by Alex Bell
Still, nothing.
He tried the back door. Eventually, he tried the windows.
The phone didn’t work, either.
Neither did email.
As he snarled and jabbed at buttons on his mobile he heard a laugh.
The berry-child was perched on the dresser, grinning at him with her red teeth.
He threw his phone at her, and she dodged easily, flickering up to the top of the curtain rail.
‘She can’t keep me prisoner here!’ he said.
‘No, she can’t,’ the berry-child said. ‘But you can. You’ll find the accommodations a little cramped, but then, it’s where you’ve always lived, isn’t it? I’m sure you’ll get used to it.’
And she too was gone.
He sat on the bed, swearing. But someone would come looking for him, soon.
He put his keys on the dresser. Then he frowned.
He shouldn’t be able to reach the dresser from the bed.
*
‘Hello? Is anyone home? Chrys?’ Tina swallowed against the fear in her throat. ‘Darren?’
She heard whimpering. Oh, Christ, he’d done it… she’d known, she’d known something was wrong, that Chrys was being abused, and like a coward she’d allowed herself to be driven off. Chrys was lying in there, hurt.
She called the police.
When they broke in, the whimpering led them upstairs.
Darren was curled on the floor, arms wrapped tight, staring at the walls.
‘Darren? Darren?’
‘The room…’
‘What’s that? Darren, can you hear me? We’re here to help you. Where’s your wife, Darren?’
‘It keeps getting smaller,’ Darren said. ‘The room keeps getting smaller. Smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller…’
Eventually, they took him away, to another small room.
Seagull Island
by
Tom Fletcher
I am lying where previously a dead seagull lay; I brushed it off the edge of the rock, and took its place. It is a good place. Smooth against my skin, and curved in such a way as to hold me comfortably. So I lie here, on my back, on the rock, my right arm hanging down and my fingers in the cold blue water of the lake, the midday heat of the summer sun pressing down on my body. I look at the rock next to my face, and there is a small red mite moving across it.
The dead seagull was decomposing and some of its bones were visible beneath its feathers. When I knocked it into the water it felt insubstantial, barely there. But it was there. If I had not moved it then I would not have been able to lie down. So it was definitely a real thing, with presence and mass.
It sank into the lake and because the sun is so bright and the water is so clear, I was able to watch it sink for quite a while.
The heat is tremendous. I can feel it penetrating my skin, penetrating deep down into my flesh, warming me through to the bone. I now have my eyes closed and I am wearing sunglasses, but even so I can still see the sunlight. The inside of my eyelids is orange, rather than black. The weather is glorious, and out here on this rock there is nothing between it and me.
The rock is a small island in the deep blue lake. The lake is the deepest in the country. When I was little, the rock was always covered in seagulls, and so I have always called it Seagull Island. Although I have not seen any seagulls on it in recent years, apart from the dead one. The seagulls have all gone.
I open my eyes and look at the water. There is no breeze so the water is flat and still. The stones and trees around the shoreline are also still. There is not a cloud in the sky. I am still. I do not move; I do not want to move. There are no cars on the lake road. I am alone. It would be nice to lie here naked. It would be more honest, and nobody would see me. But in order to take my trunks off, I would have to move, and I do not want to move. The whole of the visible world is still and I do not want to break that stillness. Also, I am in such a comfortable position that any movement at all requires a significant effort. Too much effort. I am not being lazy though. I am not a lazy person. Lying here, not doing anything… I have waited a long time for this. Modern life is difficult and I am a very busy person. I am a very important person, but even unimportant people are very busy these days. Everybody is very busy.
The heat of the sun is flowing into my muscle tissue and loosening it, softening it up. I can feel my body settling. I can feel tension dissipating. I can almost feel my worry and stress leak out of me onto the stone, and flow over the curves of the stone into the water of the lake, and disappear from my life forever.
After a while I can tell that the sun has moved. The colour of the light on the mountains is different. But it is moving slowly enough not to break the stillness. Hours have passed since I lay down. But that’s OK. I don’t have to do anything. I don’t have to move. This day is a moment of calm in an otherwise tumultuous period and I should enjoy it. I should make the most of it.
The longer I lie here, the more sense my motionlessness makes, and my resolution not to move grows stronger.
Another of the small red creatures moves across the surface of the rock and onto my left hand. It is tiny. Just a little red dot gliding along. I can’t feel it when it touches my skin – it is too small. There are several on the rock now, I see. My mother used to call these things ‘money spiders’, but I don’t know if that is their real name. I watch them go about their business. Money spiders. I wonder if I should be worrying about money. Not my money, I’ve never had to worry about that, but other people’s. I can’t remember.
By the time the sun is setting, I need the toilet. I just urinate where I am. The urine flows and pools and runs into the lake. I am surprised at how much of it there is. It is really lovely to just let go like that. It feels luxurious. It feels as if I am being kind to myself. Giving myself a real pampering! Once, in a meeting in a room all glass, I thought I was going to wet myself. The table was littered with empty coffee cups. We had been there all day. I suddenly became aware of this intense pressure deep inside myself. Everything got foggy; I couldn’t think. I stood up and walked to the window, hands behind my back. I looked out over fields of shining cars, so small they looked like insects. A world thick with insects. The thought of pissing myself made me sweat. The thought of it streaming through my grey suit trousers. It was a real deep fear. I walked slowly from the room as if I’d just remembered there was something I needed in my office, hoping that the others hadn’t noticed the sheen on my face. If only they could see me now, like this, really enjoying myself. I don’t know what they’d think.
There are still no clouds in the sky. The sky is fiery red to the west and deep blue to the east. The moon is hanging bright up there, now, and a couple of stars are visible above the mountains, which are reflecting the western sky. The mountains are glowing red. They are beautiful. I have lain here long enough now to become familiar with the rocks and trees of the mountainside. It has been a clear day, and my vision is very good. I can see the details of the trees; I can see the leaves and branches, even though they are very far away. I can see them not moving in the lack of breeze. I can see them standing still and silent among the rocks, in the red light of the setting sun.
Night falls and the air grows cool. The moon is three-quarters full and it is luminous, and I can see its craters. I feel as if this is the first time I have looked at the moon and seen a three-dimensional sphere, the first time I have seen how it curves away into shadow. Usually I think of it as a disc, even though I know that it is not really a disc.
The fingers of my right hand are still in the water, which is cold now. The lake looks like a lake of ink. I am tempted to lift my hand and look at my fingertips by the moonlight, to see if they have been dyed black, but I do not. I wonder if there are any fish in the lake that do not like sunlight, and so rise to the surface only during the night. Fish or other creatures.
The moon and stars are bright but the sky in which they shine is utterly black, as black as the lake. The sky is like a la
ke and the moon is like a rock in it, like another island, like my island, like another Seagull Island, opposite. It is nice to imagine another being up there, an alien, a very important alien, having a lie down and looking back at me. Taking some time to themselves. It is important to take time to yourself and look around at the world sometimes. It is very important.
Or maybe the moon is an island in an inky black lake, and I am looking at it from underneath. Maybe I am at the bottom of the lake. And maybe there is somebody lying on the other side of the moon, looking away, looking out into space. Maybe there is somebody lying on the floor of this lake, looking up at the bottom of Seagull Island. Lying down there in the cold and the mud, having a nice long rest. Maybe they feel guilty about lying down for so long, but just can’t quite bring themselves to get up yet. I now understand what it is like to be too relaxed to move. I understand that very well.
I sleep, but it is broken, haunted sleep. I keep thinking that something’s gone wrong with the money, but I don’t quite know how, or what that means. I dreamt that we put it at the bottom of the lake for safekeeping, but now it’s not there. ‘Maybe it has just gone down into the lake underneath,’ I say to the others. ‘Or the lake underneath that.’ Water is running down my legs and it won’t stop. There was a rock in me once, a solid core that held me together, but now I think it’s gone.
The heat comes quickly after dawn. The sun feels just like the ball of flame that it is. I feel as if I am lying by a fire. My skin is slick with sweat in no time at all.
My mouth is very dry; I wonder if I should drink from the lake. But it seems a shame to start moving now, after I have lasted so long, after I have done so well. Or maybe it is time to move, after all; time to leave, in fact.
I can feel the heat of the sun inside me, inside my chest cavity.
I open my eyes and tilt my head, ever so slightly.
My body is coated in red things; the money spiders. They are swarming all over me. I cannot see my skin at all. The rock, too, is covered. I do not know where they came from. They could not have come from the water. Unless they are not money spiders; maybe they are something else.
There is something quite wrong. I sit up.
There is a dip in my stomach, full of these creatures seething. I cannot see any flesh or blood, but I know they have eaten into me. It is a concavity, teeming with tiny red lives.
I bring my left hand to my face. I can tell straight away that my fingers are too thin. I think the spiders have eaten away the skin and some of the meat, and now my fingers are more or less just bone. Bone and spiders. I have read about animals – vampire bats, I think – that anaesthetise their victims before sucking their blood. All I can feel is the wonderful heat.
I lie back down again. I suppose I have stayed here for too long, but it is too late, more or less, for me to do anything about it now. I will remain. It is another clear, still day, and the lake is blue again, not black. I vastly prefer the lake during daylight hours. There is something unfriendly about the night, and during the night my thoughts unnerve me. I do not understand them.
Table of Contents
X7
Contents
INTRODUCTION
Dead End
If I Were You
Gravy Soup
The Devil in Red
Stormcats
Walls
Seagull Island
