Counting Sheep by Jenny Palmer, Chamomile tea

The fog was starting to clear. The sheep were on the move. The farmer must be about. He would be bringing them theirdaily rations of sheep nuts to keep them going through the winter. Julia loved watching them. Fat with lambs, they ran in single file to assemble as a flock in the spot where he would dole out the feed. Some stragglers made up the rear. They were the ones who were going to have twins or triplets.  Once they’d eaten, most of the sheep would lie down and chew the cud. It was a sign that they were contented and well-fed. One of them just stood there, staring into space. What was it thinking? she wondered. Did sheep think?

Sometimes she wished she could stop thinking. Turn her brain off. Be more sheep. She was feeling sleep-deprived, having lain awake half the night watching YouTube videos and listening to podcasts. It was her own fault. She needed to take herself in hand again. She’d had these bouts of insomnia before.

As an asthmatic child, when she couldn’t breathe, she would cry out in the night for her mother to come, to give her a pill and rub her back. The attack would be over in twenty minutes or so and her mother would leave, telling her to count sheep. She liked to imagine the sheep jumping over a fence one by one, even though it was not in their nature to jump, except when they were lambs. But it was easier to count them that way. She rarely got to a hundred.

Insomnia was a real bind especially when you had to get up in the morning. The more you tried, the less you were ableto nod off. And she’d tried everything over the years: chamomile tea, cutting out caffeine, not drinking alcohol, going to bed earlier, mindfulness, meditation. Nothing seemed to work. Sometimes she’d get up, make a cup of tea, and readuntil she dropped off, but the house was too cold for that in winter. She’d end up turning on the radio to distract herself. It hadn’t exactly been comforting listening to the BBC World Service and following all the trouble spots around the globe.But at least it had been educational.

Since she’d retired, she’d embraced the new technologies. Nowadays she turned on her tablet to watch films, podcasts, and YouTube videos in bed at night. She liked to feel in touch with the world and hear the various analyses about what was going on behind the scenes. Nighttime was her favourite time of day, a time when she could absorb new information, learn something. And what with Netflix, Primeand Sky Atlantic, she was never short of anything to watch. But of late it was becoming a problem. Teenagers weren’t the only ones addicted to technology.    

Ever since that unhinged, demented, real estate manfrom reality TV had got into power in the US again, things had gone downhill. He was dismantling the rule-based international order. The whole world was living in a state of anxiety, watching his every move. The number of political podcasts had grown exponentially, and it was getting harder and harder to keep up.   She knew missing sleep was an unhealthy habit to get into. Research showed that lack of sleep caused all sorts of health problems. It could even shorten your life. That was something else to worry about.

How could she break the habit? It occurred to her one night that she could only allow herself to fall asleep once she’d found someone or something that gave her hope. Hope that the war in Ukraine might end, hope that there would be a political solution for the conflict in Gaza, or that nations might unite to combat climate change. Something to indicate thatthe world was not falling into chaos and that things would right themselves eventually. It was a hard ask. 

All this searching was sending her brain into overdrive. Not only was she over-tired but over-stimulated, making it impossible to sleep. If the world’s biggest brains couldn’t sort it out, how could she? She had been looking for answers where there were none. No one could tell her things would get better. The truth was it could go either way. Better to concentrate on the people and places around her, focus on them. Better to accept her limitations, like the Serenity Prayer said, and stop worrying. 

She managed to allow herself to fall asleep that night and didn’t wake up till after eleven. By the time she got up, the sheep had already congregated by the gate and were contentedly chewing the cud.  

About the author

Jenny Palmer writes short stories, poetry, memoir and family history. Her collections 'Keepsake and Other Stories.' 2018, and 'Butterflies and Other Stories,' 2024, were published by Bridge House, and are on Amazon. 'Witches, Quakers and Nonconformists,' 2022, is sold at the Pendle Heritage Centre, Barrowford

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Hope and Gloria by Caroline Moir, Macchiato

Thea assumed they were named in an ironic nod to the patriotic hymn, favourite of promenaders and rugby players alike. Were the promenaders under-the-skin rugby players or was it the other way about? 

Their parents were anything but patriotic. Their mother gave birth to them in an old bath tub in the field at the side of their house. She had emptied out the water and scrubbed it clean of sheep’s saliva and chewed grass. The mother had collected fallen oak leaves and filled it in the autumn of the year, which was dry for once. It would have been very awkward to give birth to them in a bath tub full of slippery leaves and in pouring rain, they would have been like eels.

They were eleven just coming up to twelve. They had been to school only the once when they were four coming up five. With inexorable logic they said they had been, and refused to go again and their parents set themselves to teach the girls at home. The natural world surrounded them. Their house backed onto woods and looked out over low fells to the Bay where there were quicksands, where cockling tractors went down under the eye of their owners, experienced cocklers at fifteen years old, and where there had been a tragedy of inexperienced cocklers. 

 It was a three-storey house with small shuttered windows set in the grey stone walls, and doors they could bar from the inside and an adjoining stable at the rear of the house with its own half-stable door and a cobbled incline leading up to the bank on the edge of the pine copse where a lane led to the hamlet closest to them. 

It was a barn really, with wide wood panelled flooring on the second and third floors. Thea had been invited in once for coffee and Hope and Gloria had sat there looking at her sidelong. She and their mother had nothing to talk about, Thea felt very commonplace beside her, and she wasn’t asked again. Nor had Thea invited their mother.  

They were advanced scholastically, though Thea didn’t know why. They were expert runners and the day when she wasn’t at work, she saw them from her cottage running away with loping, long strides, extra long considering their height, over the rocky out crops. They could calculate the elevation and the breadth of the oak trees using applied trigonometry, they had ‘swallowed a dictionary’ as their dentist remarked when they presented their perfect needle-sharp teeth to him, they had read Shakespeare. They read everything. They wrote in their notebooks observations on the seasons and the flora and fauna they encountered. When Thea asked them if they were lonely with no friends nearby, no friends at all as far as she could see, they replied that they ‘considered it an idyllic childhood’. 

Now they had to go to school. Their mother wanted to return to her work as an ecologist and their father, though he had taught them rudiments of French and German, could no longer spare the time because he had been made head of languages in the local sixth form college. Dressed in uniform, and with identical rucksacks for their books, Thea saw them on the first day of the new school year walking the mile down the grassy path that led from their home to the track that began at Thea’s cottage which led to the main road where they could catch the bus to the comprehensive. 

Thea drove in the opposite direction to her school. She wondered how long their obedience would last. The thought popped into her mind unbidden. Just as the open nature of the building where she taught popped into her mind on the morning of the Dunblane massacre. The caretaker with the built-up boot had come post haste to tell her in break.   

During the long golden days of September and on into October, reminiscent of the year they were born, they walked composedly to and from, the request stop which had been put into the schedule especially for Hope and Gloria.  After half-term for several days Thea didn’t see them but the weather had broken – just in time for Hallowe’en, she thought, spoiling the trick or treating of her pupils – and assumed their parents had taken to driving them to and from school. Then as she was leaving at the beginning of the second week, she saw them get into a taxi. She waylaid them on Friday, her day off, she was working a point-eight timetable. She asked why they were being taken by taxi instead of by bus. 

They spoke in unison, ‘The girls on the school run were horrid to us. They called us weirdos.’

Thea could possibly see why they had called Hope and Gloria ‘weirdos’ but – had they done something to provoke it? 

‘Did you talk to them?’ 

‘We didn’t talk to them. They addressed remarks to us.’

‘Perhaps you should have done’, Thea said gently. Then changing the subject briskly. ‘Are you coming down to trick or treat in my house? You did last year. If so, I will get some sweets.’

‘We don’t know.’ 

They didn’t come trick or treating. Thea was somewhat regretful but relieved. They were growing up. Last year they had masks they’d created themselves. Foxes masks. Thea had commented they shouldn’t let themselves be seen by the farmer because he would shoot them. They stared at her in disdain. Thea decided, not for the first time, for all their cleverness, they had no sense of humour. 

She didn’t see them during the second half of term because she was directing a production at her school which involved her staying late and going in her on her day off. It was very hard work, unpaid, but it was rewarding, she was doing something creative. On the eve of the penultimate day of the autumn term, it snowed heavily and the head closed two days early, because the staff had nowhere the leave their cars. 

Hope and Gloria’s school stayed open and Thea saw them equably tramping through snow up to the rim of their wellington boots. She hoped they were fleece-lined and they had got thick socks on, and a thought occurred to her, they were biding their time. 

January came, and then February, then March. Thea saw the girls at the request stop in the mornings, but she didn’t see them get out of the taxi in the afternoon, because she returned later. She saw them pass on Friday when she had her day off. Did they go to school she thought? They were composed, but they weren’t lively as when they were home-schooled, and their rucksacks were suspiciously lean. Thea’s pupils had bags that were bulging with books and PE kits and ingredients for Home Skills classes. 

She waylaid them again on a Friday. It was the beginning of April – Easter was late that year much to the annoyance of the council which had to plan holidays around it. 

She asked, ‘Did you have a good day?’ 

It was Hope who answered, ‘I had a good day, but Gloria didn’t. She was called names in hockey.’  

‘Do you do hockey in the spring term? We have netball.’

Gloria said, ‘Some of us do hockey and some of us do netball.’ 

‘Are you not in the same class?’ 

‘They split us up. They said we were disruptive.’

It didn’t ring true to Thea. She didn’t imagine the girls were disruptive and the PE teachers she knew were too careful of their pitches to play on them in the winter months. Also, it didn’t ring true to separate two sisters of the same age and of the same isolated upbringing. If it was true the head of year was deficient in their empathy for these particular students. 

Hope and Gloria walked on quietly but Thea caught a glance between them – and she could detect no sign of games equipment in Gloria’s bag. 

On the Monday of the second week in April, Thea saw them waiting for the taxi. It must be costing their parents a fortune, she thought, but no more than breakfast and after school clubs. On Tuesday she didn’t see them, on Wednesday she didn’t see them either. She supposed they’d caught some bug which was going the rounds and they were off sick. On Thursday she was off early and back after dark on a trip to Manchester. 

On Friday morning there came a knock at her door. The girls’ father stood outside. He wore a worried expression. Had Thea seen Hope and Gloria? They hadn’t come home last night. They said they were poorly on Tuesday and Wednesday and they were excused school as they had settled down very well and were liking it so much. 

Thea was surprised at this, but she said she hadn’t seen them, she would look out for them, and suggested they ring the year head. The parents had phoned. Hope and Gloria weren’t marked in on Thursday.  

‘Then ring the police.’ 

They had done. Last night. Police were scouring the countryside. The RNLI and the coastguard were searching the bay. 

A mountain rescue helicopter clattered overhead. 

They bided their time, Thea thought. 

They wouldn’t have gone down to the bay. They were mountain people, not sea people. They had escaped to their lair and would come when they were ready and they had punished their parents enough.

About the author

Caroline Moir has one novel published, Brockenspectre, which won the Lakeland Book of The Year Fiction Award 2022, a number of stories, and plays commissioned and produced, among which Lady Anne Clifford - a Woman Cast Out https://www.thegreatbritishbookshop.co.uk ; carolinemoir.author@gmail.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/caroline.moir.16 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/moircaroline/ Threads: Caroline Moir (@moircaroline)

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The Deal by Nazia Kamali, cold coffee

In the air-conditioned cavity of the Blue Stars café at the GMS Road of Dehradun, Shahid sat stiff, staring at the two contracts placed before him. His hand was half outstretched to pick a cinnamon roll when the buyer presented her proposition. Shahid’s fingers had curled back into a fist that dropped in his lap as his mouth turned sour.

Ms Ray, the buyer, tapped her fingers on the table. “What do you say?” Her eyebrows stretched like a quiver ready to shoot.

Shahid bit his lower lip.

Two girls on their right clicked pictures with a bun topped with a generous layer of velvety blueberry cake. The girl on the table in front of them, hardly in her twenties, giggled as her partner fed her a taco with his hands. The server, wearing a black apron with the logo of the café, over a red t-shirt and blue jeans, weaved her way to the counter.

“Let me know what you decide.” Ms Ray instructed and left.

Developing a mobile application that detects and announces objects in front of the mobile’s camera to aid the movement of individuals with visual impairments was Shahid’s dream. He had the blueprint of the application for two years before Naved, a high-school friend, offered his support. They discussed use-case scenarios, wrote code snippets in Python, and tested the program's output on virtual machines for several months before preparing the proposal to sell the application. They lacked the financial resources to launch it on their own, and no investor was interested in a collaboration.

How could Ms Ray think he would agree to such a scandalous suggestion?

Naved was the one who brought the buyer. When Shahid told him that he could not see Ms Ray alone, Naved refused to listen to any excuse.

“Since when have you started doubting yourself?” He had dismissed Shahid’s fears with the wave of a hand. “You were always the smarter one.”

“I’m,” Shahid had slumped deeper into the antique, wrought-iron garden chair at Naved’s palatial house, “I’m just wondering if they’ll agree to deal with me. You are the man they want.”

The glasses of sweet, beige coloured, almond milk that Naved’s mother always prepared when Shahid visited stood on the table between them. Naved handed one to Shahid and took a few mouthfuls from his before speaking, “They want to meet the developer of the application, and you know everything there is to tell. Just be there at four.”

Ms Ray had no idea what she was asking of him.

The stuffy bus ride on the cruel June day covered Shahid in a slick of dust. He took off his clothes and stood under the shower. The water in the overhead tank of the building was boiling even at six in the evening. Shahid cursed and came out.

Ms Ray had given him two days to mull over the offer – cut Naved out, sell the application as the sole owner, and enjoy all the glory that comes when it succeeds. In return, she wanted him to reduce the price by thirty per cent. “You’ll still get more than your original share, and we’ll take care of the legalities, including any copyright claims filed by your partner.”

She had winked and presented him with two agreements – one listed both Shahid and Naved as developers, while the other had only Shahid’s name printed on it. “All you have to do is change a few lines of code here and there to make the program structure different. I’m sure it's easy for someone of your calibre.”

Eyeing him, she smiled in a way that made Shahid’s lunch curdle in his stomach. “You have both worked hard on the project, but your partner keeps using I instead of we,” she emphasised the I and we. “It’s time you get the credit that you deserve.”

Suffocated by the thoughts, Shahid opened the only window of the apartment. The slanting rays of streaming sunlight highlighted the splotches of dal and gravy on the floor that he had been too busy to wipe.

The bottle of Lysol that Shahid fetched from the bathroom cabinet was almost empty. He trickled a few droplets into the bucket half full of water, dipped a rag, and scrubbed the floor. Dip and scrub, dip and scrub, he worked through the length of the apartment.

Rhea, his ex-girlfriend, always reminded him to clean the place before it started resembling a chicken coop. “My bathroom is cleaner than your bedroom. Do something about it.” She would shout and rummage through the pile of clothes on the floor at the foot of the bed, sniffing his T-shirts. “Wash them today if you want to come anywhere near me.”

When she asked him to meet her at Starbucks last Friday, he thought she wanted to make another reel. Being a mildly successful food influencer with 5.2 K followers on Instagram, she always went to aesthetically appealing places. For the first time, Shahid didn’t mind paying the exorbitant amount for a cup of coffee that they could drink at a cheaper price at any other place. He was going to be rich soon, but before he could share the news, she blurted, “This is not working anymore.”

“What is not working?”

“You, me, us.” She sounded well-rehearsed.

Shahid’s heart galloped like a racehorse. “You don’t really mean that.” He wiped the tiny beads of sweat around his lips.

“Yes, I do.” She looked straight into his eyes.

“Why?”

“Because life is too short to waste.” She checked something on her mobile phone.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

Rhea typed on her phone before responding, “What I mean is, you’ll always be Naved’s sidekick.”

Bile rose in Shahid’s throat.

“I waited and waited for you to outgrow him, but he is like the crutch you can’t walk without.”

Shahid wanted to dissolve in thin air.

“Consider this advice as my parting gift,” Rhea picked up her bag, “learn to take charge or you’ll never amount to anything.”

The bells attached to the strap of the handbag jingled on her way out.

The floor became as clean as one with cracked, faded tiles can be. Shahid threw the dirty water in the drain and washed the rag before sitting on the second-hand turtle green cushioned chair he bought from a mouldy shop at Indira market.

Sweat dripped down his spine as Shahid rested his back and closed his eyes. The chair’s meagre cushion felt rough and thin. He needed to buy a more comfortable one. He also needed to buy a powerful laptop – one with a faster GPU and bigger RAM, and his apartment needed a makeover to allow him to receive respected visitors. And to meet those people, he had to buy crisp clothes and shiny shoes – the ones he had now did not create the impression he wanted to make on people.

Developing one application was not going to suffice. He needed more work, and for that, he needed people to know what he was capable of.

If he sold the application with Naved, he would have enough to pay his debts and start a new life, but if he sold it alone, no one would dare tell him that he would amount to nothing. No one will look at him as someone’s second. Instead, he will become the man who rose from the ashes and conquered the world. The deal will seal the mouths of all those who questioned his capabilities. Shahid Shirazi is not the little, ugly frog destined to die in a small, discarded well. He is the shark who surpasses his strongest opponent in one strike.

The application is his brainchild. He would have completed it without Naved. He might have taken longer, but he would have definitely completed it without any help.

Sure, Naved supplied his few cents, giving his opinions and checking the codes occasionally, but Shahid was the one who did all the legwork – he created the master plan, he drew the flowchart for decision-making, and drafted the step-by-step algorithm. He was the one who spent sleepless nights, staring at his laptop screen, pushing one more line of code to refine the application while Naved attended fancy conferences in foreign lands.

Shahid opened his eyes. The fan was gyrating with lethargy. His vest, almost wet with sweat, clung to his chest. The air conditioning stopped working three weeks ago. Repairing it was tantamount to ruining the entire monthly budget. Until when was he supposed to live like a nameless beggar?

Deep breaths, Shahid, deep breaths, he commands himself. Think clearly.

He was the only one who can change his own life.

The contracts were still in his backpack. Shahid took out the one with both their names.

“Hi, Naved.” “What’s up, genius?” “How is the mobile application coming along, scientist?”

Shahid’s mind swirled with the words of all those who ignored him whenever he walked with Naved.

“No,” he seethed under his breath.

“No,” he cried out loud.

“No,” he tore the contract into bits.

By the time the news would reach Naved, Shahid would be swimming in money and fame.

About the author

Nazia is a writer based in Dehradun. Her novella Multicoloured Muffler was published in the Rize Novella Anthology by Running Wild Press. Her shorter works can be found in magazines such as The Tint, FemAsia, Caustic Frolic, Rigorous, Café Lit, Author Publish Magazine, Juste Literary, and 50-Word Story. https://www.instagram.com/naziak_writes/.

Did you enjoy the story? Would you like to shout us a coffee? Half of what you pay goes to the writers and half towards supporting the project (web site maintenance, preparing the next Best of book etc.)