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Whistling, I gaze through my reflection. This plexiglass doesn’t look strong enough to hold all that water. After a moment, it seems as if a smack of moon jellies are floating within me, and I have a stomach full of UV berets. Even so, I admire the glass. Framed by an ever-changing light feature; the flat strength of it is remarkable. The moon jellies turning pink, yellow, green and blue as the light changes the abyss.

Mum nicknamed me Jellyfish because I was brainless like one. It’s her birthday today. Though I always remember it, I never acknowledge it. But I’m thirty and she was thirty when she passed, so I have a colin the caterpillar cake and a tea-light in my bag. 

In the centre of the moon jellies’ translucent bellies are four luminous horseshoes (gonads, I know), stark against the navy-blue water. That’s how they reproduce. 

Except I can’t see any babies. In a cluster by the glass, the grown-up ones move like the opening and closing of an umbrella. I wonder what rain feels like when you are deep inside water. Is it a thing? 

A sign on the tank reads: Did you know jellyfish are silent? They do not communicate. Just float around and feed. 

I sit down on a wooden bench, my rucksack on my back. I put my hand in my pocket to check the piece of folded paper is inside. 

The pink light fades and the water swirls with diamond flickers of light. Staring at the haunting gloam of the jellyfish, I go to my childhood. Thinking of it – hunger, slaps and too many sweets – my nickname is apt. There they are. Those darling council flat years spent being told to shut up and go away. 

*

“Please, if there is a God, let there be a Colin the Caterpillar cake,” I prayed before running into the kitchen. 

It was my tenth birthday, and I could barely see through the smoke. I heard the vicious growl of Lola (pronounced LOO then LA) and I coughed. Mum, her sisters, her friends – everyone was hers – were sat around the table. Mum tutted and her eyes rolled into the back of her head. What did she see when they turned back there? I wanted to climb on board her eyeballs. Like a voyage to the far side of the Moon, and plant a flag that read ‘Remember to buy Sonata a Colin the Caterpillar cake on her birthday’. 

“Go play,” Mum barked. “This is grown-up talk.” 

There were no seats free, so I jumped onto the side cabinet and perched in the corner by the sink. It was piled high with Sports Direct mugs and dried jam-stained plates. 

“Oh no,” I said. 

My bum was wet. I hadn’t noticed the slippery wet surface, clear and deceiving.
“Shut up!” Mum said. “Can’t you see we’re talking?” 

“I sat in something.” 

“Go away!” Mum shouted. 

If an alien watched our flat, it may have thought my actual name was Go Away. For a long time, I thought it might be my secret name. I even wrote it on my name tag at school. 

I jumped down from the side and walked away, pulling my t-shirt over my bottom. 

“Passive smoke is bad for you,” said Aunt Hilda, her voice splintered like unsanded wood. 

In the hallway, I paused. There was an outline of a person at the front door. They were small like me. The handle turned downwards and swung open. It was Cousin Reenie. She was wearing a pink dress with a little white shrug tied under her flat chest. Her hair was in two blonde braids and a plastic pink handbag was tucked under her arm. She looked older than eleven. That’s why she was picked to play Mary in the school nativity, and I was Sheep Number Thirty-Two. I moved out of Reenie’s way.

“There she is,” Mum said. “Our beautiful little Mary.”

Mum dropped her cigarette into her mug, slapped her thighs and stood up. When Reenie got close, Mum wrapped her arms around her. 

“Your hair smells gorgeous,” Mum said. 

Hanging over the door was our lucky horseshoe, yet what I saw underneath it, through the door frame, made me feel rusty.

“How come Rennie can stay and I can’t?” I asked. 

There was silence. Mum looked at Hilda, Hilda looked at Lola and Lola looked at Beverley. 

“How come Rennie can stay and I can’t?” Mum said in a whiny voice. 

Everyone agreed that that was funny, but they didn’t laugh they cackled. Everything looked yellow, except for Reenie. She was the pink tongue inside the cancerous mouth.

“Don’t forget the dishes,” Mum shouted. “This isn’t a hotel!” 

The kitchen seemed to shake and laugh. Oh gosh, I thought, am I whiny? I’d heard whiny characters in cartoons and disliked them. I used to wish Angelica from the Rugrats off the screen. Maybe that’s why everyone wished me away. I was one of the whiny ones.

Hiding in my wardrobe, I pretended my clothes, falling all around me, were my friends. Yes, I talked to my trousers and, yes, I ignored my one dress. What was I doing wrong? Why was I soooooo rubbish at being human? And (most importantly) how could I be better? The feel of fabric touching my skin was really comforting, like I was an egg in water. I was being held by hundreds and thousands of particles that supported me. I started to sing Happy Birthday to myself. But stopped. My voice was disgusting. I held my throat, aiming to rip my whiny voice box out.

“Hello…” I said in a low voice. “My name is…” in a squeaky voice. “Alright, I’m…” in a voice like a fish. “Yo yo yo, I’m–” in a high-pitched tone.

I stopped when I heard a light click. Opening the wardrobe door, I peeked out. 

“Why are you so weird?” said Reenie.

My room was dark; I never opened the curtains. Darkness was a blanket den, keeping my secrets. Rennie, with a halo of light behind her, looked at my bed. The duvet without a cover, the yellow and caseless pillows. 

“Go away,” I said. 

I twiddled my thumbs around each other. Reenie was like the Sun, too bright and marvellous for me to look at.

“I’ve got a spare lampshade at home,” she said. “It’s a princess one, I’m not sure if you like–” 

“I like princesses,” I said quickly.

There was a light bulb dangling from a wire in the ceiling. Spread around it were my WWF wrestling stickers. 

“Which princesses?” I asked.

Reenie smiled and ran towards me. She grabbed my hands and span me around.

“There’s pink, yellow, green and blue,” she said.

“There’s a green princess?” I asked.

Reenie, with her eyes wide and her lips pursed, nodded her head.

“I’ll bring it round next time,” she said.

When she left, I jumped a million times. A jump, for how many times better my life would be with the princess lampshade. I thought about Reenie. Her kindness and how the adults liked her company. I should be more like Reenie. It was an excellent idea. I wasn’t a jellyfish; I was a leech (they have thirty-two brains, I know). I clicked my nails between my teeth, loving the enamel ping.

 

The next day I knocked on Mum’s bedroom door. 

“Go away!” she said.

There was a thump on the other side.
“I need to ask you something,” I replied.
“I said, GO! AWAY!” 

 My stomach gurgled and the hallway started to spin. I chewed. I heard models chewed gum to trick their brain into thinking they were eating, but without gum I used air. When my stomach stopped, I opened the door. Mum was lying down with cucumber slices over her eyes and a half-smoked cigarette in her hand. I trod on a shiny, red stiletto. The thump must have been shiny. Mum’s room was bright, her curtain rail had fallen down and light split in holy beams through the net curtains.

“When is Reenie coming back?”
“Make me a cup of tea would you, hun?”
“I’m hungry.”
“You’re always bloody hungry.”
Mum swung her arm out and patted the surface of her bedside cabinet.
“Here,” she said, handing me a ten-pound note. “Go get me a pack of fags. Get yourself 

something nice.” 

In my room, I picked up the folded note. 

 

Please let Jellyfish buy the cigarettes
I am very sick and
can’t leave the house and as you know
I am a single mother with no one else to help.

 

Mum had lovely handwriting. A ballet of letters; they swirled like tentacles in water, joining each other harmoniously. I wanted her hand to have and to hold. I didn’t mind buying the cigarettes. Mr Himla was friendly, and he always gave me a warm croissant. If I bought the cheapest smokes, I had enough change to get a big bag full of penny sweets. Foam prawns and bananas for breakfast. Milk bottles for lunch and chocolate jazzles for dinner. 

Walking back from the shop, I had to dodge all the bikes, prams and picnic baskets. Everyone was on their way to the pretty park. That marvellous stretch of land with grass, swings and a stream trickling through the middle. Standing on the crusty green railings, I stared at the seesaw. It squeaked up and down. Two children sat at each end. They were wearing dresses. I giggled noticing that one was flashing her white knickers. In the middle, with her legs dangling either side, was Cousin Reenie. 

Wow, I thought. She has friends. If I wanted to be more like Cousin Reenie, I’d have to start wearing pink and get rid of my oversized khaki combats and Fruit of the Loom t-shirt. Reenie and her friends sprinted towards the roundabout. 

I guess if I wanted to lose weight, I’d have to stop eating sweets. After I finished the ones I had, I’d begin. Chewing chewing gum, chewing air. 

Both girls span Cousin Reenie on the roundabout. 

“Faster, faster!” She squealed.

She sounded like Mum’s handwriting: elegant and tiny. If I was going to be more like Reenie, I had to change my voice. 

 

Three days later, Mum and I were in Peacocks. She had got some tax back and decided to treat herself. On our way to the dressing room, Mum stopped. I was struggling to see over her piled up sequin dresses. We were at the edge of the children’s section. Little polka dot dresses displayed in size order. Smallest at the front, biggest at the back. Mum pointed to a small, fluffy orange top and looked at me.

“I wish you’d wear clothes like this,” she said. 

My arms were numb. 

“Mum, I can’t see. These are heavy.” 

A little girl walked over. She was wearing a lilac dress, with so many bows a Christmas present must have puked on her. She picked up a polka dot dress from the front part of the rail. She walked off like a poodle, wagging her bum.

“She looks lovely,” Mum said. “Like a proper little girl.” 

On the wall was a long rectangular mirror. I could just about see my chubby face and the mousy blonde hair falling in uneven layers around it. A stupid haircut I didn’t want but had to have, because Mum insisted that it looked like Rachel from her favourite program, Friends. I knew it wasn’t Rachel’s hair that made her beautiful. 

“I don’t like those clothes,” I replied.

Mum shrugged and flung the orange top onto the pile. My arms trembled. I held my breath.
“You should hold your stomach in,” she said, patting her stomach. “Eventually it just stays

in.” 

The sequined clothes dropped on the dressing room floor.

 

Two weeks later, I asked Mum if I could borrow her belt to keep my trousers up. Her eyes lit up like candles. That night she cooked a special dinner. Potato waffles, beans and dinosaur-shaped chicken. With it on our laps, we watched Brookside. During the adverts a man with white hair, sang always look on the bright side of life. Mum started whistling. I tried to join in but could only manage some puffs of air and dribble. 

“Love you, Mum,” I said with chicken on my tongue.
“Don’t eat with your mouth full,” she said with chicken on her tongue.

We both laughed and a bit of wet liquid shot out of my nose. I used my hand to wipe it away. Two ladies were sniffing white towels. I recognized them from a program Mum liked called Birds of a Feather. 

“What did you want to be when you were my age?” 

Mum looked at me. She tilted her head and put her hand on my knee. 

“A wife and a mother. Ridiculous I know but–” 

The doorbell rang. 

“Get that Jellyfish,” Mum said. 

 It was Cousin Reenie and Aunt Hilda. 

“Where’s my lampshade?” I asked. 

Reenie looked at Hilda. Hilda looked at Reenie.

“Who is it?” Mum shouted. “If it’s Avon tell them to go–” 

Hilda grabbed Reenie’s hand and barged past me. I closed the front door. A pile of post had gathered on our doormat. Long thin menus advertising various takeaways, little window cleaning business cards and bills in unopened white envelopes. My shoeprints were on the post. I could see the angular design. The impression I left from the pattern of my sole. 

I ran into the living room. Reenie had my dinner on her lap, chewing my last chicken dinosaur. Mum’s mouth was wide open, and Hilda had her arms crossed over her large breasts. She was shaking her head. I sat down on the arm of Mum’s chair. The second half of Brookside was about to start, but I couldn’t hear anything. 

“Where’s the remote?” I said.

“So rude,” Mum snapped. “Go to your room!”
Reenie, with my last dinosaur in her hand, started crying.
“She told me to give her my princess lampshade otherwise…”
My face flamed. I remembered Reenie whirling me around my bedroom offering and 

promising me stuff. I swallowed but my dry mouth tasted wrong and disgusting.

“I didn’t. You offered it to me.” 

A smile flashed across Reenie’s face. She shoved the dinosaur in her mouth.  

“Give me back my dinner!”

Like a jockey on a racing horse, Reenie quickly chewed my food. I felt my skin transform into glass. My body filled with a rapid of water. Reenie swallowed and stuck out her tongue. Her pink tongue was empty. My glassy body shattered.

“BITCH!” I screamed, before rushing out the door.

Reenie had ruined everything. Instead of my stomach rumbling, it bubbled. Was this how an engine feels when it starts to drive? Key in ignition and BAM power. That’s how I felt stomping up the hallway, like a driver. Until my Mum’s footsteps sounded behind me. I sprinted into the bathroom and locked the door. Mum kicked the door. I said sorry a thousand times. A sorry for how many more times worse my life would be now I’d said bitch to Reenie. I pressed the heel of my palms into my eyes, trying to stop myself from crying.

“Get out here now you little shit!” she shouted. 

I turned the faucet on to pretend I was showering. Trying to remember those golden moments before the bell rang and changed everything, I started whistling. Mum stopped banging.

“We best be off,” I heard Hilda say on the other side of the door. 

“Why did you eat her dinner?” I heard Mum say. 

“What?” Reenie giggled.

“You heard me you little bitch, why did you eat her dinner?” 

My ear was on the door. I was washed over by a surreal sensation. My skin didn’t feel like glass or water or anything.

“Don’t you ever speak to my little Ree Ree like that again,” Hilda said.

“Get out!”

“She’s gone mad,” Reenie said.

“Get out of my house! Now.”

I heard the front door slam. Silence. I got up and turned the tap off. Out of habit, like I’d not heard anything and was doing a big pooh, I flushed the toilet. 

“Sonata?”

I opened the door. Mum was sat on the floor. She looked up at me. Grey streams of mascara on her cheeks. 

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so, so sorry.” 

She tumbled forward into an aggressive amount of wailing. I sat down next to her and hugged her. My arms couldn’t hold her tight enough. 

*

 

A few weeks later Mum killed herself. I searched the flat for a note. But all I found were empty cigarette packets and that folded piece of paper I always took to the shop.

 

*

 

The sound of crying brings the aquarium back into focus. The moon jellies are clustered in the corner of the tank. They all look the same. The lighting changes from red to white. Their luminescence looks like an ultrasound. I taste smoke in the back of my throat. Mum used to be my aquarium. Now I am hers. She lives inside me. All those moments we never had play, on repeat. I unbuckle my bag. The crying becomes louder. I look towards the archway, there is a little girl. Her forehead furrows. She is wearing jeans, high top trainers and a blue sweat band around her wrist. Her baseball cap is on backwards. Her short hair flicks through the adjustable strap hole. Her sockets squelch as she rubs her eyes. 

“Don’t do that,” I say. “You’ll make it worse.” 

She whimpers. 

“Do you have water in your backpack?”
She nods.

“Can you get it out and drink some? It will make you feel better. Like an aquarium in your  

belly.”

The little girl smiles and quickly unzips her bag. When the gulping stops, she sighs.

“I can’t find my mummy,” she says.
In the tank behind her, the Moon Jellies disperse. The long sheaths of seaweed, sway

in a watery breeze.

“We were walking to see the octopuses. Mummy wasn’t holding my hand because she wants me to be independent, but a big group came in and–” 

The little girl looks constipated. 

“Do you need the toilet?” I ask.

Her bottom lip wobbles and she starts crying again. 

“Don’t cry. There’s enough water as it is.”

The little girl drinks. There is another sign. 

Did you know jellyfish are bad parents? Once they give birth to their planula, they just leave them. Providing no further care. 

“Are you on your own?” the little girl asks.

The water bottle has made a red suction mark around her mouth. 

“How old are you?” I ask.
“Ten.”

“If you wait here, I’m sure she’ll find you. Or we can go to the desk? Get the assistant to make an announcement?”

The little girl sits down on the bench. She looks at the tank.

“It’s funny when you go to a tank and you can’t see the creatures you came to see. It happens at the zoo, too. You have to really look to find them. Especially reptiles. It’s fun if you find them. But not so fun if you don’t.” 

“I’m looking for my mum too,” I say.
The little girl’s eyes narrow. She looks at the tank.
“They look dead,” she says. 

I reach into my bag. I pick up the cake.

“Like ghosts.” She gasps. “Do jellyfish have ghosts?”
My stomach lurches. I scrunch my brows. I’m not sure what she means by ghosts, there are 

so many ways a dead thing can still be here, haunting. I see Mum. I hear my nickname; Jellyfish and feel the rush of all the broken things I couldn’t fix. I leave the cake in my bag but keep my hands inside. Phantosmiacly, I can still taste the smoky odor of when I tried to kiss her back to life.  

Tears well up in my eyes. I nod. 

“A Jellyfish has to make peace with their ghosts. Then they go away.”

Her mouth pulls downwards by the muscles of her pain.
“Mummy!” she says, suddenly remembering what she’s lost.
I offer her my hand. I want to say don’t cry but I can’t. Not now. I can’t tell her not to do  

something. 

 

KAYLEIGH CASSIDY IS A DYSLEXIC WRITER, COMEDIAN AND VISUAL ARTIST WHO STUDIED CREATIVE WRITING AT BIRKBECK. SHE WAS LONG LISTED FOR THE MIR FOLKTALE COMPETITION AND IS A WRITER AND PERFORMER IN HOW TO SURVIVE YOUR LIFE PODCAST. HER WRITING AND COLLAGES HAVE BEEN PUBLISHED BY TOKEN, ROLLICK AND 3:AM MAGAZINE AS WELL AS ERTOPLASTY AND VISUAL VERSE. KAYLEIGH LIKES WALKING AND DURING LOCKDOWN HAS REALLY GOT INTO JIGSAW PUZZLES. 

I was in bed with Julia Roberts, drinking wine at her Hollywood mansion in Notting Hill. She wore the slinkiest black underwear and kept touching me. When I leaned in to kiss her, she did not reciprocate, just froze for a couple of seconds, then moved away, kept talking as though nothing had happened. Soon she stood up, began putting on her dress and saying we had to go. We had to get ready or we’d be late for the party her Hollywood friends were having. Then came my turn to freeze. She had not consented to that kiss. Was I another of those creepy Hollywood men like Harvey Weinstein? Are you ok? Are you coming? she asked. I said, are we were alright? Told her I was sorry for trying to kiss her if it’s not what she wanted. Hey, it’s OK, she replied. It’s just I’ve never been with a woman. I’m not a woman. You know what I mean. I did. I love hanging out with you though, it’s so boring spending all my time with those posh, rich people, you’re much more fun. I nodded.

 

The party was in another Hollywood mansion, bigger than Julia’s, with a marble staircase and a red ballroom where the party was held. It was a hot L.A. night but Julia Roberts did not sweat. She wore a dress like the cocktail dress Richard Gere bought for her in Pretty Woman, a Mona Lisa smile fixed to her face. I wore a dinner jacket like all the other guys at the party, but mine was too big. Julia Roberts waved hello to her friends Hugh Grant, Richard Gere, Dolly Parton, Denzel Washington, Cameron Diaz and Maggie Gyllenhaal, smiling radiantly before kissing them hello. I was afforded a brief word of introduction, but most of the men ignored me and the women giggled as though my presence was embarrassing. I couldn’t stop staring at Julia Roberts, amazed I was there with her and that she’d told me I was fun. I held on to this even though at that moment she was ignoring me.

 

Julia Roberts sent me to get drinks and I was grateful because it meant, for the first time since we arrived, she actually spoke to me. It was unnecessary — the waiting staff, who all looked a damn sight smarter than me, flocked around her, always at the ready to top up her champagne though she waved them away, to make me feel less impotent I suppose. I returned with a champagne glass for her and a whiskey for me. Caught some of her girlfriends giggling and a whisper from Maggie Gyllenhaal as I approached: he’s shorter than her!

 

I didn’t know what to say to any of Julia’s friends so I went out to the balcony, where Julia Stiles stood, silently smoking a cigarette, looking out into the night and the view of Los Angeles. I stood next to Julia Stiles, smoking too, wondering if these people believed their luck. If every day they pinched themselves to check this was real. The Angels. Maybe none of this was real. Julia Stiles threw her cigarette over the balcony, fiddled with her phone and returned inside.

 

He’s so short. I heard a shriek from inside — Maggie Gyllenhaal could not get over my lack of height. He looks so young! exclaimed Cameron Diaz, is he eating properly? Oh he’s— I thought I heard Julia Roberts say. So are you—? Maggie was saying. With ‘him’? Where had Rupert Everett sprung from? Does he have a—? Well, that’s not—? So you’re a—

 

Julia Roberts was in hysterics when I returned to her side, like a faithful but neglected pet. Looking at her I felt something snap in me and my eyes watered a little. I requested champagne from one of the waiters who sneered at me as he handed it over. Rupert Everett, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Cameron Diaz were nowhere to be seen and I had to question whether I’d really heard what I thought I had, or if my ears had misinterpreted the hubbub of the guests. Julia Roberts was laughing with a producer now I did not recognise. She kept touching his arm and I gritted my teeth because it hurt to watch.

 

After the party we lay in bed together once more, she in expensive lingerie, me in boxers from Target. We drank more expensive champagne as we lay, passing the bottle between us. She kept rubbing my shoulder with her hand and I kept thinking, this is it, but every time I moved towards her, she retreated, turning away from me to the cabinet beside her bed from which she pulled out glue and scissors and paper. Make something for me, she commanded. Julia, I have to know— Just cut. She pushed the paper and scissors into my hands. What am I to you?— Let’s not do this now. But. Cut please. Cut cut cut—

 

Len Lukowski is a writer, poet and performer based in Glasgow.

He came to like a submarine creature breaking the tension of the water. It was morning. He couldn’t remember going to bed. Not because he had been drunk or exhausted the night before – he had been neither. But the edge of his memory had snagged on something, stopped abruptly around 10 pm.

 

Vision and colour crowded in. She was awake too; he could feel her wakefulness through the mattress.

 

She rolled over and said, “Thank you for not destroying my body while I was out.”

 

He wasn’t sure how to respond. “You’re welcome?” 

 

It was 7 am and already the room was too warm. He could see that she’d bitten her lip, and the blood had dried in the shape of a bird.

 

*

 

The year before they’d allowed the garden to grow wild, both agreeing that it was better for the bees and the local wildlife if they didn’t pull up the weeds and mow the lawn. By May the garden was overrun with henbit and dandelions.  Foxes used it as a toilet. The seed bomb they’d tossed at the ground from the kitchen door had produced two poppies and a wilting patch of borage that was quickly felled by the foxes. Bees, on the whole, did not visit. They decided to get very in to gardening. 

 

She had explained that she was an ahp at the beginning of the summer. He had been kneeling in front of the tomato plants, which he’d grown from seeds, and gently tying them to bamboo canes. They occupied the sunniest corner of the garden, next to a trough where he had planted sweet peas. 

 

He had paused in the tying. “Could you say that again?”

 

“An ahp.” She must have seen him tense up. He’d never gotten over this habit – panic-freezing whenever he misheard her, or when conversation veered off into ambiguous roads. 

 

“In Thailand they call us krasue. I think in Malaysia it’s a penanggalan.” She’d paused. “I looked up the other names on Wikipedia.”

He’d run a nail down a tomato leaf. The earthy-treacle smell filled his nose. “What does an ahp do?”

 

“We’re women, but our heads come off at night. We detach from our bodies and fly around the neighbourhood sucking the blood of cattle. All our guts and things stay attached to the head, so we’re basically a floating digestive system.”

 

He’d twisted one of the leaves right off the stalk. “Not many cattle around here,” he’d murmured.

 

“We can eat carrion too.”

 

“Oh. Does it hurt?”

 

“The detachment? No. But the hunger does. And if you crush the body I leave behind, I’ll die in terrible agony.”

 

He could never imagine the ahp without the smell of tomato plants, and he mixed up the smell of tomato plants with the smell of blood.

 

*

 

When he was a child, he had been praised for his imagination. He wrote and illustrated stories about a superhero fish called Starmix. He played games with his siblings, where they pretended to visit an ultra-safe version of Jurassic Park. An imaginative child. It was even better than being a clever or well-behaved one. 

 

In one of their earliest fights, she had accused him of having no imagination, and his mind had skipped back to the school reports stuck to the fridge, the craft materials his mother had lovingly provided them. These domestic images glitched. They seemed to chase one another in a circle, losing focus but increasing in saturation and colour with every repetition. Later he learned to recognise this as a symptom of a panic attack.

 

“You think you’re so fucking clever,” she’d shouted, “but you can’t even begin to imagine. You just guess. You fucking copy-paste from the world. You have no fucking idea what trauma is.”

 

After he learned that she was an ahp, he made an effort to imagine what it was like. He tried to imagine the flying: the ground dropping away, the trees sliding past, the air biting down as he left the muggy heat of the street and reached the cold, cold night above. Then he realised he was fantasizing about leaving the punishing summer weather, and had to start again.

 

There was a time when he’d tried to imagine trauma, the actual localised existence of trauma. He did this because he wanted to stop visualising the incidents that caused trauma, which he had started to do compulsively. So he thought about trauma as a passenger, hitched to the medulla; trauma rode the body with its fingers curled inside the skull, ready to squeeze the brain through its fingers if there was the slightest hitch in the journey. He thought about trauma as an itch, a wound, a door in the attic. He thought about her face, the way it changed mid-argument, like something living in her throat had reached up and wrenched her tongue back.

 

*

 

His therapist, who he’d been seeing for about six months, at her insistence, suggested that the ahp was a metaphor.

 

“She leaves her body behind in the bed,” said his therapist, “while her mind and her guts, as she puts it, sail out the window. It’s interesting to me that ‘guts’ can mean ‘bravery’. So she deserts herself, gutless. And her body stays in bed.”

 

His therapist was looking at him with an expression he translated as expectant (although, as said therapist pointed out, he often read silences as expectant).

 

“In bed with me?” he volunteered.

 

“Yes, she is, isn’t she?”

 

They looked at one another across the small room, inexplicably upholstered in white and indigo paisley. 

 

“Where are you now?” asked his therapist. 

 

“We’re- I’m in bed with her, I suppose.”

 

“What’s that like, being in bed with her?”

 

He had been waiting for the moment that his sex life would come up in his sessions. They’d already exhausted his relationship with his mother.

 

“Good,” he said. “She’s very confident.”

 

“How does that feel, her confidence?” 

 

He wanted to say: when I first met her she’d hold my throat if she wanted to kiss me deeply. I understood the concept of surrender after she did that: it’s not just submission but desire. You have to want to give in, really badly.

 

“It’s…nice. It’s nice to be with someone who knows what they want.”

 

“Do you know what you want?”

 

He wanted to use the bathroom; he wanted to go home and play video games. He didn’t really know what this question was supposed to mean. Who still had their childhood dreams tied to their backpacks? Who wanted anything out of the day except a little kindness?

 

*

 

Sexually she was curatorial. Quite early on she’d been interested in measuring the length and width of his penis. She’d hidden her interest among breathy exclamations of oh-my-such-a-big-cock, but the erotic interest for her was in cataloguing him. 

 

When they got to know one another better, she stopped hiding behind porno coyness. That summer, one of her interests was calculating his median heart rate at the point of orgasm. He had to lie still and not exert himself or he’d ruin the data; he would be tidily fastened to the bedposts, or a chair, or the radiator. 

 

“I’d like to record breathing too,” she said one afternoon. “I need to work out a way to suspend a microphone.”

 

He stretched against the wrist ties, cracked his shoulders with a satisfied grunt. “Okay. Cuddle me?”

 

She crawled over him and tucked him under her. He felt her front teeth pressed lightly against his neck. They were both sweating in the heat and it changed the way they touched each other, or rather how she touched him – careful, fastidious, not wanting to discomfit him too much. No one really talked about the heat anymore. It was too sad to keep hearing the same thing. New temperature records were being set every week. On walks up to the shops he’d noticed several birds flitting from railing to pavement with their beaks parted and she’d told him they did it for the same reason any animal dropped its mouth open and looked desperate: they were thirsty. He started leaving flat dishes of water out in the garden after that.

 

“Do I wake you when I go out flying?” she asked him.

 

“No,” he said. 

 

“Sometimes I take bites out of foxes,” she said. “But never cats. Cats and I have an understanding.”

 

He had an itch by his hip, asked her to scratch it. “Would you ever eat any of me?”

 

“No, baby. We have an understanding too.” Then: “And I love you. I don’t want to harm you. Anyway, ahps are always married, or at least with a man. Part of what makes an ahp an ahp is the return to the whole woman form. If no one wanted her to come back to her body, why would she bother?”

 

*

 

“Do you feel that there is inequality in your relationship?” asked his therapist.

 

He thought about her thunderous rages, which used to leave him frozen, not like ice but like a broken computer programme, stuck in the last working frame, brain spinning in place. He thought about packed lunches she would make him if she was working from home and he had to go in, her furious indignation whenever someone was rude to or dismissive of him. He thought about how often she called him beautiful, and wrapped his long hair around her fist so that her knuckles showed white through the strands when she squeezed.

 

“Um, I suppose so. I’m not very brave.”

 

“Tell me more about that.”

 

“I don’t really like confrontation. I don’t like arguing, I get exhausted and I just give in anyway so it’s a waste of energy.”

 

His therapist nodded, as if he had confirmed something they’d already discussed and signed off on. “So it’s less effort for you if you let someone else have their way.”

 

“Mm, I suppose so.”

 

“How does that make you feel?”

 

“Sort of ashamed, which is also exhausting.”

 

“Do you find these sessions exhausting?”

 

He couldn’t stop himself from bursting out, “Honestly?”

 

Later, his therapist suggested a new metaphor for the ahp: her non-white body was a burden to her, but also a fundamental part of her identity that she experienced most strongly in the presence of a white man. Perhaps their sex life was a microcosm of reclamation and annexation; perhaps the ahp was both coloniser and colonised.

 

He didn’t think therapy was helping him much. He worried that he was doing it wrong.

 

*

 

On the way home from work one Wednesday, he found a group of his neighbours gathered in the street. Most of them were barefoot, and several of the men were topless. Everything seemed stained a greenish yellow, as if he’d been rubbing buttercups on his eyes. The air shimmered. Summer was here.

 

“That’s the third one in a month,” one of the neighbours was saying, in a modulated bleat that carried like a siren. “I think we should get the police to write a report up. I’m serious. Whatever does that to a fox is a danger to humans too.”

 

The neighbours were straggled around the remains of a fox. Something had torn it open and almost entirely severed its head. Rotten-looking tubing and the occasional moon-white lump shone on the pavement. There was, he realised, less viscera than one might reasonably expect from a dead animal. Some of the crimson liquid pool it lay in appeared to be bubbling. 

 

“Jesus,” another neighbour exclaimed. “Is it, is that, like, cooking? Is the blood cooking?”

 

“It is ridiculously hot,” someone else said.

 

“This needs to be cleaned up,” said the bleating neighbour, to a murmur of assent. No one volunteered. No one called the police, either. 

 

*

 

“My mother says back home, ahps sit in the trees on lonely roads and sing. They all have long black hair and it hangs down the trees like moss.”

 

“Do you do that?”

 

“No, someone would throw a shoe at me. I just fly and eat. Ahps have to be a secret. You can’t be a public ahp, because then you’re not an ahp, you’re just a freak.”

 

They were lying in one another’s arms, or rather he was lying in hers, with his own arms tucked between them like a dropped parcel. 

 

Every window in the bedroom was open but there was no difference in temperature between the room and the street. It gave their domestic life a bizarrely communal feel. Barriers between public and private were melting, merging. The evening before he had seen the neighbour from across the road, a woman in her early forties who lived with her sister and her wife, leaning against the wall of her front garden. She was wearing nothing but a tank top and Care Bear patterned knickers, and was smoking a roll-up while tears streamed down her face. 

 

When he’d come closer to ask her if he could help, she had sheepishly explained that she was not weeping but having an allergic reaction. What are you allergic to? he asked. I don’t know, she replied, it only started happening this year. Her feet had been bare on the pavement and nothing about her outfit had seemed odd until he relayed this story later.

 

In bed, starting to slip into a mud-like calm, he asked, “Will you fly tonight?”

 

“I fly every night, baby. I get hungry and I have to.”

 

He pressed his mouth against her forehead. He wondered what it was like, that driving hunger that charged moments, changed landscapes. He dreamed of it sometimes, from the point of view of the prey: peaceful under a pair of jaws, falling effortlessly into a cosy eternal void.

 

Kaliane Bradley is a writer, editor and dance/theatre critic based in London. Her work has appeared in Catapult, The Willowherb Review, The Tangerine, Somesuch Stories and Granta, among others.

It’s well known that there’s always a crock of gold at the end of a rainbow. What isn’t so well known is that a double rainbow’s different, and at the end of that there’s simply a big ruckus.

 

Had Ellie been aware of that, she might have thought twice about posting, on her Facebook timeline, what she reasonably assumed, at the time, to be a completely innocuous statement: There’s a double rainbow outside my window, which means there’s nothing else for it but to make a wish!!

 

If the camera on her phone had been working, she wouldn’t have made that statement, but in lieu of being able to post a photo, writing something fun, she reasoned, was the next best thing and, one way or another, hadn’t been able to resist the urge to share the moment. As soon as she’d seen there was an amazing rainbow outside the landing window, Ellie had rushed downstairs to get her phone, then ran back upstairs and, as soon as she’d logged in to Facebook, hurriedly wrote her message, glancing once or twice at the already fading spectacle as she did so.

 

However, after pressing send, Ellie couldn’t resist quickly scrolling down her newsfeed, and ended up clicking on a shared video clip about animal cruelty that was so disturbing she wished she hadn’t.

 

Not that that was the actual wish she made – but, as if Facebook knew that Ellie wanted her mind taken off all thoughts of animal cruelty, a notification alert popped up in that very same instant, and Ellie, knowing it was something to do with her double rainbow post, clicked on it and saw that her best friend, Lucy, had replied: Yay! Good for you. Rainbows bring good luck.

 

Delighted by her friend’s quick response, Ellie liked the message and straightaway answered: Thanks, Lucy! I’m so lucky to actually see a double rainbow. I’m right now staring out of the window in awe of it. 

 

That wasn’t exactly true, however, as Ellie was right now typing the message while sat on the loo, but though cringing slightly at telling a white lie (or was it a multi-coloured lie?), Ellie, knowing her best friend was none the wiser, and wanting to keep this pleasant conversation going, added: It’s so lovely to watch a beautiful rainbow. Then, putting the phone down to wash her hands, Ellie saw, on glancing in the mirror, the dark circles around her eyes from all the late nights she’d been having – because of her constant addiction to Snapchat, and looking up videos sometimes till 4 or 5 am – and, in that instant, wanted to smash the glass of the mirror with her fist.

 

The phone beeped – Lucy again: Yes, you’re right, it is so lovely, and it’s inspired me to make a wish myself. Rainbows represent new beginnings, and a double rainbow is surely a sign.

 

Ellie was cheered by that but before she could reply, another friend, Susan, joined in – albeit with a slightly weird and jarring query: Not having a go – I really want to understand – but who says Rainbows are anything more than simple scientific fact, i.e. refracted light that’s bent through raindrops acting like tiny prisms? Why insist they’re ‘lucky’ or ‘represent new beginnings’? Seriously, I just want to understand this conversation.

 

Ellie frowned, not knowing what to make of this unexpected intervention. It was definitely very Susan – all the sensible, geeky logic – but even so, and despite being amused that Susan referred to rainbows with a capital R, Ellie was bemused that Susan seemed to be taking her and Lucy’s comments so seriously.

 

Lucy, on the other hand, was neither amused nor bemused. She was furious, and directly underneath Susan’s intervention, typed: WHY ARE YOU TRYING TO STOP PEOPLE’S BELIEFS?

 

Whoa! thought Ellie. This sudden switch from talking rainbows to trading blows had caught her unprepared. In any event, her phone’s battery was down to two per cent, so she had no choice but to rush from the bathroom (and past the landing window without looking out) in order to quickly get to the bedroom where the charger was, and by the time she’d plugged the phone in the mains, Susan had responded to Lucy’s furious outburst – with, once again, a query: I’m unsure why you think I’m trying to stop people’s beliefs. Surely, it’s reasonable for me to ask why someone believes what they do, especially when it’s declared on social media. Sorry you feel attacked, as I’m only enquiring. Best wishes. No offence intended.

 

Ellie, however, had barely managed to read – let alone process – Susan’s reply, when Lucy shot back: FINE, YOU HAVE YOUR BELIEFS – BUT LET OTHERS HAVE THEIRS!

 

Fuck, thought Ellie. This has gone completely out of control. Mortified, she slumped down against the side of the bed and, placing the phone on her lap and letting it go to screensaver, stared at it intently while repeating in her mind the wish she’d made on initially seeing the double rainbow – ‘Please make everything bad in my life go away’ – then, finding that she couldn’t last any longer not knowing, returned to her now wracked-by-friendly-fire post on Facebook, and there, beneath Lucy’s searing salvo, was a cowed reply from Susan: You’re clearly aggrieved, Lucy, but I wasn’t trying to censor anyone’s beliefs. Sorry.

 

Half relieved, but half worried that, even with Susan backing down, Lucy, smelling blood, might still attack, Ellie decided she had to intervene. Without time to really think at all about what she was writing, she quickly typed the message: Hi Susan, no need to apologise. I’m certainly not feeling attacked or censored, and thanks for raising the questions. I don’t know much about rainbows, and certainly don’t have evidence that they’re ‘lucky’ or that they ‘represent new beginnings’, but with so much negativity in the world, I just wanted to make a cheery, positive statement.

 

Ellie pressed send, then winced on reading the message back, unsure how it would be taken – by Lucy, let alone Susan. Then, as it dawned on her that all these exchanges on Facebook had distracted her from fully appreciating the main event itself, Ellie sprang up and rushed to the landing window, only to find the amazing double rainbow had completely disappeared.

 

Gutted, Ellie returned to the bedroom and back on Facebook, was shocked to find that Lucy had only gone and deleted her angry comments, so it now appeared that Susan had been talking to herself – and, already regretting joining the fray (albeit to try to make the peace), Ellie reacted by immediately deleting her hastily-written response as well.

Deflated, and unable to bear to look at her ill-fated, bowdlerized post any longer, Ellie returned to her newsfeed, in the hope of it providing some much-needed distraction, which she found as soon as she clicked on You Won’t Believe It When You See What These Child Stars Look Like Now and saw what Haley Joel Osment, who’d she’d never heard of, looked like.

 

Thomas McColl lives in London, and has had poems and short stories published in magazines such as Envoi, Iota, Bare Fiction, Fictive Dream and Smoke: A London Peculiar. He has had two collections of poetry published: ‘Being With Me Will Help You Learn’ (Listen Softly London Press, 2016) and ‘Grenade Genie’ (Fly on the Wall Press, 2020). He currently works in Procedural Publishing at the House of Commons, having previously worked in bookselling.