By: Tess

Originally written for: 2011 Trees for Life Charity Exhibition.

With skin so soft beneath the bark
And resin coated hair,
The freshest sap runs through her veins;
She is always there.

Never sleeping, ever true,
She answers every call
As, one eye hazel, one eye green,
She watches over all.

When winter storms are raging
Or the night seems far too long,
She suffers on amidst the gales,
Resolute and strong.

And in the spring of morning,
When all is calm once more,
She will still be standing there,
Steadfast as before.

For whether auburn, scarlet, burnished gold,
Pale green or richest lime,
This mother of the forest waits
Until the end of time.

By: Craig Forshaw

Ellen Book awoke with a start.

Her hand shot out, the lamp switched on.

The shadows were chased back to the edges of the room.

The closet, behind the curtains, under the bed: they hid from her, as shadows like to do.

Even though she was safe in the light, those terrors that get inside still danced fresh within her mind. She held the covers safe to her chin, and calmed herself down, and thought about returning to sleep.

Had she done just that, maybe things would have turned out differently. Whether they would have been better or not, though, remains to be seen.

Ellen was twelve, enjoyed reading, and was bullied at school because she was an easy target. She always thought of a good comeback long after an insult, and she always blushed and said nothing when it did happen. Nobody touched her or hurt her, but their words stung like sticks and stones, and she had shed many tears this past year.

“You’re a book!” was a favourite insult, with someone having noticed she liked reading, and her name was also Book. It was stupid, and childish, and they were always saying her name and noticing her when she wished they wouldn’t.

She didn’t want to be a little girl, any more, and her boy-band posters had given way to rock groups, her books were less about adventures and more about tragedy and doomed romances, her stuffed toys hiding under her bed where they didn’t remind her of her age.

The worst thing, though, was when she did make a friend. Melody.

Melody slept over, and went for a drink during the night.

Then she told everyone what freaks Ellen’s parents were, and that was the end of that.

But right now, Ellen was scared, and she wanted to be reassured.

Her father was away on business, and her mother worked late, too. But Mum Book usually worked at home, down in the basement, where Ellen rarely went when it was dark.

Yet, tonight, she wanted someone to tell her everything was okay.

Her feet slid out from under the sheets first, tentatively, worried that something in the shadows beneath her bed would grab her ankles. She touched the cool, prickly carpet, and quickly moved away from the bed. She turned and looked at her bed.

Nothing moved in those shadows. If there was something there, it was patient.

And that made it much, much scarier.

Ellen edged her way towards the door to the landing, and reached an arm out into the darkness. She quickly felt for the light switch.

Clck!

The light came on, and she stepped out.

The stairs were next. The light switch for the living room was at the bottom, so she would have to journey down into the darkness.

Her first step made the floorboards creak a little, but as she went further down, the only sound was her soft steps, and her breathing. Everything else was that silence that sounds like nothing, but hums in your ears, anyway.

As she neared the foot of the stairs, she could see blue light coming from the windows, and the hulking gloom that coated the sofa and the arm-chair. Black murk, thick and impenetrable, hiding horrors in her head.

There was a small bit of yellow light gathered around the basement door, beneath the stairs, but it didn’t extend far.

Ellen reached the bottom of the stairs, and reached behind the coats that were hung up, reached for the light switch, knowing something was hiding there – a spider with a baby’s face, or the hand of a serial killer, or a slime that would dissolve her hand and work its way up her arm.

Clck!

It was even worse.

The lights didn’t come on.

Ellen turned, but couldn’t see very well.

Did she want to see?

Clck! Clck!

The lights weren’t working.

She stiffened, and then calmed down. Her mind was panicking, but she told herself that there was nothing there. She didn’t believe it, deep down she knew something was there, but she told herself, and repeated it. It was a mantra, and with enough repetition, she tricked herself into thinking it was true, “There’s nothing there, there’s nothing there, there’s nothing there…”

Ellen moved quickly, for the safe zone of the yellow light on the floor, and opened the door to the cellar.

The yellow light was on the wall by the stairs, but the basement itself was black.

Why?

Ellen knew her mother was working down there. The lights should be on.

The yellow light hummed a little, and the hum hung in the air, as if to punctuate the silence, “!”

The walls by the stairs were a menagerie of monsters. There was a man head being melted by acid, and you could see his skull. There was an alien creature, sleek, black, with soulless eyes and sharp black teeth. There was a portrait of a family that had been murdered, the paper yellowing, but the eldest son’s face kept blurring, and twisting, before mutating into something demonic, and then turning normal again.

There were scythes, knives, bear-traps, and limbs, torsos, severed heads.

There were pictures of people covered in blood and smiling.

Then there were the film posters beside them, showing from where these props had come.

Ellen was about to step down onto the first step when she saw a hand reach into the yellow light at the bottom.

She heard breathing, and a pained groan as the hand tried to drag itself forward.

There was the wedding ring her mother had let her try on, once. The edge of a red shirt her mother was wearing. Those grey-blue fingernails.

And blood.

“Huh… huh… hel… help…” came a tired plea, struggling to escape dying lips, barely heard.

Then, the hand vanished.

Yanked away. Sudden.

There was nothing.

Not until Ellen heard a sound from the basement. It was a clakclakclak sound, but something about it she heard as being a voice. Something was talking.

She shook, and felt like she was going to wet herself.

The word, “Mum,” formed on her lips, but went unspoken.

Tears prepared to flood her cheeks.

Then, from the murky living room behind her, came the reply.

Clakclakclak!

She didn’t realise it then, but the only thing that saved Ellen was that she didn’t care what waited in the shadows, she wasn’t curious or brave, she was a scared little girl and she ran.

She ran through the darkness.

She unlocked the door.

She left her home and ran for the neighbours.

And she would always be running from the dreams of shadows, and the cellar, and a hand reaching out of the dark, for the rest of her days.

By: everylittlething

The wind pushed through the gaps in the old house making eerie sounds and demonstrating real power. Cobwebs fluttered in the face of it and dust settled in its wake. There was no one there. Spiders hugged the walls and two mice ran along skirting boards. But no one saw them. The ragged curtains trembled either side of the small window in the scullery. No one shivered. A door from one of the outbuildings was partly off its hinges and creaked with depth as it moved involuntarily to and fro.

The traveller leant against a stout tree trunk and tried in vain to light a cigarette. He looked the old house up and down. He scanned its breadth in the scant light from the moon. He had the measure of it. To him it was stone and wood and turf and twisted metal. Clearly no one was inside. It would seem that no one had been there for a very long time. He wondered how long. He carefully picked his way through tangled garden to the door and attempted to open it. It was not as difficult as he had expected and so he entered more quickly than he had anticipated. He left it wide open.

Slowly and gingerly – not wanting any injury from random obstacles, the traveller looked around the little house. Here a rotten wooden cupboard with fragments of linoleum still lining its shelves, there a small table, white with age, and, everywhere, signs of a hurried evacuation. No food – the small inhabitants would have finished that off fairly sharpish – but crockery and pans in small numbers showed the traveller where someone had cooked and eaten a very long time ago. He lit his cigarette and watched as the smoke mingled with the cloud of memory that hovered there. A loose flagstone came between him and his exit but, instead of walking around it, his mind was jumping in and out of the stories he had read. He remembered people trapped in cottages such as these. He remembered such places coming and going through years – places like Brigadoon. He remembered Silas Marner, George Eliot’s weaver, who had hidden his money as he had hoarded it. He began to work his strong fingers around the loose flagstone. With difficulty he lifted it but found nothing underneath. He put back the flagstone and laughed at himself. He became aware, however , that he was not alone. He looked behind him, the hairs on the back of his neck bristling with something he did not recognise. There was no one there.

“You didn’t find it.”

The traveller looked up to see a young woman standing in the open doorway. She wasn’t standing very still. She seemed to be swaying but in a curving sinuous way.

“No. No – I didn’t find anything.”

“And, should you have found it, would you have kept it?”

“I – didn’t know – didn’t know what I was looking for.”

“They never do.”

“Who never does?”

“The men who come – they never know what it is that they seek – but they are all seeking something.”

“I didn’t come here to find anything.”

“No, you didn’t, but there is something missing for you and you feel an emptiness.”

“How do you – - – - – ”

“You will not find what is missing here. Go back and it will be waiting for you.”

“Where?”

“Where did you come from?”

“You seem to know all these things – you tell me where I come from!”

“You come from earth and it is to earth you shall return – but that which you are searching for is not of the earth. Go back and you will feel it.”

With that, the woman turned and it seemed she was blown along through the garden with the dried leaves and clumps of dead vegetation.

He was alone and wondering. He lit another cigarette and walked around and around the old house. It gave him no clue. He wasn’t good at taking advice. He was stumped. The wind was less aggressive now and seemed to whisper to him to leave. He closed the door behind him and stood on the path, taking in the night. His feet led him back the way he had come. It seemed the debris on the way through the wood was blown aside ahead of him. The trees coughed and croaked to him as he walked on and soon he felt a part of it all. Close to the edge of the wood he sat down and breathed in the night. The night breathed in the traveller too. And so they were one. A man whose life had been bereft of spirituality had been admitted to the spirit world.

They found him the next morning when two of the rangers arrived to fell marked trees. They told their story for a very long time. The man they had found had died peacefully and with the most wonderful expression. But the story doesn’t end there. The tree which had been his last earthly resting place was one of the marked trees felled by the rangers. As it passed through the neighbouring trees, to land on the floor of the wood, a cache of acorns and hazelnuts scattered from a crevice within its trunk. They became covered with leaf litter and settled into the earth where many germinated and developed into saplings and then into trees, breathing life into this world – life and spirit.

By: Tess

As my teacher bumbles like a droning bee,
My mind flutters to get free
Of tales of War fifty years in the past,
And of the peace that will never last.

As fifty years ahead I blink my eyes,
I stand and stare in mild surprise.
The classroom’s gone – changed into waves
And the desks and chairs to wires and staves.

My fellow pupils are tall, dark men
Whose weary arms and backs all bend
And stoop to lift again and again
The stones and rocks – regardless of rain
That trickles down their hair and face.
They all continue at a steady pace
To build and toil and heave and strain
With eyes that are blank, yet laced with pain.

I blink my eyes and look once more,
But the scene is different from before.
My friends are the same men, smiling now,
But with similar work I know not how.
For still they build and still they toil
Yet now it’s on more fertile soil.

They talk and laugh with twinkling eyes
That shine with faith and compromise.
And as they work I hear them sing
Of peace and love.

Their songs take wing
And now, back whole again, I bend and pray
In the chapel I saw them build that day.
Their work is done and now they rest,
Hands serenely folded on their breasts.
Yet in the stillness I hear them sing
And through the silence their songs take wing
And settle together in the form of a dove
Whose face returns their undying love.

This poem, written over ten years ago, was inspired by The Italian Chapel on Lamb Holm in Orkney. You can read about the Churchill Barriers and the Italian Chapel online here.

By: Finlay

Falbach the scout pressed forward into the thicket a little further. He was sure there was no one here. In fact he agreed with those who had counselled that the ambush was likely a mere invention of the vagrant they had come across. He stood still and sniffed the air, he put his ear to the ground. Nothing. He turned to go.

He only managed one step. He felt a sharp pain in his back and cried out. Almost before he hit the ground a thong was round his neck, choking his eyeballs from their sockets. His tongue, squeezed from its proper place lapped at the earth under him. Then a leather boot stepped deftly onto the back of his neck – Falbach sensed the boot had done this before – and his head was twisted round. With a grating crunch the bones of his neck shattered and the shards went into the flesh either side. Another twist and head and neck separated for ever. Falbach had just time to hear the outraged voice in his head, “But by Nuada’s beard there was no one there!”

*

The battle was fierce and hard, and almost went ill for the King of Ailech, for though the King’s men outnumbered the bandits by a score they were taken unawares and in a tight place. Two men were skewered like herrings for the smoke as they hurried to close ranks around the king; two more met the reaper’s scythe in the hand fighting that followed.

The man called Amrecht fought two bandits at once a short distance from the king, hoping to win honour for himself. But parrying a thrust the sword slipped downwards and injured him grievously. He screamed as his severed manhood slithered, wet and limp, down his leg, and fell to the ground. His foes left him where he lay until he begged his brother to appease his shame in the only way possible and his head was sliced cleanly from his shoulders.

At length though all the bandits were slain or fled, and Flaithbertach tipped sweat from his helm and cursed as he surveyed the scene. He waved to his men, “Get this foul carrion cleaned up and out of my sight. Except for the heads. Bury our dead, and set up camp. And send a rider to bring back that vagrant I turned away.”

By: everylittlething

By: Patrick

In a move that slipped under the radar of even the most shrewd economic analysts, yesterday’s launch of the new 6-blade ‘Synthesix’ razor by UK-based company Wilkinson Sword inadvertently led to the overnight collapse of global capitalism, it has been widely reported.

Bemused and shame-faced economists, including formerly smug author of The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, Nassim N. Taleb, were struggling to come up with a cogent explanation for this unprecedented phenomenon. One notable exception was Steven D. Levitt, co-author of the influential Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, who suggested in an interview earlier today that the introduction of the ‘Synthesix’ to an already, in small parts, sceptical consumer market had resulted in what he termed a ‘global bullshit epiphany’, in which people finally in one moment that Levitt likened to ‘a kind of Enlightenment’ understood the cynical mechanisms through which they had been enslaved for so many years. Levitt commented:

“If you consider the field of consumer electronics, for example, there is clearly a significant technological leap from a black and white TV to a colour TV, or from a cassette player to a CD player, or even from a CD player to an iPod. But increasingly, attempts to sell newer forms of technology to the public, based perhaps on size, weight or curvature, have been founded on rather more nebulous technological pay-offs. I had anticipated that the much-hyped launch of 3-D television would bring about something like the ‘bullshit epiphany’ we are witnessing today, but I was somewhat premature in that judgment, as many people have in fact gone out and spent considerable sums of money in order to watch television programmes in a three dimensional format. It turned out that people needed an even more bullshit product to be presented to them in order to bring about this epiphany.”

Although Levitt’s ‘bullshit epiphany’ thesis has not been widely disseminated, it appears that in a cruder form it has been lurking for a while now. Indeed, Proctor and Gamble, who, through their brand, Gillette, have largely pioneered the move to add increasing numbers of blades to what was already a highly satisfactory product, released a statement earlier today condemning Wilkinson Sword for their hubris and naiveté:

“We realised with the launch of our 5-blade Fusion razor back in 2006, in which we not only added two more blades than our 3-blade Mach3 razor, but also a single sixth blade on the rear for precision trimming, that we may have pushed the public’s capacity to swallow our bullshit to its very limits. However, through a highly skilful and expensive advertising campaign featuring some of the world’s top sporting figures, we managed to persuade an economically significant percentage of the more aspirational male population that this was a worthwhile investment. Indeed, it turned out to be so successful that we then released the Fusion Power, which was battery-powered and emitted micro-pulses to increase razor glide. And I guess we should also mention the Fusion Power Phantom with the darker colour scheme, and the more recent Fusion ProGlide and Fusion ProGlide Power series with re-engineered blades. But be that as it may, we have always been highly respectful of the public and we never even considered adding a straight sixth blade to any of our products. Instead we have focused our attentions on other products to which we could profitably – and ethically – add a number of additional bullshit features, such as fabric softener and dog food. We feel that Wilkinson Sword would have done well to have heeded the increasing public literacy over bullshit products (although given the phenomenal success of Apple in updating their products with bullshit features on a bi-annual basis, we retain a degree of sympathy). Through their impulsivity, naiveté and hubristic desire for increased market share, the world as we know it is no more and we are all out of a job.”

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the overnight collapse of the increasingly hegemonic global capitalist system has been how peacefully it has happened. Reports have come in from all over the globe of people, most of whom are newly unemployed, walking the streets with inane smiles on their faces and occasionally bursting into fits of giggles. Yet this behaviour has come as no surprise to Jonathan Zeitlin, professor of sociology, public affairs, political science and history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison:

“In many ways what we are seeing on the streets today is reminiscent of the behaviours of those who experimented with hallucinogenic drugs as part of the counter-cultural revolution of the 60s. Under the influence of these psychoactive substances, people came to understand the absurdity of everything their lives had stood for up to that point and this epiphany induced hysterical laughter in the majority of people (along with a few unfortunate suicides). I think that what we are seeing on the streets today is a similar collective enlightenment, albeit one mediated by the launch of a shaving product rather than the ingestion of a hallucinogenic substance. In many ways, this makes this neo-enlightenment both more authentic and, perhaps, more sustainable.”

In support of Zeitlin’s position, former futures trader Paul Fox commented:

“Like many people I have spoken to in the streets today, the ‘Synthesix’ advert hit me with the force of a revelation, a miracle even. I feel ashamed to admit it now, but I have been updating my TV, laptop, car, and, of course, my shaving products, on an almost yearly basis for a long time now. When I look back, it is difficult not to collapse in hysterical, side-splitting laughter at the new features which seduced me into making the purchases, and then of course show them off to my friends. But at the time, it all seemed so real, so new.”

A spokesperson for the soon-to-be-liquidated company behind the ‘Synthesix’ razor, Wilkinson Sword said:

“While this was clearly not the kind of outcome we had anticipated or hoped for following the launch of the ‘Synthesix’ razor, we would like to think that we will be remembered fondly in the post-capitalist society that we have in no small way been responsible for creating.”

There are some reports that pockets of resistance remain in China, as many of the newly aspirational citizens of the People’s Republic do not seem to find the ‘Synthesix’ range in any way amusing or preposterous and have in fact been showing off their new purchases in public locations, such as gymnasium changing rooms. The full implications of China’s resistance are as yet unclear.

By: Tess

I don’t tell people
now.

It’s not that I want to hear
the sick jokes,
but I hate the embarrassed
sideways look
when someone remembers you.

They don’t know you,
they only know
the scar you left.
Their cautious pity
tears my skin as you did.

I keep it hidden now,
my scar.

It is not shame
I feel.
I just refuse
to live as your victim
throughout my life.

You made me stronger.
I will never thank you,
but I can walk where
others dare not tread. They flinch
where I walk unfazed.

It is my strength,
my scar.

You will have
nothing.
No part of it. You are
nothing.

My personal triumph,
my scar.

I don’t tell people.
Not any more.

By: Craig Forshaw
Title by Steve Clarke

They were called Seedlings. People no taller than a centimetre, living amongst the tall blades of grass in the garden.

They almost burned to death on the day Olivia discovered them with her magnifying glass. She tried to apologise, but they didn’t understand her.

So, Olivia just watched them.

They had houses, about five centimetres high, dotted around the twelve-inch settlement, but Olivia didn’t know what they had used to build them. They would be awake when Olivia arrived in the morning, and went to sleep several times a day. It wasn’t until she was watching a nature documentary, years later, that she realised that time passes more slowly for smaller creatures. An entire day must be tiring for the Seedlings.

They wore silver suits that reflected in the sunlight like the top of a bottle of milk. The children had a game where one of them would have to touch the others with a blue glove, and they would freeze in place. When only one person was left, the others would unfreeze and fall about laughing.

Olivia laughed, too.

She wondered whether they had always been here, or whether they were spacemen, because of their suits.

One day, she awoke to the sound of the leaf-blower.

Autumn was here.

Her father, oblivious, swung the blower towards them.

When Olivia arrived, they were gone. Only a miniature shoe remained.

On her knees, she cried, though she didn’t know them.

By: everylittlething

The old woman cycled in zigzags along the ribbon of road that gave an edge to the wood.  She was dressed completely in black.  It was a hot summer’s day but even her stockings were black.  The hair was a coil at the back of her head.  Attached by a bungee cord to the back of her bicycle was a baton of bread.  It doubled the width of the woman and her bike.

“Don’t stare Bindy!” the girl’s mother said, “This is France. There is nothing unusual in that.”

But Bindy thought this was a special scenario.  She believed there was a tale to be told here.  She imagined the old woman dismounting at the iron gates of an old country villa and walking her bicycle up a crunchy gravel driveway,  her purchase bouncing with every furrow in the stones.  She saw the woman push her bike into an old stables, remove the baton of bread, and enter the house by a side door.

“Stop the car Dad!  I need to wee!” demanded Bindy’s younger brother.  Their father pulled into a green lane amongst the trees.

During the time they were parked, Bindy was dozing, but at the same time she could hear the birds singing from the branches.  She imagined the old woman of the bread, this time in her provincial kitchen, with rows of glasses on shelves lined with linoleum; with herbs attached to a wooden structure hanging from the ceiling; with a scrubbed wooden table and a black-leaded iron range.  Bindy saw the old lady break a piece of bread from the large stick and put it under a cloth which was spread on a dresser.  Fast-forward to a shared meal with everyone mopping up a casserole from their individual soup plates.  And now  the bread had gone.  The diners had gone.  The woman was gone.  Bindy knew that the diners were playing bowls in the yard – but the old lady was nowhere near.  She wasn’t in the yard.  She wasn’t in her kitchen – nor was she elsewhere in the quiet cool house.  Bindy saw her shuffling along the edge of the garden, then into the trees where she kept glancing behind her and all around.

She reached a pile of logs and carefully moved some branches which were wedged between a couple of them.  The old woman took a piece of bread from the top of her stocking and rammed it into the logs, covering it with the small branches.  Bindy could see the woman turn and start to walk back towards the house.  Then, nothing.

“Bindy, can you wait until we reach a village ?”

“What?”

“Do you need to go?  There’s nobody about.”

“No . . . no . . . thanks.”

So the family drove on until they reached a collection of houses.  To all intents and purposes this was the nearest village – certainly the nearest settlement.

“It looks like the place in that comedy Dad’s always going on about – something about a loo,” suggested Bindy’s brother.

“Clochemerle – he means Clochemerle,” offered her mother.

But Bindy wasn’t listening.  She had recognised an old country villa in the distance.

“May we drive up and look at that old house?” asked Bindy, pointing.

They really didn’t have anywhere special to be so her dad drove along towards the house.  Bindy looked to the left and noticed something moving in the trees.  She couldn’t make out what it was.  When she asked, the others hadn’t seen anything.

They reached the house and saw iron gates opening onto a gravel driveway.  It was so typically French.  Bindy knew this house.  She had been told – no – ACCUSED – of having a vivid imagination – but if only they knew HOW vivid it was and how it connected her with people from the past.

The family left the car in order to stretch their legs.  Bindy wandered back towards the trees.  By the entrance to a field, she saw a small statue of a woman in a long flowing robe.  The stone figure was offering Bindy a baton of stone bread.

“Come and look at this,” she called to the rest of the family.

“What a funny place to have a statue,” was her mum’s response, “look – there is a plaque at the bottom.  What does it say Bindy?  I left my glasses in the car.”

Bindy read the words with a shiver,

YVETTE PRAYT    1880 – 1942
ELLE S’EST TOUJOURS CONDUITE TRES SAINTEMENT

There was no need for Bindy to say anything.  She knew more about the woman of the statue – the woman of the bread – than they would believe.  It puzzled Bindy that she should have been given this insight but she had come to accept it – and be thankful.  In this case, she knew that bread, in its different forms, was the basic food of all nations.  She knew that everyone was entitled to it – and she knew that, forever, people had put their own lives on the line to ensure their fellow men and women had this basic human right.  Bindy knew Yvette Prayt.