'The Editor' by AJ Kirby

I should have known it wouldn’t work out. We were too different: like the Sting song, you drink coffee I drink tea (my dear). You say faucet, I say tap. You miss out nearly all your ‘u’s’, in favourite, or colour. Mine is red, by the way. Yours black, which according to strict definition isn’t even a colour.

            You drink your coffee black too, and it never crossed your mind that sometimes it would have been nice if you bought a carton of milk on your way home from work instead of leaving it up to me.

            Your over-zealous use of the letter ‘z’ was also a problem. As was your insistence in pronouncing oregano stressing the second syllable instead of the third. And don’t even get me started on zucchini and eggplant.

            When I complained, you got all uppity. Suggested I needed therapy. That I had issues. Period. Which is what you said instead of full-stop.

You couldn’t seem to get your head around the fact that we invented this language called English. That’s why it is called English, not American. You plain wouldn’t listen when I got started on that. Said ‘talk to the hand’, like you were on Jerry Springer.

            Perhaps the biggest mistake was making our relationship both a personal and professional one. I should never have asked you to edit my work. Not you. You who I once loved for the way you sang all the wrong lyrics to songs by the Police. ‘Simone’ instead of ‘So Lonely’. ‘Rucksack’ instead of ‘Roxanne’. That kind of thing.

I bought flowers today, on a whim. Purple. Only, now you’re not here, I can’t describe them. You’ve gone, and all I do is sit staring at this blank page in my notebook, praying for inspiration that won’t come.

'Bre/ad' by Amy Mackelden

You beg like a Bible verse: taut, memorable, ghost-written. He circles you like a Catherine wheel: you’re the pin, fixed to a flammable fence, and he’s the firework, sputter-ready.

You, Walter, have steady, cameraman hands. Cameraperson. Inclusive language is generational, a gap you misunderstand, or miss, or denigrate, the way modern gods being men isn’t a problem. For you.

His suit smooth like a wipe-clean-able tablecloth, you ask, “Who will you have without me?” You forget how fast you replaced Beta with VHS, Matt Damon with Ben Affleck, and back again.

Once, he invited you into his house, said, “Let’s break bread now,” and you remembered your tongue at the alter, a finger delivering bread, and an endorphin urge, pudding thick, to Velociraptor snap at Father Mike’s fingers.

Lapsed Catholic, you wait for this man to decide. He’s your boss. Important like the Commonwealth, in history. There’s no redemption, only more, a pre-written prescription you weekly forget to pick up.

For you, Walter, infinity’s a gas meter counter spinning into the next billing cycle.

'Together We Fall' by Hilary Slade

We all know that families tend to drift apart over time. Even though they’re tied by blood it seems to mean less and less these days. We have been separated too long.

As the crowd gathers on top of the wall we all feel the weight of it. Beneath us, either side of us, all around us. My heart thumps a little faster. I want to see this thing fall. Every person I see has something in their hands- hammers, chisels. Tonight we will bring it down.

It’s now. My arm moves instinctively, raising the hammer over my head, bringing it crashing down into the hard unyielding concrete. The sharp vibration from the impact races up my arm. It’s unbelievable. It’s not just me. This is all of us.

I can’t stop my eyes from constantly flicking over to the guard towers. They’re gone, not here to shoot us on sight for this act of rebellion. But it’s been a long time coming. We want to take back what was taken from us.

Different lives, secret lives have been lived. But I still remember them all just as they were. Their earnest faces ready to do what they needed to survive. They blended in. They’ll surely be here, as ready for me as I am for them. They would wait for me. I was still that boy who worked in a bakery. They knew I was coming when they smelled the fresh bread I brought back every day.

I feel icy beads of sweat break out across my back. They slowly inch their way down. The fear, the adrenaline, the effort it takes to chip away at this thing. It will all be worth it. Somewhere- they are somewhere down there.

But I worry. What if I can’t find them? What if they left without me? Surely I would know. But what if it’s worse. What if I only find denial? No, I can’t believe that. They will be there and they will admit the truth because they were the ones. They told the Gestapo about the Jewish family hiding in plain sight next door. The boy who worked in the bakery who looked after his mother and sisters. They saw them come. They saw them take them away to die. I saw it too. The smell of the bread never reached my mother and sisters that day or ever again. I hid and I watched knowing they were lost to me. Yes, they know the wall is coming down and I am coming for them.

'Catalyst' by Claire Hennessy

After my death, Susan writes poems about me. They are terrible, but Dr Fields praises her anyway – she’s ‘processing’ her pain, not trying to be Sylvia Plath. Two of them even reference Sylvia; it’s all about how Susan thought she wanted to be tragic and poetic and now, after seeing death close up, she’s realized that she wants to live. To be tied to the earth rather than ‘floating’. The right kind of crap to tell your shrink.

In life I constantly felt I was letting Dr Fields down. She’d look at me, waiting eagerly but professionally for the confession that would explain it all. She was disappointed – no incest, no rape. Once the boy next door tried too hard to kiss me at some birthday party, when I was thirteen, but who hasn’t had that happen? And by then I was already en route, counting my calories like a good little girl.

After my death, Helen starts eating again and Erica stops throwing up. It isn’t instantaneous, but like Susan they will refer to my death – sometimes the ‘loss’ of me – as the turning point in their little disordered hospitalized lives. The moment when they understood that they had a choice between getting better or getting worse.

Helen had the sexual abuse going for her, at least. Her stepfather. We spoke about it once. It’s the kind of confession that can only happen on a psychiatric ward at two in the morning. Susan had a crazy mother, and thin red lines peeping out from under her sleeves. Helen screamed at her once, for that. I think Helen would have liked to have been a cutter. It’s a much easier way to go – easier to accidentally push that knife or razor blade just a little too far.

Death as an anorexic is long. If I’d known, I probably would have borrowed one of Susan’s razor blades – she was good at hiding them, even from the nurses – but then I’d have hated to have to ask her for one. Helen would have been easier, if she’d had such things. Helen assumed everyone else was as traumatized as she was. It was democratizing in the weirdest way.

After my death, Helen misses me. The others don’t, not really. In their recovery stories, my death is the catalyst. My life goes unmentioned.

I wonder sometimes, why it had to be me. But then I’d let Dr Fields down, in life. There was no reason for my slow starvation. Only life, the smallest of choices made day after day after day until they weren’t anymore.

In death, at least, I have served her well. The other girls recovered. Susan goes to college, then marries a nice man who truly believes her poetry is wonderful. Erica becomes a therapist herself. Helen works in a library, and cries herself to sleep every night, but at least she is alive. Survival is the goal.

And sometimes you need a human sacrifice to get the job done.

Previously published in Wordlegs, issue 11

'The Call to Adventure' by Calum Kerr

Part 1

Lucy Burkhampton, socialite and mountain climber, is heir to the Burkhampton fortune and stands to inherit the whole Burkhampton estate upon her father’s death. In the meantime she spends her time in the same way as any young lady, attending balls, doing good works, and scaling the world’s highest peaks. As we enter the story she is resting on a ledge before attempting the next stage of her climb up Mount Kilimanjaro. Now, read on...

Lucy lifted her flask from where it hung at her side. The air was cool, but the climbing was hot. She forearmed sweat from her forehead and studied the rocks ahead. She was roped, as any good climber should be, and Emily Garbert-Smithe had found a good place to rest and secure the rope. So there was little chance she would fall, but Lucy prided herself on making every climb utterly flawlessly.

                 Her eyes traced over the cracks and gaps in the rock, picturing the climb in her mind, seeing and almost feeling the way her hands would slot here and here, while her toes could hold there and there.

                 She was just readying herself to commence the climb when she heard a scuffling from above. She looked up and saw Emily grappling with a man in black. He seemed intent on throwing her from the cliff.

                 And then he did just that!

                 With a shrill scream, Lucy’s best friend since childbirth, her sister in all but name, teetered on the brink and then, with one last shove from her mysterious assailant, was ejected into space.

She plummeted past our plucky heroine, trailing her rope behind her. Lucy braced herself for the jerk, and it came. Emily reached the end of the line and slammed to a halt, still screaming and now swinging in towards the sheer cliff face.

Lucy held on with all her might, but the weight of her friend was too much, she was being pulled towards the edge herself!

She reached down to her side and grabbed her ice axe. She hadn’t needed it so far, they weren’t high enough up, but now she did. She pulled it free and slammed the point into the ledge with all her might. It bit deep and held true, and she clung on with all her strength.

Looking down, she could see that Emily had been knocked unconscious by her impact against the cliff. Looking up, she saw the man in black looking down.

“Who are you?” she shouted. “What on earth did you do that for?”

The man laughed before he responded and the sound of it chilled Lucy to the very heart.

“Who am I?” he called in a mocking tone. “Why, my dear girl, I am nothing less than your nemesis!”

He paused to laugh again, then continued.

“I will be the end of you and of all things Burkhampton. I have already disposed of your father, after getting him to make over his Last Will and Testament to me. In a moment, I will be free of you, the only challenge to my success. And then I shall track down the Red Eye of the Green God from the Yellow Isle of the Blue Kingdom and all of your riches and lands will be mine!”

This time the laugh was definitively maniacal. And it went on for a long time.

Meanwhile, Lucy was struggling to hold on. Emily’s dead weight was pulling at her, and she was powerless to resist. She slid, inexorably, towards the edge of the cliff while the madman in black laughed.

He did nothing more than watch as first one foot and then the other were pulled out into space. And then she was hanging by her fingers from the cliff, her unconscious friend unconsciously dragging them both to a jagged death.

What will happen next? How long can this ‘cliff-hanging’ moment last? Will our heroine and her friend survive? Who is the man in black? What is the Red Eye of the Green God from the Yellow Isle of the Blue Kingdom? To find out all the answer to this, and more, tune in next time...

The Juggler by Mr Uku

Waldo the Sword Swallowing Midget was being carried out on a stretcher when Lucius arrived.  In the stage manager’s office, Oliver Bunco was pacing and chewing nervously on a big cigar.

Lucius called out, “Everything alright, Bunco?”

“Did you see Waldo? Poor sod; he pulled out the big one and pulled part of his gut with it.”

Lucius grimaced. On the stage he could see The Great Samsoni throwing his knives at Polly. He looked shiny.  “Hey Bunco, you ever see Samsoni sweating?”

“Sweating? Never,” said Bunco as he and Lucius moved into the wings to get a better look.

If a knife thrower loses his nerve he loses his assistant. Onstage, a nervous looking Samsoni was getting a slow handclap and Polly looked uncomfortable as she stood against the board, a balloon clenched between her teeth.  Samsoni glanced at the crowd and, as he drew back the heavy bladed knife, the sweat dripped into his eyes.

Polly screamed.

“Better bring that ambulance back,” said Bunco as he lowered the curtain.

Stagehands carried poor Polly away on the board she was now impaled to and Samsoni shuffled past silently. The crowd jeered and Lucius looked down at the two apples and the egg in his hands. His comedy juggling routine usually went down well but not tonight.

This crowd wanted more and looking at his bag of props Lucius knew what to do. He could hear the band playing his music and before he knew it he was out there with three large, double headed axes in his hands.

The audience sat in silence but the band played on and Lucius stared into the darkness while they vamped. A loud trombone brought the axe juggler back to his senses and he began.

He started with a standard cascade and few under the leg throws that were greeted with silence.

He moved it up a notch with some over the shoulder work. Nothing.

They want more, thought the juggler, I‘ll give them more.

He started some high throws letting the axe handles float around those big double blades.  Suddenly, one axe was tossed with greater weight sending it higher than before and Lucius spun around below it. The axe came down and he caught it perfectly.

They cared not.

He sent it up a second time, fitting in two spins before it came down.

The audience were unmoved.

A third time the axe went up with Lucius spinning three full rotations below and still they didn’t care. There was nothing else for it. He sent the axe up again, higher than before. He spun once, twice, a third and a fourth time while the double headed axe floated above before stalling and making its decent.

With perfect timing Lucius leaned forward, arms outstretched, a smile on his face and for the first time in his life performed the neck catch.

It was the loudest ovation of his short career.

'Echo of a Whistle' by Miranda Kate

Jonas had no idea how long he’d blacked out for this time. His heart raced as he spun round trying to see if the man was still there, but all he could see were empty train carriages sitting in the disused siding.

He shook his leg and pulled at his foot, but it was still wedged right under the track and he couldn’t reach it.

It was really dark now, and the wind startled him as it hurtled round the corners of the derelict train sheds. Any second now the man would appear. He’d chased Jonas through the woods and out onto the embankment, he had to be here somewhere.

He fought back tears of fear and frustration. He knew that crying for his mummy wasn’t going to help him - the man had been right about that - but the images of the underground room haunted him, with its dirt floor and rusty metal cot. He couldn’t go back there; he couldn’t go through that pain again. The very thought of the man touching him, putting those metal things near him – he yanked at his foot again to distract himself from the thought.  

His escape had been a stroke of luck rather than planned. Not only had had it been one of the rare days that the man hadn’t used the equipment on him, but the man had become complacent, allowing Jonas to go and clean up by himself.  Jonas was halfway up the stairs by the time he’d shouted, already running for his life.

And he’d almost made it, but then he’d caught his foot running across the tracks. He’d been too busy looking over his shoulder at the man, wondering why he’d stopped at the top of the embankment. And then the ground had come up to meet him; the air rushing in his ears creating a high pitch sound as he fell, and a blinding white flash as his head hit the track.

He attempted to reach his foot again, leaning on the track as he did so, and that’s when he felt it - the vibration. He peered into the darkness and made out two pin pricks of light. They were moving towards him, increasing in size. In his gut he knew it was a train.

But instead of feeling panic, he felt calm. It was over; whether dead or rescued the man couldn’t have him anymore.

Jonas looked up at the oncoming train, the lights clearly visible now, his eyes tracing their perfect roundness. He waved his arm and waited, listening for the whistle, the signal that they’d seen him. But it didn’t come.

And as the train raced through him, he realised he’d already heard the whistle earlier that day, and the blinding flash hadn’t been his head hitting the track. His foot wasn’t trapped anymore, the man was gone and so was he.