Issue 15

Your mobile, next to you on the table, rings. Far too early. It is just after one PM and so the operation, which, the doctors had told you, should, all being well, take most of the day, is probably already over.

There’s a miniature graveyard in the basement, where extra jugs of Wesson vegetable oil sit, where spelling workbooks whose pages have gone stale lay crushed under old Java textbooks and encyclopedias, where buckets of dried paint hide under the staircase, where a pillar is stained the tiniest brown, a smudge...

Evie hadn’t told anyone yet that she had grown gills. She discovered them one day during swimming lessons. Didn’t want to make a big deal about it in front of the whole class at school, but she was pretty excited.

It was the bright red of her dress that caught his eye. A shock of scarlet in the midden heap grey. He thought, She must have fallen. And then he thought, She was thrown. He climbed down, spaceman slow. Respirator, rubber boots, thick gloves, tool belt, goggles, hood.