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Colin Devonshire

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Aug, 2019

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180 Followers
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150 Stories

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Devilish Rain

Monsoon rain fell on Bangkok like punishment from a wrathful god. It was not the gentle, life-giving rain of poetry, but a violent, grey curtain that hammered the corrugated iron roofs of the Klong Toey slums, turning the narrow alleys into rivers of filth. Addi sat on the warped wooden floor of his small room, the sound of the deluge a deafening drum against his skull. He was a sikkhamana, a novice monk who had not yet taken his final vows. Or, he had been. Three months ago, he had walked away from the serene silence of Wat Pho, not in a c...

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Nine Lives?

The heat in Bangkok was a physical thing, a wet blanket that smothered the city. It clung to Sam, a freelance photographer who had come to Thailand chasing the perfect shot of a monsoon, but had found only a relentless, suffocating stasis. He was staying in a cheap guesthouse down a soi that smelled of rotting fruit and jasmine, a place where the air conditioners dripped a constant, mournful rhythm. The walls were thin, painted a sickly green that reminded him of hospital corridors, and the ceiling fan above his bed clicked with every rotati...

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A Piece of Peace

The long-tail boat cut through the murky water of the Chao Phraya, its engine a throaty growl that was the only sound in the world. The air was thick as a wet blanket, heavy with the scent of river mud, diesel, and something else—something sweet and rotten, like overripe fruit left in the sun. Leo, a freelance photojournalist, swatted a mosquito the size of a small drone and cursed his luck. He’d been chasing a story about illegal logging in the north, but a dead end and a dwindling bank account had brought him here, to the fringes of Bangko...

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A Gentle Warning

The laminated sign, taped to the glass door of Liam’s bar, was a masterpiece of bureaucratic understatement. It read: NOTICE: Due to recent incidents, we advise patrons to avoid the alleyway behind the establishment after 2:00 AM. Management appreciates your cooperation. Liam had typed it herself, after the second time she’d had to hose down the back steps. It was a warning nobody took seriously. The regulars, a mix of jaded expats and nocturnal Thais, would read it, snort, and order another Singha. They’d joke about the soi dogs or a drunke...

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Sweet Dreams

The air in the Bangkok apartment was a physical thing—a hot, wet blanket that clung to Brian’s skin. The ancient air conditioner rattled and groaned, a dying beast fighting a losing war against the humidity. It was the same sound that had been the soundtrack to his life for the past five years. The same rattle. That identical groan. The same stifling, mango-sweet air from the street vendor below. He woke with a gasp, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. The dream was already dissolving, leaving only a residue of terror ...

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Operate

The first thing that registered was the cold. It was a clinical, bone-deep chill that seeped through the thin cotton of her gown and into the steel of the table beneath her. Then came the light, a harsh, brilliant white that burned through her closed eyelids and painted the inside of her skull in shades of migraine red. She tried to move, to lift a hand to shield her face, but her limbs were leaden, unresponsive. Panic, a cold, sharp shard, pierced the fog in her mind. Her name was Eleanor. Elle. She was twenty-six. She was… she was in Thail...

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Snatched

The heat in Bangkok was a physical weight, pressing down on the back of Marcus’s neck as he adjusted the damp rag in his grip. Beside him, Leo chain-smoked, the glowing tip of his cigarette a nervous firefly in the gloom of the soi. Their target was a boy, no older than seven, who walked this alley every afternoon to buy mango sticky rice from the old woman at the end. A routine. A vulnerability. The boy, Niran, arrived precisely at 4:17 PM, his small sandals slapping against the cracked concrete. He was humming a tune, his eyes fixed on th...

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Gifted

The package arrived on the same day as the letter from the Thai lawyer, a stiff, cream-coloured envelope that smelled faintly of sandalwood and dust. Maya had been in Hua Hin for a week, trapped in the sticky, slow aftermath of her estranged grandmother’s death. The air in the small house by the canal was thick, a living thing that clung to her skin and made her English-bred lungs work harder. She’d come back to this land of her mother’s birth not out of grief, but out of a sense of grim obligation. She was the only blood relative left, and ...

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Someone Else, Please

The air in the Chiang Mai guesthouse was thick with the scent of jasmine and cheap incense, a perfume that did little to mask the mildew creeping in from the monsoon rains. For Tom, it was a sensory overdose, a million miles from the damp, grey concrete of the London estate where the whispers in his head had first started. Here, the whispers were quieter, drowned out by the rhythmic thrum of cicadas and the soft, melodic lilt of Thai. He’d been running for six months. Running from a father who saw him as a burden, from a string of dead-end j...

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Bolt!

The air in Chiang Mai was a thick, sweet soup of car exhaust and rotting fruit, a combination Beth had come to associate with a kind of hopeful disorientation. She was a world away from the grey drizzle of Manchester, and the heat was a living thing that pressed against her skin, demanding she slow down, breathe deeper. Every morning, she walked to the Thai language school, past wizened women selling garlands of marigolds and the ceaseless, honking flow of motorbikes. She was learning to say sawasdee kha with the correct, falling tone, and t...

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Should ‘av

The monsoon had finally broken, a fat, wet curtain that turned Chiang Mai’s streets into rivers of brown water and red clay. For a week, I’d been trapped in my bungalow on the outskirts, listening to the frantic drumming of rain on the corrugated iron roof and the ceaseless, manic chorus of geckos. It was this auditory assault, more than the heat, that had frayed my last nerve. I was a man on the edge of a breakdown, and all I needed was a cold beer and five minutes of quiet. That’s when Mel found me. I was huddled under the awning of a road...

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Rumours, Rumours

The air in Pattaya, thick with the scent of frying garlic and cheap perfume, was a familiar anaesthetic to Jack. He’d been a regular at the "Silver Moon" bar for the better part of a decade, a retired engineer from Birmingham who had traded grey skies for perpetual humidity and the quiet desperation of his pension for the noisy, chaotic camaraderie of the Walking Street expats. He was on his second Leo, the condensation from the bottle pooling on the scarred wooden table, when the rumour reached him. It wasn't whispered. It was delivered wit...

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Who, Me?

The air in Bangkok was a thick, humid blanket, woven with the scent of jasmine, diesel fumes, and the ever-present tang of the Chao Phraya River. For James, it smelled like hope. For the last two years, this chaotic, beautiful city had been his sanctuary. The clatter of tuk-tuks, the neon-lit labyrinth of Soi Cowboy, the serene smiles of the monks – it was the perfect anaesthetic for the life he'd left behind in a sterile London office and a marriage that had become a mausoleum of unspoken resentments. He’d come for the diving, initially. Kh...

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Accidents Happen?

The heat was a physical weight, a wet blanket that clung to Bobby's skin long after the sun had bled out behind the city's jagged skyline. It was the kind of heat that didn't just make you sweat; it seeped into your bones, a constant, low-grade fever that pulsed in time with the city's arrhythmic heartbeat. From his balcony on the eleventh floor of the decrepit apartment block off Sukhumvit, Bobby could see it all. The neon haze of Nana, the serpentine crawl of traffic on the expressway, the ghostly, unblinking stare of the million windows t...

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The Last Meal

The air in the hills of northern Thailand was thick with the scent of wet earth and decaying leaves. It was the kind of smell that clung to your clothes and seeped into your bones, a primal perfume of the jungle. Inside the small, open-air kitchen of the bamboo hut, the smell was entirely different. Here, it was the sharp, clean aroma of lemongrass, the earthy warmth of galangal, and the sweet, pungent kick of shrimp paste. Pimchanok moved with a practised, almost meditative grace. Her hands, gnarled and dark from a lifetime of work, were st...

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