Issue #9

“As American as Borscht, Vodka and Communism.”

Dear Reader.... After a protracted and all too long absence it is my distinct

pleasure to announce the triumphant return of the glorious Penny Dreadful. Cork’s

foremost photocopied literary magazine. I feel that we must offer our most heartfelt

and sincere apologies, life got in the way you see but is now safely confined in its box

where it belongs.

Since we last spoke some new pretenders to the throne have arisen and I fell that I

must express my extreme umbrage with their less than satisfactory quarterly. They

charge for it you see, money usually, but you know from the look of it that they would

accept all sorts. I would, and will, take this opportune opportunity to remind you my

dear and beloved reader that The Penny Dreadful is and remains Cork’s only free

regular literary publication and long may it remain so! We would never dream of

charging you a single red cent for any of the stories, poems and other such pieces that

are reproduced here and woe be to the man that would!

This editions list of contributors

David Toms Mark O’Leary Diane Toomey Alan Maguire Alan Grayson John Keating Marc O’Connell Wolfgang Amadeus Helnwein Aidan O’Sullivan

As per usual we will be glad to accept for consideration anything that you may happen

to have written short of racist polemics and denunciations of public figures. If you

should happen to have comments of any variety an email address is provided on the

back page. Furthermore if you are so inclined to do so you may find and “add” us on

Facebook.

We wait with baited breath,

Aloysius A Albersmith, Editor in Chief

The Miniscule Man

H. awoke in his bed to find that the arms of his pyjamas had stretched in the night. Unperturbed by this, H. rolled up the edges of his sleeves and got out of bed. On standing H. found that in addition to his sleeves, his pyjama bottoms also hung loosely from his frame. Fastening their cords around his waist, H. went to the bathroom and found that he could just barely see over the rim of the sink. Untroubled by this H. returned to his room, took the chair from his writing desk and placed it before the sink in the bathroom. Much to H’s annoyance he found that he could not see into the mirror. No matter how much his craned his neck, H. could only catch a cursory glance of the top of his head in the lower reaches of the mirror. Out of frustration H. threw his toothbrush into the sink and began recitation every profanity that existed to his knowledge. H. then composed himself, tried to give himself a smile, which he couldn’t be quite sure he achieved since he could not see his reflection, which usually appeared in the place that was now a good few inches above his head. H. jumped down from the chair and found that his pyjamas now hung even more loosely on his frame. Then H. meticulously rolled up his sleeves to just below his wrist, his pyjama legs to just above his ankles and fastened the cords of is pyjama bottoms firmly around his waist. Taking hold of the chair, H. dragged it back to its original place next to the writing desk. H. found that the top of his head now skirted just below the edge of the writing desk. H. finally realised that he was indeed shrinking. H. bemoaned his situation, realizing the mistake he had made on exiting his bed. His thoughts now turned to what size would he shrink to and whether this decreasing of his proportions would cease. By the time H. had briefly entertained these ideas, his pyjamas had fallen from him and his head now brushed against the seat of the chair. H. was shrinking smaller and smaller, this was happening to him faster and faster. Smaller and smaller until his books towered over him. Smaller and smaller until the cracks in the floor where like great chasms. Smaller and smaller until atoms appeared as large as planets in the sky. Smaller and smaller. Smaller and smaller until H. blinked from existence.

M.O.L

Get Intricate

Don’t forget to get intricate, to get all that’s implicit with it. Get deeply tacit, use that as a major tactic. Make sure it’s perfectly elastic. Make it lasting. Lounge, but don’t be languorous. Track it. As it steps lurch to lunge to launching, track it. Keep its traces. Keep all strands encased. Enclose upon it. Fold. Remake. Version from version, each mistake, remove. Each step misread, replace. Remove from it, its own pace. Ensare its every lace. Every lace untwine. Replace. Every line remake. Every making, re-line, re-trace.

D.T

Emoticon

I met Janet four years ago. Four whole years ago. Only four years ago. Janet and I first met at a house party. I don't remember the party so well. At least not the end of it. We would joke later that we were the only couple to have ever have fallen in love at first sight on our second meeting. It was one of those parties where everyone is so self-consciously young and interesting. They put far too much effort into what was, for me, the sublimely easy process of inebriation. Still I decided to crash it anyway. Somebody had the idea of bringing an assortment of children's toys to create a kind of carnivalesque kind of thing; hula hoops, space hoppers, water guns and bottles of blue gin. We were to spend the night bouncing off the walls and squirting gin across the room. Welcome to the fun house. I decided to watch the proceedings balanced on a space hopper with a bottle of whiskey, and quickly fell into that despair which has been known to overtake me when surrounded by fun people. Soon they started to pair off in order of toxicity, two by two, gin with gin, vodka with vodka. And yet I was the only one with a stomach for whiskey. Then Janet came into the room. Stumbled in. I don't remember what she was wearing, how she wore her hair or even what colour it was. All I remember is this rather frumpy drunken girl picking up a hula hoop. She placed it around her hips and gave it a spin and but it fell back down around her ankles. She either didn't notice or didn't care, “We’re young. We're free. We haven't a care in the world. Fight the system! We'll hula till the sun comes up. Or the blue gin. Whichever comes first!" And then somebody asked her to leave. She was ruining the atmosphere they said. Also “who are you?” And “who invited you?” Well that knocked me off my space hopper. I followed her out. I must have. The next day I woke up with a text which read: "Hey, this is my number. Give me a holla and I'll give you a hula!" And there were no stupid smiley faces or anything. "I miss you Janet. There is a Janet shaped hole in my life." It took me an hour to compose that message. I thought it was romantic. Was it? I still can't tell. They say that love makes fools of us all. Actually it makes bad poets of us all. "Don't be an ass," she replied, “I've only been gone a few days!" I know she liked it though. Because it took her an hour to reply. "Shall I meet you at the air port?" "If you like," she said, a big fucking smiley face hanging on the end of it. Now what the fuck did that mean? For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog then surely love breeds a whole nest of squirming neuroses. Do you love me? Do you mean it? Were you faking? Does it matter? Do the dishes. I’m not your mother. Not tonight. Not tonight. Another old saying; "Absence makes the heart grow stronger." A lie Absence makes the heart grow weaker. Absence makes me want to tear that weak fucker right out of my own throat. SOUND: A mobile phone. "I'll arrive back in Cork at 8.:35. Maybe I can stay at your house after?" There was another smiley face. This time winking. This time I loved him. This time I wanted to take that big yellow ball up in my arms and just laugh with him or I don't know buy him a drink.

J.K

Agent for the Pig’s Head

He was an agent for a pig’s head

with his own for a sample

bad meat, too much fat, somewhat profusely

packed in rolls, what an ugly man

of little means ,

scantly he dreamed of lowering prices, and more

about over-priced suits

that hug the gargantuan figure

like some byzantine idol in heat

of candles made from animal fats. How does one

answer that, other than to

spew forth words that sound like pig squeals ,

more like verbal profusions

and pig gut

rather than any semblance to sound. Why do

those joints bend the other way

to go against the current fashion

an artifice from pig iron,

fashion an artifice of the soul,

fashion a mouth-piece with which

we may voice our demands.

M.O.L

Scene 1

The aft cabin of the H.M.S Byzantium weather bound off the Southern coast of Sweden.

Captain W.B Yates and Maude Gonne sit at the large weather beaten oak dining table that

takes up much of the space of the cramped cabin. The table is laid extravagantly for dinner with

a silver service resplendently shining under layers of polish but the plates are empty, there is no

trace of food. Captain Yates sits silently, stock still, staring straight ahead out the aft windows

at the sea. Maude is attempting to peel a raw potato with her fingers but is having little luck

removing the skin, she drops it regularly and it stays half peeled.

Yates: I see it bloody, I see it red...

Maude sighs audibly

[Enter Cabin Steward]

Steward: Cap’in Yates sir, you’re needed on deck.

Yates: (To Maude, following a series of long, deep breaths) I will arise now and go.

[Exit Captain Yates and Steward]

Maude sighs audibly

As soon as Yates and Cabin Steward leave Maude drops her potato. She sits listening for any

sound that might indicate Yates’ imminent return. Hearing none she produces from her bodice

a much folded, much read letter. Taking it from its envelope she stands and walks to the aft

windows. There she reads.

The voice of Sean McBride fills the stage as Maude reads.

McBride: ...I shot him in the fucking face! He was a big baldy fucker too! I shot the

fucking head off him! I was picking bits of him out of my beard for a week! Jesus, I’ve

never wanted a fucking ride so much in my fucking life.

Yours,

Major Sean McBride

Xxxx

Maude sighs audibly

Hearing foot steps to stage right Maude quickly stuffs the letter back into her bodice and hurries

back to the dining table, picking up her potato she begins to struggle with peeling it again.

Scene 2

The quarter and poop decks of the H.M.S Byzantium. The Byzantium is a medium sized, ship

rigged sloop in considerable need of repair. Captain Yates and the Boson stand at the railings

where the Boson is casting the lead under the Captain’s direction. By the mizzen mast the

Chorus of Sailors sit in a circle repairing a sail. While they work they sing the following

shanty;

Chorus: Oh sailing men is we,

We sail upon the sea,

Tr-a la la la-la, la la la-la

Tis sailing men we be.

The Boson draws in his lead and intones loudly

Boson: Quarter less a four, sand and broken shell, sir.

Yates: (Evidentially confused by these nautical terms) Very good Boson, carry on.

Boson: Sir. We’ll get our wind yet, sir.

Yates waves off the Boson and produces from his pocket a parchment scroll and quill pen. He

sits on the steps connecting the quarter deck to the poop and begins to write. The Chorus begin

their shanty again.

Yates: Quite you men! Quite I say!

The Chorus begins to softly hum the tune of their lay.

[Enter: Maude]

Maude enters from stage right where she has spent the last several hours in the foc’sl staring

into the sea. She walks slowly aft, her left hand caresses her breast where the letter from

McBride is hidden. She walks slowly, carefully and quietly making for the aft cabin door and

trying to not attract the attention of Yates. She is so intent on this that she does not notice a

Bucket in her path. She steps in the bucket and falls flat on her face. The Chorus laugh

garrulously. Yates looks up.

Yates: Quite! I say Qu....Maude, oh Maude, cooee, Maude, over here!

Maude sighs audibly

Yates: I have written you another poem Maude.

Maude gets to her feet and walks slowly to Yates. Yates bounds up and begins to read from his

parchment.

Yates: I stand here on the black bulb of Ben

With the black pig of Cooladuff under my arm.

She sings into a cockle shell, which is also black.

“The sea! The sea!” The.....

Yates is interrupted by a loud, slow tearing noise from above. Blocks and tackle and other pieces

of rigging fall into the centre stage. The Chorus stand and all point above.

Chorus: (As one) Avast!

[Enter: Sean McBride]

McBride swings down from above landing on the extreme right, the Chorus of sailors is

between him and Yates. Maude runs forward towards McBride but Yates catches her by the

arm and pulls her back. Maude sighs audibly.

Chorus: (As one) The Black Pirate McBride!

McBride: Aye, t’be I, the Black Pirate McBride....I.

Yates: Byzantium, to arms!

Chorus: (To each other) Arms! Arms! To arms! I have arms!

McBride: Have at you!

McBride lunges into the press of men swinging a cutlass. One by one the Chorus fall.

Chorus: (Individually as they fall) I am slain!

While the fight rages Yates drags the struggling Maude to the mizzen mast where be begins to

tie her to it with rope. The last of the Chorus fall and McBride stands in the middle of the

carnage panting heavily.

Maude: Sea......

Yeats stuffs the parchment of his poem into her mouth cutting her off. Maude sighs audibly.

McBride: I’ll be taking me wife now, W.B, or should I say... (long laboured pause)...

Wanker... Bollocks.... (trails into mumbling)

Yates: Never!

McBride: I’ll do you like I did the Bores!

Yates: The Bores? I thought you fought the English?

McBride: I fight fucking everyone all the fucking time!

Yates draws a rapier and assumes a fencing pose. His left arm extended behind his body, his

right with the rapier extended rigidly to the front.

McBride: Arrr, ye’ve a woman’s hands boy!

Yates: I’m guard!

Yates lunges forwards stabbing wildly with his rapier. McBride easily side steps the thrusts.

Yates steps in the same bucket Maude fell over earlier and it becomes stuck on his foot. Not

deterred he begins to slash at McBride who parries him nonchalantly.

Maude sighs audibly.

Yates, exhausted by unaccustomed physical activity, stops and gasping deeply with a slight

wheeze stares at McBride who laughs heartily. Enraged, Yates charges using his rapier as a

lance, McBride again sidesteps Yates and with a gentle flick of his wrist nicks Yates’ check with

the tip of his cutlass. Yates drops his rapier and clasps his hand to his cheek, hopping about on

one foot (the foot stuck in the bucket) he screams girlishly before falling over where he lies

moaning.

Maude sighs audibly.

McBride: (Untying Maude) Me Maude! (Taking her freed hands) Arrr, ye’ve a woman’s

hands!

Maude sighs audibly.

McBride drags Maude to the railings of the ship, picks her up and throws her over. There is a

loud splash as she hits the water below.

McBride: (To Yates on the deck) Arrrr!

McBride jumps into the sea after Maude. She is heard to sigh audibly in the distance.

Yates stops moaning and sits up. He struggles to remove the bucket from his foot but cannot do

so. He stands and walks limping around the stage. He stops and turns towards the, assumedly

at this stage enraptured, audience.

Yeats: What need she, having come to sense

But a man to fumble in her greasy till,

And add penance to her penitential pence

Till her heart is encased in an insurmountable

Pale green fence.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the second coming will not be

In the hand.

The long legged moor-hen dives,

And hens to mòr cocks call;

But the cock will discharge his service

Against the stonebreaker’s wall.

And what rough beast, it hour come at

Last, slouches towards a wedding

To be born?

[Exit Yeats]

End

M.O.C

Cigarette

Snapping with my thumb and middle finger. Waiting for a train. I’m looking around for the kind of guy that’d put a cigarette out in his hand. Could be the guy eating that triangular boxed sandwich. I get distracted; imagine I can see so well I can count the amount of fake looking cheese pieces that are dropping on the ground. No pigeons today, else they’d be crowding all around him. He’s all alone though, doesn’t look like he’s waiting for anyone. Some guy steps up beside me, looks up from the platform and checks the train times. Gives me a weird look, I haven’t stopped snapping my fingers yet. “Can I help you?” “No, I’m alright”. He steps away and decides to move on. If he was walking any faster the rubber on his soles would melt. I know he’s not late for the train. I saw him eye up the newsstand, or maybe the guy behind it. Five minutes and I’m still here. Still haven’t found that guy, still looking. No mods here, no suit types. No truckers, no bikers. Just your average types. Range of safe colours on generic articles of clothing. Expect the guy with the white camo sweater, one with one of those fake Eskimo hoods. But then he’d look average elsewhere. There’s rush, a train’s coming in. Lots of noise, but seems the part I notice most is the announcements, boarding calls and all that. Not sure if they’d been going on all the time or if they just started. I drift out like that sometimes. The train hits the point where the breaks come in and the inertia dies. It shudders and stops. The doors open and she gets out. I was looking for the wrong gender. Barely two steps and she’s got a cigarette lit, looks like she already smoked half of it. But I can see it in her eyes, real pretty eyes too – she’d put that cigarette out on her milky palm and not even blink. She draws the stub away from her lips and exhales. Her lips look like a sleek freshly skinned carcass at a taxidermists, a tiger's slim neck, barrel chest and slim waist. They glimmer like candy apples, brighter than the LEDs they use for train times. A guy behind her seems to think she’s not walking fast enough, says something. Probably lets her know. She doesn’t even blink. Just keeps walking. I didn’t think people styled hair that way anymore. Another announcement. She’s Barbara Stanwyck when she wears that killer edge, and its her, not the open ends

of the platform giving me a chill. I would keep watching her, but a bubble pops in my range of hearing. Some girl with suitcase is standing beside me nervously chewing gum. This time my thumb and middle finger are hovering, forgotten and frozen in mid snap, like God reaching Adam on that wall in the Vatican. “Is this the platform at which the Express stops?” “You’re at the right platform, Express boarding is further up.” “Thank you”. I give them one last snap. I don’t try to find her. She’s already passed beyond my range of vision. My train will be here in three minutes. If I turn and run up the corridor like my life depends on it I could stop her; I could say something. But I don’t. “You’re scared”. “No I’m not. I’ve got time”. “Times up”. “Not till I say”. When I get home, I’ll write a letter to the paper and I’ll give ‘missed connection’ readers something to read. I’ll tell them about the girl who’d put cigarettes out on her milky white palm and not even blink.

A.H

The Good Man

Let me tell you about the last story I ever wrote, it was called The Good Man. A bad

name for a super hero, I can admit it, but please don’t judge me too harshly. I was only

twelve years old.

In the streets of Megazone you would hear the sound of lonely babies dying, and it

would be as the wailing of hungry cats to you. In Megazone you would see every form

of mutant, monster and criminal and they would be like movie stars to you. Megazone

was a hole in the tooth, growing wider, deeper, while spreading its rot. You would not

like Megazone.

Who knows what happened to the human race, to distort them, to mutate them in such

horrible ways? That event was long lost to history. Megazone was a city far in the

future, so far indeed, that I had never made up a year for it. The people, if we can call

them people, did not remember our world, would not recognise our words, or the

things which we hold dear. Family, chocolate, Christmas, these concepts were

unknown to them. No, these deformed denizens knew only dark things, like the

eternal dusk of the Megadome, the steady pulse of stale recycled air through their

squelching lungs, and everywhere, stuck on the faces of buildings, leering from the

statues on corners, blaring from the television screens- the terrible visage of the evil

General Cooperation.

Into this world was born The Good Man. The Good Man was a freak among the

freakish, a man born without the pulsating, swollen pus pimples of the general

population. When the doctor saw what had emerged from the test tube he almost

vomited."This must be destroyed", he thought, and he almost dashed the The Good

Man’s brains out there and then. But he didn’t. Something stopped him.

I started writing The Good Man during my final summer before my final year of

primary. That long glorious summer into which I have transplanted all my fondest

memories of childhood. Up and down the road of my estate, I ran the length of

Megazone, dodging the mutants which peered out from the neighbouring windows,

keeping a low profile when the cyberpunk foot soldiers would gather around their

motorcycles, smoking cigarettes and spitting uncontrollably. Everyday I would look

for new adventures, new ways to become The Good Man, like the time I found a

twenty pound note and gave it to a homeless man, the time I helped out a neighbour

by looking for her keys, the time I called the guards to tell them about my other

neighbour who used to kick his dog.

These all were all recorded in my book, a great big thick accounting book with a heavy

black cover. Each adventure had its own title, introduction, and chapter number. Each

had a page to itself, sometimes two.

Chapter 1. The Origin of The Good Man. In which our hero is born. Page 2.

Something stopped him. “What if,” the doctor thought, “what if this disgusting freak,

this scientific bungle, this smooth pale skinned, two eyed freak, what if it could be

used for my own purposes. Horrible to see, even looking at him I have to resist the

urge to vomit. And yet maybe...just maybe...he can be of some use. What if I could

replicate my mistake, to create not just one despicable freak, but a whole army of these

cooing, gurgling things? How could the General fight such an army? His cyberpunks

would be destroyed by uncontrollable retching. All I have to do is study this one,

repeat the mistake. Then I, Doctor Gurgle, shall be supreme commander of the

Megazone!” And so The Good Man grew up in a cold laboratory, hidden from the

world, prodded and tested by the evil Doctor Gurgle.

As with all good things, summer came to an end and I was soon back in school. I

remember we all dreaded the first day back because we wouldn’t know which teacher

was going to take us until we were in the room with him. We were all relieved when it

turned out to be Mr. Jameson. Mr Jameson was, everyone agreed, the best teacher in

the world. He lived right next to the school, his house was separated from the

playground by an old stone wall, over which grew an ancient apple tree, and from it

the sweetest looking apples you ever saw. Because he lived so close to the school, it

was always Mr. Jameson who supervised our after school activities, he was always the

teacher cheering us on long after the rest of the staff had returned home. It was clear to

all that Mr. Jameson went above and beyond the call of duty. Yet looking back I can’t

help but wonder was it truly due to passion for teaching? Or was he just keeping a

watchful eye on his prized apple tree until all the children had gone home?

Days meant only torture for The Good Man. Endless parades of needles, scans, probes,

and suffering. Yet The Good Man is and always shall be The Good Man. And so his

nights (if you could distinguish night from day in Megazone) were dedicated to all that

was good. Starting with one act of kindness and the another, The Good Man began to

breed new ideas in Megazone. It started with a foiled robbery, then a foiled rape, a

murder and suddenly the people (if we can call them people) began to imagine a

different way of living. And so it wasn’t long before the evil General Cooperation felt

that rippling shudder of dissent throughout the body politic.

One day, in early spring, Mr Jameson became ill. This was an unusual, if not unheard

of event. A substitute teacher was provided, a narcoleptic old lady, and after the class

had put her through the gauntlet of pranks long held in reserve for such an occasion,

switched our names, locked her out of the room, and so on, we were content to leave

her sleep in peace and amuse ourselves with idle chatter. Soon The Good Man would

face his most challenging adventure yet. Sometime before lunch I became aware of

their terrible scheme. Through the whooping, laughing, screaming classroom, I began

to pick up snitches of conversation, “ Yeah heh heh let’s do it”, “Barry can climb up,

he’s the tallest”, “He’ll never find out it was us”, and there was one word they

repeated over and over “apple”, “apple”, “apple”.

They say their isn’t a sin in Megazone, be it a knife on a throat or a curse on a black

tongue, which has not been personally approved by the evil General Cooperation.

Thus he received Rumour into his audience chambers, and began to piece together the

rambling flood of stories which Rumour gathers through her multiple eyes and spills

from her many mouths. A strange apparition. Pale skinned. Horrible to behold. He had

foiled murders, found out lies, fought off a cyberpunk. “This must be stopped”

thought the General, and then looking out over the throbbing metropolis, speaking to

no one, “Be sure thy sin shall find thee out. With watchful eyes. With babbling

mouth.”

The bell rang, the teacher stirred, the whole school surged out into the playground. I

knew what I had to do. I could see Tall Barry ahead and I pushed and weaved my way

through the hopscotch, the cops, the robbers. I didn’t feel fear. I was strong. I was

righteous. I was The Good Man.

Sure enough it wasn’t long before the Cyberpunks converged on the lab of Dr. Gurgle,

the home of our hero. “Kill the good doctor,” ordered the General, “But leave The

Good Man to me.”

Somehow I reached the old stone wall before Barry and his gang. Far over my head,

apples were swaying on the branches, singing brilliantly in the sunlight. I picked up

one of the sticks from the base of the wall, not much more than a twig but the best I

could find. It was strong, long and supple Barry and his friends approached, eyeing up

their juicy prize, they didn’t even see me. I drew a line in the dirt with my foot. I held

up my stick like a sabre.

A cyberfist punch knocked out a few teeth but The Good Man wasn’t finished yet. Not

by a long shot. Lasers zapped past him. Vials of chemicals, abandoned projects, and

batches of failed experiments smashed and shattered around him. He ripped an arm

from its electric socket. He pummelled through the metal plating on their breasts. In

his mind he was concerned with only one thing. Despite the years of pain, of

loneliness, of endless experiments, he said “ I must save my father Gurgle.” The Good

Man raced through the laboratory, jumping over the wreckage, flames licking his

heels. As soon as The Cyberpunks had showed up, Doctor Gurgle had disappeared.

But The Good Man knew where to find him. In the Acid room. He was getting rid of

evidence.

The boys were scared. They knew I wasn’t fooling around now. One of the them was

tearfully nursing a long red lash across his cheek. The only one who wasn’t scared was

Tall Barry, “Give me the stick shithead.” He lunged for it and I whipped him one

across the hand. It drew blood but that didn’t stop him. This time I went for the ear but

he was ready. He grabbed the end and snapped it off.

In the acid room, on the bridge over the pit, over the bubbling acid, General

Cooperation held a knife to Doctor Gurgl’s throat. “O the stories are true!” gasped the

General, “O horrible to see! You are more hideous than they say! So pale your skin, so

smooth and unspoiled!” “Father!” cried The Good Man, “I’ll save you!”

The twig snapped, and clutching the bottom half I scrambled for the wall, scraping my

fingers off the mossy stones as I climbed. Above me shone the apples, and beyond, I

knew, the safety of Mr. Jameson’s garden. I was high up now, I was almost there, and

then I felt Tall Barry’s large flat fingers coiling around my ankle.

“No...no...Don’t”, the doctor’s face was a broken mess of blood and cracked green skin,

but somewhere out of the torn lips which once covered his broken teeth, a rasping

voice broke free, “He will kill you, he will kill you. Save yourself my..son.” Even the

doctor himself sounded disgusted by that last word, and the General was absolutely

sickened by it. He tossed the doctor into the pit below.

With one hand I grabbed the top of the wall, digging in my fingernails against the

strong pull of Tall Barry on my leg. My other hand clutched the broken twig, the end

of it bristled with splinters. My nails began to slip, my fingers were bleeding, Tall

Barry gave another tug. I lashed out with the stick. Barry’s grip loosened and I pulled

myself up to the top of the wall. Tall Barry lay crumpled below, screaming. Everyone

was screaming. I stood above them, triumphant, with Tall Barry’s eye on the end of my

stick.

The Good Man decapitated The General with The General’s own knife and dove into

the pit after his father. The acid began to burn his skin, to eat his flesh and twist his

limbs. A few seconds in the pit seemed longer to him than a lifetime of experiments

under Doctor Gurgle. Through the deadly soup he grasped for his father and pulled

them both up the ladder to the safety of the bridge. His father was still alive, but

barely. Below the torso he was no more than strings and ribbons of flesh. “Father”,

sobbed The Good Man, “Father, please don’t die.” Doctor Gurgle looked up with burnt

eyes and lifted a hand to the face of his son. He felt the boiled, bubbled skin, the ruined

features, the weeping wounds. “O horrible to see”

They say that The General of Megazone does not live in a tower or a fortress like the

kings of old, but in laboratory. They say he is the most hideous creature in all creation.

In the streets of Megazone you would see the walking dead and call him brother.

They say that in the school in the town where I grew up there used to grow a beautiful

apple tree, wonderful to see. They say that one day a very strange thing happened to

that tree. Someone, nobody knows who, climbed over the old stone wall and plucked

every apple from that tree. Then they say this person tied every apple back on to its

branch with little pieces of string, and that the poor children in Mr. Jameson’s final

year class were shocked one morning to find all those prized juicy apples,

swinging unnaturally in the wind, rotting one by one.

J.K

Even Teddy Bears Need Names

He took a bite out of his sandwich, slurped from his glass and Wiped his milk moustache. Sat there for a while, just staring with his beady black eyes, Shrugged his shoulders and coughed, Occasionally glancing at the clock.

“I Princess Amy dub thee Patrick”.

A.M

The Tuna Fish’s Song

I am a Tuna swimming in the sea. So, Please, please, you Japanese, Don’t eat me.

A.G

Gilf It had rained just after lunch and the emerging late evening sun infused the air with the air with the sweet smell of petrichor. The day room was beginning to clear, the residents made their way to the dining hall for an early diner or to the recreation room to quietly argue over which movie to watch before forgetting what they were there for and lapsing into a settled, medicated nostalgia for the old days. Most used the hour to sit in their rooms and quietly stare out the window and think of a time when home meant something else entirely. Richard was visiting with his grandmother. Still resiliently independent enough to survive mostly on her own she would visit her only surviving friend Stacy, an octogenarian green grocer’s daughter from Harrow who had once allowed herself to be made love to in the back of a motorcar. They would work on a vast jigsaw they had started and both only half intended to ever finish. On his visits home from University “Richie” was usually dragged along to this place at least once and knew most of the residents by sight. He left his grandmother in Stacy’s room arguing about the gaudiness of the rendering of what was by now a massive partially completed tableau entitled, on the box, “The views on the river Thames”. He walked down the hall, his rubber soled steps on the linoleum occasionally interrupted by the noise of an open door. Gramophones playing decaying records of decayed songs, occasional bursts of muted laughter, one old man reading Shakespeare aloud to himself, playing all the parts with accents only slightly different to his own. Richard stopped and looked in at him for a moment but when he noticed the audience the aged man stopped and closed the door. When he reached the day room it was by now mostly empty. A young nurse with bags under her eyes and deep set creases around her mouth was serving tea to the small knot of men who stayed on to see out the last hours of day. -Richie, Richie! Richard was being called by Andy. Andy sat at a small card table with two others, Sid and Gilf. Andy had fought at Monte Casino during the war and had spent most of the time since talking about it. Like an overused word his memories of the siege, although still vivid, had lost all meaning to him. The ruined monastery, perched on its outcrop of bare rock, still smoking when he last saw it over his shoulder, was like a coloured pebble at the bottom of a goldfish bowl, magnified beyond all proportion by the water but an alien accoutrement in an alien environment. The only significant memory of the Second World War he still relished was that of an Italian girl who had smiled at him in a cafe while he was on leave in Rome in 1945. Sid was too young to have served in the army and spent most of the war in the Home Guard manning an observation post on the Dover cliffs. Perched on the precipice of chalk he would lie on his back and watch the waves of bombers drone by overhead on their way to London and sleep and dream of thousands of bees and lakes of honey. Gilf had been a volunteer fireman in London, his last thought before dying would be of a couple kissing in a doorway as bombs rained down and the city burned around them. The three of them were playing dominos, the while tiles sprawled out in a right angled spiral.

-Sit down Richie, Andy said indicating an empty chair, George died last week. Richard sat in George’s chair, Sid and Gilf continued playing as if he was not there. Andy shuffled his chair a little closer to Richard and began to tell him about Monte Casino. He had told his story to Richard several times before and lent on his arm while telling it again. The musty smell of the illicit cigar he had smoked out the bathroom window an hour ago mingled with the sweetness of the peppermint toothpaste he used to hide the odour from the nurses. He was in the middle of describing his lieutenant, whom the men called “Iron Nose”, when Gilf muttered something to Sid. Sid snorted to himself and placed another domino. -What was that? Andy asked, jerking his head around suddenly. -Oh nothing, nothing, Gilf said quickly, snatching another domino from the face down pile and studying it. -You said something, what was it Gilf? -I didn’t, the...the tea, he trailed off indicating his almost empty cup and the lemon rind perched on its lip. -Did you hear him Richard? -No, I didn’t, I couldn’t make it out, I’m sure it was nothing, you were saying about sticky bombs? -You said something about me Gilf. Andy cut off his story and sat silently regarding Gilf who was still intently studying his domino. He stroked the grey stubble on his cheeks and coughed. -Do you know why he’s called Gilf, Richard? -No... -Tell him why you’re called Gilf, Gilf. Sid put his dominos down, sat back and smiled to himself. Gilf placed his last domino. -Domino, he said -Tell Richard why you’re called Gilf! -Would you like another game, he asked Sid. -Ask him Sid; ask him why he’s called Gilf. Sid lent forwards in his chair. -Why are you called Gilf? He asked. -I, I... Gilf laid his hands on the green felt of the table, bowed his head and stared at them. -I want to know why you’re called Gilf, Sid wants to know and Richard wants to know. Why are you called Gilf? -I was, Gilf stuttered but Andy cut him off. -Right, we’ll make it easy. What’s your first name Gilf? -Guilford. -What? Speak up, nice and loud Gilf, nice and loud. -Guilford. -And what’s your second name? -Guilford, Gilf said meekly and stared at his hands spread out flat on the card table. Andy turned and smiled to Richard with a mild sense of triumph. He picked up Gilf’s cup and drank the last remaining dreg of cold lemon tea. Andy rapped his knuckles on the table. -And why are you called Guilford Guilford?

-Because, because I was found in Guilford. -You were found in Guilford, you’re a waif! Say it Guilford, say you’re a waif. -I’m a waif. -He’s a waif Richard, he’s foundling, he was found in Guilford. Weren’t you Gilf? -Yes. Sid snorted to himself and began to neatly arrange the dominos face down for another game. Andy turned to Richard, crossed his legs and picked up his recital of the siege of Monte Casino where he had left off. (Gilf stood up and turned towards Andy, he opened his mouth to speak but Sid cut him off before he could say anything. His lips softly nestled back together.) -Are you not playing? He asked -No, I, I ‘m going to my room. -Go to your room Guilford Guilford, Andy said over his shoulder. Gilf walked out of the quickly darkening day room, down the now silent hall to his room where he sat on his bed until diner time.

M.O.C

Jack Pitch

A rider with a soul of tar, His steed restless with his solemn frame. A black handkerchief about his breathless lips, A bird lets out its cry And not a blink from lidless eyes. Against the burning barn his tri-corned silhouette flickers like a moth’s wings. An hour passes into the night; the heavens open up with rain. At daybreak, only mud, ash and blood.

A.H

White Priest

White Priest All in Black Walking down a hall Shooting from the hips Red lasers flash & fly Space age clergy guns Shoot Hellfire-rays

A.H

Neon Yellow Glow

Neon yellow glow Garda man Or spaceman Break dancing At the corner On his car

A.H

I Am a Fucking Vampire I am a vampire. I want to drink your blood. I say it straight because after two thousand years I’ve finally figured out that saying it straight is about the only way to say it. She says ‘I’ve heard that one before.’ This puzzles me. It means that she has been picked up by at least one vampire before me. I find this very unlikely- There are not many of us left. Still though, I know that it has worked because her eyelashes do a little seizure and she pushes the straw around her glass with her tongue. ‘Do you glitter in the sun?’ I cringe and silently weep into my orange juice. The modern world is a terrible place and I am in a tourist hole in Barcelona, possibly the very worst part of it. It is Monday night, and although the club is practically empty, the music still pounds through the empty dance floor and rattles our ice cubes. I have been here or places like it every night this weekend and I have walked home alone. Tonight fate has smiled and handed me a plump English girl in a police woman’s outfit and a name tag which reads ‘Linda’s Hen’. The rest of the hens are downing vodka at the bar, delicious flabby legs poking out of school skirts, nurse uniforms and circulation stopping hot pants. In life I was never tall or dark or handsome. I was never a woman’s first choice and rarely the second. I have had to adjust my expectations. 500 years haven’t changed my looks but if being a vampire means anything anymore, it means sex. ‘I’m a real vampire.’ ‘Me too, ‘she says, ‘I like to suck things.’ She slurps a few drops of melted ice through her straw for emphasis. I lean in really close to her then and I show her my teeth. ‘I am a fucking vampire. I was here when the city were just houses made from shit and mud. I saw Saint Eulalia roll down the street in a barrel of glass. I dragged stone down from the mountains and built a cathedral by the sea. I have gorged myself on the bitterest blood from fascist veins. I called Gaudi a shit when I saw him in lying in the street, and I have burned a Picasso.’ She starts to nibble my neck. I can hear the blood and vodka sloshing around inside her. ‘Oh take me’ she says, ‘take me.’ ‘I am not a man. I am a wolf,’ I say. This makes her shiver. ‘I am dangerous and I will kill you.’ Oh’ she says. ‘I love to talk dirty’.

J.K

American Edition

Faithful supplicants, capriced, sit At tabernacles eating ashes. Fantasising about five o'clock, Seven o'clock, eleven o'clock, Half-past two o'clock, Eight o'clock, nine o'clock. In nomine Patris, anno domini Please come home with me, The King is dead. Died chocking on a piece of toast While he was on holidays at the coast. Face down in the breakfast annex gurgling In a pool of collected rainwater. He never even had time to read His Daily Telegraph. Outside the birds metamorphosed And fig trees exploded. But his more suggestive miracles Still lay undone. Thus passed the son.

M.O.C

Cigarette Snapping with my thumb and middle finger. Waiting for a train. I’m looking around for the kind of guy that’d put a cigarette out in his hand. Could be the guy eating that triangular boxed sandwich. I get distracted; imagine I can see so well I can count the amount of fake looking cheese pieces that are dropping on the ground. No pigeons today, else they’d be crowding all around him. He’s all alone though, doesn’t look like he’s waiting for anyone. Some guy steps up beside me, looks up from the platform and checks the train times. Gives me a weird look, I haven’t stopped snapping my fingers yet. “Can I help you?” “No, I’m alright”. He steps away and decides to move on. If he was walking any faster the rubber on his soles would melt. I know he’s not late for the train. I saw him eye up the newsstand, or maybe the guy behind it. Five minutes and I’m still here. Still haven’t found that guy, still looking. No mods here, no suit types. No truckers, no bikers. Just your average types. Range of safe colours on generic articles of clothing. Expect the guy with the white camo sweater, one with one of those fake Eskimo hoods. But then he’d look average elsewhere. There’s rush, a train’s coming in. Lots of noise, but seems the part I notice most is the announcements, boarding calls and all that. Not sure if they’d been going on all the time or if they just started. I drift out like that sometimes. The train hits the point where the breaks come in and the inertia dies. It shudders and stops. The doors open and she gets out. I was looking for the wrong gender. Barely two steps and she’s got a cigarette lit, looks like she already smoked half of it. But I can see it in her eyes, real pretty eyes too – she’d put that cigarette out on her milky palm and not even blink. She draws the stub away from her lips and exhales. Her lips look like a sleek freshly skinned carcass at a taxidermist, a tiger's slim neck, barrel chest and slim waist. They glimmer like candy apples, brighter than the LEDs they use for train times. A guy behind her seems to think she’s not walking fast enough, says something. Probably lets her know. She doesn’t even blink. Just keeps walking. I didn’t think people styled hair that way anymore. Another announcement. She’s Barbara Stanwyck when she wears that killer edge, and it’s her, not the open ends of the platform giving me a chill. I would keep watching her, but a bubble pops in my range of hearing.

Some girl with suitcase is standing beside me nervously chewing gum. This time my thumb and middle finger are hovering, forgotten and frozen in mid snap, like God reaching Adam on that wall in the Vatican. “Is this the platform at which the Express stops?” “You’re at the right platform, Express boarding is further up.” “Thank you”. I give them one last snap. I don’t try to find her. She’s already passed beyond my range of vision. My train will be here in three minutes. If I turn and run up the corridor like my life depends on it I could stop her; I could say something. But I don’t. “You’re scared”. “No I’m not. I’ve got time”. “Times up”. “Not till I say”. When I get home, I’ll write a letter to the paper and I’ll give ‘missed connection’ readers something to read. I’ll tell them about the girl who’d put cigarettes out on her milky white palm and not even blink.

A.H

This Muse is Terminal

Every day until this time had been spent with her face in mind. A visage that stuck That followed and haunted, Holding twin prongs of hope and doubt, Like swords knighting every moment. Memory resurrected the shade of skin, Every line, Every way in which the face was stamped with nose, Lips, eyes that sparkled underneath brow and between lash To bestow each day following first eruption into consciousness. Such a vision can prove too much to bear, On which heart and gut step forth to shoulder burden. Alas, still too much to carry, The turmoil does not divide, But spreads below neck to torso and lower still. Body and mind remain suspended above the earth, Upon which steps fall with heavy tread. Is therefore merciful that when these images and their promise, Do not attain solid fruition, They can go the way of all vapours, And simply melt into air. Memory loses its grip on this complexion, And every masterfully remembered detail. What each passing day gave memory, It now chips away piece by piece, With the opposite hand. Is this one’s release or does one simply disperse into air, Adrift with all the old emotions, hopes and dreams one set free? Mind no longer has a point, For each day to rally round. The Muse that that nurtured and schooled a new art of day to day living, Spreads wing and makes ready to depart. This Muse is terminal. With turmoil gone all that seems to lay ahead, Are miles and weeks of numbing vacuum,

Hidden under the Rubicon of ‘routine’. ‘Maybe this is mere melodrama?’, The mind ponders. Maybe there are a myriad of muses, To be found in as many future destinations, One may find themself in. Where? When? The face is nearly gone. Memory sporadically struggles and grasps in fog, To recall it as it did, In the image’s youthfulness. But it must watch it fade underneath its gaze. Who was she?

She is, God willing, no more.

A.O.S

The.P.Dreadful@Gmail.com