The Shoe Bag
Abdelaziz watched. From the lorry men were delivering the hotel’s supplies. Giant olive oil bottles for the kitchen. Pallets of cleaning products and insect killers to the stores.
     The noise of the planes and the heat stored up on the runway. He only came to watch one thing. The delivery of the hotel shoes. Huge transparent bags, a hundred pairs in each slung over the shoulders of the delivery men.
     So many feet. Where would they go?
     There was nothing as strange as the shape of a human foot. A walking hinge. The migrant’s essential.
     The black holes like doorways to the shoes’ interior drew his eye as much as the leather. Black circles of darkness into which feet would be placed each day. The sight comforted him. There was a destiny in it. All feet had a resting place allotted to them, inside a shoe. Even his own.

✉

Credits

fiction by
Jeremy Hinchliff
@HinchJeremy

image by
kerry rawlinson
kerryrawlinson.tumblr

©
creators

Plugged In
You sweat your way through summer, searching for a room: walkups in the hundreds, flea-pits in Alphabet City.
    Nobody in this town sweats or eats a damned thing either.
    You feel the heft of fat sag over your shorts.
    When the leaves turn, you graduate from a borrowed couch to a small, shared place by the river with a smaller room.
    Your own.
 
The air has cooled and you watch the runners, see flyers for a restaurant further down the block promising ill beats and good vibes.
    You want to sweat still.
    In the cool of a new morning, you shun the elevator, take the stairs out, into the fresh, crisp air.
    You put in headphones, hear the beat of your new city: join the flow of humanity in all its amazing shapes and hues as it huffs and shuffles, sprints and glides along the river.
    You move, plugged in.

✉

Credits

fiction by
John Herbert
@jherbertwriter

art by
Nata Tias
@natatiass

©
creators

Hair
When I wake up, I can feel a hair in my mouth. It is woven around my tongue, between my teeth. Saliva builds as I try to suck it free, to pinch it between my fingers, but I can’t grasp it. Is it one of mine or one of hers? I wouldn’t be surprised it was my wife’s. Her hair gets everywhere. She always trimmed her split ends while sitting on the edge of the bed. When the treatment shed her hair, she couldn’t face brushing it up and throwing it away. There is such pain in being a woman with no hair. I shaved my head to show my support; it’s not the same, she said.

I have it, finally. Wet and stuck to my fingertip. It isn’t hers. I throw the covers off me, searching the sheets for her, but even the hairs are gone.

✉

Credits

fiction by
Santino Prinzi
@tinoprinzi

image by
Anastasya Shepherd
scarletline.com/ashepherd

©
creators

The Last Kiss
You said goodbye in the anonymity of Paddington Station. Train announcements echoed off the high roof, flattening your voice with a thousand others. Destinations, track numbers, and your decision were incomprehensible. I should have known you would go back to her. Responsibilities and excuses. Men always go back to your wives.

You left your coffee cup on the table, lukewarm dregs in the creases round the base. I studied the place you had last taken a sip, and pressed my lips to the cardboard, tipped it up, drained the cup. This would be our last kiss, moisture enveloping our DNA in the acinar cells of our saliva, embracing in my mouth.

I envisioned them sluicing down my oesophagus, swirling through my gut, absorbed through my intestinal wall, flowing through my veins, pumping their way into the tiny embryo that has the shared double helix of us.

✉

Credits

fiction
&
artwork
by
Louise Mangos
louisemangos.com
@LouiseMangos

©
creator

Time Honoured
Marion half stood at the sound of the engine. She placed the cup back on the saucer and hovered, ever-hopeful, at the curtain. Another delivery for number 4. But the driver had just missed Mrs In and Out. Seizing her chance, Marion shakily gripped her stick and shuffled, determined, to the frosty porch, a martyrs face prepared. She knew she would keep the little parcel til Saturday at least. Weekend hours are the longest. She might knock after Sunday lunch, be unexpectedly invited in for a coffee. There was Kendal Mint Cake in the larder. Imagine their delight if she produced that too! Waiting for the kettle once more, steam wrinkled the pristine calendar. Surely Paul will come for his birthday next month. Maybe hold on to that cake. School run soon. She should stand at her gate and warn the rushing mums of that ice. They were always rushing.

✉

Credits

fiction by
Jen Hall
@jmiceling

image by
SB Borgersen
sueborgersen.com

©
creators

Black Ice
Do you know if you spread too much baby oil on the body your skin becomes a slippery slide? If you place your feet on a wooden floor, that floor then becomes like black ice. And as you slip and slide like a novice ice skater without the skates, you try desperately to hang on to something sturdy, something that will keep you upright. But your hands, your slippery hands slide off the bedside table, and the door handle rejects you, and now you’re flapping around wildly like a bird just learning to fly, or a chicken who has just lost its head. And as you call out to me for help, I reassure you that I will get a towel. But what I’m really doing is removing myself, so that when I call for the ambulance I can tell them with complete sincerity, I did not see you fall.

✉

Credits

fiction by
Kereen Getten
@kereengetten

image by
Anastasya Shepherd
scarletline.com/ashepherd

©
creators

#Notmydream
We sleep through the alarm. Curled like torpid dormice, our body heat cocoons us in blissful ignorance. Together we fly, soaring high in shared dreams: fantasy worlds where tolerance, understanding and kindness are the trending hashtags. The day is on hold. The screaming headlines are still muted until clicked and set free.

✉

Credits

fiction by
Tracy Fells
@theliterarypig

image by
Anastasya Shepherd
scarletline.com/ashepherd

©
creators

Cleaning Spray
Some mornings I sweep dead flies from the windowsill overlooking the gardens. Thick dust returns each time, laying claim to shelved photographs framed shiny and wooden. Other memories lie face down, stacked and ready for dealing at Christmas or birthdays.
 
A mop bucket full of cooling water.  
 
'I sailed beneath the waterfall,' she tells me, 'I remember the roar, the stinging spray, the sheer weight of the water crashing around the boat and never since have I, ever been so close to feeling alive.'
 
The kettle begins to boil.
 
'I flew high above the canyon,' she adds in astonishment. 'I walked on air.'
 
She repeats I did, I did as if I don't believe her. As if somehow this is all make believe. 
 
I pour the tea. Two cups, sugar, stir.
 
I know this is real. I can feel the stinging spray, the sheer weight of water all around me.

✉

Credits

fiction by
Steve M

image by
Victoria Fielding
@fielding_v

©
creators

Grip
The last time he saw her, she was sitting on the corner of the grubby white wire chair on the porch, the black vintage clutch gripped tightly in her hands. By then, her hands and pale skin were covered with creases and blue veins had sprouted up her arms. She would regularly pluck at her blouse and try to cover the blemishes. Her body was propped up in the chair, a pillow in the hollow of her back.
 
Each Sunday morning, for the past seventeen years, he would work on the flowers by the driveway, occasionally glancing in her direction. Her husband had passed away three years ago, so he was waiting. Perhaps another year, perhaps more.
 
The church bells were faint, irregular, mimicking her breathing. As the bells grew tired, her body sunk into the chair.

✉

Credits

fiction by
Carien Smith
facebook.com/carien.smith.9

image by
kerry rawlinson
kerryrawlinson.tumblr

©
creators

Diner
They stream in continuous convoy through Alma's daydreams. Campervan, caravan, overheard conversations. Sand, sweat and fermentation.
 
Another 4x4 swings away through the dust, its void instantly replaced. New sparring voices to sweet'n sour the air.
 
A milk jelly dollop of a child stares, pokes out her purple candy tongue, squeezes a tangy yellow trail towards the condiments. Alma doodles phallically on her notepad. Looks the father straight in the eye. "Make it snappy, love." The mother shrugs with her eyes. They leave behind an echo; the squinting rasp of chair legs, salt-sting resentment. Alma closes into herself.
 
She blows through the girl's leftover cola straw. A fluorescent strip fizzes overhead. Bubble galaxies wink up at her through a thousand reflected pinpoints.
 
She puts her ear to the glass. Listens. Believes in their frothy promises of something better. Above the sky; on the planets; on the eternal glimmer-eyes of beyond.

✉

Credits

fiction by
Linda Grierson-Irish

image by
Jon Stubbington
www.recycledwords.co.uk

©
creators

Days Like These
The cloth of my life is purple. Each morning when I wake it waits for me. On good days I wear it lightly; a cape woven from the finest Merino wool patterned with innocuous swirls and swoops. If I am lucky, the cloth will remain soft but those days are rare. Each fold traps the day's stresses within and the pattern becomes an angry jangling mosaic of migraine and despair. On bad days the cloth swells into a huge greatcoat, sopping with troubles that hold me tight and I breathe shallowly, desperately, longing for the day to end.
 
I dream of leaving this loathsome purple cloth behind. I will no longer carry the weight of daughter, sister, wife, mother: the tags that define my life. One day, just for a while, I will wear peach: cobweb light and butterfly free. One day, I will return to me.

✉

Credits

fiction by
Jane Lomas
@completelyjane

image by
kerry rawlinson
kerryrawlinson.tumblr

©
creators

He could hear her at the door and as usual, he shut his eyes, not to feign sleep but to exclude, to not witness. He let himself drift. The yellow lights of the tram in smog, the scratch-mark down his cheek on his first day at school. Twenty years later he’d marry her and ten years after that she’d leave him. His daughter would never recover and he would bury her at the bottom of her heroin descent. Thereafter his own life would snake down the board, through weekend binges, job loss and social isolation to house-bound decrepitude.

Time to engage. He opened his eyes. She was there, the bastard daughter of his bastard of a son. She would have had time to sneak a fiver from his wallet.

‘A wee trip down Memory Lane, Grandad?’
‘Trip of a lifetime,’ he said. Platitudes were so convenient sometimes.

Weekend Just Gone
He’s here - on his way to work – I’m guessing. Jeans and work boots. Re-enforced toecaps. Backpack over his shoulder – slight bulge. I imagine a couple of hard-boiled eggs, a banana, maybe a blueberry muffin. A bottle of spring water. And rough work gloves, dust pinched hard into the folds in the sweat-stained leather. Cell phone. Or maybe that’s in his pocket where he can feel the ring-tone.
   “Yes?” I say.
   “Americano to go.”
   “Double shot?”
   “Yeah. Live a bit, why not.”
Nothing there. Not seeing me. Like Saturday never happened. Like double pointy finger shot-gun
   “You work in ‘HueHue Coffee’, yeah?” never happened. Like none of the weekend happened.
   “No worries.”
I watch the black essence flow into the disposable cup, rippled like gran’s elbows. The last drops agonizing, slow - people kick off if they don’t get it all.
A whoosh of blistering water.
   “Milk?”
   “Hot,” he says.

✉

Credits

fiction by
Mark Ralph-Bowman

image by
Jon Lipinski

©
creators

A truck-rumble, mind-music-juxtaposed, jumps out loud behind the window, for a few seconds roars, then ebbs steadily away.  The office we’re in is third floor, creative, progressive, there’s beer on Fridays and a ping-pong table upstairs – a PING-PONG TABLE for god’s sake. Sometimes reception gets goody deliveries.  Chocolate in April, wine in December, doughnuts when a new place opens and we’re hip enough to be on their exclusive ‘Want You’ list.  Tweet Us the sugarpowder screams, Retweet Us, Doubletweet Us, TrickRTweet Us. Delicious.
We make creative things to sell you dreams.
We are made of lens flares, scintillation, fish-scale seduction.
We never bore, never tire, never run dry.
Our world is willy wonka, wizardry, wonderland.
You can’t come in but we’ll give you little pieces, piece by piece, outside the window, and we hope (clutching secret clipboards, projections, targets) that you like them – really like them. Love them. Love us.

Zeus Falls to Earth
The roof still smells of gunpowder.
 
The rain has left the slates a purple black, slick like fish scales.
Zeus sits with his legs apart, on the saddle of the ridge as if he has fallen from the sky. He studies the damage, where lightning has punched a hole through the roof, the size of a man. It reveals the relics of a child’s bedroom, once safe in the belly of the house.
 
The foreman screams up at him to stop dreaming. That he can find a hundred migrants off the beaches to fill his job for half the money. Zeus clenches his fist to summon the lightning bolt, but finds a hammer. Inside, he curses the impertinence of mortals, vows wrath and vengeance. But on the roof, as the rain passes and sweeps on towards Athens, Zeus bows his head to measure the battens and count the slates.

✉

Credits

fiction by
Henry Peplow

image by
kerry rawlinson
kerryrawlinson.tumblr

©
creators

Blue
Blue is the only colour. They all look at me as if I am crazy. I'm not crazy. The sky is blue. The sea is blue. I have blue swimming trunks, a blue bucket, a blue spade, a blue towel and a blue lunchbox. With a wave of her hand, Mum makes them stop sneering and laughing. I love Mum. She wears a blue slide in her hair, for me. I spot a small lump in the sand. "Look Mum, it's a red stone." I put it in my bucket. Mum's hand flies to her mouth. A tear appears in the corner of her eye. She smiles triumphantly.  Nobody is watching her. Nobody else sees her tear and her smile. I'm not crazy. I'm special. So is my red stone. Blue is not the only colour. There's red. Mum knows. Now she can wear a red slide in her hair.

✉

Credits

fiction by
Alva Holland
@Alva1206

image by
kerry rawlinson
kerryrawlinson.tumblr

©
creators

A Heavy Man
She always knows when he is coming - the ornaments rattle in their cases. There are a lot of ornaments and cases in her house, because her mother likes to focus on things that are pretty but that don't matter.

He is a heavy man, her mother's husband. He makes the ornaments rattle with his footfall, and he squeezes the breath from the girl just by lying on top of her. He lies on top of her quite often.

She has started to scratch at herself, in the night and the early morning. Trying to hurt. She is embarrassed by the chicken scratches on the tops of her skinny thighs, smears of ketchup on French fries. They are not enough.

She holds a piece of broken glass, from her princess mirror he has smashed. But still she can't cut. The ornaments begin to rattle, and she conceals the shard. Ready now.

✉

Credits

fiction by
Kathy Stevens
@KathyStevens91

image by
Jayne Morley
jaynemorley.tumblr.com
@jftmorley

©
creators

Heat
It was the hottest summer on record.

Everyone waited impatiently for the rains. Dust blew off the clay-baked earth.

The heat was so thick it buzzed in Jay’s ears. He poured a few drops of precious water onto his favourite neck scarf and laid its fleeting coolness on his cheek. He wished Mamma would hurry back with ice.

The first locust hit the mesh screen with the sound of a torn high voltage wire.

Jay ran down the hall and slammed the door. His heart pounded in rhythm to each thud against the rough siding of their home.

As he checked the last window in the front room, he looked out to the driveway and saw Mamma in the front of the Chevy, her palm pressed against the windshield, her mouth a perfect round O, her scream drowned by the beat of a million papery wings.

✉

Credits

fiction
&
artwork
by
Louise Mangos
louisemangos.com
@LouiseMangos

©
creator

Nighthawks
She slips onto the next stool, lips as red as her dress.

“Buy me a cuppa coffee, Mister?”

I tip my hat and nod to the boy behind the counter. The urn spits and steams. He stares at her breasts as he sets the cup down, his acne raw under the fluorescents.

A whisper of silk on silk as she crosses her legs. She holds up the coffee to warm her face, though the day’s heat lingers, even at the witching hour.

A lone car passes up Greenwich Avenue. I offer her a Marlboro but she shakes her head.

“You got any dough?”

I reach in my pocket and hand her a fold of greenbacks, no questions asked. She holds it up in the fingers of one hand, then looks out through the plate glass window to where someone stands watching, his cigarette glowing in the hot feral night.

✉

Credits

fiction by
Fiona J. Mackintosh
@fionajanemack

image by
Jayne Morley
jaynemorley.tumblr.com
@jftmorley

©
creators

Full Stop
‘Reading and writing are my alpha and omega!’

Exclamation was Mark's default setting and there were never truer words pronounced. He breathed in books, poured out stories, in hot, unpunctuated torrents.

One day he gushed to Gladys in accounts, ‘Wouldn’t you simply die without literature?!’ and his passion tipped into something dangerous, just like that, releasing them into everything! Not just into books and magazines! But into memos and emails! Into his on-line game! Into reports and thoughts!

He tried conjunctions to postpone their inevitable appearance or closed his eyes but there was no escape! They slashed the inside of his eyelids and screamed in his dreams!! Overstating everything!!! Stressing him out!!!! Driving him mad!!!!!

He was found hanging from a beam at home.

He looked like a lowercase i, but with its dot misplaced too far to one side, full stopped.

‘...!!!!!!????????.,’ shrieked his suicide note, nuancing everything, exactly.

✉

Credits

fiction by
Jan Kaneen
@JanKaneen1

art by
Nod Ghosh
www.nodghosh.com

©
creators