BAD IDEA TEAM
Website Editor:
Ben Beaumont-Thomas
Managing Editors:
Jack Roberts
Daniel Stacey
Contributing Editors:
Jean Hannah Edelstein
Alyssa McDonald
Sebastian Meyer
© Good Publishing, 2010
Design: Fiction Department
Website: Vanilla Storm
The picture of the mogul in the Business Section is a classic. The man heading a vast business empire has a flaccid pouch of skin drooping from his chin like a Foster Farm chicken. His puffy face is an unsettling tapestry of pale-white and rash-red. It looks like an instructional slide from a cut
Click below to submit a short, non-fiction story of less than 500 words length. Every month, we’ll select our favourite submission and award the winning author a free subscription to BAD IDEA.
Submit StoryOpportunity does not knock. It sits silently on my lap. A white Dell laptop computer is opportunity. Fame and fortune await. All I have to do is put together the right combination of words so that readers, more than a few, become addicted to my output. Then a red Ferrari will be my car of choic
THE HORROR WRITER’S WORST NIGHTMARE "Its the most delightfully twisted story I've read in a long time" said a fellow horror writer. I didn't know whether to take it as a compliment, but I sent it to an editor and he said he'd publish it..on one condition. He needed a suitable photo. So I sent
For want of a nipper the tooth wasn’t lost. We are talking a dental gum nipper here (no, me neither). One cannot have a lower molar extracted without it. Thus says my dentist. The tooth wasn’t lost for want of a plane ticket either. Nor was it lost for want of services on Jubilee, Waterloo
Only one room, small, and the fridge in there too, the cooker, the bed. I could ask the landlord to take away one of the big armchairs, and then maybe fit a desk would fit in the corner. I could do that. I need to speak to the lady who lives on the ground floor: apparently my electricity meter
I just don’t understand people’s behaviour on the underground. Why does everybody walk so fast to a train platform where a train may or may not be there? The fact is, if you’re rushing-you are already late. I don’t rush, In fact I walk slower in tube stations to make a point that nobody ap
Mum was angry at me. “I was gone less than five minutes and you manage to spill ice-cream all down your dress. You are such a messy child.” She was right - I had ice-cream all down my favourite dress, but all I could say was, “No Mum, you were gone exactly five minutes.” “You sit he
The harbour is frozen .Large cracked plates join together and then separate at the command of the tide. They ooze out a relaxing continuity, a dizzying timelessness, as time itself melts away. I cross yet another bridge and into people’s lives. My steps are gentle, each one a tactful acquaintance
I liked it best when they spoke to each other, in their own language. the cadence reminded me of fishing boats rocking in the harbour at Port Harcourt. And the way their faces sprung sudden grooves and their features shifted as if synchronisation of words and body language was part of their nature.
My first love was poisoned by my mother’s boyfriend. A nameless cunt. He was the exact form of what you wouldn’t want your chemical dependent/lonely/unbalanced mother to be with. The first time my love and I had sex in my boxroom bedroom full of music magazines and band t-shirts, he ruined it.
You know you’re onto something when your conversation swallows you whole. That’s what happened to my friend Zara and I last week. Walking along the Southbank, we passed an old woman shaking a bucket and croaking: ‘Save Lambeth Cats! Save Lambeth cats!’ ‘Buckets are pretty useful aren
In the Sutton branch of Waterstones a 16 year old boy looks lost. From under his peaked cap he looks at the shelves of books like a Victorian explorer staring at the fringe of a jungle. His younger sister offers no advice; she slurps on a drink and blinks a lot. The boy asks a retail assistant, on
In the Bar de los Amigos a group of women, perhaps in their seventies, play Whist and drink sherry. Their once pale skin is deeply tanned and their white hair set just so. They have lived here for many years but have few words of Spanish between them. They order another round in English. It’s safe
Upon entering the office this morning, there is a letter waiting for him. Not a surprise, it is a tradition after all. The childish scribble of handwriting reads, “From number 43, to number 44.” He takes a seat on the chair behind the huge desk, worn over the years from its many esteemed, and
"Miss, miss…" I saw the shouting man try to engage a woman in some kind of conversation. I saw too as the woman looked at him through unforgiving eyes and marched on, her raincoat flapping in symbolic disgust at her ankles. The man seemed not to care. He shrugged and casually swivelled on the spot
The train has red and white stripes along its entire length and I think, I’m going home on the good train lollipop. I have time to get a coffee and a magazine and, although I rarely buy either, this helps me to avoid feeling anxious. I like my coffee to be very sweet. It used to be four sugars swe