No Choice, But Chosen By Ayalla Buchanan

My name is Annabell. Like my mother, and her mother before that. Generations of Annabells, stretching behind me. The year is 2125, and the outside world is in ruins. Next week will mark my sixteenth year, and so tomorrow I will report for genetic placement. They say it is designed to ensure happiness, but all it really seems to ensure is limitations.

My door slides open. The hydraulics no longer squeal. It reminds me to wonder what will happen to my room after I’m gone. It reminds me to think of the brother I lost, who was transferred to the Maintenance Sector, and whose features I share. My mother stands in the doorway in her purple Domestic Sector dress. She is holding the gown I must wear to be placed. Its rainbow of colours is supposed to represent possibility, but all I see is empty promises.

“I wore this when I was tested,” she says. And I know it’s coming. The speech. I roll my eyes. “There used to be disharmony. The people were in disarray, before The Authority created this haven from the outside. The Authority is always present. They know what is best—“

“Do they?”

“Don’t interrupt me. Tomorrow you are to go to Corridor Delta Nine in the Authority Sector, and from there you will be tested. Do you have any questions?”

I take my chance. It might be the last time I see my mother. “What’s outside?”

“You know what’s outside.”

“I know what they’ve told us is outside. What do you think is outside?”

Fragment of a love story, recovered By Kevin Connelly

No more than the following fragments were ever found, as if a tiny piece of pottery must needs reveal to us the whole.

…so they would be safe. However, as we think it will be is not always how it transpires. More was expected of him, being older. Strange then that such foolishness came from him, not from her.

She could see all the dangers, the perils behind them illuminated for her the dangers in the ways forward. The whirlpool of passionate love swallowed her in deep. Such reason as she at first tried to apply was soon swept away. Together they would go wherever, do whatever, escape however. Together they would be, forever.

In their time of troubles, in the making of them, she was not entirely innocent. Jealous gossips later said it was pride in her own great beauty drove her to such extremes. No woman they said, could be so unaware of her own beauty as to be senseless of it’s effects on others, no woman…

Kevin Connelly

Kevin Connelly drawn by Paddy Lennon RHA

Kevin Connelly is the author of Fragment of a love story, recovered. A native of Kilkenny City, born in 1955, Kevin is currently living in Duncannon, Co. Wexford.

Kevin has been interviewed on The John Murray Show, Radio1 and the Eclectic Light Show, KCLRadio.

He has read poetry in the Wexford Arts Centre as part of the Cáca Milis Cabaret and on “Imeall”, the Arts programme on TG4. His poetry has received awards in The Black Diamond Poetry Competition, The Frances Browne Multilingual Poetry Competition and Fish Publications Poetry.

His poems have been published in “Boyne Berries” and “”Red Lamp, Black Piano”. In the US he has been published in “The d’Verse Anthology of International Poetry”,”and “The Lilliput Express”. Kevin has had both poetry and flash fiction published as part of the Writers on Board Scheme of the Carnegie Library in Kilkenny.

He regularly reads his work at Harry’s Bar, Langton’s Hotel, Kilkenny and The Fusion Cafe, Wexford.

CROCODILES by Matt Harris

Once there was a very happy little girl who lived in a village between a jungle and a river. The little girl was so happy that she smiled all day long. She smiled when she woke up in the morning, smiled when she saw there were noodles for breakfast, smiled on her way to her school lessons, smiled when she came home for lunch, smiled as she spent the afternoon helping her mother with the laundry and cleaning, smiled and laughed while she played with the other children in the evening and went to bed smiling and looking forward to happy dreams. Life was good for the happy little girl.

But not everyone liked to see the girl smiling so much. In fact almost everyone in the village disliked seeing her smile all the time. This was because life in the village was very hard. The reason it was hard was that they lived between the river and the jungle. The river was full of crocodiles and the jungle was full of tigers, so the villagers had to scrape a living from their thin strip of land. At night they stayed indoors, fearful of the rustling sounds from the jungle where the tigers crept, and the sloshing sounds from the river where the crocodiles surged slowly through the brown waters.

Matt Harris

Matt Harris

Matt Harris is the author of CROCODILES and is a writer based in Liverpool whose short work and poetry has appeared in Transmission, Hoax, Winamop and Confingo magazines. Matt has been influenced by a huge number of authors, in particular the wild ideas of Philip K. Dick, the vibrant imagery of Sylvia Plath, and the simple prose of Raymond Carver. Matt has recently completed a full-length novel named The Tourist, a love story inspired by my fascination with travel and foreign places. Outside of fiction, my other great passion is writing and recording music.

Author Q & A

When did you start writing?

I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember, starting with pencil-illustrated monster stories when I was a child and onto navel-gazing epics when I was a teenager. Hopefully I’ve improved since then.

I Eat People By Will Davis

I eat people. It’s what I do. I don’t care what they look like, if they’re fat like seal puppies, or mouthwateringly beautiful as Nereids. I don’t discriminate. The only thing that matters is that they have flesh I can suck on and bones I can chew. I wait near the shore until they get close to the water and then I rise and wrap my coils around them and eat them right up.

‘You’ve become trapped in your own destructive cycle.’

That’s what my therapist said, blowing bubbles out of his pipe while I floated on his couch amidst the decorative seaweed of his office.

‘You need to develop a normal healthy relationship.’

Will Davis

Will Davis

Will Davis is the author of I Eat People. Will has also authored My Side of the Story (winner of the Betty Trask Prize 2007), Dream Machine, The Trapeze Artist and Demonica, and is books editor for Attitude magazine. He is also a prize-winning aerial circus artist, specialising on corde lisse, and has performed his acts at many theatres, nightclubs and festivals in Europe.

Author Q & A

Can you tell us about the inspiration behind this story?I wrote this story at a writers retreat in Scotland a couple of years ago. It was quite a forlorn, windswept sort of a place, without any internet or television. I think being isolated fed into wanting to write about a lonely mythological character, and to consider how he might relate to the modern world.

Take A Number Please By Tamara Jones

Harry and Oliver sat on the bench at the bottom of the stairwell and stared morosely at the lino floor beneath their feet.

‘Getting a bit boring this,’ said Harry, scuffing his boots on a large patch of worn lino and grimacing.

‘Got boring ages ago,’ said Oliver, shuffling on the bench and looking around vainly, but not for the first time, for a clock. ‘Must be getting on for lunchtime, don’t you reckon?’ Silence. ‘How much longer before our numbers come up do you think?’

Harry shrugged dismissively, but before he could say anything the doorway from outside opened and a man entered the waiting room. Harry and Oliver stared at the newcomer and watched curiously as he stood looking around the room, at the benches against the walls and at the stairway leading up to the blue sky filled doorway above.

Tamara Jones

Tamara Jones

Tamara Jones is the author of Take A Number Please. A Former languages teacher pleased to be devoting all her time to writing, a lifelong ambition that can now be fulfilled. Beats lesson preparation and marking any day. Winner of Jotters United ‘Spirit’ short story competition. Story ‘Stalking the Watcher’ published in Jotters United.

Lives out the back of beyond on the edge of a forest and when not writing, spends inordinate amounts of time gardening and watching the wildlife.

Edward’s First Love By Jay Moussa-Mann

Tomorrow the world changes. A new dawn, bringing with it new times, new foundations, new concepts. Tomorrow the blood and sweat poured into the tracks that will now carry people from one town to the next will not be in vain. The passion I have borne for the past years will finally see fruit. Tomorrow all our efforts shall be rewarded. The Stockton-to-Darlington railroad is born.

I turn from the window (I don’t know why I am stood here, it is the dead of night and outside is pitch black). His breathing in the corner of the room has become more laboured, as if the body is craving, heaving, fighting for the air all around it yet unable to take enough in. Rapid breathing, now quieter. Easier. I feel my body relax again. I didn’t even realize I was tensing with every inhalation. Subconsciously breathing each breath with him.