Baby’s screaming wouldn’t stop. It echoed through the whole house from upstairs in its crib, threatening to lift the roof off in one long cataclysmic wail: “I neeeeed yeeww! Where are yeeeeewww! I knooow you’re down theeeerrre!”

Downstairs, Daddy sat on the couch facing Mommy by the front window coated in frost. They locked eyes, their faces creased like two paper bags. They held their breath as tight as two divers. A faint smell hung in the air like sour milk.

Daddy glanced up at the living room clock, its spiky minute hand dragging across a pale face. It was a 12:23 on a Saturday afternoon. Nearby, the wallpaper had buckled a little. Baby’s onslaught began a half hour ago, after Mommy plopped it in the crib for its nap, surrounded by piles of picture books and stuffed bunnies and kitties.

He could picture Baby standing up on its toes, hands gripping the bars, red-faced, gasping for breath between sobs. A galaxy of radioactive-green stars swirled on the ceiling. From a small cube white noise gushed.

He held up both palms to Mommy, fingers spread as if in surrender, and mouthed the words, “Ten more minutes.”

Mommy felt she was on the verge of tears. She clamped her hands over her hears and collapsed sideways onto a cushion. It killed her to hear Baby in despair.

“Why won’t you comme up heeeeeerrre? I don’t want to sleeeeeep! I’m not tiiiirr-red! Puh-leeeease!”

Daddy remembered from Sociology seeing the slow-motion footage of a mother’s face when its infant cried, a micro-seconds shift from murderous rage to wide-eyed compassion.

Mommy didn’t know how much longer she could stand it. She shoved herself up and hurried into the kitchen to do dishes, where the rush of water from the faucet helped smother Baby’s howling.

Daddy sat stone-faced on the couch. The house was chilly, but he refused to put on a sweater. They both knew Baby needed its nap, that without its nap it would turn into Bad Baby, flinging toys and food on the floor, screeching like a wild animal, its eyes bleary and unfocused.

“I luuuuuvve you! Why won’t yeeww help meeeeeee?”

Mommy reappeared wringing her hands in a towel. She nodded at the clock with fierce determination. The minute hand ticked into place. Ten minutes. They both knew this couldn’t go on. Daddy hung his head. Mommy went to the foot of the stairs and prepared to climb them quietly, the carpet soft under her sneakers, waiting for the creak at the top to give her away.

Daddy watched Mommy start to glide upstairs like an ascending angel in a church pageant. He caught his breath and listened for the moment that Baby’s shrieking ceased, when an enormous silence would settle over the house like a big soft blanket and they would all crawl under it, and Daddy would tell stories about a hairy monster with jagged teeth who was really friendly, the terrible interlude all but forgotten as sleet pinged the windows and tree branches brushed the sides of the house like an impatient creature seeking warmth.

Based in Boston, Gary Duehr has taught creative writing for institutions including Boston University, Lesley University, and Tufts University. His MFA is from the University of Iowa Writers Workshop. In 2001 he received an NEA Fellowship, and he has also received grants  from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the LEF Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation.

Journals in which his writing has appeared include Agni, American Literary Review, Chiron Review, Cottonwood, Hawaii Review, Hotel Amerika, Iowa Review, and North American Review.

His books include Point Blank (In Case of Emergency Press), Winter Light (Four Way Books) and Where Everyone Is Going To (St. Andrews College Press).

The snow is falling but do you care after all you are the night. The fire is burning but the stars do not warm and are insanely distant. After all you are the night of death. No one is born in a cemetery with a candle in their hands and this death continues simultaneously with the night. The river is endless. After all you are water and you are one with time. And everything around is censorship or self-censorship. And the jumping recitative of fir trees drinks the smooth surface of autumn. The last sip. But the truth does not exist. Death teaches after all death is our only teacher. Death learns hands and hands learn to sleep. Teacher or student? After all no one knows anything and this night an infinite amount of water has flowed into the future and all around is white and white. A black cry descends on the black snow. The ice cracks and the depth is endless. Minutes pour out. The years float by themselves like water in water. Seagulls cry. There are no more seagulls. There have never been seagulls before. There will be no seagulls and only beaks. Sound. The sound cracks. The forest of death noisily falls asleep and only the snowy night that touches your lips like an ellipsis. The word is your name. Cut a strand of silence and share the silence with it. Your grandmother was shot with a machine gun during the German occupation more than 70 years ago. Your daughter today looks at the sky and sees military planes shooting at the stars in the continuous darkness. Nothing has changed in the world for decades. The forest is squatting and the night shoots at the cast-iron milky back of the head at the soldiers sleeping in the barracks. The river of night floats by every second. After all. The future has never been here before. There is no future.

Mykyta Ryzhykh has been nominated for Pushcart Prize. Published many times in the journals Dzvin, Dnipro, Bukovinian magazine, Polutona, Tipton Poetry Journal, Stone Poetry Journal, Divot journal, dyst journal, Superpresent Magazine, Allegro Poetry Magazine, Alternate Route, Better Than Starbucks, Littoral Press, Book of Matches, TheNewVerse News.

You can find more of Mykyta’s work here on Ink Pantry.

Even if I were to bark up the wrong tree, so be it as long as I am barking something. I don’t know how to climb a tree. Wrongs can’t be right until a climb has ensued. I slide many times before I correct my path. A really steep climb, all the way up, reaching out to save my children who lie here at the top.

Giants take my children from me and put them there. Too strong for me, I can’t fight back. No big deal for them ’cause they don’t need to climb the tree; standing on the ground, they simply roll ’em over to the nestled leaves. But I must stand my ground if I were to win this war. It is a war now that they have taken them from me.

I hold on to the bark for dear life. As much as I want, I can’t let go of it. I don’t know how to. Fear is all around me. Fear is swelling inside of me; my children, taken from me. I slide. I slide all the way down. The bark is flimsy. It comes off easily. Just as well, I spring right up, get back on with the climb. My nails dig deep, clawing into its russet skin.

Some bark comes straight off and exposes a stark tree which in turn shows a clear pathway to me. The tree gives me some stability, as I get my bearings back on it. Half way up, I hear my children sing, “I love you Mummy. My only sweet Mummy. I love yoouu when the days are sunny. In winter, I love you some more”. Sweats run down my forehead. Trepidations rise as I hear their voice. They sing out loud; I yell that I am coming to rescue them. They tell me that the time is right now, ’cause the monsters are out to pick berries in the woodlands.

Time is of the essence. How soon before the giants return? Amla in Bangla, and rich in Ayurvedic properties, the giants know about it only too well. They are after the ripened fruit—the reds, not the greens. They have a huge appetite to whet. I inch up and slide back; quick to resume, I stay the course. Gently treading this time, afraid to fall. The tree seems to be growing on me. I feel dwarfed against it, obviously unlike the giants as tall as the tree.

What better lure than to secure my children’s destiny from the giants who would make a meal out of their tender bones, and red gooseberry even before the evening is out? This impossible climb bruises me from head to toe. Lean times, a lean tree. Weary of the chase, I turn my gaze upon the woodlands. From this height, I can’t see the gooseberry anymore; minutely microscope, they seem to disappear on the stretch.

The tree is tall; too tall for me. Giants have no patience, and perspire in vain. I see clearly how distraught they are, trampling the shrubbery in anger because they don’t see it. The fruit is massacred underneath their giant feet. Towering tall, they don’t see what I see. I see my children. They see me. I make them a few gooseberry pies picked from the same shrubbery.

Multiple contests’ winner for short fiction, Mehreen Ahmed is an award-winning Australian novelist born in Bangladesh. Her historical fiction, The Pacifist, is an audible bestseller. Included in The Best Asian Speculative Fiction Anthology, her works have also been acclaimed by Midwest Book Review, and DD Magazine, translated into German, Greek, and Bangla, her works have been reprinted, anthologized, selected as Editor’s Pick, Best ofs, and made the top 10 reads multiple times. Additionally, her works have been nominated for Pushcart, botN and James Tait. She has authored eight books and has been twice a reader and juror for international awards. Her recent publications are with Litro, Otoliths, Popshot Quarterly, and Alien Buddha.

You can find more of Mehreen’s work here on Ink Pantry.

Away from my family, my home, my community, I live under the spell of this ethereal, hazel-eyed woman, swayed by her deific exquisiteness, in a small, abandoned cottage near the woods. Her identity is unknown. But mine altered from a fierce hunter to a roamer, striving with vapourish dreams.

One day I pursue her into the woods with my loyal horse, unnoticed. She stops by a river. I climb up a nearby tree to get a better glimpse of her. As she bathes in the cool river water, I witness her supernatural abilities—alternating as a part woman and a doe. The body of a female with hooves instead of feet. A fruit from the branch, where I positioned myself, drops on the ground. She startles, looks up. On perceiving me, she transforms rapidly into a deer, her eyes glaring with a just-before-storm atmospheric look, and within seconds, starts running.

I chase her on horseback, in tune with her speed, under the cerulean sky—among orangish-yellow flare, spectral, with white ribbons scattered here and there. Her reddish-brown body is now a fleece of pearls, her hooves glowing like lightning, setting the path ablaze on the green mantle of grass moving along the rhythm of her body, while the trees are stationed afar as forest guards. Her tail rises, sticks up like a white flag; her glittering, palmate antlers carry the sun along, as she leads me across emerald, tranquil glades and meadows. Her stance taut, chest swollen with pride, steps electrical.

With a divine grace, she heralds the incoming of a newborn. Storming the agrostis pastures beneath her feet like a restless ocean under the clasp of turbulent waves, she continues darting speedily, while a fawn emerges from her posterior and feebly lands onto the blooming yellow gorse and bracken. Being unusually strong, the baby with a spotted coat almost instantly stands up and follows his mother who promptly licks him clear of the birth fluid. On giving birth to a new life, I notice the gentleness back in her body, her eyes oozing warmth of the mother earth and care of the Nature for the young one.

The earth dressed in jade welcomes the regeneration in a lively spirit—leaves rustling, flowers bowing, branches prancing, while the wind spins a cool gossamer cloak about us. Noticing me at a short distance, the doe and the fawn turn their faces upward, and as if alerted by some inconspicuous signal, they prepare themselves for the run. I imagine her for the last time as a maiden, now newly blossomed into a mother, her eyes like the luminous dawn cascading into unvoiced emotions. Jaded with inexplicable arousals within me, my viperish self brawls for release.

“Who are you? What do they call you?” The fawn asks me, his beautiful brown eyes expectant with kindness and inquisitiveness.

“I’m the earth, the water, the forest, and…” I pause, look above and continue, “the dark,” as the purplish-grey, translucent screen laminates the sky.

Sreelekha Chatterjee’s short stories have been published in various magazines and journals like Flash Fiction North, Friday Flash Fiction, Borderless, The Green Shoe Sanctuary, Usawa Literary Review, The Wise Owl, Storizen, Five Minutes, 101 Words, BUBBLE, The Chakkar, The Hooghly Review, Bulb Culture Collective, Prachya Review, Creative Flight, Literary Cocktail Magazine, and in numerous print and online anthologies such as Fate (Bitterleaf Books, UK), Chicken Soup for the Indian Soul series (Westland Ltd, India), Wisdom of Our Mothers (Familia Books, USA), and several others. She lives in New Delhi, India. Facebook/X/Instagram

‘All habits are tinged with sadness, / for being habits.’ Paul Theroux

During pre-dawn silence, no longer part of noisy families, greeting another day released from night’s hobgoblin dreams, he reads mostly depressing news with derivative sub-headings. He tackles delivered newspapers in the same sequence after removing glossy feature sections like a rich man ignoring a beggar – Epicure, Money – that sometimes slither unwanted to his floor. Ritually, he begins with the front pages’ clamour, then sports from the back, saving word puzzles he completes nonchalantly until last. Serious reading, a cello’s sumptuous notes enhancing his mood sometimes, comes later in the day.

His coffee brewed in a pot the same as he sees in favourite movies, those with brave direction and storylines, he sips from the same mug, its handle missing, stirred the same number of times, rattling lightweight pages, some filled with ads. Loathing advertising since youth, its chief crimes banal repetition and boneheaded appeal, this irony is not lost on him. He could catch radio news afoot to counter chores’ tedium, or when driving, ditto with his phone attending to life’s quiet desperation, yet he reads newsprint days into weeks, months and years uncaring what narrow minds think, of him or anything else.

Wide reading spurs recollection. He lowers a paper or book to his lap reminded of old haunts he falls into again, street by street, fizzing along vaporous memory’s fraught trails where the splendour of scenes like cherry blossom didn’t even exist in the imagination. Only church bells chiming on Sunday mornings offered an approximation of beauty. He hears their idiom, tawdry yet sweet, redundant now, so elegiac, and relatives’ voices, sees his classrooms’ faces. Some names hover just beyond reach, as do smells he wants to breathe once more. Feeling like a character in one of his books he time travels over and again. Those harsh precincts remain fertile for him but they are all changed of course, gentrified now.

He collects what amounts to a muse carnival. Although being overcrowded with gewgaws instead of people, he can’t resist op shops and market stalls, their ridiculous bargains. One favourite site, within a fenced off rubbish tip, is on an island where pre-loved items left by locals and holidaymakers are displayed in a tin shed by volunteers. To the sound of seagulls’ cries you can leave your own unwanteds and/or help yourself to others’. Hats, clothes, board games, wetsuits, a beautiful statuette suffering a broken ankle, Mozart on vinyl, curios and chronicles, even damaged stained glass imbued with classical hues, from the gimcrack to the magical, are free.

Convincing himself he is not addicted, just obsessive, he moves his treasured trash around, but not much. Glancing in certain dusty directions he sees its artful reflection in mirrors. He has found an oil painting, its canvas lumpy, possibly a pentimento, and a watercolour, both by unknowns, and famous books written long ago that he should, and probably won’t, read again. Other relics from cobwebbed lofts and musty chests of drawers remain, as he does, freighted with keeping everything unchanged living alone on the plains of sorrow. Like the band playing on the doomed Titanic this trove comforts, so too, his coffee and memory accompanied newspapers that contend with his awareness of incomprehension’s replication, a kind of hideous virus.

Ian C Smith’s work has been published in BBC Radio 4 Sounds, Cable Street, The Dalhousie Review, Griffith Review, Honest Ulsterman, Offcourse, Stand, & Westerly. His seventh book is wonder sadness madness joy, Ginninderra (Port Adelaide). He writes in the Gippsland Lakes area of Victoria, and on Flinders Island.

You can find more of Ian’s work here on Ink Pantry.

Holding up the champagne flutes, Di and I looped arms and tried to take a drink, laughing.

‘Happy New Year!’ she said.

‘Here’s to turning forty,’ I replied.

‘Oh God. Don’t remind me.’ She covered her eyes. ‘I’m dreading it.’

I knew she was. ‘I’ve had an idea. Let’s make it a celebration, a joint party. And I challenge you to do forty new things before you’re forty.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Is there anything you’ve always wanted to do, but not got around to, or been too chicken? Well, now’s the time. You’ve got eight months to do it in. Make a list.’ I opened the kitchen drawer to pull out a pad and some pens.

Di thought for a moment. ‘You mean like belly dancing?’

‘Yes. Exactly like belly dancing,’ I handed her a pen. ‘You’ve been saying for years you wanted to learn. Write it down.’

‘Okay, I’ll do it. What about you? Back atcha.’ She pointed. ‘You’ve got to do it too.’

‘Alright…I’m going to get a second piercing in my ears.’ I touched my earlobe. ‘My mum never let me when I was young – said it was cheap – and I forgot about it till now. I’m going to buy myself some tiny diamonds, stylish ones.’

‘Good choice. I’m going to read War and Peace. Always intended to, but never found the time.’

‘Good luck with that,’ I replied. ‘Life’s too short! I’m going to volunteer on a charity project for a couple of weeks, somewhere in Africa or maybe India.’

‘Great idea. I’ve always fancied seeing Dubai, so I’m going to quit my job and go work there.’

I frowned. ‘Won’t Jack have something to say about that?’

Di shrugged. ‘I don’t care, he’s never home. I think getting a divorce will make it onto the list too. How many are we up to?’

‘Oh, not even ten yet. Miles to go.’

‘Right then, I’m going to get myself arrested. Never done that yet.’

‘Too drastic! I’ve never even spoken to a policeman in my life,’ I said. ‘Don’t get arrested in Dubai – they still have death by firing squad. You might not even make it to forty.’

She thought for a moment. ‘I’m going to try smoking pot, or maybe something stronger. Pop some acid and go to a rave. Do they still do that?’

I shrugged. ‘No idea. It sounds a bit extreme. It’s not really what I had in mind…’

‘Well, now you’ve started me off. It’s your fault.’ Di laughed.

I tried to bring the conversation back to sense. ‘Is there any food you’ve never tried that you like to?’

‘Hmm, magic mushrooms. What’s that called? Psilocybin, yes that’s it. I’d give that a try.’

‘No, I mean like…trying Japanese food, for example.’

‘Nope. Though I’ve always wanted to own a katana: one of those curved, razor-sharp blades…’

‘Oh, well we can put that on the list.’ I smiled.

‘…and to behead somebody with it. Somebody famous, or obnoxious. Jeremy Clarkson, perhaps.’

‘Maybe this is getting a little out of hand.’ I put the pen down.

‘I’d like to learn to fly,’ Di said.

‘Oh, that’s a good one. Do you mean like a Cessna; pilot lessons?’

‘No. I mean like, flap-my-arms-and-launch-off-the-balcony. Fly. Like this.’

She lifted her arms like a football supporter watching a goal scored, then stepped right out of her silver glitter shoes and ran through the living room, her chiffon dress trailing and rippling like the skirt on a hovercraft.

Di shouted, ‘I’m going to fly!’ then crashed through the patio doors and straight over the balcony rail.

‘Wait!’ I sprinted behind her, almost grabbing the fabric of her dress as she slipped on the smooth floor where the snowfall had melted then refrozen into a thin sheen of ice.

I couldn’t bear to look over the edge; I live on the sixth floor.

-o0o-

The policeman passed me a tissue and patted my shoulder. ‘Don’t blame yourself, Miss. A lot of people take it hard at this time of year. Even closest friends often don’t see it coming.’

‘She was depressed about turning forty this year. I can see now: she was acting strangely all evening.’ I sniffed.

‘I’ll break the news to the husband. Are they separated?’

‘I think they were having trouble. I don’t know why he didn’t come to dinner with her.’

-o0o-

It took me an hour to clean up all the broken glass from the patio door.

I was tempted to text Jack, but it was too risky, so checked my online banking instead and was satisfied the police had already broken the ‘tragic’ news.

Then I flushed away my insurance policy: the psilocybin container with Jack’s fingerprints on.

Angela mostly writes short stories and has been published in Café Lit and Backstory Journal as well as shortlisted in various competitions. She is currently working on her debut novel having recently completed an MLitt in Creative Writing with University of Glasgow.

The conductor’s wife carried his balls in her purse, so he said. She was a bully, convinced that she was smarter than, more successful than, more desirable than he. Plus, her purse was bigger. In rehearsals, he had become so nervous that his baton kept slipping out of his hands. “What’s bugging you?” I wondered. “My wife,” he might have said─ but now I can’t be sure. At the podium, he watched my bowing arm for cues. My staccato, sautillé and spiccato all helped him feel the vibrations through his feet, he said. I wondered if he knew he was deaf. “I love you,” I whispered, to test him. He didn’t answer but launched into the latest story about his wife: how she’d taken to fishing out a can of Mace from the purse where she kept the balls, and setting it like a centrepiece on the table. He recited these details to me in the Green Room with his eyes squeezed shut from the effects of the spray. I held his hand, the one without the ring. I liked him to look less married, if possible, for the sake of my fantasies, which throughout my life have always been the best revenge against reality.

Cheryl Snell’s books include several poetry collections and the novels of her Bombay Trilogy. Her latest series called Intricate Things in their Fringed Peripheries. Most recently her writing has appeared in Gone Lawn, Sleet Magazine, Necessary Fiction, Pure Slush, and other journals. A classical pianist, she lives in Maryland with her husband, a mathematical engineer.

It was uncannily quiet in the afternoon. I felt like a water sodden dead log as I walked to the summer cottage through the Whittle Thorn forest near our house, within the suburbia of Whittle Thorn. Moments ago, I heard in a news report an abduction in the suburb. Surrealistic, how some news sunk in without having any effect whatsoever, other than this parched feeling at the back of the tongue on a scorched afternoon sun. But I kept walking through the forest. A whipping bird lashed out as I slowed, I felt a whip crack my back. It did not bring a tear to my glass eye. They were a dry desert, prickly as cactus. I rubbed them a couple of times, I wish something would rub off from being with the best ones. There were the best, I tried to hang out with in their tranquil hangout.

A man ushered me into a cottage that smelt of burnt toast and burnt egg omelette. Nothing in this cottage could shepherd the delight of surging romance, a notion. Barren was not how I felt; it was a feeling of a much deeper sense of being abandoned. The abundance of hatred filled my heart from treachery and betrayal. This man whom I called ‘Uncle’ when I looked upon him as an ‘Uncle’. He shredded my childhood, put me through a paper shredder. As I recalled that other afternoon, I was at his place. Obedience was not in dearth, around the clock that was all I did. Obey, and followed him around the house until he broke. Hunger and lust were cascading like ink streaming out of a bottle. Real ink, who saw it these days, anyway? I did. I saw how his eyeliners darkened, painted with sooty coatings of coal ink. He grabbed me. I blinked and passed out.

When I woke up, it was evening. Bodily pains and shivers ran through my spine, I saw a diminishing sun over the horizon. Heavy like a dead log, I felt no remorse until I stood up and felt it, the blues between my thighs. Doors were open and I saw a few men. Jabbering away, one looked my way, I heard about the abduction then. Played the part, I was burning up, Uncle had a round head scar which I saw for the first time. With all the other men, he too was listening to the news of abduction. Play the part? What part was he playing? In the heart of it, I lay low and waited for my chance. I wish I had a crowbar.

Uncle entered the room and looked me in the eye.‘Oh, how could you? You heinous son of a bitch, how could you do this? You heard me,’ I said out loud in my mind, those lousy moments as I glared back at him in silence as always, waiting for the next instruction. Instrumental to this abduction, Uncle took me under his wings after I became orphaned. Courage failed me and I waited it out, for my turn to avenge. Uncle held me by my shoulder as he walked me to the cottage. Others didn’t. What more could they do to me, I thought. 

Despicable people had vulnerability, and hubristic in thinking that no evil could touch them. Of course not, because they were all evil themselves. Evil upon evil upon evil, compounded to make a hot air bubble of ever-growing evils, when one day the bubble had to burst.

The cottage smelt of what it did: burnt toast and burnt egg omelette. Heaps of other kinds of smells entwined the space. Cocaine and alcohol staled the air, to say the least. Concern was how to smell the fresh air, still, and feel free. This was claustrophobic. Uncle’s gang was here already. They were planning something big. Uncle was hiding in plain sight all this while, playing a double part of a benevolent elder, deceptive and whimsical. It was now clear. I sighed, but not resigned looking for ways to get out of this. Burnt toasts and omelette. This wasn’t enough. There had to be dust storms and coal dust spatters; inhale to make lungs a perforated organ full of holes, I somewhat prayed. I was out of my wits.

Uncle sat me down in a chair while he negotiated with his gang. They were selling me out to the highest bidder, while oil was hotting on the puny cottage stove for more omelette. My prayers were answered. I saw a hole in the cottage floor. An object was flashing a shine to my glass eye. I picked it up when no one was looking. Sharp as a razor blade, I kept it in my fist. When a child was born it entered the world with its fist closed; it held a one-way ticket to the blue. This razor was that ticket. I began to cut myself, I screamed until they noticed. They couldn’t sell damaged goods. 

Blood flowed from the cuts but they bandaged every one of those wounds, while Uncle negotiated in the other room. I lay alone for a bit, then jumped blindly through an open window like a petrified kangaroo. Uncle hadn’t counted on this; I had lost some blood and they thought I was weak. Boom. Boom. Boom, I heard gunshots coming my way; I made it to a darkly dense hedge. Camouflaged in the forest, I hid myself well amongst the browns of its plains. Charming as it was, the cottage could have been a safe house but it only housed crooks like Uncle. 

The party was over, or I hoped it would be soon, but people still hopped around, lurking; my heart was thumping. I feared there were more, more like me, at risk. At least, I knew the Uncle’s hideout if I could get away I would burn the whole house down. Night owls came out of the woods, and sat on high branches, I wasn’t, not yet. Still, hiding away from the ubiquitous dance of spotlights through the forest. One of the owl’s hoots instilled in me some hope, the highways were close, and I knew, if I made it through this if I could somehow get to the highway soon.

Something was burning again. It trickled through my nostrils. Not more burnt omelette. Smoke was rising over the cottage, a spark there must have started a fire that was devouring trees and the forest denizens. More and more torches were snuffed out, useless against this fire’s luminous forces. Caught up in this towering inferno, the cottage was burnt down to a cinder too, with everyone in it before they even knew what struck them or how—raging, engulfing, a breathing dragon, and I? I was already in the firm clasps of the owl’s solid toes, as it towed me away. The party was over soon. It seriously was.

Multiple contests’ winner for short fiction, Mehreen Ahmed is an award-winning Australian novelist born in Bangladesh. Her historical fiction, The Pacifist, is an audible bestseller. Included in The Best Asian Speculative Fiction Anthology, her works have also been acclaimed by Midwest Book Review, and DD Magazine, translated into German, Greek, and Bangla, her works have been reprinted, anthologized, selected as Editor’s Pick, Best ofs, and made the top 10 reads multiple times. Additionally, her works have been nominated for Pushcart, botN and James Tait. She has authored eight books and has been twice a reader and juror for international awards. Her recent publications are with Litro, Otoliths, Popshot Quarterly, and Alien Buddha.

(Warning: strong language)

Brigadier Robert D’Alby of those famously Glorious Roscommon’s was a mighty fine, hench figure of a man. As an impeccable Sandhurst officer cadet it became crystal clear that D’Alby was hewn from exactly the right old-fashioned, ornamental stuff. Possessed of athleticism, but devoid of contagious narcissism; he employed RP to acclaim a martial style-of-life, minus today’s all-too-familiar, fanatical ‘boot-polish-up-the-kilt’ mentality. Unerring Apollonian devotion to tours of duty, irreproachable ethics & a Spartan indifference to physical discomfort, made D’Alby splendid soldierly material. Additionally, D’Alby’s tendency to remain celestially aloof (distanced from clamorous subordinates) enabled access to private thoughts beyond the woefully limited appreciation of rough-&-ready non-commissioned comrades. Uninventive fellow officers bored D’Alby too: their impossible drunken mess parties, latent homosexuality, imbecilic gambling & monomaniacal brutalism, interdicted him from honourably pursuing a deeper camaraderie. Above all, he abhorred their collective flat-Earth disregard for synthetic cubism, et seq. Still, such wilful textural blindness didn’t prevent (or detract) D’Alby from admiring Britannia’s venerated strength of character; nor could various mind-boggling patterns of crude, spiteful behaviour, intemperately disseminated amongst Blighty’s privately educated landowning ruling-classes, annul an intuitive esteem in which he held this ruthless creed- neither did that intrinsic nationalistic exceptionalism existentially flaunted over generations of folk deemed lower in rank, status, or quality, by English gents.

Well-cushioned by the UK parliament’s Armed Forces Pensions & Compensation Scheme, D’Alby remained fighting-fit at thirty-seven in the wake of this index-linked military retirement, plus subsequent induction into the ‘Guild of Ancient Mariners & Venerable Fishmongers’ (via an old boys’ network) which facilitated another lucrative career opportunity; a stint of reclusive commitment this time, further serving his class with insignia keeping his end up in a private sector lighthouse. Generously endowed & left to his own devices; a proud wickie, embellished with frilled epaulettes, he kept Bishop Rock Lighthouse shining bright & spotlessly clean. Recreationally, during an abundance of spare time D’Alby manufactured basic collectibles, inc. hand-woven cotton rugs- sundry novelty shaped candles, model warships (frequently embattled within bottles) & craftily assembled reactionary objets d’art to be sold as bric-à-brac for cash at mariners’ fêtes. Despite crackerjack diversions, piecemeal, his lonely life’s daily routine drifted surreally into an unplanned concatenation of doubtful occurrences (albeit his loyal service was made as comfortable as possible by portable paraffin heaters, frozen crabsticks, the BBC World Service’s It Sticks Out Half A Mile, & Scilly regional radio). In the fullness of time, Robert quietly monitored how natural power emitted from those loose & fecund bowels of Mother Earth reigned supreme- that is, put simply- the Everyman, nature’s sentient nonentity, merely floated upon her ethereal waves. Yet one who could curry Poseidon’s favour was blesséd indeed. So, weather permitting, Robbie irregularly attended an austere mariner’s guildhall, where a gracious & most proper art of ingratiation was taught in confidence to select scholars. There, inside Twisted Bobbins Sentinel Chambers, one could confidentially manipulate mystical gifts according to one’s breeding, wisdom & talent; ancillary occult factors being two tools of divine provocation (each empowered with prodigious energy) enabling a righteous seeker to beseech & become adorned with charmed privileges afforded to orthodox craftsmen. These were twofold: one pukka velvet wishing cap (immaculately derived from legendary Fortunatus), & the other a pair of elegant ivory lorgnettes, proffering all-sightedness.

Now, as amusing as this esoteric bourgeois scenario may appear, it was not entirely satisfying. Hence, influenced by the compelling literature of Aleister Crowley (on loan from Bobbins’ hypnotic Worshipful Master), Robert sat forlornly under a pointy puce cupola; staring disconsolately through tight fitting magical retinae at his unemployed, purple Hampton Wick. Hallucinatory masturbation just wasn’t working: hard-core, no-nonsense skulduggery was called for. So one day, this abstemious xenophobe- inasmuch as his wasp’s waist seldom played host to dodgy foreign foodstuffs- clipped his magnificently glossed monkey wrench moustache, smeared petroleum jelly around his unloved ring-hole before purposefully penning a charmingly succinct advertisement, all set to be tastefully displayed in the Lonely-Hearts section of City Limits, a cooperatively run alternative weekly listings magazine, ref: pubescent wantonness; an announcement he dispatched post-haste by the utmost economical means of a tax deductible supplies boat, which fortnightly ferried rations of baked beans marinated in orange tomato sauce. ‘Attention boys & girls! Any cute proletarian teenagers out there, hankering after pagan erotica in a lighthouse, should call D’Alby now. Admission is free!’

‘’Oh, yes. London. Now there’s a filthy big city chock-full of perverted deviants.’’ He thought fiendishly- inconspicuously revelling in tutto-anale imagery. On the surface both Robbie’s deportment & attitude conveyed a cultivated character, a noble esquire who coveted beauty & classical repose above all else. But beneath this calm exterior, D’Alby frantically required several hard-knuckled fist fucks. Assimilating contradictory hyper-religiosity & hormonal pressures resulted in self-adjudged guilt; his pallid superego took waxen umbrage, wanly scolding a Dionysian id for its clammy, impure ruminations: ‘’just lay back & think of Merry England!’’

D’Alby tentatively undressed in front of a full-length cheval mirror; perturbed, critically reviewing his aging reflection: an inner resentment grew uncontrollably dark. Most shocking were nauseating surly features that obnoxiously emerged without invitation; ugly, outlandish, bizarrely misshapen in every last ghastly detail. Each flaccid aspect called for slashing &/or expert mutilation. A self-defacing element imbued Robbie’s mind: ‘‘Oh, for a Black-&-Decker Workmate!’’ Robbie hated it. This damned chimera was alas no longer he; rather a mocking minacious curse.

As giant hailstones crashed around surrounding toughened glass, D’Alby laughed uproariously, artistically smearing arterial blood across his scarred gammon-pink nakedness. Having sliced off his inverted hairy nipples, & super glued them to his knees, he recklessly took a rusty cheese grater to the ship’s fringe benefit tomcat, whilst ejaculating over vivid adolescent memories (of his gang goosing by House Apostles ceremonially attired in uniform coats & cocked hats with ostrich plumes) during his assignment as a Charterhouse fag. Relaxed, he reflected upon infamous full moon initiation rituals he’d witnessed agog; rough sleeping orphan Stan Crabbs, a plausible cephalopod, came unstuck. A rootless persona non grata, Stan’s ovoidal working-class corporation was collected; drugged & bewitched by sinister decree. Manhandled by St Agnes’ sturdy yeomanry downstairs into Old Lanes’ spellbinding crayoned pentagram; forcefully shoved, Crabbs fell prostrate between scary cloven hooves- where he was instantaneously plagued by ankylosis & force-fed slough from millions of damned excrescences while his chafed tramp’s sphincter was invaded by vile swarms of chattering animalcules (besieging his cerebrum & infesting his congenitally stunted imagination with obscure forms of regimental Catholicism). Cruelly enough, metemsomatosis irretrievably undermined Crabbs’ innate processes of perception, rendering his alchemical substitute frenetic, barren, snarling & regardent (why such random, forsaken educationally subnormal vagabonds were solemnly condemned to suffer so, fuck only knows). ‘’And then all us nonpareils, chartered fishermen, aristocratic seafarers & the like, steamed the fat plebeian cunt & gouged out his oculi. He can’t see anything now.’’

Following an eccentric, two-month long collage of auto-erotic overload (resulting in the first instance of little more than a sore willy, & secondly, through the latter period, only dizziness, nausea, & an acute sense of futility born of self-mutilation), having received no expressions of interest, nor any letters of reply, Bob nonchalantly applied enchanted Fastskin Elites before decisively jumping overboard. Resplendent in top-of-the-range Speedos; determined to swim ashore & hard ride Shanks’s pony onto central London immediately, in full Picaresque personage, to get balls-deep into heavy-duty cottaging. He wondered what the precious all-seeing mincer would make of that. Beat off an all-penetrating stethoscope perhaps, or tickle an ever-swollen vulva? Because whatever it is, wherever it’s coming from, unequivocally one’s throbbing erogenous zones need a jolly good going over now & again, just to maintain a soupçon of sanity. Seen?

Evan Hay exists in Britain & rather than follow spurious leaders- over the years he’s intermittently found it therapeutic to write out various thoughts, feelings & ideas as short stories to be examined, considered, & interpreted by clinical practitioners who may be able to offer him professional psychological assistance.

You can find more of Evan’s work here on Ink Pantry.

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Jordan saw her early that morning in the car park outside the local convenience store he passed as he walked to work. She was sitting in her car, maybe waiting for someone, and he wouldn’t have noticed her were it not for the rain making her move her head closer to the windscreen to peer through the droplets. He recognised her straight away. It was Pamela. He knew her from work, but she didn’t know him.

Her bobbed dark hair, smooth skin and prominent cheekbones dominated the twenty-three-year-old Jordan’s thoughts since he first saw her a year ago at the factory where they both worked. But Pamela was out of his league. For one thing, she was ten years older. Then there was the status thing. She was on a higher salary, he earned the basic. She drove a car, he didn’t even have one. Did celebrities date “normal” people? Mum earned more than Dad. Dad wished he had a better paid job. All relationships were dictated by status.

As he passed her car, his gaze fixed on her for a few seconds and the look was returned. It was brief, but nonetheless, a perfect start to his day.

In the factory later that morning, time was ticking away quicker than usual. Jordan had suggested an idea for improvements in the department which could result in smoother operation and higher quality output. His supervisor recognised the potential and encouraged Jordan’s initiative. A meeting was quickly arranged for that afternoon so he could outline his plan to the person at the top – the managing director. A one-on-one meeting with the managing director was big news. Jordan’s throat was drying up as meeting time drew nearer.

He nearly didn’t knock on the office door. His inner voice said to just do it. You’re here now, why not? Lay out your plan and then get out. You don’t need this pressure. He knocked and her voice called to him to come in. Pamela, the managing director, sat at her desk, conservative, striking, with that her business-like, yet warm smile.

“Hi Jordan.” She used his name. Female husky, professional; it made him feel sick, but a good sick. “Come on in, have a seat.”

“Thanks.”

His shy eyes avoided hers at first.

“How are you today?” I recognise him.

“Not bad,” he stammered. Standard answer – doing fine so far.

“Your supervisor told me you’ve got an idea for some improvements?” I’m sure that’s that guy I saw this morning, the one me and Audrey think is hot. I can’t believe he works here.

“Yeah, it’s nothing great.” Don’t say that – too negative.

“It doesn’t matter. I’ll listen to any ideas. It’s good to know that staff are work-conscious.”

Jordan quickly outlined his proposal, the odd word losing its way before finding the road out, blue-collar dampening as he spoke.

“That’s a really good suggestion, and it’s actually something I’ve been thinking about too.” Good looking and on my wavelength.

“I think it would definitely increase production,” he added. We’re thinking the same. This is good. Now leave the room.

“Absolutely, I totally agree.”

Pamela thanked him promising she’d get back to him whether or not his suggestion was to be taken further. He returned the thanks and stood up to leave when she spoke again, taking him by surprise.

“Jordan, do you happen to live on Westwood Street?” I need to know if it was him.

“Yeah I do,” he replied. She saw you. Big deal. Don’t look too much into it, but out of curiosity… “ Was that you this morning in the car park?”

“Yeah it was,” she smiled. “I was picking up a friend who works here. That’s weird.”

“Yeah that is really weird.” It should have been just a smirk, but he inadvertently flashed a full beam grin her way. She was picking up a friend. That means she could be single. So what? Why are you even thinking that?

“So what’s your plans for tonight Jordan?” Keep it formal but find out if he’s got a girlfriend.

“Not much. Quiet one.” Standard answer again. What ARE you doing anyway? I don’t think you’re doing anything.

“Well enjoy, whatever you’re up to.”

Ask her the same thing. It’s only manners. “Up to much yourself?”

“Tonight’s TV night. Catch up on Game of Thrones. Do you ever watch it?” I’d watch it with him.

“Yeah I like it.” I’d watch it with her.

They exchanged pleasantry goodbyes and he left.

For the remainder of the shift, Jordan’s workstation was cloud nine. Now that she was out of his sight, that distance brought a new, restrained bravado. His relationship with Pamela could metaphorically move up a notch. She had spoken to him, referred to him by name. They had even talked about what they were doing that night, the female husky, professional voice maybe not so intimidating now. He could talk to her again, find out if she’s seeing anybody, ask her out.

That evening at home in his room, Jordan kicked himself back to reality. He could never seriously contemplate a relationship with Pamela, and surely she could never reciprocate. The woman he wanted would remain a dream until he found love in second best. It all came back to the status thing.

#

The same evening, Pamela logged onto Facebook. Let’s see if he’s on here.

Andrew Newall lives near Falkirk in Scotland. His short fiction has been published online and in print. His work has most recently appeared in the pages of Flash Fiction North, Razur Cuts and Dark Dossier.