Best British Short Stories 2023 by Nicholas Royle

Author:Nicholas Royle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Salt
Published: 2023-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

LEONE ROSS

When We Went Gallivanting

Richie met Athena Righteous-Fury on the same day the tower block where she lived got up and started walking.

Richie was scooping his hangovered behind out of an acquaintance’s yard after a night of group-drinking. The lift was dead. Last night it had seemed hysterically funny getting up to Floor 29, like climbing a concertina. When they finally arrived, gasping, strung out in the corridor like paper bird decorations in the wind, looking at the stars, Richie saw he was too drunk to get down again.

It was a distinct tremor in the concrete that had woken him, but he’d only realise that later, confusing the tremor with a need to urinate. He slipped out the shaking front door, leaving a snoring crowd splayed amongst Rizlas and pint glasses.

Richie didn’t notice the fluorescent blue liquid running down the tower block walls, hissing and fizzing. He slunk down the corridor. Didn’t tower blocks usually sway in the wind?

A woman three doors down flung open her door and walked out, orange robe flailing. Richie would have skipped on by, but for the transparency of the woman’s nightdress, exposing prodigious breasts and a bigger belly. She was the largest person he’d ever seen, like marshmallow foam, beautiful eyes wide and head cocked. There was no way to get past her without full body contact, and he was sure that would be like a hurricane: swept up into trouble.

– You feel that? asked the woman.

– What? said Richie.

Her reply was drowned out by a yawning, squealing metal sound, like all the cutlery in the world scraped against corrugated iron, and a sudden, meaty stench, as if they’d been rammed face-first into a butcher’s shop.

The tower block began to move forward.

Gaping, wordlessly screaming, Richie glared over the edge. No, he was not insane, the entire structure was walking, as if he’d hitched a ride on a stone monster. Things were falling off the building, bits of furniture and clothing and was that a bicycle coming for his head?

The large woman grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, pulling him inside her apartment and out of the way of the falling bike. It was a perfectly organic motion, like a wise mamma cat with her kitten. Richie crouched in her hallway, heart thundering. He choked a thank-you, noticing the heart-shaped mole on her shoulder.

WINNER OF THE ANGELIC BODY AWARD, said her orange robe.

Outside, metal boomed.

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