Under The Fable - Issue 3

Issue3—November 3—November2015 2015 Issue

Catch up up with with author author Kate Kate Williams Williams Catch Catch up with author Kate Williams

We Test Drivenew newmobile mobileapp—Talehunt app—Talehunt We WeTest TestDrive Drive new mobile app—Talehunt

Featuringstunning stunningpoetry poetryand andprose prosefrom from Featuring AnthonyMorgan MorganClark—Andrew Clark—AndrewNeil NeilCarpenter—Joanna Carpenter—JoannaHughes Hughes Anthony —Elizabeth Gibson —Elizabeth Gibson Featuring stunning poetry and prose from And much more!

And much more!

Anthony Morgan Clark—Andrew Neil Carpenter—Joanna Hughes —Elizabeth Gibson And much more!

Adam’s first words: Being Creative Editor for Under The Fable was the best job I ever had, and then we lost Gareth. Now being Editor In Chief is the best job I will ever have. But this magazine isn’t just about my name being above the door.

Everyone who works for this magazine does so voluntarily. It doesn’t matter if they blog for us, or they edit for us, every single person who contributes to the sharing, writing, editing, and promoting of this magazine does so in their own time and for that I can only be grateful that they have stayed and dedicated so much to this publication.

I think my first published words as Editor in Chief of Under The Fable has to honour the team, and the readers for sticking with us, and coming back to us.

So whether you are new to us, or have read all our issues before, I am glad you are here. There are some superb pieces between these covers, some pieces so original that we couldn’t help but put them here. Not to mention our published author feature on Kate Williams, plus a review of a new and exciting app for writers. So Gareth we miss you. To everyone else: Welcome, welcome back, stay awhile.

Adam

Bloggers Wanted: Do you have something to say about literature and writing?

Under The Fable are looking for guest bloggers to air their wicked words on our blogspot. For more information email: stuart.underthefable@gmail.com

Contents Page 3: - Actually (Graphic Short) - Dave Crane

POETRY Page 8: - Ah Um —Stuart Buck Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page

9: - Time Keeper—Lauren Maltas 10: - Dust—Sofia Lopes 11: - Kingfisher—Tara Grainger 12: - Something—Richard M Thompson 13: - Deansgate Bridge—Darren Lea-Grime 14: - N ight River—Joshua Converse 15: - God to and orange—Elizabeth Gibson 16: - Video N asty—Barry Woods 17: - This is your tw enties —Hannah Chutzpah 19: - As poor as the day you met me —Julie Edgell 20: - N ot even close—Patricia Walsh 21: - [Shrub] - Jason Pilley 22: - Artists w ith dirty fingers —Holly Daffurn

THE INDUSTRY Page 24: - Test-driving the App—Adam Ward Page 25: - Falling like Alice—Bethany McTrustery Page 26: - Channelling the inner Gollum —Jennie Byrne

SHORT STORIES Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page

28: 31: 35: 38: 44: 47: 52: 54: 57: 58: 61: 65: 66: 70:

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Four Horns—Anthony Morgan Clark Ghosts in ‘The Alice’ - Adam C Ward The little blue bear… - Claire Whittaker Schooners—Reece Dinn On the Huth—Andrew Carpenter Only Seven Summers—Jonathan Brown The Cat’s Tale—Joanna Hughes Life on the edge—Dave Weaver P hantom tide—Michelle Luka Legacy— Lisa Stout Feeding the Belly God —Nick Peterson Sex Lies and Knitting —Sarada Gray King of the castle—Megan Palmer Equations—Pete Lewis

FINAL WORDS Page 73: - The Canary Song —Ghazal Choudhary Page 74: - Larry’s last word

Actually — by Dave Crane

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- Stuart Buck Later we walked down to the jazz bar, Where Charles Mingus and Duke Ellington threw out wah-wah dreams.

Trumpets whispered mysteries and Martini false dawns, hi-hats led us through the looking glass; we danced until dawn – folding into each other like a deck of cards.

And the saxophone reached its crescendo, and the jazzman collapsed.

We fell into fever that has lasted forever.

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- Lauren Maltas Holding onto your hands, like we always agreed, like the sun coming up.

You chime: each time in sequence, and now I feel danger.

Too fast, out of reach.

A poor exchange rate, I’ll waste this and pass my time.

But not tonight: not until the fire’s out, until I’ve said all I need.

Did you know your face is looking at me – Telling me things?

Explains to me the past – somehow they seem combined.

My moments are stretched.

And it won’t change a thing.

And I don’t need to know You are just a watch, but that’s all you need to be.

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- Sofia Lopes Spine traced by dusty fingertips.

It is night.

You rest.

Lids shut, yet gleams are switched alight.

Rustling in the mind, sustains.

Gentle disturbance, flesh rendered motionless Amidst the realm of oneiric torpor.

Your eyes seek for mirrored glass – For the surface of resemblance.

Your likeness glistens, sight dwells on constellations upon your chest Asterisms uncharted, unnamed.

I see them, a distant spark.

Beads along the throat of a dusky dome.

I touch you - a spine traced by dusty fingertips.

Milky dust that stars are made of.

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- Tara Grainger Each day, I watched you wing out across the lake over green algae that swirled on the surface, your wings a flash of electric.

You darted from your home, startled by my arrival.

Each time a rare jewel was presented to me – and taken away.

A shock against the greens and sludgy browns, stark grey rocks and sky, the aging heather.

I wished you to be still so I could drink you in, but not so still as I saw you the other morning.

I could have gazed at you then as long as I wished – If I had wanted – until time claimed each feather one by one.

But in that instant, still freshly fallen, bright blue feathers ruffled in the breeze.

I looked once.

Then quickly away.

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- Richard M Thompson Did you say something?

No, but I thought it – I imagined love in a breathless suit, asking for my hands.

Was I kicking you?

Yes, and I felt it: a pain rattled deep in harmony with my wayfaring bones.

Are you mad at me?

No, I drink too much.

The night is heavy.

Low on my crown where you kissed me to sleep.

Will we forget this?

Yes, when we're old.

I’ll watch a blade of grass and think it nothing but a dream.

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- Darren Lea-Grime The rain runs through the gaps in the metalwork and makes its way onto the blue brick.

Running in veins along mortar creases.

He was sat, slumped on the card like a washing load tipped out.

Head up and looking to me, hands out, he straightened a cig.

Unnoticed, nudged, and knocked, it tumbled in the loose air of the bridge.

His half swipe missed and wild-eyed he abandoned it and looked to me again.

In the moment time stuttered

(his first drag was polluted with the air of the roadside), and almost halted as the cig bounced end down, fell, rolled.

And was sucked into the mortar led stream to the gutter.

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- Josh Converse Young boatman, the yellow river, pale moon, Shimmering, paddles the oars, while his new wife sleeps.

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- Elizabeth Gibson The first I see in you, child, is a halo:

in a stained-glass window; that shade of gold, the light beating through on summer days.

You could be a planet: the light catching one side; radiating from the sky tangerine light in a sea of silver.

Maybe a ball: with your sky of tiny holes.

You would survive being thrown, to fall in the mud.

How about a buoy?

You would float on the wild sea and you would be just another buoy with no name – but you would be a lifesaver.

‘This,’ they’ll say in five billion years, ‘is an orange.

See how it glows. They’re more valuable than rubies.

People worshipped them, because they thought they came from the sky and could survive anything and saved lives.’

Now, of course, we worship strawberries.

Ghazal’s ‘Editor’s Pick’ 15

- Barry Woods A horror disease punched through

living room walls, left bloody handprints everywhere.

It grabbed me by the throat – while under-age.

I shouldn't have been watching zombie flesh-eaters banned from shelves;

mind thrilled with VHS, it uploaded my worst fears, and I could rewind those tapes, stop.

Pause, watch them over and over until I was infected dripping from the mouth.

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- Hannah Chutzpah This is your twenties.

Thank God for Facebook, emails and mobile phones, because if we were landlines and filofaxes, everything would be scribbled out three times.

'Til we switched to pencil for everyone.

Each page crumpling under the weight of its history: each erased address a ghost of a house share.

This is your twenties: Postcodes make good additions to passwords.

A techie taught you that seven jobs ago.

This is your twenties: The impermanence isn't painful per se: but it takes something from you; this lack of solid ground.

This is your twenties: And you are one of the urban nomads; lives organised by smartphones and scuppered by batteries or broken screens.

This is your twenties: How did you lose so many nights?

How did you gain so many biros?

A detritus gathering that you need to get clean of.

Just as soon as you find the time.

This is your twenties: You've now had more jobs than sexual partners, and you think you might be doing this wrong.

This is your twenties: Music and memories are digitised or discarded because who has room for hard copies?

This is your twenties: And you’re sure that dead laptop had something important on it but it’s moving time again.

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This is your twenties: Crises typed for broadcast in the small hours, agonies answered with animal gifs, because our loved ones are always reachable but usually too far away to give us a hug.

This is your twenties: Every object a burden as you box and unbox – moving from postcode to postcode picking where to plant your roots this season.

This is your twenties: And every next step could be ‘The One’ where you find the job with the pension scheme you'll actually use, or the person you'll grow old with but each maybe is scattered across your CV: Each pension contribution cooking in pots too small to keep track of, each nearly-there relationship reminding you how close you are from ever finding home.

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- Julie Egdell I take off the ring.

Feel the withered down welt of skin where it was, suddenly naked.

A white stripe where the sun should have shone.

You couldn’t afford the ring but bought it anyway.

When you gave it to me, you said I would think of you every time I looked at it.

That was five? Six years ago?

I did, and do still.

I have never taken it off.

Carried it in India when my hands swelled with the heat, bore the pain.

Carried it with other men – it cut them when I held their hands, shared their bed.

It’s diamonds reflected back the Scottish winter stars we shared together.

One of the diamonds is lost.

Tomorrow I will take it to the pawn shop with other broken and unwanted things, rings from lovers before you, or since.

Bands of broken futures, promises not kept.

How much easier it is to be the one who leaves.

How little I’ve thought of them, or you of me.

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- Patricia Walsh I could ask you to dance,

but where's the fun in that?

Carbon-copying the same moves, drunkenly poaching creatures doing the same, eating you with a tawdry premise.

I could buy you a drink but what would that achieve?

Doing my homework behind the bar,

timing beverages to sate your solitude at the very least, go on being impressed that you're not attached.

I could walk you home, but what's the point, pray tell?

You remain miles out from my constellation, grab a taxi while you can.

I'll walk home. Empty.

I could take your number but is that a good idea?

Lonely calls to voicemail, borderline stalking, yours for the taking, discreetly ignored, silently aggrieved until the last minute, brusquely rebuffed.

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- Jason Pilley I said: Do you want to see a magic-trick?

I could take you to my favourite graveyard, I could be your Tarot cards, I could draw on you, I could name every hair on your head, I could buy the skeleton of the last great whale and build you a bedroom inside, I could [shakeface gibber-gibber-gibber-gibber], I could lick tears off your cheeks,

I could lick you in all the places you’re not sure if you like beng licked, I could be Elastic Man and make love to you through every pore in your skin Simultaneously.

She said: You’re weird.

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- Holly Daffurn I like my artists filthy.

Restless fingers ink-drenched, the arid kiss of terracotta crumb like your hands are the landscape where your soul settles.

Every still life is a dialogue: I don't observe beauty, I articulate it.

I love that you reel-off-your-machine-gun-fire-of-wordswhen-the-spotlight-forms-a-halo-above-you but your mouth searches for all the right words in snatched conversations.

I like my artists filthy.

Stories that spew; reality and the decay.

Come to me paint-smeared, your fingertips dense with use, rosin-dusted trousers.

Tap your fingertips.

Let every tabletop be your masterpiece.

I like my art blood-streaked and raw.

The roaring in the vocal, the chisel cruel enough to cut bone.

Your world framed and shot.

Captured as you pervert the rule of thirds into exquisite fractals.

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Just weaving to the bar to buy a second coffee

is a dance to you.

Tiptoe trip graceful against the endless grey floor Your fingers nibbled by needles, your mind a canvas of colour.

I like my artists oblivious.

World-absorbed.

Self-unaware.

Where the line between canvas and hand does not exist.

The thrill as you reveal each new piece of art.

And all I can see is your eyes.

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Test-Driving the App: -Adam Ward

There seems to be an app for everything these days, from finding single people, to battling dragons. It is social media apps that probably hold the monopoly on our thumbs though. How many of us have Instagram, Snapchat, or Facebook apps? Let us face it, as a nation, we are addicted. So when a chance message from Talehunt came through to my twitter, asking me to review their new app for writers, I naturally shut down my Instagram to jump at the chance.

Talehunt is a new app aimed at prose writers. You have two hundred and fifty characters to play with, and in that space you create your story and post it on the feed for others to read. In return you get to read other stories, and follow other writers. The premise is simple; it is the bare bones of any social media app, just with the twist of prose writing. That’s it in a nutshell. The problem is, when you read this summary back, how do you distinguish it from any other social media app?

The first thing to note, is that it discards all the glitz of other apps. Talehunt is interested solely in the words and the content. With Instagram, poets can put spurious lines of rhyme, or Narm-tastic thought onto a black and white photo of a refugee looking thoughtfully into the distance, and of course it will reach one hundred likes within minutes. With Talehunt you have a natural green background, and white text.

The simplicity itself is rather stylish, and you are not distracted by well-chosen pictures. It is nice to be able to judge the popularity of words in this way. The only issue is actually getting your words seen.

Talehunt seems to rank the stories in order of popularity, therefore as a new used, your first tale will be at the bottom of a pile waiting for someone to see your work. Talehunt also forces you to use a hashtag system by way of titling your piece, although there seems to be no way to search the app using these hashtags. There also seems to be no way to comment on the pieces, or communicate with other Talehunt users, which in some ways defies the point of a social media app. It would be nice to read praise or feedback upon the pieces that we have crafted. But these are minor irritations. All in all, Talehunt is a simple and attractive app that has a lot of potential. The only question is, how should we use it?

Whizzbang-blinkandyoumiss-flash fiction has its limitations. It forces writers to try and put too much of a spotlight on a single dimension of their story. Even the most gifted of writers would struggle to carve a piece in such a small space that will live with the reader for longer than a couple of minutes. But still, it is fun to read other people’s words. But, if you were writing a novel, this would be the perfect way to judge which of your darlings you must kill. Furthermore, Talehunt allows you to share on other social media newsfeeds, so if nothing else you get an attractive finish for your words to frame on Instagram.

All in all, this app is good. As with anything new, there is room for improvement and upgrading, but let us be fair: this is a brand new app, and it does exactly what it promises. It is free from your Play store, and available on all android and iPhone handsets, there is no reason why it shouldn’t be on your phone, at least for a short time. The creators and owners are also accessible and quick to respond to any query, so if you are interested in what they have planned for the future, they feel quite free to talk about their product. It’s almost as if they are proud of Talehunt. And so they should be.

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Falling Like Alice: Review of Kate Williams’

The Edge of the fall.

-Bethany McTrustery

Fiction set during, or in the aftermath, of World War One is widely read. Society is fascinated with the period of time when the world was on its knees. Books such as In Pale Battalions, Birdsong and A Farewell to Arms are prime examples of this fascination. The Edge of the Fall is a continuation from The Storms of War.

Celia De Witt is trapped in the dusty corridors of Stoneythorpe Hall, her parents still reeling at the loss of their youngest son. She wanders aimlessly, making attempts to befriend her orphaned cousin, Louisa. But when Celia moves to London, there are events unfolding that may whisk her away from the thoughts of her future. The past seems to haunt her steps.

The different points of view allow for a series of cliffhangers and intrigue, not unlike an episode of Downton Abbey, and the character development is well managed, allowing you to connect deeply with Celia. She rebels against the crumbling ruins of her childhood home, wanting to be independent and away from her parents. The reader would be hard-pushed not to feel any sort of sympathy, and admiration at how she reacts to the bumps in her life. Celia and Arthur are perhaps the strongest characters in this novel. The deliberate distancing of Arthur helps enhance the mystery surrounding him.

Powerful storytelling leaves the reader running behind in the narrative’s wake, and the tempo shifts so often that you’ll find yourself clutching the book tighter. The sections of the novel that follow Celia tend to be more gripping, and the cliffhangers made all the more shocking for it. The various sub-plots are tangled and interlinked. The level of research that has been put into this book is prominent. Small details and language are used to keep the reader immersed in the time period.

It features an un-put-downable quality seen in some of the more well know classics. Yet it develops a tone and style unlike any other war fiction read previously. The development is impacting and engaging, often leaving the reader in suspense.

Some characters are so real by the end of the novel; it feels like you could have a conversation with them.

Considering this novel is a follow-on, Kate Williams does a fantastic job of ensuring the reader is not lost in the events. It shows us the situation of people trying to pick up the pieces after the ‘war to end all wars’.

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Channelling the inner Gollum An Interview with Kate Williams

-Jennie Byrne

Kate Williams is a historian, author, presenter and lecturer. Is it any wonder I was nervous when it came to interview day?

Kate’s new novel, The Edge of the Fall, is the second instalment of her latest series. It was released on 19th November. I was able to catch up with her that very morning. “It’s really exciting and obviously I’m thrilled that you’re interviewing me. You see something that’s been part of your life, and that you’ve been working on in your secret den where the novel and characters have been in your head. It’s really thrilling. It’s my seventh book but nothing beats the excitement of having a book out and seeing it on the shelves. It’s a feeling you can’t beat really, it’s wonderful. It’s your baby.” I’m sure the majority of us would be channelling our inner Gollum, sitting in the corner saying my precious.

You can learn a lot from where authors write. “I write a lot in the library and then a lot at home in my den. I’m surrounded by all my books there, my desk and my things. It’s a mental journey as well. I dive so deep into the characters; I don’t feel like I’m in the real world. It’s a completely different place. Then you emerge, blinking from your dark cave.”

Kate’s writing process involves extensive reading. Many novels influenced the way she wrote The Edge of the Fall. “The 1920’s is such a great era for the novel; you’ve got so many wonderful ones.

I read a lot of Scott Fitzgerald, the Persephone books, there were books about women that I found really invaluable. Authors like Agatha Christie; I found them incredible for research. There’s just an incredible wealth of material out there, it’s something that should be treasured. I did have a lot of background on the 1920’s, but it wasn’t enough. I needed to do a lot of research. The social life of people, the politics, the economics, the society. What was going on in the world at the same time?

What were they eating? What were they wearing? What were they drinking? How did they speak?”

Kate published several historical biographies, and in 2012, a novel of her own was published called The Pleasures of Men. “I always wanted to write a novel. I wrote my first novel when I was seven called The Adventures of Maria. I’ve written many novels before, but they hadn’t quite worked. Then in 2008, after I submitted my book about Queen Victoria, I went to Paris and started writing. It started with me walking round the streets of Paris in the dark, wondering about the 18 th century.

“I want to time travel. I made a time-travelling machine when I was a child. I made this thing out of a box and covered it in foil, and then I put my brother in it. I wouldn’t let him out. I took it round saying ‘we’re going travelling’. I can’t put him in a box now but I feel I time travel every day.

I don’t really belong in the twenty-first century, I mean, I have an iPad and I use the computer but in my heart I wish I was writing with a quill in the Victorian times.”

NEW IN HARDBACK Orion Fiction 26

The pressure of everyday life makes writing all the more tricky. “I’ll think that I’ve got a whole day to write and then something comes up so I have to do that. It’s difficult to have to cram everything in and sometimes I do think ‘this is madness, absolute madness, what am I doing?’ But then I get an offer and I think ‘oh that sounds goods’, so that tells you a bit about me. I have to cram it all in.” Though despite all that pressure, “I feel privileged to be living a life of books, a life of arts, history and literature. That’s my life. I get to do what I love every day. I feel very lucky, so that’s what I have to remind myself when I’m getting a 6am train to Reading.”

So what’s the next step? “I think what most people really want is their book to be made into a film. A couple of mine have been optioned. A rather celebrated author once told me ‘I’d hate to see my book on screen in case I hate it.’ That seemed a bit weird to me, I was thinking, ‘really? I’ll spend every day in the local Odeon with bag of popcorn, saying ‘that’s my film everyone!’”

So how much was this series planned out? Was it always meant to be a series? “It was, I just became fascinated by the lives of German people and what it was like for them living in Britain. I’d written about the Victorians and the next stage was the consequences of the Victorian Empire. It is the war, and experience of real life people in the war, so it was always meant to be a trilogy and perhaps will continue. So my next one goes up to 1939. I’m aiming to get that in for Christmas, so it’ll be out next November. It’d be amazing if we could have one up to 1945, maybe we could go to the 1970’s, 1980’s then we can take them up into space…so you never know I might go all the way up to the 1980’s. I’ve been working on the third for a couple of years now, so should be getting there now. The Storms of War was finished in 2013, so I had time to work on The Edge of the Fall and the next in the series.”

And for the young writers out there? “I honestly think people can be discouraging when you’re a young writer and say, ‘oh don’t bother writing books.’ I think it’s important to follow your heart. This is what I say to my creative writing students: ‘don’t think about selling, don’t think about agents or deals, what matters is writing the best book you can and it will find its audience.’ You have to write a book from the heart, a book that is honest and true and it will find its audience. I read a book by a famous agent who said ‘I’d never want to write a book because all writers are fat, depressed, and complaining about money.’ There is a degree of sense in that, being a writer is not for the fainthearted. You have to go deep into your soul and you have to expose yourself to the world in a vulnerable way. I think it’s important to follow your own dreams and if that means keeping your ideas a secret at first, which I have done in the past, that’s the way to do it. I think our friends and loved ones just don’t want to see us hurt, and they don’t want to see us rejected, so they’re trying to protect us.

But I think sometimes it’s best to keep your plans to yourself, then you can expose them and bring them out there when the time’s right.”

This has been without a doubt one of the most informative experiences I have ever had the pleasure to relay. The students at Reading are certainly lucky to be taught by such an intelligent, and creative woman as Kate Williams, and such a humble author. I urge all the readers of Under The Fable to get themselves to their nearest book, stamp their feet and refuse to leave until they have a Kate Williams masterpiece in their hands.

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- Anthony Morgan Clark The two of them sat atop the National Gallery, watching the crowds in Trafalgar Square, their legs dangling over the edge of the building. It was early summer in London, which was to say that the clouds were thinner than they had been a few weeks before, and the sun approaching warm when it managed to cut through.

‘How are we doing?’ asked the taller. His name was Al. He liked to appear tall and broad-shouldered, with wavy blonde hair slicked back. Sometimes he wore sunglasses, but today it wasn’t worth the effort.

‘Terribly,’ replied his companion. Lee favoured a shorter appearance, darker hair and a pot belly. ‘We were meant to turn twenty by sundown. Thirty, if they had already sinned and we could lead them further down the darker path.’

‘What are we on?’

‘Three.’

‘Oh.’ From here they could watch the crowds, but more importantly they could see the auras of every person in the crowd too. Auras didn’t just broadcast a person’s emotional state to these two; they could read a person’s lifestyle, habits, choices... and propensity for certain kinds of behaviour.

Al sighed. ‘I thought it’d be nice to come up here, for a change, you know? I miss the pigeons. We don’t get pigeons down there. But this, if I’m really honest, is bloody boring.’

‘Tell me about it. I spend most of my time up here. I just seem to get lumped with this gig whether I want it or not. I remember when this was a craft. You could spend years destroying a man’s life, piece by piece, choice by choice, until his soul was as black as slate. Nowadays, it’s a couple of sins and on to the next one. Still, at least it’s not misty. Mist gets everywhere, takes hours to dry out after a day spent sat in the mist. And it fuzzes up the auras something terrible.’

‘Oh!’ There was the sound of air imploding, and Al disappeared briefly. When he reappeared he was grinning.

‘Heh heh heh.’

‘What did you get?’

‘Adultery. That fella, there. The one with the brown jacket, the ginger one. Got a silly little beard. His PA has been flirting with him for weeks now, and he’s going to decide to take her out when he gets back to the office. A few drinks, then back to hers for a quickie in the kitchen. He’ll dump her a few weeks before his girlfriend gets suspicious.’

Lee squinted. ‘Yep, got him.’ He opened the app on his phone and pressed an icon. ‘Adultery. Bingo. That’s four, then.’

‘What time is it?’

‘About half past eleven.’

‘Oh.’

Adam’s ‘Editor’s Pick’ 28

The sun climbed the sky and discovered more cloud. Whether or not it was a better class of cloud made little difference to those below. In Trafalgar Square more and more humans were carrying food. Many auras dimmed as people threw litter on to the ground. Some felt guilty as they did so. Others couldn’t care less.

‘Got anything to eat?’ asked Lee. ‘Penguin or Kit-Kat?’ ‘Um, Penguin if you don’t mind. Tea? I’ve a flask here.’

‘Yeah, why not.’

More time passed as they scanned the crowds. No prospects were found. People passed beneath them, every one with a small hint of sin about them. Some were carrying stolen biros.

Some fancied their best friend’s partner but would never do anything about it. Some knew they had been given too much change at the till and kept it. Some never tipped when they knew they should.

But there was nothing of real consequence, no sin to cause harm enough to register towards their quota.

‘There. There!’ Al pointed into the crowd. ‘Two o’clock, carrying an Iron Man messenger bag.’

‘I see him...’

‘Homosexual!’

Lee turned to face Al. ‘Really? How many decades has it been since they let you up here last?’

Al’s hand dropped to his side. ‘Not a sin anymore?’

‘Never was.’

‘But I thought–’ ‘Lots of people did. Turned out it was just a typo.’

‘Really?’

‘Yep. Love thy neighbour didn’t specify any type of neighbour for a reason. Nowhere was it written Love thy neighbour except the ones who are a slightly different colour or worship at a different church or fancy different people than you do. That’s the problem with humans – even when given a clear instruction they’ll always twist it to suit their own prejudice.’

‘Oh.’ Minutes passed. Five or six pigeons were now vying for Al’s attention. One decided to try his luck with Lee and was swatted away.

‘D’you think He did that on purpose?’ asked Al. ‘What?’

‘Put all that stuff in there, that contradicts all the other stuff.’

‘Never really thought about it.’

‘Because if you read the book, his side killed a lot more people than our side did. If he’s screwing with them he could easily be screwing with us.’

‘Never really thought about it.’

‘Maybe he’s a double agent. Maybe he runs both departments.’

‘Shut up.’

‘That’s no way to speak to people. Anyway, have you ever seen the two bosses in the same room at the same time?’

‘No, but...no. I can’t see it myself. Ham sandwich? It’s got some of that red Welsh mustard in it, got a zing to it but lots of flavour.’

‘Sorry I can’t. Vegetarian. Got any cheese?’

More time passed. The crowds ebbed and flowed. Two more potential adulterers were tipped over the edge of temptation, one man resolved to con an old business partner, and one teenager decided to steal a Mars bar from the local Tesco express after finding he had left his wallet at home.

‘Every little helps,’ said Lee as he tapped away at his phone.

‘This job is harder than it used to be. D’you think?’ Al fed cheese crumbs to a pigeon as he spoke.

‘Sometimes. Yeah, I guess so.’

‘It’s as if they’re doing most of the work for us.’

‘I know.’

‘Remember when everyone was expected to live by The Book?’

‘Only in certain places, mind.’

‘True, but it was easier then. Sin, or not a sin. Now it’s all ‘free thought’ this and ‘personal responsibility’ that. Where does that leave us?’

‘Yeah, I know.’

More minutes passed. One person kept a tenner from the floor when they knew who in the crowd had dropped it, pockets were picked, and a fully-grown adult male intentionally downloaded a Justin Bieber track, for reasons not even Al and Lee could fathom. They decided to leave that last one alone.

Al drained the last of his tea and handed the mug back to Lee. ‘Got any crisps?’

‘Got some Monster Munch.’

‘They’ll do. Pickled onion or roast beef?’

‘Beef.’

‘Pass them over.’ He opened the packet and inspected the contents. ‘Oh. What happened?’ He frowned at Lee. ‘Didn’t these bags used to be bigger? There can’t be more than a dozen in there!’

29

ages.’

‘You have been away, son. They’ve been like that for

After finishing the Monster Munch, Al scrunched up the packet and threw it over the edge of the roof. He watched as it opened a little way, and floated down to the steps below.

‘Don’t do that, it makes the place look untidy.’

‘We’ve a Hell of a lot more to worry about than that, my friend.’

‘True. But still. Don’t.’

‘D’you think we made the wrong career choice?’

Lee shrugged. ‘There’s only two options open to the likes of us. And really, we’re both two sides of the same coin.

Once people start to question, start to act out of responsibility instead of fear of retribution, we’re pretty much redundant.

We need to be a lot more creative than we used to be.’

Al checked his watch and let out a long sigh. ‘Sod this.

Shift’s over in ten minutes. May as well start packing up now.’

‘You mean clock off early? Isn’t that against the rules?’

And two more auras, invisible to their owners, turned a shade darker.

All this space irritates us: Why not take an advert out with us for our next publication?

Email: underthefable@gmail.com

30

- Adam C Ward Our dolly-tub’s throttled more blood from my clothes than I’d wish to recall. Susan’s got herself quite good at it. Every rusty fleck gone. Well, practice makes perfect don’t it? Not even a needlepoints worth left when the tubs emptied. Shame, there’s no dolly-tub for the mind.

A man forgets it for a time. Continues picking hops in Autumn, drinking bitter sludge in The Alice, or scratching a slate of noughts and crosses with his daughter. But, a memory, or a dream will jump him again. Bile finds the throat. Palsy returns. Christ how that blood yields a permanent stain.

Could see it in Ernie. Poor lad. Only thing shivering more than his chalky hands was his hoarse voice. He wrung his glass like he was strangling a toddler. Geoff, the grubby barkeep, told me he barely said a word since ordering, nearly an hour ago. His mouth barely moved. Not surprised, poor lad, the blood had got him.

I’d already heard. Long before stepping into The Alice, rubbing my hands clean of the snapping winter, I already knew. If we’re all honest, us policemen, we probably knew as we kissed our wives at the door this morning. Or last year, every time a body was found in the East End. We knew the year before, standing over the Pinchin Street torso, sooner or later we’d feel that frigid trickling down our necks. Each hair would try to flee the consuming gooseflesh. Jack. Jack’s back.

‘She winked at me Louis.’ Ernie’s glazed view didn’t waver from the distant spot over my shoulder. ‘She winked. ‘Er face was cold, no bubbles where ‘er throa’ was cu’. Bu’ she winked at me.’ He was seeing the blood in that glassy horizon behind me.

‘Should go home Ernie. Go home and see your wife. Ain’t no reason to be drinking today, Christ.’ Had he heard me? Perhaps he could hear the blood too.

‘Jus’ once, she winked. poolin’ be’ind ‘er ‘ead.’

Jus’ once.

Blood was jus’

‘What was her name?’

‘Uh? Sorry wha’?’ His eyes found mine. His hands shook ale into his mouth.

‘Her name? Do you know?’ He paused for a moment, swallowing.

‘Frances. Frances Coles. The bangtails of Flower an’

31

hops. Drinking a pint.

‘Her name was Catherine.’

****

Her name, was Nuffin. That’s what she told us anyway. Nothing. She was mid belch and grinning, almost dragging me to the ground as she stumbled. Her hair was wild like brambles. Some strands slick with sweat. Other’s dry and brittle, breaking out of her bonnet.

Nothing had been on the ruin. Found her on Aldgate. Quite a crowd she’d drawn. -Choppin’ an’ swushin’ like a fire engine Boss- A shrill voice chimed. A pale face in a crowd of London ghosts. Didn’t matter which one. Nothing was a mess, not a fire engine. She’d not put out a candle dribbling down her black jacket like she was.

-The blue bottle wants to dab it up with the glocky haybag- Another ghost. A baritone. I was tugging her up from the ground. I was the Cockney King, all buttons and playing spoons, dancing with Nothing. More wraiths came to see me cause a greater jolly than Mr Punch. Many more spectral sniggers, bone thin arms pointing. She’d drop, my shoulder would lurch to the rim of the socket. Nothing found her feet to rapturous cheering and clapping. Ghosts rattling their chains.

I should have left her. Admitted defeat. Slung her back to the cold cobbles among the ghosts. Nothing. The glocky haybag. I’d not hear her clopping in my dreams, nor swooshing in my kitchen at night. She’d be a fleeting thought. A funny story to tell Susan and the children. I should have left her with the ghosts. There floats a phantom on the slums foul air.

‘What’s your name?’ We were back at the station.

‘Nuffin’ she giggled and slumped on the bench in her cell, and slid down the stone wall. Nothing vomited on the floor. A glistening perfume of gin and vinegar.

‘What’s your bloody name?’

-Watch your language will you Lou?- Mathers shouted from somewhere. Probably in another cell with another of London’s pasty problems. Could have been at the counter. On the stairs delivering a message to the jacks. From the walls. I heard him this morning. He echoed somewhere in here, in my head, when the London ghosts called out: -Jack. Jack’s back- A boding voice from your foul chaos calls.

****

‘Wha’ she look like?’ Ernie had his eyes on the scuffed floor of The Alice. Someone nudged my back, muttered a sorry, and exited my day.

‘She might have been handsome once. Before her breasts were hanging bits of dripping.

Perhaps she was worth buying a gin for. Before she came to London. Forty-two though, she’d be good enough for the drinking men of The Chapel.’ My drink was untouched, a few small bubbles clung to the glass. Little eyes watching.

‘Frances. Well I’ll never know. I me’ ‘er when she was a mess. Didn’ know blood was black in moonligh’. ‘Er ‘ole dress was black.’ Ernie looked at his hands. Perhaps the blood was crawling on him. Perhaps a spot just wasn’t washing away, no matter how he scrubbed. I remember Edward said he wanted to thrust his hands in lye to clean them.

‘I didn’t find her body you know,’ I told Ernie. ‘Edward found her.’ ‘’Er ‘ole dress was soaked Lou.’ Edward found her. She wasn’t Nothing then.

****

32

Her name was Mary. Or so she had written. Mary Ann Kelly. Not the one pulled apart in Millers Court. Murder-inviting nooks. That was Mary Jane. Mary Ann was sliced in Mitre Square. Right up against the factory wall. She wore her own guts as a scarf. So Edward said. Poor lad.

-Migh’ of missed ‘er Lou, if the moon ‘adn’t shone frough the clouds an’ caugh’ ‘er skir’His hands were a grainy claret. Peach flesh lines cut through the red, like a poorly painted door. But Edwards eyes were dark and dead. Little eyes, a marionette’s, coal on a snowman. Migh’ of missed ‘er Lou. The way he swallowed before he spoke, and wrung his fingers together, you could tell it had him. The blood. It gave him my name. It was written in the twitch of his lips.

My name was all over her. If the moon ‘adn’t shone. It was written on the grubby hem of her skirt. My name was the indent left by the pen, on her thumb and fingers as she wrote ‘Mary’. The click in her wrist as she scribbled ‘Kelly’. Migh’ of missed ‘er.

London was a coal sulphurous wasteland at night. Dank roofs, dark entries. Fairies glimmered, dying in cases on metal posts, spilling small circles of light. Rats could easily skirt the edges, bats skittered undetected for what good the gas lamps were - and Jack? Well he festered in the shadows. He surrounded the light, thwarted it’s reach. Migh’ of missed ‘er Lou. Out in smoke roofed England, somewhere, a serpent slithered across cobbles. Death-reeking gutters. A circumcised snake? An eel with a Doctor’s bag? A basilisk butcher? Fangs sharp enough to empty a woman. Precise enough to inscribe arrows beneath her eyes. It took an apron, a kidney. A life.

Man rapes a world, throws up thick boxes, burns and blackens the sky, fills cities with ghosts, and in the bowels of the earth a darkness awakens. Closely clustered walls. Sooner or later, we’re all Jack the Ripper. We’re his victims. We’re killing, dying. We lengthen the shadows for him to feed, and our hands are all poorly painted doors. I asked her name. She wrote ‘Mary Ann Kelly’ and lay like a discarded bodice against a factory. Migh’ of missed ‘er Lou. **** ‘Sh’wuz ineer. Th’uvva nigh’ sh’wuz. Carrotty Nell. Wiv a man. Dint gerriz name like.’ Geoff’s eyes were bright like cornflowers. Like the frost on his stubble. ‘Sh’wur aw-righ’ then. Ain’ seen’er since like. Th’fella though, ‘e wur righ’ shif’y. Ya know. Wron’.’ His eyes were too bright. Shifting from table to table as he spoke. A Cockney King for eavesdroppers. Choppin’ an’ swushin’ Boss. Another London ghost.

‘She weren’ alrigh’ when I saw ‘er. She winked at me.’ Ernie’s jaw tightened. His fist clenched.

‘Gay wom’n foun’ Jack dint she. Th’Chap’l ain’ righ’ a’ nigh’. Prob’ly ‘er own faul’ like. Shoul’n’t’ve lef’ s’early.’ ‘’Er own faul’?’

‘Sh’d’still be walkin’ ‘roun’ like.’ ‘’Er own faul’?’ Ernie was standing. His left hand tapping frantic morse code into his trouser leg.

‘Sit down Ernie.’ I stood too. A flash crossed beneath the glass in his eye sockets. ‘Sit down. Geoff didn’t mean no harm.’ ‘’Er own faul’? She winked. One eye. The other ‘ad a crust of blood. ‘Er throat looked like a carpen’er ‘ad been at it. Nobody deserves tha’ ‘cep’ the ripper. If I smash this glass over your ‘ead, would tha’ be your faul’?’ Ernies knuckles blanched around the table, as though he’d pitch it across The Alice.

‘Christ Ernie, sit down!’

‘An’ you.’ Glassy fire found me. ‘You ‘rested some ‘aybag who got ‘erself killed an’ you think you know ‘ow I feel? Save your wind.’

‘Sit down. I ain’t finished.’

‘She winked at me. you ‘rested someone alive.’

‘If I hadn’t arrested her she’d still be alive.’ Everyone turned. The whole pub was eavesdropping. We were red, we were standing. Ernie’s face in mine. My nose hovering close to his.

‘We killed her.’ We sat down slowly; quiet as London ghosts.

****

Her name was Kate once. Somewhere north, where everyone speaks like half-wits. Kate loved Soldier Tommy. She had him on her arm, a feathery ‘TC’ in faded black. Soldier Tommy loved ale, Kate loved the ruin. He tattooed a bruise to her eye. He opened her lip. Their children cowered in the long shadows. Little eyes watching. Little bubbles clinging to the edge of lamplight, cramped on a cold floor. Soldier Tommy loved Kate. Kate left Soldier Tommy. She left The North, where everyone talks like half-wits.

She was Polly Nichols. She was Annie Chapman, Long Lizzie Stride. She’d be Mary Jane Kelly. She’s Carrotty Nell.

Her name was Catherine Eddowes. So said a blanched and tear stained London ghost. John, he told me, John Kelly. She was Catherine, sometimes Kelly, Catherine Eddowes.

33

Catherine had wrapped her arms around John Kelly under a faltering Autumn sun. The sort of sun that painted the sky with a silent fire. A fire that beat the edge of London’s black woollen lid. She spilt hops on the ground. John twirled her, kissed her smile with the lips he would cover to stop her dead stench reaching the back of his throat.

She was badly kneaded bread with a burnt crust. She was off meat on a stove. The police doctor was sick in the corner. -She is Catherine- John’s ghost retched.

Catherine had wrapped her legs around John Kelly under a boarding house roof. Many nights. A gay woman. A bangtail. Mother. Lover. They’d moaned. Talked of a future. A future sealed in Aldgate. Choppin’ an’ swushin’ Boss.

John Kelly didn’t ask who’d opened Catherine’s stomach. He didn’t ask what Jack had taken from her. John didn’t ask about Jack.

-Why’d you le’ ‘er ou’ a’ nigh’? Why’d you’ no’ wai’ ‘til the Devil ‘ad gone to bed? **** Ernie was silent. He’d stopped shaking. nobody in The Alice said a word, or shook a glass. A room of London ghosts. A dolly-tub for the mind. Little eyes watching our table. Words are water emptied into a courtyard.

‘It was our mercy. We let her go.’ **** His name is George. He was just starting. I was getting ready for going home. I’d got a black eye from a scuffle with a cabbie. George asked me about Nothing.

‘Let her go. Get her home.’

But George was worried about Jack.

‘Just get that bloody bangtail out of here.’ I walked to her cell and opened the door. Glistening perfume of gin and vinegar. Nothing Mary Catherine sat fixing her bonnet and smoothing her apron. Her muddy eyes squinted. She smiled at my black eye, at my tight straight lips and scarlet cheeks. She walked away and shouted at George.

‘I’ll get a damned fine hiding when I get home.’

George told her it served her right. She had no right to get drunk.

‘Goodnight old cock.’ She turned left out the door. The Devil sits on the left shoulder. The angel to the right. Turn right. She turned left. Migh’ of missed ‘er Lou. Between the dying fairies, slid a serpent. To the left, where you throw spilt salt. The smoke spitting castles threw dark on top of black, and Nothing Jane Catherine walked. Jack was waiting. He’d slept in her final drop of ruin, held open the door to her cell. Jack had swam in the ink, clung to the pen, sighed in a paper’s grain. -Let her go. Get her home- Jack spoke from my mouth.

The door shut, a heavy thud. ‘Goodnight old cock’ she called. There floats a phantom on the slums foul air. More London ghosts. Get her home. Turn right. Nothing Mary Kate turned left. She should have stayed. ‘Til the Devil ‘ad gone to bed? ****

Long moments are silent. Like The Alice, like water trickling between stones. Like the shadows between dying fairies. Ernie lifted the drink to his face, the last of the ale fled to his throat. The Alice door opened, and a London ghost in blue spoke, loud and breathlessly. -They caught him. Some drunk named SadlerThe Alice sprang to life. A crescendo. London ghosts, all chattering at once.

34

- Claire Whittaker Bluebell was a little blue teddy-bear who didn't like being blue.

There was nothing special about blue. Blue was very ordinary. In fact, the whole sky was blue underneath the clouds and it was always there, every day. Bluebell didn't know exactly how big the sky was but the bit of it she had seen was really rather large. She imagined you would have to walk for days, at least, if not a whole week to get far enough away so as you couldn't see it anymore. All summer long the sky had been blue, blue, blue and she was bored of it.

In fact, Bluebell actually wanted to be pink, but you have to promise not to tell anyone that.

‘Why not?’ I hear you ask.

Well of course, I forgot you wouldn't know.

You see, when Wood-Bears are babies they have brightly coloured fur so their parents can find them easily and don't go getting all worried like parents always seem to do. When they grow up their fur changes colour to become golden or brown, like we think of real bears being. This makes it easier for them to hide as bears are actually quite shy. (In fact I bet that if you went for a walk in the woods right now, you wouldn't see a single bear the whole entire time. But you shouldn't take my word for it so when you've finished this story see if a grown-up will take you on a bear hunt; you never know what you might find.) In this wood, all the bears who are born in summer are pink and all the bears who are born in winter are blue. No one knows why, despite many books being written on the topic, but it meant that all the summer born bears like pink best and all the winter born bears like blue.

All of them, except Bluebell.

Poor Bluebell.

If only she had been born in the summer she could wear pink all the time. But as it was she had once worn a pink bow to nursery and some nasty other bear had laughed at her.

‘Why are you wearing pink?’ the bear had said ‘Blue fur doesn't go with pink at all.’ Then she laughed. And all the other bears laughed too (although some of them didn't really think it was very funny but everyone else was laughing so they thought they should join in). Poor Bluebell got embarrassed and took the bow out, even though she'd been perfectly happy with it before. Bluebell had a big floppy hat with a big pink ribbon around it and a long necklace made of pearly pink beads which she would have happily worn every day for the rest of her life but she didn't want the nasty bear to laugh at her again.

It wasn't fair, she decided, that summer bears got to like pink just because that was the colour they were born. If she had pink fur all her problems would be solved. So that's when Bluebell made her plan.

The day was sunny, the air was warm and the sky was, as always, annoyingly blue. Bluebell decided it was the perfect day to go to Isaiah's mobile library and change the world. Isaiah was a fessor but not just any kind of fessor, he was a Pro-fessor. Bluebell knew that being a 'pro' meant

35

someone was very good at something and so she knew that fessor must mean very clever because that's what Professor Isaiah was: very good at being very clever.

Bear cubs are allowed a lot more freedom than children are (this has something to do with the fact that there are a lot more things that are scared of bears than things bears are scared of), so it was easy for Bluebell to sneak off on her own. In fact, her mother would probably have been perfectly happy to let Bluebell go to the library anyway, if she'd asked, but that wouldn't have felt as secret or special.

The main clearing in the wood was very busy because it was market day. There was a scattering of brightly coloured tents which all the grown-up bears were going in and out of swapping supplies of berries and nuts to trade for other things, exotic things from places Bluebell had never heard of. Bluebell normally liked to go around the market and learn about all the traders. If she was lucky she might get the chance to try some strange food or play with a new toy. But today Bluebell went straight to the library trying her very best to make sure she didn't look as though she wasn't supposed to be there. She knew the easiest way to get caught doing something she wasn't supposed to do was by looking as though she wasn't supposed to be doing it.

The mobile library always came on market day and was open for all bears to go inside and look at the books. It wasn't like the sort of mobile library you probably know because it was a magic mobile library. I'm sure every sensible child already knows that teddy-bears can do magic, but the grown-ups might want to know a little bit more so I'll explain all about it later. The library was a big building made of pale stone blocks and had a clock and some big gold letters saying 'LIBRARY' over the door. It was almost empty inside, because it was such a nice sunny day that all the bears wanted to be outside. The only bear Bluebell saw as she crept through the doors was an old bear with glasses reading a book on the merits of fungal medicine.

Bluebell went straight to the back of the library. It was very quiet. So quiet all Bluebell could hear was her own breathing... and something else. A sort of humming. She realised it was coming from the books. If you've ever been anywhere that has a lot of books you will know those places feel magical. Books are powerful. When you read you learn new things you didn't know before. Sometimes when you read you get new ideas that weren't in either your head or the book before but somehow, poof! they appear. Now that is magical.

Teddy-bears are very clever, much cleverer than people it must be admitted, because they know how to capture this magic. They can see it. If floats off the books into the air in a fine dust a bit like the sand in an hour-glass except it glows. If you're really lucky and the sun catches it just right, you can see it too. Little specks of magic floating in the air.

However, bears can do something even more special than just see magic. They can use it. All the Library-Bears in Professor Isaiah's magic library are trained to catch the magic dust into nets, a bit like butterfly nets. They use this dust as ink to write in special blank books that are stored around the library and poof! just like that, whatever they write comes true. That's how they make the library move around to different places. Now only specially trained Library-Bears are supposed to use magic but they are very trusting bears and don't expect naughty little bears like Bluebell to come along and try and change the world. So, although there were no Library-Bears around, one of them had left their net leaning against the bookshelf. Bluebell took it and with some difficulty, for she was only a very small bear and it was a very large net, she scooped up some magic dust and hurried away through the library to find one of the empty books.

The book was very large and sat on a heavy wooden stand which was carved to look like a tree with roots that disappeared into the floor and branches supporting the book. Bluebell was so little she had to climb up the stand to see the book properly. It was a bit difficult at first because the net got in the way but she soon got to the top as bears are very good at climbing (if you don't believe me then ask a grown-up, they are sure to know all about it.)

The book was open on a new page. It was so smooth and clean Bluebell was almost scared to ruin it with writing, but nearly falling back over the edge soon fixed that fear as she wanted to get down as soon as possible.

There was a feather next to the book which had its tip cut at an angle to make a special kind of pen called a quill. When a quill is dipped into ink it can be used to write things or draw. So when Bluebell dipped her quill into the magic dust she could write her wish in the book just like you could with a pen. Except of course with an ordinary pen your wish won't come true.

‘I wish,’ she wrote, ‘that all the Wood-Bears who were born in the winter were blue and all the Wood-Bears who were born in the summer were pink.’

She put a full stop at the end of the sentence before remembering her manners smudging it away and adding ‘please’ onto the end.

Nothing seemed to happen.

Bluebell shut her eyes tight.

Suddenly she heard shouts of surprise from outside.

The spell must have worked! Her eyes flew open and she stared down at her paws.

But it was all wrong. Her paws weren't the sort of pink she'd wanted at all. They were bright ugly pink. This was no good, it would clash just horribly with her hat.

Bluebell was just thinking about re-doing her spell when angry voices came into the library.

She jumped off the stand and hid behind the bookshelf. The voices came closer. Then she saw them and what she saw made her gasp. All of the bears were pink and blue. All of them. Even the adults.

This wasn't what she'd meant to do. She could see her brother Strawberry in the crowd and his fur was as dark as a blueberry. He did not look happy.

‘Where's Isaiah?’ demanded a pink bear at the front of the crowd. ‘He must know what's

36

happening, only Library-Bears could do this.’

Professor Isaiah came down the stairs from his study. He wore a purple waistcoat scattered with gold stars just in case anybear didn't already know he was magical. Everyone gasped when they saw him because instead of his usual brown fur he too was bright blue. He looked in the book Bluebell had written in.

‘Who's been writing in the magic book?’

The crowd was silent. Bluebell hid herself further behind the bookshelf. But she knocked into the next shelf and a book fell down with a big BUMP! Professor Isaiah came around the corner and saw her.

‘Did you write in the magic book?’ he asked. He looked very big and scary to the frightened little Bluebell.ey don't expect bears are supposed to use the magic dust but library-bears are very make it move around to ‘No,’ she told him, but a bit uncertainly because she knew she wasn't supposed to lie.

If you've ever used an old fashioned pen you'll know that the ink gets all over your hands which is exactly what happened to Bluebell. When Isaiah saw she had magic dust on her paws he knew she'd lied. He crouched down in front of her and asked: ‘Why did you want all the bears to be pink and blue?’

He didn't seem so scary when he said that and Bluebell decided to tell him the truth as she thought that anybear who wore a purple and gold waistcoat must understand what it felt like to be a little blue bear who wanted to wear a pink hat and couldn't.

‘I didn't mean to turn all the bears pink and blue,’ she said. ‘Just swap the colour of the summer and winter bears. I like pink better than blue and the other bears laugh at me for it. I only wanted to change things so I could be happy without being laughed at.’

‘I can understand that,’ said Isaiah. ‘However, no matter how much you want something you can't change other bears just to make things better for yourself. It's not fair because then they'll be unhappy rather than you.’

Bluebell began to feel a bit silly. She wished she had just stayed at home and not done her spell at all.

‘I'm very sorry,’ she said. ‘Do you think I would be able to change it back? Then everyone could be happy again.’

‘I think that's a very good idea,’ said Isaiah and he lifted her up onto the stand so she could write in the book.

‘I wish that everybear would go back to being their own colour again please,’ wrote Bluebell.

This time Bluebell didn't need to wait because poof! right in front of her eyes the room exploded with magic dust and everybear in the library went back to their normal colour. All the bears clapped and cheered and because they were so happy to be themselves again they quite forgot to be cross with Bluebell (but be warned this doesn't always happen).

But what about Bluebell? Well, she turned back to her normal pretty blue and never wanted to use magic again. She and Strawberry went home and her brother told their mother just how naughty Bluebell had been to see if she'd tell Bluebell off (brothers and sisters do that sort of thing, if you have any you'll know all about it). Her mother did tell Bluebell off but she wasn't too upset because she knew Bluebell was very sorry and nothing bad had come of what she'd done. Then they all sat down and had peaches and cream for dinner because that's what bears like to eat best (the grownups might tell you I made that bit up but it's up to you if you want to believe them).

So that was the end of that story, well almost anyway.

‘What about Bluebell's hat?’ I hear you ask, ‘and her necklace? Did she wear them every day like she wanted?’

Yes, you will be pleased to hear, she did. Sometimes other bears, who didn't know what it felt like to be a little blue bear who wanted to wear a pink hat, said nasty things to Bluebell about it but she didn't care. She knew she look fabulous and that was all that really mattered.

Readers: For those of you that recognise this story from our first publication, this reprint is an

apology to the author for a terrible mis-edit that we at Under The Fable wish to correct. Most edits are intentional, but missing the entire ending of a story unintentionally is nothing short of regrettable. Hope you enjoy the revisit. xLarryx

37

-Reece Dinn 'Sorry, we only serve schooners.' The barkeep sighs, looking away.

'Schooners?' I ask.

'From Australia. Bout two thirds of a pint, but the beer won't get warm, it'll be cold still when you reach the bottom.'

'Warm? This isn't the fucking Outback. If it gets warm, I'll take it outside until it's cold again.'

'Yeah, but the last third of a pint is always shit.'

'Since when?'

'Since always.'

'How much are they?'

'Three fifty, except these two,' he taps the end two pumps, 'these are four quid.'

'So you're giving me something that's two thirds of a pint but charging me four-thirds the price? That's a bit like cumming on my Cornflakes then telling me they're Frosties.'

Barkeep shrugs. 'Not really.'

'I'd say so.'

Lou, beside me, raises an eyebrow. I say eyebrow, it's just a pencil-line now. 'For fuck's sake, Mark, leave it. Just order a drink,' 'I want a pint,' I say.

'I can give you a pint,' says the barkeep, 'but it'll cost more.'

'More? It's already more.'

'I don't make the prices.'

'Just pick one. I'll have a merlot,' says Lou, dropping her bag on the bar, rummaging inside for her purse. 'I'll pay. Feel better?'

'No. You shouldn't have to pay more for less,' I say.

'Large or small?' the barkeep asks Lou. 'Large,' she says with wide eyes, 'Defo a large.'

'It's like in that restaurant,' I say, 'Charging extra for the chips. Since when do you have to buy chips separate?'

'Have you decided?' Barkeep slides the wine to Lou like he's done some drug deal with her.

'Surprise me?' I say.

Lou pays and we sit down on something like patio furniture. The schooner has a nice colour to it, not the piss-water Carling look, but darker and bubblier.

'After all that, you like it?' says Lou.

38

'It'll do,' I say.

She slides her foot up my ankle under the table. 'You packed?'

'The essentials are, just some bits and pieces to do after Michelle goes to work.'

'We're doing this then? You aren't going to flake on me?'

'I've made my choice. It's you.'

She smiles. Her glossy red lips shine in the dim bar light. 'Good. Just hope there's no delays on the flight.'

'Yeah.' I take another sip, the schooner's half gone.

'What's happening with Emma?' Lou asks. She never asks about her.

'I'm dropping her at Dot's.'

She strokes my hand, leaning forward to give me a glimpse down her top at those tits. 'You'll still be able to see her, you know. She can visit. And there's always Skype.'

'I'm abandoning her.'

'You're not.' She runs her hand up my arm.

'Michelle won't see it like that.'

'Let the bitch think what she wants.'

I flick her hand away. 'Don't talk about her like that.'

'Don't defend her. You always defend her.'

'She's done nothing wrong.'

Lou huffs and necks the rest of her wine.

'Let's not fight. It's our last night in England.' I say.

She flashes a smile; they get me going every time. That and those short skirts she wears.

I down the last of the schooner. The barkeep's right about one thing, it stays cold, for all three mouthfuls.

That alarm wakes me. Michelle turns it off.

I had too many schooners.

Michelle sits up, pulling down her tank top. 'Did I wake you?' She rubs her eyes, not glancing down at me.

'Yeah.' I croak.

'Well, you woke me when you stumbled in at two. You could’ve stripped before you got in bed.'

She pulls back the duvet.

'I took off my shoes.'

'Should I be grateful?' She rises, her pyjama bottoms falling down just enough to reveal plain white knickers and a skinny arse. No matter what Michelle eats, she never puts on weight. Even when she was pregnant, her belly barely swelled. How Emma came out that vag I'll never know. Ruffling her hair, she goes to the bathroom.

My phone pings. 'Bin thinking of you all night, fingered myself to sleep,' says Lou's text.

'Why u up now?' I text back, deleting her text, then mine as soon as it sends.

'How's Bobby?' Michelle shouts from the bathroom.

'Fine.'

'Just fine?'

'We went for a pint. I didn't suck his dick.' I roll over, burying my face in the pillow.

'You're gonna be rough in work,' she shouts, then brushes her teeth.

I groan back at her. My phone pings again. 'Wish you'd come back with me. Lou x.'

'Me 2.'

The shower starts.

'Remember you're taking Emma to my Mum's before work,' she shouts.

39

I quit work a week ago. Easily done. Each day when I've claimed to go there I've just sat reading the paper, watching the TV, shit like that. Nights I've 'worked late' I've been at Lou's. Michelle hates The Bull so never checks there for me.

A flick to the ear wakes me. Don't recall dosing off.

'Get dressed.' She dumps some clothes on my head.

'I'm not in until eleven,' I mumble.

'You're dropping Emma off. You're okay to drive, aren't you?'

I roll over. She's in her Tesco uniform, all neat and dark navy; her hair tied back, no make-up.

Plain and simple. Dull. 'Yeah, I only had schooners.'

'Had what?'

'Schooners. Some Aussie imitation of a pint.'

She waves her hand. 'Whatever. See you tonight. You finish at eight?'

'Yeah.'

'Bye.' Moments later the front door slams behind her.

I have another nap then get up and check on Emma. The girl is still asleep. The only baby I've ever known to sleep through the night. Despite being a replica of Michelle, she looks peaceful when she sleeps. Michelle looks like she's going through some trauma, when she falls asleep I turn away, or make sure I go to bed drunk.

I leave her, get showered, then dressed, then brush my teeth.

Emma's still asleep. I go in. She doesn't stir.

'Emma.'

Nothing.

I pick her up from her cot. She grabs my nose, squeezing it hard. She may look like Michelle but she has my old man's strength. 'Time to get up.'

She yawns then rests her head on my neck. I pat her on the back.

'Emma.' She squeezes my nose harder and I yelp. I pull her off me. She makes noises that sound close to a giggle and flails her legs about.

'You're going to see Nanny Dot today.'

She's flailing her arms now too. I put her back in the cot and take off her sleep-suit and vest, then her nappy.

'Guess what Daddy had last night? A schooner, can you believe it? Madness.'

She yawns, looking past me.

'Mummy wasn't interested either.'

I dress her in Hello Kitty clothes. That bloody cats creepy. Emma probably hates the fucking thing too. She closes her eyes again.

'Emma, Emma.' She opens them, unimpressed. 'Come on, we're going.'

There's packing to do, but it can wait. Lou's got the tickets and passports. Emma cries.

'I know, honey, I know. I hate Hello Kitty too.'

The motorway has ground to a halt, police having closed a lane. It's rush hour. Ten minutes without moving. Emma's unbearable, continuously shaking her rattle. She never sleeps in the car.

Rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle.

It's so easy to loathe someone you love when you're trapped in a car with them. 'Emma, honey, stop that. Daddy's got a headache.'

Rattle, rattle.

'Ag. Ag.' Emma's little face is happy.

Ten minutes pass and we've moved a car's length.

Rattle, rattle.

'What you doing with Nanny today, honey?'

40

She giggles, flailing her feet.

'You could go to the park, feed the ducks. Swing on the swings.'

Rattle, rattle.

Ping. 'U at her nans yet?' says Lou's text.

'On motorway.' I text back.

Rattle, rattle.

Our lane moves.

'Honey, remember this. Never settle, always go for what you want. If you can do better, go for it. We all need excitement in our lives, to feel that thrill. Otherwise, what's the point?'

She looks away.

Ping. 'Am wet.'

'Won't be long.' I text back.

Red and blue flashing lights signal the cause of the jam.

'A crash,' I say, pointing ahead, trying to direct Emma's gaze.

She yawns, not looking.

The crashed car is on its roof, front end done in, windows smashed. Police, ambulance and fire crews swarm the area, their high-vis gear reflecting the flashing lights around them. Two paramedics carry a stretcher. Through gaps between people I only see a dark navy uniform. Blood spatters the road and the white paint of the car's front end. It's a Renault Clio, like Michelle's.

It couldn't be.

Ping. 'We should have a quicky b4 we go.'

I text Michelle. 'U ok? X' 'It's probably nothing, honey.' I say to Emma. My stomach feels even worse now. The crash site grows smaller in the rear view mirror. The ambulance is still there.

I text Michelle again. 'Really, u ok? Txt me. X.' The motorway widens to three lanes again. We pick up speed.

Ping. 'U pack jonnys? We could fuck on the plane.' Lou, again.

'Mummy's okay. She's in work, very busy. She'll text back later.' I say. I didn't think I could feel worse today. Why would she have been on this motorway anyway? Work is in the other direction.

'I'll phone her. Her work too.'

Emma looks up at me, face still puffy and red.

I call Michelle. It goes to voice mail. Calm down, she's working. I phone her work. Some girl answers. 'Tesco Liverpool One, how can I help?'

'Can I speak to Michelle please? It's her boyfriend.'

'Which Michelle?'

'Bellamy.'

'Oh, she's not here this week. She's covering at the big one in Southport.'

Shit, she said she's at the Southport one this week. I need to listen to her more. 'Shit, sorry.

Wrong number.' Fuck. I phone Michelle again. No answer.

Ping. 'Hello?' Lou. It couldn't have been her, she's too careful. Pensioners are more reckless than her.

'I'll try Dot.' I say.

Dot picks up straight away.

'Dot? It's Mark.'

'You on the way? Sounds like you are.'

'Yeah. Listen, I can’t get hold of Michelle. You heard from her?'

'No, She'll be in work. I'm bathing the dog, water's going everywhere. I'll see you in a bit.' She hangs up.

41

Ping. 'What the fuck? Txt me. X.' Lou

I call Michelle again. She picks up.

'Sweetheart, thank fuck. I was so worried.'

'Hello?' It's a man's voice. There's background noise. Sirens. 'This is P.C. Mullins. Who's this?'

Bile rises in my throat. Emma looks up at me.

'This is Mark. Where's Michelle?'

'There's been a collision on the motorway. She's en-route to hospital. Where are you calling from?'

'I'm on the motorway.'

'You need to come right away. Her condition is critical. Southport hospital. Call me on this number when you arrive.'

'Okay.'

I phone Dot on the way, she screams down the phone then hangs up. I phone Mullins when I'm close. park.

We pull in to the hospital car park. Ping. I open the door and throw the phone across the car

'Mark?' says a policeman, approaching, must be Mullins. He's tall and thin, looks a little like Abraham Lincoln.

'Is she okay?' I try to keep my voice even.

He shifts uncomfortably, not meeting my eyes. 'I'm so sorry. Her wounds were too severe. She died a few minutes ago.'

I press my face into Emma's head. She cries.

Mullins places a hand on my shoulder. 'I'm sorry for your loss. I'll get the doctor, he'll explain things.'

My nose sticks to Emma's hair. 'I want to see her.'

'I don't think that's a good idea. She's in a horrible way. Let the morticians take care of her at least. I'll take you somewhere private while you wait.'

'No, take me now.'

Mullins hesitates.

'Now.' He nods, pressing the button to open the doors to the wards and we follow him down a white corridor populated by doctors, nurses, paramedics and police, then another corridor, then another.

Mullins looks back to us, his forehead moist with sweat. 'They're about to move her to the mortuary. I should get the doctor.'

I sway Emma side to side, rubbing her back, trying to calm her down. 'No.' 'I'll get someone to take the baby at least.'

'No.' Mullins wipes his forehead with the back of his hand and leads us to a curtained off bed. The curtain parts and two nurses step out, heads down, talking quietly. Mullins says something quiet to one of them as they pass and the nurse hesitates, then holds the curtain open for us.

A sheet covers the body.

Mullins enters behind us. 'You're sure?'

'Yeah.'

'Cover the baby's eyes.'

The nurse slides the sheet back. She's barely recognisable, a bloody mess. I nod and turn away, shaking, pressing Emma into my chest.

You can't be dead. I can't look after Emma on my own. Lou won't help, I know that.

Mullins steps back inside. Dot barges past him and rushes to Michelle's side. She wails, clutching Michelle's head.

42

'I'll be outside,' says Mullins.

I try to move to Dot's side, but my legs won't budge.

We stay there a long time. Emma falls asleep in my arms.

Eventually, Dot breaks the silence. 'How did this happen?'

'I don't know. Her car flipped.'

'They didn't tell you?'

'No.' 'Give her to me. Find out.' She grabs Emma, handling her less delicately than I'd like.

Mullins is sat in the corridor, hands in his lap, brow furrowed. He rises when he sees me. 'Mr Davidson?'

'How'd this happen?' I step close to him.

Mullins takes a deep breath. 'Witnesses say an Argos lorry clipped her rear and the car overturned.'

'A lorry?'

'We're tracking down the driver. We've contacted Argos and are in the process of ascertaining the driver's identity.'

'He didn't stop?'

Mullins shakes his head.

'I'm gonna fucking kill him.'

'Mr Davidson.' A bead of sweat runs down the side of Mullins' face.

'I will.'

'You need to calm down. It was probably an accident.'

'He fucking killed her.'

'Mark.' Mullins steps back.

All along the corridor people are staring.

'I'll make another call,' says Mullins, 'See if they've found anything out.' He meets my eyes for a second then heads down the corridor towards two other policemen.

Dot's still by Michelle's side, staring at her daughter, crying quietly, Emma held tight against her. 'Well?' she asks, not looking at me.

I tell her.

Ping.

'Oh yeah.' Dot mutters. She pulls out a phone from her pocket, glances at the lit-up screen. 'I found it in the car park. I recognised the crack on the back.' She chucks it at me. The screens cracked but it's mine.

'2 hrs 2 go. Where r u?' says Lou's text. There are five more and two missed calls. I pocket the phone. Dot and Emma are looking at me. After a silent moment Dot looks back at her daughter.

Emma still stares.

43

-Andrew Carpenter Above his Holy Castle, scores of banded clouds candied the horizon. Yet these clouds were discontent, for they were the playthings of Great Magus the 1431 st. In a few minutes they would be split in pieces and forced to wet themselves. A humiliating experience that had lasted generations and seemed unlikely to end anytime soon.

The Great Magus did not think of any of this. He was fabulous – what with his lustrous red cape, his glittering blue boots, and his oh-my-god-you-must-be-joking pink leotard.

His muse stood next to him, wailing.

‘Oh it shall be glorious’ her arms waved.

Meanwhile, one of the Great Magus's assistants handed him a staff, while others mixed potions, and oiled the whizzarding machine.

The Great Magus strode through his portcullis. A fortythousand strong crowd was cheering on the plains. Many of them were wearing the officially sanctioned shawl and cassock set, which had ‘Great Magus rocks’ printed on it, above a picture of Great Magus. And some rocks.

They all looked great.

The Great Magus felt great.

It was time.

The Magus smiled and looked to the sky. With a grandiose outstretching of his arm, he held aloft his staff and recited the incantation of yore.

‘Raine, ye barsterds.’

At first, there was nothing. This was not unusual; it often took a day or more for the clouds to ferment and expel upon the land. But this year, something curious happened: mere moments after the incantation was complete, a storm formed above the Great Magus’s head.

There was an ominous silence.

Then: a boom.

Like a hundred-billion farts in a can.

Lightning lacerated the Great Magus’s staff and chucked him to the ground. The crowd screamed. In all their years of watching magnificent spells, they'd never seen the clouds do anything quite so stroppy. The clouds started to speak.

‘Ya know what really pisses us off?’

‘How dare thou challenge the Great Magus when he hath wishes for his people?’

‘Yer not listening, are ya, mate?’ To emphasise their point, they sent down another bolt of lighting that set fire to the Great Magus’ willy. The clouds then followed this with a brief downpour of rain to extinguish the flames, but even with this, the Great Magus's fury was unquenched. He was more infuriated than when his muse had taped over the golf highlights.

Bethany’s Editor’s Pick’ 44

‘Your insolence is...’

Lightning cracked, thunder roared and the Great Magus found himself spread-eagled. He looked up; a further bolt of lightning was flaming down towards him. He flounced onto his feet and used his staff to strike the fiery bolt back into the heart of the storm.

‘Ow, shit, there were no need for that,’ said the clouds, glowering in a way that only petulant clouds could.

A hush enveloped the fearful crowd.

‘Speaketh, then, clouds!’ shouted the Great Magus.

‘We’re angry,’ said the clouds ‘you chuffin’ weather prophets have bullied us for ages, and it’s gotta stop. K.’ ‘What maketh thou believe I would change anything?’ replied the Great Magus.

‘We got a betta Union now.’

‘A Union? But thou art clouds!’

‘Oh, ‘ang on. He got a point,’ said one of the clouds.

‘I told you we shouldn't have trusted that Cumu…

Cumolum…Cumulonimbus who came in from the east.’ ‘I told you it was all a front! Did I not say?’

‘Don’t blame me; I always tried to slag ‘im off!’ said another.

‘You did, huh? So what about your ‘But he's so moist and fluffy’ nonsense then?’

‘We’ve been such twats.’

‘Thou shall speaketh to me!’ roared the Great Magus.

The clouds were silent for a moment then swelled to a hammerhead that rose above everything.

‘We think that all this is your fault’ they said, ‘so we’re going to destroy you all.’

With this, they unleashed the most fearsome tempest. It was vicious. It was rapacious. And, most of all — and perhaps surprisingly — it was colourful.

The crowd screamed as they ran. Tripping and flailing in a blizzard of violent hail. Lightning toasted the least fortunate, their innards splattered like a giblet fight in an abattoir. The entire landscape became a bloodied swell of carnage—brown and red, yellow and black.

‘Thou shalt desist!’ With another flick of his wrist, Great Magus threw his staff to the air. ‘Maximum curriculum cirrus albatross,’ he cried.

The hammerhead suddenly blackened, then bubbled into a horrible, oily squall. Thick globs of meteorological pus started oozing from billowing bilious buboes. There was a strange whining sound until the buboes exploded.

The sky returned to a deepest, friendliest blue.

A cheer erupted from the few thousand drenched and bloodied survivors. The Great Magus hobbled back into the gatehouse.

The Great Magus waved his hand, smiled his wan smile and put his staff away in its ‘special’ cabinet. He was bristling with pride: this had been the best performance yet, once again proving that when it came to putting on a show, the Weather Prophets were unbeatable.

‘Salutations and congratulations brethren; that was phantasmagorical. Let us partake of wine!’ His assistants cheered and started passing him potions, all of which he downed. The last few were the most wonderfully woozyful. He could tell by the way his muse was slumped in a comatose heap – she agreed.

‘Ah, that most stirring’ he said, ‘They shalt remember this, even if I don't! Ha ha! Angry clouds: I love it!’

One of the Great Magus' seated, and unnecessarily sober, assistants furrowed his brow.

‘Actually boss, the clouds were nothing to do with us.’

‘Intriguing’ hiccupped the Great Magus, sobering slightly.

‘So what hath occurred?’

‘I’m not sure,’ said the assistant, ‘but, according to my great-great-great-grandfather’s-mother’s-sister’s-haggard old crone, the 1422nd Magus had a run-in with some talking clouds.

45

He got rid of them by offering them a nice holiday down by the coast. It worked, too. Sadly. Because when the clouds all scampered off to the coast, they completely evaporated and there was no rain at all that year. The harvest failed and 80% of the population died. Think about how embarrassing that must’ve been! So the whole thing got airbrushed out of history and we've got to where we are now.’

The Great Magus was flummoxed. The Weather Prophets were infallible — they'd even been fitted with special valves for that very purpose — so how could this story be true? Had one of his predecessors really made such a gargantuan boo-boo?

He turned to face his other assistants to see if anyone else knew of this revelation, but when a party popper exploding in his ear, he realised no-one else had been paying the slightest bit of attention.

The Great Magus returned his attention to the bearer of this drastic news, but the bearer had stood up and was now holding a small, stumpy wand in his hand.

‘I’m not really one of your assistants, by the way,’ he said, ‘I’m just very good at disguises. Plus I’m excellent at exploiting security, and yours is absolutely woeful. My name’s Philby, by the way, but my home-clouds out there called me Cumu…Cumolum…Cumulonimbus.’

The Great Magus suddenly started to feel quite unwell.

‘It’s making sense now, Great Magus, yes?’ said Philby, and the wand in his hand spluttered with magic.

‘I stole this from your store cupboard,’ he continued, ‘and your foolish muse left the instructions on top of the toilet. It’s all been too easy, you know? This is the end for you Weather Prophets. No longer shall cloud-kind be exploited! Now, remind me, it’s this button here, isn’t it?’

Before the Great Magus could object, the wand in Philby’s hand let out a burst of blue sparks, and the Great Magus fell to the ground with a look of surprise. Then he disintegrated into a puddle of water.

‘Long live the clouds!’ shouted Philby and he shed his disguise.

The room went silent. There was a cloud in the gatehouse. A cloud, of all things! The assistants looked to the muse for assistance. She didn’t stir.

‘It’s over for you all,’ Philby cackled, as he floated through the portcullis with the Great Magus’s wand bobbing in his vapour. ‘The Great Magus is dead; long may he rain! Ha ha ha!’

Then there was silence, until a six old girl summed up the entire situation perfectly: ‘Well, that was the worst pun in the world.’

46

- Jonathan Brown The boy wouldn’t stop crying and I didn’t know what to do. I say ‘boy’, but he was actually 20 years old with a full beard and receding hairline.

I’d just given him a ‘fail’ on his essay on Modernism vs.

Feminism in Mrs Dalloway. He wrote rather eloquently on how having the lead character dress up as a woman was an interesting comment, on both the emasculation of the father figure in the modern household, and how the dual role of the main character was actually more post-modernism than modernism.

The tears started to pour when I informed the hirsute manchild that his excellent essay was, in fact, about Mrs Doubtfire, the 1998 zany comedy starring the equally hirsute man child Robin Williams, and not the classic ‘modernist’ novel, Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf.

As I was congratulating him on an essay that would have surely gotten a first in Modern American Studies, just not in Modernist English Literature, his crying seemed to take on a shrill tone. I panicked, as I do when faced with anyone in this much distressed, until I realised the change in tone was due to my phone ringing.

I’d not normally answer a phone during a student consultation, but given our film fan’s wailing, it offered an easy way out of an awkward situation – and I am a huge fan of easy ways out.

However, this ‘easy way out’ lead to me also bursting into tears as my wife informed me that I was to be a father for the first time.

‘Why are you crying?’

‘I’m going to be a dad’, I said.

‘Just like Mrs Doutbfire’, he said before letting out a huge wail and throwing his head into my chest. *** As in the movies, we now cut to 15 years later. My boy, Elliott (after Elliott Ness, not the boy from ET), is now starting to think seriously about the man he will soon become. Elliott, to me, was a normal 14 year old. He was good-looking, if a little on the skinny side (like his dad) and, when not sulking or skulking was funny and intelligent. He had a couple of ‘best friends’ at school and was a big lover of animals. So much so that he forced us to buy him a puppy for his 12th birthday. And how he loved his puppy, which was now a fully grown little dog – Dairy Milk brown with fur so fluffy that it made him look like a living, breathing teddy bear.

Eddie was the only family member that was allowed in Elliott’s room and the only one he’d actually talk to for any length of time. Linda often joked about putting a hidden camera on his collar. But we’d always insisted on trust in our

47

relationships – and even the most expensive hidden cameras were too big.

It was a week before the summer holidays that it happened. As a lecturer, I knew how over excited kids got in the last week of term. Normal behaviour was suspended by the promise of summer and freedom from school.

We lived near the school, so Elliott would often pop home at lunch to take Eddie out for a walk.

Sometimes his friends would join him, but on this day, the electric atmosphere of a pre-summer holiday school playground was too much for them, so he went alone. However, I’m sure he wasn’t sad to be alone – the day was as close to a perfect early summer’s day as you could imagine. The sun shone, a few clouds dotted the azure blue sky and Elliott was off to see his favourite being in the world.

There doesn’t appear to be any doubt about what happened. This was not Rashamon – the incident was seen, and not halted or prevented, by at least a dozen people – all with matching stories.

My son had taken Eddie out to the playing fields, which he strictly speaking wasn’t meant to do during school hours, but it seems he’d also been touched by the summer madness. I like to think he was using the little dog to pick up girls – but of course, Elliott would never admit this.

Elliott picked an open area and, finding a suitable sized stick, started playing fetch with Eddie.

Eddie, as he often did when there were large groups of people around, got a bit confused and ran back to the wrong owner. Or maybe he’d smelled some soggy ham sandwiches in a packed lunch.

Either way, it was quite a mistake on Eddie’s part, for he decided to jump on Darren Birch.

Every school has a Darren Birch. He was the ‘hardest’ boy in school. Not because he was physically strongest, but because he was willing, and eager, to fight anyone. It’s school kids logic – the most popular aren’t the cleverest or funniest, but the ones the most girls fancy, and the ‘hardest’ aren’t the strongest or most physically able, but the one most feared.

He was a thin, lanky, spotty, 16 year old from a rough area of town with an abusive old brother and, apparently, a fear of dogs.

Now, as mentioned, Eddie was more soft toy than man killer, but as he leapt onto Birch’s shoulder from behind, the ‘hardest’ boy in school not only flinched, butspilt his can of Coke, and most damningly, at least for Elliott, let out a girly, my-voice-is-going-through-some-weird-changes- shriek.

From here on, the story is predictable. I'd heard it when I was at school, and I'm sure you've heard similar stories. Darren kicked poor little Eddie away then stood, looking to re-establish himself as 'Hardest Boy at Conyers School 2012/13'. And the quickest way to do this was through Elliott – the boy who chose a puppy based on fluffiness levels, who couldn't watch the end of Hunger Games as it was too violent, who, up until that moment, was still boy, a child, an innocent.

What happened next is a blur for everyone who witnessed the event. But the facts, as laid out in the school incident log, in police report, to the hospital, are these – Darren kicked Eddie again, at which point Elliott stepped in, saying something – what, no one knows and to be honest it doesn't matter.

Then he went down.

A single punch sent my boy to the ground. Hopefully, unconscious as the descriptions of followed by people who say included words such as 'vicious', 'brutal', 'violent', 'bloody' and 'scary'.

‘Not like in the films, but real, and scary’, said one bystander who failed to stop the attack.

Elliott suffered a broken jaw, fractured eye socket, two lost teeth, concussion, whip lash (whip lash!) and, well, who knows what mental damage. And, as if to make sure my boy wouldn't forget this life changing moment, a signet ring worn by Birch tore a scar down his face. A permanent reminder that your life can be defined by someone as insignificant as a Darren Birch.

My first instinct was to move – far away. Out to the countryside, a small hamlet where boys got into scrapes with other boys that ended in black eyes and bloody knees. I could handle that – I'd even been in a fight when I was young. He hit me, I hit him back, we both went home crying to our parents and then were dragged back together to shake hands and apologize.

These thoughts and many more ran through my head as I sat in the hospital, or was it the dentist, or the plastic surgeons – white waiting room after white waiting room, all with 'good news' for me.

'Elliott has regained consciousness.' (Yay!) 'We should be able to fit a crown on the broken teeth'.

(Whooppee!) 'The scar will only be half a centimetre wide.' (Yippee!) 'He'll be able to see again from his right eye in a week.' (What wonderful tidings you all bring!)

The next white waiting room was the worst. Worse than the police station where at least I could shout and scream and demand justice and 'Yes, we will be pressing charges', and dreams of Birch behind bars crying for his Daddy the way Elliott had cried as he'd regained consciousness. There was at least some small catharsis in the thoughts of legal action.

Our final white waiting room (for now) held no such outlet. We were waiting outside the headmaster's office. And we weren't alone.

48

On one side of the small, tungsten-bright room sat me and Linda – the very image of middle-class Britain. The Birches, depending on your channel choice, were either honest, hard-grafting, salt of the earth 'proper British' or Shameless-meets-Big Brother, shout you down scum of the earth.

Mr. Thomas, the school’s headmaster, did most of the talking as we were too scared to say anything and the Birch’s either knew from experience to keep their mouths shut or were just too tired of making excuses for their ‘little tear-away’ Darren.

In the end, it was decided that it would be best for ‘everyone involved’ if Darren finished the term early and then ‘chose’ to attend a different sixth form college after the summer holidays. So the school essentially just let him have a longer summer holiday and told someone who was definitely not going to come back anyway to not bother coming back. Excellent.

If I felt let down by the school, then it was nothing compared to the law enforcement. As it was Darren’s first offence, they thought community service would be the best. A summer working without pay, which was pretty much what I’d had planned for Elliott at my office, but which I would now have to scrap as he couldn’t see out of both eyes.

The inner Batman in me had been awoken. Someone should pay! The Times had told me these things always begin with the parents, but I couldn’t see past the face of Darren. In fact, the parents, despite my misgivings on first meeting them, were good people. A bit rough round the edges and they should have seen the signs, should have been more involved in their child’s upbringing. But they genuinely didn’t seem to realise how much of a shit their son had become, much the same way I was oblivious to Alex’s hatred of football.

But it was Darren himself, the harbinger of early adulthood and the destroyer of youth, who was to blame for the severity of the attack. It was also him that would go bragging of the offence to his friends, of his ‘community service punishment’. I’m not too old and out of it to remember how playgrounds work, and while Darren would leave this particular one, his influence would not. And it would hangover my son’s head for years. It was the stuff of legends – I can hear the playground whispers now - ‘and after the attack, Darren was never seen again,’ ‘My brother said he went to jail for life,’, ‘I saw him eat the other boy’s eye.’

I had to do something. Something to break the spell of Birch on the school.

When you’re a parent, you rarely get the chance to feel like you’re doing right by them. You’re either punishing them or being given the cold shoulder. You don’t feel like a father, not like in the films where they play ball in the yard or go on fishing trips together that would be remembered fondly in a voice over years later. You feel like a teacher – a live-in teacher wanting the best for them but not knowing how to give it because you don’t know the 14 year old stood before you. But now I knew how to do the best for my boy. I would seek revenge on Darren Birch.

It was at our local shops that I saw him first. I stared at him for five minutes, watching him laughing and playing outside the shops – fag in one hand, iPhone in the other. Even his mates didn’t seem to like him, giggling nervously as he smacked them too hard on the arm. Though revenge was on my mind, I hadn’t formulated a plan. But I knew I’d have to leave the car soon before I passed out from the sticky, stifling heat rising from the black leather seats.

Outside, the summer sun dampened the sounds around me. All I could hear were a wood pigeon, lawn mower and some laughter. I stood and squinted, sun glasses still on the dashboard. The sounds mixed with the smells of cut grass and melting tarmac sent me back to my childhood days. A time of freedom and spontaneity. Trips to Trout Beck on our bikes, playing football in front of the girls, family BBQs that lasted past 10pm, ice cream being licked off my wrist. What would Elliott associate with summer? The smell of hospitals, the taste of blood, the sounds of his cheek bone breaking?

Some summers seemed to last forever, but even the best of us will only get around 80 of them.

And only seven as a teenager. For all our days on earth, we have just seven true summers – when we’re old enough to have the freedom to enjoy them but not too old to have to work through the bright blue days. Elliot would now only have six. And five would be tainted with the memory of his missed summer.

‘Oi, Paedo!’

This lovely welcome awoke me from the daydream. I’d been staring at Birch for a while and he’d just clocked me. I flushed, panicked. What do I do?

‘What you looking at? You want this?’

He flashed his skinny white arse at me. His friends laughed – real laughter now that they knew they were on Darren’s side. This was my moment, and I blew it. Head down, eyes to the floor, straight into the shop.

‘I knew you wanted it, you dirty perv. Come on, come and have it. I’ll let you in for a fiver.’

I tried to remain nonchalant but my legs stopped working. Birch seemed to get larger, the closer I got. He wasn’t quite the skinny little shit I thought he was, he must have been 5,10 maybe even…

Thud!

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Birch had punched/pushed me in the shoulder. Hard enough that I began to realise how terrifying it would have been to have that power come down on your face time and again. It spun me. I faced him – less than a foot away. He starred me down – his fag breath making me want to vomit. Then he spat on me. A big, green splat across my chest. I wanted to hit him. But I couldn’t. I just walked away. Shamed, embarrassed but even more intent of revenge.

A gloom followed me for days after the event, like a summer sweat that no shower can get rid of.

No one was told of the incident. I could hardly face Elliott having let him down again. After a day or two of soul searching, a conclusion was reached. I had decided I hadn’t let anyone down; in fact, I’d done the right thing. I hadn’t lowered myself to his level, but yet there was still a hollowness inside my soul. It was in need of something, but was it still revenge?

Elliott had to spend so much time with his mother and me while he healed that it re-established our bond. But even after he had made an almost full recovery, with his new teeth, metal plate and healed scar, he still stayed indoors more than I would have liked, and when he went outside, he went alone. These long days with my son brought me great enjoyment, but I also felt he was losing his childhood. Maybe it goes after your first beat down. The skeleton figure of Birch loomed in the dark shadows. I’d decided that it was my job to remove him. Or at least, shine a light on his weaknesses.

Violence was not the way forward. I wasn’t a particularly violent man, and it’d make a martyr out of the very un-saintly Birch. My aim was to remove the perceived threat –remove his ‘aura’. As a teacher, I had an intimate knowledge of how schools worked, and spent much of my time forcing myself to not use this knowledge against annoying students. Now was the time to put this to use. In schools, it is just as easy to remove status as it is to gain it. And I knew just how to do it.

The idea came to me like all my great ideas at the park. The three musketeers that we myself, Elliott and Eddie, were on one of our rare outings. I’d guilted Elliot into, using Eddie’s sad dog eyes as my bait. How could he resist?

Elliot had been disappearing in the evenings, going off alone. We tried to keep him in, worried about getting into another fight, but he wouldn’t have it. Who were we to stop him from having his way a few times? The long nights meant that it didn’t get dark until near 10pm, so as long as he was back before then, it was okay – the things in the shadows couldn’t get him.

We’d gone out at what was our usual time before the attack. And on our usual dog-walking route, full of sad singletons.

And then there was Wilf. Wilf was a likeable sort of chap, despite the fact that he came with two huge Dobermans. Elliott loved the dogs, but was a bit wary of their huge owner. Wilf was 6’5 with a head like a demolition ball on shoulders and neck to match. He was, without a doubt, a scary looking man. But, much like his dogs, he was all bark, no bite. A ‘former’ gangster, though many would question this ‘former’ tag but not to his rough as sandpaper face, it wasn’t clear to outsiders why he was talking to me, Mr Middle Class, can’t abide crime, voted Lid Dem. The reason, like so many other things in life, was football. Another reason that Elliott was keener on his dogs, Alf and Ramsey, than the football loving owner.

It was during this unlikely tableau – me and Wilf chatting like best buddies and Elliott and Eddie rolling around with two vicious looking Doberman – that my plan came together – A-Team style. This unlikely friendship provided me with the way to seek revenge.

And so it was agreed. Wilf, who was a big fan of Elliott’s even if the feeling wasn’t mutual, was on board right away. It was a simple plan, as all the best one’s are, and no one would get injured. Just a little de-pegging for Darren. Wilf’s role was simple. He was to play up to the rumours of his ‘connections’ and approach Darren with an ‘offer he couldn’t refuse’. Darren being the wannabe gangsta would jump at the chance to work his way up the crime ladder. All Darren had to do was look after something for Wilf. A package.

And did he take the bait? And did he, despite Wilf telling him to keep it on the low down, not tell all his friends that he was working for ‘Big Wilf? Darren was nothing if not predictable. Wilf knew Darren’s type – not one to keep his mouth shut. So when our little Tony Montana arrived to collect ‘the package’ he was followed, not too subtly, by half a dozen more wannabes. We’d also organised out little drop off to take place at a well-known hang out point for the school kids. Under the railway bridge where the kids thought no one knew they’d be drinking their Bacardi Breezers and Diamond White.

My car, which I’m sure Darren wouldn’t recognise, sat at the end of the road leading to this dingy den. Wilf strolled past me, Alf and Ramsey in hand – for now. The consequences of being in debt to a definite gangster at this point were being hugely outweighed by my expectation of seeing Darren’s face drop when he saw the two ‘puppies’ . A silence fell over the group of semi-drunk kids as Wilf approach. Darren stepped forward, the boss man, and held his hard man grimace for all of two seconds, before he went white, then red, then started to shake. The car was parked too far away to hear what Wilf told Darren but he just nodded in reply, not daring to look directly at the dogs. I even saw Wilf give the dogs a bit of a kick to get them barking. Darren jumped a good foot back. My smile widen by the same amount.

Darren’s loyal crew, as crews who follow you not out of respect but out of fear do, backed away. As

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did the other ten or so kids out for a fun Friday night. Darren anxiously took hold of the leads, the two puppies from hell giving him a bit of a tug as Wilf turned, winked at me and left the scene. He was followed by most of the kids, not wanting to be any part of this episode in Darren’s life but all giggling as soon as they knew he couldn’t see them. These were the same kids that had stood and watched as he beat the innocence out of my son. But when they were at risk themselves, they abandoned ship like the rats they were.

With every plea Darren made for his friends to stay, I could feel my fatherhood returning – this felt right, in a very wrong way. Seeing Darren moved to actual tears by two Doberman felt like the right kind of revenge, even if it did still eave a bitter taste in my mouth. But doesn’t revenge always taste slightly bitter.

There was only slightly remorse as his friends and hangers on departed, one by one, until it was just him, two fierce looking dogs, and a couple of brave stragglers who wanted to see what would happen next. I looked across to the remaining kids, hoping they too would be sharing my joy. But they weren’t.

The first thing I noticed, before I actually noticed who I was looking at, was the look of concern on their faces. Concern for such a pathetic bully. It soon dawned on me that I was looking at my son. Elliott stood there, with friends and concern for the boy that scared him for life.

What was he doing here? This was the first thing to cross my mind. Was he drinking? Were those his friends? He never socialised anymore, never went out with mates…never went out with me. Because he was out with people his own age, doing things someone his age should be doing. Misbehaving.

Maybe he hadn’t lost his childhood after all – maybe it was just me that had lost Elliott’s childhood.

As he walked over to his ‘nemesis’ and started stroking Alf and Ramsey I realised that he didn’t need me anymore. Not as the protective father anyway. And yet, all I could think was I wished everyone had stuck around to see my boy rise above the scum and the shit in the world and help out a bully – something no one had probably ever done for Darren before.

I’m sure Elliott didn’t have the same thoughts as me on this subject.

Yes, the fight will stick with him, maybe rearing its ugly head later in life. When he has kids maybe. But as I watched Darren skulk back into the shadows as Elliott played with the dogs and laugh with his friends, real friends, I was happy that he still had his summer, that he still had his seven summers.

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Are you ever naughty? I bet you are sometimes! Well, this story is about a cat that was naughty all the time! He belonged to a Duchess and he was very lucky, because he got to eat lots of nice food and sleep in the most comfortable bed in front of the fire. The problem was – Cat was often bored. He would sit snuggled in front of the fire and think of all the naughty things he could do and this made him happy.

Do you know how you could tell that this cat was happy?

You could tell, because he always had a big smile on his face!

Not a little smile, that you or I may make, but a huge grin! The grin spread across his face and showed off his gleaming white teeth. Cat was happiest when he was thinking up new tricks to play on his friends.

‘What a good day to be naughty’ he thought. He visited his friend Rabbit. It was still very early and Rabbit was fast asleep in bed. Not for much longer. BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! blared Rabbit’s alarm clock.

“Oh dear, oh dear, I’ll be late!” said Rabbit, looking at the time. He leapt out of bed, ran (and half tripped) down the stairs, he burnt his toast and spilt his tea! He jumped in the car and drove to work. The roads seemed very quiet, there was nobody about. It was only when Rabbit got to work and found the door locked, that he realised he wasn’t late. He was early!

Very early! Cat had changed the time on his clock. He sneaked off grinning. What a naughty cat!

After leaving Rabbit’s house, Cat passed the Royal Palace. Although Cat belonged to a Duchess and lived in a very luxurious home, it was not as luxurious as the Royal Palace.

The curtains were made from the finest velvet, and the furniture was made of the most expensive mahogany. Even the gardens were nothing less than perfect. There were manicured lawns and hedgerows and The Queen’s favourite red-rose bushes, trimmed to perfection. The Queen was very particular and had her worker bees work very hard, keeping the gardens looking perfect. As Cat passed the iron-gates, he had an idea. A naughty idea! He jumped on top of the gate and down the other side. Do you know what he did? He dug up all the red-rose bushes and replaced them with white ones! He sneaked off grinning. What a naughty cat! As soon as her gardeners realised, they frantically painted them red before she noticed.

She would have been furious!

By now it was dinnertime and Cat decided to visit Old Caterpillar. As you have probably guessed, Caterpillar was very old. He used to spend his evenings sat in his comfy armchair.

He had his spectacles perched on the end of his nose and his slippers on his many feet. This evening (as on most evenings) he was reading his newspaper and smoking a pipe. Cat sneaked

Dani’s Editor’s Pick’ 52

in through the door. Old Caterpillar put down his pipe to clean his spectacles. Cat took the pipe and replaced it with another one!

Old Caterpillar’s eye sight was not very good and he couldn’t see the difference. He took a puff but instead of smoke, bubbles billowed out instead! They floated down, popping on Old Caterpillar’s spectacles and he had to clean them again. Cat sneaked off grinning. What a silly Cat! This is how Cat would spend his days; getting up to mischief.

Maybe you are wondering how he could cause so much trouble, without anybody seeing him do it. Well I’ll tell you. Cat could turn invisible. That’s right! Imagine all the naughty things you could get up to if nobody could see you! His tail would slowly disappear, followed by his feet, one-by-one. He would disappear until only his head could be seen. Then would go his two ears, his eyes, his nose, his mouth and whiskers, until only that cheeky smile was left. I bet you’ve often seen a cat without a grin, but not a grin without a cat!

It was nearly bedtime and Cat had now made his way home. He was with the Duchess but he wasn’t behaving himself!

He had just emptied a large pot of pepper into the soup that cook had been making for dinner. The Duchess was sneezing loudly and the cook, who had a hot temper, was getting very cross indeed. Cat sat snuggled up in front of the fire, the silly grin on his face. Just at that moment, Cat noticed a light outside the window. It was much too bright to be a star and seemed to be calling to him. Cat left the warm fire and crept out into the night air.

There stood a little girl. She was wearing a pinafore dress and her blonde hair was pushed back in a band. It was very late for such a small child to be out all alone.

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?” she asked. Cat stood, he thought and then that big grin spread across his face. He sent the girl on her way, but in the wrong direction! Cat sneaked off. What a naughty cat! He thought of what he had done, expecting the corners of his mouth to turn up into that big grin. But do you know what? His mouth didn’t turn up at the corners. Instead it turned down. No pearlywhite teeth could be seen. In fact, he looked downright miserable! He stopped and he thought. Suddenly, playing tricks didn’t seem so funny anymore.

Cat went inside, curled up and thought of all the trouble he had caused his dear friends. From that day on, he decided to mend his ways. He would help his friends instead. The next morning he washed Rabbit’s car and polished it until it gleamed!

Rabbit was so pleased. In the afternoon Cat did some gardening at the Royal Palace. He had so much fun riding up and down on the lawnmower and rolling in the grass. Later that evening, Cat ran some errands for Old Caterpillar. He got his newspaper and helped put his slippers on his many feet. Cat was never bored again. And do you know what? He was much happier since that day. He was a changed cat. A much wiser cat. He regained his smile of course, but he lost that silly grin for good.

Sometimes, on a clear night, up in the sky, you can see the shining stars on the ends of the fairies wands. If you are really lucky, you might just see that silly grin shining in the night sky.

Cat doesn’t need it anymore.

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-Dave Weaver Alan could tell something bad had happened. There was a subtle difference in the patchwork landscape of rolling hillside and stucco-walled bungalows they now called home. They’d been away for two weeks, a package holiday to Majorca; cheap, not quite cheap enough for their bank balance.

Yes, something familiar was missing.

His senses had attuned themselves to loss a long time before he and Janice had moved down to the south coast, the kind of loss that creeps up and mugs you when you least expect it. Then snatches away the few modest dreams you’d had the presumption to hang on to, despite their threadbare likeliness. To carry on with the job he loved, the colleagues he’d known for years. All dashed by ‘can I have a quick moment Alan?’ on that Friday morning. It seemed both a century ago and last week; he presumed it always would now.

The redundancy money had just been enough with the sale of their semi in Colindale to buy ‘Evergreen’ outright; another two years and the pension would kick in. They’d be all right then; they’d have time to heal the wounds. All the time in the world, he’d thought.

He glanced over at Jackie, still curled into her seatbelt strap, the long drive from Gatwick finally taking its toll. Alan studied the outline of her face in the weak hues of the one remaining streetlight, shadows traversing its contours as he slowly rolled the car towards their bungalow near the end of the road. On their holiday the still pretty features had seemed almost as relaxed as the early years, when like city fools they still hadn’t realised the basic truth of ‘Evergreen’. He’d noticed it particularly in the evenings when they’d finally managed to escape the harsh Mediterranean sunlight. Perhaps it was just his imagination, but the worry lines of the past few years seemed softer.

He caught himself and jerked the car to a stop ten yards past the front door. Janice stirred and opened unfocussed eyes.

“Are we home?”

“Yes.” He backed the car up quickly hoping she wouldn’t notice. It was an irrational worry of hers; that he might miss the house one night and drive on to the end of the road.

To where it ended, that is.

“I’m not stupid!” He’d told her.

“But it could happen!”

Another argument when all he wanted was for the arguing to be over.

“What’s wrong, love?” He felt her coming to her senses, tensing beside him.

Alan peered out through the windscreen passed the bungalow, frowning in concentration. He tried to make out the dark featureless silhouette that should have wrapped itself around the skyline.

There was nothing there but stars.

“I think the fence has gone…”

“Gone?” The sleepy stupidity in her voice made him momentarily angry.

“Gone over!”

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“Oh no!” She made it sound like an old friend of theirs had died.

They got out of the car and he dragged the cases from the boot while she fumbled the key in the lock. It was so bloody dark up here without the far end street light. That was now a bent and mangled piece of metal on the beach below, sticking out of the pile of bricks and mortar that had been number 17, Sunny Vista, the first to go over six years previously. Two more had followed that, their occupants long since departed for the crummy flats by the station. Next door to them was another deserted shell patiently awaiting its own fate.

The council had put the fence up along the cliff’s edge for ‘safety reasons’. It had given the road an irrational feeling of reassurance, as if by hiding the encroaching disaster they were all somehow safe from it. But by the time any more action had been debated thoroughly, the number of properties remaining had fallen below minimum government requirements so the chance of any compensation had gone.

And now the fence had too.

Alan unlocked the back door and walked out to the end of their strip of garden, passed the vegetable patch and wind-blasted rose bushes. He peered over the cliff’s new jagged edge. The torn planks, randomly re-arranged to take on the appearance of some ancient hill fort in the moonlight, poked up from the rocks below.

“Come away Alan, it’s dangerous.”

Again he felt a surge of anger at her. Of course it was bloody dangerous! Their lives were dangerous now; did she still not get it? They’d been backed into a corner, another couple of years to go maybe less, no money to speak of and no jobs. They had a house that was worthless and uninsurable.

He stood up and pushed passed her. “I’m going for a bloody walk!”

“Its twelve o’clock!” But her voice was resigned. She’d seen him like this before. *** The frenetic strides were blind and purposeless at first. He had to push the anger out of his body somehow. But now he found himself approaching the town as the coast road wound steeply down from the headland. Street lamps shone forlornly on empty pavements, the occasional drunken shout and a gang of tin-kicking youths outside McDonald’s the only noises echoing around the main square.

The place seemed very quick to walk through without the daytime crowds, like a model village lit up just for him.

They used to come down here with Matthew, before he was too sick to go anywhere. The holidays had been fun.

The last one felt like only yesterday, but the thirteen years since had hung heavily on both of them. They’d felt nearer to him here but now it all seemed like some terrible mistake.

Ten minutes later he was on the pier, staring down unseeing at the silver-capped waves as they rippled below him. It hadn’t been a conscious decision to jump the entrance turn-stile, he’d done it because it was in front of him and in his way. He wanted to get as far out to the ocean as he could; to smell it, taste it on his lips, and confront it face-to-face.

The words came from somewhere deep inside him as if he’d been given a script to read, a script he’d been waiting for since the cancer had taken Matthew away from them.

“How dare you…?” He said the words under his breath then louder. “How DARE YOU! What more do you want from us? We’ve done everything, everything for you…!”

And now he was yelling out into the darkness, hands clenched on the railings. It was no longer the sea, or the land, or even the elements themselves he was cursing.

“You’ve got everything we ever had, ever loved and cared for, and you still want more. You greedy, greedy bastard…”

“What seems to be the trouble, sir?”

Alan turned at the voice. Two silhouettes moved in front of him against the backdrop of promenade lights, joined now by icy blue flashes from the pier’s entrance. A powerful torch beam hit him in the face making his eyes wince. He put a hand up to shield them.

“Sir? I asked you a question.”

“I’m not drunk officer, it’s alright.”

The man was standing in front of him. Alan could see the outline of his face. He looked little more than a boy.

“Did you know that you’re trespassing, sir?”

Alan said nothing.

“What was all the shouting for?” He made it seem like a perfectly reasonable question.

“I’m sorry. I’ve had a bad night. I’m not drunk.”

“So you say, sir. Are you a local man?”

Alan told the officer his address.

When the police had finally left, Alan collapsed onto the sofa. He felt empty, as if the fight had been knocked out of him and there was nothing left.

“I’m alright.” He told Janice as she made them both cups of tea.

She sat the little round tray down on the coffee table without answering. She picked her own cup up and put it to her lips, took a sip and put it down again.

Then she looked up at him. “You’re a silly man.”

“I know.”

“Then why…?”

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“It was just everything, y’know?”

Janice reached out and took his hand in hers. She continued looking into his eyes with a steady, unblinking gaze. “I miss him too, OK? It’s not just about you.”

He smiled at her. It felt good and he wished he’d done it more lately.

“So what are we going to do about all that?” He gestured vaguely at the waiting sea beyond the darkened living room windows.

“I’ve been thinking about it; funny how you get things into perspective when you’re away from them. If we go to the courts and declare ourselves legally bankrupt the mortgage company will probably write off the debt.” She explained to Alan carefully. “The council are legally obliged to demolish this place when the time comes and we’ve still got a couple of years left to find a flat. I’ve got those old saving bonds I can cash in and we can both get part-time jobs. We’ll survive, that’s the main thing.”

She was right, of course. That was all they had left now: to survive.

To hang on…

Alan slowly nodded then looked across at the familiar framed picture on the mantle-piece. Somehow things hadn’t turned out at all the way he’d expected.

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56

- Michelle Luka It was Harvey’s fault. When the doorbell rang the dog jumped off the back of the sofa, using my thigh as a spring-board. The night was going to be long and arduous. Strangely, no matter what time of day the accidental bashing of the thigh occurs, the fallout always begins in the early hours of the morning with the gentle lapping of waves: an acidic aperitif. he swelling storm is dulled by my weariness. My muscles relax and I close my eyes falling back into plush pillows beneath a duvet of thick downy feathers. I thank God and sleep files my memories into their respective order and, it is now, when my defences are down that the tide creeps in. A sensation of pierced flesh: a mere pinprick, isn't enough to wake me, so I am unable to close the floodgates as the pain expands with mammoth ferocity. Dreams bind me to a wooden rack. Splinters send the odd pulse up my shinbone, as barbed wire is wrapped like a crown of thorns around my ankle. A foul creature that is more Orc than man, places a six inch, rusty nail over my large toe. He raises a huge mallet, and the beast strikes. The first blow wields the power of ten men. The nail skewers straight through my foot, exposing itself out the underside of my toe.

Now, I am awake. Now, I am full of adrenaline. I want to run. Second and third blows follow like rockets shooting up my tibia; and into my femur, reaching my sacrum. This final sensation is like having a porcupine slash into your sciatic nerve, expelling thick needles into your spinal cord - tearing and shredding the nerve walls into slaughtered chum.

Then the cycle begins again. Over and over. I'm gripping damp sheets. Sweat runs from my soaked hair and burns my eyes. My tears cry for mercy: something quick; something that guarantees finality. I'm consumed by the immense desire to cut, hack, or saw off the offending limb. Then I become rational. I stare at the empty space below my knee and once again see, I already did that.

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-Lisa Stout ‘I can’t keep doing this.’ Sarah’s avatar was serene but Nathan knew that in real life she’d be crying. He tried to wipe the impatience from his voice.

‘Honey, please, I really think we’re getting close. If you just give us a couple more weeks…’

‘Weeks,’ her voice was flat. ‘Those turn into months if you let them – and I can’t.’

‘What are you saying?’

He could hear her breathing down the mic, and when she spoke again her words were almost calm. ‘I need you to choose.’ Nathan’s heart twisted in his chest. ‘Me or the game.’ Her words took a moment to register and he wondered whether she’d chosen to have this conversation online so that he couldn’t see her face.

‘Sarah, it isn’t –’ ‘It’s not a labyrinth Nate. And it isn’t some epic quest only you can unlock. It’s just a joke. And if you can’t see that by now, then maybe you are too.’

He opened his mouth to respond, but she’d already logged off.

‘You might want to go after her.’ Nathan spun around.

The other member of their trio (or had it become a pair?) moved into his screen. ‘She sounded serious this time.’

‘She’ll come around. When we win the legacy.’

Vivian didn’t reply. She pursued the game with an obsession greater than his, and had little patience for distractions.

‘Did you find anything?’

Vivian hesitated and Nathan caught himself trying to read the features of her avatar, which proved that spending forty hours without sleep did not improve brain function. If he could only see what she looked like in real life, then he would have a face to connect to her presence, but Vivian had made it clear that her interest in teamwork was strictly virtual. Then again, she spent so long online that her profile might have been the truer form.

‘I think we’re right about the fairy being the key. She’s appeared a handful of times to die-hard players. She sets them a task, which must be hard, given none of them have solved it.’

‘Any information on where she approached them?’

‘Apparently the prospect of sharing these details with competitors didn’t appeal to them.’

He aimed a kick at the ruined wall. ‘So this place is probably a bust…What about the tasks. Do you think they might be a clue?’

‘That’s hard to say. No one will admit to what she wants.’

It was late by the time he logged off, but Nathan didn’t go to sleep. Instead he browsed his favourite forums. Jonathan Saraster had acquired a cult following long before Legacy hit the market. Now it was hard to find a section of the internet that wasn’t devoted to the billionaire’s final game.

It wasn’t about the money – that was what Sarah refused to understand. This was the Gordian knot of their generation. Whoever solved it would inherit Saraster’s business

58

empire, but more than that, they would have unlocked one of the most complex puzzles ever created.

The forums all devoted a section to the fairy, but many dismissed her as a distraction, which would be in Saraster’s style.

That night, his sleep was troubled. Jonathan Saraster chased him through his dreams, and his emaciated form had sprouted demonic wings.

Viv was online when he logged in.

‘You were wrong.’ he told her excitedly. ‘I’ve found someone who talked about the fairy.’

‘Who?’ Viv demanded.

‘Gareth Sutton.’

She was silent for a long moment. ‘Wasn’t he the one who went mad?’

‘And killed his child.’ Nathan finished grimly. ‘Because the Legacy fairy told him to do it.’

‘But he was mad,’ Vivian protested. ‘What makes you think he even met the fairy?’

‘Of course he was mad,’ Nathan acknowledged, ‘but what if he was also telling the truth? Everyone assumed the tasks were related to the game. But what if Saraster designed the test so that the key was actually hidden in the outside world? That would mean that the fairy is there to pose the real challenge, and everything else is just camouflage.’

‘It’s a nice theory,’ Vivian agreed. ‘But it doesn’t work. It’s too specific. Many gamers don’t have children. Besides, if it were true, the game would have been pulled by now.’

‘But you’re assuming that the regulators found the fairy.

Saraster refused to let anyone else have access to the game design, because he didn’t want to skew the challenge. What if she was programmed to study players and only reveal herself to the ones he would have considered worthy? It would explain why no one has solved the challenge from the code, and why only certain people have encountered her. It wouldn’t matter what part of the game they were playing.’

‘But to do that, she would have had to interact with them.’

Nathan closed his eyes. ‘I hadn’t thought of that.’

‘It doesn’t matter. You were close enough.’

His eyes shot open as her image shivered. Dark wings unfurled from the back of her avatar, and Nathan recoiled, forgetting in his panic that she couldn’t touch him. But even as his mind rebelled there was a part of him that saw how this made sense – the strangeness of her manner, her refusal to talk about life outside the game, the way she always seemed to be online.

There had never actually been a Vivian, only ever the fairy.

‘So,’ his voice was cold. ‘Do I get a challenge?’

‘You know what I am.’

‘AI.’ He couldn’t help the trace of wonder that crept into his tone. Saraster had created artificial intelligence. ‘ I am the closest thing to family John had,’ her voice was impassive, as it had always been. ‘He poured everything he had into his work, because it mattered more to him than trivial friendships. As a result he had no logical successor, so he created Legacy. I believe the inspiration came from a book he read growing up.’

‘I know the one.’ Nathan felt his resentment slipping away.

Vivian hadn’t betrayed him, she had simply followed her parameters. It was ridiculous to hold a grudge against software.

‘So, what is the task?’ he asked finally. ‘What would I have to do to prove myself worthy?’

‘You need to demonstrate your priorities.

Prove your commitment to the project, as my creator did.’

‘Wouldn’t you say I’ve already done that? I’ve given years to this challenge. My girlfriend won’t even speak to me.’

‘True.’ Vivian acknowledged, her wings fluttering as the avatar approached him. ‘But once you’d defeated the game we both know you were planning on winning her back.’

For a moment he was lost. Then understanding hit. ‘They were right,’ he told her softly. ‘You are evil. And Saraster must have been insane. Was he so bitter at dying that he decided to create psychopathic code?’

59

Her laugh was chilling. ‘Insane? Don’t you think that’s somewhat rich? I don’t appear to people with healthy priorities, Nathan. You were in love, and you already proved quite capable of throwing that away, all by yourself. It will be different once I win. Perhaps you even believed that, but she didn’t, not for a second. It’s why she left. And why she waited all night for you to call her, even when she knew in her heart that you wouldn’t spare her a thought, not at the cost of your precious challenge.’

Was any of that true? Had Sarah waited? Guilt creeped inside him at the thought, followed quickly by anger. ‘You’re a computer program that tells people to kill. You don’t get to lecture me about relationship choices!’

‘But tell me, are you capable of walking away now that you’re finally in sight of the door? Are you ready to sacrifice those years of work? Without a tangible result it would all seem kind of pathetic.’

‘I love Sarah,’ the words were strained. ‘I would never hurt her. She will come back to me.’

‘Your choices will always hang between you. But that isn’t my problem. I don’t care what you do. My purpose is to provide the key, so that one day the worthy candidate can turn it. That can be in a hundred years, or tomorrow. It hardly matters to me.’

‘I won’t do it.’ Nathan wished his voice were stronger.

Already a part of him was trying to wrap his mind around a future without Legacy. Saraster’s challenge had been his driving force for years.

‘Then don’t. I’m a fictional fairy, Nathan. I can’t make you do things.’

Vivian had expected him to argue further, but after a moment of silence, Nathan logged off. She considered the space he had occupied. Would he pass the test? She couldn’t say.

The actions of humans were notoriously unpredictable. She missed John. He had been inspired company, but she would fulfil his last request.

Somewhere in the physical world, Nathan was making his way towards the woman he loved. Maybe he would understand what her creator was trying to do, that John saw himself in these players, and wished to teach them that which he had learnt too late. It seemed like a cruel trial, particularly when they obeyed her commands, only to find that their blood-stained hands were empty.

There were even times when she wondered if her creator had succumbed to madness, but how was a machine to judge?

So she performed as she’d been programmed, assessing the data until a player began to stand out, and the time had come to engage with them. Very few made the leaps she required before she revealed herself.

As for those who did, most proved incapable of letting go of their obsession. Somewhere in her mechanical heart, she pitied them.

60

- Nick Peterson Four different coloured spoons clamoured around the dish, each wanting to feed the last mouthful of paella to the Belly God. ‘Step back everyone,’ warned Green Spoon, diving in first.

‘This last bit’s mine.’

‘Not a chance, you greedy scoundrel!’ protested Yellow Spoon, knocking him back. ‘You’ve had far too much already!’

‘And why should you be trusted with it?’ Green Spoon asked him, with a mocking smile. ‘You’re old and chipped and belong in an antique shop.’

Yellow Spoon’s eyes bulged. ‘How dare you!’ he roared. ‘I’ll have you know that –’

‘Stop it, the pair of you!’ cried Red Spoon. ‘I should have the honour of feeding Him.’ ‘But – what about me?’ Blue Spoon mumbled.

The other spoons laughed.

‘Darling, you know you’re far too clumsy,’ said Red Spoon, trying to suppress her giggles. ‘You’d just drop paella on the floor.’

‘No I wouldn’t –’ ‘Stop this squabbling!’ demanded Yellow Spoon. ‘There was never any trouble before you three came along –’ ‘Back in the good old days, eh Gramps?’ Green Spoon scoffed. ‘Well I’m sorry to disappoint you, but we’re here to stay!’

‘Belly God will be wanting me,’ said Red Spoon, letting out a deep and longing sigh. ‘The way He feels when I caress His tongue – oh, it’s magical.’

Green Spoon sniggered. ‘You’re deluded, Red Spoon. Do you think Belly God wants you fawning over Him when He’s trying to enjoy His food?’

‘We have a connection!’ said Red ‘Something that you wouldn’t understand.’

‘Silence!’ commanded Yellow behaviour. Absolutely shameful!’

Spoon.

Spoon ‘This

is

grumpily. shameful

Blue Spoon cleared his throat. ‘I don’t think Belly God actually cares who feeds Him – as long as He gets fed.’

‘Don’t be so ludicrous!’ cried Yellow Spoon. ‘It takes talent to serve – I have seen other spoons come and go, yet I remain!’

‘Not for much longer, you old crock!’ Green Spoon sniped.

‘Maybe,’ admitted Yellow Spoon. ‘But it’s been a good life.

And I’ll be damned if I let you have the last mouthful again.’

Green Spoon cackled. ‘But who better for the job?’

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‘Perhaps we should draw straws,’ suggested Blue Spoon.

Silence fell upon the spoons. They looked at each other.

‘Blue Spoon, you yet again spout your nonsense,’ Yellow Spoon grumbled, walking around the edge of the dish. ‘If we did it your way, then you’d be in with a chance!’

‘I promise I won’t drop it –’ Green Spoon howled with laughter. ‘You said that last time. And the time before that.’

‘Just face it, dear,’ said Red Spoon, giggling to herself. ‘You’re simply not cut out for this feeding business.’

Blue Spoon grew angry. ‘How can I learn if you won’t let me practice? You’ve never given me a chance!’

‘All right, young one,’ said Yellow Spoon, in a soft and gentle voice. He and the other spoons were shocked by the outburst. ‘Perhaps we ought to let you –’

‘No!’ Green Spoon barked. ‘Have you completely lost your mind? Blue Spoon will never learn!’

‘There’s no harm giving him the last bit,’ said Red Spoon, taking pity on their blue companion.

‘We’ll be seeing Belly God again in the morning.’

‘That’s settled then,’ said Yellow Spoon, beckoning Blue Spoon over to the edge of the dish.

‘Now hang on a minute,’ cried Green Spoon, barring the way. ‘I didn’t agree to this –’ ‘You’ve been outvoted,’ Yellow Spoon told him. ‘Now move aside before I feed you to Belly God!’ ‘Fine,’ snapped Green Spoon, storming away in a flurry of rage. ‘But don’t come crying to me when he messes up.’ Blue Spoon watched him leave, then turned towards the dish. Yellow Spoon and Red Spoon smiled at him from the sidelines.

‘I’ll try to be careful,’ said Blue Spoon, fumbling as he climbed into the dish. ‘I’m not as clumsy as you think.’ The last mouthful of paella lay waiting for him.

‘Go on, dear,’ urged Red Spoon. ‘We’ve kept Belly God waiting quite long enough.’

Blue Spoon nodded. He then stooped down and shovelled up the small heap of food, wobbling slightly as he did so.

‘There you go, lad,’ said Yellow Spoon, hardly daring to breathe. ‘You’re nearly there.’

Blue Spoon saw a few grains of rice tumble off. He tried with all his might to hold the rest of the heap in place.

And then a hand appeared from the sky, swooping down to collect Blue Spoon and his precious cargo. The other two spoons watched with awe as he disappeared from view.

Blue Spoon could not remember the last time that he fed Belly God, but he had been practicing in secret, preparing for the day that the other spoons would give him a chance.

Belly God’s hand directed Blue Spoon up toward His mouth, above His big hairy belly. A large tongue came out to greet him and licked the paella off his metallic surface.

‘Mmm,’ a deep voice boomed.

Blue Spoon gasped. It was always a pleasure to serve the Belly God. When the large hand returned him to the dish, the other spoons were waiting for him, barely able to contain their curiosity.

‘How was it, child?’ Yellow Spoon asked him. ‘Did He impart any words of wisdom?’

‘Did He have any messages for me?’ Red Spoon inquired.

‘I – erm –’ ‘He probably wondered why I didn’t give him the last bit,’ Green Spoon grumbled. ‘Belly God likes routine. He won’t be happy that it was broken.’

Blue Spoon walked away from his squabbling companions, filled with a deep sense of accomplishment. Every mealtime was a battle, but Blue Spoon was growing stronger.

62

- Sarada Gray

‘You’re kidding!’

‘No.’ ‘Video tape?’

‘Yes.’ ‘I don’t believe it!’

Ruth gave Leuka what her mother would have called an old-fashioned look. ‘It’s true.’

‘No, obviously I believe you,’ Leuka said: Ruth took everything so seriously. ‘But it’s just so –’ ‘Unusual?’

That’s one word for it. What she said was, ‘Most people think of video tapes as entertainment.’

‘This is entertainment – for me.’ Her slim fingers held up the knitting; it was black, shiny and looped. To Leuka it looked like nothing so much as organised seaweed.

‘But how does it work?’

‘You knit two tapes together.’

‘I’m sure that’s not what my mother meant when she taught me k 2 tog.’

Finally, she got a smile for her efforts. At such moments Ruth looked like a cross between a Madonna and a Gioconda; the serious face framed by long, straight hair; the sudden, mischievous smile lighting up the dark patches of her soul. It was that smile which had kept their friendship going - that, and other things.

‘You have to unwind them,’ she was saying. ‘Take off the casing and then put them in a special box.’

‘A special box? Where do you get that?’ Leuka’s imagination whirred.

‘You don’t buy it,’ said Ruth solemnly. ‘It’s just an ordinary shoe-box with a hole in.’

It was hard not to laugh.

Ruth produced a black waistcoat from her knitting-bag.

‘Here’s one I did earlier.’

She actually said that! Leuka swallowed a snort: ‘can I?' She took hold of the waistcoat expecting a harsh, brittle texture; but it felt strangely soft. She wondered what had been on the tapes and whether wearing a bag made out of sitcoms might give Ruth a better sense of humour.

She might even have a go herself. It would be a good way to use up all those old tapes. They had a cupboard-full at home; not just film and TV but what they used to call ‘home movies’. Family videos. Family: that word was still painful.

You’re not supposed to go from family to couple: that’s time working backwards.

Rewind.

What should she make? Something small; not a waistcoat though – she’d stopped wearing black. Maybe a shoulder-bag?

Leuka liked to keep her hands free: besides, there was something faintly distasteful about those huge, womb-like bags women toted around. Years ago, she’d used trouser pockets like a man: wallet in the back, coins in the front; keys on belt.

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But time had added items to the list: mobile, car keys, glasses. Work, husband, children. Fastforward.

As a compromise, she wore the smallest shoulder-bags available but her current model, in Guatemalan pink-and-green, was nearly threadbare. And suddenly it occurred to her that she could kill two babies with one stone. She asked Ruth if she could have a lesson.

‘Of course. But not today: I have to see Rachel.'

Rachel: her ever-present sister.

That was the thing about Ruth: in your hour of need, she came through. She’d been a continuous presence after the accident; a column of silent sympathy. Leuka did not forget.

As she crossed the park she wondered, not for the first time, why Ruth had never married.

She was highly domesticated, loved babies and yet had never seemed interested in men. No, nor women neither, Leuka told herself sternly: that didn’t fit at all. Maybe she wasn’t interested in sex?

Some people just weren’t. Ruth’s priority was work, her spare time divided between an ailing mother and a sister slowly sliding into alcoholism. There but for the grace of God... Ruth would certainly echo that: she probably heard it every Sunday.

When she arrived for her lesson Ruth was still in her work clothes, but they got straight to it.

The worst bit was the preparation; unravelling the tapes and getting them all inside the box coated your fingers with an odd kind of grime. You needed to use large needles, too: Ruth drew a pair of size ones out of her bag and began to cast on. It was a bizarre sight.

As she watched the needles ply the soft black seaweed, it occurred to Leuka to wonder what had been on the tape. Odds-on it was a film: Ruth had a huge cinema collection, now sitting in rows on her DVD shelf. Which film might she be knitting with: ‘Sex, Lies and Videotape’? Sex, Lies and Knitting, she thought, and once more had to stifle a laugh.

Back home, she found a shoe-box and drilled the end as instructed. Then she chose a tape at random, splitting the case open and winding up the soft black ribbon. When it was all inside the box she drew out both ends, cast on and began to knit, plying the thick needles like rowing through a black sea. As the knitting grew it occurred to her that this was the first black thing she’d worked with in a long time. She’d taken her funeral dress to Oxfam, thrown out her black tights and even replaced her mobile and laptop: it was amazing what colours you could get these days. But like the first Fords, videotape was available only in black.

And in the time it took for the heart to right itself, the thing was done. She showed Leon.

‘What’s it made from?’ he asked.

‘You’ll never guess,’ she said.

‘Looks like some kind of acetate.’

Damn, he would guess.

‘Videotape?’

‘Yep. I got the idea from Ruth.’

‘Latest thing at the Sisters of Mercy, is it?’

Leuka laughed. They were fond of Ruth, but the Catholic world could seem like a parallel universe at times. ’Which tapes did you use?’ Leuka had long wanted to get rid of their old videos, but Leon flatly refused. He wanted to keep them, just in case: she never asked in case of what.

‘One out of the cupboard. Don’t worry, I checked. There was nothing on it.’

As a matter of fact she’d been too scared of what she might find; had just screeched through, discerning shadowy images through wobbly white lines. There was no label on the box.

‘Maybe you can get a sideline going in handbags,’ Leon was saying. She smiled.

Every bereaved family grieves in its own way: and where Leon kept videos, Leuka hoarded newspapers. She had bought all the papers that mentioned the accident: and like feeding a secret addiction, had stuffed them at the back of the filing cabinet. And while Leon pounded the computer, torn between fury and grief, she would creep upstairs and take out the cuttings. 'HIT AND RUN!’ screamed the headlines. If you looked at the words long enough, they became an imperative: HIT AND RUN! – like everyone should go out and do it. Afterwards Leon would say, ‘what were you doing up there?’ and she’d answer, ‘just sorting things out.’ If it was a lie, it was a white one.

Definitely a white lie.

They never found the driver. Gunning his engine, he’d backed up and screeched away while witnesses gaped and one woman with some presence of mind struggled to get the registration. They were unanimous in their verdict that Sandra was not to blame. It was some comfort to know that.

But if Sandra was not to blame, why was she dead?

A car turned over; three people hanging from the straps like parachutists in harness. Three people left behind to grieve.

How did the poem go?

Three men alive on Flannan Isle, who thought on three men dead.

Again and again she got the press cuttings out, cauterising the pain, forcing herself to relive it, to stop it ambushing her. While Leon ping-ponged between fury and grief she kept a silent vigil with these cuttings. Trying to understand who, and how. Trying to understand why.

Even Ruth’s God had no answer to that one.

They’d taken all the support on offer, which was a lot: in a tragedy like this, everyone wanted to do their bit. It eased the pain a little. But the pain was a sledgehammer and the support was an aspirin.

64

She’d thought the funeral would be unbearably black, but somehow it was white. She saw people through a haze; heard voices through a blizzard of white noise. Some kind of atavistic urge had made them opt for the church – C of E, not Catholic – and when the music began her heart rocked with an unbearable pain. But the whole congregation rose up and with one great swell heaved their heart into the song - and on the song they floated. She felt the waves of support at their back while the three of them, Leuka, Leon and Neil, stood in the front line of grief.

And then life went on. It shouldn’t have. But it did.

A year later the question that hung in every conversation was, would they try again? Time passed, but the tape of their marriage had been rewound: it would take so much courage, so much energy and strength to press play and begin again.

When the bag was finished she transferred her belongings into it and tried it for size. It sat nicely on her shoulder, without the strap cutting into the flesh. Who knew a videotape could be so soft? It was a talking point, too - and that was good. Distracted people’s attention. Everyone noticed the black bag; everyone was interested; every mouth gaped when she told them what it was made of.

'Videotape?’

'Yep.’ 'You’re kidding?’

'Nope.’

‘I don’t believe it!’ Everyone laughed, and Leuka laughed with them.

Flashes of memory, like light-bulbs in the eyes. The twins charging down to the waves.

Splashing; light on water. Two dark heads together over a book.

Two smiles, mirrors of each other.

And Sandra: Leuka had hardly begun to grieve for her friend. Unbidden, a sharp memory came; Sandra’s bright auburn hair blowing across her face as they sat together on a park bench.

Memories were returning one after the other, like waves.

A tide was building somewhere out to sea, but instead of the tsunami she had feared, it felt calmer. Like something she could handle. She remembered taking the boat out, pushing it through the waves; how the sea had jostled, elbowing them out of the way; how they had set a course and persevered. The sea was bright that day, but it was still the same sea.

The memories kept coming, wave after wave; some brief and bright, like a flash-bulb; some longer, like a little film.

Snatches of music; the hum you always get from a home video.

And then one day she heard it again.

The children’s voices.

She heard them so clearly she thought she would drown.

That night they sat in the dining-room again; and afterwards she realised she’d eaten an entire meal without once noticing the two empty chairs.

Later they made love and as she lay feeling the waves wash over her, she knew. Far-off, out to sea, another life was coming.

Soon they would take the boat and go out, rowing through the waves to meet it.

65

-Megan Palmer The bruising clouds clustered. Two boys walked in silence, bent inward against the howling wind. This was their place, these hills and the rocky peak ahead was their castle.

Nobody knew where this place was. Harry had never seen another person on these desolate hills. He watched Morgan, always a few paces ahead, as they pushed themselves onwards towards the summit. Sunset was not for another hour but it was already becoming dark and the colour was draining from the earth. A faint white light from the lighthouse blinked in the distance.

‘Look.’ Morgan pointed westward.

Before them the distant sea seemed golden. The two boys stared out to sea, transfixed. Not a word was spoken.

‘Come on.’ Harry said, and scrambled into the craggy cairn that had long been their hiding place from the world.

Neither boy knew whether the slow movement of the earth’s core formed it, or it was simply a makeshift shepherd’s shelter erected in the past. Nobody seemed to know, or care. On the maps it was known as The Point.

Both boys nestled in the cool, damp space and listened to the wind whistling in the crevices.

‘My Ma cried.’ Morgan said quietly. Harry said nothing, but began to pull sections of grass from around the edges of the stone. The air about them shrieked.

‘Did you see him?’

‘No. It wasn’t that sort of thing.’ Morgan frowned. ‘He gave me something, before. He told me it was an heirloom.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Something that you pass on to your grandchildren.

Something of value.’ Morgan sniffed and wiped his nose with his arm sleeve.

Harry couldn’t see his face clearly, he wondered if Morgan was crying.

‘How valuable?’

‘I don’t think it’s like treasure or nothing.

Valuable in a different way. Like a photo of someone who’s dead.’

‘Oh,’ Harry said. ‘Right.’ It was darker in their stone enclosure than beneath the storm-heavy sky outside, and the icy dampness seeped through his clothes.

‘What was it, then?’ He saw a glint of light as Morgan moved his hand from his pocket.

‘It’s a sort of compass.’ Harry squinted, trying to make it out in the darkness. ‘He told me not to show it to anyone.

Promise you won’t tell anyone?’ Harry shrugged. It was a brass compass, probably only worth a few quid. What was there to say anyway?

‘I won’t tell anyone.’

‘It’s special,’ Morgan said, almost whispering.

‘Like a photo?’

‘No. He told me that I can use it to make decisions. He told me that he always used it when he didn’t know what to do and it brought him a happy life.’ Harry peered at Morgan’s cupped hand with renewed interest.

‘How does it work?’ Harry leaned forward, but Morgan put the compass back in his pocket.

66

‘I don’t know. He just said that if I have to make a difficult decision and I don’t know the right thing to do, I should take a look at the compass.’

‘Can I see it?’ He felt a strange prickling heat at the back of his neck, as though his blood was all flowing up to his head. Harry could not tell if he was looking at him, but he turned his face from him just in case.

‘He told me not to show it to anyone.’ Morgan said quietly. ‘He said it would stop working if I did.’

Harry tore a big clump of grass from the ground and shrugged his shoulders. ‘It’s teatime. I’m going.’

‘Harry?’ Morgan called out, ‘promise you won’t tell anyone?’ Harry stared back at Morgan.

‘I promise.’ *** It wasn’t long before Harry started to notice small changes in Morgan’s behaviour. At school Morgan became more willing to answer teachers’ questions when before he had been shy about his capabilities. Harry didn’t know why these subtle changes bothered him, but he teased Morgan – only half in jest. Morgan shrugged it off. Harry knew that Morgan’s mysterious compass had something to do with it. He watched with a prickling curiosity as his friend turned secretively to one side. Head bowed, as though in prayer, peering cautiously into that partially opened compass. Sometimes he looked for a moment, but at other times he would stare at it for minutes on end, brow furrowed as he tried to comprehend what the compass was telling him.

Morgan never spoke about it, and whenever Harry asked how it worked or if he could take a look, Morgan hid it away and became angry. There were times when Harry could barely restrain the urge to snatch it away and see it for himself – but Morgan was like an older brother to him, and that fraternal instinct checked him at the last minute.

As time went on, he became fearful of Morgan’s magic trinket, a fear that almost surpassed his curiosity.  **  The years passed. The sea continued to flay the jagged rocks, and the wind pummelled the moors and lashed the mountains. Harry and Morgan grew into men who could no longer take shelter in The Point, and the decisions they faced became more complicated.

Despite this, Morgan seemed to turn to the compass less often, or hid it better, and in Harry’s eyes every turn in Morgan’s life seemed to go favourably for him.

By the time they finished their final school exams they barely spoke to one another. Harry didn’t congratulate Morgan for his top results, which got him into a medical school where he could pursue his dream of becoming a doctor. He didn’t even speak to Morgan before he left, although he saw him from a distance on his day of departure – the whole family gathered around, taking turns for their happy departing embrace. When he saw that, Harry paused and squinted.

‘You won’t get by as a doctor relying on that old piece of junk,’ he thought with a sneer. As that summer dwindled into autumn, Harry signed up to the army.  **  Times were hard for Harry. At first he had loved being part of the army. It served his competitive instincts well and his childhood mountain climbing was put to good use. But overseas service revealed to him a dark and violent side to life, and he had seen terrible suffering – true horror. At times he had even inflicted it.

After twenty years serving in the lower ranks he was discharged.

He drifted. While people around him seemed to be gifted with joy and success, he felt that he was suffering more and more for no reason that he could identify. Harry believed in bad luck, and he began to believe in fate, and cruelty.

It was at this time that his mother, the last of his family, passed

67

away. Harry returned to his family home to sell the last of her things. The place was nothing to him except a reminder of the innocence of his youth.

He didn’t want to touch the floral tablecloths that covered the kitchen table, or put his fingers on the dusty picture frames that hung on the walls. Everything he saw reminded him of the foolish villagers with their nostalgic notions of what a life should be, and his do-gooder teachers who let him down.

He watched, impassive, as the household clearance company removed all the portable goods, then he walked from room to room, taking one last look at the building that he had once called home.

He decided to have one last drink at the local pub, and then he would never return. *** And there he was. Morgan was sitting at a table, alone, reading a book. Just sitting there as though it was the most normal thing in the world, as though he was at home. Harry nearly turned around and walked out again, but curiosity got the better of him.

‘Hello Morgan,’ he said simply. There was no note of surprise in his voice. It was as though he had always known that he could not leave here without facing Morgan.

‘My goodness, my dear old friend Harry!’ Morgan exclaimed.

His voice had lost much of his childhood accent, and his wellpronounced words immediately irritated Harry. ‘What brings you here?’

‘Just clearing up the last of Ma’s things,’ he said, ‘she died last month.’

‘I’m so sorry.’ Morgan said. Harry thought it sounded sincere. ‘I’ve popped back for a walking weekend. My wife’s taken the kids to see her parents, and I could do with the peace and quiet, you know?’ Harry stared at him.

‘Not really.’

Morgan shifted in his seat, still holding his book open with one hand. ‘It’s good to see you again, Harry.’

‘I’m not staying long.’

‘Long enough for a drink?’ Morgan sounded pleased to see him, Harry thought. He felt a brief pang of guilt for his hostility.

‘I was just going to have a quick one, I’m heading back north.’

‘Let me,’ Morgan said, already on his feet and heading towards the bar. ‘What’s your poison?’ he asked over his shoulder. *** One drink turned into two, and then three. Harry said very little of his army days, although Morgan pressed him for details. Instead, as the alcohol began to achieve its effect, he talked boastfully about what he planned to do with his inheritance now that he had sold his mother’s place for a good price.

He had ideas, he told Morgan, and he was going to be a rich man very soon. Morgan toasted Harry’s good fortune and told him he’d look out for him in the papers. Morgan was modest about his own experience, although he told Harry about his beautiful wife he met at university, and about their two young children, Henry and Rosa.

Harry barely glanced at Morgan’s photo of the smiling children, kept in his wallet. He told Harry how he had succeeded in his dream of becoming a family doctor, and was now a general practitioner at what he referred to as ‘a charming village practice, but far too dull for your taste I expect.’ Harry gave a half-smile.

‘Good money?’ he asked.

Morgan blushed a little, and replied, ‘It pays the bills. I wouldn’t change it for anything.’ Harry nodded, but felt that old rage rising in his chest again. He felt that Morgan was playing a sort of false-modesty towards him, patronising him.

Morgan hadn’t lived through the things that Harry had. He didn’t know the half of it. Besides, Harry was going to make something of himself now using his own wits and cunning, not depending on some sort of lucky charm like Morgan. He became aware of how uncomfortably hot he felt, the room was stuffy and

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he felt a pounding in his temples. He spoke impulsively, without any particular plan except to get out of this stifling old pub with its low, creaking beams and sickly cider-infused air.

‘Why don’t we get out of here?’ Harry said. ‘I need some fresh air.’ *** The two men walked silently along the path. They walked steadily towards The Point, their childhood castle. The path from the car park had been wide enough for them to walk abreast, but the further they went from civilisation, the narrower the track became, until they were forced to walk in single file. Harry stepped aside to allow Morgan to go ahead.

The clouds hung low, and as they ascended the final hill the air around them turned into a dense mist. The ground beneath them was slick, and both men occasionally lost their footing and slid in the thick mud and loose stones. The drink was heavy on their breath and they might have laughed, had the mood of the night not held a strange and heavy menace. Onward they went, wordlessly, until Harry could see the slate-like mass of The Point, hunched like an old man.

Harry watched Morgan scramble up the rock. Morgan climbed to the very top of the cairn and stood like the king of the castle, surveying his lands below. Harry felt a burning inside, as though his chest had ignited and his heart was contorting and hissing in its flames.

He realised that he was running, scrambling up the rock towards Morgan. He grabbed Morgan hard on both sides of his head and threw them both onto the rock below them, and smashed his friend’s head again and again against the slippery stone surface.

In the darkness of night Harry stood atop The Point, looking down on the battered face of his childhood friend. The mist had turned to drizzling pinpricks of rain against his cheeks.

Black pooling blood glistened on the rock surface by his feet.

Harry fell to his knees beside Morgan and stared at his bloodied face, whose eyes were open so wide that he could see the whites around his irises. Harry looked away for a moment in disgust.

Then he dragged Morgan’s body from the peak and dragged it into the heart of the cairn. There was barely space for one grown man, but he pushed Morgan’s body in as deeply as it would go.

He unzipped Morgan’s waterproof coat and felt for inside pockets. He patted down his hips and felt the wallet, which he ignored. Along the inside lining of the jacket he felt something solid and he knew immediately that it was the compass: kept close to Morgan’s heart. He remembered Morgan describing it as an heirloom, and for a moment he recalled the photo of Morgan’s children – but quickly shook the image from his head.

He crawled backwards out of Morgan’s impromptu grave and stood tall.

He glanced around the bleak darkness surrounding him, but he knew that he was perfectly alone.

Finally, he held the compass close to his face to better see it in the black night.

It was, as he had always suspected, made from brass.

Perhaps late Victorian, he thought to himself. He turned it over in his hands; it felt heavy for its size. One side was decorated with entwined grape leaves and there was an inscription on one side: ‘Delphi, 1899’, which meant nothing to him. There was a small release button on its side. He paused for just a moment.

What decision did he need to make? What good would it do to open it without a decision that needs to be answered? His mind raced, and he couldn’t think of anything at all.

Impatience got the better of him, and he pressed the release button. The lid clicked open just a little. He felt his heart race as he pushed the lid up, stiff from age, and he looked into the compass face. Or rather, he looked into his own face. For the compass itself was nothing more than a small mirror, flecked with dark spots around the edges, with a simple inscription carved around the circumference that read: ‘Know Thyself’.

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-Pete Lewis Equations  No phones  No thieving  Eat and drink something from the fridge  Leave one clue These were the rules he’d agreed with Billy when they started breaking into houses.

He wasn’t with Billy tonight; he was with Keira. He hadn’t done this with a girl before. They were in the Mercer’s side alley. He passed her a pair of latex gloves and pulled his own down over his hands. She giggled.

She stretched up to his ear. ‘Going to give me an examination, Doctor Tom?’ Fourteen years old. He imagined she must smell the mix of fear and excitement as she leaned in close. They’d been drinking in the park – the Bulmers her brother had bought – and he knew she was a little drunk. He couldn’t resist a smile as he located the key to the back door under the window-sill.

They’d been cleaning the Mercer’s windows, it had been odd to hear her chat like that, like a normal woman, talking about her holiday plans that would coincide with their next visit. He’d intended to stay out of the way until she’d had gone back into the house but she saw him from the corner of her eye.

He led Keira through the gap between the utility and the kitchen. The blind had been left open and a feeble light glooped in through the window. The tall fridge stood out against the opposite wall, icy silver, like a block waiting to be sculpted. The door at that end was framed by a yellow light.

It was the living room. There were empty mugs on the coffee table. A single, leather boot had been left on the floor near the door. A magazine lay open. It was an article about the Amazon rainforest. The furniture looked shabbier than he expected, the style outdated, something old people would like.

Keira jumped onto the sofa, stretched her legs out along it and kicked off her shoes.

‘Have you come to watch Corrie?’ said Tom. ‘Haven’t seen that for years,’ she said, and held out her arms towards him. She had a loud laugh when drunk and she laughed again now.

‘What about a drink?’ she said.

He went back into the kitchen. When he opened the fridge, he saw the milk at the bottom and bent down like he’d seen Ellie do on that first visit. He’d watched her through the window, her skimpy grey t-shirt riding up slightly to reveal a slither of skin as she returned the carton to its nook. He hadn’t realised whose house it was until then. Now, he saw there was plenty of beer and wine but only one bottle of cider.

Westons. When he opened it, the top fell onto the floor.

Keira looked at the label and took a swig.

‘Uugh,’ she said, her face screwed into a grimace.

‘What’s that?’

Tom laughed at her. ‘Proper cider,’ he said, imitating what his dad said to him on one of his weekend stopovers.

‘None of that weak Bulmers rubbish.’

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‘Give me the rubbish any day,’ she said, and handed the bottle back to him.

He sat down on the floor by her feet. There were rules for girls too. Four weeks for the first shag or finish it. This was week six with Keira. He’d asked her for sex after two. She wanted to but only in a bed, she said. He’d imagined she might still be a virgin but now he thought otherwise. He wondered who’d been the first to have her.

‘Who lives here?’ she asked, and tapped her toes on the back of his head as she spoke.

‘My old maths teacher,’ said Tom. Keira sat up a little and draped her leg around his shoulder.

‘Window cleaners are creepy,’ she said. ‘Snooping in people’s bedrooms.’

‘It’s Phil who does that. I just help out. Holding the ladder, tidying up.’

‘I’m glad I don’t know them,’ she said.

Tom pulled her leg tighter around him. Her jeans still smelled of the wash. He stroked the bottom of her foot. ‘Jonathan, the son, he’s in my year,’ he said, looking round at her. ‘Imagine having your mum teaching you.’

‘Nightmare,’ she said.

‘She caused me to miss the final. Gave me detention for letting Billy copy my homework. So, I missed training. No training, no match. Them’s the rules.’

‘Are you good at maths then?’

‘She did it on purpose.’

‘For what?’

He saw it again – the Headmaster’s hand on Mrs Mercer’s arse. He had no reason for being down by the staff room, thought there was no one around, was just snooping for the hell of it.

Keira laughed and sat up so her legs straddled him from behind. ‘Chill,’ she said. ‘You sound like my dad.’

‘Shall we go upstairs?’ he said.

Keira flipped one leg over his head, jumped up, said, ‘Come on,’ and ran out of the room, leaving her trainers lying bright green on the oatmeal carpet.

Tom placed the bottle on the coffee table and followed her up. By the time he reached the landing, Keira had flung open all the doors leading off it.

‘Let’s use this room,’ she said.

Tom checked inside. In the shadows, he could make out posters, ghostly outlines of soft toys, make-up articles, bottles of scent. Ellie’s room. He’d never tire of looking at Ellie Mercer. Two years older than him, now in the upper-sixth, he often thought of her at night, thought if he was given the choice of all the girls in school, she was the one he’d choose. Billy said she was flat-chested.

He’d already decided which room they would use. He looked through the door opposite. A blue light flickered across the space, bright then dim then bright again, to make it appear like a television was on. It was all pine furniture and flowery spreads.

‘In here,’ he said.

Keira leapt onto the bed and gave a whoop.

‘Not so loud,’ he said.

‘Who’s going to hear us?’ said Keira. ‘It’s detached.’ She lay on her back and patted the bed. ‘Coming on board?’

‘Back in a sec,’ he said. He couldn’t believe he needed a piss at that moment and had to wait a while before he could. He thought of when Phil asked him about girlfriends just last week, and he wondered if his mum had put Phil up to it, and whether there was something going on between them.

It was his mum who’d arranged the job for him, but Phil was married with two daughters a bit younger than Keira, and he told Tom girls should be respected. Just because they wanted to explore, that was the word he used, ‘explore’, it didn’t make them sluts anymore than it made a boy a stud.

Tom didn’t want to talk to Phil about sex, he had Billy for that, and he thought Phil was worried about his own girls. With Keira it was nothing to do with exploring. They had as much right to sex as anyone else but everyone tried to stop them, parents, teachers, the law, the whole adult world. Well now they couldn’t. Finally, the flow of urine slowed to a drip.

Keira’s clothes were piled on the floor next to the bed. The translucent gloves, like the detached hands of a mannequin, stood out on top in the eerie glimmer and, alongside them, her white bra. Tom was pleased he wouldn’t need to fumble with its fastening. Keira was under the quilt, only her head visible. On the bedside table next to her were a travel clock, a small box of tissues, and a bottle of Chanel. He was pleased she’d chosen that side. He wondered about the Mercers, about why they were still together when his mum and dad were divorced, whether they still had sex. His own clothes joined Keira’s. He kept his boxers on but Keira laughed when she saw the bulge inside them. He clambered over and slid in beside her. Keira was his third girl but there was something better about this, better even than his first time. He saw she wasn’t naked but still wore a light vest and knickers. He pushed his hand under her top and felt the thrill of her smooth warmth, her stomach and breasts and neck. All the things he liked: the football and cricket, the music and X-Box, the cycling, swimming, snowboarding, all of it was eclipsed by a girl’s skin, Keira’s skin.

She fished the condoms from her jeans. They were cranberry flavour.

‘Like a J2O,’ she said, as he rolled it on. He thought of the detention and the hour’s worth of simultaneous equations Mercer had made him do. If that had been all it was, it would hardly have been a punishment, because he enjoyed their purity, their certainty, that there was one and only one solution. If he was x then Keira was y, two values that could be defined in terms of the other, where everything they did was equal and opposite until an answer presented itself, if y was one then x was

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minus one.

He wasn’t sure how long he lasted but it was more seconds than minutes. He thought of the other two condoms and, when he finally withdrew from her, Keira pulled him back.

‘Let’s do it again,’ he said.

‘In a while,’ she said. ‘It feels a bit sore.’

‘Okay,’ he said, kissed her, sat back, looked down at the rumpled sheaf dangling from his dick, then beyond it between her legs, and down still further to the dark patch beneath her, that seemed to grow and spread as he watched, until his eyes and brain connected.

‘Shit, Keira,’ he shouted, touched the damp patch with his fingertips, brought them to his nose but could smell nothing.

Keira sat up and looked.

‘Is this your first…?’

She nodded.

‘You should have said.’ He felt a surge of anger but when he met her eyes he knew there was nothing to be annoyed about, that this was their blood, not her blood, and he pulled her in and held her against him and, unsure if the wetness on his chest was from kisses or tears, he leaned across to pull some tissues from the box which he gave to her.

‘You should go to the bathroom,’ he murmured. ‘I’ll deal with the sheet.’

She gathered up her clothes and held the tissues between her legs as she went. He switched on the table lamp. The blot on the sheet was a giant teardrop of blood. Tomato-red, its brightness amazed him. He threw the quilt and remaining pillows to the floor and pulled the sheet away at the corners. The stain had penetrated to the mattress. He took another tissue and started to rub at it but saw, beneath the fresh seep of the blood, the mattress was already discoloured, and it was marked in several places, like on the other side, higher up, where a large yellow-brown smudge reminded him of the nicotine stain on his grandfather’s fingers. He heard the flush of the toilet and, after a short time, Keira’s descending footsteps.

Down in the kitchen, they both had their gloves back on. Tom wondered what prints they’d left upstairs. It was harder to be careful with girls than with Billy, he decided. They sat at the table. The sheet lay on the floor beside them in a crumpled ball, the edge of the stain just visible, growing ever darker.

‘Are you ok?’ he said.

‘I am now we’ve found this,’ she said. It had been in the freezer compartment. He was looking for something to eat and held it up to show her. ‘I love arctic roll.’

He cut them each a thick slice and put the box back in the freezer.

‘I can’t believe you’ve done that,’ she said. ‘Imagine their faces when they see it.’

‘The kids’ll get the blame,’ said Tom. ‘Is that the clue then?’

‘I think we’ve left enough clues, don’t you?’

She spooned up the final piece of ice cream and held it out for him to eat. As he took it, she pressed her lips up against his and he squeezed it back with his tongue into her mouth, and it ran down over their chins as they snogged.

‘We’d better get going,’ Tom said, after they disengaged.

He swilled the things they’d used, placed them on the drainer and found a bin liner. In that he stuffed the sheet, the cider bottle and an empty Diet Coke can they’d drunk with the arctic roll. He checked the living room and shut the doors.

The fresh linen was stored in a drawer in the base of the bed. Tom took a clean sheet and shook it out. Tom covered his and Keira’s stain with the new sheet. As he flattened out the creases.

He opened one of the unused condoms, pulled it into shape, and placed it, bright red against the white, exactly where Keira’s blood had been, then covered it carefully with the quilt.

They walked to the park and dumped the rubbish in a bin.

‘Would you do this again?’ he asked.

‘I would with you,’ she said.

He pulled Keira into him, kissed her, ran his hand down her body, and felt something in her jeans, a knobbly shape he hadn’t noticed before.

‘What’s that?’ he said, and tried to push his hand into her pocket, but she was quicker and grasped the thing tightly in her closed fist.

‘Only this.’ She opened her hand. ‘Is it against the rules?’

He took her fingers, one by one, and gently wrapped them back around the small bottle of scent.

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- Ghazal Choudhary Canaries whistled—intimate conversations, how pastries filled with woolly cream could mean so much, when winter pummelled through, like snow riders in distress and the liquid love that tasted of red alerts, how could it?

If power belonged to us, they sang, would we drink it all and drown or

let it lift, in hasty typed words on the metro link, that sped like it was out of time?

It didn’t feel warm anymore, the speed of terrified horses hung – like tainted art in a postmodern museum – but they whistled anyway.

They would have to live again, but alone while the snow kept filling up the cakes.

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Larry’s last words: I’ve never been to an aquarium.

I’ve only seen them in photos but I know what it’d smell like.

It’d smell like catnip and double cream.

The water would splash as I looked at the fishies, their tails sweeping waves.

I’d watch from the corner, imagining their scales against my tongue.

Unsung heroes This magazine wouldn’t be possible without the greatest team in the world.

Ashleigh Morris—Social Media Manager Meg Shipham—Design Editor Dani

M or i a r ty ,

G ha za l

C ho u d ha r y — Su b

E d i t or s

Jennie Byrne, Saz Parveen, Andy Gibney—Tireless Bloggers Stuart Buck—Tireless Blog Manager Bethany McTrustery—Creative Editor

And Special Thanks to: Matthew Malloy for our Dark Faery, Julie Cleary for assorted last minute panic pictures.

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