“If you know what you’re listening for, and you concentrate hard enough, you’ll hear them up here, away from it all. We’ll see them.”
I listen. A fox barks.

1

A tabby was sleeping by four ripening peaches as its feeder asked: do Jesuits make the best writers?

‘Your eyes are moist’.

His uncle was famous for shooting his thumb off while climbing a stile. He’d show you the result, given half a chance, thin hard hands cupped and shaking, the left side whittled, a seam of scarring. 

Lord Serriorth’s name originated on an island far to the west. It related to anger, and he embraced that without even knowing the fact. He was simply a furious person, from the moment he woke in the morning, until the last moment he fell into bed, huffing, puffing and enraged about something or other.

My Mistress heard that the Queen shoots a longbow and has set herself to the same. As we tread the frozen river, ice all about us like the blue-white wastes of the underworld, I pull my cloak tighter to my shoulders.

All the seas are one creature. Of molten metal, iron-coloured, she has tsunamis for claws and white wave-crests for ears. Your ship rolls on her uncountable shoulders.

A girl’s scream stills two dozen sieving hands. The sound carries across the sand flats and salt water pools, catching in the cliffs that confine the bay. Women, previously bent double and scattered along the shore, cluster around the girl.

While rinsing the pink gravel from the fish tank, I sneak a handful into my mouth. The rounded stones rattle around my teeth, massaging my tongue, before tickling their way down my throat.

Sylvie said, if you want to make a baby, you have to break some eggs. It never became entirely apparent what she meant by that, but, in the manner of people desperate for a solution to an unsolvable problem, we returned to her time and again nonetheless.

At the beginning, it was just little things, like where did he put his watch or what was the name of that guy he went to school with. Nothing out of the ordinary. Now, his father’s voice often trailed off mid-speech.

I think of Manhattan, New York, as I put my daughter to sleep. I think of ascending the face of a building, like paper caught in an exchange of air. My thoughts are blockish, grey. Patterned into the tight, potent space between buildings.

The rain was still siling down as the taxi pulled up outside Rayners. Lucy guided Nanna Shaz and Nanna Pat out the car and into the pub whilst Mam paid the fare from Chants Ave. They’d been to the funeral of Lucy’s last surviving Great Nanna.

Winter visited the parish early that year. The folk in that part of the world were poor at the best of times, and the snap of cold brought with it a slew of further hardships.

A priest, a rabbi and an atheist walk into a bar and not one of them is in the mood for a joke. 

            They had decided ahead of time to stagger their arrivals and lie about where they were going.

I need to piss but I can’t take the stairs by the microfiche room or else I’ll see Kinchin again. Oh, he’ll be there, skulking in the stairwell, waiting to follow me up two flights of stairs, down a drab corridor and into the bathroom.

Ghost hunt No: 22. Saturday 28th January

Written by Bob

Organisation: Saltings-on-Sea Ghostbusters

Here the juniper trees slope sideways from the strong sea air, reaching out toward the water. And at certain times in the summer, you can walk along the beach path to see hundreds of cocooned caterpillars, awaiting their turn as butterflies.

People can be so unexpected. One minute they’re all over you asking questions. Then, puff, they’re gone and there’s no-one to listen to the trickle of words that you count as conversation.

Woke abruptly to discover I’d been hauling a sledge alone across the Antarctic Plateau again. Cramp in my leg from sleeping too still, but my body’s fizzes like lemonade’s in my veins.

He came back at 3.15. An innocuous return, a knock at the door.
He stood with his head against the door frame, hair matted and skin grey as stone. His clothes were streaked with mud and soaked through. I pulled the door wider. He came in.

‘Goodbye, mother. Don’t come out.’ My daughter pauses in the doorway, stooping down to press her powdered cheek against my cheek. Then she takes her own daughter’s hand, and walks off. Neither one of them looks back.

Many years later, as he faced the wall of thorns, a young prince was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him aside and told him he was to be married.

It isn’t me, it’s you, he says, so I leave behind the love of my life at sixteen and travel to England to live with my uncle and his family. My drunk father gets easily coerced by his I-know-better brother to send me across the world.

Livvy and Hugh travelled by ferry from Nice to Calvi and rented a tiny bergerie in the northern mountains of La Balagne. It was high season, and the woman in the tourist office told them they were lucky to find anywhere.

Lying. Weeping. Falling. Sinking. Drying. Crumpling. Desiccating. Settling. That’s how it happened, the slow slip from stoved-in head to clean white bones. And now, here I am. Waiting.

We had two special weekends coming up. Weekend one was Blackpool. Six of us. The lads only. Weekend two was Stig coming out of prison. Weekend one was excitement. Weekend two was dread.

Step 1: Wash

Run a bath. Clean the bath first, because you’ve seen the criticism around baths. ‘Bathtubs are full of germs!’ and ‘you’re sitting in your own squalor!’. Yeah, you acknowledge, baths are kind of gross. Cover the tub in bleach.

Pavel’s hands were sticky with drink. His fist slammed the bar. Another pint.
“That’s how you kill a rabbit,” someone said.
The pronouncement, made in a loud baritone, broke through the haze of Pavel’s third ale.

She can feel that Isabelle hasn’t shaved her armpits recently. This surprises her. The fuzz of it burns Kate’s hands as she drags Isabelle into the bathroom. It’s easier than expected. The hardest part is getting her over the side of the bathtub.

It always starts with something small. I’m in the kitchen, putting away the shopping, when a raspberry tumbles from its punnet. Rolls across the granite kitchen counter. Drops onto the parquet floor. A shiver travels up my spine.

Ten years. Oscar and I have been as thick as thieves for ten years.
We were both young, fairly decent looking fellows when we first met, with sharp eyes and white teeth that were still all there. Don’t get me wrong, we’re not completely decrepit now, but time hasn’t been generous to us.

The road from school to Grandma’s house was treeless and the wind blew my skirt in every fierce direction. But when I got to the forest, it swallowed me.

Food is what you need. Water’s what you need. Help is what you need. A shit is what you need. Oxygen’s what you need. A mate is what you need. A good groom’s what you […]

Bal Kishan is a hitchhiker standing by the motorway, waiting to hitch a ride. He is a young boy in khaki shorts and a t-shirt with a torn hem. A car stops. He opens the […]

He’s drawn a tiger in crayon. White paper shows through the orange and black stripes. The eyes are slanted and green, malevolent as poison ivy. Broccoli trees surround the tiger, and a sky-blue river meanders from one side of the page to the other.

Mam’s hands are scorched by time, raised blue veins crisscrossed over parched skin. She has a misshapen little finger where Da once brought down the blunt handle of his knife when she reached for the salt.

Their first spring together was…unexpected. He held a fear of women, of being caught in a lie. Don’t you agree? Don’t you love me? Am I enough? Will you stay?