Fox Ferguson

“Mind the gap” by Fox Ferguson

Submitted to Contest #249

[Content note: mental health, suicide, gore] It doesn’t look good, does it? - to be late for the job interview. I had thought of every possible delay in advance and had taken every reasonable measure to guarantee my arrival on time: the night before, I had planned my route across London and packed a bag – Keys, wallet, laptop, I say under my breath like a spell – and had laid out my shirt, suit and tie with the devotion of a priest laying out the altar cloth. I had accounted for delays on the underground and even left myself ten minutes to b...

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“The selfie of Dorian Gray” by Fox Ferguson

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #244

[Content note: substance misuse, suicide, transphobia]Picture this: Dorian Gray, 25, gorgeous bachelor of the Brighton gay scene #handsomeAF #queen #slay. Picture his blazing blue eyes set above aquiline nose and a rosebud pout of a mouth. Cheeks ready to blush under the lick of glitter from a make-up brush. Deep gold locks styled to perfection. Forehead wide and empty as a summer sky #beautynotbrains #imageiseverything #skindeep.Picture this: Dorian perched on the sleek leather and chrome of a barstool in the Poison Ivy, margarita in one ha...

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“AKA everything goes to shit” by Fox Ferguson

It was a normal Saturday night, just me, Queenie and meth-head Mike, and everything was going to plan. We were, turd-like, passing through the arsehole of Brighton, AKA the Victoria Gardens vicinity, where the Brighton Sauna allows you to catch gonorrhoea in the hot-tub blowing some bear whose chest hair blooms like the flowers of Victoria Gardens are supposed to and then shuffle your way up to Morley Street to get your ceftriaxone injection to treat said gonorrhoea, AKA we were round at meth-head Mike’s. Meth-head Mike is one of those hip...

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“Portrait of an ordinary man” by Fox Ferguson

Submitted to Contest #230

[Trigger warning: implied paedophilia and child abuse] He was, altogether, a very ordinary man. He wore jeans and a hoodie, and he was quietly good-looking, neither plain nor showily handsome. His eyes were of a colour you couldn’t remember. Once, on holiday, he had been persuaded to have a caricature portrait taken on the beach; but the picture had come out blandly bad, as if there were nothing in his face which could be grasped or exaggerated but only what was regular. He was a very ordinary man. No one noticed him as he crossed the ...

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“*Terms and conditions apply” by Fox Ferguson

Submitted to Contest #226

The email goes to my spam but I open it because it is addressed to me by name: Dear Mr Faust, Here at Hell Telesales, it is also Black Friday and we have the deal of a lifetime for you! Please tune in tonight to Hell Telesales to see our range of irresistible products and for a chance to seal the deal of a lifetime! Yours sincerely, Mateo Mephistopheles, President and Senior Presenter at Hell Telesales Pushing back the creaky-wheeled office chair, I stretch my legs and yawn. Jeez, where do they get these marketing campaig...

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“Yellow” by Fox Ferguson

Submitted to Contest #225

[Trigger warning: mental health, suicide/self-harm]The brief at the night school class is clear: Paint a self-portrait in monochrome. I choose yellow.It sits there between green and orange on the art teacher’s colour wheel. He spins the paper circle and all the colours briefly blur to white.I choose yellow because it is the colour of happiness and sunshine. The colour of the sunflowers in the Van Gogh painting the teacher showed us. Yellow flowers in a yellow vase on a yellow table against a yellow wall. The colour of butter and comfort. The...

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“Six visits - a ghost story” by Fox Ferguson

Submitted to Contest #221

The first time I came back, there were still things that smelt of me. My shaving brush in our pristine white bathroom, my shirts in the wardrobe, a faint smell of cigarettes in my study so you can almost see me exhaling a cloud of white smoke into the easy green light of the vintage lamp-shades. You’d noticed them too. Those stubborn smells. They ingrain into the fabrics of our suburban homes like they ingrain into our minds – one inhalation and you’re transported to another time, another time, another time… The first time I came back I ...

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