The Laundrette
It was barely four o’clock, and already the thick, wet Scottish dark of winter had fallen around the loch like a shroud. The car mounted a rise and began the descent into the valley.
Maggie didn’t like coming this way, but she didn’t trust the Big Road, what with all the lorries—not in this junkheap. The rusting Ford Focus was all the car they could afford, or so Iain claimed. Knowing him, he had a secret car, a better one, stashed at his mother’s.
The beating rain lulled. The wind coming off the mountain met the wind coming off the loch, rocking the car like a cradle.
The car hit a pothole, jerking Maggie awake. Her hands clamped the wheel for her life and little Callum’s too. The car jinked to the left. Tires squealed. Fear painted her with ice, inside and out.
The truck’s headlights washed the car with eerie brightness. Its horn rattled all the windows, her skull, and ribcage too. The sixteen-wheeler cannoned by, drenching her windscreen with filthy spray.
“Sweet Mary!”
Maggie didn’t believe. But the old oaths held some power.
The car steadied. Wobbled. Steadied again. In the backseat, Callum took up like a banshee, the wail rising quickly to a high-pitched scream fit to shatter the steamed-up windows.
Her heart hammered. She felt warm at her armpits. “Callum, love, it’s okay. We’re fine.”
The banshee disagreed. If anything, the intensity of its cry increased.
“Callum!” She could barely hear herself over the screeching.
A twang, then, in her stomach, like a rubber band. Too early for it to be kicking just yet… surely. It couldn’t be. If she began to show, then she wouldn’t have a chance of getting rid of it. Dark thoughts circled like crows.
That pothole might have solved a few things if it had been bigger. If the lorry had been a little further over…
She winced, shocked at herself. Her grip on the wheel became a weld.
Blurs of light visible through the windscreen were the pale dabs of Kippingford, the one-street village in the crook of the valley where the river drained into the loch.
No more headlights oncoming for now.
Thank God.
In the backseat, the banshee had quieted, perhaps bored, perhaps lulled by the thrumming engine and drumming rain.
She breathed deeper, and as she did, the smell reached her.
Not from Callum. From Iain’s dirty washing, overtopping the bag stuffed behind her seat. Sweat. Cigarettes. A hint of an aftershave she didn’t know he owned. And something she hadn’t smelled since the night he’d put another whelp in her. Only dried this time. Sour. Dank. His mother’s spite and adoration for her son had obviously overridden her sense of smell.
“I’m tired of him leaving a wash for me on his way to the rigs,” Ailsa McAllister had said bitterly, handing over shirts, pants, and socks from what must have been her son’s last three pit stops at the house he still called home. “And I have enough to be getting on with, what with Christmas around the corner. It’s high time his wife started doing her job.”
Maggie had protested—“It’s no’ my fault he doesn’t bring these back”—but Ailsa was stone-faced, reveling in this latest opportunity to remind her who was the most important woman in Iain’s life.
And so Maggie had taken the washing, Callum, and the toy helicopter Ailsa had bought her son’s heir away silently, like the good wee woman she was. Away from Ailsa’s spanking new Bosch washer-dryer. Back to her own worn-out Indesit, which could only manage cold or boil washes these days.
“And mind you get them properly clean!” Ailsa had announced to the neighborhood as Maggie loaded Callum into his safety seat. “My Iain is used to the best!”
The loch road flattened out. A faded sign announced “Kippingford,” and the village’s first few dour houses loomed through the rain, like mourners drifting to the graveside. The lights Maggie had seen from higher up resolved into two tired street lamps and a squarish block of washy fluorescence at the village’s end.
What could be open at this time of night?
She slowed the car.
The shop’s unlit sign was barely visible above the square of brightness.
BEAN-NIGHE LAUNDRETTE.
Maggie had never heard of “Bean-Nighe.” It had to be the Gaelic name for the village, but it hadn’t been on the sign.
Through the glass frontage, a rank of yellowed machines. A row of white seats. And the suggestion of a skirted figure, short and round, hunched over a titanic pile of washing, orange and red and black. From the rigs, obviously.
Maggie had never seen the laundrette the few times she’d taken this route. It looked old, from the fifties or sixties. She bit her lip. What would it be for a wash and dry these days? Five pounds? Six? And then she’d have to account for ironing. That would be another three or four for sure.
The temptation was an ache in her—not having to sort through his mess. Drag it cold from her machine. Wring it out until her hands were pink and sore. Dry it by the radiator. Pray it didn’t go musty. Press it, hoping her old iron wouldn’t spit scale on it or scorch it.
But nine pounds! Maybe ten…
Either amount was impossible. Iain kept a tight rein on her household money. She’d gone hungry once this week already. Anyway, using a laundrette would seem “lazy” to him. And then she’d be explaining to Louise next door that she’d fallen down the back steps again.
As they passed The Bean-Nighe Laundrette, Callum made a strange, cooing sound. He’d be playing with his new toy. Good.
The fluorescence became a pale blur in the rearview mirror. Disappeared.
More lights approaching. Another lorry.
This time she was awake, at least.
By the time they got home, forty-five minutes later, Callum was fast asleep. She woke him carefully in case the banshee returned, but he just rubbed his eyes and was away again almost as soon as they’d got in. She put him down in the back room, keeping the door open.
Iain’s washing was even worse than she’d thought, and she recognized none of it. She put on a rubber glove. The end of a thick hiking sock was practically solid. She threw it into the machine like she was holding a snake by the tail. It clanged into the drum. Two plaid shirts smelled like he’d worn them for a week straight. Ditto three pairs of briefs. A pair of grubby jeans.
When she got to the bottom of the bag, her heart froze.
The dark blue blouse was a cheap thing with a low, scalloped neckline. Nothing she would wear. Smelling of some brassy perfume and unfamiliar female sweat. And across the front, a seeding of crusty stars and blotchy galaxies.
She dropped it like a hot brick. Tears pressed at the insides of her eyeballs. She blinked them back in, flung the blouse into the machine, and thought for a hot second about boiling the whole lot—or burning it.
She shook her head. She’d just throw the blouse away.
Ah, no. Better yet. She’d wash it and put it on the top of the pile for him.
If she did that, he’d hit her for sure.
It might be worth it.
She tamped her anger back down, locking it into the tiny box where it usually lived, away from the world.
She’d wash the blouse, iron it carefully on Cool, and tuck it between two of his shirts, like it had gotten there by accident.
She filled the detergent drawer and set the dial to Warm, which meant Cold.
The machine coughed, whirred, and died.
“No!”
She twisted the dial and tried it again. Nothing.
What were her options? He’d be back tomorrow night, and the washing had to be done and pressed by then. Handwashing wouldn’t get it fully clean, and the idea of touching it disgusted her. Louise would be asleep now on her evening dose. Maggie didn’t know Mrs. Choudhury well enough to ask, and old Mr. McCaffrey didn’t have a machine, by the smell of him. Ailsa’s Bosch would make short work of it, but that door was already closed, although the idea of showing his mother the soiled blouse was a dark, delicious temptation.
There was only one option.
Ten pounds, though…
She went to the freezer, the one place Iain never looked. At the back, behind a Tupperware of his mother’s Cock-a-Leekie soup, which tasted like gnat’s piss, was a bag of chopped onions. Inside the bag was another Tupperware, a tiny one, only big enough for half a lemon or your kid’s baby teeth. It contained three brown notes and two smaller blue ones. Forty pounds was not a lot of going-away money. But then she didn’t really have anywhere to go. These new plastic notes didn’t get ice crystals; that was something. She stuffed them in her bra, enjoying the momentary cool of them.
She woke Callum gently, led him—bleary but mercifully quiet—to the car, and he was soon asleep again.
It wasn’t until they were back in Kippingford, parking on the street opposite The Bean-Nighe Laundrette, that he woke up again—cooing, pointing.
A woman stood at the window, a faint smile on her face, as if she had been expecting them.
“Come on,” Maggie said, lifting Callum out of the car. At least it had stopped raining. “We won’t be long. Just enough to get Daddy’s washing done.” Another twang in her stomach, stronger than the first time. Maybe she was losing it. Maybe she wouldn’t have to do anything. Maybe it would just come out of her on its own. She was sure that had happened once before, a long time before Callum had chained her to Iain. She could only hope. She’d planned for an eighteen-year stretch in hell until Callum was old enough to leave home, and she was three years into it. She couldn’t cope with a reset.
Callum tottered from the car, looking like a little spaceman in the hooded grey onesie, eager to explore this strange new planet. They looked both ways and took it carefully. The woman opened the door for them and beckoned them in with a crabbed hand.
She was short, almost as round as she was tall, with pale, leathery skin, a sharp nose, and dark discs for eyes. Barely-greying crinkled hair suggested she might be in her forties, while wrinkle-scored skin hinted at her sixties. Her voice was deep, watery, as if she’d walked up from the bottom of the loch. “Good evening, young lady. And who’s this fine wee gentleman?”
“This is Callum,” said Maggie.
Callum smiled, and the woman smiled back. Her nose wrinkled, and her eyes drifted to the washing bag.
“Oh, yes, sorry,” said Maggie. “My husband’s.”
“It always is, dear.”
The laundrette was warm, filled with a rank of yellowed machines with single black eyes, shelves stocked with boxes and bottles of detergent, a row of white plastic chairs, an ironing board, and a metal rack of wire hangers. White floor tiles were scrubbed to within an inch of their lives.
And on them, a huge pile of orange overalls, filthy with oil and grease.
And blood. In lines and patches and around tears in the fabric. Great gouts and splashes and congealed pools of red-brown.
Maggie’s heart caught in her throat. She could smell oil and machine grease off them, but the overriding smell was smoke, with something faintly caustic beneath.
The washerwoman turned her head. “Ah. A terrible thing.”
There was only one question on Maggie’s lips. “When?”
The woman nodded. “Soon.”
“Soon? What do you mean?”
The dark discs fixed her. “I need to get these washed soon.” The woman looked at the washing bag. “Take the end machine for your load. Wee Bessie will sort you out.” She indicated the last machine, the smallest one in the place, then turned to the pile of overalls.
It couldn’t be. Just couldn’t be. If it was Iain’s rig, she’d have heard. Come to think of it, if it was any rig, she’d have heard. News like that blasted through city and country like a bomb going off. Some other accident, then. Maybe these had been held in evidence or something, in storage while battalions of lawyers played an inquiry like a table football game. That had to be it.
The sound of creaking bones pulled her from her thoughts.
The washerwoman looked to be in some discomfort.
“Here, let me help you,” said Maggie. “Mine won’t take long. These look…” She pulled up one of the overalls. It was filthy with grease and smoke, intact but for holes the size of dinner plates in front and back, their edges tattered and bloody, as if a big pipe had been threaded clean through a man. There was a nametag on the front: MCADAM. “Geordie McAdam?” She dropped it.
“Sorry, dear?”
There came a sound like a sudden storm, a blaze of light, and a sixteen-wheeler barreled past at the kind of speed a village should never see, rattling the entire laundrette.
Maggie jumped, looked anxiously for Callum, but he was playing, oblivious to the passing fury. She looked back at the nametag. “It’s the name of… one of my husband’s colleagues.”
“Your husband works the rigs.”
“Yes.” Maggie flushed hot and cold. She and Tess, Geordie’s wife, weren’t close, but she knew her. Maggie wasn’t close to any of the wives or girlfriends; Iain didn’t like that. But she’d seen Tess on one of the few occasions Iain had taken her to the club, and she’d exchanged a few words with the shy, pretty wee thing while Iain was “draining the hog,” as he liked to call it. “Poor Tess,” she said. But McAdam wasn’t that unusual a surname. This could be anyone. Especially if these were old. “Where are these from?” she asked the washerwoman. “From an enquiry?”
“Ach. Enquiries… what a waste of time.” The woman grabbed at the pile and brought up two of the heavyweight suits. “Let’s put them all in Big Ailsa, shall we?”
“Big Ailsa?”
The washerwoman chuckled and nodded toward the biggest machine in the place, near the front. “A mean, angry spirit if ever I’ve seen one. She’ll beat your clothes like she’s beating heads on a rock. Just what these need.”
Maggie picked up two of the overalls and took them over to the machine, adding to the two the washerwoman had loaded. Then she caught herself in the task. Why keep these terrible things? Why wash them, for God’s sakes?
“Don’t strain yourself now,” said the washerwoman. “How far along are you?”
“What?” Maggie’s heart was in her throat again. “How did you…”
“I know the look.”
Maggie looked down at her stomach.
The woman clucked. “Not the belly. The eyes.” She picked up another two pairs of overalls. One was practically shredded to nothing, a bloodied wraith. “I lost one myself. A long time ago.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry.”
“They come and they go,” said the woman distantly. “So easily.”
Maggie didn’t know how to respond. She took another two overalls to machine Ailsa and fed them in. She couldn’t help glancing at the nametags. MCKAY. ROBERTS. She didn’t recognize either name. The pile didn’t seem diminished. How many men had died? She racked her brains to try to remember when last there had been a disaster on the rigs.
“This isn’t all of them,” said the washerwoman, as if reading her mind. “There’s more out back. We’ll have to do them in shifts, if you don’t mind.”
“I have to get mine done,” said Maggie softly. “And there’s Callum.”
The dark discs flicked to the front of the place. “He seems right enough.”
And he did, flying the helicopter around and around. It was the happiest Maggie had seen him for a while. “He misses his Daddy.”
“Aye, well. Boys will.” The washerwoman closed Big Ailsa’s door and tipped powder into a yawning tray. “Put yours in wee Bessie, like I said. She’ll be done with them in a jiffy. They’ll be dry and pressed before you know it.”
Maggie remembered, reached into her dress for the nestled notes. “How m—”
The washerwoman shook a hand at her. “Don’t think of it. You’re helping me, and I didn’t ask.”
“That’s very kind. It’s the least I can do.”
“No, it’s not.”
“What?”
“The least you can do is nothing. You did something.”
They loaded the other machines while Callum shuttled imaginary oil workers from the cliffs of washing machines and dryers to the white plastic chair rigs offshore. Maggie didn’t recognize any other names from the tags.
Soon, the laundrette was chugging and sloshing and rumbling away. The air grew warm. The tang of detergent gradually took over from smoke. The foam in the machines started off black and pink, but that soon faded to grey and then white, washing away the memory of whatever disaster had befallen these men.
Maggie sat down, exhausted. The washerwoman handed her a cup of tea. When did she have time to make that? “This is very kind of you.” She sipped it. “I don’t usually take sugar…”
“You need it after all that work. Especially in your condition.”
There it was again. Hell resetting like vast, terrible clockwork. She could almost hear the gears clicking, huge teeth interlocking, trapping her. The laundrette shook as another juggernaut passed outside.
Maggie looked around frantically. But Callum was still playing happily. She looked at the watch she didn’t have. “Is that the time? We need to get going.” She made to get up. And then, remembering. “Oh. My washing.”
“It’s done.”
Sure enough, there it was, in a neat pile on the chair next to her. Washed, dried, and pressed. “How—?”
The washerwoman was holding the cheap blouse by the washing label. Her expression was unreadable. “This disnae look like something you’d wear.”
Heat sprang to Maggie’s cheeks. “I…” She didn’t know what to say.
The woman smiled darkly. “Men.”
Maggie put her tea down on the chair next to her, stood up, and brushed her coat down for no good reason. “Are you sure I don’t owe you anything?”
The woman shook her head. “On the contrary. I owe you.” The dark discs were flat as holes. “Sit a minute. Finish your tea.”
“I really must be going. Callum, you know.”
“He’s fine.” And he was. A full heliport of detergent boxes and paper cups was under construction on a Formica table by the front window. “Sit.”
Maggie obeyed the command, sipped her tea, and racked her brains for something to say that was as far away as possible from unwanted offspring. “So, Bain-Nig, is it? Is that the old name of the town?”
“Bean-nighe,” corrected the woman.
“Ban-Nee-Yeh,” repeated Maggie.
“That’ll do,” said the woman. “It’s no’ the name of the town. Folks around here don’t have need of the old names, not now.”
The bulb in one of the laundrette’s hanging pendants dimmed abruptly, and the place changed subtly. Shadows lengthened, colors curdled, lines drifted. Angles seemed odd, as if the laundrette didn’t quite fit into the space marked out for it.
“Ban-nee-yeh,” said Maggie, trying out the word.
“The bean-nighe is a spirit,” said the washerwoman. “You’ll have heard of her sister, Boabhan Sith, and her Irish kin, Bean-Sidhe.”
Maggie thought of Callum’s wail. “I—I’ve heard of banshees. Does this ban-nee-yeh scream too?”
The woman laughed like a drain gurgling. “Och no. Nothing like that. The bean-nighe is a washerwoman, condemned to wash the clothes of the dead at the river ford.”
“Condemned?”
“Aye.”
The temperature in the room seemed to drop a few more degrees. The machines sloshed and rumbled. One drained; another started its spin cycle.
Maggie felt nervous to ask. “Why condemned?”
“She was with child,” said the washerwoman heavily. “But she died with it at the birth. So her spirit is condemned to have the clothes of the dead delivered to her and to wash them until her true time is done.” She paused, as if contemplating. “Whenever that might be.”
Maggie stared at the great pile of overalls, which looked as if they might take forever to get through. “Who decides on her true time?”
The washerwoman huffed. “That’s down to Fate.”
Maggie gripped her tea more tightly to feel its warmth. “Fate?” she said bitterly. The idea was almost offensive. If Iain was her fate, there really was no escape. “I don’t believe in fate.”
“I see.”
“And what happens after that? When her ‘true time’ is done?”
“Death,” said the washerwoman. Her head flicked up, startlingly quickly, to look at the window. “As comes to us all.”
Another lorry blasted by outside, blazing lights and a blaring horn this time, like a huge metal harbinger, shaking the laundrette.
The woman turned, black disc eyes wide, hair wild. “She does have power, though.”
Maggie recoiled. Her stomach cramped violently. She’d been brought up to be polite, especially to old women, but a sudden spurt of anger blew all that to ash. She stared into the washerwoman’s blank eyes. “How? How does she have power? Can you tell me? Because I’d love to know!”
The heliport suddenly collapsed, boxes and cups bouncing all over the floor. Callum’s banshee wail took up again, instantly piercing.
Maggie whirled around. “Callum!” She jumped up.
The mug, empty, fell from her lap. It bounced once on the tiles and clattered into the machines. They were all on spin now, like a row of turbines. The noise was enormous.
“Callum!” Maggie grabbed for him, but he evaded her, running toward the washerwoman. He grew silent as soon as he reached her skirts.
The washerwoman looked down at the boy but didn’t make to touch him.
Callum, undaunted, wrapped his arms around one of the woman’s legs.
Maggie went to them and pried Callum away.
He bounced away from her, like a little spaceman across the surface of the Moon. He found his helicopter.
Maggie looked at the washerwoman. “I’m so sorry. He’s tired… I’m—”
The woman interrupted. “I still owe you a favour.” The words were flat, as if Callum had drained her of any finer feeling.
Maggie gestured to the neat pile of Iain’s washing. “You’ve already done me a favour.”
The dark discs narrowed to slits. “I said I owe you a favour.”
Maggie’s breath caught. She had no idea why she said what she did next, but it was all she could think about. “I’m so sorry you lost your baby.”
The washerwoman took her hand as if she were grasping a fish she’d caught at the ford. Her hands were cold as metal. “And yet you want to lose yours.”
Maggie winced and tried to pull her hand away. “That’s none of your business.”
The washerwoman did not let go. “No, it’s not. But I can help.”
Another of the pendant lights dimmed fractionally, bending the laundrette’s angles further out of true. The noisome pile of overalls appeared to twitch as the light changed.
“How can you help?”
The woman’s hand tightened. “You don’t want to keep it.”
Maggie gasped. Her eyes flicked to the metal rail of wire hangers, glinting in the new shadows like a rack of torture implements. Her insides twanged in alarm. The smell—the taste—of smoke and blood and oil clawed at the back of her throat.
The washerwoman seemed taller now. Or Maggie was shrinking. Their eyes were level. “You don’t want to carry his seed to term.”
The next word came to Maggie as if her tongue had collected all the smoke and blood and oil in her throat into a bolus of bitter phlegm. “No.”
The washerwoman was silent for a moment. Then she said, “And then there’s the other one.” The dark discs flicked over Maggie’s shoulder.
Maggie felt an uprush of cold air, as if the tiles below her had fallen into clear winter air. Her thoughts raced like snowflakes in a gale.
“It might turn out like him,” said the washerwoman. “Gamble. Drink. Cheat on the wife.” She paused. “Beat her.”
Maggie tried to pull her hand away from the vice. “Who do you think you are?”
“You know who I am,” said the washerwoman.
Another light went out, but a brighter light replaced it.
From the road.
The laundrette was shaking. All the machines were spinning, but it was more than that. Another big sixteen-wheeler was coming faster even than the last.
The washerwoman released her grip.
Maggie turned.
Callum was nowhere in sight. The glass door of the laundrette was trembling, as if it had just opened and closed again.
Light flooded the laundrette. The noise was deafening. The floor shook. The spinning machines shook. The walls shook. The ceiling lights swung crazily. The new heliport flew to pieces, cups and boxes and plastic bottles flying everywhere. The helicopter spun to the ground, crashing on its side.
The washer woman’s voice cut through the din like a dark, brambled thread. “You want it gone too…”
Then, silhouetted against the wall of light, a tiny shape like a dark star, arms wide as if welcoming blazing oblivion.
“CALLUM!!! NO!!!”
Maggie fainted.
Dreams of fire. Oil. Smoke. Blood.
Awake.
Something was poking her in the side.
She opened her eyes.
A little grey spaceman was poking her. “Mam.” It was the first time Callum had said a word in his three years on the planet. Poke. Poke. Poke. “Mam. Mam. Mam.”
The smell hit her. She was lying on the stinking pile of overalls.
Maggie scrambled into a chair, pulling Callum into her arms—warm and cold and hot and crying and laughing and angry and guilty and so—so—relieved.
The little lad wriggled free, retrieved the helicopter, and began the reconstruction of the heliport, seemingly delighted with his new word. “Mam. Mam. Mam.”
Maggie leaned back in the chair, instinctively wiping the sides of her coat where the overalls had touched. She stopped, pulled them away, and stared at them. Was that oil on them? Soot? It was difficult to tell in the odd, shadowy light. She sniffed at them. And there it was—oil. Smoke. Blood.
She felt sick.
Something on the pile caught her eye.
A flash of something impossible.
She got up and went to the pile.
The washer woman stood impassive, watching.
The tag was scorched, its edges singed and curled. A smear of oil cut the name in half, but it was still quite visible.
MCALLISTER.
Maggie pulled the overall, or what was left of it, from the pile. Ragged holes were everywhere. An entire arm shorn off. The rest of it black and brown, barely any orange visible.
Her heart felt as though someone had jammed it up into her brain pan. She couldn’t feel her legs. Electricity danced in her eyelashes, the tips of her ears.
“W-when did you say this happened?”
“Soon,” said the bean-nighe.
The laundrette was almost completely dark now. Only one bulb was still live. It hung over where Callum was playing, flickering. Shadows seemed to dance; lines warped. The dark eyes of the inert machines stared sullenly.
“Soon,” repeated Maggie.
“He’ll never be a good man if I save him,” said the bean-nighe. “You’d think hours lying smashed in the burned, cold, and wet on what’s left of an oil rig would change a man. But it won’t. Not that one.”
“Save him?” Maggie’s breath was coming in tiny little wisps.
“I still owe you a favor.” The bean-nighe’s tone made it sound like a curse.
Perhaps it was. “Save Iain?”
“Aye.”
“Otherwise…he’s dead?”
“He died two hours ago,” said the bean-nighe. “A few minutes before you drove past here the first time.”
“You saw me drive past?”
The bean-nighe didn’t answer; instead, she nodded at the ragged overall in Maggie’s hand. “Two hours is about my limit with resurrection.”
Maggie remembered how handsome Iain had been when they met, how full of desire for her he’d been, their crazy, funny wedding day, his ardor that night, all the wonderful things he’d said and never said again, his pride when Callum was born. He’d even stopped drinking for a time, then took it up again. The arguments. The absences. His relief—her relief—every time he left for the rigs. Undisguised bitterness when he returned. How he’d lost his temper when Callum was teething and then got a taste for it.
She put her hand to her cheek. The bone had healed poorly, leaving a faint ridge. She took a full breath.
Her eyes dropped, but she could feel the bean-nighe staring, waiting for an answer.
Finally, Maggie said, “I won’t cheat Fate.”
She looked up.
The bean-nighe’s dark eyes glittered in the last light of her laundrette. Her words were low, guttural, like the cold loch water was draining into her. “I thought you didn’t believe in such things.”
Maggie looked at the washerwoman, remembering her first pass by the laundrette. “Let’s say I had a kind of awakening. On the road.”
About the Author
Mark Brandon is a writer of dark fiction based in Leicester, UK. He has published two steampunk works – The Colossus of the Thames and Inkerman – and his short stories have been published by SpaceCat Press, the Association of Ishtar, RedCape Publishing and Rawhead. He was Editor’s Choice 2022 on the TinyBookcase SFF podcast.