Fester Crab and Benjamin sparred all summer and autumn, trying to pluck a feather or pierce a shell. One bright December morning they met for a last hurrah before their beach was carried away on winter’s drifting sand.
‘I hold my claws up to you, Benjamin, and offer you the dance of peace.’
Fester danced a circle and Benjamin Seagull watched.
‘Old adversary and now dear friend, you dance well for a crab. But it’s time for me to say my goodbyes and bid you one last farewell.’
Benjamin Seagull flapped his wings and flew into the opulent blue sky.
‘I hadn’t finished my dance. Typical of Benjamin to leave before all was said and done.’
At that moment Fester felt a tiny pain on his left side.
Most likely a heart attack’, suggested a medical crab at his funeral. ‘It was probably brought on by a change in the weather.’
‘The cold,’ said Benjamin. ‘Fester never liked the cold.’
In his will Fester left his protective shell to Benjamin, who wore it on his back until it dropped off during a violent storm near Newfoundland.
*picture by Jonny Voss. A slightly different version of Crab and Gull was in our book ‘Dogsbodies and Scumsters’ and will be published on Words for the Wild on January 22nd.
About Alan McCormick Writing
Alan McCormick lives with his family in Wicklow. He’s a Trustee and former writer in residence for InterAct Stroke Support, a charity employing actors to read fiction and poetry to stroke patients.
His writing has won prizes and been widely performed and published, including recently in The Stinging Fly, Banshee, The Lonely Crowd, Southword, Sonder and Exacting Clam magazines, and previously in Salt’s Best British Short Stories, A Wild and Precious Life – A Recovery Anthology, Modern Nature Anthology – Responses to Derek Jarman’s Modern Nature, The Poetry Bus, The Sunday Express Magazine, The Bridport and Fish Prize Anthologies, Popshot, Litro and Confingo; and online at Epoque Press, Words for the Wild, 3:AM Magazine, Culture Matters, Dead Drunk Dublin, Mono, Fictive Dream, The Quietus and Found Polaroids.
His story ‘Firestarter’ came second in the 2022 Francis MacManus RTE Short Story Competition and ‘Boys on Film’ came second in The 2023 Plaza Prizes Sudden Fiction competition.
DOGSBODIES and SCUMSTERS , his collection of short stories with flash shorts inspired by Jonny Voss’s pictures, was published by Roast Books and long-listed for the Edge Hill Prize.
Alan and Jonny also collaborate on illustrated shorts known as Scumsters – see more at Deaddrunkdublin.com and Scumsters.blogspot
Alan McCormick Writing 