Author: Kirsty Lewin

Raspberry Origami

Aye, he can do it alright. Practicing hour after hour in his mother’s bedroom mirror. The vanity mirror above the scrawl of lipsticks and powderpuffs and rusting rings and the jingling bangles tied together with a baby blue plastic crucifix.

He sits on the velveteen stool with its bandy legs, hunched forward, his face dead centre, steaming the mirror, lips pursed, a pout, a scrunch of his forehead, a deep inbreath, jaws tight, hands on hips, a further lean in, and brrrrrrrrrr. Blows the perfect potted raspberry. Again and again. Two minutes between each one. The two minutes break is important although he no longer remembers why.

He doesn’t tell the rest of them. The gang. Jesus they would kill him, not for the raspberries, they love the bloody raspberries, heh Kent, go on, look at the copper, rasp him, mate, rasp him! No they’d crucify him for the practising, the urging on of his facial facias, the vanity mirror, his thin boned hands on his thin boned hips.

‘What are you doing up there, Kent?’ His mother’s voice hovers up the stairwell, drifts into the bedroom. The words barely make it; his mother is tired.

‘You in my room again.’ It’s not a question.

‘I’m not, Mum.’ Kent stands up, shakes his head, and turns for the door. Takes a last look at the mirror and pulls his lips in over his teeth. Two new freckles above his lip. He searches for something to blot them out, finds a dried-up concealer stick and rubs it across his skin. Now he looks like he’s diseased. No tissues anywhere. He rubs at it with his sweater sleeve. Jumps down the stairs three at a time. Blows a raspberry at his school photo that’s pinned to the hall wall at a jaunty angle with a red tack.

Kent is fourteen. He has facial fluff and growing pains and feet that are too big for his legs and cheek bones born of angels. Kent is an only child of an only parent in the only house without a hedge in the only street without street lights in the only suburb without a bus or a train or even any hint of a promise of a levelling-up.

Other kids do fags like Kent does only. He picks up only and rolls it between his fingers, holds it up to his mouth, sucks, breathes in deep and coughs and splutters.

When Kent’s only mother is at work in the club she tells men to fuck off and tells women to keep their titties in their blouses there’ll be none of that round here. There’s no voice-hovering with these exhaltations. Titties and fuck offs are forbidden in the only house without a hedge, though, and Kent whines that it’s unfair and his mother says there’s nothing fair about this world now eat the bran flakes to keep your ‘tines rigorous.

Kent learnt the raspberries off his mother and his mother learnt origami off Youtube. The only street without buses is also the only street without the drone drops. Does his mother steal the coloured card that comes in packs of a hundred, ten sheets each of ten rainbow colours? There’s no money for meat so how come there’s money for origami paper and how does it arrive without the drones?

As it’s Sunday, and his mother isn’t working, they sit together in the room with the table, folding the thick clean-smelling card. Out in the street, there’s a drive-by shooting. The walls shiver and they turn their heads briefly to look through the lined shadows of the window security bars, then return to the folding, eyes down, nails carefully scrubbed and trimmed. You have to respect the paper, his mother always says. Clean hands make mean origami.

Pink flapping cranes pop out of Kent’s hands and stalk across the broken television and step down the piles of old music magazines. The cranes do not have eyes but they see, Kent is sure of it.

Bethany, Kent’s mother, sits on the floor, her legs long, her eyes crossed, her fingers deft and magic. She twists orange dragons and green wizards and glorious bulbous crimson toads. She uses the wrong coloured card for the right kind of mystery and blows a raspberry at Kent for every finished creature.

Kent folds a kitten out of brown card that will lie on his hard pillow behind his head at night and purr and purr and purr as Kent hides his heart from the livid bloody blasts that rampage across the night city.

The tap tap tap at the window is all yellow beak and irridescent feathers. Small. Persistent. Bethany looks up at the bird and back to the dove taking shape in her hands. She hasn’t seen a live bird in months. Not since Kent’s birthday. Even then, she’d only caught the shadow, and afterwards, had doubted she’d seen anything live at all.

‘Look, love,’ she says to Kent. ‘The poor wee thing is blowing raspberries.’

This piece was from a two word prompt exercise: raspberries and origami.

exercise writing

Greyfriars Bobby

In this constraint writing exercise I typed out the first chapter of Greyfriars Bobby by Eleanor Atkinson, but removed all the sentences that did not start with ‘he’ or ‘Bobby’. The purpose of the exercise is to consider sentence structures, and how we might vary them. While removing many of the sentences changes the meaning of the original text, and in this case, results in a loss of whole scenes, it is still possible to understand the gist of the story.

He was only a little country dog – the very youngest and smallest and shaggiest of Skye terriers – bred on a heathery slope of the Pentland hills, where the loudest sound was the bark of a collie or the tinkle of a sheep bell. Bobby had heard it many times, and he never failed to yelp a sharp protest at the outrage to his ears: but as the gunshot was always followed by a certain happy event, it started in his active little mind a train of pleasant associations. Bobby knew, as well as any man, that it was the dinner hour. He did not know the face of death and, a merry little ruffian of a terrier, he was ready for any adventure.

He had learned that by bitter experience. He could go no farther himself, but the laddies took up the pursuit, yelling like Highland clans of old in a foray across the border. Bobby dashed back, barking furiously, in pure exuberance of spirits. He tumbled gaily over grassy hummocks, frisked saucily around terrifying old mausoleums, wriggled under the most enticing of low set table tombs and sprawled exhausted but still happy and noisy at Auld Jock’s feet.

He learned that he might chase rabbits, squirrels, and moor fowl, and sea gulls and whaups that came up to feed in ploughed fields. He was no lady’s lapdog. Bobby had the leavings of a herring or a haddie; for a rough little Skye will eat anything from smoked fish to moor-fowl eggs, and he had the tidbit of a farthing bone to worry at his leisure.

He might have been carried to the distant farm and shut safely in the byre with the cows for the night, but for an incautious remark of the farmer. Bobby pricked his drop ears. He yelped at the crash of the gun, but it was another matter altogether that set his little heart to palpitating with alarm.

Bobby stood stock still for an instant.

Bobby forgot to dine that day, first in his distracted search, and then in his joy of finding his master. Bobby barked as if he would burst his lungs. He barked so long, so loud, and so furiously, running round and round the car and under it and yelping at every turn, that a latternly scullery maid opened a door and angrily bade him no to deave folk wi his blatterin. Bobby’s feathered tail drooped, but it still quivered, all ready to wag again at the slightest encouragement.

Tags exercises

found poetry how to guide

How to tie a lie

Tying a lie is one of the most essential skills in any man’s life – here at Lies R Us we understand different knots can at first seem difficult to get your head around. From windsor knots to trinity knots, knowing when and how to wear different knots can be stressful and confusing.

At Lies R Us, we’re here to help! With these clear and simple instructions you can become an expert in next to no time. Put down the clip on lie and explore three of the most popular and impressive ways to tie your lie.

How to knot your lies

When it comes to choosing a knot for your lie, there are a multitude of options depending on the level of formality or style you want to achieve. The windsor knot, grantchester knot and trinity knot remain three of the most popular options.

The windsor knot

Arguably the most popular of all the lie knots, the windsor knot is perfect for both day to day office and Zoom wear or special occasions. As well as being incredibly versatile, the traditional windsor knot is also one of the easiest to pick up.

Start with the wide side of your lie on your right.
Take the wide side over the narrow side and turn it back underneath.
Bring it up, through, and down towards the left hand side of the knot.
Pass the wide part over the front of the knot.
Then pass up and through the neck loop.
Finally pass it down through the front of the knot and tighten.

The grantchester knot

Once you’ve mastered the windsor knot, the grantchester knot is a great option to move onto for your lie. Slightly more complex, this knot creates an incredibly stylish and sophisticated look for any formal affair such as a wedding, christening or formal party. You’ll probably want to invest in a new, fancier lie to make this knot worth the effort.

Start with the lie on backwards with the stitching facing up. The thin end of the lie should be three buttons down.
Cross the thinner end of the lie over the top.
Go over the top of the lie twice with the thicker end of the lie.
Pull the thicker end under and over through the neck loop, pulling it towards the left hand side and straight across under the forming knot.
Now, back over the front face of the knot, and under back through the neck loop, pulling it down through the front of the knot, and pulling the lie tight.

The trinity knot

If you’re confident with your knot tying skills and really want to impress, opt for the tricky trinity knot. As one of the more complex lie knots, practice makes perfect with this one, but once you have it down the trinity knot guarantees to make an impression! Finding a lie worthy of this knot will not be easy. Be discrete and, it goes without saying, ensure any minutes of lie discussions are unfortunately deleted.

Pinch the thicker end of the lie about five inches below the colourrow and fold underneath the thinner side.
Fold the thinner end over the pinched up part and pull up towards the neck loop and out.
Now place it back next to the thicker end of the lie in the position where you first started going directly under and across where the knot is forming.
Pull it back over the front of the knot then up and through the neck loop and over.
Go back across the front of the knot then back underneath diagonally, then directly through the main part of the knot.
Nearly there! Finally, put the smallest part of the lie down then back up through the top part of the knot, pull tight and you’re done.

Tags howtoguide, lies

exercise writing

Periodic snippets

She hadn’t meant to do it, hadn’t noticed that her feet had fed her into the church, into the dark stray mauve of the granite slabs, up the blotched red of the worn carpeted aisle between the pews, up to the coffin sat aloof on its wooden bier, but she opened the lid anyway, and in she climbed.

It wasn’t the first time she’d lied to him, but the strength of the lie, the sheer unadulterated outrage of it was a shock even to her on her first full day in the cellar of the convent, shackled.

The frog was not from here, not with those iridescent turquiose spots, the pearl pink toes, the foreign croak, but she wasn’t xenophobic, no sirree, and so she popped it into her mouth, and swallowed.

She was driving, one hand on the wheel, the other hand lipsticking, Trevor the toddler screaming in the back, the rain swimming across the windscreen, when they announced it on the radio, her husband George was born again.

exercise writing

Periodic Proverbs

Two writing exercises; one on periodic sentences and one on reworking a proverb.

Periodic Sentences

He stood under the tree, sheltering from the wind the rain his trammelled mind, and ate his shoe.

She passed through aisle after aisle, cat food for the seven plus, shampoo for nits and scales, she stared at her reflection in the coolers, she listened to the hum and throng, she frowned at the whines and shrieks of dragging toddlers, and then she saw it, tucked behind the pyramid of half-price sweetcorn, a home-made bomb.

He was only three, skipping down the pavement, his mother shouting on her phone, his sister playing hopskotch, when he accidently stepped on a crack, and disappeared.

Molly and Maureen were selling cockles and mussels from a wheelbarrow, singing Alive Alive O, hoiking their spits and hoisting their petticoats, when, from ten storeys above them, a thirteen tonne dragon fell.

From the upstairs bathroom window, little Tommy watched the little bird that went to sleep early and woke up early and flew down to the lawn and pecked up the little pink worm and hopped this way and that, and sang a little song and Tommy squinted his rogue eye, raised his catapult, and shot it.

Reworking a proverb

The early bird catches the worm.

If you push your way to the front, you’ll get what you want but folk will holler.

The starling is the woodpecker’s competitor and, with the collapse of the starling population, the woodpecker is making a comeback, especially in the morning on the birdfeeder.

Get up early to win.

Long sleepers are big losers.

Better the raucous ring of an alarm than a growling belly.

A rich man leaps like a salmon in the pink pools of dawn.

Late is slovenly, late is starving.

I’ll pick you up at six tomorrow morning, the Asda worm sale starts at seven and there’ll be dangerous queues.

The bird that goes to sleep early and wakes up early gets to the lawn first, gets the first worm and is never hungry, nor is he popular with his compatriots.

exercise fiction writing

Perspective

This writing exercise is based on an exhibition by Lea Gulditte Hestelund at Overgaden in 2018, and the Olga Ravn’s subsequent novel, The Employees.

The Cleaner

I overheard someone calling it a Minion. I see it now. It’s the colour and shape, the oval of the omeprazole capsules that Hamid takes for his irritated belly. I think it’s more like a halter. A donkey’s halter, in pale yellow, slipper soft leather. It’s for a human head, not a donkey’s, and that’s creepy. We don’t know it’s for a human head but that’s my best guess. It isn’t fitted over a head, just a clear perspex dome. I don’t like it, especially at five in the morning when there’s nobody about. The lower straps would cover a person’s mouth. Even a donkey’s mouth is let free. Minions are creepy too, the way they get about all together dressed the same with their deranged eyes and their tilted mocking laughs. I overheard the shift manager calling us minions in the tearoom. He thought I wouldn’t understand. Or maybe he knew exactly. He was picking his nose when he said it. I was emptying the coffee machine. Pushing the damp dark grains into the food compost bin and breathing in the thick woody scent. He flicked the snot onto the floor. The artist came in one day. A string of people followed her in white gloves. She asked me about cleaning her object. Did I use the little brush I’d been provided with? She blinked a lot when she spoke and looked over my shoulder. Then she thanked me for my work and gave me a paper bag of croissants on her way out. One of them’s half eaten, she said, you can throw it away if you like, I won’t be offended.

The Security Guard

They don’t know how long to stand in front of it without moving on to the next one. They look about to see who’s looking. But they all stand longer in front of this one than the others. Especially the women. They frown when they look at it and they touch their lips with their sparkling painted nails. One of them actually started crying. Dabbed her eyes with a tissue she pulled out of her handbag then tried to hand it to me to put in the bin. There’s no bins in here, she said, sweeping the tissue around the curve of the gallery with a tanned bare arm. So where I am supposed to find one then, I didn’t say. Actually, it’s my favourite piece in the exhibition. It doesn’t have a name none of them do. It’s definitely for prisoners, for women likely given the colour. They would use black on men. Or grey. Must be to gag them. Some of them need gagged right enough. But not like that. Women are right to stick up for their rights. Reckon its something to do with that cancel culture. Everything is these days. No one out protesting yet but they’ll be here sure as day turns to night and night to day. Last exhibition they were all out screaming and chanting and throwing coloured flour about the place. Half of them with purple hair. Or green. Rings in their noses. The other half older men in suits with pink frothing faces and jowls laddering down their necks. Even got my picture in the news trying to keep them apart. My mother cut the piece out of the newspaper and pressed it between two old magazines. The headline said Choreographed Cancel Culture. What does it mean? my mother asked. She’s proud of me, my mother.

The Woman Visitor

I’ve been three times now and I can’t stop staring. I want to reach inside the case and touch it the way you’d check a lump on the back of your neck to see whether it’s growing or not. It’s leather, the colour of October oak leaves. If I say bondage would you think less of me? But bondage is wrong – it’s not dominatrix stuff. It’s a silencer. Allows her to see but not to speak. Allows her to sniff but not to yawn. Why do I think it’s for a woman? The artist is a woman. She’s telling us about women being silenced. Or she’s doing the silencing. One woman silencing another. Does she want to silence her, the artist? Of course. You only have to look at Twitter. Women rounding on each other like serpents. Trolling and wounding. The strap that goes up over the head that keeps the whole thing in place has long slim pockets. You could keep pencils in those pockets, coloured and sharp or blunt black, the harness comes with no explanation no instructions. What do they let her do, we wonder? What does she draw with the pencils that she cannot say out loud?

The Student

Look at that one over there. The amber one with studs. Studs have more than one meaning. Take your pick. That’s a head alright. Empty-headed. The straps must cover the mouth. Unless you turn it round. But what would be the point of that? How do they know if it’s on too tight? Hannibal Lechter didn’t state a preference for colour but if he had he would have picked scarlett November for the metal taste he left on her tongue. Behind, at the back of the head, there’s a thronged strap, pigtail length, fringed at the end, a grabber for the controller. How we scream at those old movies with the fringed leather jackets on the boys that strut their stuff puffed up preening themselves in car windows while wiping yellow shite off their shoes. The studs that keep the whole thing together are not neat, people are not neat, they are rowdy when pricked antagonised demonised anonymised why waste time with neat when you’re trying to buckle them up.

The Object

We are here for you to relate to our bodies in many different forms and positions – bodies that may seem strange to you. Through spatial staging, the artist enters the viewer’s own body, thereby adding an additional layer of experience to the exhibition’s theme. We hold our secrets behind the tamped skins of pigs and spit inward the moment you move on.

Tags art, gallieries, objects, perspectives

exercise Flash fiction

Ghost

This is a George Saunders exercise: write a story with exactly 200 words in 45 minutes but only use a total of 50 words.

Wanker ghosts her. For the boxes she packs.

Win a week on an island. She never enters competitions. They want your data. Troll you for years. She ticks the boxes. Wanker.

Dodges through the traffic. Fingers up to the blasting horn. Wanker.

They call months later. Automated message. You’ve won. Pack your bags. We’ll send a cab. The cab is automated, dodges traffic. They ghost her bags. She wins a week on a traffic island. Traffic blasting horns.

She ticks her fingers through the week. She never packs boxes. Traffic blasting horns. Wanker.

She ticks her fingers through the month. She never packs boxes. Wanker. Trolls on cabs dodge blasting horns.

She ticks her fingers through the years. She will never pack boxes. Wanker. Ghosts tick fingers up to blasting horns. Trolls send a competition. Win a week on a box. The wanker never won.

She wins a week on a box. We’ll send a cab. The cab is automated, dodges traffic. The box ghosts her. Trolls send a competition. Win a week on a troll. A ghost trolls her. Win a week on a horn. We’ll send a wanker. The wanker is automated, dodges her boxes.

She never calls.

fiction Flash fiction

12:21

Man alive, Stoat has stuffed that Secretary of State good and proper, stitched her up, hemmed her in, eyes of rubies, teeth of pearls, leant her stiff against a swanky oak lectern, her calves bulging American Tan, his best window display yet.

Flock to see her and the rest of his exhibits, they do, gawping at his art, his science, his flair, the intricacies of his cross-stitch, the way he nips and tucks.

Two gold coins they pay to get in, with one return visit included, although some do not get the full value, the ones with the marble smooth chests or the smooching chocolate eyelashes, the ones with the furling curling fingers, or the ones with only nine delicate silver-ringed toes.

Owl and Hare, they’re part of the squad, claws primed and ears pricked, impervious to the dismal pierce of an underground scream, the serrated garotte of a belly-slitting blade, they stay schtoom oh yes wouldn’t you. All those tourists flocking, filming, praising, spending, offerings of fridge-cooled diced carrots, an open tin of sardines in brine, a jumping matchbox of fed-up crickets, a basket of steaming greasing chicken nuggets fresh from Grab and Dine.

Owl supervises the queues, eyes brimming, head spinning, do-not-touch-my-feathers gliding, swooping this way and that, that way and this, keeping them all in line. First Saturday of the month, change over day, at least five hundred or more, snaking past the butchery, hipping the conga through the bakery, backs slid down kegs behind the brewery, a spiked peck is all it takes to tame the coiling queue.

Who is this?

Trumpets blazing, fawns a dancing, crowds cooing and booing and pushing and craning. The smooth roll in of a blacked-out limo, a president no less, his ligatures of gold, his gloves of foetal calfskin. his wedge of silk green acolytes. Owl ushering him out of the car, Hare handling the security, no exemptions, patting him down, poking his holes, rifling his bag, sequestering investigating penetrating validating, boxing his ears before sending him through.

Welcome, welcome, Your Excellency, step right in, Stoat on his tippy toes, bouncing on the glass cabinet containing the once crooked Ambassador to Azerbaijan stretched over an oil barrel, arse up in an elegant pose.

I’m sure you’re dying to see, Your Excellency, the private collection through the back, just for our VIPs. Stoat trotting in front, leading him on, pointing, explaining, pontificating.

Past the Tobacco Magnate, propped up in bed, his jellied lungs all a quiver on a silver platter on his bilious crimson quilt.

Past the Queen of Payday Loans, locked in a pillory, naked but for her coffee-stained paper bikini of red-letter final notice demands.

Two presidential eyes roving crossing, blinking popping, following the black-tipped brush of an upright tail. Stoat urging him on, nearly there, mind your head in the next bit, the ceiling’s low never got round to raising the roof just the dead ha ha ha.

Past the Chairman of SUVs, flat out and flattened, a black tyre print indented across what’s left of the horizontal flush of his bare and hairy belly.

Past the Pastiche of Media Barons, their brazen venalities tattooed orange on the mottled purple of their lumpen inner thighs.

Past the Triplet of Fornicating Free Traders, each with a pond net pulled tight over their head, secured at the neck with the most intricate of violet feather flies.

Past the Laird and Gamekeeper in their bloody snared embrace.

Four weeks later. 12.21 on the Saturday afternoon, everyone checking watches even those without, bending peering, wrists fobs lockets, shaking and shining and winding, ready now, look away look away look away, shut your eyes, keep them shut, keep them shut… and now!

Owl crashing cymbals. Hare drum roll beat.

rat a tat tat

rat a tat rat a tat

rat a tat tat

Swish back the curtains, all the window a stage, out with the Secretary of State, in with the preserved for posterity President sat proud on a plastic blow up planet, necklace of fingernails, buttons of toes, a truly lustrous enamel gilt stare, and look at the calf, live no less, laying sweet at his feet, chewing a bale of sun-blessed hay.

They surge they gasp they press their noses to the glass, they stare, they tremor, they blow for air, not a cut they say, not even a gash they say, what a talent they say, Stoat for President they cry as they shoogle and shuffle their turn to examine every specimen in its neatly labelled glass case.

Stoat skipping and leaping and glaring and lairing from his fresh grass nest on the granite shelf behind the pinging till.

Ooh and ahh and wow and goodness and see that, the wee thing doesn’t even have hands just claws how on earth does he do it incredible isn’t it just incredible just as well we’re ordinary we’re normal, normal people, local people, no chance of us ending up like that.

Stoat taking a bow, Stoat winking a black forest eye, Stoat puffing an elegant so-white-it-must-be-bleached perfect down bib.

What’s all this then? Two proud officers of the law with their fly-blown bellies and their clack clack shoes, their caps that sweat their pustulant brows, their ties that torque their larding necks, their nylon holsters that chafe and slide and give them a splint of a swagger.

Welcome, welcome, Officers, step right in.

Man alive, that stoaty laugh chortling out of the gallery, giggling down the alleyways, snickering across the cobbles pop goes the weasel kill the stoat said no one ever in this once proud industrial town now squeezed between the unspeakables, the undeniables, the unforgivables, where Owl counts them in and counts them out and is very good at his minuses.

Tags animalrights, COP26, environment, nature

fiction Flash fiction

Innocent

She’s never regarded herself as innocent. The judge had been clear, though. Patting her arm with his gaze as she left the court. An innocent victim, he said. Rina hadn’t met his eyes. Seamy eyes under a thick black eyebrow that hung across his forehead like a slain lampost.

She’d dodged the reporters and the rubber-neckers on the way out, pulling her scarf up over her head, leaving the lawyer to make the statement on the steps. You do it, she said, say whatever needs to be said, she said, declining the hugs, the victorious raised fists.

She hurries down the street and ducks into the first close on the left. What does he know about innocence, the jumped up tosser? In the close, in amongst the mouldering, the light declined, the broiled piss and the previous night’s chips and gobshite, she trips her fingers behind the grill above her on the wall and finds the half-smoked joint. She lights up and takes a long deep breath. What do they know in their trumped up gowns, their lacquered hair, their plump pecunious lips?

Above her, a small cat slides out through the only window in the close. Orange and white, pock-marked and scabbed, it jumps down and scrolls about her feet. She puts her free hand down and the cat teeters up on its hind legs, rubbing its head against the rough warmth of her palm. Its left eye weeps pus. She feels about her pockets. Nothing to offer it but a tightly rolled bus ticket.

Innocent victim. She takes another long slow toke. She almost believes it herself. That’s what happens, her mother used to say, if you tell a sorry often enough. Her screwed up mother and her screwed up sayings.

Never hold your wheesht.

The nights are fair drawing pastels.

The early bird is tired and wanton.

If pigs could fry.

She would chuckle when she spoke, her mother. Could barely string a sentence together what with all of that chuckling. A happy drunk.

Don’t judge a book by its lover.

Once bitten twice sighed.

The cat is climbing up her black polyester slacks, digging its claws into her right knee. She’d bought the trousers in a charity shop the day she’d got her mother out of care. Every day she’d worn them in court. Every one of seven days.

She shakes the cat off the trousers. Places the remains of the joint back behind the grill. Leans against the smooth damp drear of the wall to get her balance. Pulls her boots off, the stone slabs shocking her bare feet. Then she takes the trousers off, bundles them, and throws them into the corner with the chips and the piss and the half-hearted crimson leaf that’s blown autumn into the always winter close.

She pulls her boots back on. Her mother still chuckling almost to the end. The sudden tight surprise of the what? mouth. Mottling skin and spittle. The cat jumps back up onto the window ledge. Mewling. She relights the joint. Finishes it. Rolls the sleeves of her blazer up to reveal the blue cotton cuffs of her old school shirt. Pats down her sensible flesh coloured hipster knickers. Stoops under the entrance to the close and walks back out into the high street.

A group of tourists all in the same cheap saltire rain capes turn and stare. Aim their camera phones at her. Click click click. She taps an impression of an Irish jig. Then gives them the finger. They laugh and look again at her legs and herd on, following a wet cardboard sign on a stick. She rolls spit in her mouth. Changes her mind. Doesn’t spit.

She studies herself in the window of a cashmere and tartan tat shop. Does a little dance. Kicks up her bare legs. Spins. Around and around and around. Arms out, head wild. Wide-mouthed scarlet-lipped howl. Hair asunder, twirling whirling tripping ripping pulling her jacket off Fred Astaire. Ginger Fucking Rogers.

Two police officers. Men. Coming towards her, radios spattering, arms outstretched. Four male hands coming for her and she’s up on her tiptoes. Hula hooping past them. Jiving, surviving.

Innocent. Fucking innocent victim.

Liar liar pants on wire

fiction Flash fiction

Mistletoe Lane

He has told her to fossick in the hedgerow at the bottom of Mistletoe Lane behind the cemeteries. The new cemetery and the old one. That’s what they call them. New Cemetery and Old Cemetery. Helen doesn’t understand. They both look of the same vintage. The pleats and pleadings of the granite stones. The dustings of silver and amber lichen. The low shrubby birch trees that circle clusters of graves like a party game. Both cemeteries spill down the shallow slope below Hincombe Oakwood, separated only by a low drystone wall, three headless scarecrows flapping about in faded denim dungarees, and a rusting sculpture of what the village has agreed, after several years of indignant and family-rupturing debate, is surely a calf with three legs suckling its mother.

But they’re just the same, she says to Charles the shopkeeper as he hands her the grey metal bucket and the green cotton gloves. Aye, he says. But one’s old and one’s new. Which end of the lane has the best fruit, she asks. He winks. That’ll be for you to decide.

She opts for the longer walk, fossicking in the briars at the bottom of the lane behind Old Cemetery with her bucket on her left arm and her green cotton gloves pulled tight up her wrists and she plucks the fat brambles one by one, holding them up to her face, checking for worms, dropping the unsullied into the bucket, the pre-eaten into the grass wet about her feet.

I’ll cook what you gather, he says. She laughs. A pie, he says. You don’t know how, she says. Aye, he says, of course I do. All the men around here cook. Well at least scrub your nails first, she says. He puts his arms around her. Pulls her in. I should go, she says. Before it gets dark. He spins her round. Releases her with a flourish. You’ll need flour, she says. And butter for the pastry. The pantry’s bare.

She hums as she picks, a meditative hum, the cool damp of the wind on the back of her bare neck and the nettles rude about her calves. Plucking, examining, leaning in, scowling at the stings, stretching, leaning, plucking, examining.

The villagers that work in the fields are heading home. Carrying sticks and scythes and hoes and sacks. In twos and threes, they trickle down the outside of Old Cemetery and New Cemetery, none of them taking the central path past the scarecrows or the suckling calf. As they come closer, she waves. None of them wave back. She drops her hand, flushes. Refocuses her attention on the fruit.

You’ll love it there, he says, heaving her suitcase up the steps of the bus. The light. The fresh air. And the river. The kingfisher is practically tame. I’m sure he’ll bring me a fish one day. She waits for him to choose a seat, sits down beside him, allows him to take her hand. I’ve never been away before she says, never this far. She doesn’t ask about the kingfisher. And later, when he points out the first blue flash of the bird on the other side of the bank as he drops his wormed hook into the smooth dark of the pool, she’s disappointed. She’d expected something more. Something imperial.

The lane is rank. Rank with dog piss and rotting leaves and fetid mud and sprays of mouldering funeral wreaths and a great mound of pig manure by the wooden style into the graveyard. She tries not to breathe through her nose. Her belly curls. Just another twenty minutes and she’ll have enough.

She shares the lane with a long row of squat corrugated iron sheds in blue green grey. Each shed has a padlocked door, a trail of irascible dandelion flowers about its front edge, and black hand painted signs with names and dates. Harrison 1924. Garvald 1919. Morecombe 1923. The blue shed has a different sign. God is dead 1917.

Her bucket is nearly half full. Dusk is skidding down the two cemeteries, swallowing the graves set by set. She squints through the leaves. Spotting. Plucking. Inspecting. She moves slowly along the verge away, the sheds at her back, the dead on the other side of the wall behind the brambles, and behind her, the iron duct that runs the line of sheds at neck height pipes poison into a wide wooden cask barrel.

She hums as she picks, picks as she hums and the rain picks up, heavier now, splattering her bare head, her metal bucket and behind her the poison duct pouts and strains, gargles and stretches and she picks and hums psalms and a Viennese chorus, plucking a harp with her plum stain gloves, the poison duct pulsing and bubbling.

Bubbling. She stops, listens. Squeezes a handful of the red purple fruits between her gloved fingers. She feels it before she sees it. The subtle shift of the air. The smell of eggs. Sulphur. Sinister. Her eyes prick. She coughs, her lungs clogging. Turns to look.

The pipe is breathing. Great spumes of yellow breath spewing out and hunkering about the lane, shaping and shapeless, morphing and stacking, burying the corrugated iron sheds scrubbing out god is dead deleting Harrison dissolving Garvald.

She pulls her gloves off. Drops them in the bucket. She’s disorientated. Which way is the village? A new sound. Wheels in mud. A vehicle, then another, and another. In they come, nascent in the buttery smog, all of them long, low, glossed, black. Behind them a trail of villagers in dark suits and dresses, mud spatters about their legs, dismal hats, aloft their tattered black umbrellas.

Helen is not in the lane. Helen is not picking brambles. Helen is buried in New Cemetery. Helen has been entombed since 1927. What’s left of Helen silts and filters through the peaty soil below the granite with her carved angel and the clinging lichens and a petrified bunch of lavender.