'The Magnolia Tree' by Elizabeth Lovatt

Our mother said it would be a good lesson for us to pick up the fallen magnolia petals in the garden. It wasn't even our tree, it reached over from next door and dropped its petals on our patio, covering them with pink and white teardrops. My brother and I set to it; him bending over, me sitting down on the cold slabs, the damp seeping into my bum, clutching two or three petals at a time and stuffing them into a black bin bag. They were silky soft with a hint of slime and layered like an onion, you could peel them if you were careful or bend them in half with a satisfying snap. Along the broken edges the pearly white would turn brown, an instant visible decay. I would push my thumbnail into them, making half moon impressions and watch as the stain of brown semi circles appeared on the milky surface, a wilful destruction. My brother and I worked non-stop until the job was done. A nod from our mother and we went back to playing, back to fighting, back into the house.

The next morning the patio was covered in more white petals than before, as if there had been a snowstorm in the night, as if it was not the start of spring. 

Our mother handed us another black bin bag. It will be a good lesson she said. 

'A Face At The Window' by Johnny Heriz

I paint your face all the time, how I remember you.

Laughing. Angry. Dreaming. I have tried to catch the arc of you, with paint.

I have laboured for days over these fractions of time. Together they are less than you, not even a skeleton to hang you from.

Sometimes, I have caught a look that has no name. All must lie silent then.

Other times, I have torn you into pieces because you were not you. I know I cannot bring you back. I leave the maze of walls then, and sit in our favourite places, looking out for you. I breathe deeply for your scent. I look for your footprints, and listen for your warm breath in the air.

Your palimpsest is in my heart, which I am stretching across these frames for you.

I look through the window at our swing seat and its cushion of roses.

I have looked from there back into my studio, at its collage of canvases in which I was lost, for years. I picture myself in there looking out, framed by the window, the artist’s installation of regret.

These are some of the ways I lose and find myself in you, now that you are gone.

They say the eyes are the windows of the soul; I am blessed with an imagination which lets me see you still, your face at my window. I paint and paint, into the night I paint. I draw the blinds and shut my eyes, and still I see you, and still I paint.

You pass through my dreams when my hands are empty but you are never there when I awake, and turn my head.

I have special days, bad days they are.

Then I clear the studio wall. I choose a portrait, and stick it there on its own, low down. I sit with my back to it. I shuffle my chair backwards and forwards, until your face is reflected next to mine, and then I see we are together, sitting on a swing seat, hardly able to move.

"A Little Bit Of Hope" by Martyn Clayton

Amidst all this traffic noise and concrete people are conspiring to fall in love. Jenny does part time shifts at the little M&S,  Tony cleans the gents toilets. It must be written in the stars because their nicotine cravings always coincide and they’re out back by the bins sharing a lighter. 

  “Do you come here often ?” asks Tony with a grin.

  “Not if I can help it.” says Jenny.

They settle down to talk about kids and partners and switching to E-Cigs as if they held all the answers before someone officious is looking for one of them. It’s always the way. Your heart’s set to take flight then some joyless automaton butts in to remind you that this is all you’ll ever be. 

  Jenny tries hard not to feel trapped as she scans pre-packed sandwiches. At home Colin will be putting out the recycling, reading a bedtime story to Freddie, making hot buttered toast for Alice before both of them huddle up on the sofa to watch a police drama.  She knows Tony has knocked off now. He’ll be climbing into his little car, shuffling down the slip road back to his flat where he’ll prepare a microwave lasagne, washing it down with bottled lager.  He says he rarely thinks about his ex and he’s coming to accept he’ll never feature much in his daughter’s life.

  “That’s just how it is,” he says. “You live and learn”.

  He says he’ll wait for Jenny as long as it takes. He says it’s not like he’s fighting off better offers. And Jenny hopes the guilt that blushes her face when she remembers that afternoon last summer isn’t visible to the customers. They pay little notice. They’re tired and fractious and want to get wherever they’re going. 

  All Tony says he wants is a little bit of hope. All she wants is to feel something again. When you’re young you never imagine you could ever grow this cold.

  Except this, whatever it is, promises something. The strip lights give you a headache, the people, the smell of coffee and car oil, pasties and burgers. She sees inconstant hearts come and go. They meet covertly at the edge of the motorway weighed down with guilt and desire miles from the life they’ve chosen to lead. A few hours get spent in the neighbouring motel, before they’re filling up fuel tanks, or fixing make-up, heading back to whatever awaits them wherever they come from. 

   Is she really any different  ? She imagines how she’d feel if Tony’s car swerved and hit the barriers of the central reservation. She’d mourn in secret. At the funeral she’d sit several rows back from the ex as his coffin gets carried in, emotion so restrained she might explode. 

  When she gets home the house is silent except for gentle snores. In the shower she runs a finger along her Caesarean scar, trying to recall Tony’s lips his voice saying he honestly didn’t mind. 

"Hats" by Lynn Mundell

When Clay turned 50, he decided he would wear a hat every day for the rest of his life.

“It will be my thing,” he told Death, the dark-haired man always at his elbow.

Clay began with a knitted watch cap, but was mistaken for a notorious burglar and was shot at while helping a friend move his possessions to a new apartment.

He then bought a striped train conductor cap, which the ladies really loved. He grew tired of other men yelling “Choo Choo!” though, and was hospitalized after an especially bad fistfight.

His ex, Claudette, gave him her old beret, but he began to smoke and drink too much red wine. He put away the beret after dozing off on his acetate sofa with a lit Gitanes.

On Clay’s 51st birthday, the dark-haired man handed Clay a bright white gondolier boater with streaming fluorescent yellow ribbons. Clay disliked the hat, and accepted it ungraciously, saying “Thanks. I guess.”

On Clay’s walk to the pub that night, a gust of wind lifted the boater off his head and into a stairwell. Clay instinctively dashed after it, thereby barely moving out of the way of a cab barreling down on him.

Clay just caught a glimpse of the driver — the dark-haired man, of course — who in annoyance hurled his own undertaker top hat out the cab window, where it landed on the pavement.

Clay put the boater on top of a nearby trashcan and, stooping, picked up and dusted off the top hat. Dropping it onto his head, Clay discovered it was a perfect fit.

For many years to come — countless generations, in fact — Clay wore the top hat daily, unlucky in love, true, and generally treated with distaste by all, but at last perfectly safe to go about his life.

"Nina Sings The Blues" by Catherine Strong

There’s just a small bunch of us foreigners who come here to drink in Luderitz; we huddle together in the small bar after a long day, cradling our beers in weathered hands. From the sea this little town is barely visible amongst the sands and, one day, no doubt it will be swallowed up by them, as all the towns here are in time. Either that or perhaps it will disappear under the guano that covers the jetty. 

We’re talking about the word ‘makoro’ and the bride price of cows ... there isn’t much to do in downtown Luderitz, as you’ve probably gathered, so Dougie goes over to the juke box and starts putting in a load of coins. I hear them chuckle down the slot, one by one, like a pachinko machine and I imagine for a moment we’re in Tokyo or Las Vegas; Brian’s talking about his girlfriend back home, and Marion’s flirting with some guy in a beanie hat by the bar, when Nina starts up on the juke box. 

It’s a tinny 50 cent sound, but it makes my heart race like I’ve just run a marathon along the Skeleton Coast. It’s only the third time I’ve heard ‘My Baby Just Cares for Me’ in twenty-five years, and suddenly I don’t hear Brian or Dougie anymore, and the sweat beads up on the back of my neck as if it’s midday in the sands.

And I’m back in the buttery kissing you for the first time; walking through thick confetti mist as she blasts those lyrics right down the aisle. But this third time, the song makes my palms sweat-clutch the bare wood of my chair, trying to get a grip on the handle as Nina hits those high tones. I look at Brian and Dougie and Marion. None of them know about you ... 

Dougie can tell something’s wrong, and pats my hand. He’s sweet, is Dougie. For a moment I think he’s noticed the ghosted band of diamond-white flesh on the fourth finger of my left hand; but it’s shrouded ochre now, and he turns away, nodding in time to the music as Nina sings the blues in this desert-drift bar.

'After the Apocalypse' by Patricia M Osborne

My eyes flicker but reveal no light. The stench makes me gag. I stretch my legs and kick Michael at the foot of me. He’s in his thirties, straggly hair, matching beard.

            ‘Do you think it’s safe to go outside?’ I whisper, clasping my mouth. ‘I have to get out.’

            Michael coughs, strikes a match and moves his hands to the engraved markings on the wall. ‘It’s been twelve weeks and we’re running out of cans.’

There are six of us counting me and Michael, three male and two other females including a ten-year-old girl, poor little wretch. Strangers huddled in a shelter when the siren screamed. No idea whether our families are dead or alive, probably better off dead than endure a smelly hell hole like this, starved of sunlight.   

Anthony bangs his head as he stands up and bashes his elbow on the wall. ‘Well, I’m for outside, anyone else?’

Everyone clambers up, pushing against each other to get towards the iron door, desperate to get out. 

‘Give us a hand Michael.’ Antony struggles with the door.

            Between them they heave the door open, creaking as it reveals daylight.

            The temperature drops. I’m knocked to the floor by short fat legs as Sam escapes to the settled white sheet outside, still blowing a blizzard.

Sam screams and bolts back trying to outrun the ferocious snow beast close behind. He pushes into the tomb, twelve hands lean on the door, darkness returns.  A small stock of matches and candles lay on the floor but must be conserved.

            ‘What are we going to do now?’ The girl’s tears fall on her cold cheeks. ‘Michael? Anthony? What are we going to do?’

            ‘Just give me a minute to think.’ Anthony spat.

            I took control.  ‘Where did you put the guns?’

            ‘Over here.’ Michael digs down into the wooden box. ‘No idea how to shoot.’

            ‘Well lucky for you I had rifle classes. How many in there?’

            ‘Six.’ Anthony pulls out a box of ammunition. ‘Ammo too.’ He tilts his head. ‘Can anyone else shoot?’

            ‘Me, me,’ came the chorus of baritones.

            ‘Anthony and I will go first, shut the door behind,’ I order, ‘if we kill the boar we eat. You ready Anthony?’

            ‘Ouch. Wouldn’t you be better with another shooter?’ Anthony holds his head.

            ‘Stop being a wimp and get out. No one leave the shelter until we get back. Understand?’

            I crouch on the ground, hold the rifle in position and aim. We drag the four-legged albino, blanched in red, across the ice.

Anthony bangs on the shelter. ‘Open up.’

Everyone scrambles out. Wimpy William, once a butcher, dresses the beast ready to roast. Two hours later we huddle around the fire and tear the meat like savages. Hot succulent food replaces our daily diet of cold baked beans.

            Tomorrow, the real journey begins but for now we enjoy our prize.

"The Point" by Ian Denning

Coffee pot, toast, warm enough to eat outside. There’s a tenon saw and a tray of coriander seedlings on the patio table and cobwebs catching the light. The coffee is how I like it, the cobwebs are untouched and – yes! – Nick Cave is on the radio. This is a good day. 

Rhodri  appears through the kitchen door. He’s still in his pyjamas, barefoot.

‘Dad...’

‘No bare feet outside.’

‘But mam said you can take me camping by the waterfall.’

‘No bare... she didn’t did she?’

Lyn’s voice, sing-songing yes she did, comes from the kitchen as she snaps the radio off. 

I call in to her, ‘Point is, I’ve got plans. Stuff to do.’

‘You can teach me to make a fire.’

I take the coffee pot into the kitchen and turn the radio back on. Courtney Barnett is playing. Lyn says, ‘Do your stuff before you go.’ Then, ‘Point is, you need to do this.’ Her words cue uncomfortable recent footage in my mind.

‘We can catch our dinner and cook it.’

Put me on a pedestal -  I’ll only disappoint you, says Ms Barnett, before Lyn flicks the switch again.

We’re walking the path up the gorge. I’ve got sausages and a tin of beans in my rucksack; newspaper to start the fire. All afternoon, Rhodri talked endlessly about camping and cooking trout and did nothing about packing the stuff he needs. Now he’s repeating the names of the rivers – Mellte, Hepste -  that feed the gorge. Over and over. It’s getting late.

When we get to the spot above the waterfall I pitch the tent under the trees and send him off to gather firewood. He comes back with a handful of sticks and some green leaves. I send him off again, gesturing the size of the armfuls we need. He comes back with another tiny fistful. He looks disappointed when he sees me balling sheets of newspaper.

‘I want you to show me how to light fires like this.’ He’s rubbing a couple of twigs together.

‘Not this time. We need to get it done. Get some water will you?’

‘We never get to do the things you tell me about.’ His face tightens and he kicks at the firewood pile, then stalks off toward the river. I turn my back to him, start on the fire. I really can’t be arsed with this. I can feel that knot tightening in my stomach, like before. The before that Lyn was thinking of.

When I turn back Rhodri is standing on the lip of the waterfall, at the point where the rock strata fractures and the river drops in a sheet. He’s looking down, tiny against the sheer rock, at the churning, mesmeric pool below him.

Later, he’s curled against me with his plate, licked clean, on the stones around our fire. There’s an owl, and river sounds. His steady breathing, the smell of the smoke.

I get it now.