FICTION

FROSTBITE

She can still hear the church bells ringing, can still feel the sting of the crisp December air

on her cheeks. Draped in taffeta and drunk on love and just a bit too much champagne, clinging to

the arm of her beloved with his hand covering hers, matching silver bands glinting in the light of

a muted winter sun. She can remember the sky darkening, the silver clouds becoming stars almost

as bright as the newly fallen snow that covered the grounds of the church garden. She’d heard that

rain on your wedding day was a bad omen, but what about if it snowed? It certainly hadn’t felt like

bad luck when they’d shared their first dance together as husband and wife with the gentle snow

falling around them and his tuxedo jacket on her shoulders, nor did it when they made a snow bride

and snow groom to stand beside their head table. They drank expensive hot chocolate from

engraved thermoses and were sent off by their friends tossing handfuls of snow into the air...

PRICELESS

Viktor Dyakov was a fascinating specimen. He was hot-headed, impulsive, a bit absentminded, yet extremely charismatic. He had a fondness for ponchiki and Japanese pop music, inhaled coffee like it was air, and had a habit of chewing on his bottom lip on the rare occasion he got nervous. He was a graduate of the prestigious Vaganova Academy of St. Petersburg, and yet somehow ended up a member of a no-name ballet company in New York at the age of twenty-three. He was talented beyond compare, yet seemed perfectly content to dance for an audience of hardly one thousand. He was impossible to figure out, yet so alluring to the point where one couldn’t help but try to...

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Anna Price first saw him in a crowded subway station. It was no surprise that she noticed him out of the throngs of people there. Aside from the fluorescent light gleaming off of his platinum blonde hair making it seem to glow, he stood nearly a head above everyone around him. His striking alabaster skin made Anna wonder for a moment if she’d somehow spotted an angel in the middle of Manhattan. His eyes were a stunning shade of blue, the colour of a clear morning sky, crisp like the ice that covered the lakes in Central Park every winter. Viktor noticed her staring, and was captivated by the peculiar look in her eyes, curiosity mixed with a burning passion, a question he wanted to spend the rest of his life answering.

ROSES

There are roses in the trashcan. They’re perfectly fine flowers, only slightly withered. They’re still tied together by a single red ribbon, the distinctive scent barely detectable over the stench of old food and other trash.

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There’s a girl standing in front of a window looking out at the sunset. She watches the bright blue of the daytime sky slowly fade away to oranges and purples. She holds a cup of tea in her hands, more for warmth than for actual want of drinking any. The heating in her apartment is out, and won’t be fixed for several more days, so she’s told. Normally, she’d go over to his place, but that isn’t exactly an option now.

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There is a boy watching the same sunset out of a plane window. His flight was delayed, so now he’s still waiting for the plane to take off when he should already be on his way to Liverpool. He fiddles with the rose petal in his pocket, the one that had lodged just beneath his collar when she’d thrown the bouquet at him. He runs his fingers over the silky petal and tries not to think too hard about why he’s kept it...

RENEGADE

Looking back, I realise I probably shouldn’t have shot him. But when it’s 3 am and you’re alone in an alley with a hulking slab of drug dealer who’s shouting profanities at you for not having exact change, and you’re hopped up on adrenaline and also just happen to have a gun with you … things happen. My finger was on the trigger before it fully registered that I’d taken the gun from the holster on my hip.

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It’s not like I killed him or anything. At least, I don’t think I did. I wasn’t even really aiming at him, probably didn’t hit anything important, but I didn’t stick around long enough to find out how hurt he was. I hopped over the body before he even finished falling to the ground and haven’t stopped running since. I can still smell the liquor on his breath, can feel the flecks of spit that landed on my face when he stepped too close during his tirade. Heart pounding against my ribs hard enough to bruise the bone, breathing coming in short, painful gasps, I press on into the night.

Well, so much for Julian’s birthday present... 

ONE OF MANY

The light comes on, jolting you back to semi-consciousness. With your eyes only half open you still manage to see a figure approaching you, a blunt object held in his left hand. The sight of the weapon barely even fazes you. You don’t react when it comes in contact with your skull and the world around you starts to spin. You don’t have the energy to scream out so you lie there with your hands tied behind your back, the side of your face pressed against the cool concrete floor, and you pray to a god you no longer believe in asking him to bring you through to the other side of this hell.

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The blows stop coming. The metallic scent that has been in the air since the night of your first beating is stronger, more present. You can taste it and it almost makes you gag.

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Another man enters the room holding a camera. They always take pictures afterwards to send to your country. To show your people that you’re still being abused and that you need to be saved. No one is going to save you. It’s been months. At least you think it’s been months. You have no way of telling time in this cell. You have no way of even knowing when the days begin and end. You have no sun to tell you. Your only source of light is the bulb swinging above your head.

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It might be autumn now. It was spring when you were taken. You think about autumn and spring, and of the summer you missed. You try to remember the feeling of sunshine on your face. You think about the beach and the feeling of sand between your toes. Now the only thing between your toes is dried blood from when they cut the webbing between them with a piece of paper. You have no idea how long ago that was. It feels like it’s been forever...

A CITY THAT FEELS LIKE HOME

The plane’s wheels come in contact with the tarmac and she moves away from where she’s had her face pressed against the tiny window. She gets her carry-on down from the overhead compartment with only a small amount of difficulty and makes her way on anxious feet through the terminal to the sea of yellow awaiting her outside. The worn leather seats of her horsepower-drawn carriage welcome her with the embrace of an old friend as she relaxes into them. After several miles she sees the skyline peeking through a curtain of smog and smiles. Finally, she’s arrived.

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The atmosphere at the city’s centre is crackling with potential. Potential chance encounters, potential stories to tell, potential mysteries to uncover. She revels in the familiar sight of unfamiliar faces and the sounds of angry drivers who don’t understand that blowing their car horn won’t make the car in front of them move any faster. She can feel the subway trains thrumming beneath her feet, can smell the freshly made potato cakes being sold by a nearby street vendor. There’s the naked cowboy in all his southern glory, standing just a few feet away from Elmo, who’s posing for a picture with a couple of sweet-looking children. Leaving the excitement behind, she strolls towards the theatres and overhears the high-pitched chatter of two drama students who have just met their idol. A look further down the street reveals a crowd of theatre patrons all standing on the tips of their toes to get a glimpse of those who they’d just seen on stage moments ago.

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 Several blocks down and a few turns later, she encounters a quaint little neighbourhood, and as her feet carry her forward she keeps her mind busy imagining stories behind every detail she sees. There’s a stoop a man may have spent many nights sitting on wondering what his place was in all this madness, a streetlight a young couple shared their first kiss beneath, the entrance to a restaurant that may be the culmination of years of hard work. There’s a chalk drawing on the sidewalk in front of a business, above which she might see a small chubby face pressed against the window trying to view their masterpiece from above.

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The aroma of warm, rich coffee draws her into a shop where she orders something that tastes like roasted marshmallows. The woman behind the counter serves her with a tired smile that makes her eyes crinkle. Her story can be read in the lines of her face, with one look at the weathered hand handing over the coffee cup.  After exiting the shop, the cup of liquid marshmallow held firmly in her gloved hands, she turns around and watches through the window as the woman collapses against the counter and picks up a book.

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Eventually she finds herself lost in a green oasis amidst the concrete jungle. There’s the crunch of a leaf beneath her foot, the warm embrace of a chilly autumn evening, wind whispering through the trees, the sound of a dog barking in the distance. The ever-impressive skyline of the city looms overhead, reminding her that it is only this city that can give her such a sense of serenity.

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Screw dense forests and sprawling golf courses, country clubs, dirt roads, and that stifling small town feel. She doesn’t want to know everyone’s name, to be unable to go somewhere without running into an old acquaintance she’s forced to speak to for at least five minutes to seem polite. Give her insane traffic, filthy sidewalks and crowded streets in a city that never sleeps. People in a hurry, people chasing their dreams, people who don’t care what you think of them because chances are you’ll never see them again. Give her crystalline water spewing from fountains, modern art and old-fashioned buildings, the feeling that no matter how much of the city she sees there will always be more to discover. She could spend ages wandering through these foreign streets and never grow bored or feel uneasy. It’s amazing how a place she’s never been before feels more like home than the town she’s spent her entire life in.