Flock of Shadows

by Houguez, Claire; Parfitt, Rebecca;

  I saw what was underneath, what is underneath. Hidden. Ancient. Hungry.

  I dream about it, I think. But then I wake up and she’s there and I forget. For a while.

  She’s asleep now. Next to me.

  Naked. Cold.

  I opened the door and she stood back, suddenly uncertain, afraid.

  ‘Come in,’ I said and she smiled.

  They were arguing in the pub, he’d pushed her up against the wall, and sometimes I wonder what the quarrel was about. I try to remember what he said to her before he walked away.

  ...and don’t come back.

  The way he wiped his hand. The way she grabbed at mine. But I can’t remember what he said, not for sure. I can’t remember what I saw, in that moment when I flicked on the light.

  I could try now. There’s a lamp by the bed. I could look.

  But then she stirs and shifts, rolling towards me. She opens her eyes and she smiles.

  Her red lips.

  Her white teeth.

  I can taste blood in my mouth.

  The Office Block

  Rhys Owain Williams

  Night held a black, fingerless grip on the town, its glutting darkness punctured only by the dim light of the street lamps. Carrying a plate of stale hot-cross buns, Mr. Owen climbed the stairs to bed, his eyelids broiled by the stye-reddened itch of insomnia. He could not know for sure, but he felt as if he was the only person in the town whose body still belonged to yesterday. Everyone else, it seemed, was already asleep.

  His heavy limbs rested at the edge of his bed, Mr. Owen waited for the thick coating of butter to soak itself into the spiced buns. The room was dank, despite having been damp-proofed by the landlord just a few weeks earlier, and fresh specks of black mould had begun to steal their way across the white ceiling. Placing the plate on the floor, he switched on the electric heater and began to read – the glow of the heater’s halogen lamps providing enough light to see the colour supplement of last Sunday’s paper.

  Mr. Owen’s sleepless nights had a distinct whiff of the temporal loop. At 2am, a second supper was toasted, and taken upstairs to be eaten in bed. Hot-cross buns, English muffins, crumpets – whatever bread-based product had been reduced to clear at the supermarket on the way home from work. Once in bed, he would flick through the pictures and light articles of uninteresting magazines – his mind too drained to engage with anything of substance – until the watery-grey wash of early morning told him it was time to brush his teeth and put on his suit. He never closed the curtains, he saw no point – he had as much chance of getting to sleep with them open.

  His eyes resting on a photo-page of ugly, expensive furniture, Mr. Owen picked up a bun from the plate on the floor. The sickly yellow excess of unmelted, store-brand butter pushed itself into the gaps between his teeth. He hadn’t toasted them long enough. Fumbling for the bottle of water at his bedside, he dropped the half-eaten bun to the floor, its cloying milkiness too much for his tired stomach to take. It was a waste, but it didn’t matter – he ate at this time of night to quell boredom, not hunger. Wiping a dribble of old tap water from his chin, he switched off the electric heater and fell back onto his bed. The room cooled, as the ghosts of the night streamed through the cracked window frame to seize its dark corners.

  Across the street stood a disused office block, a chunk of grey brick hugged by seven rows of single-glazed glass. The last company had moved out over a year ago, and initially there had been talk of ‘luxury’ apartments, but now the building seemed fated to be slowly demolished by disuse. At half-past two each morning the lights came on, illuminating the long corridor-like office space. Erratic formations of empty brown desks collected themselves upon tiled-carpet, extension leads for now-absent computers coiled around their wooden legs. A few chairs had been left behind too, moth-bitten and bent out of shape, but all electrical equipment and stationery had accompanied the business to its new premises across town. There was nothing left worth breaking in for, so it was strange that the security timer had been left on to ward off potential looters for so long. It all seemed such a waste.

  *

  ‘I’m afraid I’m going to have to discontinue your prescription, Mr. Owen.’

  He hadn’t been listening. The doctor’s office was too warm, and he hadn’t had a chance to take off his coat on the way in.

  ‘You see, you’ve been on these tablets for almost eighteen months now, and we’ve seen no change. I’m sorry, but my hands are tied.’

  Mr. Owen nodded. The doctor was a locum, a short man with unkempt white hair and a Bart Simpson tie. His skin tone suggested roots on the Indian subcontinent, but his accent spoke of a childhood elsewhere. Mr. Owen stood up, extending his hand. He would be glad to get back out into the January dusk.

  The lamp behind the doctor illuminated his round head, making the thin fuzz on his earlobes look like strips of mislaid sellotape, ‘Have you considered natural medicine, Mr. Owen? Let me just find you a leaflet.’

  The route home from the doctor’s surgery always seemed to take forever, snaking past rows upon rows of terraced homes with cracked roof tiles and thick curtains. Mr. Owen had bought an all-day ticket that morning, but there were no buses in sight. He was off-route – best to just keep moving forward.

  Committing himself to sweat patches, he tackled the gradual incline that led from the centre of town to his house. The dark office block towered above it all, surveying its domain. Mr. Owen knew that it wasn’t possible, but he couldn’t help but feel that it was watching him, devoting at least one of its thin glass eyes to his lonely journey from foot to brow. The words of the locum doctor slowly began to sink in. Eighteen months. No change.

  Guiding him through streets he barely knew, the office block grew larger with each step he took towards it. Mr. Owen felt the furthest from sleep he had ever been.

  *

  At work the next day, he caught himself staring out the window more often than usual. The previous night had been tough. Of course, every night was a sleepless one, but he hadn’t been that restless since this whole thing began. His temples bloated under the pressure of a thousand unfinished thoughts. Too agitated to concentrate on the spreadsheet before him, he tilted his screen away from his neighbour to check the online auctions he was tracking. Expired vouchers, mystery boxes, worn socks. As items for sale, they all fell foul of the website’s terms and conditions, and would be taken down long before the auction could reach conclusion. Mr. Owen found that following the narrative of each auction – counting the days before the website noticed the seller’s breaking of their rules – passed the time in a way that was not too troubling for his worn mind. He had no desire to bid on any of these items, although the mystery boxes did intrigue him. Most, if not all, would contain nothing of real interest – the contents of a forgotten kitchen drawer, perhaps, or the dregs of a successful boot sale. Things that not even the charity shop would want. But there was no way of knowing for sure, not without opening one yourself.

  Trudging home up the hill, Mr. Owen felt the sting of carpet burns on the soles of his feet. He could not spend another night pacing around his room. His sanity could not take it. He filled his evening with monotonous tasks and then, when night came, lay on his bed and counted the stars.

  One hundred and ninety seven. One hundred and ninety eight. One hundred and ninety nine.

  The leaflet the locum had given him, now dampened by the grease of buttery fingers, had almost convinced him of the benefits of an alternative path. Then, at its end, a price list: ‘buy four sessions and get your fifth session free.’

  Three hundred and twenty. Three hundred and twenty one. Three hundred and twenty two.

  The stars seemed brighter than they should be, outshining the encroaching glare of the town’s layer of light pollution. Mr. Owen thought about buying a telescope, learning how to pick out the asterisms.

  Five hund
red and sixty four. Five hundred and sixty five. Five hundred and sixty six.

  Distracted by thought processes, his eyelids grew heavy. Seconds became lost, some stars went uncounted. Mr. Owen felt a numbness spreading from his ankles. It was finally here.

  Light. Filling each corner of the room, dissolving shadows. Mr. Owen awoke from his almost-slumber. It was 2.30.

  Across the street, the office block grinned through seven sets of fluorescent teeth.

  Returning home the next evening, Mr. Owen paused at his front gate. The office block, stained by rainwater, loomed through the mist. It interrogated him, posing questions without words. On his way to work that morning he had not been able to shake the image of it from his mind, its silent laughter echoing through his skull like footsteps on wrought iron.

  Something had to be done.

  He had not known what that something was until a clenched fist had smashed into the table in front of him at the end of iteration meeting that afternoon.

  ‘Jesus Christ Owen! Did you hear a word I just said?’

  He hadn’t heard a word, not one. His line manager’s head pulsed like an over-boiled kidney bean. The eyes of the room were on him. Thinking quickly, he plucked a stock phrase from the recycled air.

  ‘I feel that there’s definite room for more “light-bulb-thinking” at this company.’

  Entering his living room, Mr. Owen peeled the bag-for-life from his underarm crook, allowing its contents to fall through the split onto the safety of the soft carpet below. Unfastening his trouser clasp, he sat down on the sofa to examine his haul. The boy at the shop had been very helpful, racing off down the aisles to gather everything on the list. He probably should have tipped him. The well-worn bag had broken as he boarded the packed 27A. The whole world sniggered. It was the type of event that would normally have haunted Mr. Owen for days; an acute chagrin that bores itself into the mind, returning its victim to the point of embarrassment at every opportunity it can find. But today, there was no room for deviation of thought. As the colour drained from the sky outside his window, the hour-long slots of late night television provided a countdown. Tonight, his second supper would go untoasted. When the channel switched to the stream of 24-hour news, Mr. Owen knew it was time.

  Though the wind did its best to deter him, breaking in actually proved to be easier than feared. He could not find any security cameras to blind with cheap spray paint, and the door had opened with the slightest of persuasive whispers from the still-shiny crowbar.

  No alarm – he needn’t have waited until the rest of the town was asleep.

  Inside, the moonlight moved with Mr. Owen, guiding him from the building’s entrance to the row of elevator doors on the back wall. Running on autopilot, he pressed the button to call one. A low groan accompanied the opening of the doors, the inside of the elevator lit only by a low-wattage safety bulb. His own silhouetted reflection in the elevator mirror stole a breath from his lungs.

  The building knew what he was about to do, Mr. Owen could tell that much. It watched him round corners, listened to his footsteps. So why wasn’t it putting up a fight? He had been foolish enough to use the elevator – it would have been so easy to trap him between floors, watch on as desperation devoured him from the inside out. But the office block welcomed him in an almost comfortable silence, not even allowing the rats or the wind to suggest other presences on the floors above him. It wanted this, he thought, perhaps even more than him.

  He tackled each floor in almost ritualistic fashion. There was no need to rush. The wielding of the hammer was therapeutic; each light bulb lifting a little of the sleepless weight from his shoulders. By the time he reached the seventh floor, adrenaline was slowly giving way to a feeling of warm content, a comforting itch in his elbows and knees that suggested sleep was finally on its way.

  Mr. Owen made his way down the stairs from the seventh floor, only stopping to smash the occasional strip light. Reaching the bottom, he checked his watch. 2.27. He had wanted to be back at his bedroom window by half-past two, but it didn’t matter – he could watch the lights not coming on tomorrow night. That was, if he could stay awake for it. Throwing open the fire-door to the lobby, Mr. Owen stopped. Just two light bulbs remained, hanging above its centre. He took them both out with one swing.

  Pausing to catch his breath, Mr. Owen felt the office block exhale. 2.29. It was done. Light from the street-lamps cast an orange path between the darkened walls of the reception area, a ceremonial carpet leading from the glass entryway to the company emblem on the back wall. As if making a grand entrance at a benefit dinner, Mr. Owen walked slowly down it, his tired head held high.

  A light came on.

  On the wall behind the reception desk, hidden beneath a plastic cover, it illuminated a block of black photo frames – all filled with the smiling faces of the company’s executives and directors. Mr. Owen could not help but move his eyes across the pictures, looking at the plaques for a name he did not want to see. He found it beneath a frame in the central cluster – beneath a chiselled jaw with ice-white teeth. Mr. Conran – Managing Director. She was in the neighbouring frame, wearing the necklace.

  Outside the office block, the deathless night waited.

  The Gardener

  Paula R. C. Readman

  Iwas busy in the garden when the phone rang, yet again. These days, it’s non-stop. I’m beginning to despise that bloody thing. It’s worse than having nosy neighbours, I can tell you. How on earth did they get my number, I’ll never know. Bloody reporters wanting to know everything!

  Storming into the house, I snatched up the detestable object, ready to give them a piece of my mind when the voice on the other end carried me back to when I was sixteen going on seventeen.

  ‘Hello... Is that Jennifer Underwood? It’s me... Molly... Molly Maclaren,’ the nervous voice spluttered.

  In my mind’s eye, I’m catapulted back to that dreadful, bone-chilling day. I can clearly see the slate-grey sky and feel the cutting, whistling wind. Remembering the mud-filled cemetery with the two black holes, where they laid my parents to rest.

  It makes me shiver even now.

  Standing alone, I watched the gravediggers shovel piles of mud as swiftly as they could before the threatening rain began to fall once again. I listened to the hollow sounds that the stones made as they rattled against the coffin lids. Then the heavens opened to receive the souls of the dearly departed while it pisses down on the rest of us.

  I shivered. Not because of the icy rain that chilled my face, hands and legs, but a strange sense of foreboding, as I suddenly became aware that I may’ve been a little too hasty in what I had done.

  ‘I’m sorry to bother you, but it is Jenny, Jenny Sanders isn’t it?’ the voice drags me back into the present.

  ‘Yes, hello Molly, it’s been such a long time. How are you?’ I said softly, hearing the child that I never was in the tone of my voice. A persona I’ve carried with me since discovering that plants, like me, have a darker side too.

  My parents were a great deal older than most of my classmates’ parents. As a child, you don’t see your differences until someone else points them out to you, which my contemporaries were quick to do. No amount of arguing with them could persuade them that they were wrong in their spiteful remarks. The old man, who came to the school gates, was my father.

  I can still hear their cutting name-calling, ‘Mousy Jenny, mousy Jenny! Grey hair, grey eyes, old and grey before your time... ha, ha, ha! Too grey for your parents, they dumped you on your grandparents... ha, ha, ha!’

  So, I gave up, but not before I gave them a taste of my special medicine. At the school Christmas party, I added a few drops to the fruit punch bowl, just enough to make them green, and vomit over their pretty, party frocks.

  Once I accepted I was different it was easier. I enjoyed being a bit of a loner far more than trying to conform. To me, my fathe
r was far more fascinating than their stupid fathers were, as mine was a botanist.

  Plants were my parents’ life. What my father didn’t know about them wasn’t worth knowing. As a child, I spent many a long hour listening to him as he imparted his knowledge to me. He taught me more than just the common or the Latin names for every plant in our garden. Telling me which were medicinal, and which ones are harmful.

  ‘A garden isn’t a natural habitat for plants, my little Princess,’ he used to say, ‘It is man-made. This means every plant in an English garden has come from somewhere else.’

  This simple fact sparked a fascination in me to find out more. I didn’t just want to know how to grow them, but their history too. Men have fought and died over plants. During the 1500’s, a single bulb of a humble tulip became the cause of a war as men’s passion raged trying to obtain one of these valuable plants. Throughout the Victorian era, the British became great plant hunters as they built up their collection changing our landscape forever.

  Plants are so much more than most people realise. To some the unassuming plants like a Buttercup, Ox-eye daisy, or Rosebay Willowherb is just a weed when they look at them. However, to some a weed can be a thing of beauty, but most won’t know how powerful these plants can be. While many enjoy them for their pure aesthetic beauty, a vase of flowers on a sideboard, or even for their healing properties, the thing that captivates me most about plants is their darker side.

  I would like to be able tell you that what happened to my parents was an unfortunate accident of fate, but all I can say is lucky for me it turned out to look like one. Being an only child may have many advantages especially when one is young. Not having to share your parents’ love and attention may seem wonderful at the time, but as their health declines you find you have to pay it back tenfold, on your own, especially if your parents happen to be elderly. Then that is sooner rather than later.