Love @ First Byte

 Will Sutton was a second year philosophy student who knew he was in a considerable amount of debt.  He woke up in the mornings and worried how he was going to eat, as he ate his meagre breakfast of cornflakes with barely a splash of milk.  He worried in the shower how he was going to pay the rent until the end of term.  His parents were coming to visit him today and he would probably have to explain to them why, despite the fact he had a part time job, that he constantly asked them to send him money.  His parents, though not poor, were not wealthy people and already gave their son a sizeable allowance each month that should have been more than enough for him to live on.  It was therefore a puzzle to them why he constantly pleaded poverty and begged them for more.  They had decided to visit him, determined to try to get to the bottom of the matter, and fairly firm in their resolve that enough was enough.

The Archivist

It was a cold wet morning and the rain drummed mercilessly on the little skylight in her office letting in a small dribble of natural daylight.  She was one of the lucky ones as the other archivists had desks between the endless shelves stacked with university records under fluorescent tubes.  Flooding was a constant worry here in the basement when it rained.  She was the veteran of two floods one of which had reached her door the result of a leaky roof.  She used to tell people that she kept an aqualung in the bottom of her filing cabinet and few realised that in fact this was true and not a joke at all.

Cinema Sartre

 

Chapter One

One postcard then another

I first encountered the Cinema Sartre about two weeks after my partner disappeared.  When I say disappeared I mean that we had breakfast together as usual before I left for work and that was the last time I ever saw her, but I know that I had killed her.  

The Lure of Arachnid Passion

 

The spider had bitten her on her right gluteus maximus.  The initial bite had left two small red puncture wounds that soon turned angry red.  Shortly after being bitten the toxic enzymes, and in particular hemotoxins, in the injected venom began to spread destroying the lining of the smaller blood vessels and allowing blood to seep into the soft tissues  surrounding the bite, producing local haemorrhaging, the area became black in stark contrast to the creamy whiteness of her skin becoming sensitive and tender to the touch.  He gently probed her bruised skin softly with his finger tips as she stood naked and vulnerable trembling slightly as she allowed him to perpetrate this intimate act upon her body.