Alliterati Issue 11 by Alliterati

A L L I TE R A T I

1 1

JOIN THE ALLITERATI the best fresh talent in art and literature

CONTENTS MUSIC

POETRY

6 DEMOB HAPPY RATTLESNAKE WASH IT DOWN 32 AMELIA & THE OTHER STUFF CRUSH CANAL

ASA MADDISON 10 SHUSH RYAN FOSTER 28 BRIEF SKETCHES CIRCA ‘27 LAYLA HENDOW 29 SECOND CITY ANTONY OWEN 41 THE SUBJECTS SOPHIE WHITEHEAD 42 AN EVENING OF WINK MURDER TOO MUCH GRAVITY LIZZIE RIDGWAY 53 SORRY ALYSSA CRESSOTTI 58 TO SAMSON VIRTUES, ACTS AND STRENGTHS SHOSHANNA BEALE 64 THE RAIN MILES SEA 66 BLOODY HANDS FILM STEVE KLEPETAR 78 EVERYTHING YOU LACK 20 MATT PICKERING MOHAN RANA 79 ICOSAHEDRON OBSESSIVE TUNE 54 MARIA ABBOTT JULIE HOGG 86 SEXY DESIRE LINES THE END

BIOS 88 CONTRIBUTORS 94 EDITORS

ART

MAX LEE 8 NICK PERMAIN 12 DEMI OVERTON 13 ESME MCCALL 18 JESS THORSBY 26 JUSTYNA BELKEVIC 34 SWEETNESS COME HERE ALEX SEARLE 40 DAISY MILBURN 44 BALTIC MILLENNIUM BRIDGE PHIL FRANKLAND 52 RUTH PICKERING 56 LORDS AND LADIES SHAGGY SOLDIER MARTIN ECCLES 60 WATCHING BENJAMIN WILLIAM ROGERS 67 DEFACEMENT FOR SANDWICH PAPER 2012 DAISY BILLOWES 72 FLAPPERS LAZY LEOPARD ZOE MOLLOY 76 EDINBURGH FICTION ASHFORD HERMIONE MACMILLAN 80 14 LAURA EMERSON MATT WILKINSON 85 A MAN WITH HIS BACK TO THE SUN 22 CRAIG HINDS ICARUS 36 MARTHA LANE ODDS ON 46 MARK PLUMMER DUE TO PASSENGER ACTION 62 DANIEL BOWMAN GROUND FLOOR APARTMENT 68 JACK NUTTGENS THE LETTERS 74 MATHEW FASULLO LIKES AND DISLIKES 81 PHILIP SWANN MIDNIGHT CALLS

PUSH

PLAY

RATTLESNAKE Now.

That’s better.

This upandcoming garage-psych band from Newcastle-By-Way-Of-Brighton brings to mind a combination of Bush, Silverchair and Nirvana, but with something new and refreshing that is all their own. if you manage to sit still through an entire track, you’re just not listening right - Demob Happy is as addictive as they are fun. So go on. Turn up the volume. Get out of your seat. It’s far too late to turn back now...

WASH IT DOWN

While you’re at it, swing by their website. You can also catch the guys7 on Facebook and YouTube.

MAX

LEE

ASA MADDISON

SHUSH

Shush…..shush….. Shush…..shush….. The old man breathes to the rhythm of the respirator. The same rhythm of the compressed air which would rush through the factory with each push of every button pressed. The shush that gushed through plastic pipes and shuck each machine to life still plays in the old man’s head as he sits and coughs for breath, remembering what has gone, inhaling all that’s left. Everyday the shush would blow away the silence in whispers which flushed through the factory’s soul. Its deep hush replaced good morning niceties with red eyes and long tortured yawns exhaled by mouths sucked dry of speech. So much is said within the silence of breathing, in that place where saying nothing had become the norm. The stillness of the similar, the monotony of the familiar, as the same sand-beaten faces passed every day. A relay of reality, chiselled in expressions without hope. These hunched slouching heads bob like dash-board toys passing upon the conveyer-belt of factory life.

To him the shush was the rhythm of consistency the swoosh of cable reeling machines that tightened copper wire in circles around asphyxiated wooden barrels, the Ouroboros snake of routine, the daily click of the clock machine. Clocking in, clocking off. Suffocating everything in-between with shush. Nameless days melted into months never spent like the decades cashed in to pay the rent. Relentless weekends when he hardly came home, family time blown in a blitzkrieg of lies, swapped to the second stealing shush. Memories he never experienced exchanged for a wage. A slave, shackled to submission by the shush till old age. The old man recounts each second upon his fingers, shaking by the age he sold, grasping at the grains falling through his wrinkled hands. His palms press together in a prayer, a lamentation for youthful times. When growing up was an ambition and working days were wished away within the well, in prayer for the weekend, before he drank away the hours to mask the pain of the life he swapped to ever wanting shush. The old man now sways to the golden handshake he never received and waves goodbye to the production line of wasted time. Breathing deeply he coughs away the decades, worked dry, turned to rust, good for nothing except collecting dust. Too frail to breathe for himself clinging to the air from the respirator he kisses as it sings him a lullaby and softly sends him to sleep. Shush…..shush….. Shush…..shush…..

NICK

PERMAIN

DEMI

OVERTON

LAURA EMERSON

A MAN WITH THE SUN

HIS

BACK

Roger wakes once more in his own bed and counts both as blessings, as usual. The news forecast had been for snow and Roger had fretted himself into sleep after laying out his thickest socks on the other side of the large bed. Roger knows that his son won’t make the trip if there’s snow. Why should he? Much safer to stay home and warm of course, and with two small boys. No. Rather not drag them out in this, if there is a ‘this’ to be dragged out into. His bladder pressers. Fighting the ache in his limbs he pulls away the covers, lets the air in to seek him out, snatch away the heat earned by the hours, to tug on each white hair and raise them, an army atop a wave of shivers and shudders. He no longer relieves himself upon waking but dresses first. The journey to the bathroom is a hard one and one he is loath to repeat. Sometimes he wonders about a bucket by the bed, but he has not sunk so low. Soon, he thinks, but not yet. He remains horizontal to wriggle out of his pyjamas and kicks off the bottoms into a heap at the foot of the bed. He fumbles with his nightshirt, button by button until it lies flayed across his chest, and pulls each puckered arm free with the other. Underpants are the worst, the most difficult to escape. They will do for another day as they had done the day before. Trousers first, brown and thick. Bunching each leg he struggles forward to lean across himself. He teases his gnarled toes, feet burnt a fierce, freezing red, through the opening. One. Then the other. He gasps for the breath he has been holding. On his back again he rocks and pulls, tugs until the hue of his face matches his feet and he sucks in to draw the flaps together. A button. A zip. A victory. Next a vest. Back to front, inside out, he never checks. Of course, it doesn’t matter. The cotton slides over his flesh to cover stiff pink nipples. His shirt is buttoned halfway to begin with, a trick learned over time. A tartan of red, blue and black, soft collared. He dives into it, drags it over his head, his arms flailing for sleeves. He’ll finish fastening it over toast. Or not. A thick cardigan of moss green, too big now but worn and warm, familiar as fried bacon. He sits. He plants his fists, bulbous knuckles biting the stiff mattress and he lowers each frail foot to the floor. He takes up the lambswool socks and plunges once, twice, hooking each around his naked toes. He slides his feet, working them into the wool until the hems touch his heels. He dives again, snatching and tucking them up to his ankle. And slippers, easy. Worn suede moccasins. The final flourish.

Roger takes up his stick from where it leans against the night stand. One brief wobble, old knees chime out the hour of his rising, and he steps. Heavy on the right, hard on the stick, he walks to the window. He splits the curtains to let in the sky, a rosy dawn, fingers spread across a world made white. It is beautiful to the point of agony and hard as bone. The spears of ice at the sill are dry and solid. There are no signs of an early thaw. Everything is locked down, as hard and cold as steel. The road across the valley is blocked but maybe they’ll clear it. Maybe he’ll come. The jackdaw screams and stamps his black-twigged feet against the apex of the kitchen roof. He wants his breakfast and Roger wants a piss. The way to the bathroom is short, just across the landing, but Roger’s limbs are heavy and stiff with lying and the cold. When Roger makes it, stick striking loudly on the tile floor, he is fit to burst. Shoulder pressed against the wall, he struggles to undo what he has so painfully done up. Before he is even free of his trousers, the business has begun. He swears softly, but it isn’t much and it will dry. It happens more and more. Maybe he should get the bucket. One more thing to clean, or to neglect until it festers. Could he even carry it and walk? Perhaps he will drink less so there is less to come. Urine thunders into the pan, a brazen copper, acrid vapours rise with steam and false warmth. When it’s over, when he absolutely certain that the stop-start stream has run dry, he pulls up the briefs and trousers that he clutches still in his left hand. He knows that one day he’ll have to sit, but not today. Roger counts another blessing. He falls onto the sink. Voices play in the pipes for a moment before the water comes, brown at first, then clear and cold, the merest dribble. Up in the hills the plumbing must give way to gravity. With one hand cupped to catch, Roger splashes his face three times. He no longer shaves and the hair on his face retains the tawny hue that was routed as winter stole over his head and hid in his ears. A precious shard of vanity clings to it. Roger believes that a beard gives balance to his face, that it softens the years and masks the crumpled hollows of his sinking features. His son says he looks unwell. His son brings him his weekly rations, mean bags of produce that match Roger’s meticulous list, correct to the last penny of his pension. His son brings nothing more, except biscuits, which are in turn eaten by his son’s own sons. Roger struggles with the stairs but can’t bear the thought of living below. He needs the lofty view of the valley. Descending arse-first, he grips the rail and shifts his stick to the step. Holding and leaning, he brings each foot down and then inches his hand along the rail. Stick. Foot. Foot. Slide. Over and over. A rhythm emerges. It stops. His book sits forgotten on the nightstand. He doesn’t go back. Stick. Foot. Foot. Slide. Until finally he reaches the hardwood floor of the hallway. It’s colder down here. The card for Roger’s gas metre is somewhere, lost among piles of prepaid, unopened envelopes that litter most of the beautiful surfaces. Often he uses them, still sealed, as kindling. He can’t find the fucking card and even if he could, there’s no money left to spend on it. Roger splits his own wood and stacks it himself in the store behind the shed. He will light another fire and that will do. Roger knick-knocks his way to kneeling before the hearth. He knows one day he will kneel without rising, but not today. He knows this. And one night he will mount the stairs to bed and stay there. Tonight? No. He knows this too. But not long. ‘Soon,’ says the Jackdaw each morning over tea and toast while Roger envelops the cup in a meagre embrace, palms wide and fingers spread for two handfuls of heat. The carriage clock ticks on above him, falling in step with the thrum of his pulse that has

quickened with strain. A strange sort of sympathy, a reminder to think on, think always, about the finite nature of his own internal mechanisms. A pile of damp newspapers. Not many. No time to grow old and yellow before they are eaten up. His son brings them; they are on the list. Yesterday’s leftovers, news spoiling fast. He gets them cut price. Sometimes, if the manager isn’t looking, the lady with the glasses throws in the local fish-wrap for free. His son uses the difference to buy biscuits. He buys biscuits and feeds them to his sons. Twist and tie. Twist and tie. That’s how he does it, building a nest of knots in the grate. Age has drawn the bones of his own hands into gnarled knots, but the hands remember. Skilled hands that work hard through lifetimes do not forget their purpose. It takes no time at all. But the kindling wood is store-bought and he is ashamed. The damp season set in, forcing Roger to hang up the axe until spring. Old hands remember, but they also swell and become clumsy. He budgets for the wood and trims fat to make room. He doesn’t need deodorant. Who can smell Roger? Only Roger and he doesn’t mind. The pile is alarmingly low, but maybe he will come. A lattice fire burns best - lay the sticks loosely one way, then the other in layers. Leave space. The Fire must breathe if it’s to live. Pack it too tight and it will choke, but give it too much space and it will consume too much, too fast. It will eat itself alive. He plucks a match from the box and strikes it. A gentle touch here, here, and there now. He tosses it into the basket he has built and it sits as the flames close in. A quick blaze, gobbles the words and blazes high. A snap. Overture. The wood has taken. Fingers reach around the blocks and singe the splinters that blacken, red-tipped like torches. The match is doomed. A sprinkling of coal and the serpents rally at the stake, all hiss and spit and tongues lashing through splits and cracks. A damp haze clings to the warming bricks and he traps it with newsprint, spreading words over the mouth of the beast and it sticks, held fast by the breath of the blossoming flame. His knees have grown as cold as the stone floor beneath him and they grumble as he wrestles the first up into a right angle. Elbow digging into his thigh, one hand upon stick and one grasping the mantle, he pushes. Like a great tree felled in reverse, all cracks and groans, he returns at length to standing. Once upon a time he would walk it off, this stiffness clenching every inch of him, but he can’t walk so far these days. He walks it as far as the kitchen. Drafty it is. The large single pane lets the bleak light in to rest in bars on the back wall. He doesn’t turn the light on because bleak isn’t the same as dark. Yesterday’s water sleeps in the kettle and it will do. It always did. The world has softened, but not Roger. He sets the water to boil, takes the two spent teabags in the sink and plops them into his cup. His cup mind you, and not that god-awful thing they’d pushed on him at Christmas. A ‘mug’ they’d called it. They can keep it. His cup holds hunter’s green under azure sky, yolk yellow sun on the rise. She had painted it herself and fired it well so the colours would stick. She had traced for him the tiny dog, and every stroke of ink spoke of swift movement, life, light and powerful. Everything she had been then. In the distance, small and still where land meets sky, a figure. A man with his back to the sun. It is the view from the kitchen window in spring-time, every line of landscape curved, every crop of rock shaded. Every gate and post that lay between she and he at sunset, she had painted them all, his daily return to her. Kettle boiled, he fills his cup to the brim. He sinks a slice of granny loaf into the toaster and sips his tea, his back to the sun.

ESME

MCCALL

MATT

PICKERING

ICOSAHEDRON

ICOSAHEDRON is the first completed work from the MEMORIAM series, which synthesizes recollections of memories and the objects that triggered them through beguiling and fragmented visual means. Through it, I attempt to reflect my own struggle with piecing together memories and my frustration at my inability to do so. Despite an abundance of information pertaining to the memories, the images and words become a confused and distorted through their projection and assimilation and only small fragments are cogent at any moment in time.

CLICK

WATCH

CRAIG HINDS

ICARUS

On what wings dare he aspire? The Tyger, William Blake Hammer rings on bronze. The furnace roars behind him, and inside, in the forms of tigers and panthers, flames and shadows war. The fires of the furnace are brought into disorder by the striking of claws and incessant snuffling noses, which imagine the sources of the trails they follow as beasts and persons and they conspire to bring about their evisceration only. Their claws and teeth are at his back. The hammer rings again. His sweat which wets the air cannot be expunged by the heat, and fills the furnace where, high and low, his scent reaches the delicate noses of beasts on lookout. The sound for the hunt is diffused in drops of sizzling saliva that drip down onto the heads of cats inhibited from no violence. Wriggling through the grate with horrific howling, sniffing and shifting from paw to paw they steal into his forge, light and shadow falling on his floor like rugs procured by a well-travelled merchant at great difficulty and expense. The beasts dream of dancing on his giantâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s body and on his shoulders and getting in his eyes and shrivelling beneath the skin to heat blood and fill the air with his red steamed blood. The burning body on the floor would be encircled by flitting cats, circling and at the zenith leaping him, an orange tiger, a black panther, the pinnacle of what could be devised by a barbarous and ancient civilisation for the advancement of man, or else it is the habit of beasts possessed with a dark, quick and secret cunning that they keep in their stomachs heavy with the blood of other dwellers of the jungle, the stalking of which governs their existence, and it glints seldom in jerking eyes and sticks in the throat far from slicked, swelling tongues. The hammer swings down. Raising themselves from the workshop floor, rugs only playing dead, they creep by a table between him and the furnace with soft patience. Their arched backs ripple the straight lines marked in thin pencil on documents of invention. At the hot touch of tigers the pencil lines are imbued with movement and an animation for swaying and ticking allows wings to flap, cogs and treads to turn. The drawings and diagrams are his intentions for the state of futurity measured out on the page. Things that will be handed along from Aztecs to men who creep between alien rocks with rasping breath in caution and in lurching flight brought on by the terror of caves and palaces and worse - the speaking of unnamed tongues - things taken and passed like bowls and jars and plates along the long table at a feast where the guest list is a long call for all

the worshiped names of man. Things his son can turn in his hands. His son, who torch in hand wanders the labyrinth like a man who spins across space hoping to witness stars still burning, glad to sit even at a fire and decipher the tales in the shadows it casts and the red cracks in bloodshot eyes. Or glad to sniff up the vapour from the smoked carcass and hear the rituals of the men foreign to him and match the drums and howls and the beating of torsos to the twitch in his forehead. Glad because not all the stars have been extinguished, or else on cold planets they can be called up like deities with drums and the burning of papery skins that are kept inside temples with stacks of wood that they burn also. But the labyrinth is empty. His son wanders until an oily sweat congeals at his ankles, runes written on his skin by the earth. He wanders and feels fire rolling beneath stone. Except, with the unseeing eyes of the infant, he has not seen the sky which turns over the cities and tropics and deserts and like this, the fire beneath his feet moves. The runes written on his skin and the currents of fire are signs, signs that the Earth is moved to speak with him, but the Earth cannot speak and its signs are indecipherable, even to a man such as he who lives so close to its core. The realm he inhabits is otherwise inhuman and the soil there can thirst for no blood but theirs. But they keep their bloodline inviolate and they do not strain it from their bodies to colour their world. They do that with the flickering fire of the furnace, which his father speaks of often, and all of its progeny. They use polished metals, bronze, to hold the standing stones of the labyrinth in different guises, and when his son gazes at them, he bears witness to their different shapes and colours. The flickering torch, too, holds colour and it summons all he sees into an orange world without prejudice, though its toleration is without purpose because the labyrinth is all rock, and the furnace keeps its own colours. The flickering of the torch is the movement of his sonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s thoughts and they pulse like the heart. Orange waves swell and push against rock as if it is the skin of a greater creature and as sure as there is fire in his blood, fire is the blood of the creature and the kindling of these currents of fire from inertia is his duty and so the torch he carries fills the tunnels with blood. To leave the labyrinth he must be bled from the rocks and leave the creature with fire for blood and make its arteries cool and the black tunnels swallow up any space in which sparks are lit. And then the torch flickers into darkness for an instant and it tells him that his far-ranging thoughts fly back to him and curl up in a dark bundle inside his head and the return of his thoughts to his skull is like a gust of wind. And that is why the flame flickers, so he has said to his father many times. Always, his father speaks next of the furnace and enacts an ancient right that man claims his own. He tells of all the tragedies known to him so that one day man will know all things that are in the world for the becoming and when his father does this sometimes he puts down the hammer and looks at him and sometimes he does not. And the living in the labyrinth is a state of exile from knowledge of all new tales and all new tragedies. Bronze sounds again. Out of the darkness a head surfaces and is caught in the furnace light. Shadows run down the face. In each eye a point of coruscation is imbedded like a pin. The flesh of the eyes is white and thick and flecked with grime like water in a diseased pool. His pale and dreadful limbs uncurl and his forearms uncross. Icarus stands and from the corner of stone he steps towards his father. He makes little sound and his father does not turn, but still he lowers the hammer from its strike. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;What are you making?â&#x20AC;&#x2122; The voice of Icarus sounds as if through a gasmask, and without

terror, and because the voice is detached from the terror inseparable from speaking through such devices, the voice has become inhuman, and such a voice is a thing of terror itself. ‘How long were you there?’ ‘Awhile.’ ‘Were you sleeping?’ The furnace roars and settles into a low hum. ‘No.’ ‘Icarus,’ his father turns the hammer in his hand. He looks into the furnace and colours form shapes in his eyes. ‘Icarus.’ ‘Go on. Tell it.’ ‘When we were first...’ ‘No.’ ‘In halcyon days? Yes. In halcyon days, all colours charged with the bearing of heat coalesced in a hot globe and conspired. They were brought there at a whim. A whim that red might know of white by yellow and orange. To see what they might learn. At first, the great orb sat silent and still and deep in the Earth’s stone skin. Would it could murmur its secrets. The fire cannot speak but still it thought and with that first thought it began to hum. It thought on that for an age and, I think, still would, but I cannot say what it thought or what this thought would have become. I can only vouch that it was one thought and not many for it was one sound and it did not stop. I feel the reverberations of this sound murmuring to my blood even now; though it was a sound made long ago and it did not stir my blood but the blood of my ancestor. Such was its power. As soon as it made this sound the rocks around it listened and offered passage through their very beings and into the hollow dens where they keep their treasures. So it drank from rivers of gold, silver and bronze and grew bigger. ‘But it was disturbed. Men came and called it fire. They walled it up with metals and substances from places the hot globe had not ventured yet, but man had. They used great sheets of metal, unchanged from when they dug them out of the ground and when pulling these great shards many backs were broken from toil. It was then that man taught beasts to do his bidding so that the bones of the Earth could be lifted. They took these shards and hemmed in the hot globe while it thought. And the hot globe found the wall could not be subsumed into its being and for the first time there was something it could not do and it was alone. ‘The men left a grate like a mouth in the wall and they began to call it a furnace. They left a grate in the hope that it might speak to them and be their prophet and idol and when it did not they thought to rip away bits of it and make them like men. But the furnace keeps its own colours and would not become flesh. It was then that man took up the hammer. He wedded the things he knew to fire and in doing so made them holy. But that was not all he made. For in making new things he made himself a blacksmith. In changing the world we changed ourselves. ‘It was the hammer which drove the furnace into disorder. See how it churns. See how it whirls and wheels. I am a smith. It was with the furnace fire I made the labyrinth. In imitation of when the hot globe travelled freely, I used its fire to melt rock and have channelled tunnels beneath the Earth. I have done this because the lineage of fire ordains its servitude to man as lightning is enthralled to a power divine. The furnace fire, I believe, is ancient and of no other ancestry than the first fire bequeathed to man. It is still unruly and unused to being under our yoke so I think it promethean and I keep it. There is a greater globe of fire than this one set at the

Earth’s core, and you have felt it, too. It does not know the rule of man, but by learning the furnace fire’s secrets, we will know how to command it into the shapes we choose and build better things or else we will find it greater than ourselves and worship it and build monoliths for it and it will issue forth molten and golden and resurgent from the ground.’ ‘And we must witness turmoil engulf the civilisations of man or bring it ourselves. Yes. Now the other.’ ‘When we were first incarcerated in the labyrinth, I lamented. I watched them cut the rope with which I was lowered here and cursed and thought my sentence was unequivocal. I carried you to the furnace. I considered passing you through the grate and suffering the long death of starvation alone. But I remembered the Minotaur. Slain by Theseus. We have feasted on its gigantic corpse to this day or night. But still, though I knew all the ways of the labyrinth and so needed no string, I had no rope, as the one I gifted Theseus, with which to ascend. I remembered I had my inventor’s brain and my workshop remained unchanged. I began to chip the resources from the rock. I began to devise devices for our escape.’ ‘Yes.’ ‘And that is who we are.’ ‘Yes. I heard you miss a strike.’ ‘Yes. You heard the other four.’ ‘What are you making?’ ‘A rope.’ His father sleeps in the infernal glow of the furnace. Icarus kneels before a pair of bronze wings. He heats a tip of one wing and places it to his skin. He heats the other. And again he welds it to his skin. Tigers and panthers howl through the grate. He flies. And this also has been one of the dark places of the earth. Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad

JESS

THORSBY

RYAN FOSTER

BRIEF

SKETCHES

N .Machiavelli (new stuff) Water lily’s torn by late-spring torrents, sitting at the zenith of tense wooden Italy Rome, ‘neath her gold coruscation welters (concrete white, road-mapped in bronze) amid spittle of palsied lips, on hillside, - rising... rabid earth, green thorns from rose-stems, lithe roots grip sword-hilts, wind-carved steel/ wind-birth n.b Pliny’s kids are to be lost in the chaos, and the bookshops’ complaints’re to be filed with Sforza...

CIRCA

‘27

LAYLA HENDOW

SECOND

CITY

I Perhaps, my dear, in spite of us, spring days will bloom and leave again like flower heads dried to dirt, or rows of forest trees chained to city trucks. Perhaps we can return some day to where among our childish years we played those made-up games, just you and I, where we once laughed so loud we scared the crows, and where, I once reached out and kissed you. Here. Just so. Sitting out in the fields where the tree-swing hung, creaking in the wind. That thing that I had made for you one summer day, because you asked me to. When the rain fell down in sheets the elders led us down the flooding streets, and we caught forks of lightning in our hair. We tilted back our heads and drank the rain, we held hands and heard stories about Godâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s angels and saints: about his spears, how he made the thunder roar, and how, in a whisper you and I werenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t meant to hear, how there must be more to life than this.

II Outside, the people swim like slaves to the second city. They lose their land. Their crops. Their words. The country split itself in two, while we played catch, like the bones and bodies of men long gone from this place. Like the wise woman who would read riddles from your palm for a golden coin. I’d watch my father sweat over a land barren and dry. Where colourless shoots emerged, lost hope, and withered down to die. They were no use to him. At night he paced the fields as though in search of something daylight wouldn’t show. He’d whisper as he went: there must be more to life than this. In the distance he could smell the green land. He could see the sunflowers, standing like a yellow army to guard the second city. III So do not leave, like the swallows up there in their clay nests. Do not leave this wooden chair – the crackling radio is a kind of comfort, like distant fireworks, and the walls enclose our underground home. Stay a while. Listen to the church bells ring. They sing, ‘a baby has been born today. A baby has been born.’

Perhaps spring days will come again, and dry the winter’s dampening floors. And you and I will make a patchwork life between these decaying walls. I’ll make a crown from painted card and we’ll live life in scripts. We’ll play at being more than we will be. That mattress on the floor will be your burnished throne. I’ll sit at your feet to act your loving fool. Your jester and your king. And the flowers will grow among the weeds: small, perfect, blue. A glimpse of some small paradise, to last a single day, then disappear.

AMELIA

THE

CLICK

OTHER

PLAY

STUFF

In an era where top singles are remixes of remixes, Amelia & the Other Stuff stands out as a reminder of how captivating simplicity can be. Her songs possess an intimacy and sincerity that makes you feel as if you’re sitting on your best mate’s back porch, sharing laughs and sharing confessions as the summer evening winds down. So settle back in a comfy chair now (or a back porch if you’ve got one) and let the eveningcreep in as Amelia starts another story.

Don’t forget to grab her album on your way: I Made You This

JUSTYNA

BELKEVIC

Sweetness

Come Here

MARTHA LANE

ODDS

But the Dealer just stares, there’s something wrong here he thinks The Clash, ‘The Card Cheat’ There is a letter waiting for Joe. At this point Joe and I have been together five years. I refer to him as ‘boyfriend’, but always after a pause hoping to the Gods of Lexis that a better term has been crafted. I can’t use lover as it is just too ridiculous – and with a hint of West Country that I can’t carry off – and I can’t use partner because people quite often think I’m gay. That isn’t an issue, but Joe’s masculinity takes a knock every time somebody asks how Joanna is. I suppose I could get away with partner if his name was Derek or Jim but it isn’t and deed poll seems like a lot of unnecessary paperwork. I downright refuse to use soul-mate, so boyfriend is begrudgingly bandied about. Now, my boyfriend is looking at a letter not wanting to read it. I don’t want him to read it either. I squeeze my eyes shut and a casino rises up from the cracked laminate of our lounge. This casino is not like the real ones, sad brown places filled with men who have bulging money clips and students trying to ignore the flecks of vomit spotting their ill-fitting Burton suits. No, I am imagining one of those garishly bright casinos from films, where multi-million dollar heists are hatched and people are so glamorous they float and glide – their feet too privileged to bother with carpet. My lounge is now lined with lush green tables, smooth like suburban lawns and the bare energy saver bulb has been replaced with flattering lights that make sequined dresses wink. The comforting crack and fizz of fireworks surrounds us and pink cocktails swirl around in tall, elegantly thin stemmed glasses. In one hand I clutch two smooth dice, their numbers tattoo my palms. I’ve made sure the casino is full; people surround me with hushed voices. Anticipation has painted their cheeks a rosy hue. They are all behind me, wanting the win almost as much as I do. In my other hand, Joe’s thick fingers curl around mine, a little squeeze lets me know it will be alright. He does look dapper in the suit I’ve conjured for him, brown with a thin pinstripe and a pink tie in a thick, loose knot. There is a 96% chance we will be just fine. 96% is big, good odds. We are happy making this bet. Happy rolling any dice, picking any card, putting any number of chips on the table. Anybody would be. If you had a 96% chance of winning you would make that bet too. It would be you standing in a

floor- length purple dress, satin sweeping the air into tornadoes around your ankles. You would be throwing the dice, head bucked wildly back, laughing. You would be so sure of winning you would already be spending the money – buying yachts, safaris and chandeliers. You know? All that stuff that really matters. Joe reaches the bottom of the letter and looks up at me. He doesn’t need to speak. I let my satin dress fall to the floor. The fireworks fade away and the green table lawns turn back into the beige laminate that dominates our dank flat and I am left staring into two wide hazel eyes, their green flecks magnified by the watery film that has formed. Turns out we are the 4%. We’re going to pass it on. There are umbrellas everywhere, and venoms, and umbilical cords Pablo Neruda, ‘Walking Round’ It was 16:30 in a South London flat when a woman clicked her tongue against the back of her throat. It was an old habit. She looked down at her swollen, wriggling dome. She was due to give birth at any moment. She looked over her shoulder as the windows rattled. She walked towards them and drew back the charity shop curtains. The winds were so strong they seemed to have dragged the night with them, wrenched too early from the Southern hemisphere to loom over her. Those who were still out on the street were horizontal, bent like reeds by the gusts. Everybody was snubbing the words that had been said on the news that day, as Michael Fish smiled smugly from their TV screens, even adding a condescending nod of his balding head. ‘Apparently, earlier on today a lady called the BBC and said she’d heard there was a hurricane on the way. If you’re watching, don’t worry, there isn’t.’ The pregnant woman reclined stiffly. She wasn’t alone in the flat, her husband was pacing, his clammy hands occasionally patting her shoulder. He hadn’t said a word in hours. He hadn’t been able to unclench his jaw for the past three. His anxiety was infectious; even she was beginning to feel the tell-tale itch of uncontrollable angst spread beneath her skin. The television was blaring to cover the noise from outside but neither of them paid attention. She could not move her head from the window. She watched the wind, so thick it could almost be seen, as it slid as easy as cheese wire slicing roofs off whole. Cars were being flipped like beer mats and trees snapped, leaving splinters the size of bodies strewing the streets. She spoke softly to her belly, not wanting the howls shaking the tower block to be the only sound to infiltrate her womb, hands cupping her sizable girth, praying to no deity that her baby would not come out that night. The winds did not relent until the very early hours of the morning. 23 years later I found myself sitting in a fertility clinic, where it felt apt to be thinking of my own entrance into the world. Joe was next to me. We’d had a fight so I didn’t ask him about his. While everyone else around us was staring hopefully, doe-eyed, into each other’s faces, we were seated at separate ends of a scratchy sofa, looking at different walls. It was stifling, too; I kept having to cross and uncross my legs to avoid them sticking to the chair. Joe mistook this for huffiness. Fertility clinic waiting rooms are not the same as doctor’s waiting rooms. Nobody in that

room was smiling; they were barely breathing. The longing in the air was palpable and tasted like the pithiest orange. A receptionist was attempting to make a pile of previously untouched adoption leaflets noticeable by fanning them out attractively. A buzz shocked the room. ‘Martha Lane?’ My ears have gone numb. Dr. Carson has been talking for an age about egg donation and now Joe is joining in. A sociology graduate whose final module was in eugenics, he is worried that by tampering with eggs and sperm we are ‘playing God’. ‘Scientist,’ I correct him. We haven’t even got on to the morals of aborting an affected foetus yet. I note the fact that we’re not talking about sperm donation any more. That was not a path he wished to tread. ‘If Martha’s parents had chosen this route she wouldn’t even be here.’ I don’t point out to him that my parents didn’t have these choices. Joe has a habit of being dramatic when he thinks it is necessary rather than when he actually feels the need to be. I think he is over compensating now because I am so calm. He keeps looking over at me with his face full of deep concern. It is not his truly worried face though. He doesn’t share that expression in company. ‘I wouldn’t worry yourself with ideas like that,’ she then goes on to list absolutely every option and outcome we could be facing. It is a list of numbers, science, and facts. There is little room here for psychoanalysis or the social sciences. She barely pauses for breath, which is a feat as this mathematical list is very, extremely, incredibly long. I am both worried and bored in equal measure, which is difficult to convey. I feel sorry for the specialist, who’s looking at this strange look I must have. I have a dour face, I know that. I am happy with it, ironically. It works for me. I am not a dour person, but I do have a dour face. It is a mixture of thick eyebrows that I am loath to remove because my mother plucked hers once in the eighties and they never grew back, and a mouth that naturally turns down at its edges thanks to my dad. I am a lot like my parents. They have strong genes obviously. My dad’s genes took over the body; unfortunately, this is why I can’t wear jeans. Mum’s genetics took care of the head. I look remarkably like my mother – apart from the very corners of my mouth which go down rather than up – and without any coercion I think, act and even talk like her sometimes. And I don’t wanna get married in the same church as you all Reverend and the Makers, ‘No Soap in a Dirty War’ Mum wasn’t exactly surprised when I told her I wasn’t returning home after university. She was worried about our lack of jobs, prospects and friends (all of which had inexplicably upped roots to Manchester) but she wasn’t surprised. It was her fault really, she had made the mistake of taking me to the Natural History Museum for my fifth birthday, I had been allowed Nutella sandwiches for breakfast on the train, and it had been amazing. From that day I knew that there were bigger and much better places to be and I had been ready to leave since five-years-and-one-day-old. When looking at universities my main priority had been distance. The 144 miles to Newcastle seemed just right. Number 47 was our first flat after university. It was on the parallel street to the beautiful

three storey house we had spent our last two years in. Moving day was not enjoyable. Of course we couldn’t justify a moving van for a move of less than 100 metres, but by the 13th car trip we were biting at each other. I lost count of how many times we dropped the bookshelf that we walked through the leafy streets of Sandyford. By the time we had moved in we hated the place. Without the previous owner’s furniture to hide the cracks and what looked like bullet holes in the door we realised that we might have made a mistake renting it. My mother‘s first flat was an absolute shocker. She and her flatmates had a tin bath, stolen from one of Brixton’s more reputable dumps. To make it even more homely they had added a ragged hole in the wall between the bathroom and kitchen, to make room for the hot water pipe they’d wrenched through so they could use their pilfered tub. Their most trendy design feature was the classic ‘Truro Double-Glazing’ (patent still pending). This was black bin-liners my Cornish grandfather stapled to his daughter’s windows to stop the ‘Northern’ chill seeping in. I am glad to say that she is much better at interior design nowadays. But, anybody who was witness to her wielding a sledgehammer around my childhood dining room in search for the original Victorian fireplace would not have found it difficult to imagine her with a holey flat. Because of this unfortunate start in shared accommodation she was not too generous with sympathy whenever I moaned about number 47. She always said it wasn’t that bad. It was awful though. Every room was horrible. My third least favourite room was the kitchen. A ragged hole in the wall would have been an improvement. It had smelled like damp since the flood, and metal. It somehow managed to smell of metal. The windowsill peeled, paint blistering like burnt skin and there were always silvery slug trails glinting along the milk chocolate brown floor. It is November 2009. I am boiling something in a pot. Boiling has been my preferred method of cooking recently. I don’t particularly like boiled food, but I do like the vapours of steam that the hot water creates. I lean into them, letting them curl around my face and neck. When I am boiling things I can forget the cold that has a hold on the flat. The floors are brittle with it. Joe is playing video games, for every bubble that pops in my pot there is a gunshot from the other room. The phone rings. He doesn’t notice, so I pick up. The speaker on the line is a pasty, portly Irish man called Mr Bourke. I have met him just once. He is a doctor. Joe doesn’t look up for the entire conversation.

That phone call was my diagnosis. The diagnosis I had needed for 22 years. ‘The normal range is between 40-59,’ he might as well be talking in tongues. ‘Right, and my test came out….?’ ‘Your levels are 79.’ I paused, ‘okay,’ what else was there to say? ‘This does mean Cystic Fibrosis is very likely. We’d like to repeat the test.’ They repeated the test.

ALEX

SEARLE

ANTONY OWEN

THE

SUBJECTS

These were my Father’s streets he forged silver from mackerel walked through welded rain.

For Joseph O’Toole Machines gleamed in the fifties. Cobbled streets were chrome and ruin, sky basked in bonnets of Daimler.

These were my Grandma’s streets, the one who gave me cake and coin to buy her bread from the nig-nog.

Men were produced by factories, on Sunday’s air smelt of Dreft only wives hung out husbands to dry.

These were my Mothers streets, the one who pushed a glass eye pram to homes of men with war in their eyes.

Coal crackled fire in miner’s chests asbestos wove tapestries of phlegm ruins emerged from ruins.

This city bore its country’s scar, healed by all of its subjects our city invaded all of us.

People walked with their heads up, Moon awaited America like Guinness for the Irish to settle. Slab grey streets flowed rivers of Sari, they made their gold in street corners sweeping crystals of shop windows, these anagrams of broken English made Urdu a backroom language where fathers drifted home through incense. Children played on stairwells to sun, shooting down immigrant planes from houses that would die again.

SOPHIE WHITEHEAD

AN EVENING MURDER

Played at Lilyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s dinner party with friends and that Portuguese guy who broke up with his girlfriend a few hours later, with words that tasted like blades of orange peel and the sediment of mulled wine, from sweet to sour, it laced the gums. But she inhaled it, sucked it back and kissed it out while twitches diluted in the air and sank through skin, like the rhetoric of wiser men with tight vernacular. And hours later sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d show nothing fleshy of her trauma, no slit to touch for severs made, and with the rum all gone, the gin he left was opened and that taste of leaves and flowers lay dormant on her tongue.

WINK

TOO

MUCH

GRAVITY

Where limbs slide into tarmac, lift out like spoons of treacle by orchards dripping apples, dipping apples in the mud trees forsaken by branches flaunt their only naturals stand nude on the avenues, show different hues of garden and words just melt down pages spelling some broken language for the walls to bend and read they spit the seed down further so that in the end we sink inside the rubble of our skies, find a face trapped in a head and start to dread the descent.

DAISY

MILBURN

Baltic

Millennium Bridge

MARK PLUMMER

DUE

PASSENGER

ACTION

The police have got one of the doors into the Underground cordoned off so everyone is pushed in through the other door. They all try to look into the taped off area and it makes the crush even worse. Someone steps on my foot and then says that there’s blood on the floor. I say that he’s standing on my foot. He says there’s blood on the floor, someone’s been stabbed and we all continue down the steps. I don’t move my feet; the other people just shuffle me along. I imagine the people parting as I fall and cartwheel down the concrete steps. The man who saw the blood would turn aggressively, and maybe even raise his fist as my spinning carcass hits his back. Then he’d feel a moment of guilt as he saw my disjointed neck at the bottom of the stairs, before stepping over me and getting on his train home. I search for him in the crowd. He’s a few places in front of me. His hair’s dark with bits of grey in it and swept over to one side. He’s wearing a t-shirt that says ‘but I’ll shave it for later’ on the back. I try and guess what it says on the front but it’s impossible, something sexual. We reach the platform and there’s a train there. The carriages are already full but more people cram on. The doors close. I expect the people who got on to look back at us smugly but they look back almost regretfully; like they wished they hadn’t got on and regret us being separated. The man who saw the blood makes his way to the far end of the platform and the crowd moves with him. He stops and turns. The front of his t-shirt has a picture of a moustache with an ‘I’ above it. Below the moustache it says, ‘you a question’. I moustache you a question but I’ll shave it for later. At least it’s not sexual. I try to guess his name. The shirt and his voice suggest baseness, something monosyllabic, something blunt. Craig. Jack. Wayne. Ian. Yes, Ian. Definitely, Ian. I look at his face. His nose is pinched and leans slightly to the right and there’s a little dent on his left cheek, a cut from his childhood that he’d picked and not let heal properly. There’s a mouselike quality to his face and there’s glimpses of naivety that hint at Ian having a bullied childhood; a bullied childhood that led to the scar on his cheek and a broken nose. The people behind me push me over the safety line. I feel the wind pick up and the whirr of the train approaching. I think of myself being picked up by the draft like a leaf and floating out in front of the oncoming train. ‘There’s blood on the track,’ Ian would say whilst standing on someone’s foot. ‘The train crushed him. He jumped off.’

The train stops. I don’t jump off, the train doesn’t crush me and there’s no blood on the track, well not mine at least. I think I wouldn’t be able to jump in front of a train, not off a busy platform. I’d be too self-conscious about the way I jumped. It would be like high jump in school all over again; no way of knowing if your technique is right and if people are sniggering at you. And if I did jump off and it didn’t kill me – if I jumped too early and the train managed to stop in time, or too late and just bounced back off the side of it – I wouldn’t be able to bear the embarrassment. We all pile into the carriage. I’m separated from Ian and can’t see where he goes in the crowd. I search the platform as we leave the next station but can’t see him. The train speeds on through the centre of the city. I think about the people up above us shopping and taking photographs and I consider the weight of them all. I visualise cracks opening up in the tunnel ahead of us and London landmarks falling onto the tracks. Just after Euston, at the point where I guess we go under the river, I can hear water running, like a tap that’s been left on. I envisage a tidal wave barrelling down the tunnel at us. Or even worse: the water slowly filling up the train like a bath, except there’s no plug or overflow, and all we can do is wait as it slowly deepens and drowns us all. At Waterloo the carriage thins out as people get off. As we move away again I see Ian in front of me to the left-hand side of the carriage. He doesn’t hold the rail and rocks from foot to foot with the sway of the carriage. I look up at the map and guess where Ian lives. He didn’t look for a seat - and I don’t imagine Ian to be the chivalrous type - so he can’t be going much further. Kennington. Oval. Stockwell. Clapham’s too expensive. Balham. Tooting Bec. I can imagine him saying Tooting Bec; it suits his voice. It’s the kind of name that sounds ridiculous when anyone says it except a Cockney. I search down the black line but can’t find anywhere else that seems likely. I wander why they made this one black and the others bright colours. Maybe because there are so many suicides on this line. Or perhaps it’s cause and effect; depressed people are drawn to the black. Ian’s looking at something on the opposite side of the carriage. I move to my right and try to see what he’s looking at it. He’s looking at a girl asleep on her boyfriend’s shoulder. The boy’s arm is wrapped around her holding a book. Every breath pushes the girl’s body tighter to her lover. Ian shuffles uncomfortably as the girl whispers her dreams into the boy’s chest. He watches as the tendons of her neck flutter with some unconscious excitement. Ian wishes it was him in the boys’ place. The girl stirs slightly and the movement pulls her blouse tight against her chest. A gap opens up between the blouse’s buttons and the black lace of a bra is visible against white, curved flesh. Ian swallows. The boy lifts his head from his book and Ian looks away quickly. His cheeks turn red, the white scar now more prominent against his blushing skin. The train stops at Clapham North and the couple get out. The boy hits his shoulder into Ian as he leaves. Ian pretends not to notice. The train leaves the station and a man takes a deep breath and gets up from his seat. He puts his satchel over his shoulder and stands by the door at the end of the carriage. He takes another deep breath and looks around. There’s a blazing light as his satchel explodes and the train buckles up, smashes back down and bounces off the walls of the tunnel. I can see it all and feel the fear and excitement rushing around my body. I wonder if it will just end in a white flash, then nothing, or if I’ll survive and have to fight my way out through the corpses and the black smoke. I start willing it to happen.

The train stops at Clapham Common and the man gets out. I look back to Ian. He’s picked up one of the Metros from the back of the seats and is looking at the back page. I imagine him at a football ground screaming Come on, you Spurs. The white shirt would suit him. He looks up momentarily at the station signage as we go through Clapham South then goes back to his sports. ‘Goodbye, Ian,’ I whisper and make my way to the door. ‘Balham. This is Balham,’ the announcer says in a voice somewhere between surprise and disgust. I get out onto the platform and walk towards the exit. I can hear a busker playing somewhere in the tunnels. I always think that when I bend to drop a coin into their case that they’ll put a knife in my neck. In the crowd ahead I can see the greying crop of hair and the ‘but I’ll shave it for later’ shirt. I hurry to catch up with him. I follow him off the platform and up towards the street. I go behind him through the ticket gate. I reach my oyster card out towards the reader and my hand touches his as he moves away. ‘Sorry, Ian,’ I mutter. He doesn’t react and keeps walking. He goes out of the station and turns right. My flat is the other way but I decide to keep him company for a while. We move away from the high street and turn right into Bedford Hill. I’m disappointed with how he walks. He’s huddled and slow; I’d expected him to bounce but he slouches along with his chin tucked into his chest. He kicks at the ground with each step and his hands are pushed inside his pockets. I draw hope from the optimistic thumbs that rest on the outside of his jeans. The buildings open up to the fenced grass at the beginning of Tooting Common. Tooting, I knew it. The street lights start to flick on above us and somehow make everything greyer. The common is empty. I long for the sounds of birds, or children playing or a football match to cheer Ian up but there’s only the traffic and the trains. A lorry comes around the curve of the road and I visualise it tipping over on top of me. I imagine the police wouldn’t even realise my flattened body was there until they hoisted the truck up. Ian stops where the road crosses over the rail lines and looks down at the tracks. I stop a distance away from him and look over the wall. The lines look like the inside of a plug. I lean out and look down at the large shingles between the track twenty feet below me. I feel wind rushing past my face and see the shingles rushing up towards me. I look up and Ian has set off along the road. I follow him. He turns and looks at me and seems to speed up. We turn right, towards Streatham, and then Ian goes to cross the road. A car’s coming, but he steps out anyway. The car breaks and blasts his horn. Ian raises his hand, shouts sorry and crosses the road, quickly glancing back at me. I wait for a gap in the traffic and follow him down the street he went into. On the corner there’s a wooden house with a balcony that looks like it’s in the wrong city. I expect to see an Asian woman come and hang out washing. After that, there’s an old school turned into flats and a series of brick, semi-detached houses. Ian turns off the street into a driveway, ducking under a haggard tree. His house is large and painted white. A rusty number forty-seven hangs next to the red door and the number 4 rattles as he shuts the door. There’s a silver Citroën on the driveway with a Chelsea sticker on the back window. It must be his son’s; Ian would look ridiculous in a blue shirt. I watch the windows for movement but can’t see anything. His bedroom must be at the back of the house. There’s a dormer window in the roof and a series of Buddha statues sit with their

backs to the world. They must be Ian’s wife’s. She’s probably a bit spiritual, and that’s probably the room where she does massage therapy, Reiki, that sort of thing. She probably burns joss sticks all the time and Ian doesn’t like it. He finds the smell overwhelming. I can hear arguing coming out of the open first floor window. The voices are muffled but I bet she’s stunk the place out with her incense again. He’s just got home from work, wants to sit down, relax and have something to eat but he can’t without choking because she’s fumigated the bloody place. And she hasn’t even started the dinner because she’s been too busy rubbing lavender oil into naked strangers. The shouting stops and I hear the catch of the front door. I run out of the drive and hide behind a parked car in the street. I watch through the car’s windows as Ian comes out and gets into his car. He slams the door, starts the engine and pulls out of the driveway. I get out from behind the car and hear a car door open on the other side of the road. A man gets out. He watches Ian’s car reach the end of the street and pull out into the main road. The man crosses the road and rings the bell of Ian’s house. Ian’s wife answers the door but I can’t see her. The man checks behind him then goes inside. I wait for a few minutes and then see the man, shirtless, close the curtains of the room with the Buddhas. I walk back to the main road and hope to see Ian driving back to the house to catch and kill his wife and her lover. But he doesn’t, so I slowly walk back the way we had come and back to my flat. My post is piled up on the hall table. It’s all junk mail. There are brochures for stair lifts, oak furniture, Elvis CD collections, Lidl has inflatable beach chairs on special offer, Oxfam wants me to buy a goat and there’s a leaflet saying the Samaritans will listen if I need to talk. I redistribute them amongst the post of my neighbours but keep the Samaritans’ leaflet. My flat is on the first floor. I go up and take out some things from the fridge for a salad. I take the big knife off the rack and look at it in the light from the bare bulb above my head. I straighten my hair in the reflection then rest the blade against my wrist. I rotate my hand gently. Where my skin is touched by the knife it turns white and then back to normal as I move it away. I push the knife back down and watch the artery bend and then pop under the blade. Blood pours down my hand and through the contours of the lettuce leaves like a passion fruit dressing I saw in a magazine earlier. I put the knife down and take out the Samaritans’ leaflet. I phone the number and a Cockney man answers. ‘Ian?’ ‘I’m sorry? This is the Samaritans.’ ‘Yes, I know, but that is you, isn’t it, Ian?’ ‘I can’t give you my name, mate.’ ‘No. No, of course. How about I just call you Ian and if, by coincidence, that is your real name then so much the better.’ ‘Okay, if that helps you.’ I laugh. ‘I don’t want to get you into trouble or anything. Is someone listening in?’ ‘Do you feel like everyone’s listening in? Is that the problem?’ ‘What? Oh, no, I see what you mean. I’m not paranoid or anything. I just imagine with the kind of thing you have to deal with that your supervisors probably listen in to make sure you’re keeping to the guidelines.’ ‘Yeah, that’s right, so we’d better stick to them then, hadn’t we? What would you like to talk

about?’ ‘Well, I seem to spend a lot of time thinking about killing myself or dying’ ‘And what normally brings this on?’ ‘I don’t really know. I just see a car and I feel like jumping in front of it. I see a bottle of bleach and something compels me to drink it. I feel an urge to walk off the tops of high buildings; it’s as if gravity is stronger at precipices. Like earlier, Ian, when we stopped and looked at the railway. I felt some irresistible force pulling me over the edge.’ ‘And have you done anything to harm yourself?’ ‘No. No, I’d never actually do it. I just imagine what it would be like.’ ‘So why have you phoned us today? I mean, what can I do to help? What would you like to talk about?’ ‘I don’t know. Your leaflet came in the post today and I just thought… Well, I met you today and now this. The coincidence is unreal.’ ‘Look... I’m here for you to talk to if you’re feeling down or anything like that, but this is a bit…I mean, I don’t really know what you’re talking about.’ ‘Come on, Ian. You remember me. It was only an hour ago.’ ‘Look, mate, I’ve been here all day. I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ ‘We walked to your house together. You went in, had an argument with your wife, left, drove over there to the Samaritans and then you wife’s lover went into your house.’ ‘No, look here, I’ve had enough of this. This line is for people who are genuinely depressed or worried about hurting themselves. Not for people like you phoning up and taking the piss.’ ‘Have you ever tried to kill yourself, Ian?’ He hangs up. I screw the leaflet up and curse my own stupidity. I’ve annoyed him. I shouldn’t have bothered him at work. I could have got him in trouble and now he’s angry with me. I turn the lights out and lie on the bed. But I can’t sleep. I just keep replaying the conversation and thinking about what I should have done differently. It was the comment about his wife that really infuriated him. Then I think about the way his breath seemed to tighten before he hung up, when I’d asked him about suicide. Of course: the bullied childhood. Why else would he be a Samaritan? He must have some kind of reason to volunteer for them. They must have helped him in the past. My thoughts spin in a great circle until the sun comes up. Then I get dressed and walk down to the tube station. I wait in the ticket hall as people come in and out of the station. The longer I wait the more likely it seems that Ian has killed himself. It’s obvious: his marriage was in obvious disarray; I’d heard him arguing with his wife who was cheating on him and saw his longing for the love the young girl on the underground had shown her boyfriend. Then there was that dejected walk, the suicidal glance over the railway bridge and the kamikaze road crossing. Yet I’d still pushed him and now Ian is sitting somewhere alone in his car with a pipe pumping his exhaust fumes in through the driver’s window. But then he arrives. I reach out towards him in excitement and he flinches. ‘Ian, I’m sorry about last night,’ I plead with him but he just looks away from me and walks quickly through the barrier. I follow him. ‘Ian, please. I’m sorry. It was a mistake. It probably wasn’t your wife’s lover. Don’t do anything stupid. You’ve got so much to live for.’ He lowers his head and walks quicker. He goes onto the north bound platform. I wait in the stairwell to give him a chance to calm down. I peer round the corner and he’s standing towards

the edge of the platform. He looks around the station nervously. The board says the next train is in three minutes. I step out onto the platform. He sees me and walks further along. I follow him. He gets to the end and I wait a few metres away. He looks over his shoulder at me and I smile. He takes his phone out of his pocket and pretends to look at something on it. He seems nervous, twitchy. I move back down the platform to give him some more space. He watches me in the corner of his eye. More people come onto the platform and stand between me and him. He puts his phone back in his pocket but still seems to be looking around nervously. I think back to our conversation last night. I look at his wrists and think I can see bandages sticking out of the end of his coat sleeves. He’d tried to slit his arteries after we’d spoken. The sign changes to one minute. Ian lets out a big breath and moves closer to the edge. I can feel the air the train’s pushing down the tunnel at us. Ian looks around at the crowds and places one foot over the safety line. I can see the lights of the train reaching out of the tunnel. I step forwards and Ian spots me. He brings his other foot over the safety line. He’s staring at me. ‘Don’t do it, Ian,’ I shout at him. ‘Keep away from me,’ his eyes are wild and scared. I step towards him and he steps back towards the edge. The train comes out of the tunnel. I take another step towards him with my arms out offering him safety. He steps back, his feet touching the edge. He turns round and looks at the short drop onto the tracks and he starts to move. I run and grab at him but he moves to one side and I miss him. I feel my front foot miss the platform but I can’t stop my back foot carrying on and it pushes me further off. I look back at Ian’s wide eyes on the platform and I know that my timing and technique are perfect as I sense the red of the train next to me and it engulfs me in a white light.

PHIL

FRANKLAND

LIZZIE RIDGWAY

SORRY

Echoic, like a drained well in a draught; a useless hole full of pointless space. Empty of meaning, brimming with nothing like a scowling pumpkin in November, left to rot with its innards scooped out. Wilted and crisp at the edges. The light absent from behind its eyes. Its purpose past.

MARIA

ABBOTT

Trying to understand the behavior of society and why certain groups are discriminated against whilst others turn away is central to my art practice. I am currently researching into the contemporary feminist issue of ‘lad culture’. This phenomenon is focussed around University campus culture, where students feel pressurised to behave in stereotypical ways. ‘Lad culture’ involves the commodification of women in the promotion of club nights and products. This degradation makes derogatory jokes and sexual harassment acceptable as common practice. I have researched extensively into the subject, via media coverage and through speaking with women about their experiences of ‘lad culture’. ‘Sexy’ uses ambiguous, uncomfortable imagery of the body to question what it means to be sexy. The piece came from a witness’s account of harassment at University.

SEXY

CLICK

WATCH

RUTH

PICKERING

ALYSSA CRESOTTI

SAMSON

Puzzling out the symbols in dreams, Using a vast connection of wires. Subversive, my hand in your hair. In waking, I thought it was to feel its softness. Now I know I was testing for weakness. All the time measuring the length Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d cut off.

VIRTUES, ACTS STRENGTHS

I have a planâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; To buy a box of hosts, Bless them myself. Make a meal of the messiah. Me and three Jewish guys in the Backseat of a Ford. Tasting the tasteless at midnight in Jersey. Eating the body of the God of Love And Floods.

AND

MARTIN

ECCLES

WATCHING

DANIEL BOWMAN

GROUND

FLOOR

APARTMENT

George creaked over to the window and closed the blinds. His ground-floor room looked right out onto the pavement and anyone passing by would be able to see everything he owned. If he ever saw a big window with the curtains undrawn on his walk home from the factory he would always peer in on the people inside, never for long, just long enough to form an impression as to what their lives were like. Mostly it was just an empty room, or a guy watching TV, oblivious to the fact that he himself was being viewed by George. But today, today he had seen something more. He walked over to the little freezer in the corner and rummaged around for a frozen Korma. He pierced the lid several times and set the microwave going. Oh yes, today he had seen something brilliant. It was getting dark earlier now, by the time he had left work it was already pitch black and the streetlights were making little halos in the fog. He could hear his shoes splattering on the wet pavement, squelching with each step. All of the large bay windows to his right glowed from within, but were sealed off by thick curtains. As he progressed further down the road, however, one house seemed to glow brighter than all the others, spilling out onto the street, flickering electrically in the puddles. This house had no curtains, and George had gazed, infatuated, inside. And there she was. Wearing silk pyjamas and sitting alone on her sofa, with her golden hair tied back behind her head. Just sitting there, staring back at him. She was the most exquisite thing he had ever seen. The microwave bleeped. George found a plate under his bed and scraped some of the remnants off into a bin bag. He ran it under the tap and dried it off on his trousers before filling it with greasy curry and setting it down on the table. He grabbed a glass from the sink and filled it with water. Small pieces of enamel floated at the top, the sink was peeling again. There she was, just sitting there. She looked so upset; there was a box of tissues on her lap. Whatever had happened, whoever had hurt her, George had suddenly felt an urgency to set things right. She was so perfect, she shouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t ever be unhappy. The room she sat in was beautiful; two large gold-framed mirrors stared at each other from opposing walls, disappearing off into infinity. An intricate chandelier hung from the ceiling, pouring light out over the dismal wet world in which George stood. He stared, and she stared back, everything stopped moving. Who could have abandoned her? George suddenly felt inexplicably angry, gazing around his peeling apartment, the damp spreading with increasing boldness across the ceiling. In his head he had walked down past her window, never breaking eye contact, and passed through the

open door into her house. He had sat down on the sofa and just held her, her shoulders so soft and smooth beneath those silk pyjamas. Her fiancé had left her, she’d say, a week before the wedding, sold all of her jewellery and taken off in her car. How could he do that to you? George demanded, outraged. She said she didn’t understand. But George was here now; everything was going to be alright. And then she had kissed him, pressed her warm body against his soaking overalls, ran her fingers through his wiry hair, down his arms… George almost fell backwards off his chair, flailing his arms around. He regained his balance and looked around warily, though he knew he was alone. The two of them had decided to run away together; they would leave the very next day using some of the money she had inherited after her father died. ‘Can we leave so soon? What about your job? Won’t they mind?’ He told her firmly that he couldn’t care less about his job; they would just up and leave. He was so romantic, so impulsive; it was just exactly what she wanted. She’d had enough of men who looked the part, tall and handsome, well-dressed, intelligent, and now she just needed someone who would love her forever. And George would. ‘What about your family? Won’t they mind?’ George explained that his father had also passed, and his mother was a drunk. They hadn’t spoken in fifteen years. No, she wouldn’t mind. He heard raised voices on the other side of his wall; his Polish neighbours were rowing again. He asked her to marry him. She gazed thoughtfully into his dull, honest eyes, and said, quite simply: ‘Yes.’ He contributed what he could towards the wedding. It was a very small affair, and the only others present were the registrar and the registrar’s cat, Tiddles. He looked very handsome in his suit; it had been his father’s. He knew his father would be very proud if he could see him now, dashing in his waistcoat and lapelled jacket. She, of course, looked spectacular, in an immaculate white dress with pearl lacings and a thin veil over her face, he couldn’t quite see it… George left his apartment door wide open as he marched out into the street. The rain was really driving now, splattering down onto his head and making the fibres of his father’s old suit cling to his skin. Where was it? It had been somewhere along this street. House after house George passed, the curtains drawn on him wherever he looked. It had been one of these, he was sure. He ran along the shimmering pavement, scanning for a light on in the window, craning his neck and searching until… There! Just a little further down the road, the same warm glow emanated out from that grand room; a sanctuary in the midst of all this hideousness. He would stride in, take her in his arms, and they would both be happy. Water was getting in through the flapping sole of his shoe; his feet were cold and wet. He was shivering all over. He gazed into the room, and there she was, cradled safely in the arms of a man. A tall, handsome man who stroked her hair and told her he loved her. George stood there in the rain, staring at them. So happy, they were both so happy now. He caught the man’s eye in one of the large mirrors. He stopped stroking the woman’s head and pointed up at where George had been standing, but George was already gone.

SHOSHANNA BEALE

THE

RAIN

Every time the rain comes it takes me to another world. I am but a drop of rain in this endless sea, and as the rain falls I feel myself reflected in each drop, feel each drop as it falls to the ground, feel each breaking of the water, feel a shiver of delight as each drop breaks on my skin, runs through my hair, trickles down my neck. I feel myself swept away with the tide, a flood of crazy emotion in an abstract world, riding on the winds of all my lonesome thoughts; a state of solitude at once intoxicating and unbearable.

MILES SEA

BLOODY

HANDS

How could such clear thoughts and such clean designs rend the flesh from my hands and leave my fingers bloodied? How could a pen and a paper a need and a dream spiral so far from either, obeying the most base inklings? These bloody hands linked to a yearning mind are their own agents with their own ears and eyes, and all the lives on the page all the words given names all the characters when created are born through adulterate means.

With every word and every line I release myself upon the page to murder all my creations and use their lives to satisfy the aching fingersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; moans.

All will and every whim succumbs to the fear, and so when glancing at my fingers see bones instead of meat. So nursing is allowed now, yes vanity is okay, but even when bandaged, hands still hang wet, and red drops stick like syrup bleeding onto, and through, each and every page, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;til all is the same story or the story is too reddened to read.

BENJAMIN

WILLIAM

Defacement for a Sandwich Wrapper 2012

ROGERS

JACK NUTTGENS

THE

LETTERS

Ian knew that he was right, and the other man was wrong. It could surely only be stupidity so acute as to be almost deliberate that prevented jacKDaw54 from seeing it. Ian simply had to explain how and why his opposite number’s affirmations were economically, not to mention ethically, unsound, and this compulsion reached a point where he had a window open on the white Dell on the cluttered desk in his office, which he checked every half an hour or so, then on his Mac at home, to his wife’s annoyance, several days after the article that had provoked the dispute had been published. The article had been about congestion charges in London, but Ian’s reply to his antagonist’s assertions in the Comments sections had soon developed into a critique of the Labour and Conservative parties over the best part of a century, and, inevitably, the looming 2010 election. His opponent’s replies were irregular in their promptness, sometimes coming straight away, sometimes hours later, but they always came just before Ian could convince himself to end the discussion. One evening at home after dinner, jacKDaw54 used the metaphor of ‘Blitz Spirit’, which made Ian, who in 1981 had graduated from the University of Exeter with a 2:2 in Modern History, laugh out loud, and it was with a flourish that he typed his reply, making sure to cut off his opponent’s escape route, not to mention pointing out how contextually irrelevant it was. This time the reply was prompt, brief, and all the more baffling for its conviction. Ian gaped; the man was taking refuge in more stupidity, but had crawled into such a thicket that there was no obvious way of drawing him out without writing pages and pages of text. Feeling ready to treat himself, Ian decided to simply insult the man rather than arguing further. He typed: If you’re that ignorant there’s no way of explaining it to you. I’m just going to bang on the keyboard with my fists and/or head, as you seem to be doing, and post the reply.

At this, Ian leant low over the keyboard, let his head fall with a cathartic rattle onto the keys, and gleefully rolled it left and right. When he looked up at the result, he blinked several times, then scrolled down in case he

was reading a previous comment. No; there was his lunge, and his opponent’s swipe. There, in the comments box, were two sentences. His movements had formed words, and what they said was this:

Labour is stagnating. Brown and whoever will replace him are worse than useless. Like it or not, the Tory party is the only alternative with a chance of winning and the only viable way forward. This country needs a new man at the helm and Cameron is the man for the job.

They were not strictly relevant to his antagonist’s reply, yet nor were they totally irrelevant; but Ian would certainly not be sending them to the man on the other end. Glancing at the door, he cut and pasted them into an empty document, emailed it to himself, and deleted it. Then he returned to the debate and replaced the message with a couple of lines of gibberish, with a furtive feeling that jacKDaw54 would know what he had done. Still unhappy, he logged out of the website, closed the window, and shut down the computer. The next day he got a reply; ‘Thought so.’ It was not at all consistent with his antagonist’s previous assertions - indeed, it did not make sense - but he had the uncomfortable feeling that there was a smirk in the words. There were several reasons why the letters from nowhere bothered Ian. For a start, there was the content of the message itself. Ian had voted Labour ever since he his first election, twenty-odd years ago now, and although in 2003 he had sent them a letter telling them that he would withdraw his membership from a party that pursued an illegal war, he remained convinced that they were better than the alternative. Secondly, the self-assured style was quite unlike how he would ever phrase his argument. ‘Like it or not’ reeked to him of an obsession with claiming to be in the majority that he associated, perhaps wrongly, with the Right; it was practically like saying, ‘It may not be politically correct, but…’. Thirdly, the style felt familiar, though Ian had no idea why. When May 2010 and the election rolled around, Ian became uncomfortable. Polls indicated that the Conservatives would win, or at least get the most votes, and they were threatening, amongst other things, to allow universities to raise their fees as high as they liked, a policy that frightened him, what with Eva, the eldest of his two children, soon to be at that time in her life. She was sixteen, too young to vote, but old enough that if she did decide, as she was threatening, to have her lip pierced, there was nothing that he could do to stop her. He repeatedly told her that however exciting the Liberal Democrats may appear to be, they would not win the election, and as such, the best option was to vote for Labour. He wondered whether it was fair to tell a child to vote tactically. The Liberal Democrats would certainly not win in his ward; it was to be hotly contested between Labour and Conservatives, having often changed hands before. As such it was especially important that he gave his vote to the right side, if only to cancel out Lisa, his wife, who had always voted Tory. In April, he was sure that he would vote for Labour. Two weeks before the election, he was more nervous and wondered whether Labour deserved his support. Perhaps he could spoil his ballot in protest, or vote Green. Five days before the election, he was seriously considering that change - Conservative change - might be the best thing for the country. He met the local Labour

candidate, not for the first time, at his son Julian’s Parents’ Evening, exchanged pleasantries, and promised him his support. On Election Day, he felt confident again: he would vote for Labour. To think of doing anything else was silly. On the way home from work he walked slowly to the polling station, enjoying the evening sunlight. As he came nearer he found that he was walking more and more slowly, although the sunlight did not gain anything from each passing minute. He walked through the polling station, Julian’s old primary school, looking around to see if anyone he knew was there, and ushered a woman wearing a coat far too heavy for such a warm evening in front of him. Once the ballot was in his hands, however, Ian could not convince himself to put a cross in the Labour Party’s box. Choosing a third party, he told himself firmly, was avoiding the issue, and as such out of the question; it was worse than voting Conservative. Was it really possible, he asked himself, that he could have produced those words out of nothing? Perhaps they had come out of the ether, but they could be a warning. What of, was the question. Perhaps another illegal war would be waged if Labour were to remain in power. Ian was not superstitious, as a rule, but to ignore what he had clearly seen and never mentioned to anyone was obviously foolish. He wondered how many other people had seen the letters. Looking over his shoulder, he grimaced and put a small cross in the box for Conservative, folded the slip twice, dropped it into the ballot box and walked home as fast as he could. ‘Did you vote?’ Julian asked him before the door was fully open. He was thirteen and taking a promising interest in politics now. His school had done a mock election, and the Green Party had gained the most votes. ‘Of course I voted.’ ‘Who did you vote for?’ ‘Who do you think?’ Ian said. ‘Let me at least take my shoes off.’ He turned on the news, nervous now. His was an important ward; it could go either way. Ten minutes later, Lisa opened the door and said, ‘I thought I’d see you at the polling station. What’s the matter?’ She laughed. ‘Did you tick the wrong box by mistake?’ ‘I think I might have done.’ She smiled, bemused, and kissed him on the cheek. Over dinner, he was chatty. The next day he would remember that he and Julian had disagreed over who should be in England’s world cup selection, and that Eva had mentioned plans to go away for a week with her friends in the summer, of which he had approved. At half past nine, though, he found that he did not want to face the world any longer, and went to bed, claiming that he needed to rest for the next day. The next few days squeezed past uncomfortably until eventually, with the blessing of the Queen, David Cameron was made Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in a coalition with the Liberal Democrats. Ian felt oddly neutral, as though under an emotional anaesthetic, and when he saw the local Labour MP he congratulated him on his re-election. Labour had won in his ward by two hundred and ninety-three votes. His defection had made no difference, no difference at all, and yet Ian still felt unpleasantly hollow as they shook hands. In the coming months, education cuts were announced. Eva made him proud when she walked out of school to protest, reminding him of his own days as a student, and he considered taking the day off work to join the protests. But he groaned inwardly at the events, all but certain that the cuts would not be overturned, and that if his daughter did, as she hoped, get into a

Russell Group University, it would be £27,000 of debt. More time passed, and as the protests received more and more coverage, buzzwords words like ‘Kettled Generation’ emerged. The Government showed no signs of backing down, and Ed Milliband, Labour’s new leader, was greeted with deafening ambivalence. One night as he sat replying to an email long after work was finished, Ian could hardly hold back tears; tuition fees were up, and Cameron and Gove had plans for the NHS. ‘Stupid, stupid, stupid’ Ian muttered, and once again, he let his head fall onto the keyboard. When he looked up, the following words were on the screen:

You are not alone.

Ian brought his eyes closer to the screen, adjusting his glasses, and the messaged shifted.

The Tories are no better. It doesn’t matter who you vote for, none of the main parties has any integrity any more LOL.

Ian could only gape at the screen in horror. He must have written the words himself - must have. But he could not have done; all he had done was to let his head fall onto the keys. Then the screen went black and Ian glimpsed something, something that laughed to itself in the darkness, and it sent a violent shudder through him. He dropped the mouse with a thud, turned off the computer, unplugged it, opened the door and went to the garden to sit down in the chilly November darkness, where he sat gulping in air and rocking on the ground, head between his knees and eyes closed, until Linda and the children helped him to his feet, and forced him to open his eyes, and face the world again.

Flappers

Lazy Leopard

MATHEW FASULLO

LIKES

AND

DISLIKES

On last.fm, Jeremy hearts songs with his mother’s name in them. On Facebook, he likes pictures of corn snakes and dinosaurs because his little sister has books about those. He retweets updates from his high school friends because it makes them wonder what he’s up to. On YouTube, he dislikes covers of pop songs and likes web design tutorials. He and his fiancé re-pin ideas for their wedding on Pinterest and when she’s gone to work or out with her friends he makes a list of the things he wishes he could pin on their board instead: donut recipes, workout routines, photography tips, infographics, books he plans to read to their children. He posts this list on Tumblr, then twenty-five people heart it and seven more reblog it. On Netflix, Jeremy “really likes” Along Came Polly. He “likes” the Walking Dead and “hated” Superbad. He Diggs stories about 90’s celebrities and buries stories about Apple products. But on Google+, he +1’s anything about the iPhone 5. On Etsy, he favourites vintage board games because he remembers playing the original Game of Life with his parents when he was eight and the memory still makes him smile. Jeremy Stumbles Upon pictures of places he wants to go on his honeymoon. On Del.ici.ous, he favourites articles about astronomy, because at night, sometimes, Jeremy looks up at the stars and is absolutely amazed at how unfathomably enormous the universe is. This makes Jeremy feel small, not insignificant, but small in the way seeds are small, or children are small, or poems are small. Jeremy dislikes the taste of Chinese broccoli, but he likes bok choy. He loves the smell of oranges, but hates the way they feel in his mouth. When Jeremy takes the dog out for a walk, he dislikes how she always tries to walk on his right side. Come to think of it, Jeremy just dislikes the dog. It was his fiancé’s idea to get a Jack Russell in the first place. The only Jack Russell Jeremy has ever liked was Wishbone ― he and 21,295 others like Wishbone’s Facebook page. Honestly, Jeremy is more of a cat person and he’s been meaning to check, but if cats have a Facebook page, he’ll like that, too. Sometimes, Jeremy worries that his likes and dislikes contradict. Is it okay to like dinosaurs, but not to like birds? They are related after all. Does he seem real to the companies that are buying up his personal data? If someone were to take all of his likes and dislikes and lay them out on a desk, would they make a complete human?

He likes animals, so clearly he has a heart and astronomy so he has a brain. Donuts, a stomach. Romantic comedies make the shape of the smile he gets when he opens the door and his fiancé is curled up in front of the fireplace. Fingers for typing. Feet for travelling. Ears for songs with his mother’s name. He’s a likeable guy; he has 387 friends after all. He must be real, right? He couldn’t be a bot, or a fake identity. He has fears, too, they can see that, can’t they? At night, Jeremy likes to pray, even though his Facebook profile lists him as atheist. He prays: don’t forget me, don’t forget me, don’t forget me.

ZOE

MOLLOY

Edinburgh

Ashford

STEVE KLEPETAR

EVERYTHING

YOU

She is everything you lack, and so you descend breaking the wrinkled surface of a grey lake, world diver seeking bottom muck, green universe of rough and shimmering reeds. Image of her lips hold out a promise of fruit, eyes burn in your brain – you have forgotten nothing about her electric ﬂesh or black ropes of hair. Can you breathe through gills of dream or make wild music from yellow and blue striped ﬁsh or will silence here propel you back to an earth you need to fashion from handfuls of mud and new colors leeched from broken sky?

LACK

MOHAN RANA

OBSESSIVE

TUNE

Night passed and the morning came, though, tossing and turning, I got nowhere. A journey, my friend, to wrong places. If you want to lose the way, we will go together, on condition that first you forget your name. Noone wants to be forgotten, it is true, but may they, life after life, be reminded of their absence. When will dreams be recognized, and truth? Even after waking, how can we know the truth when everyone around is sleeping in the sleep of memory An obsessive tune fills my mind. -Translated from Hindi by Bernard Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Donoghue and Lucy Rosenstein

HERMIONE

MACMILLAN

PHILIP SWANN

MIDNIGHT

CALLS

Around the time I lost my job, I started to call my friends up at midnight. Nobody had ever called me at midnight, so I didn’t know how unsettling it could be, to be called at midnight. I called Proctor first, because he was a nurse and could handle it. I called him most nights for a couple of weeks, until he told me to stop. He said his wife had told him she was sick of me waking the kids. I had completely forgotten that they even had kids. I had never liked Linda; she was a sharp little woman, with fat lips that struggled to contain her tongue. I had told Proctor not to marry her but he didn’t listen, and now I couldn’t call him up at midnight. The times Proctor told me about his work, I almost fainted. He talked about blood and compound fractures like it turned him on. He had a gleam in his eyes and a way of moving his hands through the air, like they were fans wafting his energies. Everybody knew about the time he had set a baby’s broken leg and the time he had watched a woman die from the shard of glass that stuck out from her belly. Proctor was a real hero. When I didn’t call anyone up at midnight, I walked around my bedroom and waited for something to happen. Some nights, I looked across at my neighbour’s bathroom window and saw it lit up. Sometimes I could see a vague silhouette projected onto the peach-coloured blind. I sat by my window for hours waiting for a glimpse of my neighbour but I never believed she would appear from behind that peach-coloured blind. After a few weeks of not calling anybody, I decided to ring Martha. Martha posed as a nude model for the Life Drawing class I had been attending. After one session – the leader of the class had called the session: The Burning Bush – I asked if she wanted to get a drink. Martha was a real redhead. I think she said she had Irish blood in her and I could sort of see the dull, green misery in her eyes. ‘What?’ Martha said. ‘Who is this?’ I said it was me and that I couldn’t sleep, it was half-past one in the morning. ‘It’s half-past one in the morning,’ she said. ‘What do you want?’ ‘What are you doing?’ ‘I was asleep,’ she said. She sounded distant, startled and broken. ‘What do you want?’ ‘Do you want to get another drink?’ ‘It’s half-past one in the morning,’ she said. ‘Goodnight.’ I called Martha the next night but she didn’t pick up. The last time I saw her – after a

session called: Breast Is Best – she had told me she was kind of seeing someone. She had always spoken in muted aphorisms, like she was acutely embarrassed by what she was saying but lacked the self-belief to stop herself from saying it anyway. That was all a few months before I lost my job. While I decided who to call next, I watched my neighbour’s bathroom window. I knew it was her bathroom window because I knew our houses were the same – or similar enough. I knew the floor plan would match and that someone had deemed it right to put her bathroom window right outside of my bedroom window. It didn’t always happen. Some nights the light never came on, or if it did, I missed it. I knew she lived alone now. Her husband had died and her sons had moved out. It was a big house to live in all alone, but none of that stopped me from watching her bathroom window. One morning the light came on at 3:30 and I thought I noticed the peach-coloured blind flutter, jolt slightly, even rise; the silhouette lingered, grew darker somehow, as though being stationary emboldened the shadow, but it all came to nothing. That peach-coloured blind. A few nights later when I couldn’t sleep, I called the last person I could think of. For a while, before I dialled the numbers, I thought about what he would be doing. I knew it was likely he was sleeping. But I couldn’t discount other possibilities. It was possible – though not likely – he had thrown a party and were now in the process of cleaning up. It was also possible that he was away from home, on holiday or on business. I wondered about how likely it was that he was doing nothing; rather, just sat by the window with a drink in his hand, waiting for the telephone to ring. ‘Eldridge,’ I said. ‘It’s me, Erik.’ ‘Erik!’ Eldridge said. ‘Just the other day I was thinking about you.’ My watch said it was 4:43 and I knew something must be wrong with Eldridge. I had gone to school with James Eldridge twenty years ago and, as if by magic, we had somehow renewed our contact numbers and addresses without much real communication. He sounded just the same, only older, chastened by experience and wearied by the hour. ‘I have a neighbour,’ I said. ‘And my bedroom window looks out directly at her bathroom window.’ ‘I see,’ Eldridge said patiently. ‘And the only thing that is stopping me from looking right in is a peach-coloured blind.’ ‘Peach-coloured blinds,’ he said. ‘It seems like a perfect metaphor for something.’ ‘Do you think she knows?’ ‘I doubt it.’ ‘She would have said something,’ I said. ‘Wouldn’t she?’ ‘Unless she enjoyed the thought of it.’ The conversation went along like this for half an hour. I assumed he was drunk, but it’s possible he assumed the same thing about me. Finally, Eldridge put the phone down on me. I listened to the recorded voice for a few minutes with the hope it would say something different. If she would just alter her tone, her pitch or the enunciation of the word ‘again.’ None of those things happened, so I replaced the receiver and got into bed. I went for a walk the following morning. I looked into the hollow of my neighbour’s kitchen window but nothing shifted, nothing moved. The garage door was down. The car was missing from the drive. There was a neat outline of the car on the driveway. All around, the ground was two shades darker than the space where the car had been parked. I supposed it was a perfect

metaphor for something, but I didn’t know what. I walked back through a steady drizzle. Autumn was falling in on the world like a great damp smudge, so that the many colours of summer died away and bled into one. When I was indoors, I called my mother and told her about how I had lost my job. It was 11:35 when my caller ID said Proctor was trying to reach me. I let the phone ring and ring. A couple of hours later, I called him back. His voice was mucus-thick and ghostly. He was whispering but he sounded ill. He said his wife hadn’t woken up. He wanted to keep it that way. I could hear his bed creak. The mattress groaned with a dense, plastic cough and soon he started to talk more clearly. I could hear his naked footsteps and I knew he had become the kind of man to install under-floor heating. ‘I told you not to marry Linda,’ I said. ‘She’s only trouble.’ ‘She’s only trouble when people wake her children up.’ ‘Your children.’ ‘Our children,’ Proctor said. He told me a new story, of an elderly drunk who had arrived at the hospital with a nail through his palm and a dislocated shoulder. The man had been trying to erect a picture frame for his wife. Apparently, it was a portrait of their dog which they had commissioned an artist to paint. ‘Anyway,’ he said. ‘He threw up everywhere when we pulled the nail from his hand. I think he had passed out by the time we got to sorting his shoulder.’ I told Proctor about my neighbour and my bedroom window and her bathroom window. I told him about the peach-coloured blind and about the car disappearing. I told him about the island of grey in a sea of darker grey. I told him that I didn’t know where my neighbour had gone, because I didn’t. It had been two days since I had seen her car and now the island had been washed away. ‘She lives alone?’ Proctor said. ‘Yes.’ ‘She’s probably just visiting family.’ ‘She does have family,’ I said. ‘There you go then.’ I listened to Proctor talk and I could see him – for the first time – as a nurse. He had a calming eloquence that I had never noticed before. He didn’t know the big words, or at least, he didn’t use them. He said my neighbour would probably be back soon and I tried to pay attention. It was 3AM by the time Proctor hung up on me. His voice had returned to the grave and the naked paddling of his feet had given way to the crunch and roll of his mattress. I tried to tell him that his wife was trouble and that the kids didn’t like her, and that’s when he hung up. I had signed up for five Life Drawing classes. The last one I went to featured Martha as a dramatic nude, the leader said this session was called: Naked Or Nurture. Everybody in the class exchanged the same knowing look. Martha stood there for ninety minutes and everybody scribbled as best they could – terribly, in my case. When she had put her clothes on, I came up to Martha and asked if she wanted to get a drink. She didn’t commit either way; she just waited until begrudging acceptance was the only option left to her. ‘Are you still seeing someone?’ I said. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Are you looking to?’

‘No,’ she said. No matter how much she smiled, she couldn’t do anything to alter the dampness of her eyes. She smiled but that only brought the puffed redness of her cheeks closer, throwing the miserable, wet green of her irises into stark relief. I felt sorry for her and for the fact she couldn’t do anything with her sadness. Later that night, my caller ID said Martha was calling. A part of me knew that she would, that her answers from the evening had been less than completely honest. I let it ring, anyway. I was busy. I was watching the black hole in my neighbour’s bathroom window.

MATT

WILKINSON

JULIE HOGG

DESIRE

LINES

Where we naturally desired to go And feel our feet fall on the earth An invisible path covered with snow Undirected, and it was worth Everything to feel our feet fall on the earth Make a trail of desire in ribbons of dirt Undirected, and it was worth A simple shortcut through patterns of hurt Make a trail of desire in ribbons of dirt Cease to wonder, will we ever go back? A simple shortcut through patterns of hurt Trample together a spontaneous track Cease to wonder, will we ever go back? A perfect expression of desire lines Trample together a spontaneous track Following our unbiased designs A perfect expression of desire lines An invisible path covered with snow We followed our unbiased designs Where we naturally desired to go.

THE

END

and when its time to switch off the light when everythings done and everythings said and my vessel of life has no need of a bed lets continue our happiness under the ground in secret sleeping without a sound with a smile that can never be taken away lay my bones on your bones at the end of the day.

CONTRIBUTORS DEMOB HAPPY Demob Happy are a group from Newcastle by way of Brighton. They play Garage-Pysch Rock songs for thousands of adoring seconds every week. They have 953 fans on Facebook 0.00001361% of the worlds population. This is their third single release. website: demob-happy.com MAX LEE ASA MADDISON Asa is a 3rd year literature and creative writing student at Northumbria University. His main creative medium is poetry, although he does occasionally dabble in the dark arts of prose writing. Heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a regular at all north-east open mic and spoken word events, where he is currently attempting to make a name for himself as performance poet, he has been published for his page poetry in various magazines in the past. Asa is also the poetry editor for Northumbria Universityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s The Edge Magazine. NICK PERMAIN DEMI OVERTON LAURA EMERSON Laura Emerson is a writer, musician and performer, associate artist for Jack Drum Arts, and founding member of Backscratch Theatre. She spent her childhood in the library reading big books with no pictures. In 2004, she switched libraries to study English, Writing and Performance at the University of York. In 2011, she graduated from Newcastle University with a Masters in Creative Writing. She visited the campus library twice. Rather than get a real job, she turned freelance and embarked upon a life of creativity and poverty. In her work she takes story frameworks, character archetypes and folklore and muddles them around a bit until they mean something. She is making mediocre progress with her folk fiddling, is a top notch Rat Wrangler, and has recently gotten her fireplaces just the way she wants them. You should see them. ESME MCCALL

MATT PICKERING Psychology, both personal and collective, is the inspiration for the work of Matthew Pickering, a cross - disciplinary fine artist currently studying at Newcastle University. Working primarily in photography, video and installation, his work currently explores the relationship between objects and the memories attached to them or triggered by them. website: matthewpickering.blog.com CRAIG HINDS Having lived in the north east all his life, Craig is currently a second year literature student at Newcastle University. He’s working on a novel based on the transformation of various myths and legends, particularly the Arthurian legends. Craig enjoys the novels of Cormac McCarthy and the poems of William Blake and Percy Shelley. JESS THORSBY Jess is a second year fine art student at Newcastle University. She utilises the constructed and the ready-made to experiment with transition of form and surface. Jess is interested in purity of materials and the temporal. Casting allows her to accurately replicate specific surfaces which grasp her attention. Utilising cement, resins, and real material taken from the site, she’s able to create unique one-off pieces that suggest and offer new interpretations of the environment. website: jessicathorsby.tumblr.com/ RYAN FOSTER R.G. Foster is a poet born in north-east England. He has wandered afar and lived in numerous places since, thinking of himself as a bit of a troubadour. His work can be found in various journals, including Inclement, You Stumble into a Room Full of Poets, The Recusant, and others. He has spent the last couple of years trying to devise a method of writing a poem about absolutely nothing. website: balladofalunatic.blogspot.co.uk/ LAYLA HENDOW AMELIA & THE OTHER STUFF Amelia Shadbolt lives in Palmerston North (New Zealand) and writes songs to process her feelings (oh, art!) under the musical pseuonym, Amelia & the Other Stuff (there is no other stuff, though, it’s just her). website: ameliaandtheotherstuff.bandcamp.com/.

CONTRIBUTORS JUSTYNA BELKEVIC Justyna is a second year politics student in Newcastle University. She originally comes from Lithuania and is very interested in photography. Fortunately, Justyna can combine her artistic hobby with politics, as, probably, politics are arts as well. website: jumabe.tumblr.com/ MARTHA LANE Martha Lane, 25, Newcastle upon Tyne, works full time at Mslexia Publications as the Subscriptions and Projects Manager. She is close to completing her Creative Writing MA at Newcastle University, in which she has focused on writing fiction for Children and Young Adults. She enjoys film and travel — sometimes combining the two, meaning she once ended up on the red carpet of the Sarajevo Film Festival. She doesn’t have a blog or a website, but you can follow her on Twitter as @poor_and_clean. ALEX SEARLE Material is subject to temporal decay, and this is a theme throughout Alex’s work. By combining sculpture with mark-making she aims to depict the random and unpredictable patterns that are the result of the inevitable breakdown of materials, both organic and industrial. The intricate patterns contrast with the often geometric shapes they are trapped within. The randomness of the contents of these repeated geometric shapes seems to corrupt the linear flow of the sculptures and they begin to descend into chaos as they cascade down the walls or lean in precarious positions. website: www.alexsearle.tumblr.com ANTONY OWEN Antony Owen is from Coventry, England and the author of two poetry collections since 2009, My Father’s Eyes Were Blue (Heaventree Press) and The Dreaded Boy (Pighog Press). In 2014, Owen is planning a peace ambassadorial role to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, plus a third collection focusing on immigration and identity. SOPHIE WHITEHEAD Sophie is a second year English literature student at Newcastle University, currently spending the semester abroad in Leiden in the Netherlands. She started writing poetry as part of the creative writing module in first year, and continued with the poetry module available in second year. Sophie is considering doing a portfolio of creative work instead of a dissertation and so is interested to see other people’s opinions on her poems.

DAISY MILBURN Daisy Milburn is a BA Fine Art student at Newcastle University, currently in her second year. Her work here explores the relationship between photography and the viewer, examining the loss of first hand experiences when we choose to relive moments through the viewing of photographs. website: artatnewcastle.wordpress.com daisyvictoria.co.uk MARK PLUMMER Mark Plummer is twenty-five and lives in Cornwall. He has previously had short stories published in the United Kingdom, USA and Australia. He has written and performed in plays for arts festivals in the UK and has written pieces of journalism for both local and national newspapers. PHIL FRANKLAND Phil is a third year fine art student at Newcastle University. He is interested in collages and paintings describing abstract interior spaces based upon previous paintings, exhibitions and photography. Painterly marks and spaces are repeatedly translated between different two-dimensional media to explore certain relations between the purely painterly and the representational. website: philfrank.tumblr.com/ LIZZIE RIDGWAY Lizzie is a 22 year old student at Lancaster University studying English Literature, Creative Writing and Practice. She has always had a passion for literature ,which during the last three years has transcended into writing it, most specifically poetry. There is nothing like the satisfaction you receive from the effects of your finished poetry, when someone takes a minute to read what you have spent weeks crafting and immediately relates. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the best kind of addiction. MARIA ABBOTT Maria Abbott is a Welsh artist currently studying BA(Hons) Fine Art at Newcastle University. Maria explores a variety of artistic mediums and never limits herself during her artistic exploration. Maria uses this diversity to explore her interests in old industry, social dogma and discriminated minorities within her art. website: maria-abbott-art.weebly.com RUTH PICKERING ALYSSA CRESSOTTI Alyssa Cressotti is a writer, editor, and media maker in New York City.

CONTRIBUTORS MARTIN ECCLES Martin Eccles is studying fine art at Newcastle University. His main interests are in creating work in, or influenced by, natural habitats and materials. He uses a variety of (often mixed) methods to create visual, sound, three dimensional or text works. website: martin-eccles-artist.co.uk DANIEL BOWMAN Daniel is currently studying English literature and creative writing at Northumbria University. Heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s originally from Sheffield and has been writing short fiction and poetry for a few years. Heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s trying to extend that to include scriptwriting, but without much joy so far. His favourite writers include Katherine Mansfield and James Joyce. SHOSHANNA BEALE Shoshanna Beale is an emerging writer. Based in Melbourne, she writes poetry, short stories, articles and reviews, and has recently discovered the world of blogging. She works as a freelance writer and editor and is currently finalising her first novel. website: shannabeale.wordpress.com BENJAMIN WILLIAM ROGERS BWR is a human shaped artist. He is afraid of his grandmother Delores. website: bwrg.co.uk/ JACK NUTTGENS Jack Nuttgens is a third-year modern languages student at Newcastle University, currently living in Galicia, Spain. His favourite authors include Neil Gaiman and Rudyard Kipling. In his short stories he likes to combine the ordinary with the fantastic, and he hopes to one day write a novel. DAISY BILLOWES MATHEW FASULLO Mathew Fasullo is a writer living in the City of Terrible Winter: Edmonton, Alberta. His work has been featured in Hoot Review, Ascent Aspirations and will be soon be featured in Filling Station. He holds a BFA in Creative Writing from the University of Victoria and loves vegetables. website: theglasstypewriter.tumblr.com

ZOE MOLLOY I have just completed my second year of studying Fine Art at Newcastle University. My current work is a series of lino prints of landscapes I have visited. I wanted the works to portray the lines and marks present within the landscapes, often exaggerating and simplifying these to create more stylized images. STEVE KLEPETAR Steve Klepetar’s work has received several nominations for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. His latest collection is Speaking to the Field Mice from Sweatshoppe Publications. MOHAN RANA Mohan Rana was born in Delhi in 1964. He has published seven poetry collections in Hindi and a bilingual chapbook, “Poems”. He lives in Bath. website: wordwheel.blogspot.co.uk/ HERMIONE MACMILLAN website: hermioneart.tumblr.com PHILIP SWANN Philip is working to complete a collection of short stories - of which this is one. He holds an MA in Creative Writing from Newcastle University and am hoping to find work so that the decision to embark on a PhD is made a little easier. MATT WILKINSON Matt is a mix media fine art student born in the north of England and who is currently studying at Newcastle University. He practices in a range of different mediums creating work through old and new means. website: matt-wilkinson.blogspot.co.uk/ JULIE HOGG Julie Hogg is a poet from the north east of England who discovered her passion for writing poetry whilst completing an MA in Creative Writing at the University of Teesside and can’t stop. Her work has been published in magazines and anthologies and she performs at regional spoken word events.

SENIOR EDITOR

editor@alliteratimagazine.com

SASCHK

DRAKOS

Writer. Photographer. People-watcher. Building-explorer. Terminal idealist. Itinerant magpie. Saschk crawled out of the kudzu-wrapped deep South (US) to find himself living in the unlikely environs of the north east UK. He maintains an impressive collection of names, former addresses, and people’s stories. Saschk is a true believer in the literary potential of genre fiction, zombies, and that there’s nothing sexier than blank pages wrapped in leather. He published a semi-autobiographical word-monster in 2011. He blogs when he feels inclined to speak prolifically. He tweets somewhat more frequently. His future plans include a southerly migration in his continuing quest for the Sun (and an MA). He’s also rather fond of shiny objects.

ART

art@alliteratimagazine.com MARIA

ABBOTT

Maria R. C. Abbott is an enthusiastic Fine Art Fiend who is studying and guzzling the subject at Newcastle University. Maria’s art centres around an interest in the human experience, which often involves being incredibly nosy. Despite her antimonarchy tendencies, her best achievement has been the observation of Prince Charles’ eyes over her painting ‘Miners’ which is on permanent display at the ‘Ty Ebbw’ museum in Wales. Jolly ho. You’ll mainly find Maria swing dancing, tea sipping and dabbling in poetry and paint. She regularly updates her artistic ventures via her website: maria-abbott-art.weebly.com.

JAMES

RICKETTS

James Ricketts is upcoming artist, photographer and illustrator. He is currently studying Fine Art BA honours at Newcastle University. He spent a year in Oxford between 2010/2011, in order to complete an art foundation at Oxford Brookes University. His practice often reflects the melancholy and the strange and he is strongly influenced by artist such as George Grosz and Goya. His illustrations are published in the Newcastle Courier magazine on a weekly basis. Originally he is from West Sussex, near to the vicinity of Brighton. 94

LITERATURE

submissions@alliteratimagazine.com

FELICITY

POWELL

Felicity is an English Literature student at Newcastle, and is also President of the Creative Writing society, with a hardcore addiction to Potter and Tolkien. In her poetry she likes to explore the metaphysics of writing and the power of ink on the page, and is eternally seeking for anyone whose weirdness is compatible with her own. Felicity also enjoys canoe polo, though ever since an unfortunate kayaking incident in first year, she is slowly overcoming an irrational phobia of waterfalls.

AIMEE

VICKERS

Aimee Vickers is studying English language and literature at Newcastle University. She is a self confessed control freak and enjoys drinking coffee and planning unrealistically wonderful holidays. As well as these unhealthy obsessions she also dabbles in lyrical dancing, all things theatrical and the occasional jog when she isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t busy writing colour coded lists.

FAY

CODONA

Fay is an English Literature student at Northumbria University, she has a penchant for musical theatre and enjoys old music of the jazz/swing persuasion as well as the odd movie marathon â&#x20AC;&#x201C; accompanied, of course, by a hot cuppa!

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