All stories

Under the bed 2

by Dan

Under the bed

When I was a child I had a place where no one could find me.

My grandfather’s house was as tall and scary as was he was. Austerely dressed in a cardigan with holes in it and thirty year old pyjama bottoms, he looked through me fiercely as if I was an annoyance. He was a twentieth century “great man”, a philosopher and a painter and also by reputation a bohemian philanderer. Intelligent, taciturn, given to speechifying. My grandmother was soft and warming in comparison but tough in a different way too.

He would talk about me as though I wasn’t there. “Can’t that child go out and play?” he’d roar as if his version of playing was supremely important whilst mine was beneath contempt.

I found no solace in the scary poster of Sarah Bernhardt as Lady Macbeth, none in the moulting case of stuffed Egrets on the dusty stairwell and fewer still in the terrifyingly be-whiskered Victorian man in the sepia photo who shared Grandpa’s piercing eyes.

So, in order not to be problematic I created my own universe, under the bed in their spare room at the top of the house. Me, a cloth goose, a broken Tonka truck and a hideous doll that looked like Hamble from playschool. Here I learned to imagine, and how to withdraw and use my own voice.

Years passed and Grandpa befriended me in the end, he saw himself in me and because he’d never talked to me at all as a small child it wasn’t an awkward shift. Unlike my changed relationship with my grandma who was horrified to find a spiky teenager who looked determinedly like a boy sitting where once Little Tilly had been. Little Tilly, who’d been so enamoured and keen to learn the rules of domestic servitude was dead.

Grandpa taught me art and thinking and clarity of purpose. How to not let the periphery obscure these. In the end I became so like him that my husband takes the kids to the park so that I can concentrate on my writing every Saturday morning even though I have five days of blissful peace before that when they are at work and school. I know intellectually I’m lucky that, like grandpa, the domestic world is arranged to preserve my imagination but I’ve never felt it.

Until this shit storm started.

How do they screech so loudly? Why can’t they understand reason? If I go in the garden they follow me and I’m not allowed anywhere else thanks to this privacy invading virus. My husband has gone to the shops to buy new toilet rolls and paracetamol and they are shrieking and crying so loudly I think I’m going to go mad!

In desperation I stick Toystory 2 on, the only way to guarantee half an hour of peace. Then I climb to the old spare room at the top of our inherited house and crawl under the bed where my friends the cloth goose, the broken tonka truck and the hideous doll that looks like Hamble from play school are still waiting like Woody and Buzz to resume the old, old game.

Hangover cuddles

by Jenny

The light flared and the room came to life. Holly wasn’t alone.

I knew what was coming. This was the second time this week and probably the twentieth since term had started, so I knew exactly what to expect. Didn’t make it any more enjoyable though. It was dark down there and you never knew what would be down there with you.

Had I seen this one before? I didn’t think so, but then they all looked the same really; hopelessly young, wearing skinny jeans and nonchalant confidence like a paper-thin mask. I could see through it all to the bewildered lad inside, why couldn’t Holly?

She picked her way through the chaos of her room, pulled the heap of dirty laundry off the spare chair for him and poured them each a vodka. She was drunk, I could tell. She hadn’t cast about the room to make sure nothing embarrassing was left lying around; dirty knickers, old food, crusty plates. Me.

Luckily I was tucked behind her pillow. Not so much that I couldn’t see her, but enough that she couldn’t see me. It bought me a little time.

She didn’t need to worry anyway, his eyes took in nothing but her. And why should they? She looked lovely, if a little unfocused - the kid couldn’t believe his luck. She threw her vodka back in one and watched him do the same before moving in for the kill.

She straddled him and pulled off her top and they were off. I watched her now and remembered, as I always did, the time when she was just my little girl and I was her whole world.

I had still managed to cling on to a corner of it, though - she’d brought me with her to uni, hadn’t she? A surge of triumph welled inside me when I pictured Rainbow Bear’s face as she’d left him on his shelf and slung me in her bag instead. One of the last good days.

But it was a tired sort of joy - all the strength of the memory wrung out of it, like an old teabag, as, slowly, the little girl I knew disappeared night by night into vodka bottles and strange boys’ arms.

They’d made it onto the bed by now and I knew what was coming. Her hand groped blindly for a few seconds, then she found me and I was rammed, unceremoniously, down the side of the mattress once again.

I landed with a thud. Not much had changed down here since last time. I sprawled awkwardly next to the old sepia photo of her nana and her copy of Macbeth with all of Lady Macbeth’s lines highlighted in yellow.

The morning would be different - all hangover cuddles and whispered apologies I knew. It was always the same; we’d spend the day in bed together watching old episodes of Friends. This arsehole would be gone for good and for a little while, just a very little while, I could pretend things were like they used to be and that I had my Holly back.

Slowly the springs above me fell into their familiar creaking rhythm. It was going to be another long night.

Bedtime Tale

by Claire

In the collection of skin, dust and hair that collected under the bed lay a forlorn toy bear, his stuffing peeking through his broken stitching. Once upon a time he had a growl that emitted fiercely from his chest when turned upside down. That growl had long ago turned into an unreliable squeak. Agnes had never seen that bear except in an old sepia photo of her grandfather as a toddler. In the dark space of her hiding place she worried about the bear and nudged it with her foot, but it stayed inert and silent and seemed that it would not come to life. Agnes felt a little of the tension in her body relax.

Agnes could hear shouts and shrieks all over the house, she could hear the thud of footsteps and slamming of doors. Agnes kept her foot resting on the bear and concentrated really hard on being quiet and still. She shut her eyes, listened to her breathing and remembered that old photo. It showed a small blonde cherub holding hands with an old lady as they stroked a calf, on the ground a few feet away was the bear propped against a tree stump. Her grandad was now a balding old curmudgeon, with enormous ears and hairs growing on his nose, but he had sparkly blue eyes. Agnes could remember seeing the same eyes on the little boy in the photograph. That’s how she had known it was him, as a small child she had pointed to him and said “Grandad” the first time she saw it and her mother had been amazed.

The photo had been in a silver frame on her grandmother’s sideboard. Alongside it had been a black and white photo of people in costume, they had pan-stick faces and rouged cheeks. One of them was her grandmother in 1956 portraying Lady Macbeth in the local Am-Dram Shakespeare production. Agnes found it much more difficult to syncopate that image with the wizened vacuous granny she knew. Old things came from young things it seemed but sometimes the connections were lost.

She felt pins and needles in her hand where she had been awkwardly resting on it and stretched out her arm for relief. Her fingers grazed across something soft and small which made her jump and fearing that it might be a dead animal of some kind she screamed. Immediately knowing that she had given herself away she put her hand over her mouth and waited. And waited. Not knowing if she was more scared of discovery or of the dead creature.

Agnes heard the door creak and saw legs enter the room. The shoes walked around the bed and away again over to the window, they turned and stood still for a moment before walking back over to the door. Agnes heard the door again and started to feel a surge of relief, before the shoes turned and the face and hands of her seeker lunged under the bed.

“Found you Agnes, your turn to count!” said Mark. Agnes wiggled onto her belly and crawled out from under the bed backwards. The last thing she saw on her way was not a dead mouse, but a crumpled sock.

The Locked Room Part 5

by Jon Peters

The church was ablaze. Pews were lakes of fire, blackened bodies slumped over benches like decayed stuffed animals. A priest with flamed robes bellowed in pain, his screams mingling with the shrieks of the undead. To our right was a large iron cage with the door ajar.

My eyes watered from the smoke. Evelina touched my shoulder and I jumped.

“I thought you were one of them!” I shouted over the roar of the fire and shrieks of the zombies.

“We should see if there are any survivors. There are rooms in the back of the church.” Evelina walked through the smoke and fire, motioning for me to follow.

“Are you crazy?” I yelled after her but followed anyway. “How do you know there are rooms back there?” I admit it was a strange question under the circumstances.

“I used to sneak in here and have sex with one of the priests,” Evelina yelled back over her shoulder, dodging a zombie at the same time. He moan-howled, his head in flames.

“I really want to hear that story sometime soon but right now we gotta dodge the dead. Onward!” I shouted, pointing with my hand like it was a sword.

We moved through the pews, smoking bellowing around us, choking us. At the back near the dais, a giant red curtain strapped to the top of the ceiling caught fire. Evelina found an invisible slit in the curtains and pulled them apart, revealing a wooden door. She burst through it and disappeared down a dark hallway. I followed closely.

We checked three rooms with no luck. Same with a small kitchen. The fire hadn’t spread to the back of the church yet and I just hoped that there was an exit somewhere.

The last room we arrived at was locked. Evelina didn’t wait for anyone to answer. She kicked the door in, her powerful leg splitting the wood near the lock.

An old lady crouched near a bed, knife in hand, jabbing at something underneath.

“You’re going to hell!” The old woman shrieked.

“Umm, would you like some help?” I asked, not sure what to make of the situation.

“Brother Michael was caught last night fornicating with one of the undead children. I’m sending him to hell!” She bared her teeth at us, drool dripping down her lip.

Alright. I’d had enough. I looked around the room. Next to a framed old sepia photograph of a young nun was a lit candle. I grabbed it and flung it at them. First the old lady and then the bed caught on fire, followed closely by a shadowy figure underneath. Evelina and I stood and watched in fascination. We finally backed out of the room and shut the door.

“I understand why you’d light the priest on fire, but why Lady Macbeth?” Evelina asked, her hair damp and matted to her forehead.

“Eh, she was as good as dead anyway with that zombie horde outside. I just helped her out.”

We found a door to the outside world and exited the church.

(To be continued)

Under the Bed 1

by unknown....

The idea had been to get an early night and come up with a proper plan tomorrow, but it was pretty clear by now that wasn’t working out. The light had gone off, followed with Alex dutifully rolling onto his side and squeezing his eyes shut - all the mechanisms of going to sleep - but he knew pretty quickly it was all an act.

He could almost feel it, wedged behind the box of trainers he hadn’t worn for years but couldn’t bring himself to throw out, as if it were giving off a physical heat. By now he’d worked himself into such a state he was half convinced it was about to make kindling from the bag of old football programs and sepia photos he’d inherited and never found anything useful to do with.

Of course it wasn’t giving off heat; it was pot, and cotton, and… Alex shook his head clear, he couldn’t think about what else it was. In a way it might have been better if he hadn’t acted so quickly, throwing his hoodie under the falling container in panicked hope of cushioning the fall. There was a moment, a perfect fraction of a second, when Alex saw his top slide neatly into the impact zone and felt his heart burst with relief and accomplishment, better than any goal he’d scored, but it all evaporated when the pot cracked soundlessly into three, letting its contents spill out like sand, swelling into a pile until it was difficult to tell how they’d ever fit inside the pot in the first place.

At least if it had shattered everywhere, cracks reverberating around, shards of clay and powder racing to all ends of the room, then it would have been over. There’d have been no getting out of it then, the music would have been faced and it’d be done with. Instead Alex had been able to gather up the whole mess inside his impromptu landing mat, folding over the sleeves and rolling it into itself so it looked like he’d just scrunched up his hoodie and was cradling it for comfort like a stuffed animal.

Lisa, or her parents, would notice it was missing, obviously, it was just a matter of when. Was it something they looked at every day, or just every now and again, when they did the dusting maybe? Did they have some morbid ritual, where they lit candles and said heartfelt words? Alex had no idea what people did with these things; it was weird to put them on your mantelpiece, he was sure about that.

Alex gave up and rolled out of bed, taking himself across the landing, passed his parents room, and back to the half-lit bathroom sink, where he ran his hands under warm water again, wringing them under the stream like Lady Macbeth for the dozenth time that evening, desperate to make sure any residual fleks of Lisa’s grandma were washed away, hoping maybe then he could sleep.

Joe's lottery win

by James

It was a weird, walking up to their front door without Joe. Gone was that sick, almost giddy feeling, had his wife really gone out for the day? Alison tried to stay calm, but deep inside was a whole different kind of sick feeling.

As the sound of the doorbell faded Alison had to clamp down on her desire to turn tail. Obviously, they weren’t home. They had gotten a last-minute deal, gone away for the weekend. But that was crap. Joe gone away without telling her? Joe gone away with Lady Macbeth?

Her heart fluttered in time with the flickers of grey ghosting behind the frosted glass in the door but it wasn’t Joe. His wife blinked myopically as Alison mutely thrust forward the envelope with her cover story.

‘Lottery,’ she said. ‘Joe’s winnings. Is he here?’

Joe’s wife shook her head. She looked at the envelope, blinked again, then peered at Alison’s face. She began to smile. ‘Oh, it’s…’

‘Alison, from the club. It’s Joe’s winnings. It’s not much, but these things get misplaced, so…is Joe here?’

Joe’s wife was smiling broadly. She looked so warm and engaging, nothing like the double frosted dragon ice queen Joe was always describing.

‘Joe isn’t available, but how about a cup of tea?’

Alison wanted to be anywhere but here. She wanted to kick off her heels and run, because this was nuts – accept an offer from the wife of a guy you’ve been shagging? A guy no one has heard from in days?

But she had to know.

She followed Joe’s wife down the hall towards the kitchen, then asked if she could use the bathroom. She almost blew it by turning for the stairs before she got an answer, but covered herself by saying, ‘Upstairs, is it?’

Joe’s wife still looked so warm and granny-like. She nodded happily. ‘At the top of the stairs, dear.’

Alison didn’t need to use the toilet but she paused in the doorway and stared at the pink bathmat woven with roses. She and Joe had done it on the floor. They had done it in almost every room. Joe’s wife was an old granny, but not Joe. Yeah, he was grey, and yeah, he creaked up the stairs, but there was so much life still in Joe.

Alison could hear the sound of china tinkling from the kitchen. She flushed the toilet and then moved swiftly across to the bedroom where Joe slept alone. Of course it was crazy, and of course she didn’t believe it possible, but how many times had Joe told her that’s where she’d find him if he ever stopped calling her?

The sound of the kettle whistling kicked Alison into life. She dropped to her knees by the side of the bed, took a deep breath and pulled up the hanging edge of the valance draped over the iron framed bed. She grinned happily. What a dozy cow. Under the bed was nothing but a few bits and pieces, a faded stuffed animal, a handful of sepia tinged photographs.

A cough from behind chilled Alison’s blood. She tried to find a smile when she turned around but her failure didn’t matter. Joe’s wife was smiling enough for the both of them.