DALSTON NOIR #4 Egon Has a Plan

Egon pondering the meanness of life

Read Dalston Noir #1 Trouble On Kingsland Road
Read Dalston Noir #2 It Was a Dog’s Life After All
Read Dalston Noir #3 The Past Isn’t a Different County

Even though it was already the end of March, the nights were cold and Egon wished his bedsit had central heating, but instead he turned on the gas oven as soon as he got up.

Munching on Weetabix he googles dog breeds and there she is – a Golden Retriever. All the dogs look cute but none of them has the effervescent beauty of Gilda. Eager to find out more about the breed, he learns that Golden Retrievers are cheerful, trustworthy, demonstrative and forgiving – characteristics he had always hoped to find in a girlfriend. It also listed mouthiness, heavy shedding and distinctive doggy odour. Still, he reckons, something he would put up with.

DALSTON NOIR #3 The Past Isn’t A Different Country

Egon pondering the meanness of life

Read here Dalston Noir #1 Trouble On Kingsland Road
Read here Dalston Noir #2 It Was a Dog’s Life After All

‘The past lies like a nightmare upon the present.’ (Karl Marx)

Still befuddled, Egon enters his studio flat, which really is the real-estate agency’s term for bedsit, on Graham Road. There always lingered a slight morbid and musty smell in these Victorian houses and Egon resented the fact that he kept looking at the same four walls.

Lying on his bed, he feels as if the walls are closing him on him, or maybe he’d just been here for too long, but as he isn’t paying rent he isn’t complaining.
After splitting up with his ex, he felt lucky not having to move back into a flat-share, which he thought was undignified at the age of 35, but unavoidable in London where being able to live on your own was considered a luxury.

DALSTON NOIR #2 It Was A Dog’s Life After All

Egon pondering the meanness of life

Read here DALSTON NOIR #1 Trouble on Kingsland Road

Keeping an eye on Costa Coffee, Egon quickly takes out his iPhone5, which he had found in a bar one night and managed to unlock. The light wasn’t great for photography but he didn’t intent to post the crime-scene pictures on Instagram.
Poor dog, what an end to a life filled with adversity and struggle. He makes a pledge there and then to find out who killed him, because in his mind there was no question that this had been a dogcide. A suspicion which is confirmed when he sees what looks like a stabbing wound on the dog’s right rib cage, very close to what must be the heart, Egon figures.
The stern police-woman’s superior is leaving Costa, heading for them and Egon decides it is high time to disappear in the crowd.

A Recipe For Love

Erkan thought to himself, ‘if nobody loves me I just love me’ and gave himself a big hug.

photo: Barbara Martin

Dangerous Liaisons – a call to arms!

Three girls, a Hasselblad and a Dresden Hinterhof is all you need…

This is my gender-bending pictorial take on the delicious Les Liaisons Dangereuses.

I hope it inspires you to add your own flash fiction/images/songs/videos or autobiographical tales of seduction, revenge, love and betrayal in the comments section or by pasting a link to your story!