HISSAC Highlands and Islands Short Story Association

Taking first prize in our 2007 competition is a remarkably inventive story by Lexie Fox, which combines the anatomy of the fugu fish with the disintegration of a relationship, not to mention topical tips on exotic poisons!

Deep End Dining

It is pyrotechnic dining, eating on a tightrope, fish as a circus stunt, no net.
   See chef Motoyuki Akahori bow, his serious smile, a flash of bleached teeth. Notice the imperceptible twitch of his wrist that sends the fugu hiki spinning up behind his back, high, higher, sharp, pointed, descending in a tumbling, glittering tornado, till he snatches the knife handle out of the air and the flinching diners remember how to breathe.
   See the fish on the marble slab, bloated, scaleless, still pulsing, grunting. For the torafugu – the tiger blowfish – it’s a toss-up. Is it death by a thousand cuts or death by letting the oxygen in?
   And for the diners?

* * *

Perdita isn’t thinking about fugu fish.
   She is preparing sashimi for her husband, Adam. It may be the last meal they will ever eat together, but she hopelessly, proactively wishes for a new beginning. It may be too late. She knows this, but she does not let herself believe it.
   Perdita is using her grandmother’s boning knife, a sliver of silver worked against a carborundum stone over the years into a thin smile. On a wooden board that will forever smell of fish she’s laid out pale farmed salmon cutlets, purple meaty tuna, and sea bass, flaky, grey, stuck with needle-bones.
   She cuts the fish. She fans the raw slices immaculately on a flat square tray. She remembers.
   She remembers being eighteen, their first real date (they’d slept together twice, but she hadn’t met his friends). She remembers a window like an endless waterfall of black glass. They studied themselves in it, her in a beaded vest, 501s, cheap Indian jewellery, Adam behind her, stooping slightly, setting his head on top of hers so she looked like a strange two-headed creature. She remembers the downward pressure of his chin on her skull, the painful pleasure of it.
   She’d never been inside a Japanese restaurant. The shoes in their cubby-holes at the entrance, the low tables, mats and cushions, the shininess of gold and black lacquer, the square precision of it all was marvellous to her, exotic. The other guests in their dining pit were old university friends of Adam’s. One was a camp gay man, another a Chinese physicist. The women – Erica, Beryl, Pauline, Ursula – seemed hard, sophisticated, knowing. They wore short skirts that rode up as they squatted, serious chunky earrings, thick bands of eyeliner, toenails painted blue or brown.
   As to Perdita, she was to be the entertainment, of a sort. Adam displayed her wonder, her naïveté and youth with a flourish. She was perfectly capable of wielding chopsticks, but for him she pretended helplessness, so he would snake a strong arm around her back, insinuate it against her breast and manipulate her hand with his, raising it to her mouth. He fed her morsels of raw fish smeared with eye-watering horseradish. He wiped her mouth with her napkin in her hand, in his. He was her Geppetto. He tipped hot shots of saké into her. And for him she became soft, silly, ignorant.
   Perdita wonders if Adam remembers this, or whether he’d say, “but I’ve been to so many restaurants. How am I expected to remember one night?” or “I can’t believe how poorly educated you were – you pronounced Nietzsche Night-chee and thought the Kyoto treaty was a Japanese dessert. I was embarrassed by you” or (with a weary sigh), “Yes, I remember. That fluffy act was attractive … when you were eighteen.”
   But still, this night, she prepares sushi for him. The room is almost ready, the candles yet unlit.
   Perdita lays out six limp grey prawns by the stove top. She pours a golden pan of oil, sifts cornflour and baking powder for the tempura batter.
   She washes her hands at the sink, raises them to her face. The smell of fish lingers and sticks.

* * *

A deadly dose of fugu tetrodotoxin can dance on the head of a pin, a hundred thousand times more potent than cocaine, a thousand times more lethal than cyanide.
   So chef Motoyuki Akahori coolly evaluates his audience, at their waiting horseshoe table.
   Neophytes! He dismisses a groom and his supporters out for a prenuptial dare, swaying slightly. The pair of pale American reporters twitching for the notepads in their back pockets hold more interest – how strange men are that they would rather face death than die of embarrassment. And the not-so-young businessman with the exquisite companion – see how she has turned her bowl over, placed an elegant hand on top. See the man turn it back, capture her hand in both of his, look into her face, long and deep.
   It is the fat Buddha-man with the greedy eyes who concerns him. One such gourmand once did the rounds of every fugu restaurant in Tokyo in a single afternoon. Luckily Motoyuki Akahori was not the last to serve him.
   See the chef’s fingers flex and stretch. They dance to the silent keening of the fish.
   Let the chef wait. Let him concentrate, calculate the exact titration of poison that will gift his guests a faint tingling of the lips, a dry mouth, a heightened, mellow euphoria.
   For without that buzz, fugu flesh is pale, bland, subtle as the fragrance of spring rain dripping upon a stone.

* * *

There was nothing subtle in the way Perdita discovered about the affair.
   It was a simple mistake, answering Adam’s mobile while he was in the shower. The unsubtlety lay in the calculated pause of the caller after Perdita’s “Hello”, the deliberate, husky “Adam darling, is that you?” when it so patently wasn’t.
   Ursula.
   Intellectual Ursula with the cap of severe black hair, the parrot nose, her faint feral grubbiness covered up by heavy perfume – Tendre Poison – which gave Perdita a headache.
   “But Ursula’s so unattractive,” she said to Adam. “I can’t believe you like her.”
   “Who said anything about liking?”
   Perdita does not, cannot understand. She knows herself capable in her working life – “a safe pair of hands”, one who “gets things done”. So why, in this most important, intimate area of her existence, does she try so hard, yet stumble every time? Why do those safe hands turn to butterfingers when she tries to hold her man?
   Three weeks is a long time sleeping on a sofa with a wooden strut that digs into your back. Three weeks is perilously close to the cliff top where punishment falls into habit. Any longer, and the punisher may become the punished, while the punished walks away.
   So today Perdita has decided to forgive Adam.
   She broke their morning silence. “Will you be home on time tonight?”
   “London Transport willing, I suppose so. Do you care?”
   She expects him at seven twenty-five.
   At a quarter past seven Perdita runs a bath – not hot enough to flush or sting. She adds sweet almond oil, a splash of Allure. She piles her hair up off her shoulders. She fastens heavy knots of gold in her ears. She used to love his look of concentration as he fumbled with clumsy thumbs, trying to remove the butterflies, trying not to hurt her, his massage of her reddened lobes. “Used to” … that most final of marital tenses.
   At twenty past seven she undresses. There’s scented soap, a chair and soft towels by the side of the bath. She turns off the light in the hall, leaves the bathroom door ajar. When she squints through the crack she can see a line of golden light stretching across the floor to the front door of the flat.
   Then Perdita climbs into the water and waits. It’s not three weeks, three months, more like three years since Adam last soaped her back. She misses the surreptitious slipping of his hands on wet oiled flesh, around, between. She feels infinitely, languorously alive.
   But Adam doesn’t come. Still he doesn’t come. Perdita begins to shrivel and to chill.
   She dries herself. She dresses in new black lace underwear, underwired, lifting the slight droop of her breasts. She wears a shiny black kimono robe patterned with dragons. She doesn’t put her hair up Geisha-style, with crossed chopsticks. That would be too much.
   At twenty-five past nine she hears a clatter of dropped keys at the door.

* * *

In the green murk of the restaurant tank, two torafugu circle endlessly, suspiciously. Their mouths are sewn shut with ugly zigzags of black thread. Otherwise one would slash at another with needle teeth, and both, attacker and attacked, would perish in the tainted water.
   See that intrepid diner tap on the glass with his chopstick. Watch the nearer fish twitch, flex, swallow, swell, pump itself to four times the size – a tiger-blimp with cold black eyes and straining lips. See its companion cower at the transformation.
   Earlier there were three.
   Chef Motoyuki Akahori has chosen his fish with care. He has evaluated its age, speed, aggression, its state of sexual arousal. A fugu chef must train for seven intensive years to obtain his licence; many fail under the pressure. One miscalculation, one slip of a razor hiki, and the bridegroom, the reporters, the lovers and the gourmet would be paralysed, asphyxiated, dead (or in a death-like coma).
   With a squeeze and a waft of his knife he must temper the flesh with exactitude – less than a taste, less than a scent, merely a breath of venom. But first he must make his fish safe by removing the toxin sacs.
   The poison of the fugu fish is stored in the sexual organs, male and female, and a little in the skin. But its true potency lies in the liver.

* * *

Adam has taken in drink on his circuitous journey home. It is obvious in the care with which he moves and speaks, the slight foxing of his eyes.
   “You’re late,” Perdita can’t help saying.
   “So?” Adam looks down at her. “I didn’t realise I was that late. You’re ready for bed?”
   And, just like that, the tawdry glamour-spell of the kimono fades. It’s only a dressing gown.
   Perdita opens the fridge door; it cools the sudden heat of her face. There’s a slim green bottle of Pinot Gris chilling as an aperitif, fresh and lemony.
   She offers Adam the bottle. But he has already dropped a couple of ice-cubes into a heavy cut glass, and poured three deep fingers of scotch.
   “I need to get out of this suit,” he says, and heads for the bedroom, glass in hand. “I’m not too bothered about dinner. I had a sandwich at the station.”
   Perdita goes into the lounge. Slowly, automatically, she removes the clingfilm from the sashimi, from the sushi rice, moulded and tied like little gifts on the smoked glass coffee table. She pours dark pools of teriyaki and soy into shallow bowls. She adds green coils of fiery wasabi, piquant flakes of ginger.
   There is no better company than Adam when he’s interested. Perdita has prepared a list of suitable topics in case the conversation flags: small anecdotes, self-deprecatory incidents, questions to forestall his boredom. She revises them silently in her mind.
   She settles the arrangement of the flowers, plumps two floor cushions. She pours steaming water into an ice bucket and sets the saké to warm.
   Then Perdita lights the candles. They are banked around the room, nightlights in saucers and ashtrays, taller candles in glasses, in candlesticks and vases, on plates and trays. She lights them with a taper, starting at the back, and as she bends, she loops her long hair away from the flames with her hand.

* * *

Watch the virtuosity of chef Motoyuki Akahori. His knifework is blinding in its speed and dexterity.
   The last grunt of the fish is silenced in a single disembowelling slash. The diners cannot see how expertly he skins and fillets, scrapes and discards. The silver blade works faster than their eyes can follow.
   See the evenness of the slices, as knife and flesh fly together in the air. See them fall into an intricate, ironic pattern of petals – a chrysanthemum, the flower of death – slices thin as cigarette papers, so fine that the picture on the plate can be read through them.
   And if the chef is very skilled and very quick (as this one is), the flesh will yet retain a muscle memory, and the pearlescent slivers will twitch and lift upon the plate.
   A garnish of limesprouts, purple hanaho petals and grated radish wreaths the centre – bright flowers on a cold grey grave.
   How can one not trust such craft and care, such artistry?
   Chef Motoyuki Akori bows to the bridegroom, to the American reporters, the lovers and the gastronome.
“Enjoy,” he says.

* * *

Perdita looks up from lighting the last tea-light.
   Adam is standing in the doorway, absurdly young in his mild confusion, his light evening stubble. He’s wearing a blue polo shirt and jeans. The golden hair on his arms glints in the candlelight. She longs to smooth it flat, to hold his hand against her cheek.
   Perdita comes close, and he touches her under the chin, lifts her face to him. It’s going to be all right, she suddenly knows. It’s all good. It will work.
   “What’s all this, then?” he asks quietly. He gestures at her, at the room. “All this … stuff?”
   “Don’t you remember?”
   “Not like this.”
   Perdita stands beside him in the doorway. Her magic room of seduction, of apology, of commemoration has turned into a horrendous embarrassment. She wishes herself away.
   She sees it now through his eyes, the banks of votive candles in their mismatched pots, overblown chrysanthemums bleeding crimson petals onto the carpet, vigil seats. And in the centre the dark rectangular coffin, crowded with funeral meats, with unguents in bowls, with dead white flakes and green wasabi worms, waiting hopelessly for the visit of the sin-eater.
   She looks at Adam. She is suddenly conscious of her half-nakedness, the opened gown, her white breasts offered on the black lace shelves of her bra. She pulls her robe closed and clutches at it with both hands.
   Adam places his palms together and bows lightly. “Ah, so.” He looks at her. He looks at the room, at the tomb-table.
   There is a flash of white teeth as his thin lips curl an elegant smile.
   “Ah, so,” he says, and bows again. “Cold fish.”

<top>

"Does he like to sit by the calm blue wave?
Or to sleep and snore in a dark green cave, or a grott,
The Akond of Swat?”
Edward Lear

THE MADMAN
By Isabelle Llasera (Joint Second Prize)

The madman looks towards the mountains in my back. Not, I think, at anything in particular, just at the air that we never think about unless it whirls and wraps itself around our bodies. And then it’s the forgotten waste in the village we fight against. Dried leaves, twigs, bits of glass, of tiles, confetti, empty cans, plastic bags rattling, swirling up, swishing past. But the air is very still today. I see he is holding his usual vigil on the quiet emptiness, leaning against a wall on the step of my neighbour’s doorway. I slow down my pace a little as I approach, watching. His eyes pause onto mine and come alive, round, keen, shimmering.
         “I am so sorry about what happened. Your sister now! After all the rest!” I smile briefly in his direction, look away and press on, not wanting to hear more. I have no sister. I hurry to the market square, past the war memorial and pop over to the chemist’s to buy some aspirin.
         He has turned around now, away from the mountains. His body is tense, slightly inclined, his arms stiff against his legs, a mime’s illustration of expectation. I must have been on his mind for the whole of the fifteen minutes I was gone, so eagerly he smiles at me as I get nearer. “I’m so sorry. I’m mistaken. Of course, it’s not your sister but your uncle.” His eyes are liquid, his smile huge. Is he telling me that life holds endless promises? Neither of my two estranged uncles has set foot in the village for at least twenty years. I hurry along.
         I have seen him around for as long as I can remember. He must be in his fifties now, but his grief, whatever causes it, his life, mine or the one he has created for me, is as bewildering and irresistible as a child’s. He too must have seen me all his life but he has never given in to the cosy chatter of village encounters. He either ignores me or he expresses his deepest sympathy for the tragedies that hit me in his mind. More often than not though, I arouse in him no compassion. Nothing. Nothing at all.
         I was gone from the village for a few years once, lured away to fight battles that were to retain distant pieces of the country within the republic, and give purpose to my life. Shortly after I returned, he rushed up to me near the grocer’s and thanked me for having been there on that “terrible day”. “I will never forget what you and your father did,” he said. “Yes, when was it? Time does fly, doesn’t it?” I mumbled, trying to gather more details on my family’s generosity. “It’s the least we could do in the circumstances,” I managed, striving to pull out unbroken threads of memories. But they remained in a messy tangled heap of bits and pieces. When he had chirpily trotted up to me, I had nearly hugged him, so familiar was his face. It was as part of my childhood landscape as were the war memorial, the mountains in the west and the stooping figures of the old ladies I had been forced to kiss as a child, but whose full names I had never known. They had nicknames, sometimes first names and weird little anecdotes attached to them. Limpy was said to have been a beauty in her days and beaten up by a rival, which accounted for her limp. Greta, who, after the kiss, touched my cheek with a crooked finger heavy with yellow stones, had soft white curls and, people whispered, a German father. The North Sea wind whirled around a little girl with long sandy plaits as I stood there with the whispers in my ears, watching the white curls.
         When I came back after those years away, the republic had lost its largest piece across the sea and I, a finger. Limpy and Greta’s backs had arched a little further. “Hello there. And how’s Henry today? Isn’t the wind freezing cold? Much worse than this time last year, isn’t it? Oh well, I must be on my way. Look after yourself,” they said. And the old ladies, and the sight of the war memorial on the square, and the madman rushing up to me that day, had cast a hazy pall over the years in between the time I had left and the time I had returned. The cracks in the walls had widened, bits of grey plaster had fallen off and shutters had been closed. But plaster gets swept away and cracks and closed shutters go unnoticed, or remain unspoken of in the village. As had gone my absence.
         The old ladies aren’t around anymore. One after the other, they went missing. And as they went, as lightly as sparrows drop, gone were the nicknames, gone the funny stories, along with the trotting around. I had thought them here forever, like the clouds that gather on the mountains when the wind dies out in the hot summer evenings. But they vanished, as did the young men whose names are inscribed on the war memorial, as do the events inside the vessel of the madman’s mind. So, that day shortly after I returned, I just smiled and left him there, as the only memory that unravelled without a split or a knot was that he was not someone I normally talked to. I vowed to find out about that “terrible day” that must have fallen into oblivion in the turmoil of my life’s past few years. But somehow, I never did. Or I don’t think I did. For who was left to ask? It was so long ago.
         Some days, when I rush around, busying myself with this and that, filling time with endless things that push and pull me here and there (I must dash and buy some grated cheese, I’d better mend that door, plane it down a bit, I simply must go and take these empty bottles down to the glass bin) I see him up to six or seven times. He stands in a doorway, often the one opposite my house and stares at the empty air towards the mountains. In winter, he wears brown corduroy trousers and a grey woollen coat with the collar turned up over his long straight hair, in summer, checked Bermuda shorts and moccasins. He is well-dressed, even, to a certain extent, fashionably dressed as fashion goes in the village. I wonder who, if anyone, is behind the scene.
       When dust and confetti swirl in the streets, he too dashes here and there, stiff and intent, from the market square to the public garden past the war memorial, the pillar rooted in the heart of the village. If I were a visitor to the village, if I weren’t aware of the endless patterns of his moves, I would think him a very busy man indeed, those days when there’s whirling and howling in the air. And when, up on someone’s doorstep, he stands, arms like wooden sticks along his body, fists pressed against his legs, the tension on his face muscles, the flickering in his feverish eyes are signs that he will soon be gone, as if on a mission, triggered off somewhere by a matter of great urgency, usually to another nearby doorway. He darts to and fro those days, with the dried leaves and the empty cans and the plastic bags, like a lead soldier on parade gone awry.
         But I wonder if anyone ever sees him. I don’t think I have ever spoken to anyone about him, or ever known his name or ever asked anyone what it is. I forget him the minute I don’t see him. The funny thing though, is that no one has ever talked to me about him either. Perhaps they too forget about him as soon as he’s out of sight. Or perhaps he has created tragedies for them too that they are not prepared to share, dreading who knows what. Let’s face it, if I had to ask anyone about him, I would have to mention his “madness”, to say something like, “He’s always sorry for some terrible thing that happened to me. The other day, he was sorry because of my uncle.” What if they said “Yes, I too am sorry.” Or even worse, “Oh was he? He was sorry for what happened to my uncle.” Perhaps he’s everybody’s fleeting secret, each one of us wanting to remain the sole object of his grief and of his sympathy.
         In the evening, my headache is gone and just before the grocer’s closing time, I run out again to buy some peanuts. At the end of the street, beyond the motorway, I watch the gentle upward slope of the plain darkening. In the distance, the black blue mountains stand heavy against the lightness of the sky as it turns orange. Not wanting to trivialize the splendour of the transient sight into a weather forecast, I avoid the one or two familiar silhouettes I make out on the pavement opposite. But they are quickening their step as dusk shrouds the streets, vespers call and summon no one, and walls turn into tall grey barriers.
         He is sitting now on the step of a narrow house next to the grocer’s. He is turned towards the spectacle, his elbows on his knees, his chin resting in his cupped hands. If I didn’t know his pale, wizened face, I’d think he was a big tired child. One day perhaps, he let some woe seep from within through the surface of his face and he couldn’t put it back inside. How many and whose tragedies has he gone through today? I slacken my pace on my way back and try to meet his eye, to regain his attention, to witness once again the intensity of the strange pain I sometimes bring out in him. But his eyes remain lost in infinite despair towards the mountains that now reach out to the dark red tatters of the sky and melt onto the plain. Is he petrified in amazement at the wonder of the distant fading sight? Is he paralysed within the grief that creased his face when he saw me in the morning, aching for the ghosts in my life? Or what? Have I stopped existing inside his tortuous mind for the day? But what about tomorrow? And the day after, and after?
         Above the muffled roar of the motorway, only the swallows’ swift circles and shrill whistles fill the darkness setting. I leave him there, a mere hunched shadow now. I hurry past the war memorial where his father’s name, his name, may be inscribed, for all I know. There are so many, so many names. The old ladies’ fathers’ names. Their husbands’ and their sons’ names. They get washed away by time. Mine’s not there though. I sometimes stop and check on my errands.
         The streets are empty now, a playground open to everybody’s fears. I lock myself up inside my home. As we all do in the village.

<top>

The Kielius Fish
By Clare Jay (Joint Second Prize)

            Lilia didn’t really like art; it demanded something from her – an opinion, an emotion – that she wasn’t willing to give. But beauty was said to be an antidote for grief, and sometimes beauty was to be found in art galleries, so she found herself wandering into the Kunsthalle in Kiel on a chilly April morning. Her suede boots tapped uncertainly down the shiny black floors as she looked for some beauty, her pumpkin-coloured hair bundled into an untidy ponytail. Lilia’s boss, Rebecca, had given her compassionate leave; she was hoping that Lilia would recover from her grief, which she referred to as an affliction. This affliction was preventing Lilia from functioning normally in her job as copy editor for a computing magazine. Rebecca had advised her to go somewhere she had never been before, and so Lilia had decided on Germany.
            One of the first exhibits that Lilia encountered in the Kunsthalle was a black plastic chair, cut into pieces and hanging by chains from the ceiling. There was no beauty in this. She walked past alabaster busts from Cyprus, whose empty eye-holes made her feel uneasy. Then she entered the painting gallery and came to a standstill before a large mixed-media image of a fish. Lilia had been to the aquarium on the river front the day before, and had seen bright yellow tropical fish, almost circular in form, which looked like butterflies as they flitted through the fronds.
            This fish was a bold lemon-yellow and was swimming fatly down to the right-hand corner of the canvas. Its eye was made from the silver lid of a tin can. The artist had decorated eggshells in pale greens and vivid yellows and then crushed them into the thick welts of acrylic paint to create scales. Around the fish, he had ground cigarette stubs into sweeps of purple within crimson. Lilia noticed with a sudden jolt that inside the belly of the fish the artist had pasted a black-and-white newspaper image of a foetus. The collage was entitled ‘The Kielius Fish’.
            Lilia knew that beauty could vanish at any moment. For this reason, she stored up beauty in her head. If she saw, on the way to work, a particularly green leaf splashed with water droplets which the sun was knifing into crystals, she would slow to look at the sight, taking a mental photograph. Changes in the light would make her pause as she breathed in the beauty, trying to store it somewhere within. Beauty, much like happiness, was an inconstant, she felt. It came and went. She walked as close to the painting as she dared, and stared at it unblinkingly until her eyes ran with tears.
            The painting was wild and free. It used ludicrous amounts of paint. There were colours-on-colours; white within violet, ultramarine within cadmium yellow. The foetus was the only feature leached of colour; it hung sadly inside the fish in shades of grey. Lilia looked hard, and thought she could see the mouth of the foetus opening and closing very slightly.
            There was confusion all around her, and a ringing in her ears, as though someone had hit her very hard on the head. Lilia put out a hand and felt smooth, hard coldness. Her cheek was pressed into this coldness, she realised, and the whole of her right side. The voices came again, with less echo this time, so that she opened her eyes in a painful squint. Faces were bent over her, and a warm hand was squeezing her arm.
            “Können Sie aufstehen?” asked a man with a florid face and kindly blue eyes.
            Lilia allowed herself to be helped first into a sitting position, and then gently onto her feet. She passed a hand across her face and was appalled to feel it come away wet with slime. She looked at it uncomprehendingly. Saliva, snot, tears? Her chest hurt, the breath was raw in her throat. There were four or five people standing around her, their faces sharply concerned. Lilia closed her eyes in shame. She remembered hearing a sobbing lament from a great distance. Hearing it, she had thought it unstoppable. What is wrong with that poor woman? she had thought, full of sympathy. And now here she was with signs of sobbing smeared across her face and hand. The people were talking to her again, but she didn’t understand. She opened her hands to them in despair.
            “Sorry,” she choked. “I’m sorry.”
            None of them replied – they stood respectfully, apparently waiting for her to say more – so she looked through them and walked unsteadily from the gallery, past the reception, down the steps, and finally out into the clean air.

            The following day, in the little house she had rented near the artificial lake a few minutes from the centre of Kiel, Lilia was bending to wrap a towel around her wet hair when she saw a flash of lemon-yellow in the toilet bowl. She peered closer and saw a little fish down there, as bright as a butterfly, with feathery fins. She caught her breath and watched its big silver eye as it flashed around in the water.
            Should she flush it to the sea? She imagined it swimming down the Kiel canal with joyous flicks of its tail. But she knew it would die on the way, be eaten by drain rats or battered in the U-bend pipe, its glowing yellow scales corroded by chemicals. She couldn’t flush it away. She couldn’t pee, either, knowing it was down there. How could anyone urinate onto an eye that sweet? Lilia watched the fish in concern for over a minute, and then she screwed her towel firmly onto her head and left the bathroom to use the downstairs loo instead, with its cracked plastic seat that pinched her thighs cruelly if she didn’t sit on it just right.
            She brushed her teeth with her strong flexi-form toothbrush and flossed meticulously. When she looked in on the fish later, it was nowhere to be seen. She agonised that using the flush on the other loo had somehow sucked the fish down the U-bend where it was even now fighting for its life, perhaps stuck, with its spine crushed. She remembered seeing the faintest shadow of the spines of the yellow fish in the aquarium as they swam past at eye-level, bright lights all around them. Such fragility. Lilia wrung her hands and knelt beside the loo. She picked up the bristling black lavatory brush and tapped the surface of the water with it.
            ‘Hello?’ she said. ‘Hello?’ But the fish had gone.
            That day, Lilia walked along the metallic blue length of the river, trying not to think of what might have befallen the fish. She watched two swans fighting – how vicious they could be! The water swirled and chased over their swooping white necks and hectic wings, their beaks transformed into daggers.
            Rebecca, her boss, had used the word ‘miscarriage’ during her monologue about compassionate leave, even though she knew that Lilia’s baby had been born alive. She knew! And yet it meant nothing to her. Lilia turned her platinum wedding ring on her finger, turned it roughly so that the engraving on the inside of it scratched her skin. She hadn’t seen her curly-haired, Scottish husband Samuel for three months, and the last time they had been in contact was by email, to discuss an annulment. Samuel had been in Chicago on business when their baby was born, and so he had never met him. It wasn’t really Samuel’s fault, she supposed. She released the ring and noticed that the swans were spent, and the fight seemed forgotten. They drifted apart almost casually and rocked in the wash of a passing boat.
            Lilia leaned out over the water and looked at her reflection, which broke and reformed in the waves. There were hollows around her eyes, scored in strong black lines. She felt as though she were looking through layers and layers, down into the deep throat of something. Not wanting to be swallowed up, she straightened up and walked quickly away, towards the diversion of the town.
            The next morning, the fish was in the toilet bowl again. Its movements were sluggish. Its scales had a duller sheen. Lilia looked at it and it looked at her.
            ‘You’re the Kielius fish, aren’t you?’ she said.
            She felt she would cry. It needed food, so she went out and bought a tub of tropical fish food from a pet store on the high street. When she returned, the fish was flapping weakly, its spine clearly visible now, the gleam in its eye all but gone. Lilia was about to pour the fish flakes into the water but with her hand poised above the fish, she realised that she must get it out of this water – it would be full of germs and chemicals. With a sudden sweep of understanding, Lilia knew that the Kielius fish needed to be taken to the aquarium.
            There were no plastic bags in the kitchen. Lilia looked around her desperately, her hands fluttering at her sides. There were blue ceramic soup bowls, but she wasn’t sure that she felt confident enough to walk through the streets of Kiel carrying a blue bowl with a yellow fish in it. She imagined the water slopping out with every step of the journey to the aquarium, and the fish circling nervously, gasping for breath. Still, she reasoned, there was no other way. She took one of the bowls into the bathroom and scooped the Kielius fish gently into it. The fish’s sunshine yellow scales had faded to the colour of sunflower seeds, and its silver eye was clouded, but seeing her distress, it bravely flicked its tail. As Lilia carefully refilled the bowl with fresh water from the sink, the Kielius fish opened and closed its mouth in a way that made her heart crack at the seams. Her baby had moved his mouth like that, taking short, painful gasps of air. She sprinkled rust-coloured flakes of fish food over the surface of the water but the fish didn’t respond.
            Lilia dragged on her jacket and left the house, closing the front door with her foot because her hands were full. It was a race against the inevitable now, she felt. At worst, she had about ten minutes to save the Kielius fish. At best – the very best, in the version where time stretches out of pity – she had half an hour. She knew how it would go. As she walked swiftly past the Kunsthalle, holding the bowl gingerly in her hands and avoiding the gaze of passers-by, she thought about her baby. The doctors had refused to save him. If he had been a fortnight older when he was born, they would have done all they could, they assured her. But he was too small, so undeveloped that giving him life support would condemn him to a life of severe mental and physical handicap.
            Lilia’s only son, Jamie, had been a living doll a few centimetres longer than a felt-tip pen, with a beating heart and soft fingernails. A miniature boy with plum-coloured skin and lungs too undeveloped to breathe air. What had he been thinking, to emerge so soon from his safe sac of amniotic fluid? Jamie had lain in the palm of Lilia’s hand with his knees bent like cricket’s legs and struggled to live. He had gasped; small, rough gasps which must have hurt him, but he hadn’t cried. Nor had Lilia – she had blinked the tears away furiously so that her view of him would not be blurred. They’d had so little time together, after all. The doctors had told Lilia that premature babies under 22 weeks would usually only live for about ten to fifteen minutes without medical intervention. But Jamie had survived for a full 32 minutes, his tiny mouth opening and closing as he suffocated slowly in the air.
            The steps which led down to the aquarium were uneven and Lilia had to concentrate, co-ordinating her legs without slackening her pace or spilling any more of the water. The Kielius fish was completely grey now. It lay in the bowl, barely moving. The small circle of its mouth opened and closed apathetically. Lilia ran up to the ticket booth at the aquarium and bought a ticket. The aquarium man, whose eyes were startlingly green, looked at her and the soup bowl strangely, but if he saw the Kielius fish, he didn’t comment. He let her through the turnstile and she entered the dark interior of the aquarium with its brightly lit tanks. For a moment, Lilia wondered why she was going to all this trouble to save the life of a fish. After all, death comes for each of us in the end, she reasoned. The Kielius fish might have had a good, long life already, for all she knew, whereas her beautiful foetus-child Jamie had started dying from the moment he was born. But then she saw the yellow fish, astonishing in their beauty as they darted like butterflies around the tank that they shared with a dozen plump starfish, and she knew that she had been right to come here.
            Stepping right up to the floor-to-ceiling glass of the tank, Lilia gazed and gazed at the fish. They were swimming at eye level, inches from her face, so that she felt as though she were floating. The water eddied around their swirling forms and yet there was a sense of stillness and suspense. Lilia was dazzled by the luminous yellow shapes; these fish were like bolts of sunshine.
            Holding the soup bowl firmly in both hands, she braced herself and swam forward into the aquarium, air bubbles streaming from her nostrils. The space was light and she was surrounded by free-floating yellow fish. The fish regarded her in a friendly way, as though she belonged. Pushing out strongly with her legs, she let the bowl fall and watched as the Kielius fish tumbled gracefully out. For a moment, he hesitated in the water, grey as a corpse. Then Lilia saw his gills working and the lemon colour returning to his scales. He shimmied his tail, turned briefly to shine on her with his silvery eye, and then zipped away between the fronds, bright and perfect.
            Lilia felt so light. All around her was the luminous shiver of beauty. The water cooled her head.
            She took a deep breath and swam further, out towards the open sea.

'This story can also to found in the Cinnamon 2008 Collection, 'Mint Sauce & Other Stories' , Cinnamon Press, March 2008

<top>

Dead Scorched Birds
By Helen Forbes (Highly Commended)

Forked lightning is shooting from the end of the child’s arm. There is no hand, just jagged gold, crackling and jumping, balls of sparks bouncing off the ring of pink fur that trims her sleeve. Nothing but the lightning moves. Not her arm. Not her face. Not even her eyes.

Someone speaks. Her mother. She has shining chestnut hair and sparkling white teeth. Lightning in both hands, she swirls her arms, making golden streaks in the night, dazzling circles and great swooping trails. A name, spelled out in sparkling gold. Amy.
“Look!”
Amy doesn’t look. Her eyes are still fixed on her own fire, her arm still rigid.

At the end of the garden, where the shed used to sit in a jungle of nettles, three coloured wheels are spinning on the newly-painted fence. Faster and faster, showers of coloured sparks dancing in frenzied spirals. In Amy’s hand, the lightning is fading. Frowning, she watches it die, then she drops the burned-out sparkler and runs.

“Wait, darling! Not too close.”
Amy stops at the bush. A gloved hand emerges from her sleeve, each finger a different colour, and grasps a branch. The scarf has slipped from her little oval mouth. She holds her breath but tendrils escape through the gap in her front teeth, float from her and evaporate into the freezing night.

On the fence, the Catherine Wheels splutter and die.
“This one, Dad?”
A boy. He is older than Amy and he has lifted a rocket from the metal box. He hands it to his father, then he carefully replaces the lid on the box. Together, they set the rocket in a small bucket of sand.
“Stand back, Mark.”

The night’s stars dim and disappear as the sky explodes. Beyond the fence, the solid bulk of the hill is lit up in showers of cascading colours. Again and again, the hill is lit up, the sky sprinkled with stars of gold and purple and red. The fireworks whistle and crack and bang. The noises bounce off the hill, slam against the windows, echo across the moor.

In the house next door, thumping feet on the stairs and the watching boy drops down on his bed. The door is shoved open and he shrinks from his mother’s whisky breath.
“Like bloody Beirut out there!” she hisses. “Close those curtains and get to sleep.”
But . . .
The word stops before it reaches his throat. He swallows it and tugs at the curtains. They don’t meet. Sometimes he watches the moon through the gap. Sometimes it is a pale sliver of gold, sometimes just a shadow behind bruised clouds. Sometimes he stays awake until dawn.

From the neighbours’ garden, a high pitched squeal, then a barrage of bangs that shake the whole island. The boy can get up without making the bed squeak. It hurts his chest to hold his breath so tight, but he can do it. The moon is a huge orange ball and around it white rockets of light are flashing and skittering randomly. They whistle, then they die, falling from the sky like the feathers of dead, scorched birds.

It is silent now, the orange moon shining down on the garden next door, on the giant heap of rotting wood that was once Old Alasdair’s shed. The father is crouching, fire in his hand. He touches it to the base of the heap.
“It’s not going to work,” Mark says. “It’s not, Dad.”
The man laughs, pokes some more among the wood and the fire catches.

In the room, the boy has to let his breath out. It steams up the window and he rubs at it quickly with his sleeve. By the time the window clears the fire has taken hold. Mark is gazing into the flames. His father behind him, he drapes his arms over his son’s shoulders, pulling him close against him and smiling down on him as if he is the most precious thing in the whole world.

The watching boy shivers. There is a memory in him, in his shoulders. A memory of being held close like that, warm breath on his head and his neck. A man . . . It is gone, evaporating into the night until it was never there.

They are all gathered at the fire now. The burning wood is roaring and crackling. The mother is crouching beside Amy, her arm holding her tight. Amy’s little mouth curves into a huge smile and then it’s distorted by a yawn. She sinks against her mother.

The boy turns from them. He pulls the cover up around his ears. Its thinness cannot shut out the chattering voices, carried on the still night air.

At last he hears the father tell them it is time to go in. He’s on his knees again, peeping through the gap. Their faces, as they approach their back door, have turned blue in the moonlight. Amy looks up. She stops. He hesitates, swallows, and then he waves. She stares back, then she runs into the house.

The father takes his time tidying the garden, lifting the spent fireworks, dousing the bonfire until not a spark is left, locking the shed and checking the back gate. A window creaks open. A lisping, baby voice: “Night night, Daddy.”
“Night night, sweetheart.”
He grins up at her, blows her a kiss. The window creaks shut.

The boy’s face is in the pillow, tears soaking into the lumpy stuffing, a fist in his mouth to keep the sobs in. He wishes it was Beirut. He wishes a missile would land on their council house, with its damp chill and the wind always battering the grey walls. On his mother and her hidden half-bottles and gaunt wasters of boyfriends. On the village and the fat headmaster with his prize ram and his bad breath. On their new neighbours with their perfect garden, their perfect children. Amy, blown to fluffy pink smithereens, strewn across the moor; Mark and his shining mountain bike, jet-propelled into outer space and annihilated, like one of their “superb” fireworks. The whole island, smashed to bits and scattered across the sea.
But it’s not Beirut. It is nowhere; just a tiny scrap of land crouching on the shores of the Atlantic. And now the sky is dark, the moon and stars shamed into hiding. The hill squats, black and unyielding.

He watches through the gap until the first fragments of daylight start to trickle from the sky.

<top>

The Gang of Four
By Sarah Ann Hall (highly Commended)

1973 - we are born on the same ward of the local hospital.
1976 - we tumble around nursery, all curls, rounded bellies, chubby thighs
and incessant cheer.
1984 - we meet again on the first day of secondary school - flattened curls,
long white socks, blouses still with the folds in. We find ourselves in the
same class, spend the next five years sharing every registration.
At fifteen we all have boyfriends. At sixteen we are all single and boys are
a waste of time. We stay on, take our ‘A’ levels, and then things start to
change.
Two of us fail.
Paula goes to university in Leeds. Harriet joins Glaxo down the road on
their apprenticeship scheme. Wendy stays on to repeat the year. I get a job;
re-sit in November.
That first Christmas we get together and it’s the same as always. We head
out to the cinema, traipse round town window-shopping, string out burger and
coke for two hours.
When summer comes Paula has a boyfriend and stays in Leeds to be with him.
Harriet and I work through. Wendy passes her exams and gets ready to go to
Manchester.
At Christmas we get together. Paula brings her boyfriend to meet us. Harriet
waxes on about the benefits of the pharmaceutical industry. Wendy gripes
about her studies. I watch my friends grow.
We don’t meet up for another year. Paula and Stuart are engaged. Harriet has
met Ben. Wendy has had a string of men as long as her arm. I am single
still.
Paula and Stuart graduate, announce they are to marry in October. We parade
up the aisle, Paula a picture in ivory silk, the older three cocooned in
lemon organza. Harriet and Ben are having a break. Wendy and I are single.
All three vie for the attentions of the best man. Stan has twinkly blue
eyes, a fantastic smile, looks great buttoned up in a penguin, and has a
girlfriend.
‘A girlfriend! He’s not married,’ Harriet says.
‘He might as well be,’ Wendy sulks, ‘they’ve been together since school and
are getting married next year.’
My insides tumble whenever I catch his eye. Later, when we dance, his hand
brushes my arm. My heart sings. I have never wanted anyone as much.
Within the year Paula is pregnant. A month after telling everyone, she
isn’t. No matter, it wasn’t to be, they can try again.
For my twenty-fifth I arrange a party. Paula and Stuart are both busy
working for Amnesty International, putting the world right. Harriet and Ben
are together again, developing drugs that will save the world. Wendy is an
artist with a great portfolio and a couple of solo exhibitions planned. I am
single, PA in a bank in the city, a flat of my own, minted.
We meet at a restaurant in town, all coming back to my place after. We drink
and reminisce and tell of what our life has become. The morning after we
promise to do this more often.
A year later both Paula and Harriet are pregnant and Wendy is going to
America to work for a year.

In the months before my thirtieth birthday I wonder about repeating the
experience of my twenty-fifth. Harriet and Ben have two sons. Paula and
Stuart are childless. Wendy is finally coming home. I am in the same job
with a bigger flat and more savings in the bank. If I don’t rein us in now,
we will spread to the far oceans and never swim back to each other.
In the restaurant, as I book the table, I recognise a face at the bar.
‘Stan?’
He smiles and my heart flutters.
‘Hang on,’ he holds up his hand. ‘I’ll remember in a minute.’
I order a juice. I should be getting back to work, but appointments and
meetings are the last thing on my mind.
‘Alison. Paula and Stuart’s wedding. The sexiest of the bridesmaids.’
I smile, my body a radiator.
‘God, that must be eight years ago?’ he says. ‘And you’re sexier than ever.’
‘You don’t look bad yourself. Are you waiting for someone?’
‘No. Just had lunch. What are you doing here?’
‘Booking a table for my birthday. How’s your wife?’
‘Good. We have two daughters now. How about you?’
‘Securely on the shelf.’
‘I don’t believe it. You’re so gorgeous, they must be banging down the
door.’
He makes me feel so good I want to run away with him, but words are cheap.
‘I obviously pervade a negative aura.’
‘Alison, you’re delightful. I bet your boss says so.’
‘He does, but he’s fifty-two and happily married. Are you working in town
now?’
‘No, came up on the train this morning. I’ve a hotel booked and another
meeting tomorrow.’
I swallow. Desire floods through me.
‘Are you doing anything this evening?’ he asks. ‘Can I take you to dinner?’
‘That would be lovely,’ I say just as my phone rings. It’s the boss, in a
flap. He knows I haven’t taken a lunch hour in six months, and apologises
for dragging me back to the office, but he can’t find the papers for the
meeting that’s starting in five minutes. I down my drink, give Stan my card.
‘I’ll book somewhere and give you a ring,’ he says.
In the office I lay my hands on the relevant folder immediately and send
Richard along to his meeting relieved and happy. The afternoon passes in a
daze as I email Wendy, Harriet and Paula with the arrangements for my
birthday and wait for Stan to call. I am home before he does.
‘I’m so sorry. After you left I ran into a couple of old rugby chums and the
afternoon disappeared. I’m free now if you’d like to meet.’
‘I’m home now,’ I try to keep the bitterness from my voice.
‘Oh, and it’s a bit of trek for you to come back into town now, isn’t it?’
‘That doesn’t matter.’
‘No, I’m being selfish. I don’t want to put you out.’
‘You could come to me. I’ll make you dinner.’
‘That would be great. Only-‘
‘I’ve got a spare room.’
I will him to say no.
‘Are you sure?’ he says and my insides collapse.
He is with me within the hour, suit-bag on shoulder, briefcase in hand. I do
chicken breasts in a Stilton and cream sauce. He’s brought wine as way of
apology and present. We eat. I drink sparingly, needing to keep my wits for
fear of making a fool of myself. When he kisses my cheek goodnight I want to
wrap my arms around him and pull his lips to mine.
I sleep fitfully, dreaming we are together. We part the next morning at
Oxford Circus.
The following weekend it’s my birthday. Paula looks thin and drawn. She and
Stuart have had nine miscarriages. She is thinking of giving up, thinking of
IVF, wondering if she has sticky blood. Harriet is a picture of health and
contentment. She has given up work to look after the boys. Wendy has
backache, a hang over from three years spent on a futon in a draughty flat.
She’s been home four months, back in a normal bed and a normal routine, but
the back isn’t improving.
‘Try a chiropractor.’ Harriet says.
‘No, she needs an osteopath,’ Ben grins. They delight in amiable argument.
‘What about having a scan?’ I say.
‘But there’s nothing wrong with me.’
‘How long have you had persistent backache? Six months with no let up
whether you exercise or rest or take pills. I know I only shuffle papers for
a living, but that isn’t normal. You’re too young for permanent backache.’
‘And you’re too old not to have a man,’ she says.
‘You haven’t got a man,’ I squeal.
‘No, but at least I’ve had some.’
‘So have I.’
‘Hang on,’ Ben says, ‘she’s gone red. Who is he?’
‘There isn’t anyone,’ I say.
‘No, but you’ve got your eye on someone.’ It’s Paula, who is so lost in her
body’s dysfunction that she clutches at anyone else’s pleasure.
‘I had someone round for dinner, but he’s married, and he slept in the spare
room.’
They all boo and hiss and say I’m useless.
Paula and Stuart come back to my place. Harriet and Ben go home to relieve
the babysitter. Wendy goes off into the night having promised to meet
friends at a club.
Paula and I sit into the night.
‘Harriet never even wanted children,’ she says. ‘And then she turned into a
bloody earth mother - all reusable nappies, breast feeding and whatever the
babies want.’
‘She’s pregnant again, you know.’
‘I thought so. Staying off the wine was a bit obvious. Why didn’t she say?’
‘Probably so as not to upset you.’
‘It’s the pussyfooting around by the fertile trying not to hurt my feelings
that’s upsetting. It’s so unnecessary and arrogant. So, I can’t have
children.’
‘You don’t know it’s your fault.’
‘I do. Stuart has a son.’
I stare, reach out and hold her hand.
‘A one-night stand when we were at university,’ she tells me. ‘We had a row,
he went off and got pissed.’
‘How long have you known?’
‘Forever. Stuart’s supported him all the time.’
‘Why didn’t you tell us?’
‘I didn’t want Harriet to rub my nose in it.’
‘She wouldn’t have.’
‘Wouldn’t she? Who’s your married man?’
It isn’t a moment to prevaricate.
‘Stan.’
‘What, our best man Stan?’
‘Yes.’
‘Jesus.’
‘We haven’t done anything. I doubt he’s interested. But I think he’s
gorgeous and fantastic and if he wasn’t married I’d throw myself at him.’
‘Jesus,’ she says again.
‘Sorry if I’ve shocked you.’
‘It isn’t that. They nearly didn’t marry. Because of you.’
‘What?’
‘After our wedding he told Melissa he’d met someone else and wanted to call
things off.’
‘But we’d only danced.’
‘He came and stayed with us after our honeymoon,’ she says as if she hasn’t
heard. ‘And then Melissa was pregnant and he did the decent thing. Do you
love him?’
‘I don’t know him,’ I frown, ‘but I fancy the pants off him.’
We giggle, rolling around on the settee until Stuart shouts at us to shut
up.
A month after the party Wendy emails to say her GP is sending her for a
scan. Another month passes and Stan phones.
‘I’m coming to London. I have to see you.’
‘I don’t think that’s a good idea.’
‘I’ve booked a hotel room. Come as soon as you finish work tomorrow. I can’t
wait for us to get to your place.’ He gives me the address and room number.
I commit both to memory.
The following day I walk into his room. He is in jeans and t-shirt, the most
dressed down I’ve ever seen him, and the most desirable. He pulls me to him
and kisses me. My body is on fire. He pulls my hair, I bite his lip. We are
heading for the bed and ecstasy when my phone rings.
I ignore it, my hands probing the definition of his back. It rings again,
then a bombardment of texts. I pull away from my nearly lover to switch off
the damned thing and accidentally press show. A text screams out that one of
us has cancer. I spend the evening in Stan’s arms, crying. When I wake he is
still cradling me and our allotted time is up.
‘Call me,’ he says. ‘Please.’
I smile weakly.
‘I don’t care if she knows,’ he says, brushing my face with a finger. His
lips hover over mine and for the first time since the message I want him,
but we have overrun.
In the lift he holds my hand. In the foyer he walks ahead of me.

We are thirty-one. Harriet and Ben have two sons and a daughter. Paula and
Stuart are pregnant. Wendy has a new show opening and the steroids make her
look fantastic.
We are thirty-two. Harriet and Ben are rowing over custody. Paula and Stuart
have had a daughter who spent three months in intensive care before dying,
and Paula is pregnant again. Wendy is putting on a brave face.
We don’t get together anymore. Paula is the only one who knows about Stan. I
don’t call and hear nothing. I next see him at Wendy’s funeral, a distant
friend pulled in by the tragedy. He stands at the graveside, head bent,
anger flaring in his eyes. Later, back at Wendy’s parents’ he pulls me into
a bedroom when I try to leave my coat.
‘You didn’t call,’ he spits in my face.
‘Neither did you.’
‘You’re just a tease.’
‘You’re a married man.’
‘I’d leave them all tomorrow if you wanted.’
I thump his chest. He catches my arm and reels me in. His lips are on mine,
my hands pulling the tie from his neck, unbuckling his belt.
We have sex in Wendy’s old room. Survivor’s sex, adulterous sex, the best
I‘ve ever known.
He comes home with me after the wake. We make slow love, taking the time to
undress and examine each other’s bodies. Sleep is long in coming.
We are thirty-three. Harriet and Ben are barely talking. She has taken the
children to her mother’s. Paula and Stuart have healthy twins. Wendy lives
on through her work. Stan and I are trying to be together as his wife fights
tooth and nail to keep him. And we four, we pretty four, will never be
together again.

<top>

DON’T TRUST THEM, DANIEL
By Kath Kilburn (Highly Commended)

I’m too daft to lie, my mother used to say, and anyway I’m not that kind of person. I didn’t think you’d like me if you knew I was older. I told you lots of true things about me, but…there’s always a ‘but’. They say that, don’t they? Mum used to say I’d always be ‘the butt’. Two tees, she said. It was her joke.
It really was me in that snap. I wasn’t cheating, honest. It was a few years ago, taken at school, that’s all. I didn’t have another. You said I was handsome. No-one else ever said it except you.
You didn’t send me a photo, but you sounded lovely. Soft. I pictured your wavy hair, green eyes (I think you said green - green or brown.) And you were kind. So lovely.
It’s the noises that bother me. Nothing else. The noises – I don’t like them. Just because I stay in and sit at my computer, that doesn’t make me a weirdo. You understood. I’ve heard them call me that. Sometimes they shout it through the letterbox. Kids. But I’m not.
I wanted to smell your hair. I like smells, nice ones. And to see you in your uniform. Scrubbed face. Shiny black shoes. Smell you. Somewhere away from the noises. It’s the tick, tick ones I don’t like. They do my head in. I put the alarm clock under the bed so I couldn’t hear it ticking. Mum said I was a funny lad. I don’t know why that’s funny. I’ll tell you what else as well – those crossings that beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep to tell you to cross. You can see the traffic’s stopped but they go bloody beep, bloody beep, bloody beep, bloody beep, bloody beep. Wagons are all right, but they back-back and then they beep as well. Some of them talk to you. ‘This security vehicle is reversing.’ I don’t mind the talking though. It’s just the bloody beeping.
When we got the computer, it was better for Mum. She said it was difficult taking me out; she couldn’t avoid every damn beep and bang, she said. (Bangs are all right. It’s just the beeping.) Sometimes she got on my nerves.
You were kind when Mum went away. I kept the email you sent. I printed it and put it in a plastic bag and taped it up and it’s in the blue box. It was raining when it arrived and my pencil had just got broken – the Eddie Stobart one I told you about – because I was mad at Mum for going off. I think I was crying. Or that might’ve been the day after, I can’t remember. But your email made me feel better. You said you’d be my friend so I didn’t need to be lonely, and I just had to mail you and you’d make me feel better. It was lovely. I didn’t know whether it was okay for it to be lovely when Mum had gone, but it was anyway.
There were flies in the room, but you couldn’t see them, from the computer. Pauline, that’s the nurse who used to come to see me, she said I had to have a home help. So she sent this man, Peter. I didn’t like him coming to the house. He wanted to get rid of the flies, and he brought sprays and cleaning stuff. He used my computer when I was at the lavatory. It’s got stickers on it saying 'Private' and 'Daniel’s Computer', but he ignored them. He said he was sorry and his was broken, but he didn’t look sorry. I wouldn’t let him in after that. I think it might’ve been Peter who broke my Eddie Stobart pencil. I liked the flies, they didn’t beep.
You wouldn’t have sent me any messages if you’d known about the flies. Mum didn’t like flies at all. Said no-one did, they were dirty, disgusting and had diseases. After she disappeared I got loads more in the house and I liked them. I’d laugh – these flies in Mum’s house. She wouldn’t have liked it.
I wasn’t lying. With the photo, I mean. I wouldn’t do that, especially to you. I thought you might like to look after me. Mum said before she left that someone would, but no-one did. I knew how to get food: www.tesco.co.uk.
After Mum went, the guinea pig died and that made you sad, you said. Did you mean it? Pauline looked in the cage one day and said, ‘Do you feed this guinea pig?’ And I said, ‘Yes’, but I didn’t, so I gave him a www.tesco.co.uk carrot while she was there, to show her. And she said, ‘Well, I suppose they don’t live long, do they? Didn’t you have a rabbit as well at one time?’
And next time she came he wasn’t moving at all. She pulled a face and put on some gloves from under the sink and got some newspaper and wrapped him up and took him away. She said, ‘Something’s got to be done.’
You were my friend, weren’t you? That’s why I don’t understand.
Someone came to the house. Pauline sent them, I think. Usually I don’t answer the door, but they knocked – knock, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock - like that, for ages. I thought my head was going to bloody burst so I looked out of the window and they stopped knocking and shouted, ‘Daniel? Daniel Price?’
The house wasn’t clean, he said. The garden was a mess. The home help wasn’t able to get in. The guinea pig had died. (‘Well, I don’t suppose they live long, do they?’ I said.) There were too many flies.
My mother told me never to meet anyone I only knew through the internet. She didn’t trust them. ‘You can’t trust them, Daniel,’ she said. ‘You don’t know what they’re planning.’ You told me what you were planning. You were planning to go on holiday to Venice with your family and you were going to university in three or four years and you liked me because I didn’t tell you off like your mum and dad did. Why did they do that when you were so lovely?
It was amazing you lived so near. That made me very happy. I wasn’t surprised you didn’t want to come to the house, even though I hadn’t told you about the flies. I didn’t blame you for that. Peter didn’t like the flies. He tried to kill them. The park was a lovely idea. I wanted to hold your hand but if you didn’t want to hold mine that was okay. I wanted to look at you. I wanted to know if your hair smelled of Vosene.
The park doesn’t have any beep, beep, beep noises. Not usually. There’s a crossing on the way but I crossed somewhere else so I didn’t hear it. I didn’t see any Eddie Stobart wagons and no wagons reversing either so I wasn’t sweating or anything when I arrived. I wanted to see you. I wanted to know if your eyes were green or brown. I thought you’d have freckles – you sounded like you might.
‘By the lake,’ you’d said, and I thought that would be good because that’s away from most of the people and maybe I’d get chance to hold your hand. Maybe you’d kiss me.
It was a lovely day. There was a little breeze. It was a long time since I’d been out of the house and the sun felt nice. I didn’t remember that. And it smelled of grass. The park was bigger than I thought and I was getting excited. I bumped into someone and said ‘Sorry’. I saw the bench by the lake and you sitting on it. You were beautiful in your uniform, just beautiful. Long hair – brown and wavy, like you said. Blue Alice band. Bare legs. I was panting from hurrying and the sun. I felt shy as I got close. You were so lovely. And your voice – I didn’t know anything about your voice before. You talked like you came from somewhere else, but nicely. Soft.
We sat side by side like friends do when they like each other a lot. And we talked about you and about me and things we like and things we do. It was wonderful. I reached out for a photo you said you were giving me and my hand touched your uniform dress. Just by accident. I liked it, how it felt. And then I put my hand on your leg because it looked so nice, and I put my face close to yours because I wanted to see if you’d kiss me.

And then, someone was shouting. There was a phone. Someone’s phone was ringing – ring, ring, ring, ring, ring. I panicked. Even though you were there, I couldn’t stand it. It was like beeping. I could see some policemen with batons in their hands. I didn’t blame you for looking scared – all those police. I couldn’t stand that ringing, and I just ran and ran and ran. Back home.
Back home the door was open and inside there were people taking up the floorboards and moving the computer. I told them to bloody go away and my computer was private, but it turned out they were policemen too.
Someone had hold of me. I can’t stand that. I didn’t want them to lift the floorboards. That’s where the flies come from. I didn’t want them to find Eddie Rabbit. I buried him under there, see? They found him anyway. He didn’t look like Eddie anymore. I had to look away. They were disturbing my dead rabbit and I was getting upset and struggling and I kicked a policeman, so they took me away, in a different car from the computer.

Mum came to see me last week. She looked at me and sighed, and said it would never matter how far she went, they’d track her down to look after me. She wouldn’t tell me where she’d been, just that she’d been at the end of her tether and had to have a break, and she was sorry it’d been so long and she hadn’t written. She smiled at me but she didn’t look happy.
Mum said you weren’t real. You were just a trick – a trap set up by the police because they didn’t understand about me. I don’t think you were a trick. You were real. You sent me all those email messages and I met you in the park. You were lovely.

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Going to Bed With Friends
By Wes Lee
(Story Excerpt)

She’d been jolted awake when he roared out his orgasm – a distant sound from a zoo. She had thought it was from the zoo at first, (they lived near it and one night she’d been woken by the lion – she’d had dreams of it escaping and surprising her in her bed). She thought it was the lion again but had quickly realised it was Warren. The roaring had gone on all night; the laughter and the booze-fuelled drama that had played out. God, she wondered what his room smelt like?
She had wanted to go in this morning when she heard them leave. Loud voices. Their laughter growing faint as they’d travelled along the hallway. The front door slamming. She’d wanted to walk around his room and taste the air they’d left in there. She wanted to stand there listening, divining – what? What would she find? What did she want to find out? She was attracted to him – she knew that, and she’d had her opportunity to take the supporting role in that sweaty, booze soaked room. But there had been the taboo against sleeping with friends; because that was what he’d quickly become when he’d answered her ad for a flatmate. And in the few days before that - when they were just two strangers living in that house - the moment had passed when they could have flooded his room with those cries and in the morning it wouldn’t have mattered. They would have been transformed in the night, become something else – maybe not lovers, but people who knew each other’s skin. They might have been able to go on with their lives, living together as flatmates and it wouldn’t have hurt. But now, if it happened now, who knew? Things would change . . .

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Only Child
By Katy McAulay (Highly Commended)

Aw boo – more people were getting on the bus. Six-year old Laura preferred it when it was just her rattling around the bottom of the double-decker like a penny in a tin. When there were people, she had to behave, or strangers would start asking questions, and that was always difficult, because Laura had been told not to talk to strangers, but she had also been told not to be rude, which meant that she – ooh look! There was a seagull in the road eating a –
            HONK. The bus slammed to a halt and all of the passengers’ heads nodded in agreement.
            The seagull flapped its way back into the sky and the Cork traffic began to move again.
            Laura was glad that the seagull had got away, though she wasn’t too keen on them, not since one had taken a chip from her hand that time dad had taken her for a picnic on the beach. She favoured pigeons because they looked so funny when you fed them chips. They would peck at the hot potato and then jump back, surprised as anything, and then they would forget that it was hot and peck it again. Plus, when there was a whole crowd of pigeons, and they got a fright and flew away all together, it sounded like applause. She had told her dad that in one of her stories once and he had told her that it was a really good way of saying it.
            Laura looked down at the newspaper folded in her lap. One of the passengers had left it behind and she’d swiped it quick – here was something that would keep her busy for at least the next ten minutes. Dad was always telling her that she needed to learn to for at least the next ten minutes. Dad was always telling her that she needed to learn to take her time over things, have fun with what she had, rather than always looking to him for the next bloody amusement. She’d looked at all of the interesting pictures, and then she’d dug her pencil out of her Minnie Mouse bag and tried to copy one of them into her notepad. As she looked at it now, the end results weren’t bad. Laura jumped down from the seat and made her way up to the front of the bus. Other passengers had to hold on to the rail when they walked, but she’d had lots of practice and she could walk up the aisle as steady as a…as steady as a rock. She knocked on the driver’s cab and held the picture up, but more passengers got on the bus just at that point and she was in the way. She had to move back down to her seat at the rear of the bus.
            Rubbish. Rub-bish. She pinged the bell a few times, even though she knew she wasn’t meant to, beating out a rhythm on it until a woman approached her and asked her where her mother was.
            Laura looked around, unsure what to do.
            ‘Do you know where your mummy is?’ asked the woman again, and she seemed kind enough. Laura decided it would probably be OK to answer.
            ‘Yes.’
            The woman laughed. ‘Is she on the bus?’ Can you point her out to me?’
            ‘No,’ said Laura. ‘She’s not on the bus. She’s at work.’
            The lady glanced back at her friend, who was peering down at her from high up on her seat. She had a sad face on.
            ‘And where are you going?’
            Laura didn’t know how to answer this question. She looked at the stranger’s smile. She had lines around her mouth, and her pink lipstick had smudged. She waited for Laura to give an answer so Laura had to think fast. ‘Eventually,’ she explained, feeling proud of herself for using such a big word, ‘dad’s going to take me for tea. At six o’clock.’
            The lady looked at her watch. ‘All right,’ she said grudgingly. ‘And you know where you’re meeting your daddy, do you?’
            ‘Yes.’
            This seemed to satisfy her, and she left Laura alone.
            Laura could see the bridge coming up again on her left and that meant not long now. She gathered her pencil and the notepad and put it into her bag, making everything tidy, and then she approached the driver’s cab once more and knocked on the plastic door.
            ‘Dad? Can we go to McDonalds for tea?’
            ‘Sure we can, petal.’ The window in the driver’s cab was open, and her dad’s right arm was brown from dangling in the sun all day.
            ‘Cool,’ she said, mimicking the big girls who had been on the bus earlier that day.
            ‘There’s a shame,’ said the lady who had been talking to her before. The stranger was now getting off the bus with her friend. The friend shook her hair and Laura smiled at them, not wanting them to be sad.
            She chose chicken McNuggets for tea and fries and a strawberry milkshake instead of the ice cream that she had really wanted but her dad had said that she wasn’t allowed. The man put it all in a paper bag with dad’s McCheeseburger and she carried it home.
            Mum was in the kitchen when they got there, and she was crying again. Dad usually ignored her when she did it, but today he paused as he took the McDonalds bag from Laura’s grasp, and looked across the table at her wet face.
            ‘Bairbra,’ he said. ‘Stop it now. This has gone on long enough. We have plenty.’
            ‘You can’t understand,’ mum said, and she got up and left the kitchen.
            Dad put the bag down on the table. He fetched the salt and the ketchup from the cupboard and placed them next to the bag, but he didn’t open it. Instead, he looked at Laura for a long time.
            ‘Mum’s all right. Do you know that?’ he asked.
            ‘She cries all the time,’ said Laura, looking at the unopened bag.
            ‘I know, petal. She’s a little bit sad at the moment.’
            Laura wondered if she was ever going to get her tea. It was getting cold. Something else seemed to be required of her, so she asked, ‘what’s wrong?’
            Dad looked at her for another wee while, and then he said, ‘She’s sad because she would like to have a little brother, or a little sister for you, but one hasn’t arrived.’
            ‘It would have to be a brother,’ said Laura. ‘I don’t want a sister.’
            This seemed to cheer her dad up. He smiled and finally, he opened the bag and handed her the box of nuggets.
            ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Can I have my fries please?’

The first foster child was called Sally.
            Laura had come home not long after her seventh birthday to find a plump toddler on the floor of the hall. The imposter had Laura’s old dolly, Bethany, in her mouth. The little girl had a blue dress on and startled, curly hair that spread out from her head in electrified ringlets.
            Laura took one look at the child and ran for cover.
            ‘Mu-um!’
            Her mum was in the kitchen, cutting up fruit. She looked different somehow. Something about her face. She didn’t pause at the pitter patter of tiny feet on the linoleum, but she did ask, ‘what is it, petal? Did Sally give you a fright?’ Laura’s mother never called her petal. That was her dad’s name for her.
            ‘There’s a baby in the hall.’
            The knife sliced through apples, slid under the skin of a pear.
            ‘She has Bethany!’ Laura’s voice took on a new, frantic tone.
            Her mum laid down the knife. ‘Laura,’ she said. ‘Sally is going to be staying with us for a wee while. Do you remember the lady who came to visit last month? Remember how she asked you if you wanted to help other little children who don’t have a family of their own? Sally’s one of those children. Her mother isn’t very well and she needs our help.’ She held out a piece of fruit to Laura. ‘Eat your apple now – that’s it. Do you want to come and meet her? You could take her this fruit.’
            Laura looked at the slimy chunks of pear on the plate.
            ‘No thank you,’ she said.
            The next day, when Laura got up for breakfast, her mother was dressing Sally in a pink skirt and a pair of striped tights.
            ‘Sally and I are going to walk you to school today,’ she said. She tickled the little girl’s chubby belly and asked her, ‘would you like that?’ Mum’s voice went all high pitched and funny when she talked to Sally. The baby looked shyly at Laura, and then she hid her face in her hands.
            Laura went into the kitchen and helped herself to cereal.

Dad was finished early on the buses on a Wednesday and he was waiting for her at the gate at three-thirty. They walked along the pavement together and dad asked her lots of questions. ‘How do you feel about having Sally here? Is it a bit strange? How would you like it if we all went to the deer park together this weekend?’
            His face was anxious. Laura didn’t want him to worry.
            ‘I like the deer park,’ she said.
            ‘I know petal.’
            ‘Dad?’
            ‘Yes?’
            ‘Where’s Sally from?’
            ‘Her family lives in Blarney. She’ll visit them all the time. She likes you, I can tell. But you don’t have to play with her if you don’t want to. It’s OK to take your time to get to know her.’
            ‘OK.’
            Later that night, at the tea tables, Sally dropped her special beaker onto the floor. Her face creased, and she began to cry. Spit dribbled onto her chin and she made wet gulping sounds, as though she couldn’t get enough air.
            Laura retrieved the cup, wiped the lip with her sleeve, and handed it back.
            ‘Thank you, Laura,’ her mum said, smiling brightly. She looked at Sally, who sooked on her juice, instantly quietened. ‘What do you say Sally?’
            The toddler pulled her mouth away from the beaker, making a small pop. ‘Nk you.’
            ‘You’re welcome,’ said Laura.

The next day, Laura abandoned Sally at Cork City train station.
            She had managed to sneak out of the house without mum seeing her and guide Sally all the way down the big road. Easy. In fact, the plan would have worked perfectly if the guard hadn’t noticed her stepping of the train onto the busy platform. Sally was sitting at a table within the empty carriage, a small suitcase by her side. Her pink coat was buttoned tight to the rolls of fat beneath her chin. Laura had given her a custard cream she’d swiped from the tin in the cupboard above the sink to keep her happy and Sally was sucking it thoughtfully as Laura waved good bye and hopped from the train, her heart light.
            ‘Hello young lady,’ said the guard, bending his long, blue legs and squatting in front of her on the platform. He smelled faintly of cigarettes. Laura wrinkled her nose. ‘Where are you going today?’ he asked?
            ‘Home,’ said Laura. Her arm ached from carrying the suitcase. She turned around and tried to walk away in the other direction, but the guard took two long strides and put his hand out in front of her.
            ‘Is that your little sister over there?’
            Laura looked at the train, which had recently terminated in the situation, and was still resting against the end of the track. A couple of stray curls poked up, announcing Sally’s presence just beneath the second window of the carriage.
            ‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t have a sister.’

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