Category: Creative Writing

By Jiyan Sheppard 

It was in moments like these that I’d think of what I’d say to him if we were ever to speak, which we never did. Moments of empty space and feeling the dead, still European air. I’d think about cuckoos, how I’d watched them move on TV, how an unsuspecting warbler would watch their chick grow up prickly and monstrously hypertrophied and how the warbler’s children would be clumsily ejected from the nest to the forest floor, where their skeletal remains would rot slowly and gently turn to soil. I liked to watch TV in my head, around this time.

I committed myself to taking an inventory of all the things that he’d accumulated, at points like these, to catalogue the lost or given away, the borrowed and never given back. I supposed the bulk of it must’ve been purchased, though I could never figure how, or from where. Clothes and paper and books and jewellery formed strata, each layer corresponding to a day, each cavity corresponding to something lost, something rediscovered. He was missing a gold bracelet, which I’d been eyeing for some time and thinking about taking. I don’t know why I never did. I suppose I could never tell if it was real or fake – not that that would’ve made a difference, taking it.

– – –

He had curated a selection of bath soaps and shampoos that were organic and branded minimally and in rustic colours: the colour of mud, the colour of clay, speckled carefully with imperfections. I had followed him to the shop in Via Toledo that sold them in brown bamboo-paper baskets, and had surmised that they were worth more than the rent on the small room he and I occupied. 

If I lay a certain way in this bath, his bath, I can become convinced that my body is no longer here. 

Sometimes I lay and read things he’s written: poems, scraps of novella, manifestoes even. I find that they bore me. Art bores me. Books bore me. His grand gestures of futurity and ‘New Vision’ bore me especially. 

For every paper basket used, the shop pledged to save a square metre of endangered rainforest.

If I lay a certain way, amongst his words, I can become convinced that my mind is no longer here – that I’m just an empty thing, floating between grit and bubbles, filling up slowly with water as I sink to the river’s bottom. Fish carve tunnels inside me. Coral grows on my skin. My bones rot into soil.

– – –

That evening, he left the house and searched for a clearing in the Giardini del Molosiglio. He rolled a cigarette on some old Kerouacian novel as he walked, and smoked half before stubbing the rest out on the wooden slats of a public bin, flicking it inside. There were circles of bottle caps and discarded cigarettes in the gravel where others must have stood in communion after work, casually grinding their butts underfoot into a powder as they talked. They looked like the droppings of some pseudopodic, bonedead tree.

I watched him approach a complex of benches, where two girls already sat, talking with their heads close together, and I fell behind a palm tree.

He sat himself on a park bench with ‘mors’ written on its brown moiré pattern in blue ink, and carefully set his book’s spine so it dug into the flesh just above his folded knee, suddenly being struck, in the vaguely gold-tinged light, by how beautiful its distressed cover looked, its wrinkles and folds, nicotinic fingerprints and dirty patinas, the way he imagined an Italian grandfather to look, in one of those technicolour fishing villages inside his head, and he positioned the book’s cover so it faced the two girls, as if it were a dark spyglass, stealing light from them to him, a line of light like a reel of fishing twine, brown and dusk-coloured and tough and hard to break.

He carefully struck up a conversation, waiting for the girls to laugh before leaning in, deliberately casual and uninterested, to ask them something. They sounded Scandinavian. Dutch. He talked to one more than the other, and I watched her dwindle in conversation till she was no more than an audience, an onlooker like me. I began to feel as if I already knew her.

– – –

I smoked one of his Newports down to the filter as I waited for him to leave, stubbing it out on the tree before me and letting it fall into the already scorched shrubbery. Without planning on it, I found myself hovering towards the girl, now alone, and so I asked her about their conversation. I tried to emulate his mannerisms of indifference, but found I couldn’t.

Eventually, she began to talk of possessions.

“Then, I told him I liked his watch. He said it was a gift from his grandfather, a watch that had been passed down his family, from grandfather to grandson, in these kinds of leaps. He said he had another watch that would look good on my wrist, if I’d meet him here tomorrow morning.”

“What did you say?”

“I told him my flight was tomorrow afternoon, and that I wanted to spend the morning sightseeing with my friend before I left. I’ve been in Napoli for a week now, but I haven’t even seen Pompeii yet.”

To her it seemed too obvious to state whether she had lied, saying this, though I couldn’t read her in the slightest.

“What did you think of him?”

I don’t know why I asked her.

“He was a little annoying. Nothing more, I thought.” She eyed me. “At least he’s travelling, I suppose.”

I wondered if she was referring to his soul or Napoli’s tourist economy. I didn’t ask.

From the adjoining street I heard the sound of hard, bony sandals clacking against stone. They seemed to be a portent of something.

“Oh!” Her friend had come back. “It’s good to see you again.”

Her friend smiled and called me somebody else’s name. I stared blankly into her look of recognition. She thought that I was somebody else: perhaps the man I had been following. It didn’t seem likely. I was almost certain we looked nothing alike.

– – –

In his burrow the next morning, I rooted through his rut of stuff until I held it, balanced in my hand, delicate as an egg tipped on its edge, and as my fingers brushed against its gold patina, where other, older fingers before me had completed the self-same action, had lifted it to an illuminating light to survey their property, an old name engraved on its smooth case-back revealed itself, that might have read Lewin or Lewis when it had been new. It felt overwhelmingly like a prop from a TV show, so detailed it might be unreal.

I reevaluated his other belongings, taking inventory once more, deliberating whether I had taken enough for my time. But I didn’t want it to look like a robbery. I decided on the watch alone, hoping that he’d blame himself for losing it amongst the vague promises of the evening. It would be good to travel lightly, not to feel suffocated by the weight of his other possessions. I could wear the watch on my wrist without even noticing.

I imagined something this old ought to have some value. Somebody had thought it worth keeping from falling apart, rotting into its constituent parts. I pinched it between forefinger and thumb, and assured myself that this was what I had come here for, and yet I made no motion to leave.

By Jude Kirk

Fragment of ‘Dear Benjamin’

Another letter to you, my dear. This time, let me take you back to the summer of your seventeenth. 

This was the moment I gave up my doubts. 

I was painting in the greenhouse, early August. Your favourite month, your birthday month. I had gone hiding there in a sulk, half-knowing I’d be so easy to find, to you. And to anyone who just about went looking. It was the middle of the day with the sun at its hottest and its highest; The unbearable kind that makes it hard to find the air between the heat. 

I had been sick for months by then. We still didn’t quite know what it was, but I hated it and it was horrid. It appeared to be something like pneumonia, something horrid in my lungs and closer to my heart. The bout with “pneumonia” then, had me thinking that summer may be my last. I had not been sleeping well either. When sleep did creep over to me with heavy hands, he only did so in brief snatches. Morpheus was not being kind to me. Not much was. It felt like fainting rather than sleeping. I can’t imagine how I must’ve looked!

This illness was an excuse for my silence, also. I was not usually so quiet. I could not explain to anyone what other fevers had come over me that summer. And so, it was a blessing of a sort, the horrid sort. And as the sickness eased away in that sickly sweet summer heat, so too did my mind return to me, and with it came you, again.

“You should get some air, you know.” 

I hadn’t heard you come in, and the first pitch of your voice through the stillness had my hand unsteady. The painting I had been working on was horrendous anyway, despite my heavy focus. It was never the canvas I was focused on, nor the colours nor the brush strokes, but some very distant thing I couldn’t quite reach when I awoke. 

I threw the brush down, and it hit the palette with a feeble little clatter. I wanted quite suddenly and stupidly to rub this entire painting into an even more horrendous blur, only to tell you it was your fault. But I knew that the moment I saw your saddened face I would be the sorry one. 

And then: “Sorry!” you said, quieter this time. With the way you said it, my bitterness was gone immediately. I shook my head, pulled myself from my own haziness and finally pushed myself to meet your gaze, one of the very few times that vac. 

You were hovering just by the door, as if waiting for permission to come in, as if unsure if you should disturb the apparent peace I had made. But the peace was only a distraction, and there you were to break it! You were already looking guilty, something that had become increasingly irritating for me to watch. 

I only got to see you in the summers then, and how I had missed you so throughout the long months away. But things always felt underwhelming in the end, and the anticipation might’ve been the best part. I could not tell you half the things I wanted. And I never wanted to lie to you. Being with you, especially that summer, felt like a wound. I think all these things vaguely when I see you there. I can hardly bear to look at you. 

When I looked away from you, you lingered still. I then felt your head near the crook of my shoulder, the heat of your face there. 

“What’s that meant to be?” You asked 

I huffed, and it hurt my chest. “It’s abstract. Some things aren’t meant to be understood.” 

“Well, if it was never meant to be understood then what’s the point of making it? That’s not the point of abstract art, is it? It’s… subjective, or something like that…” 

“Oh, shut up” I huffed again, despite the hurt, I liked the distraction it gave me. I threw one of my brushes at you, which you only just dodged. 

You laughed at me, your breath coming out warm and heavy near me, like a dog’s. I knew then that I had to get away from you, and I headed to the door, suddenly enthusiastic of our reluctant trip. 

But you were looking at the painting still, even as I waited by the door for you. You must’ve seen every brush stroke, every flaw and every unfinished thought. You had reached that time of summer where your face tanned and your hair was bleached in the sun, and all your freckles came back. I felt myself flush, and for a moment, I was glad for the heat. 

You brought your hand up to it, pointed at something I could hardly see, your hand arched in the air as if that explained what you were seeing or maybe even feeling. “It looks like the ocean to me.” you said it softly, so softly “And that – this grey thing back there – is like a boat.” You grinned and looked back to me “Do you see that?”

I shrugged. I had been trying not to think too deeply into all I had been doing. 

★★★★

This is one of my favourite memories. One of my favourite, worst memories. 

Summer is a rotten season. Everything rots, including myself, and everything is in flames. But I knew you loved it so. I knew that you thrived in it, unlike everything else. Your joy gave me a reason to meet you there. 

If I was going to die that summer, I wanted to at least leave a bit of my truth behind for you to find. I couldn’t imagine leaving you nothing. This was the summer a legacy came to mind, this idea of a thousand plus letters just for you. I knew it would be easier then, to be around you with a goal in mind. 

But what I also knew was that you were getting at least a little tired of me that summer. You did a good job at hiding it. But you’ve always been a distant soul, haven’t you? I know, I know, that doesn’t mean you don’t care. I think your distance – my reaction to my own solitude – said far more about me that summer than it ever did about you.

 The air was too much; Too sweet and warm, as if a whole world had moved on without me. I felt dizzying underneath it all. 

I sat on the bank near the river. The sun was too bright on the water, beaming at me in the eyes that I hardly looked up to be blinded by it. I stuck to the safety of a familiar notebook, a familiar pen and then, the unbearable horror of no ideas and an empty page. The page before me was also too bright, too empty. everything was too much. I was becoming more serious about words that summer. Silly because I was only sixteen but already felt quite old. But I was wonderfully naive, and my words proved it so. My poetry, too flowery (which is a trait that you’ll know lingers even now).

Stupidly, I could only write good poetry when away from good things. There was so much I had been feeling that the words strung themselves together before me every night and I would feverishly have to write them down, in the dark, before I had forgotten them. Reading them the next morning, hardly ever knowing what they meant. I supposed I was quite annoyed to see so much of you that summer. If I really thought about my own soul, I would realise that I was unhappy.  But I did know that then, in a very abstract way; I knew a lot of things very vaguely. I knew that thinking about the wrong things for too long was dangerous, without Passion on your side. And it was even more upsetting, because everything I wrote and everything I seemed to read, always brought me back to you. 

And how could I avoid you? It was infuriating, in a tantalizing way. You were in every word, in every space in-between. How overcome I was with my affection for you! How overwhelmed. I didn’t mind the thing blooming inside me, no: how much would it inspire. But as the feeling lingered, through the winter of last and then spring and now summer, my words became separate from me.

It started the summer of 1915, and as the year elapsed, I thought I’d come back to you and be able to shake your hand and call you merely a friend again without it feeling like a half-lie. It had only gotten worse. 

Your face changed so much over that year. You have gone from boy to man quite quickly. But I don’t want to start writing about how you look to me, not like that.

So, I have gone off into far too many tangents already, my dear. My dear, but I know you’re not mine. But I thought you were, then, or perhaps you could’ve been, one day. In a very distant way. Thought of a future was almost dangerous, because I think I knew, even then, that half my lifespan was up already, at sixteen. 

★★★★

You were shirtless in the river, with your back to me. Your muscles were strong but still soft from the ballet, which you recently confessed was starting to get tougher, and you were starting to have a hatred for all its demands. 

I wanted to join you, in the river, but I was still sick with my lungs, and I was too scared. A piece of me knew that as you stood there, looking just a little older in your years and a lot wiser, that when I stood before you, I was only aware of the pallor of my skin from so long indoors, and the ridge of each rib that would have made you worry, like you always, always do. I felt suddenly like I would dissolve in that water like paper. I felt the weakest I ever had. The discomfort is why it lingers still. I was feeling a little more defeated than I was pretty, and you were the swan instead. But I like to think that if you asked me to join you enough times and with that same smile, I would do that, maybe. Maybe I wouldn’t mind how you would worry, if it made you happy to have me there. Maybe I would come to you, and let myself sink into the cold water up to my chest, only to feel the coolness of it lapping at where it burnt to breathe. Or maybe I wouldn’t. I probably wouldn’t, would I? That would ruin all the yearning. And I’ve never liked an ending, even to painful things. 

But this: you, shirtless in the river, utterly unaware of anything but what was in the moment, with your eyes and your hair and your lips, this is the vision that accompanies me nightly! A man like this. How lucky I am, I thought. And how cursed. To know you but to never really know you.

I sat on the riverbank, and, wincing, I tried never to look at you. When I looked at you, I seemed to find a few words to write. Then I imagined what I would say or do when you – like you always do – ask to read what I’ve written so far, only to find yourself so intimately on the page. I could imagine your disgust, you know: The slight, impartial look of wide eyes, the wince you’re trying to hide to remain kind. Your lips parted – though we both know you will not find the words – the gap between your front teeth to remind me that you, like me, were just a boy still, despite what we say or do or think.

I stopped thinking and wrote this in a very sleepless daze:

August 22, 1916

You are καλος κάγαθός. You are so sweet it’s almost bitter. I almost don’t mind playing The Fool. 

To you, I give you my heart. For you, I’d do a thousand things, write a thousand horrid words. 

Though there is something comforting about being hopeless to you. I’m hapless to this thing I call Desire, this fragile thing I can never share, because the entire world hates it. I am hopeless when I imagine nothing in between us: the horrid, beautiful creature you are and the curve of your lips, the cruelty of my name on them, short and melodic. The maddening thought of you in my bed for sleep and for love (however you like it, whatever you want). The thought of your head on my pillow, and how the smell of you would linger there, further, further on. 

The thought that if only for a moment, you gave up this thing you call Morality, and let me in.

The vile notion of how I could make you move or feel, if you gave me the chance and you gave me the time. 

I think of these things in brief moments like gasps. I try not to go beyond the act of thinking, and yet you linger, still. 

I don’t mind the thought that my bed is empty without you in it, my words rendered futile if they are nothing but You. 

And I do not mind your lingering, even if you are the furthest thing from me. 

You will never know this agonising thing some try to give a name. 

You are, in more ways than one, καλός καγαθός.

After I wrote it, I read it once, then twice and then another time. On the third time I laughed, because although pretty, I could hardly understand where the words came from or what they might’ve meant. I thought that if I was going to maybe one day write a wonderful terrible novel to mark my debut, this should be an addition to it. A terrible speech marked onstage. Though I already knew I wasn’t going to read it again, after that day. I didn’t want to put it into context. I didn’t want to know what it meant. I was a living contradiction (am, still), and I both loved and hated it. All I knew was that I liked the sound of it, that was all. If it were a song then I may only recall the tune, not the words. 

Then I heard another thing I liked the sound of. Suddenly aware of your laughter, too. 

“What are you reading?” you called out. I had to wince to find the features of your face.

“Words” I said, pretending to put pen to paper if only to distract myself, to stop you from calling to me. 

“Well, that’s a bit vague.” 

I then let myself plummet back like a defeated thing. I heard you coming to me, barefooted on the grass. Blocking the sun with your silhouette.

The sigh that came from me then was pathetically sad. 

I pulled out a fig I had picked earlier (stolen, really, from a neighbour’s garden). When I split it, I found it filled with maggots. You seemed horrified, even more than I. They writhed in the pulp, what was left of it, and in between the seeds. I looked at it in a strange way, as if expecting Summer to prove itself and all its awful ways at some point.

“Don’t eat that.” you said, wide-eyed. Then you snatched it from me and threw it in the river, hearing the dull plunk that disturbed the glassy water. “Do you always have such bad luck?” you said it teasingly, but I felt the truth in each word so hard it made me tremble.

(But you’re not bad luck, I thought. Or maybe you are, if it meant I couldn’t have you). 

“I’m not blind.” I said it with sarcasm, but I always had a weakness for your affection, like a dog’s. 

You smiled at me, and went rummaging in your bag instead. I waited. Whilst I waited, I tried breathing, if only to stop my heart from beating the way it was. It thrashed so hard it almost made me nervous. And whilst you did this, I tried not to look at the smooth, cool plane of your back and the curve of your spine. I was so feverish I wanted only for a moment to feel the coolness of it from the water, soon to be dried by the sun.

Whilst you looked, so calm you seemed to me:

“What are you writing about?” 

I didn’t really know what I was writing about either. That was true for the most part. Because if I was going to lose you, to anything at all, I didn’t want to forget even the discomfort. Discomfort like this. 

So: Words, I said again. You laughed. 

 From your bag (which was filled with far more than either of us needed and mostly with things you would never use) I felt it before I saw it. You had thrown it at me, and whilst on a regular day I had reflexes “like a cat” you once said, today I was quite the opposite. As I turned it hit squarely in the face. The force of it burnt hot and red, and I clapped my hand over my nose, mostly out of embarrassment. 

“Oh my god!” you were so panicked you almost tripped over your own legs when you came to face me. “Why didn’t you catch it?” 

“Why did you throw it?” 

“I wouldn’t have thrown it if you didn’t always catch things.” 

I glared at you or at least I tried. There was no point trying to be angry at you that way. My words were muffled, and I was beginning to feel queasy in the heat. 

“My nose, I think it’s broken. I think you’ve wounded me.” I meant that last part, really, despite the melodrama. 

Before I could even think, you were shooing my hand away and pressing the smooth bridge of my nose. You were so close I could feel the heat of your face. I winced, feeling half numb and searing and tingly all at once. But the feeling of having you so close was stronger. I was shocked when I found myself wholeheartedly sad that this was the closest you would likely get to me, and the only reason why. You weren’t looking me in the eye, but God, I couldn’t look away from yours. 

“It’s not broken.” You said, then caught my eye “God, you’re clammy.”

I shooed your hand away. “I’m sick!”

You shrugged. 

“You are sick if you keep saying it. It’s all about mindset.”

“Since when were you a philosopher?” I said, though it came out a sigh. I retrieved this orange you had thrown at me, which seemed rotten and ripe too, and started to peel it. It was flat on one side from where it had hit me. I pressed down on it there where the peel was too thin. I wasn’t going to eat it. Everything was making me feel sick, even you at some point. And I knew that you were quite used to my wallowing by then, my poet’s despair, because you laughed, sweet and warm. How were you to know I was truly, deeply unhappy at that moment? Even worse, how was I to know?

“Since summer started.” you said, as if in a flourish that explained it. And it did, for you. “Summer, which comes to save us just in time.” You laid down beside me, your arm over your eyes. You smelt like skin and heat. I think that will cling to me, always. I think you will cling to me, always, whether you know it or not. 

I wanted to stay there with you forever, you and me and oranges! Even though the oranges were too soft and too sweet and the figs half-rotten, and the river too bright and the air too humid. I hated it all but didn’t seem to care.

You weren’t lying down that long before you sprung up again. 

“Can I read what you’ve written now?”

 You were so terribly excited I didn’t want to disappoint you. Didn’t want to tell you that, no, my heart is thrumming like a caged bird when I look at you, and that at any moment I could be sick. 

“Let me read it to you.” I said, shocked to find my voice shaky. I don’t know what compelled me to read instead. As if in some way I could hide some pieces of myself behind a masking voice. I covered it up with a cough, in hopes of pity, to remind you that I’m sick. I don’t know why I wanted you to feel bad. You didn’t seem to notice. You laid back down again, eyes closed whilst I fumbled, pretending to find the right page. 

I read: “You are καλός καγαθός…”

I was hoping that if I read and only focused on the shape of the words as they left me, I may forget what it felt like to write them. I tried reciting it casually, languidly, as if I were not serenading you in some way. 

When I reached the final word, the silence was sickening. I dreaded it. If you had some vile remark, I’d rather you tell me now. Do not leave me in the dark, please. Do not leave me in the silence. I couldn’t look at you, so I waited for you to try meeting my eyes instead. 

“That was beautiful.” you finally said, your voice slightly whimsy, maybe drifting between sleep and something else. “Who’s it for? What is it about?”

“You tell me.” I said it with sarcasm, but you didn’t give up. 

“What do you mean? How should I know?” You liked answering questions with even more questions. Your smile was beginning to falter, even more so when I laughed at you. 

‘It’s like what you said: all art comes from somewhere. It’s abstract, subjective, as you say. So, you tell me.’

You then looked at me sadly. Why did it seem that everything I was saying to you I was saying wrong? I didn’t know what you wanted from me. Perhaps you wanted nothing from me at all. I hardly ever felt like I took up space. But for a moment there, I did. 

I knew you didn’t like to think for yourself too often. You weren’t all that used to it. If you thought, you would have realised, by then. That I am not the kind of man who will ever have a bride.

I knew you weren’t the kind of man to go unmarried or without children. I knew you were like a dog that way, following orders or expectations. And I knew that you knew that we would never talk about girls, we would never talk about Love. But you never even mentioned such things, not once. You were so innocent as you sprung through all your years of boyhood even then that it almost sickened me. Your innocence and my curiosity of you, and my concern, strange to me in myself. 

By that age (16, only somewhat aware of life, the in-between time), I was beginning to think that Wilde’s love was the only love I would ever be able to feel. It proved itself to me in the words I wrote, and the things I saw when I looked at Art and Life together, only to see them as one in the same. The Achilleus, the Antinous, the worship and the secrecy and the sadness. I didn’t mind being proven right upon seeing you and feeling such fleeting hope. 

I supposed that you weren’t like that. And if you were (oh, if you were), I would have had you already. I would have pushed my poetry under your doorstep nightly. Maybe, I would not have to write the poetry at all, if I could just look you in the eye and say it all with the confidence that you would be happy to hear it. I might have become one of those boys who picks flowers for his sweetheart, only to leave them on your desk or at your doorstep. Maybe I would join you in the river, if I knew that you knew.

I realised only in retrospect, that I never replied to the questions you were asking me. I think we were quiet for a very long time. Everything was very still. I don’t know how long I stayed like that, chin on knees, feeling like a fragile thing, with you lying beside me, feigning sleep.

I don’t know how long we had been like this when you finally broke the silence:

“I’m going to go back in, I think,” you said, and jutted your chin to the water, still too blinding to really see. “Will you come?” Your voice became momentarily unfamiliar, as if I had been away from the world for a while.

I felt a bit like I could cry. Or laugh. I couldn’t tell how it would come out if I let it. 

I said no. I said I was feeling horrid again and that I could hardly breathe, again. You looked at me oddly sad, but only for a moment, because that look in your eye was covered quickly with something else, I couldn’t quite understand. Then you smiled, and I couldn’t tell if it was real this time. 

“Let’s get inside, then.”

We walked back, without saying much. 

★★★★

In bed that night, lying above the covers. The dull terrible ache in my lungs had caught up on me, lingering still. I could hear the rasp of it still when I breathed. 

I was no longer in my mind, but my body, and I can feel its ache. So aware of myself in terrible ways. And Time was slowing down, when I didn’t want it to. I would find momentary peace in nightly revelations, only to realise they were not real. I was tired but again I could not sleep. I couldn’t tell if my body was tired or my head. But no matter which it was, it hurt like a physical pain. Like growing pains in my heart.

There is really no reason for feeling this way. That night I thought, half-asleep finally, that this feeling too shall pass. Summer will start to fade into chilliness, the leaves will burn a different colour, and the winds will return and sweep the stillness away. This sickness will pass within me, and I will be back at it again, with the sword and the word: all the usual things in my life I hadn’t really yearned for until I could no longer have them. And this feeling for you will pass. I will return to school by the remnants of summer, and you will become a desirable distant thing, which I can never have, and thank God I can’t have. You will be so far away by then that I will forget the pain that comes with having you close, seeing you shirtless in the river, having you care for me in that way you do. 

I’m writing this to remind myself of the pain you can bring, not in a bad way, my dear. You, the real you, is not a thing I want to forget. And that too shall pass.

I know this may not be an interesting story. I know that I don’t know many things, still. The same was true the age I was here. I didn’t know it would become such a favourite memory of mine then. I didn’t enjoy it at the time. 

There I once stood, and here I stand now, 24 years old, none the wiser, and the questions I had back then remain the same. There is fear of feeling and then fear of never being able to express it. Do you think, really, that being stuck all alone with that is worse? It’s like trying to scoop the seeping tide back in. Something hot and heady and unable to hold in your hands. 

I wonder.

Darling one, can you see me now? When you read my words, can you feel me? Can you feel my affection for you, in all my irritation? Do not doubt it, do not underestimate the power of words. Writing this all up with the intention of having you one day read it feels like I’m undressing in front of you. I am giving you my heart even when it is no longer beating, so that you may love me still, and know all parts of me, always. 

To be carried by you forever is enough. 

Now, I have already said much for one memory, haven’t I? If you are still reading these, I hope my words bring you some peace, my love. Some reassurance, whatever you may need it for. In all ways.

By Matthew Dodd

I’d read in a paper not too long ago – The San Francisco Chronicle I believe – about a boy who’d won the lottery with a ticket paid for by his week’s pocket money and had bought his parents’ house, evicting them both. It said that the boy had let them stay on in a basement annex on the condition that they let him have figure skating lessons on a Wednesday afternoon. The newspaperman covering the story – John or James or maybe Simon – had asked the boy why he didn’t just use the money to pay for the lessons himself. The boy offered no comment. There aren’t many things on which one can justify having no comment, I think, but maybe figure skating lessons are one of them. I’m not sure why this particular story had come to me at this particular moment – in the second class carriage of an Amtrak service running, late, from Buffalo to Poughkeepsie – but I hadn’t got a novel or a newspaper or a cereal box to read so I supposed remembering this half-chewed scrap of a story was all the entertainment I would find.

My head had already begun lolling slowly towards the window before I realised my mind was straying in the direction of unconsciousness. The jostling death-throes of the glass woke me up with its infernal rattling before I’d had the chance to fully make contact, sending my upper body in an urgent overcorrection back the way it came and, further, into the shoulder of a moustachioed man of about fifty sat to my immediate right. He looked up – his nose had been down as he’d remembered to bring a newspaper – and scoffed before shaking me off and returning to his reading. I apologised and came back to a postural middle ground between these two extremes. Outside, a tapestry was being constantly redrawn of leaf-less trees and car-ful motorways (highways, I mean): rivers whose waters vanished into forests and tossed twigs and logs out of their bodies like toys out of a baby’s pram. We came, every few minutes, to this or that small town which had once been a bustling centre of this or that industry before this or that tall man in an ill-fitting suit had bought and sold the land for some or other reason. Huge concrete mammoths of buildings – adorned with great tusks of moss and mould – stood erect and empty, languishing in vacuity. Out of a few leaked the vague sounds of angle grinders or young mothers crying.  These disparate visions slipped away at the pace with which they’d arrived. 

Narrow seats of an awkward maroon sighed against windows half blinded by frost and veneered with an array of assorted secondhand chewing gums, altogether topped by a baggage rack which, at every turn and fluctuation in speed, appeared ready to relieve itself of its duties. Up and down the aisle marched a seemingly endless parade of children, parents, students, pensioners and most every other denomination of personhood – as though the gangway were bifurcating humanity itself. I watched their passage in a daze. Idly, I wondered how my mess of limbs might be categorised by a spectator of this cavalcade. This line of inquiry went nowhere. According to the pamphlet that, crumpled and defaced, still just about survived in a pocket in front of my seat, this carriage in particular held seventy-six seats. Of these, I estimated that about sixty-two were occupied – though I wasn’t quite sure whether to classify a seat on which a handbag or small child had been placed as ‘occupied’. This meant that, on a carriage whose seats were unassigned, the gentleman who had sat next to me had decided to do so not out of necessity but out of choice. There were, at the very least, fourteen other options of seat and, by extension, fourteen other seat-fellows he could’ve made. Why, I naturally thought, me? Did something in my elegant air call to him in a voice of calm authority: this is a chap you should sit next to? Did he notice something in my debonair way of sitting? My habit of humming the opening to Duke Ellington’s In a Sentimental Mood? What of my outward being reached out to him and brought him to my side? Just as I thought to ask him any one of these questions, the gentleman stood up and made for the toilet at the south end of the carriage. I would not see him for the remainder of the journey.

Somewhere past Utica – I think my old piano teacher once lived there – I engineered myself out of my seat and made a short pilgrimage to the restaurant car. The phrase ‘restaurant car’ is perhaps an overly romantic one. This was little more than a vestibule with a pile of assorted chocolate bars and a disaffected young girl stood behind them. I asked her what her name was, not because I particularly cared to know her – I know quite enough people already, I think – but because I felt it likely that nobody else had done so in quite some time. It was Donna. On second thoughts, it may have been Dana. It is one thing to hear someone’s name and another entirely to remember it. In any case, we had a rather meagre conversation which resulted in my acquisition of a shoddily constructed club sandwich and a small bottle of sparkling water. The whole ordeal cost me eight minutes and six dollars. As soon as I felt the money leave my hands on its maiden voyage towards hers, I realised that this was all the money I presently had in the world. That is to say, it was the money I had intended to use on purchasing a ticket for the train I was, at that particular point, already on and had been on for around one-hundred-and-thirty minutes. In that moment, I hoped with a more sincere belief than I had ever before mustered that this club sandwich tasted better than it looked. 

Changing tack as I walked back in the vague direction of my seat, I thought through my possible means to avoid any retribution for my ticket-lessness. My chief idea was that, when the inspector came, I would simply plead ignorance: at the very least of the ticket price, at most of the English language in general. Over my many years of forgetting tickets for various transports, I’d developed a fairly reliable alter-ego as the German tourist Jurgen Voss, whose grandmother’s dying wish was that he visit Lichtenstein – or wherever it was that I’d forgotten to purchase a ticket to or from. Failing this, I might be forced to rely upon my exhaustive quantities of charm and charisma. At school, I was briefly made acting captain of the debating team. This may come in handy, I thought. 

There’s no necessary criterion of evil required for becoming a ticket inspector, but I sometimes wonder whether it doesn’t help. I’m sure, once they disembark and shed their skins, that they are all very nice – if not just simply very unexciting – people with homes and garages and perhaps even dinner waiting for them. I’m sure that a husband or wife will be sitting cross-legged in the kitchen awaiting their return, poised to ask them ‘how was your day?’ only for them to brush the whole nine-to-five off as another in a long, identical procession. To me, however, at this point in my life, they represented nothing short of evil manifest. Turpitude in a suit and tie. 

I slunk back into my original seat, a task made easier by the absence of my hairy friend. The club sandwich – for which I had potentially sacrificed my very freedom – made little impression on me. Indeed, were it not for the slight unease felt in my stomach about ten minutes after consumption, I’m not too sure I would’ve remembered its existence once it had left my immediate eyeline. My kingdom for a sandwich; perhaps not my finest exchange. For a time, I held my head in my hands as though my ignorance of it would make the outside world disappear. Realising that this was likely untrue, I rested my head abruptly against the back of the chair and left my hands to drum a frantic rhythm on my trouser leg. This rhythm was, perhaps, more A Love Supreme than In a Sentimental Mood. The expectation of the ticket inspector was becoming unbearable. His eventual arrival – for I had decided that he was a young man named Samuel – was encroaching on my psyche like a band of guerilla fighters in a small Latin American city-state. My left leg jerked up and down repetitively in a manner suggestive of many small children on a trampoline. It was as though I were trying to operate a bicycle pump unnoticeable to anyone but myself. The paranoid sepia of the carpet was likely the most disgusting thing I had ever borne witness to. Briefly, I thought that I might vomit but decided, on the whole, that this was not the best use of my time. I screwed up my eyes and clenched my hands together. I could not, I did not think, let this spectral ticket inspector get the better of me. No, I repeated, no, I would triumph, I would win. I sat back in my chair with a notion of relaxed gravitas. It is a self-evident truth that he who acts as though he has nothing to fear has, indeed, nothing to fear. Consequently, all I had to do was act as though I were the sort of person who would have a second-class train ticket from Buffalo to Poughkeepsie. A simple task. I turned my attention towards the window to my left. The great American countryside was absconding before me in a wild frenzy of colours, predominantly browns and greens, and shapes, largely squares and rectangles. A tree, then a river, a barnyard, a cow – two cows! – an elderly couple on a bench, an elementary school, a bus – a bus crash – an ambulance, a dog, a post office; a world of errant banality subsumed any thoughts of ticket inspectors or the fines they may prescribe. This new persona of mine, the gentleman dandy who rides the railroad as a novelty, had, I thought, broadly dissuaded me from my mania.

Lost in this revery, I did not notice the door at the end of the carriage opening and a squat man in a hat and tie making his entrance. His footsteps fell as raindrops in a bathtub and I persisted in my innocence until it was, as it were, too late. The man poked my right shoulder, just above the clavicle, and asked in an upsettingly offhand way, ‘can I see your ticket?’ I looked at the man for a moment, and him at me, and proceeded to shift my attention towards his silver nametag. His name wasn’t Samuel but Lucius. This was unexpected. I hadn’t a chance to resuscitate Jurgen Voss before I found myself answering plainly, in my own accent. ‘Please forgive me Sir, I’m afraid I spent my ticket money on figure skating lessons.’

By Saoirse Pira
On a Monday morning in November, Marnie will peel a pomegranate. The light through the window is thin and grey, the kind of light that makes everything look a little washed out. She can hear the boiler clicking somewhere in the house, the radiator hissing faintly like it’s making an effort, but all a bit in vain. The fruit is sitting in front of her on the counter, alongside the knife and bright green cutting board that was left in the house when she moved in.

She knows David is going to break up with her later. He hasn’t said it, but she can tell. He’s been distant, weird – answering texts late, looking at her sadly when he walks her home. When they made plans for this afternoon, his voice had this strange quality, like he already knew he didn’t want to come. She doesn’t blame him, not really, she can understand it. But still, the thought of it feels like something heavy and inevitable. The worst part, she thinks, is that she will say she brought this on herself – it was her on Friday night asking him what they were doing, if he had made up his mind about her yet. Of course, this is a normal thing to ask, but she turns the thought around in her head – at least she will have herself to blame. They were meant to meet on Sunday, but he was tired and hungover and hadn’t made up his mind. Marnie bought the pomegranate two weeks ago for a Halloween costume. She fancied herself clever, going as Persephone, though the whole thing felt slightly forced, like a joke only she was in on. A girl she sits with sometimes in lectures had suggested it to her – she said in earnest that Marnie should make David go with her as Hades. This seemed ridiculous to her, even then, but she laughed anyway, made a joke-that-wasn’t-really-a-joke about how he’d never do it. She never asked him, of course. But she bought the pomegranate and went to the party, and she fancied herself clever. She never got around to eating it afterwards. It just sat there in the fridge going weird. She isn’t sure why she picked it out this morning. Maybe because she knew today would be long, and peeling a pomegranate is something to do with her hands.

She rolls it between her hands for a bit, getting a feel for the size, and gets a sense that the last time she held a pomegranate was in primary school, though she can’t place when or why. It doesn’t really matter, it was just a feeling. She looks up how to cut a pomegranate, clicking through an article, a visual guide, a video. They all advocate a mess-free, so-easy-your-toddler-could-do-it method. She knows she won’t be following any of it, but she learns that the pomegranate is a berry, and the seeds and pulp are produced from the ovary of a flower, and it’s used for bonsai in Japan and Korea. She learns that we get the English word for the military ‘grenade’ from the modern French for the fruit; they have the same name. Her own grenade could have come from India, Israel, Peru, South Africa, Spain, Turkey, or America. The weight of it is heavy in her hands.

She sets the fruit on the cutting board finally, carves off the crown most of the way, then breaks it off clean with her hands. She scores along the ridges of the membranes, through the skin, top to bottom. The pomegranate is harder to cut than she thought it would be, and the blade catches slightly before it finally gives – it relents, and splits along the seams, and she presses her thumbs into the crack, pulling it apart. The juice beads at the edges and trickles down her wrists. It’s sticky, colder than she expected – over-ripe. The seeds glint under the dull light, impossibly red and slightly translucent, like tiny gemstones. Her hands work precisely, peeling back the membrane, plucking out the seeds one by one, watching them drop into the bowl. The whole process feels strangely neutral, almost comforting. There’s something to the rhythm of it, the way the fruit resists and then gives, the small bursts of juice staining her fingertips. She likes how quiet the kitchen is, bar the occasional faint sound of seeds hitting the bowl.

Marnie thinks about what David will say later – they’re meeting for coffee at three. She entertains a scenario in which he has made up his mind and chosen her. He will look at her like he does after a few drinks, just before a few too many. There will be love in his eyes. He will say that he’s ready, and it’s her, and he won’t say he loves her but soon enough he will love her. She picks out a stray bit of membrane from the bowl. He will not love her, she knows this much. He will say ‘I just can’t do this’, and ‘I’m sorry’. He will not say ‘I love you’, and he definitely won’t think it. She wonders if she will cry, or if she’ll sit there, nodding, like she understands it all perfectly, like she was on the same page the whole time.

She guides a seed into her mouth, bites down hard, makes note of the pop. It is both tart and impossibly sweet – something about it feels medicinal. The light has shifted slightly, making her reflection in the window more visible. She watches herself for a moment, her hands stained red, her face pale. Then she looks back at the pomegranate. The sky is heavy; Marnie can tell there will be no stars tonight. For now, though, she fixes her focus on the pomegranate, the bowl slowly filling, and the soft sound of her own relentless breathing.

⭒⭒⭒

“So, tell me about this David.”

Marnie hadn’t seen Liam since they left college for the summer. This was their grand catch-up, sat in the pub, sharing a table sticky with old spills and new initials. It was easy with Liam, the way they could fall back into rhythm after months of not seeing each other. She had told him over text that she had been seeing someone, that she really liked him. The weight of her news had felt heavy, dense in the air. He had been telling her about his summer of adventure, and she was so comfortable to be sat across from him, listening. Marnie wasn’t sure she wanted it to be her turn to talk. She hesitated, turning her glass in slow circles on the table.

“I think he’s the best person I’ve ever met,” she said finally, glancing up at him as though testing the waters.

Liam raised his eyebrow, turning his face to a kind of smirk. “Bold statement. Where did you find him?”

She laughed, looking down into her drink. “We met at Amy’s party. I don’t know, he’s just… kind.” The word felt small compared to what she wanted to say, but it was the only one that fit.

Liam tilted his head. “Kind how?”

“He listens to me,” she said, shrugging a little, like she wanted to make it sound like less than it was. “Like, actually listens. And he remembers things I’ve said, even small things. And he’s — well, he’s nice to me in a way that doesn’t feel like he’s trying to get something out of it.”

Liam gave her a look, his mouth twitching at the corners. “Marnie. This is not your usual brand.”

“I know,” she said, laughing again, but softer this time. She felt a little sheepish, like she was saying too much. “It’s different. We haven’t slept together.”

Liam blinked, visibly surprised. “Oh, this changes things. How long has it been? And he’s not gay?”

“No, he’s not gay,” she laughed, then added quickly, “It’s been a few weeks. I mean, it’s fine, obviously. It’s just – I don’t know. It’s weird. He said he doesn’t do casual. And I’ve never had someone hold their interest in me without giving them anything. Or feeling like I should. I don’t know. I think he really likes me, Liam.” She bit her lip and looked at her friend, feeling the need to downplay it somehow, like the powers that be would hear her hopefulness and strike it down. “Well, you know. We’ll see how it goes.”

Liam nodded slowly, watching her. “And you? Do you like him?”

She smiled, a small, private smile. “Yeah,” she said. “I do. He’s – he’s good to me, Liam. I like how I feel when I’m with him. He feels safe.” She felt the words settle in the air between them, heavier than she expected. She wanted to follow it up with something like, But who knows? It’s early days, just to keep things light, but the truth was she meant it. All of it.

Liam leaned back in his chair, folding his arms. “Well, I’m happy for you. This could be good,” he said after a moment, his voice softer now. “I mean it. It’s just… surprising, that’s all. You usually don’t—”

“Date, I know.” she finished for him, raising her glass to her lips.

“Yeah,” he said, smiling slightly. “But maybe that’s what makes this a good thing.” Marnie nodded, but she didn’t say anything. Instead, she watched the bubbles rising in her pint, thinking about David – about the way he looked at her when she spoke, like her words were something he wanted to hold onto. It was a nice thought. It was hopeful.

⭒⭒⭒

They had their first kiss in the club smoking area. Marnie had gone out with him and his friends. She wasn’t sure if he liked her, or if she had misread it. He kissed her and his friends complained that it took them too long. They met for coffee on the first date, they both had it black. They talked until close, she didn’t want to leave him – she asked if he wanted to go to six-thirty mass with her, and it was almost a joke until he said yes. They walked and sat in an old pub with sticky beermats. They walked to mass, arm-in-arm. If we walked to church like this back home, they’d ask when we’d be married. He knelt beside her in the pews. She thought he was beautiful. She apologised after, when it dawned on her that it was probably abnormal to be taken to church on a first date. He said it was okay. They found another pub – they sat, they talked. He was beautiful. It got late, she didn’t want to leave him. He walked her home; she hung on his arm and laughed, because they looked like Bob Dylan and Suze Rotolo walking. She invited him in. She showed him her favourite record, lay in his lap, listened to the first song. I’m quite fond of you, you know. She couldn’t find her favourite movie, so let him put on his. They lay on her bed. He kissed her. She felt beautiful. She tried to follow the movie, but her eyes were heavy and he was snoring, so she let herself sleep beside him. They woke up before the movie ended, he said he had to go. She didn’t want him to leave her, but she walked him to the door anyway. He kissed her at the door, and she didn’t close it until the dark swallowed him whole.

⭒⭒⭒

It happens the way she knew it would. Marnie gets to the café a few minutes early, hovers at the side entrance, stubs out her cigarette. He catches her, she walks over, they hover by the front door.

“I’m sure you know what I’m going to say.”

And she did – and he says just that. I just can’t do this. I thought I could. I’m sorry. The words land as they should — short, simple, unremarkable, a thud so predictably neat. Marnie had built this world in her mind, she had lived through it already. All there was left to do now was to watch it twist, contort, realise itself in front of her.

She nods then, she gets it – she understands. She has already understood. They move to sit on a bench facing the car park. It’s a shopping park, there are old ladies passing them with trollies, bags of groceries unloaded into cars. Marnie begs a little there, it doesn’t work – it doesn’t matter.

“Can we still be friends, though?” He shifts on his feet, looks at the ground.

“Of course. I want to be your friend.”

They would not be friends, this much she knows. It would be strange – strange because she almost loved him, stranger still because he knew it. They part awkwardly, she makes a joke that isn’t funny. He laughs, it’s warm. They will not be friends. There was no coffee, in the end. Marnie walks herself home, stares at the sky. Seagulls caw somewhere in the distance – someone told her once that this means a storm is coming. She has to laugh then: the sheer drama of it all.

In the kitchen, the kettle lets out a hiss before the final pop. Marnie makes a cup of tea. This time, she will take it with milk. Her pomegranate seeds sit in a bowl on the counter. It feels practiced, when her hands find the seeds, when she lifts them out to inspect the stains: blotches of pink, so much red.

The sky outside is heavy, there will be no stars tonight.

By Rory McAlpine

The fingers were always difficult, and not the proportions, they were the easy part. It was ‘touch’ that was difficult to capture. Hands are full of life, they sculpt and paint, but also wash and cook, stroke and clasp. Without capturing this trait within the fingers, the stone hands would look heavy and fake. Niccolò had always believed it to be in the creases, using his chisel he carved the hand with fine intersecting lines and marks. The constellation of markings gave the hands a history, thus inferring a future activity and imbuing them with that quality of touch. 

Niccolò chiselled his sculptures in one of the west facing rooms of the house, he enjoyed watching the sunsets slink below the ocean, calling the return of its rays that danced like embers on his window. He worked on his sculpture in the early hours of the morning. Before then resting for breakfast with his family, where they often sat on the huge oak table in the garden, his children running around restless as his wife Maria laid down fruits from the orchard, and all around them the smell of lavender would ebb and flow as the borders were coaxed into bloom by spring. He loved the smell of lavender. It made you understand bees; drawn by flowers. The smells: sweet, alluring. 

I don’t wish to give the impression they were a wealthy family. They lived in the large house overlooking the bay, sure, but it was on the brighter and more romantic side of ruin. Crumbling brick, a couple rooms home to the elements, peeling paint and carpets worn by many feet. It was that slightly shabby look not of neglect but of love and history that wore things thin from enjoyment and use. 

When Niccolò got to sculpting the eyes, he had to take particular care. He chiselled one a day turning his sculpture to the window so he could study the patterns of shadow and light on its face at different times. First the incision for the pupil. Then his tools coax an iris to bloom around it. He had to make sure the eyes could see. That was imperative.

Art was a peculiar thing he mused; it was created by the artist then lived on after their death. He thought of all the things his statue would see, all the generations it could observe. Art lives through wars, across generations and revolutions. It could watch his children’s children grow old, and their children. It is easy in this vein of thinking to ask what legacy one’s life will leave. Even a sculpture exists only a tiny portion of time’s reign. But this is a dangerous question to give thought to like exposing fire to air, it hungrily devours it, growing to destroy all that is dear. Looking up at the stars, facing one’s own insignificance is to meet the face of oblivion. One’s life if they are lucky and extraordinary may momentarily cause a ripple in the cosmos. But a ripple is nothing in the churning Pacific Ocean. 

Gazing out his window Niccolò saw his children roll around the grass. Another legacy that would live on. When they sought shade under the apple tree, he and Maria had planted again Niccolò noted, the tree another small legacy that would outlive him. The figure of Maria reading ‘D H Lawrence’s Collected Poems’ on the Juliet balcony of their room, wind tousling her face, so she had to pull the strands from her eyes. Him and Maria shared many legacies. In her hand was the legacy of another whose writing had long outlived him. 

The collective. Was that the answer? After all, a hive is made by a thousand bees. Many stars make a constellation, two people make a child. For one to focus on one’s own life is to isolate a single shade of colour in a painting. Sure, one’s life might only make a ripple in time, but in a generation each individual’s ripple would soon culminate in a wave. 

Niccolò’s finished sculpture showed a figure’s hand outstretched. He pulled a pebble his daughter had brought him from the beach and placed it among the curl of the outstretched fingers. He resolved to put it in some body of water so the pebble would be suspended, ready to be dropped. 

Dropped, to bring forth a ripple. 

By Matthew Dodd

It was early in the morning, and for the first time in the year, snow was falling.  Plumes danced down through the air, scattering themselves across the sky and spreading out into a soft white net over the garden. Once vibrant flowers were now dulled to homogeneity. Where leaves once sat, crystals of ice now staked their claim. As the sun rose over the garden, beams of light glanced upon the field, painting a rather pretty picture of winter. The garden made an all but perfect tapestry of the season and its associated joys. That was if one could exclude the unmissable exercise in laziness who made his temporary abode in the middle of all this. 

Angelo splayed himself out across the snow-covered lawn, a black smudge on this otherwise undisturbed canvas. Angelo – as you may have ascertained – was a cat, and was therefore accustomed to taking his time when waking up. And yet, even by feline standards Angelo was a lazy cat. He had been known to sleep for near on twenty straight hours and, on one occasion, after a particularly filling meal, had spent an entire week unconscious. However, on this particular morning Angelo struggled to keep a hold on his doze. The incessant snowfall was proving to be rather the impediment to Angelo’s lie-in. His arms gesticulated wildly in a futile attempt to tire himself out again. When this attempt proved fruitless Angelo shook his head and began to wake. He opened his eyes slowly, one at a time – in case any larger cats were waiting in his immediate line of vision – and was slightly confused to find that the world had gone all white. His amber eyes flitted around his surroundings, processing the new information. The world had indeed gone white. That was if it was the world: the living world that is. Angelo jumped up at this. For a cat, Angelo spent a lot of time contemplating death. He often wondered what would happen to him when he eventually ceased to be. In all honesty he tended to believe that death would never happen to him, he was far too special for that.

 As he considered this, Angelo became aware that the white of the world seemed to be moving downwards. His eyes narrowed. That certainly was strange. The world only ever moved like this when the great showertime came. Angelo then realised what was afoot. He was not actually dead, as he’d been quite convinced, rather it was that time of year at which the clouds started falling from the sky. Angelo wasn’t quite sure why the clouds did this, but he supposed they had rather a good reason. Angelo knew this time of year well, this being his tenth experience of it, and had come to treat it as a friend, a reminder of everything he was and had been. Humans are often surprised to learn that cats are well aware of themselves and their own temporal position but, as Angelo had often noted, humans were surprised by most things. He was up on his feet by now and, as he began to move, slowly became aware of his situation. This was the Garden. That’s what the humans called it (comprehension of the English language was another feline skill that humans seem to forget). Ah yes, Angelo remembered now. He often liked to visit this spot, this very spot in fact, to take one of his naps. In fact, now that he thought about it, he’d taken one such nap very recently. In fact, now that Angelo had thought even more about it, he failed to remember very much of what happened between his last visit and the present. Lost in his train of thought, Angelo had neglected to note the tree – into which he had just walked. Despite his stature Angelo had somehow caused the tree to shake, which caused a large snowfall atop his head, in turn inciting a helpless mew of despair. He shook virulently. Angelo couldn’t entirely recall his position towards this cloudfall. 

Upon further examination of the garden, Angelo deduced that he’d only been asleep for at most half a night since the sun was only now rising over the garden fence. That was good for Angelo. This meant that he could go and be there to watch his human wake up. He loved his human more than anything in the world. Even more than he loved napping. Angelo couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t loved Human. Human was to him what the earth was to the moon. Both entirely wrapped in their own existence yet eternally dependent on the other. The Moon rises and falls with the Earth. The Earth may even one day be able to be without the Moon’s complementary being, but the Moon will always need the Earth, and in the same way Angelo will always need his Human. He slumped down against a tree and let memory flood over him. Memories of Human and Angelo together, Human and Angelo apart, and Human and Angelo reunited. Years stretched out in Angelo’s mind, with this Christmastime (yes, Angelo recalled, that’s what Human called it) being the one constant. Other humans had left Angelo’s Human over these years. Angelo had slept on the laps of countless others during the cold months. But Human had always been there. Angelo had even seen Christmases when Human was alone, and Human was sad, and so Angelo was also sad. But Angelo had watched Human find new humans, and be happy again, and that made Angelo happy. Angelo remembered, there was another human that spent some three Christmases with Human. It was a human with brown hair and big brown eyes who used to spend hours with Angelo, stroking him in the spots behind his ears where only his Human knew. Whatever happened to them? Angelo struggled to remember. In fact, he struggled to remember many details these days. Angelo was getting old, he didn’t have time to remember all the sad things. He preferred to spend his thoughts on the happy times he and his friend had shared, rather than dwelling on those awkward in-between times. Human had smiled and laughed in the company of others, and there were times when Human hadn’t. What was the point in trying to dissect the sadness when you could be enjoying the happiness? Angelo slunk forward through the garden towards the house’s back entrance. As he crept, he caught sight of a robin sitting on a tree-branch, rather content with the leaf he was picking at. It pricked its head up and peered at Angelo before returning to its leaf. Angelo made to greet the robin, only for it to fly away, leaving its leaf behind. How fickle and rude that bird is, he thought to himself.

by Charles FitzGerald

Desperation smells like curdled milk. A persistent, rancid odour which sits in nostrils, clings on  clothes and spreads like oil. Tessa could smell it on the rat sitting before her. He’d been trying to  chat her up for the past five minutes. 

“What college?” was the grand opener. Tessa glanced up from her pint of Kopparberg – an hour  old and lukewarm. She was a little bemused at what stared back at her. A pale-faced rat, dressed  in a tanned Schöffel, tattersall shirt and club-stained Reeboks.  

“Uh…”. Tessa’s mind went blank. She’d never spoken to a rat before. “Mildert”, she lied. 

“Fuck. Unlucky”, his underbite rattled back. He took a seat opposite Tessa, his marble eyes fixed  on hers. “I’m Hatfield”. 

“Right. Yeah, no, I’m just waiting for my friend, so…”. An age’s worth of spilt alcopops glued  Tessa to her seat. She reached for her phone. 

“What’s your name though?”, the rat inquired. Tessa couldn’t decide what was more terrifying –  being propositioned by an anthropomorphic rodent in Britain’s saddest nightclub, or having to  dust off the freshers’ week pleasantries (“what course?”, “where you from?”, “Surrey? No way!”,  et al). Before she could choose, Tessa found herself answering his question. “Tessa? I’ve literally  never heard that name before in my entire life. I’m Ollie”. He extended his paw – bearing a signet  ring and Patek Phillipe watch. Tessa shook it, shivering at the caress of his claws. “Do I smell a  Northern accent, perchance?”. 

“Uh, yeah. Liverpool”. Tessa took a long, strained blink. Some respite from Ollie’s sharp gaze. 

“Fuck’s sake, sorry to hear that,” Ollie sighed with an eerily genuine earnestness. “I mean, least  you’re fit though, right?”. He scratched his nose with his arm, leaving a snail-trail of snot across  his sleeve. “What you drinking though? Looks shit – lemme get you something. Treble?” 

“I’m alright, thank you”. Tessa attempted a carefully calibrated smile. Musn’t lead this twat on, she  mused. She glimpsed around for any sign of her housemate, Georgia, who’d been led astray by a  stranger’s promise of ketamine ten minutes before. No luck. 

“Where are your mates?” Ollie hissed across the table. “You on your own?”. 

“No”. The smell was growing too pungent. Tessa stood up. “Excuse me”. Without missing a beat,  Ollie rose from his seat. His wiry frame towered over Tessa like a palm tree in the wind.  

“Which is it, then? Mine or yours?”, he squeaked, flashing his snaggletoothed grin. “You what?”. Tessa backpedaled. 

“Well, I mean – we’re obviously gonna shag, aren’t we? Mine or yours?”, Ollie queried with a  bizarre tinge of sincerity. He reached for her hand.

“You’re fucking vile”, Tessa scoffed, slapping away his coarse paw. “Piss off”. She spun and  made a beeline for the smoking area, beads of sweat dripping down her forehead. A packed  dance-floor stood in her way – a teeming scrum of paralytic students, swaying in vague rhythm to  Sugababes’ About You Now. To her horror, Tessa could not shake the stench. It seemed to only grow more potent. 

A searing pain suddenly exploded in Tessa’s neck, hurling her down to the ground. Her head hit a  puddle of cheap spirits and lemonade, as she shrieked with agony. Tessa’s peripheral vision was  dominated by Ollie – his front teeth sunk deep into her skin, effortlessly tearing through muscle.  Her screams slowly dissipated through a fountain of blood, as her eyes fluttered up towards the  crowd. 

Through muddied vision, Tessa made out a slender figure – swaying with the music. Another rat,  his chestnut loafers a foot away from Tessa’s drained face. Passionately kissing a half-conscious  Georgia. Leisurely moving towards her neck.

By Rory McAlpine

‘Insects are drawn to carcasses. They swarm above them- like the ragged form of a departing soul’.

(Excerpt from The Meaning of Metamorphosis) 

They flit from the reeds that slip above the water. They flit from the trees that huddle in forests and the wild heather- like a fallen shard of a sunset’s hue- that flares across the slopes. Forming serpentine shapes, the insects sway and plunge in movements directed by something otherworldly. They skim just above the loch, coil around branches, weave among grass. The butterflies are the most beautiful. Their wings, when the light glances off them, at just the right angle, are nature’s stained-glass windows. Light illuminates much of the insect’s beauty. It glimmers on the spider webs, and glimmers on the dragonfly wings; that come night cluster around lamps meaning their weird bodies can be closely marvelled at. Avery learnt from a young age, placing lamps outside her caravan, invites insects to cluster. One of the more unusual beauties is the sound they make. For Avery she cannot think of a piece of music that could rival the insect orchestra. 

The thrumming. It’s what she calls the collective voice of the insects. It thrums through the ground, the air. Its permeance means it often melts into the background, but if you listen for it, then it’s deafening. Avery could feel it, the thrumming, as she sat balancing the notebook open across her knees. The binding had disintegrated long ago, leaving the loose sheets of paper to be sandwiched between the covers. The scratching of her pencil itching her curiosity as she sketched- in fragile detail- a butterfly. Her pen strokes pay obsessive attention to mark even the most insignificant of details. If you turned to the front of the book, you would see the title written neatly in the middle of the page with her name printed underneath: 

The Meaning of Metamorphosis

Avery. C. Tomlinson

Insects fascinated Avery- in every way imaginable. Yet one process had become something of an obsession: metamorphosis. The process that makes a tadpole a frog, or a caterpillar a butterfly. Avery spent hours cataloguing insect behaviour, appearances, habitats, and food sources in her notebook. It was crammed with tiny spidery writing and large sketches that started off in a straight line but ended up slanted, so the writing on every page was slightly lopsided. She worked on it whenever she wasn’t cooking or cleaning. 

Completing her sketch Avery headed back up the loch to her caravan. The caravan was nestled under the cover of a few sparse trees. It had been patched up so many times nothing of the original structure remained. A wooden veranda had been constructed around the caravan with poles at either end that dangled paraffin lamps. Once inside the caravan was cluttered, with stuff covering every surface. Mainly it was paper, drawings, and small sculptures. A few pebbles, flowers, mismatching crockery. Yet by far the strangest addition was a large wooden table at the far end. A large tree branch had been suspended a few inches above the table. Hanging from this branch were twelve chrysalises. They looked ornamental hanging there. Coloured a deep jade and speckled with gold. If you watched very closely you might spot their occasional quiver as something happened inside. Sheets of paper plastered the table below them with Avery’s endless observations and drawings. Avery placed her notebook safely away and went over to examine the chrysalises, gently touching one before noting down its texture. She proceeded along the line looking for even the slightest change. Her notes already track how initially these chrysalises had been a very pale green before transitioning to this deep jade and gold. The one at the end was even beginning to show a hint of blue. 

How Avery knew something was wrong she wasn’t quite sure. Maybe it was the change in temperature when the door opened. Maybe it was a sound she had subconsciously picked up on. All she knew was suddenly she was no longer alone. Before she had a chance to react Avery felt the claw grasp her and pull her violently backwards. Snapping her neck back, her knees buckled. Taken off guard it took a few seconds for her to wrestle free and twist to face the creature. It was a blur, a flash, a stinging pain on Avery’s cheek. She saw bared teeth and matted grey fur. Gaunt and gnarled, it lurched- clawing, and spewing a guttural intonation. It scraped her face, tore at her clothes. The weight of it was light but the force of its attack knocked Avery- who stumbled, then fell. Half-blinded. Spittle flew in moist goblets- rainforest rain. It reared up, eyes devoid of anything, the rational sacrificed to instinct. Puppet to the primitive. Avery heard her fluttering breath in her ears. Screeching wings flapping… not wings, clothes? “Muriel?” The wild creature came into startling clarity as Avery lay on the ground, blood smeared and dazed. The vicar’s wife. Not some animal. Just the vicar’s wife. Muriel screeched again, that awful animalistic sound. “Satanic child” the words mangled by her hoarse throat were barely recognisable. She spat it out as if its presence burned her tongue. Avery felt something hard and blunt hit her once. Twice. “Devil spawn”. 

‘What drives the change tadpole to a frog, what alchemy delivers the winged butterfly from the slovenly caterpillar?’

(Excerpt from The Meaning of Metamorphosis) 

She learnt it through the stares in the village, from the butcher who cussed at her from his shop. From the young boys that crossed the street to avoid her, and the children dragged frantically by parents out of her path. The whispers as she passed were as loud as the screaming abuse that snapped at her heels as she ran away. She was hungry because the town would not feed her. It was as if her money was stained. 

She pieced it together, news clipping pasted over some gaps. The vicar’s daughter, sweet angel Annie, salt of the earth Annie, all the children wanna be Annie. No longer. Now dead Annie. Gone Annie. 

And no one knew how Annie died. Healthy then suddenly not. Breathing then stilled. But they did know. The creature in the woods, they said, that lived among the bugs. Whose mother made the potions and chants, communed with the dead and dealt in the dark arts. She killed church choir Annie. 

Yet none of them probably knew Avery’s mother, the women who mixed not poison healing potions from flowers, soothing lotions from leaves. A woman who praised the moon and whispered to the woods thanking them for their fruits and air and medicinal properties. A woman who was gentle, a caring soul. However, to the villagers she was the one no one could understand. And that lack of understanding bred fear. She became the cause of bumps in the night, rotting crops and diseases that bedded households. And Avery her daughter; her spawn. Avery had killed Annie. The motive was hazy, the story heavy with embellishments and interpretations picked up from fireside chats and tales to the children. All converging on: Avery killed Annie. 

Avery stopped visiting town. Before she had been reclusive, sure, daughter of a feared misunderstood mother but a girl the town would tolerate, entertain, feed. She had, if not friends, acquaintances, people she would talk to. She would sometimes sketch families, paid a pretty penny for her troubles, or bring some vegetables to sell at the market. But the Vicars wife had taken this, bathed it in the poison of her tongue. This isolation was different, it was personal, targeted with no respite. Avery was no longer Avery. She was the embodiment of sin, the devil, a bundle of peoples’ angers and fears. Hate can do that, scarily fast. Dehumanise you. You become distorted in people’s perceptions, a reflection of what they fear. The truth was a peculiar thing, it was liquid and malleable. Avery was no longer Avery. The village had chosen their truth and would see only that. Not Avery but a creature, a poison, a child killer. She had become like the fallen angel Lucifer they preached in church, a concept abstracted from her individual: an object of hate with no life or being behind it. 

She felt it for the first time that day. When she walked out of the village for the last time. The blood was beginning to congeal on her forehead, like some third eye, from where some young boys had thrown a rock at her. The rock made contact leaving her head singing and eyes slightly blurred. Blood had run down her nose and slipped into her mouth. Sharp and metallic like biting a copper penny. She felt something bloom in her gut, dark and cold that drew her stomach into knots. Something alive.

Avery had enough food stockpiled to last a few days. She had the few edible plants that grew in the nearby forest as well. She didn’t see any alternative but to hope at some point the hatred would pass. She continued observing her insects, and her pet study watching the chrysalis’s swell. She sometimes wished she was like the bee, who could change pollen into honey, to Avery this was as miraculous as turning water into wine. She considered scooping honey from the beehives when she felt very hungry. But restrained herself, she wouldn’t destroy such a beautiful creation as the hive. 

Avery had been sleeping poorly. She would awake in cold sweats from dreams where the vicar’s wife Muriel was slowly strangling her or beating her. In that moment between dreaming and waking, shadowy furniture in the darkness would morph into her leering form. 

She had been awakened by one such episode, when she heard the tinkling of glass, that sent the silence of night similarly falling to pieces around her. Creeping to her window framed by the slither where the curtains didn’t quite touch, she could see two shadowy figures. A rock hit her deck. Then her first lamp hung outside the caravan; smashed. The light died and the bugs that clustered it were engulfed by the night. Then the next lamp, then the next. She wanted to scream, to cry as the bugs fled and the lights winked out. She thought of the bugs fleeing into the night alone and separated from their families. She thought of herself sitting in darkness on the deck without their companionship. A rock sailed through her window dragging the cold and darkness of night in with it. The last light fell away shortly after. Avery lay in darkness; the insects had fled leaving her alone. She wanted to cry for now she was truly alone. In that moment it seemed her final resistance had been extinguished. As the darkness hemmed the cabin in, her head began to pound.  

It had grown and spread from that moment the vicar’s wife had knocked her to the floor. What had bloomed in her stomach had now burrowed itself into her mind. It had wrapped her spine and polluted her blood. It was something dark, primitive. Like a cuckoo egg deposited in some different bird’s nest, when the chick hatches it knocks other eggs out, killing them. Taking control, seeping in. Avery had no room, she felt herself pushed and pushed. Compressed within her mind. She was suffocating under the weight that had no form but merely a presence. Like a current in her mind. Pounding. There was no strength left to press back. Better to submit. To huddle in the corner. A fly in a puppet. No control of her limbs any longer. The thing that was left was Not Avery. Avery was before the hatred; the lamps being extinguished and the fleeing of the insects. What it was, I cannot say. I can only say very clearly what it was no longer. 

‘When the chrysalis is shed what emerges is unrecognisable. It has undergone such an unfathomable change so profound that it truly cannot be considered to be the same being which it formerly was.’ 

(Excerpt from The Meaning of Metamorphosis) 

When the time came, from a distance, they looked like fireflies delicately suspended over the loch. Their numbers doubled by the reflections. It looked beautiful, almost mythical. Flowers of fire charring the night like stars that had fallen and just been caught before the extinguishing water. Yet if nature had any wisdom to impart it was often the things of great beauty that are deadly. The villagers gathered around Avery’s caravan, drawn like the insects every night. Muriel faced them all. Her flaming torch she brandished overhead. “We must be driven by the Lord’s wishes. We must be just. We must forgive. We must have mercy. Yet we must also protect ourselves from the devil’s temptation. His allure to The Under. Where sinners are roasted on spits. This girl was bad from the start. It started with her mother’s potions and false gods. Her unnatural and sinful ways. Now her daughter has carried the blackened heart and taken my dear Annie.” Tears fell down Muriel’s impassive face. 

“We must end the circle of sin, end the temptation. This is not a trial. This is a rescue party. We are saviours guided by Him. We shall free this girl from her sin. She will be judged and atoned by our father. Where he will cast fitting judgement. We are merely to deliver her.” Muriel’s speech was met with pounding feet and gleaming eyes. She raised the torch above her head. “Father deliver us from evil,” she cried and with that tossed the torch through the caravan’s front door.  

As the fire unfurled its limbs inside the caravan the chrysalis on Avery’s desk began to quiver, then split. Blossoming like a flower, thin legs protruded pushing the fragile structure open, until the insects wriggled free. What crawled from the chrysalises was not the expected butterflies with wings like Picasso pieces. They were butterflies cloaked for funeral mourning. Moths with wings of aged or scorched parchment. They swirled upwards in their cloud, the eclipse of moths. Like burning paper scooped from the fire. Disappearing out the window, out of harm’s way. 

The thing that used to be Avery- that was now a Not-Avery creature- watched from the shallows of the loch as her caravan went up in flames. The eclipse of moths settled on the reeds around her. Eclipse: when one thing completely hides the other. Completely trapping the other. An unnatural eclipse had occurred within Avery. By what, it was not known. Something dark. It was moulded and fed by the villager’s hatred, driving her to attain a gleam of madness in her eye. Avery was the devil, they had proclaimed. So, she had become just that. Avery had changed. She was no longer the girl she was before. Not-Avery climbed out of the loch. Silently approached the villagers. She clasped a knife. Her eyes were dead. 

‘Once changed, it can never un-change. Metamorphosis is permanent it seems, a process where a new creature is born, one utterly changed; forever.’

 (A line among the charred remains of The Meaning of Metamorphosis. 

Posthumously discovered).