Stories
A collection of some of my prized and published creative writing
Celeste
Flash Fiction celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Carnation Revolution
To celebrate 50 years of the Carnation Revolution
“Do you have a light?”
Celeste stepped out of the subway, her arms full of freshly-cut flowers she feared would go to waste. The restaurant’s celebrations had been cancelled on the revolutionaries’ orders, leaving her with unused bundled bunches of carnations and the manager’s instructions to ‘make something out of them.’
The sky roused, yawning and stretching over the Praça do Rossio. Beholding the city square, she knew her flowers had no place in a day like this. Her bouquets of swirling scarlet skirts, would droop, idle; crowds of port-drunk cheeks, would wilt, withering away.
“Ma’am, do you have a light?”
He was just a boy, like many others standing by. Only peach-fuzz and a tenor’s voice, lazing against one of the military’s tanks. An unlit cigarette poked out from between his lips.
“No, sonny.” She wished she had anything to help or thank them, but she only had carnations. Scores of blossoms, whose petals spewed fresh and wound-like, when the revolution should spill no blood…
“If a flower will do.”
The soldier-boy took it. Amused he called a friend. Celeste sowed their green lapels, then the muzzles of their rifles. Shoots red like spring made a meadow of the army.
Lisbon stirred and rubbed its eyes clean of wintery sleep. But Celeste? Just then It was enough the flowers wouldn’t waste.
The Butcher’s Girl
Short Crime fiction; A young mother is interrogated when her partner becomes a suspect in the murder of his coworker, a Latina woman.
Short Crime Story
A young mother is interrogated when her partner becomes a suspect in the murder of his coworker, a Latina woman. Her unreliable account of events makes the detective question whether she does or not know more than she lets on.
Exploring gender and race in crime fiction, the story delves into the complicity of white women in hate crimes.
Published in The Yard: Crime Blog; 8th of April, 2024
Read Here
The Price of Money
Winner of the 36th Edition of the Ferreira Castro Youth Literary Prize
Prize-Winning Short Story
When Ana, Lady’s Maid to the Marquess of Bastos, is approached by a mysterious man, her morals are put to the test. If she agrees to become an accomplice in the murder of her masters, she will be well rewarded. What is she willing to do for money, how far will she go?
A thriller that explores class and the impossibility of subversion when greater, golden forces, are at play.
Winner of the 1st Prize of the 36th Edition of the Prémio de Literatura Juvenil Ferreira de Castro
To be published in forthcoming anthology