When All This is Over Go To Pat’s Flat by Shelley Hastings

(15 Guidelines For a Swift Recovery) 

 

    1. Put on that leopard print dress with its elastic rah-rah skirt and low slit on the neck that’s been at the back of the cupboard for two decades. The last time you wore it, maybe your twenty-first, long before kids.

    2. Pull on thin black tights and shiny leather boots with chunky heels. Ricardo should put on that powder blue suit he was wearing when you first saw him. The one that is too tight on the crotch and has a split on the arse. Get it fixed up. No one will notice in the dark.

    3. Get a cab. Don’t walk. The party has started. Little Mo is on the decks, he’s wearing his Moondance T-shirt from the millennium, swaying, can in hand. He whacks you on the back as you go past and starts playing that tune, the one with the piano riff, the classic you all loved when you used to go to Mass.

    4. Leave your coat on Pat’s bed. You can’t find her anywhere. The kitchen is heaving. Sambuca shots lined up on the counter. Mo’s chicken, rice, and coleslaw under foil on the cooker. Paper plates on the side.

    5. Squeeze down the hall. Everyone is grinning, shiny, faces open. The school mums and dads wearing new clothes and smart shoes. There is no need to say anything to anyone. What is there to say? You are all here. Slap shoulders, kiss cheeks, stroke backs.

    6. Make cocktails. Take the watermelon and vodka out of your plastic carrier. The sink is bulging with beers in lukewarm water, the blender on top of the microwave. Find the bread knife and hack at the fruit. Scoop out the seeds with a teaspoon, then use your fingers, pull sweet chunks out the middle, chuck the skin.

    7. Find the ice in the bottom of the freezer. Send cubes skittering across the kitchen floor. Some people kick them aside like pucks, others pick them up, before slipping them down the back of an unsuspecting neck. Slosh in vodka, force the lid. Press hard as the blender crunches loudly. Divide up the pink frothy liquid into whatever you can find: coffee mugs, trifle glasses, coloured plastic cups.

    8. Offer them out. Shai comes up behind you. Her head on your shoulder, her arm around your waist. She is handing out dabs of MDMA from a tin with a cherry on the top and people reach over, dipping in little fingers, making faces like, ‘Oops, yes please.’

    9. Dance. Go to the corner where it’s dark, the rug rolled up. Time warps. Nell appears in black sparkles. Do stupid moves together, point to the floor, her face, the cooker, the sky. Be robots. Be crap at it. Become so hysterical you double up in pain. It’s infectious. Others start. The school mums and Bristolians and dodgy neighbours, some of them too slick, showing off, like they went to robot school.

    10. Shout for Pat. She’s in the hallway, holding a champagne flute. Wearing a snakeskin dress and gold looped earrings. You wait for her robot move but she drops to the floor instead, on the beat, knees bent in a crouch, not spilling a drop of her drink, then straight back up. It is so unexpected and so good. An elastic move. The room roars. Everyone does it, or tries to, but one of the school dad’s legs buckle, his knees in agony. He gets stuck, puffed out. Little Mo drags him up.

    11. Get stoned. Curl up in the mustard armchair with Pat and Nell. Think about how much you needed this. Think about how you love them but don’t say it. Eventually you are so squashed you can’t feel your legs. Push them off. Get a plate of chicken and salad and sit on the counter, your heels kicking the cupboards to the beat. The school dads lose their shit as the music turns to happy hardcore. Heads down, like they’re running a marathon. Hands drawing shapes in the air as they remember some dark club years ago, before they were going bald and doing back exercises.

    12. Watch Ricardo in the corner in his suit, sleeves rolled up. He seems to be looking for something on the ceiling, amazed. Feel deep love for him and his newly mended trousers. He catches you looking at him. Don’t call him over, just raise your glass.

    13. Remove your boots. Unpeel the sticky leather and let your stockinged feet slide about on the melted ice and sloshy muck that’s been trodden in from the garden. Ski to the music. Little Mo turns on a microphone and starts to MC. The school dads gather round the decks. The music is too fast. Pat appears. ‘For fuck’s sake, Mo. This is shit.’

    14. Pull open the patio door. Just as you are about to escape that tune will come on. That Neiked one. The I’m feeling sexual one with its eighties sax solo in the middle. Feel overcome. You know all the words to this one. All the women stream in from the hallway and toilet. Kerry, Shai, Patty, Isha, Sylvia, Hanna, Louise, Nell, and Pat. 

    15. Let loose. Become a throbbing circle of sax playing women. Perform your jazz solo, one leg hitched on the chair, ladders running up your tights. Root down to the ground and way back up, like you’ve been waiting for this moment all your life. Everyone else does it too, in beautiful symmetry, and when it’s done you hold each other up. You are sweating, and on the right side of queasy, so when the tune finally finishes, splash your face and skid out to the patio. Wrap yourself in a blanket and smoke menthols. Watch the sun rise over the sweet summer grass. 

 

Shelley Hastings is a writer, dramaturg and producer. Her writing has been published by Southword Magazine, Galley Beggar Press and Unbound. Her short stories have been shortlisted for the Seán O’Faoláin Prize, The Pat Kavanagh Award and The Writers and Artists Award amongst others.

FUNFAIR by Michael Eades

There’s a temporary utopia in town. You can see the lights in the distance, flashing through the gaps in trees, across gardens and slate roofs. You can hear the music and the high pitched screams and the hiss of hydraulics through late summer air. 

August, 2020. There’s a funfair on the Common. It is only a small one: a few socially distanced rides huddling well away from one another. But it is definitely there. Its placement has a defensive quality, tucked away at the bottom of the hill down by the High Road, surrounded by a temporary fence. It stops and starts, struggling for custom. Every time I walk past in the morning and at twilight I see the rides squatting emptily, waiting for punters, surrounded by bored men smoking and chatting. 

In these viral times, in a lull in the pandemic, it is optimistic of them to come here and set up shop. In that sense, you might read it as a positive sign. A little flash of returning normality in the midst of a ‘new normal’ defined largely by weirdness. In another sense of course it presents a strange tangle of interconnecting risks. Danger of death from those poorly maintained rides meeting danger of death from infection carried on machinery and candy floss. 

I want to walk out into that fair and take some pictures. I want to put my mask on and move in close enough to hear the screams. 

A funfair is a portal that connects you to different times. The lights, the repetitive music, the conjuring trick worked by the shooting galleries and the ghost train; they trigger responses deep within you: emotions, memories. They allow you to slip through one reality and into another. The sights and sounds come together to create a spectacle, an illusion which, for some reason, never changes and always, always works. 

Walking around a weirdly empty, Covid-stricken fairground on a bank holiday weekend, I can suddenly see how it all works. I can see the breaks and the joins and the gaps between things. Sitting on their rides, bored workers stared into the distance or dance ironically to the music pumping out of speakers. The music is never updated. It is the same music played at fairs for the past twenty years or more. Rave classics. ‘You’ve got to show me love’, ‘It’s Not Over Yet’, ‘Search for the Hero’. A few scattered families are wandering, wearing masks. Rides whirl and climb into the sky with only a couple of punters aboard. Hand sanitizers squirts are compulsory on embarking and disembarking. 

In the looking glass hall of mirrors here I see reflections and refractions of funfairs past. I remember trips to Blackpool as a child. Every year with my grandparents to see the illuminations. The almost panicked excitement of it. The huge scale of the rides when seen from close to the ground. The sense of being inside another world in the dark rides: ‘River Caves’ and ‘Alice in Wonderland’. Experiencing actual, traumatising terror on the Ghost Train. The definite autumn darkness with weird light at the edges, the rich feel of seaside air, the luminous paint glowing and the smells and screams lingering in the car on the way back. 

The filmmaker Patrick Keiller, who grew up in Blackpool, once suggested that: ‘if Louis Aragon had come to England and someone had taken him to Blackpool, he might have been intrigued, and England wouldn’t have been left off the Surrealist map of the world’. 

Wandering through this tiny funfair in South London, stopping to take pictures and jot down notes, I can see exactly what he meant.

Funfairs are portals, ways back to different times. 

I remember going to Blackpool again later, as an adult (or a young adult, a larger child). The excitement felt almost as intense. It felt almost…better. I was there with someone that I loved at the time, intoxicated, happy just to take a day out from the world and immerse myself in a different, artificial one that has stood somehow on the cold lip of the North Sea for more than a hundred years.

When I was there, I didn’t think about the future at all. I didn’t realise that this was a moment that would have an ending. I didn’t realise that the person I was with would become a stranger one-day. I didn’t realise it would turn all turn into nostalgia. 

Fairgrounds, pleasure beaches, funfairs. Trips away with different people over different years. Grandparents, parents, partners who come and go. Different versions of myself, on different rides, with different people.

And then, finally, just me. Just me, walking around a deserted South London funfair with a camera, in the middle of a pandemic, alone. 

Michael Eades is a writer, researcher and curator based in London. His work has appeared in The Mechanic’s Institute Review, The i, and Reflex Press. Michael also runs the UK’s Being Human festival, an annual multi-city festival of innovative, research driven events. He can be found at @DrMichaelEades and www.michaeleades.net.

Who Am I If You Keep Telling Me to Shut up? by Kayleigh Cassidy

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. 

THE JAVELIN by Sam Simmons

St Pancras, Central London. A station was opened in 1868, to serve the Midlands. The grand building at the front is a hotel that has slept on the Euston Road since the station was built. Behind the Grade One listed exterior are boutique shops to suit the needs of the modern clientele that frequent the station – from its new destinations of Paris, Brussels, and Amsterdam on the international rail link. Also, from the far reaches of the continent and beyond, reached via train services from Gatwick and Luton airports. It’s a bit like an airport terminus since St Pancras station had ‘International’ added to it in 2007, although there’s no duty free (it’s more like double the price).

Sometimes I see mice run across the concourse, looking for food in the city. Sometimes I’ve seen them run under the rails, looking for a place to hide. Trains here are served by overhead cables, so I’d hope the mice would run on to somewhere else when they feel the rumble of a train. I want to be the mouse, creeping out gently, watching the comings and goings, rather than being a part of it all, rather than be the briefcase rush hour model image. But I guess we are all a part of it. Our lives are in the hands of the six-car service to Margate, whether we like it or not, whether our journey is for work or pleasure. I want to take my time and buy my M&S avocado sandwich and eat it, before I’ve boarded the 140mph High Speed train. I want to enjoy my expensive artisan coffee before I leave the big smoke (which probably isn’t the big smoke anymore). I’ve been looking at new ways of naming it, and so far, I’ve come up with ‘the mega million gigabyte’ and ‘the big vape’. I don’t think either will catch on though.

The barista is abruptly asking me if I want ‘hot or cold milk’ with my Americano. The question of milk becomes more of a question of having a quick answer. I’m abruptly asked again. I’m being too slow. A train that connects London to Kent in no time at all is waiting for its load going from city to sea. It has the comforts of Wi-Fi. There’s never much chance to socialise here, so I guess we’ve got to take those moments of me, myself and Wi-Fi when we can. A modern train for a modern society. I spill a bit of coffee down my front during a power walk and don’t have time to care.

The train has nestled into platform 11. I slot my ticket through the machine and the barrier grants me entrance. A conversation is going on with a passenger and the guard as I walk through to catch the train.

‘Moorgate? You want the Northern line.’

‘No. I’m going to Margate.’

‘Oh, Margate? You want platform 11 for Margate.’

The train is getting busy, loaded up with pushchairs, back packs, suitcases, and of course city boys and girls in their best clothes (no coffee stains down their shirts). The digital board says ‘MARGATE’. Echoes of Chas & Dave.

Our service leaves St Pancras along a railway that passes over the Regent’s Canal with its narrow boats afloat, and the canalside gas holders that have been turned into offices or luxury flats. Camley Street Natural Park brings greenery to the area. We pass a bridge that has ‘HOPE’ painted across it. We head out towards the east. Our service sinks into a tunnel, then it picks up a bit of speed, and all we can see is our reflections in the windows. Oyster tappers are reminded to get off at the next stop as their fares won’t be valid any further. The ticket holders’ border.

We pull into Stratford International, where the international trains do not stop. The station has an unfinished look about it and sits in a concrete ditch. There’s the big shopping centre, Westfield, wedged between the international and mainline/underground Stratford station. The signs lead you through the shopping centre. I worked out there’s a short cut around it, if you walk past the depot where the HGVs are unloading their unholy goods. It’s a different world from the Stratford Centre, which at night, is a shelter for the homeless to put down their duvets for indoor sleep. Where the Olympic Stadium now engulfs the land was previously a mountain of fridges, which was said to be the largest collection of dumped white goods in Europe. Why didn’t they build the stadium out of old fridges? Next to the stadium is a supersize Helter Skelter.

 As soon as news of the Olympic games were pulled out of the hat, the Javelin would be the one pulling us into the new Olympic park through shuttle services using the newest train technology that these Hitachi-made Class 395 fleet could offer. Each train has the name of a famous British athlete on the front, complete with their signature and the words ‘Britain’s Fastest.’ Dame Kelly Holmes is an important one, being from Kent.

Celebration Avenue. Victory Parade. Anthems Way. Olympic Village. Olympic sized shopping centre. Olympic Park. Olympic Javelin throwing you into London in record time. Shaving minutes off your journey. Increasing capacity on the network. Room for more. Squeeze in. Hold on tight. Come January the fares will go up again. This is the price we pay for a celebration. If the London yellow stock brick was still in building fashion, the high speed would be lugging them up from the clay pits of Kent to Stratford, because building is happening quickly in the outer zones.

Onwards we go, slipping through into another tunnel. The hum of air pressure. You really notice that it’s picked up speed when it launches itself out of the tunnel and into the wastelands of the London/Essex border. It flies through the area like it’s a forbidden zone. I try to take in as much as I can, every time I pass here. I don’t want life to just be a blur we speed through.

It’s Ford Dagenham territory. MOT centres on the roadside at Ferry Lane. The industry buildings and work yards of Eddie Stobart, Rainham Steel, Scania Purfleet, Tesco and the glowing ‘M’ of fast food in the distance. It doesn’t have the dramatic feel of being on a two-car diesel pacer train, slugging past the dead British Steel works between Redcar and Middlesbrough. But this is what modern industry has become. The A13 runs alongside our tracks. Pylons sending electricity, fast, across Rainham Marshes. This is the land of Iain Sinclair’s orbital ramblings. Cobelfret Freight ferries anchor at Purfleet. A dangerous sighting of ‘Daily Mail’ beside the stilts of Queen Elizabeth II bridge brings on terror. Motorists are still required to pay the royal fare to cross. More shopping precincts at Lakeside, Thurrock, somewhere over there. Bluewater, the other side of the Thames estuary. The train rocks like a rollercoaster, red squares of rows and rows of Biffa bins blur past, and we catapult down through a tunnel under the river.

When the HS1 resurfaces again, we arrive at Ebbsfleet International. They seem to have stuck ‘International’ on every station. Intentional? Will they still be ‘International’ if this Brexit thing goes ahead?

Ebbsfleet is a made-up place on the Kent side of the Thames estuary. There’s not a lot there. Just a car park for commuters to park their motors before boarding a quick one into town. Two churches sit on the chalk cliffs that surround the station. Its location is somewhere between Swanscombe, Northfleet and Gravesend. Ebbsfleet does exist, but as a hamlet, some 55 miles down the line, at the mouth of the River Stour, near Ramsgate. I’m sure this new Ebbsfleet will exist soon. From the train window I can already see the men in green jackets surveying the alien lands. There’s already an Ebbsfleet United football team. I can’t see any goal posts. Perhaps they have a kick about on Rainham Marshes?

Ebbsfleet really is commuter land – most of the passengers that get on or off here are cradling laptops and holding leather satchels. The trains come fitted with handy plug sockets, and the modern commuter’s best friend, Wi-Fi. A lake is in sight of the platform, a pretend natural feature for passengers to glance at. Mark Wallinger’s commissioned White Horse (or Angel of the South) was planned to be built near where the rail goes under the A2. The white horse being the symbol of Kent. It was going to be taller than the Angel of the North, although no signs of the giant gee-gee as we leave Ebbsfleet Valley behind. Whether it exists or not, we start moving like a race horse again. We pass where the A2 was re-routed to make way for the tracks of this new rail link, and then we go into the fields of this home county.

The Javelin is the heron of UK trains – the only one superior is the Eurostar. Although the routes have been perfectly timed, that we rarely see the mythical beast pass us on our journey – only in its London nest, back at St Pancras.

We cross the River Medway, side by side with the M2. We see Rochester Castle crumbling on the riverside. It’s been haunting the riverbank since long before Dickensian days. It’s a picturesque view of Medway, whichever way you look out the window.

We flee consumerism in the fields. If I was standing on the field, the train would look like a Hornby set. Faster we go, into the hop growing county, we see the wooden poles that help them grow. The hops get dried and land into liquid form eventually. Two or three oast houses grouped together around the county, looking prestigious in their places. They were used as kilns to dry the hops and many have turned into homes, since beer is produced on an industrial scale now. The hop pickers would have caught the High Speed 1 if it had existed then. Down to Teynham, Faversham and Paddock Wood. London to Ebsfleet in 17 minutes. To Ashford in 37, Canterbury in just under an hour.

The murmurs of conversations, phone calls, and a faint hum of headphone music. The snoozer resting their head on the window. Oblivious to where we are. Just waiting for the train announcements to confirm it. Others glare on at their phones, immersed in emails or their favourite new TV series. The person behind me accidently knocks on the back of my seat. I feel it reverberate down the spine.

I watch the blue circle move across Google Maps on my phone. We get close to the M20 and move almost twice as fast as the cars. Shiny modern saloons, lorries, logistics…all moving across county and country, but not as quick as us. A corrugated metal barrier suddenly blocks our views, as we head into Ashford.

At Ashford International, it comes off the overhead cables – ‘ding’. The station looks like a glass spaceship, that has landed in a random town. Sometimes a Vic Reeves sighting, he catches the HS1 from Ashford. This is where the train joins the regular tracks with the mainline trains. There’s three lines coming out of Ashford – towards Ramsgate, Folkestone or Hastings and above is a monorail, where the Eurostar tears up into the sky, towards mainland Europe. Although some of the continental trains stop at Ashford, adding the international. The only international signs I can see is the word for exit in French, sortie. There are several javelins parked in the sidings, next to a building – ‘Hitachi – Inspire the next.’ Opposite sits the Millenium Dome-esque Ashford Designer Outlet, and the Batchelors soup factory. A clash of Andy Warhol’s soup factory and a naff pre-Millenium architectural panic attack. They have a face off across the tracks. We tune into regular speed now, getting the currents from the third rail.

Wye, Chilham, and Chartham. We sail through these places, while the Stour gently flows past. ‘Why kill ‘em and cart ‘em to Canterbury?’ Grandpa Tom once said to me. The slow stopper from Charing Cross opens its doors at these villages on the Kent Downs. Near Wye, there’s a white horse engraved on a hill. There’s a few of them on hills around Kent. Still no clip-clop clip-clop at Ebbsfleet though.

I hear a man on a phone say, ‘I’m off to that dump of a place, Canterbury.’ A slight irritation grows inside me to say, ‘it isn’t a dump.’ It’s the first time I’ve heard the place I was born called that, though I’ve heard my hometown be called a dump many times. Herne Bay – cracked manhole covers with the words ‘Pryor & Co Ltd, Dalston Junction’, ‘Haywards Limited Makers, London’, and ‘T.Hyatt & Co, Farringdon Road.’ Perhaps in the future, when BT have done their broadband job, these will be ultra-fast portals to London.

‘We will shortly be arriving at Canterbury West.’ Across a level crossing, a sighting of the Westgate Towers, and the traffic queued up along St Dunstans. We pull into the Archbishop’s city. From the station you can see the Gothic cathedral poking up. No, it’s not a dump. It’s built on history. This is where Chaucer and his storytellers pilgrimaged from London. It’s where Saint Thomas Becket was murdered by the king’s followers inside the cathedral in 1170. In Roman times this ancient city was called Durovernum Cantiacorum. In the early 2000s, Tony Robinson and his Time Team came to the big dig, where 2000-years’ worth of artefacts were found. The diggers took the artefacts and now a modern shopping arcade sits in their ancient place. Nowadays, the cobbled streets are packed with students and ‘I love London’ T-shirts. My Great-Great-Grandfather’s pink plaster mould cherubs are still intact on one of the buildings half way along the High Street. They’ve been there since the 1930s. Much of Canterbury was bombed during the Blitz, but the cherubs survived World War II. Beside Canterbury West, is a goods shed, which has been turned into a farmer’s market displaying the best produce from the Garden of England.

We roll out into the edgelands of Canterbury, heading towards the seaside. There’s a power plant and electrical wires firing in many directions. Pylons waving for miles. Car showrooms with brand new Jags, Mercs and BMWs on their forecourts, overlooked by a landfill site on a high mount, where seagulls scavenge. A permanent private gypsy site the other side of the tracks on Vauxhall Road. We pick up moderate speed across the level crossing past the village of Sturry. From the Javelin window, we see the glistening lakes of Westbere, where I did cross country running in my school days. We pass the derelict halt of where once stood Chislet Colliery. The colliery produced coal from 1919 to 1969. It would have powered the steam trains. The only remains is the station platform. The Stour joins trackside again at Grove Ferry, where boats and amateur fishermen while away the day. We glide past the fields beside Stourmouth and Sarre. During the summer you can read the crops on the fields. We go over the River Wantsum, which in the past would have been a channel of fast flowing water. It separated the Isle of Thanet from the mainland. These days it’s just a piddling stream. Wantsum Brewery sits nearby, and worth a sip if you like an ale. Better than the river water, it’s said.

The real Ebbsfleet can be seen from the train, but I can’t quite pinpoint where. It’s near where the concrete tea cups of Richborough Power Station used to be, and the only reminiscence of those cooling towers is a small wind turbine.

 We slow down and go under some concrete bridges of dual carriage way and pass Pegwell Bay. William Dyce famously painted ‘Pegwell Bay, Kent – A Recollection of October 5th 1858.’ The painting was inspired by a family day out the Dyce’s had spent on the sands. A concrete platform sits near the bay, where the hovercraft used to inflate and glide to Calais. It discontinued in the 1970s. The port of Ramsgate can be seen from here, and that’s pretty much derelict too. Now the bay is a place for birdwatching across the marshes and sands.

‘We have now arrived at Ramsgate.’ The doors bleep, several times, and open. If you’re sitting or standing near the door, you immediately feel the breeze of the seaside air. Ramsgate has many regency squares, and a large number of blue plaques – including one to Vincent Van Gogh, where he is said to have spent his happiest times as a teacher. From the window, all I see is another red Biffa bin and seagull shit scattered across the platform. (Even over the yellow line.) The station is a bit of a way from the town centre and the sea, so don’t let the first sightings put you off. It’s home to a royal harbour, where barges and yachts slowly bob on the twinkling harbour waves. On a clear day from the clifftop, you can see France. Perhaps it should be named ‘Ramsgate International’?

A viaduct takes us out of Ramsgate, affording us a panoramic view of the town. A voice comes from the tannoy. ‘Welcome aboard this service to Margate. Calling at Broadstairs and Margate ONLY. If you see anything suspicious, please do report it to a member of staff or the Police. The next station stop will be Broadstairs. Thank you for travelling with us today.’ Every time we stop, another town gets dropped from the digital screen. Then, the most common of all train interactions, ‘tickets please’, comes into the carriage. I look for today’s ticket, amongst my wallet full of expired journeys. I’m wearing a beret. The ticket man approaches me and says, ‘Bonjour! Paris is that way.’ He points, laughs, nods at my ticket and stamps it.

‘Tickets, please.’

I then overhear a conversation between a passenger and the ticket inspector.

‘I’ve got a ticket here somewhere. Can ya come back in ten minutes, mate?’

‘I’ve got plenty of time. I don’t mind waiting.’

‘I swear I just bought a ticket. Bugger. I can’t find it.’

‘Well, if you can’t find it, you’ll have to buy another one.’

And when it comes to the price.

‘Fucking hell, has it gone up? I swear it was cheaper than that before.’

‘Yeah, it goes up every January.’

‘Nah, you’re joking. It couldn’t have…ah! Will you do me a discount?’

I guess the guy doesn’t want to fare dodge, but who can blame him when prices go up? We slowly cruise through Dumpton Park. There’s weeds and wild grass growing in the cracks of the island platform.

Pavements full of litter, unemployment, teenage parents, family struggles, stroke services in jeopardy, mental health issues and a corrupt district council looking after everything. Welcome to Thanet.

Broadstairs station hangs on a slope at the top of its High Street. Welcome to the Turner & Dickens way. Dickens’s Bleak House lives on the clifftop and looks over Viking Bay. With windfarms on the horizon, as is much the same along the Kent coast. It has the best of the bays in the area and is regarded as the quainter of the Thanet towns. But much the same as the other towns, a lot of the High Street shops have moved to the out of town shopping centre, Westwood Cross – a mini Westfield.

We cross a field out of Broadstairs, pass an estate, and the train slows down as we approach the town where the journey ends. The unfinished town. Bits being propped up and just about held together. ‘MARGATE’ rolls across the screen. People start to prematurely stand, collecting their bags from the racks and heading for the automatic doors. I stay where I am, until we pull into the terminus. Somebody is playing music on their phone, another is answering a call and says, ‘I’m just on the train, but I’ll be there in a few minutes and will walk up to the clocktower and meet you.’ The railways aren’t public anymore, since they were privatised, but you still get no personal space.

We see the brutalist architecture of Arlington house. ‘BLOCK BREXIT’ in one of the windows of flats. Next to the re-vamped funfair of Dreamland, where I spent a summer working the dodgems and the tea cups. It’s been a theme park since the 1880s. It went into demise and ruin in the 2000s. The old owner set fire to the scenic railway, and it was derelict for years. But money has been put into it, and now it brings the tourists back in for more days of play. The scenic railway is making the kids put their hands in the air again. The Turner Contemporary has attracted artists and art lovers, the ribbon cut by Tracey Emin, who grew up here. It’s seen trendies from Hackney migrate to Margate via the High Speed rail, still within a commutable distance of the office, but who cares, you can work from home now. Or just work from your favourite local that offers coffee, and yoga and records too. A man with a beard is also flogging bars of soap, and candles made from local seaweed.

Margate’s always been a place for artists and holidaymakers to escape the city for cleaner air. The famous lines of T.S.Eliot ‘On Margate sands, I can connect nothing with nothing.’ He wrote some of The Waste Land in a shelter across the road from the station. Eliot’s poetry writing shelter is next to some toilets (his anagram). Turner came here to paint the panoramic sunsets across the harbour arm – smudged gold in the naturalist form. Tracey Emin has moved back and laid her bed in the Turner Gallery, and also married a rock. Dreamland is an all-day disco again. Sea bathing might not have come back just yet, but people still come to cleanse city pollution from themselves in salt water.

‘We have now arrived at Margate, where this train terminates. Please remember to take all your personal belongings with you when leaving the train. And when alighting, please mind the gap between the platform and the train. We have now arrived at Margate. All change, please, all change.’ Could the announcer not have put it as simple as ‘we have arrived at the sea – wash your sins away.’ I step out of the train, at the end of my journey, on the threshold of where the land meets the sea. There are no ticket barriers at Margate, so I just wander out onto the seafront without getting my ticket out of my wallet. I hear a seagull cry, I feel the sea salt breeze, I’m back home beside the white horses of the waves.

Sam Simmons is a beret wearing poet. He was born and read within seagulls’ cry of the splashing North Sea waves in Kent. He is a writer of geographical ramblings, poems and a painter of pictures. Sometimes he uses crayons like a three-year old would. He has an interest in psychogeography and enjoys long walks. In 2020, Sam graduated with a BA in Creative Writing at Birkbeck with a psychogeograpical dissertation titled ‘The Turtle’.

Julia Roberts by Len Lukowski

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.

THE BUTCHERS by Jonathan Morrow

I like to walk after therapy. I don’t feel ready to be normal again, or like I want to let go of the conversation yet. I follow the train line to the next station, or the one after that, depending on how it went. The city is coming together in my head. On this walk: the Vietnamese restaurant where I met Mary Lou; the roastery where I did coffee training; the kebab shop where Ross explained to me what a HSP is. A map of personal landmarks. For the first time I consider if Melbourne is my home.

There is a butchers by the next train station. Today I walk on its side of the road. There is a sign in the window seeking a cleaner in the evenings. It would fit in with my other job. I feel embarrassed to be looking at the advertisement. But I’m desperate for money, and here is an opportunity. I take a photo of the email address with my phone while a man walks behind me.

            I come back next week for a trial shift. I smoke outside to pass the ten minutes until 4 o’clock. I don’t know why I’m unsure of myself. I think, It’s just a cleaning job. I meet Matt, who takes me to the back and shows me where to put my bag and where to change into the uniform: a black chef’s jacket, a grey flat-cap, white wellies, a blue plastic apron. The apron is too long on me and I have to hold it up when I walk. I can keep on my own trousers.

            Matt shows me a laminated sheet on the wall – the cleaner’s tasks. He’ll help me out today and show me where things are. I clean a hundred black trays, scrubbing off meat, fat, blood and marinades, making sure I get the corners, then rinse away the suds and stack them to dry on the shelves above the sink. I do the same with deep blue and white buckets, ten or so, but wash them on the floor because they’re too big for the sink, and stack those to dry too. I take apart a saw, a mincer the size of a bath, a smaller mincer, a burger machine, a sausage machine and a tenderiser with a big American flag on the side. I wash the components in the sink, then scrape off the bone dust, cartilage and leftover flesh from the machines themselves, and scrub away the bloodstains and hose them all down with hot water until the stainless steel is shining and the air is thick with steam. I empty four bin bags and put them in a dumpster, and break down the cardboard boxes from the day and put them in too. I lift the heavy bucket of animal waste into a yellow dustbin kept in the chill room, and clean that bucket too. I scrape yellow fat off the long plastic cutting boards, douse them in white bleach and rinse them, and wipe the splattered blood off the walls above the counters. I put the machines back together. I clean the sinks. I mop the floors with water and red soap, and pull the suds and bits that everyone has dropped throughout the day to the drain in the middle of the floor. I empty the basket from the drain, wash it, and put it back.

            It takes longer than the three hour shift. Matt tells me I will get faster, and helps me to finish when it’s almost 7. For all three hours I try to ignore how humiliated I feel. I try to walk more naturally in wellies that are too big. I try to think about something else when I push the dumpster through the car park and see my reflection in the shopfront of the IGA, when I catch the eye of a man getting out of his black Porsche, and a woman in athleticwear tying her beautiful Golden Retriever to the tree outside the laundrette. I fear Im not better than this.

            Matt and I stand next to each other in the back after everyone has gone home and survey the room. He tells me it’s a good clean. I say that’s great. He asks me if I can come back tomorrow, and I thank him three times. I change out of the uniform and say, See you then. I walk to the station. I smoke two cigarettes waiting for the train. I tell myself I deserve them. 

I work at the butchers three or four nights a week. I don’t make friends with anyone. There’s little opportunity to because I work in the back. And there is a hierarchy in our uniforms that I feel as keenly as being new. I tell myself I like the break from talking and smiling to people all day in the cafe. I can put in headphones. I only need to say hello and good night. I can think or daydream or eavesdrop. I tell myself they’re dull anyway, working in a butchers, that I’m not missing out on any real craic. On Thursdays, there is a guy who reads out quizzes on his phone. I say the answers to myself, and get more right than they do. I am above them and beneath them.

            There is one guy who sometimes talks to me. I think his name is John. I don’t have much choice if he decides to start a conversation. He finds me at the sink, and asks questions that have one word answers and segue into another story, fact or opinion. I guess he’s in his early 30s. He always makes self-deprecating jokes about his height, like when he asks me to pass him one of the black trays I’ve washed from the shelf. When he serves a customer who annoys him, he turns away at the end of the transaction and paces to the back and shouts, What a fucking whore, or something, after the automatic doors have closed.

            On Valentine’s Day, John asks me if I’m doing anything after work. No, I say. I don’t want anyone to know me, as if that will make my time here less real. Then I repeat, No, nothing really, because I feel awkward in the silence between us. Me too, he says. Just me and my dog at home. Doing the three C’s together. He waits for me to ask him what the three C’s are, which I do. Cocaine, cocktails and ketamine, he laughs. I smile at him.

            I move through the cleaner’s tasks faster now, like Matt said I would. Today I finish before 7, and say good night as John is still putting cling film over each tray. I take the tram to Ross’. I can smell bleach and blood on my hands, on the sweats I’m wearing. I have to get off early when a ticket inspector comes on because there’s no money on my Myki. I wait 15 minutes for the next one.

            I pick up some dinner from the store and walk the rest of the way down the high street. It’s getting dark, but it’s still warm. I feel excited to see Ross. I wonder if he will have got me anything, but I know he won’t have. I don’t have anything for him. There are a lot of hairdressers in Toorak village. Barbers with leather sofas, mini-fridges stocked with craft beer, dark wooden floors. Salons are painted white, with good lighting and magazines and indoor plants on side tables. Every chair in every hairdressers is taken. Everyone is preemptively dressed, in tall shoes and shiny shoes, looking clean. I like looking in the windows. I find this funny and sweet, and think of all the ways it’s important and unimportant. I see my reflection in the clean glass. When I reach the end of the high street it’s dark, more quiet.

            I pick Ross up when he lets me in and we kiss. We are staying in because I said we can’t afford much else. He orders an ice cream sundae on UberEats while I shower and change my clothes. I sit down with him and find a film to watch on the projector. I wait to press play until his housemate finishes talking and goes back to their room. I tell him about the hairdressers, but he doesn’t laugh or seem to find it interesting. I think it’s because it was Australian, and he is Australian. We are quiet, and I feel sore. I wanted him to laugh because it would make me feel like he understands me.

            He falls asleep next to me while the film is still on. There is a pool of ice cream left in the box, but the thought of hearing the spoon scraping the styrofoam is unbearable so I put it down on the floor. I can still smell bleach on my hands. I do not watch the film. I’ve already seen it. I imagine walking past restaurants in the dark, seeing two sat either side of a small table with a bottle of wine. I tell myself it is natural to feel left out. I wonder if Ross feels that too but didn’t say anything.

 

Jonathan Morrow (@jonathanmorrow0) is a writer of fiction, non-fiction and theatre. He is Irish, but has lived in the US, Australia and is now based in the UK. His work is due to appear in The Rumpus.

The Ahp by Kaliane Bradley

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.

THE ARTIST WHO LIVES HERE by Claudia Lundahl

I keep paints and brushes and bottles of solutions around to remind myself that I am an artist, or, rather that I want to be an artist or to just be considered one. As though through the surveillance of the items on my desk, I can be encouraged to see myself that way. I have bottles of things with fancy names like gouache and varnish and I know what they do but I’m not totally sure I’ve ever used them correctly. I have a wooden paint chest that was given to me as a gift by someone who looked at me once with my messy hair and eccentric clothing and thought “I know just the thing.” 

I have based my artistic pursuits on the idea that all art is art, or, art is whatever you want it to be, or, there’s no such thing as bad art. I do not actually believe any of this is true. The truth is that I like looking at the art materials on my desk and thinking “an artist lives here” and the artist in that sentence is me or some version of myself that I am perhaps creating or molding myself into through the things I have purchased from the little shop on Old Brompton Road (near the hospital) which allows my dog inside and smells like old books and clay. The thought pleases me because it makes me see myself as an outsider would; like I am a character in a film which makes me feel capable of transforming my circumstances into something more interesting for myself, the me who is also the viewer. 

The truth of the matter is that I’ve hated anything I’ve ever created with the exception of blind contour drawings which is only because there’s no accountability when you’re drawing without looking at the paper. Talent doesn’t really come into blind contour – there’s no need for finesse or exactitude or understanding perspective or depth or shadow or hint or hue. These things are necessary when you’re drawing perhaps a building or a basket of fruit or a sad child or a running deer, etc. but not when you’re just moving your pencil or charcoal or pen around on the paper while staring at a thing.

I was once tasked with drawing a crystal bowl in an art class I was taking and I couldn’t catch the light, I couldn’t form the shape I needed out of pure illumination. It was frustrating in a way I still can feel when I think about it. I tore a hole in the paper with erasures. I wanted to be able to draw the light, goddamnit. I’ve felt since failing at that exercise that real artistic talent will always be out of reach but I feel important when I gesso a canvas. I feel significant when I mix a little bit of linseed oil or turpentine into my oil paint. Here’s a girl who knows what she’s doing, I think as I struggle to create something I’ll be happy with knowing full well I won’t. 

 

Claudia Lundahl is a writer from New York City who now lives in London, England. She has a husband and two dogs. Find her on twitter @claudrosewrites.

The Rainbow Ruckus by Thomas McColl

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.