From Alsiso – K.J. Bishop: Alsiso’s exile lasted two hundred years. He roamed, vagrant, in distant lands, sleeping in fields of sugar cane, searching for his reflection in flooded temples where the bodies of monks had turned to fish, and he drank the ponging lees of sanctity.

From Alsiso – Nick Jackson: In the night the birds call to each other and the insects striate. The forest whispers a new story in his ears that he doesn’t yet understand. The night is hot and humid and there is a putrid smell of death from somewhere in the undergrowth. For the first time he is aware of aloneness.

From Alsiso – Justina Robson: I know that he would kill me, if he had the chance, if he wasn’t seen, because he thinks of himself as the original, the father, and that he has the right. Somewhere in the jungle he’d have his chance if I let him but I make every effort to be accompanied by others. So does he. So do they all. So do we all.

From Alsiso – Kaaron Warren: Up close, without the bar between us, in harsh lighting, I can see his flaws. His nose, red and pockmarked. His cheeks veiny. His eyes yellowish. His knuckles bruised. But he smells good, real, and I say, “My husband is very old,” and he pushes me up against the wall and kisses me.

From Alsiso - Marie O’Regan: I tried to figure out how I felt but the truth was I felt nothing at all. I was empty. I stood up and unbuckled my trousers; let them fall to the carpet. I tried not to think about the blood that had soaked into the backs of the legs.

From Alsiso – Christopher Kenworthy: As I lay there, I was surprised when the first image appeared, because it was a sort of wooden toy, not dissimilar to a train, but with a human head and eyes. It had feelers like an insect. It was clearer than anything I’d seen in a dream, and when it made eye contact, I knew it was alive.

From Alsiso – Andrew Humphrey: His skin was a shade of yellow-grey that I’ve not seen before or since. His fists were clenched. A single tear trickled down one cheek. He didn’t appear to see me but he said, “Oh, Jean” as he tried to stand and pitched headfirst into the bath. The toilet bowl was full of blood.

From Alsiso – Alasdair Stuart: The slide is a video capture of footage shot during the fall of the Berlin Wall. Partially obscured behind the revellers, the word ‘Alsiso’ is written in two-foot high letters on the wall.

From Alsiso – Allen Ashley: It got so bad that I stopped going to Wonder Village in High Grove because of the presence of Al flipping Siso. Was he somehow stalking me? Did he have a bugging device linked to my usage of teletext listings? Improbably, he was always exiting the exact screen I was queuing for and would make a beeline for me.

From Alsiso – Nicholas Royle: I looked at the heron again and my heart stopped. Very slowly the creature was moving its head forward, its impossibly long neck unspooling like celluloid tumbling from a reel. It moved a foot or so, no more than eighteen inches, then refroze. I breathed out.
     I realised then that I could go. I had been given a signal.

From Alsiso – Antony Mann: A chain of thought in his head, unfolding interconnected like DNA, about the general stupidity of pedestrians, the fairness or otherwise of life, the value of the hours after dark when there was nothing on television and even the hum of the fridge had died down.

From Alsiso – Andrew Hook: She reached into the pocket of her short tartan skirt and pulled out the object she’d been fingering since he entered her apartment. With a quick movement of her thumb she flicked it his way, and it rolled up to eye level. A bullet.
     “Take a good look,” she said.
     He did. The word Alsiso was carved along its length.

From Alsiso - Matt Dinniman: I ran through the crowd, my shoulders brushing shoulders just as another poor soul detonated. I ran across the street, dodging cars, and into the entrance of my apartment complex. The stench of fire and burning oil drifted with the wind

From Alsiso – Tamar Yellin: She handed me a leaflet. Her face widened in a brilliant grin.

Take the Alsiso Challenge!
Kr.5000 says you dare to Say Alsiso

     “You still think this whole thing is some kind of joke,” I said.
     “It was pinned to my car.” She shrugged. “I think you have to laugh.”

From Alsiso – Steve Savile: Alsiso’s face was more than twice the old man’s height, weathered with the touch of lichen from the damp air, and vines grew across its heavily lidded right eye and around the Golem’s forehead like a crown of thorns. The Golem’s body disappeared down into the darkness beneath the platform where it stood on the floor more than seventy feet below.

From Alsiso – Kay Green: He put a spark of himself into Alsiso, then lay him in a magic boat, and gave it a push towards the shore of the Island of the Gods. That push was the Atlantic storm system. That push caused Alsiso to reach land as a thriving chieftain, leading his brave, ruthless seafaring people to glory.

From Alsiso – John Grant: There is a camel in the car with us now, urinating loudly on the floor. Robert does not notice this, either; the only things he knows are me – with my body that’s been all put together wrong – and the redhead, who’s likewise here alongside us, and whose name is Molly. She’s lovely indeed, now that I know how to see her correctly.

From Alsiso – Gary Couzens: Alex found out soon enough. He’d stayed behind after his practical, drinking with a group of fellow Physics students and drink had loosened his tongue. He arrived just in time to see Simon leaving the house in full drag. Alex laughed so hard he was bent double.

From Alsiso – David Allen Lambert: Mel fixes the waitress with silent anger. Without another word she takes the bottle to the Maitre D’, who personally carries the bottle back to Mr Roadkill. When he sees the bottle coming his way he stands up so violently that his chair tips over and crashes to the floor.

From Alsiso - Brian Howell: Jun noticed a thin vertical line opening up in the wall. At first it was pitch black, then totally white, from which it proceeded through all the colours of the spectrum. These colours then began to separate like the closed iris petals of a camera, then slowly opened, sucking him very gently into the space next door.

From Alsiso – Conrad Williams: I’ve always been a sucker for lost souls. Children crying, it doesn’t do a thing for me. But seeing a child in the tortuous few moments before the tears, when he or she is detached from its parents, say, when the confusion and panic are setting in, that kills me. Tears are the release. Tears are the relief.

From Alsiso – Lisa Pearson: The darkness behind her is liquid, brimming. Impossible to know what lies at the heart of it, what lurks at its edge. On the manicured lawn, a leopard poised for the kill, a crocodile swallowing an impala foal whole, or perhaps a new born giraffe tumbling from the heights of its mother’s womb.

From Alsiso – Marion Arnott: But when I looked down on its pale stone, quarried near my home place by the slaves of the Sea Lords, I heard the crack of the overseers’ whips, and their cry of ‘Stones for a Lady’ as the great hewn blocks crashed down the ramps to the barges. That white stone was reserved for the palaces of the Sea Lords’ consorts. The more favoured the lady, the finer her whorehouse, and Alsiso was the finest whorehouse of them all, carved from our hearts, mortared with our sorrow.