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The Queen's Head #8 2 CONTENTS

EDITORIAL 3 THE ELASTIC WEDDING BAND by Camillus John 4 CAGED by Sarah Walters 9 THE CHAIR by Elliott Simpson 16 EXIT STRATEGIES by James Hodgson 22 BIRDHOUSES & MIDSECTION by Rachel Plummer 27 A LIFE EXAMINED by Elaine Gallagher 29 DELIA SMITH DOES NOT EXIST by Jenny Terpsichore Abeles 38 3 EDITORIAL incarnation of the Fechner. There are darkest darks, such as Sara There exists an optical illusion Walters’ Caged and James Hodgson’s called the Fechner Colour Effect, Exit Strategies, portraits of damaged discovered in the 1800s by a Mr Gustav minds spinning out of control, each by Fechner, an early pioneer in turns illusional and delusional. There experimental psychology and a founder are light-lights too, however: Camillus of psychophysics. Just think, having John’s The Elastic Wedding Band is a that on your business card. Although comedic slice of fatalistic surrealism technically the effect was first and industrial mishap, while Elaine observed by Benedict Prévost, Monk. Gallagher’s queer romance A Life Fancy having that on your business Examined finds renewed joy in lived card as well. Imagine if they were experience. But then, not everything is alternate sides of the same card. You’d as simple as a temporal modulation of be ever so impressive at networking local patterns. Between the black, events. between the white, you’ll find the rest: Anyhow, this effect is an illusion of Rachel Plummer’s poems colour, brought on by the rapid Midsection and Birdhouses which movement of black and white patterns. balance the visceral with grace and The colour isn’t there, but you see it all precision, Elliott Simpson’s New Chair, the same. Different people see a fabulist tale of Ottomannic different colours. Apart from epileptics, metamorphosis, and Jenny Terpsichore who are advised to stay well away from Abele’s encounter with the unverified, anything called a Benham Top, and in Delia Bacon Does Not Exist. All three don’t see anything. We’ve yet to figure blend the truth with the unexplainable out why, exactly, this effect occurs, and to disconcerting effect. for that matter so have scientists, who If, after exposure to all this strobing are much more familiar with the effect strangeness, you start seeing things than your editors, having dedicated that aren’t there – colours, loved ones, their entire lives to the pursuit of the intentions of the multiverse laid knowledge. We like to wait for bare like a Wikihow – well, you can’t knowledge to come to us. There’s such say we didn’t warn you. a thing as overkeen, you know. Still, we like to think of this issue of The Queen’s Head, our 8th, as a literary 4

THE ELASTIC could ever blame us. Our kiss of death will be guilt free. We’ll go down in WEDDING BAND history. Look at our situation for God’s by Camillus John sake. You won’t last a month, and by then we’ll just be fit to flop down When you know at any minute listlessly without the wherewithal to as you’re going to smack yourself up much as moisten our lips before the against your wife at more than one crash together comes, and our brains hundred miles an hour, your life tends are dashed over the four living room to lose a lot of its flavour. To say the walls.” least. And I did know that at any “What do you mean next month, minute I was going to smack myself up Chicken - me?” against my wife at more than one “You’re a woman. How could you hundred miles an hour, because it was physically last longer than me, a man? all authenticated by scientists. Who No matter how many squat-thrusts.” could do nothing to save her. Or me, “You’re a bastard, Chicken. A for that matter. They stated quite bastard. And I promise you now that I’ll emphatically that it just wasn’t out-squat-thrust you any day of the scientifically possible to prevent me week, onward to kingdom come.” from killing her. Like, bloody hell, in the “Well do that so, Honey.” “Don’t worry, Chicken, I will.” postmodern age of the bell-whistling And so it all began. She got Bookie, internet, this was quite distressing. our nice landlord, to put up a net- That’s why I offered her the kiss of curtain halfway across the room so she death right there and then on a plate, wouldn’t have to look at my rubbery instead of delaying the inevitable for a face ever again, and we squat-thrusted few weeks at most, I reckoned, eked ourselves onwards for day after day out with endless squat-thrusts for after day, from opposite ends of the strength (the basic up and down same room. variety, because nothing more was Because the basic up and down possible in our elasticated position). squat-thrust was the only sure-fire way “Let’s fling together, kiss and die we were going to survive, stuck as we gloriously, Honey. Come on. It’s the were, permanently, into our stretched most romantic thing we can ever elastic band. Many top-notch scientists possibly do. The repose of the had said so. Top notch? Okay, I come at happy. Abraham’s bosom. And no one 5 you straight here, no pussy-footing. We woman I wanted to spend the rest of could afford top-notch because both my life with, and now had to spend the our parents are quite well off and they rest of my life with, in permanent could supply us, Honey and I, with tension no less, at the opposite end of enough money for the rest of our lives, stretched elastic. How, indeed? so we didn’t have to worry about Ever since that night of Strip Snap working for a living like everyone else. the scientists asked us, can you Which meant, after said scientists’ maintain the tension between you? Do chin-stroking advice, we had the you want to maintain the tension? means to survive in our stretched Have you got the will-power to position until a solution could be maintain the tension and live? Of developed for our problem in the course we do, we screamed. Of fucking laboratory, because no man or woman course. We were fit people who ran can stand in the gravel-crunching path laps in the Phoenix Park as part of our of the march of technology without working week. Before. For fun. Before being pushed roughly aside. the elastic band. Nearly elite athletes The illustrious scientists employed at national level, both of us were, at by our parents were like professional school and beyond. Before the elastic boxing coaches pacing up to us band. Big and strong, and our parents between rounds, right in our faces, were rich bastards. How could we fail practically spitting. But only to to maintain the tension? How? motivate. So that we could maintain And Honey needed real life tension. the tension. Our wealthy parents got That’s how I interpreted the situation. them to the living room, in which we My comments, I never apologised for. were permanently stuck, many times Not a syllable. She needed to kick over with the power of the pound against my prickist attitudes to keep note. And each and every time it was her squat-thrusting onwards and the same. Keep up the squat-thrusts, upwards. The anger would maintain guys, they said. And we’ll develop a her focus, Grasshopper. I was a prickist. solution. Soon, we promise. Very soon Go for it, Honey. Hate me and live indeed. forever. And vice-versa her. But how could I concentrate when I Thus we watched and despised had to watch my eternal former lover each other through net-curtains eating through a net-curtain in the centre of a up our lives as best we could. Sleeping living room I could never leave? The standing up in our elastic band. One 6 eye open. Squat-thrusting and having you know you’re in the presence of the lovers in and out, over the years. person you’ll spend the rest of your life Always maintaining the tension. with, the person you’ll die beside, then Because we couldn’t get any closer to there’s only one course of action. each other. Which was our lives at ‘Let’s get inside that elastic band, opposite ends of the same room for Honey. It will bring us closer together.’ thirty long years. Together. But apart. It was only, of course, meant to be That’s all I could see. Each lover she a black joke and a laugh, but with beer, took giving my squats extra upward cigarettes and a strong connection, it thrust. Renewable heartbreak. Thirty became so compelling that we just years’ worth. And vice versa her. couldn’t not do it. Bookie worked an elastic band Probably. Since day one in Bookie’s factory for his daily bread and butter at house where we painted a bedroom the time. We should have paid him together. In the beginning. Bookie let us rent a room in his more rent, so he didn’t have to work house in Ballyfermot. We were a young there. Asked our parents for the cash. couple married almost two months at Wise after the event every time. that stage, saving for a deposit. Wink- Because, he checked in to the elastic wink to our rich-bastard parents. His band factory to get a heads-up on the house was a library and he was off out following day’s production schedule that evening to a book festival, while before coming home to his house that Honey and I painted our rented evening – a crucial delay – after the bedroom purple. It had to be purple. book festival had closed up shop. Thoroughly full of ourselves, we We celebrated when we had the job picked up the elastic band and done with a card game called Strip stretched it so that we could get inside. Snap in the living room downstairs, Laughing all the way. Physically got seeing as though Bookie was gone and inside. Standing up. At either end. probably wouldn’t be home until late “You walk towards the kitchen wall, late-late. A divil for the books. Honey, and I’ll walk towards the We drank beer, smoked cigarettes opposite window.” and played Strip Snap until we were It was only four steps or so in either naked. Then we saw one of Bookie’s direction but required a great deal of industrial strength elastic bands, lying effort in our gregarious mood to really on the mantelpiece, in our drunken stretch that elastic. But we got there. exuberance, yodelling out to us. When We were young and drunk, is the whys 7 and the wherefores, and we evening and skipped towards each desperately wanted to have sex other, joyfully looking forward to sex, afterwards. Honey touched Bookie’s and we’d have died beautifully. Guernica print on her wall. I touched Instantly. Happily and romantically. his far window’s cactus plant on mine, Instead of what happened next. which looks out into the back garden. I And after thirty hard squat- stuck my head out. Then we turned to thrusting years of refusal later, my face each other. mouth did something I couldn’t “And now for sex!” control. For the very first time I cried I began to step towards Honey’s out loud in my stand-up sleep: naked breasts when death licked my “I love you, Honey.” face and cupped my testicles. She heard me and cried back: “No, Honey! We can’t.” “And I love you too, Chicken. But “Chicken, I know. We’re stuck. why the fuck didn’t you say that thirty Don’t move. Bookie will be home soon. years ago?” He’ll get us out. He knows everything We no longer felt the need to about elastic bands – and not just from maintain the tension. In the middle of books. From real elastic-band factory the night, at last we were truly awake. life.” “But Honey – I only said that in my If we stepped any closer towards sleep. I was dreaming. You’ve just each other the momentum in the woken me up from a nightmare.” elastic would be unstoppable. Both “You’re joking, Chicken. Tell me sides of the elastic band would flick you’re joking?” “Of course I’m joking, Honey. Of together at such a speed that we’d course. As I said earlier, I love you.” smash each other’s skulls apart when “In that case, Chicken, I want that we met in the dead centre. Game over kiss. After thirty years.” right there and then. “Yes Honey. Yes. At long last.” We’d worked it out, without So we pursed our lips and prepared scientists, on the spot. If only we were to take our first steps towards each born a bit dumber. Or hadn’t been other in a very long time and to finally educated to such a degree by our rich- release all the tension. bastard parents. Then maybe, just “But first Chicken, let’s have a maybe, yes, a pipedream, I know, but minute’s silence for our shared and maybe we wouldn’t have realised unshared thirty-year past.” anything of our own volition, and we’d Thirty years of watching the love of have pursed our lips that effervescent your life living, loving and squat- 8 thrusting without you from across the scraped us off the walls. He room through a net-curtain from refrigerated the entire room so people opposite ends of a stretched elastic can pay in and see us romantically band. mashed together. Still. “It’s now or never. Kiss me to death, Nothing of us on the floor, ceiling or Chicken.” windows though, strangely enough. We stepped forward with pursed The scientists couldn’t explain that lips and the elastic band did as was its either. Just the two of us and the wont. It came together at an enormous elastic band pebble-dashed over lick. Bookie, our nice landlord, filmed Bookie’s four walls in perpetuity. Not our final fling for Facebook, YouTube, the way we wanted it, ideally, but the Twitter, etc. It’s what our fans wanted. way it is. So we gave it to them. We’d built up quite the romantic fan-base in the intervening years. We were actually in * the top ten virtual Dublin tourist attractions for five of those years, Camillus John was bored and braised in although we did drop off the chart Dublin. He has had fiction published eventually. But after our death, who previously in The Stinging Fly, RTÉ Ten and knows? Top three definitely. Headstuff.org. Recently he killed the Prime In the end we tried our best to kiss, Minister of Ireland in fiction in the Welch but it’s really difficult to direct yourself literary magazine, The Lonely Crowd, with a with any degree of accuracy when piece entitled, The Assassination of Enda moving at such a speed. Bookie, Kenny (After Hilary Mantel). however, proved it with slow motion afterwards, frame by frame. Corroborated by scientists. Our lips actually touched full-on for a fraction of a second, 0.245, i.e. a proper kiss, before our skulls collided, exploded, and blew our brains, skin, hair and bone out onto the walls of Bookie’s living room. You can still buy the print. Bookie preserved it all pristinely. He never sold the house to our parents or 9

CAGED the wind. They unloaded onto the front by Sarah Walters lawn and Julia was grinning and naked and they swallowed her whole. They arrived in news vans with satellites growing out of their roofs like Julia met Louise in AA. Louise had angry, stiff erections. Julia was naked veins made of whiskey and tar. Julia except for a thin white muscle tee that had vodka fire in her throat, ignited hung down to her knees, the material sometime in our sophomore year of fluttering over her breasts with each high school. warm push of the damp, Florida breeze “Not like there’s anything to do in through the yard. Her blonde hair, Lake Placid besides get blitzed,” Julia unwashed for days, fell around her face would say from the passenger seat of like a shredded veil. That was how I my mother’s Town n’ Country, cheap found her when I stumbled out of the plastic bottle of vodka between her house: wild. Eyes darting. Fingernails thighs while she rolled a joint on a bit to the quick. All of her raw. All of chemistry textbook. her knotted and strung out. We were 20 when her mother “Julia.” I said her name over and called me. Tearfully begged me to over. Over again. Over again. So many come to an intervention. To write a times it felt like a foreign language. Like letter to Julia telling her how her I was saying it wrong. addiction was negatively affecting my “They’re coming,” she told me, life. I was her best friend, after all— after I had tried to place her nearly surgically attached since third grade, naked body into some kind of reason two heads full of blonde hair and or logic or nonfictional space. “Who’s coming?” crooked baby teeth. “I called them.” I lied my way through it; Julia’s “Called who?” addiction was the best thing about my “They’ll come. They’ll see, then. life. Julia being a trainwreck was my How beautiful she is.” point of comparison. I looked good in And then they came. First just one, any light, standing next to her. Vomit in and then three more all at once, with her hair outside a dive bar full of their satellites and their patent leather middle-aged dads willing to buy her slingbacks and shoulder-padded drinks. Julia being completely fucked blazers and hair that barely moved in 10 made me the perfect, shining example murder-suicides like gripping novels. of Has Her Shit Together. She pinned them on her bedroom walls I went to that first meeting with and swooned over them like they were her. We hot boxed the car in the photos of Hollywood heartthrobs. She parking lot outside of the church. only ever wanted to fall in love with Shoved five bucks each in the people who were absolutely cupholder on bets of how many Jesus irreparable. Only wanted to unbutton Saved Me stories we would hear. her shirt for people who were terminal. Louise was wearing a shiny gold Broken glass people. Backwashed- bikini top under a gauzy black blouse, a whiskey people. I should have microscopic pair of black shorts, and imagined that AA would be like speed scuffed white Keds. She looked like a dating for her. hooker who had mugged a fifth grader Outside after that first meeting, for her shoes. Julia was smitten. Louise was lighting a cigarette with a “I’m Louise, and I’m an alcoholic.” match. Julia glided across the parking “Hi, Louise.” Her voice was thick and throaty, like lot and slithered up to Louise. I waited it had drained through a cigarette filter. by my car and I watched them. She had a beauty mark on her left Watched their lips move—Julia’s cheekbone. Shiny, glossed lips. Nails wound up in anxious grins and bottom- lip-bites, Louise’s twisted around her painted Hellfire red. Louise’s mother was dying of cigarette, leaving a red lipstick stain on cancer. It was stage four and looking the filter. grim, so she figured she should “come Back in my car on the way home, to these meetings for that poor old Julia held a matchbook in her palm like bitch.” a precious jewel. Louise’s phone Julia was practically masturbating number was written on the inside. On beside me while Louise spoke. She sat the outside, the matchbook was an on the edge of her tiny plastic chair. advertisement for The Blue Moon, a Gripped the sides with her bitten local strip club, a naked cartoon pin-up fingers. Pressed her thighs together like laid across the address. she had to pee. I worried she might start to drool. Or have an orgasm. If trainwrecks were works of art, Julia was insatiable for disasters of Julia and Louise were a Van Gogh. A Da all kinds. She read news stories about Vinci. A Degas. Flaming, burned bombings and car accidents and landscapes that Monet must have 11 thrashed and bruised his way through “It doesn’t sing.” Louise pulled hard before finally melting into lillies and on her cigarette, tapping ashes out the still ponds. car window. “It doesn’t sing.” They laid across the backseat while * I drove most nights, their spindly limbs hanging from open car windows, Julia decided on a Tuesday that she cigarettes dangling from between their had to kill Louise. I was with her in her bedroom at ringed fingers. I drove because they couldn’t. her mother’s house, her body all bones Because neither of them had a license and sharp edges laid across the because both of them kept getting unmade bed, the mismatched sheets pulled over after five and six cinnamon and blankets. Her naked breasts rose whiskeys. I drove because I always did, and fell with her breaths, her breathing because before Louise, it had been me almost a quiet lullaby she was singing and Julia, two heads full of blonde hair while she spoke to me. “Can you imagine it?” She asked, and useless ambitions. I drove because like any trainwreck, eyes fixed on the popcorn ceiling, I couldn’t look away. I drove so that I fingers tracing shapes and letters on could watch them unfold around each the bare expanse of her stomach. “Can other, draped over each other’s laps in you see it? Can you see her dead?” She my backseat, rambling in slow, quiet closed her eyes, bottom lip between soliloquies about the ways famous her teeth as if some kind of pleasure people have died, about strains of had just washed over her, her fingers orchids that Julia failed at growing in ghosting the top of her pink cotton her mother’s living room windows, panties. “Wouldn’t she be so about Louise’s ribs and how Julia beautiful?” And we suffered through the rest of thought they looked like a bird cage, the endless summer afternoon, one how her heart must have been the that seemed to last for days, the ceiling bird. “What does it sing?” Julia asked, fan blowing strands of blonde across head lazy in Louise’s lap. I watched our faces, Julia humming along with them through the rearview as the whatever scratchy melody dripped southbound lanes of Highway 27 slid from the quiet radio speaker, and me past outside. thinking of Louise dead, of Julia wearing handcuffs like diamond bracelets, grinning at me. 12

“Do you think she’s happy?” Julia * asked. She sounded hopeful. She We all visited Louise’s dying mother sounded enamored. She stared at the day before. Louise pleadingly. I wanted to pull her I drove. Louise sat up front. Julia back. To shake her and make her stop. laid across the backseat and propped Louise’s shoulders lifted and fell. her heels up on the open window. The thin straps of her tank top Crossed her thin ankles. Cat napped. stretched over the deep valleys of her Louise’s mother’s nurse was the collarbones, taut on her shoulders. She only one there. She sat beside the wasn’t wearing make-up. She looked hospital bed reading a trash magazine. pale and young and empty. She looked The bed looked out of place in the like a girl watching her mother die in middle of the living room, all the other front of her. furniture shoved aside to make room Outside on the porch as we were for it, like her dying was a spectacle, leaving, Julia told Louise she loved her something better to watch than the TV, for the first time. She wound Louise up which was turned and facing the wall. in her arms and kissed her and held her All of the windows were closed. face. Louise stood and let her. Florida’s aching summer was pressing at their glass panes while the air conditioner hummed in time with the When we were in high school, Julia beeping of heart monitors. fell in love with a boy named Luke. We three stood like wilted orchids Luke was on the lacrosse team and had at the foot of the bed. Louise’s mother dirty blonde hair that fell into his eyes. was barely conscious, and she He had a girlfriend named Natalie. He muttered and limply pointed at had no idea who Julia was, much less different things in the room. The nurse that she was in love with him, much turned the pages of her magazine. less that it was the kind of love that Chewed gum with her mouth closed. consumed her, that swallowed her up “She looks like she’s already dead,” and made her take sharp swigs from Louise said, her voice curious rather water bottles filled with vodka. than sad. The room smelled of Julia wrote Luke a thousand letters. unwashed skin. I stared at the bag She kept them in a shoebox in her collecting urine hanging from the side bedroom. Once, she showed them to of the bed. me. 13

“See, I just. I can’t give them to there in the room with me while she him.” She tried to explain. She bit her spoke through the receiver. cuticles. I looked at the papers. Instead “She looks so beautiful. You have to of words, there were just scribbles. come see.” Abstract scratches of ink and pencil I drove to Louise’s place in a that formed no coherent thoughts or dreamy stupor, seeing things on my ideas. way—ghosts of dead presidents and Julia broke into Luke’s house one mangled road kill peeling up from the night while everyone was asleep. She asphalt. stood over him while he slept. Sat on Louise shared a shitty his bedroom floor listening to him manufactured home with a girl she breathe. She left the letters on his tended bar with. Their driveway, just a night table and a week later, when he long stretch of dirt and grass, was hadn’t acknowledged her or the empty when I pulled up. The clock on unidentifiable mess of scribbles she my dash wore a sickly green 3:04AM. The front door was wide open. I had professed to him on paper, she found Julia inside in the kitchen. Her convinced herself his girlfriend Natalie flimsy white sundress was caked in a was the reason. After Julia attacked her in the thick layer of black-red. As I came school parking lot, Natalie had to get inside, she wiped sweat from her stitches across her cheek. forehead with the back of one hand, “She’s not pretty anymore,” Julia leaving a smudge of red behind. swore to me as I drove to the “What’s going on?” I demanded, mandatory community service the voice stuck in the sleep still heavy in judge sentenced her to. my throat. Julia just grinned. Tom Waits’ voice was crooning from the turntable in the I got the call the night after we living room—she thought she had the visited Louise’s mother. moon in her pocket… “I did it.” Julia’s voice was wild and My eyes, up until that moment, breathy on the other end of the phone. had refused to see it. The smears of “Did what?” Sleep was still red along the kitchen countertops. blanketed over me. I tried to shake it Dripped onto the floor. from my senses, half convinced I was Over the edge of the kitchen sink, still dreaming. I could almost see Julia the soft lines of a woman’s profile rose up like a landscape on a horizon line. 14

The round end of a nose. The two, bristled brush while Julia stood at the careful hilltops of closed lips. sink, dragging her fingers through the “She’s so beautiful,” Julia thickened, dried blood in Louise’s hair? whispered, barely audible under the A reporter in a pastel yellow pencil music. Under the thick, throaty voice skirt and blouse stepped over an lifting weightlessly from the turntable. empty whiskey bottle on the lawn and Under the palpable darkness approached Julia, cautious—a tiger emanating from Julia’s every cell. handler stepping into the cage of a “Everyone should see how beautiful hungry cat. she is.” Julia sang out, a giggle “Did you call it in? Where are the punctuating her words. police? This wasn’t on the scanner. Where did you find it?” She asked in quick succession, wary and impatient. The reporters emptied out onto “She had a bird inside of her chest,” Louise’s front lawn from inside their Julia answered, as if that was exactly vans and trucks, satellites pulsing, high what the reporter had asked of her. heels sinking into the damp morning She nodded and went on. “She had a grass. bird inside her and now, now she’s the “Julia,” I begged, but she just bird.” She looked up to the too-bright laughed and pulled madly at her hair— morning sky, turning her face to the still stained red in spots from the night sun, Florida layering itself over her. before, no matter how long I had spent The reporter looked to me, and trying to clean her up, how I had when my blank expression offered her shoved her white sundress into the nothing, she backed away, signaling to metal trash bin outside, tossed a match the men at her truck, back towards the in after it. sharp shove of satellites. “I called them,” she shrieked, eerily Julia collapsed into laughter. A gleeful. “I called them and told them to laughter that was full and came from come and see Louise. See how somewhere deeper than her lungs. It beautiful she is.” erupted from her in waves, tumbled I tried to think of when I’d lost track from her grinning mouth and fell into of her. How she had slipped out from the air around her so warmly that I under my watch and made the phone could almost see it, glittering around call. Had I fallen asleep, exhausted her shoulders. from hours of breathing in bleach, from Inside the house, Louise had her scrubbing the kitchen with a sharp- eyes closed in the kitchen sink, while 15 the rest of her slept silently on the bedroom floor in a wide, beautiful circle of red—a halo of her pulse, quiet and still, as distant sirens swept onto the front lawn, taking step with the dancing light of Julia’s laughter.

*

Sara Walters is currently finishing an MFA at the University of South Florida, teaching creative writing, and drinking a lot of expensive coffee. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Bridge Eight, So to Speak, Barely South Review, Lunch Ticket, and Sugared Water, among others. 16

THE CHAIR ‘Alice. Alice. Alice?’ by Elliott Simpson I try to call for her, but the words Oh God. reverberate in my head. The clock I am a chair. informs me that it’s eight o’clock, Somehow I have turned into a chair. meaning that she should’ve been up I can’t move. My legs, all four of half an hour ago. I hear stomping them, feel like they’ve been encased in sounds from above me, and then clay, and my arms are stuck out as if footsteps descending down the stairs. reaching for a hug. I can only look ‘Alice, please. It’s Jen.’ straight ahead, towards the door that I listen to the slap of her feet as she leads from the kitchen to the hallway. passes through the hallway and into My eyes – do chairs have eyes? – are the living room. She’s saying just about able to skim over the something, chanting in a low hum, but gingham tablecloth laid out in front of I can’t quite make it out. Still, I listen. me. I can feel the sunlight from the Cushions fly off the sofa, only to be window warming my back, which returned moments later. Drawers are means it's morning… and that I’ve been opened, riffled through, and then down here all night. slammed shut. I know what she’s I can smell wine. Red? Red. That’s saying: ‘Keys, keys, keys…’ what I was drinking last night, sat in Once the living room is dismantled here. Thinking about yesterday feels and put back together, she comes into like picking up a half-read book after a the kitchen. As I see her, a heat flickers week without contact. I was drinking inside of me. Alice stares at me for a alone in the kitchen, on my third glass few seconds, perhaps curious where of wine, maybe fourth. Alice… Alice the new chair came from. The moment had gone to bed early – yes. She said quickly passes as she begins to search she was starting early the next day, and the kitchen. A few minutes later I hear that I should still celebrate by myself: a jangling sound and she rushes out of celebrate her saying, ‘Yes, Jen, let’s get the room. The front door slams shut. married.’ Then this. Then I somehow turned My phone is on the floor next to my into a chair. feet. I must’ve dropped it sometime * last night. It buzzes throughout the day, 17 sending unwanted vibrations up my gimmicky quiz shows that we usually legs. I say legs, but that isn’t what they sit through together. The kitchen door really are – legs let you walk, run, is left open, so I listen and play along. I jump, kick… My body feels like one imagine Alice shaking her head at my single unit: no limbs, just a large, guesses and correcting me like she intricately-shaped torso. usually does. Right now I would give I can’t read my phone’s screen, but anything in the world for one of her I already know what the messages say. head-shakes. It’s Alice asking me if I can pick up At half-past seven, she starts to some things on the way home. It’s cook dinner without me. We had Mum wondering if I’m still okay for planned to make a curry together, but Sunday. It’s James asking why I’m not she goes for oven chips and a chicken at work today. It’s Karen telling me that steak. She sits by me as she waits for I better have a good excuse. her food to cook, playing with the ring I have a good excuse. on her finger. We continue to sit together as she eats her beige dinner. In between chips As the front door opens, I call to and forkfuls of chicken, she makes Alice despite knowing how pointless it phone calls: ‘Hello, I was wondering if is. At first my efforts for attention are Jen was in today?’ ‘Have you heard crude: I swear, I insult her, I say things from Jen at all? ‘Hi Shirley, I was just that would make her disown me, just ringing to ask about Jennifer…’ Her to get a reaction. Then I simply tell her final call, to my mother, proves to be a that I love her. Nothing. ‘Jen,’ Alice says, ‘did you pick up mistake and it takes Alice a good ten some milk?’ After receiving no minutes to calm her down. After response, she comes into the kitchen slotting the last of her chips into her to check for herself. ‘For God’s sake.’ mouth, she disappears back into the She pulls out her phone and calls living room. For the rest of the night someone; the vibrations in my legs tell I’m alone again. me who. It doesn’t take her long to discover my phone. I see little of Alice in the morning. She makes herself a bowl of cereal, but

Alice spends most of the evening in tips it into the bin after the first the living room. She watches the awful, spoonful. I wish I could say something to her. I wish I could hold her. 18

* unwilling spectator, hoping that one of them will eventually call the police. ‘I need to call the police,’ says Alice. Alice does. After having a few gin and ‘I mean, it’s been long enough, hasn’t tonics, Julia begins to stare at me, eyes it? How long are you supposed to hazy with alcohol. She asks Alice if wait?’ she’s always had five chairs. Alice sips ‘She’s been gone for two days, hon. her drink and glances at me. I can call them if you don’t think you’re ‘I don’t bloody know.’ up to it.’ Julia is with Alice this afternoon – they went to school together. I was never very fond of her, My mother is here this morning. and now no longer have the ability to Hello Mum. I thought she might sit on walk out of the room when she enters. me out of some maternal instinct, but Alice sits down at the table while Julia no, she stays standing. The meal we fills the kettle. were supposed to have on Sunday has ‘I can do it, I just… Should I consult left a void in her schedule, so she’s with Jen’s parents first? I mean, Jesus, come over here. I think Dad is playing she’s just bloody gone.’ golf. ‘There’s never a right answer to this ‘You must have some idea where sort of situation,’ says Julia. ‘You’ve just she is.’ got to trust your gut instinct, and do ‘I really don’t,’ says Alice. ‘I wish I what you think is best. You’ve got to did, but… I’m as distraught over this as take control.’ She sounds like she’s you.’ recounting lines from some self-help She is. I heard her crying in the article. That’s all Julia is, a collage of living room yesterday when the police opinions found in waiting-room came over. They came to collect some magazines. photos of me, as well as get a Alice winces as her friend places a description of my character. Alice was mug of tea in front of her. ‘No thanks. mostly flattering. Just… There’s a bottle of gin in the ‘When did you last see her?’ says cupboard – that one over there, yes. Mum. ‘The last moment? When?’ ‘I don’t know, Shirley. I really don’t.’ Should be some tonic water as well.’ A Alice begins to cry, but my mother gin and tonic appears in front of her. shows no sympathy. She just stands ‘Thank you, that’s perfect.’ Julia takes her tea over to the table there and waits for her to stop, ready and sits down. I watch them chat as an 19 to ask another question. I can only read, what music I listened to, and watch and listen. what TV shows I watched. When Alice mentions names over the phone, I don’t know who half of the people are Three weeks. The first few days anymore. I can’t remember what were easy to keep track of, but now colour our sofa is. I’m not sure what everything is beginning to mush our garden looks like. I don’t together. My memories of the past remember any of the in-jokes we had week are just a collection of scenes: at work. It’s been so long since I’ve Alice’s parents coming over to cook her seen anything beyond these four walls, dinner, the police searching through anything beyond this kitchen. What lies the house, the evening Alice spent in front of me is everything now. working her way through several And Alice. I also have Alice. bottles of wine. Though I don’t remember what order these things occurred in. A new person. I hear her talking to Alice and Julia as the front door opens. Alice says her name: Sophie. Sophie, Alice is on the phone. ‘Yes, yes, I’m Sophie, Sophie… Julia calls her Soph fine, I just… Yeah, it was good. I’ve only instead, like she’s trying to make it a been back for a couple of days, but I thing. Sophie – I’ve heard Alice say that think the routine is good for me. name on the phone before, and I’ve Everyone at the office treated me like heard it thrown around this kitchen normal. I’m going out with the girls on late at night while she and her friends Friday as well, after much persuading… empty a bottle of gin. Yeah, first time in a while. I don’t think ‘Pretty nice place,’ says Sophie. I could stand being stuck in here all day ‘It’s all right,’ says Alice. ‘Got all the anymore, I’d just… God, I couldn’t essentials, I suppose. Living room, handle it. Claustrophobic. So how’s kitchen, bathroom, soundproof Mum? …Yeah, really? That’s great. dungeon…’ You’ll have to tell me all about it on ‘Funny.’ Saturday…’ ‘It’s also got a bedroom, hasn’t it Alice?’ ‘Julia.’ Everything fades eventually. I can ‘Oh, I’m just winding you up. It’s hardly remember what books I used to only a joke.’ 20

They stand in the hallway for a bit, wants to take her out to dinner. For chatting about odd things. now they just sit at the table and drink. Julia clicks her tongue. ‘Well, I ‘You know,’ says Sophie, ‘I’ve been suppose I better be getting on. Andrew looking at some houses recently. There said he was going to take me out are some really nice ones just outside somewhere fancy tonight. Alice, text of town that I think you’d like. This later?’ morning I was looking at this gorgeous ‘Sure.’ place with an en suite bathroom, and ‘And I guess I’ll see you some other the rent…’ time, Soph.’ ‘Sophie,’ says Alice, ‘are you asking ‘Bye, Julia.’ me to move in with you?’ The front door slams. After a few The question is answered with a seconds, Alice says, ‘I’m sorry about blush. ‘I think it’s time, don’t you? her. She’s just a bit, well… She’s always These past six months with you… I’ve been like that.’ loved every second of it. And if we’re ‘It’s fine, really. Don’t worry about going to move in together, I want to do it.’ I wait patiently for the two of them it right, you know? My place is too to come into the kitchen, but they do small – half of it is taken up by my bed not. Instead they go to our bedroom. – and yours, well…’ She sips her drink. ‘I just don’t think it would be right for us to live here together.’ Alice and Sophie are sat in the ‘What do you mean?’ kitchen with me, eating fish and chips. ‘You know, your ex.’ Sophie is here most days now. They ‘Jennifer.’ ‘Jennifer, sorry. I just think that you talk about movies a lot, it seems to be need to get away from this place, and a common interest. Alice says that her all this stuff. Too much history. Alice, I dad used to work as a projectionist, love you, and I think if we live here and that he was able to get her in to we’re just going to get caught under any film she wanted to see for free. the shadow of what happened. And I She never told me that. I thought I don’t want that, because I think we’re knew her, but she never told me that. pretty great together.’ Alice nods a couple of times, but Sophie has surprised Alice with a says nothing. I half-expect her to play bottle of wine. She wasn’t supposed to with the ring on her finger, but be coming over tonight, but now she remember that it’s not there anymore. 21

Instead, she stretches her hand across front of the window, allowing me to the table to Sophie, and they knit their see out onto the street. Some people fingers together. They smile at each look at me. other. I do not smile. I do not frown, or I think about Alice sometimes, her cry, or swear, or shout. All I do is and Sophie. I wonder what their house watch-watch-watch and listen-listen- looks like, and whether they got an en listen. suite in the end. I wonder if they watch quiz shows together, and if they make up some of their dinners as they go ‘God, I didn’t realise you had so along. I wonder if Alice ever thinks much stuff.’ Sophie leans on the table about me at all, and if she still has the while she looks around the kitchen. ring I gave her… Almost everything that isn’t food has But that’s only sometimes. Most of been thrown away. The kettle is gone, the time I just watch and listen. the bread bin is gone, the gingham tablecloth is gone… My world has slowly been deconstructed into * nothing. ‘It’s not that much,’ says Alice, Elliott Simpson is a writer based in Plymouth, coming into the room. Devon. He particularly enjoys writing about the ‘Darling, it is.’ She clicks her tongue strange and unnerving. and glances over the remaining items www.ellsimp.wordpress.com in the room. Her eyes stop on me. ‘What do you want to do with the chairs then?’ ‘The chairs? I don’t know… To be honest, they are looking at bit old and worn out. Do you think a charity shop would take them?’

I’m surrounded by furniture: tables, sofas, bed-frames, desks, stools, cupboards, and even a few other chairs. I’m lucky that the man who owns this place chose to position me in 22

EXIT STRATEGIES far from earth, far across known space: by James Hodgson travelling without moving. Given the relativity of time it is With amyl tucked under one nostril, impossible to say for how long he a finger pinching the other, John takes departs (those of us trapped unluckily a deep hit before he passes the bottle on earth would suggest around ten forward to the guy in front. The minutes). His first thoughts post-amyl poppers are an activator. Already in his high are of his wife, Tanya. A vague blood is about a quarter gram of PCP, headache. A finger of the nitrite’s or phencyclidine, which is a bitter residual smell draws him on to others; white powder likewise administered the odour of cleaning products, gym via the nose. The combination of PCP mats, and bodily fluids lingering and poppers will briefly permit John to everywhere like background radiation. fold space, to travel without moving: How Tanya would shriek. ‘The germs, the amyl tunes out everything save a the germs…’ she would say, white single object and the PCP is a powerful pack-ice knuckles topping fistfuls of hallucinogen, and John is able to derive blouse. John looks at the anus in front a sublime unparalleled sexual high of him. How long is his companion from the alignment of these two things going to be? Some people find it hard with a third thing, the aforementioned to come on PCP, particularly those on single object, that is here the male their first trip. He can empathize. But body’s unglamorous exit. Gross, huh. when John shared a line with this The spice extends life. But so too does anonymous man, this man whose arse it expand consciousness, which for he’s just, well, eaten, the guy said he’d John means an unfolding of the screwed on it before. With large universal human membrane – purple- muscular buttocks pushed right up red, pale-horse beige – twinned with against his face he cannot guess the collapse of his mind towards it, a whether he’s even enjoying himself – tin can that has crossed, deep in the in fact he just has to lie in the afterglow ocean, from one threshold of pressure and wait. I wonder, thinks John, what to another. Drugged thusly, John – no- he does for a living. The man is longer-John, not-even-anything – motionless. Eventually, John wriggles journeys along corridors of mutable out from underneath. No response to shape and fluorescent colour, travelling this. It takes another minute, and the 23 arrival of a cold sweat, for him to As he approaches the Exit (an understand the man is dead. Dead, oblong of golden-orange light) he hears somehow, possibly off the PCP, during a scream, sharp and effeminate, and the period of time in which John likely therefor to be the muscle twink. passed through the star-gate of his Now John knows his timer has begun rectum, that is, the dead man’s, to for real. He’s certain the muscle twink travel the universe. He presses a hand saw him leave the cubicle containing over his mouth, swears into it very the dead man, which, based on his quietly, and backs against the cubicle experience with cruising, should mean door. Someone tries to enter. He holds he, the muscle twink, will absolutely the door closed. recognise him, John, on sight and if not First come practical considerations. recognise his face then certainly his He checks the dead man’s pulse, to be body-type, and his cock, too, and sure. Yes, dead. He scrapes up what he possibly recollect that he has a small can find of his own semen, cooling, and tattoo of an animal paw on his pec wipes it on his towel. Alongside his which he sold to Tanya as symbolic of poppers, he pinches the PCP beneath his inclinations toward naturalism the towel the same way he imagines (honey, I just love bears!) but in fact you’d hide a loaded gun, then re-enters signals a taste for unsavoury things the sauna’s labyrinth. done to gentlemen covered in hair – Almost immediately after leaving He walks towards the tangerine the cubicle, a muscular twink cruises Exit, then stops. He must leave, now. him. He does not take the proposition He should leave, shouldn’t he? He up. He walks into the dry-ice, hoping it should open his locker and clothe will obscure his face, and at the end of himself and pick a breath-mint from the corridor turns left. Through the the bowl and walk out into the evening ears: faint house music. Through the light. So why does he waver, a corridor nose: the fumes of lavender-scented away from escape? In Frank Herbert’s cleaning products, liberally applied. Dune, star-ship navigators are gifted There is but one way in to the sauna, with marvellous drug-enhanced and one way out—the locker room. cognitive abilities which they use to Another man, this time thick-set, cross interstellar space (John’s only checks him out. Would he be tempted seen the David Lynch film: after a in any other situation? Jesus, John, he charged evening watching Feyd tells himself. A man is dead. Rautha’s half-naked frame emerge 24 from the smoke on Geidi Prime he They can’t know. How do they know? asked Tanya for her hand in marriage, Impossible. He opens a cubicle. A bear- moving neatly, even seamlessly, from ish man is getting screwed by two men, one form of speculative escapism to one skinny, the other old. They take it another). Likewise, as John’s preferred in turns. John, feigning interest, listens brand of cognitive enhancers dance to the corridor. Amidst the footfall of down his neural pathways he thinks: if I slow amorous travellers he can make am seen leaving now my face will be out other sounds: harsh voices, shoes captured on the closed-circuit cameras clunking up and down. Frantic immediately after the time of death movement. When the skinny man pulls which will be taken as a smoking gun. I away, cock shining like a bullet, he should wait it out. Maybe even find holds the bear’s legs towards John. someone to say, ‘him? This John- ‘You want a go?’ he says. John shakes fellow? Well, I was with him around his head. With eyes closed, the bear is the time you’re talking about. We were oblivious or indifferent. Dead. Could engaged in private business.’ be. John pads away from the locker- He sits within the darkness of a room. A man, betowelled, slaps up the small porn-theatre, camouflage netting corridor ahead. It is the muscle-twink. for a door, and tries to puzzle out the He can hear him shout at reception. ‘A optimum way forward. “John,” says a body, a body!’ voice. “Is that you?” John takes a right and heads into It is a man from work. Alan the maze. Soon after, two attendants Edgware, manager of Accounts bolt past him, the second knocking into Payable. His body (slouched pendulous John without a word. The PCP skitters flesh hanging from a slack frame) is across the floor. Do either of them what shocks Michael first. In the real notice? No. John could leave it alone. world this man raises purchase orders. But the finger-prints, he thinks, are “John,” says Alan, whispering. “It’s me, surely an incriminating clue. He collects Alan.” the drugs, holds them tight beneath his John keeps focussed on the screen. towel. Alan holds up his ringless wedding Some elements of the chemical finger. Brothers together: the secret persist in his psyche. For example, he sign. reads into the faces of the men he “Does Sally know you’re here?” passes both desire and judgement. says John. It’s about the only thing he 25 can think to say that’s not related to test of fear. He’s waited long enough. If the office, but he regrets it he leaves too late, Tanya will worry. He immediately because Alan scowls. needs to make his exit. To return to “Tanya thinks I’m working late,” says Tanya. He must not fear. He will walk to John, by way of explanation. his locker and clothe himself and pick a Alan gets up and leaves. John, breath-mint from the bowl and stride anxious for a moment about this, keen out into the evening light; men will to apologise and return to the warm have come and gone and he will slip complicity between brothers, tries to out like his peers and return to real life follow him through the maze, but in and enjoy Dim-Sum and take Tanya on vain: Alan has rushed off into the a long weekend, perhaps – smoke. He walks back to the Exit. Around it John approaches the swimming now he finds four men with torsos pool. It is empty and still, the pool, but wrapped in towels standing alongside above the turquoise waters (actually in an attendant. The attendant is asking the place of a mermaid chandelier everyone to wait – there’s been an intended by the management as a accident. Up goes a groan. An touch of camp) floats a hallucinated ambulance is on its way. Although the Tanya. attendant isn’t certain he believes the ‘You said you’d take me on a long police will need to take statements weekend, John,” she says. Is her head from witnesses. They ask the attendant shaved, a la the Bene Gesserit questions, such as ‘what happened?’ sisterhood? He looks away. ‘Tonight, and ‘will you want our names?’ John John, I’m making Dim-Sum.’ walks the other way, as fast as he can. That’s right. Chinese night. Tanya An alibi. That’s the next best thing. makes very good Dim-Sum: pliable, Someone to say, ‘him? This John- feather-light dough packed with fellow? At that time, the time of the porkmeat, spiced, that spills immorally murder, we were engaged in private over each finger upon the bun’s business.’ A handsome Italian stares at opening. Will he ever see Tanya again? him. Yes, he’ll do. Just before he ducks ‘Fear,’ says the version crowning the into a cubical, two attendants pool, ‘is the mind killer. You must not approach. Actually, he realises, they fear.’ He must not fear. are working their way down the There is only one way out. John corridor, knocking on every door. knowns what he has to do: pass the Asking questions. Inside, the Italian 26 starts to suck him off. Given John’s from the bar. What a gentleman, she proclivities this can only leave his dick says. This is who I am, Tanya. She looking like a sock caught in the rain. laughs at a crab doing something The Italian flicks his eyes up to him, stupid. They drink piña coladas and puzzled, even pleading. John whispers laugh together at the stupid crab. This in his ear. The Italian nods, gets on his is who I am. knees and faces the door; John kneels Of course it’s just a trace-effect, the behind him. ‘What’s that?’ says the spice’s pale echo magnified through Italian. The packet of drugs has slipped the lens of the amyl like the last from the towel once more. ‘PCP’, he crumbs of gold brought to light by a replies. The Italian scoops out a bump. panning dish. But what’s funny is that ‘Any good?’ He doesn’t respond. It’s for a moment (before the attendants too late to snatch the evidence back knock on the door) he believes in the (although he is possessed by a brief vision sincerely – as if it were real, as if fantasy in which he does just so, then it were something as innocent as a one in which he reports to the police destiny, or a possible destiny. that it’s not his PCP at all, oh no, actually the Italian supplied it—it’s all his fault, you see, and not the other * way around…). He reaches for his poppers. James Hodgson has fiction published in The A deep hit. Like acid, almost, along Cro Magnon, JJ Outré Review, Typehouse the innards of his nostril. He can Literary Magazine, with Queen Mob’s likewise hear the Italian snort the Teahouse and in Spoke, an anthology of New powder. In the unguent darkness – the Queer Voices. He has poetry published smells of which fold and unfold – John in Kaffeeklatsch Magazine, NSW Magazine, can see a tiny image of his wife. A final Chelsea Station Press and the Between hallucination, activated by the Anthology (CS Press, 2014). His website poppers. Tanya is cooking dim-sum. is hodgsonson.wordpress.com She welcomes him home. He tells her about his day. She has had a good day. She has done many positive things in the world. They book flights for Cyprus. He lies her down on a beach, fetches her a magazine, and orders cocktails 27

birdhouses by Rachel Plummer

Once our house was loud with birdwings. House martin, coal tit. Feathers beating the close wooden walls.

Later our house was an abandoned nest box incubating egg shells, dead leaves, three naked helpless

nuthatch chicks rooting for beech mast, maggots in the nest bed. The birdhouse stank of wood rot and rotting bird bones, sternum and scapula. We stripped them, starving for the leather-scrapes of tendon that still clung in strings.

Empty. Stomachs clenched tight as fists. And we were birds, air-light and perching, finally hollow

enough to dart from the door's black eye to the white eye of the sun, blinding and new over the garden.

midsection by Rachel Plummer

Belly wilted. Clitoris framed in folded flesh like old linen that you've given up on ironing, and all of that mossy, hanging labial satin.

Moth bitten, one scar on her abdomen that opens like a mouth, and another – there, it bleeds silver capillaries upwards, outwards over her pelvis.

Here. Her vulva, vulnerable underside; its 28

soft topography on your fingertips like nothing ever sculpted or set in marble, wrinkled and golden.

Ebb. And ebb. See how she is curved underneath, moon-round, marred. You're cored like an apple, hollow, flowing out and in on the tides of her skin. She bares you like teeth.

Plush as fruit exposed to the wasps and rotten at its centre, she lets the edges give and sag and swell beneath all that lush and hairy flinching, sleeping

skin. So pale, and normally unexposed; her damaged stomach, ribs, and the softness below them smudged as if by fingers. Not flower-like, not bud and not petal,

even when she spreads out the limp majora. See, they sigh like something unused to being seen. Steady. She's shy as a green cocoon too soon picked apart. She

wears herself like another woman's dress. Who is the girl so lost at the edges? You can see her small, dull eyes in the mirror, watching. No recognition. *

Rachel Plummer was born in London but has spent most of her adult life in Edinburgh, where she lives with her husband and two young children. She has had poems published in magazines including Mslexia and Agenda, is a Troubadour prizewinner and a recipient of the Scottish Book Trust's New Writers Award. 29

Sara rewinds and plays the film yet A LIFE again. 'You could, you know, remember it. EXAMINED In your brain?' Rafe taps Sara on the by Elaine Gallagher temple and she pouts. Gorgeous, tall, with fair curly hair, greatcoat and suit The singer has launched herself into hiding a slim figure, Rafe insists on the crowd, trusting the raised hands to being referred to as neuter: they, them. support her and pass her along, Sara can never tell whether they are directing herself by leaning in one male or female, both or neither and direction or the other as she trails a doesn't care. She can't draw her eyes forty-foot train behind her. She comes away from their beautiful cheekbones straight for Sara, grinning wickedly, and wide dark eyes. She desperately waves as she passes and travels on. wants to impress them. Behind her on the stage the band keep Rafe smiles their amazing smile and up the song's chorus, improvising riffs Sara forgets her pique. They know the around the melody and keeping the effect they have on her, but for some atmosphere high as the crowd cheers reason they have held back, seeming her on. content to stay just friends. Sara sighs 'Isn't that amazing? Look at it and smiles back. They sit for a again!' Sara thumbs her phone to moment, saying nothing but nodding rewind the video and the singer to the server as she brings their coffee. approaches the screen again, grinning The shoppers pass by outside the again as she crowdsurfs past, the music window, busy in their own worlds. tinny through the speakers, sounding 'Did you enjoy the gig?' flat against the background music of 'Yes! it was brilliant ...' Sara starts the cafe. thumbing through icons to play other 'Marvellous. Did you actually watch clips but Rafe puts their hand over hers the gig?' Rafe looks curiously at the to stop her. phone and then at Sara. 'Describe it to me. Make me be 'Of course I did. I was there, wasn't there.' I?' Sara opens her mouth, pauses, 'Filming it.' closes it. She glares at Rafe, 'That's why 'Well, yes, how else am I going to I took the videos, to show you. To keep remember something like that, look!' and to see it again whenever I like.' 30

'But I'm not there, all I see is a little Sara is walking through Kelvingrove picture. Can't you make me feel as if I park, on her way from her flat in the were there?' West End to the city centre. It is a walk 'How can I do that?' that she loves in any season; right now 'If you were really, truly there, the early November drifts of leaves are watching, feeling, listening, part of the golden at the sides of the path and the crowd rather than a bystander air is crisp without being biting cold. As recording it, you would be able to she walks she drinks in the colours; make me feel it too. I'd hear it in the greens pale to conifer dark, muted by thrill of your voice as you tell me how it the overcast, the lighter trees showing was and what you saw. What you felt.' patches of rust as their leaves turn to 'But I was there! Now you're taking fall and join the drifts on the path. the piss.' Sara feels as if she's about to Beside the duck pond there is a tree, a cry, disappointment welling up in her flowering cherry that she has throat, behind her eyes. Rafe holds up a hand to her face, photographed many times in its tilting their head and smiling a seasons, still keeping its leaves but now wordless request for permission before gorgeous in many shades of red and they gently stroke her cheek and wipe orange. She stops, enchanted, and away a beginning tear. reaches for her phone to take a 'Can I make a bet with you? How picture. about you put that thing away for a Her phone is up at her face and she couple of months and actually look at is setting up the shot when she the world? Then I'll ask you again and remembers her deal with Rafe. She we'll see how you do.' grimaces, thinks about taking the 'What do I win?' picture anyway. Who would know? It's 'I think you'll find that you win a not as if she shows them every picture wealth of experience, but you want that she takes. Just the really good something more?' ones. And this would be a really good 'I'll feel like I've been hobbled, I one; the colours of the tree are think I deserve something more.' beautiful, a flame in the dourness of 'All right then,' Rafe smiles a the Scottish autumn. She puts her promise that makes Sara's breath catch phone away; maybe she'll learn to in her chest. 'A kiss.' paint. 'Done!' Further along the path there is a

group of childminders with half a * 31 dozen toddlers, the children free of A boy in a track suit and hoodie has their prams to run on the grass. A his hand wrapped in the strap of couple are running round a tree. Cathy's bag and is dragging it away. Another joins them, chortling, then Cathy has the bag in both hands and is another and soon all the children are struggling to keep hold of it, her efforts circling the tree, no purpose or game pulling him around to face them. but laughter and running. Sara smiles Suddenly the buckle snaps and the at the scene and walks on. strap gives way. The bag's contents go Sara catches up with Cathy at the flying, and the boy lets go the strap bookshop on Argyll Street and soon and runs for it. He is around a corner they are negotiating the Saturday before Cathy or Sara can get a phone afternoon bustle on their way to Mono out and take a snap. for lunch and an afternoon's gossip. 'Bastard!' Cathy hasn't had time to Friends since they met in a first-year be shocked but tears are starting as she History tutorial, they have shared puts together the wreckage of her bag. books and bands and advice on Sara puts her arm around Cathy's boyfriends or girlfriends. shoulder and waves for the attention 'What, not at all?' Cathy asks. of a nearby police officer, who has just 'I can use it as a phone of course, noticed the fuss and is running towards but I'm meant to pay attention and them. remember things. It's murder.' Sara looks at the corner where the 'That's a bit extreme.' boy has disappeared, picturing the 'I know! They keep doing this Jedi pinched face that had been beneath Master shit, I don't know why.' 'Why do you let them away with it?' the hoodie, and vows to herself, Phone 'Well, there's a kiss in it for me...' or not, I'll remember you. Sara falters, suddenly uncomfortable; something feels off. She shakes her Sara weaves through the gig crowd head and turns back to Cathy, whose at the Academy, spilling slightly the attention is distracted by a woman drinks in her hand, shouting 'excuse trying to push a buggy at the same me' in the ears of guys standing in her time as she is keeping a fractious four- way so that she can be heard over he year-old from running away. chatter of the crowd. Eventually she 'Each to their own, I suppose... makes her way to where Cathy is Hey!' standing, holding down places near the 32 centre front of the venue, perfect place the photo opportunities she had to see the stage. missed, the tweets that she hadn't She hands Cathy her drink and been able to make, squeeing about turns to see what is happening. They songs as they were being played so had made their way to the spot while that everyone would know what a the support act were on and the crowd good time she was having. She puts her had been thin knots of people hand in her pocket, closes it around standing, drinking, chatting, completely her phone, thinks of her deal with Rafe ignoring the singer and guitarist on the and pushes the phone back down stage. Cathy had wanted to do the safely. same, but Sara had found herself The band slows down slightly, caught up in the voice of the girl playing a number from the new album, singing, and while she hadn't shushed then another one that is complicated her, had not paid attention and Cathy and baroque with varying dynamics had got the message. and difficult lyrics. Sara is fascinated, To cheers and shouts, the PA marvelling at the tightness of the announces the main act and they come players as they hand melody from one bouncing on stage; a singer/pianist, to the other and play spectacular solos. guitarist and drummer who are on Cathy nudges Sara; 'What's this their reunion tour after about fifteen one? I don't know it,' she shouts. years. The gig starts, the lead launching 'I don't know it either, must be straight into a high-energy rock new,' Sara shouts back. number and Sara and Cathy are 'It's a bit weird!' 'I'm liking it!' dancing and cheering with the rest of Cathy makes as if she's going to the audience. shout something else but Sara misses it Out of the corner of her eye, Sara as she turns back to face the stage. sees Cathy lifting her arms up, trying to Song follows song, numbers from get a snapshot of the band, or at least the new album and familiar ones from the singer, since she is probably too the band's previous life and from the close to get the whole band into the singer's solo career. One, he introduces shot. She is standing still, jostled by the as being about a tragic period from his bouncing crowd and looking up at her youth. The song is haunting, with a phone to try to see the screen. Sara melancholy piano accompaniment and grimaces, thinking of the gigs she had very light backing from the rest of the been to in the last couple of months, band. Sara had never known the story 33 of the song and she finds tears starting starts to post them onto her social as it pours out a tale of grief and networks. heartbreak. Sara grins and walks on, still A shoulder jostles her and Sara is glowing with the happiness of the pulled from her reverie as a boy pushes crowd. past her with drinks. He passes them to his friends just in front of her and they It is a spring Saturday and Sara is laugh and talk through the crescendo walking through Glasgow Green on the and the ending of the song, completely way to the People's Palace. The day is ignoring the fact that there are people warm and bright, April sunshine around them trying to pay attention to glowing in the new buds of the trees. the music. The show picks up pace with a She stops as she reaches the riverside crowd favourite, in which the audience edge of the park to lean against the is divided into halves and given tunes railing and watch the sparkle of light on to sing, as if they were trumpet and sax the ripples raised by the breeze. A cormorant is perched on a pile in sections. Sara is caught up in the the river, wings spread to dry in the enthusiasm, chanting her part with breeze. Sara stands watching it for a Cathy and everyone else around her. few minutes. She is part of the show, the pleasure of A couple walk past her. 'Look at the audience, the joy of the players that, what's it doing?' the woman says. and the song, uplifted by it; for a brief 'Their feathers get waterlogged moment she feels as if she is every when they dive.' person there, musicians and audience 'Oh. Wait a minute.' The woman alike. pulls her phone out of her bag and The show ends, the crowd cheering takes a picture. for several encores, and Sara is Sara looks at the cormorant. The transported through it, one with the cormorant looks back. They both revellers until she and Cathy are shrug, and the bird dives off the pile, jostling for the exit. leaving a circular wave that is quickly 'Are you all right?' wiped away on the rippling river 'I'm fine, wasn't that amazing?' surface. 'It was fantastic! Look at this,' Cathy Sara turns away and walks on, pulls out her phone to page through unsettled. Did that bird really shrug at the pictures that she had taken and me? 34

As she walks through the park, the always has been, the range surrounded breeze moves the tree branches and by the household implements, the the sun through the translucent leaves flatiron and the skillets and the shines dapples on the grass that dance pictures of the sink and the wringer like laughter. Sara sees a tree that looks that would have done for the distinctly amused, and wonders if she household's washing, and the Liz is losing her wits. Lochhead poem framed beside it. The People's Palace is a museum, More voices distract Sara as she with a large arboretum built to the wanders round the displays; images of side, the Winter Gardens, filled with people, snatches of conversation. tropical plants. Sara comes here a few Bright chatter and shrieks of laughter times a year, fascinated by the lives of of women washing their sheets in the the Glasgow citizens that are preserved steamie, the public baths and in the displays. As she passes through washhouse; jazz and rock and roll the entrance hall, she hears echoes, played in the Barrowlands ballroom. her footsteps coming back to her as She has been to the Barrowlands, but murmurs of voices and a hectoring it's a gig venue now, not a dance-hall. speaker. She looks around but there is The overlay of emotion is like nothing nobody in sight and the voices fade. she has ever felt, the connection she She remembers that the palace was feels with the lives of the people that originally intended to be a lecture hall are depicted. and meeting place for the people of Down the stairs, out past the cafe Glasgow, and shrugs at her overactive area and along the arboretum path to imagination. the shelter of the trees. The warmth She goes up to her favourite and humidity enfold her and the display, the reconstruction of a murmur of the trees and plants, some tenement flat from the time before as old as the Winter Gardens electric lights and the modern kitchen themselves, are calming. The old appliances that she takes for granted. banana tree is friendly and comforting There is the cast-iron range, the to sit under and Sara gradually relaxes cooking and heating of the flat, and until the clamour of her feelings she sees the family settled round it, subsides. She pats its trunk, nods Paw and Maw and children like a scene thanks, and stands. from The Broons comic strip. No. She doesn't; the museum display is as it * 35

It's Friday night and Sara and Cathy creep that had been chatting up Cathy. are at the Pig and Butterfly to hear She doesn't point him out to her. their friends' bands. The crowd is They have a good spot near the friendly and the first band have a good stage when the band takes their sound for the venue; quirky and fun, positions and starts to play. The lead mixing klezmer and rock in danceable singer is theatrical, with a curled tunes. Sara sips her drink and listens to moustache and bowler hat, cerulean the music while Cathy chats distantly trousers and red and white spats. Sara to some guy who seems intent on grins just to see him, and laughs as he separating them, smiling politely while gesticulates and dances among the keeping her body language neutral. crowd, climbing on tables and getting Sara looks over at the guy. She the audience to sing along with the purses her lips. He has a look that she refrain. really doesn't like, quite apart from the Sara is focused on the music and fact that he's being incredibly rude to the performance, when from behind her and taking up her friend's her, a voice says, 'Hello.' She starts, and attention. It reminds her of something. feels stupid for it as she relaxes and That bag snatcher. It's not the same grins at Rafe, who grins back. She feels person, but Sara remembers the her heart leap, because the smile has feeling. She nudges Cathy, who looks the same promise in it that she saw round. months ago in the cafe. They beckon Sara tilts her head in the direction her, and she follows them to the edge of the band and Cathy nods. She turns of the crowd. to the guy, says, 'Excuse me,' and the 'Are you having a good time?' two of them start filtering their way 'It's great, yes. Paul really knows through the bar, past the leather how to work a crowd, look at him.' 'What about your friend?' armchairs and tables, to the stage. Sara looks over at Cathy, who has They dance together to the rest of the settled in with a knot of their friends band's set, and hang around to chat and a couple of the players from the while they break down their kit and previous band. She remembers the make way for the next band. creep and looks around, but she can't There is a scuffle near the door; see any sign of trouble, and relaxes. Sara can see the bouncer heaving a 'She's fine, we're both good. How man out in an armlock, recognises the about you?' 36

'Not bad at all. I'll be moving on Sara reluctantly looks away from soon, though.' them and around at the people in the 'Where to?' bar. Many of them seem the same as Rafe just smiles and turns to watch ever; her friends chatting and nodding the band, who have launched into a their heads to the music, the other spiky, dissonant number which the lead people in the crowd the same kind of singer is performing with a hand- well-off twenties and thirties- puppet of a skull, which he makes to somethings she'd see on a Friday sing along with him. Sara stands close evening in the Pig and Butterfly. She to them, as close as she thinks she can starts to notice feelings associated with get away with. Any other time that she the people she is watching; loneliness has tried this, Rafe has gracefully in this woman; simmering violence stepped away a little, but this time from that boy that makes her recoil, they look round at her and smile reminded of the creep from earlier; gently, not moving away. Emboldened, genial anarchy radiating from the Sara takes their arm. singer on the stage. The band goes into a cabaret Another person seems doubled, as number that has a lively beat and if an unfocused image were people around the stage start dancing. superimposed over them; regrets, a life Rafe takes Sara's hand and says, 'Will not lived. As in the museum, images you dance with me?' begin to overwhelm Sara; emotions, 'Yes!' Rafe swings Sara around, leading pictures, histories. She trembles and her in jive steps; she has no idea what looks around wildly. Rafe holds her she's doing, but their lead is firm and close and pats her back. 'Don't be afraid, you're just seeing gentle and she finds herself spinning what's always there, if you begin to and swaying to the music along with look.' them. As the song ends, Rafe gathers Sara pulls away slightly and sees her closer in a circle of their arms. Sara that the glow she had imagined still smells a spicy scent, cinnamon surrounds them. In fact, it surrounds perhaps, and feels warmed, as if she's Rafe and she is bathed in it and surrounded by a golden glow. warmed by it. 'You've been learning to pay 'Always keep looking,' they tell her. attention to the world, haven't you? They take her arms and move her Look around.' away as the aura opens around her and draws back around their shoulders. It 37 spreads the length of the bar, covering and enfolding the Friday revellers. Raphael draws Sara closer again; leans in to kiss her lips. She slides her arms around their shoulders and they hold her for a timeless, euphoric moment. The moment fades and leaves Sara standing alone in the crowd, smiling blissfully, a tear running down her cheek.

*

Elaine is a member of the Glasgow SF Writers’ Circle and a book reviewer for Interzone magazine. The film she wrote, High Heels Aren’t Compulsory, recently won the award for Best Scottish Short at the Scottish Queer international Film Festival. 38

DELIA SMITH dress drifted away at the edges, fraying into the green and stone cemetery DOES NOT EXIST landscape. I recognized her by Jenny Terpsichore Abeles immediately, and informed her, “You are Delia Bacon!” And she responded She as much as admitted this to as clear as day, or at least as clear as a me. misty, rainy, poor-visibility kind of day, She wasn’t sure if she was Delia not the romantic kind, but the cold and Bacon, or had been, or had nothing to clammy kind that you’d prefer to view do with Delia Bacon, but it appeared with an involuntary shiver from inside that she found herself more or less your house: anchored to the brown sandstone “Delia Bacon does not exist.” cross that bore Delia Bacon’s name in Still, I am going to call her Delia the Grove Cemetery. The dead have a Bacon. fondness for stone, as do the living, and the reasons for this may become Usually the dead don’t bother to apparent someday. When Delia Bacon get your attention. appeared, I had been sitting in a I can imagine them comfortably laid somber cross-legged position for over out in their best clothes many feet three hours, until my bum had gotten below the earth, perhaps gaseously damp from some deeper layer of the flitting around their bones and earth and my legs and hips had gone whatever flesh hangs about, and in any numb, and when I noticed her, she case, content to remain beneath our looked like an antiqued photo that notice, less distracting, even, than a someone was holding ten feet bad smell. They are simply there, underwater in a wind-bristled lake. Or invisibly enjoying what amounts to a maybe in the sea, while the waves are lovely garden with trees and slapping. I think she was wearing a monuments and sweet little walkways, bonnet—not a hat, but a bonnet, the with nothing on their minds as much as big, face-framing, old-fashioned thing. eternity, undisturbed even by the And I think her hair was dark and wildlife that burrows in the several feet coiled beneath her bonnet, and under below the garden that we—the living— her chin, I think, was a silky, white bow. don’t see. People don’t like to think Her hands were folded in her lap. Her about that. The worms. The dirt that will eventually fill in the spaces in their 39 skulls where once eyes and the though it were coming from a medulla oblongata, etc. were. Dirt that cemetery across the sea, perhaps in crushes bones, eventually. Dirt that we England. It sounded as though it were co-mingle with, become no different coming from the sky, or under the from, our solids and gases mixing with earth, or both together. “...my foot!” I its solids and gases in an extremely couldn’t hear her very well. I have long-term, inescapably intimate affair. never heard the dead speak; when I’ve A tongue of dirt in your ear, or in the seen them, they have always kept their cranial hole where your ear used to be. lips disapprovingly pursed, as though I The skull is full of such apertures, as is had offended them with my living the skeleton. The body, before dying, is presence, my blood, my beating heart. perforated, as well, but the skeleton is I can still my heart to almost nothing, different. It is itself a hole, dug deeper the patter of a mouse foot, the sound than a grave, that a life has climbed out of moonlight dropping on frost, but of and then fallen back into. Ashes to they can hear it anyway, and I can see ashes—true enough for some. For how annoyed they are by it. “...my others, dirt. It’s the sort of becoming foot!” that’s extremely undramatic from I listened harder, testing my living topside. Topside, it’s all quite peaceful ear against death’s silent vacuum, and as far as the dead are concerned. then I got it. “The Bard of Avon, my Which is why I was, after three and half foot!” hours, surprised, after all, to see Delia Delia Bacon is not impressed by Bacon appear, hugging close to her uneducated people from the country. crucifix in a hobbled sort of way. I had William Shakespeare, who she calls gone there to speak with her, but a “fourth-rate player” (even though the hadn’t really expected to. King was sufficiently taken by Her voice was whispery, as you’d Shakespeare’s company to give it his imagine a dead person’s voice to be. royal name), was an Elizabethan-style Who knows where she was finding the hayseed. And he never went to air to push her voice into the sunlight. university, it is true. One might doubt “...my foot!” It sounded as though it that a country-boy with no proper were coming from deep within a cave education could have written thirty- at the bottom of a valley on the other some-odd of the most beautiful and side of dense forest at the end of an delightful and disturbing plays anyone interstate highway. It sounded as 40 has ever seen. Delia Bacon penned a snips and pieces of orange cloth left 658-page book about it. Delia Bacon over, and hung these on the walls of had been born in a small Ohio town, every room in my house. These are the and never attended college. flames, the lighthouse eye that will “Hush!” she whisper-hisses at me. always guide me back to my port, for “Delia Bacon does not exist!” no matter how far I ramble, I would like to return home again eventually. My For some, it’s fine dining. For others, baseball or spy novels ghost knows that, the little ghost in my or simply their work. It takes nobody womb, waiting to be born when I die. I do still sew sometimes, but I long to realize that all the hours and discovered a hobby I prefer. Some days of a life must be filled with people call it “paranormal something. I tried sewing for a time. I investigation,” but that suggests a lot liked the feeling of cloth between my of technical gadgetry that I have no fingers, cloth in long swathes that interest in storing in my closets. I have could be formed into anything. I took my senses, more so than some. That’s my Uncle Danny and Aunt Esther’s old, all a good ghost-hunter needs. Some orange drapes and made a toga out of like to stake out haunted houses or them. The toga is not considered to be hotels, but you shouldn’t do that. It’s a very au currant fashion, but it is an awful invasion of privacy. comfortable, and on someone as tall as Cemeteries look like gardens to us, but myself, quite elegant. On the streets of to ghosts, they’re cities, public spaces. my smallish New England city, heads Necropolis, it used to be called. City of turned with well-oiled alacrity at my the dead. They’re very public places. passing, but when I caught a glimpse of Boneyard, God’s acre, barrows—we’ve myself in a bakery shop window, my had to put them somewhere, haven’t oranginess pleasingly framed by pink- we? I find “resting place” to be a nice frosted cupcakes, I felt suddenly name, and they can be very restful, unanchored, as though I were a ship indeed. Until you actually see a ghost, that had sailed out beyond the edge of that is, which can be distressing, it the world, back when the world had an turns out. The dead are not good edge, and could never find my way conversationalists. Look at poor Delia home again. I hurried home and Bacon! She didn’t even know if she removed all the old family photos from existed. their frames. I replaced them with the 41

I wanted to meet Honoré de Balzac wondered if even that was enough, very, very badly. what he had done with his time. I was I went to the Peré Lachaise reluctant to turn out the gate into the Cemetery, bought a map for some-odd streets of the city of Paris, worried that sous, and walked round and round. It the whole city would seem now like was a lovely day. My shoes were something different, a place from the uncomfortable. I got lost. I saw Oscar past where the living should not be, a Wilde’s grave, covered in lipstick. I saw place from the future that I haunted Frederic Chopin’s grave, and Sarah unwittingly. Lingering, that is when I Bernhard’s, and Jim Morrison’s. I saw saw him, the ghost, standing by a Abelard and Heloise’s grave, a bit water fountain. He seemed to be trying gaudy, I thought, built by a romantic to get my attention with all the countess for two epistle-wrapped but discretion of one long dead. His rotten corpses. I had come there to see costume was eccentric and his Balzac, and finally, a bit tear-stained, I moustache long. His lips were clenched did find his grave hidden amongst shut, a dark line sewn across his abundantly blooming hyacinth. blanched face, but his eyes held whole Someone had left a bottle of Côte du dictionaries, encyclopedias, books of Rhône there, and someone else had hours—all the hours that had passed left a fifty-franc note pinned down by a between him and his flesh. It was rock. I pocketed the note and smashed getting late, dark dusk, and although I the neck off the bottle of wine, didn’t mind standing there with an old drinking carefully from the jagged ghost—one has nothing if not time, edge. Wine makes my skin feel fuzzy, after all!—I could see that the but not my head. I talked to Balzac for gatekeeper wanted to shut in, and so I quite a long time, but he had nothing left, without ever knowing the name of more to say to me. Everything he was him to whom I whispered Fare-thee- ever going to say had been said. The well. thought made me sad. I didn’t glimpse his jowls shaking in the shadows; he Delia Bacon was the only one who did not glare at me from under messy ever spoke to me. hair. Even if it was only to tell me that I thought about the careful pages Delia Bacon did not exist. Maybe she’ll he had written about his world, a tell me something different if she ever world that was gone now, and follows the inviting orange torch I lit in 42 my soon-to-be haunted house. Maybe Imagine—gasping at the radiance of then we can speak as equals, she and I. dead stars!, but maybe whomever It seems as though everyone I’ve ever gazes at our light also sees only a met, no matter how young or ignorant brilliant afterthought, a fairy flame that or uninformed or hare-brained, seems marks the way for other wanderers of to know that butterflies live only for unknown wild wastes. Following each one day, one day! How much crueler, other’s errant light, we foray much then, to stamp its life out, driving by, further into the fens than we know we perhaps, not realizing that something should. Maybe just when we’ve given delicate and lovely has left its vital up hope of ever being found, a woman fluids on your headlight. Every hour in a humble home will invite us in and must count for a pale green moth as give us a drink made with warm milk, years of our lives count for us. In an mint, and drugs, and when we will lay hour, like a butterfly, I could fall in love, our heads on her hard pillow, we will dream oceans of bliss, get my heart dream yet another sleep, full of broken, and die. In a minute, I could unlikely stories, that it will be nigh get a Ph.D. impossible to rouse from. If Delia Bacon does not exist, then neither do I. We are, both of us, Have you ever filled your pockets orphan theories launched from the with stones? minds of geniuses who neglected to People do this at the beach, often, give us shoes sturdy enough to stand in because the stones are worn so muddy streets. She shimmers for a smooth by who-knows-how-many moment in a sunbeam, but is it really a centuries of lolling around in salt water. sunbeam? It might be a sign of The white stone that has found its way blindness sneaking over my aging eye. into the shorts pocket of a young And when she really disappears, I think woman wanting to remember this walk that it is possible she was never here at along the beach with her lover until all, not her ghost, not herself, with her her dying day was once a mountain, bonnet and her own penchant for probably, and will one day be a grain of sitting on gravestones on sunny days. sand. And the woman? What was she We have heard that the light from when the mountain still stood? And certain distant stars only reaches us what will she be when her keepsake is decades after the stars themselves slowly shattered by the unstoppable, have died. Observed of all observers. the passing of time? A fish. An ash. A 43 ghost. A musical note. A lilac bush, every small flower in each nodding bunch crying out, “Look at me! No, look at me!” After everything, we are only blanks that can be filled in with anything. Nobody has ever said that about a stone. Nobody has ever called a stone a phony. Nobody has ever claimed that stones do not exist. Unlike Delia Bacon.

*

Jenny Terpsichore Abeles is a writer living in Western Massachusetts with three Armenian wildcats. She has published short fiction in Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, Lackington's, and New Dead Families and is currently working on a novel about werewolves, demonologists, automatons, death cults, and true love. 44