The Secretary

The secretary sat back from her desk and rubbed her eyes. She couldn't concentrate. The words the Party leader had spoken the day before kept appearing in her mind, cutting her thoughts like gulls in cloud.

She walked to the window and gazed out beyond the city. Large clouds rolled in from the sea, lit up bright yellow-white by the late afternoon sun. She bit her lip nervously.

The Party leader had made it clear that he did not expect her to turn the offer down. And it was a wonderful offer. Her heart raced at the thought of the advantages it could afford. But there was a tightness in her stomach, a feeling unfamiliar to someone so capable. The bad feeling grew.

She had no idea what Charles looked like- the city was good at hiding those things that shouldn't be seen- but she'd heard the rumours like everyone else. The enormous physical prospect of him was unbelievable enough, but there was so much more. He didn't belong in the city, amongst them here; he just didn't belong anywhere. She thought about his parents and how embarrassed and dissapointed they must be in him.  Her mind started to construct an image of him without his clothes and a bitter taste caught the back of her throat. She closed her eyes and rested a hand against the window, breathing heavily.

Could she really do it? The sickness could be controlled through medication, as could the lack of physical desire, but could she keep the act up, all the way to the end? The idea of being intimate with him... And what if she accidentally let the truth slip out? The whole matter demanded the utmost discretion; the Party leader had explained that very carefully. And she knew very well that he detested loose ends.

A call came through on her screen, the metallic sound bringing her back from her thoughts. She walked back over to her desk and answered the call, her voice friendly but with a measured calm, just as prescribed by her role. Back in familiar territory she felt comfortable again, in control. The Party leader was out, and the man hung on, flirting with her as she had come to expect. She smiled and laughed lightly at his jokes. An act, perfectly performed.

She walked back to the window, this time noting the fine view of the city and the sea beyond. Gulls caught the autumn wind and wheeled through the rolling clouds. There were planes.

This was a good job. One of the best she could hope to find outside of the Ultra class. If she turned the offer down, this would be it; a job for life, answering calls, scheduling, translation, speech-writing. She knew she could do so much more. She rested her head against the window, feeling the warmth of the sun and the dead cold of the glass. Balance. She slowed her breathing.

The offer meant things she would otherwise never have. Wealth, fame, maximised opportunity. A place among the Ultra.

She turned back to her desk, catching her reflection from the long mirror on the far side of the room. She was staggeringly beautiful. Even here in the city, even amongst the countless beautiful women she stood out. She touched her face and played absently with her hair. There had always been something, a feeling that she was destined for something more. She imagined families watching reports about her on their screens at home, people reading articles about her, discussing photographs of her over their morning coffee in cafés all over the city. Men, talking about her in bars, thinking of her as they went about their work.

She sat back down at her desk, and smiled.

Lost Inside

My girlfriend has one of those bags.

She's sat on the edge of the bed right now, searching through it for her glasses.

A lot of girls have bags like that nowadays; it is nine feet wide, a hundred and twelve feet long, and sixty three thousand five hundred and seven feet deep. On the outside it looks like any other brown leather bag.

It’s the kind of bag that absorbs normal everyday items, the kind that makes you question your own sanity. It gets you looking in the back of the freezer or under the rug in the living room for a glasses case that otherwise might take a generation to find.

I lie there staring at her naked back with the morning sunlight glinting off her shoulder. She's making quiet exploration sounds. I think about offering her a compass, a stout pair of boots, a flask of coffee and sandwiches wrapped in paper so she can get to the search seriously.

She stands up looking like you wouldn't believe and gives a faintly exasperated, but quite delicious sound. She walks over to the bedroom door and wraps a robe around her cool white body. Without her glasses she looks like a librarian on her day off who intends to get drunk and sleep with strangers.

I hear her go into the bathroom and start looking for her glasses under the toilet seat.

Then I hear sounds downstairs and I know that she's looking for her glasses in the kitchen cupboards. Right now she's looking in the tin that holds the sugar from the top shelf of the cupboard by the refrigerator, like the glasses are a hidden treasure in a desert of white crystal sand.

I hear birds singing and my immediate reaction is to look down at the bag. There could be birds down there.

She comes into the bedroom carrying two cups of coffee and a pair of glasses on the bridge of her nose. I ask her where she found them and she tells me that these are her spare pair, and that the other pair must still be in her bag and will turn up sooner or later.

I swear, sometimes she opens that bag and the smell that comes out of it is like someone just lit a camp fire. I remember the day we bought it from a second-hand shop, and lie there wondering about all the people that might already be lost inside.

November Sunday

1. Gentle

We sat
Watching the snow come down
On the roofs of the town

She ran her hands through my hair
And kissed my shoulders

I wondered if that
Was how the rooftops felt

2. Piss

I was enjoying
a nice
Sleepy
Sit-down-piss
With my girlfriend next to me
In the shower

She looked amazing there
Behind a curtain of tropical fish
Like an oyster diver
Drowning
In warm tropical waters

I thought of what I might look like
From the other side

3. Armageddon

The snow fell all morning
Then suddenly
(And so quietly)
It stopped

Everything was a smooth white colour
Like an art gallery
With nothing put up
On the walls

We didn’t want to ruin
The quiet smoothness outside
So we went back to bed
And ignored the messages from my mother
Telling me she was right
About Armageddon

And each of us had a place in that old yellow streetlamp light, and the days of aimless rain

At dinner recently a man started talking about how he had lost his faith in God. He’d been quiet for the whole meal and started telling people about it right in the middle of desert.

We put our spoons down and listened to him. He had a strange way of talking like he was explaining the whole thing to himself. He looked down at his desert the whole time he spoke.

When he had done we picked up our spoons and finished desert in silence. No one said anything to the man about him losing his faith in God. It was a sad story and not one I really wanted to talk about more.

I wondered why the desert had made him decide to talk about it.

After dinner we said our goodbyes and I shook the man’s hand for a good while. Looking back it seems a pointless thing to have done but I couldn’t think of anything better at the time.

Outside the house it was dark and a fine rain was blowing aimlessly about the front yard. There was that old yellow streetlamp light.

As we walked away I looked at the cars parked on the driveway. The man had arrived last and his small car was squeezed in right at the end. I noticed on the back of his car the place where a chromed fish emblem had recently been. It’s the sort of thing you see everywhere.

The man had pried the fish away but the glue was stubborn and had set hard. I scratched at it with my fingernail to check; it was as much apart of the car as the paintwork.

We both stood there in the near rain and old yellow light looking down at the shadow of that fish on the man’s car. I imagined him uselessly scraping away at it and it seemed the saddest thing in the world right then. My wife squeezed my hand and said that maybe God wasn’t ready to let the man go quite yet.

The Somnambulist and the Song

It starts with a man sitting up in bed. He’s dreaming but has done like this for a long time. The woman lying beside him used to wake up, years ago.

In the dream the man is looking out of the eyes of someone else. He can’t see himself in the dream, but he feels convincingly old. His breath is heavy and sounds like a far away carpenter’s workshop.

The old man in the dream is looking down at the tracks of a railway from the edge of the platform. He looks down for a good while, studying the lustrous surface of the steel. Eventually he looks up, turning his head in unison with the man in the bedroom and staring down the tunnel where the train will go. The old man considers its quiet, calm blackness.

Then there is the sound of a train coming from the opposite direction. Both men turn their head to look. The man sitting in bed feels his pulse begin to rise. On his left hand, his thumb starts to twitch. The men look down at it and frown. It’s got a lot worse recently and the old man knows what it means. He brings his hands to his open mouth to try to calm the tremor. All the man in the bedroom can think is that his hands feel so cold. Then the man in the bedroom starts to pull at something at the side of his finger. The old man is pulling his tatty fingerless gloves over his second knuckle. Both of them shiver.

The train comes into the platform and once again the man in the bedroom feels his pulse begin to race. He can feel his heart beat at the tips of his fingers. Just as the train is about to pass, both men can hear and see nothing else and the man in the bedroom feels the legs of the old man twitch. The man’s heart stops momentarily as he looks up to see the train pass. He feels the cold again, creeping through the old man’s anxious state.

The old man turns around and walks back to a blanket on the floor by the wall of the platform. He sits down like a rusty box of tools.

They both sit still for a while, catching their breath.

At this point, the man in the bedroom becomes aware of something in the old mans’ arms. He can’t see it because the old man has his own eyes closed. Instead the man in the bedroom just feels and hears the object. First the old man runs a fingertip along a wire. It gives a distant squeal. Then the old man runs his finger along a thin piece of something, counting small hard protrusions. Both men count nineteen and the man in the bedroom is suddenly aware of how warm the object feels in his arms. There is a pleasing wooden grain to its surface. Finally the old man looks down and it is a small guitar that the man in the bedroom does not know the name for.

Just before the old man starts to play, the man in the room notices how much calmer he feels. His breath is soft and relaxed. Then the old man starts to play and the quiet beauty of the song surprises him.

There is no one around of course; it is winter and late and there is never anyone here. Nobody walks past to hear the song. The only person who hears it is the man in the bedroom from somewhere inside, as it travels down and across his spine. A part of the song briefly makes him tingle as it becomes ever so slightly faster. Like the dream, the song is a minor lament and the sound of it is beautiful in their arms. The song is played so quietly by the old man it would be completely drowned out, were it not for the place being so utterly deserted.

After the song is finished they both look down and see an upside-down hat on the floor. It is as empty as ever. Both men reach out and pick it up, placing it carefully on their heads.

From somewhere far away, there is the sound of another train. The old man says, “I think this is mine.” He says it with a grainy lilt to his voice. The man in the bedroom speaks the words silently.

The old man stands up painfully; but both men expect this by now. The sound of the train comes in louder than the previous one, because of the quietness of the song.

Suddenly the old man breaks into an uneven run. This hurts both of them right down their spine and into their knees but by now it is too late and both men have smiles on their faces now. The train meets the men with its sudden light and noise and just as sudden blackness. The only thing the driver saw was a man in a dark coat, and the head of what looked like a guitar poking up over his shoulder.

The man in the bedroom wakes. He lets out a small shout.

The woman sits up and reaches around him. His body is cold and damp. She has seen this so many times before.

“Bad dream?” She says, softly into his ear.

“No.”

The Train

I witnessed something recently on an overnight train; it was a small thing that happened quietly in the middle of the night whilst other people were somehow managing to sleep. It wasn’t a thing to wake the others for, just a moment of humanity to sit and watch from the silent darkness of my own bed.

I’d woken gradually to a full bladder and one of those slow-formed questions about holding out until morning. Realising that the answer was of course no, I sat up and looked around in the gloom of the carriage, at the dark-coloured limbs hanging over the edges of the other bunks. I wondered at their effortless sleep. Meanwhile my bladder truly needed emptying but the silence and unfamiliarity pinned me hard to the bed, and I could feel sleep-inertia wrapping itself warmly around my shoulders. So I ended up sitting there, dumb and foreign and inert and needing-to-piss, for quite some time.

Then from up at the end of the carriage I heard the cough of a child. I looked over. In the lighted section by the carriage doors, a man with a moustache was sat leaning against a partition wall. Next to him, curled into a ball comprised mostly of limbs, a young boy was trying to sleep on the metal floor of the train. He was restless and clearly unwell. His cough was frequent and the sound of it rattled through the body of the carriage and blended with a metallic noise that was the background to all other things. The man by the boy’s side looked down at him with love, occasionally running a hand across his back or through his hair. The man’s other arm was around the boy like the walls of a castle.

I don’t know how long I watched the two of them for, but at some point another man appeared from the doorway to the adjoining carriage. He was carrying a huge pile of cardboard and other things that I couldn’t make out. He stopped and looked down at the man and said something to him too quietly for me to hear. This new man had a moustache too. Eventually a bright smile came over the face of the seated man; he gathered the young boy in his arms and stood up, holding him closely. It was then that I realised what was happening. The other man laid down the material he had brought from the cargo carriage; plastic sheeting, bubble wrap, layers of cardboard, until he had a single plastic sheet in his hands. I wondered how long it had taken him to collect it, to carry it through the umpteen carriages of sleeping bodies, and to convince the man guarding the cargo to hand it all over. I wondered if the guard had taken any money.

The man laid his boy down gently, then took the final plastic sheet and laid it over his small frame. Slowly, slowly, the boy’s head disappeared under the cover as he curled himself away into a warm and comfortable place. Then the two men, they were strangers I believe, shook each other's hand for a very, very long time.

I finally came to my senses and wandered to the toilet, nodding to the men as I passed. I emptied my bladder whilst smiling to myself and wondering if things like that happened all the time when hardly anyone else was watching.

Sunday, Raining, Chinatown

Sunday,
Raining,
Chinatown:
the lady in
Ho’s bakery
tells me
there are no
sweet melon cakes left
but she offers me
a beautiful smile instead
(the best of the day)
and three roast pork buns
the whole lot
for a celestial bargain
of a pound and
twenty-pence
so I take all four
and sit under some
pagoda arrangement
amongst the hurried
Chinese voices
and the sound of rain
on the red lacquered roof
and in the warmth there
I’m glad that
the thousand things you want
are not always
the things you really need
and it's all the same as it was before
(Sunday, Raining, Chinatown)
but for now
at least
it's a great deal better

[O: Go there]

Waterfall

I came across
a waterfall
in a forest
that surprised me
because there
had only ever been
dry earth there,
but now it was a
long, flowing
waterfall
that ran in
gentle curves and
almost silence
down between the trees,
creating
little clear pools
that played
so fragilely
with the first
fallen leaves of autumn
that I wondered
whether they had
even the slightest
idea

The Interesting Death of Daniel Price (Pt. 1)

It was the change of wind I noticed first, and then the old man walking down the beach toward me as if he was ordinary and had simply been brought here on a day trip. He was wearing the same dark grey coat as all the other times I’d seen him, and had that long crooked stick that he obviously didn’t need for walking. I’d never seen his face close up before. Somehow he had always kept just far enough away; stood at the back of a crowd or turning just as I’d realised he was there. I’d never even been brave enough to talk to him.

But here he was walking past me now, giving me a brief and empty glance that dried my throat up instantly. He carried on past and worked his way to the high tide line. He had arrived with the returning tide and the change of wind made the waves crash heavily on the sand. He stood appropriately silhouetted against the finest sunset of the year.

I knew I had to talk to him this time, but for a short while I let him be there by himself. There was no one left on the beach for him to bother anyway, except me. My breath became shallow and quick as I climbed down from my lookout chair. I took as deep a breath as possible and walked down to where he stood.

He didn’t notice me, or seemed not to, for quite a while. I turned to look at his face and saw for the first time the wrinkles and folds of his skin. He had a much kinder look about him than I had expected, and his eyes were lost behind bushy white eyebrows as he stared out at the sky painted sea. It was still a full minute before I could bring myself to speak.

“Excuse me,” I said, in a predictably dry voice. “Can I have a word please?”

He didn’t react. Could he even hear me?

A few seconds later however his posture grew slightly tense and he turned slowly to his side. His eyebrows rose up over his eyes and his mouth hung slightly ajar. He stared at me like a bewildering work of art.

“You can… see me?” he said, carefully surveying my face. He spoke very slowly.

“Yes.” I replied. “I can see you. And I know what you’re here for.”

His eyebrows descended in a concentrated frown. He dug a small notebook out of his coat pocket and flicked to a recent page. He seemed to read for a moment and then looked back into my eyes.

“Joanna… Cox,” he said, with the slightest of smiles. “Interesting.”

His manner, just as I had expected, was of complete calm. He seemed to consider carefully the words he spoke, and the sounds that came from his mouth were deep and smooth. He spoke impeccably like someone who had been doing a very formal job for many years.

“It is not yet your time,” he said, continuing his search through the pages of his notebook. Eventually, he gave up looking for clues. “This… has never happened before.” He put the notebook back in his pocket, sighed and looked back out over the sea. “I suppose you have questions for me? It seems that you should have them answered.”

I nodded.

“I shall give you six,” he said. “Six is a good number.”

“Who-“

“After,” he interrupted, holding up a bony hand, “you have answered one question for me.”

“Fine,” I said.

“How does Joanna Cox know who I am?”

He asked the question word by word, as if it contained many sentences. As he spoke wind became noticeably cooler. He waited, looking out at the sea with eyebrows raised, for a reply. I took a deep breath.

“I’ve seen you before,” I told him. “Several times. The first was the day my father died. I was nine. I remember being sent to my room while the family went crazy downstairs. Anyway, I saw you, from my bedroom window, leading him away down the street.

“I shouted down at him, but he… ignored me. My mum heard me shouting eventually and came into my room. She didn’t believe me of course. Eventually I didn’t believe me either.

The man stood silently for a while. The ocean churned in the strong wind. He nodded slightly. “And the rest?”

“I’m a lifeguard. I’ve seen you three times on this beach in five years. Last year-“

“Melissa… Cook,” the old man interrupted. He said her name slowly with his eyes closed.

“Melissa. Yeah. When I brought her body out of the water, there was a big crowd, and behind them, you were there, holding her hand. She was watching me.”

“Sometimes,” the old man said, “the young ones have to watch for a while. To understand.”

I took some time to calm the memories that had been brought back to the front of my mind. The man seemed satisfied with my answers and said no more. I watched some gulls for a while circling gracefully above the bay, and then remembered about the questions.

“So,” I said, taking another deep breath. “Who have you come for this time?”

“A boy,” the old man said. “He is called Daniel Price. He is twelve years old.”

I didn’t recognise the name. He would be one of the nameless thousands that visit this beach with their families every summer.

“Does he drown?” I almost didn’t need to ask.

“Yes,” the old man said. Just as he answered the wind picked up more strongly. The waves crashed a little louder.

“Is there anything I can do?” I asked.

“You should… console his parents.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“No,” he said. “It cannot be stopped.”

The sun was almost down and we watched it blend with the water for a while. It was a fine sunset.

“But, stopping people from drowning is what I do. I’m good at my job, you know.”

“Indeed,” the old man said. “That is… precisely why Daniel Price drowns.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It is best for you that it stays that way.”

The gulls decided to stop circling and headed back to the cliffs on the western side of the bay. They left their inane chorus trailing back toward us.

“Can you not take someone else?” I asked. “An old person?”

“No. It does not work that way. Tomorrow… here… is Daniel’s day.”

A family appeared on the beach further down from us. They had two dogs that ran in and out of the surf, barking loudly. The sight of a young boy with them made my stomach churn. Tomorrow?

“You said tomorrow? What are you doing here now if he dies tomorrow?”

The man pointed slowly out to the horizon. “The sunset.”

I gave an accidental laugh. This old man was really not what I had expected. “The sunset?” I asked. “What do you care about the sunset?”

The old man gave a small but kind smile. “Do you not think it is beautiful?”

“Of course I do. But…“ I really had no idea what to say.

“I have been doing this job for… a very long time, Joanna” the old man said, sounding slightly weary now. ”I have spent a great deal of time in the company of your kind. I have… learned to appreciate some things as you do.”

“So now you enjoy sunsets?”

“Amongst other things.” He gazed out at the sea again, which had become momentarily calm. There was only a small sliver of sun remaining over the ocean. He looked to be thinking about something.

“Joanna, I want you to know something. That is, I do not enjoy causing so much sadness. To begin with, the weight of the will of the universe felt good on my shoulders. But I am… tired of it now. Now that I understand you more completely.”

“Then choose,” I said. “Choose not to take Daniel Price tomorrow.”

“I cannot.”

“You’re choosing to talk with me now. You’re choosing to watch the sunset. Choose.”

He sighed.

“You must remember that we are different, Joanna. For you, existence begets function, and therefore choice. For me, function begets existence. If I chose to ignore my responsibility tomorrow, my existence will cease. It may come as a surprise to you but I do not wish to die.”

“Neither does Daniel Price.” I felt guilty saying this, and then confused.

The man said nothing for a while. His breathing had become noticeably heavier and he held his walking stick tightly. His knuckles were white.

“The job would be completed by another,” he said, eventually.

“At least it wouldn’t be you.”

He paused momentarily. The final words he spoke that evening were, “You have already had seven questions, Joanna Cox.”

Mermahuataur

The fisherman looked down at it, half wrapped in net on the deck of their boat, it flapped and slipped around uselessly. A tail and cloven hooves were never a winning combination on a wet wooden floor.

“What is it?” Said one of the men.

“It’s the devil,” said another. He took hold of his crucifix and pressed it to his sunburned mouth.

“Let’s put it back before something bad happens,” said a third.

The creature had given up trying to escape and was lying exasperated on the deck. It looked at the men through large, black, sad eyes. Its tail was a stunning iridescent green and made the men recall their time in beautiful, far away places. It was making a strange sound.

Just then the captain appeared amongst them and looked down at the sorry creature. He had no idea what it was, but part of being a captain is to say things like the following.

“Whoo! We’ll eat a good supper tonight, lads!”

Some of the men started to retch, but the captain was in mid-flow. “Don’t worry, we won’t go near it until it’s stopped mooing from its gills. Now, do you suppose it'd go better with mustard or lemon?”

The captain wandered off in search of just the right condiment.

Without a word the men rolled the creature back over the edge of the boat and into the sea. It looked immediately happy. They watched it enjoy the water, diving down and swimming past them far more gracefully than they had expected. Before it disappeared, it popped its head up out of the water and looked back at them contentedly. It was slowly chewing an enormous clump of seaweed.

Paradise City Prostitute

The girl
stood
by the side
of the road
like a pure
vision
of 1986
she was
a music video
all by
herself
something about
heartbreak
and leaving home
wearing tight
jeans
and a leather jacket
with hair that
no wind
was a match for
her lips and
nails
were painted
bright red
and she
held a cigarette
nonchalantly
in her
hand
like a weapon
she was
staggering
and all three of us
fell in love with her
for the seconds
while we passed
and later we
joked
that her
calling card
would read
Take Me Down to Paradise City
or maybe
Slippery When Wet

Campsite

I
woke
to a cloudless
evening sky
and swaying branches
of hazel
and birch
I was really
barely there
unable to move
or unwilling
it didn’t matter which
the insects
didn’t even notice me
and all around
were hushed
excited voices
of close friends
enjoying one another
and a constant drone
of grimy
happy children
their words a mix
of foreign tongues
and laughter
it was perfect
and just then
a wind came through
and played the trees
like an orchestra
of harps
and as much
as I wanted to stay
I was lulled
to sleep
again

Principle

“It’s the principle of the matter,” she said, dragging the suitcase away. It was threadbare and broken from years of careless treatment. In its bottom corner was a hole, she had obviously forgotten, and things of no apparent consequence spilled out onto the street behind her. She was walking too heavily to hear. The old forgotten items lay there casting small shadows, enjoying sunlight and fresh breeze for the first time in years. I didn’t say anything. It was about the principle after all.

The Beer Festival

The room is adorned with a brightly dressed array of bearded, bespectacled men like some national wizarding or gnome's convention. Instead of magical staffs or humorously oversized garden implements however, they hold in their hands something far more useful. It has been coursing through the digestive tract of our populace for thousands of years and has made us the bearded oafs we are. I refer of course to the soporific, mildly hallucinogenic, great social relaxant that is finely brewed ale. The men pound their glasses together and quaff. Some guzzle, belch loudly and laugh; some sip and intellectualise. All, however, smile. It is the night after Christmas and the elves are winding down to a wobbly walk home and a well-deserved night’s snooze.

Around the periphery of the room, tricked into coming by their wily wizarding fathers, are the disapproving children of drinking age. Some are here on the pretence of bonding with their father; others know it was never likely to happen anyway. They stare at the obscure scene playing out before them, occasionally catching the eye of their forebearer, and offering a raised eyebrow of condemnation whilst secretly filming him on their mobile telephone.

Inevitably, the most bearded, most bespecacled of the men, their leader perhaps, produces an unlikely looking instrument from a multicoloured, ethnic hand-made satchel. The men gather round and look over each other's shoulder to get a glimpse of the ukulele he holds in his wiry hands. He launches into a badly conceived tirade that can loosely be characterised as folk, although where exactly it derives from is unclear. It is a tune he learned at a commune in Belgium, if that is at all helpful. He is not the most talented of musicians, nor is he the most gifted of singers, but he’s the best they have and the men are going to make hay whilst the sun shines kind of. The men lean back, close their eyes and commence swaying. The part of their brain concerned with musical appreciation has apparently closed down for the night. None of them know the song, hardly any of them have been to Belgium, but they hum along with imaginative vigour anyway.

In amongst the aural assault one of the more inebriated wizards decides to go and bond with his son. He wobbles over to him with an abnormal grin on his face, immediately making him the least popular kid in wizarding pre-school. He winds a spindly arm around his shoulders.

“Howsigoin, son?” Says his father, who is at the stage where he no longer has need for spaces between words. The gravity-through-pause section of his brain has shut down for the night also.

His son starts to reply that he is OK but the man has already noticed something of even greater intrigue. In his son’s hands is a half-drunk, un-poured bottle of brightly coloured liquid. It looks like something from a nineteen-fifties B-movie, if nineteen-fifties B-movies had been in colour. An alien would have arrived sporting crates of the stuff saying:

‘ “Drink it, humans. It tastes sweet and it makes you live forever!”

‘ “Errr, it’s OK,” the suspicious humans would say, “We’re going to stick with what we’ve got. We like the way it makes us forget about our awful lives and gives us stupid children.”

‘ “Mmm,” the alien would say, slowly walking backwards into his spacecraft and flying away, never to be seen again.

“Sowassicalled?” the man asks his son. He’s been staring at the label intently for minutes but cannot read the name for it contains no vowels.

“Youneedvowls,” he tells his son, replying to a question in his own mind, “vowlsare… butter... innawordsandwich…” The man is talking incomprehensible bullshit now, and trails off in volume, incanting some obscure spell the son has never heard before. Heroic action is required to interrupt him before the spell is completed, possibly killing everyone in the room. In timely fashion he tells his father the name of the drink. It’s sexy and urban sounding and rolls nicely off the tongue. It makes you sound attractive when you say the name because you’re not using many consonants. The man laughs.

“Soundslikebollocks,” he says and lets out a self-satified laugh.

“Well what’s yours called?” The son says. The question surprises his father who spends a good amount of time with screwed up eyes, clawing through the thick alcoholic mist of his mind to ten minutes previously when he pointed at a random barrel and stared at a barmaid's cleavage.

“Badgers... Badgersssomethin…” he replies. “Sweaty Badger? No… Anyway, tryit!”

The boy was unconvinced to begin with, but now even more so as a glass of something called Sweaty Badger, the least sexy and urban sounding name in history, is thrust toward his young un-bearded face. He takes the obligatory sip and immediately feels the bitterness of the drink dry out the back of his throat, just as the brewer intended. He pulls a face like badgers are clawing at his internal organs, not quite as the brewer intended.

“Dad, that tastes terrible,” he says.

“I know,” says the man, “bu'tha’s the goodthing about gettinolder, youno, your tastebuds dry up aneverythin startstastin OK. Even yourmumscookin!” The man smiles and lets out another self-satisfied giggle. The boy tries to stifle the smile that’s beginning to build deep inside of him.

Probably with the help of some subtle dexterity spell cast underneath his breath, the wizardly man surprises his son by snatching the bottle of brightly coloured, youth-giving elixir from his hands. He takes what he thinks is a sip, emptying the remainder of the bottle into his beard-encompassed mouth. He spends a few moments pulling a good range of faces.

“Ashleythasnotbad, he says to his son who is not called Ashley. “It’s like pudding, yknow? A pudding?” He puts extra comic effort into saying pudding a second time and his son can take this silly man no more. He starts to laugh, succumbing to the humour spell his father cast five minutes ago. With a smile the man slaps his son’s arm with a gnarled hand as the other pre-wizards look on. They pull knowing faces at one another but are secretly jealous at the spectacle of love they have just witnessed.

Eventually the evening winds down to its sleepy conclusion. The gaps between the wizards have increased as the crowd has steadily thinned. There are now only a few men left in the room; some of them lean against the wall, some of them sit against whatever supporting surface was closest, all have nodded off. The ukulele man has fallen asleep in his chair thank God, and someone has put an elf hat on his head, or returned it to him perhaps.

The barman, secret head of the sleepwizards clan, rings a merry bell signifying the end of the evening’s affairs. It cuts through the stale and boozy air and makes a few of the recumbent wizards stir. One wakes up with his head on the shoulder of a sleeping friend and notices a great patch of his own drool there. He giggles slightly and rolls away to one side.

“Shall we go?” The son asks his father, whose eyes are beginning to roll backward.

“Webest'ad,” says the father.

They walk out of the room, weaving past groups of sleeping wizards, and turn toward home. The last thing the barman hears from them is Sweaty Badger! and fatherly laughter echoing back down the street.

Clouds

He sat
smoking his pipe
quietly
in the forest.
From the branches
of trees,
birds watched
clouds
gather
peacefully
below them.

Daydream

It’s hard to concentrate
in a warm office
in the summer
when all you want
is to be sat
by a lake
and have small birds
land
delicately
beside you
and fly away again
when you turn
to look at them.

Journey

I drove a hundred and forty miles to see an old blind man spit into a bucket and do an impression of an armchair. He was sat in the corner of the room covered in fine dust, looking rickety and threadbare as I recounted the details of my journey.

“I drove a hundred and forty miles,” I said. “I got a flat tyre and the air conditioning stopped working on my car. It was unbearably hot.”

The old man was still doing a great armchair. Just as I was beginning to wonder if he had actually died, he started to draw a slow breath, the air entering his body through the hundreds of small holes left there by the woodworm. When he had finally filled his lungs he leant forward and said to me in a voice like kindling on a fire, “Next time, boy, use the god damn telephone.” Then he leant back into the corner and died.

The old man always was good at impressions.

Unforeseen

A man made love
to a hole
in the wall.
He found it
strangely
one-dimensional.

Freckles

Your face
in the
half
light
of my room
is a
sky
of faint stars
that guide me
to warm
and
quiet
places.

4 A.M.

It’s four in the morning and once again I’m awake. Awake to a biting cold trapped somewhere deep inside my body. My eyes don’t work yet and the cold is the first thing I feel. In my mind I have an image of the mountains around me, and the cold deserted mines that perforate them. This is how I feel at four in the morning, like a hollow mountain filled with an unknown cold. I try to ignore it, to wrap up in a tight ball and hope it goes away, but the cold has already reached the roots of my teeth. I can’t feel the ends of my fingers any more.

There’s a ringing in my ears like there were loud noises before but I can’t remember. Everything is too hazy. I crack open both eyes and realise I’m still drunk. I couldn’t have been in bed very long. I slide out of bed onto my knees and smile at the soft landing. I need clothing and scrabble around in the dark hearing myself mutter incomprehensible bullshit as I grab whatever textiles come to hand. With my numb fingers it takes me a few moments to wear them.

Suddenly somehow I’m in the living room and passing a table with an open packet of cigarettes. The cigarettes make me smile and I light one, writing unknown words in smoke across the empty space of the room. There’s a soft glow through the curtains that makes them almost intelligible. They hang in the air like velvet, just for a second. In the gloom I see a half-full glass of wine and I down it in one with the cigarette in the corner of my mouth. It’s quite a move considering my state and I feel awkward and sassy and right inside, and decide that I should probably go for a walk.

At the back door, all I’m able to handle are wellington boots but they’ll do fine and I like the sound they make as they go on. The pre-light of the morning is still too bright for me and I zigzag along the lane with my eyes nearly closed. The noise my feet make inside the boots makes me laugh. They’re far too big for me but I like them that way. Wellington boots should always be too big.

I don’t stop giggling until I reach the forest above the town. Sounds and images from the previous night begin to creep into my memory, amplified by the silence of the trees that have stopped their conversations to look down at me. Stumbling over roots I remember a girl, dancing. She had beautiful lips and a gap between her front teeth. There was something nice around her neck that kept getting flicked by her dark hair. I’m just getting to the part with the kiss and the words she said when I realise my arms and legs are being scratched by bushes on either side of the path. I look down and for the first time notice the outfit chosen by those numb hands in the darkness of my room. It's a yellow miniskirt from the night before and the enormous shawl my mother knitted for me that lives at the bottom of my bed. It’s perfect. I try to recall what I was thinking about but the images are lost. The only thing that remains is a memory of a good taste on my lips.

I come out on the fell side into the long grass and for the first time notice that there’s no wind, like the weather’s late or I’m perhaps a bit too early. The clouds are holding each other for warmth, and the lucky ones at the end of the valley are red-tinged and warming already. By the time I get to the top of the hill I’ve smoked three more cigarettes and burst into drunken laughter twice, and the sun has risen fully over the horizon. It’s larger than I expected, and a wonderful deep red like it’s just firing up. I sit and stare directly at it whilst I can, whilst it is entirely for me.

After a short while I realise that I’m squinting but I try not to look away. I want to see the warmth push the clouds away, but it’s too bright now even with my watery eyes closed, and the heat, that perfect golden heat is suddenly deep inside of me, lighting up everything. A warm wind picks up from somewhere and starts to mess with my hair, and I get to my feet and throw my shawl to the floor. I unzip and take off my skirt and kick the wellington boots away, hearing them land with a deflated SHLUMPH somewhere nearby. And before I know it I’m smiling and laughing and shaking my hair and all this time that crazy golden smile from a hundred million miles away beams down at me alone. My fifth cigarette drops from my mouth but I don’t care about anything any more, just this moment: me, naked and finally warm and smiling my own crazy golden smile, silhouetted from behind like a monument to the way things ought to be when you wake up cold and drunk at four in the morning.