Lilo is one of the short stories dug up from my floppy disc archive – recently restored to me. I’m presenting it here in a slightly revised form, which is short-hand for me having excised all the bits from the original 1997 edition that felt in some way clunky or surplus to requirements when I read it again all these years later. This already short story just got shorter.

Aged nineteen or thereabouts I went on holiday with my girlfriend, my best mate, and his girlfriend. It was one of those sun, sea and sex holidays – a rite of passage you might say. The core exchange in this story is exactly what happened to my friend and I as we were lying beside the pool minding our own business. Like the resulting story, the episode was over in a matter of minutes, but I can recall even now how disquieted I felt for days afterwards, how entirely unsafe.


You can find a large print PDF version here.


3 responses to “Throwback Friday #33 Lilo (1997 rev. 2020)”

  1. Some children already know too much. (K)

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  2. Indeed, I was left with nothing but questions about this unpleasant moment – it was power really, or rather powerlessness, and also questions about how the child knew how precisely unsettle in this way – a thought that is unsettling in itself.

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  3. […] Look finds its way into Red’s Kingdom from that same clutch of obsolete floppy discs on which Lilo was floating about, and likewise these illustrations from another old short story. I’ve […]

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