Tag: #literaryjournal

The Hydrogen Fairy- Julianne Corrigan

I am a tiny particle.

I am moving in small circles but remain invisible within the vast universe. I am random and free, existing only as a concept.

Just a thought.

In the burning core of the solar explosion that you will know as a distant star I am biding my time. I am not waiting, because waiting is an idea that doesn’t exist in a universe where time itself is illusory. How can I linger in timeless space?

The length of my existence is measured in the massive explosions surrounding me. I cannot count. There are no numbers. But there will be and they will transform everything. They will become important and intricate, and the universe will appear too small. But I will become large and significant, surpassing all that came before, anticipating all which lies ahead. I will become the blueprint.

I will become you.

There are many explosions in the core of my star and I am only a tiny particle.

I am moving closer to my metamorphosis. Very soon I will be two. When the last explosion of my life as being one finishes, I will fuse and multiply and nuclear energy will enable me to begin my journey. I will not be the hydrogen atom of my birth but will become the first stage of my growth. I am slowly becoming the complex compound you need.

It is the journey of my destiny and of your tentative life.

My voyage precedes the demise of my star, which has been burning for so much longer than you will ever know. As it transforms into a supernova and I move further away from my birthplace, I sense where I am travelling and embrace the cajoling and subtle pull.

The collapsing star is continually spurning my siblings. They are moving quickly in their attempt to catch me up on the long journey. It is a voyage lit constantly by other distant stars. My siblings are trying desperately to find me, to attach to me so as we can multiply together. They understand the importance of this journey and this knowledge encourages them to become part of me.

So we can become you.

I am passing much smaller and younger suns and at a time in the distant future, when they themselves are spent, they will produce more of us.

Barren planets come and go but these desolate places do not beckon me.

They are not my final destiny.

Cosmic debris is littering my path. But I need to focus on my journey and arrive safely at my ultimate destination.

Massive comets, which have their own tale to tell, smash into me, their energy so strong that I multiply again and again. I am becoming more powerful, more complex. My growth is exponential and my size is slowing me down. Some of my siblings are catching me up. They are hurtling through time and space in a supreme attempt to be with me. Silently jostling, they collide with me and once connected they are assimilated, becoming part of me.

As I will become part of you.

I move through so many solar systems. Each one seeming larger than the one I have just passed through. More and more organised they appear. Each one hinting at the promise of what will be. Hinting at the promise of what should be.

Of what will be you.

Now I am changing again. My siblings are now so a part of me that we are real matter. Our name alters. It changes again and again. I am becoming impenetrable. Still not as important as my parent – the star – but my destiny is drawn. And as surely as your sun will burn for a long but finite time, my destiny is as clear as the final fate of your sun. Perhaps clearer.

Because soon I am you.

I am now more than the hydrogen atom of my birth. I am expanding, filling space, creating a tiny part of gravity. As one I am nothing. But there are many more like me. Our births and multiplication are constant.

We need to be prolific. Occasionally instead of expansion the universe implodes, taking many of my siblings with it. There is no time or space inside the two dimensional hole. Does it exist? It might do to my siblings trapped inside, although as I travel to my final goal, I think it does not.

How can it?

When it isn’t part of you.

By knowing my size and complexity I recognise I’m nearing the end of my journey. I am now becoming the organic, stable matter I need to be.

The solar system I am now entering appears disparate from the others. More organised. With ripples of divergent energy it feels different. It is an energy which inspires me.

To become you.

I am beginning to perceive an irresistible pull and although subtle, it has been with me from the beginning. I am passing planets unlike anything I have seen before. They are directing me towards my destination: enormous pointers in the massive space all around me. And I can do nothing to halt my progress, my fate.

And your destiny.

Everything is becoming smaller. This solar system is more compact, and yet more complex. The evenly spaced planets and debris are depleting. I am serene. I am arriving at my real home.

I am beginning to feel who you are, to know what you will be, and what I will become. An excitement overwhelms me at the idea, of becoming you.

You, who will be more important than your sun and will know more than anything I have encountered on my journey.

It will be many millions of years before you become your destiny, but I am patient knowing we will achieve the goal of my dying star.

My arduous journey is not in vain because you nearly exist. The older solar systems already comprehend what you will finally become. They have glimpsed at your destiny. They know there is nothing that will compare to you.

You will be unique.

I am now reacting with oxygen and water vapour. I am growing up.

Gravity is pulling me ever more strongly towards the blue planet. A planet that is different from all the others. I want to get there. I want to be part of it. This planet will become my home.

Your home.

I am now moving faster than ever before. I see the spectacular blue planet in its glory. Beautiful and serene. Calm and peaceful. The white clouds hovering above its surface, cajole me. They are willing me not to make a mistake. Their hope is for me to be successful, to penetrate the fragile atmosphere and find my new home.

To find you.

I am plunging through the ambience of the beckoning planet. Now I am what I need to be, complex enough to begin your life. I am entering on the bright side; your sun is shining strongly and emphatically. It is shining down so hard that the blue oceans are twinkling white as they swirl and dance in the invisible wind. Water which will be my new home and the start of you.

It is a sight more beautiful than anything I have seen travelling through thousands of solar systems. The view an image of loveliness and unparalleled in the infinite space encircling its precious parameters.

It is ours.

I am moving at great speed through the atmosphere, light and welcoming, warm and enticing. I begin to slow down and float gently and as I break my way through the fragile shell of the blue planet, incommensurate with its size and beauty, I am at peace.

I am sinking into a great ocean and it is here where I find my penultimate resting place.

Because soon, in thousands of generations of life, I will become a part of the puzzle that is you. I will become the part of you that thinks and reasons. Loves and hates. Laughs and cries. I will be a fragment of all your emotions.

And when you grow old and die I will continue on, forever and endlessly.

Because I am the fairy inside all of you.

I am looking backwards towards my star, a silvery dot shimmering in the sky. It is now long dead. It died giving birth to me. It died giving birth to you. And although I look and marvel at its persistence, it is the persistence of you and your planet which is truly marvellous.

I will never leave you.

I am your fairy.

 

JULIANNE CORRIGAN writes historical, suspense and speculative fiction. She was shortlisted in the Bridport Short Story Prize in 2016. In 2019 she made the final in the Write Stuff competition at The London Book Fair. Her contemporary suspense novel, Falling Suns by JA Corrigan, was published by Accent Press in 2016. https://twitter.com/julieannwriter

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Staples – Leslie Doyle 

Mary said she wasn’t getting any more mammograms, on account of the radiation. Trish looked up from her Moscow Mule, swirling the copper cup carelessly.

“I know, right?” Trish looked around the restaurant, one of those dockside ones where people pulled up on their boats and customers sat at wooden cable spool tables. Plastic crabs and lobsters in fluorescent colors on the walls. Wait staff in vaguely nautical outfits, the girls in apparently required tiny white shorts they kept tugging down, the guys in knee-length cargo shorts.

“Last time I flew—to Florida when Frank’s dad was sick? —I refused to go in the X-ray machine and I had to get searched.”

“I don’t like to fly anymore” Mary answered. “They’ll kick you off as soon as look at you, after pawing through your bags and touching your lady things.”

Trish nodded. “Well, I won’t fly again, that’s for sure. On the way home, they bumped me after I had an assigned seat. Then just before boarding, they called my name and announced they’d found me another seat.”

“Well, that was cool.” Mary stuck another tortilla chip into the crab dip. The bright yellow chip and pale pink dip echoed the colors of her off-the-shoulder blouse. She hiked one sleeve up, hiding the sunburn line. “I mean, that they made up for it like that.”

Trish shook her head. “No way I was getting on that plane. It was a sign. I started yelling I wouldn’t get on it and I thought Frank was going to have a fit, telling me TSA would arrest me if I didn’t shut up. The lady next to me said well then she wasn’t getting on it either, and I told her not to worry, it wouldn’t crash if I wasn’t on it.”

Mary listened and nodded. She and Trish were best friends now, since they’d met at Maid in the Shade, working all summer to clean rental houses between tenants and change sheets at the local motels. She knew Trish and Frank were recently separated and wondered if it had anything to do with this incident.

“So we drove a rental home. But anyway. You know that you can get an MRI mammogram now, right? No radiation.” She caught the server’s eye and held up her cup.

Mary shook her head. “Nope, no MRIs for me. Not since my lung collapsed last year and they had to stick it to my chest wall with staples.”

“Wait, what? That’s crazy!”

“Yeah. But here’s the thing. I can’t ever have an MRI now. The magnets would pull out the staples. Rip them right out of my lungs. They’d slice my heart to bits.”

The drinks came, and they each took a sip. They had an afternoon off, before the next round of tourists. There were a million beds to change and toilets to scrub tomorrow, but for this afternoon they had nothing to do but sit in the sun on a dock.

Trish looked out over the boats, pondering what was luck and what was fate. And the menace of Mary’s staples. She’d never heard of such a thing before, but at the same time, she knew exactly what Mary meant.

 

LESLIE DOYLE lives in New Jersey and teaches at Montclair State University. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Gigantic Sequins, The Forge, Electric Literature, Fiction Southeast, Signal Mountain Review, Rougarou, and elsewhere.

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In The Dark Garden – Lorraine Wilson 

You walk down through your dark garden to the bench at the far end, and you sit there, pulling your knees up and folding your arms around them. Your feet are wet from the grass, from the rain earlier and tomorrow’s dew. There is the very faintest of breezes, but it is enough that where your hair lifts from your neck, the skin cools. You don’t mind at all, the chill in your extremities and the way your shadow lurks at your feet, they hardly register as you tip your head back and fill your eyes with the night. Mountains rise around you, a steeped blackness that swallows monstrous shapes out of an indigo sky where the stars are unfettered tonight by either cloud or moon, and their presence feels so close, so tangible that you almost convince yourself you can hear their voices, murmurs from the abyss, or from the past.

It is a comfort, that thought – that the stars dusting your eyelids are so far in the past that you were not born when these photons were. You wonder if the light is altered somehow, by touching you. If it is tainted.

An owl calls in the trees, half of a song, and you and she both wait in silence for her mate to respond. He doesn’t. She calls again, from further away and he answers her. The forest murmurs on, teetering on sentience under the cover of darkness and you can feel the lure of it, the utter pitch of the shadows beneath its branches that stretch from the slopes above almost to your garden. It would be easy to do. Step down off the bench and take two paces through foxgloves and early borage to the fence. Climb over into the sheep field just as you do during the day, cross ten metres of hagged and frayed grass and then step into the forest.

Maybe that complete, inkwell blackness would offer you a better oblivion than the starlight. Maybe. But it would also offer splinters, twisted ankles, a compassless disorientation.

There is a temptation in that, too. You pretend there isn’t, or that you don’t feel it. But there is, and you do.

A tiny spark of pain lights upon your temple and your response is reflexive, brushing away at the unseen insect with the edge of your hand. It brings your mind back into your body, reluctantly, sadly, back to the cold creeping around your ankles and the tangle of hair against your cheek. Back to the ache in the pit of your abdomen, the pull of gravity and endings within the cradle of your pelvis.

You take a breath, rest your forehead against your knees and close your eyes. You do not cry. Not now, although you did earlier when the pain began. You did when you stood in the shower and watched your red blood spell out the breaking of your heart.

The thing is, you think, you do not know how to say goodbye to someone you never got to meet. You do not know how to let go of someone whose cells still circulate in your veins, whose bones and heart you were building from your own.

The thing is, you think, this is not the first time and you still have not learned how to bear it.

Above you, the beech trees tap out leaf-and-twig signals, and you can smell their new growth. It is a part of the night’s scent, the beeches, sheep and wet grass, pine and the tang of peat, solitude. The world turns, and sitting so still, you almost believe you can feel it. The world turns, the present becomes the past; becomes memory, scar, secret.

You realise that you are now entirely cold. Perhaps that was what you were waiting for, to be fully numb. Rising to your feet, you press one hand over your cramping muscles, your empty womb and you take a last look at the forest with its outheld promise of shadows.

Then you turn around, to the house where a light is still on in your bedroom. Where your child, the one who made it, the one you are so lucky to have, is sleeping and will soon wake. Where your husband is sleeping and will not wake, but will bring you tea in the morning, and will love you.

The grass leaves remnants of itself on your feet, and over your shoulder a gibbous moon lifts one corner of itself above the moors. The night is kind to you, and you are grateful for it. As you open the door and step into your home, it is almost enough.

 

 

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I Still Remember The Number Plate Of The Peugeot 308 – Lydia Unsworth 

I passed the autumn and early winter noticing the flies but, whether from stubbornness, pride, contempt, or lethargy, refusing to do a thing about it. Sometimes I look at the edges of squalor and think, is this squalor? Not yet.

Unable to remember the sound of my own voice, I recall VHS tapes that might have proved it. For when I might need to prove it. Taped over; haunting cupboards everywhere.

The buzzing reminds me I am still responsible.

After these sweltering days, we are all grateful for a little wind, a little rain. The slightly open door keeps hitting the frame. I joke-clenched my fist in the baby daycare place, for which I am not sure of the English name, only because I didn’t have a sophisticated enough repertoire for what I was trying to say. Then I followed the lines of all the adult eyes to see if they were seeing what I was seeing; i.e. the fist in the baby daycare place.

I close the windows because the children playing football outside are not mine and the sound of the ball bouncing off modern surfaces is slamming into the bulges of my barely contained rage. I would like to speak in a clear, calm timbre. Wrap a towel around the exterior walls of my returning body. Walk like I grew up with newspapers. Exhibit the confidence of a six-digit number. Mediate.

I would like to take drastic action. Gather my hair into a ponytail and just chop. I think I did that once. When I was drunk. When my hair was short and my ponytail shorter. And in the morning I hardly remembered and nobody else noticed at all.

 

LYDIA UNSWORTH is the author of two collections of poetry: Certain Manoeuvres(Knives Fork & Spoons, 2018) and Nostalgia for Bodies (Erbacce, 2018), for which she won the 2018 Erbacce Poetry Prize. Her work can be found in Ambit, Pank, Litro, KillAuthor, Tears in the Fence, Banshee, and Sentence: Journal of Prose Poetics, among others. Based in Manchester/Amsterdam. Twitter@lydiowanie

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Remembrance – Mark Left

She sees him first. A figure through the steamy window, waiting to cross at the lights, looking diminished by the modern-day traffic, and still unaware of her gaze. He is adrift in the noise of the street, fresh from the Remembrance service and too smart for round here in his blazer and medals, his polished patent leather shoes.

Shorter than she remembers but he walks well. There’s a spring in his step, just like the Bernie of old. She recalls watching him marching in parade at the airfield. So many lovely young men but he always drew her eye. So many of them died. She remembers them all and feels a surge of regret despite the fifty-seven years in between.

She is excited to see him again. At seventy-eight, she wonders if she should feel like this. It feels odd and a little inappropriate in public. As if anybody’s watching, she tells herself. She finds herself considering if she looks attractive, if it really matters now. Then he’s through the door, and they greet each other and embrace. His voice is shaky – perhaps with nerves – but the same tone, steeped in the years but still familiar. His face, his blue eyes, the way he lightly holds her at arm’s length and smiles at her. She remembers the New Year dance and the kiss of the younger man.

“Oh, Bernie. How lovely to see you again.” She cannot stop smiling. Inside, her heart fuels the fires of expectation and she turns the corner into a widening memory lane. She could talk for hours, and she will.

*      *      *

He sees her first. He’s hesitating behind the pillar box over the road, watching her sitting in the misty window opposite, concentrating hard to see her well through the patchy clouds in his eyes. He searches his memories, leafing through the synapses that store faces and places, finding broken links and voids where there was once history. The angle of her nose, her jaw, it seems wrong. He cannot be sure.

He stands confused in the rush of passers-by, the air booming with the noise of traffic. He adjusts his hearing aid and smooths his blazer, checks the medals are hanging straight, but at last admits to himself that this is not the Mary he thought it was. He has surnames muddled, her married name on the website, too much time passed. She is not his Mary, not Mary from 1944.

Yet their correspondence says she knows him. Who then? He has no recollection. Nothing.

It does not occur to him to not turn up. Despite the years, there is such a thing as duty and he moves to the lights and crosses when the traffic stops. Now he thinks she has seen him and he walks as straight as he can without his stick, and he tries to inject a youthful swagger. He’s not sure why it really matters now. But his bad hip hurts like hell and he’s glad to reach the café door. He goes inside and she rises and he embraces her as if she means something, murmuring her name, holding her at arm’s length again to look at her while his smile hides the truth.

No, this isn’t who he hoped it was. His heart rings hollow with the disappointment and a desire to distance himself settles in. Still, he’s here now. One coffee and half an hour won’t hurt.

 

MARK LEFT writes stories and sometimes poetry. He has been published in @EllipsisZine and was highly commended for his entry in the BIFFY50 Microfiction Contest Autumn 2018. He lives with his family on a hill in the middle of England and can be found on Twitter: @ottobottle

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Oneirology 101 – Essie Dee

The evening breeze has a dampness about it, and I pull my coat closer. Turning onto the darkness of Woodbridge Road, a shortcut of sorts, I save about thirty minutes. Good on cold evenings such as this, when I am already running late.

Halfway up the road I see college lights in the distance – across a field at the end of the lane. While traversing a side street a white car pulls into the intersection and pops the trunk. Before I can comprehend what is happening the trunk slams shut, closing out the world.

*      *      *

I really need to start leaving for class earlier, or stop taking evening courses. I enter the gloom of Woodbridge Road and unease flows over me. Shifting my bag to the opposite shoulder I look around – they really should put in lights around here.

Approaching a side street I see a white car idling, hear its trunk pop. Everything in me says ‘run!’ Turning, I fly down the street, am outpaced and grabbed by the bag, which I shrug off. Grabbed again I fight back, flail, try to scream, and am hit. Hard. I crumple to the ground in a heap. The wheels of a car make a slow approach; I feel myself being lifted and thrown. Shrugging into the back corners of the trunk, I fear what awaits me.

*      *      *

I’m startled by the numbers on my watch- seven o’clock already. I’d best get moving if I hope to make it to class in time. Throwing on my coat, I grab my bag and head into the damp dark of autumn night. As I approach Woodbridge Road a dire sense of fear and dread takes over. Stopping, I look down the unlighted street – a quick path for years now, why this sudden feeling? A white car turns up the road heading into the darkness. A moments hesitation before I take the long way, walking in crowds that push along to the next intersection.

*      *      *

Exhausted, bad dreams aplenty this week. I grab a coffee before taking my shortcut to class.

 

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A New Face – Steven John

Ten minutes from home Goodwin makes a decision and parks outside the roadside pub. He’s never stopped there in all the years. There’s the usual cabal of drinkers and smokers sitting at the long, trestle table outside the pub door. He’s imagined himself as one of the group; shaking hands of welcome, being kissed on the cheek, buying a round, squeezing onto the bench seats, touching shoulders and thighs.

Goodwin goes to the bar and orders. The barmaid’s about his age. Attractive. Contagious smile. He imagines a single mother making ends meet. He imagines staying back with her for a drink after the other customers have gone home, and talking. Just talking.

He looks at the old framed photographs hung on the shabby walls. Drinkers from years gone by, regulars, past it now, or dead. He can hear their guffaws, smell the tobacco smoke, taste the froth on the beer, feel the late night party going on around him. He strokes the head of the dog lying at its owner’s feet. The first non-work related sentence for ten hours he speaks to a dog. His own gentle words sound foreign. The dog’s owner nods as if to say ‘it’s ok, he understands you.’

Goodwin takes wine outside into the night. He looks to sit at the trestle table. There are no spaces. No-one looks at him with eyes that say ‘Sit here.’ No one shifts up. All the faces are joined together. There are no loose connections at the trestle table.

On the small beer-terrace to the side of the pub are empty tables, positioned close together under a cane trellis arbour made for grapevines. There are no hanging grapes. Instead there are vines of fairy lights. He sits under a light that turns his white wine to red. He works out the repeating pattern of colours threaded through the trellis; red, green, blue, yellow, red. He reads work emails on his phone, stacking up to keep him awake. He scrolls through his contacts looking for friends. There are two but he hasn’t seen or spoken to them for months, years. A couple sit down opposite each other at the next table. He goes to say something but can only find words for traffic or weather. The couple reach across their table and hold hands.

The barmaid comes outside to wipe tables and clear glasses. Goodwin’s on his third.

“You’re a new face,” she says.

“Does it fit here do you think?”

“Somehow I think it’s a perfect fit.”

Goodwin arrives home, late for him, and drunk. He shouldn’t have driven. He unhooks the stepladders from the garage wall. There are no familial hellos. There never are. He carries the steps onto the landing and climbs into the loft. From a taped up cardboard box he finds a set of Christmas tree lights. He takes the lights to the spare room where he sleeps in a single bed and pins them above his pillow. He pulls off his office shoes and slides under the duvet. If he squeezes his eyes almost closed, the coloured lights coalesce and fizz. If he opens his eyes slowly, the lights glare and fly apart.

 

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Collections in an Empty Hand – Haley Petcher

Déjà Brew is Danny and Kate’s go-to coffee shop, only two blocks from the elementary school where they first met on the playground when he rescued her from the Kindergarten Bullies—he said she told the weirdest, coolest stories during Show and Tell and proclaimed loudly, standing on the top of the slide, that she was under his protection—and five blocks from the movie theater where they shared their first kiss, grappling in the dark during an old movie about the British monarchy. After that he started calling her his Queen.

They’re in the coffee shop playing cards when Danny says, “Don’t get worried if I start spending more time with that girl we met at the park the other day. It’s just that I need more Indie Pop Friends. My others moved away.” He sighs like it’s an inconvenience and sips his coffee. They’re playing the game of Nines.

“I don’t want to date her. You know you’re my girl. My Day One.” Danny reaches out and touches Kate’s free hand, covering it with his, squeezes, releases.

When you’re playing Nines, you want high cards, twos, and tens. Kate plays a king, which Danny can’t beat, so he adds the recently played cards—twos and eights and queens—to his collection. The goal might be to get rid of all of your cards first, but collecting is Danny’s strategy. He loves feeling like he has a collection of valuables, of ammunition, up his sleeves.

The two play card after card, taking bites of their traditional orange roll between turns and watching a man in his gray flat cap and tweed blazer trying to learn French. When Danny and Kate walk the hallways of their school, he calls her mon amour, shows her off, and tells everyone her stories. Danny liked the way Kate fit beside him, her head on his shoulder, his arm wrapped around her waist, and the way their classmates in high school watched as they walked down the hall. Kate moved with him, Peter Pan and his shadow.

Danny puts down a queen, winks at Kate. She’s never liked the title, but it used to make her smile all the same, thinking about all of their Firsts. Now her smile feels stale. She puts down a two, resetting the deck so they can play lower numbers again.

“You know you’re my girl, right?” Danny asks.

Before Kate nods, saying that she knows she’s his girl—she always has been—Danny says, “I mean, you know I like to have a wide variety of friends. The Avid Video Gamers. The Music Connoisseurs. The Cookie Bakers.” He examines the cards in his collection, weighing them against each other.

Kate plays a seven, sips her tea.

“Remember how the Car Enthusiasts got me into that show with all the old trucks?” Danny asks. An eight.

Kate puts down a jack, nodding. She had been home that night, plans canceled.

“My Car Enthusiast friends really like their alcohol. They’re exhausting.” He gives her a knowing glance. “The tickets were hard to come by though. Totally worth it.” A king.

“You know, I’ll be with my lacrosse team and then Indie Pop Girl this week, but I bet we can do something next week. I’ll shoot you a text when I have time.” Danny’s fingers draw circles on Kate’s knee, warm and familiar. “You’ll be free, right?”

Kate wonders how long the two of them will sit like this in the coffee shop, building and unbuilding collections. How long would it take him to replace his Silent Queen? Kate looks at the cards in her hand, sees a two and a ten, considers the risk. A two lets you restart with lower numbers on the same pile, but all those other cards are still there underneath the two, all of that extra baggage a threat to your goal of an empty hand. However, a ten flushes the pile and lets you start fresh. She snaps the ten on the table. A few years from now, she’ll sit in a coffee shop with new friends in a city 852 miles from Déjà Brew and tell stories she never told during her silent days, wondering why—why, why—she stayed quiet for so long, watching him take card after card. But, for now, she pushes the collection of cards aside and takes one more sip of tea.

 

HALEY PETCHER earned her BA from Auburn University and her MA from the University of Louisville. She currently teaches high school English in Huntsville, AL. You can find her work in Pithead Chapel, formercactus, and Spelk and learn more about her at http://petcherpages.wixsite.com/portfolio.

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Aground – Ed Broom 

Ken stands, rigid, transfixed by the slick spreading under his feet. For reasons he can’t fathom, Ken wills the black cloud to expand, to extend another centimetre, another millimetre. An inky big bang. With the last of the oily liquid pulsing and swirling and warming his toes, images bob into his head, distressing pictures of tarred gulls dredged from old TV news. Then, unbidden, a name both long forgotten and yet somehow unforgettable.

“Amoco Cadiz,” he says, pointing to the capsized cafetiere at the puddle’s epicentre. “Look, Cynth. Remember how that was all over the papers during our honeymoon?”

For their ruby wedding anniversary, Ken had suggested returning to France, “for old times’ sake. One last fling. Doesn’t have to be Paris, Cynth. I know we’re not as young as we were. Maybe a few days in Brittany? I’m determined to try an oyster before it’s too late. Or Normandy, perhaps do some battlefields? You used to love a cafe au lait. I’m not suggesting taking the Fiesta, don’t be daft. We could go wild, splash some cash on the Eurostar, say? Trish says it’s amazing.”

Despite Ken’s myriad attempts to convince her, Cynthia wasn’t to be swayed.

“We swan off to France and when we come back, all we’ll have to show for it will be a new set of snaps,” she said.

“If we’re going to spend some money, I’d prefer to spend it on the house,” she said.

“That back room has been looking tired for far too long,” she said.

Hence the “sea moss” walls. The ivory linen Roman blinds. The new cream carpet.

Three weeks ago, on an unseasonably sunny Wednesday afternoon at the bowls club, Ken’s concentration had been disturbed by a figure barging through the pavilion doors.

“Dad! Don’t you ever answer your bloody phone? I’ve been ringing and ringing.”

Ken hadn’t seen Trish in that particular setting for years. Probably, he thought, not since one of the club’s family fun days. She’d had a similar scowl back then, he recalled. He lowered his wood and loped over.

“Trish. Keep it down. Where’s the fire?”

“Dad, it’s Mum. She’s at The Royal. She’s in a bad way. She slipped in the kitchen, Dad. Banged her head. We need to go, Dad.”

“Traumatic brain injury,” the doctor said.

“Massive internal bleeding,” the doctor said.

“Nothing we could do,” the doctor said.

Now Ken stands, rudderless, lost in a rapidly cooling decaffeinated slick. He’s still clutching the tray. Two mugs cling to the edge.

 

ED BROOM works in IT but tells his children he’s a lighthouse keeper. He lives in Ipswich and tracks down crinkle-crankle walls.

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Six Jars Under The Bed – Alva Holland 

Adam kept his mother’s kisses in a blue jar under his bed.

He reached down, lifted the jar, turned the lid, felt the release, raised it a fraction and watched the kiss escape.

It landed on him in a flutter – like the silken hanky she kept in the pocket of her floral dress. She told him the flowers were spring creations.

Each year, as winter faded, she’d pull the dress from its layers of lemon-scented tissue paper and tell Adam more flowers had blossomed, that this Spring would be particularly beautiful.

Oh, how many times he’d tried to count those flowers, their complicated petal layers competing for his heart.

Adam sat on the side of the bed absorbing the peace the kiss brought, saw his mother’s face, not pale and wan as it was towards the end, but vibrant, sparkling, like when she walked with him through the woods, when she’d tried to understand him.

He’d started to run from the rain, but she’d tugged his shirt.

‘Feel the rain, my darling. Always, feel the rain.’

The drops had infiltrated the fiery hair strands attempting to escape the loose bun she’d scooped up to try to tame them, had run down her forehead and cheeks, trickling onto her shoulders, watering the flowers.

The blue petals had changed colour, become rainbow-like, more complex. That same day, Adam ignored a glance, a grin. He’d walked on, but looked back, briefly.

Adam slid from the bed to sit on the floor. Six jars sat in a line on the polished parquet. The jars didn’t need labels. The colours told her story, and his when she’d listened.

Walking outside, he felt his mother’s love fall in a satin veil from laden clouds. The wind sucked at him, pulling the darkness from within him, scattering. He felt the space it created, wanted to fill it with something new.

Kisses rained down, cloaking him, black with silver lining.

He recalled the young man in a pale blue shirt, khaki pants, whose hesitant lips on his felt cool, like paper.

A virgin membrane disturbed, shuddered, settled.

It was time. Time to reciprocate, with intent – a new journey.

He smiled and strode on, seeing only flowers. The invisible cloak enveloped him, soaked him through.

No more ignoring. No more looking back.

‘Do we need to keep these jars?’

The khaki pants are now flannels, the hair grey, the mouth as inviting as ever. He looks quizzically at Adam during their attempt at decluttering.

‘Yes,’ said Adam.

‘Yes, we do.’

 

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The Kiss – Ellie Rees

Rupert was sixty-four when he drowned, fifty years ago.
I wondered what such an old man was doing
swimming in the sea, off Exmouth.
He had taken his teeth out; put them in a pocket –
his clothes, neatly folded, were found on the beach.

I remember his eyes – blue, like the sea –
they stared at me, unseeing.
Entangled in his limp embrace,
I throttled him to keep his head above water,
I was saviour and attacker.

Something yellow bubbled from his mouth.

Let the others haul us both into the dingy,
let the swimmers push us back to the blood-red cliffs.
From out of the crowd, wearing a bikini,
a woman with a child perched upon her hip
said she was a doctor – told me I could stop.

Police Station, a statement, then deep shadowed lanes;
the radio was playing a whiter shade of pale.
We stopped in a village, ate scampi in a basket –
sunset blushed the pub a psychedelic pink.
Later, I was sick.

I walk on this shore with my fellow ‘rescuer’,
my husband of forty-seven years;
he takes my arm gently then leans in for a kiss.
You have no idea how difficult it is
to give the kiss of life – to a mouth with no teeth

once you’ve sucked all that yellow foam out.

 

ELLIE REES gained a Phd in Creative Writing from Swansea University this year. In an earlier incarnation she was a teacher of bright young things from all over the world. Now she is teaching herself to be a poet. One of four finalists in Cinnamon’s recent Debut Poetry Collection competition.

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How would you like to bury my soul – Anointing K Obuh 

We girls/what chance do we have against bitterness /the fire raging within our souls/ This war/hands overrated/bathed with our mother’s blood/this grief/fingering us to sleep/Tell your sister/her/ hands will ice over/come may/ she would stop feeling/like a bitch/such revolution in a word/ graffiti painted on streets/ halfway across the world/ let her sing misery/like a lark/ record her pain on a VN/ Before she crosses over/in her dreams/ into the graffiti painted on streets/halfway across the world/ Leaving behind/ a half chewed gum/her favorite bra/ a flower for mother/ and a suicide note/ craftily written.

 

 

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The Arrival of the Finnman – Michael Bloor

In October, I shall have been Governor of this island for forty years. I came here as a young man, to command the garrison and dispense justice in the assizes. I arrived full of hopes and vaunting ambition, trusting to my connections in the distant Imperial Court to secure me rapid promotion to more lucrative and influential positions. My hopes were vain, my ambitions lost and my connections as enduring as morning dew. Nevertheless, I have learned contentment in this little bounded land. True, the winter days are short and the winter nights are long and bitter: for weeks together, the gales can blow loud enough to deafen, and strong enough to deposit small fish on the cliff-tops. But the peasants, farmer-fishermen for the most part, are determined, even heroic – very different from the servile drudges one encounters in the capital and the countryside round about it. I have come to respect and emulate the islanders’ quiet virtues. To watch them fishing is an education – two boats working in careful concert. And then to watch the sharing out of the catch, with one fifth part reserved for widows and the sick. Yet now it seems all my hard-won lessons on peasant virtues may be cast over.

It was a stormy day of early March when the ‘Finnman’ was captured. I remember because when my sergeant brought me the confused news, I was staring absorbed from my chamber window at the waves breaking wildly on the rocks at the harbour entrance. The wind was catching up the spume from the waves and the low sun was creating hundreds of small, truncated rainbows as it shone through the spume.

Tales of the mysterious Finnmen are common currency among the islanders, but I have paid them no more heed than stories of dwarfs living in the mounds along the shore, or of the ‘selkies’ that are said to inhabit the western skerries. The Finnmen travel in skin canoes at great speed; they are fierce, cruel and emit screeching cries; they are said to drive away the herring shoals.

The Sergeant said that a group of fishermen from the west end of the island had found the Finnman collapsed among the dunes: first of all, they had spotted the skin canoe, beached on the shore, and they had then followed his tracks into the dunes. I told the Sergeant bring the Finnman at once to the chamber, along with his captors.

A couple of minutes later, the corporal of the guard (a hulk of a man), dragged in a bundle of skins that proved to be the insensible Finnman. He was accompanied by the sergeant and four fishermen. I knelt to make an examination. The Finnman was breathing rapidly and shallowly; he smelt strongly of stale urine and rancid fat. I felt in his mouth and found the tongue swollen and distended:

‘The Finnman needs water – Corporal, fetch me a pitcher of water. After that, go to the cellarman for a bottle of brandy.’ I turned to the fishermen: ‘How did he come by these cuts and bruises?’

‘Excellency, he was unconscious when we found him, but we thought it best to bind him. He then came to and he started to struggle, so Gruta hit him. But Gruta only hit him once. By the time we arrived here at the fort, a crowd was following us. As we waited for admittance, some of the crowd started to throw stones. And a woman ran forward and hit him with a stick.’

The sergeant confirmed that this was the case and that the woman in question was Sella, the widow of Odd. The corporal then returned with the pitcher of water. I wet the Finnman’s lips but he did not revive. The corporal had already departed again for the brandy, so I sent the Sergeant to bring Oolla, the midwife, as the hospitaller is an ignorant drunk whom I would not trust to treat hiccups. I sent the fishermen to recover the skin canoe, and the Finnman’s weapon, a short dart, that one of the fishermen (an intelligent lad) had said lay beside the canoe.

Left alone with the Finnman, I observed him carefully. Of normal stature, with a yellow-ish skin (redder about the face) and dark, lustrous, coarse hair. A flattish face, the nose being small. The eyes were brown and curiously obliquely set. The teeth were much worn. From his musculature, I would have judged him younger than myself; from his wrinkled skin, I would have judged him older.

In recent years, I have devoted some of my leisure hours to an illustrated description of the many monuments that the Ancient Ones have left on the island. I have fancied my account might ensure that some posthumous celebrity might attach to my name, and that the island itself – this isolated and obscure outpost of Empire – might also gain a degree of fame. Now, I was seeing things differently: surely the mysterious arrival of the Finnman would make the island famous throughout the Empire? The four fishermen’s names would be as famous as the past Emperors who had first sent out ships to explore these remote waters.

The corporal returned with the brandy, which I ordered him to administer, but it was not a success. The Finnman choked, vomited and lapsed back into unconsciousness. He still had not spoken a word in my presence. I was later to learn that, when struggling with his rescuers, the Finnman had only made a few hoarse noises.

When the midwife entered the chamber she at first recoiled from the sprawled Finnman and would have fled if the sergeant had not restrained her. But her kind instincts soon got the better of her. She suggested that the Finnman would take some time to recover and that it would be best if he were carried to her hut outside the fort gates. There she would wash and bind his wounds and, once he was conscious, keep him on a diet of gruel and herbs of her own choosing. I agreed, gave her a purse, and bade the sergeant and corporal carry him away on a hurdle, adding only that the hurdle should be left in the hut and that the Finnman be bound to it, to prevent ignorant flight. I was remiss in omitting to require the posting of a guard outside the hut.

The early evening I remember as being one of pleasant excitement as, by candlelight, I began an examination and description of the canoe and of the weapon that the fishermen had brought in, just before dark. The canoe, wondrously light, was secured from swamping by skins and draw-strings designed to fit around the seated Finnman, like a leather shoe around a foot. The body of the canoe was constructed of greased skins, stretched over a taunt frame made partly of wood and partly of bone. The wood appeared to be that of a kind of pine tree, but not one I recognised. The canoe was evidently propelled by a single oar, shaped into paddles at both ends. The weapon was more ingenious still: the short dart, tipped with sharpened bone, was made more effective by a separate wooden throwing arm. I was of the opinion that the dart-plus-arm would have been just as murderous as a full-length javelin, but much more readily handled in the confines of the canoe.

I had just finished a sketch of how I presumed the throwing arm would operate, when the sergeant once more rushed to my chamber – this time with news of a riot outside the fort. I was stunned: it was more than twenty years since there had been any civil disturbances on the island. The sergeant had already called out the guard. I issued pikes and armed both the sergeant and the corporal with an arquebus. We then all immediately ran out of the fort towards the shore, where the crowd had gathered. Two barrels of pitch had been set alight. It was plain to see that the figure stretched on top of the barrels was the Finnman, still attached to his hurdle. He looked more an effigy than a man.

The crowd quickly dispersed. The midwife, who had taken a blow to the head, claimed not to have recognised the young men who burst into her hut and seized the Finnman. Sella, the woman who had previously hit the Finnman with a stick, turned out to be a simpleton. The corporal of the guard, a native islander, told me that the islanders believed that Finnman had to be killed, lest he spirit away the herring shoals. He could not say, or would not say, who had instigated the riot. At the assize, I called the fishermen who had found the Finnman to give evidence, but they had returned to their homes at the western shore on the evening of the burning and knew nothing of the riot. Surprisingly, the young fisherman who had mentioned to me the Finnman’s weapon gave evidence that he had indeed heard the story that Finnmen could charm the herring away from the island, but for himself, he believed that herring shoals shifted for many reasons – that they were not at the beck and call of the Finnmen.

These peasants whom I had come to respect, living in such successful harmony with each other, clearly had no respect for an outsider. The greater the bond between islanders, the less the fellow-feeling for the stranger, the intruder. There is no wisdom to be found here, no matter how beautiful the sunsets.

I have arranged for the Finnman’s burial and I shall dispatch the canoe and its accoutrements to the Imperial Chancery, the lawful recipient of all shipwreck spoils. And then I shall ask to be relieved of my post on account of an infirmity, an incurable island melancholia.

 

Michael Bloor is a retired sociologist living in Dunblane, Scotland, who has discovered the exhilarations of short fiction. Recent publications include The Cabinet of Heed, Ink Sweat & Tears, Litro Online, The Copperfield Review, Scribble, Dodging the Rain, Everyday Fiction, Firewords, The Drabble, Idle Ink and Spelk.

 

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Audition Isolde – Jim Meirose 

Wait wait wait wait-wait-wait, Isolde! Again, you have not reached the minimum level to pass this audition. Your face is more Pilotblanket than Homo Sapiens, we don’t need a glamour-shot or hand-done old school brainwave chart to know you are no Gage. Your head is still symmetrical and you have no mates dragging behind. ‘splain, Lucy. You got one more try. Go.

Start where the boss said.

Okay.

On!

The boss said, You’ve no job. You’ve no salary. Si. You’ve no savings. I go alone. So here you sit. I go alone. I am the rope bridge you simply need to not fall from which will see to it your trip to your death is not a horrid poor sickly lonely cold dark stinking painful premature one. ‘splain, Lucy. Splain and that will be it. But Isolde, at the same time, consider this—maybe, on the other hand, you’re just hallucinating. Maybe—

Cut there, Isolde!

Time’s up. That’s your slot. You came in, you bulged, all filling, you outgrew. What the hell and out you’re popped to the list we might call back next year. Your tone quite reminds us of being nine years old at the living room window watching downsnow vis-à-vis wintrycold kind of piling up like it did then and as it does then a grainy photo through the parted out of style lacy curtain and down it comes the clouds no sun cold ready for school Midnight in Moscow flesh colored superhouse across dimmed by sheets over sheets of show Midnight John in Glenn Moscow and Midnight in Moscow rules are to be obeyed sheets of snow crackly-cold beautifully sunlit ice storm morning after sun, here let’s pull on yer leggin’s time to have fun everybody have fun! Everybody have fun! After all, this is the real life Queen Mary Boat, Docked permanently. Needless to say, school did not get canceled. The day memorable because somehow wrong. As in, not normal. That we call such days wrong, well, don’t sweat it. The word shrimp could have been chosen instead. The meaning would be the same for you Isolde. Intention is everything. You’re just reading. Not doing advanced calculus in your head. My God hole, Jesus, wake thyself up. Nobody else will no matter how long you wait, mon mon, my sweet! So what that you’re really just eighteen. So what that for reasons unimportant you are on your own. Learn from the mottos of the past masters; Listerinio Veronicans! Op Verinicans Ooo La La Mitosismysterianan-Rose! And best of all, soon to revert to the hyphenonalian nationica! Then to just shoot out the end-over-outpipe, into the backwall splat. Okay Isolde. Here’s a test. Say all that back. Fast. Can you say it backfast? C-c-c-c-an U Sayit-Bach back back to me and me only in seven exactly not eight not six but seven exactly that numerio-of-words what it just took a hundred and thirty blackjackie daddio metrics all in inviolate triplicate copies over copies of copies of heh, to explain to you, Isolde?

No? You look puzzled.

That is also the wrong answer, we suppose.

Thusly leave us, go forth—and may you have a profitable day!

 

http://www.jimmeirose.com

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Picnic at the End of the World – Sharon Telfer

When the sirens blare, we pedal hard up the hill. We’ve been paying attention. We chose this spot thirteen weeks ago. In the valley, the roads out of town clog like arteries.

I shake out my mother’s snowy damask. You slice the thickening air with your great-aunt’s mismatched silver. We lay out the crockery dug from the back of the cupboard, that pattern we loved so much when we put it on the wedding list but now can’t remember why.

We unpack the hamper and begin to eat…

…sourdough kick-started with a culture that bubbled westwards across Europe one step ahead of advancing armies, your Grandma’s pastry which we never tasted but everyone said was the best ever, crumpled bags of the Mary-Jane caramels my mother craved while she was carrying me, hedgehog cake with almond prickles and five candles, the biggest juiciest bramble you thought you couldn’t reach but which was worth every scratchy snag, that chocolate Easter bunny too beautiful to bite without weeping, sherbet dibdabs and white mice and flying saucers, tiny bottles of summer-curdled-winter-slushed milk, rice pudding with skin on for the last day of term, fluffy mints from Grandad’s pocket, leftover Yorkshires gilded with syrup, a licked-out cake bowl, Mum’s treacle pudding erupting like a suet Vesuvius, lip-smarting crisps and warm lemonade in the back of the Cortina waiting for the grown-ups outside the pub, mouth-sealing bonfire toffee, bangers on the barbecue half-charred half-pink like sunburnt noses, first kisses cherried with cola, the sudden obvious point of olives and anchovies, the devilish whiff of kidneys, the sour-shock pickle of someone else’s body, silky tongues of smoked salmon on Christmas morning, nostrils popping with champagne, Marmite, sleepy-eyed moussaka with chips our first morning barely awake but ravenous at that old-school Greek place that’s a sushi bar now, bitter aniseed that kept us dancing well past dawn, salt-rimed-lime margaritas under a stardust California sky, gelato masking the June sewer stink of honeymoon Venice, the wake-up chilli spike of breakfast in Kerala, the peace of tofu in your vegan phase, falling for the irresistible temptation of bacon sandwiches after an all-nighter, peat-smoke whisky burning away the heartbreak of the child who came too soon, amazing tea and buttered toast after the child who arrived right on time, cook’s-perk crackling chicken skin stripped from the carcass by the kitchen sink, wasabi’s eye-opening sting, the never-to-be-repeated-twelve-course-tasting-menu-treat from your father before you stopped talking to each other altogether, those oh-so-expensive Valentine truffles that tasted almost better than sex, HobNobs in bed to the Sunday clatter of rain and bells, three strawberries of perfect ripeness picked with my father in the care home garden, Mars Bars on the moors still a sodden drenching hour’s hike from the bloody car, cold beer, takeaways family-style with friends, warm beer, pastries dunked in gossipy lattes, soldiers dripping thick with yolk, a long glass of cool clear water downed in one…

We raise our toast in our one surviving crystal glass. It glints like ice against the dropping sun. As the earth cracks and the sea rises and the sky falls, nothing has ever tasted so sweet.

 

SHARON TELFER lives near York, UK. She has won the Bath Flash Fiction Award, the Reflex Fiction Prize and the Hysteria Flash Fiction competition. She is the 2018 New Writing North/Word Factory Short Story Apprentice. She is an editor at FlashBack Fiction.

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Maybe I’ll Grow A Beard – James Bates

Rob peered out from behind the Sunday sports section. Across the room he observed his wife Shelia, doing some sort of handwork with tiny needles. Crocheting, maybe? He didn’t know. Had no clue. Didn’t care. She was dressed in a teal blue, floral print skirt and a white peasant blouse. Her auburn hair was pulled back in a pony-tail. Her full lips and high cheekbones, once so beguiling to him, were now anything but, just plain and unremarkable, nothing to write home about. He sighed and turned back to check on the baseball scores but only for a minute. He was having trouble concentrating. “I wonder,” he thought to himself, “If today’s the day I tell her I’m thinking of leaving.”

Shelia worked at the local middle school as a teacher’s aide. She was a diligent employee at the school, and she was just as diligent at home where she was as handy with a power drill as she was in the kitchen. She’d single handedly painted all of the walls in all of the rooms of their small bungalow style home. She’d put up book shelves. She’d pulled up all the old carpeting and sanded and refinished the wooden floors. She kept the house neat and clean and tidy. She cooked fabulous, healthy meals. She’d even made the skirt she was wearing.

She’d also made the baby quilt laying on the floor between them. On it, seven-month old Emily lay rolling back and forth playing with a rattle. She’d recently learned how to turn herself over and now lay arching her back, attempting the feat yet again. Rob watched, disinterested, as his daughter made a move and finally rolled onto her stomach. Imperceptibly, he shook his head, big friggin’ deal.

Shelia’s excited voice cut through the silence of the room, “Emy, look at you. Good girl, sweetheart. You’re getting to be such a big girl.”

“God,” how ridiculous, thought Rob. He set his paper aside, thinking, “I’ve had enough.”

At that same moment, almost like it was orchestrated, Shelia set down the project she was working on, a crocheted cap for Emily, and got to her feet. She reached down, and in one swipe picked up her daughter and carried her into the kitchen. “I’m going to fix Emy some cereal,” she told Rob, “What are your plans for the day?”

Rob got up and followed behind. He worked as an IT specialist for a large company in Minneapolis, twenty-five miles west of their home in the small town of Long Lake. He’d been there for ten years now, four years longer than he and Shelia had been married. It was a moderately stressful job so Sunday mornings he usually went for a long run to have some time alone and unwind. Usually, but not today.

“There’s something I need to talk to you about,” he said, looked at the back of her head, noticing strands of grey, wondering what he’d ever seen in her, “Something I want to tell you.”

Shelia took a small pan out from a lower cupboard and filled it with water, “What?”

Rob watched as she added dry cereal, put the pan on the burner and turned the stove on, all the while bouncing Emily on her hip. “I…” he paused. Did he really want to do this? Did he really want to give up this life? His wife? His daughter? Their home? Security? Give it all up for his freedom and the chance to do whatever he wanted to do? Asked and answered. You bet he did. He finished his thought, “I’m thinking of leaving. Moving out. Steve from work says I can live with him. He’s got an apartment near the office and some extra space. He says I can stay with him for a while.”

Before he started to ramble too much, he forced himself to stop. Was he nervous? Yeah, a little. But, truth be told, it felt good to get the words out and tell it like it was to Shelia. Who knew? Maybe she’d beg him stay. Maybe she’d break down and cry and plead with him not to go. Maybe she’d make good on her wedding vow to be a good wife to him and not take so much time with her precious Emy. Maybe she’d promise to make an effort to treat him like he deserved to be treated. The breadwinner. The man of the house.

He waited for her answer.

“So you really want to leave?” Shelia asked.

“Yeah. Yeah, I do.”

Her answer surprised him. “Well, good,” she said, “Great. In fact, it’s about time. I’ll tell you what. I’m going to feed Emy and get her changed. We’ve got a play date at 10 this morning at Susie’s.” She made it a point of looking at the clock on the wall. “It’s 9:30 right now. I’ll be home by noon. I want you out by then.”

She turned her back on him and set Emily in her high chair. Then she turned off the burner and went about finishing fixing breakfast for their daughter.

Hmm. Unperturbed and feeling rather liberated, Rob walked to the back of the house where their bedroom was. That was easy. He scratched his chin, noting the rough feel of his whiskers, and at that very moment had a thought, “Maybe I’ll start growing a beard. That’d be fun. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do. In fact, now that I can do anything I want to do, I think I will. I think I’ll grow a beard.”

He took down two travel bags out of the top shelf in the closet and began packing. Shelia had given him until noon to move out. Hell, he’d be gone way before then.

Back in the kitchen, Rob didn’t hear Shelia on the phone, “Hi, Susie, it’s me. Yeah, I’ll be there in a little bit, but I’ve got some good news for you. Exciting news, in fact. It’s about Rob. He’s finally leaving. Yeah. Seriously. No, I’m good. I told him it was about time. I think he was shocked, but so what? I’m sick of him and his idiotic attitudes. Yeah, but don’t worry, I’ll figure out something. We’ll talk more when I get there. Okay? Yeah. Bye.”

Shelia hung up and wiped some cereal from her daughter’s chin. She grinned at the cute little girl and fed her some more food, leaning close so they could rub noses. Emily giggled. “We’re going to be just fine, sweetheart,” she said, her grin turning into a big smile, “I promise, Emy. It’ll be just the two of us now, and we’re going be just fine.”

 

 

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Penalty Charge Notice – Dan Brotzel

THIS NOTICE CONTAINS IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT AN OFFENCE WHICH YOU ARE BELIEVED TO HAVE COMMITTED. DO NOT IGNORE.
(You did, of course.)

DETAILS OF OFFENCE
Hmm. How about: failing to be present to the person you said you loved? Basically, you recklessly entered a restricted zone (my heart), parked your callous little self all over my feelings, and just sat there while I bled dry.

TIME
Most of the time really. And more and more as time went on. I mean, when was the last time we’d even had a meaningful conversation about anything?

PLACE
I didn’t know where you were emotionally most of the time, only that it was somewhere other than with me. Even when you were here, you weren’t really here.

EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT THE ALLEGATION
Oh come on, it was all over your face. That slightly vacant guilty look that became your default expression with me? The way you never texted or called in the day any more? The way you were oddly reluctant to introduce me to your friends or family. Your avoidance of sex. And when I said we should do more together, you were always like, Yes! This weekend! Let’s drive out to the hills. Let’s spend some real time together! And then you were like: Oh wait, I promised to help my mum.

CONDITIONAL OFFER OF FIXED PENALTY
I tried to make you see. Tried to explain what was really happening. I don’t know why you want me here, I said. I only moved to this city because I thought you wanted us to be together. I gave up everything back home and got a shit job here so you wouldn’t have to keep subbing me. I share a flat with a bunch of arseholes because you’re not ready to move out from your mum’s. (Did she ever even really know about me, by the way? Does she even know you’re gay, come to that? You were oddly evasive about that too).

We used to make big plans about living together, marriage, adopting a kid. But it got a point that if ever I broached the subject, we ended up in a blazing row. Remember the shitshow at New Year’s Eve? The night the neighbours called the police? The crimes of Paris? First-class tickets on Eurostar and me sobbing alone in the buffet car.

THIS OFFENCE CARRIES A MAXIMUM PENALTY OF…
Christ, I didn’t know. How can you serve an ultimatum on someone who doesn’t give a shit? I could have just walked out on all this long ago, and I probably should have. That’s what my sister said, and you know how she always saw right through you. The only thing that stopped me was the fear that you would have just watched me walk away, just let it happen, been secretly glad. The only thing that stopped me was that I still loved you.

FAILURE TO RESPOND TO THIS NOTICE WITHIN 28 DAYS IS DEEMED AN OFFENCE AND COULD LEAD TO A COURT SUMMONS AND PROSECUTION.
Actually you did respond. To start with. You pulled out all the stops for a night or two, gave me some attention, showed me a bit of love. Just enough to keep me going till my next little hissy crisis. Jesus, you must have despised me, the way you just kept me dangling. Did you get off on watching me twist and writhe, you cold-blooded sadist? And God, how I must have hated myself to put up with it, to think that the best thing I could do with my life was to hang around waiting for you to turn into a decent person.

IF YOU MAKE TIMELY PAYMENT AND AGREE TO ATTEND AN EDUCATIONAL COURSE, YOU WILL BE DISCHARGED FROM LIABILITY TO CONVICTION AND NO PROCEEDINGS WILL BE COMMENCED AGAINST YOU.
Yeah right.

YOU MUST PAY IN FULL AND SURRENDER YOUR LICENCE.
And your ego. And your nasty sadistic streak. Also your sidelong glances at other men. Don’t think I didn’t notice. (But of course, it’s way too late for all that now.)

THE EDUCATIONAL COURSE IS DESIGNED TO EXPLORE YOUR REASONS FOR OFFENDING AND HELP PREVENT FURTHER LAPSES.
i.e. explore the reasons why monsters like you persistently exceed the normal limits of reasonable behaviour in supposedly loving monogamous relationships. As for further lapses, if you can’t see what the problem is already, then God help the next one.

YOUR DETAILS WILL BE CHECKED AGAINST A NATIONAL DATABASE TO ESTABLISH IF YOU HAVE COMPLETED A SIMILAR COURSE OF EDUCATION WITHIN THE LAST 3 YEARS.
You will also remain in my personal database for all time, and as soon as I get out of here I will not hesitate to inform any future partners of yours what a sneaky self-involved shit you are.

YOUR PERSONAL DETAILS WILL NOT AT ANY TIME BE MADE AVAILABLE TO THE PUBLIC.
Unless of course you do this to someone again, and I’ll paste the gory details all over Facebook.

YOUR DETAILS MAY HOWEVER IN FUTURE BE USED FOR THE ENFORCEMENT OF OTHER CONTRAVENTIONS AND OTHER ASSOCIATED PURPOSES.
And by ‘associated purposes’, I mean whatever the fuck I want it to mean, but especially reserving the right to drag up your sorry behaviour at any time that suits me, especially where it might assist me as an underhand card to play in winning any future argument I might have with anyone who I suspect of emotionally abusing me in any way whatsoever.

IF THERE IS ANY REASON WHY YOU THINK YOU SHOULD NOT HAVE TO PAY A PENALTY CHARGE, PLEASE SAY SO NOW. YOU CAN ALSO REFER THE MATTER TO A HIGHER AUTHORITY TO MAKE REPRESENTATIONS ON YOUR BEHALF.
But just so you know, that doesn’t mean your mum. Also, I can tell you now that the following were never going to cut it:

* ‘I was not aware of what I was doing’
* ‘I was not in full possession of my faculties at the time’
* ‘I did not see the signs’
* ‘Someone else was in control of my mind without my consent’
* ‘It was late at night and I’m not at my best then’
* ‘Well, that’s not how my mum sees it’
* ‘It was very early and I’m not really a morning person’
* ‘I was momentarily distracted’
* ‘It’s my first offence’ (bullshit)
* ‘My memory may be faulty’
* ‘I’m just really tired – work’s been really hard recently’
* ‘It’s not you, it’s me’
* Any sentence beginning, ‘What about when you…’
* Any sentence along the lines of: ‘If you’re the injured party, how come I’m the one in plaster??’

PERSONS WITH DISABILITIES ARE CATERED FOR.
But just so you know, things like ‘my mum never hugged me’ or ‘I’m just wired differently to other people, I guess’ do not count as disabilities. Injuries after the fact do not count either.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT YOUR REPRESENTATIONS AND SUPPORTING EVIDENCE WILL BE CAREFULLY CONSIDERED, AND YOU WILL BE NOTIFIED IN DUE COURSE OF THE DECISION REGARDING YOUR CASE. IF YOUR REPRESENTATIONS ARE ACCEPTED, YOU WILL NOT HAVE TO PAY THE PENALTY CHARGE.
But there are laws for things – rules of love, if you will – and in your case, I’m afraid, the charge was payable in full. PLEASE DO NOT SEND POST-DATED CHEQUES. Just like your post-dated affection, these will no longer be accepted.

CURRENT LEGISLATION PROVIDES THAT, WHERE THERE IS SUFFICIENT EVIDENCE TO JUSTIFY THE COMMENCEMENT OF CRIMINAL PROCEEDINGS, A FIXED PENALTY MAY BE APPLIED INSTEAD OF A PROSECUTION.
OK I shouldn’t have done it. I guess I took the law into my own hands.

THE FIXED PENALTY SYSTEM IS DESIGNED AS A FAST-TRACK SYSTEM WHERE THE OFFENDER DOES NOT DISPUTE THAT AN OFFENCE HAS TAKEN PLACE.
OK, OK. But you knew what you were doing. And I was sorely provoked. This had been going on for months, remember.

IF THE PENALTY IS NOT PAID BEFORE THE END OF THE 28-DAY PERIOD, AN INCREASED CHARGE MAY BE PAYABLE.
And you certainly milked it for all it was worth. Going to the papers like that, you little tart. ‘Jealous gay lover runs over boyfriend’. How much did you get for that? As if. It was just a little nudge. We were in a driveway, for fuck’s sake.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ARE MY HUMAN RIGHTS INFRINGED IF I RESPOND TO THIS NOTICE?
Are you fucking kidding me? I got six months and you’re asking me about human rights? I don’t even believe your leg was broken. (Not in four places anyway.)

IS YOUR EQUIPMENT ACCURATE AND CAN I SEE EVIDENCE OF ITS INSPECTION?
Oh enough with the gas-lighting already. You had it coming. ‘Dangerous driving,’ they said. Trust me, babe — I never drove with more care and attention in my life.

 

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Image via publicdomainpictures.net

Medea – Dawid Juraszek 

harness a raging fire
arrest a torrent in its rush
bleed the heart of a rock
you can

the gore and the dross
left in your wake
singe as they swell
in the only space there is

flesh blood skin bone
anointed and enhanced
proliferate
beyond the wine dark sea

you may wish to move on
new life awaiting you
in far away climes
but no.

DAWID JURASZEK is a lecturer in culture and literature at a university in Guangzhou, China. His academic background is in English, translation studies, educational leadership, international relations, and environmental management. A published novelist in his native Poland, his work has appeared in The Remembered Arts Journal, Amaryllis, The Font, and elsewhere.

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Image via Pixabay 

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