tender when slowly bra…

Time travel. The subject of science fiction. But for Günter, it was something he often undertook, journeying to far-flung destinations when seeking to add to his collection. A horophile with...

by Steven Lemprière Love, honour and obey. My marriage vow to you. Just shy of twenty years, our china anniversary, a promise for you is ...

I’ve welcomed a puppy into my life, and strangely, she could be your doppelgänger. She’s a rescue. That’s how you described yourself when we met, but others labelled you as toxic. I failed to...

Léon. My grandfather. King of the Jungle. Pure fantasy, but his name, when expressed in his accented French drawl, seeded a child’s imagination; a belief further emboldened by me being his little t…

Like a moth drawn towards a flame, I furtively skirt two expressions of perfection. The first, a beguiling creature; the second, a word. Captivated at the zenith of beauty, by someone who possess p…

A house now unencumbered by timepieces, but still, their chimes remain, haunting its hollow margins. My father, the timekeeper, has departed for somewhere where the past, present and future are as …

My dog is deaf, and I whisper when I want to communicate with him. I find lowering the timbre of my voice accentuates the movement of my mouth. My dog is smart; he can lip read. My cat, on the othe…

By Steven Lempriere Mother met Jesus today. Dressed in company coveralls, he was busy stacking the bakery shelves at Walmart. She recognised him because the trolley he extracted loaves from also co…

Loitering at bus stops was an indulgence on Brian’s part, the kind only a cigarette could address. But tonight, with just a wintery fog for company, Brian kicked his heels. But then, shortly before...

“Tomato Tarte Tatin?” Sophie questioned, and not in her customary soft-toned whisper as she glanced over Tom’s notes for this evening’s celebratory dinner with her parents. No, her voice’s...

Since journeying past the road’s last fork, an expedition begun in a not so distant past feels far too short an adventure. Future detours are no longer charted, and the previously undulating...

You’d laugh. I’d cry. We are, in fact, polar opposites. Something recognised by all bar you. Family and friends often remark we’re like chalk and cheese. Me, the former. Brittle and a little...

Backstage at the Arena, May sensed more than the instrument’s physical weight as she lifted her father’s axe from its stand. Named after a Chuck Berry song, Pa’s childhood hero, and not her...

The final eight limber up. All seek gold. The three fastest marshalled together. An expectant triumvirate. I’m in lane four, my two rivals span either flank. Ahead, four-hundred metres of anaerobic...

My father spent most of his life, not just a normal working day, ensconced in his boatyard, somewhere he considered home, harboured amongst a community that, like him, had seawater coursing through...

The funeral party ambled along a weedy graveyard path, passing ancient headstones, some respectably inclined, as they journeyed behind Rose’s coffin toward her family’s plot and a return to her...

A call Tom had foreseen. His aunt relaying the news of his father’s death. Together as a family, but emotionally estranged, there was little love lost between father and son. But she’d kept Tom...

Dorothea, a woman of considerable refinement, never viewed herself as a lady of the night. No, she was a dominatrix. For her, an important distinction. Her clientele were well-to-do gentlemen, not...

As a morose teenager, I fell in love with a girl when our families shared the carriage of a touristic steam train. Fair, pig-tailed and German, we exchanged glances, even a brief smile, but never...

I’m attending a new psychologist. His mission is to wean me off consulting other psychologists. He’s the latest in a long line of Psychs I’ve consulted about my addictive personality. It’s a...