It was a hollow victory, Hugo thought as he tucked into his last meal. Now that the initial excitement of escaping the care home and boarding a plane to Switzerland had worn off, the stark finality of death began to sink in.
After all his dear friend Ron had done to help him – booking the Dignitas appointment, fetching his passport, lying to the staff and Hugo’s family, and driving him to the airport – he felt bad even thinking like this.
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UPON BEING NAMED INDIA’S most wanted criminal, Fariha went to her local shop, where she bought a bottle of bleach to drink.
She stopped briefly to look at the rack of newspapers and her worst fears were confirmed. The Mumbai Mirror – a newspaper she had previously contributed articles to – had launched a hate campaign against her. Other papers carried headlines and stories pertaining to Fariha’s crimes. These included the assault of a friend from her university days; her suspected role in the murder of a Bollywood actor; and her involvement in a conspiracy to detonate a bomb in the US embassy in New Delhi shortly after 9/11.
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In memory
of all friendships
lost to silence
. . .
“Hey.” Sent.
Sitting in her half-lit bedroom, Kate kept staring at the phone screen. It was more than a year between their last “goodnight” and today’s message.
Continue readingFleeing Fern ran along the animal tracks she knew so well. Undergrowth lashing her legs, the tree branches closing in on her hair and skin, Fern was oblivious to the pain or the sound of the mob bellowing behind.
”Find the witch, before she puts the curse on someone else.”
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An unexpectedly early inheritance: poor Aunt Hettie shouldn’t have died so early, and Janine hadn’t considered the implications. However, hearts wear out, and as a result, Janine now owned a largish suburban house and just enough income to enable early retirement from a dull, mid-rank civil service post. Janine stepped out of her job and (at last) from an unsatisfactory marriage, kicking them both aside like dirty clothing. Free!
The house had a lovely garden backing on to a small copse. There was ample time in Janine’s rethought life to take on beekeeping, two hives of bees soon making good use of the garden.
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Winchester Hall had seen better days. Not especially photogenic or a marvel of design, it nevertheless stood proudly between tall oak trees whilst a meandering river coiled around it.
This site was infamous for the legend of Lady Elaine Winchester, accused witch who was rumoured to haunt the grounds.
“Of course,” the groundskeeper informed me, during our steady trek up to the property, “the witchcraft charge was all hogwash. Her accuser, Simon Mathers who was just eyeing the estate, cooked up the witchcraft crap, and after he had her hung, brought the house from her dissolute and estranged son. Oh, and before she died, she vowed to kill any descendant of Mathers who’d dare step foot in her house, and to do everything in her power to help her descendants reclaim their ancestral home. Do you know what happened next?”
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Her living room is modest; a faded hand-stitched rug, aging armchairs, and bare surfaces adorned by little other than books. Of the latter, there is an abundance. Stacks ten deep, crammed shelves, and an overflow surrounding the chairs like learned sentries guarding against ignorance.
Witchfinder Smith rubs his chin. Not the home of a dark-artist, he thinks. It feels more professorial than satanic. Intellectuals are banned, but they aren’t witches. Besides, intellectuals are not his concern, being in the purview of the Bureau of Acceptable Knowledge, not the Witchfinder General.
Continue readingThe blade glints in the light that breaks through the shutters.
Dust motes lazily dance in the illumination, like galaxies spiralling away from The Big Bang, sending her mind to thoughts of fractal patterns, never-ending repetitions of mathematical formulae that are mesmerising in their complexity and beauty.
She can see everything now, the enhanced vision they gave her at sixteen just one of the many upgrades that apparently make her better, faster, stronger. She’s supposed to be more than human but, somehow, feels lesser, as if this isn’t meant to be.
Continue readingI.
I have lived in the cathedral rafters for an endless number of bell chimes. At first I thought I’d count them to track the passage of time. It’s an enormous hunk of bronze, the bell, and every time it rings, it roars so loudly I’m amazed I haven’t lost my hearing yet. In fact, though, most of the time I don’t hear it at all; after so long living here I must’ve learnt to ignore it, and only when I was much younger did it used to wake me up on a Sunday.
Sometimes the chime of the bell is so incessant it’s impossible to ignore. When it rings to announce special occasions, so do my ears. I remember, as a child, church bells singing wedding melodies while beautiful women floated like clouds along the aisle. From this close there is nothing melodious about this bell. It only clangs.
Continue readingThe boardroom was silent for a full minute following Lisa’s presentation.
It was Callum, one of the Runners in the TV company, who broke the silence. “You’re the producer so you know best…” he said.
A bit over-confident for one so young, Lisa thought. But he had the good grace to blush when he spoke, which was kind of cute, so she let him continue.
“…But what sort of person would want to watch a football match like this?”
Lisa peered over her glasses and allowed a smile to spread across her face. “Exactly,” she said.
*
Continue readingLiz sat drinking her oat milk latte, and seeing her reflection in the cafe window sighed. This is not how I imagined my retirement, my face all puffy and pale from the medications I had been prescribed. After an active job I had felt prepared for the future, but my body had other ideas it had decided. Diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol had suddenly appeared, although I was told they had been on their radar for years!!
Having lost the ability to wear stilettos, I reluctantly admitted defeat and replaced them with sensible shoes. I loved my old shoes even kept my favourites, just in case, trying them on now and again but usually ended up going ass over tit .
Continue readingThe ambulance outside alerted two of the neighbours.
‘Is Janice OK? Mrs Hughes asked. ‘She’s been looking very drawn.’
‘I saw her come to the door. I think it’s…’
‘Alex?’
‘Janice told me he’s been worse lately,’ Mrs Phillips said.
‘That overdose. Last summer, wasn’t it? Do you think he…?
Mrs Phillips clamped her lips together. This isn’t suitable conversation her stiffly proper expression seemed to say.
/
Eirlys was everything to him. He watched her grow as a baby, kept an eye on her schooling. On her reaching puberty he became over-interested, you might say. When she had boyfriends, well he had jealousy like a bridge has rivets. Eirlys’ marriage left him grey somehow, his spirit seemed to have drained from him. But he had the blues in him right from when we first dated, just kids. He was prone to them. Having a daughter gave him some relief, I suppose; her leaving home extinguished that. I tried to help him but his empty heart wouldn’t let me in. I’ve been expecting this ever since last summer. Longer, really, if I’m honest.
Continue readingLeela stared at the white plastic stick, silently begging the Hindu goddess of fertility for two blue lines. But once again, Parvati was not playing. Leela pulled down the waistband of her jeans examining her pockmarked belly. Countless tracked cycles and three rounds of IVF, each preceded with the optimism of ‘this time!’ followed by a dream shattered. Grief, despair, jealousy, overwhelm and other inexplicable emotions joining the rollercoaster on each trip.
“This time we’re done” said Rahul, “IVF has decimated our sex life. And in case you’re wondering, I can’t countenance surrogacy, it’s rent-a-womb exploitation on steroids and I won’t be part of it. I’d prefer a puppy, much less trouble.” he concluded.
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In the dusk is a sea monster, bulky, black and rubbery, glistening in the remnants of the light. It is almost still, as if waiting for a prey.
A fellow waves the crowd on board, taking the last of their money. At this the youngest of our crew, Paul, averts his eyes. It’s superstition: if he doesn’t look maybe this voyage might be uneventful.
More ragged travellers arrive. The fellow squeezes them on, extra bucks for him and his criminal smuggling network. He doesn’t care if he’s endangering people. He gives one of those on board a GPS, saying in English, ‘north west’.
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Feeling vaguely sophisticated, Janelle sipped her chilled Chablis in Sydney Airport’s business lounge.
Life is good. Basically it’s just a series of decisions… and consistently making the right ones, she mused, recalling the roller coaster of the last six years.
Continue readingMum’s crying again. That’s how my days go now, thinking she’s talking to her comatose son, but in reality I’m right here, locked inside my own body, fully conscious but unable to move or speak. I braced myself for her routine onslaught of confessions as she wiped the tears from her eyes and adjusted the stiff hospital chair.
“Oh, Danny, it’s just so hard,” she began, her voice cracking. “I’m working night and day, and when I’m not working I’m cleaning. I love Mark dearly but I wish he would just once take something off my shoulders.”
Continue readingShe rests the plastic stick upside down on the sink as carefully as possible, as though disturbing it might disrupt the chemical reaction of hormones in the pregnancy test and somehow change the result. Then, just as gently, she lowers the toilet lid and perches on the edge.
Five minutes. That’s all she has to wait. It scuttles by like a mouse when you’re having fun, but she knows how leaden time becomes in this particular situation. She’s been here too many times. She’s tried distraction – scrolling mindlessly through Instagram (bad idea. Baby photos and smug pregnancy announcements everywhere); counting the mosaic tiles on the walls (4,820); and muttering prayers. She’s even tried watching the test continually, waiting for that second pink line to bleed through the stark white window, on one occasion even convincing herself that she could see it. But it was just a trick of the light. No matter how she passes the time, it always ends the same way. Tears. An argument with Gav, because he never says or feels the right thing. Another month stretching out like a desert before her.
Continue readingWhat with the encircling memories crowding in, Engineer Ozob completely forgot to recalibrate the composter. The consequences, cataclysmal, are well-documented in the journals recently unearthed, an appropriate descriptor, given the tons of earth mixed with meteor fragments that had entombed the Obmil Annals. 110 year-books, carbon-dated 5630 AD to 5740 AD, then silence.
The previous evening, prior to Ozob’s dream, Deputy Toidi had reported, “Composter one’s out again.” with that smug look that said “You must have it done it wrong again.”
“I’m onto it. Good timing; a new rubbish cloud is orbiting.”
Continue readingThe shop’s door opened with a gentle “ding”. A teenage girl walked in, looking around, getting used to the cluttered dark room. On shelves, all sorts of unusual items were put for sale: a wooden pigeon, an engraved locked box, a teddy bear; unsophisticated at first, each one contained a special purpose.
“The all-knowing glasses? Is it like Wikipedia?” she stopped in front of round glasses in a golden frame.
“Nearly”, the shopkeeper replied,” but you can’t have Wikipedia transmitted directly into your brain.”
The girl laughed. She kept walking until she found a shelf with sealed empty bottles. Just looking at them already felt unusual, like nostalgia.
Continue readingBefore she died and came back to haunt me, I lived with my mother for two years. They wouldn’t let her out of the hospital bed until they knew she was coming home to someone, and my father had the foresight to die a decade prior. I asked her doctors for a care package. No result. When they told her this, she took it to mean that no one cared.
Behind the dusty velvet curtains in my mother’s spare bedroom was a streetlight bright enough to seep around the edges and keep me up all hours of the night. At four o’clock I’d stand in the window and watch the rain fall like knives and write descriptions in my head of the garden, four metres square of concrete jungle. To the song of her snoring I’d walk along the landing and trace my fingers along the bannisters, planning how to photograph the woodwork for the house listing. When I spoke of my mother, the neighbours’ mouths gaped, horrified at my exasperation, and I made a mental note to warn the next owners they could never be honest.
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