Fiction - j. ashley-smith

In Memoriam

by Joseph | Jun 17, 2020 | Fiction

All that is left are memories.

Like that time on the shingle beach at Aldeburgh. The ocean grey as slate, crests ruffled like white frosting. The thump of waves and rasp of small stones and, everywhere, the seashell roar like an endless breath. No horizon where the sky meets the sea, only the blur of cloud banks gathering. A tang in the air, of salt and electric tension, of the storm that will hit that afternoon.

We are at the beach, John and I, but it is cold; British summertime and I am wrapped in a woollen overcoat, shivering. I have my chin on my knees and hug them to keep warm. One hand is beside me, caressing the uneven ground. Part of this memory is in my fingertips, the sensation of touching the pebbles, of their roundness, their smoothness, of a kind of perfection that exists only in the feel of things.

John is behind me, pitching stones into the ocean. I cannot see him, but hear with each throw the rumple of his jacket, the distant plop, the scrabbling at his feet for another perfect skimmer. Everything about this irritates me. I do not remember why I am angry, only the crackle of it in my belly and spine.

Later, the storm will break. We will run, drenched, through the dark streets to the bed and breakfast, up to John’s room and the smell of pot pourri and the fish and chips we sneak inside. We will eat on the bed, right out of the newspaper, drink Adnams from the can. Our daughter is conceived to the sound of water hammering against the windowpane, sluicing down the narrow laneway.

This is the first memory I give to Dymphna. The first Dymphna, that is. Dymphna 1.0…

Read more in Issue 131 of Aurealis Magazine. Illustration by Nick Stath.

The Face God Gave

by Joseph | Feb 18, 2019 | Fiction

They were somewhere between LAX and Sydney, way out over the Pacific Ocean, when the plane hit rough air. The boys were both asleep, finally, and Karen lay in a waking doze, drained of all energy yet too wired to submit to sleep.

It was a relief to see them unconscious. They’d been awake so long, passed through so many time zones, that both boys had lost it completely. They had become so feral that even the endless loop of movies and TV no longer subdued them. But now Dylan was curled beside her with his head in her lap, snuggled under the airline blanket, one small, sock-less foot poking out from beneath. Torin lay rigid as a plank, mouth wide, with his head against the window-blind. The arm of Karen’s seat was up and dug painfully into her shoulder with the sudden dip and shudder of the plane.

Karen had never before confessed this to herself, but she was terrified of flying. For the sake of the boys, she had pressed down her true feelings, wore a brave expression she hoped concealed how tightly she gripped the armrest as the plane peeled from the runway, how her belly churned each time, as now, they hit a bad patch of turbulence…

Read more in the anthology Gorgon: Stories of Emergence, edited by Sarah Read. Illustrations by Carrion House.

The Moth Tapes

by Joseph | Feb 17, 2019 | Audio, Fiction, Free Stories

So here we are, little one. Our new home sweet home.

Not that I’ve fixed up your bedroom yet, but there’s still time. And it’ll be lovely, Noodle, I promise. We’ll go down to the shop tomorrow and look at colours. I’ll paint you a mural, get one of those things that dangles over your bed. When you look out your window, you’ll see the garden and the trees and the mountain behind. When you’re big you can walk out the back gate and spend all day up there, among the shinglebacks and roos and galahs. I’ll blow a whistle when dinner’s ready and you’ll come running back.

I found something out there today, out near the back gate where the veggie patch will go. It was poking out of the dirt and at first I thought it was a loose cable or something. When I looked closer though it wasn’t anything like that.

It took a bit of wiggling to get out of the ground, but I’m glad I made the effort because it’s just so unusual. I’ll put it somewhere safe for when you’re older; you can keep it in a box with all your other treasures. A sort of hollow leather cigar, all plump and shiny and rippled, the end’s torn like something burst out from inside, and I guess that’s exactly what happened. Perhaps it’s some kind of cocoon. But of what, though?
I have no idea…

The Moth Tapes was shortlisted for an Aurealis Award for Best Horror Short Story in 2019.

Read more in Aurealis Magazine issue 117.

Or listen to the full story on the Tales To Terrify podcast, read by Josie Babin:

Our Last Meal

by Joseph | Apr 1, 2018 | Audio, Fiction, Free Stories

It used to be our favourite lookout. Our hangover lookout, Sallie called it.

We always got trashed the night we arrived and, the next day, would roll out of the cabin before dawn, woken by kookaburras and the first crystal shards of hangover. We’d slog our way through the rainforest, sweating poison, Sallie forever in the lead, boasting how she’d walked this track since she was a toddler and couldn’t I keep up. At the top, we’d stretch out on the coarse rock and share the same, unchanging picnic: crackers, cheese and cucumber sliced with a knock-off Swiss Army penknife, all rinsed back with the warm dregs of last night’s bottle of white. And there we would lose ourselves, gazing out across the canopy and the hazy blue exhalations that rose above it, into the deeper blue of the sky.

It could never be the same without her; I knew that. But something had drawn me back here, to spread out that same simple lunch and stare blankly at those same treetops…

Read more in the AHWA anthology, In Sunshine Bright and Darkness Deep.

Or listen to the full story on the Tales To Terrify podcast, read by Dan Rabarts:

The Further Shore

by Joseph | Mar 17, 2018 | Audio, Fiction

Renault was out beyond the littoral when the fear bloomed.

Drifting with the currents, he bobbed above the reef. The sun warmed his back, cast a spangled net of iridescent white on the ocean floor. The only sound was the rasp of his breath in the snorkel, the faint pop pop of unseen creatures in the labyrinth of black coral below.

The black reef, with its oil-slick glimmer, stretched as far as he could see. Crooked spires. Towers that jutted and curled like obsidian fingers. Was it a trick of distance, or movements of the water that made the coral writhe and sway? It was profoundly hypnotic, drew him out over ever-deeper waters, farther from the shore.

Renault had noticed the pattern two days before. It was madness to think there should be order out here, among these chaotic accretions; yet there it was. The deep grooves of shadow that drew together, converging like vast, curved spokes around a distant axis. It had been too late to explore that first afternoon, and yesterday had been overcast, the light too diffuse to make out any detail in the reef. This morning he had woken early, determined to swim out to the point where those dark channels met.

His excitement mounted as each stroke brought him closer to the centre. The crevasse he was following narrowed, its arc tightening around smooth plates that resembled the petals of an obscene black flower. These segments overlapped uniformly, interlocking at the hub around something that glinted, that refracted light in soft, shimmering rainbows. It looked very much like a pearl. A pearl the size of a boulder.

Renault strained to make it out, unable to believe what he was seeing. But his mask had fogged and his sight was confined to a blurred rectangle. Just outside this frame of vision, he caught a movement.

He spun, scanning the water around, below.

There was nothing. He could see nothing. But his back tingled, his chest tightened.

Something was there. Something…

The Further Shore was shortlisted for Aurealis Awards in both the Best Horror and Best Fantasy Short Story categories in 2017 and won Best Fantasy.

Read the full story for free in Bourbon Penn 15 .

Or listen to the full story on the Tales To Terrify podcast, read by Pete Lutz:

On The Line

by Joseph | Dec 17, 2017 | Fiction

The toy phone shrilled and shrilled.

Mike watched his daughter from behind the Sunday paper. He’d started on the crossword, but the sound of the phone hacked at his concentration like jagged glass. He tried to focus on the grid, at the handful of words inked in blue biro, but his attention was across the room, on the play mat with Janie and the damn phone. She’d found it in the 50c box at Vinnies, a lump of red and yellow plastic moulded to look like an old-school flip-top mobile. She loved that toy phone almost as much as Mike hated it.

With every chirrup, Mike felt his tenuous calm splinter. Janie had been playing with that bloody thing non-stop since they got back last month, and it was really starting to grate.

“Hello, Janie speaking.”

It didn’t seem to bother Mandi. She had a talent for tuning out all that was unpleasant in the world, leaving only those details that kept her happy: coffee, music, the mysteries of the human heart, and the wonder of their angelic, sandy-haired Janie. But he just didn’t have Mandi’s patience. No matter how hard he tried to ignore the bleeps and ditties of every bit of plastic crap Janie was given each year, something always cut through, always managed to jangle his nerves, sustaining that constant of low-level stress, which along with the never-to-be-satisfied hunger for sleep, seemed to define Mike’s experience of parenthood…

On The Line was shortlisted for an Aurealis Award for Best Horror Short Story in 2017.