Neon Literary Magazine #35

ISSUE #35 www.neonmagazine.co.uk info@neonmagazine.co.uk This compilation copyright © Neon Literary Magazine (2013).

Do not copy or redistribute without permission.

All content copyright © respective authors (2013).

Authors may be contacted through the publisher.

Cover image copyright © Imran Khan (i-k.co.uk).

ISSN 1758-1419 [Print] ISSN 1758-1427 [Online] Edited by Krishan Coupland.

Published summer 2013.

Subscriptions and back issues available from the website.

C O N T E N T S J e n n y

G r a y . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

37 Milvington Road Hampshire Saddleback We Always Swam In Rivers

J a c k

B r o d i e . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

N o e l

S l o b o d a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 2

Nothing, Shadows

The Cannibal Affair My Stepfather As A Porcupine My Mother As A Raccoon

S a r a h

G r e e n f i e l d

C l a r k . . . . . . . . . 1 6

But What Can We Do About It? This Gun Takes Vowels And Consonants (Smug Sister) I Don't Mean To Brag But...

Boot Sale Blues Voodoo Dreams Hunting In The Snow

N i c o l e

C l o u t i e r . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 1

D e r e k

A d a m s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 9

Coyote Runs

What You Need To Know About Your Caesarean Section Paranormal Investigation The Eels

D e b o r a h

S e l l e r s

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 4

Methodist Hospital What To Do In Paris I Need A Sharper Knife For This

A n n e t t e

V o l f i n g . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 8

Pinpricks: Before The Conference Sharing The Row

C o n t r i b u t o r s

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 2 2

Image by Jesse Therrien

3

J E N N Y

G R A Y

37 MILVINGTON ROAD I undress for you, sliding soft cotton from cold, pimpled, skin.

Watching you unfurl. The dizzying stripes of your blue pyjamas. We touch in non-erotic places. I learn the hairs on your arms, the curves of your calf.

Run me a bath.

Alone, I sink with hot relief. You lean on the door, "Will you tell him?"

"Nothing happened," I say.

"No, nothing did."

4

HAMPSHIRE SADDLEBACK When he was done arguing he went to the barn, he had a wrench crooked under his left arm.

(He'd been fixing the tractor before the fight began).

The sow shuffled, idle in her stall.

He paused a moment, he put his wife's face on the sow and the sow's face on his wife.

When he was done beating he scooped the sausage meat into a refuse bag and went to bed.

In the coolness of the darkness his wife curled round him, her breath warm on the nape of his neck.

5

WE ALWAYS SWAM IN RIVERS and lakes, in the coolness of a Scottish summer.

I found I lowered myself in fighting the semi-pain, aware of jagged rocks and the dog's sharp paws.

You always dived deep.

Red hair flowering behind you the murk in the water made your skin seem more like stretched canvas.

I always watched in those brittle months you self-absorbing.

You towelling off. Goosebumps forming like the ripples on the loch.

6

Image by Maxime Perron Caissy

7

J A C K

B R O D I E

NOTHING, SHADOWS I was lying alone in a double bed, doing terrible things to a pair of knickers.

The house was the student house of White's girlfriend – the room an absent house-mate's. Every few minutes an ambulance would roll past in the night, turning the room into a silent disco, red and blue. Whenever this happened, she smiled at me, the girl, from the hundreds of photos on her walls.

There was knocking at the door.

"Yeah?" I pulled over the duvet, tucking myself in. The door scraped over carpet, stopped, and then White flicked on the light. He stood there in unbuttoned jeans, rubbing his eyes.

"Class night," he said, and I nodded, although I had spent the last two hours of it pouring drinks into toilets and checking the time on my phone.

"Turn the light off," I said. He turned it off and lay down along the end of the bed. I waited for him to say something.

"It's so cool you came," he said, head down like he was talking to Betty Boop on the duvet cover, "I mean, all my best mates up here together. But you and me, man. We're like brothers. I'm serious - we're like brothers or something."

"Thanks," I said. "What's up?" He didn't move for a moment and I began to think he'd fallen asleep. "What's up?" I said again.

"I swear that Irish girl's cheating on me." Just then an ambulance went past and the lights started rolling around the room. I looked up and took a tour of the house-mate's life. Hair blown back by a rollercoaster. Some tattooed boy by a pool. Parties from year ten onwards: the plainer girls pushed to the sides as she became beautiful.

"How sure are you?" I said, sitting up and feeling the knickers brush my legs. "Because I don't get the feeling Caoimhe would–" "I swear she's cheating on me."

"Fine. Why?" He fell forward onto the duvet and sighed. "Texts."

"Texts?"

"From this Charlie bloke. Work mate. Blatant douchebag, right, clearly just wants to bang her." He turned over and spoke to the ceiling. "But no: 'We're pals, Tom, he's my pal from work.'"

"Good impression," I said.

"Thanks, I know."

"So what's the problem?" I said. "They're mates; he's a loser."

8

White sat up. "He is a loser. One of those gamers – you know. Probably likes Lord Of The Flies or something, probably goes to fucking wizard conventions. It's actually funny. But you should see the fucking texts he sends her. 'Bought some new boxers you can help me remove.' It's actually funny."

"It's out of her control," I said. "It proves nothing in itself."

"He's one of those gamer boys. Ugly cunt. Works at Costa, right, fulltime – he's twenty-five or something – and then he goes home and plays his games and has a wank. It's actually funny."

I heard footsteps on the landing. White fell back onto the bed. "But I swear she's going with him."

"I very much doubt it."

"I swear down she is, mate. I know I deserve it. It's basic karma for all the times I went with other people." He paused. "The worst was that Sophie – I shagged her on Caoimhe's birthday when Caoimhe was downstairs."

"You bastard," I said.

"I know. And she wasn't even fit." There was a silence, a long one, and from far away on another street came the noise of people arguing, a girl shouting Leave him alone. "Dylan," said White, "Can I sleep in here?"

I sat up. "Go back to Caoimhe, mate."

He stood and reached to lift the covers back; I held them down.

"Mate, you can sleep with me or you can sleep with Caoimhe. I know which one I'd choose."

The door brushed over the carpet and there she was. Caoimhe flicked the light on and stood in the doorway wearing a grey dressing gown, no makeup. Her long black hair was wet at the ends from where she'd been sick and wiped it out.

"Turn the light off," said White into the duvet. She turned it off and all I could see of her was a slant of street-light across her face.

"Are you coming to bed?" She might have been talking to either one of us, or both. "Dylan, will you please tell Tom to come to bed with me?"

"Tom," I said – he was pretending to be asleep – "Will you please do the right thing and go to bed with Caoimhe. Look at her, for God's sake. If you don't go, I will." She laughed; strings pulled inside me.

"And will you also tell Tom that I'm not cheating on him with Charlie from work?"

"Tom," I said. "Come on. Of course she's not cheating on you with Charlie from work. And even if she is, who cares! She's here now. Look at her, for God's sake. I think I'm in love with her."

9

No one spoke. From far away came the noise of smashed glass, screaming. Finally, White rolled off the bed and onto the carpet. As he fell he took the duvet with him, and I lunged forward to pull it back.

"What was that?" said Caoimhe.

"Nothing," I said. "Shadows." They stood in the doorway and pressed their foreheads together. As they kissed an ambulance went past, and I watched the fluttering lights on their faces. For a long time after they had gone, I could still hear them. I lay there, still tangled with the knickers, and I listened: to the toilet slamming, to White falling over, and finally to the faint but rhythmic squeaking that came through the wall.

Next morning the pavements shimmered with broken glass. I had lost my shoes, and it would be months before they arrived in the post from Caoimhe.

By then she'd have finished with White and would be seeing Charlie from work. The sun was out and the pavements were hot. At the bottom of the road White took his trainers off so we'd be barefoot together. We tiptoed across the city, and as we spoke, about football, films, and girls, I looked down and imagined the tarmac had turned to soil, the glass to fallen nettles, and that we were weaving through trees on our way to the rope swing, many summers before.

10

Image by Miguel Saavedra

11

N O E L

S L O B O D A

THE CANNIBAL AFFAIR "Better to roast and eat him after he is dead." - Montaigne During the French Renaissance, no philosophers could have imagined you and I would one day embrace anthropophagy on weekends.

Starved by meagre rations in arranged marriages, we dragged bony bodies to a secret banquet in my Toyota's tight backseat behind the community tennis courts gorging on a pale, fleshy feast; we could not stop ourselves under the leering moon, who wondered if we would swallow enough to swell up, float into the sky and join him.

Tantalized by the vicious caress of your canines, I was ready to give up slices of liver, finger sandwiches, slabs of ribs, a breast, a thigh– until you designed a fixed menu for every day of the week and demanded I do all the cooking too.

12

MY STEPFATHER AS A PORCUPINE Whenever he held me at arm's length, he promised it was for my own good, never reckoning his legacy was already at work inside– spikes that lanced my kidneys, scratched my lungs, and pricked my brainstem, making me bristle with spleen no matter how delicately the arms of another warmed me in an unforced embrace.

13

MY MOTHER AS A RACCOON Dropped us in trashcans filled to bursting with blessings during that first lean winter I discovered my love of colour.

Taught us schadenfreude strutting across broken lines on crimson roads that claimed whole clans of squirrels.

Cared enough for us never to remove the midnight mask covering strain marks scored around her eyes.

14

Image by "sskies"

15

S A R A H

G R E E N F I E L D

C L A R K

BUT WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT IT? It'll run its course What if it doesn't?

He'll grow bored of her Bored? He's never had so much sex.

Eurgh. Just pictured him naked.

Enough girls It can't be serious.

He's sick in the head.

And the dick.

Enough (Mother leaves) He must be a pervert.

A paedophile.

She's legal though.

Agreed.

But what can we do about it?

16

THIS GUN TAKES VOWELS AND CONSONANTS Open fire in the etiquette fog, "Isn't he too old" (a little, or a lot...)

The air is scarred with a bullet tongue, and the seconds still as the round of heated sour words curdle the atmosphere like an underground carriage.

Reload, "He's nice enough" (for someone else) More waiting while the medics check for wounds.

The clock hand beats again. The victim smiles with false precision; an artist's impression.

No bleeding, but we've lost her for good.

17

(SMUG SISTER) I DON'T MEAN TO BRAG BUT‌ I've walked the same shifty underpass home, no different to you.

I've watched the faces crease between their brows as they try to work out if indeed that man beside me was my father.

But no, a father wouldn't swagger, arm rested over shoulder, brushing the top of my boob.

I've watched the faces change to dirty looks as if they've just eaten shit.

I don't mean to brag but...

I took note.

Now I walk home with the right man beside me.

And I watch the faces smile politely.

BOOT SALE BLUES Good advice adorns the Sunday tables; cherished, worn and faded.

She snubs the said befores and I know betters, but, isn't the best wisdom pre-loved?

18

VOODOO DREAMS Like mist at midnight Gently travelling its course; Poison stops your heart.

HUNTING IN THE SNOW With us you never camouflaged; you were the siren on the robin's chest.

I'd killed you in my mind a thousand ways a thousand times.

She might have loved you, but she didn't fall.

With a barbed lasso you hunted her.

Forced the bud to open before its bloom.

Your hunting season's over.

Ours is just beginning; so cover your tracks as you leave.

19

Image by "bjgr"

20

N I C O L E

C L O U T I E R

COYOTE RUNS A hazed dawn. Coyote runs down the mountain. His body moves almost too quickly for his feet and the muscles in his legs lengthen to keep up with his mass.

Moss-covered rocks seem to burst from the ground; the coyote leaps, nearly catching his toes. The mountain sheep stand chewing cud and tossing their horn-curled heads with unease. He passes by.

Between Coyote's gritted teeth is a stick that burns from one end. The red flames devour the scorched bark and singe the hairs on the coyote's cheek. The sun rises orange. Each breath burns.

A girl, fifteen, throws her leg through the open window and straddles the sill, balancing one foot on the loose toilet back, the other on the coiled hose that hangs carelessly against the house's panel siding. The girl shifts through the window, then winces at the sound of her feet hitting gravel. She releases a breath, pulls her jacket over her shoulders and walks, hunched, along the side of the house.

The forest looms up beside her. The glow from her parents' bedroom window disappears into the spaces between the peeling birch.

Around the side of the house, past the pond and through the garden that the deer always get to first. Past the stone wall that draws a line across the top of the downhill driveway, she's safe enough to quicken her steps, sending garnet stones in a tiny avalanche down the twisted length of the driveway and into the dirt road.

It's darker here, the lantern-like house over the hill behind. The girl stuffs her hands in her jacket pockets and walks quickly, her back straight, her eyes flicking back and forth across the road in front of her. She thinks she hears something, a rustling of leaves or a chittering of great teeth. She reaches down and grabs a rock the size of her hand, curling her fingertips around the uneven edges. It's all about posture, she knows. The animals here attack only those that won't fight back.

A car's headlights absorb the darkness, until there is no place that does not see her. She blocks her eyes with her hand, but is too late to duck. The car pulls to a stop beside her and she looks in the driver-side window.

"Where do you live?" The voice comes before the face. It is not the one she was expecting.

"Sorry?" She squints.

21

"Do you live nearby?" A woman. One the girl has never seen before.

Curly gray wisps waver around the illuminated face, the darkness slipping into the crevices of her skin. The green numbers of the dashboard clock reflect back in the woman's glasses.

"Yes, just down the street." She feels suddenly known.

The woman becomes clearer, her eyes hesitating, suspicious. Her lips, white, press together.

"Do you need a ride home?"

The girl shakes her head. "No, no. I'm just out for a walk."

The green numbers move up and down as the woman nods. "Be careful."

Gravel grinds against itself as the car drives away, leaving the girl in darkness.

She wonders if she should turn back. How hard would it be now for her parents to piece together? This street was too small for anonymity.

The next car that pulls up, she gets in, sliding into the back seat, the right side of her body pressing against a boy who smells like leaves. He passes a pipe and a lighter and she takes them, filling her lungs to prove that she will not waste. The boy smiles.

In the front seat, the driver grips the wheel like a chauffeur. The smoke drifts towards him in a suspended stream. He breathes. A black briefcase rests on the passenger seat – the one his father will need for work tomorrow.

"How long do we have?" the girl asks, exhaling.

The sun, rising, smears Coyote with orange heat. Thief, it calls. Thief. A vulture floats in the hot air, rising. Her shadow spreads across Coyote's back and he keeps running.

The blonde driver holds up three fingers, each representing an hour before the car has to be safely back in his parents' driveway.

"To Anne's?" the girl asks.

The driver nods without turning his head. She sees the shadowy curve of his upper lip in the rearview mirror – the wide indent that travels upwards, bending into the underneath of his nose. Around his silhouette, the road unravels into existence beneath the headlights. The girl focuses on each stone that passes, trying to hold them in her sight as they disappear under the car.

For some reason, she thinks this will be possible. Each new stone begins to disappear faster than the last – or is she imagining this? She can't decide. In the rearview mirror, the driver's upper lip curls into a grin and the wide-eyed girl presses her fingers into the leaf-boy's shoulder.

22

Suddenly, her body swings sideways, and the leaf-boy wraps his arms around the girl's shoulders as their bodies fall first away from, and then towards the car window. The deer's massive chest seems to pass in slow motion, a held breath; she swears she sees its heart beat, hears the blue fly buzzing in its coarse fur.

The girl cranes her neck, desperate to see its face, its eyes. The car bolts past. She spins around in her seat, pupils pressing into the corners of her eyes, trying to catch a glimpse of it behind them, but there are only shadowy clouds of dust.

The car horn blares into the darkness.

Coyote crosses a stream, but does not stop to drink. The tattered shadows of the tree line decorate his golden fur. Tiny silver fish scatter from the shadows of his paws. Water splashes against Coyote's shins. His fur darkens and shines.

The car pulls down the tree-lined driveway, stopping in front of the old stone house – headlights pressing through the window and reflecting off the goldstriped couch and the mirror that hangs above it – until the engine shuts off. In unison, the girl, the driver and the leaf-boy pull their car door handles, step out and walk towards the house, their footsteps like waves on a pebbled shore.

"You're smallest," the driver says, and bends his knee in front of the loose window, intertwining his fingers like a stirrup. She presses the sole of her shoe into his hands and he lifts up, leaning his shoulder against her hamstrings as she lifts the screen from the window frame. The screen drops to the ground with a singing saw shudder.

She presses the glass with her fingertips and the window creaks open.

She pulls herself through the opening and drops, landing on a wooden chest.

Across the room, beside the gold-striped couch, is a pianola, the keys yellowed and cracked.

The boys' shadows sprout across the stained wooden floor, and she considers not opening the door. Instead, she could run into the next room, lounge on the Victorian couch in one of Anne's dust-covered dresses and listen to a record of Mozart while they ran from window to window, watching the little Tippler– There's a light tapping of fingernails on glass and the girl steps into the stream of moonlight that seeps into the floorboards. The blonde driver and the leaf boy stand beside each other, the latter out-sizing the former so dramatically that she presses the outstretched undersides of her knuckles against her smile. The driver tilts his head and taps the glass again.

23

From this side, the lock turns easily between her fingers. It clicks open and she pulls the door towards her. Their shoes cross the clapboard.

"Remember what we agreed," the driver says, his eyes blue and severe.

The two nod. If one gets caught, the others run. No waiting, no heroism.

"We're in this alone."

They separate. The driver rests on the gold-striped couch, his heels propped on the wood-trimmed arm while he flips through a photo album filled with old stamps. The leaf-boy has taken to spraying the floors with white vinegar, wiping them with a dry-mop they kept in the closet. The girl sits down at the Victorian cylinder desk and rolls up the thin wooden cover.

In the corner of the desk are three coconut dolls – souvenirs from a tropical island where their hair was made of the brown bark, pulled after all the milk had been drunk. Paper rests on the desktop, a pen beside it that had dried itself of ink long ago. Indentations are made in the corner of the page where the girl has tried, once before, to bring it back to life.

The hairs on Coyote's cheek are charred and curled tight against his reddening skin. He slips between the trees, feeling the gods at his back. The wind shouts.

The girl pulls the long drawer until it presses against her stomach. From it, she takes a pile of yellowed letters tied together with thin, brown string. She tugs the string's frayed end and lets it fall from the paper in a loose coil.

Dear Anne, the first letter starts. Thank you for the pictures, Dear.

Especially the one with the display of hose. I love you more than I can... The pencil strokes soak into the paper, lines of confession invisible after all this time. His name was John Beban, and hers, as they knew her sixty years later, the woman who lived alone in the little stone house, was Anne Citron. The girl imagines that John died there in the trench after he wrote this one last dirtsplattered letter. Anne would, perhaps, take them out and read them from time to time, while she waited, while she mourned, while her new husband, a book draped over his face, snored on the wood-trimmed couch. It wasn't that she never loved him, this second one, but she would often wake up in the middle of the night, her body soaked in sweat, with the image of John's face.

And when her husband, this college man, tried to comfort her, it was never enough.

In Anne's bedroom, the girl sifts through the clothes that still hang in the armoire: long dresses with lace-trimmed sleeves. She drapes a knitted shawl over her bony shoulders and sits on the corner of the stiff mattress, one arm wrapped loosely around the canopy post.

24

The leaf-boy starts the pianola and Bach's ghostly keystrokes drift through the door frames. The girl sighs and lies back on the bed, staring up into the canopy's dizzying garden and allowing the song to become familiar. A slant of light breaks beneath the curtains.

A blue bird flies by Coyote's head – low – swooping closer and closer. It pecks at the skin on his skull over and over until he's sure he deserves it.

He bends between the trees under the cover of leaves. His tail stretches behind him and the gods reach for it with fiery hands. In the distance, there is music.

The leaf-boy is standing by the window, overlooking the back yard. The girl stands behind him. His wide shoulders rise and fall with each breath. He is silhouetted by dusty yellow light and suddenly seems small – a grain of sand, an atom.

They are standing together, watching the first hazed cues of sunrise.

The girl slips her hand into his. The back yard's steep slope is smeared with treetops and fog. It feels as if the house is floating; just one push and it would be swallowed whole, like a melon.

"We should go," the girl says. The driver slips the book of stamps back on the shelf.

Outside, a thick fog presses against them, and they wonder what time it's gotten to.

The car speeds through the fog, streams of white rolling against the windows. Through the windshield, they see only white. They are in a cloud.

They are flying.

"Slow down." As she says it, the car lurches sideways, lifting their bodies from their seats. The driver slams on the brakes and the girl's head smashes into the seat in front of her. For a moment she is lost; the car has stopped. Her nose feels like it's been pushed inside her head. She tastes metal.

She reaches up to her face and feels her nose, still there, still whole. Her hands cup over it.

"Let me see," the leaf-boy says, pulling her hands from her face. Staring.

"You're fine, it'll be fine." He smiles.

"Shit, shit, shit," the driver says, stepping out of the car and into the glow of the headlights. The front bumper is smashed against a stone wall – broken rocks strewn across the grass of an apple orchard.

The girl and the leaf-boy come out of the car slowly. She can feel her heart beat pressing frantically against her ribs and struggles to swallow.

25

"Shit," the driver says again, running his hand along the hood. The other two step forward, fog separating around them like a sea.

In the headlights' distance, surrounded by a mist of disturbed white, lies a mass. Its midsection rises and falls unsteadily.

"What is it?" the leaf-boy asks.

They step carefully. "A dog?"

Up close, the animal's grey fur looks as if it's been brushed with gold paint. Its body is motionless, laying on its side, but its eye – tinted brown around the pupil – follows them frantically, straining into its corner while they kneel beside the body. Gravel presses into the girl's knees as she runs her hand against the animal's luminescent fur and the breathing, shallow, quickens. "A coyote," she says.

The beast's legs begin to twitch and then kick. The leaf boy grabs the girl around her shoulders and pulls. They fall backwards, together into the dirt. They sit still, breathing in rhythm while the coyote stands and shakes the dust from his fur.

He looks at them, and the girl tries to discern anything from his eyes.

The coyote turns and runs, disappearing over the stone wall and between the apple trees.

The sun rises orange, setting fire to the orchard.

"We have to go," the blonde driver says, plucking an apple and throwing it over his shoulder. It lands in the girl's lap and she takes a bite. It soothes her swelling tongue.

Coyote runs. His teeth dig into the burning stick's bark. His cheek boils. His legs go numb beneath him – mechanical feet. Coyote stumbles over his own pinpricked toes. The fire, loosened, leaps from his mouth, tumbling end over end over end across the sky– Until it lands in the apple tree's igniting arms. The fire catches, infecting the orchard with majesty. Coyote collapses on a twist of upturned root.

The car pulls up to the driver's parents' house. The driver rolls the car carefully into the previous day's tyre tracks. The three get out and follow silently, ducking behind the car's broken body. The blonde boy tip-toes up to the side door and waves once before disappearing through it. The girl counts to ten.

The two grab the largest rocks they can find, and, gripping them tightly with their fingers, smash the rocks against the car hood. At first, she does it tentatively, wincing with each crash. The impact echoes through her body.

26

Morning light glistens from the metallic indents; the paint cracks. The girl and the leaf-boy shout and cackle over the sound of cracking aluminium.

When the lights in the house flash on, they drop their rocks and sprint as fast as their feet can carry them. Dew damp dirt splatters the backs of their bare legs.

"Someone's been breaking into that old house down the street," her mother tells her. "Did you hear?"

The girl shakes her head and sips her coffee. The mother watches her, and the girl swallows carefully.

Her mother shrugs. "Well, the nephew's taking the place over, finally.

That old woman's been dead for months."

The next time they drive by the old house, a green dumpster overflows in the front yard – furniture and clothes, the gold-striped couch, the Victorian cylinder desk. Plywood is nailed over the windows, and a path of pink insulation litters the grass.

Before the nephew sells it, the three will make it back inside Anne's house one more time. They will be overwhelmed by the dust-covered floors, the empty quiet, and they will find a chandelier bead, a photograph and one broken piano key under the radiator.

When, years later, the leaf-boy and the girl meet by chance on a layover in Chicago, she'll still be wearing the piano key around her neck. Snow will be piling against the window, covering the wings of the planes that will take her east, him west. They will sit side by side at a coffee bar and she'll try to recite Anne's letters, but stumble over the words. He'll interrupt and say she looks radiant. She'll comment on how much weight he's lost, he'll say he's stopped drinking, and they'll wonder how they got away with it all.

27

Image by Ognjen Djokic

28

D E R E K

A D A M S

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR CAESAREAN SECTION Turning the pamphlet's well-worn and underlined pages, in the soft green waiting room, comparing bellies; yours ripe and ready, mine a dream-filled pillow.

Choosing the one, that was hard, the right one, my ideal other, the right hair, right eyes.

Everything must be perfect for baby, The plan meticulous, your home town a twenty-five minute drive, just over the state line.

Our meeting "Hey, look at us, how long? Me too." away from the video surveillance of the Grantsburg prenatal unit.

"Perhaps I'll bump into you again."

Not too often, enough for a check up, not enough for anyone to remember seeing us together.

Double-checking dates.

Not too soon, not too late.

Timing is the key, like me arriving at my "What a co-incidence, next to yours" auto, in the hospital lot, with you, the ignition, the battery, all at the point of despair.

29

My Arm & Hammer smile offering a lift.

Hand, clean and red, on the car door "Help yourself to some of my OJ" Ketamine bottle in my purse.

In the trunk, distributor wires, carrycot, sterile sheets, alcohol, scalpel.

30

PARANORMAL INVESTIGATION I am experiencing strange phenomena in the streets of this deserted ghost town.

I catch your blonde locks flowing from the corner of my eye or your skirt lifted by the wind in the movement of a curtain at an open window.

I am setting out my equipment in search of what once was physical.

I have a tripod-mounted Full-spectrum video camera to catch any unusual motion: the corner of lips lifting into a smile, or the flash of your glow worm eyes.

I switch on my voice recorder, ask tentatively "Are you here?"

Listen, straining to create my name in the distorted buzz of white noise.

Wander around Electro Magnetic Field meter in my hand, waiting for the needle to jump.

31

THE EELS Several people said they had seen him clinging to the guardrail, after the huge wave had sent him off the pier, before he disappeared into the grey water and out of sight.

The lifeboat and a helicopter searched till dark, then again the next day.

Nearly a week later just off Dungeness some fishermen hauling in their net, drag a bloated rag doll from the water.

Out from the jeans' legs and under his anorak, leaving the body by various orifices, some of them new, the eels.

32

Image by "soopahtoe"

33

D E B O R A H

S E L L E R S

METHODIST HOSPITAL Hopeless you in the bed me in the chair both of us waiting You became talkative near the end of my visit I counted the freckles on my arms

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WHAT TO DO IN PARIS I put on my best Edith Piaf hair explored the city with a grin and a red push-up bra Frenchmen thought my accent was cute perfect loaves of bread jumped into my arms strong bottles of wine followed me through the French Quarter I knew you'd be napping when I returned hungry when I woke you so I brought you an apricot tart and didn't tell you I fucked Hemingway in the Louvre his breath smelling of scotch and the garlic potato salad they no longer serve at CafĂŠ Lipp

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I NEED A SHARPER KNIFE FOR THIS Sixteen yes, but, if I was all too willing, can it really be said you corrupted me?

To this day I gauge all men against you, even your brother.

To say who was better is a baby I won't want to hold.

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Image by Marcelo Moura

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A N N E T T E

V O L F I N G

PINPRICKS: BEFORE THE CONFERENCE So you step out of the three-star hotel into a different rain from at home.

Numb streets, the narrowing hours.

Search out a table for one, as you wait– a single rose, a luminous wine.

But there's no story here.

Just the wait for the start, just the shivering spell cast in the clouds so you'll think and you'll breathe like a doll that somebody hates.

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SHARING His dreams are amateur. Maybe, once a year, a girl; maybe even one with breasts; but he can never be quite sure.

She sighs, impatiently, as he confesses– then explains how she was raped, yet again, by the entire Red Army in just two minutes before the alarm went off, and still had time to re-take her French O-level and wash the kitchen floor.

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THE ROW A swollen day, jabbed.

Soon it will split right open, to a black place by a black sea, all outline gone, just a shuddered spoke like the devil's tail.

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Image by Yazmeen Razak

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C O N T R I B U T O R S Jenny Gray grew up in rural Aberdeenshire, Scotland. During her school years she wrote a monthly column for her local newspaper The Ellon Times. She read English with Creative Writing at the University of Chester.

Since she graduated she has been travelling in Canada and working on her first novel.

Jack Brodie is twenty-two, and started writing in 2011 after he read The Rain Horse by Ted Hughes. He lives in Alton, Staffordshire, amid the screams of the famous theme park. During his degree he took a Creative Writing module under the novelist Joe Stretch. This is his first publication

Noel Sloboda serves as dramaturg for the Harrisburg Shakespeare Company and teaches at Penn State York. He is the author of the poetry collections Shell Games (Sunnyoutside, 2008) and Our Rarer Monsters (Sunnyoutside, 2013) as well as several chapbooks. He has also published a book about Edith Wharton and Gertrude Stein.

Sarah Greenfield Clark is just another someone, writing in what little free time there is. She studies the craft with the Open University and sh e'd love to do this as a living, but for now she's mostly happy being a mum and escaping in poetry and prose when she can.

Nicole Cloutier is the Editor in Chief of Lumina. She grew up in rural Connecticut and is currently completing her MFA at Sarah Lawrence College.

Derek Adams is a photographer, poet, poetry promoter and sometimes writer of short stories. You can find out more about him and his work on his website (www.derek-adams.co.uk).

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Deborah Sellers lives outside of Indianapolis, and is temporarily of the leisure class, which unfortunately doesn't pay the bills. She lives with fellow writer Kitrell Andis and their cat who thinks she is a marshmallow.

The most interesting thing she's done lately is seen an Ai Weiwei exhibit.

Annette Volfing is originally from Denmark. She is now an academic teaching Middle High German literature. Her poems have appeared in The Interpreter's House, Smith's Knoll, Snakeskin and The Oxford Magazine.

Imran Khan provided the cover image for this issue. You can find out more about him and his work by visiting his website (www.imrankhan.co.uk).

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S U P P O R T E R S

This issue of Neon was made possible by the kind support of: Lisa Clark April Davila Shannon Ralph Jessica Falzoi EAM Harris Richard Fox Matthew Di Paoli Simon Collings Patrick East Steven Young Victoria McGee

Noah Saunders Sandra Hiortdahl Benjamin Liar CH Thompson Danica Richards Kevin Bannigan William Wallace Sarah Purnell Jan-Kees Kok Sunetra Senior Cynthia White

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JA Underhill Tracey Swan Amelia Ashton Bryn Fortey Jon Margetts Scott Thornley Charles Thielman Christopher DiCicco Woodland Grove Gallery Neal Holtschulte