'The Rocket ' by Avery Powell

His mother had promised him a rocket ship. Now it stretched out in the arroyo ninety meters long, red in prow and dorsal fin. Finding a crew had not been a problem. The district was full of handy folk, second daughters and unwed sons ready to try their luck amongst the stars. They gathered at the rocky mooring just before dawn: Red Moss, White Bird, Elk-Sandy and the rest, children of chieftains all, and Eagle was their captain. His mother’s silhouette could be seen by the big house on the caprock, backlit by the coming day. Eagle did not look up but set his crew to work.

The rocket bucked and bounded from shore to celestial sea, a contrail wake marked its passage. The red prow crested the turbulent atmosphere and broke into the placid star-road. A calm hand held the ship in line. The steersman and engine crew were no strangers to riding on the abyss. He took them straight to Karrasland on the far side of the Leopard Nebula. The planet was a blue jewel and the rocket fell like a leaf to shore beside a thundering sea.

The dusty crew had never seen so much water or such tall, green trees as those that grew on the slopes above them. They wandered among ferns under pines and splashed among tide pools and breakers. Eagle stood at the foot of the gangplank and looked up at the big house built on the cliff that overshadowed the bright bay. When the others returned he organized work crews to harvest lumber, fill tanks with and run the desalinators to catch salt and fresh water. He set a watch for intruders.

Dusk began to settle over this corner of the world as the ship filled with mountains of salt, lakes of water and forests of timber. The crew chatted happily of the fortune they would make on all three. The daystar’s glory burned behind the northern horizon, the air was still warm, the ocean ceaselessly singing and lights were on in the house above when the rocket was fully loaded. The crew made ready to go, taking deep breaths of surf and sky.

“It would not be right if we came all this way and took such a haul if no one knew we had been here,” Eagle said.

The crew urged him to board and be off with their prizes before anyone stopped them but Eagle would not listen and headed up the rocky beach. The night was full dark, except for a band of gold in the north when he came to the big house. The windows were too high to look in. No one answered the knock on the door. The wind blew off the sea and the great water crashed to land far below. Eagle heaved a sigh overboard.

The rocket swung more from its berth into the sky. He sat silent at a telescope. On the cliff the great house burned into the night.

'Blue and Grey' by Danny Beusch

Their suits, in cobalt blue and ice grey, are tailored and sharp. Their stubble is exact. Their hair is styled just so. They radiate youth; I am exposed by its unforgiving glare.

Earlier this morning, my fifteen year-old son gave the following advice: your handshake must be firm and confident; you must maintain eye contact; you must give real-life examples; you must ask questions at the end, even if you already know the answers. I intently studied my coffee, falling deeper into its abyss.

Grey informs me that they’re not searching for the finished article but for someone with potential. ‘We will commence by assessing your problem-solving skills,’ he says.

Blue nods. ‘How would you go about estimating the number of newspapers sold in the UK every day?’

My brain darts back to this morning’s train and the crumpled newspaper I picked up from the aisle. I turned straight to the cryptic crossword, a welcome distraction from my churning stomach and the stench of the nearby toilet. It took twenty three minutes to complete – Leamington Spa to Birmingham International – with a tiny bit of help from the lady next to me. I can hear my son: ‘logical thinking, and effective teamwork to boot’.

‘Good luck,’ said the lady as I got off at my station. But then came the torrential rain, and my sodden shoes, and my mascara tears.

I write down Blue’s question. My son said that this gives a good impression. Thorough. Dependable.

‘Well,’ I stutter.

*

Blue doodles. It’s been a long day. He can’t believe that there are still five more to see after this one.

*

Grey stares. He’s always been attracted to older women. He crosses his legs to draw attention away from the stirring in his crotch.

Total Eclipse by Jane Roberts

I blame Boodles. I blame Tiffany & Co. I blame the Financial Times’ How to Spend It Magazine.

My wife would drop the usual hints, peppering our breakfast poached eggs with that dangerous meek-faced-leaden-backboned volatility. The sort that explodes when you least expect it.

“If I could own The Milky Way… I’m sure that would be me set for life. No more diamonds. No more emeralds. A definite saving, darling. 13 billion years old. Now that’s vintage. That’s a genuine antique. No one will have anything like it. It’s practically recycled, isn’t it? So much more ethical than Blood Diamonds. So much better than one of those zirconia things.”

Don’t ask how. You wouldn’t believe it. Don’t ask how much. I still don’t believe it. But when wife wants – whatever wife wants – wife gets.

There she stands in front of the mirror, particles of light dripping from her clavicles. A milky miasma around her and her reflected twin. Like religious icons with diadems shining out. Except around their breasts rather than their heads. We call her chest Silicon Valley – last year’s Christmas present.

“It’s such a good fit. It could have been made for me.” She swishes the radiance through her fingers this way and that to see how the intensity of brilliance alters at different angles.

At parties she lights up the room. People dim the chandeliers just so she can shine brighter. She receives compliments from all. Until. At one event a woman brushes past The Milky Way with a hand displaying the blackest of blackest rocks.

“What, this trinket? It’s just a piece of rock from the centre of the Moon. Nothing too ostentatious,” the woman answers the intrigued crowd who turn their back on the glow emitting from my wife. And I’m left thinking – this was the most expensive light show I’ve ever paid for, and now it’s the most expensive blackout I’ve ever witnessed. Total eclipse.

 

Pinned In Place by Sian Brighal

He’d lined the walls with them, filled drawers, all preserved behind glass. Each one a trophy of his neglect and wrongly diverted passions. Each one a placard—no, a dedication to his lack of interest in our marriage. Memorial plaques to each dead day lost, sacrificed to his pursuits. I had grown to despise them. Foolish, I accept that now.

                                                                 

It didn’t take much. It’s quite amazing what a hammer and pent up rage can do, and the sound of shattering glass and splintering frames seemed to spur me on. Once I started, I just couldn’t stop. It was a most purgative of endeavours.

I see you hide your smile, not sure if it should be bemused, incredulous or sympathetic. It doesn’t matter. I don’t need anything from you. I now have all that I could have ever asked for.

Yes, I suppose there was more similarity between us than differences. It was hard not to see my face reflected in the glass of those framed homages to confinement when I dusted them: see my own existence as a thing caught and trapped. I did find them beautiful once. I admired them, so carefully catalogued, so neatly arranged, so diligently presented. But their continual state of enforced order soon eroded their beauty. It became a mockery.

Once liberated, I gathered them together…gave them a proper funerary ceremony, but even in that, I was bitterly mocked as they fluttered lifeless up on updrafts. It was the fire that caught your eye, wasn’t it? Yes, I wondered what brought you and your officers here. It’s funny, or maybe not, but when the pyre had incinerated his trophies, I had a moment of sublime enlightenment. Too late for his precious collection, but such is the way of things. However, the epiphany was abiding.

My husband? Yes, I’ll take you to him…because he can surely explain this better to you than I could, couldn’t he? He’s not far from here. Mind the glass and splinters as we go; I’ve been quite remiss in my duties.

You see, in that moment, I realised why he’d dedicated our lives—for both of us were consumed—to it.  There was an immortality of sorts in his work. Those fortunate Lepidoptera plucked from a savage life that was only doomed would have stayed beautiful for…almost…ever. Content beneath glass, perfectly preserved, admired and loved, always there when an eye sought their comfort: static, unchanging….eternally loyal. All the things I craved.

Ah, here he is, my husband. I knew he'd clarify things for you. Isn’t he beautiful? Never changing, never fading, never flying away again. I’d watched him, helped him, with his collection, so this was always just a question of scale; the fence posts were ideal, if a little cumbersome to use, and of course, he’s a large specimen so required more than one pin. I don’t think they detract from his perfect state. All he needs now is a glass front. I think he’ll go lovely in the library.

'Nail Trimmings' by Shirley Golden

Dana can’t cry, not in front of everyone.  Bradley breaks down, and leans against his wife for support.  Dana holds onto the front row pew as the coffin appears.  The service wasn’t her idea.  She’d have preferred a woodland clearing, surrounded by oak and beech trees, where the whisper of a breeze rustled through new shoots, and enlivened carpets of bluebells.

She stands to sing, ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’.  She mouths the words, never comfortable with singing out loud, and listens to the rain, lashing against the stained glass.  She checks her watch – it is a tick because there’s no need to retrieve her mother’s one o’clock pills from their box.  Her fingers twitch.

Bradley said she looked tired and asked about the Will.  He used to phone once a week.  Their mother would wait for his Sunday night call, while Dana ran her bath, or made sure she had the right sized clippers for toenails.  The rest of her evening consisted of drying, cutting and plucking.  Her mother endured it, reeling off Bradley’s achievements, which chiefly involved material acquisitions.

Dana had fallen, years before, for an entrepreneurial man.  But she had not featured as a part of his long-term plans.    

Her mother referred to Dana’s artwork as ‘her little hobby’.  At first, Dana took it as an expression of interest.  But her mother would glance at Dana’s pieces, and speak of her own schooling, and of how she won a trophy once for a painting of a forest.  

So, Dana went back to cutting and plucking in silence.

Later, their mother lost track of things; she’d sit by the phone every day in expectation of Bradley’s call.  Dana tried to persuade her to carry a mobile device in her pocket, but her mother didn’t trust that.

Dana cooked meals that were barely touched, ran baths that went cold, and she cut and plucked.  

She kept the nail trimmings, and stained them, creating a page of bone-thin crocus petals, yellow centred with a faint purple flush.  

She intends to hang the piece on an east facing wall.  Not immediately, but after the funeral when she is settled in a place of her own; once everyone else has forgotten.

'I Wonder If You Remember' by Jennifer Harvey

I saw the swans today, on the bridge. Just the two of them, the cygnets grown now, gone. There were six of them, remember? We'd make sure to always count them, check they were all there. ‘One, two, three, four, five, six.’ Rejoicing when the tally was met, because we had known summers when some were lost. They came in low, over the bridge, and I looked up the minute I heard that strange sound their wings make. You know? That peeping sound, like they're rusty or something. They were headed to that spot where the riverbank slopes, the one near the bridge where they always nest. And I had to think of you. That spring in particular, when we'd stood side by side and watched them. You got too close, and one of them - I guess it was the male - hissed at you and rose up, wings outstretched, to defend the nest. The sight of it sent you scrambling up the slope in a panic. I remember how confused you were, a little disappointed even. ‘How can something so beautiful be so mean?’ I had no answer for that. ‘Instinct isn't always beautiful,’ I could have told you. ‘Nature isn’t always graceful.’ When was that? Years ago, but I can’t seem to find the date. All I have is today. Me, standing on the bridge, alone. Watching the swans settle on the riverbank and wondering if they have returned out of some sort of nostalgia. You’d have laughed at that, wouldn’t you? Giving them qualities they cannot possess. But I like to imagine they look up too sometimes, when they hear that sound in the air, that peeping. I like to imagine them counting. ‘One, two, three, four, five, six.’ Keeping count, looking out for their young, even though it's no longer necessary. I like to think I share this with them. Anyway, seeing them made me think of you. Made me wonder if you'd have remembered this too.

'The Devil is in the Detail' by Emmaleene Leahy

The package was large. Brown paper tied with string, very unorthodox. I could smell turf. It was dripping. A pool of liquid like wet ink gathered under it. I presumed my boss put it on my desk. It was there when I came back and she was gone. In a hurry, she probably forgot the paperwork. Rather than bother her, I’d use my initiative.

Normally I knew what I’d be working with. There’d be a meeting, documents and an inventory. I had no idea how fragile the contents were so I took extra care. Using my nails, I delicately untied the string.

I shrieked. Inside was a perfectly preserved human body. Everything was the same burnt umber hue as if he’d been dipped in tea for hundreds of years. 

My cry had drawn attention. Over my shoulder, three pairs of eyes watched. My monochrome man wasn’t something that we mere museum employees got to see every day so I shared my bounty.

The cause of his slack jaw raised some debate. Someone said that it looked like he was smiling.

“It’s creepy. Like it’s laughing an evil laugh.”

“I think he looks like he’s coughing.”

“Maybe he choked.”

“Or drowned when the bog sucked him under, consumed him.”

“No, he would have been buried after he died.”

“I think his mouth is open so wide because he’s shouting and roaring.”

“Roaring in agony I’d say.”

“Don’t be morbid.”

“It’s consistent with the broken ribs. I think he died in battle.”

“A battle he lost.”

As excitement subsided, I examined him in more detail.

I could see that he’d been immaculately preserved. I’d never seen anything like it. Not only were there tufts of hair still on his head but I could see individual hairs on the back of his hands. I could even still see the ridges in his fingernails. The tint of the bog water seemed to highlight details of him in a way that wouldn’t be visible in a living person. It seemed to get inside the cells and show the structures.

The other three were already gone home by the time I had finished cataloguing the front of the body. It was only when I began to move it that I noticed something strange about how this creature was jointed. It began at his elbows, an extra appendage.

As I rolled him over to inspect his back, a plastic pocket with a piece of paper inside floated to the ground under my desk.  Assuming it was the missing paperwork, I didn’t pay it any attention. I was too occupied with the frame-like structures coming from the man’s back. I gently unfolded them and something seemed to come loose. Was it a tail? My heartbeat amplified as I realised he had wings. The focus of my eyes spiralled down to read the note at my feet.

The devil liked to use his initiative. Look at what happened to him.