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The self grows leaves it thought impossible,

And learns to name the jarring pattern

I tape the final photo of them into my album.  

 We didn’t think it would be our last,  

I sound the horn and declare war on time.

This marching arrow will march no more

with a bullet in its knee and another in its jaw.

There is a flow

To walking along the beach

At sunset.

I sport a cap and collar,

One throat and tongue, though I cannot speak.

Humans have windows with shutters and drapes;

Hinged spheres of glossed glass tinted many colours. 

A wandering child finds a shadow-show:

watches the pale tarp contort the gloom,

where a story is painted by the loss –

There I am, on the hardwood floor, peacefully cracked, 

body broken in half like my Russian dollies. 

She drinks you in and you become see-through

Just one look and anyone would be doomed

yes I feel like one of the angels in this duvet he says it’s like a fishnet like a Greek kind of fishnet with fish netted in the middle

Art and Media, Photography: 

Maybe I will find my portrait on these shelves,

Burned out transistors

Billowing fumes of

Gain and treble

What pain is waiting to break your spirit?

What bite is as raw as your own?

The morning is perfectly arranged

on gaping white circles:

soft silent eggs, the hues of strained smiles

 Unpaint me, benevolent spirits, 

from this corner I have found myself in. 

You reach your arm toward the next branch,

Muscles taut.

I’ve seen angel-dust sooner rust
‘neath the watchful gaze of starlight,—

For once: release,

let me be above these streets,

Metal on metal scrapes the soundtrack to my parent’s cooking.

Our cold stone floor reflects the clash of dusty steam.

I can only hope my reflection refracts. An image of

myself, untameable. There’s a portrait of my face

Lay me down in

A bed of roses.

Gift me a robin that

Sings me to sleep -

“Arthur wanted to say he’d miss sunrise runs and playing her favourite songs on the piano. The way her nose crinkled when he offered her peanut butter, and the sound she made when he beat her at tennis for the first time. The crack on her front tooth.” 

TW: Blood, Death

My first order of business is to make a sandwich. After asking Freddy what he wants for lunch, I make my way to the kitchen with a new goal in mind. It is my preferred activity to fixing the radiator, the first of two  tasks my parents entrusted me with earlier today. I was made aware of a screw that was bulging out of the radiator, which could cut the skin or catch the clothes of whoever passed it, but that isn’t my priority.

This is it. The sailors gather around you, some jealous, some admiring, some fearful. Only a few have gone down in the bathysphere, but never to the depths you’re going. You can only hope the bathysphere is as infallible against the ocean as it is on blueprints. The captain salutes you and reminds you of your orders. When you hit 500 fathoms, you’re to observe any geological abnormalities as predicted from the unusual currents that emanate here.

Some expect you to give a final speech before you descend. Perhaps a thanks to the crew or a witty remark. Any final wishes if something goes wrong. A last chance to repent your sins. You offer nothing. Instead, you climb into the bathysphere, giving the crew a thumbs-up through the observation window. The hatch locks. You ready yourself as you’re hoisted above the ocean, deep and murky, and are dropped in.

Your breathing increases as choppy waves slosh against, and eventually over, the bathysphere. You feel like an acorn, dangling on a string, waiting to be cracked.

The lights switched on with a dull buzzing noise, the meeting room awake with their fluorescent glow. Six employees filed in, walking towards the central table. They sat upright in their chairs like a set of matching graphite pencils, ready to underline the importance of finance in a dying world.  

The director walked in last, the door clicking shut as he sat at the head of the table. He shuffled his papers as he looked around the room like he wanted to organise his employees into a neat stack as well.  

“All right, let’s make a start,” he cleared his throat, “it has come to our attention that  DMB, the firm’s biggest competitor, are being praised for their sustainability in becoming a  paperless office.”  

Shock rippled across the employees in a wave of grey. “So as director of marketing, I wanted to take a deep dive into how we too can be a ‘sustainable’ company. Does anyone  have anything they’d like to contribute?”  

West Sands Beach, St Andrews.  

The sky, sublime, is blanketed with heavy, dark clouds rolling out to meet the water, as cruel and cold as it is. The sand is littered with as much debris as the last time, shells and seaweed discarded everywhere, rejected by the sea. 

I was with you when I was here last. You pocketed the seashells you thought most beautiful, to give to me before I left – though you forgot to give them to me. When I did leave, their absence in my pocket only twisted the knife that was my absence in your arms. You’re absent today, too. It’s been a long time since I loved you. 

You’re sitting on an armchair, a mug of tea beside you, your child on your lap. She’s holding a book. She keeps asking where you got it from. You don’t recognise it.

Before you, a blank expanse stretches out, bleak and never ending. There’s nothing in sight that can jog your memory, because there’s nothing in sight. At all. It’s just empty and barren, devoid of anything whatsoever, just you and nothing, just you in nothing, and if you’re the only thing left doesn’t that make you nothing, too?

‘Dad?’ She’s looking at you with big eyes, waiting. As you turn to look at her, you notice something at your side. Something that can make the nothing go away.

Did you know that all these stars are dead? Isn’t that amazing – that they can shine for so long after they’re gone? And what came before them? What do the stars look up to? 

I thought about that for a long while, my gaze searching. In the distance, a bonfire was spitting tongues of smoke into the dusky blue, its warm breath gusting over us. You gripped my hand a little tighter, and that warmth was bone deep. I figured then that it wasn’t so strange at all for stars to shine for so long; you’ll be smiling down at me forever.

Perfect 

  /ˈpəːfɪkt/ 

Having all the required or desirable elements, qualities, or characteristics; as good as it is possible to be. 

‘What does red feel like?’ she wondered. ‘White is light. Grey is thin. Blue is closeness. Black is there, all around my naked self.’ 

But she had never felt the colour red.

Life is exhausting.

That was all she could think as she paced along the desolate seafront, the wind and rain at her back, the steady hum of nature disturbed only by distant groups of drunk men shouting nonsense to each other. The late autumn night was as peaceful as it was distracting, both allowing her to relax and find comfort, and offering enough background noise to block out all the emotions she was too scared to feel, let alone express. She knew this wasn’t the safest place to be, but at least it wasn’t there. Being there was too much right now. 

Russet apples were the jewels of my grandfather’s garden. They came in the autumn and left him poor in the winter – a feeble caretaker of hollow timber. My grandfather was a jovial man, as men often are when they grow old and bury their wits. He would mumble and grumble with the airs and graces of an inventor or a prophet, despite inexperience in either profession. There was wisdom to him though – wisdom that comes from dead acquaintances that whisper memories in his ear and goad his tongue to flick and click and speak truths. He would look upon us with eyes that were not his own and stone us with old wives’ tales and stoic idioms.

The house, now empty, holds its hill in wait. Its garden rises too unevenly – a broken mower lies there, rusting well – and shaggy grass obscures the earthen scalp. A pathway reaches down, parting the weeds, and from the pavement points to the eager door. It’s red. The walls are white. Their paint-pores drip with rain.

We hide, clutching each other in the dark. The sounds of men on the other side of the door cause us to shake and hide our faces in each other’s dresses. The ground is cold and hard, my position uncomfortable, but I cannot move. One of my sisters leans on me and I hold her tight, both for her and for myself. Her body is warm and soft, reminding me of the nights we would lie with the others, talking until Selene in all her beauty has crossed more than half the sky. 

Mother was leaving again, as she always did when the lights in the house were switched off early. It meant that Mother and Father weren’t talking and that the child was awake in her bed when she heard the soft creak of the floorboards beneath Mother’s feet. As her bedroom door was eased open, she stepped toward her, leaning down to whisper a soft goodbye. The child lay still, her eyes remaining closed. 

Mother had left three times before she learned to stay awake, to fill the hours waiting for her inevitable goodbye with the plastic stars scattered across her ceiling. She’d watch them until their shapes blurred and stretched, distant figures swirling into a silent dance made for her tired eyes alone. Sometimes she longed to pull them down, loosen their hold on the ceiling so she could watch them from the palm of her hand. They swayed to the rhythm of her thoughts, a constant hum of Mother always returned. Even if she never said it outright.

I was sick when I stole Dad’s headache medicine. I’d had the Thursday and Friday off with a fever but now that it was Monday, Dad had suggested I was fine to go back to school. Mum had nodded, finishing a bottle of wine.

I used to be a much more troubled man than I am now. Not that I’ve got it all sorted. But it was only three years ago that I let such a good thing fall apart, and everything had to be built back up from scratch.

It was the week after I’d spiralled again, except that time I really didn’t go back. Instead I’d found this place not too far out from work, and they were letting me stay for pennies. Oakwood Apartments was the name. It’s funny how they decided on that. I’m sure the whole thing came out the arse end of a cement mixer.

I often dream of killing my father. Not always in the most sensible way. Sometimes he stands there as I drive a knife through his neck. He doesn’t move, but he does scream. And I cry when he dies in my arms. I tell him I’m sorry. I ask for his forgiveness, but he never says a word. Sometimes he is already dead, a simple concept I am stuck trying to bring back to life in one way or another. Either through making a deal with the devil or pouring him into a mould, trying to shape him back into being. I always fail. And though I cry and apologise, he’s not there to listen. He’s dead. I call out to the heavens, full of anger and hate. I beg for them to give him back, but in a dream there is no one but myself to listen.

A drop of sweat fell against his cracked lips—lacing them with the barest hint of pain and taste of salt. Or perhaps it had been some stray droplet from the sea. It didn’t matter to him, as his eyelids began to flutter shut. In his drunken stupor, he thought he saw shadows moving below the surface.

Jasper was finding it hard to tell illusion from reality.

Some things were easier than others. The dog definitely didn’t have twenty-two tails, and the sofa didn’t grow wings and flap around the room every evening. And of course, the microwave didn’t have a mouth, so how could it talk to him?

The man with a slightly unbalanced pace is back in the room again. Tracy glances to her right, at the

drawer where her belongings are kept, then impatiently lifts her wrist to check the time. This is the

third time she has looked at her watch in the past ten minutes.

He rode a dying gelding into the camp, dismounted, and shot the horse through its beating eyes. Men stirred in the early morning light, casting pails of filth into the mud and chuckling amongst themselves as they bartered bread for tobacco. They did not react to the gunshot, instead casting hostile eyes at the epaulettes on the man’s shoulders. The Grande Army of Napoleon Bonaparte were used to the unnecessary cruelties of their officers.

Garry sat on the curb of the grey pavement, watching the morning traffic.  The cars inched slowly along, coughing out exhaust fumes into the cold morning air. Behind him was Planet Organic, just opening up for the day. Next to it was Dunns bakery, releasing the warming scent of freshly baked bread. As Garry sat on that curb he could hear many things. Among them the hum of the cars as they trundled along and the nine tolls of the church bell announcing the hour.

Sarah was just about to pour herself a glass of water when she noticed the pair of glasses left unfolded on the kitchen table. There was nothing unusual about that; both her parents wore glasses, and her mum had an annoying tendency of leaving them absentmindedly about the house and then asking Sarah or her brother to find them for her at the most inconvenient of times. Normally, she would have just ignored them, but today something seemed off.

It has grown cold here. And dark. I try so hard to tune out my senses, but they always seem to come back, nagging away at me like unanswered prayers.

I am hungry.

I am tired.

I am lonely.

I hear others shuffling around sometimes – muffled grunts of pain and dirtied rags trailing along the floor. It does not matter whose. It does not even matter who is left.

My fire is small, scarcely more than a candle, but I nurture it as though it were the Sun. I dare not add more kindling, though there is nothing else around me but ruins. I do not want the others to see. They will take my tiny flame, try to steal it for themselves, and they will fight and squabble over it until they are simply fighting over ash.

 Most of the time, he was angry. Two decades - perhaps more if he dwelt on it for too long - he’d worked his way up to this. Research grant secured, carefully curated team on board. And now, he’d lost it all. Through no fault of his, either. perhaps it was his own biology laughing at him for trying to decipher it.

“Write it.” 

“I’m…trying…”

Your voice is hoarse and weak. You don’t remember when you last drank. Or ate. Or slept. But adrenaline propels your fingers against the keyboard. You suspect the sun has set, but you daren’t look up and check.

They will be waiting if you do.

“He isn’t going fast enough,” one of them whines, “I’m hungry!”

“We have waited too long. We must be released.”

“He will finish soon.” You feel her icy glare on the back of your neck, and suppress a shudder, “If he knows what is good for him.”

It awoke in the dark heavens between matter and non-existence. A fragile crust of ice on a pulsating metal sphere, hurtling through nothingness. It witnessed the death of light and the birth of galaxies, and felt indifferent to these acts. 

I am alone.

Even the sound of a microwave oven terrified him. This was why he had avoided microwave cooking for just over a week. All he had to eat in his house was a shoe cupboard full of boxed meals, all of which were, necessarily, microwaveable. How daunting the quantity in which they had accumulated, these microwaveable meals. He had to put one of them in the microwave, and eat it. His ribcage was showing. He was wan and thin, sickly in frame and stare.

They had been a happy family for many years. There was an uncle who lived in a dark cupboard: he didn’t wear clothes anymore and walked about on all fours. His eyes had turned inwards from not needing to see for so long, so when he looked at you there was no iris, only a lens of grey albumen. The only time he saw the sun was on his weekly walk to the playground, leashed: so he couldn’t attack the mothers.

You do not remember what life used to be like. Or rather, you remember it, but it is hazy now, as if you are seeing it through a curtain. Some mornings you wake up and think you can feel seafoam on your skin, waves pushing against your breast. Some mornings you wake up with a smile on your face, but it is not yours. It belongs to some past you, some other you. And you are not her. 

JANE

It’s great, thank you. 

Jane picks up her backpack from the floor and puts the keychain on the zipper, alongside another one Sofia has given her. They are the exact same.

SOFIA

Oh. I didn’t realize I’d already given you one.

JANE

Doesn’t matter. This way I have a spare. 

SOFIA

Right. I’ll get you a plushy next time.

ALISON

Is he okay? 

GARY

He’s quite upset but as far as we can tell, he’s alright, yeah.  

ALISON

He said there was someone in the house?

GARY

Yes, we had a look, we can’t see anyone, or any signs of forced entry. 

ALISON

Okay, good. He suffers from dementia so I–

GARY

Yeah, we thought so. That’s the closest Lucy’s been able to get to him - he flinches when we touch him. 

BRIAN

The dead drop is in the peacock’s nest…

BRIAN winks badly. HECTOR seems confused.

BRIAN

I’ll cause interference, giving you approximately three minutes to pick up the package and exit the establishment as planned. Make sure you’re back for bingo at 5pm sharp matey. Oh, and tell Jane that I miss her choux pastries.

HECTOR nods and checks his watch. 

HECTOR

I will. Thank you so much chap. Just one quick question on the whole operation –

BRIAN

Of course.

HECTOR

What kind of distraction have you got planned this year? Are you going for the classic?

BRIAN chuckles.

BRIAN 

I think the paramedics might catch on. Don’t you worry Hector; I’ve cooked up something brilliant! 

The oil sizzles in the wok as VANESSA (45) gives it a hearty shake. They both laugh as EMILY (20) rushes over with the clean rice and pours it into a saucepan of boiling water. 

EMILY 

I wouldn’t call that dancing, mum. Here try something like…

EMILY pushes herself away from the stove, elegantly spinning, and dipping into a pirouette. She unbalances with a squeal and grabs VANESSA for support. 

VANESSA

I see all those ballet lesson paid off, didn’t they?

EMILY (20) pauses to answer the question, her lips pursing. 

EMILY

Yeah, I suppose they did.

GEORGE

You smoke now?

SAMANTHA

Only on special occasions.

GEORGE

What’s so special about today?

SAMANTHA

I bumped into you, of course.

GEORGE

How cute. If I buy you a drink, will you stop lying to me?

JOSH

I wanted to give a speech today.

HARRY

Yeah?

HARRY is staring at the cigarette.

JOSH

I had one written down. I was going to give it, but...

JOSH flicks the ash off his cigarette.

JOSH (CONT’D)

I couldn’t do it. I just wanted to give Dad a proper send-off, but... Fucking coward. I couldn’t do it.

JOSH stamps his cigarette out. HARRY looks at it, crushed on the floor.

RHYS: Give me a dare. Go on. Anything, I’ll do it. 

JAMIE: Anything? 

RHYS: Yeah. 

EMMET stands looking unsure, JAMIE looks around and focuses his attention on the houses around them.  

JAMIE: Alright. Dare you to hop the fence behind you and bang on one of those windows. 

RHYS: Which one? 

The boys look toward the houses through gaps in the wooden fencing. JAMIE points to one in particular: an unkempt looking house with yellowing England flags and draped inside the windows.  

JAMIE: That one. 

RHYS: Easy. 

CARL

You've never been disappointed? 

GABRIEL

No. I guess it's because I've never hoped. 

There is no reply. He walks back into the centre of the room. As he looks around the cabin he catches sight of his reflection in the large mirror. He flinches.

He walks towards it, confused and afraid. Reflected in the mirror is not his own image, but that of the man. John moves his head slowly from side to side and the reflection follows this movement.

MAN(REFLECTION)

Of course I’m here.

Kira
Being so far out in nature, it really makes you think.

Finley
(not paying much attention, has his eyes closed)
Oh yeah? How so?

Kira
(glances down at him, nervous)
Well, summer is almost over. Some of the leaves are falling already. You can't help but wonder how much longer we're all gonna be here.

1 INT. EDITH’S LIVING ROOM - EVENING 1

A ring tone plays as a conference call loads. The call connects.

EDITH (77) is too close to the camera. She has her ear to it as though she is taking a telephone call.

EDITH

Hello?

SKYE

Hello, Edith.

EDITH

Hello? Who is it?

SKYE

Edith, you’ve got to move back, love. It’s a video call. Look at the screen.