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Post Vital

by Jon Peters

It was 11 p.m. on a calm, late Wednesday spring night in the high desert of Albuquerque, New Mexico. A soft wind cooled through the trees and in through the open window of Sam Smith, a 43-year-old single bisexual man with buzzed grey hair, sharp cheekbones, and a hint of stubble on his pock-marked face. He sat in a comfortable brown lazy-boy chair on his porch, surrounded by a scattering of pine and sycamore trees, smoking a joint, watching the stars shift across the sky. His six-year-old cat, Luna, a plump tortoiseshell with a penchant for biting, slept on the armchair next to him, fur ruffling with the breeze.

Sam’s apartment sat on the first floor, facing south, his porch partially shaded by the stairs leading up to the second floor. Every hour a gong rang out through his window, reminding him that time was not on his side. The sound came from a grandfather clock he inherited from his mother after her sudden death in 2020, a victim of the first corona virus outbreak that destroyed his world.

Sam had returned from Erik’s house just a few hours earlier, smelling of sex, and after taking a shower and putting on a pair of worn satin slippers, he settled down with Luna to finish a Stephen King book. It’d taken him a month to read it and he was happy to be finished. He finished his joint as he finished the final chapter.

A police siren rose in the distance, a howl on the wind too common these days. Sam was over being scared. He’d bought three guns since the quarantine, after spending a lifetime never owning one. He always carried mace. The post corona world demanded it.

When his mother died, it was as if the world collapsed into a pinpoint and he was cradled in the nothingness of silent, deep space. He often imagined he was floating toward Neptune, and he longed for the methane blue comfort of the alien world. He left behind the desert world in those dreams, the one with an apartment under the stairs.

And this is where his mind and body sat with quarantine. If he did venture outside, it was to take hikes through the desert mountains, wearing a white, leather mask with silver spikes and cheap, fake bronze, bug-eyed steampunk goggles. He didn’t wear a shirt and he carried his mace in his right hand. He’d used it a few times, and there was a simple pleasure he took in blinding an unleashed dog and sometimes their irate owners. He hadn't used his .38 special, yet, and for that he was grateful, if a little disappointed.

The night closed toward midnight and Sam’s reflections muddled into dreams, but he couldn’t tell the difference. Mostly his mind wondered from zombie tales to true crime stories in which he was always the main character. Someone, somewhere, was always choking to death by his hands.

He desired that to be his real life, yet he felt older than he was, like some plague had swept him and given him the lungs of an 80-year-old. A joke, but not a joke, told many times, by many people.

Blinking away the stars, Sam Smith desired suicide but he lacked the constitution.

Dippy Eggs and Toast

by Russ

Kim sat alone in the hall, perched on the stool next to the telephone table, watching the pendulum of her grandmother’s grandfather clock as it twitched from side to side. She hadn’t known they were meant to swing until earlier that year, when school visited Osborne House and saw Queen Victoria’s clock. Kim’s gran had said theirs twitched because it was younger, so it did a more modern dance, but mum’s boyfriend laughed in the car and told her it was because it was a cheap knock-off. It didn’t matter to Kim, it still marked the time, every empty second of it.

As sunlight poured ignorantly through the glass panels of gran’s front door, marking shapes and angles on the familiar carpet, Kim wondered when she’d start crying. Her mum, and Auntie Jo, had been in tears most of the morning, but it hadn’t happened for Kim. Instead she just sat, blank-faced, replaying the moment her head, and trying to make sense of it.

Kim had slipped out of bed as soon as she’d heard Gran coughing early that morning, while everyone else was still sleeping. It was something they’d made a habit of that summer, Kim couldn’t sleep properly in her temporary room, and Gran was always up way earlier than anyone else, so Kim had started sneaking in to snuggle in her big bed. They’d talk about school, or Gran would tell stories about Grandad. Sometimes they’d play with make-up, or paint nails, always the same colour, the one that matched Gran’s satin slippers. Eventually Gran would get up, and go make breakfast for them both: dippy eggs and toast - coffee for Gran, milkshake for Kim - and they’d eat in bed while watching cartoons, and wait for the house to wake up.

This morning had been no different to begin with. Gran had been a little sluggish, but Kim knew she sometimes took a while to wake up fully, and was always gentle until she had. They cuddled a little, and Kim listened while Gran talked about a silly thing Grandad had done while they were courting. Kim loved it when Gran called it ‘courting’, she’d done the same at school once, but the laughter made it very clear not to do it again. While Gran talked, Kim turned to lay on her belly, and occupied herself painting Gran’s toenails, the same purple shade as always.

It was when Gran stopped talking that Kim turned round, the sentence had finished but the story hadn’t, and the listener looked to find out why. Gran smiled back, and then, she was gone. Kim blinked her eyes and stared at the object which used to be her gran. It was the most clear thing in Kim’s world that it wasn’t her gran anymore, but that was all she did understand.

Eventually, Kim slid off her gran’s bed and went to knock on the room her mum was sleeping in, handing over control to the bleary-eyed woman who opened the door.

Now the adults were busy upstairs, and Kim sat below, watching the pendulum twitch on her grandmother’s grandfather clock.

Mister Desperate

by James

I always thought I’d feel a sense of pride to have gone into a pub and “pulled”, but if I’m being honest, I’m not even sure I did the pulling. I was Johnny Failure when I left, then moments later I was singed by a searing ray of airborne Sambucca as Sarah clamped her lips to mine. Several minutes of lip grinding later it transpired she thought I was a fellow called Chad and she had been gagging for his length all day. I murmured that she had the wrong person but she couldn’t hear me over the throbbing noise of my lightly bruised testicles.

Of course I should have run a mile, only Mister Happy has not had a bluebell field walk in hand with a young lady for far too long.

Back to her place and up to her bedroom where she freed Mister Fucking Ecstatic, and then paused. It was a curious mix of lust and coy in her eyes as she gazed at my grandfather clock. In a voice that was small and wee she asked me if I had a satin slipper to clothe my butler. Downton Abbey is where my mind went, and the moment was only saved when she giggled and told me she had some in the bathroom.

Mister Happy limped into Mister Slightly Troubled inside the bathroom. I know, I know, shouldn’t judge and all that, and if people really want to live with tiles black with mould and a green sink crusted thick on the inside with congealed toothpaste, who am I to judge? I used toilet paper to open the cabinet above the sink, and there, shining like a scimitar thrust from the lake was a brand new packet of prophylactics. As I turned from the sink in triumph I felt a slight tug. Mister Gone Back to Snail in His Shell was stuck to the sink, snared by a blob of-

I don’t know the colour, because I screwed my eyes shut and used the toilet paper to free myself.

Back on the landing Mister Sieg Heil said howdy. I clothed him in a satin slipper, pawed the carpet, and charged.

Sarah not just a hard drinking and hard belching filly – you can add hard snoring to the list.

I coughed, I threw myself down next to her on the bed, nothing doing. There was a glass of water next to the bed and I was giving it some thought when somebody began to hammer on the front door. Sarah’s eye instantly popped open. She looked me up and down.

‘You’re not Chad!’

The banging from the door redoubled, and a gruff male voice called for entry.

‘Shit! That’s Chad!’

She bundled me and my togs down the stairs and with much hurried whispering told me to leg it down to the basement and out through the kitchen door.

There was no key in the door, and no time. I heard Chad calling from above he was going down for a beer…

Under the stairs went naked old me and Mister Bloody Terrified. I lurked in the dark as footsteps sounded above, praying I would be able to sneak past him when he went into the kitchen, otherwise surely it was sudden death…

In the big house

by Jenny

It is Joanna’s first week in the big house and she’s still finding her way around its dark twisting passages and narrow corridors with their flagstone floors and deep, shadowy corners.

It’s very different from her mother’s house in the village, which is crammed with children and noise and mess. This house sprawls, like a great fat spider, and she can sometimes walk around it for an hour or more and not see another soul.

She works as a skivvy; scrubbing in the kitchens, blacking the grates in the Family bedrooms, but her own bedroom is upstairs in the attic. She has been hired to replace one of the two maids who disappeared a month ago and the Family have found no-one who will accept the other position, so Joanna sleeps in her bedroom alone.

She lies awake at night, listening to the heavy tick of the grandfather clock in the hall and wishing herself back home to the warm bed she shared with her sister. Then outside her own door she hears quite distinctly, the dull thud of footsteps.

Not the delicate satin slippered steps of the Family’s youngest daughter, but the heavy tread of someone wearing sturdy work boots, like Joanna’s own. She slips from her thin sheets and lights her stub of a candle.

When she opens the door there is no-one there, though she’s sure she caught the flash of a black skirt disappearing around the corner.

Joanna hurries out in her bare feet. She hears the door at the bottom of the narrow wooden staircase slam closed. She takes the stairs two at a time and emerges on to the soft carpet of the first floor gallery in time to hear the big front door downstairs creak open.

She has never been through this door and it is with a thrill of excitement that she slips through it and into the night.

The crunch of boots on gravel to her left, she turns and follows, the sharp stones cutting into her bare feet. The path winds around the garden and disappears into a small copse.

Under the trees it is dark, but the moon is bright and full, so Joanna doesn’t notice her candle gutter and die. The figure is ahead of her, just out of sight. She speeds up, ignoring the pain in her feet and the chill of the night air.

The ice house looms up suddenly in the dark, a squat, low building, half submerged in shrubbery. The footsteps have stopped running now and Joanna can hear them just the other side of it. She tiptoes around, but they are gone. Instead, she sees a small window cut roughly into the side of the building. The glass is filthy, but when she peers through Joanna can see someone inside.

At first she’s not sure what the person - or is it people? - are doing there at this time of night, but as she rubs at the dirty glass with the sleeve of her nightgown she sees the spatters of blood, the horrified eyes, staring sightlessly up, the mouth locked in an eternal scream and the grubby white maid’s cap perched crookedly on the small broken head.

And as she opens her mouth to scream, Joanna feels something coarse come down over her head and everything goes black.