NOT WITH PEOPLE

This is a story about the time I left the house to be around people but not with people. People when they’re looking at the newspaper or at each other are comforting bean bags and people when they ask you to explain yourself are that bed you bought from a cheap website that time. The one that doesn’t feel quite right and your back hurts and you wonder if you’ll ever get used to it.

People when they’re holding each other at bus stops and on each others shoulders across the bridge and wishing the movie was over so they can look at each other again. Those people. They’re the first coffee in the morning after your senses have come back after a head cold and you open the curtains and the sun feels like the sun and you are a frozen flower. People when they make you feel small and then say it was just a joke are that bed you bought once from that cheap website that bursts into flames and burns your house down.

So I left the house to be around people but not with people.

Between the car park and the coffee shop there’s a department store and the department store has a fake cul-de-sac with wooden house fronts and upsell gardens and a walk-in catalogue of living rooms one after the other.

You can only see the first one through a fake window. You walk under the flimsy cardboard streetlight and over the plastic grass and there it is. A wooden portal into modern family life. You can breathe deep and smell the flowers from the vase on the coffee table reminding you that family can be slow and calm and you see the broken banisters from curious customers wondering what is upstairs reminding you that family can be chaos. The flowers are lilies today and they are replaced every day and that makes me smile and I wonder who does that. This is the room of flowers because there are flowers on the mantlepiece too. Under that, a flat screen TV and games console and pretend homework out on the dinner table with pens and exercise books and a fake spilled glass of water.

Past the room of flowers is the ice cream room. I call it that because it reminds me of every summer the ice cream van jingled to our house like an old cartoon where even the trees danced and the man inside was a 99 flake with sprinkles. He would have lived in a house like this. Polka dot curtains and colourful lampshades with see-through plastic stands and I don’t really know what jive music is but they had music playing that was as colourful and angular as the ice cream room.

I like the next room because it reminds me I’m nearly at my favourite room. This room is Julie Garland’s kitchen and it smells of freshly baked cookies in a way that almost smells of freshly baked cookies but reminds you of the early 90’s when they tried to make scratch and sniff TV a thing. Anyway it’s the only room with a mannequin and she’s dressed in a white blouse with a blue apron that makes her look like Dorothy and when I told my friend she looks like Julie Garland she laughed and told me that’s not her name it’s Judy but that’s now the name of this fake housewife offering up a homely kitchen for just $999 plus installation.

That’s my journey. Every day I’m not working. I drive to the car park by Madison and Cooper and make the short walk to the coffee shop past the cul-de-sac of rooms for sale. The room of flowers, the ice cream room, Julie Garland’s kitchen, and then my favourite room. The final room. The final room before the exit to the coffee shop and it’s the only room not for sale. This is the anxiety room. A chair with no purpose and a table with no placemats. A fireplace with no mantlepiece. A vase with no flowers and a door that leads to nowhere. The room is roped off with signs on every surface reading This is an arrangement area and not for customer use. In a store full of sink-in sofas and deep oak dining rooms and lavender diffusers, here is a room so unsettlingly lifeless and an off-grey that can’t even commit to being brown and the only room that tells you off for even looking at it. The anxiety room is my favourite room because it’s the only room that changes. Sometimes a clothes rail with curtain patterns against whiteboards and wallpaper samples and other days old coffee cups and someone left behind a walkie talkie after a staff meeting. That room can never really be anything it has to be all things to everyone and we are soul mates me and the anxiety room.

After the anxiety room it was a jumble of sale rails and end of line items. Out of season overcoats, last year’s technology and then the exit. Across the street, past the fountain and into my people watching spot.

• • •

And it was in my favourite people watching spot that our story begins. Because it was in that spot that I first saw Archer Lavallière. Picture a hat rack in the most expensive bar in town. A tower of dark fabric. Not the dark of cheap whiteboard marker maths, the dusty dark of a hundred history lessons rubbed into old chalkboards. I guessed his age in a heartbeat. If he wasn’t 43 he was 42 and if he wasn’t a summer July August baby he was definitely a cosy winter jumper December Christmas tree and nothing in between. This wasn’t a maybe there will be flowers soon person this was there are flowers right now see how I bloom person.

Right in front of me in the queue, ordering what I would then hear him order every day.

Hello yes thank you.

I will have the Sumatra, extra hot, very little milk thank you, can I pay with cash.

Always with cash, always with permission. I was in love years before his coins hit the counter.

The next day. I got there a little later but I could still hear him order.

I will have the Sumatra, extra hot, very little milk thank you can I pay with cash.

The quiet way he said

Hello yes thank you

meant

if I was the only one here I would want to know about your day, tell me everything.

and the way he said

can I pay with cash

really meant

I know I can, I just really don’t want to bother you with any of this I wish you were rich beyond your wildest dreams.

Dear Archer,

You remind me of, you make me feel like, there’s something. Some feeling I can’t grasp. Like waking up from a dream and the dream fades like a photograph you threw from a ferryboat and it’s gone into the cold water forever. Archer you’re that picture somehow. Standing by a -

It’s gone.

I nearly wrote you a note a hundred times and nearly slipped it into your blazer pocket a hundred times. I used to sit in that spot in that cafe writing you nearly notes over and over again until the ink in my pen faded away.

• • •

This is a story about the time I left the house to be around people but not with people. People when the stars come out and they stop and stare and dream are movies you never want to end. They are movies you never ever want to end. People who no longer gaze at passing airplanes, those people are the unskippable ads.

People who leave the curtains open just in case they catch a shooting star in the corner of their sleepy eyes are big beautiful dreams of green fields and purple paintbrush galaxies stirred into hot ginger tea. People who never think about the sky are cold callers who call again and again and again and Archer you were the love of my life. You were deep blue clouds of stars and airplanes and sad movies beyond melancholy and you wrapped me in your infinite arms around and around until I could no longer see the ground.

Between the car park and the coffee shop there’s a department store and the department store has a fake cul-de-sac with wooden house fronts and upsell gardens and a walk-in catalogue of living rooms one after the other.

That day, the window into the room of flowers had gone. Not boarded up, not moved somewhere else. Gone. The window into the world of family chaos was gone. Gone like the way you know the summer has gone when the leaves turn to rust and you know that summer is still there behind all that is hidden and maybe it will return, or maybe it won’t. I’ll never forget that feeling. When the first room faded.

The ice cream room still jangled and chattered like a happy dog. Still yapped in bright colours and pulled on the lead. Like it was restrained by earthly colours and wanted to take you somewhere more exciting. Nothing missing there. Polka dots, one two three, yes probably all still there. Red see through plastic all still there. I looked back, wondering if it was all in my head but the window to the room of flowers was still gone. It sat in my mind. Quiet and uneasy.

That morning I walked with my head down through Julie Garland’s Kitchen and the nearly smell of nearly freshly baked cookies made me feel better. Today the anxiety room was hard to see through the layers of dresses hung up on wardrobes on wheels, arranged around a meeting table with big sketches on paper and then pencils and some plates with pastry crumbs and very important work it looked like.

Then across the street, past the fountain and into my people watching spot. The cafe was a local cafe called The History Of Coffee where the walls were covered in a winding timeline drawn probably drawn by the runner up of some school contest why was the window in the room of flowers gone.

It didn’t make sense.

But that would have to wait because he was right on time as always. The expensive watch of a man called Archer Lavallière. Every inch of his tailored suit looked to me like the meticulous spinning cogs and hands striking magical midnight even in the middle of the day. In the middle of a coffee shop. A midnight full of moons like five moons and even more stars in one inch of his blazer pocket than in an entire night sky.

Hello yes thank you.

And the air in my lungs where was the air in my lungs.

I will have the Sumatra, extra hot, very little milk thank you, can I pay with cash.

The quiet way he said

very little milk thank you

meant

if I could ask less of you I would ask less of you.

and the way he said

can I pay with cash

meant

If I could give you everything I would give you everything. Come away with me to the graveyard of stars, to the stations where everything new is born and we’ll start everything all over again.

Dear Archer.

Were you once my world? Did we once dance together? One, two, three, step. I know it. I feel it. There was a dance and there was a crowd and we were the stage and -

And then he looked at me. Right over from the counter with his coffee in his ringless hand. He looked at me the way you look up at the departure board when you’re not looking at the departure board your mind is still in your book.

Archer there’s something. Something I can’t. Quite. Something beyond sadness in your eyes.

And in the corners of your smile.

Like a field trying to be green. Trying so hard to be green after a war but the landscape underneath has changed forever and is never going back.

I saw you trying, Archer, and I saw the old war underneath everything.

• • •

Between the car park and the coffee shop there’s a department store and the department store has a fake cul-de-sac with wooden house fronts and upsell gardens and a walk-in catalogue of living rooms one after the other.

Or at least there used to be.

That morning on my walk through the store on my way to the coffee shop the window was still gone and I hate that but now the ice cream room too. And Julie Garland’s kitchen. Gone. Not gone like they ever used to be here but gone like they were never here to begin with and nobody will ever talk about them or help you remember the colourful lights and the sounds of happiness and movement and cosy home life all gone. How often the world whispers its favourite lie and its favourite heartbreak they were never here to begin with.

There were still a few walls left standing around the room of flowers and all four walls of the anxiety room. Walls surrounding wardrobes on wheels and the autumn line. But as I walked I had to stare so deeply at all that was left to keep me from feeling the big wide open space of what was once the thriving department store now a vast empty warehouse with no colours or signposts or clothes or lives for sale.

They were never here to begin with the world utters and you have to point at the only memories left to convince the world that the rooms were really there and they really were as beautiful and alive as you remember.

Archer help me. Everything around me is fading like a drawing on sand and the waves are coming faster than I can draw.

Hello, yes, thank you.

Sigh. Big closed eyes sigh.

I will have the Sumatra, extra hot, very little milk thank you, can I pay with cash.

Archer when the barista passed over his coffee he always sat at at the same table. Small round table by the window, folded pyramid special offer advertisements pushed gently to the side. Far enough from the door that it didn’t cause a draft. A perfect people watching spot.

People when they pass by the window are birds caught in the warm air. They rise and fall and tumble and turn. They are birds caught in the warm air and they chirp happy family chirps and they sometimes laugh like people and cry like people but they are birds caught in warm air.

I used to leave the house to be around people but not with people. With one person. My person. Archer there are two seats at the table is one of them for me? Archer the rooms keep disappearing around me but you are always here at this table. Archer is one of them for me? If I’m here every day will you be here every day?

That morning, I don’t know if the disappearing rooms made me panic that everything I knew and loved was leaving or if he was just particularly tall and summertime but I sat on the chair opposite Archer by that window. He had his coffee in both hands watching the birds with their shopping bags and newspapers and I spoke out loud for the first time.

“Archer if I-“

Something in him shifted the moment I began to speak. He didn’t turn to face me, he didn’t smile, if anything he looked suddenly cold.

“Archer I feel like everything I knew is leaving.“

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a journal. Dark green with two pens clipped to the front cover.

“If I’m still and quiet,” I said, “can I sit with you at this table?”

Archer opened the book to the middle and started to write.

March 10th

“I’ll be so still and quiet.”

Archer wrote silently in his journal. The shadows of his arms on the table were lighter now.

March 10th

He wrote.

I miss you.

I miss our home.

Our home with the lilies, our home with the broken banisters, all of it I miss it and I miss you.

In the same moment I knew he remembered me.

I miss coming home to you, seeing you smile in your blue apron while you conjured up magical cookies and you showed me all your secrets.

He remembered me. And the shadows on the table were lighter still as his arms began to fade in the morning light through the coffee shop window.

When he wrote

I miss you

what he meant was

You aren’t here

And the small way he wrote, in small letters

i miss our home

meant

can I have you back?

Archer you remember me. And now we are at this table and it is the end of everything and you remember me.

I’ll come here every day at the same time. I keep thinking if I do everything right, if I do just everything just the way it was then maybe I’ll see you again.

But I know you’ll never come.

The last corner of his shirt collar and the small silver cufflink of his writing hand lingered in the air as the rest of Archer, my Archer turned to icy morning field smoke and spiralled around his empty coffee cup.

• • •

This is a story about the time I left the house to be around people but not with people. Between the car park and the coffee shop there’s a department store and the department store has a fake cul-de-sac with wooden house fronts and upsell gardens and a walk-in catalogue of living rooms one after the other.

I used to leave the house just to be around you again. To keep you in my mind and my heart and in the soles of my feet and in the tips of my fingers and in the air around my face. But my death came fast and nobody is ever ready and I fought for you and I fought for my memories even as they faded and at the end there you were at your table. For me. Always.

People when they are with each other for the short time they have each other are the beating heart of the universe and nothing else comes close. They are the beating heart of the universe and they are birds in warm air and the true chaos of life and death and the sunshine in the morning. They are the calm moon in the night and the beauty of all things that won’t be here forever.

How often the world whispers its favourite lie and its favourite heartbreak they were never here to begin with.

But we can whisper back.

They were.

Oh they were.

ANIMALS

Freeze time.

The movie’s on pause.

This is the ’90’s so it’s an ugly pause. The room looks like someone shredded a photograph and couldn’t put it back together, but you can still make it out clearly enough.

It’s dark.

Maybe no bigger than a two-car garage.

There are one, two, three- there are seven sources of light. Four security monitors, a computer screen, a sliding window and a door to the daylight outside that looks like it’s about to slam.

• • •

There are lines everywhere the light pours in. Sharp lines from the screens, smoke lines from Rosa’s cigars. Her old cheeks are sucked in like leathery bellows and she’s closed her eyes like it hurts a little after breathing out smokey lines of despair from Alex’s questions. Lines of escape from Hannah. From Hannah being Hannah. There are ashtrays and staff radios and old coffee mugs and broken pencils and zoo maps and marker pen corrections on zoo maps.

Here’s how the room’s laid out. That sliding window? That’s where Hannah sits. She has a bell that says ring for attention and she has a fake wedding ring that’s just for attention and she has a wooden holder full of timetables and she has a sickly positive outlook on the world that drives Rosa insane because Rosa is jealous because Rosa thinks Hannah thinks Hannah will live forever.

Rosa’s desk is on the left wall of the office, a desk she sits at with her chair arched back so she can stare at the soap opera action on the zoo’s black and white monitors mounted on the wall. It goes: monitor, cable tangled in cables, monitor, monitor, dried up silly string from the Christmas party ‘85, more tangled cables that aren’t plugged into anything anymore, monitor. Below that, a long desk. Rosa. Next to Rosa, Alex. Alex is the work experience boy who pretends he doesn’t want to be there but his secret is he actually thinks this is all really cool. Alex asks curious questions even though he doesn’t understand the answers.

The movie’s on pause, with less than an hour to go before Hannah, Rosa, Alex and everybody else in that VHS room will all be dead.

Ready?

Play.

• • •

Bang.

Rosa jerked in her chair as the door slammed hard and she yelled “Harriet,” emphasising the T like her spit was a dart and the ceiling was a picture of Harriet.

The slamming door also made Hannah jump and she jabbed her nail file into her thumb as she turned to answer the visitor’s question at the window.

“We close at nine, but the last road train to the car park leaves at eight-thirty.”

“Nine-thirty,” said the room in unison.

“What’s that?” asked Hannah, beaming, and still talking to the outside world. “Yes, absolutely. The penguin shows are at one, three-thirty and six-fifteen, but they only dress up for the last one.”

Here’s Hannah - twenty years old, crooked nose from a childhood accident she’ll tell you about sometime, eyes like badges saying have a nice day hiding signs saying I’m lonely help me. Mousy blonde hair tied up with giraffe-striped shoe laces from the zoo gift shop.

“You can get your tickets for the show at the entrance.”

She’d worked there for two months and, knowing almost nothing about the Maricopa County Zoo just off I-10 between Saddleback Trails and Lowes, just made it all up as she went along.

“We don’t have penguins,” muttered a voice from a shadowy corner at the back of the room. It was a quiet voice with a strange air of authority, the way a teacher might tell the class they’ve had an hour already and there’s only half an hour to go.

Hannah slid the window closed and rang the bell with a little hand tap of achievement.

“It’s not a typewriter love,” said Rosa. “The bell, you know, it’s for them to get your attention and you have to leave the window open for them to use it,” and then without taking a breath she hissed into the radio, “Don’t- Martin don’t go in there. Oh god.”

Rosa wore big headphones with only one ear covered and the chunky spiral cord rested in her line of cheap coffee-stained novels she bought from goodwill because she had a secret crush on the woman that worked there and would spend no end of loose change on junk just to hear her say good morning.

Complete story available to agents and publishers. Contact Russell James at russelljamesauthor@gmail.com

ALL THE COLOURS OF DEATH

I am in pain.

All the time.

All the time, I am in pain.

Somehow saying it under my breath under my duvet under my ceiling stars brought me relief. Somehow, admitting it felt like a comfort.

I saw a late night commercial once where an old man with long hair and a badly-fitting sweater looked straight into the camera and talked about ‘the power of the mantra’. It caught my attention the first time it came on because of how slowly he was talking compared to everything else on TV. His room was lit by warm orange spotlights that made lines in smoke and a yellow phone number flashed up at the bottom of the screen. The man explained that by repeating certain lines over and over again we could find relief from anxiety. A twenty-first century pandemic, he asserted in his deep, Texan accent.

“Now’s about time for you to start your journey to inner peace,” he said. “Turns out I’ve done the hard work for you. Say the words, make your surroundings a little simpler. All you have to do is repeat after me, and then just maybe you’ll dial the number and join me on a little year-long adventure.”

I’d seen the advert so many times I knew every beat. He’d shuffle to the centre of the screen, close his eyes and then I’d repeat the mantra along with him from under my cosy sheets.

“Life is made from many colours,

But see - only green in the trees.

Get a whole year of mantras straight to your door,

For only ten easy payments of $8.99 a month plus shipping fees.”

I even knew the number by heart. That old mantra-selling Texan was the only reason I left the shopping channel on all night, on that old TV that I found behind the post office the week after I moved in. It flickered and buzzed and had a broken yellow tint that matched the stars on the ceiling.

Back then I’d sit, hidden and exhausted in the yellow-edged darkness after a day stripping mattresses at the Trucker’s Motel, a tired old bundle of walls on Route 80 between Lexington and Elm Creek. It was like a beacon of safety, that bright buzzing screen. Eight hours of ricocheting elastic cornered bedsheets, flicking up skin flakes and rubbing against wet spots. Eight hours of avoiding leering guests with X-ray eyes and a thirty minute break in the office listening to Dina Morello complain about the noise from the vending machine complain about the smell of the radiators complain about the sticky telephone buttons complain about the cold.

But when I got home and locked the door, behind the glow of that broken yellow TV screen, I could try and breathe a little easier. I could make my world simpler like the old man said. I saw those late night commercials like the flickering lights I’ve seen in big corporate kitchens, the ones that attract flies and then burn them up. I imagined anything nasty in the world becoming attracted to that screen and not getting any closer.

Yellow for stars, yellow for comfort. Yellow for vaporising the day in a raging furnace.

I’d whisper it aloud to help me make sense of the world. I figured I could start with the colours and everything else would fall into place.

The power of the mantra.

I remember those nights so clearly now, through the haze. I remember thinking a breadknife would be the right way to do it. I remember the thoughts inside my mind like a bee sting I couldn’t comfort. I remember it all now. I remember that man standing in reception. I remember when the mantras failed. I remember when the yellow light didn’t work its magic anymore.

Complete story available to agents and publishers. Contact Russell James at russelljamesauthor@gmail.com

HOW TO DISMANTLE YOURSELF

Make notes in the margins as you read.

Dog ear the corners.

Leave breadcrumbs in those impossibly small spaces where the pages meet, because you’ll want to find your way back.

• • •

We used to visit our father on the last Sunday of every month, before his Alzheimer's convinced him we were strangers. Old margarine tubs full of tulips and cracked dirt were lined up on the window ledges and it would become spring, even on the darkest of days.

Most of the things I learned about the world were from those Sunday afternoons of rolling news channels, where loud dusty men spoke in proverbs and set things alight. I remember groups of people holding homemade signs amongst dozens of collapsing buildings. It turned out to be only one but they played the footage so many times I thought the world had ended.

I sat on the button-backed armchair for hours eating biscuits and drinking my father’s cement shaded Earl Grey under the re-framed portraits of my mother. Visiting him in our family home always reminded me of being young, when his mountain range hands gripped our fingers so tightly it hurt until bedtime. He used to take us out for walks in the ever-rainy moors and we’d trek over to the steam engines at Dawlish Warren. We’d walk for a while, and when we got too tired he’d put us on his shoulders and we’d dig our fists into his raincoat and hang on for dear life. He was a cathedral of a man with the heart of a chapel, and I loved him.

And we were all there when he died. Right up until he closed his eyes there was a strength that reached out as though caught in a burning building. An alive soul in a collapsing body. Fighting to breathe. A desperation to fly upwards and away from the flames. A dream, that after an evening of bright hospital lights and praying relatives, eventually arrived.

• • •

Mark the lines that trouble you.

Bend back the spine until it cracks and fits in your back pocket.

• • •

Complete story available to agents and publishers. Contact Russell James at russelljamesauthor@gmail.com

GOLD IN THE ABRAHAM

Before you read any further, you must agree to the following. 

     1) I will abandon my ambition.

     2) I will not carry my brother.

     3) I will follow, where others lead.

     4) I will not show charity.

     5) I will pass on my pain to my children.

     ☐ I agree to the terms and conditions. 

Now read those again. Read them out loud. Write them down. 

     Congratulations. You’re a nobody. 

     Now panic. 

     I am the man who kills nobodies. 

• • •

     Let me tell you how that works. 

     You’ll be in a queue, gripping your heavy basket with white knuckles. You’ll be leaving the aeroplane after arriving on holiday. You’ll be walking across the hot tarmac.

     And you’ll be gone. 

     You’d probably be so engrossed in the free newspapers that your final thought would be about cheap flights to Tokyo. How embarrassing. 

     Imagine. 75 years of biting your fingernails, picking the shell out of your scrambled egg, changing the channel. An entire life of trimmed lawns, greenhouses and inside out rubber gloves. 

• • •

     I grew up in Forthspring, Idaho. Back then we had a ranch by the River Abraham on a plot of land which stretched three miles south to the forest and across to the clay mines. We had warped pantry shelves which were always full, my mother always used to say, “As long as you’re workin’.” 

     With shelves of plates looking for all the world like the local bakery, looking back I have no idea how she kept it from going stale. Homemade treacle tart, sitting out for just long enough that the filling had a chance to soak into the crust. Cakes, biscuits, jam. Bags of sugar, bags of flour. 

     As long as we kept ourselves busy we were allowed to eat whatever we liked.

     We chopped up the fallen trees into firewood for hours on end. We would have to use the axe with the worn down wooden handle which had a grain running along the sides in small ridges, giving us blisters the size of dimes. When we couldn’t hold the axe any more we fixed fences, fed the livestock and most afternoons my father and I would go hunting for dinner. 

     Sometimes he would even let me hold the rifle. I was young back then, and though I practised on the bird feeders in the yard when he wasn’t around, I didn’t find it easy. The pea-sized dents in the shutters and the embedded pellets in the bark of the oak tree were enough to show that. When I got older I was good enough to be able to hit something that was completely still, but as soon as it was a moving target I had as much hope of hitting it as I did of reaching puberty before Mary Elizabeth got home from Summer camp. 

     You’d better keep moving.

• • •

     On the first warm day of the summer my brother Danny and I were panning for gold in the Abraham. It was always the first thing we would do when the chores were done. Danny had this big metal pan which he’d scored marks into with his penknife. He said it was his secret to always finding more gold than me. We’d found our usual spot along the riverbank and already had flakes of colour in the big glass collecting jar.

     So Danny, he turns to me and he says, “When I’m a grown up,” oh and by the way he’s standing knee-deep in the river, gold pan in hand when he says this, “I’m going to be rich.” 

     I don’t know if it was the smile in the corner of his mouth or the fact that he didn’t take his eyes off the rubble in his pan, but as I looked over from the shallow water, I believed him. 

     Danny was my older brother by a year. He was first to kill a deer, first to break a bone, and was the first person I could ever imagine moving away from Forthspring and making a life somewhere else. He was my hero. He was so confident for every moment I was timid and where I wobbled on the stones across the river, he leapt two to three at a time. He would fall in, of course, but being cold and wet-through was, according to Danny, “what being alive felt like.”

     He sat by my bedside when I had glandular fever. He would cheer me up by reading telegrams from our father’s desk in funny voices. We laughed so much that day that it hurt more than my swollen tonsils. 

     When I stepped out of line, Danny corrected me. I feared disappointing him more than anybody else.

     And then came the day I walked home from hunting with my father to see my brother’s body being carried out through the back door of the kitchen. 

Complete story available to agents and publishers. Contact Russell James at russelljamesauthor@gmail.com

THAT’S WHERE THE MONSTER IS

⭐︎     ☾

1. Blink

⭐︎

The biggest lie we’re ever told is that perfect love drives away all fear.

A little 6x4 summer meadow and my first life lesson, taped above the oven. Cardboard, steam-bent edges, faded colours among the postcards and life quotes my mother used to make her nest. Dirty little rectangles where the yellowing tape had peeled off and had to be replaced.

Perfect love drives away all fear. A sentence of six words in curly letters that became a voice of constant comfort every time I walked into the kitchen. Sometimes I’d get close up just to hear its voice:

Listen, kid. I know you’re confused and in pain but know this: the worst the world has to offer will one day be eclipsed. All of your panic and anxiety will soon be swallowed up in some aching euphoria and you’ll forget what it’s like to be afraid.

Here’s the problem. Nobody who has ever been in love would ever decide to print that on a meadow. Once I left home and lived in the wide open world, love created the most perfect fear. The fear of endings. The fear of this person I found. This wonderful being who patched my imperfections. That they will one day be gone. That if it was this good, then I had to face what it would be like when it was all taken away.

Perfect love drives away all fear. I’m sure it’s true somewhere. Maybe there’s another universe, or a planet buried among the distant stars. Maybe people live there too. Maybe around every corner you find endless fields of simmering embers and tall beacons of light just waiting to overcome the darkness. Maybe that exists, but it’s a different world to mine.

My simple, broken world. I’ve heard it said that we’re nothing but the sum of our experiences, and if that’s true I’m just a bundle of sorrow and broken hearts.

Sorrow, broken hearts and perfectly cooked toaster waffles.

• • •

Back then, being out in the world filled me to the brim. I’ll always remember the long walks after work, balancing on tired feet, trying not to overflow until I got home. Home with the green door, home with the arch of jasmine. Home where you knew how to unplug me from the day. From every exhausting minute out in the big wide world that filled me up like a bathtub.

The man with the ragged fingernails who reached for the elevator button just as I did. The woman holding her husband’s car keys telling me I didn’t work hard enough. It all spiralled down the plughole when I was with you.

When the 17:03 arrived at 17:05 and I missed the next connection. When the electric meter needed a dollar and all we had were dimes and matches. When the neighbours bickered and blared and we had to close the living room windows in the middle of summer. All of it drained away when I was with you.

But I always knew my handmade fear was waiting. I could see it. It was crafted together over years of laughing at your funny faces and missing you when you brushed your teeth. It was hiding inside a tiny wooden box, maybe crossed with a yellow ribbon, waiting for the right moment. An intricately designed, masterfully created heartbreak.

I learned all this in the café on Fifth when you got your test results, when my hips wrestled the seat and I couldn’t decide if I should chase you out the door. Even when you came back and I was allowed close enough to hold you.

When you sang half a second out of sync to a song you didn’t know, or made up your own lyrics to Mahler’s Symphony Number 5 on late night radio. Even during those nights under the sheets where we became a whirlwind of paper hearts, still I’d be waiting for the knock on the door. I’d be handed a tiny wooden box with a note inside telling me it’s over. Telling me I was right all along.

To my lost love.

My hair is your favourite colour.

You used to say my eyes were pocket bonfires and my freckles were flickers of ash. I used to say if I could choose to live anywhere, I’d build a pillow fort under your collar and fall asleep to the sound of your voice.

But recently I haven’t been able to sleep at all.

We used to tell each other of our vivid, world-saving dreams, but during the heaviness of my new real-life I can’t even breathe without a soundtrack. When the music comes on, I know what to tell you.

Mahler, and I love you.

Let me tell you a story, because I can’t deal with the silence. I’m going to talk to you and if you can hear me, blink that star over there. The one that looks a little blue.

I’m going to talk until you blink.

Complete story available to agents and publishers. Contact Russell James at russelljamesauthor@gmail.com

FOR DAISY, AFTER SHE SAVED ME

There used to be a theme park just outside of town, between the railway line and the old canal. The park is long abandoned but the eager billboards still line the roads nearby, with thick outlined letters promising affordable family outings and death-defying corkscrew rides.

Only at Caído Del Cielo!

The huge signs would still be convincing if they weren’t so faded, but the slogans didn’t work so well without the fluorescent colours.

I was an engineer for the trackless rides at the park. You know the ones - where your feet dangle just inches above the fake sharks and canyons. It was my team’s job to make sure the ride didn’t collapse on you and your hotdog-filled family, but I also played a part in making it scary. Sure, the artists painted ocean backdrops and the lighting crew could turn an old rusting warehouse from jagged rivets and girders into a western saloon, but we were the only ones who knew how to make you really feel like something could go wrong. We could make you feel out of control, and our rides were always creaky enough to make you regret strapping yourself in.

This was before the days of regulations and monthly inspections, before the park was managed by boards and investors. We held that place together and put on a hell of a show. The false danger was the reason the punters came back. The overdramatic peril helped them forget about their daily lives and had them excited for a change.

•••

The night I met her, that was the last night I worked at the park. Back then my shifts ended with safety checks and maintenance. Only surface stuff, restraint systems, nobody takes the detail seriously anymore. The chances of you being badly hurt in a theme park are one in 25 million, yet people still pass out during the climax of OMG Bees! A ride for kids under ten.

The last check of the day was always The Leafy Lake, and that’s where I met her. A shoeless bundle, crumpled into the corner of the bench by the boathouse. All I had to do was make sure the boats were all properly attached to the long wooden jetty, it’s a ten minute job and I would have been out of there by sundown if I hadn’t have heard what I heard.

Have you ever noticed how you always hear your name even if it’s from the other side of the room? It ought to get tangled up in the other conversations but somehow it breaks through and gets your attention. It’s the same thing with despair. Through the xylophone sounds of the boats knocking against the jetty and the radio chatter from my walkie-talkie, I heard the tiniest sound.

Truth be told I hadn’t even seen her, and yet I’d walked right past to get to the gate. I remember looking around for somebody else to take responsibility. One more job and then I was home for the weekend. I had leftover shepherd’s pie. Half a bottle of Eerie Kansas. Ice fishing on Saturday, Mass on Sunday. Surely somebody else could deal with it.

They say that even fatal injuries in a theme park are mostly caused by previously undiagnosed brain conditions. That means, it’s not our fault, it’s yours. We give you the warnings, after that it’s up to you. I remember when a four year old boy once managed to sneak into Abattoir 3D. Hs parents complained for months afterwards saying that we were the cause of his nightmares and sleepless nights. And where were they while he was sneaking into the adult movie? In the gift shop.

•••

I walked over to the girl and asked her if she knew where her parents were, but all she could do was look at me and cry. Her tears rolled around her blushed cheeks like huge planets and they ran through her fingers. She’d had her hands over her face and the sleeves of her white cardigan were soaking wet. I asked her what her name was and she still didn’t answer.

Under the cardigan she was wearing a yellow dress. It looked like a uniform. I wondered if she’d become lost on a school trip and they just hadn’t noticed. As she moved slightly on the bench I saw that there was a dark grey scarf tied around her leg. All I remember thinking was Good God she’s hurt herself too. If it wasn’t one thing having living breathing lost property to deal with, now I had to play doctor?

And I had shepherd’s pie at home.

There was a small white label at the end of the scarf, and the name Daisy was written in blue marker pen. Somebody must be missing her, surely somebody is looking for her? I called into my radio. Had anybody called reception? Nobody answered.

I looked over at the jetty. Suddenly ice fishing seemed so far away.

It was now too dark to check the boats so I asked Daisy again, “Who were you with at the park today? Where do you live?”

She looked up at me for the first time. She looked exhausted and she wiped her eyes with her sleeve.

“Nobody and nowhere.”

That’s all she said. Nobody and nowhere. Her voice was shaking and the words seemed to catch in her throat as they battled their way through the sobs. I asked if she was hurt and she screwed her face up and hid behind her hands. The scarf around her leg slipped and I saw a blood smeared cut which ran right up to her knee.

Daisy reached down and tied the scarf tightly back around her leg.

She whispered, “I don’t think I landed very well.”

She was staring into her hands, as though seeing something in the distance. I watched one of her tears as it collected in a pool on her eyelashes. She blinked, and as it rolled down her face it followed the rivers down her cheek and landed on the peeled varnish.

It had been a long day. I was definitely tired and the only light was now coming from the old neon signs above the jetty. In the flickering light I could have sworn I saw her tear shatter as it landed on the bench. It seemed to crack and then break like a bead of glass.

As the next tear fell, I reached over to catch it without thinking. I held out my palm under her chin and waited until it rolled into my hand. It was perfectly smooth and light as a soapy bubble, but it was solid and I wrapped my hand around it. Tears were now cascading from Daisy’s cheeks and they crashed against each other as they smashed into tiny fragments and fell through the gaps in the bench. Some rolled around my feet and others bounced into the long grass. They became brighter with every passing second and surrounded us in spinning shadows.

As I watched, paralysed to the spot, I noticed my own tears. Normal, watery tears that seemed so dull and useless. It’d been years since I’d even come close to crying, but there I was, standing there in the freezing evening with stinging eyes and uncontrollable sobs.

I frantically began to pick up the glowing tears from around the bench and underneath the fence. I could only hold a small handful before I feared breaking them against each other so I filled my pockets. The shallow pockets inside my jacket were soon bulging so I emptied my jeans of loose keys and coins and filled those pockets too. I took off my shoes to gather more of her glowing teardrops inside them and I held any that remained in my shaking hands.

Complete story available to agents and publishers. Contact Russell James at russelljamesauthor@gmail.com