by Paul Magrs
They were in hushed, urgent conference.
Aunty Jane looked flustered and hot, even in her loose nightie. Santa was chuckling at her, lifting up his great beard, rippling his fingers in the humid air. Uncertainly, Jane was joining in with his echoing laughter.
When Santa snapped his fingers, Robert could hear the click.
A solid transparent sphere shimmered around both figures on the bridge. It looked brittle and faintly blue, like Murano glass.
Aunty Jane stared at the old man in wonder and he was laughing again. The glass started to mist over and it was harder for Robert to see them. He realised that it was snowing inside the bauble. A perfect, miniature snowstorm was raging just inside the sphere. Santa had taken Robert’s aunt and trapped her with him in a bubble of winter.
All around them in that hermetic space, silent clots and specks of snow were whirling, and colliding with his Aunty Jane’s overheated flesh.
He’s doing it, Robert thought suddenly, to prove that he is real.
Santa’s doing it to prove it all true.
Aunty Jane was frozen in that moment; aghast, awhirl. Her breath was crystallizing. Robert could see his aunt’s gasp of amazement hanging in front of her and it was like a large white question mark.
Santa bent forward to kiss her. He’d be melting the flakes on her face, her eyelashes.
Then he reached up and pricked the bubble from within. It burst like soap and the glass and the hectic blizzard melted in an instant. The hot wet air of the Venetian night came flooding back.
“I’ll catch my death,” Robert heard his aunty say.
Santa was peering over the side of the bridge, down to the canal, where a great dark shape had drifted up and was waiting for him.
“Time for home, Jane,” he said, in an unexpected accent.
Jane let Santa lead her down to the gondola. He nodded to the boy in the boatnecked jumper, who was bracing his slight weight on the slant of the gondola’s stern. Robert stared as the boy doffed his yellow straw hat at Jane, revealing his nascent horns, their rounded nubs poking out of close-cropped hair. Reindeer, Robert realised. The boy had cloven hooves.
He watched his aunt rubbing her arms, though she must be warmed through again by now. She was stepping aboard. She looked dainty as she sat down in the cushions, hugging her knees as Santa joined her.
The gondolier shoved their small boat away from the crumbling shore. As they went sailing off into the dark, Robert heard his aunt come out of her trance with a gasp.
It wasn’t really like her, taking off like that.
MARKED FOR LIFE
Meet: Mark Kelly – a man tattooed with glorious designs over every inch of his body. He’s married to the slightly unhinged Sam and has a young daughter who’s about to be kidnapped at Christmas by an escaped convict and old flame of our hero’s. Over one snowy festive season the whole family sets off in perilous pursuit… accompanied by Sam’s mother, who’s become a nudist lesbian and her girlfriend, who claims to be a time-transcending novelist known as Iris Wildthyme…
DOES IT SHOW?
Meet: Penny Robinson, who’s a sixteen year old with witchy powers and an impossibly glamorous and overbearing mother called Liz. They’ve just moved into the neighbourhood and the friendships they make will start off a bizarre chain of events involving love affairs with hunky bus drivers, people dressing up as dogs, raucous nights out with the ladies and a very surprising revelation on the dance floor during Goth Night in Darlington...
COULD IT BE MAGIC?
Meet: Andy, a young gay man who finds himself quite unexpectedly pregnant. Andy runs away to Edinburgh to sample the delights of the wicked city and to give birth to a child of his own: one covered in golden leopard fur…
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PAUL MAGRS lives and writes in Manchester. In a twenty-odd year writing career he has published novels in every genre from Literary to Gothic Mystery to Science Fiction. His most recent books are The Martian Girl (Firefly Press) and Fellowship of Ink (Snowbooks.) He has taught Creative Writing at both the University of East Anglia and Manchester Metropolitan University, and now writes full time.
MORE BY PAUL MAGRS FROM LETHE PRESS
MARKED FOR LIFE
Meet: Mark Kelly – a man tattooed with glorious designs over every inch of his body. He’s married to the slightly unhinged Sam and has a young daughter who’s about to be kidnapped at Christmas by an escaped convict and old flame of our hero’s. Over one snowy festive season the whole family sets off in perilous pursuit… accompanied by Sam’s mother, who’s become a nudist lesbian and her girlfriend, who claims to be a time-transcending novelist known as Iris Wildthyme…
DOES IT SHOW?
Meet: Penny Robinson who’s a sixteen year old with witchy powers and an impossibly glamorous and overbearing mother called Liz. They’ve just moved into the neighbourhood and the friendships they make will start off a bizarre chain of events involving love affairs with hunky bus drivers, people dressing up as dogs, raucous nights out with the ladies and a very surprising revelation on the dance floor during Goth Night in Darlington...
COULD IT BE MAGIC?
Meet: Andy, a young gay man who finds himself quite unexpectedly pregnant. Andy runs away to Edinburgh to sample the delights of the wicked city and to give birth to a child of his own: one covered in golden leopard fur…
*
FANCY MAN
The never-before-published ‘lost’ novel that continues in the same inimitable style of Phoenix Court.
Meet: Wendy, who grows up the youngest of three brash sisters in Blackpool and who leaves home when her mother dies. She moves to Edinburgh under the wing of her vulgar Aunty Anne, whose sights are set on the millions her ex-husband has recently won on the lottery. Wendy spends a happy summer finding herself amongst her new family: Uncle Pat, frail cousin Colin, Captain Simon and Belinda, who believes herself to be an alien abductee.
Published by Lethe Press
lethepressbooks.com
Copyright © 2018 Paul Magrs
Introduction © 2018 Paul Magrs
‘Glittering Fag’ first published in Raise #2
‘Baubels’ first published in Fable (Queer Life Issue)
ISBN: 978-1-59021-654-5
No part of this work may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, microfilm, and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Author or Publisher.
Author photo by
Clair Macnamee
Cover and interior design
by Inkspiral Design
