Warwick Uncanny - Volume 9, Issue 1 (Creative)

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The sun rose the same way that it always did this time of year; it dragged itself into the air hour by hour as the light chased after it exhaustingly. The birds would scream, intermittent squawking until the neighbourhood was finally awake. It would take a few moments. Then the fleshy cogs would come out of their homes to feed themselves to the

things. Silly things like an iced latte, or dinner with your family. Yes, they always wanted just a few more moments.

She sat up in their bed when the sunlight blinded her eyes. He left the blinds open again. A low beep came from the kitchen where the coffee pot hummed its good morning to him. It must be eight already. He us heard the door slam behind him. The slam would wake up the baby, but it was fine, she

herself to wait up for him any longer. Now it was three minutes after eight and the baby continued to snore. There had only been a dull click from the bathroom door as he went in.

A cloud went over the sun, shielding her eyes as she dragged her legs from under the covers and into the living room.

taste the difference, but she knows that he never remembers to put it on the list.

She made her way into the kitchen where his mug sat on the stained white bothered to clean up

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before bed because the food would still be there in the morning. It would all still be there in ll and went to sit on the couch where leave. He came out of the bathroom and went into the kitchen briefly for his coffee before walking into the living room to put on his shoes.

Can you not

A week ago,

ied to kiss him goodbye but would only be able to catch

a cheek as he rushed out.

Now she just looked off into the room. Her baby wailed somewhere away from her.

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If they have the apple

humble and sweet too easily crushed

but made precious between our tongues they sit like jewels on a ring.

Yes, I would rather betray God for a grape.

My dearest Eve, the days in paradise are long but the nights are longer.

And in those dark hours when the holy book is shut.

Our soft emerald grows.

Fed with our sleepless spirits and good conversation the kind that can only be had when the Adams of this world lay with their ears as closed as their minds.

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Witnessed only by

I will let our simple fruit fall.

From my lips to yours let it slip into that small dip just above your chin held there by my own face A pocket made just for that olive pearl.

down your elegant neck.

A perfect runway undeserving of my tongue.

But still you accept my gift, reaching over my back till your arms become my wings.

And your perfection makes an angel out of a sinner.

We hold our grape

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between our abdomen It is the only distance we can bear now.

Our breasts kiss as we do.

Our hearts speak as we have spoken.

And our souls?

They burn, with the fire of those nights until they are soldered together.

I watch as our grape climbs one last mound approaching the edge as you approach an edge of your own.

And in my ecstasy t quite tell if I tasted it or you.

Oh, let apples fall.

Let rage, rage on.

Let God and man go to war.

But spare me but a grape.

A woman.

And Eden at night.

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I have never been one for religion, piety.

It seems a waste to me, living your life in fealty.

To them?

Of all people.

Why does Lucifer intrigue, and the spirit seem so meek, when I have never been one for evil deeds?

Ever one for the redeemed.

Those that haven't been.

Perhaps it's my sobriety, Drawn to the distance between.

But I no longer wish to see, your drinks, your little extremities.

Your big mistakes.

Your name will nevermore be clean.

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This seized evidence has been amended to adhere to the constitution of Juche law as directe

Korea Central Procurator's Office. All

documents contained within this folder must be destroyed. Immediate incarceration will be employed against any defiance. This adheres to the policy guidance of the WPK Organisation and Guidance Department.

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"You can't come back."

He's cloaked in shadow. His name is beyond their collective knowledge.

Breath scrapes down her gullet, floods her eyes. She has been forbidden to cough.

Nine other people stand shoulder to shoulder beside her, compacted into a huddled circle of bodies, barely an inch between each of them. They're all facing the guide, hanging off of his every word.

They are adorned with a collage of holes, each of them embellished with the uniform of their penury. Any exposed skin revealed through the rips and shortcomings of their clothes is wrapped in sheets of dripping newspaper, ink blotted and streaming through the Chosongul.

"If they see you crossing, they'll shoot."

All of them, she notices as her heart swells, are swaddled in this newspaper.

"If you make this decision, you will forever live with its weight."

She recognises scraps of Rodong Sinmun and its headlines clinging to the yellowed skin of the man beside her.

with pro"If the Chinese find you on the other side, you will be sent back."

She glances down at her left knee, unable to meet the gaze of anyone in the circle.

The frayed gash of her pants reveals: 'Representative of the "Liberal

Korea Party" Hong Jun Phyo, a top-class political profiteer and chieftain of thieves.'

"What happens if we are sent back?" A faceless man interjects from her left.

Hunched over in the darkness and crouching like the rest of them, the cloud of condensation from the guide's breath stops.

"What then?" Another says, pushing for an answer.

He remains silent, absorbing this question.

There is a pause.

They do not have to see the intricacy of his face to understand his projection of pity.

We must look pitiful, she thinks. She knows they all resemble fossils; skin flush to the bone like the imprint of a skeleton upon sandstone. All their weakened physicality was defecated out under the pressure, expectations, of those who perished in the famine.

Pulverised under rotting flesh, their body immortalises the failings of historical

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collectivist bygones and authoritarian political rule, carelessly leaving behind a long since Pulsating fossils.

She feels the abrasion of mistreatment as if it were a branding iron on the curl of her inner thigh.

As if feeling it too, the guide shifts uncomfortably. The lack of communication of such damaging sentiments did not stop each North Korean from knowing the truth of their neglect. Insulated for almost a century.

Wordlessly, the guide stands and turns on his heel, careful to remain low.

With soundless footsteps, he vanishes into the tree line.

Behind them, the Amrock river roars on, doing little to drown out the weight of their treason.

Strangled by that silence, or in a chokehold of his crime, a young boy opposite her He shovels the silence deeper. Even the river hushes its tones.

To avoid any chance of catching his eye even in the darkness, she looks down at her lap.

The woman sitting beneath her tightly clutches the tiniest pair of what appeared to be ballet pumps, nestled into her lap. They rest atop her bulbous stomach, her faded shirt stretching and fraying over the hump of her unborn child. She adorns the evergrowing gap between the hem and her waistband with Rodong Sinmun: North Koreans The weight around her shoulders increases. The headline inevitably vomits memories of her first rubber-stamp election day.

She remembers the gnawed pen that had sat awkwardly in her clenched fist.

The paper below was almost blank.

Almost.

There was no box to tick. No other names to consider.

Flanked and incarcerated, pressed tight against her shoulders, were two armed soldiers.

Their bayonets had been pointing towards her feet, a hollow gesture representing Voting was mandatory.

One party was mandatory.

There was no box to tick.

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She had choked the pen in her grasp. It was and had always been a hollow symbol extinguished, blown out with obsequity.

Grief passed before she carefully, without her own interference, folded the paper She is disgusted at the memory.

She removes her eyes from the scraps of newspaper as if they had scolded her.

As the group reels from the departure of their guide, their focus elsewhere, it Almost.

A chuckle. d forwards towards the group. A warning from the water over their betrayal of the Fatherland.

The hairs on her arms stand to attention as her mouth instantly dries.

Someone was laughing.

The laughter grows louder. A single voice follows.

A chill runs through the veins of the onlookers. Even there, their lives and actions were comparable to animals in a zoo. In a cage. They had never been alone.

They scrutinise the darkness.

Silence.

Each person is denied their exhale.

The noise of the river had masked the sound for too long; for there, a hundred yards away amongst the darkened shrubbery, was the undeniable glowing embers of a cigarette tip.

They are choked into silence. No one dares say a word.

Rapidly, her eyes dart amongst the branded headlines splayed over their frail bodies. She does anything to distract herself, but what she finds refutes her efforts: The laughter sounds again.

Seventy yards.

They cannot waste a second.

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Shivering in place, she spies on the speaker. Another faceless man. people are leading a happy life thanks to the state provision of every condition for food, circles his midriff.

Her stomach acids slosh together like the rapids of Amrock.

She remembers her biweekly meal not being enough.

She would much rather swallow her tongue before she spoke a word, but her mind made no such preference. If the permanency of sprawling tattoo ink is gently dabbled into the rind of the skin, the permanency of trauma is scraped into the hollow of the bone.

Brittle shin bones rattled, each rib still a marker for the transparency of her skin.

As her skin had suctioned to the bone in a vacuum back then, the ivory continued to flash through now. Pouring sunlight would have made her opaque.

She recalls the vivid memory of collapsing against a tree during a desperate attempt to forage, her body falling limp against where the rough bark should have scraped unforgivingly against her face. There had been no bark remaining.

The tree had been stripped of its outer shell, the grass beneath it scarce.

Their surrounding nature was destroyed in their blind hunger. It was all they had.

Now a heap at the base of the exposed trunk, her body becomes limp.

It was there, inflating and deflating inches away from the tip of her foot.

A toad.

She recalls blinking at it, calculating her next move; its large dead eyes blankly gazing into space. Its slimy rind is motionless.

Her body yearned, leaning forwards.

She saw her opportunity.

Her stomach screams.

She recalls the bone pressing either side of the creature, trapped in her iron grip.

It squeals for help, screeching inside her crushing vice.

As she had looked at it, her mouth had begun to water. s forgotten what satisfaction

They had to cross now.

Fifty yards.

Wordlessly rising from the ground, just metres away from the path, each one clasps their hand over their mouth as the cigarette and laughter advance.

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As they stay low and light-footed, her body shudders, almost collapsing at the She feels the water rise to her shins, her eyes locked onto the already sodden newspaper clinging to the skin around her arms, curling over her bicep. Even her own body was not excluded from this impoverished mâché.

Adrenaline pounding through her system, the freeze of the water is lost on her. causing her to stumble against the sand sheets of the river bed. stream.

A shout.

Thirty yards away.

Hands snatch at her skin and bones.

As she steps into the centre of the river, her ankles fold.

This time, the hands are too loose.

She feels herself falling.

The pregnant woman ahead of her in the line turns back. She opens her mouth to scream, desperately freeing her other hand, dropping one of the tiny pumps she was clutching into the rising water in the process.

Someone, perhaps the young boy, snaps his hand outwards. He clamps it over the He is not fast enough. attention-seeking. Behind the woman, bathing in the expulsion of her horror, she finds

scream and the fall, bounce off of the meniscus of the water, launching their sounds across the two embankments.

No one moves.

A bellow is heard from the shore.

Silence.

Another shout.

About ten yards away.

As they hold their breath, she gasps for hers.

Winded from the fall, she begs for air. Water swallows her face, consuming her.

She pleads for breath, for anything but the black tar gushing through her nostrils and

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open mouth. The pregnant woman, hovering above her, stares down whilst her bulbous body recoils.

The despair the defectors had been suppressing with the weight of their hope can be subdued no longer.

As her limbs thrash against the surface of the water, her body swamped with the weight of a crashing current, she sees humanity under pressure unfurling before her.

They begin shoving, pushing, projecting futile helplessness through the flaking newspaper around their bodies. They are frantic.

They clamber over one another, scrambling for freedom.

The break in the waves allows her to gorge on the air at the surface. Her hearing is smothered by the battle cry of the water, only able to catch snippets of sound as the waves raise her up.

Their hands twist into grotesque cl throwing themselves through its lasso. peel and rip from the skin of the group in the heat of the panic. Headlines swarm her vision: The adrenaline subsides, and her veins run cold.

She feels tears well in her eyes.

She hears the cock of the gun.

The remaining defectors' hands are outstretched, longing to feel the mud under to the ground in their desperate struggle.

She can still hear screaming. Their outburst of desperation, the sobbing snotdripping cry to succeed in their treason.

Newspapers continue to peel off amongst the struggle, littering the surface of the water, clinging to her skin and choking her out. It blinds her vision as it drifts above her submerged head.

She cannot breathe.

She cannot scream.

Her limbs blindly thrash outwards, brutalising the body of water. Like a blunt knife to the skin, it butchers the grooves and whorls of opposing currents. It does not slice but rather bludgeons. It smashes, it does not cut. She turns violent, spasming her body to try and find something - anything - to grab onto.

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She attempts to lay motionless as she is carried downstream, watching helplessly.

One by one, and in quick succession, they look to the North Korean bank.

Their faces twist.

The screaming gets louder.

Gunshots.

The surface of the water breaks repeatedly around the group, it shatters the skin of the swelling current.

Her eyes lock onto the silhouette of the pregnant woman, spotlighted by the aid of Luna. The woman turns her back to the weaponised embankment, crouching over into the current, the aquatic force smashing into her tightly closed eyes. Her feet are firmly planted in the silt. She howls, wrapping her arms around her stomach. A wounded creature, sickened by its life, now betrayed by the cause she served.

The group turns back towards their villainous goal.

Death comes before capture, suicide before reincarceration. The penitent traitors do not seek their penance, but rather their furtherance in shame. Cowardice.

She dares a look in the direction of the group, in the direction she had been carried from.

The surface of the water around the group is peppered and split, the ripping of its surface does little to diffuse the roar of the river in her ears.

Between the splits, between the screams and the shots, comes a moment of sudden calm.

The pregnant woman crumples forwards from where she stood, limp. Even this far away, the water around her floating body floods crimson, diluted and metallic against her lips.

The others clamber over themselves to reach the embankment. Those who had been screaming and crying to risk it all for their own capitalistic treason are slamming their feet into softened Chinese mud.

They are pushing themselves up.

They are so close.

But then, the forces from the great beyond wrap themselves around each of them, lacing into their contorted bodies to intensify the pull.

Clutching thick clumps of Chinese grass in their balled fists, they begin to fall.

One by one, some even two at a time.

The brighter green of the mossy bank is stained black, only revealed once their corpses slump down the incline into the water below.

They are reclaimed by the water. By the Fatherland.

They are no longer screaming.

They are no longer afraid.

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They had been saved by the soldiers.

And, for now, she is unharmed.

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EUNJA is a fictional amalgamation of over 30+ North Korean citizens and their account of the moment of their political defection. Peppered with actual North Korean national newspaper headlines and subjected to ruthless mock censorship in the form of struck-out text, the piece highlights the weaponisation of media for totalitarian indoctrination in defiling a story of human desperation and sacrifice.

Eunja: The Korean word for 'hermit' or 'troglodyte.'

Chosongul: The Korean language script used by North Korea.

Rodong Sinmun: A North Korean newspaper serving as the official newspaper for the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea.

Liberal Korea Party: A conservative political party in South Korea that was labelled rightwing or far-right.

The Amrock River: Also known as the 'Yalu River', it is a river that borders North Korea and China. It is commonly used by North Korean defectors to escape into China.

The DPRK: The Democratic People's Republic of Korea. The official political title for North Korea.

Supreme People's Assembly: The unicameral legislature of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

Juche: The official ideology of North Korea.

WPK Organisation and Guidance Department: A department of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK), the ruling party of North Korea.

Central Procurators Office: criminal cases and maintain surveillance over all citizens.

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I find myself going blind these days, A calcified yellow glaze of mildew covers My pupils, irises becoming the color

And I stagger my Love Not a waltz, nor a gate Or a horse clipHalf-hearted hoofs stiffly guide me to My desk.

All letters I write shall be dedicated yours, My guiding cursive unreadable to anybody else, I sing of my love For your depths undrained, The syllables of velvet That I have held so close To my breast All these years.

And yet, You are not here.

Heard but not present,

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I awaken in the night, half-asleep, half-expecting To see you standing in my doorway In that wisping white dress The high-collared buttons circling your throat Attaching the brain to the heart to the neck.

I part my lips and call your name

I scream, my calls escaping as a crescendo of gasps.

Pleading for an avalanche of papers, Revealing themselves from hiding places Pooling around my legs Uncharted pools of genius lying in wait.

Because I must find you I run out the doors, sparing no haste Passing the school, the fields of Gazing Grain, Sprinting until I reach the sun The golden gates open, A splintering eye Until I can no longer see.

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When my heart rate slows Tired out, giving up on the search, I collapse into bed Little flickers of light going in and out of focus Tracing little volcanos and whirling galaxies In my mind I will not call out in joy, Until I know for sure you have returned somewhere Inside me.

Cardiac arrest along with the loss of sight Da-dum Da-dum Da-dum Da-Dum Da-Dum And then

The Spark!

Suddenly I cannot express my misery Without little dashes, Conveying the gap of days The wheel of time

the way the earth keeps spinning

despite The lonesome ache.

Nobody, was this your doing?

Are you sitting behind me

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Guiding the hand to the mouth to the page?

You deal the pretty words - the card girl At a casino in Vegas -

The glittering gifts shine Unbarring my nerves, Revealing my bones.

Oh Nobody your brilliance!

It alights the strongest fire Ablaze in the darkest night of winter I kneel at your altar providing bluebells Of Amherst and smoldering kisses.

When I have worn myself out And you have retreated To the mermaids in your basement I turn off the singular light Precariously hanging by a thread And go to sleep, Alone

Always Alone!

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say I love you

s what my

sister says. She has convinced herself that love works the same way that fear does, that if you close your eyes and count to three, then the other person will go away. The sun was bleeding into the night, one giant ball of gas was becoming millions of little ones when I

sat back as if we were at a red light

I guess the sky did look a bit red.

I remember feeling like I should look at her

like I should be keeping an eye out

IQ was in the gutter. That unfortunately, unlike me, she had a stupid sister who asked stupid questions when the silence got too loud. But at least there was the engine, which hummed like a projector in school when your teacher came in too hungover for a lesson and, from where I was, the projector was breathing and the sky was the moving picture above us.

I wanted to ask her if she thought that we were like the stars and if they were also only seeing our light from light years ago. I wanted to ask her that because I knew she was thinking about how differently everything could have turned out if our parents would have

told me that she was right. They lay in my lap hardly taking up any space until you flipped them over and saw what life does.

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My guess is that your hands are where all of your damage goes, and mine were staring back in patches of dried calloused skin that can only come from a bitter

this may be as good as it gets, but my sister finally began to hum from her seat and I decided that this was fine. If I were a coward who fo I love you anymore

other end of the rope with one hand and a knife in the other, always trying to release themselves from you. And still, I took my good-for-nothing palms and wrapped them

again, just to keep holding on. I kee

.

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hoodlums.

Among other things.

that slick beauty. That convertible mustang had been the apple of his eye ever since he spotted it on the back of a cheap magazine from an unkempt newsstand. But, right now, there was minimal proof of the superb bodywork from that eye-catching first photo. The now crudely spray-painted bodywork had more

-view mirrors hung from the sides more

loosely than a broken limb and the cobweb-cracked frame had its wipers missing. The smashed front lights stared back at Dan before his empty eyes went towards the other half. The back doors had been ripped clean from the edges, and the roof next to where the spoiler should be, was torn open like a tuna can. Not even the license plate had gone unscathed, although the drawn 9 next to the 6 would have seemed much more aggravating without the handiwork that was currently assaulted his senses.

Three bystanders walked past him, gazing over his shoulder before Dan pulled himself back to reality and became conscious of where he stood. At that moment, he sighed, knowing his reliable ride for the race had been mangled into the latest sensation in modern art. ***

The day after, the police station seemed as clean as it insignificant to Dan when he walked through

etcetera, laid

scattered

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or the found no use for the car anymore. In a wee cemetery or promptly sacrificed to appease the Mayan fire gods.

the burnt money.

1. Pack some belongings and fly to Florence. For a while, Dennis had been nagging him to visit Italy destination,

deny that Manchester was becoming somewhat of an insipid

eyesore.

2. Invest in a renovation or rent a new garage. The mould was congregating in a few spots of the old one, and the free space for the vehicles was shrinking as the months flew by.

Before long, the muck would have evolved into a cul-de-sac of all kinds of microbes, and he

to deal with whatever Dennis had to say on the matter.

3. Save the wealth for an emergency. While Dan had become acquainted with tuner culture, his brother (and polar opposite) was studying Music Composition and Technology at Hertfordshire. A wise person would have reserved the money for both of them (and their family) to fall back on during rainy days. Dan, however, was not a wise person.

4. Distribute the money among the remaining crew members. Albeit begrudgingly, the

Furthermore, some of their most well-known marketplaces were selling interesting pieces

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at a relatively good price, so they could have taken that relatively lower risk.

*** He spun around the circumstances in his mind on the bus trip, over and over again.

them about, had slipped through the cracks of a rusty alley. However, in time they would begin to ask how the thousands worth of part-time summer jobs had dematerialised in a flash. The biggest trouble

state. ntact, would describe it. Dan had told him

before anyone else about how the carjackers had peaced-out with everything but the chassis. Even if Abe had declared to the mechanic that spilling the beans was the best (and/or least bad) out of his options, t all, the guy Dan had rented the car from was nowhere as lenient as Abe, and even less as welltempered.

Dan muttered a curse against his reflection before he went back to watching the latest news

fashion. *** Once he arrived at the garage, he came face to face with a jaw-dropping surprise.

Trent had, once again, spent the night cruising about looking for spare car parts. As one

might assume, it a second

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so shrewd that he often put on display the rarest findings he could get his hands on, even on the chance it Too bad the winner of that lottery also happened to be Dan. The other mechanic picked up his pace and stopped at the desk without taking his eyes

came to intercommunication, but the thought of no one else notifying Dan about a new project baffled him to no end.

we can the silverwares exhibited; a couple of back doors, a convertible roof and a windshield wiper.

Same never fail this

ched for the folder and passed it to

his crewman. Trent sat back as he wished for the ground beneath him to open up and swallow him.

that the same words Abe had

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and again, I told you this habit was gon thought about what

worst

doing, but Dan marched towards the door, where the whirring and buzzing of steady work kept the place from falling into complete silence.

have an

the Blue ***

for all

-painted Johnson on its bonnet),

they agreed to repair the mustang as best as they could. One tow truck delivery later, they waited for the night to start the restoration, hoping to make quick work of it with only themselves.

The next morning, they ended up explaining everything to everyone else.

After one long discussion later, neither Dan nor Trent expected to be accepted back on the team after their risky stunts, especially when their career as a driving team was just beginning.

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To their bewilderment, not only did the rest appreciate the honesty on display, but also made a few promises between themselves. Safe to say, from that point onwards, communication between the partners had gone a few scales upwards in their list of priorities, sitting barely below work performance and extra-curricular availability.

Although annoyed that the incident clashed with their tight schedule, the crew nevertheless gathered their best tools and put their blood, sweat, and tears onto the table. For four gruelling days, three mechanics, two auto technicians, and a barely professional driver managed to turn that astounding travesty of a lump of coal into a fine ride again. As such, the week went by at lightning speed, and before the racers knew it, it was the eve of the competition.

As they enjoyed their completed work, Dan felt that a few strings were loose between him and Abe. After a few irritating minutes of worry and amusement, the elderly saw that the circumstances his client had found himself in were indeed quite unusual. Eventually, some renegotiations later, Dan ba And eventually, the race day came.

After overcoming the short string of events, the team was hoping to finally get their big break, as many And yet, their

eared it would.

that was their ride.

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