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“The man who comes to fish wears a faded brown body warmer, and pitches his line at the very edge of the scum pond. Grundy watches him, from a distance. Watches as he wrestles the flippering silver bodies from the water and smacks them dead against a rock...”
Men of the Waste is a short story about a decrepit old man who lives on a patch of wasteground, and has dealings with the local authority that don’t end particularly well for anyone. It is a sometimes-mystical, sometimes-violent story about territory and place and what it means to live a quiet life.
It was shortlisted for the Bristol Short Story Prize, and published in the competition anthology in 2013.
Men of the Waste by Krishan Coupland is marked CC0 1.0. As with a lot of my short fiction, I have released this story into the public domain. This means you can use it any way you like, including making a profit from it. Let me know if you do anything interesting with it!