'Stone' by Shekina Rose

She stirs her coffee in the cold of the early morning. This is her peaceful time, when the rest of the world sleeps. As she stirs, she notices the tips of her fingers feel different. She holds them in front of her face. They are no longer squishy and pink, but tough and grey. 

She spends the day doing what she normally does. She drives her children to school. She works, tapping away on her laptop, so engrossed in deadlines that she doesn’t hear her hard fingers snapping against the keyboard. 

At home, she makes tea, burning her hand in the oven. She goes for a run. She puts her children to bed. As she reads to them, she remembers how the tips of her fingers are not the same anymore. She can’t feel the smooth pages of the book. She slides her fingertip along the paper edge. No blood.

That night, her husband waits for her in bed. He is naked, the duvet is down below his waist. She lies down beside him. He strokes her body. She closes her eyes and lets him trace his fingertips across her skin.

She falls asleep and dreams she is a child, standing in the doorway of her family home. She is calling for her parents, they do not answer. She shouts louder, with a noise starting in her stomach. Small cracks appear in the walls. She should leave, but her feet are stuck. Her legs are heavy. Bricks tumble around her. She is frightened. She keeps calling. No one comes. 

The next morning when her husband awakes, her body is grey. Solid and smooth. Her eyes do not open. There is no saliva around her lips. His wife has turned to stone. It was always going to happen.

'A message from the other side' by Amy Wilson

“Happy Birthday, darling.” My mother’s voice makes me jump.

“Mum! How long have you been standing there?”

When I look closely, I realise that she’s not so much standing as she is hovering, her feet vanishing into the coffee table. I make a move to clear it out of her way before I catch sight of the small frown on her face and remember just in time how much she hates people to ‘make a fuss’ over her spectral form. Instead, I plop myself down on the sofa and gesture for her to join me. 

She smiles as she arranges herself, hovering just above the cushions, close enough that she looks like she’s really sitting. It took her almost a year to master the trick and she loves to show it off whenever she can.

“Your grandma sends her love,” she says, tucking her legs underneath her to complete the trick. “She wanted to come, but you know how she is about travel.”

I nod. Grandma Iris had never even liked taking the number 4 bus, let alone making the journey from the astral plane.

“Was the traffic bad?” I ask and my mother wrinkles her nose.

“Oh no worse than usual, I suppose. Although I swear the queues get worse every year.” She reached out and lays her hand across mine. I can’t feel it, but I appreciate the gesture. “Although it was worth it to see you on your special day,” she says, smiling.

'Morningtide' by Alex Otto

Mama hoarded sunrises. Big ones, little ones, blood-red ones, lumpy cloud ones that hung like our stucco ceiling. She just stuffed them into her purse when she thought no one was looking, but I always saw. She’d look left and right, then jam handfuls of rays deep into her brown leather satchel the same way Grandma used to sneak Sweet ’N’ Low packets from King’s Diner. Once in a while she’d drop a golden stream into my outstretched hands until it dripped like honey between my fingers, and two hours later I’d still be licking its jelly off my thumbnail. On holidays my sister and I would get bubble-gum-pink cotton-candy gleams. We’d take a pinch and blow them into the wind like dandelion fluff, hoping they’d seed and grow sunbeams on our lawn. Sometimes we’d go weeks with just rain and clouds and stormy dawns, but Mama always had enough sunshine tucked away to get us by. We’d sit on the porch swing on the stone patio and we’d stare into the grey abyss until Mama came along with a sly smile and handed each of us a boxed-mac-and-cheese-orange streak — comfort sunrise at its best.

'The Pocket' by Patricia Akasaka

The pocket used to be on my old skirt. I was 6 and in Japan.

The red skirt Mum bought for my first day at school didn’t have a pocket. She stitched a thick tartan check fabric on it and made an impromptu pocket. I was happy. That made the skirt far classier I thought.

Over the next two decades, it stayed with me. When I grew out of the garment, Mum moved the pocket to a new skirt. It endured many such transfers. I taught myself to sew just so that I can unstitch and stitch the pocket. When the fabric wore thin and looked weak, I embroidered on it to strengthen it. I had a reason to do so. The pocket gave me “gifts”.

The first gift was a lipstick. I didn’t know how, but it was there. I took it out, wore it, looked into the bathroom mirror and then, put it back into my pocket. And then, it disappeared.

The gifts were small. Little pink shells, shiny blue glass beads, and little coins from foreign countries. As I grew older, the gifts changed. The pocket occasionally gave me a cigarette or two. And then there was that one night, when it provided me with a condom. The thing is, I was certain I didn’t put it there myself. Nevertheless, it was a lifesaver. Literally.

When I turned 30, I started hearing voices from the pocket. It talked in different voices. Sometimes a young woman and sometimes a little child and I started putting things into it. Things like—a condom.

I’m drinking coffee now in a tunic with an old tartan pocket. A little dandelion flower just dropped out of it. I smile. In return I put coins into the pocket for that girl age7.

'A Hundred Steps Forward, One Step Back' by Anastasia Dukakis

It’s Tabitha’s 18th, and she’s saved from her weekend job conducting surveys to buy her first tube of Film. The parents disapprove, but they’re too old to truly believe. Tabitha truly believes: “A Hundred Steps Forward From One Step Back”.

Under the tagline, terms and conditions roll: Ages 18+. Not guaranteed to generate perceptible changes. Side effects may include imperceptible changes. Not medically approved for major life alterations. ‘Major life alterations’ legally undefined. And so on… But Tabitha knows the rules that count:

You can go back to any point in your life, for one minute. You can do whatever you want, except cause physical harm. If done correctly, you’ll return to the present fulfilled.

She tears off her first frame and focuses, mind reeling back, back, back til…

There. That point.
She steps backwards.

Old Tabitha contains long-forgotten compartments and trinkets there isn't time to treasure. Instead she delivers her new piece from Tabitha’s old mouth, rushed ventriloquy. It feels like fulfilment, she tells herself, but really she’s not so sure. It feels different, she persists, which means it’s better.

Then she’s leaping forwards, clutching at different and better as her mind comes back, back, back –

It’s Tabitha’s 18th, and the frame in her hand is singed: it’s done.

And it feels…
She feels…

She looks at the frame. Murky.
That point she’d chosen…

What was the point, again?

Tabitha’s eyes are wet, but it’s from her weekend job, chopping onions in a sweaty kitchen. She checks the tube: one left.

It’s okay. This time she’ll pick better.
(A Hundred Steps Forward,)
Act better.

(One Step Back.)
Focus harder.
(A Hundred Steps Forward,)
Just once more.
Though she wonders before flickering, why this thought feels familiar – 
Has she – ?

Is this – ?

(One Step Back).

'Drizzles' by Julia Smith

  

I have a jar where I keep water. It’s getting quite full now. I got the idea when I didn’t know what to do with my tears. After that I just thought it would be cool to keep going. There are a few droplets of freezing fog which I really don’t want to talk about, the shocking blue of beautiful islands, the splash off a diving board, the first dip of each year, unexpected thunderstorms, 6 am showers, torrential rain on canvas. There is the ice that formed around my heart, which still floats on the surface in melancholy-shaped cubes

'Volcanoes' by Lynda McMahon

 

The Vice-President in charge of volcanoes rang me. I thought this was a bit strange. We didn’t even know each other. In the background I could hear music. Muzak, even. As he informed me that the most valuable commodity on earth was about to run out all I really heard was the soft pipes play on. Bizarre.

     “I had to tell somebody,” he said. “I’m sorry. I just closed my eyes and stabbed the phone book and your number came up.”

     Why was he sorry? There wasn’t much I could do about it was there? But there you go. He put the phone down.

     A few seconds later there was a knock at the door and I understood his apology. Two men were standing there. Side by side like two little jugs. Except they weren’t little. They were enormous and the dynamic tension increased as they entered the room.

     “Can tension be ‘dynamic?’ I wondered. Rather pointlessly as it happens. My neck developed a nervous tick. Literally. Tick, tick, tick as it jerked away from what I knew was coming. There was no pain as I felt the bullet enter my heart. Incongruously, all I could think about was the last song I listened to by ‘The Waterfall Strainers’ - “Blood on the Easel”.

     Funny, that.

'Ice Queen' by Emma Robertson

Diamond hard, I’m what you created; finely honed exterior breathtakingly ornamented with such intricate details, all visible flaws carved away. Smooth, luminous planes draw the eye tantalisingly to pleasing curves; only impeccable symmetry hints that my charms are not organic, a result of intelligent design rather than genetics or good fortune.

Inside my glacial brittleness is fragmented, almost to the point of self-destruction, but it’s what’s outside that counts. You taught me that.

To be your centrepiece, perfection is mandatory. I no longer remember if this is what I wanted or simply what I became. You handled me so carefully at first, a delicate – if unformed – figure, not yet beautiful but with so much potential. With an artist’s eye you saw what I could be, and so it was. I was.

Now they circle, the overplucked and undernourished clinging to the arms of the overconfident and underwhelming. Talking, talking – saying everything and nothing at once. You said I belonged in your world but the heat is too much. I feel myself melting away and worry about how little of me will be left if I stay.

One might imagine that such a glittering facade would provide me with armour but I feel my vulnerability keenly, especially in this malevolent hothouse of greed and envy where I’m neglected, left to wilt and waste away.

A teardrop of cool water splashes to the ground. I’m not strong enough to survive on my own for long; you saw to that. So much of me was chipped away that my weaknesses are exposed. My finer features are fading and you have grown tired of me.

As time wears on, I resign myself to my fate. Part of me is somewhat relieved. You don’t even notice when finally, silently, I deliquesce at your feet.

'The pantry door to hell' by Joyce Bingham

 

The kitchen floor needed a mop. Blood stains today, merged with trails of green slime and a few twigs of Christmas tree with baubles attached. The pantry door was firmly shut, which was an advantage. It is hard to clean up when the door is stuck ajar with an abandoned body part or ogre’s club. The smell is particularly bad when the door is jammed open. The neighbours complain a lot, but I tell them it’s the poor Victorian sewers under the streets. As required, I grow stinging nettles, sweet briar and deadly nightshade directly outside my open back door to welcome returnees. Over the centuries I have been mocked for my poor gardening skills, now I am sheltering bees and other wildlife, how times change.

'The Pocket Rainbow' by Jennifer Harvey

 

You keep a rainbow in your pocket for when the days are too grey and your heart beats too slowly. When clouds descend, you take it out and turn it to catch the light. The colours of your heart’s refraction.

Red is your mother’s lipstick. A pout and a pucker reflected in the mirror. Then the same repeated phrase— ‘this is how to get through a bad day, you see?’ Your crimson secret. 

Orange is a fleeting memory. A paper bag bursting on the street, fruit scattering everywhere. Kids rushed like ants and scooped up the tangy globes, biting into stolen treasure and giggling as sweet juice dripped from their mouths and banished any shame.

Yellow is a daffodil in your grandmother’s garden. Those days, toward the end, her world diminished, save for the flowers that bent in the breeze like a hello. Your grandmother greeting them in return. The lesson imparted: this too is joy. 

Green is a cold river in summer. Your sister screaming, eyes ablaze as if summer was eternal. In the depths, trout flashed green and rose. You pinched her toes and told her they were biting. Your father on the riverbank watching and laughing. That sound, caught by the river, forever.

        Blue is a song picked on a six string. A dream of California, where melancholy never seems to last too long. Notes extending, letting you know that this too will pass.

        Indigo is the jeans he wore. Hair falling over his eyes, but you sensed the way they followed you around the room. Nonchalant, until you touched him. Then he shivered.

        Violet is a powdery pastille dissolving on your tongue and gone in an instant. Pleasure so fleeting, but its aftertaste lingers.

        Happiness. It’s a spectrum kept safe in the folds of your pocket. 

'Occupational Hazard' by Lucienne Cummings

Helen pulls her gloved hand out of the sink. Poking the dishes with a ladle, she can't see what has sliced through the thick rubber and into her flesh. She goes to the bathroom to find a bandage, and on her return finally notices the tiny fin lazily circling the basin.

‘Not again,’ she sighs, reaching for her bottle of Shark Away.

'Fireflies' by Salvatore Difalco

 

You squat in the shadows, watching the movement of shadowy truncated legs. Glue seeping out between planks of hardboard lends the room a ribbed, skeletal quality suggesting a body. The structure breathes. You can hear it breathing. It sweats — behold the ghostly salt stains. Ambiguous in the smooth, creamy light, only your jeweled hairnet betrays your presence; the little glints and flashes when you move your head. When you move your head my eyes follow. Where are the legs going? They seem arbitrary, even nonsensical at first glance, but then again they carry a measure of menace. Shoes and boots clopping across the uneven floor, the whispers, the spent candles — these cause you to recoil. And yet I want so much to know you. I believe we share a vibration, a sensibility. I see us together on a davenport in a parlor filled with sunlight. A train whistles in the distance and we glance at each other, smiling. There is little further background here. The darkly painted walls create at once a sense of enclosure and infinitude. When you move your head I think of fireflies. Can you be persuaded to come out from the shadows? I imagine you effortless, of spiraling grace, wearing a hairnet and delicate gold bracelets. Don’t be frightened. I’m only here to watch. That is to say, in a sense I’m only here to watch. I could say more, but I won’t now. The legs stomp on, unsentimentally. They are headed for the other dream where the other you watches the other me.