“IT’S JUST THE PEOPLE ARE PERVERTS—not always sex perverts. Mortgage perverts. Thing perverts. Power perverts, essentially. When you’re young, you’re a functional pervert with peers that are also perverts, so it’s allowed because it’s part of your, y’know, your...”

I glaze at the shimmering basil leaves in my Caprese salad, seeking inspiration. The inky dressing oozes between the silver tines of one of our finest forks, fished from the back of the garage, saved for Christmases and Birthdays and—

“—becoming!” I rebound. “Becoming a fully-fledged pervert, I mean.”

Cheryl’s serving tongs clatter to the table. She glares at me, a pagan curse forming in the furrow of her brow, a murderous toe testing my shin.

Bill and Lucinda from next door pick at their lasagne.

“Is there pesto in this, Cheryl? It’s lovely,” Bill leches.

“Is it one of Gordon Ramsey’s?” Lucinda flanks, tonguing at my wife’s sense of self.

“Mmmm,” Cheryl’s eyes crinkle.

“How is the new BMW, Bill?” I norm along.

“Oh, it’s a dream. Ey, I’m sure you’d say it’s some kind of mid-life crisis, Clive!”

I bite.

“Well, you are in your late fifties, Bill, so chance would be a fine thing. Final third crisis, maybe. But this is what I mean about… perversions. This accumulation of wants. I mean flash cars as your poison is a bit missionary with the lights off – hopefully not, Lucinda, you deserve better.”

Lucinda clutches her cardigan closed.                    

"Clive..." Cheryl projects like a melting ventriloquist dummy.

“I’m just saying, these... nagging desires are at the root of everything. All man’s problems. From geo-politics to… dumping crap you’re done coveting at the nature reserve. When you take a big step back, we are bipedal organisms just, y’know, propelling ourselves forward towards stuff-filled voids on these janky limbs. Meat bags, really, with frontal lobes and opposable thumbs just grabbing at things that please our perverted…”

“Clivecanyouhelpmeinthekitchenrightnowplease,” Cheryl machine-guns.




The wife slops dollops of chocolate mousse in the cut-glass trifle bowls, her angry back a clenched fist.

“I probably shouldn’t drink on antibiotics,” I offer.

“Mmmm.”

“Well... y’know… that online test you made me take did say I might be a spectrum case, or something,” I offer some more.

“Mmmm.”

I wring a serving spoon. It bends. I bend it back. It snaps. I stuff the pieces in my pocket. “I mean, in fairness to me... I was carrying a lot of the chat, sweetheart.”

She spins, teeth bared, jabbing a dripping whisk at an imaginary off button. “I’m not saying don’t make conversation, Clive. I’m just saying—”

“Don’t be yourself!”

“No! No, of course, be yourself, to an extent. Just don’t call people perverts, for Christ’s sake! I mean, minimising things that bring people joy. Why? What do you care?”

“I was talking about par-a-diiiiigms,” I hunch, pinching my fingers and thumbs together, like an Argentinian midfielder remonstrating with an overzealous referee.

“Clive, my love, listen. Nobody... literally nobody... no-bod-y cares what you—”

Bill pokes his shiny head through a crack in the door.

“I’m so sorry, gang. We’ve been called away. Our youngest has taken ill.”

“Your youngest is twenty-two,” I sneer.

“Yes. And he suffers from anxiety, Clive. Or ‘strategic jitters’, as you put it. Cheryl, thank you for a lovely evening. See you... soon. Ish.”

I become one with the corner unit, clacking my tongue so the silence doesn’t open a swirling portal into the seventh circle.

The front door clicks shut.

“Shall I put the cutlery in the garage?” I address my wife’s quaking back.

“And the good wine,” Cheryl exhales.




In the still of the garden, a luminous crescent hangs like a bitten fingernail, the night air crisp and jagged. I fill my lungs, exhuming the injustice - the ham-hearted vapours of amateur anthropology. The sizzling cells of half-baked philosophies.

The moon understands.

The moon is taken for granted, reflecting the sun back at us from unfathomable distances, humouring the pinned flags of transient spacemen in its cratered face. They’d found water up there, they said. They’d found potential. Viable potential for—

“Hi, Mr Wykes.”

  A fringe-shrouded teenager hunkers on next door’s roof, beyond a dormer window. His eyes blaze down at me like a wounded bush baby.

“Hi George,” I say.

“Hi, errr, I saw that you saw me. Please don’t tell mom and dad.”

I spy the tiny ember between his sneaky digits, a thin seam of smoke snaking to the stars.

“Oh, no, I’m not some narc, George. I was looking at the moon, actually. I was thinking how pissed it must be with people sticking shit in it... hang on, where are your folks?”

“Errr, they’ve gone to McDonalds. They said they were still hungry. Something about a nasty taste in their mouth. They’d been over one of the neighbours, I think.”

“Right. Well…” I clutch our bottle of best red, sloshing the tribute to the hooded eye of Luna, Selene, Diana. “What say you to an exchange of poisons, cosmic traveller?”




“I’ve never seen that word written down before, hyperbole, so I was saying hyper-bowl, and everyone in my class, professor included, pissed themselves laughing. How am I supposed to know that’s how you pronounce it? No one told me. Are we meant to just, like, know. And are we meant to just be able to, like, talk in front of people? Was I off sick when they taught us how to do that?”

I suck on the proffered joint, gripping a slimy roof tile, the sloppy cardboard filter wobbling loose at my lips. George sips at his Pikachu mug of Merlot.

“That’s why I’m dropping out, anyway. I suppose you reckon I shouldn’t?”

I blow my cheeks out enigmatically, squinting at Sirius or Polaris or whatever. It had been twenty years since I’d imbibed, and the claggy cannabis was slamming my tender brain like knuckles in a piano lid.

“I mean, there’s so many real scholars on YouTube, these days,” George pressed on. “I can learn everything about Political Studies from those guys, can’t I? Have you watched True Patriot 45’s stuff? He makes a lot of solid points.”

I bend my creaking knees, bracing myself on the slippery gradient, lousy with moss, way overdue a power-wash from Bill, that bourgeois prick. I guess our accumulated weight. Guess the thickness - the compressive strength of the quivering timber.

“I’ve still got my student loan. I think instead of giving it back, I’m going to convert it to crypto. I read a blog that swears I can triple my money if I sign up to their newsletter. Might as well try. I can’t lose money, they pretty much guarantee that.”

I try to remember the cadence of breathing. In, out, in, out. Not too shallow. Not too deep.

“What do you know about the Illuminati, Mr Wykes?”

I hold up a sage finger in consideration.

An owl hoo-hooes.

A dog ruh-ruh-ruh-ruhs.

An idling engine dug-a-dug-a-dug-as.

A truck’s suspension chunk-chunks.

A train tuh-tuh, tuh-tuhs.

A siren weeee-oooo-weeee-ooooes.

A fridge hmmmmmmmmms.

Ancient pipes tic-tic-tick.

All, just filling the dread silence. All, just wanting their noise heard.

An indeterminate rodent with indeterminate viruses scratches and scrapes beneath, forcing its way into gaps it doesn’t belong in. Spaces inside, non-liminal, lived in, where nourishing goodness, curated and wanted in neat little rows, lay thoughtfully stocked and unsullied.

I glance back at the slick terracotta chasm to the open window. My janky limbs turn to spaghetti hoops, my meat bag a sack of spanners, my grabbers flayed spatulas.

“Cher-yllll!” I scream. “Cheryl! Cheryl! Cheryl! Cheryl!”

George’s mug clatters and smashes on the patio as he scuttles homeward. My wife’s slippers shush our garden path, security lights illuminating her oval horror.

“I’m stuck,” my hummingbird heart works my mouth. “Please fetch the ladder. I need to climb down. Help. Oh, Jesus, help! I want to descend!” •





Ian Johnson is a writer from North East England. His work appears in publications such as Trash Cat Lit, Scaffold, Underbelly, and Free Flash Fiction. He is a 2026 Best of the Net nominee.

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