Posts by Kevin McGeary

A short story by Yuan Jinmei, translated by Kevin McGeary

The bluebird called. Its singing was cheerful and crisp as water flowing into pale blue rock, notes spun as sweet as mints.

The bluebird's singing would always start before the man and the woman woke up. Upon hearing the bluebird, the man awoke. He reached out but the woman wasn't there. The man turned over to look around and saw the woman leaning against the window looking at the bluebird, her golden hair reaching down to her waist.

He walked over and started caressing the woman's locks, whose colour he adored. She turned her face to him and looked at him with eyes that were as blue as the singing bird and said: "It has laid four eggs."

Bedtime texts – short fiction by Kevin McGeary

Fantasising about Minnie was the best way to ignore his sister’s snoring. On the top bunk, where he could still smell shoes and discarded instant noodle packets, he saw Minnie the way she appeared last week on Lianhua, a breeze blowing black hair over her eyes.

It was there, under the watchful statue of Deng Xiaoping, that everything had gone wrong. His imagination wasn’t strong enough to alter what had happened. He saw himself whip out his English grammar textbook and three pages of hardcore Japanese porn fall on the grass. Minnie gave that absent gap-toothed smile that appeared to have nothing to do with happiness or amusement. The magazines weren’t his; they were courtesy of his prankster roommate, the spotty police chief’s son who went by the name of Angelababy.

As he felt the train slow down, sliding into another dark town, he focused on Minnie’s buttock cleavage and the way it rose above her dropped waist jeans.

“I need to borrow your phone,” his Sister Yezi called from below after being woken by the alighting passengers. He wiped the phone on his blanket before handing it down.