Heated Seats – Written by Darcy Isla

Heated seats. Dog-smelling coffee-smelling cig-stinking car, flashy. Jason. A strange, American name for a non-descript Yorkshire man meeting strangers on a society ramble over misty hot chocolate and, of course, as would be expected, inviting them immediately out on another daytrip.

Jason was not my friend. I came with Sarah. It was a kind of date, I guess, and she wanted a bit of support, safety, from a girlfriend. Someone to suss out the psycho. Which, as it turned out, was definitely present. Lurking in the shy, introverted man who engaged in innocent, wholesome activities. One might have met Jason in church. But no, we met him on a bloody-buggering-freezingcold walk.

I’d always wanted to come to this castle, so it was a bonus daytrip for me. Time taking pictures, while I still used to, while I still felt like there was some point to documenting our experiences, before I realised that everything had been done before. Christmas was arriving too, and of course, that always makes people feel like everything is new. Every idea is brilliant and ingenious. Every look is meaningful. Please, please, they were thinking. Please let there be something here. Despite a complete lack of excitement at each other. More, the excitement of the idea. The idea that something lovely might come out of these splendid, quiet little adventures. Not something sordid, not something real, nothing connected to real life at all. Something done on bonus time. How could you think about the ending if this thing was completely ignorable, unreal, something you didn’t necessarily have to have anyone know about. Perhaps I should try my hand at holiday romance.

Sounds quite freeing.

We looked at gaudy baubles hung on a spindly natural tree; bright, cheering tack decorating the ancient, classy building. Fantastic sculptures, fountains, lakes, endless folds of green. Or rather, white. I couldn’t wait for bonfire night. Fireworks in these surroundings. That would be pleasant.

Yes, that would be pleasant.

Words: 326

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The Science Fictions – Written by David Hartley

Ocular polished his eye, twisted the nerves into his stamen and began his day’s work with a misting burp of inevitable. Monday. They had long adopted the human word for it; for the drudge of returning to the grind. It tasted so fittingly moribund when gassed and, once ears had been attached, they were amused by the glum sound of it as well; two dull thuds like the fall of dead seed pods.

The eye gave him vision and focused in. He tugged the spool and the Science Fictions began sputtering out. The first was some Steampunk derivative that he didn’t particularly rate, but it wasn’t his place to be a critic; just to fart and waft out the translations for the Bottlers. Apparently, the Godsac’s nestlings liked this sort of waffle so he made sure to get the pungency just right.

He parped through a Space Opera and a Cyberpunk, before clacking for some shorter stuff to tide him over to feastings. And then he stopped. All his gasses groaned as a short sheaf slipped out named The Science Fictions. It was the first line that froze him;

“Ocular polished his eye, twisted the nerves into his stamen and began his day’s work…”

He read on and on until the end and then let all his pores open in one implosion of putrid panic air. The Sapguards bustled over, tendrils raised.

‘I need to see the Godsac,’ bubbled Ocular.

They cloudstepped him there and rushed him into the crèche. The Godsac, all tight fronds and pulsing glands, smelt the text with rising belches of rage. He ordered the shelling over of Bud, and angled the leaves to Earth. Ocular squeezed out some calm but the Godsac wafted it away.

‘We are discovered,’ he mulched. ‘Ready your armour and fall in.’ He pointed a thorn, pricking the flesh of Ocular’s eye. ‘You lead the first massacre. Start with all the little fuckers that have written or read those gas-bastard words.’

Words: 330

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