T/W grief, cancer

Mum smells like roses She claps more than anyone She is proud of me

I then take a bow Music lives because of you My mum, my dear mum

We avoid the word But it’s there in melodies, Memory: cancer

Now words elude me My fingers die on the keys Love is lost to me

I haunt with my song, my empty compositions Music is dying

The bird stops chirping As I play the fun’ral song I stumble and cry

Time had never passed so slowly

Putting this here just in case: C/W - pregnancy complications, war/displacement, homelessness, mental illness.

In the dank, black pits of hell, the reaper swung his scythe dangerously. All around him souls hung on thin threads. One carefully placed slice and another life would be over in an instant.

A spider ran along his scythe and he plucked it from the blade, it’s little legs trapped between his thumb and forefinger, wriggling with all it’s might, like Zeus’ captured Prometheus, trying desperately to escape it’s fate.

But he didn’t have the freedom to set free just any life on whim. Like anything else he was guided by proper order, time. Which meant he could put pressure on something, he grinned with a sick smile as he squeezed the spider’s tiny body, but he could never extinguish it entirely, not without permission.

He sighed and lifted his finger, the spider struggled back to life, scurrying off on it’s few undamaged legs.

Well, he thought. He lifted the sythe, preparing himself to deliver the damning blow. Who will it be this time?

A mother, going through a particularly hard and excruciating labour.

It was always going to be a difficult pregnancy, not that she was aware. When the time had come, her doctors had said she would be fine, despite a few minor abnormalities. She was encouraged to go home.

A few days later, she had felt pain like she’d never experienced before and was rushed to the doctor. She was just about to be sent home a second time when a bright red stain appeared on her hospital gown, blood.

He lingered around the thread for a minute, holding the scythe to the very edge. He leaned close as he could hear her breaths getting tighter, shallower; like the captured sound of the sea inside a conch. He waited patiently to hear the call.

Nothing. He dropped his sword. Well, that was disappointing.

Or, maybe it would be the young refugee instead, he pondered.

He’d had to flee with his family when his home got bombed. Ever since then, he’d been living in a bomb shelter with his parents and his two siblings, and nutritious food had become sparse.

His malnourished body was sickening as the sounds of war raged in the distance. The reaper stroked the thread. He could feel the young boy’s terror vibrating off of it, and he taunted the edge of the thread with his weapon.

But, ever so gradually, the raging, booming sounds eased and the boy’s breathing began to slow and return to normal.

The reaper backed away, disappointed.

Eventually, he heard something. A cry. It was loud enough that it permeated to him from across the room. Who was it? He roamed closer.

Eventually, he saw that it was just a teenager, not much older than sixteen.

What was her story? Well, she’d been pushed out of her home. She didn’t live up to her family’s standards. Quite rigid standards they were, you could say.

She didn’t have another place to go so she’d ended up on the streets scrounging for pennies.

When she was younger, she’d tried harder than anything to not let anyone see beneath her facade, see the side of herself that people would label her as weak for.

But, at night, she’d be tormented endlessly by what she felt, all the things she was keeping hidden from those who would not understand. And, her grades slipped.

She started picking up bad habits to quell the anguish. That was when she could no longer justify her behaviour to her father. He suddenly became cruel and judgmental where once he was kind.

There was a lot of fighting in the house.

The reaper could see her now, alone, cold, not sure if she had anyone left to trust.

He frowned, don’t be afraid, darling, it makes you look weak, he thought as he raised his scythe.

The wind blows my hair. I’m standing on the edge again. I have nowhere left to run anymore, no further way to escape my predicament.

I lurch over the edge of the cliff, and feel vertigo as the blood rushes through my veins when I see the huge seventy foot drop. There’s a slim likelihood I would even survive if I jumped off the edge. Aside from the impact of the water, there might be rocks and shrapnel that I can’t yet see beneath the surface.

I go pale. This is it, I realise. This might really be how I die.

I turn and grab my pack off my back, then I pull my winnings from it. A golden crown. Enough to feed my family, and a symbol of our oppression all at once.

I think of my wife, Lillian, and our children alone at home. Thinking of her and the little ones makes me want to cry. She was one of the first people who accepted me for who I was. She didn’t ask me questions when I cut my hair and started wearing a tunic and trousers instead of dresses.

Nor did she turn her back on me when I changed my name to a shortened version of my previous one. _Jack, that feels right, _I told her. She just hugged me tightly. And eventually our friendship grew into something else, and her children became mine as well.

I’ve been a talented pickpocket all my life. I shamed my father long before I ever got the idea to run away from home. So, when our family started going hungry I volunteered to get some food to feed us, against all odds.

‘Be safe.’ She said to me, when I told her what I was going to do, and that just this once, she couldn’t stop me even if she really wanted to.

‘You too.’ I replied, sincerely.

It was worth it, I think as I hold the crown. Even if I can’t get back to them this time, it was worth trying, it was worth that.

Eventually, I hear the men running after me again, cornering me in all directions, and I shove the crown back into my pack.

‘You can’t escape any longer.’ The frontman yells.

‘You’re right.’ I say. ‘I have no where else to go.’

He lunges forward.

‘Have a nice life.’ I say, with a slightly deranged smile, before I turn around and run right off the edge of the cliff.

The feeling of falling from that great a height is so much more terrifying and exhilarating than I was expecting.

It feels like my whole body is being blasted with wind, and there is such a lurch to my stomach as I plummet that it makes me feel like I’m constantly being displaced. The sensation makes my eyes water, but at the same time there is such a thrill shooting through my bones that part of me wants to cry out in glee from it.

But, I can see the water rapidly approaching beneath me. I feel suddenly afraid again.

I tuck my limbs as close to me as possible and stretch my legs out as I hold my breath. This is it, I think, I live or die, right here, right now.

The water breaks apart as I hit it, but I feel the impact all down my legs and arms. It feels like punching something hard that gives way from the force of your aggression.

As soon as I hit it, the water drags me under, and soon I’m completely submerged. I’m glad that I held my breath. Just as I think I’m safe, I feel my head hit something sharp, and I reel forward. I put my hand to my head but I’m growing foggier, and I can’t even think straight when I eventually pass out.

The next thing I know I’m waking up on the beach, the sea splashing harmless ripples on to the shore and splashing my feet. 

I look around for a minute, dazed.

_I must be the luckiest person alive_, I think. And then I laugh. I laugh so hard, I could break a rib.

Wait a second. I reach behind my head, nothing. No contusion, no cut, nothing. Impossible_. _I look around for signs of anything that could have been the cause of this divine intervention. Then I start shouting with wild abandon.

‘Hello! Hello! Thanks for saving me!’ 

I must look like a madman. When I’ve done this for almost a minute straight, I suddenly see a large sparkly fish tale in the distance. Is that a mermaid? It is. Or at least I think it is.

I grow so excited I jump up in spite of my tiredness, then I cup my hands in front of my mouth to try and make my words louder.

‘Thank you!’

It was said that in ancient mythology, mermaids helped save sailors thrown overboard by delivering them to the shore. They were known for their powers of healing. 

I can hardly believe my luck. A real, living mermaid just saved me. 

I’m so distracted I almost forget to check my pack. 

I fumble as I hastily pull it off of my back. And, when I pull out the crown again I can’t stop myself from crying. It’s like the emotions of the day hit me all at once. _Time to go home_, I think.

I walk for a while to the nearest town about a mile away, and when I get there I pay for a hackney carriage.

I have a few spare pennies and the distance from home isn’t very far. It’s a good thing I know where I am.

The moment I arrive I have the brightest smile on my face. I even pluck a couple of flowers from the garden outside our small cottage. It grows bluebells this time of year.

I stand around and wait for a while as I wonder what I’m going to say. Here it is, the thing that will save us from our hunger. Or, I’m safe and I’ll never ever have to leave your side again.

Eventually, I just do it. No point in dawdling. Not when it was Lillian. I knock on the door.

‘Who is it?’ She calls as she opens the door.

‘You know who.’ I say when I see her face.

‘Oh..’ She stands frozen in shock, she has a hand clapped to her mouth. Then, she throws her arms around me, tears pooling in her damp eyes.

I react instantly, enfolding her in my arms. Then the kids run out and cling to my legs, I’m almost bowled over.

After standing for a while in her embrace, I mumble through a cloud of auburn hair. ‘Do you want to see what I’ve brought?’

‘No,’ She brushes me off with her hand as she pulls back.

But, instead of giving her the crown, I produce the bluebells instead.

She smiles. ‘They’re beautiful.’ She says as she kisses me.

~~The End~~

Time stops on this night with you I tell myself it’s over now It’s barely even truly begun

I want to scream, I want to shout I won’t do it, I love you Why don’t you love me too?

I saw you with that girl I know Even her face looks just like mine But somehow prettier still

She’s nothing but a stranger to you I’ll love you in spite of her Does that change your mind?

I fell in love with you over poppies She fell in love over beer Do you remember what fun we had?

But now that’s all changed Since you betrayed Every last bit of love that I had It’s over.

I want a party My nails should look beautiful There’s a nail salon Do you want to go with me But you’d despise that. I know

Chapter 1

The clock struck with a loud boom and the girl in the silver dress froze immediately. Her prince looked at her with concern as he saw the fraught emotions racing across her face.

‘Miss, what’s wrong? Are you feeling unwell?’

She didn’t so much as reply, she simply stared at him with a startled expression before dashing off, lifting her skirts off the floor with both hands, and exiting in the opposite direction from him.

‘Miss!’ The prince shouted after her. She was rapidly disappearing from his eyeline and into the crowd of guests.

Within a moment he chased after her. He hoped that he could oupace the woman in delicate glass heels, even though by now she was several paces ahead of him and she had the advantage of obscurity. Once he pushed through the crowd he saw those same heels again, and he called out a final time:

‘Miss!’

But, if she did hear him, she pretended not to. It was evident that she had no desire to be followed, by him or presumably by anyone else. He didn’t even know her name.

Tears were streaming down the girl’s face. She had maybe seconds until everything she had went up in a puff of smoke. She would not allow the prince to see her like that; it would be too great a humiliation, not in the least because she had imagined a thousand ways he might reject her because of it.

She ran like she had wings, she didn’t even give a second thought to the long staircase which had caused her such trouble on the way in. But, in her haste she tripped on her heel, and it almost fell off her foot before she shoved it back on stubbornly. She must have cut herself at some point when the heel dislodged itself, and she limped on down the stairs as the blood pooled in her shoe.

Once she reached the carriage she threw herself inside, then she crawled down and hid in a curled up position as it trundled away out of sight. It was only until later, when her clothes had turned back to rags and her carriage back into a pumpkin, that she realised she didn’t even know the prince’s name, nor did he know hers. Now her fantasy would remain just that, and nothing more. My name is Ella, she would’ve told him, not Cinderella, just Ella.

Chapter 2

The tavern was bustling with noisy patrons. Ted was busy serving a particularly roudy party in the far corner, they looked like they had just come back from hunting. Ella sighed quietly, she hoped it wasn’t too much of a bother to her husband.

She had seen the effect that a long, hard day’s work had on him time and time again. By the end of the day he could usually hardly bare to offer her even a smile, despite his usual good temperament. The customers couldn’t know the cost their behaviour had on those that were bound to but willing to serve, but a part of her couldn’t help but resent them all the same.

Maybe it was because they reminded her of her stepmother. She had left her home with her long ago, but she was still haunted sometimes by memories of her ill treatment of her. It was never easy to just let things go.

After watching a moment, she approached the table herself. Ted was walking back towards her. She put a hand on his shoulder to convey a confidence.

‘They want to order a lot.’ He said quietly to her. ‘It’s a good day.’ She smiled at him.

‘How much?’ She asked.

‘I think they might stay the whole afternoon. But, for now, eleven cups of ale. I’ll make them for you.’

She followed him back to the counter and helped him as he filled up each cup from the barrel. Then she loaded them onto a large tray, one on top of the other as Ted had taught her when she’d first wandered into the tavern looking for a job.

She smiled at him and then headed to the table of men.

‘Eleven cups of Ale!’ She called loudly. The men cheered.

She started passing each of the cups around the table and one of the men commented on how good she was at balancing the cups on her tray. She nodded.

‘Comes with practice.’

‘I wish my wife was like that.’ Another said with a loud laugh. The rest joined him.

Then one of the other men spoke, causing Ella to focus on his face for the first time.

‘Annalise hasn’t done a day of practical work in her life.’ He added with a judgmental but joking tone.

It was the prince, her prince, the one she’d met at the ball.

The fact that he was here, in front of her, startled her so much she nearly dropped her tray, although thankfully she recovered it before she made a spillage.

‘Gods, are you alright?’ He said when he saw her struggling with the tray.

‘Yes, see.’ She gestured to the perfectly balanced tower of cups. The prince laughed at her, then turned to his table.

‘You hear that, she’s a professional.’ Ella grimaced a smile at the party. Did he really not recognise her? She wasn’t dressed so finely of course, but there wasn’t anything so very different about her appearance, apart from the fact that her face was probably smudged with dirt and sweat.

It was only when he turned back towards her that she realised she’d been staring too long. She gulped when she realised she’d been caught and resumed her task.

‘You’re only saying that about Annalise because you’re still missing that anonymous Miss from the ball.’ One of his friends said to him with a sly smirk.

‘She was magnificent.’ The prince said.

‘So magnificent you forgot to ask her name.’ The friend teased.

‘I was very distracted.’ The prince laughed to himself.

Ella wished she could vanish. She emptied her tray and quickly mumbled ‘enjoy’ so she could slip out of view from her perhaps not-so-charming prince.

Then he said. ‘I wish I married her, she would’ve made the perfect princess.’

A wave of melancholy tightened around her, she was almost swept away by it.

But just as she had the seed of an idea to turn around and tell him that the girl’s name was Ella, she was Ella, she heard those last damning words, like a confession. ‘Still, better Annalise than a common drudge.’

And she didn’t bother to look back again.

The wiggle-witch was a strange and mystical being. She had hair the colour of ivory, and a plum, cone-shaped hat that would dissolve like jelly when she took it off her head and reconfigure as a pitch-black cat that followed dotingly at her heels. She was called the wiggle-witch by those that knew her because any time she needed to get away quickly in a scrape, which was particularly handy when she was on the run from the law, she need only wiggle her iridescent crimson umbrella and she would be gone in a flash, never to return. She never stayed in one place for very long, but the places she visited would invariably become haunted by supernatural phenomena. Albert, the attorney from Newcastle, for example, had been cursed so that any time he sneezed an anthropomorphic tissue would appear out of nowhere and force him to blow, before disappearing back into thin air. It was particularly troubling when he had a cold. It had all started when the wiggle-witch had made an appointment with him on the matter of a neighbour’s dispute concerning an expeditiously growing fig tree in her backyard. He had been ill with flu at the time (little to his concern) and, unfortunately for Albert, the witch had found his behaviour so troubling that she’d made up her mind to cast a spell so that nobody would ever have to put up with his incessant sniffling again. And so it was, that near and far she went, she caused mischief and mayhem to nearly all she came across. It made it easy for Max and Mindy to conclude, when they saw a low-hanging, purple gelatinous cloud during their mid-morning dog walk, that she must be the one responsible. They reported the incident to the Didcot town council. ‘Now this is beyond the pale.’ The mayor, Stanley Friedrickson, said sternly during one of the town council meetings. ‘How long can this woman be permitted to terrorise this country without fear of rebuke? It’s unconstitutional. And now she insists on polluting our environment too? I had WWF on the phone this very morning.’ Another one of the constituents piped up. ‘Well, sir, I don’t believe it’s from lack of trying. It is to my understanding that she has evaded the law in surplus of 50 times.’ ‘50 times!’ The mayor boomed in shock. ‘How is this woman to be brought to justice?’ ‘We did have the idea of a trap.’ The man said daringly. ‘A trap?’ The mayor queried. ‘Yes. Clearly she is much too good at evasion to be easily reprimanded by the police, which is why we need to battle with her using her own means.’ ‘Which is?’ The mayor was truly curious now. ‘Well, she uses this red umbrella to disappear.’ The woman who was sat beside the man who’d been talking started. ‘We only need to steal it and she shall be caught without any means to escape.’ She looked rather proud of herself, but there was at least one major flaw with her plan. ‘This witch carries this umbrella with her wherever she goes. How do you intend to get it out of her grasp?’ The woman only smiled, clearly unfazed. ‘She is as much a victim of the weather as the rest of us, yes? My plan is to trap her outside during the upcoming thunderstorm, where her umbrella will be swiftly blown out of her grasp before she has the chance to use it, leaving us to finally apprehend her.’ The mayor mused on this for a moment. ‘I haven’t even explained the full extent of it yet.’ The woman continued, before the mayor had the chance to dispute her. ‘Since we have yet to confront her here, she will still be living in the same location, right here in Didcot. Which, thanks to Betsy,’ she pointed out another elderly woman amongst them, ‘we know to be 66 Brewers Lane. This plan, it simply cannot fail.’ She finished confidently. The mayor just slowly smiled at her to show his approval.

**

The witch was making her way home with her groceries in tow on the Saturday. The black cloud overhead was a bad omen, but the weekly shop was a necessity, so it would have to be ignored for the time being. It made her uneasy still, it was a good thing she was only a few blocks from home. In spite of what everyone else thought of her, in truth she was really a rather normal person. Her name was July, and she kept house like everyone else, had to feed Blackjack the very best cat treats otherwise he would endlessly complain, and she resented her neighbours just like everybody else. Especially that Betsy Naylor, who had taken an immediate dislike to her. Curses knows why, maybe she didn’t appreciate her homemade blueberry pudding. She didn’t relish the opportunity of moving from place to place, it was done out of necessity. And, if anyone could be rational for just one minute, they would see that all these supposed instances of disturbance were actually just mere misunderstandings. I mean really, what was she to do: let that man infect all his poor clients with plague? So, she tried to be polite and respectful as much as she was capable of being and kept her head down until the next incident of disturbance would send her running for the hills again. Suddenly, it started to rain, then pour, and before long it was hailing and thundering, the wind whipping her hair across her face. Oh no, Oh no, she thought to herself, what about the hot-crossed buns? They would easily be soaked through by the time she reached home. She should never have trusted Betsy when she said she’d be able to make it home before the thunderstorm. July groaned loudly as she reluctantly took off at a running pace towards her house, when out-of-the-blue she found her foot had become lodged in something sticky. She tried to extract it, but the struggle only sank her foot even deeper into the mysterious sticky substance. She tried to look through the mess of rain clouding her vision - was that pitch? Just as she realised what was going on she looked up to find a whole crowd of people eagerly watching her entrapment. She simply sighed: when would they ever learn? Tentatively she took out her umbrella, and as she expected, it was blown right out of her grasp as soon as she tried to open it. The people gathered around moved towards her as if to finally confront her. But, she only blithely smiled. She clicked her fingers and to the other’s astonishment the purple cloud burst at the top of the hill, releasing a horned dragon. She waved at the crowd as they still stared at the giant dragon circling overhead, then gradually down, down towards them; and used a thread of magic to pull her from the pitch and back into the hands of her umbrella. Served them right for being ungrateful, she thought wearily, as the dragon blew a fiery blast at the fearful townspeople and she wiggled her umbrella by it’s handle and disappeared from the town for good.