Issue 02

Last Night I Dreamt That My Cat Ate Me / Agnes Halvorssen

He was really sweet about it. He ran me a bath with candles, handed me a soft warm towel when I got out and gave me my nightdress which he had laid on the radiator. Everything was pink. Pink is my favourite colour, but this pink was slightly off, like the inside of someone’s mouth. He gave me a hot strawberry milk after carefully removing the skin that had formed on top. He also handed me a plate filled with those little pink wafers and pink Fondant Fancies. I don’t know what he did with the yellow and white ones.

Then he sat in the armchair holding my Mills & Boon, beckoning me onto his lap. I snuggled into his soft ginger fur, his claws only slightly digging into me. When he drew blood he licked it off with a smile. He read aloud to me about the Lady in medieval England who fell in love with the blacksmith in the local village, even though their love was forbidden. I sipped my hot milk and ate my treats. He told me I didn’t need to worry about brushing my teeth.

When the chapter was over he told me that was enough and I begged him for one more. Just one more he said. When that was done I stayed on his lap while he brushed my hair, his claws catching my neck every now and again. Then he stopped and told me it was time for him to eat me now. He said I had got too fat and was no longer useful in the world. That eating me was an act of love and was the best thing for me now. He began by licking me with his gravelly tongue until my skin came off. Next, he started to scoop out my insides and slide them down his throat. He couldn’t get enough of me and ended up sticking his head through my rib cage to gorge himself, cracking a few ribs as he pulled me apart.

When I woke up I embodied a strong sense of peace that I had never before experienced. I blinked-in the hotel room that I had been living in for two months. I lay in the bed holding tightly to a very deep desire to stay there forever. There was no window but I had pinned up a poster of kittens to try to stem the dark molasses of my existence. I craved the hollowness of my dream. More than anything I wished that I had a cat.

Dahlia / Rachael Charlotte

Dahlia pulled open the family-sized bag of Wotsits, savouring the scent of powdered cheese, just as she did every day at 11:00 am. 

“You really ought to be having something more nutritional Mum,” Michael, the last time he’d been to visit, so long ago she couldn’t remember when. He had the girls of course and a hectic job, still she thought if it weren’t for the photographs in their gold-coloured frames she might have forgotten his face entirely.

 “Just three bags today, Mrs Huskin?” Melissa on the checkout had asked Dahlia laughing, it probably wasn’t funny that she only ate Wotsits these days, and maybe the occasional apple or chocolate mousse, but there was no pleasure in cooking for one and she’d always liked crisps. Melissa chatted about her little girl, Harmony, but she never mentioned a father and Dahlia had never wanted to ask. Melissa had long red hair, a chubby round body, and a face which was so kind sunbeams seemed to shine directly from it and out across the supermarket floor. Dahlia had Melissa’s birthday written in bold black letters on her calendar (4th April) and for the past three years had always remembered to take her a birthday card. She often fantasised about inviting Melissa over for coffee but knew it would be considered an ‘odd’ thing for someone her age to try and make friends with someone Melissa’s age, so remained content with their twice-weekly chats.
  
She flicked the television over to a new episode of her favourite comedy about an Indian doctor and his family who had recently moved to the UK, it was the slapstick light-hearted kind of show she’d once enjoyed watching with her husband. Knowing she would forget large chunks of the plot line, she picked up the pencil and notepad she kept on the table beside her and began scribbling – she would recount the episode in full to her daughter Jenny later when she called. 

If she called. 

Sometimes she forgot to. Jenny had a career; one Dahlia didn’t really understand but had told Melissa about proudly anyway. Jenny was a good girl, she’d bought Dahlia an annual subscription to the Radio Times and each week when it arrived, she would spend hours reading the television guide, marking off the programmes she was going to watch, which remained more or less the same every week. It was ever such a useful thing to have. She would plan her doctors’ appointments, dentist appointments, chiropody appointments, and trips to the shop around the broadcast schedule. Michael wouldn’t have thought of something like that. 

Dahlia glanced up at the calendar which hung on the wall next to her frayed, green armchair. It would be Melissa’s birthday again soon. This year Dahlia decided, she would bake her a cake.

The Pantheon Ombudsman / Sarah Oakes

Odysseus entered the number into the phone he had borrowed, hoping there was enough signal. He paced as it rang, marching across the deck of the ship as the sea roared its rage at the rocky island. 

“Hello and welcome to the Pantheon Ombudsman,” the voice said. Odysseus sighed. It was an automated message. “Please note, all our calls are recorded for training purposes. If you would like to complain about a Greek god or goddess, press 1. For a Norse god or goddess, press 2. For a Roman god or goddess, press 3.” Odysseus ignored the rest of the options about Hindu gods and Celtic druids and pressed 1 on the keypad.

He winced as the hold music echoed, shrill and sweet. It was definitely a siren. He scooped out the beeswax from the pot and stuffed it into his ear as he waited. 

“Welcome to the Greek God Ombudsman. To help us with your complaint, please select the option that best fits your situation. If you have been turned into an animal, press 1. If you have been scammed by a seer, press 2. For all other queries, including family disputes, shipwrecks, sacrifices and battle compensation, press 3.” Odysseus hesitated for a moment, before pressing the third option. He inserted more beeswax into his ear as the hold music wailed. He hoped it wouldn’t be too long. He didn’t have much battery and he really wanted to call Penelope; tell her he was on his way home. 

“We are currently experiencing a high volume of calls.” The voice finally said. “If you would like to leave your name and a message, we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.” Odysseus let out a roar of frustration, throwing the phone into the sea.

On the Road up to Helios Lake / Jenny Wong

The empty two-lane highway unfurls from the horizon, promising a perfect blue sky and adventures through flatlands and rolling hills. Though my gaze should be drawn ahead, I am preoccupied with the long shallow ditch running beside me, a place where memories of little broken things lie listening and unseen. Solar-powered calculators. Half-serviceable lawn furnishings. Odd pieces of discarded glass that still have their shine.  

I almost miss her as she crouches in that roadside gully, a small slip of summer sundress in lavender stripes, easily mistaken for a scrap of abandoned clothing. Her chubby hand waves in my rearview. I slam on the brakes, back up, and throw open the passenger door.  

Road dust powders her knees. Summer heat pinks her cheeks. Short hair sticks up like bits of fresh golden straw. 

She answers my questions with downcast eyes, her fingers intent on filling a bright white yogurt container in her hands.

“I’m Juni.” Plink.

“I’m six.” Plink.

“I’m finding these,” she holds up a stone before dropping it in with the others. Plink. She points across the wheat field to a small gravel road where, if I squint, a metallic black station wagon leans off to the side, wheels turned at a sharp hasty angle. “Momma got tired real quick and kept rubbing here,” she points to a space above her heart. “She said to go find all the best pretty rocks. And come back when this is full,” she pauses, thinks. “And to wave to all the cars.” 

There is no movement from the distant hearse-colored vehicle. I could venture over, search for a pulse in that hollow below the jaw of a woman I don’t know, but I hesitate, noticing how the road is marred by a strip of yellow warning dashed down the middle. Juni’s yogurt container is almost full. I reach for my cell phone, dial the three digits reserved for emergencies. Tin and static dance in my ear. Plink. Plink. Plink. 

I stare ahead, dropping one or two word answers in response to the calm voice on the line, breadcrumbs leading up to the nature of our situation. 

Clouds lurk along the windshield’s edge, threatening to unroll and darken the upcoming hours with rain. From far away, sirens will begin to scream and wail, but they haven’t reached Juni, not yet. She sits on the shadowed side of my car, picking pretty stones, making the same fickle choices as minor gods, unaware of the empty spaces their taken treasures leave behind.

Pop Goes Your Dreams / Stephen Pisani

I pop people’s dreams. Literally. It’s good business, recession-proof even, because everyone has dreams. For instance, I never dreamed of doing this. When I was a kid, I imagined myself up in space one week, and as president the next, still in my space suit and cradling my space helmet to my hip. Some dreams, like these childhood fantasies of mine, fade away on their own. Die a natural death. Others require a little outside help. 

That’s where I come in. Mine is not a line of work for the faint of heart. I am the Grim Reaper of helium-filled aspirations. How it works is this: you write my employer, Burst Your Balloon Enterprises, with your proposal. Maybe your partner has always dreamed of pursuing a self-fulfilling, but risky, career path. Or your kid wants to eat pizza every night for the rest of her life. Say your neighbor fancies himself the next drummer of a famous heavy metal band, and reaching this goal requires constant practice at three in the morning. Bring these people to me—I recommend one of our signature “Surprise Parties!”—and I’ll gut their hopes quicker than they can say, “When I grow up…”

We also welcome masochists. Over the course of the last five years, many a brave soul has entered the spacious meadow where dreams go to die at the hand of a pin the size of my pinkie. These people are there to temper their own expectations. Their balloons have featured—always in carefully written magic marker—longing for bigger houses, faster cars, better-looking and just-plain-better romantic partners. They stand in the knee-high grass and hand over their balloons like they’re relinquishing their firstborns.
 
I’m the doctor who says, “This will only hurt for a second,” as the patient winces, looks the other way into a blinding sun, and waits for the POP to jostle their whole body. The aftermath, too, with the pink or purple or orange or green balloon lying in the grass, shriveled up, choked by the weeds, kind of resembles a shot your doctor would administer. My vaccine wards against hope, false promises, ambition. You leave the meadow in some degree of pain, but content that who you are now is the best you will ever be. That is, if I do my job right.

Sometimes the balloon will not be popped. Simply refuses. It’s always an awkward moment, despite the disclaimer on our website: WHILE WE STRIVE FOR 100 PERCENT SATISFACTION, WE DO NOT MAKE ANY GUARANTEES; SOME DREAMS CANNOT BE PUT DOWN. That’s nice and all, but it doesn’t help me much. I’m the one who has to sweat over the stubborn balloon, poking and squeezing and huffing, then tell mom and dad, “Sorry. Looks like Billy is destined to be a rodeo clown after all.”

Today, my bosses bring me the balloon. That’s the way it is, one balloon per day. Taking the air out of people’s dream is emotionally draining work. My bosses clop through the knee-high grass of the meadow, the bottoms of their khaki pants darkened by morning dew. The big boss carries the balloon in both hands. The message faces away from me until they’re close enough to ask for my pin.
 
After I relinquish the tiny instrument of destruction for the first time in what I hesitate to call a career, they spin the balloon around. I barely have time to read what it says before the big boss pierces the latex skin. In two seconds, I’m watching them take the air out of a dream I didn’t even know I had. Naturally, I’ve heard of people being let go like this, but I never thought it would happen to me. As my balloon wheezes its last breath, my bosses circle me and yell, “Surprise!”

Basing Major Life Choices on a Throwaway Comment from a Cobbler / Nicola Ashbrook

Meeting

She noticed him at the cobblers – her left shoe needed a new heel, his right. 

“You’d make a pair between you,” the cobbler quipped, and she took him literally.

Proposal

“Marry me?” he yelled, the bungee pulling him away, sending his question multiplying from the mountains, turning her awkwardly muttered “erm” into an arrogantly assumed “yes”.

Wedding

The voluminous princess dress concealed her burgeoning belly but not her pause before “I do”. She’d need sunglasses to conceal the consequences doled out later in the honeymoon suite.

Children

She had Casper and he had his secretary. Two years later, Lara arrived. The secretary was long gone so he had the au pair. He had needs, you see.

Divorce

She punctuated the settlement with the non-worn heel of her right stiletto, couriered to his bedsit, along with a photograph of the children he’d no longer know.

Faded Hometown Glories / Kristine Brown

I’m traveling back to roads of familiarity, hands clasped in the passenger’s seat as I smirk in feigned longing. The driver asks me where I’m from. I tell him, “I don’t know.”

He asks, “So why are we driving thirty minutes out?” I want to tell him about the article I read about an Uber driver making $526.04 driving someone from Miami to a Seattle coffee shop. I decide not to, as I’m terribly sleepy.

I know we’re heading home. Haystacks, goats, water towers advertising names of cities that promise Suburbia and the absence of beatings in apartment complex parking lots that require residents’ intervention that’s as intricate as that Rube Goldberg contraption some of us drew in seventh grade. The body found in the drainage ditch of the newest elementary school is something we all would agree never happened.

Another cluster of goats, the sky graying, yet dry as the palms of those people who never ventured beyond the gates that kept their family businesses safe. Cottages cram five miles down, a dilapidated marquee yelling “Go Trump Go!” I’m pretty sure the last “O” is a zero. Resourceful types, they call themselves. I’m also pretty sure I may need new glasses. I hold my breath as a cardboard box tumbles across the road, one flap torn as one would expect of a bird’s wing when the local cats aren’t sleeping. The box hits the poll of the withered marquee, and I remember that I had already taken care of all that ballot business two days before. None of my checkmarks would be found in that box.

“What doctor are you seeing?” The driver is striving for life, I can tell. The road is gray, the sky is gray, my sweater is gray, his jacket gray. I have never liked questions. Only the finality of statements.

I turn to the driver briefly and notice a chapped, bitten lip. “I have been referred to a specialist.” I look at him for two minutes more. My words do not seem to register.

I decide not to tell him the suite number, though he pulls into the area without much trouble. I’m counting the buildings, one through sixteen. He drops me off at number eleven.

“An animal hospital?” He frowns, noting that I entered the car with just my purse.

“Yes. It’s for a friend.” I look to the building, pretending it’s open on Saturdays, while the hours on the glass door state otherwise. “Thank you.”

“Be safe, okay?” He gives me a thumbs up.

“I will.” I’m ready to weave through several offices, to wait at the office I was in truth referred to, but only when I’m sure that no one can see. I’m ready to accept that the bright green pills the doctor prescribes may or may not make life and my hometown great again.

The Map / Lucy Ashe

Visiting grandma and grandpa is a treat for Natalie, far better even than the swings or the ice cream van, or the garden centre with hopscotch chalked out over the concrete. Natalie knows exactly what she will do when she arrives. Hugs and kisses in the hallway, grandpa’s cardigan smelling of old books, grandma with flour on her cheek. Then, as fast she can, to the map. 

The map-room, as she calls it, is her favourite room in the house. She loves the messiness, sea shells gathering dust, books open across the desk, the encyclopaedia, so many volumes, piled high by the window like a magic staircase. And now, she is here at last, her own small voyage through the hall, escaping just as her mother starts fussing her, smoothing her hair, wiping a smear of colour from her cheek where the blue crayon broke the bounds of her page that morning. 

Natalie doesn’t turn on the main light. She likes the little glow from the lamp on the desk, weaving a pattern of shadows across the wall. Her map is centre stage, wide across the wall, a medley of colours, shapes, adventures, drawing stories with legend, longitude, latitude. She drags the footstool and climbs on top. Her hands are clasped behind her back, a reminder not to touch, but she leans forward as far as she can, eyes scanning from Cape Horn, Cape Town, Cape Leeuwin, up up up to Finland, Iceland, Greenland. Naming them, whispering the countries, cities, seas, oceans, brings them closer. She dares herself to say them louder: Togo, Congo, Colombo, Mexico, Morocco, Monaco. 

“Natalie”, her mother calls, but Natalie can only hear trains, wind on the plains of Africa, the waning cry of the cormorant. 

“Grandma’s brought down the china dolls for you.” But Natalie is in the Arabian Sea, searching for islands.

Happy Holidays, Orville Redenbacher / Amy Barnes

I eat coal from my Christmas stocking. It’s gag gift gum that turns my teeth black. Father’s teeth aren’t black but his lungs and his father’s lungs and his father’s lungs are forever dark.
 
My mother points at her gift, a big footprint microwave. We can make popcorn in 6 minutes, she crows to gathered family and neighbors Polaroiding the appliance.
 
My brother and I love popcorn, but not the burnt bits in spaghetti-stained Tupperware bowls. 

5 minutes.
 
We climb on Father, open the smoked glass door in his chest, poke our fingers where his lungs used to be and come away with ash.
 
Ding.

Jane Clark / Alexandra Reza

As the ferry pulled away from the quay in the distance, its twin chimneys booming, the short white-haired woman reached down and slipped her shoes off, one by one. She dipped a toe into the water and gasped at the chill as the wave rippled through her tights. She paused, contemplating the expanse between her and her husband. The water sparkled and the boat looked almost still against the sunset. I must do it, she thought. The bastard. Imagine the triumph of walking into the deck lounge and sitting down casually in the armchair opposite him. ‘Oh, Michael!’ She could say. ‘I didn’t know you were still on board!’ Or perhaps she wouldn’t look at him so he would think she hadn’t seen him. She would go straight to the bar and smile at the boy. ‘I’ll have a glass of whisky, thank you, no, no ice, just as it is, and the gentleman with the green jumper will have a vodka tonic, please, with lime, not lemon. Thank you very much, Robert.’ Yes, ‘Robert’ was a good touch. And she would walk slowly over and set down the glass on the table in front of him, on his paper so that the condensation leaked and spoiled the newsprint, and she would sit down, in silence, and light a cigarette and look at him, and not speak. Or, better, perhaps she would exhale slowly, and sip her drink and say, deliberately, witheringly, ‘If you ever do that to me again, Michael, you little shit, you will…’ He would what? Rue the day? No, perhaps it was better with no ‘if’, just: ‘Don’t you ever…[pause]….don’t you ever do that to me again, Michael Clark, you little piece of shit.’

She arranged her shoes neatly together on the beach and folded her jacket next to them. She took her earrings off and put them carefully on top of the pile. Then, gripping her handbag under one arm, she stretched the other out in front of her, and, bending her legs, Jane Clark dove awkwardly into the water.

Once she was in, it wasn’t too bad. The tide had come in over the hot afternoon sand and the water was still. And anyway, she had her clothes on for warmth. She pushed her handbag up onto her shoulder and began to swim, breast-stroke, towards the ferry. She continued this way for a little while, enjoying the sound of the cicadas and the hum of the afternoon turning into the evening. She glanced at the ferry, it hadn’t seemed to have moved much, that was good. She stopped for a moment and turned around to see how far she had come. The shore looked quite far away. Good. That was very good. Jane began to laugh, this was perfect, it would be so funny when she got there. The bastard! She was coming for him! ‘Rue the day’ was exactly it. Someone on the beach was waving and she waved back, triumphant, no, she was not drowning, she was waving. She added a thumbs up to be clear. ‘Don’t fuss, love!’ she shouted.

This was turning out to be a good day after all. The best day of the whole holiday, in fact, the only day when so far he hadn’t sat there reading his newspaper, that bloody newspaper, in silence for hours on end. She couldn’t stand it anymore. ‘Please don’t look at me like that, for god’s sake Michael,’ she had said, and he had looked back at her, placid, concerned, - how infuriating he was with his collegial routine - ‘wha-, oh, darling, please, don’t, what have I done this time..?’ as if he didn’t know perfectly well what he was doing when he looked at her over his lowered fucking paper, expectantly, as though whatever she had to say had better be worth it… Well, two can play that game, Michael Clark, she had thought, let’s get the fucking gloves off then, shall we, and she had shifted gear, all sweetness and light – ‘yes, you’re quite right, darling, I’m sorry,’ and she had kissed the top of his head, and patted up the greasy strands that had fallen down from covering his bald patch. ‘I just came in to say I’m going for a walk and I wondered if you wanted a cup of coffee before I left. Sorry to interrupt.’ And he had floundered for a moment, and then accepted, politely, perhaps slightly nervously, she had thought, as though she was something to be scared of. Ha. ‘Maybe I am’, she muttered happily, kicking her legs and diving under the water, like a professional swimmer, or a dolphin.

Although to be honest it was almost worse when he got up from that chair – those dinners with the Thomases, with Michael droning on and on... god, all his bloody opinions, who cared, and she would glaze over and he would say something bloodcurdling, like ‘wakey wakey darling’ or ‘as you can see, politics isn’t really Jane’s cup of tea’ and they would all titter and she would feel the knot rising in her chest again, but would smile sickly back at them. But to leave her there! To actually have the gall to say to her in that rational, reasoning tone that ‘he was going to have to head back early’ and that ‘it would do her good to stay on a while’, and ‘get some rest’…get some rest! The nerve. She had refused. There was absolutely no fucking way she was staying on her own on this fucking ferry, she had said. ‘It’s not a ferry, darling, but fine, you can come back with me then. I’m going to have to go tomorrow’. It was a fucking ferry and yes fine, they would leave tomorrow, she had said. And so they had put their bags in a taxi and driven to the airport to catch the 6.30 evening flight back to London and then the fucker had actually done a runner. A runner! He had disappeared in the boarding lounge and as soon as she noticed he had gone she knew the little bastard had run back to the boat to carry on his fucking holiday without her. ‘In peace,’ as he would put it. Her mind went white. So she had followed him, pushing her way back through the security lines and through the shops and the perfumes and the sunglasses and the huge bars of chocolate and back into a taxi and straight to the port as fast as you can, please, it's urgent, and that was how she had ended up on the beach. I mean, can you imagine. To get there and see the boat heaving away without her, to stand on the shore and watch it go, humiliated, abandoned… well. Maybe it was for the best. Now she would show him, she would walk into the ship bar later that evening and tower over him and his shitty newspaper and he would look at her, terrified, and nothing would be the same again.

And with that conclusion she began to swim even faster, more firmly, pushing the handbag back up every time it slipped. The water was cooling down now so it was important she keep the pace up. It occurred to her that her skirt was slowing her down, as the water was billowing into it, so she unzipped it and kicked it off. She felt free when it drifted away, lighter, unburdened, and she swam on. After a while she felt tired and turned over to float on her back, rippling her legs every so often to keep floating in the right direction. On her back, she could see the moon and clear sky and she felt expansive. She couldn’t see the ferry any more as it had gone round the headland, but she would stay here for a while and begin again when she had caught her breath.