timwrite.net

Curious writing for curious people

Short Fiction

Please enjoy reading these very curious tales for very curious people.

  • The Vibe

    Machines in a dark, very dark room. Photograph is copright TN Smith 2026.
    Timothy Smith

    All the people, the few who had been left behind – employed (whatever that means) – pressing the odd key, asking the occasional perfectly corralled question, they scattered like dust motes, like language.

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  • Trite and testy

    “The Discovery of Nat Turner,” engraving from Popular History of the United States, published by William Cullen Bryant and Sidney Howard, 1881–88. Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
    Tim Smith

    Why do Ai’s zealots take the road most travelled, usually by teenagers? Because they only think at surface level? Surely there must be more to it.

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  • Bach vs Ai

    Sheet music of the aria from the Goldberg Variations BWV 988 by Johann Sebastian Bach.
    Noel Murphy

    Sunday afternoon deep in the the Yorkshire winter, I was listening to Johann Sebastian Bach’s Goldberg Variations (played by Beatrice Rana) and I drifted into imagining dear old JSB writing at his piano as the candles were lit and the sun set.  I thought of him finishing up and then trudging through the snow in

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  • AI is not helping your ideas

    A hand-drawn cartoon of a man in a hat saying, "Eh?". Oh, he also has the feet of a duck.
    Tim Smith

    “That picture you painted doesn’t look like the bay of Naples even though it’s called ‘The Bay of Naples’, bro!” says an AI zealot.“You got the prompt wrong. Ask your LLM to make a painting in the style of Cezanne!”, they continue.

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  • Christmas in Sam’s Restaurant

    Tim Smith

    “We’ve cleaned, Chef”, she snapped back. She knew what he was feeling because she was feeling it too. Christmas week and she was already planning where to work next. My dear reader, it was Christmas week and as usual Carl, the Chef-Patron was in a tumultuously bad mood. The restaurant had been decked with all

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  • A Christmas Hope

    Noel Murphy

    Christmas Eve had come at last, and the house was festooned with decorations. Granny Bacon had called it ‘gaudy’ when she came to visit. Sean was fairly sure that this meant it was completely bloody brilliant. Part 1 It was two weeks before Christmas Eve, and there was no Mum to be seen or felt

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  • McDonald-Sayer Turns Away From His Dream

    Noel Murphy

    “If I’d wanted revolutions, I would have hired a Cuban,” he had joked, weakly.

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  • O’Keefe and the Maltese

    Noel Murphy

    He’d lay out a solution using his own code. I’d remind myself never to wrong-side him. Never.

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  • Revenger’s Tales – John and Gordon

    Noel Murphy

    Revenge makes you right and wrong simultaneously. Something tells you that what you want to do is wrong but by doing it, by completing their Revengers’ Tale, the world will be set right.

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  • The Rimmingtons

    Tim Smith

    No one close by heard the single gunshot crashing from the wardroom. No one was there to soften the blow as Glyde’s badly damaged head slammed into the table.

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  • Don’t call him Satan

    Noel Murphy

    You snake! You dog! You dirty snitch. My brother’s got 15 years in prison because of you…

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  • Sports: for People Who Hate Sports

    Noel Murphy

    Any Winter Sport is immensely entertaining because it will show you people far more wealthy than you will ever be injuring themselves badly.

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  • The Wallington Shocker

    Noel Murphy

    “You would like to know as much about the creature who pulled the triggers, tied the knots, hammered the nails and wielded the knife. I imagine that you have your own theories on the pairings of the civilians, the note, the relationship between the eight and the reason for choosing Wallington above all other villages.

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  • The Poet’s Wife Writes

    Noel Murphy

    I became intensely jealous about exactly what was happening during those lunches.

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  • ‘Dapper’ Dale’s death

    Noel Murphy

    Dale had done this to him. Threat after threat sandwiched by false friendship, even sympathy. Dale played with him until Ted finally broke.

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  • Mountain Pressure

    Noel Murphy

    Ups and downs and winter birds singing around them. The pine trees’ scent, the wind in the needles above and around them.

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  • Lucy’s days

    Tim Smith

    The noodles would slip down and fill his stomach, taking away the humiliation he felt at being in debt to his own daughter.

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  • It Comes to Some of Us in the End

    Noel Murphy

    Tom ‘Bopper’ Keys was returned unto the earthly Earth. That much was certain.

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  • Sydney by Cab

    Tim Smith

    I’ve heard of thousand dollar bottles, dug from Napoleonic cellars over which a shopping mall was soon to rise.

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  • A Patient Shark

    Tim Smith

    Maybe I am an escapologist and this is a show? Seems unlikely.

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