Vortex UoW 2023

Vortex

New poetry and prose from Creative Writing students at the University of Winchester

Editorial copyright © University of Winchester

Individual copyright © as credited

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without prior written permission from the rights holders.

Editor: Kayleigh Mills

Co-editors: Hollie Davis & Caitlin Fussell

Project Lead: Judith Heneghan

Design: Jamie McGarry (Valley Press)

Foreword  Judith Heneghan 5

Dear Octopus  Becca Miles 7

Souvenirs  Eva Hagavik 8

Your mum  Tom Moody 12

The Holidays  Molly Penney 13

Clean  Robyn O’Mahony 14

Red Rabbit Traps  Isabella Goddard 18

nostalgia is one hell of a drug  Ellen Page 19

The White Room and the Red Circle  Mollie Steel 20

Protecting Literature  Martin White 25

Looking Glass  Nancy Ripley 28

When She Leaves  Emma Matthews 30

Renewed  Eden Irving 31

Harried Life  Sarah Standage 33

Red Wine Bruises  Tilda Sweetzer-Sturt 34

Cake  Emma Matthews 40 In the Shadows of 1985  Elisa Perin 41

Please note: Vortex 2023 contains material some readers may find distressing.

Foreword

Welcome to Vortex 2023, the magazine for new poetry and prose by Creative Writing students at the University of Winchester.

Vortex, published annually, turns twenty this spring. Two decades is no mean feat for any literary magazine, and while its processes and design have undoubtedly changed over time, it remains steadfast in its mission to celebrate great work from the BA and MA programmes.

This latest edition has been shaped from start to finish by three final-year student volunteers. Kayleigh Mills, the editor, along with co-editors Caitlin Fussell and Hollie Davis rose to the challenge with a fresh, clear vision and good-natured professionalism. Reading the volume of submissions, drawing up a shortlist, then finessing the final selection has required dedication, diplomacy, an eye and an ear for language, informed literary taste and the determination to champion a standout piece. Excellence was the watchword and, as Kayleigh observes, ‘while there was no set theme, the collection as a whole needed to flow.’

Huge thanks to all who submitted. The team received over fifty entries, so please don’t be disheartened if your piece didn’t make it this time. Thanks also to Glenn Fosbraey and Richard Kelly for ensuring that Vortex could continue, and many congratulations to those whose fine work was selected.

We hope you will agree that Vortex 2023 showcases the verve, the wit and the clear-eyed gaze of students from across the Creative Writing programmes. Curiosity is vital in our often polarised and contradictory world. Each poem or short story in this edition illuminates a specific moment or a state of being and invites us to see things a little differently.

Good reading!

Judith Heneghan Senior Lecturer, Creative Writing The University of Winchester

Dear Octopus

Becca Miles

I think I want to learn to take your shape. I wanted to ask before I did.

My limbs are lonely, my bones are iron bars, my organs trapped in this tetrapodic prison. I long to squeeze into small spaces but I don’t want to presume.

Octopus, do you guard your plasticity, or will you share it? I promise

on the inside, I am just as alien as you.

Eva Hagavik

Dear Hannah, I am sorry.

No. That was not it.

Hannah,

I think about your mother a lot. She would always be tidying and cleaning in my workshop. I told her I had a system. ‘A mess is what it is,’ she would say. She insisted she hated messes. She didn’t. She loved cleaning, and without messes, there would be nothing to clean.

No. That was not it either.

Mr Watson had never been good with words. He would feel things and think things, but expressing them? It had never been a talent of his.

Annoyed at himself, he crumpled the attempt of a letter into a ball.

‘Some more paper, sir?’ asked the bartender, his voice carrying a thick French accent.

‘Umm…’ said Mr Watson.

The bartender handed him another sheet.

It was dark and gloomy inside the bar. The walls were covered with old photos of the building’s exterior and its previous owners. ‘(Now and Then There’s) A Fool Such as I’ sung by the King himself played from a jukebox in the background. There weren’t many people present that night. Mr Watson liked it that way.

To my daughter Hannah,

How is Timmy? He just turned eight, did he not? He is probably too big now for that rocking horse I made him.

Mr Watson crumpled up that piece of paper too. He then put the cap back on his pen and threw it into his satchel. His hand dragged through his thin grey hair.

‘Is everything all right, sir?’ asked the bartender.

Mr Watson rose from his stool, pulled on his coat, and started awkwardly counting his francs.

‘Yes, yes, everything is fine,’ he finally muttered. His hand trembled as it had been doing for years now – it came with age, his doctor had told him – as he placed a few coins on the counter.

He made his way outside where cold wind and dull moonlight caressed him awkwardly, as if they were strangers. He leaned against the wall on the corner and lit a cigarette, listening to the youthful noise of Lyon past sunset. Why am I still here, he wondered. Smoke made its way through the wind as he exhaled. He could almost hear his late wife’s voice whispering in his ear: Go home, Jacob.

*

To Hannah,

I am not sure if you want me to – I would not blame you if you didn’t, for it has been five years and that is far too long – but I am coming home.

It was very loud inside the train station. Mr Watson was used to this by now. No matter the country, the train stations were all quite alike. The rush of people was the same, although the languages spoken would vary. The works and systems were the same: the whistles of old steam engines; the feeling of the paper tickets between one’s fingers. This train station was no exception. Yet, everything was different.

Mr Watson walked down the platform, dodging the many shadows of people hurtling by. He looked at the ticket in his hands. It felt smooth against his rough wrinkled skin. He stared at the coach number for a second, then put it back into his pocket. His hand found an unlit cigarette to fidget with instead. His other hand was dragging a heavy old suitcase.

First stop is Paris. Then the ferry over to London. I believe I will make it to Glasgow before my letter, resulting in my arrival being a surprise. Apologies. I am aware that it may be an inconvenience.

‘En voiture!’ shouted the conductor as he walked along the steaming train.

At once, a dozen people withdrew from their families and friends on the platform and hurried to the train doors with their luggage. ‘Au revoir!’ they said.

Mr Watson reached his coach and entered. A whistle blew behind him as he lifted his luggage onto the racks and settled in an empty window seat.

The train jolted into motion. Mr Watson moved his hand into his satchel and took up his leather wallet. It was old and tattered by now, but it was still in one piece. He opened it carefully and found a photograph that had been tucked inside amongst francs, German coins, a Las Vegas die, and a folded postcard depicting the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

The photograph was full of creases; its corners had gone soft. It was black and white like most pictures. It showed a small boy, only a toddler, sitting on a rocking horse with his young mother kneeling beside him, and behind her, the boy’s grandmother. They were smiling at the camera.

It had been Mr Watson who took the photograph, and now his eyes lingered on the face of his wife. He imagined that, in another world, she was sitting in the seat next to him at this very moment, leaning her head against his shoulder, her hand in his. She would have found the French landscape soon surrounding him to be quite beautiful.

Mr Watson’s coat was soaking wet as he walked the path up to a small brick house. The lights inside were on. He could hear voices behind the kitchen window and stretched his neck to see the people, but his view was blocked by drawn curtains. Mr Watson wondered, for a second, if they had done any renovations to the kitchen as they had once talked about, and in that case, what it looked like now. Guilt suddenly crashed over him. He could have been there to help with the carpentry.

Mr Watson now stood in front of the slim front door, his hand hovering. His eyes had landed on a red children’s bicycle that was leaning against the wall next to him.

A sudden cold breeze drew his attention back to the door, but his hand still hovered, trembling more than it had in years.

Just knock, he thought. But what do I say? Afternoon? Hello?

The door opened in front of him. Mr Watson stepped back to see his daughter in the doorway pulling a coat on hastily. She looked just as he remembered and the resemblance to her mother was as strong as ever. Next to her was a young boy, taller than Mr Watson’s memories insisted he was, but who he still recognised with ease.

The woman was looking behind her. ‘We’ll be back by tea!’ she called. A man inside the house answered with a mumble.

Then, finally, she turned. Her jaw fell, but the rest of her face was expressionless. The moment seemed to freeze for Mr Watson, whose heart was pounding hard against his chest in anticipation for her to speak.

‘Dad,’ she finally croaked.

‘Umm… I- I can come back later if you’re going out.’

The woman gave a sudden sob as she threw her arms around him and squeezed him tight. Tears began falling down her cheeks.

‘Don’t be silly,’ she muttered.

I hope you can forgive me for everything. Love, Dad

Tom Moody

thinks I’m lazy. I’d tell her I’m not –but I can’t be arsed.

When I’m in the room she likes to speak to you in French. ‘Tom est un imbécile.’

Your mum does not like Brits –she does not understand our love of binge drinking. I explain she has not put her thumb on the table and must now drink.

‘Tu aurais pu trouver beaucoup mieux que lui.’

I have no idea what this means –but your mum is probably right.

The Holidays

Molly Penney

My fruit cake is peeled and sits half eaten on my red plastic plate, the icing is too sweet and thick and stale, my sisters have barely touched theirs and my brothers are not here. Our parents are happy on the wall; they are so glad that everyone could make it this year. The dog is outside and in the bin, we do not have a cat. We have a fire in the fireplace, large, coloured bulbs on the walls and candles on the mantel from previous years, no tinsel and no tree.

We do not mind when the children cry or scream, we keep up conversation. Our records jump and crack, but we do not notice, we are not listening to the words, we already know them, we do not care, it is noise. The silence gathers outside but we do not let it in. We wait for the snow to lay and stick and wish for it to bury us alive.

Robyn O’Mahony

The room is small, boasts that uninspired colour of shared flats everywhere: magnolia. The air inside is stale, the walls damp with condensation. Patches of mould grow along the windowsill. The alarm sounds and signals the start of the day. Your routine begins.

You snooze for a little while, annoying your housemates still in a state of half-sleep, that continual alarm sound upsetting the ears of everyone in the flat. This place, this space between the sleeping world and the waking one, it’s your favourite time of day and you are not yet willing to give it up. It is your only place of peace, while awake, before it evaporates, and your brain begins to tap tap tap away at you. Before you take a shower, you boil the kettle. Once it’s ready you carefully pour the water all over the head of the brush, sploshing some around the bathroom as you do, catching your little toe just a bit, sucking in the pain between your teeth with a woosh sound. You set the kettle back into the kitchen and clean your teeth. You wash your hands before and after. In the shower, you try not to touch your face much which, you admit, is a little difficult when trying to achieve optimal cleanliness. You turn the shower off and try to dodge the curtain which is encrusted with mould. You wash your hands when you get out of the shower. When you get back to your bedroom – which sits at the end of the hall, at the front of the flat – you apply hand sanitiser.

The email arrived as nonchalantly as emails do – silently and without ceremony. You intentionally don’t have your phone on loud, or email notifications on, so you didn’t even realise there was an email until much later in the day. It was not written with kindness; this you knew, from years crafting passive-aggressive emails to colleagues. It was deliberately unkind, you thought. A little cruel. You wanted to punch the laptop. You wanted to punch her. You kind of wanted to punch yourself.

Instead, you washed your hands. Again.

The timing of the email was pretty shitty, you thought. Then you reasoned she probably didn’t deliberately choose for it to arrive at this moment, or at all. The following week, you moved to London. You had been excited, still kind of were. But the email lingered.

On the train you applied hand sanitiser six times. The journey was one hour and ten minutes. *

As things so often do, autumn happens all at once. You have been in London for four months. You like your job – the duties, the clients, the people. You like that you can take the Northern Line all the way to the office. You like the people you see on the Tube; still marvel at the faces and glimpses of lives you get to catch while you travel. You like to pick up Metro and read the segment that features people appealing to those they have seen on the Tube; sometimes wonder if someone might be talking about you. You like Long Acre – where your office is – and the expensive shops that line the street. Life is normal. The office is a three-storey conversion with wooden beams and slanting ceilings. The carpets are cream, there is a preposterous number of real plants. It is infinitely nicer than your flat and you spend the weekends waiting for Monday, for the moment when you can step outside the reality of your life and into the imaginary world of your job: the little dramas that don’t actually matter but seem impossible, the small catastrophes of what the Friday treat will be because the pizza van isn’t available anymore. These things don’t matter, and it is a pleasant life to reside in, one that provides a comforting veneer for your social media feed. Outside, in the flat, things do matter. Too much. Like the fact that you are behind on the council tax by three months, so the bill is beyond comprehension and your housemates, whose salaries are much larger than yours, refuse to divvy up the cost fairly. Like the fact that even though you’re familiar with the phrase don’t shit where you eat you still fucked your housemate – in his double – and then went to sleep in your single. Your room is collecting dust because you can’t bear to move things around and put them back in their exact place, so it’s a little filthy. The blinds in your bedroom aren’t white anymore

because the mould has claimed them as its own. The windows are almost always wet on the inside. But your hands are clean.

One day, at work, a colleague asks, why are your hands so red?

You look down at your hands, nestled together in your lap, and say, they just get like this in the cold weather.

And then you excuse yourself to the bathroom.

At group therapy they said, imagine you are afraid of dogs. Now, how might you, step by step, overcome that fear?

This analogy didn’t feel relevant to you given that washing your hands is an essential aspect of life. But you didn’t say that. You just raised your hand – keen to be seen as someone who was taking it seriously – and said, visiting a park where there might be dogs?

After Christmas, when you’ve been home and then returned to the city, another email arrives. It says:

He’s gone. Don’t come to the funeral, it will only upset the kids.

You press x on the browser, you shut down the laptop. You wait until the engine stops whirring and then close the lid. Even though you want not to bother with this shit you can’t. You want to be able to be normal, to respond normally. To slam the lid of the laptop down. To slide it off the bed until it crashes onto the floor. But you have to do it as it has to be done otherwise who knows what might happen. You walk to the bathroom and wash your hands. You move the soap dish a little to the left, to the exact place where you know it should be. Your mind says a thousand and one things about the dish and the fact it was in the wrong place and how the wrongness of that one thing has been contaminating everything else and how you didn’t notice and maybe that’s what caused this. Maybe that’s why he’s dead. Maybe it’s stupid fucking meaningless shit like this that meant you didn’t see him for fifteen years. Meant he got a new life, forgot your birthday, didn’t visit when you nearly died from a ruptured appendix.

You think: this bathroom is filthy. Dusty and wet at the same time,

an ecosystem of its own. You wipe the top of the cistern with your fingers and watch the dust disappear. You turn your palm over and examine the particles on your fingers. You wash your hands in the basin. You rub the wet mould away from the shower curtain with those same fingers. You wash your hands again.

Red Rabbit Traps

Isabella Goddard

All blood and all bones, all fine China skin, Cherry red rabbit atop mattress springs.

The milk carton children spin hair into harps, A half-broken skull to a whole-broken heart.

Pull her to pieces, there’s sugar inside; All sweethearts, all violets, all pink suicides.

Now cracked down the middle, that curlicue head, All glitter, all worms-meat, all motel swan beds.

Cabbage patch cheeks, two flowering ferns, Drinking the Kool-Aid and kissing rope burns,

Pushing and pushing till old farmer snaps, All blood and all bones, all red rabbit traps.

nostalgia is one hell of a drug

Ellen Page

i’ll worship you if you just let me soak it all up.

i can’t go back to it, so i’ll take it with me, and every so often i’ll take a sip.

i can’t stop myself, even if i wanted to, it tastes too sweet –

scratch that, i’ll never stop.

when july rules over me, it will forever be a wet october afternoon / a snowy january morning / a cold december night

all at once and also not at all, because time isn’t so kind anymore.

slow down for a minute, and let me catch my breath before it starts again and this becomes a memory, too.

my head is starting to hurt, and i’m forgetting the curve of her jaw.

one more taste, please. just one more.

The White Room and the Red Circle

Mollie Steel

The girl woke that morning as she always did, with the light filtering through her window.

She had just left a dream of courageous knights and fire-breathing dragons. With bleary, swollen eyes, she stared up at the white ceiling and replayed the images of flames over and over in her head until she felt giddy. Never had she seen a red so vibrant, so vivid.

Truthfully, in her world, there was never much colour.

The walls of her world were painted white.

The girl bathed in the tingling warmth that filled her body for a few moments longer, and when she was finally ready to leave the marvels of her dream, she sat up. Stretching her arms and flexing her fingers, she tapped six times on her chest – three with her right hand, and three with her left. Balanced. It was all right to stand now. She picked up the clothes The Voices had left at the foot of her bed whilst she slept: a white dress, white socks, and white underwear.

Her world was unremarkable, nothing like the places in her books or dreams. It was a table and a stool, and a bed beside a thick, frosted window. It was her bath, her books, the projector, and The Voices.

The girl smiled and tapped her left middle finger and thumb together three times.

She liked The Voices.

She never saw them but liked to imagine they were as elegant as the elves she read about, or as strong as the dragon-slayers. They watched to make sure she was okay, that she liked her food and her books. Sometimes they spoke to her through the silver sphere in the corner of the ceiling. She liked it when they did that.

The girl liked all The Voices, though some more than others; some spoke curtly, and some made her laugh. Sometimes they made loud noises and said things she didn’t understand.

The girl sighed contentedly as she thought of Sleep-Treat. This was the name she had given The Voice which spoke to her before her nightly gummy was slipped through the metal serving hatch. The girl

hated the taste of the gummy, but Sleep-Treat made it easier.

Maybe Sleep-Treat was a witch; the girl had read of witches before. There were good and bad ones, but they could all brew potions and elixirs. The girl was sure Sleep-Treat was a good witch.

Following her usual routine, the girl straightened her blanket and smoothed it down three times. She didn’t quite get all the creases out and though seeing them made her fingers twitch, to touch it a fourth time just wouldn’t feel right. To distract herself, she stepped towards the window and strained to see the other world. It looked small and blurry, but the girl knew otherwise. The Voices had shown her videos and images of the other world: the endless deserts with scorched sands; the towering mountains topped with ice and snow, and the deep oceans filled with hidden creatures. It made the girl’s head spin. She didn’t know how it could all fit.

Throughout the day, the window’s shadow became a sundial. Depending on where it was in the room, it indicated when to expect the next Day Tray, when to sleep, and when to watch the projector.

She glanced at the floor. The shadow was approaching its first place, just in front of the metal serving hatch, which meant it was almost time for the first meal of the day.

The girl looked back at the window, entranced. It was rare, but sometimes large shapes drifted by the glass, and her world turned dark. The girl didn’t like seeing them; it made her heart race. The Voices had warned her that these shapes were the beasts of the other world, and she was in here to be protected from them.

Three bangs drew her attention away from the window and she spun around to see the yellow Day Tray being slid through the small metal hatch in the wall behind her. Yellow meant today was a Fourth Day. The girl knew that of course. In the beginning, the cycle of alternating coloured trays helped her keep track if she happened to forget what day it was. Blue, red, green, yellow. Yesterday was green, tomorrow would be blue. It was as natural as breathing.

The only time the order changed, was once every ninetieth cycle when the girl would be given a white tray with a huge slice of sweet rainbow cake. She always looked forward to this and kept a tally on the wall behind her desk that counted down to the next white tray; in four cycles, she would be expecting her fifteenth white tray, though

she’d probably had many before which she just couldn’t recall.

The girl smiled and rushed towards the wall, grabbing the tray before it fell onto the floor. She sneaked a glance at the raised circle by the hatch.

‘Do not look at that,’ came one of The Voices from the silver sphere, and the girl quickly looked away, flustered. Do not look. Do not look.

The Voices did not like her acknowledging the circle. Once the girl had been so intrigued by it, she’d waited until the light disappeared then approached the circle with outstretched hands. When her fingers had brushed against it, The Voices had screamed and made loud noises that made the girl fall to the ground. She’d clutched her ears and curled up in a ball. After that, The Voices reminded her every day that she was not to touch the circle. She was not to look at the circle. She was not to think of the circle.

But today, the girl could not ignore the fact that the circle had been glowing red.

Swallowing back the sudden anxiety, she banged her fist against the wall in thanks and took the food to her desk. Sitting, she took the piece of black chalk from the pencil pot and drew a new line onto her white tray tally. She rubbed her hands together to wipe off the dust, then pointed at the first section of her tray. She didn’t recognise any of her food.

‘Mash poh-tay-toe,’ came one of The Voices from the silver sphere. On the wall beside her tally, the projector lit up. ‘Mash Potato,’ it read.

The girl repeated The Voice’s pronunciation a few times before she was satisfied. They had given her different kinds of potatoes before, and as she prodded at it with her fork, it occurred to her that it looked just liked the insides of a jacket potato, or a regular potato just smushed –mashed. The girl smiled. That made sense.

She scooped up a large piece of the mash potato and took a bite before pointing at the second section.

The process continued, with the girl being introduced to the other new foods – broccoli (bad), sausage slices (good) – along with a small carton of strawberry milk (very good).

While waiting for the shadow to make its way to the second place of the day, the girl sat cross-legged on her bed and occupied herself with her books. The first one she picked up was about the adventures of the Flower Fairies. The girl loved flowers and had begged The Voices to let her have a real one, but they had refused. The thought of never being able to touch one made her heart ache.

Closing the book, she slid it under her bed, and chose another. This one was about pirates who hunted mermaids and sirens. The opening of the story explained how they had carved a large wooden lady into the bow of their ship with spikes coming out of her head.

The books made her question what she was: her ears were not pointed, and wings did not sprout from her back, scales did not cover her body, and horns did not emerge from her skull. She knew she was a girl, because that’s what The Voices called her, and because she had long hair and wore dresses. The girl also knew she was not a child, because according to the books, children were stupid, could not speak properly, and cried at everything. The girl, on the other hand, could speak very well, and from what she could remember, had never shed a tear. But the girl was sure she was not a woman, or a man. Her books said that women were desirable, with thin stomachs and curves on their chests and waists; the girl was thin, but she had no curves. On the other hand, she knew men had hair on their faces and strong, muscular arms. This was not the girl either.

All she knew was that her hair was brown, and her skin was peach, though if she looked at her hands and wrists closely enough, she could see lines of green, purple and blue beneath the surface. She had tried to cut them out one day with the knife and fork on her tray, just to get a better look at the colours, but The Voices had yelled and screamed and banged their fists against her wall. They’d stopped giving her metal after that, and the girl never tried it again.

The girl placed her book down and lay back in bed, pressing her fingertips into the hard parts of her face. She ran them across her dry lips and her blunt teeth, across her eyelashes, and along the angles of her jaw to try to piece together a picture of what she looked like. She thought a lot about her eyes. Were they green like a selkie’s or brown like a satyr’s?

With a sudden curiosity, she raised her hand, and pressed her

fingertip into her eye. Touching burned, and the girl flinched, but she persisted, this time pressing softly. Her eyes were wet and squishy, but no matter how much she rubbed, no colour came away like the girl had hoped.

Her books described eyes in so many ways: empty, and beady, doeeyed, and bright. Did hers twinkle or sparkle? Did they flash or darken? Then there were her lips; if she puckered them and pouted far enough, she could catch a glimpse of their light pink colour. Sometimes, if she bit down into the skin, they would ache, and a bright red would ooze out and drip down her chin. The books called this blood. Blood was bad. Blood had come when she’d pressed the fork into her wrist. Blood made The Voices angry.

Three bangs came from the wall, and the girl looked down at the shadow on the floor. It was in second place. It was time to watch the projector. She took a seat at her desk and rested her chin on her hands and waited.

The girl knew something was wrong when the projector did not turn on. She looked back at the shadow slowly moving past second place, then again at the blank wall.

‘Hello?’ she said to the silver sphere. ‘The projector isn’t working.’

When there was no reply, the girl stood, keeping her eyes glued to where the projections always appeared. She banged on the wall above the metal hatch three times and waited.

Nothing.

She tried again with the other hand.

Nothing.

The girl chewed her lip. It was okay, The Voices would fix it. While returning to her seat, the girl caught a glimpse of the red circle once again. She looked away, heart racing, but paused as she realised The Voices had not yelled nor had they banged on the wall. Still, the girl had no intention of going near it, but she couldn’t stop herself glancing at its red glow.

The Voices did not acknowledge her.

Protecting Literature

Martin White

Kateryna waits until daylight. It is the only time she can venture outside; there is a curfew at night. The city has been under martial law for over a week. Seven days ago, the Russians surrounded the city, and the constant bombardment is now part of her everyday life.

The sirens are muted this morning as Kateryna picks her way through the rubble – the remains of a library. She has acquired an abandoned shopping trolley left in the stairwell of her apartment block. She remembers wiping the blood off the handle, unsure whose it was or if they lived.

The air is tainted, and she can taste sulphur on her tongue. It is hard to tell if it is the smoke left over from the night of shelling, or thick cloud; maybe it is both. It seems darker today.

The trolley is almost full of books. Kateryna picks them out from the bricks and the twisted iron beams. Dogs bark somewhere in the distance, and three people pass her by in a hurry, carrying loads on their backs. They do not acknowledge her, and she is grateful; she was never one for idle chat, even before the invasion.

Kateryna only collects novels – works of fiction. She has always been a book hoarder; she takes advantage of the situation. She did feel guilty at first, but she now tells herself she is playing her part. Preserving the library. She may return them once the war is over; she is not sure.

I might be dead soon anyway.

The trolley full, she manoeuvres down the road, zigzagging between smouldering craters and burning cars. The pavements are far too hazardous. Bombed-out buildings lean leprously over her and force her to keep to the centre of the street. A clapped-out Skoda passes by, coughing and spluttering. Five or six young men squeezed into the vehicle carry machine guns and head toward the city’s outskirts to defend what is left of it. She prays for their safety and wonders about joining the militia again, but she knows they wouldn’t want her.

Kateryna was born with missing fingers on her right hand and a

clubfoot that hinders her movement. She will do her bit by saving as much of the library as possible.

Thankfully, the elevators in her apartment block still work, and she pushes the overloaded trolley out into the corridor and towards her apartment door. She does not bother to lock her door; it is easier for her to leave it ajar. Then the sirens begin to sound out again, like a wailing child. She hurries into the marginal safety of her hallway. Already it is lined from the floor to the ceiling with books, and she can only just squeeze the trolley down the passage. Once inside her one-room studio, she looks around. The single bed unmade reveals the stack of books kept underneath. Empty tins of meatballs with spoons still in them sit on the kitchen counter, nestled on more books. She has almost run out of space. The walls are lined with Zabuzhko, Zhadan, Matios, Kostenko and even translated works by Dickens, Trollope, and Orwell.

As she wonders where to place her latest collections, the ground shakes with a massive explosion. Dust comes raining down from the ceiling, and she hits the floor, covering her head. There is the distant rattle of gunfire and another explosion; she sees the window bow from the blast. Quickly she rises and begins to stack the books from the trolley in front of the window. When the trolley is empty, the window is almost shut off from the outside world. Working at speed, she gathers more books from the hallway and stacks them up until the light no longer comes in.

Kateryna sits in the darkened room. A single candle lights up an area of her bed, and she reads Anna Karenina in the dim light as the bombs fall around her. She blocks them out, her mind in Tolstoy’s world. Another colossal blast shakes the room; the candle flickers and dies. The window smashes behind the book wall. She holds her breath for what seems like hours. The shelling eventually ceases, and the sirens sleep.

The next day, Kateryna begins collecting every book she can find. She will fill every apartment, every house that still stands, and when peace returns, she hopes and dreams of building a new library – bigger and better than before.

Looking Glass

Nancy Ripley

The sun licks the glass and creates pictures on its liquid skin. It fills the ache inside of me. I am a well that is barren, playing music in a raging storm, building sly-by-night ladders out of hands in the midst of a drought. I have a staring contest with the sun’s unwavering body, a force of commanding attention. She bats her eyelashes and breathes smoke that chokes the notion of focus from your dribbling lips. I leave with striped cheeks and questions and I still need to find out who the victor is at the end of the looking-glass war. I am not your God, wondering woman. I am too selfish to love beyond the air of summertime. Stop this nonsense and fold your body into mine.

My eyes are not quite themselves after this war. They are strangers against my dormant, butterfly skull, fluttering like mingling hosts and lost causes, like the attention span of a child in the winding streets of Rome or France or Peru.

I do not trust them with the rest of the girl. She is scared of hushing lips, of quiet malevolence that feels kind and stifling and wholly parental. Handprints lay flush on my temples, picking apart the excess of my daydreams and smothering them whole. Killers, claim my manuscript. A tight wrapper of stone lays against the sand in my eyes so it does not leak and spread a sleeping plague To those same little children.

This shade is obscuring, the light is blinding –pin-pricks of motion dance behind my sturdy, burnt eyelids and I feel whole with the pain. There is a boy who plays behind the curtains of my home, pulling on the greying cotton and making my caged birds shriek a battle cry of warning. Do not take her word for it, love. She is a liar at the best of times, and the looking glass is covered in thick dust and all shaken up. Guzzle warm rain from nimbostratus mouths, complacent lover, take care with my soul.

When She Leaves

Emma Matthews

‘For this world is not our permanent home, we are looking forward to a home yet to come.’

– Hebrews 13:14 (nlt )

After a wrinkled woman props her glasses on the nightstand for the last time, she leaves like a dozing child

whose eyes close in the back seat but open in their room. Is it possible to wake somewhere other than where we fall asleep? Maybe God is the father’s eyes glued to the midnight road and the mother’s arms carrying her child in from the car.

I expect the woman wakes to that smell you only notice when you’ve been gone –the dust of a house that’s been missed.

Renewed

Eden Irving

We settle down en masse to tune in to our favourite little drama. The Milky Way pulls up a chair; the stars allow the asteroids to sit upon their heated laps to see. Gravity drops off some matter to consume, as we waft away the occasional bit of… what did they call it in the show? Space junk? We shoo it off to get a clear view. It all goes quiet and still, as the ball of contradiction turns on, like one of their infinitesimal children’s toys.

Sometimes we struggle to keep track of its name; it changes so rapidly. Some call it Bumi. Or Terre. Nchi. Earth. Aarde. Tune in at the wrong angle or shine its sun off kilter, then everything goes upside down, all lopsided and confused. When that happens, we need to adjust our constellations and pay attention to catch translations and spelling. We’ve been watching for the past few millennia. We missed the beginning, so are trying to pick up context clues of where this all came from, how long ago it debuted. Seems they can’t commit to continuity. Typical.

This little globe turns, the seasons roll on, our attention spans wane. The oceans rise and fall again, the fires burn in the background, as our protagonists debate wars, genocide and the latest digital trend. They bring in the occasional storyline, all with pitiful shock and drama, each episode or two. The odd scandal. Their silly sports days and who’s barred from them because of biology or societal makeup. Occasional power outages. Sometimes, if we’re lucky, watching a species die out just as the night draws in.

The seasons pass. Our bacteria and atoms itch for something new. We spin the sphere to keep up with the hours, curious where the gazes of our good selves will land. Nothing interesting happens at night on this world; just murder and sex scenes. We follow along as the humans lose their place and start to flee. We sit back and settle in as the borders collapse, as the temperature rises, and our experiment of entertainment gets good again.

The light in their eyes diminishes as the finale draws near. They trim

the cast down – a well thought out decision. We watch life whittled away by the gifts they take for granted. We note and tally on the back of stray astral beings who goes when, quizzing each other about who died first, debating who was the main character all along.

Soon, light dies. We turn down the sun, tired and aching, as drowsiness approaches. We stay present enough to see the final human, staggering through the Himalayan mountains to escape the oceans and ash. They lie down and begin to accept what’s next. They turn, and seem to look up, up, up. They reach out their frail, jagged arm in their final move, staring at us.

The credits roll.

We’re confused, unsure what the narrative choice was there. Was it meant to make us think? Were we meant to be included all along? We could interact?

We move back for a while, adjusting to the absence of our little programme. The stars come and go. The moons live and die. Maybe when we’re present enough, we’ll find a new show. Something to hook us better next time. Maybe we won’t see them to the end.

Harried Life

Sarah Standage

With apologies to Elizabeth Daryush (‘Still Life’)

Through the patio doors the dull sky casts a shadow on the messy table, strewn with newspapers, cutlery, and plates for four, a vase with forgotten roses, odd mugs and wizened apples in a bowl, white sliced toast and a tub of margarine, a pot of tea – no need for a strainer with teabags – and four mobiles blinking weather reports and latest news. She rushes up the path with the empty compost bin feeling her life is a mess and no sooner has she sorted one thing than another problem surfaces. She worries about the corner that she cannot see around.

Red Wine Bruises

Tilda Sweetzer-Sturt

I’ve never cared much for red wine, but it’s always served at these things.

I do drink it, though. Everybody does. They swirl it around glasses shaped like swollen raindrops, waft their hands around the rim and mumble about notes of blueberry and pinecone. Perhaps it’s part of the ambience. They aren’t here for the books, really.

She is. Sophia.

She’s sat across from me. She shifts in her seat, one leg crossed over the other, and buttery lamplight slides down the curve of her calf. My eyes linger on her ankle, where the clasp of her shoe fastens. She’s come straight from work. Estate agent, on the high street. Good at her job, but constantly outshone by her co-worker, Dione. She hates Dione.

This week’s book sits on my lap, unopened. It’s old, wrinkled – a library loan – and the woman on the cover looks just like Sophia. Carmilla is her favourite book, she suggested it for this week. I watch her hand tighten around the spine of her own copy as Lisa calls for attention from the room. Her knuckles whiten, and her neck flushes. I want to touch that neck.

Lisa’s voice is grating, but I listen, and I smile. She’s invited us all into her home, after all; I should be polite. Members of the group talk about the book, and I chuckle when Henry makes a joke, nod sagely at Eleanor’s appreciation of metaphor. Occasionally, in a voice that oozes like molasses, Sophia breaks through the babble with a simple, concise point. Around halfway through the evening, she takes her hair down. It hangs at her waist in snaking brushstrokes of blueish black, with a kink where the clip had been.

A little after nine, I collect the glasses. Lisa rambles on as the rest of the group gather their coats, lips and teeth stained a bruised purple by the wine. Sophia stacks the chairs. Tinkling laughter trickles in from the hallway as I stand at the sink and slowly dip each glass into the soapy water. The suds turn a blushed pink.

‘Need any help?’

Sophia stands in the doorway, leaning against the frame. Her smile is tired, makeup smudged.

‘All good,’ I say with a smile.

She steps further into the kitchen, heels clacking on the tile, and yawns. My hands buzz from the heat of the water even as I reach for the tea towel. She sinks into a chair and cradles her head.

‘You alright?’ I ask, after a moment.

‘Yeah, just’ – she closes her eyes – ‘head hurts.’

I crouch beside her. ‘Nauseous?’

She swats at my shoulder. ‘Stop fussing.’

‘Here,’ I say, grabbing a clean glass. ‘Have some water.’

The tip of her finger brushes mine as she takes it from me. I stuff my hands in my pockets.

‘They’re all gone,’ Lisa announces, swishing into the kitchen in a flurry of linen and jingling beads.

‘I best be off too,’ I say.

‘You can let yourself out,’ she replies, assessing the contents of her fridge with a disappointed expression.

Sophia moves to the door, but her step is unsteady. Her paling face is sheened with sweat, and her hands shake slightly as she fumbles with her coat. I shrug my jacket onto my shoulders, watching her sway.

‘Soph?’

She wobbles. I place a hand on her shoulder.

‘I don’t think you should drive,’ I say. ‘Do you want me to take you home?’

Her forehead wrinkles and her nose scrunches, as if confused, but she holds out her car keys for me to take. She makes it down the steps from the front door, but stumbles as she hits the paved walkway. I slip an arm around her waist, her hip warm under my hand, and help her to the car. By the time she’s strapped in, her eyes are glassy and her head heavy. The engine rouses with a drowsy purr, and I pull out onto the road.

I’m continually surprised by how little effort it takes to incapacitate someone. One or two drops of GHB in a glass of wine, for example, and that’s it. Out like a light.

The bedding box was my grandmother’s. Sugared blue, with ornate, curled feet. When emptied, it was just about the right size, if a little cosy. A woman of five foot nothing would have no problem fitting inside.

I weighed the lid down with books, just in case the drugs wore off quicker than I anticipated. I perused the titles as I stacked them, trying to remember which I’d already read. They ended up piled in categories: those I liked, those I didn’t, and those I couldn’t remember. Every now and then, a soft bump or ka-thunk against the walls of the box would remind me of my dwindling time, and so I locked the doors, closed the blinds, and checked on the vials in the fridge.

She’ll be resistant at first. I expect that. Even to me, they don’t look appetising. I did my best to keep them from congealing – refrigeration, sterilised needles, labelled dates of extraction – but they still seemed… sludgy. Dark, thick, unlike the striking, spurting scarlet you see in films. Blood drawn from a deep vein has a slow colour. A reddish, brownish, creeping kind of colour.

She starts crying after a while, then banging on the lid of the box, kicking at the sides, but it’s only when she goes quiet that I look up from my book. She might have hyperventilated, passed out. I’d read her medical history many times, but hadn’t thought to check for phobias. Slowly, I approach the box.

‘Soph?’

No answer. Unsurprising, but not encouraging.

After a few minutes of silence, I remove the books one by one, and curl my fingers under the lip of the lid. When I lift it, her eyes are closed. She’s dishevelled, sweaty, but perfectly still. I reach down to press two fingers to her neck, and the skin rises to meet my touch in a slow, but steady, ba-bum. I remain there for a moment, watching a bead of sweat linger on her clavicle.

Pain flares in my forearm, blunt and hot. I yelp and withdraw my arm, a chunk of my skin coming away between her teeth, and she jams her elbow into my shoulder. I hit the carpet, air whooshing from my chest, and she tries to clamber out of the box, but she’s disorientated, feverish, and she topples. She lands a little to my left and I grab for

her, nails catching on her skirt as she scrambles just out of reach. She almost gets to the door, but I grasp her ankle and yank.

The noise she makes is like a trapped animal. Yowling.

I get on top of her and hold her down. She spits at me, writhes under my bodyweight, but I keep her there. She screams and kicks, but I lodge her palms beneath my knees and sit my full weight on her abdomen. I soundproofed the room years ago, using night terrors as the excuse. She can shriek and wail all she likes.

I assess the wound on my arm; the teeth marks make me shiver. I reach down and run my thumb over her lower lip, smearing my own blood across the skin, and then move a strand of hair out of her eyes. She really does look like the girl on the cover. Seeing her there, laying beneath me with my blood on her lips, is almost enough to make me buckle.

‘I knew it,’ I say softly, a little out of breath. ‘I knew you were the right one.’

I pull back her lips with my thumb. Her teeth are neat and white; a little square, but they could work. *

She doesn’t like the teeth filing one bit.

Getting her to stay still is a challenge. Even cable-tied to a kitchen chair, lips pulled back and pinned to her cheeks, she resists as best she can.

Her gums are a little crowded, so I dig out my dad’s old toolbox from the shed. Inelegant, but necessary. The pliers are rusted, stiff with age, but I manage to wrestle out four teeth. It takes more strength than I anticipated – and several attempts – but as each tooth plinks into the bowl, she struggles less. I tilt her head forward to catch the blood and spit in a bucket and pack the gouges as best I can with shreds of cotton wool. I put aside the extracted teeth for cleaning. Little chunks of pinkish flesh still cling to the roots, and the blood starts to crust and brown.

With more space to work with, I use a metal file. The noise is the worst bit. A biting grind that starts off squeaking, and fades to a hiss. She digs her nails into the wooden arms of the chair with such force

that they crack and bleed. I get her incisors down to slender points, curved at the tip, and shorten her front teeth. She manages not to faint until I’ve almost finished.

The first time I offer her the blood vials, she vomits. I’m unsurprised by her initial aversion, as alongside the lingering queasiness from the GHB, the cooling of the blood only seems to enhance its corroded smell.

When she sleeps, I clean her wounds. Wash her hair. Change her clothes. But her lips are cracked, her eyes sunken. The pin holes in her lips and chest darken, threatening infection. The woman on the book cover was pale and unblemished, but she is sallow. The next night, she caves.

Crouched in the corner of the room, she watches the window. Pale fingers of dim evening sun slither through the gaps in the blinds and streak the floorboards in gold. She watches them as if she expects them to coil back and strike her.

‘I’ll drink it,’ she says.

She can barely spit the words out, shredded by her dry throat and sharpened teeth.

She meets my eyes. ‘Please.’

Please. It’s so delicious coming from her lips. The base of my stomach tenses, and I smile.

She doesn’t flinch when I approach her this time. She takes my outstretched hand willingly, entwining our fingers. I lead her to the kitchen, alight with spidering tingles, and her hips and hair mist my mind.

The refrigerator light is dying, flickering slightly. My fingertips prickle against the chilled glass as I search for the freshest sample.

She wants to. She asked to. It’s working, and the idea of my blood on her tongue makes me quiver.

Then there’s a hand in my hair, and a pain in my neck; a pressured puncture. A tearing sound, warmth washing down my chest.

She rips away from me, taking with her a mouthful of skin and tendon, and shoves me to the ground. My head cracks against the table edge and I hit the tile, the impact fizzing in my nose. She tears fistfuls of hair from my head, follicles still clinging to patches of scalp, and spits slippery chunks of my own vocal cords in my face. Her shrieks

are gargled, blood thick in her throat.

Her thighs clench around my waist and I can smell her hair. Her teeth on my neck, her nails on my cheek, the heat of her body on mine. She claws at me as if she wants me to fight her, but I don’t. I relish it.

I lose feeling quite quickly, left only with a sense of creeping cold. As I lie there, though, I see her do it. I see her lick my blood from her lips, and the faintest flicker of pleasure flares in her eyes. Her body is so starved of water, she returns to my open throat.

The refrigerator whirrs; chilled air slithering from the open door across the blood-pooled floor. I lift a hand and twist my fingers in her hair, cradling her head. Her tongue is hot and her breathing laboured, but she does not push me off, and she does not stop.

Cake

Emma Matthews

She looked him up and down. God, was Colin the Caterpillar down his trousers? They looked tight –

but they both knew it was probably Cuthbert.

In the Shadows of 1985

Elisa Perin

Home was a straight, shiny-new, suburban street full of kids, milk-carton homes, precise turf squares.

Naïve days spent playing métiers; make-believing cops-chasing-thieves, bakers, butchers, daddies coming and going with austere briefcases; heedless of apartment-block shadows crossing the street, presaging staggered calls of ‘Souper!’ Rattling bikes ditched on front steps, wheels spinning.

Mid-summer, Simon Côté appeared opposite; cool Levis, brown leather, curly undercut. Older girls

flocked. Forbidden to go, I watched their shadows coerced across the blacktop. Out of reach.

Where There’s a Spark

Elisa Perin

I was six years old when I first understood how to strike a match. I watched my grandfather lighting his pipe. It was a ritual with him – a way of expressing emotion, I think. He was a man of few words. The pipe, always cushioned in his shirt pocket, close at hand. Close to heart. He would stroke it when my gran told him to do something, when my mother left the house in a skirt, when my sister whined from the cot and neither of them were around to quiet her.

I watched him take the pipe from his pocket, tap the bowl with his index – the skin there harder somehow, and iodine-coloured from years of kissing tobacco. Then the match box. I loved the wooden rattling sound, the whisper of the opening box, the smell of sulfur when the head stroked its rough side. And then the spark, the sizzling flame.

How I loved seeing it dance. Grandfather would watch it burn for a second, as if he was solving all his problems behind its intensity. Then he would bury it in the tobacco, inhale in that puffing way.

Now, as I watched the blaze consume the arcade, each shop folding like a train of camels, I knew I had solved one of my problems. And no one would ever find the little matchbox that started it.

Lewis Leverett

#note to future self: this was a piece based off of a prompt for class, but you won’t have time to finish it until later. Reminder of intentions/ideas: Initially, to tell a story in the form of code. But became a piss-take of literary writing. Need to figure out how to add in a story. But just finish it first. I’m writing it all properly in code so that it would actually work if someone ran it. Just copy and paste it into Docs afterwards and stick it in Courier.

import random

bluntOpeningsList = [“He died yesterday.”,”The thing that she disliked most about a full english breakfast was the eggs. So, she wiped the blood off of her hands and ate everything but the eggs.”,”She was the second most beautiful woman in the world.”,”She had only three friends now and they were all dead.”]

#add more once everything is working

coreIdeasList = [“A man struggles with fixing a light (metaphor: the man struggles with fixing his relationship).”, “A man forgives his father.”, “A toxic marriage.”, “The protagonist turns into an animal, but somehow it’s still boring.”,”A really toxic marriage.”]

#add more

additionalIdeasList = [“Write wholly unnecessary graphic descriptions of the naked female body.”,”Soak the story in an all-consuming pessimism.”,”Write as plainly as possible. Try to write an entire story without an adverb. Or, for added fun, challenge yourself to write the whole story without adjectives!”,”Take out all of the plot points.”, “Incest?”]

#add more

endingsList = [“The protagonist is depressed by the events of the story.”, “Nothing happens.”, “Nothing happens, but the protagonist is depressed.”]

randomNumber1 = random.randint(0, len(bluntOpeningsList)-1)

randomNumber2 = random.randint(0, len(coreIdeasList)-1)

randomNumber3 = random.randint(0, len(additionalIdeasList)-1)

randomNumber4 = random.randint(0, len(endingsList)-1)

#is there a more efficient way of doing this? Have a search when you get back from the hospital.

bluntOpening = bluntOpeningsList[randomNumber1]

coreIdea = coreIdeasList[randomNumber2]

additionalIdea = additionalIdeasList[randomNumber3]

ending = endingsList[randomNumber4]

print(“Here is your literary story prompt!”)

print(“First, a blunt opening. Now, you don’t have to use this phrase exactly, but do make sure that it is extremely blunt: “ + bluntOpening)

print(“Now, here’s the core idea for your story: “ + coreIdea)

print(“In case you don’t feel that idea alone is enough for you to get those awards, here is an additional idea, either depressing or sexual in nature, to help you fall into a literary style: “ + additionalIdea)

print(“Finally, here is your ending: “ + ending)

print(“Now, rookie writer, novice neurotic, get writing! And remember, whatever you write, keep it in the back of your mind that death comes to us all. If your story is feeling too bouncy, why not add a suggestion of sexual assault, or make the protagonist beat a child, because their father beat them? It doesn’t have to be either of those, but just make sure you remind the reader they’re here to frown and analyse, not to read for ‘reading’s sake’. And -- above all -- never forget: show, don’t tell! Happy writing!”)

#So, what’s the story? It should be something grim but vague and quiet, so that it itself becomes a literary story. Or maybe the total opposite? Something tongue-in-cheek and dramatic? Maybe. But wh

Mr Sandman

Casey Brown

my head is heavy as a lampshade

– the bulb is dark as coal –this bed is little as the thumb of a doctor whose glove is riddled with holes.

Your scythe sits heavy in the dip of my temple.

I snort its rust

– like honeycomb.

My eyes fizz white like a bomb in a bath shell –choking on dreams of dirt roads.