The baby is nearly thirty months, not truly a baby any more. He can climb stairs, pedal his tricycle, put words together in groups, although only his mother is very good at understanding him. He pronounces words using only half of his mouth, making the sounds fluffy and intimate. Only if you spend a lot of time with him will you understand his way of speaking. His mother likes this. It’s nice for her that they have this almost secret communication. She’s the one who explains the world to him. She knows that soon he’ll get better at speaking, and soon enough he’ll be at pre-school, and he’ll have other people to explain, and he’ll need her less and he won’t want her so much and this soft time they’re sharing will change into something else.
third person
January: Two people
Two people, at not quite their first meeting but coming together out of boredom and as a result of the deliberate steeping of their own hearts in salt, in a squat-style nightclub in East London at the beginning of Spring, will medicate each other’s wounds only partially successfully and, kiss.
March: ghost story attempt
She showed up in a taxi. The sort that trawl the train station picking up tourists and children making brief prodigal returns. She took from the taxi a re-purposed cardboard box. Its four flaps were folded closed rather than taped shut. Her only other luggage was a hard plastic case on wheels.
She introduced herself to the receptionist as Shona Omara. The receptionist, who was also the proprietress Mrs Headle, told her how to find her room.
Shona pulled her case up three flights of carpeted stairs to the third floor. Along the walls of the staircase Shona noticed scuff marks, presumably made by other guests dragging their own luggage. She made a second trip to the lobby to collect the cardboard box.
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February: The Grand Tour
In this story a young man, older than a boy but not so mature that he would be expected to have as many regrets as he in fact carries around with him, leaves his home town, Hull, for an odyssey he himself cannot see the end of but in which the reader or listener of the story thinks they can predict where his story will take him.
August: Attempt at modern folk tale
The third child of the third daughter fell asleep beside a lake at the edge of a forest. Although the woods were ancient, thick and dark, the third child wasn’t afraid. As soon as night came she fell asleep just as she always had.
The spirit that lived on the edge of the lake and that carried the memory of the old world within it saw the third child sleeping, and without hesitation ate her.
July: Arrival
For weeks her belly as wide as an ocean. It ripples. Time spent checking the packed bag, cleaning the prepared room, folding clothes.
Cooking then eating a curry. Its golden flavour rich rolls around her tongue, and the spiciness brings beads to crown her head, but the ocean is calm. Boiled eggs with crumbling sunlight yolks.
Even the clock ticks slow. Count these moments
before
the clenching. Sea-sickness, a tempest.
Her chair is on its side. There is blood on the towels cleaned just this morning. Thrown to the floor in the room cleaned just this morning. The packed bag stays shut. There is ringing. She screams.
Emerging from the eye of the storm, he arrives squalling.
June: Park Story
Up above, the sky is open blue. Down beneath, the grass is living green. Kelly watches as the smoke from his mouth curls out into the blue. Near to him, in a group to his left, a girl plays bongos. She is wearing a tan fringed jacket. She has feathers in her hair. This morning she gave Kelly a flower. Someone else is playing an acoustic guitar. Maybe it’s Dan, muting the chords with his fat fingers. Reedy voices that have been up all night and into today attempt to keep pace with the stumbling guitar.
Somewhere off to Kelly’s right, away from his people, he can hear the thunk pause thunk of a cricket bat. Spattered clapping. There are families over there. He saw them arrive, before his come-down made him lie-down. The June sun sinks – into Kelly’s face, exposed arms, feet in sandals.
A shadow touches his right leg, nearabout the ankle. Kelly looks.
December: King Kong at Christmas
Christmas for Kong had never been as bloody, nor as violent and carnal, as legend might lead one to expect. For so many decades the community on the other side of the barrier, seething with their own concerns, had made tribute to the great Kong, the King Kong. Fashions and tastes changed from generation to generation behind the barrier, but the offerings remained as steadfastly, as solidly, uniform as the dread Kong himself. It is no wonder, of course, that the people thought of him as a god. And as a god he could not go blameless when a typhoon capsized the fishing boats and destroyed the market. But as a god he could be placated; a quiet Christmas could be predicted by a doubling of tribute. Not just a young girl, scented with clove oil and drugged to calmness, but also a teenage boy picked by a lottery, and a basket of glass blown into shapes too delicate for Kong to handle. The glass shapes represented fishes, fruits, sometimes eggs (for fertility), female shapes (for luck in marriage) and flowers. For the people behind the barrier, flowers symbolised prosperity. If Kong overturned the basket while ripping the human offerings from their stakes, then a bad year was foretold. If the basket remained more or less intact then the people could rejoice in a great and fortuitous year ahead. He ate the offerings. This is what he has always done. For the offerings to take place at Christmas was natural: the Winter Solstice heralded the triumph of light over darkness and a true beginning to the next twelve months of survival and trade.
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November: Mick
Maybe you wouldn’t expect so, but Mick remembers breathing. He remembers the little noise his lip made when they’d part, and the rise of his chest, and his lungs filling. He remembers the little temperature change in his nostrils when they’d suck in new air, and the baby-turbulence at the roof of his mouth when he’d breathe out.
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