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Longshore Drift

by Dan

Trogg just leaned forward as if he were sitting on the edge of a swimming pool and flopped.

A falling man makes almost no sound but Trogg’s quick descent seemed to fill the air between the balcony of the 4 story London house and it’s basement. The low dull thud at the end was anti-climactic.

What do you do when you are off your face on acid and a bloke, the one you bought to the party, does this?

Dave Stanmore, nowadays known as Stan, ran down the stairs and out of the door.

He didn’t check on Trogg but instead went to his bedsit. But here, when he opened the fridge Trogg’s face grinned out from a mouldy lump of liverpate, and, when turning the light on, it leered at him from a lampshade.

He grabbed his pushbike from the hall and cycled Eastwards through long, quiet streets where Trogg couldn’t follow and lived a dozen strange, slow dreams.

Eventually, he came to a dark Industrial wasteland area by some water where he could cycle no more. He left his bike and crawled through reeds to a small, rotting, wooden jetty, climbed onto this and sat down, shivering and wet.

It was mid-June 1983. He was 32. He was the father of a little girl called Summer but nothing else he’d done since his blissful student days at Aberystwyth had gone right.

He’d arrived in London, been dropped by his uni friends, and quickly become stranded in a world of boring work, endless tube-train travel and unsatisfying dates that occasionally resulted in one-night stands.

On one of these he’d got Lorraine pregnant. Her furious, bald, gym teacher of a dad bristling at his door convinced him to do the honourable thing. An honourable thing that couldn’t last and set them both back.

When Lorraine kicked him out he’d gone on a spree in Soho, searching for his old confidence, but the losing feeling stuck to him like the dirty London air. He’d met Trogg earlier this evening, they’ed taken the acid together and gone on to this party hosted by some kid whose parents were away. They’ed been there twenty minutes when it happened.

On his jetty, Stan ate some cola cubes fished from his wet pocket and hoped that he was still hallucinating. He fell asleep listening to the comforting rhythm of lapping ripples.

An hour later he awoke and realised his hope was in vain.

It took months for the police to decide not to charge him with murder or manslaughter. After that and Trogg’s depressing funeral in Hereford, Stan just sort of gave up on respectable life. People said that the acid trip had wrecked his brain but actually, he just ran out of faith in the idea that he had a place in society,

He began a new life as a beachcomber, moving along the coastline like longshore drift. The sea air made him happier than he had been in London. Here he was buoyed by hope of childhood seaside holidays and student glory years, sustained by the rhythm and poetry of the tides.

The only effort he maintained thereafter was an irregular but determined contact with his daughter, Summer, with whom he stayed in touch for the rest of his life.

Imperfect Cog

by Russ

The moon mission hadn’t gone quite according to plan.

Paul squeezed another portion of vacuum-packed satanic pate into his mouth, grimaced, and thought about the inescapability of it all. Some programmer had mistyped a digit months ago, and now there was nothing anyone could do to save him from spending the remainder of his days floating aimlessly in space. He wondered what would happen to that imperfect cog, as he watched the lunar orb float quietly by. He hoped they wouldn’t suffer too much for it, we all have bad days at work.

The doomed astronaut chased down his daily meal with a dose of jellified meds. These he laughingly called cola cubes, or at least he would if there were any reason to refer to them outside his own head.

Thankfully, due to the initiative of beginning to stockpile food and drugs ready for the colonisation program, Paul had enough of these onboard to keep him alive until the sun swallowed both the moon and the earth. What with that, the perpetual life support technology which was standard on all modern spacecraft, and the lack of, well, anything that might actually kill him, there was every chance Paul could enjoy this endless floating solitude for seventy or eighty years, maybe more.

For a moment he imagined his time-shriveled and incontinent body drifting weightlessly from wall to wall as he waited to finally die at the end of it all. Had this been intended as a longer mission, they’d have installed an exercise pod in the cabin. He’d seen the models in the space station briefings, the latest ones doubled up as showers, of a sort. Of course, there didn’t seem much use for one now anyway, except perhaps as a way to deal with the smell that fifty years of idle masturbation was likely to cause.

He really wished they’d let him pack some beer.

He flicked the switch to turn off the internal lights and plunged the capsule into darkness so he could get a better look at the darkness outside. He let himself wonder briefly if his trajectory might eventually bump him into a planet, that before he died he might somehow swap the inside of this tin can for mountains, oceans, desert. He’d even settle for bug-ridden wetlands if it meant seeing something without a serial number stamped on it again. For a moment Cheryl from the bar on Paul’s last earth night flickered through his brain, as she’d seemed to do most days since. He relit the cabin and replaced space with his reflection.

Dabbing fingers at the control pad, Paul looked for something to do. Every book ever published in America, every album released, every film ever set to digital archive; data storage didn’t weigh much these days. So much he hadn’t seen, so many wonders of human achievement and understanding.

Paul swiped at the screen until it settled on the familiar menu for season one of Family Guy. He hit play, turned the lights back out, and exhaled. In the background, the whir of the carbon dioxide converter disappeared beneath the theme tune, as Paul hummed along in the dark.

Bill's day out

by Lewis

“Stop squinting” Sharon said. “You look retarded.”

“I don’t think you can say that anymore.” Bill replied with a restrained calmness he did not feel, eyes straining in the sunlight as he peered into the distance. “Yes I think it’s this way.”

“I tend not to take directions from the idiot who got us lost in the first place.”

Its just over there I'm sure.

“Oh good, more miles of boggy dirt.”

“It’s wetlands actually.” Bill ventured. “And it’s one of the most biodiverse ecosyst..”

“I swear Bill. No one will find your body.”

Bill wisely kept his mouth shut and focussed on his rucksack.He wondered where exactly they were. It had all seemed pretty straightforward. A romantic walk, see the birds, get back to nature, find a sunny spot, ask her to marry him and the rest was history. She’d always talked about how they didn't do enough together.

The reality had been drizzle, fog, wet feet, wet attitudes and the realisation that his poor at best, sense of direction was even worse in this endless morose flat space.

“Just think how nice it will be to put our feet up tonight and relax, just the two of us.” He gambled hopefully.

“Just the two of us? Its been just the two of us all day. And honestly i'm not sure the both of us are going to make it back.”

“Well, how about a little treat. I bought lunch and i made your favourite cola ice lollies.” Bill dropped the bag to the floor and began to rummage around.

That did sound good, Sharon thought, but after a few minutes and some sounds she recognised distinctly as his compressed panic, escaping in little gasps, she began to suspect that the Cola cubes had not gone quite as Bill had planned. Despite herself she smiled. How did it always manage to go wrong for him? It wasn't that he didn't try, it just always seemed to not turn out as he expected. It was one of the many things she loved about him. But it drove her mad as well.

“Can’t wait for an ice lolly.” She said. “Just what i need right now, the suns come out as well. I really, can’t, wait, for, my…”

“Yes. Ok fine. I get it. The cubes have not gone quite to plan. They’ve melted a little bit.” He still had his back to her, as she tried to contain her amusement and hunger.

“A slight hiccup thats all.” He held up the sandwich box and handed it to her. “Not quite as waterproofed as i hoped.” She said nothing, just picked up a soggy cheese and cola sandwich that had turned to mush.

“Ah my favourite, satanic pate.”

A silence as vast as the sky above them stretched out. And then Sharon laughed and threw her arms around him. “God I love you, you absolute knob.”

“Well that's good to hear. I know this hasn't quite gone to plan. But actually. One sec.” He dropped down to root around in his bag. He looked up at her as she smiled down with a look of slight confusion.

“There was something I wanted to ask you.”

Drowning in sky

by Jenny

Sky. Everywhere. He’d never seen so much of it all together in one place like this before, unbroken by buildings or trees. It seemed to go on forever and for a moment it seemed he might fall into it and drown if he kept on staring up into it.

Then Keith kicked him behind his knees so his legs buckled and he fell down the coach steps and onto the gravel.

“Anthony, get up” sighed Miss Mitchell distractedly as she tried to count heads. Keith snickered and Anthony pushed himself back onto his feet. His trousers were dusty and his palms were grazed, flecked with blood where they’d scraped along the floor.

The wetlands centre was unlike anywhere Anthony had ever seen before. Reeds as tall as giants stretched up all around him and the air had a stillness that not even the chatter and shrieks of 25 inner-city ten year olds could penetrate.

The day was dry and cold. Miss Mitchell handed out worksheets and asked them to put themselves into groups for the work. Naturally, Anthony was left to work alone. He didn’t mind. He concentrated on being inconspicuous so that Mis Mitchell wouldn’t notice and force him onto a group who’d only resent him for it.

At lunchtime they sat in the picnic area, pulling packed lunches out of bags, sharing out cola cubes and jelly babies and blackjacks. Anthony had a limp little cellophaned parcel of bread smeared with his father’s diabolical home-made pâte. He hoped nobody could smell how disgusting it was, but ate it anyway, because he had nothing else.

Afterwards, the others piled into the gift shop to see what their pound coins would buy them, but Anthony slipped away to stand alone beneath that endless sky one last time. He walked quietly down the wooden boardwalk, listening to the rustling and chirruping from the reeds and wondered what it must be like to live in so much space.

He stared out across the parkland and nothing but trees and grass and reeds interrupted his view. For the first time in his life he felt like he could be the only person in the world and the thought was breathtaking. He forgot his teacher. He forgot his squabbling, bickering, spiteful classmates with their glossy hair and expensive backpacks. He forgot everything except how it felt to be alone, here, in this wonderful place.

Anthony turned when he heard the bell of the gift shop door and saw his classmates piling noisily out and being shepherded towards the coach. He pictured himself climbing back onto it, enveloped by the smells of stale crisps and petrol, driving back to where buildings caged you in and blocked out the sky.

Then he turned back to stare out across the scene before him again, taking in its muted greens and blues and greys stretching endlessly on. And, without thinking of what he was doing, Anthony began to run as fast as his legs would carry him, trying, for just a few moments, to lose himself in all that open space.

A thousand thundering thrills await

by James

Sandra proffered the plate of tiny scraps of wafer-thin toast topped with blobs of pinky brown. Dougie dabbed his tongue cautiously. The look of trepidation left his face. ‘That’s not bad,’ he said. He chuckled. ‘Had me worried for a second. Thought it was one of your strange veggie concoctions, but this is a lovely pâté.’

Sandra’s face took on a flinty edge. ‘It’s not meat, it’s seitan. Made from wheat gluten.’ She set the tray down on a side table and turned back to face him. ‘Although I am no longer truly vegan I still try to live by its guiding principles.’

Dougie could feel his hopes for this night slipping away. It would be like that time he tried to take her up the wetlands to one of the bird spotters hides. She had smiled as she had accepted the cola cube alcopops he had bought, and then smirked when she told him Carl from the rugby team would be well chuffed with his them.

But Sandra smiled warmly. She shook her head lightly. ‘What are the chances? Us two? Both of us on the same Space forum?’

Dougie grinned with relief. Back of safer ground – their mutual love of those seminal Liverpudlian nineties rockers, Space. When news of their hometown comeback gig was announced he had broken all his social media rules and got involved in frantic chat on the fan’s web forum. It was a blast from the past when Sandra sent him a message, and even wilder still when she turned the conversation to her Liverpool city centre apartment and offered him a place to crash following the gig.

Sandra said, ‘Did I mention, I only have a one bed city centre apartment?’

Dougie could only manage a gulp.

Sandra dropped to her knees and placed a hand on his knee.

‘I think we should get any awkwardness out of the way up front. Do you agree?’

Dougie managed a limp nod. Sandra squirmed her hand between his thighs.

Throatily, she whispered, ‘Good,’ and then, ‘But I have to confess, I have a little sexual peccadillo…’

Had she confessed to a giant sexual rhinoceros Dougie would not have cared. Reality for Dougie had become this stunning woman who stood, slipped from her dress and then led him through into her bedroom. He danced himself naked, shrugged off the odd feel of the plastic sheeting beneath his feet, hurled himself onto the bed then stopped.

‘Rubber sheets?’ he said. It all became clear. She had a rubber fetish.

It was to be the greatest night of sex of Dougie’s life. It would never, ever be topped. He felt as though he were floating above his own body watching some athletic porn video as Sandra thrashed atop him.

Afterwards, as a puddled mess, he was barely able to focus through the haze in his brain. Sandra’s voice seemed to fill his head.

‘Here’s my confession, my little sexual fetish…’

Dougie felt something gloriously ice cool pressed against the skin beneath his chin.

Sandra said, ‘You see, I can no longer be truly vegan because I’ve joined a little sex cult. It’s the society of the praying mantis. You see, we mate, and then…’

The ice cold feel vanished from Dougie’s neck as Sandra raised the knife so that it glittered before his dull eyes.

‘But…what about the Space gig?’ he managed to murmur.