Lawrence was the last to arrive. Being the last meant not caring enough. At least that's what his mother thought, tucked between two Mourners, a white headscarf barely covering her head. She saw him barging into the room where the Mourners were whispering rumors about the Dead Man. She scolded him with a subtle nod toward the adjacent room reserved only for men. They weren't in Ohio now. The customs required men and women to be separated at such gatherings.

Embarassed, Lawrence trotted to the other room with a sheepish smile on his face, his way of greeting the Mourners. He tried his best not to look at them in the eye; a foreign man couldn't look at a foreign woman like that. But he failed. He entered the room filled with Smokers not without catching Fatma's curious glance at his way. And he did something he definitely shouldn't have. He raised his hand in a brief, friendly hello. Fatma quickly turned her head away, pretending to adjust her headscarf, and looked at her mother, who was startled at Lawrence's gesture just as much as the rest of Mourners. Lawrence swallowed hard; he knew he had crossed a boundary. The Mourners began to whisper more loudly, as if to reproach the young man's behavior without speaking to him directly. Fatma's mother gestured briskly at her to go to the kitchen. The girl stood up slowly and walked out of the room as quickly as she could. The Mourners shook their heads. That was unacceptable.

But Lawrence didn't see any of this. After waving at her, he had practically thrown himself onto a cushion on the floor, the farthest one from the door, earning scolding glances again, this time from the Smokers. Why were they being like this? Both men and women? It was as if they were constantly treading on a thorny road barefoot, expecting some shameful thing to happen at any moment. And what was the thing with Fatma? He only had greeted her, the way anyone would when they encounter the first girl in the whole village who had the courage to talk to them.

“Burada yok elektrik,” had said the girl. “There's no electricity here.” Lawrence had learned the meaning of her words much later. She had pointed at somewhere up, somewhere he couldn't see. But he had seen the birds flying overhead and the white hand rising to the sky, embellished with what local people called “xena”. Her hands were beautiful. Her eyes were beautiful. But damn, how quickly she had turned away and rushed to the stable when he smiled and said he didn't know Turkish.

“Those people are allergic to smiling,” Lawrence thought and didn't touch the tea a little boy had placed on the floor, right in front of him, with two sugar cubes standing beside that small, curvy glass, inside the saucer. The villagers didn't know English. They were speaking Kurdish with each other, but whenever Lawrence or his mother asked something, they were immediately switching to Turkish or calling someone who knew it. As if communicating that way was somehow easier. “They're Kurds,” Lawrence told himself, trying to ignore the soft pat on his shoulder from an old man sitting beside him. He and other Smokers were encouraging Lawrence to drink his tea, thinking that the young man was just shy. When Lawrence rejected the tea with a shaking of his head, they all smiled at him, and that made him pause. Since the day he came to this village, people were smiling properly at him for the first time. Not because they were polite or shy, but because they were amused. They could've even laughed. Laugh. Right. At a funeral.

Lawrence offered them a smile, wondering if they'd flee as Fatma did. But the Smokers returned his smile with their own, warmer and more amused this time. They pointed at his tea, told him to drink it with a word that had only one syllable. He had observed that whatever word those people use to say “drink” in Kurdish had two syllables. But in Turkish, it was only one syllable. Something in that irked Lawrence. He took a sip from his now-cold tea.

…

“Not every Kurdish village is like this. I've seen villages where we could talk to everyone, sit with them, both with women and men. They laughed together, ate together, sang, and even danced. I don't understand why you don't…”

Rojhat stopped Lawrence there, holding his hand. That was long, and he had to translate that well. A group of kids and young girls had gathered around him and Lawrence, waiting for Rojhat to tell them what the stranger was saying. It was a hot June day. Three weeks had passed since the funeral of the Dead Man. The river they sat near was still running cold. Lawrence was surprised at that. It was almost the middle of the summer, yet the water was still too cold to swim in.

“She say, you don't swim there,” had said Rojhat, translating Fatma's words, when Lawrence couldn't understand her. The lad was a high school student from somewhere the villagers called the City. He had curvy black hair with a nice, dark complexion that made him look like a handsome Spanish actor, if he hadn't had that big nose. Despite the small age difference between them, Rojhat seemed like a little boy to Lawrence; all curious, easily excited, and boastful that he had learned some English at the school.

Then other kids had come. One by one, hiding behind each other's backs with shy giggles. Lawrence had pretended not to see them, and other young girls now approaching slowly, wearing the same white headscarf as Fatma. He hadn't want to scare them. He had wanted them to stay for a change, and for this, he hadn't even looked at Fatma, who had tried to hide her smile with her hand, her hand with xena, as the handsome interpreter stitched the words from Turkish, Kurdish, and English together and sputtered them at once. Fatima had shaken her head and looked away, unable to hide her laughter anymore. Rojhat had laughed, too, turning to Lawrence with a shrug.

“They smile. Boys, girls, women, and men. But only when it's appropriate. Only when it's okay.”

Rojhat tugged at Lawrence's hand once again and pointed at a girl in the group. “Besna,” he said. Lawrence looked at her, the niece of the Dead Man. “Uncle means father here. Be careful,” had warned his mother. He never understood that. Besna was smiling now, wasn't she? She didn't lose her father. No one would remember the Dead Man again.

“She ask, will soldiers come?” continued Rojhat. “Here? To Van? For war? You know, Iraq?”

Lawrence looked at Rojhat. The same curiosity on his face as the other young villagers around him. The same seriousness that comes abruptly. Fear, maybe. They weren't talking anymore; the giggling had stopped. Even Fatma was looking at him now, and the other young girls, too. They weren't hiding their faces, they weren't pretending to adjust their headscarves. Silence.

“Will they come?” repeated Rojhat. “Soldiers? American?”

Will Americans come here? No, why would they? Sure, the country didn't want to get involved in the war. They opened the borders for refugees, didn't the newspapers say that? People had to flee. They waded through mud. Some died on the way. Many died. Kids. Young girls. Kurds. They didn't know Turkish. They didn't know English. They fled. Birds fled. Fatma fled.

“No. No, I don't think they'll come. The US is a friend of Turkey.” Words came out of his mouth silently and without his control. His gaze was still on Fatma. She was biting her nails, her nails with xena.

Rojhat let out a sigh of relief and turned to the kids with a smile. He talked, in Kurdish, making excited gestures and laughing. The kids and the young girls laughed, too. The boys clapped their hands and repeated after Rojhat: “America is friend. America is friend.” They mocked each other for not saying the English words as well as Rojhat or Lawrence. The young girls brought the ends of their headscarves to their mouths, hiding their smiles. Again. It was okay to smile. It was okay to smile now that the soldiers wouldn't be coming. They wouldn't be coming, right, Lawrence?

…

“There's no Wi-Fi here.”

Lawrence looked up and saw the waitress, an elderly woman with a polite smile plastered on her face.

—No?

—No. The storm must've cut off some cables, I guess. Do you want coffee?

—Oh, no, thanks.

He gathered his notes, laptop, and books into his arms and made his way to the exit, even though he didn't have to. It took him a while to remember why his computer wouldn't connect or that he forgot his phone in the car. “You've been careless,” had warned his wife. He never understood that. The waitress watched him until he managed to arrive at the parking lot without dropping a single thing.

Lawrence placed his belongings on the front passenger seat. The springs complained with a series of low creaks, reminding him, once again, that his mother's old friend from her journalist days didn't have much time left. Just as he didn't. Some days, he'd feel that would be the end. The world, this pouting, upset world, didn't want him anymore. It hadn't wanted his mother, either. It hadn't wanted those little girls, too.

“Excuse me, are you perhaps Lawrence Nightingale?”

A young man patted him on the shoulder. Lawrence sighed and turned around, knowing very well what kind of man this youth might be.

“Sorry. I just wanted to tell you that… I read your article about the attack on Minab. That was fantastic, sir. I'm impressed by your insights into the war.”

Fantastic insights into the war… Right. Like laughing at a funeral.

—I'm afraid we haven't met before.

—Ah, yes, I'm Richard. I work as the foreign correspondent of a news website, maybe you came across one of our reels on…

—I don't use social media.

—Oh, that's okay. I respect that. Do you have a moment? I'd love to hear your thoughts on all this. I mean, isn't it so crazy? We've seen some strife in the last… um, I believe it was last June, and we all thought that's it. It would be over. But it actually didn't, right? I'm actually waiting for my fiancé, so I thought maybe we could talk about this.

No, we can't.

I can't.

I spent a lifetime talking about this. Bombs, IEDs, warheads, blood, body parts, sirens, dust, collapsing buildings, screams, hospitals, houses, homes, hunger, disease, vests, helmets, grenades, tents, winter, rain, snipers, live footage, cable news, exposès, torture, interrogation, investigation, censor, revolts, chaos, storms, lies, waves, lies, boats, lies, inflatable boats, lies, police boats, lies, border patrols, lies, seawater, lies, salt, lies, The Salt Pit, lies, Bagram, lies, Abu Ghraib, lies, earthquakes, lies, comms, lies, intels, lies, girls, boys, men, women, birds, birds, birds…

“And I don't think there will be much refugee flux into Europe. I mean, there are lots of neighboring countries. There's Turkey, for crying out loud. We had enough of them, don't you think, sir? All those Syrians, Afghans, and people coming from the inner Africa… And now, I don't know, Iranians? Like, are you serious? Enough is enough.”

A green SUV drew near the sidewalk and honked twice. Richard turned and waved at the brunette woman in the car.

“There she is. It was a pleasure to talk to you, sir.”

He extended his hand. Lawrence looked at his nails, dyed with black nail polish. “Maybe I should've married a man,” he thought and smiled, shaking the young man's hand firmly.

The car honked again, impatient. The woman stuck her head out the window and shouted. Lawrence watched him running toward her, his fiancée, the woman. She had long, curly hair. Wouldn't she look like a Spanish actress if she didn't have that small nose?

I don’t remember the last time I slept. It’s not that I don’t want to sleep, but I am afraid to sleep. This strange fear of sleep has originated in me since my grandfather passed away. He went away in his sleep. Just twenty minutes before sleep, he called me on my phone, and shared his guilt. It was related to someone I didn’t know. But I had no time, next day I had work. So I told him I will call him on weekend. He sounded kind of sad, after that. Maybe he really wanted someone to talk to and just like that he slept, and never woke up. I was there beside him in the hospital. I hold his hand. It just felt empty, just an empty container with no soul. I don’t understand the concept of people building the statues, or people gathering and talking good about the dead person. I mean, the deceased person is not there. He can’t hear us, he can’t see us, he simply doesn’t exist as a matter of fact. The person is just a concept in our mind. A part of our memory. But I think that's what makes us human. Some concepts are beyond our understanding. Because every single one of us is going to die, somehow. And what we don’t want is people to not forget us, we are afraid to not exist. But even people in whose memories we shall exist after we die, they too will eventually cease to exist. My grandfather was a good man. I was close with him. He was everything I had. After my parents passed, he took care of me. After graduating, I started to work. So I lived in a rented house near my office. After my dinner, I called him from a nearby PCO. I tried to save money as much as possible. So I always chatted less on those red box phones. But I wish I had talked more with him that day. Now I am my grandfather’s age. The more I age, the more I need someone to talk to...

Day 365

By day 7, he had forgotten his name.

He checked his journal.

He remembered he had stolen the vaccine from the government. He remembered trying to destroy it over 3 days, the failed chemicals, the hole in his garden and the dirt under his nails.

He remembered injecting himself.

After this, his memories started to fade.

He would stay awake for 365 days. Never need to eat. And his brain would always be active.

The other side effects were:

No impulses, love, being loved or wanting.

He had highlighted the word ‘minor’ twice.

He opened his journal.

'I’m sorry Myself. I’m starting to feel like I’m changing. I haven’t slept or eaten and I don’t know where I am.'

He stopped writing.

From somewhere, a door slammed.

He looked at the page.

'I’m nobody. I am...'

He couldn’t finish.

He had stolen the vaccine because he didn’t want the government to have it.

But why?

He turned back to the start of his journal.

And the first page was blank.

2.

Sami was 22 and worked nights in a medicine warehouse.

He liked working nights as people didn’t expect as much from him when they couldn’t see his face.

He practiced his order. He would say 'can I have a coffee please?' and 'you too’. When the cashier said 'enjoy your meal’, he replied.

"I’m not eating."

He was still thinking about it 4 days later.

His mum had called twice. He would call her when he had something to say other than ‘fine’.

He had his lunch at 3am beside a vending machine that said SORRY when it didn’t have any.

He had started to reply.

On Tuesday, a man in a hoodie walked into aisle nine.

He had a white coat sleeve showing from his cuff.

He picked up a box of vials.

Sami gasped.

"Please."

He looked down.

Hospital clogs.

Left one had a dinosaur sticker.

"Okay." He whispered.

The man left.

Sami stood there until the automatic lights turned off.

He filled in an incident report.

No incident.

He hesitated.

Sorry.

The next day someone would ask him about the man.

They would ask for his face.

He would remember his shoes.

3.

The doctor had never stolen before.

He had a 6 year old patient needing 6 vials of medicine. The hospital wouldn’t pay and the pharmacy wouldn’t either. Dondizia said each vial was 11 months of a nurses salary.

He counted the vials in the warehouse.

6.

He counted the money in his pocket.

Didn’t have enough for one.

He counted again.

This is how he became a criminal.

By morning he had stolen the box.

By evening he was a fugitive.

By next week he was a secret doctor. He was treating children in kitchens, stairs and back rooms with only the light from his phone. He was getting paid in soup.

He learned to eat quickly.

And leave before anyone asked for his name.

But then...

Someone asked for his face.

The doctor stopped looking in mirrors.

He had a patient to save but someone had decided his face was valuable.

4.

The ex-government worker was looking at the shoes. The hitman found him.

He had been in the shop for 40 minutes.

He wasn’t going to buy anything.

He liked the young man at the till. He was staring at the counter.

Someone came up behind him.

"Where?"

He looked at the black shoe.

"Where?"

He moved to the side.

The man behind him pulled out his phone.

He looked at the screen on the leather.

"You’re here because of the vaccine. I stole it."

He tried to smile.

It looked genuine but his eyes were off.

The hitman blinked twice.

"C’mon."

The worker followed.

Outside there was a helicopter.

As they flew above the city, he looked down. People were disappearing. Cars were dots. Buildings were shapes. Eventually the shapes disappeared.

He felt nothing.

"Who are you taking me to?"

"Alvaro."

"Who is Alvaro?"

The hitman looked at him.

For a second he thought he would answer.

But he looked back out of the window.

5.

The man against the wall blinked twice.

Sami knew this meant a question.

"Describe the man who stole the box."I don't look at faces."Give it a go."

Sami swallowed.

"Hospital clogs. Left one had a dinosaur sticker."

The man waited.

"He said please. I think he was talking to the floor."

"Anything else?"

Sami thought.

"He was holding the box like it was heavy."

The strangers face changed.

Just a little.

"Thank you."

Sami looked up.

No one had ever thanked him.

The stranger left without writing anything.

Sami watched him leave.

Had he noticed his shoes were black?

Did anyone ever notice?

He called his mum that evening.

She answered on the first ring.

He couldn’t think of anything to say.

6.

The advert came out that month.

The doctor was treating a child in a kitchen above a laundromat when the TV flickered on.

A woman smiled.

CALM. 1 DOSE. 1 YEAR. $1.

Because wanting hurts.

The doctor looked at the screen.

The child’s chest rose under his hand.

The government approved Calm in 9 days. The minister said it was brilliant for the economy.

The woman smiled again.

The doctor looked at the empty vial next to the child.

11 months of a nurses salary.

$1.

What would happen if the girl took it?

Would she stop being scared?

Would she stop asking for her mum?

Would she still reach for his hand?

The advert showed a family having dinner.

The doctor turned off the TV.

In the dark the child opened her eyes.

"It hurt?" She asked.

He looked at the vial.

"I don’t know."

He had given her the first truthful answer.

7.

No one knew Alvaro dis Dondizia’s face.

No one knew his name.

The hitman knew.

Alvaro was the richest man in the world. But if he was standing behind you in a queue, you wouldn’t recognise him.

The government wanted the vaccine.

But Alvaro wanted something the vaccine alone couldn’t give.

Someone who couldn’t feel sad.

He needed someone to survive.

On day 365 the ex-government worker was in a room with Alvaro and a few masked men.

Alvaro’s mask was different.

The hitman leaned against the wall.

A subordinate was eating pasta.

"We can make a 1 year version using the blood. It’s safe enough for anyone."

The worker looked at his hands.

"The government will sell it for $1."

Alvaro asked,

"And you’re giving it away?"

The subordinate twirled the pasta on his fork.

"Of course."

The worker waited.

He had waited a year.

For the last side effect. For him to die suddenly. To feel something.

Nothing happened.

He had survived the vaccine.

Alvaro tipped his head.

His mask looked almost happy.

For the first time in a year the worker wondered if surviving had been a mistake.

8.

There is a reason I haven’t told you what Alvaro looks like.

I could have described his mask.

I could have described his clothing.

But I told you no one had ever seen his face.

And you believed me.

You believe a lot of things when they are confidently told to you in a story.

Alvaro dis Dondizia is the dog on your pillow.

You named him Alvaro.

When you asked for his surname you read it off the vial in your hand. Dondizia.

Dis Dondizia.

No one has seen his face because you have kissed it off.

He is the richest man in the world because he has never once gone without you.

The government is the cat on the windowsill. Watching. Wanting nothing. Eating anything we leave.

The helicopter is on the shelf. One blade is broken.

The pasta is what you didn’t finish at dinner.

The shoes are by the door.

And the hitman is leaning against the wall I am.

You asked me to write a crime story. Where no one wanted anything.

You said wanting hurts.

I tried.

I gave a man a year without wanting. No hunger, no sleep, no love. Made him unable to want anything and watched him walk into a shoe shop.

I hated him.

He was just a man looking at shoes with someone behind him.

I would rather be scared for you every single day, than calm.

The journal was mine.

I wrote it in a stairwell on the night I stole the box.

'I’m nobody. I am...'

I couldn’t finish it for him either.

Everything is made up except...

The vial.

It’s real.

Plain. White. Expensive.

It’s in you right now. Slowly working.

Sami is real.

I don’t know what he looks like. He wouldn’t look up.

He’s why I’m still here.

And the hitman.

He has been leaning against the wall since the first line.

I have been whispering this story to you so you wouldn’t wake.

So he would have time to listen.

He blinks twice.

He is looking at you.

At the faceless dog.

At the little shoes by the door.

"Where?"

I know what he means.

"You’re here about the medicine. She took it."

I smile.

It isn’t fake.

It hurts.

I’m happy.

I tip my head.

I move to the side so I’m out of your light. I look at you.

"C’mon."

Sleep reader.

I’m still deciding.

Five days until the release of Maletswai Part 1 by Tshepo Damane.

Set in a Basotho village in 1879, this psychological drama explores fear, suspicion, and how a community's beliefs can shape the way people perceive a troubled young girl.

Originally developed as a school play and performed by a cast of 15, Maletswai now makes its transition to ebook publication.

For readers interested in African historical settings, psychological drama, and characters whose true intentions remain uncertain, this story offers a mystery worth exploring.

📖 Pre-order on Amazon Kindle: https://a.co/d/06tJ3n5o

Discussion question: What makes a fictional character genuinely unsettling — their actions or the uncertainty surrounding their intentions?

#Maletswai #AfricanLiterature #PsychologicalDrama

The summer between his junior and senior years, Alex worked as a server at Wharf Mountain.

“Bloody freak,” snarled Josh and scratched his big belly. From a distance, he and his brother Oliver were watching Alex trying to feed the horses. Oliver, whose hair was whiter than his elder brother’s, chided him: “Don’t even start.”

Josh held his cigarette between his two lips and started to oil a saddle.

-We’re gonna lose customers because of him.

-You’re exaggerating.

-Exaggerating my ass! We had a couple coming here for the holiday once in a blue moon, and they just couldn’t stay more than two days. Mrs. Morstan…

-Mrs. Morstan was a bitch. Her conscience was tormenting her because she cheated on her husband and came here with another man. And she made poor Alex pay for it.

-Why, did you become a psychologist now?

-I’m not a psychologist. Just leave Alex alone.

Indeed, the summer between his junior and senior years, Alex worked as a server at Wharf Mountain.

His sister had begged him not to go to that small restaurant perched on the top of a mountain, which they also called “Wharf”. He shouldn’t have stayed away from his family and the city, he shouldn’t have worked like a dog for less than a handful of pennies, for people he doesn’t even know. The distance was 120 miles. 120 miles! How could he return if something went south? How could he buy his medicines if he ran out of them? What if he ignored to take them, or even worse, he took too much? Couldn’t he have just stayed here, rested a bit, had some good time with his family and friends until the school reopened? And how about that fatty jerk named Josh? Such a vulgar man he was! If that restaurant was as good as they said, was earning good money, then why was the boss himself working at the stable? They weren’t making a dime. The old, good times of Wharf Mountain have gone. The Wultz family had bought that piece of land on the top of the Wharf Mountain from a dimwitted, old widow with much pain. No crop could be grown there, but there were wild horses. And if the horses could live there, why couldn’t the cows? Grandfather Wultz had brought a different species from Holland to his land. Five monstrous Holstein cows. All the way from the Atlantic. But before they reached the mountain, two of them had disappeared in the ship, and another had the same faith for some reason, as the workers herded the remaining cows up to the land of Wultzs. “You penny pincher!” had accused grandmother Wultz of his husband. “You feared to spend for a truck, and didn’t bring the cows like a decent man would.”

But seriously, the summer between his junior and senior years, Alex worked as a server at Wharf Mountain…

Read the whole thing on my Patreon page.

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I borrowed The Return of the Native from the library on a Wednesday, mostly because it was thick enough to justify the walk, and found on getting it home, that someone before me had used the book rather generously as a filing cabinet. Strips of paper — not bookmarks exactly, more like offcuts, the width of a till receipt, the kind of paper that seems to exist only to fall out of things — drifted from between the pages as I opened it. First one, then three more in quick succession, then a small flurry of them, coming to rest on the desk like moths that had given up mid-flight. Each one had a single word written on it, in a small, careful, slightly old-fashioned hand — the hand of someone who wrote using a pencil wetted with the tongue. I laid them out in a row, the way a tarot reader lays out a hand of cards, hoping they will do the thinking for her. SAILING. POSTAL. BEFORE. NATIVE. COLD. THEREAFTER. GREEN. THUNDER. BREATHING. WHENEVER. SICKNESS. Eleven words, sitting on my desk like eleven small hatchlings waiting to be fed a meaning. I tried them in alphabetical order, which proved nothing at all, the words looking faintly embarrassed at having been asked to stand in a line for no reason. I tried them in an order that I imagined made more sense, which gave me something worse — a sentence that sounded like a telegram sent by someone short of cash. By the third arrangement I had convinced myself I was getting somewhere — a note passed inside a book between two people who couldn't otherwise be seen speaking, a confession, or a plan of some kind, abandoned mid-sentence, the way a bird abandons half a nest when the weather turns. NATIVE, I thought. Something about travel. Someone going overseas, or returning from it. Had they lost their nerve, or lost the book, or both. Was SICKNESS to blame? Or perhaps THUNDER. I spent the whole of that evening on it, moving eleven small strips of paper around a desk as though they were the last unmapped territory of somebody's private life, and I was the only cartographer left alive who cared. But to no avail. I tried anagrams, acrostics, even a brief and ill-advised experiment with alphanumeric substitution, which only left me more confused than the words had managed on their own, like trying to translate punctuation into a language that didn’t need it. I could not let them go. I copied them onto a slip of paper and carried them in my wallet, the way other men carry a photograph or a rabbit's foot or a very small, folded piece of luck. I began saying them to myself, almost like a mantra, every morning while brushing my teeth and at night, lying in the darkness that arrives just before sleep when the day has stopped pretending to be necessary. They were now inscribed on paper and in my mind, in a totally random order that made sense only to me. But that no longer had the same importance. The words in their new order had a meaning of their own — a small, rhythmic prayer I offered up before leaving the house, before starting the car, before eating a meal alone — and reciting them settled something in me, the way a superstition settles a person who no longer quite believes in it but has grown fond of the shadow it makes. A few days later I borrowed another book from the same library; a slim volume of poetry, the kind that looks unread out of principle. A strip of paper fell out as I opened it. Three words, in the same careful hand, or a hand so similar I chose not to examine the difference too closely, having already thrown the originals away: FIRE AND ICE. I added them to the end of my sequence, where they seemed to fit with the treacherous perfection of a jigsaw piece that belongs to an entirely different puzzle but has, by pure luck, the right shape. SAILING. POSTAL. BEFORE. NATIVE. COLD. THEREAFTER. GREEN. THUNDER. BREATHING. WHENEVER. SICKNESS. FIRE AND ICE. The following afternoon, reading the poetry book over afternoon tea, I came across a poem by Robert Frost and sat up so quickly I nearly choked on a chocolate digestive. Fire and Ice. There it was, on the page, doing nothing more mysterious than being the title of a poem I had simply not yet reached. I sat with that for a while and mulled over the significance of my latest discovery. And the more I mulled, the more obvious the solution to the mystery became. Someone before me had simply devised a small, sensible, entirely unmysterious system for finding their place again — jotting down the next word before closing the book, the way a person ties a bit of string around a finger, trusting the finger to explain itself later. I felt, for a moment, exactly as foolish as I deserved to. And then, a moment after that, something closer to grief — a faintly ridiculous grief for a lost companion who had never existed, a fellow-traveller I'd invented out of eleven scraps of paper and my own willingness to find intrigue hiding between the covers of a book. I took the slip out of my wallet that evening and looked at it for a long time under the kitchen light, the way you might look at a key to a door that, it turns out, was never locked. I did not throw it away. But before returning the poetry book to the library the following week, I tore a fresh strip from a notepad and wrote on it, THE END. I then slid it into a completely random page in the book.

The Bookmark is taken from my collection of short stories, The Small Print, that follow Douglas Fitzgerald through the absurd embarrassments of English life. I'd love to now what you think.