This is the eight short story in Eight Shots of Fiction by Gill Hale and Ali Luke.

You’ll get all eight when you join our newsletter here.

Megan liked solitude: that was why she had built her house far from her chaotic family. She worked on it day after day, night after night. Sometimes she turned her hand to smaller projects; the “super-responsive keyboard”, the “intangible tape”, which kept small royalty checks coming in – left by the postman in the box at the end of Megan’s drive. Under her influence, the house had grown foreboding. She did not encourage visitors.

When the doorbell rang, at four on a Thursday afternoon, Megan blinked slowly out of her work, thoughts still in a cocoon of algorithms. She touched the security screen to see who the intruder was.

“Debi,” she said, as she opened the door. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

Her sister flounced in, a swish of gypsy blouse and scarves. Immediately, Megan could see that she would not fit with the cool cream walls and plain floorboards. Debi was a splash of chaos, corrupting perfect order.

“You need to cheer this place up a bit!” Debi plonked down two carry-alls in Megan’s hallway. “I’ve brought fairy-lights with me, cushions, candles, all sorts of gorgeous bits and bobs. We’ll have a proper housewarming.”

Megan followed her sister towards the kitchen. Her own kitchen. “Why are you here?”

“It’s so … clean,” Debi said, staring around the kitchen. “So sparse. It doesn’t even have a smell.”

“I wanted it that way. You know I hate clutter.” Her thoughts were already strangled by little, worthless, prosaic questions: how long before she could get rid of Debi? Why did her scatty sister have to intrude? Was their mother behind this?

“Is this thingy your kettle?”

“Don’t touch that!”

Debi’s hand faltered back. “Well, it’s … interesting, whatever it is.”

“It’s an intrinsic part of the house. Why are you here?”

Debi sat down on the immaculate kitchen sideboard, pulling off her twined scarves. “Well, I just thought I’d pop down and see you.”

“Must you stay?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Debi’s shoes, kicked off, sailed gracelessly through the air. There was a tiny, sharp, crack as they chipped one of the tiles. Megan’s lips tightened. She could almost feel the house groan; irked, rebelling.

“Just for a week?” Debi said.

Megan took a long, slow, breath. Part of her, though, realised that this could be an interesting experiment. The house had never had two inhabitants to cope with before. “I’ll make up the spare room for you.”

* * *

Throughout her schooling and career, Megan had always been intrigued by how quickly order broke down. Of course, quantum mechanics decreed that there was a possibility the broken mug would unshatter – but, in everything, organisation gave way to chance, to destruction; the heat-death of the universe was inevitable.

After a couple of days of Debi, the descent into utter chaos looked nearer than expected.

The spare room was engulfed. The wallpaper shimmered, still warm with change, in a new bedazzling pattern. A once-plain duvet was now garish, covered in cushions and tassels and smiling soft toys. Discarded clothing, magazines, shoes, lipsticks and general Debi-debris covered the carpet. Megan trod carefully.

This wasn’t part of her house. It was a room ruined by a spirit of disorder. Megan’s lips tightened as she picked up a sweater, a scarf, a shoe. She began to impose tidiness via brute force.

After sorting clothes between laundry hamper and wardrobe, pairing socks and folding t-shirts, Megan felt calmer. The bright wallpaper had faded, and the cacophony of candle scents had been replaced by the aseptic smell of the laboratory. Perhaps she would write a new chapter for her thesis, describing how the house reacted when occupied by two very different individuals.

“Hi, Megs!”

The waft of bubble-gum perfume hit Megan before she even turned to see Debi struggled in with bulging shopping bags and hurled them onto the bed. The duvet which Megan had just straightened spontaneously curled up, one end flopping onto the carpet. The corner of a poster came unstuck. A shred of wall-paper unpeeled. The house was rebelling.

“You have to leave,” Megan said.

Debi’s mouth opened and closed in a silent “oh”.

“I need to concentrate. And you … aren’t at home here, in this house. My house.”

Debi’s hands fluttered over the new purchases, the ornaments that had accumulated around the room. “But I am, Megs, honestly. It’s perfect. This room is … so … so me.”

Of course it is, Megan wanted to scream at her. Don’t you understand yet? Can’t you see what I’ve invented?

But she just said, “Make sure you’re packed by this evening. I’ll arrange a taxi.”

Megan picked her way out of chaos, down the hallway to cream walls and the plain staircase, into the immaculate kitchen. She pressed the button for white coffee, and watched the machine. Coffee grounds chugged. Smooth almost-black liquid dripped. White milk dashed in, swirling like a galaxy before being engulfed into ubiquitous brown.

She needed order, and the house would respond. Of all places in the universe, it alone could defy the laws of thermodynamics. She reached for the mug, and the milk unspun, sinking to rest beneath a layer of pure water, above coffee-silt and the chlorine and fluoride.

Everything orderly, clean, neat. That was what her house meant to her – and to the world. With the fabric of the house applied widely enough, she could reverse once-inevitable decay on a global scale.

As she poured another coffee, and unswirled the milk from that also, she could feel the strength of the house pulsing. From upstairs, she heard Debi shout, “Megs, there’s something freaky about this room!”

“It doesn’t like you,” Megan said quietly, and put one hand on the wall.

“Megs!” Debi’s voice was as whiny and shrill as it had been when they were small children. “Megs, I’m scared …”

Megan ignored a dull crash from somewhere above. She poured a third coffee.

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This is the seventh short story in Eight Shots of Fiction by Gill Hale and Ali Luke.

You’ll get all eight when you join our newsletter here.

Hilary sat by her father’s bed and watched the slowly shifting diagonal on the cover, where the light from the window met shadow. In ten minutes, when she’d finished this cup of tea, it would make a better composition. The line would bisect the neat nursing home quilt; her father’s chest and face would be featureless in the shadow and the sun would fall full on his left hand. That would be the focus: the light pitiless on every age spot and skin crevasse; the lax, old man’s tendons failing to grasp the pale material. The rest could blur into the darkness.

The tea was bitter, stewed. The light fell as she’d imagined it and she sat still.

In her mind, a portfolio of pictures formed a slide show. A bouquet of small dusty hands, ebony skinned, pink palmed, reached up to the wonder of water from a village tap. A scientist’s sterile fingers gripped a blue-lit test tube. At a Basque festival, dancers raised their arms as they swirled. The show’s sound track was her father’s harsh breathing and, beyond the window, the voices of local school children enjoying their lunchtime break. The children were muffled, but nothing muffled his breathing.

She sat alone. Twice a week, for months now, this had been her duty. It was quiet today because her father was asleep; if he was awake he would be angry at not knowing who she was and the kind little Filipino nurses would have to settle him again. They said he’d been out of bed during the morning, but he was tired now, his body finally failing, following well behind his mind. They were so kind, Imee and Chona. She never knew how to respond.

“Talk to your father about things from your childhood. Happy memories you shared. He still has some long-term recall,” Dr Sayer had said, almost a year ago.

She’d looked blank then; she didn’t want to think what her face would show now.

“Holidays, birthdays, Christmas, that sort of thing,” Dr Sayer went on, maybe a little impatiently. To catch the essence of Dr Sayer on camera you would need sharp focus but a slow shutter speed; Dr Sayer’s precise movements were blurred by haste.

She’d always gone to her grandparents for the school holidays: good memories, but hers alone. Christmas had been… generic. She talked to her father about the village, about local people he’d known. She should have talked about her mother, but the words dried up. She’d caught her mother unawares once, and the lens had seen past the perfect make-up and controlled expression to capture haunted eyes.

She wondered what Imee and Chona made of the frequent silence in the room, the missing warmth. Was it just a stereotype that she imagined them coming from loving, sprawling extended families?

Her father coughed, shifted uneasily. The sun was on his face now; she went over to the window and pulled the curtain across half the frame, smothering the rays. In the schoolyard, children lined up in rows, a pattern of red sweatshirts against the drab building. She’d been older than that, first year at secondary school, when her mother had found she was pregnant again. Hilary, who’d given up long ago pleading for a brother or sister, had been thrilled. She’d not realised that her parents, in their thirties when they married, hadn’t planned for even one child.

Hilary’s mother had been several months into the pregnancy before the truth became apparent: not the menopause at all, quite another cause for her various symptoms. Too many months, Hilary now realised, for any option but having the baby.

She remembered that time in an odd kaleidoscope of other, random, pictures from the year – new friends, French and Latin, the laboratories and a crazy science master, a bus ride to school every day. In between learning ‘vocab’ and discovering the elements, she’d seen her mother swell and grow more tired. The baby had come in the Easter holidays.

“A baby brother,” Granny said, but there was something not quite right with her voice.

It turned out that this was because there was something not quite right with her brother, too. To Hilary he was just about perfect; to everyone else, the extra chromosome seemed to be a really big deal. Down’s Syndrome. She had to look it up in a book in the school library, because Granny wouldn’t talk about it.

They called him Michael, but not as if the name made him welcome. Hilary called him Mikey and loved to give him his bottle, coaxing the milk into his too-small mouth. Her mother grew pale and untidy and sad. She was a woman who’d always perfected her appearance before Hilary stumbled down to breakfast; now she forgot to brush her hair until mid morning.

Hilary looked at her father’s hands, in shadow again now. She couldn’t recall ever seeing him hold Michael. Hilary held him all the time, took him out in the pram, smiled at the neighbours who said, “Your mother’s so lucky to have such a good helper,” and glared at the ones who made sad noises about his handicap. She hadn’t had a camera then. One of her most precious possessions was a dog-eared, badly composed snapshot her grandfather had taken of her staggering a bit under the weight of Mikey at three months.

Because Michael had thrived. He put on the pounds. He cried less. After they’d stayed with her grandparents for much of the summer her mother began to look groomed again. In September Hilary went into the Second Form and they learned pottery in Art.

In October she caught the flu that was going around her year group and brought it home.

After an uncomfortable few days, the rest of them threw it off. Michael developed a chesty cough that wouldn’t shift. He cried and coughed night after night. The doctor prescribed antibiotics and said reassuring things; it was a bit of a chest infection but Michael was strong enough now. Her mother grew exhausted again, until one morning she was weeping silently over the breakfast.

For the first time Hilary could remember, her father said he was taking a day off work.

“I’ll stay home!” she volunteered.

“Certainly not. Your education’s important.”

Hilary didn’t argue; looking back she couldn’t remember ever arguing. But she’d arrived at school to find that the boiler had failed, and that those who could go home were being encouraged to do so. A quick run back to the bus stop and she was at her house again by ten o’clock. She hurried up the stairs to Michael’s room, calling, “We’ve been given the day off! The heating’s broken.”

There was no sign of her mother. Her father turned, his hands gripped around the bright little pillow that went in the bouncing chair and that Mikey loved better than a toy. Her father’s fingers looked large and ugly against the pattern of ducks. “Hilary,” he said quite calmly. “I want you to go and phone the doctor. Michael’s taken a turn for the worse.”

Through all the distress and the talk of chest infections and vulnerable babies, through the sad little funeral and the sympathy at school, it never occurred to her to doubt what her father had said. But, for some reason, that image stayed with her of his grip around the pillow.

She was earning her living as a freelance photographer before she allowed herself to think, to really think, about why she so often focussed on hands. Then she blamed herself for having such ugly thoughts. She was busy, socially and professionally; she travelled to countries where far too many babies died before their first birthday. But somewhere, at the back of her mind, the suspicion grew. Her father choosing to stay at home; Michael’s sudden relapse when he’d been getting better; the way the doctor spoke to her father about post-natal depression and asked him about her mother’s state of mind…

She tried to talk to her mother once but how could she come out and say it? Did Dad smother my baby brother so you could have your life back? Did he take the pillow and press it down over Mikey’s mouth and nose till the problem went away?

She photographed hands on guns and hands on knives, healers’ hands and pleading hands. Her problem never went away.

Her mother died suddenly of a heart attack, the questions unasked.

Last year, Hilary had taken an unusual assignment, travelling to Switzerland with a freelance journalist to do a feature piece on an artist – an artist who was noteworthy not just because his work was innovative and growing popular, but because he had Down’s Syndrome. The article was inspiring; it was read and reprinted widely. For Hilary, it turned confused memories and a lifelong sense of loss into a furious need to know.

Back in England, she went to see her father for the first time in a couple of years. The house was indescribably dirty and he didn’t recognise her at all. Her first thought hadn’t been guilt or concern or even what to do next. It had been, “I’ve waited too long. Now I’ll never know.”

There was guilt, too, though. The shadows on her image of him might be her own creation. She worked hard: found a doctor, a good consultant, a caring Home, sold the house to fund it long term. She’d been relieved to find this place, where kindness was still considered an important part of treatment. And she’d visited, with just her ambiguous feelings as company each time she sat out her hours.

Until two weeks ago, when she’d finally gone through boxes from the attic that she’d hastily stored at the time of the sale, things put away by her mother over many years. There was a jug that her grandmother had prized, old school photos of Hilary, several copies of her first published photo. At the bottom of one box, was a jumble of Michael’s few possessions: the little ‘for best’ outfit granny had bought him, a pristine teddy and the duck pillow…

A soft sound at the door: Chona looking in, smiling, collecting the empty tea cup.

When she came for her last two visits, she’d brought the pillow, screwed up in the bottom of her bag. Rambling and strange as her father’s thought processes were, she could often see some twisted connection to reality. The first time had been like today though; he’d never really been awake.

Last week had been different.

“He having good day,” Imee told her, pleased for her. “Say the dinner too cold.” Only Imee could have been so happy about being grumbled at.

Hilary had sat down, gone through the usual routine of who she was, why she was here. Only this time, it had had some real purpose. Some talk about their old home, the village, the pub he’d liked, the Bird in Hand, and then an outright lie. “I met old Doctor Wetherby last week, father. You remember him?” Doctor Wetherby had retired to the south coast twenty years earlier, but that was the sort of detail her father was always hazy on.

“Wetherby?” he muttered, pushing absently with the back of his hand at the damp corner of his mouth, where spittle leaked when he talked. “Oh, Wetherby. Useless on the tee.”

Hilary took the duck pillow out from the bottom of her bag and held it up where he could not avoid looking at it. “Did Dr Wetherby ever know about this? Did you tell him why you were holding Michael’s pillow that day?”

It was hard to say what she’d expected. Confusion? Sudden guilt? A hint of years of remorse? She settled for his connection with the conversation; it was better than she’d hoped for. Her father gestured irritably. “Old fool Wetherby. No good talking to him. The man had no idea.”

“What did he have no idea about?” Hilary asked, trying not to let the tension bleed into her voice, trying not to break the spell. A day as lucid as this might not come again.

Her father shook his head. “Had to be done, you know. Couldn’t go on like that, years and years of it, no kind of life. Had to put us all out of our misery.” He wiped at his mouth again, impatiently. “You should tell them to bring me a cup of tea. They never bring tea. I haven’t had a cup of tea for weeks.”

He was losing his brief focus, already looking at her as if he was puzzled she was there, but she’d heard enough. Her anger was physical, a choking sensation in her throat. But she squashed the pillow back into her bag, and did nothing, because they wouldn’t be alone much longer. It was three-thirty; within a few minutes Chona came, bringing the usual afternoon tea.

But today Hilary had planned her visit carefully. Today she’d come earlier, made sure she was sitting here at three, when the staff got together for their meeting before the afternoon round of the patients’ hot drinks. When Chona had waved on her way past, it had been the last time anyone would look in for half an hour at least.

Hilary hadn’t brought the duck pillow. There were more than enough pillows here and, however fitting it might have been, she didn’t want to use Michael’s.

Her father’s rasping breathing was still an eternal rhythm in the room.

They would talk of vulnerable old men and weak hearts.

She took the pillow that they sometimes used to prop him up. It was solidly packed with some non-allergenic fibre. Her hands were tanned against its pale cover, her grip firm. She stared at those hands for a long, long minute. There was the tiny pattern of cracks in slightly dry skin; a raised vein; a healing scratch where she’d brushed against a wire fence; the freckle that might be a first age-spot. The picture they made was so clear in her mind that she could see the gloss surface of the print and the way the close-up showed the texture. Another one for the portfolio, but these were her hands, part of her own life story.

Every picture tells a story, but you had to choose what story you wanted to tell.

Quite slowly, but quite decisively, she placed the pillow on the floor.

Ten minutes later, Imee came in with the tea, and woke her father. Hilary shook her head to the offer of another cup. “I have to go,” she said. “I don’t know if I’ll make it next week.”

“We look after him for you,” Imee said, untroubled.

Outside in the sunlight, the children were coming out of school, the little ones holding a hand, the older ones chatting or scuffling a bit, all with that indefinable lightness of step that spoke of escape. She took out her camera, and photographed their feet, bouncing, skipping, running to freedom.

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This is the sixth short story in Eight Shots of Fiction by Gill Hale and Ali Luke.

You’ll get all eight when you join our newsletter here.

I peeped through the curtains at the faint tendrils of dawn creeping across the sea, red fingers stretching over the grey expanse. I didn’t even dress or put on shoes, just crept out of my room and down the stairs of the Sea Urchin Guest House in my boxers, slipped outside and shivered in the chilly morning air. The chorus of gulls was just beginning.

The beach was deserted. I scrambled down the path and towards the shoreline, the pristine sand damp and soft under my feet.

“I missed you, Rosie!” I shouted at the dawn, and, “I’m sorry I never told you how I felt.”

The waves broke in whispers, and the cawing from the cliffs was muted. I ran along, gasping salty lungfuls of sea air, eyes tracking across the smooth sand.

Then, finally, I saw it – still wet from the sea and shimmering as the sun rose. A perfect shell, the size of my hand. I plucked it from the beach, sloshed the sand which clung to it into the freezing ripples of the sea.

I held the shell to my mouth, and breathed into it, repeating the words over and over, hoping they would somehow lodge inside. “I love you. I love you. I love you.”

* * *

It all began by the sea. We were eight, and the last days of the summer term were dragging to a lazy end. Both loners, we ended up sharing the losers’ seat at the front of the coach, right behind the teacher.

“I don’t want to sit with a girl,” I said, to the window.

“Just put your seat-belt on, Jonathan,” said the teacher, ticking off names on the register.

“I’m not a girl,” Rosie said, “I’m a shapeshifter in disguise. I’m really from the planet Zogg.”

That made me look at her properly. She sat on a different table at school, and I’d just thought of her as one of the girls until now. But she wasn’t dressed like them, in their bright elastic hair-things and friendship bracelets and flip-flops. She had sunglasses balanced on the tip of her freckled nose, and wore a black t-shirt with a skull-and-crossbones on. I decided the trip might not be so boring as I’d expected.

We spent the journey chatting, and were soon at the beach. The rest of our class ran around shrieking, dipping toes into the sea and flinging seaweed; Rosie and I crafted a stupendous (her word) castle, worthy of the Rock Monster himself – who was represented by a particularly ugly pebble (my find).

“We should make a friendship pact,” Rosie said. The teacher was blowing her whistle to call us all back to the coach, but no-one was paying any attention.

“Like what?” I thought it was a great idea – I just wasn’t sure how it was done. “Should we spit on our hands and shake?”

She didn’t go “eww”, but just said, “That’s a bit childish.”

“We could cut our arms with knives and be blood-brothers –” I’d forgotten that she was a girl, because she didn’t giggle and squeal like one.“Blood … brother and sister.”

That didn’t sound quite the same, and Rosie was shaking her head, wrinkling her freckles at me. “We’ll just swear it.”

“Okay,” I said, and ignored the second whistle.

“By the salt in the sea and the pebbles in my shoes and the sand in my sandwiches, I swear I’ll always always always be your best friend, Jonathan.”

Was I supposed to say the same, or did I have to come up with something even more awesome? I picked up one of the shells we’d rejected as too big for the Rock Monster’s castle, and held it out to her. “As long as you can hear the sea in the shell, I’ll be your best friend too, Rosie.”

We both knew that meant “forever.”

* * *

“Forever” almost lasted a decade.

We were at the sea again. It was mid-winter, a freezing wind sweeping the Cornwall coast. Rosie had persuaded me to join her for a post-Christmas break in a tacky little bed and breakfast, the Sea Urchin, where she’d stayed as a child.

Nothing seemed quite right. We bickered from day one. Rosie was moody, quiet, sullen, but insisted on dragging me down to the windy shore.

“It’s going to rain,” I said, as soon as we were crunching across the pebbles beneath a bleak sky. Cold foam fizzed where the waves broke on the grey sand.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. She took my hand, and tugged me along the beach. Around her neck she wore that shell I’d given her nine and a half years ago. Before, I’d been flattered when she’d told me she saw it as a talisman, a token of our friendship. Now, it seemed stupid, childish. Why didn’t she wear the necklace I’d given her for her last birthday? The bracelet I’d slipped into her locker? She’d seemed embarrassed by both gestures; she’d tried to laugh, tried to pretend it didn’t mean anything.

I glanced sideways at her now, watching as the wind whipped her hair about, hard enough to raise red marks on her cheeks. My faltering, “Rosie, what’s wrong?” was almost snatched away by a sudden gust.

Her eyes were moist when she turned; mine were too, but that was from the sting of the wind. “I … I don’t know how to tell you …”

Nightmares hurtled through my mind. She had cancer. She was pregnant. She was going to hurl me off a cliff onto the rocks. She really was a shape-shifter.

“I’m going to America next August, for university,” she said, “I’ve got a scholarship to Ohio State.”

My cold fingers uncurled from her hand. America. She’d talked about it once or twice, over a game of cards in the common room, but I’d put “I might go to uni in the States” in the same category as “I might win the lottery, become a space-tourist, and buy a trip to Mir.”

“America?” My mouth was dry, I could taste salt in the air.

“I didn’t know how to tell you. It’s not for ages yet. And I’ll come home, in the holidays, for Christmas.” She reached out for my hand, but I kept my arms at my sides. “It’s only America – not the moon…”

Even that couldn’t make me smile. She turned, and walked on. I let the crash of the sea and the tearing wind steal my mumbled, “I love you.”

That night, I couldn’t sleep. The sea groaned, gulls screeched through the night. Every time I closed my eyes I saw emptiness, a great vast sheet of water between Rosie and me. I watched her, curled beneath the duvet, hair twisted like fragile seaweed on the pillow.

Her shell was on her bedside table, and I took it, silently. I carried it down the stairs and crushed it between my palms – not caring that shards pierced my hands – and then, silently again, I walked back to our room and scattered the ruined fragments on the table.

* * *

As I walked back from the beach to the Sea Urchin, the words of Rosie’s email ran through my head. “I’m back in the UK. Meet you in the Urchin, Monday morning, about coffee-time…”

I’d thought of replying, “I’m sorry I never answered your emails. Or your phone calls. Or that postcard with the flying saucer over the Pentagon.”

I’d wanted to say, “I don’t want to see you. I’ve moved on.”

In the end, I’d sent, “OUT-OF-OFFICE REPLY: Jonathon is away from the computer, finding himself. He may be some time.”

So, I was sure she wouldn’t come. Why would she bother going all the way to the sea if she thought I’d not received her message?

I waited in the Sea Urchin’s tiny lobby, taking in every nuance of the tacky sea-side decorations; model ships, a faux-aged ship’s wheel — nothing had changed in five years. I started each time a guest came through the doors. None of them were her.

I sat there, feeling foolish, holding my shell carefully, carefully, like thin crystal. She was never going to come, I’d thrown away chance after chance and now it was too late. I stood up – I’d take the dead shell back to the beach, stamp it into the sand.

But as soon as I took a step, the door jangled open, and there she was. Even shadow-eyed with jet lag, she was still as beautiful as the last time I’d seen her. “Jonathan,” she began, and her voice rippled like sand ridged by the tide. “Why didn’t you phone? Why didn’t you ever answer my emails?”

I just held out the shell by way of answer, and said, “I’m sorry.”

Silently, she lifted the shell to her ear, brushing away tendrils of tangled hair. She closed her eyes, taking long breaths as though gulping in the sea as well as listening to it. I heard her give a small, hiccupped, sob.

I watched as her fingers curled more tightly around the shell. Could she hear more than just the echo of the waves?

She reached for my hand, and I leant closer and whispered, “I love you.”

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We’re thrilled to announce the publication of Gleams, a novel by Ananda Rae, now available from Amazon and through our own website.

Here’s the blurb:

Marian just wants her life back. After a car crash in L.A., she’s been suffering from panic attacks – and her glamorous best friend Liza has been left suspended between life and death in the Institute of Immortal Pursuits

Living in London with “wholesome” boyfriend Cliff, Marian’s spending her days in bed, unable to face leaving the house. She’s certain that there’s a reason she’s not getting better – there’s something wrong, something she can’t fully remember. After an anonymous invitation arrives in her inbox, she travels back to L.A., hoping to find Alex, the man who she met at a party on the night of the crash, hoping he can help her piece things back together. But as she tries to get to the heart of one mystery, more emerge: who is the woman with the missing breast, and why does she have an apartment full of plants? What Alex’s research all about?

Rae’s gripping, lyrical prose vividly portrays Marian’s state of mind, and weaves together the past and present into a narrative that digs deep into life, death, and what it means to be a friend.

You can find out about Ananda herself, and buy Gleams, from this page.

You can also download the Gleams press release (pdf) here.

This is the fifth short story in Eight Shots of Fiction by Gill Hale and Ali Luke.

You’ll get all eight when you join our newsletter here.

Arachnophobia, that’s what they call it. Fear of spiders. I’m a walking, shrieking text-book case. You can’t open a cupboard in my apartment without finding cans of killer spray and long handled brushes for disposing of the little beasts without going near them.

It’s one of the reasons why I live in this cheap corner of concrete city. Only one, mind you; I also like the night life round here. But it’s certainly a plus that it’s as near as you can get to a spider-free zone. I wouldn’t take a country walk or go to a garden barbecue for a year’s pay. Some people say that where there are no spiders you suffer from flies, but that doesn’t worry me; I like flies.

Everyone who knows me is well aware of how I feel about life with eight legs. They’re mostly pretty good about it. Some of them probably think I’m a bit weird, but none of my boyfriends have let it worry them – not till this one. Kevin’s taking an interest. My feelings about spiders just seem to fascinate him.

I met Kevin a couple of weeks ago in a seedy but spider-free pub. He’s a big man and judging by his beer gut he must have spent a good few hours in similar establishments. He had his eye on me from the minute I walked in the door, and luckily for him, I prefer my men with a bit of flesh on them. We had no trouble striking up an acquaintance. We had a drink or two, what passed for a chat – me listening to Kevin on the star qualities of West Ham – and after that it followed the usual sort of pattern. We met a couple of times at local hotspots, had a few meals out, then I asked him along to the apartment. There’s something quite different about eating at home.

I’d got the apartment spotlessly clean, as always. You can’t be a slut if you have a spider phobia. There was plenty of meat. Most men like meat and I’m no vegetarian. The doorbell rang on time, and there was Kevin, plump and shiny but fortunately not smelling of aftershave. The table was set, a bottle chilled for a drink before dinner, and I could guess exactly what he’d want to sit down and talk about.

No, not football, not any more. Not even what he did at work today. Kevin’s new chosen subject was ‘lovable spiders’. Under the beer and bobble hat exterior, Kevin was apparently a bit of an amateur shrink. Somehow, over the last fortnight, he’d decided he could help cure my feminine frailty.

“You can’t let something like this rule your life,” he said, in a naturally patronising manner that must have been handed down through generations of men in his family. “It’s taken over. You won’t even let me buy you a bunch of flowers, and I know that’s killer spray not perfume in your handbag.”

I did a bit of girly eyelash fluttering and said meekly, “You’re so right. I don’t think anyone could really imagine the hold this has over me.”

“You live here,” he went on, regardless, “just because it’s all concrete and brick. It’s not a nice area. A girl could easily get into trouble around here.”

I nodded with just the right degree of agreement. “It’s even worse than you think,” I said. “Do you know, I’ve started to have these weird ideas about spiders now – really weird.”

That got his attention. I could tell, because before he’d been eyeing my legs and now he forgot about them. I had to tell him every detail of my spider fantasies. It kept us going all through dinner.

“I don’t believe spiders originated on this planet,” I explained. “To me, they’re aliens, all of them. Of course, many of them have been here for centuries and get along pretty well with most people. I think they’re quite intelligent, you know, even the small ones. That’s probably why they’re not interested in taking over the world. I believe they all come from one star system in the first place, they’d call it something like Arachnos, but in their own language, naturally.”

Kevin gave me a vague but encouraging smile around a mouthful of rare steak. A trickle of meat juices escaped. I blinked and hastily continued with my story. “But there’s worse than that. You see, I can’t help believing there are also more advanced inhabitants of Arachnos. Super-spiders, so to speak. I can see these being able to travel about the galaxy, maybe take on the shapes of the races they visit – so you wouldn’t even know they’re really spiders.”

My phobia must have been the most interesting thing Kevin had come across in years. He could hardly swallow his steak for listening to me. He asked a few questions, and even used the word paranoia which is a lot more academic than we usually get around here. But basically I talked and he listened, which was definitely a new departure.

“What with Superman and so on, super beings generally get a good press, but what I say is, you’re sure to get a nasty one sometimes, a criminal. These spider people may have laws and morals or whatever, but there’s always going to be one who goes to the bad. If you had thoughts about evil spiders who could pass as human beings, killer spray in the handbag wouldn’t seem such a crazy idea.”

Kevin didn’t have an answer to this, but that didn’t stop him explaining it all away. He had some interesting ideas about the sort of things in a girl’s past that might cause these sorts of fears and delusions – funnily enough, it seemed that the answer to all my troubles might be a relationship with the right sort of bloke. Apparently, a girl who was having it off with a sensible, protective type of guy would find these fantasies just flew out of the window once she had something better on her mind.

As it happened, I’d no objection to the evening moving in this direction. In that way, it was no different from my previous boyfriends; it had just been nice to talk for once. It didn’t matter how much Kevin believed me.

That is, it didn’t matter to me.

It mattered a lot for Kevin, of course. Permanently and fatally, though quite a lot of him is still trussed up in gossamer in the bedroom as the steak had taken the edge off my appetite. It’ll be one of my most lasting relationships.

They’d be very annoyed back home on Arachnos if they knew what I’d been doing since I gave the watchers the slip and headed out to this obscure bit of the universe. The rules about preying on sentient beings are ridiculously strict, though if you live in my part of town you’d quibble about the word sentient being applicable to the locals. All the same, I’d be in for an unpleasant time.

Still, I don’t think I’ve anything to worry about. The police have never come round asking after any of my  ex-boyfriends, and if they did they’d hardly suspect the truth. There might have been the odd scream, but that’s not exactly unusual here. No, the only ones who make me nervous are those who could spot me for what I am, and that’s my own kind.

They may have been on earth for a lot longer than me, but one spider knows another, if it gets close enough. That’s why I have to keep them away, or make sure that they don’t leave again. It’s murder of course, and would add to the list of charges against me back home, but these little local beasts are the only ones who could shop me to the arachnid authorities. So where I go, the killer spray goes too.

Arachnophobia? You can learn to live with it.

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This is the fourth short story in Eight Shots of Fiction by Gill Hale and Ali Luke.

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Each day, I arrived at the railway station by half past seven, and wrote down the number of the seven-thirty-two to Birmingham as it sped past. Each day, I bought a coke and kit-kat from the vending machine and sat on the bench at the end of platform two to eat them. Each day, I went through my homework folder, handling every pristine page by the edges as I wrote Matthew Hudson in every top right corner.

At seven-forty, the fifth-formers from St Jim’s would arrive – ties absent, hair unbrushed, the toes of their shoes stone-scuffed. Carl Stevens was the leader, but the other two were just as tall, loud, and dangerous. They caught the train before mine – and for weeks they left me alone.

Then, one chilly October Monday, I overslept. I ran to the station but caught only a glimpse of the fast train to Birmingham receding into the distance. The blank page of my notebook, ready for the new half-term, would have to remain empty.

There was no coke in the machine, and after eating my twenty pence piece, it refused to release a kit-kat.

“No!” I thumped the side of the machine with my hand, hard enough to hurt.

“Oi, spastic, gerrout the way, I wanna mars bar.”

I turned to see the fifth-formers, Carl’s jaw wide and ugly with a smirk.

“You deaf? Move your skinny arse.” He reached out and shoved me. My hands went up, palm-out in panic, and the fifty pence coin for the coke clinked onto the platform.

I stooped to pick it up. A size nine boot slammed down, missing my fingers by inches.

“Finders, keepers. Spazzo.”

All of them were sniggering as I stood up.

“That’s mine, you bully, give it back.”

Carl took a step towards me, eyes narrow, a fist raised. I turned and fled down the platform, and it wasn’t until I heard howls of laughter instead of chasing footsteps that I realised he’d just been trying to scare me. Their train pulled in and they swarmed onto it.

When I was sitting safely in the end carriage of my train, the seven-fifty-five, I lowered my head and clenched my fists so tightly that the nails bit into my palms. I wished I was stronger, bigger, that I possessed the indefinable cool the fifth-formers had. I wished I’d been brave enough to fight Carl. I wished I had my drink and chocolate.

When I lifted my head, I saw, on one of the flimsy plastic tables, an unopened can of coke and a kit-kat. I looked around the carriage, but there was no-one. It was as though they had been left for me, were meant for me.

I cracked the kit-kat in half, then nibbled and scraped the chocolate covering from each finger with my teeth, before crunching through the biscuit.

The next morning dawned bleak and rainy.

“Why don’t you wait a bit, Matthew, see if it eases up? Surely you don’t want to hang around at the station in this weather.” Mother paused before saying, “And those rough boys from St Jim’s won’t be there, if you wait quarter of an hour.”

I held up my notebook. “I need the number of the seven-thirty-two.” And I wanted a reason to take the new umbrella which she had bought for me. It was smart, black, business-like, and carrying it made me feel taller.

I reached the station with plenty of time to watch the train to Birmingham rush by. I copied down the number – I had almost a full page now.

But when I walked to the snack machine, Carl and his gang were already leaning against it. I thought of turning and walking back to my end of the platform, but I wasn’t going to let them ruin a good day.

“Oh, the little spaz is coming to get his drinky-winky,” Carl yelled.

“Oh, do shut up,” I said, annoyed.

They laughed even more, and mimicked me, in posh, affected accents. “Oh do shut up, Carl.”

Carl miraculously stepped away from the machine. “Go on then, four-eyes, get your drink.”

I wasn’t sure what to do. I walked closer, but didn’t take my money out, in case Carl was about to snatch it. The three of them crowded in as I bought the coke. I was trying to keep my breathing slow, but my chest felt tight.

The cold can was clutched safely in my hand, and I could hear the rumble of their train in the distance. I was going to buy my chocolate and get away safely.

“Finders, keepers!” Carl said, and I grabbed for my kit-kat, afraid he was about to take it from the vending machine. But he snatched the umbrella instead. As the train rushed in, he drew back his arm and hurled it onto the tracks. I heard the snap.

“Whoops,” he said, and laughed. They disappeared onto their train, and I made it to my carriage before I sat and opened my can, my hands shaking.

“You’re better than them,” said a man’s voice, gruff but kind.

Fizzy cold coke sloshed across my hand in shock. I looked all around the carriage, but it was as empty as ever. I even checked that no-one was slouched down behind a seat.

The next day, I bought The Times – our class was studying various newspapers in Tutorial time. Carl tore each page in half, scattered them into the wind and onto the line as I watched. I fought the urge to cry until their train had left, until I was safely hunched in mine; then I buried my face in my hands to hide the tears. I didn’t have enough cash for a second paper.

“They’re scum,” said that voice again, warm and angry – but not with me. This time, I peeked through my fingers, and I saw him. A man in his twenties, tall, broad-shouldered, wearing black jeans and a brown cord jacket. The sort of person I wished I’d already grown into – confident, at ease. Not someone who’d cry over a piece of missing homework.

“I hate them,” I said, “Especially Carl. He’s a Neanderthal. I wish he was dead.”

The man just nodded, slowly, twice. He nodded towards a table, and I picked up a folded, pristine, copy of The Times.

I stared at him.

“Don’t let them win, Matthew,” he said.

“Who are you?” I asked, but the train pulled in at my station. He smiled and shook his head as I stepped off.

After that, he became as much a part of my morning routine as the coke and kit-kat – but a less predictable one. He wasn’t there every day – but sometimes I heard his voice or caught the scent of his aftershave in the carriage, and there was always some tangible sign. A computer magazine, unfolded at an article about the upcoming Windows 95. A half-packet of polos, after Carl had held his nose and declared that my breath stank. A huge tattered paperback, the whole of The Lord of the Rings: I hid from the world in it, night after night.

Then it was mid-December, and snow was crunching underfoot. The puddles on the platform were solid ice, and the fast train from Birmingham didn’t arrive. I asked the station master, and he said it had been cancelled. I wrote “SNOW FALL” in my book, in neat capitals.

“Aww, look at spazzo, all wrapped up in his duffle coat. Did mummy knit you that scarf?” They were around me before I could flee down the platform, big, hulking orc-like figures. Carl grabbed my scarf and tore it from my neck; the others ripped my coat off and handed it to him.

“STOP IT!” I screamed. Carl was lumbering towards the track, I could hear the roar of the train coming and knew my winter coat was about to meet the same fate as my umbrella had done. I ran towards him, arms outstretched. “I hate you! I wish you were DEAD!”

Then I saw the man. The first time I ever saw him outside the carriage of my train. The last time I ever saw him at all. He snatched my clothes from Carl, then gave him a hard shove.

Carl’s arms windmilled, comically, as he fell. The train smashed into him before he even hit the track.

Did I murder Carl Stevens? I was smiling as I put my coat back on, wound my scarf back around my neck. There was an inquest, of course, but Carl’s friends swore that none of us had been near him. I said he’d slipped on the ice.

Each morning, I wrote down the number of the seven-thirty-two, filling four more pages of the notebook. Each morning I bought my can of coke and my kit-kat; the machine was always full now. And each morning I stood and looked down, reverently, at the dark stains on the rails, and caught a whiff of aftershave on the breeze, and smiled to myself.

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This is the third short story in Eight Shots of Fiction by Gill Hale and Ali Luke.

You’ll get all eight when you join our newsletter here.

Ghost of a Chance

Bernard Mortimer was not an imaginative man. To wake slimed with sweat, heart pounding from some half-remembered terror was an experience he’d escaped for the first fifty years of his life. He could think of no reason why it should have happened to him with increasing frequency over the last two months. This morning, pushing upright from damp, twisted sheets to gasp for breath, he was sure the oppression was growing worse.

He hurried into his normal routine. The familiar patterns of the day were his best route to calm. It was fortunate Mary was away at a conference. In spite of their separate bedrooms, he knew she’d noticed his disturbed nights. She didn’t press him with questions of course; they’d always made courtesy an important part of their life together, but he saw she was puzzled and a little concerned.

A hot shower, excellent coffee, the reliable comfort of the Mercedes all helped to push the night from his thoughts. By the time he turned into the tree-lined drive to Courtney Manor, he was ready to focus on his patients rather than his own problems. He had worked at the Manor since he gained his surgeon’s qualifications, but he still noted with approval the way the approach emphasised the clinic’s seclusion. And not just privacy: the sweeping lines and well-tended verges suggested a quality and attention to detail that was all too rare. This morning, the elms with their new foliage were bright in the sunlight; he could hardly see when he drove into the heavy shadow of the building to park.

The shadow rather than the sunlight stayed with him through the morning. He wouldn’t let it affect his work, but it was there in the background, a sense of dark at the edge of his day that weighed on him more as the time passed. It made him do the unthinkable at lunch and mention his problem to a colleague who had enquired politely about the length of Mary’s conference.

“I’m not, as you know, at all inclined to imagine things,” he said, after explaining he was a little relieved at her absence. “But just recently I’ve been prone to wake at night to a sense of… suffocation would perhaps be the best word. As if something is pressing on my chest, leaving me with not just the physical symptoms but a quite unpleasant feeling of mental oppression as well. I’ve taken the appropriate steps in the way of examinations and tests and so on, and my doctor can find no physical cause. To be honest, I’m beginning to find it a little worrying.”

He was relieved to see that Edward looked mildly concerned rather than irritated by this intrusion of personal details into their conversation. They had been colleagues for more than fifteen years, and Edward offered no facile suggestions about nightmares. “If I were you I’d get a second opinion,” he said. “Things do get missed. There’s sure to be a reason somewhere.”

“My feeling exactly,” Bernard agreed. “I did, in fact, get a second opinion, but if it happens again I shall see a specialist, regardless of the expense.”

“I think you’d be well advised to; we’re not getting any younger.”

This rational exchange and the touch of kindness he hadn’t looked for lightened Bernard’s mood a little as he went to his office to deal with paperwork from the morning’s consultations. He thought he would make an appointment with a specialist. It was a long time since expense had been any real problem for him – the Manor’s fees were high. The fact that the procedure they offered was medically trivial was irrelevant; they were being paid for professional and discreet care, sometimes for teenagers booked in by distressed parents but mostly for women fully in charge of their lives.

It was the latter whom Bernard preferred. They had made their own choice, rationally, with an understanding of their options and they were grateful for the consideration and expertise they found at Courtney Manor. He had particularly fond memories of a famous tennis star and her gratitude at being restored to the lucrative match circuit. She still sent him a bottle of Glenfiddich every Christmas.

He avoided the young ones, these days; they upset the even tenor of his life.

It was the time of year, he thought, glancing out at the unfolding leaves. There was something about this spring that was drawing him to a line of thought he usually dismissed.

He could picture the girl quite clearly, though it had been so many years ago that he saw her as a patient. She’d been sixteen then, brought in by her shocked parents who saw a baby as the end of all their hopes for her. A bright girl, he remembered, and destined for Oxbridge, but she’d been one of his most difficult consultations. He’d only given advice on the medical options, of course; the arguments had been between the girl and her parents. They’d pleaded, she’d questioned, and it had hung in the balance whether she would go through with it.

In the end, she’d turned to Bernard and said, “You say this is just a cluster of cells, no more. If that’s really the case, yes, I want to do this. I want to finish my A levels, have a gap year, everything. But if there’s even a ghost of a chance…”

He told her what he honestly believed, that there wasn’t, that there was no point imagining such a thing. Perhaps because she saw he was telling her the truth, she was finally convinced. She let them proceed, her parents were grateful, and he didn’t think about it again for ten years.

Two Christmases ago, she’d written to him. He’d never had the letter back from the authorities; he hadn’t wanted it back, but he still recalled most of it. She’d evidently written it in great distress; the tone had been almost hysterical. She was married. She’d had a child in the autumn. She should have been happy. Instead she was convinced that ten years earlier she’d been led into an unbearable mistake. As soon as she held her new baby, it was as if she could see the child that had never been. She couldn’t love her daughter because of it; the child she wanted was the lost one.

He’d been seriously concerned when he read this. It sounded like a particularly severe case of post-natal depression, and he’d managed with some difficulty to contact her GP and alert him to it. There was very little else he could have done to help her. She hadn’t written with any aggression, not even blame. She just wanted him to know, she said; she was sure he’d never known.

In the spring, when the days were painfully bright with the promise of new life, she’d driven back to Courtney Manor very early one morning. She’d walked through the dawn to the pretty garden where patients were encouraged to recuperate, and in the early sunlight she’d taken such a massive overdose they’d been unable to save her when she was found.

“You can’t blame yourself,” they told Bernard, and although he was naturally distressed at what had happened, he didn’t. The post-natal depression had caused her actions. He understood that. It was just such a shame that all her potential should have been wasted.

Perhaps it was the subconscious connection of the weather and time of year with this sad episode that was affecting his mood, though it could hardly be blamed for his other troubles. He immersed himself in paperwork and was able to shake off any feeling of unease until he returned home at dusk.

He’d enjoyed a good meal at the White Hart on the way; he was looking forward to a quiet whisky with the crossword; but ridiculous as it was, he felt almost apprehensive as he thought of the night. When the telephone rang, he was even pleased to hear his sister’s voice, though her ability to talk at length about trivia was normally something of a trial.

She came to the point surprisingly quickly for once. “You know, Bernard, I hope you won’t take this the wrong way, but I wondered if you’d like me to come over tonight? Just so you’re not on your own while Mary’s away, I mean.”

“Brenda, I’m fifty six. I’m not afraid of the dark, and I’m quite good at looking after myself.”

“Oh I know. It was just that when we met for coffee last week, Mary mentioned you’d had some funny turns…”

Cool, elegant Mary was very unlikely to have used that particular phrase, but he must have worried her more than he’d realised for her to discuss it with his sister. He should definitely see the specialist.

“It’s kind of you to be concerned,” he told Brenda, “but I’m quite happy to have an evening alone.” If that was not strictly true, it was at least the case that he thought he would feel worse if Brenda came to hover and worry. Even when Mary had been home, it had made no difference. He was alone in his sleep.

He felt a heavy reluctance to close his eyes that night, and most unusually he woke twice in the early hours, both times to a sense of relief that nothing had troubled him.

It must have been near dawn when they came.

He thought he opened his eyes, but perhaps the action was only in his mind. They thronged around him in a curious mixture of forms. Some were translucent, unrecognisable except to his informed eyes. Others had blurred but vaguely human outlines, unfinished but full of promise. A few had the complete broken bodies of late panics. There were so many, so very many, the non-fruits of years of work. They pressed upon him closer and closer.

He tried, or thought he tried, to sit up in bed, but a curious immobility held him back. They had no weight, and yet their pressure on him increased unbearably. It was not their touch which was crushing his heart, nor the sight of them, so familiar from medical textbooks. It was not even horror. It was a cause of death unlisted by his pragmatic profession. Bernard Mortimer was dying of suffocating and overwhelming regret. He felt the touch not of a thousand bodies but a thousand tiny unformed personalities.

They had all been people after all.

He would never have imagined it.

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This is the second short story in Eight Shots of Fiction by Gill Hale and Ali Luke.

You’ll get all eight when you join our newsletter here.

Crimson Midnight

“Fair ladies, brave gentlemen,” Nicholas said, “Come back at the same time next week, for more terrifying tales.”

Most of them filed out, picking up coats and bags, fortifying themselves against the weather outside with scarves and woolly hats. A few lingered, finishing drinks; a knot of young men kicking back on their stools, round one of the battered tables. A whispering couple in the far corner, where the dim light masked a peeling strip of wallpaper.

Nicholas packed his props into his bag –plaster-of-Paris skull, hook, broken compass, little bone dolls – and looked up to see a young face that would have been pretty if not for the layers of severe make-up and the nose piercing.

“Hi,” said the black lips – there was a tongue stud too. “Your stories are awesome. I’ve never even heard most of them before, and I’m a real connoisseur of horror events, I run a website. Where did you find them?”

Nicholas refrained from telling her that she’d not have heard any of them before. They were his stories. His nightmares. Plucked from the shivering, sweating, witching hours of sleeplessness.

“They’re mine,” he said, simply. “Glad you enjoyed them.”

She put a hand – each long nail painted with a tiny skull – on top of his bag. “I’m Crimson Midnight.”

Nicholas raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

“Yes!” She glanced around as though to check that no-one was listening: Nicholas followed her gaze: the young couple were wandering off, hand in hand, the men were laughing about some shared joke and paying no attention.

“Were your parents melodramatic ancient hippies?” he asked.

The painted nails curled into her palm, and her black eyeshadow creased as she scowled at him. “It’s the name I’ve adopted. My true persona.”

“I see,” he said, feeling that someone who called himself Nightmare Nick for publicity posters was probably ill-advised to laugh. “Well, Crimson Midnight, if you’ll excuse me, I have horrors to invent, nightmares to endure.”

He always said it lightly, but never without an inward shiver that trickled down his throat to the pit of his stomach. One free night. A few hours of dreamless sleep. What wouldn’t he give, for that?

“But … I was hoping we could talk. You see, I’m a reporter, I run this website …” She pulled out a notebook. Nicholas took in the gothic stencilling, twining dragons, dying roses, drawn on the cover in what looked like white tippex stained red with felt-tip pen. A testament to many wasted hours at the back of a classroom.

“A reporter? How old are you, thirteen?” He deliberately under-estimated.

Her outrage, betrayed by a squeak in her formerly low voice, didn’t disappoint. “Fif-teen. I’m fifteen! And It’s a really popular site, Lucid Nightmares, all about the darkness of life, shadows, true legends about haunted castles, horror stories from all round the world.”

It had been a long, draining afternoon of twisting his face into grimaces, flourishing props, visiting and revisiting the all-too-real horrors of every night … but something about this insistent young Goth made him decide to let her question him, because that would mean he could question her.

One young girl’s life that was currently being twisted into a self-indulgent river of bad poetry, dark thoughts, and ridiculous clothing. It wasn’t too late, for her.

“Let’s get a drink.” He zipped up his battered holdall, shouldering it. “You can tell me about your website.”

“Great!” He could tell from the way she broke off, from the pink tint beneath the white powder that paled her cheeks, that it was rare for Crimson Midnight to let herself show any sort of excitement or enthusiasm. Her voice quickly regained its low, breathy-whisper tone. “Lead on, man of nightmares.”

“Nicholas will do just fine,” he said, and took in her slightly crushed look with a certain cruel glee.

He found a vacant table, a bandy-legged one with a sticky surface. “What do you want to drink?”

“Um,” she said, then flicked back a lock of black hair that had fallen across her face. “Smirnoff ice, please.”

“You’re fifteen. Coke, lemonade or orange juice?”

A sigh and a “Diet coke.”

He gave a crisp nod, set down the holdall on top of the table – remembering the spilt beer a little too late – and said, “Keep an eye on that.”

When he returned, she was rummaging through the bag. She clearly didn’t notice him until he set down her glass at her elbow with a bang; then she jumped, snatching her hands out of the bag.

“Don’t touch my belongings, please.”

For a couple of moments, she gazed defiantly at him, then dropped her gaze to her drink. “I was just having a look. For my article.” She’d set her notebook on the table, a serious metal fountain-pen resting on top of it. “How did you get into this … business? You really make a living telling horror stories?”

“Yes.” He took a long gulp of his beer. “It’s something I’m good at. Something I enjoy.”

“Scaring people?”

He set the glass down. She held his gaze, this time, her eyes surprisingly blue; he had to blink away a memory.

“I don’t get a kick out of terrifying people, no. I like to entertain. I like to tell my stories.” It’d have been more truthful to say, I need to get them out of my head.

Crimson Midnight was writing in her notebook. She had a round, open handwriting, almost childlike in neatness. “When did you begin?”

“While I was at university. Someone suggested it … well, suggested something along similar lines.” His earnest counsellor probably hadn’t meant start telling ghost stories when she’d told him to “find a way to share these nightmares in a safe and supportive environment.”

“Where do you get your ideas?”

Nicholas steepled his fingers. Leant forwards. “I dream them.”

His face was close enough to hers that he heard, as well as saw, her gulp.

“They’re all … true, then? I mean, those stories are all nightmares you’ve had?”

“Yes.”

Crimson Midnight’s book had fallen closed now. The ice rattled in her glass when she picked it up for a swig of diet coke. “All of them?”

“Yes.”

Her hands gripped the edge of the table now. “Teach me how to do it. We’ve been talking, on the website, for months now. About really having lucid nightmares. Horrors, terrors, the long dark night of the soul, evil stalking dreams, being able to will all that.”

“You’re trying to have nightmares?”

Her eager nod almost turned his stomach. He should have eaten something before starting on the Guinness.

“We’re trying to delve into the darkest, deepest recesses of our minds and souls…” she began.

“Rubbish.”

The words faltered on her lips. “I…”

“Why would you seek out nightmares?” He fought the urge to grab her by the shoulder and shake her, hard. “You know nothing at all about darkness, horror, tragedy.”

“I didn’t mean to …” she began, hesitant, now. Then, a black-nailed hand rested on top of his, on top of the bag, her palm soft and smooth. “What … what happened to you?” she asked, in a whisper.

Nicholas found himself shaking his head. Found his voice wouldn’t allow words. He reached into his jacket pocket, drew out the necklace that he’d carried with him for the last ten years. The one he’d bought for Julia – and never given her.

“Bad things happened. Someone I … cared about … died. It was a long time ago. That doesn’t make it easier.”

She was, thankfully, silent. He uncurled her fingers from his hand, and dropped the necklace into them.

“I want you to have this.”

Slowly, she held it up to what little dingy light there was in the pub. The butterflies sparkled, in a way they hadn’t done for two decades, since Nicholas picked it out in the shop.

“It’s … but …”

“Not very Goth?” Somehow, he managed a wry grin.

“No, I like it, but I can’t …”

“Of course you can. Get nightmares out of your head. Wash that muck off your face. You’ve got your life ahead of you, and it could be such a wonderful, joyful, exciting life.” He stood up, picked up the bag.

“You’re going?” She was on her feet too.

“Yes. Get on home, Crims—what’s your real name?”

“Margaret,” she said, then blushed, as though a swear-word had slipped out unintended. “Not very Goth…”

“It’s a nice, strong, name,” he said. “Get on home, Margaret. Use those talents …” he gestured towards the lurid doodles on her notebook “…to make something beautiful.”

He didn’t wait before striding off, didn’t even pause to drain the last few inches of Guinness, just walked straight out and down the road. When he came to the bridge, he paused, as he always did at the end of October. It was ten years, now, ten years to the day. He stared down into the stars reflected in the depths. And whispered a prayer, for Julia, for himself, for Margaret.

Perhaps he’d saved a life, now, a young, promising life; could that finally make up for Julia, for his failure, two decades before? Nicholas’s hand curled, empty, in his pocket, where the butterfly necklace had always been. But there was no point dwelling on what was gone.

That evening, for the first time in ten years, he slept nightmare-free.

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This is the first short story in Eight Shots of Fiction by Gill Hale and Ali Luke.

You’ll get all eight when you join our newsletter here.

Aliens Within

The intruder was almost upon her. Still unseen, it was pressing closer by the moment.  Hannah heard her own harsh breaths drowning out the whirr and click of the alien machinery. Her legs felt rubbery, and her will to fight the inevitable had eroded away. The end wouldn’t be long now.

She’d known for months that enslavement was coming. She’d seen it happen to her friends; sometimes with willing surrender, sometimes with random panic. A few had managed to free themselves violently, but they were changed too…

Sweat ran down Hannah’s face. The gulping breaths she drew gave her no energy. A spasm of pain tore through her abdomen, and she knew she was done. Her existence as an independent human being was measured in minutes.

She’d always pushed this moment out of her mind. It hadn’t been hard; the enslaved led such separate lives that it was easy enough to avoid them. She’d worked and partied with the free, and assumed she’d stay a part of that world. Now she could forget about carefree days – or nights. A slave got up when she was called.

Her exhaustion became unbearable and her world was reduced to pain. Hannah realised she’d welcome the end now, and the sound that would signal the stranger’s presence. Perhaps that was how it worked. You were so grateful when the agony stopped that you welcomed your new master or mistress with mindless affection.

With a last, wrenching tug, her struggle was over. She gasped; the machine noises changed their tempo, and over all the rest rose the sound Hannah had been waiting to hear: the high, waspish wailing of the invader.

It was a sound suggestive of fury and demand, and instantly had attendants hurrying to serve. Hannah had to know the gender; somehow that seemed very important.

“What is it?” she asked.

“You have a lovely, healthy, baby boy,” the midwife said. “Isn’t he beautiful?”

He was red-faced, sticky, smeared with unmentionable substances. His mouth moved in a self-absorbed reflex. He was born knowing he was the centre of the universe, and her role was to serve. She’d expected that. What she hadn’t expected was that he actually was beautiful: perfectly formed, every fingernail a miniature miracle, his eyes bright with intelligence. Hannah realised with amazement that here in her arms was the exception, the one baby it was worth making these sacrifices for.

She was no longer one of the free.

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