The Storyteller, by Seb Durran

The Bomb, by Henry Sharland

‘Those who are humane toward animals are not necessarily kind to human beings’- BORIA SAX animals in the third reich

Dear Ms. Frank, I believe we are all put onto this earth for a reason, some more extravagant than others. Me, I believed I was put in this world to be alone, quite the opposite to how you saw the world. Perhaps as dark and melancholic as so, I liked to think I was one which preferred solidarity over affection, this way you can never truly be disappointed, like I disappointed you. My future words are written with great sensitivity and regret, for I am unequivocally apologetic. Not a day goes by where I do not feel shameful or remorse. I assume you’re thinking, how can someone of my elegance be living in a minute crevice in this russet brown wall? The truth is Ms Frank, I wasn’t always this unfortunate. When I was asked to tell my story in this collection, at first I was hesitant. I refuse to let myself relive the darkest and most shameful moments of my life. However, my inner conscious was harder to persuade. Why do these other creatures get to tell their fables because they are ranked in higher regard than that of a mouse? I am well aware people consider the works of ‘Blondi’, Hitlers tedious and uninteresting hound, in great need of a haircut. But why individuals choose to read his stories over mine is well beyond my whiskers. I for one, was not filled with her same stupidity to let my own ‘loyal’ master poison me, that is not the story of my death. Besides, what I observed was far more compelling. My first home was my Haussmannian in Paris. The top floor of ‘La Place Dauphine’, where the nights were filled with expensive champagne and cigars. Mr and Mrs. Monet would send handstitched invitations, etched with pearls and scented lavender to their friends every Saturday, inviting them to their ‘palais’. They spoilt me too,

and rightly so. The sound of the pianist perfectly hitting every note, her delicate brown hair sitting marvelously on her shoulders. I would lounge on the top lid of the piano mesmerized by her work, flicking my tail in tenderness. There was something quite feminine and seductive about the pieces she played, as if a man couldn’t recreate her work with such perfection. I was highly educated too; you would appreciate that Ms. Frank. My afternoons were spent in my library down the corridor. This was my favorite part of the day; words drowned my thoughts. It was here I was finally allowed to think for myself, rather than Mrs. Monet feeding me. Female solitude when truly chosen can be a wonderful thing. But being blissful, didn’t make me naïve. The music, the friends, the conversations, the laughing at Jewish mass slaughters. ‘Hail Hitler.’ Suffocated me of any breath I had left. The faint crackle in the corner of the room from the Wehrmacht news on TV. I called it the ‘German propaganda machine’, it was constantly throwing out lies twenty-four hours a day. I decided to leave my home, only once my age allowed me to. A full 13 months later, I was a wise mouse of 1 year and one month, and ready to leave. I realized; I would rather be taken out by a trap than have to hear another anti-sematic word that left either of their mouths.

Why are humans generous to animals such as myself, yet so heartless to their own kind?

It is a question I still do not have an answer for Ms. Frank, maybe you would? In this biotic community, biological beings are ranked more or less ‘German’ according to the Nazis. Us as animals could rank higher than mankind. It is these misconceptions between creatures which create such historically changing predicaments. For how can one be ranked?

“You mustn’t say a word, not so much as use the bathroom or run a tap when the building is occupied. Do you understand?” The two girls shook their heads in agreement at their father. Head to toe

dressed in old coloured coats and strange little hats, carrying a small bag stuffed with their belongings. They looked around in astonishment before being led up a wooden staircase, through a grey door and out of sight. The church clock nearby struck. I remembered that day, it was the first time I hadn’t been alone since running away. About a week later, 3 more people arrived from a different family. Much to my initial mortification, the young boy who’s name was Peter, decided to being his tomcat ‘Mouschi’. The building capped to a grand total of 7 people, but it was you I was most intrigued by, Ms. Frank. The youngest, I could tell. I was immediately drawn to your feminine intellect. As a clever, and incredibly imaginative girl, you didn’t hide the pain in your eyes that day when your father said you ought to be quiet. It was impossible for a girl like you to stay silent. Every quarter of an hour you found comfort when the church clock down the road chimed, I watched your eyes light up for its duration. Reminding you that there was a world outside where children went to school and played together, not terrified of being seen or heard. When the others had gone to bed you would stay up, writing in this old book of yours by the lamplight of the street, how I wanted to uncover myself from my hiding spot and observe you more closely. For your hair fell short over your eyes and your body was curled up against the wall, it was like you were a baby seeking the comfort only a mother could give. Relief washed over you, as you were once again left in solitude with your diary. It was where you safeguarded your mind away from prying eyes, your thoughtful wonderings aroused. I wanted to know more than anything, what you were writing in that book with such intensity. What words came out of that inked pen, what answers were you seeking? I imagined myself slipping through the crevice of the wall and out into the open. Being a field mouse (the smallest of our kind), I would have the ability to swiftly move myself up onto your wooden desk that creaked every time you turned to a new blank page, without being noticed. I imagined seeing

the world from up there. Not men in uniform taking away people with yellow stars glued to their shirt. Instead, I imagined curling my tail up onto your shoulder and leaning forward to read your stories with you. We would sit, and read and write for hours, as if nothing else in the world mattered. The start would read something like this, Saturday 11th July 1942 Dearest Kitty, Father, Mother and Margot still can’t get used to the chiming of the Westertoren clock, which tells us the time every quarter of an hour. Not me, I liked it from the start; it sounds so reassuring, especially at night. You no doubt want to hear what I’ve been thinking about hiding. We’ll all I can say is I don’t really know yet. I don’t think I’ll ever feel at home in this house. You see, it’s the silence that makes me so nervous, I’d give anything to have one of our helpers here…

It was as if you had no other human mind to clarify your thoughts with, leaving them prosperous. It was this solitude of yours which I now realise, was fulfilled through writing. Oh, how I watched your opinions changed as you grew up in those two years. “He’s arrogant and lazy!” You would write about Peter, but it was all in your eyes Ms. Frank, you weren’t fooling me. You used to look at him with disgust, as if a rodent at your shoe, but something shifted, and you learned to find comfort in his presence and fragmented in his absence. I realised I misunderstood you on our first encounter. I believed whilst a quiet and somewhat strange girl, you wouldn’t let anyone in. I thought we were similar in the way we kept to ourselves, as being vulnerable is a weakness. But I was wrong (for the first time in my life). I watched you open yourself up to him, you discovered you were worthy of his love. Isnt in strange, how in the darkest of moments relationships can be provoked? After my three long years on this planet, I’m now wise enough to know, connection shouldn’t something you’re afraid of. You inspired me Ms. Frank, for many

years I closed myself off to that kind of love. If only I had longer on this earth to try again. I still wonder what you wrote on your page that day. Did you resent me? Maybe I inhaled too much smoke, it must have drifted through the crevice, for my head was a bit foggy. I had decided to take a leap of adventure out into the world, this wall was too suffocating. I never thought that a moment of reckless adventure could lead to your capture. I could have sworn I heard footsteps following me back inside. I didn’t make it very far before I thought I heard them. “In there!” they must have shouted. Men in dark uniform carrying rifles, their all too recognizable shiny symbol sat on the top right of their shirt. I cowardly retreated to the crevice in the russet brown wall, the place I should have stayed all along, and observed. I see now, in those final moments, in the end it wasn’t the bombs or the gas chamber that killed me. It wasn’t a noble death by any stretch of the imagination, nor was it as glamorous as dying at war. I wasn’t a martyr. I was just a mouse, who wishes she could apologise to you, Anne. I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you. My body oscillated. Breathe in, breathe out. It was my fault. In. Out. My heartbeat quickened. All 19 grams of me trembled, contracted and exhaled. My mother once told me to count sheep when I couldn’t sleep. So I started counting. In. Out. I never got very far that day, only a few paces outside our building. I wanted to see the clock you were so very fond of. I imagined the school kids outside just like you described them, happy and not frightened.

Warm regards,

Your attic companion

THE STORYTELLER

Soul of Koi Fish

Died 1945, Hiroshima By Seb Durran

Beyond the Surface

My pool was located within the boundary of the Uyuu restaurant of Hiroshima, Japan. A great many people came to it, hoping to rest with a good meal after a day’s work. It attracted both working-class and diplomates alike. In my time there, I heard a great number of stories. After all, there is no inspiration like the weariness brought by the afternoon sun. With tongue’s loosened by tea and sake, the restaurant came alive with chatter as the sun began to set. It was late one autumn evening when Mr Tanizaki’s voice first pierced the pandemonium of the dinner rush. His words held influence, a weight that even we in the pond could feel. My father paused for only a moment before continuing with his routine, disregarding whatever the man had said.

“There’s no use listening to the fools on land.” He said, “They have no advice for you.” My father was very traditional and growing annoyed at my continued refusal to find a husband. At the age of 8, I was almost a third of the way through my life, and I was yet to make an attempt to find a partner. Perhaps I saw the lives of my sisters, Makoto and Himari, post-marriage as boring. They always seemed to be busy, and I had no interest in being a worker for a man who was perfectly capable of doing things himself. Perhaps the men of the pond were simply sick of pining for me and had given up marrying into the great Kujou Clan. My mother’s family had been the ruling class of the pond for 19 years now and had successfully married off all my elder sisters to other high-class families to ensure their place in the hierarchy. When my father arrived 13 years ago at the age of 16, his family took little time to befriend the Kujous. He married my mother after only 2 and a half years in the pond and took great pride in sharing the tales of his travels. I find this amusing, that a nomad like my father has no respect for the stories of humanity. After all, they travel

distances we can barely comprehend, to places we only know of in myth and legend. My mother was much less grounded than my father. Trained in storytelling, my mother carried down the role of pond matriarch from her own mother, and her mother before her. Her title ‘Shinwa Supika’ was bestowed upon her 9th birthday and translates roughly to ‘Myth Speaker’ in the English tongue. I adored my mother and intended to inherit the title one day, so I threw myself into studying. I was yet to realize how influential this decision would be.

Survival

My time in the pond was all the result of a stroke of luck. As one of 87 eggs laid by my mother during my birthing period, the odds of my survival were slim at best. My fry resulted in only 9 Nishikigoi, koi who inherited the correct patterns of colour to be acceptable for the ponds maintainers and my family, while the other 78 were culled. This process is a difficult one and was done by the man in charge of the pond and his young daughter. Hardened by his decades of work, the man held little sympathy for imperfect koi and had no hesitation in removing them from the pond. His daughter, who I assume to be no older than 12 at the time, was much more sentimental. She couldn’t stand killing us, so she would instead bring a great bowl of water and scoop them into it so she could take them somewhere her father would never find.

The only exception to the stone-faced caretaker’s nature was the day of my mother’s passing. He had witnessed her birth, the most perfect Nishikigoi in his many years of work. She went on to birth over 45 Nishikigoi in her 27-year lifespan, and her death brought a tear to his leathered face. Her death transcended worlds, and those in the pond shared in his grief. As is tradition, we buried her body below the stones on the pond floor and arranged sacred plant life around it. Finally, I placed the last remaining fragment of her; an unfertilized egg. I had found it two years ago after her most

important lesson, about the myth of the first koi to swim upstream. After facing the rushing river, the gods rewarded him by transforming him into a dragon. After her passing, I knew that in her own way, she had survived hardship and I trusted that she would have ascended after her passing.

An Unspoken Bond

I liked to believe Mr Tanizaki and I shared a truly deep connection. We were both storytellers. We both lived pampered childhoods. And we both suffered from a turn of luck in our teenage years. For Mr Tanizaki, his family finances plummeted, while I was the victim of a plummeting shell. On one occasion he descended from his terrace to see the pond he had spent three years staring at, to feed his curiosity. On that day, I stayed exceptionally close to the surface in the hopes of catching his eye. I was successful in his feat, and in that moment that felt like an eternity, I could feel him analysing. I could almost see his mind begin to write a story. After only a moment of eye contact, he turned and left to return to his perch above our pond. Unbeknownst to me, this would be the last time I would see him.

Disaster

For the first time in my life, my father had listened to those above the water. He had been preparing for the worst, bracing for the impact that, rumour had it, would arrive soon. The weight of Mr Tanizaki’s gossip had finally been felt by my father, but I was blissfully unaware of the danger. It all happened in a flash. I saw my family for only a moment before light flooded my view. From this flood came a drought, all light fading into an intense darkness. And in this void, I could think of nothing else except Mr Tanizaki. I’m still not sure why. I had just witnessed the end of my family, my friends, and my home yet I felt the most worried for a man with whom I had only shared a moment of eye

contact. The thought of him being caught in the bomb filled me with a sense of dread I didn’t know existed, a feeling as unbelievable as some of the myths I had memorised. As I wept for a man I never knew, I remembered the words of my mother. “We koi fish are symbols of luck and prosperity. We bring fortune, but fortune is all about perspective. Good luck and bad luck are two sides of the same scale.”

With her voice in my head, I began to pray. I prayed that Mr Tanizaki had escaped, offering my misfortune in the hopes that he would have escaped the city. I would not see the result of my wish for many years.

A Stroke of Luck

I had been dead for two years when I saw him. I contemplated approaching him, but my new form as a dragon would likely be both unfamiliar and, as history had proven, frightening. It appeared that my perseverance through my father’s nagging and the strain of carrying on my mother’s title had qualified me for ascension. So, after my death I elongated, becoming alike to a stroke of paint left by a paintbrush on a canvas. This freedom allowed me to visit him, and on my first visit I saw the name of his most famous book, “The Makioka Sisters”. A story of four sisters, the youngest yet to find a partner. At that moment, I knew he would recognize me.

GUPPY, THE DESTROYER OF WORLDS

Soul of Guppy Fish

Died 1945, United States of America By Brendan Mensh

“Learn to value yourself, which means fight for your happiness.”

Pre-Creation:

It hit me hard, the cold needle of the new tank in which I was thrown into. That’s when I began to regard him in a higher manner, a man of so much intelligence. Why should he waste his valuable time delicately placing me, a guppy fish, into my brand-new marineland contour glass aquarium of which he has already spent such amounts of money on? Watching him pace the wooden floors of his cluttered office whilst repeating the words “There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong”, it was clear that Julius Robert Oppenheimer was such a profound and intelligent man.

I felt a part of me connect with him. It immediately brought me back to my tank just after my mother was separated from me by a thin glass hindrance. She went insane because she couldn’t be with me. She used to mutter at night, “you can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality”. I didn’t understand then what she meant, but now that I am carrying fry of my own, I have made sense of it. I interpreted it as making what you want of the world and to recognize the supremacy of reason and apply it consistently, then all the rest will follow. With all the fighting going on, if no one was to come out on top, what was the point? Each death and all the suffering and effort would be in vain.

Creation:

I never fully understood the science of it all as the politics was front of my mind. I wanted my side, the right side, the strong side to win, to destroy their enemies and leave us on top. I’ve been reading more of Ayn Rand since mother was taken, and her philosophy is inspiring. The end goal of life is an individual’s own survival is it not? So, is it selfish to want to live, is it selfish to want the best for my fry even if

that means the demise of another’s? I used to tell Julius that. He would nod very flimsily. I could tell he wasn’t overjoyed to develop such a destructive bomb that would devastate so much, but we’ve got each other to support. So onward and upward! It’s not so much that I want death. I mean if there was a peaceful solution to end this 6 year war that is destroying so much life, and stopping these appalling crimes against humanity, then you’d be insane not to take it. However, since that’s really not an option with such inexorable bigots like Hitler, Mussolini and Hirohito who clutch such enormous power, the only option is to eradicate the evil and the monsters who instigate it through means of lethal force. Therefore, me and Julius must seize this opportunity granted to us via Julius’s first-hand knowledge of nuclear chemistry and my political planning, and end this war dead in its tracks, “The ladder of success is best climbed by stepping on the rungs of opportunity”. I thought it odd when Julius brought me with him to Los Alamos, New Mexico. I soon realised with great excitement that it was to witness the world’s first nuclear explosion on the desolate plains of the Alamogordo Bombing Range. Julius left me behind at the ranch school where all the scientist and officials were situated. It was a truly beautiful place, and the wooden cabins that filled the land between the surrounding mountains created the perfect location for top-secret laboratories. To anyone outside of the classified group, Los Alamos was simply known as “site Y”. I’ll never forget that morning. I was awoken early with a slight pain in my belly and concerned about whether the pain was related to my fry. The thought however didn’t last long as I was immediately rocked in my tank as the room suddenly lit up brighter than day, followed by a sonic boom that nearly made me jump right out from the tank. Nevertheless, I did not fear as I knew what this meant. We had done it. We had created a means to an end.

Post Creation:

The days following the successful test in New Mexico I fell ill. I presumed it was travel sickness or just a pregnancy thing. Once back home with Julius he was noticeably different, quiet, and solemn and he seemed to lose his energy. This was always going to happen. I knew he wasn’t the strongest man mentally and he had forgotten the why? Forgotten that this great power was going to prevent so much death to come. The twenty-one days between the testing in Los Alamos and the day it happened were long and drawn out. Julius’s melancholy mood had made its way into my head, and being with him so much I wasn’t surprised, although I wasn’t feeling great. I was still eager for it. I’ve tried to stay clear of the end of this recount of events as best I can, the end of my life. The days leading up to the day it was dropped I was gradually getting sicker and sicker. My belly had begun to ache, ache like my fry were inside trying to claw their way out. I struggled to not worry and that it would all be fine but going against my motherly instincts wasn’t easy. The morning we received the telephone call I was uneasy as I watched Oppenheimer whose entire physical being had become lost to his mind and was slowly falling apart, stumble hastily towards the ringing. I didn’t hear exactly what was said on the telephone, but it wasn’t hard to guess once he fell to his knees and a single tear dropped from his eye. His face was pale, lips blue, a look of shock and regret that I’ll never forget. In that moment I knew it had been done. I still didn’t understand why he wasn’t pleased with himself. It had worked, we had won. The war would be over, and we could live without fear. Julius stopped feeding me after that morning, I could see the pictures he was receiving that showed the disturbing reality of what we had done. The images of human flesh that had melted off children like plastic and the black shadows remaining after people were turned to ash where they stood. What had I done?

I knew I had to be strong for my fry, I was excepting any day now, but something deep down told me it wasn’t right. I awoke the following day to a sharp pain seeping from inside. It was the fr., I could see blood seeping out as I noticed Julius on the television making a speech. He had lost his mind and depression and regret had consumed him. The guilt of his creation was too much. Do I deserve this? Is this the price for the devastation I encouraged? Was Julius’s price to lose his mind to the darkness and mine to lose my fry? My young? I pushed hard, more blood. I could still hear Julius in the background, his voice emanating from the television whilst I floated in agonising pain and distress. Once the blood dissipated, I saw them, their lifeless bodies, my fry, floating, their lame bodies deformed and conjoined, shaking, and twitching. I watched as they succumbed to their illnesses. They died right there, right in front of me. I watched helplessly. “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds”, Julius said. Did I subsequentially kill my own by my own egoistic doing? I looked up to the top of my tank, blinded by selfloathing and dismay. What have I done? I leapt from the surface of the water into the air, knowing full well what would come of this. I hit the ground. I lay there convulsing, choking on the nothingness. Filled with my own regret and misery I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.

BLONDI

Soul of German Shepherd

Died 1945, Germany By Daisy Le Deux

Every animal is a tradition, and together they are a vast part of our heritage as human beings. No animal completely lacks humanity, yet no person is ever completely human.

Boria Sax

Unaware in the beginning

I often take my mind back to the day we first met, the moment that my small body was placed into his withered hands. ‘My beloved master[s]’ warmth connecting with my soft innocent fur. From birth I was affected by human manipulation, produced as a German shepherd hived to Adolf by Martin Bormann head of the Nazi Chancellery. My owner adopted me in admiration due to my ‘Germanic wolf like’ nature. I, due to this, evidently, was obedient, intrepid, and intelligent. My loyalty, often seen in admiration to the human form demonstrating their ‘heritage as human beings’. The ability to remain devoted to Hitler, at the most of times, is what lead me to experience the true recollection of the dividing war. Though I do not ponder on these acts that constructed my sense of being. My ultimate journey is reconstructed in my mind, over and over again. From this I often wonder on how it is that ‘one, who shows so much

hatred towards those of their own kind’ can love me. A demonstration of human lust for obedience and power.

Around the time I was bought to Adolf the war was beginning to unfold. Though it was not present in the earlier stages of my life, these are the memories I recall the most. We often spent a lot of time at his second home, far away in Obersalzberg, hidden within the Bavarian Alps. It was constructed upon a small opening inbetween the overbearing peaks, that acted as a cover to the other

corners of the world. My intensely sensitive ears, dormant from the volume of destruction. Just true coherent silence. So still and peaceful, the only conscious free noise intoxicating the ears being the breath reaching out between the two lips.

I would perch on the end of the wooden bench, glancing to the waving red and black strip of fabric that would hang heavy. Scanning the peaks I would fixate on the near mountain hare in the distance, with their scent radiating underneath my sophisticated nose. I was trained to understand the faintest of scents. Teasing my animal instincts to employ, with no near judgement to the danger it may cause for animals within the reach of my sharp, fang like teeth. Though threw time I was taught the abstract nature, to an animal of my skill, the ability to preserve these tendences. I would lay latent watching as the chair, he so often placed himself on, would rock back and forth. As if it were about to roll over in the slightest tendency of imbalance. He would sit there for hours as I obediently watched, pen placed upon his lips, fixated on the pages. Given to him by members of his team that had constructed on the matter. The reason I say ‘matter’ so unintelligently is because at the time I did in fact not know what he was glancing upon. But rather I choose to focus on the emotion of it all, the sense of intensity that struck his face. The way his finger moved from word to word, bouncing along the page as if the words were nothing. No meaning, no effect, no ability to cause unimaginable danger. The vacant sea of bodies, Auschwitz

My murky eyes met with the flooded sea of stripes. Contorted by muddy flatland as the Großer Mercedes encountered with the long winding road. I could feel the sense of unease within the air. Though I knew that my master could feel an awareness of pride, through his achievement that was Auschwitz. My acknowledgment of his grand

successes encouraged me to hall my front legs onto the leather stitched seat leaning up against my master’s leg. As I felt ‘the

agreeable weight of his hand on my head’, ‘admiring the gracefulness of the gesture’, feelings of comfort and fondness overtook me. The moment was broken as we pulled onto the front gate, guarded by the men I had begun to know very well. Engulfed in oversized woollen cloches, secured by a strap which attached to a Submachine gun. Paired with a tin like helmet and black boxy pants. I began to look closer admiring that the large woollen overcoats were stained by red raw blood, some blood so fresh I could see it congeal as we rolled past. ‘The [scent] was intoxicating’ I could feel it weave its way up my nostrils, as we passed the high rise, twisted wire fencing.

I began to fetishize around the thought of standing proudly at the front of the intimating gates. I often spent time thinking about the nature of his kind. I was so enchanted by the thought of being able to walk, act and mostly speak like one of them. Nevertheless, I subtilty enjoyed the ability to sense emotions within their eyes. The ability to see fear before it was spoken, sometimes on occasions before it began to enter the consciousness of their mind. Though not in my master, no I did not see fear. Rather the remanence of ambition and intelligence. To me he was truly kind, treating me as if I was a part of him, that I embodied his strength and the parts of his weakness that I would only witness in the stillness of it all. A part of him that was not present to others as he did not believe that one should be seen through empathy, but rather fear. Though I was not fearful, not hesitant, nor timid I was loyal. In a way that I human could never be.

Till death do us part, Führerbunker

I arched my head upon the elongated opening within the window, the presence of saturation diminishing from my nose as the wind swept past my depleted face. I began to look upon the once flourishing streets which were now tainted by cascades of overbearing bomb shelled buildings. Rows upon rows of clinical structures lined with the scent of fresh ammunition reminiscing on my senses. As we drove through the streets of Berlin down towards the Führerbunker. The events leading up to our final resting place were lost in translation, a subtle blur of overbearing power from the other corners of the world who had moved in. With our power now demised to the mere 4 door Mercedes that carried us along the war struck streets.

As we began to approach the old wooden building, I could hear the chatter between the men in the car. Adolf sat furthest from me; his wife Eva next to him. I haven’t spoken about my ‘master’s female

companion [who] did not like [me]’. At times kicking me under the table when Adolf wasn’t looking. But I choose to ignore it. Because I knew she wasn’t angry at me. She was angry at him for letting me see a part of him, that she was never accustomed to. For that Eva was lonely at the most of times, and angry within the moments that she choose to not feel alone. From there and into the disguised building was a short 10 meters, then we begin to walk down a case of stairs, deeper and deeper. Sinking into the ground as if it were going to save us from the danger. As if what they had done was understandable from under here.

Most of our days spent Infront of the radio, which would continue day and night. Blaring contorted statements upon the events leading to the fall of the war ‘the rest of the world us come to save us’, ‘those who have committed these acts will be brought to justice’ all

statements of hatred and lust to bring back a normal world. But the world was no longer normal, it was now polluted with death and destruction, no hands were clean. What was done was done. All I remember from then was my last meal… as I bent my head down to feast upon the preserved duck fat, scooping it up in a moment of sorts, it seemed to taste strangely different. But my hunger overwhelmed my sense in the matter. As I placed my body upon the soft converted pillow that lay next to the chair Adolf would perch on, I could see a switch within him. An emotion that I thought was impossible to emerge in his beautiful brain, fear.

My eyes washed in and out of the near surroundings, the noises of blearing bells and broken chants. The scents of cigarettes and unwashed bodies. My heart pumping, the pulse coming in hot waves causing everything else to pulsate. The beats broken up into moments, slower then slower. With each breath becoming like a weight to my chest. I thought back to the fields were me and my beloved brother would run for hours, the feeling of the grass beneath me. The sky so clear it would radiate of the sun. The fixation of love to my dear brother who had gone missing weeks before this moment. Then I thought of him, my dear Adolf. Oh, I hope to be able to see you again. To be able to show my devotion to you. To place myself back onto the wooden bench, watching you rock, back and forth. Looking so fixated upon a plan that you thought would never end. I wish to see you, to hear you, to feel your hand upon my head. For all my life I can remember you, I trust you, I long for only you. As I saw myself float over the dishevelled room the sensation of guilt, ‘so long as I never had to leave, not even in death’. My dear Adolf I didn’t choose to leave you; I wish so strongly one day to tell you. I am sorry.

HIVE REPORT

Soul of Bee

Died 1957, United States of America By Daisy Turnbull

“Betrayal is the only truth that sticks”. Arthur Miller

Hive report

Entry 1:

It’s mostly a swift sashay, her gate. Held by smooth, primed legs enclosed in mesh. A fresh ladder down the back. Candidly, her dress flows in the wind, mirroring the perfectly constructed effortless curl that swoops over her made up face. On a working day she lay elongated across the fresh bed of clovers forming, atop a lustrous ground cover, sitting like she knew someone was observing, controlled by an onerous gaze. A “poster girl” I believe, she has the look. I heard a buzz moving through the cohort gathering room that she takes part in her own exploitation of her female constitution in the pursuit of money. This humanitarian crisis has plagued this nation since the dawn of the camera. Man, launching at the lens to capture the depths, the most natural part of a woman, eager to subvert this sight for a cash grab. Onwards, I see my morning’s find lay in vain, crushed underneath her arm. Rich roses of the deepest red, folded and expelling water from their damaged creases, as she slowly breathes, in and out. I was primed and ready to strike; skilfully subtract the nectar from the subjects, bank it, and return to base. Alas, my goal was interfered with by her pulling out a kitchen knife, not even a standard weapon in this theatre, to hack at the stems and wrap them in a coloured ribbon. Purpose for this task remains unclear. The morning sleep was followed by a later, afternoon sleep. Her eyes lay slightly open sometimes as she sits there. A weight comes with her rest, like she has fully escaped from present day, left the room. Away from her blued life perhaps, and the underhanded arena in which she plays. Despite her undeniable flower-like radiance and

sugar-like sweetness, she’s surrounded by a darkness, which perplexes me. “Honey” is what the man who lives as her counterpart in the house calls whenever he is seeking her, (research into this name should be conducted). To this, she comes running, like a well-trained dog, switched on and eager to please.

Entry 2

Today a small gathering, with no evident productive value was hosted. Clothes worn by the guests were plainer than what is usually adorned by Honey’s associates, the ones who come late at night, talking in deafening tones in the early hours of the morning. They usually come clad in shining jewels and other impractical details, like tall shoes that leave them joking of cramped feet and blistered skin for the remainder of the event. It seemed to be a union of sorts. Perhaps a marriage between Honey and the man. Him, dressed in a smart, yet not flashy suit, woven of wool I suspect, and as for the wife, I can’t help but notice a dampening in her attire also, drabness prevailing. Why is this I must wonder? Why the compromise of her so characterised, dare I say “branded”, exuberant excess? If I was one to assume I might say that assimilation is in play. It looks as though the woman is changing to suit the friends and preferences of the intelligent, grounded man and his associates. Curious.

Entry 3

If not willing to die by the cause, why betray those around you, and pretend to live by it? Upon my morning rounds, raucous could be heard drifting from the window of the sunroom. The media, so blinded and disorientated in

this chase for their enemy that she has been branded as “very positively and concisely leftist”. Despite being an embarrassment to the US government, displaying their ignorance to what a true man of the cause would act as, embedding the ideologies into all facets of their life, this statement infuriates me as it so greatly upset her. Why pretend to be something when you are not? She mourns the loss of her impartial reputation, which falls in the gaping abyss her lowlife entertainment lays. Standing for nothing and falling for anything. Now more than ever her own agenda, in which she reals the innocent, untortured mind of man in with her sweet taste, only to leave their feet sticky with her concoction of deceit, is evident. Reassuringly, in his eyes, I don’t observe a deep love for her. As she understandably stares longingly at his respectable stoic nature, which looks to hold a wealth of knowledge, he looks as though he himself is searching for more. His mind perhaps hungry. Undeniably he lusts for her, I can’t hold him accountable for that, but beyond that, the emotional connection doesn’t seem to hold so firm. How could he, as he is, love her in such states of difference? The saying goes those opposites attract. But ideologically this cannot apply. His views and her obnoxious actions lay polarised. Of course, upon the Nazi-Soviet invasion of Poland, initiating the second World War, Jean-Pierre Faye proposed the horseshoe theory, suggesting that one could go so far right, that they would become left and vice versa. But one with any secure, based understanding would know that this is false, and the ideas simply do not align. I’m babbling, although I’m sure you can see this is simply lit by the burning passion I have for this topic.

Entry 4

Please excuse my emotion, I come in sorrow to pose this question to you, asking for no answer. Why do the institutions punish those who

choose to stray from their control? The free thinkers? A good man, an artesian, brought to his knees for wishing to help the struggle. The voice of the people so far oppressed by the man, furthering his own regime, that if not now than when? Today I heard the familiar, shrewd voice of the man coming from inside the sitting room, yet today it came from across the radio. Upon close analysis of the happenings, it is clear to see that the government of this country has lost its mind, and this set their skewed sights on Honey’s man to uproot what they obviously believe to be a system of like-minded me, who are “set on the destruction of the free world”. Evidently, the “land of the free” has, itself, destructed just fine on its own. The muffled voice from the man (her man) in the box persisted he “could never use the name of another person and bring trouble on him” once again, so admirably, showing his unwavering loyalty to our cause, in the face of others’ acute bullying. I would like to say I am surprised, but time after time, the greed of Americans prevails, working at any cost to save their so beloved hierarchical society, that perpetually restricts their movements and works to manipulate their minds into believing that the exploitation of their resources is what freedom is.

Like so many of my brethren before me have chosen to use my final strengths and end the oppressor. Relatively, we may be small, but in cohesion, we create a society, oozing with the indulgent sweets of our labour, all to be shared. This must spread! Both ways cannot flourish under the same sun.

We must unite in the struggle; we have nothing to lose except our chains!

We will return to our natural state in death. The utopia we are dreaming of, in American culture I have heard this be referred to as heaven: a classless, carefree society where no one is burdened by

their stresses that accompanied them for their previous lifetime. We must continue out fight to reach this. I hope you understand my departure.

RED PRIDE

Soul of Sparrow

Died 1959, China By Gen Whitford

“Men must conquer nature” – Mao Zedong

“The proper definition of a man is an animal that writes letters” –Lewis Carroll

Dear Charles L. Dodgson.

My boy raised me on feasts of stories about the souls of animals who ploughed the earth, dug the great depths of Diyu, of the four great creatures who crafted and quartered the heavens between them, their souls glowing at us from constellations in the sky. But my most treasured tale was yours, Alice in Wonderland, though I found it overwhelmingly and most brilliantly absurd, the way in which you write about the animals, as if they were people. I’ve also never met a rabbit, but I can imagine they are quite an inferior animal, they can’t even fly. I think a bird of some kind, perhaps the great Vermillion bird of the South would make a more suitable subject in your next story. (I implore you to keep this in mind).

I would like to tell you about my life, I hope my story could help enlighten your next book.

I remember my birth clearly, the spherical smoothness of the surface I was encased in, and how the first stretch of my leg poked a hole, shattering my peaceful solitude, I didn’t mind though. A wisping shard of light crept into my embryo, and the darkness softly crumbled away. It was like escaping from a tunnel, so I must have a sound insight of Alice’s experiences when she emerged from that rabbit hole. I was shivering, wet and hopelessly alone when the boy found me, curled up in a ball, at the foot of a fragrant Prunus plum tree, its flowers blossoming watermelon pink, and its grand thirtyfoot-high trunk produced some relief from the cruel presentations

of a bitter storm that unforgivingly devoured the region. He too was soaked to the bone, his aching grey jacket clung tightly to his attenuated body. It wasn’t long before I ensconced the boy’s home, where he’d brought me after finding me during that terrible storm. He’d announced himself to me as Jiànguó, and he lived in a rather mundane commune with his parents. I disliked Jiànguó’s father. He would swat at me if I ever flew near, and I think if he could catch me, he would have clipped my feathers. Jiànguó’s father was lettered, I could tell from the way he ate his dinner with delicate fingers, holding his chopsticks as precisely as a surgeon, and how he groomed himself even more meticulously than the cat that prowled around the commune late at night. He also collected books, hard-spined thin orange books, which had strange birdlike characters on them, and were very different from the neat little red books Jiànguó kept orderly under his bed. One day I saw Jiànguó’s father taking out the books from the shelves and stashing them hurriedly under the floorboards. He left one book though, if I could read, I would tell you it’s title. He recited it every night, to Jiànguó, and I listened, nested in my coop, to the story of white rabbits, red queens, and this silly little girl called Alice! That’s how I learned it was your book, you see! I never got to hear the end of it though, because one day, these men stormed into the commune, and took away all the orange books. I thought they were those erratic queens’ soldiers you wrote about, because they were all dressed up with little red stars on the collars! Upon sight of their grand uniforms, my feathered chest swelled in respect. I saw them burn your book outside as well when I was sitting on the windowsill. I don’t think they appreciated your story. But I did feel quite pitiful for your Alice, more than the pity I felt for when the soldiers took Jiànguó’s father away, I never saw him again after that. I didn’t mind his absence, but Jiànguó’s mother did, she cried for days. I can’t

remember what happened between the months he was taken away and the month that she died, still unmoving in the same position. You see, animals are detached, mate for the sole purpose of offspring, but Humans are rather tempestuous, they mate forever! And yet, you write about animals as if we were the same as them. Jiànguó became emancipated too, the bones underneath the skin of his cheek became unwelcomingly flagrant. His mother’s body lay still in the corner for many weeks after her death, I doubt Jiànguó had the strength to move her. In her rest she was the most serene I’d ever seen her; I almost missed her vibrant feminine presence in the commune while the men were out, now that I was left alone for most of the day. She’d warble the melodies of great revolutionary playwright Tian Han, the tinkling sounds of 志愿者游行 echoing determinedly off the grey walls throughout the day. Every now and again gazing at the dust-collecting portrait of the man that hung in the kitchen. After her death, I got lonely. I think that’s why I felt my mating urges increasing after death, shooting through my feathers like ardent pulses of electricity, until I was sure I would burst. I loved Jiànguó, but I craved to leave the mundane confinement of the commune and join the other sparrows that flew past my windowsill every day, gliding inexhaustibly over limitless skies. He must have noticed my broodiness; I hope Jiànguó understood my lack of affection and solitude towards him as not something I intended, simply instincts I could not restrain at my young age in the vernal season. He must have realised my inclinations, for one morning found me in my nesting and gently cupped me in his palms. It was only then I noticed they no longer possessed the smooth boyish ridges, but the rough calluses of a working man. He tenderly rested me on the grass, stroked my beautiful red helmet for a while, and eventually walked away. I discovered then that the commune was surrounded by tremendous mountains, thrusting spires of naked

rock into the heavens so high you would believe the very sky was pierced. After he left, I realised the vulnerability in my own sovereignty. I longed for Jiànguó to change his mind and bring me home. But I couldn’t wait for him to come to his senses. A whiff of catlike stench polluted the air, and my instincts warned me an interaction wouldn’t be as agreeable as stumbling upon that Cheshire cat you write about. I took off then, joined some other sparrows nesting in the trees, finding myself seduced in the earthly presence of white wing bars and tan supercilium’s. It wasn’t long before I found a mate who laid my eggs, though not far from the commune.

I missed Jiànguó. But I was glad I left, I had discovered the wonders of liberation; morning chorales, fields of delicious, golden grain where we feasted often, and the newfound sultry pleasure of dustbathing.

One rather murky day in autumn, a thunder of high-ranking officials paraded through town, crowned head to toe in gold and red and rather splendid looking. Their craning necks and downward-looking expressions reminded me of those Caucus birds, the ones that you described as rather proper. I felt that familiar feeling of admiration flush through my wings. They were noble patrons of Great China. Things were different after they left.

The first thing I noticed was the net that cast over the fields, our once-great feasts of flaxen grain became limited to the meagre insects and worms that offered difficulty extracting from beak-tight holes in the ground. The next thing I anticipated was the death, not like the death of Jiànguó’s mother, but a sinister death of starved souls. The eerie tenor of death toxified the air. We animals are superbly skilled at picking up on these things. Sure enough, the

Humans enervated, their once sublime ochre skin alchemized into an ugly yellow. The Humans in the town became angrier, angrier than any red queen you could write about. They killed my mate. She’d was snatched right from our nest, from an upper branch I watched her skirmish and struggle in some desperate plight for release, her delicate bones crushing in the unrelenting grip of the Human. I have trouble forgetting the sight of her body impaled and limp, numbered in a line with many others, desiccating, rotating, above a beastly fire crackling beneath our tree. I struggled to understand; our leaders would never allow this lunacy, surely not knowingly. Amongst the chaos, I found Jiànguó’, trudging haggardly down the spindly field paths, towards the edge of the forest, a long shiny metal contraption of some kind tucked under one arm. He’d lost the air of boy-like innocence that once surrounded him, his wrinkled and angular face shrunken into itself, twinkling eyes were dulled and stagnant. I flew towards him, gliding joyously through the air, “my

Jiànguó’”! I chirped, “at last we meet again”.

I didn’t feel the bullet pierce me; I only heard the defeating bang of the machine. “Jiànguó!”, he must not have recognised me, because I couldn’t understand why he didn’t cup me in his palms again, or why he left me bleeding on the ground once again amongst the redstained moss that shrouded the roots of a withering plum tree. The dark red that engulfed me enticed a sweet string of memories of fresh mornings in the commune, the chimes of 志愿者游行 drifting sweetly through the commune. I felt the surges of fervent torrents slip away from my body, my soul arranging itself amongst the inky blackness, the faint twinkling outlines of a noble Vermillion guarding a fourth of Tian, perched amongst its moonlit mansions.

KALMA

Soul of Chimpanzee

Died 1950s, Space By Amelia Sadleir

I have lived four hundred and twelve days for this moment. Four hundred and twelve days encased in ice-white plastic, ceramic floors, long winding corridors that lead nowhere. Four hundred and twelve days for an expedition I don’t remember and a sky I can barely see. It isn’t like this is new or strange – in fact, I’ve been planning this for months. Or at least, they have. Nurse 1 and Nurse 2 and Dr Miller in his sterile white coat, a white that matches the walls, that makes his yellowing teeth stand out like a lighthouse in a storm. He’s a smoker, the kind of addict that hides dope in the inside pocket of his lab coat and pops outside when things get stressful, returning with glazed eyes and the smell of shame. He started disappearing a lot more towards the end, I noticed. And I understood why – four of us down, all dead either in flight or from the moment they came back to Earth. The embarrassment of the USA, starkly contrasted with the Russian success of spiders and tortoises that not only reached the greater blue, but lived it to the moon and back. Static proof of consciousness that travelled four hundred and seventy-seven thousand miles just to smack America’s big red ass. Or so Miller told me, nails tucked into his palm so tightly that when he reaches out for a pat I see red, crescent-shaped marks, little C’s so deep they only fade after a five-minute stroking. I am the fifth in NASA’s space exploration experiments – a pioneer, you might say. Or a doomed man. Personally, I lean into the latter. My brothers didn’t. They were excited, all chitters and chatters and wide eyes when we learned of our mission. For them being called Albert was an honour, and to ascend so far into the sky cemented the hope that humans could view us as equals. 4 monkeys later and I have come to the realisation that there is no chance of reaching equity between us. Being flung into space wasn’t an honour. It was a death sentence, one that humans preferred to lay on their primate descendants.

You wrote of this in your novel, didn’t you, Ellison? Believe me, I know. Miller loved you – the kind of love that made him read every word of your sci-fi bullshit to me, late at night when he should’ve been at home with a girl, or a boy, instead of starving his brain with physics and a drugged-up monkey. And yeah, I get it – the relationship between whatever master computer ruled your story and its tiny people playthings – it’s different to the way I was treated. Par exemple, no-one moved me from bright, green Earth to a televised cave so far underground the only light is the glow of my captor’s pixels. But they did take me from my mama. No-one ever stripped me totally of myself in exchange for a whole new race and a whole new sexuality. But they did neuter me. No-one ever strung a hallucination of companion’s corpse above me, only for his real self to walk around the corner, so my compounding horror could be followed by overwhelming shock. But I did see Albert II, first to make it back down, limbs strewn and head lolling, chest hollowed in. Do you know what happens when the atmospheric seal on a missile sent into orbit isn’t double checked? Gravity is a monster in itself, especially on fragile bones left unsecured by the hands delivering them to it. They kept his heart beating with tubes and sugar water and dissected, pickled, studied it to disintegration. Then they buried him – what was left – in the backyard. That was my first freak-out, and the first time I was held down and injected with barbiturates. The thing about barbiturates is, they don’t make you feel good. Have you tried Xanax? That shit makes you feel good – soft breaths and slender thoughts, like your head is floating off your shoulders. They gave it to me, crushed up in spoonfuls of honey, when I needed to sleep, and I could see why Miller loved stuff like it so much, he’d end up letting it ruin him completely. I wonder now, if he had tried barbiturates – thiopental, methohexital, the kind of words that don’t roll off your tongue the way “xan” does … I wonder if he would’ve quit.

Spoilers: he never really quit, he’d just say he did. The thing is, if he had gotten clean, I don’t think he would’ve let me go up after my brothers, or even finish the program. He really cared for me, you know, and he could show it. More than just reading me your novel too. Walks around the garden, pats, stomach rubs, movie nights, sitting on his shoulder as he rolled crisp joints under his desk. I just got him, and he got me. I knew the things that made him tick, the way his mind worked, why he could spend so much time outside, even on the coldest of days. He knew I didn’t like the things they started putting in me, so he’d swap them for me – phenobarbital to alprazolam, to melatonin, to tiny sugar pills I could let dissolve under my tongue for hours on sweet end. Hell, maybe he just wanted to put them in himself, but it made me feel safe under his touch. I couldn’t see the world, so he’d bring it to me in long, languid stories, eyes glossing over as he reached into the darkest of memories just to show me all the light I couldn’t see. Turns out, you can’t see a lot from a laboratory. He was my only connection to anything that wasn’t mission related. He was special. First time he got caught high on the job was when we were about two hundred pages into I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream – yeah, more of your futuristic philosophical vitriol – and one of the nurses, the mean one, popped her head around the corner of his cubicle and proceeded to not only tell him off for having me outside the enclosure, but also mention the three-stack of diazepam that had gone missing from her work bench. Miller just glanced up and blinked a couple of times, slow saucer-blinks that made it so obvious who the culprit was. Everyone already knew about his smoke breaks, and the drinking problem, and that time he fell asleep in his car with a rolled up dollar bill nestled against the windshield. He had a problem, whatever. And every time one of his monkeys went up and didn’t come back down, it got worse.

Took three times before they fired him. I remember the exact day it happened – number three-hundred and ninety one. Albert IV went up alive, came down dead. Lots of yelling, some door slamming, men in suits peering around me with frowns. Demands for phase five to start immediately, lest Russia got another chance to laugh in America’s face. The greater good, the future of spaceflight, all that bullshit. Miller’s voice, usually low and husky, now so cold and tense it might snap. Nasty words shattering the usually solemn atmosphere. Storming into my enclosure, grabbing the stack of pills kept permanently in the cupboard behind the door, saying he’d be back soon.

I wonder if he knew it was fentanyl, not Xanax. Anyway, I never saw him again. I got a new director, one who wouldn’t read to me, wouldn’t exchange my sleepers for something softer. Twenty-one days of hell, drifting in and out of consciousness under a wave of barbiturates in preparation for the big day. They sent me up on Seconal sodium, the kind of thing that hits you so hard you just fade out into white. It hurt going in, but soon everything was so muffled, I couldn’t wriggle or cry or even move my tail. I had no mouth, I couldn’t scream. I didn’t see the sky, didn’t feel the gravity push down on my ribs as I ascended infinitely high. I travelled four hundred and seventy-seven thousand miles and didn’t remember a single moment of it. Four hundred and seventy-seven thousand miles, you say? And that’s right, I made it. I fucking made it. Here’s your big plot twist, your moment of clarity – I know you love these, Ellison. The main character beats everyone in the most perfect, bittersweet, unconceited way: free will is synonymous with hope. Nothing trumps the human spirit. You are not a haughty asshole. I get it. Miller gets it, too. He’s coming for me, you know, right now: wherever my capsule has landed, he’s on the way. He’s probably a

little high, definitely should not be driving, but it’s okay because there’s a copy of your book and a stack of sugar pills in the front seat, and love is all-guiding, right? I’m finally sober, a bit hot and dizzy maybe, but clear-headed enough to know he’ll be here soon. I can open my mouth and scream as loud as I want.

OCTOBER

Soul of Horse

Died 1963, England By Alannah D’Andrea

Perhaps someday I'll crawl back home, beaten, defeated. But not as long as I can make stories out of my heartbreak, beauty out of

sorrow.

Sylvia Plath,

the unabridged journals

It’s October, happiness arrives cracked under the escaping moonlight across the moors and hope is given incrementally. Breathing in the clean air, my tail picks up, new muscles form and the thoughts of tack and sound of leather echoing sends a shiver down my spine. What is left of the night dances over the rolling hills, and I begin to feel like my namesake. My soul, like the airy spirit in the Tempest, floats in and around the rolling valleys, perhaps I search of a portion of myself that remains unchanged by you. No longer am I temporarily floating, like the elm tree flowers that flutter in the breeze, but I am inextricably bound up in memories of you. The sun awakening behind the late October fog reminds me of the self-proclaimed sunworshipper you were, always satisfied by the feel of the sun tanning your belly brown.

The days I most looked forward to spending with you were when you would call my name, weary after a day of pouring thought into rhythm. As the words tumbled out of your mouth my ears would relax and my stoic demeanour was broken by the quiet tenderness you had for me. Your hands would caress the nape of my neck and you would rest your long hair and loose waves upon my muzzle. Whispers and curses would fall out of your mouth, and on the days you laughed, you managed to light up the leaden blue skies. But towards the end, so often you cried, your whisperings of your marriage to that Yorkshire poet relentlessly bringing my tail to a

swish. All my past anger and the part of my soul I’d thought I had laid to rest with the nightmares and ringing of explosives came up to taunt my bloodstream. Tears would empty your eyes and ricochet onto my nose and all I could offer was to carry your heaviness. When the clouds behind your eyes were so dark, they were causing the sky to blacken, I was just an animal, a beast of burden to carry your heavy load.

How sometimes I yearned to be as carefree as I was in that chaotic April, two decades prior, of 1944. It was a time when my legs would move as easily as the tree branches dancing in the wind, and my mind was as naive as a foal’s. I had heard about the war from the passing comments made by nearby soldiers, young men dressed in starched green uniforms, free from fear and blood. Their faces masked with excitement and anticipation as they would talk as if they had a future beyond the dark shapes of the fleet which stood outlandishly still before the horizon. It was a thrill that I thought I had ought to enlist myself in. And so, for days on end I would watch the figures below compete in their life-size game of battleship. Young men playing on the sand with big machine guns only taking breaks to drink out of these unusually small shiny metal flasks that they hid in their pockets. In their American twang they would speak jovial words of Exercise Tiger and Utah Beach, and it was if they were living in some big pretend world in which all they would do is kick around with their mates before waking up and doing it again the next day with their big American grins. I would fall asleep to the ruckus of laugher and wake up to trumpets and harmonicas being played and it was if I would be forever young, playing in this great big fantasy world.

But whilst the years may have wearied me, when the hills have fallen asleep and the wind no longer whines, I am still able to hear the ringing in my ears. My body shivers as I recall the faint murmurs of

the soldiers’ desperate cries. Their cries not a sign of their birth, their first breaths, first blinks, but a hymn which was signalling their death. I blink twice, hard, to block the images of my friends lives and big silly dreams being blown to fragments. How their crimson red blood stained the fresh, unbroken sand and oozed into the crystal-clear water. It was as if that day my own body was in the line of fire not solely my heart, the furrowed earth beneath me rocking. Guts falling, like the tears of the soldiers’ mothers’ eyes at their funeral, It felt as I had been hurled with grenade which imploded my body. I forced to steer my eyes from the bloodbath below and slowly I turned and galloped further, and further away from the Sands, vowing to myself that I would never allow myself to be in a line of fire in which I was to feel that much pain and betrayal.

But how was I to know that when you, just a Fulbright Scholar with your Veronica Lake Bang met me, I would never be able to love again? For it is only now I have come to understand that all is not fair in love and war, but back then, I was just a horse, ignorant of the

simplest things.

Early October you rose, a sensitive figure against the soft moonlight and your voice wafted, as if it were on the wind’s hands, awakening me.

The world forever, I shall not entirely Sit emptied of beauties, the gift Of your small breath, the drenched grass Smell of your sleep, lilies, lilies.

Fondness and melancholy dripped from each line, taking me into a world of a child, and for a short moment I had to recover my flesh before I felt you pulled against my chest. Your hands and body wrapped around me, and not soon long after, your entire body

pressed against me, so close it was if our souls intertwined. The hills stepped off into horizon as I began to race our luck into the substance less blue. Both of us just a shadow of piling limbs and hair, the elm trees on either side of us becoming a blur.

And I rode, and I rode, and I rode until I knew that the sound of you calling out Ariel, voice no longer syrupy but strangled, was nothing more than what it was, an echo of a ghost of you. For in my mind yesterday you had unpeeled yourself

Dead hands, dead stringencies Foam to wheat, a glitter of seas.

But today, together we are

The dew that flies

Suicidal, at one with drive

Into the red

Eye, the cauldron of morning.

And as I begin to slow down, my transcendent experience shortlived, I am unarmed against the longing that hits me, where the silence is not an echo but a constant ringing in my ears. The rain covers my coat silently and it is no longer days break, but days end, the path ahead lit up by the moonlight. But, like all things, I am still yet to adore the stillness that the moon is offering, for my heart has yet to let me admire the things that remind me of you. My eyes grow intoxicated with tiredness and my legs collapse from underneath me, and it is at this moment I let my soul go.

From stone to cloud, so I ascended

Now I resemble a sort of God

Floating through the air in my soul-shift Pure as a pane of ice. It’s a gift.

COCOONED DREAMS

Soul of Butterfly

Died 1963, United States of America By Dan Tadmore

“There is no better than adversity. Every defeat, every heartbreak, every loss, contains its own seed, its own lesson on how to improve your performance next time.”- Malcolm X

Again and again, I become enslaved to the drudgery of these desolate streets, crippled by the need to evolve, grow, and fulfill the role of a butterfly. Imprisoned, wings are the key to the towering iron bars of this institution. As I am alive here, I know that beyond the finite walls there is hope. Hope to witness history unfold and the casino of justice to hit the jackpot; like the echoes of the preachers, moulding civility into streets, I too, seek freedom. Whilst my 12 eyes cannot see it, my heart knows that the path to justice is paved with love and democracy. My beloved Doctor Martin Luther King has bestowed me with the ability to foresee evil permanently perish in the coming weeks. I know this is the fate of mankind.

Prejudice, like a single drop of water in the desert, is fleeting. Squirming to a concrete curb, I seek higher ground. I recall days ago, I saw the unfolding of wise justice in the streets below, a crowd of people surfing on a new wave of equality. This time it was different however, this was not the same Martin Luther, the man who saved me. I saw a dark-skinned man behind a dark pine podium. Perhaps he was a follower of Doctor King, I prayed, describe to me the freedom, sir, the freedom to the people, freedom to the institutions and freedom to the heart.”

The dark prophet started to speak. “Stay in the valley of despair” he proclaimed “for the dreams of justice, change and freedom is not the fiction you idolise. Brothers are fighting brothers, ignorant of the true enemy, the government, who has monopolised violence. They oppress the naive who struggle for a fair life. They project crocodile

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tears whilst they meet self-defence with guns and batons. We serve the system of white power through a façade of peace; peace is not the answer”

I stiffened my body as I knew he was wrong. The Ivory Tower of government does not fall through flames and fury, but through a mutual march up its steps until we meet face to face with the bureaucrats. I was not heard. Numerous supporters, with the roar of a black panther, chanted “Malcolm, Malcolm, Malcolm.” “We must not allow the white man to parade himself in fictions of doves and rainbows,” he continued. I was stunned, even threatened by the evil logic of this dark prophet. This warped view of humanity is as magnetic as it is cynical, the gates of justice respond to an open, nonviolent heart. Yet he continued.

“Much like the caterpillar, we cannot see change without breaking down what is already there. However, the caterpillar envies the butterfly, not understanding the sacrifice it made, the risks it took to seek flight. You see, the caterpillar consumes everything around it, absorbs itself in its shell, and when it is ready breaks down the walls which confines it, emerging as a graceful butterfly.” I zoned out, I felt dirtied by this incoherent spew of violent rhetoric; for it is my mission to fulfill the peaceful dreams of Doctor King. Malcolm X pounded the podium, the aggression of his gavel fists mirrored the violent messages he imposed on the people below him. He kept speaking, “We must not be enslaved by the idea of an easy path to justice. We must burn down the institutions that command us; they want us to be blinded by the shell in which they entrap us, but we will not submit. No victory without sacrifice. No victory without sacrifice. No

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victory without sacrifice. I stand here telling you, my friends, that the fight is just getting started and we will not fall. No, we will not. We will fight like the panther and from the ashes of Jim Crow, we the black phoenix will rise. We will rise” The crowd sang back, echoing the preachings of Malcolm, worshipping the totem of violence. I moved on, refusing to let myself be subjugated by this warmongering rhetoric. Bold passions of fight and injustice discredit the flames of freedom that engulf the streets. I am certain that lawmakers will hear the case of Martin Luther and release the shackles of Jim Crow. I recall the sounds of Washington Marches: flags of unity flapping against the pole, drumming of half a million feet crying the tune of “We shall overcome.” I Recall the courage of non-violence overpowering the dwindling evil left in the world that has tried time and time again to divide man. Hugging the white pillar, it was time.

Upside-down, I adhere to the white wall, a tall monument for which the city was named. A softshell of green overtook my body, consumed me until I could not see past the green of my cocoon. Through time, I endured, I endured metamorphosis. At last, I was ready. The softshell of my cocoon crumbled, and I fluttered, a butterfly, ready to witness the arc of history, the justice of civil rights, unfold before my eyes. Through the grace of God, I ascend, climbing the stairs to the pillars of justice, ready to view the heavenly earth below. This is to be my fate.

I Emerge with the beautiful colours of a kaleidoscopic vision but below the world looks violent.

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Below, a tribe of white-robed men approached the dark holes for eyes, an abyss, reminiscent of the demonic Yellow Jackets. Instinctively, I was afraid. These men wielding flames of passion on a burning cross confront protestors, the linked arms of future justice. Together, blurring together a violent web, an inglorious dance.

When I was grounded, I pictured this path to freedom as a canvas lined with freedom and peace for all, ready to take its place in the halls of history. As suddenly as I ascended, I see the canvas splattered red. Expecting passionate unity, like the men and women who obediently followed Moses across the Red Sea. I see waves of unfounded hatred crush their flimsy hopes. And as I foresaw the bank of liberty cashing in the cheques of peril. I witnessed poverty. Without suffering, it would be impossible to shape a unified peace out of the marble slab of America; for these men are both the sculptors and the sculptures. Both the ballot and the bullet. Unprecedented, I feel a great wind, an immense movement. The white-headed bald-eagle pierces my existence, swallows me. As quickly as it swoops, targeting the exterior of my body, it leaves; returning to the nest that lay on the white pillars of the Capitol. A mere butterfly consumed is an afterthought by a great power. Yet, through my execution, in which my body was disgraced, left a single wing fluttering towards the state park, the same streets that were paraded with the half a million heroic passions of unity. So that caterpillars might still learn to fly.

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A LETTER TO TED HUGHES

Soul of Fox

Died 1969, England By Lucie Gill

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I imagine this midnight moment’s forest:

Something else is alive Beside the clock’s loneliness

And this blank page where my fingers move

Ted Hughes, ‘The Thought-Fox’

What I fear most, I think, is the death of the imagination Sylvia Plath

Dear Mr Hughes,

I would like to begin this letter by expressing my deepest condolences. I, too, have felt the trauma, pain and agony of losing someone close. And as my daughter once said, something that I will never forget, it is very easy to choose to die if every breath is a matter

of choice. And no matter the hours, days, weeks and months that pass, I know that guilt does not fade. But despite it being in our nature to dwell on the pain of the past, we must make a conscious effort to attempt to bound forward.

Enough about pain. I write to tell you I have always admired your poetry, raw; exposed, animal. You weren’t lying. It wasn’t an attempt to create something ground-breaking; it was yours and it was real. The Hawk and the Rain was the first poem I heard of yours when I was just a pup, I imagined myself a bird, free and wild, competing against the elements, only to fail and die. It was undeniably and unquestionably real. You didn’t hide behind the fairy-tale, the lies, the stories written by Beatrix Potter and A.A Milne, and for that I will always admire you.

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I am writing this from outside your window. The crisp golden leaves are falling mournfully only to be swept swiftly away in bundles of crimson. The last peaches, the triangular beechnuts, and the red leaves of the cherry trees quivering in the November dusk. You’re watching TV intently, I can hear the static voice of the reporter, as you observe the destruction in Derry. An attack. Two officers shot dead. I have begun to notice these reports are growing in number, each night I come and stare into your glass panes illuminated by a soft golden light. Nearby, the men train, fearing an attack in London is imminent. I can hear their drills above my burrow, the shouting in the rain, anger entrenched into their voices and an ocean of mud that slowly drips down only to overwhelm my home. But please do not think of me as a stalker - I am but a little fox who is drawn to your creative prowess.

I try to write as you do, draw inspiration from your work. We, poets and writers, as you know, battle against ourselves, trying not to relinquish what we hold onto in the deepest parts of our souls. It’s difficult to put into the world something so private, something meant for only those who truly understand who you are. I have my favourite poems of yours, Red, The Drowned Woman and A pink wool knitted dress, but all seem to have a common bond, your exwife.

You see I too have an ex-wife, Samantha, she and I met in Oxford, spending time with a skulk who was renowned for their concrete poetry. We got married less than three weeks later, tossed and flung into ardent, all-consuming love, before anything had smudged. Within a month we found ourselves in North Yorkshire in love with its bleak but bewitching terrain and infatuated with the men who worked above our home, waiting and practising for the day they would be needed. It seemed like quite the exhausting job, waiting to be called up with the threat of the blackness and void of death, but

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something that evidently gave them purpose. Before we knew it, we had quadruplets, Sybil, Arthur, Gabriel and Esme now fully grown, except for Sybil.

You see Sybil was a writer too, she would often fountain a monologue, spent her days watching the soldiers practise from a distance both admiring them and condemning them. She saw the beauty in the army rigidity, their desire for perfection. But she also saw the horror, their power to cause destruction. Their youth went quickly, Esme got married, Arthur joined Foxes for a Communist England and Gabriel went on his tour of Europe. She grew quiet and began to remove herself. We tried to help, took her out to hunt but that youthful shameless joy did not return. We suggested she visited my sister, Alice, down south near Cornwall. She left in a rush “I catch a glimpse of that sea they all talk about”. After two weeks we heard the news, she had walked into the ocean and submitted to the cruel, ruthless waves. You see Mr Hughes, it is not only humans who yield to their cruellest thoughts, but all of us. It has nothing to do with

being human, and everything to do with being animal.

After that, things got difficult. Our bitterness grew and Samantha moved out. Guilt and death are quite remarkable, some people fight, battle to get through the pain and the majority of us surrender to it. So, I began to write.

I am working on a poem at the moment inspired by The Troubles. I was intrigued by how quickly something can divide us, something as magnificent and personal as religion. When the British army arrived in August in an attempt to quell the growing civil disorder, I saw the horror, on your face, on the faces of the men who live above me and by the words used by journalists. I became obsessed, plagued by the hostility that engrossed Northern Ireland. The words the reporter used revolved around my mind until I was begging my brain to let

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them retreat. But the same words stuck, and I decided to publish my first poem:

I can smell it,

The metallic odour of burnt matches and decaying eggs as the gun powder overwhelms the city

the children wait

Entrenched in darkness,

Hungry for it to be over Their throats raw from wails

Soon it was systematic,

The empty and deafening sound of the rounds of ammunition Brought solace

Tranquilized by the systematic pouring of granules from bags The sergeant barks his orders

The wrath of the rioters Happy to die

They close their eyes

Wait

Pray

Stay

Breathless for the smell to go

Your wife was a very interesting woman. She embraced the complexity and beauty of motherhood. Her collection Ariel became a manifesto for feminists. Sybil thought it was extraordinary, a remarkable attempt to fight against the phallocentric society that constrains women, whilst seeing the beauty and power of having, “Books and Babies and Beef stew”. I admired that, and I admired that in my own wife, who embraced motherhood, who longed for it. That’s not to say there is anything wrong with a woman who does

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not seek motherhood. But there is something warming about a woman who is in complete adoration of her own children.

Many seem to blame you. They see you as an egotistical man who thrusted her to her death. They despise you; her grave has been savaged by those who see you as an enemy. Why should your name lie on her tombstone, they argue. She was an individual in her own right, they have said. And perhaps in some way I can understand their unearthed rage. A writer that spoke to masses of women who were battling with their role as a mother and as an individual. But I do not blame you, you did not place her head into that oven. You did not push her to the edge of her cliff of abyss.

I cannot give you an exact reason for my letter, other than my veneration for your poetry, perhaps it’s that I am also dying. Cancer. But don’t pity me, I think it’s time. The only thing that I will miss is not my family, though I do love them, but when I fall asleep at night, I will not be able to think of a story or the beginning of my next poem and I will worry that the art we hold so close in our hearts is a dying pursuit that will eventually fall away into to oblivion.

Now I have said all that I have wanted to say. And I am listening to you from the garden next to your dwindling, bare rose bush, observing you write your poem. Possibly you are trying to comprehend if you were in fact to blame for her suicide as I watch you pace across your living room looking as if at any moment you will fall to the ground, exasperated, repeating “What happened that night? Your final night”. So, Mr Hughes, as I begin to feel drowsy, cold and hungry I will wander back into my burrow and fall asleep, give into the malady and accept the void, while writing a story in my head.

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STAY

Soul of Corgi

Died 1997, England By Eliza Frazer

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“Heaven goes by favour. If it went by merit, you would stay out, and your dog would go in.” Mark Twain

“Only in death do the two parallel lines converge and after death perhaps, cross over to become parallel again; hence the widespread belief in the transmigration of souls.” John Berger

Dearest Diana, It has been a year since the news broke, a tumultuous marriage that no one could save. You longed for his love, maybe too hard and too fast, tremendously torn between mother and monarchy. You were trained into a new life, had the old trained out of you, just like my ancestors, purebred with our curated genes. My Great Grandmother Susan was the first of Mummy’s many, spoilt rotten and yet fiercely loyal. We slept in wicker baskets raised above the floor so our fur would not get cold overnight and turn our coats to stone. I have no doubt you wonder why I write to you; our souls now intertwined. When I closed my velvety, chocolate brown eyes for the last time, the light faded, and I entered a tunnel into the abyss. After our delightful journey, we arrived at our annual summer retreat on the grounds of Balmoral Castle. I enjoyed nothing more than when my paws delicately glided across the dewy manicured grass, the weight of my chubby, round stomach bouncing from left to right. Shamefully, a waddle more than a walk. The sound of kestrel birds kleeing as they sang their graceful morning song and my nostrils engulfed with the delectable, sweet rose scent from the regal pelargoniums that edged the herbaceous borders. These lined the same path we always trod together; a time when we could be alone, allowing Mummy’s tender voice to unload her troubles as I listened.

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The air has a strange thickness to it today, the water in the river flows slowly, drip-feeding the intricate ecosystem that surrounds it. It puzzles me how dependent the food chain is, a hierarchical manipulation that can suspend or foster life around it. It was early in the morning, and through the window I could see no stars. I opened one eye as the high-pitched ring of the telephone entered my muddled dreams. Turning my left ear outwards I could now hear the pacing of Robert’s footsteps. He seemed agitated as he made his way towards Mummy’s bedroom. I heard her speak and from the tone of her voice, I could sense the disbelief of the incomprehensible event she’d just been informed of. As the sounds became muffled in my weary state, I thought I heard Charles say, “They’ll blame me, they’ll blame us for this.” Dawn broke under an orange sky, a pale rose-pink swirled through the clouds. She was getting ready for the morning church service when I noticed new shoes neatly placed on the floor. The same Anello and Davide’s, yet this time rather than patent leather, they’re a solid leather, the gold buckle clearly absent. Suspended on the hanger above me was a black skirt and blouse. I watch intently as she gave two light spritzes of her Floris White Rose perfume, the same perfume she’s worn since I was a puppy. This comforted me as I found myself chasing my tail, dazed as I span around in endless circles, my coping mechanism when I felt unsettled. It wasn’t until the pages of the newspapers started dancing over the tartan carpet that I realised what all this commotion was about. I walked over to them and saw the wreckage of a car emblazoned on the front page, coupled with your portrait. Tragically you had died. It was then that I relieved myself, having not been properly toilet trained, allowed to do such things when and where I pleased. Perhaps, this reflected how I felt about the British press or, perhaps it was just because they’d forgotten to take me outside. Just as you

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had spoken about how the press had hounded you, in the coming days it would be Mummy who was their next target. That night amidst all the chaos of people coming and going, Mummy still managed to feed me. As she carefully placed my silver bowl down, I could smell the chicken. Free-range, of course, grown here on the estate. I finished the last piece and made one last lick around the bowl ensuring I hadn’t missed something. It was then that I pondered… “What did you eat for your last meal? Was it on a silver plate or in a bowl such as mine? Were you sleeping on the finest Egyptian cotton sheets, changed daily?” You were at the Ritz after all. As Mummy and I walked towards my wicker basket one last thought entered my mind as I nuzzled down on my crisp sheet. When would we meet again? After days of keeping the princes occupied, shielding them from the ensuing news spectacle and tabloid headlines one of which read “Show Us You Care”, we returned home to Buckingham Palace. Mummy had relented with the flag and agreed that the Union Jack would fly half-mast once she left for the funeral service. Most of the day I sat in the window trying to catch a glimpse of the thousands of mourners who placed flowers, cards, and teddies at the Palace gates. All in your honour. I wandered the corridors searching for Mummy when I spied her seated at the Chippendale desk in her drawing-room. I placed my tired body a few inches away from her worn, brown leather loafers. She had spent considerable time tediously contemplating the address she would give to the nation in response to your death, anxiously ensuring she encapsulated the emotions of the Crown and her people. On black-edged paper, stamped with the Palace crest were the words, “No one who ever knew Diana will ever forget her”. Her usual dignified tone was now ambivalent, as her soft whispers trickled down to my tail and she said to me, “Phoenix, how do they

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expect me to lead my nation when no one understands I too need time to grieve?” I saw the tears no one else did, I heard the words no one else ever will. I would catch myself staring adoringly into Mummy’s eyes as she tenderly rubbed the fur between my ears. Her hands restrained, weary as she navigated being a grandmother and a Queen. Her delightful smile hid amongst her newly pale skin, her cheeks no longer with a rosy undertone. Perhaps it was my prudence that noticed the new wrinkles that graced her forehead. Pressure continued to mount from outside as the public slander and media tabloids drained her every being. I would rub my body against her nylon stockings, absorbing her pain as I felt her warmth drain away. Your death was equally as sorrowful for her, as it was for the rest of the world. If only the world saw how vulnerable she was, how fragile she had become. Another Annus horribilis. I waddled beside her through the Palace grounds as she tried to keep the rest of the family together, a task that saw every fibre of her being slowly pulled away from her. Mummy was rather proud of how the world united amidst your death. The same world that believed your death was no accident, premeditated out of jealousy. There was little I could do, all I had was compassion, the very same compassionate spirit as you. I wanted to tell the world Mummy needed a break from the relentless pressure, that she too was human. I took her pain and held onto it, so she didn’t have to, but as my pace slowed down to match hers, my body struggled to cope. After all, you said I was just a moving carpet following the monarch around everywhere.

Two weeks after you took your last breath, I took mine. Graciously outliving my expiration date. Sadly, I had no glorious death, my loyal companionship meant Mummy’s pain was far too much for my tiny frail frame. She told me not to go and I disobeyed her orders, but I held on for as long as I could. She was the oxygen we all breathed; I just couldn’t hang onto the little oxygen she had left to give. As I

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inhaled the cool air of the castle for the last time, I returned to the poem Ted Hughes wrote for you, his words with me as I closed my eyes one last time and entered the dark tunnel.

Mankind is many rivers That only want to run. Holy Tragedy and Loss Make the many One. Mankind is a Holy, crowned Mother and her Son.

For worship, for mourning: God is here, is gone. Love is broken on the Cross.

The Flower on the Gun.

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EUCALYPTUS GLOBULUS

Soul of Koala

Died 2019, Australia By Tom Ross

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Dear Judith Wright, I was feeling lost, confused. I could taste the dense clouds of smoke, enveloping my home. The smoke was dry, had a vivid red glow to it. Red to me was a fearful colour, the colour of danger in nature, it never meant anything good. The only red thing that brought me happiness that I can remember is the red fabric some humans wore when they came to see me. That made me happy, they made me happy. The thought of my home with all the laughs and smiles on the little children’s faces that I created made me warm inside. Although I was already warm enough inside. And sometimes smiling teeth through red lipstick. Teeth bared in laughter, not like scary dog or fox teeth. Sometimes there would be flame, but the flame was contained in squat little boxes, or on the end of small sticks. The source of this luminous and bitter ash smog came a with an unbearable heat. As the heat got more and more intolerable, a sound of snapping and cracking seemed to stab my fluffy ears with more kick to it. My ears, my radar, my warning system, were suffering. I was suffering, this was red pain. I could feel and hear the hot blood pumping around my whole 10 kilo body, like footsteps when a group of humans once came to look at me and hold me. I hope the humans turn up soon, they always do. Surely. Maybe they were busy dealing with more difficult animals, like the dog they always shout at while it runs away from them and barks. I know I am their favourite animal because they never call or shout like that to me, only cry out in a happy tone. I am the animal they come to see. Always the first thing they do when they climb out of their steel vehicle, they gesture to each other, whisper and laugh, and point their small black squares at me. I do miss those times; it feels a lot longer than a few days ago that I had my last encounter with a human. It was a scorcher of a day; my fluffy suit couldn’t bear it. The heat was starting to get to me, my paws beginning to feel chalky, as they began to crack and tear. Even

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the humans knew not to touch my paws. They were so respectful of me. Or maybe it was my fingers. Whenever they saw my fingers, they stepped back, and drew a substantial breath, as though air had become scarce, and the humans have become selfish. But none of two things could happen. I’m not sure why they feared my fingers, they have fingers too, we are all the same. Saying that, I thought that the humans’ fingers were weird. Their nails were blunt, like the top half had been sliced off clean, and the nails had grown to a more rounded shape, so it didn’t look “as” strange. But the attention that these humans gave me made me immediately forget my imaginational thoughts I often ponder over. As the day went on, the I saw more and more faces, some familiar, some not. But everyone’s faces did have one thing in common that was very salient to my life, and that what their facial features. All the humans had fluorescent white bone like gems in their mouths, all 32 of them. They always brought happiness to me. I honestly don’t know how. Their grills must turn up the heating in my bodies central heating system. Some of the younger humans had smaller, or less pearls in their mouths, and then some humans didn’t have any, or at least show them to me. I can’t lie, I didn’t like those people, they weren’t nearly enthusiastic as the others. I hated them to the point where I wouldn’t let them touch me. they didn’t deserve to feel my high demand fur. I’m not an object. You can’t just expect to come to see me, without showing the slightest emotion. I see straight through the humans, all their thoughts, whether they’re scared, excited, or just acting tough Infront of me. Humans, bloody hell they are phenomenal. I sure do love them, and they love me just as much I am sure of it.

I don’t know where they are now though, and I have no explanation for the lack of surging steel vehicles flooding the carpark at the sanctuary on the coast. Surely even in this heat struck and cloudy smoke situation the humans, who are so good to me will come. Come pay me a visit, or even better, take me somewhere where the circumstances are far more bearable for my what seemed to be

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liquifying figure. The animal sanctuary resembled a horror film set, the crackling white noise was the intense background noise, and the smog from the ash clouds represented plot fog. No one was in sight, not even my carer. She would always be with me when I needed comfort or support. She was everything to me. but she was nowhere to be seen, as if she had been sucked up by the clouds of cinders. That one dog that was always causing a ruckus, being a pain for everyone, was dead silent. I couldn’t even hear his chain he was bound to chinking with his movements. I felt more alone than ever. Mum and Dad. Where were they. They must be hiding within the silhouette of the thick mask of smoke surrounding the coastline sanctuary. They were my only hope of making it out of this environment, and they were nowhere in sight. I decided to scurry around the small proximity of the sanctuary to find mum and dad. As I crawled around at a unhurried pace, the hard to swallow smoke in the air didn’t get weaker. It got to the point where I would only be able to find them if I physically ran into them. Only then would I feel some love and temporary protection from the fire. As I pondered around the diversly natural sanctuary, I stumbled across the car park, which once used to bear the weight of several tonnes of rubber and steel. Now, holding up the mass of a single koala, full of fear, loneliness, and a rapid heart rate. If the humans cared for me, they would be here by now. The crackling was increasing in magnitude, and the red glow was getting more and more angry. Maybe humans are that good to me. maybe then don’t care about me. maybe I am just an object. I was now well and truly on my own now. You once spoke about a “furious animal”, angered by the humans’ actions. Yep, that’s me, you wrote about me, the infuriated koala who was so naive to human nature and their selfishness which they mask with entertainment and enjoyment. They really are a bunch of bastards, humans are. I wish the humans were here once more, not to comfort me or save me, but for them to witness and experience the agony and severity of what they have done to me and the rest of the animals at the sanctuary. I want to hear their pleads for help

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overpower the sounds of destruction in the distance. I would be thrilled; I could die in peace. However, that wasn’t going to happen, the humans were not coming back. The source of the terror at the sanctuary was getting closer, I could feel it more and more, blood was now pulsating around my head. Behind the thick Behind the thick curtain of cinders, piercing orange flickers traced the outlines of the tall leering gumtrees. The blinding flames licked the gumtrees. The heat from the now exposed blaze beyond survivable. I had to hurry along out of the death trap of the enclosed sanctuary. The tall leaning trees, charred from the bottom began to tip over, resulting in an airstrike of falling gumtrees. This was nightmare, I must have been hallucinating, this can’t possibly be happening. the gum leaves I had today must have got me drugged out. Pinching and twisting every body part did nothing, reality didn’t change. This was real. There was only one way out, the asphalt road which all the selfish, self-centred humans use daily. The black tar of the road branded my paws, which were already sensitive enough. This was worse than walking over gum nuts daily. I had to keep enduring the agonising burn, otherwise the fire, which was fierce enough now to sweep up my soul and anything else in its path. Its like as though you had written about this moment in time, where you read “suffer, wild country, like the ironwood that gaps the dozerblade”. The country sure was suffering. The wall of fire was as vicious at a dozer blade, consuming and devastating everything in its path. Through the array of gumtrees, was the ocean. Water. Water is the one thing that I use to cool myself down. I had venture towards the ocean. I however had to risk waddling through some dense vegetation, littered with ancient gumtrees, lurking high above what was visible, due to the pollution like smog. I could hear the fire behind me catching up to what was me, an insignificant koala enveloped by a substantial forest of fuel load for the fire. The heat felt as though it was pinching at my skin, melting away the silky fur protecting it. my disproportionally sized ears were melting away, shrivelling up like a toasted marshmallow. In agony I slowed down,

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letting the devastating wall of flame take me as one of its many victims. the common knowledge still prevails, “no land animal can escape a bushfire”.

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THE LONGEST RACE

Soul of Horse

Date of death unknown, Australia By Sophie Salter

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‘How could we fail to love an animal who would take up our causes for us whether they were tranquil agricultural efforts, or this horrible thing called war?’ - War Horse

‘Loyal to their own, loyal to the cycle and to the Creator’ - Tim Winton

I can never quite comprehend the kindness I was shown by the humans who surrounded me from childhood. From the first day that I can recall, as a young colt, being raised in a large paddock under the nurturing watch of the Castlemaine trees, I was tended to by my first trainer, Tim. I watched as he would feed, strap and brush the other horses daily, yet I always felt I held a superior position in his mind. His attention to us diminished as the years went on, but so did the necessity for us to be attended to. Being brought up to race is an honour to begin with. Other horses I had come across since travelling around the state, had passed along stories, telling us tales of horses being involved in grueling conditions and forced to suffer for men. At war, we are the most trusted breed to assist them in their cruel endeavours. After overhearing some Sydney mares gossiping last month, it struck me for the first time that those horses who had been selected to leave the farm and join the Australian military, may not be enjoying privileges as significant as mine. Ruby, the closest filly to me growing up, was taken into the military. Her devotion to humans has little reward in my opinion, but such ingratitude never seems to matter to us, we serve. At the time, if Tim had asked me to go elsewhere and do anything other than race, I would have obeyed without question. In recent moments however, I would not have been able to leave him behind.

Tim and I had always been interested in racing. His father was a trainer and had been priming him to fill his shoes since the day he was born. Without surprise, when the time came for Tim to move on from the Paddocks of Castlemaine, I was brought with him to further my race training. We had just stepped into the real racing industry;

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we were becoming professionals, new people came, and they went, but there was always Tim. I met many other horses and at first it was a dream come true. The surreal moment of trotting into a stable that was pristine and lined with perfectly fit racehorses, was one I could never forget. However, the dream was not everlasting as I had imagined it to be. Many times, during my happy days with Tim, I would see the paddock at home and catch myself wondering that if life could be as it was, I may have been happier. But it didn’t matter. I knew Tim was happy. Often, I would return from the beach, floating on the feeling of strolling across the soft sand, hearing the crash of the morning waves and feeling them brush past my hooves, only to return to the constant complaints of the others. “We cannot be tortured like this any longer” was the first objection I had paid any attention to. After being standoffish, they surprised me with their drastic opinions on the supposed mistreatment they claimed us to be receiving. They claimed we were used for the human's gain, personally as entertainment, and financially if we were to win. They never spoke their trainers' names, rather referred to them as ‘the humans. I wanted them to see that I am doing this for my own gain and could only imagine the feeling of being the first one to cross the finish line, when the time came. However, without admission, I did it for Tim, I did everything for Tim. I don’t know how long we were there some mornings, which was how I could tell that time had been well spent. The beach was my favourite part of the gruelling training, I felt free. When I thought about what the routine would look like as a racer, I saw barriers and water troughs and much running, but the sandy strolls and salty steps in the crystal morning sea were the surprises of my glorious preparation. If only I could have dreamt it, the scenery alone would have surpassed my expectations. When the sun poured through the slight cracks of the barn each morning, I imagined what the rising

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light would look like at the beach. The distant waves pummelled in the background as I walked towards the coast; the earth beneath us seemed to hum. These were the cold mornings, when even during the winter storms Tim couldn’t resist taking me back. Later, there was a major change of scene, that I had been waiting for without ever knowing -. the swarming crowds, more people than I had ever seen at one moment in time. People sitting in lavish garments and eating miniature foods. All of them were watching. It was marvellous. It was racing. My big moment, or so I thought; the barriers open, I leap further than I thought I could ever, and as I’m running, ‘crack’. I leap forward again, in total shock at the sharp lashes being hurled onto to me from above. Curiously I peripherally glance at the other horses, and to much amazement, they too were being whipped. My mind was too perplexed to give it thought, but the cruel angry cuts forced me to increase my speed. I was the first to cross. And once again, everything changed. I could tell the other horses weren’t impressed. They would murmer as I returned to my stall and they never included me, but I didn’t mind, I was successful, and making Tim proud. Returning to the stables was dreadful, yet their whispering chatter kept me awake, not because they were loud, but because of the constant reminder of the moment I felt the sting of the whip. They had always talked about ‘poor treatment’, but I never thought they made any sense. As weeks passed, they began to accept my presence and pleaded with me to understand their views on the trainers. I would sit and listen, to feel less alone, but I could not stand for the slander of the people who gave us everything. I was more successful than them at the end of the day, I don’t blame them for being jealous. The next race came around sooner than we had all expected. I was almost more nervous. I was being walked up to the barriers when from a distance I saw a swarm of people, pushing through the

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crowds, screaming in anger. Their raised signs were causing such distraction. Security ran towards them, their words were left ringing through my mind, ‘You lose your money; they lose their lives’. Their echoes and the words of the other horses clouded my head. I couldn’t see it then, but the anger inspired me. I ran faster than ever, the lashes on my back fuelling the rage. I won, and I won, and I won. Everything was good after that, just photos, gleeful screams from the crowd and sometimes tears of joy. Nothing made me happier than seeing Tim smile. The news of the people with the signs was all that was talked about after they had made an appearance at almost every race, for months. The same messages and similar despondent lines written on big poster boards. I heard Tim call them animal activists, I had always thought about the stallions in my stable like that. Activists. So brainless. That’s what Tim said anyway. The new obsession with these people made it harder to stay connected to the other horses with whom I had just made connections. They were praising this rubbish about our ‘detrimental conditions’, as if we were going to die. The trainers on the other hand, didn’t want to hear about it. I seemed to be the only horse to remain loyal to our people, ironically the only horse to remain loyal to our own nature. It was a starry night over the main stable, where restless stallions ached from lengthy hours of training. We could not sleep, we never really did, we just dozed off at early hours of the morning, only to be woken at what felt like even earlier. But that had not happened yet on this night. I heard whispers, not from the boys, but from the outside. The whispers turned to talks and the talks turned into screams. We were confused at first, the trainers didn’t sleep close by, had we missed our night-time nap, was it time for yet another day I wasn’t ready for? The screams were chant like; I knew them all too well. A burning flash came with the swing of the stable doors. The chanting stopped and the people screamed at us to run free. ‘They can't hurt you anymore’. I couldn’t believe what I was

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witnessing. I immediately thought of how angry Tim would be in that moment.

Without question the first three horses bolted. I saw the horses from the other stables running chaotically alongside them. They looked foolish, but they did look free in a sense. The people kept screaming, I lay on the ground trying to stay hidden. I heard a blazing noise amongst a moment of silence. I opened one eye; all the others had left. The activists were outside the stable again and I was drained of all hope. I hated myself for feeling like that, I was the one that stayed, that was the right thing to do. The screaming began again, this time followed by the crackling of a bright orange glow I had only feared until that moment. Everyone knows horses are afraid of fire, but I was calm.

The guilt continued to fill my body, or maybe it was the heat. I was down, I was sorry, but I was ready. Ready to see Tim somewhere else, ready to feel peace, ready to put this never-ending conflict behind me. I thought about Ruby, I wondered how she was. The sides of the barn were engulfed. The sweat brought me visions of the beach, the last time I would feel wet, the salty feeling of the clear blue. It made me cry. I was rising upwards with the flames. gasoline filled my nostrils, and the sharp glowing fire took me over. As I closed my eyes, I thought Tim might just come for me, he might have just been there soon. The farm came to mind, back when it was good, back when I was excited. I remembered Tim, I waited for Tim, I knew I would see him, until I breathed my last.

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This article is from:

A Little Birdy Told Me