I wonder if the bead of sweat on the shopkeeper’s brow is a reflection of some discomfort caused by my presence. The man standing behind the counter of Stone Street’s Everything Shop – ‘Everything,’ in this instance, refers to a range of home and garden goods – looks much as he did when I first started to frequent the strange little outlet, more than a decade ago. He is greyer, wears glasses now, but mostly he’s the same. I envy...
Welcome to Ferenbrooke
Ferenbrooke is an odd place. It's nestled in the East of England, surrounded by fens and woods and noisy things that dwell within the dark and damp landscape. The town and its surrounding villages are host to strange customs and whispered stories, half-forgotten conspiracies and broken bargains. There are no maps for the streets are restless. You'll reach your destination regardless. It might not be where you were planning to go, but it's your destination all the same.
If Ferenbrooke is where you're meant to be, you'll find a place here. Nestled warmly among the most recent denizens of the Stone Street Cemetery perhaps, or sipping a G&T in a bar without a name while you try not to make eye contact with the pale man sat next to you.
Take your time, look around. There's plenty to see provided you don't let your gaze linger in the wrong places.
But first, a word of caution. This site is written for mature readers and will contain horror and violence and bad language. Content warnings for specific stories are supplied on a best-effort basis. Shoot me an email if you feel I've missed something and I'll correct it as soon as possible.
That said, please do explore. There's an RSS feed if you want to be kept updated (and are the kind of nerd like me who still uses RSS feeds).
Happy reading.
--Antony Frost
Recent Writings
Short Stories
‘Doesn’t it drive you mad?’ My brother asked, gesturing at the ticking clock on the mantle, the baroque beast that had been our father’s. ‘I find it quite soothing,’ I replied. It was the first time he’d come to visit me in almost a year. Good to see him again, though it felt a little odd, me now living in the house we’d grown up in while he had built a new home...
It was a Tuesday evening when I finally relented and accompanied Nico to the nameless little cocktail bar at the far end of Stone Street. He’d been a few times now, always raving about how cool the place was, this strange little cocktail joint with only the street address as point of reference. The building simply had the street number above the door, hence its colloquial appellation, ‘Numbers.’ Painted a dull, dark blue, with a few tables on the double-width path outside, it wasn’t...
I stood in front of my friend’s house alone. He’d handed over the keys as though they were nothing more than twisted shapes in cheap alloy, as though the act of supplying me with shelter was as simple as lifting a cup to your lips. Perhaps the act truly was so trivial to him; Ali was many things, destitute was not among them. In fact, of those various wayward souls that had composed our little circle in secondary school, Ali stood out as the Rich Kid. I...
‘That’s the last of them,’ Mark said as he placed yet another cardboard box on the kitchen table. His face shone with sweat and joy, a broad smile parting his moustache from his beard. Ivy paused her self-assigned task of filling the built-in kitchen cupboards with crockery and glassware and glanced at him, smiled. The last few weeks had been a blur. They’d put the offer in, squared it with the bank, gone through the bureaucratic purgatory of...
With helmet in one hand and overladen saddle bags in the other, Ethan charged out into the bitter autumn evening from number 43 and let the door slam behind him. He glanced back at the building, once a large house for an expansive family and now three mediocre flats. One of them, until just that moment, had housed him and Erin. He wiped the wet from his eyes and stepped quickly to the road. His bike, an obedient if underpowered Royal Enfield Bullet 500, waited...
The event was larger than I’d anticipated. Close to a hundred people filled the small University hall, half a dozen or so waitstaff tending to the crowd. Across the other end of the room I saw Chelsea getting balls deep into yet another white wine spritzer. Old stone walls lent the whole affair a grandiose atmosphere and spine-breaking acoustics. Every word became a warcry, every whisper a scream. The main man, Doctor Sullivan Griever himself, occasionally appeared from a dark corner and...
Lucy Hayward placed her mug down on her kitchen table, furrowed her brow, and said, ‘You’re actually gonna do it?’ Chris O’Halloran, a good-natured Canadian from the flat across the hallway, shrugged and said, ‘Yeah...
Serial Fiction
In the wake of his estranged father's death, Owen travels to Ferenbrooke to settle the will and get some measure of closure. Dark truths meet him there.
Blog Posts
After much procrastination and some actual genuine time-sinks (like moving back to Cambridgeshire from Essex), I finally got around to launching a Gemini capsule and formatting the content of this site for it. I’m very new to Gemini, so please don’t hesitate to email me at ferenbrooke@mailbox.org (new email address BTW) if you spot anything funky. For those not acquainted with Gemini, think Gopher but tweaked for the 21st century. Very simple, no scripting or...
It’s been a hell of a year in the F. household. I started 2024 unable to walk and uncertain that I ever would again due to the hit and run that I never shut up about. We had a one-year-old, my wife had not returned to work, and my job as a wax factory worker was looking untenable. I’d eventually get back on my feet with crutches in January, a walking stick in April, and unaided in June...
It’s been a long time since I’ve written creatively. I’ve done a few blog posts about tech and politics on my other blog, but I haven’t made stories in quite a while. I’ve...