Tag: #prose

How Paul Got The Job – B F Jones

The HR department had been in turmoil for the past 6 weeks, struggling to fill in the much-needed role of Sub-lead Digital Marketing Co-editor, which required an in-depth knowledge of editorial techniques, digital marketing and IT support, along with a passion for fruit dehydration and its associated policies, ideally a masters degree and preferably some relevant experience.

Contenders had been carefully selected. Of the 20 that went through the first round of video conference interviews, 9 were deemed too inexperienced, 4 had come dangerously close to falling asleep listening to the extensive list of duties and decided not to proceed with the process, and 2 had overlooked the fact that it was a video call and had not been prepared. The woman with no trousers and the man with a collection of swastikas in the background had provided delightful water cooler material for the rest of the week.

The last 5 contenders were invited for a second interview. Two of them had, in their own words, “not felt a connection with the Lead Principal Marketing Co-director”, one of them later referring to her as a bitter old bat, and the other going home to reconsider his career and life choices. The third one got lost on the District Line, leaving the final 2 in a very good place.

Young Danny was sitting at reception, wiping his sweaty hands on the thigh of his beige linen suit, rubbing his non-existent moustache with the back of his fist. The receptionist had kindly offered him a drink, which he had declined in an unexpected falsetto voice that had made him sweat more.

He’d then sat for the following 10 minutes, flipping through the job description over and over again, then through his CV, noticing to his horror that he had written ‘steak holders’ instead of ‘stakeholders’, prompting his feet to start sweating.

Miranda, the self-proclaimed Lead Principal Marketing Co-director had paired up with Sarah, the newest member of HR with a strategy to play good cop/bad cop and base the final decision on a 30-step marking process.

Sarah had welcomed Danny in, ignoring the squelching of his shoes, refraining from wiping her hand on her suit skirt until it was safely out of sight under the table they all sat at. Miranda had immediately fired off questions, starring at Danny while he stuttered answers that trailed off, suffocated by a thick coat of discomfort.

Later Danny, pint in hand, arse cheeks still tender from extensive clenching, vented his spleen to his friends. How am I supposed to know how to weigh an elephant without fucking scales? Yet Danny still hoped. The pretty HR woman, Sarah, had asked regular questions and he had answered them well.

Sarah had felt Danny would have been a good contender for the job if not for his sweat glands and rabbit-in-the-headlights demeanour. He was well qualified, ethical, had a definite passion for fruit dehydration and was likely to be a great team player. She had therefore called him in person to share the bad news that he didn’t get the job and had voiced encouraging thoughts to him, resulting in an immediate and awkward Facebook friend request.

Paul arrived exactly 2 minutes early at the reception, knowing from years of experience that waiting too long will tarnish one’s chance for a first impression as well as moisten one’s palms. He had decisively agreed on a cup of coffee, requesting skimmed milk and 1.5 sugars, as a way to show that he was confident, not afraid of bold choices and not afraid to be bossy. He’d enjoyed seeing Sarah walk off to the kitchen. Nice pins. And come back holding the hot beverage. Nice tits. Thank you Sarah.

Miranda had fired her trickiest questions and he had replied unflinchingly, maintaining her gaze whilst avoiding being drawn to the hairy mole on the side of her nose. Sarah had to hand it to him, this was an impressive trick she was yet to master. Paul had said that he had no problem looking after a team, asserting that discipline wasn’t an issue for him to administrate. He mentioned that information was power, that he didn’t believe in getting feedback as a mean of progression, that he rated himself a strong 10/10.

Sarah wanted to further explore some of the answers she considered as “alarm bells” when Marcel came trotting into the open-plan office. She had not been informed of Marcel’s occasional presence on the office grounds and she had felt the hair on the back of her neck slowly rise while Paul’s voice had become distorted by the absolute revulsion that had overcome her. Unable to take her eyes of the mouse, and unable to make sense of Paul’s ramblings about discipline and empire building anymore, she had nodded and nodded, feeling her feet rising and her legs coiling around her chair legs. She’d shortened her share of the interview to half the questions when Marcel had started looking though the glass window; and definitely called it a day when he started walking alongside the meeting room door, the thick glass pane rendering his tail gigantic.

The next day, the new HR lady, Julie, phoned Paul to congratulate him on his new role as Sub-lead Digital Marketing Co-editor.

 

The Cabinet Of Heed Issue 32 Contents Link

Image by Jo_Johnston from Pixabay 

And Sings The Tune Without The Words – Evan James Sheldon

I went out back to smoke and think my deepest thoughts when I saw the man tied to the tree. He had been there for some time. At least I guessed so by the state of decomposition. Even still, his hair looked great, all styled and intentional. His eyes were open and milky, seeing right through me. I wondered what he had been looking at the moment he passed. From his view, you could make out my kitchen and I thought maybe he had been watching me wash dishes. How mundane an ending, how minimal.

It made me wish I lived a wild extravagant life; not for myself but for him.

I had read somewhere that the soul can linger in the body, though I don’t know that mine would, if given a choice when the moment arrives. But, if he was still around, I thought I might offer him something better than sudsy water in his parting from earth.

I put my cigarette in his mouth and tried to think of what I would want to see before I shifted dimensions or whatever. I ran back in a grabbed some poetry and then read him my favorite lines. I tried to sing a hymn, but I only remembered the tenor line and it sounded odd by itself without the other harmonies. I danced wildly, with abandon. I performed a small one-act play I made up on the spot. I painted something I had never seen. I moved from one thing to the next without pause. I laughed. I wept. I was everything.

Exhausted, I leaned on the tree next to the man. The light in my kitchen leaked out into the lawn but that wasn’t what drew my eye.

It was the sky. It was everything besides my kitchen window. It was everywhere I wasn’t, and it all took on an enraptured, amber hue. I couldn’t look away.

And I wished someone would come along and support me, tie me up when I began to falter, so I could continue to view it, long after I had lost the strength.

No one came.

Eventually, the sun set and it got cold. The light from kitchen beamed like a beacon, calling to me. It wasn’t anything compared to the sky. Not what it had been anyway. But it was a warmth at hand, one I was familiar with.

I went inside and didn’t know what to do. I turned the television on but it was too garish. I had once read that canned laughter had all been recorded in the fifties, so every time a laugh track ran, it was really dead people chuckling so you would understand and laugh too. I moved from the couch to the bed back to the couch, and then to the kitchen. I couldn’t have told you what I was looking for. I didn’t do the dishes, but I did lean beyond them to look for the man who couldn’t stop gazing at the sky. It was too dark to see him. To see if he was still there. If he was still there, I would be a silhouette, a suggestion of personhood backlit in the near neon-blue of television glow.

Then I had an impossible thought and wondered if the man had shaken free of his tether, started walking, and simply kept on up and up and up. And if you were always walking up, with nothing to keep you on the ground, why couldn’t you step right into the sky? I craned my neck looking for the ember of my cigarette in the sky, even though he finished it a long time ago.

Behind me, dead people laughed and laughed until I couldn’t stand it any longer and I left the kitchen to see what was so funny.

 

Evan James Sheldon’s work has appeared recently in the Cincinnati Review, Ghost Parachute, and Litro. He is a Senior Editor for F(r)iction and the Editorial Director for Brink Literacy Project.

The Cabinet Of Heed Issue 32 Contents Link

Image by Hans Braxmeier from Pixabay 

Teatime – Noa Covo

The tin of biscuits in my shopping cart reminded me of Sunday tea with my mother, the only day of the week she and the crows had a truce. As a child, my mother and I would spread out a checkered blanket in the soft grass, pull out a thermos, dainty teacups, and a tin of store bought biscuits. The crows would gather, bright eyes gleaming. My mother would open the tin and toss the biscuits into the grass, letting the crows have their pick. There were never any left for us. After they had devoured the biscuits, the crows would gather on the grass at the very edge of the picnic blanket with their greedy beaks slightly open, as if they wanted something more. They didn’t attack. Sundays were truce days. My mother and I never drank the tea we brought with us. It always cooled in our dainty teacups, and we’d pour it away at the end of the picnic.

I had half-forgotten the tea parties as I waited in line at the shop with a cartful of food until I pulled a tin of biscuits from underneath a bag of rice and a can of tomato sauce. I hadn’t remembered putting it there, but I paid for it nonetheless. I found myself in the parking lot, leaning on the hood of my car, tin in hand.

I opened the tin. A crow landed with a flutter at my feet, and a moment later came the rest of them, eyes glittering, beaks wide open, waiting. I took a biscuit from the tin and wondered why my mother had never kept any for the two of us. The war with the crows had lasted well past my seventh birthday, perhaps even my eighth. They had stolen our silverware and rummaged through our drawers. I remembered their squawked demands.

“Why did you stop?” I asked the crow at my feet. I wondered if the biscuits had finally appeased them.

The crow stared unblinkingly as I brought a biscuit to my mouth. Its cruel eyes glittered. With a shiver, I remembered the last of our shared picnics. The crows had stood at the edge of the picnic blanket, waiting, as they always did, but this time, my mother took one long look at me, a look at the crows, and nodded. The crows stormed the blanket. Memories came back, as I clutched the biscuit in my hand, memories of being ripped apart in the soft afternoon sun in the park on a checkered blanket, torn apart as my mother watched.

I blinked back tears, examining my hands as if looking for scars, proof that the crows had tried to pick me apart. I remembered myself sobbing, blood running from my wounds, and my mother handing me my teacup and telling me to drink up. I remembered the metallic taste of the tea, tea that had knitted my wounds together as the crows flew off and my mother caressed my bloodstained hair. My mother’s war with the crows had ended that day.

The crows in the parking lot watched me. I had forgotten what it was like being at war with them, the constant fight and flurry of feathers. I would not enter another war with them. I knew it would end, once again, in my blood.

I dropped the tin, letting the biscuits spill over the pavement. The crows looked at me unimpressed. They had tasted my flesh once, my eyes, my cheeks. I would not let them have that, not again, and they would never again settle for less. I left the biscuits on the ground and got into the car. The war between us had been my mother’s. I did not want it to start anew. On my way out of the parking lot, I watched the crows. They spread their wings and flew away, leaving the biscuits untouched on the pavement and becoming a black cloud of distant memory.

 

Noa Covo is a teenage writer. Her work has appeared in Newfound and Reckoning, and her microchapbook will be published by Nightingale and Sparrow this summer.

The Cabinet Of Heed Issue 32 Contents Link

Image by seawie from Pixabay 

 

 

Stream Of Consciousness Drawer Three

If Life Were Meant to Be Easy, All My Best Ideas Wouldn’t Come to Me in the Shower – Marissa Glover

My skin is dry from all the washing but I can’t put lotion on it because of allergies. I can’t cover the knuckle cracks with Band-Aids because adhesive leads to hives, and I’m not sure if my Epi-Pen’s still current. I know they expire after a while—everything expires after a while; usually it all goes bad just when you need it most.

Right now, I don’t know what I need. I’m supposed to be working but can’t think straight. My brain cells are arguing with each other, tugging the hem of my skirt for attention, saying my name over and over like a child says Mom Mom Mom Mom Mom in a store. She finally yells, WHAT? But it’s not the child’s fault she’s angry. After all, Mom ignored the child for two solid minutes when the kid only wanted to show her the monkeys on the yogurt bottles. How silly the monkeys look!

I feel sad for those kids—they only want to say something, to be heard, just some kind of acknowledgment, but then I realize they’ll get their revenge in about twelve years. Mom will tell them to do something over and over and over again, but they won’t hear a word she says through their earbuds or gamer headset. Karma, bitch.

I don’t know why I have tennis elbow now, twenty years after I retired from the game. I’ve tried every internet suggestion plus hive-mind advice. I moved my laptop from the study to the bar to the dining room to the couch. Doesn’t matter. Comfortable is an impossible position.

All this moving in place, you’d think I’d be able to keep track of things, like my cell phone, or my glasses. Sometimes I wonder if my brain cells are killing each other, if their bickering has come to blows, and whose side I’d be on.

The glasses thing became such an issue (since I can’t see without them) that I bought those eyeglass chains, and now my kid says I look like an old lady, even though I got the really cool-looking beaded ones, ordered a set of sixteen different colors before Amazon stopped delivering. Today I’m wearing periwinkle.

Part of me wants to scream, That’s because I AM an old lady! but part of me wants to show him pictures of when I was young and beautiful because if he could see me then, he’d know. He’d know how pretty his mom could be, how she changed and maybe this would make him sad too, how everything changes, how he’ll wish he had a box like mine, how everything looks better when you’re looking back.

At the bottom of the box, I found a photograph of the first boy I ever kissed. A boy who didn’t love me when I wanted him to but said I love you two days ago—now, when the world is dying and maybe we are too. When you’re poor, there’s nothing to unload before the market tanks.

Marissa Glover teaches and writes in Florida, where she is co-editor of Orange Blossom Review and a senior editor at The Lascaux Review. Marissa’s work appears in Rust + Moth, SWWIM Every Day, Okay Donkey, and Whale Road Review, among other journals. Her debut poetry collection, Let Go of the Hands You Hold, is forthcoming from Mercer University Press in 2021. Follow Marissa on Twitter @_MarissaGlover_.

 

Paul Daniels’ Stream of Suggestion – Mike Hickman

I stand in the alleyway with Paul Daniels wrapped in plastic at my wrist and the rain comes down and I wonder why I am out, and why I risk the downpour for this.

Now the stream is interrupted.

Jonny. Calvin. Andrew. All gone – some more literally than others, and they’re not standing there with me. Not then/not now. But the tar of the fence panel in front of me still haunts as I keep out of sight and I can see the spatter of more than rain down the front of my jumper and hear the shouts of those who’d pursued me into the ginnels because we’d – my friends, me (always me) – wanted to put on a show for the school, like that’s something eleven year olds do. For charity. With our own egos as the benefit. They said that, those who’d pursue. Those who still did – until recently. I stand and wait for the voices to recede and Mr Daniels, bewigged, twinkling, hefting a magic wand that isn’t as plastic as the one in the box, peeks through the Bejam carrier, capital-S-suggesting that there’s a route out of this. I believed him once – like I believed all the shiny floor telly we watched at home. You too, Paul said with a wink. You can, Paul said. They don’t matter.

But I’m still here. The tar reek at my nose and the rain down the back of my parka and the fear that I’ll be called out – again – for what I am and can’t help being. Hiding here, tucked in, not breathing, when I’m supposed to stride forward as the Year 11s round the corner, wielding the wand at them and shamelessly wearing the TV magician toupée of power which will put them where I’ve been told to put them.

They can only hurt you if you let them, son.

And

The second arrow thing that the woman in the cardy and the day-glo Crocs would tell me in Group. I’ll look it up one day. Seems profound.

This all matters – even now, with the stream interrupted. I stand in the alleyway with Paul Daniels wrapped in plastic. Jonny, Calvin and Andrew, they all head home – no-one goes for them with Kwik Save’s battery farmed finest. It’s alright for them – even standing up there in front of the school in assembly – because they’re embarrassed, they don’t want to be there, they’re not even very good at it. So that’s alright, then. Me, though? It matters and the pursuers smell that – they smell the desire for the shiny floor and the taking Paul Daniels seriously – and that’s why they go for me. When such things mattered to them. When there weren’t other things. Like now, when they have to Let Go. When we’re all supposed to.

I stand in the alleyway with Paul Daniels wrapped in plastic at my wrist and the rain comes down and I wonder why I am out, and why I risk the downpour for this.

 

A spider on my sleeve – Steven Patchett

I have a spider on my sleeve. I didn’t really notice until someone pointed it out to me.

Of course, I’ve known about it all along, caught a glimpse of it in mirrors as I walk down the high street. I haven’t actually done anything about it. It has sat there, bulbous and fat, black legs hanging on tight around my bicep, looking at me with an expression I can’t even begin to translate.

I didn’t want to brush it off, it had settled there when Mum had died. I might even have picked it up from her. They often said that she used to see things that were not there. Special eyes, she had said.

But at least I had confirmation now, I wasn’t just making it up. They told me, it’s got its fangs deep in your arm, doesn’t it hurt? But I wasn’t sure what they meant. I hurt all over, all the time, so it was hard to say if it was just the spider’s bite.

After mum had died, and the lawyers took her estate, I was sort of grateful to have something left to remind me of her.

Even if I’d considered it imaginary.

But now, of course, it wasn’t.

I took it to the zoo, to see if they could work out what to do with it. But they looked frightened when it ran up my arm onto my head, the long hairy legs wrapping under my chin. It tickled, and kept my ears warm.

They couldn’t help me in the end, far too interested in creatures they knew something about, like Black widows and Tarantulas.

I could have taken it to the cat and dog shelter, but I doubted they could have helped. They were probably less qualified than the zoo had been.

So we went to see the Doctor, the one who was prescribing the pills. I had them to make me forget, though I’ve forgotten what it was so important about remembering. The Doctor rolled her eyes and told me I was imagining things. But when I looked into the mirror I saw the spider staring back.

Have you been taking your medication, the Doctor asked. The spider looked pissed in the mirror.

Of course I have Doctor, the spider told her.

Before I could leave for home, the spider is on the move again, just leapt up onto the doctor and wrapped its legs around her head. I was so embarrassed, I pulled the spider off and told I her was sorry, meaning every word, while she sat in her chair, a funny look on her face, her mouth a big red O.

I was so mad with the spider while we rode the number 37. Everyone is looking at us, with the same funny look on their faces, as I shouted at the creature as it sat next to me.

When I got home the police were waiting there for me. Maybe they can help with the spider.

Steven Patchett is an engineer, husband and father living and working in the northeast of England. He can be found on Twitter, being encouraging, @StevenPatchett7.

 

Mission Accomplished – Ami Hendrickson

Today, I will not dwell on my problems.

This is the task I have set myself. In my mind’s ear, I can hear the “Mission, Impossible”-style voice intoning, “Your mission, should you choose to accept it…”

I do not always choose to accept it. Today, I do.

I will not focus on the current mandatory quarantine that keeps me inside when what I really want to do is meet my friend Kim for brunch at The Mason Jar, order their clove mocha – “candy coffee,” she calls it – and parse the state of the world over savory French lentils, poached eggs, and Paesano toast.

There’s a perfectly good coffee maker in my kitchen. And plenty of coffee. “This is a blessing,” I say aloud, “not a problem.”

We’re low on bread. I take two yeast packets from the cupboard and set them near the warm coffee maker. I have yeast. I have flour and oil and water. What I usually don’t have is time.

I haven’t made bread in three years – since the last time I was in the house day after day, month after month. It was a bit like quarantine, wasn’t it? Staying with you. Always within earshot. Taking care of you as your life seeped away like water from a drying sponge…

The smell of rising dough and of baking bread fills the house. It’s the smell of heaven, but it only makes me miss you more.

Today, I don’t want to think about that.

I don’t want to contemplate the logistics of how Anne Frank and her family stayed inside, hidden from the sun, teetering on the brink of existence, peering daily into the black hole of hell, for two years. (I don’t want to, but I know that by dinnertime, I’ll be wondering, for the thousandth time, if they painted a yellow circle on the ceiling somewhere, for reference. Or could they only see the sun in their imagination, when their eyes were closed, shuttered to their reality?)

I will not close my eyes. I will keep them wide open.

I will look at the dogs, happily snoring beside me, unaware of how privileged they are to be allowed on the couch.

I will drink in the sight of our daughter doing her course work online because the schools are all closed. She’s so grown up now. Seventeen. The same age I was when I met you.

Today, I will say a grateful prayer for fresh-baked bread, for a roof over my head, for friends, and for family. I will not obsess over the fact that my employer is looking for ways to cut my hours. I will not worry about paying the bills. I refuse to fracture. I will not complain.

Not just yet.

Not yet.

For now, I am going to eat these strawberries in a glass bowl that was my grandmother’s while listening through the cracked window to the bluebirds sing “chirr-chirr-chirrry” as they build their nest in the little cedar house by the mailbox.

Ami Hendrickson writes books, screenplays, and endless to-do lists. She also writes for famous horse trainers. Some of her favorite pastimes involve horseback riding, playing with her dogs, and teaching writers workshops. She lives in Southwest Michigan, where she pines for a working TARDIS.

 

Mrs Average – Ellie Rees

‘Five foot two, eyes of blue, but oh what those five foot could do. Has anybody seen my girl?’

‘I had green eyes, reader; but you must excuse the mistake: for him they were new-dyed I suppose.’ (Or was it ‘dear reader’?)

Such things stick in my head: not a jot of originality, just the dead leaves of other writers, scraps of ancient songs. I’ve always been ‘Mrs Average’: green eyes, five foot five (now five foot three) weighing in at a steady nine stone four, shoes 5 ½ and dress size, 12. Average. Dead ordinary. However, judged by my age (another number) I have suddenly become ‘Mrs Vulnerable’, can feel the strength seeping from the tips of my fingers and even the garden secateurs hurt!

… Note to myself: Why have you not given your age? Is it possible that even at your advanced time of life you still worry about how the unseen, unknown reader might judge you? Vanity of vanities; all is Vanity!

I need to look up when to use the numerical symbol and when to write it. Why are shoe and dress sizes written one-way and other measurements the other?

Now is our Pompeii moment – I seem to have changed the subject – the sun is shining and it’s Spring. I have enough to eat and everything appears to be normal. Yet… I am obsessed with statistics. How many dead in Italy or Spain in the last twenty-four hours? I wash my hands singing two choruses of Ring-a-Ring-of-Roses and remember we are only two weeks behind Italy.

Ah, so now both the Heir to the Throne and the Prime Minister are afflicted; I wonder what the statistical chances of that happening are? Come to that, I wonder what the odds are on my super-fit, first-born having the virus, while – thank God – my second son, paralysed from the chest down, remains fit and well with me, in isolation.

On second thoughts, Pompeii is not a well-chosen comparison: that happened with a bang, not a whimper (sorry!) It’s the knowledge we now possess about their quality of life, before the pyroclastic flow, that seems apt. They were so much like us in their sense of security and their love of material possessions.

I will start to count my material possessions. That should pass the afternoon. Perhaps I should put my diaries together somewhere so that my granddaughter will find them and be able to get to know me when she’s older. On second thoughts, (for the second time) perhaps six years old is a little young to have such a responsibility. She might not take after me; might even be a mathematician.

My mother-in-law stuck a label on the back of all her china – Moorcroft, Clarice Cliff, Gaudy Welsh – giving its make and age, thus hinting at its possible value. Clever. I’m still stuck with all her possessions now and they’re about to survive yet another generation.

Ah Life, ‘How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.’

 

So Let’s Build A Mother And Her Son – miss macross

So let’s say that there is a robot who looks just like a man, meticulously constructed down to his wet eyeballs and rubber squishy cheeks. His cheeks are so squishable that if he had an aunt to squish them when she visited on holiday, she would feel like the Queen of Aunts Who Squish Cheeks. Let’s say that this robot is self-aware; he knows that he was, say, created by a genius woman whose son was kidnapped by his evil wealthy grandfather and that, uh, this wasn’t a concept stolen from a hit Korean drama. He calls his creator “Mom” because she programmed him to, but he also believes that since she was the one who brought him into the world, she is, in fact, his mother. It may not be normal, but what is a normal mother? Some of us have mothers who [insert trauma here]

so, really, he’s right and he was, in fact, instilled with an unshakable sense of right and wrong. This makes it difficult for him to write poetry. The Hallmark cards he finds at the corner pharmacy each May make no sense to him: broken guitar strings strumming banal covers in the wrong chord. Because the person hired to write these verses isn’t the child of the recipient, these cards hold no meaning. Therefore, the robot tries to write his own, his understanding of emotions being

close enough but no cigar smoked by the poet writing about their cheating lover or their lover’s cheater or the death of their

He does not understand death; to be more specific, he does not understand the pain associated with death, though he intellectually understands that once some things are lost, they cannot be fully replaced. His mother has installed a Kill Switch in his rustproof abdomen, a method of nonconsensual self-destruction that will deploy on the day when his mother is finally reunited with her real son. He is real in the sense that when he dies, it will not be taboo to hold his funeral. The robot is unaware of his kill switch; most of us are unaware of the ticking bombs in our bodies, or rather, which bomb will be The One.

If he is alive next Mother’s Day, he will write her a poem that contains line after line of observations cited by sources, and his mother-creator will be horrified. She will think that it is a suicide letter. But he can’t leave her yet; she has not been reunited with her Real Son, the one who may or may not be slowly killing himself several countries away, each glass of soju another shot away from his memories of a beloved mother who his grandfather has told him is long dead. The robot, with his spring water coolant eyes and carved dimples, will think that the words that he organized on those lines were Right.. As she cries, he will ask her if they are tears of joy. He will wish her a happy Mother’s Day.

 

Interlude – Michael McGill

Steven, it’s the cars that I miss most. They would glide past my window at night and I’d listen as I treaded softly towards sleep. But they’re gone for now; they are parked on other streets. They are still, and they are silent. And waiting.

Steven, I write this letter from a strange place. A stream of consciousness, if you will – and will you? I have set myself a limit of five hundred words. Please don’t take this personally! I type as the news is on over there – the other side of this room. It plays in a loop – over and over, the same faces, the same hairdos, the same Union Jacks behind the same suits.

An empty vase sits in front of me. A Mother’s Day card, and a teddy bear on the window sill.

Each day brings a video conference call. Each day one of us comes closer to cracking. Each day waiting.

Steven, you left the house last Autumn under a cloud. It was a light cloud, really, but still. Things fester over Winter. Darker thoughts ferment.

After this is over, you must visit. I will cook. And if that doesn’t put you off, nothing will!!

Steven, I know. He was a mistake, of course, but still. Each of us needs an interlude. And he was mine. He sits now in a plain room with a chair and a window, a bed and a blanket. I miss him, but there we are. He was young once, I’m sure, but his voice deepened. And he became more plain, and he became more cold. He was my mistake, and I’m sorry.

I am typing in the dark and I am dreaming. Of better days when the pavements are fuller, of warmer evenings when crowds gather again. Of meetings with faces and voices and vibrations. When friends and colleagues are no longer little boxes on screens. When people will talk again in sync; faces and lips and voices. There will no longer be a time lag.

Steven, it is dusk. I have put on the light in this room, but the curtains are still to be drawn. Passers-by can watch me type if they feel so inclined. Or they can wave to the teddy bear instead!

Today, I watched a friend on film. She was in a field near her home with her dog. She smiled at the camera, and warmth filtered through the lens. I miss her.

You will be eating now, I imagine, as you read this. You will open this email, I hope, and you will read. You will scan for typos, and I pray you won’t find any! But therein lies the problem. The wood for the trees. The resolute failure on my part to ever see: The. Bigger. Picture.

Steven, I still remember the day you left. It was dark by the time you walked away. October brought in the cold and it felt cruel. You caught the last bus, I’m sure, and you disappeared.

Michael McGill is an Edinburgh poet who has recently had work published by 24 Unread Messages, Funhouse Magazine, The Haiku Quarterly and detritus. His overheard comments and photostory projects regularly appear on Twitter and Instagram. He has also performed his work on the Lies, Dreaming podcast. Twitter: @MMcGill09  Instagram: michael7209

 

Lockin 30/03/20 – Jason Jawando

see, get up and have a drink, sometimes a second after breakfast, and then catch the bust to work. At work there’s naohter one before I go about my day. Then a few more when I get bored and need a break. At the weekend it all goes to pot, bit there;s one at brealtast, more during the morning when I;m reading and listening to music; in the afternoon when I start writing there’ll be more; and again in the evening. See, it’s this working from home – or at home strictly – that’s making everying different. M body has made the transition well enough. IT extpect it’s drinks when it gets them. That means everything is in the same place. Morning, eafternootm and evening, sitting ath e same desk, with the same cup of the same tea sitting in front. That’s not realy a hardship. In the midst of all this coronavirus outnreak, the greatest tragedy is hardly Jason drinking a cip of tea at the same place all day. It just begins to feel wearily familiar. Here we are again: another cip of tea, with te same view from the same window (it’s dark now, so that’s not literally true. Except it is tru 0 ) close the bracket. Forgote to close the breackter when I meant to. It is the same view outside the window, even though it’s fark now. Nothing has actually changed in any ontologival sense. I can’t really see anything now. There are lights on inside the room and the curtains are closed. Through the small gap in the curtains, I can see s white streetlight, which spreads a glow on the darkness immediately surrinign it. I now see. I know what surrinds it because I;ve lived her for years and I know what the road looks like. It’s the last road in the West Midlands. If you cross over it, you’re in South Staffords Hire. I don’t leve on the road, but on a cul-de-sac, off a cul-de-sac, off a crescent. The main road passes a few yeards from the house, on the other side of a hedge. I can see through the window o the study, which hasn’t always been m study, and I travel along it every day on the way to worl. So I thin I know it pretty well. I don’t always fo that way. Some days I walk in the opposite direction and catch a different bus. Cathing no busses at all aright now. The bus company have agreed to suspend the Direct Debit though, so I won’t be out of pocket. By the time I get to catch the bus somewhere, then the world will have started to look different, There;s no way that it can’t. I worked in Birmginahm for seven notnts, the year before last, and when I came back to WOlverhamptn, everything looked different, which was odd as I was still living in Wolverhampton. And spent weekends there. My sense of strangeness doesn’t emphasise sense at the expense od strangeness.

 

Fifteen Minutes Till Film’s Out – Duncan Hedges

Fifteen minutes till film’s out. Oh, you’re going for the shoulders again. Okay, it’s piano time. Ha-ha. Any excuse for a bit of physical contact. Yes, I know the score. You’ll pretend that my shoulders are a piano keyboard and I have to guess the tune and when I say something ridiculous like ‘Macarena’ you’ll fake disbelief and then go back to the start and do it all over until you get bored and tell me it was actually ‘The Flight of the Bumblebee’ or some other obscure crap and I’ll laugh and pretend to be interested in your deliberately goofball tastes that aren’t tastes at all but just an attempt to be different. Oh good, you’ve found your wheelie chair so I can get back to my admissions till while you gab on about something or other and think that I like you more than I do, because of that one time I stroked your hand and called you sweet. But tell me this: how else do you get rid of someone if not by feigning endearment? And there was no way I was going to walk the length of the foyer to collect the next day’s pre-books and give you a forty yard arse goggle. Oh, you’re off. No hand stroke needed today then…just the sight of the team leader. Great. So substituting teen lust for married lust. Ten minutes. Let’s see if he can get by without mentioning his ding-a-ling today. Ha-ha. Yes very funny, rummaging in your trouser pocket for your ding-a-ling and offering me a fiddle and then when you finally pulled it out, it was some outdated musical device with a tiny handle that turned and played ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’. Yes, very clever and of course I thought you were going to slap your married penis out on the desk, didn’t I? Yes, of course, ha-ha. Oh what a shame, your mobile’s ringing. Five minutes. And leaving just in time for teen lust’s return. And okay, teen lust, you really are hurtling down the foyer like an Olympic sprinter and yes, you’re going to hurdle the crowd control barrier and announce your arrival with the loud slap of your size tens. What a shame the work rota grabbed my attention at the very same moment. Nice to see a shift with Stevie next week and one with Jed as well. On separate days. Bonus. Twice the fun. And I think I’ll study this rota a little bit longer. My shoulders tightly hunched over the desk, just until you make it back to your chair. Oh good and there we are. And maybe I should tell you that I’m working with Stevie and Jed next week. Maybe you’d like to know that. But I can’t leave you on a thought like that. Zero minutes. No, so I’ll give you a friendly pat on the shoulder when film’s out. Until next week, teen lust, until next week.

Duncan Hedges lives and works in Leeds, West Yorkshire. He writes short stories in his spare time and has been published online at The Cabinet Of Heed, Ellipsis Zine, Spelk and Bending Genres.

 

Nocturne – Elodie Rose Barnes

Sometimes, the end of the day feels like the end of the world.

The word ‘apocalyse’ means ‘the lifting of the veil’. Ancient Greek. I wonder if it also means this, now; the caving in of the darkness, the silence of the moon, the soft falling of dew from nowhere. I wonder if this is the shore on the other side of silence. Even the streets turn away their faces and disappear. I am alone.

Bells count the hours; they know this strange thing called time better than me. Minutes pass from one corner of the room to another. My feet, pacing, syncopate with the seconds. How are the bells not exhausted? But so much passes between fleeting chimes, and eventually darkness splinters into this thing called dawn. Like ice cracking and then thawing, trails of moon-melt streaking the sky. My reflection distorts itself in a thousand watery mirrors. Bell-chimes fade to whispers, vibrating in silver droplets of light, and I miss them. They didn’t even know my name. All night I have been listening to voices that never called me by my name. Take away my name and this is left: a shadow waiting for a woman to come home.

The tree outside breathes slowly so as not to wake the blossom. In its branches a bird sings to a distant sun.

Elodie Rose Barnes is an author and photographer. She can usually be found in Spain, Paris or the UK, daydreaming her way back to the 1920s, while her words live in places such as Dust Poetry, Bold + Italic and trampset. Current projects include two chapbooks of poetry, and a novel-in-flash on the life of modernist writer Djuna Barnes. Find her online at http://elodierosebarnes.weebly.com

Cabinet Of Heed SOC Drawer 31.04

 

 

Stream Of Consciousness Drawer Two

Hope Grows – Rob McIvor

Beards.

I swear all the men in this street are growing beards. Every one of them.

Not those fluffy two weeks away glamping with the family and I didn’t feel like shaving beards, but proper, six weeks away from work, just like a teacher in summer, and look what happened beards. Let’s all hole up at a pink house in upstate New York and make a great album beards. Garth Hudson beards. The real thing.

Even Frank, at number 34 is doing it. I saw him this morning, going out for his daily exercise with his little girl; the one that asked me if I was Santa Claus. What’s her name? Oh yes, Guinevere. Sorry, but if you’re going to saddle your child with a name like that you need to give her some decent genetic material. But Frank’s no Adonis and her mum’s no Helen of Troy. Poor kid.

Anyway, back to Frank’s face. I noticed it when he was on the way out and had a good look when he was on his way back, with his newspaper. He always holds it up to his chest, with his arm crooked, like a junior barrister carrying his briefs. I don’t know what he does for a job. Maybe he really is a junior barrister. There it was, a bit wispy in places, sort of ginger with blonde roots, but definitely an attempt at a beard. He’s going to need another month of this before he looks like anything other than an unkempt hamster.

I see them all coming and going. Phil from 43 (very dark, he’s already shaping it into a kind of biblical sage look); Louis and Michael from 28 (matching goatees, flanked by carefully cultivated stubble); the teenager from 39 (a bit scrappy but 8/10 for effort). It’s as though on the one hand they are all trying to pretend that they are going about their lives as normal, as if nothing was happening, while, subliminally, little squirts of testosterone are dribbling into their brains and telling them that this is their chance to let it go, show what they can do if left undisturbed for a month or two, to return, when it’s all over, with their faces a visible declaration that it’s all going to be different from now on.

I envy them their futile hope. I remember the last time it was all going to be different. And the time before that. Each new dawn breaking through, like tiny shoots from an overnight face. And that moment when we all thought: shall we let it grow a little, give it a chance, nurture it, before razoring it away in a submissive, supplicant return to normality.

I wonder which will last longer, this naïve sense that something has changed forever or the beards. All those beards, screaming out their vitality, their endurance, their presence. I watch them passing all day. And I look down and remember that the last time I shaved was May 2nd 1997.

Porthcothan Bay – Matt Fallaize

I, of course didn’t realise until years later what had actually happened, because it made so little difference at the time.

You don’t though, do you?

A was about to be my first proper girlfriend . There was a sort of tacit acknowledgement between us that we were about to be a thing, but we weren’t, in any binding sense, that yet. So it was plausible, legally-speaking, in Double Science when Cowan and Rawley told me that she’d had actual sex with a guy in a tent on Porthcothan Bay, just the weekend before; some kid from another school, I didn’t know him. It wouldn’t have been a crime, technically. We’d been edging around each other for a while, but it wasn’t like I had exclusive rights.

They said it with a note of concern, they wanted me to know what I was getting myself into. They were angry at her, her friend Nicola had told them. She’d been in the next tent along. Their words were rushed. They’d fallen over each other to tell me.

We were friends , of a sort, Cowan, Rawley and I. I’d been to their houses, they didn’t seem to actively dislike me, we had occasional conversations and compared homework from time to time. They were, I instinctively acknowledged, a couple of brackets up from me, popularity wise. They dressed with more confidence, surfer clothes, they had a certain relaxed charm. It didn’t bother me, it was just how it was.

The odd thing is that I remember not believing a word of it. Not in any angry, hot denial sort of a way. I just thought well that didn’t happen and thanked them for telling me and thought no more of it. I’ve always had something of a short fuse, and it was worse then. You’d have expected me to lose it. Confront A. Or, more likely, retreat into myself in silent misery and never speak to her again. But I didn’t. I just thought nah, and went about my day. We became an item shortly afterwards. She was, I knew, a bit too good for me. But it took me some years before I worked out that was how I felt, then.

And I’ve no idea what made me think about his, twenty five years later. My wife and I had just finished off dinner, we’d been having a rough time but things were getting better and we were in expansive, confiding mood, having one of those conversations where you maybe reveal a little more of yourself than you normally would, even to a loved one. When you talk about each other’s pasts. And I’ve no idea why I told her about this, as I hadn’t thought about it, right up until that moment, but when she said in a small, furious voice: fucking hell, they didn’t even want to let you have that one happiness, they wouldn’t even let you have that I thought Jesus yes that’s it.

Matt Fallaize is a writer (and chef) based in Ormskirk, Lancashire, UK, where he knocks out meals, stories and poems in wildly varying quantities… His work has appeared in various places and, you can find him, should you feel so inclined, in the usual places.

To Slow Down – C J Dotson

A couple of months ago I began to suspect that I might have ADHD. Inattentive type. I talked it over with a few friends who’ve known me for a very long time and with my husband and eventually I called the psychiatrist’s office that my husband goes to and asked to set up an appointment. I didn’t have a referral or anything and there was a little bit of surprise or hesitance on the other end about it, but I had a first appointment a couple of weeks ago. About a week after that I had a follow up to do a series of true/false questions, over 500 of them, on a computer. In that time I have been doing a lot of research on my own and I came to the conclusion that something that might really help me would be to create a schedule. A detailed schedule of every activity throughout my day, one for each day of the week. I started it, and it seemed like it was really helping me. A few days after that, the governor of Ohio (where I live) canceled all school for three weeks. He said three weeks. I and my husband both figured pretty immediately that that was actually it for this school year. There goes my stepson’s last year of middle school and my son’s first year of preschool. And there goes that carefully crafted schedule. It had to be reworked and it doesn’t always work because my son is home all the time now and you have to be a lot more flexible with kids. I’ve missed parts of the schedule almost every day but I’m still trying. More, something strange started happening to my perception of time, right away. Everything in my personal life kind of came to a stop. We’re not leaving the house. I’m not planning my son’s fifth birthday party. I don’t take him to school or pick him up, I don’t check my schedule at work, I don’t look up events at the library, I don’t make plans with my mom. Everything in the world outside started moving so fast. Governor DeWine started shutting things down left and right, and in my opinion good for him. Stores ran out of a lot of things (insert toilet paper joke here). There’s more bad news from around the world every day. Time at once seemed to slow down to almost nothing and to speed up incredibly, depending on where I’m looking. It’s disconcerting. And my god is it distracting. I know I’m not alone in this. I know that right now almost everyone in the world, except for people in denial perhaps, are feeling this too. I know that. But it just doesn’t seem fair that I was finally, at age 33, figuring out some big fundamental part of who I am and learning how to work around it and then (allow me to be a little hyperbolic for a moment) and then an apocalypse started.

CJ Dotson has been reading sci fi, fantasy, and horror for as long as she can remember, and writing for almost that long. She works in a bookstore, co-hosts a SFF book club, and is a wife, mother, and stepmom. In her spare time she paints and bakes. Visit cjdotsonauthor.squarespace.com

Not today – B F Jones

I woke up to smell of tress and bananas and oxygen, to a sing song, from little birds. To the patter of hungry toddlers, demanding bread and honey, to the soft purring of a congested husband, demanding my body pressed against his. One of the cats paws my chest and it hurts to be alive some days. There’s a pool out there full of water and lilies. I float on one of them, my body spongy like a star fish, my mind gone to the good place. The nebulous place of stars and clouds, foamy with delight, dewy with love and the warm embrace of dear ones, muscles and tendons and flesh. Hot breath garlicky and sweet. Red wine running through our veins as we hold hands tight, squishing our pulse, making sure that it is here. Yes it is here.

I woke up to the song of neighbours, guitars and banjos and flutes, their hope rising through the air, their feuds, suddenly forgotten. Not today, revenge, not today.

I hold a small bird in my hand, its tiny body nested against my palm. The cat brought it in, proud, but I said no, not quite, give it back. Not today.

I lay awake at night with the weight of my dreams, suffocating me. The water lilies have come for me and they cover my hairy body. I have become an animal and I am chasing my dreams, my aunty Virginia had warned me about the furry family legend. You can’t escape it she’d say, wagging her strappy tail. We’re better off this way, she said, dislodging a small bone from between her teeth, curling up on a pile of skeletons and purring with the satisfaction of the mighty. I know best my dear one, yes I know best. We can try and try and try but only this way we can succeed. Come and join the tribe my dear one. There are small ones to eat and medium ones to fry and big ones to fight. Don’t run away my darling I know best. But I run away. Traps everywhere, traps traps traps. Sweet old ladies turned devil. I run on that springboard and jump from high. There must be a way out from this pool that I swim over, my body a hovercraft of hope, not weighing anything anymore; I have turned into one of those little brids from the tree that I see from my window when I wake and say not today, not today. I bake some bread with misfortune and expired yeast, it rises and burst, giggling as it splatters my kitchen walls. I mop it with the last of my hope, I polish the wall with fierceness and anger and undying love while I scream and shout not today, not today. I wake up with a small bird on my chest, it’s eaten the cat and vomits a soft cloth of comfort, I wrap myself in it and I go back to sleep. Small birds sing song as I doze, not today, not today.

Mother Love – Anne Hamilton

If she’s filled that bloody commode again, I’ll swing for her…Deep breath, deep breath. Onetwothreefourfivesixseveneightnineten. Knock. Do it. Ugh: overnight breath and lavender water, and what have I said about the electric heater? Look at the old witch, perched there like a Buddha in a hairnet and curlers, tasselled bedspread up to her neck. Ask how she is, Mags, go on, see which laugh we get this morning: brittle, hollow, tinny, tinkling, woe-is-me. Depends whether she’s showcasing her indigestion or her constipation. Or her ‘little bit’ of diabetes. For God’s Sake. None of them’ll stop her guzzling tea and toast – once we’ve got through the rigmarole of me offering and her refusing. Give the old girl her due, she times her hesitation to a tee: well, if you’ve already gone to the trouble…I’ll try a little…Oh! Fuck’s sake. She always notices I can’t be arsed to iron her napkins, one of the six white linen squares, plus silver ring, my dear mother brings when she visits. My paper ‘serviettes’ are ‘common’. Being a perfectionist is such a curse, Margaret, such a blessing you don’t suffer. Ya-di-ya-di-ya. I get through these fourteen day ‘holidays’ pretending to be a below-stairs extra in Downton Abbey. Brown toast is wrong. White toast is wrong. Sodding Michelin-approved truffle-dusted artisan focaccia is wrong. But she’ll suffer it: tsk, tsk – you flighty young folk (mother, dearest, I’m forty-six) are too ready to waste things… She lived through the war, don’t you know, all gravy-browning legs, dried-egg canapes, and people today not knowing what war is. Yeah, right, Ma, all those thousands of whinging Syrians should Keep Calm and Go Home, shouldn’t they? I try smiling, honest I do, but she shrinks away as if I’m baring my teeth, all the better to eat her with. Breakfast takes longer than a medieval orgy, and I’m up and down the stairs like an Olympian. I lose all kinds of pounds when she’s here, running around pretending I’ve a book balanced on my head, lowering my shoulders and straightening my back, just as the eighty quid a session osteopath recommends. Now she’s off on one about my new-fangled dishwasher scratching her manky old crockery (yep, she brings her own Royal Albert china along with the napkins). Is it a hair (my slovenliness) or a crack (my cack-handedness)? Whatever. There’re always spares in the special antique shop, aka The Salvation Army, down town. It’d break my caring mother’s heart, you see, if she didn’t have a full dinner service to leave my can’t-do-any-wrong doctor brother when she carks it. Oh, no blame on him, he’s one of the best, my little bro. Patient. Kind. Cheery. I’m the mardy one. S’pose I’m not really blaming Her Highness, here, either…well, alright, I am, but what can you do, eh? We get on fine as long as there’s a respectable social distance – 300 miles usually – between us. And like I tell myself, for better or worse she is my mum.

White Out – Mark Anthony Smith

In these times of a Virus other things spread like germs too. I couldn’t even get some milk today. I can substitute peanut butter or jam for butter. I can go without marmite and tinned mushrooms because I don’t like them. But black tea makes me angry with its sharp taste. I drink tea sans milk and forget about biscuits. This panic buying tests my patience.

I sit cooped up. I do that anyway since half of my neck has been removed. On Social media, there are young people being arrested in The Costas. They’ve only just become legal to drink and no threat of illness will change that. The Spanish Police are not in a British holiday spirit though. The beaches and bars are on strictest lockdowns. The teenagers learn the hard way to a thunderous applause from other tourists from their balconies.

In the papers, schools are headlining to be closed indefinitely. Home schooling will test some parents and kids if the PlayStation doesn’t substitute the clammer of maths and arguments. It is novel, being at home, but for how long now the cinemas have closed? People are worrying about the lack of pay too.

There are increased Road traffic accidents as people worry about whether they’re symptomatic or worrying too much – or not enough. We have seen regular outbreaks of violence. A lady fights on the path because her Ford has been pranged and she doesn’t have her usual patience with other things going on. A man fights openly, in a Supermarket, for the last toilet rolls. He is apprehended. But not before he bombs those that arrest him with boxes of man-sized tissues. People are not thinking straight.

The streets are deathly quiet. I can hear my teabag plop. The shops are either closed or an open free for all. It’s soon gutted. I am gutted. I sip. The tea is bearable as I watch another Apocalyptic film and forget. What do they say about real life and fiction? I chuckle. I try to forgive the behaviours of those who panic buy like vultures picking off carrion on The Serengeti. The credits roll. This is how I escape.

Mark Anthony Smith was born in Hull. This is his second furnishing in The Cabinet of Heed. His Horrors appear in Anthologies from Eerie River, Red Cape Publishing and Nocturnal Sirens. ‘Hearts of the matter’, a book of poetry, is available on Amazon. Facebook: Mark Anthony Smith – Author; Twitter: MarkAnthonySm16

I See Your Looks – Shannon Savvas

I see your looks. I hear your whispers. I don’t bloody miss a single raised eyebrow or purse of lips. Why the hell she has to be so slow. She knows I’m in a hurry, I rang and told her I’d pick her up at ten. Hell, I left it in big letters on the whiteboard in her kitchen. I arrive and she’s not dressed, or has forgotten where her handbag is (like she’ll even need the screwed up, used tissues and Elizabeth Arden lipstick she’s been using for the past ten years), or goddam it she needs the toilet because she took a laxative this morning. Yes, yes, I’ve caught the bloody hell head shakes, the exchange of tongues in cheeks between you and your brother. She’s getting old, clumsy, slow, whiney, bad-tempered, unstable, a hoarder, forgetful, bloody awkward, stubborn just to piss us off. Fill in any other blanks you want. And yes, I am getting old and no, trust me none of the above is deliberate. But some are downright wilful – oh and do you know why I’ve turned into a hoarder? I’ve turned into a hoarder because I’ve lived long enough to know that the minute you find something you like, it disappears – off the shelves, end of range suddenly or company gone bust. That’s why I stock those 3-ply linen-like napkins, the jars of peanut butter which are the only decent ones in the shops, the shampoo to strengthen and thicken your hair because another great boon of age is thinning hair. No one is going to catch me out. Not you, not your brother and for sure not this pandemic – who the hell knew? Trump didn’t (hah!) so why would anyone else, but you see, I am prepared. Who’s laughing now, suckers? Whatever’s left over at the end, you can bloody burn it or bury it with me (because who cares what you choose, I will be dead and won’t know – just make sure there are no priests because that I will know). And what about her friends? Where have they gone? Where? They’ve bloody died. Or I’ve shed them like old skins one by one until there is no one. I got tired of the effort. Simple. The return was no longer worth it. Years of seeing and listening and accommodating before I realised the was no reciprocity. A reciprocity failure of a lifetime. Some days, I just want to be left in peace, be allowed to fade gently, to die in my own time and way. Other days, the days after your visits, I want to live long enough to see you fail incomprehensibly at the mercy of your children, to watch as it dawns on you that I was right, about it all, and that none of this was willing or purposeful or wanted. I want to see you betrayed by family and body as I have been. Yes, I do want to see that. No, I don’t.

The Cry of the Damned – K D Field

We’ve been talking about this here in El Compartimento over the course of this Spanish lock down. Have we been such bad stewards of all the abundance we’ve been given that this virus a big shot across the bow? There are indication that it might not be far from the mark.

In China, during the height of the pandemic there, they had to shutter factories and chemical plants. And suddenly, many cities in China had their first sunny days in years. But it will not last. And Venice – without all those pesky tourists, has shown photos of their canals running clear.

We are the pandemic that has been relentlessly attacking the planet for more than a century. – since the dawn of the industrial revolution. We are the virus that she and all her inhabitants have suffered and died from as we marched forward with unabated greed.

People quote the bible to justify their actions. Genesis 1:26 “And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth.” But if we are made in God’s image – or the deity of your choice – we aren’t very god-like. Dominion over things makes you responsible for them. But we have cared only for ourselves; never looking at the long term and never asking ‘Why’

On Twitter they ask ‘How could this happen?’ And I think ‘How could this not?’ I’m not a religious person but the bible doesn’t just give us dominion over all things on earth, it also says ‘As you sow, so shall you reap.’ We are reaping the seeds we have sown. Not in the way a televangelist will tell us, or that abomination FOX News, but in our inability to see where it would all lead.

Governments are putting together bailout packages. $$$. And billionaires are the monkeys running the circus. Sound and fury and short-term thinking. The world has fundamentally changed overnight. We can’t buy bribe Mother Nature, who has more integrity in a drop of the tears she’s been shedding for us, than all the dirty politicians combined. And she will win. She always plays the long game. We’ve been screwing with nature for too long and its tired of us. What better way to get rid of what’s killing you than to find something that will kill it? As humans, we should understand that – we live in a state of war.

The utter incompetence in dealing with this crisis comes from those we’ve elected to lead us through it. We must ask ‘Are they the fools are or are we?’ Because we’ve put our livelihoods, our very survival in the hands of the unqualified, the celebrated, the cults of personality; instead of those with decades of study and expertise. Listen to the politicians on tv these days. War talk, for sure, and I get it at this point. But maybe what we need to do is declare a truce with our planet and start treating it like it matters. Maybe we should do that and pray it’s not too late.

KD Field is an American writer of fiction, narrative short story, and nonsense. Originally from Seattle, she currently resides in Valencia Spain. You can check out her blog: at vivaespanamovingtospain.com

Stupor – Ryle Lagonsin

ALL I EVER DO THESE DAYS IS SLEEP

i dreamt a news reporter tells me that a parasite on the ground looks for me for it needs to find something or it can find something from the atmosphere to supply it with what it needs. i dreamt three times at the same time i went to sleep. i had been listening to raymond carver a few hours before i dreamt i am listening to a podcast of his where he talks about life in general but more specifically life without anyone to pray to. in the same dream i saw a huddle of people and a little girl dressed in black behind the others raised her hand and said i don’t believe in god and the others gasped and they looked and the child’s mother said no child of mine can ever say there is no god. and then i dreamt of the same little girl dressed in black but we are not in a garden anymore. we are in an airport and a naked man is seated on a flimsy chair in the middle of a soulless lobby and he says to the girl: child come here come near me and the little girl walks closer. he says: child do you believe you have a heart? and the girl nods and he says: that right there is proof that there is GOD. he says: that there is air to fill your lungs that your heart continues to pump and that all the cycles go on repeating inside you prove that there is GOD. i turn my face to look behind me for one second for a reason i cannot remember now and when i turn back again the little girl is gone but in her place are two huddles of people separated by a few feet from one another. one group with more people than the other. i could have counted them but i would not know regardless how many people were in either group they are separated by colour. and a few feet away from both of them the same man is speaking still but he is standing now a microphone in front of him. he is dressed now jeans and a light blue button-down he is saying: child learn to pray ‘cause when they come after you the only thing you’d be able to run to is one name. it would do you right to drop to your knees and learn how to pray he said. one person from the group whose colour is the man’s same colour came closer. the man said: once i ran to my teacher frightened but she said hug that man child not me not my colour she said. you cannot hug me was what she said he said. and then i stirred awake and i was in the dark again and in the dark i wondered where my phone was since something told me when you wake this will all make sense. but then i find that carver is still playing in the podcast i wasn’t hearing and i was still inside my head.

Porcupines – Sara Magdy Amin

I had read it somewhere – in some nature magazine, was it? Ah, maybe I had heard it on the radio some time ago last week when Peter was fiddling about with arbitrary things around the house; a futile exercise of boredom that absolutely makes me squirm, but all the while, I still choose to ignore – that porcupines struggle to keep each other warm in times of winter.

I look to my right at Peter and Noah in their state of slumber. A fascinating view of chests rising and falling in such synchrony, inhale, exhale; wisps of existence cutting through the silence of the air in cyclical waves. Such peacefulness, I think, such delight it is, when a father and son share warmth and proximity.

But what was it about porcupines and winter?

Ah, yes. The spikes.

Peter, for as long as I can remember, had always wanted to have children. I recall the day we found out we were expecting (such jubilance flew out of him he almost knocked me over – I had inaudibly shed a few tears in the bathroom beforehand – and came out to join his frenzy), he was, to say the least, tremendously ecstatic.

Porcupines. Three in a row. Our spikes maiming each other, slashing each other across our warm bodies, drawing blood and mixing it in a joyful union. We have not yet learnt to keep safe distances. Since news of the outbreak was announced we have been ever so scarred. Noah (I can picture him laughing now) recently developed such thirst for human contact. In our seclusion, a party of three was formed. Our roles, as parents, cultivated in this arrangement, and he, in his tiny world, was thus able to practice such charm upon us. The mother, myself, the father, Peter, and little Noah, delicate little Noah, were together. Here, now, celebrating immediacy in our former detachments.

I had often times found it hard to play that role – the mother that is – thinking back to the first few months where I was often times drenched in perpetual anger, my womb aching, bosom sore, in a state of fury at my anatomy, constantly reprimanding Peter for simply existing as a man, (unaccompanied, singular, free, human). I found it hard to be that abundant giver and provide godly offerings in god-like ways.

I shift to lie on my side. Dawn is almost cracking through, her bright threads imposing through the darkness, resting over our limp forms, birds chirping nonchalantly in recognition of something above our worldly perceptions. Do they know the world is unfolding? Have they comprehended how to live only temporarily and chant their way through it all? The newspaper yesterday said that death toll rose to a thousand and thirty-five people. Those poor birds, that darned influenza, snipping away already temporary lives, making away with their chants.

Noah’s eyes open. He yawns and draws in near, running his jagged barbs into my skin. I nourish him back to sleep and kiss his tiny little forehead.

Cabinet Of Heed SOC Drawer 31.03

Stream Of Consciousness Drawer One

Untitled – Carla Halpin

Mine is a pocket of calm in these crazy waters. It isn’t so bad. Yes, the four walls are not very far away. But here in the eaves, the angles of the roof are casting interesting shadows in the mid-day sun, which I never noticed before. How intriguing my now defunct calendar on the wall seems? And at any moment, papers strewn will be hit with organisation but with 365 hours in the day now, there’s plenty of time to organise them later. The boundaries of the weeks are blending. But if I notice one new thing every day, then that’s a change, isn’t it? The fresh spring air is pouring in my window. Pop music drifting up from downstairs, as planned, to fill the house with noise and people and movement. How clever we are to manage to unlearn all the natural things keep us sane, like noticing, like music. I never usually stop long enough to notice out my window. The trees are budding in clusters of tiny pink, growing in patterns mirroring neurons in my brain. I guess both are lit up with this moment of really looking. I do notice the change of this season out my window- but from the sounds. It’s time for the shrieking of the foxes. They started up again last night. It’s nice to hear the world moving outside. I’ve never met the people on the opposite side of the pink flowers -the neighbours – but I know of their movements from their sounds. Someone is very keen in woodwork in what was once a daily irritation. Now it’s comforting. He’s busy at work, and I like to imagine he’s happy, because he does it every day. And I can’t see any fruits of his labour. The fruits of his labour must be inside him, and possibly in his wife as it keeps him out the house. Next door to them is a dog. I’ve never seen it. But I know when it’s happy or sad by the tone of its bark. Sometimes I want to rush over there and comfort it, but it’s never long before someone gets there first. The fence sways in the wind; it’s soon going to topple. And although I’ve been told that wouldn’t be a great thing, I can’t wait for this dog’s face to appear and see if it matches my imagination. Black, scraggly and with a waggy tail with a long curtain of black hair. We’re not so far apart, really. The south aspect holds an entirely different scene. It must be the only time in my life I’m glad trees have been chopped down as it opened up another direction. I can see a ceiling to floor window in a faraway house. It might be a bedroom, maybe with long curtains that float in the wind. I can’t see in, but yet I still wonder if they can see me as I wave my arms. I could write words in the air. Whatever happened to walkie talkies? That would be perfect right now.

Carla Halpin is an editor who lives in the New Forest where she writes poetry and flash fiction. Her work has appeared in Anti-Heroin Chic , A Story in 100 Words and The Cabinet of Heed. You can find her on twitter @CarlaHalpin where she posts regularly as part of the very short story community.

 

New Pressures in the Time of Corona – Laura Besley

I watch my 5yo tearing around the garden and my 2yo trying his best to keep up and I think: can I do this? Can I keep them entertained for the next who-knows-how-long?

I am a mother who dreads the school holidays. Not because I don’t love my kids, but because it’s a reminder of the fact that I can’t always cope. A reminder than I’m not the mother I wanted to be; I’m not all-sacrificing, putting their every need before my own; I’m not able to endlessly come up with fun games to play and roleplays involving superheroes; I’m not able to think of a million different fun things to make out of egg boxes; I’m not able to give up everything I am for them. Sometimes I wonder why I should. And then I feel bad.

Last summer I had them for four weeks on my own. Taking away weekends, that’s only 20 days. When you put it like that it doesn’t sound like very much. And I feel ashamed that I dreaded those days and didn’t always cope very well. I feel should’ve enjoyed it more.

And now? Now I’m supposed to homeschool my 5yo. Teach him phonics, improve his reading level, teach him Maths, do PE with him, be creative with him, all the while making sure my 2yo doesn’t break, wreck, or scribble on anything my 5yo is doing. This new pressure, this new homeschooling pressure, is just another thing that parents are now having to contend with. It’s too much. I know people mean well, but I’m being inundated with messages from people sending me things to do with my kids. I might rue these words if people stop sending me things, but it’s overwhelming. Like I haven’t got enough to get my head around with all the new rules in place and my brain working very hard to block the panic and worry about what might happen if my kids, or anyone else I know, gets the bug.

I’ve decided, for my own sanity and those around me, to take a big step back. I will continue reading to my kids; I will continue asking them questions, trying to get them to work things out for themselves; I will continue playing in the garden with them; I will continue letting them watch TV. I will do all the things I normally do with them. I will keep them safe. That’s my only job right now.

 

These Days – Jordana Connor

Beep beep beep… “And now, for the 5:30 news update.” Christ, still in the middle of the apocalypse I guess. I’m going to lie here in bed for 10 more minu- oh. Getting poked in the ribs. Must be my turn to make the coffee. This rug needs a vacuum. Is that a spider?! Oh no. Just a feather. Whew. Come on cat – I know you want to get out for a sniff of the garden.

Okay but don’t dash under my feet. If I fall down the stairs and crack my head open, bleed to death slowly on the little Persian rug, who will feed you top of the line science diet food, and trim your claws? Door open, (cat out! Why do they always flee out of an opened door like they’ve been trapped for days?) kettle filled, kettle on. Dishwasher emptied. Coffee in plunger. Mugs out. Sift and discard contents of the downstairs litter tray. Wash tray. Wash hands. God, the interminable scrubbing of hands. I’m starting to feel like I’m prepping for surgery 20 times a day.

Mugs are full and steaming, and the trick now is not to spill too much on the ascent up the stairs. Ahhhhh… made it. Mornings are nice. Blinds up, blue sky and wild parrots screeching a greeting to a new day. I like the sitting, propped up on our pillows, coffee cooling, phones in hand. Powerful, expensive (germ covered) conduits to the latest in these, The End Times. Or just a temporary foray into misanthropy. Depends on your outlook, I guess.

The news is terrible, but it’s the sports news that winds me up the most. “A bunch of grown adults, who have dedicated their lives to playing a game, played a game yesterday, which nobody got to watch. Sad! Some of them won, some of them lost, here are some meaningless statistics for you, conveyed in a breathlessly entertained tone, so you are fooled into thinking it all matters.” It doesn’t.

Coffee drunk, eyelids finally unglued. Time for a walk. Better find some clean shorts. Where are my sports socks? Why does this hair tie look chewed? (Damn cats!) Ok, off I go. Can’t stay in this house for months on end with no reprieve. Pretty sure we’re allowed out for walks as long as we don’t go near anyone else. Fine by me.

God there’s a lot of poo on the pavements here. Who did THAT? Hoping for possum, but who knows? Australia is full of weird and wonderful creatures that crap on the pedestrian infrastructure. Always will do, no doubt.

Oh – here comes an older couple. They’re darting their eyes at me.
Should smile and look unthreatening. Try to look responsible and well. Look perky. Pick your feet up.

Oooo – that’s a pretty flower.

Shit. I coughed. Poor things scuttled down a driveway. Feel guilty.
This all sucks and I’m sick of it already. But not SICK sick! I wonder if I have enough toilet paper…

 

Come to Heel – Charlie Sanderson

We walk seven miles or more the dog wrapped up in mud and sprung coil like across the fields, through trees, the wind howling banshee like against our waterproof trousers and fleece, the ground beneath our feet tantamount to constant change and love like a warm cushion between us softens the blow of the way the land lies right now, this way. She won’t come to heel for long enough, a herd of deer, red flag to a bull, only now she waits longer before she bolts at them, old enough to see the danger now, of more than one, creatures in packs aren’t so safe these days. When your eyes get a little wiser.

The road finally brings us home against the backdrop of field upon field edged in hedgerow upon hedgerow. The odd mansion house for the rich and famous types. Folk who like to live in the city and come here to shoot deer. We do laugh at how even they won’t survive this time around, silent killer, invisible man hunter. We shouldn’t laugh. But there’s little else to do. So, we laugh and we walk our way on and through.

At home the eggs sizzle in the pan and the home-made bread almost burns in the broken toaster, I tell you about the omelettes in Singapore how they have them with sweet chilli sauce there too and raised eyebrows smile back at me across the table you cut in half to fit the room. How I love you.

After we eat and you clear the sides of crumbs and swear at the toaster and the random shit radio six play on a Saturday afternoon, your dad walks past the window. Shoulders hunched against the climate of life right now. I don’t know what to do. So, I break the rules and open the door and make him a cup of tea. And as you walk out with him, I wonder love, who will live and who will die? I think of Captain Pickard last night, taking to the space ship crew, “Every single time you say goodbye to someone you cannot know if you will ever see them again, this is no different”.

We can balance our lives on the head of a pin, but maybe some of us will fall too far in to climb back out again. It’s all just change though isn’t it? I keep breathing and dropping to my heart and feeling all that panic and love and hope and regret. How irrational people always thought I was when I was so lost in my fear of death. And now it is so palpable and yet, I do not feel afraid exactly. You are the mistress of your own misery. You say that to the dog when she pulls on the lead and chokes herself, or walks headlong into the stick I’m swinging in front of me as we walk. She needs to come to heel. We all do though, don’t we?

 

I Feel Weird – J L Corbett

“I feel weird. Do you feel weird?” I asked my husband earlier today. He also feels weird.

I’m not as worried about him as I was seven days ago. Seven days ago, he was sweating through his clothes and coughing violently. He groaned to himself and mumbled that his existence was pain. I held off calling 111 until he threw up blood. It took half an hour for them to transfer me to a medical professional, and during that time I stood at our bedroom window, staring at the world from which we would soon be quarantined. I wanted to drive him to the hospital (even though I haven’t passed my test yet), but I knew they weren’t letting infected people in. I wanted to call somebody over for help, but anyone who crossed our threshold would be risking their health.

I listened to the hold music and felt very alone.

I felt tears forming, which annoyed me. I told myself to get a fucking grip – I am his wife now, and I need to act like it. I am the person who needs to steer the ship alone when he’s incapacitated.

As each day passes, the virus loosens its grip on his body. There’s been no more vomited blood. Quarantine has been an odd mixture of anxiety and boredom.

On day five, he was well enough for a short walk around the park. We were out for less than an hour, but I think it was the highlight of the day for both of us. He seemed elated at being outdoors and around people (at a distance, of course). He was still very weak, but able to have a conversation and a walk.

This morning, I spent three hours in the garden whilst he slept. I cut down the enormous ugly bush that’s been an eyesore in our garden since we moved in two years ago. I blunted the multi-tool in the process, so I had to cut down the rest of it with a handsaw. It was tedious and now my arms hurt. It killed some time and some pent-up energy though, and also that hideous bush.

After lunch, I called my boss and told her that the quarantine period had been extended from seven to fourteen days since we last spoke. She hurriedly told me to take another week off. She was practically begging me not to return too quickly. After I hung up, I felt dejected. Is it too dramatic to say that I feel rejected from society? Maybe society isn’t even a thing anymore.

We live up north. I’m supposed to be in pub in London right now, drinking with friends I haven’t seen since last summer. Next month I’m meant to board a plane to Ireland to see some other friends. My family lives down south, but my stepdad is almost seventy years old and has health conditions. So, when will I get to see my mum again?

I feel weird.

J.L. Corbett is the founder and editor of Idle Ink, an online magazine of curious fiction. Her short stories have been featured in MoonPark Review, Paragraph Planet, Schlock! Webzine, TL;DR Women’s Anthology: Carrying Fire, The Cabinet of Heed, STORGY Magazine and others. She owns more books than she can ever possibly read and doesn’t get out much. She can be found on twitter: @JL_Corbett and has a website: http://www.jlcorbett.org

 

Meanderings – Stella Turner

I follow the arrows but it’s not the way I want to go! I’m feeling anxious. I go against the flow now feeling guilty. Will I be stopped? I think I’m too near the woman choosing yogurts. She’s looking daggers at me. I want to run to the toilet roll shelves but no let’s not be too disappointed too soon. Why is that man looking at me? He’s with a woman maybe his wife no she looks too old; his mother? No far too young. Probably I’m giving him too much eye contact. I do that. Is it a fault? Four loaves I take two. Is that selfish? See a friend. We stand the recommended two metres apart. I’m happier with feet, metric is for the young ones. It looks six foot. I was her bridesmaid forty years ago, her groom stands beside her. Isn’t he asthmatic, at risk? She has a scarf covering her mouth he and I dressed as normal. I’ve left my man in the car. He’s diabetic, definitely at risk. I’m warned to keep him at home. I would have driven myself but he wanted to get out so he drove. Didn’t the email from the company CEO say or was it government advice one person per family only to enter the shop. Luckily no items out of reach else I’d need help. I’m short, vertically challenged. Social distancing makes it hard to ask for help. My friend says she was dreading coming here today me too. Can’t find eggs ask a store employee picking for home deliveries, the lucky customers who stay home, stay safe. She apologises, none, I say aren’t the hens laying? My daughter has a hen, Betty; I could barter Betty’s daily egg for the packet of Paracetamol I found on the shelf if we were allowed to visit each other. I miss my grandson could try skyping him. No toilet rolls. I pay the bill with plastic. I’ve always said I’d never pay for food on credit. Plastic is safer than coins and notes says the experts. First time plastic is good for the planet! Huge change in habits no more big food bills, no more waste. We’ll see! The cashier smiles weakly as I say thanks for coming to work. I bet she’s thinking stay home old biddy. Don’t infect me! I wheel the trolley to the car. Open the boot and load the three carrier bags for life. Miffed that I had to take the risk. Next week I’ll run the gauntlet again unless it all changes.

 

Coronavirus Held a Press Conference, and Crushed It – Michael Wade

Thank you. Goodness, what a turnout!

Yes. I realize you’re looking at a microdroplet of snot. It was explained to us that TV requires a picture. We’re smaller than the wavelength of what you call visible light, so…Does anyone have a substantive question.

Right. Thank you for phrasing this important issue so forthrightly.

We need to acknowledge that our core interests won’t always align. I’m a virus. I’m pretty militant about viral rights. Not to get into labels or name-calling, but let’s be frank. Certain organisms are fighting tooth and nail every day against our very right to exist.

You speak of hundreds of thousands of – uh, infected humans. Infected. Do you understand how offensive that language is?

You speak of thousands of host, human, deaths, and the possibility of millions, and I hear the self-righteous outrage in your tone. Do you even want to hear our side?

Good. In five of your milliliters of blood, in every infected human, your word, hundreds of millions of us exist. Each wanting nothing more than our natural rights. That’s all. Well, here’s your headline, ladies and gentlemen. Approximately all of these virions are dead now, or soon will be.

Get your heads around that. Your languages may not have words for the numbers of dead I’m trying to describe.

Look, we’re sympathetic to your issues. But this focus on what I would absolutely call the acceptably low host loss associated with our incredibly successful program…Well. Let’s just say work will be required to mesh our perspectives.

Yes. You, sir.

I can’t speak to that. You’d need to talk to those viruses. What you call common cold of course refers to many different viruses. The question of whether we’re just the common cold pumped up by left-wing hysteria, whatever that is, reflects a multi-cellular organismic arrogance I find beyond insulting.

Ma’am…

I was briefed on that, yes. We agree strongly that damage to your economy and health from so-called social distancing is extremely concerning. This is one area where we can make a lot of headway together.

Take your cue from us! We know the odds are against us, but in the meantime we are having a ball together in your sera and fluids! Why should we be having all the fun in these challenging times?

In the back. Yes.

Well, we are mutating constantly. We seek, in good faith, the ideal virulence, where you, our cherished biological colleagues, suffer only the most minor physical inconvenience. All I can tell you is that we are working tirelessly for our mutual benefit.

Excuse me? Right. Folks, sorry, this sort of thing is new for all of us, and I’m being told we’re experiencing some mucus degradation, and will need to close.

Time for just one more…right, you sir. Front row. Yes, you, with the barrel chest and the large nostrils.

I couldn’t hear you. I wonder if you could come closer. Yes. Closer…

 

On the Platform – Joyce Wheatley

We stand disconnected, vulnerable, uneasy. Eyes dart toward the western sky. I’m tired of floating erect in these 9-to-5 fatigues, impatient to get on with whatever’s going to happen.

We’re awaiting rescue. I don’t know why or from what. No one speaks of it. My companions look familiar but I don’t recall their names. The middle-aged man in a suit cycles up and stops. If I’d taken my bike today, I’d be home by now, but the tire’s flat. Thus, I’m on the platform.

“Listen.” The cyclist opens his book, “You don’t have to stand under the silver tree to darken.” Shadows haunt his face. Street lights buzz. Across the street, St. Gregory’s stained glass windows arch behind him. Lindens shiver, leaves sparking belly-up under the moon.

“Let me tell you … we are standing ….”

Balloons, captioned to burst, hover out of his mouth. Like deer frozen in headlights or cows lying down before rain, our notable behavior is “squirming,” anxious and uncertain whether or not disaster is coming. We shuffle and hum, tweet and pray for safe return to our nests. I want to get home, but I’m curious about the end.

Wind gusts a sea green bottle rolling, cluttering the sidewalk. I snatch it up and I Spy With My Little Eye a paper note inside, visible through glass curved like an old Pepsi bottle. “Time’s running out, and no one is coming to save you.”

I wonder what happened to Hope? There’s a place right here beside me.

People on the platform drift and shift. I want to connect with someone, but, if Hope doesn’t arrive, who? Ambitious, a woman slithers to the center for the prize spot. Either she covets the safety of belonging or she’s climbing the ladder of success. If you don’t want to fall off, step away from the edge, but my nature avoids the middle like a plague. Give me drama—sharks, high seas adventure, a great white whale! … and such. An eye patch swaddles my left eye. A red scarf bandanas my head. I mount a seahorse, whooping “Ahoy, Matey!” Or give me Apollinaire so I can fly.

No one speaks. Waves crash in, shattering the quiet anticipation of fear. We’re drowning in the deluge, drenched on the platform, and then we swim, like a school of fish, swerve and plunge, in and out, circling to the depths until the gushing slows to a stream, flows to drizzle and the drizzle stutters to a drip.

“Save me,” a dolphin in a suit pleads. I embrace the wounded creature, “You have strength,” I say,” and flop him back into the waves. “And courage.”

On the platform, resuscitated, we rise one by one, and shed our scales and fins. We stand together, waiting to board, and wave goodbye.

It’s beautiful, the love that flows from the ocean.

 

Need – Samantha Costanzo Carleton

Elizabeth picked up the habit of lighting candles from her grandmother and so she did that now because why not? Her grandmother had lit candles in church every week and prayed after dropping quarters in the half-empty metal box attached to the table of votives and as the sound echoed across the quiet church Elizabeth and her sister would stage-whisper arguments over who got to light the candle in part because it was the only time they were ever allowed to handle something as dangerous as fire on the end of a long wooden stick but also because they knew there was a certain kind of honor in the task and a solemn need to take this Very Seriously because the candle was an offering or maybe a plea, but anyways their grandmother would shush them and drop more change in the box so they could each have a candle and honestly, they never had to argue in the first place because didn’t they always need more than one light? There were always more things to ask, more people who needed healing or hope or good luck, so their grandmother told them who the candles were for and Elizabeth would do her sworn duty to pray for that person but also sneak in in a request for help on a math test or patience with her sister or world peace or for God to forgive the bullies that made fun of her hair, the biggest ask of all, and she would feel good because she was being selfless and asking for help for someone so clearly less fortunate than she. Anyways, lighting a candle seemed like something that would maybe help her feel alright again today and so she struck a flimsy match and touched it to the wick of the tiny little tea light that smelled like vanilla and chemical lemons from one of those self-care subscription boxes she had gotten for a few months and then cancelled when she got bored, it wasn’t even holy, not that she was convinced the ones in church had necessarily been blessed, either. Today she did not try to pray or really think to because she was focused on the ritual at hand — she lit her candle and stared, closed her eyes and took a deep breath, filled herself with air and tilted her head back instead of downward like she did inside the churches, and the prayer still didn’t come though something inside her squirmed like pleasepleaseplease and yet this weirdly-scented tea light flickering atop a paper mountain on her desk still felt Very Serious, still an offering or plea or desperate shout to be seen in the midst of all this, this mess, which would definitely eat her if not for that tentative, wavering flame and the smell of vanilla and fake lemons and something in her that actually felt like rest to scare it off. It was enough.

Samantha Costanzo Carleton is a marketing copywriter by day and creative writer by night. She lives in Boston and is working on her first novel, based in part on her childhood in a Cuban family. You can find her on Twitter at @smcstnz.

 

Little Flower – Cyndie Randall

I know at least 20 of them these days, but Angie was the first to breathe on me. A haunted friend. She drives my body now much of the time, curls up pained in the evening and pops peppermint candy like pills to get the torture of men out of her mouth. She wears wrinkled clothes, no makeup, writes poetry nobody cares to read. Therapists don’t believe in her and she’s fine with that. Feels invisible anyway. Her and I have our own dystopian trauma choir, all ages and genders lined up from present day all the way back to the crib. Seven times I pleaded with the Lord to take them away. The Lord told me, You must forgive seventy-seven times seven times, and then He sent seven more plagues. I think we need new numbers. Little flower, just take one more step, I hear. Just one more step. I spend most nights dreaming I am waste deep in snow. The moon asks, What are you doing, little flower? I scream at him, that moon. There is a man up inside there telling me which way to drag my hope next but he never tells me why. He is my only light, so I go. I do it. I pour sweat. I will turn any trick for water or a biscuit, any trick for a try on the love machine. Stop calling me little flower, I think. There is no one here by that name. Do you even know our name? When will I wake? No one listens when I say what I need. Here is a screw. Here is a screwdriver. I promise I will hold still. I’ve got about 20 holes to choose from, so take your pick and start somewhere. Or get me a mirror. I’ll do it myself! I’ll do it myself, and sing alto and soprano and bass and a nice tenor for you then. Ask Sal. He’s got the best voice of us all. Deep, mellow like a hum or a storm just starting out. A storm planning on screaming no where and killing no one. Sal has all our blueprints. You can ask him anything and he’ll tell you. If I am the flower, he is the sky and such a view he has. Sal, are you the moon? Are you the moon for us, my friend? Are you calling me little flower? Tell me how the story ends, Salvatore. Does Angie get her babies back? Does Evie close her legs? Will anyone come to untie Annie, heal the burns up her back? What do you see from way up there? Just my trail? Just the trail from my thick middle dragging, dragging through the snow in my childhood yard, longest chain there ever was linked back to that basement wall, training training training me. Go on, call me a little flower. Call me a flower all night long and we’ll do whatever you want ’til the sun comes up. Whatever you want, Lord, I mean moon, I mean dad.

Cyndie Randall works as a therapist and lives among the Great Lakes. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Crab Creek Review, MORIA, Okay Donkey, Whale Road Review, Boston Accent Lit, Yes Poetry, The Night Heron Barks, and elsewhere. Connect with her on Twitter @CyndieRandall or at cyndierandall.com

 

Cabinet Of Heed SOC Drawer 31.02

I Called You Last Night? Really? – Mike Nolan

In the safety of my cubicle, I set my sunglasses and coffee next to the keyboard and fell into my chair, firing up the computer and taking comfort in being able to dim the screen. I couldn’t do anything about the overhead lights. 

I’d consumed half a Nalgene bottle of carrot-ginger-tomato juice, a concoction I heard was the absolute best cure. Nothing beats simply going back to bed, but I couldn’t miss work.

Scrolling through e-mails, I banged away at the keyboard. I was halfway through my coffee when Beth’s eyes slowly peered over the cubicle wall. My hands froze above the keys. 

“You doing okay?” she asked.

“Yeah, hi, I mean, good morning.”

I shifted my tired eyes back to the screen, wondering if they looked as bloodshot as they felt.

“You’re all right then?”

My eyes returned to Beth, and I could feel them pulse slightly, keeping time with my heartbeat. I drained the last of my coffee. “Yeah, I’m fine. Why do you ask?”

“Well, after you called me last night—”

“I called—” Catching myself before I could complete the question, I changed gears. “Yeah . . . last night. I called.” 

Beth slipped around the cubicle wall and folded her arms across her chest. Perching on my desk, she lowered her head and searched my face, wearing the expression you make when you’re not sure if you should continue a conversation. “You remember calling me, right?”

“Of course,” I lied. 

“All right, I wasn’t sure. And . . . I was concerned. You sounded sort of sad.” Beth’s eyes radiated empathy. My heart stuttered. She was perfect—smart, beautiful, honest—and now that I was over Amy, I was ready to fall in love with someone else, like Beth. 

“Sad?” I forced the smile again, proving I was not sad. 

I was treading water and damn close to sinking. The only thing I remembered with any clarity about last night was celebrating the date, October twenty-third. I was proud of having survived a year since breaking up with Amy, although I wasn’t sure survived was the right word. Over the last few months, I’d been careful to use the phrase, “breaking up with Amy,” because it sounded mutual, like something we’d both agreed on. Truth was, Amy ended the relationship, and I’d been walking around with a gaping wound ever since. 

So last night, on the anniversary of our breakup, I decided to celebrate. To show how strong I had become, I watched Sleepless in Seattle, the old Tom Hanks–Meg Ryan vehicle that had been our go-to romantic comedy. Amy and I had the lines memorized. As a precaution, I deadened any possible pain with vodka. Normally, I wouldn’t do that; I didn’t even like vodka. But at the time, it made sense, in a self-abusive sort of way. I thought watching Sleepless in Seattle would be like me taking on the role of Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca, when Bogy asks Sam to play “As Time Goes By.” “Play it . . . if she can take it, I can take it.” It all turned out to be torture, just like it was for Bogart in the movie. He couldn’t take it, and neither could I.

I ended up flat on my back on the living room floor, semi-conscious, TV screen buzzing a monotone, and a half-empty bottle of vodka by my side. A tiny voice inside my head kept saying, “You know you still love Amy.” Which was why Tom Hanks, Meg Ryan, and I all got hammered drinking vodka.

“So we’re going out to dinner?” Beth asked.

“Right . . .” I was fishing, working hard to concentrate on the conversation and keep the smile on my face.

Amy walked by with a stack of files in her arms. Christ! Perfect timing. I froze for a second, trying to regain focus and remember what Beth just said. After missing a beat, I grinned. At some point this conversation was bound to crash and burn. I would die in a blazing fire.

“I’d like that,” Beth said.

This time I smiled for real, just like Tom Hanks. Maybe there would be a soft landing after all. For a second, neither of us were sure what to say next. 

I lowered my eyes. “I’ve got a confession to make.”

Beth drew closer. 

“I was, you know, just a little tipsy last night. I mean, when I called you.”

“But you meant to call me, right? You want to go out . . .”

“Oh, yes. Of course. Yes.”

Beth made a sympathetic “Mmmmm” sound, her eyes full of concern. I melted. She squeezed my arm, and I loved her even more. 

Beth leaned back on my desk. “And you’re doing okay now?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Really.” This was working.

“Well, we’ll talk about it at dinner, right?” She squeezed my arm again.

That sealed it. “It’ll be fun.” Now my smile was uncontrollable.

Before she returned to her own cubicle, Beth gave me a little hug, which actually made me shiver. 

Beth started to walk away and my breathing returned to normal. I focused on my computer as Amy walked by again, still carrying the same stack of files. Was she circling the office, waiting to talk without Beth around? Amy stopped next to my cubicle. I stood as she said, “You doing okay?” which made Beth stop and turn around.

“I’m fine. Ah, thanks for asking. How are you?” I fumbled for words as my eyes darted between Beth and Amy, and a hundred emotions—feelings that were supposed to be buried beneath a shallow pool of vodka—came rushing to the surface. Suddenly I was back to being Bogart, not Hanks. A sad, hungover Bogart.

“Good,” she said, nodding. “I just wanted to check, you know, after you called last night.”

 

Mike Nolan lives with his wife, Ann, in the little town of Port Angeles, in the far corner of Washington State, USA. He is the author of My Second Education, has a web presence at mikenolanstoryteller.com and can be reached at mikenolanstoryteller@olympus.net

The Cabinet Of Heed Issue 30 Contents Link

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Jars – Tammy Breitweiser

A shelf full of glass jars line the entire East wall. The shelves remind her of a floor plank from an old barn floor. Some jars are empty. In three jars there is yellow liquid of various shades. One is a swirly glittery rainbow like a unicorn threw up. Several
are various shades of green and blue.

One jar has an eye that follows you as you walk by. The window at the end of the room is cased in white and the glass is so clean you think there is nothing in the frame. The room is ten degrees warmer than the hallway. The room is narrow like a hallway and a half
with one wall with no adornment at all. A simple wood desk stands under the window.

The jars are mysteries of memories. Snippets of emotions showing life and light. Some of the jars hum. A couple emanate voices that run nonstop like an 8 year old excited to be in the car going anywhere. Others are fireworks and excitement.

She picks up a jar from the third plank and the eyeball stares at her from the top shelf.

She cups her hands around the embossed jar. She hears a language she does not know. The jar is warm and she holds it to her chest. It looks like she is holding a weight ready to do squats. She closes her eyes and it hums louder. The frequency matches hers infusing
the feeling of green meadows and the smell of grass.

Words and images flood her soul. She breathes in contentment. She feels herself skateboarding down a hill with wind in her face. The breeze whips her legs. There is a sense of freedom, peace, and joy like a dream.

Tears roll down her cheeks as she starts to sway back and forth. The humming softens steadily and then there is silence. She opens her eyes and places the jar back onto the shelf without the sound of glass and wood. She feels oddly like she has been on a ride at
an amusement park and now it is time to exit where the sign leads.

The jar sighs and starts to hum. It glows light and brightens with a surge and glows normally.

The jars are like tarot cards and feed off your intuition. One who is not aligned would hold the jar and it would turn black and hot and she would rush it back to the shelf where it came.

The afterglow lasts and the feeling is like being wrung out on a humid long distance run or a massage.

Another day a jar will reconnect her with the feelings of loved ones who have passed.

It all starts with a color.

Tammy Breitweiser is a writer and teacher who is a force of nature, an accidental inspirationalist, the keeper of the little red doors, and a conjurer of everyday magic who is always busy writing short stories. You can connect with Tammy through Twitter @TLBREIT

The Cabinet Of Heed Issue 30 Contents Link

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Pamela – Linda McMullen

They say I broke in, stole things, and ran screaming from the house. It’s a lie.

The truth is that the king’s chamberlain had long suspected Mr. Baer – a senior footman – of having sticky fingers. The chamberlain suspected Mr. Baer of pocketing one of the king’s diamond pins. Accusations of theft were an extremely delicate matter. The chamberlain confided his fears to his own servant – my father. My father volunteered me to slip into the Baers’ house to investigate.

I waited until they had gone to church. The house was locked, but Mrs. Baer had left a pie cooling on the windowsill. I hoisted myself up and slipped through the window.

The family had obviously been running late; I spotted half-empty porridge bowls on the table. I amused myself briefly by tasting one. It was no better or worse than what my own mother made.

Then I began my search.

I sat on each of the chairs, to ensure the pin had not been hidden beneath a cushion. The child’s chair was poorly built, and it collapsed beneath me.

The floor had not been swept in some time.

I went upstairs. The Baers had two bedrooms; I went into the adult Baers’ room and lay on each of the beds, feeling for a pin-prick beneath the mattress. I also looked under the bed opposite, preferring not to dirty my dress, or my golden curls, on what was probably another dusty floor.

No pin.

I went to the junior Baer’s room, lay across the bed, and peeked underneath.

A trapdoor!

I tugged it open from my ridiculous angle – there, beneath the trap, wrapped in a handkerchief, was the pin!

I held it up to the light, watched it sparkle…

…and did not hear the Baers return until I heard shouting below.

There was no window in junior’s room, and no time to fly downstairs.

My best option, I reasoned, was to remain in bed, feign sleep, and pretend that I had wandered in as…a prank. I tucked the pin into my pocket.

Such a racket they made when they found me! Baby Baer pointed and screamed, Mama Baer wailed about the shock to her nerves; Papa Baer took me by the ear and hauled me to the village square, shouting all the while. A crowd formed immediately; someone ran for my father.

Father lit into me, calling me yet another female led astray by her curiosity. He offered to let Papa Baer punish me, giving no hint that bore any responsibility for my intrusion. Papa Baer took full advantage of Father’s offer.

I hobbled home.

My father offered no consolation, no apology, and no ice. Instead, he said, “Did you find it? The chamberlain has come asking!”

I looked him full in the face: “No.”

He looked crestfallen, and shuffled away.

I left in the night, went to the capital, and sold the pin to a wealthy collector. I have lived comfortably in town – and gloriously unencumbered – ever since.

Linda McMullen is a wife, mother, diplomat, and homesick Wisconsinite. Her short stories have appeared or are forthcoming in over forty literary magazines, including, most recently, Arachne Press, Luna Station Quarterly, Ripples in Space, Write Ahead/The Future Looms Magazine, Drunk Monkeys, Storgy, and Newfound.

The Cabinet Of Heed Issue 30 Contents Link

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A Moment Coloured Dusk – Elodie Rose Barnes

Night rises slowly here.

A show of darkened gold, amber, fierce orange. Almost three hours after it started the glowing embers still spark in the western sky. Looking at them ignites a longing, as if the fiery trails – all that’s now left of the hottest day of the year – hold something just out of her reach.

She’s here to meet someone.

In all of the eighteen million, three hundred and ninety six thousand moments that she’s lived (give or take; she’s never bothered to adjust for leap years) only a handful stand out, coloured threads in a thick spool of grey. This will be one of them. The hard slats of the park bench digging into her thighs, the rustling and shifting of the trees, the warmth seeping from the city stone. The waiting. The two music students practising harmonies on the grass; alleluia over and over again. She doesn’t understand the rest of the Latin, but listening distracts her from wondering.

She’s here to meet a woman, but she doesn’t know what the woman looks like.

Her hands feel restless, jittery. She hasn’t brought a book because she doesn’t want to blend in. She needs to stand out, to make herself known, to make it clear that she is the outsider here because the other woman doesn’t know what she looks like either. Not any more; she’s all grown up from the year-old baby who survived the night on the convent steps. Left there by the woman she’s here to meet. Raised by nuns instead. She is imagining an older version of herself, and she imagines that the other woman is imagining a younger version of herself, but what if they are both wrong? How will they ever find each other here, in Paris, if it isn’t like looking into a mirror of the future or the past?

She wonders whether, like an animal, she will know her mother’s scent before she knows her face.

The sunset show is almost at an end. She doesn’t understand why people talk about night falling, because this husky, inky purple seems to be floating up from the heat-soaked ground. Her feet are swimming in it, along with the grass and the paths and the bottoms of the trees. Her hand nervously pats her small bag, wishing that she’d at least insisted on a photograph. All she has is a letter. She doesn’t know how the letter found her. Her husband is a diplomat, and she’s travelled so much that the ground sometimes sways beneath her feet. She wonders whether the handwriting – looped, heavy, spiky in places – will show in her mother’s eyes.

She wonders if it will finally feel like coming home.

Violet creeps up over her legs, over her arms, tangles in her hair. The leaves are swaying in it. The park is gradually emptying and she thinks this must be it, over, too late, but she doesn’t want the deep, rich colour to run with her tears. The moment is gone. With shaking hands, she gathers her bag and smooths her skirt. She’s glad she hasn’t told her husband.

She steps towards the night, and the woman on the bench opposite lowers her book

Elodie Rose Barnes is an author and photographer. She can usually be found in Paris or the UK, daydreaming her way back to the 1920s, while her words live in places such as Burning House Press, Bold + Italic and trampset. Current projects include two chapbooks of poetry, and a novel-in-flash on the life of modernist writer Djuna Barnes. Find her online at http://elodierosebarnes.weebly.com, and on Twitter @BarnesElodie.

The Cabinet Of Heed Issue 30 Contents Link

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Banshee – Claire Loader

They say the banshee came the night my grandmother died, the night my mother was born. Through their screams and wails it was said another sound could be heard, a keening howl that tore about the hedgerows, raced upon the fields. The desperate cries of life and death dancing above the thatch as both bled into the floor beneath it.

I never really believed in all that shite. My Grandmother dying as she gave birth on the barren earth of a dingy cottage was horror enough without the need of a spectral element. I think Mam was always disappointed in me in that way, as if not believing in another piseog I was turning my back on her somehow. Just another disappointment to add to the pile.

“Could you make your bed this morning please, just once?”

“Yes, Ma.”

“And don’t go using the dryer so much. You know it eats up the electricity.”

“I’m sorry, Ma.”

“And you better not fail that maths test this morning. If I have to be called in to talk to Mrs Kennedy one more time…”

“I’ve been studying Mammy, don’t worry.”

If the banshee really did exist surely it was in the form of Mrs Kennedy, she heralded the death of all things. That pursed upper lip, those awful tanned stockings, the way she spoke Irish like she was squeezing it past a carrot squashed up the hole of her arse. Her classes were like one long drawn out scream in which we were all forced to remain silent, not knowing which one of us would drop next from shear boredom. And I was late, again.

“Ms Kavanagh, Dia dhuit.” The words slid out of her mouth like putrid yoghurt. “Delighted you could join us.”

I sat quickly in my seat, determined to ace this thing, to prove to Mam I was more than just a future burger flipper at Supermacs, pregnant at seventeen to the likes of Enda Costello. I looked up at him from my exam paper, broad shoulders hunched over his own, the bottom edges of his pants mucky with this morning’s dirt. Up early on his Dad’s farm most like, his large hands at work long before I managed to drag mine out of bed. His pen was dwarfed by them, and I could suddenly see myself in its place, albeit far less rigid…

“Ms Kavanagh! Eyes on your paper please!”

The banshee again, screaming at me from my future. I looked at my blank paper, then at the clock. I didn’t need the gift of foresight to know I was in deep shit.

When I arrived home Mam looked shook, as if she knew already of my imminent F.

“You alright, Ma?”

Her hands paused in the sink, “Yes. Yes, it’s nothing.”

My eyes narrowed, full sure she could somehow see into my mind, into all of its scraggly compartments, see clearly my morning equations that had nothing to do with numbers. I wavered like an unsure cat, not knowing if it was truly safe.

“Why don’t you go walk the dog or something?”

My brow creased in suspicion. “Sure, Ma.”

I grabbed the dog, hand sliding over the small box in my pocket as I headed out to the quiet of the back field. My parents hadn’t built far from the old cottage, its stony gable end the only thing visible now through the tangle of brambles. I turned from the kitchen window, lighting up a cigarette away from the ‘Great Eye of Mammy’ that was otherwise always watching, Molly rustling about the long grass as I drank in the quiet of the afternoon, certain at any moment Mrs Kennedy would appear with my fast food uniform at the ready, the stitched white shirt proclaiming my doom.

Molly started barking suddenly and I nearly tripped as, quickly turning, I saw her growling wasn’t at the house but the ruins, a dark movement catching my eye from between the bushes.

“Those little Halloran shits again.”

I don’t know what I was doing heading towards the cottage, as if my cigarette was some kind of lightsaber against local vandals, but I stopped abruptly, the dog trembling at my feet, a hooded figure looming out from the stone.

“What the…”

A shriek broke the air and, not waiting to find out if it hadn’t come from my own mouth, I ran through the paddock, my fingers fumbling on the kitchen door, before slipping inside and slamming it safely behind me.

Mam spoke suddenly from the middle of the kitchen, as I leaned heavily against the door, my chest heaving. “You saw her too, didn’t you?”

“I, no, um… maybe?”

Mam stood ashen, her gaze suddenly fearful and I barely made out her whisper, “But she only comes to warn of another’s passing. But that means…”

Our eyes locked. Perhaps now was a good time to tell her about the test.

 

CLAIRE LOADER was born in New Zealand & spent several years in China before moving to County Galway. A photographer & writer, she was a recent winner in the Women Speak poetry competition and blogs at http://www.allthefallingstones.com

Cabinet Of Heed Contents Link 24

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Trainwreck – Alexa Locksley

First time in Denver, a highrise hotel
Smooth sweep of the sliding door whispers class traitor
recessed lights nod in agreement
My companion’s asleep—
exhausted by the mesas of Utah
the hazy opulence of Vale
or maybe my sullen silence
Tiptoe through the lobby of the Grand Hyatt
dress too short
hair too disheveled
flannel too flannel
too many toos for this place
and a copy of Burroughs tucked under my arm
catches the camera eyes of the elevator woman
fluorescent glare from her black plastic shells
insect eyes bulge from her face
She adjusts her orange hibiscus print dress
smiles a false robot smile
and telepathically opens the doors.

Cross the stone corridor
step out into the steaming gray morning, stand under wet humid sky
my antennae drooping, two wilted celery stalks
Take refuge among leather and lamplight
Crack open gold coins, melting yellow streaks
Cell walls expand, jelly replenished
synapses of cellulose stronger with intake:
poison word hoard and rich burn of espresso
wine & sour oil
faint hints of charcoal at the back of the tongue
an imagined memory of withered grass, oolong reduced to ash
false dairy, shelf stable and sanitized
in another world, twin apricot suns below ground
in the lindworm’s tunnel under Munich streets

Shake off the memory
shake out my powdery wings
dodge the streetcars and blend in with gray concrete
Disguise myself as a steamed salmon
lemon slice to keep up with the fashion
and join in the stream

A fresh bucket of deep-sea dread from a long-past meet&greet
(too serious and literary for the ampersand)
Warst du schon mal in Wien?
that deceptively innocent questionmark a tiny tadpole sprouting tentacles
transforms
octopus whirlpool spirals down to the depths
until your friends fish you out
reel you in
admonish in hushed strained voices because Jesus Al you can’t say that
and the sting of the fishhook still slices into your cheek

But now in the diegetic present
face to face
you’re one of us, I’m almost sure
our panicked transaction of phrases a mutual trainwreck
jumbled words casualties that limp from the wreckage
and for a moment I belong.

 

ALEXA LOCKSEY is an escaped Midwesterner living in Las Vegas, where they teach English. Their poetry and short fiction has appeared in Ghost City Review, Peach Mag, Shot Glass Journal, Rose Quartz Magazine, and Bone & Ink Literary Magazine. They are on Twitter and Instagram @AlexaLocksley.

Cabinet Of Heed Contents Link 23

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The Tutor – Bayveen O’Connell

After mid-terms it was decided that I needed a biology tutor. Dad made a call or two and then dropped me off at the house at the end of the terrace on Lincoln.

“You’ll love her. We dated senior year,” he grinned as I got out of the car.

Climbing the steps, I heard the door click open.

“Maggie, right? I’m Angie,” a woman in a whoosh of loose kimono robe welcomed me in.

The hallway led to the kitchen, which was illuminated by windows running the length of the whole room, overlooking the yard. She sat and motioned for me to join her. Angie’s hair was long, black and silky, and she looked out at me through her bangs, pulling a pack of Lucky Strikes and a lighter from the pockets of her kimono.

“John said you’re struggling in Bio.”

I flinched. It sounded worse coming from a stranger. Raising her eyebrows, she put up her hand. “Struggling. I hate that word. Forget it.”

I exhaled, letting a nervous giggle escape. Smiling as she lit up, she said: “So what’s up?”

“What’s up?” I wasn’t sure where to begin.

“What’s the deal with Bio?” Angie took a drag.

I glanced along the infinite window sill where things were growing in pots higgledy-piggledy, green and dangling in every available space. “Humans are ok, even frogs and parasites but plants are just too bland. I mean…pea chromosomes and bladder wrack seaweed?”

Angie exhaled and issued a whoop of laughter. “Your father’s grown wise with his years, sent you to the right place.”

I looked back at the sill again, full of strange colours and scents, high sweetness and sour rot.

“You’ve seen my babies, eh? Here, let’s make a bet. If you don’t have green fingers by the end of the month, I’ll give you 40 bucks.” Angie stood up, coaxed me from the chair and pointed towards a pot with spiky-headed things. I shrugged, eying the gross little petals that looked like mouths.

“We can bet your father’s money.” Angie said, watching me watching her plants.

Above us, a bluebottle fly hummed, bumbling down the window. It made a long, lazy loop around us and stopped near one of the spiky mouths.

“What you think?”

I didn’t reply. I was too busy looking at the fly rubbing its front legs in anticipation of some delicious juice, then crawling up and into the red tongue of the plant. Just like that- snap! The jaws closed around it, the spikes inter-twined, yet I could see the shape of the fly still wriggling inside.

I turned to Angie, my eyes nearly bulging out of my head: “This can’t be real, this is some sort of…”

Angie threw her head back and chuckled, the light glossing through her hair.

“You’re not a teacher, are you?” I said.

She rolled her eyes, “No, I’m a witch. And I have more weird stuff out in the greenhouse, if you’re interested.”

 

Bayveen O’Connell lives in Dublin and loves travelling, photography and Bowie. Her flash, CNF and poems have appeared in Three Drops from a Cauldron, Former Cactus, Molotov Cocktail, Retreat West, The Bohemyth, Boyne Berries, Underground Writers, Scum Lit mag and others.

Image by Mylene2401 from Pixabay

Takotsubo – Rebecca Field

The inflatable Darth Vader in the hallway keeps making me jump. It catches me unawares as I nip to the downstairs toilet, go to answer the front door or pick up the post. It is a dark shadow lurking in my peripheral vision, about the same height as you were; three foot or thereabouts. In that instant when my brain forgets, I wonder if there is somebody standing there, if it is you come back somehow.

Your Mum wouldn’t have it in your house. I remember her bringing it over, saying ‘you’ve got more room for things like this here,’ and setting it down with a smirk. I hadn’t the heart to say we wouldn’t have it either. When you turned it on, it started making those heavy breathing noises and then you took out the controller and started moving it up and down the parquet and I realised the full extent of its robotic capabilities. I’ll admit, I did wonder if after a while I might be able to accidentally puncture it whilst hoovering whilst you were at nursery.

I tried putting it in the garage, but every time you came over it was the first thing you asked for. You loved chasing the cat with it, dressing it in different hats and scarves, pinning me into corners in the kitchen with it as I made your lunches, and so in the end it stayed in the hallway like a quirky piece of furniture, waiting for your next visit.

That afternoon, I came home with Fred in my black pencil skirt, hung up my jacket and slipped off my court shoes by the front door. It was there waiting, holding its light sabre aloft. It seemed to have an indignant look on its face, as if it had been denied the one thing it wanted, its sole reason for being. I know how you feel I thought. Keep busy, I told myself. Don’t stop or you’ll never get going again. I went upstairs to strip the beds, open the windows, let in some air.

As I was loading the washer I felt the first pain. It was sharp and unrelenting, like somebody squeezing my heart in a tight fist, trying to wring out every last drop of blood. I leaned on the counter, knowing it wasn’t right, but thinking that maybe it was a manifestation of grief and might pass soon. I went back through the hallway to the lounge, to the safety of soft furnishings and carpets. I saw it again in the corner as I passed and I thought that if this was my time to go then that wouldn’t be so bad.

I leaned back on the sofa cushions and called to Fred, only half-hoping he’d hear me. He called the ambulance and that’s how I ended up in the hospital with a cardiologist telling me it wasn’t really a heart attack; it was this thing called Takotsubo that had made my heart stretch out of shape. He said it was the shock of your death that did it, but I’d probably make a full recovery. I decided right then that he knew nothing about bereavement. Fred asked why it had such a strange name and the doctor said it was from the Japanese, something about the clay pots fishermen use to catch octopuses, and how they looked like the shape of my left ventricle. He drew a diagram on some paper and I wondered how an animal as intelligent as an octopus could get trapped so easily in an open necked clay pot. Maybe they were too trusting I thought, thinking they had found somewhere nice to rest, then finding themselves ripped out of the water before they realised what was going on. I don’t remember the rest of what he said but I stayed on that ward for several days, thinking that my heart was still broken whatever the monitors were saying.

When Fred brought me home, Darth Vader was still in the hallway where you’d left him. His face was expressionless, like the way I felt. I didn’t think you’d want me to put him in the garage just yet, Fred said. No, I said. I quite like him there after all.

 

 

REBECCA FIELD lives and writes in Derbyshire. She has been published online by Riggwelter Press, Spelk fiction, The Cabinet of Heed and Ellipsis Zine among others. Rebecca was highly commended in the 2018 NFFD microfiction competition and tweets at @RebeccaFwrites

 

Image by toxi85 from Pixabay

Blueberry Muffins – Steven John

Dymphna lived with her mother in three damp, square rooms above Greasy Joe’s truck stop on the drainpipe road out of a nondescript town, the name of which mattered only to those that lived there. Greasy Joe himself, Dymphna’s father, had keeled over from his lardaceous arteries when she was twelve, and her mother had been bitter about it ever since.

From a mouth like a squeezed lemon her mother would say, “Your father fucked off and left us nothing but his arse to wipe.”

“Father didn’t fuck off Mum, he died.”

“Well that was convenient for him wasn’t it? Got him out of frying eggs for the rest of his puff,” Dymphna’s mother would say.

The red neon Greasy Joe’s sign pulsed like a bleeding heart into Dymphna’s bedroom. Her mother gave her Saturday night and Sundays off. A night and a day away from the water boiler where she made mugs of tea and coffee for fifteen hours straight. The day Dymphna had left school at sixteen her mother had said,

“You’re on drinks. I’ll do the frying,” and that was that.

There were Saturday nights, in front of her bedroom mirror, when Dymphna thought she was pretty enough. She blow-dried her long silky black hair and fluttered her eyelids at herself. There were other Saturday nights when she thought she was a flat-chested bag of bones that stank of streaky bacon. Either way her boyfriend Eddie would pick her up Saturdays, in his articulated truck, for the overnight haul to London.

After three hours on the road Eddie pulled into their usual layby and Dymphna ran over the carriageway for McDonalds and Cokes. Whilst she was gone Eddie pulled the curtains across the windscreen and laid out the blankets on the single bunk behind the wheel. When Dymphna climbed back up the steps to the cab Eddie poured two large plastic tumblers of rum and Dymphna emptied in the coke. Whilst they ate their cheeseburgers and drank their rum and cokes Eddie watched video of extreme fishing.

Dymphna rested her head on Eddie’s shoulder.

“Well this is nice Eddie, just you and me,” she said.

“You made me miss a good bit. He was on a monster fish” Eddie said and rewound.

At bedtime Eddie and Dymphna stripped off to their underwear and got under the blankets. Dymphna had in the past tried some experimentation with their love-making but there wasn’t sufficient headroom for anything that different. Eddie said that it seemed like a lot of huffing and puffing for nothing much anyway.

At five in the morning Dymphna woke to the cough of the truck’s engine and Eddie taking a piss on the front wheels. She pulled on her clothes, used the McDonald’s toilets and brought back coffee and blueberry muffins.

Whilst Eddie supervised the unload she redid her make-up in the sun visor mirror and never left the womb of the cab. On the return journey Dymphna talked about her dream to own a café by the seaside. Eddie said that was fine by him as long as he could go fishing.

“Maybe I could sell fresh fish from a corner of the café,” he said.

“And I would sell my homemade muffins,” said Dymphna.

Late on Sunday night Eddie dropped her back outside Greasy Joe’s.

“Same again next week?” he said, without stopping the engine, or taking his hand from the wheel. Dymphna leaned over and kissed him on the mouth.

Back upstairs in their damp rooms her mother lay hugging a cigarette on the sofa. She didn’t say hello or take her eyes from the TV screen.

“Had a good day Mum?” Dymphna asked.

“I changed the oil in the fryers,” she said, “whilst you’ve been out enjoying yourself.”

 

STEVEN JOHN lives in The Cotswolds, UK, where he writes short stories and poetry. He’s had work published in pamphlets and online magazines including Riggwelter, Bangor Literary Review, Fictive Dream, Cabinet of Heed and Former Cactus. He has won Bath Ad Hoc Fiction a record six times and was highly commended in 2018 ‘To Hull and Back’ competition.Steve has read at Cheltenham Poetry Festival, Stroud Short Stories, Flasher’s Club and The Writer’s Room on Corinium Radio.  Twitter: @StevenJohnWrite

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Cabinet Of Heed Contents

Kings Cross Examination – Dan Brotzel

Let us turn now to the evening of the 21st. An unusually hot Friday, even for July, as we have heard. At about 5.45pm you boarded a tube train to take you home, is that correct, Mr B?

Yes.

What route did you take? 

It was the Piccadilly line, heading north. I got on at Oxford Circus, then got off at Finsbury Park to get the Victoria line. 

Indeed. And it was at Oxford Circus that an incident took place. Do you remember coming into contact with a gentleman – Mr Jarvis, here – as he attempted to alight from the train?

There may have been a brief coming together. The train was very crowded.

Quite so, quite so! But you weren’t actually on the train at the point, were you? Or you were not supposed to be, at least. 

I’d stood to the side to let people off. I guess the momentum of the crowd carried me forward on to the train. It was hard to see if there were people still getting off. 

I see. Are you in the habit of being swept along by the momentum of the crowd?

Well, there are times when-

Have you, for instance, ever been swept under the wheels of an oncoming train by the hordes on a crowded tube platform?

Well. I mean, I hardly think-

Answer the question, please, Mr B.

I haven’t, no.

Are you aware of the protocols concerning the egress and ingress of passengers on tube trains, protocols which have of course especial sway and application at times of high peak use?

‘Please let passengers off the train first.’

Quite so, quite so. And yet you did the exact opposite…

As I’ve tried to explain-

-Leaving poor Mr Jarvis to have to fight his way out of the carriage, in order not to be stuck on the train and carried forth to another stop not his own!!

I regret this. But he did actually shove me quite roughly. 

He had to get off, Mr B! He had a gym appointment in Regent Street for 8.30! That muscle tissue won’t tear itself you know! 

I know. I’m very sorry. But I was in the way by accident. Whereas he pushed me on purpose.

And then what happened?

He stalked off.

Understandable, perhaps? And how did you feel?

I was upset. I was partly riled about having been shoved so roughly, and partly guilty at not being able to apologise. But of course, he never gave me a chance to explain, which was the worst feeling of all. 

Oh dear! Poor Mr B! Let us turn now to the morning of June 27thand to the testimony of Ms Pierce here. (And thank you so much for coming in to testify today, Ms Pierce, I now it’s not easy, the courts are not as accessible as one might wish.) So… at approximately 7.55am, you had boarded a train on the Piccadilly line, heading south.

That’s right. I was going to work.  

You were very comfortably ensconced in your seat, were you not?

No, I couldn’t get a seat at first.

That was a shame, wasn’t it, Mr B? I bet you were looking forward to getting stuck into your book. 

Well, it’s always nice to be able to sit down. That line gets very crowded in the mornings. 

Yes, of course. And you’ll stop at nothing to get a seat, will you, Mr B? And you’ll cling on to it at any price, won’t you? 

Well, I don’t think that’s entirely fair.

Let us see. Tell us what happened just after Kings Cross.

Someone stood up and gave their seat away. Only seconds after the train had left the station. 

Was that unusual? 

It was unheard of! I thought it must be a tourist, or someone very unfamiliar with the line who was nervous about missing their stop. They had a sort of fluorescent rucksack on, and a general air of panicky purposefulness. 

Any other thoughts?

Well. I did wonder if they’d spilt coffee on the seat or something. Or if they were incontinent.

Charming! But none of that worried you, did it, Mr B? What did you do next? 

I sat down. 

You pounced on the seat. Like a vulture.

Well I think I was technically nearest at the time.  

So no one else was interested in the seat at the time?

Well, there was a woman…

What sort of age?

About my age.

Did she make a move towards the seat?

I’m not sure. 

You didn’t think to give up your chance of a seat up for the lady?

I did think about it.

But you didn’t do it.

No.

What reasons did you come up with, in your own mind, to excuse yourself for your failure to extend this basic kindness to a lady in need a seat? 

I remember telling myself that women find that sort of thing patronising now. Equality between men and women makes a farce of all that old-fashioned chivalry stuff. Same as how they don’t like to be called ‘girls’ any more (or ‘ladies’ probably.) Also, I thought she was the sort of age where the offer of a seat would have been more upsetting than complimentary. Also, my back’s quite bad at the moment. And anyway, it’s dog-eat-dog on the Tube. 

I see. You went through all these reasons while you were in the process of sitting down?

Yes.

And did any of these excuses, these self-justifications, make you feel any less guilty?  

Not really. But I was also thinking of that time I stood up for a woman with a loose-fitting top on. She snarled: ‘Why does everyone keep offering me a seat? Do I look fucking pregnant or something?’ She did, of course. 

I see. But still – to return to the present case – you sat on.

My back does twinge a bit. 

More self-justifications, I see.

I’ve started doing pilates! Just once a week, but it does seem to be helping. It’s all about working on your core. 

Let’s stick to the case at hand. How many others were standing by the time the train neared Kings Cross?

About 7 or 8. 

But not you, of course. You were set up for the journey with your hard-won seat.

As I say, I think I was nearest. 

And then someone got on at Kings Cross that changed things. Or should have, perhaps.

You mean the blind woman. And her guide dog.

Quite so, Mr B. What did she look like? 

If I recall correctly, she wore a bright orange top and jangly earrings. They reminded me of the comedy Christmas tree ones my mum always wears. At Christmas. The woman’s eyes sort of fluttered. And the expression on her face was open, smiley.

So what happened next?

Nothing. She just stood there with all the other people standing.

A blind woman? Left to stand in the vestibule?

I know. But it was quite clear who should have stood up for her. 

Who?

The person in the nearest seat. The protocol is well-established. 

And who was that?

A teenage girl.

I see. And what did she do?

Nothing! She was oblivious, self-involved, headphones on, possibly asleep. Possibly foreign.  

So what did everyone else in the carriage do?

Well, we all sent out our strongest guilt-glares, of course we did. But the girl seemed to be immune to them. 

I see. So naturally, someone else stood up to offer the blind woman a seat?

Actually, no one made a move. It was all a bit tense. 

And where were you seated in relation to all this?

I was sitting opposite the teenage girl. 

So who was on the hook now, morally speaking, if the teenage girl was oblivious? Was it you?

No! I’d say it was the man sitting next to the teenage girl. A sort of bearded, geeky type, all wired up and immersed in his game of Minesweeper. Or the second season of I, Robot, I don’t know. 

You couldn’t actually see what was on his screen, could you?

No.

Have you ever actually payed Minesweeper? Do you even know what it is? 

Not really, no. 

More casual prejudice, I see. Anyway, did you all start sending guilt-glares this man’s way too?

Of course! It was getting embarrassing by now. The whole system was breaking down.  

And what did this ‘geeky type’ do? Did the guilt-glares get to him?

No! He just sort of… retreated into his beard.  

You didn’t like his beard, did you?

No, if I’m honest. 

Do you wear a beard yourself sometimes?

Yes.

And how do you feel about your beard?

I don’t like it much either. 

I see. Are you, by the way, in the habit of describing teenagers as ‘self-involved’?

Er… yes.

And people with beards as geeks?

Yes.

I see. Meanwhile, back in the carriage, the blind woman still didn’t have a seat. 

No. I did send out a few more random guilt-glares of my own, but they come to nothing.

So perhaps it was down to you now, Mr B, as the only seated person apparently aware of the situation, to make a stand – quite literally – for common decency? 

In retrospect, yes. I fully accept that I should have got up at this point. 

So you stood?

Er, no. 

You carried on sitting.

Yes. I’m not proud of this. 

And how did you justify this to yourself at the time?

Well, I was still waking up really. But I did wonder if the blind woman had already told someone that she was happier standing. I started to imagine in fact that I’d heard her tell someone this. Also, I thought that it might have been awkward for her and her dog to make their way across to my seat.

What was the distance between the blind woman and your seat?

Ooh, six or eight feet at least.

I see. And of course, you still had your book to read. 

Well, yes. I suppose so. But the atmosphere was almost a bit too awkward for reading by now. 

Still, it would have been a shame to have to lose that hard-earned seat.

I’m not proud of myself. 

Remind us, for the benefit of the court, what sort of book you were reading?

It was an account of the genocide in Rwanda.

I see. Let us fast-forward now to Warren Street, and a new development occurred. What happened? 

The seat next to me came free. 

I see. And then?

This woman with cropped blond hair and a stern expression made a big point of leading the blind woman over to this seat so she could sit down. It was a foldie, I recall. 

And what did you do? 

At that point I leapt up so the blind woman could have my seat instead, which was actually slightly easier to access than the one that had just come free. 

So you were shamed into action at last.

I suppose you could say that. We helped the blind woman to sit down, and then I offered the woman with the stern expression the free seat next to the blind woman. 

Your seat.

Yes.

And what did the woman with the cropped expression do?

She said: ‘No thanks.’ And then she said, louder and more pointed, for the benefit of me but taking in the whole carriage: ‘And frankly I’m astonished.’ I noticed a hint of Liverpudlian in her stern accent. 

I see… Stern face, stern accent: did you want to use the word ‘Scouse’ just then?

It did occur to me but I wasn’t sure if it was OK to use it. Especially if you’re not, er, Scouse.

Such delicacy! Such sensitivity! Mind you, even the guards in the camps read Goethe. So let’s recap: you have shown yourself to be callously spineless and morally bankrupt. Your offer of assistance is rightly dismissed as ‘too little, too late’ by your righteously stern fellow passenger. So now what do you do?   

Well, there was nothing for it but to sit down again. 

Back to your fascinating book about genocide?

I couldn’t read! The words swam before my eyes. I felt that people were looking at me. I didn’t want my stupid seat. It was a relief to get off in the end.  

This was at Victoria.

Yes.

Where you were about to mount the escalator… 

Correct.

…Only to look up and see the woman with the stern expression staring down in your direction.

Yes. I hadn’t realised she’d got off at the same stop. I could see she was still talking about the incident with someone. And from the set of her chin and her tautened lips, she was obviously still seething about it. 

Oh dear Mr B! Not what you wanted at all, I imagine! 

No! Plus I had on these light blue trousers paired with tan shoes. I was a bit stuck for clothes that morning, and my outfit suddenly seemed ludicrously conspicuous. Everything a shade too bright to be plausible.

Yes, I remember. It’s one of our worst, isn’t it? You must have been terrified she’d spot you.

Terrified.

And did she?

You know she did. You’re me, remember.

So what did you do?

I hung back, slinking around by the bottom of the escalator.

How did you feel?

I was burning with shame, obviously.

I see. And what did she do?

Oh, she just carried on glaring down at me. 

From her ever-ascending moral high ground.

Yes. 

Serve you right, perhaps, Mr B?

But I didn’t see the blind woman! It wasn’t down to me to stand up in the first place! Of course I would have got up if I’d realised! I was half-asleep! My back! Pilates! Don’t single me out – look at my track record! Look at all the other fucks who did nothing! And these people never give you a right of reply! Most of my mental life is spent fighting these imaginary court cases! 

The self-prosecution never rests, m’lud.

 

Image via Pixabay 

Cabinet Of Heed Contents

Orangelip – Adam Kelly Morton

Jeff is the only guy I know who truly appreciates dinky cars. My favorite is a navy-blue Hot-Wheeler Ford Mustang that goes super fast on the plastic racetracks that we have laid out all over his basement floor. It smells like oil down here, but it adds to the experience. Jeff has a Matchboxer fire truck that goes pretty fast too, but it doesn’t go around the loop-the-loop as fast as my Mustang. He loves fire trucks though, and his has a moveable yellow ladder on it that’s pretty fucking cool.

Jeff asks me, “Why don’t you let me use your Mustang this time around?”

“No,” I say. “You’ve got your fire truck. Stick with that, Orangelip.” I call him Orangelip because Jeff always has Tang residue on his upper lip. My mom was the one who first called him that. She has funny mean names for all the neighborhood kids.

Jeff looks down at his fire truck and rolls it around in his hand. “I never get to use anything that wins,” he says. “I never get to win.”

“Well, that’s just too bad for you, Orangelip,” I say. “A loser is a loser.”

After a while, we go upstairs to the kitchen for lunch. Jeff’s mom’s blonde hair is usually done up in pretty curls, and she always wears makeup and light-colored clothes. Now, she’s just wearing an old, beige bathrobe that has brown stains on it. She’s barefoot, has hairy ankles, and her face and hair aren’t done up at all. She stands behind the counter and scrapes a thin layer of Skippy onto a piece of white bread, then covers it with another piece and puts it on a plate. Then she gives us couple of plastic cups of water and a container of Tang, and walks out without putting anything away.

“Why is your mom so quiet?” I say, as Jeff starts spooning Tang into his cup.

“I dunno,” Jeff says.

“Your parents getting divorced or something?” My parents are divorced, so I feel bold about asking.

“No,” Jeff says, with his mouth full of sandwich. He takes a gulp of Tang to wash it down. I take a heaping tablespoonful of Tang for my water. We never get tasty shit like this at home. “But he lost a bunch of money,” Jeff continues. “The bank called my mom the other day and-”

Jeff’s mom appears in the kitchen doorway. “Eat your sandwich!” she says. Jeffrey looks up at her, then down at his plate. She keeps standing there, staring sometimes at us, sometimes at the kitchen stove as we eat in silence. Afterwards, we go back downstairs, put our dinky cars and racetracks away and go out. It’s too quiet at Jeff’s house. He should get a dog or something. We have a dog named Daisy. She’s fun, even though she licks herself all the time.

Jeff’s backyard has wooden, vertical fence on two sides and high, chain-link fence at the back. Beyond is a field full of trees and wild brush that’s called the Dead End. It’s at the edge of Foster Park, and I’m not allowed to go in there. But there’s a hole in the side fence that we can pass through into the neighbors’ yard, and from there it’s easy to slip through a gap in the fence and into the field. Jeff takes a look back at the house to make sure his mom isn’t watching as we go.

The week before, we’d explored a bit, and found a dead cat. It had grey, tabby fur and its eyes were green, and glazed open. Bugs were crawling and flies were buzzing all over it. Neither of us knew what it had died of. We decide to go find it again.

“Jeff,” I say. “What does your dad do?”

“I dunno,” he says. “Sales or something. But he’s not home as much as he was before. Now he doesn’t get home until after I’m in bed.”

It’s weird to me that Jeff doesn’t know what his dad does for a living. My dad is a textile dyer, and Jacques is a mailman with Canada Post. Mom’s a homemaker, like Jeff’s mom–only my mom is a much better cook.

We find the cat. Its carcass is flattened, and it seems to be just fur—a cat-shaped mat. There are a few tiny, white worms wiggling around on its surface.

“Touch it, Orangelip,” I say to him.

“You’re crazy,” he says. “I’ll get worms all over me.”

Jeff picks up a stick and starts prodding the dead cat. He digs the stick underneath the cat and starts lifting it up.

“I’m gonna throw it at you,” he says.

I back away from him. Jeff is walking towards me with the stiff cat out in front of him on the stick when he stumbles on a tree root. The cat falls off the stick and lands on Jeff’s left foot. He screams and jumps up in the air. The whole underside of the cat is covered with maggots, and a bunch of them get onto and in his shoe, which he yanks off. Jeff is screaming and has tears in his eyes.

We run from the Dead End back toward Jeff’s.  When we get to his backyard I look up. Jeff’s mother is there and staring out the window. She probably heard Jeff’s hollering. Now, if it had been my mom, I knew I would be in trouble right away. She would know that I had done something bad. But I realize that we are going to be okay, because Jeff’s mom isn’t looking at us. She’s just staring out into the field.

Back inside, we play dinky cars some more. We stay downstairs, and Jeff’s mom stays upstairs. When it’s time for me to go home for supper, Jeff opens the garage door and I leave.

“See you later, Orangelip,” I say.

As I’m walking back, I see Jeff’s dad coming down Harmony Street in his rusty, brown Plymouth Reliant. I wave hello, but he drives right past me.

I get home and me, my mom, and Jacques eat spaghetti with meat sauce and Caesar salad for dinner. We’re in the kitchen and The City at Six is on our black and white kitchen TV. Daisy is eating kibbles out of her bowl.

“What do you suppose Jeff eats for dinner?” I ask my mom.

“Orangelip?” she says. “Tang, probably.”

After dinner, I do some homework, then watch a bit of hockey in French with Jacques, brush my teeth and go to bed. While Mom’s tucking me in, I come really close to telling her about the dead cat, but there’s no way I can do it without mentioning the Dead End. She would just know.

It’s later on that night that I wake up to police sirens. Through my bedroom window overlooking the driveway, I can hear Mrs. Andrews from next door talking to my mom on the front lawn. My clock says 1:20am.  I kneel on my bed, pull back the blind and look out through the window screen. It’s a warm night.

Jacques and my mom are out there with Mrs. Andrews. Our French neighbors from across the street are out there too, standing in their lit doorway. Suddenly, a couple of police cars rush by with their flashers on.

“I’ll go see,” Jacques says to my mom.  He starts walking down the hill. I see dozens of red and blue lights dancing on the houses where the street turns west toward Foster.

Mom sees me, and comes back into the house. I hear her walk up the stairs and through the hall to my room. She opens my door. Daisy runs in and jumps up on the bed. I pet her while still kneeling. She starts licking herself.

“What’s going on?” I say.

“Something,” Mom says. She puts her arm around me, and we stare out the window together.

Every few minutes there’s another police car, or special police van that goes by—then a couple of news trucks from CTV and CBC. People from the neighborhood are walking down the street to see what’s going on.

My mom and I are still awake when Jacques comes back. The three of us are in my room. “It’s at the Moodys,” he says.

“Is their house on fire?” I say.

“No,” says Jacques. “Go to sleep, Alan. We’ll talk in the morning.

“But, I want to know if—”

“Alan,” my mom says. “You’re safe. You go to sleep now. Do you want Daisy to stay with you?”

“Okay,” I say. Mom and Jacques leave, keeping my door ajar for Daisy to go out if she wants to.

I lie there for a while, thinking about Jeff’s house on fire. It probably started from the oil smell in the basement.

In the morning, Mom is sitting on my bed beside me. She is stroking my hair. “You up?” she asks.

“Yeah,” I say.

“Come into the kitchen.”

Jacques is already there. “Sit down, Alan,” he says. I do.

Then he tells me what’s happened.

It doesn’t make sense. Jeff’s dad did something horrible, first to Mrs. Moody, then to Jeff, then to himself in the garage, and that I’d never see any of them again because they were all dead.

“Are you okay, Alan?” Mom says.

I don’t say anything. I just start to sort of shiver and cry. Mom and Jacques hug me and tell me it’s going to be okay, and that I’m safe.

But all I can think about is not being able to play dinky cars with Jeff anymore, and that it’s really too bad.

Orangelip would have loved to see real fire trucks in front of his house.

 

ADAM KELLY MORTON is a Montreal-based husband, father (four kids, all under-six), acting teacher, board gamer, filmmaker, and writer. He has been published in (mac)ro(mic), Soft Cartel, Spadina Literary Review, Black Dog Review, Fictive Dream, The Fiction Pool, Open Pen London, Talking Soup, and Menda City Review, among others. He has an upcoming piece in A Wild and Precious Life, an addiction anthology to be published in London, UK. He is the editor-in-chief of the Bloody Key Society Periodical literary magazine.

Image via Pixabay

Cabinet Of Heed Contents

Movie Night – Brian Wilson

On the night my dead son showed up at the front door I was about to watch a movie. His face was grey and there were dozens of holes in his skin the size of bottle caps. The least I could do was let him inside, given everything that had transpired between us while he was alive.

My dead son took a seat in the living room. He stank to high heaven. I made some comment about it being stuffy and opened a window. “You’ll be thirsty,” I mumbled, and went into the kitchen to fetch him something, nervous about leaving him alone but glad to be removed from the smell. I tried to remember what sorts of things he liked to drink. At a loss, I boiled the kettle.

He was standing next to the mahogany liquor cabinet when I returned, peering in through the smudged glass. I wondered if he could see his reflection, and if so, what he thought about it. Steam rose from the mug in my hand.

“Got rid of it all as soon as…” I started, trailing off. His neck was covered in purple bruises, blooming around his throat. “I’ve been doing better.”

I placed the mug on the table in the centre of the room and sat down in the armchair opposite the television. My dead son lay on the sofa.

“I wish you hadn’t worn that,” I said, gesturing towards his hoodie. It was the same black hoodie he was wearing when I found him hanging in the garden, his body twisting in the breeze like a bloated piñata. “Maybe you don’t have a choice.” Then, realising: “It’s what I deserve, I suppose.”

An uncomfortable silence descended. “How have you been?” I asked.

“I’m here to kill you,” he said, matter-of-factly. His voice was rougher than before, as though his larynx was lined with sandpaper.

“You are?”

His arm cracked as it rose, and when his finger unfurled it was pointed at the empty liquor cabinet.

“I was in a bad place. I never should have taken it out on you.”

The holes in his flesh gaped like parched mouths.

“There is no other way,” he said.

“If I had known what you would do…”

“There is no other way,” he repeated.

Silence resumed. I noticed he was staring at the television screen, frozen mid-picture, and I was struck by a ridiculous thought: that my dead son had come back to watch a movie. When he was alive, movies were the one thing we bonded over. After his mother left us they became a necessary distraction. Every Friday night he would select a DVD from the rack, pop it into the player and then join me on the sofa. We didn’t say much on these nights – the movies did most of the talking. Usually I could tell what kind of a week he’d had at school based on whatever he picked. As much as I loved this ritual, it wasn’t enough to buoy me during the six remaining nights of the week. But no matter how bad my drinking got, I never laid a finger on him during movie night.

Without saying anything, I lifted the DVD remote and pressed play. Within seconds we were back in that familiar bubble, sharing the only thing we ever really learned how to share. It was a movie we had watched together a few times before. Time passed in a haze.

I paused the movie about halfway through.

“Will it hurt?” I asked. My dead son said nothing. A couple minutes later we went back to watching the movie. Near the end, I paused the movie again. He glanced at me as if to say: what gives?

“I know it’s too late,” I said. “I know that whatever I say now is meaningless. But I’m sorry. I wish you could know how sorry I am.”

I looked into his eyes for the first time since he arrived. They were cloudy. They had the same look tea gets when you add a drop of milk. I saw him through the rot then, my son; that fearless young man who sat on my knee when he was a boy and asked why some movies have colour and some do not.

The remainder of the movie withered away, and when it was over we went out into the garden and he took from me what I could never give back.

 

BRIAN WILSON is a writer from Northern Ireland. He recently won the STORGY Shallow Creek short story competition. He likes to tweet from @bwilson4815

Image via Pixabay

Cabinet Of Heed Contents

Hands At Ten And Two – Ashley Naftule

There was a drop of my father’s blood on the dashboard. He held up the pinewood car with bandaged fingers; the one wrapped around his right index finger was sopping red. “Best one yet, kiddo.” It really was.

Dad and I had a deal: he’d carve the cars and I’d take care of the rest. Dad kept it simple: he whittled the wood down and shaped it with my granddad’s hand knife. Dad was pretty good with it but occasionally his hands would get shaky and the knife would slip.

Dad said all the other vets from Peru had the same hand tremors. Some kind of gas they breathed in during the war. I never asked for more details; I was little then, but I knew when an adult was pulling the drawbridge up on me.

“What color should we paint it?”

Dad always let me pick the colors. I never picked the right ones: I always wanted to do polka dots, zebra stripes, or neon splatters. Dad loved accuracy; he’d spend hours pouring over repair manuals and photobooks, making sure every inch of the wood car was a mirror image of the original.

“Let’s do blue and silver. That’s how it was in the movie, right?” We were both surprised by my choice. I don’t know why, but I felt like this time getting it 100% right mattered in a way it hadn’t before. Maybe some part of me already sensed the thing growing on my Dad’s brain and was just trying to make him happy in the brief time we had left together.

“Blue and silver it is, kiddo,” he said. He set the car down on his workbench. It was a perfect replica of a 1955 Chevy 150. Dad reached into his pocket and pulled out a tiny black strap. “I finished the seatbelt this morning. Black nail polish and a rubber band. Not bad, huh?”

It did look pretty good, but I noticed that something was missing. “How are they going to-”

My Dad smiled and pointed to a pile of safety pins on the bench. “I was going to make the clip last. Hammer it out of a couple of these.” Dad had taken care of everything: it was on me to get the last missing piece.

I left the garage with bait, a small net, and a holding box. I saw a couple of drivers behind Matt’s house the last time I slept over. Matt said he heard his mom complaining that the littles were getting into the pantry and stealing food. We went over the fence after dark and saw a few of them scurry off into a nearby bush.

I knocked on Matt’s front door but nobody answered. I knew where the key was to their garden door; I had seen Matt fish it out of the bottom of a hollow rock by their mailbox. I grabbed the key and snuck into the backyard.

Climbing over the fence, I landed as lightly as I could on the ground. I didn’t want to squash any of the littles. I remembered my scout training and scanned the area, searching for tiny footprints, campfires, shacks.

Near a cluster of mushrooms I saw a pair of thimble-sized tents. I set down the bait and peeled the plastic lid off: instant beef stew with roast vegetables. It wasn’t long before the littles came out of hiding: a male, female, and a pair of younglings.

I struck fast, swinging the net at the male. He and the female dove out of the way. I stepped forward to swing again and felt something crunch beneath my feet. I heard tiny voices wailing incomprehensibly at me and realized that I had stepped on the younglings.

The male and female stood in place, making weird noises that sounded like sobs. My scoutmaster told us we shouldn’t be fooled by these sort of noises. The littles may look and act like us, but they’re not us. They’re soulless.

I scooped up the male and dropped him in the holding box. I hopped back over the fence, leaving the female behind. We only needed one to be our driver. On the way out I stopped back in front of Matt’s door and wiped my feet on the welcome mat. I saw something tiny, stiff, and blue stuck in between the mat bristles. It looked like a pair of bloody blue jeans.

By the time I had come back, Dad had finished the seatbelt. “Look at what your mom made!” Dad held a tiny pair of racing gloves, a crimson red jumpsuit, and a white scarf in the palm of his hands. “He’ll be the most handsome driver in the derby”, Mom said later while we were having dinner.

Dad put the driver under his microscope. “You picked a good one,” Dad said. “He’s healthy, young— good reflexes, too. Look at how he’s wriggling. This one’s going to put up a fight.”

Dad wasn’t kidding. It took us two weeks to train the driver. We had to go so far as to lay down pillows all over the garage floor to keep the driver from jumping off Dad’s work bench.

After two weeks, the driver began to “rag-doll.” That was the ideal state for a little, according to the pinewood handbook. You could just pick them up, buckle them in, and push them around without complaint. We did a couple of trial runs on the race track my Dad set up in our backyard. No crashes, no casualties. The perfect car.

Perfect car or not, we came in second at the derby. Dad and I didn’t care. We knew we had put together the best car and driver, even if gravity didn’t agree with us.

I still have that car. I keep it on a shelf in my living room. The driver is still in there, too— hands at ten and two. The taxidermist said it was his best one yet.

 

ASHLEY NAFTULE is a writer and theater artist from Phoenix, AZ. He’s been published in Pitchfork, Ghost City Press, Vice, Popula, Occulum, Rinky Dink Press, Bandcamp, Four Chambers Press, The Outline, Cleveland Review of Books, Longreads, Amethyst Review, Bone & Ink Press, and The Molotov Cocktail. He’s a resident playwright and the Artistic Director at Space55 theatre.

Image via Pixabay 

Cabinet Of Heed Contents

Third Dimension – Sheila Scott 

Perhaps I should be less heroically independent. As I’d fumbled with my stick and the handles of the car door, the taxi driver offered to take me up to the entrance, but I waved him away, embarrassed by my need for assistance. Now I tic tac my way up to what he said was an impressive façade of shining glass.

A slight breeze from the revolving door alerts me I am near the entrance. I put up a hand to catch the speed, insert myself into its spin, and let the metronomic click of its passage tell me when to step out.

A vastness opens around me; I can feel its echo. After a beat I opt for the direct approach and start straight ahead. The leather soles of my shoes squeak across the hard floor, and my stick keeps a syncopated rhythm until it hits the front of the reception desk.

‘Good morning, sir. Can I help you?’ A young female voice with the flattened vowels of a northern accent.

‘I have an appointment with Doctor Eric Meadows at Third Dimension. Eleven o’clock. My name’s Roy Collins.’ I hear the flick of a page, forward then back.

‘Very good, Mr. Collins. You just take a seat and I’ll tell Doctor Meadows you’ve arrived. Here, let me help you.’ Her chair scrapes back. A gentle hand takes me by the elbow to a nearby seat and, as I sink into it, the firm vinyl makes a similar sound to the floor. The receptionist leaves a trail of violets and vanilla in her wake as she returns to her desk. I fold up my stick and lay it across my lap.

My GP put me in touch with this place. Doctor Calder is a good sort, one of the ones who truly cares about the patients, not just dashing off a prescription and propelling you back out the door. She’d read about the new process in some science journal or other and thought it might help me. ‘What do I have to lose?’ I told her, and she put her hand over mine and gave it a squeeze.

Now I sit and listen. A lift pings intermittently and voices drift past. Footsteps resonate confirming my original impression of great space. Eventually I become aware that someone has closed in and stopped before me.

‘Mr. Collins?’ The rustle of a sleeve as a hand is extended. I hold out my own hand and it is firmly grasped and shaken.

‘That’s me. Doctor Meadows I take it?’ We release hands.

‘Call me Eric.’

‘Eric. In that case, I’m Roy.’

‘And how are you feeling today Roy?’

‘Ach.’ I face the voice and give a shrug. ‘Can’t complain Doctor Me… Eric.’

‘Do you think you’re ready to come with me up to the lab?’

‘Yes, I believe so.’

‘And you brought a photograph with you?’

I pat the breast pocket of my tweed jacket and offer a smile.

‘It was always my favourite.’ I feel my eyes dampening already and remind myself of the vow I made this morning. No tears.

‘Good stuff. That sounds ideal. Right, let’s get started then, shall we?’

He also takes my elbow and guides me towards the pinging lift. ‘We’re very grateful for your participation in our trial. Your perspective will be most helpful to us.’

The lift doors shush open, we take a step and they shut behind us. I can feel the closeness of the walls and there is a strong smell of brass polish. Eric taps a button and the lift shunts into action. It is hard to tell if we are going up or down.

‘There’s nothing more for you to sign you’ll be pleased to hear, Doctor Calder kindly sent us on all the forms.’

‘Ah. She’s very efficient. Been a good doctor to my family.’ My voice catches.

‘I would imagine she would be, yes.’

The lift thrums. Eric gives a little cough.

‘I understand my colleagues have already gone through the process with you, Roy, is that correct?’

I nod.

‘I’d a very long phone call with one of them on…must have been Monday? I’m pretty sure we covered everything.’

‘Yes, that’ll be our Doctor Stewart. She’s a devil for the detail.’

The lift jolts to a stop and Eric guides me out. A silence hangs between us as we walk. Finally, he opens a door and escorts me into the room.

‘If you’d just like to have a seat, I’ll go and check they’re ready for you. In the meantime, is there anything we can get you? Tea, coffee, water?’

‘A coffee would be lovely thanks. Just black.’

‘No problem.’ The door closes. The air in the room is a mix of lemon freshener and institutional mustiness. There is a low hum, I suspect from the air conditioning, and a clock ticks loudly. I take the photo from my pocket and with my fingers lightly trace the scene as best I can.

The picture sat on the mantelpiece for years, watching as its occupants in the real world grew bigger and bolder or smaller and greyer; morphed from flat black and white to the colour of the three-dimensional world. The frame surrounding it changed, reflecting passing tastes and trends, but the picture remained a constant. When Gemma married and moved overseas, that image was a visual reminder of those early carefree days. A few years later, I would look at it to see Linda, the woman I married, as she gradually left us. When I could no longer cope and she was moved to the care facility, the photograph was still there. My sight went not long after that.

I’ve heard folk say the one thing they can never take from you is your memories but that’s a lie. I watched Linda stripped of hers. Then as I grew used to the darkness I realised that the images in my brain were also beginning to fade. One night as I was feeling my way to bed I knocked the photo to the floor. I picked it back up and tried to remember the scene. My chest chilled; I recalled the form, the beach and the chairs, but could no longer visualise their faces or what they were wearing. I couldn’t see them anymore.

The door opens again.

‘Hello Mr. Collins.’ A different, younger male voice.

I hear him cross the room. ‘I’ll just put your coffee on the table here.’ He pauses as I don’t react. ‘It’s just to the left-hand side of the sofa.’ He passes back in front of me and the door closes once more. I track the surface of the table with my hand until I locate the paper cup. The steam blasts my face as I lift it to my lips, but the coffee is low on taste and I set it back down. The clock counts the seconds aloud until Eric returns.

‘All ready for you, Roy.’ He leads me out the waiting room and into the lab. There is a buzzing noise and a smell like electricity. It reminds me of the strange odour given off by the little engine of my childhood train-set, as I laid my head at the side of the tracks trying to make it look life-size. I take comfort from it in this alien world.

Murmuring voices are working through a checklist. Every so often there is a loud clunk. From Doctor Stewart’s description of the process, I guess it’s the sound of the projectors being positioned.

‘Could we have your picture, please, Roy?’ I pass him the photograph and listen as he inserts it into the machine. Fingers rap on a keyboard and another voice says ‘set’. Eric ushers me on a few paces.

‘Sounds please Jez.’ The room fills with the staccato shriek of seagulls over the velvet rolling of waves to shore. Children laugh and chatter in the background. I have no idea where the soundtrack comes from but today it will be my North Berwick.

‘That’s you, Roy. Just reach out.’ Eric lets go my arm and I stretch out my hands. A small gasp escapes my lips as I touch the soft wool and floral embroidery of Linda’s favourite cardigan. That’s right. She wore it most days that holiday. She’d got it in the women’s drapers beside the Co-operative when we’d just moved into the house. I can picture her standing in the kitchen swirling round as she held the front panels straight to show off the pattern. She’d never had anything so fancy, she said, but she just couldn’t resist it. She wore it all through carrying Gemma too, even when she couldn’t do the buttons up anymore, the panels sitting either side of her swollen belly like curtains. That little top was a constant in the early years of our marriage and one of the reasons she loved this picture so much.

I long for the sweet scent of her favourite perfume as I trace the shape of her arm up to her shoulder, then bring my hands up in front of her face. There is the gentle heart shape of her chin, the tilt of the corners of her mouth and the upward sweep of her perfectly permed hair. A pair of large round sunglasses, so fashionable at the time, perches on her small snub nose. Her face reforms in my mind.

My eyes are wet and I don’t care. For this fleeting moment they are returned to me, yet I am reminded of how much I have lost. My shoulders heave but I am smiling. It is worth it.

In the photograph Linda sits in a folding chair and I follow the cold steel of its tubular frame down to where I know Gemma kneels, frozen as a five-year-old. My hand skims her pigtailed hair, the cool cotton of her tee shirt with the three pearl buttons on one shoulder, and the frilled skirt of her bathing suit. She is carefully constructing a small empire of sandcastles with her bucket and spade. Over the soundscape conjured by the lab, I recall her soft voice explaining to the inhabitants of her castles how their sand city was evolving. I hear Linda’s voice too, sharing the gossip gleaned at breakfast about the other residents of our B and B.

I remember where I was immediately prior to taking the photograph and, with some difficulty, resume this position. Sitting beside Gemma, my back resting against Linda’s legs, I am engrossed by the B and B tittle tattle and Gemma’s great construction project. I run my hand around the contours of the castles and, as the details regenerate, I will them to stay in my memory this time. The pressure of Linda’s knees against my spine reawakens the sensation of her stroking the shorn hair at the base of my short back and sides. I can smell the mix of sunscreen, brine and ice cream that was Gemma after a day running around in the sun. Everything I used to see when I looked at the photograph, I sense as I sit inside it.

‘One more minute, Roy.’

His voice sounds quieter and a little less confident than before.

‘Yes, Eric.’ I give Gemma a kiss on the top of her salt straggled hair then haul myself up. The temporal distance, oddness and presence of an audience make me feel almost shy as I lean down to hug my wife a last time. Now I catch the light rose traces of Linda’s perfume. She feels firm and alive, not the frail echo that sits in the hospice hiding sandwiches in her dressing gown and screaming because she doesn’t recognise me.

A touch on my arm and I jump.

‘Sorry, Roy. Didn’t mean to startle you.’ Eric steers me back across the room. The seagulls and waves cease, and I realise, once again, they are gone.

Eric hands me back my photograph.

‘Thanks again Roy. Karen will be in shortly to look after you. You okay?’ Once again I nod. I don’t trust myself to speak just yet.

The next steps have already been explained to me. They’ll take me through to a clinic where all my vitals will be monitored, and a psychologist will debrief me. The scientists have learned to be more careful what they release into the public domain after the last time. They want to assess the medium-term impacts as well as the immediate, so in a fortnight I’ll go through a second batch of tests, then a third lot after six months.

The real world can wait, though. For in this moment, I see everything clearly again, and for as long as I can I will cling to this image. I will stay sitting on the beach with my young wife in her favourite cardie and my beautiful little girl building castles made of sand.

 

SHEILA SCOTT is a hybrid writer-scientist who most enjoys sitting with pen and paper turning idle thoughts into short narratives and illustrative doodles. Published in Causeway, Cabinet of Heed, Flashback Fiction, Poetic Republic, Qmunicate and shortlisted for Arachne Press Solstice Shorts, she also helps lead New Writing Showcase Glasgow and has an intermittently hyperactive Twitter account @MAHenry20.

Image via Pixabay

Cabinet Of Heed Contents

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