'I am what I am' by Nick Black

I am what I am, I am my own special creation.  First editing Nature’s mistype with the white-out of Mum’s make up.  Then tonsorial experiments, sartorial over-elegance, a wiggle added to walk and talk that caught people’s breaths like burrs on a bush.

As the millennium burnt itself out and we tiny competitive stars strove to flare with light, cosmetics moved from powders and grease smears to the sharp-tongued touch of the medical and surgical, kissing my skin, my body opening up.

‘I admire your guts’ gasped a client, mouth inches away from them.  ‘What imagination’, sighed another, atremble.  Credit my clever accountants, I thought.

But the value of investments can go up as well as down.  Past performance is not a guide to future performance.  Gravity tugged.  Cells collapsed.

So in came the implants.

The mechanics.

The bionics.

I am now in the tiresome process of leaving physical form entirely.  Each day, my plastic lungs exhale my voice into microphones while cameras capture, catch what they can.  Lasers nib my profile.

All of these files will eventually corrupt, disintegrate.  Bits and bytes of me’ll drift through the networks, bright plankton in black oceans. I’ll be everywhere.  I can’t wait.

first published at http://jukeboxstory.wordpress.com/winning-story-april-2014/

'A Sense of the Sea' by Annmarie Miles

Nazar loved the sea. He loved the feel of cold water on his feet and squishy sand between his toes. He loved the rush of water around his ankles and the pull of the outgoing wave. His other love was stones. He was an expert at spotting the unusual. Nazar recognised every shade and line; every curve and rough corner. 

He rarely saw much on the beach; a woman walking her dog, a man with his child. Never before had he seen a camper van. 

He went to investigate. As he got close to the van, a man opened the door. Nazar wanted to walk away, but the man called out to him before he could turn around. In a moment of uncertainty, Nazar froze. He blinked a couple of times, and the man was standing in front of him. He was talking quickly and Nazar couldn't catch all he was saying.

“Slow down,” said Nazar. “You need to slow down; I don't know what you're saying.”

"You can't understand English?" Camper van man replied, in exaggerated syllables.

"I can understand it. I just can't hear it! If you take your time I can read your lips."

“Ahhh, ok. Well, I just thought I’d take a walk along the water's edge. Want to come with me?”

Nazar was interested in the man and even though it broke his mum's rule about strangers, he agreed. 

“Why is your camper van on the beach?"

“Oh my girl and I, we’re travelling poets. You like poetry?”

"Not really." Nazar shrugged a reply.

"What do you like?" 

"Stones"

"Sorry mate, I thought you said stones. Come again?"

"I did say stones." Nazar waved his bucket. 

"Oh ok. Cool. Everyone has their thing."

They got to the shoreline. Nazar was already barefoot and the man didn't bother removing his sandals.

"Beautiful huh?" 

"Yes" said Nazar. "It really is. It looks like it sounds cool." 

"Awh man it really does. So soothing, but hurrying too. Like when you’re on a rollercoaster; you know? The swell then the drop. The rush, the pause, then the rush again. It's the nearest I can tell you." 

It was the best description Nazar had been given. 

"So are you a good poet?" 

"I think so. I'm a happy poet. I love to write and share my poetry with others." 

They stood in silence after that; letting the water race past their feet.

"Oh I gotta go, I can hear my girl calling me. You want to meet another travelling poet?" 

"No, thanks. I'd better go." Nazar held out his hand to shake hands. The man did too; above Nazar's and to the right of it. Nazar had been so busy looking at his lips he had not noticed his eyes. Nazar moved his hand to meet the man’s. 

"Do you want me to tell you what the sea looks like?”

“Thanks kid but I got it. Rollercoaster right? Swell then drop, rush then calm?" 

Nazar smiled. “Yeah that's it.”

'Unlit Sticks' by K. S. Moore

The tractor scores bright lines in the field. Four bales of silage already loom, great barrel-shadows with a sheen of their own.

I hide behind glass and a dark house that has brought out the black in me. It is June and I'm about to light the fire. The house needs a fire. It's old, heartless, permanently on pause. I assemble the timber. The phone rings.

I wonder whether to wash my hands. So many creatures in the garden . . . I'd be a fool to think they hadn't scurried over my kindling. I worry about the germs spreading, imagine them skipping from my hand to the receiver, leaving a trail of risk. I'll wipe it later.

“Is Mrs Wall there please?”

I'm not a Mrs, I'm a Miss, so I shake my head, until I remember to speak.

“There's no Mrs Wall here.”
“Are you sure?”
Of course.

I hang up, turn on the television. It releases a jangle of sound and I wonder why I even own it. It's not as if I need the company. I have Lana. She turns her key in the door. Clicks into place.

“Any phonecalls for me?”

I shake my head. This house has taken all my words. I cannot find them, even as she runs from a rotten marriage.

“I thought . . .”

I never discover what the thought was. It is lost as her handbag slips from her shoulder to her wrist, triggers a sigh and sit down at table.

Neither of us makes tea, meets eyes.

The fire is just unlit sticks.

'The Proselyte' by Kelly Creighton

Scarlet, being born on the 13th of the month, was unlucky, according to Mother who told her so at least once a day for as far back as the girl could remember.

She heard how on Mother’s wedding day, as she watched her own reflection, the mirror dived from the wall. A glass fin sliced her, leaving a blood-bubble to narrowly miss the tulle overlay on her boned claret skirt. Mother ignored Scarlet’s declaration that she'd been lucky by picking at her blister. She fixated on the seven barren years before the eighth; seamless symmetry, Scarlet’s conception and her husband’s demise.

Grandmother stopped her tug of the tortoiseshell’s tail to raise her eyes and tell Scarlet that her father dying before she was born gave her the charm, but Mother continued to watch out for money spiders and say that they were far from fortunate. Grandmother scolded Mother, she sang her song about the money man being dead. The lyrics couldn’t have been about Scarlet’s father, for the girl had grown to realise that marrying a man with money would have been a propitious thing and she had inherited Mother’s losing streak after all.

Scarlet went outside to watch the mackerel sky buckle with clouds and the snails emerge from their shelters. When a spider showed his fuzzy face she checked first to make sure he wasn't a money man. Considering a change of faith she took one long pointed fingernail and pinned him down. The rain was coming anyway.

'Puzzled' by Jennifer Wilson

Miss Hardy liked to fit people into her world like jigsaw pieces: everyone neat and tidy, tucked away in the perfectly-labelled filing cabinet of her life. She would have given them physical labels, as well as mental ones, if she could: good child, bad child, trusted friend, frustrating colleague. All very well, until she found the person who didn't fit.

She tutted, and fussed, and frowned at him every time they met, which she tried to avoid at all costs. But her mind kept flicking back to him, her eyes finding him whenever she could, across the assembly hall, or in the line for lunch. Which label could she apply? Which group could he be slotted into?

He annoyed her, but not that badly. He intrigued her, but not so much as to want him around all the time. For now. She wanted to ask him question after question, but did not always like the reply. Or the time it took for the reply to come.

She asked others how they would label him.

“Heart throb,” was one response.

“Dashing,” another.

None of it helped.

Acquaintance? Too fleeting. Friend? Not quite. A nuisance? Most definitely, yet it seemed too harsh.

At last, just in time, inspiration hit, the tag which fitted the bill. One hurried phone call, two exclamations of happiness, and the label was applied.

He would be 'hers'.

'The Collector' by Dixon Barker

Gilbert Funeral liked to collect. Of a morning you’d likely find him in town walking hands-behind-his-back, head tilted down and nose pushed forward, his thin moustache quivering as if sniffing out his next piece of wonderful rubbish.

Gilbert collected many things. Often it was buttons, brooches and pin-badges, other times it was matchbooks, football cards or train tickets. Sometimes he collected phrases, although recently he’d been drawn to collective nouns almost exclusively: a blush of boys, a bench of bishops, an observance of hermits and a congregation of magpies. The latter had made him consider collecting birds, but something more interesting came along and he had collected that instead. One time, Gilbert had even tried to collect himself a wife, but he found that wives didn’t seem to like being collected.

People in town had a lot of time for Gilbert, until he had tried to collect them.

‘Do you enjoy it?’ one of the townsfolk once queried, since no-one had ever understood why Gilberthad to collect things.

‘It’s just something I’ve always done,’ Gilbert responded, in that high, shrill way of speaking he had. The truth was Gilbert had no idea why he collected. He couldn’t remember when or how it had started - he just knew he had to collect.

Despite all of his efforts, Gilbert had never been very good at collecting friends. He’d tried to join in with the games at school but would always end up collecting all of the balls, hockey sticks or jerseys in before the games even began. ‘Gilbert Funeral,’ his P.E teacher would cry, pointing to the edge of the playing field, ‘go and take a seat now’. So Gilbert would sit and collect his thoughts.

When he left school his mother had suggested a career as a debt-collector, ‘It’s hard work, but you get to collect all day,’ she told him. In truth she wanted him out of the house, and his uncle’s collection firm seemed the perfect place to accommodate his foibles. Gilbert would leave the house before 6am, collect himself a newspaper and begin his rounds. On his travels he’d collect all kinds of cash and assets. After collecting more than his fair share of insults, threats and black eyes however, he decided to call it a day and settled back in with his mother.

Recently though, Gilbert’s mother had been ill and relocated to a nursing home. When the call came that she wouldn’t make it through the night Gilbert sat by her bed-side. Together they recollected her favourite memories as a child and Gilbert put them all down in a notebook he’d collected from the front desk. 

Weeks later Gilbert collected her ashes. On the train home he fell asleep and missed his stop. He didn’t know where he was and wandered into the waiting room. Here, he noticed a large sign reading ‘Collection Point’. Beneath the sign was an uncomfortable looking metal-framed chair. Gilbert walked over, and took a seat. Waiting to be collected.  

'Five Seconds' by Sal Page

Chrissie grabbed two salads, span round and slammed right into him. He moved his cappucino up out of the way in time but one of his doughnuts jumped off the plate. He put his coffee and the other doughnut back on the counter, Chrissie put the salads down and they both bent to pick the doughnut up, very nearly bumping heads. Chrissie grabbed it. They looked at each other and said, in unison, the same three words.

    ‘Five Second Rule.’

    Laughter. Not only from the two them, from counter staff and nearby customers. Chrissie flung the doughnut away, picked up the tongs and slid another onto his plate. She noticed his hand shook as he took it and muttered his thanks. She picked up the salads, a slice of cucumber frisbee’d off and she kicked it under the counter.

    Lunchtime rush done, Chrissie took two coffees over to his table.

    ‘Can I join you? My shift’s finished.’

    She sat down before he could answer. He scooped up the papers he’d spread across the table. She introduced herself and found out his name.

    ‘Thought you might like another coffee, Alan. What’s all this?’

    Alan removed his glasses and cleared his throat. ‘I’m working on a research project.’

    ‘What about?’

    ‘Er … this is quite a coincidence actually. It’s about the five second rule.’ He glanced up for a second then looked away.

    ‘Really?’

    ‘I’m testing the theory out. Dropping different foodstuffs onto different surfaces and leaving them for varying amounts of time. We check them for contamination and record the results.’    

    He didn’t seem to be able to look at her. He began listing bacteria. Chrissie remembered some from her food safety course. She watched his mouth form the words. Salmonella, Staphylococcus Aureus, E-Coli … and yeasts, human skin and ordinary dust.’

    Elbow on the table, she lifted her cup. ‘That doughnut would’ve been fine. Reckon I got it in four and the floor’s mopped every day.’

    Alan looked serious. ‘But think of all the people who come in here. All the places they’ve walked. Take me, for example.’

    Chrissie shifted in the chair. She’d like to do just that.

    ‘Today I walked along the river and through the park so …’

    ‘Duck poo. Dog poo.’

    ‘Exactly. And that’s just for starters.’

    Chrissie laughed. ‘You go to some strange restaurants.’

    He smiled. Blushing was endearing. On Alan. He looked right at her and swallowed.

    ‘I like Bertollini’s. Maybe, I mean only if …’

    Chrissie decided to be kind and guess the rest.

    ‘I’d love to. You need proper food tonight. Two doughnuts is not a good lunch. I’ll meet you in five.’

    Chrissie hung her apron up and fetched her jacket, not knowing that in five hours she’d be in his bed, dropping pieces of Bertollini’s profiteroles onto his bare chest. That in five days she would be unable to imagine life without Alan or that in five weeks she’d be his assistant. Dropping food for a living.