“Can we throw this away?”

Chloe stands in the doorway holding Gilham’s old coat.

“No.”

“It smells like rotting flesh.”

“Put it back.”

Gilham loved that old coat.

“My grandmother killed this musk ox with her bare hands,” he’d boast.

Gilham was World Champion of Bullshit.

Molly misses him desperately.

…

This is the sixteenth in the series of Humpbuckle Tales. Each story is precisely 50 words long. They are meant to be independent stories, but if you read them all you will find each one adds another piece to the puzzle – there is a bigger story that is being told.

This story was first published on my Hive blog (@felt.buzz) and you can find all the stories on the @humbuckletales Hive account – at the time of posting this I have just published number 27. On Hive I publish 12 stories per week (Monday to Saturday one story per day and then six 50-word stories in one post on a Sunday).

If you prefer the drip drip drip approach keep coming back here for one 50-word tale every day!

You can watch the author read the first 10 Humpbuckle Tales on YouTube or you can listen to it as a podcast. The 2nd author reading is scheduled for 1st November.