The Looking Glass: Volume Two Read online

  *

  Carla gripped her pack tightly. She’d been given a copy of the ultimatum but she hadn’t been too good with reading. Instead they gave her the audio version, piped in through her helmet. Jeremy’s voice rang in her ears as gravity did another lurch to the left.

  “This is your last goodbye from Britain and I’m sorry it has to be me. You have either failed to comply with Phase Two, or you’ve been judged by me as unfixable. Therefore you are being relegated to Phase three.

 

  “The island is situated in the North Sea and during the winter, temperatures will drop significantly below zero. The coat you are currently wearing is the taxpayers’ final gift to you. It is strongly advised that you retain it.

  “You have shown that you wish to be in charge of your own life. On the island you will get exactly that opportunity. There is no government, no legal system and no police. Your desire to act however you want is about to come true.

  “In order to prevent unwanted pregnancies, the water supply contains a chemical which will sterilise you. You may have sex as much as you want. If you manage to successfully smuggle drugs onto the island they will be legal. There are no hospitals.

  “Thank you for calling the Jeremy Kole Show.”

  Carla was crying so much. The other seats on the plane were empty. She didn’t even understand what she had done.

  What she did know, was who had been sent to Phase Three over the years. She’d seen wife beaters, child abusers and violent thugs all carted off to form their own community. She’d always felt safer on the streets knowing that another dangerous criminal had been removed. Jeremy had been her hero. Even the Prime Minister admitted that crime figures had dropped since the merger.

  She looked down at the tattoo on her leg. It was the only thing she had for reference. The idea of something being permanent wasn’t something she could easily grasp. She would be on this island forever. Just like the tattoo would be on her skin.

  “We’re nearly there Miss!” shouted the pilot through the speakers.

  “Please don’t make me jump out.”

  “Sorry miss, got to.”

  “But I didn’t do anything wrong!”

  “Well I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “I’ll do anything. Seriously, you can have me. I don’t care.”

  “Well that’s tempting, Miss, but I’m gay.”

  Carla’s last hope (her looks) had failed. She sat back and looked out of the window as the plane descended below the clouds. Her parachute was on tightly and her knuckles were white from gripping the release cord.

  “Listen Miss. If I tell you something… well, let’s just say when you get to the pearly gates you didn’t hear it from me.”

  “What?”

  “A lot of people don’t bother opening their chutes.”

  “How far down is it?”

  “Far enough. That’s all I’ll say.”

  She thought about this for a minute and looked at her tattoo again. The rest of her life was too difficult to deal with. But the parachute jump was right in front of her. She could deal with that.

  “OK, Miss. Here we are.”

  The hatchway on the side of the plane opened.

  “What if Jeremy loses his power?” she asked desperately.

  “You don’t watch the news, do you?”

  “What?”

  “Last week the network announced a breach in the Kole Treaty. They’re going to dissolve Parliament.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means Jeremy and Gillan will be running Britain soon. Time to jump, Miss.”

  She knew if she refused, one of the beefy security guards would come back and throw her out. Then she’d be falling with a broken wrist. She reached the open doorway and looked down at the island. There were fires everywhere.

  She let go of the release cord she’d been gripping the whole journey and closed her eyes. Her grandmother had been Catholic. Maybe it would be worth praying now.

  Carla fell toward the island and her parachute never opened.

  Water Creature

  Anya Benson

  I do not know whether I was there before time or whether time became real in me. It does not matter. You may call me Timeless, but of course there is no such thing as timelessness. This is not a problem because there is also no such thing as me.

  I was alone that night, but maybe I was always alone. I have no memory of another creature like me. There were shells that grew claws and scurried under the sand, and scaly things that dove deep then jumped above the water in such a rush, and large soft creatures that flew above me as if unaware of what lay below. There were no sounds, but there were many colours, sometimes so loud I had to close my eyes. I was weak then.

  The first sound I heard was the moon. Beneath the water, the moon breaks into so many disquiet circles and bars and shapes that have no name. I knew the moon not as something one but as something many and moving. I watched the shapes that night, dancing above me to something soft and subtle in colour. In the water I tried to move as a fish might, curving my body to the lights, but I was too large to be like light. My fingers pressed to the mud, sinking not dancing, my weight suddenly awkward when there was so little room between the air, the ground, and the tall grasses growing so close.

  I wanted the little moons above me, and when I could not imitate them in my clumsy body I tried to eat them. Slowly, watch the target as it breaks and forms again, and then come up fast, mouth wide.

  Mouth wide capturing not light but something richer, stranger, more painful. This was the air you know so well.

  When I breathed air I saw the moon become one, as you see it now every night. The lights tingled almost smugly around me across a surface that seemed suddenly still. When the moon turns it makes a strange noise, not beautiful but not angry. The moon speaks not in language but in shivers that sometimes make a song.

  The moon was creaking, singing, its voice deep and chaotic but still enchanting. I lapped up air where there should have been light-infused water. I saw sky for the first time, but I am still not convinced one can ever really see the sky – it is more the absence of substance that we see, and on that night it terrified me. In the water nothing was unattainable, but once there is sky we have something to dream with. I knew nothing of dreams but as I looked into the grey sky through which I could not move I suddenly knew what it meant to desire. It was then I decided to remain in this strange world where light stayed so still.

  But how could I move across such flat terrain?

  My body was pressed squirming in the mud, my figure shaping and reshaping its surface. You do not know what it means to move for the first time. I had floated across seas far wider and deeper than exist in your world today, but I had never truly moved. To move is to go from one place to another. There was only one place before, and so I had never moved.

  I slapped my tail against the mud. I grasped outward with my arms, hoping I could take in with every sense this new pale liquid you call air. I jumped, so forcefully I could feel the harshness of the wind. I jumped out of the water, but then I fell like deadened grasses back into the water.

  It no longer tasted like home.

  I shuffled quickly through the mud, in loops and paths that were not paths, thinking. What is flatness and what is space? How do I move, and what do I move through? I had never thought these things before. And as I thought and pawed frustrated at the broken shells beneath me, I saw over there, where the space between my tail and your air became narrower, there the mud met the sky.

  It was as if the water had become useless, emptying and emptying until it was gone entirely. But I had just found desire, and desire held me stronger than these dusty molecules of water. I squirmed into narrower and more useless water until my scales were stung by the air, and squirmed still until there was no water left to cling to.

  I had met the sky. It did not feel as painful to my lips now,
nor as rich.

  It is the sky that creates longing. When I met the sky, I met sound, which plays the mournful tunes we need to feel loss. And I met the sea, which was now a stranger to my eyes, something moving but in long strides like it was one thing, like it too longed for the sky. And of course I met the moon, stable and unreachable, like all that for which we long.

  Back in the sea, this would all be broken into a thousand floating fragments, but things were more solid now.

  In longing I laid upon the mud, then later upon the marsh grasses. I lay watching, moving, and yearning, and within those grasses time finally began. Time is measured in desire, and desire is measured in me.

  The air still seems harsh, sometimes frighteningly so.

  Wings

  Elliot Brooks

  Child was sent to fetch the paper, the scissors and the stapler. She ran on her tip toes, trying to touch the ground as little as possible. The wooden drawers were before her and the paper was in easy reach, in the bottom shelf, but the other items were quite out of her grasp. She dragged a chair across and balanced herself on it and opened the top drawer. She couldn't see inside – still too short. Her hand slowly reached in and she tried to locate the items. She wasn't allowed in this draw normally, but she had worn Topher down. She needed the paper, the scissors and the stapler for what she wanted. She wondered why Topher had made her gather the required items, when it was quite unsafe, she thought, for a girl of her age and size to be bothering with drawers that contained sharp and dangerous objects. He was the grown up who looked after her. Her tiny fingers clasped the scissors, she drew them out and laid them on the floor then returned to do the same with the stapler. With all the items gathered she closed the drawer and took the chair back.

  All this time, Bel watched Child from the next room. She had a good viewing angle through the archway. Bel sat, as ever, with a perfectly straight back and with her hands laid quite purposefully on her lap. She wore white spotless gloves, a lace bonnet and a simple black dress that made her look rather serious, or so Child always thought. As Child returned with the necessary items Bel rose to accompany her to see Topher, for they must do certain things together.

  Topher was standing by the workbench when they arrived. It was really Bel's workbench, she had paid for it, as she had paid for the rest of their belongings, including Child. Bel looked upon Topher with a face of accustomed tiredness. She had grown so bored of how he looked and how he acted. It was dull, really. He never would change. She often felt quite the urge to buy him a set of masks for him to wear, with each mask portraying different people he might be, and when he wore each one he would act appropriately. He could take on the role of others she had left behind, so that she might know, years after the opportunities, what life really would have been like if different courses had been taken. Topher truly was a dreadful trickle of a river.

  Topher looked back onto Bel's face with a look of lazy-feigned adoration. He wanted to try, but he was losing that gracious will. She wouldn't be happy. He wanted to tread out his life in the same path he had wanted to tread as a young man. The paths he and she had taken had converged only briefly, at a crossroads heading in different directions, and in the confusion of traffic they had continued their travels together, going now to a destination neither of them had wanted.

  “Topher? Bel?”

  Child spoke, breaking the silence. Bel really hated those names - for they were their names now. She would forever be Bel, and he forever Topher. Child didn't like words that went to waste. People called him Chris, and people called her Anna. Child had decided to call them by the parts of their names that were never used, so the words weren't wasted. Bel preferred what the people called her.

  Responding to Child's impatience, Topher took the paper, the scissors and the stapler from her. He took pride in his work. He began with the paper, that delicate, fine paper. It was pure and white and crisp to the touch. It looked strong yet it was a fragile thing, and Topher took great care not to tear it. He laid it out on the bench, and smoothed it down with the side of his right hand. He folded it in half. Perfectly in half. Once more he smoothed the paper, it had to be tight. From behind his ear he withdrew a stubby pencil, and drew two circles on the paper, one large and one slightly smaller. They were drawn with their rightmost sides against the crease, with the larger above the smaller, and with a slight overlap. He took his time in drawing. It had to be exact. And the longer he took the more he could delay what had to be done. After he finished the pencilling, he looked to Child and Bel. They seemed approving. Child was staring unblinking at the work being undertaken, while Bel was daydreaming. Thinking to herself what mask she would have had Topher wear on a day like today.

  Next, Topher reached for the scissors. Child looked frightened. He held the paper up to the light, then carefully cut along the pencilled lines, taking the outside edges of the shape the two circles had created together. He breathed heavily and slowly. This was important. As he made that last, thicker cut, he allowed a smile to appear on his face. He wasn't sure if it was real. He unfolded the paper, to reveal what looked like bubbly butterfly's wings. They were perfect and pristine. Child giggled in delight. Topher laid the wings down, and held out his hand to Child. Once accepted, he picked her up and placed her seated on the bench.

  Bel now pondered whether Child would also be improved with a fine selection of masks.

  Topher began with Child's coat. He undid the buttons one by one, taking care to be gentle, then folded it and rested it on the side. Then he took off her top, and placed it on her coat, leaving her bare from the waist up. He gestured to her, and she lay front down on the bench. Topher took the wings and balanced them on her back, making sure everything was symmetrical and proper. Meanwhile Bel took the scissors and set to work on the coat and top, making holes in the back. When the wings were in a satisfactory location Topher ran his fingers through Child's hair, and reached for the stapler. He shared a look with Bel, she swallowed and nodded. Topher gripped the little engine and slammed it through the paper and into the spine of Child. She screamed in pain and blood began oozing out of the wound, but the paper soaked it up. The blood spread and filled the once white wings. They allowed her a minute to recover, then snapped and reminded her that this was what she had always wanted. Child stopped her sobbing. She sat back up and allowed herself to be reclothed by Bel. Her wings jutted through the new holes perfectly. Topher took her by the left hand, Bel by the right, and she was led out of the house.

  It was a long journey, but not as long as Child, Topher or Bel had hoped. Part of the way they all walked, and part of the way Child was dragged like a slave between her two companions. She wouldn't walk at those times, but she couldn't stop moving. Soon they found the start of the climb, and up they rose. The stairs that the earth had provided took them foot after foot higher into the atmosphere, until they burst through the clouds. The air was thin and cold and they were all quite sure they would die soon. But they reached the end. The edge of the grassy climb overlooked a chasm whose bottom was hidden by cloud. Topher and Bel let go of Child's hand. She walked to the edge, and peered over with a sense of nervous eagerness. She looked back. The hands of her companions were looming out to give a helping shove but they were too late: she had fallen herself. They turned their backs and walked away before finding out if she had gotten her wings to work.

  Christopher held out his arm and Annabel took it. Together, they walked home.

  Emmeline

  Olivia Waring

  And I said she was too skinny, always too skinny.

  Even when she was eating a rich tea and smiling painfully.

  She looked ever so nice in that red velvet dress, though, said mother. Oh, she did.

  She did as well. It had an open back, and the cut of her back bone was exquisite between the folds of the material. The bend of her neck with her hair swept up into a caramel swirl. The dainty bumps of her spine. The way she held her thin arms.

  I look back and I wonder,
when I was looking at that body all that time ago, what was I really thinking? Was I thinking anything?

  Oh no, she had a boyfriend and yes, I did not have a boyfriend. He came round with a single red rose and glittering brown eyes to pick her up and sweep her off while I sat and read Proust. I could see her through the window glass, see her shivering and he never offered her his jacket.

  It was only embarrassment I felt when she came into my room and took things out of my wardrobe, threw them onto her frame and spun round. An enormous beige cardigan, a gargantuan smock. She almost drowned in them. She laughed at her reflection with the voice of a sparrow.

  And there were all those friends who stood and smoked with me in the park. They would watch her go past with thinly-veiled contempt, and say My God I’d kill for her figure. And I nodded and puffed my cigarette to keep warm.

  I forgot, towards the end, how similar our eyes were: watery blue, dotted with grey. I look at the photo albums now, strewn with our two round faces, blushing cherubs in rain macs, heading out in wellies, little short legs, feeding the ducks. She always copied me. If I had green playdough, she wanted green playdough. We normally had the same ice lollies at the park or the beach. When she dropped hers, I gave her mine. We shared my special colouring pencils. She stole my eyeliner. She stole all my LPs. Until, one day, she decided she knew better.

  And she knew it all, then.

  I said it again and again. Mother frowned and sometimes said something and sometimes did not. I was always the one that brought it up. But my words were diluted by time and place and selfishness. The rain tapped down the window, impatient streaks staining the glass.

  People I did not know were starting to stare at me in school. I only half understood. I thought it was my makeup, a ladder in my tights, something like that. I got paranoid. Nobody seemed to have an explanation. I felt like I wanted to die when finally the teacher came and asked me Was Emmeline seeing a doctor? A thousand thorns were jammed in my throat. Everyone stared at me now because I got out of the car with the girl who looked too thin to stand up.

  I tried to talk to her one weekend. It was raining hard, so she couldn’t go out, escape, see her boyfriend. I started talking while we were watching TV. Ten words later, and she’d gone, locked her bedroom door, folded herself up in silence. It was an impregnable fortress for seven days.

  The radio went up when she forgot to finish her dinner. I smiled because I loved her, the loneliest girl in the world. My shimmering ghost.

  Listen to me.

  Em won’t drink now.

  Isn’t it odd, isn’t it bizarre, that we are now sharing our house with a skeleton and yet we act as if nothing has changed?

  I didn’t want to shout at her. So I didn’t.

  That silence cut the thread of my sister’s life.

  My eyes flicker and burn out of my skull and there she is, beyond here, waiting for me on the last Christmas morning. There’s a carol floating in from the kitchen radio. She looks like a little girl again. Pink spotted pyjamas. Hair in plaits, hanging there. Her pallid face blessed with one blissful smile. She opens her lips. She is about to call out my name.

  But she isn’t there when my eyes open.

  His Garden

  Sue Smith

  Small lettuces green,

  tender in brown earth quietly

  wait to be eaten.

  Tomato plant climbs,

  towards hot sun in the sky.

  Flesh warm on my tongue.

  Greenhouse humid hot,

  smells of leaves, summer promise.

  Flowers to be picked.

  Slip

  Jina Foo

  The tulip bloomed in the dark of the night.

  Her demure lips which demurred before

  now drolly assent, all mouth and throat and lungs -

  when did this newborn learn to breathe?

  An elastic band slipped over the wrist then

  forgotten, slipping the mind as matter-of-factly

  as soup will spill

  from a spoon.

  We let slip anything we hold too tightly

  for too long.

  I woke up one morning and found that it was gone

  like a bad dream, then all fire and brimstone -

  now a tender burn on the skin.

  Like a paper boat, folded, re-folded, secretly set out to sea -

  He’s gone

  now, and I’m free.

  Coventry – 14th November 1940

  Sarah Williams

  What happened in Paxton Road?

  A bomb fell,

  terrifying the families

  in the shelter

  at the end of the long garden.

  They didn’t want to be there,

  on account of

  Alf Green’s feet,

  which smelt,

  long warm wafts of old cheese.

  Caught between the two evils,

  the Luftwaffe

  and Alf’s socks,

  they suffered

  all through that long night.

  And next morning the mess,

  a kerbstone

  on the bed,

  a hole in the roof.

  Granny did not speak for a long time after.

  Perhaps she feared more nights,

  sitting, listening

  to the planes

  overhead,

  and longing for some fresh air.

  Escape Lane Ahead

  Nicola Hargrave

  She could never get the temperature right in this car. Too hot in summer. Too cold in winter. The controls made no sense. Random symbols, dials and buttons. She wasn’t stupid; she was more than capable of programming her DVD recorder, using online banking, bleeding a radiator. A very practical woman. But this car had been a pain from the start.

  She sat motionless in the rush hour traffic, sweaty and tense. There was nothing or nobody on the car radio to listen to. No, she didn’t want to win a luxury holiday for two. No, she didn’t think this new track was awesome. How did these people get paid to utter such drivel? She thought about what would make her journey tolerable.

  A station that played her CD collection.

  No adverts.

  No over-enthusiastic presenters.

  No ‘amazing giveaways’ with screeching winners.

  The traffic started to edge forward. Laura was now up to second gear. A blast of warm summer air through the open window. And stopped again. He’d be home by now. Leaving his bag in the hall for her to sidestep. Draping his tie over the banister. Dropping the rest of today’s work clothes in a pile on the bedroom floor. Dressed in those shapeless trackies. Laid out on the sofa, watching nothing of any importance to anyone.

  He always arrived home first. Their work finished at the same time, their paths home were similar enough. He used shortcuts, barged in, swapped lanes. All he gained was five, maybe six minutes. Laura was never much later than that and rarely resorted to his bad-mannered driving.

  She’d been thinking about leaving him for too long. It consumed her. She couldn’t remember when she’d made the decision. Actually, she hadn’t made the decision and that was the problem. Life went on and she was being carried along. She just wanted it all to stop.

  They’d met at uni, she’d never noticed him. He kind of crept up on her. Not in a man-in-a-balaclava-down-an-alleyway kind of way. More like a pair of socks wearing away at the heel. The sort of thing that happens and you really don’t know how, when, why it’s come about. Like men going bald - maybe they don’t notice it happening until there’s barely anything there?

  Simon had morphed into her life sometime three, four years ago. She watched couples in films, soap operas, restaurants celebrating their anniversary. “Oh, darling I can’t believe it’s been three months since we first kissed....”

  Laura had no idea when they’d first kissed. She couldn’t remember their first conversation. Their first meal together. None of it. Simon had a needle-sharp memory for the
se things.

  “Remember when we went to see that Ibsen play on our third date?”

  No.

  “You must do, you spilt ice-cream down that white top you seemed to wear on all our dates!”

  No.

  “We took a taxi back to my place. It was the first time we, erm...”

  No. Nothing.

  Laura was not prone to such bad memory loss. In fact, she was crammed full of pointless memories and facts. She knew the best way to peel a boiled egg was to slam it on the kitchen worktop, roll it back and forth under your palm so the shell peels as easily as an orange. She’d seen two minutes of some awful cooking program that stuck in her head. The presenter’s inane fat-tongued grin glaring out, the irksome mockney voice giving the viewers a chef’s secret egg-peeling technique. This was one of the more useful thoughts trapped in Laura’s head but could she remember the first date with Simon? The shirt he wore to his birthday meal last week? The name of his first pet dog? Nope. She wasn’t being deliberately mean, forgetting great chunks of their life together. It was more complex than that.

  At some point Laura had fallen out of love with Simon and along with that realisation came the need to free up some of her brain’s hard drive. Laura had been erasing the sights and smells of their relationship for a long time now. It was so she could finally set herself free from him. Her closure had started long ago, preparing herself to move on. Just one thing was stopping her.

  She needed to tell him.

  The car was getting stuffy, Laura should have been home by now. At the end of the road she could see the police waving traffic down an avenue to the right. What now? Another bomb scare, drugs bust, pile-up? It didn’t matter, she was relieved that the diversion would at least get the car moving, get some air flowing in. And eventually she’d get home. And tell him.

  Every day, she thought about it. Obsessive thoughts of how she could tell him.

  Simon, you’re dumped.

  It’s not you, it’s me.

  It’s not me, it’s you.

  It’s just not working.

  We’ve grown apart.

  I can’t live like this.

  I hate you.

  I wish you were dead.

  She staged endless performances in her head. It made her tired, exhausted. And none of it got her any closer to actually finishing it. The problem was that she didn’t hate him, didn’t wish he was dead. But it was killing her, a part of her dying inside every day. The feeling of utter weariness and discontent was destroying her, devouring her.

  The queue started to move again, the car in front stalling. School kids sucking on ice pops slamming into each other started running with purpose towards the scene up ahead. Sirens wailing in the near distance. Now twenty minutes later than normal, Laura’s fatigue was growing. She’d get home and order a takeaway, no way was she doing any more work tonight. She might even join Simon on the sofa for some TV. He’d be watching some teatime quiz show, giving answers. Any incorrect ones followed by quick retractions.

  Oh, it used to be that.

  No, they must have changed it recently.

  As if that’s right, I’ll google that later.

  Nope, no that’s never been true.

  Simon liked to be correct. He never made for good company when there was someone more intelligent around. Or when he’d been corrected. In time Laura understood that it was easier and quicker to concede that he was correct and she knew nothing. Of all the reasons she wanted to leave it was this that got to her the most. She’d surrendered herself a long time ago to make life easier. If he thought he was the clever one, the pragmatic one, the funny one then she didn’t have to put up with his moods. She wanted to leave. To go back to being the clever one, the pragmatic one, the funny one.

  The sirens were deafening as the ambulance approached the scene ahead. Only two cars in front were blocking Laura’s view now but by leaning and extending herself she could see a jeep on its back and a white saloon nudged into its chassis. Like some little kids playing with their Matchbox cars, crashing them, flipping them, throwing them in the air. The scene ahead was chaotic. Police holding back the gathering crowd. Paramedics on their knees pumping the chest of the bloodied jeep driver. Shaking their heads, looking up at the sky. The crowd looking on in silence, hands covering mouths.

  Laura wound up her window, she didn’t want the spirit of death getting in. A nervous smile crossed her mouth, amused at how silly her superstition was. A man had died in the road. She’d seen a man die in the road. She didn’t know him, didn’t even know for sure he was dead. But it hit her like a saloon into a jeep.

  The cars in front crept past the scene. Laura followed staring straight ahead. She turned down the avenue, two minutes from home.

  Tonight she’d tell him.

  Like a saloon into a jeep, tonight she’d tell him.

  in-TRANSIT

  Anthony Levin

  I’ve got my possessions in a bag on a stick, I’ve slung them over my shoulder.

  It’s about the length of confused?

  I’m watching American Psycho, I’m reading Imperial Bedrooms, I’m listening to a car alarm, I’m undressing work colleagues, I’m looking at the spine of a book on my shelf that says ‘Hello, I’m Special’. Next to it: ‘Selfish Capitalist’.

  I’m at a film screening of a film I’ve seen, I’m talking to my professor who was crying on the train.

  My rain-soaked sheets are lashed with sun. My pain-soaked heart is maudlin.

  I’m horny but my prostate hurts. I’m sorting through music that’s not even mine. I’m putting off plans because there are too many.

  My friend from LA is ignoring me on Facebook.

  I’m counting the tut-tuts I get from old teachers at a Nostalgia Fair.

  I’m omphaloskeptic. I’m logophilic. I’m talking to someone in Fashion like I know her.

  What do you do?

  I’m an expert in ambiguity – no, opacity.

  What does that mean?

  I’m not sure, it’s complicated.

  I’m extending the line of credit on my good will.

  A magazine I write for went into liquidation.

  I’m reading excerpts playing the part of aphorisms.

  My ex-ex-girlfriend is named after a wine, or the other way around.

  I hand her some poetry I wrote thinking it might heal something I’m not sure needs healing.

  I’m thinking about the seven most common logical fallacies.

  Ok so I neologise.

  I’m word-dropping to impress friends. They look quizzical.

  They can’t pronounce Borges properly. Neither can I.

  What do you do?

  I’m an epistemological dilettante: I half-know things.

  Like what?

  Did you know that there are only 14-

  [pause]

  14 what?

  Exactly.

  Autumn In London

  Fergus Tevlin

  As I sit with the Arabica beans

  Enjoying my own company

  For once...

  In my smart clothes

  I look out the window

  I watch as bitter winter slinks

  Chatters about pavements grey

  And leaves that begin

  To turn

  Brown. Crisp after the warm

  Of summer’s embrace

  The glass that divides

  My lover and I

  Or a friend

  Begins to harden, a reflection disappears

  And everything else

  Turns cold

  Jack Frost whispers in my ear

  Her words

  Wander to the back of my mind

  And even though I’m really outside

  Standing under a cobalt sky

  I finally begin to realise what’s going on within

  London’s Red Buses

  Mosope Adekola

  Of course I had heard of these buses
even in Nigeria. However, the whole idea of a double-decker bus seemed so ridiculous that I didn’t think of it again. This was until the rainy chilly evening when I stepped out of Elephant and Castle tube station and into the well-lit streets of London. And I saw one.

  I blame Enid Blyton. She left this huge detail out of her fantastic tales of pointy-eared pixies, stocky gnomes and enchanted woods. It would have been very much appreciated if she’d told a tale about scarlet two-storey buses roaming the glistening streets of a faraway place called London. Father had told me, when I was younger, of a place where there were buses with staircases in them. I would have believed Enid but definitely not my father.

  Standing startled, I stared at these red delights. At that point I forgot it felt like minus 50 degrees and that a few minutes ago I was certain my lips would fall off due to the gnawing cold. Inevitably, I thought of the Nigerian buses called danfo. Yellow and much smaller than the red buses, danfos look like crumpled metal on wheels. They seat 13 jam-packed people whilst the conductor hangs desperately onto the outside of the bus.

  Once on the so-called 343 to Peckham Rye, my mind started cartwheeling. The scenery, smells and the general aura of this place overwhelmed me. My bulging eyes darted from the clean streets with no potholes to the traffic lights which actually worked, a twin pram and a teenager with hair that made her look like a porcupine wearing all black with cherry lips.

  Just as I was informed of the two-storey red bus, I was also told of the underground trains. All I could imagine was a long, rusty locomotive grinding through thick soil under the ground and in the process, crashing into the thick buttresses of trees. Absolutely preposterous. The Elephant and Castle station was actually nothing like I had imagined. It looked sane and civilized. There were chairs for the passengers to sit on while they waited for their trains. The tubes, as these trains are called by most, did look tube-like. With blue-cushioned chairs that faced each other, yellow poles for standing passengers to hold onto and doors that automatically slid open and shut once at a stop. On one frightening incident, a few months later, these doors that seemed to have a mind of their own slid shut against a woman’s leg as she was getting on the train. I was certain she was going to be dragged to a horrible death. My mind was immediately made up: I was never going on this tube of a thing. Standing still, I began mourning this stranger’s demise. Until miraculously, with the frantic help of some passengers, the murderous door slid open, quite sluggishly too, like it was used to such happenings.

  With all these images cruising back and forth in my mind I forgot about the embarrassment of sitting on my mum’s lap in the bus. I was sixteen by the way, and not five. In Nigeria this was alright regardless of age, but it obviously wasn’t on these crimson buses. No one else was carried on someone’s lap, even passengers much younger than me. But she was so happy to see me and I had missed her so much that I let her carry me on her lap like a brown woven wicker basket filled with precious shopping’s of yams, plantains and cassava.

  THE LOOKING GLASS ANTHOLOGY

  The Looking Glass is a student-run annual anthology at the University of York. We accept submissions from all students (undergraduate and postgraduate) and our core ethos is that it’s better to produce one thing of quality than several throwaway magazines.

  We will begin taking submissions for our fourth edition from Monday 8th October 2012.

  If you’d like to get involved, you can sign up to our mailing list at the following address:

  groupspaces.com/TheLookingGlass

  You can also find up-to-the-minute information, including guidelines for submissions, over at

  TheLookingGlass.org.uk.