Issue 6

THE RED LINE www.overtheredline.com

THE RED LINE

With Stories From Rowan Martin Andrew Hanson Richard Lakin Michael Davis

I6 URBAN

And Daire O’Driscoll

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THE RED LINE Welcome Reader, The final competition of our first year in existence has drawn to a close. The five stories in the next few pages represent our favourites from forty-seven stories that we received for the Urban Fiction issue. They also represent a good cross section of the types of narratives that we received under the Urban umbrella.

At the end of the stories we have included Eric Westerlind’s lively critique of the stories and his overall winner of the competition and fifty pounds sterling.

At this point we might be drawn to eulogise about the passing of our inaugural year and the breadth (geographically, thematically, and stylistically) of the stories that we have been honoured to publish, but as we are a few weeks away from our Best of the Year edition for 2013 it is probably best left for now.

What we would ask is that, if you enjoy the stories here or have benefitted from involvement in the competition, that you help to spread the word in 2014. You can link to us via the web site on twitter, facebook, and pinterest, as well as subscribe to the mailing list. We will be looking for contributors for new projects in the new year, all of which aim to support writers of the short story form and to encourage greater interactivity between writers and readers—the way we typically communicate about these is via the mailing list.

Anyway, in the meantime we hope that you enjoy these stories and even that you might be spurred to write one of your own.

Toby and Stephen

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Some Go Dancing

By Michael J. Davis It got dark and they fell in. The water was cold. They turned together under the surface, Janelle’s hair twisting like smoke, her eyes closed. Blaine could barely see her face in the dim moonglow through the high gym windows. He thought again about his own death, how easy it would be to drown, to let go.

But then he inhaled, choked. It hurt and he panicked, pulling her up with him.

He coughed while Janelle vomited water. Then she rolled on her back, looked at him, and grinned.

“Your eyes are fucking crazy,” he said. He was flat on his back. Janelle was beside him, her pale shoulder glittering with droplets.

“Your eyes are fucking crazy. Along with the rest of you. Where’s my shirt?”

The water slapped against the tile. The pool filters gulped. Somewhere, far above in the dark, a wall clock thunked one minute forward. Blaine had a dim memory of boosting her up through one of the men’s room windows. They were in the Women’s Gymnasium, CSU Fresno. What the fuck.

“You put it on that kid’s head. The one who grabbed your ass.”

“He shouldn’t have done that.” Janelle sat up and raked her wet hair back. “Gimmie your shirt.

Did I burn the place down this time?”

He could see her ribs in the moonlight, the bumps of her spine, the goat’s head pentagram on the back of her neck. Blaine sat up beside her and started unbuttoning his soaked short-sleeve. “You tried.”

“No shit? Well, that’s what happens when you smoke K.” The kid hadn’t been smoking K. That had been Janelle. They took the elevator up to the second floor and climbed back out the bathroom window, slower this time. On that side of the building, it was only a short drop to a closed dumpster. Then they walked across campus toward the sirens.

The kid’s only crime had been being drunk and horny. He’d done what any loaded 19-year-old will do when a woman takes off her shirt in the middle of the frat party and grinds on him. He didn’t deserve a front kick to the sternum.

“Holy shit,” Janelle said.

Yes, thought Blaine, holy shit. Across Shaw Avenue, the Zeta Beta Tau house was on fire. Redorange flames licked out of the windows. A crowd had formed. A wilted group of sorority girls in tiny 3

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shorts and sweatshirts sat on the curb, crying and holding hands. A few people still had plastic cups full of beer. The police had set up a perimeter and two water trucks were spraying the third floor. Then a deep thud came from within and a green fireball busted out towards the sky, raining hot glass on the firemen.

They immediately turned away and dropped to one knee like synchronized swimmers or medieval soldiers when a volley of arrows comes down.

“I guess you succeeded,” Blaine said. The air smelled like smoke and melted plastic. The heat had already dried his T-shirt.

“Maybe it wasn’t me. I don’t remember a thing.”

“It was you. It’s always you.”

Five campuses this spring and three fires. Deaths? Blaine didn’t know. Why would he want to know something like that? And yet he felt he should know. He should find out. So when they got caught and someone threw them both in a dark hole, at least Blaine would know why. Someone was tracking them. Someone had to be.

“Shit,” Janelle said. “Look.”

Two sorority girls and a frat brother with a ball cap on sideways talking to a cop and pointing.

“Go,” Blaine said. They walked. They didn’t look back. When they got a block away, they started running—silently, simultaneously, the way the firefighters had knelt, perfectly synchronized, as if the two of them had also been trained. Some mad dance: arson, fire, and blame.

“You gonna hit it or what?” she said when the Dodge Monaco wouldn’t turn over. Blaine touched the screwdriver to the top of the solenoid inside the mangled steering column—nothing.

“It’s dead, babe. We have to go. Get something else.”

Janelle sighed. She’d found some black lipstick in her duffle bag, but she was still wearing his short-sleeved button-up. She was a beautiful woman, no doubt about it. Fair skin, long raven hair, blue eyes. She’d even look good when all she had to wear was a prison jumpsuit. The yellow-white streetlight made her jawline and cheekbones look extra severe. Her hair framed her face in graceful arcs. She looked well put together, as if she hadn’t just gotten high on horse tranquilizer, burned down a house, and almost drowned.

“Give it here.” Janelle slid over to him and planted a black kiss on his cheek. When she used the screwdriver to cross the terminals on the solenoid, the Monaco lurched and started up with a high keening 4

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deep in the engine. She kissed him on the lips, made the heavy metal horns with her right hand, and said, “Love me.”

“Listen to that. It won’t last.”

“Nothing does, Blaine.” She winked, then slouched against the passenger door and shut her eyes.

It started to rain. They went down several tree-lined streets to the squeak of the wipers and the death cry of the engine. Blaine headed for what he thought might be the direction of the 5 North. He rolled down the window and lit a cigarette, listening to the sirens in the distance.

It was dangerous, life. He was falling. Always in his dreams, falling or burning or screaming. Not so different from when he was awake. He’d done too many drugs. That was one thing. Ketamine. Meth.

Rock. Hash. Shit Janelle cooked up on the way. How did they both still have their original teeth? Blaine didn’t know. Cancer was probably locked in. Arthritis for sure. He creaked when he walked. He’d turned 37 four days ago and hadn’t said a thing about it. What would Janelle have done if he had? Bake him a cake?

Now she’d gotten the portable lab stuff, the hot plate, their tiny generator and some ingredients.

She was over in the woods doing her thing. You could make meth from lots of substances. And you could make it anywhere. All it took were a few household products, a heat source, and patience. He’d taught her how, at first, but now it was all Janelle. Maybe it was bullshit, the patience part. But they were careful.

They hadn’t had a cooking explosion in a long time. Still, what did he know? These days, he waited by the car. She never let him watch.

Maybe she was cooking down another batch of that liquid K they’d bought in Arizona. Or something else. They could make more in the long run selling meth to hillbillies in trailer parks, but that was dangerous. So they stuck to universities. And the college crowd liked K just fine. Dissociative. Hallucinogenic. Snort a bump of ketamine and you go outside your body. Tastes like oven cleaner if you smoke it. But it’s good for the nervous high-maintenance types. Blaine had seen it all. Rich kids with suitcases of dope. Wheezing trailer trash rednecks in wife beaters, no teeth and orange hair. Secretaries with death in their eyes. Fun-loving idiots who had no idea. Addicts. Future captains of industry. Future guests of the state. Kids on fire, feverish, drowning, disintegrating, disconnected, coming down, shot up, strung out, freezing in the heat, melting in the cold. Kids headed for the gutter, jail, the grave. Everything.

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Pop the trunk. There it was. A shit-ton of meth in two lady’s handbags. Three more 12oz. cylinders of liquid ketamine. His usual bag of travelling hash. A cardboard box of lab equipment, solvents, a folded tent. A crate of cold pills in individual boxes. A box of powdered rat poison. All that special goodness.

Janelle came back grinning, armpit rings and a V of sweat on her T-shirt between her breasts. She smelled like cleaning supplies and burned hair.

“We’re good.” She took the cigarette from his lips.

“How good?”

Janelle sat on the bumper of the Monaco, smiled, smoked. “Just wait.”

Four hours later, after dumping the chemical remains in an orchard and getting a filthy dinner at Denny’s, they drove through downtown Chico, looking for the state college. She had directions written on a ripped piece of graph paper. 11:30 PM on a Friday. Packed sidewalks. All bars wide open. Drunk blondes in glittery dresses. Subwoofer thumps at the stoplights. A ten-year-old with a mohawk in front of a lit-up laundromat breakdancing on a piece of linoleum, black silhouettes around him in the bonelight.

“Go left,” she said. And there it was. Chico State. Dark as a crypt. The place looked like Atlantis sunk beneath the waves. Blaine imagined a shark snaking between the red-brick buildings. They went around a field to the other side of the campus, then went left again and rolled down another quiet tree-lined street. It looked just like the one in Fresno where they’d parked the car before selling the first batch of K to the ZBTs and then ruining everyone’s night. Every campus in the country had neighborhoods like that around it. Quiet old houses. Not too much money, but clean and neat. Window boxes with geraniums.

Cats. It was the sort of area Blaine used to live in when he worked at Chemical Dynamics in San Diego.

But that was more than five years ago—when he had a job, a wife, a life. Ancient history. Before he failed his drug test three times in a row. Before Janelle.

“Here,” she said. “Yeah. This.” Small two-bedroom house. Peach stucco. The rust-colored drapes everybody had in the 70s tied to the sides of the front window. Dark inside. He went by, did a three-point turn, and parked across the street from the house. Janelle opened the trunk and wrapped something in a plastic grocery bag. Then they were ready. They walked down the driveway past a minivan and a Subaru with a CSUC Faculty Parking sticker in the corner of the windshield. The backyard was a small rectangle of flat grass surrounded by trees and walled with fix-foot trellises. The neighbor’s floodlight 6

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shined around the spikes of a wrought iron spite fence, striping half the yard and house with fat bars of light. More bonelight. Pale. Spectral. Ghost city. Dead light.

Nothing on in the house, but they didn’t have to knock. He came out immediately and shut the door quietly behind himself. Fat guy. Round belly and a double chin. Early forties. Brown hair down to his shoulders, parted in the middle. Khakis. Lionel Richie concert shirt. Hello, it said across the bottom, is it me you’re looking for? He had a long face, small full lips, and the expression that people get at graveside funerals—mournful, a bit uncomfortable, a bit like he thought he should be somewhere else, like maybe he’d killed the person in the casket and was afraid people might catch on. He stood on the cement step just below his backdoor and frowned at them.

“What do you want?”

“Who else comes up to your backdoor at midnight?” Blaine said.

“That’s not what I asked you.”

“We’re here to sell you illegal drugs.” Janelle smirked and held up the bag.

He looked at her for a long moment. His frown got deeper, brows pushed together. Then he laughed. “Well good.” He looked Blaine up and down. “And what are you here for?”

“What the fuck does it look like?” There was something about this guy that seemed extra wrong.

Not the usual wrong drug shit, but reptile wrong. The kind of guy who goes to AA meetings to find a date.

That sick vibe. He was a college teacher? Of what?

“Wait here.” He went back inside, taking care not to make a sound. When he turned, they could see the handle of a gun in his pants pocket. Blaine looked at Janelle. She shrugged.

The fat man slipped back out with a yellow plastic bong in his hand. “Let’s see it. And keep your voice down. My wife’s asleep.”

Janelle unwrapped the plastic grocery bag and took out a large Ziploc full of white powder. The K. She held the bag in the light. It cast a gauzy spider web on the back of the house. Bonelight, boneweb, thought Blaine, everything dead or dying, falling apart, falling away.

The man’s mournful expression had returned. He offered the bong to Janelle. “Go ahead. Do the honors.”

She looked at it and shook her head. “Sorry, Nate, I don’t feel like it tonight.”

“You serious? How do I know it’s for real? How do I know it won’t tear a thousand little holes in 7

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my lungs on the first bowl?”

“Killing customers is bad for business,” Blaine said.

Nate turned his head slowly and raised his eyebrows. “Was I speaking to you?”

“I was speaking to you. If you want the shit, pay us. Otherwise, we’re out.”

Nate looked at Janelle. “I think he’s bad for business.”

“He’s my boyfriend.”

“Oh really. Well tell him to relax. And at least pack one for me.”

She put the bag on the ground. “Why don’t you do it?”

He sighed. “Because of this.” He took the gun out and pointed it at Blaine. It was a little gun, the kind women keep in their purses. Dull black metal. Not a movie gun. Not an ego gun. A gun people buy along with shooting lessons because they’re planning on using it and afraid of it at the same time. A gun you get shot with in a parking lot or in someone’s living room or in a dark backyard.

“What is this?” Blaine said. “You’re robbing us?”

“Lower your voice. My wife needs her sleep.”

“You’ll wake her up if you fire that thing,” Janelle said.

“Aw, shit,” he smiled and tossed the bong to her with his free hand. “You got me there. Then I guess I’ll have to shoot her, too.”

It’s not even his place, thought Blaine. He broke in and killed everybody. He’s a psychopath.

“Hurry it up,” Nate said. Then he looked at Blaine and winked.

Janelle carefully loaded and tamped the bowl with her thumb. Then she got out her lighter and offered it to him.

“No way,” he said. “You first.”

She gave him a look of pure hate but took a hit. The smoke was thick and unnaturally white when she exhaled. Cartoon dragon smoke. She made a face and blinked a few times. It smelled the way the house fire had—hot chemicals, melted plastic.

“That good, huh?”

“Always tastes like that.” She croaked the words out and spat on the grass.

Nate nodded and sighed. “Okay,” he said. “I’m satisfied.” Then he unzipped and took out his limp penis, a small pale tongue hanging out the mouth of his fly. “Now you can blow me.”

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“Fuck you,” said Blaine.

“Right.” Nate shrugged and fired into the ground. The gun made a pop no louder than a balloon.

Lines of gray smoke came out of the barrel and flowed up around his hand like tiny serpents. “I can do you and then pick up with her. It’s all the same to me.”

Blaine looked at Janelle. She had dead eyes. She put down the bong. “It’s cool,” she said. “Just be cool. Blaine, why don’t you go sit in the car.”

“He’s not going anywhere,” Nate said. “Now get with it.”

She wobbled as she walked over to him. She knelt down and took his penis in her mouth the way she sometimes did with Blaine, then started bobbing her head.

Blaine’s throat tightened up. He was breathing hard. He stared at the gun still pointed at him. He was maybe five, six feet away. He started to sweat.

But Nate was looking straight at him, grinning. Nate didn’t look away, even when he slapped the side of Janelle’s head. “Slower” he said. “Take your time.”

She slowed down.

The wind rose in the leaves above the backyard. Black branches waved in the starless sky. It took a long time for Nate to come. He made a little sound and told Janelle to swallow. And then Blaine thought they were both going to die. And he thought about falling in the pool; the time they were both shitfaced and Janelle drove them off the freeway into a canyon; the time he came home high and his wife Sarah started screaming because he’d gotten cut to the bone and was covered in blood and didn’t realize it; the time Janelle tried to burn a Hummer and it had a locking gas cap and wouldn’t burn and she kept pouring gas over it from a can and then, when she finally gave up, it exploded and they were both deaf for a week. A hundred other times. Waking up in the hospital. Waking up in a ditch with blood in his hair.

Waking up on an enormous concrete pipe in a construction site. Waking up in people’s homes, in stolen cars, on roofs, in movie theaters, on shit-stained mattresses. Death was easy. It was right there all the time. It was drugs. It was that bullet in the ground. It was Janelle. It was Blaine himself, his own mind.

Maybe it didn’t matter whether you tried to live or die. Sometimes you lived. Other times you died.

“That was real sweet,” Nate said. Then he gestured with the gun. “Now get lost before I change my mind.”

They backed away from Nate, the bong, the bag of K, his erect penis sticking up out of his fly, glis9

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tening in the light. They walked up the driveway in silence, past the Subaru with its faculty parking sticker, past the minivan with a plastic Goofy on the dash.

Janelle got halfway to the car before she started vomiting. Blaine tried to put his arm around her, but she staggered up, almost fell, and ran down the middle of the street. He watched her go. She went across the intersection at the end of the block and almost got hit by a truck. She didn’t even look.

He started searching for her about an hour later. The Monaco wouldn’t turn over. Blaine worked the screwdriver across the solenoid from ten or twelve different angles before the current connected in the steering column. Meanwhile, the house across the street stayed dark.

Blaine drove around the neighborhood, smoking cigarette after cigarette. He was thinking about guns. He was thinking about handcuffs and about injecting oven cleaner into Nate’s balls and letting him stay like that until he died. He was thinking maybe Janelle was going to kill herself—because she’d tried to before. But he was also thinking she’d want to burn one more house down first, that she wouldn’t go out so easy once she got angry. And he knew she was angry.

So he cruised the gas stations in the area. Janelle knew a hundred ways to start a fire, but gas was her favorite. It was her thing. She loved the smell of it. She loved the way it burned, the way it made a fire breathe. She said a gas fire was better than a poem or getting high. It got her high. Just the sight of it.

But he couldn’t find her. He went down the same streets twenty, thirty times. Not knowing where else to look, he drove back to Nate’s house. It was almost 2:00 AM. He parked in exactly the same place, got out, and leaned against the car.

There was Nate in the front room, sitting in a recliner, watching T.V. He had a beer resting on his belly. A woman came in. She was wearing a pink bathrobe and she had a baby on her shoulder. She was patting it on the back, doing a little rock-a-bye dance. Nate said something to her, then looked at the T.V. and started to laugh. Then she started to laugh. They laughed for a long time.

Something was real funny. But the baby was crying. It was wearing one of those animal pajama suits, all one piece with little rabbit ears on the hood. She held the baby at arm’s length and said something, then she started patting it more rapidly on the back, doing that rock-a-bye dance. She and Nate were still laughing. He got up and put his arms around them both and they started waltzing across the living room. Waltzing and laughing. The woman did a one-handed pirouette. And he bowed like an 18th century 10

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lord.

That’s when Blaine looked around and noticed Janelle sitting on the porch steps of the house behind him. She had two red metal gas cans beside her, the sort you see strapped to the backs of Jeeps.

She’d been crying. Maybe she’d cried out all her tears. He walked up and sat next to her.

“There’s a baby over there,” she said. “He’s got a baby. They’re dancing.”

“He’s got a wife, too, from the look of it.”

Janelle nodded slowly. “I guess she woke up.”

Now Nate was back in the recliner, holding the baby on his belly where the bottle had been. He pointed at the television and said something to the kid. The wife had disappeared.

“I can’t do this.” Janelle looked down at the gas cans, rested her hand on them. “I want to, but I can’t.”

It started to rain. They stared through it at Nate until his wife came back and took the baby. Then it was just him. He turned off the lights. The blue-white flicker of the television flashed on his face like lightning.

“We could get him now,” Blaine said. “Get the crowbar from the trunk. Throw a rock through the window. Go straight in at him. Beat him in front of his wife and kid. He fucking deserves it.”

Janelle thought about it. But she shook her head. “He’s got a baby. The baby’s innocent.”

“So we don’t beat on the baby.”

“Come on,” she said. “Let’s see if the heater works in the car.”

Blaine drove to a 7-11 and they bought doughnuts and coffee. Then he got on the 5 going south this time. Neither of them felt like spending the night in Chico. They hadn’t talked about where they were going to go next. It didn’t matter. After an hour, she looked at him.

“You know,” she said, “some people lead their whole lives and never go dancing.”

Blaine remembered the kid with the mohawk breakdancing outside the laundromat in that dead bonelight. Maybe that kid was high. Maybe he was just a normal kid. Maybe he had no home. Maybe he was some kind of genius. Maybe he’d grow up to be a rapist like Nate. It made no difference. Blaine would never know him.

“But then maybe they do dance. Maybe they just decide to and they do it,” he said.

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I’m going dancing. You just make the decision and you go.” Her voice wobbled a little. She looked very young to Blaine right then.

He smiled. “Anybody can.”

“Yeah.” She looked at the rain being pushed along the passenger’s side window. “Even us. We could go dancing.”

“We could. I like dancing.”

“I like it, too. It’s better than dying.”

The keening from the engine had gotten worse—like an animal caught in a cruel trap, screaming in pain. The wipers squeaked. The steering column made an electrical zap sound and smelled like hot metal.

“Blaine, can we go to San Francisco? I think my mom lives there.”

“We could go down there,” he said. “There’s nothing stopping us. San Francisco’s better than dying.”

“I think I need some help.” She slid over and put her head on his shoulder. “Can we stay there for a while?”

He said yes, okay, if that’s what she wanted.

“Yes,” she said. “And I want to go dancing someplace like normal people.”

Blaine thought about it. Normal might be good. They could try normal. So he said he might like that, too. The night was almost over. The bonelight had faded back to the drug world, the world of the dead, the lost, the dreaming. Ahead there was only sunrise and the mad dance of the sober, day-lit world.

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A Tenner Up

By Rowan Martin I shat it, initially, because it looked like she had thrown a baby at me. It was a grotty doll, with one of those cloth bodies, plastic limbs and half-shut eyes, manky, but that did not explain why a young woman – she was definitely a woman, not a lassie - was running towards me, pushing an empty toy pram with no doll in it.

Allison Street is a midden. The pavements, at any time, are ankle-deep in shite. I ducked to avoid the flying baby, didn't totally succeed and somehow crumbled. Balance is no longer my strong point.

Sorry.

She was bending over me and had both her hands clasped between her knees, and she was wearing brightly coloured – very red, in fact - tight jeans. She repeated herself, agitated - Sorry. Sorry. The way she rolled her r's told me lots of things at once – she didn't speak much English, she was not from here, and she was worried. Apart from that I wasn't listening as I was certain other folk, probably swarthy big strong men, would be along soon to kick my cunt in. Plus, the doll, which looked like it would never be the source of any innocent fun, was staring at me from the ground, about two feet in front of me. Totally still, with those half-shut eyes.

I supposed she realised that I was an old man when she saw me on the ground; while keeling over I'd aimed to twist onto my backside, but hadn't managed it entirely, so my hip and thigh took the brunt of it. I was about 80% convinced that I was in for a doing of epic proportions, hence why I was in a foetal position. Instead I was being apologised to by a woman in stretch jeans who kept speaking words which seemed to have no vowels. I complained. I made no sense. I could tell by the furrowed brow and the yelling she was on the verge of. Did this woman just throw a doll at me? Did she mean to?

Okay, okay... okay. I politely stopped using so many words which might confuse her. I flapped a hand. Next to her bony kneecap, my hand looked enormous. I made use of a concrete step, an overgrown bush and a metal railing to regain my footing, and I could feel her tiny, useless hands on my elbow and back. I said thankyou, which is what you have to do, although those gentle touches you get from passersby

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when you're righting yourself don't amount to much in the way of actual help. I brushed a couple of fag ends from my knees. She scrabbled around on the ground. No, no, I haven't dropped anything, it's fine, I'm fine...

I spoke as clearly as I could. I said the t's and the ends of my words.

She looked up at me and said something I didn't understand. I gave her a thumbs up to show I was really, genuinely, totally fine. She said another thing I didn't understand, nodded, and kept looking around on the ground. She held up a CD to me, scratched, which reflected a street light dully.

Naw, no, no... I'm fine. That's not my... She threw it to one side, reached towards the kerb and then picked up a packet of instant noodles, which were burst at one end. Naw, hen. No, you stand up now... I began to kneel again, although it was costing me pain and time and hassle, anything to stop this conveyor belt of rubbish that was not mine. Then she held up a twenty-pound-note. And she said something else, and like her it was a total mystery, and she waved it at me.

It wasn't mine. I was sure of it. She looked like she could do with it. We were both on our knees now, looking at the twenty. I had to stop a second and get my breath. And I was already thinking in my head, ibuprofen. Codeine. Tramadol. Treat myself to a whisky. Tonight. Fuck tomorrow and the empty head it'll bring. Twice on the ground in a day!

I flapped my hand at her again to make her stop speaking. She did stop, she understood this time, but then replaced it with a smile when I brought out a ten. I would give her the ten and she would give me the twenty. She'd worked it out. Her smile stretched, she looked at the ten, and I saw the chipped front tooth and the missing incisor and the gaps at the back where a couple of molars should have been. We swapped notes and I repeated my routine from earlier earlier (concrete step, metal railing, fucking knees and thigh and hip) and thanked her again. A tenner up, and I had a new limp, too. She rattled past me with her toy pram, and I saw her put the cheap doll in the seat, and she was waving the tenner. Cheery things were shouted at me, which I didn't understand, which might have been thanks.

I would never find out what she said or why the doll came flying towards me in the first place.

Neeson's is where I've been going since the dawn of time. I was leaving Neeson's when I was 14

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smacked by the doll and got a tenner. Next day, I decided Neeson's was where I was going to spend that tenner, just in case there was some kind of luck there, that I could get into a pattern of going home, getting dolls thrown at me, getting tenners from foreign women in tight jeans. It took me a wee while to get going; I slept in, stayed up later than I wanted to last night, sometimes that happens with whisky and painkillers.

Last night I was watching nature programs, late.

It was beautiful. There was a shark. A shoal of tiny, shiny fish darting about. A red octopus-type creature who gave birth, fed her children until she starved to death, then lay there as a lifeless grey lump. I went to my bed after that. It depressed me.

I was thinking of the red octopus when I was at the corner of Allison Street and Langside Road.

There's a camera there, a tall tower of a camera that looks down towards Toryglen. To me, it looks like a frowning eye. It has a very disapproving look to it. Normally that CCTV is what points towards you, uselessly, when you're forcing your way through a group of teens or men who stare. There's a wee ledge at the base of the camera, big enough to sit on. Two men sat on it and nearby, three men stood. They were spitting parts of something they were eating and they were not speaking, which made passing more nervewracking than it ought to have been.

The only hing you nee'tae be scared ay is that wumman wi the rid jeans an a scabby doll, I said out loud to the pavement. It felt like they were staring at me. But I didn't feel right after last night, so. So. 8 halfs, I could afford with my tenner. I didn't know if I would drink it all there and then, and I didn't know how much of that I would spend on other people, but I deserved all of them.

It was busy. I couldn't work out why and then I saw there was football on the telly. A seat nobody liked, the one nearest the toilets and furthest from the bar, was empty. I put my paper there and then saw Joy was on, she looked busy and was laughing at a joke and pouring two pints at the same time. She'd see me soon, she always did. By virtue of her being older than her daughter who also worked there, who dealt with the younger men, she had a tendency to make sure the old men got served first.

When Joy wasn't on I sometimes just went away back home. I speak to her so often I don't remember, a lot of the time, what I actually say to her. When I got back to my seat with the half, I realised we'd said a fair few sentences, but I couldn't remember what any of them were. We were both smiling and nodding. I

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usually held the tenner up high and out of her reach, so I probably did that. She usually said, wee double for me, aye? And I usually said, you can have whitever ye want, Joy, anytime. And she usually said, naw I canny, you're too old. And then we both laughed. But I don't actually know what we said that time. I couldn't be bothered trying to remember the words or even the sounds.

Joy's lassie was also on, she was bringing through boxes of flavoured cider – strawberry and lime, for fuck's sake. She also wore stretch jeans but hers were pale blue – grey? White? - and had holes in them, which looked like she'd made them herself by scraping a brillo pad back and forth. Her skin was a nuclear shade of mahogany. I laughed at my own joke and remembered that I liked Joy, that I should keep my opinions on Courtney to myself.

It didn't seem much time had passed but I was done my half already. Another half was gotten and I went on with my paper, which was a satisfying read, as I like the news and the tone of the Herald. In the Herald, nearly everything in the world happens inside Glasgow. I remembered being gripped by the polis murders on Allison Street a few years ago. I loved looking for the coded references to the Catholics ruling Glasgow City Council. Now it was a wee bit more vague and general, it was almost entirely like the magazine section you get on a Sunday now, but that dry tone was still there. And the crime, if anything, was worse. A young boy was being tried for murder, for example. Allegedly he'd murdered his own sister. She was only 10 and he said she was seen with a lad. Just a lad. I wasn't sure if I should think of it as a Romeo and Juliet or if it was just another terrible thing that had happened.

I was looking at the telly briefly when I noticed Courtney. She suddenly became still looking at her phone behind the bar. She shook her head and stared up at the optics, turned to the queue and then said to some lad that she'd be back in a bit, went towards the ladies. Joy looked after her and shook her head.

When Courtney was near me she said, alright, Jack? And went past – and then, and then, she came back and asked if I was after another half.

Table service! Never before. What a treat! She went and got a half for me, wouldn't take money, said naw, want tae ask ye a question. She sat down my half and then sat down herself and said, You're auld. I laughed but she didn't so I stopped. How old were ye when ye stopped bein a total dick?

Whit?

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I mean, look at this.

She held up her phone. It was a pair of tits. Well, just the cleavage, but it was definitely tits. And they were an even deeper mahogany shade. I frowned. Then she sort of pushed the picture up and showed me the text. In capital letters there were the words SUNNY DELIGHTS and then a sort of poem about how brilliant big tanned breasts were. I recognised the name of the sender. Her man.

Aff, doll, you're better than that piece ay shite.

Aye, I know that, he doesnae though. He's on a stag.

When's he back?

Two more days.

Where is he?

Budapest.

Ah. Brothels. I looked down and then up again. W ell, in answer to your question, I was never a dick.

A gent fae birth. I said it with a smile. She smiled back, but put her hands up to her temples and shut her eyes. Here, I said, passed her two tramadol.

Thanks, she said, with a wee watery smile. Then her hand went to her pocket and she passed me a wee white pill with a diamond on it.

Two poond pill, she said. They're no strong.

Then she was up and behind the bar. I took it as my turn to get back in the queue and did so, for another half, which I enjoyed immensely. Then I thought, fuck it, and I took the pill.

FUCKIN HELL AYE THERE WIS NAE WAY THAT THE DOLL WUS GONNAE HIT ME AYE I DON'T KNOW SHE MIGHT AY BEEN ROMA WHIT'S ROMA HERE I'LL BUY YES A DRINK AYE IT FUCKIN DESTROYED ME AYE AH HUD TAE GO HOME N SELF MEDICATE NAW MAH LEGS ARE AWRITE NAW WHO'S PLAYING I DON'T FOLLOW ANY TEAMS AYE I WAS INTAE FORMULA ONE AGES AGO AYE SENNA AYE NAW I GREW UP ON CALDER STREET NAW SHE DIED NAE ONE ELSE LIKE HER NAE ONE ELSE LIKE HER IN THE WORLD AYE WE DID 17

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AYE YOU REMEMBER MAH WEE GIRL AYE YOU REMEMBER MAH WEE GIRL NAW SHE LIVES IN AMERICA SHE EMIGRATED SHE SAYS I SHOULD GO OVER BUT I HAVNAE THE MONEY AND NEITHER'S SHE NAW AYE MAH DOCTOR SAYS I'M DAEN FINE BUT WHIT ELSE IS HE GONNAE SAY WHIT IS HE GONNAE SAY THAT I HAVNAE MUCH TIME NAW HE'LL JUST FUCKIN FEED ME WHATEVER HE HUS TAE TAE GET RID AY ME AYE. NAW. AYE.

The football had been switched off hours ago and my voice was hoarse. I'd never done so much talking. Sometimes I'd talked when I wasn't sure anyone was actually listening. I was tired but not tired. I saw Courtney and Joy pass a look to each other – how're we gonnae get him oot ay here? - when I stood up to go. I gave them hugs, and a wee guy who smelled of sick, I gave him a heavy pat on the back, and then I was out. Out into the sweet Govanhill night air. And it went from very noisy to very silent, all of a sudden, so I started singing to fill the silence. I went straight down Langside Road towards the park. It felt like the direction the park was in, at least. Things kept wobbling – I realised it was my head, that I could hold it up only for a couple of seconds before I dropped it again, but I couldn't stop it.

At the CCTV, the one with the ledge beneath it, just near where I was almost struck by a flying baby, I could hear sounds of talking. I could see red, too. Red jeans! The doll woman. She was sitting, I think. I could see three men around her in a semicircle but lifting my head up to get a proper look was too difficult.

I was looking at the ground to keep my balance and not fall. She was the cause of the fall, though, the flying doll and the tenner. Now she was sitting down so I was in no danger. Safe. No dolls. Tramadols. No danger.

She was sitting very close to those three men, though. She was sitting down in front of those three men and they were looking down on her, at the top of her head, and they were shouting at her. Lads shouldn't be shouting at a lassie. Lads should never shout at lassies.

I got my balance on a corner, there was a wall painted blue. I got my head up, managed a quick look before I had to take some deep breaths. Those three men were very close to her. She must have been talking but I couldn't hear her. Her head was moving. The men were shouting – jeering? She wasn't making any sounds. Her head was moving quickly and regularly. The three men were standing around her in a very close semicircle and shouting. And jeering.

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My head got heavy again. I had to look down. The three men were still there and I heard them laughing. All of them were looking at me, it felt like, but I couldn't lift my head, it was too heavy and I worried I might be too heavy, too, that I would hit the ground and then I probably wouldn't get up. I thought then that I wouldn't mind it, passing away now, but somehow that thought became a laugh and I spluttered a noise. I meant to say, hey, but it came out hah.

I said it again, louder. Haaaah. And again, hah. My face was up against that blue wall. And my hands were on the corner. The laughing had stopped and it was all very quiet. Some steps, maybe some shuffling.

Those guys coming to help me? My head felt light, very light. I blinked and then I was sitting down and I felt my head smack off the blue wall and then there were hands in my coat. In my pockets.

Haaaaaaaaaaaaah. I had nothing. I had my key and my paper. They looked at them and threw them away.

They didn't want those so they took my wedding ring instead. I felt them wiggle it over my knuckle. I felt wetness on my hand. They must have spat on me to get the ring off. It's not worth much. A plain band, not even engraved, though we meant to. We meant to. We meant to. I saw her red legs. She was still sitting there. She was patiently waiting for these men to come back. Her knee wobbled as though she was bouncing her leg, fidgeting. Fingers went into my trouser pockets and they took the rest of the tramadol. They weren't talking at all, businesslike. My head was too heavy to lift. They went back over to the girl, one of them put his hand to the back of her head and I blinked. I think it was deliberate. I shut my eyes and it felt like my body thought that was it and my ears shut closed.

I blinked again, and the sky had changed colour, and it was two polis looking down at me. One woman, one man. They looked at me sympathetically. I looked like an old man to them. To them, I looked like a real live man. A man. I put my hands up to my face and covered my eyes.

They asked me, a shape of a man, if I was alright.

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Hilltop Town

By Daire O’Driscoll

It was the spring of 1952 and I was suffering the steep climb towards the isolated hilltop town of Lethenberg. It was a bright and sunny morning, though a bitter breeze blew through the boughs of the trees and made the streams ripple with a mournful twitter. This icy gust is typical for that time of year, as anybody who knows the town will attest, and I recognised the victims of its callousness through the ravaged countryside about me. Despite the wind, the spring was beginning to have its effect. Tiny buds bloomed in the nearby fields while flocks of wild, winged ones echoed birdsong from all around. At the base of the hill these fields stretched as far as the horizon, no matter which direction one looked I had not been to the town for many years. It was a curious business that had brought me to return, somewhat reluctantly, and I had had to travel a great distance. They used to say that once you had left it, the place would never appear the same to you again, that it would instantly seem foreign and obscure. I did not even entirely understand the nature of the business but I had decided that it was best to see it through regardless.

I had been walking uphill for almost an hour when I saw a man appear in the distance, walking in the same direction as I but at a much slower pace. As I came closer, and then passed him, I saw he was a spindly, elderly man, seemingly about 70 years of age. He was doubled over in a dirty, grey overcoat, as though concealing something of the utmost importance in its folds, and his slate eyes, which sat beneath an enormous, wide-brimmed hat akin to that of a warlock, darted about suspiciously as he saw me. I nodded at him as I passed but he did not return the greeting. As I walked on I could hear him standing still, as though waiting for me to disappear before he proceeded.

After I had walked another hundred paces the calls of the wild were shattered by another. “Hey, you there!�

I stopped and turned to see the old man shuffling and scuttling up the path towards me, maintaining his bent posture but with a bony forefinger pointed in my direction.

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“Yes, you! Stay where you are!”

I decided there was probably little harm to be done in waiting to see what this strange fellow wanted. He caught up with me at last and through heavy panted breaths spluttered – “You will have to forgive my rude behaviour my good man. You see I had not yet realised that you were from these parts. Naturally I am cautious of outsiders.”

Here he paused to cough several times until he had gathered himself sufficiently to notice the look of surprise on my face.

“Ah hah, I see, I see. You have been away, you have forgotten the signs.”

He chuckled to himself while I decided that I definitely did not understand what he meant. He stretched out his pointing finger once more and it wavered wobblingly in the direction of the sky overhead. I looked up to see a cloudless, blue canopy dotted only by a sun and a pale afternoon moon.

“You are approaching from the East my boy. Only we can approach from the East. It is the first sign of course of a newcomer; they always approach and leave via the South. It’s because of the altitude you know?”

I stared at the sky as he went on.

“Of course in my haste I had forgotten what direction the path was facing today, until I looked at the moon and realised you were going the proper way. Naturally, if I had been aware that you were one of us then I would not have been so discourteous just now.”

I mumbled something about there being no need for an apology.

“And then of course there’s the name of the town - Lethenberg. You know, I’m sure, that it derives from the Greek for ‘stone’? So there’s that too.”

He looked straight into my eye as if waiting for a reply. I did not understand his babbling in the slightest so I just nodded and remained silent, before setting on my way at a gentle pace. The man was not yet finished though and lunged to my side with surprising dexterity.

“My name is Jerome Farshoff, delighted to meet you.”

I did not want to tell this madman my real name and I thought that a similarity of titles might toss him 21

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from my trail, so I told him my name was Jeremy Famshoff. He seemed not to notice but started walking alongside me and saying “We must ensure that you take the correct number of footsteps before entering the town. Remember that its 64 upon approach and 95 on your departure. Now, shall we discuss the interesting latitude of the land?�

The old man went on in this bizarre manner as we continued up the path together. I, for the most part, said and comprehended little, while he raved about rules and signs that I was supposedly expected to realise. As we got closer to the town his posture improved until he removed the secret package from his overcoat, revealing a bundle of ragged, yellowed papers, covered in spider webs of scribbled handwritings, indecipherable to me when he placed them in my hands. He explained to me that he only wrote this piece in order to masquerade letters hidden beneath its text, letters that were secreted in the paper in invisible ink and were only visible during one particular day of the calendar year.

He told me much that I have forgotten and even more that I could not follow, but the general idea was that he had completed a polemical critique of the farmers who worked in the fields that stretched outwards from the base of the hill. These were apparently the sworn enemies of the townsfolk and this man had finally discovered the root of their power. If he could just get the finances together to publish a thousand copies of his paper, then the townspeople would be guaranteed happiness for generations to come.

As we were parting ways I realised that the old loon had talked me into partially financing his scheme and I heard myself agreeing to meet him later that evening to arrange matters further. He stuffed the papers beneath his coat once more and staggered off in the opposite direction to my immediate destination.

________________________________________

Later that afternoon I walked without aim along the dusty, antiquated streets of the town. The early stages of the business had gone surprisingly well. I had gained more ground than I had lost in the matter and, even though I knew there was more work to be done before I left the town again, I could not help but congratulate myself on the opening proceedings. The telegram I had received from the Minister had been 22

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somewhat cleared up and at last a semblance of an explanation had been provided as to why it was so important that I returned.

For now I had some hours free and I found myself wandering through the lonely town, interested in discovering whether any memories would be reborn or whether any had actually been suppressed to begin with. The sun still sprinkled life beautifully from above and once inside the town the buildings formed a barrier against the fierce wind of the hillside. The streets were mostly deserted, as they always were about lunch time. Then again my memory could not summon an occasion upon which they had ever been busy.

The town was a quiet one.

I stopped into a tavern that I had never noticed before and ordered a glass of water. The place was bright, despite the low ceiling, and the light shone upon empty wooden tables and chairs. Trophy filled cabinets lined one wall, their gleaming contents regularly polished. The floor was uneven and my wooden stool wobbled as I drank at the bar.

The place was empty apart from the barman and I. I could feel him watching me as I sipped from my glass. He was a stout, middle-aged man of an uninteresting height. He wore a white shirt and a red waistcoat above it, with a red face to match. The second button up on his waistcoat was missing which I found unusual because the others all sparkled as though the recipients of rigorous, recent attention. Long, brown, wiry hairs hung from his nostrils but were masked by a bushy moustache beneath. His hands were large and strong. He spent some time washing glasses and watching me in silence.

I could not remember exactly why I had decided to ask only for water, but it was exceptionally refreshing and I ordered another glass. The barman evidently saw this as an opening.

“Can’t get it anywhere else.”

He chuckled after saying this. His voice was deep and coarse. He sounded like a bear that had been taught to speak English.

I agreed that the water was very good. This seemed to please him and he went on.

“There is no purer spring for thousands of miles. Some say that there isn’t anywhere with purer water in the world, but of course how could any of us know that?”

He chuckled again. His laughs sounded like tin cans bouncing off the insides of an empty, stone well.

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“Where are you from friend? And what brings you to these parts?”

I was not eager to discuss my business so I satisfied half of his curiosity by telling him that I was originally a local.

“Ah, I suspected as much. You seemed a little too at ease for a first timer. Although you’d know from a glance that you’ve been on the outside.”

He turned and poured himself a glass of water and began to explain to me, in laborious detail, the various unique aspects of the town. He explained to me how very few things in the town had changed and how I had surely been altered by my absence. He told me about the first, and only, time a car had entered the town 4 years prior and the ensuing disaster that had led to its banishment. I only listened to a fraction of what he was saying. He was not expecting any response and my mind was occupied by the more important matters that I would soon have to attend to. I finished and thanked him for the water. I stood up to take my leave.

“Well, it’s been a pleasure talking to you friend. This has been the busiest afternoon in Farshoff’s for some time.”

I questioned him as to what Farshoff’s was.

“Why it’s the name of my establishment. I’m Jeremy Farshoff, please to have met you.”

He held out one of his paws. I could, of course, not reveal my real name to any laymen at that point, so I created another and shook his hand. He held my hand tightly and continued to talk, even though I was clearly attempting to leave. He told me how his wife had died two years before due to a gangrenous leg that had not been properly treated. His son, Jerome, and he were the last two living Farshoff’s, though he noted with sadness that his son was no longer wholly what one would classify as alive. Jerome had come home from the well-publicised war with a head that had been turned inside out and upside down. He had spent all of his time trying to complete an important manuscript that could only be read in a certain light.

The barman and his wife had tried caring for Jerome but it had become too much once he had begun to physically hurt other people. After the barman’s wife died he had had to relinquish care of the boy.

My curiosity had finally been aroused and I told him excitedly about my encounter with the old man upon the hillside earlier that day. He looked at me in surprise for a moment, and I thought I noticed an ex24

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pression of pity, before he chuckled again. “That is impossible. My son and I are the last two Farshoff’s left alive. It must be the altitude getting to you. Here have another glass of water.�

I was now ill at ease and wrestled my hand from his grip. Somehow I knew I could not trust this man. I could hear him calling after me as I quickly left the bar and decided to continue with my work.

________________________________________

I stepped out onto the cold, abandoned streets of Lethenberg. The stars blazed in the clear, black sky above but below the town burned in the grip of an icy furnace. The sole light visible was a dull glowing in the second story window of one building. A sense of foreboding held me captive as I began making my way towards the location of my appointment with the old man from that morning. I clasped my coat about my body to ward off the cold.

The second meeting had not gone as planned. At first the Minister had maintained his level of enthusiastic support. However, with the arrival of the School Mistress, a hard-faced woman with pursed lips who walked with the help of an artificial right leg, his determination visibly waned. She opposed the idea entirely, opposed me and even seemed insulted by my being there. Despite her humble official title, it seemed she held a powerful sway in the town. The Minister flinched and laughed nervously beneath her verbal body blows, forgetting all he had promised me that afternoon. I left feeling dejected and lost. Once more the details of the plan became vague and difficult to properly arrange in my head. Why had I come back here?

Bare, unforgiving avenues passed me by on either side until I reached the farmhouse on the far edge of town. It was not how I remembered it. By the moonlight I could see that the roof of the living quarters had collapsed. There was no glass in the windows and the stone walls were covered by weeds and moss. It seemed as though nobody had lived there for years. The place was silent and dark apart from a small beacon of light coming from behind the building.

I circled round to the back of the farmhouse to see a lantern burning in the run-down stables. I ap25

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proached the closest one, a rickety hovel comprised of only two walls, that together formed a right angle, and a tin roof. The old man, Jerome Farshoff inasmuch as I knew him, paced up and down amidst bales of hay and reams of scattered papers. Rusted farming equipment littered the floor. The lantern briefly lit his face each time he passed and I could see that he had assumed the same features of suspicion as I had been subjected to when I had first passed him upon the road. I was nervous but felt obliged to at least let him know that I could not help. I cleared my throat. The old man turned sharply.

“Who are you? What do you want?” he spat.

I saw his eyes glance nervously over his precious scattered papers.

I reminded him of our meeting that morning and stepped closer to the light. I could tell that he did not recognise me or possess even the slightest recollection of our conversation, but when I mentioned the promise I had made to him with regards to the money his attention refocused and a wave of enthusiasm burst upon him.

“Ah yes, of course, of course. Well young man, where have you been? I don’t have all the time in the world you know? Anyway, I’ve prepared some examples for you of the piece. It’s several, unconnected excerpts and I’ve taken the liberty of coding it with a new system and providing you with a key to reading it. Naturally I can’t be handing out any complete copies at the moment. They could be waiting to pounce at the sniff of anything substantial.”

Here his eyes scanned the perimeters of the stable uneasily. I tried to take this opportunity to interject and explain that I couldn’t help him, but the old man would not listen to a word I was saying. He began holding several dozen sheets before me and explaining the mechanics of the coding. The more excited he became the more my anxiety rose about telling him the truth. I shivered in the cold. Once more I clutched my coat close to my body, having to pull it more tightly than usual as one of the lower buttons had come loose and fallen off. As the old man went on, I noticed something out of place in the stable. A small frame hanging upon one wall contained a few lines of writing resting behind a glass pane.

“It comes without meaning. It departs in darkness, and in darkness its name is shrouded.

For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing; even the memory of them is forgotten.”

By the time I had read these words the old man had stopped speaking. He was staring up at me with a 26

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face full of excitement, his eyes blinking hurriedly. I drew a breath and then told him the bad news. My meeting had not gone as planned and my business in the town was over. I would be unable to finance his venture. It was impossible.

“What?” the old man shouted.

I could hear a lifetime’s worth of dejection in that single word. His body immediately assumed a broken posture, as if a sudden weight had been slung upon his back. He stumbled backwards and tripped, falling into one of the mounds of hay. There he writhed about painfully, emitting strange howls of discomfort. I apologised and said that he was bound to find somebody else to help him. It was no use. He was trapped in his own mind, he neither saw nor heard. I was no longer there. I left the farmhouse and Jerome Farshoff. I felt nervous and frightened.

________________________________________

Soon afterwards I was walking back down the hill, away from the town. My feet moved quickly despite the uneven ground, covered in crevasses and layers of loose pebbles. I was eager to get away and never to return. I did not belong here. I could not think of any good reason why I had come back. I turned to take a final look at the town but it was now invisible in the darkness. Not a single light or life lit it up.

The strong breeze native to the hillside had picked up and I shuddered with the cold. Perhaps the whole time I had been doing little more than chasing the wind. I turned my attention towards the night sky. The moon would light the path sufficiently for the remainder of my journey. Something struck me as unusual about its positioning upon the canvas of black behind it and I realised that I had unwittingly taken the southern road out of town. My fears came back to me and I quickened my pace down the hillside.

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First Edition

by Richard Lakin Ernest Nettles was a fixture in town, like the gasworks or the ring road. The shoppers and commuters no longer noticed his awkward, shuffling gait or the homburg he wore at a jaunty angle. But if you were a visitor you might pause to stare at the stooping giant in the tartan overcoat that only fastened at the collar.

This Monday morning, as always, Ernest was in search of bargains. He peered through the glass, frowning as he framed his eyes against the reflection of a buzzing strip-light. OK, it was a charity shop and it wasn’t as if Anna or Mrs Pepper was paid, but it said nine o’ clock on the door and it was already three minutes past. Ernest shuffled, choosing a patch of block-paving that wasn’t blighted by gum or spittle, and set his bag down. He wanted the pick of the weekend’s hand-ins, but if they didn’t open soon he’d risk missing the best ones at British Heart. Four minutes past. Ernest’s eyelid flickered. His feet did a little jig on the spot as finally Anna pushed her way through the bead curtain at the back of the shop. Anna was a bright girl, but unsuited to shop work in Ernest’s considered opinion. Her pale cheeks and throat flushed scarlet when anyone spoke to her. She was painfully thin and, if forced into conversation, her fingers worked away at the amber beads on her wrist.

Anna clutched a crisp box tight to her chest, steering a bony hip to support it. Ernest thought it was heavy and hoped it contained railway books or a few decent crime novels – not his preferred choice, but there was a good market. Anna set the box down and tugged back the bolts. She mumbled something as Ernest strode in.

‘Nice day for a race,’ Ernest said, ‘the human race, that is.’

Anna blushed, but Ernest paid her no attention. He stared at the wall of books, his mind working away, searching for any obvious changes. As a boy scout Ernest had discovered he possessed photographic recall.

They used to play a game where Skip would bring out a tray containing a cotton reel, a 50p piece, a toy car, a rabbit’s foot and many other curios. After ten seconds Skip would place a tea towel across the tray and challenge them to remember as many items as they could. Ernest never missed a matchbox or a toffee.

The bell over the door tinkled causing him to start. His shoulders dropped when he saw it was Martha. She 28

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had a battered raincoat with the collar turned up against the wind and carried a string bag, bulging with windfall apples. Ernest smiled, but Martha stared straight through him. Ernest sighed and stared at the wall of books, unblinking. Since Saturday a few Dan Browns had been added and a Jackie Collins with an immaculate dust jacket. The usual haul of sports bios and romance was wedged between travel and classics; garishly pink or sparkly covers with caricatures of blondes on shopping trips to Paris. There were a handful of literary reads that were obviously unwanted Christmas or birthday presents. Their spines were pristine and the pages neat and uniform.

Ernest sighed. Today’s new additions did not look promising. Yet now and again a first edition washed up among the dusty house clearances and the stacks of books left at the door in bin-bags. Ernest scanned the hardbacks. The dross they couldn’t sell was stacked in wicker baskets or piled against the milk churns in the window. Ernest was squinting at a stack of novels when a shadow fell over him. He blinked and looked up at a frowning Perry Sadler. Ernest’s eyes narrowed. He stared back at Sadler who held up a white British Heart carrier bag. Ernest’s heart thumped. He swallowed as Sadler’s hand snaked into the bag. Sadler’s eyes widened as his hand foraged about, a magician about to reveal his trick. Ernest pressed against the window. His pudgy nose smudged the glass. Sadler grinned and wagged a finger.

‘Patience, dear boy,’ he mouthed.

His hand emerged from the bag, with…..a cheese sandwich. He took a bite of it as Ernest’s jaw dropped.

‘Got you,’ Sadler mouthed, jabbing a finger.

Ernest turned to check Anna wasn’t watching. He stuck two fingers up, but Sadler had turned his back.

Perry Sadler disgusted Ernest. His baggy flannels were creased and filled with pastry crumbs. His house was overrun with cats. He drank so much he was forced to fill his neighbours’ bins with his empties in the small hours. My God, did the man ever stop to look at himself?

Ernest closed his eyes and slowed his breathing. When he was calm he decided to give it one last try. He was not returning empty-handed. Sadler clearly had nothing from British Heart so there was all to play for.

Ernest’s knees cracked as he crouched. He wobbled and had to steady himself against a white wire stand of greetings cards. Why someone would want to say Happy Birthday with a photo of a relief camp in Mozambique Ernest had no idea. He blinked and stared at the spines. The books were mainly crime or battered

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classics with a handful of out-of-date school textbooks. He opened a Reader’s Digest map of the world and was tracing the line of the Danube with a bitten fingernail when his eyes were drawn to a book at his feet.

Ernest’s heart lurched. He steadied himself on the bookcase. It felt as though he was falling in a lift. He blinked and squinted at the book. It was an Alec Watt first edition. Ernest’s heart thudded against his ribcage. The Inspector Souter novels were bestsellers. They’d made Watt a very rich man and had been adapted for television. There were tattered paperbacks everywhere, but a handful of first edition hardbacks had been printed by a small press in Fife. The trick was finding a copy of Clyde Boys – like the one Ernest was staring at.

Ernest licked his lips. His mouth was gummy. He stifled a cough and peered through the card rack. Anna was wrapping a snow globe in newspaper for Martha. Ernest offered up a silent prayer. He got to his feet, shielding the copy of Clyde Boys behind a hanging dinner suit. His heart raced. The greasy fried breakfast he’d scoffed rose in his throat. The fried bread lay at anchor in his guts. He lifted the cover and saw £2scribbled in pencil. His eyes widened. It had to be worth hundreds, if not more as a prized first edition. He pressed the book against his chest and sniffed, drinking in the fusty smell of brittle paper. As Ernest approached the till he fumbled the book and a slip of paper fell out, floating like a feather to the floor. He crouched and picked it up. A message was scrawled in a spidery hand.

Wrong again! You’re losing your touch, Ernest. What you should be looking for is Glasgow Kiss. They only printed 200.How touchingly amateur of you.

Love Perry xxx

Ernest gnawed at his cheek. He tossed the book back among the maps and postcards. Perry had put the damn thing there knowing he’d find it. Anna was changing the music. Those men in blankets with nosepipes came on.

‘And that’s a bloody racket,’ Ernest snapped.

He took deep breaths to calm himself. Getting angry made him light-headed and little sparks flashed at the edge of his vision. Outside, he gripped a bench and steadied himself. Pigeons pecked at a pie crust at his 30

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feet. He’d get even with Perry, alright. Perry got his French fags on the cheap, knocked-off. Perhaps he could put in a call. Yes, he’d see to Perry bloody Sadler for sure. And he’d never quit on his little discoveries, not while there were possibilities. He cracked his knuckles and set off. He hadn’t been to Save the Children yet and there was always Scope.

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The Keepsake

By Andrew Hanson

He stood outside flat-footed. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw the prison officer smile dryly as he pulled the gate to, the coils of razor wire wobbling as it clanked shut. There was no sign of his brother, merely blazing sun and heat haze on tarmac. He had told himself not to expect euphoria, and none came.

Just a sweat-bead of relief. He shuffled away, another deadbeat popped out of the prison system.

The front side of HMP Wandsworth was a Victorian castle, enormous blocks of stonework shouting their untrammelled mass, their un-human dimensions. It would take thirty men to shift one of those an inch. Not that Dan had ever thought along those lines. He had done his sentence meekly. Told to expect seven years, given thirteen, out in eight. But the stone… made him think of Emily, a fixer mason. That might be the kind of facade she would repair, though her work was more likely grand buildings in central London. The only work on this place had been done by the prison officers, presumably, for someone had hung a chain of hanging baskets along the front. Coming from inside, it was too implausible for words.

It didn’t take long to find the visitors' car park. Her Majesty’s Prison Service accepts no responsibility for loss of or from, or damage to… Sean wasn’t there. He had to wait half an hour, then declined the suggestion of a strip club, was told his favourite pub had changed hands, and in despondency told his brother to return him to his parents. He would crash there until he could sort something out.

There were meetings at the job centre, a trip to Primark and contact with the Probation Service. He was reunited with his guitar, and spent hours persuading his fingers to find some speed, until the pain forced him to stop. With fake spontaneity he called Emily. It was the only thing he had been waiting to do.

"So you're out then?"

"Yeah, that's right, free man and all that. Just… Trying to get my head straight."

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"You don't mean –?"

"No, no, I mean seeing what comes next."

"Well I'm the past, aren't I?" "You're a mate though. I mean mates stick around, right?"

"Yeah, course."

"How about a drink sometime?"

"Dan…" "I've been inside for eight years, Em. I'm trying to get myself… Orientated."

"Shall I buy you a compass?"

"It's just a word they use. My head's spinning though, that's true. Everything's changed. Anyhow, I don't need a compass to tell me my life's heading south."

"Ah, you sorry-arsed comedian you!"

"Yes to a drink then?"

"Alright. Just remember."

They would meet at Balham tube station. Beyond that, who knew. Dan walked around the area reading signboards. Nothing seemed to make much sense: frozen yoghurt ice cream? Surely it was one thing or the other. Power yoga was a contradiction, too. And who knew what a salted caramel Florentine was!

The road layout was still the same. WHSmith occupied the same premises. Balham was still a centre amidst a broader vastness. With a prisoner's ear he could hear the sullen mumble of the granite kerbstones, the brooding of the Victorian redbrick bleeding in the sun, the blocked-in mortar moaning. Yet on top of all of this was a frenetic hissing, an alien cacophony that spoke of irremediable change.

They walked to the Bedford. Two pints of Carling and a packet of Walkers'. Dan had made a point of asking for pork scratchings. He was on edge.

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"So what happened to your hair?" he said as they sat down.

"I had an undercut but I'm growing it out."

"You're looking well though. And still blonde."

"You can rely on bottles."

"I think I'm going bald."

"Huh, perhaps it was being in prison."

"Yeah. I only did it for the money, you know that. I was just a van driver. If I'd never bought the van for the band…"

"You knew the kind of people you were working for, though. You knew what was in the van."

"I didn't come here to ask for forgiveness."

Emily shrugged and sipped her lager.

"So what's the plan? Where are you going from here?" she said.

"Get a job in a bar, perhaps. Not sure I can face going back to retail. Doubt they'd take me even if I wanted to. But listen, I don't want to go on. How are you, Em?" "Fine. You know – I have a kid now. Lilly. She's with Mum this evening."

"Appreciated." He raised his glass a few inches. He was well aware that she'd been in a relationship and had a child; while he'd been carefully arranging his roll-ups and wanking over magazines. He looked for a ring on her finger but found nothing.

"But… What was his name, Roy…?"

"No. We split. Eighteen months ago now."

"I'm sorry to hear it." His free hand gripped the edge of the table.

"Yeah. I try to work out sometimes where things went wrong, but there aren't any easy answers.

Perhaps he just got bored with me. And people change, I guess."

"They don't really though, do they? Sometimes we just kid ourselves that we know them, that's all.

Don't reckon I've changed. And if prison doesn't change you, what else is going to?" He grinned, briefly.

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"You've been busy with a guitar called Glenda?" She smiled and pointed at his swollen fingertips.

"Making up for lost time. Couldn't have taken her inside, she would have got trashed, one way or another."

"Remember when we had that upstairs flat, and you serenaded me from the garden?"

"And then downstairs came back and said it was alright, so long as I gave them a rendition of –" "Come on Eileen!!" they groaned in unison.

"That was a long time ago now," she said, slowly. He took a gulp of lager.

"How's work then? Still climbing up buildings?"

"Yes, but I'm a banker mason now."

"A banker and a Mason. Dear oh me."

"You know what it means. I make the stonework as well."

"Ah, I'm pleased for you, really I am. I always knew you were skilled. In lots of ways." He leered.

"Oh, get out! So where are you going to live then?"

"Dunno yet. Not round here, that's for sure."

"You've got to have a plan. Can't stay at your parents –" "I don't want to think about it."

"You've got to be responsible."

"You see what I said about people not changing?! You know, I was thinking, in the days before I got out, is the locket still there?"

She sighed and looked away.

************

Dan remembered well the day that Emily had returned from work coy with delight, teasing him, sup35

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pressing the desire to tell all. Around a decade ago, she had been repairing the "New wing" of Somerset house, a 19th-century addition on the western side of the complex. It was just before Christmas. She told him she had found something, then worked him over for suggestions, mercilessly mocking his weak ideas.

Roman coins? Since when had she dug places up? Couldn't he remember what she did for a living? All right, the initials, the signature of some long forgotten stonemason, never expected to see the light again, an intimate bridge between the past and the here and now. No, but the light, that was it, the light. On a south facing facade, on the shortest day, the noon sun was low enough to pick out a tiny gap below the roof overhang, where two polished blocks of stone had a cavity between them insufficiently filled with mortar. A deliberate gap, maybe half an inch wide. A gap with a view to the Thames and over to the south bank of London, a tiny eerie. And inside? She reached into her pocket, and pulled out a paper serviette spotted with ketchup-bottle splatter. Cocooned in the middle lay a locket on a chain, filthy and tarnished yet scratching to silver.

No, she hadn't opened it yet. She had been waiting for him. Dan rinsed his hands and ran a thumbnail around the joint. The locket opened easily. Inside lay a tiny piece of brown paper, folded up. Emily went to the bathroom to get the tweezers. Dan's hands were shaking, so she took over, and nimbly unfolded the fragile sheet. "Stanley and Grace, 21st December 1854." Oh, that is so sweet, she had said. For a while Dan was silent. Then he told her how it was the most beautiful thing he had seen, and how they must add their own names, on a new scrap of paper, and if the scaffolding was still up, she should put the locket back where she had found it. Other couples might carve their initials in tree bark, or put padlocks on bridges, but they would have something permanent. Something truly romantic. Perhaps the low sun had given Stanley the idea, maybe that was why the locket had not been found. Or perhaps it was the day of his and Grace's engagement. Dan and Em would never know, and not knowing gave you licence to imagine. And so now their names were up there too, nestled in a tiny crevice beneath overhanging blocks, near the roof of Somerset House.

************

Emily swallowed a mouthful or two of lager and then lifted her head to meet his gaze.

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"It will still be there Dan. It's not going anywhere."

"It was a beautiful thing though, wasn't it? Not everyone has that."

"Yes, it was special."

There was an outbreak of raucous laughter at the bar. "It can't be easy, being a mum on your own," said Dan. "What, and it would be easier if I had an ex-convict around the place?"

They both laughed warily.

"I guess that's all I am now, an ex-con!"

"No, you'll always be more than that. Remember it. You've got to be tough, Dan." He nodded. Dan asked her if she did any sculpture now, knowing that she had always had an artistic side. But she didn't: no time, no money. It seemed like a sore point; perhaps that window of possibility had closed. As they approached the end of their second drink Em was playing with her glass and looking at her watch.

"I'd like to meet Lilly, you know," he said.

"Yeah. That would be nice. Another time, perhaps."

"Well, thanks for this evening. It's – well, you know I'm short on people to –" "I get you, it's cool." She smiled and he blushed.

As they walked down the road, Dan caught the silhouette of her face in the glare of the streetlamps, and for a precious second the way her hair flowed, her lips curled and her laughter echoed erased the intervening years. The grotty suffering of prison was lifted away: the brittle opposition of forces, the seizing up of hope and the acid bite of cynicism were all gone, and he had a purpose. For a second or two that is, until they went their separate ways, retreating to formality as they parted.

They had been out of touch most of the time that he was inside. He had kept a photo of them togeth37

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er; you needed a photo, it was almost expected. Although their relationship had ended in acrimony, although he knew he had let them both down, she had been his lighthouse in the dark. She was the image and the image was her. When he heard she was in a new relationship, he simply cut off contact and kept her as his focal point just the same, his vanishing point on that far horizon where the sun sets over the waves.

So she was single again, but he had better leave it a week or so. He should meet her daughter, he was good with kids, and it would be good for Emily to see him like that. Help her forget that he had a conviction for driving kilos of coke around the country.

When the time came it wasn't hard to arrange: she was on site, brisk on the phone, as though it were any other appointment. He arrived at her flat with some cheap flowers and a cuddly dinosaur toy. When she made it downstairs her hair was wet and she was holding an earring. As they lent forward to hug, he somehow ended up kissing her on the corner of her mouth. Her eyes censored him but she wasn't cross.

A small girl with bobbed black hair sat on the living room floor, colouring in stencilled letters on a large sheet of paper.

"Lilly, this is my friend Dan," said Em. Lilly appraised him uncertainly, like a supplicant arrived unasked for.

"And this is Dan's pet dinosaur!" Dan waggled the purple and green monster.

"Dinosaurs are all dead now," said Lilly emphatically.

"Well this one is still alive, and he needs looking after. Can he see what you're writing?"

"It's a welcome poster."

"It's for her nursery," added Em. Dan sat down. "You seem nicely set up here," he said.

"It's a struggle, I can tell you that much."

"Isn't everything?"

"You getting your benefits sorted?"

"Yeah, applications are in."

"I'll just go and put these in some water," said Emily, gesturing to the flowers. Dan sat there watch38

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ing Lilly, trying to grasp the impossibility of a new person. She was not just an extension of Emily: in his head, he would have to fashion a new space of unknown dimensions. Em returned, and smiled despite herself.

Dan said, "You know, we could get a lane at the Megabowl, go for fish and chips at Sea Spray. Like we used to. Take Lilly with us?" He gestured expansively, failing to find a casual tone.

"The Megabowl closed years ago. And, we can't just pretend, Dan!" "Well there must be other places we can go bowling."

"I haven’t been in yonks." Her eyes softened with pity, and Dan looked away. He had been part of this town: it had shaped him, but any imprint he had left behind was gone, just like the Nazi bomb that blew up the tube station, the prostitutes who used to hang out down Bedford Hill, the reggae shop or the banana bread bakery. No traces remained. History was not a story, it was a collection of moments, with bewilderingly little connection between them. You blinked and you were lost.

After Lilly had gone to bed Em offered to cook and he accepted, far too enthusiastically. The dynamic was all wrong; he needed her to want him for something, to be able to bring something to the table. He had no money, now more than ever.

"I’ve got a job interview," he said.

"Oh, nice, where?"

"A pub in Norbury. Nothing special."

"What’s it called?"

"The Windmill." Damn, when lying it was best to avoid specifics.

"Cool, good luck with that!"

"Thanks." He paused. Emily was slicing onions. "Em, what do you think happened to Stanley and Grace? Do you ever wonder?"

She stopped. "I don't know, Dan. I don't know." Suddenly Dan was awkward, silent.

"Oh, I hate chopping onions," she said a minute or so later, and went to rinse her eyes under the tap.

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He stared at her bum, shrink-wrapped in denim, as she bent over. He had only ever been in charge in bed.

That was the only place she had let him take over. He gazed into the blank void of the TV screen, remembering her sideways smile that quickened his pulse, the delaying tactics that she tried but would soon grow tired of, the way her breasts fell to either side like lazy eyes. How her legs would clasp his back at the end.

He ate his pasta in something of a daze. Before he knew, it was time to leave. She wanted him to go.

She walked him downstairs, fiddled with the lower lock and let him out.

"Nice to see you," she said over his shoulder, sounding uncertain. He turned to face her and suddenly they were close.

"You're doing a great job with Lilly," he said.

"Thanks, I –" "And you still look amazing."

"Dan, I don't think –" She wouldn't meet his gaze. He put a hand on her arm and slowly she raised her eyes. Mahogany eyes. He lent forward and kissed her on the lips, carefully. His hand was shaking.

She was motionless, but after a while she responded with a keenness that surprised him. For a perfect moment Dan could see their future in front of him. Then she broke off and hugged him.

"That's enough for now."

"Take care then, see you."

"Bye Dan." On the long walk back to his parents' house, Dan felt the distant afterglow of his teenage years.

He waited two days to text her. Perhaps they could meet in London after she finished work? He was almost out of cash, but he'd worry about that once they were back together. She said that she was busy, babysitters were expensive and – she hadn't meant for anything to happen, the other night. Not that it had.

Dan made himself shrug and smoked a fag, leaning out of the window into the August drizzle. He had a date with his probation officer.

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Jobcentre, phone calls, applications. Borrowing money to pay for stamps and envelopes. Losing himself in his guitar. Trying to make too little suffice.

"Hi Em, it's me. I just wondered – why can't we meet for a quick drink, nowhere near yours, I can meet you in town… I know, but just for an hour?.. Okay, that's okay, but we can't leave things like they are, I mean!.. Well you felt something, though didn't you, I know you did… Listen, I looked up the church you're working on... Alright, alright not there. How about the North end of the Millennium bridge? Yeah the one that bounced... Yeah, six on Thursday is fine. Sound. I'll look forward to –"

The next two days dragged by in a smoky, febrile smear. By Thursday afternoon Dan had run out of cigarettes. The bus took an interminably long time to get him there, but he was half an hour early. After pacing up and down and nearly walking into people, he managed to perch against a handrail and stay still for five minutes, focusing on the tall brick tower of whatever it was over the river. He imagined it swaying back and forth like the needle on a giant metronome. The people coming over the bridge seemed mostly happy, engaged, comfortable in themselves. He read the bags they carried, and after a while he remembered that yes, that building was Tate Modern. Emily had been really into sculpture, once. Just like he'd been into songwriting. He walked over the bridge, turned around and sauntered back, affecting a casual gait. She was late. He tried to remember their phone conversation. Had he been pushy? – no, no he hadn't.

By half-past six he had a banging headache. He called, but her phone was off. Still he waited, until sometime after seven he flopped down the steps to the Thames path and started walking. Mostly he looked at the paving, raising his head just often enough to avoid collisions. The roar of the traffic and the light off the river enveloped him in a blur. He didn't want to stop walking. Yet he couldn't deny the memory of one building: the heavy grey blocks on his right belonged to Somerset House. With leaden feet he climbed the steps to Waterloo Bridge, turned, and gazed upwards. Against a grey-blue evening sky the Corinthian columns and porticoed windows were distant and foreign. Yet somewhere there, snuggled in its hiding place, was a piece of him and Emily. Of who they had been. The locket was a time capsule now, and it didn't matter whether their names were ten years or a hundred and fifty years old.

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THE JUDGEMENT

A Tenner Up The destitution draws me initially. I quite enjoyed translating, supposed that'd be the whole Over The Red Line element to all of this. There's a grit here too, in those noodle packs, in the cyclic impoverishment that has these characters (old man and stretch pants) again in front of one another. Those last scenes, the spit on the knuckle, those fucking knees that can't get an him up anymore, I loved that doped-out rendering of incapability. All one could feel was old and powerless. I think parts are scrappy certainly – the central drug use, the tavern feels a touch bridgey. Maybe I was hoping we'd go see that octopus again, go understand something, but the story, it's a simple exchange, up ten bucks, down ten bucks. Some real shine. I'd see it extended, stretched a touch to see what breaks. 8.1

The Keepsake Interesting. Not so delicate with the feeling and so very near the desperation of the soon-to-be-forgotten. I was gripped, definitely. Not sure where my hope was directed exactly; whether I felt that keenness in that kiss was deserved, but I tracked it and enjoyed. It was expedient and focused– the conversations felt on point and the exposition (febrile, acrimony, grotty; all got deserving underlines) was, I felt, the muscle of the work. On revision, I'd attack another dimension to the piece, something to waylay our attention and wrench us at least into something other than heartache for a moment. Parents, brother, the Windmill, the guitar – one of them as a possible siren to suck us from the whirlpool. 8.6

First Edition Man, more! Gotta have more. I mean, Perry Sadler, the greaser outside, he's the antagonist all lit-searchers are looking for, ready to be confronted, but our Gentle Giant protag doesn't take it to him! Instead, we're left with a scrappy piece of paper with, in too many words, defeat written on it. Not to say that all heroes slay their dragons, the world is chock full of the defeated – see this shortlist for others – but we need some sensation of victory. Finding that book, there's a boon there, yes, but maybe we need to carry it further, let him spend the little money he's got, go through a few more gauntlet swings with this host of well-fleshed, blushing characters AND THEN pull out the carpet. But– a deserving start, keep at this. 7.2

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Some Go Dancing Chest heave after that. Sitting here in a roomful of normal, sober, non bonelight, an unbroken Thanksgivin' world. It took a second but this is a shaker. Terse sentences early, odd nearly unbelievable scenesetting but it was woven tight around these two. My hesitation midway was frankly in the 'Urbanity' of it, but I came around to it. That whole "someone must surely be chasing us" had all the prophecy necessary to keep the tension strung. The bonelight was lightly abused (it was good, don't burn it up) but you went somewhere here that the others haven't, and the writing was as good. Less flourished, but as good. 8.8

Hilltop Town The unsurety is striking. The character –and in his always-parallel, the author– seemed unsure of his business in the town, a place he'd been before but leaves ultimately "unable to think of any good reason why [he] had come back." You've got the wordskill to populate this place. Your character description of the barman is on point and imagination in the form of this bumbling old man's manuscripts, the names being the same – by far the most inventive story of the shortlist with the most personally (to me) appealing aesthetic, but you didn't trust your magic. Your character (main) never bit and believed and so neither could we. Let him. Let us. Get to know his business, make it up. It is not enough to simply walk in and walk out, not with the power of your pencil. Go deeper, be firm, don't doubt. High high potential. 7.9.

The winner, with 8.8, is Some Go Dancing.

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