Litro #95 North London Teaser

STORIES TRANSPORT YOU

Stories from:

Carl-Henrik Bjรถrck Ben Fergusson Jonathan Pinnock Paul Lyalls Laura Solomon Vanessa Woolf-Hoyle

SALON CONTEMPORARY CURRENT EXHIBITIONS | ‘BEST OF THE UK’: Class of 2009 22 April - 30 May 2010. A group exhibition featuring some of the best artists selected from the 2009 Degree Art Shows from the various art schools all over the UK. 82 Westbourne Grove London W2 5RT +44 (0) 20 7221 1650 info@saloncontemporary.com

Welcome to issue 95 of LiTRO From the editor It’s been both fun and fascinating to take the helm for this, my first

issue of Litro as editor. Years ago I heard about this great idea for a short story magazine which was distributed free at tube stations, bookshops, and wherever else people might get bored and need something to read: a literary alternative to Metro.

It was called Litro, and I submitted a number of stories, one of which was eventually accepted. I was delighted and terribly pleased with myself, and I hope that the authors in this issue feel the same way, because the quality and range of their stories is breathtaking and I’m very proud to publish them.

Since my first appearance in these pages, Litro has grown and changed enormously, but it still provides Londoners with free fiction from around the world, and although this issue is themed around North London, it’s no different. And given that London has a population the size of some European countries, it’s not surprising that the magazine features authors from or living in Sweden, Germany, New Zealand and New York, as well as oodles of home-grown talent.

In this edition of Litro you’ll find flash fictions and full-length stories; tales about love, death and parenthood, as well as Siamese twins, sick chickens, burned-out artists and time-travel. It’s as diverse and varied as the city itself, so swipe your Oyster and jump on board: this is where your journey begins.

Katy Darby

Editor

litro is brought to you by editor in chief and Publisher – eric akoto editor-katy darby contributing editor – soPhie leWis online editor-laura huxley events editor-alex James design/Production-anastasia sichkarenko litro has been distributed for free near to london underground stations and in galleries, shoPs, etc. since aPril 2006. it is Printed on 100% recycled PaPer. Please either keeP your coPy, Pass it on for someone else to enJoy, or recycle it – We like to think of it as a small free book.

Cover Art: Johan Andersson ‘Courage’ Oil on canvas

1

Contents Market Futures

Vanessa Woolf-Hoyle................................5

Raincoat

Carl-Henrik Bjรถrck..................................10

Ewan without Ruby

Ben Fergusson..........................................11

Clubs and Societies

Ben Fergusson.........................................22

Piss and Patchouli

Jonathan Pinnock...................................24

Twins

Laura Solomon........................................32 Poem: Progress in Progress Paul Lyalls...............................................38 LiTRo listings by Alex James...............42

www.LiTRO.cO.uk 2

3

SToRiES

Market Futures vanessa Woolf-hoyle

M

y foster brother, Nemo Davies, was a living statue. He had a number of different ‘skins’, but my favourite was his Invisible Man. For this effect, he wore white gloves and an extended jacket fitted over his head. The spectacles and hat were fixed to his special chair. Covent Garden’s crowds liked it, and tourists were pleased to drop fifty pence in his box in return for a handshake and photo.

The council gave him a flat in the Market Estate near the Caledonian Road. I only went to visit him once; just once.

It happened during an unseasonably hot spell. He texted me. I was revising for my GCSEs and it was misery. Nemo never took any exams, but no one seemed to mind. He came from a hideously poor family in Wales and they used to lock him in sheds and make him live in the garden, even during the winter. That was why he came to live with us in the first place.

(A few years ago when we were kids, I asked him how he put up with it, and he said he didn’t really mind. Weren’t you cold? I asked. He looked at me. He was blind in one eye and it used to roll around everywhere. He fixed me with his good eye and said yes, it was cold. But it gave him time to think.).

His text said: “Got something crazy come over right away.”

I told Dad I was going swimming. If it was something crazy, he’d want to know what and then he’d only worry; he was always worried about Nemo. As I sweated on the number 29, I tried to imagine what crazy thing it was. I just knew it would be extraordinary because Nemo’s brain didn’t function on any other level.

The Market Estate was a little crumbling world in itself, all red brick and community murals, dating from those 5

Raincoat carl-henrik bJörck

H

eavy raindrops on pools of water. A grey dead-end street.

“What are you thinking?”

She sits there with her usual cup of tea.

“Nothing,” I say.

I look towards the other corner of the café, but she catches my gaze. Holds it. She opens her mouth. Once, twice, but nothing comes out.

“What do you want?” she finally says. “What do you need?”

I stare out of the window. The pools are all disturbed and broken now.

“A raincoat,” I say.

Carl-Henrik Björck is a 24-year-old Swedish writer and psychology student. He normally lives in Umea, in northern Sweden, but right now he is doing his psychology internship in New York City. He writes short stories, poetry and fiction. His ambition is to finish his first novel before the end of 2010.

10

Ewan without Ruby ben fergusson

C

usco told Lionel he’d killed chickens before. He told him you cut off the chicken’s head with a knife or an axe – “A small axe,” he’d said, when Lionel had laughed at the thought of Cusco trying to bring down an axe with enough accuracy to sever a chicken’s neck.

Lionel climbed out of the armchair for the first time since dinner, a spray of peanut shells falling from the creases in his trousers. He emptied his beer and began to ape Cusco’s skinny body. He picked up an empty Pringles tube to act as an axe and brought it up over his head, pretending to shake. When he brought it down on the imaginary bird, he overturned the ashtray on the arm of his chair and the grey dust floated down and stuck to the bacon fat on an abandoned dinner plate, streaked where he’d licked it clean.

“Oi!” shouted Cusco, poking the air, “Oi. Oi. Just listen,” he said, but Lionel was repeating the mime, pretending to sharpen the axe’s imaginary blade. “Oi, Li, right,” said Cusco, “Listen.

Listen, right. Don’t bother. Don’t bother, right. Listen.”

“Ssh...” said Lionel, pausing in his imaginary slaughter. “Shut up! Ewan!” he said, pointing upwards.

“Just let me tell you,” said Cusco, more quietly. “It’s because they don’t die if you break their necks – they just run around, like. So you have to cut their heads off. To sever the tubes to the brain.” He tapped the thin hair above his temple. “The tubes.”

Lionel leaned on the door, slightly breathless. He scratched his beard and pulled down his polo shirt, which had ridden up to expose the lower curve of his white belly.

“It’d die if you twisted its head. I killed a rabbit once,” he said, feeling proud, “it had myxomatosis …” He recalled its gummy blue eyes, the ridiculously soft fur, its quivering, and its light, weary breathing. “I just pulled and twisted.”

11

21

Clubs and Societies deborah fielding

T

here’s a song on the radio and like all songs, it is about love. John has heard the song before, but as he sits here in his living room on his day off with his feet up on the coffee table, he hears what the words really mean.

For the first time the lyrics make sense to him. There’s something about beautiful eyes, something about time and dreams and being crazy and something about tears. John thinks he can probably leave tears out of it, but otherwise it’s exactly right. He looks at his toes dancing along to the tune and he feels like he’s part of the Real World now. He feels as though understanding love is a kind of society and he’s been invited to join it at last. He smiles, closes his eyes and thinks about Jane.

Jane is at work and her colleagues are complaining about their girlfriends and boyfriends and husbands and wives over coffee and tea. He doesn’t listen, they say, she doesn’t understand what it’s like for me, he hasn’t got a clue, it’s like talking to a brick wall. I wish he didn’t wear that dressing gown, I wish she’d cut her toenails. Jane listens and she wonders about John. She feels as if her colleagues are in some sort of club that she doesn’t belong to. You’ll see, they say.

Just you wait a bit. It’ll be the same with you. She wonders as she sips her tea how her colleagues used to feel at the beginning. She wonders when you join the club, and if you have to join it. She thinks about John on his day off at home.

She wonders if her colleagues are right, if complaining and misunderstanding is what it’s Really Like.

Later that day John sees Jane across the pub where he meets her after work: her face is shiny and her hair is parted in a funny way from where she’s been running her fingers through it. He looks at her and wonders about those song lyrics. He looks at her with mascara smudged under her eyes and wonders about this society that he’s been invited to join: the society of dreams and sunshine on rain and 22

Piss and Patchouli Jonathan Pinnock

i’

d been given detailed instructions on how to get there from Chalk Farm tube station, but it was all too easy to tell which had been Astrid’s flat: it was the one on the ground floor with the soot marks around the windows. The front door had a temporary padlock attached to it, but it was hanging loose. I was wondering whether I should take advantage of this when the door burst open and a man wearing a hi-visibility jacket and orange wellies came out carrying a couple of bin bags. He dumped the bags on the ground between us and eyed me up and down.

“Can I help you, mate?” he said.

“I’m looking for Astrid Gordon,” I said.

The man gave a rueful smile and jerked his thumb back towards the flat. “If you’re talking about the bint who lived in that place, there ain’t much left of her,” he said. “And what there is got taken to the morgue last week.”

Oh God. Too much information. He was looking me up and down again. Then he tilted his head on one side, and gave me a more sympathetic look.

“You next of kin, mate?”

“Sort of. Well, not really. I … used to know her. A long time ago.”

“Ah. I get the picture.”

“No … good Lord, no … it wasn’t like that at all … I mean, we weren’t … well, only for a short while … and even then – ” He looked into my eyes and nodded slowly. “’s all right,” he said, “You don’t have to say another word. Come on. I ain’t supposed to do this, but seeing as all this stuff’s going to be chucked out, you might as well see if there’s anything you want to keep. Souvenir, like.”

24

27

31

Twins

laura solomon

i

have two heads. I say ‘I’, I mean we, me and my conjoined twin. She is Trinity, I am Stella. Between us we have two hearts, three lungs, two spines and two heads, as formerly mentioned. Currently, we are learning to drive. We are ever so co-ordinated. People are impressed. Trinity takes control of the wheel, the lights and the indicators, and I take control of the pedals. Off we go, wheee whizzing round traffic islands, ducking and diving through the dirty streets of London, then on to the M4 to Bristol to visit Aunt Margaret.

At birth, we had a one in thirty million chance of survival.

We beat the odds, we pulled through, survivors. We love life; how grateful we are to be here, how thrilled; each day is a tiny little gift. We make the most of it, get on with it. Wallowing in self-pity is not for us. We are battlehardened. Our parents protected us; said no to the medical men who wanted to make lab specimens of us, poking and prodding and mauling, documenting, labelling, filing away. The world is obsessed by us. We have no desire to be a freak show, though we are one of course. In the street, people stare and take photographs, as if we are Beyonce or J-Lo or Madonna. We hate it. A normal life is what we crave; dignity, composure – heads held high. After all, we are not disabled, not technically. Mentally we are in fine working condition.

At school there has been some cruelty, but also compassion.

Nice girls, those Benson twins, is what people say, and we are nice, we do unto others. Mockery is inevitable, it’s typically short-lived and then one of our friends, Evelyn or Kylie or Diana will step in and tell the mocker to shut their fat face or they’ll shut it for them. A good group of mates shelters us from storms that might otherwise blow our way. Academically, we excel: Trinity’s the mathematical type, I’m more of the arty sort, into poetry and painting, though we’re also careful not to try too hard in case the other kids get jealous and pick on us even more. Anything 32

PoETRy

Progress in Progress Paul lyalls

T

here are no horizons in a city,

only those within yourself.

I couldn’t tell where the city ended and the people began, there were only individuals with crowd-like tendencies and eternal hopefuls dreaming of big fat redundancies.

I went through every street in the city and couldn’t find one person whom I remotely liked.

The revolving doors of human happiness were jammed shut with people pushing in every direction apart from the right one.

To escape the city, I took to the country ‌ only to find that the city had got there first, flanked on all sides by ivory tower blocks.

I felt like driving my fist into an oncoming truck or smashing up a train, or injecting raw words straight into a vein.

I switch on the TV - which tells me, apparently, everything is drifting towards a state of perfection 38

40

41

Cover Artwork by Photographer Zima Kaoku ‘Landscapes with Corpses’ courtesy of Hatje Cantz

His text said: “Got something crazy come over right away.”

Market Futures, by Vanessa Woolf- Hoyle, page 7

Welcome To Litro Magazine STORIES TRANSPORT YOU It has been designed to fit easily into your pocket or bag, and we hope you’ll either keep it or pass it on for someone else to enjoy.... think of it as a small free book.

If you would like to advertise in Litro or suggest a where it should be made available, please drop us a line at sales@oceanmediauk.com LITRO IS PUBLISHED BY OCEAN MEDIA BOOKS Ltd

www.oceanmediauk.com