1. The Butcher

   By Victoria Ferris

   He flicked the switch and the bone saw squealed. Blood splatters slapped against hanging plastic sheets around him. John grimaced. He pushed down and the sharp blade ground against bone. He often wondered why he’d become a butcher. Blood made his stomach churn. Guilt would occasionally creep from the pit of his mind. After all, this had once been a living creature. He glanced at its face. Cold, dead eyes stared back. Its mouth ajar, an expression of untamed horror stretched across it. Her skin was soft and smooth, she had been so beautiful. And how John loved beautiful women.

2. Saturday Night Fever

   By Liz Carroll

   The Saturday night arguments were in full swing when the pub door opened and something nameless slid in. Joanna stopped polishing glasses. A shadow swirled above Jack’s head. It extended over Paul, drifting into his ear. Both men turned snarling, coming face to contorted face. The crowd retreated making themselves smaller. Joanna grabbed the soda syphon and squirted. The shadow turned towards her. She saw eyeless sockets, a distorted grin and squirted again. It laughed, nodded and drifted back out. The landlord snorted.  

   “You always over-react! It’s just friendly banter.” The men laughed.

   Outside in the darkness something chuckled.

3. Primal Urges   

   By Marie-Louise McGuinness                                  

   The stars’ needle gaze is blunt in velvet cloud, and the sky - oil-slick dark. A crow pecks jellied eyes from a milk-fed lamb, and a fox stalks the hen coop for flesh.

   Timeless in shadow, the village clock echoes the click-clack of heel-shortened steps; and fear, in palpable ether, wafts odorously from dampened skin. 

   Muffled in her footsteps, she feels him. Hunting.

   In the sun-blind morning, when the blood-inked river is grossly swollen, goosebumped news spreads fast through the streets.

   And, in their aphotic dens, sated beasts slumber until the next sooty night spurs their primal urge to hunt.

4. Eventide

   By Armand Diab

   The ship’s shadow is swallowed by eventide, as mist envelops the sailor on the vast deck.  Air is damp, its breeze delivering creaks of unknown origin.  The fog thickens, simulating temporary blindness.  When it recedes, an ominous schooner looms next to the military vessel.  The blackness of night prevents the sailor from reading its name. Several figures move about the gloomy vessel, their faces indecipherable under the blue moonlight.  The young man’s Hello goes unanswered.  Then, a high pitched shriek reverberates across the water.  It extinguishes the sound of his head hitting the wooden promenade.

5. The Blind Painter

   By David Haworth

   Before.

   Oh, fantastic sweeps of colour! Solid shapes, delicate texture, depth, distance, light, shade. 

   Reflection, emotion. An invitation to another world. 

   A painting.

   Then.

   When Madeleine died, my eyes lost their reason to see. Shock perhaps, or protest. Overnight, submerged in blackest grief. 

   Now.

   I still paint her. 

   Mind’s eye still focussed sharpness. Forge form from darkness. 

   Who knows if I paint what I see? I cannot see what I paint. But the process of painting, the act itself is where the therapy lies. 

   Portraits by a blind man; impressions of suggestions of a memory.

   Do you like them?

6. Night Drive

   By Sally Tate

   The animals come closer at night.  I watch the hedgerows for eyes, one foot tensed and ready to brake, just as you taught me.  Strange how old habits illuminate the darkness, become the small, final embers, which I stoke with breath, on the deep, forest lanes which have always led to your house.  
   We have known these roads so intimately - the curve where an owl swooped, ghostlike, above our heads; deer herding over the moonlit moor.
   Wherever you are, beginning your journey, I hope you see my fire. 
   I am pushing my love towards you and onwards through the dark.

7. Cleaved

   By Heather Haigh

   So you whispered nicey-nicey

   while the moon was slicey-slicey

   like a sickle in the sky.

   
   It glinted on my flick knife,

   and her eyes were shiny-shiny.

   Her breath came warm but rushy,

   claws and elbows,

   teeth so bitey,

   till the red was hot and gushy

   and her drool was sticky-ugly

   but the bifurcations lovely:

   flesh from flesh,

   sounds from silence,

   spark from dullness. 

   
   So the walls are always screaming

   as I swallow doctors' poison

   still the moon's a pale marshmallow,

   and I'm choking on the sawdust,

   and the world is turned to clay.

   You will come back, 

   won't you? 
   Soon?

8. Tropical Rain

   By Lin Whitehouse

   Ink-black darkness descends without warning, with no clash of cymbals or bolt of light. It’s eerily quiet until tapping against the window, like fingers idly drumming a table. The patter gains momentum, as if the dudup steel pan has set the rhythm to orchestrate the storm.

   A torrent of crystal-like shards rain-down. The earth, dry as salted cod, greedily guzzles each drop. After the downpour the sun emerges into a cloudless, cerulean sky; vapour rises like steam from freshly baked fungie. Lizards scuttle from under stones to bask.  The heady, syrupy smell of Frangipani lies heavy, like a beaded veil.

9. She Hangs Upon the Cheek of Night

   By Robert Burns

   The velvet Mojave sky expanded in all directions with infinite blackness, punctuated by the sharp pinpoints of a billion white-hot stars. The ash of the cigarette brightened and bathed Sophie’s face with its vermilion glow.
   Even in our quietest moments, I had never felt closer to her. Blanketed by the narcotic desert night, I couldn’t keep my eyes off her.
   “What?” she said, moving closer. She laid her head on my shoulder.
   “Nothing,” I smiled. “Can’t believe my eyes is all.”
   Dawn would come soon. I put my arm around her waist and we waited for the sun.

10. Mountains of the Moon

    By Josephine Anderson

    It’s not African drums. It’s water from the Rwenzori mountains, carrying rocks as big as elephants as it crashes through the valley, leaving destruction.
    The Bakonzo people pick up their pangas to rebuild lost trails. They carve twenty-two km of new paths for tourists through the Afro-alpine moorlands.
    They slash a way in order to find the best routes.
    Then people will come back and see giant flowering Lobelias, soft pink Impatiens, and waterfalls splashing over granite boulders into iridescent pools.
    They will see Rwenzori Turacos flashing scarlet, blue and green in darkest Africa.

The group chose ‘The Blind Painter’ as their favourite. Congratulations, David Haworth!