Under Seige

 Brigita Orel

weak tea and Merlot (not together)

When I am brought home, Tim has been informed about the hostage situation at the bank; warned, perhaps, about my fragile state.

Through the kitchen window I watch the taillights of the police car. Behind me, Tim asks, ‘Darling, are you alright?’

He hands me a cup of tea. 

‘The girls?’

‘I put them to bed an hour ago. They were restless because you weren’t here.’

His face looks drawn and ashen. ‘I heard about it on the radio. I called the police right away and told them you were in there. What happened?’

I sip my tea, too tired to answer.

‘The officer said two robbers took hostages. Said we were lucky there was only one customer in the bank. I told him where to stuff his luck,’ he continues savagely. ‘Did they hurt you?’

He holds my hand in his. 

‘It’s alright. We’ll talk tomorrow.’ My eyes flit to his. ‘Or whenever you feel ready.’

He hugs me until it hurts.

‘I’m relieved that you’re home safe and sound, you know? Just happy you’re here.’ His voice trembles. My heart does too.

In bed, I stare at the ceiling. Tim tries to be supportive and stay awake with me. He soon slips into oblivion, and his features soften on the pillow. Envious, I watch him in the light that seeps through the blinds from the street. 

Just before daybreak, I succumb to exhaustion. I sleep for an hour before I scream myself awake and frighten the girls in the adjoining room. 

I hear Tim rush upstairs and calm Emma and Jade. 

When I enter the kitchen, he’s already throwing out the toast which got burnt while he was getting the girls to brush their teeth, and dress.

He gives me a peck on the cheek. ‘I’ll take the girls out after breakfast if you’d like to go back to sleep.’

‘I don’t think I’ll be able to avoid the nightmares, anyway.’

His gaze is offering to listen if I’m ready to talk, but I avert my eyes.

When he puts the plate with eggs and sausages in front of me, he hugs me around my shoulders. ‘Love you, Kate.’

I caress his hand over my heart and close my eyes. He and the girls were all I thought about while the madmen rampaged through the bank, threatening, shooting at the ceiling. I jump at the memory. I’m on my feet before I realize the loud bang wasn’t a rifle shot but the kitchen door which slipped out of Jade’s hand.

‘Can’t you be more careful?’ When Jade’s face crumples, I hate this angry person who shouts.

Tim looks from Jade to me and back, probably trying to decide whom to calm first.

‘It’s okay, Jay. Mom’s just tired.’ He carries the three-year-old to her chair. Emma skips across the room behind them, oblivious of the tension in the air.

‘Hop up,’ he tells Emma as she climbs her chair. ‘For you two, princesses, I made pancakes. Raspberry or strawberry?’ Tim holds up two jars of marmalade and the girls’ eyes soften with craving as they try to make the difficult choice.

I stand by the table, watching Tim effortlessly distract Jade from her fright, throwing me a worried glance over the kids’ heads. I look out the sunlit window which feels like a portal out of the effort that everyday life seems to have suddenly become.

My hands shake as I sit down to eat, avoiding everyone’s eyes. I feel guilty for letting my twitchiness get the best of me in front of my daughters and angry that I’m not allowed to express my emotions.

My fork slips and clatters to the tiles, and I jolt again. I pick it up and catch Jade’s stare. I expect her reproach – ‘Mommy, can’t you be more careful?’ – but I see only the child’s delight while munching on her huge pancake. So easily forgotten and forgiven. If only.

That evening I tell Tim how I slipped into the bank just before closing hour. The tellers were closing up their windows, except for a young girl with her dark hair ends dyed bright red. I tell him how at first I thought I found myself in a film when two masked men entered. One of them pointed his rifle at me and I raised my hands without him having to ask. I still feel stupid for that.

Tim listens and tries to understand what I’ve been through. When we go to bed, I turn my back to him and he doesn’t try to reach me.

He wakes me at five a.m. when I’m sweating and tossing in a nightmare, hearing the teller scream when threatened by the gun. 

Giving up on sleep, I prepare breakfast instead. By the time the others wake up, the grease on the bacon has curdled, but they eat it anyway.

We go for a walk down to the beach where the girls gather stones and seashells. It’s warm and humid but I can’t bear to take off my cardigan. Soft as it is, it feels like armour to my shattered self. Tim looks at me with questioning eyes but doesn’t comment.

Jade wants me to read them a story before bed. ‘The one about pirates!’ Emma claps and jumps on the couch. ‘Yes! Pirates and parrots!’

‘No, no pirates tonight. Let’s read something nice and happy,’ I say because I can’t stand to read about guns, even picture book ones. ‘How about Cinderella?’

Jade’s face falls and Emma starts to protest, but I sit them down on either side of me and start reading with a soft voice so they have to calm down if they want to hear the story.

After two days, this is the first night I put the girls to bed. When I manage to extricate myself from their hugs, I join Tim in the living room watching Wallander on the telly. The wine he serves relaxes me, and I refuse Tim’s suggestion to change channels if I don’t feel like watching a police drama. I didn’t think of the robbery for hours at a time today. But the fear is not gone; it is only metamorphosing into anger.

During commercials, he turns to me, slowly, sleepily.

‘You look relaxed,’ he says. I know he felt lost when he couldn’t get me to talk to him. We are a sharing couple. Or we were until I was taken hostage. 

‘I feel better,’ I whisper and kiss him. He feels warm, familiar, winy. Somehow that makes me feel threatened. But the feeling vanishes as he cups my face in his soft illustrator’s palms.

‘I was out of my mind when I heard about the robbery.’ His voice falters. ‘You mean the life to me.’

‘I’m sorry I scared you, Tim.’

Our kiss is desperate, re-connecting us after too long. He pulls at my cardigan and the sleeves slip down my arms. My skin breaks out in gooseflesh despite the warm room. 

‘Tim …’ I mumble.

‘Hm?’

He keeps kissing me, and my hesitation dissolves. But when his hand reaches to unzip my jeans, I freeze. 

‘What is it?’

‘Nothing. Let’s go upstairs.’

Tim turns on the light in the bedroom, sweeps me up and carries me to the bed. Breath catches in my throat when he drops me on top of the bedspread and covers me with his heavy body. He’s missed me. I can feel it in the way his hand pulls the t-shirt up my back resolutely. Panic rises in my throat at the intimacy, and I taste the heavy acid of the Merlot at the back of my mouth. 

‘No, Tim …’

‘But we need to get you undressed, Kate.’ He chuckles into my neck and licks the vein pulsing frantically.

‘Stop.’ I try to push him away.

He still thinks I’m joking.

‘Stop! No.’

When I push him again, he collapses off me.

‘Kate?’

‘Just leave me alone!’

‘Good God, Kate! What’s wrong?’

I cower by the headboard, hugging my knees, pulling the t-shirt as low as it will go. After two days, I finally cry, but I don’t feel relieved, only more terrified.

When he lifts my chin to look at my face, I pull away.

‘Tell me what’s wrong, love,’ he pleads on his knees.

‘What’s wrong, Daddy?’ comes like an echo from the dishevelled, sleepy Emma at the bedroom door.

I see and hear her, but the images can’t penetrate through to me. I’m so angry, so frightened and disgusted, my vision is blurry and there’s ringing in my ears.

‘Go to bed, honey, I’ll come tuck you in in a minute,’ Tim reassures the girl.

The doorknob rattles when she lets go of the door and tiptoes back to her warm bed.

Tim gathers me in his arms and cuddles me as though I were the girl who just got woken up in the middle of the night.

‘You’re home, you’re safe.’

I whimper in his chest and shake my head. 

‘What is it then? What didn’t you tell me?’

Him knowing me so well makes me wail aloud. I clutch at him and let him rock me. I keep whispering, ‘I’m sorry,’ but he shushes me.

I know it will be in the papers, if it hasn’t been already. But that’s the outside world. This here, this is my world. The thought of my husband and daughters thinking less of me punches me with a searing pain just underneath my collar bone.

‘I held the gun,’ I mumble into his chest.

‘What?’

‘He made me point the gun at the girl. She was so young, Tim. Pretty, all smiles. But then she cried like a baby.’

Tim groans and I feel the rumble like an earthquake under his ribs.

‘I was shaking so hard I was terrified the gun would go off. That made me shake harder.’ I wipe my eyes with his shirt, but the tears keep coming.

‘I hold the gun in my dreams every time I close my eyes.’

I pull away from Tim. I can’t bear the contact. ‘Her eyes were like Emma’s, huge and warm. I could’ve killed her.’

He pulls me into a hug although I resist. ‘Your life depended on it, Kate. You had no choice. Imagine what the girls and I would do if you hadn’t come home on Friday. Think about that, think about the girls. You returned safe and sound to them. And that girl is okay, too. Probably terrified but unharmed.’

I understand his reasoning. But there are parts of me which know he is wrong. I had a choice.

‘I hate those men.’ Terror still churns in my belly, but it seems with every breath a mouthful of it is released into air where it oxidizes and fizzles into mist. 

Tim goes to take care of Emma, while I climb under the covers and try to calm down.

‘She was fast asleep, sitting against the headboard. She didn’t need me to tell her there were no monsters under her bed this time,’ he says when he returns.

The mattress dips as he climbs in. ‘Feel better?’

‘Yeah,’ I say softly. ‘You were great, taking care of the girls. And of me. Thank you.’

He gathers me to him and tucks the covers in around me. I feel safe, or a part of me does anyway. Another part which will keep me awake at night wonders whether I’d have been able to pull the trigger had the robber ordered me to. I might claim it would’ve been for my daughters’ sake because they need their mother, but that would’ve been a lie. I would’ve done it for my sake. Selfish monsters don’t skulk under beds; they hide comfortably snuggled in clean sheets.

About the author

Brigita Orel has published short stories and poems in numerous literary magazines. Her work was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. She currently studies creative writing at Swansea University. www.bsoulflowers.blogspot.com 

Spring Sunshine

 Sharon Phillips

tea, white, no sugar

Keith feels the March sun on his face through the train’s window. It is the first time in five months that it has shone strongly enough for its warmth to be perceptible. Or is it that he hasn’t noticed it before? He knows that he has been preoccupied over the winter. Remote even, or so his wife Jane has claimed in one of her frequent perorations on the matter.

 

‘You should be enjoying your retirement, not moping, darling,’ she had concluded. Keith suspects that the ‘darling’ was an afterthought. He looks through the window at the Hampshire countryside. Green fields - tick. Daffodils - tick. Lambs - tick. All in their proper season and all perfectly agreeable, of course, but just - what? Predictable? Safe? Something like that, anyway —

 

‘Refreshments, sir?’ He sits up straight at the steward’s question and feels as if he has been caught drifting off in a meeting.

 

‘Tea, please. White. No sugar,’ Keith says, in an effort to show that he has been paying attention rather than because he wants the tea. Not that it matters; he is alone, for once. That is the problem with retirement: no time on your own.

 

Keith knows that is not the only problem. He and Jane have established a routine of lunches, walks, visits. 

 

Keith has done the redecorating that seems to be obligatory for newly retired men and says that he is enjoying retirement whenever the question is asked.  The truth of the matter is that he is more bored with the predictability of retirement than he was with his work as Vice Principal of a Further Education College. That is why he accepted an offer of consultancy at the college in the Midlands to which he is now travelling.

Keith glances out of the window again. Ships, cranes, lorry parks: Southampton. He’ll have thirty minutes here before his connection to Birmingham. If there is a newsagent on the station he might be able to find a decent book to read.

Keith sits on a bench outside the station and leafs through the novel he has bought, which is more demanding than the thrillers he has grown used to reading in recent years. His enjoyment of the  prospect of reading it is interrupted by a shout. Keith looks up, to see a young woman trying to call a group of teenagers to order.

 

‘Guys,’ she says, ‘guys. Listen up.’ There is a pleading tone to her voice and her face is flushed; Keith suspects that she is not far from tears, although the teenagers’ behaviour seems unexceptional. He sighs and stands up. Perhaps she could do with a hand? But it is not his responsibility to help her, he thinks, he is retired. With that thought Keith feels his heart lift.

 

Keith settles back onto the bench and feels the warm sunshine on his face. He opens his book and starts to read.

About the author

Sharon retired in 2015 from a career in education and decided to try her hand at writing stories and poems, something she hadn’t done since she was a teenager. She lives in Dorset with her husband, two dogs and two cats.

Little Bit on the Side

 Jazz Jackson

double espresso...short, but with an added kick!

Helena peaked out the window from behind the curtains, anxiety a knot in the pit of her stomach. The beam of the solitary street lamp showed nothing aside from the neighbour's cat licking its arse on the hood of a parked car. She swallowed, the motion painful in her suddenly dry throat. She threw a glance at the clock on the wall and began to pace nervously, up and down, up and down. Where was he? He should have been there ten minutes ago and her husband, Greg, was due home in the next fifteen. Even if he arrived now she'd have to bundle him into the back yard and through the kitchen door. She simply couldn't risk Greg seeing him. The truth would destroy the foundation of trust their fifteen years of marriage had been built upon. Well, initially anyway. 

Another glance at the clock. Two minutes had passed. Helena could feel the heat rising in her face, no doubt colouring her cheeks in spatters of pink. This always happened when she was angry, scared or frustrated. Or all three, as she was now. She needed this, though. This...this bit on the side. This release. It was the only thing that kept her sane in the humdrum of the everyday life she shared with Greg. 

Was that the purr of an engine? She raced to the front door, yanking it open before the car had even come to a stop outside the house. The engine cut out and the driver's door opened. The man who emerged had guilt scrawled upon his face. He knew – goddamn it, he knew – how important punctuality was, especially tonight, a Friday night, when Greg might have left work early. He mouthed “Sorry!” as he jogged up the drive, his bag bouncing against his hip with the movement.

Helena opened her mouth to speak, to tell him to shut up and quit wasting more time...but before the words could pass her lips, there was a flash of headlights as another car came rolling up the street. No, she shook her head, backing up towards the house. No!

Greg.

His car, a beat up old thing that had barely passed its MOT, came to a halt in the middle of the street. With its engine still running and headlights still beaming, the door creaked open and Greg, almost as creaky himself, hoisted himself upwards and out of his seat. The look on his face said it all. He knew. There was no lying her way out of this. They'd been discovered. There'd be no more secret rendezvous. There'd be no more bi-weekly fifteen minutes of illicit pleasure. 

“Helena?” said Greg, his tone scorched by disbelief, “What is this? What are you doing? I knew something wasn't right between us but...but I never imagined this!”

She surveyed her husband, a portly, ruddy-faced man who could have graced the cover of GQ when they had first met all those years ago. Guilt gnawed away at her but she couldn't deny her feelings. She glanced up at the comparatively taller, much leaner man before her. 

“Just give it to me,” she said, her voice a husky murmur, “Just give it to me dammit.”

“How long, Helena?” Greg cried, barrelling towards them and shoving himself between their bodies, “Weeks, months? Tell me! How could you do this? We were meant to be in this together!”

She gazed into his glistening eyes sadly and raised her hand to cup his cheek. He jerked away with a hiss, as though her almost touch had burnt. She curled the offending hand, using her fist to muffle the anguished cry that erupted from her soul.

“A year!” she sobbed, “A whole year! I needed it. I was weak. I couldn't help myself!”

Greg whirled around and grappled with the man behind him. After a tense few seconds of shouting and slapping, the man's bag fell to the pavement and its contents spilled out for all to see.

“Pizza! Pizza!” Greg shrieked as he stamped upon the offending box furiously, spittle flying from his mouth. The delivery man backed away, his hands raised in surrender. 

“Go!” Helena wailed, “Flee while you can!” 

He didn't need telling twice as he promptly swivelled and dived head first into his car. The engine roared into life and the squeal of tires upon tarmac announced his departure. 

“All this time,” Greg hissed, still kicking at the pizza box, “All this time you've been making me salads and grilled fish and lecturing me about diabetes and you've been munching down secret takeaway pizzas for a year!”

Helena, tears coursing down her cheeks, knelt down and tried to pull the box out from beneath his feet. It was too tortuous to watch. It had cost her a fiver! She wrenched it free, peeling back the lid as Greg raged on. She sighed. Slightly smushed but edible. His boots hadn't infiltrated the cardboard. 

She shrieked as the box was pulled from her grasp and watched in horror as Greg began tearing the pizza apart, piece by piece, and shovelling it into his mouth. Stringy cheese coated his face and the sauce, barbecue – her favourite – smeared itself around his lips like a grotesque imitation of lipstick. 

Helena stared at her husband, hoping to God that marriage counsellors were as cheap as pizzas. 

About the author  

Jazz Jackson is a Lincoln-based writer who harbors dreams to become a New York Times bestselling author. In her spare time, Jazz, drinks copious amounts of chai tea and blogs about her favourite subject: books. You can check out her book reviews at http://swooningoverfictionalmen.wordpress.com.  

The First

Richard Hough

espresso, extra shot 

I never knew her name though her face haunts me still. When I entered the waiting room at Winchester’s railway station, she was already there, sitting alone, staring into the past. The first thing I noticed about her was those beautiful, sapphire-blue eyes. Even in my student days, when Frankie was telling us to Relax and Band Aid was wondering if “they” knew it was Christmas, I was attracted by a woman’s eyes above any other physical feature; it was what initially drew me to my wife some ten years after this brief encounter.

Closing the door to keep out the fumes of passing diesel trains, I tried to avoid any awkwardness by greeting the stranger with a cheery “hello!”

A sad, wizened face turned towards me and I was immediately reminded of my boyhood neighbour who constantly complained about me and made my life a misery. How I hated that old hag. This traveller dourly returned my greeting.

“Goot evenink,” she murmured. It was then I saw something, deep within those eyes. Torment was present; heartache perhaps for a lost lover? No, that wasn’t it. It was pain of a much different kind.

Having been raised in Birmingham, I was used to meeting people from different ethnic

 backgrounds. Many were, for example, immigrants from India and Pakistan. My closest

boyhood friend was of Afro-Caribbean origin but I had never encountered anyone with an

 accent such as this stranger possessed. I seized upon the novelty to strike up a conversation 

which would have such a lasting impact on the rest of my life.

  

                  

After we had exchanged the usual pleasantries concerning the weather and interminable delays to the Sunday train timetables, I grew a little braver.

“Excuse me for being rude but I’m guessing you aren’t local. May I ask where you’re from?”

“I am Russian but I haf lived in Enkland for many years.”

Being inquisitive, I wanted to know more about her homeland.

“How olt are you?” she demanded, those sorrowful eyes looking into mine. I replied I was to remain a teenager for just a few weeks more.

She explained when she was my age she lived in abject poverty in Petrograd, the Russian capital at the time. Her father had gone off to fight Germany but the superior fire power of the German army had proved too much for her countrymen whose morale was already low. Many Russians were killed, her own father never returning from the war. Csar Nicholas II (she almost spat the name) lived in luxury whilst she and so many ordinary people went hungry. The people in the capital city of this huge country had virtually nothing to eat, even bread being in short supply. Their leader was weak; all he could do was to keep dissolving parliament, each time to little or no effect.

The winters were always cold and harsh and eventually people took to the streets in anger and frustration. As those steely eyes stared into mine, a tear formed. Her ageing, husky voice almost faltered as she explained why she had joined that awful revolution. She had seen so many terrible things in March 1917. Men did such awful things to each other, things which surely no deity could reasonably forgive. Worse followed until even soldiers eventually deserted their leader.

As a young, hungry woman who had lost her father and had younger siblings to help feed, this tormented soul had joined the forces of rebellion. The horrors she had only previously witnessed from afar, she became guilty of committing herself. Those same atrocities she had condemned before hunger had consumed her sense of morality. She forfeited her eternal soul to help replace one form of tyranny with another and it was the futility of this which distressed her most, a view she readily voiced.

Even now she was elderly she still could not forget the abhorrence of those times. They haunted her dreams but worse, they pursued her wherever she went. Her people, she said, sacrificed so much for nothing more than endless years of new horrors. She prayed daily her countrymen would once again be at liberty.

As the tears came more freely from those tired, angst-ridden eyes, this stranger whom I suddenly knew so well, implored me to enjoy my freedom and live without hatred. I knew I could help her end the nightmares.                                                  

I often relive every detail of that evening wondering if the woman, whose name I never asked, found peace when I closed her eyes for the last time. Since then I have supplied an end to many other stories but this is the one I remember most, my first.

A Birthday Present

Sharon Phillips

a pony ('the little drink with a big kick')

 On Lil's fiftieth birthday she was woken by toothache.

‘I’ll take it out now,' the dentist said. Back then you got knocked out with chloroform for an extraction. Lil was already faint from the gas when the dentist spoke again.

‘May as well do the others too.'

'Alright,' said Lil. She didn’t like to ask him what he meant.

When Lil came round, the dentist gave her a mirror so she could see his work. She looked at the reflection of her toothless mouth and closed her eyes.

“I’ll fit you a nice new set,’ the dentist said, 'happy birthday.'

About the author

Sharon retired in 2015 from a career in education and decided to try her hand at writing stories and poems, something she hadn’t done since she was a teenager. She lives in Dorset with her husband, two dogs and two cats.

A Bridge over Troubled Waters

Robin Wrigley 

a bottle of still mineral water 

As I turned the corner and climbed the pavement leading up to the bridge over the river, a figure caught my eye. Though my mind was on other matters, I instantly recognised the young waitress who only a couple of hours before had served my lunch in the hotel restaurant.

     I could have sworn she was attempting to hoist herself onto the bridge wall but stopped when she saw me, dropped back to the pavement and just stared ahead along the river.

     ‘Hello – are you okay?’ I ventured unsure if I should intervene, worried I could be wrong and my approach rebuked.

     ‘I’m okay thanks – you startled me that’s all,’ she glanced briefly in my direction before turning back to the river. I think I caught a hint of an eastern European accent but I couldn’t be sure as she spoke so softly.

     She was slight with blonde hair fashioned in a pony-tail just as she was in the restaurant. No longer wearing her uniform she was dressed in jeans and a faded red hoodie. The strangest thing was she did not have any shoes on, odd in mid-October.

     ‘Are you sure? It looked to me as though you were trying to climb on to the wall. Where on earth are your shoes? Aren’t your feet cold?

     ‘Really I’m okay – please leave me alone - please.’ She wasn’t rude just sad and pleading, I was tempted to acquiesce but something said I should persist. 

     ‘Look I’m sorry if you think I’m being nosey but I think if we got off this bridge and had a chat I might be of some help.’

     This last remark seemed as though it sliced through her control and she sank to a crouch position rather like a marionette would collapse when the puppeteer drops the strings. She clutched her face in her hands and muttered through them, ‘Why couldn’t you just leave me alone?’

     ‘I suppose I could but I’m sure you’ve noticed I am a priest and I apologise for interfering; you see I am obliged to offer help even when as it appears, it is not welcome. Come, I’m sure we can find some solution to your problems.’ By now I was beginning to worry how this might appear to a passer-by but thankfully the place was quite quiet.

     As circumstances stood my thoughts were as much for myself as for this poor unfortunate young woman and in all honesty it might be better if we linked hands and jumped together. I quickly banished the thought. 

     I was on my way to an interview with the Bishop that could well spell the end of my career. The misinterpretation of this situation with a young girl crouched as if in fear of me could easily tip the balance of the scales of my future, already in serious jeopardy.

     ‘Get off her you bastard!’ I turned just in time to receive a painful blow to my left jaw that sent me sprawling over the crouching girl onto the pavement beyond her, catching my elbow against the stone wall and knocking off my glasses.

     My assailant, as far as I could make out without my glasses, had a bushy beard and was wearing black and white check trousers the sort favoured by professional chefs.

     ‘Come on Alicia let’s get away from this pervert, as for you mate you ain’t ‘eard the last of this.’

     Before I could say a word they were gone, I was abandoned on the pavement searching for my glasses.

Appeal

Roger Noons

 

a pint of orange juice and lemonade

 

    ‘The next time the referee blows his whistle, I’m going to shove it right up his …’

    Peeeep!

    ‘Number 3, Whites, you’re still not binding properly. I’m sick of telling you. You’re in the sin bin for ten minutes. Penalty kick to Reds.’

    ‘How long to go ref?’ asked the Whites skipper.

    ‘Four or five minutes.’

    ‘Does that mean I start next season in the bin?’ queried the No. 3.

    ‘Unless you appeal,’ said the referee.

    Using both hands, the prop pulled up her jersey and leant forward displaying a generously-filled sports bra. ‘That appealing enough for you, Ref?’