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How To Tell If You Are In A Nicholas Sparks Novel by Alyson Kissner

Alyson Kissner is a poet from Vancouver, Canada, and a recent graduate from the University of Edinburgh. She has most recently published in The Toast, Nailed Magazine, and tNY Press, as well as being featured on The University of East Anglia’s New Writers website.

 

How To Tell If You Are In A Nicholas Sparks Novel

 

It is summer and you have fallen in love.

You know you are in love because sometimes you hate each other, and that’s how you know you are in love, you know?

Your name is Katie or Katelyn or Katherine or Kate.

You are white and heterosexual.

You are staying in a small seaside town that is quite unlike the city where you’ve lived your entire life.

Everyone in this town is white and heterosexual.

You are living or wish to live in a rundown house that is somehow romantic and isn’t infested with rats.

Your lover’s partner is dead or abusive.

It is strongly implied you have had an encounter with a ghost. This does not unnerve you.

That beautiful man is from the military.

Someone has written a series of letters that will change your life.

You will become involved in a spontaneous instance of passionate love making without ever having discussed methods of birth control or asked your partner about their sexual past.

Someone close to you is dying of a terrible disease.

Somehow, there are horses.

The sexiest person in town has a son or a daughter with whom you develop a close relationship.

A bad man has drunk too much alcohol.

Your mother just doesn’t understand.

Don’t worry, you’re still white.

You won’t die alone.

Alyson can be reached at her Twitter handle @alykissner for questions, concerns, or sizeable donations.

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Four Senses & Fukushima Rice by Karen Ashe

Karen Ashe is a writer based in Glasgow. She writes short stories, flash fiction and poetry and is working on her first novel. She was awarded a Scottish Book Trust New Writer’s Award in 2016 and has been published in Mslexia, and was highly commended in The Bridport Prize.

 

Four Senses

 

The bell above the door tings. I hear the hiss of rain, then air rushes in, laced with donkey-shit, dim-sum steam, fried-noodles. Carts rattle, drunk men squabble, mahjong tiles clack against the table top. The door closes, trapping us in silence like flies in amber.

The workroom is separated from the shop by a row of lattice-work panels, draped with sweet-smelling blossom that keeps us hidden from view. I sit close behind it, so close I can hear the rustle of the ladies’ Cheong-Sam, the soft brightness in their voices, the slide of the notes being folded into the money drawer.

The shift in the air stirs the scent of the flowers, brings memories of my village; the sound of my mother singing, the gurgle of the river in spring, the haunting call of geese on the move. Apple-pears sliced in a bowl. The sun on my face.

The needle stabs the tip of my thumb. I bring it to my mouth to check for bleeding, but thankfully there is none. I cannot damage this suit. The squelch of the tailor’s sandals grows louder, closer. He halts somewhere behind me. My heart beats so fast I can barely hold the needle. Did he see me stab my finger? I will my palms not to sweat. I cannot drop the needle. There is a slap and someone further down the row cries out. The sandals squelch on.

The tailor employs an unusual training method. Boys are locked in the cellar in total darkness until they can sew straight lines of the tiniest stitches. If they survive that, they are brought to the workshop, where they must sew with their eyes closed. If their eyes flutter open, he threatens to stitch them shut. When they pass this test, they may open their eyes, but must only look straight ahead. Forget that you have eyes! You have only four senses now. I was his best apprentice; it came naturally to me.

We sit in our long rows like stitches in a seam, working long after the tailor turns the lock on the door and the blinds rattle down the windows. The assistant gathers the work, the needles and thread. I hear the key turn in the padlock then the tailor loads the bobbins of thread into the wooden cabinet. They must be protected from the rats. A bowl is placed on the ground in front of me. I bring the spoon to my mouth, eat till it scrapes the bottom.

It is 22 steps to my bedroll. 300 stitches in a sleeve, 749 in a trouser leg. At home, it was 472 steps to the well, 115 to the apple-pear tree. I knew night was falling by the rising of the birdsong. Could sense snow coming by the smell in the air. I learned from my mother to turn my head towards my father’s voice, to smell before tasting, brush the walls with my fingertips. Keep my face to the sun. Follow the sound of her singing.

*

 

Fukushima Rice

 

Shizuka’s back is aching. She rolls onto her side on the tatami, feet searching for her slippers. She gets up, slips on her yukata, trying to stretch out her back, but her growing bump pulls her forwards, always forward. Her belly is a tight ball; how quickly it has grown from seed to watermelon. It kicks in response to her touch, and she smiles. If only this silent conversation were enough, she would keep it inside forever, but she so longs to see its face.

She sets the water to boil for tea, opens the back door and stands in the warm spring sunshine. The lumpy hills are purplish in the morning light, unchanged since her childhood. The air is fresh and cool on her cheeks. She kicks off her slippers and wades out into the field.

She will be no use if the baby does not come before harvest; she can barely bend. Reaching her hand into the murky water she can smell the earth beneath. She stretches her fingertips to feel the root, pulls hard. It comes away with a small tearing sound.

The sheath is green and plump and when she parts it with the nail of her thumb she is barely breathing. The sheath splits down the centre and there, like a row of baby teeth, pearly white and gleaming, sit the little beads of rice. It is not yet ready. Soon.

If you would like to know more, you can contact Karen via kazashe@outlook.com. More of her work can be found here.

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Battered Moon & Map by Karen Ashe

Karen Ashe is a writer based in Glasgow. She writes short stories, flash fiction and poetry and is working on her first novel. She was awarded a Scottish Book Trust New Writer’s Award in 2016 and has been published in Mslexia, and was highly commended in The Bridport Prize.

 

Battered Moon

 

Even from a distance, with the naked eye on a dark smoky night, without the aid of a lens and magnified, you can see it. Battle-scarred, world-weary, battered moon.

In the early phases it’s not clear, not in the hairline fracture of the first waxing. But as her profile emerges, the damage is evident. Gouges, bruises, blackened eye, cracked tooth. Clouds gather round her like curtains round a hospital bed. But this warrior moon rides without rest, bareback towards the dark side.

She turns her face in shame, or maybe it’s indifference, with a last glimpse, making way for the pampered pretty-boy Prince Charming sun. But floating over fields in the blue of days is easy. Ride the black night over the chants of a million witches, the stares of a thousand sailors, lay yourself like a balm over a sea of ink, rock the tides to sleep. Then call yourself traveller.

*

 

Map

 

How to make a map of the sea? Endless blue, wave upon wave, shoving at the ship, covering everything in a crust of salt.

He’d managed a map of the stars, easy enough to look up, make a mirror image of the night sky on the parchment. Of course, the next night it would be different again.

A flotilla of gulls bobbed on the horizon. Or at least appeared to. Everything played tricks on your eyes way out here; the sun with its dazzle, the constant blue sea, the faultless sky. He made a few scratches with his pen on the straight line across the paper. They’d only burn it in the morning, but if he didn’t do his best they’d beat him first.

They said they were going to cross the horizon, go beyond the Earth’s limits, peel the sky from the sea like an eyelid and sail on through. But however long they sailed they never got any closer. That was fine with Joseph; he had no desire to drop like a coin through a slit in the Earth’s skin.

His mother planted a coin once. At least she said she did. Now he was older, he could see there may have been some sleight of hand involved. She covered it up with a handful of good soil, spat on her palm and pressed it to the ground with her eyes closed. She made him do the same.

You watch. It’ll soon grow, just like you and your brothers and sisters. At harvest time we’ll shake it firm and gold will rain down on us like God’s own blessings.

The boat swayed and rocked. From overhead a cry of Land Ahoy!

If you would like to know more, you can contact Karen via kazashe@outlook.com. More of her work can be found here.

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Excerpt from Kinski in the Attic by Simon K Brown

Simon K Brown is a writer who lives in Edinburgh. He won a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award in 2017 and has had his work published by 404 Ink. He’s currently trying to squeeze out his third novel.

The following piece is an excerpt from Simon’s second novel, Kinski in the Attic.

 

Excerpt from Kinski in the Attic

 

Fraser Ross. Fraser Ross with his fucking fake tan and faux-hawk. Fraser Ross with his banger of a car parked in the square, honking and shouting at any women that pass. Fraser Ross with his fucking misspelt tattoo (“follow you’re dreams”). Fraser Ross with his monopoly on all the rich American golfers who come to play on the course. Fraser Ross with Becky Sutherland in the toilets at lunchtime. How could you, Becky?

It’s still chucking it down outside. Don and I scurry beneath the giant umbrella I nicked from the clubhouse, bounding over puddles as one. The few streetlights we pass bleach the raindrops. We vault the wall bordering Fraser’s back garden and take shelter beneath a plastic slide. The grass tickles our chins. I’m in no position to criticise, but if his house is anywhere near as cluttered as his back garden we’re going to be here all night.

But it could be worse. At least we’ve got ourselves a rain-free nook here. A square patch of light spills over the fence which runs round to the front of the house. He’s in. I slink up to the back door and try the handle. Locked. I tuck myself in beneath the dark double windows and skirt round the side, moving slow, soon passing what I take to be the living room window.

Farther along I find the bathroom window ajar. I listen for a moment to make sure no one’s in there, then push it open. It squeaks—I stop and drop to the ground. I listen again. Just the faint sound of things exploding on the TV. Don arrives and boosts me through. I swing one leg inside, half-expecting to knock something over but I don’t and, as I heave the rest of myself through, I see it’s actually quite fastidious; certainly not what I was expecting, what with the state of the garden. The room feels clammy and smells like cinnamon. Someone just took a shower.

I move from the bathroom into an L-shaped hall. The floor’s carpeted, which is just as well because my shoes were squeaking on the tiles. Light seeps out from under a door to my right; sounds like it’s where the explosions and throaty bellows are coming from. Other than that the hallway’s dark. Door open on my left. I can just make out a wedge of chintzy quilt. I tiptoe in.

Someone’s in the bed. Becky, curled up in the foetal position.

She stirs. I fall to the ground as silently as possible and get into a foetal position of my own. I lie there, willing every part of me invisible.

Creaks.

Need to move.

I drag myself under the bulging mattress. I think my legs are hidden but I can’t move my head to check. More creaks, a groan.

Becky plods into the bathroom and as soon as the door clicks I scramble out from under the bed and tap-tap on the window so Don knows where I am. He appears a few seconds later, hands shielding his eyes as he peers in, the tip of his nose squished against the glass.

I scour the room, keeping on ear on Becky’s progress. They’re not going to be in the chest of drawers, or the clothes basket. The walk-in closet?

Its mirrored door opens with a squeak. I brush aside all the shirts and dresses and there they are, tucked away at the back: Fraser’s golf clubs. The light is poor so I have to grope the club heads. Two drivers. Fifty-fifty. Fuck it. I pull both out and shove them down a trouser leg each, tucking the grips into my socks.

The toilet flushes.

Not enough time to make it out. I get back into the closet and palm the squeaking door shut. It’s still wobbling when she plods back into the room. The bed creaks. Could be waiting here a while. Shit, her dresses smell just like they did at school. If she were to catch me now, with a face full of laundered dresses, it’d be the talk of the town for months. There are people whose couches face their living room windows, where they lurk for hours on end, waiting for the slightest whiff of gossip.

The bed creaks again. Becky approaches the closet – and goes past it. She must open the living room door because suddenly all I can hear is tense music and constant gunfire. Might not have another chance. The closet opens easily enough. I hobble out into the hallway, where the door to the living room is open.

‘I’m not asking for silence,’ Becky’s saying. I scamper past the door, catching a glimpse of her in an oversized grey t-shirt.

‘Fine,’ shouts Becky, her voice coming into the hallway. ‘We’ll see how you like it tomorrow.’ I run round the corner and throw myself up against the wall with a clatter. Becky storms out of the living room and slams the bedroom door shut. I sigh and slide off the wall, no doubt leaving a sweaty impression behind.

The kitchen is cold and dark. I can see the top of the slide through the windows. My shoes squeak on the linoleum as I make for the adjoining utility room and the back door. The living room door opens, letting loose another flurry of gunfire and screamed dialogue.

Footsteps clomp in my direction.

I stride into the utility room, speed trumping silence, and lean into the bit of wall to the left of the archway, nearly tripping on a mucky old pair of boots. The clomping arrives in the kitchen, pauses. I think I’m breathing too loud. The clomping carries on, still heading towards me and my minimal cover. A noise like suction—the fridge. Glass chinks, the fridge closes. A few more clomps, a pop and a hiss, and the footsteps recede back to the living room and the yelling becomes muffled. I wipe my hands on my inner thighs. The key is in the back door and I slip out into the curtain of rain. A smile spreads across my face as the door closes behind me.

I skirt the house again to find Don, still beneath the bedroom window. He’s frowning but it fades when he sees me.

‘Get it?’ he whispers; I nod. He grins and we pick our way back through the garden, past a rusted trampoline collecting rain, past faded and deflated footballs, past reams of nettles, back over the wall into the street behind, striking out eastward, the cathedral’s floodlit edifice looming over the rainswept streets. At first I’m laughing along with Don, but as we get farther away from the house the smile fades from my face and a familiar gnawing at my insides starts up.

 

Outside the Social, cherries light up in arrhythmic patterns; little red constellations peppering the darkness. All the smokers hide under thin bits of piping despite it providing little protection from the rain. The whole building throbs to a muddied beat. If I touched the brick, I’d feel it. We handshake and fistbump our way through the usual suspects and ignore the half-joking, half-serious requests for drink.

Inside, there’s a decent-sized crowd. Seem to be a few from other towns as well, always the ones you have to watch. Anonymity and alcohol don’t mix well. The DJ’s shit. He’s trying his best to appeal to the only two who’re on the floor – a couple of girls who were the year above me, who pinch one another’s noses and shimmer up and down, their laughter exaggerated so it’s perfectly clear that they’re not to be taken seriously – which means we’re being subjected to some hideous early 00s pop. Perhaps because of this, everyone else has moored themselves against the wall.

There’s no sign of Joe so we get ourselves a couple of nips. Single malt – the Social’s got some sort of deal going with the nearest distillery where they sell a measure of it for a quid. I suppose the thinking is that if we get it on the cheap we’re more likely to recommend it to the rich Americans that come over, the ones with the disposable income to splash out on the more expensive bottles. Me and Don hung around with the son of one of these rich Americans a couple of summers back. He took us up in his dad’s private jet and circled the town. It was weird because I could see everything at once. My house, Don’s house, the schools, the cathedral, the golf course – our whole world visible through one tiny window. And that’s all well and good but it’s hardly a fucking driver is it?

This is it though: these are our Friday nights. Same faces, same chat, week in, week out. I feel like we’re all in a cuckoo clock, each of us following our little paths as we stream in and out of the house, performing the same stilted actions, day in, day out.

Joe and Campbell appear midway through our third. At first when I hold out the club – the expensive one, the other’s bog standard – he looks livid.

‘The fuck’s this?’ ‘It’s a golf-‘ begins Don, but I cut him off before he can finish.

‘I see you out there when I’m caddying.’ I whip the furry cover off the head. ‘Titleist 915D3. Worth about four hundred quid.’ Joe takes it and studies it. Anger has changed to irritation.

‘This isn’t the same thing.’

I shrug. ‘You’re right. But like I say, I see you out there. I think you need all the help you can get.’ Hope that was the right side of playful.

Joe snorts and tries to shake the smile from his face. ‘Aye, maybe you’re right.’ He holds out his hand for the other club. ‘That’s you then, Donny boy. As for you…’ Joe shoots out a hand and pins me against the wall by the neck. ‘…don’t you ever point so much as a fuckin finger at me again,’ he says, his spit flecking my face. I nod. He kicks my stomach so hard that I crumple and fall to the ground, trying not to throw up. The floor reeks of stale beer, which doesn’t help. I watch two pairs of shoes head to the door.

Don picks me up. He looks sheepish. ‘Sorry mun. Kind of all my fault.’ I bat his apology away. Still can’t speak. ‘Thanks though,’ he adds, slapping my arm. ‘Lifesaver.’

I get some air back into my lungs. ‘Welcome. Don’t do it again though, eh?’

Don offers me a drink (!) but I decline. The gnawing that started on the way from Fraser’s has only gotten worse and if I drink any more the evening might be a weepy affair.

I stop off at the shop on the way home. Place stinks of wet clothes. Sodden cardboard disintegrates beneath my feet as I search the shelves for a prompt. I’m perusing the eggs – organic, free range, or both? Why does the smallest decision have to have an ethical dimension tacked on? – when the shop bell dings and in walks Holly of all fucking people, with some huge hispanic looking guy in tow. Our eyes meet and she gives me this guilty look and she might say something but I’ve already pushed past her and fled out into the pissing rain.

I’m passing the cathedral when I hear an engine in the near distance that sounds as though it’s seconds from exploding. I look behind me: a pair of headlights blossom from pinpricks to golf balls and continue to swell.

I don’t have to think about it.

I step out onto the road and make like I’m crossing but loiter on the white lines, fumbling with my laces. When it’s close enough I lurch into its path. Brakes screech. The Beetle skids, carving up rain. The moment stretches out. The car glides towards me. I can see the horror on their faces, I can hear their screams. The car pirouettes round me in a neat arc and spins for a few more feet then stops, straddling the white lines. The driver winds down his window. His teeth are dazzling; there’s something of the Hollywood actor about him.

‘What the fack do you think you’re doing?’

I flap my arms. They fall back against my sides with a squelch. ‘Sorry.’ The driver swears at me and tears off into the night. I stare after him, watching his car become a red smear in the distance, then scrape the hair up off my forehead and continue to the Social.

I march straight up to the bar and get four whiskies lined up. Down they go, one after the other. I’m getting another when a girl I don’t recognise approaches the bar. Rosy cheeks, like she’s worked a farm all her life. Her features crowd the centre of her face. She catches me staring at her.

‘You’re a bit wet.’

‘This season’s look,’ straightening my duds, ‘marine chic.’

‘Suits you. Wait, you’re the one who got punched earlier, eh?’ I nod. My whisky arrives. I lift it up and knock it back. The girl leans in towards me. ‘You alright?’

I gaze far away, like a grizzled war vet. ‘I’ll live.’

The girl pays for her drink and comes close. ‘I hear that guy’s a drug dealer.’ As she mouths the last part I catch the vodka on her breath.

‘I’ve heard that too.’

‘So are you, like…’ Her eyes widen with suggestion.

I straighten up, roll the shoulders a bit. ‘Well I uhh, couldn’t say one way or the other.’

Real close now. Hint of blue above the eyes. ‘Could you get us some speed?’

‘Oh aye, sure, no bother.’ Like no one’s ever lied to The Girl From Another Town before. She looks back over her shoulder at her mates. ‘Wait here.’ I slink off to badger Valdas and return with a little bag of something clenched in my palm. She offers me some. I accept. Be rude otherwise.

Aggy (short for Agnes. ‘Dad says I’ll grow into it. Arsehole.’) and I tell each other everything about one another but it’s not for the simple pleasure of knowing; we rattle through our histories at a hellacious clip, like we’re cramming for an exam. Waves of artificial happiness carry us to my house. Afterwards, too wired yet to sleep, I stare at the ceiling, feet twitching, and try to ignore reality tugging at the corners of my consciousness.

Simon can be reached on Twitter, @SKBwrites, or via his website, www.simonkbrown.com.

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The Family at the End of All Time by Robert McGinty

Robert McGinty works and writes in Edinburgh, where he lives with his wife and son. He was a recipient of a 2016 Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award in the Children’s and Young Adult Fiction category. He is currently working on a Young Adult novel called The Dead Men of Pendragon House.

The Family at the End of All Time was written six months after Robert became a father and describes in a fantasy/sci-fi setting the effects of sleep deprivation on a new parent, when time itself has become very plastic and unreliable.

 

The Family at the End of All Time

 

Baby was asleep, at last, in his basket.

‘How old is he now, do you think?’ asked Mother.

With intense fascination, she watched the little frowns that passed over Baby’s sleeping face like clouds across a bright day.

Father looked at his wife with a worried expression.

‘What do you mean?’ he asked.

‘We don’t really know, do we?’

He put down his paper.

‘You must be able to work it out,’ he said. ‘We brought him home from hospital…’

He looked up at the ceiling to aid his calculations.

‘When was it now?’

Baby chuckled in his basket from the depths of some abstract dream and Mother instinctively put her hand out to touch him.

‘It really is broken, isn’t it?’ she said.

Father blinked his tired eyes and rubbed the grey bags of skin that hung beneath them.

‘Well, it’s either that or it’s us. The little bugger hasn’t let us sleep since we brought him home.’

*

You couldn’t see it in the sky or anything—not even with the most powerful telescopes—and it was hard to believe, yet its effects were being felt. People preferred to remain indoors. It was too strange a feeling to come home from work not knowing if it had been five thousand years or five minutes since you had left in the morning. The official recommendation was to stay at home and limit the disorientation.

The youngest family lived in a street on the edge of town, under the shadow of the conical Law which towered up behind their garden like a blunt-headed green giant. All the houses on the street had been built to an exact design and Father sometimes said that he might easily return to the wrong house some evening and mistakenly end up with another wife.

He had been joking then, but now he felt as if something like that had really happened to him, and in his own home. His paternity leave seemed to have lasted about a century already.

The street, usually busy with neighbourhood children and their bikes and games and battles in the daytime, was absolutely deserted. Curtains in house windows up and down the street were drawn, hiding their unmoored inhabitants from view. He let his own curtain fall and turned back to the dingy light of his front room.

Mother was cradling Baby in her lap; Baby had just come off her breast after a long feed and was whimpering gently in the crook of her elbow.

‘Will he ever grow up?’

Mother looked to him, almost challengingly, for an answer.

He had no real answers, of course he did not.

‘In other dimensions, perhaps, he will. It will be a different kind of growth.’

‘Yes, but what will his life look like?’

‘I don’t know. I suppose a lot different from our own lives.’

The woman cuddled the whimpering form closer to her breast.

‘I want him to have the kind of life everyone before him has had. I don’t want him to be different from us.’

‘You don’t know. It might be better.’

In his heart, he didn’t think it would be.

*

Some nights Baby slept for five hours straight according to the clock, and those nights were good; they could be survived. But on most nights, Baby slept hardly at all—he yowled when he was put down and wanted to be continuously suckled. Those nights were hard to take, and Father was not sure if the time dislocations he felt were the effects of sleep deprivation or the hyper-massive black hole on the edge of the galaxy.

‘Do you think he is aware of what is happening?’

Father was sitting up on his pillows reading his paper, and turned his head to consider Baby suckling at Mother’s breast.

‘Maybe it’s why he can’t sleep,’ said Mother.

Baby always kept up a mumbling commentary while feeding, and they listened together for a few moments as he slurped, grumbled and pulled at the teat in his mouth.

‘I don’t suppose babies have any concept of time anyway,’ said Father.

He flapped the paper in his hand.

‘It says here the hole is expanding and eating local stars at such an enormous rate that the effects might eventually extend to the other dimensions.’

‘How long before it reaches us?’

Father shook his head.

‘Even if they were to put a timescale on it, how would we measure it without reliable time? What does it mean anymore if someone says such and such a thing will happen in ten minutes? What is ten minutes, after all?’

He read more of the reports without really understanding anything about the complex physics involved.

‘Does it mean there will be no more birthdays?’

‘Yes, there will be birthdays. Of course, there must be birthdays.’

He spoke with conviction, without feeling any conviction at all.

‘But if you don’t know how long a year is and you can’t measure a year, how do you decide when to have a birthday?’

‘Maybe we’ll find other ways to mark special events. I don’t know, but there must be birthdays of some sort.’

Baby sighed and spat out Mother’s nipple, causing her to wince. She gathered him up, put his big nodding head over her shoulder and began to burp him.

‘I was looking forward to his birthday parties,’ she said, patting him sadly.

*

The effects of the hyper-massive black hole, which had suddenly and impossibly belched into life in apparently empty space, pulsed about them, distending and contracting time, distorting the very fabric of linear existence.

Sometimes Father thought Baby had been with them for a thousand years and at others for merely five minutes: he could be surprised all over by the little stranger who smiled and giggled at him as if they were meeting for the very first time.

Sometimes he wondered if they should have had Baby at all; if they should have made another decision in the knowledge of the Event. But when Baby smiled, such a surge of primal and instinctive love thundered through him that his doubts were all swept away.

Baby might not have the life they had enjoyed—the sequential, orderly life of time running forwards, but it would be a life after all. Where there was life, there were always possibilities.

They lived in their house on the edge of the town in the shadow of the Law while time continued to fracture and the hours ebbed and flowed like a tide around them.

Father looked out at the deserted street and saw that the sun was shining.

‘Why are we all hiding?’ he asked. ‘What are we afraid of?’

His wife did not answer but looked at him, surprised at his tone.

‘I want to show Baby the world as it is, before it is gone forever,’ he said positively.

It was as if a heavy weight lifted from his shoulders.

‘What are you suggesting?’ asked Mother.

‘A picnic, on top of the Law,’ he said.

*

Climbing the steep sides of the Law after days spent inactive in the house was punishing, but they were determined. Father carried Baby in the sling on his front, and Mother carried the backpack with the picnic. By the time they reached the top of the Law they were gasping for breath and sweat was pouring from them.

The view was wonderful from the summit, looking out over the rolling green hills and the wavering canopies of trees to the sparkling river in the distance. The sun was shining brightly over everything and Father could almost convince himself that the roads and houses were trembling in and out of view because of a heat haze; this sleight of hand helped settle his mind.

They spread the waterproof rug and on top of it they arranged the food and drink. Father unbuckled the sling and sat Baby on his knee, the wide-eyed child considering the astonishing world below him from the shade of his floppy sun hat.

They ate and drank and talked to Baby, who talked back in a language neither of them understood. Father was aware that his wife was shifting backwards and forwards, as he must be; he caught glimpses of her as she had looked when they first met and as an older woman he did not yet know. He ignored the effect, keeping vertigo at bay.

‘It’s coming, isn’t it?’ she said at last.

There was a pearly whiteness around them that suffused the air, as if atoms were congealing.

‘Yes,’ he said quietly, and put his arm around her.

A great white pressure weighed on the sun-lit world; the sign that something tremendous and awful was about to happen. The scenery slipped about them as reality lost its anchor in the present. Past and future ran free of constraint.

They did not look at the world; they looked at Baby with their heads together and waited, cradling the child between them as if they could protect him, enjoying the warmth of the sun beating down on their three bodies.

‘Do you see him?’

Father did see him, the man his child would become; the man he already was; the man that looked at him from child’s eyes.

‘I see all of him,’ he said softly, with awe in his voice.

They held each other tightly and Baby played between them while the skies opened and everything happened.

Robert McGinty can be contacted via his Twitter account, @robertmcginty1.

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Child of the Moon by Heather Parry

Heather Parry is an Edinburgh-based writer and editor. She won the 2016 Bridge Award for an Emerging Writer, and has been published in several magazines, including The Stinging Fly. She performed her work at the 2016 Edinburgh International Book Festival and is currently working on her first novel. 

 

Child of the Moon


His mother paints electric blue around his eyes and sweeps the brush upwards with a flourish. She knows the boy hates it; the cloying grease of the face paint, the performance to come, the inevitable pimples. Yet he sits still while his mother, with mascara shipped from Asia, colours his white eyelashes even whiter. With the same implement, she’ll colour his white eyebrows too. As they sit face to face, their bare knees rest together. Their vastly different skin tones, as always, make him think of yin and yang. She prefers to call him the cream to her coffee.

“Seriously, mum. I’m too old for this.”
“You’re never too old for tradition.”

A splash of darkest red on the lips finishes his face. He goes to scratch his mouth. His mother bats his hand away. She steps behind her seated son, taking all of his thin, colourless hair in one hand and sweeping it up from his shoulders. Two twists of the wrists and it sits in a neat bun atop his head, showing off his pale neck. A good length of spine. She glances out of the window. It is almost time.

“Mum, they don’t even watch anymore.”
“But they’ll notice if it doesn’t happen.”

The curtain twitchers of their small town know this routine like clockwork, and though they no longer spill out onto the street, they still await the boy’s emergence with every rise of the blood moon. She begins to wrap the many-coloured fabrics of their homeland around his body. She allows a proud tear to drop onto his pearly back.

He stands, lifts his arms, slowly spins on his heels. The fabric encases him. This is not how the men dress on their island. This is the ceremonial dress of the women, but she has never told him.

He is ready. Swaddled in the fabrics of his homeland, his white hair tied, his face painted. He looks magnificent. She hands him his bow and arrow. He tugs at the material around his waist and scratches where the paint itches his face. If only her heritage actually did look this beautiful.

The moon finally burns. The boy goes out into the street.

He walks to the middle of the road. Raises his arms. His fingertips touching above his head. His gaze raises to meet the sky; upon seeing the scarlet circle he reacts. His body falls. He catches himself in a wide-footed stance, knees bent, arms up in horror, face contorted. He points, the fingertip tracing a dragon’s path around its prey: the blood moon. He turns away, one arm across his eyes, one leg slightly bent, the other sweeping the pointed toe of its foot around him in a quiet circle. He spins, torn. Action or inaction. The fear of letting one thing consume another. The terror of potential failure.

A single bark of laughter. A chill passes through her. She looks from house to house. Each window is dark. Each door remains closed. He stands, adrift. Man dressed as boy. But for the whiteness of him, he looks exactly like his father.

With a breath so deep it animates him, he decides. He reaches for the bow and arrow tucked into the back of his fabric, his delicate fingers finding them easily. He lifts them into the air, settles the arrow to the bow, strokes arrowhead to feather, and grasps. He points the tip skyward, trained on the moon’s predator. His painted lips part. He takes in strength. He pulls back. Pauses. Lets go.

He stands in the silence. She aches, but cannot rescue him. He waits a few more seconds, allowing his arrow to pierce the creature’s heart, stop its danger, end its reign over the moon. His mother neither smiles nor claps. This, she thinks, is the last one. A child can slay dragons, but not a man.

 

You can find out more about Heather Parry at her website, www.heatherparry.com, or by following her on Twitter, @heatherparryuk.