Litro166 teaser by Litro Magazine

AFTER DARK

Robin Dunn Chinweokwu Ukwueze Viviane Vives Susanna Crossman Regi Claire Lucie Britsch Allyson Fairchild

Cover | Joshua B. Huitz

ISSUE  LITRO MAGAZINE Editor- in-Chief Eric Akoto | eric.akoto@litro.co.uk Assistant Editor Barney Walsh | barney@litro.co.uk Art Director Elina Nikkinen Head of Development & Partnerships Maria Salvatierra Arts editor Daniel Janes | arts@litro.co.uk Online Editors James Cook | essays@litro.co.uk Catherine McNamara | flash@litro.co.uk Hayley Camis | tuesdaytales@litro.co.uk Story Sunday | barney@litro.co.uk Subscription enquiries subs@litro.co.uk or +44 0203 371 9971 USA: 646 519 2452 All other enquries info@litro.co.uk Cover image Still Life Study by Joshua B.Huitz © Litro Magazine LTD November 2017

Litro Magazine’s November 2017 issue is filled with stories about what goes on after darkness has fallen, when we think no one’s watching, or after-hours, when everything’s shut. Secrets and shady stuff, illicit activity, or things more magical: the store mannequins come to life, elves appear to do the poor shoemaker’s work (but not the poor writer’s, alas) .. or scarier stuff, too: the vampires and ghouls and zombies and werewolves come out to play, and to eat us all up. So as the NHS goes into its winter crisis, as the Little Match Girl freezes to death in the darkness, along with so many others, as we enter this darkest time of year with only some ancient pagan rites involving mistletoe and alcohol to see us through to the spring, we have in these pages a movie shot in the night in Robin Dunn’s “Black Moon”, actors too in Viviane Vives’s “The Lit Window”, some disturbing late-night encounters in Chinwe O’Brien’s “The Beautiful Coffin”, a bizarre transformation in Susanna Crossman’s “Wild Things, or The Law of Superposition”, a summer evening’s mushroom-fuelled party going wrong in Regi Claire’s “Fallen Maidens”, some even less expected late-night visitants in Lucie Britsch’s “Night Sharks 2”, and a newlywed’s sleeplessness driving her out into the night in Allyson Fairchild’s “Triadic”. We hope you enjoy these stories: something to warm you just a teeny bit, something to while away a few minutes while we wait for the long-overdue collapse of civilisation – speeded up by Brexit and Trump, of course – to take us into a new, and this time endless, Dark Age. Eric Akoto, Editor-In-Chief www.litro.co.uk @LitroMagazine @LitroMagazine

TABLE OF CONTENTS

www.litro.co.uk @LitroMagazine

#166 After Dark

Contributors

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@LitroMagazine

Black Moons - Robin Dunn

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The Beautiful Coffin - Chinweokwu Ukwueze

Wild Thing, or The Law of Superposition - Susanna Crossman

Fallen Maidens - Regi Claire

Night Sharks 2 - Lucie Britsch

Triadic - Allyson Fairchild

Todo es de Color - Children of Catalunya - Viviane Vives

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POETRY

FLASH FICTION INTERVIEW

Art

E ART

ESSAY

3 3 CONTRIBUTORS

Robin Dunn lives in Los Angeles, but is Chinweokwu Ukwueze is a Nigerian

trying to escape. In 2017 he was a finalist for writer born in Nsukka, Nigeria. He lives in poet laureate of his city. Lagos. He studies English and Literature at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. He has been published in The Muse, Turk Magazine, Kalahari Review and university magazines. He is currently the editor of The Muse journal, Department of English, University of Nigeria, Nsukka. He believes that art is human, and as such, it pleases the soul. You can follow him on Twitter @obrienfic.

Viviane Vives owns an interdisciplinary

creative studio in film and architecture with her partner, MJ Neal, FAIA. She’s a Fulbright scholar for Artistic Studies (Tisch School Of the Arts, NYU) and her translation work, poems, and short stories have been published internationally. As a photographer, filmmaker, and co-owner for the design studio she has exhibited internationally and won many awards. Viviane's poetry has recently been accepted for publication by Southeast Missouri University Press and her poetry book manuscript, The Cities and the Dead, will be finished in 2018. She's also working on a poetic prose version of the book in Spanish.

Susanna Crossman is a British writ-

er based in France. She is co-author of the French novel, L’Hôpital, Le dessous des Cartes (LEH, 2015). Her writing has been published in The Creative Review, The Stockholm Review of Literature, RIC Journal, BlueFifth Review, Visual Verse and elsewhere. She is part of the Dangerous Women Project and her work was shortlisted for the Bristol Prize and Glimmer Train. She regularly collaborates on hybrid projects with visual artists, filmmakers and musicians. Susanna Crossman is represented by Craig Literary. Read more at: @crossmansusanna

CONTRIBUTORS

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Regi Claire is a Swiss-born, Edinburgh- Allyson Fairchild is a full-time student based short story writer and novelist twice shortlisted for a Saltire Book of the Year award and longlisted for the Edge Hill Prize and MIND Book of the Year. Her work has been selected for Best British Short Stories and published in the UK, Europe, Australia and the USA. Regi is a former Royal Literary Fund Lector and Fellow. ‘Fallen Maidens’ is her second story in Litro Magazine.

and part-time historical tour guide at Flagler College in St. Augustine, Florida. She has been recognized in high school by earning school-wide writing awards. Currently, she is majoring in Psychology and Sociology with a minor in Creative Writing. In her spare time, Allyson enjoys reading, yoga, and listening to vinyl records.

Lucie Britsch writes odd things that have

appeared in Barrelhouse, Splitlip, The Millions, Catapult, Volume1 Brooklyn and Five2One. Epiphany and Jellyfish Review forthcoming. She has two honourable mentions from Glimmer Train. She says, “I’m working on two books because I have to be difficult. My writing won’t change the world but it might make someone laugh.” @LucieBritsch

Joshua B Huitz is an emerging Photog-

rapher based out of New York, photographing mainly Street Photography, Fine Art and Landscape. Josh's ability to see and capture everyday life and present it in a unique fashion is influenced by the texture of film, cinema and art. Joshua has been exhibited internationally and published in the 2017 Wild View Animals Of NYC Calendar, The Tishman Review, The Apeiron Review, Shrill Cats Magazine, Shadows and Light Magazine and Vines Literary Journal.

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Black Moons

Robin Dunn New York had not yet completely died… “It’s so nice to feel good,” she said, and touched herself while she sucked his cock. Strewn over the table were the implements of their game, which had been her game first, and was now his too. Nothing kinky. It was art. She was Julia; he was Thomas. Her boyfriend was Elliott. It had been Elliott’s idea, the project. There were some things you could only do in New York. He’d met them first after a private screening of a cut-in-progress of their work, and Elliott and Julia had seemed the perfect hipsters: hipsters from a time before it was a pejorative term, Village people from before it was a gay rock band, when it was just people in their Village and their art. Even though this was 2005. In her black, and her pageboy school cut, she could have been at home at any art school in Europe, though her contribution to Elliott’s project was more quotidian: she was just the leading lady. “Black-and-white tells the best stories,” Elliott had told him, high on weed and comfortably ensconced in his room on his favourite pillow. “It softens the edges; makes everything seem more real. But what I want to know, what I’m worried about, is the ending. That’s why I need you.” “I’ll do what I can,” Thomas had said. Really he was out of his depth, but he couldn’t leave. Elliott’s apartment was its own black and white story. Mirielle came in, in her characteristic sheer panties and ’80s T-shirt. She had a new haircut and looked depressed; she wandered slowly through the kitchen. “I can’t seem to find the right salad,” Mirielle said. “We’ll find you one later,” Elliott said. “Right now we need to shoot.” She held the book in her hands and propped herself up against the pillows and Thomas began to understand where Elliott was taking the thing: of course, first and foremost to some minds, it was a piece of genius just to take control of these beautiful young women, but Elliott was smarter than that, because he didn’t make them do anything overtly sexual. They just lounged around. Like odalisques, with nothing to do, in a New York hour, on a daddy-funded New York year, and where was the money coming from, anyway? Thomas didn’t want to ask. “It’s partly a documentary,” Miri had told him when she’d first ushered him upstairs to their apartment. “But also we’re acting. Elliott hasn’t decided yet where the story is going.” Thomas became part of the story. Like a key in a lock, or a beautiful piece of jewellery set into the shoulder of a Roman emperor before an orgy-of-state, he was important. *** Thomas had found himself stuck with both women, Miri and Julia, with only one umbrella, and rather than be a gentleman and hand it to the ladies he clutched it himself out of fear,

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The Beautiful Coffin Chinwe O’Brien I wasn’t mad – they were, all of them… On the day the woman I stayed with was supposed to go to the Nkwo market at Ibagwa-Aka, a man draped in dazzling white came to me before dawn. He was in white clothes and his face shone with much brightness. The white bulb in the veranda of the house where I slept shone on his face and made the brightness that came with him brighter. I lay on some old cartons, covered with the tattered wrapper the woman had given to me, starring at the quiet dusty road when he came. He was a young man, but he had grey hair all over him. He was on white slippers and they made slap, slap sounds as he walked towards me. When he got closer, I knew he was not among them, he was different. He stopped just before the uplifted surface of the veranda. “Well done,” he said. “Go away!” I said. I looked at him, and although I knew he was different, he might still act like them. He’d have told me something and when I disagreed, he would conclude that I was mad. I wasn’t mad – they were, all of them. “I’m not here to tell you what you’ve always heard,” the man said. I saw his eyes, his eyes had fear and pity, the ones I always saw on people’s faces when I walked around the town. His was fear and pity, but it wasn’t for me, it was for someone else. “Eh? Then what?” He looked up, and it made me wonder why he was looking up while he knew it was still dark. He looked up for a while before he stared fixedly at me, right into my eyes. His fixed eyes on me scared me, because his eyes were hollow, so hollow. There was such indefiniteness in his eyes. I looked away sharply. “I’m on my way to the land of the Dead,” he said. “I just came back here to tell you what will happen today, because you’ll be the one to defend me.” I looked shortly at him and looked away. Then, I knew he was mad as people said I was. He dressed well, but he was mad. I didn’t want to tell him that he was mad, because everyone was mad anyway. “You might not believe me, but you can touch me to confirm,” he said. He stretched his hand to me and it made me flinch. “Don’t be afraid, touch me.” I stared at him. I looked away and shook my head. People might believe I was mad, but I didn’t want to die – at least I was better than dead people. “Touch me,” he said. I turned and looked at his fair hand and the grey hair on it. I decided to try it. So, I stretched my hand to touch, but I touched nothing, because he was void. “I can’t touch your hands,” I said. “Yes, you can’t, because I am Dead.” He looked up again, shook his head pitifully and looked at me. “Today, my body will be cut into pieces and dumped in a bush like that of a dog.”

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Todo es de Color Children of Catalunya

Viviane Vives Behind a lone lit window… A charming lively plaza in el barrio de Gracia, behind a lone lit window on the third floor, a nineteen-year-old girl smokes a cigarette. Behind her, boy one is drinking wine with boy two, sprawled over bright green and yellow mattresses. She met boy two in drama class, she made him cry, made them all cry, even Maria Teresa, the teacher, who one day kissed her on the mouth, just like that, was sobbing too; because of her fierce, almost painful beauty, because of her rawness and truth, this girl made their stomachs hurt. She wore mortal fear and pain like a princess her mantle and crown. In the improv, she was dying, she had cancer, dared not tell her husband. “Is he really cheating on me? Worst of all is not the cancer, or even to die, it’s not to be able to communicate. My husband…” – she’s annoyed at herself because she cannot remember the actor’s name – “…anyway, I cannot connect with him, I suffer so fucking much because of this, not because I’m dying. It’s im-po-tence!” Her character’s horror is still vibrating through her. “How can I know death so intimately, though?” she wonders. “It felt like I brought death into the room! The accident?” Maybe. But being out of her body had brought her closer to life, if anything, fuelling her rage to live. “I did not meet death while I floated over the scene…” Maybe not the accident, but the wasting away inside endless casts, month after month, immobile, the metal sticking out of her like a bad Frankenstein movie. A boy from her class at Jesuits had made fun of her, it made her blurt out a terrible spell: “May the exact same thing happen to you that happened to me, so you will know what it feels like.” It worked, he had a motorcycle accident too, he broke the same leg. She would never forget the look of sheer panic he gave her the next time they saw each other, both in cast and crutches. He never addressed her again. It scared her too, brutally. From that day on, she became mindful of her desires. “It wasn’t Death, it's just a concept! It cannot give you pain, actually, because if you can get out of your body, see everything from above, as in a film, camera on crane, still hear everything up close; you cannot die; you just leave the body behind and make them all go away. I know this so well, yet the agony of this imaginary woman who is dying of cancer and cannot communicate with her husband, how she feels about her own death sentence, is quite real to me.” Interestingly, in the distant future, her parents will fight their way through that very scene, to the death, a muerte, both dying of cancer within months of each other, but unable to communicate, or even die in synch. Boy two is seventeen, has already forgotten all about the class, ready as hunger, he feels lonely, even now. Boy one is eighteen, more responsive to her touch than the clouds in the sky to the wind. Her little apartment with Vinçon mattresses on the floor smells of fried onions and wine, understands desperation well, and is very patient. Months ago, when she slowly opened the door of the apartment, shaking, it fell in love with her too; it held her firm-

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Wild Thing, or The Law of Superposition by Susanna Crossman Virginia’s past is stripped naked, laid bare, strata after decomposing strata… At midnight Virginia stirs, roused by a sound from the chicken coop: a feral scamper, a skittish cluck. An intoxicating scent hangs in the darkness. By Virginia’s bedside is a vase filled with cut scarlet buds. It is May and the weather is unusually hot. In the garden, the roses are blooming. Love at the velveteen petal’s edge. Beside Virginia, her husband lies embedded in sleep. Albert is upturned like a turtle, old flesh exposed. She feels his chest creak, rise and fall. The sheet undulates with his breath, soft and crisp as close-weave cambric. Outside, an owl hoots. The undergrowth crackles. Virginia slides from beneath the sheet. She has been dreaming of a necklace unearthed in a dusty back drawer. The pearl is turning, she thinks in the dream. She puts on an orange quilted dressing gown, wraps the fabric around her half-awakened body. A droop of breast. Broad shoulders. A length of wrinkled, speckled thigh. Downstairs, in the unlit hallway, her green wellingtons stand guard, two monumental tombs. The rubber boots are hard and empty against her bare feet, sacred chambers. Virginia eases open the back door. Outside, the night is like treacle and charcoal, a rich, deep, flowing black. She carries no torch, as the moon is full. It blazes in the sky like a Celtic shield, a celebration of dark hours. An ancient lustre. As she walks, Virginia’s eyes shrewdly dissect the landscape she has shaped for over thirty years. Mapping the scene, she surveys farm and garden, cultivated florals and patchworked fields. In the dark dairy shed, Jersey cows blink brown buttery eyes. Hooves shift on brittle straw. By the flowerbeds, the odour of roses coats the air, licking particles of the night. Snared by the perfume, Virginia hears a canine whine, another cluck. She forces her body towards the chickens; sturdy legs stride and strong arms swing. In the vegetable patch, she spies the fox amongst the carmine ripening strawberries. The creature is edging through the night. Now, it freezes on padded paws. A stilled, arched back, its bristled coat like suspended fire: scarlet and mandarin. Virginia is speechless. She doesn’t bellow as usual, or cast a hastily grabbed stone. Instead, she stares at the fox. The fox stares back. Seconds pass as their eyes meet. But then Virginia trips. She stumbles backwards. Her green wellington boot catches on a forgotten Frisbee. Her feet rise, carrying her body into motion. The world rotates like the plastic sphere that her sons once threw from hand to hand. They yelled “Here,” and “Over here,” stretching and spinning through their days. As Virginia soars, she reaches up for the stars, and catches a reddish blur of fox fur. An oval strawberry floats in the wind. For an instant, her body is suspended in space and

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Fallen Maidens by Regi Claire The perfect midsummer night… The wind had died down. The water now seemed to lap and nuzzle with gentle insistence. Everything was shaping up for a perfect midsummer night. Rainey stowed the wok and the coolers with the oil, samosas, fruit, ice and bottles in the prow of the dinghy. “Anything else you want?” Pete called down from the boat. Rainey checked the rucksacks. “That’s it!” She gave him the thumbs up, then watched as he climbed down the ladder with the small camp stove. When he stepped aboard, the dinghy rocked under his weight. He had a belly now – marriage became him, she thought with a flash of pride, and she reached out to squeeze his shoulder. He turned towards her. “All right?” he said, adjusting his baseball cap. Rainey nodded, smiled. She could feel a wetness at the corners of her eyes; humidity, that was all – it was hot today, hot for Scottish latitudes at any rate. The late-afternoon sun was still high in the sky, though sinking now and strewing the water with a starry glitter that presaged a nightfall that would never really fall, and there was the beginning of a redness in the west, the faintest orange flush, like a fire that hadn’t quite caught. Above her a flock of birds streaked across the brightness, black arrowheads seeking an invisible target. Rainey glanced at Pete, but he was bent over the outboard, starter cord in hand. He pulled. The metallic retch-and-rasp, so ordinary, so familiar, made her flinch. As if it had wrenched apart the here and now, and the world around her could no longer be trusted. Then the motor gave a stuttering cough and, with a lurch and a churning of waves, they were on their way, cutting a passage across the glassy surface of the loch towards the wooded hump of the island. *** A few minutes later Pete shut off the engine and they paddle-steered the dinghy into the shallow landing place under the willows. They beached the boat, then began to unload. From further inland came a sudden swell of drums; like a rupturing heart it sounded to Rainey, and she stopped to listen for a moment, breathing in a stray drift of smoke. “They’re already here,” she said, a little disappointed. She had wanted to arrive first, surprise everyone. Set out the stove with the wok and provisions. Display the cocktail glasses she had bought specially. Pete just nodded. He had never been one for competing with or impressing people. He was kind and obliging – too obliging for his own good sometimes. They hoisted their rucksacks, picked up the coolers and set off slowly. “Like a couple of mules,” Pete said, grinning at her from under his cap. Rainey grinned back, but she felt uneasy, felt a presence barely concealed behind the warble and flit of shadows and the trickery of the light – the still-bright sunlight that played over the leaves and branches overhead, dappling them neon-green, yellow, and so white in places they seemed to be missing parts of themselves.

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Night Sharks 2 by Lucie Britsch I was actually fine apart from the shark thing.

She warned me on our first night together that there might be sharks and not just regular ones but night ones. Swimming around the bed. So if I wanted to call it off she understood. Instead I suggested we went back to mine but she said it made no difference. The sharks would still come. She said it was like in those movies where they think it’s the house that’s haunted but it’s the person. The creepy kid I said. Yes she said I’m the creepy kid I guess but it’s sharks. We don’t have to do this she said again but I had committed to her and her sharks already. She could have had a husband somewhere, kids, an extra limb, webbed toes; nothing was going to change my mind. Did I mention she was pretty? I asked the girl if there was anything I could do, I said I would buy a harpoon, keep it by the bed, if it helped. She liked that but said no and I was secretly glad because I had no idea where you would buy a harpoon and was pretty sure they would ask what I wanted it for and then things would be weird and anyway I didn’t think I could carry it home. We went to the park at night and there was another young couple there and I got talking to the guy and he said his girlfriend saw a man in the corner of the bedroom so they came to the park. She likes to pet dogs he told me. I told him about the sharks and he said he preferred the man and that he wasn’t a strong swimmer and that film you know, I said Jaws and he said no, that one about the killer whale, I said oh right but I didn’t know what he meant. I took her to the aquarium and she said she knew what I was doing and it didn’t work like that. She wasn’t afraid of sharks. She said you could be the biggest shark fan and one would still eat you if it wanted to, which they don’t generally she said, people eat way more sharks than sharks eat people she told me because she was smart and pretty. The whole thing hurt my head but she seemed ok with it but then they were her sharks, not mine. Spoiler alert, one girl’s sharks are another boy’s rabbits. She said the only thing that ever helped was watching The Lion King but what she didn’t know was that I fucking hated The Lion King. Ok, I hadn’t really seen it up till then, but the thought of it annoyed me. I thought Aladdin was the last good one. I could talk about this for hours when I was drunk if anyone cared, which they didn’t. When I suggested we went away I knew she thought I meant just us, not the sharks, but she couldn’t promise anything. I was sure they wouldn’t dare come if I booked a fancy enough hotel. Sharks were fierce but I imagined they were generally all for romance when it came down to it. I saw the way the momma sharks held the fins of their babies. But they came. She said it didn’t kill the mood but it did. I started to get upset about

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Triadic by Allyson Fairchild I wanted to get out of this place so badly… “I love you so much,” my husband told me quietly as he moved farther away from my unclothed body, wrapping himself within the sheets and letting out a muffled sigh. “Goodnight, Sarah.” I lay there for a few heartbeats while his words echoed in my head tenderly, feeling the cold creep across my flesh now that his aromatic warmth had left my skin. Immediately I yearned for him but I did not want him disturbed. I listened to his breath become slower and deeper, relaxing as he was lulled to sleep and I was left alone in the room. Shivering, I pulled the sheets of our bed up to my chin and turned on to my side, back towards him, sinking into the comforting cotton. For a minute, I let myself close my eyes and I attempted to fall asleep, thinking of our wedding only months before, our seemingly endless lovemaking, his mouth and grazing teeth across my tanned skin as he murmured my name again and again, promising and vowing how much he loved me. I passed through all of our memories, one by one, but my limbs ached for movement. I could not sit still for long even though all I really wanted to do was lay in the haven of the blankets, thinking of him and finally nodding off into a much-needed slumber. It seemed as though I could never sit still. My bare legs slid down the side of the four-poster bed as I moved away from the mattress and onto the stiff hardwood floor, the still cold attacking me at once. The soft, metrical sound of my feet patting the ground was the only noise breaking the night air as I made my way to the walk-in closet of the bedroom and shut the door quietly behind me so as not to bother my exhausted husband. I clothed my quivering body in seconds, lower half clad in tight black jeans while I searched and rifled through the curtains of fabrics for a top to go with them. Once I picked out something that would do, I slipped on a plain black sweatshirt and then left the closet and the bedroom and my husband, my devoted husband, as he dreamed, far away from this reality. I tiptoed down the stairs like a burglar in my own house, telling myself I was just grabbing something to eat from the kitchen, or maybe I would make a cup of tea, a habit of mine, as thoughts of my home and life and marriage filled my mind, comforting me. I would only take a few minutes, calm the jitters battering the inside of my skin and then return to bed and the love of my life for a long night’s rest. I smiled at that thought. It sounded so lovely, so perfect. I just had to remember to grab some medication as soon as I finished my drink. That was probably why I was so edgy. My feet found their way into the kitchen and I perused the polished oak shelves, trying to find the tea bags and a mug. I murmured a song under my breath, my wedding song, my husband’s face filling my mind. My hand gripped the container of tea naturally as, for some reason, I couldn’t remember what I was doing up or why I even wanted anything to drink to begin with. The tune faded from my lips as I dragged myself away from those mem-

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