By Benjamin Judge
Location: Cornbrook Metro Station
The station is a sheet of plastic folded into a twist. A Möbius strip of neon. A hole of oxygen floating over a city of ghosts. From the bridge you can see the skin factories floating in the canal. You can see the ray labs.
He had asked her name but she didn’t even know. She seemed pleased he had asked though. Not many did that any more. And she was still around somewhere. In the shadows. She was watching over him maybe. They did that sometimes. If they really liked you.
He could hear the click-clack of her lolly as she moved it round her mouth. Sugar against enamel. He knew that between sweet and tooth, somewhere, was her tongue, dyed crimson from the colourings. In the train she had coughed up a thin stream of ruby on his shirt. Now it marked him like a scar or an emblem. A medal. A tattoo.
They came from Knowhere. Older than him but younger than her. Ray boys. The blade didn’t hurt as much as he thought it would but it travelled slow as a dream. He looked down and saw the copper collecting where the knife met his body. The copper formed a coin, a penny, and then dripped to the floor. The ray boy grinned professionally as he slid the blade across the belly. More coppers flowed, splashing at his feet. Then his life started to flow out of him. Just coins at first but soon followed by notes. Fives. Tens. Twenties. He hoped the girl was OK. He couldn’t hear the lolly any more.
He saw the first fifty leak out of his gut as he blacked out. He knew he wouldn’t wake.
The station is a sheet of plastic folded into a twist. A Möbius strip of neon. A hole of oxygen floating over a city of ghosts. From the bridge you can see the skin factories floating in the canal. You can see the ray labs.
Benjamin Judge has lived in Manchester for about five years, first in Didsbury, then the Northern Quarter, and now Littleborough. 32. Male. Married. His plans for this year are to write more and eat less. http://cynicalben.blogspot.com
By Sian Cummins
Location: Maple Avenue, Chorlton
The woman was heading for home when she saw them. Taking her eyes briefly from the root-cracked tarmac, she looked for vehicles, and her eyes caught the eyes of one of them, and the one of them she saw said ‘hi’.
The woman was 100 yards on before she realised what she’d seen. Instinct had not allowed her to stop or respond to the ‘hi’, and now she knew she was heavily in instinct’s debt.
They were coming in twos down the road, badges swinging from strings round their necks, in violent primary colours. The woman ran for the old house. Before she reached the door, she heard another door open and another ‘hi’ said to the unsuspicious occupant. What could she have done? She couldn’t have warned them all.
She slipped inside the door and closed it, though they’d already seen her. It occurred to her to alert the ones who lived on the other floors of the house, but her responsibility was to the one who shared the second floor with her.
As she pulled the man away from the window by his sleeves she could already hear their voices outside the next house.
‘Did they see you?’ he asked. They huddled in the hallway. He took a ragged strand of tobacco from his trench coat pocket and rolled a thin cigarette.
‘One of them said “hi”.’
He reached behind her and extinguished the light from the swinging bulb above their heads. ‘They’ll see that! They’ll know we’re hiding!’
‘If we keep quiet they’ll pass us by.’
The man and the woman were equal, but she found a part of herself deferring to him on this point. He spent his days in the rooms they inhabited together and had developed a knack for surviving these regular forages to the door, a knack different to that needed for her own forages to the city.
‘Those others will just open the door,’ she hissed. ‘In all the other houses. They’ll think they’re doing a good thing.’
The man and the woman helped where they could, but considered themselves shrewder than their neighbours. Bags on shoulders, they had left Levenshulme for a better life, and knew better than to open their door to strangers.
By Abigail Warren
Location: King’s Chambers, Young Street
Graham must think of a solution. The advantage of being in love with someone you are not supposed to be in love with is, in fact, that your mind is constantly searching for a solution. Subconsciously, it’s going on and on and on. It probably won’t stop until the solution is reached.
How does he know he is in love? He interrogates himself as he sits behind a pile of photocopying. To be sure. That it’s not boredom. That it’s not that he’s not had a girlfriend-type-person for seven months, one week, two and a half days (thanks to the new and daring side parting, according to his friends). That it’s not Fear of Valentine’s Day and the shop windows stuffed with fake hearts and cards and cupids. That it’s not loneliness (knowledge of television schedule for next four days: impeccable).
He slowly writes out the letters on his memo pad, below the company logo. (Boss says, looking over his shoulder, what’s this then lad, hahahahahaha, got it bad have we, fuck off thinks Graham but smiles obligingly, hahahahahaha, good for you good for you, who’s the lucky lady, er your mum thinks Graham, just a girl he says).
The just a girl is called Fiona. Fee. She has dark hair and blue eyes, and is almost nearly engaged to Graham’s best friend Andy. Andy, to be fair, has turned into a bit of a knob since he started working in PR, and says the word ‘PR’ a lot, but Graham still loves him as only a best friend can, and shares many an alcohol-softened memory of night-glossy Manchester with him. Often shoeless, or shirtless, or on one occasion trouserless running down the middle of Oxford Road, screaming.
So what now? He met Fee at a houseparty. He remembers Andy in a bad yellow shirt. She is wearing a pretty dress, and her eyes are kind, and she keeps smiling at Graham, and asking him questions. Graham thinks it may even have started then; he got annoyed because Andy was not paying much attention to her, or him, for that matter. And he had got a haircut, which Graham silently noted and took as a betrayal to their longhair friendship, and, indeed, the band. Granted, they had not practised for a while now (four months, five days and one morning), but still, there was no need. Graham tossed his lovely locks, and spent the evening determinedly getting to know Fee. She was very likeable, and seemed to understand everything he was saying, which was rare as most people told him that he mumbled his words.
After that, he bumped into her in the rain coming out of Kendals; well, he had been coming out of Kendal’s, and manfully, had not required a bag, (not a bag fan, bad for the environment), but realised the lack of forward thinking in this as he clutched a bottle of lavender moisturiser for his sister. She was soaked, and the rain had gone through her coat and her hair was stuck to her face, and he thought how pretty she was, and then stopped himself thinking this and stared at the floor while they talked.
After that, it was in Mojo’s with her friends and he was drunk and stared at her chest the whole time; the time after that was better, they did a pub crawl together with Andy and some mates, and Andy and Graham had a drinking race and Graham won, impressively (before vomiting); then it was on the High Street (a quick hello); then it was in Boots (buying moisturiser); and then, the last time, that was the best, that was when he knew, was when he helped her get Andy home after ten pints in the Old Monkey on a Sunday afternoon, and she was upset, and they put him to bed and she poured them glasses of wine and they sat in the living room with the lamp on and the curtains open, talking and looking at the moon while Andy snored.Their flat was on Deansgate, very swanky, thanks to Andy’s new job (in PR). Graham thought of his own flat in Chorlton. She had talked about her life and he had talked about his (well, a bit, the exciting bits; he didn’t mention gofering in Kings Chambers or Lanky Prick Boss.)
By Nik Perring
Location: Intersection of Palmerston Street and Hurst Lane, Bollington
Two old ladies were standing in front of me as I waited at a bus stop near a car park. It had snowed heavily and while I waited to see if the bus would arrive – there were rumours it had been cancelled – I listened to them. The first one, the one on the right, with hair as fine as thread jutting out from under a headscarf, said, ‘Might not be able to buy my angel this year.’
‘No,’ her friend said. It was neither a question nor a statement.
‘First time since I was nine, it’ll be,’ she said. ‘My father gave me my first, as a present. Brought it back from a business trip. Said it’d watch over me, keep me safe, just like he did.’
‘Really,’ said the lady’s friend.
‘It was beautiful. Made of china. No taller than my thumb. Lips as pink as a kitten’s paws and oh how I loved it. Loved that I had something that’d look out for me.’
I moved closer.
The lady continued. ‘I had quite a collection – even before my father died.’
‘Oh,’ said her friend.
‘Heart attack. I don’t know what I was thinking, really. But it seemed that with him gone I needed a little more looking after. So I jumped on the bus and I went into town and I came home with another angel.’
‘Really.’
‘Really. And I’ve done it every year since. Never missed one.’ She shuffled closer to her friend and said, ‘And I always make a point of doing it on his anniversary.’
‘Lovely idea,’ said her friend.
I noticed then that people were beginning to drift away. One lad, a mobile phone to his ear, said ‘bus has been cancelled,’ as he walked past me.
‘Cancelled,’ said the lady’s friend. ‘Doesn’t look like I’ll be able to buy my chops. And you won’t be able to get this year’s angel.’
The lady said nothing. I think she shook her head slightly, though I can’t be sure.
She walked then, slowly, to a corner of the car park where the snow was thick and untouched. She placed her bag on the ground and she lay down on her back. Nobody said a word. Everybody watched. The lady moved her arms, down then up, flapping.
When she’d finished she stood, collected her bag, and walked away, not looking back once at what she’d created. Not once. I suppose she didn’t have to.
Nik Perring is a writer and workshop leader from the North West. He doesn’t live very far from Manchester at all. His short stories have been widely published and he’s the author of a children’s book. http://nikperring.blogspot.com
By Deborah Morgan
Location: The Four In Hand, Palatine Road, West Didsbury
Saturdays, it’s him. Washed and combed
like nothing happened, walks in the pub,
Jesus Christ it meant nothing. He rubs
out promises made in marriage. I phoned …
She answered, you, making jokes stoned,
a cherry red thrill on your arm at the club.
Yeah, too good an opportunity to pass up.
I stare at his neck, its slack lazy fold.
He’s a man with words alright.
The match starts. I pull his ale.
Behind him his wife is listening.
He moves towards the box into the light,
sees her stare, fully loaded like a sharpened nail.
In flashes, the bandit pays out the jackpot – kerching.
Deborah Morgan is an MA student at Liverpool University. She got this idea after seeing a couple fight over a third woman last Valentine’s night. It wasn’t pretty in the end.
