1000words

For many men, if not most, keys are a symbol of power. Not the power to open doors which are for most, or many men, already open. For men, the key’s ability to lock a door is where its power lies.

And not just doors.

The power of the key to lock the ballot box, the chastity belt, and all the trappings of patriarchy is beyond symbolic. The key, ipso facto, is power. For women, there is nothing in their wile or charm that can outdo the power of the key, except possession. Beg, steal, or borrow, by hook or by crook, through subtlety, stealth, or ingenuity, a woman’s task is to gain possession of that elusive key.

For me, a daughter of the manse, keys have always figured in my life. Our parish was a fishing village on the East Coast and our church, dedicated to Saint Peter. Peter, we were frequently instructed from the pulpit, was impetuous, hot-headed, gutsy. Under pressure, he was the coward who denied his Lord. Yet he was a Rock, a Fisher of Men and, ultimately, the Keeper of the Keys. My father called me Clephane – according to my mother, after Cleopas, one of the men who saw Jesus on the Road to Emmaus. My father wanted a son. I have always been a disappointment.

My sister, Alice, younger than me, always got her way. With or without keys she could charm her way into or out of any situation. Alice was coquettish, dimpled, blond. Her milky-blue eyes with naturally-exaggerated lashes would open wide, even if guilty-as-hell, and plead innocence. Unlike Peter – and me – she was an expert in denial. If my father accused her of not doing her piano practise, she’d flutter and pout until he believed or forgave her. Even in music, I could never get to grips with keys. And I didn’t learn the poker-face until my teens.

Our house was a rambling, Victorian Manse; dark and foosty, with a permanent tinge of furniture polish. Being a modest, protestant family we could barely afford to heat, let alone live, in such a palace. Many doors were, therefore, shut. The cellar was locked (and haunted, supposedly) and the third floor was out of bounds, even though the doors to the bedrooms only were lockable. Alice, as always, found a way in. The huge clutches of keys that hung on the brown hooks in the hallway were in common use, but the ones in my father’s drawer in his dusty study were his secret stash.

In my father’s house were many mansions, and he had keys to the lot. Keys were the indication of his position in a community that had the power to open and shut doors, systems, or ceremonies of whatever was deemed worthy, proper, sacrosanct. The Church was at the head of this corrupt, divisive, systematic cant. When he was installed in the Parish, keys were handed to him like badges of office. The church-key was the biggest, most elaborate thing my sister and I had ever seen! He was gifted with a Bible, with a lockable clasp, and, even though he didn’t know a thing about fishing, was granted possession of one of the sacred Box Keys.

On the day of the Fisherman’s Walk, he’d proudly strut at the front of the parade, holding his key with the other two bona fide fishermen, and present the Box Gifts to the poor as if he had put the treasure there himself. We’d all straggle – women and children – behind the men. Even when she was still a girl, one of the young fisher-boys would take Alice’s shawl. When she was older, they’d take more than her clothes at the Fisher Dance, after the 23^rd Psalm. Alice was never left wanting.

For me, the symbolism of the keys was more potent than the fact that men, women, and children were only allowed to mingle after the Meeting, once the Box was locked for another year. I wanted, needed, was determined, to get into that Box. When I did, however, I unleashed desire far greater than any hierarchy of land, or sea, or heaven. For me, this was the key. And the root of my evil.

The penny dropped when I turned 18, three years before I didn’t receive the key to the door. If by Machiavellian means I was to find a position on the ecclesiastical ladder, I had to learn how to give. I gave my (unpaid) services as the first female Parish Secretary – a position my father, no enemy of influence, opened for me. I had access to unlimited places of wealth, and quickly learned how to fiddle figures with more subtlety than my sister’s finger-twisting flirtations. Entrusted to the secrets of The Box – the only bastion of faith, love, and charity of this parochial community – I yielded to temptation, and I took. I took, and I took, and I took.

It’s amazing how much wealth a woman can amass in a couple of years. My sister married young, and fed her family while I cooked the Parish Books and nourished my new-found greed. My Father tried to get me off the hook with ‘delusional kleptomania’ – but madness is another method of incarceration meted out on women when men cannot contain them any other way. Besides, he was in denial and, like Saint Peter, proved a far-from impervious rock.

All the protestation of Saint Peter cannot free a person whose natural position is to be oppressed (or, as Alice puts it, sat upon) by the heaviest book society possesses. I’ve learned far more about keys in recent years, not to mention Patriarchal Institutions – although, ironically, most of the key-holders here are woman. My room is a box, and every night as the door is slammed shut, I hear the rattle of retribution.

Somewhere, in this post-Edenic hierarchy, the God of an older testament, whose angels stand as sentinels with keys of flame, far mightier than the sword, sits in Judgement.

(Author: J. A. Sutherland. Story: All rights reserved. Photographer: Vidya Crawley. Image: Some rights reserved.)

Kate separated the cash into piles as Dan scooped out the red hotels and the green houses. They were bored, restless, skint. They’d watched the Dexter box-set and had run out of things to talk about.

Dan smoked what was left of his joint in the ashtray and passed it to Kate, expecting her to say no, like she always did. But she didn’t. She took a sip of wine and a big drag and pulled her new Ikea cushions onto the floor for them to sit on.

Kate started to giggle and Dan smiled, his hair falling over his face. Kate imagined him as a boy, imagined the pair of them as kids, before the bills and the arguments started. She saw them picking out their playing pieces with their eyes closed, fate as incomprehensible as the end of summer. She imagined him with grass in his hair, her with dock-leaves in her pockets for his nettle stings. They’d let each other out of jail free, without a card; they’d turn the money into aeroplanes and thump the board and make the houses scatter and bellow “boom, crash, boom” like Godzilla, or God.

“Want to roll first?”

“Ok.”

Kate’s head began to pound and Dan got bored. He leant over the board and kissed her clumsily, and she could smell the onion and cigarettes on his breath. She kissed him back, pulled off his t-shirt. The money, the colour of confetti, stuck to their skin as they rolled onto the floor. Kate closed her eyes. She wanted to pretend that they were Vegas winners or something, that they’d hit the jackpot, that they were still lost to each other, all each other needed, even in some tiny flat on the corner of somewhere-on-sea.

They woke up when it was dark, both huddled together on the sofa. Dan’s elbow was sticking in Kate’s back and her hair was in his face. The booze and the weed had worn off and they were cold and hungry.

Dan went to get an Indian takeaway menu from the kitchen as Kate hooked her bra back on. She started tidying up the mess, the ash on the floor, the Pringles crumbs, the crumpled notes. Kate imagined them playing in their own home, if he ever went back to work, imagined him watching the football on the television over her shoulder, her checking her phone when she should be rolling, stalking people on Facebook and wishing for notifications, wishing that she’d kept in touch with her girl-friends. Kate would still agonise over where to buy and Dan would spend recklessly. He’d tell her that it was only a game. She’d tell him to grow up. They’d snap at each other, be sore losers, bad sports.

‘Pizza?” Dan asked, coming back into the room with his phone in his hand. His face was still crumpled from sleep and his hair was tousled. At the sight of him Kate felt her heart lurch. She got up and hugged him, pressed her face against his bare chest, the familiar smell of him making her words catch in her throat.

“Ok,” she whispered, holding on, not wanting to let him go, her hands clasped behind his back, the dice held tight within them.

(Author: Nicola Belte. Story: All rights reserved. Photographer: Luis Hernandez. Image: Some rights reserved.)

Everyone had a right laugh, the first time I was arrested; funny old Norma, scrambling over the power station fence to wrap scarves round the chimneys. Really, who gets arrested for a bit of knitting?

It was young Katy got me started; She used to drop in at the social centre craft club with her grandma, but she never showed much promise. She made some doilies for mother’s day and knitted a pair of booties when her best friend took pregnant, but that was about it. Then the baby came and she found herself at a bit of a loose end and started to visit a lot more often. I suppose I should have wondered at that, a fourteen year old knocking about with a bunch of geriatrics, but my own granddaughter lives on the other side of the moors and wouldn’t lower herself to knit even if she could be bothered to visit. Stuck up little madam that one, just like her mother.

But Katy seemed to really enjoy it, once she got stuck in. Then I saw all her hats one morning, on the bollards in the high street. Everyone else thought it was one of those viral things that no one ever understands, but I knew straight off they were hers and I collared her in the kitchen next day.

“It’s called yarnstorming,” she said. “Guerilla knitting.”

I didn’t see where the gorillas came into it, but she showed me some cracking pictures on her phone; flocks of butterflies swarming all over a dismal taxi office, trees wearing mittens and a whole phone box covered by a multicoloured cable knit cosey. I agreed not to dob her in, and she agreed to help me sneak out after dark.

We knitted daffodils for the hospital gardens and a lovely Fairisle sweater for the old King’s statue in the park, then tried to brighten up the towers at the power station. Caused a right old kerfuffle, I can tell you. They tried to say I was a terrorist, like you can blow up a bloody chimney with a carpet bag full of oddments and extra long Tom Baker scarves … Katy was lucky they didn’t spot her – she couldn’t play the senile old biddy card like I could – but she was gone before they came and dragged me down from the fence. I didn’t think I’d see her after that, but there she was come Monday, more ideas than ever.

The papers made me a local celebrity, and that brought in a few more crafters, but none with any real commitment. By Chinese New Year, it was just me and Katy again. We made thirty snakes with fat white eyes and fixed them all to the walls of the local Chinese chippy. Course, it turned out that they were Japanese, didn’t celebrate the New Year and see snakes as bad luck… We both got cautioned for that one, which is fair enough, but I still think it was a bit of a stretch making it out as a racist attack, just because the eyes were a bit slanted. Have you ever tried to draw on a ping pong ball?

Katy stopped coming round after that. Her grandma said it was just a phase, that she’d grown out of it and started seeing a nice young fella, but I didn’t believe a word of it. They just didn’t want her being lead any further astray by a batty old bird like me, so I knocked on her window the night I ‘stormed the bus station. We’d planned it so carefully, done so much beautiful work, I was sure she’d want to come along. Instead her ‘nice young fella’ came to the window, drunk as a lord and half undressed, calling me a bad influence and telling me to eff off. I called to Katy, but she hid under her duvet until I left and I had to do it all myself.

I’d just finished when the early crowd came in. We’d crafted a bed sheet to go over the departures board, embroidered with destinations like Oz and Middle Earth, and the bus bays had matching signs. There were stuffed figures waiting at the doors, a queue of gnomes and unicorns bound for Neverland and Narnia, and the centerpiece was all ready for the first bus. As they trooped aboard, eyes shining at the magic of it all, I pulled the rope and a cloud of paper butterflies fluttered down over their heads, then a great knitted rainbow unfurled from the front of the bus station, sending them on their way.

That was the plan anyway, but it needed two of us. As it is, I wasn’t strong enough, and the rainbow only unrolled at one end; the other caught on the strip lights above the station doors, pulled them loose and swung them down into the driver’s side window. He screamed a bit and let his foot off the brake, just long enough to shunt forward and crush Katy’s young man against the steel door frame.

To be fair, he wouldn’t even have been there if he hadn’t spent the whole night in Katy’s bedroom, but they still said I was lucky to get manslaughter. It doesn’t make much difference at my age though; I won’t ever be walking out of here.

It’s not that bad though; not like Cell Block H anyway. I’m working in the laundry, still making and mending, and there’s a craft class too, so it’s not that different from being in the social centre. A few of the young girls even come to me for lessons. Stormin’ Norma, they call me. One’s coming on a treat, embroidering a beautiful eagle across the shoulders of her uniform. I’m not too keen on the little black fellas it’s eating mind, but it’s decent work, and I always say you can’t go wrong with a nice bit of needlework.

(Author: Karl A Russell. Story: All rights reserved. Photographer: Nana B Agyei. Image: Some rights reserved.)

Grandmother was singing again. I could hear her through the wall, her voice like a papercut, thin and bleeding and painful. Still, I loved to listen. It felt like something I could follow, something that would lead me somewhere I wanted to be. Singing as you bustled around your house was normal, wasn’t it? The sound of potatoes, boiling by the kilo on her stove, that was normal too. The shipshipship of her slippers as she crossed the floor made my hands tremble as I traced my fingers along the pattern on her ugly green wallpaper. She was so delicate. One tiny slip, and she could fall, and if she fell she’d be gone…

‘Agnes?’ she called. She pronounced it differently to everyone else. Annyess, she said. Ann. Yes.

I licked my lips.

‘In here,’ I replied. ‘Just coming.’

‘Good, good,’ she said. Shipshipship.

So, dinner was ready. That might take an hour, if I ate slowly. I might be able to drag the dishes out for thirty minutes. Then she would start to drop hints about aching elbows and fluffy heads and soft pillows, and that meant ‘Time to go home, Agnes. Time to go.’

I couldn’t move from the wall. My forehead was nailed down. The hideous green pattern snaked into life all around me, wrapping me up in sinuous leafy arms, like Sleeping Beauty.

‘Agnes!’ came the call again. ‘It grows cold, your food!’

I braced myself against the wall and pushed as hard as I could. Gradually, like uprooting a weed, my head came unstuck.

Shipshipship. Then, knocking.

‘Liefje,’ she said, through the door. ‘Is everything all right?’

I freed a hand and scrambled around behind me, trying to find the flusher. My eyes boiled in my skull. The noise of the water whirling away, down the drain and away to the sea, gave me some cover as I wiped my face and blew my nose. I threw the tissue into the loo just before the flush was finished. It vanished without trace.

Rattle. Rattlerattle. The door handle jiggled.

‘Agnes, let me in. Please?’ Her words were quick and worried. My guilt scooped out my insides and dumped them all over the floor. I unlocked the door, but couldn’t look at her.

‘Sorry, Oma,’ I said. She made no reply, but reached in and took my hands in hers, one at a time. Her touch was gentle, her fingers cupping mine like I was a precious thing.

‘Even as a tiny girl,’ she said, ‘you would be alone, when you wanted to be sad. You would not cry where we could see you.’ She ran her soft thumb-pad up and down my fingers, each of them in turn, circling around the back of my hand. ‘Not like your Oma. When I wanted to cry, the village would know about it.’ She chuckled. I kept my eyes trained on the front pocket of her apron. My nose was beginning to melt.

‘Tell me what is on your heart,’ she said, tugging my hands gently. I let my eyes fall on her face, but I was afraid to open my mouth. I knew a wave of sticky darkness was lurking in my throat, ready to engulf her. I said nothing.

‘If you cannot say it, I cannot help you,’ she smiled. Her eyes were sad, folding at the corners like a fan. You cannot help me, Oma, I said, in my head. Not even if I scream it, or sing it to you in a song. You can’t help me. I fought back the black surge inside my chest and took a deep breath. Her eyebrows raised, waiting. Her grip on my fingers tightened a fraction.

‘It’s nothing. I’m fine,’ I said, forcing a smile. Dark gunk oozed between my teeth. ‘Just schoolwork, Oma. I have an exam. That’s all.’

‘Well! You are lucky, then, to have so clever an Oma,’ she replied. ‘What exam? I’ll sit it for you. We’ll fool them all, hey?’ She released one of my hands and reached up to brush my hair from my forehead. I felt like someone had buried an axe just beneath my throat, and a fat, hot tear slid down my cheek. I loved her so much for trying. I loved her for caring.

‘Oh, my darling,’ she said. ‘Please.’ She was beginning to cry now, and I hated myself as I watched her eyes fill.

‘Dinner’s getting cold, Oma,’ I said, wiping my nose with the back of my hand. ‘Come on. Let’s eat.’

‘Who cares about dinner?’ she said, placing her hand on the side of my face. ‘Dinner is nothing.’

I imagined telling her, then. I imagined describing what he’d done to me, what he’d made me do. I thought about including the detail about the camera, how he’d laughed as he’d told me how much the shots would go for ‘in certain circles.’ In my head I watched her face change as she realised who I meant, who I was talking about. I thought about talking, but as the words started to bubble up, my throat closed over. It was like I’d swallowed a handful of razor blades. They ripped me raw inside, tore up my words and my body alike. I knew that pain.

I imagined her shuffling across to her wicker-bottomed chair, the one she placed by the stove. Her headquarters, as she called it. Ship.Ship.Ship went her feet. Her face pale and cold as a china plate, her hands quivering. Her heart exploding in her narrow chest. Her brain churning, trying to find a corner in which to place this new thought. I imagined her hanging it in her mind like an ugly picture, then turning it to face the wall.

So, I told her a boy at school had broken my heart. I told her he’d chosen another over me, and she’d smiled fondly, and we’d eaten, and she’d sent me home to hell with a kiss.

(Author: Sinead O’Hart. Story: All rights reserved. Photographer: martinak15. Image: Some rights reserved.)

“Salsa,” Joy announced one morning, “is the new Bums and Tums.”

I kept my head down. One flicker of interest would have her dragging me to the nearest class.

“Sadie, did you hear me?”

I looked up and lost the battle.

*

The community centre smelt of overcooked cabbage, sweaty feet and some odour I didn’t care to identify. I felt conspicuous standing alone whilst everyone else was in couples. Joy was drooling over Miguel. His Spanish accent sounded just a little too contrived, and I was sure he was Mick from Rotherham or Scunthorpe.

I’d been to Spain a few years ago with Gavin. We’d shopped in Las Ramblas. He’d bought me a scarf with Spanish dancers and castanets all over it. It was a bit naff but Gavin rarely bought me a present. I looked forward to seeing the sights especially the architecture of Gaudi. Gavin bought himself a Barcelona football mug when the open top tour bus pulled into the stadium. Thought we were going to grow old together until he told me he had a wife and a greyhound up north.

The old music centre in the corner suddenly came to life. Miguel pulled Joy close to his chest then flicked her away. He twisted and turned her to the throbbing beat; she looked amazing.

I got to dance with an old man called Malcolm with wandering hands. He wheezed a bit but kept up with the tempo. Think in his younger days he wore suede shoes and drain pipe trousers. Saw Joy laughing, but I didn’t care. I’d have the last laugh. Miguel had already noticed my potential and signed me up for private lessons.

(Author: Stella Turner. Story: All rights reserved. Photographer: Luca Boldrini. Image: Some rights reserved.)

Claude tilted the rickety barstool to the side, one foot hooked over the rung, the other placed squarely on the cement floor. He reached for the warm beer – Shirley had a rule about putting glasses down on the slot machine – and let the last of it slide down his throat. He slipped one last coin in, listened to the carnivalesque opening notes of Ode to Joy, and watched the colored lights flicker and pop. Cherries. Bar. Seven.

“Right,” he said. “I’m off.”

“You all packed?” Shirley rang up his tab.

“Got nothing to pack,” Claude said, pocketing the change. “Take just what you can carry, that’s my motto.”

“We’ll miss you around here, won’t we, Henry?”

Henry lifted his head from the dark corner and sniffed, sneezed, scratched at his side and lay his head back down on his paws.

Claude walked out past the station and over to the convenience store. Jimmy was standing by the beat-up Plymouth. He stabbed out his Camel as Claude approached.

“That all you taking?” he moved to open the trunk.

“I’ll just chuck it in the back if that’s okay with you.” Claude swung the faded green backpack off of his shoulder.

“You’re not leaving on account of me, are you, Claude?”

“Nah. Losing the job didn’t help, but it’s time I got back anyhow. Thirty years is a long time.”

Jimmy drove out of town, eased the car onto the highway going north.

“Not much traffic,” said Claude.

“Nope,” answered Jimmy.

Claude took the wheel after dinner.

“Things cool with your sister?” asked Jimmy.

“Damned if I know,” said Claude. “Last I heard was when she sold off the house.”

“You didn’t go back then?”

“I didn’t.”

The sun was coming up when Claude said: “I got busy, that’s all.” Jimmy was snoring, his head lolling back against the window.

They stopped for breakfast after Claude filled up the tank. When the eggs came, Jimmy asked: “So where’s all your stuff, Claude?”

“That’s what I’m going to find out,” Claude said.

“Got anything worth having?”

“I don’t remember.”

When Claude woke up, they were turning off the highway.

“Recognize the place?” asked Jimmy.

“Sure,” said Claude.

“Want me to drop you at your sister’s?”

“That’d be great, Jimmy. Thanks.”

Claude watched old landmarks fall into place. The bridge over the rapids, the long hill into downtown. They didn’t go by his old home.

*

The paint on his sister’s house was peeling.

“Want me to wait?” asked Jimmy.

Claude chuckled. “Don’t tempt me,” he said, then patted Jimmy’s sleeve. “Nice knowin’ ya.”

Claude dallied at the end of the walkway looking at the windows, at the curtains that didn’t move, though Nadine surely was watching. The house, with its peeled grey paint, was ugly and small. ‘Like Nadine,’ he thought as he roused himself to move. He rang the bell, set his backpack at his feet, and waited. An unnecessary light came on above him and the door opened.

“Claude,” Nadine said evenly. “It’s been a long time.”

“Yes it has,” said Claude. He flinched in an effort to hug his sister, but she backed away and waved him in.

“Come in,” she called, as if to a visiting committee. “Come in.”

Claude stood across from Nadine. Between them on their old kitchen table was a box, a shirt box from the long-defunct clothing store downtown. His name was written out in their mother’s handwriting. Claude.

“You want me to find you a bag or something?” Nadine asked.

“Thanks,” said Claude. He lifted a corner of the box with a finger. It was not heavy.

“I’d ask you to dinner,” said Nadine.

Claude shook his head, put the box in the Pink Princess bag Nadine held out. “You say my things are in a garage at Floyd’s?” He held a clear picture of the white-washed garages lined up on one end of the strip mall at the western edge of town.

“Till the money ran out anyway,” Nadine said. She was easing Claude towards the door.

“The money?”

“Money’s been tight, Claude.”

*

Claude walked the three miles with the Pink Princess bag under his arm. Floyd, well not Floyd but Floyd’s son or grandson, would let him crash somewhere. In the garage there’d be an old tent and sleeping bags. Maybe they’d even kept his old beanbag chair. It’d do for the night.

From two blocks back Claude could see the odd light, the lack of cars. Even so, it was not until he stood before the line of shuttered doors with their peeling white paint that he understood whose money had finally run out. He stood in the abandoned lot, reading and rereading the sign posted on garage door number five. He turned and sat, leaning back against the door. He took the shirt box out and held it in his lap.

He had taken to sending home postcards with the thought of offering up a sort of Morse code of his life. Sometimes, in the gloom of an empty bar, he had envisioned himself on a visit back home, regaling his parents with anecdotes he deciphered from the enigmatic messages. He’d always included one line that was meant to jog his memory. With an unfamiliar twinge of anticipation, he removed the top of the shirt box. A dingy blue folder he recognized held his birth certificate, report cards. He pulled a wooden recorder out of its blue knitted case, placed his fingers over the holes and blew until his breath gave out. Underneath the fifth-grade music workbook was a postcard. Claude recognized the bland photograph of a palm tree on a beach, remembered the writing on the back.

Dear Claude, The weather is great. Having a lovely time. Wish you were here. Love, Mom and Pop.

Claude put the recorder back in its pouch and slid the pouch down the side of his backpack. He would practice Ode to Joy. Other things would then come back to him.

(Author: Kymm Coveney. Story: All rights reserved. Photographer: Paul Nicholson. Image: Some rights reserved.)

The door to the hovel was thrown open and shuddered as it hit the wall. Out of the snow a great figure wrapped in animal hides appeared, stamped his feet, closed the door and nodded to the old woman at the fireside.

“Witch,” he said, not an accusation but a greeting.

“Laird,” she replied and pushed another log into the flames. She didn’t get up. In her eyes they were equals.

Her two sisters watched from the shadows, one through the eyes of a crow hidden in the rafters, one as a toad who hid amongst her sister’s aprons.

“The McDougals approach,” the Laird said as he sat down.

The old woman gave the hulking man a cup of hot broth.

“A day away, maybe less when I left. I need your advice,” he said. “And your help.”

A low muttering came from the rafters.

“How can we live through this? They have more men and are better fed, our pride is no match for solid muscle.”

“Survival, is that all?” the old woman asked.

“Aye, it is. That and no more,” the Chieftain replied letting the broth warm the bones of his hands. “I’d spare my clan the fight if I can. They’ve wept enough.”

The witch let her eye wander out over the fields, over the deep snow to the huddle of stone this man called home. She saw steel and running men and was glad she could not hear.

“Spare us this pain,” the Laird said.

“I will do what I can,” she said. Their eyes met in the firelight, hers full of steely resolve, his filled with the burden of his name.

The door slammed shut and the crow hopped down onto the table to peck at the dregs of broth.

“It’s too late for the others,” the crow said. The witch nodded, she could see the blood on the snow.

“Spare him the pain,” the witch said. “That’s what he wanted.”

The toad, warm in the layers of hessian, kept her own council.

“He’ll have to make it down the mountain, ride back across the valley,” the crow mused.

“But if he fell and lost a shoe…” said the toad at last.

“And the cold had taken his horse…” added the crow.

“And the storm became worse…” they all said together and the words took root in the fire, breath from each of them leaping up the stone and mud and out into the sky.

“And then he’d be too late to see,” the witch said to herself. “And that is the only pain we can take away from the world of men.”

(Author: Tim Stevenson. Story: All rights reserved. Photographer: Heather Stanley. Image: All rights reserved.)

“Never trust the green man,” Phil said. I didn’t believe him – why would they put them all over the place if you can’t trust them? “Watch the road,” he said, “the traffic lights if you must, but don’t rely on that bastard.” I never took any notice. I just crossed when the green man told me to like everyone else.

I changed my mind after the accident. A woman with a toddler was waiting for the lights by the pub. I was waiting for a friend, listening to their conversation, remembering when my lot were kids.

“But that man went,” the little boy said indignantly, pointing at a bloke in a leather jacket who was racing across the road.

“Well he’s very silly. We know we have to wait for the green man, don’t we?”

They waited. And they waited.

When they finally set off, so did a post van. I couldn’t look but I felt the shattering of glass and bone through my body. Both of them died – the boy straight away, his mother a few days later.

Before I shut my eyes, in that slow-motion moment before the van hit, I looked up at the lights and I saw them: the green man and the red man, looking down on the road together and getting their story straight.

(Author: J Adamthwaite. Story: All rights reserved. Photographer: Thomas Hawk. Image: Some rights reserved.)

I joined this writing class at the library. I figured it would be the best place to steal other people’s ideas since I had none and I wanted to make a coin or two. Word was there was a new way to make money - selling stories to the jaded old men that wandered the platforms and bridges at the station, bitterly opposing the way their lives had turned out, afraid to jump but more afraid not to and trying to find something to stop them being so damn scared.

I went down there the Tuesday before my first class to make sure I wasn’t wasting my time. The last time I’d needed a train was over a year ago, and there’d been a handful of old men milling about on the second bridge. We thought it was a bunch of trainspotters – old beige and grey men blending into a patchwork quilt of seventies anoraks, their skin the same colour as the coats that made us scoff. We weren’t the only gawpers; a man with a flask spoke to us quickly, trying to explain - he was there to see some steam engine or other, and these weirdos were obscuring his view, and he’d complained to the Station Manager who’d told him to leave them be; they were volatile and they didn’t need confronting because they were there for only one reason - they could no longer stand being alive. We left them bang alone, sneered some and tutted and made our presence felt for no other reason than it made us feel big, and then we got our train.

This time there were hundreds of them; on the first bridge, the second bridge, covering the broken third bridge and now spilling over onto the platforms; ochre shuffles and elephantine unrest mumbling and stumbling and fumbling slowly around each other. I shuddered. It felt disgusting to me, and desperately sad, and the stench was unbearable. And I just wanted to know if I could make any money out of these freaks.

I approached one of them. He was sitting on the floor with his head in his hands, tea-coloured clothes and tea-coloured skin and tea-coloured teeth all blending together into a tea-coloured slump that made my shoulders hunch and my knees weak with I don’t even know what. “Why are you here?” I asked. He gave me nothing. “Why are you here?” I asked again, crouching to his level and trying to sound kind. “Life,” he replied. “Life tastes too grim.”

I glanced around and I noticed a boy in a bright red jumper handing a bundle of papers to another yellowing fool. I leapt up and followed the boy through the crowd. “What did you give him?” I asked. “A story,” he replied. “Why? What about?” He shrugged. “They don’t like living but they don’t want to die,” he said. “I sell them stories about love and lust and sex in green fields and birds and magic and rainbows and shining leopard print hope. They pay cash. They read and they read and it keeps them going. They pay cash.”

On Wednesday I started my writing class. It was full of dumb kids trying to write about things they had no idea about; sex that they’d never had, drugs they’d never taken, women they’d never loved and places they’d never travelled. Dumb kids had no idea. And I was no writer. I stole words by the dozen but they made me dry-gut myself with every depressing line I read.

By Thursday I was back at the Station. The boy in the red jumper approached me with a wad of A4 paper. I paid him what I had in my pocket and I sat down with my friends.

(Author: Jo Coleslaw. Story: All rights reserved. Photographer: Richard Littledale. Image: All rights reserved.)

I find her, barefoot in the grass, twenty miles from nowhere, as though she has just stepped through the doorway from the Golden Realm itself. The soft cotton of her simple white dress flutters in response to the westerly breeze, making it cling; and revealing hints of a womanly figure beneath.

She gazes upward at the Sun; one hand lifted as though she is fascinated by the rays of light which glimmer through the gaps between her fingers. She wriggles them, one at a time, flexing each knuckle in a wave. Every tiny movement causes the sunlight to catch on her upturned face in a slightly different way; each one more beautiful than the last.

Without a word spoken, without time passing, without doubt; I fall in love at that moment.

She turns her radiant face to me, and smiles as though she can read my thoughts. The clear, crystal blue of her eyes holds an otherworldly clarity, a wisdom beyond age; hers, are eyes which shine with the memory of wonders. Loose strands of fine, white hair fall across her face, and demand that I lift my hand to stroke them away.

My fingertips brush against her delicate skin, pushing aside the stray lock with a sparkling frisson of emotion. She takes my hand by the wrist and nestles her soft cheek into my palm. Her eyelids close slowly, their movement matched by a growing smile which alters the lines of her face, so that the sunlight catches her in new, bewildering ways. So peaceful, serene. I do not want the moment to end.

Smiling still, she holds my hand up to the Sun and spreads my fingers wide. Twinkling shafts dance between them as my hand wavers to the pulse of my quick beating heart. A heart lost entirely to her.

The softest of kisses touches my neck, lingering, tender; or maybe it’s just my imagination and the warm caress of the summer breeze.

I know, that when I drop my hand and turn back to her she will be gone. So I stare at the Sunlight glinting between my fingers, remembering all the ways it touched upon her brow. And I stare; until my retina throb with incandescent loss to match the void she has left in my heart. Stare, and stare at the Sun, until I can see nothing but argent luminance.

My eyes have gazed upon the eldritch splendour of the Fey, a sight to which nothing can compare; I need them no more.

(Author: James Coates. Story: All rights reserved. Photographer: Luis Hernandez. Image: Some rights reserved.)