Selected Works

Peckham Pelican 

Entering the place looking around like I smelt something expired from our fridge. 

After a few minutes of childish sulkiness I open up. 

V: You know I am a bit bored of these hip-cool-white-middle-class-beansie-and-yellow-socks wearing places all over London. I want dirt, I want ugly, I want real, I want to see colours, I want to see interaction between people which is not this English distant bullshit on an avocado toast next to an oat flat white.

N: I believe you are a bit delusional if you think you are going to find this in Camberwell, when you are sitting in a coffee shop where a proper winter market is taking place. 

V: ( shruds shoulders) I guess you are not wrong.

On the way to Oval

These Wednesday underground rides from downtown. Eating out from a paper bag, blurry vision, hot french fries and being deliriously drunk. 

A curious and kind eyes pair looks at me and my paper bag from the opposite blue sits.

-Do you want some french fries? I ask. 

He nods and I sit next to him. 

We eat the nasty and greasy fries and bean burgers together while telling me about his night. I ask him to lie. Do not say anything which is true. I am fed of who does what and how random cute drunk guys get their money from. So he lies, like water running out of the tap he keeps on lying. He is ridiculous and funny. He makes up a story about him working in a construction site and he is the manager of it. And he has 4 children and they have this huge long-ass bike where 5 of them are riding through France every year. Where is the Mom? I get into the game. Oh- he sighs. She is living in the Antarctic saving Polar Bears from extinction. I offer my Coke to him. He is grateful and we laugh and just stare at each other. 

At the stop before Kennington, finishing the last piece of my bean burger he states that he likes me. I like you as well- said it to him. So randomly and so clearly without any shame that I can like a person with just knowing his pretty lies and nothing else. In real life, it takes months to say something like this. But on this underground, you can do anything because it stays there. Between the french fries, the wind of the metro, the old lady, the Arabs, me and this person. This is like an airport, this is the under the table drink in Turkey, the asshole of God, the blackouts after standing up too rushy, the underground is a not existing place where you can say out what you feel to a random stranger. 

When stepping off the underground at his stop he holds the door of the metro and asks me: What’s your name? I will not let this door go until you say it. What’s your surname? 

That was the point when I realized that I have to let go of the love of my life because I can’t spell properly. I shout my name. I even spell it, he might have heard it right. 

I keep on riding until Oval, smiling and saying sorry to the people on the underground. I jokingly say to them:

Sorry guys this is the beginning of a love story here, I will keep you updated! 

On my way to Oval London rides the tube, in general in a very formal manner. You have to keep it together during the day. But once you are drunk and down in the rabbit hole, that’s when the game changes. Your signal is off, no data, we are riding this tube together in this very moment. Strange things happen, strangers sometimes take off and they are not strangers anymore. This is just one of many stories which belongs to down there.. Peckham Pelican. Recently I discovered that I am not a big fan of London. I guess the problem must be me. Noa my flatmate has great come backs, she reflects back in a very Woody Allenish way to my nonsense talk.

Viktoria Vay is a 2nd year creative writing student. Has been working as an assistant in films for years. 24, very confused about life in general. A wannabe screenwriter.

Embracing the Light

Dhaval was already waiting at the door when it arrived. The dappled midday sun danced across the floorboards and the polished brown leather of his sandals. He paused to relish the moment of anticipation, the sun hot upon his toes. A small chestnut coloured rectangular envelope sat at his feet. Red capitals pasted across the front - ‘IMPORTANT’ - told Dhaval everything he needed to know; this was the one he’d been waiting for. He collected it quietly, feeling its smooth texture in his hand as he strode back to his leather chair. He lowered himself towards it before dropping the rest of the way. His rickety joints didn’t let him get away with much these days. He pushed his spectacles up his nose slightly, wrinkling his brow while he tore the envelope open.

The workshop was a modest space. Some might have regarded it as cluttered, but after 43 years perfecting his craft here, Dhaval had it organised just as he liked. The first half of the wall to his right was covered with shelves spilling out dusty files and books, outdated materials hung like peculiar jungle plants from the sheesham wood, which was in dire need of maintenance. Next to the shelves stood Dhaval’s fabrics: rich wools, subtle linens, the finest of cottons and the softest of silks. When he was a young boy, Dhaval would sit for hours on end watching his father handling his elaborate materials, which he could barely afford in those days. But if his father taught him one thing, it was that you cannot make an honest suit without fabric fit for a king. 

The opposite side of the shop was occupied by sturdy workbenches and tables. Several sewing machines and half empty packets of beedis were scattered about, which explained the deep set, spiced scent of tobacco that hung thick in the air. People regularly wandered past the large windows at the front of the workshop, often popping in to see what Dhaval was crafting. Sounds of beeping horns drifted into the shop from the busy road joining the end of the small side street, a necessary reminder of the sprawling city that surrounded him. The notoriously creaky pipes that spluttered and coughed around the workshop seemed to combine with the horns and whistles outside to create an estranged samba band.

Bing bing bing! The front door swung open and Dhaval hurried to close the letter, concealing it from view. 
“Dhaval! My god, it’s roasting out there today, I’ve never known Kolkata this hot in January!”. 
Sanjana flapped into the shop, an electrical current of chaos. Nothing out of the ordinary though. She was a fairly new but loyal customer. Dhaval liked her a lot. But he struggled to understand why she always seemed to be in a rush, limbs at all angles as she zoomed from one place to the next. Nevertheless, she was a kind, sensitive woman and that is what Dhaval valued more than anything.
He chuckled, “You’ve only been living here two years! Not much to go by is it?”.
“Alright! No need to try to outsmart me. Why not use your expert opinion and tell me honestly? Don’t you think it’s hot out there?” Sanjana smiled, gesturing to the outside street.
“Never said you were wrong”, Dhaval replied, “haven’t you read the news? Global warming is coming for us all. This is only the beginning.”
Sanjana laughed fondly, stood next to the counter in a sea of her own shopping bags, no doubt full of food and other necessities for her three children and husband, Pavan.
“Is it ready then? Pav’s been really excited for this one, it’s for an important work party next weekend.”
Dhaval strolled over to the storage cupboard in the corner of the shop, scanning through a series of packages and garment bags. “Ah! Here it is…” he leaned inside and retrieved an opaque charcoal garment bag. “Let me know if he needs any adjustments.”
“Dhaval, you’re too modest. It’ll be perfect and you know better than I do – you get it right every time,” Sanjana said, unzipping the garment bag as Dhaval handed it over. “Oh Dhaval! It’s beautiful, thank you. Just right for the party.”

Dhaval beamed. Even after more than forty years as a highly respected tailor, the glow of satisfaction at a happy customer had never faded.
“Right, I should get on my way. I can’t wait to show this to Pavan. Thanks again Dhaval.” She sighed, readjusting her deep green, silk sari before bustling out of the shop, one more bag added to her collection.

Dhaval swam in his own silence again. Back in his familiar leather chair, he picked up the letter and re-read it. The stillness in the room felt impenetrable. A large bead of sweat travelled from Dhaval’s receding hairline, trailed down his cheek and dropped onto the letter that now sat quietly in his lap. He coughed violently, his breath strained. Reaching down to the wooden table to his right, he grabbed his notebook and Nokia brick phone. Another hard cough. He scrambled through hundreds if not thousands of customers’ numbers spanning over thirty years. There she is. Asha.

He hurriedly moved across to the door, flipping the sign closed and turning the lock before tucking himself away at the back of the shop, out of sight. He wished his heart would stop jumping so fast. Hands like an earthquake, he held the phone close and dialed.

“Hello?” Her voice sounded just the same. Dhaval paused.
“Asha… hi… it’s…”
“Dhaval.” She cut him off. “It’s been so long.”
“Asha, I… sorry but…”
“What’s wrong Dhaval? Why are you calling me?” Her voice was kind but nervous, wary.
Dhaval exhaled. He couldn’t find the words. Hot blood pumped through his ears as he stood motionlessly. 
“Asha, I need to see him.” 
Tears sprung to his eyes for the first time in years, stinging as he held them back.
“I’m not sure that’s the best idea. Are you expecting Sahil to have changed?” 
A deep anger in her voice gave itself away momentarily. 
“No. No… not at all. It’s been a long time Asha… I think it’s me who has changed.”
The line went quiet for a moment as Asha considered.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea. He’s been happy recently, happier than he has been in years and this could just…”
Dhaval raised his voice slightly, desperately. 
“Asha please! Please. I really need to do this. Now or never. Please.”
Silence. 
“Ok,” she sighed, “but please be kind, he’s been through enough pain.” 
Dhaval closed his eyes, guilt seeping through him. It was a different kind of guilt to the one he’d felt continuously over the years. A more immediate, burning guilt. 
“You know the Samar Sarani road? He lives there, number 288. He should be there today. Ok?”
Dhaval panted a sigh of relief, “Ok, thank you.”
The line went dead.

Dhaval took a big breath. He couldn’t remember the last time he felt so many feelings at once. His bloodshot brown eyes darted across the workshop. Letters. His brain felt fried. He strode over to the corner of the workshop by the window, opening a badly painted green cupboard. 288, 288, 288, he repeated in his head. Inside sat copious piles of dusty, hand-written letters tied together with worn pieces of string. He grabbed a brown leather duffel bag from above the cupboard, stuffing the fifteen years’ worth of letters inside. He struggled to close the zip. Lit a beedi. Heavy plumes of smoke drifted towards the ceiling. Keys… keys… Dhaval stood in the middle of the room, spinning round searching. Oh yeah… stupid. They were hanging in the lock. He stepped out into the dry, harsh air. It really is hot he thought, walking into the heat of the day.

Dhaval lived on the edge of the Amtala district of Kolkata, a friendly neighborhood just outside the new town. Although it was mid-winter, the streets were dusty and humid, and it didn’t take long to be covered in a layer of dirt and sweat just from being outdoors. It was a thirty-minute walk to the address Asha had given him. 288. After living in the neighbourhood his whole life, he recognised almost everyone, and simply lifted a hand to greet any familiar faces. As he marched along the main road, the sharp, clear beeps of rickshaw horns chorused as they sped by, kicking up dust in their path. Tiny specs sat in beams of ethereal light that hit the street through slow moving clouds. 288. Men sat around in chai stalls, playing cards and sweating on cheap plastic chairs. A market was in full flow around him now, piles of brilliant red and sun-yellow ground spices stood against the walls, lumpy vegetables lay on tatty blankets in the shade. Barefoot children in dirty rags ran past, squeezing through small gaps in the chaos of people and carts. His chest exploded into a frenzied coughing fit. He stopped to recover. The smell of raw meat sat on the air. Dhaval felt nauseous, stomach swaying with nerves. He set off again. Not much further. 288. He gripped the bag of letters tight against him. What do I say? Everything was happening too fast as he strode from street to street. He turned a corner. 288. I’m here.

A small blue door next to an electrical shop. 288… this must be it. He looked around, breathless, but not from the walk. It was a nice enough street; quiet, residential. Stray dogs fought over some lurid red meat next to him. How do I do this? He stood there, tried to look casual when a man from the electrical shop came outside for a cigarette. Wish I hadn’t forgotten my beedis. He pushed the doorbell. It sounded in the distance. Deep breath. Straighten up. Dhaval smoothed down his white cotton shirt, it was too late to conceal the damp patches of sweat that had formed. His hands were clammy against the material. The door swung open. The two men stood for a moment, taking each other in. Does he know who I am?

“Dad…?” Sahil stuttered.
Dhaval hardly recognised his son. It made sense, of course, but it also didn’t somehow. The bandy, nervous boy with the soft eyes that he knew all those years ago was no longer. What have I missed?
“Dad, what are you doing here? What… what’s going on?”
Dhaval looked down at the floor, then back up to meet Sahil’s face. 
“Your mum gave me your address... I’m so sorry Sahil. I think we need to talk... if you’d like to?”
Sahil shuffled uneasily from foot to foot, eyes darting, not sure where to look. He wore a sky-blue t-shirt and pair of fitted jeans that complimented his toned physique. He looked younger than he was - his early forties - but his eyes were evidence of his years. 
“I’m not sure… why should I?” he murmured cautiously.
Dhaval took a small step forward.
“I mean, you don’t have to. I just want to talk, I have a lot I want to tell you and apologise for,” he sighed, “we’ve lost so many years.” 
Sahil stood silently. 
“Please Sahil, I know I don’t deserve anything from you, but it would mean so much if we could talk, you don’t even need to see me again if you don’t want to. Maybe I could come in? Or… we could grab a drink together?” 
He gestured along the street. Sahil looked up, his forehead defined with deep creases. Contemplating his father’s desperate expression, his frail body, his shiny leather sandals like the ones he always used to wear, he replied.
“Come in. We can have a drink.” He stood back, holding the door. Dhaval wheezed as he left the hot street behind.

Sahil’s apartment was sleek and modern. He’d obviously done well for himself. Light flooded through the blinds into the room, which contained a small kitchen and living space with a sturdy wooden dining table under the window. Dhaval glanced around at the perfectly shaped rectangular kitchen units and polished worksurfaces. It was a catalogue kitchen, but Sahil had certainly made it his own. Half-familiar faces smiled out from pictures that decorated the warm orange walls. A sweet, fruity string of smoke floated and spiralled in the corner of the room where an incense stick burned down. Dhaval gripped the bag of letters tightly.
“Tea?” Sahil turned to his father.
“Yes, yes please,” Dhaval replied quietly, taking a seat at the table. 
Silence. Sahil was overwhelmed and finding it hard to concentrate on making the tea properly. Dhaval sat very still, taking it all in. He wasn’t sure if it was the floods of white light or the smoke of the incense that made everything feel hazy and dream like. The whistle of the boiling kettle broke the silence. Sahil turned on his father.
“Why are you here?” he spat.
“Sahil, I’ve come to apologize, I need to explain…”
Sahil rolled his eyes, taking a slow step forward.
“Explain what dad? How you abandoned me? I needed you… and you just threw me away. Your only son… I’ve lived my life without a dad because of you. And why? What for?” 
His voice trembled slightly. Dhaval’s eyes were fixed on his son. 
“I felt so much shame… and fear. I felt like I was nothing. And what did you tell me, your son?” 
Rage filled every corner of the room as Sahil’s words bellowed out. 
“Be ashamed, be scared… you’re nothing. You’re nothing… if you’re gay.” A tear ran down his face and he wiped it away, his breath heavy. Dhaval still stared at his son. What have I done?
Sahil spoke again, his voice fearful and tight.
“If you’re here to cause more pain, please go. It’s taken me so long to pick myself back up again and forget about all this.”

Dhaval stood quickly. Come on. Take your chance. 
“Please sit down Sahil, I’d like to explain everything,” he said firmly, taking a step forward and gesturing towards the suede grey sofa that took up most of the space in the living room. Sahil trudged across and sat there stiffly, his eyes bright and feeling.

Determined not to let his fear cloud his vision once again, Dhaval spoke.
“Sahil, the day I left you… I made a huge mistake. My ignorance and fear, well, they won over my love for you. I paid the price in the loss of my only son. But that was my choice… And I live in the consequences. You didn’t make that choice, but you’ve still had to suffer all these years. No father should abandon their son… for anything. I know I’ve failed you. For that I’m so sorry, for everything I’m so sorry… You’re my son, that’s what matters.” Dhaval’s cheeks were wet with tears, his chest heaving and crackling. Sahil watched the floor, still and reflective. The light was changing now as the sun dropped in the sky and the room was awash with golden tones.
“Why didn’t you come before? It’s been twenty years,” Sahil looked at his father, his face softened.
“I wanted to Sahil, really,” he turned and collected the bag from where he’d left it on the table.
“I wrote you these letters. I just couldn’t let myself try to send them.” Dhaval passed the bag of crinkled papers to his son, who pulled out a bundle, letting his fingers feel the pages of his father’s shame. 
“I just thought as soon as I tried to get you back, you’d reject me, just like I did to you. Then it really would all be over.” Dhaval’s shoulders sunk into his thin body as he walked to sit next to his son. 
“Fear just got in my way again… I was so stupid.” 

Dhaval looked up towards the window, letting the glorious light saturate his face. He rested his eyes, enjoying the warmth on his skin. Sahil spoke, a glimmer of hope in his eye and a cocktail of emotions in his voice.
“Thank you for bringing these.” 
The two men turned to each other, their eyes meeting for the first time in twenty years. 
“I’m so sorry,” Dhaval whispered.

___________________

Various acquaintances had been coming and going all day. The bedroom was abundant with vivid blooming flowers and Asha’s homemade dahls in plastic Tupperware. As the sun began to set, the room became golden and the two men found themselves alone again. The hum of distant traffic and the hazy vibration of Hindi music coming from a nearby shop floated on the breeze that flowed through the open window. Sahil sat next to it, the curtains dancing with the wind and brushing against his back as he watched his father. A serene orange light illuminated Dhaval, who lay under the white cotton sheets of his bed, his face thin and his body frail. He looked so small in his big bed, almost child-like. They sat quietly, Dhaval wandering in and out of sleep, his breathing shallow and labored. Occasionally he would wake himself up coughing and Sahil would rush to his side to comfort him. But as the hustle bustle of the city began to waver and the fiery beams of light fell deeper in the sky, Dhaval opened his eyes and beckoned his son over. His voice was barely audible, almost gone forever. 
“In the corner…” he gestured behind Sahil, “I made something for you… in the bag.” 
He closed his eyes again. Sahil turned and walked across to a clothes rail that stood in the corner. Hanging at the front was a solitary garment bag. He lay it across the pale sheets of his father’s bed. Dhaval opened his eyes again to watch his son unzip the bag. As he pulled out the splendid, golden sherwani, Sahil’s eyes were wide and bright. It was a masterpiece. The sherwani itself was a rich shade of blue, embroidered with a striking floral gold pattern. It was captivating. The fabric was so gentle in his hands, almost other worldly. Delicate stitching held cold metal buttons in the shape of golden flowers. A Chinese style collar was shaped with glowing bold embroidery like bright buttery fireworks. Shining sapphire blue Patiala’s flowed from beneath the sherwani, the silk draped in perfect form. Sahil scrambled to change into the treasure his father had crafted. Unsurprisingly, it was the perfect fit. He felt the warmth of his childhood in the sweet tobacco smell of his father’s workshop embedded in the material. 

Dhaval watched his son. His body was harsh and aching. But for the first time in his life he felt a raw, celestial sense of belonging. A truly immaculate feeling of peace. Intense gratitude spread through his body until he couldn’t feel the pain anymore.

Embracing the Light was inspired by Martha’s travels in India. The character of Dhaval was based on an amazing suit maker in Kolkata who had recently died. His story stuck with her as she thought about the incredible knowledge that went with him to the grave and wondered what his final months might have been like.

Martha Harris is a second year BA Media & Communications student specialising in Creative Writing.

Home After Dark

‘Make sure you get home before Dark,’ Archie’s mum reminded him as she zipped up his hoodie.

“I will, mum.’ he said happily, opening the front door. His mum put her hand on the door and looked down at Archie, with that serious look on her face.

‘Promise?’ she asked.

‘Promise.’ he nodded.

Archie’s mum smiled. He gave her a hug and headed outside.

Now he was eight, Archie’s mum let him go to the park without her, but always on one condition. Like clockwork, every day, she made him promise to be home before Dark. Archie didn’t understand why it was so important, but when he asked, his mum told him that if he didn’t, he would never be the same. Archie wasn’t sure what she meant, but he loved his mum and trusted her. So, every day without fail, he set off home in plenty of time.

When Archie got to the park that day, his friends Marco and Sophia were already there, playing catch. Archie rode his bike up to them and parked it on the playground, before joining in their game. The three children spent hours playing ball games on the green, climbing around the jungle gym, and playing make believe, until eventually, the sun began to set. They all knew they had to be home before Dark, so they started getting their things.

‘I wish we didn’t have to leave so early,’ Archie picked up his bike as they all headed for the exit.

‘Yeah, but we gotta be home before Dark,’ said Marco.

‘I don’t get why it’s so bad,’ Sophia shrugged, putting up her hood as it began to lightly rain.

‘Mrs. June said her son didn’t get home before Dark once. And now she says she’s never gotten him back,’ Marco pointed out, adding,

‘I don’t wanna risk that,’

Sophia shook her head and closed the park gate behind them.

‘Old Mrs. June? She’s crazy, I see her son with her all the time.’

The next day, Archie couldn’t get what Marco said about old Mrs. June out of his head. On his way to the park, curiosity got the better of him. He turned his bike around and took a different route, making a diversion past Mrs. June’s house. As he biked past, he peered in through the windows. He could see Mrs. June putting breakfast on the table. And there was her son, sitting right beside her at the table. Sophia must have been right, thought Archie. Her son’s still there; maybe Mrs. June just isn’t very well. Content, Archie kept pedalling to the park.

What Archie couldn’t see through the window, was the way Mrs. June’s hands trembled with nerves. Or the blank expression on her son’s face. Or that his eyes, once baby blue and full of life, were now as black as onyx; flooded with Dark.

As summer continued, Archie spent most days at the park with Sophia and Marco. Every day his mum warned,

‘Make sure you get home before Dark,’ and every day he played from morning until sunset, when he speedily made his way home. But, as the months flew by, the sun began setting sooner and sooner. One day, just as they were leaving, Sophia realised she couldn’t find her football.

‘Just get it tomorrow,’ said Archie, tugging on her sleeve. Sophia shook her head and continued to search.

‘You guys go, I’ll find it,’ she insisted.

‘You won’t make it home before Dark, Sophia,’ Archie frowned as the sun got lower in the sky.

‘Don’t worry, that’s all silly anyway,’ Sophia said happily. She hugged Marco and Archie goodbye, and after a moment the boys set off home, and Sophia continued to look for her ball.

The next day, they all met as usual. But Sophia seemed different. She didn’t smile. She didn’t laugh. She barely spoke. And her eyes, usually bright brown, were Dark; completely black, like her pupils had spread across her entire eyeballs. Archie and Marco asked if she wanted to play, but instead she sat alone on the wall, next to Archie’s bike. While Archie wasn’t looking, she picked up a sharp pebble, and poked a hole in the tyre.

When it was time to leave, Sophia still didn’t say a word. They all left their separate ways.

Archie hopped astride his bike and started to pedal, but the bike didn’t move. Frowning, he looked down to see what was wrong. When he saw the flat tyre, his heart sank. The sun was slowly sinking deeper and deeper in the sky, and it would soon be Dark.

Archie quickly leapt off his bike and started wheeling it beside him, going as fast as he could. He forced his little legs to move quickly, but the flat tyre dragged and dragged, making it impossible to pick up speed.

By the time Archie reached his street, the sunlight had almost completely gone. His heart beat faster and faster as he panted and desperately tried to drag his bike home in time. He looked to the hills and saw the last part of the sun shining dimly above the landscape. Panicking, Archie dropped his bike on the pavement and began to run, as fast as his legs could carry him, breathing heavier and heavier. As he drew closer to his house, the last peek of sun disappeared. All in a moment, Darkness flooded the street. Archie felt a cold shiver. The only light now came from the dim, flickering street lamps. Archie found his feet rooted to the spot. He was paralysed, unable to move.

Out from behind the house beside him, he saw a shadowy figure emerge. His heart flipped as he watched it slither across the garden towards him. Before he knew it, the grim, tall, jet black figure stood before him; like a storm of bad feeling. Its raspy voice rang around Archie’s ears.

‘Didn’t your mother tell you to get home before me?’

Isabella Clark is a media graduate who pursued her love for storytelling through creative writing at Goldsmiths. Having written from a young age and being particularly interested in horror, she has a passion for penning subversive children’s stories which mix a fairy-tale style of writing with dark and eerie plots. Now working with primary school children, she hopes to nurture imagination and inspire future generations of storytellers.

The Soldier's Wife

Caught somewhere in between a fragile sleep and somnolent wakefulness, she feels her fingers entwined perfectly with her loved one. In her transitory phase, occurs a beautifully painful sleep paralysis. Her body, as calm as still water and her mind as calm as the raging sea, she feels engulfed by a paradoxical whirlpool of emotion.

Today’s the day, that’s haunted her for weeks. Today’s the day she wants to forget but something inside urges to remind her. Today’s the day she’s armoured for, ever since her acceptance. It’s the day she needs to let him go.

Trudging towards consciousness, she breaks the surface tension, and opens her eyes. She feels a sudden relief from her insecurity and fear of ultimate loss. Her gratefulness and sense of privilege overcomes all other feelings at first sight. She confidently blushes on impact. Laying wide awake in front of her, her beloved adores her as if for the very first time - the way he does, every time he looks at her. In a fractional gaze, the two have exchanged a thousand words. Their love, old fashioned. Timeless and eternal. They’re a five page love letter, in a world full of status updates.

They cut through time to stop and stare, wistfully, painfully, but alluringly. Her mind salvages each glance, each nuance, and gradation, etching it into the deepest corners of her soul. She memorises the minute lines on his face, the fall of his hair, the iris of his dangerously brown eyes. She imbibes each moment, and stockpiles them to get through the tough times awaiting. This, he knows. He purses his lips and tightens his grip on her fingers, doing the very same. Revering her serenity, he plants a kiss on the back of her hand, injecting her with much needed strength. She feels heavenly, but knows that she is soon to trespass through hell.

Afflicted by a sense of time, she courageously sighs and momentarily caresses his hair whilst getting up. She slips into her sandals and scurries to the door. She sneaks a peak through the corner of her eye just before exiting the room and he’s just as pensively quiet and breathing motionlessly.

She washes up and heads to the kitchen. Her aim is to work briskly and elaborately. She tries to draw her absolute focus to the most unnecessary tasks. Anything to distract her from the desolation brewing within. She assiduously slices pieces of bread, assembles the diced vegetables in the most perfect manner, and mechanically goes about her other tasks. Fully well knowing that this her battle strategy. Her way to hush the aching heart.

She walks to the sink to rinse her hands. Pausing her routine she stops to at a vague figure in the mirror. She instructs and commands the reflection to keep it together. The reflection winces. She further sternly intimidates the reflection, reminding it to keep up the shield but experiences a rigid barrier. She pierces harder. The reflection lets out a solitary victorious tear, and sniffs with finality. Order received. She shakes her head, wipes her cheek and walks out of the wash room as if nothing ever happened.

She wraps the ultra-carefully made breakfast in brown paper, and puts it in the front pocket of his backpack along which she slips in a long letter and a photograph. She zips up the bag and places her palm on it. Tracing the edges of the badges and dog tags organised beside it, she is struck by a sense of patriotic pride. Though she glows with pain, she smiles through it with reserved optimism and hope.

She walks to the front porch, as the first beam of sunlight traces her face. Staring at the luminous, golden strip of cement which is scheduled to carry him away, an uneasy panic sets in inside her titanium heart. She feels cogwheels choking down her emotions. One may also call it, ‘acceptance’. She feels, as if though she’s staring into oblivion.

Breaking the deafening silence, he walks out the door, and onto the front porch. He’s in uniform, and is wearing his heavy duty duffle bag on his back. No words said once again, the two just have a beautifully painful telepathic conversation. One of the million ways they profess their undying love.

He walks towards her, and gently places his hand on the nape of her neck. He traces her skin with his fingers, and stares into her crystalline eyes. ‘It’s time’ something tells them. She feels those cogwheels rotating. She feels a feeble urge to defy the laws of space and time. Her heart ebbs and throbs with sorrow. And the same cogwheels force her to smile. After all, a warrior’s strength is abstinence from conceding. And she is one hell of a warrior.

She hides her tears with all her might. Not because she wants to, but because she has to. Not because she’s afraid to cry, but because she’s afraid he might. He sees through her as if she’s glass. As if her walls are mere holograms. He embraces her in his arms. She stands on her toes and clings on his tall neck, knowing fully well that she will never hold something so dearly again, till the day he returns.

The bus honks from slightly far away.

Startled, she subconsciously tightens her grip. She looks down, intensely. He inhales, and slowly lifts her chin up while whispering in her ear, “I love you, angel”

The two kiss each other farewell, making the universe evanesce for a few brief seconds.

He fixes his cap, and moves ahead to board the bus. She stands there, illuminated, counting his footsteps. She stands there, watching herself crumble and reforming, oscillating from love and pride to pain and courage. She sees the bus transcend into a blurry distance along the ribbon like road. It gets smaller and smaller, diminishes to a tiny speck and slowly, disappears.

She exhales, for her battle has just begun. She walks into the house, all guns blazing.

by Vedika (Veda) Maheshwari

It's Not Me, It's It

PAGE 1

Alice was five years old in dance class when It first started talking to her. Pink dress stretched over its lumpy body, hollow eyes staring: an ugly version of her in her ballet outfit. It whispered that she shouldn’t do her performance that weekend; she would embarrass herself in front of everyone. Alice tried to protest, saying that it would be fine, but It started shouting at her and wouldn’t stop.

‘Mum. I need to quit ballet.’

‘Why?’

It hunched in the shadows in the corner of the room, long toenails poking into the lino. Alice thought about telling on It. But It shook its head slowly, threatening.

‘I just don’t want to dance anymore.’

PAGE 2

Alice grew used to It’s company, whispering to her, stale breath making her retch. It told her to be especially careful to make sure that bad things didn’t happen to her and the people around her. So Alice was extra careful. Everywhere she went, It would always be lurking. It followed her around, grabbing her wrist with its icy fingers when she was invited to go to a sleepover because it warned her that bad things might happen there, that her parents might be gone when she comes back. She became scared to leave the house in case it was telling the truth. She begged It to let her go but, no matter what, It wouldn’t stop.

When her mum did manage to drag her outside eventually, she offered to buy Alice ice cream, and Alice burst into tears because It told her that she would get food poisoning if she ate it. Alice wanted to have the ice cream and a nice day with her mum so badly, but she couldn’t make It be quiet. Alice’s mum looked at her as if she was crazy.

‘Alice, I don’t understand. This is getting silly now.’

Alice wanted to scream that it wasn’t her fault, it was It, but her mum wouldn’t believe her. She couldn’t see It.

PAGE 3

It got more threatening. Everytime Alice went to eat It would grip her throat and she couldn’t swallow. It would tell her how disgusting the food looked until she felt sick and couldn’t face eating, and she started to get thinner. She became exhausted from staying up every night doing school work because It told her that she was going to fail. Alice became unrecognisable. People were asking her what was wrong, but when she tried to tell them what was happening, It shoved its bony hand over her mouth to muffle her voice, silencing her cries for help.

When Alice tried to sleep It sat on her chest with its full weight and she couldn’t breathe, her heart would race until she would scream. Still, no amount of pleading or reasoning could make it get off. Tears would spring from her eyes but It was unmovable, like a mountain.

Alice felt exhausted, and she didn’t know how much longer she could put up with Its threats.

PAGE 4

Alice met Lucy in school, and to her surprise, Lucy had a creature too. Lucy’s looked different to hers, It trailed behind her, distracting from her work. Lucy told Alice that it made her miss school some days because it would perch on the end of the bed and mutter that Lucy was not good enough to do anything, that no one liked her, that she had no future. Sometimes, It would even hurt her, tell her that she would be better off dead.

She said ‘it makes me feel so horrid some days I feel like there’s no point doing anything.’

Alice understood.

PAGE 5

Lucy said that she had told her parents about the creature and they believed her. She told Alice that her It was quieter after telling and her parents were trying to help her get rid of the creature. Alice couldn’t believe it. As they were talking, Alice looked over at the creatures standing together. They stamped their feet and waved their fists, but it was as though they were behind a glass screen, unable to interrupt when Alice and Lucy were talking about them.

The girls began to spend more and more time together, relishing the time with the creatures behind the screen. Alice felt less alone knowing that someone else had a creature that no one else could see, that said mean things. She felt relieved that her and Lucy could face them together, forever.

Laura Brampton is an MA Gender, Media and Culture student who writes in her spare time and specialised in Creative Writing in her undergraduate degree. She likes to write about uniquely female experiences and the relationships formed between women that can help them in overcoming their obstacles.

Dolphin-Mama

Sometimes you walk out over the hills when you’re flushed with anticipation, sick with want. Sometimes your cheeks smart cold when the wind blows, prickling with an icy heat, and you realise you’ve been crying. From the field nearest the sea, you can see the distant structures of falling-down farmhouses. You like to wait out there, in the view of ruins. Homes where somebody lived once, peopled with light and ordinary dreams. We are waiting for a baby. We aren’t waiting for a baby.

We are parents to a thirteen-month-old. She doesn’t speak yet. We walk early first-thing and last thing before the evening deepens to a blue fog. We check the herd in the morning, fill the feed trough, watch them flock, crying out and bleating. We move through them like two priestesses, running our hands over the congregation of their dirty, woolly bodies like we’re touching waves. The baby reaches out and joins the happy, shrieking chorus. Down the cliffs, past the coast, dolphins travel in groups. We see the short-beaked common dolphins every day, thrilling when we spot their creamy sides from our distant vantage.

I ask, What’s the collective noun for a group of dolphins?

You tell me, again, that it’s a pod.   

You worry that the air of manure isn’t good for her small lungs. You worry that pure air will coddle her. You stare at the poster of our planet Earth floating in blackness above our TV, next to a poster of tanned, tattooed men dancing the hula in grass skirts with bright, floral head pieces. We don’t remember putting either of these posters up.

You ask, Should we take this down? Is it weird to have this up? Like, racially?

We try to remember tacking them to the wall. It’s lunchtime. You ask, Do you want to feed her?

We try not ever to look at the silent telephone. We have reduced the line population down to two, one for the internet and one for the single handset built into the wall. We are successful in avoiding phones, but we fail at not wanting what we want. You practice breathlessness in front of the space poster. I can see you doing it, hyperventilating until your eyelids flutter. You try hard to allow yourself to feel your way through it, but you also try hard to not ever cry. I fail to reassure you. We wait for the telephone.

When you answered the telephone for the first time, you were laughing. I had written Microsoft Office as one of my skills on a job application and you exclaimed, That’s not a skill! We argued playfully and you picked up the phone with ease, without hesitation or thought. We were followed around then by the happy idea of babies.

I remember how my heart slowed as you were saying into the handset, Yes, yes, we want her, we’ll be there, we’re leaving right now.

You relayed the words birth and hospital and no contact, and I grinned as they moved through me like water moves through holes in a sieve. Foster-to-adopt.

When, after nearly two years, the telephone rings to announce that she will be re-homed with her birth family, you cry and change the ringtone to a blaring alarm.

I keep my phone on silent. You field missed calls from my agent, my publisher, our parents. You read a lot of books about dolphins. At meal times, you rattle off information you’ve committed to memory like gunfire. I am sometimes startled, caught off-balance by the burning volley of dolphin facts framed as questions: Did you know dolphins have names, like, a signature whistle? Did you know dolphin mothers sing their name to their calves in utero, and when they’re born? Did you know that, after a couple weeks, the dolphin mother stops singing her signature whistle as much but the other dolphins in the pod start to sing their own whistles with greater frequency? The world around them formed through whistles.

The new baby calms you down. To me, she feels impermanent.

We keep the same crib. It’s low enough to the ground for you to sit on the floor and rest your back against the wooden slats while she sleeps. And sometimes I catch you humming a song about the world ending, plucking away at a sad imaginary banjo. I guess this is your whistle. I won’t make fun of you for it. Sometimes you catch me whispering over her, Mama, mama, mama. She still doesn’t speak.

You frequently tell me not to call her the new baby. I frequently apologise. I’m just trying to guard us against separation. The new baby eats solids now and you feed her pineapple chunks on our evening walk. We are flocked to by the sheep, who wonder lazily if we’ve brought food. Every time we leave the house I anticipate the missed call when we return, with equal parts terror and hope.

At the vanishing line the fields are dark and blue. We can’t see the stone ruins of other people’s homes anymore, or even the orange dots of new life. We are alone with the sea, noisily tilling itself like a ripe meadow. I keep looking back in the direction of the house, afraid that we’re too far. The phone is ringing and we can’t hear it.

Down the cliffs, out past the coast: dolphins. I call them common but you correct me. Bottlenoses. You can tell by the elegant arch of their dorsal fin. I’m not convinced.

I say, You can’t see from here.

But something starts whistling and the baby shrieks back, so maybe.

by Kandace Walker

A Kind of Love

We were not in love. When I heard that you’d died I felt sad. I knew that I wasn’t going to be invited to your funeral, because we had met while you were at university and I never met any of your family. I only knew two of your friends. Every time we went out we went out alone, just you and I, to strange, hidden bars where people played the banjo on rickety stools. I remembered wearing your leather jacket as we smoked in the alleyway outside, and I remembered apologising on your behalf because of your drunkenness in a pub on the way home.

I did not have a period of disbelief, when I was told. It came out of the blue because we hadn’t spoken for a while, I had thought of you in the years between our disconnect and your death, but we’d unintentionally kept our distance. We only had one mutual friend, but she was more my friend than yours.

You died on a boat, I was told, in Greece. You had an epileptic fit and didn’t make it through this time.

We were laying in your bed when you told me you had epilepsy, and that it was severe. You told me because I had to keep an eye on you when we were together and I had to learn to take care of you. I didn’t mind. You’d had this conversation with your roommate, Misha, before, too, but not in bed.

I found your parents on facebook two years later, because I was still thinking about you. We were only together for a short while and yet I found that you were appearing in my thoughts more now that you’d died than the you had been alive. I looked at photographs of your funeral and I felt like a voyeur, like I shouldn’t be looking. But I had wanted to go. Our mutual friend said that I could go if I wanted to, she’d given me the address, but I thought it would be weird of me to just turn up. I looked at your parents’ photos, and photos of your siblings.

You all look alike. I wonder how your parents feel now.

One night, after a bottle of wine, I’m back on your facebook profile. You said that you don’t use it much, and that you’d log in just to accept my friend request, and you did, and now you’re dead I feel like I’m part of a privileged club. I now have two dead facebook friends. I’m flicking through your photographs, remembering how you looked when you slept. I go into your friend’s again and I find your brother. I look through your brother’s photographs. You’ve been dead for two and a half years or so, and his facebook has moved on. I go to your mother’s facebook. Hers hasn’t moved on. Her last post was your funeral. I wonder if that’s just because I can’t see the most recent things, or because she doesn’t really use it.

I’m a bit drunk, and I decide to write to her.

Dear Helen,

You don’t know me, and I’m not sure you’ll even see this message, but I thought I’d write to you anyway. I knew Tom quite well, he and I were together for a little while. I wanted you to know that I still think of him often, and of you and your family. I wonder how you are and how everyone is dealing. That’s all.

And I send it.

I suppose it is a kind of love.

Farrah Moore is in her first year of a part-time MA in Creative and Life Writing. She is a writer and mother of two who is based in London. She writes about bereavement, grief, babies and parenting after the death of a child.

12 hours of our (acrostic) love

1100

Waking to the smell of eggs and bacon. You aren’t next to me, but humming softly in the kitchen. I hug you from behind and kiss your shoulder. You turn around. “Happy anniversary,” you say, placing your lips on my forehead. “We’re going to have the perfect Sunday”. I tell you to watch the bacon.

1200

Up for an hour and you’re already dressed. You know it takes me too long to get ready so you don’t say anything, you just smile. I pull my hair out from its towel cocoon, letting it fall down to my shoulders. I turn around to say “What—”

1300

“—next?” I ask, as we come back home from our walk. “Picnic,” you reply, holding up a cute woven basket like the ones from the movies. I light up instantly. “I made your sandwiches with mayo,” you say, then laugh at my squirm. “But you know I hate mayonnaise,” I tell you. You laugh once more then bring me in for an embrace. “I know,” you whisper, “I lied. I just wanted to see that cute face you always make.”

1400

“To many more years to come,” you say, clinking your wine flute with mine. We’re at a cafe now. There’s a folded newspaper in front of you. “Look, the crossword,” you say. “Twelve across. Eight letters,” you continue. I reach for your hand. With your other, you scratch your head. “I’ve never been good at puzzles,” you say. I smile at you. “I know.”

1500

You kiss me twice, then twice again. A sigh escapes your lips. “I love you so much,” you tell me. “I love you so much, too,” I say back. The wine has made us both tipsy. I remember the time you first fumbled over those words. You were scared of the vulnerability but also desperate to let it out. “What are you smiling about?” you ask me. “Nothing,” I hum.

1600

“Is this going to take long?” you ask in feigned annoyance as I drag you into a clothing store. “You promised me the best Sunday,” I argue. “I promised you the perfect Sunday. That isn’t the same thing.” You’re right about that. I don’t tell you this can’t be the perfect Sunday. Instead, I say “Well, it’s the best.”

1700

My feet begin to hurt. I start to limp as discreetly as possible but it doesn’t work. You notice it immediately. “My heels aren’t that comfortable,” I explain. You stop us there and take off your shoes. “Wear mine,” you say. “I’ll go barefoot.” You catch my hesitation and swiftly pick me up, throwing me over your shoulder. “Put me down!” I squeal. “You either take my shoes or I’m carrying you home like this,” you declare. We laugh together.

1800

“—favourite spot?” you ask. “Yeah.” We end up on the park bench, eating chips and cheap hotdogs from a food stall nearby. We observe the people passing by, coming up with stories of who they are and where they’re headed. “See that guy carrying a frisbee?” you ask. “You don’t know him yet, but soon he’s going to be recognised as the first ultimate frisbee gold medalist from the Olympics.” I smile at you and say, “A man made to go down in history.”

1900

Part of me wishes the sun would never set. I tell you the day has been so great, I kind of don’t want it to end. “It doesn’t have to end, you say, “not yet, at least.” I can see your eagerness. You just want to please me. I don’t tell you the other part of me wishes it was tomorrow already. “Let’s go home.”

2000

Of all things, you extend your hand to me and ask for a dance in our living room. I accept, and you give me a twirl. You pull me close and we sway side to side, dancing to the distant melody of a man playing his guitar on the street below. “This is my favourite song,” you tell me. “I’ve never heard it before,” I reply. “Me neither,” you say. You look into my eyes.

2100

“Any second now,” you say. I hush you. We’re curled up on the couch, watching a horror movie you picked out. I scream when the horribly fake ghost appears. You laugh uncontrollably. “I hate jumpscares,” I say out of breath. “I love how terrifying you find this unterrifying movie,” you reply.

2200

“Day has come to an end’” you sigh. You ask me which part was my favourite. “That hasn’t happened today,” I say. You look confused. This time I’m laughing. “I’ll let you figure this one out.”

12 hours of our (acrostic) love

- waking up next to you is my favourite part of any day

Alexia Beatrice Guglielmi is currently a first-year Media and Communications student. Her favorite pastimes include reading, writing, and procrastinating from doing both. It is not uncommon to spot her watching cooking videos and daydreaming about the food.

Seek

I seek for solace in your chest. I dig and carve into it to find a place I can call home. But your ribcage holds a shipwreck, your treasure washed ashore. Your waters seize me and I am capsized like all the other boats that have ventured here before. Your pirate’s smile gleams; deceiving me into thinking that drowning is somehow euphoric. And against your currents’ warmth, all my thoughts are clouded, like a beast, I search to fill my whirling hunger. A feeling of longing arises as I dissipate to the bottom of your seabed, my hand reaching for the surface, calling for air.

Yet I am here to tell you that drowning me will not kill me. You may waterborne my body a hundred times, but I will come back with the same mean look in my eyes. You may have been defeated, crushed by an ally even, but I am not here to give you my condolences. Part of you has died. Accept it. The funeral flowers have wilted and the candles out. I seek for the life that exists after everyone departs. I am here to rebuild upon the aftermath, not sit in wallow and waste. I am here to discover the city that hides under your waves of heartbreak. The world moves forward and I am asking you to move forward with me. Let your waters calm and set the gale afar. The sun is rising and we are awake with it.

Current Editor in Chief of GoldDust and Goldsmiths’ alumni, Anna McNutt’s dream is to never stop writing - no matter what direction life may take her in. Her ambition to make GoldDust a supportive space for creative minds translates in her own personal projects, working freelance as a producer and script editor.

Doreen and Barbara

Some days the branches of the giant conifer tree at the end of the garden sway in the wind so hard I think the whole thing will snap. I watch from my bed every morning through the seasons, a reminder that people are out in that weather, existing, living their everyday lives.

I long for a life I never had.

If only I had more time and I’d seen more places, met more people. Women now can have high up jobs in cities, no husband. Live their life on their own terms. I overheard Mary’s grandchild, no older than twenty-five, talking about her business trip to New York City, how she went to the top of the Statue of Liberty. I’ve never been outside of Europe. Scared of going by myself, I suppose. Stan always said he didn’t see the point, that we were able to do anything that we could

do anywhere else here, in Bexhill. The problem was we never did. Stan would tell me the things that I wanted to do were pointless anyway. My little friends were too gossipy, he’d say. ‘I don’t know why you’ve got to tell them all our business, Dor. It’s not like you do anything interesting enough to talk about anyway.’ Every Sunday before my coffee catch ups with the ladies from church he’d sneer and tell me not to bother going, and I’d walk out the door anyway.

I never realised what I’d missed until I met Barbara. She moved in not long after Stan died. It started with a conversation about the bland food: they make it mushy so the old dears can munch through it with their missing teeth, and tasteless because we don’t digest spice apparently. She said the food ‘wasn’t a patch on the Hilton’. I laughed, thinking she was joking. Obviously an NHS-funded care home isn’t going to be serving Michelin Star meals, but she was deadly serious. She gets confused about where she is and forgets that we get the same dinners week after week.

I sometimes wish I could forget I was here, even just for a minute.

Barbara’s eighty years were significantly more exciting than mine; she was a dancer, her husband an actor, and they spent their best years drifting from one country to the next, making glamorous friends while wearing glamorous dresses. I could look around her room all day at the photographs of her past life, worn out jazz records. Barbara’s favourite song is Girl from Ipanema by Stan Getz, her eyes light up when the soft refrain begins, as if she’s back in Rio being serenaded by her husband. Her lips mutter along with the words while she beams from ear

to ear - ‘... tall and tan and young and lovely

the girl from Ipanema goes walking’

‘He made me feel like the most beautiful woman in the world!’ She’d exclaim while padding around her bed to the rhythm. ‘We’d dance in the moonlight and he’d hold me close and tell me he never wanted to let me go!’

I don’t think I ever felt beautiful around Stan. That was his way though; he couldn’t seem to show me he cared. If I’m honest I don’t know if I loved him enough to spend my entire life with him. You can’t love someone who treats you like an inconvenience. But I didn’t know any better. I thought that was what all marriages were like.

Barbara forgets what we’re talking about in the middle of conversations sometimes, repeats herself. She can’t remember what day of the week it is and constantly moans about the room being to cold or too hot, too noisy or too quiet. But occasionally she’ll recall how the sand felt between her toes on the beaches of Brazil the night that her husband proposed with a clarity unlike anything I could recall.

She has a daughter who comes and laughs about things that happened in her previous life and even though Barbara often can’t remember, I think they just like to see each other smile. Seeing them together makes my heart drop in my chest. I wish I had someone to worry when I get ill, to bring me my favourite flowers on my birthday. Sometimes, when I pray, I ask God why I was never able to have children. That’s the one thing that I truly regret. Not caring for a child, even adopting. I have so much love to give, and no one’s ever taken it.

But then I look up from my spongy carrots and Barbara’s watching me and making a disgusted face while letting the mashed potato drip from her fork; I feel the corners of my mouth twitching and I think maybe things aren’t so bad after all.

Laura Brampton is a third-year Media and Communications student specializing in Creative Writing, from a tiny village in Devon where she found a love for writing because there was only sheep for company. She has a website for videos she makes at: lebrampton.wixsite.com/lebrampton

Luggage Restrictions

Small purse/personal item

The neighbours’ brindled cat carries a small capsule around the neck with an address and other essential information. When he goes on longer journeys he fills the capsule with cash and false IDs that he uses to get into pubs and other fully licensed places serving alcohol. He is otherwise, mostly, an even-tempered animal, good to children and a tremendous cuddle-tail.

Hand luggage

In her pouch she carried items from the sea. Pearls, bladderwrack seaweed, mussel shells and a saltcellar. She wanted to be more earthbound in this way of doing things. Connect to nature. It took her long to adjust and usually she packed too much. Then the sea-foam dripped down her legs and gathered in the shoes. If she lost her ways she traced her murmur of waves and salt trails home - but otherwise a well travelled cod head lead the way.

Suitcase

This was a cumbersome thing and he had promised to take it with him. All the way. He wasn’t on a pilgrim journey though he was completely dressed in white, from shoulders to the little ball on his ankle. This was voluntary, partially anyway. When the nights came the colours turned upside down and the desert came blue and the sky red. The suitcase got heavier in every valley and it did not help that the red heels were one size too big. Besides that, it was hard to walk in the slim stilettos through the wet sand.

Karólína Rós Ólafsdóttir is a first year English and Creative Writing student. She is from a town in the north of Iceland surrounded by mountains and sea, a poet, feminist and a one half of an Icelandic poetry duo called Sóknarskáld - www.facebook.com/soknarskald

She is currently knitting a sweater and working on tweeting more in English, catch her @Karolinarosolaf

Words by Stephanie Gorman

How An Extra Leg-Piece Once Saved Hamid Anees’s Life

Hamid

Hamid Anees looked like any other boring man who worked at a boring bank. He wore the same four khaki safari suits to work every day for thirty years, his hair, as black as it was when he first stepped foot into the State Bank of India on Lattice Bridge Road, Chennai, and his comb, the same one used to brush his moustache with for the larger part of three decades, rested in the front pocket of his shirt.

Hamid Anees was not a man of much regret. For instance, he did not regret taking the Bank Exam in the summer of 1988. If it weren’t for that, he would have probably taken over his father’s medical store in the small coastal town of Tutricorin. But here he sat, behind the grand counter of the State Bank of India on Lattice Bridge Road, Chennai, advising customers about their bank balances, asking them to sign properly on their cheques, informing them about increasing interest rates. Sure, it wasn’t the most glamorous job, but in ten years time, he would retire and earn a pension for the rest of his life.

Yet, when the clock above his counter, next to the portrait of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi struck three, he found himself squirming sitting behind his counter. He felt the tiniest pang of regret. Just a tickle. And then it started creeping in, and kept creeping in, and before he knew it, he was swimming in an ocean of regret— the kind of regret one only feels three hours after eating a chicken leg-piece too many at lunch.  

‘Neha?’ he looked behind. ‘NEHA?’ he repeated, with trembling hands and fear in his eyes, silently swallowing a burp.

‘Yes, Hamid sir?’ she appeared.

‘Can you cover for me?’

‘Of course, sir.’

‘I’ll just be five minutes,’ he said as he darted to the bathroom.

Aadittyaa

‘Are you going home now?’ Harini furrowed her eyebrows.

Aadittyaa and Harini stood outside a large wrought-iron gate, the words “ANNA UNIVERSITY (MAIN ENTRANCE)” beamed from a tacky florescent yellow banner hanging awkwardly across. For Chennai’s premier institution, aesthetics weren’t exactly top priority.

‘I can’t go back in,’ he said. He wasn’t wrong; as of fifteen minutes ago, Aadittyaa was banned from entering university for the next six months.  ‘Bloody cameras,’ he muttered.

‘How are you going to tell your parents?’ Harini asked.

She had a point. How would he tell his parents? Harini had lived two doors away from Aadittyaa her whole life; she knew his parents would be shocked to find out that their son was suspended from university for hacking down closed circuit television cameras with an axe— he was a peaceful kid. They wouldn’t, however, be as surprised to find out that he got caught because he forgot to delete footage from the damaged cameras— Aadittyaa wasn’t exactly “cautious” or “intelligent”. Why would their oblivious, harmless son suddenly engage in an uncharacteristic act of destruction? No, Harini thought. He would have to explain right from the beginning, from that summer afternoon when the mercury soared to forty eight degrees and they sucked on orange icicles in his bedroom and watched V for Vendetta for the first ever time.

‘I don’t have to tell them anything,’ Aadittyaa said.   

‘What if they find out?’

‘It’s in my past. And the past can’t hurt you anymore, unless you let it.’

‘Aadittyaa Aravind. Stop. Quoting. That. Fucking. Film.’

Aadittya glared at Harini. ‘Sorry, A,’ she rolled her eyes.

A for Aadittyaa, A for anarchy. He thought that was very clever. After all, he was now an anarchist. He was blissfully unaware of what anarchy was for the first nineteen years of his life, but that fateful summer evening, the one with the orange icicles and V for Vendetta, had changed his life.

Aadittyaa had not read much anarchic literature. In fact, it would be correct to say he had not read any anarchic literature. The sole material he had engaged with that covered the subject was V for Vendetta itself, but that did not stop him from founding the Anarchy Society at his university. Members would wear Guy Fawkes masks and all black outfits and march to the Karpagambal Temple every Thursday to steal a solitary shoe from pairs of shoes that devotees would leave outside. ‘It’s not about stealing shoes,’ Aadittyaa had declared to his recreational anarchist cult, ‘it’s about standing up for something.’

Stealing from outside the temple was a calculated decision too, if one could call Aadittyaa’s decisions that. He did not support organised religion, not since he watched V for Vendetta at least. He snickered at people who believed in religion or superstition— ironic, Harini thought. Most well off families happened to be superstitious, and Aadittyaa’s parents were no different.

When he was born, the family priest recommended naming him Aditya— Sanskrit for the sun god. However, the family numerologist believed that a name with eight to ten letters would lead to a longer life, and recommended Aadittya. This didn’t go down well with the family astrologer who felt it was imbalanced, and recommended adding another “a” at the end. Aadittyaa. You could never have too many A’s in a name. When he “discovered” anarchy and began to openly despise religion, as any form of hierarchy, it was no surprise to Harini that he did not want to be reminded of his name.

‘Are you going home now?’ she asked him and quickly glanced at her watch.

‘I don’t know...’

‘If you can’t go home, where will you go?’

Aadittya could not answer.

‘A! If you can’t go home, where wi—’ a ringing bell interrupted Harini. ‘I have a lecture now,’ she stepped back. ‘But text me.’ She turned around to walked towards the university building, and called out behind her shoulder. ‘Don’t do anything stupid!’

‘If I can’t go home’, Aadittyaa snickered, ‘I’ll go out with a bang.’

Selvaraj

Today, Selvaraj Pandian graced the Thiruvanmyur watering hole,  “FRIENDS WINES” with his presence. He did not grace these watering holes stocked with his presence often, certainly not at midday when they would still be stocked with alcohol. Those close to him would tell you that he barely graced anywhere with his presence. In fact, the employees at the toy store he ran would inform you that he hardly graced his own shop with his presence.

The sandy plastic chair clad south Chennai watering hole, on the other hand, was very accustomed to patrons gracing the dingy bar with their presence at midday, but rarely did they bring their dogs along. Selvaraj brought to the table, quite literally, a golden retriever— a breath of fresh air from the regular pack of cards, cigarettes, or revolver pistol.

He had company— a man with a receding hairline and a bushy moustache, wearing a white shirt, white trousers, and white sandals. His shirt was unbuttoned at the top, providing onlookers with a peek of his chunky gold chain and bed of chest hair.

‘What’s his name?’ the man asked Selvaraj, visibly amused at the dog.

‘Garfield.’

‘You named your dog after a cat?’

‘After the cricketer, Laxmi, brother.’

Garfield barked.

Owning a toy store was never Selvaraj’s primary career choice. Many toy storeowners would inform you that it wasn’t their primary career choice either, and that they mostly ran toy stores solely for financial gain in order to feed their families and provide shelter. Not many get to do what they love and earn money from it, but Selvaraj did. Twenty-two years back, he was a tearaway pace bowler, like most eighteen year old aspiring cricketers were. It served him well— brought in enough money to feed his fledging family and provide shelter. But over the years he began to lose a bit of his fitness, a lot of his pace, and all of his hair; the money, too, started to dry up.

Let me clarify, Selvaraj never made it very big in cricket. He is not the kind of athlete you would tell tales about to your grandchildren; the kind who defied all odds, gravity, and the clutches of death to win games firmly lodged in the jaws of defeat. The highest level of cricket he would play would be the domestic test championship, the Ranji Trophy. He did play for his state Tamil Nadu for a decade and a half in the championship, but would never come close to the dizzying heights that West Indian 1970s all rounder Garfield “Gary” Sobers would touch.  In fact, the closest he would come to Sobers would be naming his dog after him.

‘You wanted to be like Sobers when you were young?’ Laxmi scoffed.

‘My father wanted me to.’

‘Selvaraj Sobers,’ Laxmi chuckled, admiring his own wit.  

Selvaraj still played cricket. No professional team would want a forty-year-old washed out athlete, but semi professional sides were more than happy to have older players with domestic experience. Selvaraj’s fifteen-year spell with the Tamil Nadu side was enough for him to be swooped by the local outfit The Titans; they weren’t The Titans of a specific place, or specific time, or of any other definable characteristic, but one would presume that they were called so because they were based in Thiruvanmyur­. Thiruvanmyur Titans had a ring to it, but the wound up going only by The Titans. Whether this was a deliberate move or just an oversight on the owners’ end remains a story for another day.

‘Let’s cut to the chase,’ Laxmi said. ‘We both know why we’re here’

‘I don’t.’

‘What do you mean?

‘You called me - I showed up.’

‘Just…showed up?’

‘Yeah, I thought you just wanted a drink or something’

‘It’s midday.’

‘Some people drink at noon.’

‘You brought your dog along!’

‘Yeah, well, he gets lonely at home.’

Garfield yelped. Selvaraj was right. The dog did get lonely at home; he even took him to Titans games on match days. The Titans gig did not pay much. Selvaraj only earned ten thousand rupees every season, but he did not mind that. He only played cricket for the love of the game. For money, he fixed games. Not match fixing, good god, no! Nothing that compromised the outcome of a game; just smaller things, like wearing his sunglasses backwards, or shining the ball with a towel, or “accidentally” bowling wide balls. Local moneylenders like Laxmi would pay the cricketers in advance. They would bet on these petty, inconsequent outcomes, and sit on a fat wad of cash after the game.  

‘How much money did I give you?’ Laxmi asked.

‘Thirty thousand rupees.’

‘And how many wide balls did I tell you to bowl?’

‘Two.’

Laxmi gaped, bewildered.  ‘I said three, Selva.’

‘I thought you’d said two this time.’

‘It’s always three. It’s been three for the last year and a half.’

‘I know, that’s why I thought you said two wides, you know, to change things up.’

Laxmi was dumbfounded.

‘I would tell you if I changed instructions, wouldn’t I?’

‘I don’t know, this one time my aunt Sujatha went to th—‘

‘I would tell you!’ Laxmi almost had tears in his eyes. ‘Selva, the money,’ he said, ‘I need it back.’

‘What?’

‘The thirty thousand. I lost it all betting on your stupid ass.’

‘I can’t.’

‘What do you mean you can’t?’

‘I used it all to pay for my insurance.’

‘Your insurance?’ Laxmi looked at him blankly.

‘Yeah, you know, an arrangement by which a company or the state undertakes to provide a guarantee of compensation for specified loss, damage, illness, or death in return for payment of a specified premium.’

‘I know what an insurance is, Selvaraj Pandian!’

‘Then why’d you ask?’

‘I can’t believe this is happening. I can’t fucking believe this is actually happening!’

Selvaraj shrugged.

‘You have until five in the evening to return my money.’

‘I can’t.’

Laxmi put his hand into his pocket and fished out a shiny, silver revolver pistol. He stroked the golden retriever.

‘You have until five. Or else, you’ll never see Garfield again.’

The sun shone off Laxmi’s gold chain into Selvaraj’s eyes. Garfield stared into space.  

‘Four hours, forty five minutes, and fifteen seconds’, Laxmi said. ‘Fourteen’.

Pramod

In a dimly lit basement in Thondaiyarpet, North Chennai, two men sat glued to the television, watching the Two O’Clock news. The taller of the two wore an ill-fitting suit, a bowler hat, and sunglasses, while the other man wore a school uniform. On the wall behind the television hung a poster of The Godfather, a life-size cutout of Tamil cinema villain Prakash Raj, and a map of Chennai. Empty cans of beer, banana peels, and a box of eggs lay littered on the centre table. There is a common saying in the broadcast industry— you watch the Two O’Clock news either because you work in news or because you have no work.

‘Gangster Dharmaraj arrested for attempting to rob Member of Parliament R Raja’s house,’ the anchor droned on. Even she did not want to be on the Two O’Clock news. No one wanted to be on the Two O’Clock news.

‘Gangster-a?’ the man in the suit sat up. ‘Dharmaraj-a?’

‘We’re bigger than him brother Pramod,’ the other man reassured him. ‘It’s just the Two O’Clock news. Only people with no work watch the Two O’Clock News.’

Mani would take offence if you told him he had no work. He would argue that he was sixteen years old and still at high school, and was not bound by societal pressure to be gainfully employed yet.

‘If fucking Dharmaraj is a gangster, we’re bigger gangsters,’ Pramod fumed.

‘We deserve to be on the news too, brother Pramod,’ Mani agreed.

Pramod, unlike Mani, did have work. Sure, “Gangster” wasn’t an option on the income tax form, and many accountants would inform you that gangsters seldom paid income tax, but there was no denying that being a gangster was hard work. Pramod liked it when people respected that, and that was perhaps what helped him strike a connection with Mani at a wannabe-gangsters-only-screening of The Godfather a year ago.

‘How do you manage all that work by yourself?’ Mani had asked.

‘I barely do, actually,’ he had responded. ‘I’m on the lookout for an assistant.’

‘I’ve always wanted to be a gangster’s assistant,’ the boy blushed, and so began a rather peculiar gangster-sidekick relationship.

Unlike Mani, Pramod did not idolize the idea of becoming a gangster. He wanted to be an actor— not any actor— he grew up watching Nambiar terrorise hapless protagonists, Nasser kidnap supporting actors and heroines, and Prakash Raj playing antagonists with enough conviction to be the most despised man in all of Tamil Nadu. Pramod did not want to be any actor; he wanted to be a Tamil film villain.

When he turned eighteen, he joined the gym and put on some muscle to support his six foot two inch frame. When he turned twenty-two, he began auditioning for villan roles in Tamil films, but after a year of wandering from set to set and audition to audition only to face rejection, he realised he would never bag a villan role. Not because of his obvious lack of acting talent— when had that been a problem in the Tamil film industry—but because of his inability to grow facial hair. What is a Tamil villain without a moustache? Nothing of significance, that’s what he is. He could go audition all he wanted, but he would never land a villan’s role without a moustache.

One fine day, when this finally dawned upon him, he bought a gun, put on his father’s wedding suit, and went around town committing petty crimes— picking pockets, charging hafta at the local market, occasionally even sending threats to celebrities and politicians. What he had not done yet, was appear on the news.

‘We deserve to be famous, brother,’ Mani sat up.  

There was a glint in Pramod’s eyes. ‘Yes! Let’s kill someone!’

‘Who?’

‘I don’t know, let’s just kill someone.’

‘Seems a bit much…’

Pramod rolled his eyes, ‘Then let’s rob a bank’

‘You mean you’ll rob a bank.’

‘We’re a team.’

‘I have geography in an hour at school’

‘Don’t go! You’re supposed to be my assistant, dammnit!”

‘Mrs. Sudha will call my parents if I don’t go.’

‘Shall we kill her?’ Pramod’s eyes sparkled again.

‘Absolutely not!’

‘Alright,’ Pramod scowled. ‘Then we rob a bank.’

‘You’ll rob a bank,’ Mani corrected him.

‘Which one?’

‘Do you have any darts?’ Mani glanced at the map of Chennai on the wall.

Pramod shook his head.

Mani shrugged. ‘Okay,’ he said, and picked an egg up from the table. ‘Wherever this breaks on the map, drive there and rob the first bank you see.’

He threw the egg at the map, and it promptly splattered on impact. Pramod walked towards the map and rubbed the yolk, which was by now dripping to the floor, with his handkerchief.

‘Lettuce Bridge Road?’ he squinted.

‘Lattice,’ Mani corrected him.

‘Let us,’ Pramod winked.

‘Let you. I have geography!’

Aadittyaa, Selvaraj, and Pramod

It was five minutes past three o clock at the State Bank of India on Lattice Bridge Road, Chennai on a Friday afternoon. It was busier than a regular Friday afternoon. One of the two tellers’ counters was more crowded than usual; she informed a harried customer that this was because her veteran supervisor was occupied and she was covering for him. She wasn’t as quick as him, she told him sheepishly.    

The customer nodded in agreement, stopped for a second, sighed, and opened his backpack. He took out a revolver pistol and pointed it at the teller. Now, this was not a real revolver pistol. The customer had picked it up at the toyshop he owned. In fact, he did not know the slightest bit about guns. For a man who spent most of his life playing professional cricket and some parts of it running a toyshop, he never needed to know about guns.

‘Thirty thousand rupees, now,’ he placed his sports bag on the teller’s counter.

‘Five lakh rupees, now,’ a man in a sloppy suit, a bowler hat and sunglasses standing a couple of places behind flung a leather duffel bag towards the teller. He then brandished a pistol and fired into the roof. This was not a pistol from a toyshop, and the man definitely seemed to know a thing or two about guns.

‘ALL YOUR MONEY, NOW,’ barked a third man from the end of the queue dressed in a black t-shirt, skinny black jeans and a Guy Fawkes mask, and held a semi-automatic rifle above his head with the grace of a man holding a semi-automatic rifle for the first ever time in his life.

‘EVERYBODY DOWN,’ he yelled. ‘GIVE ME ALL YOUR MONEY AND NOBODY GETS HURT,’ he flung a large suitcase towards the counter.

The petrified teller squeaked, ‘It’s almost the end of the day, we only have ten lakh.’

‘Then give it to the man!’ the man with the sports bag said.

‘Yeah, you heard him!’ the man in the sloppy suit said.

It was not often that three separate parties accidentally ended up robbing the same bank on the same day at the same point of time. It was certainly not something Aadittyaa, Selvaraj, or Pramod had thought about, but they all instinctively seemed to agree that the best way forward would be to team up with the person in possession of the deadliest weapon.

Both the tellers combined forces and stuffed Aadittyaa’s suitcase with all the money they could find.

‘This is it,’ Neha said as she handed the suitcase back to him.

He received the suitcase and turned around, and Selvaraj immediately put his hand around Aadittyaa’s shoulders, as if he were congratulating a bowler who took a hat trick on debut.

‘Well done da,’ he said. ‘Good job.’

‘Nice one,’ Pramod did not want to be left out. ‘Now can I have five lakh from that?’ he meant business.

‘I just need thirty thousand,’ Selvaraj put forward his claim.

‘NO ONE GETS ANY MONEY, I’M BURNING ALL OF THIS!’ Aadittyaa waved the bag around.

‘No no no no no no no!’ Selvaraj panicked.

‘IT’S NOT ABOUT THE MONEY, IT’S ABOUT SENDING A MESSAGE’ he continued.

‘No! Please, just give me my thirty thousand, there are lives at st—“

Selvaraj did not finish his sentence. It is difficult to finish sentences when a failed-Tamil-cinema villain-turned-wannabe gangster shoots you in the head. In fact, it is difficult to finish sentences when anyone shoots you in the head. Selvaraj lay motionlessly in a pool of blood. Later that day, an underground cricket betting ring would get uncovered after the ringleader would be arrested for shooting a dog. It was a bizarre chain of events, but then again, it had been a rather bizarre day.

Sometimes, one witnesses something that changes everything one had ever thought about life. Aadittyaa thought V for Vendetta was his life-changing event. But seven months later, as he witnessed a former cricketer getting shot in the head right in front of him, he realised that perhaps this was his life-changing event; V for Vendetta was just a false alarm. It began to dawn on him that perhaps, there was a small, slight, miniscule chance that his understanding of anarchy was convoluted; that robbing a financial institution hours after getting suspended from university wasn’t a very good idea; that getting shot by an actual gangster in the middle of an accidental three way robbery literally hours after being told not to do anything stupid would, in fact, be a stupid thing to have done.

Ideally, he would prefer shooting the man in front of him. Unfortunately, he had never really used a gun before, and the middle of an existential breakdown while attempting a robbery wasn’t exactly the best situation to try out something new. He didn’t think he would actually have to fire a gun. He had stolen his father’s credit card last week in a radical act of anarchy, and used it to buy the  first semi-automatic revolver he could find.

Do anarchists live off their parents’ money, he wondered. So far, anarchy had meant voicing dissent in an academic safe space with negligible to minimal consequences. But as he faced a threat to his entire existence, he considered, maybe, just maybe, anarchy wasn’t for him.

‘Keep it together,’ he thought to himself.

However, he could not keep it together. He could not keep it together to the extent that he didn’t realise that he said this out loud, too. Not only that, but he also momentarily lost control over his bladder, and as a consequence, stood in his own mildly toxic bodily waste.

Pramod had read somewhere that in moments of crisis, a real gangster could smell fear. At this point in time, all he could smell was urine.

‘What sweetheart, all good?’ Pramod muttered an iconic Prakash Raj dialogue as he pointed his pistol at Aadittyaa. ‘Goodbye,’ he said as he reached for the trigger, ‘swetheart.’

Aadittyaa gulped.  

Pramod pulled the trigger. Nothing came out from the barrel. He pulled again. Nothing. Again. Nothing. Again. Nothing.

‘For fuck’s sake, I thought there were five left!’ he shook the pistol and looked into the barrel. Except, through sheer habit pulled the trigger, which, for a change, fired a bullet from the barrel. Unfortunately for Pramod, it promptly blew his brains out and splattered blood all over the counter and on to the clock and portrait of Gandhi hanging on the wall behind him. Pramod would make it to the news later that evening, just not under the circumstances he’d expected.

Aadittyaa stood wide-eyed for a few seconds. When he realised what had just happened, he bolted towards the door. As he did, he heard sirens in the distance.

‘Damn it, the cops!’ he thought. Had he paid a bit more attention, he would have realised that was just an ambulance in the distance, but one cannot expect critical thinking abilities to be at their functional best minutes after attempting to rob a bank and witnessing a homicide.

He quickly tucked into the lane on his left, and ran around the perimeter of the bank. It was only a good few metres into this did Aadittyaa realise he was running away from the scene of a bank robbery holding a suitcase full of stolen money in his right hand— he looked like exactly the person the police would be after. He threw the money into the nearest window he could see, and ran into the distance with the shattering of glass still ringing in his ears.

Hamid, II

Hamid Anees had taken a satisfactory dump. In the good old days, he’d read property advertisements in the newspaper on the pot. ‘I find it meditative,’ he’d say. In the last few years, however, the newspaper had been replaced by a smartphone, and the property advertisements had been replaced by motivational videos his brother would send over WhatsApp. Smartphones— truly revolutionising communication.

He finished his business, and stepped up to the sink to wash his hands. As he squeezed the last drop of soap out of the dispenser, he heard a shattering sound to his right, and a suitcase flew in through the window.

Hamid walked towards it suspiciously. He bent down and opened it, and his face turned pale as he saw it was stuffed with money.

‘I’ll ask Neha to call the police,’ he said to himself. He zipped the suitcase and released the handle, and dragged it to the door.

As he opened the bathroom door, and stood facing the bank, his jaw dropped. Blood dripped off the portrait of Gandhi.

Pranavesh Subramanian is a 3rd year Media and Communications student at Goldsmiths. He forms 1/4th of New Delhi’s based alternative comedy collective, Brainfart Productions (which he deeply regrets naming at the age of 17). His aim is to one day research what it means to write comedy under late capitalism, but for now, Pranavesh is happy to settle for playing Football Manager 2017, taking the Wolverhampton Wanderers into Champions League. He tweets @pranxvesh and sometimes writes funny Instagram captions @pranavesh.

Dwell

Dwell is a short story about grief and the many ways it manifests. It's a story about the places we call home, it's about loss, about friendship, and even hope. But most of all, Dwell is a story about the times when we're forced to dwell on painful thoughts and how those thoughts are able to send us on the path to acceptance. 

PART I

1 

You brush your fingers along the lens and glide them upwards to feel for the shutter release, you touch the curves, the controls, the hard glassy edge of the viewfinder. The body feels rough under your fingertips. It feels good, it feels like home. 

Bringing  the viewfinder up to your eye, you tilt it at just the right angle, feeling for the zoom button to flick through existing photographs. It’s no use, the zoom can’t fix your sight. The faces still blur…but Jenny’s strawberry blonde hair still manages to capture your gaze. You close your eyes and drop the camera down to the white sheets of the hospital bed. You allow yourself to collapse back against the mattress, the pain sapping your energy. Tears well up in your bottom eyelids. You blink rapidly, trying to force them away. Breathing in deeply through your nose, you sink into a world where you can see her face again.

She’s dancing, you’re dancing. Your lips curl up into a smile as you stare into her light brown eyes. And you realise, you love her. You love this girl. You kiss her. You’re in her bedroom, you’re with her and she is with you. But then…then it all changes. You can’t see her. She’s disappearing, her face becomes a Gaussian blur and you reach for her. You look around, you can’t see. You know there’s a poster on the wall but you can’t see it. You can’t see. You can’t see, the words ring in your head.

“Duncan, sweetie,” your mum says gently, nudging you awake.

Sweat beads along the top of your forehead and you wipe it away with the back of your hand. You reach for your camera and realise that the black blurry blob now sits on the table beside you. Your heart races and you swallow as you try to control the struggling breaths. One breath in. One breath out. This is only temporary, you remind yourself. This is only temporary. Soon you’ll be standing on a mountain in the Scottish Highlands photographing some alpacas in high-definition quality, or something.

“The nurse wants to take some more blood, sweetie…Doctor’s orders,” she says as she pulls sweaty, dark hair away from your forehead and presses her lips to it.

You stretch out your arm, feeling for the cannula and await the nurse.

She extracts blood quickly and methodically, like you’re a random lab rat in some medical institution. Needle in, slight pinch. Needle out.

“Thanks, Duncan,” the nurse says, as if you’re doing her a favour by keeping still. You see her silhouette turn to walk away.

“Sorry…” Mum says quickly.

“Yes?” she says, turning back.

"When will Doctor Peter see him?”

 The nurse bows her head and you imagine she’s checking over a schedule.

“Ah! Today. He’s booked in today.”

The echo of her shoes tell you she’s turned back round to leave you and mum alone.

A few hours later, a man in a purple uniform carts you away in a wheelchair. Its wheels squeak as it skates over the gap between ground and elevator.

“Hockley Ward, second floor. Going down,” the elevator voice says.

You wonder if they know that it’s your eyes that aren’t working, not your legs.

Your parents sit next to you in the waiting room as you wait for your name to be called. It’s one of those plastic seats you get in hospital waiting rooms, where they’re all connected by a metal bar. You know it because Dad’s restless legs are shaking so much that it’s causing the whole row of chairs to vibrate.

A while later, Mum takes you by the arm and guides you into a large room and seats you down. The doctor stands before you and a whole team of medical juniors start silhouetting behind him. They scare you and you can’t quite pinpoint why.

He speaks medical jargon. Optic neuritis…something Stargardt’s, central vision loss. Cells in the optic nerve beginning to…

“Die,” the doctor says lastly.

Now you’re getting it. They scare you because your future is in their hands. They speak a language that you can’t comprehend. Your hands are shaking, you can’t…control them. Your mind tunes out of whatever he’s saying, like it’s protecting you from hearing the truth.

Dad’s voice pipes up, knocking your brain back into gear: “Thurrock’s what?”

“Thurrock’s Neuropathy. It’s a rare genetic condition passed down from the mother through the mitochondria.”

“What does that mean? There’s…there’s something you can do, right? Some kind of treatment?” you say, and you’re hyperaware of the tremble in your voice.

“No,” the doctor says hesitantly, “You’re going to go completely blind in, potentially eighteen months.”

2

I push the handlebar down and swing the fire escape door open. The cool air hits me in the face as I take one tentative, barefooted step onto the cold concrete rooftop. The moon peeks out above a high rise block of flats opposite, shining a pathway towards the ledge. I run the back of my hand across my runny nose from the cocaine come down. A small red car zooms by below as the wind quickens its pace. It makes me regret coming up here in just a pair of boxer shorts.

I could do it, you know. Twenty-three floors high, just one step. It would be quick. Instantaneous. A hundred metres? Terminal velocity. Yes, I could do that. The vertigo kicks in and I take a tiny, hesitant step back. I can see it happening, the slow-motion freefall… The same moment has played through my head so many times. Falling. Falling into the deepening depths…

“Thomm-as?”

Shit. I back away from the ledge and eye the girl. Her arms are wrapped round her body as she shivers in my black bathrobe.

“Yes?” I say, trying hard to hide my annoyance at the interruption and her continued butchering of my name.

“Is everything…okay?” Rave Girl 5 continues, her brow furrowing.

“I’m fine, Lisa,” I say as I walk past her and jog back down the staircase leading up to the fire escape door.

“It’s…Leah,” she says coldly.

My mind flashes back to the time in the club when she corrected my pronunciation of Greenwich. Greenwitch, Grennitch. Lisa, Leah….

“Right, sorry, Leah.”

She follows me back into my flat and stands by the door. I watch her fingertips glide along the wood of my vinyl player. She’s not you, Annelí.

“Look, Leah. I’m not in a good place right now. I’m going to need you to go,” I say with as much sadness as I can muster.

“But it’s 4am?”

“Please? I can call you an Uber? Here, I’ll pay for it, where are you go-”

“Forget it,” she says, striding into my bedroom to change into her clothes.

She’s out of my flat in five minutes, with nothing but a look that says ‘fuck you’. She’s not you…Annelí. Nothing but those same coloured eyes.

At 5am I decide to head back up to the rooftop. I lay a blanket down and sit, watching the lights of the buildings dance asynchronously. The sounds of early London buzz in uncooperative dissonance in the February wind. I can feel the flu-like symptoms coming on thick and fast.

I unfurl one of the corner pages of Kafka on the Shore and hold the book up to my face. Tracing my finger along the shitty sentence that I’ve read over and over again, I start to talk out loud.

“And once the storm is over you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.”

I can’t help it, I laugh like a maniac. Fucking bullshit. You were right, Annelí. Murakami is one lattelepjandi lopatrefill. You never liked his work. Bleak and depressing, you’d say.

At half past, I light a candle on top of a Red Velvet cupcake and wait for the wind to blow it out. It doesn’t, so I blow it out myself.

“Happy birthday, Ann,” I say under my breath, “I miss you. So much.”

3

Three weeks. Three weeks since you were discharged and in that time, you haven’t been out on a shoot. No more tears, you tell yourself. You’d been psyching yourself up for this very moment. You told Jenny everything and she…understood. Today will be the first time you’ve seen her in months. It’s time you left the house.

Your alarm wakes you at 5am and the breaking dawn greets you with its bright morning hues. You get Mum to drive you up to the entrance to Primrose Hill, something she would have never have done…before all of this. You haven’t forgotten how to navigate its landscape.

You ascend it, it’s a path you’ve trodden up a hundred times. Perching yourself on the bench, you wait.

You pull the Canon up to the view of London and hold down the shutter release. Click. It’s like the ability to take photographs can’t be unlearned. You had to swap out the lens before you left to make sure you could capture dawn’s light with the prime lens. Click. Sometimes you feel like you’re just doing this to keep up the great charade of normality, just so you can pretend that nothing has changed. Who are you kidding?  It’s all changing.

An hour passes by, maybe more. You ring her. Two hours, three. Again and again you ring her and it just rings and rings before going to voicemail. You can recite the voicemail message by heart now.

The dog walkers arrive and leave, the morning joggers complete their morning routines and are off to work. The hill is starting to be invaded.

She’s not coming. The realisation sinks in. 

The soft gentle breeze washes over you and you collapse onto the floor before the bench and hover your hands just above the ground. Finally, you place them down and feel for the words that are etched into the tarmac. From muscle memory, you move your fingers through the letters.

“I have conversed with the spiritual sun…” you mutter to yourself.

Both of you shared this spot together. You hold up your camera again and stare at the viewfinder, tilting it at just the right angle, now a sequence of motions you’ve perfected. Clicking through the images, you wait for your brain to click with recognition. Your eyes stare with concentration, just waiting for your remaining vision to find the photograph of blonde hair merging with the backdrop of London at dawn. It’s like you’re playing a game of ‘Where’s Wally?’ and struggling to find him.  There. That’s the one.

You hover your finger over the delete button and take a deep breath, then pull your finger away. You were afraid of telling her, and you were right. All she knew was that you’d dropped out. You should have kept it at that and kept your big mouth shut. You pull your rucksack over your back and walk back down the hill.

Dad waits for you at the entrance of the park and drives you back home.

“How’s Jenny?” he asks, “Did she want to come round for lunch?”

You don’t respond.

When he pulls into the drive, he eagerly guides you through the porch and into the living room.

“There’s a lady here to see you, Dunc. Her name’s Juliet, she’s from the Social Services,” Mum says as you walk in.

Juliet shows you a long, white cane and teaches you how to use it. It’s a foreign object, like something that should never, ever be in your possession. You put it down on the chair next to you.

“Look, I know it’s hard,” she says, “and I know it’s easy for me to say, but honestly, it gets easier. You’re going to pull through this and come through the other side,”

Juliet, the not-blind social worker, says it like gospel. 

“No,” you say, shaking your head. “It’s not…going to be the same. Everything’s changing. My life…it’s never going to be-”

“Duncan,” Mum says, a quiver in her voice.

“Fuck! Didn’t you hear him? It’s your fault! Your fault that this…that this is happening!” you scream, your mouth spitting the words out like venom. “This…shit! It’s fucked up everything!” You lurch out of the living room door and run up to your bedroom.

You think you should feel bad for saying it but you don’t. It’s never, ever going to be the same. You’ve lived life through your eyes, through the variety of lenses lining your windowsill. How can it ever be the same?

You stare at the wall facing your bed and zoom into the A3 poster with your camera. It’s a picture of a waterfall in Iceland shrouded by mist.

You unzip your rucksack and take out the gift card you bought from the Iceland Air website. A return flight for two people to Reykjavik, like you and her always dreamed of. It was a present, for always being there for you, for continuing to be there for you…

Tears roll down your cheeks and splash onto the gift card. You wipe your eyes with the back of your hand.

“I’m still going,” you say.

4

Over the past three years I’ve mastered the art of faking “being busy”. The trick is to play the part with conviction. Be the poor, lonely, broody European who has a shit command of the English language.

Step one: Keep my head down and sit at the cubicle with two screens, minimum. Three if possible.

Step two: Pull up a spreadsheet when the area manager walks behind me. That’s how to fool the stupid. When I look hard at work, I am hard at work. I mess around with the data, type in the figures here, send off some e-mails there, make a few phone calls – remember, poor English! My Literature degree doesn’t exist in this dimension. And by the time I’ve done all of that, the day should be gone. Bam! I’ve got money in the bank and I’m living the bullshittery that is ‘being an adult’.

Step three: When the hands on the clock point to five, get out of the office! See, the idea is to escape before any colleague can ask whether I want to grab a drink. If I answer and say no, I’m rude. If I answer and say yes, I’m screwed. The best thing to do is to not give them the opportunity to ask me in the first place.

I don’t think I can ever get used to the suffocating feeling of the London Underground. We’re packed in like dead fish on a Reykjavik boat. The man behind me sneezes on the back of my neck and I can physically feel the snotty residue hitting my skin. I grit my teeth instinctively. Thank you… Drullu kunta.

I’m trapped in the corner facing the glass. A couple leaning on the cushioned rest lock lips like lizards. They whisper sweet ‘I love you’s’ like how couples do at the six month point in a relationship. Like how we used to do…I stare at their reflection in the glass. Fuck.

I shake it off and close my eyes. I need sleep, no. I need air. I run my fingers through the stray blonds in my hair and wrestle through the sweaty suits to make my way off the train.

I can’t stop myself, I’m sauntering from pub to pub without a care for the consequences. After my seventh…maybe eighth drink, I realise, I have no idea where I am. I don’t even open my phone to check, because I don’t even care. I deserve every stupid thing that happens to me. The lampposts blur together and they start to wobble like they’re doing a dance. I lumber forward and spot another pub filled with after-work drinkers. The sign above reads ‘The Shipwreck’. Ha, perfect. I push the door open and slur the order for a pint.

I drink slowly now, like I know I need to stop. To take it…easy.

The phone in my pocket rings and vibrates. Arí. The green answer button beckons to me. I don’t want to press it. I do.

“Helloooo, brother,” I say.

“Tómas?” he says. Is he…angry? “Are you drunken?”

I burst into laughter:  “Drunken? Arí, you need to improve your English!”

“Andskotinn, Tómas,” he says, now switching over to Icelandic. I can picture him shaking his head in disapproval.

“What? Don’t judge me, Arí! I’m celebrating!”

“Are you fucking kidding-”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, don’t curse at me!”

“Who are you with, Tómas?” he says.

“Myself,” I tell him. “Now if you will excuse me, I am celebrating Annelí’s birthday.”

"The fuck you are. I’m getting on the next plane to London and I’m taking you home. This is the end, Tómas. You are coming home.”

 I end the call.

5

The window pane is cold under your hand. You can feel the icy temperatures outside the body of the plane leeching through the glass.

You and Dad had planned it meticulously. It wasn’t easy, mind. Dad assisted you with organising the trip. He’d understood, unlike Mum. You practically had to beg him not to tell her.

Dad had spoken to a lady at a small family-run hotel and she said she could definitely accommodate you. It feels strange, lacking the independence to plan a holiday by yourself.

It’s infantilising, you think. The way dad had to get some assistance from the airline as he carried your duffle for you. Did dad used to do that? The moments start to blur, like you’re forgetting how things used to be and how they are now.

You’re exhausted, not physically – emotionally. The tethers to the visual world are snapping themselves in half.

You hear a trolley come rattling down the aisle next to you and you look straight ahead, feeling the smooth edges of the folded up cane in your hand for support. You can do this. It’s you against the world. God knows you’re on your own now.

The plane lands and you stay seated, just like the air hostess told you to. You realise you’re the last passenger left on the plane, like the forgotten liability you think you are.

Pulling on your beanie, you walk through the connecting tunnel guided by one of the airport staff. You can’t help but allow yourself to smile, even for this one moment. You descend the escalator. Welcome to Iceland.

The smell of rotten egg fills your nostrils as you’re led outside the airport by the man. The scent of…sulphur? Rain pelts you in the face as you stand in the darkness, waiting. You pull your coat tight around you and wrap your scarf around your neck a second time.

The man hails a cab and he and the driver have a brief conversation in Icelandic.

You can just make out the guy gesturing to the cane in your hand that’s still folded up. He then opens the passenger door and you throw your duffle in before stepping in yourself. 

 “You’re going to 168 Hverfisgata, is that right?”

“Yes, please,” you tell him.

As he drives, you notice the lights blurring past and the dark green fields pop out in the gloomy blackness.

He makes small talk and by half an hour in, you feel like you know all about him. Magnus, with two kids. Been working for airport taxis for twenty years. He loves his job, he loves his country.

Magnus parks up on the side of the road and offers to guide you to the door. You refuse, politely. You stop at the threshold, duffle strung across your back and knock loudly.

6

I didn’t put up a fight when he came, I just bawled into his shoulder. Arí helped me pack up my life, the dingy shithole I called home in London was stuffed away into three large suitcases. He’s right, I was unravelling at the seams. Arí booked the flight and we caught the plane the next day.

We take our seats on the plane and I turn to look at him. He gives me a small smile.

“Ma is going to be happy to see you home,” he says.

I nod and stare out the window. It’s still disorientating hearing his voice in real life, hearing the Icelandic language again. I’m trying not to think about it. About how the country will suffocate me. How they will suffocate me.

I flip open Kafka on the Shore and rest my head against the cold window. ‘If you remember me, then I don’t care if everyone else forgets.’

 Being home, it gives me anxiety. Like all their beady eyes are upon me. The airport I’ve grown up travelling in for twenty-four years feels the same. Time’s just stopped here. 

“Mind if I drive,” Arí says as he walks towards my Jeep in the airport car park.

“I see you took her,” I say, stepping into the passenger side.

“Yeah,” he says, giving me a sheepish grin and hopping into the driver’s seat.

“It is fine, Arí.” I tell him as he swerves out of the car park and onto the highway to Reykjavik.

“So is this it now, Tómas? You’re not going back to London?”

“Why?” I ask.

“Just…we’ve moved all of your stuff out into the shed.”

“Ah, I’m gone for three years and you’ve turned my room into a guest room?”

“It’s been three years, Tómas…we thought you’d never-”

“Arí,” I say, looking at him, “Relax, I’m just fooling.”

He shakes his head and punches me in the arm.

“I’m not planning on staying home long anyway...”

He laughs: “Over my dead body,” but he bites his tongue as he says the words ‘dead ‘body’.

I fake a grin. He didn’t mean to say it.

“Are you scared?” he says after a few minutes silence.

I look ahead, watching the streetlights illuminate the stretches of black tarmac in front. The wipers swipe aggressively at the windshield.

“Yeah,” I say softly, “Yeah, Arí. I’m really fucking scared.”

Arí reverses into our driveway. I stare at my childhood home. It looks exactly the same, the same red, wooden door. The same green elf statue on the lawn. Nothing changes.

I take a deep breath as Arí unlocks the front door.

“Tómas,” a voice breathes out as I step through the door.

Ma dives at me, holding me tightly. She kisses my cheek and her eyes fill with tears.

“It’s OK, Ma. I’m home,” I say and kiss her on the forehead. “I’m home.”

In my room, I begin to unpack my things. I lift out a photo frame. Shit. The glass had cracked in transit. I take the picture of Annelí and me out of the frame and lie it on my old bedside table. She has the biggest smile on her face as we stand in Hans’ house, posing for the picture. I unpack a few more items and feel my eyes getting tired. I lie back on the bed and close them.

A knock comes at my door, “Tómas?” Arí says.

“Shit,” I say, jolting up. “I fell asleep.”

“That’s OK, Tóm. You must be tired,”

“Yeah, I haven’t slept properly for…” I glance at the photo on the table.

Arí catches me looking at it. He takes a seat next to me.

“Tóm?”

I look up at him. His eyes bore into me, knowingly. I’m in for it.

“I want you to do something…not for me, but for yourself. I’ve seen how you’ve been, Tómas. You need to say goodbye. Please, for yourself, take one last trip up there and say goodbye to Annelí. She loved you so much, Tómas. I can see the…whatever this is, tearing you apart. You did nothing wrong.”

He leaves me to soak in his words and closes the door behind him.

7

Waking up in a different bed isn’t disorientating, it’s exciting. You are in Iceland. You’ve watched countless documentaries declaring this country the most beautiful place in the world. Films, television shows, music videos, every visual medium is itching to translate the beauty of Iceland to the screen. Now, you’re doing it.

The loud beeping of your watch wakes you up in the morning. Throwing off the covers, you place your feet down on the carpet.

Coming down the stairs, you carefully feel the edge of each step with your toes, a practice you’ve gotten used to doing. The lady who owns the bed and breakfast has a selection of food laid out for you. She takes you down and identifies what each item is. Fruit, cereal, bread

As you eat, she tells you where you can find the nearest tourist centre and offers to walk you there. But she seems…preoccupied. Her phone rings constantly and she has to keep pausing when she talks. After the fourth call, she sighs, turns it off and apologises. She starts telling you about the things you can do in Reykjavik.

In your hand you hold your camera, the image of the waterfall on the viewfinder. You consider asking her about it but the house phone rings, she apologises again before dashing off to the porch to answer the call. You drop the camera to your lap and sigh, there’s no point burdening her. She’s got her own problems and, like you keep telling yourself, it’s you against the world. No one wants to hear your shit.

You tug your hoodie up and pull down the strings. Your camera swings against your neck as you bend down to feel the laces to tie up your shoes. Taking one step outside onto the cobbled Reykjavik street, you inhale sharply. You can do this, you coach yourself. You can do this.

You hold the folded up cane in your hand and watch yourself shake involuntarily. Why are you so afraid? Because…because you know you don’t need it. You keep it folded up and shove it deep into your pocket, its string poking out from the top.

You walk now, the route directions the lady said ingrained in your brain. The cobbled path under your feet is unnatural but you get used to it, like how you have to get used to everything. A delicate wind rushes past your face as figures move both past, and at you. People stroll rather than speed by, not like in London where everyone moves hurriedly and tut if you’re too slow.

Left for two and right at the Salvation Army… You stare up at the sign and squint. Is that the shop? The words blur together. You shake your head and carry on walking. At the next intersection you stare up at the second shop’s sign. Is that it? You can feel your heart rate beginning to quicken as something tells you to turn right.               What did she say it was next? Straight for five…until you get to the Skuggi? No, you’re sure it was a right.

Screeeeeeeeeeeech.

Fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.

You stare at two bright car headlights as the loud beep of a car horn wrecks your ears. You let out breath after involuntary breath as you rush to the other side of the road. The driver shouts something in Icelandic.

Fuck! What are you doing? You collapse to the pavement and throw the cane to the side. The breaths fail to release. Your ribcage yearns for air as you breathe deeply, forcing a flood of oxygen into your system.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Alex Lee graduated from Goldsmiths in 2017 and achieved a first in Media and English. After completing his degree, he undertook numerous internships at the likes of the Guardian, Mac World and Tech Advisor. Alex is now writing for the tech and culture website Alphr, as well as freelancing for the Guardian. You can follow him on Twitter at @1AlexL.

Brainchildren (Part II)

“Come see this.” He picked up the cat and released it on the carpet. Trembling with excitement, Joe kneeled down again and softly flicked a bubble. It rolled for only a couple of seconds, but it was enough to get Cinnamon interested. His eyes widened and he lifted a paw. At once he was on his back legs, jumping like a marsupial. Cinnamon’s enthusiasm with the balls allowed Joe a deep breath. At least he knew for certain he wasn’t imagining them.

He sat, holding a bubble, while its twin rested on the centre of the table. Staring at the smoke within it, he travelled back to his deepest need: his wife. Now he had hope. He thought about the lunch at Le Perroquet. The bubble on the table glowed in a bright blue light. Joe jumped to his feet as Cinnamon crouched.

Before Joe could react, Cinnamon shot forward and hit the pulsating blue ball. Joe saw it happen in slow motion. The sphere flew off, hit the side of the fireplace and shattered into pieces. Joe’s forehead burst open, as if someone had stabbed his brain from the inside. He forgot who and where he was, but none of it mattered, he wanted the pain to stop. He was screaming with all the air he had in his lungs, but it wasn’t enough. It was the end. Joe begged for death. Fireworks exploded behind his closed eyes. Painfully slowly, it faded. Wheezing, Joe became aware of his position: he was on his knees and holding his face, though he didn’t remember kneeling. His brain pulsated. He looked up in time to see the fog, hovering over the shattered pieces of the sphere. It whispered something. Joe heard it loud and clear, as if the glass fragments were right next to him and not across the room. The whisper carried the idea of taking Amelia to the restaurant from their first date again. It flashed before Joe’s eyes at the speed of light: then it was lost.

Standing up slowly, Joe looked around for Cinnamon. The cat was trembling, his fat body squeezed under the coffee table.

“Hi, buddy… Sorry I scared you,” Joe whispered, petting the bit of fur he could reach.

He sat back down on the sofa, feeling as if a little piece of his soul had sunk into the core of the universe and left a hole in its place. At the same time, he felt something heavy in his stomach. He’d never been in that much pain before and was stunned by what he’d gone through. Joe tried to remember what the bubble had shown him, but he soon realised it was in vain. He had lost whatever scenario the bubble had given him. Joe ran his fingers through his hair. Breaking the sphere had broken one of the two ideas he had.

As a philosophy teacher, Joe was used to theories and hypotheses. He’d studied a lot and though he wasn’t particularly keen on showing it off, he had a fair amount of knowledge. Yet he’d never heard of a phenomenon like this. His ideas were taking a physical form. This experience made him interesting, worth studying even! Of all the opportunities he’d been given, this one was perhaps the most precious. His hands were sweating again. The image of the fame the bubbles could bring popped up as a drop on his thumb. Contrary to what Joe had believed, it seemed there were still some possibilities for his life.

Cinnamon squeezed himself from under the coffee table and glanced at the second bubble on the dining table. Joe followed the cat’s eyes, got up and held the bubble to his heart:

“No way! You want Jessica, right? If you break the ideas, I’ll be all you have. And we both know how shit I am at taking care of you.” Joe looked at the cat, almost expecting Cinnamon to deny it. He didn’t.

Joe contemplated the object in his hand. He felt a sudden rush of love for it. It whispered confidence into his brain. Now that he knew what they were, he couldn’t help but thank them. He caressed the spherical bubble lovingly. They were here to show him how to improve his life, to remind him that there were always options. And they would help him get his family back. One last chance.

The bubble in his hand reminded him of the lost one. He cleaned the shattered glass, mourning the loss. No matter how much he tried to remember, the thought seemed to slip between his fingers. It was so close, yet impossible to reach.

Joe decided to lie down on the sofa watching the bubble growing on his thumb.

“Why? Why me?” he whispered. Glancing out the window, he noticed the sunrise. It had been a long night. Joe positioned his hand on his side, making sure the bubble would be safe, and allowed his eyes to rest.

It was one in the afternoon when Joe woke up. The living room was suffocating and warm. Joe rubbed his eyes and turned. It sounded as if he was sleeping on a sofa made of crystal. Carefully, Joe sat up, trying not to smash the bubbles. It hadn’t been a dream. The sofa and the floor were covered in round bubbles he’d created in his sleep. Cinnamon was perched on top of the bookshelf, looking down with superiority. Joe needed to keep the bubbles safe, the memory of the pain from the day before was still very present. The scenario he’d lost hadn’t returned to him, so he had to keep the new ones safe if he planned on getting back together with his wife .

As he packed them carefully into the cardboard boxes Amelia had left behind, he looked at each individually. He would touch them on his forehead and they’d invade him in smells and colours of a distant fantasy. Some encouraged him to travel more: he saw his family, in scarves and gloves, biking around Amsterdam. They rode together, smelling the snow and hints of marijuana, enjoying the beauty of the canals. For a few seconds, he sat by the Douro River, enjoying a glass of Port wine, holding Amelia’s hand and ignoring Jessica’s eye roll. He could hear the cheers of football fans gathered around a TV and smell sardines and bread. Another wanted him to take Amelia to Venice. Another suggested he scheduled more things with Jessica. The one next to it urged him to take Jessica Christmas shopping around the Grand Place. He watched her obsess over The Grasshopper, the toyshop she was too old for but simply couldn’t resist. He smiled, watching her run from the sheep to the bear and settle on the round-faced monkey she sometimes resembled. Every time he thought about the scenario they portrayed, they’d glow light blue. They were so fragile and beautiful; he couldn’t believe they had appeared from within him, created by the mere thought of them. The last time he’d been that amazed, he was holding his new born daughter in his arms. Being in their presence also seemed to inspire the creation of more. This explained why he’d created so many in his sleep: each scenario seemed to multiply into a web of more specific scenarios stimulated by the initial one. His palms were permanently sweaty and his mind overflowing with images of family.

When Joe started reminiscing on the times he’d taken Jessica Christmas shopping, he noticed the golden glow behind him. Most of the bubbles he hadn’t packed glowed in gold instead of blue. Joe picked one and pressed it against his forehead. He smiled as a memory filled his mind. A four-year-old Jessica stood on her tiptoes, tongue tucked between her teeth, dipping strawberries under a glossy fountain of molten chocolate.

This was a problem. Joe couldn’t afford to lose memories. His smile faded. He packed the balls with the memories even more carefully. Now, he had two cardboard boxes full of brittle glass bubbles that contained a mix of memories and future possibilities. He glanced at the top of the bookshelf. Cinnamon was observing him. Though the cat hadn’t done anything during the night, Joe was sure he saw a hint of challenge in Cinnamon’s eyes. So he stored the boxes safely in the home office and closed the door. It was time to call Stephen.

“Hey man, I was getting worried,” Stephen’s voice answered at the second ring.

“Can you come over?” Joe asked.

“Bar? I could use a whisky,” Stephen suggested.

“Can’t.” The sweat in Joe’s hands turned to drops again. “Please come over?”

He glanced at his reflection in the mirror: his olive eyes were shiny and his forehead glowing with sweat. Stephen arrived twenty minutes later. By that time, Joe had a sofa full of bubbles telling him how to improve his career – go back to studying? Finish the essay he’d been wanting to publish? Change paths?  – And Joe felt overly energetic.

“Do you remember when I said I wished you could write me a life script?” Joe asked as Stephen strolled in, “Turns out I don’t need you to do that anymore.”

“Really?” Stephen looked around apprehensively, “So?”

Joe walked to the sofa and presented the sea of bubbles with an excited “Ta daaa!”. Stephen looked at the sofa, then at Joe, then back at the sofa.

“Yeah. Comfy sofa, you’ve had it for years,” said Stephen.

“No, no.” Joe picked up a bubble carefully, “After I left the bar, I had an epiphany. Then these started coming to me! They have my thoughts! I can finally organize them, I have a shot at getting Amelia and Jess back.”

Joe waved the bubble in Stephen’s face. For some reason, Stephen looked confused. Maybe, Joe wondered, Stephen should see the memory bubbles. Those were easier to understand. Joe gripped Stephen’s arm and dragged him to the office. He presented the two cardboard boxes on the desk, one with a golden glow, and the other with a blue glow. Joe picked up a memory and showed it to Stephen.

“These have memories inside. See how they glow in yellow?” Joe looked hopefully at Stephen.

“So… Boxes of nothing? Should I be seeing something here?” Stephen tilted a box and peeked inside. Joe jumped forward, but he was too late. A sphere slipped from the box and shattered. It was as if the glass had shattered in Joe’s head and sunk into his skull. Even though he thought he hadn’t forgotten the pain, it was even worse than he remembered. He opened his eyes when the fireworks behind his eyelids extinguished. A scream was dying in his throat and his head throbbed. Stephen kneeled down, their faces at the same level.

“Are you okay? What happened?” Stephen asked anxiously.

“At least it wasn’t a memory,” Joe mumbled. Another piece of his soul had disappeared and left a hole in its place. “It’s okay. You didn’t know,” he said to Stephen.

“Joe, buddy.” He helped Joe stand up and rested a hand on his shoulder, “ Do you feel alright?”

“Don’t tell me you can’t see them,” he insisted. Cinnamon wandered in, his yellow eyes on the boxes.

“There’s nothing to see,” Stephen said quietly. He looked around as if the room was infected, hand still on Joe’s shoulder.

“The cat sees them!” Joe squealed, pointing at Cinnamon.

“Listen, this isn’t about the cat. It’s about you not being able to get over Amelia leaving. You need to let go.” Stephen wasn’t one for sugar coating, but this one hurt. Suddenly, something clicked inside Joe’s head. He shook Stephen’s hand away.

“Oh, I see.” Picking up the cat, he walked out of the office.

“What?” Stephen followed.

“That’s what this is all about. Amelia. You think you’re better for her.” Joe dropped Cinnamon on the sofa and turned to face his best friend, “That’s why you want me to move on! “The world is your oyster!”,” He waved his hand in the air, faking a deep voice in a poor imitation of Stephen. “Is that why you’re pretending you can’t see them?”

“What are you talking about?” Stephen looked confused, which only made Joe angrier. Stephen was a good actor.

“You think you are a better fit for her, don’t you?”

Joe couldn’t remember the last time he’d been this angry. He was trying so hard not to let his anger out and punch Stephen he feared he might have cracked a rib. His palms started sweating and a drop grew on his middle finger. Everything made sense. Stephen’s discouraging advice, his insistence that Joe should move on… Stephen looked at Joe with goggled eyes. The bubble grew at incredible speed and floated to the ground. Joe bent down to pick it up.

“You’re not making sense. Joe, I don’t want Amelia. Come on, man, you know that! I told you to move on because you’re not a good couple anymore. Amelia won’t change her mind and you need company.” His eyes showed more pity than he intended, as he looked between Joe’s face and his hand, clutching the bubble.

“I don’t need company.” Joe unconsciously glanced at Cinnamon.

However alone he might have felt, now he had a different mind-set. He didn’t need anyone who carried a dangerous hidden agenda. He pictured punching Stephen, hard, right on the nose and the bubble in his hand glowed blue.

He put the bubble down on the table, then walked to the door and opened it:

“Get out,” he said. He needed Stephen to leave. That was all it took to avoid the tempting punch.

“Seriously? You’ve got to be going nuts, mate,” Stephen said, without moving. Joe was getting impatient. He marched towards Stephen, put both hands on his chest and pushed him hard. Stephen stumbled backwards a couple of steps but kept his balance.

“I’m not your mate,” said Joe.

Stephen stomped past him and slammed the door.

Joe was alone once more. Except this time, he didn’t even have Stephen. He didn’t want him either. It wasn’t a matter of pride. Joe knew Stephen plotted everything, he’d been trying to sabotage Joe’s chances of succeeding from the second Joe asked him for advice.

As a consequence of the unfortunate encounter, Joe was now aware of one more detail regarding his bubbles: they could be bad too. So far, all he’d seen was pretty scenarios of moments with his family, but the new bubble he’d created was different. That punch on Stephen’s nose, the punch he so deserved, was right there inside the bubble. Joe watched it on a loop for a few seconds and then stored it away. It was curious how vivid – and strangely satisfying – the scenario was.

He strode around the living room. It was time to learn to deal with the bubbles. He had a meeting scheduled with Amelia and Jessica in a couple of days, to organise that year’s Christmas. Joe did some research about the bubbles. He Googled them, but nothing similar came up. However, there were suggestions on meditation and relaxing exercises. It couldn’t hurt to try.

He learned that massaging his eyebrows was effective, as well as holding his thumbs inside closed fists. The same couldn’t be said for meditation: sitting down and emptying his mind was easier said than done. After a little incident with an outburst of bubbles while he was trying not to think at all, Joe put away the bubbles and decided it was enough meditation for one day. He tried herbal tea, different genres of music, reading, and TV. By the end of the day, he knew what helped and what didn’t.

Joe’s theory was that the only way to stop the sweat from becoming bubbles was to stop thinking about the trigger. But it was a trigger for a reason. Every night, Joe would lie in bed, trying to evict Amelia from his mind. Still his thoughts would float back to her: the way she held the back of his neck when they kissed, her soft pale skin, the spot where her lower-lip piercing used to be, the soft arch on her back and the freckles on her shoulders. He would daydream, thinking about kissing her, on the smooth curves of her neck, on her collarbone. The house didn’t help. Whenever he tried to avoid creating more bubbles, it seemed to call upon daily memories – Amelia drinking her wine at the table, pinkie sticking up, or Jessica watching TV with Cinnamon on her lap. Soon, Joe started running out of room. He ordered new cardboard boxes, packed up the bubbles and put them away wherever he found the space: the office, the guest bathroom, the attic and inside every wardrobe they owned. But they were never ending, and the same couldn’t be said for his house.

On the morning of the meeting, Joe woke up early. His room overflowed with bubbles: on the floor, the bed, the bedside tables, there were even piles of them in the corners. He breathed in that familiar suffocating warmth that came with the excess of bubbles. Joe cleared them away, hiding them in the wardrobe in Jessica’s room. After ten minutes of relaxing exercises, Joe got dressed, fed Cinnamon, filled the pockets of his overcoat with plastic bags (just in case), and left for the metro to Merode. He wasn’t sure how he felt: he was nervous about seeing Amelia and Jessica. He also worried the bubbles would show up. He’d decided to keep them secret for now, until he figured out which plan to approach first. Either way, he felt an uncomfortable pressure in his stomach, as if his organs had switched places, and kept his hands in his pockets, fists closed around the thumbs.

Joe came up the stairs out the metro station and looked around. Surprisingly sunny for November, he thought. He glanced back. The Rue de Tongres seemed more uphill than he remembered: he observed the commotion in all the shops, then quickly returned to reality. If there was ever a day he couldn’t allow himself to drift off, this was it. He looked away from the street he’d been observing to Avenue de Tervueren, the perpendicular avenue the metro station led to. On the other side, he could see the restaurant where they’d planned to meet. His heart was racing. They used to go there when Jessica was young. Her favourite puppet show was outside the park, visible from the restaurant. The Cinquantenaire Arch was noticeable in the distance. This place gave him goose bumps. He waited until the tram passed and crossed the street. Before going in, he took a deep breath and glanced up at the restaurant’s name. With a tone of sarcasm, he read it aloud to himself:

“Carpe Diem.”

The moment Joe stepped inside the restaurant he knew he was doomed. Looking at Jessica and Amelia made his stomach twist and his hands began sweating instantly. He attempted to act normal. Amelia’s eyes were darker than he remembered. Every time she looked at him he got lost gazing into her eyes. He was distracted and anxious, but it wasn’t until Amelia mentioned Stephen that he lost it. According to her, Stephen was worried about Joe. He’d called. Joe’s feelings were mixed and incompatible: he felt both happy to see his family, and angry with Stephen and Amelia. How could she believe Stephen? He lowered his face and massaged his eyebrows, assuring Amelia he was fine. Bubbles started forming again, at alarming speed. There was no way he could hide them. So after a painful few minutes with his hands in his pockets, he mumbled he wasn’t feeling well and ran out the restaurant straight into a taxi.

Joe walked into the house and to the bar. He helped himself to a large glass of whisky and then fumbled around in the wooden boxes for anything to smoke. He found an unopened box of cigarillos and slid his finger through the slot, ripping the seal. He couldn’t believe how badly it had gone. The worst part was Stephen. Unbelievable Stephen. He lit a cigarillo, took two drags and put it out.

Cinnamon wandered in and rubbed his belly on Joe’s legs affectionately. Joe bent down and petted the cat, a gesture he didn’t recognize in himself. Cinnamon had become his only ally.

“You want to know how it went?” Joe said to the cat, his voice roughened by the alcohol, “Badly…” Joe took a seat on the sofa. “Stephen called. Told her I’m having a nervous breakdown.”

Cinnamon jumped on the sofa and looked at Joe. He had the sort of interested gaze that had Joe wondering how much a feline could understand.

“I know you don’t think I am. But Amelia believes him. They think I’ve gone nuts.” Joe rolled his eyes.

Joe needed to show Jessica he wasn’t having a nervous breakdown. He had to tell her he could win Amelia back and that he’d make up for all the mistakes he’d made over the years. He’d never take them for granted and he’d never forget that Olivia lived by the school. The bubble with this plan popped up. Only then did Joe remember the two spheres he’d collected in the taxi. He pulled out the white plastic bag. Cinnamon looked between Joe and the bag disapprovingly.

“I lost control,” Joe said, feeling embarrassed, “I know, I shouldn’t have. Don’t judge me, I didn’t mean to,” Joe sighed. “I was reminded of how things were. And there was the Stephen issue. I got so angry with all of them, I knew it was about to happen again.”

The white bag stared at him, like the incriminating evidence of a crime he was yet to commit. Joe decided not to reveal to Cinnamon the content of these particular bubbles. The judgemental look in the feline face was definitely more than he could handle. He looked at the cat and saw a question reflected in the round eyes.

“What do you think happened next? I left! I couldn’t let them see…”

He hid his face in his hands as he continued:

“I probably looked insane… What if they don’t take me back?” His voice got lost in the last words and his eyes filled with tears. Then he remembered he had new children to care for. So he pulled himself together and cleared out the bubble that had quietly landed on the floor.

Brainchildren (Part I)

Alone, in a bed that didn’t belong to him. The door creaked. A stranger walked in. His smile was frozen, yellow eyes shining in the dark, his nose resembled that of a witch; long and crooked. Joe tried to scream, but his voice didn’t obey. He looked away from the stranger’s shimmering eyes to his hands. They were talons. The massive claws held on tightly to a strange-looking blue pillow. Joe struggled to move his legs; he needed to escape. But he was paralysed. The stranger’s grin widened into a demonic smile with enormous sharp teeth.

The pillow was approaching and Joe was still immobilised. He tried to scream, but it was in vain. The stranger moved closer, the pillow covered Joe’s nose and mouth…

Joe woke suddenly, gasping for air. He’d fallen asleep on the sofa, the TV on. He shook the nightmare away. The cat, Cinnamon, had taken advantage of his distraction and climbed on his lap. Joe jumped up; the cat fell standing up and ran away. On the other side of the long mirror at the bottom of the stairs his reflection copied him. Cursing the cat, Joe observed his body with a dispassionate stare. His once bright green eyes had turned muddy. He ran his fingers through his thinning hair; the hairline had retreated and the blonde was turning white. He frowned at the mirror. His body had always been skinny. Somehow, no matter how much he tried to put on weight, his belly was the only part of his body that obeyed. Joe pinched each side with his fingers, and shook it up and down. It jiggled. Scowling, Joe looked at his watch. Ten-thirty. He shot two pills of paracetamol to the back of his throat, filled the cat’s plate with biscuits and dragged himself upstairs.

Amelia was curled on her side, back turned on him. Joe knew she was awake. They’d been married so long he knew the signs. She was probably upset at something. He wondered if he should ask. But he didn’t. Instead, he stripped down to his boxers, and opened the drawer of his dresser. Ignoring the neatly folded pyjamas, he picked an old t-shirt, put it on and climbed into bed. Amelia sighed. Joe sighed back. As soon as his head touched the pillow, he was asleep.

The next day, Joe woke up at lunch time. He threw his old robe over his improvised pyjamas, stumbled down the stairs and entered the kitchen. He sniffed the air. Salmon. Amelia was arranging potatoes in a serving bowl. Cinnamon, meowed around her. Amelia’s long black hair was tied in a lustrous bun and she wore a black velvet dress falling down to her knees. She looked stunning; but Joe forgot to notice.

“Is that salmon?” Joe asked.

“Good morning! And yes,” Amelia replied.

Amelia made fish once a week. It was often salmon. Joe hated it, but he’d never told her that. “Great,” he said.

Amelia glanced at him and turned her attention back to the potatoes:

“Are you going to change for lunch?”

Joe looked down at the boxers paired with the grey Snooker t-shirt he’d won years ago and the robe, resting on his shoulders. Amelia hated it. She’d given him so many others over the years, hoping they’d replace the mouldy, food-stained robe. It never worked. Joe fumbled with the hole in the pocket.

“No, I’m good,” he mumbled.

Joe sat at the table as Jessica walked in. She was eighteen and resembled Joe in looks as much as she mirrored her mother in personality.

 “Mum, can I go to Olivia’s tonight?”

“What for?” Joe asked.

The two women looked at him.

“To hang out, what else?” Jessica responded.

“Of course, darling. Dad and I are going to the cinema, we’ll drop you off.” Amelia carried the salmon to the table.

“We are?” Joe questioned, watching his wife drop a chop of tin-foil-wrapped salmon on his plate. His nose wrinkled.

“I’ve been wanting to see The Wedding Bride. It’s on at the De Brouckère. I bought tickets,” said Amelia.

“Where does this Olivia live?” he asked.

Jessica lifted her eyebrows: for years Olivia had been Jessica’s best friend. Joe had dropped her off at Olivia’s a thousand times. He never remembered.

“Woluwé. By the school.”

At 7 o’clock, Joe drove Jessica to Olivia’s and headed to the cinema with his wife. Amelia placed her hand on the armrest the moment the commercials started. Joe was focused on the French-dubbed Nespresso advert featuring George Clooney. The film started.  Joe wasn’t paying attention: the film was a sequence of clichés he could have narrated without having watched. He felt bored and uncomfortable. He was wondering which way to avoid traffic later when he heard sniffs from Amelia’s side. He looked at the giant screen, at the scene set in Paris, then glanced back at his wife.

“You okay?”

“It’s like our story… Don’t you think?” She wiped a tear.

Joe didn’t answer. The truth was, he couldn’t remember. He knew they’d gone to Paris on their honeymoon. But his brain was vacant of details, let alone emotions. Amelia, however, not only sobbed but also hogged the armrest the entire time. It made him uneasy. He had no place to rest his elbow and his hands were sweaty. Every time Joe cleaned his palms on his jeans, Amelia leaned more towards him. The romance ended with the main couple kissing on the Love Lock Bridge. The credits hadn’t started rolling yet and Joe was on his feet. Amelia frowned.

During the drive home, Amelia pursed her lips, crossed her arms and sulked. Joe was confused. He’d driven Jessica to her friend’s, gone to the cinema and sat through what was possibly the worst chick-flick of the century. Nothing he did made his wife happy.

“Can I ask why you’re sulking?”

“You’re unbelievable.”

Joe didn’t understand what he’d done wrong. Amelia had a list. She spoke of his lack of compassion and warmth, his poor listening skills and distraction. She claimed he took her for granted, along with Jessica.

Joe half-listened to all of Amelia’s arguments, drifting in and out. After many years of marriage, he’d learnt to tune her voice out. Tapping his fingers on the wheel as he drove he scanned the city lights distractedly.

“I mean, did you notice my hand on the armrest?” she asked.

“I noticed…”

“I was trying to get you to hold it…” Amelia hid her face in her hands.

Joe pulled up by the house. They walked in solemnly, ignoring Cinnamon snoozing on the sofa. Joe turned to Amelia and rested his hand on her shoulder:

“This is silly!” He forced a smile, “I’m sorry, okay? Let’s forget about it!”

Amelia didn’t say anything. Joe went into the kitchen and helped himself to some water. He breathed a sigh of relief: it would blow over. If he didn’t put up a fight, the argument would die and everything would return to normal. He strolled back to the living room. Amelia was standing on the Turkish rug.

“You don’t mean it,” she said.

“Huh?”

“That apology. You don’t mean it. You don’t mean anything you say anymore.” She sounded resentful. “You’ve changed. You don’t like cheap romances anymore; you don’t remember anything we did together. You don’t remember Paris! I’ve been trying to remind you…”

“Is that why we went on that dinner date?”

“Which one?” Her nostrils widened, “You mean the one on Friday? When you claimed I was moody and should go for dinner…”

Amelia did a dramatic pause, hands in the air, her palms turned to Joe:

“... With Valerie!”

She let her hands fall, slapping her hips.

“What’s wrong with that?”

“You should be the person I talk to! You don’t see me… Last night you knew I was awake. Did you worry something was wrong? Did you ask?”

“No, I didn’t…” He looked at his feet. If only life was scripted, he'd know what to say. Amelia turned her back on him. Joe’s hands were sweaty and he felt his cheeks warm. He considered leaving. The crosswords awaited him on the nightstand. She’d sulk but by the next day there would be no sign of the fight.  He’d started turning around when she spoke:

“I’m not happy. I haven’t been happy in a while. Believe me, I tried. Not just for us, for Jessica too. But now she’s leaving and I don’t think I can keep trying on my own…” She turned to Joe, holding a half-empty glass of water. Her rounded lips trembled. Her eyes filled with tears and she mouthed an inaudible “I’m sorry”.

The Monday after The Fight, Amelia had the conversation about the divorce with Jessica. Joe found nothing useful to say, so he distractedly rubbed his hands together under the table. Amelia covered everything in two minutes. Her speech sounded rehearsed and Jessica acted as if she’d been the audience for which Amelia had practiced.

On Tuesday, Joe dropped Jessica at university and, before nightfall, his wife packed a suitcase and left. Joe watched this happen like a dream; shocked with the turn his life had taken but utterly powerless. He wondered about the house on his own, observing all the objects he’d never touched, collected throughout a lifetime of marriage. It didn’t take long for Joe to realise he didn’t know where anything was. Or how to do chores by himself. It was as if his routine had started to crack and he couldn’t keep it together without Amelia and Jessica at either side.

Amelia came by to pack the following day. He watched her bringing in flat cardboard boxes, putting them up and neatly packing her things. He carried them to her car, like a zombie, not sure what he was doing. He called the school and made up an excuse to get out of work: he wanted to be in whenever Amelia came over to pack.

Despite how much she cried in those packing sessions, she didn’t change her mind. Joe kept overthinking what to say and ended up not saying anything. He thought he could mention the jar from their honeymoon. Then he realised that could give her the impression all he cared about were material belongings. He then considered asking how she was. But seeing as she kept packing and crying, letting Joe hold her, then quickly returning to packing and crying (this time refusing to let him hold her), it seemed there wasn’t any other way she could express her feelings. There were many things he could say, but they all seemed to have a possible backfire and he wasn’t willing to risk it.

After her third day of packing, Amelia left the spare boxes and closed the front door. Kraainem had never felt so silent. Joe was invaded by a sudden sadness born from the loneliness he no longer knew how to feel. He took out his phone. Stephen Adams was the first name on his contact list and he didn’t need to look any further.

“Hey. Heard about it. Sucks. Bar?” One of the things Joe liked about Stephen was how he expressed himself with few words.

At 9 o’clock, he sat at Stephen’s favourite cigar bar, staring at the black and white photos of Miles Davies and Louis Armstrong on the walls. Stephen arrived a few minutes later, settled in on the leather lounge chairs and ordered two Montecristo number 2 and two whiskies (“On me”). Joe observed his best friend. He had fancied Amelia before Joe, back at university: he would have been a better husband. Perhaps he would have made her happy. But Stephen was already making Valerie happy.

“So?” Stephen asked.

Joe narrated the events of the week. Stephen nodded, puffing on his cigar.

“Truth is,” Stephen said, hidden behind a curtain of smoke, “you should have done something. Too late now. You know Amelia calls Valerie, right?”

“Always has…”

“It doesn’t sound good from what I’ve heard. You know Amelia: takes a lot to change her mind. Want to know what I think?”

“Shoot,” Joe replied, taking a sip of whisky.

“Give it up.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah. I mean, it was a good few years, but things change… Time to admit defeat, my friend. The world,” he waved his hand around, “is your oyster.”

“What about Jessica?”

“She’s a big girl, she’ll be fine! I reckon she’d rather see you happy apart than miserable together.” He pointed his cigar at Joe. “Believe me.”

“Damn you, children of divorce,” Joe muttered under his breath.

They sat in silence, puffing and sipping. Joe rubbed his sweaty hands on his jeans occasionally, thinking of how happy he could have been if he’d managed to keep his family together. Maybe he’d be at home with them, sitting on the sofa watching TV, instead of here. The bar was frequented by men like them, lonely, middle-aged, most of them on business trips, relaxing after meetings. The dim lighting and jazz music attracted this particular clientele. The cigars and alcohol convinced them to stay.

Joe was lost contemplating how much his life had changed when Lou Rawls’s deep voice on the speakers interrupted his train of thought. Stephen was humming along, but Joe had never properly listened, though he recognized it. He took in the lyrics for the first time:

“I should have been smarter,

I could have used my head,

And we still be together somehow.

If I coulda, woulda, shoulda,

And it’s always too late

I'm saying it now,”

Joe froze, listening to the voice that understood him so well. The song had been written for him. Stephen didn’t notice Joe’s attention had shifted and chimed in with advice:

“ I reckon you should change glasses. They make you old,” he said casually. Joe caressed the rim of the horn glasses he’d worn for decades.

“I don’t think so…” His eyes were focused on the speaker.

“You’re a good looking man, but if you’re back on the market, you should tr-“

“I’m not ‘back on the market’.” Joe rubbed his palms on his jeans again.

“Joe,” said Stephen, and leaned forward, “you have to look to the future, man. Amelia’s the past. She’s the ex-wife!”

“Not yet,” Joe said, smiling.

“There comes a time in everyone’s life when they make that statement:

"If I would have just…",

"Or could have just…",

Or the bottom line is "I should have just…",

And you always wind up on the outside looking in.”

That was exactly the way Joe felt. On the outside, looking in. Lou Rawls had given him insight: use your head, be smarter. He needed to be the man Amelia used to love.

“That’s it!” His brain overflowed with excitement.

“I knew you’d get it,” Stephen said, patting Joe’s shoulder. “One more?” Stephen clicked his fingers at the waiter.

“No, I can’t,” Joe stood as the waiter arrived at the table. “My coat, please.” The young man rushed off and promptly returned, pinning Joe’s overcoat between his thumb and index. Joe slid his arms into it as Stephen examined him in confusion.

“Why? It’s not even eleven,” he noted.

“I think I have an idea.”

Joe left the bar in a hurry. The air outside was so cold his lungs froze with the first breath. He turned to the right and started walking towards the De Brouckère metro station. His mind was racing: he now had a much more positive view of the future. He wasn’t divorced yet; he could still charm his way back into Amelia’s heart. The thought of this made him tap-dance on the sidewalk. He hadn’t felt this excited in a long time.

Joe descended the escalator, deep in thought. The first time he’d taken Amelia on a date, they went to Le Perroquet, a small pitta restaurant by the Place du Sablon. He remembered how she’d considered her choice carefully, how she’d tried all four of the sauces brought to the table, how she’d coyly asked for a bite of his pitta as an excuse to touch his hand. She was funny and interesting and Joe had felt guilty he’d ‘stolen’ her from Stephen. Still she made him feel more confident and happy than anyone ever had.

If he took her there, she’d remember, surely? He just needed to adjust his attitude. Smiling to himself, he entered the metro to Stockel and sat down. His hands were still wet and it was getting worse. He inspected them carefully. It was cold, how could he sweat this much?

Turning his attention to the poster with the metro lines, he observed the pink line he was travelling. The train approached Merode. Amelia and himself had walked to the Cinquantenaire Park, in Merode, after that lunch. If he scheduled a meeting there, he could tell her he was willing to change, he loved her, and would do anything to win her back.  Yes! He liked the sound of that!

He glanced at his hands again. Sweat gathered in droplets on his fingertips. As the train continued its journey, Joe looked back and forth between the growing droplets and the stops. The drops – one on each pinky – had grown to the size of marbles. They had a semi-flexible consistency that reminded Joe of the contact lenses Amelia used to beg him to wear. In retrospect, Stephen might have had a point: changing glasses could be a good idea.

Joe stuffed his hands in his pockets and ran out when the metro stopped at Kraainem. By the time he arrived home, the bubbles had grown to the size of goblets. He rushed into the house and washed his hands at the kitchen sink. The bubbles were attached to his skin; they didn’t pop or wash away. Joe felt nervous: for all he knew, they could be poisonous! This was the sort of thing his wife would know how to deal with. He tried everything that occurred to him, but nothing cleaned them off. He tried breaking, popping and stabbing them with the sushi knife, but it slid in and out like butter without leaving a scratch. They kept growing. Joe sat on the sofa, next to Cinnamon, his heartbeat echoing in his ears.

“What do you reckon? Maybe they’ll fall when they get heavy?” Joe waved his hands in front of Cinnamon’s snout, his voice breaking with panic. Cinnamon gave them a sniff and tucked his face into his belly again.

“You don’t care. I bet you’d care if it was Jessica,” he said resentfully. Joe then noticed he was jealous of a cat. Could he go mad if he failed in getting Amelia back? He’d been married for so long he didn’t know how to be single. He was so lonely that Cinnamon had become comforting to have around.

Joe had always disliked Cinnamon. Though it was him who bought the orange cat, he’d never gotten attached. Cinnamon was a birthday present for Jessica. She was mad for it. But Joe couldn’t bring himself to like the arrogant snout, the pompous trotting and those scary yellow eyes. He turned his attention to the growing bubbles on his fingertips.

They were now the size of bowls, but they weren’t getting any heavier or falling. Yet, the area where they were attached to the skin was growing smaller. Joe watched them detach, almost at the same time, and float to the ground. He kneeled to see them land on the carpet. He reached out. The sticky, flexible wall had lost its wet contact lens consistency and adopted a dry, hard exterior instead. Joe lifted it and held it up against the light. It had a foggy core, as if a cloud had taken shelter in the centre. Dropping it gently on the carpet, he rolled the bubble away. The friction against the carpet wouldn’t let it travel far, but it definitely rolled.

Cinnamon snoozed on the softest side of the sofa, emitting a noise Jessica called ‘purring’. Joe had always thought snoring was a more appropriate term, but he’d wisely kept that to himself. Looking between the strange bubbles and the sleeping cat he felt alone and completely clueless. But he needed to start somewhere.

Picking up the bubble, Joe considered breaking it. Maybe he could access the fog inside. From the depths of his brain, something told him not to. Instead, he pressed it lightly against his forehead. Before he could understand what was happening, a scenario flashed before Joe’s closed eyes: Amelia sat across from him at the table they’d gotten on their first date, outside, at Le Perroquet. The street was filled with weekend movement. He could smell the pitta bread in the breeze and see the brightly coloured stained glass shaped like a parrot on the window beside them. Joe heard his own voice, echoing softly, begging Amelia for forgiveness. He felt Amelia’s presence, smiling serenely across the table, reaching her hand out to him. When their fingers interlocked, he saw her wedding ring, forever on, like his.

As abruptly as it started, the scenario ended. Panting, Joe looked around at his cold house. It was hard to believe what he’d experienced. The bubbles were much more interesting than Joe had expected. He carefully considered the details he’d seen in the daydream. Even though the atmosphere seemed as close to their first date as possible, the rest of the image wasn’t. The wedding ring gave it away. It was the future. Maybe the spheres told him his fate! Could he be psychic? A wave of adrenaline and energy washed over him.

by Connie Freire de Sousa

An Act of Surrender

This is what I know: it was a bad accident. They flipped off the road, their old and cherished Pontiac battered on every side. It was somewhere upstate, on that long and lonely road between St. Ignace and Saginaw that when I was young felt like the saddest and most beautiful stretch on earth. The doctors say Mom was conscious the whole time. But Dad was knocked out on impact. And now, this is also what I know: after a 24-hour coma, he’s out for good.

So now I’m in Amsterdam, waiting for my connection, loitering at the gate with an international phone bill that will scald my eyes next month. I’ve cancelled all of my classes for the next week. I thought the department would ask more questions, but I guess they know that if I’ve been known to show up with a 103 degree fever, it must take a lot for me to pull out.

The kids are with George, but that’s nothing new. Luke’s bedroom at my house has been in the same state for months -- that’s to say, empty. Eliza is busy making the rounds of backseats of all the blue-eyed boys in her class, so it’s doubtful she even got the message. Kate’s been on her own for a few years now, but she’s the only one who remembers enough of them to care. Even still, her memories are of the floral print couches that sag just a bit too much to be comfortable, and the barren midwestern trees, and the silence that endured between them and me in our numbered visits. After the last one, I’m sure she understands my position: apprehensive, and alone.

*

Detroit was just as dismal as I remembered it. Maybe even more so. If you’d told my dad that in fifty years’ time his neighbourhood would be half boarded up and the rest impoverished beyond recognition, he’d have laughed in your face then told you to get out of his respectable, hard-earned living room. But it’s true: the dilapidated train station and wide streets that echo emptily for miles would hurt even a visitor’s feelings.

I didn’t dawdle much, though. Made a quick round of the old haunts in the rental car then got straight onto I-75. Not that it got much better -- if anything, the bleakness just gets more pronounced as it expands outward, the blue-collar decline settling into the landscape more and more the further you drive away from the city.

I’m headed to Gaylord. If Dad knew he’d die in a hospital in a town called Gaylord, he’d have driven a bit further before making his dramatic exit off the road. He and Mom were always the types who turned their heads with disgust at any reference to the homos, as they used to spit with Catholic-conditioned vitriol. I remember bringing my friend Claire home from Ann Arbor for Thanksgiving one year, since her folks were way out of state. We hadn’t even broken the bread before they spotted her short hair and unkempt fingernails and called her a dyke. Not long after is when I caught wind of the Social Anthropology programme at Cambridge and made my Great and Controversial Escape.

Miles and miles of nothing but gas stations and pitiful main streets give way to state parks lining the highway. There are no geysers or sequoias, but still I’m relieved to see something, anything, besides mementos of the fallen industries here. It’s getting dark and nothing’s lit well. I can understand why Dad might have lost sight of which way was straight.

Finally the sat nav indicates I’m somewhere near civilisation, or close enough: Ostego Memorial Hospital. Among the one-lane roads and shingled bungalows, it sticks out like a sore thumb: a beacon of sterility and bad news, fluorescents illuminating just a bit too fiercely for comfort. Pulling up, I have to resist every urge in my body to make the world’s grandest U-turn and hightail it all 300 miles back to the airport. It’s not a big place, but imposing enough in its glowing red EMERGENCY sign and metal pillars to fill me with dread. On the bright side, I think: I’ve already had the worst day of my life, so this can’t hurt much.

*

“What’s your relationship?”

I pause.

I guess, on strictly literal terms, it’s “daughter," but if I were to answer truthfully, it’d be “mutually loathsome, distant and irrevocably fucked up.” I assume the nurse doesn’t want to hear many details, not now.

“They’re my parents.”

She looks at me with big doe eyes lined with too much drugstore makeup. I don’t think they get many big traumas here in Gaylord. Just your standard-grade pneumonias, near-tragic drunk driving incidents, maybe a few high-risk births or power tool mishaps. One look at this nurse’s face and I know they’re preparing for me to lose it, because they already have. Maybe, on second thought, my extended “relationship” answer would have been helpful.

“I’m so sorry,” she moans, sympathetically enough for me to feel sorry, too.

“Thanks,” I say, immediately feeling the way my voice wavered. After more than two moons of solitude, in transit from overcast England to the sleepy midwest, I realise I’ve spoken to no one but myself recently, and this will soon require a lot more talking for which I might not have the right vocabulary.

“It’s okay though. These things... happen.” I wonder if I’m consoling her or me.

The nurse eyes me like I’ve just sprouted an extra eyeball in the middle of my forehead -- totally alien in my irreverence.

She gives me a little hospital directory, with Xs marking their respective rooms, then sends me on my way, distrustfully, looking for some kind of sign I’m not sure I’ll give.

*

Back before Detroit got its rep as the sorest example of the death of the American Dream, it was its birthplace. And I mean it--as far as the eye could see in my neighbourhood, well-kempt children leapt in and out of sprinklers on the front lawns of three-bedroomed houses, and fathers returned home from the plants proudly in their five-seaters. After dinner mothers would gather to smoke cigarettes and play bridge while the kids sat in front of their televisions, mesmerised by the splendour of American modernity. Everyone knew someone who worked for one of the car companies, and we all regarded Henry Ford as some kind of Michigan-bred messiah.

My dad was one of those auto industry posterboys, the eldest son of immigrants, working his way up from janitor to lineworker to supervisor. He was quiet. Somehow the great roar of engines and whirring of pistons endeared him and its grip never loosened. The last time I visited, with Kate and Eliza covered in freckles and Luke still pink, Dad was holed away in the garage, tinkering with something or another, or perhaps pretending to because he knew no other way. It was his nature to operate in the shadows, tacitly follow routines, listen to baseball on the radio with charcoal-coloured hands. Mom was loud enough for the both of them to be heard.

It’s fitting, then, that he went out doing what he did best--driving that olive-coloured clunker of theirs, probably dozing off, Mom yammering away while he was just trying to hear the sixth inning commentary.

“Lily. Do you want to see him?”

A doctor and another woman whose exact purpose I momentarily forget look at me with wrinkled brows, entirely aware of the fact that I’ve zoned out of everything they just said until this phrase.

I consider the implications of either answer. It’s been nearly 15 years since I saw him, dead or alive. The last time was so ugly that I willed it out of memory, so really it’s been even longer. I imagine him older, more withered, tempered by the years and the violence with which they say the car careened into the ravine. I wonder whether he’s still in his golf shirt or whether they’ve changed him into something less alive.

“I don’t think so,” I finally admit.

The doctor and woman look at each other. Refocusing, I peer at her white plastic name tag, pinned neatly onto her ribbed turtleneck the colour of a dirty canary. Sandra. Evidently she is a resident social worker at Ostego Memorial. Evidently she’s singled me out as in need of confiding. Evidently I am expected to verbalise my stream of consciousness coping mechanisms with this cloying woman. Under the aseptic white light, her red lipstick seems to make her mouth jump out of her face and challenge mine to speak.

“I mean, it would probably be a shock.”

They both nod.

“Very well. You will get another opportunity to decide whether or not you want an open casket at the funeral. We’ve compiled a list of resources and providers near their home in Detroit that can help you with that process,” Sandra says, softly, as though speaking to an injured fledgling.

She hands over a pamphlet and a copy of the Serenity Prayer.

The doctor, Dr. Ferber, waits a moment before moving on to the more pressing, uncertain matter.

“Heidi is just out of surgery from a few hours ago. We aren’t entirely sure about the exact extent of her injuries. Thus far we can gather the range of bones she’s broken -- sternum, collarbone, three ribs, both wrists, vertebrae. She’s still critical because she hasn’t been stable enough for us to explore the possible internal injuries she’s sustained,” Dr. Ferber explains. He speaks slowly as he details her condition, fashioning each broken piece of skeleton into a tiny tragedy.

“Still, it’s nothing short of a miracle that she’s been more or less conscious since the accident, save for the times we’ve had to sedate her,” he adds. “So strange and so terrible, the way we found them. A clear ten-foot drop, crushed interior, no signs of collision, on a day as clear as they come at this time of year.”

“Miraculous,” Sandra nods. “Your mom is a true fighter. You don’t get survival stories like this every day. A really special woman. You should be proud to have such a strong lady for your mom.”

“Strong,” I say aloud, making sense of her judgement. “Yeah. You could definitely call her that.”

Dr. Ferber and Sandra exchange glances again. Sandra clears her throat loudly, purposefully.

“We both think it’s best that for now Heidi shouldn’t know about Robert and his passing. At least not until we can better ascertain what’s going on internally and ensure she’s in a stable enough state to handle the news,” Sandra says. “Grief is a powerful thing and it’s not uncommon for elderly partners of the deceased to pass soon afterward, in their shock.”

Goodness.

If there is one thing I know about my mother, it’s that in spite of all of her pushiness, despite her assertiveness and wearing of the proverbial pants in their relationship... her self-assigned value as a woman is very much intrinsic to her status as a wife. A good wife, even. A woman in service of her husband, the man who provided for her perms and kitten heels, the man who no matter how loudly she’d wail would listen until it was no more than a whisper. She was fierce enough in character to fend for herself in those sixty years of their marriage, but somehow, she wouldn’t have. Not without him.

So now, I’m supposed to withhold information from the woman whose prying and nosiness and need to know it all has permeated every relationship she's ever had. Not just with me, but with my friends and my friends’ friends and their second cousins thrice removed, never mind my ex-husband and my children who, lately, I keep as far away as she kept me. I’m supposed to keep privy the heaviest and most meaningful news of her life. I'm supposed to listen to Sandra and her firetruck mouth, telling me she knows what's best for my mother, fighting for her life, unknowing that her veritable other half has already lost his.

I think, this will not end well. I think, these people don’t know my mother well enough to know what’s best. Then again, I think, neither do I.

*

Dr. Ferber has a few other patients to check in on and other families to liaise with, so for now I am left with Sandra. We roam the hallways, its walls painted a shade that I can only compare to butter that’s been left open in the fridge too long, linoleum floors gleaming with some kind of artificial brightness that juxtaposes the dull ache of the building’s spirit. She asks questions. Where I live and why it took me so long to come. (Cambridge, and because unfortunately they haven’t mainstreamed teleportation technology yet.) Questions about my work (professor of postgraduate education) and my hobbies (long-distance running, reading, walks in the cold). If I have any children (yes, three, though they’re not children anymore) and the loved ones I’ve left to look after them (I loved him once, but for now I let that can of worms remain tightly sealed). I feel rude for not reciprocating her curiosity, but she hardly leaves the opportunity, filling in every gap in conversation with a prompt so that I’m not left to my own devices in our silence. Finally, she stops in her tracks.

“Lily, this is your mom’s room. I want to reiterate how astonishing it is that she’s made it here, relatively in one piece, alive, and by all considered measures, well,” she says. “Still, it’s not easy for anyone to see a loved one in pain or on medical support. I can go in with you to see her this first time, to help you through the process. She’s still sedated, so anything you say, or any difficulties you have, won’t be heard by her.”

I half-grin to myself. That’s a first.

“I’d also like to invite you to my office afterwards, if there’s anything you need to talk about in private. I’m here to help.”

She grins, brightly, and despite my disdain for her chirpy nature, I can see her eyes smile too. I’ve never been one for counselling, but I’ll give her genuineness.

“Let’s see how we get on,” I say, inhaling, readying.

There is no preparation for the truth of it, though. There’s no way to mistake her, even with the low whir and occasional blips of equipment surrounding her bed, even with her body stripped of its blouses and nylons in favour of a shapeless cotton gown. My god, she’s gotten older. Those expensive creams from Montgomery Ward could only fend off wrinkles for so long before gravity and the years caught up. She’s rigid. Propped nearly upright in a neck brace, plastic corset and two plaster casts that stretch the length of her arms. Of course, her nails are flawlessly French manicured. Even her hair retains a certain pomp to it, holding on to the last of the aerosol before it all went wrong. The curtains are pulled slightly so that the last of late afternoon sun may stream onto the bed, illuminating the inhuman nature of it all.

Sandra stands behind me, just inside the doorway, tentative.

“How do you feel?” she asks.

I think, Why? or even What? do you feel would be easier questions to answer.

“I feel like I want to check in at my hotel and get settled, maybe eat something and have a nap, before doing all of...this.”

Sandra, for once, lets the silence permeate the distance after my words.

“It’s sad,” I add, finally. “I think it’d be better if I can sort out a few things then come back with a clearer head, when she’s awake. How long til she’s up again?”

“A couple hours. They put her on pretty heavy meds. I think Dr. Ferber plans on coming back and doing a scan or two, assuming he confirms the surgery went to plan,” she says. “Just to make sure there’s not something more we’re dealing with...that we don’t know about yet.”

I stay with my back to Sandra, eyes transfixed on the bed, the image of my mother’s battered body filling my eyes with unbearable presence. I scan the room -- the woolen armchair in the corner, the framed watercolours and pastel trim on the walls, the trio of daffodils in a vase on the nightstand. To lie unconscious in Ostego Memorial, off the highway in Gaylord, Michigan, is something I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. Not even her.

*

I sit in the parking lot, rental car warming up, staring at the dashboard, wondering if all 34,632 miles on the odometer were spent as terribly as these. On the radio they’re asking listeners to call in with their worst stories of infidelity and I swiftly change the channel. Smooth jazz. No thanks. Motown. Too sad and nostalgic. Traffic and weather. Doesn’t matter. Radio goes off.

Driving away, I pull into one of the gas stations between the hospital and my Holiday Inn and buy a pack of Camel Lites. They’re cheap as shit here. I guess all the men made prematurely redundant need something to fill their days besides drinking Schlitz and lamenting the Tigers.

Back on the road, I smoke one with the windows rolled down, even though March in northern Michigan is far from summery. The end of winter feels good on my skin. Though I’ve just seen my mom in a state that they say you’ll never forget, all I can think of is the way she looked that day fifteen years ago, in her apron and rollers, eyes filled with nothing but reproach even as they became distant in the rearview mirror. I exhale smoke. I wonder if even the most powerful sedatives could cloud that.

*

The hours I spend at the hotel are restless. In my haste to pack in Cambridge when I got the news, I didn’t bring much -- just the last of my heavy-duty American winter jackets, a pair of boots and a pair of flats, a few sombre black pieces lest the need for them arise (and it most certainly has). So there isn’t much to unpack. I pay $14.99 for wi-fi access, just to check in with the kids, but none are online. I leave brief notes for them, just to let them know I’m here and more or less alive. The TV doesn’t offer much of a reprieve -- mostly pay-per-view mixed martial arts and celebrity gossip about people I’m dumbfounded are famous. A nap is out of the question -- I’ve never been a good sleeper, certainly not now -- so I mostly sit on the edge of the bed as dusk quietly creeps down the horizon and the night pulls closer the inevitable return to the hospital.

I smoke another cigarette on my way back. I’m not a smoker, not by any regular means, but there is something about the muffled rush of nicotine that has soothed me since I first knew what it was to need relief. From the walks around the neighbourhood I took as a teenager, craving a break from Mom’s incessant berating, through to the passing stresses of college, all the way to those embittered days of my divorce. Something about the aftertaste still carries the pain, but also the knowledge that it will pass, just as it always does.

The shock of the hospital is more subdued now, but sedation can’t last forever, and that’s what gives my heart its weight as I pull up this time. Deep breaths. She needs me now, I try to convince myself. Even if I’ve never satisfied her needs before.

Sandra and Dr. Ferber are waiting for me. They run me through all that I’ve missed in the few hours I was away: the scans were clear, save for a bruised lung from the chest trauma, and she’ll need assistance with breathing for the next few days until she can better articulate what she’s feeling and what she does or doesn’t need. They’re fairly certain the small fracture at the top of her spine won’t gravely affect her overall mobility. She’s awake, but still a bit loopy. They reiterate the need to keep news about my dad quiet; I should try to skirt the issue however possible, and if she’s still insistent, to just say that he’s here, in the hospital, but not doing so well.

The walk back to her room from Sandra’s office is like one of those terrible dreams we all have, the ones where faces are talking to you but it sounds like you’re underwater, and all the air has left your throat when it’s your turn to speak, and you feel an overwhelming need to run but your legs can’t muster the lightness to do so. I feel like a crippled elephant with a thousand bricks strapped onto its back. A crippled elephant orphaned by its mother, crawling through desolation for some kind of comically fucked-up family reunion.

And we’re here. I stop in my tracks. Take as deep of a breath as I can muster in my gasping nightmare state. Look to Sandra and Dr. Ferber for some kind of signal, but they’ve just got their eyebrows raised, suggesting this is all me. Sandra gives me a nod, and in I go.

Her eyes are only half-open when I walk in, but widen enough that they seem to swallow her forehead when she recognises me. She’s got an oxygen tube running into her nose and is strapped up to the point of being immobile, but it can’t stop her bruised lung from dispelling a long, low groan out of her mouth. It’s the most subdued, yet somehow the most poignant, communication we may have ever shared.

“Hi, mom,” I say, as warmly as I can.

She tries to mumble something, but her lips and tongue are still an hour behind her brain in waking up from surgery.

“Lily just got here earlier this afternoon. Isn’t it so great to see her all the way from London?” Sandra is doing her best to make peace, unknowing there’s any reason to, and also displays the American tendency to refer to anywhere in Britain by the name of its capital.

Mom’s eyelids flutter and she lets out another short mumble.

“I came as quickly as I could,” I say. “I’m so glad I made it to see you...and dad.” As soon as the afterthought comes out of my mouth, I know it was misjudged -- the mere mention of my dad’s existence seems to remind her that something is very wrong, and her heart rate monitor immediately speeds up in its bleeps.

I hear Sandra’s breath catch in her throat. More mumbling from mom. Dr. Ferber steps in, probably well-versed in these kind of cataclysms.

“No need for alarm Mrs. Barro, he’s been well looked after by my team in a different ward. Lily’s going to be splitting her time so that she gets to see both of you, until things smooth out,” he says, coming to her bedside to gingerly rest his hand on her shoulder, maybe the only part of her upper body that hasn’t snapped in two. He gives me a look out of the corner of his eye, silently urging me to be more prudent. Slowly the pace on the monitor slackens.

I remain still, unable to touch her with any semblance of affection, even now. I think of the state of their car when it was found in the ditch, crunched inwards on itself, and the way Dad must have looked, facedown on the steering wheel. I imagine my Mom’s sleepy eyes filling with terror, but the splintering of her old bones keeping her from so much as resting her hand on his bruising, bald head. I think inside that vehicle, in the moments leading up to help arriving, must have been only place worse than here.

“I think it’s a good idea to leave you two alone for a bit,” Sandra suggests.

“Yes,” Dr. Ferber concurs. “Let you catch up while we speak to a few other patients and family members. How’s that sound?”

I nod. Can’t bring myself to verbally agree, but I know it’s inevitable.

“We’ll come back to check in on you shortly,” Sandra says, with a grin and a wink too cheeky for me to bear. Maybe my mom won’t be such bad company after all, if only for being incapable of making such facial movements.

Suddenly I feel more exhausted than I have in weeks, even after the all-nighter with Luke when he almost overdosed, even when I did nothing but read theses round-the-clock for a week. An insomniac’s coping mechanism: shutting their eyes when life demands its utmost attention.

“Sounds good,” I say, putting on the most upbeat tone I can muster. “I’ll be here.”

Dr. Ferber and Sandra leave the room, and I see my mom’s eyes fixated on me, only me, morose and critical at the same time. I pull the armchair from the corner of the room closer to the bedside -- though not daring to get too near; nearer than we’ve been in decades -- and sit. Only when I’m there do I realise the angle is too low for my mom to see me, unable to bow her head from the neck brace, and I sit for a long while with my head in my hands, willing myself to stay.

*

An hour passes. We sit mostly in difference and in silence. What can be said? As time goes on the fog of sedatives slowly lifts from her thought process and muscle movements and she interjects into the quiet every so often.

“How is he?”

“Why aren’t we in the same room? I thought this is what we paid insurance for.”

“When will I get to see him?”

Each time I wince.

“Don’t worry, Mom. The doctors here are great.”

“Maybe you’ll be moved soon, when you recover a bit more.”

“Hopefully, soon.”

The heart rate monitor rides the waves of her panic like a tragic crescendo.

After a while of this back-and-forth leading nowhere but to conversation about Dad, I try to seize the talking lead. I say how wonderful it is that my department found a substitute lecturer so quickly and with no questions asked. I tell her of the buttercups already poking their heads through the soil on my running trails. I mention that I saw Stanley’s Donuts had closed, which is a shame because I’d ached for their jelly roll all these years. I talk and talk of everything I can think of that’s happier than this; anything that doesn’t direct her thoughts towards Dad, even if they never left. I’m a terrible conversationalist, but I’ll talk for hours if it means she doesn’t get the chance to pester me about George and our great demise.

She doesn’t respond, and after many minutes of slowing beeps on her monitor, I’m sure she’s asleep. I quietly pick up my purse, take a breath and rise. It’s only when I’m in the doorway and flick the lights off that the moonlight illuminates the tears on her cheeks, and the whites of her eyes which peek through like crescents when she thinks I’ve walked away.

*

The next morning I wake to unbearably bright sun streaming through the tacky tartan curtains in my hotel room. I could draw them and become one with my bed for the rest of the afternoon, but I know it’s futile -- Dad will stay dead, and Mom will stay broken and persistent, even if my head is under the pillow. Anyway, this funeral will not plan itself, especially not if his most cherished still thinks he’s lain on another rock-hard hospital mattress, if at rest then at least with a pulse.

I skim through the pamphlets Sandra and Dr. Ferber gave me, little encyclopedias of the businesses that are too grave for the regular phone books. The cremation resources are totally useless -- Dad would die a second death before he’d consider turning to dust, not after all those years of Catholic schooling and marriage to my mother.

I shortlist three cemeteries, the only three I can place after more than thirty years off the city’s grid. Of these, there’s one I could never forget. Mt. Olivet, the biggest in Detroit, the one whose pathways would last longer than Jack Ryder’s two joints whenever we’d walk through it after dusk. Afterwards there was the cracked leather of his backseat, and the hiss of the radio, and the shifting of my skirt before I traipsed back into my parents’ house, eyes full of weed and sex and shame. Those were different days. The summers were engulfed in fury, riots blooming up from the hot asphalt like desert flowers. Inextinguishable. Detroit was a festering wound in those years, but Mt. Olivet was a suspended oasis, nothing but darkness and silence and escape. Dad only withdrew further into the lounge those months of disquiet, so somehow I think it’d suit him to be in the only place that never saw the great ruin.

I call Mt. Olivet’s cemetarian, but he advises me that I won’t get anywhere without an appointed funeral director, especially not from afar. Trust America to make even the most sentimental of occasions a money-making affair. There’s a pamphlet for funeral directors, too, and lacking any other indicator I pick three by shutting my eyes and pointing. I choose the one nearest to our--their--house in Rosedale Park. It seems a bit dated, but decades into its practice, just a regular funeral home without any of the over-the-top fixings that never suited my dad when he was alive and definitely wouldn’t now. He was a man characterised by the ordinary -- both in ideals and in practice -- not wanting to elevate himself above his neighbour. Readying to call Wilson Akins Funeral Home, I realise I wouldn’t know who to invite; who of those neighbours bothered sticking around when it all went down the crapper, or even who’s still alive.

The man on the end of the line reassures me those preoccupations are for a later time. First there’s the business of transporting the body, and picking a date, and selecting a coffin, and registering a place at the cemetery, and let’s not forget making a deposit for the whole thing to be worth their while. He’s got a tone of reassurance and assertiveness that I imagine only comes after years of swindling money out of the bereaved. I follow his lead on most suggestions -- send a basic car up to Ostego Memorial; nothing fancy but definitely American-made. Five days seems a reasonable amount of time to prepare; not so hasty so as to rush myself, but also swift enough that hopefully my stay in Michigan won’t go on longer than necessary. I tell him Mt. Olivet is the preferred cemetery, and that he can use his best judgement on selecting a coffin that’s affordable but not so cheap so as to resemble cardboard. Likewise with the flower arrangements -- Dad was never moved so much by flora, but it is a nice gesture. He gives me a ballpark figure for the total cost, I read my credit card number through the phone for the deposit, and we agree to speak again tomorrow when the car is on its way. I should be prepared to select some clothing and beloved items for him to be buried in by the evening before the funeral, latest. I should also notify all interested parties of the service as soon as details have been confirmed. I decide not to tell him of the complicating issues with Mom -- until she’s allowed to know he’s dead, there’s no sense in bothering with the dreadful details.

I smoke a cigarette in-between phone calls, not bothering to step outside. After more than fifteen years of separation, I still am filled with nothing but disdain when faced with the prospect of speaking to George. George of dashingly good looks well into his 60s, George of the easy way out. The George who couldn’t keep his eyes off the graduate students’ wagging asses, after his gaze had strayed from his wedding ring. Twice. Thrice. I’d lost count. Once a bastard, always a bastard. Mom always said I should’ve known better, and only now will I admit that maybe she was right.

I wasn’t a fool. Neither was he. That’s what made him so endearing -- he was so fucking smart, and not in the type of way that kept him holed up in libraries and labs away from those of ordinary intelligence. Smart in the way that would charm the skirts off of ladies thirty years his junior, and funny to boot, always the first to be invited to dinner parties and the last to leave. He was almost 40 when I enrolled in his class, on the tail-end of his second marriage. No kids. First wife, Joanne, was a drunk. Drunker than he ever was, and his university sweetheart, but not sweet enough to keep him around. She paralysed herself on the back of a motorbike, arms wrapped around whichever drunkard had agreed to take her home from the pub. George was quick to make his exit before she even came to. His second wife, Lucy, was stinking gorgeous, but dimmer than you could believe. A bit of arm candy for the dinner parties, but she couldn’t keep up in conversation, something George found utterly unendearing. (He would later tell me he refused to procreate with a being whose IQ rivalled a meerkat’s.) This was around the time I enrolled in his statistics course, fresh-faced from my last summer in Ann Arbor, flush with the thrill of leaving America against my parents’ wishes.

I admit I was quick to fall for it. Only just 23, determined to seize everything and everyone that came my way in Cambridge because I’d be damned if I didn’t have something to hold on to when my visa days dwindled. It started off innocently enough. I always sat towards the front of the class, not because I had poor vision, only because he spoke quietly and I feared missing one of his puns. (I was still shocked by the lightfootedness of English wit and desperate to keep up.) Up close, I began to admire his features -- jawline sharp as a knife, no sign of slackening despite his age; hair that was starting to grey but hadn’t yet thinned; eyes that varied from stormy sea blue to ice depending on his intensity. I visited his office a few times in the early weeks. I hated statistics, but found myself desperately wanting to achieve; to make an impression on a man who didn’t seem easily impressed.

Wrong I was. Turns out he was impressed by a lot. Impressed by the freshness of my chest -- I was a late bloomer, after all -- and impressed by the way I would lament American politics and blow rings of smoke after I’d pleasured him in his office. Impressed even by my accent, which I’d worked hard to soften after discovering the graceful cadence with which my British counterparts spoke. I knew he was married, and couldn’t have cared less. He didn’t hide his marital discontent; rather almost used it as a lure, as if to suggest it would all be over soon, so I should get my place in the queue early while I could. Lots of other students fancied him, but as far as I knew, right then I was the only one who stayed past office hours. In retrospect I should have been turned off by his disregard for his wife -- it would be mimicked later on -- but at the time I was ignited only by his charisma and awe-inspiring intellect.

His class ended; our affair didn’t. Soon we became less secretive, and half of Cambridge knew we were fucking on the not-so-sly. He told me that Lucy had moved out, and whether or not it was true I didn’t care to know. He was taking me out to dinner and the theatre, even holding my hand on campus. We went punting beneath the willows on the river and stained our teeth an almost permanent plum from all the wine we drank. When we had been seeing each other for nearly a year, on a particularly tipsy evening, he told me that he was leaving Lucy for good; that the papers had been signed. I smiled, but didn’t overtly celebrate. On that evening he invited me over, and I was stunned by the elegance of his house. Late that night, he told me never to leave.

Soon after my course ended, it happened. I was sick to my stomach at all hours of the day, and two weeks late, though I was doing my best not to keep track. In all honesty, I wasn’t trying for it, but wasn’t preventing it either. In those months I was faced with a soon-expiring visa and a struggle to find a job. My options seemingly ended at enrolling in a PhD program and borrowing more money I didn’t know if I could pay back, or marrying George. Getting knocked up wasn’t either of those, not directly anyway, but it helped. When I told him the news, he drank himself into a whiskey stupor, then apologised, hungover as all hell the next morning, and told me I shouldn’t even think of “taking care of it,” as I told him I would in a huff the night before. But I wasn’t fully convinced. Motherhood was never firmly in my plans, immediate or otherwise. I wasn’t totally averse to the matter, just favoured all the freedoms my mom’s generation wasn’t given. I never thought that I would enter the UK a single student and leave a pregnant housewife-to-be, but this was the scenario I found myself in that Christmas, a couple months after George took me to the register office to tie the impromptu knot. I didn’t know what was worse -- getting knocked up and then married to my parents’ surprise, or not doing it at all. But I accepted it as part of the requisite journey to stay as far away as I could from the bungalow on Artesian Street.

By the time I met them at the airport in Detroit, I was showing but doing my best not to. Wanted to let them down easy, tell them of my charming and successful husband before letting them put together all the shotgun wedding clues. Mom wouldn’t be fooled, though. Took one look at my swollen face and turned white. Wouldn’t speak a word to me all the way home. Before I left back for Cambridge, I made all the amends I could, but Mom would never let me forget that I was having an illegitimate child with a sinful man. Years later, she’d say “I told you so,” and she had. But that didn’t make me hate her any less for it.

The first few years after Kate was born were blissful enough. George made himself present, gave fatherhood as best of a shot as he could without having ever really wished for it. I wasn’t very good at the domestic thing, but fashioned myself into a mother I thought even mine would approve of. Kept a tidy home, threw dinner parties and only burned a few of the dishes, tried to feed the fire alight between me and George. This worked up until Eliza was born. But having two kids was way different than having one, something I guess not even my cynical, all-knowing mother could tell me. I burned out, and quickly. Started snapping at George for the littlest of things, just because I was stir-crazy. I missed my self, and I mean the self that wasn’t constantly in service of a needy little being. I stopped having time to read academic journals, stopped wearing decent clothes if I didn’t have to leave the house (and I often didn’t). It was a chicken-egg scenario -- did George pull away because I had pushed him, or did I push him because he was pulling already? Years later, I still don’t know, but I do know this: it was a tug-of-war we never reconciled. He spent more time at the office and stopped bringing me to his dinner parties. I was more sullen, less beautiful, arid even in the wettest months.

I had my suspicions, but it wasn’t until I found myself pregnant with Luke that I gave into them. I hadn’t wanted another kid, not after the downward spiral we found ourselves in after Eliza, but after many months of only intermittent sex, I stopped keeping track, figuring it was all a lost cause by then. I was totally against it, but George wouldn’t be reasoned with. He said maybe all we needed was a bit more man in the house; that maybe I’d find balance with a boy to dote on. When he was desperate to keep me grounded at home, he even pulled out the daggers: but what would my parents think of an abortion? Now that I think about it I wonder how he managed to make such comments, with the infrequency that he was at home during those months. Office hours turned into all-nighters; after-work drinks devolved into stumbling into bed at 2 a.m., me lain wide-awake, half sick with pregnancy and the other half sick with disdain.

I should have known. I was, after all, that girl with whom he spent those late-night trysts, while his other wife was at home, probably just as spiteful as I felt later on. On the day of our twenty-week scan, frazzled and up to my neck with impatience for the girls, I turned up to his office, sure that he’d forgotten the appointment and would need a reminder. I’d put on a bit of mascara and blush, resolute that if I was going to be having this baby we could at least play dress-up for the doctors, wondering why neither of us appeared to want it.

There I was, belly expanding more quickly than it ever had before, a sleeping toddler in one arm and a kindergartner tugging at the other, jaw dropping so hard it could have hit the south pole and bounced right back up. There he was, older but no wiser, balls-deep into a grad student with her polka-dotted panties around her ankles. Oh yes, he had forgotten.

When they told me it was a boy at the appointment, I cried.

*

“What do you mean he hasn’t slept at your house in months?”

Mom is incredulous and more lucid than I’d like the next day in her hospital room, the overcast afternoon at least shedding a bit less light on the lines on her face which only crease deeply with disapproval.

“It’s always been that way. Luke was George’s darling from the moment he left my body,” I say. “And anyway, I wouldn’t tolerate him in the same way George does. He takes no interest in school, no interest in sports, no interest in anything but his burnout friends and his sketchbook.” It’s only when the words leave my mouth that I reel at the similarity with the expectations Mom and Dad had for me, too. But I guess embitterment before birth doesn’t fade easily.

“It would have been nice if we had seen him more. You know they could have spent the summers with us. Robert can take him into the garage, show him something about the value of his hands. I bet they don’t teach you that in England,” Mom says.

We’ve spent the morning catching up on the children she never saw grow, the ones whose childhoods even feel far away from me now, blossoming while I shuttled from divorce court to classroom to the emptiness of my bed. If Kate and Eliza at least spent a few blissful years with the illusion of family, Luke got only the epilogue. The last time he saw my parents he could hardly keep his eyes open, and perhaps it’s better he didn’t.

“You weren’t exactly supportive the last time I brought him to Detroit.”

“Supportive? What was it you would have liked me to endorse? The shotgun wedding, the marriage to a cheater, or the broken family I saw coming all along? What you did to those kids was unfair and still is.”

A snicker would not be enough, nor would it matter. Any conversation of family I’ve had with my mother since I was old enough to consider having one has devolved into this. My place as a wife and mother was never in the mould of hers. If I got married, it was for the wrong reasons. If I had children, I didn’t raise them right. If my marriage broke down, it had to have been my own doing. I was too stubborn, too foolish, too selfish. Too resolute that I would never end up like her. Too blinded to see that in the end, maybe I was.

The day has been trying. Mom is gaining more of a grasp on things by the minute, and her drive for information on Dad only wanes when she’s ridiculing my parenting decisions. Dr. Ferber and Sandra have done their best to keep her in the dark but I feel the weight of her unknowing more each time she asks. The car picked up his body before I visited Mom today yet somehow his presence remains, in the stillness and quiet. For now I will encourage her berating so long as she can stay off-topic. The day after tomorrow I have to leave for Detroit, and if I can manage to hold her off until then I might reconsider the possibility of miracles.

“Are you reminding Robert to use his eyedrops? And are you making sure his meals don’t have tomatoes? I’ve told the nurses a thousand times but they don’t take me seriously,” she interjects into the sombre space of my thoughts.

“They don’t tell me anything. I don’t understand why we can’t be in the same room. He didn’t work at the factory for these many years for his insurance to give us this crap.”

The monitor falls into its habit of quickening whenever measuring her heart’s leaps for Dad, and I will myself to be on the receiving end of her brutalities until I go, so long as the distraction keeps the needle’s swings from being too wild.

Before I went to Mom’s room today, Dr. Ferber pulled me aside to discuss some puzzling conditions of the accident. Mom’s maintained that she was asleep the whole while -- she will sometimes doze off in the passenger seat, lulled away by the smoothness of Dad’s maneuvering -- but the doctors think otherwise. Her wrists were shattered in such a way that she had to have actively resisted -- seen the drop coming, known the force with which they were about to crash, thrown her hands up against the dashboard in an act of surrender -- and they’re concerned she’s suppressing some of the trauma she might have experienced during and after the accident. Alert and motionless must be the worst combination for seeing your partner out of this world.

Anytime I breach the topic with Mom she flies off the handle entirely. After all, it’s hard to talk about the accident without talking about Dad. But the fierceness with which she maintains her state of slumber is something that unsettles me, somehow. The eyes of denial prick me more than any of her fragmented bones.

At the end of the day, after we look at photographs of the kids and compromise our differences, just as I put my scarf on, she sighs.

“If I had known we’d end up this way I never would’ve done it.”

I’m startled by her admission, but respect it -- Mom has never been well-known for her reflective qualities -- and on the drive back to the hotel, Camel Lite burning fruitlessly into the chilly Michigan night, I wonder what she meant.

*

At the hotel I log on to the webpage I created for Dad’s funeral. There’s no way I could round up all of their friends and acquaintances -- not when I haven’t kept track of who and where they are in decades -- but I sent messages to all of my childhood family friends, asking if their parents were still alive and still close to mine. Some didn’t respond at all. Maybe they don’t often check their messages; maybe my parents spread word of my unorthodoxy around the whole of northwest Detroit. Some did. Linda Brooks, Jimmy Tartleton, Mary Sanders, Donny Magnuson -- all still in Detroit, all with one more parent still alive than I.

One by one word seems to spread. Mostly it’s kids joining the group on their parents’ behalf, but a few particularly web-savvy friends and family members add themselves too. Dorothy, my dad’s younger sister who I haven’t seen since before I left for England, is no less wordy than I remembered. She leaves a message in the guestbook which stretches the length of my laptop screen. It’s mostly Jesus stuff and memories made in the ‘40s, but something catches my eye.

I guess we all knew it was coming soon, but that doesn’t make it any easier. May Heidi someday join you in Heaven so you both can finally be at ease.

We knew? Did I?

I suppose I accepted the fact that one day I would get the call; that one day I’d be confronted with something in-between grief, guilt and indifference. Each day I saw the deepening of the creases on my own face I knew theirs would by now be canyons. He was old. 80-something. Mortality is an obvious factor in those years. But that doesn’t make you any less blindsided.

... I guess we all knew it was coming soon…

... you both can finally be at ease…

I read her passage over and over until it’s mush. As I drift off to sleep, the words spin around my skull, reprimanding me for my distance and unknowing. Soon, soon, soon…

*

A day of rain. When I muster the will to draw the hotel curtains in the morning I see nothing but wet streaks on the pane and somehow I am comforted by the semblance of home on the isle. If I didn’t already feel far away from the watermelon juice, sticky on my chin, and the smell of fresh-cut grass on the baseball fields in the summers of my youth, I certainly do now. Even my most cherished Julys are sodden now.

I’ve received a message from the funeral director -- last-minute details, mostly. Questions of how many people to expect for finger sandwiches and a vague tone of assurance. He reminds me I must select something for Dad to wear -- even though I’ve already told them an open casket is out of the question, with the injuries he carries out with him -- and it dawns on me that I no longer have keys to the house. Hopefully Sandra and Dr. Ferber recovered Dad’s set from the car, or else the negotiation with Mom bodes poorly.

A few more members for the funeral group online. A few new emails too -- departmental notices, a check-in from my dean, a message from Kate. She’s holidaying in Morocco with her boyfriend, Tom, and sends along photos of shadows cast by a sun that never shines up here. She asks the requisite questions -- How’s everything going? Is Grandma handling it okay? How long ‘til you come back? -- but I know it’s more out of duty than genuine concern. She too asks about Luke -- if I’ve seen him lately, because he hasn’t returned any of her messages -- but there’s only so much talk of intergenerational estrangement I can handle in a short period of time.

I drive slowly to the hospital, letting the fat drops of rain linger on the windshield in the parking lot until they become one with the quiet.

*

I ask Dr. Ferber and Sandra if they took Dad’s set of keys from the car and a panic grows in-between us. In sending the Pontiac to the junkyard they didn’t think to remove them; the only mementos they recovered were on his body, now stained deeply with crimson and in a bag sent away to be incinerated. Mom’s purse was spared and now sitting in a corner of her hospital room, as a sort of reassurance of normalcy. The game plan is to rummage through her handbag in her painkiller slumber and, hopefully, make a run for Detroit before she can ask where I’m going.

Walking to her room from Sandra’s office, I make a mental map of the childhood home I haven’t spent more than a few days in since the ‘70s. The lounge, flanked by plasticine floral couches and a television which seemed futuristic upon its purchase but a relic years after. The bedrooms, tidy and dim, and the crispness of the sheets after Mom’s starch routine. The door which only unlocks with patience and a thrust of the hips. The backyard, small but noble in its well-tended perennials. Going back tomorrow to its reticence will provide less solace than a muted sadness.

Mom has fully gotten her bearings now, expressing her displeasure with the hospital meals and even moreso with the separation from Dad. If it weren’t for the swelling in her lungs the whole of the wing would hear her disquiet. Dr. Ferber trails me into the room and sets to our sedation mission.

“Morning, Mrs. Barro. I need to speak to you about the level of medication you’re receiving,” he says. “Seems there was a mix-up with my staff and you’ve been on a lower dosage than we normally recommend for someone of your age with internal damage. If it’s alright with you we’re going to up the steroids and morphine to ensure your lungs heal properly and you don’t feel pain in the process.”

“I think I’m doing just fine with what I’ve got, doctor,” she says, distrustfully. If there’s one thing my mom’s good at, it’s sniffing out bullshit.

“It may be true that you feel okay for now, but it could be that the painkillers are masking some real trauma that needs to be addressed. As your doctor I must urge you to consent. It will save you some pain and recovery down the line, when you’re no longer on the drip,” Dr. Ferber coaxes.

Mom tuts and falls silent. A woman accustomed to her own assertions faces an adjustment period when everything lies out of her hands. I should know.

Soon she is conked out, but not before she mutters as she goes under. “This was all a mistake.”

*

Night falls as the rental car pulls onto Artesian Street. Gloomy as the Detroit mood may be, only the miserable could say the way dusk hits the elms isn’t beautiful. Finding a parking spot isn’t hard -- of the residents left on this block, most of them lock their beaters up in their garages, a kind of Motor City buried treasure.

On the stoop someone has left an arrangement of forget-me-nots, and their blushing lavender seems out of place against the cracked concrete. I pick up the flowers and fumble with the keys, now foreign in my fingers. The door is no less sticky than I remember -- I marvel at how neither of my parents managed to break a hip swinging it open -- and when it finally goes, I almost drop the vase.

Gone is the militant tidiness with which Mom ruled the household. Unopened letters and years-old bills are strewn across the table in the hallway. Shoes are mismatched and scattered and scuffed with early spring’s mud. Dad’s myriad thermal jackets, once kept fresh and gingerly arranged in the bedroom closet, now hang off of every makeshift hook in sight.

I make my way to the kitchen to put down my bags and the flowers, which suddenly have quadrupled in weight in my hands. Something is very wrong here. Was very wrong here. On the kitchen table lies a stack of letters from the Michigan Chapter of the Alzheimer’s Assocation. A lump grows malignantly in my throat. I tear one open.

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Barro:

Upon review of your health insurance we regret to inform you that outpatient care for Robert isn’t presently covered by your providers…

A rage blooms alongside a great guilt inside of me.

... we recommend contacting family members for assistance in this sensitive matter…

I rack my brain for any missed calls or messages I received from Mom in the past two years but recall none.

... and though outpatient care is the preferred choice of many families in your situation, we suggest reconsidering the residential care admission we spoke about during your last consultation…

My face is ablaze, my palms are damp and my heart is beating as quickly as Mom’s in her recent testing of the monitor’s pace. I feel equal parts fury and shame. Why hadn’t they spoken to me? Why hadn’t I been reachable?

My gut surges upwards into my throat but instead of making a beeline to the bathroom I traipse over umbrellas and weeks-old newspapers to their bedroom. Questions swim circles in my head quicker than I can ask them. Why was he still driving? Why didn’t Mom ask me for money? Why hadn’t the doctors mentioned that this might not have been spontaneous after all?

The bedside lamp had been left on, pale, but light enough to illuminate all I’d need to see. On the bed, lain forlornly, were Mom and Dad’s churchgoing outfits. A slim navy suit Dad had purchased in the ‘60s and Mom had tended to ever since. Mom’s pleated lilac skirt and white blouse with a straw bonnet to match. This had been premeditated and the only one who hadn’t seen it coming was me.

In my head the scene replayed itself in a more hideous light than I’d previously imagined. Dad at the wheel, against anyone’s common sense, hardly able to keep his mind focused on the date, much less the traffic. And Mom, scheming as she ever was, seizing the wheel when Dad had started to drift off, shutting her eyes and praying God would forgive her. In the end mortality’s joke was on her but no one, least of all me, laughed.

Next to their clothing was a handwritten note and a bookmarked Bible. Tears clouding my eyes like cumuli in the English sky, I make out what I can through my gasps.

Dear Lil.

I didn’t want you to find out like this. By now we will have both departed, but I hope you understand my intention was for it to hurt less for all of us.

God took you on a different path than we had intended but I do not scorn you. If there’s one thing I want you to remember it’s this - don’t ever let Kate, Eliza or Luke have to see you out like this. Make amends. Let love back into your heart. And forgive.

We love you.

Mom.

And perhaps for the first time ever, Mom and her God have brought me to my knees.

by Bela Zecker

A Not So Little Girl

Keira means 'dark', nice choice of name for your little girl. It gets better though. Mallory means 'unfortunate'. I asked my mum once if she knew what both names meant. She said yes, but Mallory was grandma’s fault, as she was the one who married a Mallory.

But Keira? My parents thought a name that means 'dark unfortunate' was quite "unfortunate." She started laughing, and then crying, so I went upstairs. Don't worry, she's not a complete psycho. She was crying because my father passed away when I was six years old. Whoa! I know, bombshell, I don’t mind talking about it though. I can barely remember him, save for a few holidays, and he took me to a park once. And he really loved me. I know that.

It’s always difficult when somebody who has not lost a parent talks about their family as a tight, secure unit. Almost every day I ask myself “what would have it been like if he was alive?” or “how would I have dealt with that situation if he was still around?”

I cannot help but look at all situations and wonder if it would have been different, especially now. Would his love have made up for my mum’s complete rejection of me? Or would he have simply nodded whenever she spat out a spiteful comment and then winked at me as if to suggest I wasn’t alone, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to stand up for me against my mother?

There are some pictures of him in my mum’s room and I used to look at them sometimes when I felt alone. Mum always says she can see him in me. I think she hates that.

Oh yeah, and I have a twin sister, Cara. Her name means ‘beloved’.

I used to believe that we are born, then we live, then we die, and that’s all there really was to life. I guess you could say I was proved wrong, but we will get to that later.

*

My life wasn't that hard. I had a mum who had her moments, lots of them. She doted on my sister like a princess and treated me as if I were just a guest who had outstayed her welcome. Cara was Captain of the Netball team but also made brief appearances for the Rounder’s team when they were short. She played piano, grade five, and violin, grade six, and generally got ‘A’ grades. She had long chestnut brown hair and these huge amber eyes that would draw people in, regardless of what she was saying. In contrast, I had been given up on by the entire PE staff due to my refusal to do anything but use the cycle machine, and even that was a rare event. I had dull brown eyes and could never get my hair to shine the ways Cara’s did. It just hung limply around my face, regardless of how many hours I spent trying to curl it or hairspray the roots in a pathetic attempt to get volume. She was good at Maths and Science and Spanish... well, you get the picture. The only subject in which I excelled and she did not was Art. What my mother liked to call “the subject for people who are useless at everything else”, and said it was simply a reflection of my apathetic attitude towards life.

*

This view of the world was hardly my fault. I had some friends, but I went largely unnoticed in school and, like practically every child nowadays, I was bullied. Not sure how many of them had their hair set on fire at eight years old, though. I had a home, but I was lonely. There was once a time when Cara and I were inseparable, we would go everywhere together, dress the same way, and share all the same friends. But our mum managed to drive us apart as soon as she realised Cara was ‘going places.’ It became clear that she was proud of Cara, showing off to the family about every top grade she got in every test, regardless of whether it was important or not, and simply changing the subject when it came to me. I was hardly failing, I was working at a consistent ‘B’ grade level, and when I did get an ‘A’ mum would brush it aside saying, “Art isn’t a real subject though, is it, Keira?” and “I hardly think Drama should be much of a concern to you, considering that ‘B’ you got in English.” It was like nothing I could do was good enough for her.

*

If, like me, you don't believe in the afterlife or in some sort of higher power, then you are wrong. Sorry. I still don’t know if there is a great higher being or not, but I do know there is something after death, and I am existing in it.

We stay on earth. Well, what happens is you die, but you are still on earth, a sort of sunless, darker world, the sort of thing you would expect from some sort of post-apocalyptic themed graphic novel. The buildings appear to be glazed over in the kind of sepia tones you can use on your phone to hide your imperfections and your terrible photography skills. Oh, and the sky is grey all the time, no matter if it is night or day, all you see when you look up is grey.

You can meet others, but only if you want to. You can’t see other dead people wandering down the street, scaring a few kids on Halloween or popping into Tesco’s. They are there, it’s just we can’t see each other unless we choose to. Too complicated, you see. No, we aren’t ‘ghosts’ as people have so kindly called us; we have simply left our empty vessels. No, to meet each other we must change the way we see things, you close your eyes and then you just hang in the air, in the human world, but our minds are not there, they are in this other place that’s like an internet chat room, except you can see each other and you just wander aimlessly until you meet others like you, or people you know. I haven't found my father or Cara yet, but I haven't been dead very long so that could change.

No, death is difficult. You are condemned to spend the rest of time watching the consequences of your actions play out. So I have to watch my mother’s life play out, childless, alone, empty. But you don’t just watch it, you can feel everything they feel, all the sadness, all the hurt, everything. The way that their heart feels as though it is going to tear in half, the way their lungs struggle to fill with breath.

*

After that fateful night, I became the main focus of her attention. All my life I wanted her to notice me, wanted to impress her, and now she was paying attention, only it wasn’t the way I wanted. Let me tell you what happened on the night of July 29th 2012. That night changed my life.

*

Where I live, a boring Inner London suburb, the roads are very quiet at night. Houses hide in tree lined avenues. There is little street lighting so, as you're driving along at night, it can be difficult to see a pedestrian on the pavement.

It is 12:15am and a warm summer’s night. We – that is to say Cara, Natalie, Tom and I – have just been to a party. A lot of people who go to my school live around my area, including all of the above; the sum total of the friends I have made during my thirteen years at school. Of course we only got invited to the party because of Cara. This summer we are not going back to school though, we are leaving for university. I am staying in London, and so is Cara. We aren’t going to the same University but we are considering moving out of mum’s and finding a place of our own.

We have dropped behind the others, caught up in our own world as we stumble home on heels that are way too high to be walking in when this drunk. Cara says it should be made illegal to make fabulous grown women such as ourselves walk home in such a state, and that the government should hire overtly muscular and attractive men that you can call when you need to be walked, or even carried, home.

I laugh and it echoes down the street, Cara puts her hand over my mouth and whispers, “Don’t wake up the neighbourhood watch!”

We both burst out laughing even more. The idea of moving out makes me smile. Although we don’t wear the same clothes anymore and don’t have all the same friends, Cara and I are as close as we have always been, despite mum’s protests. As we go to cross the road, I drop my phone, and I stop walking to reach down to pick it up.

And a car is speeding towards Cara.

*

They say that in the moment before impact everything slows down. I don't think it did for Cara, and I don't think it did for the car. But there, as I looked up, a passive observer, everything slowed down.

I am looking directly at the car and I can see it, pelting down the road, I imagine trees whipping past the window, how it looks from inside the car. And I can hear it; I think it is the loudest sound I have ever heard. And then I look at Cara. And I know. I know before it happens that the car is going to smash into her, it seems that minutes are going by but it can’t have been more than a second. I can see it, I know it. And I do nothing, I don't call her name, yell "STOP", I don't even blink.

I watch as the car slams into her legs and she is flung to her side and over the car, her arms blocking her face from the impact, her fingers flexing. I can't hear anything now. She slides over the car, and for a second I think she is looking at me, asking me, "Why? Why didn't you shout, why didn't you tell me about the car?" Her head flings back and she lands on the ground, smashing into it, her arms and legs being pulled along with force until she stops. And then there is no more movement.

*

The car screeches to a stop and the sudden noise reminds me that I am alive. I don’t think I am breathing. The car door opens. But I am not looking at the car. I am looking at the body of my sister. Suddenly I hear my name.

“KEIRA! Oh God, what the fuck? Keira, do something! Don’t just stand there! Keira, PLEASE!”

Why is Tom shouting at me? I am still looking at Cara. I can’t even move. What does he want me to do?

“Keira? Keira, can you hear me?” Natalie is at my side. Tom has run over to the driver, dragging him out the car. Shouting profanities while begging for her life, “You son of bitch, you fucking, FUCK! Just bring her back, man, please, just FUCK, what have you fucking done, have you any idea…”

I realize Natalie is still talking to me. But I can’t really hear her. It’s as if there is a soft humming over all her words. And I can’t take my eyes off my twin in some vain hope that if I stare long enough, she will move. I am willing her to move.

My neighbours appear and my mum is running out. The crash must have been so loud. And I realise I have witnessed it all. I feel sick. I am shaking now, my mum runs over to Cara’s body. She screams and falls. A woman goes to comfort her, somebody else is calling the police. All I want is my mum. Eighteen years of awkward conversations and skirting around each other, and all I want is my mum to give me a hug and tell me it’s all going to be okay.

The questions have started, and I know they will turn to me.

“Keira? What happened?”

I can’t…

"Keira what did you see?”

I can’t stop looking…

“Keira, was this man driving the car?”

I can’t stop looking at her…

“Keira? Why didn’t you stop her?”

And there it is. That moment of doubt. My mother’s voice rings the clearest in my ears.

“Keira? Why didn’t you stop her?”

Why didn’t I? I have no idea. I have no answers. All I know if that my twin is dead and I am not.

The man from the car is crying, and is visibly drunk. My mother turns to the diver who is sobbing, while being restrained by a neighbour.

“That’s my daughter, right there, that girl is my daughter, and you… you have stolen her life.”

The tears start to roll down my face.

“You’ve stolen my baby, you’ve stolen my daughter, my life…”

She breaks down, and friend hugs her.

I feel Natalie grab my arm and she says, “Keira let’s get you inside now.” I have thrown up all down my front, I don’t remember being sick. Natalie guides me back to my house.

*

I remember when I was small I was sick in school one day, and my dad came to pick me up. He took me home and sat me on the edge of the bath and washed the vomit of my face and out of my hair. Now Natalie does this for me. She grabs some old clothes from my room and helps me into them. Then she takes me to my bed.

“I’m so sorry Keira. I know you loved her.” Not true, I didn’t ‘love’ her past tense, I still do, I always will. Natalie leaves and I lie down, but I know I won’t get any sleep yet.

*

I hear my mum come into the house. She is crying and she has some friends with her. I am not sure if I want to go downstairs or not, but my feet take me to the door. I am nervous now.

The police have arrived and are taking the driver away. He is protesting his innocence, saying Cara stepped out. Regardless of this he is arrested for murder and I am the only witness. The police want to speak to me but on seeing me pulling at the long sleeves of the jumper I have thrown on they tell me they will take a quick statement and come back the next day. The police ask me questions, what did I see, how fast did I think he was going, if it there were any other factors. My answers are short. I am in shock and don’t feel like talking.

I walk into the house and put the kettle on. My mum looks upset, but on hearing me her mouth curls into a scowl.

“Do you want a tea, mum?”

“Keira, I need you to be honest with me, did you see what happened?”

“Yeah, mum, she stepped out to cross the road. I’m so sorry, mum…”

“Why didn’t you cross the road, Keira?”

“I… I dropped my phone.”

“Is it broken?”

What?

“God only knows why you didn’t try and stop her, for heaven’s sake, Keira, you were supposed to be her sister.”

“I’m so sorry mum.” I can’t stop the tears, I can’t even breathe.

“If you weren’t so useless, Kiera, then maybe… Well, maybe it should have been you…”

“Mum, please, I’m sorry.”

She looks at me, sighs deeply, and walks upstairs.

“She was my sister and I loved her too!” I scream after her.

Then… nothing.

I put my head in my hands and lean on the kitchen counter. I concentrate on my breathing. I am trying to stop crying. Why does my mum think it was my fault? Was it my fault? Should I have stopped her? I have no idea how long I stay like that, but eventually I walk upstairs and crawl into bed. I know I should sleep, but I don't want to. I don't want to do anything at all but lie there. I don’t know what else to do. I keep seeing it happen over and over in my head, except each time I find a way to stop her crossing the road. I save her.

I wake up and it is the next morning, thinking it was all a dream, but then I open my curtains and there is police tape and officers outside. I go downstairs and I can hear my mum on the phone. She is telling someone the story of last night.

"No, Keira was with her but she’s okay, a bit shaken... Yeah I’m still trying to take it all in... I don't know how it happened... Oh, yeah, she's still sleeping now."

I try to breathe out and realise my heart is racing, I feel like I'm choking. I close my eyes and sit on the stairs. Silent tears roll down my face. I calm down, my breaths are slow.

*

Guilt is a funny thing; it comes in waves, letting you think that everything is okay. But there it is, in the background, creeping up on you until it is all you can think about, nagging away in your mind, throbbing like a headache. You can do nothing but sit at its mercy and tell yourself you are not in the wrong, that anyone would have done the same thing. And just when you think it is gone and you have overcome it, there it is again, lurking in the shadows.

*

That’s how it was for me. I had another interview with the police the next day, explaining what happened, and they told me that the driver would go to jail, but they would still need to hear my statement in court. I dreaded having to read it out in front of people. If my own mother was under the impression that I could have stopped the crash what would they all think me?

Suddenly, I started to become possessive of Cara, she was my sister and I couldn’t accept that she was anyone else’s friend. Natalie and Tom started to question my actions that night. They were supposed to be my friends, and even they couldn’t understand why I, in their words, “let her cross the road without me.”

Then we had an assembly at our old school to remember her. Almost the whole year turned up, yet no-one even spoke to me. They gathered in groups to point and whisper and shake their heads in my direction. It was not just my mother who accused me of not stopping Cara, or the car itself, but people who barely knew me.

*

The funeral was difficult. We often joked about the song we would play at our funeral. Mine was ‘I Feel Fine’ and her choice was ‘Highway to Hell’. Of course that was a joke, and wasn't actually played. What eighteen year-old would tell their parents what music they wanted played at their funeral? Instead, mum chose a handful of hymns and ‘Over the Rainbow,’ her favourite song.

Everything was so raw for me and for my mum. We had barely spoken a word to each other for three weeks. We lived around each other, had dinner separately, went out if the other was home. The only interaction we had since the night Cara died was when I broke a vase of roses in the living room and she had hissed at me, “You have a habit of killing the things I love, don’t you, Keira?”

Why did my mum need someone else to blame? She had the driver; he was in jail with no chance of bail. I wasn't in the car, I didn't push her. Was it not enough that I blamed myself? No. I should have grabbed her arm, I should have shouted out, I should have warned the driver, I should have done something, and not just remain crouched down as I watched my twin sister die.

*

Do you ever walk through a cold patch, maybe in a hallway or in a bedroom, and you shiver, but you forget it? Well, that’s us, the dead I mean, suspended in the air. When we don’t want to face the harsh, and frankly tedious, task of following whoever around, we just close our eyes and try and find people who we may know; people who left us behind. Anyway, there we are, hanging in mid-air. And you just walk through us; that’s what gives you that shiver. Some people keep their eyes closed for so long that the spots at which they linger become a regular visiting site for avid ghost hunters. But we are not ghosts; we are the souls of those who no longer have a place in the real world.

*

For weeks after it happened, I would go silent for minutes at a time, while I watched it play back in my mind. I wouldn't leave the house, and the sound of tyres screeching to a halt would cause me to spiral into a panic attack.

I wanted to feel normal again, but I was fast realising there was no chance of that. It had been two months since the crash, there were still flowers being placed outside the house. Everything reminded me of the differences between us. There were photos of us in the living room which I had never paid much attention to before. But it was clear how different we were. There she was, with her sleek brown hair, framing her perfect face and her prize-winning smile. Next to her was a plain looking girl with almost translucent skin and a bored look on her face. I could see now why people were so drawn to her rather than me, why even my own mother chose her over me.

On the wall sat framed certificates for various musical and sporting events, her grades from GCSE and A-Level and, right at the end, a letter to say my art work was being featured in a show at Borough Market. My one achievement, versus the seven of hers that were on the wall. Mum had more in the hallway, all Cara’s. It was clear that she outshone me in all departments, and obvious that I should have been the one to die. Being alive was beginning to feel like a form of torture. These feelings were killing me, and I didn't know how to deal with to them.

*

When we were younger dad would treat us both equally. It was evident that I wasn’t sporty, so he used to take me to art galleries and print out certificates from the internet to give to me for drawings I had done at home or at school. He would pretend they had come from my teachers, but I always knew it was him. To him, it did not matter who was more intelligent, or who ran faster, he just wanted us to be happy with who we were. Dad had taught me that there was more to life than achievements. But now I was wary of receiving too much attention, I lived in constant fear of local people recognising me or asking me about what had happened. My reaction to everything seemed to be “cool”, “okay”, “sure”.

*

It is now late September and there is still no date for the trial. The council put some speed bumps on our road to prevent drivers speeding and causing more deaths.

But it is no use now, Cara has already gone, the worst has already happened. I feel as if I have a hole burning inside of my chest, I think it is going to kill me. I can't sleep, I can't eat, I can't breathe. Life is getting harder and harder. I wish I were five years old and my life could be full of fairies and princesses. But I am not a little girl anymore.

What if I had not gone to the party that night, maybe Cara would have kept up with the others, or maybe she wouldn’t have even gone at all. It’s now November 6th, nine days before I kill myself.

Days pass and I am falling apart. The sound of traffic panics me, I have no friends at University, I’m quiet and never go out, and now people have stopped asking.

My mum is growing increasing resentful of me; we have gone from not talking to her constantly berating me. Every time I walk past her she hisses some hateful comment about how tatty I look, how I should be trying harder with my studies, how I allowed my sister to die.

She doesn’t realise what I’m feeling. Having a twin is like finding your soul mate, except they’ve been by your side all your life. Cara has gone and I have been ripped in half.

*

I had always liked walking at night, normally just around the local area, but for some reason on this night, the 15th of November, I dragged myself out of bed for the first time in three days and walked away from my home and towards the river.

Before I left I went into the kitchen and wrote on a post-it note, “Mum, I’ve gone out for a bit. Please know I loved Cara and I’m sorry.”

Thinking back I must have known what I was going to do. But I can honestly say that I didn’t leave the house that night planning on killing myself.

*

To my mind suicide had always been a ridiculous notion. I didn’t understand it then, but now I know it isn’t something you plan. It isn’t something you think about for days on end before committing to it. You just make the decision and then do it. There is nothing more.

*

There are lots of us here. We are all intrinsically connected, we have all shared the same fate and no-one is happy. It’s difficult, people kill themselves because it hurts them too much to keep on living, but the irony is that in killing themselves they end up here instead. They are the same person, with the same thoughts, but now they have to watch the lives of those they left behind.

It’s been almost a year now since she died. I still haven't cried since that night. I don’t know why, I just can't bring myself to do it. At the time it was because tears made it real, tears made it so she really wasn't ever coming back, but now, now it’s been too long. I feel that if I cry now I will bring it all back to life, and I think that would be almost worse.

*

Back to that night.

I stand there at the top of the bridge, and a cool breeze hits me.

I stand there, just looking out over our town.

I stand there and I think about what will happen if I stay alive and go to court.

*

A couple walk past me and smile, I smile back. A few days later they do an interview in which the man says he wished he could have saved me, his wife says if only she had stopped and spoken to me, stopped me from doing it, but they didn’t. Just as I failed to stop Cara crossing the road.

*

I look down at the river again, then climb up on the bars and sit on them, my feet dangling over the edge.

I lean my head back and remember the time dad took me, Cara and mum to the Lake District and how he and I sat on the edge of a boat with our feet in the water. He wanted me to go swimming with him but I was terrified of the water, so he told me to close my eyes and just drop myself in. And I did, and it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. I could hear the sound of mum and Cara clapping and I could feel the warm waves on my skin. It was almost the happiest I had ever been.

I smile and close my eyes and edge myself off the railings. When I was watching Cara die, everything slowed down, but now I know how she must have seen things. It is terrifying, and fast; nothing slows down. And then it is over. In just a few seconds it is all over. All the pain and the guilt and heartbreak, it is over. I can only hope that I have not caused as much pain to others as I inflicted on myself.

*

That morning my mum opens the door to the police, she is holding the note I left for her. She screams and falls. The same way she did when she found Cara. Funny, that.

by Nicola Scott