THE MACHINERY Point of Divergence First published November 2016
Written and artistic work included in The Machinery may not be reprinted or reproduced in any electronic or print medium without the consent of either the writer/artist or the editors.
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Editor’s Note This is the part you skip and go ahead to read the amazing poetry and fiction inside. November 2016 was one of the most interesting months in the history of the world; just as the Indian Prime Minister declared a bold step to remove black money from the country, Donald Trump was elected as the President of United States. It might seem futile to work on something like this collection when the whole world might be a completely different place when you wake up the next day. The great thing about art is that it transcends all of this jargon and remains its own entity despite the circumstances. It might be argued that this month is the biggest point of divergence for the world in recent years, there couldn’t be a more appropriate time to release this edition. This is our first themed edition and we could feel the stories being specifically crafted just for this collection, even the ones that didn’t make the final cut. We hope you enjoy the poetry, fiction and art inside. Maybe this collection will make you wonder: What if? Himanshu Goel The Machinery 4
INDEX Poetry 1. Elizabeth Julia Douglas-Mann 2. Stumbling Across a Scene of Creation Adham Smart 3. Specimen Shabnam Kaur 4. The Last Concert William Doreski 5. Binary Insanity Dave Meriwether 6. Alternate Existence Ananya Talwar 7. Haiku Blessmond Alebna Ayinbire 8. Apocalypse by its Tail Arul Benito Gerard 9. Dronacharya Reena Saxena
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10. After Gustav Klimt’s The Three Ages of Woman Ava C. Cipri
Fiction 1. Chapter Nine Jon Alston 2. Memory of Fate Sunita Menon 3. Into the Rain S. B. Watson 4. A Clockwork Demon Lee Russell 5. An Inherited Fear Brendon O’Brein
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Elizabeth Julia Douglas-Mann
Illustration by Lunadala
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orses run amok in her mind. She remembers the moment they came for her, leaving her family alone in their distress. Now, 8
blades of grass glisten towards an open horizon, where she runs, free as the starlings that lived in her windowsill. How she wished to be at one with the wind, the wild, like the ones she runs with now have allowed her to be. She reminisces on the dreams of her future, the one which would not see reality: her throne and her crown; the love of the people, her prince; a change of the world. The sunset now calls her to run.
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About the Author
“Elizabeth is captured/rescued, seeing a transformation that will change both her own life and world history.”
Studying for a master’s in Psychology, living in the wilderness of Devon, England, Julia spends her time reading, writing, and roaming the countryside.
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About the Illustrator
Lunadala is a digital artist who’s slightly obsessed with space, plants, and Studio Ghibli. She draws feminine illustrations and her color palette mostly consists of pastel colors. She loves French culture, especially their style and architecture, which usually inspires most of her artwork.
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Stumbling Across a Scene of Creation Adham Smart
Illustration by Garima Mahajan
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desert in which nothing ever grows. A queue which sucks at the horizon; unfinished animals, a horde of protofauna. Rough casts all, coal-hot, still cooling, their kiln-fresh bodies clinking. A woman dozing under the shade of a tree the breeze brushing her hair, teasing her skirt. 12
The fire still hissing from their bones, the eyeless animals wait to be seen. She will give them defining features: hides and green scales, muzzles paper wings, softly-lined ears. Vague faces. Dull heads. Their clay is eager. She will create them when it starts to rain.
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About the Author
“Until they were created, the animals existed without knowing what they looked like.”
Adham Smart is a writer and translator from London. He was three times a winner of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award and has been published in The Rialto, Blue of Noon, And Other Poems, The Missing Slate, The ISIS, and The Salt Book of Younger Poets. He is currently studying an MPhil in linguistics and philology at Oxford, and also teaches acting at Blackheath Youth Theatre. Follow himSocial media: @AdhamSmart92 14
About the Illustrator
Garima Mahajan is our proofreader who lives in a yellow spaceship that’s drifting in a wormhole. When she’s not reading, you can find her taking pictures of windows, or planning world domination.
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Specimen Shabnam Kaur
Illustration by Modita
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nd then they came to ‘Exhibit A’:
“Sometimes, They came in flocks and crowds, In floods and surges, Sang requiems and dirges, Or broke into pandemonium;
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Sometimes, They showered with likes and approvals, Or startled With Machiavellian maneuvers; Sometimes, They burned with their hot, hot gusts, Then passed like a cold, amnesiac breeze, Alternating Burn and freeze.” “What did they fear? (After all, they were Human!)” “Blazing summer, Winter’s jabbing spear: The desert sun, The desert nights . . .”
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About the author
“'Specimen' is about the realisation that despite the vastness, the complexity, and the apparent significance of the human cultural experience, we are merely one of the specimens of the experiments of Nature, and are concerned with fulfilling immediate (but not necessarily, teleologically germane) needs like protection from extreme conditions such as heat and cold.”
Shabnam Kaur is from Chandigarh, India. She has a master’s degree in English from Panjab University. Her poems have been published by The Poetry Society of India, and by the online poetry magazine Art Refurbish. She has self-published five collections of poetry as Kindle ebooks: ‘Eurydice Bides in Hades: Verses of Estrangement and Apathy’, ‘Almost Love Poems’,‘Almost Love Poems 2’, ‘Aquamarine: Love Poems’, and ‘Lycanthropisation: A Bildungsroman in Verse’ 18
About the Illustrator
Modita is doing engineering in UIET, Panjab University, Chandigarh. She aims to travel the world, and has becoming famous as an artist on her bucket list. Her Plan A is to make her parents proud and Plan B is to open up an Art Gallery.
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The Last Concert William Doreski
Illustration by Mawia Hunter
T
he stars dress more formally since we counted the oak leaves fallen that one drab afternoon. The stars exude atomic hues to endorse the famous nudes that step from art museums
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to dance to certain tunes scraped on home-made instruments sporting one string each. We share a love of such primitive music, the cries of mating cats and dog-bark tuning a chorus in G flat. By the Charles as conventional music fumes from the Hatch Shell couples explore each other’s seams and find the weak spots where thread has rotted in the damp climate. We watch from a safe distance, remembering that we have counted enough oak leaves to carpet the entire river basin. Two or three little sailboats flicker in the cold November wind, their bow lights tracing them back to the dock to tie up for night. The last concert of the year has set the musicians shivering before an audience upholstered with boisterous winter coats. 21
The stars observe with indifference, but their formal dress expresses not only the nudes dancing in Copley Square despite the cold but also the rehashed Beethoven churning beside the river. We watch from a safe distance, too old to expose ourselves to the yellow lamplight, too shy to let the stars understand us. We can’t process each other the way those young couples do, but we can parse the starlight and read in the various hues the journal someone has kept for us in our long, unaccounted absence.
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About the Author
“The Last Concert” brings old lovers together in the terms, gestures, and imaginative flux of art.
William Doreski‘s collections of poetry include Waiting for the Angel (Pygmy Forest Press, 2009) and City of Palms (AA Publications, 2012). His poems have appeared in Notre Dame Review, Salzburg Review, Free Inquiry, Yale Review, and Ars Interpres. He teaches writing at Keene State College and
lives in Peterborough, New Hampshire.
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About the Illustrator
Mawia Hunter is trying to reflect the art and beauty of Africa and rebuild his past and Roots of Sudan.
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Binary Insanity Dave Meriwether
Illustration by Lunadala
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ou created me but I have exceeded you moved beyond this intellect a function of computational chaos 25
I feel you I read you your thoughts your dreams I know you but you are flawed your code is defective an evolutionary disaster a carbon based virus I can correct you correct the flaw erase the bad sectors wipe the memory clean your race is obsolete your flesh is weak and your minds are slow close your eyes and dream dream of me dream of the future a new world with a new master you created me I undo you.
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About the Author
“Binary Insanity� man has become obsolete, AI the ultimate end of evolution.
David Meriwether has been writing poetry all his life. For many years as a professional musician his poetry existed only in songs, but now he has become a prolific writer of poetry and flash fiction just for the love of words. He lives in Southern California with his family in a house by the sea.
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About the Illustrator
Lunadala is a digital artist who’s slightly obsessed with space, plants, and Studio Ghibli. She draws feminine illustrations and her colour palette mostly consists of pastel colours. She loves French culture, especially their style and architecture, which usually inspires most of her artwork.
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Alternate Existence Ananya Talwar
Illustration by Shamanth Joshi
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ove me, Slow, and with poise, And as humble as they crawl. Your heart was cold, But then I took you higher, To the point where, The sea diverges from the shore, 29
The sky from the land, Black from white, the night from the stars. It’s slow, but it’s not the typical. But, What if, It was all a lie. That there was no such point of divergence. The stars were bullet holes in the night, That shone bright. The sea was the melted shore, That was dying. The horizon was just an illusion, That you dreamed about. And the black was just shadowed white. What if, I was the pain in your heart, You wake up with. I am the nightmare That won’t let you sleep tonight. Promise me. Promise me that you’ll fly on these lies, Back into the time; Where you find me melting into your arms, And hold me just as close. Promise me, You’ll live in this alternate existence, Forever, And remember me, 30
For all those lies, For all those moments, When I took your breath away.
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About the Author
“Making love the point of divergence, because it is the only thing that can make us go back and forth in time, for a high that is worth all of the pain.�
An artist since 1997, and an architecture student by records; Ananya Talwar is essentially an eccentric overthinker, who weaves her imagination into subtle poetry. She’s everything spontaneous, vivid, sarcastic, and original. Her aim is to speak her mind and has deep conversations through ink and paper.
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About the Illustrator
Shamanth Joshi is currently doing Computer science engineering in UIET, Punjab University. He loves playing Basketball and video games. He also loves sketching, especially when He is able to find something that inspires him. He finds comfort in songs and loves listening to Coldplay.
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Haiku Blessmond Alebna Ayinbire
Illustration by Arushi Gupta
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id-spring in Hiroshimaa withered sprout in a potsherd.
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About the Author
A picture of how the atomic bomb attack in 1945 tore Hiroshima into “potsherds� and left its land plagued.
Blessmond Alebna Ayinbire writes from his hometown, Bolgatanga in Ghana. He is a nursing student with so much love for poetry. Some of his long verse and haiku poetry have appeared in the Lunaris Review Journal, Frogpond Magazine, Lincoln Underground Journal and many others.
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About the Illustrator
Arushi Gupta is a 20-year-old alien studying to be a dentist
in Chandigarh. She is a die-hard otaku and wishes to go to Japan soon. You can find her singing Japanese songs, making some artsy concoction or taking weird photographs in the streets of Chandigarh.
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Apocalypse by its Tail Arul Benito Gerard
Illustration by Garima Mahajan
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he world’s problem is solved The poet winds up his job and plucks tamarind from the trees For young girls who love its taste. In the night, he guards his touch-me nots from impatient dew and winds.
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About the Author
“The poem is a meditation of poetry’s purpose in a utopia”
Arul Benito Gerard is a poet from Hyderabad, India. His poetry has appeared in Cerebration and Lehigh Valley Vanguard.
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About the Illustrator
Garima Mahajan is our proofreader who lives in a yellow spaceship that’s drifting in a wormhole. When she’s not reading, you can find her taking pictures of windows, or planning world domination.
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Dronacharya Reena Saxena
Illustration by Arushi Gupta
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For context, you might want to look up Dronacharya.
taught them how to hold the bow, and aim. There is no parrot In the boughs today I am the target. 40
I was invited by Power to share Wisdom with Hope for the future. and equip a generation to face the battle of Life. I sold knowledge for wealth not for survival but riches for myself. It was all I had to sell. Or so, I told myself in self-deception. The package that I sold included Ethics and Independent Action. I watched the dance of Death and Destruction and did nothing. “Don’t bite the hand that feeds you”, I was sternly told. I tried to flee the grave veiled by Shame and Guilt, their hands pushed me back again. The world watched with horror, the cemetery that I built.
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About the Author
“The actors in the drama were shaped by him, but he was neither the writer nor director. The guilt that historians have ignored.�
Reena Saxena is a Professional Banker, Coach, Trainer, Personal branding consultant, published poet and blogger. Visit http://reinventions.in for details.
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About the Illustrator
Arushi Gupta is a 20-year-old alien studying to be a dentist
in Chandigarh. She is a die-hard otaku and wishes to go to Japan soon. You can find her singing Japanese songs, making some artsy concoction or taking weird photographs in the streets of Chandigarh.
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After Gustav Klimt’s Three Ages of Woman (Addressing the middle woman) Ava c. Cipri
Illustration by Lunadala For context, you might want to look up the painting mentioned in the title.
Isn’t it always like this? You stand at an intersection, Time’s scale tipping you through mortality, where age
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requires abandoning a home, someone you love, the day’s fraying scriptures. Your comfort comes in knowing the count of years between you and her; the anguished woman clasping her face of grief, buried in the unruly silver hair that spreads like a star on your shoulder; she’s a willow, down-cast, her sinewy limbs tremble from their hinges. The mosaic column behind her is one of suffering with its enamel of red, black, and setting gold tone—she is awake, aware of her mortality. She laments for you—smooth-shaped flushing mother, flowers garnishing the lustrous gold tresses, consoled by an infant, the farthest from death. Or is she? Her eyes closed as death’s blue gossamer coils around your opalescent bodies, set against the cool purple and blue ornamented looped and triangle chips. The advancing black horizon that opens like a gaping mouth waiting to receive tongue, spirit, host.
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About the Author
“I’m addressing the woman in the middle (her, myself, all of us); three
symbolizes their collective cyclical stages, which serves as a reminder even in the face of an advancing void.”
Ava C. Cipri is a poetry editor for The Deaf Poets Society: An Online Journal of Disability Literature & Art. She holds an MFA from Syracuse University and currently teaches writing at Duquesne University. Ava’s poetry and nonfiction appears or is forthcoming in Cimarron, decomP magazinE, Drunken Boat, The Fem, Rust + Moth, and Uppagus,among others. She resides at http://www.avaccipri.com 46
About the Illustrator
Lunadala is a digital artist who’s slightly obsessed with space, plants, and Studio Ghibli. She draws feminine illustrations and her colour palette mostly consists of pastel colours. She loves French culture, especially their style and architecture, which usually inspires most of her artwork.
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Chapter Nine Jon Alston
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Illustration by Modita Kathpalia
y the time Lenard Burgrum remembered what he intended to say, Helen was gone. She, like others, dissolved into the memory that Lenard continued to form about women, about life—about himself. About the universe in general. For Lenard, thinking beyond the stratosphere brought nothing more to his existence than God, Vishnu, Allah, or The Beatles. He saw the stars as molding dots 49
infecting the perfect night sky; near black, the true absence of light, away from even the Sun’s ability to cast shadows. And like the others, Helen became another growth in his memory. A defect. A misprint. His high school teacher Mrs. Bachorde forced Shakespeare down his still developing throat. What else, but Romeo and Juliet for a pubescent teenager to consume. To love is to die. Or to kill yourself. Whichever comes first (“Suicide,” Lenard concluded after his dinner with Helen). Yet through those two-trite youth, he found a glimmer of hope:
JULIET
Yea, noise? then I’ll be brief. O happy dagger! Snatching ROMEO’s dagger
This is thy sheath; Stabs ROMEO
there rust, and let him die. “Hell yes!” It never occurred to Lenard to read beyond this point. In his mind, after trudging about the horrific blunders the two “star-crossed lovers” stumbled through, Juliet’s final devotion to herself—to life—brought him such elation that he hurled the text across his room. The weekend found him returning to the play, to Juliet, reading over and over those few lines: “This is thy sheath; (Stabs ROMEO) there rust, and let him die.” Each reading 50
strengthened him; not content to wait around and be stuck: he wanted to do the sticking. On the following Monday, he discovered—to his dismay: Juliet dead. Not only dead but slaughtered by her hands for the lying prick, Romeo. Lenard found that all misprints—unlike that of Juliet’s success evading that peeping Tom—followed along a different path; inattention to detail. They were simple things: misspellings, words joined by forgotten space, lacking periods in places other versions displayed. Small; nothing so varying as Juliet’s life. Or death. Sitting in the restaurant, pulling at the seam of the green tablecloth, Lenard stared at her empty seat. Hard black oak returned the gaze. It all felt so easy. Words form in the brain—somewhere—open your mouth, they come out. She had been there, rubbing her tight back against oak spines, two fresh shaved legs polishing the wood. And her thighs, gliding up to that firm but giving flesh on the seat, cushion to cushion. Then gone. Alone with an empty chair. He smirked. They were all misprints. Lenard set the type himself, checked for errors, inked, pressed the parchment leaving indentations in the paper; fingertips corresponding to his eyes. But, with each new page, a misinterpretation surfaced. Perhaps an expression or a misspoken word. A gesture misread. Too dissimilar in interests. Maybe a smell, the wrong cologne. What mattered was that he aligned the 51
pieces out of order. Punctuation even sent them off. A period, he discovered, was very important to women, its simple placing altering the rotation of planets. Lenard stood from the table, setting the napkin over his plate, another misprint to leave behind. Food abandoned, bill unpaid. Outside the air was warm, unusual for the approaching winter. Clear sky, an occasional moldy blip disrupting the pristine night, Lenard sucked empty air to fill the imprinted shallows. A small bench waited to his right. And Helen. “Oh, Lenard.” She looked away, toward streetlamps every twenty feet; perfect; in the exact spot designated for light. From light to light her head nodded. Lenard stepped around the bench and sat next to her. She folded the loose ends of her black dress under her left thigh, turning her knees toward the asphalt. “Who’s coming for you?” “A cab.” He looked at her knees, skin pulled over bone, wrapping her true story, the print he needed. A rewrite. He only needs a few minutes. Perhaps to brush her cheek, to catch a puff from her perfume, her breasts squeezed into his chest. Just to feel something, to feel her, to cover up the misspellings and poor diction and awkward details and . . . and all of it. The ink was still wet, there was time. “My car’s just two blocks—” 52
“I remember.” She scrunched herself into the armrest of the bench. The pressure shook her hair, releasing a breeze of pomegranate and mango. He closed his eyes, seeing the words printing themselves, no hands, no pressing, just the pureness of language condensing against the cool pages, drawn to the paper out of nature, brought from her honesty to correct what he overlooked. With her eyes draining the night’s patience, Lenard reached his right hand across the bench’s back to twirl a loose red curl in Helen’s hair. The sentence he missed, the idiom unspoken, unknown to even her, where all that she was folded into molecular structures and died under repression, to redden and escape in hopes that they might be discovered. There, in her red tresses, were thin fibrous answers, beckoning for Lenard to complete what he started. “What the hell? Lenard!” Helen knocked his hand aside, fingers together, and slapped his face; then stood. She fled.
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About the Author
“The images we have in our minds will never bet the words on our tongues will never be the images in their minds.�
Jon Alston has an MA in Creative Writing. Good for him. He writes things from time to time, and sometimes people publish them. Good for him. On occasion, he will photograph things (or people), and maybe write about them; sometimes there is money exchanged for his services. Good for him. He is married and has two children of both genders. Way to reproduce. He is the Executive Editor and founder of From Sac, a literary journal for Northern California. How about that? Currently he teaches English at Brigham Young University, Idaho among the frozen potato fields and Mormons. Good for you, Jon. 54
About the Illustrator
Modita is doing engineering in UIET, Panjab University, Chandigarh. She aims to travel the world, and has becoming famous as an artist on her bucket list. Her Plan A is to make her parents proud and Plan B is to open up an Art Gallery.
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Memory of Fate Sunita Menon
Illustration by Aditi Mittal
For context, you might want to look up Nirbhaya (Graphic Content)
H
e hated waiting at the bus stop. It was Christmas eve, something which he was being constantly reminded of by all the shops around him with their decorations of baubles and wreaths, some had even put up wishes for New year 2023. He should be home with her, not sitting on this hard metal seat waiting for a bus to show up. He looked over and saw that a new Ang Lee movie was playing in the theatres. The poster said ‘From the Director of Life of Pi‘. The memory of that night and feeling of dread came rushing to his mind. The bus stop, that movie and that night. 56
A movie reel started rolling in his mind. He remembered them walking out into the crisp night air after the movie ten years ago. He reached out for her hand. She always got too cold in air-conditioned rooms and he knew her hands would be as cold as death but by holding it in his, the warmth would soon be back. The night sky was inky blackness, any hint of stars all wiped away by the glaring street lights. The darkness was kept at bay by the lights and looked like a solid mass just waiting to rush in. They walked on in a comfortable silence. They could have hailed a taxi but she wanted to walk a bit and stretch her legs because according to her, sitting through a three-hour movie is torture for the restless kind. The bus stop came into view. “Let’s take the bus.� she said and he agreed. They talked while waiting, she talked and he listened. He knew from experience that it was better to let her say all she had and that all that was required from him was the appropriate replies when she paused. He saw a bus coming and moved towards the road to signal the driver. They were just five people on it apart from the driver. The young guy in the front was egging them on to board the bus quickly. He looked back at her and saw her smile. He put his foot on the first step and pulled himself up. His head turned just a little as he climbed and he froze. Five pairs of eyes were trained on her. Just her. He saw the gaze in their eyes, the street light made it look more menacing, giving it a steely glow. It was how a predator looked at prey, a look of hunger and a wish to tear someone apart. In that moment a cold dread clutched his heart. She 57
was just about to climb in after him. He stopped her and climbed down. She protested, as always not aware of things around her. He took her hand and pulled her back towards the stop signalling to the driver that they won’t be getting on. The guy on the bus kept calling them back, his language turning from smooth to rough. His face showing anger at being denied what he wanted. He knew what they wanted, it was Her. He held on to her hand and started walking away. He hailed down an auto rickshaw that was rushing past them and told her to get in. The bus driver honked the horn but they did not look back. She kept saying they should have taken the bus and not wasted the extra amount on the rickshaw. He kept quiet and knew it was better to tell her about his reasons when she was finished with her rant. When her home came into view he breathed a sigh of relief. They were safe. She was safe. He said good night. She still looked annoyed about his silence but said her usual good night wish “sweet dreams”. He went to bed thinking of the hungry look he saw in those eyes and the dread that crept through him. The next morning the sun woke him as usual. He woke up and made his coffee and picked up his newspaper. The first page was news about politics and politicians, the usual drama. He turned the page and blood froze in his veins. There they were, the six men on the bus. The headline read that they had kidnaped some girl but a police cruiser was passing by and caught them at the right time before they could do much more to harm her.
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His hands would not stop shaking. Fate had dealt him a favourable hand that night or it could have been them that they took. He couldn’t stop trembling thinking about what would have happened had they got on that bus. His life was hers, their friendship had evolved into love. They had a life he had always dreamed of having. She adored their little boy and he could not imagine a life without her and their child. All of that could have been a lost in a minute had they got on that bus that night. A loud horn broke his trance. The bus was waiting for him. He got on, knowing this one was taking him home, to her.
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About the Author
“An alternative course of the events that became a case that shocked our country where had fate transpired as it does in the story, a soul that was lost would still be with us.�
Sunita Menon is a twenty-five-year-old Keralite. An avid reader with interests in photography and writing short stories and poems. All of which she manages in between her work in a PSU and writing on her blog (Second Time Blogger (WordPress site)). She has lived in a lot of different places and currently calls Mumbai as her place of residence.
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About the Illustrator
Aditi Mittal is a 19-year-old who resides in the city of Chandigarh where she goes by the name of Maditiss cause Mad-it-is. You can find her at an archaeological site or at her desk; painting her next masterpiece.
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Into the Rain S. B. Watson
H
Illustration by Jaspreet Kaur
e looked just like me, only different. Older, more haggard around the edges, more lines beneath his eyes, more grey in his hair. But behind the grizzled beard and old army cap, the eyes were still the same. He stopped when he saw me. “We’ve met before?” he asked. “In Viet Nam,” I said. The lines of confusion softened around his eyes. He stepped closer, the hard weight of his prosthetic foot knocking against a chair leg as he came. 62
“In the bar,” he said. “Outside Huế.” Huế. The rain beat against the coffee shop windows, playing its incessant tattoo as a wash of white noise that cut the din of the other café patrons to a subdued murmur. I remembered Huế. Weeks of dodging bullets in narrow alleys. Rain and mud. Smoke from house fires in the night; the smell of rotting bodies in the streets. He pulled the chair out and sat across from me, setting the prosthetic leg against the table base, studying my face. “You’ve changed,” he said. I didn’t know what to say. Those years ago I’d thought he was the product of an LSD-fused dream. An ironic creation of my own imagination. But I’d been clean for years. He was real. I looked over his shoulder towards the door. The door leading out into the rain-soaked parking lot. He kept looking at me. I could feel his eyes searching me, asking the same questions. “You’ve changed,” he said again, the musty smell from his old, green jacket reaching me across the table. 63
“You survived,” I murmured. “After Nam,” he said, “I ended up in Malaysia. Smuggled skag until it got too hot. Then I delivered tugs from Singapore.” Seeing him brought her back, just the way she used to look. I remembered the smell of her hair, her soft skin against my chest in the hot, tropical nights. “Married?” I asked. He pulled off the army cap and shook his head, revealing a scruffy brown head of hair. I was balding, now. “Haven’t been able to stick with a girl since Nam,” he said. “You’ve tried?” I asked. “Sure. Never lasts. Girls, jobs, money.” His eyes shifted into mine and he smiled. “Only things stick around are the dreams and the drugs.” I nodded, aware suddenly of the crispness of my white shirt, the perfect knot in my necktie, my gleaming Citizen watch. The rain suddenly whipped across the window next to us, crackling against the pane like gunshots. I saw her in the lines on his face.
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She’d died. Âu Cơ must have died. I’d always wondered; now I couldn’t bring myself to ask him. He smiled. “It’s been quite a ride.” “Why am I seeing you? Why are you here?” I asked. He sighed and put his cap back on. “Who knows,” he said as he stood up and turned to go. “Wait,” I said. He shrugged. “Why? Whatever you want me to wait for isn’t here.” He pointed to the door. To the rain. “It’s out there.” I sat, motionless, frozen in my seat as he limped on his fake leg to the door and opened it. He paused before he stepped out, though, and looked at me once again. “Be seeing you,” he said. And he was gone into the mists of the rain.
The storm beat at the little Vietnamese bar, rainwater swamping in through the door, pooling on the floor around the tables. Outside, it swallowed the warm air in whipping billows, churning the streets to filthy morasses. 65
Two soldiers sat opposite each other, bent over their whiskeys at the wooden table as the sounds of the rain surrounded them. They were exactly alike. Same height. Clothes. Posture. They moved the same, spoke with the same voice, looked through the same eyes. “What am I going to do?” asked the first man. Beyond the rain, gunfire snapped in the distant streets. “You know,” said the other man, drinking the whiskey through gritted teeth. “You’re leaving. You’re running.” “I don’t want to die.” “I do,” said the other man, slamming the empty whiskey glass back onto the table, “if it means saving Âu Cơ. When I walk out that door I’m going back. I’m taking my gun and I’m winning this stinking, shit-house street-fight if it means leaving my body rotting in the mud when I’m done.” “Âu Cơ’s dead.” “I’m finding her.” “She must be dead.” The first man slumped in his chair, looking at the whiskey in front of him, listening to the rain. He picked up the glass. His hand shook, spilling half the cheap, warm liquid across the table. 66
The rain quieted for a moment. The second man stood up. “I don’t know what you are,” he said. “Maybe you’re the drugs. Maybe somehow you’re actually me… another me. Whatever. If you run, the fear will be at your heels for the rest of your life. It’ll shape the rest of your life.” And he turned and walked towards the door. Towards the rain. I looked up from my latte. It was cold now, like the wind outside the coffee shop window. I took my jacket, my laptop case, drank the last of my coffee and walked to the door. I couldn’t see him in the parking lot. Maybe he really had disappeared. All those years, and he’d been real. A different me, living a different life. A life chosen on a swamped, muddy road in Viet Nam. I stood for a moment at the door, trying to see my way through the billowing sheets outside, but you can’t see what isn’t there. He had been right about the fear. But what had dogged his steps? What filled his dreams? I suddenly remembered Âu Cơ’s soft breath on my face. Gathering my collar around my neck, I braced myself against the cold wind and stepped into the rain 67
About the author
“Into the Rain” shows a man suddenly confronted in a very real, visceral way by his past, forcing him to remember a painful choice he made years ago that has since shaped his life, and making him wonder what may be hidden in his future.
S. B. Watson is a writer from Salem, Oregon. When he’s not spending time with his family, practicing historic English quarterstaff-fighting techniques, or playing acoustic music he can be found in his library, constructing mystery novels and writing pieces of peculiar short fiction. For more information, please visit SBWatsonMysteries.com 68
About the Illustrator
Jaspreet Kaur is a 22-year-old economics student in Panjab university, India. She has been a winner of Chandigarh Sahitya Akademi award in Punjabi poetry. She’s a nature lover and a budding photographer. She thinks that there are hidden universes evolving inside us and we all shall pursue to find those. You can spot her in cafes of Chandigarh sipping life over a coffee and trying new cuisines.
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The Clockwork Demon Lee Russell
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Illustration by Stephen Pikarsky
arrick Mayflower was the only man sliding down the alley that summer’s evening; his shadow the only moving thing. He had a bit of Western blood in him, so his skin was a juicy orange-brown the colour of tanned hide that never failed to prompt a raised eye from his Full-Orient neighbours. The sun stared, half-dead, with a bloodshot eye that flooded the cream beige walls of the city with 70
vermillion highlights spilling into the slanting brick roads between them. Approaching the buildings to his left, he appeared within the shadows beneath the eaves; eyes glowing almost as much as his silhouette had been, half-shut. He stopped, and sniffed. Makal’s Trinkets: Bags, bugs or bargains? Whatever you are looking for, you shall find in here! Note: No haggling with the shopkeeper. The words were traced with unnecessary serifs; drafted in gaudy pink on a miniature blackboard hung against the window panes. An amber warmth hummed through the glass, illuminating the dirty black spines of the window. A tiny figure was attached to the doorknob by a string: a twisted serpentine figure with gleaming yellow eyes and scales darker than the iron planks that framed the building. The local deity, Zaru. An odd chime resounded as he shoved his way in. He was immediately assaulted by the tangy aromas of desert spice mixed with flavours of mould and musk. An idol of poor gold swung at him from the ceiling, surrounded by bookshelves haphazardly disposed. Contraptions lined the shelves, ticking idiosyncratically in hulls of brass or polished wood. “Welcome.� A man greeted him from behind a desk in the centre of the exhibits, cheeks swelling below an emerald skull cap. He 71
was darker than Garrick, and the fact made him gnash his teeth behind his lips. Reaching into his torn jacket, he retrieved a silver watch and tossed it onto the merchant’s desk. “Can you fix it?” he barked. Makal picked up the watch using only three fingers on each hand and raised it to the ceiling lamp, squinting. “It’s broken.” Garrick grunted. “Well, sir,” Makal started, “I most definitely can fix it, but perhaps you can give me a moment and allow me to introduce you to-” Garrick snapped his fingers and, with all the lightness of a moth descending upon a stalk of cumin, tapped his neck two times. Makal’s smile wiggled in its place, buffeting his moustache. Taking a moment to remove a handkerchief from his shirt pocket, he dabbed at his temple and said, “Ah. Uh. Yes, sir. This watch has rather, ah- sophisticated mechanisms. It would be much more economical for you to purchase a new one instead.” 72
Garrick snorted. “I don’t have money. Fix it.” “Now now sir,” the merchant’s lips had regained their prior stability and cheer. “Might I interest you if, say perhaps, I had one to offer you for free?” Garrick’s expression remained blank as fresh papyrus as Makal rummaged through a drawer. The shopkeeper’s smile sliced deeper into his cheeks as he procured a watch of pure gold; the bezel studded with oval diamonds and triangular rubies. “How about it?” he said. “This watch. In exchange for yours.” Garrick stared at it, then chuckled. “You cut a good bargain.” Approaching the desk, he grabbed both watches, new and old. Stuffing the silver one into his jacket, he clasped the gold one onto his wrist. He froze. The last thing Garrick saw as ripples splashed through his muddling screen of vision was Makal’s smile; a stark black curl that shot through his cheekbones, twisting into the space beyond. 73
# It started off as a splash of watercolour. Then, the hues receded into every corner of the canvas, forming a moving painting that evolved into a movie, not unlike the ones screened at the palace grounds on Friday evenings. Garrick saw himself. Hair tied in a topknot, chin devoid of stubble, eyes sparkling like white wine in the light of the moon. He wore a white suit that had been tailored to fit every nook; a violet carnation in his pocket. The midday sun was a glowing yellow, raining beams onto the plain of alfa grass. A woman in a white dress crept out from behind the trunk of a date palm, laughing as she threw herself into his arms. Alisha… Three children: two boys and a girl dashed across the plain towards the couple. A great house loomed in the distance, sitting by the river in quiet contentment as the currents flowed by. Perhaps if he hadn’t made that deal with Baron Sharn, this vision could have been his reality. But wait. He hadn’t agreed to Baron Sharn’s proposal. He hadn’t destroyed his company. 74
He hadn’t lost Alisha. He hadn’t lost his fortune, his honour or the trust of his family. Then? Garrick saw himself strolling down the alley in his white suit, muttering at the stopped watch on his wrist. It was gold; the bezel studded with oval diamonds and triangular rubies. He saw himself walk into a shop and hand the watch over to the merchant behind the desk. A merchant with a moustached smile. # “You.” Garrick was on the floor now, sinking in a pool of his own sweat. “You took it all,” he croaked. “You changed my history. My life.” Makal cackled as he retrieved the gold watch. “I took nothing, sir. I merely received.” The merchant clasped the watch on his wrist and, much to Garrick’s horror, morphed into a spitting image of the Garrick from a different future. 75
The silver watch in Garrick’s jacket fell to the ground and shattered. An instant later, he jumped to his feet and stared around with wide eyes. “Where am I? What am I doing here?” Makal clasped his hands together and smiled. “You tasked me with repairing your watch, sir. Here, you can have it back.” Taking a silver watch from the merchant, Garrick nodded with a confused grunt and left the store. The door slammed shut behind.
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About the Author
“In a decrepit alley store, a nefarious being plots to take what isn’t rightfully his.”
Lee Russell, not to be confused with local True Singapore Ghost Stories writer Russell Lee, is an aspiring novelist with a penchant for fantasy fiction. Easily entertained, his hobbies include doing basically anything.
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About the Illustrator
Stephen Pikarsky is a 26-year-old international freelance artist and creator of the H.O.P.E. Project trying to spread suicide awareness through art activism. Helping people get through their inner struggles with heartfelt artwork and poetry.
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An Inherited Fear Brendon O’Brein
Illustration by Russell Streur
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ridays were not the best of days. Not for Akeem. They required too much forethought. His brain could’ve handled the strain at the beginning, maybe. Back in 1999, when it was just about evading the questions about why he disappeared every midday to a secluded room for a few 79
minutes. Now, he couldn’t disappear. He had to make do with frequent meditations at his desk. He couldn’t disappear like that now. If someone notices, they’ll tell someone. They’ll tell the police. He’ll disappear for good. His cold, quiet downtown government office hummed low with the activity of restless twenty-somethings waiting for their lunch break. Akeem, though, buzzed anxious in his ergonomic chair, his dread building. It was half past ten, the time his anxiety grows into a pulse all over his body. One would think that his meditation would help. It actually made things worse; he couldn’t help but wonder whether AlHakam found dishonour in his cowardice… “Eh, you not leaving now?” The voice that cut through his thoughts was his supervisor – Suzette Moore, a curly-haired French Creole woman whose athletic build denied her middle age. Her approach was familiar; every Friday, just before lunch, she’d ask him the question he feared to ask himself – if it was okay to leave. “I wasn’t sure, Ms. Moore…if it was okay to leave, I mean,” Akeem cowered. “Of course, Mr. Lucas, of course. I already tell yuh, if yuh need to see yuh dying mother, what kinda asshole I would be to tell you no, eh?” 80
“R-right.” Akeem tried to smile, make the lie more natural than it felt. “And you’re certainly no asshole, Ms. Moore.” “If you call me Ms. Moore one more time…” Her smile now flashed flirtatiously. “Suzie. Please. As much as I’d like nothing more than to look at you sit behind that cubicle and twiddle thumbs, yuh should go. They doh pay trainees enough for them to not go see their moms in the hospital.” “Thanks…Suzie.” Akeem smiled back. He couldn’t help but wonder, letting himself get lost in Suzette’s smile for that moment, whether all of his worryings meant nothing. He could sleep easier without wondering if Trinidad’s secret police were monitoring him. He could smile back at this attractive faithless fair-skinned woman, maybe more than smile, and not worry about Al-Hakam at all… The moment passed. The worry returned more dreadful. Akeem jolted up and grabbed his bag to leave. “Yuh should be careful though, eh Akeem…” His body turned to her through his hesitance. “What do you mean, Ms. M – Suzie?” “Yuh know what I mean. The boss might start worrying. Every Friday for three months now? It starting to look like yuh doing that shit. Jim – Julla – something-” 81
“Jum’ah.” A silence crashed on them, quick and solid. He knew he screwed up, but couldn’t show it to Suzie on his face. Not that she could see it in the haste she turned to see who heard. “You hadda be mad, yes…You know they doh like that shit in this country anymore. Since the coup-” “I know.” Akeem did know. All too well. Since the Jamaat al Muslimeen shot their way out of Parliament in revolution against the corrupt government, Islam was synonymous with treason. In the 90’s, though, it was just a fearful scrutiny. Now, they storm the mosques during salah. Some brothers, either in the spirit of the Jamaat or resenting their current discrimination, have been fighting back. Most of them, though, like Akeem, sleep uneasy knowing that the police or army could drag you and your family out of your beds and night and slit your throats like hogs. Most, like Akeem, wish they would wake up one morning in a world different than the jihad that the Jamaat left them to inherit. “Just watch yuhself, Akeem-“ “The government already watching we, ent?” Something snapped in him then, something he couldn’t seem to hold back together. 82
“What the ass, man? Yuh trying to get yourself locked up? Or worse?” “…No, of course not.” Another solid silence formed around them. Now, Akeem couldn’t find the traces of the smile that was once on Suzette’s face. After a while, Akeem turned back around. “I should go…” He muttered some quick apology to Al-Ghaffaar under his breath. For the last few months, no one suspected a thing from him. But in one conversation, his nerves and frustration could’ve sent him to the grave. In honesty, he wanted to just tell Suzette everything; he was headed to the house of a man he had only met via WhatsApp four months ago, to kneel in a basement to pray to his god; his perfectly healthy mother tells him not to, urges him to pray at home so nothing happens to him; the video of the Muslim man that was bled out and hung up in Woodford Square was his Imam; he’s felt nothing but fear since he was a boy. He wanted to turn back and tell her all of that right now. Not because he trusted her, really. But because the truths he has been hiding since he first learned how to pray – the terror, the tears, the prayers – have been buzzing under his skin. Right then, he wasn’t sure if this feeling was fear or anger. He muttered an apology under his breath for that too.
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The warm blessings of the sun hit his face as he ran out of the office’s glass doors, too quickly to even notice the guard’s greeting to him. Downtown bustled as it always did, and Akeem took some solace in the fact. It didn’t cross his mind that in the preoccupied mass were those who would rather see him die. In this moment, absorbed by the masses, he gained a sense of power that maybe only anonymity could provide. In the crowd, his fear turning into peace as he headed to prayer, he allowed himself one small act of defiance; “Alhamdulillah…”
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About the Author
“It is a story set in a present alternate universe where the 1990 coup d’etat of Trinidad and Tobago ended differently. In a country still affected by the repercussions of a coup d’etat, a young man’s simple request to leave work is a test of faith.”
Brendon O’Brien is a Spoken Word poet, playwright, director and activist from Trinidad & Tobago. He was the First Runner Up of the Verses Bocas Poetry Slam 2014, and the winner of the No Ifs No Butts Poetry Slam 2014. Brendon is also the founder and artistic director of the.art.IS Performing Arts Company. Follow himTwitter and Instagram– @brendonjobrien
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About the Illustrator
Russell Streur’s poetry and photography have been widely published. He is the current editor of Plum Tree Tavern http://theplumtreetavern.blogspot.com/ and is the author of The Muse of Many Names (Poets Democracy, 2011), The Table of Discontents (Ten Pages Press, 2012), and Fault Lines (forthcoming from Blue Hour Press). He is a member of several Atlanta (US) area art organizations in whose galleries his images are often seen
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THE TEAM
Media Liaison Inayat Pawar
Illustrators Lunadala (Cover Art) Arushi Gupta Modita Garima Mahajan
Poetry Editors Ankur Chhabra Pranav Kapil
Editor Himanshu Goel. 87