Simon Curtis
Stories (43/0)
The Cults of Mars
Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. In fact I completed one of my Ancient Culture Finals on a Twentieth Century piece that said just that. I’m pretty sure it was this that helped me scrape through my Archeology and Ancient History degree. Not that it made a great deal of difference in the long run. The jobs available on Gentaru for Archaeologists are few and far between, it’s a relatively newly inhabited planet. I’m fourth generation here and my family were by no means early settlers. However, despite the lack of genuine need for my skills, my passion superseded the very sensible advice given by my father.
By Simon Curtis2 years ago in Horror
Train of Thought
The gentle rocking of the train carriage slowly roused the old man from his sleep. As he gradually woke strands of his thin grey hair fell across his furrowed, worn forehead. He pushed his round gold rimmed glasses back up his long thin nose with his left index finger and allowed his eyes to readjust to the strange light in the carriage. He looked down at his right hand and noticed a small blue ticket in between his finger and thumb.
By Simon Curtis2 years ago in Fiction
You called on me
The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. It sat flickering into the dark, deserted and chaotic crowd of bitter trees. The intermittent rustle of the low breeze through the branches were inaudible inside the damp and inhospitable shack. It’s walls oozed neglect and made the air heavy with a thick earthy stench.
By Simon Curtis2 years ago in Horror
Watching
When I was very young my family lived in on a council estate in South Yorkshire. My father worked in a factory and had done since he left school, mum never worked, they had married straight from school and she had fallen into the role of home maker. My older brother came along after a couple of years then me.
By Simon Curtis2 years ago in Horror
- Top Story - January 2022
The Owl of St BarnabasTop Story - January 2022
We lived in the city when I was a child in the 1980s. It was and old industrial city that hadn’t changed much since the 1800s. There were new buildings here and there but that was in the centre, where I grew up much of the old mills and warehouses still stood alongside the old tenement buildings. We lived in one of them. It had been converted in the 1950s but it still looked tired. My parents had done a great job making it homely but to a young boy it’s lack of outdoor space was always a problem. There was no green space around us for me to play in and though on Sundays, when they were both off work, my parents would try their best to find me somewhere to play it was short lived. During the week there was nothing for me, especially during the school holidays. As I got older I began to wander and soon I found the only grass anywhere near me. The churchyard of St Barnabas’ became my quiet place, my countryside.
By Simon Curtis2 years ago in Horror
Edwin’s Book
When I was a child my father took a new position in his firm. It was a promotion of sorts and brought him more money but the consequences were that my younger brother and I were moved hundreds of miles north of where we had both been born, where all our friends were, where everything we knew was. I think it was a little harder for me, I was eight, David, my younger brother was only 5 and had been in school for a lot less time than I had. I’d got my friendship groups and in the blink of an eye it was gone.
By Simon Curtis2 years ago in Horror
Foot Hammock Anyone?
One of the things about not getting diagnosed till you’re an adult and then subsequently ignoring your diagnosis is that you compound your terrible ADHD habits and assume that everyone is just like you. The truth is that they aren’t. The stuff you’re doing isn’t what the person next to you is doing, well it might be but for the sake of this let’s say it isn’t.
By Simon Curtis2 years ago in Psyche
ADHD, Anxiety and the glass bowl.
It seems that the challenges of being an adult with ADHD is often overlooked. The majority of us have lived with it so long we have subconsciously developed strategies that mean we don’t regularly consider them as challenging. In fact we tend to utterly ignore them which on a day to day basis is unimportant, however being more aware of just how your ADHD brain has adapted to keep you functioning is crucial in keeping you happy and healthy.
By Simon Curtis2 years ago in Psyche
The Ferryman
To preface this story I feel it is very important to tell you a little of my own background. While I am somewhat incidental in the events, why I am now writing about them is significant if only to demonstrate that I have nothing to gain from having imagined it all.
By Simon Curtis3 years ago in Fiction
The Vicar of St Eigron’s
I write this as a testament to the events I was party to. I do not ask the reader to believe what I write, if I am quite frank I just don’t care if you do. I’ve lived a good and very ordinary life, I’ve taught in the same school for a decade now, I served as a governor last year and am due to get married in the summer. Everything I do is as conventional as you could hope to expect but the last few weeks have proved somewhat different. I can’t imagine going back to how I was is at all possible but hopefully by writing this down I will somehow begin the process.
By Simon Curtis3 years ago in Fiction
In search of ‘The Ticky’.
As a freelance features writer I’m always looking for great and original stories I can get my teeth into and during a recent trip I had made to the Scottish Borders in pursuit of a story about Gamekeepers in modern Britain. It was an interesting article in the end but very niche and while it sold I knew as I researched it that I needed something different to follow up with and to that end I was very receptive to anything new or intriguing. Perhaps too much so but what I found in a tiny little country pub sent me down some spectacular rabbit holes and finding the most disturbing story I have ever come across.
By Simon Curtis3 years ago in Horror