Saccade

by Chris Bell

sac•cade (sa’ n. [French, twitch, from Old North French saqiuer, to pull] any of the rapid, involuntary jumps made by the eyes from one fixed point to another. “Sometimes I think they can’t even see me. I ask myself sometimes, in supermarkets and places, if I actually exist, or if all this is just in my imagination.” Sam Kite is plagued by panic attacks, lives alone and works in a dead-end job. But like most of the people he knows, he only pretends to be working. His life is pathetic. He lives in fear of “The Almighty Crunch”, which he senses is “I can think of a lot of terrible things that could happen. Most of them small, personal things, so that’s just me being selfish. The sad thing is that most of the big things might be doing the planet a favour.” His fantasy is to live “in a comfortable glow of self-appreciation”. When his half-hearted suicide attempt is foiled by a nameless ‘guardian stranger’, by chance Kite encounters “The White Woman”, an eye-catching squatter called Grace Starling; a deep, once seen, never to be forgotten kind of woman. Sam Kite tries to impress himself on the world by repeating to the mirror each morning, “My name is Sam Kite and life is great.” Half right is as good as it gets. His happiness finds its true expression only on film, in his collection of classic DVDs. “If I felt I was in the rat race I’d want to get out of it, but I’m a non-starter.” Yet even a man like Kite is capable of changing things for the better. By the author of Liquidambar ( Songshifting ( Requiem For Stage Diver and Bass Guitar ( and The Concentrated Essence of Any Number of Ravens ( “Chris Bell’s Saccade is a beautifully constructed, heartfelt work. Expertly weaving in multiple plotlines, Bell creates a story of loss, love, and ultimately redemption … It is, of course, a testament to his skill that he constructs such a complex plot without allowing too many threads to slip away, but that he is so precise with his diction is what sets him apart from other writers. He has a gift for emotionally loaded, short, concise statements.” Sophia Ioannou, Seven Stories Press

197 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 10, 2012

About the author

Chris Bell

The author was born in Wales in 1960. In 1976 he was the youngest poet ever to be published in former Poetry Society chairman Norman Hidden’s magazine Workshop New Poetry (UK). In January 2006 his poem about the writer Richard Brautigan, ‘The Graves Have Turned to Powdered Wind’, won the Edit Red Writers Choice Award. His poetry has been published in Axiom (Wales); Scree (England); Sivullinen (Finland); foam:e and Snorkel (Australia).

His fiction has appeared in The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror (Tenth Annual Edition) (US), in which his short story collection The Bumper Book of Lies received an honourable mention; The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror #21; and This Is The Summer of Love (New Writers Special) (UK); Not One of Us (US); Zygote and TransVersions (Canada); Zahir (US); The Third Alternative and Postscripts (UK); The Heidelberg Review (Germany) and Takahe (New Zealand). His first novel, Liquidambar, inspired by Edward Hopper’s paintings, won the UKA Press ‘Search For A Great Read’ competition.