'Skimming' by Gail Aldwin

Through the obscured glass, she recognised his black leather jacket and when he pressed his lips against the window leaving the imprint of a kiss, she knew it was Dyz.

            ‘I’m off.’ Shan ran her fingers through her hair, making the blonde curls bounce. She slung a jumper around her shoulders and bolted outside before her mum could see who was at the door.

            Kicking a can along the road, a signal for the neighbours to gawp, they lurched, bumping hips and shoulders as they went. At the station, he jumped the barrier and she followed, chasing him down the steps as the train drew in. Shan sat by the window and Dyz slumped next to her. He chewed gum and Shan stared out of the window. When he knitted his fingers through hers, making the pattern on a zebra’s coat, Shan’s heart thumped.  

            On the beach, they walked towards the sea. Waves lapped the pebbles and Dyz took a stone, balanced it in his hand, then skimmed it across the water. It bounced more times than Shan remembered to count and she clapped her hands, applauding his performance. A gang of boys jostled on the path and distracted Dyz. They stood in a huddle, adjusting their baseball caps. When they beckoned Dyz over, he hurtled towards them, stretching his arms to slap their shoulders. Shan watched from the shoreline, then Dyz turned and saluted her. The boys jeered but Shan waved back, trying to smile while the tears seeped.

'A Suitable Boy' by Kath Kerr

He’s about the right height and that’s the most important bit.  All sorts of things can be disguised and made up for, but the height has got to be right from the start.  And the build really, or the clothes have got to go and sometimes those are exactly what makes the case.  The family sometimes get brought bits of clothing to identify and if they wouldn’t fit, nobody believes it’s them.  In fact, they start to suspect something’s amiss and that wouldn’t be good for business.

This one is well over six foot and skinny as a banana.  Lots of young guys look like that these days so it wasn’t too hard to find someone suitable.  Skinny jeans, floppy hair, bit of a girly bag, typical college student really.  So what better way of convincing him to play along than a pretty college student who is interested in every word he has to say?  She was too easy to recruit.  Give her a sob story about how he’s my son and we’re estranged and would she talk him into coming outside where we can just talk.  Adding in £200 for her trouble and a few drinks and she thinks she’s doing him a big favour.  Thinks she’ll be on for more where that came from too, if he has a rich dad.

It’s always a shock for them when they come face to face with the one they will be standing in for.  This guy played it cool but you could see he was scared.  Even then he thought it was some kind of sex game and he was going to be raped.  Poor bugger that would be the least of his worries.  Once the client had confirmed he was happy with the one, then it’s on.  There’s never any violence, only drugging and a brief struggle, then the boy doesn’t know anything else about it.  Violence would leave a trace and unexplained wounds wouldn’t do, would give the game away.

There is a way of fixing the petrol tank so that it explodes when the car crashes and that’s how it’s done.  It all has to look natural or they won’t believe it.  Late at night, wet road or maybe an uneven surface, then off into a tree or down a ditch.  And boom.  Disappearing is much harder than anyone thinks and much more expensive.  Want it cheaper, go to someone else, but then watch as your plan unravels.  Pay for this level of expertise and you are guaranteed no failures.  You’ll stay disappeared, whatever you’re running from.

Because I always know what’s suitable.

Fragile clouds' by Wendy Errington

Fragile clouds allowed the morning sun to soften the bathroom, but nothing felt soft.

     “What on earth are you doing Maggie? You’ll make us late!” a voice chilled the air.

       I stepped from foot to foot on the ice-rink lino. The gritty, smooth toothpaste tasted cold and sweet.

       But Angela’s cold voice was not as sweet as she shouted again, “You’ll make us late for school!”

       A mouth full of froth prevented me from answering. Quickly I played the checklist through my thoughts: washed, pencil case packed, dressed, bag packed, teeth. Next, socks and shoes on. I was following my daily ritual, but the jumper that I needed to wear on Mondays, was still in the wash. I wasn’t ready to face school today without it on, but then was I ever really ready.

      Every day brought some problem – tables test, spelling test, Jane going off with Rachel, Rachel going off with Jane, spelling test, tables test. Some days I got it just right. Some days I followed the morning ritual with ease and my clothes were the right ones. My lucky ritual plus my lucky clothes equalled a lucky day. Some days Jane was off ill and Mrs Richardson would forget to give us the test. Lucky day: perfect day.

            I pulled up my socks, rolled them over, pulled them up. Looking up my sister was in the doorway; her tongue was ready to slice me up.

      “I’ll catch you both up, go on without me…I…I can’t find my shoes,” I lied.

        I could hear my heart pumping; could she? I heard my brother jumping down the stairs and tearing out of the front door. Window frames rattled and the mirror on the bathroom wall tilted.

     “Brilliant! Dan’s gone without us now. Why do you always leave it till the last minute to find your shoes?” She didn’t need, or want, an answer and was soon behind Dan, running off up the street.

      I sat on the bottom step of the stairs; the carpet was worn and tufted. The house breathed. I held my shoes on my lap and pulled at loose stitching. I curled over, smelling the cracked leather. The tan leather changed to dark brown as my tears stained my shoes. I wanted to be like Dan and Angela; I wanted Rachel to go off with me; I wanted ten out of ten without the stomach pains.

        What if …what if I wore the dirty jumper? Who says it’s dirty? I ran up to the bathroom, turned the washing basket on its side and pulled it out. I threw the yellow jumper I was wearing on the floor, tunnelled into my favourite one and smoothed my hair. Flying out, straightening the mirror as I went, I spotted a flash of red…my red jumper.  

        Fragile clouds allowed the morning sun to soften the bathroom and it felt soft.  

'False Gods' by SJI Holliday

Her username was ‘Venus85’. She’d wanted just ‘Venus’ but obviously so did someone else so her birth year was as good a suffix as any. His was ‘Adonis82’. She supposed he’d had the same thought.

They’d started off in a chatroom, then emails, but neither had been brave enough to pick up the phone. She’d sent him a photo of her in a bikini on a beach in Crete, taken when she’d just started Uni. Lithe and smiling and sunkissed. His had been taken on a field trip to Mount Olympus. He wanted to be an archaeologist. She didn’t have such heightened plans. A teacher, she hoped. High school. Biology maybe, although they all seem to do a bit of everything these days. They talked about books and films and heroes and heroines. They talked about how everyone met online now. It was the thing to do. We’re Gods and Goddesses, they told each other. These ‘real’ people; they don’t even come close.

They decided to meet at the Eros statue in Piccadilly Circus. Seemed fitting. She arrived by bus to Victoria Coach Station and walked past Downing Street and Nelson’s Column. He was coming by tube, he’d said. He didn’t live far. She was early; sat on the edge of the fountain, watching the crowds that bustled and hovered around, taking it all in. Japanese girls giving the Victory sign to the cameras, giggling. Americans in shorts, swollen feet squeezed into gaudy-coloured Crocs.

He was late.

She wandered around what she thought was the main tube exit, but there were too many others and she didn’t know which one he’d appear from. She glanced up at the neon screens, the giant faces of the beautiful people. Watched the buses, the taxis; the people playing chicken with the traffic, risking their lives trying to get across to Burger King. Horns honking; chattering: French, Spanish, Italian. Teenagers with backpacks and braces.

Then she saw him.

Well, she assumed it was him – he carried a single red rose. He looked nothing like his picture. Thinner, spottier. Crumpled clothes. She looked down at herself, cleavage threatening to burst from the long floral dress she’d chosen after discarding multiple less-flattering outfits. Nothing fit very well at the moment. Her hair was good though, long and shiny, dyed a golden-flecked red. She was still Venus, she’d decided. Even if she wasn’t quite the one in the bikini-shot. He, though – he was no Adonis. She wondered if he’d photoshopped his picture.

Charlatan, she thought. Beware False Gods. She slipped into the crowd before he could see her; let herself get carried away in the throng towards Leicester Square. She turned once and saw him standing near Eros, a puzzled look on his face as he glanced at his watch.

Lucky escape, she thought.

As she turned away again, she just missed the man who came running up the stairs from the tube, panic on his fine-looking face.

If only she’d waited a little bit longer.


First published in What the Dickens? Magazine (The Olympia Edition)

'Hairdressers Are Too Dangerous for Boys' by Conor O'Reilly

I was sent to the hairdressers. Not to the barbers where my old man went. I recently learned that it was because I cried when I got the same haircut as every other eight and nine year old boy in the village. I also learned that I cried when I got a different haircut from everyone else. Some people are never happy.

The hairdresser’s has always smelled strange, or it has its own smell. A smell concocted of hairdryer and hairspray and peroxide and everything else I saw being applied mechanically to heads.

Back then I would sit mop-headed and big-eared waiting. I’d pick my nose and flick through Marie Claire and OK hoping they had a comic strip, or at least the flash of a white bra strap. In the barbers there was everything; The Eagle, The Beano, The Dandy, and if they were taken there were the topless women on page three of The Sun, or the dirty phone numbers on page 49 of the Sunday World, if it was leftover from the weekend.

One day a man walked in. I wasn’t alone. I had a mop headed and awkward looking ally, another unimpressed by all this fanfare over hair. He was dressed in what looked like a really expensive suede jacket, no tie and he wore jeans during summer.

I admired this upstanding gentleman, he who could wear jeans and a suede jacket, here for an upstanding short back and sides. He sat reading a man’s paper that he had, no doubt, bought with his own money and he was now choosing to read it instead of OK and Take a Break. Why couldn’t I have thought of that?

He had foresight. He had wisdom. This man actually might be a genius, a local figurehead, a man of status. That’s the reason he took his business to the hairdressers in the first place!

After mulling over it I finally worked out why he’d come here – clearly, he was going to get married! It was so obvious that he was getting married on Saturday. How could it be anything else?

I could tell his future wife was gorgeous, like one of the Page 3 women in the newspapers, but she didn’t show her boobs to anyone, not even him and his suede jacket. I reckoned he must want a really special haircut for her – I knew I would for my wedding.

It was his turn. He stood up. I knew I should listen and get some pointers from this expert, just in case I might be able to indulge myself if it cost less than the three pounds my mother had given me with the order, “and don’t stop in the shop on the way home”. I sat waiting, ears perked and concentrating. I watched his mouth opening:

“Hi, how are ye? Grand. Two blade, shave it all off, thanks love”.

I swore that I would never go back to the hairdressers.

'Say Jump' by Bethany Anderson

Crowds gather; collected noises in the street. Bustling and bristling, magnets for attention, the best advertisement in the world. Roll up, roll up, people are here, something is about to happen. Roll up, roll up, morbid fascination and melodrama enough to last your gossip all week.

Several feet below, my predicament is a form of macabre entertainment. The man on the roof; an eternal dilemma. Send in the paramedics, the police, the priests. Fingers pointing, voices shouting. Through afternoon fog cameras flash, blurring the view, small dots on my retina. Everything upside down. Fluorescent yellow jostles brief cases, handbags, school uniforms, woolly jumpers, suits and tracksuits away from the building. There is nothing to see here. But there is a man on the roof, I think he ’s going to jump. He is, look, he’s going to jump. Or he’s just going to fall. Gasps are loud from mass lungs. His foot. It slipped. Watch out, stay back, there’s nothing to see here.

Words of wisdom from a megaphone, drifting upward in a gust of litter. Closer to the edge and vowels are barely recognisable. Behind a police line do not cross, safety in numbers on the road. Traffic stops and stares. This is what it comes to. Seconds away from scarring minds, millimetres away from staining concrete, just a jiffy from judgement. What scares is mortality, the instant that turns on floodlights, exposing dancers as make up and sequins, reducing clowns to wigs and sponge noses. The dancing bear is just an animal. The world is a stage but this big top is gaudy canvas. Masquerading as a masquerade.
Prepare to be amazed; the excuse for being late for that meeting, a reason to get drunk tonight, a badly written entry on your LiveJournal.

Please step away from the edge. Please come down from the roof. You say jump. I say how high. Go on, jump. How high do you think you ’ll bounce?
Prepare to be astounded. The moment you’ve all been waiting for. This is some fun for you, some light entertainment, disbelief suspended temporarily. Your dark fixation satisfied, you must tell all your friends.
Do not try this at home.
Police line do not cross. Cameras flash. Audience cheer.

Ladies and gentlemen, tonight for your delight: the man on the roof.

Sounds Of Darkness' by Jo Derrick

Until my last wife, I was happy.

Until my last wife I drank four pints of Adnam’s ale every night in The Old Ship Inn. I’d then amble out into the night and watch the pewter-coloured sea roll and heave like an old drunk.

“Lean into me, old friend. We can beat the wind,” I say to Arthur, who has been in the pub since five. 

The beach has virtually disappeared and what’s left of it is uninviting; too wet, too grey, too slippery.

The old and the ancient emerge from the dusk. The Victorian hotels frown down upon the beach like proud patricians.

We light a fire on the beach. When it dies and night sweeps over us, we move on, staggering like old tramps towards the town. 

“Listen!” says Arthur and stops us both dead in our tracks. “Hear that? That, my boy, is the sound of darkness going.”

I nod sagely. “Yeah, man. Darkness. Always goes eventually,” I say weaving my way along the main road.

“Fancy a last one in The Dungeness?” Arthur asks, fishing in his pockets for the last of his cash.

I grin. “Sure thing.”

We approach the bar. The landlady gives us a look that could kill. She’s about to call last orders. 

“What’s it to be?”

We order whiskies and carry them to a table near the window and sit in silence before knocking them back in one hit.

Each summer, every summer, last summer. It’s the same routine.

We go back to Arthur’s flat. It’s not sex, nor love, although body fluids are involved. It satisfies. It’s good. 

Later, much later, I stagger out into the dawn, before the beach tractors trundle down the sand ready for the day’s work.

One man sings, another man cries.