Editor’s Not Dear Reader, Welcome to Writers’ Bloc’s journal for the 2021 autumn term! I would like to thank everyone who submitted: without all of your high quality work, this journal wouldn’t be here! Putting this journal together has been such a fun experience for me, and I’m excited for you to immerse yourself in these 42 pages of creative work! I decided to choose TWILIGHT for this quarter’s theme because by the time this journal is released, we are approaching the colder months, where autumn is slowly drifting away and winter hasn’t fully arrived yet. This time of transition reminds me of twilight, where the sun has dipped below the horizon and yet, we still appreciate the light lingering in the sky These times of transitions hold so many feelings: mourning for the passing sun, yet excitement for a cozy night. Either way, I believe we need extra warmth in these special times. I can proudly say the pieces in this journal are warmth packaged in pages, whether celebrating love, talking anxiously about monsters and ghosts, or expressing the dif culty of being in that in-between state. Every piece is unique, and offers an original interpretation of the theme. While I can talk for so many pages of how the pieces in this journal mean a lot to me, I will leave you to move on to the next page. I hope this journal will be like a comforting hug in a cold, dark day for you, the way it is for me.
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Content Lovers Only Last the Night by Elayna River There is a Monster in the Twilight by Macsen Gravell Nightwalk by Leo Kemlse ‘From Sodom to Zoar’ by Thomas Sinde Misplaced Wishes by Sophie Brow Rosary by Helen Ree Two Poems by Jo Birc 24 hour party people by Devin Birs twenty: by Yerkezhan Berkembayev Gelding by Shreyas Muthusanka Two Poems by James Simpso Twilight by Yuri Nemoto-Smith AD ASTRA by Hannah Burrow Three Poems by Jack Mclella Snacking by Victor Savag
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Blackpool Rock by Victor Savag
dripping in rouge by Addlenor Twilight by Eve Scahill Twenty Years by Shreyas Muthusanka
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embrace by Isabelle Porter
It feels good in a blue-violet haze kind of way, in a cotton candy kind of way lick-your-lips kind of way, I-feel-the-sky-in-my-belly kind of way, I-am-the-angel-in-this-story kind of way. I write it all down. We hold hands. I dance. You laugh without sound. I y all the way up, and won’t come down.
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You’re 13, baby cheeks on an island between lunch trays and aluminum foil, an God is rougher than yo imagined Still, there’s the weight of your ar next to mine,
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Lovers Only Last the Nigh Elayna River
the shift in gravity. Oh, to be attached to something orbital, the ache of a warm body. Honey in the throat, and velvet veins, and kisses on ngertips and it's beautiful beautiful with each new breath it’s furthe
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To the right of your nightstand, the sun reaches for the heavens. Notice how far away the light is. Notice how, if I’m there, you’re not going very far. You see, no one learns from history, that’s the rst lie. We claw at ourselves-claw at each other, again and again. Where there’s a clock, there’s trouble,
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so here’s the gray sky to mark the haze passing. Here’s the words on the page, the pen to black it all out. Kiss the pavement one last time an take an axe to these wings, then to my hands
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There is a Monster in the twilight. There is no more perfect place for it to be. It hunches in those moments, after everyone has slipped away to their homes, as I sit and wait for the exhausted sleep that chains me to myself. There is an in nite space there, nothing lost or gained, that serves a Monster quite nicely. The others don’t believe me, of course. The Monster doesn’t either. To them, the air is broken only by the squeak of metal on ceramic, chair legs on old wood. None of them are chewing. None of them swallow. I raise my head. They don’t look at me yet, and the Monster is still lost in the dead light. It stumbles a curious gait that I don’t see, only hear. I am alone in that. They don’t hear the way the nails carve the pavement “Its legs scream when it walks,” I say, gazing out of the dining room window at the orange haze of growing night. Mother laughs, softly, without looking up from her plate. Father makes no noise but clenches his fork into a heavy st. Brother snorts, though there’s no mirth behind it. It seems I am the only one feeling it approaching: the harsh accent to the silence, the shrieking steps. I don’t feel it anymore though. Why did you stop? I think. The Monster outside the window does not reply. It is standing still now, carving its silhouette into the glass, and smothering the nal glow of day. The screaming has stopped, and instead it tilts its head quizzically at me with
(CW: body horror, implied violence/gore
There is a Monster in the Twilight Macsen Gravell
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a creaking sound: steel popping in ame. The silence continues for a good long while before I speak again. “Its arms are sharp,” I explain. “But they’re wrong. Its ngers are inside out. They tunnel into the forearms and split the muscles of the biceps.” Mother makes a sound like a gag, but I’m looking at the Monster again and my mouth won’t stop. “It makes them roll down, stretches the skin. Like balloons half melting in a sun that refuses to let them burst. The ngers keep going though, out of the bone and pulling skin and up, up, in blood as oil-slicked feathers and-” There is a thumping sound and I start, for a moment fearing the Monster has made a move. But no, it’s still standing there with that stick-thin head tilted at an angle that makes my stomach churn. Father has made the sound. He has gripped the fork so tightly that the esh of his thumb has come away, thick and gluey, and lies with the fork on the oor. His ruined palm is mashed into the plate of food in front of him. I don’t quite know what it is, but the cloying taste at the back of my tongue is a salty, rusted blood. It must burn like hell re in that wound, but his expression is not pain. It isn’t much of anything. The tissue under his eyes is a stark ash against the beet-red clay of his cheeks. His mouth is slack, his eyes cast downward. He looks so very unwell. Mother laughs again. Brother snorts, and this time there is something viscous to it that would make me shudder if I was not afraid to move. Brother looks at me and I ght to keep my gaze at his, above the trickle of something that now leaks pink from his nose. “The body,” he says. “What?” I reply.
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“The body,” he says, and I know he will not ask a third time. Somewhere in the room, the sound of a latch snapping open. “Its torso is ragged,” I say. “Open and weeping in a way the face cannot. Some windows don’t lock, you see. And if they don’t lock, they don’t unlock. And broken glass cuts so much deeper than you think. There is a pattering sound. Liquid dripping in time with a frantic heartbeat. No footsteps accompany it and yet it moves closer with every thrum of pumping muscle I feel cracking the bones of my rib cage “A dress of matted skin hangs from the collar, pearly white and pus yellow, the chest a mess of stained tears.” “What does its head look like?” Brother croaks, and snorts again. What comes next is as black as soot. I look back to the window, to refresh myself. But how silly of me, the Monster is at the table as it always is. The night sky is now so dark I can’t even be sure that there has ever been a window there. I do not need to move my head to study it. That awful popping sound dances playfully around the room and tunnels into my ears just as the thin head enters my sight once again. I take a sharp breath that brings no air. “The head is wrong. There is nothing where there should be, and too much where there shouldn’t. It’s too loose to tell if it has eyes, but you can feel it looking. The gape at the top assures you of that, though if you asked it, it wouldn’t know what you meant.” Mother laughs again and Brother asks another question, but of course I don’t hear it because there is no one in the chair. I call for Mother, reach for Father, but of
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course I live alone. The lump of thumb esh squirms into the mouse hole I keep telling nobody I will ll. “What does it sound like?” the Monster asks from across the table, each word dragging with it an alveoli, a vein, a ragged chunk of something strung along shing wire. “Like,” I begin as I choke back a sob and meat. “Like a man, I think. Important. I don’t know, I don’t like to listen. It shakes the brain. “I see.” Brother nods, then pauses. “What does it eat?” Mother asks. I’m slow to respond and I can feel he doesn’t like that. At rst my jaw creaks open like a wax doll, silent, until from my chest comes the hum of a furnace. A white heat builds to an agonising crescendo and thaws my tongue, and I speak again before he can grow tired of me. “Us, Father,” I say hoarsely. They don’t like that answer, but he knows I cannot lie. “May you be excused?” he says after a long pause. “No,” I reply. That popping sound again. It is nodding. I nod in turn to an empty room. My cutlery clatters against my plate, though I don’t remember dropping them. I get to my feet, wiping absently at the matter still clinging to my nostril. It comes away with the sound of soft laughter. I scrub at it with the other hand until it comes away empty and broken. Satis ed, I walk. Footsteps follow behind me as I approach. They aren’t trying to go unnoticed. With ngers that are not where they should be I grasp at the heavy blackout curtains. I begin to draw them just as the orange haze returns, growing, spreading, eating as it sweeps the pitch-dark hillsides. It is dragging
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itself on desperate arms that roll with sodden esh and legs that scream the last of millions, the gape on top twitching like a mad, dead thing. But while the bloodied dress swallows the butchers, the bakers, the-kind-enough neighbours of the streets beyond, the curtains are already closed. And nothing may change in my lonely twilight.
Nightwalk Leo Kemsle Your window lights up neon, like a trapdoor to Vegas. The sirens call of the hospital turns tales tall, speaks of untouchable nights unfolding meters away. I am in your lullaby breath rapture just blinks from the action and I need something, a distraction. We wander the streets like teens, like fish, like dandelion fluff. We follow the breeze waiting to be swallowed up. The heat of the evening breathes on us leaving smudges on our necks, a message for the next dawn.
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We let the moon suck our toes as we drop out of wobbling headstands curling into nautilus', our skin and the stones.
(CW: homophobic violence
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A cobalt knuckle bleeds blue into th sky. Perhaps God was enraged and kept o punching the moon, his st looking like th disgruntled white guy’s in that Nick Ref lm stepping up from the gouged-out-melo -head he had laid into. The rage of ma lled the twilight air, that rage focussed a my friend collapsing into dust on hi lover’s arms, those cut lips becoming sil that blocks up the river- ow of his words He wanted to be held, cupped in her hand and lifted toward the sky. But God ha nothing to say to him, only azur heat on this summer evening to burn throug his powdered face. He had nothing to sa to his girlfriend too. Those cuts had come fro a ‘moment of weakness’ with a soft-mouthe young man. A ‘moment of weakness’ that mad him feel like Judas in ‘The Taking o Christ’, holding a Caravaggio-mad divinity with desperate hands. Th blows that followed were af rmations tha he could never touch a work of art. No on this dying out August day, not whe he might survive as clay rather than esh protected from turning to dust. In th cobalt bleeding sky; God hurls his punches
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‘From Sodom to Zoar Thomas Sinde
Misplaced Wishe Sophie Brow The star I have clasped in my hand is desperate to escape. It leaves the edges of my ngers burning, like my throat, after I retched up the leftover parts of the universe. This is my third star. Tumbling out, they fall from my mouth onto my sheets, leaving stains like discarded dreams. I have never kept them. Afraid of what their glowing presence means, of why they fall out of my body. I give them back to the depths instead. And they are always so eager to be free as if by sheer will, they can join their sisters in the sky The water laps at my legs and the sinking sun leaves bruises on the clouds left behind. I tie a string around the star I have clasped in my hand. Watch it realise its con nements, watch it shudder into the lack of freedom, watch it accept I have no use for it. This one doesn't ght. Only ickers to a dull gleam, like when teeth are revealed in the shadows. The deep blue yawns, stretching down, making the lake ripple with a promise of night. I attach the string to a stone. Crouching in the water, I let the star in my hand go. It falls, a comet for only the lake to see, the stone pulling it down. Will it nd the others I have drowned? The ones I am persistent in forgetting? I can only watch as it descends into darkness - just not the darkness it would call home
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The water stills. My palm feels heavy without it. I leave the lake and the fading colours behind. I wonder how many more stars I will have to hold in my hand. Whether I will have to keep drowning them in the fading light in hopes they will stop appearing. Whether there will come a day
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when a black hole rips open within me so even stars can't nd a place to grow
Rosary Helen Ree Shifting vertigo In sky lost of substance Pale sun hanging Anemic beast, with shadows That act as the nooks Crannies and pillars of night’s cathedral. Silver sliver agains Another endless drop To meaning, with arm and neck Flashing somewhere between Tattered cloud chains veilin Ruby beads of a cruci Rub against esh Virginal, yet stainedInk of seven sins Drip from hand Sky meets, and shapes Round thigh and breast Tinted with berries’ lust Guilt of unacted, unspoken Pathways to heaven.
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Indulgences fall too In silver stars from lover min Pillars for my procession.
I wish her Gild my skin in grace Reprise for unmoored ange Vertigo beckons another tast Aisle of sea and wildness Leading nally to
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Salvation, crowned with owl feathers.
Two Poems Jo Birc Steeple Reaching, towering; skywards staring, Tiles formed of half-light shadow gloom, Melting, seeping into mist, Surrounded by dreary Ice-laden droplets, Draining light fro moody clouds, Shrouding Light. House The dreary, dusty house, Masks a whispered violin, Playing lonely adagio waltzes As above, a spider dances.
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Charcoal dust and weathered rugs, Ruf e and creak, mold and shape, Showing imprints, footprints, clothes-prints Left by a specter, Drawn with invisible ink.
24 hour party peopl Devin Birs (CW: blood) America oh America. Land of freedom land of man. Motherland, Fatherland, Brotherland, Sisterland America land of many things and many people. Upon its streets lie a thousand doors to a thousand rooms. The heat and noise of it all entrancing those old bats out of their Transylvanian manors and into the pioneer town and old neanderthal caves that dotted the west. There they built new manors and castles. Far from the watchful eyes of the church and steeple out west they claimed a new land. There they stood for a hundred years, blood was easy to those old and powerful, born with European money and European morals. Enough to last them till civil war and depression. Money and high standing beginning dwindle and dwindle until you’re left cruising down the LA strip while old songs about dead men in vampire costumes blare in your ears Here they are the last of the great European houses, little more than two pale wrecks in ancient Vivienne Westwood blazers and trousers with disparate seams. They are thin, so thin that their bones practically pierce the esh. Less cheekbones more cheek-shanks to any who dare brush against their face. But how desperate they are for you to brush against their face, to lean your cheek close, and for those old yellow fangs to stretch down to your plump little veins
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They are as close as old blood can get to man and wife. All the bitterness and regret of an archetypal western marriage is there. The average conversation being a holler
from him followed by a banshee scream from her followed by a roar in response. Then at night after a good feed they lie in each other’s arms, he tells her how he once tricked Byron into drinking red wine disguised as blood. She tells him how she used to roam the Hollywood streets. As the song picks up again, she tells him about the old dead Lugosi I knew him, y’know Who’s him The guy in the song Bela Yes Bela You were in a lm with him No, I just knew him She used to watch him, not when he was in his prime, of course. No, she watched him long after the universal pictures, strutting back and forth in front of an old mirror dredged in a homemade vampire costume. There were times she’d get a gaze of his pearly eyes, lost like a dog in a desert He was like us, y’know Bela Yeah He couldn’t be like us. There’s no one like us No, there’s no one like us left, at least not here
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They drive down to the old villas. Back when lms were but images and tune, before there was speech, before the world knew the name Dracula. Back when blood was served by the gallons, when country kids with big dreams
hung from the ceiling, their nectar dripping down into his goblet. He dreams of those days, he dreams of those days when he sleeps, they live motel to motel, there’s enough in this ever-stretching city to last an eternity. In his dreams it is still ’28. He is still ve hundred years young. Oh, how these past few years have taken such a toll, oh how he wishes he followed the others on their trails. He still hears of them, some living out in communes in the Midwest, rationing the blood between them, praying to some old gods for long long night to nally come. Yet others integrated into the American way; the big house the big car the big wife and bigger kids. Their skin strong enough to last in the day if they’ve got a few layers of mascara and even more sunscreen. Model citizens living the American dream. Maybe that’s what he needs he thinks, some sort of suburbanised chosen lifestyle existence, rather than be stuck drifting through LA On Halloween they attempt to slip their aching thin bones into the goth nights and day of the dead fests. Most reject them after catching a glimpse of their languid eyes, too many childhood memories of dead sh re ected in those grey orbs. But LA is a large looming city, one with more clubs than cruci xes and enough bred bouncers and desperate managers In the back rooms and smoking lounge, he leans in to give some student a kiss, his fangs unfurling out of his mouth and biting down. There is no grace to his feeding; he lingers over her, his skin sticking to his ribs, the muscles in his arms and pecs looking strained and abby, yet de ned enough to still stand out in contrast to his twig thin legs and pond-shallow face
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She takes the victim’s boyfriend to the next room over and gently nestles her fangs into his throat, stroking his neck
and pulling down his eyelids as he attempts to scream but only makes out a mute wail And the club blares its music, and the song remains the same. The dead actor, the bled-out victims, owers in deathly bloom. As she drains him, she thinks on Bela, she thinks on his languid little face when he saw her in that alley. How he barely noticed her fangs, her promises of immortal life drifting past his ears. He simply stood there gazing at her, too old relics of old Europe lost in different worlds. When the media declared him a junkie in their postmortem, her man had joked about it. The old vampire actor more of an addict than they were He’d always hated Bela, he hated how all it took was one movie for everyone to recognise his pearly whites and lack of re ection as more than just a trick of the eye. All it took is one lm for the covens to be shut down, for the elders to move out to the Midwest, for him to be stuck sucking blood in the world’s shittest goth club two hours before the sun came up An hour from now they will vomit what little guts they have left out by the graf ti at Venice beach. He will scream about junkies the degeneration of youth, of how students ought to keep their blood clean. She will stay quiet; she gets the sense that there’s nothing worth saying
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Two hours from now they are running, their skins little legs breaking upon the soft sand. He is thinking of how long he’s lived, how many battles he’s fought. Of his old his old his old kingdom, of what he once was. She is thinking of his gaze, that how lost he seemed, the citizen old Europe adrift in the new world. How similar they were, how they were always doomed to be lost
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In the morn no one will notice the few extra gains mixed in the sand, the wind will have folded their ashes across the beach, till sand and man are inseparable. A few hundred years of life reduced to just a few extra grains to be churned into the sea
twenty Yerkezhan Berkembayev
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exact middle of childhood and accepting that i need a job soo
Geldin Shreyas Muthusanka Gelding is a strange word. Originally, I’d thought it had something to do with gold, like the gold of the sun sinking at dusk. But no, it referred to the castration of a horse. To geld an animal or a person is not just to remove its reproductive capabilities, however. No self-respecting dictionary would stop at that. No, the action of gelding is the act of removing vigour and vitality, or depriving someone of something essential. Peasants in medieval England used to ride geldings, while Kings rode on stallions, indicating that they too are in possession of their vitality, vigour, and ‘something essential’. Something essential, of which an individual can only be in possession of one. To say that I have never felt my genetic material as anything essential, vital, or vigorous would be an understatement. My genitalia are not essential to any individual or community, and anyone who thinks they are, please don’t, that is incredibly creepy.
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In short, that is the basic distinction. Gilding is the act of coating or wrapping with gold. Gelding is the castration of horse, the removal of power and authority from a creature, an act of emasculation. Geldings typically did better work and were far less prone to ts of aggressiveness. For the most part, stallions seemed to be more status symbols and war beasts. If you wanted good, effective labour, geldings were far more compliant and ef cient. There seemed to be this general, rational understanding that preserving the continuity of some genetic lines was simply unnecessary and cutting them off for effective labour just made logical sense for progress and development. This rationale has survived over 400 years of questioning, and
no one has refuted it strongly enough for the practice to have been stopped.
So, the moral of this story is, it isn’t worth preserving, cut it off as soon as you can. It’s just better that way.
the tree those wraiths of wicker scrawl across the evening sky, pulsing and puncturing the landscape with silky silhouettes that race and spin across breathing elds. the world is alive. heaven bleeds an inky, blistering blue. the leaves writhe and shudder in lapping wraps of apping orange that look like re but aren’t. the garde i still remember that idle afternoon, passing in wonder through that fuzzy world of knotted chestnuts and occose owers folding their petals away from our prying ngers. we ambled through a clearing of platinum beeches, carrying in the creases of our skin and our clothes the unshakeable scent of sun-baked rosemary and apple grass twilight came, our faces were bleached and streaked by clouds of sodden pollen and mist infused with oak. the mud-clotted ground soon gave way to a sea of hyacinths.
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i still remember that idle afternoon, passing between those waves of a hundred purple hues. i’ll return one day, and meet you at the edge of where heaven blooms.
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Two Poem Thomas Simpso
(CW: blood
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The waning light brings about the turning of the tides. The harbour masters send up the red are that bursts brightly against the muted skyline. All the children of the dockworkers used to play a game and try to nd the most real stars against the ash of the False Star. That’s what they called it. I never knew why. It seemed almost cruel to the are, trying to make it something it’s not and then blaming it for not being something it never claimed to be. The False Star, The Mars Imitation. Why couldn’t they just call it The Flare Once the harbour masters signalled the second are, the docks would still and the children would fall silent. The Witching Hour had arrived. From beyond the seawall the wind would rise. The gentle evening breeze that brushed hairs from a tired face would suddenly chill in the light of the are. Like a dog biting its owner’s hand it would strip back all the warmth and go for the bone. But it was a puppy; harmless in its temper until it grew up and beyond the seawall, it had found its pack. The wind would scream and cry in shrill bursts, whipping up the surface of the sea in a fury. We call her The Wailing Mother. Whispers among the workers say that it holds the echoes of a woman who lost her child at birth and threw herself into a storm in despair. Now she cries for her child every evening at twilight. The storm would rage, sea foam would spit at the buildings and ing detritus at the windows. Anyone caught in the open would die from suffocation as the wind ripped the air from their lungs and fed on it itself
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Twiligh Yuri Nemoto-Smit
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The children of the docks hear the whisperings of adults. They scurry away to hovels below the warehouses to tell them all the secrets they had learned in the light of precious candles. I watch them from afar, the only adult tolerated to stay amongst them though barely out of my teenage years. I would say that this was why they let me stay but I knew better. As they did, or didn’t in some cases. Most didn’t know I existed Irene, a sly thing with eyes like a fox, would keep me company during The Witching Hour. That’s how I like to think about the moments we shared together. Comfortable companionship. We wouldn’t talk. Couldn’t. They had ripped my tongue out long ago so now I only grunt my pain. Irene never made an effort to talk. She would just sit on the wooden crate in the corner furthest away from me and watch. We would listen to The Wailing Mother together, hear her rage ung at the warehouse above in the form of shells and seaweed, listening to the pattering of spray being thrown at the walls. We made no sound When the wailing ceased, Irene would get up and slowly cross the room to stand in front of me. She’d kick my foot lightly and once she knew I wouldn’t move, she would check over the chains that bound my wrists, feet and torso, securing any weaknesses in the links. Satis ed, she would turn to me and tap my cheek with her ngertips. I would look up at her as she brandished the same knife as every other night in front of me in warning before gently taking my left wrist in hand, slicing vertically along my forearm in the ritual Blood Letting. The blood bubbled up blue. She nodded to herself and sheathed the blade. The harbour would survive another night
AD ASTR Hannah Burrow (twilight, selly oak, 8pm) night sinks down with furred edge made soft from the blur of polluted ligh and careful glow of corner shop sign settles on its haunches above identical roofs at rst it is a barren darkness, empty except for the haunted silhouettes of football posts and three gures gripping cups with stubborn hands and eyes that squint and smiles that shiver when a nger, quivering, nds orion’s bel little bright stepping-stones cast in relie these silver pinpricks our eyes adjust towe hook our brains on them and hang dow over the city, spangling this suburban sk wondering why day breaks but night fall when the milky way we cannot see is a crac in the black, splitting straight down the middle. I wonder if someone else will see us here god or the international space statio traversing the night with silent precision, or the semi-detached across the green eavesdropping cautiously as we talk about simple things which are neve simple, and I commit each wind-chilled word to memory.
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- for lucas and emily
Three Poem Jack Mclella Fleeting Birdsong We’ve gotten used to it I think That low rumbling roar Much like our enlightened ancestor Would stroll, oblivious Past birdsong I think we’ve accepted That stillness is gone The world must ever move along But when we simply cannot stop Now We hear the birdsong
Omoieeso The stones click clack across the wooden board The wind blows gently through the palm And life it slows and soars I nd all my demands are store And left. I forget my glowing alms The stones click clack across the wooden board
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Never has such vibrant colou Bespoke so calm a lan And life it slows and soars
The wind it whispers does not roa She remembers when it sang The stones click clack across the wooden board She remembers when it sang for her When it rushed and lashed and poured Now life it slows and soars Now she rests in good accor In the garden of her psalms The stones click clack across the wooden boar And life it slows and soars Mortal Horizo What lies on horizon Specked with shadows of mortality Where forgotten shades languis In turgid expectation of fortune
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I see there my echo Trodden tie, cautious eye Meandering still through Maze of desks Waitin For the phoenix death
(CW: addiction, reference to shooting) It itched like there was a bee trapped in my helmet. I wasn’t wearing a helmet though, so the bee must’ve been trapped in my head. I fancied a Crunchie, I wanted a Crunchie, you know I really fucking craved a Crunchie. There wasn’t much time; Joe’s International Wines, Foods and Things closed at ve and the sky was darkening with every minute. Night falls like a hammer in November. Fifteen minutes to make it I don’t know if it’s true, but a friend told me once he lived near the factory where they make the honeycomb stuff they put in Crunchies, he lives in Herefordshire. I really don’t know if it’s true. But if it is, I know the rst thing I’ll do if I ever go mad is get a gun and go to Herefordshire and take the factory hostage and try and eat as much of the stuff as I can before they get to me. And when the police do get to me and shoot me, I’ll die surrounded by more Cadbury manufactured honeycomb than anyone ever has. I’ll probably be the rst and last person to ever be shredded by gun re in the Crunchie honeycomb factory in Herefordshire. And as I die my body will go stiff and full of holes like the cooling honeycomb liquid does before its packaged
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I turned the corner onto the High Street, the sun had fallen below the horizon now, it’d forgotten to take with the colourless light which illuminated nothing and weirdly attened everything, it made the shop fronts of the Turkish barbers’ and the Greggs’ look like cardboard cut-outs, set
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Snacking Victor Savag
dressing. Joe’s rose ahead like a biblical star. Oh, I’m sorry, that feels offensive, or at least not very tasteful. I try very hard in going about my business to be tasteful. But my words are falling all about the place now, like someone’s fucked the magnets at airport security and I forget to check whether the words are tasteful before I say them. I haven’t eaten in a while Some might say I have a problem when it comes to sugar, I’d probably agree with them. I’ve always thought it was so embarrassing to be addicted to sugar, like I’m a little kid, instead of a more adult addiction like cigarettes or gambling or porn. But they just don’t, and I’ve tried, do it for me like a Crunchie or a Snickers or a bag of liquorice when I can’t get to sleep because I remember I’m going to die. My thinking had kept me occupied and now the corner shop drew up beside me like a sheriff on a white horse. I went in paid Joe, I assume it’s Joe I’ve never asked, £1.20 (£1.20! I hadn’t noticed the economic effects of the pandemic until it hit me in the chocolate bars) and left. I looked around the street to see if it was safe to eat. I didn’t like to be observed, as mentioned earlier it makes me feel childish. An old woman in a pink coat waited for the bus on the other side of the road. The fat cow looked like a Percy Pig, and I knew what she thought of me
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I stole into the alley next to the shop and hid behind the big bin. There was a binbag there, which I thought was a brilliant stroke of luck because I had started to feel my legs were a bit tired. I sat down on it. I must’ve sat too hard or fast in my excitement to nally be alone with my chocolate because the bag split and leaked this orange liquid, I
swear it was bright like Lucozade, down my trouser leg. I tried to swipe it off with my hand, but the bastard almost jumped at me with how bad it stank. My hand was covered in the stuff, and I felt it would probably drop off, or cause me some real lasting damage, if I didn’t wash it soon but I was tired of waiting and I need to get on with eating. The pristine golden length of wrapped chocolate was burning a hole in my pocket. I tore open the wrapper with my clean hand and teeth and I wondered if gold could tear so easily. I consumed the chocolate in two bites and one rasping swallow, the shattered honeycomb fragments cut at the sides of my throat, but it was a blood sacri ce I made willingly, gratefully even
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With the sugar nally inside me and my thoughts starting to rearrange themselves into the shape I usually tried to keep them in, I wondered if there might be something wrong with me. The bin juice ran down my leg like something symbolic, and my red right hand burned with embarrassment at the state I’d let myself get into. Joe came out to see what all the fuss was about, at least I think his name is Joe, he saw me sat on the bin bag and took a step back, then took a step towards me. I tried to smile at him, he tried to smile back
He, that boy in the big coat, has a theory That his life is a disappointing series Of events strung together like The paper triangles of sad bunting That hang in the town Where the bollards wear knitted hats And they’re always celebrating the birth or marriage Or fucking u vaccination of some royal twat. That town he’d hop the twenty-minute bus to In the summer and go river-jumping, Because even if they never Took down their bunting At least they had clean water. Although they never swam in it, he saw He feels himself strung up, cruci ed, suspended Between two neat semi-detached redbricks Above the cobblestone road. On a string of bunting that might stretch back As far as his rst ancestor Who dully struck rock against rock But could never get as excited about the sparks As the other hairy-faced people could He thinks he’ll be strung along forever Dragged toward his future The nal nished chapters of a book Like his fate, a boring life is stamped through him Like the writing in a Blackpool rock
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Blackpool Rock Victor Savag
I want to cut him free from his paper chains And burn down the gingerbread town That holds him captive. To tie yourself up in bunting and big coats Is cowardice and excuses Freedom wears only a vest and shirt sleeves Or gets out its tits And faces the void that will swallow all choices With no jacket.
dripping in rouge Addlenor
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I read your grotty, erot-y twilight fan cs I ick through them in the waxing and waning moons It’s fty shades of shit storms. I’m not actually a vampire. I just like red lipstick. Blush and bashfulness I exist, that’s enough for now. Full moon tonight. Recharge. Recleanse. Repeat.
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Romeo’s last thought would have been that she would be lounging around her front lawn with her friends. After a day as complicated as hers, with failed dealings, conversations with cops, and a very disturbing encounter with a man, a sh, and a dog she probably should have been working or more accurately planning. However, watching the Chicago sky turn an azure blue, Romeo couldn’t help but enjoy the tranquility, watching the clouds, once a stark white, transitioned somehow in seconds to oating bits of cotton candy. As Romeo and her friends settled down on their juvenile game, of throwing and trying to cover each other in the orets of sunset, mango and russet-covered leaves that had been copiously falling off the trees, Romeo felt the tranquility and calmness she had only been experiencing a few minutes ago leave her body. Something felt off, the afternoon descending into evening had been too; Romeo didn’t quite know but something felt off. Autumn had brought in frosty bitter wind and a brilliant plethora of leaves and the urge to stay bundled up in bed, and today was no different. It was November after all and less than a week away before Romeo’s birthday. Yet Romeo couldn’t help the overwhelming feeling of unease wash over her It was too quiet, that was the reason for the unease. But the children were at clubs or friends’ until 8 or still back at the group home. Isaias was touring, Rius was in Italy, and everyone else she knew was either in jail or overseas. So why was she feeling a sense of dread “Rome, are you okay?” Matti called out, causing a temporary distraction in Romeo's thoughts. Romeo looked
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Twilight Eve Scahil
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around and saw her friends observing her closely almost as if knowing what she was thinking. (Then again they probably did. “Yeah, I’m ne, Matti, just thinking about the rough day I had at work, is all.” Romeo concluded what was worrying her; it had to be it was just a very strange day which had thrown her off. Her worries about everyone else were irrational; they were safe “You're a gang leader, you can have an easy day at work?” Mylo scoffed “Alright, alright, smartass, I had a harder day than usual,” Romeo responded to the chorus of laughs coming from her friends. Shoving a pile of leaves towards Mylo so they encased the lounging man beside her Romeo wouldn’t voice it, but the comment had gotten to her. Mylo was right, she was a gang leader. Well gang was a loose term, but she had enough of a rep for people to start asking questions and she was noticed around the wrong parts of the city. With a reputation like that, it led to trouble it had to and it always did. She just didn’t want the trouble affecting her family, it was her mess and not theirs “Guys, Xander and the rest are at clubs or their friends’, aren’t they?” Romeo had to ask. She knew the feeling of dread was because of the possibility of her family being in danger – the quietness and pleasantness had only caused her more unease of the situation, it was the calm before the storm. Now she just needed to gure out why. She already knew where they were, of course; nothing in Chicago happened without her somehow knowing, let alone something to her family “Yeah, they are. Romeo, you know this, you created a timetable of all those kids’ locations. I swear if you weren't related it would be stalking,” Seven replied this time, a cheeky smirk adorning their face
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“Yeah, it’s like you're obsessed with them. Kai joined in laughing along, “besides, Rome, it’s twilight. Who’s dumb enough to do something at this hour?” The group proceeded to quietly laugh but stopped when they saw Romeo’s rigid movements, and apprehensive expression “Ro, they are ne. Half of them have phones, and we know the people they are with, and we trust them. They are safe, Romeo, it’s the day that’s thrown you off. You're not used to being back so early so you're worrying to compensate.” Tiger tried to soothe her. While Romeo appreciated her friends’ efforts, it did close to nothing to soothe her worries The rest of the evening went by, and Romeo tried desperately to distract herself. Even though her friends helped, she couldn’t concentrate. More often than not, instead of listening to their witty banter, she found herself gazing up at the sky She watched as the afternoon turned into evening and as the sun danced across the sky turning from a blinding light to a warm yellow, to a faint orange with every step, until it looked like a ball of re was disappearing across the horizon With the time passing Romeo tried to remind herself that it wasn’t long now until she would see her family and then the worry would nally pass over But just as twilight ended, the sun ghting to illuminate the sky, Romeo heard it. A gunshot. And then another Romeo had been right, twilight had been a warning, her family was in danger. It was now time to face the darkness of the night
Twenty Years Shreyas Muthusanka (CW: negative self-esteem) As I hold my breath, And clutch my throat tight There’s a child with a story to tell He had teeth pulled out because his smile wa Too revolting, too ugly, too crooked like an unkept soul His hair fell out because he ha Bad genes bad habits, terrible shampoo Fireworks exploded in his face because he wa Stupid enough to lean in But that’s alright, just wash off the trauma like the soot on your face. A child who could only be a chil Because everyone else was older and smarter and Better, And how mature he is for his age! If only he wer Intelligent What say you, child? Are you a communist? A capitalist? Or are you jus Unimportant
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He could only have been a child Twenty years spent bitter in his esh Twenty years mulling over reworks and smiles Twenty years of sunsets stale on rooftops Looking down And always latched onto his toes, an opaque silhouette of what he could only have been Idiotic, stunted, ugly, fat shadow
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I ought to end it so no one ever needed to suffer him ever again But if I keep going then my nails will go through my neck and I’ll bleed and sca And if they see it—if they tell me agai How immature and unintelligent and sel sh and terrible and unimportant and If I have to deal with that then I can’t do that I could never do that how could I do that So I have to—I ought to—I need to Breathe
embrace Isabelle Porte
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I think I like the library best in these autumn 6 pms, when it’s dark too early and the tables start clearing. I think about this downstairs over a half-off breakfast, tucking bitten ngertips into my warm palms. When I step out the door and shift hands in my denim pockets, I imagine the sun curled in the night’s embrace. I choose the lit path and nd my way along its arm.