Plus Ten Craft

Seven friends put together a blog to write regularly. We're looking for guest submissions: [email protected] Charlie Edwards | Beau Jackson | Melissa Hicks | Thomas Trinquet | Matt West | Lara Horton | Tom Edwards | Guests | Audio

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26th December - Thick as Thieves

We beat the bus there -

plimsoles pounding through puddles -

but the stop is packed

whining girls and shoving boys

one shields a hot cone of chips.

A poor slice of roof -

rain fills up our laughing mouths;

the sky scowls, rain pours.

Our coats and brollies missing;

under one blazer, we grin.

Melissa Hicks

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18th December - Behind Closed Doors

Rubber tires slow-kissed tarmac, as the garbage truck drove up Clement Street. Aaron put the brakes on once they were outside the first house. He took a moment to survey things: a suburban street of pebbledash houses awash with the semi-skinned sunlight of the morning. Weeds lifted themselves up from cracks in carless driveways. No car alarms, no dog barks, no birdsong. Clement Street was silent, as it had been every day for the last six months.

All the bins had been wheeled out to the edge of the sidewalk, as usual; there was a yellow glow coming from behind the curtains of a second floor window in one house and the flickering white light of a living room television behind another.

Aaron’s eyes widened as he spotted something red crawling out from behind a low brick wall at the end of the street. A light breeze dribbled a child’s football out onto the pavement. False alarm.

Jules slumped in the passenger seat beside him with his feet on the dashboard, eyes hidden behind shades, “It really bothers you, doesn’t it?”

“I’ve come back here for the afternoon shift at three before and it was exactly the same. They never come out.”

“Reckon if you saw one of them face-to-face, it’d put your mind at ease?”

Aaron folded his arms. “Not after last week. I need to talk with them, not just see them. Especially if they’ve decided to start winding me up by throwing away what they did last time. There’s no excuse for that kind of waste.”

Jules nodded. “Either way, we’ve got work to do.”

They got out of the garbage truck. While Jules turned on the compressor at the rear, Aaron strode towards the wheelie bin outside the first house, Number 39. He lifted the bin lid. Anger twisted in his chest. Crammed inside, were brand new children’s toys – dolls and cars in unopened boxes, a tricycle, spinning tops, children’s keyboards, full bottles of poster paint, a huge roll of coloured sugar paper, a stuffed monkey.

Aaron held the bin lid open and called Jules over. Jules took a look at the contents.

“Again, huh?”

“Perfect condition, all of it,” Aaron hissed, “How can they throw all this away? Don’t they know how poor some parts of the world are? I don’t care why they’re holed up in these houses, they should take this stuff to the charity shops for some other kids to enjoy, not dump ‘em!”

Aaron noticed the living room curtains move at Number 39.

“Yes, I know you’re in there! Is this supposed to be funny?”

Aaron turned to Jules. Jules shrugged.

“That’s it. I’m going to find out what the hell is going on.”

Aaron pushed through the picket gate and stormed up the garden path to Number 39’s front door. He pressed the doorbell. From inside, he heard the muffled sound of children giggling and thumping up carpeted stairs.

“You’re going to be in big trouble!”

When Aaron banged a fist on the door, it swung open to reveal a pitch-black hallway. He took a step inside and trod on some broken glass. His vision filled with light, there was a roar and the force of an explosion sent him flying out the door, his face and skin searing with intense heat.

“Hey.”

Aaron gasped awake in the driver’s seat of the garbage truck.

Resting a hand on the rolled down passenger’s window, one eyebrow raise, Jules asked,

“You’re not going to make me do this whole street on my own are you? Come on.”

Jules disappeared round the back of the truck once more. Aaron caught his breath and turned to look at the adjacent house. It was Number 43, the last house on the road. He stuck his head out the window and looked down the street. House Number 39 was still there, completely intact, with the door closed.

He must have fallen asleep before they got to Clement Street. Jules…must have been driving. He shook his head and got out of the car.

“Grab those two will you?” Jules called out. Aaron spotted two black wheelie bins at the curb.

Without looking inside, he grabbed both bins by their handles and dragged them to the rear of the truck where Jules was waiting. Aaron clipped the bins onto the hydraulic forks, then gave the thumbs up to Jules, who pressed the red button. The forks lifted the bins high, then tipped their contents into a curtained off opening at the back of the truck. A thick red sludge slopped out of the bins and splattered the inner sides of the container. In amongst the red substance Aaron could see small orange shapes, and after a closer look, realised they were letters. Aaron stared into the container in disbelief. Two bins filled with alphabet spaghetti in tomato sauce?

Someone shrieked with laughter from inside Number 43.

Aaron ran across the street and up the paved driveway and banged on the front door.

“Hey! You in there! When I tell your parents what-”

The door of the house yawned open onto a wide room. Aaron walked into the centre. A pencil was rolling back and forth on the dusty chequered tiles at his feet. The back windows were smashed, and splattered across every surface was what appeared to be minced meat soaked in tomato sauce. It ran down every wall and lay in pools on the floor. It dripped from the window sills and the ceiling. Snapped desks and chairs missing legs lay against the walls, the skirting boards dusted with splinters. On the far right wall was a blackboard where the ten times table had been written.

Behind a desk on its side near the blackboard, something moved. The tread of his boots were deafening as he approached the desk. He looked over. A woman in a white headscarf lay on the floor, staring wide-eyed at the ceiling. Her eyes met his and she began to cough softly at first, then harder. Blood rose to the corners of her lips and spilled in streams down her chin. Her gaze dropped from Aaron’s face to his hand. Aaron looked down. His fist was closed around something. He opened it. He was holding a grenade. His hand began to shake. The grenade dropped from his hand to the floor. The room changed. The red sauce dripping down the walls blackened, and figures began to appear on the floor around him. Small figures. With arms twisted behind their backs. And gashes in their abdomens. Missing their lower halves. Missing noses and ears. Screaming mouths. Writhing in flames.

He heard static from his right. A radio had appeared on the floor near the desk. One voice started speaking, then many,

“It’s not your fault, Daddy.”

“Thirty one school children were killed today, after a gun fight escalated in the streets of-”

“I think we’ve done enough for today, Aaron.”

“Casualties are a necessity of war, sergeant. You know that. We cannot afford to-”

“We were supposed…supposed to celebrate…celebrate her birthday tomorrow. What am I to do with her gift?”

“Those men, they love to kill.”

“Aaron. AARON.”

Dr. Julien squeezed Aaron’s shoulder a little too hard to wake him from the trance. Aaron slumped onto the sofa, breathing hard, sweat dripping from his forehead. He blinked and looked around the office where he sat.

“Wh-what happened?”

Dr. Julien sat down in the swivel chair by his desk and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“We took the therapy a little too fast.”

Melissa Hicks

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16th December - The Reader and the Dreamer

We pass the tall thin red brick chimney pot of Peglers, corrugated warehouses with diamond shaped air vents, and furred green fields without an animal in them. The sky is calm and a gold band of sun passes beneath plump blue clouds. At a small two-seater table in first class, a red-haired woman is watching the scenery pass through the window, touching the corners of her mouth and thinking. Eyes flickering over one tree and the next. Across from her, another woman is holding an old red book; adjusting her round glasses to a place further up her nose, and scowling sometimes at certain sentences or words that she reads.

I’m trying to decide their relationship to one another. They haven’t spoken since I got on the train at Stevenage, and the carriage is partially empty. On the table between them there are two mugs, arranged one behind the other; a half full bottle of water by the window; two paper coasters stuck together by a single ring of residue; and some crumbs, perhaps from biscuits, or the lemon and thyme cake that I see is on offer in the menu.

The reader wth glasses is now looking up from her book. Contemplating the space ahead of her that either contains her thoughts, or the red head dreamer’s neck – exposed so as she is still looking out of the window. The dreamer plays blindly with the crumbs on the table – it must have been her biscuit, or lemon cake, but her hands are straying ever so slightly into her travel companion’s side of the table – the reader returns to her book.

If they are sharing the water, they most certainly are travelling together – but I have only seen the reader rest her hand on it from time to time. The mugs of tea are also placed very close to one another – a proximity one wouldn’t dream of placing them when considering a stranger’s personal space.

At the announcement of Doncaster the Reader stows the book away in her bag. The Dreamer stirs to watch her, but it’s hard to discern her expression through the passengers reclaiming their overhead baggage.

When the crowd disperses I see the Reader put on a scarf and, filing down after the others, she wishes the Dreamer a Merry Christmas.

We pull out of the station and again I try to analyse what kind of a “Merry Christmas” it was. Whether it implied that she’d see her again, that she wishes she could see her again, or that they never would. The Dreamer returns her gazing out of the window, and in the reflection on the glass, I can see her eyebrows furrowed. She’s trying to figure out the same thing.

Beau Jackson

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14th December - Night Haikus

"central line" 

subway carriage ribs 

jostle flesh and veins as you 

take me underground

"towpath" 

golden lamplight burns 

through the thick reams of fog which 

suffocate the lake

"afterglow" 

francis bacon lips 

turn to pulp as love sets in 

dank with fond decay

"exhumed" 

burial reversed 

the tomb of his chest is pumped 

full of quaking light

"back here" 

the road roars with rain 

you say nobody loves you 

as I drive you home

Tom Edwards

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13th December - Nutmeg

Christmas is lonely.

First comes the shopping, done without the children lest they see their present before it can get wrapped. Done without the boyfriend who has probably bought his sweetheart something from Amazon. Done without the wife because it is always so hard to surprise her. Done without the friend because no one can keep a secret.

Then comes the hauling inside, done as quietly during the night. The tired parents, already exhausted from putting their children to sleep doze in and out of their own little dreams while they clumsily wrap and tag and then hide the store-bought toys to bring back later so Santa can take the credit. The boyfriend ordered it as a gift, so his only concern is making sure she isn’t home when it arrives. The girlfriend tries to be creative. She’s seen the Youtube clips on how to perfectly wrap a gift, but it never goes as plan. She gives up thinking her boyfriend probably threw hers into a bag so he didn’t have to buy the wrapping paper. And the friend, who wraps alone in their room, imagining the looks of joy that never seem to live up to expectation.

One young girl, on Christmas Eve, reads the Christmas book her grandmother bought her a few years before (the same book the grandmother bought all her grandchildren). She reads it every year to herself as she sits in bed with socks on her feet and mittens on her hands because that is the only way to make it feel more like Christmas. She reads the story and sees the pictures of an old tale told many times. There is a boy lost in the snow who stumbles upon an old woman’s cottage where there is always a Christmas tree that touches the ceiling though it is only she that sees it every year. Where there is always a fire burning merrily in the fireplace though it is only her cold, aching feet before it. Where the kitchen is always supplied with warm milk and cookies though by January they have grown cold and stale.

The lonely girl reads a lonely story, and she falls asleep wishing her family wanted to read with her.

But her mother never does for she is the one who wakes by four to begin cooking. She cooks alone, following the same list of food she makes every year. She makes four pies because no one likes the same kind. She makes the turkey and stuffing and rolls and potatoes and two kinds of dishes with yams because some like the yams smooth with marshmallows and some like it chopped up with brown sugar and cinnamon.

She still bakes as the sun rises on empty streets and frosted yards.

The girl wakes, opens her window, hears her mother cooking, but instead stays in her room to watch the sun melt the frost off her neighbor’s roof. She waits for her brother and sister to wake, but they never do by the time she gets bored and goes into the kitchen. She wants to help her mother bake, but she always does something wrong like adding nutmeg to the sweet potatoes that made her mother throw the entire batch out one year. So now she is content with sitting on a stool and watching.

Her mother doesn’t speak. The girl doesn’t speak.

The house is warm from the oven. The fireplace is cold and black.

The girl leaves to plug in the Christmas tree lights. She sits beside it watching the lights flicker and move along their electric, green strings. She has a scarf wrapped around her neck and touches the window trying to feel some of the chill from outside.

Her sister wakes next, stumbles into the kitchen, steals a fresh baked roll and stumbles out again to switch on the television. She tells her younger sister that there are always good movies playing on Christmas. The Christmas Story takes up an entire channel for the day, but neither them have seen it all the way through. They won’t even bother to watch it today.

The brother enters through the front door. No one knew he spent the night with a friend. He doesn’t say a word as he goes to take a shower. When he comes back out he sits on the couch with his phone. No one bothers him.

The girl wants to read another Christmas story, for the Christmas that she had always grown up with lived only on pages in times long past. It exists in movies where miracles happen and families wear sweaters as it snows outside. It exists in other houses behind other doors, or so she thought as she watched the neighbor’s grandkids and brothers and daughters, laden with gifts and food, park on the street and walk up to that other front door.

While the turkey finishes baking, the mother stops and tells her children they can open their presents. There aren’t as many since Santa stopped coming. The girl received a necklace from her brother that she saw her mother bring into the house. She received a scarf from her sister, a repackaged gift from one of her sister’s friends. From her mother she received a quilted blanket which she bought. Her brother and sister received one too. Hers was purple. Her mother’s favorite color.

They open the gifts from her, though as a child, her mother had bought all of them, so her sister got a necklace from her and her brother got a new computer game since that is all anyone knew he liked.

They thank each other politely and put their gifts in their separate rooms. The mother returns to baking while the children watch television.

The day moves slowly to ten o’clock, still in the morning. But the food is ready since the mother started at four. The girl sets the table. Each gets a different drink. They bring the food to the table, and then they eat. There is not much to talk about. No one knows each other.

So they eat in a semi-silence, broken up only every now and then with compliments to the chef and comments about the season.

Then the sister gets upset because there was nutmeg in the sweet potatoes. She hates nutmeg.

The mother is flabbergasted. She doesn’t know how it happened. She blames the young girl though the mother didn’t realize that the cinnamon and nutmeg containers look quite the same. She was tired. She was awake since four. But it must have been the girl who swears it wasn’t her.

The brother grumbles and leaves the table, clearly angry that someone got angry. He slams his bedroom door and only emerges a couple of minutes later with his backpack saying he is going to a friend’s. The mother is too busy yelling at the girl to notice.

The sister throws her food in the garbage and sits back on the couch to watch television, scowling that her meal was ruined.

Before the girl is finished eating, the mother already has the leftovers packed and stuffed into the fridge. They will be eating Christmas food for lunch and dinner until New Years.

The mother goes to take a nap.

The girl swipes a slice of pumpkin pie, the flavor made for her. The other pies remain untouched. She slinks to her room, avoiding her sister’s heavy scowl, her painful gaze. She has an old television in her room. It only plays VHS, but that’s fine because all her Christmas movies are on VHS.

She pushes one in, listens to the tape wind up, presses play, and enjoys Christmas day all over again, only this time with a different family. She does this until the day grows dark and the streets light up with Christmas lights. She turns off the tv, slips into bed with socks on her feet and mittens on her hand, her pile of presents in the corner.

Before she falls asleep, she forgets for a second that she had spent the day alone in her room.

So for her Christmas means loneliness. It is all she knew. Real Christmas existed in movies and in books: the places where miracles happen and people don’t mind nutmeg on their sweet potatoes.

Lara Horton

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12th December - For Granted

I like that feeling. 

When your hand has been there so long it feels like it's missing when you move. 

Absence makes my heart grow like the grinch.

Matt West

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10th December - Vegetable Soup

Sometimes with one little spoonful,

Of vegetable soup, hot from the stove

You get the comfort,

Of a hug

Without the fuss, the tears, the drama

Of someone who you really love.

But let me eat another bowlful,

Of your kisses and your laughs

For vegetable soup may be warming,

But not eternal like your heart

Charles Edwards

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8th December - Soma

My body has always been the wisest part of me. In control, yet beyond my control, it has its own rules and routines. It breathes without needing my mind to temper the rhythm; always even and always enough. I can clamp heated iron plates around each strand of my hair and rake it with toothy combs and bristled brushes, but I can’t tame its instinct to curl and clump together and coil towards the ground.

Each time I swallow food or water, it’s like handing over an ongoing project to a learned engineer and telling them, “use your best judgement.” I trust them to make the repairs, to replace the wallpaper of the skin, to construct an extension of muscle, to build up the layers of flesh on the foundations of bone, to fit furnishings of fat where they feel the heat needs to be kept in (and whenever I want to spoil myself with an extra cushion or blanket.) I occupy the attic, a bedroom at the top of the house, working away on projects of a different kind, only dimly aware that work is going in the rooms below.

But it’s so much - what’s happening in the body at any given moment, what it’s doing – too much for us to do anything more than accept and forget. Entire organs exist inside it that not even the most enlightened minds among us know what for. When a pain waits around long enough to be noticed, we go to an expert in bodies and ask about it, never thinking how strange it is that we always trust someone else to know more about our own body, this steed of tendons and sinews that carries us through life, than ourselves. And what about those times when I feel a fizzle of pain in the bottom of my foot or an ache in the side of my face that doesn’t last long enough for me to name it as a problem? Only my body knows the story behind that sensation.

It’s not that I like it when I get ill, my throat rough with coughing, my nostrils stinging every time I bring the corner of the tissue to them, my eyes swollen and red, my heart panicked. But at those times, my mother says what she always says, “Just rest and let the body fight it on its own.” And when I do, it feels as though my mind were a child - which had been allowed to play at living and being an adult - handing over its toys to a parent, who’s not just older than me and my twenty-four years, but much older; so old its origins aren’t remembered or understood. I listen to my body at those times when I’m ill: “this much of the meal is enough”; “wrap up in thick, loose clothes”; “take each sip of water slowly.” I get into bed, take a deep breath in, and sink into my mattress and sheets. Warmth and darkness envelop me.

I rest, and my body tells me with more confidence than I’ll ever have, “this is right.”

Melissa Hicks

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7th December - Epitaph for the Alpha Male

here he lies, th’adored youth, 

the demigod who walked among 

us lesser boys, unmanly souls, 

who here in loving memory throng

we whisper of those lustrous locks 

we recall that skin of marble white 

we sing of how his blade of truth 

swiped often left, and seldom right

those sculpted arms, cross’d and unmov’d! 

that keen eye darting like a hornet! 

that mouth curled in brave ridicule 

of effeminacies he had scorned!

not just athlete, but philomath! 

deep ruminations all are etched 

on his profile, denouncing all, 

the fat, the bald, the fems so wretched!

and those who challenged what he said? 

why, his noble cause they could not hinder 

for his conviction burned so bright, 

set aflame by sacred tinder

o, who would not desire this lord 

as close as one could hope to be 

to that most prized of paradigms: 

heteronormativity!

yet he is gone, at least to those 

who have unlearned his handsome lies, 

and those who pay no tribute here 

will come to life just as he dies.

Tom Edwards

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6th December - Omega

I begin with waking

At the very beginning

When I wake from black into black

And go when it begins to fade

I journey into light

So different than where I was

Where I had always been

But the sun is so warm

The day so right

That I wish to never end

In the dark and empty night

With fear I move

So that my feet may carry me

From an end

So I run to where I was, where I have always been

In the beginning before light

Because I fear the dark and empty night

Lara Horton

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5th December - Custom

Three lumps of sugar in his Latte every day, stirred with the spoon left in the mug. It pushes against his cheek as he drinks. He cracks his book and doesn’t look up unless it’s to make sure he doesn’t miss his mouth. When he’s finished, he orders a ham and cheese toastie and another latte. Three more sugars, plop, plop, plop.

I watch him every day from behind the counter, Monday to Friday at about 1.30. He smiles and is polite enough with his measured voice but doesn’t say anything more than necessary. Doesn’t share. He let out a gentle laugh the first day I predicted his order, then smiled every subsequent day.

He is a slow reader.

The price of toasties went up four weeks ago, but I couldn’t disrupt his habit. I gave him the staff discount, which actually came to less, but he put the rest in the tip cup. His taste in books ranges from the Classics (Austen, Hemmingway, Tolstoy) through Fantasy (Harry Potter, The Alchemist) and Horror (Steven King, Lovecraft). Today, he is reading Zodiac.

I sometimes wonder whether he’s the only reason I stay. There was a week back in July where I had to call in sick from when I caught Laryngitis from my downstairs neighbour and when I got back I asked Alison whether he came in.

“The young guy with the old man jumpers? Yeah he was here… No I didn’t notice. I think the book was blue though… Yeah probably… No he didn’t say anything. Seemed confused about the price though.”

I’ve gone to ask his name before, but what if he has a really weird name like Ezekiel or Waylon or worse, something really bland, like Jack, Sam. Tom Dick or Harry… In a way its better not to know, and what if he was creeped out and stopped coming? He is a staple here, like sliced bread and the whirr of the coffee machine in the background.

He keeps me going. If he can go through the same ritual every day, then so can I. I’ll lather rinse and repeat in order to watch him read his book and drink his latte with three sugars.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t fancy him. I mean, he’s not hideous by any means, its just, I can’t know him enough to actually fantasise about him. It’s like when you drink water. No one raves about water. They love juice or lemonade, or even coffee. Water is just something you can drink, and it refreshes, but you don’t exactly relish it, and if you do, it’s usually because it’s flavoured.

What would happen if I hadn’t just been I’ll but had left? Would he have stopped coming? Is that putting too much importance on the value of my role in our transaction? I am replaceable, a broken cog can be replaced, and was in fact. Would he just continue to come in every day and pay 50p more each time for his toastie? Would he just grow older and older while I went on not knowing what he was reading?

Or what if he was the one who stopped? What if he gave up coffee? Or got a girlfriend who wanted to meet for lunch but only at the expensive Parisian bistro on the seafront for Croissants and Danishes? What If he got fired? Or promoted and became the head of whatever company he worked for and had to

move city. He finds another café in another place and continues his routine, while I watch the door at 1.30 every Monday to Friday to see if he walks through?

How long would I wait?

Matthew West

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4th December - Genesis

He never existed,

Was never really there,

The man without soul,

And no one to care.

Where did he go,

Where could he have gone?

The man without soul,

Could not hold on.

Pushed deeper down,

Forced deeper still,

The man without soul,

Lost his free will.

Trapped in his mind,

Shackled and chained,

The man without soul,

His hope it had waned.

Shy light to his life,

Tempting and taunting,

Perhaps a way out,

But more certain a haunting.

Thomas Trinquet

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3rd December - Snowflakes

Do you remember how we used to watch the snowflakes falling down?

It was February twelve years ago and the sky was so crisp it was as if you could reach out and grasp a chunk, holding it in your hands and warming it to make the clouds that drifted high above us. The ground was calm then, all frozen in the suspended animation that frost brings to each blade of grass, the wind barely able to move the diamond blades as they stood in their millions to form our favourite meadow.

Of course the flowers had gone then. The kaleidoscope of coloured petticoats all cosied up for hibernation as we crunched across their ice filled kingdom. We went to the forest grove nearby and picked up the skeletal leaves, shattered the surface of a frozen puddle with our boots and enjoyed the whispery touch that only the cold can bring, and that’s when it happened.

Snow.

The light fluffy sprites of the sky cascading down like icing sugar sifted from a celestial sieve. We caught them on our gloves and looked at their perfect little forms, each flake entirely different, each one a flower in itself, their spindly little arms like petals strewn about the wind. They caught in our hair and left cold spots on our skin. We caught them on our tongues and felt them melt to liquid.

It was a magical time, a memory that I want to grasp forever, keep it safe and close to me like that fake snow you capture in a snow globe and shake every year, hoping for the day when you’ll see the same scene outside your window. But though the years fade and our lives drift in and out of one another in the tapestry of existence, I know that whenever I see even the faintest flake of snow, a single whirling star caught in the breeze, that I will love you. I have loved you. I do love you.

Forever.

Always.

Like our special meadow, caught under a starry sky of frozen flowers.

Charles Edwards

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2nd December - Covent Garden

Let me tell you about Covent Garden she said, her face brilliant and red at the cheeks from the cold, It’s always been magical to me.

Her mum bought her a miniature pink frog on a lillypad floating on blue water inside a glass keyring from there. She saw handmade kaleidoscopes, like brass telescopes, a dewdrop glass bubble at the end. She walked around the square with her friends once, alone once, holding her mum’s hand another time, looking at Chrsitmas trimmings of holly hung like swags of fabric, red velvet bows, twinkling orange lights, golden bells. Watched street performers playing a harp, violins, double bass, trumpets, like she’d never heard before. Had a ride in an anti gravity spiral. Bought curiosities for herself. Found an Ocarina for her best friend that she rarely sees anymore. Talked about writing here, and felt that she was on the edge of something brilliant, about to dive down into publishing and come out with a finished novel that everybody loved. Pictured her stepsister selling clothes on a stall, worlds apart from the house where they used to live. Bought a t-shirt from David and Goliath that became her trademark and made her laugh. Been astounded by the dressing of shop windows and reminded that This is London. This is the capital and it’s magical, and so many who aren’t here are wishing that they were. And there is nowhere else on earth quite like it.

Then she stopped, her eyes still sparkling, and you felt her wishing you there with her. For a moment she looked disappointed, but then she smiled, and kissed you.

Beau Jackson

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1st December - Christmas Haikus

  Dad by the cold stove 

serves the sponge another drink; 

hot bite of brandy

--- Robin ---

A proud, red full stop - 

the only punctuation 

on this page of snow.

Melissa Hicks

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22nd October - Fear Itself

I'm afraid of heights. I'm afraid of falling. I'm afraid to make an impact.

Fear is the driving force, but mostly it drives me into inaction, sitting like a deer in the headlights, unable to twitch out of the way. I'm afraid of being crushed down, and of it being my fault in the first place.

I'm afraid of things with too many legs, that move too fast and hide too well.

I'm afraid of creaking in the dark, and the sound of pigeons rustling in the ceiling. I'm afraid of foxes running over the roof. I'm afraid of the cats at the window.

I'm afraid to talk most of the time, to people, for people, about people. Talk is solid, words are solid and solidity is something to fear. You can get a black eye from solidity, a broken leg, a tumour is solid.

I'm afraid of drowning. I'm afraid of burning. I'm afraid I'll set fire to a tea towel when I just wanted baked beans. My mother never trusted me with matches, maybe there was a reason.

Sometimes I'm afraid of my Mother, of what she'll think or say, and sometimes I'm afraid for her. Sometimes I'm afraid she's right, and sometimes that she's wrong. Perhaps it isn't fear. It could be worry, like the worry I know she feels for me. I wish I could make things easier.

I'm afraid of frogs and most amphibians. Not to look at, but just that they might touch me. I can't stand slime or gross or eww or get that away from me. The fear of sensation. I'm afraid of a lot, but only when I think about it.

I'm afraid of quicksand, but only as a metaphor.

I'm afraid I might be lactose intolerant. I'm afraid I'll have to diet. I'm afraid they'll make me stop drinking coke. I'm afraid one day I'll be the one to want to stop. I'm afraid to restrict.

I'm afraid I'm being too harsh. I'm afraid I'm being too soft. I'm afraid I'm being just right but people find it annoying anyway.

I'm afraid of things that jump out at me. Things that go bang or crack.

I'm not afraid of what people think, but I am afraid of what they'll say. I'm afraid of what they meant but can forgive them what they don't. I'm afraid to come across as anything because I know it won't be what I want.

I'm afraid to ask.

I'm afraid to judge lest someone judge me back.

I'm afraid to argue.

I'm just afraid.

Matthew West

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[plustencraft]

11th October - The Thoroughfare

As I step over the gap and into the train, I am enveloped by stale, recycled heat. The sickly sweet smell of urine stings my nose and I see a structure that looks like it’s been stolen from a space shuttle at the end of the carriage. Shit. Too busy skipping tracks on my phone to remember to avoid the toilet carriage. But I can’t be bothered to walk up the train and find another, so I leave it to the air freshener of familiarity to make the smell slowly slightly less offensive.

I slip the padded shells of my headphones off of my ears and look through a doorway to my right, keeping my gaze low to avoid awkwardly meeting the eyes of someone already sitting down. The train’s not crowded, so everyone has decided to sit in separate booths from each other, or failing that, at least two seats away from the next person. I pick a window seat in the last remaining, empty six-seat-set. On the opposite side of the train, two boys in washed-out TKMaxx hoodies, tapping and sliding their fingers and thumbs across smart phone screens, are talking about the badly kept secret that their friend Neville is (ironically) “frigid as fuck.”

Wanting to be alone as realistically possible on public transport, I turn my eyes to the landscape of the industrial estate that has started to roll past me. But the presences of the other people in the carriage prick at my mind like pins. In my peripheral vision, I can still see the woman in the burgundy business suit turning the page of a book in the row ahead. In the window is the reflection of a ginger schoolboy behind me, popping the stylus out from a DS, its glowing white screen lighting up the boy’s face like a revelation. And by the train doors, a bald man with frown lines (who I’ve become convinced is staring at me) is leaning against the glass partition, his coat folded over his crossed arms.

And then it happens. A hollow crunch followed by several moist chews and the crinkling of foil. I wince and turn ever so slightly to confirm my dread: the old man, head cradled in a tartan scarf, one row back on the other side of the carriage is tucking into a packet of crisps. He stares blankly ahead, thinking of something else, with his mouth hanging slightly open. Grossssss.

I don’t want to catch his eye, so I look out the window and dig my nails into the bristly seat covering as the soundtrack of early-stage digestion continues. Focus on something else, anything.

I’m just in time to see a newsagents, its windows blocked out with a layer of white paint, a Chinese takeaway and a lorry depo disappear behind a blur of trees the colour of dirty painting water. Silver birches and bushes with tiny yellow leaves from Nature’s pointillist phase stand out from the passing foliage.

Through gaps in the trees I see glimpses of white semi-detached housing with narrow, paved-over gardens and low brick walls. A woman with shopping disappears behind a red front door as she kicks it shut behind her. A break in the trees then reveals a spread of tall grass and wildflower fields and power cables droop between wooden pylons erected alongside them. Brooding on one particular cable with hunched shoulders is what looks like a bird of prey. Its tiny black silhouette is dwarfed by the yellow slopes and red peaks of colossal sunset-clouds behind it. Only when it takes off do I realise that it was actually just a fluffed up pigeon; maybe I won’t tell my mum about it when I get home after all.

The window goes black as we enter a tunnel.

After a self-conscious moment of glimpsing the other commuters again, I look down at my phone and open up the Facebook app. No new notifications. I refresh the Home Feed. Still none; but George Takei has posted an article: “Thirty Stupidest Ways To Check Out Early.” After reading about a man choking to death on a Strepsil, I notice that the windows are still black. This tunnel is surprisingly long.

The woman behind me coughs, then clears her throat and gets back to her book. I study the reflection of my face in the window. There’s a distortion in the glass; two heads of brown hair tied back into two braids, two pale faces, four flat, shineless eyes and a single double-chin between them. A brassy fanfare sounds from the DS behind me and I hear the ginger boy whisper, “Yes!” I glance at his reflection; he’s grinning and swinging his legs.

The windows are still black. When does this thing end?

Beyond the window, in the darkness, something catches the light from inside the train, and moves.

It looked like-

No, that can’t be right.

Another flash of grey in the same spot as before.

What was that? A rat?

But at eye level? On the wall of the tunnel? Can they hang from walls like that?

I see it again. It’s a crescent-shaped speck. It swoops down and then up again in an arc beside the train, disappearing into the darkness once more.

I realise then that the object isn’t small. It’s far away.

It appears again. I press my palms to the glass and squint out the window.

A pair of grey wings is gliding across a darkness outside the train that spans not inches, but miles.

My heart twists in my chest.

But I’m awake, I know I’m awake. The windowpane is lukewarm and sticky underneath my hands.

The train passes by something much closer than the bird in the darkness: a vertical grey line. It takes me a couple moments to realise that it’s a corner.

I turn my head to the left to find it again before the train leaves it behind. Yes, jutting out from the darkness, about three metres from the window pane of the train, is the vertical edge of some kind of enormous grey mass – some kind of structure rising far above the train.

I turn around to look at the other commuters. Their eyes are all down, on books, phones, games, food. The man by the train door has fallen asleep and keeps bowing his head, as if supplicating some invisible guest. I’m about to shout at them to look, when something else catches my eye.

Out in the darkness, more corners have appeared. Some are fainter than the first one I saw, some more defined. I look across the train, out of the opposite set of windows. More corners. Some closer, some further away. Surrounding us are buildings, going on for miles and miles.

It’s like… a city.

I lean even closer to the window and peer downwards. Between the gaps in the thick, glinting metal tracks is not gravel, or dirt, but more darkness. A sheer drop.

Light fills the train, I cover my eyes with my hand. We emerge into daylight.

Fir tree branches thwack against the train window. A dense Autumn forest fills my view, dusky shadows between the trees.

I look back the way we came. A brick tunnel with lumps of moss and common weeds sprouting from the cracks shrinks behind, with an opening just wide enough to fit a Southeastern train.

When I face forward again, the view has changed to an expanse of swaying wheat. Next comes a small church with a graveyard of sunken headstones, then a fenced-in allotment, then a street of pebbledash houses, then a downhill road behind the platform of a station we’re not stopping at.

I sit still, waiting. Waiting to wake up. Waiting for a second sighting of that place. Either, just so long as I can be certain of something, one way or the other.

We pass into another tunnel and I gasp when the train goes dark, but it’s out into daylight again in seconds. A short five-metre tunnel. Nothing more.

Soon enough, the black metal scaffolding of Craydon’s gasometers and its main retail park, oozing cars from every parking-lot-pore, slide into view, as the train arrives at my home station.

The woman who was reading stands up and makes her way out of the train. I force myself to do the same, rising to my feet, knees shaking and weak, like I’ve just climbed down a mountain.

I walk down the aisle and almost put my foot down the gap as I step off the train.

Once on the platform, I turn and stand to watch the train pass, until the last carriage is gone.

I stand there for a moment longer. But there are no answers.

Then I turn around and begin my walk home.

Melissa Hicks

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