All Seeing Izabella

 

by Yvonne Lang

herbal tea

There was a salty sea breeze stinging my cheeks as I trudged down the old wooden pier. I’m sacrificing another weekend to support my continuous victim sister, Marie. It’s out of season, everything shut down for winter and no else is around. A freezing cold beach and closed arcade didn’t appeal to anyone else apparently. We weren’t here for fun though.

Marie’s partner had gone missing almost four months ago. The police had no leads. He had simply vanished. I didn’t miss him; I knew my sister was better off without the asshole. The police didn’t seem to be searching that hard for him. He was a grown man with a checkered past and no signs of foul play – he wasn’t high on their priority list, for which I was glad. I had hated her dating him, was distraught when he moved in with her but knew I couldn’t intervene. I had fixed anything that ever went wrong with my sister’s life. I took the role of older sister very seriously after we lost our parents and looked out for her. Perhaps too much. The first significant choice she had ever made alone was to date that loser.

His disappearance should have been a chance for her to get her life back on track, but she was devastated. She had no idea if she had been dumped or if he had been a victim. The uncertainty drove her mad and when the police could provide no answers, she started turning to more unusual sources. Ever the supportive sister, and to make sure she wasn’t ripped off in her fragile state by some charlatan, I traipsed round with her visiting psychics and mediums. All spouted tosh and none agreed with each other.

Then someone from one of my sister’s online support groups had mentioned a fortune teller doll that seemed to know things that were impossible to know. It was giving grieving people answers no-one else had been able to provide. 

So, here we were, on a frigid weekend to see if a mechanical doll in its little Perspex booth could help Marie move on. We found the booth; her name was emblazoned on a brass plaque above her – Izabella. Everything else in the arcade looked old, faded. Yet Izabella’s face still looked brand new, serene, her blue silk outfit pristine. Something about her gave me the creeps.

Marie’s eyes glistened as she approached, the pound coin already in her hand. She pushed it into the slot and waited expectantly. There was a whirring of gears as the doll creaked to life and aged bulbs flashed behind her. The pale white hands moved awkwardly over the cheap looking crystal ball and an automated voice asked,

“What answers do you seek?”
Marie told her tearfully. There was more whirring and then the lights faded as the doll stilled. A slip of pale-yellow paper popped out from the machine. Marie snatched at it, but her face fell as she read. She screwed up the paper, tossed it to the floor and stormed off – obviously another dead end.

Curious, I picked up the paper and unfurled it,

‘Your sister made sure he was removed from your life for your own good.’

I stared, slack jawed at the doll,

“You grass,” I said softly.

How did it know? If it knew it was for her own good why throw me under the bus? Maybe that was why Izabella had left out the word ‘murder’ since she knew my motives were pure. Small mercies. 

 

About the author 

Yvonne's work has featured in a range of publications, from Your Cat Magazine to Siren Magazine, as well as ranking highly in competitions. Her debut book is published as part of Demain’s Short Sharp Shock Series. She resides in Yorkshire, England with her partner and cat. http://www.yvonnelang.co.uk

 

Was Humphrey a thief?

by Jon Hepworth

lemon squash

Linda Fairlight reached for the recently published1982 British Railways Timetable and was pleased to find that there was a train leaving Lower Compton for London the next Friday, at ten in the morning. She always liked the ten o’clock trains as they were less crowded than earlier ones and cheaper.

            She was travelling to London to visit her Aunt Agatha. ‘Poor old Aunt Agatha’ Linda would say; poor because her aunt could only afford a bed-sit, and old because her aunt would be shortly celebrating her eightieth birthday.

The next Friday Linda boarded the train at Lower Compton and was delighted to have a compartment all to herself. The journey up to London would take over an hour and so she had brought a book with her. She settled herself in the seat near the window, placed her spectacles with the tortoise-shell frame on the end of her nose and, with great expectation, opened her book titled, The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes.

The train was starting to pull out of the station when there was a bang, someone wrenched open the door of her compartment, clambered in and dangerously leaning out of the train shut the door with a loud crash.

‘Oh dear!’ she said, and with a small nervous laugh, ‘that was rather dangerous.’

The overcoat that had been flapping in her face rearranged its self into the conventional attire of a young man.

‘Yah!’ he said ‘why are trains always on time when it would be far more convenient if they were a couple of minutes late?’

He was about to sit down when he felt a strong tug at his coat.

‘Yes?’ he queried, turning to look at Linda.

‘Yes?’ queried Linda.

‘You tugged at my coat!’

‘Why on earth should I do that?’ asked Linda hugging her book close to herself.

‘I don't know’ he said and raised his eyebrows.

Linda examined the coat, ‘your coat is stuck in the door."

‘Oh!’ he said and looked quite disappointed, ‘I'll have to open the carriage door and...’

‘You'll do no such thing; that would be positively dangerous!’

The train was now travelling at a fast speed. With some difficulty the young man took off his coat.

‘Here, use it to cover your knees,’ he said ‘and I'll reclaim it when we get to London. At least it will keep it off this dirty floor.’

‘Oh I couldn't possibly...’

‘Yes you could!’ And he place part of the coat over her knees. It was cold outside and the heating on the train was frugal, so the coat would be helpful. The pockets felt very heavy.

‘What on earth have you got in the pockets?’ Linda asked, much to her own surprise.

‘Two silver candlesticks, a silver cigarette box and a silver sauce boat in the poachers’ pockets on the inside!’

‘How....! How unusual.’ said Linda, and she looked at him carefully; ‘wouldn't it have been easier to put them all in a case?’

‘Yes, but too obvious - I don't want anyone to know that I am carrying them.’

‘Oh!’ Linda had a strong feeling of apprehension, safer to bury herself in her book, real drama very seldom imposed itself on her well-ordered life and she liked it that way. She opened her book again.

‘I took them this morning from the Grange in Upper Compton!’

Linda looked up. She hoped that she had not heard what she thought that she had definitely heard. She felt the colour of her face turn from a healthy pale pink to an embarrassed red. She took off her glasses.

‘Pardon?’

‘I took them early this morning from the Grange!’

‘Don't be silly! If you did you certainly would not tell me!’

‘Why on earth not? - Why - what would you do about it?’

‘Why pull the emergency cord just above my head.’

‘But I could stop you before your hand had got halfway there.’

‘I could scream and shout for help!’

‘Are your knees getting warm?’ he said, deftly changing the subject. She looked again at his face, full of grins and eyes that were alive.

‘Your teasing me?’ she said, ‘I always believe what people say; I don't like being teased?’

            ‘Look I’ll be honest with you.’

            ‘I do hate it when people say that.’

            ‘Don’t you want me to be?’

            ‘Yes, of course, but when people say that I always wondered what they have not been honest about!’

‘But what I said is true - I did take them from the Grange, but not take as in stolen but take as in carrying. I am carrying them hidden so that they won't be stolen! The Grange is my home. Does all that make sense?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ said Linda closing her book.

‘I'm sorry,’ said the young man ‘but I found the thought of being a thief exciting. My names Humphrey Kew, my friends call me Den. Can we be friends?’

Sherlock Holmes suddenly seemed uninteresting. She felt all males were inherently chauvinistic and not to be trusted. She was glad that there was a corridor running the length of the carriage she was in. If he became difficult she could shout.

‘Why are you carrying all those valuables hidden in your coat?’ she asked.

‘Valuations, parents want to know what the items are worth - I have an appointment at eleven at Sotheby’s, with Mr. Princetown of the silver department to put some prices on them for insurance purposes.’

‘Oh!’ said Linda, a thought flashed into her mind and then receded, the thought that the explanation was just a bit too detailed

 ‘Oh!’ she said again. She knew that in all the best detective stories fibs were best told with as much truth in them as possible to make them convincing.

 ‘Isn’t it silly that Upper Compton is below Lower Compton?’ Humphrey questioned.

‘But it isn’t!’

‘Last time I looked on the map it was at least three miles south of Lower Compton.’

‘Yes, I know!’

‘But you just said that that it wasn’t below Lower Compton.’

‘Our ancestors were not concerned with which village was Northern most. Lower Compton is in a valley whereas Upper Compton is built on a hill; so is higher, hence Upper!’

‘Oh – alright clever clogs!’

‘As a librarian I come across lots of useless information.’

Humphrey, call me Den, chatted on for the rest of the journey.

The landscape and time flashed by and the train quickly arrived in London.

‘Must rush,’ said Humphrey as the train drew into the station. He opened the door to release his overcoat; put the overcoat on, and disappeared into the crowd surging through the ticket barrier.

Linda was placing her glasses in their case when she saw something sparkle on the floor. She bent down and picked up a brooch, it was a fine piece of jewelry, it looked like a diamond and ruby encrusted pheasant. Humphrey hadn’t mentioned it. It must have dropped out of his coat.

‘Oh dear!’ exclaimed Linda. She gathered up her book, still unread, and her handbag now containing the broach. She left the carriage and walked along the platform. She was glad to see that there was a bank of telephones in the station concourse. She asked directory enquiries for the telephone number for Sotheby's and phoned through.

‘Can I speak to Mr.Princetown?’ Linda queried.

‘There's no one of that name here!’ was the reply.

‘From your silver department?’

‘Sorry - no one of that name in the silver department!’

‘Well a Mr. Humphry Kew has an appointment to see someone in your company this morning at eleven and I need to get in touch with him. It's important.’

‘One minute please,’ there was a pause. Linda could hear the rustle of paper and some muffled voices.

‘Hello - no, sorry, no one of that name has an appointment here today!"

‘Oh well, thank you!" Linda slowly put down the phone. She felt fully justified in her view that all males were inherently chauvinistic and not to be trusted.

She left the brooch at the Lost Property desk along with her name and address.

Linda walked out into the torrential rain of a very wet London.

How she wished that crime would stay within the covers of a good read.

 

About the author 

Jon has been writing short stories since joining a Writers Club twenty years ago. He has had one story accepted for inclusion in an anthology and four by Cafe Lit, 18th, 28th June and 7th,15 July.

Hey Ma, Look At Me

 

by S. Nadja Zajdman

lemonade

During the first week of September I swim in my neighbourhood’s outdoor community pool.  The day camps have closed, and the children have returned to school.  With the children gone and a softer sun beaming on the water and on me, I feel as if I’m vacationing at a resort.  There is no ocean on the horizon and there are no waving palm trees, but strangely enough there are gulls wheeling in the clear blue sky.  On the outlying lawn butterflies flit onto fuzzy-headed purple clover, bumble bees drone in the background, and the first yellow leaves dive into the water and land at the bottom of the competition-sized pool.  I can see them clearly as I propel myself through water warmer than the air, which has a nip in it.  I am wearing prescription goggles, which enables me to open my eyes and see underwater as clearly as I did when I was a five-year-old learning to swim.  

           I didn’t want to learn.  My mother insisted upon it.  The first six months of swimming lessons were an ordeal.  By bus, my mother and I would drag to the YMYWHA in the dead of winter, even in blizzards.  It took the good part of half an hour to relieve myself of the layers of clothing and the heavy coat and scarf and hat and boots I was bundled in, in order to get into my bathing suit.  A hard plastic cap had to be stretched and fitted over my heavy braids, which placed unremitting pressure upon my skull.   When I whined about the effort involved my mother would snap, “You are going to learn.  One day, you will thank me.”

            It was when I squeezed into the bathing suit and bathing cap that the worst part loomed.   I had to enter the pool area and climb down a ladder into the water.  I was awkward and fat.  My swim mates mocked me.  The saving grace was our teacher, Paul Rosenthal.  I remember his name, and I shall always remember him.  He was a German Jew, a refugee from The Third Reich.  I don’t know when nor how he escaped, but Paul Rosenthal’s survival and entry into my existence set me on a course that saved the quality of my life.  

 By the time I was placed into my swim teacher’s paw-like palms, he must’ve been in his forties.  He was muscular and handsome, with a tenderness that belied his physical bulk.  Paul—if memory serves, we called him Paul, not Mr. Rosenthal—paid extra attention and took special care of me.  He would stand halfway between one end of the lane and the other and coax, “Just this far, Sharon.  Come, come.  Swim to me only this far.  You can do it.  I know you can do it.”  As I frantically paddled towards Paul, he would surreptitiously back up until he reached the end of the lane.  Then he would scoop me into his warm, strong arms and exult, “Look Sharon!  Look behind you!”  I gasped with surprise and growing confidence when I realized how far I had come.  “You see!  You swam all the way across the pool!”  By spring I had become the star of the class, bouncing on the diving board and shouting across the water, to the outlying stands, “Hey Ma!  Look at me!”

            My mother was going through anguish of her own, during the winter I learned to swim.  Mum had never learned to swim.  When she was seven years old, her father threw her into a local stream in a practical application of the adage that what doesn’t sink, will survive.  As Mum started to drown her father’s sister fished her out of the water and turned on her brother, cursing him with invectives that were a Polish equivalent of “What were you thinking?!”  This violent form of baptism left Mum with a lifelong fear of water.  Yet seven years later she would wade through the slime and rat-infested sewers of Warsaw, escaping its infamous Ghetto.  For Mum, the ability to swim was equated with survival.

            While keeping vigil in the spectator stand of the pool area at the Y, Mum silently endured the nastiness of the other mothers as they watched me struggling to climb up and down the ladder.  My classmates’ mothers were as cruel as they were.   Ironically, or not, the most vicious of the lot was an obese woman by the name of Mrs. Shulman.  All winter Mum cringed as Mrs. Shulman smirked and scoffed at “that spastic fat kid who can’t even get herself up and down the ladder.  She has no business being here.  Why does her mother bother to bring her?!”  It was only in spring, when I called out triumphantly from the diving board and Mum acknowledged me with a curt nod, that Mrs. Shulman realized who had been listening to her rants.  She may have become embarrassed, if she was capable of embarrassment, but from then on Mrs. Shulman bit her virulent tongue.  Mum maintained her silence and her dignity, looking beyond the prattling, unaccented women and onto the water, not at me, but at the fellow survivor and refugee who had done for her daughter what she could not.  My swim teacher caught the sadness in her haunted eyes and acknowledged Mum’s mute gratitude with a slow smile and quiet pride. 

 

Swimming was, and continues to be my salvation.  In the years to come I would swim my way through massive weight loss and massive personal loss.  From my teenage years on, when my parents moved us into an apartment building with both an indoor and outdoor pool, I rarely lived swimming pool-less.  In the years to come, I would coax my mother into the water and support her weightless body so that she could lean back, let go, and experience what it feels like to trust, float and surrender.  On seaside vacations Mum would grip my hands while edging sideways into the ocean in a valiant attempt to conquer her fear of water.  She chattered in order to distract herself, and when a wave rose up and slapped her open mouth I laughed, so that she might laugh, too.  Wet, refreshed, and worn out by the challenge she had set for herself, Mum would declare, “That’s enough!” and retreat to the shore.  As the tide ebbed and the sun set she sat in the sand gazing, in fascination, as a group of gulls gathered together, seemingly by appointment, and stood at the edge of the water, waiting patiently, we decided, “For Daddy to bring them home.”

 

My mother is gone now.  I plunge into the water while dying yellow leaves drop to the bottom of the community pool and lie still there.  As I push and propel, my eyes open and my vision restored, I marvel at how it’s possible to feel so fortunate, so grateful, and so intensely lonely, all at the same time.  Hey Ma, look at me.  I’m still swimming.  Thank you.

About the author

S. Nadja Zajdman is a Canadian author. In 2012 she published her first collection of linked stories, Bent Branches. Bridgehouse Publishing is bringing out Zajdman's second collection of linked stories, The Memory Keeper. 

 

More Than Words

 by Michelle Adams

hot, strong tea with a splash of milk

He moved each wooden tile, worn smooth from years of use, from its place on his rack to its new position on the board, pausing for a second between each new letter, taking his time to let the word unfurl. He started with an ‘M’, placing it on the light blue space under the ‘E’ already played in an earlier turn.  Three more tiles followed, O, N, I. The board rotated slightly, the turntable still gliding smoothly despite having sat unused in the attic for the last few years.

                It had been gathering dust in the far corner, sticky and forgotten, and coated in a thick layer of grime. The cardboard box had absorbed gallons of grease over the years as it sat on top of the old Welsh dresser in his grandmother’s kitchen. Multiple ring stains covered the top, and it smelt musty, damp, and of stale smoke from the cigarettes she’d chain-smoked as they’d played. The lid corners were worn and torn slightly from the repetition of being lifted on and off, on and off, over and over again. This deluxe version of her favourite game had been a gift from him, an upgrade from the old foldable set they’d played on together since his childhood. He’d been so proud to present her with it, paid for from his very first pay-cheque, and she’d cherished it.  Years of used scorecards and scraps of paper made the lid hard to close, as she’d never thrown a single one away, often looking through them at the start of each new session and commenting on his improvement. As the years had progressed, so had his vocabulary and his skill at placing the tiles. These scraps of paper told a story of their own.

                He placed a ‘C’ beneath the ‘I’, clicking it into place on top of the red triple word score. The next letter, another ‘N’, he placed at the start of the word. NEMONIC. He grinned as he heard her voice in his memory, scolding him for his misspelling. His smile became rueful as he placed the last tile at the top of the word on another red space. He counted up the score. ‘Double letter on the M…… triple word….and again… fifty points for the scrabble… that’s seventeen, fifty-one…. Two hundred and three points.’   She’d have loved that score, may even have rewarded him with a chocolate biscuit from her old china jar. She hadn’t cared about winning, although she did, and often. She’d never let him win; he’d have to earn each victory, of which there had been few in his younger years. She always said that the best games were the ones where they both had the best possible scores by placing each tile in the best possible place every turn. When she’d first taught him to play, they would spend more time checking that they couldn’t have done better than they did playing. She said that the game was ‘as much about mathematics as it was about words.’ She taught him the value of teamwork and the importance of taking his time when making decisions, and how to both win and lose graciously. Her disappointment in him, if he ever placed a low scoring word to block her an opportunity of a high scoring one, still stung.

                As he’d grown older, they hadn’t played as much, but whenever he visited, the game was brought down from the dresser as the kettle boiled. He hadn’t noticed at first that his grandmother was winning less often. It still filled him with shame that it had taken so long for him to realise that the time she spent shuffling her tiles and considering the board was becoming longer due to her confusion rather than her being strategic. It wasn’t until he’d visited and they were drinking tea and eating cake, and she’d made no move to retrieve the set from its shelf, that he realised there was something wrong. It was then he recognised just how old and frail his beloved grandmother had become. He sniffed back the tears that threatened at the memory, inhaling again that scent so familiar to him.

                ‘Jeez, Gramps! It’s a good score; you don’t have to cry about it!’ The teasing voice interrupted his reminiscence. His opponent asked, good-naturedly, ‘Is that even a word? And what’s the point in even trying to beat you?’ He looked across the board at his grand-daughter and smiled. 

                ‘The point, Sweetheart,’ he replied, ‘Is not to try and beat me, but to get the best possible score in the best possible place every time.’

 

About the author

Michelle Adams lives on Anglesey, North Wales. Since turning 40 a few years ago, she has returned to study and is currently a student with The Open University, studying towards a BA in Arts & Humanities (English Language & Creative Writing).