Category: Short Stories

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, as well as occasional articles and stories for his blog-site.

Voyager is a short story about a journey of escape for a space obsessed boy who feels a million miles distant from everything in his world, and his journey out into the universe through the stargate of his imagination.

 

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Voyager

 

How could he make them understand that his signal took seventeen hours to travel from where he was to where they were?

‘You said you had one yesterday. Show us.’

Giles found himself backed into a corner of the school bike shelter by a crowd of boys from his class. Big Archie, the tallest boy in the year, stood at their head.

‘You haven’t got one, have you?’

Archie held his own mobile phone in front of Giles’s face—a sleek, black rectangle of technology.

‘Everyone else has got one. Are you a freak or something? Are your parents too poor to buy you one?’

They all laughed. They did not understand that their laughter would not reach him for a further seventeen hours.

‘What’s in the bag?’

Giles clutched a white plastic bag with something rather awkward and bulky inside that stuck out of the opening at the top.

‘Voyager 1,’ he said.

He held the bag open for the boys to see and Archie reached in and pulled out the delicate model by the long, latticed arm pointing upwards at him.

‘What the hell is Voyager 1?’ said Archie, turning it over in his hands.

‘A spacecraft,’ said Giles.

There was a sudden crack and the long arm snapped off from the main body of the model.

‘Aw, broke it. Sorry, Spaceman.’

Archie shoved the separate pieces back at Giles. The boys laughed and walked away, leaving him standing alone with the broken model cradled in his arms.

*

Giles did not hear Miss Teather calling at first because his mind was full of space, as it always was.

Sputnik encircled his thoughts, beeping simple messages. Mercury, Gemini and Apollo spacecraft streaked across the blue sky of his imagination, and the Eagle landed in the rocky terrain of his fantasies.

‘Giles!’

Miss Teather’s voice jerked him back to Earth, where he discovered that his class was laughing at him.

‘Yes, Miss?’

Miss Teather, with grey bags under her eyes, barely kept the exasperation out of her voice. ‘Are you ready to give your presentation? Come up to the front of the class.’

Giles picked up the plastic bag containing the broken model and made his way between the desks towards the whiteboard, just avoiding the wicked foot Archie stuck out in his path.

‘Do you have something with you to illustrate your subject, Giles?’ asked Miss Teather.

‘Yes, Miss.’

He fumbled awkwardly with the bag and removed the two parts of Voyager 1.

‘What a shame! How did your model get broken?’

Giles could feel Archie staring very hard at him.

‘Dropped it, Miss.’

He held up the long latticework section of plastic struts that had been snapped off.

‘It’s the magnetometer, Miss. I can mend it when I get home.’

Miss Teather nodded patiently.

‘Well, on you go Giles, when you’re ready.’

Giles turned to face the class and twenty-four bored, hostile faces stared back at him.

‘This is Voyager 1,’ he said, holding up the model.

As soon as he started speaking on his subject, he forgot all about those faces, as if they were no longer there. The spacecraft filled his entire field of vision and all he had to do was broadcast the voice that was always talking in his head, set his controls to autopilot and cruise.

The voice told his class about the launch of the space probe Voyager 1 on September 5^th, 1977, sent by NASA on a grand tour of the outer planets. It described the main components of the model: the High Gain Antenna Reflector Dish and Sun Sensor; the boom arm that housed the Ultraviolet and Infrared Spectrometer and Radiometer; the Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator; the Micrometeorite Shielding; the Hydrazine Thrusters and the Optical Calibration Target.

It explained how the once-in-two-centuries alignment of the planets had enabled the spacecraft to reach Jupiter; how Voyager had used Jupiter’s gravity to slingshot out to Saturn; and of its numerous discoveries among those far away worlds and moons.

The voice described the golden disc attached to the side of Voyager, with its engraved depictions of two humans, a man and a woman, and set of logical directions to Earth that would provide any curious aliens with a route map to find its makers.

The voice told of the Pale Blue Dot, which was the furthest away picture ever taken of the planet Earth–a tiny living speck engulfed in the blackness of space–and of the vast distances the spacecraft had traveled, and how it had crossed the heliopause in 2012, which is the point where the Sun’s solar winds die away and interstellar space begins, and how in 40,272 AD Voyager 1 would pass within 1.7 light years of AC+793888 in the constellation of Ursa Minor.

Finally, the voice explained that from its current position in space, a message from Voyager 1 took seventeen hours to reach Earth traveling at the speed of light, and that its broadcasts would become fainter and more distant until 2025, when the spacecraft would finally run out of power and stop sending messages home.

And then, as if it too had run out of motive power, the voice stopped talking and Giles saw once again the bored, indifferent faces staring at him.

‘Well,’ said Miss Teather, ‘that was a very…detailed…presentation. Thank you, Giles.’

*

As everyone was leaving the classroom for lunch Miss Teather asked Giles to stay behind.

It was strange being in the empty room with just his teacher and the smell of his classmates hanging in the air. Miss Teather sat behind her desk and looked with a kindly face on him.

‘Is everything quite alright, Giles?’ she asked.

‘Yes, Miss.’

‘I’ve noticed that you don’t play with any of the other boys. Has anything happened between you and them?’

How could he explain to her that he was now so incredibly remote from the other boys that anything they had to say to him took seventeen hours to reach him?

‘Nothing’s happened,’ he said.

Miss Teather was quiet for a moment, just looking at him, as if working out in her mind how to span those millions of miles between teacher and pupil.

‘Would you tell me if anyone was bullying you?’

‘Yes, Miss.’

‘Have you told me the truth of how your model got broken?’

‘Yes, Miss.’

‘Is everything quite alright at home?’

‘Yes, Miss.’

He thought fleetingly of his parents, Phobos and Deimos, circling cold and distant in his mind’s orbit.

Something about his answers seemed to make Miss Teather slowly crumple. She looked very tired again.

‘Go and eat your lunch, Giles.’

‘Yes, Miss.’

She called to him just as he was passing through the classroom door.

‘Thank you for the presentation this morning, Giles. It was very interesting.’

‘Thank you, Miss.’

*

He was orbiting Jupiter with his lunch, sitting under the leafless tree that grew on the patch of playing field furthest from the school. The voices of the other children floated to him on the air like distant messages from mission control.

His blue lunch box lay beside him as he ate a cheese sandwich. As well as sandwiches, it contained an apple, a packet of crisps, a chocolate bar and a carton of blackberry juice, all as artfully and economically packed as any astronaut’s provisions. It was important to be supplied with a carefully balanced nutritional package when so far away from home, circling a massive gas giant.

Giles thought of his home, millions of miles nearer the sun and so much warmer than these frigid wastes of space. He saw his busy bedroom walls with their posters of important satellites and spacecraft–from Sputnik to Mars Rover Curiosity–and the recreations of these machines which he had crafted from modeling sets and which stood on every available surface.

Would he ever return? Was there enough power in his engines to turn from his path and cross the distance back? He did not think so: he had traveled too far already. It was a one-way mission, after all. He wondered if his parents would be angry with him when they found out he had gone on such a journey without their leave, or if they would even notice.

Giles was so absorbed in these far away meditations that he was not aware of Archie until a foot kicked his lunchbox and sent his apple rolling off across the grass like an out of control moon.

A shadow fell over him: he looked up.

‘Did you tell?’ said Archie.

Giles shook his head. ‘No.’

‘What did she want?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Giles, shrugging his shoulders. ‘She just asked me some questions.’

‘What sort of questions, Spaceman?’

‘Just questions.’

Archie suddenly dropped on Giles, shoved him into the dirt at the base of the leafless tree and pinned him under his enormous knees.

‘Did you tell on me?’

Archie’s knees were squeezing so much air from Giles’s lungs that he could barely find the breath to answer: ‘No!’

‘Did you?’

‘No!’

‘Bloody freak.’

With a last vindictive shove at Giles’s head with his spade-like palm, Archie released him and jumped up.

‘Tell on me and you’re dead.’

‘I won’t,’ said Giles.

‘Shut up, Spaceman.’

*

Using Jupiter’s enormous gravitational field, Giles shot himself out on a new trajectory across the empty spaces of the playing fields and away from those distant laughing voices.

Soon he was beyond Saturn and still traveling, his lunchbox with his essential supplies gripped in his hand as he walked and walked. He was covered in dust and tears. His cheek throbbed where Archie’s hand had struck.

But Archie was seventeen hours from him and could not hurt him; he was so impossibly remote from all living things that none could touch him. Giles was on his way to places they could not even imagine, covering distances that seemed impossible to them: he was voyaging alone into an astonishing universe.

At last he reached the heliopause, the boundary of his solar system. The school walls stretched out on either side of him.

Pushing his lunch box to the top of the wall, he scrambled up beside it and sat looking at the distant school building, watching the scurrying dots that played inside its protective embrace—so far away that he could barely even hear their voices.

He turned and dangled his legs over the other side of the wall with his back to the school. Across the fields in front of him ran the main road out of the town, where cars passed continually on their journeys to unknown destinations.

He was at the limits of the solar system, his signal weak, all alone on the boundary of the Sun’s influence—so distant that he could no longer feel any of its warmth touching his heart.

The school bell was ringing and ringing, sending him a message which he had traveled too far to hear. He picked up his lunch box and looked out at the vast reaches of interstellar space stretching out in front of him.

He had a long way to go: he jumped off the wall.

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Robert McGinty can be contacted via his Twitter account @robertmcginty1 or through his blog. More of Robert’s work can be found here.

 

KC Murdarasi is a Scottish author based in Glasgow. She studied Ancient History at the University of St Andrews, then worked as a missionary in Albania for a few years before returning to the UK.

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The Archaic Smile

 

The van doors swung open, revealing the limestone figure, and Nicholas bit his lip to suppress a gasp. One leg in front of the other as if impatient to move, hands clenched into implacable fists, each muscle as perfect as the day it had been carved. Taking in every inch, Nicholas, curator of the Ancient World collection at the Royal Museum, swelled with pride. This was his purchase; he had negotiated it, organised the funds, arranged the transfer. Now here it was. Nicholas’ pale blue eyes burned as he stared at the statue. It didn’t meet Nicholas’ gaze, instead smiling impassively over his head.

“He’s a happy chappie, ain’t he?” said one of the couriers, jolting Nicholas back to the present. He realised he was shivering in his shirt sleeves.

“You’re late,” Nicholas snapped. “You should have been here two hours ago.” The couriers shot each other a look and started to wheel the carefully strapped statue up the ramp into the Royal Museum.

The London sunshine was weak, filtered by layers of cloud—nothing like the fierce sunshine of Greece, but it was welcome after centuries of darkness. One foot in front of the other, the statue entered its new home.

Nicholas led the way through the confusing passages of the museum, his quick steps sharply defined on the hard floors, until they reached the main gallery. In a small, dark room, off to one side, waited an empty plinth.

“Just here, please,” he said. His hands played nervously with his tie clip as he watched the couriers jack the statue to the right level, then painstakingly inch it on to the plinth. Nicholas’ thin frame, a picture of nervous energy, provided a contrast to the solid musculature of the limestone man who stared calmly over his head.

“Zakynthos Kouros,” read one of the men after they had finished. “Is that his name, then?”

“It’s what it is known as,” conceded Nicholas, frowning at the inexactitude. “It is a kouros, a statue of a young man, and it is from Zakynthos. Hence, ‘the Zakynthos Kouros’.”

“Who’s it supposed to be?” asked the other courier.

“No one knows,” said Nicholas. “It was probably a grave monument for a young warrior.”

“Well cheerio, Zak,” said the first man, “Keep smiling!” The two men laughed as they wheeled their platform back out to the van. Nicholas winced. The kouros kept smiling.

The young man in whose memory the kouros had been carved had been dead for some time when the commission was finished. His family, rich and influential, had the brand-new statue installed on the highest point of the island. The warrior’s grieving mother visited often, his other relatives less so. They left small presents, libations, remembrances, but soon the visits stopped and the young warrior was forgotten. The kouros remained, however. Unperturbed by the years he continued smiling to himself until everyone had forgotten why he was there. It didn’t take many generations before the islanders started to believe that his perfect form, larger than life, must represent Zakynthos himself, the legendary founder of the island. The small presents and libations began again, this time accompanied by prayers and requests for blessings from the hero Zakynthos.

Emma, the junior gallery assistant, popped her head into the room.

“Is this him?” she asked, “He’s amazing! You’d never know he was so old.”

Yes, you would, thought Nicholas, if you knew anything about it. He sometimes wished he could be more patient with junior staff like Emma. She had a real inquisitiveness which should be encouraged, but she knew so little that was of any worth. She had a degree in Cultural Studies. Nicholas thought Cultural Studies was the sort of thing people studied if they had no culture of their own, though he had never said this to her.

“Why is he in the side room? Why not in the central gallery?” Emma asked. Nicholas frowned. He had considered this for some time and still wasn’t sure about his decision.

“It’s easier to protect here. It would be preferable to display it in the main gallery, but I can’t take the risk of crowds jostling it.”

Emma nodded distractedly as she walked round the statue, looking it up and down. “There’s something funny about him,” she said. “It’s as if his forearms are on the wrong way. Or his hands are.” She made a fist and looked from her hand to his. “And his face–that funny little smile! Why did they make him smiling? Is he supposed to be a friendly warrior?” She gave a smile of her own to Nicholas. It wasn’t as effective on him as it was on other men, but it still had a thawing effect.

“It’s called the archaic smile,” Nicholas explained. “Early Greek sculptors found it hard to carve the mouth realistically. The solution, they discovered, was to carve little grooves on either side of it, giving the appearance of a smile. The archaic smile disappeared once sculptural technique improved.”

“Shame,” said Emma, “it’s really cute.” She reached up a finger to touch the kouros’ smiling face. Nicholas’s hand shot out, stopping just short of grabbing her wrist.

“Don’t touch it!” he snapped, shocked. “Never touch limestone without gloves. The acid in your fingers will damage the rock.”

Emma backed away, stung. She never seemed to be able to do the right thing where Nicholas was concerned. Nicholas saw that he had shaken her and wanted to apologise. But how could he apologise when he had only stopped her from doing something she should have known better than to do anyway? Instead, he spun on the heel of his shiny brown loafer and hurried off to his office.

The Zakynthos Kouros did not remain alone for long on his elevation on the island. Others arrived. Some were merely small relief sculptures, but others were kouroi like him, standing almost as tall as he did. These were in a new style. Their bronze bodies glowed like warm flesh. Their hair fell in realistic curls and the mouths on the faces of these boy-men had perfect, curved, pouting lips. And yet the islanders remained loyal to their Zakynthos, with his rock-cut, dependable, not-quite-right anatomy, his steady gaze and his cryptic smile; the offerings kept coming. From time to time over the decades an earthquake would shake the island. Some of the lighter bronze statues would fall and need to be propped up again, or repaired, or melted down, but the Zakynthos Kouros stood strong, the lord of the island.

Nicholas hunched over his computer, the light of its screen competing with the failing light of the autumn afternoon. He sighed and ran a hand through his unfashionable hair. More and more he had been feeling that he was not cut out for this job, or perhaps that the job was not cut out for him. At thirty-two he was one of the youngest collection curators the museum had ever had, especially of the prestigious Ancient World collection. Luck may have played a part, but Nicholas knew that his drive, intelligence and perfectionism had taken him this far this quickly. Yet now he found that what he’d achieved was not what he wanted. He was expected to line manage other people, people with no similarity to himself and apparently no sensitivity for the ancient world. He had free reign to display exhibits and design collections, which was his dream, but he was expected to submit reports detailing the educational value and accessibility of his choices. He was in love with the relics of the ancient world but he often felt that his work cheapened them.

Shaking his head, Nicholas pushed the subject out of his mind and went to work on his computer. There was a lot to finalise before the exhibition opened the next morning, and the central exhibit arriving late had not helped. He worked away doggedly at the final details of tour plans and exhibit guides before movement below distracted him. The smoked glass of Nicholas’ office looked down on the gallery, and he could see some of the junior staff near his prize exhibit. They had obviously come from other galleries to see the new purchase. Some of them had gone inside the room, and Nicholas could not see from here whether they were wearing gloves. Quickly saving his work on the computer, he hurried out of his office and down the stairs.

Earthquakes had become a feature of the kouros’ existence on Zakynthos, and he smiled on calmly as they passed him by over the decades and centuries. But the base on which he stood was gradually weakened, and the crevice in the side of the hill which had been there for centuries was gradually widening. Even he was not invulnerable; one day, much like any other, the shaking and rumbling started again, and this time the kouros did not stand strong. Tipped over onto the soft earth, with his fists clenched and his face still set in a smile, he rolled into the crevice. Dirt and debris piled on top of him, hiding him from sight. The islanders wondered what had become of their Zakynthos but, as after all earthquakes, they had more pressing concerns on their minds. The rain set the fresh dirt in the crevice, the grass sprang up, and the kouros was lost.

Down in the gallery, having protected the kouros from ungloved hands for the second time, Nicholas realised he would have to do something more permanent. There were Tensa-barriers in a storeroom. He didn’t like using them but it was obviously necessary–there were currently no glass cases large enough to hold the kouros. Nicholas looked around to make sure that nobody was waiting to prod his purchase while he was gone, but it was the end of the working day and the last of the assistants was leaving the gallery. Relieved, Nicholas hurried to the storeroom.

Other earthquakes followed while the kouros was buried in the hillside. He could feel them pressing on his stone limbs, the earth shifting around him, packing him in more tightly. Sometimes it seemed as if the pressure must crack the limestone, but each time the strong rock held out, surviving another year, another decade, another century beneath the ground. Goats walked over him, rains fell on the earth above him, but the kouros’ stone smile stayed in place.

Nicholas took a deep breath and released it slowly. He always felt more at ease when the museum was empty, when it was his private domain. He set up the garish black-and-yellow striped bands around his prize exhibit, a metre and a half from the statue, far longer than any arm. There was barely any space left in the small room—no risk of a crowd. This was the first time the statue had ever been on display since it was discovered, and Nicholas felt the responsibility keenly. Only expert archaeologists had ever seen this statue, and he could not allow it to be damaged now that it had been entrusted to the care of the Royal Museum. He set up a metal placard holder behind the barrier, then hurried up to his office for the final item.

In the end it was another earthquake which had released the kouros. A spate of tremors occurred close together, sending panic through the islanders, who now drove cars and carried phones but still feared the shaking and rumbling as their ancestors had. The crevice in the hill, so long filled in, started to open again. The dry earth shifted and broke apart. Eventually, one of the many quakes dislodged enough earth to reveal a piece of the Zakynthos Kouros: one foot poked out into the light, as if he had kicked the hole himself. Once the quakes and aftershocks were over, it wasn’t long before the foot was spotted. The exultant looks on the faces of his discoverers when they realised that they’d found a whole archaic kouros reminded him of his early admirers. He smiled.

A piece of paper flapped in Nicholas’ hand as he walked quickly to the centre of the gallery. He slipped under the barrier and placed it on the placard holder, behind the plastic panel. ‘CAUTION: Do not attempt to touch this statue as it is very delicate’. Yes, that would do. Now all that remained was to shut down his computer and lock up. He wanted to get an early night, ready for the opening of the exhibition in the morning. It would be his triumph. He leaned down to adjust the piece of paper in its holder.

The smile on the kouros seemed sinister in the half-light of the side room. Towering above Nicholas, it looked far from delicate. It had survived its identity being forgotten. It had survived new styles of art and new philosophies. It had survived earthquakes too numerous for even an ancient hero to remember. It was lord of the island of Zakynthos.

The limestone remembered the tremors, the shaking and rumbling. It remembered the sensation of toppling, falling, from so long ago. Slowly it began to move.

Nicholas looked up from fiddling with the paper, but too late. He tried to back through the door but the barriers hindered him. The kouros crashed down on top of him. Its clenched stone fists pinned Nicholas’ arms to his side. The weight of its torso stifled him from crying out. There was silence.

*

The opening of the new Archaic Exhibition the next day was a great success. No one commented on the empty plinth in the side room. Instead, people’s eyes were drawn to the star attraction in the centre. One of the junior staff hurried over to Emma as casually as he could and spoke in a low voice so that the spectators could not hear.

“What on earth happened last night? I heard Nicholas got crushed by a statue or something?”

Emma replied in the same low tone. “It was the Zakynthos Kouros, the new one. But it’s okay; Nicholas is going to be alright. A cleaner found him this morning. A few broken ribs, but it looks like that’s all.”

“Poor sod!” replied her colleague. “What have you done with the statue? Was it smashed? That thing’s worth millions!” Emma raised her eyebrows and leaned closer.

“It was completely undamaged!” she whispered. “Nicholas must have broken its fall.”

“Dedicated to the last,” chuckled the boy. “But you haven’t displayed it, have you?”

“Of course I have,” Emma said, obviously proud to have been the one to make the decision. “Nicholas would want me to. But it’s okay, I’ve taken precautions.” She led him over to the centre of the room where the largest crowd was clustered.

“I’ve moved it to the central plinth. The other one must have been unstable. And I’ve put up those metal security barriers, not the stretchy ones. And I’ve put up a sign too.” She pointed to the display board which stood in front of the strong barriers. “It was open on Nicholas’s computer so I just changed it a bit and printed it.”

The limestone statue now towered over a sign that read: ‘CAUTION: Do not attempt to touch this statue as it is very dangerous.’

Standing tall in the centre of the gallery, staring over the heads of its new admirers, the kouros smiled.

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Karen can be reached via her website: www.kcmurdarasi.com.

Sarah recently graduated from Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota with cum laude degrees in Creative Writing and International Studies. Her fiction and poetry are published in Chanter Literary Magazine and in Thistle Literary Magazine. Sarah is currently based in Washington, D.C., where she is working on her first novel.

Sometimes the world gets smaller before it gets bigger. Don’t is a short story about Eddie, a child whose family has changed in ways that he doesn’t understand yet.

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Don’t

 

It was the last day of summer, and in the morning it rained. Eddie pressed his nose against the living room window. He watched the raindrops drip down the glass and into the yard, which had already turned to mud. The house was quiet. Eddie listened to the rain plinking off the roof and in the gutters. It sounded like maybe it would rain forever and would wash away everything, the cars and the yards and the sidewalks, and he would never get to go to second grade because the school would wash away and everything would be mud.

Eddie removed his nose from the window, leaving a smudge. The situation was serious. He decided to prepare. When the world washed away, he would not. He would be ready. Eddie slid down from his perch on the couch, sending his mother’s red throw pillows tumbling to the floor. He left them there. Her bosses let her do her lawyer work from home, so she was busy in her office downstairs with the blinds always shut. She probably didn’t know it was raining. Eddie would warn her later.

He rubbed at his nose and thought about what he would need to do first. The rain began to blow against the windows, tiny taps against the glass. Waterproof. He had to be waterproof. Eddie went to the boot tray by the front door and put on his green galoshes, and then opened the coat closet and pulled his raincoat from the hanger. Eddie zipped it up as far as it would go. The zipper tickled his chin. “Phase one: complete,” he whispered.

The coat closet was, like everything else in the house, carefully organized. Eddie looked up at the sweaters and raincoats and jackets, lined up by who was supposed to wear them. His father had gone on another trip. His hangers were all empty. He must have known it would rain. His hangers looked like knobby wooden shoulders, bunched up next to the ink-stained black coats that Eddie’s mother wore and the rows of Eddie’s brother’s things that always looked nice and new. His father had wanted to donate them, but his mother said no. Eddie was glad. He liked Neil’s coats, with the gum wrappers and pennies and his bus pass still in the pockets.

Eddie reached up and pulled Neil’s raincoat down too. He would be doubly waterproof, just to be sure. The shiny red fabric still had its familiar plastic-and-brother smell. It hung past his knees. Eddie puffed up his chest and pulled both hoods over his head, pulling the elastic so that he could still see. “Phase one: super complete,” he said to the hush of the hall, “Complete for real.”

The wet taps on the window grew louder as the wind picked up. Eddie could hear it whooshing around in the living room fireplace. He tugged at Neil’s sleeves. It would rain forever, he thought, and the wind would blow everything into the mud and the puddles, all the houses and all the people, and there would be no second grade for him or for anybody. Downstairs, the fax machine whirred. Downstairs. Down. Up. Eddie would go up. He would be a pilot. He would fly away from the rain and the wind and he would only land, he decided, when it was sunny again.

Eddie had read enough picture books to know that if somebody wanted to be a pilot, they had to wear a cap and goggles and a leather jacket. It was a law. He would ask his mother about it later, but he was pretty sure. Eddie rocked from his heels to his toes and back again, thinking. He stopped. There was a leather jacket in Neil’s room.

Eddie went upstairs and crept down the hall, holding his breath, making sure that his galoshes only made small squeaks. It was important to be quiet, like a ghost. One night at the beginning of the summer, not too long after his mother started doing her lawyer work downstairs and closing all the blinds and curtains, Eddie heard his father go into Neil’s room. Eddie heard him saying something. He got out of bed and pressed his ear to the wall, but his father’s voice was too quiet for him to hear the words. When he came in to kiss Eddie goodnight, his cheeks were wet. He started taking his trips after that.

Eddie reached the door. There was a small crack near the hinges, and two stickers that looked like they were stuck there without a lot of thought. One was from a Granny Smith apple. The other was from a band Neil used to like, a shiny red mouth sticker with a shiny red tongue and round white teeth. Eddie turned the doorknob and walked into the room. He wanted to say, “Phase two, part one: complete,” but he didn’t.

Neil’s room smelled just like his raincoat, only there was more of it. The air was full of Neil. The bed was unmade, as it always was, next to the nightstand with the cards and the little orange candy jars on it, and the guitar leaning against it on the ground. Clothes were piled around the bed and by the bookshelf: pants, shirts, unpaired socks. Eddie didn’t see a leather jacket. It was in the closet, maybe.

The closet door was closed. Eddie made his way over to it, turned the doorknob, and pulled. It didn’t open. Eddie frowned and puffed out his cheeks, but pilots needed to be brave and not quit, so he tried the door a second time. It didn’t open. Eddie stood in front of the door, thinking. Outside Neil’s window, rain came down on the roof like it didn’t know how to be quiet, just how to fall down and down and down.

Thunder began to rumble. Eddie’s stomach rumbled too. He remembered that it had been a long time since breakfast. He took one of Neil’s candy jars of the nightstand and tried to open it, but the white top wouldn’t come off. Neil loved his candy. He ate his candy in the morning and at night, even in the afternoons sometimes. He said it made his stomachaches feel better. Neil never let Eddie have even one piece, which wasn’t fair at all. There were more than enough to share.

Eddie put the candy jar back and jammed his fingers into the pockets of Neil’s raincoat. His hoods fell forward and he pushed them out of his eyes. His hands curled into fists. This was important. He was a pilot. He needed his lunch and he needed his leather jacket. Eddie wrapped both hands around the closet doorknob and yanked, hard.

It opened, sprinkling bits of dust from the top of the door. They hung in the air for a long moment, not ready to fall, but then Eddie stopped looking because there it was, the jacket, dangling in front of him. It was wedged in between the button-up shirts and the dress pants. Eddie pulled it down.

He slipped his left arm into the black leather, then his right. It was heavier than he thought it would be, heavy and warm, tugging a little at his shoulders as if it was tired and wanted to lie down. Eddie thought about saying “Phase, two: complete.” He rolled the words around in his mouth and then swallowed them. He had to be quiet.

Lightning flashed through the window over Neil’s bed. The light caught the lip of the old fishbowl on the desk where Neil kept his guitar picks. Eddie went over to the fishbowl and poked it. It was the size of his head. An idea gripped him, suddenly. It was the size of his head. He lifted the fishbowl off the desk and tilted it over. The picks made a nice clinking sound as they hit the desk. One rolled under the bed. Eddie flipped the fishbowl upside down and lowered it onto his head. He was better than a pilot. He was an astronaut.

Eddie took a few steps back and turned to face the wall mirror next to Neil’s desk. He peered out at himself from under the fishbowl and the jacket and the raincoats. His preparations, he saw, were perfect. Eddie was waterproof, windproof, and gravity-proof. He waved at his reflection and his reflection waved back.

Astronauts were better than pilots. He could see that now. They were like regular pilots, except they were space pilots. They didn’t have to worry about hitting birds or the Eiffel Tower. Eddie nodded in agreement with himself. This was the right way to go. There was no rain in space, and no mud, probably. He would have to go there to be sure. It would all be okay. He would build a spaceship and fly to a better place, like Neil did. He would go to second grade after all, except it would be on Mars.

The fishbowl was fogging up from Eddie’s breath, and it was becoming harder to see. A malfunction, Eddie thought, his first astronaut malfunction. He would have to fix his equipment before takeoff. He took the fishbowl off of his head and was thinking about how best to fix it when the elastic on Neil’s hood gave way. As the hood fell over Eddie’s eyes, he dropped the fishbowl.

It fell with a crash and shattered. Shards flew everywhere, spattering the floor and the bedspread. Eddie screamed. He leapt backwards, tripped over a pile of laundry, and found himself on the floor. His ears rang with the impact and his back stung. The bed loomed over him. The ceiling was miles away. Eddie was too stunned to move. Mayday, he thought. Mayday.

Eddie heard footsteps on the stairs, and then in the hall, and then the door opened. His mother appeared in the doorway. Her hair was pulled into a loose bun out of her face. He saw her cheeks go white and then pink all at once.

“Eddie! What are you doing in here!?”

He forgot how to breathe. “I was just…I was just trying to…”

His mother’s eyes swept over the room, catching on the raincoat, the leather jacket, the orange candy jars, and the fishbowl scattered into glistening pieces all around.

“Why did you touch his…oh god, Eddie, you–”

“It was an accident, Mama, I didn’t mean to,” Eddie burst out, his voice getting higher and thinner, “I really wasn’t trying to do anything bad, I was just playing, I’ll fix it for when Neil comes home–”

She seemed to pinch inward. “Eddie, you know he’s not…” Her knees buckled and her fingers went white on the doorframe. Her nose twitched. She inhaled sharply, smelling the air that was full of Neil and now with Eddie. Her face hardened. “You can’t play in here.”

Sweat dripped down Eddie’s ribcage. “I’m sorry, I–I was just–I wasn’t trying to break anything…”

She took a few steps into the room, not looking at him. She straightened a book on the bookshelf, then put it back. Her eyes seemed far away. “Get out.”

“I’m sorry, Mama, I’m really sorry–”

She looked down at him, and her eyes were stones. “Get out of here, Eddie.”

He clambered to his feet. “I’m sorry, I–”

“Don’t,” she said, cutting him off. “Just don’t.”

“Mama–”

“Get out,” she said, quiet and low, “of your brother’s room.”

She closed the door behind him. Eddie stood in the dark hall, alone. The house was quiet. The rain poured down outside. Eddie could hear it crashing down on the roof and slamming against the windows, and he could feel it burning out from his eyes even though he shut them as tight as he could. Under his eyelids, everything was mud.

Eddie slid the jacket off his shoulders. He unzipped the raincoats and let them fall to the floor. It was the last day of summer. It sounded like maybe it would rain forever, on the houses and the people in them and on everything, and there would never be anything but mud. On the other side of Neil’s bedroom door, his mother began to cry.

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You can read more of Sarah’s work at https://www.sarahrichmanwriter.com.

Alex Mullarky is a writer from Cumbria, England, who studied English Literature at St Andrews. She now lives in Melbourne, where she has completed a Masters in Screenwriting and works part time as a journalist.

The Lay of the Last Survivor is a short piece of historical fantasy containing and inspired by Alex’s loose translations of a number of anonymous Old English poems such as Wulf and Eadwacer and Charm against a Wen as well as a passage from Beowulf and the Old Dutch text fragment Hebban olla vogala.

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The Lay of the Last Survivor

 

I am Lunete, the fourth of that name.

Before me, my mother, Ishild; her mother, Else. My great-grandmother Lunete who brought her people to this land gave us her name.

Mine is Lorn; I am the last. I sing the song of my suffering.

Else taught me many songs. Our people sang when they reached this land, and called it Beortholt, for the sunshine and the trees. There are songs for all things. Songs for weaving, songs for harvest. When she spied a wen at the base of my thumb, my grandmother seized my hand, spat on it, and sang.

Wenne, wenne, wenchichenne,
You shall not build here, nor make your home.
Move you northwards to that near place;
There, ermig, you have a brother.
There shall I lay a leaf upon your head.
Beneath the wolf’s foot and the eagle’s wing,
Beneath the eagle’s claw you will wither away.
You will smoulder, like a coal upon the fire;
Like water in the pot, you will fade away.
You will become as small as the linsetcorn,
Smaller than the handwurmes hupeban,
Smaller still, until you are nothing.

She sang it with me again and again until I could recite the words alone. She made me a poultice with leaves of milkblue, with the feather and claw of an eagle, and the toe of a grey wolf, and the wen shrank away to nothing.

I do not have the voice of a blackbird, as they say of Anesa, but because of Else I know all the songs, and when the old woman died it was me they began to turn to with queries about the words. Later still, I began to think of my own words, my own tunes, and I intended to ask Anesa to learn them and sing them, and I hoped they would bring the others great joy.

All that has changed.

It was his singing that drew me in, or I would not find myself where I am today. But when I sat weaving amongst the trees that afternoon and I heard the paddling of an oar and that sweet voice rising over the water, I was spellbound. It was a tune I recognised, though I did not know it by heart; I had heard Else singing it gently as she laundered her clothes in the dusk once, but she had never offered to teach it to me. It went like this:

All the birds are building nests,
Except for you and me;
What are we waiting for, my love?
What are we waiting for?

It was the voice of a man who does not understand the words he is singing, heavily accented, with the words flowing into one another: ‘for-my-love’. I caught glimpses of him between the leaves as he paddled closer, and I believed him to have a wolf’s skin cast over his shoulders, hooded over his head. When a breeze sprang up and the ears flickered, it was the wind that stirred them, of course. It began to rain.

All that is in the past, now. I have had much time to think on that day, back when the beasts were only a dark song for dark evenings. Perhaps he knew then what he was bringing down upon me, upon himself. I knew nothing–and yet it is I who serve out my sentence in isolation. In a fortnight, they will carry my cub to the tor and expose it.

There is a song about the tor, but it is long, too long to work into my song about myself. They say there was once a wyrm who nested on this island, one of the old monsters from before the time of men. There beyond the trees he fell into a slumber so long and deep that the earth grew over him and his flesh dissolved into the soil. There is a tunnel that was his tail, and a cavern in the heart of the hill where his ribs are a vaulted ceiling. But the entrance to the tunnel is a secret. It is never safe to venture into the belly of a dragon, however long it sleeps.

I hear a call outside. I hope my song will not be cut short.

It is quiet.

I should begin with Beortholt, since this island’s history is also my history. Lunete, my grandmother, was one of the five who brought their families here from the mainland many years ago, taking to the water for the first time in their people’s history. From there Beortholt’s song is swift and short: a small people surviving; then, as generations passed, a larger people prospering, trading, spreading to the small daughter islands. A thriving community with much wealth gathered, we named ourselves the Eadwacer: the watchers, guarding what is ours very closely.

And then came the beasts.

I knew the songs of battle but I had never witnessed one for myself before last autumn when the beasts reached our shores.

My song is not a battle song, though battles litter it. They were driven off that day, when my mother put a spear in my hand and thrust me out of the door to face the wolves. It was his face I was confronted with then, and already they were withdrawing. They made their camp on the nearest uninhabited island, deep in the fen country, and when they attacked again the following day, my wolf was not with them.

Then the weather turned and there they stayed for the winter, enemies at our door, and we kept wary eyes on one another, and my belly began to swell.

In spring the attacks began afresh. A tradition was born then, when old Rina wore the antlers of a stag into the fight. Before, we were a peaceable people, with no need for battle customs. Now when the cry goes up, the men and women of Beortholt reach for the antlers they keep on a high shelf and fasten them to their heads. I wear them nestled in my hair like a crown. Good for stabbing out an eye while thrusting a knife in. I saw Rina measure herself up against their leader, his sharp beak and her heavy head of antlers, he shaking out the feathers of his massive wingspan, she shifting her furs back on her shoulders. They were too well matched; both of them live still, though scarred.

When they came sailing towards us in their long ships we lined up on the shore and I sang my charm, made new, under my breath.

Wenne, wenne, wenchichenne,
You shall not build here, nor make your home.
Go back, ermig, to your brothers in the north.
They will lay leaves upon your chief.
Under the feet of wolves, under the wings of eagles,
Under the eagle’s claws my people weaken.
May you smoulder, like coals upon the fire.
Like water in the pot, may you fade away.
Your deeds smaller than the linsetcorn,
Your men among worms in the earth.
So little. May you come to nothing.

We are all too well matched. Three times they met us in battle; three times they withdrew as night fell and we took the advantage in the night-time landscape we could navigate in our sleep.

I did not see my wolf again on the battlefield, but my swelling stomach began to draw attention. Questions were asked; we are a small community, they are bound to be. No one came forward as the father and I offered no help to those who would pry. At last old Ninian ordered that I should be brought to him, and he took one look at me and recoiled in disgust, and announced, ‘It is one of theirs’.

That seems a very long time ago, now. It must be two months or more. My time is very close. I feel the babe clawing to be free; it has claws, certainly. I hope he will have ears like his father’s. I think when they learned what the wolf had done, they locked him away, as the Eadwacer have done to me. They do not intend to kill me, but when the child is born they will expose it at once; old Ninian told me so.

It is a funny thing. I have faith in my wolf, though I knew him only briefly. He has kind eyes, and the hair of his beard is very soft. He will make certain our cub survives.

I think perhaps the song is ready.

He will be given to my elders like an offering.
If he comes with his men, they will swarm him.
We are distant.
The wolf is on one island, I on another.
His island is secure, deep in the fens.
The people of that island are savage.
If he comes with his men they will turn on him.
We are different.
I have thought long on my far-wandering wolf,
On the day when fierce tears joined the rain,
When the wolf of war brought me into his arms.
He was a comfort to me, then
–and likewise hateful to me.
Wolf, my wolf, who corrupted me.
It is not the starvation that disquiets me.
Do you hear me, Eadwacer?
A wolf will carry our cub to the forest.
You may readily tear apart a thing which could never be joined
–our songs together.

I hear a sound. I think it is laughter.

No. Not laughter. Shouts.

I hear footsteps and I recognise their timbre. My mother, Ishild, unlocks the door. ‘You must run,’ she says. When she speaks again I do not hear her. I crumple to the floor. I am splitting in two.

My mother kneels down beside me at once, lies me back with gentle hands. ‘The child chooses its timing poorly,’ she says. She locks the door and washes her hands in the pail.

For the next hour my screams almost drown out the clamour beyond the locked door. Beyond the pain in my own body, I understand that there is turmoil outside, and slaughter.

What a moment to be born, my cub!

When finally it is over, my mother thrusts the babe into my arms and rips the cord that joins us with her teeth. I cry out, in horror, not pain. ‘Run,’ my mother breathes, and she unlocks the door and vanishes into bright white sunlight.

‘Mother,’ I cry after her.

I have a screaming child in my arms, but the air is thick with shrieks and cries. I wrap the babe carefully in the blanket that I have slept wrapped in over these past months. She will know her mother’s smell, at least, for it is a girl I swaddle tightly. I clutch her to my chest and, stumbling, climb to my feet.

My eyes cannot cope with the brightness of the sun until I am surrounded by it. Old Ninian is dead at my feet, his throat torn open by teeth. I suck in a breath and cover the baby’s eyes lest it fathom something of what it sees. The dwelling in which I was kept is some stretch from the settlement, separated by distance and a clutch of trees. I hold the girl tight to my chest and stride between gnarled trunks. I flinch at every twig-snap, but the beasts are not in the forest.

They are in the village. The grass is littered with bodies, the paths that generations since my great-grandmother have worn down are smeared with blood. The sight makes my stomach turn. The people I have known all my life–everyone I have ever known–cut down as they ran, lying where they fell in grotesque parodies of flight. I watch as an axe is thrust between a woman’s shoulders by a man with the black feathers of a raven spreading from his arms. The woman’s cry curdles my blood, and she falls, twitching. She was the last.

No. I am the last.

The beasts stand together, surveying their work. There is not an antler among the dead. How were they able to set upon my people with no warning?

They are discussing the dead; I see it in their gestures. Who will loot the bodies, perhaps. Who will finish off those who still breathe. An eagle squawks in anger. I gather myself together. I should be splitting at the seams with rage. Instead I feel cold, and very calm.

I step towards them. A hand closes on my forearm before I can raise my other foot and I turn quick as a startled doe to face my wolf.

He is distressed. I do not understand his words, but his tone is clear. His eyes are wide looking at the babe I hold, the girl-child who squirms and attempts to suckle. He reaches for it, and I press it close to my chest. I wrench myself back. My foot catches, and I stumble. I land on my back and the child falls from my arms.

The wolf picks it up. He cradles it gently, cooing to it. He offers me a hand. By some miracle we have not yet been noticed by the others. I begin to pick myself up. My hands are wet with blood, my body twisted up over a corpse on the ground. I scramble away from it, horrified. Then I cry out, a long, low wail.

It is my mother, Ishild. Her face is broken and bloody. She stares at me in terror.

The wolf speaks more urgently now, grabbing for me, as the beasts take note of our presence. I claw at him, push him away, and then I drag my fingers through my hair and tear, howling like an animal. The wolf backs away from me. Blood runs from my scalp onto my face, and I grab more fistfuls and pull again.

The wolf has my child. I reach for it, and he holds it away.

The beasts do not care about me. They have begun to search the houses. I know what they seek; they won’t find it there.

The wolf lays a hand against my cheek. I turn sharply and sink my teeth into it. He flinches. His eyes are full of dismay. He backs off a few paces, begins to walk away, then runs. He has taken my child.

My mother lies broken beside me. I dig my nails deep into the skin of my cheeks and keen.

Tripping, falling, I run through the trees towards the tor. It rises above the leaves like a beacon. I have entered the belly of a dragon once before, on the day when old Else showed me where the accumulated wealth of the Eadwacer was safeguarded. I find the opening in the hill, the sliver of cave that cannot be seen from almost any angle. I push my body through it. In the darkness on the far side I feel for the pile of stones that has been left here with just this situation in mind. One stone at a time, I wall myself into the barrow.

In the darkness you cannot see the glint of gold, but you can feel it, cold and hard beneath seeking hands. I half-climb, half-wade into it, singing as I go, part charm, part keen.

Heald ðu nu, hruse, what watchers could not–
The harp is silent, the music gone.
The hawk has flown from the hall.
The swift mare fled from the courtyard.
Bealocwealm hafað
fela feorhcynna forð onsended.

I sink deep into the hoard, roll golden coins across my bare skin. It is so very dark.

I wait–a long time indeed. I hear nothing but the deep silence of the tor.

At last I feel the rage begin to burn into me, where before there was only coldness. It resonates through me until I am humming with it. My flesh is burning. If I open my mouth my breath will be flame. If I open my arms the skin will fall away and my wings unfurl.

I am Lorn, the last of the Eadwacer.

It is very dark. I think I will sleep.

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This piece was based off of a society with a strong oral tradition; to honor that tradition, a reading of this piece by Caterina Giammarresi is available here. More information about Alex Mullarky and her work is available on her website, www.alexmullarky.com.

Born and raised in France, Pauline holds a Masters in Creative Writing with distinction from the University of Edinburgh. After living in many different countries, she now lives, works, and writes in the Scottish capital.

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The Washing Cycle

 

There was blood on Karen’s daughter’s underwear. It had gone through the cotton and appeared on the outside of the white knickers, and dried and rendered the garment thick on the patch that had fit between Emma’s legs. Alone in the bathroom, Karen allowed herself to run the tips of her fingernails along the caked blood; her hands were reddened by the chemicals she’d been using to clean the bathroom this morning, and she felt nothing but stiffness under her fingertips. She dropped the garment back into the basket with the rest of the dirty clothes she’d picked up around the house—her daughter’s football uniform, a white top with foundation on its collar, Michael’s work shirts that he’d left on the dressing table chair—and made her way down the two flights of stairs to the basement.

Apart from the sound of the radio, which was playing some pop star’s new single from the living room, the house was quiet. Michael was at work and Emma locked up in her room. They had argued last night at dinner, Emma’s interjections the typical ones of a teenager who believes that she’s misunderstood, Michael’s the unhelpful ones of a father who spends too little time with his family to know what is actually happening. Karen had tried to calm everyone down but the conversation had still ended with the slamming of Emma’s door and Michael’s frustrated grunts. He had cleared the table and washed the dishes with barely concealed anger, gone to bed before Karen, and left for work without speaking a word to either of them.

As she passed by her daughter’s room, Karen noticed that the “Do not disturb” sign was still up on her door, the three words written across a simple sheet of paper wrinkled by the years of use. There was not a sound coming from inside—Emma must have been on her laptop listening to music through her headphones at a level that Karen knew she would probably disapprove of. Karen would try to talk to her later and offer that they order sushi and watch some TV together. Everything would be fine.

Karen’s slippers whispered against the steps that led to the basement. She balanced the basket between her hip and elbow, turned on the light, and walked up to the washing machine. The room was silent and smelled of laundry detergent and fresh linen. Another basket of clean clothes that she hadn’t yet had time to fold was sitting on the ironing board and a few of Michael’s shirts were still hanging from coat hangers waiting to be ironed. The basement was full of cardboard boxes that contained objects that they didn’t need anymore which Karen needed to sort through, and a few of Emma’s old baby clothes and toys that she couldn’t bring herself to get rid of. The shelf against the left wall was still covered in photo albums, books, and strange owl figurines that they’d got back from Michael’s mum’s house after she’d passed away which he’d promised he’d take care of a while ago, just like the humidity stains on the ceiling and the dodgy pipes that had been needing fixing for a few years now.

Karen deposited her basket on top of the washing machine and picked Emma’s underwear back up. The stain would probably never come off, she realised, and for a moment she considered just throwing them away, but she thought she should at least try. She opened the cupboard above the machine, took out a plastic box full of cleaning products, and picked out a half-empty tube of toothpaste along with an old toothbrush whose bristles had gone flat from use. She applied a thick layer of toothpaste onto the stain and starting brushing it into the fabric, just like her mother had taught her all those years ago.

She had taught her many more things, and Karen often wondered if her life would be any different if she had listened to her mother’s lessons more attentively. She would maybe not have waited such a long time to get married, would not have put her career before her family. She would maybe have listened when she began hearing people say, “you guys would make such great parents”, or when Michael’s mother started asking when they were finally going to give her grandchildren. She remembered that time when she thought that they had their lives ahead of them, and she remembered it bitterly.

The stain was already fading beneath Karen’s fingers. The minty smell of toothpaste tickled her nostrils and blood was running off the stain to lodge itself underneath her nails. Karen remembered when she was younger and had to take care of the bloodstains on her own underwear, back when she thought that having her period was a curse and hated the idea that she would have to deal with it for the rest of her life. Now she would have done anything to wake up and see blood between her legs.

They had tried to have more children. They had tried so hard Karen still didn’t understand why it hadn’t worked. Michael had always wanted a boy. He’d made a list of names he liked—names taken from old school friends, or books he’d read, or conversations he’d overheard in the streets—and Karen had found it ripped to pieces at the bottom of the bin about a year ago. When Karen was pregnant they had refused to learn the sex of the baby and had agreed on a light green for the room, but Michael had still bought a blue sleep suit with tiny anchors on the front, which lay at the bottom of the pile of Emma’s baby clothes with the price tag still attached to it. He had never been disappointed that Emma was a girl and kept telling Karen that there was still plenty of time for them to have a boy—except there wasn’t any time left now. There was no longer any blood, and there would never be another baby. There would never be a little boy.

Karen realised that she’d been brushing the fabric so hard that it had started pilling, so she set the toothbrush aside and chucked Emma’s underwear into the washing machine, where it landed with a soft thump. Her hands were trembling now, and she had to put both her hands flat on top of the machine for a moment to calm herself down. She could hear her heartbeat inside her ears and feel a lump in her throat as her eyes started to prickle, but she swallowed hard past it once, then twice, then took in a deep breath, and she felt better. Everything would be fine.

Looking out the small window at the top of the wall, she noticed for the first time that day that it was raining. It was a Saturday in mid-June, and the sun should have been shining and the streets packed with children playing, mothers reading out on their porches, and fathers tending to their cars and gardens, but instead the street was grey and empty, the sound of the drops falling onto the roofs of cars the only thing to be heard.

With a sigh, she focused back on sorting the clothes out. Whites into the machine, colours in the basket. She inspected a couple of Michael’s white shirts. One of them had a red stain on the front near the fourth button, certainly a dash of ketchup from the sandwich she’d prepared for him last Tuesday; the other showed a mark too, on the collar this time—a burgundy, glittery, faded smear. She had seen a few of these before on his button-ups, and Karen knew they disappeared really well with her regular stain remover. She dabbed the stains with product and threw them into the drum, where they joined Emma’s stained underwear; she added the foundation-coloured white top and a few of Michael’s tennis socks, and started a quick wash at sixty degrees. She had dealt with this before. She knew what she was doing. Everything would be fine.

As water started pouring into the machine, Karen went back up the stairs into the kitchen, bringing with her the basket of clean laundry and setting it on the dining table. She still had plenty of things left to do before Michael came home from work tonight, but he had been working on demanding cases lately and often left the office long after Karen and Emma had gone to bed. Then, in the dimness of their bedroom, Karen would watch him undress slowly, his movements languid and reluctant, and he would join her in bed, his body still fresh from outside and his breath smelling of whiskey. Karen had a feeling he always knew she wasn’t asleep, but they never talked.

They used to. They would have conversations for hours on end, at the breakfast table, in the car, in bed after Emma had fallen asleep and the house was quiet and undisturbed. He would tell her about his cases, about that article he’d read at lunch in the newspaper she’d packed in with his meal, and most importantly he would ask her about her day and pay attention when she said that she’d met with Lilian for coffee, or had a chat with Emma about a boy from her class she liked, or watched a movie that had made her cry. Now she never heard about Michael’s clients, or whom he’d gone to lunch with, or what his boss had thought of the outcome of his latest case. Now there was just silence.

The radio was still playing music in the living room, and Karen looked at the checklist in front of her. She needed to pick up Michael’s dry cleaning, go grocery shopping, and take the dog out for a walk. The house was a mess too and Michael hated coming home to a dirty place, so she would need to tidy everything up before he got back. The kitchen didn’t require much attention, but she still needed to hoover the carpet, dust the shelves, unload the dishwasher, change their bed sheets.

Just thinking about her tasks exhausted her, and Karen automatically took out a glass from the cabinet and the bottle of Côtes de Bergerac she’d opened last night and poured herself a large glass. The condensation made the liquid look hazy and the glass still showed a trace of red lipstick on the brim. She looked at the clock and failed to feel guilty for having a drink at two in the afternoon. She didn’t even mind the fact that at any time Emma could stumble down the stairs into the kitchen and walk in on her mother getting drunk in the middle of the day. Instead, she took a sip, relished the feeling of the alcohol going down her throat, and put the drink back down next to the sink with a soft click.

She was tired. She wished that Emma would come out of her room and offer her help and chat with her as they cleaned together. She wished that Michael would come home earlier tonight, have dinner with them, and finally agree to touch her body under the blankets at night. She wished that there was noise in the house, footsteps and laughter and singing, that they would start watching television together again like they used and that Michael would prepare the fish pie he was so good at making and hadn’t cooked in years.

Karen took another sip of wine, a bigger one this time that burned when she swallowed, and hesitated a minute before opening the last drawer on the left of the kitchen counter. She fumbled through broken scissors, hotel matchboxes, user guides for objects that they didn’t own anymore, until she found what she was looking for. She had put the pack of cigarettes there a long time ago and the paper had yellowed and the tobacco dried, but she couldn’t have cared less in that moment. She took a match out of one of the boxes, which they had been given at a cottage in Devon many years ago, and lit a cigarette. It was her first one in such a long time that it burned her throat and brought tears to her eyes when she took the first drag, but after a couple more she found that pleasant feeling again, the familiar hand gesture, the bitter smell. She walked up to the sink, opened the window, dropped her ashes down the drain, and relaxed against the counter.

After years of trying, Michael’s mother had suggested, in that nagging voice of hers, that things might work better if they both gave up smoking, that she had read somewhere that nicotine decreased fertility, so Karen and Michael had both worn patches and chewed gum for months with the conviction that it could only help. But it hadn’t and right now Karen resented her mother-in-law for keeping her away from her cigarettes for so long, because although Karen’s lungs were clearer now, the house was still quiet, the third room still empty, and that blue sleep suit still laying unused at the bottom of a cardboard box.

With the back of the shaky hand with which she was holding her cigarette, Karen wiped at her eyes with more strength than she had intended to, leaving a smear of black mascara on her red, irritated skin. She took a few more drags from the cigarette before putting it out against the side of the sink, and chucked the butt out of the open window. Outside, the rain had stopped.

She took a deep breath, ignored the dryness of her mouth and the way her nostrils tickled, turned around, and started sorting through the clean clothes she had brought up with her and left on the kitchen table. She made three piles, one for each of them, and then went up the stairs and put them away in their respective wardrobes. She left Emma’s in the basket outside her door, not yet willing to face her, but she knew everything would be fine.

When she was done, Karen made her way back to the basement and put the wet clothes in the dryer. Inside, amongst a heap of button-ups and isolated socks, lay a blood-stained pair of underwear.

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Pauline can be reached on Twitter, @paulinejeremie, or by email at pauline.jeremie@gmail.com.

Angela Hicks is an Edinburgh-based writer and editor. She graduated from the University of Edinburgh’s Creative Writing programme in 2016 and was one of the storytellers for Edinburgh City of Literature’s Story Shop 2017. She is currently working on her first novel.

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Back Home

 

They tour the house first, the lawyer’s curiosity getting the better of her. Greta wonders what she thinks of it; is it more kitsch than she imagined? More austere? There’s the sense that nobody ever enjoyed themselves here. The whole place is cold—the wood in the windows has warped and swelled so that they’re permanently jammed half-open, a legacy of the old woman’s passion for fresh air. Despite that, there’s a feeling of mustiness to the house; it’s evident that no one’s lived here since her disappearance.

With a sense of relief, they all troop back into the kitchen and the lawyer spreads the paperwork out across the oak top of the kitchen table, indicating the place where Greta and Harry need to sign.

‘If you and your brother initial these pages, and then date and sign here, here and here. These are the title deeds, then these ones are for the insurance; it’s not very much since the place is so old, but the previous owner took out policies against fire and flood damage and they’re still running.’

Previous owner, like they don’t all know who used to live here. No policy against theft, Greta notes. The Witch had her own way of dealing with thieves.

She looks around. The kitchen is much the same as the last time she was here, though now there’s a thin film of dust covering the surfaces. Everything’s in its place, and the Witch’s things are still here—her hat on the coat hook, her shoes by the back door, her cigarette lighter next to her keys on the shelf above the Aga, in the space between the dead spider plant and the cook books. The only real difference is the Aga itself. It ought to be lit—was always lit every single miserable day that Greta spent in this house. What a beautiful fire, as the Witch liked to say, hot enough to cook a person. It’s odd to sit here now and not feel the heat radiating from it.

But even stone cold dead, the oven still has the power to conjure up the past. The air around Greta feels too thick, too heavy. As she stares at it, her breath catches in her throat. The smell of wood smoke burns her nostrils.

She forces herself to turn away, to look towards the pantry door instead. Is it still full of food, she wonders. It always used to be crammed with so many cakes, biscuits and pastries that the door would barely shut. It always was shut though. And locked. The key is the large brass one from the bunch on the shelf. She opened it once, she recalls. Not worth the consequences.

‘And after all these are signed, the house is ours?’ Their father speaks up from the other side of the table. Greta jumps, startled; she’d forgotten he’s here. He hasn’t bothered to smarten up for this; he’s still dressed in his lumber jacket. His woodcutter’s axe is propped up against the back door.

‘Your children’s, yes,’ the lawyer nods. ‘Although you’ll be responsible for it for a few years yet since they’re both still minors. I know it’s taken a while getting it through the courts, but we got there in the end. We’ve managed to argue that the previous owner’s disappearance should be reclassified as a death in absentia—or in layman’s terms, she’s presumed dead. This allows her estate to be passed on. Since your children were living here for the last few years under her guardianship, we’ve successfully claimed that it should be inherited by them.’ The lawyer smiles at Greta and Harry. ‘I know that your father’s home is really too small for the three of you, but now you can live here again. Isn’t that wonderful?’

Greta smiles back awkwardly, trying to convey their supposed excitement at being back in this house without having to say anything. She doesn’t trust her own voice. She can’t explain, of course, that they can’t live here, not when they know what is buried under the basement floor.

‘You’re so lucky,’ continues the lawyer. ‘The forest location is beautiful, and this is such a lovely house, and so spacious.’

‘Yes,’ says Greta in as warm a manner as she can manage. It’s true—the house is large, even if the Witch didn’t allow Greta in most of it.

The lawyer offers some more pleasantries, gathers up the paperwork and drives away. After she’s gone, their father immediately makes himself at home; he gets a drink from the sitting room cabinet and goes upstairs. Greta hears him snoring loudly in one of the bedrooms. He always was a heavy sleeper. She panics that he won’t have taken his shoes off first, then remembers that such things don’t matter anymore.

She stands in the centre of the kitchen as the sun sinks behind the tree and wonders what happens next. A copy of the title deeds still lies on the table.  She could finally go and sit on the leather sofa in the living room, or follow her father’s lead and tread mud into the Witch’s bedroom, or go up to the attic where Harry slept and where she was never allowed. But she can’t seem to move.

‘I thought we’d feel better.’ Harry walks into the kitchen behind her; he looks so small and pale in the moonlight.

‘I thought being here when she wasn’t would be—I don’t know—better somehow.’ He shivers.

Greta holds out her arms to him, and when he stumbles to her, she enfolds him in a hug. It’s easier than speaking. Because what answers does she have? He’s right, things should be different. She looks at the Aga again and tries to think of something comforting to say which won’t be an outright lie.

‘What do we do?’ her brother asks. His faith in her ability to sort this out is hard to bear. It’s the house, she thinks, this stupid Gingerbread Cottage with its fairy tale décor trapping the past, with all its secrets, all their memories, inside.

Her eyes slide past the Aga to their father’s axe. Is it despair she feels, or something else? She disentangles herself from her brother, picks up the axe and swings it at the table, burying the head in the centre of the deed papers. She pulls it out and swings again. The table’s old and sturdy; it takes a lot of blows before it buckles, but Greta’s strong and determined. The wood creaks and cracks as the axe repeatedly hacks into the once-smooth surface; fragments splinter off and the cut in the table top slowly widens into a gorge. Then, as the dark stone of the floor becomes visible through the middle of the table, the legs give out and with a shudder the whole thing collapses in on itself.

When she’s finished, Harry picks up the axe and attacks the kitchen chairs; Greta goes into the sitting room and comes back with her arms full of the Witch’s bottles of spirits, her stash of after-dinner sherry, the special-occasion port, the vodka and gin for her afternoon martinis. Greta made those for her; by the end she could produce an acceptable Vesper. Not perfect, never perfect, but an acceptable one which the Witch wouldn’t criticise too much. On her second trip, Greta fetches bourbon, amaretto, another bottle of gin and one of vermouth. She tips whiskey and vodka over the dismembered remains of the table, empties the other bottles across the kitchen floor. The smell of ethanol overpowers the other scents lingering in the kitchen.

She takes back the axe when Harry’s exhausted and squares up in front of the pantry door. Splinters fly across the room as she hacks away at it. She’s found her rhythm now; it doesn’t resist as long as the table.

Inside is just as magical as Greta remembered. The preservatives in the sugar-frosting of the cakes means that they have not aged and rotted. The airtight plastic boxes have protected other goodies from decay; shiny wrappers of the biscuits, bars and sweets glint in the darkness. Bunches of candy canes hang down from a hook designed to hold herbs. The smell—cinnamon, flour, lemon, nutmeg, freshly-baked dough—is enchanting. Greta chucks a bottle of absinthe through the hole in the door. It shatters among tins of gingerbread; green liquid drips onto the lower shelves.

‘What now?’ asks Harry when there’s no furniture left in the kitchen to smash up. Greta hesitates; they could start on another room, but she has momentum now and she’s ready for something new. She gathers up the empty bottles and takes a packet of dish cloths from under the sink. She tells her brother to get petrol from the garden shed. On the way out, she grabs the Witch’s lighter and locks the backdoor behind them.

Thirty feet from the house she squats down with the bottles and carefully soaks the dish rags in the last remnants of alcohol. When Harry brings the petrol, she adds a measure to each bottle and stuffs the damp cloths into the necks. It’s only when she flicks the lighter on that he realises what she’s intending to do.

‘Is Father still in there?’ asks Harry.

Greta pauses as she thinks about the woodcutter still asleep in the house. For a minute, she imagines going in and fetching him, imagines finally telling him about what it was like living here, living with her. All the things which were said, all the things which were done. She imagines passing on every poisonous sentence the Witch ever whispered to her, pouring out the bile and hate and terrible, terrible promises which the old woman made her and which she still half-believes even now.

Grow up. Nobody loves you. Nobody’s coming to save you. Your father left you in the middle of the woods. Alone. And scared. In the woods where there are monsters. Parents don’t do that, or not to children that they love anyway.

She twitches her head, trying to free herself of the Witch’s voice. She tries to imagine what would happen next. Would their father hug her, tell her he’s sorry, promise that everything will be alright from now on because he’s there and he will never ever leave them again?

Dream whatever dreams you like. Everyone’s abandoned you, forgotten about you. You’ll never get out of this house. You’re too weak. You’re nothing. Less than nothing. You’ll never save yourself and never save your brother. Give up.

‘But I got out,’ Greta whispers, ‘and I got Harry out.’

You’ll never be free of the past. Your father chose to leave you. You were his children and he left you. Never forget that.

‘Do you want me to go get him?’ she asks quietly.

In answer, Harry bends down, lights the first bottle and hands it to her.

When she throws it, the bottle misses the window and smashes against the wall of the house. Harry lights a second one. This time Greta takes more care with her aim, pulls her elbow back to a better angle. Practice makes perfect, as the Witch always said. It’ll be a beautiful fire.

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You can follow Angela on her Twitter, @MS_a_hicks. More of her work can be found here.

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.

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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.

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