ICARUS SINCE 1950 ISSUE 1 VOLUME 60 NOVEMBER 2009
CONTEMPORARY CREATIVE WRITING FROM TRINITY COLLEGE
ICARUS Acknowledgements
Staff Editor:.............................................Dan Sheehan Deputy Editor:................................Ana Kinsella Poetry Editor:..................................Joanne O’Leary Copy Editor:...................................Fionnuala Barrett Graphic Design/ Layout: ..............Eoin Nolan Illustrations: ..................................Sam Coll, Helen Diamond, Emma Graham, Sinead Mercier, Mary Sheehan. Poetry Archivists:..........................Andrew Hayden, Aoife Rafferty.
Special Thanks to:
Niall O’Brien, Darryl Jones, Peter Henry, Brendan Guildea, Prof. Eoin Nolan, everyone at D.U Publications, family, friends and well-wishers. Icarus is funded in part by a grant by the DU Publications committee and by a grant from the TCD School of English. Icarus is a fully participating member of the Press Council of Ireland. Serious complaints, or indeed serious compliments, can be made to: The Editor, Icarus, House 6, Trinity College, Dublin 2. Appeals may be directed to the Press Council of Ireland.
Icarus is now accepting submissions for its second issue. Deadline: January 3rd 2010 Submissions of prose, poetry, drama, photography, cartoons, writing through Irish can be made to:
submissions@icarusmag.com
For details of length and quantity of submissions, advertising or any other enquiries, please contact:
editor@icarusmag.com
www.icarusmag.com 2
ICARUS Volume 60 Issue 1
With Tired Eyes, Tired Minds, Tired Souls, We Slept
ICARUS
Friends of Icarus Ben Keatinge Mark Hutcheson Rosemarie Rowley Aine Miller Nicholas Grene Eve Patten Philip Coleman Gordon Jarvie John Scattergood Mary Sheehan Peter Sheehan Mary Claire Sheehan 6
ICARUS Contents
Page 8................................................Editorial - Dan Sheehan
Poetry
Page 10.............................................The Real Forbidden Fruit - Issy D’Arcy Clarke Page 10.............................................Come Down From Your Rooms - Conor Leahy Page 11.............................................Newton Putting Down his Pencil - Laura Michet Page 12.............................................Emily Dickinson’s Father’s House - Daniel Freije Page 13.............................................For Her - Sarah Jane Colleran Page 14..............................................A Late Interior - Gerald Dawe Page 15.............................................Limb Love - Sue Rainsford Page 16..............................................Yolk - Ana Novacic Page 16.............................................British - Beth Burke Page 17.............................................The Itch - Laura Kennedy Page 17..............................................A Difficult Portrait - Sarah Edwards Page 18..............................................Underwater Scene - Andrew B.King Page 19.............................................Eighteen-Line-Almost-Sonnet - Tim Smyth
Short Works & Cartoons
Page 20.............................................Gift - Lucy Byrne Page 20.............................................Bedroom - James Keaney Page 20&21......................................Cartoons - Robbie Hinkson Page 21.............................................Lunch - Andrew Hayden Page 21..............................................Funeral - Andrew Hayden Page 21............................................ Easy Now - Oshima Fawkes
Prose
Page 22............................................The Hunt - Jeff Beckland Page 25............................................Only They Know - Andrew B.King Page 29............................................Danny Was a Friend of Mine - Ines Novacic Page 34............................................Prologue to a Night Out off the Town - Danielle Hersee Page 35........................................... The Chase - Rosalind Abbott Page 37............................................Meeting with the Clean Man - Michael Healy Page 41............................................Belgrade - Kate Ferguson Page 42............................................Baby Bear - Michael Armstrong
Drama
Page 52............................................Crone - Kate Brower Page 53............................................We Are Not Blinking - Neil Ferron
Icarus Through the Ages
Page 62.............................................The Day After the Fair (1969) - Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin Page 63.............................................There (1958) - Brendan Kennelly Page 64.................................. Notes on the Contributors
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ICARUS Editorial
November, 2009
Welcome, welcome one and all to the first issue in this, the 60th volume of Icarus Magazine, Trinity’s tri-annual creative writing tome. For six decades now, the good people at Icarus have striven to bring you the finest poetry, prose and drama (among a smattering of other delights) that our fine institution has to offer and this year will be no exception. In fact, as promised, we have spent the last few months trolling through the archives and assembling the masses in preparation for the end of year celebration that will mark this auspicious occasion. On that, for now, I will say no more … Returning to the issue in hand, throughout these pages you’ll find more wonderful writing, from both budding scribblers and established authors, than ever before. The young writers showcased throughout this issue display a broad range of styles and themes, from stark, disquieting fantasy to lyrical reminiscence and everything in between. Though their approaches may differ, what they all have in common is the evocative and engaging power of their work. Alongside these stars of tomorrow, we are also lucky enough to have the presence of some of the masters of today. Poet, Trinity lecturer and Icarus alum Gerald Dawe has kindly furnished us with a brand-new poem, while in our new ‘Icarus through the Ages’ section, former editors Brendan Kennelly and Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin take us back to 1958 and 1969 respectively with two of their early poetic works. Now, much like the first time, first drink or first words; the first issue of any student publication runs the risk of being messy, unpalatable and generally incoherent. The fact that we have managed to avoid this pitfall (I hope!) is a testament to both the quality of writing submitted and the hard work and dedication of the Icarus team. May they continue to mask my incompetence for the year ahead. That’s all for now. Get reading, keep writing, and I’ll see you again in February for issue two. Dan Sheehan Editor
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Poetry
The Real Forbidden Fruit
ICARUS
Issy D’Arcy Clark What is forbidding about the apple? Hard and sour, Dry and ordinary. But A nectarine, A neck, Tear, In, Is soft, And sun warmed And hangs low, Like a heavy hot orb On a cool, green bed. The smooth skin Can so easily be bruised; A mere touch would spoil. But the dark, burning hue, Like something naked and inflamed, Calls of its gift for you. The sweet scent precedes the bite. The bite, Like an egg, still in its shell. Solid, impenetrable, and then, Liquid. The serpentine voice in her hissing ear, The ripping sound of the skin Clinging to its treasure, The illicit explosion of sticky, sweet nectar, Bursting free, Running down the corners of her mouth, Dripping off her chin, Onto her unclad body; The taste of Sin.
Come Down From Your Rooms Conor Leahy
i.m. Conor Cruise O’Brien Baptiste is leaping through the streets these nights. His robes fill up the air in which he leaps. He is a loose purse of milk spilt into tea When he leaps like this, over these black streets.
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nights.
ets.
ICARUS Newton Putting Down his Pen Laura Michet
In the broth of wax in the candlestick-well, the wick floats free. The light snaps out. Evenings he goes bareheaded, runs his damp palms across his hair, flat and sweaty where the wig holds it, as he thinks. He is balding. The universal attraction of thoughts to God took his hair too, left the prism of his brain crisply bare in the white moonlight. But he is done with optics for today. Whirling bodies and plunging forces slip apart and spiral away until he could almost catch them like feathers on his tongue. He wonders what married men think of their scalps. What wives think. He wants someone to love him, as an experiment. He feels the tide beneath him and knows it is the moon that troubles his digested nerves – at night his thoughts silence him like ghosts or prophets, like acts of God, and leave him bare. He’s adrift now, shipless and numb, sea-wood already, so long he’s been afloat. He has built this world from the forces up but is no less afraid, finds no more order In the things humans do. The things they say. Heaven is all that draws him now, heaven and all its great men, and despite their disagreements, he thinks he could find a place among them, that they would enjoy a certain brotherhood the way stars, through mere human abstraction and earth’s absurd perspective, have form and meaning forced upon them until somehow, with great reluctance, those distracted bodies adrift in lightless space submit, and become a constellation.
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Poetry
ICARUS Emily Dickinson’s Father’s House
Daniel Freije
I shall be adopted into the sun, I will be transcribed among the stones; To die is not so wrong Or cruel as we imagined. I’m shown
The artifice of souls, the repeating Scenes (another crow is bold, Another leaf fleeting From an oak, winter is cold) Of life. There are just a few things I need to know before I make My way across the stings Of old scrapes re-worn: have aches Been right or wrong? Will every place Regret takes hold be well-endured, And I see face to face? Are we by friendship reassured?
I remember walking down Into the night in Amherst, and I Remember going around Your walk-ways slowly. Again I’ll try
To find that spot, when I return. If I am apostrophic, I’ll get Divided, unconcerned And into everything, and that
Is not so bad. I’ll take the rough Result myself. To know there is An answer is enough, And far too much to ask. Prayer is
The heart at needing, but what about The fate of needs unfulfilled? I cannot live without You, but I will.
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ICARUS
For Her
Sarah Jane Colleran
She is deeper and simpler than any I’ve met; A wise innocent old child, she awes and shames me into seeing what I close my eyes to, learning what I skimmed over and standing as tall as my stoop will allow.
Poetry
The subtext of humanity; the base, the low, Communications of form and physic, of malice or idle tongues – these channels she can’t see, is ferried across. We drink our fill thinking them the freshest, the gladdest waters. She fell to her knees for the cross, As I stared open-mouthed, delving for reason and rhyme. It was she who chided me, told me ‘Bow your head, acknowledge it, know it,’ and I did, but carefully, cautiously, one eye on the vision. Mass Of Wild Things Hidden behind crumbling stone walls, and guarded by sentries Of evergreen and fir, the graveyard lies untouched and protected. There was death here, and grief, but its time has passed. All is still now, burdened and released by the weight of time. The oak chaplain holds his sermons for the skies And the ivy and the weathered stone and me. I am an intruder, an interloper of this mass of wild things. Inside the chapel there is a silence. The leaves have hushed their benedictions. The birds watch, their coos muted, disproving.
No murals needed here, no paintings. Only the azure arch of the sky and the wind whipped leaves. This is religion! This is prayer! Sunlight dapples the knee-high grasses. Wildflowers bow their heads.
A low breeze hovers waiting and reluctantly I know I have to go. I would have fallen on my knees, but this was not my place of worship. I left. The oak whispered its Gospel, the grass bowing to the Word.
I stood among the graves; my heart a little heavier, my feet wishing to plant roots. The breeze took pity, and parted the canopy. A line of sun shone onto a grave. Sarah Janeline Colleran A butterfly alighted and basked in the light, and I read the short of the boy’s life.
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Poetry
ICARUS A Late Interior
Gerald Dawe In an old photograph of my mother and grandmother, I see the look of my daughter. Nineteen forty-seven, the two women smile, arms delicately linked – one the same age as the century, the other turning twenty. In the darkened window, in the neatly falling lace curtain, before sunburst and cloud cover, whosoever took the photograph is just about discernible – my soon-to-be-father father, in his new postwar life or, more likely, the man-to-be my uncle – goofy-toothed, sleeves rolled up, skinny as a rake, making faces at this little family before they all go back in again, through the dim hallway, by the monk’s bench, good chairs, grand sideboard, to the light of a painted scene. Gerald Dawe’s most recent collection, Points West was published by Gallery Press in 2008. A chapbook of uncollected poems, Country Music: 1974-1989 is forthcoming. He teaches at Trinity College Dublin.
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ICARUS Limb Love
Poetry
Sue Rainsford
There is such smoothness all over that at last, at the final dent, I think here is the point my heart will break. In the back of your arm I locate the rupture of my most muscular organ – the inner conclave at the back of knee is how the gurgle gets pushed from chest to throat, and the crack of my heart, an abbreviated snap, tells me I laid down inhibition for the reasons of skin on skin; and the ponderous notion, the fictitious inclination, that I would be moved – by him, and in being moved locate where all that solid instinct went astray. For it must have been me, who with hands and furrows in place lifted it out of utility, and toward something more like a rush, more like a charge forward into ice and collapsing lungs, more like a head in its own hands, the final inward curve of one all-over slump, the only position for the rocking and the sway that comes at the end of all my indulgences, all my once-more-for-the-sake-of-its.
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Poetry
Yolk
Tapping open a shell Against any thin rim. he sound of breaking armour Zig-zag splitting egg skin.
Tapping open a shell And cracking across a smile, Through the thin toothless slit Pours my unborn child.
ICARUS
Ana Novacic
British
Beth Burke father leaves time we sight an ergo: something is awry wrong and now we are bleedy lambing time the car lurching between three wheeling Greek mountains, he mouthing off mother grasping her brochure and I I bleeding in the backseat brave and white a woman is as a woman does, she tells us retells us fears we listen to radio-out a love of the sinful and of the harmful un biblical.
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The Itch
Fly outside my window. Torpor. Elegantly it fusses to Enter the maw. Such a stupor Awaits it here, such red and blue Musings.
With spindling limbs it skims the glass – From one solarium to the Other, it beseeches the fall. Wings bat folds of seraphic air Homeward and
Gazing from each standpoint reveals A true interior, my wings, Too, would itch. I remain below. The fly and I, we envy one Another.
A Difficult Portrait
She falls out and in of focus blending the horizon past an elbow to a fine pastel light vibrate and settle on the slimy rims of an eye. Magnify the colours with a brush stroke, harder and steadier with each bristle hair. Keen eyes, positioning a thumb and a steady, firm hand. Studying the bridge of a nose and the curious freckle above her eye. The portrait of a lady, dressed in midnight blue coyly positioned to expose the nape of her neck.
Gently twelve pearls rest on a collarbone. The light hits each sphere to reflect the yellow tones solely noticed by the brush. Feathered strokes add to the texture of her smile, masking embarrassment and anxiety for those few precious hours. Layer upon layer, shades upon shape, she lies on the page and breathes all the colours developing her complexion. An intimate moment for two strangers in the good dining room as she catches his eye despite his focus.
Laura Kennedy
Sarah Edwards
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Poetry
Poetry
ICARUS
Underwater Scene
I swam down, snorkel-eyed, past caves of machines; white whirring wires, tied ligatures – a Pelagian quarantine.
His body was a sunken wreck on the linen, fish-shoaled floor; drowned amidst the salty spray of weeping red bedsores.
His lungs were lined by coral, oil-choked and starfish-spread; cancer clams sticking to the rock pools in his head.
A cold current slipped over the hull of his naked side; rusted, ribbed, pale, painted by the tide.
His life was now a vessel veined by changing seas, his blotched and pebbled memory sometimes surfacing on the breeze.
Clouds of silver sprats moved in shimmering designs; prancing, waltzing, jiving in the ballrooms of his mind.
When I left his raftered hand rest down he turned to me and smiled, though the portholes of his eyes were dim; pain-cracked and crystallised.
I came up gasping, tear-choked, eyes swimming in brine; leaving the ship as I found it – scuttled, listless; submerged in time.
Andrew B. King
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ICARUS
Eighteen-Line Almost-Sonnet
Love, let me lie on your lap at the cineplex, And we’ll swill solutions of blue chemicals, And let go of this search for truth and symbols. For the troubles of this world have become complex
And the only real solution is to forget. So when the curtain of the screen trembles and tears, And the walls judder apart like two huge pairs Of jaws, and the latest disaster strikes - be it
Some long-predicted plague, nature giving up at last, Or the banks collapsing like a house of cards I’ll be ready. So let unending rainbow glissades Of unwatched DVDs shoal past us, let the newscast
Show unbought organic cabbages, fast-food boxes And prophylactics drowning the faux-felt seats in a tide Powered by a million pointless Xeroxes. While the rubbish ocean eddies, we’ll float side by side.
And then, when the deluge is at an end, We’ll walk out like Marla and Tyler, hand in hand.
for A. Tim Smyth
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Poetry
Short Works & Cartoons
ICARUS Gift
Lucy Byrne
W
e found an abandoned house down a small, overgrown laneway between two redbricks on the outskirts of Dublin city. In the yard outside the boarded up building, there lay scattered remnants of a life forgotten; a glass decanter, the cork stuck fast, picture frames with fraying paint, a rotting window shutter. Nestled in the corner, against the old stone walls, a blackberry bush grew. Never in our lives had we seen so many blackberries growing together, glistening and ripe in the late afternoon sun. They seemed endless, bounteous, like a gift hidden for us, alone. We picked them. I showed you how to tell the good ones from the bad, and as you ate them one by one, I collected a handful, waiting so I could eat them quickly, in a glutinous mouthful at the end. They were delicious. They burst when bitten, releasing sweet and bitter flavours of the approaching autumn. We made satisfied sounds as we chewed in the silence of the yard, down the lane off the suburban street. Nothing stirred but us, and the distant sound of an occasional meandering Sunday driver seemed worlds away. When we’d had our fill, we left and wandered back down the way we had come, our berry-stained fingers loosely clasped, musing dreamily over the luck of our discovery, and the courtyard behind us, lying in patient stillness again.
The Bedroom James Keaney
Invite you into the house Computers and noise Sleep hand-in-hand Light conversation Slow painful intimacy Toys and clothes Navigate the body Wait for signs and codes Old photos, passport ones Handfuls of cold skin Hidden shameful weapons Spider webs, brown hairs Panicking ‘Be quiet!’ We’ve gone casual For attention Affection Anyone
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ICARUS Lunch
Easy Now
Short Works & Cartoons
Oshima Fawkes
Andrew Hayden Seated in an off-white transit van at eight fortyfive in on an icy January morning, the grizzled construction worker lifts a lid on the tin that his family had received on Christmas Day when it had contained an assortment of biscuits. He peers in and looks through his lunch-box at four plain ham sandwiches in aluminium foil, an aging banana, a fun-size Mars bar and a Ribena Toothkind all neatly and lovingly placed inside by his wife earlier that morning.
Somebody said to me That you had heard That I loved you still. It isn’t true. It’s just a rumour that I started.
Funeral
Andrew Hayden Awake and alone for the first time in thirty-four years, John was to bury his wife today. He cried twice that morning and smoked for the first time since she asked him to stop one Christmas just after they had gotten engaged. He opened the front door and walked toward the church. It had started to rain. His black umbrella could only temporarily delay his suit being soaked by the rainwater.
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Prose
ICARUS The Hunt - Part One Jeff Becklund
T
here’s a tranquillity he gets out of it, the repetition of a process, the sensation of inevitability toward an outcome. It becomes most readily apparent in his behaviour on the days before the hunt. Usually it will be on Sunday, and he won’t know it until he wakes up. Eight AM. Every day of Stewball’s life begins at eight AM. There’s something I find just primitive about the whole thing, really, all the routine and ritual that goes into it. It must fulfil some need for comfort, create the illusion of control, to know exactly what’s going to be happening next even if it can’t be something good. It’s like tapping your foot to a rhythm that isn’t there, letting your head drop down against the bedpost, half asleep, again, again, bleeding in the same spot under your skin, you feel you know what’s coming next. For Stewball though, I guess it fits. He’s a primitive sort of guy. None of the tanks are in his room, but then again his bedroom operates just like one of those terrariums. He’s got timers hooked up to all the outlets and the dozen or so florescentlit enclosures downstairs in the ‘Kashmir Lounge’. They stutter on together at eight AM. Daylight. For him it’s an outlet with a phonograph player plugged into it which I assume belongs to the Commodore, like the house, and practically all that Stewball owns. Sun goes up and needle drops. There’s only one album up there, and it’s a recording of the Charles Mingus Octet. He hums it all the time. Over and over. Today I was notified sometime before noon via text message. I’d slept in my clothes so it didn’t matter that I’d left my cellphone set to silent after work. :: 10:17 :: Tailless amphibians – Anurans. Tank 6. Need accomplice to come with. No mercy, help us trail them down. Not that there’s anything wrong with Fiona’s bedroom, of course, especially now that I’ve got it to myself. Guess I’m used to the couch. I’ve never felt like much of a Romeo anyway and her, our, now my living room makes for a pretty stellar Mantua since I finished installing this beautiful 42’’ Panasonic LCD display. Sometimes on Saturdays I’d stay late at the Mud Lodge after we closed up at the store. I wouldn’t even bother looking to see if she was still up in bed – best to get bitched out in the morning after I’d sobered up a bit. She had a job too, of course. She’d gotten a degree and everything and still barely made any money. With what I had going she could have quit kissing ass all week and taken that second degree she wanted. Even better she could have stayed home with me and done jack shit. I slept till two or three Sunday to Wednesday, worked a few shifts as a sub-manager at a wholesale wine store on the weekends, once in a while went to check up on Stewball and spend a little time with the Commodore’s accounts, make sure the whole dream didn’t fall apart. It isn’t hard to understand why Stewball’s gotten to be such a nutcase with his father the way
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he is. Commodore Charles Haverstock was once a pretty important figure among the wellto-dos of this fairly indistinguishable suburban lake community. At this point I think most people figure that he died or just disappeared when he had his stroke and stopped showing up at races, collapsing on the deck of his E-scow on a close haul through the finish line. It was well into the summer of that year and as they often did, the Commodore’s crew had nearly finished first, his gut glinting sun from the keel as he belted out a few lines from Der fliegende Holländer, saluting his crew, the lake, the air. When you live like that I suppose you do die more or less once you’ve forgotten how to eat, shit, and speak. He had something to do with the civil law cases through the 70s and 80s, the big tri-city initiative that got investors and developers back out into our flaccid economy. He helped fund the refurbishment of the old yacht club at Lucia’s Bay of course with all the money he made, never missed a regatta. My uncle sailed a lot back then and from what he’s said that man really loved to sail. I didn’t know him while he still had motor skills but really it’s probably best that way given the circumstances when we met.
I’m not sure if Stewball even finished high school, and it surprises most people who meet him and don’t know him very well. He’s got a knack for finding things outside, ecology, a social magnetism that extends beyond people and into other spheres of life. It probably cripples him more than anything. In high school I used to stack bets for people against different athletes at our track and field meets. Afterward we’d walk up along the creek the school diverted for the track and the field until we got back behind the Leeman & Co air conditioning plant. We’d go with girls or to smoke cigarettes. Sometimes Stewball would be back there fishing or setting up nets and things. If he tried to talk to us later at school we’d made animal noises at him or throw dirt and grubs if we saw him outside. About a year ago when the Mud Lodge Restaurant and Cocktail Bar started buying wine from my store I’d stop in a lot to make deliveries. I’d see Shawn, the head chef, hiring him out with freelance work, sending him to procure specialty items: fresh salmon, pheasant eggs, catfish, walleye, stream trout, smallmouth bass, bullfrogs, rhubarb, fox parts, baby venison, duck, geese, bunny-rabbit, soft shell turtles, snappers, pike, wintergreen, maple syrup, muskrat, opossum, marmot, snakes, other more suspicious meats and appendages I didn’t recognise and didn’t have the nerve to ask about. Their house was one of the last to be built before the economy went stale again, screwing the banks and developers who’d believed in us. The Haverstocks relocated from the Southeast somewhere and the place had an odd Neo-Mediterranean feel. It looked much older than it was, as if it had been airlifted over from Morocco or somewhere, landing thoroughly out of place in this temperate climate; so many deciduous acres. There’s a few scummed-over ponds where Jacob Nolan, Emerson High’s National Science Olympiad prodigy disappeared collecting samples, testing for abnormal PH levels he’d discovered in the area’s egret faeces. There were peat bogs where a redneck Scottish family sometimes snuck around along with the occasional cadre of eco-hippies who came to cut out strips of peat. There were shallow marshlands with bur-reed and water hemlock that filled and drained and froze again through every year. The lakes, too. They weren’t far away. Whatever impression of solidarity this place lacked, however tasteless or eccentric the Commodore, for Stewball it was ideal. He throws great parties too. Not then but now. He’ll call me around four or five in the afternoon in a fit, tank 11, the red-backed salamanders:
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‘Plethodon cinereus!’ ‘Hello?’ ‘Oh don’t pretend like you don’t remember those red-backs I got going in tank 11. I moved the little schemers to 10 with the four-toed salamanders. I had a dream last night that smelt-fish were coming back, I’ve got a good feeling about smelt-fish, gotta make room.’ ‘Uh-huh, yeah?’ ‘I’m thinking about converting 11 over to aqua-, the big switch. Anyway, I came down from lunch with dad and, ahhh the schemers, I think they knew what was coming and took their own lives ...’ So I head over to help him clean out tank 11, he’s got this whole procedure for the ethical and sanitary disposal of captive animals. Another one of his damned rituals: feed the deceased to the correct predators (got to know what’s in each tank), feed it to Sandra, his cat, if there isn’t one, trash can if the cat’s been overfed, toilet if one of his mental alarms go off and the trash gets deemed a biohazard. Burial occurs only in the occasional extreme. There’s a contingency for everything. Myself, I had to ‘balance’ the Commodore’s checkbook, anyway, and stop off at the bank afterward so it wasn’t much of a big deal. I stop in again on the way home to use their paper shredder and there’s a half dozen people barking around the patio and he’s inside blending margaritas. I’m not even sure where these people come from. He never used to have friends. The first time I went over was almost a year ago. I got a call from Daisy, a girl who applied for work at my store. I’m not sure if she had intended to dial me exactly. I told her to call if she had any questions about her application but there was lots of shouting and what sounded like a circle of djembe drums stammering up through the background. Plus, I felt a couch night coming on. ‘I’m an alcoholic,’ she said once I arrived, shaking my hand with the same polite demeanour she’d presented herself with at the shop. Sure enough, there was Stewball, banging away on one of those drums like a little monkey. ‘Tim Mossborne.’ I shook her hand. ‘We met last week.’ She was cute. Stewball can be quite a musician, actually. His instruments, for the most part, they’re expensive souvenirs the Commodore picked up back when he used to sail long distance: a Malaysian lute, Celtic and Chinese dulcimers, a didgeridoo, a North African alboka hornpipe, a polychromatic kazoo given to him in 1971 when a series of cyclones forced his crew to take shelter off the coast of the newly formed Republic of Bangladesh, hiding out in the basement of an abandoned ceramics studio with a group of Tibetan monks, a charango guitar from Chile, a Venezuelan clarinet, he keeps it all in fairly good condition and on
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display down in the Grape Room, one of the house’s last enduring legacies of Stewball’s dead mother. She had a thing for grapes apparently: plastic grapes, wax grapes, beaded grapes, tapestries depicting scenes in which grapes are grown, eaten, or used for pigmentation, medicinal, or ceremonial purposes, a purple clustered Afghan with actual seeds sewn in; they hung down with decadent bouquet from little hooks fashioned to look like stems picked clean. The room was lit by lamps made from old Greek wine bottles and early American Welsh’s jelly jars half melted and grafted back together, casting light that swelled from indigo to jade and aquamarine. Even the wallpaper, barely visible, depicted a panorama of Dionysius, inebriated, emerging from Zeus’s thigh and riding a leopard through fields of Theban harvest, smashing grapes into wine with the skulls of two Tyrrhenian pirates as he rode. I could smell it all on her breath. The way Daisy was looking at me, I could see right away how this place would never be short of madness and ecstasy. ‘I’m only happy when I’m drunk.’ She was making way too much eye-contact. It freaked me out. ‘That’s why I’m an alcoholic, see.’ I went to go get her a beer. Later we went up to an empty bedroom. I almost had her pants off when I felt something moist and rough, like the wet bristles of the scrub-brush you do your dishes with chafe up behind me along one of my shoulder blades. I throw the girl off the bed, trying to stand up, ready to fight off one of the beasts I’d seen Stewball bring into the Mud Lodge. I hadn’t seen him there, the Commodore: plump, comatose, moustached, laying limp, suspended with us in his waning bedspread. He stared up at me, at nowhere, grinning.
Only They Know Andrew B King
It was an unwritten law that nothing untoward happened in L——. The quiet west of Ireland village was a place for reclusive artisans, spent hippies and old sheep farming locals. No television camera had witnessed the insignificance of its single, stone-flagged street since RTÉ had shot a documentary on rural matchmaking there in the seventies. The breaking of this almost legislative anonymity, therefore, was the reason that the inhabitants of the place felt even more violated at this time. As if the disappearance of a seventeen-year-old girl wasn’t enough to throw a tight-knit rural community into rapidly unravelling threads, the fixed stare of news cameras had torn open the village and offered it up to the judgemental stare of a nation which thought that places like L—— had slipped into the brown bog years ago, along with lumps of butter and elk bones. It was day three of the search; one of those seeping days when the mist never lifts but lies in a damp, dewy greyness over everything – like the bloated memory of a cold morning which the afternoon just can’t forget. A curious flock of sheep, the slender line of local volunteers in luminous yellow jackets moved awkwardly through the drizzle, negotiating their way around bog-holes and clambering over soft, grass-clotted hills, digging their gnarled sticks into uneven ground and pausing to inspect a rubble heap, or comb through a reedy patch of undergrowth. The blue bulk of the spying mountains watched over them with vast, ancient
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formidability as they went through now familiar motions. Hump-backed trees made gloaming shapes. The volunteers were spread sparsely, about fifty yards between each of them. At times a blob of yellow would vanish behind the contour of some looming slant of earth. Their throat-weary shouts struggled through the suffocating mist and after a few hours of this effort the cries stopped bothering altogether. All but one, that is. Sebastian Boland, the missing girl’s stepfather, persisted. He would pull his soaked, hanging frame up after short, breathless intervals, shaking violently as he croaked her name over and over … ‘Eimear, Eimear, Eimear …’ Following these outbursts he would slump forward on his twisted staff of ash-wood and stumble through the squelching muck once more ... his thoughts the only answer to his tired, stifled calls; grass, bracken and slippery stone fleeing past his glazed and pensive eyes. Marrying Clíodhna four years ago had seemed ideal. She had convinced him that L—— would be perfect. She and Eimear had always lived there and she couldn’t imagine authors writing anywhere else. The mountains whispered their secrets to you ... that was what she had said, her amber eyes flashing with freshness and passion. They could write their way through the cold winters and sure their mutual author friends could visit during the summers. They had run a workshop there every August since and she had been proven correct in her promises of reward. New eager novelists had come from the four corners of Ireland to take part. He had been genuinely surprised at the extent of subscription, finding that the instructive process of the workshops guided his own flourishing creativity, adding fat to the skeletons of his ideas. For three years his name had grown and his books had sold. Closed Space was a bestseller, his best work to date according to the Irish Times. Clíodhna, in the meantime, was perfect for him, equally proving herself as an author. Her own poetry collection, Dreams in the Daylight, had won the Irish New Poetry Award for 2008. He remembered her beaming, toothy pride. She had almost crushed his hand that night as they sat through the taught, listening stillness while her poems were being read. She had proven that she wasn’t just the new wife of Sebastian Boland. That had probably been the happiest time in his life; just before he threw it into shapeless, deceitful turmoil ... just before it all went rancid; before he fell in love with his stepdaughter. Suddenly, he stopped his trudging and looked up, rain dripping from his beakish nose, and his booted feet sinking sickeningly into the wet, flattened grass and sheep dung. There was a thicket of heather, parted oddly in the centre, in front of him. It swam out of the half light like a barnacled sea-monster. He peered carefully, gripping his ash stick, feeling the rushing pound of his heart as it chased his fleeting breaths. He pushed clumsily through the thorny, picking heather, slapping fretfully at the clinging branches, cutting himself, dragging in big gulps of cold air ... There she was. She was spread out like a white canvas in a clearing of crushed tawny gorse. Tripping on a root, he collapsed to his knees beside her, the soft dimness of his damp surroundings reeling before him. Her hair was splayed in reddish tendrils about her head, disappearing into the knotted undergrowth. She was naked and her skin was veiled in silver beads of moisture. Larger drops slid like tears down the side of her staring breasts. She wasn’t marked at all and one would have thought her sleeping were it not for her stark pale skin, the blood gone from her now clammy flesh. There was no long pause. It only took him split seconds to erupt into grief. He sobbed, a great, heaving dry cough, his drooping
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shoulders shaking uncontrollably. He leaned over her, kissing her softly on the face and neck again and again, his salty tears landing in puddles in the hollows of her closed eyes. There was a sodden piece of paper placed on top of her folded cardigan and jeans. He groaned as he pulled it out, unfolding its limp creases tremblingly. Seb, I think it will be you who finds me here. I’m nearly sure of it somehow. I love you, Seb, and I never wanted to do this to you or Mum, you know that. I don’t understand how this has happened to us. I’m sorry for doing this to you. I’ve had the best time of my life with you and I know I can’t love anyone else. There isn’t room for the three of us here though, Seb. You have known that since our first night together. I’m making your decision for you. Stay with Mum, she needs you. I’m sorry for doing this to you ... sorry for always being here ... I guess there’s never been anywhere else to go. Everywhere leads me down the same cul de sac ... to you. Eimear xx Sebastian prostrated himself beside her, kissing her softly on her cream-cold forehead. Rhythmically he moaned, pulling tufts of earth and grass and flinging them despairingly onto her chest. With great, frightening, manly tears gushing down the rock face of his cheeks, he crawled about the dense thicket, tearing branches of heather and piling them on top of her bare body. Frenzied, he shivered as he stuffed her protruding, blanched hand back under the heavy blanker of torn plants and thorny fronds. He was eclipsing his reality with unearthed heather. His vision swimming with rain, mist and briny tears, he stumbled out of the needled copse like a bandy-legged foal. The other volunteers were some distance away at this stage, the yellow blobs trickling across the expanse towards the foot of the blue-bruised mountains. The wind howled down from the lofty tops, carrying their old wizened secrets across the bogs. Sebastian felt the chill screaming on his face, he saw parted cherub lips, a smile, soft hands, and laughter. He felt rustling bedclothes. He saw big, amber, tear-filled eyes. He saw a white hand sticking out from under a pile of ripped gorse. The mountains screamed. They were screaming at him, their high-pitched whistling voices blaming him, over and over. The sound of guilt was everywhere. The air was sharp with it. Sebastian floundered on, muttering mindless apologies under his breath. Hunched over his gnarled ash wood he pressed into the swirling rain, catching up with the search party. As the wandering flock of volunteers sunk into the growing dimness of the night, one voice could be heard, fighting to overcome the leering howl of the mountain winds. Faintly it could be heard – ‘Eimear, Eimear, Eimear ...’ It was a broken, desperate noise ... dry with denial. But, nobody else called her. Sebastian Boland hadn’t a chance. He would never see her alive again. In their heavy, panting hearts they knew one thing for certain – The girl was dead.
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ICARUS Danny Was a Friend of Mine Ines Novacic
Danny was a friend of mine.
D
anny Dunne woke up every morning at six o’clock because he wanted to. Danny remembered how, as a young child, his father used to wake up very, very early and leave the house to go to work. He smelt of cigarettes and always wore a smile and a funnylooking hat. There was a sense of security in the house on those mornings. One by one, the household would awake wholly tender and tolerant, reaffirming the unbreakable unity of a family. Sooner than perhaps befitting, sleep would slip off soft human flesh and evaporate out of sight through the small windows of the house. Then, time to assume assigned roles in the family dynamic. Time for making the bed and time for breakfast. Time for each Dunne to pursue a separate path. Danny used to follow an older neighbour to school because he could not memorise the way. Danny got his own bedroom when they moved to number 42. He remembered revelling in the newly-acquired privacy as the sun playfully shot laser rays through framed holes in the wall. The moonlight played no such games. Night after night Danny failed to sleep for fear of solitude seizing him in his dreams and removing him further and further away from his family. He reasoned that that was what happened to Daddy. Daddy Dunne was a country man in the city. He had traversed West to East to learn about history but found little support for his dyslexia and quickly abandoned academics in favour of muscle-use. Danny enjoyed stories about how Daddy had carried him as a baby in just one of his big, big hands. Rough skin, tough haircut, big softie. Daddy Dunne had fallen in love every day at college, and later with every woman who happened to pass by his exposed workplace. His niche in the city was as vulnerable as the unfinished construction site that he worked on. At any moment, individual effort and hard labour could be abandoned, left unappreciated. Daddy Dunne’s recurrent fear was being left with tall, thick brick walls that he could not make or break himself. The city was all brick, brick, brick, and thank God for Mummy Dunne or else he would’ve died, he always said. Mummy Dunne was the boss’s sister. He traded in his job for a modest ceremony in her local Parish and a promise of forever. They had only had eleven guests. Both parents had been too busy. Danny told me he’d never been to his daddy’s farm, ‘Well, once, but it didn’t count.’ He said the barn smelt awful but the old lady who showed him around shouted at him for holding his nose and lectured him about how beautiful nature smelt. He said was glad when she tripped and stepped in a large plop of cow poo. ‘I never laughed so hard.’ His grandparents didn’t own a television and didn’t know anything about Spiderman or Superman. They said the only hero was Jesus. Danny’s daddy’s gone 363 days. His mummy doesn’t like the countryside, and besides she’s allergic to pollen and cats. They talk on the phone once a week, always Sunday, always at noon. Daddy Dunne’s been here for birthdays, Christmas and Easter. He didn’t come to our graduation from Bellstown National School last Thursday. Granny Dunne’s dead, so
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ICARUS now Danny has to make the trip down to see his father.
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I sleep over every Friday night. Danny’s house is smaller than mine, especially since it’s an apartment. It looks like it’s bigger because it’s on a big street with lots of trees and you’d be fooled if you thought it was all one house cos it’s six apartments! My mum told me and I thought she was trying to be funny but then I saw. My sister Susie always asks to come in when I’m being picked up or dropped off because I tell her it’s one big house with a massive fountain and Mum has no clue. Danny plays along because I said I’d tell everyone about him liking Claire Manning if he told Susie. I love tricking Susie because it’s only fair really. She’s always treated better than me when I younger. I still hate being the older one. Until sixth class, Mum and Dad never let me eat sweets during the week. Susie’s four years younger and just cos I get sweets, she gets sweets too! I only ever got a crappy apple, yoghurt and a sandwich. She gets a chocolate bar with Coke in her lunchbox every day. At least now I’m headed to secondary school so I can buy my own lunch if I don’t like what Mum wants me to bring! Two months to go, Danny says. I’ll remember our graduation forever and I’ll never lose touch with my friends. Clara Lara and Brittas Bay had been too unforgettable for that. It’s a done deal, I explained to Danny. ‘Of-course, you and me will stay friends, but so will Christy, Robbie, Matt, Rory and Jamie. We’ll all be friends and our schools aren’t far away either. I bet we’ll even be able to go over for lunchtime.’ ‘I hear lunchtime is two hours!’ (No way!) ‘I’m gonna buy chips and pizza every day and talk to everyone and especially all the girls. I mean, I like our friends yeah? But do you realise that now we’ve got a chance to meet tons of new people and tons and tons of new girls! In fact, if we do art, we’ll probably get to draw naked girls all the time!’ ‘What! Who told you that?’ ‘Seán Finnegan; his cousin’s in secondary school. There’ll be so many girls we won’t know which ones to meet first. Maybe one’ll even get with you!’ ‘Shut up!’ I hate when Danny tries to be all cooler than me. Just cos none of the girls in our class are my type is all. I’m saving myself. In the films Mum doesn’t know we watch, all the guys pretend to be sensitive cos that’s what girls like. I’m two steps ahead. Plus, Mum promised new clothes and a new haircut before school starts. Danny’ll have no chance, even if he ends up getting that phone he’s moaning about. For some reason, Danny’s mum won’t get him a phone. She says he doesn’t need one until they see ‘how things go’ in secondary school. He gives out occasionally, but ever since I got my Nokia for Christmas he’s basically taken over it, so I don’t really know why he complains about needing one so frickin much. I never spend the credit I buy or get to text the numbers I wanna text. Danny says it cos all these girls are mad texting him. Bet he doesn’t even know half these girls. Can’t say I wasn’t jealous at graduation, though. Leila’s family’d invited all of us to their house in Brittas after beach manhunt. We started to play spin the bottle, eight of us, five
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girls. Eight pairs of fingers crossed we don’t end tickled by Rachel’s tash. Danny kissed Leila and my mum came to pick us up straight after. Five minutes into the game, Danny well ahead of us, stupidly smug. Apparently I was supposed to get excited and be satisfied with a special card from my gran waiting at home for me. It had a ten pound note in it. Cheers gran. Danny’s heading to boggerland after we finish our breakfast and Mum picks me up. I can smell the fry downstairs, I love Danny’s mum’s cooking. None of this weird new soya granule thing my Mum’s been making us eat. Who actually finds lumpy feet smell appetising? I’m on my second egg and fourth sausage, Danny’s still on the toast and beans. He hasn’t even boasted about Leila yet today. His mum is freakishly quiet. I guess he’s just never been to a funeral, neither have I because when my dad died I wasn’t even born and I’ve only ever known Stephen. I don’t even have a photo of me with my dad, but I’ve a few of some guy with mad hair on some moped. It’s weird when I see Mum staring at photos of such a young guy, and her so much older. Danny has a photo of him and his dad at the Man U match year before last. He’s barely finished his second sausage the bell goes and ‘How are you Mrs Dunne’, it’s Stephen. During the drive home I think about if me or Danny will make the firsts on the school rugby team. See, I’ll never say it to him, but he’s better at football than me. I’m hoping that means he’ll be crap at rugby. You can’t have it all. I also think about James Bond’s cars. Imagine Stephen in one of them! Don’t think I’ve seen anyone in glasses drive a car like that. Stephen’s grand though, he’s already let me steer and told me that as soon as I’m sixteen, he’d take me driving near Santry. It’s where Mickey practised and when he passed his test he bought his white car with leather seats that you can hear a mile off. Mickey’s a wanker. I can’t wait to drive. Maybe I’ll be nice and pick up my girlfriends and take them to the cinema. And I’ll pay because I’ll be rich from setting up my own internet company. I’ve always been best in the class in IT. Danny’s birthday is two months before mine. Granny Dunne died a month after his birthday. He turned twelve, we’re both young for our class. Danny’s twin brothers are too old for their class because they had to repeat the year. They were told dyslexia is genetic. The Dunnes’ grey Nissan Micra pulled out of the gravelled driveway fifteen minutes and fourteen seconds after Mummy Dunne had cleaned up the breakfast. Mummy Dunne drove and thought about how cold corpses must get under all that damp earth in winter. She reasoned that summer made Granny Dunne’s death slightly more bearable, not so piercingly cold. The twins each had a pillow and were smashing them against each other’s head. Danny wasn’t even enjoying front seat privilege. Dinnertime in the Chinese yum, yum, only there’s always broccoli or some other veg thing mixed in with the main food. If Mum’s not looking, I’ll put it on her plate, she loves the stuff anyway. I hate being rushed while I’m eating at the Chinese. Once we left without dessert. The fortune cookies are always stupid but the chocolate cake is unreal. Stephen is taking Mum out after and soon enough Stella will arrive with her sleepover bag. I should be embarrassed about still having to have a babysitter, that’s what I tell all my friends: ‘Mum’s so embarrassing, she’s such a stupid worrier.’ I also tell them she’s hot and fourteen and tried to kiss me one night. She’s basically Mum’s age and they do Greek classes together. I liked when my auntie used to mind us but now she’s got the baby and after that one time she
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minded all three of us, no thanks. Don’t think even Susie Snorezilla slept as Ella screamed and screamed and screamed, and stank the house up. I dunno why you’d bother with kids. If you really wanted the hassle you could always adopt grown up kids, like my age. That night, Danny Dunne did not sleep well. The following morning, Danny did not wake up at six o’clock and it was not because he wanted to. His mum had avoided looking at him after the family had parked in front of the little isolated house and they’d gobbled up small soggy sandwiches without a crust. Daddy Dunne held him close and stroked his hair as the priest spoke. Grandpa cried at first, then stared and stared and did not say anything at all. The twins were well behaved, and even afterword, in front of the Church, they resisted the urge to push an annoyingly swotty girl into the puddle she had chosen to stand directly in front of. Danny sat between his mother and the twins in the cold church and smelt the soul of his grandmother swerve up, up, away and past them all. The priest reiterated the lesson she herself had taught Danny about Jesus. Jesus is the light; Jesus is the Saviour, Messiah, Master, Mentor, Jesus hasn’t got a Batmobile and he can’t fly but he will save you all. Danny had secretly always been afraid of God. He didn’t like the idea of an old man watching everything he did and knowing everything he thought. It made him feel bad about taking two euro out of Jack’s pocket when no one saw, and saying that it had most definitely not been him. Danny feared Jesus because Jesus was the son of God and Danny knew that there was nothing in the world he wouldn’t do for his father, so Jesus must be the same. If God the dad spied on him and judged him, so did Jesus. Daddy Dunne thought about how, thirty-five years ago, his mother had found out he’d been giving his rationed school lunch to Tommy the Tank. Tommy’s mother had driven to the nearby large town every Sunday to stack up on Weight Watchers yoghurts. Granny Dunne told him gravely that every time he gave food away food or threw it away, the baby Jesus cried. He was seven and it broke his heart. Jaysus, Stephen woke me up on Sunday extra early because he was so excited about the match. He coached a team in Wicklow and it was the finals. He liked to take me because it was a time for us men to bond. I always preferred rugby because that’s where the real game is at, but I never told him and he never really asked. Although Susie’s his real daughter, he chooses to spend time with me at times like this. Besides, the team always lost and Stephen always drowned his sorrows in the nearby pub, which meant I got to go to the pub. When he’s really down, he doesn’t notice me swigging from his pints. Danny called last night, a week since I seen him. I could hear one of the twins going ‘stupid Dan Pan is really a sissy girl that cries all day’. I guess cos it’s summer I missed having him around. We could’ve played the Wii or something. He sounded weird on the phone and didn’t want to come round next week. I called his house later in the evening cos he had had to go real fast and I hadn’t even told him about the text I got from Leila. Technically she didn’t say it was for him, so there’s no reason why she couldn’t be texting me. Danny’s mum said he couldn’t come to the phone and that he’d phone me back. I waited, went to bed and I guess I’ll call again tonight I’ve been hanging around with Seán and Jack for the last two weeks. What is Danny playing at, the muppet. He’ll kick himself when he finds out we went to the cinema with Kate and Leila and Connie. We chose this class funny film and I laughed so hard I practically forgot that it’d be funnier if Danny were here so we could dare each other to throw some popcorn
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at people sitting in the rows in front of us. ---------------------------I wake up every morning at six o’clock because I need to. Seven thankful minutes of being half asleep before my phone’s done snoozing and forces me to get the fuck up. Whoever invented phones can fuck off in the mornings. I never’ve time for a shower in the morning, so I have one before I go to bed. I remember this one girl, Sophie, told me that was gross. ‘Eh, what?’ ‘That’s such a guy thing to do.’ She’s majoring in feminist literature and I didn’t follow up after that one film we saw together. What’s wrong with being clean before going to bed? REM is sacred, so Mum likes to say. She’s into --- now. Her and Stephen had a blow out last week cos she’d donated two hundred (‘To the cause, Stephen!’) on the sly. I’m sworn off religion of any and all kind. Clean for four years. Only thing I believe in is dreams, not that I’d advertise the fact. Two weeks ago I dreamt of a girl and pretty much fell in love. Two days later, I saw someone of an un-fucking-canny resemblance to her in one of my lectures. It was unreal, and it took me a while, but I went out with her for the first time last night. Must like her more than expected. I didn’t have the balls to kiss her goodnight. I purposefully set up the most annoying alarm because then there’s no luxury of choice about getting my ass out of bed and starting the day. Barely time to acknowledge how ridiculously fuzzy sleep makes you in the morning. I usually shake it off with a forty-five minute run to College, rucksack on my back. This morning, I figure I’ve had me a big night last night and treat myself to a lift from Stephen to the bus. I always carry a change of clothes, towel, Lynx Temptation, apple and water, 750 ml. Every morning the swim starts off painful but never fails in leaving me gratified when I’m outta the water. I love swimming because you can relax in the rhythm (not being funny, not a poof, bear with me), and you stop hearing and seeing and it’s the only fucking time in the world it’s all about you. I like to think it’s like a challenge I rise to. Keeps me sane anyway. I can think without thinking about thinking or what I’m thinking. Sometimes I’ll mentally pause on sex. Sometimes I think about how much older Stephen has managed to look in the last two months since he’s going bald. Sometimes I think about Susie’s boyfriend and how much I’d love to kick him in the nuts. And, it’s mad, but if I’m really into all this thinking, I get to thinking about people I don’t even know and imagine the lives of these people. I think about all the people in my life that I’ve maybe forgotten or never noticed. I don’t like to think I’ve been forgotten or overlooked. Shit buzz. ---------------------------My new best friends are Sam and Spike. Spike was the first to over-use gel in first year secondary. He still wears his hair spikey. Sam has glasses and told me when we were fourteen that he dreamed about becoming an astronaut. Now he’s doing physics. He used to have a dog that he named Laika, but then he cried when he realised that a poor dogcorpse was abandoned somewhere in space.
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‘Oi!’ Spike greets me the same way, same place every day of term. We have politics together and we’re always five minutes late. There aren’t enough girls in that lecture. Spike is mad into mainstream electro and has got into a habit of grabbing dancing girls from behind. One in a thousand grabs him back in the way he wants and fantasises about. The rest either grab his hand to push it away, or grab their boyfriends to do the honours. Once, drunken Spike grabbed a guy with long hair and got a ball-grabbing. It’s left him with a permanent dislike of long-haired men. ‘Man, how’d it go with your one last night?’ ‘Grand.’ ‘You lucky cunt, I’d probably give her one if you weren’t planning to.’ Spike’s never had a girlfriend. Sam has been going out with Tina for basically twenty years. Sam turned twenty-two three months ago. Tina and Sam’s mums have been inseparable besties since the age of five. They got pregnant around the same time on purpose I reckon. Sam wants to marry Tina but he never talks to us about it. Tiny Tina has short black hair and a fringe and has never tried meat. ‘Are her tits really nice and big or is it just the bra?’ ‘Shut up Spike.’ ‘You wanker!’ he smiled delightedly. I’ve one year left of college. So I have one year to come to terms with the fact that I would have wasted four years studying something I neither like nor am good at. I’ve one year to decide what other undergraduate course I’ll do after this one. Maybe I’ll spice it up and complete my second degree somewhere else, maybe like India or Iceland or Indiana. I’m not sure why I always only think of place names beginning with ‘I’. I’m at my bus stop thinking about me, me, me, I, I, I and Indonesia, Inverness, Idaho, Iowa. The sky’s grey and the air dull and it looks like rain. I’ve my earphones in and the music’s lulling me into a state of bored being. I’ve been waiting for half an hour. It is excruciatingly normal, dull and overdone. I can finally see the bus coming and I don’t move. I’m boredom’s captive, frozen in time and place. Then. Then there it was. Eight years later. A guy my age with a very different, very short haircut walks briskly past me. This guy is wearing black skinny jeans, black Doc Martens, a white shirt with a dark grey, slightly stained jumper over it. And he has passed me by without registering that it is me, and that I stand here alone at this bus stop and that he has grazed my chest with his blue rucksack. His earphones are guiding him through a different vibe and he walks with a purpose as if he owns himself and feels comfortable with himself. Danny was a friend of mine: he just walked right by me and didn’t even say hi.
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ICARUS Prologue to a Night Out off the Town. Danielle Hersee
T
he bells tolled their wordless song of ungracious praise over the black and orange city. Across the bridge trails of whispering song, smoked in the sharp frosty air, rise. Mumbled Latin doesn’t last long on a creeping breeze. The short black coat barely moved as the wind crossed it, dark hair scarcely could be encouraged an inch from the striped hat that held it down. With each bell tolled came the dry words. ‘Ave …’ Words float. ‘Ave …’ Words freeze. ‘Ave, Maria.’ And burst into syllables over the black water of the foggy Anna Livia. The pale faces passing took little notice of the peripheral image as it moved past them through the night. Drained eyes, that would never meet yours, not that you’d try. No-one sees them as clearly as they see. When she passes, it remains such an unremarkable moment that it is forgotten instantly. Lights flashed to green as she drifted across the empty road. Noise of a hundred conversations broke into the night, like bats taking sudden flight, as the door of a pub on the other side of the road burst open. Tightening her grip on the world that was kept in the bag rested against her hip, she darted across the road. Suddenly turning into an almost black alley that led to the next street, eyes closed as car lights flashed in. Breaking from the thin ally she crossed again picking up the tune again. Ave… Ave… Ave, Maria. An archway stood open and black, coloured only by the misted shine of dagger-like icicles that hung precariously from window sills. The music of a tin flute, high and sharp, sailed out, cutting through the night in a way the holy bells never could. A beggar with his cap on the floor sat still as his bone thin fingers flew. The echo of footsteps did not disturb the music travelling up through the air that was swept away once the breeze changed its name. Short echoing tings rang out as coins slipped from her hand. The music stilled allowing the silence to encroach upon them as it shouted its sudden presence.
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ICARUS ‘Here early, Síofra.’
Prose
Approaching the arched gate she knocked. A flash of light cued the next song that rose and died on the air as it followed its brothers into the hearts of strangers. Its death tolled by the dropping clang to give birth to the next in a stream of light.
The Chase
Rosalind Abbott
O
f course, my husband never spoke about her much – the other woman – not to me, anyway. But nevertheless I’d heard enough from snatches of stolen conversations to know just how damn perfect she was. Based on the information I’d gathered from the various sources who’d seen her themselves, and perhaps with a little added spice from my own natural dread, I’d glued together an image: a vision of her, hanging, beyond my clutch. Her face and slender limbs would haunt me sometimes when my attention drifted from spreadsheets and other mundane office tasks, floating, like a stray balloon that never seemed to deflate. When I saw her it was unexpected. Well, not her, technically speaking, but a girl who seemed to me a capsule of how I’d always imagined her to be; her very essence before me in material form. I was heading home from the gym, crimson-faced with a pumping heart and training bag slung clumsily over my shoulder, and there she was, slinking forth just a few paces ahead. Strands of glowing peroxide hair were neatly pulled back and snapped shut in pink elastic. Her waifish figure was intangible; casually chic fine knitwear and a pair of Audrey Hepburn Capri pants hung from her elusive frame. Instantly magnetised to her cat-like prowl, I drifted absently forth, eyes transfixed upon her tapering, ambrosia calves and delicate ankles, nimbly dancing before me. I’d once overheard she was an acclaimed ballerina ... or perhaps that was my own addition to her saga. Had she been heading the opposite direction to me, maybe I’d have followed her anyway. Or maybe not; I don’t know. But that doesn’t matter – by some blow of fate, the tracks lying before us were briefly intertwined, and for those intoxicating few minutes when she stepped across shattered paving-stones before me, her spell didn’t fade. Sometimes her fleeting footsteps would bounce ahead too fast, and I’d fall behind; like a startled rabbit she’d slip away, distant and haughty. Other pedestrians would invade the space between us. But I stayed hot on the chase, blood rushing to my face as I pursued her track. I’d always catch up. With agitated vision, I analysed her form – the delicate nape of her long neck; the arches of her ivory feet, flashing like beacons and calling forth; the scarlet-tipped candles of fingers, clutching a softened leather bag ... I’d seen ones like that before, hanging from the arms of deliciously underfed, flaxen-haired starlets in magazines, and somehow, I always knew she’d have one. Her stark white ponytail swung from side to side, hypnotically.
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I never saw her face. At one point, I recall, the tip of a ski-slope nose flickered out for a split second as she scanned for traffic at the edge of a road, but it swiftly darted back into hiding. No more than this. The rest of her features teased me, stashed away from prying eyes, but I knew how they’d be: glassy, topaz eyes peeping out from under sooty lashes; a gentle blush at the giddy heights of her sculpted cheekbones; the delicate curve of her peachy pout. Traffic soared past us unheard, whirling round; the streets seemed a dizzy fairground and I was crawling up to the peak of the ride, sweat rising to my palms in anticipation of the plunge. My feet mechanically kept stepping on forth, left, right, left, right, until WHIZZ! I withdrew my foot as if scalded by steaming bath-waters as a cyclist spun past. On the edge of the curb I teetered, heart dropping and stomach flipping as I observed the lights change and glow red before me. She danced ahead unknowingly on the other side. Traffic flew by, her image flickering between rushing bonnets and growing fainter by the second. When I reached the other side, bewildered, I scanned the square into which she had scampered: a blur of forms rushed by in all directions but hers was not amongst them. Her satin pumps had skipped off to places unknown; I pictured her running forth into my husband’s arms as she once had done on those dusty late summer evenings last year. Catatonic in the midst of rushing commuters I stood silently; then shuffled away, numbed. My feet marched forth like lost soldiers, their commander shot dead, left clueless of their destination. On and on I strode forth until I reached the edge of land and could go no further. The Prussian blue waters of the sea rippled calmly towards me under a stale blanket of sky; the sun shied away behind a cloud. Vague silhouettes of solitary figures dotted along the strand sleepily beat their way home, each one seeming as bleak and desolate as myself against the greying backdrop of the horizon. Dusk. Once more, I became engulfed by those feelings of despondency which had chronically haunted me, accompanied by her balloon-like, floating image. I felt as if I were lying alone in bed – lying awake in a sea of inky darkness, the night ringing all around me, as I’d lain on those lonesome September nights as they hungrily explored each others’ flesh in some distant apartment. In my gut I’d known from the start he was away with someone else; and all along her icy reflection peered up from the glassy waters of my mind. Again and again I’d try to fish her out; smashing angrily at the surface of the water with my fist, only to find that within seconds, all would be still. The flawless portrait I had painted would remain unbroken, looking on, amused, at every step I took.
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Meeting with the Clean Man Michael Healy
A
feeble lamp lit most of the cramped room, casting enough illumination over the bed for Armstid to discern the gnarled crevices charging through his increasingly aged skin as he drew his palms away from his face. His eyes were eternally bloodshot, sensitive to even the most meagre of light. His teeth were yellowed, his gums bloodied, his hair declining into his beaten skull. He sat half concealed by the bedclothes, propped up against the backboard, glaring at a bare, unfeeling wall with the wan severity of failing eyes. He could feel each muscle rebel as he endeavoured to raise himself from his bedside, every quarter of his diminutive body pleading for surrender. His knees finally locked him into an upright position, the violent grinding of tendon and sinew abating to the old man’s ever diminishing force of will. The pounding against the door of the apartment continued with the same ceaseless hostility as it had for ten minutes now; consistent, aggressive and determined. Without haste and with trepidation, Armstid slid on a pair of threadbare trousers and awkwardly pulled a T-shirt over his collapsed, measly chest. Jagged, unruly bone tore against his withering flesh as he moved to the door, each step laughably minute, each movement felt by every fibre of strained muscle wailing with capitulation and agony. He entered the hallway of his apartment, bags of trash lined up against the wall by the door having sat there in some cases for many weeks. He could feel a trembling, a burning convulsion of outraged tissue as he passed his fingers over his now violently distressed stomach. He turned away from the door, planting a knotted hand against an unpainted wall. Leaning over, the old man prepared to vomit, but only wretched without throwing up, his stomach contracting sadistically, his crazed and pained screeching clawing at his
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throat. He fell to the ground and sat for a few minutes, his back to the filthy wall, heaving with each breath, feeling as if his skin was about to fray or tear at every location any muscle still resided on his body. He could feel the sweat materialise on his back as he convulsed and shook, hunching forward and rocking where he sat, raising his shoulders above the level of his head in stress. A vein pulsed maddeningly on his forehead as he sat there writhing and suppressing the desire to yell, his face a burdened crimson, the muscles in his jaw and cheeks tight and trembling. The knocking continued with the same unwavering persistence as before. It was past one o’clock now, perhaps. Armstid had misplaced his watch somewhere beneath the ever increasing piles of filth littering his apartment and owned no clock. He could see, however, through the open window at the far end of the flat that not only had darkness descended in earnest since he had fallen asleep but the hushed, desperate stillness of the lonely hours leading into the new day was now resting over the city, discerned only in the manner that the mournful breeze caused the curtains to sway with unconcern or how the distant streetlamps turned their gaze away from the streets, polluting instead the merciless night sky. He could tell the time this way. Climbing slowly to his feet, he stumbled the remaining distance to the door and, without care or foreboding, mustered enough strength to draw it open and observe his visitor. A figure in a dark, dirtied coat stood stoically in the doorway, and expression of depthless contempt colouring his countenance. The weak, murky light that reached him from the interior of the apartment was sufficient to illustrate to Armstid the visitor’s crippled features. To most strangers it would appear that he had suffered a stroke some years earlier, the left side of his jaw sinking uncontrollably below the level of his right. As such, his mouth was never fully closed, a look of despair or anguish never fully extinguished no matter his true expression. One eye suffered the strain of outrage, the other leaned outwardly without agency or facility. He was younger than Armstid, though visibly old himself. He was taller, however, and still broad at the shoulder. Armstid coughed as he examined the visitor in silence. Eventually he smiled, parting his dry, cracked lips to reveal the sickly teeth that concealed a loathsome, sarcastic smirk now animating his otherwise burdened features. Turning, Armstid strolled into the main living area of the flat and seated himself in the stained armchair in the far corner, leaning back and feeling himself pass from the reluctant light, bathing his face in the shadow of a corner removed from the influence of any source of illumination. The visitor followed, standing silent and tall, directly in the old man’s line of sight. Armstid regarded the visitor with amused antipathy, repulsed by his putrid features. They were, however, familiar to him. The visitor had clearly caught the smell of cheap cigarettes, the functional region of his face curling and grimacing at the repulsive odour hanging resiliently in the air. Armstid needn’t have been smoking in the preceding hours; the stench of years of spent ash clinging to the fabrics of the old man’s crumbling living space projected a continuous sense of burning and contempt outwardly, afflicting the rest of the house with the remnants of a tired, selfloathing regret. Armstid coughed ferociously, effectively clearing his throat in preparation. The visitor remained standing, immovable and stalwart, his comparatively immense form positioned between Armstid and the nearest lamp, throwing an impressive shadow over the smaller man.
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‘Yeah, I always wondered what happened to you,’ Armstid finally spoke, laughing. His eyes were sunken with fatigue but the rest of his weathered body was animated now with a frenzied, derisive nostalgia, a smirk adorning his mouth and an eagerness to communicate directing his hands. Drawing a crooked cigarette from a pocket, Armstid continued to speak as he searched for his lighter. ‘I got ‘em all, you know. After that night, I mean. The wife, the family, everybody I knew. Got rid of ‘em all and got the fuck gone. That was nearly thirty years ago now.’ The visitor was still motionless, regarding Armstid with practised contempt and apathy. Armstid was lighting his cigarette, haphazardly balancing it in the corner of his lazy mouth as he fumbled with the lighter.
‘I remember at the time thinking I might regret it, that it might have been a little too drastic. But nah, it was the right thing to do. I was cruel then, maybe. I was always cruel, though, even if I didn’t want to let it show. Those days still haunt me, to tell you the truth. The bedrooms in that house, the sunshine filtering in through those curtains, all those friends with their crests and troughs of bland drama and dumb idolatry hanging on to everything we did with false interest. And boy, what I’ve got here is no paradise but at least I’m living with some honesty.’ Armstid extended his arms and turned his head, directing the visitor to examine the room. There was veneration or affection in the old man’s gesture. The ceilings were stained with years of unchecked water damage. The archaic, fetid green wallpaper was peeling from the skirting board with aged mould crawling up through the floorboards. The room’s odour hung putrid as ever, the stench of physical occupation and lingering cigarette smoke mingling with the contents of the festering bags of trash by the door, producing a grotesque portrait of human habitation. ‘Ain’t any love in here, kid. I need none of that hypocrisy.’ Each word was accompanied by the ache of warring flesh produced by his corroded lungs. The gravelly voice continued, struggling to speak each syllable, each breath tearing at his scarred throat. The visitor didn’t move, his face in tandem both determinately outraged and slack with indifference. ‘Years ago, years even before I decided to take the action I did, I looked into somebody’s eyes. A friend’s, I think. Maybe a girlfriend’s. It doesn’t much matter, I suppose. But I looked into this person’s eyes and I saw past those old, poetic windows of the soul and instead saw only a grotesque mass of terrified blood an’ guts. I saw the contract of mutual fear, the fear of public failure and the fear of loneliness, hanging heavy and choking off the rage behind those eyes. I saw that any love in there came from utility and greed. And I felt sick that I was guilty of the same hypocrisy. And from that point on I saw that same look everywhere. Couldn’t get away from it. Every time a friend would look at their partner I would see that same vacant anguish, the dumb terror and the invited self-deceit. I’d see it in them all. And I’d see it in myself. No person could live with that ugliness.’ Armstid took a final drag of his cigarette and threw it carelessly to the ground. ‘If you’re looking for contrition you’re not going to get it from me. Nah, there’s only one
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honest man in this room. The honest man has no need to apologise to the hypocrite.’ The visitor took a step forward, slowly and laboriously planting one foot in front of the other. The shadow that his form cast over the old man increased in magnitude and drenched the corner in deeper darkness. Armstid smiled and rose to his feet, running a hand through his greasy, knotted hair and inhaling with a physical liberality not known to him in years. He stood with tall defiance in the shadow of the larger man. ‘Right now, kid,’ he continued, ‘I’m feeling more proud, more awake than I have in quite some time. And as I’m sure you well know, you’re not the only one capable of violence standing here in this fading light.’ The visitor raised his head, visible now only in silhouette, and placed a hand at his belt. Armstid gave a satisfied smile, prompted finely by the avarice of righteous disdain, and drew another cigarette from his pocket. ‘I think, though, I’m just going to burn another one and take a look over the city.’ The false sensation of strength left the old man as he hobbled to the window on the far end of the room, turning away from the visitor. He lit his cigarette before undoing the latch. Leaning on the window sill, the light breeze colliding with his weak skin, he heard the click of a light switch behind him and was suddenly alone in taxing blackness but for the idle illumination reaching his eyes from the city beyond. As an indifferent moon became obscured by a thick mass of congealing cloud, Armstid felt any remaining compassion, any
lingering will to decency leave him. A blind malignancy overcame him, not by the active encouragement of rage or indignation but as one reverts to a place of comfortable default in the absence of support or success. Guided by sensation and instinct, a dark mass of formless dissonance fell to the earth, smothering the yard below with the clandestine guile of a sudden, inexplicable lucidity. Oppressed by the descending burden, reacting with rage and atrocity, the night’s unwavering dark now absorbed a resilient crimson, born of disdain and desolation, coursing through the unseen, eternally robust matter tumbling now ceaselessly toward the ground. All eyes turned toward the sky now burned with the fury of abandonment and discordant song, resisting not the returning gaze of an infinity’s contempt beating indiscriminately the contrived bodies constricting knowing minds. The lanterns burning unfathomable distances away from the bleeding forms of their beholders leaned now with humble curiosity, their interest momentarily aroused to observe an instant of wrathful, detestable courage.
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Kate Ferguson
B
elgrade’s car horns sound full-blast amidst interminable cheering. Outside, the vast cityscape of black and grey and gleaming white and inside, a hostel with a loose interpretation of ‘en suite’. I lie in bed and let an unknown bug buzz in my ear. Lights flick as I surf the TV channels. Kylie curves her way to me on VH1 and the Discovery Channel is looking at where meat comes from. I’m grateful for the scraps of globalisation in this city of Cyrillic. Here Costa Coffee sells giant cups of hot chocolate orange at small amounts of dinar and a Happy Meal comes at a happy price.
The Lonely Planet Guidebook declares it the newest party hub and the group of French and American backpackers on the PlayStation that I pass and hop over by day, I do not see at night. I buy Ian McEwan’s For You in a bookshop that’s open at midnight and use my last dinar to purchase the hand-crafted, recycled jewellery of a street vendor, who scolds me for wearing flip flops on a cold night. I wander around the main square and can’t identify the mounted statue in its centre nor the colourful graffitied messages that decorate the sides of its buildings. All around are young people hanging out of honking cars. The buzzing creature retreats and I change the channel. I am startled when an image of Belgrade flashes behind the newsreader. We’re back in the main square with the horse and the graffiti nearby. The subject of the report is the Gay Pride Parade scheduled to take place the following Sunday. The Government has cancelled it following extreme and widespread threats of violence. Translated into the Latin alphabet the graffiti reads ‘Death to Homosexuals’ and ‘We Are Waiting for You’. 1389, the ultra-nationalist Serb Popular Movement, declared the cancellation ‘a great victory for normal Serbia’. There are reports that claim that organisers of the parade were asked by Prime Minister Mirko Cvetkovic to relocate the rally from the centre of Belgrade to a field, but that they rejected this as a symbolic marginalisation that defeated the purpose of the march. It is three in the morning and still the car horns screech with joy. Google reveals that Serbia has beaten Russia in the semi-final of the Basketball World Championships. This is a country where topless teenage boys cry for balls shot through hoops and not through nets. It’s a place where if you’re young and gay, you get your hot chocolate orange from Costa Coffee ‘to go’.
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Michael Armstrong It is always very difficult to describe what someone is really like, almost impossible when that someone is yourself. Nevertheless, there was a girl once, and her name was Baby. Describing this particular girl is an exceptionally difficult task, as she was always secretive, preferring others to guess things about her rather than reveal them herself. When people were wrong in their guesswork, as often happened, she would mostly feel satisfied that she was such an elusive and fascinating character, and would opt to spend more time in their company, without, if possible, accidentally getting to know them in any great detail. Only on occasion would it occur to her that she might quite like to be as exotic as some of the more imaginative admirers suggested, and the odd sense of envy this realisation caused made her resent their particular attentions, shunning them in what appeared to the rejected to be inexplicable and often violent changes of mood … COMPLIMENT INCIDENT NUMBER ONE A short digression on her appearance. Though her curly hair sometimes shone with flecks of gold and amber in the right kind of lighting, she would have preferred to have the sleek black hair of the movie starlets, or at the very least the straight fair hair of the other girls in town. When complimented by the other girls, she would thank them and smile sweetly until their backs were turned, and then proceed to stick out her tongue and privately wish upon them curses of unnatural baldness and big thick fat necks. One ill-timed execution of this manoeuvre led to injury when the would-be victim turned back to face Baby, hoping perhaps to receive a compliment in return. Baby promptly snapped her mouth shut, but withdrew her tongue too late, trapping it between her teeth with enough force to draw blood. She and the girl did not speak much after that. … Blessed with a temper fit for these occasions, it is strange how differently she reacted to those who, by sheer luck more than anything else, happened to stumble upon the correct answers to her favourite guessing games. To these suitors, she would simply deny that they were in any way correct, projecting an impression of disinterest and mild disappointment, when in fact she felt violated beyond words. For their part, the suitors were thankful for at least some information on whom she wasn’t, and so set about scouring the boutiques and fancy shops of the town in search of gifts, armed with the knowledge that she: 1)
despised the colour purple in all its forms.
2) generally preferred non-fiction, and believed girls who liked romance to be very silly indeed. 3) had never been through a rather fervent tomboy phase that left her with an extensive knowledge of selected sports tournaments and science fiction serials.
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4) owned no stuffed animals, would only own one for ironic purposes, and felt no jealous resentment at all towards the fair-haired girls’ unabashed adoration of all things fluffy and/or horse-related. 5) thought all dresses were dated, and believed girls who spent too much time in fashionable boutiques to be very silly indeed. 6)
had a fatal allergy to Turkish Delight, in particular the chocolate covered variety.
7)
never gave boys, love or the merits of other girls much thought.
COMPLIMENT INCIDENT NUMBER TWO Short without being squat and slim without being thin, Baby encountered none of the problems faced by her waif-like fair-haired peers when the curriculum enforced sports upon them at various ages. Indeed, the only physical defect she was born with was a form of short sightedness, which gave her eyes an ever-present watery look, as if at any moment she could burst into tears. This gave any number of admirers cause to gaze longingly into her eyes, inspired with heroic thoughts of forever altering her melancholic moon-face with their insipid eye-and-hair-related amateur poetry. In practical terms, however, it meant a natural talent for the javelin was never fully developed, and prescription glasses were a necessity for many tasks, a fact she kept hidden from her admirers, for fear she be showered in all manner of eyewear. So then, Baby was a uniquely attractive girl with many male and female admirers around town, none of whom she counted as friends. She had learned perhaps a little too young not to expect much from people, to keep a distance, be self-reliant and tough. She would tell herself often that if the world presented her with a choice between settling for fake and shallow adoration and being alone, she’d be damned if she’d let the world see that she wasn’t just fine on her own. But like anyone who has the luxury of such a choice, Baby was never all alone in the world, not completely. She had Bear. BEAR For as long as Baby had been Baby, she had had Bear. Produced by the now-defunct APC Inc, Bear was a prototype of a new kind of stuffed toy, infused with occult technology to the extent that he had, for want of a better word, a soul. The circumstances by which Baby’s father, ROY, had acquired such a valuable item for his newborn daughter are not known, as at the time of APC’s collapse he worked as a mid-level manager in their raw materials procurement division. It can be presumed that in the chaos of the company’s collapse, as the main employer in town, those left in gainful employment were too troubled by socioeconomic and civic problems to care much for what was housed in the now abandoned factory, while the jobless seemed to care for nothing much at all. During these turbulent weeks and months, ROY somehow discovered Bear, and brought him home to his newborn baby. Setting the brown fur bundle beside her in the cot, Bear
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immediately sprang to life. He turned his pebble-black eyes towards his new charge, thought his first thought, and put his arms around her. Seeing his newborn held safe by this unique creature, ROY had a sudden and unexpected attack of inspiration, and decided to abandon plans to name the child LITTLE ROY, preferring instead to stick with the pet name he had been using up until that point. Such were the circumstances by which Baby and Bear first met. In the decade following the collapse of Anthropomorphic Plot Contrivances Incorporated, ROY settled into his new life as both a parent and senior administrator of the town council’s resource management division, a job that provided a comfortable life for both himself and Baby. Bear, created without a mouth, needed neither food nor any other form of sustenance to survive, and in his more reflective periods ROY wondered what powered the creature who so diligently watched over his child. Thankfully such periods were short-lived, as ROY focused on earning enough money to finance Baby’s education, and so was rarely at home, effectively leaving Bear in charge of Baby’s upbringing. Bear took to his appointed task with a kindly stoicism, changing diapers until it was time to remove stabilisers, attending tea parties until it was time to fit bras. A kind of intuition about the world kept all three from divulging the secret of Bear’s existence to the rest of the town. As Baby attended classes and got to know and fundamentally dislike her peers, she would explain her exemplary presentation and preparation for class by the invention of a mysterious maid who cared for her. If pressed about the maid’s whereabouts, she would claim that her family lived in the next valley, on the other side of the forbidding Marley Hill, and that she visited them on weekends and socialised there. For his part, ROY would do all the necessary shopping according to the lists Bear provided, which, despite being illegible to the untrained eye due to Bear’s paw-fisted pencil grip, could be relied upon to be both meticulous and exhaustive. Bear would also play his part in the subterfuge, making sure that if anyone called at their house, he would make himself scarce by hiding upstairs in the corner of Baby’s room, sitting perfectly still until the guest left. By such methods, Bear’s existence was successfully kept under wraps for years on end. As often happens when people get taller and older however, little by little Baby began to grow up, and Bear found he was needed less and less for the chores around the house. ROY would give Baby money to buy her own clothes, books and food, and she would first sample the most enjoyable parts of these activities (the buying of the clothes, the cooking of the food), before going on to discover the value of the less appealing tasks – ironing, dishwashing, and the general care of their home. Before long it seemed to ROY that his girl had become a capable young woman, though he always hoped for her to make more lasting friendships, and wondered sometimes if the local school was providing her with the best possible opportunities for socialising with others. The change in Baby was not missed by Bear either, but he reassured himself that there would always be one of his tasks that she could not carry out alone. For every night, after sending admirers scurrying home through some form of abuse, she would retire to her room, undress, and get into bed. Eyebrows raised in coy expectation, the pursed smile of a secret joke on her lips, she would keep her eyes clenched tight until, after a few seconds, she felt Bear’s arms on her shoulders once again. She was a lot bigger than when they first met, and his arms couldn’t quite wrap around anymore, so after his signature movement she made
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hers, turning and lifting him over to face her. Holding him close to her breast, her face soon relaxed into the satisfied, contented half-smile of the heavy sleeper. Bear, needing no form of rest, would lie and listen as the collected sounds of the night played to the beat of her heart, his unclosing eyes pressed too close to some indeterminate patch of skin to be of any use. He lay like this until dawn, when, with great care, he would exit the bed and go downstairs to the kitchen, not to prepare breakfast, but simply to place the ingredients and implements in the most easily accessible points of their respective storage cupboards, so that when the morning chef descended from her slumber, she would begin the day thinking proudly to herself about how her new responsibilities already seemed like second nature. THE INTRUSION OF MEN’S AFFAIRS INTO THE PLEASANT LIVES OF THE FAMILY OF THREE: A RECIPE FOR IMBALANCED DISASTERS AND ACCEPTABLE TRAGEDIES To his men, he was known only as Captain. Blessed with an elegant body and a quicksilver mind, Captain was better known not by his recorded deeds (which included a small number of bloody battles that he had happened to survive and, in some form or another, ‘win’), but by the stories that followed him and his troupe everywhere they went. Men spoke of his ability to make kings weep into their chessboards with his subtle oboe skills, while Women talked approvingly of his commitment to mannerly behaviour in spite of his obvious animal magnetism. Boys fought before playing war to decide who got to be Captain and who was stuck playing his faithful second-in-command, Brave Wendy, while girls giggled and blushed at the thought of his infamous pantaloons. The man himself was mortal, honourable and ultimately unimpressive. He had outwitted countless enemies and cheated death many times only to be trapped by his own fame, lacking the ingenuity to escape his predicament by either voluntary exile or the fabrication of some sort of juicy scandal, possibly involving a homoerotic shore leave with BW. The never-ending boredom of his days never revealed itself to the wider world, and certainly not to the secluded valley in which ROY and his family lived. So it was with some excitement that the town’s chief mail opener and deputy chief mail peruser burst into ROY’S office one Thursday, to announce that due to their town’s exceptional resource-gathering for the never-ending War Effort, Captain himself would be making a visit on the day of their annual festival, to start the event by shooting the starting gun. The gun signalled the beginning of The Jont, when all able-bodied non-conscripted young men below the age of twenty-two would run full pelt at the peak of Marley Hill. The object of the race was not to reach the peak, as it was common knowledge that it was unclimbable, but instead to be the last person to give up climbing and the first person to make it back. There had in the history of the town been only one solo winner of the race, its inventor, and he had long since passed away into legend, leaving no name but the irritating precedent that It Could Be Done. The usual outcome was two winners, who shared the honour of having their names stitched on a ceremonial banner that was unfurled just one day a year, the day of the festival, and kept unfurled for the duration of the Jont. Time, memory and age-old rivalry caused the elder statesmen of the town to miss the race every year, as they feverishly searched the banner while the race was underway to find their
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names and settle old scores ‘once and for all’ until next year, and so the race was watched by the women of the town, some of the wiser men, the boys who swore they’d be ready for next year, and ROY, who from the age of eight had never competed due to other concerns. In chronological order, ROY’S concerns were as follows: veruccas, a broken wrist, a twisted ankle sustained in training for the Jont, more veruccas, a trip to his father’s estate in the neighbouring valley, flu, hopleg, the induction session of all APC raw materials procurement mid-level managers (scheduled due to insensitivity on the part of Head Office), yet more veruccas, a sore back sustained carrying his wife home from their wedding exactly one week before the festival, a secret trip courtesy of his wife to the coastal towns to celebrate his birthday, also exactly one week before the festival, the demands of care for his wife, who had taken ill, the death of his wife and the birth of his daughter, and finally, a refusal to compete for unrecorded reasons in his 21st year. It was for these reasons and more that ROY’S reaction to his colleague’s announcement was something of a disappointment for the eager deputy. This time of year always made ROY feel torn, for though he was thankful for his life with his daughter, and happy for what the festival represented to the town, the heat of high summer brought thoughts of age-old frustrations, of pain that would never go away. He sometimes felt ashamed that at these times he was jealous of those who grieved loved ones in the winter months. He reasoned that for them, in their darkest times, the land and the air mourned with them. But he mourned alone, in the hot weather, amidst the joy of others and the radiance of life. So when the deputy peruser barrelled in with the news, ROY’S reaction was a smile completely at odds with the look in his eyes, a barrier of good manners meant to encourage the deputy to spread the glad tidings elsewhere, augmented by his curt response. ‘That’s nice.’ COMPLIMENT INCIDENT NUMBER THREE The Friday of the week following the peruser’s outburst was ROY’S birthday. Being quite a reserved man, he held no great party, nor asked for any presents, but simply bought in a few finer ingredients on his way home and broke with routine by helping Bear and Baby to prepare dinner. Some of the young men of the town however, those with the hyperactive imaginations and the tenderised cheeks, saw the occasion as an opportunity to once again visit his most uniquely attractive daughter, in an effort to win their way back into her good books. They called at the house later that evening, under the guise of bringing their parents’ best wishes to ROY, and then with practised nonchalance inquired if they could pop upstairs to say hello to his daughter while they were there. Fortunately for them, Baby was in a good mood after ROY’s birthday meal, and so opted to toy with the prodigal suitors rather than drive them back down the stairs and straight out the door. Overjoyed, the men took turns to try and convince her of their superior charm and intelligence, their sensitivity, and their bona fide career prospects. She deftly fended off their questions with masterful skill until young Thomas Sandel tried his hand at the guessing game. Hoping to display both his sense of humour and the Rational And Mature Attitude To Life that he and Baby so obviously shared, poor Thomas jokingly asked whether the bear
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in the corner, hitherto unnoticed by this or any other congregation, was a keepsake, an ironic statement, or if, ho ho, a cultured young lady such as Baby still slept with a stuffed animal at night. The crowd roared, secretly cursing Thomas for his perceptive abilities, but Baby did not respond. Thomas looked around at his competitors, laughed himself, and then met Baby’s stare with a raised eyebrow and a smile. But Baby did not respond. She waited until the laughter subsided, and the room fell silent. She waited until the stupid grin fell from his face, and until she saw the first bead of nervous sweat appear on his forehead. And then, very calmly, she said that his question was a good one, very droll indeed, and that she would love to tell them all the answer, but that her answer could not help but lead to more questions from all of them. And she was getting rather tired. So, she proposed to tell whichever two young gentlemen were successful in next week’s race exactly why a cultured young lady kept a stuffed bear in the corner of her room, and the rest would just have to forever wonder whether it was a kind of immaturity, a kind of joke, or a kind of love. And with that, she bade them all goodnight. THE JONT The gun fired. The crowd cheered. The young men ran towards the hill. Thomas Sandel kept to the back of the race, planning to set one foot upon the incline and then speed his way back to claim his prize. He tripped on a small stone before he had a chance to put his plan into action. The race continued. Watching through binoculars from the festival canopy, Baby and ROY took in the race, ROY with bemusement, Baby with dread. A murmur passed among the spectators as news spread that Captain would be making his way from the starting line to the canopy, to meet and greet the fair townspeople, and all eyes, even those which up to this point had been feverishly scanning the ceremonial banner, flashed back to the patch of beaten earth where the competitors had lined up. There indeed was Captain, striding towards them with his practised smile. He shook hand after hand, nodding respectfully and echoing peoples’ names with a ‘pleasure to meet you, so-and-so’ when introduced. Baby and ROY took no part in the throng, looking on from a distance.
A councilman fought his way to Captain and directed him back over to a few local dignitaries, but as Captain turned away from the crowd, he did not immediately look towards his new targets. Instead, he looked down, and to nearly all of the onlookers it looked like he was simply being sensible with his footing on the grass, taking care not to trip as he walked. But looking down like this, for the briefest of moments, his face turned, and he abandoned his cheery mask, taking time to summon the energy required for another round of glad-handing. And Baby saw him for who he was. She’d seen loneliness in men’s eyes before, sadness too, but never like this. For the two were married with another emotion. One she knew from too young an age. Boredom. Suffocat-
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ing, all-encompassing boredom, in every act he performed, in every person and every thing he set eyes upon. She could see it in him, even when he gathered himself and looked up towards the dignitaries. Some time later, when the bonfires were lit and the first winner had returned, Baby left ROY where he sat, and walked over to introduce herself. His remaining chores completed, Bear checked the lock on the front door and carefully carried a candle lamp up to Baby’s room. Setting it on her nightstand, he took up his favoured position on a chair in the corner of the room, facing her bed. He sat motionless for several hours, waiting for their nightly routine. He heard ROY come in, and listened as he retired to bed. Long after midnight, the door cracked open and Baby walked in, with a man Bear did not know. Bear watched as the man kissed her cheek, neck and mouth, and watched as Baby kissed the man on the lips, and on the mouth. He watched as the man undressed her, and held her, and took off his own clothes. He watched them lie down on the bed and move the covers. He watched things he did not understand. He heard Baby cry out, but not in pain. And he watched her lie facing away from him, with the man’s arms around her. And he heard her sleep. And he watched. DAWN ‘Hello’ ‘Hello.’ ‘I have a question.’ ‘What is it?’ ‘If I asked you to come with me, to Oreilles, what would you say?’ ‘Oreilles?’ ‘A city, quite far from here. It’s beautiful.’ ‘I know that. But my father, my family. He would be alone.’ ‘You could come back anytime you wanted.’ ‘When could we leave?’ ‘This afternoon. We’d need to get there by nightfall.’ ‘Okay’ ‘Okay.’ ‘Go get me some breakfast then.’ ‘And why should I do that?’ ‘Because you love me.’ ‘Where is your orange juice?’ OF LIFE
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So it was that Baby decided to leave the town behind. After fetching her breakfast, Captain left to fulfil a few final duties around town (an interview with the local paper and the renaming ceremony of Captain Street), so Baby began to pack her things, slightly irritated by Bear’s curious absence. She assumed that he was staying downstairs until Captain left, but with her man now gone, she was annoyed that Bear had not come upstairs to lend a hand with packing, and would be damned if she was going to go all the way downstairs to fetch him. Two suitcases later, she knocked gently on ROY’S bedroom door and let herself in without waiting for a reply. ROY was still asleep, and she felt an odd reversal of roles as she sat down on the side of his bed, shaking her father gently to wake him and tell him her news. Though parental angst and general grogginess made the conversation much longer and more difficult than it ought to have been, something in the way Baby held herself affected ROY much more than her words. She sat by his side with such composure and self-assurance, her excited expression belying a strength he had long since lost. Of course, she told him how often she would visit and how he and Bear could visit her, and how things would seem like normal after a while; that this was just a natural progression for someone her age. And she spoke of Captain, of how he was different to the boys around town, of how he was a good man who understood things, and of how they had talked long into the night, and of how he made her feel. But ROY only half-listened. He smiled to himself, thinking how stupid he had been all these years, to have been working away at his job when all the while he could have spent his time watching Baby grow up into the beautiful young woman now sitting by his side. For now she was an adult, it was too late. Now she was ready to go. He started to climb… Captain’s carriage was due at four, and although Baby had packed hours in advance, she was not ready to leave. For when she and ROY went downstairs to prepare a light lunch, Bear was nowhere to be found. Not in the kitchen, the front or back rooms, nor in the bathroom or any of the bedrooms. He was not outside in the garden or in the yard, on the roof or in the cellar. In their small world, he was a missing person. Bear had not once left the house since the night ROY had placed him in her cot, so both ROY and Baby were consumed by the endless and terrible possibilities for what could have happened to him. Regardless of whether he had finally been discovered, the outside world was no place for Bear, but how could they search for him? He could be anywhere as far as they knew, and it was not as if they could enlist the local police for help. The only option was to wait for his safe return. But waiting only requires one person. So the carriage came at four fifteen, to take Baby to her new life. All farewells that truly matter are painful, all the more so if circumstances force them to be rushed, and the parting of ROY and his daughter was a particularly hurried affair. Both did their best to say with hugs, awkward silences and meaningful looks the words that stuck in their throats, until finally ROY spoke, telling her that the minute Bear came back, he’d send word. He nodded to the young man in the carriage, and Captain nodded back. And they set off for the pass around Marley Hill.
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…branches tore at him, rocks split his feet. And he climbed… So ROY was left alone in their home, but he would write to Baby often, always beginning his letters in the same way: ‘My dearest daughter, this is not the good news, but…’ Baby’s letters were always less frequent, to the extent that sometimes ROY would send three or four before getting a response. He didn’t mind though, as he reasoned that life in the city gave people less time to correspond. He was happy just to know that she was safe when the reply eventually came, though sometimes he wished she wrote more often. After Baby’s departure and Bear’s disappearance, ROY’s life became quieter, more sombre perhaps, but not drastically worse. He would go to work every day, pick up food on his way home and catch up on reading during the evenings, occasionally taking a stroll around the town, sometimes even up to the old factory, to search for any sign of Bear. But he found nothing. He saved most of his money for trips to Oreilles, and though in his letters he would ask Baby when she planned to visit, they were always the parts of his letters that received no response in her replies, and when he visited her, she would avoid the question with a skill that she had honed for years on lesser men. And by a convention that they kept to out of love and memory, they never spoke of Bear when Captain was around. As for Captain, he had found a home for Baby in the leafy suburbs of Oreilles. After a few more years of celebrity work, he took a post with the government as a goodwill ambassador, a new type of employment created especially for him. He never escaped the confines of his fame, but Captain was thankful to be no longer alone in a world that adored him, and so he did his best to make their life together as happy as possible, such as it was. He was, at heart, a good man, and he and Baby lived a pleasant and uneventful life, until one day they had a child of their own. And all of those who visited their home with gifts and presents for the newborn said the same thing – that they were blessed to have such a uniquely attractive little boy. … birds pecked his eyes, clawed at his ears. Scars down his back from where he had slipped… ROY retired at the age of fifty-two, without much fanfare. He kept up with his reading, his letters to Baby and his occasional searches for Bear, though in his heart he knew they were useless. Now that he no longer worked, he felt the emptiness of the house more than he liked to, and he liked the winter much less than before. …colder near the top, it gets harder to move. There is a flag… NOW It is late winter. Many more years have passed since Baby left with Captain, and although roy has made many trips to see them, Baby has never returned to the town, nor spent another night in her old room. roy keeps the bedding fresh and the dust clear just in case
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either of its former occupants return, though his search for Bear ended long ago. With age, roy’s mind has dimmed, and he finds it a little harder to concentrate than before, and much harder to remember how things were. It is mid-morning. roy is sitting at the kitchen table, writing a reply to a letter he received the day before from his daughter. The letter was an invitation to his grandchild’s birthday. He will be attending. He writes carefully, not wanting to have to start again from scratch. He hears a sound at the door. It is too weak to be called a knock, but it repeats with the insistence of one. He walks to the door, and opening it he sees a face he has not seen since a time of light, of colour, and of young men running up hills. It is a face with no mouth. Bear’s right ear is missing, and one of his pebble black eyes hangs from its thread. There are wisps of dirty wool across his body, hanging from tears in his chest and the lower half of his face. There is no fur left on his back, just bare and soggy wool that reeks of mud and rain. In one of his paws, he holds a flag. Bear looks up at roy, and stares. roy does not say a word. After a time, Bear’s hands start to shake. The flag waves. He falls to the ground. roy takes Bear under his arm, steadying himself on the banister as he goes upstairs. He enters Baby’s room, lays the broken bear on her bed, and takes the flag from his paw, placing it on the nightstand next to an old candle lamp. roy sits down in Bear’s old chair, and watches. But Bear does not move. He will not move again. OLD HABITS¬ And still, despite their years together, Baby keeps a few secrets from Captain. Like the times in the dead of night, when she wakes up to find he has moved over to his side of the bed. And she longs for a small touch on her shoulder, a sign that she can reply to. She lies awake, but it never comes. And watery eyes start to flow, silently, into the pillow. And she cannot get back to sleep. For Baby is still Baby, though nobody knows. But Bear is not Bear any more.
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ICARUS Crone
Kate Brower [A woman, Crone, is sitting beside a window with a cup of coffee.] CRONE: Someone once told me I looked like a witch. She was only a little thing, cycling along the school corridor, how she got her bicycle through the doors I don’t know but – she called me a witch anyway. Said I had the hair for it, I suppose by that she meant that it looked like some sort of gothic candy floss. I can’t disagree. My hair has always been a source of much contention. When I was younger, I hated it. Now that I’m old I ... it seems insignificant. My mother used to wash it for me, in her green bathtub, with her own hands. She was like a washer woman from a waybefore time. She would wring out my locks as if they were heavy skirts, lift and squeeze, lift and squeeze. Poor mother. Jill had a fair bit of her own hair too. [Long pause.] Anyway, not much to look at anymore. I mean myself. I mean I’m ... well I’m hooded now. Girls on bicycles don’t look at me anymore, I’m too old for consideration. Suppose that’s what time does to you – pencils under your eyes and fattens out your thighs. [Short harsh laugh.] Stop complaining would you ever! I’ve spent too much time talking about what I dislike instead of just doing what I liked. Sometimes the difference is imperceptible. [Pause, she looks around.] It’s very dark in here. I never realise how dark it is. It’s like when I lie in bed some nights and suddenly it comes over me: I’m clenching every muscle in my body and I’m meant to be lying down, in bed, trying to sleep. Ridiculous. I’m not too good a sleeper anyhow – I used to get by on very little. Well ... funny what things you choose to remember and what things you choose to forget. [Pause.] Would it surprise you to know that I was highly ... highly sought after? That people – men – wanted to sleep with me? And sometimes, just sometimes, they wanted to marry me. [Pause.] The way they approached, it was like they were offering a flower to a naked princess. Embarrassed but proud of themselves. I thought I owned all the men in the world then. That’s something I’ve chosen to remember. I was wanted once; for many, once, I was it. Whatever the hell that is. [Pause.] God knows it belongs to someone else now. [Pause, then brightly.] As you can see I am alone. Ah not too bad though, I have fresh clothes on, some tepid coffee on this window sill and a roof over my head. Mind you, my toilet is broken. [Pause.] It is said, of women mostly, that they often get better as they get older. The analogy of the fine wine, that one gets bandied about the place a bit. As if we girls sitting on our shelves are secretly gathering all our best bits from all our years and shoving them desperately down our corks waiting patiently for the day when someone opens us. [Pause.] Who cares how good you taste, it’s all about your name, date and country of origin. [Pause.] Look I’m no witch. [Shrugs the shoulders.] I can’t live any differently. You can’t control everything – scratch that, you can’t control anything. [Pause, she looks out the window.] My God, I didn’t even notice. [She goes to put on a jumper and sips her coffee.]
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ICARUS We Are Not Blinking
Drama
Neil Ferron
SUZIE – Ten years old, plump if not fat, a dollop of the Devil’s mayo in her tuna salad. CHARLIE – Ten years old, skinny. MR AHMED – Eighties, wheelchair-bound with afghan spread over his legs, very thick glasses, nearly comatose. A note: Both Charlie and Suzie are to be played by adult actors. [A living room. As the lights come up, ‘Babalu’ by Desi Arnaz plays – drums thumping, ruffled shirts ruffling, a Cuban transvestite arches an eyebrow. SUZIE enters strutting about with a giant silver purse. She plops the purse down in the middle of the room and triumphantly removes a tube of lipstick. She applies it to her lips, smacks a kiss, then smears some across her eyelids like eyeshadow. She exits and returns, wheeling in MR AHMED, speaking at the break-neck pace achieved only by ten year-old girls.] SUZIE See Mr Ahmed, I like it when you babysit because Mom thinks there are some things that little girls Simply Should Not Do, and one of those things is to dream of becoming a movie star/sex icon/ambassador to a country where poor people get their hands cut off for diamonds – which – when you think about it, is extra sad because they can’t even wear the diamond rings they’ve been making unless someone, like an ambassador/sex icon, makes a super big ring for whatever they have left of a hand, which might make them feel better – BUT! – for me, Mr Ahmed, for me, it’s not really about poor people with no hands. I have to become an ambassador sex icon because that is the only way that Danny Kelly, the president of the fourth grade and the cutest boy I have ever seen, will ever ask me to marry him and have kids with him and someday die a beautiful death in his beautiful arms. And THAT is why I’m glad you’re here. Because every sex icon needs a break out sex movie directed by a foreigner, and tonight we’re going to make that movie! [The door bell rings. All in one breath.] CHARLIE WILL YOU GET IN HERE AND SET UP THE CAMERA WE’RE ALREADY FIVE MINUTES BEHIND SCHEDULE! [To MR AHMED.] Charlie’s my neighbour. He almost ruined everything with me and Danny Kelly, but the movie’s going to fix that. [CHARLIE enters with a video camera. He freezes when he sees MR AHMED. SUZIE pulls a pearl necklace and other costume items out of the purse and starts dressing herself.] SUZIE Okay – set up the camera here so Mr Ahmed can shoot the pretty side of my face – put on your costume so you don’t look so boring – we’re starting at Scene 1 – HEY! Why are you just standing there?
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CHARLIE I wasn’t aware that you wanted to film with another man. SUZIE Jesus Charlie, this is Mr Ahmed, he’s foreign but he had nothing to do with 9/11, and Mom says we need to be extra nice to him because he can no longer afford his home nursing premiums so he babysits me, okay? Moving on— [SUZIE pulls two scripts from her purse and gives one to CHARLIE, pulling the camera from his hands and shoving it into MR AHMED’s lap.] We don’t have time to memorise anything because I just wrote this script and I don’t care if you don’t know what the words mean, just read. Quiet on the set for the opening commentary for the special edition DVD! Ready, annnnd roll camera. [Throaty, sex icon voice.] For your consideration, I, Miss Susan Bethany Jenkins, have written a film about the tragic fall of the future President of the World because he to refused to love an extremely beautiful woman – me. The name of this film is Suzie on a Hot Tin Roof starring the supremely talented me and Charlie, who owns a camera. [She pulls CHARLIE in front of the camera. He stands like a deer in headlights.] Charlie! CHARLIE [In one nervous breath.] Good evening I am Mister Charles Owen McGarry thank you for purchasing this DVD it is very philanthropogical of you to support the arts the show will now begin. SUZIE Okay. Scene 1, The Great Inauguration Ball, where the world’s wealthiest people dress up and ignore the fact that the global economy is totally screwed. CHARLIE [Stiff, reading from the script.] The President of the World enters with a large smile because he is everyone’s favorite president because he looks like someone from a poor country but talks like a white guy. SUZIE Stop talking like a robot. CHARLIE I have stage fright. SUZIE Don’t you know anything about Hollywood? Mr Ahmed hold scene. [SUZIE pulls a bottle of Robitussin out of her purse and pours a shot into the lid.] SUZIE Say ‘Ahh.’
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ICARUS CHARLIE I don’t—
Drama
[SUZIE dumps the Robitussin down his throat. He starts coughing.] SUZIE Well? CHARLIE I think I got some in my eye … SUZIE Jesus. [She takes a quick swig herself.] Roll camera. CHARLIE [Reading.] The President looks to the East, sighs, and says to his extremely beautiful wife, ‘Remember the election days when everyone believed I could save the world but I didn’t have to do anything but give speeches. I liked those days.’ SUZIE ‘Even at your Inauguration Ball, where I am the skinniest wife of them all, you can’t talk about anything but global tragedies! You never tell me how beautiful I look and that is why someday you will be kidnapped and tortured by your own operatives.’ CHARLIE ‘You are probably right.’ SUZIE ‘I am right.’ CHARLIE ‘Maybe you should sing your chart-topping single that was produced by Kanye and Timbaland—’ Suzie I don’t think this movie makes any sense. SUZIE Hold scene! Charlie, you show up late, you get stage fright, and now you’re telling me my script’s no good. CHARLIE But why are you going to sing? SUZIE Because it’s a flashback.
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CHARLIE Nobody sings in flashbacks. SUZIE If the next scene is my bikini scene with Russian Prime Minister Brad Pitt, then it’s got to be a singing flashback – that’s Hollywood procedure. And if we don’t follow Hollywood procedure, we’ll go to jail, get kicked out of school, and become meth heads and crack babies – I swear to God Mr Ahmed is the only one holding this thing together. [SUZIE grabs the Robitussin and takes another pull from the bottle.] I don’t know if I can work under these conditions. Roll camera! CHARLIE I think I’m going to go home now. SUZIE Hold scene! [To CHARLIE, suddenly soft.] Come here. [CHARLIE takes a step in her direction.] Closer. [Another.] Let me see your finger. [CHARLIE extends a finger. SUZIE takes hold of it and kisses the tip.] SUZIE You know this movie is my only chance to become a sex icon and make Danny Kelly marry me, right? And you’re the only one who can play the President. I need you, Charlie. Right now. CHARLIE I just think all this fame is changing you, Suzie— [SUZIE sensually puts CHARLIE’s whole finger in her mouth.] SUZIE Do you still think I’m changing? CHARLIE Um, n-n-nnnn no. SUZIE Do you think the singing flashback is a good idea? CHARLIE It is very European and I am certain it will garner you much acclaim.
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SUZIE [Back to business.] Good. We’re skipping the bikini scene and going straight to Scene 7. Roll camera! Scene opens in a CIA black site, there is nothing but cold stone and the sound of dripping water. The President of the World is held prisoner. CHARLIE I don’t have Scene 7. SUZIE It’s improvised. CHARLE I don’t know what that means. SUZIE Close your eyes. [SUZIE takes the afghan off MR AHMED’s legs and places it over CHARLIE’s head.]
CHARLIE Suzie – I’m allergic to dryer sheets and if Mr Ahmed uses dryer sheets the chemicals will make the muscles in my throat constrict and we’ll need to call a medical professional to give me a tracheotomy— SUZIE Shhhhhh. [SUZIE takes off MR AHMED’s belt and tightens it around CHARLIE’s arms. SUZIE takes a glittery belt from her purse and cinches it around CHARLIE’s neck, leaving some slack.] CHARLIE Suzie I think maybe we could try something more hopeful than the imprisonment of elected officials because my mom says the world needs more hope in the world, like Mexican people going to college, and Japanese cars that run on malaria vaccines, and chimpanzees from one genocidal country having babies with chimpanzees from another genocidal country… [SUZIE takes CHARLIE’s hand and licks the inside of his palm.] SUZIE When we finish this scene, you’re going to be a star just like me, and you’re going to get a scholarship to Harvard, and you’re going to marry a girl with a tiny waist and big boobs or whatever you want and your face will be everywhere. But first you have to finish this scene. CHARLIE Okay.
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SUZIE Mr Ahmed, don’t stop rolling. [SUZIE kicks CHARLIE in the back of the knees and forces him onto the ground, holding onto the glittery belt like a leash.] SUZIE Can you hear me, maggot? CHARLIE What— SUZIE I said: maggot, can you hear me in there? CHARLIE Yes. SUZIE Are you the President of the World? CHARLIE Yes? SUZIE No you are not! CHARLIE But you said I am! SUZIE You are a piece of stinky poop stuck to the bottom of my shoe unless I say you’re something else, get it? CHARLIE Yes! SUZIE What are the nuclear missile codes? CHARLIE What? SUZIE When we went to Nature Camp and I had to pee and you followed me behind the pricker bushes and watched, did you see me pee on my skirt?
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ICARUS CHARLIE What?
Drama
SUZIE When we went to Nature Camp last month, did you see me pee on my skirt? CHARLIE No! SUZIE I’m a radical Muslim and I’m launching nuclear missiles at the White House and Disney Land and your stupid little bedroom unless you talk – did you tell the boys I peed on my skirt? CHARLIE No! SUZIE Did you follow me behind the bushes and watch me pee? CHARLIE No! SUZIE Josh Crosson said he saw you! CHARLIE Okay I watched! I saw the pee and I saw the skirt! I just – I – I wanted to be near you— SUZIE Who did you tell? CHARLIE Nobody! SUZIE I’m going to stab your dog in the face with a giant knife and then I’m going to turn your dad’s skull into a toilet bowl and puke all over it! CHARLIE But I didn’t tell anybody— SUZIE TELL ME WHAT YOU KNOW ABOUT DANNY KELLY! CHARLIE He’s class president – he has blonde hair – he, he wears v-neck sweaters – he likes to draw pictures with Rebecca Little—
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SUZIE My partner watched his whole family get executed on a soccer field because somebody thought they belonged to the wrong mosque so if you think he cares what happens to you then think again! Did you tell Danny Kelly I peed on myself ? CHARLIE No! SUZIE Do you know what’s happening to your mother right now? CHARLIE What? SUZIE Do you remember the colour of her hair? CHARLIE What? SUZIE THE COLOUR OF YOUR MOTHER’S HAIR! CHARLIE Brown! SUZIE WHO TOLD DANNY KELLY I PEED ON MYSELF? CHARLIE I swear to God I don’t know! SUZIE If you saw me pee on myself and you didn’t tell him then who did – because somebody did! – SOMEBODY TOLD HIM AND IT RUINED MY LIFE BECAUSE NOW HE THINKS I’M A FAT, UGLY, FAT PERSON! [She drops CHARLIE and sits down.] We were math partners before Nature Camp, and once, just for a second, we were reaching for the same pencil and we almost touched hands and he smiled and I smiled and when we both smiled I thought maybe he was going to take me to the mall and buy me a Cinnabon, and I might smudge a little frosting on my lip and he would lean in, real slow, and kiss the frosting off my lip, or maybe just think about kissing it, or maybe just smile at me and let me wipe it off with a napkin … [SUZIE nestles up beside CHARLIE and hugs him through the blanket. After a moment, CHARLIE speaks.]
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CHARLIE You know, science says that pretty people, like Danny Kelly, well, science says all kinds of things are attracted to pretty people, not just good things. So pretty people have more friends but they also have more ulcers, and brain tumours, and little bugs that make their private parts all itchy. Science says it’s not always as good as it seems. [SUZIE leans in and kisses CHARLIE through the afghan. She exits.] CHARLIE Suzie? Hey Suzie?
[MR AHMED slowly stands, walks over to CHARLIE, and removes the belts and afghan. The two look at each other, and MR AHMED places a gentle hand on CHARLIE’s forehead. He rustles CHARLIE’s hair, resumes his seat in the wheelchair, and wheels himself off stage. After a moment, CHARLIE looks around the room, sees SUZIE’s tube of lipstick, sneaks over to it and slips it in his pocket, then exits. Lights out.]
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Icarus through the ages
ICARUS THE DAY AFTER THE FAIR
My onions have all sprouted, Their stiff skins loosening; the smell Soaks up into the linen press.
hings do grow, if not stopped in time.
The day after the fair You said “Twenty years ago Just you were having your happy childhood I sat beside the one-bar fire Guessing the wind’s angle, hoping The same rain swept through the valley Church and school where I grew As pleased as if with my own choice Till I was ten years old.”
Although I know that from 1971 No more mistakes will be made in the rearing of children I failed to reply, realising At that stage no recipe Warmth or ice could make you sound.
Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin Icarus, Issue. 57. 1969
Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin is now a Fellow of Trinity College Dublin where she is an associate professor of English Literature specialising in the Renaissance. She is a founder of the literary magazine Cyphers and has released several critically acclaimed collections of poetry; the latest of which “The Sun-Fish” has recently been shortlisted for the T.S Eliot prize.
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Icarus through the ages
THERE
Where a naked child Makes rich the air With laughter rising like a prayer, Life is mild.
Where a fickle breeze Gives a soft caress To a castle in a wilderness, Life is ease.
Where men and years Are heavy, slow of foot, And only dreams have firm root, Life holds tears
Brendan Kennelly
Icarus, Issue 26, 1958
Brendan Kennelly is one of Ireland’s most distinguished and best loved poets. He was Professor of Modern Literature at Trinity College, Dublin for over 30 years, and retired from that post in 2005. He now teaches part-time in the US and lives in Dublin. He is the author of over thirty collections of poetry
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Contributors
Notes on the Contibutors
Jeffrey Becklund has been dead for 20 years.” -Feedback to: becklunj@tcd.ie Laura Michet is a third-year student in English and History at Dartmouth College in the United States. She is spending Michelmas Term studying here at Trinity through a program with her English Department, and thinks that Trinity and Dublin are both truly fantastic places. Laura is from Connecticut. -Feedback to: Laura.E.Michet@Dartmouth.edu
Oshima Fawkes doesn’t do much - Feedback to: faganoo@tcd.ie Michael Healy was a touring guitarist with Dire Straits until he felt
the band had become too commercial. His preferred geometrical plane is diagonal.-Feedback to: healymi@tcd.ie
Neil Ferron was born and raised in Seattle. He is now studying
theatre and performance at Trinity thanks to a George J. Mitchell scholarship. - Feedback to: nferron@gmail.com
Sarah Jane Colleran is studying English and History Feedback to: xorcha@eircom.net
Rosalind Abbott is a 2nd year History of Art and Architecture and English Literature student. She would like to point out that she is not (quite) as psychologically disturbed as her characters. This is Rosalind’s first short story, so whether you think she should stick to the day job or you want to hear more, let her know at abbottr@tcd.ie
Beth Burke is an aspiring artisan of words currently studying History. She
habitually frequents Dublin’s web of watering holes in an attempt to unearth some colour from the streets and enjoys christening inanimate objects. -Feedback to: burkes9@tcd.ie
Daniel Freije, a visiting student at Trinity College Dublin, was born and raised in Worcester, Massachusetts. In the Spring, he will return to Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts, where he lives with his friends, the weather and the ghost of Emily Dickinson. - Feedback to: freijed@tcd.ie 64
ICARUS
Contributors
Laura Kennedy is an English Lit and Philosophy student from Limerick who has been published in Icarus previously under a pseudonym, and cannot be defined in two sentences. - Feedback to: kennedla@tcd.ie Elle Hersee is a first year English student who thinks the only pj’s that
should be in public are private jokes, which should be said loudly. She would also be alone in her metaphorical mental jail cell without the cunning breakouts of the tantalising Iona.- Feedback to: herseed@tcd.ie
Andrew B King is an English and History freshman, who loves to write.
He has won The Dromineer Literary Festival Short Story Prize 08, the Amergin Junior Creative Writing Competition 07, and been runner up in the Listowell Writers’ Week Junior Poetry Competition 09, the Teaching English Magazine Poetry Competition 09, the Frances Ledwidge International Poetry Prize 08. He has been published in Revival magazine, The Cathach journal and The Young Emerging Writer’s Forum. - Feedback to: kingab@tcd.ie
James Keaney is a SS Genetics student who can be found on the roof of Westland Row. He hopes to learn Galician in the near future. - Feedback to: jkeaney@tcd.ie
Ines Novacic is a third year student reading English and History at Trinity College Dublin. She has worked as a journalist for Kingston University London and Totally Dublin magazine. She is currently the news editor for Trinity Film Review. Ines has been writing as a hobby since she wrote her first book in a school notebook at the age of nine. She aspires to write fiction professionally and is interested in journalism and photography. - Feedback to: yvzee_88@hotmail.com Conor Leahy is a SF English Studies student. He writes very very slowly indeed. His only living hero is Harold Bloom. Feedback or just say hello to Feedback to: leahyco@tcd.ie Sarah Edwards is a junior sophister Biochemistry and Immunology student, her obsessions with Ryan Adams and Sylvia Plath ensures her heart will always belong to poetry though.- Feedback to: edwards@tcd.ie 65
Contributors
ICARUS
Lucy Sweeney Byrne lives in Bray, and is currently in her first year of
studying English. She will also be contributing to TFR magaine, and intends to win the Nobel Prize for literature in the near future. Feedback to: loopeyloo2@yahoo.co.uk
Kate Ferguson is a student of English literature and Psychology. Part
Irish and part Bavarian, she feels as comfortable with a glass of glüwein as a pint of guinness. She enjoys social comedy, sophisticated prank phone calls and reading everything but Tristram Shandy. Her ambition is to become a journalist.- Feedback to: ferguskk@tcd.ie
Ana Novacic is a Dublin-based poet and short story writer, born in Belgrade. Her work has previously been published in Tema literary magazine in Croatia, and her first collection of poetry (entitled A Case of Indigo) will be published in a bi-lingual edition by Aora Naklada (Zagreb) this year. She is currently studying Russian and French in Trinity College Dublin. Feedback to: ana.nov@hotmail.com Tim “The Texan” Smyth’s war of words with Dave “The President”
Preston reached a stalemate when a frustrated Preston challenged Tim to a fistfight. Tim promptly turned tail and ran away. -Feedback to: tismyth@tcd.ie
Sue Rainsford is a student of History of Art & Architecture and
Philosophy and wishes she could write like Raymond Chandler. -Feedback to: rainsfos@tcd.ie Gerald Dawe has published seven collections of poetry, most recently, Points West. A chapbook, Country Music: Uncollected Poems 1974-1989 is due soon along with The World as Province: Selected Prose 1980-2008. He teaches modern literature and directs the graduate writing programme in the School of English, TCD. -Feedback to: gdawe@tcd.ie
Isabelle D’Arcy Clark is in her first year reading English Studies.
She thinks Dublin is magic and is very happy that she and Trinity chose each other. Feedback to: darcycli@tcd.ie
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Contributors
Michael Armstrong is a Senior Sophister Philosophy and Political Science student from Carrickfergus, County Antrim. He plays the drums, enjoys both journalism and creative writing, and currently edits Trinity News’ arts and culture supplement TN2. -Feedback to: tn2@trinitynews.ie
Kate Brower is a fourth year Drama student.- Feedback to: browerk@tcd.ie Andrew Hayden is in his final year of a TSM in English Literature and Psychology. He would like to be paid to do nothing but read and write essays sporadically in the future but doubts there was a vacancy like this even when the Celtic Tiger was about. Potential employers can prove him wrong and contact him at anhayden@tcd.ie
Robbie Hinkson is in first year English and draws most of his cartoons at the back of his Old English lectures.- Feedback to: hinksonr@tcd.ie
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