Category: Coffee Break Stories

“Time,” Professor Braithwaite asked me. “What do you think about time?” “I don’t understand,” I answered, taken aback. Was it a trick question? “Come now, Peter,” the professor went on. “You tell me that you want to join our graduate course in parapsychology, the branch of science that looks into unexplained aspects of the living…

When I saw the child struggling in the water, I shrugged off my jacket and shoes and jumped off the bridge into the river below to rescue him.  It wasn’t bravery.  Because right at that point I was so sunk in misery that I honestly didn’t care if I lived or died.  They say that…

I looked across and over the fantastic vista spread out below me. Sunny landscape, trees, fields and villages.  Standing at the top of a telegraph pole is the best way on earth of seeing the world and its beauty, and I was thoroughly enjoying my new job. I thought back to my interview a few…

“Hello Sarah!” I normally wouldn’t have looked down at the blanket-covered beggar who was camped out in the shop doorway, for his dirty clothes, straggly unkempt hair and silver stubble repelled me and I was anxious to get away. “Don’t you recognise me, Sarah? I’m Roger – you were my first girlfriend all those years…

“Fuck off, you disgusting pervert, just FUCK OFF!” So saying, the young woman screamed and stamped her high heel onto her attacker’s foot.  His grip on her breast eased immediately as he backed away. I had been lucky to get a seat in the morning rush-hour on this train from Brighton to London, and the…

“Where on earth is Sue?  It’s not like her to be late.”  Barry’s shaggy eyebrows met in the middle of his forehead as he frowned, making him look even more like an angry bear than usual. “And why isn’t she answering her phone?”  Skip’s soft Scottish-accented words echoed Barry’s mystification at the absence of our…

“Walk in.  Shoot him.  Walk out. Catch the train back to London and I clear all your debts and give you a nice chunk of change.  And Presto Hey!  Bob is your uncle!” Big Ron is the owner of the casino where I regularly lose money.  He’s also a criminal and a gangster.  He came…

Niccolớ Paganini was the most celebrated violin virtuoso of the 1800s, unparalleled even today. But his reputation is forever tarnished by persistent rumours that his extraordinary speed and skill on his instrument were thought to be a ‘gift from the devil’. It was said that his doppelganger was seen on numerous occasions ‘complete with horns…

“Of course I can’t tell him until we’ve signed the contract. Once we’ve officially committed to buying the big house I can push for a better divorce settlement.” “Poor deluded idiot.”  I heard my best friend, Colin, laughing at me from my own bedroom as I stood on the stairs out of sight.  “Anyone else…

The strangest experience of my life happened when I was asked to survey a derelict old inn in Cornwall. Zennor Point.  Zennor Point.  Where had I heard that name before?  It was stuck in my memory somewhere, floating around with all the rest of the unexplained flotsam and jetsam ‘happiness words’, kind of like the…