Insects by Kate Smurthwaite

Queen Bee

Our eyes first met across an array of specimen jars. Part of the furniture in the evolutionary biology labs – every available surface seemed to be filled with tightly packed jars. Each one was filled with it’s own feotus-like life form, preserved in gooey brown gunk. She was mousy to the point that there had to be more to her. No-one would dress that frumpily unless they really had something to hide. She did. A treasure trove of delights awaited me behind the unnecessary glasses, beneath the knee-warming horizontally-striped jumpers and out of the school gym-class plimsoles. I love the others too, all of them, intermittently between the scratchy arguments about housework that hasn’t been done and the social and physical ramifications of drinking pasteurized cow’s milk. But I love Leila not only the most, but the most consistently too. With a softness that wrinkles my nose and makes me curl into a ball around her or around the place where she would be if it were possible for me to will her there.

Leila was the first to move in, when we finished college and came back from our gap year travelling through the orient, the jungles of south America and anywhere we could get to without it costing money we didn’t have. It was supposed to be a journey of self-discovery, but I learnt only what I didn’t want. Families living the same life over and over in town and village after town and village. The same meaningless story with the same meaningless characters. Just a different casting director each time tweaking the slowness of the needy eyes and the raggedness of the “actor’s own” costumes. I wanted to prove that things could be different. So I went back to the house left to me by my mother in her will, and Leila came with me.

For a few months it felt like a love-nest. Heavenly in its way, but ultimately unsatisfying because I had things to prove and I needed a bigger universe in which to conduct the experiment. Recruiting was easy. For those unsure about the wisdom of the philosophies themselves there were still the dual temptations of free accommodation and all the physical intimacy you could handle; with Leila, with me and with whoever else we had seduced by then. They came in ones and twos, refugees from the failed experiment we call “normality”. The house was soon known as the commune. They brought ideologies of their own which drifted in and out until a few had fixed themselves into our lives permanently: we turned pescatorian, vegetarian, vegan, we grew our own food, organically, we meditated, we performed our own theatre, we sang and danced together, the bedrooms became hobby rooms for everything from woodwork to candle-making and we all slept together on a pile of cushions in the living room.

I learnt the hard way to keep distancing them all from each other. Two of the initial round of recruitees left together to start their own place. Now if I see a bond forming that looks like it might be stronger than their bond to me, I move in, I send Leila or one of the others in. I don’t want to break the bonds, just fracture them, stress them a little. This experiment is about communal living not proximital living. And I watch Leila the most closely, I see her as my chief attendant, my lady-in-waiting. In the event of my incapacitation she assumes temporary control, she manages until I return and is responsible for matter arising which are not worthy of my attention. She would be the hardest to replace, though with the investment in training each of them I am wary of putting any at risk.

However to more pressing matters, the commune having reached a state of not only harmony but also of surplus, I took the decision to extend the frame of the experiment. I decide to have a child.

We had several applicants for the role of sperm donor. The successful one arrived as the heat left the skies on a summers weekend afternoon. We decided that to preserve the sanctity of the house itself we would allow him only into the entrance hall. I greeted him personally and Leila provided tea and cakes to sustain his energy levels while we confirmed the details of the arrangement. The intercourse was not intended to be pleasurable. He had brought a magazine as a safeguard on his ability to perform sexually. I had taken the precaution of asking Leila to ensure I was well-lubricated. He signed waivers on his right to visit or have contact with any resulting child and, there being no reason to delay further, Leila excused herself from the room and we completed the transaction.

Afterwards I lay on my back with my feet raised to increase the likelihood of conception. Meanwhile he put his clothes on and Leila came in and showed him out. Then she wrapped me in a towel and brought me through to the living room where, again to increase the likelihood of conception, by causing the cervix to dip into the pool of collected sperm at the neck of the womb, but also to remind me and the other where our true sexual bonds lay, we pleasured one another until it was dark and we were tired from the hunger of having missed dinner.

After it emerged that my third attempt to become pregnant had been a failure, Rhiannon had the temerity to suggest that perhaps she or one of the others should take the role of child-bearer. I saw it as little short of a direct challenge to my leadership, my control and ownership of the commune, but it didn’t bother me. I told her that I would be happy for others to have attempts at conception on the same basis I had and that anyone who wanted to do so should let me know and I would arrange it myself. By allowing them only to mate with individuals of my choosing provided a deterrent and left me firmly in control. Also I knew something they didn’t - I’ve been adding contraceptive chemicals to their tea and coffee since they first arrived.

My fourth attempt at conception was a success. I sincerely hope the child is female since we have little use for males here, though we would attempt to make a decent job of his formative education before sending him out into the “wild” of the 21^st century to fend for himself.

Saline Sodom, by Ben Sheth

Saline Sodom

“Bugger!” said God, as he looked down from his cloud upon the smoking ruin of Sodom, which he had just condemned to destruction with armfuls of burning sulphur. He changed his exclamation to “Fiddlesticks!” when he spotted one angel blush with embarrassment and another smirk at the irony of the remark.

“I really didn’t want to do that. But they left me no choice. I’d given so many warnings, explained their iniquity to them so many times. One can’t go on warning without taking any action,” he muttered wistfully. The smoke below began to disperse, revealing the once sophisticated metropolis now reduced to low piles of ash and rubble. He cast an annoyed glance at the still sniggering angel. “I’m no toothless lion. That’ll teach them not to take me seriously…”

In the far distance, had he been looking, God could have seen straggling groups of survivors inching their way across the plain away from the carnage of their devastated homes.

Lot and his daughters were part of that group. They struggled through the heat, watering the desert with tears which evaporated within seconds of touching the sand (though they left a tiny trace of salt on the surface of the desert: the only salt which they would know now). They looked back to the hill, six miles behind them, where they could make out the large pillar of salt erect on the top. That was all that remained of Lot’s wife.

When evening came, the rag bag of escapees stopped walking and tried to restore a certain community feeling by gathering together to eat, as they always had done in Sodom. A goat which one family had brought was slaughtered, a fire built, and the solemn group sat around the fire, trying to remind themselves of happier times. The feebleness of the bland, unsalted meal, as well as the glaring contrast between the fun they used to have at feasts, and the misery of their current circumstances, made their losses and deprivations seem all the more stark.

“This doesn’t taste of anything,” one boy complained. “Where’s the salt?”
“That’s not funny!” Lot growled. “She only looked back to make sure our daughters were coming too. God got the wrong end of the stick, as usual.” With that he picked up a piece of gnawed goat bone, and threw it at the boy.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” the boy whimpered. “It’s just that since our town was destroyed, everything’s been so dull. Even after a bad day, I used to cheer myself up with some really tasty, salty roast goat. But now there’s no salt – that idiot” (by which he meant God) “used it all up on his wife” (with this he cast a resentful look at Lot) “and I can’t even enjoy my food any more. This just tastes of grease,” he added, tossing his tasteless, half-eaten piece of goat shin into the fire. There it sizzled and crackled, and the escaping fat threw up a little glare of flame, which illuminated a ring of glum, weary faces.

There was silence as they all turned and looked out into the barren, featureless desert. There was nothing but sand and rock in all directions. Yes, they all thought to themselves, life without salt is really not worth living.

***
It was Saturday afternoon in the lively, desert metropolis of Sodom, and the preparations for that evening’s party were in full swing. Far across the desert Sodom was renowned for the liveliness of its feasting, drinking and dancing. The desert had been turned, through careful planning, the good fortune of a few water sources and the conviviality of its people into a centre of cosmopolitan glamour, which offered the most sophisticated entertainment, and, it was rumoured, the freest attitudes towards sexual congress for hundreds of miles in any direction.

The atmosphere was joyous, as couples, groups, families and individuals of all ages and both sexes conversed and caroused. Later on that night, after the eating, drinking and dancing had finished, everyone went back to their huts. Though quite a lot of people did not go back to their very own hut, but to the hut of someone else they’d met that evening. Sounds of salty, sweaty, straining satisfaction emerged from the huts until well into the early morning.

God was watching from high up in the sky. His omniscience enabled him to see what was going on at the festival. He could not see through the walls of the huts, but he could imagine it. He looked around at his androgynous, anodyne angels. None of us is sweaty, salty, or, frankly, satisfied, he thought. So why should they be? And his brain began to boil with the indignant, intimidating intimations of enforced moral improvement, which he would tell them in his daily Godcast the next day.

“I want men with long beards to run your society,” he practised to himself. “And women will cover themselves up so that all sexual feeling is repressed. And men who want to lie with men will also have to repress their feelings, although if they grow a long beard I might turn a blind eye to what happens. I will tell the men with beards what to do every day, so you mustn’t question their decisions, because they’ll just be doing what I tell them.” That sounds much better, God thought. Then they’ll all be as bored and repressed as I am.

But he knew in his heart that they wouldn’t take much notice. Why would they, when they were having so much fun? So he began to collect pieces of burning sulphur as well. That’ll really sort them out, he decided.

Moab and Ben-Ammi had just woken up.
Moab stuck his head out of the window of the hut to look at the day, and tell the time from the shadow on the hut peg.
“Oh, just in time for the Godcast,” he observed.
“Can you really be bothered?” Ben-Ammi asked.
“It looks rather gloomy up in the sky, and there’s a sulphurous smell in the air,” he said worriedly. “Maybe God has a warning for us?”
“Oh, don’t take any notice. Come back to bed, darling!” He grabbed Moab’s arm, pulled him back into bed, and they had passionate sex, and rubbed salty semen into each other’s skin.

Salt by Kate Smurthwaite

Death of a (Good) Salesman

One of those days I suppose I should say
Pride first, then the fall
Up one minute, down the next
Or to better explain it all:

This morning I get the trophy: best sales record this year
Another one for the shelves
I don’t need trophies for the gadgets we sell
I always say: They sell themselves

I’m not like the other sales guys though
Trying to make ends meet like every other graduate
Before prematurely giving up
Getting old and bald and fat

They don’t understand sales is about creativity
Finding ways of getting the client before the other guy can win
It’s like doing the Oakey Cokey though
You’ve got to throw your whole self in

Then this afternoon the results came through
Routine check-up, nothing new
Normal, normal, normal, normal,
Continued on page two

I’ve never smoked, I don’t take pills
Never more than a social drink
I’m not the healthiest eater alive
But I’m better than most I think

But there it is in red highlight
Between “History of Cancer: none, as stated”
And “Liver Function: regular”
“Blood Pressure: dangerously elevated”

It stops me dead in my tracks
I look back at my lunch in my lap
Salt and vinegar crisps
And a half-finished floury cheese bap

It’d be strangely emasculating
Eating celery and low-sodium dips
But I’ll do it if it gives me a few more years
Than the battered cod and the chips

My knee-jerk reaction to the salt-laden crisps
Is quickly to throw them away
But it seems like a waste while the bag is still sealed
So I leave them for a healthier day

Martin comes over to tease me
Says the award should have gone to Tim
So I give him the crisps then I’m sorry I did
I don’t really want to kill him

Home by Kate Smurthwaite

“You can never go home again, but the truth is you can never leave home, so it's all right.” Maya Angelou

“Home is the place where, when you have to go there, They have to take you in.” Robert Frost, The Death of the Hired Man

“There is nothing like staying at home for real comfort.” Jane Austen

There’s no escaping “home”

I have to go there

And I’m supposed to like it

Him and his dirty plates

Never a hint of gratitude

Piles of laundry

(He never wears things more than once)

He doesn’t know how to use anything

Except the TV

He doesn’t move for hours

He doesn’t even watch anything good

Just junk-vision, garbage, dumbed-down nonsense

I need to unwind after work, is that really too much to ask?

They never seem to sit still

And their needs are never-ending

Meals, snacks, drinks

Help with their toys

With their homework

(Usually nothing more worthwhile than colouring)

They need to be supervised and assisted

While they wash

Clean their teeth

Pull the clothes I’m always repairing on and off

Not this jumper, it’s scratchy, I don’t like it any more

It paces about, panting wetly

Threatening to soil the carpet or the cupboard under the stairs

(Like it’s punishing me for not paying it more attention)

Needs to be walked

Needs to be fed, watered, brushed

Needs to be de-wormed and de-flea-infested

Sheds it’s stinking fur on every piece of upholstery in sight

Rrrrufff rrruff ruff-ruff-ruff-ruff-ruff

Holiday by Kate Smurthwaite

The Litter-Picker

I hate the summer beach
They won’t let you wear trousers
You have to make the most of the weather
And so your jeans don’t get wet when you go paddling.

Then they stare at me
Because I don’t look like them
There’s nowhere to hide things
In the little bag of navy lycra that’s all you can wear.

If I want to go in the sea
I have to wear big orange armbands
As if I didn’t have enough funny lumps and bumps
They give you extra ones.

I like ice creams
But I let a dog lick my ice cream once
And they all laughed at me
Now if I get ice cream they tell me over and over I mustn’t let the dog have any.

Now it’s the end of summer though
The noisy children have all gone to school
That’s where they study writing and numbers
I don’t have to do that. Not unless I want to.

I don’t want to study today.
I want to go litter-picking
With my gloves and my big black bag
You mustn’t pick up anything you’re not sure about.

There’s no-one here today
Just me in my long trousers
Lolly-pop sticks and bits of plastic and funny stones with tar on
And Ruthie watching me from the path.

When my bag is full I give it to Ruthie
She says don’t I want to stop now
But I don’t want to stop until I’ve filled all the bags
And picked up all the litter all along the beach as far as the end.

Ruthie says it’s making her tired just watching me
She says we better have a break after this bag
So I fill it right up
Until I can’t put one single more piece of litter in.

Ruthie puts the bags in the skip
She always skips to the skip
She laughs when she skips to the skip
Sometimes I laugh too.

We have to go to the shop for hard ice cream
The ice-cream van has gone now, I don’t know where
The man in the shop says he’s seen me working hard
I don’t say anything

The man says do I like dogs
Then I say yes
Ruthie tells him I like to feed ice cream to the dog
So the man gives me an extra pot of hard ice cream
For the dog.

A Holy Day, by Ben Sheth

A Holy Day

The grass was browning around the edges, and the buildings of the oldest quadrangle in the school seemed to be groaning in the heat. The dull glaze of the stone seemed to be suffering in the intensity of their re-baking. Their shimmer seemed to be a silent scream, the occasional cracking of bone-dry twigs the wretched climax of a torture session perpetrated by the climate on the ancient institution.

In a shaded but still stiflingly baked office, Francis Hyde sat at a modern, faceless chipboard desk with what appeared to be a duvet of paperwork over him. Despite the heat, this duvet seemed welcome, and Francis was fiddling about with the papers before him with the apparent abandon of a child released to its sand pit. Before him were drafts of a few documents he had been preparing. As deputy head in charge of development, a suitably vague title which enabled him to interfere in any area of school life which he felt needed ‘developing’, he had had a few ideas which he thought would help the school modernise; run in a more up to date, corporate way.

The pupils had left the school some ten days ago, and most of the teachers had followed quickly on their heels, fitting in as much genuine, uninterrupted holiday as they could before the publication of exam results and the flurry of next term’s meetings announced the arrival of autumn far more grimly than any change in the weather could. The atmosphere of the school, therefore, was one of a city once busy, now abandoned. Perhaps Rome before the Visigoths arrived had the same unhealthy feverishness to it?

First on Francis’ list, if he could find the paper in the crazy tessellated jumble on the desk, was the updated risk assessment for staff taking pupils out of school on trips. No more would be the carefree, spontaneous minibus excursion by the History department to see the Saxon village nearby; forbidden would be those Geography trips to the chalk hills, the Biology trips to the nature reserve, or English trips to the theatre. So messy; so many unidentified risks, leaving the school liable for untold damages and adverse publicity. No, in future it would be necessary to secure a term’s advance permission (from him, of course), including details of exactly who was going where, what they were doing, how they were getting there, and exactly when they would leave and return.

But this was trivial compared to the next project, keystone in his modernisation project, which was a super, overarching scheme of work, to be computerised, so he could, at the click of his mouse or press of his key, see what every teacher in the school was teaching. Every teacher had been required to submit details of every course they were teaching, to every class, and provide a lesson by lesson breakdown of exactly when it would be taught. It was so important, thought Francis, that he could supervise this, to ensure all modern methods were used whenever possible, and flag up possible difficulties when inspectors next visited. Francis didn’t of course, have many lessons to teach himself – he was too busy checking on everyone else – but was nonetheless the school’s acknowledged expert on planning everything from genetics to Gawain and the Green Knight.

Last, his best plan yet; the plan which engendered such massive pride. The innovations list. The hopeless, backward teachers who spent all of their time on such backward, IT-free tasks like marking, or, much worse, reading books (when so many texts were available for the whole class to use on the internet!), would now be held to account. How many new methods or procedures had they invented in the past term? None, in most cases, unlike Francis’ prolific record. This inadequacy would now be ruthlessly exposed by the list, which would be updated daily on the school’s intranet page. And the first innovation on it? The innovations list, of course!

At last it was done, and a glut of satisfaction settled over Francis. He didn’t know what day it was (it didn’t terribly matter) and hadn’t noticed that in the meantime it had become dark outside. The peculiar, mystifying changes of nature held no interest for him. Tidying the completed documents into a few neater piles (order from chaos, like the best creators) left a few bald holes of wood veneer peeping through the ruffled snowy top of the desk, but that, for once, was not what Francis was concentrating on. A balmy, comforting glow of self-satisfaction was spreading from within. The stale, hazy evening heat in the room seemed to acquire a nourishing warmth. He surveyed the piles of completed documents, looking like so any ancient burial mounds, with increasing satisfaction. He noticed that above, on the shelves above his head, the red box files made a cross shape among the black ones. For once, he allowed himself a few moments’ repose. He created it, and he knew that it was good.

He was still there, dozing in his office chair the next morning, when the caretaker came round with the morning’s post. He was woken by the slight scuffle sound of a small, brightly coloured card rubbing against the carpet as it was shoved under the door. It was from the headmaster, on holiday in Turkey. “Hope you’re enjoying the break too,” it said, among other generalised expressions of goodwill. Francis looked up disdainfully at the little token. He realised it was of no significance and went back to sleep.