Coming Home

thethemeis: Reunions

theauthoris: Ben Hayes

At last, the city came into sight through the ash, the shimmering glow of the dome visible as a diffuse light in the clouded distance. Kilam smiled beneath his mask, and shifted the weight of his pack, hastening his pace.

He reached the ashlocks, and rang the great steel gong that hung beside them. There was a brief pause, and the outer door swung open. He stepped through, into the cramped space on the outside of the dome’s arc. The door closed behind him with a sullen clunk, and a fine spray of water filed the air, dripping off the heavy waxed canvas of his poncho. As Kilam watched, the ash that had entered with him fell as a thin grey fluid, draining away through the floor grates. The water stopped, and a tooth-edge whining sound bit his ears. The dome vanished, and he stepped into the other half of the room. With another high whine, the dome flashed back into coherence behind him, and the interior door opened.

Stepping out into the courtyard, he tugged his mask off, feeling his skin tingle at the fresh air. The light of the city was brilliant after so many days in the ash of the gahl, and he blinked as his eyes teared. Hooking the mask onto his belt, he shifted his pack again and began to walk.

He could have found his way from the ashlocks to his home almost blind by now, but each time he returned the walk still felt fresh. He reached old Osur’s cart, and bought a roast yam filled with fried brightwing grubs.

“Back from the gahl again, Kilam?” the old man asked, smiling. “Tell me, what treasures did you find in the ruins today?”

Kilam took a bit of his yam. The grubs crackled slightly between his teeth, salty and pleasantly sour. “Ah, nothing too marvellous. A couple of knives. Some books. Toys for my daughters.”

Osur raised his bushy eyebrows. “Knives, you say? I could use a new paring knife, if you’ve got one that’d suit. Some choked bastard stole the last Auld blade I had.”

“Keh,” spat Kilam. “You go to the watch about it?”

 “You know what they’re like; it’s not worth the paperwork,” Osur scowled. “Probably some skulking squidsucker who took it. If their own folk don’t want them up there, we don’t want them down here. Thieving little wasters.”

Kilam finished his yam, and licked his fingers. Setting his pack down on the bench beside him, he opened it and pulled out the three knives he had found. They glimmered in the bars of orange light cast by the gills of the suncaps around the square, and Osur leaned in to peer at them. One was a small thing, with a folding blade and a glossy green handle capped with golden metal. One was long and broad, with a handle that grew directly from the metal of the blade. The third was about a hand-span in length, with a slight curve to the edge and a handle of dark wood. All the blades had the faint purplish glint of Auld steel.

“That one,” said Osur, gesturing at the wooden-handled knife. “How much?”

Kilam rocked his hand judiciously. “Forty taeli. And only because I like your yams; anyone else would pay fifty.” He was lying; he’d probably have offered forty to anyone who didn’t look like a total fool, but Osur didn’t need to know that.

The old man winced. “Still hard. How about thirty-five and a case of sirequ?”

Kilam licked his lips. “You know me too well, Osur. Fine, done!” He pressed his hand to lips and heart, and held it out to shake. Osur did likewise. “Mind if I pick the wine up later? It’d be Rokun’s blood to carry it with my pack.”

Osur counted out coins onto his counter, the chitin discs clicking sharply. “Any time, Kilam. Don’t take too long though, or I’m liable to forget I traded it to you.”

With a laugh, Kilam swept the money into his purse, and waved goodbye.

A few brief streets later, he came into sight of his home. A flicker of movement flashed across the window upstairs, and he grinned. A moment later the door burst open, and two small girls struck him forcefully in the midriff as they flung their arms around him.

“Dad! We missed you!”

“Did you bring us presents? Was it scary in the gahl?”

He hugged the girls close, going down on one knee to kiss their heads. “I missed you too Milu! Yes, Soshi, I did bring you presents, and it’s always scary in the gahl.”

His youngest daughter pulled back and looked up at him. “Did you see any cutstipe mushrooms? Is it true they grow twice as tall as a man and have stalks covered in spines?”

Kilam smiled at her. “I did, they do, and they have! I’ll tell you all about it after dinner. “Now where is–” he broke off, as his wife appeared in the doorway, wiping her hands with a cloth. “Akae!”

“Kilam! Welcome back!” Tossing the rag aside, she trotted out and pulled him into a hug, careful to avoid crushing their daughters between them. Kilam rested his chin on her shoulder, breathing in the scent of her hair. He felt a knot in his chest unwind, and his shoulders dropped slightly as some of the tension went out of him.

“Mm, I missed you most of all,” he murmured in her ear.

She wiped at the grey smudges of ash and spores that had marked his cheeks where his mask met the skin. “You look every inch the yellowback hero. Find any beautiful ashland princesses out there?”

“I can’t understand how you can bear to read those trashy novels,” said Kilam, shaking his head. “But even if there were mysterious tribes of savages living in harmony with the insects and the mushrooms, not a one would be as beautiful as you.”

Akae smiled. “Dinner won’t be ready for an hour or two yet. Go have a bath, you shameless flatterer.”

Kilam disentangled himself from the family embrace, and nodded. “That sounds like heaven.” He tousled his daughters’ hair. Dropping his pack in the hall, he headed to the bathroom.

As the tub filled, he dropped his ash-caked clothes in the big stipewood bin by the door. Carved whole from the stem of a great bronzecap mushroom, it had taken him and Akae four days to make. Something caught his eye, and he peered more closely. Marked on the side in intricate pokerwork was a carefully detailed figure of a man in a broad hat and a heavy poncho, with a mask over his face. Underneath was written, painstakingly: “Dad’s Clothes.” Kilam smiled; Milu’s artwork was getting really good these days; he didn’t have to exaggerate his praise any more.

He slipped into the steaming water, and sighed contentedly as his aching muscles loosened, and the ash began to seep out of his pores.

An indeterminate time later, Akae’s voice woke him. “Kilam? Hey, sleepyhead…”

“Mm…”

The door slid open, quietly. “It’s time for dinner.”

Kilam sat up. The water was a cloudy grey, and his fingers had wrinkled. “I’ll be right down. Thank you, love.” He climbed out of the tub, and towelled himself off. Akae had thoughtfully left one of his robes hanging outside the bathroom, and he slipped it on. The silk was cool and liquid-smooth against his skin, wonderful after his grimy, ash-caked gahl clothes.

He followed the delicious scents down the stairs to the living room. The girls were already sitting at the table, and as he entered Akae emerged from the kitchen, carrying a broad platter piled with food. “Mum bought fresh ejanuk tentacles!” exclaimed Soshi, bouncing in her chair.

Akae smiled. “The Ejamei came to trade yesterday. I gave them eight of those Auld steel bearings you found a couple of months ago. I got some starberries too.”

“And people laugh when I say I married you for your mind,” said Kilam. “Nobody can drive a bargain like you, Akae.” He skewered four of the fleshy rings, and dropped them on his plate. Nobody could cook like Akae, either.

Milu cocked her head, inquisitively. “Is that a really good deal, then?”

Akae nodded. “Oh yes. The Ejamei don’t sell much meat to us. Most of the ones they hunt are part of a young person’s adulthood ceremony, and only blood relatives of the hunter can eat them.”

“Ish ‘t true th’t-“ began Soshi. Kilam glowered at her, and she stopped and swallowed. “Is it true that they fly on wings, and throw harpoons at the ejanuk?”

“Yes, it is.” Kilam paused, and took a bite of the meat. It was tender, and had a subtle smoky flavour. “Well, partially. They have these things called vhuae, which are shaped like the scales of a snakefly; sort of flat and oval, with a half-dome at the front to cut the air. They stand on them, and steer by shifting their weight. When they fly in close to an ejanuk, they fire harpoons into it using gas-bows, and hold on until it dies.”

Akae nodded. “It’s very difficult to get it right. They have to be careful where they harpoon it; if they hit the ink sac it will ruin the meat, and if they hit the gas bladders then the ejanuk will fall out of the sky, and be lost in the gahl.”

“And all the while they’re holding on, it’s trying to crush them in its tentacles, or blind them with ink, or pull them into its beak,” said Kilam, taking a crackhopper leg from the platter.

“It sounds really dangerous!” said Milu, her eyes wide.

“It is,” Kilam said, quietly. “I’ve found quite a few dead hunters lying in the gahl.”

“Oh, oh!” Soshi exclaimed. “You promised you’d tell me about the cutstipe mushrooms!”

Kilam nodded. “I did at that! So, you know I went to the Auld city far north of here, yes? Well, the journey is long, but by now I know the route well. However, this time, a pass I usually take through the hills was blocked by a fallen bronzecap; and it had brought part of the hill down with it!”

The girls gasped. Kilam smiled; Milu was growing up, but she wasn’t too old yet to be enthralled by his stories.

“So, I had to find another path. Now, I knew from my second trip out there that the east of the hills is a terrible marsh, filled with jaurili that drone like horns when they fly, and have probosci as long as my forearm. They can drain a quart of blood in a handful of seconds, and I didn’t want to go that way. So, I headed around to the west, which I had seen only from the peak of the hill on past journeys. I knew it was covered in dense spore-growth, and I expected it to be hard going, but I hoped that it would be too thick for any large insects to live there. The descent was awkward, but I made it down in one piece, and pushed on into the forest. The mushrooms were thin-stemmed, greenish things with pale gills, and their spores fell in fine clouds whenever I brushed against them; I had to change the filters in my mask after I got through. Eventually, I reached a place where the growth was less dense, and I could see the city ahead through the ash. As I headed that way, the fungi around me changed, and I noticed almost too late that the stalks had spines! It’s very fortunate that I had been trying to avoid the mushrooms already, or I might have blundered into them. You see, the spines on a cutstipe are not as obvious as you might imagine; they’re quite fine, and translucent like the wings of a jauril or a snakefly. If you walk into them obliquely, they’ll probably break, but if you happen to step into one head-on…”

Kilam stopped, and took a mouthful of his dinner, building the suspense.

“If you step into one head-on, it’ll go clean through you!” he said, making a sudden poking gesture with his skewer. “Now, I had no choice but to make my way through the cutstipes, for that was the only way to reach the city. But what was I to do? I could try and press forward slowly, and trust my skills to keep me safe, but if I should trip… So, I took my khopesh, and I went back and cut down one of the thin-stemmed mushrooms from the forest. Then, holding it by the stem, I pushed the cap ahead of me through the spines! When I came out the other side, it was brisling like a pincushion. In fact…”

He rose from the table, and fetched his pack from the hallway, setting it down beside his chair. Reaching into one of the side pockets, he withdrew a tightly bound bundle. “I brought back some of the spines.”

The girls oohed as he laid the spines out on the table. Each of them was around a foot long; they grew longer, but he’d only taken the tips. “Be careful; the points are as sharp as a needle.”

Akae reached out and picked one up, peering at it. “Hm. These look like they could be quite useful, actually. Would they be good as needles, perhaps? Eating skewers?

 “Maybe.” Kilam shrugged. “There are a dozen there, so you can experiment. I don’t know if you could manage to put a hole in them for thread though, I think they might split. They seem to be sort of fibrous.”

“Thank you, Dad!” Soshi said, hopping down from her chair and running over to hug him. “None of the other girls get to learn about the gahl like this.”

He smiled. “You’re welcome, Soshi. Hey, maybe you’ll become a prospector too, when you’re older.” Certainly, she had the curiosity for it. “And I brought you two a couple of other things, as well.”

He reached into his pack again, and pulled out a small grey box. “This is for you, Milu.”

She opened it, and a faint glow lit her face. “A trapglass? I’ve only ever read about them!” She lifted a six-inch square of shiny black glass out of the box. “Is this the input–”

Soshi interrupted her with a sudden laugh. “Turn it over, Milu!”

The older girl did, and laughed as well. “I can see you tested it when you found it, Dad.”

The other side of the glass bore a slightly blurred picture of Kilam, smiling and holding two fingers up in a V. He chuckled. “Well, I didn’t want to bring home a dud. That image is about ten days old, so it’ll hold them clear for about a week. You clear it by drawing a cross on the picture side with your finger, and then you can see through it again. Hold the dark side facing what you want to capture, and run your finger down the right-hand edge to store a new image.”

Milu held the trapglass up, admiringly. “Thanks so much, dad! This is amazing!”

“You’re welcome, Milu.”

Soshi looked up at him. “What did you bring me, Dad?” she said, her eyes sparkling with excitement.

“Something that will help answer some of your questions, Soshi,” said Kilam, reaching into his pack again. This time, he produced a dense, matte black tube.

Soshi took it. “Huh, it’s heavy!” She turned it over in her hand.

“It’s an Auld microscope, Soshi,” Kilam said, pointing to the lens set into the end. “Like your magnifying glass, but it can show much smaller things. You see how it twists in the middle?”

“Oh, I get it!” exclaimed the girl, peering into the tube. “It adjusts the focal distance, right?”

Kilam laughed. “Right at once! You’re so quick you scare me sometimes, Soshi.”

His daughter looked up at him, grinning widely. “Thanks Dad. You’re the best.”

Kilam caught Akae’s eyes, and smiled. He knew that sometimes, they all wished he wasn’t gone so often – and that as much as they loved his gifts, what mattered most to the girls was that he had been thinking of them while he was away. But he was back now, and for a few weeks at least, he could spend time with his family, and they could enjoy themselves.

And then, he’d leave again, back into the gahl and the Auld ruins.

The hardship would be easy, knowing that another homecoming waited for him.

The Class of Never Again

thethemeis: Reunions

theauthoris: Aaron Twentythree

   I gave them all one last chance.

   Lenny Gibbins, old Gibbins the Gibbon, I invited for a drink at the local. Told him it’d be just like old times, because it was going to be. He ummed and aahhed, obviously looking for an excuse to say no; and then when he couldn’t find one, he just said, ‘Nah.’

   Pete Harding, former head boy, now middle manager at a small bank, turned me down when I asked if he wanted to go bowling. I remembered how when we were at school he used to love a bit of ten-pin, so I booked a lane and called him up (admittedly, out of the blue) telling him to meet me at the bowling alley in a few hours. He was just as reluctant as Gibbins, started making all these excuses about how he didn’t have a babysitter and it seemed a bit weird that I would do this after not seeing him for over a decade, but I could tell that the real reason was that he just didn’t want to see me. So I went and bowled on my own, imagined all the pins had his face on them. Got the best score I’d ever bowled.

   Joshua Daniels, Dave Franklin and Georgina Hemsworth turned me down when I offered them a free track day which I’d booked and paid for. They wouldn’t have had to pay a penny to drive Ferraris, Lamborghinis and Astons for a whole day, as fast as they wanted; but because it was me, they declined. Then Lizzie Barnes, Frank Teller and Harvey Tool couldn’t make paragliding. Even Trevor Greening, that friendless old spastic, didn’t like me enough to come clay pigeon shooting. I was starting to think that nobody cared about our school days anymore. All those years, down the drain. Well, I wasn’t going to let them slip away. Best years of our lives, them.

   So I organised a reunion. I booked a huge function hall (under Trevor’s name), a caterer (paying in cash), and, obviously, Bucks Fizz for music. After all, who the fuck doesn’t like Bucks Fizz? I paid a printer to print all these official-looking invitations, with our school crest and all swirly writing and stuff, and I wore rubber gloves as I enveloped them up and sent them out to everyone in my year, even the people I didn’t like, inviting them to The Big Reunion. I even told them some old teachers were coming, when they weren’t. For all I know, all our old teachers are dead by now.

   And just so I could be sure everyone would definitely come, I told them all there’d be a ten thousand pound prize for the Reunion King and Queen. Everyone loves money. And Bucks Fizz.

   Then, with the logistics out of the way, I set about arranging the fireworks. I dyed my hair blonde and grew a big dyed beard. I scoped out the hall I’d hired and decided how it would all go down, where I’d set it all up. I planned everything, visualised it, stored it all in that great big noggin of mine, ready to execute. It was going to be the reunion of the century, I could feel it in my bones. I just had to make sure I got it all ready before the big day.

   So I visited hardware stores all over the country, making sure to buy in small quantities and pay in cash and never visit the same store twice. I bought fertiliser, bleach, nails and screws in all shapes and sizes. I bought tinsel, balloons, and, through a contact and for a large fee, copious amounts of hydrofluoric acid. I spent weeks in my basement, readying it all, perfecting. 

   Admittedly, it took me longer than it needed to; but such are the perils of being such a devastating perfectionist!

   And all the while, as I toiled away making sure it would be a night all those antisocial bastards would never forget, the RSVPs were pouring in to the fake e-mail address I’d set up. Suddenly, my company wasn’t too boring for Lenny Gibbins and Pete Harding. Out of the blue, it turned out that Josh, Dave, Georgina and Lizzie weren’t too good for me anymore. To my surprise, Frank, Harvey and Trevor suddenly had time to spare for little old me. The promise of ten thousand pounds had freed up their busy, busy schedules; and while I was livid, I was also ecstatic, because soon they’d be laughing on the other sides of their faces. Literally.

   When it was all set up, I dyed my hair back to black, and shaved off my beard, and I went out and rented a tux. I wanted to look my best, so I paid extra for the most suave one they had in the shop, and I even bought a new pair of shoes while I was there. I must say, once I’d had a bath and greased back my hair like I like it, I really looked like the dog’s nutsack. From then, it was just a waiting game.

   I waited in the driving seat of my car until half past nine. It started at seven, so to be sure that I didn’t peak too soon, I’d set the fireworks to go off at ten. Once it hit twenty-five to, I left my driveway, and started my journey to the party.

   It would only have been a fifteen minute drive normally, but I managed to drag it out to twenty, taking my time, trembling with excitement. All the way, I listened to Celine Dion. I anticipated hearing some of Bucks Fizz lingering in the air on my walk from the car to the hall, so I didn’t want to ruin that by listening to them in the car as well.

   Arriving, I was barely containable. I took four minutes to park up the car across the road from the hall, making sure everything was perfect, and I sniffed in a great big lungful of air as I got out of the car, making sure I committed everything about the evening to memory so that I’d never lose it.

   It happened right on time, which I knew it would, since I set the timers and I’ve never got it wrong before. I was steps away from the hall, literally tens of metres, and Making Your Mind Up was ringing through the air. It hit the chorus at 21:59, and by 22:01, the hall was a smoking crater. A stray nail landed on my shoe, which sort of shocked me since I wasn’t expecting any debris to reach me at all, but apart from that, everything happened exactly as I knew it would. It was perfect.

   Oh, and yeah, I killed Bucks Fizz, which is bad I suppose; but if you want to make an omelette, you have to break some eggs.

   When the police and the fire brigade and the ambulances arrived, I played the part of distraught citizen (which I’d been rehearsing in the mirror for the past few months) flawlessly. They wrapped me in their arms and they counselled me and they told me I was going to be fine, and none of them ever suspected that I had prepared the nail bombs in my basement, because they had no reason to. I was crying and screaming and reaching out to clutch the air between me and the smoking shell of the hall, but inside I was laughing and dancing and celebrating the fact that I was the only one left. Because I was the only one who deserved to live. The class of ’83 were scumbags. We all knew it, I was just the only one prepared to do anything about it.

Diary on the Clouds

thethemeis: Reunions

theauthoris: Luke Stephenson

   You know it’s funny, in a way. I can remember the pain, but I don’t think I ever felt it. When something hits you that hard it’s lights out before you have time to feel anything; by the time the impulse gets to the brain for processing it’s too late – you aren’t processing anything anymore. But my spirit knows what I knew at that last moment: that the truck was going to hit me, and given that I woke up here, it knows that it killed me. So I guess it fills in the blanks from there, leaving me with this phantom memory of a feeling never felt. Or is it a real memory of a phantom feeling? I don’t know; I’m still getting accustomed to it all really - I’ve never had to think about things in those terms before.

   We felt each other’s presence, my grandparents and I. The meeting was strange; I could sense sadness in them as they spoke to me, but also something that felt like... relief. I suppose they were expecting my father first. We can’t look at the living world, so they haven’t seen him in almost six years. I’m starting to feel the same ambivalence – I miss my wife and son, but I think I would be devastated to meet them here soon. Since we found each other, Nan and Gramps have been helping me settle here. There isn’t really anything to do; everything is very still and tranquil, but I never feel bored – I never feel the need to engage with things like I did when I was alive. This sense of patience is slightly alien to me as I know it wasn’t a strong trait of mine in life, but I don’t feel uncomfortable. Still, it is nice to have company.

   It was his birthday today. At least I think it was; keeping track of time is difficult here. I already missed his science fair and his high school graduation. We had been working on my old motorbike together before the accident; he was fascinated by the engineering. I would show him how a part worked, and then I would help him take it apart so that he could put it all back together. He wanted to build his own one day. His mother and I were worried that he would get into racing them like I had been, but he’s got a different head on his shoulders – he likes to build things. I’m sorry, son. Sorry I was so careless.

   There was a strange feeling in the air a few days ago. A familiar warmth was nearby. Gramps and I went on a bit of a hike to investigate – and my wife was there. How long had I been gone? A few years - maybe a decade? Seeing her again left me dazed as a hundred emotions swept over me at once, feelings appeared from nowhere to replace the peaceful numbness. She was here. We were reunited but... so early.

   She’s been keeping her distance from me since she arrived here. I know that the experience... changes people... but it’s like she’s a different woman entirely. Is the woman I love still in there somewhere? Will I see her again? More worryingly, what happened in my absence that could change her like this? We talk about the good old days sometimes, but never those ten years I was gone. If I bring it up, she walks away, stifling tears. She never mentions our son.

   Years have passed. Decades. More than a hundred years. My father is here, my mother is here. My aunts and uncles and brothers are here. My entire family is together again, finding peace in each other’s company. But there is still one missing, and no one will speak of him. I am trying to fight the answer but it lurks there in the back of my mind, taunting me. My wife’s early arrival, the way nobody will speak his name, those nervous glances they share when we speak of our time together in the living world. The years continue to drift by, and new generations arrive. Still, I cannot find my son. My fears take root, and soon after I can no longer avoid the truth.

   If he is not here, there is only one place he can be. There is no peace for him there, and none for me in kind as a single question forever remains:

    Was it my fault?

How I Lost My Girlfriend on Christmas Day

thethemeis: Christmas

theauthoris: Aaron Twentythree

   It was our first Christmas together, so when I took Jen round to my parents' house I was filled with just as much apprehension as excitement. I knew Jen well enough to know that she wouldn't judge me by my insane relatives, but I had no idea how far they could go before she would be so weirded out that she wouldn't even want to be in the same room as them anymore. But there was only one way to find out, so we set out to do so.

   When we got there, my granddad was standing in the hallway with a hose in his mouth, which led up to the top of the stairs, where my fourteen-year-old cousin (who had stayed the night so that his parents could have their annual Christmas Eve swinging party) was pouring ale into a funnel at the other end. When he finished one can, he'd wait for my granddad to give a thumbs-up before popping open another and starting to pour that down the tube. I didn't stick around to see if he finished the six-pack my cousin had at the top of the stairs, but I've seen the eighty-two-year-old drink a lot more in one go, so I can only assume so. My mother greeted us, and instructed us to shimmy around the old man into the kitchen, where the rest of the family were wetting their throats with gin and Baileys like they'd been three weeks without a drink.

   'Son!' My dad screamed, stumbling toward me in a Christmas cracker hat, arms wide, ready to embrace Jen and me in a big whiskey-stinking hug. 'I haven't seen you two for so long,' he said, playing with Jen's hair with one hand and slapping my face with his other. Oh, and lying, since I'd seen him two days previously. 'My god, she's beautiful. How did you get her, you ugly little bastard?'

   I laughed and went to the fridge to get a couple of drinks. My nan was sitting at the kitchen table, staring into space and half-singing, half-mumbling a Christmas carol I hadn't heard before, with lyrics about violent outbursts and shepherds and male strippers. When I asked the room if she was alright, my mother replied, 'She's been like that ever since your brother showed her around upstairs. I think he must have given her a cheeky swig of that absynthe he keeps up there.' When I leaned in to kiss her, my grandmother stank of gin and marajuana.

   My alcoholic uncle and his wife who still thinks it's the seventies arrived shortly after, and my dad and his brother proceeded to swordfight with the carving knives in the centre of the kitchen while their wives laughed and my granddad stumbled back into the room holding onto the walls for support and Jen huddled into my chest, scared that a stray knife might embed itself in her pretty face. I told her this was a yearly tradition that had only claimed one toe in the fifteen years I'd seen it occur, but she was having none of it.

   Dinner passed in similar fashion. My brother and my nan had the munchies, so they had to eat three platefuls each before they were satisfied; my dad and uncle spent the whole dinner arguing over the score of a game of football they had played in their early teens; their wives silently attempted to drink each other under the table, devouring two bottles of wine each before the turkey had even been carved; and my granddad insisted on sitting next to Jen, so that he could share all his terrible jokes with her and flirt in his shameless old man way all through the meal. Bless her sweet heart, she sat there smiling politely the whole time, despite clearly being utterly creeped out.

   After dinner, my nan fell asleep with her head on the dinner table. As she snored loudly, my brother, cousin and granddad decided to play a game of Frisbee in the living room, while the rest of us played cards at the table in the connected dining room. We played Rummy and Chase the Ace with the sounds of 'Fucking yes mate!' and 'Couldn't catch that one, could you, you little shit?' coming from my granddad in the other room. I was even starting to relax, sure that the craziness was almost over, until the window smashed and we all noticed that my granddad was halfway out of it, laughing his drunk head off.

   'Oh, you utter bastard!' My mum screamed, jumping up and helping him out of the hole in the wall.

   'Don't worry love,' my dad replied, downing another glass of whiskey, 'we'll just take it out of Robbie's pocket money.' My brother protested for a while, before storming out of the room. After shuffling the cards, my dad grinned and said, 'Right, who wants to play Ring of Fire?' And that's when we left.

   'I hope you didn't find that too painful,' I said to Jen in the car on the way home.

   'It was fine,' she lied. 

   'I know it wasn't,' I said, 'but in exchange, I promise to do anything for you. Whatever you want, I'll do it.'

   'Okay, you can not moan when my mum serves up a vegan dinner tomorrow, with no alcohol,' she replied, smiling sweetly.

   'What?! You didn't tell me she was a vegan!'

   'She is. That's why I've avoided having you eat at my parents'.'

   'Fuck that, I'm moaning all I want, and we're getting a McDonald's on the way.'

   And that's how I lost my girlfriend on Christmas day.

The Beauregard Wishlist

thethemeis: Material World

theauthoris: Aaron Twentythree

   ‘It says here that the world’s first ninety inch television has just gone on general sale, Geoffrey. Have we ordered one of those yet?’

   Geoffrey sighed inaudibly, twiddling his fingers behind his back as he eyed the bald spot on his employer’s head. In all the years he had been serving Humphrey Beauregard, he had never known his master’s memory to be as bad as it had been since that little dog Scuffer had died following a mouse into the open fire.

   ‘Yes, sir; it was delivered last Tuesday, and now takes pride of place in its box in the Technology Room.’

   ‘Excellent, Geoffrey. Most excellent. Did we pay a good price?’

   Geoffrey juggled the consequences of lying and being honest in his head for a few seconds before realising that whatever he said, he would receive the same response. The old man didn’t care how he obtained any of the things he owned, or how much he paid for them; he just cared that he owned them. Without that, his life was worthless.

   ‘No, sir; we paid much more than we should have, because supply was limited and you wanted to receive it before the royal baby was born. You said you wanted to watch it live, sir,’ the butler replied, honestly.

   ‘Excellent, Geoffrey. Most excellent.’

   The aging billionaire was riffling through a catalogue of shiny new things that any fool with too much money and not enough sense would desire within seconds of seeing; only, it was a mystery to the patient butler how the old man was seeing these things at all – the eye that hadn’t been irreparably damaged in that hunting accident two decades ago was so myopic that it was basically a decorative marble. The butler had to do everything for his master these days, from clipping his curling yellow toenails to changing his outfit every morning and evening. But that was all part of serving the Beauregards.

   ‘Oh, look, Geoffrey! A new Jaguar!’ A chubby, wrinkly finger poked the page of the magazine resting in the old man’s lap, and the butler didn’t even look down before he replied.

   ‘It looks just splendid, sir.’

   ‘I must have it. Do we have space in the garage?’

   ‘We do not, sir. We bought a Fiat 500 in every colour and pattern, because you saw the advert for them on the television and thought that it would be nice if the two of us could drive around with such flair.’

   ‘Have we done so yet, Geoffrey?’

   ‘Not yet, sir.’

   ‘I see. Well, if you could, please arrange for another garage to be built, and order one of these Jags. There’s a good chap.’

   The butler sighed again. He knew that to order the Jaguar and to build the garage would not be in his master’s best interests, but he knew also that it wouldn’t hurt an old man to get exactly what he wanted, whenever he wanted it, in the final years of his life. If Humphrey Beauregard had the means and the will to waste money on extravagances time after time, who had the right to deny him that privilege? With that in mind, the butler turned on his heel and made to leave the drawing room and make preparations. As he reached the huge double doors of the room, he was halted by his master’s call.

   ‘Oh, and Geoffrey?’

   ‘Yes, sir?’

   ‘What of love?’

   ‘Love, sir?’

   ‘Yes, love. Can one buy that, yet?’

   ‘No, sir. Not much has changed since we last enquired. Love still cannot be bought.’

   ‘I see,’ replied the old man, his disappointed voice barely audible above the cracking and popping of the fire.

   ‘Would we like to order a prostitute until the situation changes, sir?’ Asked the butler, knowing the answer he would receive, since the two men had had the same conversation every other night since the passing of Mrs Beauregard in the early 80s.

   ‘Excellent idea, Geoffrey. Most excellent.’

Reliving The Future

thethemeis: The Fast Lane

theauthoris: Aaron Twentythree

   They told me that there was a cliff just off the motorway past Staples Point where you could travel back in time, if you drove off of it at exactly midnight. I laughed at them at the time. I laughed and I told them to stop being so ridiculous. That’s not even possible, I said. But that night, there was nothing in the world that could have kept me from finding that cliff, and driving straight off of it at top speed. 

   That’s where I was going when I was weaving in and out of traffic on the M46, blasting my horn at the slugs crawling along in the fast lane, and the speed cameras just after the Fairbrook Interchange caught me travelling at 116 miles per hour. That’s where I was headed, when the lights down the centre of the road stopped and I was driving into blind blackness with just the three metres ahead of me visible, lit by my headlights, and the fox’s eyes appeared off to the left and I was travelling so fast that I had no time to react so I ploughed through it but I heard no impact so I don’t know if the fox was a hallucination or it just turned to mush in my grill. That was my destination, when that first police car caught wind of my kamikaze journey and slotted itself into my slipstream, sirens shrieking and lights blazing, and called its two friends to join the chase.

   The speed I was going by then, they had no chance of catching me. Even the helicopter bathing me in a heavenly spotlight as I ripped my beeline in the chilling night air was struggling to keep up. Without regard for my safety, on a mission to put my life and body in jeopardy just to see Jenny again, I pushed the car past 150 miles per hour on that pitch dark road, searching for Gatsby Services, where the metal barrier that I had to smash my way through sat waiting for me.

   When I reached it, I lost the two most cowardly police cars along with my front bumper and headlamps as I demolished the aluminium fencing with my jet black BMW. The third panda car continued its pursuit, following me onto the rocky path to the cliff, through the shrubs and the wildlife I murdered on the way, until its driver worked out where I was going and skidded to a halt. Left alone to meet my fate, I ploughed on through the debris to my glorious destination.

   Haloed by the light from the police helicopter, my front wheels left the cliff edge at exactly 23:59, and I went into freefall.

   For the first few seconds, time stopped and started like I was living inside of a strobe light, as the rocky beach below and the waves that broke against it drew themselves closer to my windscreen by the millisecond. I experienced a soul-crushing disappointment, as I realised that I had gone on nothing but a suicide mission, believing a rumour that was never designed to be truth. I was falling to my death at terminal velocity, and there was nothing I could do now to atone.

   But then it happened. At first, too quickly to control, the images flashing past my eyes with such disorganisation and confusion that I wasn’t sure whether I was experiencing some kind of pre-mortem highlights reel or just fitting in panic; then, as my brain tuned in to the blurry images more accurately, bringing it all into focus, more slowly and easier to affect. I soon realised that I was being transported to all of the moments in my life where I had done something that I regretted. All of the times I felt guilty or wronged or like my life had taken a wrong turn, they were rushing before my eyes, begging to be tweaked.

   Wetting myself at primary school. Cheating on tests and being caught. Cheating on schoolyard girlfriends with meaningless kisses. Arguments where the smartest, most biting retort had only dawned on me the morning after, over breakfast with my parents. Jokes I had tried to make in front of rooms full of new people, only to watch the joke fall flat and those strangers give each other pitying looks. It all zoomed past, as I disregarded the chaff to get to the crux, so that I could change my past, and in doing so, change my future too.

   I saw her face before I realised I had progressed that far through my life, and the stream slowed right down as I took her in. Here she was: Jenny, my beautiful ex fiancée, grinning at me with her thin nose and large eyes and full lips revealing paper white teeth. The face I hadn’t seen in two years had appeared in my eyes again and took my breath away with its beauty, almost making me forget what I was even doing here, physically falling through the air at a million miles an hour, but spiritually reliving a past I yearned to correct.

   I lived in that past for the entire duration of the relationship we once had, changing everything. The way I treated her, the way I thought of her, it was all renovated by the knowledge of what I had, which was only informed by the fact that in my previous future, she was gone. Every morning, I told her she was beautiful. I hugged her and I kissed her and I slept next to her with complete and utter contentment, worshipping her for being the most beautiful human being I had ever chanced upon.

   Where before I had criticised her taste in music or literature purely for the sake of contradicting her views, which I thought of as overconfident and ill thought out, this time I agreed wholeheartedly. I grabbed her hands and danced with her around her bedroom to Paramore songs and kissed her neck while she read cheap crime books, because I realised then that life was too short to disagree over such trivial matters; and also because if I was honest with myself, we shared so many of those tacky tastes anyway.

   I took back all the times I had been snappy and uptight. When the urge overcame me to shout at her or cut her down nastily in the middle of one of her uninformed rants, I chose this time to resist it. I heard her out, I let her finish, and then I grabbed her shoulders and kissed her mouth and told her that I loved her because that’s all that matters and heated debates are made for ponces in suits, not young lovers. I never told her she was wrong even when she was, I never took her for granted, and I never let her think she was anything other than perfect.

   And most importantly of all, I stripped away all that jealousy. All the insecurity I’d felt at the time, weighing me down like the world’s heaviest gelatine chainmail, I deemed to be completely useless, and left it locked in a time capsule in the past. I let her talk to whoever she wanted to talk to and flirt with whatever she felt like flirting with, because I knew that deep down, she was devoted to me, and everything she did was for me all along. Having the gift of hindsight made it infinitely easier to watch her throw herself around the dancefloors I could never navigate, and our relationship blossomed under the sunshine I allowed it to bathe in, as I blew away the clouds I had manufactured the first time.

   After we made love on her birthday, Jenny dressed in one of the kinky costumes she always loved to wear for my benefit in the bedroom and I burning with desire and love for her stronger than I had ever felt, after that, I felt that my work in the past was done, and decided to fastfoward to the present day, to my new future that awaited me like a light at the end of the tunnel. I relinquished my hold on the past, and let the images zoom past once again.

   But they went too fast. The memories that I couldn’t remember because I hadn’t lived them yet, they sprang past my eyes like an elastic band pulled too tight and suddenly released. I lost a grip on the past, and it all passed me by, until I woke up in a car, falling off of a cliff.

   I had changed nothing. Or at least, what I had changed hadn’t mattered. It had all ended up exactly the same. At some point, it had all gone wrong again, despite all that I had edited out in the footage of my lifetime; and I had ended up right back where I started: falling through the air, headed toward a cold, hard death on a pebbled beach. But this time, I felt a warm satisfaction as I drifted through the beam of the police helicopter’s spotlight toward the rocks and the waves, because I had seen Jenny again, and fixed it all. The fact that our love had eaten itself alive sometime since and left me just as distraught as before was a shock that was easily assuaged by the knowledge that this time, I wasn’t completely to blame. I had loved and been loved, and to feel that again was all I had needed.

   With my soul still swimming in this feeling, my body disintegrated against the beach, along with the scarlet Audi it had arrived in, leaving only ashes and smoke in that helicopter’s beam.

Erica

thethemeis: Erotica

theauthoris: Aaron Twentythree

   Now, she haunts my dreams.

   Erica, the girl who once spoke endlessly of how one day she would live on the banks of the Nile or in the very centre of Hyderabad or in an apartment with a clear view of the Golden Gate bridge (if she could ever break free of these chains), she now inhabits the dark space in my mind only visited in sweaty bouts of unconsciousness. Trapped inside my subconscious, she keeps her stranglehold on my thoughts, my actions, my entire being, despite that she has had no real contact since that one night.

   That one night that plays in my dreams, on repeat.

   I sit there on the edge of the bed in my grotty flat, my head wading in a shallow pool of Glenfiddich, desperate not to give in to lusty temptation this time, but to talk her out of her decision and persuade her to faithfully surrender herself to the future I have planned for the pair of us. ‘Erica,’ I whine, ‘give it some thought, please. You don’t have to do this your whole life. It could be so different. We could move anywhere. We could be in love. I know you want that, even if you won’t admit it.’

   My dingy bedside lamp reluctantly half-illuminates the room, trying its hardest to hide the blemishes that litter my walls and the drink stains that crazy-pave my carpet in a shroud of shadow.

   ‘Aaron,’ she replies as she leans against the door that links my bedroom to the stained old bathroom from whence she came, her voice a rich sauce of years of cigarette smoke and an immitigable childlike femininity, ‘you don’t even know for sure that my name is Erica. It could be Rebecca or Jessica or… Roxanne, for all you know.’ She slinks across the room toward me.

   ‘I know you like to pretend that you’re keeping me at arm’s length like you do all the others,’ I rest my head against her bare stomach and close my eyes, as she stands in front of me in frenchies, a push-up and fishnet stockings, and I try to block out that stunning view that always seems to make the best arguments in my favour crumble around me, ‘but you’re translucent to me. I see through the act. You care about me, and that’s why you told me your name on that first night we met, that first time.’

   ‘You think you have it all figured out, don’t you, Boy Genius.’

   ‘I do.’

   She kneels between my legs, which she has pushed open with her petite, manicured hands. Her sharp nails draw lines up my thighs and her large brown eyes meet mine, her plump, dark red lips creeping into a cheeky smile as my heart stumbles over itself to get to a dancefloor inside of my ribcage.

   ‘Well, Freud,’ she whispers as her slender fingers walk their way up to the zip on my trousers, ‘if we’re going to elope, can we do it later? I have other plans just now.’

   ‘But – wait –’ I grab her hand, pull it away from my crotch.

   ‘Aaron, I love our chats. I really do,’ her fingers do their signature strut once more, up my stomach to my chest, as her other hand continues freeing me from my trouserous prison, ‘but I do find it tiresome. Can’t we save it? Hold the thought and drag it back out, say, post-coitus?’ With that, she pushes me back onto the bed by the sternum, and my resolve dissolves in an instant.

   Like it does every single time with Erica, the air around my newly freed thighs and pelvis feels strangely magical, making my heart flutter like the first time all over again. The loss of innocence is a recurring theme in the feelings mustered up by thoughts of Erica, and no matter how many times one spends the night with her, it never fails to feel new.

   Her kisses creep up the inside of my thigh, those soft, moist lips planting promises of something altogether more pleasurable slowly in a pathway to my throbbing penis, which she reaches in seconds that feel like hours, and slides into her warm, wet mouth. Her black glossy fingernails dig grooves in my thigh as her tongue slips softly up the length of my erection, the softness and warmth of her mouth enveloping me until my arm hairs stand on end. 

   I run my fingers through her jet black bob, clenching a handful as she begins to nod with more enthusiasm, swallowing me deep into her mouth before sliding out far enough that I think she’ll let go. She begins to build speed, lapping me up until the tip of me reaches the hot, dark back of her whisky-stained throat and then withdrawing to tongue my throbbing end as if licking a flesh popsicle. Faster and faster, deeper and deeper, she sucks and kisses and licks until my back arches and my skin quivers and my brain swims in an electrical storm that takes my breath away. I grab the hand she has rested on my chest and squeeze her tiny fingers and the pressure builds in my head and the blood rushes to my crotch and my penis throbs in her warm wet mouth and she laughs and I gasp and every muscle in my body clenches to prepare for an explosion and then… she stops. She takes me out of her mouth, and those round brown eyes blink innocently at me as he finger wipes saliva from her bottom lip, which creases into a sly grin.

   ‘Where next?’ she asks, as she stands and places her knees on the side of my bed, straddling my hips as my legs dangle over the side of the bed. I struggle to gain my breath back, my head spinning and my heart drumming in my chest, as I lift my upper body from the hard mattress and pull her to me, kissing her stomach and breasts and neck with the vigour of a shark on a blood high. She cackles and grabs my hair for balance, as I go temporarily insane with desire and throw her onto her back on the bed.

   She kicks her legs in playful resistance, as I wrestle the panties off of her pins and throw them to the floor. Her tiny feet, with matching black nail varnish and tattoos of song lyrics that mean nothing to no one, slap my shoulders and hands, keeping me away from the prize I desire, until I grab one and tongue it, shoving her big toe into my mouth as I stroke a finger up her shin to her thigh. My tongue follows closely, drawing a line from the sole of that perfect foot to her knee, that knobbly dimpled lump that she hates and I love, where I plant a kiss that brings forth another beautiful giggle, before proceeding to kiss my way up her inner thigh.

   Sigh, she sighs, as I breathe my frantic breath against her smooth leg skin and lock my fingers in hers. I kiss her clitoris softly, a peck that is over as soon as it began, and she sighs again, her legs hinting at closing before I delve my head between them once more. I kiss her again, longer this time, and harder, and she gasps. I repeat this twice more, taking my time, building the anticipation until her head lifts from my pillow and she growls with frustration, grabbing my head and pushing my face into her crotch.

   I begin to lap slowly at her clitoris, licking her up and down, as I slip a finger into her hot, wet hole and massage slowly inside of her. I draw circles with my tongue and my hand simultaneously, one way and then the other, clockwise and then anticlockwise, until her breathing reaches a pace that tells me that she’s ready for the speed to be built up. My left hand creeps up the smooth skin of her thigh and tummy until it meets her hand that rests there, which I grab and hold tightly; and my right hand works another finger into her, pushing in and out gently to the rhythm of her fast-beating heart. My tongue does its own dance, drawing the letters of the alphabet and the numbers from one to nine and ancient hieroglyphics and whatever the fuck else I can manage on the tiny pink face of her clit. Faster and faster I lap, suck and gently gnaw at her until she writhes on her back like one electrocuted and her fingers squeeze the blood out of my left hand. As her other hand pushes my face closer and closer to her, not allowing me a moment’s air, I slip another finger in and push into her hard and fast, sucking her clitoris into my mouth and running my tongue along it in slow, long laps. Her back arches, and as I pound my aching hand into her the final few times, I feel her quiver all over, her muscles convulsing involuntarily, as her grip on my hair relaxes and her vagina pulses intensely around my three fingers, still knuckle deep inside of her. FUCK, she screams, and her legs clamp shut, narrowly missing my grinning head.

   She lies motionless for a while, still holding my left hand, eyes still closed, breast heaving. When she does open her eyes, they meet mine immediately, and she sits up to kiss me on the mouth, with both of her dainty hands wrapped around my neck. ‘I want you inside of me,’ she says, ‘and I want it now.’ She lies back, dragging me with her by my bottom lip, which is clamped between her teeth.

   We’re like scavengers that have found fresh meat. We’re insatiable as we collapse together onto the bed, she scratching lines into my back that almost draw blood and I biting her neck, her shoulders, her ear lobe, so that she gasps from the ecstasy. We fuck like sixth formers in an empty house, carefree and youthful and so full of love and lust that no amount of orgasms could ever satisfy us. I pump myself into her from on top as her left leg sits on my shoulder and her right sits at my side. She smokes a cigarette which she puts out on my chest as she sits on top of me, massaging her breasts and crying out for God to help her. I lick beads of sweat from between her soft round breasts while I push myself into her as far as I can and kneed her buttocks in my hands. From behind, I pound her so hard that she clutches onto the headboard for stability and can’t utter a sentence from her clumsy cumming tongue. She lies down flat on her front, and I straddle her, entering her from behind and pushing as far into her as I can while pulling her hair just as much as she likes. Then, we do it all over again.

   Finally, after all of the breathlessness and the sweating and the cigarettes and the fucking and the pouring whiskey onto each others’ searing skin and the fuck me harder, fuck me harder, I want to feel you fuck me harder, I reach a blissful, serene orgasm that silences the entire world. Troubles, issues, debt, duty, sin and evil crumble away to leave me in a heaven of my own creation, as Erica lies there underneath my exhausted body, panting and giggling and asking me what has happened to me tonight. We kiss, we embrace, and everything that was ever bad about life disappears as I lie there with my one true love.

   And then I wake up.

   I wake up in a new town, in a new city, in a new country, with only the cigarette burn scar on my chest to prove that that dream was ever a reality. 

   I know how the dream would end if it played on. It would end with me begging her to reconsider her life choices to accommodate a life spent by my side. I’d tell her we could find a way to pay off whoever was running her. I’d tell her we could run away, start a new life, and she’d never have to do any of this to anyone else again. I’d say all these things, and she’d just smile at me as she redressed and took money from my wallet, before purring, ‘I’m leaving the country tomorrow. If you can find me again, I’ll marry you, Boy Genius,’ and walking out of my life forever. 

   That’s why I wake alone. That’s why I’m constantly on the move. That’s why no one else will ever do. 

   Because I am forever searching for Erica.