

Published by The Looking Glass Society

www.thelookingglass.org.uk  
The Looking Glass Anthology, YUSU, University of York, Heslington, York. YO10 5DD.

First published 2011

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The Looking Glass Anthology  
Volume 2

A literary anthology written and edited by students at the University of York

Contents

Foreword by _David Zendle_

On The Art of Empty Poetry by _Libby Brown_

East of Barcelona by _Libby Brown_

Grandfather by _Christian Foley_

Mathematics by _Catherine Bennett_

It Looked Like Scarborough, But It Felt Like Florida by _Christopher Fraser_

Lesson Plan by _Laurence Cook_

Sometimes I'm Glad by _Laurence Cook_

A Young Toad's Travels by _Micky Nolan_

The Molecular Body by _Catherine Bennett_

Positions by _Alexander Humerliss_

Something Old, Something New by _Joanne Hardy_

Wade's Causeway by _Joanne Hardy_

In The Trench by _Sandra Garside-Neville_

Doubt by _Victoria Touzel_

The Willy Pot by _Sandra Garside-Neville_

Keks Night Out by _Peter Speller_

With A Kiss by _Serena Rudge_

Whirligig Beetle by _Peter Speller_

Untitled by _Naomi Cartmell_

Sonnet by _Nicky Kingsley_

Purgatory by _Nicky Kingsley_

Mum's Egg-Cup, One of a Set by _Nicky Kingsley_

Melody by _Mark Wiltshire_

Small Thought by _Chris Bennigsen_

Uganda by _Susie Ricketts_

Rainbow by _Faye Tyreman_

The White Dress by _Marc Smith_

Imagined by _Olivia Waring_

Walk of Shame by _James Faktor_

The Circle by _Michael Walkden_

Come The Revolution by _Caroline Moore_

Dvořák by _Rebecca Hemsley_

Tsunami by _Gavrielle Groves-Gidney_

The Jeremy Kole Show by _Tim James_

Water Creature by _Anya Benson_

Wings by _Elliot Brooks_

Emmeline by _Olivia Waring_

His Garden by _Sue Smith_

Slip by _Jina Foo_

Coventry – 14th November 1940 by _Sarah Williams_

Escape Lane Ahead by _Nicola Hargrave_

in-TRANSIT by _Anthony Levin_

Autumn in London by _Fergus Tevlin_

London's Red Buses by _Mosope Adekola_

#  Foreword

## David Zendle

In late 2009, there was a stitch missing in the creative fabric of the University of York. Dozens of students were avidly writing plays, short stories and poems, but there was no single place in which these pieces could be published: the community had an active mind, but no voice. Frustrated by this, a small group of students from the university's English department set out to collate the best pieces of creative writing that the university had to offer and publish it in a yearly anthology. Thanks to the support of the department itself and the FR Leavis Fund, our task was a success, and the first edition of The Looking Glass sold out almost instantly.

This year, we've returned as a YUSU society, officially ratified, and our editors (and authors) come from departments of the University as diverse as Physics and History. This was all made possible by the dedication of a small but hard-working group of individuals. I'd also like to thank David Attwell – without his support and encouragement there would never have been a first issue of The Looking Glass, let alone a second one. Thanks are also due to the York Annual Fund, who provided a significant chunk of our funding. Finally (and most importantly), I'd like to thank our editors and, especially, our authors. Having the bravery to submit a piece of fiction to public scrutiny takes incredible determination, and I'd like to thank you all for the courage you've shown by allowing yourself to become so intensely vulnerable.

With that said, I hope you enjoy our second issue!

David Zendle, Editor-in-Chief

#  On The Art of Empty Poetry

## Libby Brown

I can write for you

Rippled notes,

Of future exploitations,

Love,

Retching, and purging

Of anatomy and intoxicated

Meta-poise.

Inked limbs and trepid clawing of

Knives on ice as we

Fall and cling and vaunt a maudlin prayer,

For rippled notes,

Of future exploitations,

Love,

And tepidity,

Lacking in a

Loquacious letter, or loot.

Deepening the trip,

Loosening the grip,

As we dip and scratch rippled notes,

Of future elegies,

And odes to felony.

I can't do everything.

# East of Barcelona

## Libby Brown

The lights are hungry. There are seraphim, and salt and a sense of having bones, and being bones. I can move, and my mind is wet ink. The uncarpeted sea swills past my sinews and my skin, inhaling me. I don't have to think. I am part of the sea, East of Barcelona, and the moment seeps from me like an offering. I have something more than language; the silk simplicity of being. Hot and ambiguous words trickle over my retinas, optical language-making as thoughts race to finish themselves before clarity washes over them like the tide. And when your lips touch water it is like kissing the perimeter of a secret – or, perhaps, the scarlet sheen surfacing the King of Spades. Loose and lucid cultural references penetrate and re-penetrate you. I think of East Barcelona, and I think of the water's boneless dancing and of glass, and my frost-blonde hair is clasped by a watery branch and becomes uncoloured by water, until it blends like soft tar with the black body of moisture. It vanishes me. I extinguish myself. I was a drop of gold on a landscape of rippled black. Now I am washed under and washed away to decompose, laughing literature and melting torn pages of my mind which hold nothing but fear, memories and scenes from Macbeth.

That night I felt that I had bled the sea from my heart, and that the waves dripping up my collarbone were spilt from me. I was there, legs falling into nowhere, before pools of my blood and myself.

# Grandfather

## Christian Foley

My Grandad exists in his own time capsule

Which takes the shape of semi-detached house

With windows peering out like wise but drowsy eyes

On the steep and sloping street that Time

Has time and time again chosen to keep the same.

The same can be said of my Grandad.

The misty crystal glass glows golden yellow on the front door,

Thawing the cold corridor, following the slight touch

Of a wrinkled, wintry index finger to a dull white light switch.

The door opens slowly, pushing against a heavy carpet

To reveal someone I expect to be older and more fragile

Than a snowflake on cold skin melting in the heat

Of the beaming sun.

Though when the door opens, I see a man

Wearing a gleaming grin, unbowed by the weight of the world

Carried for almost an entire century.

A shock of white wiry hair continues to work its way outwards

While thick and bushy eyebrows snake their way inwards

Above the searching eyes observing the circle of life,

The birth of a child, the hearse of a wife,

Hard work and happiness immersed in turbulent strife.

The same jacket of faded blue zipped to the collar

Clings to his body, the polished shoes still reflect movements

In the boss black leather.

A leathery gnarled hand

With veins that stand up like ancient tree roots on uneven ground

Reaches out to bridge our generation gap with a handshake,

That is not strong, but not nearly as weak as I anticipate.

Painted pictures of dreamy streams

And cleanest green landscapes decorate walls.

The hallway hasn't altered in the fourteen years I remember walking in,

The first door you see is almost closed, if opened it would bring

A moment of pain that flashes past the heart in a rapid pulse of memory.

Momentarily I'm four years old kneeling in front of the telly

Leaning forwards like the sounds and colours could save me

From the raw reality that in the next door room, Grandma Lillian

Had just succumbed to lung cancer.

I remember so vividly; the program we watched was Watership Down.

Pacing, racing hares, facing stares from a boy whose heartbeat

Matched theirs in speed.

Everything is copper toned, auburn chairs and thick carpet

Colours of autumn. Kit Kat wrappers glisten silver shining out from

The bin in the corner of the kitchen, tins of food form in ranks

On the shelf. Health, my Grandad says, comes from sleep.

Deep slumber, the frail chest rising and falling like tragic heroes.

Books and plays scattered haphazardly like a shattered mosaic

Prosaic letters echo the sentiment if something has to be said

Go say it, my Grandad tells it like it is.

He's my shallow breathing reminder that nothing lasts forever.

Summer won't spring into winter but May March slowly

Into seasons where breezes freeze features or gusts of cold air

Mean weakness, he greets us and sits down in the same chair.

For an evening, everything is preserved like museums.

I can pretend like a child that nothing in my own life has changed.

When I leave I return to the running river of comings and goings,

The humming and sewing of Grandma may have gone but

The house is a memory, our safe haven of the past. I seek asylum there.

We all know that one day Time will take its toll, but for now...

My Grandad exists in his own time capsule

Which takes the shape of semi-detached house

With windows peering out like wise but drowsy eyes

On the steep and sloping street that Time

Has time and time again chosen to keep the same.

# Mathematics

## Catherine Bennett

It's like mathematics, the way  
we become opposite and equal  
sides of the equation. You push your  
hands through me; they clot in my hair  
and we lay there,  
nose to nose,  
occasionally misting up each other's faces  
with our breath.

I tell you we're parentheses  
surrounding a nothing, or  
the nothing is a something and the something  
is that dream we each have  
of our past lovers. I pretend you're  
thinking of your last fuck, while we fuck,  
because it makes me jealous and I always  
fuck better when I'm seething.

You know this,  
know these symmetry-games I play, matching  
the holes in your body to the parts of her that  
must have been placed there; I am like a child  
learning shapes and numbers.  
Circle. Square. Take away  
and you have the proportional nth amount,  
or the negative number that fills us.  
You are you, +1, and minus all your old loves.

But mathematics does not show the trail they leave,  
the ghost-fuck always between us, the droplets of  
him still salting my stomach.  
You can taste him,  
the unknown amount – let's call  
him z – but by working backwards you can  
discover his mass,  
the bulk of him that you replace, the number  
recurring.

We are the probability of it,  
the sheer unlikelihood that humans  
can fit each other like a mechanism,  
whirring and spitting,  
the statistical blunder of negative number.  
A clock which turns backwards, a bed left  
yellowing in dirty light.  
The sum of it all is n, where n  
is the aggregate of memories  
palpable.

# It Looked Like Scarborough, But It Felt Like Florida

## Christopher Fraser

You were standing out in the ocean when I arrived, just at the point where the top of each wave brushed against your neck. It was one in the morning. The light came from the arcades behind me, and the moon, and that was about it. There was that strange aural dynamic - far-off chaos, but immediate stillness. The atmosphere of the loner hanging around in the garden at every house party you've ever been to. Everyone else was inside, their £5 notes drawn to change machines like moths to a flame.

"Come on in," you said. I almost expected you to say "the water's lovely". That's what people say, right? I shook my head. It's not exactly a fear, but I have a problem with the sea. I think it's one of hassle – the hassle of getting sand in your toes, of the awkwardness of drying off in public.

This was our first meeting; you in the water, me on the shore. Not to get too steeped in metaphor, but that was a pretty accurate description of every girl I'd ever met. There I always was, drawn to those enveloped in complexity, mystery, a whole bundle of paradoxes and details and connections to every part of life, with me sheepishly hanging around the periphery. Not scared to join in, but too content with my own life to want to risk it.

You blinked, and stared with a new intensity. You reminded me of someone. Scratch that - a few people. Resigned, I tugged off my T-shirt, lost the sandals, and stepped into the sea. A smile. The memories glowed a little brighter. Strange. This wasn't déjà vu - I hadn't been here before, hadn't seen you before, hadn't - for that matter \- ever been into the sea, if you forget the six-year-old me being led, hand in hand, by my mother, in one of the quieter resorts of Majorca. This was new, definitely; but at the same time familiar.

Your hair was cropped short. Your face: ordinary-looking, besides that smile, a smile that was burning through me. I tried walking up to meet you until most of my body was submerged, then swam the rest of the distance. We were a long way from land. I didn't have my contact lenses in, and the details of the seafront were blurred and confusing, a streak of light giving way to blackness. I couldn't even see the stars like this.

I turned to face you, and all the details came back into focus. Every time I placed who you reminded me of, my mind shifted somewhere else. I'd notice your piercing eyes, think of a childhood sweetheart, and then immediately be reminded of my best friend by the way you reached up and scratched your ear. And, looking down, I could see that you had my mother's shoulders, the skull structure of my grandmother, and - judging by the way you suddenly laughed without provocation - the sense of humour of my father. He was always laughing for no reason, and he'd never say why.

Funny, but I didn't feel uncomfortable just looking into your eyes. Call it a fear of connecting, but generally it was my one big flaw - talking to people, I'd always look at the table, my fingernails - anything but make eye contact for more than a couple of seconds. You, though - I felt comfortable with you. We'd just met, but the way you looked at me made me feel safe.

I closed my eyes, just to listen to the sound of the waves, and the mariachi-influenced jazz music piped through loudspeakers along the bay, and the far-off chatter. Peaceful sounds. No pressure. I'd come here to escape the stress, and it was working so far. I hadn't spoken to anyone from home in weeks. And I'd switched everything off - no-one from home could speak to me.

My eyes opened when I felt your hand on my waist. I looked over at you, and you'd moved forward. You gazed at me again, the smile gone, looking as if you were about to tell me something deadly serious, and then pulled me close. I thought to resist, then didn't. This was strange, but at the same time... it felt too natural to object to it.

Our arms wrapped around each other, the waves slowly flowing across our shoulders and breaking hundreds of yards off. I could have stayed there forever.

# Lesson Plan

## Laurence Cook

The following is an instruction on how to create an exact reproduction of an autumn morning in 2007; the text is copied verbatim from a teacher. Please pay close attention to the following stage directions before using this lesson plan.

Epigraph

'bird's egg blue and until that and nothing else there is the permanence of something I've forgotten'

Setting

A large blue modern classroom on the top floor of a building, the back wall is completely glass and looks out onto a busy roundabout beyond a patch of grass below. The noise of this should be constant throughout and half-open blinds periodically sway to reveal more, and then less, pale light. It is cold; at least ten Students should still be wearing coats or huddling into the desks for lack of them.

Cast

Teacher: a man, 32. Tall. Glasses.

Students

...

Teacher: _(The passing round of handouts may serve as punctuation. Copies should be bad to awful - though legible, they should look as if they had been scanned from an old edition and then copied again if not actually produced in this way.)_ I've copied this, because I think it's something you should be aware of. If you don't understand or - getting it doesn't matter, what is important is that you see things like this and that you... It's not on the syllabus and, again, this is not something you need to worry about... in fact I forbid you to worry about this. _(Instructive)_ This poem is not something anybody needs to worry about.

_(_ Teacher _then returns to the front.)_

...

Epilogue

'At this point Miss Baker said:

'Absolutely!'

with such a suddenness that

I started – it was the first word

she had said since I

came into the room.

Don't worry it doesn't mean much really'

Notes

Something should be mentioned about the feelings that should be evoked, though I can give no specific guidance on how these are achieved: An unspoken and as yet unrealised understanding between Students and Teacher, a feeling of the rest of the world passing by behind you (though this is somewhat achieved through the use of the window and roundabout behind the Students, it can probably be taken further), the feeling of one complete moment.

# Sometimes I'm Glad

## Laurence Cook

Sometimes I'm glad this isn't forever.

the raingrey days of

early summer –

the black shining slates on roofs

are important because they won't

always sit slap slap on top of each other.

some solace

in the ability to shut

everything out once and for all

as a thick window to an autumn storm

Or

to let hot, balmy day in

completely,

just until the cool of night.

# A Young Toad's Travels

## Micky Nolan

Johnny thought, with his fluorescent imagination,  
of the things he could do if only he had the patience.  
So, once upon a toad, he wished to walk the road,  
to find the spices of his life, that which he loathed.

And so Johnny went on his way, peeling his eyes as he goes,  
until he came across a woman, covered in herbs from head to toe.  
'How do you do?' said Johnny, 'What may it be?  
I'm sorry to say this, love, but you're looking like a tree!'

'Business as usual.' she said, 'That's the reason for the load.  
There's a lot of stuff back there - but there's nothing for a toad!'  
Disappointed as he was, Johnny searched through night and day,  
It was a long and dreary road, not that he minded anyway.

Then alas, after years of searching, the time finally came,  
A quite exuberant fellow he was, he didn't even have a name.  
So with a great sigh, Johnny explained, his words cold and flat, but bold and plain,  
But the man understood what he had to proclaim.

So the trees blew, and the grass grew,  
And in that moment his wish came true.  
He could walk again, with power and might,  
With not a hop in his step, just a smile of delight.

And so when Johnny looks back, he can look on back in pride,  
And know that life can be even greener on the other side.

# The Molecular Body

## Catherine Bennett

The body is the place of love -  
it happens right there, on  
the skin or on the tongue, little pin-pricks  
of knowing, bursting

into a carefully articulated  
question, or a phrase that lightens  
near the end. Why do you let me  
continue in this way?

It always goes like this, she said,  
soft in the middle and then blood  
near the end, everywhere. Lymphs  
pooling in the centre of the bed.

She used to steal the sheets. Stole  
them for want of you, for love of  
your body, you labourer. I am also  
converted to thoughts of you, obsessed.

This city has a thousand tongues,  
and they all speak apart. I see  
you through the window, the sliver  
of the outside world. Why challenge

me, why think me into life? The iron  
in my blood, haemoglobin, platelets,  
hormones and oxytocin and oestradiol,  
spittle and oil, the salt that goes

into making me exist; all exist  
separate. I am the miniature city,  
my tongue the giant muscle that rolls  
like the river through it.

You are remains, the compound that bleaches  
bones in the sunlight. Why do you  
let me speak without making a sound?  
Why speaking? You. Speak.

# Positions

## Alexander Humerliss

Soil. Grass and flowers. Sighing trees, yellow autumn, and the weeping, wordless wind. These were the philosopher's woods.

Running through the centre, moving at a playful pace, drifted the river. A girl skipped up its shallows, bare feet cold in the flowing current. Mother told her not to play in the philosopher's woods, but why shouldn't she? They were hers as much as his. And the river! The water felt so good against her skin, and she laughed as she waded upstream. The waterfall was only a little distance ahead. Only a few more turns. Yes already she could hear it:

'The waterfall's laughing!' she cried. Oh - how it always seemed to be laughing! What was so funny? While she was kicking the water, spraying her hair and clothes, a fish moved out from the bank, woken from its slumber. It had such heavy, heavy eyelids, and such red, red eyes! Poor fish. He'd obviously been crying, she thought, as he swam in a fixed, straight line, striking fast through the water's depths. She thought she would cheer him up, and tried to stroke him as he swam by. Eugh! He felt horrible. So cold. Scaly fish. Cold fish.

Cutting into the back of the cliff, behind the waterfall, tunnelled a cave. The scene was beautifully carved, like mother's pots, but the cave was so terribly dark. And inside that cave lived an old man: mother called him a... a... philosopher? He was in love with something. He loved 'Knowledge': but who was Knowledge? She had never seen her. She preferred to play by herself. It was all very confusing. Hum! As she skimmed the stones, dancing their toes upon the surface of the water, she thought that every now and then, in between the joyful chattering of the slip-splashing waterfall, she could hear someone weeping. Weeping, weeping behind its torrents. Why, it must have been the philosopher. Oh! She tried to ignore it, but it really wouldn't do, on such a sunny day, to have anyone upset. Not even the old philosopher. And besides, it was spoiling her play.

She waded under the waterfall, shivering as the cold water writhed like sliding forest snakes slithering down the small of her back. The echo of the water bounded off the walls, boom, boom, and the light was darker here, and there were many shadows, and the cave really was very deep, and she was cold, and shivering... Oh! But that sobbing! This philosopher really must have been very upset. Sob-sob-sob like a baby.

She crept through the cave, dry now, feet scratched with nails upon the cold earth. Candles lit the way: deep, dark underground. No wonder he was crying: how dark and lonely this cave must be! No flowers, no light, no warmth: all the things she loved. But really! She decided she must drag him up to the river, and cheer him up, like Father would do when she was upset, and alone, and lonely. Then he would feel better! If she could make him laugh...

She came to a large, open space, with bookshelves pushed against the cool earthen wall. There were many books lining the shelves, nestling close in the cold dark of the cave, papers rustling like leaves in the cool cavern's draft. A fire burned in the middle, hugging its embers, and on a stool sat the philosopher. She sat watching him, head in hands, back turned to the fire. He faced the cold earthen wall, watching the shadows dance and flicker, dance and flicker.

And she watched him. And she watched. And watched. He? He sat, and wept, and sat. What a strange man. Was he always like this? But what a life to lead! She was nervous, and her breath caught in her throat, tight. But she would have to ask him, would have to...

'Who are you in love with?' she asked the philosopher. 'Why are you crying?'

As a pebble drops from a great height, slicing clean through the silent air, making hardly a swish or a sigh, before thumping into the water with a great 'plop', so the silence broke, and her voice echoed off those ancient tunnelled walls, breaking the delicate surface tension he had so long kept company with. The air trembled, tremored: Spring meltwater sliding into stream. The fish awoke. He stirred, blinking, moving slowly to face her, and he set his eyes upon her, laid his staff across his feet, and after much time, composed himself.

A tunnel opens, and we move from light to darkness. Now enter darkness. Who was this child - so small and trembling - to make demands of him? He, who had looked upon the sun's zenith, at her highest point in the sky, married to the heavens, finding only darkness and death wedded to the nadir, to the trails of her dresses. He who had lovingly traced the cosmos with the ink of his eye, drawing, exploring, as one possessed by the heat of the stars, burning with lovers' heat, bound and wrapped within their spiralling, burning passion: yet when ink ran warmest, burnt brightest, clearest, so it had spilled and spilled over into a change, a play, a flux and fluid pattern. This 'love' dried now, dried long ago. Set, yet set in spillage. Long ago: philosopher. He would stretch out his hand; to grasp her, to hold her down; she so cold, changing, slipping as streams passing between rocks: truth slipped between his fingers... and ink ran free across damp parchment –

'Take my hand' she cried. He'd been sitting, eyes glazed, for a good while. Silly man. Why did he not respond? Old man. She grasped his hands: oh! They were cold, wizened hands. Eugh! She heaved him, bear-like, out of his seat. Before he had time to resist, to struggle, she dragged his frail body, stumbling, out of the cave, and out, out up the slope. They passed the candles, and several spiders, moving up for some time. She thought she'd taken a wrong turning in her hurry, but then they reached the end of the cave, the water rushing over its mouth. And it split them like a screen from the outer world. They stared beyond its shimmering wall. The light's play through the water was beautiful. It split like an arrow thudding into bark, peeling layers of colour over their skin. She turned to grumpy, who was beginning to glaze over again...

Oh! How this waterfall pounds eternally against the rock: the rock a prisoner chained to its music. I know this sound well. I tunnelled underground, into Earth's cool, chthonic embrace, to silence her weeping – the river. Do you not hear her weep, child? She weeps even as she flows, with each successive change. Each part, in succession, weeping as she's forced ceaselessly out towards the sea, pulled by a force, a flux she cannot fight. She's pulled from the land, dragged under by her own current, her own violence, towards that sea, and she sings her elegy as her fate is forced. Her music saddens me, striking deep, writing her notes deep, cut into my heart.

'I hear her laughing,' spoke the girl. She heard the spray skip along the rocks, the bubbling of the still water, lapping, lapping against the cave wall. What a silly man, and what funny things to say! Nothing for it. Out she dragged him, through, through the waterfall's singing wall. Now dark, now wet, now...light! And they were out.

The philosopher shivered in the heat of the cool autumn sun. It stuck to his skin like honey, sweet and smothering. His eyes shivered too, stung by the waning sun, spreading its rays out through the trees, pollinating the reds and yellows of the woods with life. The air swarmed his lungs; he choked, and inhaled. Choke, choke. Bending over, he ran a finger over the earth, tracing its cool loam with a line, writing his existence back into the ground. As a child, losing its way in the darkness, stumbling, then leaps into the arms of its mother, so he embraced the warmth of her world. For this was 'it'. This: these leaves sweeping across the breeze, joining hands with the girl, twirling in the fading light.

The girl was happy. She had made him smile! He wasn't quite so distant now, and the tears had dried from his cheeks. The river, running through the centre of the Philosopher's woods, moved swiftly on. In the middle of the river, just beyond where they were standing, stood anchored two rocks. These rocks had sat here for a great many years, facing the cave, head in hands, solemnly. They had rested here, anchored against the river's flow, even before the philosopher's descent into the cave. And that was long, long ago. She had seen him go down, and the people who had come to play in her woods had heard his weeping, had called this place the 'weeping woods', the 'philosopher's woods'. These woods were far older than him. She had been here since the first sap in first spring, when it had sprouted fast from the ground. She had watered it, nurtured it, and watched these woods grow. She had seen the river carve its channel, and the cave chiselled out of the cliff. The birds build nests. She had watched as the wind, earth, fire and air dwelt between her leaves.

The girl hopped onto the first rock, hopped onto the second, singing as she leapt. He followed her, jumping onto the first rock.

Knowledge and play. A strange alchemical formula: the transfiguration of two such unlike elements in the calcinatory should hardly have produced such striking results. The stone would conceal itself, hidden for years. And then, when it so chose, it would reveal itself, humbly, through the play of a girl. He had found her, stepping between the stones, stepping between the flux of the river. He caught her, mid-air, caught between one rock and another, dancing through the air, stepping between the flux. Found her between the folds of the red, red leaves. The river. The sky. Autumn. This girl...

'Follow,' she sang, leaping onto the bank. And she sat upon the warm riverbank, hands wrapped around her knees, smiling. The sun was hot. He had begun to dance, she thought. She hummed, and he, oblivious, danced to her tune. And so she sang his metaphysics to sleep.

He stirred from thought, glancing towards the next rock. A leap's distance. But that girl's smiling. Such a strange smile. That strange, enigmatic smile, which had gazed, gazed back at him as he had searched the nauseous expanse of darkness for his love. It was a smile that knew. Such strangeness. And a feeling rose upon him, gradually, gradually rising as the stream cuts through snow in winter, and it became greater, and it became great, sound, and roaring thunder. It tremored through his body, piercing his frameworks, his systems, tunnelling its music through the caverns of his mind. A great cloud moved across the sun. The sky greyed as if aged, and the girl was gone. A rumbling. A wall of water tumbling over the waterfall. He stood still, still upon the rock. And it rushed at him. Someone was coming. Someone approached, and he was helpless, yielding to her outstretched fingers, slipping between her hands.

Water. Head pounding. No rock; no anchor. Feet? Flailing. Change and the river, roaring past him, accelerating; drowning thoughts. Drowning sight. Drowning. Yet within the water's violent, wheeling pace, at its centre, he was still. And he heard a music. A beautiful, playing music. She was singing, as she thundered and roared. How strange to find that, of all the places, the heavens, the woods, the caves and the bookshelves, it was here, sung to sleep in the arms of a flowing river, in the eye of its torrents, the stillness he sought. A great calm. That peace. He closed his thoughts, and singing with her, singing as in love, passed away, far beyond the woods, and out, out into the sea. And so the children would laugh once again, skipping streams and skimming stones, in playing amid the Philosopher's woods.

#  Something Old, Something New

## Joanne Hardy

Ruby was very proud of her house, everyone knew that. "A place for everything and everything in its place," she would pronounce at least once a day, as she berated her husband Harry for leaving his wellies in the middle of the kitchen, or for leaving his newspaper in the downstairs loo. She often quoted her visitors' remarks about what an exceptionally well-kept house she had, and wore their comments around her like a mink coat, her chest puffed out with pride.

On this particular day, Ruby was up early and down the town by seven-thirty. Harry had given up trying to talk her out of such early morning excursions, especially now it was dark first thing, but Ruby had Standards. Harry knew when he was beaten, so he settled for having the kettle on for her when she returned, not only loaded down with the day's bread, newspaper and ginger snaps, but also bearing news from giggling shop girls about the latest neighbourhood scandals, "... and him thirty-five and divorced twice!"

Harry settled down with his tea, trying not to notice the date on his newspaper, while in the background Ruby got started on the oven. She'd had a man out to clean it just last week, but had not been convinced that the job was up to scratch. "How typical of today's generation," she'd announced, as she peered accusingly into the oven while the cleaning man loaded his equipment back into his van. "No pride in their work, no pride in anything anymore." Now she worked her fingernail over a non-existent blemish and tutted under her breath. "If a job's worth doing...."

"...it's worth doing properly..." Harry parroted quietly, safely unheard behind the ramparts of his paper.

Ruby, hands gloved like a surgeon, glared at the oven, as if by the sheer power of her gaze alone she could burn off the grease and dirt.

"Right!" she announced, and began squirting foul substances into the defenceless cooker.

"Have you got the window open, love?" said Harry, as noxious fumes began to drift through into the back room.

"Yes!" came the snapped reply. Harry resumed his position behind the newspaper. He knew when his input was not required.

As the morning progressed, the house began to gleam with an almost inhuman cleanliness. Carpets were shampooed, rugs beaten, skirting boards washed and grouting whitened; all the while, Ruby scolding, stitching one task to the next with the fine thread of her dissatisfaction. In the face of this constant verbal onslaught, Harry retreated further into the sanctuary of his newspaper, not even looking up when he heard the ominous sound of ladders being propped and loft hatches being lifted.

"Are you sure you can manage, love?" he shouted half-heartedly, his eyes not leaving the headlines.

He received a muffled "fine!" in reply and was content. He reached for the television remote and turned on the racing. He settled down further into the sofa and reached into a trouser pocket for his betting slips.

"OH!"

A sudden explosive syllable abruptly halted Ruby's monologue. This sudden absence washed through the house like a tide. Harry reached for the remote and turned down the sound on the television, then put down his newspaper and walked to the bottom of the stairs. He peered up the stairs, ears straining for sounds in the unexpected lull. Not hearing any movement or sound, he climbed the stairs to the landing.

"Everything alright up there?"

Nothing.

He moved to the bottom of the ladder and peered into the gloom. "Ruby love?"

Placing his foot on the bottom rung, he took four quick steps up the ladder, and poked his head up through the hatch. The still air caught in his throat and he coughed. Blinking through watery eyes, he could not at first make her out in the gloom. Then, forming slowly, like a developing Polaroid, shapes became defined; shadows coalesced, forming a figure. As his eyes became accustomed to the dark, he saw her, frozen, arms outstretched, cradling a bundle in her upturned hands.

He climbed through the loft hatch and into the cramped space, perching precariously on ancient rafters, not trusting the plywood he had laid down - when? Surely not ten years ago? He stood for a moment, disorientated by the darkness, while his eyes took in the scene: a roof space filled with sagging unlabelled boxes, keyless old suitcases and lacy bin bags, the contents poking their noses out like mice. All around him, the past piled up towards the ceiling, dusty and cobwebbed, insect corpses scattered like confetti on every surface. All around him hung the smell of damp decay. Unbidden, the word "mausoleum" formed in his mind as he surveyed the accumulated trappings of a family's life, piled into mounds in a musty attic, reduced to shrouded dead things; out of sight, out of mind.

He moved towards Ruby, suddenly concerned, unnerved by the strange atmosphere of the place, so different from the bright world on the other side of the hatch. He reached out a hand towards her, suddenly fearful that she too would prove a ghost, insubstantial as the memories that pressed in on all sides. His fingers touched her shoulder and he felt tension buzzing through her like a current.

"Love?" he repeated, more gently.

She turned to him, holding the bundle towards him like an offering. Harry glanced at her face, disturbed by the confused mixture of emotions fighting for dominance on those familiar features, then looked down at her hands. Swaddled in a young girl's grey school jumper was a small doll, its face and body faded and broken, yet wrapped up with obvious care and affection. A miniature plastic hand, missing fingers, reached up towards Harry. The doll's painted face, worn out not through neglect, but through the touch of love over many years, smiled up though a threadbare sleeve and with an electric jolt of memory, he remembered.

"She never put this down, do you remember?" Ruby said, looking at Harry. "Everywhere we went, always clamped under her left arm like a handbag. Every birthday we thought she'd grow out of it and she never did. I remember us standing at the bottom of the stairs when she went to bed, listening to her sing "Away in a Manger" so the doll would get to sleep..." Her voice cracked and stilled, and her gaze returned to the faded face.

"Molly the dolly, wasn't it?" said Harry, not moving his eyes from the small plastic figure. "We once lost her in that lay-by in Scotland, do you remember?" His eyes filled for a second time. "We had to retrace our steps till we found her. Missed the last ferry because of that, had to sleep in the car..." He smiled. "The things she had us doing for that damn thing."

A crowded moment, heavy with emotion and memory, came and went. Harry withdrew his hand from Ruby's shoulder and she exhaled heavily. As he watched, the years seemed to fall away from her like snow from tree branches at the first touch of spring sunshine.

"Do you know, I forgot this, I forgot it all." Ruby looked urgently at Harry, astonishment and anguish lighting her features. "She's my daughter. Our daughter. Half of you and half of me. All those years of care and love, watching her grow, keeping her safe... how could I just forget?"

She turned away, unseeing eyes darting from side to side as she replayed scenes in her mind: things being said that should not have been said, things left in disarray that should have been tidied up and mended but had instead been left unregarded, neglected. She took in a deep breath, then paused, suddenly unsure.

"Do you think she would still want us there? After all those awful things I said...." Her voice, already quiet, tailed off as uncertainty traced lines across her face.

Harry put his arm around her waist and she laid her head on his shoulder, feeling and then remembering the strength of him. They stood in that space for a few minutes, lost in thoughts and each other, and then both carefully climbed down the ladder.

Harry went into the bathroom and washed his hands carefully in the immaculate sink, while Ruby walked dazedly into the bedroom, hand automatically reaching for a duster left on the dressing table. She sat down heavily on the edge of the bed, fingers distractedly twisting the yellow material first one way, then the other, oblivious to its grimy state. Her eyes were drawn to the fancy pink and white feathers peeping from the top of a carrier bag that had been roughly stuffed behind the box of Christmas decorations on top of the wardrobe. That hat had taken her ages to choose. How could something so carefully selected be so quickly discarded?

Straightening up to dry his hands, Harry caught a glimpse of his face in the shaving mirror, unsure for a moment who the old man was looking back at him. Then he walked into the bedroom and took down the morning suit from the hook on the back of the door. Ruby looked up at him, her face holding a question.

"Don't worry love, we've still got time to get there," he said, and he hugged her as she wept into the yellow duster, tears washing away the dust and dirt of the years.

# Wade's Causeway

## Joanne Hardy

We did not mean to go there  
but our planned road was closed,  
so we walked instead on a Roman's road,  
and we looked for him.

Our planned road was closed,  
but the moor was open, infinite, beckoning.  
We looked for him,  
watching our feet and marking our path.

The moor open, infinite, beckoning,  
but disclosing no hint, no glint of the previous.  
We watched our feet and marked our path,  
but came no closer to our foundation.

No hint disclosed, no glint of the previous  
amongst the stones and moss and wind.  
No closer to a foundation;  
only echoes.

Amongst the stones and moss and wind  
My daughter, yelling, stopped us, held us fast:  
"Echoes!"  
At the pointed stone by the bent fence post.

Held fast,  
as voices roiled and rebounded through the landscape.  
By the pointed stone by the bent fence post  
we found a foundation at last.

Voices rolling and rebounding through the landscape -  
how many had paused here, listening?  
We had our foundation at last,  
standing in the footsteps of ghosts,

by the pointed stone by the bent fence post.

# In the Trench

## Sandra Garside-Neville

In the trench, the cold earth  
in yielding to the pick, shovel and trowel,  
seems to sigh and slump,  
as we strain to find the past.

In yielding to the pick, shovel and trowel,  
the sharp tanged soil,  
as we strain to find the past,  
scatters under our heavy booted feet.

The sharp tanged soil  
gifts us pottery, bone, tile and maybe more,  
scattering under our booted feet,  
like bright eyes sparkling in the light.

These carriers of ancient truth lie  
in the trench, the cold earth.  
And past notions gather and  
seem to sigh and slump.

# Doubt

## Victoria Touzel

Beneath the frail shell  
There lies a bloody promise  
Born of more than lust.

It was unexpected.

And the girl who lies within  
This cold bed seems condemned;  
Although it be laid double,  
He may never touch her again.

Although ever bound by gold together  
She still sees his eyes stray from her by day.

So now she suffers the contractions  
Of a scaled and silken scarf  
Slyly coiled about her neck.

Insidious and pitiless.

# The Willy Pot

## Sandra Garside-Neville

It's a phally!

He cried, dark curly hair

Always red faced, excited

He has a present

Which he spreads before me

Dirty pieces tumble

Slender fragments,

Pottery covered in ancient dirt

Gently thud onto the surface

He shuffles the pieces

Swiftly making sense of chaos

It's what diggers do

Yes, I see it now

A small jar emerges

My thoughts make it whole

From the broken sherds

With decoration icing the surface

And a golden brown slip

Cruel cockerel claws emerge

Holding up rude, strutting members

Complete with feathery wings too

They parade around the vessel

Proclaiming their proud mission

Bringing the owner luck and life

Only it broke,

Dropped by some Roman from near or far

The shards discarded, deposited

It tells me the sad story

Of that brief time in the light

When they were all erect and laughing

# Keks Night Out

## Peter Speller

My seam is aquiver  
as the door creaks ajar  
Will it be me?

A hand on my hanger  
twists, lifts me free.  
Please choose me.

Her skin warms my fibres  
and brings me to life.  
What will we do?

Booted and belted  
we stride off outside.  
Where will we go?

The pub would be fine  
a club would be better,  
I want to show off.

To rhythm and blues,  
we're flaunting our curves,  
with consummate flair.

Some uncorking and clinking,  
much laughter and drinking,  
I'm under the table.

It's creasing me up,  
the belt's getting tighter.  
Undo a notch.

Now the tablecloth's hiding  
a hand on my knee.  
That's quite enough.

Then it's all over,  
discarded, dejected,  
I need a wash.

# With A Kiss

## Serena Rudge

Confusion  
Runs around my head,  
Holds me hostage,  
Won't give up the  
Relentless stream of different dreams  
Like black and white  
Romantic films.  
Is it real,  
This fluttering feeling?  
Heart throbs, head pounds,  
Are these the signs,  
The sights,  
The sounds,  
Does my head spin from memories  
Or put a spin on the memories?  
I took the apple,  
Bit off more than I could chew,  
Screw the clichés,  
This is about you,  
I'm falling fast, hard,  
Waiting to hit the ground,  
Need to hit it,  
Not running but with a thud,  
Knock some sense back in.  
You stole mine with a kiss,  
Stomach flips,  
I need it back,  
Legs tremble  
When I remember  
What you said,  
Shouldn't have said.  
I should leave you be,  
But it's too late,  
You charmed me and won  
And I cannot let go.  
I'm knotted,  
Pulled tight,  
No way out,  
And my constant clawing for an answer  
Simply makes this harder  
And entangles me further.  
Too many things holding me back,  
Weighing us down,  
Her, unwanted, far away,  
But you won't act,  
Him, who'd feel betrayed.  
Your face, my thoughts,  
Cloud my conscience,  
I can't see,  
Tumbling,  
Still falling,  
Waiting to understand  
What to do  
About what I want  
But just can't have,  
How to unravel  
This puzzle  
Of you.

# Whirligig Beetle

## Peter Speller

^ ^

^ ^

^ ^

^ ^ ^ ^

^ ^ ^ ^

^ ^ ^ ^

^ Living ^

^ in a swirling ^

^ two-dimensional ^

water world, twirling on

unbroken surface tension,

and with no apparent pattern,

its rapid, random kinesis leads

the casual eye to miss the guile

of nature's evolution; instinctive

preservation aided by vision,

bisected, to see up and down,

simultaneously the threat

of predator from the air

or under water, my

happy whirligig beetle

twirls in circles, a

jig to thwart the

predatory wishes

of malefic

birds and

fishes.

#  Untitled

## Naomi Cartmell

[Come up on Eve, sitting in a hospital bed in a private room. There is a jug of water and a glass on her bedside table, along with lots of papers. She has long, slightly wavy, dirty blonde hair, and a sheen of sweat is visible on her face. She has bags under her eyes, and has clearly been crying. She sighs, and does not talk for a long moment.]

[Whispers] What was I thinking? What am I even doing here?

I was stupid. Stupid and young. It's not all about the money, you know? I see that now. [Her voice cracks, like she may start crying] Now; but it's too late.

[She sighs and runs her hand through her tousled hair.]

Urgh, this mattress is so uncomfortable. I thought private hospitals were supposed to be like frigging spas. Not this one. A sadist designed these beds, I swear. [Scathingly] 'Hmm, what can we do to make sick and dying people even more uncomfortable?' Ha. But I'm not dying. Well, so they tell me. Feels like I am...

You know, I'd never been in hospital before. Never broken a bone, had a sprain, anything. I should have known my life was too good to be true back then, that God would throw a lifetime of pain all over me now, pain it feels like I'll never escape - drugs and all. I remember the first time I lay on a bed like this, as the sadists slapped some gooey shit all over my stomach. It was freezing. Did they care? Did they hell. They showed me it on an expensive little TV screen. I couldn't see it. Her. Just looked like a load of crap to me; I didn't know how some freaks could get all soppy over it, it's crazy, it's not like Da Vinci created it, or anything - you can't even see anything, barely. But I just smiled and nodded like they expected me to. Empty smiles, though. Ironic isn't it? That I felt empty, vacant, when I was fuller than I'd ever been in my entire frigging life. Full with life. Someone else's life. I can't believe I ever felt empty. But then, I didn't consider that deformed little sea-monkey as life, back then.

[Eve lays her head back and closes her eyes. She does not move or speak for around 30 seconds. Then she suddenly sits upright, curling in pain, clutching her stomach.]

OOOOW! OOOOH, SHIT!

[Her body relaxes, and she closes her eyes again.]

Bitches. Bitches didn't tell me it hurts afterwards too. Grâce aux Dieu. Thanks, God.

[Pause]

But I suppose everybody else is distracted from the pain. They all have their little bundles of joy. Their gifts from above. Not me. Not me. [Whispers, barely audible] I am joyless.

[A single tear runs down her cheek. She quickly brushes it away and shakes her head.]

I remember the first time I knew I loved her. I remember it exactly, every detail etched into my very being. I was in the bath. I never used to take baths. I used to shower, every morning. Well, every mid-morning-slash-early-afternoon when I got up. Anyway, so I was I the bath, disgusted by my mutating body – they should pay you extra if you get stretch marks – and I felt the weirdest sensation, like someone was pushing on my belly, but from the inside, and then I realised that she was nudging me. [Eve smiles as she remembers.] A tiny little person giving me a tiny little nudge and saying 'Hello, Momma' 'cause that was all she knew. I was all she knew. And I can't even be that for her.

[Pause]

It was then that I realised I loved her. That I'd always loved her. Always and forever. Oh, yeah, and then Isabelle came round – She's such a good friend, Isabelle; stuck by my every decision since prep school – and then we had a glass of wine to celebrate my little nudger. I'd been good, though, hadn't touched a drop of alcohol since I first peed on that little white stick – dignified, huh? I could go for some now though. Straight vodka, not fussy alcopops or shit. All I have is this water. Eugh.

[She pours some water from the jug into a glass, and drinks the whole glass without pausing, then puts it back on the table.]

Eugh! Tastes like hospital. How is that possible?! Even the shitting water tastes like hospital. I don't know if I'll ever be able to wash the microwave-food-and-fear smell entirely out of my hair. [She chuckles, half-heartedly, and blinks slowly.]

I'm so tired. I haven't slept for about [she pauses to count in her head] about thirty-two hours. Thirty-two! That's ridiculous. Trust me to go into labour when I'm about to tuck in for the night. [Sarcastic] Thanks again, God, for that ray of proverbial sunshine. I can't even sleep now. Every time I'm about to doze off my mind just replays the moment when they took her away. I'll have nightmares, I know it. I wonder how long I can go without sleep...

[Pause]

I shouldn't have mentioned it. I'm replaying it now. Stop. I've got to stop. [She clutches her head in her hands.] Stop it!

[Eve slowly exhales, and inhales again.]

Nine months that thing was in me. Nine months. And she became a part of me. With her inside me I became a sacred vessel. And they just took her away. How can they just expect me to live without her now? How am I supposed to live without her? Before I knew it, my whole existence revolved around her, and, and now... it's like they have taken away my sun. That's what I would have called her. Sunny. Would have. It's perfect. Just like her.

Just after I gave birth – must be about 2 hours ago now – some witless nurse clearly not aware of my situation asked me, 'Does she have a name yet?' I shook my head. 'No,' I whispered. She's anonymous. Untitled. Some of the best works of art in the world are untitled. Some of the most beautiful. And so was she. [Her voice cracks and breaks.] She always will be, to me, no matter what ridiculous name they give her. My beautiful little untitled baby.

[Her eyes shine with tears. Some well over and run down her cheek. This time she makes no effort to wipe them away.]

[Through tears] That was when they took you... away. Stole you away. Away from me. 'No! Where are you going?!' My cries were useless. Nobody paid me any attention. You started crying, screaming, as they carried you away. I could hear you down the corridor.

But you're mine, I thought. How can they? But they could. And they did. I guess they were right. You're not mine. You were never mine. From the very beginning, you were never mine. [Sobs] You never will be mine. Never.

[Her fruitless tears run freely now.]

But I'll always be yours. They stole you. But not before you stole my heart.

[Whispers] I'll always be yours.

[Eve curls up into a ball. She shakes, sobbing uncontrollably. In her hand is a small pink teddy bear, visibly embroidered with the words 'I Love You'. Go to black.]

# Sonnet

## Nicky Kingsley

You died. At once I saw you fly away,  
No longer citizen of now and here  
But four dimensional: each deed, each day  
That you had lived, a part of who you were.  
Your many faces, child and wife and crone,  
All notes that made a single melody  
Which hung in silence now it had been sung;  
And then I knew you wholly, finally.

I fought then to stop time, to staunch the flow  
That took you from me, till at last I saw  
This was your parting gift, to let me know  
That all the past is safely held in store,  
And all I must let go, at such great cost,  
Is mine forever – nothing has been lost.

# Purgatory

## Nicky Kingsley

Now we are in purgatory  
Going back over it all  
We are at last remembering the good times  
Ends of days safely gathered in  
Tucked up warm  
Warm milk and honey  
Music box singing  
Guten Abend Gute Nacht  
Warm lamplight  
Safe harbour

Later the little boat lost its mooring  
The current too strong  
Pulled away  
Each of us shouting it was the other's fault  
You ran along the shore  
I fumbled helplessly with heavy oars  
Both of us shouting

The rest is history  
A long long journey  
Not so much over now as completed  
Look at it  
Look  
Look at that bit there  
Where you tucked me in each night  
Safe  
At bedtime  
That's the best bit  
The best bit  
The bit we returned to  
That last night when I gave you a last drink  
Sang to you  
Tucked you in  
Held your hand  
Sat with you  
All night  
Until  
The end

# Mum's Egg-cup, One of a Set

## Nicky Kingsley

You had sets, I have odds and ends:  
This bourgeois egg-cup, pure white and gold-rimmed,  
A little piece of Germany – of _Sehnsucht,  
_ Longing, for where I belong and don't belong,  
Of _Heimweh,_ homesickness, for the homeless.  
Oh Mummy, _Mutti,_ did you ever think  
When you adventured forth across the world  
That it was my roots, too, that you tore up?

# Melody

## Mark Wiltshire

Amidst a perfect clamour, and the din  
Of merry chimes more gaily rung than ever,  
A single child's smile breaks, standing –  
Mind ripe, love pure, imagination clever;

He feels these sounds be soaked into the air,  
For, open, flower-like will he reside;  
Not prostrate, nor clinging, hoping but to float –  
But tall and deep, within the golden tide.

And, if our smiling child takes the chance  
To swim within the melody today,  
It is _his_ hair caressed by choral waves, and  
For _his_ eyes the wondrous sights will play.

To know fine moments of great truth and beauty,  
To let our senses roam in things refined -  
Is opportunity. And this alone  
Can fetter-break the shackles that confine.

Yes! Let it be known that truth comes opportunely,  
Not madly or in divine revelation;  
But in giving yours to other lives and tides,  
So we may love without dry hesitation.

For, bells still toll and gaiety resounds;  
Our happy melody is full and bright;  
So cover not with sentiments our ears,  
But let us live life as a child might.

# Small Thought

## Chris Bennigsen

I knew you would be leaving soon,  
But I never thought to question,  
Where you'd be, two years from here,  
After the wedding bells and celebration.

Will I feel alone or cheated?  
As you drive the intimate night,  
Leaving all behind you here with me,  
Watching your small, fading headlights.

Believe me, I'm pleased for you,  
It just hit me properly –

I will miss you, brother.

# Uganda

## Susie Ricketts

For the eight hundred and seventy three inhabitants of the Kabukwiri- Bushenyi district, Sunday meant two things: God and avocadoes. As unlikely a pair as they may seem to the outsider, to this community the latter constituted an integral part of their relationship with the former, and both made up a vital chunk of their seventh-day activity. Makline skipped ahead of her grandmother, now so worn by age and sun and motherhood that her whole body hung like draped, stained linen and her eyes were just a faint glimmer in a nest of wrinkles. Distant music hummed in her ears and avocadoes played on her mind. As she heaved her swollen ankles over ant mounds and fallen strips of bark from the trees, she caught the building crescendo of a hymn not so much floating on the humid air but exploding with the full life and vitality Agnes used to know in her bones and still felt in her mind. Descant hallelujahs leapt above the melody, interspersed by a strong, celebratory bass. Weaving harmonies danced and shimmied and shook with all the triumphant energy of the African Rumba and to Agnes it felt like the sound was coming from the very centre of the earth. Exploding from tree roots, oozing out from the coarse red ground beneath her feet and falling like shards of glistening rain from the sky. "God is Great!" It screamed at her. "God is Great!"

After the service the avocado bidding began. Frenzied as ever, fruit after fruit was presented to the congregation, its individual virtues considered and its final worth decided by an electrically fast, benevolent battle of wills. Agnes had a suspicion that many of the young, more free-minded men would not choose to be so pious in their worship if it wasn't for this weekly excitement and the chance to compete over the various selling prices of their crop, but as the proceeds went towards the church, she couldn't complain. Swirling rhythms still beating against her temples, she shut her eyes to the commotion and slept.

҉ ҉ ҉ ҉ ҉

Miss Mercy Masani, proud teacher of Class P5, Kabukwiri Primary, had always been a walker. She had never had much time for the showy Bora Bora riders who roared up through the matoke sending red dust flying in stinging swirling swarms and upsetting the early morning calm. No, she had strong legs and as she wove up through the dry brittle spines of African plain grass she thought that this was a particularly fine day for walking. The proud Ugandan sun was just beginning its ascent; a light smatter of rays causing the leaves to shine and the well trodden path to emit a not uncomfortable warmth under her bare feet. It had not yet reached the stage where its blazing heat made the very earth seem to ooze a sticky haze, but that would come later, no doubt.

As she walked she considered her life's merits. These solitary occasions allowed her time to reflect and she enjoyed counting her blessings. Teacher of Kabukwiri's oldest, and she believed finest, students, was indeed an achievement. Her student Makline was excelling in English and Maths – and from a family who, like much of the farming community, had no interest in education! To add to this she owned shoes (though not to be worn for walking of course!) and she wasn't a mandazi lady, which by its very avoidance was a great success.

As the track rose out of the maize and rounded the corner to school, she felt a thrill of satisfaction at the solid grey structures which served the most distinguished purpose. A few sweet yellow bananas already littered the step, facing which the polished tree trunk, rubbed smooth by countless bottoms, now held three more.

"Agandi!" The long southern vowels sounded bright and crisp in their throats. She replied with a light cheeriness that showed that the brutal midday barrage had yet to take hold.

# Rainbow

## Faye Tyreman

The beauty of the birdsong danced rioting rainbow violets  
And the moon shone under the sun in spotless hues of sapphire  
While hedgehogs in the foliage snuffled sparkling fairy magic  
Then tension in the air burst showering violent dewy droplets.

Bounce, splash and plop in puddles form waves on an emerald surface  
Where ducklings, bottoms bobbing, dipping toy-like in the ripples  
Pass swans gliding serenely holding proud necks curved and graceful  
Compared to soggy rabbits running twitching whiskered noses

Then tumbling down their burrows beneath the beds of flowers  
Where roses close their petals distasteful of the weather  
The trees all sigh together whispering leaves start turning yellow  
Sunlight breaks through the mist to burst its many colours

Casting all the creatures in a vibrant spectrum's archway  
Framed the scene becomes a stage of magic, fun and child play.

# The White Dress

## Marc Smith

Over the bridge  
fresh spring night  
lights from the fairground  
away to my right  
Looked to my left  
black night sky  
headlights in front  
from cars passing by.

Woman in white  
crossing the street  
drunk, she faltered  
tripped over her feet  
The driver hadn't seen  
her fall to the ground  
a screech, a scream  
a crash - no sound.

People rushed over  
my feet like lead  
fairground still moving  
blue green red  
Controlling my body  
walked to the scene  
a hole in her head  
where her brain should have been.

Blood trickled down  
her pretty white dress  
dead eyes wide open  
_'oh fuck, what a mess' -  
_ Stepping away  
I looked at her face  
wondered her name  
so young, a disgrace.

White dress turned red  
like fair lights behind me  
screams from the fairground  
or was it her family?  
Eyes clean white  
like lights in the street  
the street where she laid  
her life incomplete.

The image still haunts me  
some days and most nights  
silhouette of her body  
in front of headlights -

White dress turned red  
clean white eyes  
hole in her head  
The first time I'd seen  
a body lay dead.

#  Imagined

## Olivia Waring

The lipstick left on your mug,  
The one with Wallace and Gromit on the front,  
That lipstick  
Could have been forged by watercolours  
Mixed pink and red smudged over the rim  
Left over a period of days.

The deep twist of your voice, the sarcasm,  
And you sound like a 45-year-old man,  
But this makes it all the more sexy.

The smile...  
I half remember it  
You were goofing around in the mud, little waves  
Of muddy puddle water darkening your shoes  
And you kicked it all over my black lace tights  
Laughing that deep laugh  
Like a boom threatening to burst the worn clouds above us.

The cut of your jumper  
Or maybe it was a pullover, a sweater  
But it was definitely green, clean algae green  
And cut round your torso like armour  
The armour of a Cambridge hopeful.

The forgotten feeling  
Whenever you were about  
Murmuring, humming your precious piano piece  
A feeling that I was on air  
Listening to you  
Even thinking I could hear the beat  
Of your large, simplistic heart.

The way you never even touched me  
Not on the arm, not by accident,  
Not even, really, with your eyes.

# Walk of Shame

## James Faktor

On this hot day my shadow is keen   
To the ground and prances ahead;  
It wavers like a ballerina.

Like some child I'm led,  
Down past the river that does not sing,  
My smart shoes clip the bank in steady time and ring,  
And ring and ring in concrete claps and

Like some blind man I'm led,  
Away from the river that does not sing,  
To a street where shadows play their  
Melodramatic games, and everywhere  
Applause cries out as they stir and swell and perform  
Their role as a perfect audience by the feet of the day,  
That trample down upon the gurgling crowd.

A song does stir amidst the throbbing crowd,  
A song not from the heart of the deep river.  
Instead I close my mouth like a starless night,  
Sweeping over the desert sands,  
And the song comes from the closely pressed,  
And sweaty hands,  
Of a guitar playing street busker,  
Largely unwanted by the flowing crowds,  
But because I'm being watched I listen,  
To the notes that linger a little too long:  
A tired imitation of a well known song.

# The Circle

## Michael Walkden

**October 3** rd **, 9pm**

Watch House

Iron gates creak in a wind somewhere close to a gale. Autumn's newly withered leaves whisk helplessly into the air, their former verdure already forgotten. Occasional figures scurry by, heads down, collars up. From up here, one can stand and observe the city in all its sprawling majesty. In the distance, crooked spires pierce the skyline, reaching for a heaven that twinkles mockingly back at them. The city is everything, and everything is decaying.

It turns my stomach. I stand here on the edge of this putrid corpse of a utopian dream, where the scar tissue is at its freshest, and all I see are parasites. They hide their faces, but I sense so much more beyond the hoods and hats, the coats and collars. People made this city, many of them the greatest minds this world has ever known – and it consumes them. It swallows all that was once innovative, feeds upon the rotting fruits of their labour, grows bloated and foul. These people are less than excrement. Why concern ourselves with their self-made plight? Those who think themselves kin to the Man all meet the same fate. This place consumes itself from the inside out.

Already I have tarried too long. She is here, and she needs me. She thinks to change things. But why change when you can recreate? In the end, this city will burn. The ashes will cool, will be whisked away on the wind with autumn's newly fallen leaves. One day, there will be nothing left. I will walk where the cold ashes of this city once lay, but I will feel no gladness. Seeing so much – _so_ much – of one's life, one's love, brought low, can never be occasion for mirth. He loved these people and they failed Him.

And so I prise open these century-old gates. The streets are empty now. The wind ruffles through my hair, through my clothes. I drink it in; the night air is a lake. It has been too long. I walk down West Street, turning at the canal. I cross a park that I don't recognise. I pass beneath apartment blocks, beneath neon signs hawking every kind of poison. They have spawned here like maggots. It is worse than I was told, worse than I could ever have believed. A winking neon mermaid invites me to sample the decadent delights of Sami's Seafood Grill. Three women, all smoking cigarettes, watch my progress with loose interest, no doubt wondering whether I comprise their fare for the evening. So strong is the urge to spit at their feet that I barely constrain myself.

I am once again reminded of _her_. Her naivety, so unbelievable. Her betrayal – of me; of _Him_. The fate that awaits her when I deliver her to Him. I love her such that it burns white in my chest. But whatever my feelings for her, my work here transcends all. Duty is all. What we want now is irrelevant – if we succeed, want itself will be obsolete. If we can but close the circle, we may yet finish what our fathers began.

# Come The Revolution

## Caroline Moore

He pulled his gnarled hand out from the dank abyss of the rubbish bin. Soggy chips wrapped in crumpled newspaper came out with it. They would be good with the dregs of flat Coke he had found discarded under a park bench earlier. He shivered and pulled his thin coat around his emaciated body, trying to cover the gaping holes where the cold air was biting at his skin.

The tree lined path through the park was deserted. No one who didn't have to be was outside in the raging blizzards that were sweeping through the country. This was the type of place Billy preferred. One of the few bits of parkland left in the city. It looked ghostly this morning, the snow untouched by feet, the tree branches heavy with the fresh fall.

He closed his eyes and breathed in deeply, smelling the freshness of pine and early morning in the air. The smells evoked so many long-buried memories for him of a life he once lived, when he was respected and loved by many people. When people smiled and waved when they saw him, instead of ignoring him, or even mugging him for his few measly possessions, as they often did now.

Back then, Billy had lived a charmed life, part of a very wealthy family, appreciating his position and everything he had. He always tried to help people however he could, but now realised that he had never really fully understood how others lived.

As he slowly shuffled through the parkland, he recalled a day, long ago now, when he was being driven by chauffeur down this very lane. The radio had been announcing yet another strike, this time council workers. Strikes were becoming frequent and increasingly riotous.

"What is the bloody Government doing to stop all this?" he had commented to his driver. "There's a new strike every week. I hear even the nurses are talking of walking out."

"I don't know what they can do now," his driver replied. "People are furious at the benefit cuts and tax rises when they see bankers and the like getting bonuses. It seems to have gone too far this time. There's a bad feeling going around. A friend of mine says he has seen a whole family on the streets begging for money, homeless."

"Surely not!" exclaimed Billy. "That sounds more like Victorian times than now. We would never let that happen, would we?"

Over the next few months, as he travelled around, Billy started to realise the depths of despair the country had reached; with the benefits system all but collapsed and unemployment at unprecedented levels.

But that was 40 years ago now.

He sighed regretfully, reluctant to remember the life-changing events that had later taken place. The trees watched over him as he reached the end of the deserted path. The park opened onto a wide, asphalted road, softened with the thick coating of snow. He recalled when this road had been an attractive, bustling approach to the area he once lived in. Trees that had lined the road had been long ago felled to make way for monotonous tramlines and ugly concreted pathways that networked the city.

His mind drifted back, to when he was a young man living here. He felt such turmoil about that fateful day that changed his life forever. Could he have done anything differently? Did he deserve what had happened?

An embittered movement had been gaining momentum, encouraging everyone to withdraw their finances from the system. This movement grew until the City's infrastructure collapsed like a house of cards. But still people wanted more revenge. Mob rule was taking hold using the internet to spread the message quickly and expansively. The revolution began.

Billy watched in despair as many of his privileged friends and families were hounded out of their homes, which were looted and vandalised or burnt to the ground. Some tried to recklessly defend their possessions and he heard through the grapevine that one family had been murdered in their beds. First blood had been tasted. After this, like baying hounds, the mobs began to take more lives.

That fateful day Billy and his family were ushered into the cellars of their home with some urgency as news of many deaths spread quickly. They sat terrified, not knowing what was happening above their heads. Not understanding how they could be targeted like this. If they could have more time they would be able to hide in one of the secret locations they knew about. How had things broken down so quickly?

They were betrayed by some of their long standing, previously loyal staff. He couldn't blame them. They must have been equally scared for their own and their family's lives. Within hours Billy and his family were found and marched up to one of their elegant drawing rooms. Here, his father and grandparents were shot in the head, perhaps a more merciful end than it might have been. Many were shouting for them to be thrown to the angry crowds outside. He believed the man who shot them still held onto some of his previous morality and had tried to make their end easier. During the panic and shouting as the shootings took place, somehow Billy managed to slip away through a little-known servants' staircase.

He ran into the countryside he knew well from the hunting parties he had enjoyed. He was shaking with fear and shock. For days he buried himself into the undergrowth, hiding and hardly breathing as he heard people passing by. When he dared to venture out he kept moving through fields and farmland, keeping hidden, living off the land where he could.

Over the next few years Billy moved all the time, never wanting to stay in one place, and avoiding crowds and cities, terrified of being recognised. He let his hair and beard grow long and straggly. Encrusted dirt disguised his once soft blond hair. His muscular, lean young body became thin, his ribs protruding. He was getting more desperate as yet another winter approached, and began to venture into the towns again, to find much had changed.

The new government had taken control. Things were under the rule of law again, and people were working at putting their lives and cities back together.

He spent some nights in homeless shelters where men in similar situations to him huddled in corners talking about what they knew. It was in one such hostel he found an old acquaintance who knew of his brother's fate.

"A rebellious group of soldiers fighting in Afghanistan heard what was taking place at home. They set upon their leaders, including your brother," the man told him.

Billy was inconsolable when he heard the news. He had persuaded his brother to stay put at the time, convinced that he would be safer there until everything had blown over.

Forty years later he now had more regret for that advice than anything else. If his brother had returned, perhaps they would have survived the last forty years together. His rheumy eyes pricked with tears thinking of his life-loving brother and the fun they used to have together. They had been close and he missed his laughter.

Billy was now nearly 70. Over the years he had drifted from town to town, in homeless hostels or on the streets, staying mainly alone; scared his voice would betray the upper class accent he had tried hard to diminish over the years. It had often got him beaten up or ridiculed.

It was the first time he had returned to his hometown since the revolution.

Yesterday he had walked through the city's alleyways, keeping away from the crowds. He had never heard what had happened to many members of his wider family. The thought that some may have survived had brought him back, hoping to perhaps find someone before his days on Earth were through.

He had passed the new Presidential Offices; although perhaps not so new, he thought wryly, as they now must have stood here for thirty years or so. The Miliband Dynasty was ever present. Socialist Ed Miliband had taken power directly after the revolution, before his brother David won the first Presidential title, with his son now following in his footsteps. They were the new First Family of the country.

Billy stood at the end of the road leading to his old home. He felt the urge to see if it was still there, but was scared at what he might find. He wearily shuffled his feet forward, ill-clad for the snow in old torn trainers with carrier bags tied over them to keep them dry. He trudged onwards down the long straight road, keeping his eyes to the ground to avoid eye contact with anyone he passed. He reached the end of the approach, the road opening up into a large junction. The monument that had once stood there proudly had been replaced by an uninspiring, grey brick roundabout.

He looked around. The area was unrecognisable to him. Where his elaborate stately home used to be, there was an ugly, concrete built multi-storey block of flats, probably housing hundreds of families rather than just one now. Where the expansive gardens had been, there was a faceless supermarket and car park. He noted, with a wry smile to himself, the nameplate in front of the complex: "Buckingham Towers".

# Dvořák

## Rebecca Hemsley

bathed only in undisclosing water and the heavy darkroom glow of an orange wall heater  
melting lovingly, sympathetically, into the highlights of a raised leg,  
rusted liquid gold,  
sunset-candlelight  
and the captive distant journey of nineteenth-century cellos  
forcing a muffled passion-heartbeat beneath the still-pool tremors  
heady long-removed ache

# Tsunami

## Gavrielle Groves-Gidney

Moving stone shocks wave  
dragon arcs foam as teeth snap  
the innocent land.

# The Jeremy Kole Show

## Tim James

"Are you honestly saying, on national television, that you'd rather go on a night out than look after your two month old daughter?"

Mattie looked up at Jeremy, obviously frightened. I almost felt sorry for him. Everyone in the audience knew the answer was 'yes'. Of course he'd rather spend time having fun with his friends. Who wouldn't? If Jeremy had asked "is it the right thing to do?" the guy would have obviously said no, but Jeremy had asked what he _wanted_. We were well within our territory. We'd agreed to focus on desires and motives rather than actions. It was part of our mission statement.

"No Jeremy, I'd rather look after my kid!"

"Then why don't you?" shouted Jeremy, practically in his face.

Mattie didn't look like a particularly bad father to me, or a negligent one. He just suffered from being eighteen. In all honesty, do any eighteen-year-olds enjoy waking up at three in the morning to change nappies? The poor kid was in a difficult position, but I don't think he had the skill to put into words why.

"We're lingering too much on Jez," Franz said, tapping my arm. Mattie looked like he was about to cry and that was gold dust. Couldn't be exploitative though, so I cut to an attractive girl in the fourth row. There were plenty of men I could have shown, but I wasn't stupid. During the cutaway the boy started crying. I switched back and got him weeping in close up. Perfect.

"Look, what d'you wamme to say? I love my daughter!"

Cut back to a shot of Jeremy looking unsympathetic. Remind the audience at home not to feel sorry for the crying kid. He was huge, had very short hair and walked like an ape. He was obviously the villain.

"I want you to admit that you're a binge drinking toe-rag who cares more about his friends than his child!" Cheers from the audience, no need to show it.

"I haven't drunk anything in two months Jeremy."

"Smoked any cannabis?"

"No! I'd never do that around my daughter."

"But you used to smoke it?"

"No!"

Jeremy paused for a second. "Are you paying for this child?"

"Yes! Every penny I can spare."

Jeremy paused again, having run out of accusations.

"Shit!" Franz shouted into his microphone – essentially Jeremy's ear, "call Gillan out quickly."

"Gillan's on the show, ladies and gentlemen." He stepped aside and our after-care director moved forwards.

Jeremy was aggressive, sometimes even unfair, but it wasn't just bear-baiting. The show was there for people to see justice being done. You couldn't take someone to court for being unfaithful, but you could take them on Jeremy Kole. And weren't people at home more familiar with that kind of thing? Not everyone's been the victim of insider trading, but everyone's been cheated on.

There was a famous review of us once, from way back before the merger. They'd described Jeremy as "a hypocritical, sanctimonious, malevolent despot."

Sounded like a thorough insult to most people, but that's not how I heard it. It was just a string of insult-sounding weasel words. Still childish name calling, but because it used words of five syllables, it had become a sound bite, especially when all of this had been in court.

Another problem I had with those insults was that they were inaccurate. Jeremy wasn't hypocritical. He openly confessed to a shady past but he'd learnt from his experiences and actually yeah, that did give him the right to give others advice thank you very much.

'Sanctimonious' wasn't fair either. It wasn't like he was going out onto the street and preaching at people. All the guests had volunteered to come on the show.

And 'malevolent' is just a grown up version of 'nasty'. It's a purely subjective term, tagged on to make a list of three adjectives before the noun: despot. That was ridiculous too. A despot rules where people haven't voted for him.

Jeremy was simply a baptism of fire. It was Gillan who did the actual work. He was the reason we could justify the show to the United Nations. We could always point to him and say 'Look see! We really do sort problems out!'

"Here's the genius," said Jeremy as Gillan casually sat down on the stage. All the rules and regulations we had in place were down to him. Sure, Jeremy had a lot of power over what happened, as did Franz and myself, but Gillan was more responsible for the shape of present-day Britain than anyone else I could think of.

"Hi Mattie."

"Y'alright."

"It sounds like the problems really started when your baby was born. You heard all these rumours that your girlfriend was sleeping with other men and you started arguing with her."

"Yeah."

Franz pointed to one of the six screens we had running. It was Mattie's girlfriend Carla looking rather smug. "Go to that camera next time the word 'cheating' comes up."

"Won't that make people hate her?" I checked.

"I think Carla's going to become the villain quite soon," he replied.

Franz was a brilliant director. When he got a hunch, he was always right. Sometimes I could have sworn he'd checked out the lie detector results before us. Very illegal, of course, but he was too good for it to have happened another way.

"Now think about it," continued Gillan in his wonderfully comforting voice. "If your girlfriend _has_ been unfaithful, would you love this child any less?"

"No."

"So whatever happens, you're going to come away from this being a good father."

There was still a misconception that therapists were surgeons of the mind and that every social worker would give up their lives to help you give up the booze. Gillan and his team weren't like this. But if people saw what we actually did in after-care, shit would hit fans all over the country. And the network was pushing for us to show it.

It was no secret what we were doing, exactly, it's just that nobody wanted the gory details. We'd been investigated so nobody could complain, but when we decided to broadcast the Henderson sequence, everything would change. People would get to see exactly how society was healed. How the loose threads were dealt with.

What really scared me was what would happen if we broadcast Phase Three. Phase Two was going to be risky enough, but I don't think they'd ever find a way to televise the final solution. At least, if they did, I wouldn't have to get involved. Franz had asked me to be the chief vision mixer on all the new 'behind the scenes' sequences, so I'd have a permanent position there.

We were still putting the first one together, editing the miles of footage which would turn Gillan from a behind the scenes mind-mechanic into one of the most televised (and therefore powerful) people in Britain. Nobody would back Jeremy on his own, but talk of a Jeremy-Gillan movement had been around since the first days of the merger. The Prime Minister knew this and although he loved our results, he feared our influence.

"Coming up next we'll do those all important lie detector results, so don't go anywhere!" Jeremy insisted into Camera 5. I played the show's logo, re-routed to the adverts and we were safe for five minutes.

We never used to broadcast the show live but since the reformation it was one of the agreements. We could delay it by four seconds to remove swearing, but that was it. The public had to see things in real time for everything to be fair.

I lined up the disclaimer sequence that played after the adverts and waited for my cue. I could see Jeremy and Gillan talking cheerfully to the crew and members of the audience. That surprised most people. The fact that Jeremy and Gillan were genuinely nice blokes.

I started drinking a bottle of water while Franz talked to the cameramen, giving them new marks for the second half. I kept an eye on the monitors so I knew exactly where each one would be and by the time I'd finished my drink, the countdown reached zero. I played the show's logo and everybody took positions. Thirty seconds till broadcast.

Jeremy's pre-recorded face – one of the few pre-recorded parts of the show – looked into the camera and spoke with his usual frankness.

"Have you been cheated on recently and you want help getting things sorted? Maybe you're the one being accused of cheating and you want to prove your innocence. Or perhaps there's a divorce in progress and the courts have failed you. If you want our analysis and you're old enough to vote in a general election, then please call my researchers. The number's on your screen right now, and remember that calls to the Jeremy Kole Show are paid for by your local council. For politics you have the government, for social crimes you have the police, and for everything else, you've got me."

I switched to the cameras and Franz told Jeremy to continue.

"Welcome back to the show. Now before the break we learnt that Mattie and his girlfriend Carla are at breaking point, arguing over their two-month-old daughter because they've both been accused of cheating. So let's do those all important lie detector results."

"Ready?" Franz whispered.

"Don't worry, all prepped."

Cut to Jeremy receiving the envelope, then to a quick shot of Mattie in tears. He looked nervous. Then to his girlfriend Carla. She looked confident.

The polygraph was still the strongest criticism that the UN had against us. 97% accuracy wasn't quite good enough and so much of the show relied on it. Since I'd been on board we'd done about 15,000 lie detector sequences. That's 450 innocent people sent down.

The lie detector had been described by the New York Times as 'the most horrifying and disturbing mandate in British politics.' That was the Americans for you. Inventing something and then shunning it when we put it to good use. I mean what were they trying to say? That the lie detector was a slightly vague judicial process? No shit, Sherlock.

No one was stupid. We all knew that occasionally we'd send the wrong guy down. But when the Kole Treaty had been voted for, the British public knew that too. They thought it was worth the risk. If you contacted the show, it was on your head if we sent you to Phase Two and Gillan's after-care, or whether Jeremy just lost faith completely and sent you to Phase Three.

Sure, it wasn't an ideal system, but there's no such thing. The Americans think democracy's any better? That was a joke. A whole system built on the assumption that 'the majority is correct'? The majority of people still believe water drains in different directions either side of the equator!

"We asked Mattie have you slept with anyone since your child was born and he answered no... he was telling the truth."

The audience cheered and his father hugged him. So good, so far.

"We then asked Carla have you had sex with anyone since the child was born and she answered no... well this says you were lying!"

Oh good one. Men cheating was same old, same old. Women cheating was still a bit taboo.

"Told you," smirked Franz.

"Can we have a round of applause for Mattie ladies and gentlemen!" Jeremy asked/ordered. Everyone cheered again. Everyone except Carla's parents of course. Oh, and obviously Carla, who was screaming and protesting.

They always said the same thing: "Why would I come on the show if I was lying?"

I just bleeped it out. Same old arguments in the newspapers. Same old boring examples of people who'd famously beaten it, or famously declared innocence only to admit later that the polygraph had been right after all.

"But you still got this girl pregnant, didn't you," said Jeremy, turning on Mattie once more.

"Yeah I know. But I was drunk and I never meant it to happen."

"Well why didn't you use something rubbery?!"

The audience went wild as Jeremy dropped his catchphrase. It hadn't actually been his idea to put those words on the condoms, it had been mine. Durex had laughed at us. Nobody wanted to buy condoms with a picture of a middle-aged man on it and the words "use something rubbery!" underneath. But now Jezza's Johnnies outsold them three to one. Suck on that Durex!

"OK now get a shot of Mattie's grin," said Franz.

It was another good call. Usually Jeremy's catchphrase was a serious allegation, but every now and then it could be taken in good spirits. Mattie knew he was off the hook.

"And as for you, you little liar!" Jeremy turned on Carla.

"I swear I wasn't lying Jeremy! Mattie I would never do that to you! I'll take the test again."

"Save it darling!" Jeremy yelled. The tears were gushing down her face. "You've come on here, gotten pregnant, cheated on your boyfriend and accused him! You even had me fooled but d'you know what? I've had enough! Get off my stage!"

And that was it. Goodbye Carla.

We had plenty of footage with her parents backstage as they said goodbye, but there was nothing we could use it for. If we ever did start broadcasting Phase Three somehow, then maybe we'd use all this stock footage. But right now it was too raw.

The footage from Phase Two was going to be dark, but nowhere near that bad. The screaming from the druggies stopped me sleeping at night, but as per always, you couldn't argue with the results. Not that I'd call Phase Three a result for a sixteen-year-old girl.

"D'you really think he should've kicked her off the stage?" I asked Franz hesitantly.

"It's his call."

"I know, it's just that she didn't really seem bad enough to warrant it."

"Jeremy obviously took a dislike to her."

"That's what I mean. It used to be the worst of the worst, people who weren't reformed by Phase Two. People who genuinely couldn't be integrated into society. Now I think he's just using it as an excuse to get rid of people he finds unpleasant."

"Well that girl was really obnoxious."

"Yeah, but carting her off seems a little harsh."

"I'd be careful with talk like that," he laughed. "You'll end up getting Three'd yourself."

I paused for a minute as I considered his joke. I then asked the question that was on everybody's lips: "D'you reckon it'll ever come to that?"

"What?"

"Them taking Phase Two and Three out to people on the street?"

"I doubt it, that's what makes this all legit. Everyone who gets sent down is volunteering to be on the show. If we started Phasing the public it would remove the whole purpose of the merger."

"Justice for the people and by the people," I mumbled, repeating the show's slogan.

"Speaking of which," I added. "Have we heard back from the network yet on the Hendersons?"

"They're still pussyfooting. No one wants to be the person to approve it in case the whole plan backfires."

The Henderson sequence was probably the most cunning political weapon we had ever used. The point was to force the government to breach the terms of the Kole Treaty. If they made us censor part of our broadcast, we could turn round to them and say we wouldn't abide by the rules either. We would essentially be legally entitled to challenge them for power.

"What does Gillan think?"

"He thinks we should run it."

"Really?"

"Yeah. In the name of openness and honesty. Let the public see what Phase Two actually looks like."

"He could run for Prime Minister in twelve months."

"I don't think he actually wants all that power."

"What about Jez?"

"Same. They're worried they'd become political puppets. Things are tense enough between Commons and the network. They don't want to get involved."

"Almost feel sorry for the bastards."

"Shit have we been lingering on that crying girl for eight seconds?"

I quickly mixed to another camera and hoped nobody thought it was exploitative (another of those stupid agreements we'd signed).

*

Franz and I were sitting in the edit booth, watching the Hendersons sequence carefully. I thought it was a fine piece of work and I was reluctant to change a single shot. Franz backed me completely, but he had to be absolutely sure he could un-justify every part of it. It had to be the most incendiary sequence we'd ever submitted.

The plan was far too elaborate for anyone on the show to have cooked up though. The orders had come down from network HQ. God knows how long they'd been planning it. Maybe from the beginning of the reformation.

Everything that was pre-edited (i.e. not live) had to be submitted to the governmental media department. It was a traditional thing. The same way the King was officially supposed to approve each law. If he actually tried to block something, it would be an outrage. Likewise, if the Government tried to censor something in one of our shows, it was a breach of the Kole Treaty.

The Hendersons sequence was a graphic depiction of how Phase Two actually worked. Bad for both powers. If the government were exposed for having approved of our methods, they'd be in just as much trouble as us. So they'd tell us to cut it. The network would politely agree and not cause a fuss, then start broadcasting the after-care sequences in a much tamer form. We'd make Gillan look like a saint. Then, when his approval ratings were through the roof, we would announce our political intentions.

It was a very risky game because the network didn't want the public to see the Hendersons sequence either. So it was actually crucial that the government told us to cut it. If they gave it the all-clear, we weren't legally allowed to tamper with it afterwards. We'd be forced to broadcast the whole thing. So it had to be controversial to a politician's eye... but appear completely innocent to a member of the public, just in case they ended up seeing it.

If we miscalculated one frame, the whole plan would go up in smoke. Controversial to most people meant swearing, sex, violence, discrimination or drugs. They were old hat though and too obviously 'offensive'. If the government told us to cut something like that, they'd actually get support from the public. "Well of course they told you to cut it, it's horrible!"

It had to be something that wouldn't be seen as controversial unless you fully understood the implications. Enter the Hendersons.

They'd been married at 21, two months after meeting each other. Totally illegal of course, so I don't know why they'd been stupid enough to phone the show. I guess they had nowhere else to turn.

Generally, we grouped troubled marriages into one of three categories: trippers, cheaters and snappers. The trippers were the ones who'd gotten onto booze or drugs. They were always put into Phase Two with Gillan. Electrotherapy and cold turkey. Hard-hitting TV.

Cheaters were a bit more difficult to deal with. We had to reinforce the message that cheating was illegal (punishable by up to Phase Three) but ignore the fact that it was a law we were naturally inclined to break. Any time a person said 'I don't know what came over me', 'I was horny', or 'I don't know why I did it' we bleeped it just to be safe. It implied that having sex with people was a primal urge. And that implied that the law was unreasonable.

The Hendersons had been snappers. Constant arguing. Both convinced that their opinion was correct simply because it was theirs. Cheating and tripping you could feel sorry for. But snappers were just dumb. None of that upbringing or genetics crap. No one cared.

Ultimately, some people are childish and some aren't. Not rocket science and a whole lot more practical than liberalism.

"Well you told me that you never seen 'er cos..."

"No I never!"

"Yes you did and you know you did so don't say you didn't!"

"I never said that!"

"You're a liar!"

"How am I lying?"

"You've been lying since you came in here."

"When? When have I lied?"

"You turned round to me the other day and said you'd never spoke to 'er and I find out from my sister that you 'ad when you was with 'er!"

"She said that cos you was givin' me grief!"

"How was I?"

And then in came Gillan.

"We're going to teach you how to debate in a structured and productive way. You'll learn valuable skills to help you argue properly so that when you've left the show, you'll be able to settle quarrels on your own." The voiceover explained the rest.

"The Hendersons are each going to be sealed in a dark room with a pane of glass between them. They'll be able to see each other's rooms but only when the lights are on. The glass is soundproof so if they want to communicate, they have to use the headphones and mics we've provided. But the minute they argue poorly, the microphone, headphones and lights will be turned off. Only when they learn to communicate properly, will they be allowed to communicate uninterrupted."

Gillan then explained the rules of 'good arguing' while they were printed on the screen. Some of the rules were obvious like 'responding to a criticism with a counter-criticism is forbidden' and 'apologising, but then going on to defend the behaviour anyway is forbidden'. But some of the rules were a bit more unexpected, things like: 'Explaining matters of principle must be done without the words I, me, my, you, your, us, they or them'. It was difficult to understand why Gillan had introduced all of them, but we actually found that when they were enforced, the bickering stopped. Arguments became debates.

After the Hendersons had heard the rules there was a brilliant section where they tried to bicker normally but kept having the lights turned off and their audio removed. The night vision cameras picked up the looks of shock on their faces and the instructors would then explain which rule they'd broken. Getting indignant with the instructors would result in warnings on the first two instances and Phase Three on the third instance.

Gillan's voiceover guided the viewer through this whole chunk and it really worked. Franz thought that if the sequence aired, children would start playing it as a game in playgrounds. Learning to debate at a young age. If things took a certain turn, it might even become one of "Jezza's laws".

Once the Hendersons had realised that hurling abuse at each other and making constant accusations was getting them nowhere, they calmed down, stopped shouting and actually listened. Within ninety minutes, Mr. Henderson was crying and begging Mrs. Henderson's forgiveness. She began crying too and gave it.

The voiceover then explained that they had to spend a month communicating like this before going for a 'trial week'. If, during that, they broke any rule, they would have to start the whole scheme again.

The Hendersons failed the first time. They learnt the laws, but they didn't instinctively feel them. And this was where the controversy began and ended. It wasn't a matter of knowing certain things in theory; the rules had to be engrained onto them, so that they'd do it without thinking. The second time round they got it perfectly.

Was it behavioural conditioning? Yes. Was it brainwashing? Yes. But did it get results? My God yes! The figures had always been undeniable. Of the couples who got to the end (i.e. without divorcing), a staggering 99.3% reported that their marriage was either back on track, or better than before.

The debates were obvious. Was social conditioning still wrong if it made society better? Did people have a right to make choices, if they would always make the wrong ones? Could you punish people into 'thinking better'?

If the network ended up having to air it, the British public would mistake it for a game show. They might even think it was a good idea. But any politician would recognise it for what it was. They, as a government, had endorsed neural programming. They had to make us cut it.

*

Carla gripped her pack tightly. She'd been given a copy of the ultimatum but she hadn't been too good with reading. Instead they gave her the audio version, piped in through her helmet. Jeremy's voice rang in her ears as gravity did another lurch to the left.

"This is your last goodbye from Britain and I'm sorry it has to be me. You have either failed to comply with Phase Two, or you've been judged by me as unfixable. Therefore you are being relegated to Phase three.

"The island is situated in the North Sea and during the winter, temperatures will drop significantly below zero. The coat you are currently wearing is the taxpayers' final gift to you. It is strongly advised that you retain it.

"You have shown that you wish to be in charge of your own life. On the island you will get exactly that opportunity. There is no government, no legal system and no police. Your desire to act however you want is about to come true.

"In order to prevent unwanted pregnancies, the water supply contains a chemical which will sterilise you. You may have sex as much as you want. If you manage to successfully smuggle drugs onto the island they will be legal. There are no hospitals.

"Thank you for calling the Jeremy Kole Show."

Carla was crying so much. The other seats on the plane were empty. She didn't even understand what she had done.

What she did know, was who had been sent to Phase Three over the years. She'd seen wife beaters, child abusers and violent thugs all carted off to form their own community. She'd always felt safer on the streets knowing that another dangerous criminal had been removed. Jeremy had been her hero. Even the Prime Minister admitted that crime figures had dropped since the merger.

She looked down at the tattoo on her leg. It was the only thing she had for reference. The idea of something being permanent wasn't something she could easily grasp. She would be on this island forever. Just like the tattoo would be on her skin.

"We're nearly there Miss!" shouted the pilot through the speakers.

"Please don't make me jump out."

"Sorry miss, got to."

"But I didn't do anything wrong!"

"Well I'm sorry to hear that."

"I'll do anything. Seriously, you can have me. I don't care."

"Well that's tempting, Miss, but I'm gay."

Carla's last hope (her looks) had failed. She sat back and looked out of the window as the plane descended below the clouds. Her parachute was on tightly and her knuckles were white from gripping the release cord.

"Listen Miss. If I tell you something... well, let's just say when you get to the pearly gates you didn't hear it from me."

"What?"

"A lot of people don't bother opening their chutes."

"How far down is it?"

"Far enough. That's all I'll say."

She thought about this for a minute and looked at her tattoo again. The rest of her life was too difficult to deal with. But the parachute jump was right in front of her. She could deal with that.

"OK, Miss. Here we are."

The hatchway on the side of the plane opened.

"What if Jeremy loses his power?" she asked desperately.

"You don't watch the news, do you?"

"What?"

"Last week the network announced a breach in the Kole Treaty. They're going to dissolve Parliament."

"What does that mean?"

"It means Jeremy and Gillan will be running Britain soon. Time to jump, Miss."

She knew if she refused, one of the beefy security guards would come back and throw her out. Then she'd be falling with a broken wrist. She reached the open doorway and looked down at the island. There were fires everywhere.

She let go of the release cord she'd been gripping the whole journey and closed her eyes. Her grandmother had been Catholic. Maybe it would be worth praying now.

Carla fell toward the island and her parachute never opened.

# Water Creature

## Anya Benson

I do not know whether I was there before time or whether time became real in me. It does not matter. You may call me Timeless, but of course there is no such thing as timelessness. This is not a problem because there is also no such thing as me.

I was alone that night, but maybe I was always alone. I have no memory of another creature like me. There were shells that grew claws and scurried under the sand, and scaly things that dove deep then jumped above the water in such a rush, and large soft creatures that flew above me as if unaware of what lay below. There were no sounds, but there were many colours, sometimes so loud I had to close my eyes. I was weak then.

The first sound I heard was the moon. Beneath the water, the moon breaks into so many disquiet circles and bars and shapes that have no name. I knew the moon not as something one but as something many and moving. I watched the shapes that night, dancing above me to something soft and subtle in colour. In the water I tried to move as a fish might, curving my body to the lights, but I was too large to be like light. My fingers pressed to the mud, sinking not dancing, my weight suddenly awkward when there was so little room between the air, the ground, and the tall grasses growing so close.

I wanted the little moons above me, and when I could not imitate them in my clumsy body I tried to eat them. Slowly, watch the target as it breaks and forms again, and then come up fast, mouth wide.

Mouth wide capturing not light but something richer, stranger, more painful. This was the air you know so well.

When I breathed air I saw the moon become one, as you see it now every night. The lights tingled almost smugly around me across a surface that seemed suddenly still. When the moon turns it makes a strange noise, not beautiful but not angry. The moon speaks not in language but in shivers that sometimes make a song.

The moon was creaking, singing, its voice deep and chaotic but still enchanting. I lapped up air where there should have been light-infused water. I saw sky for the first time, but I am still not convinced one can ever really see the sky – it is more the absence of substance that we see, and on that night it terrified me. In the water nothing was unattainable, but once there is sky we have something to dream with. I knew nothing of dreams but as I looked into the grey sky through which I could not move I suddenly knew what it meant to desire. It was then I decided to remain in this strange world where light stayed so still.

But how could I move across such flat terrain?

My body was pressed squirming in the mud, my figure shaping and reshaping its surface. You do not know what it means to move for the first time. I had floated across seas far wider and deeper than exist in your world today, but I had never truly moved. To move is to go from one place to another. There was only one place before, and so I had never moved.

I slapped my tail against the mud. I grasped outward with my arms, hoping I could take in with every sense this new pale liquid you call air. I jumped, so forcefully I could feel the harshness of the wind. I jumped out of the water, but then I fell like deadened grasses back into the water.

It no longer tasted like home.

I shuffled quickly through the mud, in loops and paths that were not paths, thinking. What is flatness and what is space? How do I move, and what do I move through? I had never thought these things before. And as I thought and pawed frustrated at the broken shells beneath me, I saw over there, where the space between my tail and your air became narrower, there the mud met the sky.

It was as if the water had become useless, emptying and emptying until it was gone entirely. But I had just found desire, and desire held me stronger than these dusty molecules of water. I squirmed into narrower and more useless water until my scales were stung by the air, and squirmed still until there was no water left to cling to.

I had met the sky. It did not feel as painful to my lips now, nor as rich.

It is the sky that creates longing. When I met the sky, I met sound, which plays the mournful tunes we need to feel loss. And I met the sea, which was now a stranger to my eyes, something moving but in long strides like it was one thing, like it too longed for the sky. And of course I met the moon, stable and unreachable, like all that for which we long.

Back in the sea, this would all be broken into a thousand floating fragments, but things were more solid now.

In longing I laid upon the mud, then later upon the marsh grasses. I lay watching, moving, and yearning, and within those grasses time finally began. Time is measured in desire, and desire is measured in me.

The air still seems harsh, sometimes frighteningly so.

# Wings

## Elliot Brooks

Child was sent to fetch the paper, the scissors and the stapler. She ran on her tip toes, trying to touch the ground as little as possible. The wooden drawers were before her and the paper was in easy reach, in the bottom shelf, but the other items were quite out of her grasp. She dragged a chair across and balanced herself on it and opened the top drawer. She couldn't see inside – still too short. Her hand slowly reached in and she tried to locate the items. She wasn't allowed in this draw normally, but she had worn Topher down. She needed the paper, the scissors and the stapler for what she wanted. She wondered why Topher had made her gather the required items, when it was quite unsafe, she thought, for a girl of her age and size to be bothering with drawers that contained sharp and dangerous objects. He was the grown up who looked after her. Her tiny fingers clasped the scissors, she drew them out and laid them on the floor then returned to do the same with the stapler. With all the items gathered she closed the drawer and took the chair back.

All this time, Bel watched Child from the next room. She had a good viewing angle through the archway. Bel sat, as ever, with a perfectly straight back and with her hands laid quite purposefully on her lap. She wore white spotless gloves, a lace bonnet and a simple black dress that made her look rather serious, or so Child always thought. As Child returned with the necessary items Bel rose to accompany her to see Topher, for they must do certain things together.

Topher was standing by the workbench when they arrived. It was really Bel's workbench, she had paid for it, as she had paid for the rest of their belongings, including Child. Bel looked upon Topher with a face of accustomed tiredness. She had grown so bored of how he looked and how he acted. It was dull, really. He never would change. She often felt quite the urge to buy him a set of masks for him to wear, with each mask portraying different people he might be, and when he wore each one he would act appropriately. He could take on the role of others she had left behind, so that she might know, years after the opportunities, what life really would have been like if different courses had been taken. Topher truly was a dreadful trickle of a river.

Topher looked back onto Bel's face with a look of lazy-feigned adoration. He wanted to try, but he was losing that gracious will. She wouldn't be happy. He wanted to tread out his life in the same path he had wanted to tread as a young man. The paths he and she had taken had converged only briefly, at a crossroads heading in different directions, and in the confusion of traffic they had continued their travels together, going now to a destination neither of them had wanted.

"Topher? Bel?"

Child spoke, breaking the silence. Bel really hated those names - for they were their names now. She would forever be Bel, and he forever Topher. Child didn't like words that went to waste. People called him Chris, and people called her Anna. Child had decided to call them by the parts of their names that were never used, so the words weren't wasted. Bel preferred what the people called her.

Responding to Child's impatience, Topher took the paper, the scissors and the stapler from her. He took pride in his work. He began with the paper, that delicate, fine paper. It was pure and white and crisp to the touch. It looked strong yet it was a fragile thing, and Topher took great care not to tear it. He laid it out on the bench, and smoothed it down with the side of his right hand. He folded it in half. Perfectly in half. Once more he smoothed the paper, it had to be tight. From behind his ear he withdrew a stubby pencil, and drew two circles on the paper, one large and one slightly smaller. They were drawn with their rightmost sides against the crease, with the larger above the smaller, and with a slight overlap. He took his time in drawing. It had to be exact. And the longer he took the more he could delay what had to be done. After he finished the pencilling, he looked to Child and Bel. They seemed approving. Child was staring unblinking at the work being undertaken, while Bel was daydreaming. Thinking to herself what mask she would have had Topher wear on a day like today.

Next, Topher reached for the scissors. Child looked frightened. He held the paper up to the light, then carefully cut along the pencilled lines, taking the outside edges of the shape the two circles had created together. He breathed heavily and slowly. This was important. As he made that last, thicker cut, he allowed a smile to appear on his face. He wasn't sure if it was real. He unfolded the paper, to reveal what looked like bubbly butterfly's wings. They were perfect and pristine. Child giggled in delight. Topher laid the wings down, and held out his hand to Child. Once accepted, he picked her up and placed her seated on the bench.

Bel now pondered whether Child would also be improved with a fine selection of masks.

Topher began with Child's coat. He undid the buttons one by one, taking care to be gentle, then folded it and rested it on the side. Then he took off her top, and placed it on her coat, leaving her bare from the waist up. He gestured to her, and she lay front down on the bench. Topher took the wings and balanced them on her back, making sure everything was symmetrical and proper. Meanwhile Bel took the scissors and set to work on the coat and top, making holes in the back. When the wings were in a satisfactory location Topher ran his fingers through Child's hair, and reached for the stapler. He shared a look with Bel, she swallowed and nodded. Topher gripped the little engine and slammed it through the paper and into the spine of Child. She screamed in pain and blood began oozing out of the wound, but the paper soaked it up. The blood spread and filled the once white wings. They allowed her a minute to recover, then snapped and reminded her that this was what she had always wanted. Child stopped her sobbing. She sat back up and allowed herself to be reclothed by Bel. Her wings jutted through the new holes perfectly. Topher took her by the left hand, Bel by the right, and she was led out of the house.

It was a long journey, but not as long as Child, Topher or Bel had hoped. Part of the way they all walked, and part of the way Child was dragged like a slave between her two companions. She wouldn't walk at those times, but she couldn't stop moving. Soon they found the start of the climb, and up they rose. The stairs that the earth had provided took them foot after foot higher into the atmosphere, until they burst through the clouds. The air was thin and cold and they were all quite sure they would die soon. But they reached the end. The edge of the grassy climb overlooked a chasm whose bottom was hidden by cloud. Topher and Bel let go of Child's hand. She walked to the edge, and peered over with a sense of nervous eagerness. She looked back. The hands of her companions were looming out to give a helping shove but they were too late: she had fallen herself. They turned their backs and walked away before finding out if she had gotten her wings to work.

Christopher held out his arm and Annabel took it. Together, they walked home.

# Emmeline

## Olivia Waring

And I said she was too skinny, always too skinny.

Even when she was eating a rich tea and smiling painfully.

She looked ever so nice in that red velvet dress, though, said mother. Oh, she did.

She did as well. It had an open back, and the cut of her back bone was exquisite between the folds of the material. The bend of her neck with her hair swept up into a caramel swirl. The dainty bumps of her spine. The way she held her thin arms.

I look back and I wonder, when I was looking at that body all that time ago, what was I really thinking? Was I thinking anything?

Oh no, she had a boyfriend and yes, I did not have a boyfriend. He came round with a single red rose and glittering brown eyes to pick her up and sweep her off while I sat and read Proust. I could see her through the window glass, see her shivering and he never offered her his jacket.

It was only embarrassment I felt when she came into my room and took things out of my wardrobe, threw them onto her frame and spun round. An enormous beige cardigan, a gargantuan smock. She almost drowned in them. She laughed at her reflection with the voice of a sparrow.

And there were all those friends who stood and smoked with me in the park. They would watch her go past with thinly-veiled contempt, and say My God I'd kill for her figure. And I nodded and puffed my cigarette to keep warm.

I forgot, towards the end, how similar our eyes were: watery blue, dotted with grey. I look at the photo albums now, strewn with our two round faces, blushing cherubs in rain macs, heading out in wellies, little short legs, feeding the ducks. She always copied me. If I had green playdough, she wanted green playdough. We normally had the same ice lollies at the park or the beach. When she dropped hers, I gave her mine. We shared my special colouring pencils. She stole my eyeliner. She stole all my LPs. Until, one day, she decided she knew better.

And she knew it all, then.

I said it again and again. Mother frowned and sometimes said something and sometimes did not. I was always the one that brought it up. But my words were diluted by time and place and selfishness. The rain tapped down the window, impatient streaks staining the glass.

People I did not know were starting to stare at me in school. I only half understood. I thought it was my makeup, a ladder in my tights, something like that. I got paranoid. Nobody seemed to have an explanation. I felt like I wanted to die when finally the teacher came and asked me Was Emmeline seeing a doctor? A thousand thorns were jammed in my throat. Everyone stared at me now because I got out of the car with the girl who looked too thin to stand up.

I tried to talk to her one weekend. It was raining hard, so she couldn't go out, escape, see her boyfriend. I started talking while we were watching TV. Ten words later, and she'd gone, locked her bedroom door, folded herself up in silence. It was an impregnable fortress for seven days.

The radio went up when she forgot to finish her dinner. I smiled because I loved her, the loneliest girl in the world. My shimmering ghost.

Listen to me.

Em won't drink now.

Isn't it odd, isn't it bizarre, that we are now sharing our house with a skeleton and yet we act as if nothing has changed?

I didn't want to shout at her. So I didn't.

That silence cut the thread of my sister's life.

My eyes flicker and burn out of my skull and there she is, beyond here, waiting for me on the last Christmas morning. There's a carol floating in from the kitchen radio. She looks like a little girl again. Pink spotted pyjamas. Hair in plaits, hanging there. Her pallid face blessed with one blissful smile. She opens her lips. She is about to call out my name.

But she isn't there when my eyes open.

# His Garden

## Sue Smith

Small lettuces green,  
tender in brown earth quietly  
wait to be eaten.

Tomato plant climbs,  
towards hot sun in the sky.  
Flesh warm on my tongue.

Greenhouse humid hot,  
smells of leaves, summer promise.  
Flowers to be picked.

# Slip

## Jina Foo

The tulip bloomed in the dark of the night.  
Her demure lips which demurred before  
now drolly assent, all mouth and throat and lungs -  
when did this newborn learn to breathe?

An elastic band slipped over the wrist then  
forgotten, slipping the mind as matter-of-factly  
as soup will spill  
from a spoon.

We let slip anything we hold too tightly  
for too long.

I woke up one morning and found that it was gone  
like a bad dream, then all fire and brimstone -  
now a tender burn on the skin.

Like a paper boat, folded, re-folded, secretly set out to sea -

He's gone  
now, and I'm free.

# Coventry – 14th November 1940

## Sarah Williams

What happened in Paxton Road?  
A bomb fell,  
terrifying the families  
in the shelter  
at the end of the long garden.

They didn't want to be there,  
on account of  
Alf Green's feet,  
which smelt,  
long warm wafts of old cheese.

Caught between the two evils,  
the Luftwaffe  
and Alf's socks,  
they suffered  
all through that long night.

And next morning the mess,  
a kerbstone  
on the bed,  
a hole in the roof.  
Granny did not speak for a long time after.

Perhaps she feared more nights,  
sitting, listening  
to the planes  
overhead,  
and longing for some fresh air.

# Escape Lane Ahead

## Nicola Hargrave

She could never get the temperature right in this car. Too hot in summer. Too cold in winter. The controls made no sense. Random symbols, dials and buttons. She wasn't stupid; she was more than capable of programming her DVD recorder, using online banking, bleeding a radiator. A very practical woman. But this car had been a pain from the start.

She sat motionless in the rush hour traffic, sweaty and tense. There was nothing or nobody on the car radio to listen to. No, she didn't want to win a luxury holiday for two. No, she didn't think this new track was awesome. How did these people get paid to utter such drivel? She thought about what would make her journey tolerable.

A station that played her CD collection.

No adverts.

No over-enthusiastic presenters.

No 'amazing giveaways' with screeching winners.

The traffic started to edge forward. Laura was now up to second gear. A blast of warm summer air through the open window. And stopped again. He'd be home by now. Leaving his bag in the hall for her to sidestep. Draping his tie over the banister. Dropping the rest of today's work clothes in a pile on the bedroom floor. Dressed in those shapeless trackies. Laid out on the sofa, watching nothing of any importance to anyone.

He always arrived home first. Their work finished at the same time, their paths home were similar enough. He used shortcuts, barged in, swapped lanes. All he gained was five, maybe six minutes. Laura was never much later than that and rarely resorted to his bad-mannered driving.

She'd been thinking about leaving him for too long. It consumed her. She couldn't remember when she'd made the decision. Actually, she hadn't made the decision and that was the problem. Life went on and she was being carried along. She just wanted it all to stop.

They'd met at uni, she'd never noticed him. He kind of crept up on her. Not in a man-in-a-balaclava-down-an-alleyway kind of way. More like a pair of socks wearing away at the heel. The sort of thing that happens and you really don't know how, when, why it's come about. Like men going bald - maybe they don't notice it happening until there's barely anything there?

Simon had morphed into her life sometime three, four years ago. She watched couples in films, soap operas, restaurants celebrating their anniversary. "Oh, darling I can't believe it's been three months since we first kissed...."

Laura had no idea when they'd first kissed. She couldn't remember their first conversation. Their first meal together. None of it. Simon had a needle-sharp memory for these things.

"Remember when we went to see that Ibsen play on our third date?"

No.

"You must do, you spilt ice-cream down that white top you seemed to wear on all our dates!"

No.

"We took a taxi back to my place. It was the first time we, erm..."

No. Nothing.

Laura was not prone to such bad memory loss. In fact, she was crammed full of pointless memories and facts. She knew the best way to peel a boiled egg was to slam it on the kitchen worktop, roll it back and forth under your palm so the shell peels as easily as an orange. She'd seen two minutes of some awful cooking program that stuck in her head. The presenter's inane fat-tongued grin glaring out, the irksome mockney voice giving the viewers a chef's secret egg-peeling technique. This was one of the more useful thoughts trapped in Laura's head but could she remember the first date with Simon? The shirt he wore to his birthday meal last week? The name of his first pet dog? Nope. She wasn't being deliberately mean, forgetting great chunks of their life together. It was more complex than that.

At some point Laura had fallen out of love with Simon and along with that realisation came the need to free up some of her brain's hard drive. Laura had been erasing the sights and smells of their relationship for a long time now. It was so she could finally set herself free from him. Her closure had started long ago, preparing herself to move on. Just one thing was stopping her.

She needed to tell him.

The car was getting stuffy, Laura should have been home by now. At the end of the road she could see the police waving traffic down an avenue to the right. What now? Another bomb scare, drugs bust, pile-up? It didn't matter, she was relieved that the diversion would at least get the car moving, get some air flowing in. And eventually she'd get home. And tell him.

Every day, she thought about it. Obsessive thoughts of how she could tell him.

Simon, you're dumped.

It's not you, it's me.

It's not me, it's you.

It's just not working.

We've grown apart.

I can't live like this.

I hate you.

I wish you were dead.

She staged endless performances in her head. It made her tired, exhausted. And none of it got her any closer to actually finishing it. The problem was that she didn't hate him, didn't wish he was dead. But it was killing her, a part of her dying inside every day. The feeling of utter weariness and discontent was destroying her, devouring her.

The queue started to move again, the car in front stalling. School kids sucking on ice pops slamming into each other started running with purpose towards the scene up ahead. Sirens wailing in the near distance. Now twenty minutes later than normal, Laura's fatigue was growing. She'd get home and order a takeaway, no way was she doing any more work tonight. She might even join Simon on the sofa for some TV. He'd be watching some teatime quiz show, giving answers. Any incorrect ones followed by quick retractions.

Oh, it used to be that.

No, they must have changed it recently.

As if that's right, I'll google that later.

Nope, no that's never been true.

Simon liked to be correct. He never made for good company when there was someone more intelligent around. Or when he'd been corrected. In time Laura understood that it was easier and quicker to concede that he was correct and she knew nothing. Of all the reasons she wanted to leave it was this that got to her the most. She'd surrendered herself a long time ago to make life easier. If he thought he was the clever one, the pragmatic one, the funny one then she didn't have to put up with his moods. She wanted to leave. To go back to being the clever one, the pragmatic one, the funny one.

The sirens were deafening as the ambulance approached the scene ahead. Only two cars in front were blocking Laura's view now but by leaning and extending herself she could see a jeep on its back and a white saloon nudged into its chassis. Like some little kids playing with their Matchbox cars, crashing them, flipping them, throwing them in the air. The scene ahead was chaotic. Police holding back the gathering crowd. Paramedics on their knees pumping the chest of the bloodied jeep driver. Shaking their heads, looking up at the sky. The crowd looking on in silence, hands covering mouths.

Laura wound up her window, she didn't want the spirit of death getting in. A nervous smile crossed her mouth, amused at how silly her superstition was. A man had died in the road. She'd seen a man die in the road. She didn't know him, didn't even know for sure he was dead. But it hit her like a saloon into a jeep.

The cars in front crept past the scene. Laura followed staring straight ahead. She turned down the avenue, two minutes from home.

Tonight she'd tell him.

Like a saloon into a jeep, tonight she'd tell him.

# in-TRANSIT

## Anthony Levin

I've got my possessions in a bag on a stick, I've slung them over my shoulder.

It's about the length of confused?

I'm watching American Psycho, I'm reading Imperial Bedrooms, I'm listening to a car alarm, I'm undressing work colleagues, I'm looking at the spine of a book on my shelf that says 'Hello, I'm Special'. Next to it: 'Selfish Capitalist'.

I'm at a film screening of a film I've seen, I'm talking to my professor who was crying on the train.

My rain-soaked sheets are lashed with sun. My pain-soaked heart is maudlin.

I'm horny but my prostate hurts. I'm sorting through music that's not even mine. I'm putting off plans because there are too many.

My friend from LA is ignoring me on Facebook.

I'm counting the tut-tuts I get from old teachers at a Nostalgia Fair.

I'm omphaloskeptic. I'm logophilic. I'm talking to someone in Fashion like I know her.

What do you do?  
I'm an expert in ambiguity – no, opacity.  
What does that mean?  
I'm not sure, it's complicated.

I'm extending the line of credit on my good will.  
A magazine I write for went into liquidation.

I'm reading excerpts playing the part of aphorisms.

My ex-ex-girlfriend is named after a wine, or the other way around.  
I hand her some poetry I wrote thinking it might heal something I'm not sure needs healing.

I'm thinking about the seven most common logical fallacies.

Ok so I neologise.  
I'm word-dropping to impress friends. They look quizzical.  
They can't pronounce Borges properly. Neither can I.

What do you do?   
I'm an epistemological dilettante: I half-know things.  
Like what?  
Did you know that there are only 14-  
[pause]  
14 what?  
Exactly.

#  Autumn In London

## Fergus Tevlin

As I sit with the Arabica beans

Enjoying my own company

For once...

In my smart clothes

I look out the window

I watch as bitter winter slinks

Chatters about pavements grey

And leaves that begin

To turn

Brown. Crisp after the warm

Of summer's embrace

The glass that divides

My lover and I

Or a friend

Begins to harden, a reflection disappears

And everything else

Turns cold

Jack Frost whispers in my ear

Her words

Wander to the back of my mind

And even though I'm really outside

Standing under a cobalt sky

I finally begin to realise what's going on within

#  London's Red Buses

## Mosope Adekola

Of course I had heard of these buses even in Nigeria. However, the whole idea of a double-decker bus seemed so ridiculous that I didn't think of it again. This was until the rainy chilly evening when I stepped out of Elephant and Castle tube station and into the well-lit streets of London. And I saw one.

I blame Enid Blyton. She left this huge detail out of her fantastic tales of pointy-eared pixies, stocky gnomes and enchanted woods. It would have been very much appreciated if she'd told a tale about scarlet two-storey buses roaming the glistening streets of a faraway place called London. Father had told me, when I was younger, of a place where there were buses with staircases in them. I would have believed Enid but definitely not my father.

Standing startled, I stared at these red delights. At that point I forgot it felt like minus 50 degrees and that a few minutes ago I was certain my lips would fall off due to the gnawing cold. Inevitably, I thought of the Nigerian buses called danfo. Yellow and much smaller than the red buses, danfos look like crumpled metal on wheels. They seat 13 jam-packed people whilst the conductor hangs desperately onto the outside of the bus.

Once on the so-called 343 to Peckham Rye, my mind started cartwheeling. The scenery, smells and the general aura of this place overwhelmed me. My bulging eyes darted from the clean streets with no potholes to the traffic lights which actually worked, a twin pram and a teenager with hair that made her look like a porcupine wearing all black with cherry lips.

Just as I was informed of the two-storey red bus, I was also told of the underground trains. All I could imagine was a long, rusty locomotive grinding through thick soil under the ground and in the process, crashing into the thick buttresses of trees. Absolutely preposterous. The Elephant and Castle station was actually nothing like I had imagined. It looked sane and civilized. There were chairs for the passengers to sit on while they waited for their trains. The tubes, as these trains are called by most, did look tube-like. With blue-cushioned chairs that faced each other, yellow poles for standing passengers to hold onto and doors that automatically slid open and shut once at a stop. On one frightening incident, a few months later, these doors that seemed to have a mind of their own slid shut against a woman's leg as she was getting on the train. I was certain she was going to be dragged to a horrible death. My mind was immediately made up: I was never going on this tube of a thing. Standing still, I began mourning this stranger's demise. Until miraculously, with the frantic help of some passengers, the murderous door slid open, quite sluggishly too, like it was used to such happenings.

With all these images cruising back and forth in my mind I forgot about the embarrassment of sitting on my mum's lap in the bus. I was sixteen by the way, and not five. In Nigeria this was alright regardless of age, but it obviously wasn't on these crimson buses. No one else was carried on someone's lap, even passengers much younger than me. But she was so happy to see me and I had missed her so much that I let her carry me on her lap like a brown woven wicker basket filled with precious shopping's of yams, plantains and cassava.

#

# THE LOOKING GLASS ANTHOLOGY

The Looking Glass is a student-run annual anthology at the University of York. We accept submissions from all students (undergraduate and postgraduate) and our core ethos is that it's better to produce one thing of quality than several throwaway magazines.

We will begin taking submissions for our fourth edition from **Monday 8th October 2012**.

If you'd like to get involved, you can sign up to our mailing list at the following address:

groupspaces.com/TheLookingGlass

You can also find up-to-the-minute information, including guidelines for submissions, over at

TheLookingGlass.org.uk.

