Giselle Leeb, "Mammals, I Think We Are Called"

 

Giselle Leeb’s debut short story collection, Mammals, I Think We Are Called, is published by Salt (Oct 22). Her short stories have been widely published in journals, magazines, and anthologies, including Best British Short Stories 2017 (Salt), Ambit, Mslexia, The Lonely Crowd, Litro, Black Static, and Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet. She has been placed and shortlisted in competitions including the Ambit, Bridport and Mslexia prizes. She is an assistant editor at Reckoning Journal and a Word Factory Apprentice Award winner 2019. She grew up in South Africa and lives in Nottingham. Twitter: @GiselleKLeeb 

About Mammals, I Think We Are Called

Ambitious and playful, darkly humorous and imaginative, these strikingly original stories move effortlessly between the realistic and the fantastical, as their outsider characters explore what it’s like to be human in the twenty-first century. Whether about our relationship with the environment and animals, technology, social media, loneliness, or the enormity of time, they reflect the complexities of being alive. Beautifully written and compelling, you won’t read anything else like them.

You can read more about Mammals, I Think We Are Called on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read an excerpt from the collection. 

From Mammals, I Think We Are Called, by Giselle Leeb 

Everybody Knows This Place

At the entrance, he waits next to the big sign with the ancient photoshopped picture blending guest houses, motorhomes and tents. “Caravan and Camping Park,” it says. The national park opposite has been restored for maximum authenticity. Just don’t look too closely at the birds. 

He finds himself listlessly plugging and unplugging his left eye from its socket. He’s started to wonder about this habit, and he’s also secretly proud of it – a nervous tic, really, something more pure human than cyborg. People remove them deliberately for cleaning, but he does it spontaneously, and this feels good. He tries to stop the ‘why’ following, to try not to explain it. 

He unplugs the eye and points it at himself. He looks pretty much the same as everybody else, and that’s OK, that’s good, otherwise he might be made to feel inferior. Nobody does these days. It’s unnecessary, distressing even. Everyone gets along: no fear, no war. And emotions remain, though faint, like delicate imprints, a slight tang in an otherwise ordinary cup of tea, or ‘cuppa,’ as he’s taken to calling it. 

But the new theme park has generated faint hints of excitement in him, a recognition perhaps of the ongoing need to connect with fully human roots. Something unexpected, not factored in. They still don’t understand it, but they’ve finally admitted defeat and created the conditions to meet the need. 

Sara Waheed, "The Cut of a Feather"

Congratulations to Sara Waheed, winner of this year's John Coleman Prize! Below, you can read about Sara and her winning short story. Congratulations too to Priyan Majumdar, who was awarded an "honourable mention" for her story.

By Sara Waheed

My name is Sara and I’m a second year English with Creative Writing student. Along with writing short stories and poetry, I love to crochet and listen to music. 

My story "The Cut of a Feather" started with the thought of something as innocent as a reed hurting someone’s hand. This led me to think of a place very familiar to me, where you can find an abundance of reeds: Jenny’s Woods in my Lincolnshire hometown (see photo above). My family and I have been going on walks, runs and bike rides in Jenny’s Woods ever since I was young; it’s a very meaningful place to me. Because of this, I decided to set my short story there, and this made the writing process more heartfelt.

I wanted this short story to show how emotional devastation can arise from seemingly insignificant things. Subtle gestures, such as eye contact, physical proximity and word choices can have a deeper impact than more obvious displays of upset. I’m very grateful for this opportunity to share my short story with more people.  

The Cut of a Feather

Whenever Alice brushed her hands against the reeds on this path, they were harmlessly spiky. They had never so much as grazed her. But on this day, the reeds at her palm were sharp; Alice could feel them almost piercing her skin. She resisted the urge to pull her hand away, and instead let the prickling feeling press against her skin like an unwanted kiss.  

Although she could see Declan’s back receding further into the greenness beyond, she stayed put. She was waiting for him to turn around. She wanted him to walk back and ask her what she was doing. She wanted him to pull her hand away from the reeds and hold it for the rest of her life. 

But if she stood there any longer, Declan would walk too far, and Alice would have to foolishly make her way across the slowly-stretching distance. He wouldn’t stop. Alice tore her hand away from the reeds and briskly caught up. His outline became less like watercolour and more like charcoal as she got closer, and his hair was so tousled that it looked strangely at home amongst the overgrown grasses.

“I think you need a haircut,” Alice said as she reached him. Her hand still stung.

He didn’t look at her, even though they were now walking side by side. His gaze was fixed somewhere ahead, despite the path being completely empty.

“Are you offering?” he said after a couple of seconds. 

Alice put a hand to the uneven hairstyle on her head and rustled the jagged ends. Given the circumstances of the impulsive haircut, Declan’s comment was in ill taste. She didn’t honour it with a reply. 

“It would probably be a good idea to get it done before your birthday. It’s coming up soon,” she said instead.

“I’m not sure if three weeks qualifies as soon.”

“I think it does. I’ll book you an appointment with Calla when we get back.”

Declan said nothing. Alice took it as an affirmation, knowing that he didn’t care either way. 

“Have you thought about what you want to do?” she asked.

“What?” he said.

“For your birthday, I mean.” 

They were passing the picnic benches. In the dimness of the grey sky, they looked derelict, but Alice could easily remember the many times her and Declan had sat at them with a flask of soup.

“I don’t really want to do anything,” Declan said.

Alice wanted to stop and sit at one of the benches, but she already knew what he would say. She continued walking.

“We could have dinner at that new place that opened in town. I’ve heard it’s good,” she said.

A particularly strong gust of wind blew past them, and Declan pulled his jacket tighter around himself. Alice knew that his warm coat was hanging behind the kitchen door, but Declan had refused to heed her warning of the weather when they were leaving the house.

“It’s Italian too, I know you’ve been into that recently,” Alice said. She’d never liked the taste of basil but had become well-acquainted with it over the past month.

“I’ve gone off it.” 

His voice was nothing more than a mumble which Alice had to strain her ears to catch. In lieu of a reply, she nodded; her hand was beginning to ache and, whilst she suspected that her palm might be injured in some way, she couldn’t bring herself to take a look.

Instead, she stuffed her hand into her coat pocket and fumbled around for her keys. The only keyring attached to them was one she’d received from Declan a few years ago. It was shaped like a daisy, but the petals were blue instead of white. Alice fidgeted with it so often that the blue had weathered over time. When she pulled the keys out of her pocket, she realised that the petals were now almost completely white, as daisy petals should be. Still holding on to them, she interrupted the quiet.

“Do you want me to get you those headphones you were looking at the other day? I’d like to get you a gift that you really want.”

“I don’t want anything.” He drew his shoulders up in an attempt to lend his red ears some warmth.

“Come on, Declan. Everybody wants something.” 

“Not me,” he said. 

“You don’t want anything?” Alice’s voice sounded shrill. She cleared her throat whilst Declan replied. 

“No,” he said. His lips were turned downwards in a hazardous frown, but Alice persisted.

“Are you telling me that there’s nothing I can give you? Not a single thing?” Clearing her throat hadn’t helped, so she forced a cough instead. It left her mouth with such surprising vigour that she was forced to stop walking. Whilst she spluttered into her sleeve, Declan stood to the side, and Alice wondered when their walks together had started to feel so lonely.

“You can’t give me anything that I want, Alice.”

The tickly cough swiftly retreated; Alice stared at him. He was standing stock-still, but his eyes were darting from tree to tree. When his gaze eventually rested on her, he released a long breath. 

“I don’t think you’ll ever be able to.” 

Alice had wanted Declan to look her way for so long, but not like this. He’d taken a step away from her, and his eyes were tight, as though there was something acrid in the space between them. The fine line that had been flickering between his eyebrows finally settled into place, and Alice knew that they wouldn’t make it to the end of the walk.

“I don’t want you to book me a haircut and I don’t want any gifts from you. I can’t do this anymore. You need to stop.”

Underneath the keyring Alice was still holding, her palm was throbbing. She clenched her fist around the daisy even tighter, until she could feel her pulse beating against it.

“Stop what?” she eventually replied. But he didn’t seem to hear her.

“I thought that you’d start to understand, or you’d see that things have changed. I was waiting, but I can’t keep doing this. If you’re going to keep pretending that this can work, I need to tell you now,” he hesitated and brushed his hair away from his face before continuing, “we stopped working a long time ago.” 

Even though Alice could see the distance between them, it felt as though his words had been spoken directly into her ears. When she opened her mouth to speak, she barely recognised her own voice.

“Why are you saying this now?” Her tongue felt as though it was coated in syrup.

Declan seemed to contemplate her words, squinting at her as though she was more of a vaguely familiar stranger than the girl who had offered him her hand all those years ago.

“I’ve already made plans for my birthday,” he finally told her.

Alice tried and failed to remember why they’d left the house in the first place. All she knew was that she’d been the one to suggest it. Without really looking at him, she took Declan’s hand and placed the daisy keyring into it. She closed his fingers around the white petals, and then she walked away.

Walking in the opposite direction, Alice discovered, wasn’t the same as retracing her steps. She didn’t recognise the trees she was passing, and she didn’t know which diverging paths to follow. The sky was quickly darkening, the greyness above melding with the deep brown tree trunks that were overlooking her mindless walking. The green leaves swinging from the tree’s branches were shrouded in shadow, and Alice was uncertain how long she’d been walking for. She sped up.

It was when she came across a familiar group of felled trees that Alice realised they hadn’t made it very far after all. They had been closer to the start of the walk than the end. The path gradually straightened up, and when beams of light cut through the thicket more frequently, she let her feet trail. When she eventually came to a stop, Alice felt as though she’d never moved at all. 

The reeds in front of her were deceptively sharp. Alice didn’t touch them. She straightened her stiff fingers, exposing her bare palm to the cool air and felt the sting all the way up to her wrist. When she finally looked, she saw a tiny tear in the middle of her palm. The speck of blood had already crusted.

Jane Fraser, "Connective Tissue"

 

Jane Fraser lives, works and writes fiction in a house facing the sea in the village of Llangennith, in the Gower peninsula, south Wales. In 2017 she was a finalist for the Manchester Fiction Prize and in 2018 was a prize-winner for the Fish Memoir Prize and selected as a Hay Festival Writer at Work. Her first collection of short fiction, The South Westerlies, was published by Salt in 2019. In 2022, she was commissioned by BBC Radio 4 for the first time to write a short story which was broadcast as part of its Short Works series. In 2022, she was also awarded The Paul Torday Memorial Prize for her debut novel, Advent, published by Welsh women’s press Honno in 2021. She has a PhD in Creative Writing from Swansea University, is wife to Philip and co-director of NB:Design, a business they share, and importantly, grandmother to Megan, Florence and Alice. She is a firm believer that there’s a right time in life to do things, rather than a right age. Her second collection of short stories, Connective Tissue, is published by Salt in October 2022.

About Connective Tissue

This collection of short fiction aims to define the sometimes indefinable and to give voice to those struggling to make sense of what life throws at them. There are those who travel in a continuous loop on London’s underground and those who dance at night with the departed. A woman confronts herself in a bedroom mirror after decades of denial and a widow finds comfort in an osteopath’s consulting room. And then there is a strange creature who falls to earth; dreams and portents; crows and folklore, and much more.

The stories are tragic and comi-tragic, but all reveal the strength and complexity of the human spirit. They bring poignant insights on grief, loss and longing and the depths and strangeness of the human psyche and how we manage to survive and just about cope.

You can read more about Connective Tissue on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read an extract from the title story. 

From Connective Tissue, by Jane Fraser

Maggie Morgan has her head in the hole that’s been manufactured to accommodate it. She keeps her eyes open and stares down through the dark space at the floor. She’s lying flat on her stomach on the black couch in the treatment room.

“How have we been since last time, Maggie?” Jenny asks. “Any pain? Headaches? Tenderness?”

“About the same. No worse. No better,” she says.

Her own voice sounds strange to her; distant somehow, as though in a great void. She wonders why it is always necessary to refer to her in the first person plural these days. She can’t recall exactly when it first started, though knows it was some medical context or other. “Still mobile are we, Mrs. Morgan?” “Wearing our distance glasses for driving are we, Mrs. Morgan?” “Taking our tablets are we, Mrs. Morgan.” “Opening our bowels regularly are we, Mrs. Morgan?”

She’d like to remind Jenny that she hasn’t been a ‘we’ for almost twenty years, that she is very much an ‘1.’ Singular. First person. Alone and almost invisible. But she can’t somehow bring it up. And she’s a lovely girl anyway. Doesn’t want to upset her.

“Just going to work down your spine first, Maggie. The usual. Don’t mind if I unclasp your bra?”

“Long as your hands aren’t cold,” she says.

“Warmed them up especially for you. Feel.” 

She knows Jenny’s hands by now: fleshy finger tips, firm, young, know what they’re doing. In the snug of the hole, she detaches herself from Jenny the girl and gives herself up to the hands.

Sharon Eckman, "I See You"

Sharon Eckman is an actor, singer and writer. Winner of the Time Out Travel Writer of the Year, she has been longlisted twice for the Fish Memoir Prize and shortlisted for the Words & Women Prose competition and the Jerwood/Arvon Mentorship Scheme. Short fiction has appeared in Shooter Lit, Words & Women: 3, 100 Voices: An Anthology, 100 Voices for 100 Years and New Flash Fiction Review. She is currently working on a novel and has just completed her first short film. Her website is here. 

Below, you can read a story by Sharon, first published in New Flash Fiction Review here. 

I See You

Grace Savage arrives as the supermarket doors open on Christmas Eve morning. ‘Twice widowed, now shy,’ as she invariably describes herself, Grace browses the fruit and veg aisles, inspecting carrots and parsnips, furtively popping a green grape into her mouth. Her youngest grandson loves green grapes and this is the best way to tell if they are ripe. Grace doesn’t consider it stealing – she will buy after she tries.

She transfers the basket to her other arm; she hadn’t change for a trolley and everyone else was in too much of a rush to be bothered with an elderly lady dithering by the entrance.

Carefully checking her list, Grace Savage treads her accustomed path past milk and yoghurt, stopping for a pot of double cream for the Victoria sponge which had been her eldest grandson’s favourite. Someone jostles her basket arm and she turns to apologise to the track-suited young man who impatiently pushes past her.

“Fucksake,” she hears him mutter. “Get out of the way you stupid old cunt.”

She considers responses. 1. Ignore. 2. Push back. 3. Point out that her ‘cunt’ is not so old and that she feels sorry for the ‘cunt’ responsible for his entrance into the world.

“Do you talk to your own grandmother with that mouth?”

Grace Savage hasn’t said this – a middle-aged man with an army haircut and cold grey eyes accosts tracksuit man who opens his mouth to spit bravado, meets that cold stare and smirks instead.

“Just banter, innit? Bit of bants? Here love, let me get that for you.” And he reaches for another pot of double cream she neither wants nor needs. Banter. Of all the words currently swilling around the world, she particularly loathes this one.

Grace Savage shakes her head. “No thank you,” she answers politely and returns the pot to the fridge, exchanging a look with army haircut man who gives her a brief, chilly smile and fills his own basket with French cheeses and crème fraiche. Tracksuit man mutters something and her hands shake as she transfers the basket again and bumps her knee on the edge of the chiller as she turns away. She hears him huff a laugh and a pulse begins to beat in her forehead.

She alters her usual route and stands in front of a shelf of cat food for the cat she no longer has. Tracksuit man has followed, picking up a two-for-one special on Pedigree Chum. He has a badly-trained crossbreed called Tyson, she decides. Tyson would be a good dog with another owner.

Tracksuit man replaces the dog food and picks up some wild bird seed. Grace is now convinced he is following her; she feeds her garden birds, whereas this man probably shoots them with an air rifle.

The game is on. Grace leads him past sanitary products, home baking and novelty cakes. He remains perhaps five paces behind. Eventually, via a circuitous route taking in electrical goods, cleaning products and makeup, they arrive at the tills. Her basket is now full. He holds nothing but a copy of The Sun.

She queues at ‘baskets only’. He slots in behind her and she hears his breath come short and sharp, can smell cigarettes mixed with something rank and rotting. His soul, she thinks. His bantering soul.

Two tills down, she sees army haircut man. He is watching and she feels a little comforted.

At the last minute, she veers away to the self-checkouts and yes, tracksuit man follows with his threatening breath and folded newspaper. Her grandson’s death went unreported in that paper; they were too busy sharing stories of overpaid footballers to bother with a boy who’d killed himself after relentless bullying. ‘Just banter,’ they’d said. Fourteen years old. His little brother found him swinging from the curtain pole.

She places her basket, scans each item deliberately slowly. His breath is louder, close by her ear and she can hear him muttering. “If you were my grandmother, I’d have smothered you in your sleep. I’d drown your cat and leave it on your doorstep.”

Grace Savage packs the last item – the plump grapes bursting with sweet juice.

‘Unexpected item in bagging area’ says the scanner. She looks around for help. Army haircut man walks by, nods to her with another chilly smile before passing through the automatic doors. ‘Unexpected item in bagging area’ the scanner repeats, insistent. She looks down at her bag. An unexpected item pokes out of the top. A bottle she doesn’t recall picking up because she never uses that brand of bleach. Oh well, since it’s there …

She unscrews the top and with calm, considered precision, flings the contents into tracksuit man’s face and as his agony fills the store and his skin starts to bubble, she reaches into her bag and eats another grape.

"The Vicar's Beard": A Story by Mathew Lopez-Bland

The Vicar struggled, hacking away at his white beard with a pair of old scissors. It was important that he looked his best for the Bishop’s visit.

Every minute or so the Vicar would successfully free a clump of white hair and smile as it fell into the sink. Eventually, a scruffy, stubbled face smiled back at him from the mirror.

He walked through the Vicarage to his bedroom and took a cut-throat razor and a pair of tweezers from a drawer beneath his wardrobe. He had bought the tweezers especially the day before, but the ivory-handled razor had been given to him by his father years ago, as a gift when he had been ordained.

Watching the way the razor caught the light, he smiled again as he walked back through his home. Feeling pleased with himself, he lifted the razor to his face and pressed it to his cheek bone. The razor sliced straight through his skin. He swore as a trickle of dark blood rolled down his cheek. He cupped his free hand beneath the hot tap and tried to dab away the blood, but the cut continued to bleed.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, to the accusing face in the mirror, ‘but it has been a few years.’

He tore a small piece of toilet paper from the roll and stuck it over the cut. A red dot began to soak through the paper as he lifted the razor to his face again. Pressing the edge of the blade lightly against the skin above his top lip, he dragged the razor up toward his nose before dipping it beneath the tap, washing away the hair, and repeating the routine several times. On the third stroke the razor nicked at the ridge of his philtrum, opening up another cut. Again, he began to bleed.

The Vicar cut his face five more times before he finished. He placed the wet razor down on the rim of the sink and inspected his face in the mirror. It looked older than the last time he’d seen it. His naked jowls hung like a dog’s and his skin was liver-spotted and grey.

He splashed cold water over his face, cleaning his pores and washing away the scraps of toilet paper. None of the cuts were deep but they all stung and continued to bleed.

‘You look so old,’ he said to the face in the mirror. ‘Your beard suited you. It’s a shame the Bishop doesn't like beards. Sandy always liked them.’

A drop of blood fell onto the Vicar's white pyjama top, from a cut somewhere on his second chin. He tutted and covered the cut again with toilet paper.

‘You’ve got more chins than the rest of the parish combined,’ he sighed, and reached for the scissors.

The scissors chewed at his wiry eyebrows, twisting and pulling but not cutting them. Giving up on the scissors, he held the long hairs between his thumb and index finger and sliced them through with the razor. Within minutes his eyebrows, which had once curled round so far that, were it not for his glasses, they would have poked him in the eye, looked nicely trimmed.

‘That’s a lot better,’ he smiled.

Another drop of blood fell onto the his top, this time from the first cut he’d made, high up on his cheek. He reached for the toilet paper and covered all of the cuts, again.

‘Now comes the worst,’ he grimaced, taking the tweezers from the rim of the sink.

He swore as he plucked his first nasal hair and tears stung in his eyes. He went in for the second and third hairs before he lost his nerve, but the pain broke him before the fourth. He turned away from the sink and the mirror and scrunched up his eyes. He wondered if it was worth the effort. He remembered, three or four years ago, Sandy had asked him to pluck his nasal hair, but he had refused.

‘Come on Mr. Vicar,’ she’d goaded him, ‘you know you’d look even sexier.’

The Vicar had liked Sandy; not many people spoke to him like that. But he had always doubted how much Sandy had really liked him. Not that it had mattered; Sandy wasn’t the right sort for a Vicar. He knew from their more candid conversations that the parish gossip about her promiscuity was well-founded. Nevertheless, he had wept for days after her funeral. That was one of the hardest things about having such a small parish, he thought, turning back to the mirror: you were always burying someone you loved. 

He plucked a further ten nasal hairs, pausing only once. The pain helped him forget about Sandy.

‘Nearly there,’ the Vicar grinned, laying down the tweezers and blowing his nose. ‘Just a quick tidy up-top and then you’re done.’

He splashed hot water over the bald top of his head, tilting it down toward the sink and hunching over. He picked up the razor again and began shaving his head, lightly tracing the outline of his skull. As he reached his crown, where the wreath of hair that encircled the back and sides of his head began, he stopped. But he struggled without the aid of the mirror, confused as to where he was shaving and where he had already shaved before. By the time he finally straightened up again, he felt nauseous.

The face in the mirror had gone a deep red and most of the cuts had bled heavily while he was hunched over, causing the scraps of toilet paper to fall away.

He sat down on the toilet, blood trickling down his cheek, and leant his head back on the cold wall behind.  He thought of the Bishop coming to visit later that day. The cuts would need to stop bleeding before then or all the Vicar's suffering would be for nothing. Several drops of blood dripped onto his shirt, and continued dripping. He hoped that the Bishop hadn’t changed her mind about beards. It had been so long since he had last seen her that she might have. 

‘Sandy was still here the last time,’ the Vicar heard himself croak. 

He wondered if the Bishop would remember Sandy. He hoped she wouldn’t.

Mathew Lopez-Bland studied English with Creative Writing at the University of Leicester as an undergraduate, before undertaking a Master's degree in Creative Writing at Lancaster University. He now works full time at being unemployed; the hours feel infinite but he enjoys being able to work from home. He writes short stories, screenplays and the occasional poem. His work has previously appeared in Writing Magazine, Writing Short Fiction and The Jawline Review. 

How to Make the Most out of a Writing Course or Workshop

Guest post by Becca Parkinson from Comma Press

Writing courses and workshops can be a fantastic springboard to advance your writing, whether you’re stuck in a rut or looking to experiment with a new form but looking for further guidance. Here are some top tips compiled from feedback we’ve received from some of our writing course alumni:

Use deadlines to your advantage – If you’re an infamous procrastinator, there’s nothing like a deadline that isn’t self-imposed to motivate you. A group deadline can often force you to write when you’re struggling and will push you to focus your mind on writing. Often writers don’t allocate enough time to their craft, but participating in a long-term course can help change your lifestyle to create time and space for writing, and allow it to become more important to spend time on. A deadline can also help you dive back in after a long pause, get back on the horse etc.

Take confidence from feedback – For many, a class environment can be nurturing and supportive and can gently encourage your work-in-progress. As we know, constructive criticism is key to improvement, whether it’s from your peers or a knowledgeable tutor. Let it give you the confidence to develop your ideas and narratives further. Sharing your work with others can be scary, but it will be hugely productive for your writing.

Get to know your peers – A number of people who attend our courses do it to make friends and meet their local peers who also have a passion for writing; often they can be people who become vital during and when the course is over, to bounce ideas and drafts off, help you edit your stories and make you aware of writing opportunities such as competitions, call-outs and further learning. 

Discover new authors and stories – A syllabus and/or reading list is a great tool to push you out of your comfort zone. Reading new authors, styles and genres can be like hitting refresh on your writing and help you find a new and improved voice. Also going back to basics and learning about different types and structures of various forms will open up an entire playground of writing techniques to you.  

Comma Press runs six-month courses which specialise in the short story genre, and are delivered by a knowledgeable and esteemed writer. Over six workshops, you'll become familiar with short story narrative structures, and be able to apply them to your own work. Structured, peer-driven feedback and personalised tuition will contribute to your completion of three short stories. We make our courses as accessible as possible: they span the UK and take place routinely throughout the year; you don't actually need any previous experience - just enthusiasm for short story writing.

There is a course taking place in Leicester which begins in April 2019, led by Dr Rebecca Burns: Rebecca Burns is short story writer and novelist. Her work has been published in over thirty online and print journals, and she has won or been placed in many competitions including the Fowey Festival of Words and Music Short Story Competition, 2013 (winner and runner-up in 2014), Black Pear Press Short Story Competition (2014, winner) and Chipping Norton Short Story Award (2016, shortlisted). 

Her debut collection of short stories, Catching the Barrmundi, was published by Odyssey Books in 2012 and was longlisted for the Edge Hill Award, the UK's only prize for short story collections. Her second collection, The Settling Earth (2014), was also longlisted for the Edge Hill. Her third collection, Artefacts and Other Stories, was published in 2017. Her novel The Bishop's Girl appeared in 2016 and her second novel, Beyond the Bay, was published in September this year. 

For more information please contact info@commapress.co.uk or head to https://commapress.co.uk/resources/short-story-courses/ 

"Sparrow": Short Story by Nora Nadjarian

Nora Nadjarian is an award-winning Cypriot poet and writer. She has been cited or published in the Guardian, the Irish Times and the Telegraph and has also won prizes and commendations in international competitions, including the Commonwealth Short Story Competition, the Féile Filíochta International Poetry Competition, the Binnacle International Ultra-Short Competition and the Seán Ó Faoláin Short Story Prize. Her work deals with the themes of women, refugees, identity, exile, love and loss, as well as the political situation in Cyprus. Best known in Cyprus for her book of short stories Ledra Street (2006), she has had poetry and short fiction published internationally. Her work was included in A River of Stories, an anthology of tales and poems from across the Commonwealth, illustrated by Jan Pieńkowski, Best European Fiction 2011 (Dalkey Archive Press), Being Human (Bloodaxe Books, 2011) and Capitals (Bloomsbury, 2017). Her latest books are the collections of short stories Selfie (Roman Books, 2017) and Girl, Wolf, Bones (Armida, 2017). The author Anjali Joseph has said of her work:  ‘Nora Nadjarian’s distilled short stories are abrupt and intense, as invigorating and aromatic as a double shot of literary espresso.’ Selfie and Other Stories is published by Roman Books, as part of the Stretto Fiction Series. 

Sparrow

My sister said she was carrying a bird inside her, a bird which would soon be drinking water out of her navel. I wasn’t supposed to say anything about it. To anyone. 

“I am a cage,” said my sister. “Inside me I keep secrets, inside me I keep a bird.” And she laughed and I laughed, too. We laughed until we no longer remembered what we were laughing about.

“His name is Sparrow,” she said one day.  “He’s only little now, as tiny as a seed – but he’ll grow and grow, you’ll see. And then I’ll set him free.” She placed her hand on her stomach and her mouth curved upwards, as if she were smiling at another world in the mirror.

I couldn’t wait. Time was too still, it was taking too long. I squinted into the future. “When?” I kept asking. “When, when, when?” My sister looked luminous as she replied: “Soon, soon, soon.” She said he was practising a song for us. “He’ll sing it so well that he will astonish us all.”

Time passed. I rode my bike and I skipped and whistled and played and waited. Sparrow was going to be my small gift for keeping my sister’s secret. The air grew heady and my sister soft and heavy, like ripening fruit. When she fluttered her eyelids, I thought she was dreaming with her eyes open. 

It was the longest summer. My sister turned sixteen. She wore a long, flowery dress, put her hair up in a ponytail. There were sixteen pink and red balloons bobbing around her head that hot, sticky afternoon of cake, cellophane and candles. My mother spoke loudly and happily about nothing and everything, my stepfather handed my sister the knife, helped her cut the cake. Then she said: I have an announcement to make. 

And the world stops there, a sharp intake of breath.

I squint into the past now for details, terrified of what I might remember. The sky is a dazzling blue, the earth hot, sweaty. I am pregnant, says my sister. She wears a necklace of grapes with which she will feed Sparrow. She performs her own birthday song beautifully, she sings her heart out – until her throat is chalk dry and her ribcage breaks. There are feathers everywhere. I run to pick them up as the balloons pop one after the other, leaving sixteen pieces of rubbery flesh on the floor, things torn and shapeless, parts of my sister which will never again be whole.  


I sit beside her and ask if it hurts. She whispers: “Truth always hurts.” Then there is a sudden, white silence which reminds me, years later, that she is no longer here. 

"Ruhi": Short Story by Amirah Mohiddin

Congratulations to MA Creative Writing student Amirah Mohiddin, whose story "Ruhi" has just been published by Litro Magazine. You can read it here. 

"The Looter": A Short Story by Aiysha Khan

Aiysha Khan is a MA Creative Writing student at the University of Leicester. She is enjoys writing horror stories and psychological thrillers which have unconventional twists, and that reveal parts of human nature and intense emotions not experienced in every day life. She is currently working on a short story collection and collaborating with an illustrator, to creative a graphic novel. The following story forms part of her Creative Writing Dissertation.


The Looter

He walked into the forest at the crack of dawn as the early morning light crested over Mount Fuji. He was going to score big today, he just knew it. September had the highest yield of any month; he’d definitely find a few mobile phones and iPods, hopefully some expensive jewellery and maybe he could steal an abandoned car. His hands started to twitch at the thought of treasure lying a few steps away, ripe for the taking. 

Before he took off down the path, he gave a quick look to his left and right. The last thing he needed was a police patrol coming his way. They might think he wanted to kill himself. 

‘No Keiji-san, I’ve just come to loot the bodies …’ Yeah, that would go down well.

With this in mind, he crept down the path and passed a bunch of wooden signs along the way. 

YOUR LIFE IS A PRECIOUS GIFT FROM YOUR PARENTS

caught his eye as he passed a sign and he shook his head at how feeble these words were. A precious gift from your parents. ‘No. Your life is your own,’ he thought. Not that he particularly cared, he was here for one thing and one thing only. Money. 

He had walked for about an hour before he decided it was time to venture off the path. When he thought he had found a good spot, he opened up his satchel bag and took out a roll of neon pink tape. He wrapped it around the nearest tree multiple times, to make sure it was secure. With a final tug, he set off from the path and meandered his way across roots and lava rock. The forest was silent. All that could be heard was the crunching of twigs underneath his booted soles. He nearly fell a couple of times and cursed out loud, kicking loose rocks and roots that threatened to topple him. He carried on like this for some time, unwinding the pink tape behind him, before he saw something through the trees that caught his eye. A yellow tent. He hurried over towards it but as he got nearer, he crouched down and watched for any movement. The last thing he needed was for someone to actually be in the fucking tent. 

He crawled through the trees, around the tent until he came to the entrance. It was empty. He got up and went to investigate. He found old men’s clothes, papers and a book. He picked up the book and turned it over. Kuroi Jukai by Seichō Matsumoto. 

‘Of course, it fucking is,’ he whispered as he tossed the book to the ground. If there was one thing he was definitely going to find on his little raids, it was always Kuroi Jukai and Kanzen Jisatsu Manyuaru by Wataru Tsurumi. 

‘If these guys knew how literally people took their words about this place, would they regret writing their books?’ he wondered, before he concluded, ‘Probably not. They’ve made a shit ton of money.’

He left the tent and, to his right, he saw a yellow line of fresh tape leading further into the forest. Maybe the tent guy was up ahead? He decided to follow it. He left the pink tape, which had practically run out, for the yellow one, ducking under branches until he came to a stop. Hanging from a tree in front of him was a body. He could see a glint of metal on its wrist. He hurried over and saw it was a watch. It wasn’t anything fancy but it would get a few thousand yen if he flipped it to the right person. He went to reach for it, but he stopped as he realised the wrist was still warm. 

The Looter took a step back and looked at the body in front of him. Usually, he didn’t care. They were just corpses, rotten and deformed, no longer human. But this one had been alive not too long ago. Something on the ground caught his eye, and he noticed a brown, leather wallet. He opened it.  Inside was a few hundred yen and an I.D. 

Takahashi Itsuki

According to the I.D. the kid was sixteen years old. Sixteen years old! What could a sixteen-year-old possibly have to worry about that they needed to hang themselves in a place like this? Itsuki was spelt with the kanji 一喜 meaning ‘One and Only Happiness’. How insulting. He placed the wallet back on the ground and looked at the body once more. 

‘Well, Itsuki-kun, you’re one with this Sea of Trees now. You probably won’t be found and your body will swing here as it rots. Is this what you wanted?’ 

He shook his head as he watched the body sway. His eyes darted towards the watch and the wallet, but he thought to himself, ‘Not this time.’ 

The Looter looked around the forest once more before he set off back the way he came. This place was giving him the fucking creeps.

Short Story by Sonia Tailor

Sonia Tailor is studying an MA in Creative Writing at the University of Leicester. She is a peace activist who enjoys writing short stories and monologues. She has organised vigils and demonstrations, and in 2007, she travelled to Jordan to make a documentary about Iraqi refugee children. For many years, Sonia was the Youth Page editor for Peace News (newspaper) and she currently runs a book blog on Instagram: @soniareads. 

Below is a story-monologue she has written for her Dissertation. 


Aaliyah

I’m woken by the airhostess taping my shoulder. 

‘Here’s your vegetarian meal, Mrs Abbas,’ she says. She hands me a compressed curry with a small bun.

‘Thanks,’ I reply.

‘And here’s your food, Miss Abbas,’ she says with a huge smile. She hands Aaliyah a smaller version of my food and an activity pack.

‘Thank you, Miss Aeroplane Woman,’ replies Aaliyah, who’s sitting next to me.

‘You’re very welcome,’ says the airhostess as she walks away with her trolley.

I give Aaliyah a kiss on her head and unwrap her food. She has my headphones on and is happily nodding to Bebe’s ‘No Broken Hearts’. This is one of her favourite songs. Her father, my husband, introduced it to her. Every Saturday he would play pop music on his laptop and Aaliyah would dance with him. Then the next Monday Aaliyah would always tell her class about the different songs they danced to. 

Bebe’s song was also playing in the car when my husband parked at Heathrow airport this morning. 

‘Daddy, daddy, please come to holiday with us,’ said Aaliyah. My husband turned down the radio.

He squeezed her tightly. ‘Sorry I can’t come, my cutie pie. I have very important work things to do. But I hope you have a really nice time. Love you so much,’ he gave her a loving kiss on the cheek. ‘You mean the world to me.’

He then looked at me with his deep, brown eyes.

‘Have a good time, Amina,’ he said. ‘Say salaam to your Mum and Dad from me, yeah? I’ll pick you guys up at the same spot when you get back.’ He gave me a hug and a quick peck on the lips. His touch, warm. His lips, tender. My handsome, cheating husband.



Aaliyah’s given up on the curry and is now colouring in a picture of an aeroplane from the activity pack.

‘Mummy.’

‘Yes, sweetie?’

‘Can I show this picture in show and tell in school when we come back to England?’

It’s then that I tell her: ‘We’re not going back, honey. Pakistan will be our new home from now on.’

"Drip" by Holly O'Brien

Holly O'Brien is an English student at the University of Leicester, studying Creative Writing as a pathway. She is an aspiring novelist, and enjoys exploring different areas in which she can take her passion.

Drip

Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip. A boy shifted while he laid in bed. Drip. Drip. Drip. The boy furrowed his eyebrows. Drip. Drip. Drip. The boy groaned. What was that infuriating sound? It had woken him up. He wondered what the time was, but he didn’t want to open his eyes and check. As long as his alarm hadn’t gone off, he could stay where he was for as long as he liked. He pulled his pillow over his head to block out the sound.


Drip. Drip. Drip. “For God’s sake,” the boy grumbled, voice muffled under his pillow. Why on earth could he still hear it, as plain as he’d been able to without the pillow? Ignore it, he thought, it’s probably been going on all night, and you haven’t noticed it until now. Ignore it. Easier said than done. It was one of those irritating sounds that makes your blood boil, bubbling hotter and hotter until it stops, like someone heavy breathing next to you, or a car alarm in the middle of the night that the neighbour doesn’t seem to care about, a sound that becomes so annoying that you lie in bed thinking, “Just steal the bloody car, will you!”

*

Beep, beep, beep! Drip. Drip. Drip. The boy fumbled frantically beside him, searching for his alarm clock. He could still hear that cursed dripping sound, and he didn’t need it to be accompanied by something else. Beep, beep, beep! Drip. Drip. Drip. The boy sat up, his hair sticking out in all directions. The alarm clock wasn’t on the table next to him. He leaned over the edge of the bed, following its sound; the blasted thing was on the floor. The boy huffed and picked it up, turning it off and placing it down beside him. He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and got up. He didn’t notice that his alarm clock didn’t read 7:30AM like it usually would after waking him up. Instead it read 3:00 AM.

*

The boy made his way across his bedroom, heading towards the bathroom. He planned on turning the tap off; surely that was what was making that dripping noise. Creeeeaaaak. The boy stopped halfway across the room, and looked down at the floor. The floorboards hadn’t creaked like that before. He reversed and took the same step again. No creak. And come to think of it, he couldn’t hear the tap anymore. The silence was music to his ears. Satisfied, the boy began to walk again. Creeeaaaak, creeeaaaak, creeeaaaak. Drip. Drip. Drip. The boy stopped again. So did the sounds. “I’m going mad,” he murmured to himself, rubbing his eyes, “I need to start getting more sleep.” He’d have to just walk to the bathroom, despite the phantom noises. He was sure they were just in his head anyway.

*

                
He arrived in the bathroom and checked himself out in the mirror, like he did every morning. But, he didn’t look like he did every morning. He was pale, white as a sheet, translucent, ghostly – odd. Perhaps he was coming down with something. That would explain the hearing things. A preferable option to mental instability. Drip. Drip. Drip. The boy looked down at the tap. It didn’t seem to be dripping at all. A sure sign it was all in his head – that is, until he saw the red water.


The boy bent down, nose millimetres away from the tap. He stared at it. There was something red coming out. He swallowed. He reached to turn the tap off – but it wouldn’t budge. It was off all the way already. Maybe if he turned it on…


The boy yelped as red water gushed out of the tap. He felt faint as he realised it was too thick to be just water, as screams started to echo around him, crying out in pain. It was only after a minute that he realised that he was crying, too, tears of red, his limbs burning as though on fire. Everything was going black. Menacing laughter had joined the screams now. Thump.

*

The boy never got back to his bedroom. If he had, he might have seen that the clock still read 3:00AM. The Devil only gets an hour. He always makes sure to succeed.