It was evening when it was first noticed on the shore. I presume it had washed up earlier that day, but I don’t know. It could have been there for months, unnoticed amongst the rubbish and rotting seaweed. Just waiting to be found.

It wasn’t a very popular cove due to the copious amounts of junk and it’s difficult accessibility. To get down to the shore, you had to make your way down a small cliff. It wasn’t impossible, nor was it extremely dangerous, but it was a lot of effort to get to a very unrewarding destination, and even worse getting back up.

I was drawn to it after seeing a post on a sort of local facebook group. The post was criticising the local government for not cleaning up the mess, but zooming into the photograph, I could see a few old bottles and some sea glass. I wanted to get down there before anyone else took my potential arts and craft supplies.

I went down once the tide was on its way out. Black bin bag in hand, and a few scrapes on my legs from the clamber down, I began to scour the beach. The smell was overwhelming, of dried sea foam and seaweed, but my efforts were fruitful. To aid the finding of sea glass, I had decided to start bagging up the rubbish. Might as well be a good person.

It was turning from afternoon to evening and I was going through the motions, binning cans and wrappers and putting the occasional pretty sea glass into my growing collection. That was when I found it. Initially I thought it was another can, and went to pick it up. But as my gloved hand grew closer, I felt this intense heat upon my skin. Puzzled, I drew my hand back. It was cold outside, and the sun hadn’t shown its face all day. Looking a bit closer, I saw it wasn’t a drinks can but some sort of seamless cylinder the size of a large flask, with no discernible markings. The surrounding seaweed seemed to almost be cooking under the heat, scorching it. I stepped back, dropping a wrapper I was about to put in my bin bag. The wrapper landed upon the cylinder, and began to slowly curl up and blacken, emitting the acrid smell of burning plastic.

That was when I started really backing away. I had been here all day. Whatever this was, it must have been here the entire time I had been. No one came or left. This cylinder was emitting heat somehow, for an unknown amount of time. Where its power source was, I didn’t know. If it opened, I didn’t know. Where it came from, I didn’t know.

So I called the local coastguard. I explained the mysterious heat emitting cylinder, and they sent a team to check it out. Once they arrived, I pointed to where it was and I was escorted away from it. At first, they must have thought it was a bomb. Although as I walked my way back to my car, I could hear helicopters coming towards the cove and in the distance, I swear I saw some people in hazmat suits.

I didn’t hear anything more about the cylinder after I got home. I scoured the local news and online local communities for any mention about it, but I could find nothing.

The next day though, a police officer and a doctor came to my door, and I was informed it was just a precautionary check up. To what, they would not say. I don’t think they even knew. The results must have been satisfactory because I’ve not been visited or contacted since. Neither has there been any mention of the cylinder in the news. At least I got my sea glass.

I sit in my garden.

It’s a normal garden, just average.

I have some flowers, some herbs,

But most of all I have this big tree.

It’s a sycamore tree.

Its massive.

It once belonged in a field,

Before the land was butchered into cheap housing estate.

Now it lives in my garden.

It looks quite silly, really.

It’s the bane of many of my neighbours lives.

It’s legally protected apparently, so it can’t be cut down.

The roots make the ground undiggable.

The leaves torment me relentlessly when they fall

The sycamore seeds sprout everywhere.

And the little pink petals seeped in sap stick to everything.

These houses are cheap. They’re built cheap.

They won’t last long. I’ve lived here since it was built.

Already falling apart. Only 14 years in.

But this tree has been there long before.

I don’t know how old it is.

But putting my hand onto its bark,

I am with it.

Dead silence rang through the forest. It had been a long time since he’d been home, but there was nothing to be done about that now. He rose out of his shelter, a makeshift blanket made of fibres pushed aside and left cold on the mud floor. Eyes darted, surveying the shelter for any signs of disturbance. Nothing.

The soles of his feet were now hardened, his peripheral widened. Soon winter would befall, and with that came immense problems. The cool air hit his face, nipping at the harsh skin and rough clothes. He glided towards the first makeshift trap, glancing before checking it more closely. Nothing. No signs of tampering either. With haste he checked the rest of the traps within the shelters proximity, all the same as the first.

He walked back over to the shelter and sat down, breathing hard. If the seasons were kind to him, it’d be a month until the first frost. If they were spiteful?

With a shudder he stood up, shaking his head. He’d have to go further today. Dread gnawed at his brain as he gathered his staff, makeshift knife and a woven basket.

He checked each trap as he walked further into the forest, each empty and untampered with. The sound of crunching branches cut the silence like a knife. Every few steps he’d stop, breath held and ears pricked for anything.

The occasional mushroom hid beneath the forest leaves, so easy to miss. Leaning down, he dug through the leaves like a man possesed. There, he spotted it. His hand reached towards the pale mushroom, shaking slightly. Out of the corner of his eye, something moved. A shadow, darker than night, sprinting towards him, reaching for the mushroom. He gasped, falling backwards, his knife waving frantically in front of him.

He blinked, and it was gone. Eyes wide, he stood up, spinning around, looking for any signs of whatever it was. His breath raged, bordering hysteria as he gazed an the forest floor for any disturbances made by the thing. Nothing.

Nerves frayed, he sprinted back to the shelter, leaving the mushroom behind. The traps remained empty as he passed them.

The shelter was warmer than outside as he clambered in, closing himself within. Was it easier to think himself insane? But if he wasn’t? He curled his frail body beneath the blanket and drifted into uneasy sleep.

He knew it was a dream because he was home. He wandered up the front steps, homesickness aching in his bones. Upon opening the door, it looked different. Darker. Filled with shadows. Willing himself to turn back and close the door, his dream self stepped forward. A creaking noise echoed in the silence. From the furthest corner a shadowy entity stepped forward, as if darkness itself.

His dream self stepped forward, as if in greeting. The shadow suddenly lurched, sprinting at him, crawling inside him.

Awaking with a jolt, his heart racing, he lept up to check the outside of his shelter. It was sunrise, the forest damp with dew. Doubling over, he vomited. He attempted to calm himself, pacing back and forward, checking the traps.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw the pile of vomit. It looked … dark. He rubbed his eyes, stepping towards it. His frail body shook as he gazed upon the steaming pile. There seemed to be something moving within it. Within the darkness. He stepped backwards quickly.

It is dark upon this field as we lie within the wheat.

It’s cold. It’s quiet. It’s lonely.

We lie together as I stroke her hair.

She’s in too much pain to look up, but I give her as much comfort as I can, murmuring quiet lullabies.

I hold her as I feel her corporeal form grow cold.

I carry her little spirit into the otherworld.

Her spirit awakes and sniffs a little.

Her ears perk up, and I let her out of my hand.

The little mouse, torn so cruelly from her realm,

Those boys with stones, leaving her in so much pain.

She runs around on the green field, far from the wheat fields of her former home.

Without pain, without the cruel fists of malice.

She is home now.

I leave the otherworld, and go to the next one.

Upon my seat I sit, us drinking from a glass of drink.

We dance dances together underneath the sunny sun.

Your breath breathes into my longing lungs.

We spoke of stories spoken many a times by one’s long before us,

and of stories unspoken for centuries to come.

When we gazed upon the gazes of each other,

I was never to have known what you had known.

That I was never the first to hear those unspoken stories,

Or gaze upon your gaze underneath the sunny sun,

Nor was your breath breathed into only my longful lungs.

How could you rewrite our entire written story,

When I thought it was already written?

For isn’t it only the poisonous who can rewrite the written?

Coldness radiates from me.

I have no heart to warm it.

I just sit alone, ice cold, riding on the underground.

I see many people here. Old, young,

Broken, empty.

Like me. Not like me. Like me? Not like me?

Do they even see me?

And one day I saw a rat.

It was your average rat. Strolling up and down the carriages.

Not strolling. More like running for it’s life. Why did I say strolling?

Running from the shrieks, the yells,

Running from the disinterested and uncaring,

Running from those who care not to notice,

Those too busy to look up from their papers and phones.

Then it ran up to me. We locked eyes.

I opened my pocket, and it jumped in.

We went home. I haven’t seen home in so long.

I put on the kettle, I got out some food.

I let the rat out of my pocket and we sat on my table together.

We ate, we listened to music, and we were warm.

We walk side by side and hand in hand down the alleyway to somewhere and nowhere.

There are places like this in the universe where there exists only within the boundaries surrounding. Just you and I alone. No big city, no forests, no oceans, no nature, no history and no time. All that is there is what we see, and nothing we can’t. Just a gaping emptiness around us.

No shriek of mice nor hum of motor, no muttering behind doors nor caw of birds. You presume it’s just quiet, but places like these aren’t just quiet. How can you not feel it? How can you not tell how wrong , how unnatural, how completely surreal this is?

But you just carry on talking, asking me where we’re going, what I wanted to show you.

I wanted to show you this. I needed to show you this.

We reach a dead end and I say that we’re at the end of the world.

You laugh and ask me why I’ve been so quiet.

I ask you why you think I’m joking.

The scene shifts before our eyes, the brick wall warping, becoming blurry. You rub your eyes, but the unnatural blurriness remains.

You ask if I see what you do. I nod.

We look around. Nothing else is blurry. Just the wall. Like some sort of unfocused picture. You step forward and reach out to touch it, but I grab your hand, pulling it back.

Instead I reach for some rubble on the floor next to my left foot, a bit of brick. I throw it at the wall, and it hits. It ricochets off the wall and lands at your feet.

I gesture for you to listen, and we hold our breath, looking at the blurry wall. Then the sound of the rock hitting the wall sounds again. Identical to the one before. You look around, trying to find the source, not yet trusting your ears. No echo in this alleyway, no one behind us, no rocks kicked accidentally.

Then I gesture to the bit of brick no longer at your feet, but back near mine.

At first you begin laugh, but then you go quiet. You go really quiet.

You pick up a pebble next to a box and look at me. I nod. You throw it at the wall. We watch as it hits the wall, and then lands near me.

We both look at the pebble as we hear the repeated sound, and I ask you to keep watching the pebble as I turn to look where you originally picked it up from.

You ask me if I can see it. I say yes, and ask you the same question. In a breathless voice, you reply yes. You ask me how it can be in two places as once. I tell you to keep looking, but you’ve already turned around. You look where I am and see the pebble, but when we look where you were, it’s no longer there.

Our eyes meet. You ask if we can leave. I nod.

I bought something today. It was probably made in China, by presumably sad people, desperate to make a sad living.

It was tweezers. It came in a big cardboard box, and then in a plastic yellow pouch. I like turning on my phone torch and a magnifying mirror, and just going ham on my face. And three hours later, my entire face is seeping, blood dripping on my cheap clothes that I’ll probably get rid of once I find the next big thing.

After that I just spent some time on my phone, scrolling.

How miserable those must be without this.

Nothing in life has ever felt as good as the rush of buying new clothes.

Watching tv while looking at my phone, also partially watching something on my iPad.

The euphoria of scrolling for days on end.

Is this all me and you and they need?

Today I’ve been considering expanding my horizons. I want something more, need something more because I am worthy of it. Will I ever actually get out of this hole, this cavernous ravine of darkness thats all encompassing? Rise out of it like a phoenix from the bitter ashes? And grow like the gnarled weed in the castle wall, persistent and unwanted, through all the hatred and weathering yet still remains. You think that I’m insane, no? Will you believe my story if I tell you it in tongues? Know that I am merely me, my friend.

When I was just a girl, I was the daughter of a seamstress. The needles poked and bled me, my innocent skin torn and broken. Stars were the light of which lit our work, just enough to see, not to be seen. Go along the shops with a little bag, my mother told me, and when they turn their heads, grab the fabric from their baskets. Out, they would yell if I were caught, but I was smart. They could never catch me, I was sly and slight. Watch while you work, my dear child, my mother lamented, for if we are found, we will find a life worse than death. Us people, we’re not like them. With our sight and our minds, they fear us and what we are. Closed minds and closed eyes cannot comprehend anything at all. Eyes open will still only see what they want to see if minds are closed.

For the starlight that guided our work one day went out. Our clothes made from stolen fabric drew unwanted attention. Time stood still as they rose over the hill towards our cave from which we worked and lived in. Had a buyer noticed their own stolen fabric on a garment they had bought from the local recluse and her daughter? Come over here, my mother said, we must go into the night.

She dragged me into the forest, with nothing but the clothes on our back and a lamp. Ended was our life of sewing clothes, torn from our cave and our source of income and food. My mother and I fled far and fast, but they tracked us with their dogs. Life that we had lived in that cave, upon seeing it, they became scared. In their eyes, we were witches, evil women who wished harm on innocents. That we were just poor seamstresses never crossed their minds. Forest life was not easy nor safe. With the harsh elements and the pursuers, we lived in fear. Fire from their bows drew close, but my mother protected me.

Now that you have listened to my story, you have helped me. I thank you for reading this carefully. Am I and my mother okay? Alive? Thanks for asking. To be honest, it’s not been easy. Mother has always done all she can for me.

Thank you for reading, and setting me free. You might want to reread the first words of each sentence, just to make sure you didn’t miss anything out with those closed eyes of yours.

There are many hours. Just....in general.

We could wait for one in a couple hours, then another,

See things with the blessing of time,

With the power of one more hour.

But why not wait for another

In case we just needed one more hour

To get the space and time

For better judgement.

One more hour and I know I’ll have the answers.

Until the hour comes,

In a couple more hours,

I’ll wait.

Just for that hour.