Spilling Ink Review is proud to announce the winning and shortlisted entries for the
October 2010 Flash Fiction / Prose Poetry Competition
First Prize receives £100. Second Prize receives £50.
All of the following entries will be included in our annual print anthology and will receive a free copy.

Special thanks to
Unbound Press
For graciously serving as Guest Judges!

In the name of fairness, all entries judged by Unbound Press were presented anonymously.

1st Place

Simon Wroe

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

2nd Place

Robert Peett

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Shortlisted

Ian Crockatt

Wayne Gay

Steve Howe

Caroline Moir

Christina Murphy

Beryl Sabel

Marc R. Sherland

Mark Wagstaff

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

+++
+++
+++

+++

1st Place

Drinking with Dionysus

Simon Wroe

First thoughts. It’s flat, obviously. And warmer than the advised serving temperature. But on this happy occasion I’m prepared to overlook that.
+++++On a day like this, when the fulgor of the sky steals sighs and Apollo glisters in his chariot, we can certainly overlook that. Fulgor. It means dazzling brightness or splendour. Why didn’t I? I could have, but it wouldn’t have sounded so impressive. As I was, now. Small luxuries must be sacrificed to the gods of the outdoor soiree. Which gods? Soft shadows playing in the undergrowth, a parliament of London plane, the bon mots of pleasant company and, of course, that fellow in the leopard skin thong. No. Before Tarzan. Dionysus. His gift, however tepid, must be savoured.
+++++The nose. Bouquet of peaches and wet hay. A ferrous backbone. Tinned peaches, perhaps, left open on a radiator overnight. Late aroma of plastic.
+++++Hampstead is so lovely in the summer. I used to make the pilgrimage up this hill often when Baroness Rothschild threw her parties. Lavish, wild affairs. Yet tasteful. The Baroness had exquisite taste. Drinking a Chateauneuf poured from the bottle is like reading a book without opening the pages, she used to say. Genuine hospitality. Because it should be decanted. To open up the tannin structure. Well that’s your opinion, but as a professional I beg to differ.
+++++The palate. More heavy fruit tones. Lurid fructose. Waterbrash. Some white spaces around the edges, chemical, curious. I’m getting sulphur and cat urine. Baize. More American 8-ball blue than billiard green. Thin mouthfeel and the metal still there, poking the tonsils like a fork tine. Tart or corrosive on the finish.
+++++When the Archbishop of Canterbury held a reception for the King of Sweden, His Highness brought a present of traditional Scandinavian brew that tasted like a trough the village drunk had slept in. So no, it’s not the worst I’ve had. Elizabeth came to that reception with me. She was so nervous in the company of royalty, she spent the entire evening checking her make-up in the back of her dessertspoon and nudging me not to drink so much.
+++++Colour. Under these conditions I’m prepared to overlook this criterion of quality. You can’t gauge a person’s feelings if they’re wearing sunglasses. Criterion. It’s a rule, a standard of judgement. Never mind.
+++++Elizabeth was devastated when we broke up. I found her on the porch outside our pied-a-térre in Portobello, sitting on my Vuitton valise, waiting for me. It was late and I had tasted a great number of wines. Herculean. Andrew, she said, this can’t go on. How long must she have waited for me? Her voice was small and tired, like a lost child’s. Devastating for her. At least I think she was devastated. She was wearing sunglasses.
+++++Provenance. With this plastic label it’s clearly no French domain. White Ace. Super Strong Cider. Strange. I absolutely did not get apple from that. Wait your turn. I’ll pass it in a minute.
+++++I, too, was inconvenienced by our separation, because I did love her. Completely. The little heart wrenching sighs she made when she slept, the symphonies of her own composition she hummed over the washing up, the pout of her lips when I had let her down. It used to make me furious, that pout, but I miss it more than anything now. Funny. I can still see her smile. If you grab at it I will smash you in the face. Inconvenienced because it’s hard for archbishops and baronesses to reach you when you don’t have a fixed abode or a telephone. Inconvenienced because no one here has heard of a sommelier. They call me “Smelly A” instead, as my name is Andrew and it is phonetically similar. I assume that’s why they call me it. It’s very witty. Alcoholics are often very witty, though it is not often said.
+++++Final thought. Disappointing aperitif, though not unexpected. In Cretan mythology the Titans mocked Dionysus and gave him a fennel stalk in place of his rightful sceptre. Not unlike me on this bench, White Ace standing in for my Chateauneuf. After the Titans mocked Dionysus they ate him, so that’s what we’re up against. Here. Take it. But they didn’t eat the heart. Zeus hid it from them and restored Dionysus to life. He was twice born. Twice born. You should be more conservative with your intake, my friend. Don’t drink it so quickly. It will lessen your appreciation of the floral notes. It will destroy everything you love. It’s a strong point. Super strong. But one that, on this happy occasion, I’m prepared to overlook.
+++
Back to Top
+++

2nd Place

 

The Master

Robert Peett

I know of a renegade priest who took to the mountains and hid himself away in a secret cave, there to meditate upon God and his own soul. He remained undisturbed by anything but existential doubts, mushrooms and an itch in the centre of his back for many years until by chance he was discovered by two poor peasants. They listened to his halting words (and scratched his back) as he unburdened himself of his lengthy meditations about how it is good to be good and lovely to love and be loved, and they were enraptured by the beauty and wisdom – they were particularly struck by the immanent niceness of the bits about re-distributing the God-given riches of the wealthy amongst the deserving poor. This seemed a penetrating and profound insight, a burning truth to shine like a… Well, anyway, they resolved that his message should be more widely heard and prevailed upon him to accompany them down the mountainside to their village of dessert-starved paupers.
+++++These villagers, after some initial lack of interest, warmed to the priest and soon became disciples as firm and committed as the first two; before long they were marching on to the next village with the priest at their head. The caravan progressed through the land, slowing up all other traffic and swerving occasionally, and it was a matter of great sorrow when other priests and townspeople refused to listen. The sorrow came mostly from the true disciples, for the opponents of the Master of the Mountain (as the renegade priest had become known; it was embroidered on the back of his cloak by doting spinsters) generally did not live long enough to experience sorrow.
+++++However, the Master was sickened by what he saw being done in his name for although he had ideas he was no businessman, much less a marketing consulting or advertising executive and he could never have worked out the details of a fast-faith chain such as his disciples were doing. He begged to be allowed to stop this bloodily triumphal progress, but the servants could hardly allow their master to neglect his clear duty. Eventually the Master did escape (night, women’s clothes, and a blind watchmaker who was on guard were all involved), and he went looking for a mountain.
+++++The disciples at first thought to pursue him and persuade him of the error his ways. Then they realised that not only would the momentum of their crusade be lost, the Master was no longer strictly necessary. Oh the message, yes, yes – but the body? Wouldn’t that be to raise him up in defiance of his own teaching? A kind of cult of the individual (no, that wasn’t their term; they spoke a different language)? Rather as it isn’t the individuals who become pope that matter but the office of the pope, the institution; thus it is an institution which has had entirely unimportant individuals in it. They did, however, need a figurehead and his name – or rather title – could not be jettisoned. But then they didn’t want someone who might have thoughts or desires or will of any kind, so they looked around for a convenient corpse. They were spoilt for choice and finding one that resembled their erstwhile Master they dressed it in clothes like his and paraded him through the streets. Fortunately one of the disciples had learnt the arts used for Pope Formosus when his dead body was put on trial by Pope Stephen the Sixth and was a passable ventriloquist, thus enabling the Master to speak. Naturally they required a new corpse every few days to avoid their cause stinking to high heaven instead of aspiring to it. The ruse was never discovered, and most of the sect was slaughtered by followers of a renegade disciple (a former fisherman who became known as The Master of the Bait) a couple of years later.
+++++As for the renegade priest and renegade master (one and the same, pay attention) he did indeed find another mountain but he had lost the knack of staying on it. One day he descended to a nearby village and, as luck would have it, his sect arrived soon after. Thus it came about that the dead body of the Master, incognito one might say since the disciples no longer recognised him, was used to imitate the live body of the Master. He was deeply unsatisfactory, for the appearance of the corpses, like facsimiles of facsimiles, remakes of remakes, had strayed further and further from the original and so he now did not look much like himself.
+++
Back to Top
+++

Shortlisted Entries

 

Leviathan

Ian Crockatt

Thon wee mon

with the hair and hymnbook (to Lenins 1,2 and 3), perfecter of the lyrical snarl, weigher and recorder of Scotland’s languages’, inordinate lacerator of the anglophile ear, acerbic, thistle-tough, dew-tender,

long-married,

whose witty, erudite, passionate verse
burst contemptuously from Scotland’s literary hearse –
+++++
+++++
+++++
thon wee mon

would be something aweful to meet down one of literature’s rank and twisted alleys, (or between the Scottish Poetry Library’s Tessa-haunted shelves)

i’ the how-dumb-deid o’ the nicht.

Did he not reach back behind the gift of his name and lug the whole apparatus of a new Scots language out of his throat, turn this prickly synthesised tongue into a fuse and hold a match to it? Bzang!
+++++
+++++
+++++
(Yon wee mon
Would have loved that mis-print!)

Which puts me in mind of a Berserk in a vest at his one love’s wedding crashing through the tables of wines and meats, kilted guests flung as passive onlookers out of their seats, the groom pinned with one hand to the wall while the other reaches for hers, the silk clothing the silk, a wund wi’ wurlds tae swing, saying

For Guid’s sake, Jean, wauken up! I’m a poet,
you c’ud mak allowances for that!

‘course he was fit fer a flytin’, thon wee mon,

any time, any place, with a cocktail of ice-cold thought and overweening words for his weapons and a phalanx of rabble-rousers for seconds, any dawn, any street.

Lenin? Thon wee mon
+++++
+++++
+++++
adored but never hurt a flea, exceptin’ of course the swarms of beasties and leeches in the schemies and glens draining the last few pints from the last few working-class Scottish men, from the corpses of Gaels and Picts.

Adored, but it wasnae the minister who leaned out of his pulpit in the shivering kirk tae shout our concern is human wholeness

or who crooned in a hymn, of Burns,

the world hath need, and Scotland mair sae, ‘o the likes ‘o thee!

If the cap fits, wee mon – despite the electrified heather of your hair –
+++++
+++++
if the cap fits.
+++
Back to Top
+++

Garage Apartment

Wayne Gay

Maybe there’s something about a garage apartment, three blocks away from a college campus, that makes people decide to leave evidence of a special favorite vice behind when they move out, and not care anymore if the landlady finds out, once they’re gone. Mother inherited our rambling old house—and the garage, and the apartment above the garage—from her father. With the insurance settlement after my father died, she was able not to work, but just barely, so that we were always scrabbling a little bit, always wishing we had more, always sure we needed to rent out the garage apartment to make ends meet.
+++++We’d only see inside the apartment between renters, which never happened for long, thanks to the eminently rentable location. But whenever someone moved out, Mother would react in horror, shock, and disdain at whatever it was the renter had left behind.
+++++“Who would have thought?” she would say, shaking her head in despair. “All that time, right here literally in our own back yard.” With an emphasis on literally. And then, with a finality that said she had put it behind her, “Thank God, that one’s gone.”
+++++As my brother and sister and I got older, we came to realize she said the same thing every time someone moved away. Because there was always something left behind. Like the stacks of little green pornographic novellas that the assistant basketball coach at the university left, neat stacks of exactly fifty in each stack. My brother Rick managed to filch half a dozen to hide them under his mattress.
+++++Then, there was the bin full of empty scotch bottles left by Miss Hopkins, a small, neat woman, administrative assistant to the dean of the college of arts and sciences. She left exactly one hundred and four bottles, which meant she was knocking back two whole bottles a week.
+++++“Could be worse,” my sister Louise opined. Mother narrowed her eyes and looked at Louise suspiciously.
+++++Mother was even more suspicious when Frank, a nice young law student, took the apartment, but she had no excuse not to rent it to him. He biked the three blocks to campus, and kept very odd hours. Some nights, he didn’t even come home at all.
+++++“Probably studying,” Louise said, one morning when, from the breakfast table, we all saw him bike home, and climb up the fragile little stairway that led up to his door.
+++++A few days later, Louise came in the back door at dinner time.
+++++“I don’t want you going over there any more,” Mother said.
+++++“Mother, we were just talking.”
+++++ Louise was seventeen, and beautiful, with long red hair that she pulled back with a confident, tossing motion as she sat down.
+++++“Besides, he’s a law student, he knows all about age of consent laws,” Rick threw in, just to make matters worse.
+++++“Am I under age?” Louise asked.
+++++“Stop that this minute,” Mother said. “Under age doesn’t matter because nothing is going to be going on!”
+++++I was fifteen, and fascinated.
+++++Frank moved out the next summer. “Wonder what it’ll be this time?” Rick muttered as we watched Mother carry the broom and mop and empty garbage bags up the rickety wooden stair that lead to the apartment’s only entrance.
+++++“Porn? Booze? He looked more like a pothead to me,” Rick mused.
+++++“Mmmm, I’d guess serial killer,” Louise said. “The back closet is probably full of dead bodies. Or bones.”
+++++Three hours later, Mother was back. I sat at the kitchen table, scribbling at my homework. Louise was on her way out to a movie with friends, and Rick had just hung up the phone.
+++++“What a nice young man he was,” Mother said. “For once, nothing shocking to clean up.”
+++++“I told you,” Rick said. “He’s a law student, and he’s smart enough not to mess with under age girls.”
+++++“I’m not under age,” Louise said, gathering her red hair into a pony tail. “Alice and I looked it up. Seventeen is legal in this state.”
+++++“Well, it doesn’t matter,” Mother said, “Since you’re not going to be doing anything anyway, until you get married. Literally.”
+++++“Smart guy, that Frank,” Rick said. “Probably going to be governor some day. Or a famous trial lawyer. Like Perry Mason.”
+++++I stared at my algebra homework, and didn’t say anything. And knew that no, Frank wasn’t smart enough not to mess around with an under age boy. But he was smart enough not to let anyone know.
+++++And so was I.
+++++Probably.
+++
Back to Top
+++

 

The Icebreaker

Steve Howe

Micah Rushforth never ate the same thing twice. He was a colleague and friend of mine back when flexible work was the only work. We would file from the kitchen, two steaming plates in two white-gloved hands, among a tide of steaming plates in white-gloved hands, all pouring through the gaps between round tables at which the guests sat, all surging towards a waving clipboard on the horizon, the safe beacon to which we all were drawn. Sometimes me and him would race- the more waiters you overtook on the way the more points you racked up, and sometimes he would make me play a game which involved saying something unnerving to the guest your plate was delivered to, something like- “I only dropped it once, sir,” or even more ridiculously, in a mock-mother sing-song voice- “eatey-uppy your din-dins!”
+++++Like I mentioned, “I never eat the same thing twice,” Micah said, to a table of work colleagues. He had just ordered king prawns in a jam roly poly. The waiter had arched her eyebrow at first, her eyes dancing around the electronic pad, searching it for the answer to this particularly unusual request. Remembering her training, a smile appeared on her face. Of course we can do that, no problem.
+++++“What do you mean, you never eat the same thing twice?” said Sarah, “how is that possible?”
+++++“If you’re creative enough,” Micah replied, looking deep into his pint of lager as if reading tea leaves, “you can completely avoid eating the same thing twice. There are countless combinations.”
+++++“But what about when you were a baby?” a man with a low monotone voice said.
+++++“Of course my parents didn’t know of my decision as a baby,” he said quickly, waiting for the ripple of laughter that normally spread, at the expense of the embarrassed speaker. The ripple did spread. “And yes, unfortunately, that does mean I’m not allowed to eat baby food again,” he said, looking up to meet a louder hit of laughter with those dazzling, expectant eyes. Of course, I laughed along as if it were the first time I had heard it.
+++++“But…what if you like something?” Sarah said, folding her red napkin into a little crushed triangle, “you can never again have fish and chips or ice-cream on the beach, for example? A hangover fry-up?” Micah shrugged and leaned back in his chair, like a boardroom executive about to make an important decision.
+++++“Everything is disappointing the second time around.”
+++++I silently mouthed the words with him behind my pint glass.
+++++Due to the nature of our work, I didn’t see Micah again for some time, not until a charity dinner fundraiser the following week. During a break in service, he had produced a Chinese meal in a Tupperware box, which contained, among other things, chicken feet.
+++++“Why d’you bring your own food?” a girl said, whose hair was scraped back so harshly it looked like her bun was attempting to suck in the whole of her face. “Are you a vegetarian or summin’? Or the other one, the no dairy one?”
+++++“No,” Micah replied, “I never…never eat. Never eat the same thing twice.” Here he struggled, because he had just forked into his mouth a large piece of ginger. His chewing slowed like a steam engine gradually groaning to a halt.
+++++“That’s ginger,” I said.
+++++“I know,” he snapped.
+++++The girl with the scraped-back hair was looking at him intently. Micah suddenly realised that his face had been contorted into a curious scowl. A smile appeared, the steam engine fired back up, and the jaw returned to a rhythmic wrenching and unclenching of the bitter object in his mouth.
+++++A couple of days later I was sat at home, reading as usual, the rain splattering the fat sycamore leaves just outside my window in a comforting melody I have found in no other sound. The phone rang. I picked it up and Micah was on the other end, along with a sound that was new to me. It dawned on me that he was crying.
+++++“Andy, I didn’t know who else to call,” he said.
+++++“What’s up?” I said.
+++++“There’s nothing”
+++++“What?”
+++++“Nothing…nothing else to eat”
+++++“What do you mean?”
+++++“I’ve tried everything, every single food you can think of, every combination, every curry, stir-fry and every bloody pie. Food from all over; Welsh rarebit, haggis, squirrel brain and sea slugs. Sea slugs Andy. I’ve had desserts, tapas, confectionary, soups, stews, on toast, in a sandwich, food inside food, grilled, mashed, sautéed and smoothied.”
+++++“Surely there’s something.”
+++++“Listen to me. I’ve tried everything. Yesterday I tried boiling salmon in marmite.”
+++++I looked up from the floor for a minute to take this in, out into the darkness where I knew the leaves hung heavy and sodden.
+++++“You need to eat something,” I finally said.
+++++“I know,” he sniffed, “I haven’t eaten for two days. Do you know how hard that is when all you think about is food?”
+++++“So have a dish you’ve had before”
+++++“But I can’t,” he wailed through the receiver. It was as if a fraudster was mimicking his voice. “I never eat. Eat the…” the voice limped off into silence.
+++++“What are you so afraid of?” I asked.
+++++That night, Micah ate.
+++++On a shift I saw him again; a different event, different caterers, different staff. He was hacking out a slice of staff lasagne with a big metal spoon. The way he flicked it onto a paper plate reminded me of a dinner lady serving, with laboured indifference, child after child their school meals. He walked and sat, back against the wall, behind a big group of laughing waiters. He placed the plate on the floor next to him and tucked his long legs up into his body. He glanced up and watched the group, their mouths opening and closing, eleven white plastic forks descending on eleven quivering slabs of lasagne.
+++
Back to Top
+++

A goat, a duppy and a walnut tree the more you beat them the better they be

Caroline Moir

Only it’s difficult now to find a walnut tree. But I know where there is one. The walnuts stain your hands ochre and grime your fingernails, and the odour of iodine accompanies you as you cup them home. Beating a goat is just silly. The billy at the end of our road, his testy, randy, tang comes to meet you before you see him. He puts his feet high up on the wall and snickers his lips in a grin. His eyes are yellow opal sliced by the line of his pupils, his beard tremors with his desire to come over, over to your side. Look what big horns he’s got – all the better to poke you with, my dear.
+++++And you can’t beat a duppy though you can call one up with beer and money thrown down on its grave ground and send it out to haunt your enemy until your enemy goes away.
+++++
+++++
+++++
Once was a woman arrive in this old island. She going to live her life here. With her man who work the plantation, with her two babies and ones to come, the born islanders. Adventure. In paradise, she say. But it was three year after the big war, the world war two. The sugar, it hadn’t recover, it never recover. Wasn’t money ’nough for ’nother manager. That was one wrong ting. And a bad man mash the dog Bellady down, what the little girl and boy say. That was two wrong ting. But the nice doctor come. He make Bellady better. And the woman is heavy with baby. That is two good ting, the daddy say.
+++++
+++++
+++++
Also there was the maid-girl for the children, late afternoons spent by copper green seas sifting white sand for tiny pink cowries, fresh nut milk to sweeten the harsh rum. Life was not too horrid.
+++++
+++++
+++++
The woman got pains. The doctor come and haul her feet in air and pull with his tongs and take the baby away. There be no more babies he say.
+++++
+++++
+++++
After, the woman smelt the duppy. Between sun down and cock crow it lingered in the porch. Left its whiff – oily nut, rancid, nostril-whickering goat, iodine from the seaweed it trailed. Every night, she said. It came every night.
+++++The woman and her husband and the two children left the island. They set sail on a top-heavy lake boat, because all the ships been taken to the navy or sunk in world war two. They steamed across the deep sea back from where they had come. And the woman threw their last beer bottle into the long, dark swell of the waves. Stoppered inside was a note. Please send money.
+++++A joke, she said, happy to escape.
+++++But you don’t beat a duppy, a goat or a walnut tree.
+++
Back to Top
+++

 

Toreador

Christina Murphy

I am thinking.

My brother painted these words above his bed shortly after his third suicide attempt. He used the sienna and gold from his paint-by-number set. The third attempt was a hanging, with the pulley at such an angle that the rope gave way at the last moment and dropped my brother safely to the ground. Now he has a red welt around his neck. “Someday you’ll go too far,” my mother said to him, “and then you’ll be sorry.”
+++++When I talk to my brother, I try to figure out the causes of his behavior. He seems normal enough, has the proper interests in sports and girls. The only unusual thing about him that I can see is his aquarium, which is full of hand-carved wooden fish. “We will name the fish,” he says, taking them out of the tank. “Jell-O, Minnesota, Hiawatha, and Lee.” Lee is an angelfish, as best as I can tell, though his stripes are not white and black but burgundy and orange. My brother puts Lee into a tiny wooden cart and moves him back and forth along the edge of the desk. “Oh, well,” my brother says when the cart tips over and Lee hits the floor. “Oh, well.” Then he climbs into bed and reads.
+++++When I get tired of being with my brother, I go into the kitchen. My mother is frying eggs. I sit with her while she drinks her coffee. “Today is becoming like every other day,” she says. She takes a sip of coffee from a white porcelain mug and leaves a half moon of lipstick on the rim.
+++++I don’t want to be with my mother. She depresses me. I wrap one of the fried eggs in tin foil and put it in my pocket. It gives a warm feeling to my chest. I go out the back door to the woods to sit by a berry bush and eat my egg and dream of Arlene.
+++++Arlene is my girlfriend. She works the counter at Dairy Heaven in a pink uniform covered with clouds. Saturday nights I go to see her work, and the place is often so full of people that Arlene scoops and serves until midnight comes and Dairy Heaven closes for the night. Afterwards, when Arlene is cleaning up, and the only light in Dairy Heaven is a puff of neon yellow from the Banana Split sign, I sit in the back and eat a triple cup of dark chocolate ice cream. Cocoa Killer is my favorite, though Arlene always tells me to try Devil’s Cake Dream.
+++++My mother comes out the back door. “Bobby,” she says, “Bobby?” She turns on the sprinkler, and an arc of beads fills the yard.
+++++She looks down the path and sees me sitting by the berry bush. “Oh, there you are,” she says. “I need you to come in and help me move some furniture so I can clean the living room.”
+++++“In a minute. I’m eating,” I say to her.
+++++She nods her head and goes back into the house. The sprinkler continues to fling water across the yard.
+++++I help my mother move the sofa. There are dust balls and pennies in the place underneath. My mother tells me I can have the pennies. I leave them on the floor.
+++++When I get bored, I walk to the Stop ‘n Go. I buy a Milky Way and eat it while sitting on a fire hydrant near the bank. Arlene and I have been on this street many times. One day the high school marching band went by, and we followed the band through the town and into the park. The band played the “Star Spangled Banner” and “God Bless America.” I bought some hot dogs and a balloon for Arlene with buttercups painted on it and a small red heart stamped in the center. We sat on a park bench and fed the hot dog buns to the pigeons, until the wind blew and the pigeons scattered, landing in some bushes near the path behind us.
+++++I buy two more Milky Ways at the Stop ‘n Go and spend the afternoon playing video games at Aladdin’s Arcade. When I get home, I find out that my brother has bought a bird. A cockatiel with jet black eyes and a streak of peachblow on the tips of his feathers.
+++++“He can talk,” my brother says. “He can say toreador. Listen!” Tic tic tuh. Tic tic tuh. “You hear it?” my brother says.
+++++“Yeah, toreador. That’s great,” I say.
+++++That evening, my mother makes pancakes shaped like pyramids. She puts a ribbon of cane syrup on them and serves them to us on blue and yellow plates. It makes me sick to stick my fork into the pancakes and watch the syrup ooze out the sides. “Why aren’t you eating?” my mother asks, but I ignore her. It’s too much trouble to explain.
+++++I help my mother with the dishes, scraping globs of pancake mix into a trash bag under the sink. My brother reads the sports page. He likes the Chicago Cubs.
+++++I have nothing to do, so I tell them goodnight and go into the bedroom I share with my brother. His fish are out of the aquarium again. This time he has painted little green triangles on their faces.
+++++I get into bed. Soon, my brother comes in and climbs into the bunk bed above me.
+++++Tic tic tuh, the bird says, sitting on his perch in the corner, tic tic tuh.
+++++My brother turns off the lights and plays the harmonica he found in a vacant lot. Most of the reeds are broken, so it makes an eerie, wispy sound like the wind in an old house.
+++++The harmonica is quiet now. The bird moves along his perch. I wonder if soon there will be another suicide attempt.
+++
Back to Top
+++

 

The Bowler Hat

Beryl Sabel

I have two photographs of my great-grandfather. Both show a small thin man wearing a bowler hat. Now immigrant Jews living in the East End of London at the beginning of the 20^th century did not wear bowler hats. And this was not the only unusual thing about Moshe Kablovsky. Whereas the vast majority of his fellow Jews worked in the rag trade Moshe was a carpenter, and no mere banger-in of nails at that but a self-employed master craftsman.
+++++As a small girl I would go into my grandparent’s bedroom to run my fingers over the satin-smooth surface of the beautiful mahogany head-and-foot-boards Moshe had made as a wedding present for his daughter. I don’t know what happened to the bed when they died. Today it would probably be worth a small fortune.
+++++Still I did inherit something he had made: a pair of picture-frames. Against a background of some very dark dull wood he created delicate geometric patterns in a lighter golden wood that shine like star-bursts. They are exquisite and I cherish them.
+++++But back to the hat. When he arrived in this country Moshe spoke not a word of English and was penniless and friendless. The ship he’d boarded in Odessa was supposed to be going to America where he had cousins who were willing to take him in. Distant cousins admittedly, but family is family. This situation was only too common and the established Jewish community in Britain did what it could to help. The Jews’ Temporary Shelter in Leman Street was the salvation of many immigrants. The area, known as St Georges in the East, was convenient for the docks. Every ship was met as it docked and the immigrants were provided with bed and board for up to fourteen days while they made arrangements for their future. The thinking behind this charity was no doubt partly self-serving. Anglo-Jews didn’t want penniless immigrants with outlandish ways to sully the image they themselves had cultivated over the years: Englishmen who happened to be Jews. Whatever the motive, the Shelter was a lifesaver for thousands of Jews during the great exodus from Russia.
+++++As it was for Moshe Kablovsky. It was here, while being kitted out from the Shelter’s store of second-hand clothing, that he found and claimed the bowler hat. Who knows why? Perhaps he needed something to help him establish his identity, his sense of self. Perhaps it simply appealed to the clown in him – he loved to play the fool, my grandmother said. Whatever the reason, Moshe walked the streets of the East End wearing his bowler hat. This, of course, made him distinctive.
+++++Now the East End at that time was not without its anti-Semitism, though compared to the pogroms in Russia from which the Jews had fled it was a mere flea-bite. And it had yet to reach the extremes it did in the 1930′s with the Moselyites. But it did exist. People felt their livelihoods threatened by immigrants willing to work for low wages in appalling conditions. Indeed, things are not much different today over a hundred years later, though the immigrants are no longer Jews. Anyway, the abuse was mainly verbal, with the occasional brawl.
+++++The bowler hat made it almost inevitable that Moshe would be subjected to abuse. One day a small group of youths began to shout obscenities at him as he walked along Whitechapel Road on his way home from work. He ignored them. Frustrated at not getting a reaction from him they soon decided to go for something a bit more physical. So one day they waited until he turned into a quieter road, then jumped him and began pounding him with their fists. As he was so short, most of the blows landed on his head which was quite well protected by the bowler hat.
+++++Three days of this and Moshe had had enough. The next day the assault was over almost before it began. Before leaving his workshop that afternoon Moshe had knocked some nails into a small piece of wood so that they projected by about an inch. He had then placed the piece of wood on his head, nails pointing upward, and jammed his hat over the wood. No further attacks occurred and though there were now several small holes in the hat they evidently didn’t bother Moshe because a few days later he went and had his photograph taken – wearing the bowler hat. In the photo you can’t actually see the holes but I don’t suppose Moshe cared. He knew they were there.
+++++I call them his ‘before’ and ‘after’ pictures and they have pride of place on my living room wall, in the frames he himself made, testament to a small but indomitable man.
+++
Back to Top
+++

 

Skin & Guts

Marc R.  Sherland

He learned to shoot when a nipper, his father taking him to the misty moors behind their ramshackle terrace slum and getting him to take pot shots at unwary rabbits in the glistening moonlight. Every shot needed to count, as ammunition was expensive, so for every rabbit which missed its place in the pot, Freddie got a weal across his bare legs, stung with his father’s army belt. It taught him to be an excellent shot. He was also expected to skin and gut the catch without sentiment or qualm.
+++++His dad died when Freddie was twelve years old. Tuberculosis took hold in lungs festered by war gassing, within two years, the man was dead. Good riddance to him.
+++++Freddie went to school when work and chores allowed him, but learning did not stick to his ribs like a good rabbit stew. The teacher Mr. Philip, stood in front of class and tapping the rule on his desk would get them to recite the ‘times tables’.
+++++“5 times 1 is 5,
+++++5 times 2 is 10,
+++++5 times 3 is 15,
+++++5 times 4 is ….”
+++++Freddie understood the rhythm, recognised the words, but could never get the sense of them.
+++++Old teach, would glance over his horn rim glasses and watch the mumbling words fall from childish lips, like the drone of incessant bees, knowing that no pollen was being collected. Except for those seated at the top right hand corner of the room, there was no honey to be made here, and even they, would likely end in an elementary school, rather than gain a grammar school scholarship.
+++++At the end of the day he would announce “You boys are nothing but cannon fodder, except for you Frederick Horne, you are destined to be a poacher, or sniper.”
+++++Freddie had brothers and sisters to help feed, for his mother had to work at two jobs just to make ends meet. By day she took in washing and by evening she worked as an usher in the Regal cinema, collecting lost handkerchiefs left at the ‘weepies’, washing them and selling them at weekends at the market, along with other ‘found’ trinkets.
+++++From the age of ten, Freddie made his way by filling sacks with coal, perched on the back of a wooden truck, which trundled along half baked roads, horse hooves attempting to avoid laming potholes every few yards. His regular customers knew him for his trademark whistling, as he bore heavy sacks on his back to the bunkers outside the slum doors. Many a time he had to turn heel still borne down with the weight, as a regular had no money to pay for fuel and no credit worth the interest.
+++++Sometimes he would see some smirking tike playing in the gutter and he would challenge them to carry the half hundred weight of coal up to the door. He would laugh as boys twice his size couldn’t manage what he had learned the knack to hoist. For all the bone crunching labour, Freddie grew strong and broad shouldered. He would have made a reasonable catch for one of the local lasses, but war interjected.
+++++One day at the evening meal, the one family gathering time, conversation dwelt on that subject, with the younger boys moaning that they were too young to join the forces and Freddie wondering which service he should join.
+++++Naomi his thirteen year old sister said “I’m gonna be a nirse, an sew up all their bullit hols.”
+++++Freddie quipped, “Well they’ll all die av gangereen from yer awful stitchin and th muck on yer grey mitts.”
+++++She slammed down her knife and hid her hands behind her back. Washing water was available once a day, last thing at night, for it had to be fetched from the pump in the street.
+++++“Yer a bustard,” she replied, “At least I don’t haulk coal all day for a livin.”
+++++He made a grim smile, annoyed at the slight but secretly pleased that she wanted to do her bit.
+++++He discovered that the dockyard needed labourers and having built muscles with the coal, reckoned that at sixteen he had the qualifications to fit the job. He was right, he was taken on at first sight and employed moving lumps of metal and wood and hammering and shoving them around. Foremen admired him, for his ready willingness to do a job and get on with it, never complaining at even the toughest request. He got any overtime that was going and he took it no matter how many hours he had already worked in a week. War made slaves of labourers, in all but wages, and he was tethered to the war effort.
+++++In 1944 the HMS Bulldog was docked at the shipyard, due to undergo some minor repairs, whilst being loaded with a cargo of explosives and shells due for the continent.
+++++The Luftwaffe had been sending bombs across the channel to drop on industry, but so far the shipyard had escaped.
+++++By moonlight urgent loading continued. One private tried to hoist ordnance too heavy and awkward. Freddie who was working late got a call to go help, his knack had been noticed. Before he could board the ship the private dropped the case of shells and they exploded setting off a chain reaction of terrible thuds and blasts until the whole ship was ablaze with firecracker whizzes and bangs. Less than a minute, one almighty explosion began to break up the stricken vessel. The crew who had been confined to ship spilled over the side of the sinking boat, but they fell into an inferno of chemical enriched flames as munitions and diesel combined to light the water.
+++++The Dockyard Police Commander, was his old teacher who had been re-enlisted. Desmond Philip took seconds to asses the situation. The men in the water were screaming to be saved. They were soaked in diesel and scorched by chemicals, wailing for mothers and praying to god to save them.
+++++“Horne”, he said. “I’ve got to ask you to do a terrible thing. There is no way to save these men, but we can help them.”
+++++Freddie stood on the edge of the dock with a rifle and shot the burning and dying men, just like shooting rabbits in the moonlight.
+++
Back to Top
+++

 

Picnic Weather

Mark Wagstaff

I do things I never did when the children were little. When their mother and I split up or I left her or abandoned her, however she likes to play it, they were nursery-schoolers and babies, bewildered at every visit, distraught at every goodbye. I was very much the wicked man who didn’t care for his children and when you’ve a name that bad, you live up to it.
+++++All archaeology now. We long since stopped talking about it because the reasons we got together and the reasons we split apart have all long since gone away. The children are nearly grown up. Sally left school this summer; Terry and Stevie won’t be far behind. Stevie wants to leave early, says he’d rather work. He was always a sharp lad. Terry’s the one for exams. I can see him doing something brainy and lucrative. Hope he remembers his poor old dad.
+++++I do things now I never did, like picnics. A wicked man, I could never stand all that football in the park. Always too keen to rush away to whatever was keeping me busy. But now the boys are allowed an occasional shandy and I’m not expected to bring anything but my wallet, I’m much more gracious. Marina always got somewhat tense when she called about trifling details of missing maintenance payments or to twist the scalpel about sleepless nights with their torn ligaments and fevers. That sunny morning, though, she sounded like ten hours’ rest and a tax rebate. Picnic weather, she told me. We’re celebrating Sally. I had some vague arrangement involving beer but rather than say I was busy – as I would in years gone by – I said yes. It wouldn’t be a family picnic: it hadn’t been my family in a long time.
+++++Marina’s peculiar strength is meticulous rage. When I was the bogeyman she hated me with the malice of Greek legend. When the children went to that overpriced school for their overcooked education there was no pencil case or tie-pin she didn’t invoice to my name. The credit card oiks never grasped her poetic, restless revenge. Marina’s idea of picnics had the same diligence. By the time I emptied her four-by-four of the trestle, the chairs, the basket and plates; options for carnivores, vegans and Sally; the desserts, the fruit and golf umbrella, it was minutes before I realised something was missing. Tom. “How’s Tom?” I asked, the friendly way of uncaring ex-husbands.
+++++She never paused setting out the glasses. “Red or white?”
+++++She invited her brother and his weird wife, and I enjoyed watching their kiddies run them ragged. Marina’s Uncle Dan pitched up so we went for a manly smoke down by the river, while virtuous ex-brother-in-law scraped plates. Dan’s a strange old man so we always kept in touch. He told me it was: “Good riddance.”
+++++“Where did Tom go?”
+++++Dan chuckled. “Some motel where he gets discount.”
+++++My surprise that my bland replacement could do anything so tasty was wholly genuine. I couldn’t help laughing.
+++++“He was long enough about it,” said Dan.
+++++It was picnic weather. The unforgiving sun drove our pale scalps into the shade of the willows. Under that curtain of lacy green we found Sally hunkered with her chin on her knees.
+++++“Think I heard a bottle open.” Dan twinkled away, wisest of strange uncles.
+++++Not entirely comfortably I sat next to my daughter. Sally’s not like her mother, not like me. She’s maybe a touch of her aunt, my kid sister, who no one remembers now except as a jar of rusty ashes. Sally stared into the willow leaves that same tense, impending way of teenage women, that frozen-fire way we grow up to forget. With only worldly things to clutch at, I fidgeted on the hard ground. I lit a cigarette.
+++++“Don’t offer then.”
+++++I should have said: does your mum know? But I didn’t. “I heard about Tom.” I wondered why she should care what I heard.
+++++“Yeah. Dads, eh?”
+++++As the eldest, her eyes always found me wanting at each muttered see-you-later as I pressed some stupid, large sum of money into her baby hands. “He was with your mum a long time.”
+++++“Longer than you.” She blew smoke at the trees.
+++++I couldn’t even ask: how’s school? At eighteen it no longer wanted her. “Doing anything nice the summer?”
+++++“No.” She half-hid her face in the crook of her arm. “I got to do forms.”
+++++“Forms?” Always troublesome. And costly.
+++++“University. Straight As if you remember.”
+++++“Everyone gets As.”
+++++“Piss off.” She flicked her cigarette butt at an anthill. A few rushed out, darting kamikaze to the big heat. “I got in Oxford. Law. Good college. Good prospects.”
+++++I’m not so stupid to congratulate people. “Prospects of what?”
+++++“Income, dad. Employment. Those things you’re too busy for.”
+++++“How’s the painting?”
+++++“You don’t care about painting.”
+++++“I asked didn’t I?”
+++++“Yeah, like I asked Tom why he was going. Like I asked you.”
+++++“Dads, eh?” I gave her another smoke, as lethal a gift as my gene pool.
+++++“I’ve had another offer.” She dragged out the words unwillingly. “London. Fine art. She doesn’t know. No one knows I applied.”
+++++“It’s good to have options.”
+++++“Yeah, your life’s one bloody big option isn’t it? She’s already met my tutors. Bought the books. She’s told everyone: My daughter’s at Oxford.”
+++++“What about London?”
+++++“Are you deaf or just thick? Everyone knows I’m going to Oxford.”
+++++I used to hold her and lie how everything was for the best. “So take London. Screw Oxford.”
+++++“It’s so easy for you isn’t it? You just don’t care what happens.”
+++++I stood, cramp walking me like an old man. Not a sly uncle: like my old man who never got what he wanted in life and never let me forget it. “We can go to London. It’s easy. There’s plenty of places to stay.” I closed my eyes, not caring what happened.
+++
Back to Top