Pulp Idol Firsts 2018 Kindle

Pulp Idol - Firsts

Writing on the Wall Toxteth Library Windsor Street, Liverpool L8 1XF Published by Writing on the Wall 2017 Š Remains with authors Design and layout by Katrina Paterson ISBN: 978-1-910580-22-6 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

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Contents Introduction Foreword Laura Bui - Someone You’d Admire Ariel Kahn - Raising Sparks Duncan Lyon - Hodder Place Beverley Bannister - Wraith Mike Levanzin - Promised Land Nick Peterson - The Light of Kamadhi Lisa Phillips - Breach Elijah Taylor - Keepsake Jack Timson - The Thunder Boy Gillian Torres - Perpetual Motion

Introduction Pulp Idol has had many successes, but few so quickly as the outcome of this year’s competition. Runner-up Ariel Kahn’s debut novel was snapped up almost immediately after the final held in May during WoWFest 2018 by North-east based award-winning independent publisher Bluemoose Books. So, well done to Ariel – look out for his debut novel Raising Sparks, which will be published in 2018.

Congratulations also to all our finalists whose opening chapters are published here for the first time. The quality of writing in this, the 11th year of our annual competition, is as good as any in previous years, and we wish them all the best of luck in finding publishers for their work.

Pulp Idol was born out of a desire to achieve two things: to give a platform to the literary talent across the region and find an outlet for it by building a bridge between the national publishing industry and Merseyside. We have achieved this and more, with over ten writers finding success through publication and commissions, and more and more agents and publishers looking out for the latest batch of Pulp Idol finalists and signing them up. We now also welcome the many writers taking part from across the country.

Writing on the Wall is grateful to all the writers who entered the competition. We encourage them to keep on writing and enter again in the future - Deborah Morgan found success the second time she entered with her superb debut novel Disappearing Home being published by Tindall Street.

Our thanks once again go to the judges of the heats; their generosity with their time and expertise enables our finalists to go on to greater things. Thanks also to our Grand Final judges, PFD Literary Agent Laura Williams and Bluemoose Books founder Kevin Duffy; having experts from the publishing industry on the panel means a lot to all the writers and helps raise the profile of the competition among the wider publishing industry.

For the finalists, the hard work begins when the competition ends, as we hand them over to our editors, who work with them to ensure their chapters are the best they can be before they are published. This year, our thanks for working with the finalists to edit their chapters go to novelists John Donoghue (The Death’s Head Chess Club), Clare Doran (Definitions), Penny Feeny (That Summer in Ischia & The Apartment in Rome) and Deborah Morgan (Disappearing Home).

Special thanks this year go to Writing on the Wall’s new Project Assistants – Lauren Buxton for her work on organising the competition, coordinating this publication and the finalists’ book launch, and Katrina Paterson for design and layout.

We are sure you will enjoy this book. Share the news of this exceptional writing talent with your friends, and if you’re an agent or publisher, be quick and get in touch before someone else snaps them up!

Mike Morris, Co-Director Writing on the Wall.

Foreword Laura Bui’s Someone You’d Admire was the outstanding winner of this year’s competition. In her protagonist, Hien, she offers us a compassionate portrait of a man still struggling to belong after 40 years in America. The weight of his experience and the effect upon his family is movingly presented in direct, unsentimental story-telling.

Ariel Kahn’s Raising Sparks tells a complex story of mystics, forbidden knowledge, family secrets and first love seen through the eyes of Malka, a young Jewish woman. She has an unexpected visionary experience in which a question is hurled at her – ‘Where are you?’ The question both intrigues and terrifies her and sets her off on an extraordinary journey of discovery.

Duncan Lyon’s Hodder Place is a memoir of his experiences growing up in a hostel for people with mental health problems. Maxine, a young woman introduced in his first chapter, literally shouts at the reader from the first paragraph, screaming and swearing: ‘She had a Dennis the Menace quality to my young eyes, but there was also the twinkle of something a lot more dangerous...’

The supernatural Wraith by Beverly Bannister, begins with a visit to an ancient burial chamber to visit the remains of a Lancashire ‘Witch’, then takes us through the secret ruins and twisted groves of a woodland, an ancient burial chamber, disrupted lives and a ghost that refuses to die.

Promised Land by Mike Levanzin is an important story, told with real passion, which captures a way of living in 1970s Liverpool that no longer exists. It is scattered with gorgeous details, evoking an array of forgotten memories.

In the fast-paced The Light of Kamadhi, we are introduced to skilled pick-pocket, Aethorn. Nick Peterson’s chapter doesn’t hold back on the horrors of the boy’s life in Brownflagon, where people are plague-infested and brutalised; it soon becomes clear that Aethorn’s challenges can only multiply.

Lisa Phillips’ chapter is full of suspense. Breach, the story of a young man, dislocated and lost, has an exceptionally strong sense of place, it’s both evocative and cinematic; as a reader, you feel like you’re standing right there.

Romance, family plots and secrets connected to the magic of the world; Elijah Taylor’s Keepsake offers the readers a murder mystery with LGBT and fantasy themes, making it an original and captivating read. The chilling aftermath of a seemingly harmless childhood incident.

The Thunder Boy by Jack Timson takes place in a dystopian sci-fi universe where two cities are locked in a nightmarish war of attrition. We follow the adventures of Ruben, a young man falsely convicted of being a terrorist, who finds himself caught in the middle of an apocalyptic struggle.

Perpetual Motion by Gill Torres is an ambitious sweep through centuries, continents and ideas of harmony. In lyrical prose with a distinctly gothic tinge, her narrator, Adolf, recounts his multitude of existences, adventures and sexual conquests in his search to connect with the motion of the universe.

John Donoghue, Clare Doran, Penny Feeny and Deborah Morgan – Editors.

Pulp Idol

Laura Bui

delaphus@gmail.com Laura Bui is a criminologist. Some of her favourite authors are Yiyun Li, Anne Tyler, and Zadie Smith. She lives in Liverpool with her husband, Daniel.

Someone You’d Admire The story of Hien, a 64-year-old man, who, after forty years, must return to Vietnam for his father’s funeral. This decision forces him and his loved ones to recall their attempts at leading better lives in spite of the difficulties of adapting to life in America as refugees.

Someone You’d Admire Laura Bui Seventeen years passed since Hien last saw his older brother, Trung. Now, his brother was an old man: wrinkles branched out from the corners of his eyes. There was no trace of the blackness that once defined his brother’s head. This shouldn’t have surprised Hien, as his brother would be seventy soon. He, himself, had seen many seasons, and they passed by so quietly under cover of night that looking at Trung was like reading the goodbye note they had left.

They sat facing each other, waiting for their bowls of pho. A small wobbly table separated them.

Hien wanted to comment on his brother’s hair, but decided against it; somehow, Trung knew.

‘There’s not much grey hair on your head,’ Trung quipped. ‘You never had to worry about our family.’

An eruption of laughter emanated from the small hanging flat screen in the corner of Minh’s restaurant. A comedy sketch played, two men in imperial garb checking their smartphones.

Hien tried to keep from sighing. He regretted doing so, but age had made his feelings and thoughts stark naked to others. He shifted in his chair and reached for the cheap porcelain teapot.

‘So, you wait until someone else dies to finally see me?’ Trung asked.

For years Hien had avoided meeting Trung. It actually wasn’t so bad, it was his expectation. The need for Hien to be how his brother thought fit. Sure, Trung’s age gave him authority, but he wanted their younger sister, Giang, and Hien to follow exactly what he said, like some mandatory life manual, as if his words were truth. Hien never remembered Trung being like this. America had changed him. It had been no shock when Trung was awarded a full scholarship to study political science there. He was the smartest at school.

They had held a big feast for him, everyone in the village showed. In the midst of the celebration, he had watched Trung, who seemed unswayed by any indication he was special, and this made Hien proud – that his brother was upstanding, a reliable source of goodness.

Trung wasn’t too different when Hien came to America, except for an apparent expectation that loomed over his thoughts: it wasn’t enough to just have something, but that something had to be his way.

‘When did you find out about Father?’ Hien asked. His stomach felt like it was hoarding a ton of bricks.

‘Yesterday morning,’ Trung replied. ‘The hired help called to tell me.’

‘I see.’ Hien thought about the time difference between Vietnam and California.

Giang must had called him immediately after she heard the news. Coincidentally, Trung was in town, in Orange County, and out of grief Hien had felt compelled to see him.

‘She said he died peacefully. The neighbours knew he was going to die soon. They said it was because when they touched him, he felt lighter, and when they looked at him, he gradually looked weaker. It was like his soul was leaving his body.’

‘So, you knew for a while that he was going to die?’

Trung smirked and shook his head. ‘It’s just things people say. There’s numerous reasons why he could have felt ‘lighter’ or looked ‘weaker.’ His soul leaving isn’t likely.’

The bowls of pho arrived quickly, as usual. A bed of herbs, lime wedges, and beansprouts on a melamine oval plate followed. For a time, they said nothing as they slurped noisily. When they had finished, they crumpled the napkins they had both rubbed against their lips into the empty bowls.

To Hien, the food was tasteless.

‘Are you in a rush?’ Trung asked. Maybe he was testing an assumption, maybe he was just innocently asking, Hien wasn’t sure. But this restaurant, in a shopping plaza with too big a parking lot, had been selected for a reason: service at Minh’s was exceptionally fast. Even after Minh died and his widow and daughters took over, service wasn’t compromised. If things became too uncomfortable, as Hien anticipated, he could leave quickly to grieve alone.

‘No,’ Hien answered. He sipped his tea.

‘Giang and I are flying out in a few days. The ceremonies begin next week.’

‘Is Giang’s family going too?’

‘They’re all going.’

Perhaps Hien had imagined it, but he thought he heard Trung emphasize the word ‘all’. ‘How old are her children now?’

‘Suong is thirty-one and Diem is twenty-three.’

Hien thought of the gap in age between Giang’s daughters. He didn’t dare venture further. ‘They’re both going?’

‘They’re all going.’

Hien now felt the pressure, that expectation, weighing down on him. He waited for the inevitable.

‘When will you fly out?’ Trung finally asked. And, as if he thought Hien dense, he continued, ‘it would be shameful, not to mention very disrespectful, not to come. After all, you didn’t bother paying your respects to Mother.’

Hien used to feel a knee-jerk reaction to protest against such a claim, but years of being misunderstood rendered him jaded.

‘I’ll buy you your flight ticket if money is an issue.’

Again, Hien did not react.

Trung shook his head and removed his glasses, briefly massaging the bridge of his nose. He placed his glasses back on, and stared at Hien. ‘What?’ He lightly lifted his hand mid-air, seemingly exasperated. ‘What can I say or do?’ He seemed to experience a brief realization and added, ‘Is there anything I can even do? Whatever problems you still have, you shouldn’t take them out on family.’

Hien let out a loud sigh. ‘You make all these assumptions but you don’t know anything about my life.’

‘Well, secrecy is guilt.’

‘Sure. Believe what you will.’

Trung leaned back into his chair and crossed his arms. ‘It’s the past,’ he said, after a long pause. ‘Don’t let it taint your present and poison your future.’

Hien snorted. ‘My future…’ He looked past him at the plastic gold cat on the counter, dipping its paw up and down. It was supposed to bring businesses good luck. ‘You were here all that time. How could you understand?’ He remembered speaking these same lines before, but they had already left his mouth.

‘I wonder,’ Trung said, ‘how this meeting would have been if you had listened and continued with your studies that I had paid for.’

Hien knew this would happen and began to get up.

‘Leaving now?’

‘I’m just going to pay,’ Hien muttered, his eyes fixed on the counter and the plastic gold cat as he walked towards them.

When Hien returned, Trung sat sideways, one arm resting on the table, humming an unfamiliar tune.

‘Do you know the people who own this restaurant?’ Trung asked.

‘I don’t.’

Hien didn’t look in the woman’s direction in case she took it as cue to come over to speak to Trung. Minh’s widow. Lean and petite, hair always tucked in a tight, clean bun; she had been a respected chemistry teacher at the oldest school in Saigon.

He waved his hand as if to dismiss Trung’s observation. ‘I’ve come here a number of times so maybe they recognize me by now.’ He didn’t feel a need to explain that he actually did know the family who owned the restaurant, that he used to be good friends with the husband, Minh, and frequent their house, which was only a few miles away, on weekends.

Nor that Minh had had a heart attack a few years ago, and after his funeral, he stopped coming to the house and only came to the restaurant to say hello to his family.

Outside, they stood next to Trung’s dusty Benz in the near-barren parking lot. Past them, a young family crossed the street to enter a filtered water shop that also sold sugar cane juice.

‘So, when will we expect you in the fatherland?’ Trung asked.

Hien knew it had been a bad idea to meet. The sun made Trung’s glasses tint and it became difficult to see his eyes.

‘I can’t go,’ Hien said.

Trung shook his head. ‘You’re near retirement. That’s how much time has passed.

You need to pay your respect to our parents. They brought us into this world and raised us.

We’re indebted to them.’

Trung’s words made complete sense: Hien knew he had to return for the funeral but he couldn’t bring himself to go. Almost forty years ago, he took the chance and ran, just ran for it, as they shot at him. He knew he’d die either way, so he might as well have died trying.

He ran and ran until he could no longer hear the shouting and hurl of insults from his captors, the sounds of anguish and defeat from brethren, the gunshots that at night woke him. On foot, he then travelled by sea to Bidong Island, on a dinky boat made to accommodate fishing for four. He hadn’t been back since.

They say you could return with ease now and visit ones you left behind, the old areas, the old haunts. Some have even decided to move back permanently regardless of how changed it’s become.

‘It is our home,’ they had said, ‘America is not and never will be.’

There, they had reasoned, were their roots, whole lines of family who gave them identity, whose spirits protected and guided them. There, life had meaning. Here, life was a spaghetti junction of disjointed roads with missing bridges. Although you could make it in America, which many have, your spirit would never feel right. Worse, it was knowing that the line abruptly ended with them. It hurt to watch the younger generation; it hurt to watch his son, Nam. It was like watching whole lines of family being wiped out – forgotten.

Hien watched Trung open the car door. He hadn’t intended for seventeen years to pass without seeing his brother. He then thought of their parents. Forty years had passed since he last saw them.

His poor mother was always working just to gather a semblance of income. The front of their home served as a makeshift grocery store where she sold little. His father wasted his days in leisure. It was his protest against life’s injustices. From birth to death, war and oppression were everyday experiences. Eventually, he had no motivation to improve his lot.

He simply gave up. In spite of this, Hien sympathized with his father, especially now.

‘Well,’ Trung said. ‘This is it, I guess.’ He started to climb into the driver’s seat.

Hien was about to ask him if he had driven down here from San Jose, but didn’t see the use in knowing the answer. He knew that Trung came to Southern California a number of times each year. His brother had some affiliation with the Universities in LA and Irvine, but Hien then realized this information from Giang was almost eleven years old.

‘By the way, how’s your family?’ Trung asked, turning on the ignition.

‘They’re fine,’ Hien replied. It took a conscious effort to elaborate. ‘Quynh is still working at the law office and Nam, he’s thirty-five now and is a high school teacher. He’s getting married soon.’

‘Oh, is he?’

‘He and his girlfriend were only recently engaged, Hien said, a little too quickly. He wasn’t sure if Trung would be invited. ‘I’m not sure when they’re planning to have their wedding.’

Trung was silent.

Hien was compelled to fill the silence: ‘How’s the rest of the family?’

‘Giang and her family are fine,’ Trung answered.

Hien got the hint and didn’t expect any further detail.

‘All right,’ Trung said. He looked away from Hien. ‘This is goodbye, I suppose.’ He leaned sideways to close the car door.

‘Please understand why you won’t be seeing me there.’

Trung guffawed. ‘How can I understand your circumstances when I have no idea what they are? You never bother getting in touch with me when I’m down here, never mind even calling me or Giang… our family doesn’t exist to you. I expect I’ll be going to my grave without seeing or hearing from you after this.’

Trung shut the car door and began to reverse. Hien stood motionless, watching his brother pull out of the parking lot and disappear down Bolsa Avenue.

Ariel Kahn

arielkahn@hotmail.com Ariel Kahn almost became a rabbi. He has worked as a bookseller, editor, high school teacher, and is now Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Roehampton University. Since 2009, he has run the Arab-Israeli Book Review, which has been widely covered in the national and international media. He lives in London with Noga, also a writer, and their two sons. Raising Sparks will be published by Bluemoose books in July 2018.

Raising Sparks While shopping for her mother, Malka accidentally meets one of her father’s top students, Moshe, a Russian immigrant who is secretly in love with her. Malka is intrigued by his passion for the Kabbalah, mystical texts and ideas, but flees when she has a visionary, hallucinatory experience of a tree made of prayers, and flees in terror. When they meet again, Malka feels the first tentative stirrings of love.

Raising Sparks Ariel Kahn Every Friday was a race against the light. It moved in a sharp-edged square from the frosted window above the sink, then edged across the table where Malka sat chopping onions. She was trying hard not to cry. The light kissed her fingertips, slipped under her board, and left it floating in a brilliant puddle. If she dived into it, what would she find? Where would it take her? She rubbed her eyes roughly with a forearm, and the dust motes blazed around her like fireflies. The light passed through her unmoved, a door into another dimension, the idea of a window come loose from itself. When it reached the wall behind her, it would blush and fade, another missed opportunity. The ebbing light marked the arrival of Shabbes and all work ceased.

She chopped furiously, half-listening to her older sister, Estie, who was telling their mother what she’d learned that week, instead of doing her share. Little Devvie stood intent, her spoon poised in mid-air. Cinnamon poured from the jar in her other hand over the braised carrots for the Tzimmes. Malka said nothing. Today Estie seemed charged by the light. Her face was animated, her dark eyes flashed.

‘We thank Hashem for creating both the sun and the moon. Why do we need both?

To teach us how men and women should behave. Men are like the sun - shining brightly in the day - full of action; women are like the moon, softly illuminating the home, and giving way to the shining glory of their husbands.’

Malka rolled her eyes. Her mother nodded from the sink, wrist-deep in noodles for the Kugel, her headscarf so askew it seemed to be fighting gravity to stay on her head. Most people ordered their Kugel from the local bakery. Not her mother.

Surreptitiously, Malka tipped the cinnamon-covered carrots into the bin and replaced them with a new batch, which she seasoned carefully. She kept her eyes on her mother. Her one hope of escape from the inane conversation and the sweating brown tiles was if her mother forgot something and sent her out for it. This week the atmosphere in the kitchen was particularly tense, as Estie’s fiancé, Zechariah Gruber, was coming the following night for Seuda Shlishis, the final Sabbath meal. No cooking could be done on the Sabbath; everything had to be completed beforehand. Her mother, a great, if haphazard cook, had been preparing all week, determined to leave nothing to chance. She dictated endless to-do lists, but in the middle of a stream of ingredients, she would realise something was missing and look at Malka with entreaty. ‘Could you just pop out a minute, Malkele?’ Malka tried to make the most of these shopping trips, taking new routes, ducking down unknown alleyways, daring herself to get lost. Anything to delay her return. The apartment always felt even smaller after one of her walks.

‘A broch!’ Her mother cried, right on cue. ‘We’ve run out of eggs and onions for the salad! How is that possible?’ She took down the shopping list from the fridge, with each item carefully ticked off, and realised that she had written on both sides. ‘I can’t believe it.

We only bought half the things we need! ‘ ‘Don’t worry, I’ll get them!’ Malka cried.

She sprang up and seized the list before either of her sisters could volunteer. Not that they ever did. Malka wondered if her mother was just trying to get rid of her, or sensed her restlessness, and was giving her a chance to escape. She was too eager to wonder about

it for long. She threw off her apron, crumpled the list and the shekels her mother gave her into her skirt pocket.

‘Malka! Your coat!’

‘I don’t need it,’ she called back over her shoulder. The front door slammed, and she was free.

Their apartment was on the third floor of a narrow block in the Jewish quarter of the old city. On Fridays, this meant dragging the groceries up three flights of stairs which stank of boiled vegetables and burnt chicken. As if this wasn’t bad enough, she had to do it in the dark. To save electricity, the hall light went on for just a few seconds after the switch was depressed, before plunging you into darkness. Her arms laden with shopping bags, Malka would lash out at the ground floor switch with her foot, then see how far she could get before it clicked off.

Malka shot downstairs, holding her breath. She burst out into the sunlight like a swimmer emerging from underwater, taking deep, gulping mouthfuls of fragrant air, inhaling pine, wet earth, and jasmine. She glanced at the list. Sadly, it wasn’t very long. She didn’t see why vegetables needed to be Kosher. Rather than catch a bus to the market in Machane Yehuda, Malka headed towards the Christian quarter, a route her father had expressly forbidden her to take.

She loved it here. The street sloped steeply away beneath her feet, slippery with crushed fruit. The air thick with the sound of Arabic as the merchants vied with one another to sell their wares. No one noticed her in her uniform of long sleeves, dark ankle-length skirt and thick seamed stockings, her red hair swinging over her shoulder in a tight braid. No one except for the coffee-merchant at the very edge of the Christian quarter. Her feet always slowed outside his stall. With his thick beard and moustache, the merchant wouldn’t have looked out of place in her father’s synagogue.

Perched on his stool at the door, he nodded cheerfully.

‘Kayf Haalik, Binti?’

‘Bikhair, shukran.’

Each week, he taught her a new Arabic phrase. She practiced at night in bed, rolling the sounds around on her tongue like sweets. She ordered her usual shot glass of steaming Turkish coffee, taking quick sips and inhaling the aroma of cardamom. The trouble she would be in if she was ever caught here only deepened her pleasure.

‘Salaam Aleikhum.’

‘Aleikhum Salaam,’ Malka nodded in return.

With the caffeine buzzing through her, Malka wove effortlessly through the throngs of tourists until she reached her favourite stall with colourful mounds of fruit and vegetables piled at its entrance. She read through her list and chose carefully, hefting stubby carrots still sprinkled with soil, stroking the onions’ papery skins. When she went to pay, she found a young boy of around her own age at the till, a slight moustache blooming above his lip. He looked at her appraisingly.

‘My father is sick,’ he said in Arabic-accented Hebrew.

In her confusion, she answered in Yiddish. ‘Wish him a Refuah Sheleimah.’

He frowned, puzzled, and she blushed at her list. Idiot, she told herself. She was meant to keep any conversation with men to a minimum. Especially men her own age. No wonder she was making a mess of it.

‘I mean atamanna lah al’afdal.’ She hoped he would hear the concern in her voice, even if she mangled the words.

His smile was a sunburst. ‘Allah yusallmak!’

She picked up her bags and turned to leave. Something brushed against her leg. She started back. It was only a cat. It was a beautiful chocolate brown, sleek and well-fed, unlike the hordes of gaunt street-cats that haunted the overflowing municipal bins. She put down her shopping and bent down to stroke it, but it backed slowly away from her towards a nearby flight of stairs, keeping eye contact. Its eyes were pale emerald.

‘You want me to follow you?’

Malka delighted in discovering new corners of the city. Who better to reveal these than a cat?

Clutching her shopping, she crept towards it. The cat moved almost lazily up the first two steps, then turned to look at her again. She darted forward, but again the cat evaded her. The chase began in earnest.

The narrow stone steps were worn water-smooth from centuries of passage. They seemed to curve in on themselves, like an ear listening to her footfalls. As she climbed, unfamiliar cooking scents drifted past, reminding her that she should be heading home.

The stairs opened suddenly on a sweeping promenade, which overlooked the Western Wall from an unfamiliar angle. From here she could see only a curved sliver of the wall, a crescent, which mirrored the symbol on the golden mosque just behind it. She would never dare admit this to anyone, not even Devvie who shared her room, but Malka loved the symbol of this other religion, and secretly called it the smiling moon.

She wanted to put her bags down for a moment and enjoy the view, but the cat was already twitching its tail at the far end of the promenade, urging her on. Just as she drew close, the cat darted down a narrow passageway. Malka had to turn sideways to pass through it.

She found herself in a small courtyard dominated by a wizened eucalyptus tree, which twisted and strained against the paving stones that held it prisoner. Malka spotted her quarry across the courtyard, scratching at a small wooden door. It could not escape her now. She tiptoed through the cool shadows, wobbling a little on the uneven stones. The door had once been sky blue, but the paint was chipped and faded. It was slightly ajar.

Just as she reached it, the cat sprang through the gap. Malka stood staring foolishly at the door. She suddenly realised how hot and tired she was. She dropped her bags, clenching and unclenching her hands to let the blood flow back through them. The cat’s head peeked round the door frame. Daring her. She grabbed her shopping.

‘You’re not getting away.’

The door creaked open at her touch. More stairs. She groaned.

‘Hello? Anyone home? I found your cat!’ she called. Her words echoed around the high domed ceiling, but there was no sign of life other than the cat, which was doing a little dance of welcome at her feet. Malka knelt and stroked its head. It pushed against her hand, curling its tail into a question mark.

Malka stood and looked around her. This was the biggest house she’d ever been in.

The domed ceiling was crowned by a circular skylight, and the stairs curved up the wall ahead of her and through an arched doorway. Curious, Malka headed up the stairs, with the cat keeping her company. She ducked through the doorway into a large circular room, with another skylight. Most of the room was taken up with books. They were crammed onto bookshelves, and teetered in piles on the floor. Every chair was filled with papers, many of which spilled or cascaded down in frozen waterfalls. For some reason, the room smelt of cinnamon. Like she was in a forest of spices.

Then she noticed that sprawled in a little clearing on the floor was a young man with a hat, a mug steaming beside him. Malka tried to leave before he could notice her, and fell over the cat. Her shopping tumbled away from her, and the onions rolled across the floor towards the seated figure. He leapt up as she scrabbled to retrieve them, and their heads almost collided. It was Moshe, one of her father’s students.

‘What are you doing here?’ They both said at once.

‘You first,’ Malka insisted, straightening her skirt. Attack was her best form of defence. Besides, what could she say – she’d followed a cat? She felt ridiculous and panicky.

Alone with a man. Yichud. She’d broken so many rules already today, she shouldn’t care, but this was more than a rule. It was a distillation of the air of prohibition that she had breathed all her life. She felt angry with Moshe for putting her into this situation. It didn’t help that she’d surprised him.

‘I’m studying,’ he said, staring at her curiously. He had high cheek bones, and very pale blue eyes. A scar twisted one eyebrow. She remembered hearing that he’d earned it beating up a group of boys.

‘What’s wrong with the books in the yeshiva?’

He blushed. ‘Nothing. It’s just that there are certain topics we are not allowed to...’

He stammered. ‘Not that I hold that against your father, of course. I came to feed the cat.

Then I just lost track of time.’

‘So, it’s your cat?’ she asked. It was the simplest of all the questions she wanted to ask.

‘Who, Reb Moshe?’ He bent to stroke the cat, which purred in most un-rabbinic fashion.

‘You named your cat after yourself?’

He laughed. ‘He’s not mine. He belongs to Reb Zushya.’

She recognised that name. Reb Zushya was a famous recluse. A Kabbalist. She looked at the piles of books Moshe was studying, taking in their titles. Sefer Yetzirah. Sefer Habahir.

The Zohar, in several editions. All Kabbalistic books. Every single one. Her father did not allow such books into the house, or in his yeshiva. Tiflus, he called them. Foolishness. There was something dangerous in his voice when he used this word, and any visiting scholar whose thinking smelt of Kabbalah was not invited back.

‘Reb Zushya? I thought he was dead?’

‘Yes. Belonged, I should have said. It was the cat that brought me here. Reb Zushya said that it was a sign. He took me as his student.’ His voice coloured with a pride she remembered from her own days learning with her father. Until she’d started asking too many questions, and his study door closed in her face, never to reopen.

‘Why do you need to feed his cat?’

He was gazing towards the window, and seemed not to have heard her. ‘He died last winter, the day it snowed. They never found a will. It would be hard to find anything here.

They searched through every book, every drawer.’

‘Who did?’

‘Rabbinical schools, both orthodox and non. The Hebrew University. Various interested individuals. They found nothing. And now his home and his famous collection of books are all disputed property. Luckily, I have a key, so Reb Moshe here doesn’t go hungry.’

His eyes narrowed. ‘Hey, how did you get in?’

‘You left the door open.’ She could feel a breeze from the hallway on her neck. If she hadn’t closed it, then technically, they were not alone. She was still safe.

‘I must be getting careless.’ Reb Moshe was nosing at the bags by her feet. ‘Forgive me, can I get you like a cold drink?’

Malka nodded. Sweat snaked down her back, curled the wisps of hair at her forehead into tendrils, which she smoothed down with a finger. She would just drink and go, hoping that no lightning would strike her down before she got home. She didn’t dare think what the time was.

Moshe disappeared through a curtained archway, and she heard a fridge door open and close, the hiss of a kettle. In the yeshiva, they called him the Russian Ilui. A genius. The term was not used lightly. Her father often brought his best students home for dinner on Friday nights. They all clamoured for his attention, each trying to out-argue the other.

Moshe was always there, but he rarely spoke. She had caught him looking at her across the table once or twice, in a way that sent her racing for the safety of the kitchen.

He returned with a glass beaded with tiny droplets. Rather than pass it to her directly, he put it on a low table so they would not have to touch. She gripped it tightly. A sliver of lemon bobbed on the surface. Tiny green flecks swirled through it. Mint, she realised as she sipped. How had he had time to make this? He was watching her closely, and she drank too fast. The cat cocked its head to one side, a welcome distraction.

‘Why…why is he called Reb Moshe?’ she coughed.

‘Reb Zushya believed the cat was a gilgul of his teacher. A reincarnation.’ He drank his cinnamon tea slowly. Steam arabesques curled in the air above him.

‘I know what a gilgul is.’

‘Of course you do. Sorry.’ When he was embarrassed, his Russian accent thickened, and vowels rolled in his mouth, refusing to leave. He pursed his lips. ‘Remember the municipal cull last summer?’

Malka shuddered. In the hottest months, the council left out poison for the feral cats that had plagued the city since the time of the British; domestic cats often ate it too. The cats screamed all night, like children in pain. Although she put her pillow over her head, she and Devvie had not slept. She’d held Devvie as they both cried angry, helpless tears. In the morning, when they went to school, they passed heaps of dead cats being loaded onto wheelbarrows, and carted away to be burned. Devvie, who usually skipped ahead, held her hand so tightly that she’d left indentations in Malka’s palm.

‘I remember.’

‘The morning after, I was on the way to yeshiva, but instead Reb Moshe led me here.

He seemed vividly alive in the face of all that death, like a blessing. Reb Zushya was so grateful, he actually hugged me. He said there was no such thing as coincidence. If Reb Moshe had brought me to his home, I was meant to be there.’ He smiled at the memory, and for a moment his face was beautiful. Behind his curly beard, he was still a boy. ‘We only had a few months together, but he taught me so much. I treasure every word.’

She sipped from her glass, and found it was empty.

‘Would you like another? It’s no trouble. Reb Zushya loved it. I still keep a jug in the fridge.’

Of course she would. It was delicious. ‘I’d better be going,’ she said hastily. She set the glass down carefully on the little table. For a moment, they both stared at it. Moshe swallowed.

‘Can I ask you a favour? Please, don’t tell your father I was here.’

She smiled at the very idea of telling her father about the events of this afternoon.

‘Don’t worry. Your secret is safe with me.’

As she stood at the top of the stairs, Malka saw there was a tree growing inside the house. How come she hadn’t noticed it before? It was huge, the branches reaching almost to the skylight.

‘It’s magnificent.’

‘What?’

‘The tree.’

‘What tree?’ He looked at her curiously, his head on one side, just like the cat.

She reached over the railing to show him. The tree had strange, crumpled leaves.

She pulled one off, and smoothed it in her palm. It had writing on it. She knew what it was.

A kepitel.

Growing up almost in its shadow, she went to the Western Wall almost every day.

Jews travelled from all over the world to pray there, and so they wanted to leave something of themselves behind. They wrote out their most fervent hopes, things which they didn’t dare say aloud, and slipped these paper prayers, or kepitelech, into the cracks between the ancient stones, pressing these furled buds of longing together so tightly the huge stones seemed held aloft by prayers alone. Perhaps they were. She had seen the kepitelech dusted with snow and dripping with rainwater, painted rose by the dawn, glowing and ghostly in the moonlight. Someone had been collecting them, bringing them here, and attaching them to this huge tree. But who? Why? She stroked the kepitel flat, trying to see what was written there. But it clenched tight like a fist, then lifted from her palm, as if caught by the wind. A roaring filled Malka’s ears, of many voices speaking at once. It was coming from the tree. The air around her grew thick, and warm as bathwater. She gasped. All the kepitelech on the tree had begun to open and close in unison, beating like tiny hearts. Each called aloud the prayer inscribed upon it, in languages familiar and unknown. As she watched, a clump of paper prayers tore themselves free, and circled above her like a huge bird. The beating grew fiercer, the crying louder. They were all the same word now, over and over.

‘Ayeka? Ayeka? A-ye—kaaaa?’

It was the first question in the Torah. The one God asked after Adam and Chava ate from the tree of knowledge. Where are you? Malka felt it was being asked of her. She didn’t know how to answer. She bit her lip, and the taste of blood filled her mouth. The whirling prayers darted arrow-like towards her. Moshe made no move to help her. Malka screamed.

She hurtled down the stairs, towards the door. She slammed it behind her. She heard a sound like hailstones hammering against the door. The prayers were trying to get out, trying to get to her.

She ran through the streets until she found one she recognised, and didn’t stop running until she reached her own block. She hurtled up the stairs in the dark, navigating by touch and smell alone. After what she had just seen, she didn’t know if she would ever trust her eyes again.

She was about to knock on the door, when she realised that she had left the shopping back at Zushya’s. She couldn’t go back, and it was too late to replace what she’d bought. What should she do? The hallway light blinked on, dazzling her. She heard footsteps on the stairs. She flattened herself against the wall so they could pass, but the steps slowed, and then stopped. She looked up. It was Moshe.

‘I think these are yours.’ The light clicked off. There was a rustle as he put the bags down beside her. When she found the light switch, he was gone.

‘Thank you,’ she whispered.

Devvie opened the door to her frantic pounding.

‘Malka, what happened to you? Estie’s going to kill you,’ she said.

Malka hurried past her, trying to look suitably contrite. The kitchen was like a furnace.

‘So, you decided to pay us a visit?

Her mother looked flustered, rather than angry, but Estie’s face was pale. Now she really does look like the moon, Malka thought, and smiled. She couldn’t help it. Estie snapped.

‘She just wants to ruin everything for me!’

‘I ran all the way here.’ Malka said. She tied on her apron with shaking fingers, then heaved the bags up onto the table. Miraculously, the eggs had come through unbroken. She handed them to her mother, who slipped them gently into the bubbling pot. There was a twist of paper amongst the coins at the bottom of the bag. A receipt? She didn’t remember getting one. Absently, she crumpled it into her apron pocket, pushed the change into the charity box. Her mother looked up at the sound.

‘Sorry, Mamme, I got everything you need.’

‘Except for the time to cook it in.’ Malka looked up quickly, but her mother’s pursed lips softened, like a challah crust dipped in milk.

‘You’d better start chopping while there’s still time.’

This meant that she was not in trouble, at least with her mother. Estie looked ready to spring on her. She focussed on the onions, which turned slippery and pungent once released from their delicate wrappers. Their pale rings brought back in a rush her glimpse of the mosque, the sliver of lemon in the drink Moshe had given her, his slender fingers as he put the glass down, the cat which was a reincarnated rabbi, and the demonic tree. She pressed her fingers against her eyelids, trying to stop what she was seeing. Somebody took her arm. Malka flinched. Their family never touched one another. Then the familiar smells of baking and lavender water lifted her head. Only one person smelled like that. Malka buried her face in her mother’s shoulder for as long as she dared, and let her mother stroke her hair.

‘Here’, her mother said at last, handing her a dishcloth. ‘You dry the dishes. I’ll finish those.’

The egg salad was done with two minutes to spare. Her mother clapped her hands, and straightened her headscarf.

‘Come my shaineh maidelech. Let’s light candles.’

As Malka pulled off her apron, the receipt fell to the floor, and unfurled. A single word glared up at her. Ayeka. One of the kepitelech had followed her from Reb Zushya’s.

She had to hide it. She scooped it up and pressed it surreptitiously into the slot on top of the charity box. As she covered her eyes and recited the Sabbath blessing with her sisters, the setting sun stained her fingers like blood.

Duncan Lyon

dlyon786@yahoo.co.uk I have previously published Sand Paper Stone (2015), a memoir about a Muslim convert’s pilgrimage to Mecca, and Incredibly Selfish (2016), a novel relating to the phenomenon of young men sitting for hours up on rooftops. I live in Liverpool, writing full time, having also lived, studied and worked in Manchester, London and the United Arab Emirates.

Hodder Place Hodder Place relates to my experiences growing up in Anfield in what was officially termed a Hostel for the Mentally Ill, remembering through the eyes of a young boy those who have nobody else to speak of them, while also ultimately attempting to resolve a selfish personal question for the author which relates to an incident at Hodder Place, potentially influencing a fundamental and profound change in legislation and policy.

Hodder Place Duncan Lyon Maxine Things didn’t always go as we would have wanted. There were several happy endings, but there weren’t any fairy tales. Maxine wasn’t out of a fairy tale. She was more like the girl on the telly who jumped around and shouted, ‘Oh Bondage! Up Yours!’

There was no good reason why she should have been with us. She was far too young. She was closer to my age than she should have been. She was sixteen, seventeen or eighteen. She toppled about and she screamed and she swore and we adored her for it. She was the first punk – the only punk – we’d ever seen. She didn’t dress like one or act like one, although she did – with short spiky blotches of black and blue hair, and a studded leather jacket that looked like it had been found in a puddle next to a bus stop, loose-necked t-shirts with black bra-lace showing where it shouldn’t have done, short tight skirts and torn black tights, thick-soled boots full of laces. She had a Dennis the Menace quality to my young eyes, but there was also the twinkle of something a lot more dangerous in the way that she stood smoking a cigarette, with her head to one side. She wasn’t a punk. She was the punk.

She was punk. She wasn’t playing. If it hadn’t existed, she would have still have had the moves and the comic-book sneer.

She didn’t want to be there. She shouldn’t have been there. It was said that there was nowhere else that they could think of to send her. She wasn’t from around our way. She sounded different. She wasn’t from Anfield.

She had the other residents of the hostel and their lives turned upside down and they didn’t deserve it. They had spent the bulk of their adulthood given over to the big institution, the dreaded dreadful Rainhill, abandoned in high-windowed dormitories to watch the sunlight move across a wall, with the same routines, for several decades, turned into a shuffling queue for Mogadon and Largactyl. Basket weaving if they were unlucky. A television left on or a door left open if they weren’t. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, without the laughs, or the visitors, and then one fine day they had been cast out, as they must have seen it: some strange thin-sheeted white, green and yellow forms completed, with copying paper between, informed officially how fortunate they were, as if selected, and taken in a van into the middle of a council estate. Here, they might find their happier ending. Sometimes the atmosphere was of that made by eight people who might have been let out of prison after undefended wrongful convictions. Not all day, every day, was like this, but enough of the time. And then came this Maxine, thrust amongst them, reeling and railing against the indignity and insult of her unchosen surroundings, and not just Hodder Place but everywhere she had ever been and everywhere she had ever seen. She was too much too young.

Maxine wasn’t a punk. Punk was Maxine. She had seen too much, knew too much and had turned the tables. She was going to mock, humiliate and destroy everything that reminded her of where she had come from, which was everything. She was too full of fear to stop hating and she was not going to let anyone in. There was no way in.

They tried. My mum tried, my dad tried. They used gentle words, cajoling words, grown up words and scolding words. It was all the same to Maxine. There was no way into

her maze. She was ready to drink until she couldn’t stand up, and she would slyly and openly make promises of favours to the boys off the estate if any of them could lay their hands on some speed. I knew that speed was not what she needed, whatever speed was, just going by the name of it; she needed to slow down, let my mother wipe away the vicious black and blue make-up from around her eyes, find the girl there underneath, drink a mug of warm milk, listen to some of our Beatles records (I wanted to play her Michelle, ma belle), just do something normal. But she was more like the girl in the song who didn’t like Mondays. And she didn’t suit Sundays either.

As that week of deep summer got warmer and warmer further and further into the evening, the later the unsettling sound of shrieking laughter on the front step of the hostel next door. There was no sensitivity she would respond to without wilder oscillations of behaviour. Neighbours were thanked by my mum and dad for their calm and wise patience, or told to go fuck themselves depending on how many times they came in the daytime to knock and complain.

I don’t recall now if it was an ambulance or a police van that came for her. It was a hot summer evening, as blue as the night turned black. There was the flashing light. Her tshirt was torn almost from her. I remember hoping that her pale cheek was pressed against one of the clumps of soft green grass that grew up in the cracks in the pavement. I just hoped that there wasn’t any powdery dry white dogshit where she fell. Her problem was a matter of emotional violence. There was so much of it in her life that she thought it only fair to share it out. She didn’t just shout and scream as she was pressed into the concrete by uniformed officers. She howled. Everyone heard it. Nobody had heard anything like it before. That sort of pain, from a girl who is sixteen, seventeen or eighteen, it isn’t normal. I don’t know where they were taking her.

When the doors banged shut there were other noises too. Briefly, before it was gone. Over and above what was left was the wailing defeat of my mother and the frantic failing comprehension of my father. Both had taken digs and insults amongst all the open-air wrestling from Maxine herself and the policemen too as they had carried and dragged this girl away from their care. The neighbours that had come outside to see stopped dead and silent and still in their slippers, unable to reconcile what they were witnessing with what they had been saying to each other behind the gaps in the curtains.

There was a heavy, heart-torn sound of sobbing deep within the estate that night, long after she had left us. All the lights stayed on. There were in total over the years that they ran it maybe thirty, forty or fifty people that came to stay and there is nobody left to remember their names but me. Some of their names I won’t be able to recall. But I remember Maxine. I wonder if she might have been the first girl I ever fell in love with. I might have been around seven, eight or nine, and that night I tried to make myself dream that she would have been taken to where all the other punks lived, all the ones who dressed up on the telly, and that she had been gently released. Only her own kind could have helped her. We couldn’t do anything. Not in our hostel. It wasn’t for her. It was a Hostel for the Mentally Ill. I don’t think we spoke about Maxine, or of anyone else by that name, ever again. We couldn’t. I don’t enjoy saying her name now.

Maxine. I don’t remember your second name. I don’t know if I knew it then. I don’t think you would want me to remember it now anyway. I don’t think you liked it very much.

Beverley Bannister

boleyn2@aol.com From Blackpool, Beverley moved to London and trained as an actor, appearing in The Mousetrap. She went into theatre management and latterly worked in the picture library of a national newspaper. She holds a History BA. Beverley relocated back to Lancashire in 2011. She is married and now writes full-time Wraith When teens Marnie and Sally disturb the remains of Jocosa Kirkham, an alleged witch from Lancashire, a mysterious young woman appears at Galenswood. Twenty-two years later, Sally is long dead and Marnie, her life imploded, is damaged and alone. The woman is still there. But now she has a double.

Wraith Beverley Bannister I am here most days, the good ones anyway. It means I am not drunk and heaped in the tiny, littered cottage that is the only thing I have to call home. I am at Galenswood, where I really belong.

But today, a long narrow shadow casts itself from beyond the ancient yew, and I know what will come. I did not expect it here, in these woods where I feel safe. Usually I can walk here, through the secret ruins and twisted groves, just as I did when Guy and I were children.

I lean my head back onto the uncomfortable ruin behind me. I am in charge here.

This is my place, not hers. I have endlessly trodden each turn and straight in the long narrow grove that led her here. I can recognise smell from every season. Everything at Galenswood, from the fragrant leaves of summer to the stark woodiness of winter; to the bowed raspberry bushes of my childhood den, is my friend and my sanctuary. I can time, with absolute precision, the number of seconds it takes to walk from the dank muddiness of the Old Pool to the grassy serenity of the only modern grave in this ancient ground.

It’s my heritage and I have never been afraid here before... Except for the time Sally and I went looking for Jocosa Kirkham’s skeleton in the old crypt.

‘Where exactly is Jocosa?’ Sally’s silver voice settled in the dusty darkness of all those years ago. Jocosa Kirkham had become such a regular topic of our conversations that we had long dispensed of her surname. It was as though she were the last piece of a private triumvirate that consisted of Sally, me and the long-deceased witch herself.

Tiny fragments danced in the funnel of light from my torch. I was trying not to think about what, or rather who, the alarmingly dense particles might be made of. I hardly dared to walk because if I did, I might tread on the scattered decay of my ancestors.

As I panned the chamber, piles of stone coffins came into view, flickering in the pale orange glow. One of them had toppled and half a skull lay next to it, grinning jauntily at a spiny splay of fingers.

I quickly turned to where Sally was pointing her own light. It was the same as mine; both had been artfully taken from the old butler’s pantry at Galenswood but hers shone a little brighter. Guy had used one in the summer when he had camped by the edge of the Old Pool. He must have replaced the batteries.

Beyond the skull there was a clutch of narrower, older coffins. Even with the curtain of shadow that draped much of them, it was obvious that these were not the anonymous tapered rectangles of the entrance. Worn and pitted, it was still possible to see that they had once been carved into chivalric effigies.

‘Do you think she might be with them?’ Sally was moving over to the blurred medieval knights as if it were she, and not I, who was leading.

‘No of course not. They pre-date Jocosa by about four hundred years or more. Just stay still and don’t start poking about,’ I spoke with a certainty I did not feel.

‘There’s another room through here and there’s a bit with a grille across it,’ she said, ignoring my instruction. She began to clamber over the noble dead to pass through the narrow entrance.

I had never imagined Sally could be so... assertive. I was not going to tolerate it. ‘I’ve seen it,’ I snapped untruthfully. ‘Uncle Ralph told me about it before I knew you.’ Another lie. ‘When I first found out about Jocosa. The family witch, he called her.’ He didn’t. ‘So, I’ll go first.’ I shouldered her out of the way.

‘It’s another chamber,’ I said, when we had climbed the two uneven steps that rose from behind the worn knights. We flashed our torches over the black, stale eeriness.

There were yet more disturbed piles of coarse and broken sarcophagi. Several of these lids were skewed and it was possible to see the crumbled mounds of my medieval forebearers. It was as though somebody had, at some point, shoved the ancient coffins in panic and then abandoned the chamber in hasty retreat.

‘Marnie, do you think perhaps we should go back?’ Sally’s hushed and urgent tone lent her a childlike quality that implied our micro order was resumed.

I shook my head and willed my voice into fervour. ‘We will find Jocosa,’ I said. ‘We know she’s in here somewhere.’

She grabbed my arm and, with a secret smile to myself as I led us both, we took small and careful steps towards the outline of the iron grille.

I shone my torch over it and saw that there was a door leading into a smaller, recessed area where an ugly wooden casket rested on a plinth. It looked as though it might have once held something more artisan than human remains. I wondered if, like Anne Boleyn’s coffin, it had been an arrow chest.

But whoever lay there must have been deliberately placed behind this heavy grille: to be kept imprisoned because they were a danger not just to the living, but also their fellow dead.

There could only be one candidate. I could hear my heart quicken as my voice tore through the darkness, ‘We’ve found Jocosa. She’s here.’

With one push and a slow miserable creak the grille door was open and we were in.

Looking down at the makeshift coffin, Sally was so close to me that I could feel her breathing on my neck. I raised my shoulder in an involuntary circular movement to wipe the unwelcome dampness away.

The lid was slightly gaped. Peering through the grimy light into the crack, I could see tendrils of a thick greyness coming up from the inside and sticking to the lid. It looked like a soft, pliant rubber, or finely woven skeins of something that might be stronger than it looks.

But I had pored over enough photographs of the sinister dead to know that this was neither.

It was adipocere or grave wax, a saponified substance that sometimes forms as tissue rots. And its presence indicated that whatever it was lying in the old chest was nothing as banal as mere bone fragments and dust.

I turned to Sally. ‘We’ll open it.’ But she stood in rigid silence, her eyes riveted on the webbed grease within.

‘Sally?’ Still she did not move. ‘You take one end of the lid and I’ll get the other.’ My fear was ebbing, replaced instead by a rush of apprehension and anticipation. ‘Then, when I say, we’ll drag it to the other side. But we’ll have to be careful because of – because of the grave wax.’

‘I - I don’t know what you mean.’ The daintiness of her tone was flawed by a reedy quiver. It reminded me of an adult actor taking a child’s role in a radio play. ‘What might happen?’

‘Well,’ I wasn’t prepared for questions. My lips pinched between my teeth as my mind exploded in a kaleidoscope of uncertainty. ‘We don’t want to, you know, make a mess,’ I said at last.

‘I feel sick.’

‘Don’t think about it.’ A primal force of curiosity was driving me to look and see whatever it was that awaited us inside Jocosa’s coffin and I didn’t want Sally to lose her nerve. If she did, I would lose mine and we would retreat back through the grille towards the crypt door and back up the uneven treads of the stone stairs. If that happened, we would never return.

There was a moment of stillness before we each took a lid end and began to move it from the top of the old chest.

With a soft snapping sound, the fronds of adipocere crumbled at the pressure of the movement.

‘Oh Jesus!’ I moved my left forearm so that it covered my nose. ‘That’s disgusting!’ I barely dared breathe as a cheese-like aroma filtered up, emanating around the grated recess.

Sally started to retch, but we carried on. The foul-smelling substance, friable as it was, caved easily and within a few minutes, the lid was off.

We placed it on the floor and I aimed my torch into the open chest. Jocosa Kirkham, our own personal witch, lay before us.

She was covered in what might once have been a white shift. Damp and discoloured, its folds hosted the same dead mould that had reached up, like twisted candles, to the lid that we had removed.

Jocosa’s knees were bent and her feet were turned unnaturally inwards as though the aim of whoever had laid her there was simply to get her inside as quickly as possible.

There had been no ceremony and no care taken. Her arms were forced behind her, probably pinioned at the time of death, and her hands were not visible. But it was her head that inevitably grabbed most of our attention.

It rested, at an alarming right angle, on her left shoulder. Jocosa, in all likelihood, would have died a slow and horrible death by asphyxiation but the neck appeared to have been broken in order to fit her into the old chest.

I did not blink as I stared at Jocosa’s face beneath the cap. How can I describe it now, after more than twenty years? It is not like assessing the features of a living, breathing human to one who has neither met nor seen that individual.

That eerie face matched the substance that had found its way to the underside of the arrow chest lid and the folds of her shroud. Although it had undoubtedly been beautiful in life, centuries of death had left no nose; there was just a convex impression and the eyes were closed and sunken. But where the top lip had withered and contracted, a row of perfectly straight, evenly sized white teeth could be seen attached to a sepia jaw.

The head itself was covered by a linen cap; a string, thin and rotten, was tied neatly under her chin. Devoid of frills and decoration, it was closely fitted and covered right from underneath unseen ears to the top of the slightly high forehead. Although most likely designed to promote plainness, it only served to accentuate the oval of the face. Several strands of strong hair sprouted, as if in defiance of an imposed modesty, from the front and bottom of it.

‘She really did have black hair,’ said Sally, softly at last breaking our shocked silence.

A body that has been preserved in the way that Jocosa’s had, does not, in lay terms at least, look particularly lifelike. Perhaps a pathologist or other scientist might be able to learn a lot from a corpse in this condition, but we were just two girls, who didn’t really know what we were looking at.

My breath was the only sound. My chest was tight and my lungs felt shrivelled by the airless decay of this secret, ghastly prison of the dead. Sally was leaning further over the corpse and for a moment the diminishing glow from my torch lit her eyes. There was a sinister glint in them that I did not recognise. It passed in a second or two, but before it did she spoke.

‘I want to touch her.’

‘You can’t do that!’ My scalp twitched as adrenalin rushed at my head. I was dizzy but my hands felt thick and heavy, like I had just released them from my own body weight.

She shrugged. ‘Why not?’

‘Because – because it...’ I struggled to think of a logical reason, without saying that the whole episode was no longer exciting and the anxiety I felt was getting worse. It was seeping down into my stomach and turning to nausea. I almost left her there, but of course I didn’t. Instead I muttered feebly, ‘It’ll make your hands smell.’

She sniffed the fingers of the hand that wasn’t holding the torch. ‘They do anyway.’

In desperation, my voice went up in volume. ‘Oh Sally, NO!’ But her hand was inside the makeshift casket and her finger tips gently caressed the outline of Jocosa’s face in all of its weird splendour.

‘What did they do to you, hmm? Why did they want to hurt you?’ Sally was crooning softly at the putrefied corpse.

I shifted from one foot to the other. ‘Don’t...’

Still she carried on. ‘Poor, poor Jocosa. I bet you never did anything wrong, did you?

Were they jealous of you because you were beautiful? Or was it because you were barren?’

She hissed the final word so that it whistled in a vicious echo around the crypt. And I swear I saw the centuries-long dead body of Jocosa Kirkham twitch.

That was the moment everything changed. What our lives would have been, Sally’s and mine, if we hadn’t gone into the crypt at all? She would be alive and married to Guy. And I... Perhaps Ed would have left me anyway. But I would still have my son.

A nearby crow opens his black onyx beak and the lament of his call seems to greet her as she emerges from the mouth of the grove. I move away from the wreckage of tombs and step back until I can feel the uneven stonework of the dead church.

She is moving forward and she has seen me. The crow is eyeing her too. Perhaps, like me, he has noticed that her sliding gait is not quite so effortless as it used to be. I exhale a frosty cloud of breath that lends her an ethereal frame as she walks among the sparkles from the late autumn sun.

She is closer and my hands tremble as they so often do but this time, it is from fear. I have not seen her in over fifteen years, since before Sally died. Her dress is always contemporary and today she is wearing a navy Barbour and dark skinny jeans. The clothes are the only thing that ever change.

There should have been something to indicate the passage of time; a slight loss of lustre around the eyes perhaps, or an imperceptible settling of features. But there is nothing and her skin is as flawless as polished marble and her eyes are untouched by over a decade of being. Standing mute and helpless in the October sun, I shiver, drawing chilly staccato breaths that don’t reach my lungs. And still the wraith comes.

Mike Levanzin

Mikeevertonblu@aol.com Mike Levanzin is a former graduate of Rose Bruford Drama School and has worked as both actor and director. His writing credits include A King and I, an adaptation of Macbeth, and God Bless The Child, a one women show on the life of Billie Holiday. He is also a lecturer in innovative theatre, but more recently Mike was a full time carer looking after his Mum. Promised Land Set in Liverpool, Promised Land chronicles the optimism and failures of a national social housing programme. Vividly brought to life through the eyes of a 10 year old boy, it is both biography and social history, ultimately celebrating the spirit of community.

Promised Land Mike Levanzin Hopes and Dreams The last room I said goodbye to was my sister’s, the poster of Ben Murphy still dominant, his Hollywood smile and blue eyes gazed out at a world that had grown up.

With the patience of an archaeologist, I began to slowly peel away the faded 70’s icon, gazing at the flakes of paint and crumbling plaster, I couldn’t help thinking, the last time this wall was blank, she was a teenager, declaring her first crush, her independence, ‘this is my room.’

As the front door slammed behind me for the final time, I felt a rush, that same rush I experienced as a 10-year-old boy, charging through a brand new shiny council house, with so much hope and the smell of new everywhere.

In the summer of 1970, my 15- year- old sister, hobbled around in shiny beige platforms and A-line miniskirts, blasting out Mungo Jerry.

While my 12-year-old brother, began an interest in what would develop into a lifelong career, a career that would shelter him under the care and guise of Her Majesties prisons. And my Dad, like the forger in the Great Escape, expunged a year of my life, changing my birth certificate from 1960 to 1961.

This crude act of fraud, was committed with one objective, to make our escape, from a two up, two down, damp infested terrace house in Everton, to the promised land, of a brand new shiny council house, with central heating, a garden, and the holiest of holy, an indoor toilet. The key to this utopian dream was to have at least one child under ten.

With the stroke of a black pen, and a slice of white bread used as a rubber, I was now nine years of age. And, unlike Steve McQueen, who crashed his Triumph 650, into a barbed wire fence, we triumphantly made our great escape, crashing across the Swiss border, or in our case the M62.

Thundering along in a 1950’s ford box van, we were now part of a new exodus and like thousands of others carrying new dreams and old furniture, we journeyed to the Promised Land, the land of milk and honey, Netherley.

Pre Viva Espana, this was still a land of knotted hankies on heads, rolled up trousers, and multi- coloured lolly ices, with more E’s and the deadliest of Angel Delights. Ironically, with all those artificially coloured foods and drinks to sweeten my childhood, on the day we moved out, I would be left with a bitter taste I would never forget.

On that memorable day….’in the summer time when the weather was fine,’ I sat on a cool stone kerb, pushing lolly ice sticks down the grid, then a popular pass time for a 9, sorry 10- year- old boy, although my skill at this activity was disrupted by my over excitement to be the first to see the removal van.

A magical vehicle that would whisk me away from a house shared by mice, the odd cockroach, and when the bucket was full, the nightly terror, of a visit to a distant dimly lit, out-door toilet, where my child’s imagination would weave images of ghosts and monsters.

A nocturnal activity, I was happy to say goodbye to.

Through my child eyes, I would also be saying goodbye to everything I had ever known, streets, faces and voices.

I would be saying goodbye to Tucker, my best friend and cock of our school, goodbye to Mrs McCarthy and her son Alex, who made a habit of tapping me on the head with his gold sovereign ring.

Goodbye to Mrs Devine, whose house had no electricity, and goodbye to Mr Dennis the owner of the corner shop, also known as ‘Pencil’, because of his pencil thin moustache.

Tucker said, ‘It looks like one of his eyebrows has come down for a drink’.

But despite Pencil’s mean thin moustache, he had a generous nature, and when money was short, which was often, I would be sent to the corner shop with a scribbled list, crushed in my small fist: ‘A box of Cornflakes, a thick sliced loaf, and 4 slices of spam’ were the usual listed needs, supported by my well- rehearsed: ‘Me Mum said, she’ll pay you next week’.

She did, as did all other Mothers who got their groceries on tick.

‘It’s here… it’s here!’

Like a discount version of Fantasy Island, I shouted ‘The van!’ ‘The van!’ I ran alongside the thundering giant box, racing down those familiar streets I would never see again. Mrs McCarthy and the rest of our neighbours stood on their pumice-stoned steps, as the massive shaky blue van carefully backed up and dropped its clattering tailgate outside our front door.

Immediately, like a gang of scouse dockers, we began a work detail and started to fetch and carry all our possessions, including an old broken chair that had apparently lost a leg in the war.

‘Don’t forget…. the Isle of Man chair’, shouted my Dad, who never threw anything away.

My Dad was from Malta, and as a young man, no doubt forging some documentation, lied about his age to join the RAF; in 1942, he and my Grandparents lived through the great siege of Malta.

At that time, the small idyllic Mediterranean island was the most bombed place on earth. Left homeless and surviving on starvation rations, he had grown to hate waste of any kind, but in truth, he could peel an orange in his pocket, or as me mum put it, ‘was tight as a duck’s arse’. She was from Liverpool.

Loading the van, my exhausted puny body developed a man size thirst. During countless trips, depositing cushions, lamps, and the Isle of Man chair, I had noticed a full bottle of lemonade hidden in the shade by the tail gate of the van.

With my thirst growing, and the sun now at its peak, it was too much of a temptation; when the moment was right and when I stood alone in the van, I twisted the top from the bottle, and gulped down the shaded golden nectar, and instantly spat out the bitter taste of piss.

It was with that rancorous taste still lingering at the back of my throat, that we began our journey to the Promised Land, where over the coming years, our little lives would be entangled by the oversight of architects, their failure to understand the needs of a community, and the fragility of concrete.

Nick Peterson

nickp2005@hotmail.co.uk Nick is a writer, poet and trainee counsellor. He has been writing since childhood and is currently working on his fourth novel, which is the first instalment of a fantasy trilogy. He believes that creative expression – whether it be through movement, storytelling, artwork or sound – can be profoundly therapeutic.

The Light of Kamadhi A young thief faces terrible consequences when he ignores his gut instinct. Several years later, he gets drawn into a strange conspiracy when he steals a royal strongbox, soon discovering that the world as he knows it is not quite what it seems...

The Light of Kamadhi Nick Peterson Young Aethorn slunk through the narrow streets of Brownflagon, looking for someone to pickpocket. He would lose his hand if he got caught, but his family was starving again and he was the only one who could provide for them.

Suddenly, an opportunity presented itself. A spice merchant had left his stall unattended while flirting with the baker’s daughter, so Aethorn slid by and stole the bulging coin purse that lay there. Smiling to himself, he pocketed his bounty and slipped away unseen. There was enough gold in the coin purse to feed his family for a month, but Aethorn had more pressing matters to attend to. He ran straight to the healer’s house and banged upon the heavy oak door.

A disgruntled old man, dressed in elegant blue robes, poked his head out of the window. ‘What is it, boy?’

‘It’s my father, sir,’ said Aethorn, catching his breath. ‘Please help him – he’s got the plague.’

The healer leaned against the windowsill, his mouth tightening. ‘That is unfortunate – alas, for Cursed Zedezek causes much suffering.’

Aethorn opened the stolen purse and thrust several coins into the healer’s gnarled hand. ‘Please come and see him, sir!’

The old man examined the coins with great suspicion. ‘Whose gold is this, boy?’

‘My – my father’s,’ Aethorn muttered.

The healer’s cold eyes fell upon the purse. ‘Do you think my services come cheap?’

Aethorn reluctantly surrendered some more coins, but no matter how much gold he placed into the healer’s wretched palm, the old man was not satisfied.

‘Please sir,’ said Aethorn. ‘My family needs to eat.’

‘Then you’ll just have to steal more gold, won’t you?’ remarked the healer, with raised eyebrows. ‘Give me the whole purse. I’ll settle for nothing less.’

With hungry mouths to feed back home, Aethorn did not want to give away all the gold, but he was convinced that only this man’s powers could save his dying father. He passed over the coin purse. ‘Please sir – it’s everything we have.’

‘Very well, child,’ said the healer, pocketing the gold. ‘I cannot promise miracles. But I will see your father.’

Aethorn breathed a sigh of relief. He waited for the healer to emerge from his home, then led him through the plague-ridden streets of Brownflagon, a maze of thatched wooden buildings that creaked whenever the wind blew. The healer winced as they trudged through mud and streams of raw sewage, avoiding the beggars that reached out to them with blistered hands. Victims of the plague were huddled in alleyways, covered in hideous purple boils, with far too many children amongst their ranks.

‘Here we are,’ said Aethorn, stopping halfway up one of the smaller streets. He took the healer inside his home and guided him upstairs.

Aethorn’s father lay in bed, coughing and wheezing, his skin riddled with sticky sores and blisters. The healer took one look at him and shook his head.

‘I am sorry, child – there is nothing to be done.’

‘But there must be something –’

The healer threw up his hands in exasperation. ‘Pray to Blessed Loriah! Pray that his suffering will end swiftly.’

Aethorn’s mother looked up from her silent vigil, suddenly realising that there were other people in the room. ‘Aethorn – where have you been?’

‘Nowhere,’ he told her, but he knew she did not believe him.

‘Well, I’ll be on my way,’ said the healer, turning to leave the bedchamber.

‘What about my money?’ Aethorn cried. ‘Don’t I get it back?’

‘I didn’t travel through filthy streets for nothing, boy!’ said the healer, gesturing at his soiled robes. ‘My clothes are ruined – ruined!’

As the healer departed, Aethorn’s mother smacked him across the back of the head.

‘What have I told you about stealing?’ she cried. ‘Do you want them to catch you? Do you want them to chop off your hand? Or worse –’ ‘I know what I’m doing,’ said Aethorn, his head now throbbing. ‘My instincts are always right.’

‘Promise me, Aethorn,’ his mother begged. There was a pleading look in her watery grey eyes. ‘Promise me that you’ll stop.’

‘But how else will we survive?’ he protested. At eight he was still too young to find honest work.

‘We’ll find a way,’ his mother said. ‘I can’t lose you as well as your father. Do you understand?’

Aethorn’s father died during the night. He was delirious towards the end and did not even recognise his wife and children. ‘Ah, I see now,’ he kept on saying. ‘By the light of Kamadhi, I see!’

Nobody knew who or what Kamadhi was, but every time the word was uttered, Aethorn felt a powerful jolt within him. He tried to ask his father what it meant, but it seemed as though his spirit already inhabited the heavens.

The following morning, Aethorn was charged with looking after his two brothers and three sisters. He took them out while their mother grieved, but none of them felt like playing and they wandered aimlessly through the dirty streets. Aethorn’s mind was elsewhere, trying to recall his strange and colourful dreams about Kamadhi, but they had already slipped from his grasp.

‘I’m hungry,’ said one of his sisters. ‘Do we have anything to eat?’

Aethorn sighed. He desperately regretted giving the coin purse to the healer. ‘No, we do not – our pantry is empty. But – if luck is on my side, I shall provide us with a feast.’

‘How?’ Brackley demanded. But then realisation dawned upon his small face. ‘No Aethorn – Mother said you shouldn’t –’ ‘Fear not, brother,’ Aethorn assured him. ‘When have I ever failed you?’

Brackley was reluctant to let Aethorn go, but he agreed to watch over their siblings.

Aethorn patted him on the shoulder and promised to reward him with something tasty.

Soldiers patrolled the busy marketplace, keeping a sharp lookout for any lawbreakers, but Aethorn was not deterred. He knew he could trust his instincts, so he weaved in and out of the stalls and patiently waited for an opportunity to arise.

Merchants haggled with the wealthy market-goers, trying to seduce them with charm and guile. The town crier stood upon a barrel and reported worrying tidings from afar.

‘The men of Ghoris are on our doorstep!’ he shouted. ‘If the heathens take Blackbridge, then Brownflagon will be next –’

‘Silence doomsayer!’ warned one of the soldiers. ‘The men of Andulin shall prevail.

Enough of your nonsense!’

The soldiers were clad in thick ebony armour with broadswords hanging at their sides. They were the protectors of Andulin, but they were also Aethorn’s enemies, standing in the way of his family getting fed.

‘Beware the Cursed Forest!’ proclaimed the town crier, quickly moving on to other news. ‘The God of Death dwells there, cursed be his name!’

‘Zedezek,’ Aethorn muttered. He was not afraid of this God. Many cowered in his shadow, begging to be spared, but when death stalked the town so mercilessly, Aethorn did not see the point in praying.

Suddenly, there was an almighty commotion. ‘Guards!’ cried the silk merchant, as a man crashed away from his stall. ‘Stop the thief!’

The soldiers drew their swords and gave chase to the culprit, who was making off with a roll of fine silk. Everybody watched as they bolted out of the square.

‘The fool,’ said Aethorn, shaking his head. He crouched at the edge of the marketplace and glanced around at the stalls, which were temporarily unguarded. If he was quick, he could take something before the soldiers came back. The nearby jewellery stall caught his attention. The merchant there was helping a woman to try on a gold necklace; his wares were exposed and ripe for the taking.

Aethorn took a deep breath and primed himself for what he was about to do, yet a horrible feeling snagged at his stomach – it was not safe to proceed. He waited for a few moments, convinced that this was the perfect chance to strike, but his uneasiness did not go away.

‘Why do I doubt myself?’ he wondered. He took another look around the marketplace and could not see any soldiers or vigilantes. The path was clear.

Despite his unease, Aethorn edged towards the jewellery stall. He needed to provide for his family now that his father was gone, otherwise Zedezek would claim them all.

‘My lady, you look absolutely divine,’ said the merchant, admiring the woman in her necklace.

Aethorn slid past the stall and pocketed a silver bracelet.

‘Thief!’ somebody bellowed. It was the town crier standing upon his barrel. He pointed at Aethorn with a crazed look in his eye. ‘Quickly – someone stop that boy!’

Dread filled Aethorn’s heart. He fled from the marketplace as fast as his small legs would carry him. A few soldiers sprang forth with drawn swords.

‘Surrender yourself, boy!’ they ordered. ‘Kneel in the name of your king!’

Aethorn ignored them and sprinted through the winding streets of Brownflagon. The soldiers struggled to keep up with him. After several minutes, he managed to lose them by hiding beneath a broken-down cart.

Lying in the mud, Aethorn cursed himself for his stupidity. Why had he ignored his inner voice? It had always served him well in the past and yet he had let arrogance cloud his judgement.

Two soldiers marched past his hiding place, their ebony armour clinking loudly. Once they were out of sight, Aethorn scrambled to his feet and cautiously made his way home.

When he entered the parlour, his mother gaped at him and knew that something terrible had happened. ‘What have you done?’

‘I’m sorry,’ muttered Aethorn, bowing his head.

‘Where are your brothers and sisters?’

‘They’re out playing. Brackley is looking after them.’

Suddenly, there was an aggressive knock at the door. Aethorn and his mother glanced at each other in fright.

‘It can’t be them,’ cried Aethorn. ‘I shook them off – I know I did!’

The door burst open and several soldiers rushed in, pointing their swords at Aethorn.

He gazed down at their sharp black edges and gulped.

‘No!’ his mother cried. She pulled him out of harm’s way and placed herself before the blades.

‘Stand aside, woman,’ one of the soldiers commanded. ‘Your son is a common thief.

Let us take his dirty little hands.’

Aethorn’s mother shook her head. ‘No – you can’t have him –’ ‘I won’t ask you again,’ the soldier snarled.

‘Please – he’s just a boy.’

The soldiers descended upon her with their swords. She grabbed hold of Aethorn and flung him out of the back door.

‘Run!’ she cried.

Aethorn watched in horror as the soldiers’ blades hacked into her.

‘Mother!’

His mother keeled over in the doorway, with blood pooling around her lifeless body.

Aethorn fled out of the back yard, sobbing as he splashed through filthy alleyways.

Somehow, he managed to stow himself aboard a merchant’s cart heading out of town. Guilt consumed him as the cart trundled away. He blamed himself entirely for what had happened. From that day forward, he vowed that he would always follow his instincts, no matter where they led him.

Lisa Phillips

lisaphillips195@gmail.com Lisa grew up in the West Midlands. She studied Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia and Manchester University, and won the Mulcahy Conway Agency Award for her dissertation.

She has facilitated writing workshops for arts and educational charities, and currently lives in Manchester.

Breach Following Sean Healey’s expulsion from university, he takes up lodging with the Willett family on the outskirts of his home city. As he and teenager Robyn Willett become confidants, he is confronted with the mysterious disappearance of his cousin, and an act of teenage violence which has long haunted him.

Breach Lisa Phillips I’ve packed up what’s left of my life in twenty-seven minutes and I’m standing looking at it: the way it fits into a seventy-litre rucksack and a big, lidded box. I find this satisfying and depressing at the same time. I get the bus to Brigheath, the box on the seat next to me and the rucksack on my lap. The journey takes close to an hour. I get off on the high street, opposite the library. I stand next to a shop selling old furniture, the box resting at my feet, and light a cigarette, thinking of what to do now. It’s evening, and the sky has turned yellow and mottled like old paper. My new landlord is expecting me, but I don’t feel like going straight there, so I make a detour to a pub and sit with a pint, reading a book in the corner, the box tucked under the table. A man sitting at the bar turns and looks at the box and asks me what’s in it.

‘Everything,’ I say. He looks at me like I’m mental, which I’m fine with. I don’t feel like small talk. I turn back to my book.

‘Packing your bags and setting off into the horizon, is it? I did something similar a few years ago. You know where you want to go? Thailand. Pattaya. You ever been there?’

‘No.’ ‘Just take my word for it,’ he lifts his glass. ‘You’ll feel like a new man.’ The barman is laughing and shaking his head. I know he is talking about prozzies, and for a while I imagine it, this man’s heavy body on top of some thin-limbed girl, the sweat in the hair in his back. It gives me a dirty feeling like soil in my mouth and the beer doesn’t rinse it out. I’m trying hard to focus on the words on the page of my book.

‘All the hope and promise of youth, eh?’ The man says to the barman, or maybe to no one, then he lights a cigarette and turns back to me. ‘Student, are you?’ I shake my head.

He gives up. I turn the page but I’m not taking in any words. Instead, I’m thinking about my next steps: how, as soon as I’ve finished this pint, I’ll be taking my things out of this pub and into a room in a stranger’s house. It will be a new, blank space and nothing in particular will be expected of me apart from £35 a week. The landlord knew my Dad from when they worked together in the seventies, but he’s never met me. No one knows me round here. I could be anyone. A good, light feeling rises all the way up from my feet when I drain the last of the lager and stand up.

It’s late when I get there, though the air is still warm. I stand outside for a while, building up courage. The house is on a Victorian terraced street and is three storeys tall. The front gate is rotten: damp wood furring up with green like sea rock. There is a small front garden, choking with tall, dry weeds. Cream paint has flaked from the front door and the window lintels. The door opens and a man appears at the top of the cracked stone steps. He’s opened the door without waiting for me to ring the bell. He must have been watching me from the window.

‘Did I give you a start, Sean?’ He smiles. I open the gate and walk up the path to meet him. ‘How are you doing?’ He looks me up and down. ‘Christ, you’re a tall lad, aren’t you? Run in the family then, does it?’

‘No. I water my feet.’ He laughs like this is the funniest thing he’s heard in a long time. He has black fillings in the back of his mouth. I rest the box down on the front step.

‘Oh, you’ll be trouble, I can already tell,’ he says. ‘You’ll be out on your ear in a week.’ I just keep smiling. He takes my hand and shakes it. ‘John Willett,’ he says. He grips my hand hard. His fingers are warmer and thicker than mine, and his skin rougher. His calloused thumb digs into my palm and he looks up at my eyes and something cold shoots through my flesh. His eyes are pale like a dog’s eyes, the wrinkles around them deep.

‘Sean Healey,’ I say.

‘Good to finally meet you, Sean. Your Dad’s told me all about you.’

‘Right,’ I say. But really, I’m thinking what a strange expression it is: when a person says they’ve been told all about you.

‘I’ll take that for you,’ he bends to lift the box. ‘This everything you’re bringing?’ I nod.

Inside, the house is dim and cool. Mr Willett has the smell of a much older man – a smell like stale malt biscuits - and the smell gets stronger as we walk into the hallway. I glimpse the kitchen through a partly open door. Following where I’m looking, he says.

‘Beyond the hallway here, is our part of the house, so no trespassing.’ He smiles at me. I assume it’s a joke. It’s hard to tell. I can hear another person shuffling around and a telly on.

I know he has a family but he doesn’t mention anything about them and I don’t ask.

We get up the two flights of stairs and walk along the landing to narrow steps going up to a small white door. He stops and puts the box down. ‘Well, Sean, you’re just up there in the attic rooms.’ He scratches at the back of his neck. I expect him to say something else but we stand in silence.

‘Thanks for the help,’ I say, finally. ‘And for letting me move in at short notice and all that.’

‘Oh, no problem. Was nice to hear from your Dad, actually,’ he nods. He doesn’t mean it. I nod back.

‘You said he told you all about me?’ I say.

‘Sorry?’

‘Earlier. You said he’d told you all about me.’

‘Well, you know. The basics.’ He laughs nervously, but I’m tempted to press him for more. I don’t like not knowing what he knows. I shift on my feet. ‘So, I’ll let you get settled in in private. I’ll give you a knock tomorrow night, maybe, once you’re back from work, and you can come and have a meal around the table with us. Give us a chance to introduce ourselves properly, then. You’ve got everything you need in there to cook with, but we offer the lodgers a meal downstairs once or twice a week, keeps us in touch.’ He keeps saying that, ‘the lodgers, the lodgers,’ like we’re all the same, like a breed of dog.

‘Is there more people living up there then?’

‘Oh no, no no. It’s just you. So, like I said, you can eat with us once or twice a week, maybe more, it’s not fine dining but we manage. I don’t scrimp on the portions anyway.’ He pauses. ‘We’ll get some meat on your bones, eh?’ He smiles.

I smile back but it’s an effort. I look down at my feet and think of my Dad: the way he used to grab the spare denim at the back of my trouser leg and shake it. ‘You need to get fattened up,’ he’d say. ‘Fill out a bit. Look at this, your clothes hang off you like you’re made of bloody wire, Sean. You could fit a second person in these jeans.’

‘Well, then,’ John says. I wait for more: a list of house rules, what day each month the rent is due, but he just smiles and claps me on the shoulder and turns to leave.

I carry the box up the stairs and set it down in the centre of the room. The space is divided by a brass floor strip into a cream carpeted section on one side and a lino section on the other side in mock black and white tile, where the appliances and cabinets are. The carpeted section has just been hoovered: I can make out the back and forth lines in the nap and it has that skin-like smell you’d get if you sniffed your fingernails after scratching your scalp. It is small and neat and the ceiling slants on one side with the pitch of the roof, so that as I approach the window edge of the wall, I have to stoop. There are little curtains with a grey and red geometric print, drawn across the skylight. The late, slanted light filtering through the fabric is as grainy as an old videotape and makes shadowy triangle shapes on the side wall and the small sofa. On the white plastic kitchen counter in the corner of the room, there is a mug with a tea bag in it, a bottle of milk, a four pack of beer, and a packet of ginger creams, along with a note that says ‘Welcome!’ in looped handwriting. Between the sofa and the kitchen cabinets is a door. I open it and walk through. The bedroom is small: a single bed flanks one wall. There is a desk at one end, a chest of drawers, a halfwidth wardrobe, and a narrow window. All the furniture is white melamine and the walls are white. I like being surrounded by all this white. It is like an undoing. The bare boards creak underfoot. I test the mattress with the press of my hand. It’s very firm. I sit down and stay still for a while and hear the pipes clanking. Then I make moves to unpack. I go to the wardrobe and get the hangers, then take them over to the bed and lay them there ready. I go through to the living room to get the box, but stop at the skylight. I push the curtains aside, open the window to its widest tilt and lean out, resting my hands on the plastic sill. I light a cigarette. The street lights have just come on and the sky is split into layers: a silty, pale brown layer around the houses, and further up, a dark blue just starting to press down.

Noises float up from the street. Car wheels on tarmac and the whining of bus brakes on the main road, girls cackling, a car stereo, the smacking of kids’ feet running on the pavement. I get a feeling in my skin, a feeling like I want to be outside, like I want to escape somewhere, and then the new space I’m in starts to feel too close around me. I don’t really know what I’m doing here or how long it’s going to be or what’s going to happen to me next.

I carry my rucksack through to the bedroom and start unpacking everything out onto the bed. When I get to the bottom, I find a post-it note from Dad. ‘Sean – give us a ring once you’re all settled in. Love, Dad.’ I re-read the note a couple of times and then I scrunch it into a small ball and throw it on the floor.

It’s almost a year since the last time I’d moved and unpacked like this: that cramped room in halls at Uni. Dad had stuck around for a bit, leaning in the doorway, forcing conversation, fake laughing at his own jokes: delaying leaving.

‘Goodbye, then,’ I’d said, walking him back out to his car finally. Autumn weather was drawing in. He sucked air in through his teeth and zipped up his coat and his hair ruffled in the wind. When he reached his car, he turned and hugged me.

‘My son, the artist,’ he said. ‘I am proud of you, you know, Sean.’ I remember breathing in deep and smelling his aftershave and his coat and the smell of our house. I watched him get in his car and drive away. Once he’d left I went back inside and when I sat down on the bare mattress my heart felt like a twisted ankle. I sat there without moving for a long time.

The bad feeling didn’t last long. About two weeks into my degree I had a rushing feeling that I was free. For a while it stayed with me wherever I went. One October afternoon, I’d finished lectures and I was standing in the quadrangle outside the block of flats smoking, when a girl came and stood beside me. There was a noise in the air above us

like fabric on a clothesline. We lifted our heads, tracking migrating birds going south across the pale, grey sky.

‘Do you reckon flocks of birds have a sort of hive mind?’ She said. ‘How do they decide when to fly away, is there a leader? Maybe the one at the front, maybe that one just took off and the others followed.’

‘But,’ I pointed up. ‘They take turns at the front, because the front position meets the most air resistance. They share the work around. You don’t have the same bird at the front all the time.’

‘That’s cool,’ she said. ‘Is that true?’

‘Yeah,’ I said, although I wasn’t really sure. I knew a bit about migration, though. I knew that they timed their flight according to wind and weather conditions, co-ordinating with a series of internal triggers: integral clocks. I knew everything my cousin Ross had once told me: about them gathering into pre-migratory flocks, and how pair bonded birds might break up to go to different migration sites, apart from the ones that mate for life. On a basic biological level, maybe it was a hive mind or swarm intelligence, but to my mind, they weren’t like ants, all stuck together. If you watched birds roosting the way me and Ross watched them as kids - the way they’d swoop and sit in the winter trees like black fruit, or the way murmurations of them would mass together, swirling about in the dark - it was more like each one was dancing with the others, but in the end, they belonged to themselves. I noticed there was one bird lagging behind, making an out of sync sound like a noise of protest. I took a step closer to the girl and said: ‘Maybe, sometimes, there’s one or two who decide they’ll fly North or East or something and go against the grain, because they fancy something different for a change, only we never notice those ones.’ She laughed.

‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Maybe there’s a few that think, ‘I’ve never seen the northern lights.’’

‘And maybe sometimes you get the odd ant or bee who cuts loose and does ok, only we never notice those either.’ She looked at me and smiled. The sound of the birds had drifted off. The air got colder and she drew her cardigan around herself.

I go to bed early, still in my clothes, to get a feeling of consistency or a feeling of being home or something, but the next morning I wake up at four, when the light is grainy and blue, feeling clammy and dirty and lost. I get out of bed and walk around the room, tracing its outer edges. I pick up the note and unscrunch it. Sitting on the bed, I imagine the words in my father’s voice.

‘Sean - give us a ring once you’re all settled in.’

After I got expelled from University and had to move back home, he became silent around me. If I entered a room he was already in I’d notice him tensing up like I was a draught.

Sometimes when we were watching telly I’d feel his eyes lingering on me from across the room, as though he didn’t understand who I was and he was trying to secretly work it out.

It’s probably true that he doesn’t. Maybe none of us really understands who anyone else is and maybe it’s for the best.

I lie back down. A weight levels out along my stomach. When I’m back on the brink of sleep I keep seeing the shadows of things on the edges looking in at me. I begin to dream: I am back in primary school and Ross is showing me around. He is nine, so I must be eight. I feel bad looking at the smallness of him and realising that I must be even smaller. All the

classrooms are empty. At the end of a long corridor we reach a door. The door is blue, with a rippled glass panel near the top, too high to see through. I don’t want to go in. Ross puts his finger on his lips as he turns the door handle. Inside, there are no children. A man is slumped over a desk near the back. Ross walks up to him and puts a testing hand on the back of his head.

‘He doesn’t move,’ he says. ‘See.’

Elijah Taylor

elijahktaylor@outlook.com I’m a 23-year-old transgender man from Wrexham, North Wales. I recently graduated from Liverpool John Moores with a first in Creative Writing and I love classical history and interactive narratives. I’m passionate about reading and supporting LGBT voices and finding new ways to explore fantasy fiction.

Keepsake Edwin Aventi is dead, and he intends to find those responsible. Help comes in the form of the unlucky Hiero Zhu, a Keeper’s apprentice on his first mission away from the research halls of Illia, who’s desperate to impress his superiors. As they draw closer to the truth the relationship between them begins to change, moving from animosity to friendship to feelings neither are sure how to voice.

Keepsake Elijah Taylor Edwin Aventi died quickly. After, he sat on the damp grass beside his body and said, ‘This really isn’t how I saw it ending.’

He had always imagined dying in bed, preferably in the morning when his room caught the best light. There would have been a healer there to fuss, his father to say a grimfaced goodbye and his sister to hold his hand.

Instead, his corpse was face down in the mud, holding onto nothing. The dawning sun was exchanged for a night sky and a blue half-moon. And in the place of his father was his murderer; a tall, skinny stranger clutching a club.

‘Bring him back to the house,’ Skinny’s accomplice ordered. He was an old man who took one look at Edwin’s cane then kicked it away and made it bounce into a ditch.

‘That’s worth a fortune, you know.’ Edwin swirled his own, now spectral, staff in the air for emphasis. ‘You could at least try to sell it. Tell Orneskians how you got it and they might even give you more for it.’

They ignored him. Skinny pulled Edwin’s corpse through the overgrown weeds behind the stables, heading back towards the house. Edwin drifted after them, watching the wound above his eyebrow stain the earth to ink.

‘I’m still bleeding,’ he said when they reached the courtyard. The marble tiles were pale in the moonlight. His cracked skull made short work of their pristine condition. ‘You’re leaving a trail.’

Skinny kept on, past the courtyard fountain that dribbled black water in the dark and the rose bushes pruned to perfection by Edwin’s mother.

‘Are you listening to me?’ Edwin stepped in front of them.

Skinny didn’t stop, didn’t blink, he carried on blank-faced and walked right through him. Edwin staggered, his body distorting and becoming disturbingly close to a cloud of mist before he shook himself back to order.

‘All right,’ he said, voice trembling. ‘You’re not listening.’

Still, he followed them, past the Aenirian friezes of his grandparents on the garden wall, all the way up to the back door of the house. The men stopped there, standing in the shadows cast by the braziers.

‘You’ll get blood all over your lovely robe,’ Edwin muttered as Skinny lifted his body.

‘I hope you’re not planning on wearing it again.’

The door opened without resistance. In the light Skinny had sunburnt cheeks and a crooked nose. The old man who had kicked Edwin’s cane had oily skin and bloodshot eyes.

They smelt like sweat, and faintly of salt that suggested they’d come from the port and brought a hint of the ocean with them.

They walked quickly through the house, past closed bedrooms, past the kitchen where servants had long since cleaned away supper. Edwin stopped at Theodosia’s room. It sounded quiet within. He hoped she was asleep. He hoped she wouldn’t be the one to find him.

Skinny turned the corner into Edwin’s bedroom and Edwin felt a yank on his waist, an invisible rope pulling taut. He was forced to hurry after them. He caught up just in time

to see Skinny drop his corpse on the floor by his bed. His head made a wet sound as it hit the marble.

They tore his silk bedding and knocked quills and ink from the nightstand. His books and scrolls were ripped. The golden earrings his sister had brought him from Illia were thrown into the puddle of blood growing around his head.

‘So, you’re not after money,’ Edwin said, as they destroyed more of his possessions.

‘And you’re tearing up all my research, so that’s not it either.’

The old man turned. He looked at Edwin, not through him like Skinny had, and raised a hand to touch a heavy gold pendant hanging around his throat. ‘I can’t listen to this anymore.’ He spoke Aenirian in a heavy, stilted accent. A Tenebrian, perhaps.

‘So you can hear me!’ Edwin stepped towards him. ‘If you could stop in your rampant destruction of everything I own for just a moment -’ The pendant hummed with light, red stirring in the gold like embers in a fire. There was a tug at Edwin’s waist, the same invisible pull rope pulling him forwards. The light grew, distorting the shape of the room around it. The humming intensified, became a shrill ringing in his ears.

‘Oh,’ he said, realising the man’s intent. ‘Please, don’t.’

But of course, he did.

Four years and two months later, a letter arrived at the Keeper Tower. The city bells were ringing in Illia when the hawk came over the skyline, swooping between pillars of ivory and stone to land on the uppermost window of the tower.

The apprentice on letter duty approached the hawk with caution; it had blood around its beak. But it only tried to bite once, and the letter was safely dropped into the pile with the rest.

At dawn, they were divided and taken downstairs, distributed equally, and the letter found its way to Keeper Ylva in the eastern courtyard.

At sixty, Ylva was already grey. Her body ached from last night’s casting class. The morning sparring sessions had once been hers, but years ago she’d hurt her back and now she just came down to watch and read by the pink dawn light. She considered the letter between sips of hot water and honey. Beside her, already four hundred years older than Ylva could ever hope to be, Keeper Tivva ignored her own letters in favour of watching the apprentices train.

‘Who can we spare for four weeks?’

Tivva hummed. Last night had been spell pronunciation and her voice was ragged when she spoke. ‘What are we sparing them for?’

‘Trouble in the village of Mirana. Mentions of irregular lights in the sky and a heavy feeling in the air. Someone found a dead wolf near the road. They’re not sure if that’s connected.’

Tivva stood slowly, arching her back until it clicked. Her weathered sandals kicked up dust as she strolled to the edge of the training yard. Six apprentices were at work, sparring with long sticks of wood.

‘Ria?’ Tivva suggested and leaned against one of the Artian pillars that lined the yard.

Whoever had mixed the tea had done a poor job and a clump of honey stuck in Ylva’s throat. She coughed, making Tivva turn with amusement.

‘Ria has dealt with disturbances before,’ Tivva said. Cast in shadow by the terrace, her purple eyes sparkled.

slide.’

Another sip brushed the lump away. ‘I know. She’s in Orneska investigating a land

‘Ah,’ Tivva said, turning back to the yard. ‘Of course.’

One of the apprentices was knocked into the dust with a cry of frustration. He fell face-first in an awkward sprawl of limbs and his opponent tapped their makeshift weapon against the back of his head.

Tivva hummed again. ‘Hierophant! Come here, son.’

The apprentice sat up sharply. His gold oval glasses were crooked on the bridge of his nose. He stumbled on his way to standing, ignored the offered hand of his opponent and limped over to them.

‘Good day to you, Keepers,’ he said. Up close, Ylva recognized him as the fat boy that had come north from Orneska ten years ago. One of Tivva’s apprentices. Preferred Hiero to Hierophant. Didn’t like anyone touching the feathers on his back.

‘When was the last time you left the tower, Hierophant?’ Tivva said. She stepped back into the shade and gestured for him to sit.

Hiero sat three spaces away from Ylva, curling his lanky frame inwards. He had sand along his high cheekbones. ‘Two weeks ago, Keeper Tivva, you sent me to fetch fresh parchment from Illia’s market.’

Errand work like that was reserved for very new apprentices or ones who would never rise to Keeper. Hiero, by his sharp tone, knew that. Perhaps feared they were going to keep him a courier forever.

‘Then you’re well rested, that’s good. He would be my choice, Ylva,’ Tivva said. She turned back to the yard.

As though Ylva had any other choice now Tivva had called him over and recommended him. She made a note to put cinnamon in Tivva’s tea later for that, teach her the perils of meddling.

For the time being she said, ‘There are magical disturbances near Mirana. I want you to go and investigate.’

Hiero smiled, all teeth. Such youthful enthusiasm was jarring coming from someone who was already so old by human standards. ‘Of course, Keeper Ylva.’

‘You could have recommended him without calling him over,’ Ylva said, when the boy had been sent to prepare.

Tivva didn’t look at her, but Ylva could hear the smile in her voice. ‘I felt for him. The training yard is painful to fall on.’

Ylva huffed, readying her parchment to begin a reply to Mirana. ‘As though you’ve ever fallen on it.’

Hiero arrived back an hour later, changed into his Keeper’s robes, a hefty rucksack slung over his shoulders. A few flecks of sand still hung on to his cheeks, stubborn.

‘Take the road south-east to Mirana,’ Ylva ordered. ‘Avoid the river. We’ve heard news of trouble on the road.’

‘Of course, Keeper Ylva,’ he said, practically snatching the reply from her hands. ‘Of course.’

Jack Timson

jtimson1@live.co.uk I am a Liverpool-born, raised and based writer, and an aspiring novelist. Having earned a 1st class degree in the subject, and seen my work featured in academic publications, I am eager to take the leap and begin the journey towards my first novel, The Thunder Boy. The Thunder Boy Zadith and Takaan – two cities locked in an apocalyptic struggle for the scorched earth they call home. Ruben, a young Takaani incriminated as a terrorist, is torn from his home and thrown into a nightmarish war of attrition in which mind, body and soul are pushed to breaking point.

The Thunder Boy Jack Timson The crowd was bathed in the raw mid-morning sunlight, slowly unveiled by the steel bulkhead. The metal groaned as it ascended, opening the sealed bunker to the mistshrouded expanse of the firebase. The glare penetrated the thick white miasma that wisped around outside, creating an uncomfortably-warm glow through the ballistic glass of the bunker’s reinforced windows.

The gun crews were massed, unit by unit, in the enormous crescent-shaped structure. It curved around the gaping maw of an underground silo, providing full vision at a safe distance. Billowing steam began to fog the edges of the glass, venting from the pressurised mechanisms of alignment systems far below. Above was a mass of tethered handles, dropping from a cage-like network of shock-resistant rails on the ceiling.

Ruben realised he had been holding his breath. He exhaled and gulped, hoping that nothing would go wrong. He was at the fore of the crowd, his tiny frame nearly trapped against the wire-buttressed window. He had been cut off from his fellow gun-sweeps, many of them younger and measlier than him, who were no doubt as far away from the front as they could get.

The crowd was silent but for sporadic, uncomfortable murmuring behind him. A groaning alarm croaked from the tannoy and the ground beneath them seemed to shake as something titanic started to move below. The murmuring surged as some men started to lose their balance.

Ruben shut his eyes and tried to think. Nervous chatter swept through the crowd, punctuated by the groan of strained metal. Thoughts of punishment shot around in his mind. In his head, Ruben tried to convince himself that the guns never failed. They didn’t clog, they didn’t break, and they never misfired. He felt his overalls dampen, and white heat danced across his back.

Then, opening his eyes, he saw it.

Rising from the caustic fog was the gun. The barrel appeared first, the towering protrusion angling towards the sky. The crew’s gaze followed the climb, heads tilting awkwardly until the gaping mouth of the muzzle, painted with a predatory grin, rose out of view.

Grandfather, they called it; a recent name, and not the first. It had been born some fifty years ago as Thumulz, named after a long-since-forgotten deity. But the crew, generations of whom had toiled, suffered and received payment in its shadow, simply called it ‘The Arl’ Fella’, many of them having no elderly relatives to speak of. In a gesture of armslength generosity, it was renamed Grandfather by the ministry some time before Ruben’s induction.

It was within Grandfather’s tunnel-like bowels that Ruben crawled and scraped day after day. For the first time, he began to feel profoundly claustrophobic.

A thunderclap of rock and steel shook the bunker, and loose chips of concrete trickled in places. The gun’s silhouette lanced through the glow of the sun, casting a long shadow over the crowd. They were virtually silent now, content instead to clench their hands and take deep, shuddering breaths.

There was a restrained commotion behind him. He turned as best he could and saw Luis, his assigned partner, manoeuvring his fat little frame through the crowd with surprising grace, silver rice-packs tucked under his ill-fitting sleeves. He almost ran head-long into Ruben, and grinned when he recognised his sweeper-mate.

Without a word Luis tossed a pack into Ruben’s hands. He half-heartedly caught it, and the smooth foil nearly slipped out from between his clammy fingers. Luis’ moon-like face cocked to one side like a confused dog.

‘Oi,’ said Luis, ‘I said oi! You look queasy, Rube.’

‘Shut up,’ Ruben retorted, ‘you reek and all!’ They were both sweat-drenched, true, but Ruben didn’t have the excuse of premature obesity.

A man to their right grunted at them, calling for quiet. Luis grumbled under his breath and squeezed to Ruben’s side.

‘What’s the matter with you,’ Luis whispered, ‘we did the sweep proper, right?’

‘Yes,’ Ruben hissed a little too quickly, ‘job’s a good ‘un, yeah?’

Of course, he was lying.

It wasn’t sabotage, but a firing squad wouldn’t ask. It was Luis’ fault anyway – if the fat bastard hadn’t let the life-cord slip, he wouldn’t have dropped the scraper. Ruben could hear it now, falling into the darkness. Clang, clang, clang.

He juggled the possibilities in his mind again. He was certain – yes, absolutely certain – that there’d be men to put a stop to this exact scenario, men who would perform double, triple, quadruple checks before they even considered— ‘Attention!’ growled an authoritative voice from the tannoy. The crowd exploded.

Luis leapt like a mortar shell and nearly put Ruben on the ground. He almost faceplanted the reinforced window as the crowd started shoving behind him. Hundreds of men hooted and roared, jumping up and down, twirling greasy shirts in clumsy circles.

‘I say again, attention!’ the voice repeated with the sternness of a practiced mobherder. It was none other than General Fusch, hidden away in the armoured control tower above them.

The crowd settled as if instinctively, the last few rallying cries dying down at the back. Ruben realised his head was spinning, and a fist-sized lump was forcing its way up his gullet. It took all his willpower not to vomit then and there; standing to attention was a secondary concern.

The steam had cleared, and now he saw the gun in all its terrible majesty. The breech section, a great oily brick of pistons, pipes and rivets, squatted comfortably in the silo opening. From there the barrel thrusted into the sky like a snorting iron cobra, its copper-coloured surface ringed with white kill-markers – one for every thousand confirmed deaths. The ant-sized silhouettes of the remaining ground crew sprinted for cover.

‘Remain orderly,’ demanded the General, voice drenched in static, ‘final alignments are complete. Adjust yourselves for category-nine recoil; countdown commencing.’

There were sudden, brief cheers that died in the nervous silence.

‘Twenty.’

Ruben breathed deep, permitting an almost-treacherous thought. This must be how Zadith feels.

‘Nineteen.’

The rails above them groaned as men pulled tight on the handles, some with both white-knuckled hands.

‘Eighteen.’

Luis leapt and grabbed on, dangling off the ground almost comically.

‘Seventeen.’

Ruben stifled a laugh. Go ahead and hang, you fat weasel, he thought. Knew you could hold onto something.

‘Sixteen.’

Through blurring thoughts he imagined how he could pin this all on that runt. Did he even need to? He let go of the cord!

‘Fifteen.’

The lump surged again, and he fought to remain composed. Whatever story he could spin, it was too late now.

‘Fourteen.’

Ruben glanced back and forth. The swaying throng behind made him dizzier, and the sight of Grandfather ahead had his stomach doing somersaults.

‘Thirteen.’

The thoughts in his head started to clear. They came fast. Loud. Frighteningly clear.

‘Twelve.’

It’s going to misfire.

‘Eleven.’

The tool will jam the breech.

‘Ten.’ The shell will detonate.

‘Nine.’

We’re all going to die.

‘Eight.’

He took two steps back into the wall of men.

‘Seven.’

He tried to shimmy through, slipping through a brief gap between bodies.

‘Six.’ The crowd shifted and closed up behind him.

‘Five.’

He was trapped. Breath came in short, panicked bursts.

‘Four’ Nowhere to go.

‘Three.’

Nowhere to run.

‘Two.’ He opened his mouth. No sound escaped.

‘One.’ Nothing happened.

Ruben opened his eyes and found himself staring at the steel-grated floor, kneeling, hands clenched over his beaten work-cap. There were brief murmurs of confusion, quickly drowned out by a deep, mechanical moan from outside the bunker.

Before Ruben had time to react, the world went white and black in the space of a second. There were shrieks of men and shattered glass, and then nothing.

The first thing Ruben knew was that he was stuck. He inhaled hard and the air stopped at his throat. He writhed and clawed at the steel floor, only to find himself pinned

under something dense and cold. The bunker seemed eerily silent, save for a persistent, tinny scream that seemed to come from within his own head.

He opened his eyes. Smothering him from the waist down was a man facing away, lying on his side, blue overalls shredded. Beyond that there was only black smoke, backlit by the throbbing crimson glow of the emergency lights that illuminated burly shapes staggering and crawling about.

He drew another breath, only to inhale a thick, acrid gulp of the smoke. He hacked it back up, and felt a fistful of bile come up not too far behind it.

Ruben twisted around and tugged on the overalls. There was no response. He tugged harder and the man’s head lolled over to face him. He was youthful and clean-shaven, a workman’s tan pockmarked by grime and clusters of glass fragments, from which blood had pooled, spattered and dried. The one eye not perforated by flying debris gazed out sightlessly.

Ruben panicked, kicking frantically away from the corpse, gaining inches as he tried to crawl out from under it.

He cried for help. Out came only a toneless echo that seemed to ebb away in the rising background murmur, as though he were submerged away from it all.

Then it hit.

The shrieking in Ruben’s head evaporated into a world of noise. Shouts drowned out by a blaring klaxon. Feet dragging on metal. The begging groans of the dying.

The sunlight had gone completely. He looked and saw where the roof had caved in over the aperture; a mess of shattered stone and crushed bodies around a buckled metal mass. Whatever had happened had been enough to force the fifty-ton bulkhead free of its mounting and then some.

He saw lights; two weak yellow beams sweeping lazily out from the far end of the room.

They illuminated chunks of fallen concrete and collapsed sections of the support rail.

Beneath these limbs could be seen, grasping at the air as they were picked out by the light.

Men were caught in the beam. Most dove to the ground or froze, bewildered. One ran towards them, waving a broken pipe above his head.

‘Zadith!’ he heard the runner cry, ‘Zadith! Kill them!’

The smoke lit up; the brief report of a shotgun followed. The runner somersaulted backwards and didn’t get up.

Ruben stopped squirming. The shrieking was back, quieter now, but persistent, bouncing around in his skull like a panicking wasp. It would occur to him later that this was the first time he’d ever heard a gunshot; not the thunderous crump of an artillery piece, for he’d heard that almost every day since his first shift. Small arms fire, he would learn, was terribly different in its intent.

‘Nobody move!’ came a voice, sounding muffled yet amplified mechanically, ‘Desist and surrender, immediately!’

More shadowy figures appeared, more composed in stature than the fumbling crew.

Tubular shotguns rested in their arms, swaying in wide arcs in front of them. Two carried the torches, cycloptic beacons scanning from helmet-mounts. They ambled towards Ruben in a wide spread, their round helmets and featureless, snout-like faces illuminated by the backglow of the torchlight.

‘Clasp your hands behind your head,’ announced the man in the centre, ‘and we will permit you to live. Disobey and we will cut you down!’ The rubber hoses of their elephantine respirators wobbled with every step.

Suddenly, Ruben began to weep. Zadith is here, he thought, they’ve finally done it.

He entertained the sensation of defeat as the shadows came closer. He could not fathom how or why, or how it related to— He remembered. His heart deflated like a barrage blimp as he remembered his mistake, and the damage it had caused. He wept freely, even as a pair of jack-booted feet stamped down hard just in front of him.

He looked up, and through tear-blinded eyes saw the black-and-tan uniform of the Interior Guard.

‘Surrender and await processing!’ announced the man, now clearly the unit’s leader, ‘On suspicion of treason, conspiracy and sabotage, you are all under arrest!’

They were read the charges in the shadow of Grandfather’s remains. Sitting behind the loose circle of Interior Guardsmen and the man on the munitions crate, the charred remains spread out like some terrible blossoming flower, sprouting giant petals of scorched metal.

Jets of foam arced upward, tiny in comparison, attempting to douse the remaining flames.

Sabotage. Terrorism. Collaboration with the enemy. They were listed by the man on the crate, a plump and balding prosecutor they had brought down from the city. He read without pause, stopping occasionally to readjust his spectacles.

Ruben’s eyes were raw from smoke and he strained to focus. He was terrified, far more now than he had been in the bunker during that terrible countdown. The vice-like grip of guilt tightened in his belly, wrestling furiously with the fear of punishment.

He knelt, hands behind his head, with the other gun-sweep boys in front of the massed crew. They formed a pathetic column of the condemned, surrounded by shotgunwielding Guardsmen, circling like starving dogs. A grumbling, fungal-green armoured car loomed behind them, wheels poised to crush, twin machine-guns trained at their backs.

Luis was beside him, his ashen face distant and expressionless, marked with untreated wounds. He didn’t respond to any nudge or whispered word, instead staring blankly ahead at their assembled captors. ‘… corruption, brigandry, infidelity,’ the prosecutor continued, ‘and wastage of military resources.’ Finished, the prosecutor folded the list and returned it to his pocket. He cleared his throat as if to make sure the prisoners were still paying attention. ‘These charges are hereby levelled against the 15th Gunnery Battalion. A collective trial will commence three days hence. All accused will remain under arrest in the firebase detention centre.’

There was no mass reaction from the crew, save for a handful of scattered, heaving sobs. Ruben knew he could end this, own up to his mistake, ‘take it like a man’ as his father would say.

‘Rest assured,’ continued the prosecutor, ‘all will be treated fairly, and those who are innocent will be exonerated.’

Or you could live, came a singular, primal thought; a thought that drowned out all others.

‘But the guilty,’ said the prosecutor, as if responding to Ruben’s thoughts, ‘will receive no mercy. The nation demands.’

Finished, he surveyed the pitiful gathering one last time, and then stepped down from the crate. The shattered form of the Arl’ Fella still simmered, the midday sun rearing over them like a cosmic spotlight.

Another man, assisted by a pair of guardsmen, clambered onto the crate with some difficulty, as though his limbs had seized up. His white uniform – now blackened by soot and scorch marks – marked him as a general. Though he had never seen the man’s face, Ruben was certain that this could only be Fusch himself. His unkempt hair and shuddering, uneasy gait made him appear far less impressive than the reputation that preceded him.

‘In accordance with the Youth Labour Corps regulations,’ he began, his oncepowerful voice unsteady, ‘those gun-sweeps below the age of sixteen are permitted to return home.’

Ruben’s heart skipped a beat. For a moment he felt he had gotten away with it; there were flash-thoughts of going truant, or disappearing into the city tunnels like a commando. The reaction of his comrades told a different story; not the slightest change in their defeated demeanour. Returning, he realised, was his only option, save a short and fatal hunt.

‘This is on the condition that they will return at oh-seven-hundred hours, tomorrow,’ the General continued, ‘those who fail to comply will be arrested and executed as traitors to the nation. That is all.’

Gillian Torres

gillian@gilliantorres.com Mindfulness and mysticism pervade all of my writing and this, the autobiography of my many lives, is no exception. I've worked hard at my craft, through studying and then working in various professional writing and editing roles. I now teach others to access creative flow through writing.

My book, The Soul Scripting Journey – A Written Meditation Practice, is also in development. Find me at gilliantorres.com.

Perpetual Motion Allow me to tell you the story of my lives. In Bohemia I was Adolf, the star of The Basement cabaret bar. In Mesopotamia Alad, worshipping the sun god and the flesh of young women. Now, still both and many more, I have a tale to share of kindred souls, forever intertwined and flowing with the motion of the universe.

Perpetual Motion Gillian Torres I was in love with my life at that time. It felt sumptuous, decadent, shrouded as it was by the dark with its flickering candle light and red velvet backdrop. Rarely did I see daylight, languishing in my bed chamber until dusk, more often than not. I had been taught, from an early age, that boys like me should remain hidden from polite society.

‘Forget society,’ I had learned to think in response to its judgement, ‘it’s missing all the applause’. I had no shortage of applause. My dark, shrouded life loved me right back, harder and louder with every moon. They laughed, they cheered, enraptured by my wholehearted performance. Sometimes my audience choked on their praise; it was so plentiful, so determined to project forth from their wide-open throats that it would tumble from a guffaw to a deep, hacking cough that reminded them of their own mortality – of the stricken and pest-ridden existence we inhabited – while simultaneously removing them from it. In those moments I possessed them entirely.

I didn’t need a stage. Any patch of bare ground could become my stage, I told them as I meandered between their tables, performing my slalom strut of soliloquy and spontaneous song. A performer doesn’t set aside time to prepare or space to perform, I told them. A performer merely wakes up fabulous, opens his great instrument and allows the show to flow through him. People would buy tickets to watch me take a bath, I told them – and indeed many had offered to do just that, though I never consented, preferring my perversions to remain non-transactional. If you have an ‘act’ you are already a rotten, stinking failure. My audience pays to see me.

That is how it felt then; as though, in my small domain, I could do no wrong. Of course I was, in reality, a prisoner of that dark domain, for outside it I was 'wrong' personified but that didn't matter. I had found my slice of freedom. I had discovered adoration. I had no desire to wander so long as I could strut.

I was Adolf, before that name hung heavy with an irremovable weight. Born in the clean air of the country to a gentle man, who somehow found it within him to slaughter pigs for a living – a side to my father that I have never been able to reconcile with the jolly, tactile, loving soul that raised me – and a mother I barely remembered. She is a sickly, bedridden woman in my memory and I never got to witness any evidence of the playful, dancing beauty that my family assured me she had once been. In another memory she is a corpse, grey/blue in colour, a stone sculpture between the sheets as my father dangles me above her so that I might say goodbye. I utter the word but it’s empty. Young as I am in this recollection – just 4 years old – it occurs to me that I never told her ‘hello’ in the first instance and that, anyway, she has already left. I am addressing an empty doorway that was passed through long ago. The statue before me looks like a memorial to the illness that consumed her. My father’s tears wet the back of my neck, as though he only just registered the passage of the woman she used to be.

Pregnancy broke her. This fact I overheard at some point shortly before or after her death. I sucked her dry and she remained practically bedridden for the rest of her life.

Nobody seemed to blame me. They loved the happy little boy who had all the soul and spirit of his mother when she was well.

‘You have her soul and wonderful spirit.’

This would be pronounced often and to me it seemed literal. I believed I had taken it.

‘Fuck my mother,’ I spat once, in the throes of performance ‘She is the only woman that ever had me inside her and she couldn’t handle it.’

As soon as it passed my lips, despite the gasps and shrieks of incredulous laughter that were usually my soul food, I knew I had ascended beyond my own personal peak of casual vulgarity. That the memory of what she was meant more to me than I had realised and could not be thrown to the baying lions in this way. That I would never speak of her again. I did not. Not during my cabaret performances, nor during my life outside of them – which anyway was simply a less applauded extension of the same thing. I had no stage, yet I was perpetually upon it and from that point on I would never again talk of my mother. Even when she re-entered my life and I recognised her despite her new mortal costume. Even when I grew closer to her in her reincarnated being than I had ever been when we were mother and son, I did not confide in her my knowledge of who she used to be.

My mother vanished before my father’s eyes, with me still in her swollen belly. By the time I was born in the country air, she was all-but gone.

Not a farmer, nor a farm hand, in fact not even a real man by the standards of the realm in which I was raised, though loved by my family despite this, it was only after I was reborn into the hot, liquor soaked belly of the underworld that she returned. By then I didn’t need her. I had carried myself for longer than she had held me. I had undergone a period of gestation as tumultuous as hers – from malformed pansy boy who wanted nothing more than to play dolls with the girls, to beaten, black and blue adolescent who wanted nothing more of anything. I had delivered myself to a place where I could shine brightly against the black night, in my rouge and silks. In my androgyny I had become mother to myself and what a proud mother I was.

Life was a show. In a smoke-filled basement with red velvet drapes, somewhere in Europe (possibly Prague, though I have never been one to recall the finer details of my many lives) I was closer to absolute, crystal clear happiness than I had ever been on this mortal plain. There I met Maureen.

Her hair was a jet-black mane. My brush strokes through it were rhythmic and my mind didn’t so much wander, as I completed the 101 strokes that she had requested, as shut down completely. Lack of sleep, the remnants of opiates and the warm crackling of the hearth, the combination was hypnotic. As my beautiful female companion rested her head against a pillow of her hands something small and deep inside me cracked, its contents beginning to leak into my consciousness. Into this pure and uncomplicated relationship of long-wedded souls seeped something like jealousy. A common poison, in a seemingly unjust world, only the unseeing are susceptible to it. In my finer moments I acknowledge that the Universe exists in a just and harmonious balance but in the moment I describe here a mortal flaw prevailed and a lesson unfurled, as let unlearned. It spread quickly over my body like a thick fur, preventing me from feeling the beauty of the instant.

Instead of a kindred soul, in front of me I saw a girl, half my age exactly, with every advantage afforded to her that had been denied me. My 30-year-old hands pulled a brush through her 15-year-old’s hair and a life that had taught her nothing of the harshness I had felt in my own allowed her to trust implicitly. She trusted me. She trusted in her own beauty. She trusted that she would grow to marry a man who loved her, mother his children and live a long life in the warmth of the sun. I too knew, implicitly, that those things lay ahead for her and because I could never realise that fantasy for myself, I wanted in that

moment to bite the milky white neck that lay exposed before me, tear the flesh and see her bleed. The compulsion shocked me back to reality. It was all over in an instant, as though it had been nothing at all. And yet, and yet, here I sit many lifetimes later relaying the incident and so, and so, it was certainly something.

You cannot forget them, your kindred souls. Nor do you remember them either. So intertwined are we with a tangled net of others that do not go but neither remain in plain sight, that we have no need to acknowledge them at all. They simply are. You feel them in your peripheral vision, those connections that anchor, protect and teach you. Meeting one for the first time in your life can feel akin to returning from a long trip and slopping onto your sofa with a sigh. So instantly gratifying, so all-consuming in its ability to smooth and reassure you that the meeting marks itself in contrast to a lifetime of more ambiguous interactions.

That is why we marry them, you see? This is how, in some of our lifetimes, we recognise who to marry. Of course, we have many more than one kindred soul and they could just as well be our siblings, our friends, our fathers and mothers. Less dramatic, less romantic in the Hollywood sense but our mutual roles are played out just the same. And how beautiful, to be born into the arms of a soul mate and share a lifetime together, teaching each other from the unique perspectives of parent and child? Do not diminish this.

Our net will always catch and cradle us, from whomever it is formed.

Love can also feel something like loathing. Not loving; loving is something different – an active pursuit that must be entered into anew, every moment. I talk of love – the unstoppable force in which none of us has any choice. In which we all swim and never surface. On this plain called humanity, that love is marked by feelings that remind us, however briefly, of its power. If there is somebody in your life whom you cannot abide and who evokes within you a passionate feeling of dislike, whether perceived as deserved or entirely irrational, then luxuriate in this person’s existence. The two of you are as intertwined as DNA. This person is affording you the opportunity to feel and learn from rich human emotion. If you traverse the stormy waters with grace then perhaps the next time your paths cross, in your next mortal shrouds, you will both have grown above the need for conflict. At that time, all that will remain is a beautiful harmony.

Never forget, a lifetime is a vacation from infinity. Drink in this experience.

I digress here from my introduction of Maureen, the kindred soul I meet so often in lives, characterised by her shining hair and reassuring contentment. She always carries a strong feminine energy, while I personally shape shift eternally, androgynous to the last and thirsty to try every experience that this affords. Maureen was never thirsty. Maureen was and remains, though no longer ‘Maureen’, simply happy. That, believe me, is a state not ‘Maureen’, simply happy. That, believe me, is a state not to be underestimated. People search for love, not realising that in fact it is the one thing they are already bathed in.

Happiness is the greatest peak to which we can ascend.

Writing on the Wall Congratulations to the Pulp Idol writers for producing such quality work and being generous enough to share it with us.

Writing on the Wall is a dynamic, Liverpool-based community organisation that celebrates writing in all its forms and works with a broad and inclusive definition of writing that embraces literature, creative writing, journalism and nonfiction, poetry, song-writing and storytelling. We work with local, national and international writers whose work provokes controversy and debate, and with all of Liverpool’s communities to promote and celebrate individual and collective creativity. WoW’s creative writing projects support health, wellbeing and personal development.

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