© The Sirens Call
A few years ago, my partner and I were on holiday in Thailand. One evening we were having dinner in a restaurant in the historical town of Ayutthaya, which is about 50 miles north of Bangkok. Come to think of it, this was one of our very last trips abroad, before the Covid-19 pandemic put the brakes on international travel. The restaurant was called the Old Place and it overlooked Ayutthaya’s River Pasak so that, in the darkness, chains of big, cargo-laden barges were drifting past the terrace where we were eating.
It came to our notice that amid the restaurant’s waiters and its (mainly tourist) customers, a young Asian woman was wandering around with a smartphone. Every half-minute she’d stop somewhere, pose for and take a selfie, then wander off in search of another suitable selfie-spot. She did this all through our meal: wander about, pause, take a selfie, go somewhere else, pause, take a selfie, ad infinitum. Presumably the waiters were too busy to approach this strange, restless, selfie-loving lady and demand why she wasn’t sitting down and ordering food like everyone else.
And I thought: This could be the start of a story…
Well, I’m pleased to say that the story has now been written. It’s also just been published in the Summer 2022 issue of the dark fiction and poetry magazine The Sirens Call. It’s entitled Selfless and is attributed to Jim Mountfield, the pseudonym under which I write horror stories. This new edition of The Sirens Call clocks in at a whopping 239 pages and can be downloaded – for free! – here.
