Hum Drum

Hum Drum

By Gary McMahon

Sometimes grief is like a suit of clothing, a favorite outfit that we have held on to for far too long, worn too many times. We cannot bring ourselves to throw it away, it cost a lot to acquire and we have grown accustomed to its fit. Sometimes that grief is all we have at hand to wear, and the other clothes in our wardrobe are nothing more than a row of shoddy hanging corpses.

The roads were busy that time of the day, but still the journey was mercifully brief. I was in London by 4 p.m., and standing on the banks of the Tames as Big Ben struck the hour of five.

I held the drum in my hand, the jocular words of the shopkeeper running through my mind: Perhaps old Harvey just wants his drum back. It was the only hope I had of ending this; the alternative I had lef in the capable hands of Probert, and I knew that he would not fail to make provisions.

I’d told him to wait until bedtime, and if by then I had not returned he was to put Plan B into action. Probert thought that he could pull together at least five thousand pounds in hard cash in less than three hours. Back in the Victorian era that much would have been considered a vast amount of money; a fortune. If I was not back in Yorkshire before Probert retired for the night, he was to leave out the money for Bellows`s restless spirit to collect. Hopefully, this would be enough to send him on his way, to pay off whatever debt Probert now owed.

Hum Drum. Photo by Elena

Standing on the breezy embankment beneath the segmented concrete finger of Waterloo Bridge, I put the drum to my ear. That humming reverberation was still present, continuing like an endless echo, a subdued song of the dead. The sky reared above me like a huge airborne spirit threatening to swoop down and tear me to pieces; the voice of civilization was a quiet threat at my back – the distant thunder of traffic, the constant thrum of feet on concrete.

I took the drum from my ear and raised my hand to throw. In that instant, the sound ceased; the drum was silent. I hurled it into the lapping black waters, hoping that I was doing the right thing, that the hex would be broken.

The drum bobbed like a buoy for a while, and then dipped sharply down beneath the choppy surface as if pulled from below. As I watched, something appeared momentarily, a bulky oval shape rising from the water – a partially deflated football covered in river slime, or possibly a skull trailing muddy decomposed matter. The shape was gone before I could make out any details. I was never certain what it was that I saw there, floating atop of sharp gray waves.

Then I heard the noise again: a low, distant hum. The sound of the drum had not diminished; if anything it had increased in volume now that the instrument had been returned to its maker. Its hushed, solemn beat joined with the gentle swelling of the waves, and for an instant the wole world was filled with its monotonous rhythm.

Splitfoot

Splitfoot

Paul Walther

There wasn’t much to see. The house, which the title indicated was over a hundred years old, consisted of a living room, with the television always going, a kitchen nook, and two bedrooms overlooking the back of nowhere to the north. The youngest girl was an infant, sharing a bedroom with her mother. The boy and girl, eight and twelve respectively, had been sharing the second bedroom. Now that Violet and company had been trapped, the entire sad-looking family was sleeping in the mother`s bedroom, crashing on blankets and filthy comforters.

Violet looked at the ugly girl in question. She was a pudgy little thing with stringy blonde hair and fatty little breasts just starting under the thin fabric of her dirty tee shirt. Staring at the television, as usual, her slack little mouth was hanging open, her spattering of acne turned into craters of the moon by the flickering green light of the TV. She had no reason to obstruct this transfer of property, since it couldn’t possibly make any difference to her whether Trixie owned the paper or Royce did (or Violet, for just a moment) – it was still just her mother’s rent check, every month. Violet eyed her closely – this nasty little girl in ripped stretch pants. When it started up again – and it would start up again, as soon as the sun dipped under the horizon, Violet was sure of it – the awful thing that had prohibited sleep last night, and would certainly prohibit it again tonight, they would have a chance to catch the little schemer at it.

The banker plummeting on a coin – the teacher disappearing into a blackboard – and the grocer silent under a pyramid of vegetables. (Scenes of Hell, Billy Collins). Illustration: Megan Jorgensen (Elena)

The first night, Violet, Royce and Trixie – stranded by the cold – had usurped the children’s bedroom, but that arrangement had not lasted the night, because of the awful… infestation. Tonight, Violet was keeping an eye on the girl. She was not going to queer Violet’s one and only real-estate deal. If that was, in fact, what was happening. Violet was not sure. She viewed every member of the family with suspicion, but her heart was not in it. She was afraid because, deep down, she believed it was real.

The evening was on; the world was going on without them. Soon it would begin. Trixie was sitting at the kitchen table, her sunglasses still on. Royce squatted on a round footstool with stuffing leaking from the seams. Those were candles everywhere, none of them lit, all of them bearing some image of the Virgin Mary or some anonymous, grimacing saint. Last night, at the high of the madness, Royce had gone through a trapdoor in the kitchen floor into the frigid crawlspace under the house with nothing but a cigarette lighter for light, looking for an explanation. He’d found none, and now he perched on his stool, looking grim.

The House of Mechanical Pain

The House of Mechanical Pain

By Chaz Brenchley

Tasha’s one of those people who live life on the razor’s edge, who find the world too difficult to deal with, almost too difficult to bear.

She tries to be sweet about it, for our sake: greets every crises with a glass of champagne, swallos down the fear and sees how far a smile and an endearing helplessness will get her this time. Seldom far enough, but when troubles reach their ragged ends she has an endless ability to suffer quietly, with an intolerable patience.

It’s one of the reasons I adore her. Also one of the reasons why, when she asks for help, I’m just there. If she has to ask, then she really, really means it.

Also, she’s not apologetic about it. This particular Friday, I was just settling down for the afternoon – Margaret Lockwood on the TV, paperwork all over the carpet, see which could hold my attention – when there’s hammer-hammer-hammer on the front door, familiar in every sense. Only one person I know deals so desperately with obstructions, kicking and flailing at them to get through to what she needs.

So I all but run to the door, and there she is, tight as a wire and twice as sharp; but bless her, she still takes the time for one of her trademark kisses, long and lingering and ironic. I think they’re ironic.

Mechanical Pain. Illustration by Elena

Then, « Jonny. Thanks… »

« I haven’t done anything yet. »

“For being here, I meant. »

“Always, for you. Why didn’t you phone, if you wanted me? » I haven’t never told her, but she is the reason I bought a mobile, the reason I always remember to carry it.

She shrugged and said “I didn’t think,” which was classic Tash: she wanted me, so she came to get me. If I hadn’t been it, that would have been one more complication to the crisis, one more struggle not to break down on the street. That’s how she deals with the world. How badly she deals.

“So.” I rubbed her long spine, feeling how the many tensions tangled through her body. “How are you doing, Tash?”

« Oh, not so great, really. You know. »

« Yeah, I know. What do you need ».

“You. Come to Brookshurst with me?”

That was new. Usually it was an evening in the pub or holding her hand at a concert, being a warm body, reminding her that she was loved. Her family was one of those things she didn’t talk about, but I didn know that Brookshurst was her parents’ place, and I knew how far away it was. This was a weekend trip she was talking about, that long at least, and I’d had my own plans for the weekend, and.

“Yes, of course, » I said. “ You sit here and watch the movie for me, while I pack.”

“Thanks, sweetie. Bring your cameras, yeah? »

Flowers and Reflections

Flowers and Reflections

All the photos have been taken by Elena.

It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light (Aristotle Onassis

I can’t change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination (Jimmy Dean)

Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence (Vince Lombardi)

We know what we are, but know not what we may be (William Shakespeare)

Try to be a rainbow in someone’s cloud (Maya Angelou)

Nothing is impossible, the word itself says “I’m possible” (Audrey Hepburn)

Live your beliefs and you can turn the world around (Henry David Thoreau)

Every story I create, creates me. I write to create myself (Octavia E. Butler)

Keep your face always toward the sunshine - and shadows will fall behind you (Walt Whitman)

If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door (Milton Berie)

We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us (Joseph Campbell)

What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality (Plutarch)

Give light, and the darkness will disappear of itself (Desiderius Erasmus)

Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago (Warren Buffet)

Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago (Warren Buffet)

The Last Worders

The Last Worders

By Karen Joy Fowler

Charlotta was asleep in the dining car when the train arrived in San Margais. It was tempting to just leave her behind, and I tried to tell myself this wasn’t a mean thought, but came to me because I, myself this wasn’t a mean thought, but came to me because I, myself, might want to be left like that, just, just for the adventure of it. I might want to wake up hours later and miles away, bewildered and alone. I am always on the lookout for those parts of my life that could be the first scene in a movie. Of course, you could start a movie anywhere, but you wouldn’t; that’s my point. And so this impulse had nothing to do with the way Charlotta had begun to get on my last nerve. That’s my other point. If I thought being ditched would be sort of exciting, then so did Charlotta. We felt the same about everything.

“Charlotta,” I said. “Charlotta. We’re here. » I was on my feet, grabbing my backpack, when the train actually stopped. This threw me into the arms of a boy of about fourteen, wearing a T-shirt from the Three Mountains Soccer Camp. It was nice of him to catch me. I probably wouldn’t have done that when I was fourteen. What’s one tourist more or less? I tried to say some of this to Charlotta when we were on the platform and the train was already puffing fainter and fainter in the distance, winding its way like a great worm up into the Rambles Mountains. The boy hadn’t gotten off with us.

The Last Worders. Photo by Elena

It was raining and we tented our heads with our jackets. “He was probably picking your pocket,” Charotta said. “Do you still have your wallet?” Which made me feel I’d been a fool, but when I put my hand in to check I found, instead of taking something out, he’d put something in. I pulled out an orange piece of paper folded like a fan. When opened, flattened, it was a flier in four languages – German, Japanese, French and English. Open mike, the English part said. And then, Come to the Last Word Café. 100 Ruta de los Esclavos by the river. First drink free. Poetry Slam. To the death.

The rain erased the words even as we read them.