Short Fiction ~ Sudha Balagopal Honourable Mention, Strands International Flash Fiction Competition - 11strandspublishers.weebly.com/results.html When the baby's heartbeat revs from the regular glug-glug-glop to a brisk dum-dum-dum on the monitor, when your contractions ride from dip to crest, a flurry of nurses prop your feet up on the stirrups. You wiggle trembly toes, legs drug-deadened, while fraught nurses trot in and out, trundling trolleys and trays. You interlock frozen fingers while they discourse about the alarming pace of the fetal heart. Earlier they pierced you and injected Pitocin when your contractions didn't progress.They followed that with the stab of an epidural. The numbness leaves you spiritless. And now, you're tired. So, so tired. “How are we doing?” the doctor asks. He's only checking on the foetus. “All set to deliver?” You think of the couple waiting outside, perhaps pacing the lobby, perhaps crossing and uncrossing their legs, perhaps reciting prayers, perhaps rocking a tiny car-seat that rests on the floor, perhaps checking and re-checking a carry bag of frills and fluffy toys. The doctor urges, “Almost there! Push. . .Puush. . . .Puuush.” You fall back, spent, and the nurses urge, “Push. . . Puush. . . Puuush.” One more hard heave, a strong squeeze, and she slithers out. It's the wah, wah, wah, wails that send spasms into your uterus. Squalls that slice, sharp, in your chest while everyone flits about, removing vessels, papers, monitors, machines and in that blur of activity, you catch a flash of tiny, flailing arms and floppy legs before she sails into wide-open arms. They sweep her away even as you secrete bodily fluids, the room surrounded by odors of afterbirth. You extend your limp hands; a wasted reach. No one notices. No one congratulates you. Your fingers droop. Someone―a no-one-special―asks a perfunctory, “Are you okay?” You straighten and straighten the crumpled sheet over the contours of your now-empty belly. ~ Sudha Balagopal's recent short fiction appears in Matchbook, Smokelong Quarterly, Split Lip Magazine, Pidgeonholes and Milk Candy Review among other journals. She is the author of a novel, A New Dawn. Her work has been nominated for Best Small Fictions, Best Microfiction, and the Pushcart Prize and is listed in the Wigleaf top 50. More at www.sudhabalagopal.com
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Short Fiction ~ Yvonne Clarke Honourable Mention, Strands International Flash Fiction Competition - 11 I stole books from the library every Saturday. We had a ritual. My younger brother and I pootled off on Saturday mornings to our local library, a formidable Victorian edifice surrounded by highly ornamented wrought iron railings. Roller skates on and clutching my bulging library bag, I attached safety reins to my reluctant brother and enacted my fantasy of driving a horse and carriage. He was lucky I didn’t have a whip. The day it happened was my brother Chris’s fourth birthday. After choosing another book from the seemingly endless Thomas the Tank Engine series (I prided myself on extending my brother’s vocabulary), I headed for the adult library in an adjacent building. I tethered my ‘horse’ to the railings near the entrance. At eleven years old I only just qualified for an adult library ticket, but was still young enough to be overawed by the high ornamental ceilings and reverent hush of the interior. The echoing acoustic magnified every sneeze, snuffle and shush. This was my wonderland – a magical place of erudition and knowledge which meant more to me than any theme park. This was the space in which to banish rowdy thoughts; I wanted no one to intrude as I immersed myself in the papery, musty odour emanating from the reference section and the cloying, plasticky pong of the ‘New In’ novels. Which section was it to be today: Fiction? I wallowed in P.G.Wodehouse (when I was happy) and Thomas Hardy (when I was full of pre-teen angst). Travel? My well-travelled father’s tales and his National Geographic magazines always fed me with a desire to know more about the world. Wildlife? Art? Music? The buffet of books was a feast for my eyes and a banquet for my imagination. But there was a problem: I could only choose three books; a near- impossible task. Stealing became second nature. My bag could hold five books, so that’s how many I took. Maybe ‘snook’ is a better word, as I always returned them, but with the luxury of doing so in my own time. The frisson of escaping the librarian’s eagle eyes only added to the joy of attaining my literary stash – no electronics to catch you out in the 1960s. But this day was to prove my undoing. As I sauntered nonchalantly up to the ‘Books Out’ desk, my heart leaping as usual like a mad March hare, a voice from behind me declared in strident tones: ‘Excuse me, young lady….’ Dropping the bag of books like hot coals, I was off, down the library steps and through the park, pursued by a portly uniformed personage who showed signs of falling behind at every stride. But an ownerless greyhound wanted to join in the chase and launched himself at me with joyful abandon, causing me to trip on the path in an ignominious sprawl. ‘I’m sorry, I won’t do it again,’ I gasped, trying to hide the pain from my grit-grazed knees, holding back my tears and my fears. As the official helped me to my feet, I smelled the whiff of his stale tobacco. ‘Whatever you’ve done, love, you need to come back to the library with me.’ It was only as I was marched through the entrance that I remembered my little brother. He was nowhere to be seen. ‘My brother’s been abducted!’ I wailed, ‘Have you seen him?’ Cheeks burning with a combination of panic and shame, I was led behind the desk to an office emblazoned with the words ‘Chief Librarian’. The ultimate confessional. My heart was banging like a bird trapped in a cage. Would I be arrested? The worry of my missing brother, however, was far greater. I realised then how much I loved him, and a torrent of tears splashed down my mud-stained coat. Mrs Black looked at me fiercely, a chief librarian’s glare. ‘You are a very lucky girl,’ she said. ‘But not as lucky as your brother. We found him wandering around the library, breaking his heart, totally lost. He said he was looking for his sister. He’s just here.’ And there, sitting on the floor in the corner of the office, was my brother, flicking through his Thomas the Tank book, sipping Sarsaparilla from a paper cup between hiccoughy sobs. Mortified and relieved, I gave a percussive sniff and threw myself at his warm little body. ‘I love you, Chris, I’m sorry. I’ll never leave you again.’ ‘We weren’t calling you back to return the books, you know. We wanted to reunite you with your brother.’ My sins had found me out at last. I had learnt two lessons today. But, contrary to what I expected, Mrs Black was impressed with my bibliophilic zeal. She decided to make an exception to the three-book rule, just for me, and I soon became known by the staff as ‘Five Book Bethany’. I never had to sneak books from the library again. As for my brother, on our trips out together, I clung to him just as a barnacle clings to a rock. ~ Yvonne Clarke has been a teacher of English as a Second Language for twenty years. Prior to this she was a copy editor and content editor for a number of publishing companies. She started writing flash fiction in 2019 and has had success in several flash and short story competitions, including the 2020 LISP Short Story Prize and the 2020 Worcester Arts Festival Flash Fiction Competition. As well as writing she enjoys cycling, music, and anything to do with protecting the environment. Short Fiction ~ Cath Barton First Prize, Strands International Flash Fiction Competition - 10 There had once been an uninterrupted vista across the park. The sun still rose behind the three-winged Georgian house – the worse efforts of man could do nothing to change that – but a tarmac road now sliced through the avenue of trees that had lined the original carriageway from the gates. The oaks to the west of the road had split and been felled, and those on the house side had grown so thick that its facade was hidden from view. Marcia Brice-Martin, visiting with her husband from Ormonville, a one-street town of clapboard houses in the American Mid West, was none the less enchanted. ‘This is so pretty,’ she trilled to the girl selling entrance tickets from a window cut in a portacabin. ‘Back home we have only – ’ ‘House and garden or just garden?’ interrupted the unsmiling girl. Her shift should have finished an hour earlier and she was feeling the heat inside the metal box. ‘Excuse me?’ said Marcia, who had forgotten to put in her hearing aids that morning. The girl sighed and repeated the options slowly. Marcia’s husband bristled and stepped forward. If he’d been back home, he would have had his hand on his gun. ‘Two tickets for the complete package,’ he barked at the girl. ‘Elmer’, Mrs B-M started in a high voice, ‘Don’t you think–?’ As he lifted an arm to silence her, she noticed, as she had earlier that morning, how prominent the veins were on the backs of his hands. ‘We will take the tour, Marcia,’ he said. ‘You wanted to come here. We will damn well see it out.’ He would have slammed his hand on the counter to emphasise the point, but there was no counter, only the sliding plastic window behind which the girl sat with the tickets. Marcia, who would have preferred to have simply strolled round the walled garden before taking tea, knew better than to argue. ‘Tours start on the hour,’ the girl said in a flat voice. ‘Forty minutes round the East Wing of the house. Stay with the guide at all times.’ As they walked towards the house Elmer Brice-Martin stumbled and clung to his wife’s arm. ‘Your stick, Elmer, we should go back to the car and fetch it,’ she said, her voice rising again. ‘Don’t fuss, Marcia, it’s this damned gravel the English lay on their paths. Designed to trip a guy up.’ The Brice-Martins were nearing the end of the 3pm tour when Trenchant Collier, a local boy whose father had worked in the gardens of the house two hundred years previously, woke from a long sleep in one of the furthest greenhouses, which were out of bounds to visitors, and went in search of something to eat. As he entered the old kitchen, which had been kept exactly as it was in the early 1800s, except that the joints of meat and loaves of bread were plastic replicas, the boy was surprised to see the small gaggle of people dressed in clothes strange to him, and equally surprised when he bit into a loaf of bread and found it impossible to chew. None of the visitors saw Trenchant, but Marcia felt his aura. She said nothing to her husband; he was a sceptic who preferred the feel of cold hard metal to stories of the insubstantial. In the conservatory tea-room they ordered cream teas, though, looking at the veins standing out on her husband’s forehead now as well as his hands, Marcia wondered about the wisdom of this. ‘Don’t you think–?’, she started as Elmer spread strawberry jam thickly on half a large scone. ‘For heaven’s sake, Marcia, can’t you let a man enjoy a bit of fruit?’ Elmer heard his voice ricochet off the glass of the conservatory roof like a spray of gunfire. The legs of the wicker chair into which he had squeezed himself buckled as he instinctively ducked down. He reached out for one of the table legs to steady himself, but caught only the trailing edge of the tablecloth. Trenchant Collier, who just had come into the tea room, was still in search of something he could eat. The girl whose job was to stop children from poking their fingers into the cake icing had been distracted by the unfolding calamity at Table 3, and in any case would not have seen Trenchant pick up the apricot and walnut loaf which she had just taken out of the freezer and attempt to bite into it. Marcia was wailing, thinking this was the heart attack she had long feared would carry her husband off. He, on his back like a stranded beetle, was impeded in his struggle to right himself by the tangle of tablecloth. The floor was splattered with sticky jam and cream and tea was trickling under the neighbouring tables. Trenchant picked up a scone rolling in his direction and smeared it with butter that had been left on another table. Relieved to find something edible, he sat down and watched the drama unfold. Marcia, feeling Trenchant’s aura again, and now convinced that her husband was about to die, cried out even more loudly. ‘For heaven’s sake, woman, pull yourself together!’ Elmer, who had managed to get to his feet remarkably unsullied by jam and cream, sank heavily onto another chair which wobbled but remained upright. ‘More tea, waitress,’ he called to the hapless girl who was trying, single-handedly, to clear up the mess. She scurried into the kitchen. Marcia felt Trenchant depart. Elmer was still with her. The waitress brought tea and more scones. ‘On the house,’ she said. Neither of the Brice-Martins had any idea what she meant, but both feeling somewhat shaken, tucked in. ‘You need to ask for the recipe for these, Marcia,’ said Elmer. ‘They’re real good.’ She did not reply. Her thoughts had turned to the ghost story she was going to relate to the Women’s Home Guild when they got back to Ormonville. ~ Cath Barton is an English writer who lives in South Wales. She won the New Welsh Writing AmeriCymru Prize for the Novella 2017 for The Plankton Collector, now published by New Welsh Review under their Rarebyte imprint. Her second novella, In the Sweep of the Bay, will be published in November 2020 by Louise Walters Books. Cath’s short stories have been published by print magazines including The Lonely Crowd and Strix, as well as in a number of anthologies. She is also active in the online flash fiction community. Website: https://cathbarton.com Twitter: @CathBarton1 Short Fiction ~ Kasturi Patra Second Prize, Strands International Flash Fiction Competition - 10 I read the first few lines of the bestselling thriller for the fifth time. Still, nothing registered. The oil-stained suede couch sagged further, its springs creaking in agony, as I slouched to make myself invisible to the people in my parents’ living room. It was difficult to ignore their words though. “Forty-two and still single, chhi chhi…are you sure she isn’t, you know…” Neela Kakima let those words hang in the air. I doubted whether she actually believed her hoarse “whispers” wouldn’t reach me in the balcony. “Na na, nothing like that,” Ma sounded apologetic, “we’ve talked about that, too.” Baba cleared his throat; he was an expert at squashing uncomfortable conversations be it the refugee crisis in Syria or his own daughter’s sexual orientation. In my peripheral vision, I noticed Arnab Kaku rubbing his thick, hairy knuckles over his potbelly, bits of his protruding stomach visible from between the straining shirt buttons. His fingers adorned with gemstone rings, looked like a grotesque rainbow. I threw up a bit inside my mouth when he stuffed his face with the jaggery sondesh and spoke with his mouth full, “Girls these days are getting too much freedom and that’s getting into their heads,” unlike his wife, he didn’t pretend to whisper, “I keep telling Neela how lucky we are to have a son.” I chucked the paperback with a splat on the coffee table and stood up. My breathing slowed down only after I reached my childhood bedroom upstairs. My parents hadn’t changed it much since Didi and I left—the walls were adorned with our artwork in crayons, the door of the steel almirah was studded with stickers from popular nineties cartoons—Powerpuff Girls, TaleSpin, Duck Tales. On top of the study table sat a picture frame that held a photo of Didi and me squinting at the camera, wearing identical batik printed frocks. The soft, pudgy body squashing against my back, smelling of apple shampoo and cocoa butter, woke me up from my fitful slumber. “Rinki!” I sat in a puddle of sleep induced daze mixed with the affection that I reserved only for my six-year-old niece. She crawled into my lap screaming, “Mashiiii”, I dipped my face into her curly hair wishing I could bottle her earthy scent of childhood and take it back with me when I left Kolkata. “I hate to break the aunt niece reunion but I have to,” my elder sister stepped into the room smiling affectionately, “Rinki, go down for lunch, I’ll come with Mashi in a minute.” Didi didn’t ask me why I was sitting on my own in this dark room when there were guests downstairs, instead she took me in her arms. I rested my head on her shoulders just like I used to on nights when I was certain the monster was calling me from atop the palm tree outside the window. My visits to Kolkata wouldn’t have been so frequent if it weren’t for my sister and my niece. At the lunch table, Didi tried veering the conversation into neutral territories. “Congratulations, on your admission to the MIT, Riju!” Didi put on a big smile and looked expectantly at the young man who was grinning at his crotch while typing furiously on his phone under the table. Neela Kakima nudged her son and muttered something, perhaps reminding him that my parents hosted this lunch to honor his “grand success”. “Thanks,” he shrugged. Didi gave me a sideways glance, I shook my head and put a little bit of rice mixed with chicken curry into Rinki’s open mouth. “From the moment he ranked twentieth in the IIT entrance exam, I was certain that my boy is going to make it to the MIT,” Arnab Kaku beamed while his son was once again lost into the fascinating world inside his phone. “Yes, Riju has always been a gem of a boy! From topping his classes to representing his school in quizzes and cricket matches. You guys have been extremely lucky!” Ma cooed while serving Riju the juiciest pieces of mutton, maybe, as a reward for his hard work. Post lunch, Didi and I lay stretched on our childhood bed, our legs sticking out, our heads huddled in a single pillow, as we traded news of our lives. My parents had taken Rinki to their room for an afternoon nap. The three guests were in the guestroom, probably gearing up for their next meal. After a while, I got up to make our favorite masala tea. On my way to the kitchen, I noticed my parents watching a Bengali soap on TV. “Where’s Rinki?” I leaned into their darkened room searching for her small body lying curled up next to my mother. “Riju took her to the terrace.” I sprinted down the corridor and climbed two stairs at a time, my parents called out after me, but I didn’t stop. When I pushed open the terrace door with a creak, there was no sign of anyone except for a few sparrows perched on the bird feeder pecking at the rice Ma had left for them. The voice came from behind the water tank, a smooth, seductive whisper, so familiar sounding, like a silk scarf tightening around my throat. I instinctively grew quieter, tiptoeing to the place from where the sound came. Rinki’s purple frilly frock was hitched up while Riju tickled her thighs, his fingers crawling upward, “I’m coming now, hau mau khau, manusher gondho pau…” those words that scared me as a child, the words of a monster who could smell human blood. I shoved him so hard that he lost his balance and fell flat on his back. I could hear footsteps behind me. Looking at the faces surrounding me, I let out a wail that I’d been holding inside for the last thirty-five years. When I could finally breathe, I told them, “Arnab Kaku is indeed lucky to have a son who is just like his father.” ~ Kasturi Patra is a writer and editor. Her work has appeared in Jaggery Lit Mag, Litbreak Magazine, Bengal Write Ahead, Escape Velocity, 50-Word Stories, and Women’s Web. Her fiction is forthcoming in Lakeview International Journal and in TMYS Review. She is a reader for Voyage: A Young Adult Literary Journal. She recently won a novel pitch competition and her novel is forthcoming next year from Half Baked Beans Publishers. She is pursuing an MFA in Fiction from Writers' Village University. She lives in New Delhi, India, with her husband and four adopted animals. Short Fiction ~ Brindley Hallam Dennis Third Prize, Strands International Flash Fiction Competition - 10 The fact is, I never felt that far away, he said, from home. He sipped at his whisky. It’s the other side of the world, I said. But you don’t notice that, he said. It’s because we travelled by air, he said. You just sit in the plane. We couldn’t see out of the windows. If we’d gone by train it would have been different. It would have taken a hell of a lot longer, I said. But we’d have seen all that countryside passing by. We’d have had to make sea crossings as well. We’d have seen the distance, not just spent the time. I could see what he meant, and I sipped at my whisky. It was like that with Mel; with Mel and me. Only not like that. About distance being what you felt, not what it really was. Sometimes I wondered about walking there, to where she lived. I wondered about putting everything I needed, really needed, into a bag and walking out of the house and keeping on going until I got there, to where she lived. That would take days. It would take weeks. It would take the best part of a day by train, or even to drive down, but I never thought about taking a train, or driving. I always thought about walking there. It’s not about just the distance. It’s about what you have to overcome to get there. It’s about what you have to overcome to start out. That’s not all it’s about. It’s about it being a penance too. A penance for not having made the journey already. Every day on the road would be an act of contrition. Each one for a year of procrastination, near enough, depending on when you start counting. It would be a demonstration too, a demonstration of how much you cared, of how sorry you were, at least, that’s what I told myself, whenever I wondered, about walking there, to where she lived. It would give them time, as well, walking there, give them time to get used to the idea; time to work out what was going on, what it all meant, retrospectively, and for the future. That’s what I told myself too. And word would get down to her, word that I was on my way. Somehow, word would get down to her, because someone, someone, who knew me, would work it out, in the time it would take me to get there, walking, to where she lived. And that would give her time too, time to prepare for it, for me getting there. It would be on Social Media, or a phone call, by word of mouth. He’s gone missing, they’d tell her. He’s walked out, they’d say. He’s vanished. Nobody knows where. And perhaps, then, they’d wait, to see how she reacted. She’d know right away. Of course she would. She’d know. I think he’s coming here, she’d say, and then she’d look at them, to see how they reacted. Where else would he go, she’d ask? Where else could she imagine I would ever go, if I walked out like that? She’d still have time to think, after they told her, before I got there; time to make plans, to clear the decks, to get ready. She might even want to come out and look for me. The closer I got, the fewer roads there would be to look for me on. She could work it out, whatever the route I took, there would be fewer roads to choose the closer I got to where she lived. And when I get there, where she lives, she’ll be watching for me, from an upstairs window, or behind a curtain, or maybe even on the threshold. And at nights she’ll leave an outside light on so that I’ll be able to find my way, and she’ll maybe even leave the door unlocked, because whatever people think, and whatever they say, I know she’ll be wanting me to arrive, and she’ll be wanting me to have walked all the way. It couldn’t be any other way, for Mel; for Mel and me. It’s in the winter that I wonder most, about walking to where she lived, when the days are short and grey and wet. I wonder on the bleakest days, and in the longest nights. And then the Spring comes around, and I forget, and another year has gone. Isn’t it? He says, and I realise he’s been talking all the time I’ve been thinking and I see that he’s filled up both our glasses again, but I have no idea what he’s asked me, nor what the answer is, and he, sensing that I have no answer, says, it’s a hell of a distance. Yes, I say, it is a hell of a distance. ~ Brindley Hallam Dennis lives on the edge of England within sight of Scotland. He writes short stories. Writing as Mike Smith he has published poems, plays and essays, often on the short story form and on adaptations from texts to film & TV. Many of his stories have been published and performed, sometimes by Liars League in London, Hong Kong, and elsewhere. He holds the degree of M.Litt from Glasgow University. Short Fiction ~ Karenne Griffin Third Prize, Strands International Flash Fiction Competition - 10 He walked along the beach, kicking at pebbles, his heart in the soles of his well-worn trainers. Why? he kept asking. The question churning slowly, as did the sea to his left. Grey water that slopped listlessly, tumbling the pebbles with a soft rattle. He cast his eyes across the calm, metallic sheet, unable to determine the horizon. Grey, grey everywhere. Except for the pebbles. They ranged between black, white and many shades of brown. Rounded gently by the sea. He bent to pick up a piece of something green: glass that had also been worn smooth by the sea. This fragment was a delicate eau de nil. Not that he’d ever seen the Nile, but he’d crossed a river that colour in Afghanistan, tumbling from the mountains in its haste to reach the sea. It had taken Jawad years to save enough for the hellish voyage across Europe that had culminated in a couple of hours in a small boat to England. He had made his home in this damp, grey land, thankful at first to be alive. But now he wasn’t so sure. For when his wife and son had followed two years later, they hadn’t been so fortunate. Sometimes he walked to the large cemetery at the top of the hill and wandered along the avenue of cypresses until he came to their graves, marked only with wooden stakes. Somehow he must find the energy to save enough to replace these flimsy reminders of Samia and Ahmed with stones in a colour other than grey. White granite would be wonderful, but it was very expensive. He preferred visiting this beach rather than going to the graveyard. This was the place their bodies had landed, limp and lifeless after the storm had swamped their boat. Jawad had waited on the shore, his misgivings growing as many hours passed. The ruthless man who had taken his thousands of pounds in exchange for delivering Samia and Ahmed had fortunately also drowned. Otherwise he would have felt obliged to kill him. Jawad’s foot kicked angrily at the pebbles, turning up another piece of glass. This one white like the ice that formed in winter, in this land as well as his own. Though Afghanistan wasn’t really his land anymore. He doubted he would ever return. He picked up the glass and held it to the light, then placed it in the pocket of his jacket with the first one. They would join others in a drawer at his bedsit. His collection embodied the many tears Jawad had cried since Samia and Ahmed had been snatched from him at the eleventh hour. It seemed apt that nobody knew where sea glass originated. He wondered whether it would be possible to make headstones from flat rock, and fix these tears of glass to their surfaces, in memory of his lost loved ones. ~ Karenne Griffin is the author of five novels and two travel books. Born in Australia, she has spent most of her life in the UK, and the past 20 years in Wales. When not writing she enjoys country walks. She has eclectic tastes that exceed her budget, and her alter ego is a flamingo. Short Fiction ~ Adam Kelly Morton Honourable Mention, Strands International Flash Fiction Competition - 10 Lana’s asleep beside me when my cell rings. I kiss her naked shoulder and reach across her to my bedside table. It’s Rob. He tells me that Ricky’s dead. * The ice at the park was too soft to skate on, so we were in our boots, taking slap shots. Over on the hill, kids were tobogganing. We could hear their shouts over the echoes of our stick blades cracking, pucks thudding into the stained white wood. Then one of my shots went sailing over the boards, right to where Rob’s eight-year-old brother Ricky was pulling his sled up towards the chalet. The puck hit him in the face. I dropped my stick and ran over to where he had collapsed. There was blood all over the snow. * “You going over now?” Lana says, leaning on our bedroom door frame. “Yeah,” I say, pulling on my shoes. “How old was he?” “Eighteen.” “My god,” she says. We hug, and I walk out of our apartment into the May sun. I drive over to Rob’s folks’ house back on Harmony Street. My mom still lives a few doors up. I knock on Rob’s porch door and step in. Their living room is full of silver-framed pictures of Rob and Ricky. Rob’s mom, Lorna, comes in from the kitchen. “Hi Alan,” she says. “Can I get you something? Tea? Water?” “No, thanks,” I say. “Okie doke,” she says. I watch her go back into the kitchen, and I sit down on one of the green felt armchairs. Everything in this room is green or silver. Clean. Rob walks in from the hall. “Hey,” he says. I stand up and give him a hug. We sit back down, with Rob on the sofa across from me. “You okay?” I say. “I guess,” he says. I lower my voice: “What happened?” He stands up. “Let’s go downstairs,” he says. We walk into the kitchen, past Lorna, who’s spreading margarine onto white bread. We go down the stairs, through the family room in the basement to the storage room. On the way, we pass the open door to Ricky’s room. I can see his posters of Vanilla Ice and Color Me Badd in there. In the storage room—full of tools and mason jars full of pickled things—Rob points up to a wooden beam in the ceiling. “He hung himself,” he says. “We found a note. He was having trouble with school and with his girlfriend.” “Holy fuck,” I say. For a second, I feel bad about having sworn. Then I realize it doesn’t matter. I hadn’t seen Ricky in years, but he had always been a shy kid. Whenever we played Dungeons and Dragons or board games he was quiet, just kind of following along. Rob tells me I should probably go. I nod, and we go back upstairs. When we get there, Lorna says, “Do you want a baloney sandwich?” “No, thanks,” I say. “I’ll have something at home.” “Okie dokie,” she says. I give Rob a hug and tell him I’m here for him. “Thanks, Al,” he says. More than anything, I want to see my mom. I walk up the street, and in through the old front door. She’s is in the kitchen, still in her yellow bathrobe, watching Coronation Street on the black-and-white TV. When I tell her how Ricky died, she says, “Jesusmaryjoseph.” Then she’s quiet for a while. “Do you want a cup of tea?” she says. “Yes, please.” She puts the kettle on to boil and gets out one of my old mugs—a graduation mug with a trophy printed on it that reads ‘Certified Smart Son’. “Well,” she says, “I’m not all that surprised.” I don’t understand what she means. “You know what Ricky was like: so shy and never showing any emotion. His mother is the same way, you know.” She takes a sip of her tea as though it’s case closed on the subject. When my tea is ready she gives it to me, along with some chocolate chip cookies. We’re sit there for a long while. The next day, Mom and Lana come with me to the visitation at the funeral parlour. I kneel down in front of Ricky, lying in his coffin, wearing a black turtleneck. He looks the same as when he was a kid—pale, soft skin and parted soft-brown hair. He still has the dimple on his left cheek from when I hit him with the hockey puck. I cross myself, stand up and walk over to Rob’s parents. His father’s eyes are red, and he uses both hands to shake mine. He tries to say something but can’t. When I reach his mother, she says, “Thanks for coming, Alan.” She smiles. I smile back. I walk out to the car with Mom and Lana, holding Lana’s hand. She puts her head on my shoulder, while my mom takes hold of my elbow. “Well,” Mom says. We drive back to Harmony and get out of the car. In the driveway, Mom hugs us both. “I love you guys,” she says. With my hand on her back, I can feel her sobbing. “I’m glad you have each other,” she says–her face pressed into my chest. Lana and I keep holding hands as I drive us back to our apartment. On the way, we pass by the park. They’ve planted Japanese maples around the perimeter, all purple with spring leaves. Down where the ice rink used to be, they’ve built a playground. * The ambulance arrived to take Ricky to Lakeshore General. Blood was still pouring out of his cheek, and the EMTs were trying to staunch the flow with gauze. “I’m so sorry,” I said. As they wheeled him into the back of the ambulance, Ricky looked up at me. He smiled a little, and gave me a thumbs-up. He was going to be okay. ~ Adam Kelly Morton is a Montreal-based husband and father (four kids, all seven-and-under), who teaches acting and writing for a living. He's had stories published in Canada, the US, and the UK, and has an upcoming piece in A Wild and Precious Life: A Recovery Anthology, to be published in 2021. His debut collection was released in May, 2020. Adam is currently working toward an MA in Creative Writing from Teesside University, UK (distance). Short Fiction ~ Cyril Dabydeen Honourable Mention, Strands International Flash Fiction Competition - 10 He keeps at it with style, about having recently recovered from a hip operation--what he wants me to know. Now he’s doing well. How well? “But...?” I ask. Milt grins; he’s in his sixties; as is Jim, his friend—a twosome. Both are retirees from the federal government, and they make no bones about it. Milt thinks about the pension he currently receives, and gloats, “If I live up to 85, that means I’ll get a million bucks from the government; I’ve done the math, sure. Christ, it’s like winning the lottery!” he crows. I wait to hear more, looking at his almost rotund form--unlike Jim. “But the government--it’s the office politics I couldn’t stand!” Milt snaps next. “Aw, what politics,” mocks Jim, looking at me askance. Yes, me. And again, it’s about Milt’s recent hip operation. “I must try to get all the body parts I need now,” he grates. “Really?” “Before it’s too late, dammit,” he hisses. Jim laughs. I bide my time, sort of, now indeed considering body parts in the offing. Old age, see, with Alzeihmer’s, dementia. Physiology, not psychology. I look at them both with curiosity. “Get it all now, once you sense it coming--the little pain in the bones, I mean. Yes, go and get it.” Milt’s eyes really focus on me. Jim nods; and he’s heard it all before. “Because body parts will no longer be available with all the seniors now putting a premium on limbs,” Milt rationalises. “Soon we will all be waiting in line, like in your common grocery store.” Simple matter-of-fact logic—here in the men’s change-room after the swim. Not a doctor’s ward, ah. Milt’s face mirrors a new reality, he and Jim being here to kill time. I watch them having a “social moment”—like a genuine senior’s moment after swimming in the pool marked out for the elderly. “Parts are bound to be scarce, see,” Milt continues; then again about his hip operation. “It was quick, the bone cartilage replacement...titanium. In the hospital they wanted to send me home after two hours,” he almost shrieks. “But?” I ask. “I told them I need physio for two weeks; I insisted on it. I didn’t take acting classes for nothing.” “Acting classes?” “I could have been one--” “One?” “An actor. You’ve got to...these days.” Who’s really acting now? “Get all the body parts you can soon, bud,” he calls me in his thespian’s style. Milt’s now adamant. “Let the young people pay for it, the new workers. Christ, yes!” Jim simply nods. “Must I pay…?” I say. “Think, man,” Milt beckons me. "I am thinking,” I admit to parlaying, not demarcating, “What if I need a new brain?” I try humour, like my ploy. Jim bursts out laughing. Milt has a jaded expression. “You can get that too, can’t you?” Who is cynical? “How about a new soul?” I attempt next. Why not? Milt looks at me in consternation. New soul? “Maybe you really need a good soul,” he excoriates. “But not a bad soul, eh?” Jim scoffs. The transformative guru in me now: “It’s about one’s karma.” “You’re getting metaphysical on me, man,” Milt peers into me. “Now if you see a beautiful woman–naked, I mean....” he raises his arms suddenly. Thinking…what? I balk at his brand of metaphysics, not aesthetics. Objectifying …who? Transcendence is in the offing, see. Milt adds, “You will still lust after--?” “I will think only of...,” I try. “Her beauty, is that it?” Milt forces the words out. Ahem. Our jousting continues. Milt and Jim eye each other, then again look at me--as if to say “He really wants a new soul.” But wherein lies my soul? What neurons, molecules? A genuine social moment it is! I invoke famed neurologist Oliver Sachs. But indeed it’s getting genuine body parts because of the panic about Alzheimer’s and dementia just around the corner. Covid-19, too. Watch out! And body parts being scarce in the capital-city--here like one’s hallowed place. Let Milt and Jim have it their way, I concede. But it’s not like being in a monastery here, nor a place of pilgrimage or retreat. Milt casts a weird look at me. Jim’s in on it, too. Now what acting lessons must I take? I imagine being, well, Marlon Brando. Jim’s lips twitch. Milt, well, he won’t come here again. And I will yet consider having a new soul. Metaphysics, yes. One female swimmer appears, out of the blue--mermaid-like, from deep undersea, you bet. Fantasy! But now, it’s really like having half a heart, half a kidney, and one lung stretched thin. I breathe hard and stretch my arms out. Hip joints pulled tight. Tissue, ligaments with titanium. Oh, a new soul I yearn for, believe me. I look left and right, for the imaginary mermaid thinking of an exquisite body and soul, yeah! ~ Cyril Dabydeen’s recent books are My Undiscovered Country (Mosaic Press), God’s Spider (Peepal Tree Press), and My Multi-Ethnic Friends (Guernica). Previous titles include: Jogging in Havana, Black Jesus/Stories, Berbice Crossing, My Brahmin Days, North of the Equator, Play a Song Somebody, Imaginary Origins: Selected Poems, and Drums of My Flesh (IMPAC/Dublin Prize nominee, and Guyana Prize for best novel). Nominated for the Pushcart Prize, he twice won the Okanagan Fiction Prize. Cyril’s work appeared in the Oxford, Penguin, and Heinemann Books of Caribbean Verse and Fiction. A former Poet Laureate of Ottawa, he taught at the UofOttawa for many years. Short Fiction ~ Edward Barnfield Honourable Mention, Strands International Flash Fiction Competition - 10 ‘Tomoko’s Web’ is the largest exhibit in the gallery, a free-standing technicolour textile sculpture the approximate size of an aircraft hangar. There’s a cute note explaining the artist’s inspiration, some fable about watching kids clamber over an earlier installation. Daniel always smiles at that. The Children’s Gallery is full of cute notes, writing on the wall designed to reduce your guilt about dumping your offspring here for an afternoon, keep up the pretence that the scribble corners and junkyard xylophones are ‘educational’. The space is designed around the writings of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a psychologist who argues people are happiest when they ‘flow’, so you know what to expect. Ceri loves the web. First time they came here, she ran to it, slipped off her shoes and bounced in her socks on the padded floor. The sculpture is full of false entrances and springy dead-ends, loops where the kids can climb up but can’t get inside. If they’re persistent enough, they can find the right hole to enter the valley, access the real excitement. There are swings built with bags of canvas like stunned insects, and the more athletic youngsters leap from the ropes and slide down the sides. Alongside the instructions not to run and banning gum, there is a text box explaining that the whole concept is designed to encourage risky play, enable kids to practice regulating their fear. Of course, it’s perfectly safe. That’s the trick of ‘Tomoko’s Web,’ the illusion of danger, the opportunity for the child to rise to a level he or she is comfortable with. If anything, the participants are part of the exhibit – it’s the parents who experience the spectacle, the unease. Like today. Someone’s child is howling, and a mother is trying to peer through the outer seam to trace the location of the sobs. There are two boys Daniel doesn’t like the look of untying their laces: fat and pale, English and entitled, and older than Ceri by at least three years. He catches himself, fights down the paternal throb of pre-emptive anger. No point losing it at a couple of gobby eight-year-olds. Besides, he tells himself, he’s used to it now. They come here on the weekends when they are on this side of town; Cynthia, his wife, peeling off for a coffee or a shop nearby. Daniel has learned not to react when he loses track of his daughter among the strands. Once, he saw her fall three levels, plunging from a ceiling rope to land laughing in a smaller net at the base. It’s all useful practice, aversion therapy to fight down the hum of parental paranoia. You can’t always be there to protect them. She’s about six feet above him now, grinning down from a tiny slit in the side. A presentiment of adolescence and beyond. When she’s 9, Ceri will cut her knee on a broken tumbler at her friend Grace’s house. Daniel will be sharp with Cynthia for about a week afterwards. (Grace’s mum being a friend of Cynthia, inflaming his suspicions of the parenting skills that made the accident possible.) In the now, Ceri has found a silk-hinged trapdoor, and is wiggling through a crawlspace beneath the main web. Daniel can barely make out her yellow dress, brown hair through the bright fibres, and winces when there’s a flash of football shirts in the layer above, the two boys wrestling. Again, Tomoko has anticipated, ensured there’s enough cross-stich to prevent any contact. When she’s 14, over the summer, Ceri will retreat to her room and stop eating. Cynthia will schedule appointments with specialists. A haunted sense of failure touches everyone in the house, as though a missed symptom or lost puzzle piece enabled this sickness to infiltrate. Finally, a week before school restarts, Ceri will emerge and ask for cornflakes. Daniel and Cynthia sob, separately. She is up among the swings now, climbing monkey-style to the absolute apex, where a second industrial safety net prevents any further escalation. Even after all these visits, he still has the urge to cry out, call her down, but he forces himself to ignore it. She jumps, graceful as a swan dive, and lands in one of the smaller inner webs. Again, the laughter. University will be difficult. Ceri will miss out on her first choice, victim of some obscure new Department of Education mandate. (Grace, with worse grades but richer parents, is accepted). Daniel and Cynthia have separated by this point and, as they trade blame in a coffee shop, he’s struck by a vision of the scar on her knee. There’s commotion, a clash of bodies at the web’s centre causing squeals and side-line interference. One of the Dads is remonstrating with a staff member, honking about safety codes, and another is trying to climb in on a rescue mission. Daniel knows it’s futile. ‘Tomoko’s Web’ has tensile strength enough to hold a family-size car, but the entrances all narrow to keep the adults out. He thinks he hears Ceri cry, imagines one of the football boys rolling over her. At 22, having graduated with honours, Ceri will celebrate with her on/off boyfriend and three of his college friends. When they leave the apartment, she will notice that the driver is having trouble focusing, his speech slurred. She does not get out of the car. Daniel is asleep when the phone call comes. The angry father collects his daughter from a porthole, carrying her out despite her protestations. The Tom Cruise manque still has one leg stuck when his son (the fatter of the fat eight-year-olds) escapes with a nosebleed and a sheepish expression. Daniel waits for a minute, holds his breath, his hopes for his daughter’s future all tangled. Finally, two feet in blue socks touch down on the cushioned ground. He lets out a silent prayer to Tomoko – Ceri, safe once more, now and forever. ~ Edward Barnfield is a writer and researcher living in the Middle East. His stories have appeared in Lunate, Leicester Writes, Cranked Anvil, London Independent Story Prize, The Short Story, Reflex Press, Communicate.ae, GoArchitect and Grindstone Literary. He is currently working on a novel and a collection of short stories. He’s on Twitter at: @edbarnfield Short Fiction ~ Gillian Brown Honourable Mention, Strands International Flash Fiction Competition - 10 A sense of possession swells Alice’s chest. Even the clusters of shivery grass that stand outside the fence belong to them now. Her thoughts jump to the future. Children skip about, playing hide and seek. A little boy sticks his head out from behind a mulga bush. ‘Here, Mum!’ he says, too young to understand the game. Her fists tighten. She must be patient. She and Sam came out here together, following their dream. Land in the outback was free for the taking but making a home of it has meant two years’ hard work. Without Sam’s skill and endurance, they’d still be living in a makeshift shelter, under scraps of canvas. Or… perhaps not living at all. Alice opens the wooden gate that Sam has made from strips of stringybark. She traces her fingers over the lettering carved on the front: Alice & Sam. And underneath: A Place Called Home. For their eyes only. Their nearest neighbours live several hundred kilometres away. A smile crosses her face as Toby, their aging cob, neighs from the makeshift stable round the back, hungry for his supper. On the horizon, Sam’s silhouette grows bigger. His wide shoulders. His measured step. Two rabbits swing from his left hand. In the other is his rifle. Alice’s stomach rumbles. Its immediacy gives temporary distraction. The doctor’s words, ‘Conception is possible, but unlikely,’ cling to her like a bad odour she can’t wash off. She won’t tell Sam. He too dreams of a family. Especially a son. ‘Light the fire, girl,’ Sam says, planting an affectionate peck on her cheek. Alice turns away. ‘Righto.’ ‘What’s wrong?’ She manages a smile. ‘Nothing.’ She’ll tell him when the time is right. Not today. The fire they share each night, outside the front porch, not only cooks their meal but eats up their solitude. Long after they’ve eaten, she gazes into its embers. In those moments, content. This is home now. It belongs to them. Together, they’ve made it so. Stage one of the plan is in place. Stage two has a setback. That’s all. One day soon, there will be the sound of little feet and laughter. A flock of scarlet and emerald parakeets fly by. They shriek at each other in a language only they can understand. ‘One big, happy family,’ she says. A lump rises in her throat, before she can stop it. She glances at Sam and sees his mind is elsewhere. For him, practicalities come first. He just assumes babies will come – a natural consequence of their lovemaking. They eat their rabbit in companionable silence, chewing the meat from the bones until only a skeleton is left. But tonight, the embers give Alice no peace. Each dying spark seems to sear her flesh and burn into her soul. Next day, Sam announces he is off to buy provisions in the market town, three days’ ride away. She hides her fear of being left on her own. Until now they’ve survived on what they brought with them, along with food from Sam’s hunting and gathering, and a supply of home-grown cabbages and potatoes. Rain water is stored in the huge tanks Sam constructed. Enough for drinking, and for Alice’s vegetable plot, down by the creek. Often dry. ‘I’ve run out of ammunition,’ Sam says, ‘and much besides.’ Alice gives him a list of her own. ‘Okay,’ she says lightly, but her heart is heavy. He saddles Toby, kisses Alice goodbye and trots off. After he’s been gone a week, she starts to pace. She can’t concentrate, forgets to eat. Ten days seems like a decade. After two weeks, her insides feel as hollow as the trunk of a dead eucalyptus. What could have happened? She picks at her raggedy sleeve, picturing the new smock he promised to buy her. Gripped by shame at her lethargy, she makes dough with the last remnants of flour. When she pulls the loaf from the mud oven, she tears at it with the hunger of a starving dingo. But it tastes of nothing. The sky whitens with heat. A flock of parakeets fly in. Alice throws some crumbs on the ground towards them. The birds land, gingerly moving closer. After eating, they huddle up together with an air of intimate contentment. Alice wipes a tear from her cheek. Next day, she sets off with the spare rifle Sam left her. ‘For emergencies,’ he said. Soon, a wallaby hops by. Her finger shakes on the trigger. The marsupial’s big, dopey eyes seem to plead with her. She lets it hop away. Hunger chews at her gut. When it comes back, she kills it. Sam told her stories about Ned Kelly and other highwaymen. How they rob and kill for a living, getting rich off others’ hard-earned savings. Sam has taken most of theirs with him. She starts to lose count of the days he’s been gone, but it is as clear as the Southern Cross in the night sky that he isn’t coming back. She roasts the meat on the fire, wondering what to do. Not only has she lost the man she loves, her dream of a family is history now. She lets out a long, shuddering sigh. In the morning, she chisels a wooden cross for Sam’s grave. And one for Toby. When the wattle comes into bloom she’ll lay a bunch beside them. Time passes. Between sunup and sundown, she gathers bush-tucker and kills game to eat. The parakeets creep up closer and closer to the house. They peck at the ground, demanding crumbs. ‘Sharing my breakfast with the birds!’ Alice laughs for the first time in weeks. ‘Part of my new family.’ She sinks back into the shivery grass and gazes up at the great expanse of sky, imagining Sam looking down. She lays a hand on her stomach as her son’s feet kick inside her; strong and determined. Just like his father. ~ Gillian Brown started out as a travel writer but now concentrates on fiction. Her inspiration often comes from her travels or real life experiences. Motivation comes from short story competitions, for which she has a mild – but enjoyable – addiction. She has had stories published in magazines, in anthologies and online and won and been shortlisted in various competitions. Short Fiction ~ June Hunter Honourable Mention, Strands International Flash Fiction Competition - 10 Manno watched his wife and young son, wrapped up in each other as they slept, and held the imprint of their peaceful closeness in his mind as he crept down the stairs. His footsteps made no noise, and the front door was quiet as it clicked behind him. Outside the night was clear, the wind a soft rustle in the trees and a hush along the grass. He left behind the silent coffee shop, the empty grocery store, the sleeping cottages and bungalows. Later there would be grey, smudged CCTV footage of him as he crossed the forecourt of the service station at 3:20 am. His dark curly fringe emerging from beneath his hoody. His white face stark in the greyness. As he made his way out of the town his strides were longer and deliberate, and Manno felt an easiness from the back and forth tipping weights, and loudness of his thoughts. An energy after the exhaustion of his never ending despair. He noticed no one on the road - no person, no car, no animal in the fields. Only shapes of gorse bushes looming on either side, and above him a basin of stars. He could smell the countryside and hear the sea in the close distance, but he perceived all of this as if he was sensing it through a straw. Later an insomniac runner would recall a man in a hoody, and how his eyes seemed empty and bulging. The runner didn’t think the man had been aware of his passing presence. Manno took the gravel path off the main road down to the beach, the loose stones crunching beneath his feet. He could hear the pure sound of water trickling down the hillside as it made its way to the sea, and the sigh and whisper of the waves as they rolled onto the sand and faded away again. He didn’t remove his shoes as he stood at the water’s edge and gazed across the bay. In the distance he could see the flickering lights of the town he had just left and remembered the image of his wife and child, curled into each other as they slept; his wife’s face peaceful as the morning, as she wandered through her dreams. Later she would tell a reporter that his absence was uncharacteristic, even though he had been dealing with some issues. Manno couldn’t tell whether the tide was coming in or going out as he walked into the sea, his eyes focussed on the darkness ahead. Nor whether the water was cold or warm as it rose up his body. When it covered his head he turned to float on his back and was calm as he stared at the sky full of stars. He didn’t struggle when the waves covered his face and all he heard was silence. His only anxiety was that which crushed him for what he could have been. Even as he felt a burning in his chest when he inhaled water into his lungs, he didn’t fight. His vision blurred and faded out. As his body shut itself off, he felt only euphoria. Later his wife wondered how it was that you could love someone to the moon and back, and it still wasn’t enough to make them stay. ~ June Hunter lives and writes in Sneem, County Kerry, Ireland. Her work has been featured in Second Chance, Mash, Flash Fiction Magazine, Reflex Fiction, Potato Soup Journal and The Blue Nib. She participates in two writer's groups – Clann na Farraige, Kenmare; and Sneem Writer’s Group. Short Fiction ~ Linda Wastila Honourable Mention, Strands International Flash Fiction Competition - 10 Dear Mom, you write, Boston is good. Your pen, the one you stole from the Holiday Hotel’s front desk, pauses over the postcard you stole in Faneuil Hall. You don’t write how your fingers go numb from cold every morning when you scavenge the green trashcans that line Newbury Street for tossed half-drunk lattes and bags filled with torn croissant and muffin crumbs. You don’t dig too deep in the garbage, though, never too deep. In fact, you don’t tell her where you get your meals; you don’t mention food or shelter or Nikko at all. You don’t tell her you’re writing from a damp park bench in the Fens where Nikko and a man, silver at his temples to match the thin stripes in his suit, have disappeared into tall waving grasses. The music is great, Mom, you write instead. Musicians everywhere. We play in Harvard Square. We want to book a studio, press a CD because, Mom, people like our songs. People like us. And passersby do appreciate your music. They drop quarters, a bill or two after listening while they lick their chocolate mint ice creams. Good nights you rake in thirty, forty bucks but you don’t tell your Mom that good nights happen rarely, that usually police scatter you with their batons because you don’t have a busker license. And the people are nice. I don’t know why you and dad ever left this city. Last week a lady who looked like your Mom—same age, same streaky blond hair, same hazel eyes which look at you with pity—fluttered a twenty into your guitar case. Since then, every night as you drift on the cusp of sleep, the way that lady looked at you burns red against your eyelids, and you carry that memory into your dream. The same dream you have every night while Nikko prowls the city, of how you fly above stars and circle the sun held aloft by a lightness, a freedom, and then how you fall, tumbling and flailing through clouds, while below you the green-blue marble of earth looms closer: mountains, trees, roads, your town, the church your father ministers and where you sing in the choir, the dirt path through woods to school, your house, and just as you brace yourself to crash through the roof, the angel swoops down, her white white wings swallow you with silver heat; she pulls you close, the angel, and her eyes fill with light and pity and compassion, and as you surrender into her she opens her wings and you spin to the ground, a sonic boom. You wake the same way every time, your body twitching in the moldy sleeping bag you call home. Streetlight filters through the plastic bag draped at the end of the refrigerator box. The smolder of campfires opens the morning. You reach for Nikko, for warmth, for reassurance, to trace the angry red lines marching down his inner arms, but he’s gone. He’s always gone. Remembering, you shiver on the bench. Nikko emerges from the grasses, alone, and pumps his fist in the air, green clenched between his fingers. You hear him mutter about getting a hotel room tonight if you can’t get into the hostel. You know, though, the money will be gone by then. He slumps beside you, the bills float to the bench, and cries. You rub his back, pocket the two tens, and pick up your pen. Dear Mom, you write again. Boston is good. There are angels here. ~ Linda Wastila writes from Baltimore, where she professes, mothers, and gives a damn. Her Pushcart and Best-of-the-Net nominated prose and poetry have been published in The Sun, Smokelong Quarterly, Monkeybicycle, Blue Fifth Review, The New York Times, Camroc Press Review, The Poet’s Market 2013, Hoot, Every Day Fiction, and Nanoism, among others. In 2015, she received her MA in Writing from Johns Hopkins. When not working on her novels-in-progress, she serves as Senior Fiction Editor at JMWW. Short Fiction ~ Rachel O’Cleary First Prize, Strands International Flash Fiction Competition - 9 Her She grips the rough bark between her knees, grunting as she reaches higher, hands already pink and stinging. Splinters pierce her palms and thighs, but she continues, eyes reaching up, only up. She stops. This is it. This is the one. She hoists one leg over the branch and stretches - head out, toes curled against the trunk. The branch wobbles, but she hugs it tightly, inhaling earthy bark and tangy orange leaf. Her heart stops walloping and settles instead into a smooth roll. She rests, eyes half-open, and breathes with the tree. In. Out. In. Them Mum is nowhere to be seen. Her car is in the driveway, but no healthy snack awaits them on the table, no strident voice orders them out of their uniforms. Their calls race round corners and up stairs. It is the boy who finds her, being just young enough to think of looking for his mother in a tree. His sister doesn't believe him, but not knowing what else to do, she finally comes. Her eyes, round and clear as bubbles, rise to meet her mother's. The boy giggles and shrieks at Mummy's game, but the girl only tilts her head. Her body stills, as if she is approaching a stray cat. “It's OK, Mum,” she coos. “You can come down now.” Mum grips the tree tighter and twitches her head slightly. Her eyes rest on the children for a moment, then close. Him He finds them sitting beneath the tree, chins tilted up. The boy is no longer having fun. He wipes the tears from his pink cheeks with his sleeve so Dad won't see. They tell him they have begged, promised good behaviour, even tried to tempt her down with chocolate. He cranes his neck. “Come on now,” he calls. “What are you playing at? Look at the children – who will take care of them?” She meets his stare, but says nothing, moves not a millimetre. “Shit,” he says. Goes to the shed. When he returns, saw in hand, the girl jumps up, pushes against him frantically. “No!” she shouts. “No, leave her! I'll make dinner. I'll put him to bed. Just leave her!” He brushes past. The chainsaw roars to life, and he stands holding it, watching his wife in the tree. Waiting. She doesn't blink. He finds the crotch in the tree that holds up her branch and presses the blade in. The whine of the saw becomes a deep growl. A puff of pale sawdust leaps from the tree and softly floats down to earth. He withdraws, pauses again. The children wail, mouths open, but he cannot hear them. His eyes lock on hers. Blade returns to branch, woodchips flying in all directions. The roaring and swirling mounts as the blade pushes further. A pale dust sticks to their skin, their sweat, their tears. And then, a sharp crack. Her eyes cool and placid, even as she falls. ~ Rachel O'Cleary is an emerging writer of short fiction and has a degree in creative writing from the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee. She has recently worked as an English teacher in Poland and France, and currently lives in Ireland with her husband and three children. Short Fiction ~ Bruce Meyer Second Prize, Strands International Flash Fiction Competition - 9 Did I remember the path beside the lake where the maples bent over the cinder path and reminded her of a cathedral she visited in France when she was ten? There was no path beside the lake. “Yes,” she insisted, “you were there. We walked slowly. You held my hand. Wind rustled through the leaves. You said it would rain by midafternoon and it did.” We had never been to such a place. I reminded her of the beach, the hot July sun turning sand into a frying pan in the late afternoon, and how she was afraid her water-puckered feet would blister if she walked to the cottage without her sandals. “Did we hear the ocean?” “All day,” I said. “Did I burn?” “No. I put lotion on your legs. I rubbed your arms and back with it, and you went back to sleep.” “Then? Then did we walk beside the lake?” “There was never a lake.” “But I remember the canoe, the paddle dipping in the water, the trail of silver droplets making haloes in the still surface, and how afterwards we stood on the verandah of the lodge and looked up at the stars. There were so many stars.” I wanted to tell her that she could only live one life at a time in her mind. “You are thinking of a time I was not there.” “But you were there when you lit a taper and touched it to the wick of the candle. You passed your finger through the flame and I was amazed it did not burn you. You told me to try it, but I was afraid. And when a moth that had gotten caught between the screen and the inner window flew free when opened the sash to let in some night air, it headed straight for the flame. It frightened me, and to calm me down you told me to make a wish.” “What did you wish for?” “I wished that you would always be with me. We would walk along the cinder path beside the lake and listen as the wind moved through the trees.” “I wish there had been a lake.” “But there was, and I wished that if you could not be with me in that moment, that wonderful moment when I felt so alive with you holding my hand, that you would find me again, and you did.” ~ Bruce Meyer is author or editor of over sixty-three books of poetry, short fiction, flash fiction, non-fiction, and literary journalism. His next book of flash fiction, Down in the Ground, will be published by Guernica Editions in 2020. He lives in Barrie, Ontario. Short Fiction ~ Bob Thurber Third Prize, Strands International Flash Fiction Competition - 8 Straight out of high school Mick’s uncle landed him and me second-shift jobs at a textile factory where everybody wore rubber headphones to muffle out the noise. Everybody except the old timers, who were already deaf. I can’t even tell you what the company manufactured, but they certainly made a lot of it. From three until midnight Mick’s uncle calibrated dozens of loom-like machines and repaired any that broke, while Mick and I hauled cartons of braid from the loading dock. When nothing needed doing it was fun to watch the machines suck up braid like giants slurping spaghetti, while high above dozens of spools and bobbins intertwined different colored fibers, crisscrossing with one another. Most nights, after work, we walked straight to the east side and grabbed a booth at the International House of Pancakes. Neither of us owned a car but Mick told the waitresses he drove a Cadillac with AC and power seats. He flirted and teased, and because we were good tippers the girls flirted back. After we’d downed enough coffee to fuel a tractor-trailer driver’s all-night run, we’d hike over to Riverside cemetery and linger by the cliffs, smoking Marlboros and talking nonsense until two or three AM. Sometimes we just gazed at the stars and moon reflecting off the black water. Mick’s sister was buried somewhere in Riverside, but we never went near her grave. Years before I met Mick, his sister had been strangled in her bed, on Easter, while everybody was at church. My mother remembered the whole story from newspapers and TV. She told me the police questioned everybody and in the end arrested nobody. Mick never talked to me about any of that, and I never mentioned I knew shit, though one night, while taking a shortcut, walking past old houses with dim porch lights and pitch-black windows, Mick picked up a stone big as a baseball. He wound up and pretended to throw the stone, faking me out. He did this house after house, telling me each time how nobody in this world should ever be considered safe and protected behind anything as frail as glass. ~ Bob Thurber is the author of 6 books, including “Paperboy: A Dysfunctional Novel". Over the years his work has received a long list of awards and honors, appeared in Esquire and other notable publications, and been included in over 60 anthologies. Selections have been utilized as teaching tools in schools and universities throughout the world. Bob resides in Massachusetts. He is legally blind. For more info, visit: BobThurber.net Short Fiction ~ Sara Siddiqui Chansarkar Third Prize, Strands International Flash Fiction Competition - 8 “Bahu, did you buy mangoes?” Mummyji, my mother-in-law, asks from her room at the back of the house. She’s old and paraplegic now, but her senses are still strong. As is her voice. I pay the produce seller in the porch for the fruits and vegetables I’ve bought and lock the front door behind me. “I smell them…mangoes,” she adds. Of course, you do. I smelled them too, for 25 years, I want to reply but don’t. After he’d married me off, every summer, my father plucked near-ripe fruits from the mango tree in his courtyard, washed them, packed them in a wooden box layered with straw, and parceled them to me at my marital address — this house, Mummyji’s domain. In the two days it took for the package to arrive by train, the mangoes turned soft and fragrant. “Only mangoes for his daughter. No sari for me or a kurta for my son,” Mummyji sneered at the mango carton, ordered my husband, Nitin, to carry it to her room and stow it under her bed. Nitin obeyed her command while she berated my father. “That miser of a man! He sent only pots and pans with his daughter. No cash, no gold coins. My Nitin is a junior engineer. Even boys with a B.A degree get a motorcycle in dowry these days,” she continued. “I thought he’ll compensate on festivals, but he proved me wrong. On Diwali, I have nothing to show when women from the neighborhood flaunt glinting necklaces or earrings from their daughter-in-law’s parents.” While I kept chopping green beans and potatoes in preparation for dinner, my thoughts drifted to my wedding night, the night I knew my kismet was doomed. After the guests left, I waited for my new husband. Nitin arrived with Mummyji to the doorway and touched her feet before entering our bedroom. She sang blessings for his long life and left. Nitin lifted my embroidered veil, raised my chin with his fingers and told me that his mother was the most important person in his life, that I was to respect and serve her at all times, without question or retort. He said nothing about how pretty I was or how excited he was about our life together. Without a college degree or a marketable skill, I had no choice but to depend on my husband and my mother-in-law. Day after day, Mummyji ordered me around, showed me my lowly position in the family hierarchy. I yearned to confide in my mother but she was dead, taken by dengue. My father, a schoolteacher, struggled to raise my younger brother and sister. I couldn’t return, be a burden to him. I smelled the mangoes my father sent in Mummyji’s room as I swept the floor under her watchful gaze and instruction, reaching the broom under the bed to gather dust and fallen hair. In the evening, Mummyji and Nitin ate while I served fresh, hot rotis to them. After the meal, every day, until the box was empty, Mummyji pulled out mangoes—my mangoes—from the carton, asked me to wash them. It took every iota of willpower in me to not bring those juicy orbs to my mouth, to take them back to her. As I scrubbed the dinner dishes after eating alone in the kitchen, my mouth watered at the sound of Nitin and Mummyji sucking in the juice and the pulp, at the thought of the golden sweetness gushing down their throats. How sweet those mangoes were from my childhood tree. How my mother used to squeeze them out to make aamras, which she served with puffed pooris. How the three of us, my brother, sister, and I, raced to the courtyard at the sound of a ripe fruit dropping to the ground. How we sat in a circle in our underclothes every night, eating the yellow mangoes, the juice dribbling down our mouths to our elbows to our clothes. How my father made us sit, one by one, under the tube well’s outlet while he worked the handle up and down, drawing water to wash us clean. At night, after Nitin was done with my body, I stayed awake, smelled the mango aroma wafting from the trash, and waited for his and Mummyji’s snores to fill the silence. Then, I sneaked into the kitchen, shooed away the rats, extracted the mango carcasses from the garbage, tore open the fruits’ skins, scraped the remnant flesh on them with my front teeth, licked the stones until they looked like oval faces framed with short, white hair. I wrote thanks to my father, said the mangoes were getting sweeter and juicier with each season. When he died, last year, the fruit parcel stopped. Today, I picked up a yellow mango from the produce seller’s cart at the doorstep. Now, after Mummyji took to bed, after 26 years of our being married, Nitin gives me money every month to purchase groceries. “Are these mangoes sweet?” I asked the vendor. “Sweeter than jaggery,” he replied. I pressed the fruit between my palms, felt its texture, brought it to my nose, smelled its ripeness, then put it down, and bought only spinach and tomatoes. I still felt Mummyji’s eyes on me, all the time. “Memsahib, buy these mangoes,” the vendor called out, as if sensing my desire and dilemma when I walked away. “They’re the last of the season. You’ll regret passing on them, I tell you.” My feet turned around and I bought two kilograms of the fruit. “Bahu, bring me a mango!” Mummyji screams. “Are you deaf?” I tear the top off a fruit, suck, and suck, noisily. She clinks a spoon to the bedrail to get my attention but she can’t have it or the mango. ~ Sara Siddiqui Chansarkar is an Indian American writer. She was born in a middle-class family in India and is indebted to her parents for educating her beyond their means. She is a Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee; her work has been published online in MoonPark Review, PidgeonHoles, Barren Magazine, and also in some print anthologies. She can be reached on twitter @PunyFingers. Short Fiction ~ Oliver Barton Honourable Mention, Strands International Flash Fiction Competition - 9 The train stops in a tunnel and the lights go out. I say to myself, I’m not going to panic, because you can feel the fear rising, you know, in spite of yourself. In detective stories and movies, things happen in the dark, in trains. Alive before the tunnel, emerge into the light; dead body. Remember Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes? I can do without this. I am tired of the boredom of it all. I just want to get home and have a drink and eat something in front of some stupid sitcom on the telly. Escapist unnatural jolliness. A ghastly hysterical studio audience. It is dark, but your eyes adjust, of course. There is light here and there. Phones, tablets, laptops, all filling their humans with images and messages. Now the train’s generators stop. Those talking too loudly on their mobiles fall silent. Perhaps they can’t get a signal. It is uncanny, unnatural. Dark. Darkish. Silent. Fairly silent. I can still hear a tish-tish-de-tish-tish from someone’s MP3 player. I wish someone would say something. ‘Perhaps…,’ I say. And stop because I can’t think of anything sensible. Then the computers and phones start winking out. In ones and twos. The tish-tish gets a bit louder. The last light vanishes, leaving a dwindling image on my retina. The tish-tish crescendos more and stops. It is dark now, and it is silent. It is impossible. How can so many batteries run down at the same time? Why does nobody speak? There is a faint hissing. Is it someone whispering? I can’t make out words. My eyes are playing tricks. I keep thinking there’s a flickering glow outside on the tunnel walls. And the hissing. It is hissing. I’m sure of that. I don’t want to think what it might mean. What is leaking… Take my word for it, in a situation like this, in darkness, when you don’t understand what is going on and something is hissing, your thoughts turn to mortality. The fragile span of life. Of what you were going to do, what you could do, today, tomorrow, next week, next year… I’m fifty-seven, I’m balding, I’m overweight, I admit it. I’m… I… Oh, be honest! I haven’t achieved most of things I thought I would. Just haven’t got around to them, put them off, couldn’t be bothered. Now, though, I terribly want to do them, to walk the Pennine way, to visit Malta, to write a book, to learn to swim, to get a more fulfilling job… Now there is an urgent need, now when perhaps it is too late. It’s making me a bit light-headed. I feel I’m floating on my seat. And there seems to be a slight breeze. My hair is being ruffled. I think I can smell smoke. Total darkness is no good for the nerves. Nor is the deafening whistle that drowns out the hissing, a whistle that echoes down the tunnel. Like a banshee. The train gives a violent lurch, and everyone is talking and we’re moving, picking up speed, and the smoky smell is getting stronger and I’m choking. We burst into the light in a cloud of steam. Someone in a seat on the other side of the carriage comes over and tugs on the leather strap to close the window. ‘You should keep it closed when we go into a tunnel, sonny,’ he says. ‘Otherwise the smoke all comes in. Filthy stuff. Don’t know what they’re burning these days. Coal’s not what it used to be before the war.’ Tickety-tak, tickety-tak, goes the train. Tickety-tak, tickety-tak. I look down at the rather grubby and grazed knees sticking out from my shorts, I run my hand through my unruly hair and realise that possibly, just possibly, I have another chance. ~ Oliver Barton used to write Computer User Manuals, but having retired, now prefers to replace telling facts that nobody reads with writing whimsical fiction that lots of people enjoy. He is currently at work on his second novel. He lives in Abergavenny, Wales. Website: www.musicolib.net, though it’s more to do with his musical compositions. Short Fiction ~ Palak Tewary Honourable Mention, Strands International Flash Fiction Competition - 9 She finished work, grabbed her old threadbare yellow satchel which she hated and rushed home. She had to go to the next shift and there wasn’t much time. Amy had been working three shifts for a while now – there never was enough money to scrap through and she really wanted to save enough to finish her A Levels and then go to college. She worked at the library, as a general factotum in a lawyer’s office and as a waitress. She studied late at night via a correspondence course, which her social worker had set up. She was to take her exams in six months and move on to the life that she dreamed about. Orphaned, in the wrong company at her foster homes and a bad decision in high school had led her down a path from which she had had a tough time trying to come back. But come back – she had – finally. It was her friend’s death through an overdose which had woken her up from the slumber she had found herself living in. Just eighteen, she wanted to pursue her dream of studying fashion designing. She loved clothes but looking at her now, no one could tell. She changed into her waitressing uniform of black trousers and a white shirt, covered herself with her dependable coat, pulled on her shabby black shoes with tattered heels, grabbed her abhorrent satchel and with a longing look at the kettle, rushed to the subway. It was a busy night and as usual, she served promptly and efficiently but unsmilingly. Everyone who knew her had never seen her smile. As the night deepened, she thought, at times, she would pass out from utter fatigue but respite came when she was able to take a break to grab some dinner. She fell on it ravenously thankful that the restaurant fed her. The rest of the time, she had to make do with cheap knock-offs from the supermarkets that were nearing the expiry date and had to be sold for less or had to do without food. She got to the station, exhausted. Alone, she sat down to wait the two minutes for the last train to come. Two men came down the stairs at the far end, one after the other. She watched them, having nothing better to do. One turned and she saw that he was short and bald, holding something that looked like a folder. He seemed to be gesturing something to the other taller man, walking backwards. She was surprised as they had come separately and she hadn’t realised they knew each other. The taller man with spiky short hair wore all black. And then, it all happened in seconds. The silence of the night was broken by a shrill shout and then a scuffle between the two. She was too far to see what had caused it and was too petrified to move. The short man broke free suddenly and pushed the taller one back. Taking the opportunity while the tall man gained his balance, the shorter one ran towards her and she jumped up in fright. But he didn’t reach her. A gun shot rang out and her breath caught – the man who was running towards her, stopped halfway and then fell to the floor, his dead open eyes eerily watching her. She stood distraught as the other man approached her, his hand upright holding the gun, his lips turned in a vicious sneer, his face one that she would never forget. She looked around to find a way to escape. She had a few moments as he was too far for a clear shot. She inched towards the tracks. Miraculously, she heard the faint sound of the train approaching. The man heard it too and with a bellow, started to come faster towards her. She sprinted to the end of the platform as the train pulled in. The doors opened and a shot sounded behind her – with a yell and in agonising pain, she fell inside the train and the doors closed. As she lay there in a growing pool of blood, her eyes started to shut. Her life’s journey flashed before her – she saw a vision of her future-self graduating from college. In those few moments, she felt a lifetime of regrets wash away and all her dreams turn to ashes. Then there was light, and noise – there was the sound of an ambulance or perhaps it was a police siren and someone calling. Were they calling her? She couldn’t tell, sleep beckoned her. She didn’t hear the shouting or the patter of the feet around her, she didn’t know the train was stopped and her assailant captured by the police, she hadn’t seen the stranger in her compartment call for help. When she woke, she found herself looking at the white walls of a hospital room. She was alone with a familiar beeping sound and a strange bubbling noise. She looked around for water. As she wondered what to do, a nurse came in, smilingly and exclaimed “You are awake” and then bustled about to get her the next dose of medicine. Amy weakly asked for water and as the nurse gave her some, she said “You are lucky. Had that last train not come or that satchel of yours not been there, you would have surely died.” Amy’s eyes involuntarily went to her old satchel sitting on one side, sporting a large hole through which the bullet must have passed through – it was that, she now knew, that had saved her life. She had been given a new lease in life - a second chance – to be happier, to not only look at the burdens in life, to be grateful and to let go of regrets. And for the first time in many years, she smiled. ~ Palak Tewary, an Indian-born Londoner, is a management/finance professional, who along with being an ardent writer, is a travel buff & photography/videography enthusiast. She blogs at www.palaktewary.com and writes fiction, non-fiction and poetry – some of which has been published on various platforms. Connect with her on YouTube/ Twitter/ Instagram on @palaktewary. Short Fiction ~ Stephen Smythe Honourable Mention, Strands International Flash Fiction Competition - 9 Granny mimicked James Cagney, danced to Boy George, borrowed money from herself, slipped me ten bob on my birthday and drank eleven mugs of tea every day, never leaving one unfinished no matter how cold it got. When she’d smoked all her Park Drive, she used the empty packet for her weekly budget. Her columns of pounds, shillings and pence were barely visible to the naked eye, yet they were crystal clear to her. She didn’t need specs until she was way into her sixties, so didn’t have to remove any the time she punched a skinhead. I was ten, which would have made Granny around fifty, and we were in a café at the city zoo. The skinhead, who was across the table from us, was scowling at a girl next to him. He called her “Slut” and gritted his teeth. The girl’s cheeks reddened and she lowered her eyes. Granny’s cheeks were also flushed but her eyes were blazing. “What you lookin’ at!” the skinhead, sneering, said to Granny. Granny stood up and walked around to where he was seated. “Pardon?” Granny said. “You need a hearing aid, Grandma?” he said, leaning back in his chair. Granny socked him flush on the jaw. Her knuckles swelled afterwards but she said she didn’t feel a thing at the time – except satisfaction. He remained seated, open-mouthed. Granny stood over him, all five foot two of her, fist cocked ready to deliver another right cross. The girl smiled and the skinhead skedaddled. Granny was always there for me. I wish she were here now, so I could pick her up like I did when I grew bigger and she got smaller. “Put me down!” she’d yell, laughing chestily. She left school at fourteen, in 1926. Jobs may have been scarce nationwide but not for Granny who lived a few minutes’ walk away from the burgeoning Trafford Park Industrial Estate, built in the north of Victorian England on what was once deer land and meadows. She walked into the offices of Ford Motors and asked about vacancies. The supervisor liked Granny’s initiative and gave her a job right there. It was after two years at Ford Motors that Granny met Harry Turner, a new accounts clerk. He was eighteen. It was a brief courtship and a hasty marriage: Granny was three months’ pregnant with Mum. I discovered this after Mum died and I was looking through papers stashed in a shoe box, found buried away at the bottom of Mum’s wardrobe. I never knew Harry Turner, Grandad, nor what he looked like. There were no photographs. Granny didn’t talk about him. Whenever I said, “Tell me about Grandad,” she’d roll her eyes, or change the subject. Like Granny, Mum didn’t mention Grandad. The stories I heard about him came from Dad: how Grandad met Granny, how he gambled his wages at White City Greyhound Stadium, always had a Woodbine dripping from his lip, and that he drank too much. At the age of 39, he was so drunk he slipped off his own balcony to his death. Granny was a Catholic. She went to confession on Friday, mass every Sunday and always took Holy Communion, right up until having a stroke when she was 81. She was to live another six months. The week before Granny died, we were in her flat on the top floor of the five-story block where she’d raised Mum. She refused to be rehoused even though the lift often broke down. “I’ll manage” she said, “I always have.” It was hot but she was wearing a woollen shawl, seated in her armchair, tepid mug of tea in one hand, a lit Park Drive in the other. Her left cheek sagged slightly but her speech was clear enough. I asked her one last time to tell me about Grandad. “Please, Granny.” She rolled her eyes. “What’s the big secret?” I asked. “It can’t be that bad.” She smiled, lopsided, and spoke slowly. “It was Sunday night. I’d been to mass with your Mum. We ate supper and she went to bed – she had school the following morning. I was reading, one eye on the clock, waiting for…” she hesitated “…waiting for him to come home. I used to dread eleven o’clock – chucking out time at the pub. “I heard the key in the front door and I went stiff. He staggered in, stinking of booze. He went straight to the balcony door and let in the cold air. I can see him now, smirking in the doorway, slurring his words, “’Cheer up you miserable cow!’” Granny stopped speaking and drained her mug. “He was shouting how he wished he’d never married me. That I’d trapped him by getting pregnant. He was always saying that. “I thought he was going to wake your Mum. I stood and said, ‘If you don’t like it, pack your bags.’ He gritted his teeth. ‘Don’t answer back!’ he shouted. He punched me and my head banged against the wall. He’d cut my lip, again.” Granny’s eyes blazed as she looked beyond me. “He pointed to the kitchen, told me make him a sandwich, and went outside. I looked in the mirror and saw the mark he’d made on my jaw. It’s a wonder the bruises ever disappeared.” Granny stroked her face, the side that sagged. “I could see in the mirror that he’d climbed onto the balcony ledge. He was shouting and waving his arms, pretending to fly. A light from a flat across the road went on and off. “I wiped the blood from my mouth and walked out onto the balcony. It was dark and nobody was around. He looked down at me, arms swaying, and sneered. ‘Where’s my sandwich?’ “I felt my swollen lip. His legs were within easy reach. I thought, ‘Who’d ever know?’” Granny waved her cigarette smoke away from me. ”And nobody does know,” she said, her eyes softening, “except God, me – and you.” ~ Stephen Smythe lives in Manchester, England, and completed an MA in Creative Writing at Salford University in 2018. He was shortlisted for The Bridport Prize (Flash Fiction Category) in 2017 and shortlisted in the Bath Flash Fiction Award 2018. He was also placed second in Northern Ireland's Bangor Literary Journal FORTY WORDS Competition in 2019 and this year he was Highly Commended in the same competition for his micro-fiction. The boy had a hunch that the moment would freeze in his memory and return later to haunt him when the vicar darted in to his house on his bicycle, his white cassock swelling in the air and its ends flailing against wind as he whizzed past and came to a sudden halt that would jerk him out of his seat and toss his greasy hair on to his forehead. He jumped out of his vehicle, propped it against the twig fence and as it started to flop down, pulled it off the ground and settled it on its stand. He wiped sweat with a neatly folded white kerchief that he drew out of the left sleeve of his cassock, grinned as he looked up and with a flick, he threw the twig gate half-open as he blundered through it. ‘You didn’t come in the morning!’ He leaned on to the cotton tree and struggled to catch his breath. ‘Push it under the shade of the tree,’ said the boy as he dropped his pencil to the picture he was drawing and screwed up his eyes against the evening rays of the sun, blazing behind the minatory frame of the vicar, who now was straining his neck to look through the wooden window frame of the room next to the veranda. ‘Yeah?’ ‘The bike’ ‘It’s alright. Where’s your dad?’ Lying idly in the room near the twig fence, dad had espied the vicar bolting past the twig gate just when he had been thinking of savouring his quotidian dose of alcohol that he used to relish after his daily siesta and had reached his hand under the cot to feel the chill of the bottle. Struggling to find the hem of his garment that had unfastened during his nap and trying to sit himself up, he managed to put the bottle he had laid his hand on back under his cot just in time. ‘Why didn’t you come in the morning?’ ‘Praised be Jesus Christ’ ‘Forever and ever. Why didn’t you come?’ He grimaced with anticipation as he caught sight of dad in the room through the window, and let out a violent volley of soggy sneezes. The boy ran to the kitchen to see if mother was home. ‘That rascal of the boy was late again to wake up in the morning. Settle somewhere down, vicar.’ The vicar pulled out his white handkerchief to wipe his nose. He looked for a respectable chair in the veranda and, failing to find one, perched on the tip of a bench whose other end lifted up and wobbled in the air precariously as he sat. ‘The rascal of the boy…?’ ‘The rascal of the boy was late to wake up; I broke his back with a kick that he is sulky even now. Be careful not to sit on the bench like that. Sit in the middle, the leg is shaky.’ ‘Did you think about what I said?’ He grabbed hold of the picture the boy was drawing, looked keenly at it, and throwing it back to the table, wondered if the image of the bearded man on the paper was really Christ’s. ‘Ask him, vicar, I don’t want to answer for him. Don’t sit at the end of the bench like that. You will break it.’ ‘Stop telling me that, for God’s sake. I won’t break the damn’d leg. Don’t you have a respectable chair in the house? Where is the boy!’ The boy stood in the kitchen torpidly, holding a glass of water that he was planning to offer to the vicar and looked through the kitchen window at the mass of dappled, misshapen, verdant leaves of a stooped down tree in the backyard with an instinctive awareness of his mother’s imminent apparition. ‘Sit here, boy. How did you chance upon that book?’ The boy climbed up the hill, on the top of which lived an old woman, a distant relative, in her ancient decrepit house that wearily gazed in perilous tranquillity at the brooding mercurial river down the hill. The old woman, before finally confining herself to the attic, used to wander through the dingy cells of her house with a paraffin lamp, which was of no help because she had misty scales in her eyes, night or day, it was always dark inside, searching for a button or a rosary or her teeth set. One day, with the paraffin lamp in her hand, she clambered up the attic, from where she refused to descend, and stayed there curled up—a preposterous cryptogram of tenacious human will—half-sitting in her bed and half-reclining on the gnarled pillows that were too grimy to tell from the weather-beaten clay-plastered wall, where they were stuck forever. The attic was full of things—old cloths, wooden toys, books and writing materials—of her son who, according to her last memory of him, had been shoved down from the attic and driven away in a police jeep, never to be seen or heard again. Her other sons forgot her—she gave birth to five sons—not because they did not love her, but because she refused to see them or eat their food, which they used to bring up to the foot of the ladder and keep there, only to be removed later because of the flies, ants, birds, and stench, and eventually they stopped visiting her altogether, partly because the boy, who, in the course of his meanderings, would make deliberate digressions to reach the old woman’s attic, sometimes with some wild berries, sometimes with breadcrumbs, tap at the wooden rail or shout, and when she responded with a grunt or a cough, ask her if she agreed to exchanging a pen, or a toy, or a book for a fruit or two crumbs of biscuits; and if she agreed to it, again with a grunt or a cough, he would throw the fruit or the crumbs to her through the grills of the handrail and the old woman, with great effort, would manage to push down with her leg or hand a pen, or a book, or a wooden toy in return. Once, the old woman dropped a paper parcel. Time and damp had blanched its brown colour and partially erased the name of the receiver but the book inside had not lost its freshness. As usual, the boy went to the backyard, climbed the large breadfruit tree and hid himself among its broad dark leaves. The vicar gawked at the boy for a minute or so and sank back to the solitude of his swivel chair staring for another minute or so at the ceiling as the boy stood against him at his table, his head hung in guilt and fear, the fury of which had abated after the tumultuous moment that his instructor had caught him, red-handed, reading something no pious, God-fearing child would attempt to read ever, let alone inside the holy sanctuary of a catechism class. The instructor, an upright and estimable Christian, with a vain smirk on his lips, spoke at length about how his impassioned appeals to the young boys and girls to abide by the words of Jesus or to be wary of the devious devices of the devil, who, from the very beginning, was a murderer, a liar and the father of lies, were falling on deaf ears. Neither the boy nor the vicar listened to what he was saying as the boy was anxiously anticipating the hiding he would get from his dad that evening—which incidentally he would, but for another reason—and the vicar was trying hard to recollect a Bible verse proper to the occasion. ‘Do you know what you were reading?’ ‘A book’ ‘A book? Just any book? Do you know you were reading an accursed book, a book of the devil, the most malicious, pernicious and calamitous Satan?’ The instructor was seething with the zeal for the Lord God of hosts as his face contorted with fanatic intensity and his eyes popped out of their pits that he personified the most malicious, pernicious and calamitous Satan himself. The vicar’s thoughts were tangling into a disconcerting mass of Bible verses that he could not snap out of their labyrinthine maze to pick a singular verse proper to the occasion and therefore he decided against declaiming any. ‘Calm down, instructor. Will you go and take care of the children in your class? They must be very distracted now. Let me handle this.’ The vicar was a jovial man with a long scrawny face, which was darker than the rest of his body, and a long scraggy neck, around which his white cassock clung snugly to the protrusive clavicles and deep jugular notch, and raced down to his feet like a frothy cascade from under a rocky ledge. A long fat droopy nose sat between his sunken cheeks like an inflated toad. When he smiled—as he just did perfunctorily at the boy—his eyeballs slid into the caves in the skull and eyelids squeezed into narrow slits. ‘Why do you keep coming back to me, boy?’ The boy inclined his head, not so much out of guilt now, but out of fear, because men of consequence gave him the jitters when they smiled that way, especially when he was at the wrong side of the table, at the receiving end of justice, or at the mercy of luck or chance, such as when he was caught drawing a caricature of the chief instructor, or found loitering about at the girls’ changing room, or woken up from a sound nap during the Holy Mass by the sacristan. He had been at the vicar’s table many times in similar circumstances. ‘What is it this time?’ He stretched his hand, poked the red book on his table with the tip of his left index finger with the dispassion of a physician examining a putrefying sore and turned it around so that he could have a good look at its title. He asked in a sombre whisper, from where the boy had got the book, partly to himself and barely audible to anyone that could have been there, and the boy, his heart trembling and palms sweating, like Ananias, who refused to barter his truth for a story, kept staring at the book and said that it was dropped down by an old mad woman living in a dilapidated house’s attic, from which she never left even for food, or for water, or for defecation, but where she lay in her bed, living on the occasional fruits or breadcrumbs from the boy. The vicar neither trusted the boy nor believed his story; and therefore, he made no further enquiry about the mad woman or her attic but kept asking him about the contents of the book and discussed matters concerning salvation of the soul; while, the boy, growing in confidence and encouraged by the trust the vicar displayed, asked him questions concerning sin and suffering, snakes and devils, wings of angels, Adam’s bellybutton, and Noah’s ark, to most of which the vicar answered dismissively but rather convincingly except for Adam’s bellybutton, which he thought was very clever of the boy to ask because he had never thought of it himself and replied that God in his omniscience and omnipotence could have done anything and man would never understand. The vicar, nevertheless, took great care to keep to a dry and severe monotone as he spoke, in order to keep the boy grounded and insecure, except at the end of the conversation when he smiled warmly at the boy, read from the Gospel of Mark, chapter three, ‘Verily I say unto you, all sins and every slander shall be forgiven unto the sons of men; /But he that shall blaspheme against the Holy Spirit hath never forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation’, and, smiling again, directed him to meet the Mother Superior as soon as he finished the Confiteor five times in front of the main altar. The boy was hungry—it was noon already—and he greedily looked at the fruit-laden Lubica tree at the patio of the convent. A very young dainty nun in grey veil, grey guimpe, grey scapular, and grey gown with sensuous lips and delicate limps was standing under the tree and, beaming at the boy, said ‘temperance’; and the boy felt ashamed that he had looked at the luscious fruits with desire and that the nun had seen him looking at the fruits with desire and proceeded to the parlour to wait for the Mother Superior, who, the nun in charge of the parlour said, had just started to have her lunch, and therefore, the boy could sit there in the meanwhile until she finished, or leave for his lunch and come back in half an hour, which, the boy said, was impossible because he would have to walk four kilometres up and down and therefore he would wait in the parlour. As their conversation was progressing, the dainty nun in grey habit passed through the parlour and stopping by him said that she was just joking and he could have some fruits if he wanted, but that he should not forget that it was the Great Lent. The boy remembered that the nun, who in fact was only a novice—as was evident from the colour of her habit—was his sister’s classmate and had visited his home some years back, before her entering the convent. As the novice continued speaking to the boy, the nun in charge of the parlour—she must be her spiritual mother—grew impatient with her indiscipline and chastised her for her heedless behaviour. When she left, the boy looked out of the window at the Lubica tree and realized that he missed her already. The Mother Superior was a fair, soft and plumb woman with kind eyes and matriarchal breasts and had an archetypal maternal air of cherishing and nourishing goodness about her. She pressed children to her breasts in a vice-like stifling hug, motherly hug, and kissed them on their foreheads; but she pushed the boy away when he lingered on for an extra moment. ‘The vicar sent me a note that you were caught reading a terrible book.’ ‘I didn’t know it was a terrible book.’ ‘What sort of terrible book? With the pictures of women without clothes?’ Arching her lips in scornful indignation, she looked at the book the boy was lifting up in his right hand and felt much relieved when she found on the cover of it the caricature of a battered bearded man with bulging eyes laboriously carrying a cross, black lines against red background, only to arch her lips again at the title above the illustration in bold black letters, Christ and Krishna Never Lived, this time in muted abomination, which was slowly turning to bemused curiosity in a soon-to-be-debunked optimism that, judging by the looks, it would be only a story book. ‘No, it is not. It says that there never lived a person called Jesus; and there lived no Krishna either.’ ‘Forget Krishna, you know that Jesus did live.’ ‘I do.’ ‘That’s blasphemous!’ ‘What is?’ ‘To say that Jesus did not live.’ ‘I said he did.’ ‘But you read it and you continued reading even when you knew it was sinful.’ That was right, the boy rued; he knew from the very first page what the book was all about, but he had this nefarious desire for the forbidden; he had a visceral rush to explore every ungodly word and every sacrilegious notion, and it seemed as spontaneous as a worm holing through wood or as natural as a flame gnawing at paper, or as enervating as a treetop orgasm. He was an awkward boy, very unremarkable in appearance and not particularly smart as was often remarked by his parents, and preferred to spend considerable time away from his peers because they thought he was awkward too. He wandered and sometimes was lost into green thickets near the river, from where he leisurely watched women, girls, children, men and animals, glistening bodies, hairy, speckled, warty and smooth, romping and rolling in water, fusing into sinewy corpulent mass and dividing, surging ripples coiling around wet flesh unceasingly. Sometimes he drew the swaying bodies on a piece of cheap paper or sometimes in his mind; either way, horripilated with excitement, he crawled up the steep winding incline that connected the thickets to the old woman’s residence on top of the hill, sneaked across the courtyard, scampered up the breadfruit tree and, perching perilously on the top branch, masturbated; and as the frenzy died down, he watched the sun setting, darkness rising, and pristine gossamer clouds of the evening turning blood red and black and realized that he had fallen again. In such a haze of vacuous gloom, he saw the old woman’s attic lit up in the glow of her paraffin lamp and longed to see his mother. When he did not go to the river, he read. Sometimes, scraps of newspapers, in which groceries had been wrapped; sometimes, old weeklies that his sister brought from her friends’ homes; and sometimes, books dropped from the attic. The boy had not finished the first commandment when the vicar rustled past them in the parlour—Sundays he had his lunch from the convent—and the Mother Superior, noticing that the vicar had not noticed her sitting in the parlour, greeted him, ‘Praised be Jesus Christ,’ to which he turned his head, came over and greeted her back, ‘Forever and ever;’ and the boy fumbled with the rest of the commandments, however he tried, he could not go beyond two or three, and the vicar and the Mother Superior smiled through his struggle, finally concluding that the boy did not know his prayers. ‘Do you know how the devil works?’ the vicar leaned forward and smiled at the boy as he asked the question and slowly turned to the nun towards the end of it. Neither bothered to answer because any answer would be nullified by the erudition of the vicar, they presumed. ‘By deception,’ he said finally, and added that the devil tricked people, communities, and sometimes entire nations, like Russia, for instance, which was once a true Christian country, by selling them his ideas, planting in their minds little seeds of utopian notions—remember how Lucifer cajoled his fellow angels—such as liberty, equality and communism by means of bloodshed and revolution that would kill thousands of people and slay hundreds of leaders including kings who were anointed by God Himself, converting masses to irreligion and godlessness, plunging entire nations into anarchy and chaos, antitheism, atheism, and rationalism, all on the behest of that damned whiskered French rioter Marx, the antichrist—may he be granted mercy despite his unforgivable sins—whose followers, you could find them everywhere, even in this godforsaken village, mind you, were writing pamphlets, magazines and books, such as the one in the boy’s hand, in the hopes of shaking the foundation—built by, mind you, the Galilean on the solid rock of Cephas—of the Church, which even the treacherous Arabian Saracens of the Middle Ages could not shake, which was two millennia old, and which would last until the Kingdom came, forever and ever, Amen. ‘Amen,’ said the Mother Superior in dread of the bottomless pit of perdition to which the book opened its pages. But the immense wisdom of the Holy Spirit, continued the vicar, guided the faithful in times of crises, by sending angels and the Holy Virgin Mary to warn three obscure children of Fatima, Lucia, Francisco and Jacinta, of the horrors that Russia should undergo, in the same year the Red Army had rampaged through the streets of the country; and the Holy Church, the indefectible church of Christ, which condemned communists as apostates in the Holy Decree of 1949, consecrated Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and, wonder of wonders, the USSR was brought to its knees, and the Holy Spirit showered Russia with his seven gifts—wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of God, ah, yes, fear of God that scattered the devils to the ends of the world—and the boy was reading what one of those apostates had written, that accursed man, who was excommunicated for writing abominable books that no good Christian should read. The Mother Superior was staring at the boy, who, it was not difficult to deduce from his face and body language, was fatigued, though not hungry anymore—he had lost his appetite and refused to eat from the fruits the dainty novice brought; the nun did not encourage him either since she thought that a little abstinence would only nourish his heavenly prospects. When the boy finally left, the vicar walked to the refectory with a heavy heart to have his cold lunch, which made his heart heavier, and the Mother Superior waited at the table. He finished his lunch in silence, raised his head and, looking at the picture of Salvator Mundi on the wall, said, ‘It is an alarming trend;’ and he explained that the boy was the third he had caught reading books in a matter of two to three months. A good shepherd should leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one, which is lost, said the vicar. The boy, however, had vowed never to read such books, said the Mother Superior. ‘The sin of defiance will grow on man and devour him,’ the vicar said. ‘I’ll talk to his father this evening when he comes for the Via Crucis. A sound beating will do it for the boy,’ the Mother superior said as she sat at the table. It had crossed the vicar’s mind too; however, he decided against punishing the boy, primarily because the boy was a regular in daily Mass and actively participated in pious associations; secondly, he had decided to talk to the boy’s father the next day when he would come for the morning Mass; and thirdly, he feared the beating may turn him into a rebel. He thereupon knelt down, recited the Lord’s Prayer, the Hail Mary and the Glory be, all three times each, and read from the Scripture: ‘Therefore said he unto them, the harvest truly is great, but the labourers are few: pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he would send forth labourers into his harvest.’ He lifted his hands to heaven—so did the Mother Superior after him—and prayed thus: ‘Eternal Father, I offer you the body and blood, soul and divinity of your dearly beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, in atonement for our sins, those of the whole world, and of the boy who blasphemed. For the sake of His sorrowful passion, have mercy on us, on the whole world, and especially the boy. We who are sinners intercede through our baptismal priesthood, given by the power of the Holy Spirit and the Incarnation of Jesus, and through the sacerdotal powers, conferred to me by my ministerial priesthood, for ourselves and the rest of the sinners on the face of the earth. Not ‘we the perfect,’ not ‘we the holy,’ not ‘we the better than all of those people,’ but ‘we the sinners in the Church’ pray for mercy for ourselves, the whole world, and the boy who blasphemed, in the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit.’ ‘Amen,’ said the Mother Superior. The dainty novice had sneaked out of the building while the vicar and the Mother Superior were speaking at the refectory. She caught up with the boy in the narrow mud path leading to the road and stuck into his short trousers’ pocket something, which, he later discovered, was some Lubica fruits wrapped in an old newspaper scrap. She was in a hurry to get back to the convent and, before the boy could say anything, vanished into a copse of mango trees, leaving the boy to himself and to the Lubica fruits, which, now that she had aroused his hunger again, he ate one after another, savouring their nectarous tartness, leaving only four or five fruits, which, by the time he reached the old woman’s house, had become bruised and soft. When he arrived at the top, evening had stretched the daylight and shadows long into the porch of the house. The sky in the west had turned golden, with a few petty scarlet clouds like squished Lubica fruits skidding along, and in the east it had darkened, a thunderstorm looming in the distance. The boy sat down on the threshold to catch his breath. He heard distant noises of men, women and cattle rollicking in the river. Dampness of the Lubica fruits sifted through the lining of his pocket and wetted his groin. When a big drop of rain fell on his foot, he stood up and entered the gloom of the old woman’s house, whose dark chambers were spectrally lit by the evening glow that had wriggled in through dislodged roof tiles. Crinkled streaks of the sullen sky were cast upon the puddles that previous night’s rain had left on the floor. The paraffin lamp was unlit; in the vaporous twilight of the leaden sky seeping in through the top window, the attic hovered in dark void, and the glistening rails of its ladder descended to the ground. The old woman must be asleep, the boy presumed, because there was neither a grunt nor a cough when he tapped on the rails, so he decided to climb up. Rain scurried across the roof. The attic was too dark to make out the old cloths, wooden toys, books, writing materials of the old woman’s son, and the old woman herself; the gnarled pillows and the bed were too grimy to tell from the old woman who must have remained curled up, half-sitting and half reclining there; and were it not for all her grunts, coughs, pens, toys, and books, the boy sighed, he himself would not have believed that the old woman had lived in the attic. The boy said he had come to trade some food. He was coming from the convent, he said, where the Mother Superior and the vicar censured him for reading the book he got from the attic, her son’s book, they called it a terrible book, and said they would report the matter to his father, who would surely cane him—a bout of self-pity suddenly rushed in and his lips twitched—and a novice gave him some fruits, which he should have refrained from eating because it was the Great Lent, but the devil got the better of him and he ate all except a few, the remainder he brought to her. ‘Bring them,’ said the old woman in a funereal rasp, which, the boy thought, sounded like a bird’s preening its wings. ‘Shall I light the lamp?’ The boy’s eyes had grown accustomed to the dark and spotted the paraffin lamp. ‘Hush,’ she said and asked the boy to bring her the fruits. The boy brought them close to her bed and placed them on the floor within her hand’s reach; a lithe hand snaked out and, clutching one of the fruits, mashed it between fingers. ‘Light now,’ she said. And the boy lighted the lamp and saw that the old woman had grown younger, a lot younger than when he saw her last, the day she had clambered up the attic; her wrinkles were smoothed, she had more black hairs in her head, and her rheumy eyes no longer had misty scales on pupils. She had grabbed something in her fist and when she opened them, there were three cockroaches, all dead. She pressed each one between her fingers, squeezed the guts out of them and ate one after another. ‘You don’t eat the fruits?’ asked the boy. ‘I bait them with fruits. Breadcrumbs are better. They last longer. Yield more,’ she said in a coarse hush entangled in phlegm. ‘Light out. Eyes hurt.’ The inky black rain outside was spitting twisted silver strands of light through the top window and the boy grew nervous as the pitch dark conjured up the long prehensile hand of the old woman ensnaring more cockroaches. The book, she said, the boy could keep; he reminded her of her youngest son, who was shoved down from the attic and driven away in a jeep by two white-clad men. ‘They took him to the police station?’ the boy asked. ‘A seminary,’ the mad woman rasped again, ‘Stay. I’ll teach you to catch cockroaches.’ He ran home, drenched in water and fright, as wind flung down clobbering globules of rain blinding him and anyone who was stranded outside that night. A stream of torrential abuses greeted him at the door—the downpour screened most of it from reaching the neighbourhood—and a whooshing cane violently met his flesh—long, crimson welts crisscrossed his calves as he lay on his stomach staring into darkness—for coming home late and for forgetting his catechism books in the class, which were sent through a neighbourhood girl. The rain did not let up until the morning; the boy, however, on an empty stomach did not last that long. Dad did not wake him up for the morning Mass. ‘A priest is a blessing to his family,’ said the vicar, sipping from the glass of water. Certainly, thought dad, the old father and mother of a priest were mentioned in Solemn Masses, invited to parish meetings as guests, given seats in the front row during prayers, his brothers were respected among their friends and acquaintances, his sisters were married off to respectable families, even to relatives of bishops—a priest of a nameless family made his people respectable in society, a decent reward for a convenient sacrifice. The boy heard leaves rustling, cows mooing and a sickle clanging to the ground and sensed his mother was back. The vicar shook hands with dad after dad replied, throwing a glance at mother, that if God willed so, who could stand against it, to the vicar’s discreetly contrived words that they should not grumble about returning one to the Lord who blessed them with six—five boys and a girl, all hale and hearty by God’s grace—and that the one who relinquished his son or daughter to God’s service should receive a hundredfold here and should inherit eternal life. Mother said nothing. She stroked the boy’s hair and he turned his head and looked into her ground down eyes. ‘Whose picture were you drawing?’ The boy did not answer. The vicar grabbed the picture on the table, walked into the kitchen, threw it into the fire—he had taken some time to see the boy was drawing the portrait of the writer—and watched with an uncanny sense of victory the fire licking the long bearded face that so deceptively looked like Christ’s countenance. He threw the book too, but its wet pages sputtered, smoked and suffocated everyone in the kitchen. ‘It’s a new beginning,’ the vicar said with a smile. The boy nodded his head in relief. The sun was setting and it was time for the Via Crucis; and therefore, the vicar heaved himself up onto the bicycle and darted back to the church, his white cassock swelling in the air and its ends flailing against the wind. The boy looked long into the road and resolved not to go to the river. ~ Shijo Varghese lives in Kochi, India. He is an artist and writer and his stories and poems have been published in various online journals. He is teaching literature at Sacred Heart College, Kochi. |
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