Metropolitan Lines, vol 1

Metropolitan Lines Volume 1 2007

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postgraduate fiction

Bill Leahy Verena Adams Sean Gaston David Fulton

James Wood Karen Harlow Mary Channon Paul Crisp Jagmeet Sidhu Hina Ahmad James Wood Johanna Steele James Wood Mary Channon Andrew Tucker

Rob Cook Stephen James David Fulton Rob Cook

3 8 18 23 27 29 34

39 45 48 50

FACULTY Beds Does My Bum Look Big? The Somerset House The Right Connections

5 7 10 12 17 19 22 23 25 28 30

POETRY UNDERGRADUATES Peep Show Goodbye Smile Taken as Read Recorded Tears The A-Z of Dating for Women Where is He? Bog Cubicle Me. You. For Andrew 5 Minutes

38 44 49 55

FACULTY The Hotel Pool, Mombasa The Sea Wall Well Now Empty and Marvellous

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Editors: David Fulton Robert Stamper Layout and Formatting: Samuel Taradash

Metropolitan Lines is the literary magazine of Brunel University’s School of Arts. It exists to showcase the creative writing, prose and poetry of students, faculty and staff connected to the School of Arts at Brunel University.

Questions, comments or submissions are welcome, and should be sent to david.fulton@brunel.ac.uk Any submissions should be sent as attachments to e-mail in the form of .doc or rtf files. Please, check your spelling and grammar before sending.

The copyrights of all works within are held by their respective authors.

Metropolitan Lines Volume 1, 2007

Editorial Staff

Charles Thurlow Jacqueline Brooks Mike Park Krystel Thompson Luke Melia Jenny Neophytou Luke Melia

FICTION UNDERGRADUATES The Undertakers The Game Slightly Delusional Being About A Dying Trade, Dear Boy The Ice Maiden The Young!

Contents

Metropolitan Lines Volume 1 2007

Volume 1, 2007

undergraduates THE UNDERTAKERS Charles Thurlow

C

arl and Finney had already arrived when I pushed open the door into the kitchen’s warmth, bringing the cloud of my last frozen breath in with me.

“You’re late, Crapper. Too busy wanking to drag yourself out o’ bed this mornin’?”

“Fuck off, Carl. Is he here yet?”

Carl was fifteen and just because Finney and I were two years younger he thought he could rib us about masturbation - like he didn’t do it either.

“No he‘s not. Maggie let us in, said he’d be down in five minutes,” replied Finney, taking off his glasses to wipe away the condensation caused by the kettle boiling on the worktop behind him. I nodded, more to myself than the other two and crept over to the swing door that separated the kitchen from the rest of the golf club to see if I could spot any sign of Mike, our boss. As I stood on tiptoe, peering into the red half-light of the dining-room, an arm yanked me back savagely by the neck.

“Don’t tell me to fuck off, little Colin Crapper,” Carl hissed as he manoeuvred me struggling into a headlock.

“Get off Carl,” I choked as I tugged at his wrist. I could smell his B.O. and feel the folds of his flabby belly against my cheek through his scratchy woollen jumper.

“Say ‘sorry sir’. Say ‘little Colin Crapper’s very, very sorry sir’.”

“No.... Fuck off,” I spluttered.

“Say it!” Carl tightened his lock.

I felt faint now from lack of air and was on the point of giving in, when the door swung open and I was rapidly released.

“What are you playing at?”

It was Mike.

“Nothing, just mucking about waiting for you,” Carl gabbled.

“Are you all right, Colin?” I was leaning against the big industrial fridge, catching my breath.

“Yes... I’m fine... Mike” “Well you can all piss off home if you think you’ve come here to muck about, me laddioes.”

“Sorry, Mike,” we chorused.

Even Finney, and he hadn’t done a thing.

Mike had a red nose. That was the first thing I’d noticed about him when Finney and I came up to the club the previous summer, looking for ways to supplement our meagre pocket-money. He was nice enough, quite serious, although I did overhear some of the members talking about the night he was forced to run naked round the eighteenth green after losing a game of cards. This vision often popped into my head whilst I was being given my instructions for the day and it was all I could do to stop myself from collapsing into giggles.

Today he seemed cheerful enough, after delivering our dressing down, and whistled merrily to himself as he prepared our tea. This Saturday morning ritual was a much-needed perk of the job, especially in the depths of winter, but there was something sinister about the tinkling of steel against crockery that put me on edge. He was never usually this cheerful, and when he was it usually meant someone would be on the receiving end of a rotten job.

“What would you like us to do today, Mike?” asked Carl, sickeningly trying to win back favour.

3

“All in good time, gents,” replied Mike, gulping his tea and ignoring Carl’s eagerness.

We perched on the gleaming work surfaces burning our hands on the thick green mugs. They used to have the clubhouse printed on the side, but they were cheap and bought in bulk and the picture had long since worn off. Mine still had half a roof and ‘Go lub’, but it was in the minority. None of us spoke as we sipped and slurped our tea, but Carl glared at me through the almost imperceptible steam that rose from his mug. I knew he wouldn’t have forgiven me yet. He spat in my face once when I called him a ‘fat blubber bundle’, so I booted him in the shins and he would have leathered me if he hadn’t been so slow. He didn’t speak to me for a month, but I wasn’t too bothered because most of what he came out with was gobshite.

I was deep in thought, remembering the spitting incident, when Mike let out a loud, contented sigh and put down his empty mug.

“Right lads, are you ready for some graft?”

“Yes, Mike,” we chorused. Well, Carl and I chorused - Finney was swallowing tea at the time, so he chirped up a couple of seconds late.

“Do you remember I mentioned last week that farmer Bradshaw’s been ‘aving some bother with a fox?”

This information was met with blank looks from all three of us.

Mike carried on regardless. “Well on Tuesday night he shot the little bugger and it ended up dead in the rough off the fourteenth. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to bury the flea- ridden furbag before the members start to complain.” He always said that thing about, “Your mission...”, and I didn’t have a clue what he was on

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Name Thurlow Charles

in front of Carl, though, he was far too self-righteous – “I’11 never smoke, my granddad died of lung cancer and you’ll go the same way” - and he had such an irritating sing-song voice when he was on his high-horse that it wasn’t worth giving him an excuse to get up there.

We set to work looking for the shovels without another word. After five minutes we’d only managed to unearth two and realised that the plastic bags were kept in the kitchen.

“There’s no way I’m going back in there. Mike’ll bite my head off,” said Carl, coward that he was. Mind you, I didn’t fancy facing Mike’s wrath again either, so I was pleased when Finney volunteered. Carl stooped, examining the shovels intently after Finney had gone and I ventured further into the shed, pretending to look for another one. Neither of us felt like speaking to the other. I was in the process of tormenting a giant brown and red spider when Finney returned two minutes later.

“Maggie were there. She gi’ me these.” He held up a bundle of crumpled supermarket carrier bags. “She said she din’t know ‘bout the shovels, though.”

“Never mind, we’ll just take it in turns to dig,” said Carl. Satisfied with this suggestion, we upped tools and set out to the fourteenth hole.

It was a freezing cold, scared-to-get-out-of-the-bath kind of day, and the frost on the tall evergreens that surrounded the car park glittered as the sun fought through the rolling mass of cloud that threatened to dull the bright morning. I liked being out and about on mornings like this - the world seems a much cleaner, crisper place when everything is edged with frozen dew.

I know it sounds daft saying it, but this kind of day always made me believe in childish notions of magic, fairies, elves, wizards, stuff like that. One day, about a year ago, I was walking through the park on a morning just like this and I saw a duck by the side of the boating lake. As I approached, I realised it wasn’t moving and, thinking it was asleep, I crept closer, intending to shock it from its slumber. But when I was close enough to touch it, and just about to clap my hands and shout and scare the thing witless, I noticed it was frozen, frozen solid with its head tucked under its sparkling wing. It rolled over when I kicked it with the end of one of my damp trainers. I went back the next day, to see if it was still there, but it had gone, and while the bitter breeze turned my ears red, I convinced myself that the duck had thawed itself out, flown on still dripping wings.

It was a ten minute walk to the site of the fox’s demise and our conversation turned to the subject of Emma Radcliffe as we set off down the path, past the

The Undertakers

about until Tom Cruise did that ‘Mission: Impossible’ film. I don’t know why he bothered saying it when we never really had a choice.

“There’s shovels in the shed and you’d better take some plakky bags to pick it up with. Don’t go touching it yourselves, mind, or you’ll end up catching all sorts of diseases.” Having duly instructed, he pushed back his chair noisily, stood up, and hurried off to his next task.

The tinkling of the crockery foretold correctly - burying a dead fox on a freezing cold January morning was pretty close to my idea of a rotten job. Finney looked green, but it could have been the reflection of his mug.

“Nice one, Crapper! Thanks a bunch for landing me in it,” Carl said as soon as he was sure Mike was out of earshot.

“What!” I said, incredulously. “You’re the one who attacked me!”

“Well, you deserved it, and you’ve still not apologised.” He started after me, but the table was between us and we began dashing round in circles, backwards and forwards as he tried to lay hold of me.

Finney started laughing and playfully punched each of us in turn as we dodged past him. Carl made a lunge at me across the battered table top and I knocked over a chair as I side-stepped his flailing arm. His face was turning purple with rage and exertion.

“Get to work!” bellowed Mike, as he burst through the door. We stopped, instantly shocked, stationary, to see Mike’s glowering face preparing to spout forth one of his well- known tirades. All three of us were out of the kitchen and halfway to the shed before the door stopped swinging. Safely inside the musty wooden haven, we gradually regained our composure.

“Bloody hell, I thought he was going to explode!” I said, partly because Mike really had looked like that, and partly to brush over Carl’s grievance by inspiring a sense of camaraderie. No such luck.

“Well, if you hadn’t knocked that chair over he wouldn’t have.…”

“Give it a rest, Carl.” This was Finney, the voice of reason.

I tensed, still expecting Carl’s panting bulk to pounce like a lazy, overweight leopard (he had really bad acne), but he just rutted and finally let the matter drop.

Finney didn’t say much, but what he did say was usually to the point and worth saying. That’s probably why I liked him. Well, that and the fact his Dad owned a newsagent’s, which had given us unlimited access to sweets and football stickers when we were younger. It meant we could nick fags now too. We couldn’t smoke

undergraduates

First Year Students PEEP SHOW OH MY OH MY GOD! “Would you like me to be STRICT?” “Would you like me FLASH?” FLASH Lip Bum Here There Filthy Gorgeous Bloody Bloody BLOODY Hell!

“I’m a DIRTY girl.”

“Are you a DIRTY boy?”

FLASH

FLASH Thigh Tit Here There Dirty Sweaty Lovely Oh my to be NASTY?” FLASH FLASH Wiggle Jiggle Jiggle Wiggle BUGGER BUGGER BUGGER ME! James Wood 5

“What? You haven’t spoken to Emma Radcliffe.” Carl was looking nervous.

“I did, on Thursday. Me mam asked me to tek round some groceries for ‘er mam and when I were in the kitchen Emma were there and she asked me wor I’d been up to, and I said ‘Nothin’ much, wor ‘ave you been up to?’, and she said she visited her Gran on Monday night to cheer ’er up ‘cos it’s not long since ‘er granddad died, and Tuesday ‘er dad came over from Bolton and took ‘er to the cinema and ‘ad a row with ‘er mam when they got back and she threw a pot plant at ‘is lead, then Wednesday she ‘ad to go an’ stay at ’er gran’s again ‘cos ‘er mam ‘ad been teken down the police station on account of ‘er lavin’ thrown a pot plant at ‘er dad, then she said she were stayin’ in that night ‘cos Eastenders were on the telly, so I said ‘All right, best be off then’ and came home and me mam shouted at me ‘cos I forgot to bring the box back.”

I was beginning to suspect I didn’t know Finney as well as I’d thought. Carl didn’t seem to know what to say in reply to this, so after a few seconds of whirring cogs and a couple of ‘ahhhs’ and ‘uhs’, he said nothing. He’d been rumbled and we all knew it so he strode off ahead, sulking, red-faced. Finney and I laughed quietly.

“You never told me you’d spoken to Emma Radcliffe,” I said to Finney once Carl had. Turned the corner in the path as it dipped behind the bushes at the back of the sixteenth tee.

“I didn’t. I made it up. I was sick of ’im coming out with lies, so I thought I’d shut ’im up for once.”

That was it - seeing Carl humiliated was funny enough, but knowing that Finney - Finney who

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Charles Thurlow

“Bullshit!” That was my contribution to the debate.

“I don’t give a shit whether you believe me or not, ask her yourselves.” This, as Carl well knew, was impossible. Emma Radcliffe reserved for Finney and myself the kind of contempt you reserve for the puddles of vomit you might accidentally tread in outside ‘The Randy Spaniel’ on a Sunday morning. The irony was, Finney and I were probably the first two lads in the area to see her naked (told you she was a corruptive influence), while indulging in the age old ‘you show me yours...’ game at the tender age of seven. Now, undoubtedly because of that former familiarity, she vigorously ignored us if ever our paths crossed. So it came as quite a surprise when Finney said he’d spoken to her two days ago.

The Undertakers

eighteenth green. I knew her because she lived at the end of my street and used to play with Finney and me when we were younger. She was three years older than us, and quite a corruptive influence even then, but now she was notorious fodder for the playground gossips.

Carl and Finney were arguing.

“Bollocks!” That was Finney. I told you he was to the point.

“I swear, I’m not lying. On Monday night I went up Tanner’s with her and she gave me a B.J.” Tanner’s Copse was a patch of densely packed trees and bushes between the estate we lived on and Bradshaw’s land, famous for illicit sexual encounters. However, I was quite sure the closest Carl had ever got to one was when the school nurse took his temperature by shoving a thermometer up his arse.

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Charles Thurlow

two bunkers that stood as sentinels to trap any golfer who might fall short, until we had gone about a hundred yards from the green. Looking left over the rough we could see the smoke from Bradshaw’s chimney, twisting out of the hollow that concealed his farm, rising lethargically into the rapidly thickening cloudscape. There was no mistaking it now - the smell radiated from the little orange bundle just visible behind a patch of long, wiry grass. We stood, thirty yards from the fox, with our sleeves over our mouths and noses.

“There is no way I’m touching that,” said Carl.

“Neither am I,” said Finney. They turned and looked at me enquiringly.

“No way. There is no way I’m even going near the thing.”

“You should do it, Carl, you’re the oldest.” Finney really had a problem with Carl today.

“What’s that got to do with anything? You should do it ‘cos you’re the youngest. Anyway, because I’m the oldest, I get to say who’s doing it, and I think it should be Colin.”

“You’re only saying that ‘cos he told you to ‘fuck off.

Anyway, you’re nor in charge, we should tek a vote.”

“I am in charge, I’m two years older. You have to do what I say, and I say Colin’s got to do it.”

“That’s crap. When’s Mike ever said you were in charge?”

“Well...he...that’s not the point. We’re here now, I’m the oldest and the biggest,” Finney pointed out how true Carl’s observation had been, but it passed without comment, “and I say Colin’s doing it.”

“That’s not fair, and there’s two of us. Maybe we think you should do it.”

All the time Finney and Carl were arguing, I stood passively looking at the indistinct orange blob, whose funeral we’d been charged with arranging, and an idea occurred to me. With my sleeve over my nose, the smell wasn’t actually that bad, and a morbid curiosity had arisen within me. I wanted to see the fox - and it wasn’t as if it was going to bite me - so if neither of my accomplices wanted to touch the thing, it really wouldn’t bother me that much. And I might be able to get something out of it.

“Stop arguing, you two, I’ve got an idea.” Two pairs of eyes and a pair of sleeve-covered hands turned to face me. “I’ll pick up the fox, I’ll even carry it wherever it needs to go, provided.…“ “What?” They said this simultaneously, eagerly.

“Provided you two dig the grave.” They looked at each other, weighed up what they were both thinking,

The Undertakers

hardly ever said anything unless he had to - had made it all up, well, that was just hilarious, pant-wettingly funny, and I couldn’t help bursting out into raucous laughter, Finney joined in and soon the pair of us were stumbling down the gravel path with tears in our eyes and aching stomachs. We were laughing so much that we didn’t notice Carl had stopped in the middle of the path, until we bumped into him.

“Watch it, Carl!” I muttered, rubbing the spot on my chest where the end of Carl’s shovel had bruised me.

“Can you smell that?” Carl had his nose thrust forward into the air and was sniffing tentatively. Finney and I exchanged glances - maybe the recent blow to his pride had knocked a screw loose.

“What, the grass?” I offered.

“No, no. That smell. Have a proper sniff, it stinks.” I took a good lungful of air through my nostrils and exhaled loudly. I was about to start deriding Carl’s imaginary stench, having smelt nothing but the slowly defrosting grass and the chalky gravel odour, when Finney groaned, “Uuurgh! That stinks!”

“See, see, there is something.” I sniffed again, more seriously this time, but I still couldn’t detect the horrible stink that disgusted Carl and Finney.

“I can’t smell anything.” I moved over to where Finney stood, to the left of Carl, and sniffed again.

“Ugh! It’s...it’s like cabbages.”

“No, it’s more like gone-off milk.”

We started walking briskly to evade the stench, all three of us holding our breath and sporting screwed-up faces of revolt. We stayed like that, moving briskly with a short-step half-run until we reached a row of waisthigh shrubs that backed onto the fourteenth green.

Thankfully, they were a pretty good windbreak, so we collapsed with our backs to the bushes and breathed.

All I could smell was grass and gravel again.

“What the hell is that stink?” asked Carl, not really expecting either of us to know.

“I ‘ope it’s not wor’ I think it is,” replied Finney.

Then it clicked. I looked at Finney, then Carl, then Finney again and we all peered through the shrubbery in the direction of the fourteenth. I felt like Tom Hanks in that war film. “Well, there’s only one way to find out,” Finney said, before clambering to his feet, bags in hand, looking expectantly at Carl and me, crouching in the untainted air. We followed reluctantly.

As we skirted the fourteenth green and reached the edge of the fairway, the smell worsened, so between gulps of air we were silent. We walked purposefully down the fairway by the border with the rough, past the

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The Undertakers Charles Thurlow

and said yes, all in the time it takes pleased with my foresight - it would fetch his BMX from Floppy’s to say ‘stinking dead fox’. “You’ll take them another half an hour to domain probably hadn’t helped. have to dig out of bounds, though. dig a hole anywhere near big Once I had reached the fox We can’t carve up the rough.” You enough to bury the fox. (sleeve still clamped firmly), I wasn’t had to pay four hundred pounds a The fox. How could such a huge, so surprised: it was a gruesome year for that privilege. “Fine by rancid reek be generated by the one sight. The prostrate vermin lay on me,” said Carl. “We’ll just head over tiny dead animal I was now its side, with its head thrown out in there and start digging. OK? Don’t approaching? As far as I could see, it death at ninety degrees from the rest bring it over until we’ve finished. “ was no bigger than a large rabbit, of its body. Its tongue had been Finney handed me the bundle of the kind Adam Riley used to have in pierced by the large canine at the carrier bags in exchange for the his backyard that served his family front left of its mouth, but no blood shovel I’d been carrying and then as a guard-dog. It was impossible to discoloured the stiff, pink casualty of they sprinted over the rough, past get in or out of the back of his house its final mournful gnashing. One ear the white posts that marked off the because anybody invading Floppy’s was hidden by the grass, but the fourteenth, until they arrived at the territory would inevitably find the other still pricked forward. I top of the bank of waste ground that Bigwig from hell clamped to their wondered what that ear had heard led down to the dry-stone wall that ankle. That rabbit lived for twelve last. The crows had taken the eyes separated Bradshaw’s land from the years and Adam Riley had grown ghoulish pits betrayed what had golf course. into a particularly nervous teenager. hidden behind the fox’s cunning “We’ll dig here, OK?” Carl Living with the fear of violent gaze, behind the green reflection if shouted. retribution every time he dared to caught in headlights.

“Wherever!” I replied. I didn’t I retched. My first sight of the think it would make much head transfixed me, but difference, it was going to First Year Students my next glance sickened. be hard work wherever The belly and a part of the they chose. ribcage were torn open, GOODBYE “It’s rock hard!” horrific evidence of Finney’s first attempt at Bradshaw’s true aim.

So there’s nothing left to say, except goodbye. penetrating the frost Maggots writhed in and I can’t believe you no longer care, compacted earth rang out about the pulpy mess of Won’t even give a reason why. across the surrounding intestines, membranes, greenery. I chuckled to gloopy red mash. I had a I notice you won’t catch my eye. myself I could see them vision of coming There are things I want to tell, but do not dare. struggling to make an downstairs into the So there’s nothing left to say, except goodbye. impression in the soil, lounge after one of my grumbling barely audible dad’s Friday nights up late If this is truth, I’d rather live a lie. curses as they puffed and in front of the telly, Either way you’re not being fair, panted, thumped and surveying the debris of his Won’t even give a reason why. clanked. I watched the excess, noticing with rising vapours of their revulsion the leftover cloudy, mingled breath for Chinese - overfaced We still had loose ends to tie, himself in his alcoholic a while, with my sleeve Now must find an identity, not half a pair. greed - the sticky red still faithfully blocking the So there’s nothing left to say, except goodbye. sweet and sour covering reek. Despite the fact that little white flecks. At least they were over fifty yards You said together we’d touch the sky. rice didn’t squirm. I away, I could make out Look, you left my dream cupboard bare retched again when I the pitiful amount of earth And won’t even give a reason why. heard the faint sounds of they had managed to So there’s nothing left to say, except goodbye. maggots feeding, moving, extract, a forlorn hump struggling, striving. between them. I was very Karen Harlow 7 Metropolitan Lines Volume 1, 2007

undergraduates or Finney’s encouragement, was unclear. But did they share my thoughts, as we gathered around the grave, silent, considering the animal? Had they, too, woken up to the terrible truth that we were all going to die? Kicking and screaming, or twisted and crushed, or dashed on the rocks in some isolated spot, or sleeping peacefully, or eyes closed in a sealed car, or lying in a ditch, torn apart by a

farmer’s gun. All of us. I was ashenfaced as we flung the last clod of earth over the fox.

We ran back to the clubhouse, sprinting until our muscles ached and the pounding in our ears became too much.

The Undertakers Charles Thurlow

The bushy tail had moulted, or been ravaged. It lay crimson, orange, ropy, chewed. The sickening sight mesmerised me.

We’d all laughed at the gore witnessed when Finney’s older brother let us watch Brain-dead one afternoon when we’d all bunked off school - especially the bit when a crazed zombie pulled out a screaming victim’s ribcage. Faced with the fox’s protruding yellow, sinewy, gunk-covered corpse, the humour failed to materialise.

I forgot everything in that moment as I crouched, peering at this image of death. The frozen duck hadn’t flown. I saw myself, years and years away, lying underground, my so- familiar body mutilated by larvae, stolen, broken down, savaged by self-serving parasites. I saw death in all its gory Technicolor and for the first time I understood its inescapable horror.

This fox was me and I too would be decaying, reeking, open, dead.

I was no longer the same person by the time Carl and Finney finally finished digging and I carried the festering corpse to the burial site.

Who knows? Maybe they changed too. I saw the disgust, the fearful revulsion in both their faces when they eventually helped me fill in the hole, as the first drops of cold winter rain escaped the clouds that had been amassing steadily all morning.

Had they seen what I’d seen?

Realised themselves what had become apparent to me? As I trailed maggots over the rough, holding the threadbare tail through a plastic bag in my left hand, the cloying, creeping stink had overcome Finney’s fragile stomach, sending his breakfast surging over the weeds and rocks on the bank. Carl had followed suit, though whether this was thanks to the presence of the fox

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undergraduates THE GAME Jacqueline Brooks

B

lood and salt.

Shivering as if from a chill, the young boy clutches at the bedclothes, salty tears running down his face. His large round eyes appear not to blink and though his bottom lip quivers, he emits no sound. Darkness envelops the room, seemingly impenetrable but for a single moonbeam weakly filtering in through the open window. Barely illuminated, a small form lies deathly still beneath the covers of the bed opposite.

In his agitation the young boy’s teeth chatter, cutting into his tongue. Blood and tears mingle in his muted mouth. Dumb with terror, he finds his limbs are frozen.

The air seems rank and the shadows unnaturally black. He can do nothing but stare, stare as the looming darkness turns to face him. * The blur of red gradually came into focus: the clock glowed 5:16am.

Groaning, Brian rolled over and stared at the wall. He’d had the same recurring nightmare for as long as he could remember. Early nights had become second nature to him, a habit formed to compensate for lack of sleep, a healthier solution than the sleeping tablets that he used to take.

Listening to the radiators tick, he contemplated the contents of the refrigerator. Downstairs, the compressor of a large cooling unit was working hard at preserving the freshness of a substantial load of meat. Stomach churning at the thought of teeth tearing into flesh, he pondered over the irony of a vegetarian butcher. At least his line

of work was one of necessity and not of choice. The family business was not his to control, but while his father remained absent, he would take care of things for as long as he had to. Besides, it wasn’t as if he had to be involved in the slaughtering of innocent animals; those poor creatures were already dead by the time they reached his hands.

Fortunately, he had Daniel to take care of most of the dirty work.

Since his father, Leonard, had jacked it all in and buggered off, his old partner Daniel had more or less taken over. Brian did what he could, but didn’t really have a flair for business. He handled the high street shop, but preferred to let Daniel take care of the trade customers. Trade customers such as Ventrue’s just weren’t his forte. It was the Ventrue order that had taken over the unit downstairs.

There were some curiously picky customers out there and Ventrue was one of them. For starters, he would only ever accept carcasses from specific suppliers. Naturally, their hygiene was always tip-top, but despite this Ventrue demanded that Daniel prepare and store his meat in isolation. Brian figured the orders either had to meet some kind of religious requirements, or the guy was just super-paranoid. Whatever his reason, he paid enough for the dedication.

Cubing meat wasn’t that unusual; neither was dividing it into portions of equal weight. However, it wasn’t the individually wrapped, 800-gram portions that fascinated Brian. What he couldn’t understand was the interest in the waste – all the blood and gooey bits. Why would anyone want gravy made out of that? Just contemplating containers full of the stuff made him feel sick.

Daniel must have iron guts. Can’t 9

say he was at all envious of his colleague’s preferential treatment.

It never ceased to amaze Brian that Ventrue would only ever deal with Daniel. Sure, Daniel knew what he was talking about, but he was a bit of a strange one really.

With a terrible temper and an eyepatch, all he seemed to lack was a hook for a hand and a parrot.

Rising from bed, Brian prepared himself for the day ahead, relieved that the Ventrue order would keep him from having to deal with dead things. Daniel would ensure that the last of the order was packaged and ready to go by the end of the day. Then, later, Brian would help him load the delivery van and rid his home of hacked-up animal.

Slinging a tired-looking dressing gown on, Brian ventured into the bathroom, did his business, and then watched his reflection brush his teeth. A minute passed and the electric toothbrush buzzed three times to tell him so. Leaning over the sink, he spat out minty whiteness, drool, and a substantial amount of blood. Startled, he choked on his own saliva, involuntarily put his hand to his mouth and whipped his head up to check in the mirror.

In contrast to his ghastly pale face, dark oozing liquid filled his mouth, overflowed onto his chin, ran down his neck and soaked his chest. Gagging, his stomach convulsed and blood erupted from him, spattering the glass. Dizzy, his ears ringing, he felt blackness close in on his vision. *

Blood and salt.

Staring up into darkness, fear gurgled in the child’s throat, rapid breathing turning into short painful gasps.

Saturated teddy-bear

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The Game

pyjamas clung to the skin of his small legs, tears Yeah right, the day he started learning manners continuing to run down his face and into his mouth. would be the day she started leaving the latch on.

The darkness increased in size, obliterated the “Ventrue’s gonna tear you to pieces, Di!” meagre light, and closed in on him from above.

Crossing her legs provocatively, Diana noticed a nail From the bed opposite there was a strange that needed reshaping and picked up a well-worn nail hiccupping sound. Swiftly the darkness receded, seized file. the bundle beneath the bedclothes and catapulted it “Seriously, man! He knows you went outside last across the room to smash night and word of what you against the far wall.

First Year Students did has spread faster than Watching wide-eyed, the piss in an alley!”

SMILE little boy’s body jerked in On a good day, Eric’s sync with the impact. His gaunt, hollow-eyed visage You smile jaw snapped and his teeth face as though it has never And you are beautiful: sank further into the flesh if had a lick of sun in its life.

Lips full and soft, eyes holding mine. his tongue. Blood filled his Unbelievably, even that grey I cannot hold your gaze for long. mouth, overflowed onto his complexion had ebbed Its unashamed happiness in the object chin, dripped onto smiling away, the papery skin taking Embarrasses me. I turn away. teddy-bear faces… on a bleached, almost translucent appearance. * It is rare Even the sight of her long For your face to take this shape. bare legs, substantial Diana sat at her dressing Too used to friendly banter and constant change, cleavage and erect nipples table applying her lipstick Like an actor failed to summon any colour and absently curling a lock It plays centre stage to your wit to his cheeks. With a sigh, of dark hair around her And mimes to make me laugh.

Diana let the file fall and index finger. Various I am anxious to be back rose from the stool. “Oh, cosmetic products lay To the teasing and laughing, don’t have a heart attack, strewn across the mahogany The old familiar positions darling. He’s a pussycat, surface, while hair brushes, And complicated ways of saying I love you, you know.” tongs, strengtheners, styling Which neither of us understands.

Calmly, she decided to products of every select the most revealing red description, cluttered the Your smile is brave. dress she possessed. shelves. Discarded cotton I keep it “Besides, it wasn’t anybody pads, smudged with nail As a gift from a small child, important.” varnish or mascara, A treasure I mustn’t lose, Lost for words, Eric cascaded down the sides of To carry carefully, stood transfixed as Diana a small swing-bin that no Take care nothing should spill, clothed herself, then left longer swung. Shoes That none of my newly discovered joy with a shrug. Maybe she peeked out from under the Should escape, was right; she did have an bed and a G-string hung Soak into ground amazing effect on Ventrue – from the knob of an Or evaporate into air. she had a pretty amazing underwear drawer. effect on him. Absently Bursting in without Mary Channon fumbling with his trousers, regard, Eric was brought up short by the naked flesh on display as, in a whirl of Eric headed for his own quarters. He really didn’t want movement, Diana swung round to face him and blue to stumble into Ventrue’s presence just yet. satin parted. Recovering, she smiled knowingly, * drawing the gown back together with deliberate Daytime television being what it was, Brian chose slowness.

“Darling,” she purred. “You really should learn some not to spend all of his free time cloistered away in the house. The day was overcast but mild, suitable weather manners.”

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Seated in a voluminous room without windows, the figures by the large mahogany table were illuminated by candlelight. Flames danced against each of the four walls, and an impressive ironwrought candleholder glowed from the table’s centre. A richly coloured rug attempted to cover the vast stone floor, while several tapestries broke the monotony of the cold grey walls.

Ventrue’s presence dominated the head of the table, his seat imposing in its size and grandeur.

The remaining four chairs were unoccupied, though the angle of one indicated it had recently been disturbed.

Diana’s sweet scent permeated the air and intoxicated Ventrue as he relaxed under her skilled massaging hands. A hush hung in the atmosphere, like that which follows a storm, soothing tempers and discouraging talk. A shadow of darkness upon Diana’s left cheek promised a large unattractive

* The sun tried to break through the miserable clouds without success. Keys jangling, Brian entered the establishment via the high street. Leonard’s High Quality butchers was always closed to the general public, while an important trade order was in process.

After raiding the cold storage for sausages and chops, Brian ventured further out the back on his quest for a bone. With the local radio station cranked up, the sickening noises of Daniel’s wet-work were practically drowned out. As Brian wandered past the ‘red room’, he glimpsed Daniel back-bent over his work, completely engrossed in slicing and dicing. Continuing a few steps more, Brian abruptly came to a 11

standstill with a frown. He’d caught sight of bare hands; Daniel should be wearing gloves.

Re-tracing his steps, Brian’s hand rose to push the door wide open, but it froze in mid-air and his reprimand died in his throat.

There, upon the table, lay the torso upon which Daniel worked. Only partially concealed by his colleague’s broad frame was, unmistakably, the trunk of a human body.

For one brief, horrifying moment, Brian could not tear his eyes away from the macabre spectacle. Locked into position, he watched as Daniel carved the abdomen like the breastbone of a chicken. Time seemed to slow, delaying the revulsion, while the scene sank in. With comprehension came shock. He found himself cocooned in a debilitating thickness that dragged his muscles and made his ears ring. As the panic built within him, his senses became intensely heightened. He tasted the iron he smelt and felt the flesh being severed.

As a slice of unwanted skin slapped onto the floor, a wave of nausea bubbled up in his stomach and forced him to back away.

Without quite knowing how he had got there, he stood hunched upon his own doorstep, bathed in sweat, gasping for breath, the left hand still grasping his bag of purloined meat.

Nausea flooded back and overwhelmed him, doubling him over with a retching that sprayed his shoes with vomit. *

Blood and salt.

As blood continued to well from the cuts in his tongue, the little boy’s silent sobbing racked his body with tremors that caused him to spasm intermittently.

Metropolitan Lines Volume 1, 2007

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*

bruise. She wished he had struck her anywhere but upon the face, the place where Ventrue knew it would hurt her the most.

Heavy footsteps intruded upon their quiet, and though Diana continued to knead his muscles, Ventrue opened his eyes and sat forward expectantly.

The newcomer approached with the confidence of one very aware of his formidable size and strength.

African in origin, he was certain that anyone who was not intimidated by his enormity would certainly cower beneath his dark menacing gaze and gruesomely scarred features. His voice, as strong and as solid as his biceps, always sent a thrill through Diana, who made a point of leaning further over Ventrue.

Seemingly ignorant of both the low cut of her dress and her entire person, Mason spoke directly to his superior, “The delivery is on time.”

Ventrue relaxed once more, gesturing with his goblet before raising it to his lips.

The Game

for a healthy walk into town.

Making sure he had bus fare, Brian locked up and contemplated visiting his mother.

With his father out of the picture, Abi had packed up and moved out.

She now lived in a poky maisonette on the other side of town with her dickhead boyfriend, Tony. Tony was okay really, but did have a dick for a head.

The walk into town would take an hour, whereas the walk to work would only take half. He could pick up his usual gift of meat and a decent bone for the dog, then catch the bus to his mum’s in time for lunch. She usually had some veggiefriendly food to offer, and he hadn’t done his shopping yet.

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* When Brian came to, he was face down upon the pavement. Miraculously he had avoided landing on his chin, but as he scraped himself up, he pressed his hand into spilled sausages. Sausage meat bulged under the pressure and forced its way between his fingers, almost setting him off on another fit of retching.

Trying to wipe the offending stuff off onto the grass, he noticed a couple of kids watching him from across the street. Wanting to get out of sight, he dug in his pockets for his door keys. A wave of dread washed over him as he remembered dumping them on the counter inside his father’s butcher shop. There was no way he

TAKEN AS READ Well-paid job, children, wife, Big house, two cats and a dog, it’s all clear: “These are the things that make up life”.

Best friends, relationships are full of strife: That sexual conflict - am I straight or queer?

Well-paid job, children, wife.

Watching the football, Rangers v. East Fife, Cigarettes, drugs, gambling, beer.

“These are the things that make up life.”

Followed down an alley, confronted with a knife.

*

Eric sat cradling his knees on his bedroom floor, picking at a scab on his left arm and listening to the voices coming up through the air vent.

First Year Students He’d heard Diana get hit earlier and the grin still played about his lips.

So much at stake with all that “Wrapped round your finger, my fear! arse.”

Well-paid job, children, wife.

He could now hear Mason and Ventrue discussing the preparations Twenty-first-birthday present for the meeting later tonight. As if in from wealthy uncle, Clive: tune with the topic of conversation, Brand spanking new Mondeo, Eric’s stomach gnawed at his insides. complete with six gear.

It was so unfair; Ventrue’s curfew was “These are the things that make really starting to get to him. He felt up life.” like an adolescent and Diana didn’t help matters. If only she would stop Swimming pool in the garden, sneaking out and shitting on their foliage neat, not rife, doorstep. He was getting punished But in reality we come nowhere for a situation she was the cause of. near.

She deserved more than a slap as far Low-paid job, no wife, no as he was concerned. Flaunting children. herself the way she did, if he were Are these the things that make Ventrue he’d give her a good – up life?

Ventrue’s voice boomed through the vent and Eric jumped guiltily.

Paul Crisp Lost in his own thoughts, he’d missed what had been said, but whatever it was it had brought all the talk 12

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was going back there now. He didn’t quite know what he was going to do exactly, but he didn’t fancy joining that torso on the slab.

His head thumped, sausage meat clung, and the kids settled themselves on the curb.

Reaching for his wallet, he selected a credit card and decided to try what he’d seen the locksmith do last year.

The Yale lock on his front door could be double locked for extra security, but he always forgot to do it. Thankful for his carelessness, he leant his weight into the wood and slid the card down the jam, wiggling it to spring the latch. Flustered, he snapped two cards before the third brought him success and he was able to enter the moderate safety of his home.

Wondering what to do, he focused upon the telephone, but thought better of it. He couldn’t quite grasp the situation himself, let alone explain it to the cops. Besides, how could he keep his own name clear when he had who knows how many cubed body parts sitting inside his own refrigerator?

The Game

Collecting the crumpled body of the four year old from the floor, the towering darkness fed upon the toddler with an urgent greed. Noises of wet suckling filled the youngster’s ears and unbidden understanding poured into his innocent eyes. The intensity of the terror broke through the choking hold upon his throat, releasing the pent-up scream, at which the darkness, sparing him only a brief glance, swooped onto the window ledge and dived out into the night, still cradling his prize.

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*

*

Blood and salt.

Hysterical screams and sobs filled the child’s bedroom. Tears streamed down the little boy’s cheeks and chin, mingling with the blood that continued to well from his lacerated tongue. Rocking dementedly, his gasps for air began to sound more like crazed hiccups.

Dizzy, his ears ringing, blackness started to close in on his vision.

As he sank into unconsciousness, a comforting, warm pressure enfolded his body. A voice reached him through the ringing in his ears.

It sounded muffled and distant. He thought he heard his name. He knew he heard his brother’s. * Awake, but too weak to move, Brian lay on the kitchen floor remembering his little brother, Adam. He’d only been six when Adam went missing. More than a couple of decades had passed since then. Sometimes, he wasn’t sure if the memories he had of him were real, of if he’d just absorbed his mother’s fond recollections over the years. He knew that his brother had been only four years old. He knew that he had been physically handicapped since birth. He knew he was as blonde as Brian was dark and that the baby blues had never faded. He knew these things, but he didn’t remember them.

He had always felt it important to know that his memories were his own, that he genuinely did 13

remember Adam, but the years were like layers of clouds that he simply could not break through, and all he was left with was the nightmares and a therapist. Neither was very helpful: he’d ditched one and accepted the other.

He accepted the nightmares, but recognised that they were founded on emotion, not fact. According to his mother, he’d never even shared a bedroom with Adam. That memory was apparently as real as vampires.

As he rose, Brian’s eyes fell upon the refrigerator once more. * The rear of the butchery was badly lit. Brian had never had cause to notice that before now. As he crouched down behind the dustbins, he was grateful for the shadowy shelter. He’d left the note on his front door as planned and all he could do now was hope that Daniel had found his keys.

Shifting weight to ease the cramp building in his right calf, Brian’s balance wavered and he almost sent the bins toppling over with his rucksack. In the same instant, the rear door opened and Daniel emerged, followed closely behind by a black Hulk. The Hulk’s arms were filled with what he assumed to be Ventrue’s blood and gore. He expected Hulkman to return for a second armful, but apparently Ventrue was interested in quality, not quantity. Watching him climb into the van, Brian wondered why it took Daniel the entire day to prepare such a small amount and then quickly decided not to think about it.

As the van left his line of vision, Brian scrambled to his feet and made a dash for the rear door. Once inside, he ran to the tiny office that had always functioned more as a tea

Metropolitan Lines Volume 1, 2007

Jacquline Brooks

The metallic surface of the refrigerator gleamed in the electric light.

Earlier, Brian had practically turned himself inside out over the toilet bowl. He felt faint and knew he should try and eat something, but water was all that he could manage.

Having finally emerged from the bathroom, Brian had sat staring at the refrigerator ever since. He was trying desperately to focus and figure out what to do, but it was impossible to concentrate.

Blood, flesh, guts, gore – all other thoughts eluded him.

Chopped up bodies in his refrigerator. In his kitchen. In his house. Bits of people in his house.

Fixated there upon his stool, Brian remained acutely aware of the passing of time. He was tuned into the incessant ticking of the wall clock and inwardly cringed as it counted away his time with infuriating speed.

And then, inspiration.

He had approximately two hours before Daniel was due to turn up on his doorstep expecting to pick up the rest of Ventrue’s order. He could simply leave a note for the one- eyed animal and let him get on with it. A set of his house keys were stranded in the shop with Daniel, so Daniel might as well use those to let himself in. In the meantime, Brian could

keep an eye on things from a safe distance and then figure things out from there.

Brian leapt up resolutely from the stool, but had a temporary drop in blood pressure and passed out onto the kitchen floor.

The Game

downstairs to an end. With a wellchewed thumbnail between his teeth, Eric strained to discern Ventrue’s movements. He could make out a faint whimpering, and now and then there was a grunt.

Mason must either be spectating down there, or it was that time already and he’d gone to help Daniel with the delivery.

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The Game

break room. Invoices were filed alphabetically. His fumbling fingers were mostly thumbs, but Brian was certain that there was not one invoice for Ventrue’s under ‘V’. Cursing under his breath, he swallowed his impatience and began to search laboriously through the entire cabinet. Time was literally money as a cab sat waiting for him on the high street, charging by the minute. Fortunately, he only had to search as far as ‘L’.

According to the numerous invoices, L. Ventrue’s Steak House was located in central London.

Stuffing an invoice into his pocket, Brian hurried out to his minicab, gave the address to the driver, and tried not to contemplate what would be poking out of steak and ale pies.

Jacquline Brooks

* The journey to the city centre was surprisingly short.

Amazing what the promise of double fare can do. Once there, however, the restaurant itself was pretty hard to find. This was mainly due to both Brian and the driver being on the lookout for a lively restaurant, and not a partially bulldozed building. Brian didn’t know whether to be relieved that there weren’t cannibalistic customers to worry about, or to be even more apprehensive than he already was. Looking out into the darkness through the car window, he decided to be both.

As the cab disappeared out of sight, Brian delved into his rucksack and pulled out a small torch. The light it emitted was rather inadequate, but it was enough to stop him tripping up his own feet. He hadn’t really expected to use the thing; it had been packed as an afterthought. The bag mainly contained stuff he’d need if it became pertinent to do a runner.

Now at the scene, he didn’t quite know what to do next. His hoped-for plan of action involved being safely surrounded by lots of people, outlining the basics to a friendly policeman, who would then call for back up, find the evidence in the van, and then arrest the lot of them. It didn’t involve being stranded in a dark lonely street armed with a crap torch.

As he’d obviously got himself a fake address, Brian decided his best bet was just to go home after all.

Having had little to eat and given the stress he’d been under, he’d had the mad idea that the bodies were being eaten. His bloodthirsty nightmares had obviously coloured his thinking. What he had actually witnessed was clearly some diabolical method of body disposal and nothing more. Expecting the undead, or similar, he’d contaminated the entire contents of his refrigerator 14

Metropolitan Lines Volume 1, 2007

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Diana had attempted to disguise her bruised cheek with many layers of foundation. Sitting across from her at the large mahogany table, Eric studied her face with outward compassion and inward glee. He wished he had Ventrue’s strength; he was a worthless wimp himself.

Ventrue was extremely displeased with her at the moment, and she now knew it. With last night’s little escapade being discovered, she feared that she would be denied her share of the banquet. Her revealing little black number was always reserved for such emergencies.

Well-accustomed to her tactics, Eric leant forward on his elbows and enjoyed the view. He knew it was really Ventrue’s eyes she wished to have glued to her body, but if his eyes were glued to anything it was to the inside of his eyelids. Ventrue’s dominating presence headed the table, but he was presently relaxed back with his eyes closed. He

As soon as the door had been pulled shut, Brian pressed on forward, minding his step with his torch. It was almost disconcerting to discover it unlocked. Were they really so confident that nobody would dare follow them down there, or were they just blinded by arrogance? Brian hoped it was the latter as he sneaked down the staircase after them.

*

The main hall was warm with merriment and candlelight. Around the mahogany table, five seats were filled.

Diana smiled at Ventrue, delighted that she had retained her place beside him. She knew she was particularly captivating that night; not one man at the table could keep their eyes off her. She’d almost forgotten about her bruised face as she basked in their admiration.

Watching her fall even more in love with herself, Eric wondered what Diana would look like dead.

He’d always had a fascination with death. Perhaps because he was always being told he looked like death. Weak and gaunt, he would never be able to dominate a woman like Diana. But, dead, she would be as pale as he, and she would have no choice but to be completely passive.

Ventrue sat savouring the moment. Normally he loved nothing more than to provoke Daniel’s volatile temper and to goad Mason into senseless combat. He admired physical strength and it excited him to see it demonstrated.

Recently, however, he had thoroughly enjoyed toying with Eric’s self-image and encouraging Diana’s self-delusions. As the two youngest members, they were the most self-conscious of the group, and playing them was highly

Frozen in fear, Brian pressed himself into the cold brick wishing he were thinner. As the van passed his hiding place, he almost sagged with relief, but the vehicle unexpectedly turned to its right, bumped onto the pavement and entered the derelict building through an area of collapsed wall.

Brian’s ears seemed to be concentrating upon internal noise rather than external. His breathing almost drowned out the crunch of gravel, and car doors seemed to slam in sync with his pulse.

Listening out for their approach, Brian realised that their footsteps were heading in the opposite direction. Spurred forward by adrenalin more than anything else, Brian crept towards the makeshift entrance as silently as he could. He could easily make out the rear of the van in the darkness, but the retreating figures were harder to discern. They seemed to be heading toward the back of the building. In the gloom it was hard to see if there was a door hidden in the shadows; all he could make out was a wall.

However, the door they opened and then entered was a trap door in the floor that evidently led to a basement of some description.

15

*

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*

probably knew her game as well as Eric did, if not better.

Ventrue was indeed fully aware of the games Diana played. She was his creation: as were they all. Each personality had been carefully cultivated with a painstaking attention to detail. They each had their individuality, and each had a different part to play, but together they were a family. They were all linked together by a common purpose, linked together by blood.

The Game

in the hope that such animals would OD on crushed sleeping tablets and anti-freeze. He figured that anything that ate people should surely deserve to be put to sleep or given tremendous stomach cramps.

The only reason he’d set out to find the restaurant was a vague recollection of the Sweeney Todd story. He didn’t want to end up inadvertently responsible for the poisoning of innocent customers.

Figuring that he should really go to the police, Brian switched off the torch and made his way along the pavement. As he did so, Daniel’s van swung into the road, barely giving him enough time to dive into the shadows away from the revealing beam of the headlights.

undergraduates At the clink of glasses, he mustered together enough strength to raise his body from the floor to witness the consumption of tainted food.

Blood and salt… The looming darkness turned to ace him…

Blood on his lips, Ventrue tipped his head back, relishing the taste.

Blood and salt.

Tears welled in Brian’s eye as he recognised his father’s upturned face.

Blood and salt.

The Game Jacquline Brooks

entertaining. He revelled in the power he had over them.

Upon the polished surface before him lay the dice.

The dice decided the fate of each of them. It was the dice that dictated their actions and reactions. As each played their role in this game of Ventrue’s design, they each became engrossed in their characters even more deeply. An addiction more potent than any drug, the game engulfed their lives, but also gave them a reason for living, and killing.

Through years of playing, their personalities had become fused with the characters that Ventrue had created. In effect, they had become their characters.

Fabricated scenarios were played out and given life.

The game world and the real world became one. They were thoroughly absorbed into, and lost inside, the dark underground world of the vampire. The dictates of society no longer held any meaning for them. They were bound only by the rules of the game.

Ventrue intended to present Diana with a mirror that night. As the rules of the game dictated, her throw of the dice would determine the intensity with which she would become infatuated with her own reflection. A high score would keep her fixated indefinitely, regardless of dehydration and starvation. That was the nature of the game. * From his elevated position, Brian looked down upon the ill-assorted group with a sense of bewildered fascination. In the middle of the table lay a pile of human flesh and a punch bowl full of human blood, yet they played out some kind of dice game completely unperturbed. It was clear from the pile of crockery and cutlery that they fully intended to dine upon the grisly centrepiece. The thought brought with it the familiar wave of nausea. A light-headedness returned with a vengeance and Brian sank onto the floor, semiconscious.

Blood and salt.

He could hear the clatter of dice upon the table and the constant drone of a single male voice.

Blood and salt…the crumpled body of the four year old…

He heard a cheer go up and plates being handed out.

Blood and salt… The child’s shrill cry rang out…

He heard liquid being poured and the fleshy substance being served.

Blood and salt… The darkness spared him a brief glance…

16

Metropolitan Lines Volume 1, 2007

First Year Students RECORDED TEARS It’s a cool winter night, Fast asleep on this comfortable night.

Suddenly, the phone rings.

Ignore it.

Can’t be bothered to answer it.

Still rings.

Let the machine get it.

Finally the recorded message answers: “Sorry, your call cannot be taken at the moment, So please leave your message after the tone...”

Silence.

Crying.

Someone’s crying out loud.

It’s not a dream.

This is no dream.

Someone is crying very loudly.

Finally I decide to leave my bed, Throw-off my blanket and quilt, Slip my feet into awaiting slippers.

The room has departed.

Caught a glimpse of the clock: 5:20.

Half asleep, I finally reach the phone.

It’s stopped ringing.

The message on the machine has finished.

Play.

“You have one new message.

Message one...”

Crying.

I can hardly make out the voice, still crying.

It’s ringing again.

“Sorry, your call cannot be taken at the moment, So please leave your message after the tone...”

This time it’s my Uncle.

No crying, But I can hear his voice at

breaking point.

Any minute, any minute now he’ll burst into tears.

Still half-asleep and longing to return to my bed, My comfortable bed, the body yearning for sleep, I reach out with my left hand, Clutch my fingers round the cordless handset And raise it to my left shoulder.

“Hello.”

It hasn’t sunk in yet.

Maybe it’s the shock of the news, Maybe it’s the sleep, Maybe it cannot be accepted, But it will cause great sadness And more weeping, more crying.

Dead.

Stopped breathing.

Extinguished, passed away, departed, deceased, Perished, expired, gone, gone forever.

Yes, he is dead. Forever.

It is now left to me to break the news to my mother: Her father is dead.

“What?”

Sheer disbelief.

“I’m turning the car round.”

Sadness.

“I’m coming home.”

To mourn.

And yet it has not sunk in.

Up goes the handset again, Numbers punched in.

I can hear his voice again, at the other end, “How? When?” she asks, Her voice rapidly changing to tears too.

Crying. More crying. Weeping.

Mourning. Grieving.

Her brother explains.

More crying. More grieving.

17

And yet it has not sunk in.

Handset replaced.

Tissue? No tissue. Get a towel.

Play.

“You have two messages.

Message one....”

It was my cousin from Canada.

Handset. Dialling numbers.

Weeping.

No chance of conversation.

And now the tears flow from both sides.

“Don’t cry, stop crying, please stop crying, don’t cry.”

And yet she sheds the tears herself.

Ironic? Death is ironic.

And yet it has still not sunk in.

Sitting on the chair, Looking away, I can’t bear to see her crying, Or else tears will flow from these eyes too.

And now it’s all over, And now I’m back in my comfortable bed, But it’s not comfortable anymore, And within a blink of the eyes The tears present here will flow too, And now it begins to sink in, And now tears flow, they flow thick and fast.

And now sleep has departed, And now comfort is gone, And into the silent morning the tears flow.

And now the phone doesn’t ring, And now the body doesn’t yearn for sleep, And now the heart barely beats, And now it sinks in.

What a start to Halloween!

Jagmeet Sidhu

Metropolitan Lines Volume 1, 2007

undergraduates acids I would employ for the disposal of the body, acids that could envelop the body (in a bath, for example) and melt them completely so they could be simply poured down the plug-hole. (I have since read about such chemicals, though they are apparently quite difficult to obtain).

There were occasionally times, in my later days at school, when I would find myself in a better mood (these were generally sunny days – clouds make me miserable) and on these days I liked to look at you. I only ever noticed you on the bright days. To this day I think I still believe you don’t exist in darkness. You’re some kind of romantic, mythical creature that only lives in sunshine. I never mentioned you to anyone. I still don’t know if you exist, or if you were a construct of my good moods. It was on these days that I felt especially crazy.

You made me cry. I’ve hardly ever cried since (except at the odd movie). I would sit there, staring, ripping the grass from the ground until there was none to reach and I had to move. And you, standing, beneath that tree, staring, occasionally smiling, apparently at nothing, as if you too realised the irony of it all.

I couldn’t describe you to anyone in a satisfactory manner. You never looked in my direction, ever. You had great trainers though: old, small tattered holes around the toes. The jumpers, always woolly, awful patterns and colours, as if someone knitted them as a practical joke for a blind child, but on you…. And then, the hair. That hair, red, so bright it illuminated everything near you. Curly, but never controlled, as if you simply used your fingers to brush it in the morning, strands sticking in unnatural directions, occasionally getting caught in the wind and blowing across your face. You never touched it.

SLIGHTLY DELUSIONAL Mike Park

S

o. It has all come down to this. This piece of paper will be, by six o’ clock tonight, me. Should have planned this earlier I suppose…

So, this is all about me. Sometimes I think I may be crazy, mad or maybe just slightly delusional. I mean, do crazy people actually realise they’re crazy? Do they realise that those people they see smiling as they walk down the street are in fact laughing at them? Do the friends of these crazy people actually turn around and say, “Look ‘Bob’, you are really fucking mad. We are, in reality, nurses employed to look after you. Did you actually think we wanted to be here?” Yes, well, I think probably not.

Since I was a child I’ve always feared death. I know everyone effectively fears death in some way, but I have always found myself thinking about it. Even as a child when everyone else was playing, I’d sit there, in the corner of the field and think of ways I could change something, leave my imprint on the world, but there was nothing I could do and now I lie here, with hours left, still thinking those same thoughts.

As a child, sitting on that field, legs crossed, tearing up the grass with my hands and piling it up next to me, I could never think of that one thing that would ‘make the world a better place’. All the ideas I ever had were, in the general understanding of the word, ‘evil’. Day after day I’d sit there, cross-legged, staring at a fellow pupil and for an hour each day plan, to the smallest detail, how I could, without ever being discovered, kill him or at least permanently remove that stupid, fake smile from his face.

It wouldn’t always be the same child I would stare at, running, skipping, laughing, doing all those useless, pointless activities my generation decided were a good use of their time. Most days it would be someone else.

Sometimes I would know this person, sometimes not.

Sometimes they would catch me looking, sometimes stare back, but mostly just run away.

Most of my plans were hypothetical back then. My ideas would depend on using imaginary chemicals, which I made up in my head to do jobs I couldn’t think of how to do in real life. These would be poisons that would kill ‘friends’ in different ways. What effects these poisons had would depend on my level of hatred for that person (decided on the moment, depending on their appearance, behaviour or mannerisms). Others were

(A conversation I heard on the train) So is this it then?

No, I just need a break.

So, we will get back together.

Yes, probably, maybe, some time.

Should I wait for you?

No, well if you want to, I don’t know how long I’ll be.

It’s him, isn’t it? I know they broke up.

No. O.K., yes. I’ve just got to know what may have happened.

Fuck. I’m not waiting. I won’t be second to that.

O.K. It’s a risk I have to take.

I’m sorry; you know I’ll wait. Promise you’ll call if it doesn’t work.

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undergraduates Yes. I love you.

Goodbye.

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Mike Park

My dreams scare me. It’s not that they’re frightening, I just get scared that someday they may make me do something I may not want to do. No, I don’t have any kind of special powers, it’s just occasionally things I see seem to happen before I wake up. So I may dream about being an old man, sitting in an old wooden armchair with a cat upon my lap, listening to music, and I’ll wake in my bedroom with my hi-fi on, listening to track six of a CD I didn’t know I owned. Or maybe I’ll dream of a man I met in a pub, only to awake to see his face in the morning news.

I don’t remember a whole lot more about life at school. Sitting on the grass was the only interesting part. People I met meant nothing. They were just characters, entertaining me with their First Year Students irrelevance. Thinking back, they all blur into the same image. Not one of THE A-Z OF DATING FOR WOMEN them did anything, in the entire tenish years I spent in their presence, to A is for anguish before that first date. make me remember them. In my life B is for beautiful compliments, paid you all night. they were as relevant as those blades C is for chocolate to help calm the nerves. of grass I would tear at on the field, D is for the ‘dickhead’ you hope he won’t be. simply occupying my attention for E is for enchanting women, who know the dating game’s rules. those few moments, before I scattered F is for foundation, a girl’s one true friend. them behind me.

G is for “God, you’re gorgeous...”

You image, though, has grown H is for happy – don’t forget dating is a laugh. with me. I didn’t leave you behind on I is for intellect: just pray he has a little. that field. My mind decided it needed J is for joking and generally having fun. you to stay with me. I need you here K is for knight in shining armour come to sweep you off your feet. to take me away from the thoughts, L is for the love you are seeking. the thoughts that make me do these M is for mascara, key to ultimate sex appeal. things.

N is for naughty girls, who stay up after bedtime.

O is for ovulation, a time you can’t bear the sight of men.

“Cries of babies wrapped in sheets P is for pretending to pass out, so you don’t have to kiss him.

Falling through the safety nets, Q is for queen - that’s what he should be treating you like.

Screaming, kicking, biting, R is for romance - every girl needs some.

You too late to save us all.”

S is for sex - if you’re lucky, you might get a bit.

T is for tantalising; it’s every woman’s best kept secret.

The dreams, nightmare, thoughts, U is for ugly men, who try to chat you up. whatever you may call them started V is for Venice, a girl’s dream date location. long ago. I don’t remember exactly W is for wonderful men, who make you feel great. when, but it was definitely during X is for x-rated: just use your imagination. those years of sitting on the grass, Y is for why are the dream men not dream men? tearing at the blades till my fingers Z is for Zzz - after all, dating can take its toll. bled. I’ve never worked out if other people have these thoughts. I never Hina Ahmad

Slightly Delusional

wanted to ask. Maybe everyone else is just stronger than me. They can all block out the voices. No, not voices, I’m not schizophrenic, just the images. The same repeated dream, like a movie clip looping over and over.

I discovered quickly I could stop them by acting out the dream: if I did what it told me, it would stop. I could sleep.

I love sleeping. Nothing bad ever happens to anyone while they’re sleeping. Even the worst dreams are forgotten when you open your eyes. Sleeping lets me escape from the other dreams, the ones I have when my eyes are open, the ones that burn. The world I live in while I sleep is perfect. It is hollow. It inhabits only me, in a void, a huge white hall, with a perfect grass carpet.

I wish you had looked at me. Even once. If I had had you face to look at, maybe I wouldn’t have done it.

Maybe I never would have felt I needed to look at another girl. I know your image so well. But, no matter

undergraduates

“The raindrops stop falling, The blood stops running.

It all ends now.

It all begins from new”

When I was a child, I would often say things to people to gauge their reactions.

“When I grow up I want to be a policeman.”

“Why?” “So I can shoot the bad guys.”

“When I grow up I want to be the Prime Minister.”

Last night my world was invaded. The perfect was filled with characters. The perfect carpet replaced with surfaces I couldn’t walk on. It was a game I didn’t know, one I would never win. The characters would

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Name

It wasn’t cheating really. Yesterday, when I saw her, sitting on that bench, sun shining from her hair, looking at her feet, thinking about everything I have ever thought, it was you I saw, you I finally walked over to, you I called an angel, you who I asked to dinner, you whose eyes I stared into for the first time as you whispered ‘yes’.

Slightly Delusional

“Why?” “So I can pass laws.”

“Like what?”

“People who don’t pronounce the letters ‘TH’ in a satisfactory manner shall be shot on sight.”

“That’s nice.”

They’d look down and smile, and think I was weird, when in fact I was the one laughing at them, at their pointlessness.

“When I grow up, I want to be a rapist.”

They’d pretend they didn’t hear.

how perfect, how divine, you were never complete, never three dimensional. I needed her face. I’m sorry for my greed. You were a gift, my gift – from God. And I decided that it wasn’t enough. I deserve all this.

I am, I would say, an attractive man. Although I would hardly ever be tempted to do anything about it, I would quite often catch a girl or woman having a quick glance at me. This generally repulsed me. I was ashamed those girls thought they had a chance, like they thought they could interest me with anything their feeble minds could muster. They weren’t you. However, I’m not saying I was completely unaffected. Sex interests me like it does any man, but not in the same demeaning way. Most men are completely run by sex.

Sex is the reason why women are now almost level in terms of power in the world with their male counterparts. Men came to understand that unless they gave women the power they wanted, then women wouldn’t give men what they desired. Ridiculous. The weakness of my generation. “Making love” has never interested me. The kissing, stroking, touching, tickling, suckling, licking, caressing, hugging. Why?

undergraduates

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Name

“The dogs were barking As it all ran out, But no-one else noticed The burning, crumbling pieces.”

I met her. She didn’t dress like you, and her hair was too perfect, but she had the face I’d been seeing, in the daydreams, in that looping movie, the flashing image of her face, smiling at me, making silly faces, screaming. Although I had no experience of having dinner with a girl, I knew how to behave. My mother had taught me very well as a child what was proper conduct and politeness, and how to impress people. Everything else was learnt from films, the small touches like kissing the right cheek on meeting, complimenting the dress, and keeping eye contact whenever she said anything.

She looked as perfect as anyone who isn’t you could look, her red hair glowing slightly under a mixture of the streetlights and the moonlight, two ringlets hanging down the left side of her face, The elegant, knee-length dress, showing just enough flesh without looking as if she was the kind of girl who would spend the daytime in a tracksuit; and perfect little kittenheeled shoes, which didn’t attempt to make her any taller than she actually was, just accentuated her perfect size, like the trainers did to you back on the field.

And then the dinner.

“So, what do you do?”

“I work in computers.”

I was already bored.

“Wow, that must be interesting.”

Firstly, I doubted that it actually was and, secondly, I didn’t actually work in computers.

“Yes, well I’m pretty lucky.”

What else could I say?

She looked around the room; she was beautiful. I was interested again, and I hated that.

“What are you interested in?”

Psychoanalysing strangers, satisfying my thoughts, killing people.

“Films, music, books, ballet.”

“Oh, I love the ballet.” Of course she did. “I always wanted to be a ballerina when I was little, I just got too fat.”

If she honestly expected me to compliment her here she was mistaken. I hated her again.

Her face, contorted in pain and hatred, as I ripped off her underwear too roughly.

“I haven’t been for a long time, maybe we could go sometime.”

“That sounds beautiful.”

Beautiful? Did she really think that made sense?

“Don’t you get bored of these conversations? The ‘what do you like?’ conversations? Come on, tell me something interesting. What do you hate?”

“Um, I don’t really hate anything.”

I’m sure all girls say this so as not to appear unladylike.

“O.K. I’ll start. I hate the black leather, zip-up ankle boots all common girls wear, and I hate gold jewellery, and fat people, and lateness.”

“You hate a lot of things.”

“I’m sure you do too. Think.”

“Sure, O.K. I hate clouds.”

“Not bad, I also hate people who don’t appreciate good music.”

“I hate people who don’t speak properly.”

I love her.

“I hate all people who think they are better than they are.”

“I hate men.”

“I hate people.”

At this point we stared at each other, through each other’s eyes.

The second true connection of my life, and very similar to the one with the nameless kid. I’m not sure how

Slightly Delusional

persistently chase, attack and kill me and then, rather than waking, it would start from the beginning. So, I would remember the pattern, change my tactics, and just as I had my chance to win, the rules would change and again I would fail. I awoke, knowing I couldn’t win, knowing that eventually the world beats everyone. My nose bled. I looked in the mirror but it wasn’t me. I woke up with my nose bleeding.

One lunchtime, back on the field, one boy made an impression I do remember occasionally. Looking at him, walking between different popular groups of children, exchanging nods, smiles, handshakes, sweeping his all-tooperfect blonde hair to one side and intermittently biting the end of his thumb, he suddenly stopped, dead, alone, and turned to me. For half an hour, we stared at each other, emotionless. I don’t even remember what he looked like physically but in those thirty minutes I felt we shared everything with each other. I was almost happy. It wasn’t a sunny day, in fact, and although I didn’t realise at the time it had rained all lunchtime. He showed no reaction to it, even though I remember being wet for the whole afternoon. He looked sad, this perfect-looking, popular kid, and he showed me that I missed nothing, that he was no happier than me, even though he seemed to know everyone of the characters I saw around me on those lonely afternoons. As the bell rang, he again adjusted his now wet blonde hair, stood and turned away.

I never saw that kid again.

undergraduates

First Year Students WHERE IS HE? The tower lies broken in the sea.

Screams curdle the blood-scented air.

Infernos ravage the city.

The fountain springs clear no more.

Straggling residents trample on their neighbours.

The earth cracks open and consumes with delight.

The tree hangs, shrivelled and discarded.

Cascades of tears are wept unnoticed.

Lightning caresses the clouded sky.

Broken, bloodied men slump in gutters.

Rotting, infested children remain cradled.

Starving, comatose mothers whisper their final words.

Where is he? the remaining plead.

He is meant to help us!

He is meant to save us!

Instead all they have is you.

Standing there, among all your glory.

Triumphant in every manner.

to do. What they showed me to do.

It wasn’t that hard, I had seen it over and over in my head, and she didn’t really try to scream after the initial realisation. She lay there, head to the side, barely moving, not making a sound. Was she breathing?

“I only remember you…” She ripped up a handful of grass, held it in front of me. A droplet of blood ran from the corner of her mouth, down her cheek and into her hair.

How long it lasted and what happened next I don’t know. The movie stopped, peace for a few moments, only to suddenly replaced with this dream, the one that ends at six o’clock.

“You know it’s too late.

They’re not screaming anymore.

The babies all grew up.

The mothers lock the door.”

Now with a few minutes left, all I can think about is how much I’d like to be back on that field, smelling the grass scattered around me, the dirty, musky smell, nothing like that of freshly cut grass, a more raw, almost threatening smell like the smell of the rabbit hutch the morning after the fox has hunted, the screams still hanging in the air.

The final reel. The ticking clock, striking six. The flashing of their faces, all contorted, bleeding, crying, begging. Then her, peaceful, under the tree, hair blowing, in the sunshine, blood running from her mouth, then me, peaceful, eyes half closed, knife at my throat, the blood.

I heard the clock click onto six. I didn’t hear the chimes.

And there I am, Chained to you like an animal, Subservient to every command.

James Wood 22 Metropolitan Lines Volume 1, 2007

Name

over, her screaming, smiling, giggling, crying.

Outside, it was cold. We both shivered loudly as we stepped outside. She looked up at me, obviously wanting me to make the decision about the next step. I suggested a walk through the park.

She agreed. There was only one thing on my mind now. She deserved this. Walking through that dark park, her thumb caressing the back of my hand, silently listening to the owls calling, occasionally swooping in on their defenceless prey; I almost regretted what I had

Title (2nd page and onwards)

long it lasted. I went deaf, and all I saw was the grey of her eyes, the pupils dilating, contracting, dilating, contracting.

“I hate awkward silences.”

Awkward silence? That wasn’t awkward, that was perfect. I hate people who can’t tell the difference between a moment of perfection and an awkward silence.

“Shall we leave?”

“Yes.” I’m not even sure she said this, all I could hear was my own breathing.

Was I growling at her? All I could see was the movie, playing over and

undergraduates Brent place. Do you understand. I repeat, do you fucking understand?”

Krystel Thompson Message deleted.

Next message sent today at 3.42 A.M. eep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep: you have nine “Oh yeah and if you want your son on the weekend, new messages, four saved. First message sent then you won’t be playing any games!” today at 1.55 A.M. Message deleted.

“KD, when you get this message just, please, please Next message sent today at 4.05 A.M. phone me back. I...I...I didn’t mean it.... I’m just “Hi KD, it’s Vanessa, just driving past your flat, I so...ahhhh – just phone me back!!” know you’re a late sleeper, just checking to see if you’re Message deleted. still up. I would have come up for a coffee. Anyway you Next message sent today at 1.59 A.M. must be sleeping. Call me, haven’t heard your voice for “Hi, babes! Thanks for this afternoon! Never felt so hmmm over a week now. Hope to speak to you soon.” good! You really spoilt me! I think you and me can be Message deleted. special. Anyway give me a call, when Next message sent today at 4.32 First Year Students A.M.” you switch your phone back on!”

Message deleted.

“It’s been an hour, and I’ve now left BOG CUBICLE Next message sent today at 3.18 you 3 voicemails. I guess it’s over. I Am. need to collect my boots, jacket and filthy, smelly, sickly “Hi, you little fox, or should I say make up, plus my toothbrush you shit, fart and vomit Big Boy! I was wondering if we tomorrow. I can’t believe you want to could link up. True, we had a wicked end it this way, we’ve been through so ellie + james 4ever time last night. You get me! Ha ha ha! much together, and you’re prepared to what a pile of crap If you’re going to Selfridges throw it away, just like that. tomorrow, I’m working. I can get you Disappointed.” this is public nature discount for you and your boys if you Message deleted. go have sex like animals need it? It’s Eve by the way. Bell me!”

Next message sent today at 5.00 beat the sin out of each other.

Message deleted.

A.M. Next message sent today at 3.32 “I can’t sleep, Kevin. I’m feeling wash your hands in acid A.M. really nervous about you meeting my but don’t forget to dry them “Why haven’t you called me? I’m parents tomorrow, but I’m quite in dirt. hurting, and I know you’re hurting excited too! Maybe we can go to the just as much. I left you a message travel agents tomorrow, you and me, a Johanna Steele about two hours ago. If you haven’t holiday. I feel like I haven’t seen you called me in an hour, then I guess it‘s for ages, it’s only been two days. Sorry over: KD and Jennifer are finished. Don’t leave me I’ve been neglecting you, I’ve had so much coursework feeling this way. One hour, okay?” to do, just one more exam, then I’m all yours. If you’re Message deleted. up, give me a call, or phone me tomorrow, so we can Next message sent today at 3.40 A.M. arrange what time you’re coming down to meet the “You fucking bastard! You said you were going to folks. Oh yeah, got loads of travel brochures. I’m bring some money for stevens school trip tomorrow, thinking Miami? Florida? What do you think?” and once again you havent delivered the goods. Listen Message deleted. here, you fucking black cunt. Dont fuck with me, Next message sent today at 5.51 A.M. otherwise ill have child maintenance sitting on your dry, “The rave was wicked! You should have come. You crusty back. Is that clear enough, you shit? Abc 123! I looked really nice yesterday, have to admit. I’m liking want you here before 8.30. You cant promise your son the way you wear your blazer with jeans! Very smart, one minute, raise his hopes, and then let him down. Just very retro! Are you still going Oxford Street tomorrow? be fucking responsible, youre 26, going on 12. If you I’ve seen this really nice pair of trainers i can see you in. couldn’t make it, all you had to fucking do is call me, you Gosh! The birds are singing, better go to bed! Call me, know 07944 211 320. Not that hard, eh? 8.30a.m., 24

BEING ABOUT

B

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undergraduates

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Krystel Thompson

her, you’ve got to treat them mean to keep them keen. I bet you £50 she’ll be making me dinner tonight.

I feel like I haven’t given you enough exposure of my lifestyle. I’ve got a story to tell you, but I can’t be too long, you see I’ve got to make it to the gym ASAP. There’s a hot chick that’s playing hard to get, she won’t be for long, though!

“A day in the life of KD?” I hear you wonder. Well, don’t worry, there’s no need to panic. I’m gonna fill you in. I’m going to describe the most eventful day of my life.

This was the hottest day by far; this was the day when sudden realisation fell onto my sexy lap, the day when I knew I wasnt just a player, I was the player.

August the 12th, K.D.’s birthday.

I woke up at 7 a.m., had to be up bright and early, I had made so many appointments. Brushed my teeth, and took up my spot in front of the mirror. I was staring at God, a superhero. Who would have guessed that by 12am, I would have a total of 17 birthday cakes, 6 bunches of flowers, 7 bottles of after-shave, 3 bottles of champagne, 8 boxes of boxer shorts, 5 pairs of Diesel R jeans, 2 pairs of Levi’s, 1 pair of Dolce and Gabanna sunglasses, a trophy, 3 teddy bears, 12 offers of cooked dinners (half of them I did take up and, yep, gained more than a couple of pounds - had to do some extra time in the gym), countless cards, the list goes on and on.

I decided to put my three phones on simultaneously.

There was a chorus of beep beeps. Yeah, I know I’ve got three phones. Well four, if you count my house phone.

One of them is strictly for my boys to phone, no girls get this number. I need some sort of sanity! I can’t be dealing with business and have a chick, stalking up my phone, just because I didn’t give her a goodbye hug or something. You get me! Never mix business with pleasure. My dad made sure he drummed it into my head before he died. Yeah, yeah, my dad died when I was 13, and a number of the ladies have tried to go all psychoanalytical on me because of that. They feel because I suffered a loss, I’m using my admiration of the ladies to cover it up. Nigga, be serious, for Christ sake!

Let me give you a word of warning. Yeah, it’s an achievement to have a smart intelligent university goddess on your arm (preferably with a nice arse!), but those are the girls who like to make too much noise, they’ve always got an opinion and, boy, do they make sure they express it. Oh shit! I’m babbling on again, I tend to talk a lot and, as I said, there’s a potential lady arriving in the gym.

Being About

so I can know what’s going on with Oxford Street!

Cool!”

Message deleted.

End of messages.

Oh, boy!

You must be wondering, how I manage to stay sane, listening to all my fans in the morning. It’s a chore I have to do, since I refuse to keep my phones on at night. I know it’s quite tedious, but a man’s got to do, what a man’s got to do! You see I’ve learnt the art of separating the big boys from the big boys. And, yep, I’m definitely a big boy!

I’m gonna put one thing straight before you class me as a typical black man. I’ve only got one child, and, yes, I do take care of him. And furthermore I did bring his baby-mother the money I promised I would. However, she wasn’t in her yard, so I gave it to the neighbour to give to her in the morning. She’s just a hyper woman.

She’s still hurting because I’m not prepared to be a fulltime lover for her, but I didn’t delusion her for one minute. She knew the score! I am not a faithful man, never will be. I’ve just got too much love to sprinkle around to the zillions of ladies in London.

You see I’m like a kid with its toys. Since when do you see a kid playing with one toy for more than two weeks before getting bored? Huh! Exactly! Every other week my son is begging me to go to Toys ‘R’ Us to get the latest gadget on the market. Fortunately, for the ladies, that’s just like me! There’s no point in me becoming attached to one toy, when I’m fully aware there’s so many waiting on the shelves. My generosity is a blessing from God and I’m no fool, I must appreciate it. Right now I’m sitting in my favourite spot - no, not Z-bar - opposite the mirror. I know you think I’m vain, but don’t bother thinking because that’s exactly what I am. I’m vain, confident, and I’m proud to say not only do the ladies love me, I love myself! It’s just a natural thing, don’t beat me up about it. If everyone in this world had the same personality, wouldn’t it be boring, eh? Anyway, enough about me, well okay, just a little bit more. I don’t want you to beg. I’ve got the buffest body in London. I work out five times a week and, to top it all off, I have tattoos, two on my arm, and one on my back. The chicks love them, especially when I grease my body with cocoa butter, and sling on a Persil white vest. My hair is always neatly plaited, and, okay, okay, I’m boasting. I’ll stop.

Oh shit! I’m sure you’re wondering about Jennifer.

She sounded desperate, didn’t she? Don’t worry about

undergraduates

First Year Students ME. YOU. Thunder.

Lightning.

Rain.

Me. You. Watching.

Me. You. You. Me. Touching.

Hands.

Lips.

Always.

Forever.

James Wood 25

Sharon was a feisty woman and one of my mature ladies. I wouldn’t be able to palm her off with ease, which meant I had to catch Monica and get her to arrive an hour later.

As I said, Monica was bubbly girl.

She chirped on that it was fine, she would turn back and watch cartoons or daytime television, and come back in an hour. She would be late for work, but would have to ring her boss, and invent some excuse. I told her we could make it another day, if it was too much trouble. After all, a cancellation would make not the slightest bit of difference in my jam-packed day.

Of course, I didn’t tell her that.

She insisted it was a minor hitch.

This was a habit of hers I didn’t like.

She was always too happy for things to run on my terms. She never argued and always believed my excuses, as if they were gospel.

Sometimes I didn’t even have to make excuses with her, it was that bad. Complacent girls become boring; there’s absolutely no challenge.

Sharon, however, was no walkover. She waltzed into my flat, took her knee-high boots off, picked the remote up, and sank into my leather sofa. Out of her bag she drew a well- wrapped box. Once opened, it became an aftershave set with shower toiletries. Well, it looked as if me and Sharon were gonna take that shower together.

This idea seemed much more entertaining, as Sharon had a few more years on Monica. She knew how to play with bubbles, if you know what I mean! Sharon’s shapely body consumed most of the shower space, exactly how I liked it.

I like to feel suffocated by a woman’s body, totally enveloped. I mean I don’t detest skinny or unshapely girls. However, if you went into

Metropolitan Lines Volume 1, 2007

Krystel Thompson

I also needed a shower, but thought I might as well leave that until Monica came round. The least I could do was have a shower with her to say, “Thank you” for breakfast.

It was 7.16, and I was nearly finished replying to the ladies when I heard the doorbell ring. It couldn’t be Monica: she said she had to go to Tesco’s, before she got to my flat, to buy the breakfast ingredients.

I opened the door hesitantly to see Sharon with an enormous bunch of flowers in one arm, croissants and jam in the other, and a party hat on her head. Shit! This was exactly what I didn’t want that day surprises.

Happy birthday, honey, she screamed.

I took the flowers off her and thanked her with a hug and a kiss. I was pissed off. I hadn’t managed to get to the letter S in my phonebook.

Otherwise I may just have been able to head her off.

Being About

Back to my birthday, August the 12th. 7am, sitting in front of my best friend, my mirror. My voice messages consisted of girls battling to be the first to wish me a happy birthday, at 1 minute past 12. Text messages were all sent between 12.01 a.m. and 12.15 a.m. The ladies were sharp, they wanted to prove their love for me by being punctual on my birthday, and punctual they certainly were. Within seconds one of my phones began to ring; the name Monica flashed lovingly on my Nokia screen. Monica was cute with a bubbly character. She used to work across the road from my flat in the hairdressers. That’s where I catch about 37% of my prey.

Sometimes you have to be wary of chirpsing girls too close to home, they could pull a stunt, like surprising you, especially at an ill moment.

I answered the phone to hear, “Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you.” She sang the Stevie Wonder version to me.

“Happy birthday, Kevin.”

Kevin was one of my makebelieve names; my real name is Kwabna. It all basically depends on which country each girl comes from.

If she’s African, I’ll release my Ghanaian name; If she’s from the Caribbean, it’ll be Kevin.

Sometimes a girl will just receive my initials: K.D. – Kwabna Daku. It all really depends on my mood.

“Thanks, babes,” I replied.

“Is it alright for me to come and cook your breakfast now?”

See, look at my artwork: 7.04 a.m., and my birthday had hardly begun. Of course, I said, “Yes.” She only lived ten minutes away, so she said she’d be at my flat for 7.30.

That gave me 26 minutes to reply to the girls who had texted and left me birthday greetings on the phone.

undergraduates Sorry, MY mistake. Phone me, when you get home!

LOVE YOU xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx What was her problem?

Had no time to dilly-dally.

Went to see the council chicks. I added more birthday cakes to my charity and one pair of boxer shorts, and a couple of cards.

It was now 11.30a.m. I rang my posh bitch.(Excuse my terminology!

‘Bitch’ is a phrase I use a lot to describe my flock of sheep.) Her name was Mary. I told her my ‘meeting’ was running behind schedule and as soon as I left the office, I’d be at her side. No, don’t get it twisted, I don’t have a legit.

Job; you see, you have to be able to adapt to the different ladies in this world. When I first met Mary I was wearing a suit, as I had just come out of court for a driving offence. I had my Prada specs on, and, yes, I did look hot, so hot I knew I could draw this high-class female into my fan club of honeys. I told her I worked for a financial company. She believed I worked abroad a lot, which made it easier for me, when I was covering my tracks. With just enough time to visit the first floor of Selfridges where I knew 4 chicks, I set out for some more birthday loving! You must always have ladies who work in big department stores.

You know: discounts!

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP Oh shit! Look, you guys, I’m gonna have to take a pause in my birthday story. There goes my alarm. It’s 9.15, got to catch some fine-arse girl in the gym, but be prepared, yes, very prepared!

I must have misheard what you said this morning. Oooops!!!!!

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Metropolitan Lines Volume 1, 2007

Krystel Thompson

“‘Darling?’ What’s all the ‘darling’ about? screamed Sharon, whilst forcefully putting her clothes back on.

“She’s a fruitcake, man! A psycho!” I tried to tell her.

Now this was becoming long. I had to meet some posh bitch in Kensington in an hour and 15 minutes, and pass by a couple of girls who lived in the council estate round the corner. I had no time for drama. Sharon had to leave, and so did Monica. Monica’s noise stopped and Sharon’s looked like it had only just began.

I decided it was about time to drop my famous lyrics in her ear.

“Look Sharon, maybe our relationship just isn’t strong enough.

You seem constantly paranoid that I’m cheating on you. If you don’t feel content in our relationship, then you know maybe we’ve reached the point where we’re gonna have to give up.”

I shouldn’t have used those lines on her. Being such a confident girl, it took me 35 minutes to finally see her out. To top it all off, when she opened my front door, on my doorstep sat a large birthday cake with the words “SEXY” exploding on it. Candles, which were once lit, had burnt down, and there were two plates of full English breakfast sat staring at me, with its glare, from the bright yellow yolks of the eggs.

Sharon climbed over the goods, managing to stamp in the cake as she raged off. The S and Y were trodden on leaving the word EX. I chuckled, “Precisely!”

Thankfully, there was no physical sign of Monica, but she had left a note saying:

Being About

KFC and asked for a bucket, you would have to lodge a formal complaint, if they had the audacity to serve you bones, now wouldn’t you? It’s all about the tender breast, and you do know that the favourite part of the chicken is the fat! To be quite frank with you, 99% of my ladies are a size 12 or above, and that’s how I like it. I’ve tried to date skinny chicks, but I always feel deprived and cheated!

Anyway, away from my curvy ladies’ philosophy, back to Sharon, a size 16, lovely in the shower. Now imagine this: a mixture of suffocation, warm kisses, steaming bubbles, John Paul Gautier fragrance and naughty pinches, when BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP, my alarm suddenly goes off.

It was coming from one of my phones lying next to the sink. I didn’t have to look at the screen to know what it would say, because I suddenly became aware that an hour had escaped by, and before I could blink, there she was. Monica banging on my front door.

“Kevin! Kevin!” she sang. My heart skipped a beat! I knew things were on top! Sharon blurted out aggressively, “Answer the door then! Who the fuck is Kevin?”

“I... I... I... I cant!” I stuttered.

What was wrong with me? I was a big man. Why was I acting like a strangled pussy. Fix up! They’re only bitches, I was on a tight schedule, I didn’t have time to be losing so early in the game. ”What do you mean you can’t?” bellowed Sharon. This noise from her mouth blended in with Monica’s shrill “Kevin? Kevin? Are you in there, Kevin?”

“Look, the girl’s crazy! She’s insane. I told her it was my birthday today, and she’s trying to stalk me.”

“Kevin, darling, are you in?

undergraduates “A dying trade, dear boy. They don’t rule the world until they’re long dead. No,” he sighed again, “everyone wants to rule the world while they’re alive nowadays.”

He didn’t move. I didn’t speak, but changed the weight from one side of my body to the other. “There’s no need to apologise either. You’re not to blame.”

“Thank you.” I began blushing the moment the words passed my lips. Thanks weren’t needed. It tensed the situation, serving to make the moment more awkward.

“You feel you’re to blame?”

“No. I mean, I suppose everyone’s to blame really.”

Clutching at sentences, I stepped forward and back to keep my balance.

“Everyone is a great number. There are some that ask a few questions. Read a book or two on Plato or Socrates. But those bastards...,” his voice boomed suddenly. “They were starting afresh. Everything was questionable. There was no science.” He hissed the word in a manner that sounded great pain. “Not a scientist, are you?” The calm, collected, very English tone returned with the question.

“No, an English Literature student.”

“Oh joy, dear boy. Oh joy.” With the words he walked past the counter to the serving side and faced me smiling. “For you, a miracle. Dear boy, dear boy, why, if science says we have come from chaos, do we no longer live in chaos? Where do we find the ability to see the smallest living creature alive in a universe that is so vast and getting bigger, and yet remain sane? So many questions and so few answers But...,” his voice boomed again. I expected a nervous young worker to return to investigate the noise. “THERE MUST BE MORE.…”

I nervously tried to keep calm as his face contorted with degrees of pain and passion I have never seen before or since. I thought he was about to have a stroke and tried to remember the recovery position, but instead he plunged his hands into the metal basin of boiling oil and began to laugh. My light head forced my body forward and I found myself on the other side of the counter with him, watching his hands crisped to cinders. Still he laughed and his eyes bulged.

“Here’s your Shakespeare! Here’s your Keats! Here’s your Joyce! Here’s your Salinger! Pain, my young son, is how we live. Tragedies. Comedies. I am as deluded as the Wife, as guilty as Faustus, as clipped as Hamlet, as isolated as Crusoe, as proud as Darcy, as paralysed as Bloom, as tamed as Chandler. It is the very essence of the God I have found. Forget love, this is process.

A DYING TRADE, DEAR BOY Luke Melia

I

walked into the fish shop and the old man nodded.

No one was serving, so I queued behind him at a distance I felt comfortable with: no less than four feet.

He turned and smiled.

“Good day?” he asked “Not bad,” I replied, surprised at his readiness for conversation.

“I found God today,” he said casually and turned away.

Taken aback slightly, I nodded as if someone finding God happened most days.

“Where was he?” I found myself asking in a strange vocal reflex.

The old man turned slowly, the wrinkles around his eyes straining. He was taking a better look at me. Years of assessing people made his attention daunting, as if he was drawing a mental note of all the insights my features might offer.

“You taking the piss?” he asked neutrally.

“No.” It was a quick reply, but I was unsure myself.

“He was under the bed. The cat put him there. I don’t think it likes him very much,” he sighed.

“Oh,” was my response, a trivial sound, understanding nothing, merely an avoidance of silence.

“I have Him in my pocket now. He’s not going to get away again. The little Bastard, so small. Hard to keep track of sometimes, especially with the cat gunning for Him all the time.” He spoke calmly with very little emotion.

No one appeared behind the counter. There was a bell, but I didn’t feel bold enough to pass the old man to press it. I lumped all my body weight to one side and tried to slouch casually. The old man assumed the conversation was over and once again turned his back on me. A few minutes passed. The traffic on the main road outside moved in fits and starts between the pedestrian crossing. Fish and burning oil clung to the battered air. The two long light bulbs were brightened by their reflection on the white work surfaces. The brightness hissed unnervingly.

“Don’t suppose you know where all the philosophers have gone, do you?” His voice bounced off the heating cabinets, housing the already cooked fish. His back remained towards me.

“No, sorry,” I answered, after an uneasy pause.

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Metropolitan Lines Volume 1, 2007

undergraduates

FOR ANDREW (my brother, who is autistic) Wide, clear blue eyes for a moment hold mine.

In his pupils’ dark pools my face glimmers white.

Recognition flickers.

Who does he see?

I smile, Anxious he should understand my love.

While his face begins to turn, The eyes linger.

For an instant we know each other, My friend.

Now I sit alone, watching silence.

The night is heavy, time drags.

You must be asleep with the rest of the world.

I list the sounds: Distant traffic, Stirring sleepers, And the clock, Tick, tick, Tock.

A shadow rushes across the room And stops, motionless, A quivering iron cage, Thick black body, splinter legs, A fearful night creature Like this hard ache inside me That keeps me from you.

Mary Channon

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Metropolitan Lines Volume 1, 2007

Luke Melia

First Year Students

pace. Standing over the basin, nausea made a potent ally of the catching smells. I had to get back. I was meeting people at the pub in less than an hour. I had to drive home. I had to... I should have... this wasn’t normal... this wasn’t right.

My hands plunged into the fat without forethought.

Emotion sprung in leaps and bounds up and down my small sub-adult frame. Pain pumped through the veins, cascading new senses that almost brought me to my knees.

“Oh my God! Oh my good God! Please! Please!” I screamed and lost breath, and the scream became silent, but somehow he heard it anyway.

“Good, good. Dear boy, He’s listening and so am I. Come now, question like they all did before. This is the very forum denied to most. You are the most powerful person alive at the moment. Live it. Live it!” His voice boomed again with the last two words, whipping them into my ear unrepentantly.

There was power: images of childhood and future trials to come; the birth of my own children; my wife in all her faceless glory; the overwhelming inconsistencies of my character and how beautiful they were; each mistake a work of art; the mistimed words; the ruthless intentions; the need and lust and great want for recognition; fear and loathing waltzing happily with love and compassion. In a strange minute of calm, when I was no longer screaming vocally or silently, I sensed the shadows smile. The choking pain in my burnt hands tamed me, nails and skin melting into each other, shivering at the scorching touch of fat. I didn’t realise my eyes were closed until I tried to open them. I remembered my brother wanted cod and chips, Dad battered sausage, I scampi just like my eldest sister, Mum fish cakes and my other sister simply chips. The cat didn’t like God very much and went for him. The old man wasn’t talking any more. Suddenly I was scared.

“Hello,” I said nervously, trying desperately to end, wave after wave of shock ripping my intestines out of my body.

“Dear boy, I phoned an ambulance.”

“What?”

“They’ll be here shortly.”

“But...”

“I pulled your hands out the fat, you fainted. They don’t look too good, I’m afraid.”

“Am I dying?” I asked, my eyes remaining shut.

“Of course,” answered the old man’s measured tone, “enjoy it while it lasts.”

A Dying Trade, Dear Boy

Change! All is change. Feel the joys of this wretched waiting room!”

He removed his hands in perfect condition, the old skin full of veins unblemished. I stood amazed, catching my breath, but having no real reason to.

“Your turn,” the old man said, calmly using a tea towel to dry his hands.

“My turn?” I replied weakly.

“Yes.” I was in no position to ask questions. The man stepped back from his position over the boiling fat. Still no one came to investigate the intrusion into a staff area.

Our dinner was free to take, but his eyes controlled me like a puppeteer, willing every step and intricate movement of my body. Sweat ran down my back at

undergraduates THE ICE MAIDEN Jenny Neophytou

T

hey didn’t know where she came from that winter’s day.

No more did they know who she was, slender as a lily-reed, pale as frosted sunlight, alone, when purple-tinted clouds rolled and brooded over the lonely hills, with the metallic scent of snow skittering down the long passes.

They hid their eyes as she walked amongst the rough-hewn cottages, ignoring the sharp cut of ice and frozen soil upon her naked foot, or the curvaceous north wind that licked at her white, white gown, to caress her bared arms. Later, he would tell them that she was his wife – later, when such a lie would be believed. Storm-white icemaiden, a creature from an older time, an older life, trapped within the middle-garth until the final storm of ice and fire, and cold, so achingly, achingly cold.

They said she was wrought of winter, yet, if so, then Lí Súla was flickering flame. A metal crafter, whose works were praised from the glacial reaches of Alba to the mellow valleys of the south, whose auburn hair and amber eyes burned above a laughing mouth, a transient, never settled, trackless as the late autumn leaves, yet, as the woman entered the village, he set his craftwork aside, and came to the door of his forge. Unlike other folk, he met her eyes, blue as the sunken depths of Wastwater and brazenly slid his gaze across the straight line of her body, lingering upon the fine wave of moon-gold hair. Then, he offered her his hand, and she came to him, though never a smile graced the set stillness of her mouth.

Behind them, Coll smoothed a fine-grained oval of wood between his fingers, the honey- tinted yew warm against his bare skin. No friendship connected the metalworker and wood carver; the smith’s fiery gaze was too disdainful, like the cutting mockery that twisted the smile on Lí Súla’s sharp face. Still, only a fool could ignore the beautiful stranger’s nature, and Lí Súla, whatever else he was, was no fool.

He turned away from the shadowy forge, pressing his hands into the dust of his work table. Who was she? Mortal, or immortal - a wight, oathbound to the land, or merely a woman, bound in foolish spirit and youth to a man that she would (surely she must) grow to hate? Slowly, he lifted his hands.

The slim pendant of wood lay there, dimmed by dust, and his palm felt cold where the yew had touched his flesh. He picked it up, and smoothed the grey from its glossy sheen. Absently, he picked up a whittling knife, cutting a straight line through the centre of the wood, slanting its ends to form the rune éoh, or ehwaz. “Firm in the earth, the yew burns well in the fire,” he heard himself say, and blinked in surprise. Those words meant something, trembled like a fire contained in a mere spark or the stirring of leaves before a winter storm. He shook his head at himself, laughing suddenly, and put the carving into his pocket. Perhaps, later, he would bore a hole into one end, hang it upon a leather thong about his neck. Perhaps. Still chuckling, he pushed away from the table and went to find a drill blade.

By evening, he had forgotten the strange words he had spoken and even the unsettling nature of the icemaiden at the forge. By the light of 29

his hearth-fire, the wooden pendant hung warm about his neck.

It‘s like being horn, she considered. The restless fire danced before her, scattering motes of light like undulating whirlpools in her vision. Pressure on all sides compelled her to follow, yet she wondered that her skin did not blacken and blister for the heat.

Darkness fell over her, and while the flame grew brighter, it could not lift the oppressive shadow. Then it stopped, and so did she. Coolness was pushed into her hands.

“Drink,” a voice commanded, and she frowned as the sound compressed and frayed. “Drink,” it repeated. “Drrrinngk.”

Why? she asked, but it wouldn’t hear her. She felt her head tipping back, and the coolness splashed upon her lips. She choked. No. I don‘t want that. Something held her tightly as she tried to back away.

No. I really don‘t. Please. But when she coughed, she couldn’t help swallowing some of the liquid, though it seemed to freeze her throat, sending a shock of frost through her heart and limbs. The burning warmth was stripped away, and she drew in on herself, shaking with the cold, gasping with its cutting bite. Suddenly released, she dropped to the floor, feeling the splintered, abrading wood under her fingers while it snagged on the fine fabric of her dress. A heavy blanket fell over her shoulders, the thick wool coarse and scratchy, but blessedly warm, and she pulled it tightly around her. The darkness shifted, coalescing into a thick sediment of colour that firmed and confined itself, coagulating into objects that reflected light, rather than absorbing it, reflected the fierce brightness of the fire.

Metropolitan Lines Volume 1, 2007

undergraduates the edge of that voice. “You are ours now.”

Though it was still winter, Faelinn could feel spring in the westering wind that played a long straggle of brown hair about the sides of her neck. It was cold, yet her hood was thrown back, the loose ends of her dark cloak flapping wildly past her thighs. Weighted down by only her silk-wrapped

clarsach, in its oiled-leather carrier, and a small drawstring bag holding the rest of her life, she felt free; light as thistledown caught on a breeze; trackless as the arch- winged hawk that roamed the clear sky above her.

Like the hawk, she stood still, hovering between moments. Then, as though unfurling wings, she ran, stretching her long legs before her even as she laughed in joy at the icy

5 MINUTES All is quiet, Except for the birdsong, Last stand of nature in a concrete world.

Free from dawn’s shackles they sing, Preaching a message of harmony to all Then away they wing.

And all is quiet, Except for the birdsong, Except for the voices of people: ‘Men’, even in the generic sense, would, of course, be sexist And that would be politically incorrect Or something like that.

Oblivious to our world they mill about And scream and shout, Oblivious to theirs we sit and listen, Hearing, but not quite understanding.

And all is quiet, Except for the birdsong, Except for the voices, Except for the megaphone man, Except for the sullen hum of the waiting car, Menacing, dirty, aggressive, like a factory dog Straining its leash, vodka breath.

I will get you next time.

Flashing eyes light up, piston muscles tense and release And a blanket of reverberations muffles the air.

And suddenly all is car.

Not many can tell you that.

And all is quiet, Except for the birdsong, Except for the voices, Except for the megaphone man, Except for the sullen car, Except for the clock, Tick after tock after tick after tock, Relentless.

Time follows you, walks with you, Does it all with you, Except grow old with you.

Invasive.

Time is the shadow that walks in the night, Unseen yet constant.

Time is the face in the crowd, Unnoticed, so easy to forget, Yet there to grab you, greet you, Show you all the things you never wanted to admit.

Tick after tock after tick after tock, It always comes back to the sound of the clock.

And all is quiet, Except for the birdsong, Except for the voices, Except for the megaphone man, Faceless, soulless, metal speech clanging out, clubbing the air.

Who are you, megaphone man?

I do not know but will obey, except I can’t For I am in here and you are out there.

No, I will not be your drone, your worker.

I will not do as you say, buy what you say, Eat what you say, wear what you say, Live what you say, love what you say, Breathe what you say. I will not.

Andrew Tucker 30

Metropolitan Lines Volume 1, 2007

Jenny Neophytou

First Year Students

The Ice Maiden

“She seems weak,” a thin, nasal voice declared in disappointment.

“Her strength will grow,” a man answered calmly. “She is ours now.”

He walked around to face her, leather-wrought boots grating on the rough floor. Seizing her chin, he forced her eyes to his, and she stared into the heart of searing fire. “Do you hear me?” Laughter hovered on

undergraduates

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Metropolitan Lines Volume 1, 2007

Jenny Neophytou

than once had destroyed an idle carving with the cry of blasphemy. Yet, one afternoon, when the sun sparkled in an azure sky above the crisp frost, he could not remain within. Breathing deeply as the tingling air enlivened his spirit, he strode past the last houses of the village, almost without noticing. It was at times like these that he could almost understand a minstrel’s choice, could almost feel the rush of air that tried to sweep him away.

Yet he knew he would never leave. His roots were too deep, here in this crystalline home of lakes and mountains. As a tall tree that spreads his branches to the beckoning wind, he nevertheless drank the cool, deep waters of the earth.

A sound broke him out of his musing, and he looked up. Grave eyes studied him carefully, and Coll found that he could not look away from the pale woman’s steady, considering gaze. “I didn’t mean to startle you,” he said cautiously.

A frown creased her brow. “Forgive me,” she apologised, her voice like chiming crystal. “I am not used to.…” The words trailed away and still she watched him, like a puzzle to which she lacked one piece.

She sat upon the bank of a small stream, heedless of the brittle frost. Rippling waters swirled about her alabaster ankles. “Isn’t that cold?” Coll asked wonderingly.

She smiled faintly. “I don’t often feel the cold. I was never cold, when.…” She fell silent, and a shadow of melancholy twisted her smile. Coll shook his head, then bent to pull the boots from his feet. “What are you doing?” she asked him.

“Joining you.”

“But….” She was cut off by his yelp as his toes touched the water.

“Gods of Ases, it’s freezing!”

“I would have warned you,” she observed, but her eyes danced with amusement.

“That’s an interesting necklace you wear,” he said, to change the subject. It was true; he had never seen a piece like it. Clear as glass, the stone hung from a silver chain that glimmered like gossamer. She raised a hand as if to cover it, but instead traced the single line slanting across its face. “The river’s rind is fey men’s foe,” she said softly, glancing up from beneath thick lashes. “The ice defeats all in the end.” She studied him, measuring the strength of his body and set of his shoulders. “You wear an interesting necklace yourself, man of the woods. The yew is a strong talisman.”

He laid a hand over the smooth oval at his throat.

“Who are you?” he asked hoarsely.

The Ice Maiden

gust of wind in her face. Perhaps it was still winter, and perhaps not safe for anyone to travel, least of all a slender minstrel-girl. Perhaps. And yet she could not have stayed any longer. The wind had changed, and the seasons were turning; it was time to move on, move on and perhaps put right the mistake she had made all those years ago.

She had been many things in her twenty-some years.

She had been both dutiful daughter and wild changeling-child, devoted Christian and pagan wanderer. She had even been betrothed, before the wanderlust gripped her soul with its avian cry, sweeping her into a world of skirtling winds and music. And once, she had been in love.

Face flushed, Faelinn allowed her feet to slow to a trot and then a walk. It had felt so nice to run, to laugh as though nothing mattered, but down in the south, a would-be king pressed upon the borders of the Land of Comrades and the lords of Alba reached after the prize in their turn. Some day, perhaps soon, war would come to Cymru and the sea-wolves, the Saecsans, would finally settle in her beloved mountains. Some day, perhaps soon, death would come for her and when it did, she wanted to meet it with a smile and a glass of the Uisge-beatha in her hand - not with tears, and a heart writhing with unspoken regrets.

The land fell away before her as she crested the open hill and dew-drops dampened the corners of her deep blue eyes as she took in the spearing heights before her.

Somewhere, nestled between those peaks, a home was waiting in the arms of a man she had left, a man she had thought of every moment since, just as, she hoped, he had thought of her.

Both the Christian winter festival and Winter’s Night were long past before Coll saw the strange woman again. As the sharp edges of ice dripped water into the rising streams, he watched the forge and wondered, for Lí Súla made no mention of her, nor was she ever seen in the living garth. Yet by night, her eerie voice could be heard in the village, and those who listened soon turned their eyes away, stung by the sharp piercing of tears.

Even so, Coll found that he had little time for concern. His winter stocks of seasoned wood were fast being eaten away, and the new-gathered store dried slowly in air steeped with ice-water melt. He had too many orders. Even the priest praised his work and parted with copper to purchase a sturdy bowl of smoothed ash, though his reedy tones more usually condemned those who had not yet converted and more

undergraduates

Metropolitan Lines Volume 1, 2007

Jenny Neophytou

32

The Ice Maiden

She kicked out, laughing in girlish delight as droplets of water sprayed before her, each drop a spectrum of translucent colour. “Are you such a warrior, Coll?” she asked teasingly.

“I never told you my name.”

She flicked her moonbeam hair behind an ear with a twist of her pale wrist. “The ice always triumphs, in the end. Though fire melts her, she chills its blaze.

Though wood halts her descent, she’ll freeze the sap within its flesh.

When the air cuts her, the hail falls like glittering white rain. The ice is victorious against all, save herself.”

“What do you mean?”

She met his troubled gaze, azure melting into deep cerulean waters.

“I scarcely know,” she admitted. “I have no answers. Not anymore.”

“What is your name?”

“You would take my true name from me?” Her tone warned him to weigh his answer.

“Would you be bound by its gift?” he asked her seriously.

She smiled faintly. “Another thing I don’t know.” She bent her head, staring at the rippling river.

“Name me as you will.”

Time passed quietly between them, as the sun deepened to fiery red. “Isa,” he said at last. She met his eyes. “Shall we meet again?”

“You would wish to see me?” she asked in surprise. He smiled warmly. “I would.”

A faint flush rose through her icepale cheeks. “I would like that.”

The next evening, as Coll sat alone in the inn, she came to him. At the cool touch of her fingers on his arm, his heart thudded to his throat.

When he looked up, she smiled.

“You said you wished to see me again,” she teased gently. “I hope you don’t mind that it’s so soon.”

undergraduates

33

grabbing her arm. “Faelinn,” he began.

“So you remember me, do you?” she stormed. “I would never have guessed.” She took a deep breath.

“The innkeeper told me about her, Coll. For the love of the Gods, she’s married!”

“I love her, Faelinn. We’re leaving here tonight.”

“And what about her husband?

Does he not count in this?”

Coll glared. “He does not deserve to keep her,” he said coldly.

“No being should be bound against her will. You, of all people, should know that.” Her eyes widened, and he saw the knife go deep.

“I see,” she said flatly, and backed up a step. “Then, forgive me for wasting your time.” She turned on her heel, and left before he could stop her. Sighing, he rubbed his temples, already regretting his harsh honesty, and returned to his bench.

“Coll?” Isa was studying him warily.

“It’s nothing,” he replied quietly, as the wind howled, lost and alone outside the tavern door. “Just somebody I used to know.” He stroked the fine gold of her hair, and kissed her brow. “Just someone from the past.”

Metropolitan Lines Volume 1, 2007

Jenny Neophytou

She frowned, trying to remember. “I don’t know, Coll,” she admitted. “Only that I thought you different from other men - but I’m not sure of that, either.”

He took a deep breath to chase away apprehension. “Do you believe that I could have the power to bind him?” he asked carefully.

“I have no way of knowing,” she told him. “Do you believe it worth the attempt?”

She stared at him in disbelief. “If you failed, Coll, and he knew.…You would risk that for me?”

The smoothest softwood felt like sand compared to her moonlight hair as he touched its fine strands with calloused fingers. “I would,” he said quietly. Then, even more softly, “Meet with me tonight. We can leave Cymru, go to Alba, or the Southlands. Go somewhere Lí Súla would never find us.

Somewhere the minstrel’s fingers ran over the chiming strings of his harp, the music plucking the strings of his being to resonate in his trembling touch. He traced the line of her throat gently with the tips of his fingers, then bent to kiss her, lips meeting and parting so softly. Her eyes were dilated, their pupils growing into a dark vortex that tried to draw in his soul, while the firelight played shadows upon the smooth skin of her face. Her hands tightened on his shoulders, but from somewhere, he heard the sound of a gasp, caught upon the edge of a sob.

He looked up. Across the room the minstrel held her harp still and her eyes were locked upon his.

“Faelinn?” He asked the question softly, needing no answer, seeing the shock of recognition in her eyes.

Suddenly, she pulled her gaze away, quickly wrapping her harp in its smooth folds of silk. Hurriedly, Coll stood and crossed the room,

The Ice Maiden

She sat beside him, and took a sip of the mead he offered her.

“Won’t your husband object?” he asked carefully.

“Who?” “Your husband,” he repeated. “Lí Súla.”

“Oh!” She laughed, but there was an oddly brittle undercurrent to her mirth. “Lí Súla is not my husband, CoIl. What did you think? That I would meet with other men behind his back?”

“Well, but.…” He felt himself blushing, but she was more amused than insulted.

“I’ve heard what the man says and, truly, we are bound.” Her voice grew hard, “But no oaths were spoken, and it is no willing slavery.”

She dropped her eyes and clasped her hands together. “I shall not be so bound again.”

For a moment, Coll merely looked at her, sitting so calmly, so passively. Then, he shivered, recalling the raw power he had felt radiating from her, when she strode from the snow-swept passes of Cymru. “Is there no way to leave him’?” he asked.

Isa shook her head minutely. “He is a wight of power,” she replied, “and he knows my name.

“But surely you know his,” Coll persisted.

She smiled. “So I do,” she conceded. “But I am bound. Only another wight could force him to release me.”

Coll drummed his fingers on the table, thinking hard. Somewhere, he heard the innkeeper greeting a newcomer, and the sound of harp strings as a minstrel tuned his instrument. “Isa,” he said at last, “you said once that you didn’t know if I could bind you with your name.” He waited until she met his eyes. “What did you mean by that?”

undergraduates Luke Melia

T

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Metropolitan Lines Volume 1, 2007

Name

o the ear she was harmony, to the eye beauty, to the nose tenderness, to the skin velvet, and to the tongue sweetness; in all, an unbridled, out-of-reach compliment to the soul. She had vanished. Tommy stood breathlessly only because his right hand gripped the frame of the small roundabout, her favourite ride.

His eyes had been closed for ten seconds and it was the game they were playing, Hide and Seek, a game they had played countless times before. Fifteen minutes past, fifteen minutes of his movements crescendoing from idyllic half- conscious circles of the playground’s fences, casually watching out for her red coat, to exaggerated backtracking and frantic name-calling, Kate! His body broke down upon seeing the open gate. The empty playground sighed, understanding all of Tommy’s worse fears dawning in quick secession. His stomach caved in. He closed his eyes again to the tinted sounds of the park.

The ducks! Of course, the ducks! Kate loved the ducks. It would have been their next stop and she had gone on ahead, forgetting the game. Maybe they had flown over and distracted her while choosing a hiding place. She would be there. He began his steps out the playground, the realisation of what must have happened stemming his worry. He relaxed slightly, trying to clear the dazed shot of anxiety that held pride of place in his chest. An accelerated imagination, catching him with one glancing blow after another, slowly withdrew but did not disappear. Past the model rail-track his strides grew. The track was hardly used and constantly overgrown with trees and bushes, shading large areas from the gravel path leading down to the miniature golf course, just past the doll’s house-sized cricket pavilion.

He remembered the tiny steam engines his father had been so passionate about and looked forward to embracing his daughter, picking her up in his arms and, on the way back, stopping to tell her about the trains.

He was happily caught numb to the conflict of her absence and, blindly believing his assumption of her whereabouts, coaxed out of blind despair much like children can be coaxed out of wanting a new toy or to be let out of a pushchair. Simple reassurances and a complete inability to bring himself to believe the horror of what may have happened were lost to his hands, toying with Kate’s carton of orange juice, staying well clear of his mobile phone. She would be standing at the

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pond’s edge, unawares of the situation and after a mild telling-off he would put the whole incident down to brief worry, her mother never finding out.

There were six people standing at Kate’s favourite part of the pond, a stone’s throw away from an old rowing boat, half sunk with a pair of yellow Wellington boots still inside. Tommy was too far away to tell if any of them were Kate. Three of the body shapes looked small enough to be children. They were bunched together and difficult to distinguish. His pace quickened. He was looking forward to seeing the ducks and making up another story about the rowing boat, unaware of the feeling in his knees subtly expanding.

Faces became recognisable. Colours from clothes suddenly beamed, despite the grey clouds above. The feeling grew and moved up into his stomach. No familiar beauty or red coat with mittens, no final relief or reward for following her footsteps. Rising ever quicker, the feeling spread and conquered more ground: his chest, his neck. Nothing happened as he imagined. She was not there to bring the joy and elation he placed such great faith in. Finally, the feeling invaded his consciousness, breaking form and becoming a thorn lodged deeply somewhere toward the back of his mind.

Walking turned without any effort into running.

Physically, he was unable to phone his wife or call the police. Where would he begin? How could he admit such a mistake? He needed occupying, the change of speed satisfying the need to feel like he was actually doing something, his body keeping pace with his racing thoughts. He wished the small crowd would part and reveal his daughter amongst them - safe and sound.

Given the chance, he never would have closed his eyes, never have played the stupid game. He prayed to turn back time or for a miracle to change everything that had happened in the last twenty minutes of his life.

Desperation was inking and mixing into his blood. He wished, he prayed, he ran. The crowd did part on his arrival, though his daughter was not there. Instead a dead duck lay at the feet of a man, who looked disgusted with the corpse as if the duck had insulted him by dropping dead. Equally blameworthy trousers were wet. The three children, two girls and a boy, were in tears. A woman and a late-teenage boy stood above the situation, not quite making a circle around the duck.

They didn’t look like a family. The small boy held a crumbled loaf and the two girls flanking him squeezed clumps of brown bead together, crumbs dropping from the sides of their hands. Chunks of bread were caught in the swirl of the shallow water’s edge. Tommy looked

THE YOUNG!

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was by far the youngest of the group. All six people looked at him wide-eyed and unsure. He ambled away, walking the first few paces backward. Once a few metres away from the crowd and crime scene, he quickened his pace. She must have returned to the playground, scared of the dog and confused. She knew the park well enough to make her way to the pond and back. Tommy was running again.

The saxophone played lazy blues, caught in the early spots of rain. At first Tommy missed the music. He was by the pavilion and almost at the model railway, Kate’s red coat haunting every tree and bush he passed. The change of key and sudden dynamics of a new piece made him slow down. George!

She was with George. He turned before reaching the cluttered greenery opposite the playground.

He walked across the park, stepping on the Astroturf cricket strip. The large man, surrounded by

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to stay for the answer. He had to keep looking.

“A Doberman, I think. It all happened so quick I didn’t get a chance to see it properly.”

Tommy nodded again and continued to look at the duck. He knew it was male from the shiny dark green streaks, but there were other colours in the feathers.

Yellows and golds and whites periodically ran through in brushstrokes. He wanted to ask whether a young girl wearing a red coat was with them before the dog attacked, but felt circumstances failed to offer the chance. An aversion to the answer he would receive added weight to the silence.

Had Kate witnessed the duck being mauled? If she had, she would be scared, hiding now from the dog or at least looking for Tommy or crying somewhere for her mother.

“Well, a terrible shame!” he said to no one in particular, his vision eventually resting on the boy who

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at the duck, then at the man, trying in vain to catch his breath without bending over.

“A great oaf and his dog killed the poor thing right in front of their eyes,” the man said, not really looking at Tommy. “Park keeper went after him and hasn’t come back. Should be put down, shouldn’t it?”

It was a statement rather than a question. Tommy nodded.

“What type of dog was it?” he asked after a short pause, feeling it was the right thing to say. He hated the etiquette of conversations with strangers. The man switched his weight from one leg to the other and the girl in front of him took his hand. She had stopped crying, distracted by Tommy’s presence.

Her eyes were bloodshot, staring without blinking, wide-eyed and expectant. The other two children kept their sulking chorus going, an anti-rhythmic accompaniment to the situation. Tommy didn’t want

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Darren the park keeper was otherwise engaged with the savage murder of the duck by the Doberman.

Tommy handed George his stick.

“Can you grab my shopping?” George asked, putting the saxophone in a case and swinging it over his shoulder.

Tommy looked at the bags: seven in all. He almost smiled, but the weight of his body prevented the muscles obeying. George waited. A sudden sense of urgency took over and Tommy grabbed at the bags, placing Kate’s orange juice on the path. The urgency coincided with a thought. While Tommy awkwardly gripped the seven plastic bags, he saw his marriage end.

He was young for a father, twenty-two. His wife was younger, two years his junior. Their marriage was the result of an unplanned pregnancy and his father-in-law rushing them through an engagement. Fragile foundations were propped up by Kate’s birth. Tommy had surprised himself and those around him at how he well he had taken to fatherhood. Soon, though, people would know he should never have been trusted with such love. Kate was his life and he fought the losing battle between optimism and despair, her red coat, her carton of orange juice on the ground in front of him.

Anxiety shot a devilish strike. She was gone and he had not been able to find her, there would be no second chances. He almost dropped the bags to call the police.

He almost broke down with an overwhelming need to sit and not move. But George, upon hearing the rustling bags, set off at pace, understanding Tommy’s need for someone to lead him. Tommy half-heartedly followed George through the undergrowth after a gap in the model railway track. His white stick expertly swatted the tall grasses. He swung the stick in varied directions to cover more ground, his saxophone case rattling behind. The large man must have walked to wherever they were going before, memory guiding every speedy step. Tommy fell into an uncomfortable routine of balancing the heavy bags on his heavy body.

Tinned meat, fish, vegetables, soups clinked and clanked in motion. George hummed whilst they moved quickly along a disused path. The rain went through the necessary stages of becoming a full shower. Any chance of Tommy catching himself in the moment of a blind man leading him in his search for Kate was lost to thousands of nightmarish images, breaking like angry waves upon a shore.

“Just through here,” George called back.

There was a small shed in a state of complete disrepair. The rain had grown in short minutes and

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bags, came into view with random arpeggios and scales.

His gangster-style hat was out of place amongst the supermarket food shopping. His saxophone was hidden by his bulk. Tommy came from behind the bench George sat at and waited for a pause in the music. In the few seconds he lost control of his imagination: police interviews, pleas to faceless kidnappers, his wife’s voice in broken grief.

“George,” he said quietly and waited.

The music continued.

“George! It’s Tom.” The music stopped “What?” George turned his head, so an ear faced Tommy. The rims of his large black sunglasses came into view. His beard was grizzled white.

“George! It’s Tom.” Tommy moved round in front of him.

“Tom! And where’s my little precious girl?” he said with a smile, his arms opening to hug Kate as normal.

Tommy stepped back, his cheeks flushing.

“I’ve lost her,” he replied sheepishly.

“Lost her!” George shrieked almost dropping the saxophone and kicking two bags over.

“Yeah, she hasn’t come to you, has she?”

“Lost her! How did you lose her?”

“I don’t know. It just happened.”

“Just happened, huh?” He paused to take a breath.

“Nope, she ain’t been this way. Course, I can’t say for sure, but you know how she loves George’s music. She would be trying to get to the saxophone if she’d been this way.”

Crestfallen, Tommy’s body suddenly felt heavy. He had to get back to the playground, ring the police, organise search parties. Kate’s picture would be in the papers by the morning. Unfortunately, he doubted the ability of his legs. For the first time, he fought back tears and cursed the time he was wasting. The worst was dawning. He was a no longer a father and his wife was no longer a mother. He had made them childless parents, prized open a gap that would never seal entirely. He fought with a sense of being incomplete.

Surely an arm or a leg was less of a burden, when lost.

“George, can you help?” Tommy mumbled, simply not wanting to be alone.

“Sure.” George replied quickly. “There’s one place in this park that kid’s always end up in. Darren fishes them out all the time. Kate’s probably ended up there. Now where’s my stick? I’ll show you.”

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the muddy ground was soft from the rain. He paused, heart in his mouth, pulse racing, his clothes covered in mud and sweat. There it was, just in front of him. He clambered over a small mound of earth.

She was perched in a hole not more than four feet deep, her hands grazed, mud covering her in patches and stains, her coat no longer red.

Tom nearly collapsed in unyielding cumbersome relief at the sight of her tiny body. The thorn in his mind dislodged and caught in his throat with attacks of nausea. He controlled the feeling after a short struggle. Bending down, he picked her up and her small frame folded into his as she spoke incoherent words in exaggerated weeping.

Tommy cried with his daughter in far fewer tears that came and went with his arms grasping and holding the back of her head to his chest.

“Alright, I’m here. Shush,” he whispered, never wanting to let go.

Emotion blurred his senses. The joy, the elation, the barrage of shocks to make him feel more love than he scarce trusted himself with.

He was a father again.

The elderly lady smiled and took one of Kate’s hands, saying, “There, there, daddy’s here now.” But Tommy was numb to all, except Kate’s touch. He smiled. He smiled and missed the small muffled voice say, “I was hiding from you, Daddy.

I was hiding.”

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time his fingertips managed to press a button. It was far too small for his hands and noise compounded this frustration. He could no longer control his eyes for the less he tried to cry the more tears welled. The words he would speak into the receiver were going to shatter his wife with every clumsy syllable. She would drop the phone, scream and cry and curse him for what he had done. Lose their daughter, how had he managed to lose their daughter?

They were to be childless parents.

Three digits away from completing the number, his mind began to play tricks. He heard a child crying, a familiar sound, a reassuring sound.

He rubbed his eyes and tried to ignore the intrusion, his concentration returning to the phone, but it was there. He stood.

It might have been a cruel figment of his imagination. He waited, completely still. There it was. He paced to the other end of the playground, stopping once when the noise returned. It was her, unmistakably her. The sound grew louder. Out the gate he went, holding on to every vibration. He double-backed to walk the way he had come on the other side of the fence. She was crying fully. There was an elderly woman following the noise from the opposite direction.

“Where’s it coming from’?” she asked when Tommy came into view.

“Somewhere over there,” he replied, pointing toward a taped-off area around some diggers and mounds of earth. They met and moved together towards her crying.

“I think it’s my daughter,” Tommy said.

The elderly lady nodded, but said nothing in return. Tommy sprinted airlessly under the tape and toward the sound. Beneath his feet

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pounded the flimsy roof. Tommy overtook George in his excitement, dropping the shopping bags. The shed was exactly the type of place Kate would end up in, her imagination discovering a fortress, an ultimate hiding place. He broke through the door still in stride. It was an abandoned workshop, an undeniably empty abandoned workshop. Rotting wood gave off a feral smell and pieces of model trains were scattered on the floor and shelves, slowly ebbing away with rust. Tommy’s childhood flashed before him in edited pictures. He could almost see his father with the paintbrush posed to make delicate tiny strokes. His own train set would have been on the floor, made out of wood. The final straw.

“Is she there?”

“No,” Tommy replied. “I have to call the police,” he added more to himself, as if saying the words gave the action a physical form and made it easy to do.

Together the men walked away from the shed, George not knowing what to say, Tommy not feeling real.

He called the police, returned George and his shopping back to the bench and made his way back to the playground. Park noises dominated, those dogs barking. All that was left was ringing his wife.

The playground was still empty, despite the rain stopping. He sat on the same bench he’d sat on to do Kate’s shoelace. His hands twitched and disobeyed all attempts to press the right buttons. He wished to somehow speak to himself, explain to the shadow of his past he could lose the two people he cared for most in those brief ten seconds.

“Don’t close your eyes,” he murmured to himself. “Don’t close your eyes.” The phone bleeped every

faculty II Starlight alters everything.

Only the reef’s distant murmur Brings rumour of the sea’s insomnia.

Somewhere in the dark Crickets shake their tambourines.

And there on the plaza terrace The illuminated pool glimmers, Almost mystical, An incandescent island, A basket of light, Sapphire and turquoise, Tranquil as a Zen garden, A think tank.

A crystal ball with nothing to hide – No skulking stonefish, not urchin spines – Candid, Its floor meticulously charted With tiles of radiant blue, Mondrian on mescalin.

THE HOTEL POOL, MOMBASA (for Ally, more than muse) I The sea is a sauna, The beach a bleached desert With a mirage of dhows.

The jinns?

Jostling curio hawkers, Over-exposed, of course.

Equatorial white-out.

But beyond the blistering flagstones An oasis of swimming pools Trimmed with bougainvillea’s gaudy confetti, Burgeoning coconuts, brash foliage.

Acrylic arboreta.

Each pool is awash With boisterous cries and thighs.

The odd mountain of greased hair Slides supine, buoyant with beer.

The dramatis persona are departed To their Quennelles of King Fish Or Karibu Cocktails.

The submerged lamps Are footlights onto an empty stage, A tropical Noh drama.

Awaiting…what?

The ghost of a waterlogged Gatsby perhaps Or indolent shades of lounging Hockney youths.

Bats flit over but dare not touch.

Not a ripple troubles The lamps’ opalescent gaze.

Only a floating frangipani bloom Presses its fragrant face Against the glowing pane.

Time to slip in.

The thrash of flesh, Cruising through stained glass, Then reclining Over luminous depths: An aquamarine mind In an aspic of azure.

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U

p it goes. Rising above head height it billows out, sucking in a sudden, impossible wind. Its ungrasped corners fly far, flicking over on themselves before the whole, thin cover momentarily freezes in motion like the sail of a capsized windsurf floating on an undisturbed sea. Or like a small maritime slick. In that moment he begins to measure his life by the beds in which he has lain. Can he do that?

The first bed always seems the best in his memory, an entanglement of little limbs with his brother, a remembrance of cold feet on warm calves. There were giggles and tears there, both often buried in pillows that were dotted with dribble stains. It was the time before he could not sleep on his back, when tiredness was a physical reality and not a mental exhaustion. He slept in the smell of his brother’s hair and woke at the sound of sparrow’s feet hopping across the caravan roof. He could see the sky without moving, looking up through the gap between the drawn curtain and small window just above his head.

At that time he looked at the sky often, wondering at the sizes and shapes of the clouds easing by. He would listen to the rhythmic breathing of his still sleeping brother lying next to him and sometimes wish that it would suddenly cease. But it never did. He felt the warmth from his brother’s body and wanted to be enclosed by him, cushioned as he fell back into sleep again. Often in winter there was frost on the insides of the windows and they would lie there,

awake, warm from their mouths down, the blankets pulled up to their red, freezing noses. Then, peering through the frost, the sky seemed deformed. They would lie as flat and as still as possible so that the cold air could not run down the lengths of their bodies, taking it in turns to name football teams: Leeds United, Bristol Rovers, Everton, coming muffled through the covers.

And players too. Sometimes he faked sleep in the morning and could feel his brother propped up on his elbow and staring at him, examining his face for any signs of life. Faking it and not knowing why.

He would keep the rhythm of his breathing, his chest rising and falling and try to prevent movement of his eyes beneath their lids. But always, eventually, his brother would lean close towards his ear and whisper, I know you’re awake.

I know you’re awake. But breathing still, unbroken.

As far as he can remember they never kissed. But then, in that time, the kiss was a kind of unknown thing, something that adults sometimes demanded. Yet it was devoid of value or significance for him. It was not a manifestation of any kind of feeling or emotion. It was a second level action, a sort of synthetic necessity for his mother and mock aunts. Of course he never kissed his brother – the kiss did not exist. This was the time before lips, before bodies, before his body. Dirt between his toes and under his nails – yes! And around his neck and in his ears – yes! And the brown reminder of an act not fully learned in the behind of his underpants. His small, white Y-fronts. Before he knew discretion. In the time before flesh. Before skin. He cannot remember how it happened that he began to feel embarrassed getting 39

out of bed on the mornings when his (mock) Aunt Isobel was there, when she would be able to see him in his underpants. How did that happen? His brother felt the same – at the same time. Is that when the ideas of skin began? When notions of flesh began? When ambivalence began?

And beds are always boats.

As he holds this cover over this bed, it becomes a sort of sail for this boat. Just in that moment of release, of tossing the thin, flower-patterned bedspread out towards the bed’s headboard, all of his previous beds replace this one and begin to be covered instead. It is a cover full of wind and memories. He stands there watching it begin to descend, realising that it will soon wrap itself round a symbolic world. A world filled with revelations of flesh, of skin, of bodies.

And then they were separated, he and his brother, when they moved into a house. For him their beds were two small boats on either side of a huge river which was filled by snakes and alligators. He feared to put his hand outside of the bed when it was dark, frightened that he would be dragged by sharp, jagged teeth into the abyss beneath the divan or injected with a vicious poison that would cause him to fall into a nightmarish delirium. He would lie there, his fingers poised on the edge of the bed, daring himself to let them dart down into the murky unknown and touch the carpet. When he first lay in that bed, between its perfect sheets, he existed still in a world of simple meanings. When he threw back those sheets and climbed out of the bed for the last time, almost ten

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faculty years later, he had entered a world of sliding complexities. This bed was the site of fluctuation and of dreams that woke him, wet and confused. A boat propelled by a wind of many colours, pushing him in defined directions towards archetypes and the inability to feel as before. It began as a bed of easy sleep and simple waking and then became the bed of masturbation and of refuge from a world that cruelly focused upon the spots etched onto his chin and forehead. From this bed he could no longer stare at the sky between the curtain and the window; he had stopped looking at the sky anyway. Now, every spare look was directed towards the mirror. This bed is remembered for his left hand holding the covers high while his right hand slid up and down his salivated penis. For turning over and burying his face in the pillow at the moment of orgasm so that his brother would not hear his whimpering release. It is a memory of moisture, of sweat and heat, of sperm and strange new odours. In this boat he navigated the stormy sea of puberty and there, in thought, the reality of girls and women became known to him. Or, began to be known to him. Or, rather, began to be distant to him, kinds of crazy constructions. He could not cuddle his brother anymore. They never touched now. Posters began to appear on the wall against which his bed leaned, photographs of spotless people in strange poses. And the game began to change. The footballers listed in the dark became replaced by pop stars, who in turn became replaced by previously forbidden words: fuck, shit arse and wank. It felt great lying there, cursing into the darkness. And of course his brother told him all about girls – the slags, the tarts, the virgins and the lessies. But what could he tell his brother? For him, this became the revision boat, sailing to his exams, his sleeping head lying for hours in the open mathematics exercise book, a forlorn attempt to absorb algebra by osmosis.

Sometimes, at night, he would pretend to be asleep, across the divide, safe from the snakes and alligators, but not from his brother’s whispers I know you’re awake. I know you’re awake.

Occasionally, when his brother was asleep, or perhaps only faking, he tried to cry in the night, not really knowing why. He would imagine his parents being tragically killed in a car crash and he left alone, the unfortunate orphan. He thought of all the pity he would receive from neighbours and friends and from the girls at school. But not even a single tear appeared. He thought of his parents dead, of his brother gone forever, of his dog run over. Of losing a leg in a terrible accident

and being forced to spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair. Not even a hint of moisture formed in his eyes. Of gradual blindness, a wasting disease, leprosy.

Nothing. And he would often hold himself in the dark and think of forbidden cuddles – to smell his brother’s hair again or feel his cold feet on his calves. But they were becoming men. Now there was flesh. And skin.

And bodies. This was the bed of the making.

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Torn from that bed of memories he sailed to independence, to lying in others’ beds of his own. The squat in North London was the coldest bed of all. Cold, lonely and, again, moist. There he travelled inside himself and was not sure what he found; or, indeed, if he found anything at all. But it felt like a plethora of inadequacies. Pitch dark in the night without electricity, he concentrated on his breathing as the air entered his nostrils or upon his sphincter muscle at the exit of his body, attempting a strange kind of foreign knowledge.

Breathing alone; no one to fake sleep for, no one to maintain a rhythm for. He tried to focus on an inner light he had been told existed, on an inherent oneness with the universe. His mind wandered, however, and he found himself saying fuck, shit, arse and wank into the darkness and, eventually, Leeds United, Bristol Rovers, Everton… He tried to cry here too, creating all manner of personal catastrophes. And still he could not.

But, this bed existing in a kind of open squat, he often found it occupied when he returned from work, strangers snoozing and sometimes even fucking there.

Afterwards, when the bed had been vacated once more, he would search for suspect stains and lost socks. If a woman had been there he would look for stray hairs and lingering smells. Then, lying there, he journeyed back to a previous bed and masturbated. Once, he came home to find a woman asleep there, so he had undressed, lay down next to her and attempted to caress her first into to waking and, subsequently, desire. He had cuddled into her S-position, his erection pressing sweatily into the crack of her backside and breathing

Beds

The cover is falling now, descending slowly. He grips it tightly by the two bottom corners and his arms follow the down-flight, a kind of slow motion, enough time to reflect. He wants to think about his other beds – in this act they become suddenly important. But it is not easy, because he is now in some way dislocated. His memory needs to be filled out, added to. In a way, recreated. He has forgotten so much in the making of the bed.

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remembers talking and fucking, smoking and sleeping. It was good to smell her hair as he fell asleep and to have her cold feet resting on his calves. It is a boat of bodies in his memory, of flesh, of skin. A boat of vomit too, it being the site of the first time someone else had puked in his bed. She had come round late one evening, drunk as a fool after meeting friends for a chocolate fondue and red wine soiree. Later, as she slept, the boat began to rock on an alcoholic sea and he woke up to the sound of drowning. He had lifted her head and, then, there in the dark, in the space of seconds, she seemed to re-decorate the room.

The next morning, under clean covers, they laughed about it so much that she puked again, this time over the side. It is a boat of laughter too. And of blood and sperm, of tongues and, too soon, her fears. And then, suddenly, they let it sink.

It occurs to him that this cover falling onto this bed has a symbolic as well as an obvious meaning – that there exist, in this act, two different yet parallel, equally legitimate, equally transparent meanings.

They moved to their own flat and bought a bed of their own. Or, rather, half a bed – a large, thick, hard futon mattress upon which, almost immediately, their flesh withered. On the same day they bought two exotic lovebirds in a church-like metal cage, which over the next few months slowly pecked each other to death. This bed’s memory now is of frigidity and fear, of dark demands failing to be met.

He can remember no cuddles there, no closeness – merely, occasionally, a brief exchange of delusions. This bed was only a piece of furniture to

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Falling, falling. Like the world, we are told. The cover falling like the human race before the wrath or mercy of God. Soon, it shall be fallen. Its see-through, patterned flowers are drifting down towards the mattress, a weird kind of ersatz fecundity. Ersatz and covering the bed.

Dying of shame because he came too quickly. He thinks. She is saying, It doesn’t matter. Really, it doesn’t matter. But for him it causes deep anguish on this, their first time.

It was the beginning of what they thought of as love.

Je-sus, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.

It doesn’t matter. Really, it doesn’t matter.

Je-sus, fucking Christ. I’m sorry.

I’m sorry.

It doesn’t matter. Really, it doesn’t. And it did not matter for her. Only for him. The making made it matter. But, despite that, it became a boat of discovery anyway, this single bed in a South London bed-sit. A room only big enough for the echoes of the bed itself. And for the bonsai tree she had bought him, a cherry blossom, which died a miniature death so quickly, though its skeleton lived on. Room too for the other echoes, the voices which entered from adjoining lives, his walls being easily breached. The human sources of these sounds remained forever invisible and enigmatic, manifesting themselves as steps on the stairs or as just closing doors. Often he lay there at night listening to the female voice from the next room, articulating dreams and nightmares, her voice deep and sometimes frightened.

Frequently her words would meet the rhythms of a badly-played, badly-tuned guitar that entered from the room of his other neighbour and, there in the centre of his territory, combine to form some kind of mesmerising, rudimentary lament. These encroaching noises had perhaps been responsible for the bonzai’s agonising decision to metaphorically top itself. He and she lay there often together, gradually filling the ashtray with sucked-flat dog-ends.

He

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hotly in her ear. At the precise moment he had slid his thumb under the waist elastic of her knickers she had turned her head to him and whispered Any fucking further and I am going to tear your bollocks off and shove them up your arse. He did not go any further. He had convinced himself later that she must be a lesbian. The bed was really a folddown sofa and, when alone, he always tended to roll into the middle. There he felt safe, secure from the surrounding dead who had replaced the snakes and alligators, lurking invisibly under the bed. The smell of his brother’s hair was gone forever, though often, on the precipice of sleep, he heard the chimney whisper I know you’re awake. I know you’re awake.

This was the first truly loveless boat, the first that emitted no warmth, no feelings of certainty. A boat drifting in a drifter’s sea, a bed that was not a bed at all and that could have been anywhere. The sky was not visible as he laid there, only the uniform fronts of the houses across the street and the crumbling garden wall out front, onto which had been sprayed, in silver and blue I HATE PEOPLE. He used to lie there and stare at it for ages.

Breathing – and concentrating on his increasingly self-conscious sphincter.

faculty

He found another single bed, in another house, again in North London. He lay there alone, hating her. He resented her and blamed her. She remained in the old flat and still slept on the futon. He went back there once to pick up some clothes he left behind when he had moved out. She was not there but he still had a key and so had let himself in. On either side of the bed was an empty can of beer and a full ashtray. So, she had foreign fucks, too. In this moment of sudden realization she temporarily became, for the first time in a long while, a hard and clear reality for him.

Fucking bitch, he spat, kicking one of the cans across the room. The thoughts of that after– bed are desolate and angry ones, sad and furious. She was frigid with him. He cannot make that out. He could not then and he cannot now. He had visitors in his new boat, shortstayers. Good, mediocre or bad fucks; that is how he measured them. Their bodies became his proxy revenge. And a river filled with snakes and alligators opened up in him. This was a boat of hangovers and bad breath, frustration and unnoticed orgasms.

Sometimes he thought that he and his visitors could have been coming by themselves, or not bothering to 42

Metropolitan Lines Volume 1, 2007

Bill Leahy

The flower patterns are touching the sides of this bed, as most of the air has been expelled. His arms are almost by his sides again, his hands still grasping the two bottom corners of the cover.

Beds

lie upon. They became older there. He wanted everything possible to have in a bed at the beginning.

Not just sleep and sex and tears and friendship. He demanded certain types of sex that any man, surely, can expect to demand and a river full of snakes and alligators suddenly appeared in the mattress between them. The bed became a site of silent, dual implosion, of swallowed shouts and simple sleep. Trees blocked out the sky and through the window only city leaves could be seen. She became frigid, he said. Frigid and fat, he said. Unerotic, boring and materialistic. She had lost her desire, her flesh, her soul, he said. It was then that the ceiling was discovered as something to contemplate and to glare at. It became a kind of hobby for him. His world began to close in on him, to form around the bed.

This was to be the boat of friendship, but it soon began to sail to other countries. It became a boat of foreign fucks in her absence, justifiable, he said, because she had become sort of microscopic for him. She remains, even now, difficult to reanimate. The bed of their discovery became the boat of her tears.

faculty

From the virgin through the tarts to the out and out whore. That is the journey he perceives himself as having made. The next was a boat of cocks and cunts and, quite soon, of insults and punches. It was a violence they both seemed to need and the bed always drew it out of them. Violence into sex and sex into violence. The two often overlapped, the one summoning the other.

Open your legs, he demanded.

Fuck my arse, she responded.

And he did, pressing down on the back of her head, pushing her face into the pillow, which afterwards could be seen to have described the sex in dribble stains.

Lick me out, she demanded.

43

suburb. For the whole of the first day a friend of his had slept wrapped around the base of the toilet, waking up now and then to vomit over himself and the floor.

This proved to be good news for the dog which, having remained unfed, excitedly lapped up the warm, complex mixture. Another friend had spent the day face-down on the living room floor, buried in broken crisps, dog-ends and half-bitten, salty lemon slices. They had devoted the three days to smoking, singing, eating, fighting and fucking. This boat was one of animal actions, a curious kind of physical celebration, of few words and even less sense. It was a kind of doom. He had fallen into a river of snakes and alligators and they were eating him up from the inside. And he had pulled her with him. The boat was always headed for the edge of the world and it reached its destination soon enough. He had called her a whore too often for her liking and he had tried to live up to his perception of what her previous men had meant for his own. He had gone beyond and this was the time after flesh, the time after skin, the time after bodies.

He was practically made.

Fuck me, one last time, she said.

Yes, he replied. She opened her legs and, with him on top of her between them, had placed his penis inside her. He let his body weigh down on her then, leaving enough space between their faces to be able to look into each other’s eyes. And then they had not moved. His penis inside her, they lay as still as rocks and looked at each other. Tears came into her eyes first. And then, finally, into his. He cried. As one tear fell along his cheek and onto hers, he placed his head on her shoulder and let his eyelids shut.

And then she had closed her eyes

Metropolitan Lines Volume 1, 2007

Bill Leahy

Taking the form of the bed itself, the cover comes to rest on the pillows. The descent is almost complete and his arms are beginning to relax. He thinks he sees no symbolic meaning now. A track of certainty. And then, in that very moment the cover falls flatter against the bed and suddenly new possibilities arise.

Suck me off, first, he answered.

And then they did it together, an entangling of limbs, thumping each others’ buttocks and thighs, trying to hurt. It was a boat that rocked on a wild sea, one that seemed to boil – not with passion as they sometimes thought, but with a palpable, unpredictable disappointment.

You fuck like a teenager, she taunted.

Your cunt is like a carrier bag, he jeered. He had, when they first met, been kind of impressed by her. She fitted a stereotype he had somewhere acquired. But in the bed, the violence soon began. He punched her so hard in the solarplexus during one fight that she had fainted. While she was still out he turned her over, unzipped his trousers and put his erect penis in her mouth. When she came round she bit him and then he smashed her with the palm of his hand on the side of her head. Later that evening, while he was sleeping, she had stubbed out a lit cigarette on his cheek. Often they would stay in bed for the whole day, the curtains drawn against the daylight, eating chocolates and pizzas, smoking cigarettes and joints and watching action videos. This was the cruise of philistines.

Sometimes, unexpectedly, perhaps in the middle of a film, lying there with her head propped up by pillows, she would begin belting out her favourite Frank Sinatra songs. The dog, locked out in the hallway, would howl like a John Wayne coyote, but she would proceed with the massacre. It was like listening to Stockhausen with a hangover – a punishment for him and the dog.

After his twenty-fifth birthday party they stayed in bed for three whole days, the curtains drawn, the flat around them resembling a Baghdad

Beds

come at all. Yet in every drop of his sperm bad faith was carried. The alarm on his clock had unexpectedly gone off one morning while one of his visitors had his erect penis full in her mouth. The ringing had startled him and made him jump and he had almost choked the girl where she knelt. That, for him, had been his proudest moment there. He had lost his own body. The only time he truly noticed himself was through rage and the only time he noticed others was as they closed the door behind them. Then he would lie and stare at the window, framed by a dirty blind and through which light had to struggle to enter the room.

faculty too, the lids squeezing out a mucus-like liquid that seemed to carry more than mere sadness. Lying there, feeling the rhythm of their breathing, he heard an old, distant voice, I know you’re awake. I know you’re awake. A boat that had hosted such violent activity now bore a sonorous stillness.

Bye-bye, she breathed.

Bye-bye, he answered. Both eaten alive by the snakes and alligators. Both swallowed by the silence. He left.

Bill Leahy

And down. The air has escaped and the bed is covered. He releases the corners he has gripped and watches the cover crease. It is the end of the descent.

He knows that he must think about his pervious beds.

Sometime. In this bed the meanings seem to have stopped shifting. They are stable now.

Beds

Now it has fallen and covers the bed. This, he realises finally, has been a wreathing. The painted flowers form a shroud that covers him. Fully-formed, fully-complete. Everything sort of fallen. His hands skim across the cover, smoothing out the creases. Here is a broken down boat on a dead sea. A Marie Celeste of male emotions. But there; in the centre. Now covered, shrouded. A possibly female form. A female form possibly. For which one has it been worse? Which one is wreathed?

The bed is made.

Wherever he went now he would bring the damage with him. He sailed in many boats and never stayed long. The longest, though short, was in a real foreign country, across real water. There, he hurt like he had never done before. She thought she had grown to know him and the piece of him she did know she needed and relied on. Yet he only gave her one piece of himself, the piece this side of the river filled with snakes and alligators. A river she could never cross. Nor did she try, as she did not even know that it existed. She got the piece of him that was manipulated from the other side of the river. It seemed always polite, caring and possibly in love. Her foreignness did not enable her to see the man in pieces – a man like those she had known in her own language. Her bed was one of gentleness and simplicity, but was only ever occupied by one and a half people. He was always only half there. She taught him to say I love you in her language, but he never said it with feeling. He could have been saying Leeds United or Bristol Rovers or Everton. He kept it always in the front of his mouth. When she said it in his language it reverberated with shattering convention. Often he lay there, staring at the brick wall that faced the window which, it being a basement flat, was encased in a large metal grill, thinking about his escape. And very soon he slipped over the side of the boat and swam away. The only piece of him she was left with was the piece she had never known. A brief, unexplained message from beyond his river that sank through her skin and began to beat with her heart. A kind of pure mutilation. And for the ones after her it could only be worse.

The Sea Wall You follow a line (it isn’t exactly a line of thought) along the curve of the bay.

Strung out under the bulbs that flicker jazzily between life and death, your only prop’s the wall, the sheer, sharp jut of rock that holds you from your black, seductive dreams.

It’s all whispers and lapses and whispers: sounds sucked back into themselves and forever spooling.

You stop at the bay’s extremity, where the spindrift comes up to jig on the roof of the wall, spawning itself into arcs and beads, into wishbones, into tiny crystal balls.

44

Stephen James Metropolitan Lines Volume 1, 2007

faculty She puts one bare foot in its dirty trainer up her bare knee to scratch her ankle.

–Everywhere. You can say that about me.

He doesn’t encourage exaggeration.

–You mean you’ve travelled extensively?

He catches her shrug from the corner of his eye.

–I mean what I said. I’m from everywhere.

His lips tighten. He won’t waste energy on her.

In his mind he returns to the project. The recent investigations are promising, according to Steve. He’ll have to see what he makes of it, on the spot.

–But, she’s saying, I was born in Greece.

Greek? That explains the accent. The straight nose and olive tinge. And Australia was once upon a time considered a place of safety for refugees. Back at his university he’s encountered Polish Australians, Jewish Australians, Dutch and German Australians, whose ancestors fled the wars of Europe. Why not Greek Australians?

–Greek, eh?

–Not exactly.

–Your family settled here?

She’s rummaging behind, in her backpack.

–They are not. They prefer the old world. Are you hungry?

Hungry? His stomach twists. God, he’s hungry.

–I am. Very. But we won’t get a meal till the next station. Which is one hundred and, let me see, (he reads the clock) –one hundred and thirteen miles away.

–And I know how many kilometres that is. You don’t have to tell me.

–What makes you believe I was going to?

–You’re utterly predicable.

Hamish doesn’t encourage anger in himself. With anger you lose control. He doesn’t reply. If she’s not careful, the station will be where they part company.

–Here. She’s passing him an apple. It’s smooth and cool as a, as a, as a breast. It reminds him of a breast. Or one of her buttocks.

–This will stop you being hungry for a while.

He bites and his mouth is irrigated. The juiciest apple he’s ever put between his lips.

She’s biting too. Chewing the apple, humming.

He says –There are provisions behind, in the back there.

He won’t have her getting the idea he’s the kind of fool, who sets off to drive across a desert without the proper preparations.

–All kinds of stuff. And water if you want it.

–Do you?

DOES MY BUM LOOK BIG? Verena Adams

T

he landscape is like the moon.

She leans out of the truck window. The sun splinters itself on her head.

–How do you know?

Hamish makes a fetish of being rational. He doesn’t care for excessive statements.

-You’ve never been to the moon.

She isn’t fazed by him. A carapace of certainty covers her like a shell. It would take more than Hamish to dent it.

–I’ve been there.

Inside, he groans. Whimsy.

And there’s the childish song suddenly in his head.

Wimsywimsyspiderclimbingupthespout. Where did that come from? I haven’t thought of that in years.

And she is retracting herself, drawing her upper body in, crushing those soft breasts in that thin tee– shirt, closing the window with a slight pressure of her thumb.

ZZZLLMP. The desert is locked out. The air conditioning takes over.

–Let’s go.

–Are you sure you’re quite ready?

She’s proof against his sarcasm as well. Stretches out her legs. Such smooth caramel legs in those short shorts.

Hamish can’t stop himself sliding a peek. Those shorts. Those legs. His reasons for picking her up.

Peeking her up. Meditating, he urges the burdened Land Rover, tireless and donkey– patient, along the shadeless and empty road toward the mountains.

I was ready for company.

I’d had enough of my own.

I was sorry for her with that backpack.

When I’ve had enough, I’ll set her down.

She’s asking him a question. She frames it without its punctuation mark, telling him that she already knows the answer. Her voice is both rough and sweet, with an accent he cannot place.

–You’re from London, aren’t you?

–No, he says, not any more. Now I wouldn’t live in London if you paid me.

And he’s drawn to ask a question of his own.

–You? Where are you from?

45

Metropolitan Lines Volume 1, 2007

faculty

46

Metropolitan Lines Volume 1, 2007

Verena Adams

get a film out of it, and I get to know a new place, expenses paid. However it turns out, we all stand to gain something. He wants to move the conversation away from himself.

–That’s enough about me. What brings you here?

You’re not a native Australian?

–Not a native Australian. I’m from the old world.

Ausonia.

–Ausonia?

He can’t place it. One of the rearranged segments of Yugoslavia? Bosnia? Ausonia?

She goes on.

–I’m Venus. Not an aboriginal version. Not black.

The real thing. And I’ve come exploring. The tough leathery males here are legendary. I mean to study them in their own habitat.

She’s one of those alternative traveller types.

–Venus, are you? Right. I’m Hamish.

–I know.

This time he refuses to be impressed. She knows his name because it’s plastered all over the place. Hamish Grant. With care. Scientific instruments. This side up.

If she’s looked in the back, which he knows she has, she could hardly miss it.

–I have been known, she continues, as Venus Callipyge. Tell me honestly, do you think that’s fair?

–Venus Kallipiegy? It doesn’t say much to me, I’m afraid.

–It means, she snaps back, Venus with the beautiful buttocks. The subtext is I have a large behind. Do you agree? Is my bum too big?

He thinks, but doesn’t say –In those shorts? I’d judge it just exactly right.

–No comment.

He gives an embarrassed laugh. His bark of laughter.

–But I hope you won’t mind my saying that you shouldn’t try to hitch lifts like that. It isn’t safe. For a young woman on her own.

Not dressed the way you are, he adds to himself.

Underdressed like that.

Hamish peers, screwing up his eyes. Red-rimmed, his weary eyes.

–That’s the first traffic since I left this morning. You see what I mean?

She’s digging in her backpack again.

–See what?

He repeats, separating out the words –What I was trying to point out about hitching lifts.

It’s unsafe. If you were picked up by the wrong type. It

Does My Bum Look Big?

–Not now. That apple of yours has done the trick.

Hamish thinks he hears her say, Many tricks, but isn’t sure. She presses her window down. Tosses away the apple core. And closes the heat out again.

–You’re going on a dig.

Again, she makes a statement, not a question. How does she know where he’s going? They haven’t spoken of his destination. Nor of hers. A filament of unease tightens round his brow. He takes his eye off the road, the drab-dun line of the road, shoots a glance her way.

He meets her eyes. They’re fixed on him. Brown or black with motes of gold, whites speckleless in spite of the dust. Lengthy lashes. There’s a slight smile moving between eyes and mouth. He reassures himself. She’s noticed his equipment stacked in the back. She’d have put two and two together, made a guess. No worries.

His unease slackens off.

–You’ve got it. An exploratory dig only.

–Tell me.

–You don’t want to know. It’s not exciting.

–I’d like you to tell me.

Generally, Hamish is reserved, locked inside the confines of his own counsel. He’s surprised to find he’s doing as she requests. He’s telling her about his mate, Steve, and Cliff, their crazy scheme. That they’ve all three of them taken a year out of their work, careers, families, just dropped the whole lot, turned their backs.

Squeezed out grants and loans from various sources.

Spent money. Steve’s got a TV channel interested, means to sell the film of the expedition.

–We call it Three Men in a Trench.

He gives his dry laugh, more a type of cough, harsh clearing of the throat.

–What do you hope to find?

She’s put her bare and dirty feet up on the dash. He doesn’t like her doing it, but is prepared to overlook it.

–Traces of the cult of the black Venus. It’s Cliff’s idea.

He’s swept us along. Archaeological departments in universities don’t offer much scope these days. We couldn’t resist the chance for a bit of hands-on.

He pauses.

–An adventure, you might say. Before it’s too late for adventures.

He’s becoming apologetic. He’s talked incautiously, too fast, given too much away. His quick words slow.

On a fainter breath he ends –or so it seemed to me.

–Do you imagine you’ll turn anything up?

–Probably not. Almost certainly not. Cliff has a bee in his bonnet about old gods in aboriginal forms. He can test his theories. Write up the results. Steve should

faculty Does My Bum Look Big? Verena Adams

happens. Two young women were murdered not long ago.

–I’ll be okay. I’d like to see anybody try murdering me.

The truck that had been the distant tornado of dust roars by, lights flashing in salute. The road is empty again. Yellow as a viper under the raging sun.

–Want a ciggy?

–I don’t.

She doesn’t ask if he minds her smoking, but lights up anyhow.

Hamish has made up his mind to drop her off at the station, when they get there. Any company is not necessarily better than none. The air is polluted enough without cigarette smoke. This smoke that has an unusual smell. A suspicion strikes him. Is she smoking dope?

She puts a hand on his knee.

–You’re tired. Shall we pull in for a bit?

A tart. Not one of those alternative world traveller types like she said. A bloody tart. He’s drawing in an outraged breath to reject the suggestion, when the land rover begins to lose power, to drag and fade. Swearing, he pumps.

God, oh god, that’s all I need.

Break down in the middle of the frigging desert.

Hamish pumps the pedals but the land rover has expired with a sigh. Stopped right there in the middle of the road.

–Shit.

Peering at the instruments.

Learning nothing.

–Shit. We’re okay for fuel. It must be the fucking distributor.

Panic and sweat break out.

She’s calm.

–It probably got too hot. Poor old car. Leave it for a bit to cool down. It’ll be okay later.

–Leave it to cool down. In the full sun. In the middle of the road.

While we sit here broiling, waiting to be run into by the first truck that comes along. Brilliant. Got any more brilliant ideas?

In reply she’s climbing on him, swarming over him. Unfastening buttons, slipping in her hands to pull their clothes up. Or down.

Hamish is glued to his seat, literally unable to make a move of his own volition. He can’t cry out: her mouth has closed his off. She’s hot, she’s slippery, she’s cool, she’s everywhere. Her perfume or the smell of the weed she was smoking has filled his nostrils and his lungs.

He passes out, only to come to at the dig, dazed, vision blurred, making explanations as best he can.

–The land rover seized up. There was a girl. A Greek girl. A hitchhiker. I gave a lift. Venus, she was called. That’s all I remember.

–You’re not acclimatised. You must have got heat stroke, Cliff explains.

–And she must have somehow fixed the engine and driven on, is Steve’s suggestion.

–Probably hung out her boobs at the next truck that passed. Signalled for help. And got it. Cliff closes his 47

suggestion with the classic woarhoar-hoar.

–Anyhow, she or somebody brought you here.

–But where is she?

–Gone. Before we got up. Just the Land Rover and you in it slumped like a sack of potatoes.

–I wish I could remember what happened.

–Heat stroke, repeats Cliff. It can have that effect. Lucky you weren’t taken worse.

–Pity she didn’t wait to be thanked, says Steve. You say her name was Venus?

Hamish wasn’t even sure of that.

–I think so. You know, it’s quite a coincidence. One objective of the dig being to investigate an aboriginal Venus.

He nods his agreement. His head’s still spinning.

–Yes. Quite a coincidence.

A fragment comes back.

–She said her bum was too big.

–Unreal, says Cliff.

Metropolitan Lines Volume 1, 2007

faculty taking much of the furniture, the dogs and the guns. His wife had moved all the remaining furniture out of the master bedroom, leaving it entirely empty, and moved downstairs into a small room looking onto the gardens.

From her window she could see the high green walls of the overgrown hedges, peaked by small Christmas trees that had broken out of the impossible rectangles and squares. Her children had soon left, fleeing what they thought was the emptiness of the house, only to find that emptiness can furnish a room, fill a house and make a marriage. They had both gone to America, not realising that in America there was an emptiness in the very land, in the still naked and shallow buildings of the Europeans that lived between the coasts. Venturing beyond New England, lingering outside of New York, which was a country to itself, they had touched the blank expanse and recoiled, only to hear the hollow ring beneath the chatter of Boston and Philadelphia.

THE SOMERSET HOUSE Sean Gaston

I

t was a great old kitchen table with high sturdy legs and the grooves and scratches of generations. On the table there was a large earthenware bowl with a spoon sticking out of it, some dried pomegranates, a plate of walnuts that had been too hard to crack and in a low white and blue china bowl unripe avocados mixed with small English apples. The four chairs around the table were empty and the door from the kitchen was open leading out into the rather dilapidated gardens at the back of the house; gardens that were too big for one, even for two people to manage. Like this Somerset garden, this Somerset house had the unavoidable uncared look of a family that has declined from its Empire days, its butler, nanny, cook and chauffeur, and come to rest on the modest nostalgia of an old pile, sans staff and sans money.

Soon after her husband had left she had found a job and maintained herself and the house. In the evenings she painted small landscapes on bits of wood with thick brushes or sometimes with her fingers, dipping and mixing the oils in a broken saucer. For a few weeks in the dark days of February she had kept a diary, but stopped after she could no longer think whom she was writing to when she wrote, “I am alone.� In the summer she worked in the garden, staying out well after dark when her eyes could see through the greys and blues of evening and she felt more animal than human. She would potter around the house, tending to the bare rooms and every once in a while finding her way into the small rooms at the top of the house, built when people, or at least servants, were shorter, filled with the debris, the archaeological curiosities, of four hundred years of continuous human habitation. Each year she would dig through another layer of this Somerset Tell, sifting through the past, lightening the load on the house, letting most of it go in a garden bonfire: the photos, the letters, the abandoned and the broken. All these impossible archives that no one could read. She had a deep respect for the past, for the ghostly whispers of the unknown ancestors who lived lives much as ours, but somehow knew that the house could only survive if it was relieved of the burden of memory. One day, she had taken all the paintings and driven to Taunton and arranged for them to be auctioned in London. All the ancestors had looked at her as they sat in the back of the car, surprised to be speeding down the country lanes, delighted to be free at last of the walls and halls that had

With only seven bedrooms the house was a small building and its narrow Elizabethan windows, with strange visual distortions in every pane, and its old pale stone covered in saffron were the only signs of its great age. The last of the Empire money had been spent wisely in the early 1930s on the roof and, somehow, everything else stayed where it was, keeping to itself, holding itself up, knowing its place after centuries. The building knew who it was, and it was a testament to its self-confidence that it remained indifferent to the incremental emptying of the rooms, the slow withdrawal of the Victorian bric-a-brac and the eighteenth century furniture that had filled and shaped and curved the rooms. Now the rooms stood squarely, floorboards and wall fixtures, far removed from the old, discoloured bergère chair, the thinning, almost balding, carpet, the makeshift bookshelf of bricks and planks, the standing lamp with the torn lampshade. But what was perhaps most surprising was that these sparse, spacious rooms had no nostalgia, no melancholy: there was no dust, no absent ache of the past. It was a house that W. G. Sebald could have never visited. The rooms were clean, the windows were open and from the early dawn until the late dusk the summer light fell through the house, circling from the back garden to the front courtyard.

It had been five years since the man of the house had moved out, leaving his wife and two daughters, while 48

Metropolitan Lines Volume 1, 2007

faculty

The four chairs around the table were empty and the door from the kitchen was open leading out into the rather dilapidated gardens at the back of the house.

Down the stone path, the low hedges on either side, around the circular pond with its pink and white lilies and out onto the lawn was another table and four more

WELL NOW

Sean Gaston

life after all still has cat’s eyes doesn’t it sparking the way ahead

Funny that finding yourself alone at night in a car you cannot drive driving

but perhaps it can never be the same for see how hands lips those touches you rely on seem to slide further out of reach as if a car in slow motion should ricochet away from all you had

odd to discover yourself on roads you’ve never ridden riding strange how the gradually illuminated land composes itself round your bumper as you bump through weird that

creeping deadness

wondering where

along the limbs

those are

confusion

who should be here

through head and heart

beside you

then without reservation from the dark a far verge and fields beyond blurred engulfing odd

could it be that it’s already over you’ve already crashed, though so imperceptibly you do not

David Fulton

know it 49

The Somerset House

chairs. She is there, sitting with her daughters who have returned from America, and sitting in the fourth chair is the man who surprised both her and himself by coming to live in the Somerset house, to trim its hedges, cut its grass, fix its roof and to live with her in a house without a past.

held them for centuries. How green the earth was, how blue the sky.

Metropolitan Lines Volume 1, 2007

faculty arrival, but at first he’d put them down to Cold War paranoia and so been free to laugh them off. Recently, however, his phone had been acting strangely: whenever he lifted the receiver, an odd sound –as if the call had thrown switches elsewhere –would start up and he’d sense a real lessening of signal strength. And then for no apparent reason –I mean he wasn’t calling from a box –his phone conversations would be cut off in midsentence. Surely an eavesdropping telephonist, no matter how bored with the senseless babble in her ears, would have soon tired of the game of cutting his connections.

No, it seemed to suggest something more organised.

After each plug-pulling he’d rung back and joked with his callers that it would be all right to start speaking again because the police must by then have found another blank, but still a nagging unease remained.

Suppose they were taping each call he made or got; suppose all the talk that took place in the ‘privacy’ of his lounge was being monitored. And then earlier suspicions came back. He recalled that on entering his flat colleagues and students alike seemed to snaffle their tongues, became abnormally interested in work and bland generalities, and what had been blurred doubt projected onto his mind focused into the belief they all knew – or strongly suspected – his two cramped rooms were under electronic surveillance. From that moment he’d begun to feel hemmed in, constantly monitored like some prisoner of conscience. Light thoughts –like the probability S.U.P’s translators were ex-students and would therefore hardly follow a word he said, if past experience was anything to go by – had failed to toss this feeling off and so the back-pack of selfconsciousness continued to weigh him down.

THE RIGHT CONNECTIONS (A Tale of Old Yugoslavia) David Fulton

S

he came to his door. What else could he do? You see he’d just finished covering forty-four essays on My Worst Nightmare with red marks, when the bell rang. I suppose he must by then have been brain dead, no longer able to make the simple connections. He opened the door to a round shining face, framed by straw-coloured hair, and a raw voice from the prairies, saying, “Hi! I’ve something real important to talk to you about.”

(Oh no!), he groaned inwardly, fearing his soul was in question, but threw the thought out as unlikely. (A Bible-belter in Yugoslavia? Surely not!) Nevertheless he did wedge a foot firmly behind the door –just in case.

“And what would that be?”

“Right. My name’s Liza. Uh, Lisa Lutz” – they shook hands vigorously – “and I’m in Kosovo doing some work for Amnesty International. You’ve heard of it?”

He nodded, glancing past her broad frame to a corridor mercifully empty of colleagues.

“Okay. We’re wanting to find this Albanian dissident” – she held up the blurred copy of a black-and-white photograph – “who, we reckon, is being held some place here in Pristina. We’ve gotten real worried about him.

You see he’s been gone these past three months and no one – not his family, not anyone – has a notion where he is. Naturally, there’s been no trial...or any talk of one.”

This was, as she’d said, important, but the voice was loud and assured, perhaps too loud and too assured; it echoed confidently down the bare stone corridor, as if never doubting its right to dominate that space, yet was –incredibly –answered by no doors inching open.

He should perhaps have brought matters to a head, asked for documentary proof or simply said he knew nothing of the case and closed the door, but his brain was gone and he did feel that to leave the matter there would have been an insult to the missing man, so he withdrew his foot and lamely let her in. Yet as soon as she was seated on his threadbare sofa, head inclined towards him in eager anticipation, plaits ready to dance again in sympathy with the cause and fingers poised to point new messages in the air, he began to have second thoughts.

After all, how could he be sure his room wasn’t bugged? Rumours of hidden devices had been ricocheting round the lector network ever since his

AMNESTY NEWS IN BRIEF –YUGOSLAVIA Adam Krashi, a human-rights activist in the Serbian semiautonomous province of Kosovo, has been reported missing. The authorities in Belgrade refuse to confirm or deny that he is under arrest, but it is understood they have been angered by some of his activities on behalf of the Albanian community, which they consider ‘chauvinist’, ‘separatist’ and ‘friendly to hegemonist powers’.

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1 pallet, mattressless, no sheet.

1 stinking, crawling blanket.

1 slop bucket, putrid, at the far corner.

1 bowl for washing, eating, cleaning teeth.

4 off-white walls, smeared with black discolouration.

1 door, no handle, locked from outside, its spy-hole always gaping.

1 high light-bulb, no shade, the switch outside.

1 small window, out of reach, its screen of sky, clouds, night not projected for him.

And below 1 body, bruised and expertly shocked, his strange groans sharing the moments with distant screams.

“My! Just look at those rugs!” she exclaimed, pointing a broad finger, so he switched his gaze back to their bold saw-tooth patterns in red, black and white.

“They’re mighty like Red Indian designs I’ve come across in the States.”

“Yes, that’s it; that’s where I’ve seen them before: cowboy films! You know I’ve been destroying my brain, trying to make that connection ever since I came to Kosovo and you’ve done it at a stroke. Brilliant!”

More serious matters were for the moment forgotten, but his companion was nothing if not determined and, as soon as she saw her chance, dragged the talk back to Adam.

“I’ve been here a day or so rooting around; like yesterday I went to the Rilindja offices.”

“Oh… but why?”

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that when the airborne duellists finally landed, their swords would must fall not on each other, but the hapless skullcap of the man who played –oblivious – between them?

And, leaning back in his chair, he chuckled once more at the scene’s comic confusion: rivals in snowwhite turbans and off-white jackets that wouldn’t have looked out of place in Ruritania; a girl in a loose, belted smock and baggy Arabian trousers, topped by the tight headscarf of a Wigan housewife; and, above all, pairs of dancing warriors ranged behind, who studiously ignored the rivals’ call to arms in their determination to imitate the duck’s flatfooted waddle. This was what he liked about the Albanians, this rough-and-ready, unselfconscious fun.

The Right Connections

“I’ve got an idea: rather than just chat here where it’s a bit spartan, why don’t we go to a restaurant? There’s this interesting Albanian place just up the road.”

“Why not?”

As they left the three-storey staff block, he looked across the ill-lit street to the campus, followed the outline of grey concrete towers, straggling up the hill in failed aspiration. There on the summit stood the main police station, its light bulbs blazing into the night, as though guiding late travellers through the city’s hidden rocks. They turned to the left and bent into a sleety wind.

“Not exactly what you’re used to, I suppose.”

“Why, no! We get this and worse for our Midwestern winters and in Chicago, where I’m at school, the January winds off Lake Michigan can freeze like death.”

“Don’t worry, I think we’ll avoid that: there’s only another couple of hundred yards to battle through.”

And in no time, panting from the wind buffets and the cold, they ducked off the deserted street and into the Rugovo, where their nipped ears were warmed by ‘Shkon Skyferi’ and the earthy gutterals of Albanian chatter. As their eyes adjusted to the dimmed lights, they realised they weren’t the only ones to have chosen this restaurant as refuge from the elements. In fact, the place looked full, but they did eventually spot a couple of free chairs at a table in one corner.

While he was ordering Turkish coffee for her and a Skanderbeg for himself, Lisa scrutinised the decor with evident satisfaction.

“Real ethnic!”

He nodded and looked dutifully at examples of local handicraft, hanging from surrounding walls (exotic mats, long embroidered slippers, naive wood carvings and sophisticated gold filigree), but what finally caught his eye, as it always did, was a large mounted photo of the dance that gave the restaurant its name.

Within a lush forest clearing two rival youths were shown leaping into the air, legs bent back, left arms extended for balance, while the right brandished swords high above their heads. What might have been frightening was completely defused by the broad grin on the face of the teenage girl, over whom the rivals fought. She’d placed hands firmly on her plump hips as if to contain the laughter exploding inside. Was she smiling in appreciation of the dance or at the sheer absurdity of it all for how could she not notice a small man, inserted between the suitors, kneeling on one leg, while the other supported a huge drum, which he struck, eyes closed in rapt concentration on the beat, so

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The Right Connections

we said, ‘No problem, we’ll just carry on through to Yugoslavia.’ And here we are. Irvin’s out chasing leads tonight or he’d be with me. As both of us are working on this, we’re bound to get some place pretty fast!”

“I wouldn’t doubt it,” he replied, surveying the room once more, yet thinking of others less convivial.

“But we do need your help.”

“Look, I’m only a lector here. I walk into the classroom eight times a week, try to coax a little communication from my students, then walk out again.

I keep my eyes on the path ahead, my ears plugged, my mouth taped shut.”

“Still you sometimes hear things, surely.”

“Not really. Students... they only come to me to talk about academic problems.”

“And yet you’ve been here one heck of a time now, haven’t you?”

“True, but no matter how long I stay, I’ll always remain a stranger.”

“Well, you still might have heard talk of this guy,” showing the photocopy once more.

Though he’d only seen the man twice, he had no difficulty in recognising him from his poorly reproduced features: the dark hair slicked back like an otter’s; the high forehead; the moustache resting on either side of an aquiline nose. All was as expected, except for a puzzled look on his normally intelligent face as if he couldn’t find a way of accounting for the camera’s sudden flash. But what the picture could not register was the absolute lack of restraint in his laugh or the vigorous –almost violent –way his arms would orchestrate an argument.

“He’s called Krashi –uh, Adam Krashi. He used to be a student here, class of ‘74, but majored in Albanian, not English.”

And there was more, much more.

“No, sorry; before my time.”

“But haven’t you heard anything?

He’s real well-known.”

“Not a thing, I’m afraid.”

They stared into each other’s eyes till he had to look away. The dimlylit room swung crazily to left and right before coming to rest at the picture on the wall. That was the Albanians for him and not Krashi and his allies. They had begun innocently enough with demonstrations in favour of the

“To find out if its people knew where the prisoner was, of course.”

“You didn’t!”

“Sure. Why not?”

He glanced at their immediate neighbours, but no one seemed to be paying them any more attention than the rare tourist passing through to Greece would have got.

“And I asked them other questions as well.”

“Oh yes… What?”

“Okay: one was if they printed stories from the other side.”

“You mean ouija boards…astral projection?”

“Hell, no. Stories criticising the government, dissident stories –stuff like that”‘ “I see. And what did they say?”

“Just clammed up and stood around looking guilty.

So I fired them another question, asked if anticommunist candidates could run in local elections.”

“You did?”

“Sure, but was served the usual bull, you know the stuff they’re parrot-taught in school. I just couldn’t get a straight answer out of them.”

He downed the cognac in one and waited for its forgetful glow. She ignored her coffee, even though the grounds must by then have settled, and continued eagerly, “One way or another we’ve been pretty busy.” “‘We’? So you’re not doing this by yourself?”

“Why, no! I came over with Irvin – uh, my boyfriend.

We’d already decided to do Europe through to Germany this summer, so when we heard Amnesty needed to find out about this dissident guy in Kosovo,

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wise to come down hard on anyone prepared to use explosive tactics. But did this mean Krashi deserved prison? Perhaps, perhaps not “You could have forgotten something, anything...a small – maybe you think – stupid detail?”

“No, I’m sure I haven’t.”

The detail he knew – and she did not – hadn’t been forgotten. How could it? Three weeks before a student friend had told him his sister, who worked as a nurse in the local hospital, had seen Krashi brought in under police guard for an emergency operation. His stomach had been cut open and two spoons found inside.

Apparently, he’d swallowed them as the only way to escape further beatings; better the lesser than the greater pain.

Did he condone this? Of course not, but would talking to Lisa do any good? The story might eventually surface on the international pages of the Western press, but would doubtless disappear as soon as the Yugoslav government denied the charges, and another story took its place. Its brief appearance would merely serve to illustrate the moral inferiority of the Eastern bloc, as if torture never occurred in Western gaols. Krashi’s position would be unchanged. The only difference would be that if the story’s source were traced, the student would find himself without a future and he without a job. He could choose to inflict that on himself, but not on someone who, as he’d left his home, had made me swear to tell no one of what he’d learnt. No, he had to keep the information to himself.

“So no buzz in the brain, no off-the-wall, last-minute connections?”

“No, nothing, I’m afraid.”

They sat only a couple off feet apart, yet as they eyed each other with growing distrust, ancient fault lines seemed to open at their feet, throwing them back to right and left. There was clearly no more to be said, so they rose, at the door pumped hands and parted, she to battle on through sleety wind to a shared hotel room, he to be blown back to an empty flat. And as he was bowled along with leaves and scraps of litter, he thought of the messenger who’d come to him out of the dark and whose distance from him was increasing with every step. In a few days she would put an ocean and two cultures between them. It was strange that even though he knew he would not, did not really want to turn and catch her up, he could not blank the meeting from his mind. He kept returning to everything he might have said, but did not, each new formula further complicating the effects till his brain began to spin.

Title (2nd page and onwards)

Albanian language, but had recently, if rumours were true, smuggled arms and bomb-making equipment across the border from Albania and were now busy drilling and practising firing in the hills above Urosevac.

Of course, he knew all about the arrested man – who didn’t? – but was Lisa the right person to talk to? He’d always thought the naive American the deadest of clichés, but here was one, sitting opposite as alive as Lady Lazarus, so sure all right-thinking people must share her views she scarcely saw those she came across, so certain error had its centre outside her own country and her self she failed to make the humbling connections.

Most of Lisa’s questions at Rilindja no doubt squeezed reluctant smiles from the faces of its party journalists, but to ask about an arrested dissident was no smiling matter. Even though there didn’t seem to be any police agent in the restaurant, it was still possible she was being trailed and her contacts noted. If she and her friend were caught, that wouldn’t matter much to them – they’d simply be deported – but what of him?

He’d be asked to leave without even his plane fare being paid – it was all down in the local contract – and what would the British Council think? After years of trying, they’d only just managed to get a toehold in the province – he was the second lector there – and they’d repeatedly advised him to keep a low profile. If he were sent home, spotlit by publicity, the university contract would probably be revoked and the British Council in its pique make sure he never worked for them again.

All right, losing your job, particularly for something you believe in, is no great tragedy, but in this case did he believe? Not really. Though he knew only too well why Krashi hated the Serbs and wanted greater distance from them, he couldn’t bear to watch the break-up of Yugoslavia, its network of republics prised apart by Western neighbours, its experiment in socialist cooperation between nationalities sabotaged by nationalism. True, the Albanians of Kosovo were ultimately controlled by the Serbs in Belgrade, had Serb army units occupying strategic positions throughout the province and a police force largely manned by Serbs, but, on the other hand, they ran their own parliament, disposed of its budget, and had their own TV station, newspaper and an education system in Albanian as well as Serbo-Croat. Things weren’t perfect (they never are), but they could have been much worse.

Nationalism would, like a bomb, blow the federation apart; to prime it was at best an act of folly and at worst a crime. So, on the whole, I therefore thought Belgrade

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The Right Connections

He crossed at the junction on a red light, then let the big wet winds carry him down the last slope to his estate. Before taking the now-sticky dirt track to his block, he looked once again across the street and up to the police headquarters, placed like a fort on its hilltop.

The work of law and order was continuing in all its many forms: not one light had been switched off, nor would be – he supposed – till dawn. The building established a zone of light against the encroaching dark; it illuminated the higher ground as wisdom is meant to, yet perhaps in its basement’s glare Krashi was at that moment being hit in all the unwise places, his cries and moans lost on deadened walls. He turned away in semidarkness, stumbled over waste ground to his entrance, trudged up three flights of steps and, after fumbling for the right key, entered his flat and switched on all the lights.

David Fulton

AN OFFICIAL ANNOUNCEMENT Amnesty International has recently received reports that Adam Krashi is being held at police headquarters in Pristina. After making repeated representations on his behalf, we have at last secured official confirmation of his imprisonment. Apparently, Krashi has been tried for counterrevolutionary activity and, having been found guilty, sentenced to three years’ hard labour; but we have been unable to ascertain whether the trial was held in public and whether the accused had the benefit of independent legal aid. We are proposing to make Adam Krashi our Prisoner of Conscience for Yugoslavia.

What else could he do?

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faculty EMPTY AND MARVELLOUS

Tokyo University

Department Store

With sightseeing weariness I wander past another ancient pond And more high towers and arches To be jerked aware by the passion Of spirited female cries. With quickened pace I scale the wall And there on the dojo veranda In black dress The lady archers stand.

One steps forward in the silence And turns side-on.

Legs astride, she sinks into her hara, Eyes closed in meditation. She slowly lifts the great long bow High above her head And pulling down the drawn arrow Turns her face to the garden beyond, Gazing at a distant circle of stuffed straw.

Into the motionless tranquillity of her taut bow A strong voice intones a high continuum, While her friends vigorously shout, ‘Shakarri iko!’ (‘Go steadily!’), ‘Gambatte iko! ’ (‘Go strongly!’).

Slowly the right hand relaxes And the arrow surges, Spinning in its long flight, Drawn by the fixed vortex Of the target’s patient heart.

‘Atari!’, ‘Atari!’, the archers exclaim.

The great bow is lowered And now only the cicada can be heard.

Past the glitz of pearl earrings And the neon glare of stiletto heels The lift arrow revolves And out trips a flawless manikin – White hat and white gloves.

With sweet mechanical bow And impeccable smile She declares in fluting Little-girl voice, ‘Ue ni mairimasu!’

She giggles at my request, But seems eager to be snapped.

Awed and exhilarated, I seek entrance to that kyu dojo, But with a deep respectful bow I am firmly turned away.

Rob Cook

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Visit us on-line: Metropolitan Lines http://arts.brunel.ac.uk/gate/ml/index Brunel University http://www.brunel.ac.uk/ The Department of English at Brunel University, School of Arts http://www.brunel.ac.uk/about/acad/sa/artsub/english