The Charterhouse Review: Volume 6 by Sitewrights

The Charterhouse Review

The Charterhouse Review volume 6: 2012-2013

volume 6: 2012-2013

Charterhouse Review Volume 6: Spring 2013 Editors ZoĂŤ Green and Samantha Clarkson Front Cover Katharine Doyle

Lizzy Parsons

Table of Contents Bill Freeman King

Harry Manton Photo

Louise Jackson Rogers You Ask Me

Giles MacDougall The Horrors that the Sea Brings

Chris Akka Rags

James Akka Procrastinating from Life

Joanna Langley Rogues, Villains, Outsiders

Phyllis Lim Of Reality and Other Falsehoods Take-off

21 23

Callum Morganti Alternate Ending to Medea

Andrew Lyons The War After War

Gus Montgomery Isaac Fletcher Matthew Adams James Randolph

Last Christmas, I Gave Your My Heart

Jack Lee At the Beginning

William Davies Ghost Story

Rex Henderson Heart

Amanda Fang Inspired by Edgar Allan Poe

Arun Silva I Am

Theo Hunt Autumnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Last Stand

Pippo Khalwa Villainy

Ella Egerton Black Tracks

Thomas Yih Torture Scene

Luke Titmuss One Shot

Peter Chownsmith Artistic Appreciation

Benjamin Torvaney The Rogues Gallery

Emma Ansell Family History

Henry Jones The Hanging Memoir Don’t You?

69 70 71

Harriet Earley Outsiders

Christopher Potts Anonymous

Ed Osborne Spoilt for Choice?

Thomas Timms Foreign Country

Polly Furness The Three Little Pigs

Michael Okoye Arduous Love

Ajitesh Rasgotra Foreign Country

Justin Heng Cow

Clemente Theotokis The Incident at Hora

Samuel D’Souza Cig and Twine

Rex Henderson Still Unmoving Water

Ella Seal

King

hen all this is over, said the King, I mean to go to the port, where Nobody will know of my status or whisper behind My back and there will be no talk of power or war. I shall leave behind the summer, and miss the rolling lawns And endless hedgerows of the palace gardens As they are kissed by each morning ray of sunlight. I intend to drink tea from Orient lands Feeling the bitter sweet taste of timelessness And smell the heady odours of this heavenly nectar. I want to see the fishing boats lining up to empty their holds And watch the weighty salmon being hefted out of writhing nets, Come back from the sapphire blue depths To draw out the precious living gems of the sea.

Bill Freeman

O p p Friends and family mourn a 77-year-old man who committed suicide outside the Greek parliament, Thursday, April 5th, 2012. Harry Manton

You Ask Me

ou ask me. You present it as a question As if I have a choice. No. No, I do not want her to come with us. I sense the misperception in your Silence leaking down the line, you mumble and stutter as you try to grasp this response. And I can hear her in the background Sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s there She can hear our conversation. * Blind communication Across a wire Masking my reluctance to even look at You. I do not want to see her.

Louise Jackson Rogers

The Horrors that the Sea Brings Winner of the 2012 Under School Arts Festival Prose Prize ‘The greatest joy a man can know is to conquer his enemies and drive them before him. To ride their horses and take away their possessions. To see the faces of those who were dear to them bedewed with tears, and to clasp their wives and daughters to his arms.’ Genghis Khan Baltic Sea, off Denmark. 790 A.D. he coast loomed over the horizon as the dawn approached. Pine trees topped with snow swayed along the shore line in the wind like the migration of ghosts in the cold northern winds. The ship’s hull slid through the water silently, occasionally scraping chunks of ice floating through near-frozen waters. Aboard the ship, men made ready for the dawn. They were Norsemen, sailing south towards the coastal villages of Denmark. There were around fifty aboard the ship, donning mail or preparing weapons. A silent fever of anticipation mingled with the cool, fresh sea air. After nearly four days at sea, they were ready to take their prize. Ivarr Ericson was nervous. This would be his first time. He had spent hours with his brothers, learning how to use the sword and shield that he now carried. The other, more experienced, men had told him to drop his shield quickly as they reached the town. One had said that there would be no resistance and that he would move faster to reach the plunder in the houses if he dropped the shield; he could then pick it up when they returned to the ship. Ivarr was almost ready: all he had to do was fasten the belt around his waist – but, before he could do this, he heard someone yell out. He looked south to the shore and saw a huddle of small wood and thatch houses just up from the

beach. There was barely any sign of life there at this hour, but for smoke rising. ‘READY!’ shouted the boat master. The shore party gathered at the bow of the boat. The ship was heading straight for the small beach in front of the village. The beach had several little fishing boats there, pulled clear of the sea. There was a huge crunching and grinding sound as the ship’s prow ran aground a few metres shy of the beach, the wood throwing up sand and rocks. ‘NOW!’ The men leapt into the icy water. Some lost their footing and stumbled, falling beneath the waves, suffocating under the Baltic only to be trampled by other raiders as they disembarked. Those who hadn’t fallen waded towards the fishing boats. Shrieking, screaming and crying from the village as people saw the ship and took to the streets with their children, attempting escape. Ivarr began to wade. The water was like nothing he had ever experienced. His mail was heavy and the water had soaked his clothes under it. His shield weighed as much as a mountain and his hands seemed to have frozen to it, as he did not have gloves. He wished that his father had been able to afford them, but his family had not been able to cover the cost of the whole war gear. His sword was in his hand and the metal of that too appeared to have been stuck to him. About a dozen had reached the shore and were yelling the name of their god, ‘THOR, THOR!’ as they charged up to the village. Ivarr staggered ashore and tried to catch his breath, but a gruff voice behind him said, ‘Move it’ so he continued up the sand and clusters of small rocks. One of the fishing boats had been set alight and the flames licked upwards, smoke piling into the dawn sky, creating a haze above the beach. Ivarr ran like he had never run before. He passed the first houses, where gleeful men searched for treasure, and jogged up the main street. As he did this, he became aware that he was still holding his shield and he tried to extricate it from his hand whist running. The town smelt of

excrement, heaps of it next to each house. A man tore down the street holding an ancient looking spear and screaming with rage. He came at Ivarr, who dodged and brought up his sword into the man’s chest, using all of the strength that came from hours of training. Blood flowed down Ivarr’s arm and under the sleeve of his mail; it spurted onto the ground and down the man’s legs. Eventually, the man’s body slackened and Ivarr pulled the sword free, the blade of which was slicked with blood and another foul smelling substance. Houses burnt; women screamed as men grabbed them; the dying moaned on the ground; the children cried; the dead said nothing. Ivarr entered a house off the street and came across a pot boiling on the fire. He climbed onto the table in the middle of the room and hacked at the thatch with his sword: it was common knowledge that peasants hid their riches in the roof. It was tough work. The thatch seemed ancient and cords held it in place. Finally, he pulled down a section and, among the mice that squeaked and scurried away, found what he had been looking for. A small bag of coins. He pocketed the coins and walked into another room, this one a bedroom. He looked under the bed, but found nothing. Then there was the sound of someone taking a breath. He looked around and saw a wooden chest on the other side of the room. He raised his sword so that he was ready, and opened the lid. Inside, there was a girl. She was maybe about fifteen, petrified to see the Norse warrior standing above her. He wasn’t surprised; he and his sword were red with blood and gore. His face was a spectacle of horror and his boots were covered in the entrails of a dead man. He immediately hauled her out of the box by the arm. She looked ready to faint. He led her to the door, surprised that she didn’t struggle. He opened the door and found a blood bath outside. Bodies littered the street and smoke darkened the morning sky. Women sobbed as they were herded together to be sold in the slave markets back home. Ivarr

led the girl to the edge of the village and pushed her away. He thought that he should at least let one human escape the carnage. She promptly ran into the undergrowth nearby and disappeared. Ivarr walked back to the ship, thinking that nothing had really come of the raid. Dejected, he pulled out the bag of coins from his tunic. He expected to find just a few coppers and bits of silver; and his shock was indescribable when he found himself looking at a bag of gold, shining brightly in the morning sun.

Giles MacDougall

Rags

Winner of the 2012 Under School Arts Festival Poetry Prize

pile of rags lies in an alley. Motionless. Silent. Enveloped by the darkness. The shadows shift. Something stirs. A face, plastered in dirt. Hands, coarse and cut. Feet, pale and bare.

The rags stand up, Bright eyes darting around the darkened face. The feet staggering out of the shadows. Shouts, rising from behind the rooftops Scare the rags out of their trance. They make a shapeless form of a boy. He looks down at his hands. A single teardrop lands of them, Leaving a pale circle in the sticky redness. The boy looks back at what he has done. Nestled in a doorway. Motionless. Silent.

The feet start running, The hands clutching the purse, The face stained with tears, The eyes; soulless. And then the shadows swallow him up.

Christopher Akka

Procrastinating From Life

e sat at the edge of the frozen lake, waiting. His hands were numb, his feet were numb, and his mind was numb. It was all the same now. Eating, sleeping, working. Dealing with family was too much of a pain now, as if it had just been wiped clean off the whiteboard of his

thoughts. The trees lay bare around the edges of the lake, sleeping, waiting for spring when they could burst with life and colour, when they could lie under the sun. But now they were naked, their branches brittle. And today the cold sun did nothing but burn the ice into his skin. He had always thought that lakes were secrets, unfathomable depths that held the cool dark bliss he longed for. What was hidden underneath the frost? Fish slowly but surely living their lives to an end, weeds billowing in the gentle currents, or a small child, scratching and scrabbling with no way out and no breath and no one to help them escape their death. Death was on his mind too much lately. Always lurking in the back of his thoughts, always waiting for him. It had started to rain now. He should have gone home, to a warm house. But he stayed in the chilled, wet air. Home was just a place he could go to re-live old memories, most of them bad. His wife was just a woman to him, who happened to live in his house. They hardly talked anymore; just a few words now and then. ‘How was your day?’ ‘All right I guess’. The same thing, every day. It never changed. Eating, working, sleeping. He shielded his slightly torn newspaper from the rain, and thought how fragile it was. The news is sturdy, always reliable. We trust it, and yet as soon the rain comes,

it collapses underneath us, and tears. Just like friends, he thought. He read the headline: ‘How my husband left me for his boss Read now on page 7!’ Why should he care? He felt he was being too negative again. It was all negativity now. The rain became heavier, each drop tearing through the sky like a knife and landing heavily on his head. Some of the snow was melting away, but the lake remained frozen; sturdy until the last minute. He thought how the snow lived such a short life, then died like everything else. There it was again, death. It knew he was unhappy, and came for him, always in his thoughts, melting into his mind. The sun was setting behind the impenetrable clouds. The rain continued. He thought about walking home. What was the use? All that was left there was a shell of a marriage, and cracked memories. He sat back down onto the cold hard bench. A flock of birds flew by. They didn’t care. The frost formed around him slowly in the dark, a secret invasion, leaving all of the world cold. Cold which was starting to burn him, but he could not feel it anymore throughout most of his body. A few stars shone out through the cloud cover, like pinholes in the sky. He imagined it to be as if the universe was falling apart around him, and the stars were the showing cracks, the evidence of the collapsing. Most problems had few signs. Like the fact he probably had no one looking for him now. He felt isolated, all alone in the enveloping night. The dark flowed and gushed into every crack, every crevice, and his heart. He wondered again about the secrets of the lake. He stood up, and walked towards it, feeling the grass, suffocated by frost, crunching underneath his feet. He could smell dampness. The rain was dying slowly.

As he walked to the crisp white shore of the lake, he thought over his life. Nothing special. He took one step onto the ice. It crunched. He thought again about the cool dark inside of the lake. The ice wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t safe. He knew.

James Akka

Rogues, Villains, Outsiders Winner of the 2012 Arts Festival Specialist Prose Prize

11th February, 2007 e name’s Carter Hastings. I been told to write a journal as part of the rehab process. Jail order and all that. I go see my counsellor twice a day, every day, and we talk about shit to do with emotions and ‘remorse’. That there’s a word he likes to use: ‘remorse’; ‘regret’ too. Asks me whether I feel guilty about what I done. Truth is, I don’t feel nothin’. 12th February, 2007 I share a cell with five other men. We don’t talk much though. Not about life now, nor our futures when we get out of this here dump, and definitely not what we done in the past. It’s just a no-go area: if you ask about it you’re gonna get yourself a beating. Four of them are like that. Don’t know their names (Joe? Brad?); your average bad guys; tattoos all up the arms, damn’ messed up in the head and stupid. Real stupid: that’s what pisses me off most. It’s like a trigger going off in their little brains and we’ll have ourselves a brawl. Trigger don’t even have to be anything big: had a guy say a prayer one time before bed and he got a good bashing. Don’t want nothing to disturb these guys’ beauty sleep. 13th February, 2007 Forgot to mention the other bloke in this cell: Samuel, that’s his name. Everyone calls him Sam though. I can tell he don’t like it. He’s one of ’em thoroughbred types: rich parents, posh school. Probably here for fraud or dealing. Something to do with money anyway. Doesn’t fit in: that’s why I like him. Bit like me in that way: an outsider.

14th February, 2007 People been getting letters today from back home today. Girlfriends, wives, support systems. Don’t have none of that, me. I’m not sad though: used to it, I guess. Was always one of them quiet kids: ‘socially awkward’ that’s how me mam described it. Never really had friends or girls chasing after me. Spent a lot o’ time behind the bike shed with a joint. Classes were stupid: never taught you nothing. Wouldn’t even know where Dallas was on a map and that’s my home town, man. Wouldn’t know Texas either come to think of it. Not that that’s much of a problem. 15th February, 2007 Mam died when I was fourteen. Never had no Dad. When Mam died no one knew: we didn’t have many friends, me and her, neither relatives. They all left her when she had me: that’s what she told me. Told me I was a mistake, not worth the trouble. Told me she didn’t deserve to spend her twenties with a kid. Wanted to party. Not that she didn’t party. I cooked for myself from the age of three – simple stuff, mind, toast and butter. Not much for brain development. Probably back then that it all went wrong for me. 16th February, 2007 The therapist been asking me to recount that day to him. The day that ended me up here in this shithole. I told him: I were walking down that avenue near the theater, not used much: people are too scared. Place you go in this city if you wanna feel the high – got all sorts for helping you get there. I wasn’t buying that day though: no, I was just walking through when I sees this girl. Remember she was standing by the side of the road, wearing red. Then I froze up . . . started kicking the chair in his office. Get like that a lot – all on edge like and angry. - Red’s the colour bulls chase after, right?

Therapist told me to leave. Said I should come back when I’m calm. 17th February, 2007. Need to get out of this dump. Haven’t smoked any in a while and I’m feelin’ the wrath. Been getting all shaky: a lot o’ people have. There’s some spliff around here but it’s the bad stuff – poor quality that the guards sell to us at some fucked-up price. We don’t do anything here neither – just talk about our feelings, fight and sleep. Effin’ bored – outside world seems a dream now. 18th February, 2007 Therapist did shitloads of prying today. I told him to fuck off. Told him hadn’t he ever seen a pretty girl and had an urge like? Well I couldn’t resist this one – could never get any willing ones anyway – and I went for it. Didn’t think the cops would be so fucking near. 19th February, 2007 I gotta spend six years here now. I don’t feel no ‘remorse’ though. She deserved it wearing that damn short skirt and being in that area o’ town with no protection. What was she thinking? Gotta protect yourself against fuckers like me: she should know that. I guess she was the trigger for me – same as these other guys here feel before they throw a punch. They don’t think it through though. I thought her through. I calculated the risks in my head. I decided it was worth it. We’re all just animals in this world. Bull chases after red flag and no one asks no questions. No one gives that bull any punishment for chasin’. Why do I land myself six years then? Fucked-up world we live in: that’s what they should teach at school.

Joanna Langley 20

Of Reality and Other Falsehoods

alling upon the elements of magick and life – I summon thee, my dark master; To disrupt rest, to make peace, to cause strife, How entertaining you would be, my personal court jester! With the power of earth, I summon thee, My dark lord; to rise and cause bedlam I feel like grinning in wicked lovable perfect glee As I paint chicken’s blood in a pentagram. With the power of air, I summon thee With the sea breeze, with a tornado, with the whoosh of my cape And slowly, suddenly, I start to see Wisps of smoke forming shape I summon thee, bearing the element of fire The hearth glows incandescent in a warm fiery welcome But the room is lit up in vain, so I frown in ire I demand your presence, and so you shall come I summon thee, bearing the element of water Stirring my pot that burns at absolute zero I throw in a sea-horse and an otter; And other forms of sea-life; watching them disintegrate as if I’m Nero I summon thee with my soul; thy Glorious Spirit, Bind you to me; my daemon of destruction and discord Suddenly blood spurts from the pot, which with green fire is now alit I sense you near; my master, Acheron, my dark lord

Completing my incantation, I cease my perfunctory hand-gestures With a blink of my eyes, I am transported To the driest of all seas, to the most barren of all pastures To a place with divine potential unfortunately distorted I see a flurry of red dust; I suspect you are near – I walk closer, in attempt to catch a glimpse of you But all I see are empty cans of what used to be beer Lying on the ground; and used tires too. What on earth is going on? Someone, tell me: is this all real? What is this place I’m gazing upon? This confusing beautiful deserted place so surreal… I’m in a room, a white, white room, biting my nails in a rut For suddenly, swept from sight, the plain is gone Everything is gone, all gone; Leaving nothing but A pain in my head: like a hammer, like a thorn Cold; Silence – eerie silence; I blink and stare and blink again – it never gets old; I stare and blink and stare again – it’s ever so simple, like a science. I draw my blankets close: the room is chilled – I deduce that I’m lying in a bed; The walls are padded, the windows grilled – What’s going on; is this all in my head?

Phyllis Lim 22

Take-off

he sky is clear, celeste; watching Wisps of shapeless clouds Drift in and out as they please Blooming flowers at the peak of their Atrocious beauty; gaze upwards in fervent worship Towards the sky, the glorious all-encompassing beyond Spreading their dewy heart petals As if preparing for flight The grass grows wild; flat blades of green tentacles Running everywhere, ascending from handfuls of elastic mud And on these rest tiny, translucent spheres of dew Denoting the freshness of spring or morning Powdery feathers; fluttery wings; a burst of colour across the sky Rail-thin, silkworm-fat, it hovers on its spindly, quivering limbs Over a branch; perfect triangles and teardrops jutting out Of its frail wormlike frame Perpetually in motion; displaying Cobalts and chartreuses, intricately divided by an odd shade of wisteria-onyx Proud antennae tremble for a moment Before the butterfly sets flight once again

Phyllis Lim

Alternative Ending to Medea Winner of the 2012 Arts Festival Specialist Poetry Prize Act Five Medea is on centre stage. The bodies of Glauce and Creon hang limply from down right and left. Medea Yet how this sweet revenge turns sour in its completion, how bitter the aftertaste! Creonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s palaces lie bathed in flame and ruin and his daughter walks the halls of Hades alone. Vengeance however, is nought but brief distraction to the spurned heart, for rejection and sorrow still burn with unforgotten ire within me. Jason, O my Jason, how fortunate he is to be blameless And innocent of crimes of the like that would have Even the Furies turning their blazing torches upon themselves rather than bear them bloody witness! Men and women alike bleed their last into the corrupted soil, worms wallowing in the blood of innocents. An ardour within me seems now extinguished, For while passionate fury once burnt vigorously with savagery, It soon degenerated and fell into ashen cinders. But now for me; whereto do I fly upon my chariot of Winged serpents that Chaos itself must have granted me, for the gods do not gift the unrighteous with boons! But no, the gods desire justice in the mortal plane and Medea herself has balanced it! Scheming kings and harlot princesses,

Usurping uncles and vengeful fathers deserve no more than their chests to be ripped out and their treacherous hearts left for hellions to ravage and shred. But Jason, his crime is absent for he has done no evil by the law; yet by the gods above he has done wrong and sinned against the law of nature. Women have no such place below men; they are all birthed and all die in the same manner. The wounds he leaves leave no tears of crimson blood, but feed the raging furnace of hatred and ire that the kindly gods abhor! For the innocent have suffered at his expense, no even worse, those that have sinned for his sake have been abandoned. Justiceâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s scales sway heavily away from the race of men and to right this wrong innocent blood must be spilt. Yet innocents, like a child, have done no evil, their scales hold true and equal. Woe betide she that ignores this truth! Dike wields the sword in her material hand, revenge is not for mortal man nor woman to seek but best left to gods. Proud Orestes sought in seething anger matched only by morals wrought of iron to retribute his evil mother; yet the Erinyes tormented him until the end of his days and many more after. Surely the gods do take pity on mortal pain and avenge? O how my fury has surged over and committed such travesty with the same speed it hath abated! Medea, you have no choice. Already Jason seeks you and the kingdom of Corinth bays for your blood and death as wolves might pursue and bare sharp teeth upon a fox. Your flight is imminent and the gods must be forgotten in haste. leave now, cry havoc and set yourself free from this prison. restore yourself unto your former kingdom; your father is aged and

weak and will fall under your crushing heel as the snaketongued Jason shall. Slay him and let him finally be with his lover in hell. Cut his lying tongue from his treacherous mouth and impale it upon a spike. Castrate the man that followed lust like a slave, more similar to a beast than a human. His injustice demands no less. I am but an exile from my homeland of snowy Colchis far across a black and unwelcoming sea within which my brother feeds the fish with bloody chunks of flesh. Across another expanse of ocean lies Iolcus and the remains of Pelias. Outsider, foreigner and exile to every kingdom on this earth. Even here a path forged of destruction And ruination is carved by unimaginable and raging vindication. If my hand had been able to find satisfaction in just two murders, I would have committed them within a flash. yet the number is too small to satisfy my pain; for before it can be torn from my now frail frame, Colchis, Iolchus, Troy, Sparta, Athens and the world would sink in flames beset from all sides to match the grief inflicted upon so many by a woman, just or not. Instead, murder rakes deep scars across my venomous heart and wrenches remorse from its darkest depths to see light. Now I leave this godless world, and perhaps prove that To whichever world I go there are no gods. (Stabs herself)

Callum Morganti 26

The War after War

he torrential rain was beating down on us like smooth stones. The darkness covered us like a blanket; it was keeping us warm and hidden. There had been no gunfire for almost three hours but I still held my weapon close. It was my teddy-bear and I was the child loving it. My hands were covered in a combination of mud, sweat and congealed blood. The smell of iron and salt in sewage water stung my nostrils. My feet were soaked in brown Vietnam water. My feet stood immobile and felt like extra baggage. My uniform and my weapon were drenched. My saggy hands slid across the slick, jet black metal, my grip tightening. The weight of our kit on our shoulders was more than the weight of life in Vietnam. My platoon and I made sure that we were as inconspicuous as humanly possible. Patrol was like waiting for Death; anxiety and fear was all you felt. Now my hands and arms are gone, and so is the war. Before we were patriotic children who wanted to play with our toy guns; now we are the depressed middle-aged men who know what mistake we made. We made the mistake of thinking we were defending lives. We took our ideology and shoved it down the Vietnamese's throats; and they did it back in turn; we would see who choked first. We claimed to fight for freedom, but we did it by taking it from others. We killed men and promoted destruction of human beings. We killed mothers, fathers, children. We took their limbs and they took ours. We caused depression and grief as they did to us. We thought that we were fighting for peace. We thought, as we were told, that we were needed to do our duty. Now I ask, how is killing others doing your

duty? For whom is this duty being done? Ourselves? I know now, handless and armless as I am, bitter as I am, that my duty is not to kill. We thought we were brave and tough and men of noble cause. But we were wrong. A sudden cacophony of noise erupted through the trees: it rammed against my ears as fast as the bullets that came with it. We hit the sloppy ground as if dead; really there was little difference between life and death. We pulled our guns, ready to fire. Thinking was impossible; the sound deafening. A mixture of shrieks, gunshots and shouts of anger filled the atmosphere. We didn't stop until they were all dead. We shot through the trees and bushes and the grass. Anything that moved was bombarded with bullets and shells until it lay on the ground, a pile broken bone and blood. The recoil of my gun wore at my shoulder. I was as cold as the mud I used as cover. Death crept up behind me and tapped me on the shoulder, mocking my inevitable fate. That is what war does to you: it brings out everything bad in you, your fear and your violence. The shots stopped. I stood up slowly, struggling to carry my own weight. At that moment, I heard a sudden whoosh. I looked down to see what it was. Blood. I looked to see where the blood was coming from. I couldn't find a hand or arm; they were lying on the ground. That's the thing about life; it is like electricity through a diode: it only flows in one direction. The things you rue in life are stuck with you and define you. They shape you as a person. The war (my biggest regret) has shaped me as an armless, pitiful and scrawny man fixed to his chair.

I am on the top storey now, looking down from the balcony at the floor below. The slick oak floor shines in the light from above. It looks cold. I feel like I am about to be set free. Released from a lifeless life. From constant anguish. I am going to see my family soon. I am going to see my arms. I am lying on the floor in a pool of blood . . .

Andrew Lyons

Last Christmas I Gave You My Heart

ast Christmas I gave you my heart, it wasn’t my heart; it was your only son’s heart. I dextrously prised it from his, until then, unscathed chest with a blunt axe and then basted it in olive oil (after carefully removing the aorta and pulmonary artery). He wasn’t woken from his slumber and took mere minutes to fall into the dank, Stygian abyss that is death, during which I made the painful decision between Spanish and Italian olive oil (in the end I went with Italian). I proceeded to slow roast it over a gentle fire until I found the ideal compromise between rare and mediumrare. Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! You do look rather pale.

Gus Montgomery

Last Christmas I Gave You My Heart

ast Christmas I gave you my heart. I was dying, you see: six months I had left. I was scared but I knew it was the right thing to do. Seeing you there outstretched in the Hospital bay with a blank expression on your face and a tear in your eye. You were so young and I was so old. My wife probably hated me for doing so, but she would have done the same. Looking down upon your innocence I see how well you have flourished thanks to my parting gift. Please, do more with it then I could. Yours sincerely . . .

Isaac Fletcher 30

Last Christmas I Gave You My Heart

ast Christmas I gave you my heart but now we are married with three extra hearts. The year has been such a roller-coaster, the engagement party, the wedding and the three kids all within a short 365 days. The blistering hot summer was spent alone with you but when the leaves began to fall, it all washed away. Now it is over and a new chapter begins, what is in store for us? What will winter bring?

Matthew Adams

Last Christmas I Gave You My Heart

ast Christmas I gave you my heart; you drank it the next day in a protein shake. You struck an imposing figure, protein shake in one hand and the divorce form in the other. Boxing day, literally. I was punched over and over again before you put vinegar on the exposed flesh that popped and sizzled like the turkey we had the night before. I seem to remember that at school I was told that a heart was important for keeping me alive, but you and your doctorate kept me alive, for your own cynical pleasure. Looking back on it, you did a good job: you didn't make the sheets all blood-stained â&#x20AC;&#x201C; and you removed the organ whilst I was knocked out, which was very considerate of you as the neighbours wouldn't have liked all my screams

of pain on Boxing Day. I don't being knocked out but if you could tell me when we meet in the fires of Hell then that would be nice. When or how you will get this I don't know but I will try and get this out. Have the police been round? Because they can be violent and, if they do detain you, then you will be in the company of similar psychopaths. Happy New Year!

James Randolph

At the Beginning

was there at the beginning. I saw the flash of light, the explosive power of the birthing of a new universe. I watched as a billion suns of a million galaxies burst into life, bathed in the new glow and warmth of these beautiful lights that now hung in the blackness of eternity. Each small event that took place was unimaginably slow. Two tiny rocks collide and later there is a new planet. Infinitesimally small molecules of gas assemble and then burst like a phoenix into glorious flame. These tiny interactions can barely be said to have occurred at all. This slowness was an agonising beauty that kept me looking and seeing the vast and unprecedented magnitude that had burst forth from the beginning of all things. I looked closer and saw the small unconscious choices that each celestial body began to make, not knowing what was to happen to each one. These early days must have been akin to the birthing of a child. The infinite potential that is always present when new-borns of any species arrive in their new world. There is no way to tell what will happen to each individual, but the potential is there. It was similar in the birthing of the universe. I had no idea what was happening at that point, but it spoke to me in some primal way, some kind of calling, a deep and undying interest had sparked within me. I remained where I was at the start, slowly rocking to and fro on the new solar winds as a small ball of fire erupted nearby. I watched as the first planet formed near to this new sun; I saw the second planet formed; again and again I looked on as planets formed, each with its own orbit and spin. They looked like small coins spinning on a tabletop, tiny and insignificant, but there all the same. In a distant star I saw the first glimpse of what would later become known as life. A microscopic bacterium, it began to replicate, separating itself from itself and making two totally new bodies. It was astounding, and it had taken

millions of years for this infinitesimally small creature to take even that first step. It could reproduce. I looked on, not realising that this tiny creature was the basis for all the life I would see later. This first life multiplied and diversified until the bountiful new life was swarming over this new planet. I continued watching as billions of lives started and ended in the blink of an eye. The first conclusion I came to was that life is fleeting and insignificant but as the life I saw began to gain complexity I came to the sudden realisation that, in its own way, even these life forms had meaning within their own existences. However my old cynicism was soon restored when, by chance or fate, the new life was snuffed. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m not sure how it happened; I still donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t. But there was suddenly no life to be seen on that distant planet. The futility was astounding. All the personalities, the intelligence, the swarms of life were just gone. No warning: just a small burst of light and it was over. I was almost moved to tears. But there were more and more bursts of organic life all over the universe. I was dumbfounded by the sheer diversity of these beings, from microscopic creatures that slithered and slid over each other in the primordial ooze, to vast giants that were as complex as they were compelling. After a few of these sudden extinctions I came to realise that death is a natural part of any mortal existence. Death is as much a part of any speciesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; struggle as life is. But the suddenness disturbed me. It still does. This became a common experience for me: I felt helpless as many interesting species and civilisations were simply wiped out of existence. I saw that the civilisations were also helpless to prevent their own demise. I saw my first supernova relatively soon after the creation of the universe. A star suddenly expanded to consume the entire solar system that had been formed around it. If there was any life on those planets it was quickly extinguished by the onset of the vast fire. The star expanded more until it suddenly contracted, all the mass of

it suddenly squashed down into a third the size of the original. This was intensely dense and heavy: it was an interesting sight for me; however, the more often this happened, the less it meant to me, until they were just specs in the infinity of space. I came to realise that the chaos I saw all around me was in fact perfect order. Planets were drawn towards the stars, perpetually spinning around the tiny pricks of light in an otherwise perfectly dark universe. These tiny planets contained smaller phenomena still, mountains that were gigantic when compared with some of the tiny creatures that, by design or accident, tried and often failed to scale them. Oceans, which to me were no bigger than puddles, spread over the rocks, huge to the mortals that inhabited the coasts. Dangling in limbo was an extraordinary experience. Perhaps it is comparable to scuba diving: watching things beyond your comprehension in an environment that you do not understand or belong in. I stumbled on like a child, wide eyed and amazed. I realised something, hanging here in the beautifully endless expanse, I was jealous of the mortals. They had an end, an inevitable and unavoidable finish; but I have only more, an eternal and endless watching, devoid of company. I imagine that life must be so incredible when you know there is an end; it forces you to live before you become one with the planet that bore you.

Jack Lee

Ghost Story 1821

‘H

elp! There’s something wrong with Timmy!’ The doctor sprinted into the room, his stethoscope swinging on his neck, coat billowing as he ran. Mr and Mrs Simons were sitting next to Timmy, desperately calling for help. Timmy himself was coughing, his eyes screwed in pain and brow creased in agony. Sweat was trickling down the side of face and blood sprayed out from his mouth, splattering onto his sheets. ‘Somebody get help in here!’ yelled Dr Hart, desperately trying to stop the boy’s coughing. His condition had been stable for the past few days; why, why did this have to happen? The hospital had been transformed into a scene of chaos; there were nurses rushing around the place and orders were being bellowed at people. Dr Hart placed his two hands onto Timmy’s chest once again and pushed down firmly in an attempt to get his heart working again. The boy’s small frame rocked at this and his head snapped backwards. Then Timmy lay there, limp, unmoving. There was a hush in the room. Dr Hart stared at the poor soul and started to tremble in sadness. Then Timmy’s parents began to sob, Mrs Simons crying into her husband’s chest. The doctor swore in anger and banged his fist onto the bed. All the other hospital workers in the room felt the sadness that had flooded the room, and a few of them shed tears of their own. ‘I’m very sorry Mr and Mrs Simons, Timmy isn’t coming back. But he’ll be happy. You gave him a great childhood.’ Dr Hart said, placing a reassuring hand on Mrs Simons and squeezing it gently. ‘Thank you doctor, you’ve been a great help,’ whispered Mrs Simons through her tears.

‘You did all you could,’ added Mr Simons, tears dropping from his cheeks and falling onto to the hard hospital floor. ‘We’ll give you a moment,’ said the doctor and exited the room, followed by the other staff. Timmy was only four when he died. 1902 James Richards walked down the candlelit corridor and glanced around as his shadow darted around the walls, moving with the flickering flames. The sound of his feet thudding on the stone floor echoed around and, aside from that, the building was eerily quiet. He reached the staircase and started to descend the ground floor. His eyes were tired after a long day of examining the hospital, preparing for its demolishment. It seemed a shame that such an old place should be knocked down and he felt even sadder knowing that his grandfather had worked here, spent many of his days saving the lives of people before he disappeared. No one knew where he had gone and all investigations had been abandoned. The windows rattled in their old frames and a cold winter breeze managed to get through the walls of the building, chilling him to the bone. He pulled his cloak tighter around him and rushed towards the door. 1821 Dr Hart leant against the wall by Timmy’s room and stared solemnly at his shoes. He felt as if it had been his fault that Timmy had died and was furious at himself for failing to save his life. However, it did seem odd that the young boy’s state had worsened so quickly and suddenly. He thought nothing of it as man’s medical knowledge was still very much growing and there was much that was unknown. He could hear the boy’s parents sobbing and talking to his dead body, desperately trying to pretend he could hear them. Dr Hart questioned why life was so cruel and wondered why God, if he existed, would do this.

1902 As James approached the door he quickened his pace, eager to be sitting by the warm hearth at home. He pushed against the door with one hand but was greeted with greater resistance than expected. He pushed harder. Yet, it still wouldn’t budge. He spat on the floor in annoyance rammed his shoulder into the door. It stood firm. James kicked the door and frustration and cursed loudly. He was locked in. 1821 The door opened and the doctor nodded at the Simons, a sincere gesture that did little to assuage their sadness. Mr Simons nodded and blinked back his tears. They walked sadly down the corridor and started the sad journey home, which they knew would never be the same without their only child. Dr Hart watched them go and then turned towards Timmy’s door, sighing. He traced the numbers written on the door with his finger, 401. He remembered teaching Timmy that there were numbers bigger than 100 and laughing at his disbelief. Tears slowly trickled down the doctor’s face and he pushed the door open. Timmy still lay as he had before, so Dr Hart walked over and closed his eyelids. It almost looked like he was sleeping. Drip. The doctor spun round and searched for the source of the noise. Drip. He realised that the IV bags were the source of the noise and strode over for closer examination. Something wasn’t right. They shouldn’t be leaking. He quickened his pace as a dark thought entered his thought and grabbed the cord attached to the bag of fluid. It had been cut. 1902 It was obvious that the demolishing crew had locked up the place, not knowing that he was still there. He still got the creeps being locked up in a hospital. He looked around the lobby and knew it wasn’t going to be a nice place to stay but understood what little choice he had. It wouldn’t do to

sleep on other hard cobbles and he realised that the hospital beds would be all right to sleep in. Of course, this idea didn’t fill James with joy; far from it, but it was the most practical thing to do so he began his search of a suitable room. 1821 He had been right! There was something odd about Timmy’s sudden deterioration of condition. Was it possible that someone might’ve sabotaged the medical gear? Who would be sadistic enough to kill a small boy like Timmy? Questions were rushing through his head and he started to shake uncontrollably as he held the cord, anger coursing through his veins. James heard something behind him and he span around quickly. He saw the corner of a white lab coat catch onto the door hinge as someone seemingly tried to escape. ‘Oi!’ the doctor yelled. He let go of the plastic cord and marched over to the door. As he approached it, the lab coat tore and he heard someone running away. Dr Hart leapt out into the corridor, but just managed to see him turn into the staircase. He followed him and rushed down the stairs three at a time. It was obvious he was the one that had killed Timmy and the doctor would catch this villain. 1902 Many of the rooms were ruined and James finally found one that he could stay in. The door creaked slowly as he opened it and the place was extremely dark. After his eyes adjusted to the blackness he could see the faint outline of a hospital bed. This room seemed strangely cold and he didn’t feel comfortable, as if he wasn’t the only one in the room. The room was number 401. 1821 Dr Hart shoved his way through the crowd of people in the lobby and ran outside, seeing the culprit in the distance and sprinting after him. The night was cold and unforgiving,

the only light coming from the gas lamps, which did little to improve visibility. The rain was sheeting down and water splashed onto Dr Hart coat as he sprinted towards the man. He was gaining and could see the rip at the bottom of the lab coat. Fueled by anger he increases his pace and soon the doctor was only a foot behind this man. Dr Hart leapt onto his back and dragged him to the floor. ‘You killed Timmy!’ the doctor yelled and turned the man over so that he could see his face. Dr Hart stopped when he saw it was one of his colleagues. 1902 James walked towards the bed and sat on it, jumping when the old springs creaked loudly. He was starting to feel very uncomfortable and could hear someone rasping quickly. The door slowly started to close on its own and James’ heart beat faster, faster. He definitely wasn’t alone. 1821 ‘Dr Richards!’ Dr Hart roared at the man who he had chased down. ‘Why? Why would you do this?’ The doctor was astounded; he had not expected one of his associates to be the murderer of poor Timmy. ‘Why? It’s always you who gets the promotion! I’m more qualified than you! I thought that if I killed Jimmy then people would see your inability as doctor,’ blabbered Dr Richards, a sadistic, twisted smile on his face. ‘You killed Jimmy just to get my job?’ Dr Hart bellowed, disgust on his face as he looked upon the twisted man. ‘You won’t be telling anyone, will you though?’ whispered Dr Richards and he slipped a knife into Dr Hart’s stomach. 1902 The curtains were billowing now and the breathing was getting louder, louder. ‘Who’s there?’ James shouted, his voice trembling

with fear. He heard a loud cough and yelped as blood sprayed onto the sheets of the bed. ‘You killed me,’ whispered a small boy’s voice and James slowly turned around. 1821 The doctor only saw the flash of metal before the blade sank into his flash. White pain shot through his whole body and he started to shake. He started to feel very cold and could only watch as Dr Richards ran away into the distance. Darkness closed in and Dr Hart was no more. 1902 There was the faint silhouette of a small boy floating behind James. He leapt off the bed, falling onto the hard floor. ‘You killed me!’ repeated the ghost coming closer to James all the time. ‘You killed Timmy Simons,’ said the ghost and placed a finger on James’s forehead. At this he suddenly started coughing, blood gushing out his mouth, his heart was starting to pump irregularly and everything started to go black. James Richards was no more; he had paid for what his grandfather had done so many years ago.

William Davies

Heart Lukewarm beads Of platinum water Collapsing onto skin In a living stream But then like a hammer hitting steel A sudden dull dong of metallic pain Reverberating around his body Emanating from his chest and throat A thick layer of cement licks a tongue Wrapped in a cloak of fatigue A body emerges from the shower Amidst a daytime slumber Onto the bed he rolled Wet hair pasted to scalp A thick swamp of strangers crowded into the room Doctors and nurses Experts and interns Old and young Examining a fleshy body No longer inhabited by its owner The truth came hard As though through the cold lens of an old camera In the world of film as though detached from the world of the living â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Heart attackâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;

Rex Henderson 42

Inspired by Edgar Allan Poe

arkness. My eyes are closed yet I know that if I open them, the view won’t be much brighter. My nose is pressed upon something impossibly heavy and cold, my back pressed against something equally steely and impenetrable. I am a sandwiched human, on the cusp of complete compression and compaction. There comes a point of total acceptance, when the body relaxes and melds into these surrounding walls, inviting them to encroach and enclose, taking solace in the entrapment – but, there is the inevitable human instinct to twitch. Twitch. A twitch in my left shoulder and it is hovering somewhere between the two surface, somewhere free! This miniscule movement absorbs me for a while – the sensation of a moving limb fascinatingly strange and almost unnatural. Shift. The right shoulder tries to copy the left. Shove. Twitch. Both shoulders are now floating freely in this sealed chamber, trying to gather as much information as possible with their feeble repetitive motions. I relax my shoulders, but only for a second before my head follows suit. Nudge. My face is pressed firmly upon the surface above me, cheek splayed out, nose almost crushed in the desperate quest to achieve freedom of movement above the neck. Push. Suddenly, my face is free and the surrounding air is cool upon my face, so acquainted was it with the reflecting faux warmth of the wall that there is a twinge of longing to fall back and lie in my sandwich box, to be the filling in some grotesque trap. Kick. Lift. My knee urges itself upward, and I finally see the tiniest sliver of daylight.

Amanda Fang

I Am

am the guy, who finds it hard to get around, Who is always left behind. I have a condition. I have to use taxis to get around, Even around the corner. I have a burning pain in my right arm.

I have the symptoms like Fatigue, weakness, dizzy spells, blurred vision And nausea. I am not an ordinary person. I have brain inflammations. I worry about growing old. Multiple Sclerosis. Impairs me, my abilities. What am I going to do later?

Arun Silva

Autumn’s Last Stand Inspired by Keats

eason of leaves and nostalgia, Reds and yellows, green and ochre. Summer’s leave has been extended, But now our hopes are suspended. Now the cider can be pressed, Until its season has supressed. Now the roasts may be prepared, And the smell of beef be shared. The sweet flowers of summer fading, And slowly the trees come into shading. Dancing through the orchard there she goes, As quiet as a herd of darting does. Until chill winter casts its veil, Autumn’s last stand shall never fail. Hand in hand she dances to the music, Her auburn curls in harmony with the wind. Soon the floor is draped with her memory And she retires then to the cemetery. Autumn, thou hath beauty deep: Neither Spring nor Summer has such grace As the mosaic of October’s face.

Theo Hunt

Villainy

Runner-up of the 2012 Arts Festival Specialist Poetry Prize

illainy is killing me: (ah!) what a topic, ’Cause you could be a villain if you’re selling drugs for profit, Or you could be a villain if you load it up and cock it, But you couldn’t be a villain if you’re working in an office. If you’re trynna make money and school system’s failed you, You’ve gotta do it dodgy; the government could jail you. And make it impossible for you to get a job, So your future’s almost chosen by the family that raise you. But when you try to break moulds, set by the same folk Who raised you and made you the man you are today, those People want to label you, and give you silly names Like pikey or chav and it makes you feel ashamed. A villain or a victim? Prisoner of the system? Out there selling drugs or grafting in the kitchen? Heads or tails, it’s the same old copper, But the name don’t point to the source of the matter. It’s all in the swagger. Everybody judges, And one guy’s friend is another guy’s grudge, and A menace of to the law just might be A father of two, only wishing he could buy something pricey For Mummy and the kids. It’s funny how we think; It’s funny how we judge by the tone of the skin, Or the clothes that he’s in, when we don’t know a thing

About his past or his present or the soul that’s within. A villain is a villain. But really what’s a villain? Bush or Bin Laden, they’re both known for killing: It’s all in the context, everything is wrong, ’Cos the USA’s the country that have got the most bomb deaths. Fat Man, Little Boy, what a fucking misery, They’ve caused to ensure that the war ended quickly. The damage ain’t over, the marks still remain, In the brains of the families of those who passed away. But who can we blame, when war’s in our tactic, And money makes our world gravitate on its axis. Blaming a villain makes us all feel great; At the end of the day though, we’re picking out scapeGoats, we take notes for anything we don’t like, And don’t lie, ’cos nobody is so benign, That they could turn their back on that money, Just so they can speak their own mind. I speak for the voiceless: preaching is pointless. The issue isn’t little but, people still avoid it; Our minds are corrupted, enough is enough: Getting judged isn’t funny for the sad little fuck With his mind on his future, who just wants a chance, And gets watched by a stranger, who don’t give a rass Where he’s come from or how he’s got to this position, But still got the nerve to label him a villain.

Pippo Khalwa

Black Tracks SCENE 1 FADE IN: he platform is dark, quiet. Lights illuminate a man, IAN RYAN, leaning against the underground wall. He is wearing dark clothes, a black overcoat, with a small black case in one hand; a handsome face, but it has been hardened by some past experience. He stares straight ahead, ignoring the few others on the platform; a loud group of party goers and a painfully young mother with an old-fashioned pushchair. A roaring, rattling sound â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the train, a locomotive steam train, is coming, the man moves further forward into the light and we can see he has been crying, long streaks illuminated on his cheeks. He steps onto the train, at the other carriage the other passengers do the same. Ian finds a seat at the back of the carriage and leans his head on the window, which is trickling wet from the drizzle outside. Ian rubs his face and looks around the train nervously, twisting his hands together in obvious anxiety. The train pulls away, with a loud rumbling sound. Ian pulls out an old, shabby black notebook, and a short pencil, obviously well used. As Ian begins to write a voiceover reports to us what he is saying. IAN (as voiceover) Pain, cold, wet â&#x20AC;&#x201C; I felt nothing. No feeling could possibly register against the solid, impenetrable thoughts that swirled through my head.

Once again Ian glares around the carriage, catching the eye of a young girl, around five years old, sitting with her grandparents. They hold each otherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s gaze for a second before the girl looks away, with an almost fearful expression. IAN (Voiceover) She is afraid of me, but aren't they all in the end. They look at me and something doesn't fit quite right, but instead of questioning it they turn away, running back to the safety of their own lives. (His voice tenses with sudden anger.) They never question it, never ask what happened . . . His thoughts are stopped by a sudden lurch on the train: the young girl falls out of her seat and is helped up by her elderly grandmother. Ian appears to recollect himself, with almost a shameful expression. IAN (voiceover) (Relaxed) No, she doesn't even realise, and no one ever will. I am certain and alone in certainty. As Ian lapses into silence the train pulls into the next station, with a great shuddering sigh. The young girl and her grandparents leave: she casts back one last curious and is then gone, sucked up by the blackness. New passengers arrive on the train and sit down; the train continues its journey. IAN (voiceover) Dozens of memories, flash in front of me, crawling wickedly from the depths

of my mind. Touches, kisses, smiles, scents, laughter; ghosts floating in front of my vision. As Ian speaks, the flashbacks appear on screen, mostly depicted through a video camera lens. Unidentified people, mainly a beautiful young woman, with two brunette children – a boy and girl of around the same age, somewhere between childhood and puberty. Their laughter and smiles seem almost prompted by Ian's speech. Ian is never shown in these memories: only his voice and laughter is heard – a happy sound. The camera switches back to Ian just as he appears to be startled out of his reflection. Again he rubs his face and glances around, focusing his gaze on an older man, around sixty, sitting in the corner of the carriage, muttering unintelligibly to himself. The man suddenly glances up and sees Ian staring, and stares back with brilliantly blue eyes. IAN (voiceover) His eyes – they were just like hers, and once again a fresh flood of memories filled my mind. They ripped out my heart, watching them again, piercing the numbness that had spread across by body. Icy shards cutting out my soul. The man continues to stare at Ian, and has even ceased in his murmurings: every fibre of his being appears focused, like a predator about to strike. IAN (voiceover continued) Hers were kinder though: she had not suffered in the same way as this man had. They were filled with laughter and smiles,

the promise of life. These eyes do not hold the same promise: they have lived, and they have found that sometimes life's promises are not what we hope for. The men still have not broken eye contact, though it has only been a few seconds. Another lurch causes both of them to jerk in their seats, and the moment is over. Neither man glances back, and Ian resumes his stare out of the window. The train comes to another shuddering halt: the old man then collects his things and moves slowly towards the doors. As he climbs off the platform he pushes past an attractive middle-aged woman, who stumbles and falls. COLLECTIVE VOICES Hey! .. You! .. Watch where you are going! (All of these are directed at the old man, but he appears to ignore all of these, appearing slow and disorientated) OLD MAN Oh. (Pause) Sorry (Another pause. Longer) I didn't see you. The woman opens her mouth indignantly, as though she was going to reply angrily; but then decides better of it, picks herself up and then climbs onto the train. Ian has watched the entire exchange in silence, not voicing a concern or moving to help like the other passengers. Ian blinks, and rubs his hands vigorously along his face, mimicking what people might do after a long sleep. He looks up in surprise when he automated voice begins: AUTOMATED VOICE Ladies and Gentlemen, that was Bredbury. We are now approaching Davenport, and our estimated arrival time is 0200.

Thank you for travelling with us. Ian reacts with a start, looking around him wildly, his head whipping around as if it was trapped in a hurricane. Eventually, he manages to calm himself, but his eyes are still wide, staring straight in front of him like a rabbit into headlights. IAN (voiceover) I didn't know where I was: I had just stepped onto the nearest train. The mist in my brain had remained: my head still felt heavy, and there were still moments where I couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t breathe. (Pause) I still see them, those are the memories I can never block out. The bodies: cold, still, lifeless. My family. They killed them, murdered them, just because we weren't what they wanted. Just because we didn't fit into the perfect picture they painted for themselves. (Pause) I can still see it now, my wife sitting at the table. I shouted to her: no reply. Then I saw it, the bullet in her forehead. Fear. Fear is the only emotion I remember from that moment, because I knew. I knew that once I left my wife, and went to their bedrooms, they would be . . . (Pause. Ian appears to choke on his words.) That was when it began, the numbness. Since that moment, when I walked into my family home six years ago, I haven't felt anything. It was emptiness. The note I found on the floor, next to my youngest. I can still remember

what it said . . . Again, Ian is cut off by a lurch in the train. This time however, the lights switch off and there is a crashing noise. A singular emergency light shows that the inside of the train is in pandemonium: people have been thrown out of their seats; luggage has been hurled across the carriage. There is a dull ringing noise; screaming and shouting, the noises of terror. The camera focuses back on Ian: he is unconscious, with blood running down his cheek. In his hand he has the notebook, and a crumpled piece of paper. As the camera focuses further onto the paper, we see the symbol of the swastika, before the screen fades to black. FADE OUT.

Ella Egerton

Torture Scene inspired by Edgar Allan Poe

fearful idea drove the beating of my heart -- was I dead? -- Perhaps this was the afterlife -- Or I could be buried alive? -- Yet I yearned to move and learn of my surroundings. It was entirely black. I was so utterly confused -- there was no memory of where I was, and my inability to move only caused fearful annoyance. The circumstances made it impossible to distinguish the nature of my surroundings. After a prolonged period of struggle, my initial anxiety was calmed as I felt motion in my left hand. It could have been days -- even weeks! -- I do not know. The blackness remained throughout the entirety. The thick leather strap was secured to the large stone brick I was fastened to. My elbow was still tethered to the stone, and it scraped along the rough exterior of the stone as I felt around with my upper left hand. With considerable effort I attempted to reach for the band that locked my right wrist. My fingers barely held onto the belt of my right arm, and with each try I sensed the gush of blood pour out from the injured elbow and bathe the back of my hips. My right arm shot up as I loosened the strap, but it collided into a solid stone. I realized the stone slab was slowly -- but strongly -forcing its way at me, and the overpowering stench of the moisture smeared on the stone allowed me to search for the strength I needed to free myself. I frantically pulled on the belt that bound my chest onto the stone -- if I could turn my torso I could free myself with much more ease. But the approaching stone slab was now pushing down onto the cartilage in my nose, and I

lacked the capacity to shift my arms. My head still bound intensely to the rock. It was the sluggish yet violent tempo of the progression that was the most horrifying. My nose was now slowly crumpling away and I felt the cascade of blood rush down my chest -- Oh the pain! The mental torment of a lengthy death, being crushed and flattened by two boulders, being utterly helpless and immovable! -- and this was only the beginning.

Thomas Yih

One Shot

he good news was that my leg wasn’t broken. The bad news . . . The bad news was that four of my ribs were. Three on the left and one on the right. I was actually lucky. The last guy they had carried past had been hit too hard – one of his ribs had deflated his lung. Although, all things considered, I couldn’t really claim to be lucky. When they brought me in, they kicked me half to death, and then water-boarded me some of the other half. I didn’t know why I was there. It couldn’t have been police business. Well, unless police make an effort these days to simply kick the shit out of everyone without asking questions. No questions. No clues. They didn’t even wear uniform. I wasn’t a convict, but maybe a hostage. I thought about a lesson in army school four years ago, about how the Royal Marines would learn everything about the location they were attacking until they could literally do it blindfolded. They then cut the power to the hostage location and killed all the terrorists without night vision. This fantasy, however, only lasted until I realised that we must be underground or something because the masked guys were carrying around candles and torches – no mounted wall lights. For the first time since my arrival I began to feel fear. I was afraid. When they were kicking me about I wasn’t really feeling it – I never did. I had been on the front lines since I graduated – I wasn’t particularly good or anything, I got shot a couple a couple of times, but the best thing that can be said is that I survived. But now I was scared. The cell was disgusting. There were rusty iron bars to keep me from leaving, and there were dents in the walls. Looking more closely at the dents, I recoiled when I realised what they were. It became pretty obvious when I

saw they spray of dark dried liquid splattered all over the wall. Then I heard it. The scream. The scream, followed by a burst of gunfire and a flash. All of this coincided with a splash of blood across the wall in front of me – they were going round the rooms. They were killing the prisoners. I panicked. I yelled and threw myself against the bars of the cell, which dug into my forearms and cut my hands. As warm blood trickled down my torso I screamed. Not to anyone in particular – just to anyone who would listen. I heard footsteps, but still continued – the footsteps quickened, until I saw a young man, probably the same age as me, sprinting towards me. I saw his grey, pitiful eyes stare into mine for an instant. One second of hesitation, until he slammed the butt of his rifle first onto my hands, forcing me to release the bars (and making my hands bleed more, as they sliced over the splintering metal). He followed this by smashing his weapon through the bars at me. The rifle hit my temple and, before I could feel the blood begin to trickle from the place of impact, I fell into blackness. Dark. When I woke up I realised that the blackness was actually more welcoming than the cell I was in. I tried to return to sleep, but found it was impossible – it probably didn’t help that by hands were not in the best state that they had ever been in with bits of metal sticking out at different angles, and blood everywhere. Panic went through me again, drawing me away from my desecrated hands – a burst of Russian or Ukrainian, not sure which, but its meaning was clear: ‘Він не спить, або привести його у грі, або вбити його’ – Bring him, or kill him. I got up, but this time ran to the other end of my cell, trying to find a way out: a hole, a gap, a hiding place, anything, but I couldn’t. They threw the cell door open and yelled something in the same language at my back. I heard the cocking of a rifle and the click of a safety catch being pushed to fire. Had less than a second to think, then I found my only solution: don’t think. I just put my hands behind my head and I turned slowly. The safety catch was turned back to safe and they beckoned for me to follow them. As I

walked past, one spat in my face; the other just looked miserable, the same who had hit me earlier. His grey eyes staring, filled with pain, at mine. I followed both of them into what was probably the main room of wherever I was. People were lined up everywhere: shots were being fired at every point possible. A line of prisoners, bags over their heads, collapsing, as a volley of bullets sprayed their blood onto the wall behind them. One lone prisoner checking to see if he was being watched, turning and fleeing; a guard was quick enough to spot him and, without hesitating, pulled the trigger. The prisoner didn’t so much collapse as disintegrate. The guard who had got him kicked the twitching corpse and shot it twice more, spraying blood back onto himself. Before I could witness anything else I was shoved into a line of prisoners leading up to a table. Each prisoner was given a revolver as they sat at the table. If you were lucky, you didn’t shoot yourself because there was no round in the chamber. If you were unlucky you did. Six chambers. One round. Russian Roulette. The first four prisoners I watched were all lucky. The next were not. One. Two. Three. It continued until seven prisoners had pulled the trigger and freed themselves from half of their brains. The one before me rejected the pistol. It was shoved towards him once more, before the tell tale click of the safety catch told me what was going to happen next. The prisoner continued wailing, I closed my eyes just as the guard behind the chair raised the rifle above the prisoner’s head. He shot once, twice, three times. Warm blood sprayed over my face, as the guard used his foot to shift the body from the chair. The guard picked the revolver from the blood covered table and offered it to me. I took it. He also told the guard with the grey eyes to take control. The grey eyed young man picked up a shotgun from a table behind us, slipped in a magazine of 12-gauge shotgun rounds, and took his place behind the chair.

I looked at the revolver. Silver, with a soft wooden handle, its barrel about four inches long. The grey-eyed guard indicated for me to spin the magazine. The most positive thing I could think was that had a five in six chance that I would live. But that also meant I had a one in six chance of death. As the original guard in charge began to walk away, he said to shoot me after three seconds if I didn’t do it myself. I pulled back the hammer, and jammed the gun in my mouth, counting down in my head. Three. Two. One . . . Nothing happened. The guard didn’t shoot me. He didn’t want to. The gun behind my head was shaking. I heard a loud sliding sound followed by a click – the guard had cocked it. He still didn’t pull the trigger. I thought of my family. My girlfriend. My Son. A shout in what I was now sure was Ukrainian broke my thoughts, screaming: ‘Shoot him!’ Less than a second later, it repeated its cry: ‘Shoot him now!’ The guard still didn’t fire. I rammed the revolver in to my mouth once more, jamming my eyes shut. Just as I heard the dull click of the safety catch being clicked off, I thought of escape. I didn’t move though. Everything went more slowly. Time nearly stopped. I saw another row of prisoners fall to the guards. I thought again. I saw sense . . . I pulled the trigger.

Luke Titmuss

Artistic Appreciation

waited eagerly for the newspapers to find their way onto my doormat. It was the day after, and I wanted to know what the world was saying about me. I was still buzzing from the night’s activity and had not slept at all. I felt energized, elated. A cursory glimpse out of my bedroom window showed nothing new and I began to grow impatient. My dressing gown’s soft fabric caressed my body as I wandered around the house aimlessly, simply wishing to kill time. To amuse myself I perused my previous days’ newspaper clippings, arranged on a cork board in my study: when I stood in front of all the fruits of my many labours I filled with pride. I took a grape from the fruit bowl and sucked on it, casually leafing through some of my mentors’ work which I kept in drawers around the room; I had heroes, like any other aspiring professional, and these great men who had come before me had inspired me and helped me to become better by avoiding the things that had eventually caused their downfall. The morning continued at a sluggish pace that I found infuriating. Whilst watching a robin dart from branch to branch on the apple tree in my garden I was suddenly aware of the fact that I was very hungry. I trudged to the fridge out in my garage to get some food. In my morning stupor, I almost opened my freezer and, when I saw that the padlock was not on the handle, I quickly replaced it, cursing myself for the lapse in protocol. Just as I swallowed the last mouthful of bagel, I heard a shuffle and a loud clunk at the door. I jumped up and enthusiastically grabbed the thick pile of paper off the doormat and laid out each individual paper on my study desk. ‘Front page on three of them: good work!’ I thought to myself. The titles always made me laugh: choice ones included: ‘Hand hacker makes bloody return to Guildford!’(The Sun) and the slightly more tasteful ‘More

lives taken by Surrey’s ‘Hand hacker’’ (The Telegraph). I took my time to read through each account carefully for signs of any knowledge of my whereabouts or description. Having found none, I reread the articles for the pleasure it gave me to see my work being credited. I had not worked in over a month and so the papers were all getting very excited by my return to the scene. All the speculating and scientific research about my work amused me greatly. A journalist from The Times stated that ‘his ritualistic removal of victim’s hands shows a need for trophies’ which of course, as with all of these supposed ‘facts’, was not true. You see, I’m not like your average serial killer: no great passion comes over me when I kill; I have no deluded sense of vigilantism; and there’s no world order that I’m working towards making. Oh, yes, and I’m definitely not psychotic. The broadsheets’ reports were always a little too dour for my tastes, although I respected their professionalism. The real rewards for my work came from the tabloids, not afraid to preach a slightly untrue, but definitely more exciting picture of me and my ‘savage, bloodthirsty rampage’ the night before. Another advantage of the tabloids is that they reach a far greater audience and instil in their readers the fervent beliefs and ‘shocking truths’ that their writers so cleverly compose. I would sometimes go to town and merely sit in popular areas, simply to hear people’s talk, whenever I heard a snippet of conversation about me I would listen intently to the conversation as it occurred. The quality of the discussion varied wildly from youths’ barely comprehensible mutterings of, ‘D’you hear about that ‘hand hacker’ psycho going around here: I mean, what a nut job!’, to the elderlys’ concerned outbursts such as, ‘Irene, I worry, I really do, I don’t want to go out of the house alone anymore; why would any man do such atrocious things?’. Whatever the content I would not baulk: it interested me to see the people’s reactions to my crimes. I thought often about where this whole thing was heading, but did it really have to lead anywhere? After all, I

could return to normality at any time as Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d left no traces that would give the police anything to go on. They acted like they knew what they were doing but the truth was they were getting nowhere. I knew that if I carried on indefinitely, something was bound to trip me up so I decided to plan one last piece that would signal the end of my career. I trudged up to my study and began preparing.

Peter Chownsmith

The Rogues Gallery

nspector K walked into his office for his ninety-fourth day of work that year. The clock had just struck half past eight when he arrived and he had half an hour to kill before work officially started. He could attempt to strike up a conversation with one of his workmates, but in all the time he had worked there he had not moved beyond small talk. He wasn’t like them anyway. He was focused and organised. So as they eased into the day with their coffee, he resolved to set about organising his desk. It was good that he had arrived early. Besides, there was little to keep him at his residence. K lived in a small flat and had changed little since he had moved in two and a half years ago. If one were to enter his flat the first thing that would strike them would be the lack of character – in fact, K sometimes joked that, if he were being burgled, the intruder would soon become bored and leave – everything seemed as inoffensive as a hotel room. The walls remained the pleasant, innocuous beige they had been upon arrival, and the solitary picture in his house hung in the kitchen. It was a vibrant print left behind by the previous residents and stuck out like an exotic bird in a flock of pigeons. There was a small living area adjacent to the kitchen, with a TV a circular wooden table and two chairs. The table was a worthwhile acquisition; it could function as a desk for his work, a dining table or a coffee table when he was watching the television. It was anonymous, yet malleable and K liked its practicality. Still, K’s favourite room was his bedroom. It seemed fitting that in it was his bed, and little else. He had drawers underneath for his clothes and a small bookshelf in the corner (though that was barely acknowledged, let alone used) as well as an alarm clock to wake him up in the mornings.

He worked with the police department tracking down criminals. Once their identity was uncovered, K would find them. Nonetheless his job wasn’t too specific. He worked on all sorts of cases: from petty theft to homicide. In fact, K had recently finished working on a case in which a man had murdered his son. He wondered what would drive someone to do that, what could modify the soul to the extent that you would destroy your own flesh and blood, your own creation. K wondered what the killer was like as a child. Did he murder neighbourhood pets? Or was it a latent urge, waiting to come forth? Was even there at all, the murderous inclination? Maybe it lay there in all of us, an ugly, shapeless creature waiting patiently to reveal itself. K’s speculations reminded him of something his father had once said to him. It was late afternoon and he was on the beach. He had said that the self was beyond time and that we gravitated towards it constantly, unknowingly. He said that this, our identity, was predetermined, inescapable. It reminded him of Plato. Perhaps there was somewhere, unknown to us, where our true forms resided, and that we were all simply expressions of this, shadows. Then was the boy’s father always a murderer? Or could he have been a victim of circumstance? K couldn’t answer the questions but knew that he was not a villain. He caught the murderers, the rapists, the rogues. He did good things. He was a good person. Surely his form was good too. K had just finished filing his reports when nine o’clock came. This was a day when he would be assigned his next case. He made his way through to the room opposite his workspace. This was the room that housed the pictures and information of the yet to be caught felons. Most of this was housed on the far wall, which was buried beneath myriad mug shots and artists’ impressions. It was a fitting way to display the assortment of criminals. All of them bound together invisibly by a common factor. It was like the aspen grove he had learnt about in school. Walking through it, one would think it was merely a collection of

trees, an area of woodland; however, beneath the surface world, they were all fundamentally connected by the same root system and identical genes. They were all joined by an intrinsic identity. He was given a brown file: as always, that contained the case information and, looking at the first page, it could have been almost anyone. Caucasian male, forty-six years old, dark hair etc., but this person was different. He had to be. And it was Kâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s job to find him.

Benjamin Torvaney

Family History

nce alone in his room, Francis pondered the day's events. It had been remarkable for the simple fact that he had been accosted by a bedraggled man wearing too much street on his overcoat and not enough clothing. With shirt askew and a curious lack of trousers, this strange man had pursued Francis through the streets of Lincoln pleading for an audience: claiming he had news of Francis' father. Francis' father had disappeared over fifteen years ago and was surely dead. Unimpressed by the deranged ramblings of the mad man, Francis had briskly walked toward home, taking care not to make eye-contact for fear of encouraging his pursuer who, although seemingly harmless and affecting the slightly confused air of a benign and elderly pet, was persistent past the point of mild annoyance. Once inside his own territory, Francis had given orders for the gates to be securely locked and a watch to be posted at all major entrances and exits. He was not concerned for his own safety, but rather seeking to avoid any potential inconvenience. As an improbably number of both close relations and ancestors had been assassinated in a multitude of inventive ways, Francis knew that at some point, somewhere and by someone, an attempt would be made on his life. He did not know why. Perhaps it was because of the extraordinary wealth his family possessed, or maybe some blood feud from centuries past. No matter the reason, Francis had become intrinsically aware of his own vulnerability and had developed a sardonic and detached nature at an early age. No chances would be taken whether threatened by an axe wielding mercenary or semi-dressed lunatic. The master bedroom was a celebration of silk and fur, an orgy of excess in which Francis rested amongst the scattered cushions upon his bed. He particularly enjoyed the few steps climbed to reach the bed: pleased with the

thought of being elevated and somehow ascending above his contemporaries. To his mind it was only fitting for a specimen of such prepossessing features and transfixing countenance. Francis began to muse that it would not be unwise to employ a bodyguard when he was rudely interrupted by a gentle knocking, a click, and then the door beginning to slowly open. An only recently familiar head appeared, peering from behind the frame, at a tilted angle that caused a mop of hair to obscure wide and terrified eyes. 'Terribly sorry for the interruption but, you see, I didn't manage to catch your attention earlier in the street so I had to come here and . . . Yes . . . well . . .' The man stumbled blindly through his words, flustered and inarticulate. Having edged fully into the bedroom, the visitor visibly inhaled, steadying himself, and began again. 'Hello. My name is Samuel Chade and I urgently need to speak with you.' Samuel stood stiff and trembling, his hands clasped behind his back, staring with impressive determination at a point just left of Francis' face. Francis did not answer. He was, maybe for the first time in his life, stunned beyond words. A mixture of horror, shock and fear span through his being until, following a brief pause of pregnant silence, he was reassured that he was not about to be violently attacked. In the place of fear came incredulity as to how this pathetic little man had bypassed the security. There was no sign of the stout, badtempered guard usually stationed behind the door. Most likely gone to the bathroom, Francis thought and deliberated on hiring a most astute replacement. Blood trickled down the stairs. There was a human dog in his room. A stray runt. At least the man had managed to dress himself in the last few hours. Perhaps his mother had helped him, Francis thought. Studying Samuelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s face, freckled with blushing, rounded cheeks, Francis found himself moved by an unfamiliar stirring. Whether through compassion, pity or some deeper urge for brief companionship, Francis did not know but,

none the less, he made the error of beckoning Samuel towards him with one cool gesture. Samuel shuffled across the room, dragging his feet like a small and unsure boy, until he reached the edge of the dais. Francis rose, slowly and deliberately, from his bed and advanced until leaning over Samuel. From his greater height and, to his mind, position of power, Francis felt secure. 'What business do you have with me?' he drawled. 'I have a message from your father's murderer.' Startled, Francisâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s eyes widened and jaw slackened. He hurriedly signalled Samuel to continue. 'He wants you to know that you'll die soon and that . . . and that . . .' 'That what?' Francis commanded. He was impatient to learn of his own fate: the history of a dead man, even his father, was of no interest compared to his own survival. Suddenly, Samuel revealed the small knife hidden behind his back and in a single, smooth movement stabbed Francis in the stomach. He forced Francis to the floor. Straddling the struggling body, he wrapped his calloused hands around the throat and squeezed. Some minutes later, Samuel stood and strode back towards the door, congratulating himself on an easy success.'That you are a fool descended from traitors and rebels and that I am pawn in the games of my ancestors: doomed to keep ancient, hollow oaths for the sake of family honour,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; he said, stepping over the corpse on the stairs, and grimly smiled.

Emma Ansell

The Hanging

he hempen halo he glowers at fears him. He stares it down; His eyes noticing its frays, noting the weak points. Gradually the fibres twist in his mindâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s eye. Those Holy sinews, unwinding before him. However, the window he perches on has a faulty lock and his dove has flown; it scraped its dirty wings from the dank, scum filled mud and raised them to flight. He has no escape, no exit nor back door, and yet, peace. And, as Death encircles him with her dress, and fear unstitches his chest, wrenching at his lungs, stealing his last breath, his visage reflects peace. But Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve heard your neck breaks first . . .

Henry Jones

Memoir

like the way your hair perches on your shoulders and slides down your back; the gentle mane strokes my faces and bars you from the fresh dislike of winter.

Your deep brown eyes are beautiful, yet you donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know it. Like that melting ambition of ours; I could stare at them all night, with my eyes closed. I wish you knew how much you mean to me, and how much your worth. I love your smile and the sweet words you birth. Others envy the way I know you like no one else does. I trust you and I hope you know that. For good. Not only in health. I stay awake waiting for your tender hug; its warmth and comfort is calming in my grief, and your sorrow. But all doves have to fly, nothing good lasts. The warmer countries are calling. For good. Not only in health.

So remember me, remember the times we laughed at a glance and shivered in a look. Remember the things that we all should have; memories that donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t last.

Henry Jones

Don’t you?

hen it’s gone. When you lose her. Don’t you wish to sit on the edge of Table Mountain, and hear your breath echo against the wall of air adjacent to your nose. Don’t you crave to lie on the steps of the Great Wall of China and feel the gritty sandstone against your bare skin. Would you not lust those who dip their toes in the Great Lakes and watch the ripples oscillate before their eyes. Don’t you yearn to clamber up Ayres Rock and taste the ochre dust that fills your throat in a breath. Would you not want to find the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and pluck mythical petals from ancient storks. Don’t you ache to swim before Niagara Falls and listen intently to the groan of the water’s stomach. Don’t you long to perch at the foot of the Temple of Artemis and stare at the sky until you’re drunk from the heat. Would you not dream of hearing a Dodo sing for the last time. Don’t you thirst for the feel of a Leopard’s coat tickling your toes, while soaking up the sun in the Masai Mara. Would you not hanker to wade in snow up to your waist and smell the crystal air of Canada. Wouldn’t you hope to see her again, to touch, don’t you?

Henry Jones 72

Outsiders

cry, just the one tear. Huddled back into a space where nothing can reach me, where nothing can touch my skin, I sit blankly, looking upon this room of the past: my past. Clothes, photos, stuffed toys with dark eyes. Their shiny black stares are intrusive and I resent them. Despite the clutter that fills the room, it is empty now and I am the only one, only thing really here. This space is mine; me and my walls. Blockaded from anything, good or bad, my restless mind traces over every crevice of conversation, detail of behaviour and my day. From the looks, the whispers, the pointing – to the shouts, the confrontation, the unabashed insults. I think of everything, but then forget. I let it slip away from my mind: it didn’t happen. It hasn’t happened. Denial? What matters when I am here in my place, the only true place? Nothing can get to me: safe, away. Emptied mind and drained thoughts, I stare vacantly into what could be a continuous abyss. Nothingness. Shapes and edges and objects are not anymore, they don’t count as anything. Only my presence counts in this room. I am alone. The room is empty, as am I. Indifference is surrounding me like a force where I cannot escape. Why would I? Here I am, free of speaking, really living or performing, where nothing counts. This is my escape from everything where I can be separate, in my mind, from life. Outside, they are outside. Everyone bustles and chatters. Laughter; so much laughter. Is there really a difference between those who are happy to be alive, and me, the one looking upon them? Another tear, just one. Why this tear though? There is nothing to cry about, no subject of real matter except this knowledge that the wicked presence of this emotion won’t leave.

My eyes reach the door: the door is the obstacle I face. The barrier, my safeguard? Surely outside is better for me . . . despite the others and despite how unlike we are? No. Closing my eyes I settle again with my back into the corner; my head lies heavy on my hands. They are outsiders, they are outside.

Harriet Earley

Anonymous

Runner-up of the 2012 Arts Festival Under School Prose Prize

‘We are Anonymous. We are Legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us.’

y name is Malik Trevon. I am on trial for a multitude of crimes of various natures. Looking around, I see men and women, good and bad. I wonder which of us the real criminal is. It’s me, isn’t it? It doesn’t matter to these people; to them I am nothing. I am but a spec of dirt; and they’re right. Alone I am nothing, but together: together specs of dirt can create one almighty pool of mud. I am part of a group called Anonymous – we’re the almighty pool of mud. We mostly sit in internet chat rooms complaining about the governments of the world; but sometimes we use different methods of computer hacking to block access to websites. The actual blocks only occur for about twenty minutes but, like Christmas presents, it’s the thought that counts. On extra special occasions, we meet up in the real world wearing masks and complain about various things: I imagine that some of us are camped outside of this courtroom at this very minute. This whole trial is a farce; people in here are tried every day for the exact same ‘crimes’ that we’re here for and they never leave without a minimum five years. There are seven of us on trial here today, waiting for the judge to hurry up and get this over with. Except for the man with the wavy, red hair; I think he’s here to be tried for murder. Must be a busy day if he’s in here with us ‘cyber terrorists’. ‘Malik Trevon, please step forward,’ says the wigwearing judge. It appears that we’re to be tried individually and I’m to be first. I see my trial-mates shepherded away into what I can only assume are cells. My first thought is that

this is proof of the corrupt system that we stand against today: while they are left in the dark, unable to see how the trial is playing out, the prosecution is able to learn the points we make and improve on them. My second thought: ‘Bugger’. This whole process is so boring, a show trial. I find myself zoning out, returning to the day of my arrest. I was just sitting in my own home, minding my own business watching the TV, when I was rudely interrupted by a banging on the door: ‘This is the police! Open . . .’ I didn’t hear the rest as by this point I was already out the door. I had anticipated this for quite a while so, naturally, I had worked out a perfect escape route should the police arrive. With this in mind, I ran out of the back door; vaulted over the small wall overlooking a three foot drop; rolled as I hit the ground and sprinted down the rather steep slope towards the hedge before the road at the bottom of the hill. As I reached the bottom, I slid through the me-sized hole that I had maintained since I began my anonymous activities. It was here that I realised my first major blunder. As I emerged feet first from the hedge, what I had failed to anticipate was that on this road would be cars. Moving cars. Moving cars that I had just unexpectedly slid in front of at speed from a hedge. This caused the car that was driving down the road to swerve off to the left, into a large unfortunately placed river. The police were of course alerted by this sudden disturbance not one hundred metres from my multiple steel reinforced front doors, the second of which they were currently in the process of battering down. The second blunder I made was what in hindsight seems like a very poor decision. I followed the car. I ran down the hill thinking I could hit the water and swim to the other side to safety, and from there escape the police. What actually happened was I tripped over a root as I ran down the hill, fell to the bottom and hit the car. Ears ringing I stood up and began to swim across the river. Immediately I could tell something was wrong as I didn’t appear to be moving. I looked back to see a rather angry man holding my shirt

collar and staring at me as if I had wronged him in some way. I said: ‘Did you see that crazy man sliding out from the hedge up there? He shoved me over the edge; I guess you’re the one he made swerve down here as he came out, eh?’ In saying this I had hoped that he hadn’t seen what I looked like as he drove his car off of the cliff. He had, and his response, came in the form of a fist. After beating him down with a piece of wood lying at the wheels of his car, the first thing I did was think ‘well, that adds grievous bodily harm to the charges against me’. The second thing I did was swim across the river, quickly. Upon reaching the other side, I ran into the forest where I made my third, fatal blunder. About half a mile into the forest I stumbled across a boy scout camp right in the middle of their ‘game’ of capture the flag. With paintball guns. Still running, I found myself getting hit left, right and centre by little paint filled pellets of pain. One hit me in my eye and I collapsed. Then someone threw a paint grenade at my face. Scratches down my back from sliding, bloody nose from the car man, soaking wet from my swim and covered in bruises and paint from that vicious group of bastards, I came across a road. If I had been even slightly inconspicuous before, I sure as hell wasn’t by then. My fourth and final blunder consisted solely of me trying to hitchhike. Someone did stop to pick me up. The car had flashing lights on the top, and the ride came with free handcuffs. ‘Malik Trevon. I won’t ask again, how do you plead?’ Ah crud, I haven’t been paying attention, um, ‘Not guilty, your honour’. Ok, that sounded confident: just stay calm, don’t get nervous, everything will be just fine. No, no it won’t be fine; I’ll need a miracle for everything to be ‘fine’. I am currently looking at umpteen years of prison. I can’t go to prison, I can barely survive away from home at a hotel; how will I stay sane in prison? Malik, you’re worrying, calm down, just concentrate on the trial, you’re

probably missing ever more needed information, Hang on, my lawyer’s speaking, has the prosecution already made their case or have they just deemed it not worth the effort? I need to concentrate; I’ve always had problems concentrating. Remember the time when . . . No! The trial! I have to pay attention to the trial! Oh but it’s so boring! Why did the police even arrest me? I mean, I’m a damn good hacker, but I’m nobody special to the cause of Anonymous; I don’t even fit neatly in with the majority of ‘The 99%’ as they call themselves. I’m happily middle class and, to be honest, in many ways I am the embodiment of all of the things we’re fighting against. I only ever do anything remotely illegal in my, admittedly quite frequent, moments of boredom; and I don’t hate the government nearly as much as I would have people believe: they have some good policies, and only a few of the bad ones actually affect me in any way. The only thing I can think of is if the unspeakable happened, they somehow found out that I designed the ‘Low Orbit Ion Cannon’ – a computer program that allows users to block access to websites when used by the masses together. But I put that online while I was in a Manchester public library; I live on the outskirts of London! I had security systems such as the reinforced front doors fitted to my house to give me time in case anybody did find out that I created the LOIC; but I always figured that was impossible, there was no connection to me, was there? Maybe the only reason I’m here is to show that no matter whom you are, working alongside groups such as Anonymous can get you arrested. I hope that’s it; if they knew about the LOIC and what it can truly do, I would be staring at a life sentence. I am so in over my head here. Also, I’ve just noticed that I seem to address my thoughts to somebody; I don’t think that’s normal; oh well, it’s my mind, I can think however I want to. I really should start concentrating on the trial; I imagine that what they’re saying is quite important to my future. I think I

also need to sort my priorities out – much as I’m enjoying this conversation with myself, it really shouldn’t take precedence over the important trial going on at the same time. I’ll have plenty of time to talk to myself in a prison cell. Oh god, prison. I suppose I’ll have to make the best of it. What’s the old saying? ‘If life gives you lemons, make lemonade.’ Yeah, well, life, I can’t make lemonade unless you give me water and sugar! ‘Well Malik Trevon, since you seem to not wish to respond, and without any witnesses or further evidence, it goes to the jury to decide.’ Oh god, what have I been doing, just staring blankly into space? I’ve missed the entire trial! Oh my word I am so going to prison now! ‘We find Malik Trevon guilty of all charges.’ ‘Well then, Mr Trevon, I hereby find you guilty on all accounts and sentence you to fifteen years. What’s that noise?’ Actually what is that noise? It sounds like a crowd: oh, please tell me that this is what I think it is. It is! There are people in masks rushing the building. I don’t know how this is happening but, my god, I am glad it is. Oh, I am laughing now, lawyers, jury members and the judge fleeing in all directions. The security force has been completely overwhelmed and even they are running now: there must be thousands out there, this is a riot; no, a revolution! ‘Come on Mr LOIC, we have a car waiting outside ready to go to a safe house to wait while the initial storm blows over; from there you can help us lead the revolution once the chaos ends: we could use expertise like yours in the new world.’ This is like nothing I had ever expected; I can’t actually say anything to the man in front of me. Hang on: did he call me ‘Mr LOIC’? So it must have been revealed I was the tool’s creator while I was held in my cell for the last however many weeks; which will be why I was tried first, and why I nearly got fifteen years imprisonment. The whole world is about to change, for the better or worse, I don’t

know. ‘How is this going to work? A global revolution? Surely law enforcement will just strike back?’ The mysterious man looks ready to talk again, and now I am concentrating on what is going on around me. ‘Just come with us to the safe house, you can make your final decision there, but we should get you out of here for now. As for law enforcement striking back: the police forces have been diminished as so many officers joined our own force; the army have abandoned the government, troops and tanks roam the streets bearing the flag of Anonymous; the government itself is in pieces, those ministers that haven’t shown support to our movement are effectively under house arrest, and even the trial you were partaking in today was solely an attempt to prove to the masses who had the power and you can see how that ended. Within a week the people will have complete control over London, a month and we’ll have Britain. Join us, come on!’ It doesn’t take much thought generally for me to latch onto a group’ on this occasion, if I’m going to get fifteen years of prison anyway, what harm could this do? ‘Ok, I’ll come with you!’ We walk out of the courtroom and immediately I see he was telling the truth: men and women in army and police uniforms patrolling the streets with that familiar flag of Anonymous printed onto their hats and sleeves. Wait, they’re saluting me! Do I deserve a salute? Ok, this could work out nicely for me after all. We get into the car and drive down the road, every street the same, flags of Anonymous hanging from buildings and cars, with army and police on the streets saluting the car as we drive past. On the radio, an American station seems to be broadcasting over all channels; some sort of emergency broadcast perhaps? ‘Governments across the world are crumbling: USA, UK, Russia, France, Italy. The list is growing faster than I can read it! Stay in your houses! The Army will deal with . . .

what? The armies are on the side of the rioters! Oh god: is this the start of a new communist era? Get food! Stay in your houses, defend yourselves.’

An electronic voice interrupts him, a voice I am very familiar with: it is the standard computerised voice I myself have broadcast messages with: ‘We are Anonymous We are Legion We do not forgive We do not forget You should have expected us.’

Christopher Potts

Spoilt for Choice?

ou spoiled brat: you own your ‘friends’, you take their love and all the things that come with that! Your mum, your dad: they are yours! You snake that knows no end to what you want! A hat! Some Shoes! Perhaps even something that’s more your type. You talk as if, somehow, you can’t be wrong! You scream when what you want ain’t there! Just hype for what you want to say: ‘Look at me! Hear my song! Your smug small smile, your barely visible gentle stare. You got a thing for Johnny or Will or Tom? Your unbelievable soft hair, what goes on under there? Whatever the truth, sometimes you make me wanna bomb. But all these things they don’t matter compared to my fear: I pray that you don’t forget, my love will always be here.

Ed Osborne

Foreign Country

rankly, I’m fed up. What do they mean, we have to enter a holding pattern? Preach to me about first world problems all you like, but there’s nothing fun about having this happen to you at the end of a thirteen hour flight. We circle above our destination for an eternity. I look out of the window, hoping someone will invent a teleporter soon. When I come to power, I’m going to ban aeroplanes. My first good look at the country sends a shiver of delight down my spine: the deep, gemstone foliage, endless lengths of rich forest running into the distance. My longing to be on the ground and away increases my impatience. My foot taps on the floor and I constantly peer through the window, hoping for some sign that the plane will right itself and prepare to land. The aeroplane flattens out and begins its descent. I sit back in my chair and try to look composed and cool (though the small child inside of me wants to bounce up and down in excitement). I hear the wheels free themselves from the plane’s body, see the flaps raise. I let out a small squeak, then quickly shut my mouth. My eyes dart around the plane. Nobody heard that. The aircraft hits the tarmac, then gradually slows to a halt. Once the seatbelt signs turn off, it’s all I can do to keep from running down the plane waving my hands in the air. Instead, I casually stand up, pull my bag out of the overhead locker and wait. We all start to disembark. Here’s the part that I hate: the airport. We line up for passport control. And here we stay. First, ten minutes. Then, half an hour. The queue is moving like a whippet – if it had been attached to a post by a very short, powerful elastic band; occasionally the queue starts forwards a few

inches, but little progress is made. It takes another fortyfive minutes to work out the problem. We, like all good English passengers, have been standing in line unquestioningly, forming our orderly queue, without searching to see why there is a problem. There are three passport control desks; only one is being utilised. Clearly we just formed a line behind the longest queue, not checking the others. Then I assume that the people at the front thought those were for special passports. Finally, after this information becomes apparent, it takes only twenty more minutes to break through to the rest of the airport. Collecting my luggage takes another half an hour. Finally, when all is done, I walk out to greet the man whoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s going to take me to my hotel. I hardly notice him offering to take my bag, my mind lost in the prospects of experiencing this new world. I wander towards the airport doors, ready to meet this new land. What hits me first is the smell. I was expecting the delicate perfumes of tropical plants, carefully balanced with smell of fresh fruits bursting with their ripeness in the trees. Instead, it smells like a cesspit. I choke my way into the van thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s going to take me to my hotel, not relaxing until all the windows are rolled up and the doors shut. The driver begins his journey through this weird country. The trip reveals many things that I couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t see from the air. How, amongst the picturesque canopy, was I meant to spot the main road filled with spluttering cars and rotting carcasses? My boyish grin recoils at some of the things I see. This was definitely not what I had in mind when I booked. After countless near-death experiences on the journey there, the driver rounds a corner and happily announces that the hotel is straight ahead. I stare in astonishment for several seconds. It definitely looks different to the pictures.

Thomas Timms 84

The Three Little Pigs

hould never have chucked them out yes the party was out of line all that drunken debauchery maybe it was a bit of an over-reaction but now they are going to die far too big a punishment note to self next time I have three piglets don’t get angry and throw them out it isn’t their fault well actually it was their fault the stupid boys but still don’t throw them out because they’re going to be eaten and that seems wrong I’m going to kill that bloody wolf huff puff blow your house down what sort of a wolf rhymes anyway and little piggy well that’s just creepy he should really see a counsellor and I mean what the hell is he doing I know that they used to bully him slightly and maybe he did leave school because of them but EATING THEM that’s just too far stupid boys not realizing that wolves grow up much bigger than pigs and this is the problem with mixed schools pigs are cleverer wolves are bigger so what do you get ANARCHY Now we go straight to our correspondent, Carol, who is at the very scene of the devastation. Yes, devastation is exactly how today’s events can be described. The first pig’s straw house has been demolished by the wolf. Luckily, the pig managed to escape and, at the moment, we are unsure of his whereabouts. We last saw the pig being chased out of the house by the wolf; however we do not know what has happened since then. It is currently too unsafe to pursue and get footage as the wolf seems to be considerably enraged. It seems this wolf will stop at nothing to catch these pigs. Thank you Carol. We’ll be giving you live updates on this story throughout the day. Please call in if you see anything or are aware of where the pigs may be hiding.

In the wolf’s stomach that’s where they are and pigs are tasty but I mean really WHAT KIND OF IDIOT BUILDS A HOUSE OUT OF STRAW gahhhhhh does he not remember watching homes under the hammer with me he always was the stupidest pig alive still cleverer than that wolf though Peter lacks motivation and concentration that’s what she said well I bet he wishes he’d listened now survival skills don’t just happen like that you need knowledge and common sense neither of which he has I wish I hadn’t thrown them out it was rash and now the idiots have got themselves killed I wonder how the wolf found out they were living alone now probably from school the boys were probably bragging about living by themselves and he saw the opportunity quite clever if you ask me maybe he’s not so stupid after all We have confirmation that the first Pig is still alive, he has found his brother and they are currently hiding in his house made from sticks. Hopefully this construction will be able to withstand the blow from the wolf.

Finally Carol some good news fingers crossed but sticks doesn’t seem very strong really would have been better to use bricks please say Phil has used bricks I would like to have at least one son alive why couldn’t we have had girls they’re so much easier and never seem to do silly things like getting themselves eaten please please please stay alive please please please I’m so sorry I chucked you out and I’m sorry I keep calling you stupid but please stay alive just hang on in there Huff Puff Eat Huff Puff Eat this isn’t my fault I could never have known it was going to happen SHUT UP BRAIN shut up shut up need to stop thinking about this can’t sit here and wait all day tea need tea tea always helps never have tea with the boys again SHUT UP Seemed to blow the house down less easily this time but still succeeded in the end. The two pigs again managed to run away so let’s hope they’re going to find somewhere safe to hide this time.

Here is safe but they’ll probably never come here again well actually I told them to never come here again and now I feel awful they can come to me come to me piggies come to me mummy is waiting but they won’t this is me it’s all me it’s all my fault I should have listened to their pleas and their apologies but you don’t when you’re that angry do you and it’s hard doing it all without Percy They lack a masculine influence at home that’s another thing she said but what was I supposed to do get married again well it’s not that easy they were so young when it happened though and perhaps she was right all along maybe if he was still here they would be capable of building houses and doing those masculine things but we can’t blame him he didn’t want to go once again it’s my fault should have found a new husband and provided that masculinity for them should have made them go to DIY class rather than drama in school all of these mistakes I’ve made if I had known I would be so incapable I would have changed everything but now it’s too late to change now I just have to hope that they survive helpless sitting here wish there was something I could do could go and see the wolf’s mother but somehow that seems pointless wish there was something but there’s nothing that makes it so much worse If I could help it would help me get through this day I wonder what the funeral would be like NO NO NO don’t start planning funerals they’re not dead yet just wait and see what happens remain calm at all times All three are hiding in the third pigs house of bricks YES PHIL bricks you genius child maybe they will survive I bet the other two are glad they found Phil I’m glad they found him always was the clever one but he has outdone himself this time bricks well I never the wolf’s huffing and puffing won’t go far this time at least I hope it doesn’t I’ll make them write an apology letter as soon as they get home I better get tidying so much to do for when they arrive

What if they don’t want to come and see me now what if they blame me what if they never want to see me again I couldn’t deal with it that would be awful I should write the apology letter The wolf’s attempts are failing: he seems to be attempting to trick his way into the house; however, the pigs are remaining firm.

Well trickery won’t work they’re the masters come on piggies hang on in there I’m so sorry I’ll make you a cake if you stay alive pointless they can’t hear but it seems worth it maybe make more tea yes tea is good tea tea tea need some tea The wolf seems to be tiring somewhat: let’s hope that he gives up and the pigs can live in peace.

Yes Carol let’s hope that I hope that very much tea Well, it seems that the three pigs have finally outwitted the wolf. No-one knows precisely what happened but we saw the wolf attempt to climb down the chimney; this was followed by a huge amount of noise and steam from the chimney and the three pigs have triumphantly emerged from their house.

YES well done piggies must get hat coat umbrella I’m coming piggies God I hope they forgive me yes my babies are alive it’s going to be fine oh thank God I don’t know how I would have coped must remember the key That poor wolf’s mummy I bet she didn’t see that coming

Polly Furness

Arduous Love

cross the exhaustion of unclean land, Where war has sought to distort humanity, I strain my eyes and think I see you stand, Running, I seek a glimpse of your purity. You smile almost the way you did when we crossed But altered like the covâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;rage of human hypocrisy. You needlessly felt the brunt of this world, Regrettably, given its sorrow and extremities. I see you open your grave eyes and feel The warm oasis where peace is maintained Deeper still, there is pain and loss of will And still all this distance remains between. Another two hundred and two minutes Before I hold you again, hold the gas.

Michael Okoye

Foreign Country

‘F

inally,’ I exclaimed as we disembarked the aircraft following the long, arduous journey. I had been alive for ten years yet I had never visited India. India is where my family are originally from, where my parents had grown up, and yet they hadn’t returned since my birth. I would say that I’m Indian, when it suits me. ‘Who do you support in cricket?’ ‘India.’ ‘Who do you support in football?’ ‘England.’ I also often find myself taking credit for Indian success using the pronoun ‘we’ when it’s beneficial. For example: ‘we’ are going to be the next economic superpower. All this, and I hadn’t set foot in the country. I’d always wondered how hot it really is there compared to England. Leaving the aircraft, I realised. The heat, but more the humidity, caused me to sweat profusely under the woollen jumper I was wearing. There was no choice, however, but to keep it on as the patches would have been embarrassing. I hoped that perhaps I would sweat so much that the whole shirt would just turn to the dark-blue colour. People always talk about how the first thing that happens is that beauty hits you. That a lie. Walking down the unstable steps from the plane you fear it collapsing. Then you have to conquer immigration. Once you’ve passed through the hole carved into the terminal building – the door – you are confronted with a sea of people standing around looking lost, among which lies a bloke with a moustache and a hat sitting behind a glass divider fiddling with a stamp. Finding him is like a treasure hunt: you receive cryptic clue from various airport staff which get you

nowhere until you accidentally stumble upon the man and celebrate. Then there was baggage reclaim. After descending more steps (which could have passed for escalators judging by the amount they moved) everyone was crowded around some 1960â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s TV set mounted on top of the information desk, waiting to see which carousel they needed. Once the authorities had divulged this, everyone rushed to the carousel, jostling for position and ignoring that yellow line which supposedly signified something. After some more delays we finally found our bags â&#x20AC;&#x201C; on the carousel belonging to the flight from Singapore â&#x20AC;&#x201C; and we proceeded to find our driver. Finally I was able to relax, despite sitting in a massive traffic jam, and look forward to the holiday.

Ajitesh Rasgotra

Cow

walk on the soft grass of Australia, With a heavy bag on my shoulders. The warmth of the autumn sunshine, Melts me to my heart. A sudden smell nudges me, The smell of grass, The smell of mud The smell of dirty water At the end of the road Stands a massive creature. Lazy like an old man, Tough like a rock. The domineering beast glances at me As it swings its tail from left to right Up and down, With such power and arrogance.

Justin Heng

The Incident in Hora

ora is an alleyway in the streets of Patmos, a Greek island. It is the island of cats. The shimmering glossy light of the moon beautifully lights up Hora. To the side of the alleyway is a little door where cats usually sleep. Every time you pass them, they see you and act scared; they then relax and purr as they stroke against your leg. There are different strange sounds you hear when you pass the alleyway; cats meowing, cats purring, and sometime cats in a fight with a stray dog, but only cats are heard. Another thing is the stench of the cats; it is a mixture of milk with bad breath. The floor on which the cats love to lie on is dented stone. One mysterious night, I was walking by the perfectly lit door and, as I was walking by, I came across a very peculiar thing. Whilst I walked past the door I heard a random scurry and hissing from cats; I immediately then thought that is was a cat getting chased by one of the stray dogs of Hora. I then looked down the other street that is a dark misty alleyway that cuts off from the main alleyway from Hora and I saw two glimmering eyes, a bright hypnotizing green. I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t fully see the structure of the cat but I was sure that it was abnormally large since the eyes were far off the ground. Closely following was another larger cat. It had similar eyes, but this one was bigger. It stopped. I stopped. It made a loud hiss that made me jump; I shouted. The man that lived in that house look surprised when he came out to see what all the commotion was about. He turned his head and took in the gleaming green eyes of the cat, then ran back in and locked the door; this was when I realized I should run. That same night, my father had told me two stories that I managed to link with each other. The first was of two children in Patmos that got killed by what seemed to be a wild animal or some type of big dog. The second story was

when he was tucking me into bed and told me a story of two cats that roamed Patmos long before it was ever founded; they were called the mother and father cats that were supposedly immortal according to Patmos mythology. They had many kittens together, and the cats that live in Patmos are all ancestors of the mother and father cats. After he had finished telling me the story of how they had magical powers to disappear at any moment, I asked him if the story was true and whether anybody had ever seen these cats. He said that he had never seen them; however, just before he left, he looked as if he just remembered something and said that what his father had told him was that special people only would see these mystical cats and that they choose whom to be seen by, and for a purpose, and there was this one man who had been attacked once that lived to tell the tale, but that he was rarely seen out of his house. I asked my dad if he was still alive today, he replied yes and that he lived in Hora.

Clemente Theotokis

Cig and Twine

wine was on her perch, preening and cleaning her feathers, when Cig decided that it was time for her to be on the perch. Cig flapped up to Twine’s perch and raised her wings threateningly. Twine, in response, raised her wings, puffed out her chest and uttered a harsh hawk-like cry. Cig brought her beak down in a slashing movement towards Twine’s beak. Twine fell back two hops and charged forward, shaking her beak from side to side. Cig tried to match the ferocity of Twine’s attack but as usual couldn’t. Cig fell backwards, flapping her wings dramatically, and hit the bottom of the cage with a muffled clang. Cig promptly got back up and tried to climb back up to her perch, but he fell back down, due to Twine’s sharp beak, and retired to a smaller perch. Later that night, when Twine was asleep with her head turned 180 degrees around and her beak tucked peacefully beneath her feathers, Cig quietly stole towards Twine, up the bars of the cage and onto Twine’s perch were she screeched so suddenly and randomly that even I, sitting down on a bean bag playing videogames, was startled. Twine flew up and around the cage in a panic and I had to take her out of her cage to placate her. Cig was sitting on Twine’s old perch quite happily it seemed to me with a smug look upon her bird face. Twine had broken a blood feather and we had to get it pulled (to Twine’s distress) but, since that incident, Cig always sits on the top perch, though they still occasionally fight about it.

Samuel D’Souza

Still Unmoving Water Still unmoving water, turquoise glazed and crystal clear; Sinking deep below the line of sight to a world of the purest black. Lukewarm water lapping up onto the boat Plunging deep into the very fabric of our skin With a lush warm that eclipses all thought And leaves you with only the sun trickling though your hair as the day passes by But up in the sky, high and mighty, ghostly pale in colour First it floats but then as though slipping through the air it plummets, Bony wings propelling it towards the concrete still water. The mask of elegance removed to be replaced by its salty unclean shell, Mouth open for the kill Emitting fish flesh breath Smash, shot into the water Like an arrow piercing the smooth surface Causing heavy ripples to rock the boat, And send shards of water clawing into our dry clothes Then it remerges Softly slithering through the wind Prey in mouth, Veil of serenity back in place.

Rex Henderson 96

The Charterhouse Review

The Charterhouse Review volume 6: 2012-2013

volume 6: 2012-2013