Road Rage

by Bob Clay

"Turn right now."

Who is this silly tart in that Sat Nav box that keeps giving me orders ? "I'll turn when I'm good and ready, and not before." Hah, that's telling her.

"You have missed your turning, stop and do a U turn as soon as possible."

"I'll bloody well do as I please and you won't have any say in it. I don't take orders, especially from bossy women. Up yours." Oh yes, I was starting to enjoy this.

"You have deviated from your route, you should do an immediate U turn."

"I deviated cos I'm a deviant, I'm free, I don't take orders from anybody, especially a stupid bloody bint who lives in a small box. I make my own decisions and go where I please, something a being who lives in the tight confined world of a printed circuit board could know nothing about." I glanced at the Sat Nav smugly, challenging it to defy me.

"You should stop immediately. STOP NOW!"

I laughed, loud and hard, but I should have listened, because while I had been talking to the bitch, a petrol tanker had suddenly braked to a halt in front of me. Just before I hit it, I'm sure I heard her laugh back.



Bob Clay lives in Cornwall.

Inspiration

by Yaja Kindermann

“I’m going to leave that cling film on.”

“Why? Winter’s over. It makes your window look dirty.”

“No it doesn’t.The sun makes it look like ice.”

“You’re mad, mad and cheap.”

“No I’m not. I’m a writer. Even that orange is a fiery planet to me.”

“And me? What am I?”

“My inspiration of course!”

“I love you.”

“See.”


Yaja Kindermann is from Herefordshire.

I wish I had a top hat

by Sally Cook

'Why did you do that?' you are saying. Actually, saying probably isn't an accurate enough description. I'd like to get this right. For the record. It's more like squealing, a sort of strangled squealing. Your face is red. You are practically snorting with disbelief.

'Why did you do that?'

I am calm. I am holding the mop, head down, in my right hand, arm extended to the side, legs crossed at the ankle, like a cabaret dancer about to perform a routine with a cane. Where's my top hat? I don't have a top hat. Or even a cane. I wish I did have a top hat, I think. It might lend the occasion a sense of ceremony.

On the floor at our feet, between us, surrounded by the shiny wet kitchen tiles, is your open laptop. Your laptop is made of white plastic. Your laptop is awash with dirty water. It is standing in a small grey puddle. There are particles of dirt and gravel and bits of food and hair that were trapped in the mop on the keyboard. It looks a bit like the beach when the tide goes out, not pretty like sand and shells and seaweed, but filthy like nappies and plastic beer can things and bits of polystyrene. For a moment there is no sound, and we both gaze at the computer, which sits there, inanimate and sopping, an innocent bystander caught in the crossfire, really. I feel sorry for the computer. Sorry, computer, I think.

Then there is a rattle and a clap and a miaow and Nellie, our one-eyed cat, appears from between your legs. She winds herself proudly in slinky figure-of-eights, around your legs, the laptop, and my legs, loving us, purring loudly, oblivious. She doesn't seem to find it odd that there is a wet laptop on the kitchen floor. She loves the wet laptop with as much devotion as she loves us. Man, woman, wet computer: all are equal in Nellie's eyes. Eye. She leaves through the door behind me, stalking off, tail in the air, to lie on her woolly cat bed over the radiator in the hall. I have tried to learn dignity from Nellie. She is very dignified. There are small, wet cat footprints on the floor in circles around you, me, and your laptop.

I mopped your laptop. I mopped it vigorously. I mopped it really thoroughly and hard; so hard that the screen fizzled and went dark. I mopped up the email that came this afternoon, that email about thank you for the flowers, they are beautiful. I wonder what kind of flowers they are. I wonder if they are gerberas, because I like gerberas and you don't know many other kinds of flowers. I wonder where you bought them. I pass the mop handle from hand to hand, a bit like Gene Kelly in Singing in the Rain. I whistle a couple of bars of Singing in the Rain and tap one of my feet experimentally.

You stop doing nothing and start moving, crouching, picking up the laptop, cradling it like an injured child, setting it gently on the kitchen table, dripping grey liquid everywhere in dot-dash trails, like blood. You dab at the laptop with a tea towel, and the room smells like disinfectant and stagnant water. You're making a low, moaning sound. I shake my head, sadly. I'm no expert, but even to me, the prognosis doesn't look good.

You are pressing the 'on' button again and again. Holding it down for a long time. Holding it down for a short time. Pressing it hard. Pressing it gently. Nothing is happening. The screen is blank. You look at me, and there are tears in your eyes. Your face is shiny. 'It's wet,' I say. 'It won't work because it's wet.'

'I know it's fucking wet, you mad bitch. For fuck's sake, why did you do it?' You ask in your new strangled voice. It's really unattractive, that voice, I think.

I have my answer prepared. 'I want you to leave,' I say. I am still calm. I try to imagine what it would be like to have botox injections in your whole face. I have no expression. Like a balloon. I look at you levelly, and the penny drops.

The confusion in your eyes is replaced by sudden comprehension, which is replaced by panic, which is replaced by fear. The whole gamut of guilty emotions, one after the other, like a kaleidoscope, or still-frame photography of clouds moving across the sky. Obvious as a written confession. Or CCTV footage.

Or, a secret folder of love letters in your email account, that you carelessly left logged in when you went to work, early, and in a hurry. Presumably, to order the flowers.



Sally Cook has a blog at ninechainstothemoon.blogspot.com and helps organise the manchester-based reading night there's no point in not being friends with someone if you want to be friends with them.

This Was a Love Story But Now I'm Not Sure

by Emily McPhillips

How you were when we met was never a problem.

I loved you for it.

Your faults were not imperfections to me. They were like the freckles on your nose that came out in the summer. They were mostly hidden, but I knew that they were there. If I looked closely enough I could always find them, but they had charm about them now, they belonged to you, and you being you was an excuse for many things.

I wish I had enjoyed you more. I wish I had licked your every pore just because you were mine, and I could.

I felt like I had found a new planet when I had met you, that I would never be able to find again; it was one of those once-in-a-lifetime moments. It was my secret and it was exciting. The night sky looked more active than ever. Daylight didn't exist for the first few months I knew you. Romance works better at night. We would talk until daybreak.

I haven't heard your voice in over three months. I worry that my memory will fail, and I'll create an image of you that never existed. I wonder if I got so used to you that you began to not exist at all. I am pawing at my skin, I am pretending my hands are yours; I am trying to remember the exact way you held me.

I can't recreate any of this on my own.

I am thinking of placing an ad in the paper. I am looking for a substitute love. I am writing my advert, and I am throwing it in the bin before I read it over. I am still in love. And I am joining your freckles together like a dot-to-dot.

I am hoping that joining your freckles together will translate into a plan, and this plan will make everything make sense again. Your freckles will tell me what the problem is, and they’ll teach me how to fix it, because some part of you must be feeling as lost as I am. I can't remember the pattern of your freckles. I can't remember the last thing you said to me. All I can remember are feelings, giant feelings that have eaten up everything else about you.

I am in bed and I am looking out of my window. The sky is coal black. My eyes are fuschia red.

On my bedroom ceiling our relationship plays out like a silent movie. It is a love story that follows all the simple ideas of other love stories. I watch it like I am watching a foreign film without subtitles, vaguely understanding it, but feeling like I am not completely in on what is happening. This doesn't feel like this is my love story anymore, this feels like something completely different to that. I am wondering when did something so simple become so complicated.

I feel quiet and sad. I imagine I feel like how one of those cat ornaments whose head bobs up and down without really wanting to might feel. I would like things to stay still for a little while, just to give me enough time to feel steady about things again; but things are whizzing past me in speeds that are like light-years, as I begin to try to work my way backwards to the things I used to know.



Emily McPhillips blogs here

Empty Nest

by Avis Hickman-Gibb

I am no longer of substance. Now I float through the days like gossamer. Once I connected in this world; I laughed and cried; had joys and sorrows. I cast a shadow when the sun shone my way. Lived my life amongst the minutiae of every day. When my children called me Mother I cared for them, and performed all their small personal tasks - as mothers do.

When the wind swept through my life I presented an impediment to its flow. But in recent years, I have felt a change of direction in this existence. I no longer have an umbra of substance. I am a pale copy of what I once was. Every day I slip further toward transparency. My purpose is depleted; my chicks all gone. I wait for a second lease; wait for the next generation to begin. To give my life substance again.

It doesn’t matter. I don’t matter. I no longer feel of matter.



Avis Hickman-Gibb lives in Suffolk with her husband, one son and two cats. She’s had stories in Every Day Fiction, Twisted Tongue, The Pygmy Giant, BackhandStories, Boston Literary Magazine, Short Humour, The Ranfurly Review StaticMovement, Microhorror, Bewildering Stories & The Shine Journal. She’s currently working on a book of short stories and a novel but is addicted to writing flash fiction.

Who are you kidding?

by Yaja Kindermann


At first it’s quite innocent.

But it soon becomes very sordid – very, very sordid, and it all begins with a carrot.

You think that what you’re doing is okay; that every woman does it – at some point. That it’s just normal behaviour. But you’re wrong and you know it.

You’re just deceiving yourself.

And when you feel guilty enough, and dirty enough, you switch the CD player off and turn the volume up on the kid’s T.V. programmes instead – for comfort – for vindication whilst you’re doing it.

If it happens on a Sunday, there’s no more ‘Steve Wright’s Love Songs’ during the session – oh no. You feel too guilty. So you switch on ‘The Country File’ programme instead and mute it because if you can’t hear them, they can’t see you.

The carrot soon progresses to a cucumber but it’s only when you dip the end in low-fat salad cream, that you know you’re really finished. Soon, what’s left of the French-bread ‘sandwich’ and curled up vol-au-vaunts from the day before is history – kids stuff. Ten more minutes and you’ll be deep frying a rich tea biscuit and pouring custard over it that hey, you’d made up without even knowing.

You curse the manufacturers of crisps for making them too ‘sharp’ then realise with fraying innocence that if you weren’t cramming two twenty-eight gram bags in each cheek, perhaps they could be forgiven. And all the while you’re blaming the carrot that had been left on the chopping board since yesterday. The carrot that made you do it, the carrot that’s making you think, ‘What happened? Where did I go wrong?’

Things were going so well when you first got up and began focusing on the day ahead. But the thought soon leaves you because there’s still a half eaten terrine of pate to get through to help you forget. You suddenly remember an actor once saying that the best way to avoid over-eating is to watch yourself doing it in the nude. Well more fool him. Clothes only restrict your ever expanding stomach.

And eating standing up doesn’t count apparently. So you try your best to rise from the counter, but your stomach’s so full, you’re doubled over and your size ten figure now resembles one of those pregnant models on the cover of a magazine.

Then things get really sordid.

Stuff you’ve dropped on the kitchen lino during the savage attack on a packet of frozen pastry suddenly looks very appetising. And isn’t that a strip of charred potato hanging off the edge of the chiller compartment? Without thinking, you hoist yourself up to it and catch sight of yourself on the steel flap, but as you snatch the potato with your teeth, the only thing that manages to pass between your lips is a painful groan.

What could be jam, jelly or juice is dripping off your chin. Your hair is littered with cake, bread and other suspicious looking crumbs and there are strands of chive poking out from in between every second tooth. You can’t swear on it, but something that looks like marmite is smeared across your face. You should feel terribly guilty, but instead the only thing you’re wondering is whether or not eating frozen chips could kill you.

And all because of a carrot.

Supplies are getting thin so you fall back onto your arse and survey what’s left of the weekly shop. You stare blankly at one egg, some left over ‘dip’, and a piece of broccoli cowering in the corner of the salad tray. It’s amazing how quickly your imagination can outstrip anything Jamie Oliver could cook up.

As you struggle to your feet, your stomach suddenly feels a lot better after the little sit down, and you eye up a bag of flour and bottle of olive oil on the side as if you were a sex maniac.

You spy a raisin on the floor and your mouth drools. You must keep going. If you stop now, you’ll realise that you’re still wearing your dressing-gown and haven’t even made it to mid-day. But you know that tomorrow will be different. You know that tomorrow you’ll be good. So you turn the frying pan on again, reach for the broccoli and give yourself a pat on the back for looking to the future.

Yeah, right.


Yaja Kindermann is from Herefordshire.

Tarot

by Nick Allen

Elizabeth draws a card, looks concerned.
“How old is your daughter?”
“Seven,” says the young woman.
“Listen, you must be sure she can swim before her ninth birthday. Do you understand?”
The young woman pushes £30 into Elizabeth’s hand, rushing to leave.
Elizabeth smiles. That line always works.

Nick Allen is a mental health nurse living and working in Manchester. He is a member of a local creative writing group and also participates in an online writers group.

The Magic Hour

by Oonah V Joslin

‘and then the clock struck midnight and the pumpkin coach became just a pumpkin and the mice, just mice and all her lovely clothes turned to rags as she fled the castle,’

‘except for one glass slipper…’ intoned Peggy sleepily.

‘I’ll read you the rest tomorrow night. Now be a good girl and go to sleep.’

Peggy turned over and imagined midnight magic.

At New Year when she was eight, her mother put her to bed a bit later than usual but staying up so late had made her cross and she argued to stay up later still – ‘til midnight. Her mother said it was only one day to the next so why bother? She might not stay up herself. Midnight would come and go. One minute to…the hour…one minute past, same difference. There was no magic in it. And she ushered her up stairs.

Peggy longed to stay awake until midnight and she tried. She tried. To see that single moment when darkness must surely be darker still, and ghosts could come out of hiding. But she was always so sleepy and watching the clock, now she could tell the time, only soothed her with its tick-tock lullaby and her eyes would shut of their own accord and that magical moment would be lost.

On her tenth birthday, Peggy forced herself to sit awake on her bed. She watched the clock for a few minutes to midnight. Then she slipped out into the summer garden wearing only her nightgown and slippers to see what kind of creature midnight was; and whether things would change.

From the darkness of the hedge, shiny eyes peered out. Peggy stood very still, arms held close about her shivering body. The eyes darted away followed by a stiff tail. Moments later, something else moved across the stones – a toad, perhaps. What if there was a rat? A sudden breeze ruffled the hedge and made a shushing noise like a giant’s hand sweeping across its leaves. Next door’s cats yowled and scrammed and screeched and made her jump. The sound of grunting over by the flower pots drew her gaze. A hedgehog was snuffling for worms. A caravan of snails climbed up brickwork, leaving a moonlight trail. Stars glinted, clouds scudded and the moon shone blue and wide-eyed. Jupiter sparkled brighter than any other point in the sky. Peggy knew about Jupiter. Teacher said Jupiter had a day that lasted only ten hours so Peggy wondered whether it was midnight there too but she couldn’t figure it out. None of them, the animals, plants, stars, seemed to take much notice of the hour. It might have been just any time.

Perhaps mother was right and midnight’s only midnight only by our clocks, - like the big one on the church steeple. But grown-ups like to measure things and then they pretend the things they measure are real, when it’s the Sun and Moon and animals that are real.

And now today was tomorrow and nothing had really happened at midnight. In fact Peggy just wanted to get back to her warm bed and go to sleep.

“Peggy, get in the house at once, you’ll catch your death! Don’t you know it’s after midnight? What are you doing out there anyway? One of these days, the bogey-man’ll get you!”

Bogey man! Adults could be so… silly.

Oonah V Joslin is a newly established writer living in Northumberland. For more information and links to her work, see www.oonahs.blogspot.com

Eggs

by Crispin Best

There are six eggs in the pan. I fill the pan with cold water from the tap until the eggs are covered. I place the pan on the gas.

After two minutes, I remove an egg. This egg is chosen at random. I hold it. If you hold an egg up to the light, you can see the inside. I do not do this. This egg is cold. It is not cooked. I removed the egg too soon. The insides are clear where they should ideally be white. The yolk is feeble. This much I know.

I wait a further minute. I remove a second egg. This egg is also chosen at random. It is also not cooked. The insides are once again clear. The insides seem more viscous this time. I wonder if this is perhaps my imagination. For later reference, I give this egg a viscosity score of 6 out of 10, where I imagine the standard viscosity of an uncooked egg to be 5. I rough out a chart and write this score in a small pad that is sitting on the countertop near the toaster. I use a clicky pen. The pad says ‘recipes’ on the front cover. I ask the pad to forgive me.

I wait a further minute. I remove a third egg. This leaves three eggs in the pan. I am using a teaspoon to retrieve the eggs. Bear this in mind. This egg, which has been chosen at random, is also not cooked. There is some evidence of what-looks-like peripheral coagulation in this egg. All the same, I decide to give this egg the same viscosity score as the previous egg. I don’t deal in half marks. This egg is warm. I have touched the egg. I blow on my fingers to cool them where the egg stung me. With the fingers of my other hand, I click the pen.

I wait a further minute. I remove a fourth egg. It dries quite quickly. This egg is partly cooked and has been chosen at random. There is evidence of a reasonable amount of congealment. The yolk, however, still quivers in a small see-through pool. This is not ideal. Opacity is ideal for eggs. This much I know. The insides of the egg are extremely hot. They drip down the dark pink palm and fingers of my right hand, my egg-crushing hand.

I wait a further minute. I remove the fifth egg. I smile. I am confident. I swaddle the egg in a paper towel. My face is upside-down in the spoon. I lop the slender end of the egg off. This egg is cooked. The yolk is soft and penetrable and lies snug in the white. The egg’s shell is very hot. I am eager. I feel my head nodding on my shoulders. In my haste, I neglect to give this egg a viscosity score. I sprinkle salt on my toast soldiers, which is a secret of mine. I dip the soldiers in the egg. The yolk yields. I eat.

After finishing, I wait a further minute. I remove the sixth egg, which is the final egg. I place the egg on the chopping board. I turn off the gas. I swallow saliva and put my ear close to the hob. There is no sound, which is ideal. I pour the hot water from the pan down the plughole and place the pan in the sink. I examine the final egg. This egg is overcooked. The yolk is churned, its colour unimpressive. I smash the egg three times with a rolling pin. I wash my hands, roll down my shirtsleeves and fix my tie in the mirror. I set off for the big conference. I can do this. I know I can do this.


Crispin Best was born in 1983 and lives next door to the house in London that he grew up in.

High Visibility

by Rosie Sandler

The big wheel had been still for about half an hour when the lights went out in all the pods. It had happened again, then: he’d been forgotten. Dermot sat down on the bench in the middle and stared out. The lights of London spread before him like something he ought to care about. Instead, he was fighting a sudden urge to go to the toilet.

Dermot could recite a list of places in which he had been locked at closing time. They included Santa’s grotto in Hull, a train outside Inverness and a department store toilet in Liverpool; at least he’d been able to urinate in that one without worrying. He sighed and looked about him for a suitable receptacle. In the absence of anything better, he took a half-empty water bottle from his bag and aimed into it, splashing his shoes and the bottom of his trouser legs. He screwed the lid back on to the bottle, then wiped his shoes with a tissue, turned up his damp trousers and began to plan the time ahead.

He could easily pass an hour identifying landmarks by their illuminated silhouettes; Canary Wharf, with its flashing beacon, would be a good starting-point. Another hour could be spent finding ways to traverse the pod without touching the floor with his feet. He was emptying his pockets in search of a makeshift dinner, when the capsule lit up and the wheel crept back into motion.

'I’m so sorry about that!’ blustered the attendant when he reached ground level. ‘We’ve never left someone onboard before.’

‘You remembered about me?’

‘Of course. Well – one of my colleagues did.’

Dermot had gone from inconspicuous to memorable in a turn of the wheel. He stumbled home, hoping it would never happen again.

Rosie Sandler's stories have been published in 34th Parallel magazine, The Local Writer 2007 collection, and an anthology of flash fiction called Jealousy (published by slingink.co.uk). She has been shortlisted for competitions in the Essex Chronicle newspaper and Essentials magazine. You can read more of her work here.

Battling for Gucci

by Jennifer Walmsley

It knocks, banging away in my mind, the one question that has plagued me since yesterday, 'What if I fail?'

I lie awake in my sleeping bag, rigid with cold. Darkness envelopes me. Other bodies shift. Murmur. Fart. Snore. I'm suffocating on a cushion of navy blue that is covering my face, protecting my chapped lips.

Dawn arrives on a drizzle of icy needles. Tension ripples through my body as I scamble up and out of my uncomfortable bed and note a queue of hard nosed hopefuls behind and in front of me.

I'm longing for a pee and, trying to distact myself from the thought of release, mentally hum, 'I'm Singing In The Rain,' but others, having no discretion, release their load of flasked tea and coffee like a stable of raddled horses.

Now a cry goes up and, like a Mexican wave, arms rise with echoing cries of, 'The doors are opening!' And, like a herd of wildebeest, we charge towards those doors, bodies pushing, hands shoving as we tumble, stumble into the warmth of Debenhams.

Avoiding the lift and escalators, I charge upstairs to the third floor, hearing others charge after me and, sprinting through to the accessories department, breathlessly I reach my goal.

There it is, the Gucci handbag I've yearned for. It hangs just a few feet away. Throwing myself forward, I make a grab for it but another makes a grab for it too. We tussle and, the tall woman, built like a wrestler, yanks at a strap but the bag, unable to withstand such brutal force, rips asunder.

A stunned, silent moment passes. Then with a roar of bereavement, I kick out at my opponment, catching her on the shin and she, in retaliation, with a fake jewelled fist, punches me on the nose.

Jennifer Walmsley was born, brought up and still lives in Wales. She's had short stories published in women's magazines, Welsh literary mags and various webzines.

My Boss is in the Photocopier

by Jenn Ashworth

All I know is that when I got to work there was something tapping behind the panel you have to take out if you want to clear a paper-jam, and the woman who answers the phone told me not to touch it. I knew it was the boss because her desk was empty.

I sat at my desk and tried to go on as usual. I make tables. I copy words from one document and retype them into a grid. You’re not allowed to cut and paste, and they can tell if you do it. They’ve rigged up the computers so they make the noise the computer on Family Fortunes makes when the contestants give the wrong answer.

I typed between the lines of the table until lunch. The tapping inside the photocopier grew louder. People ignored it, but they angled their bodies away from it whenever they had to use it.

Towards two, the tapping grew weaker. The last tap, was at 3.08. People are slacking off now. Three of the typists are making a massive rubber band ball. I am thinking about clocking out an hour early, but I’m not sure.


Jenn Ashworth is a compulsive liar and a collector of cacti.

Red, White and Blue

[Welcome back. We've missed you. Here's something ridiculously British to start off September -Ed.]


by John Richie

Blue's red and Red's true blue. Me I'm White. Reg White, not to be confused with Reg Dwight who changed his name to Elton John and who is a good six inches shorter than I am. Not that that has anything remotely to do with anything, but it makes a good chat up line. Or so I like to delude myself, not that it has ever worked, other than with Gloria from down the chip-shop and by all accounts she's not too choosy. Red supports the Blues, Birmingham City that is, not Chelsea. And of course, Blue supports Red or at least licks his face when he passes out from too much lager, or whatever was on offer. Blue is a Red Setter, Red is a copper-knob from Wallsall, and I'm his mate.

I wouldn't be bothering you with all this but we are enjoying our fifteen minutes of fame. Well actually we are savouring our last thirty seconds, so I had better be quick.

It was last week that we were down the Post Office getting our Giros. Not Blue of course, he gets a pig's ear or some such from the abbatoir. But he comes along for the ride so to speak. Well there we all were, waiting in line, each minding his own business according to his lights. I was trying to see down the cleavage of the woman buying stamps, Red was doing his football pools and Blue was licking his balls.

Next minute, all hell breaks loose. These two lads in anoraks grab the handbag of the woman buying stamps and push her backwards over onto me. I miss a heaven sent opportunity when I grab her round the waist but we both go over anyway. Red reaches out to try and grab me and inadvertently clothes-lines the lad with the hand bag. As he goes down his foot catches Blue in the ribs and throws him right in the path of his mate who is making a run for it down the far side of our queue. He trips over Blue and goes head first into the door frame. That's him out of the picture. The other bloke is just trying to roll away from all the feet that are kicking him when Red drops on him from a great height. He kicked Blue and that is all the incentive Red needs for a quick bit of GBH. Blue, who thinks the whole thing is a game invented for his benefit, barks, growls and grabs bits of anorak which he chews on with enthusiasm. With the help of a couple of Army lads who were just out of training and keen to work off a bit of testosterone we soon had the The Artful Dodger and his mate looking decidedly worse for wear and threatening all and sundry with legal proceedings.

Well of course it was all for show. It turned out the pair of them had only been out of Borstal a week. The Magistrates gave them both six months and me and Red fifty quid each. We got our name in the local paper and Blue got his picture on the front page. The lady with the handbag gave us both a tenner and put Blue's behind the counter at the Butchers. Actually, that's not all she gave us, and I didn't even have to use me chat-up line.


John Richie writes for fun. Which is just as well as nobody will pay him.

The GastroPods

by Sarah Hilary

It only took a week from the day they moved in for Rosemary and Basil Woodruff to get nicknamed The Gastro Pods.

Vera at number twelve declared it, ‘Invasion of the ruddy body-snatchers,’ and everyone glowered when the pub door got painted with Farrow and Ball, a colour called Arsenic. ‘I’ll give them bloody arsenic,’ said Jacob Lovage.

Jacob was the village window-cleaner. Never mind he was knocking ninety and drunk from eight in the morning to nigh on midnight. ‘I’ve had this job since I was a nipper.’ It was the nips that bothered the Woodruffs. ‘Health and safety,’ said Basil, eyeing Jacob’s ladder with disquiet.

It was bad enough when they knocked through the nook. ‘Open plan!’ scoffed Primrose Sorrel. ‘Bother that! I want my quiet corner back.’ When they painted the bar in shades of heliotrope, the village elders had all sorts of a fit.

The final straw was when Basil started messing with the menu. ‘Fennel in the shepherd’s pie? Not on your nelly!’ Things’d been better in the old days, when Cicely was in the kitchen and you knew what was what even if you couldn’t taste it because of the pipe smoke.

Fact was, the Bull’s was the only pub in Chervil-on-the-Woad. Where else could they convene to thrash out issues like the closure of the post office or the banning of traffic in the high street?

Day eight of the invasion, Jacob Lovage scaled a barstool, spindly-legged steel affair. ‘Must’ve cost a mint,’ he reckoned of the refit. ‘Hurts my arse,’ he complained of the stool.

The ladies started arriving. ‘Evening, Primrose.’

‘Hallo, Vera.’

‘What's on the menu today then?’

‘Chicory and dill soup, would you credit it.’

They wouldn’t have minded so much if the Woodruffs were buying from the villagers. ‘I’ve a back garden stuffed to the gennels with flax,’ moaned Myrtle Feverfew. ‘You and me both,’ said her sister, Marigold.

They fell silent when Rosemary came through from the kitchen in a Cath Kidston apron, carrying a casserole dish wreathed with steam. ‘Beef carpaccio with wild rocket and parmesan dumplings!'

‘I’ll give her rocket,’ Jacob muttered, ‘to the bloomin’ moon.’

‘Where’s the darts board?’ Peter Marsh enquired.

‘My husband’ll explain,’ said Rosemary.

Basil emerged from the kitchen with a lavender chef’s bandana around his head. Peter jerked a thumb at the newly-violet wall. ‘Darts board?’

‘Ah,’ said Basil sagely, ‘demographics said the way to go was mahjong.’

‘Do what?’

‘Mahjong. The tiles are in here,’ he produced a calico bag with a drawstring neck. ‘You’ve got your dragons and flowers, seasons and winds –’

‘That’ll be the chicory.’ Jacob barked a laugh.

‘You’re pulling my leg,’ said Peter. ‘No darts board? It’s called the Bull’s Eye, for god’s sake.'

‘Oh we’re changing that!’ Basil rattled the bag. ‘As of Monday, we’re The Cowslip.’

Jacob spat his pint and fell off the barstool, getting a nasty bruise on the way down.

‘Hold still,’ soothed Rosemary, ‘I’ll fetch the arnica.’

Sarah Hilary won the Fish Historical-Crime Contest with Fall River, August 1892. Her story, The Eyam Stones, was runner-up in the Historical Contest. Both stories will be published in the Fish anthology 2008. MO: Crimes of Practice, the new Crime Writers’ Association anthology, features Sarah's story, One Last Pick-Up. Her work has appeared in Literary Fever, Every Day Fiction, Ranfurly Review and Zygote in my Coffee. Sarah lives in the Cotswolds with her husband and daughter.

Beyond the Border

by Rosie Sandler

It’s neither grey nor quite black. It feels like grit rolling between my fingers, tastes of the ashes on my school-boyfriend’s tongue, the dust that is everywhere, seeping through our clothes and graining our hair.

When I ask for water, they laugh, their throats full of this gravel and nothing to wash it down. Never enough to drink, they show me, miming the rain that doesn’t fall, the rivers that have deserted, leaving their banks to crumble.

We start to walk again and as we trudge, I have a sudden sense that all the ground is treacherous, that the lines that knife it might gape suddenly. I lurch, clutch at my neighbour’s arm, and she pulls away, snapping at me from inside her headscarf. She has a baby. I see it now. It is too small, too quiet, a grey rag wrung out and draped against her chest.

‘I’m sorry,’ I tell her, and she nods at my tone.

We have so many languages between us, but not one that works.

The others have come to terms with our plight. They know the conflict is no longer between armies, but between the earth and the sky. There seems no likelihood of armistice.

My feet are bleeding – the only liquid in this dry place. My shoes are shreds, and all my belongings paid my way across the border.

We keep moving. Only when night forces our submission do our thoughts catch up. We have left so much behind.

Rosie Sandler's stories have been published in 34th Parallel magazine, The Local Writer 2007 collection, The Pygmy Giant, and an anthology of flash fiction called Jealousy (published by slingink.co.uk). She has been shortlisted for competitions in the Essex Chronicle newspaper and Essentials magazine. You can read more of her work here.

Elvish Ain't Dead

by James Edwards-Smallbone

The psychiatrist paced down the seemingly endless grey corridor. Despite the best efforts of a team of decorators the relentless dinginess clung to the mental health centre (they were officially discouraged from using the 'A'-word) like a leech, sucking away any last watery remnants of joy. He approached room 42 and lifted a medical chart from its hook on the bland wall, acknowledging the tired looking nurse with a tipping of his glasses.

"Good Morning."

"Morning Dr. Glossop."

"And how is the patient today?"

"Very disturbed I'm afraid sir, he was raving all night. Dr. Tanner was forced to administer sedatives."

The doctor's pristine brow furrowed, wrinkling the skin over his bald head and displacing his horn-rimmed spectacles. "What a pity, when we were making such excellent progress." The nurse nodded with the jaded sympathy of one who'd seen a thousand such tiny tragedies. "Very well, you'd better let me in."

Keys jingled in the lock like fairy bells as the nurse opened the door of the padded cell. An atmosphere of restful, sterile calm washed out over the psychiatrist and he entered, a reassuring professional smile pasted over his features.

"Hello Mr James, I'm Dr. Glossop." No reply punctuated the vacant silence. "You remember me don't you? I've been visiting for ten months now. We've been talking about Terrapposita." Stillness. "Edward?"

"Hmm?" The man looked up at last. That is to say his face looked up, his eyes appeared to be focused somewhere else entirely. "Oh hello Dr. Glossop, I didn't hear you come in. I was just talking with Sycamore." Not for the first time the psychiatrist scanned the empty room. There was evidently no-one present but the two of them.

"Miss Sycamore is here now?"

"Of course! You just have to know where to look, how to look."

Glossop sighed inwardly but tried not to let it reach the surface. James was a difficult patient who clung to his delusions more firmly than most.

"We've been over this rather a lot, doctor," the man added reproachfully, "it's all there in the book if you're still unclear."

Ah yes, the book. He'd read it cover to cover a dozen times or more in an effort to understand the root of the author's delusions. "You'll be pleased to hear it's selling well, Mr James."

"Sales don't matter Dr. Glossop! What matters is that people know Terrapposita exists and how it can be reached." Glossop adjusted his glasses with an incredulous cough and scratched his nose as he always did when considering a thorny problem. "I'm not mad you know."

"Of course not Mr James," the psychiatrist responded in a conciliatory tone, "you're simply here to recover from a stress-related mental episode". Glossop's bedside manner was legendary, a fact to which many of the more suggestible nurses could attest. The patient however had lapsed again into silence, cocking his head like a dog listening to the distant call of its master. Somewhere out in the corridor a bell clanged ethereally.

"I'm afraid I have to go doctor, the Bell of Oakholt is striking noon."

"That's the lunch bell, Edward," Glossop snapped, letting terseness overcome his measured tones for an instant. He was beginning to take James' lack of progress as an affront to his professional skills. "I'll see you again this afternoon". The author however had returned to his previous catatonia and Glossop turned back into the corridor with another practised frown. The nurse had vanished to be replaced by a burly orderly who had somehow crushed himself into a narrow wicker chair and was engrossed in a thick, colourfully bound tome. Glossop leaned inquisitively over his shoulder.

"It's Terrapposita sir, by Edward James. It's very good. I'm reading it for the Richard and Judy book club."

Glossop's scowl could have iced over active volcanoes. He preferred biographies; at least the characters in those were real. "Come on," he growled, "I've got Napoleon and Julius Caesar to see before lunch."

In the silence of his room Edward shut his eyes and calmly counted to seven and a half before opening them again to a view of a beautiful wooded hillside.

"Who were you talking to?" The speaker chirped with a high musical voice which exuded warmth and friendship as she pushed white-gold hair back over her large pointed ears with dainty elfin fingers.

"Dr Glossop," the author replied distantly.

"From the book?" The voice was laden with apprehensive concern.

"From Earth."

There was something like fear in the creature's huge almond eyes as she took his hand with her own, gloved in exquisite pearl dragonscale.

"You shouldn't say such things, Edvardion. Earth is just in your imagination, it isn't real..."


James Edwards-Smallbone (and no, he did not make that name up) is somewhere between Baloo and Brian Blessed and writes to get rid of ideas that are taking up valuable brain space.

Fishy Story

by Bob Clay

It was still alive!

Startled I took the paper bag from under my arm and gripped it like a golf club, but the fish wriggled again, so hard it made me jump. I'm all for a fresh fish for dinner, but this fresh?

The paper fell away and I gripped harder. I'd swear the fish looked at me, a look of desperation and fear. Then something incredible happened, from it's sides, small hands emerged, tiny dark fingers that wrapped around mine as if trying to free itself from my death-grip. This was not a fish from some exotic ocean on the far side of the world. This was something from somewhere much, much further away.

Its eyes rolled toward me again and as well as the fear, I saw something else, something like pleading. I could feel the slender little fingers weakening, and its struggling becoming weaker.

I started running, down through alleyways, across an old allotment to burst out on the tow-path of a canal. I swung hard and high and threw the fish into the water. For a moment it lay on its side, and I felt a sudden deep sadness, but then it levelled up. From its head a large silvery red mane rose up, followed by a great feathery swirl that ran bright scarlet along the length of its back. I'm sure it looked at me for a second, then disappeared into the depths, a brilliant silvery red flash in the murky water.

Well my little friend, I don't know what you are, where you came from, or how you'll fare in the canal system of an industrial city. But it has to be better than a fishmonger's slab, or a paper bag under my arm.

Good luck.


Bob Clay lives in Cornwall, and claims there is an element of truth to this story....

The power to decide

by Avis Hickman

I am standing here at the window of this dismal sickroom, looking down at the children playing in the garden. The sounds of their laughter float up into this overheated bedroom – intrusive, jarring; full of life.

I don’t know how long I’ve been standing here – minutes yes, but not hours; there aren’t enough of those left. I ache to slow down time - extend these moments indefinitely. But I don’t want any more suffering.

I’ll have to tell them to be quiet, again; they have no concept of what is going on up here, and maybe that’s for the best. The harsh sound of laboured breathing competes with their laughter from below. It’s an uneasy amalgam, which adds to the sense of dread, bubbling just below the surface. Concentrating on practicalities, I’ve made sure the pain is arrested and soothed. In the end, this is the most important. The only thing left I can do.

Now, there seems not enough time left to say goodbye; I wish there were more. As the breathing slows and quietens, I feel a sudden surge of panic and want to call back my actions. I don’t want to be left bereft - an orphan. Turning my head, I watch as the seconds tick away, and I become the oldest generation.

I am still standing at the window, hypodermic in hand, when there is finally only the children’s laughter to be heard.


Avis Hickman-Gibb is a newly established writer, living in rural Suffolk, England with her husband, one son and two cats. She’s had stories published in Every Day Fiction, Twisted Tongue, The Pygmy Giant and Shine! You can find links to more of her writing here.

Scarecrows

by Jenni O'Connor

The wind gusted in, ripping through the old Hessian potato sack holding the scarecrow together. Wisps of straw scurried away, leaping and twitching into the darkening sky. ‘Ow!’ he cried as a chunk flew from his cross-branch, leaving a sleeve flapping. ‘That was my arm!’

Rain followed wind; fat, heavy drops hard as boiled sweets. The scarecrow’s weight doubled as water soaked into thatch and sacking. He had been carelessly thrust into a furrow in the field, and icy water needled his base. ‘Now I’ll get frostbite, for sure,’ he thought, trying to wriggle free.

At last! The right-leg branch broke free, followed by the left. ‘Damn you, I’m leaving!’ he bellowed into the vengeful storm. One tottering step after another, he stumbled out of the field and down the lane, ignoring the disbelieving, frightened glances from gaping passersby. Heading – he told himself – anywhere but here. Heading south.



Jenni O'Connor is an aspiring novelist with one travel novel and one thriller under her belt; she lives in hope of these being published and meanwhile spends her spare minutes writing flash fiction to keep her brain cells moving!

Twin

by Rosie Sandler

A hard, sharp, agonising thump. Not the playful kick of my twin’s soft foot – something colder, crueller, malice aforethought. Then our world is tumbling downwards, our mouths silent Os of pain. A wail from outside: our mother’s voice. We know it as we know the gurgle of her innards, the thud of her heart, the warmth of her blood.

‘Don’t hurt my babies!’

My twin nudges me in the head. I shake off the knowledge of our shared hurt to retaliate: I stretch out an arm, poke a finger up his nose. He jerks, knocks me with a cornered elbow. I grin, gurn, wriggle, jab him with a splayed hand. But something is different today, off. His aim is skewed. As he comes back at me with his fist, it misses – my twin never misses.

How did it start? Like it always does: long division repeated until two commas grew. We swam like fishes, bobbed like apples in a barrel. From circle’s end to circle’s start, we knew everything and everything knew us. We stretched from jumping beans to bouncing babes until the space ran out. Now, it’s our game of pokes and pinches that passes the time.

So here we are, low down in darkness, my mother, my complement and me. More pain? No, it’s quiet: maybe he’s gone. He, her lover, who sends stress messages streaming like virus through the ether. We close our eyes when we sense him, ball our fists into our mouths and curl up tightly. He has been here: see the damage he has done, our mother on the floor, weeping; me with an ache still nudging at my body; something lop-sided in the way my twin takes aim. We have no space here, no turn-and-see, only the shared closeness of the warmth and the light-dark pattern through her skin.

She wails again, a deeper sound, and we reel together, until my upside-down is almost downside-up and she takes a breath before our world closes in. Look how close the sides are. Pulsing, pulsating. There's no way out bar one and that’s the one I’m heading for. I wasn’t ready. We weren’t ready. Twin, kick me again. Tight fit, head down and turn.

Slither and slide, squeeze and squirm. Slap into the bright. There she is. Scoop me up and hold me? Or wait for more? I open my mouth, say his name, ‘Twin.’ But they are turning me, twisting me, wrapping me up, saying, ‘Shhhhh.’ I try again, ‘Twin.’ But someone is holding me too tightly. There is sobbing. There is a wail. The voice I know as well as the gurgle and the thud and the warmth of her body.

I am held out to her, but she is sobbing and wailing, hands flapping, so they snatch me back. I am passed around. And then I see him, lying still. So this is what we look like: blue as the sea – the first water of all. They pick him up and he is leaving – where are they taking him? No silent scream this time, but a roar in my head, wrenched from my lungs, filled with this new, suffocating air. First there was the circle. Then there was you: my shadow, my mirrored self, my circle’s end.

It is cold here and very quiet. I wish you were here.

Rosie Sandler's stories have been published in 34th Parallel magazine, The Local Writer 2007 collection, and an anthology of flash fiction called Jealousy (published by slingink.co.uk). She has been shortlisted for competitions in the Essex Chronicle newspaper and Essentials magazine.