Author: brieflywrite

Jan Howcroft

I’m round the back at Earlham Road, throwing a tennis ball against the brickwork on the wall that has no windows, reciting names of vegetables. Mum’s just bought elastic off the market so I’d be in the wash house Chinese-skipping, if I could, but she’s scrubbing the wash house floor and doesn’t want me trailing muck. I need to wee.

By the outside toilet there’s a white hydrangea that’s taller than me; it rained last night so when I lift the latch and push the door, water trickles down my neck. I leave the door ajar.

The walls have been distempered but the damp’s come through and there are things you just don’t want to see like spiders in the corners and the empty husks of houseflies in the webs. Grey light enters through a tiny window level with the garden, high up on the right. Outside, you can see it just above the ground.

While I sit there on the wooden seat, I hear my father digging, his sharp blade cutting into the earth. He’s going to put potatoes in. The Izal roll is damp. When I’m done, I pull the metal chain and run.  

I go to see how many spuds my dad’s put in and if he needs my help. The forsythia’s out. There’s a robin on the handle of his spade, waiting for worms. Dad’s buried the potatoes and is making furrows with a stick for beans.

‘Ugh! What’s that,’ I say, pointing at a long brown object on the earth, about the size of my little finger.

‘Don’t know,’ he says. He picks it up and turns it over in his hand. It sticks to his skin. He drops it on the concrete slab and grinds it underfoot.

‘Don’t touch it,’ he says.

For a while I practise handstands on the grey-green garage door, but I can’t stay up for long so instead I balance on the wall outside the greenhouse. Inside are dad’s geranium cuttings. If Diana was here, we’d be running our obstacle course – flicking cardboard off a jam-jar to let the sixpence fall inside, or double-skipping on the driveway – but she’s in France. I’m going to see if I can climb the apple tree.

It’s getting cold but I’m hanging on till Dad’s gone in because I want to know what the weird thing is. I can see it from my tree branch lying in its slimy stain beside the gooseberry bush.

I don’t want to touch it so I get two twigs to prise the thing apart. It’s not easy because what was round is now flat but eventually, I succeed. Then I wish I hadn’t, because you can’t un-see a thing: that the wings are bruised and shredded; that someday soon it would have been a butterfly.

Jan Howcroft lives in Essex. She started writing when she retired. Since then, she has produced a wide variety of short stories and flash fiction and her work has been shortlisted in several national writing competitions.

Daevid Glass

One twilit morning late in August, mere weeks after the Curiosity rover landed on Mars to look for evidence of alien life, alien life landed on Earth for the only time in the planet’s history.

It plopped onto a pavement in residential north Oxford, plunging to its demise from the skies.

It had the texture of a starfish with the plumpness of an overripe mango and was curled in on itself like a human foetus. It went unnoticed until a lurcher sniffed it during a morning walk. The dog found it uninteresting and moved on to a musky lamppost.

Half an hour afterwards a sparrow had a go at it, nibbling off a morsel here and there, but the bird soon gave up and sat squat and puffed up beneath a sickly elm.

Later, a passing child kicked it rolling into the unseen shade beneath a hedgerow. By sunset the flies had seen it off.

Daevid Glass reverse-engineers morsels of reality and extracts their meaning, injecting this concentrate into carefully assembled words and hoping for a positive outcome. This process began when, as a child in Essex, a school teacher asked him to write a poem about a rocket launch. He hasn’t stopped writing since. He lives in Oxfordshire and is working on his novel, Resuscitating God. Find out more here.

Shirley Hilton

Her mother asked, “What do you plan to do now?”

“Take up lots of space,” she replied.

Shirley Hilton writes in multiple genres, never knowing which she is creating until the words appear on the page, and at times not even then. She is also an accidental lyricist for award-winning Jazz musician Ryan Middagh. Her writing has most recently appeared in Backchannels, Cedar Valley Divide, and Lyrical Iowa.

Eleanor Silk

When Hob the baker’s son whispers that the cows speak to him, I tell him to stay far away from Madam Thistle and that bloody tavern of hers. It’s not right. 

He’s not been right for days. It’s to be expected; his wife’s having their third and it’s not been smooth sailing according to him. I tell him to pray, but mostly because I don’t want to broach the subject any more than he does. Me and Maggie are expecting our first, and the last thing we want is any bad luck. 

“A stone, Mik,” he gasps, “a stone… red as anythin’, right there in the middle of the milk pail…” 

Can’t understand the man. Too much mead and too many humours, I decide. I offer him some leeches, you know, draw the bad blood out. He shakes his head and says they tell him they’re suffocating. 

I avoid him for a bit, but a few days later I’m out in the field and every man and his wife are running down into the square. Curious, I follow, and Hob’s there, writhing. Everyone’s gathered around him, and there’s some kids hovering, pebbles in hand.

He’s brick red and screaming, screaming as if he’s been set alight. There’s some crows circling, and I swear they’re laughing; their cries mingle with the kids’ braying as I prop Hob up and drag him off. There’s blood down his chest where he’s smashed his face into the ground.

I clean him up, and hand him over to the farthest inn I can find, one where the news hasn’t yet reached. God, I’ve never seen a grown man cry like that before. He kept looking at me, not really looking, because his eyes weren’t right. They were all funny, all dead-looking. He kept saying ‘red’ but it wasn’t really the word, more a long, agonising groan.

I’ll be taking him to the church-house tomorrow to speak to Father. Goodness knows where his wife’s got to. Or their little ones. He sobbed that they’ve left him, but I just can’t believe that. I give a bit more to the beggar outside the inn today as penance. Lord protect me from whatever’s rattling on inside his head. 

I eat my last meal quietly. The dog keeps giving me looks. Strange creatures they are; my old man reckons they know exactly what’s going on. I sleep soundly, waking up alone as I suppose Maggie’s gone to milk the cow. Don’t know why she won’t let me do it, it’s not long until the kid’ll be born and all that bending can’t be doing her any good. The dog licks my hand, reminds me gently that Maggie’ll be wanting eggs again for breakfast. I stumble into the chicken coop, and listen to them all chastise me for waking them. 

I feel my hand curl around the eggs, and jump back. Nestled among them is a warm red stone, red like the setting sun, red like old blood. 

“Not a good sign, that,” sighs a fat hen to my right.

Eleanor Silk has previously been published in literary journal Strukturris, and is currently working on her first fantasy novel. Most days she can be found knitting, baking and blogging.