Sunday Afternoon Seaside

'Why don't you just leave?' she asked, swirling patterns in the ketchup smeared across the newspaper with a cold chip.
   'Leave what?' he replied quietly and without taking his eyes from the foaming of the waves, as if he were merely answering his own thoughts.
   Her hand stopped still. Slowly, as her mind processed his answer, she repeated it back to him, her cherry red lips delicately forming the words and casting them into the wind.
   '...And go where?' he continued.
   And in that moment she knew everything she needed to know about this boy. She balled the oily slick of fish skin and batter into the newspaper and stood up. Grey clouds rose up all around them like coal smoke.
  'See you later then,' she said, gulping down the emotion that was already beginning to singe the back of her throat. She pictured the bus journey home alone and turned and walked away before he could see her tears.
   He didn't react for a long time, turning only when the sound of her footsteps had faded completely and she was nothing but a speck of colour gliding along the promenade.

The Hacienda del Muerto

Dusty blue twilight appears over the Sierra Madre of Northern Mexico drawing muted colours from the chaparral slopes of the piedmont. A fringe of gold creeps along the crooked limestone peak of Las Mitras Mountain and across a barren plain of sand and rock, a hundred miles of wire fences hum in the morning breeze as the night retreats. Daylight trickles into the valley. With the dirt road pressed firmly against his cheek, Ramón Bernal's contorted face appears below the crumpled rim of a fedora. He lies where he fell several hours earlier, collapsed outside the blacksmith’s shop like a forgotten antique draped in an ochre blanket of dust which rests in the creases of his tattered suit and skin. An empty bottle sits in the dust beside him. Sporadic bursts of breath escape through his matted moustache which clumps with the remnants of last night’s meal. Above the thatched rooftops, spirals of smoke muster and rise into an empty sky while the clatter of cooking pots rattles through the pueblo below. In a nearby street, the cry of a baby echoes out in response.

Forty miles away, a telephone rings in the breakfast room of a large mansion. A thin, yellowed hand appears from behind a large newspaper and lifts the brass receiver.

‘Si….Bernal? Gracias,’ comes a hushed male voice. ‘Muchas gracias.’

*     *     *

The morning passes and Ramón lies motionless in the road as the village revolves around him as if he were invisible. When the boots of the kindly pastor reach his ribs shortly before noon, he wakes, stands and pats the dust from his hat and sleeves. Drawing the back of his hand across his forehead in a smear of dirt and sweat, he gives a nod to the man stood scowling before him and steps slowly away, dragging the tang of stale beer and tequila behind him. The full weight of the sun pounds the earth with a charred fist, encircling him with a tiny shadow which pools at his feet. Already, the older women are nesting on their verandas for siesta; their bulging chins against their bulging bosoms, a dozen eyes following him suspiciously from the shadows.

Dragging a curtain of dust across the landscape, a 1931 Ford Model A silences the grazing goats as it sputters its way down the twisting mountain road, descending clumsily into the valley over potholes and stones and commanding the attentions of nearby rancheros who stop and look and tug at the peaks of their hats as their horses shift nervously beneath them.

‘Patrón,’ they mumble to the wind.

The same jaundiced man hunches in the back seat; the same newspaper hovers inches from his nose, the headlines flapping and shaking to the chatter of the suspension.

Pushing open the wooden door of the jacal, a wall of sunlight spills into the darkened room. On top of a roughly hewn table, Ramón’s newborn son lies sleeping in a wooden fruit crate lined with a cotton rebozo. He is a tiny tangle of flesh, peaceful and perfect with cinnamon skin and a coffee bean nose. Ramón rises on tiptoes in the doorway to observe his child, as if unseen hands hold him locked at the threshold of his own home.  Mrs Bernal sleeps beneath the table. She breaths heavily in the stifling heat, drawing each lungful of air as if a grindstone lay across her ribs. From the stone sink, a tangle of bloodied rags overflows. Ramón takes all of this in from the veranda before silently closing the door and stepping back into the blinding sunlight to retrace his steps.

Another bottle of tequila stands on the bar before him ready to shoulder once again the burden of this day. He looks around the empty room, taking in a deep pensive breath while the cantina’s owner, a round man with a gummy smile, idly polishes glasses nearby. The cantina surrounds him like a museum; a record of the scars gouged into this remote mining community’s existence since the hacendado discovered iron ore a decade ago.  The names of the men buried in each collapse are carved into the soft plaster wall and the bar’s scratched wooden countertop reads like a roll-call of the countless souls who have sat here seeking solace in a bottle of mezcal or in the faces of the pin-up girls who smile down from the cobwebs.

Ramón hears the sound of the motor engine before everyone else in the village. He heard it as soon as he returned home to the sound of his wife’s moans and cries spilling out across the village and into the darkness the night before. He found his neighbour on the veranda of his jacal, rocking back and forth on his heels in the sepia light of the oil lamps.

‘Ramón. Amigo,’ he called out. ‘It is time.’

Ramón said nothing. He drew alongside his friend and squinted his eyes to a horizontal tear in the cloth curtain. His face was a frown and he stood very still for a moment as the tall man beside him paced anxiously.

‘She is a young woman, Ramón. She is strong. She is in good hands, I know.’

‘Jorge,’ Ramón said still staring in at the huddle of bodies buzzing around his wife. ‘Our time here has reached its completion.’ A barbed wire scream tore the night as the women inside chanted ‘push, push, push’ in unison.  A sweaty ball of a woman burst out through the door which swung on its hinges as she scurried off into the darkness muttering and shaking her head. They both turned their gaze to follow her.

Jorge stopped pacing and stood at Ramón’s side. ‘You could go, now, take a horse, vanish into the night,’ he whispered.

‘And one of these cronies sells us out for a picayune of favour from the Patrón. We would not make it to the mountains. I cannot risk her life again, Jorge, ever. Our freedom for that of our child.’

‘But, you, maybe…’

‘Goodbye, my friend.’

The two men shook hands, tipped hats with looks of finality and respect and parted there in the darkness. As Jorge resumed his occupation of the veranda, the light of the cantina drew Ramón ever closer while the sounds of childbirth faded off behind him.

*     *     *

And now, like a tide rising across the plain, the people of the pueblo crank in to life as the sound of the Patrón's approach reaches them also, the disjointed chorus of steel and tin rattling through the warm air. The women hurry inside and shoo children into doorways, slamming shutters closed and peering out through splintered cracks.

Outside the cantina, the young driver steps down from the motorcar and opens the rear door for his passenger. He scans the dilapidated village around him, slams the door closed and pulls a packet of cigarettes from his open leather jacket, revealing the handle of a revolver strapped beneath his arm.

The cantina’s owner slides from his stool into a back room.

‘I hear congratulations are in order, Señor Bernal,’ says a skeletal figure from the doorway. It leans and shakes slightly on an ivory handled cane. The voice is rough, throaty, thick with breath and tobacco.

Ramón gazes up to the faded row of lollipop smiles and swimwear pasted above the bar.

Shuffling into the dimly lit room, the old man stops as the light from the window falls across his face. Like a wood-block print, his features are deep and coarse, carved into papery skin that hangs like wet muslin. A grey moustache fidgets as he balances there in the middle of the room loudly churning pearls of saliva over in his mouth and licking at thin lips. A pair of wire coat hanger shoulders hold aloft a pristine black suit edged with silk trim. After pulling a silver pocket-watch from his waistcoat and replacing it, he takes a stool at the far end of the bar and turns to face Ramón who stares ahead, deftly turning an empty glass over and around in his hands.

‘You are surprised to see me, Ramón?’ he asks, tapping a reedy cigar from a golden tube. He pops a match in the rheumatic sphere of his palms. Twirls of smoke expand into the space between the two men. ‘No, Ramón. That is why your bottle holds more air than tequila, am I correct?’

‘You are correct,’ comes a defeated reply.

‘But Ramón, it is the first day of your son’s life. Why do you choose to spend it in here?’ He spreads his arms with a flourish and looks around the room sardonically.

Ramón puts down the glass and refills it slowly.

Across the bar, the owner reappears. He holds his hat to his chest, quietly clears his throat and slides a bulging envelope wrapped with string across the counter.

‘With our compliments, Señor Huerta,’ he says nervously.

The old man’s hands find the package and wedge it inside his jacket pocket and the saliva rolls and slathers in his mouth again. He turns back to Ramón and the barman slides away. He observes Ramón without speaking for a moment. His head wobbles on its bony plinth. He puffs his cigar.

‘And how is your beautiful wife today?’ he eventually asks.

The mention of her draws furrows across Ramón’s forehead. 

‘You love her very much, yes? I know this. But, you…me, your wife. We all know how we came to find ourselves in this…situation. Yet, the world spins below us, does it not? The sand shifts, time drip drip drips and situations…they change.’

A strong wind twists and weaves through the streets outside, sending shivers through the spears of the yuca trees which rattle like bones. Ramón empties the glass, empties the bottle and eyes Señor Huerta severely, the sweat scoring a dark line across his collar. The old man licks his lips.

‘Ramón, your wife is very beautiful. We know this. But, we also know that she is a murderer. In the eyes of the law, she is dangerous. I know this, you know this, my people know this.’

‘It wasn’t her fault, Huerta,’ Ramón snaps. ‘The bastard had a knife to her throat-’

‘Minor details. Very minor. But, when my driver found you both huddled in my garage not three months ago, I did not see a murderer. I did not see the pretty face that was strewn across the walls of Mexico City. No, I saw the face of opportunity, the tiny soul of opportunity, growing inside her.’

‘You have your heir, Huerta. Just take the boy, and go.’

‘I invested in your wife, Bernal. I invested in you. I invested my silence and that of my people in your safety, your sanctuary. Yet every investment bears risks, does it not? So today, I collect my dividend, and my…insurance. For every child needs a mother, no?’

Ramón’s fists tighten. ‘Just try it you old bastard-’

‘Or perhaps you would prefer all three of you rot in Apodaca jail? That can still be arranged.’

Ramón shakes his head.

‘Good. Then we both know how it is to lose the people we love. We are even, no? But, Señor…’ He points a long sharp finger to the ceiling. ‘…If you try to contact your wife or child from this moment forth, I will have you shot.’

The pair step into the bright sunlight. As Ramón’s eyes adjust, he sees the Moses basket on the back seat of the car with a silken dress hung beside it. The driver throws a cigarette to the ground and opens the door for the old man.

‘I hope that you at least said goodbye,’ says Huerta through the open rear window. The engine coughs sharply into life.

‘Very well, Señor…’ replies Ramón.

With a smooth whip of his hand, with speed and accuracy that defies the empty tequila bottle now lying on the bar, Ramón draws his father’s Colt .45 from his jacket and places a bullet between Señor Huerta’s eyes. Before the driver can reach for the door handle, a second pop ripples across the plain and his head is slammed into the steering wheel sending a nebula of blood across the inside of the windshield.

‘…Goodbye.’

*     *     *

That night, dressed in a pristine black suit edged with silk trim, with a silver pocket watch and an ivory topped cane, Señor Esteban Huerta and his new wife and child rattle north in a black, 1931 Ford Model A, its bodywork threaded with bullet holes. Shortly before midnight, they slip virtually unnoticed across the border into Texas.

Trapped in an Elevator

The doors slide open with a ping and the two men stand face to face.

'Bugger.'

'Vinston.'

'Adolf.'

The rotund P.M. steps inside and chuckles quietly under his breath.

'Going up, I assume?' says Hitler, pushing the door release button.

'Yes, Adolf, yes. I'm going up.'

'Ze conference?'

He exhales loudly. 'Yes yes, Adolf. I'm going to the conference.'

'I had no idea you verr coming. It's-'

His companion isn't listening, twiddling the dials on his briefcase lock, reading the safety instructions on the wall.

The 17 button glows red. Motors whir above them.

Crunch. Clang.

'Shizen.'

Silence fills the tiny space.

The German stands, smiling awkwardly, shifting, shuffling, inspecting his boots.

The emergency alarm handle breaks off in Churchill's hand.

'Shizen.'

'I can't believe the Swiss talked me in to this bloody thing,' exclaims Churchill, puffing at his cigar.

'Vell, I came for zee skiing, and zee chocolate. I love zee chocolate!'

'I'm sure you do, Adolf. I'm sure you do.' He looks to the ground. Of all people, he thinks. Of all bloody people.

Fifteen minutes drip by. The building around them is hushed and still, as if holding its breath.

Hitler removes an empty cigarette case from his pocket and flaps it open loudly. 'Vould you mind?' he asks, nodding at the old man's cigar.

Churchill stands for a moment then shakes his head in defeat, dipping a hand into his overcoat pocket.

The two men smoke. Forty awkward minutes pass.

Hitler pops open the swastika clasp of his attache case.

'If you vould like,' he says. 'I picked zees up at zee duty frees.' He removes a bottle of vintage cognac.

'Go on then, Adolf. I don't see why not.'

...

Three hours later a Swiss engineer flicks a switch on a control panel in the basement. Cables roll and the elevator rises. At the seventeenth floor the doors ping open. Both men are sat spread legged on the elevator floor beneath a cloud of cigar smoke. The empty bottle stands between them.

'...Ja, so, she says to me, she said "eezer ze mustache goes, or I do!" Zees vimmin huh? "Vell I'll call you a taxi," I replied!'

The two men roar with laughter. They clamber to their feet and step out onto the marble floor of a cavernous reception hall.

'Vell, I guess vee missed ze start of ze conference, Vinnie.'

'Looks that way, old chap.'

A young man in a porter's suit sits at a desk under a giant painting of mountains and meadows and goats.

'You boy,' calls Churchill. 'Which way is the conference?'

'Conference?' comes a nervous reply.

As Yellow Cabs Sailed By

The sound of the buzzer rattled the apartment, waking her from a long but shallow sleep. Fully dressed, although she had managed to unbutton her skinny jeans, she hung from the sofa like a castaway. A sweet, sickly smell of Chinese take-away hung in the air, the remains of which were scattered on the coffee table between empty beer bottles and second-hand novels. It was still dark and the sound of car horns and heated shouts between a rasp-voiced cab driver and a young bicycle courier floated up from the street three floors below. Her mouth was dry, coated with the stale flavors of last night. For Amy, to wake up during the Friday night rush hour was not an unusual start to the weekend. The buzzer gargled again. She peeled her face from the cushion and an instant pain screamed out from behind her bloodshot eyes. Begrudgingly, she shuffled across the antique parquet floor of her boyfriend’s spacious Greenwich Village penthouse and flipped the latch. Two months early as normal, a rotund FedEx courier with dark patches of sweat across his chest stood wheezing over the annual case of fine wines from her solicitor Father’s office in London. ‘Merry Christmas darling. Love Father.’ Having made no contact with him since dropping out of Sixth-Form and moving to New York four years earlier, she admired his perseverance.
'God damn I hate these walk-ups,' muttered the courier as he took her signature and turned back toward the stairs.  Booting the heavy box across the floor, she lifted an arm and pulled the pit of her Beastie Boys t-shirt to her nose. The candy red lipstick she’d applied almost twenty four hours earlier was gone and her short tousled hair obscured her face and charcoal eyes with jagged layers of Midnight Blue. Even hung-over, she oozed an impish, dishevelled charm that made men of all ages weak at the wallet.

Her hangover followed her down the stairs as she pulled on a heavy tweed overcoat and turned up the collar. The echoes of her footsteps cut through the grumble of the traffic outside and through the dusty dimness of the lobby, she watched the lights of the street pouring onto the rain speckled windows, illuminating each droplet like a marble. Between the rapidly thickening drizzle descending on Seventh Avenue, the cool autumn air carried a nauseating blend of diesel fumes and rotting leaves. Her body ached to turn back. Cutting east along Bleecker, she wallowed in the warm breath of open doorways as the Village crowd slowly filled up the bars and coffee shops. Turning south, the homely neon sign of Joe’s shop reflected in the glistening concrete ahead and the smell of surgical spirits and mosquito buzz of the needle floated down the sidewalk to meet her.

Big Joe was, in her words, the original gangster teddy bear. His huge frame and bulging tattooed muscles would shake most people, even in well lit alleyways, but he had softened with age. He paid well, gave her the occasional afternoon off and even pushed V.I.P. concert tickets her way which sometimes arrived from celebrity clients. In return, she kept fully up-to-date with personal emails and texts and ensured that Google.com remained operational throughout the duration of her shifts.
'Good morning beautiful,' purred Joe from inside his tiny room, his deep, gentle voice always able to soften her mood.
'Hey,' she croaked back, sprawling herself behind the reception counter.

Amy was scheduled to work until three the following morning - Joe’s often attracted late night revelers returning home with alcohol fueled confidence. The shop was divided in two; a reception and consultation space and Joe's workshop. The glow from various neon signs blended stylishly with bright but minimal industrial spot lights which illuminated various antique road signs, B-movie posters and fifties pin-ups in small pockets of light. As the night and the rain enveloped the city, the traffic outside eased and a few drenched souls strode quickly past, hopping between awnings and over the ever spreading puddles, each wrapped tightly around the handle of an umbrella. A man carrying a briefcase clutched a fistful of soggy newspapers over his head and darted into a guest-house. Inside the shop, Joe’s jazz records sizzled endlessly from the vintage Wurlitzer which stood among the gloss red tool boxes. The needle rose, the needle fell. People came, people went. Some moaned with pain, some moaned with pleasure. She watched the minutes pass. The door rattled and a newly-wed couple ran in breathless from the downpour outside. Her frilly white dress hung like a soggy tissue which she gathered up while his name was scrawled across her goose-pimpled behind. She cried. He laughed. One lifetime membership to the cliché club, thought Amy running his credit card through the machine. At around two in the morning, the rain worsened. It hammered at the city. Small rivers soon eddied into subway entrances and puddles in the road erupted, throwing tidal waves up onto the sidewalk as yellow cabs sailed by. Amy looked up from the computer briefly enough to notice a man enter the shop shaking the rain from his jacket. She continued to probe Facebook, ignoring the long list of unread messages and the two day old text from her boyfriend. The man began moving around the shop, his shoes squeaking on the black and white checkered linoleum.
'Terrible weather,' he said from the opposite side of the counter in a soft English accent, an accent Amy hadn’t heard in months and found unexpectedly comforting. 'Hope you don’t mind me sheltering in here for a bit?'  She could smell a tinge of cigarette smoke amid the musty dampness of his sodden clothes. He was looking down at her and running his hands through his wet hair. She looked up yet her eyes immediately darted back towards the computer. With her heart racing, she felt her cheeks begin to blush.
'Um, okay, no worries,' she replied, her throat dry. 'Have a look around. Terrible weather.' Her eyes skipped around the room, to his chest, his coat, the street outside.
'Hey, you are from England,' he said. 'Look, don’t worry about all this,' he motioned with a hand towards his face, 'I’m used to it, have a good gander. You don't see a mug like this everyday.'
'I’m sorry, you...you took me by surprise,' she replied with a timid smile, a visible crack spreading across her usual coolness.  The man’s face was scarred and disfigured. Sagging skin hung down from a broken hairline like cooled lava and his eyelids looked sore, red and paper thin. Like wet fabric, scar tissue stretched tightly across his cheek and a portion of his mouth was tugged upwards into an permanent yet awkward half-smile. Amy bit nervously at her lip.
'I should audition for Phantom of the Opera, right?'
She laughed politely, still trying to gauge his temperament.
'Well, Broadway’s not far, but it’s probably a bit late,' she replied shyly.
'May I ask where you are from?' He looked at her through enquiring, narrowed eyes that seemed to know the answer already.
'London, well, High Wycombe…I,'
'It's Amy, isn't it?' he interrupted excitedly. Her raised eyebrows and open mouth gave him his answer. 'Amy Watts from Hatton Green Senior, I knew it as soon as I came in, what are the chances?'
'You know me?' she asked, his distorted appearance now pushed aside in her mind.
'Reece Leigh,' he replied, holding out a hand. 'We went through school together'
'Did we?' She took his hand hesitantly, scanning her now clouded memory. 'I’m sorry Reece, I can’t…'
'Yeah, don’t worry,' he said with a hint of resigned sadness in his bright blue eyes. 'Not many people do. Not that they’d forget me now of course.' She smiled sweetly. School was a memory of a memory for Amy.

The pair exchanged stories of school, work, of drinking cider behind the Co-op supermarket, ‘isn’t it a small world?’ and such.  As they chatted, the silken melodies of Coltrane, Ellington and Billie Holiday painted the air while Joe buzzed away in his studio like a humming bird, effortlessly casting a flock of oriental dragons across an investment banker’s back. Reece told Amy about the drunken barbecue incident in Ibiza which had robbed him of his face. He then spoke with utter joy about his subsequent marriage to a trainee nurse from Stoke Mandeville hospital. He painted, wrote poems, took evening classes and counseled burns victims among other equally admirable pursuits. Humbly, Amy spoke about her new life in New York with her seldom present photographer boyfriend Jack. Music, drink, hangovers, the usual.

'She said yes first time, no hesitation,' Reece chirped. 'We’re here celebrating our first anniversary, she’s tucked up in the hotel. Yeah, I prefer the dark you know, easier to hide this.' He motioned with his hand in the same way he had done before. 'I often struggle to sleep, so I just wander around and fall into bed as the sun’s coming up.'  Amy’s phone beeped. The frequent jingle was often her excuse to leap from boring conversations, but right then, as she chatted with this disfigured, forgotten character from her past, she ignored it. She was comforted by his frank and disarming tone and unwillingness to censure life. His confidence astounded and embarrassed her often selfish nature. Reece had done more in the past year than she’d ever achieved. She regretted her reaction to his face - a reaction he must see every day - yet she envied him; his life, his undeniable happiness and positive attitude.

'Do you like this kind of music?' Reece asked, nodding his head toward the jukebox.
'Well, thanks to Big Joe,' she said, extending a finger at him through the open door, 'I absolutely love it.'
'I used to be all dance and techno, but I prefer classical nowadays to be honest, Mozart, Chopin, they played it to me when I was in hospital, my face all covered up, to keep my mind busy, stop me from freaking out, that was the idea, it didn’t always work but yeah, it’s weird how things change.' He looked at his watch.
'Do you have to get back?' Amy asked.
'Nah, don’t worry, this time of night is when my dreams are the worst.'
'Dreams?' she replied instinctively. He scratched nervously at the counter top.
'Well, we’re trying for a baby, you see. Do you dream?' She shook her head. 'Yeah, I have terrible dreams, like, it’s normally that the baby’s coming out and it’s screaming, like how I was screaming that day, not just how a baby normally cries, but like, agony…then they’re trying to clean it up and it’s face…it's face is like mine, all distorted, bloody, scabbing, bits hanging off. Then they’re pouring water on it, trying to wash it all off, scrubbing with towels, but it just gets worse.' His eyes flickered back to life. 'I’m sorry, please, no one wants to hear that.'
'It’s okay,' Amy replied, slightly unsure what to say. 'It must be tough.'
'I do my best.'
Big Joe came through from the workshop pulling latex gloves from his hands.
'Looks like a quiet night Ames,' he said, placing a hand on her shoulder while smiling and nodding at Reece without so much as blinking at his appearance. 'Why don’t you go get some breakfast with your buddy then head home?'

'Well Reece,' she said, stifling a yawn, 'I could sure go for a coffee, how about it?'
'You sound like a real New Yawwker,' he replied, mimicking Joe’s accent poorly. Part of his face was unscarred and Amy was surprised to see it redden with embarrassment.

'I'm learning the lingo thanks.'

'A real New Yawwwwker,' he repeated.

'So how about it?'

He looked at his watch again and nodded.

Like her headache, the rain had stopped. Moisture clung to every surface and the sidewalks shone like polished coal. Drunken business men stumbled out of backstreet dive-bars and several weary-eyed students were escaping from a nearby library. Amy suddenly felt uncomfortable escorting Reece, and walked with her arms folded and her phone clutched tightly in her hand. She normally relished attention in the street; maybe at a new pair of designer shoes or with a tantalizing flash of her Japanese tattoo through a vintage summer dress, but this was different – curiosity, sympathy, horror. She felt guiltily thankful for the mesh-work of shadows thrown down over them by the bare branches which swayed over the blazing street lamps. They walked in silence.

'Um, you know what,' said Reece after a couple of blocks, apprehensively looking at his watch in the light of the Night Owl Café window, 'I’ve just remembered, we’ve booked a city tour first thing, I should really go and get some sleep, I’m sorry.' His eyes flashed from left to right, up and down the street, to the sky and to the ground.  His words were rushed and she felt shamed at her sudden relief to hear them. She did like him and felt a little disappointed, she did miss English company, she realized. Dropping her shoulders slightly, she told him not to worry and that she understood.

'Come say hello before you go home,' she said, placing a hand on his arm which seemed to settle his sudden anxiety.

'Yeah, maybe,' he said, his words fading off into the night air as he looked around again, focusing on the street signs.  A garbage truck rolled past, growling and hissing and forcing an uneasy silence between them until it had rounded the corner. They said their goodbyes, exchanged a clumsy hug and walked off in opposite directions. Amy turned and paced backwards for a moment, looking through the shadows at Reece. His head was down and his pace was brisk. He did not turn back.

Her damp trainers had left prints across the apartment, like a snail trail glistening in the amber light of the streetlamps outside. In the darkness, Amy sat listening to a classical compilation she’d found stuffed in the bottom of Jack’s CD rack.  Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro danced through the timber and brick lined space, giving harmony to the waking city as the faintest suggestion of daylight threw gentle hues of grey and dusty blue across the tallest buildings in the distance. A yellow cab rumbled past and cruised along Seventh Avenue. Amy did not see it and above the crescendo of strings and horns its stuttering engine was silent. It rounded the corner at Bedford to pass the Night Owl Café and Joe’s shop which was now closed and dark. It quickly crossed eight blocks, pulling up in a shadowy side-street outside a run-down hotel marked only by a rusting sign and flickering neon arrow which intermittently illuminated the driver’s hands on the wheel. Through a window on the fourth floor, a naked light bulb hung from a high, cracked ceiling. Below it, Reece sat on a single yellowing mattress with rusty stains streaked along its base. He held his disfigured face in his hands and a cigarette burned between his trembling fingers. On the wood-chip desk lay an empty vodka bottle among used syringes and scraps of foil. At the end of the corridor, a young woman was hurriedly descending the concrete stairs on scuffed stilettos. The emergency lighting hummed and revealed a pale face of thickly smudged make-up and her short glittered dress which shimmered in its cold neon glow.

The Death of a Writer

His scruffy handwriting slid across the page.  He watched as his scribbled sentences fell from the lines and each word tangled in on the next and the one below it. Slowly, deliberately, the shifting mass twisted and wrapped itself into strands of jagged letters and splintered punctuation, forming an inky loop of barbed wire which suddenly rose up vertically from the notebook. It coiled around his poised wrist and snapped tight like a snare.  The pen fell from his hand, rolled across the plush leather writing pad and landed nib first in the thick carpet like a dagger, a shiny patch of Indian Ink quickly spreading around the wound.

He watched as the oily black tape from his Dictaphone spewed out from the mouth of the machine and raced across the desk towards him in knotted ribbons before grabbing his free arm in a web of matted plastic. He called out but his voice merely echoed around the empty rooms of the house and called back to him through the open doorway. As if given life by his cry, the fountain pen rose up from the floor and hovered in mid-air, its tip just a few inches from his face, glinting in the Autumn sun which hung in warm squares along the wall beyond. The ping of the type writer bell and mechanical shudder of the carriage which roared and slammed into place drew within him a sharp intake of breath and drained the remaining flecks of colour from his face.

"T-a-k-e_i-t_b-a-c-k" appeared on the blank page in a cacophony of blurred steel and keystrokes.

'I can't,' he sobbed.

"T-A-K-E_I-T_B-A-C-K-!"

'It...it went to press this morning, there's nothing I can do...'

"L-I-E-S-!" stamped the machine, denting the soft cream parchment with each letter.

"L-I-E-S-!_L-I-E-S-!_L-I-E-S-!_L-I-E-S-!" it went, running over the edge of the paper and onto the black platen roller.

"L-I-E-S-!_L-I-E-S-!_L-I-E-S-!..."

With the machine crashing and pinging and rattling before him, the pen drew back sharply.

'No!' screamed the man straining desperately at his shackles as the pen shot forward and landed deeply in his skull, sending a fine crimson mist into the air and across his final words.