Abigail Parry

after Robert Aickman

Your sisters flash like jewels, bright as needles. They’re threading languid reels in the ballroom. Your heart is young and taut; your heart is strung with sparkling futures. Put an eye up to each one.

Diamond Sixteen and juiced beneath the discoball. Your pulse, a worried minnow. Repeating rigmarole of knife and nerve, plastic cups. Nitrous in the engine....

Some actors fear if they play Sherlock Holmes for a very long run the character will steal their soul, leave no corner for the original inhabitant.

Jeremy Brett

See how it glints and sparkles! Every good stone is a nucleus of crime, every facet a bloody deed.

Oh yes, the hither-thither razor zips from crown to culet! Quite so. But what may be said of the bullet,

which has struck the...