Works

Short Fiction

March 2026

Chad is at the bar

Gorillas have rights

Noah Blue · 13 min read

March 2026

I am a big fat phony

Unfiltered

Noah Blue · 16 min read

I am a big fat phony. Right now, for example, I am at my desk busy tapping out an email to a colleague about something I don’t give two shits about, even though I am giving the distinct impression that I do.

Two glowing blue anime-style eyes blazing against a pitch-black background

March 2026

Mr Two Fucks

A crime caper (of sorts)

Noah Blue · 46 min read

I have a problem. Allow me to elucidate. A certain someone, let’s call him Mr Two Fucks, has been sabotaging my work, clumsily and without guile, it is true, nevertheless sabotage is sabotage.

A single bloodshot eyeball with a deep red iris and black pupil against a black background

March 2026

there is no such thing as free will

To state the obvious

Noah Blue · 13 min read

I am alone, unless you count the dog as company. A whole day with nothing to do stretches out in front of me. I make a cup of coffee and read over the story I wrote the night before. It’s about a man who lives alone with his dog; a whole day with nothing to do stretches out in front of him.

$Two luminous eyes glowing teal and green in near-total darkness, fractured and overlapping$

February 2026

A Short Story About a Man Who Writes Novels

Experimental ones

Noah Blue · 30 min read

S writes a novel that can at best be described as experimental and at worst an abject failure. S doesn’t see this, not to begin with. As far as he is concerned it’s an authentic work of literature, maybe a little abstruse in places and perhaps parsimonious when it comes to the use of similes (although not metaphors strangely enough), but otherwise artistically sound. In other words, not a prize-winning novel (not that S is in it to win prizes, although he has no problem with them in principle, and would gladly accept one, were it ever to come his way, which it won’t) but solid, good enough, an eight out of ten let’s say, on a good day.

Close-up of wide blue eyes against a bleached monochrome face, staring directly at the viewer

February 2026

Other than my parents splitting up, nothing much has happened recently

A coming-of-age tale (mostly)

Noah Blue · 27 min read

My dad recently moved out of the family home and into a studio apartment in a rundown part of town known for illicit activities. Why that part of town, I have no idea. It’s not as if my dad is poor and has to live there. In fact, he could probably afford to live in the so-called salubrious part of town if he wanted to.

Extreme close-up of an older man's eyes, heavy-lidded and intense, with deep shadows beneath

February 2026

Serial Killer

An edge case

Noah Blue · 18 min read

I want to go for a walk, but at the same time I’m not sure if I do. I stand up and make as if to set off, but then I sit down again, sighing. I should go for a walk. A walk would be good for me. But then what if I run into some unforeseen trouble on my walk? Won’t I be safer here, sat down? Here in my flat I am safe, out there I can’t legislate for what will happen. I guess I’ll stay put then.

Aphorisms

I would like to apologise. Not only for the things I have allegedly done but also the things I will almost certainly be accused of doing in the future.

Kant or Nietzsche? The interview question I invariably lead with. There is no more efficient way to elicit the true nature of a candidate.

If I am reincarnated as a colour, I’d like to be blue. Failing that, orange. If I were to come back as white, I’d top myself.

Zen. The most significant sign in a universe teeming with them.

Investing, if you are to be successful at it, requires nothing less than the negation of the present moment in perpetuity.

I am not remotely prejudiced. Some of the best people I know are accountants.

I suspect I may be nearing the end of my hard-lived life. I am fine with that. It gives me the impetus to write.

Being a parent reveals the schism between who you are and who you have to be.

Bullshit jobs pay well. Or at least they did. Now the best bullshitter in town is eating our lunch. Soon it will be eating us. After that it will eat itself.

I am not crazy enough to believe that anything I say matters, but I am crazy enough to say it anyway.

A so-called great work of literature or philosophy is but the fruit body of a subterranean organism that subsists on the putrescence of other organisms.

The doubts I have are manifold, but they pale into insignificance to the doubts I don’t have. Or is it the other way around?

Language comes, ultimately, from the desire of consciousness to classify its contents. What consciousness didn't bargain for was the way in which language would come to colonise those contents, to mou…

The banality of life becomes tragic when children are born. We are suddenly forced to admit that what didn't matter now does even though it still doesn't.