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  • Mother and son
  • Family life ; Mothers and sons
  • A mother feels burdened with a long awaited son who turns out to be an imbecile. She resents the toll of daily caring for him and his inability to mature, become responsible and behave normally. With her husband dead, she sees no way out and longs...
  • Roger Mais Collection - Short Stories & Articles
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  • A Man can laugh
  • Boxing ; Love stories
  • Having just won the boxing match, Nick did not like listening to Spink, his manager, telling him that he would only be good for a few more fights because his legs were giving out. Nick’s uncertainty about the nature of the relationship between his...
  • Roger Mais Collection - Short Stories & Articles
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  • Adventure
  • Family life ; Imagination
  • The children engage in wildly imaginative play where the boys hunt lions and buffaloes while the girl and her doll travel to the sea where she hears the lap of the waves and watch as the frail boat struggles to stay afloat against the elements....
  • Roger Mais Collection - Short Stories & Articles
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  • Buried treasure
  • Deception ; Buried treasure ; Man-woman relationships
  • As far as Joshua is concerned, women are not very smart and he has no intention of spending his fortune on his wife who considers him mean and lazy. He denies these accusations along with her saying he is easy prey to any conman, until the stranger...
  • Roger Mais Collection - Short Stories & Articles
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  • Singing down the lane
  • Friendship ; Violence
  • Three friends head for home in the dark after a night drinking. The first one branches off to his home leaving the other two, one of whom is singing at the top of his voice. Annoyed, his companion orders him to shut up and this leads to a fight at ...
  • Roger Mais Collection - Short Stories & Articles
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  • Remote control
  • Man-woman relationships
  • Peter, the poet, is torn between two women - Sylvia, his wife representing the subjective part of mind, and Claire, his mistress and the objective part. As he sets off in the night to visit Claire, the journey affords him time to contemplate and...
  • Roger Mais Collection - Short Stories & Articles
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  • The Letter
  • City and town life ; Man-woman relationships
  • Three rough and randy young men under the influence of strong drink set out on a walk to meet some girls and have fun. But what they encountered not only killed their appetite but forced them to do some serious thinking.
  • Roger Mais Collection - Short Stories & Articles
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  • Some women take a whipping
  • Grief
  • Sadie sat stone-faced as her boyfriend’s co-workers delivered the bad news of his death in a boiler explosion at the packing plant. All were concerned at her lack of emotional response to the news, but none saw her as she grieved for him that night...
  • Roger Mais Collection - Short Stories & Articles
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  • Till the end of time
  • Man-woman relationships
  • Clive told her he wanted the beautiful black girl to be his model, but his wife doubted his intentions were that honourable. Accusing his wife of jealousy, Clive attempts to engage the services of the said beauty at the nightclub and this leads to...
  • Roger Mais Collection - Short Stories & Articles
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  • An experiment with wallpaper
  • Children ; Honesty
  • The author presents a portrait of himself as a budding writer who loved to eat the plaster in the wall paper. This had unpleasant consequences, especially when his father took him out to the woodshed and applied a not so gentle reminder to the...
  • Roger Mais Collection - Short Stories & Articles
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  • Appointment with fate
  • Dentistry - Fiction
  • With humour, the writer describes his dreadful visit to the dentist and step-by-step torture he had to endure as he was unwillingly strapped into the chair, gagged and gassed in order to have his tooth extracted by a London dentist who thinks every...
  • Roger Mais Collection - Short Stories & Articles
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  • Background to Arthur
  • Best friends ; Biographical fiction
  • The author recalls the life story of his best friend, Arthur, who grew up in a church orphanage that believed in raising “ children on religion and starvation”. The harsh cruelty with which he was treated as a child and later hardships in life did...
  • Roger Mais Collection - Short Stories & Articles
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  • Swing high, sweet chariot
  • City and town life ; Police
  • The author pokes fun at two matters which came to the fore recently - the abundance of perambulators (baby carriages) that causes traffic jams and the newly issued Metropolitan Police Manual which provides detailed guidelines for dealing with...
  • Roger Mais Collection - Short Stories & Articles
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  • Man or God, and a handful of stars
  • Nationalism ; Political fiction
  • The writer ponders the concept of nationalism evidenced by the presence of a local university, a national culture, a national consciousness, and a national literature. Such ideas meet with stiff resistance but the author is determined to continue...
  • Roger Mais Collection - Short Stories & Articles
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  • Two women in profile
  • Women ; Biographical fiction
  • The author, a tenant, listens to the story of the lives of two women at the boarding house where he lives. They tell him about their past, show him pictures of their family and friends and for a brief moment they seem to bond, then just as quickly,...
  • Roger Mais Collection - Short Stories & Articles
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  • My life as a gunman
  • Children ; Crime
  • With tongue in cheek humour, the author describes how he became a gunman and ended up in juvenile detention. All he ever wanted as a child was a pair of roller skates, but his parents gave him a water pistol instead which started him on the road to...
  • Roger Mais Collection - Short Stories & Articles
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  • Black magic
  • Horse-racing ; Suicide
  • Ruth recounted her story of how her handbag featured in the suicide of an ex-jockey whom she accidentally encountered and who insisted that she bet on the horse “Black Magic”, a sure winner. The man was in desperate need and was counting on some of...
  • Roger Mais Collection - Short Stories & Articles
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  • Big bage
  • Violence ; Children
  • Ferdie , a ragged street-wise boy, was feeling on top of the world until he encountered Herbert, his sworn enemy. The inevitable fight ensued with Ferdie unexpectedly winning. This victory gave him the courage to challenge the rich “stuck-up” kid...
  • Roger Mais Collection - Short Stories & Articles
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  • A hole in his shoe
  • Crime
  • The killer had made a spectacular jail break and an even more unbelievable escape from the hotel where the police had him cornered. Despite his bravado, the end came as he was cut down by the police, one of whom expressed surprise that the nattily...
  • Roger Mais Collection - Short Stories & Articles
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  • Sentence of death
  • Crime ; Justice
  • By a strange twist of fate the judge finds himself called upon to pass the death sentence upon a man he had wronged terribly in the past. The prisoner was indeed guilty of the capital crime this time, but the judge’s conscience screamed...
  • Roger Mais Collection - Short Stories & Articles

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