by Marc Nash
Since I was filled with the presentiment that this was somebody else’s life flashing before my eyes, it occurred to me that perhaps I should do something to preserve it as a record. However, on each occasion that I managed to squirt some paper between the rollers of the printer, the text had decomposed its legibility and the printer peeled off what appeared to be a laboured test run. Even when prepared, with paper in place, waiting for the next manifest, the resultant synchronised print-off was still garbled gibberish. Had the forces of darkness secured the printer outpost? Or was the printer garrison still holding out, desperately broadcasting its coded warning as to the original errata? Or had it gone native and veered off into its own hallucinatory discourse? The period for her words to re-establish their cursive flow, was now becoming longer and longer. I decided to write some of them down. Contracted wrist giving way to longhand, as I reflexively moved for the weight of my journal. Albeit according her a fresh page at the back.
As I launched into amanuensis mode, I would be holed each time by the gobbledegook guillotine. Shredding meaning. Splintering intelligibility. I made myself memorise more for the record. Then dictate to myself from the afterglow imprinted upon my side of the retinal wall, once the image had faded from in front of me. Thus I knew my transcription would not be a pure one. More of a cross-hybridization. So be it. Amy’s plaintive greet-the-day mewl brought a natural end to my assignment. I rose to confront the day chock-full with purpose, stale from having spent a night under the tiles and pressed against the eaves. This time the monitor screen was wiped clear at my hand, rather than that of any second or third party.
I returned to my journal that night. Re-read my latest (borrowed) entry, anticipating it to be an annotation of the rest of the entire preceding contents. A foreword or afterword. A dedication. An acknowledgement of something or other. An imprimatur. But it failed to read that well, or interestingly, even. More akin to some dream you noted down before returning to sleep, only to read it through stupefied the next morning. It was no dream though and I’ll have the dial-up bill to prove it right enough. I guess you had to have been there. Which neither of us ever were really, I suppose. The e-mail bounced back to me as undeliverable.
I didn’t return to the website. I don’t know if her digital Cheshire cat smirk managed to prevail. I unplugged the computer, faithful to my vow to reverse previous vows. I tried ripping out her page from my journal, but she put up her customary catfight. Eventually she was gone from my life, but she took with her half the folio’s anchoring twine. My journal now hung frail and played out. It no longer had an aroma for me to inhale. I told you she was a tenacious old bird. In union we’d not grafted. Only in divorce. Still, that was an advance on my ex-husband. He’d barely merited an entry, let alone a dedicated page.
XX.XX.Something or other I’ve been intending to do this for ages. But there just never seemed to be an opportunity. Now though is the time, since Suzanne’s off helping with the flowers for the Harvest Festival, while Amy’s off harvesting her grandparents for some CD-Rom or other down the shops. I need to sort out my journal. I’d made a few daily jottings after my internet night of the lone wives, but the tome soon dismantled itself irreparably. The leaves of my life fluttered down in one fell swoop and fanned out across the floor. Now my own narrative lay fractured, and other than scooping the pages in a bundle and slipping the copy within the covers for safekeeping, I did nothing to reorder it.
And so it would have stayed. A relict of the former me, had I not now occasion to consult them in some pressing practical matters. For life has slithered on.
I’m unsure if Stormont is presently in session, or whether it is whiling away one of its accustomed suspensions. Don’t know how the Unionists have the temerity to claim the high moral ground when a clump of them kept their hand in with some pipe-bombing and intimidation of four-year old girls on the way to Catholic School. That played well on global TV. And we’re supposed to have all the Grand Masters? I don’t know, maybe that happened a long time ago. I no longer keep up with current events. Omagh is quiet enough anyway. The planet is definitely heating up, no matter the protestations of the authorities. I warned you about those buried nappies coming back to scourge us! I’ve no idea on the current state of our erstwhile holiday beach, since we’ve not been back (which makes me believe it was the provenance of my ex-husband, rather than part of my family’s legacy. Another thing I can’t clearly recall).
Even managed to pop on through the tunnel over to Eurodisney. It was predictably tawdry, but then hey, it’s for the kids really. Next stop the Holy Land, but things are looking a touch precarious there right now. Imagine a girl from Ulster weighing that up as a singular risk a generation ago! The lumber room has finally been done up. As a nursery. I’ve been seeing this fellah and we’re expecting. I had plenty of misgivings at first, but he’s dead keen. Says he’s going to be really hands-on. He did the decorating. Relaid a new carpet.
Why put myself through all that again I ponder? The prospective flush I was anticipating was that of menopause, rather than pregnancy. Hormone replacement rather than revivification. Will it bring us closer together? That presupposes an intimacy gap that needs plugging. Even if that’s the case, then how can a child possibly add to any partnership, when the division of attendant labour is so implacably unequal? Whatever good intentions he lays out before me.
And why do we persist in thinking in this manner anyway? As if we expect our issue to betoken some future hope, when all they embody are our shoddy, rehashed genes. Further reinforced with our rehashed parenting. How are they meant to shine as a beacon, from out of the seam of our own deeply flawed lives? Since we are their formative and guiding influences, are they are not condemned but to repeat our mistakes? Our wholesale exporting of imperfections, indicts them to similar shortcomings in their lives. And they will inevitably breed them on into the future. So the cycle is largely unbroken.
But none of this is why presently I need recourse to my journal. Ultimately my emotions will rule on whether I issue this new baby, full of grace, or full of rage. And sure, we will take soundings from assisted memory. Admit expert submissions from Suzanne and Amy. But there again, neither Omagh nor the world are shaped in one’s own image as I perceive it. Suzanne and I independently both reached this epiphany around the same time. Even if we momentarily turn our backs on the exteriority of great beauty or of relationship, it will still persist when we turn back to gaze on it. So we will not be disappointed like Lot’s wife and dissolve into salty tears. That malevolent logic of the Republican School of Adams, McLoughlin and McGuinness, whereby a sniper or bomber only had to get lucky once, whereas the quarry had to remain lucky everyday, perversely infers a more generous truth; I gaze upon my children and regard that every day, indeed, I am blessed in their presence. All emanating impalpably from two miniscule cells, egg and sperm. And now, it appears, I – we – have been bestowed favourably upon once again. There’s always room for some more wondrous, sublime beauty in the world. Here’s hoping.
Publishing the Underground
Publishing the Underground is Dead Ink’s way of publishing daring and exciting new fiction from emerging authors. We ask our readers to act as literary patrons and buy our books in advance in order for us to bring them to print. Without this support our books would not be possible.
Dead Ink and the author, Marc Nash, would like to thank all of the following people for generously backing this book – without them this book would not be in your hands.
If you would like to help Dead Ink continue this work please check the website.
www.deadinkbooks.com
Adrian Ward
Alex Blott
Amber Rollinson
Andrew McMillan
Anthony Self
Ben Sewell
Charlotte Bence
Chris Limb
Corey Nelson
D Levin
Dan Brotzel
Dan Thomson
Dani Freedland
Daniel Carpenter
David Hebblethwaite
Denise Sparrowhawk
Emma Baxter
Eva Hnizdo
Gareth Rees
Graeme Hall
Haroun Khan
Harry Gallon
Helenice Zimmermann
Hilary Stanton
James Powell
Jamie Sewell
Jenny Bernstein
Jonathan Freedland
Julie Raby
Kieron Smith
Kit Caless
Laura Emsley
Louise Thompson
Matthew Shenton
Meaghan Ralph
Nick Wilson
Paul Hancock
Petrea Ruddy
Rebecca Lea
Rebekah Hughes
Robin Hargreaves
Sally Lines
Sam Fisher
Shahbaz Haque
SJ Bradley
Sophie Hopesmith
Steph Kirkup
Susan McIvor
Tamim Sadikali
Tania Malkani
Tom Gillespie
Tracey Connolly
Wendy Mann
Yvonne Singh
Every Fox is a Rabid Fox
Harry Gallon
‘Every Fox is a Rabid Fox is a harrowing and brutal read. But I fell for its incredibly tender heart. I loved this book.’
- Claire Fuller, author of Swimming Lessons and Our Endless Numbered Days
‘Beautifully executed tale of innocence, tragedy, and the family traumas we all carry with us and many times fail to leave behind.’
- Fernando Sdrigotti, author of Dysfunctional Males
Robert didn’t mean to kill his brother. Now he’s stuck between grief and guilt with only ex-girlfriend Willow and the ghost of his dead twin sister for company. Terrified of doing more harm, Robert’s hysteria and anxiety grow while Willow and his sister’s ghost fight over him: one trying to save him, the other digging his grave.
Every Fox Is A Rabid Fox is a brutal yet tender tale of family tragedy, mental illness and a young man searching for escape from his unravelling mind.
Another Justified Sinner
Sophie Hopesmith
It’s the eve of the recession, but who cares? For commodity trader Marcus, life is good: he’s at the top of the food chain. So what if he’s a fantasist? So what if he wills his college sweetheart to death? So what if it’s all falling apart? This isn’t a crisis. Until it is.
As misfortune strikes again and again, he goes to help others and ‘find himself’ abroad – but it turns out that’s not as easy as celebrities make it look on TV. Another Justified Sinner is a feverish black comedy about the fall and rise and fall of Marcus,an English psycopath. How difficult is it to be good?
Sophie Hopesmith is a 2012 Atty Awards finalist and her background is in feature writing. Born and bred in London, she works for a reading charity. She likes comedy, poetry, writing music, and Oxford commas. All of her favourite films were made in the 70s.
Hollow Shores
Gary Budden
Budden’s debut collection blends the traditions of weird fiction and landscape writing in an interlinked set of stories from the emotional geographies of London, Kent, Finland and a place known as the Hollow Shore.
The Hollow Shore is both fictional and real. It is a place where flowers undermine railway tracks, relationships decay and monsters lurk. It is the shoreline of a receeding, retreating England. This is where things fall apart, waste away and fade from memory.
Finding horror and ecstasy in the mundane, Hollow Shores follows characters on the cusp of change in broken-down environments and the landscapes of the mind.
Gary Budden is the co-director of Influx Press. His work has appeared in Structo, Elsewhere, Unthology, The Lonely Crowd, Gorse, Galley Beggar Press and many more. He writes about landscape punk at newlexicons.com.
The Night Visitors
Jenn Ashworth & Richard V. Hirst
Winner of The Saboteur Awards 2017 Best Novella
Orla Nelson used to be a famous writer and now she’s seeking a comeback. Alice Wells wants to make something of herself before it’s too late. In The Night Visitors these two women, connected by blood and ambition, investigate their ancestor Hattie Soak, a silent film star who fled the scene of a gruesome unsolved crime.
Told entirely via an exchange of emails, The Night Visitors is a story of ghosts, obsession and inherited evil. This novella traces the ways in which technology can hold and transmit our worst secrets and unspoken fears, and what happens when uneasy collaborations start to unravel.
Jenn Ashworth’s first novel, A Kind of Intimacy, was published in 2009 and won a Betty Trask Award. She lives in Lancashire and teaches Creative Writing at Lancaster University.
Richard V. Hirst is a writer based in Manchester. His writing has appeared in the Big Issue, the Guardian and Time Out, among others.
About Dead Ink...
Dead Ink is a small, ambitious and experimental literary publisher based in Liverpool.
Supported by Arts Council England, we’re focused on developing the careers of new and emerging authors.
We believe that there are brilliant authors out there who may not yet be known or commercially viable. We see it as Dead Ink’s job to bring the most challenging and experimental new writing out from the underground and present it to our audience in the most beautiful way possible.
Our readers form an integral part of our team. You don’t simply buy a Dead Ink book, you invest in the authors and the books you love.
About the Author...
Marc Nash has published five collections of flash fiction and four novels, all which look to push narrative form and language. He also works with videographers to turn some of his work into digital storytelling. He lives and works in London in the NGO realm.
