CUT is now available!

The kindle version of CUT is now available to buy from Amazon.com ($1.16) and from Amazon.co.uk. (£0.77).

 You can also buy a hardcopy from Amazon.com ($7.54 + P & P) and from Amazon.co.uk (£6.60 + P & P).

CUT - opening

His body odour made my eyes water.
 My attempts to initiate a conversation had been met with robotic silence.
A jerk of the chrome-plated Beretta that meant: Dig.
 I was working by torchlight, deepening a pit that had been mechanically excavated for a burial tomorrow.
 I was adding the eight inches which would shortly contain my corpse.
 The two-in-one. A clever way to dispose of a body.
 Cruagh Cemetery in the Dublin Mountains; not the ending I had planned when I joined the force.
 The city’s sodium lights twinkled like jewellery display. I felt a chill of déja vu.
My arms were like rubber.
 Images from my life flashed and faded, like a movie on fast forward. Graduation. Eleanor’s face in church on our wedding day. The day she gave birth to Ray. Chin on her chest, eyes streaming, being ordered to push.
 I pushed the thoughts from my mind and kept swinging the loosened soil to the side of the pit. “Enough. Throw out the shovel. Lie flat.”
The voice was cold. “Face down.”
 This is how I die.
 A sound like a whip crack.
 My forehead hit the side wall of the pit. A searing pain pierced my brain. A coppery taste on my tongue. A smell of burning flesh. My flesh.
 A smell of humus and damp clay.
 Tiny roots seemed to reach, like white spidery fingers, toward my eyes.
 A sweet feeling spread through my limbs.