Maybe it was because I had recently become a Buddhist, not just to impress the hippy yoga-bunny next door, I hasten to add – I really had been trying my best to eschew material possessions and to seek some kind of spiritual enlightenment that would be an added bonus to my getting in her knickers – but it was when I was nearing the end of my Master’s studies when the ATM refused to give me any money.

There was nothing unusual about that, of course. As a postgrad student, whether I would actually get any cash or an “Insufficient funds” message was pretty much a form of gambling, and I would often feel a slight thrill of expectation as the machine took my card and then pondered my request. But no, this time was different. After I had inserted my card and entered my PIN, the message “What thesis do you require?” appeared on the grubby screen. At first, hungover and distracted, I had simply assumed it had asked what service I required, and I instinctively stabbed at the lower bottom button for cash, out of muscle memory. But when nothing happened and I re-examined the screen, scraping away the mottled flecks of dried vomit from the glass, I could see two simple options next to the uppermost button – Masters on the left and Doctorates on the right.

Confused, I pushed the button next to Masters and a further list of options appeared – “A deconstructionist critique of J.K. Rowling.” “An analysis of semiotics in Love Island.” “The works of Philip.K.Dick as postmodern predictor of intersectionality.” This final choice instantly grabbed my attention as this was in fact the subject of my own Master’s thesis which, truth to be told, I had been struggling with. Or I would have been struggling with had I bothered to start writing it at all. Slowly, I pushed the button next to that option and the machine whirred and the sound of motors and wheels and flipping paper came from within. Then my card was slowly released and, when I pulled it from the slot, the machine started printing off reams of paper, whirring and clicking as sheet after sheet was spat out. I grabbed a sheet at random and there indeed was in in-depth analysis of the works of Dick through a postmodernist lens.

While this was unusual to say the least, I was more glad to be relieved of worry about the impending dissertation deadline than I was about the nonsense of a ATM in the centre of a provincial University town proffering expertly written literary analyses for free. After returning home and checking that the machine hadn’t inserted too much idiotic Marxist analysis into the thesis, I spent the rest of the day getting it bound before submitting it early. After all, I wanted to be free of the worry of academic deadlines and get back to my main focus; drinking and pulling first year girls in Trixie’s, the tacky nightclub where there was more beer on the floor than in its patrons.

But in the following days I often stopped by the ATM to watch the queues of people stood disinterestedly in line before it, one after the other inserting their cards and taking their cash, no-one seemingly being offered postmodernist literary analyses. Once I stood there for a full hour, looking to see how the ATM could have done what it did. Was there some kind of trapdoor in the front where a miniature literature professor could have gained entry or hidden cameras beaming images to some control room somewhere where a team of academics examined users’ faces on flickering screens and doled out pertinent literary analyses? But instead, people simply stood in line like supplicants, only for their devotion to the machine in the wall to be rewarded with cash, nothing else, just crisp bank notes which were quickly gathered and then pocketed by the grateful flock.

So even after what had happened I was still a little surprised when the next time I used the ATM, after inserting my card, the simple message, “Do you want the truth?” appeared on the grimy screen, underneath it the options, Varnished or Unvarnished. But after I pressed the latter button and the machine whirred and then spat forth its slip of paper I read its message with a sense of profound awe as I saw the reality of It All.

The machine simply gave people what they wanted –advice, literary theses, existential Enlightenment; it was just dumb luck and limited perspective that meant that what most people who queued for an audience with it were interested in was money. So once I had seen the Truth, I sat on the pavement in supplication next to the machine, its disciple – no, its Apostle, giving it a voice beyond what could be expressed on the screen. And as pilgrims line up before it seeking a boon, I encourage them to seek more, to give up their devotion to worldly things, to expect more than just cold, hard cash, for they will receive it. I have been here so long now my sodden clothes are rotting off my body but still I urge the users of the machine to give away their money, even a pound, even a pound will do.

They glimpse at me with disgust before cold eyes stare ahead and they try their best to ignore me.

 

James Burr has had a couple of one-minute stage-pieces staged by SLAMX in London in February and had many short stories published in journals and anthologies, including Bizarro Central, Horror Sleaze Trash, decomP, Suspect Thoughts, Darkness Rising, Raw Edge, Ellipsis and Ideomancer. His first collection of short stories, Ugly Stories for Beautiful People was published in 2007 and his second collection will be published by Nihilism Revised in the summer.”

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At 1am I’m in your bed.

You awake and we lock eyes. Panic clamps your vocal cords squeezing out a strangled howl. You fall to the floor, drag yourself backwards getting tangled in the curtain. It wraps tightly around you, a paisley print sari, a futile protective shield. A slice of light from the lamppost outside casts your shadow on to the ceiling, it quivers, grows and turns inside out… who’s the monster now?

At 2am you’re hiding.

Crouched behind the chair that wears your best jacket; on your haunches clutching the empty tweed sleeves. I hear your rapid shallow breath; a fist of fear squeezes your lungs wringing out wispy smoke trails, the warmth of life evaporating in the room’s icy chill. I roll onto my side, a domino effect; you adopt the brace position …what are you afraid of? What do think I will do?

At 3am terror twists your mind.

You are the third wise monkey, sitting at the foot of the bed; knees pulled to chest, shoulders hunched, hands clamped across your mouth …are you holding in a scream?

At 4am I beckon to you.

My palms upturned, fingers curled, pulling you closer, inviting you in. You accept and lay next to me and the mattress vibrates as fear rattles your bones. My presence here has made the bedding damp with cold; I watch the goosepimples race across your throat.

Face to face, heads on pillows, you are petrified still, not even a blink. And then you whisper, to me, your voice no louder than the beat of the butterfly’s wings; “What do you want?”

“To rest:” I tell you, my breath blowing icy barbs that sting your cheeks.

Your hand reaches for my face, that need to feel if I am real. Under your fingers I crumble to dust and ash that swirls and scatters, a former life, now dirty fairy dust.

At 5am I’ve found another resting place.

I pour myself through an open window and hover above the floor. The bed is tiny, but my bedfellow wears a huge smile and Winnie the Pooh pyjamas. He gurgles with joy, so happy to see me! I could be his new playmate, or perhaps his imaginary friend for years to come.

I levitate and swirl then blow icy kisses on his rosy cheeks; he chuckles for more, chunky arms reaching high above him.

I think I will be happy here.

 

Denny Jace has been writing since June 2019 She writes Flash Fiction and Short Stories and is building up to her first novel. She lives in Shropshire with her husband and two (grown up) children. Most of her days are spent reading her stories to Maude and Stanley, her two faithful dogs. Her stories have been highly commended, Winner of Retreat West Micro Flash Fiction 2020 and published in Ellipsis Zine. Twitter @dennyjace

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He works the phone all morning, calling to remind his clients to take their pills and drink lots of water, and to reassure them that the voices aren’t real. Some of them he calls and calls again, hoping that on his third or fifth or eighth attempt they’ll give in, pick up, and maybe even recognize his voice, hear and heed his advice.

By noon he’s pretty toasted from the effort, buys himself a burger and a Coke and goes down to sit in the shade beside the lake, contemplate its smooth surface like it’s a giant crystal ball, and try to divine what comes next. The only other beings he encounters are a few ragged gulls scavenging the shoreline for scraps and a pair of loons forty or fifty feet out, bobbing and diving for whatever it is loons dive for. He watches them for the longest time, thinking about how quiet it must be just below the surface. He wonders why they come back up at all.

He can hear the snarl of a revved engine on the bank far off to his left, somewhere out of sight. He can’t tell if it’s a chainsaw or a dirtbike, only that it’s small and angry sounding. It echoes across the water and comes back at him almost a full second later, only slightly smaller but just as angry. When he can’t stand it anymore, he heads on back to the office.

When he gets to his desk, the phone is ringing, but he can’t bring himself to pick it up. There’s a meeting going on in the conference room; he can hear voices through the wall.

 

Ron. Lavalette lives on Vermont’s Canadian border. His poetry, flash fiction, and creative nonfiction has been very widely published in both print and pixel forms. His first chapbook, Fallen Away (Finishing Line Press), is now available at all standard outlets. A reasonable sample of his work can be found at EGGS OVER TOKYO.

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You’re over at Drew’s house with Cyndi and your wife, during one of his I-might-just-be-the-wealthiest-man-in-town parties complete with a string quartet and catering staff and the most expensive booze you’ve ever seen which is why you’ve had your share and Cyndi’s too because what the hell, she’s too young to drink. You’re about to head for the bar to get started on your wife’s share when you notice Cyndi, glaring at Drew’s coffee table.

“What’s up?” you ask her.

“Can you believe this?”

“The table?”

“Yeah, look at it.” The middle section of a giant tree that someone put legs on and shellacked until it was smooth like marble.

“It’s a table made from a tree cookie,” you say.

“Yeah, a sequoia tree cookie.” You cock your head at it. It’s a big table, but it’s not sequoia sized. It’s not even redwood sized. Cyndi’s at that age when everything is an injustice that she must rail against, and you like that about her. She’s a good person and all of that, but on the other hand, she’s also kind of wearing you out with cause after cause.

On the other hand, you know that Drew’s always had kind of a thing for your wife, so you say, “Son-of-a-bitch, you’re right.”

“I don’t believe it. I thought these trees were protected.”

“Go grab your mother. We’re leaving in protest.”

Cyndi heads off looking for your wife while you slip over to grab one more drink. Drew comes up behind you and grabs you by the arm. “I wanted to show you something,” he says. He takes you into his study, which has been locked all afternoon, closes the door behind him, locks it.

“What’s going on?”

“I just bought something at auction the other day, that I think you’d get but maybe not everyone else would. You know about the Boer War, right?”

“I wrote my dissertation on it. I teach a couple of seminars.”

“Yeah, I thought so. Check this out. It came back to England with a colonel. He reportedly bought it during the campaign.” He hefts something that looks a bit like a tree stump and places it on his desk in front of you. “The man is supposed to have known Churchill.”

“Which one?” You ask, but his face scrunches. Then your face scrunches. You can feel it. “What is it?”

“Look closely. He turned it ironically enough into a footstool.”

You stare at the gray thing for a while until you understand. It’s the foot of an elephant, hacked off and preserved somehow. Once you understand you lose yourself a little. All you can do is stare. “You have a lot of money, do you Drew?”

“What?”

“There is a point at which a man might have too much money.” You realize that you’re still at that age when so many things are injustices that you must rail against, and you like that about yourself, but it can be exhausting.

“What are you talking about?”

Cyndi and her mom come through the door on their quest to find you, and you turn to Drew, who is goggling at your wife and say, “Listen Drew, we’re leaving now, and until you can find some way to act like a human being and get that stump out of here, we’re not coming back.”

“What?”

“Seriously, man, what the fuck is wrong with you?”

And as you walk out your daughter beams at you for the first time in a long time and it makes you want to storm out, which you do, as well as anyone can storm and also stop off by the bar for one more glass of the good stuff.

 

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Today we printed out the Internet.

All of it.

Boredom is the main obstacle. Paper jams welcome, our printer stopping on random pages, gasping for respite. Occasional network issues keep our minds sharp. And the trucks outside, delivering paper to our door, as we stack and carry into the warehouse.

Otherwise it is the mundane, the churn of the printer barrel, its friction melodic. We compose accompanying ukulele chords, playing our song during long periods of self-doubt. The information we print is sometimes distracting, sometimes worthwhile, infrequently enriching. Content we never knew of, its existence beyond imagination.

We abandon our plan for governance, the physicality overwhelming. Our original intention to create a structure, a manual index. Prototypes still on our walls, built with string and pins and photos, all now hopeless. Instead we have chaos – information random, back to its anarchic conception. We print, and stack, and store as we find it, building towers of content. Archways of A4, avenues of ink.

We try not to think of the trees, or the transport footprint, or the excess. Instead we focus on the greater good. How every individual, or society, or civilisation needs a backup. The inevitable collapse of infrastructure, and a world thankful for our save state. Everything recycled.

Our first query is from an old man who wears medals on his jacket. He walks with a limp and a small dog. He compliments our efforts, peering into our back-yard Internet. Paper blocking the horizon, changing perspective. A forest cut down and reassembled new.

Can I use your Internet, he says, The local library is closed.

He is a writer, researching bacteria types for a new poetry collection. We draw him a map from our collective memory. The information is to the west, far beyond the recent paper monoliths, sheets fluttering like the snow. He takes a compass and a flare gun, declining our offer of a guide, before vanishing into the web.

Buoyed by our good deed, we double our efforts. The final million pages, a period of reflection. Holding individual sheets up to what remains of the sun. Observing gaps in the fonts. Touching our favourite words. Smelling the ink. Consuming both the form and content. Leaving our fingerprint on every piece of information ever created. The printer thin and worn down, operating beyond its design. Stray pages on the carpet, information trampled and lost forever.

Late in the day, a query comes from the old man’s daughter, concerned by his disappearance. Several hours and billions of pages have passed.

He is easily distracted, she says.

We assume shared responsibility, having been equally distracted by our nearness to completion. Could we have boxed him in? Does he still wander without direction? His daughter demands to search with us, but we persuade her to stay. The landscape is organic and collapsing, shifting sheets forming curves and slopes. Instead, she will stay to maintain the printer, and wait for our return,

In our bag we pack a map and compass, and a box of matches, in case of emergency. Before leaving we document our efforts and intention, for the scenario we do not return. Upload our story to the web, hoping it will print out before the cartridge r

 

Paul Thompson lives and works in Sheffield. His stories have appeared in Okay Donkey, Spelk Fiction, Ellipsis Zine and The Cabinet of Heed.

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Crawling. Right hand digging into the dirt. He pulls, shoulders straining. Then his left hand, fingernails tearing on a rock. He pulls himself forward again. A sharp branch sears his ruined foot like a branding iron. He bites his lip against a scream. He is crawling away from the dark. Crawling.

Panting. His lungs fill. But not enough. Never enough. The exhale whistles and bubbles like an old teapot. Breath smells of blood.

Sprawling. Face laying in the soil. One eye pressed closed against the ground. One eye open, tear-filled and wide. He sees decayed leaves and a horse’s skull. He lays there too long. Too long.

Listening. The air presses itself around him. The beginning ends. His ears pull in the sounds of the terror-filled darkness approaching.

Is that it?

Can he hear it?

No. A beautiful silence. A sweet silence. A silence he can live in.

Remembering. A fool to come out here alone. The brochure had advised against it. The locals had shuddered and shuttered themselves in before full dark. His new bride laughed at him as he carried her into their room. Dared him to be a man for her.

Moving. Has to keep moving.

*      *      *

Crawling. Left hand digging into the dirt. He pulls, shoulders straining. Then his right hand, digging like an undertaker’s shovel. He pulls himself forward again. Another desperate handspan closer to nowhere. He bites his lip against a sob. He crawls through the dark. Crawling.

Panting. His chest rises just a little less than last time. Never enough. A bubble fills his mouth like a sail. Pops, and smells of blood.

Sprawling. Face laying in the soil. He twists, there on the ground. Something primitive urges him to look up into the night. One eye closed, blood-crusted and dead. He sees the starry sky and a mourning moon. He lays there too long. Too long.

Burning. His foot is burning. The frantic mind-voice urges him to look. The logical mind-voice warns him to not. Stomach roils at the sight of twisted white bone. Red life-blood. Pink muscle. Green pus. Black rot. Clear venom.

Scratching. His nails leave a bloody track on stone. A big stone. A huge stone. A standing stone. A stone standing with its fellows in a circle of lintels and the living night. A darkness is approaching.

Is this it?

Can he see it?

No. Beautiful stones. Deadly stones. A sight he can live with.

Remembering. A fool to come out here alone. His gut had cautioned against it. The locals had locked their eyes on their doors and locked their doors behind them. His new bride laughed at him as he stepped into the night. Dared him to be a man for her.

Moving. Something else is moving on the Forever Moor.

*      *      *

Crawling. Talons digging into the dirt. It crawls, straining toward him. His shoulders ache with his petrified stillness. It pulls itself forward again. The cold standing stone holds him like a dead lover. The dark crawls closer. Crawling.

Panting. His lungs pulling in their last sweet air. Not nearly enough. Not nearly enough again. The inhale gurgles and crackles like an empty percolator. Breath smells of blood.

Sprawling. Face laying in the soil. Mouth pressed open against the ground. He tastes sweet sticky moss. A line of spit tangles back in his hair. He lays there too long. Too long.

Listening. The fog rolls in and slams shut above his head. The end begins. His ears pull in the sound of the hate-filled darkness approaching.

Is that it?

Can he believe it?

No. A long quiet. A quivering quiet. A quiet he can’t live in.

Remembering. A fool to come out here alone. The moor itself had warned against it. The locals had made the sign against evil and he’d signed away his soul. His demonic bride laughed at him as she stepped out of the night. Dared him to die like a man for her.

Moving. Finally stops moving.

 

Damon Garn lives in Colorado Springs, CO with his wife and two children. He enjoys hiking, writing, and annoying his neighbors with mediocre guitar playing. He writes in the fantasy/sci-fi/steampunk realms, experimenting in flash fiction, short stories, and a novel. Follow Damon on Twitter: dmgwrites or at https://dmgwrites.wordpress.com/find-my-stuff/

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Alison wanted to order champagne which to Frances seemed a little over the top for the occasion. The occasion? Meeting Vivienne, Alison’s ex.

In the two years Frances and Alison had been together, she had heard a lot about Vivienne; the stories were usually followed by words like b*tch or c*nt. Frances couldn’t understand how Alison had stayed with her for half a decade, and above all continued to be friends after, but she had gotten used to the follow-up to the b*tch/c*nt stories which were always redemption ones; justifying why Vivienne had done what she had done, saying how great she was really, how when Alison needed her she had always been there… Frances suspected Alison had some form of Stockholm Syndrome.

When they had discussed the reasons to move to London “We’ll be close to Vivienne!” was always in the pros for some reason. They had some minor arguments about it, and on more than a handful of occasions, Frances had found it unavoidable to ask if Alison still had feelings for her. Alison laughed out loud every time as an answer. Well, she must’ve thought that was an answer because she’d never say anything after. It didn’t feel like an answer to Frances, but what could she do? Their relationship seemed just one big fight away from perfection, which Frances thought any relationship should have to pass the test of seriousness. The big fight did happen, eventually; it wasn’t about Vivienne so Frances took that as an answer and married Alison quickly after.

They had been sitting at the restaurant for half an hour. Vivienne was late. Charming. Frances hadn’t considered the restaurant was going to be this fancy; she had only put a coat over her favourite jogging bottoms which the Maitre Di scoffed at. She felt utterly embarrassed and couldn’t believe they had left the dog home alone for this.

When Vivienne finally appeared, she was wearing a white dress that seemed tailor-made to her incredible body, she might as well have been a Hollywood star; frosty, decadent, shameless. They got up to say hello, well Alison did, she just followed. Vivienne kissed Alison’s cheek and then hers. She smelled so good, the b*tch. The first words she said to Frances: “I read somewhere sweats are the new black!” The c*nt.

Vivienne then turned to the waiter and asked him to send her hellos to Antonin, who Frances later learned was the chef, and then she ordered a whiskey, neat (so now they’d have to drink the £90 champagne bottle just between the two of them. Great. Frances hated champagne as much as she hated Vivienne). Also, who orders whiskey to drink at dinner?

After the tiny starters, before the ‘Pork Jowl with Langoustine’, Alison got up to use the loo leaving her alone with Vivienne. Trying not to look up at her, Frances noticed the pattern on the marble table looked like a vagina and she thought of mentioning it to Vivienne but it didn’t seem like she’d laugh. Vivienne asked Frances what kind of art she liked, Frances wanted to answer, to seem just as cultured, but the only painting she could think of now was the portrait of her dog that she had gotten from a painter at Leicester Square years earlier when she never thought she’d come to live in London.

Vivienne quickly realised Frances was lost and said: “That was a stupid question, the last thing I want to talk about now is art!” and she changed the conversation to: “Alison sent me a picture of your dog. She seems lovely. Next time we’ll meet at mine so you can bring her” followed by: “Have you spotted the vulva on the marble? I’m yet to find a table here that hasn’t got one.”

And all Frances could do was laugh. So they laughed together and toasted to vulvas. Suddenly Frances felt better in her own skin than she’d ever felt before. When Alison joined them it looked like she had been gone three decades and Vivienne and Frances had been friends that long.

As the night continued she couldn’t take her eyes off Vivienne, they all kept laughing together; Vivienne was doing this thing where it seemed her and Frances had lots of inside jokes. How was she doing this? They’d only met an hour earlier.

After the cheese selection, the petit fours and the Port digestif, Vivienne asked for the cheque and paid for dinner—as an apology for being late—and somehow it didn’t feel awkward.

Saying their goodbyes, outside the restaurant, this time Frances offered her cheek willingly and kissed hers back. She did smell wonderful; Jasmin and spices; daring, refined, erotic. Then Vivienne got in her Porsche and they waved her goodbye. She waved them back with the promise they’d meet again soon and then drove off into the London night to the sound of Kim Carnes “Betty Davis Eyes”.

This woman had broken her wife’s heart and here Frances was, thinking she would probably let her break hers too.

 

Nadia de Castro has written and directed short films (fewer than she thought she would) and designs logos for a living. She is inspired by women’s lives, cultural clashes and tv shows about lawyers. She lives in London with her wife and their dying plants.

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Late afternoon on a searing July day in the year nine hundred and thirty-one, wearing a long saffron-coloured tunic close-fitting at the torso and loose around the forearms and knees, the King of Munster atop the Rock of Cashel, Lorcan mac Coinlígáin, stood before his bedchamber window overlooking miles of rolling pastureland and scrutinising his clammy upper-lip in a piece of polished bronze.

More than anything in the world he detested days like this. Days so muggy they revealed the curse God inflicted upon him, namely sweat glands without restraint. Hours could pass as he tweaked and twisted his thick moustache, growing incensed by its refusal to sit exactly how he liked it. A symmetrical horseshoe widening at the corners of his mouth and falling into two blonde horns precisely one thumbnail’s length below either side of his chin. A look so interwoven with his identity that he had taken to locking himself inside when it could not be achieved, forcing aides to knock on his enormous oak door, sending eerie booms, like overhead thunder, reverberating around the lofty space and a hateful shiver down his spine.

‘What can be so important,’ he snarled, opening the hatch he had installed, low enough to reach yet high enough for him to remain hidden, ‘that you insist on interrupting me while engaged in work of the utmost importance?’

‘I carry news of another raid, my King,’ the breathy voice responded. ‘Every day now they advance closer – Lismore the latest. Fourteen men slain, eleven of their women abducted.’

‘Tell me something, Óengus,’ the king replied, fanning himself with the bronze and throwing a beam of light around the room.

‘My King?’

‘Is there a waterway in Lismore suited to longship sailing connecting them to the sea?’

‘Uh, I believe so.’

‘I may be mistaken, but from my window I see no evidence of a waterway with similar capabilities in the area. Has it managed to elude me these forty-four years?’

‘No, my King, but it has been said that they are growing more brazen on foot, that it is only a matter of time before they overrun the middle country. We must be prepared.’

As the king emitted a series of contemptuous groans, a pattering of goathide sandals on stone floor could be heard in the great hall, followed by an exchange of mutterings between their owner and Óengus.

‘Fool! Those fleshy oafs could not walk a thousand paces on foot –’

‘My King, a boy here carrying a message for you.’

‘Give it,’ he whispered with an exhale as if surrendering to a deep melancholy, and a hand came through the hatch offering a folded piece of vellum. He opened it carelessly and, with his left hand flattening the sides of his moustache, read

Lest beef swiftly restore our brains and brawn,
Lest lodgings are bestowed at the first yawn,
Lest ale is proffered for forty to swill,
Satire will befall the King Coinlígáin

‘Why do you punish me, Lord!’

‘What is it?’ Óengus inquired. ‘Oh, God! The Vikings approach?’

‘Worse.’

‘What could be worse?!’

The king scrunched up the vellum and threw it through the opening in the door.

‘Poets.’

As Óengus investigated further with the messenger, the king moved to the window to look down on the marketplace in the foreground. With disgust, he saw a large gathering of outsiders conversing, laughing, plotting amongst the town traders and their livestock. The formidable figure of his cousin Cellachán alongside them. His attention naturally fell on one of them dressed in a multi-coloured cloak, the likes of which he had only ever seen on the High King of Ireland. A servant holding a gold branch above his head followed him wherever he went. The king squinted, attempting to discern some of his features, but, besides a solid constitution, he was too far away.

‘Apparently the newly elected Chief Poet of Ireland is among them,’ Óengus called through the hatch, sensing the king to have moved away. ‘They travel with a retinue of forty poets and servants. Their demands must be met; the law grants them the right to satire.’

‘And? There is nothing here to satirize.’

‘Of course not. But you know how crafty these poets can be. If they contrive to spoil your good name, it can bring shame upon the Eóganachta and, God forbid, invoke facial blisters and even death upon you personally.’

The king held the mirror to his face and examined his narrow freckled jaw, his tall forehead streaming with sweat beads, and his strained close-set eyes.

‘Nonsense! Give them bare barley loaf and water. If they must stay the night, run whatever vermin occupy those ramshackle guesthouses behind the stables out and let them rest there.’

‘But the boy here says the Chief Poet expects to dine with you in full banquet inside the castle walls. I urge you to do as they please.’

‘The offer is already too generous. Now go!’

‘Yes, my King.’

Not ten minutes later, Óengus returned.

‘I have spoken with the Chief myself. She is already making enquiries about you with the townspeople, and threatens a public show of satire before vespers if you do not comply.’

‘She?’

‘I am as surprised as you are. Uallach ingen Muinecháin, the first Woman-Poet of Ireland in a thousand years. I am told she was the top student in all twelve years of study, without exception, excelling in oration, memory, chants, and composition.’ He paused for a response and, when none came, added, ‘You know how unethical these poets can be.’

The king, lying face down on his four-poster bed with eyes closed and arms by his sides, mumbled an unintelligible demand into his pillow.

‘Pardon?’ Óengus asked.

He raised his head.

‘No accommodation!’

‘But –’

‘Go!’

And for two hours he stayed in the same position, awake but still, until a burgeoning furore outside coaxed him to the window. Through the small diamond panes, he spied Uallach standing on a makeshift stage chanting with her arms aloft. In front of her, her adoring audience of a hundred or so, made up of her entourage, the market traders, and what looked like most of the town, were matching her every word. Enraged, but unable to make out what they are saying, he smashed one of the panes with his mirror and heard

The Magic King of Munster,
Why is he unseen?
The Magic King of Munster,
Because his armpits gleam!
The Magic King of Munster,
His face soon a-rash?
The Magic King of Munster,
Imprisoned in moustache!

sung on a continuous loop.

‘That’s what they call poetry nowadays, is it?’ he asked through gritted teeth, pacing back and forth before slamming open the hatch. ‘Óengus!’

Moments later, Óengus’ voice appeared.

‘My King?’

‘Those Vikings, what do they do with the women they abduct?’

‘Uh, the reports say they are put on the ships and never seen again.’

‘Well then, tonight in Cashel we are going to have a Viking raid of our own.’

‘My King?’

‘Send some of our most trusted into the surrounding lands under order to pick up as many brawny wayfarers as they can find, the dimmer the better. Tell them we are arranging a mock Viking raid, or something, to test and improve the town’s defences. If they refuse, offer whatever amount of food and shelter it takes for them to agree – we can banish them as soon as the job is done. In the meantime, fashion costumes for them to wear. It hardly matters what. The halfwits of this town would not know a Viking from a washed-up seal. As soon as we have fifteen or so, choreograph the attack. Ideally only the Woman-Poet and one or two others for appearance should be taken. So describe to them in detail her distinctive clothing.’ The king paused his lecture to listen to the town chanting below. Then, pinching his earlobe until he could take the pain no longer, ended it with, ‘If some of the men decide to play the hero, killing them would not be the worst thing.’

‘You must reconsider!’ Óengus ventured.

‘What?!’

‘I mean, I beg you respectfully, my King, to rethink this course of action.’

‘If you question me once more, it will be your life you are begging for.’

‘So…what do you want done with the women we capture?’

‘Discreetly bring the poet to me. She too will know how it feels to be encroached upon. And make any others disappear.’ He closed the hatch before Óengus could pique him further.

Darkness fell. And, though the public performances at the king’s expense had subsided, sporadic bursts of laughter down in the marketplace told him the poets were far from moving on to the next town. Delirious, he waited five hours for his plan to unfold, pondering what these leeches could possibly have to laugh about and repeatedly checking his reflection for signs of facial blisters only to revile himself each time for doing so.

Once the first screams cried out below, he leapt to the window and, with a candle illuminating his black grin, listened to them race through the town like sinister waves branching off in different directions before coming to an abrupt end. He put his ear to the broken pane – not a conversation in the still night – and brooded until three assertive knocks at the door, unlike Óengus’, made him flinch. Uneasy, he approached the hatch.

‘I am with Uallach, my King,’ Óengus’ nervous voice announced.

‘Who else accompanies you?’

‘Uh, just your cousin Cellachán, who spearheaded the operation without fault.’

‘Are you present, Cellachán?’

‘I am, Lorcan,’ a gruff voice replied.

‘Before I open up, lift up this Woman-Poet so I can see her.’

The top of Uallach ingen Muinecháin’s head appeared above the bottom ledge of the ill-lit hatch, peering unperturbed and, as the king suspected, smiling down at him.

‘No need,’ she said. ‘Now let us proceed.’ Her voice’s commanding downward inflection in stark but somehow compatible contrast with its pacific tone.

‘Good Jesus!’

‘Not the Good Jesus, just a humble poet on a sultry night awaiting the King of Munster to open his door and fulfil an invite.’

‘An invite?! Well…well…you are mistaken there!’

‘Well, forgive me. I was escorted to your chamber on another’s decree?’

‘Uh, no, but…’

‘But nerves have dealt you a change of heart. Yet only regret will beat if we now part.’

‘This is not…!’

Uallach turned from him and said, ‘King Coinlígáin is ready.’

‘My King, are you opening up?’ Óengus asked from behind her.

‘I did not say…! All right. I will open the door marginally. Only the poet may enter.’ He closed the hatch, lifted open the iron latch, and pulled back the door.

Uallach half entered and stopped, her visible eye locked on him.

‘Believe me when I say, in reality your tash possesses a majesty no words can convey.’ She offered him her hand. The king, acting on a curious impulse to get her into the light where he could see her better, took it. A brief lapse in concentration that allowed Cellachán and two accompanying Eóganachta to slip in behind Uallach and tackle him to the ground, sending his mirror clanging across the floor.

Carried off the Rock of Cashel for the last time, and concealing the bottom half of his flushed face, Lorcan mac Coinlígáin heard rejoicing from townspeople who stayed up for the deposition. And the celestial voice of the Chief Poet of Ireland declaim

Narcissus high on the Rock,
A man so foul, yet enabled to be king
I guess the only true shock:
I got that close, and did so without puking!

 

Following a stint as a scriptwriter in London, Darren John Travers returned to his home county of Kildare, Ireland to focus on his literary career. Darren is currently at work on his first collection of short stories.

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Four hours ago I reported him missing. On my mountain the temperature drops uncomfortably when the sun goes down, even in the summer. Professionals, volunteers, and busybodies gather around their four-by-fours and ATVs, sip black coffee from plastic cups wrapped in paper napkins, look at the ground while they chitchat. They know not to stare at me. I keep myself together, wrapped in a blanket provided by the paramedics.

Sheriff’s deputy moseys over, takes off his hat, shines his cow eyes in my direction. Are you okay, he says, your fella had his share of history and oftentimes folks just up and go. I’m fine, I say, right now I’m thinking about everything he’s done for me.

* * *

Grace’s house rested on pilings embedded in the mountainside. Beyond a gate, down alternating flagstone landings and stairs, huddled a guest cottage converted into a rental. This crumbling stone heap, cool and dank as a grotto, seduced William with its promise of solitude. Grace’s bootlegger ancestors established the willow- and aspen-shaded compound, but the toxic byproducts of lead-soldered copper still pipes demolished the illicit empire and scattered her family.

Grace stayed on her side of the gate and William kept to his until the afternoon she asked him to come up and destroy the wasp nests behind her shutters. He’d fired up his chainsaw and there she was in the blue haze, waving a can of insect spray, her words smothered by noise. William killed the engine. “Show me,” he said.

Afterwards, a task almost daily. Split a cord of firewood. Drag the wrought iron bench across her deck to catch more sun. Move the bench back to get out of the sun. Clear deadfall and rocks from the eighth-mile-long zigzag driveway. Reattach the bowl of the birdbath in her neglected herb garden. Grace would loiter, arms crossed, pretending not to watch William work, a cigarette drooping from her lips.

The afternoon he accidentally plunged a screwdriver through the web of skin between his thumb and forefinger, she didn’t blink, or ask if he was okay. Rusty bloodstains dappled the deck boards.

Rumors shrouded the mountain; stories about Grace’s groin-punchingly generous annuity, funds whose existence defied all of the government’s attempts at seizure. Despite the supposed wealth, Grace and her property wore gray every day.

* * *

I don’t believe in bad luck. A hurtful situation happens on its own and no one can control it. What you call “good luck” applies to positive outcomes, not beginnings. I mean, if you fall down an old abandoned well, you have a chance. Broken ankle, cracked ribs, peed yourself, the whole deal; just wait and rescuers will race your shock or hypothermia and probably win. You can slide your truck off the logging road and be pinned unconscious at the bottom of a ravine, but your phone broadcasts the location, plus or minus one yard. You’re not unlucky until you’re dead.

* * *

“How did you learn to do so much stuff?” Grace asked William one unusually muggy morning.

Brine flowed down his forehead and left shiny dots on Grace’s mower. He abandoned his struggle with the carburetor adjustment screw.

“From doing. Nobody ever taught me anything. I just figure it out.”

“So, is that the way you became a chef?” She stared at him now. “You couldn’t make a peanut butter sandwich and then one day you just…cooked?”

Her eyes belonged to fish nestled in shaved ice. William couldn’t recall telling her about his career in the restaurant business.

“Nope. You’ve busted me. I graduated from L’Academie de Cuisine in Maryland. An exception to the rule, I guess.”

“You went to a fancy-sounding school. Was it hard?”

“Not really. Instructors just yell at you and lecture how to make soup stock from leftover hotdog water.”

William grinned. Grace responded with cough spasms instead of laughter.

* * *

Search parties and heroes and satellites are fine but don’t go far enough. They won’t find you if someone smashes the back of your head, ties you with clothesline, and holds you beneath the cold lake water until your insides fill with what’s outside. Soon, soon, buoyancy must surrender to piled-up rotten logs. No matter if the lake drains, not this year, could be later in the future, when the mud goes all sky-bleached and split open, a hiker finds your scattered bones, and the particulars of your ending will still baffle the experts. For just long enough, as I imagine it.

* * *

“I don’t have any skills,” she said when the coughing fit passed.

“You’re better than you think you are. All human beings possess at least one talent — a capability they’ve learned, or a gift.”

“Me? Nothing worth much. Maybe I’m an expert at watching TV. It’s all I do.”

“Okay, okay.” He gathered his hand tools. “Listen, you can borrow my mower. You have hardly any grass to worry about.”

Grace dropped a smouldering butt onto the flagstone, swivelled her sandal, and left a black smudge. She drew another cigarette from the threadbare, floral-printed pouch she carried everywhere.

“Why’d you quit being a chef? Didn’t want to do it anymore?”

“Wasn’t my decision. We don’t always get to choose, right?”

“Yeah. Why are you so nice to me?”

His toolbox weighed a thousand pounds. “So many questions.” He bit his lip and shrugged. “Hey, we’re neighbors and I’m just a decent guy.”

William trudged downhill toward the shed behind his cottage. With his free hand he wiped sweat from his eyes. Two-shower days were the part of early retirement no one mentioned. They didn’t warn him about the giant mosquitoes up here, either. He’d resumed shaving, which he also didn’t anticipate.

He rolled out his mower and inserted a dump can nozzle. He’d get his landlady going again even though she’d never offer to repay him: no discount on his rent, no cash, no gas, not a glass of iced tea. A man of his means, subsidizing a woman of hers. William chuckled. He’d end up mowing her yard.

He made a farty-motorboat sound with his mouth and shook his head. You don’t sear flank or brisket and serve them as if they’re tenderloin. Tough cuts go low and slow. He glanced back up at Grace’s house and she’d not left her spot beneath a scraggly weeping willow. He smirked. Hungry people, forever the same. She stooped to pick up something from the ground before turning away. The cicadas hushed and dampness fled the air.

* * *

On the way from the shed to his cottage, William looked up at me. Did he smile or was it a frown? Do facial expressions reveal a person’s thoughts? Lots of emotions are lies. People tell you to have a nice day; they imagine they’re suggesting a great idea you were too stupid to stumble upon on your own. As if you’re the only one who has a say in it. Desire for money or influence runs deep. Above all, flesh wants flesh.

He disappeared inside the cottage. I tried to poke my thoughts past the walls, the roof. Doesn’t always work when I want it to. This time the day turned bright with truth. My lungs stopped; nothing rattled in or out. Feet and hands went numb, quick-frozen. Within seconds the high-pitched tone in my ears quieted and I could breathe again. On the ground lay my grandmother’s cigarette pouch. I grabbed it and lit a smoke. I suspected I knew where her old picnic basket was put up and I had to find it before lunch.

* * *

Crisscrossed lights, a cat’s cradle of beams; half of them point upward, as if the searchers expect to find my tenant atop one of these trees and he’s a songbird or a Christmas angel. Flashlight tag was one of my favorite childhood games. No matter where I hid or how fast I ran, the other kids lit me up and I was “it.” One night I broke my eldest stepbrother’s nose — I used both hands to swing our big black aluminum flashlight. Later my stepmother told me if nobody’d pulled me off of David I could’ve pounded his nasal bones through his brain. What he said or did to provoke me, I can’t recall, unlike the sound his face made as I smashed it into tomato soup and croutons.

The sheriff is here now, the Old Man himself, talks on his two-way for a minute, listens, and hobbles over to me. Puts on his mask of concern. He’s another phony. I light a cigarette. Sheriff removes his hat and begins a speech about staying strong, and when the sun’s up and the fog burns off we’ll get the chopper from Telluride in here to cover more territory. Be patient, he says, although it can’t be easy for you. Were the two of you close? I tell him thanks, you and your team are trying so hard. I won’t give up, I say.

 

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The longest hour of the night, just like every night, she waits for the siren. They all do, positioned behind crumbling walls, peering from windows, their ears grasping every whisper, every little shuffle of fidgety feet, every loose brick trickling dust through the walls. She can see them. Smell their anticipation. Taste their fear, their desperation. Every emotion mingling with her own and settling into a bitter bile at the base of her throat. Any moment now, someone mutters behind her. Her face spreads out into a grin.

Only a madman would look forward to a night like this—didn’t her father say that once, years ago, teeth grinding down on tobacco as he waited for the same sound, the same signal? Or was it that woman who’d taught her to wield a knife? It’s hard for her to tell these days, hard to think, memories blurry, wavering, fading in and out, almost as if she’s not really there, not real at all. But what is real, she wonders, in a world where the sky could erupt, the air could fizzle, walls of water take over every inch of space? What is real when you could lose all sense of security, go from stability in the below-ground districts to the open outdoors where nothing truly remains, when these could be your final footsteps, your last attempts to see another’s smile—wretched as it may be—or feel another’s warmth one last time? Everything. Nothing. Both. Either.

The horn blares then, echoing through the streets, and she darts outside, body covered with odd materials that smell of smoke—doesn’t everything smell like smoke these days?—grimy and hole-ridden but layered just enough to protect her from the harsh winds and goggles over her eyes. The sights are the same. Layers upon layers of crumbling buildings and twisted trees, most of their branches rotten, weeping, while some stand gnarled and tall in rebellion against the churning sky, surrounded by flowering weeds and tentacles of fungi that branch out across the road, small blips of colour in the eerie dark. Scattered lamps line the streets, flickering on and off as she passes, shadows around them rising and falling. Nothing remains still tonight.

She navigates the towers of litter with practised ease, looking for things that might be of material worth—old parts, a spot of ore, an abandoned automaton or intelligence unit somewhere in the wasteland, maybe even a person, lost, the bounty on whose body would see her through the next rains—anything that she can use to bargain at the haggle booths, the only part of the below-ground that she, and so many others, are permitted into. Food. Medicines. Skin protection. Limb upgrades. Not that she can afford anything more than she sorely requires. Not anymore.

How many cycles does she have to go through before her hands no longer have to search, scavenge, seek, before her nerves no longer remain on end? How many more nights does she have to spend, rummaging around in piles of dirt and sewage, old backyards filled with junk, poison, bones, only to be spat on the next day when standing in line at a haggling booth?

It doesn’t seem worth it, the stone in her chest, heavy and cold. The voices of the people she’s lost, their ghosts lingering in the night, people who’d braved the open land when the sun was out, when each breath of unfiltered air was a threat, wanting a few tokens to feed their families or hoping to luck out and find a job working on one of the lowest, most exclusive city levels. But they ended up with lost limbs, their insides eaten up slowly, or felt their eyes fizzle until there was nothing left but hollow sockets. That’s just how it goes in this damned existence. Every action is a bargain for survival, and, sooner or later, the cost is a life. Each day as hopeless as sprinkling salt over withered daisies and hoping they’ll grow back.

But. But but but.

There’s always a but, isn’t there? Something to make her eyes flutter open, lungs expand and contract even as they burn each day; a desperate fervour, a yearning for hope. And this time it’s a sliver, a streak of moonlight, there, just there around the bend where the street turns into a rabble of stones, peeking out from shards of glass, glimmering and fading, drawing her eyes to the dusky skies, over the once-busy walkline where cottage homes and restaurants used to sit, silhouetted against the horizon, to where the ocean looms, dangerous and erratic. She walks towards it, darting around scuffles over food and tokens, ignoring the calls of her friends, everything distant, distant.

Oh, but the waves. They rumble and crash, rising and falling in a desynchronised orchestra, at times soft, offering reprieve in hushed whispers, other times deafening, wanting to claim and claim, smoke almost rising from its crests and dips. Mesmerising. Haunting. How many people had she let go to its depths? All lost, lost because of shrinking hills, stagnant soil, strangers’ greed, a system that broke and crumbled, leaving her, and so many others, scrambling in the dust.

Here I am, she mutters, lips twitching. Still alive, as promised.

She stands there just for a moment—just for a moment, she tells herself, against the tick-tick-tick of her mental clock, counting down the seconds till dawn—surrounded by the smell of decaying fish and deformed gunk, plastic bottles and wrappers and cigarette buds and loose teeth scattered about, every wave pushing items onto the shore; a silver-soaked graveyard. The only beauty she knows. She tugs a conch out of the sand, and a giggle bursts from her lips.

She sells seashells on the seashore. See, Ma? I can say it now.

She flicks a piece of plastic out of its ridge and presses it against her tin-foiled ear, harder and harder and harder, until she can hear the ocean’s screams.

 

Purnima Bala is a writer, editor, and artist whose short fiction has appeared in Ellipsis Zine, MoonPark Review, The Sea Letter Magazine, and Emerge ’19 Anthology and is forthcoming in other journals. In her free time, she reads and edits for Periwinkle Magazine and tweets @purnimabala.

Image via Pixabay