Library Love

The New World by Rebecca Ferguson

Welcome to the new world.

There are rules here, like laws of nature. They are important, and they are absolute. There will be no exceptions.

In the new world you cannot go back to the past. You can never go back. It is the essence of it all. You will want to, of course you will, but you cannot. Nobody lives there anymore, and nothing remains of it except the faint smell of perfume that has long since dried up and the last golden days of your happy childhood. Her things will wait in the dark like ghosts, and the memories will haunt you for the rest of your life. In the new world the mistakes you made you cannot change. All you can do is replay them in your mind as though you are watching through a window, and you can bang uselessly on the glass as much as you like but none of it will make any difference at all.

In the new world it is not a feeling but an ocean. It is not a static thing. It ebbs and flows with the weather, the seasons, the way your heart beats when you look at a photograph of her. You will never be safe from the choice to sink or swim, to paddle in the shallows or venture into the dangerous depths that will look ever more tempting depending on the time of day and the pain in your chest. Life carries on too easily too close to the shore, and sometimes it will seem easier to go under and never resurface. Nobody will tell you to be careful.

Drowning is pleasant in the end they say.

In the new world your dreams will have claw marks and you’ll awaken with salt in your mouth as you reach for someone no longer there. Your dreams will be sirens calling you out to sea, to that ocean of grief that may ebb and flow but is still always there. In the new world you will want to claw through time until you arrive home with your fingers bloody and raw, until you satisfy your unyielding need for the way things were. If she were here in the new world she could take your hands in hers and gently wipe off the blood as she always did and say you’re alright, I’m here now. What was all this fuss for? And you could cling to her and say, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Please, please, take me home.

But this is the new world and so you cannot find home again. You will need to remember the reason, the one you learned when you got here and turned around only to find the door slammed shut and disappearing behind you. Rule one, the essence of everything. You can never go back. You can never go home. This is the new world after all. Remember why you are here.

She has been dead since the beginning.

For Whom the Clock Ticks by Jamie Andrew

The little psychiatrist had been watching his new patient – an uncommonly large man – for what felt like an eternity, not wanting to rush him, but conscious from repeated glances at the clock on the wall that time was running out. In the no-man’s land between their respective leather armchairs the ticks and tocks punctuated the air like gunshots.

The large man was swaddled in layers of clothing, his face obscured by the hood of his jacket. The psychiatrist dared to hope that the physical camouflage obscured a psyche that was similarly layered. A rich seam to be mined, in more ways than one.

And yet the patient had barely spoken.
‘It’s your time, Mr, eh… Mr…’ The psychiatrist had somehow forgotten the man’s name. ‘But it is customary to speak.’

The large man nodded slowly, then said in a voice as dark as midnight: ‘It sometimes feels like death is all there is.’

The psychiatrist smiled. ‘Have you considered a change of vocation?’

The large man sat impassively for a moment. ‘Was that supposed to be a joke?’

The psychiatrist peered down through his spectacles, and with a robotic cock of his neck signalled his best approximation of playfulness. ‘You say you’re an undertaker. You made a statement about morbidity. I offered levity. You rejected it. Don’t you think that’s interesting?’

The large man didn’t. He reached into the pocket of his long jacket and drew out a packet of
cigarettes. The psychiatrist offered him no verbal resistance, so he proceeded to pluck out and push a cigarette into the shrouded darkness of his face. A lighter followed, briefly illuminating his face, but the psychiatrist couldn’t make out any specific features.

‘You don’t mind if I smoke?’ asked the large man.

The psychiatrist pulled a pen from the outside pocket of his muted green suit. He unpopped the lid and stacked it at the back of the pen, but made no move to disturb the unspoiled notepad on his lap. He just held it there in his hand. Like a cigarette.

‘It’s interesting,’ the psychiatrist said, wiggling the pen in his grip. ‘That someone so deeply involved with death would ally himself with one of its greatest foot-soldiers.’

The large man puffed a jet of smoke across the room, where it lay between them like mist. ‘It relaxes me when I’m working.’

The psychiatrist shook his head and smiled. ‘Ah, but you aren’t working right now, are you?’

At that moment the psychiatrist chanced to peer down at his empty note-pad, and was surprised to see the words ‘I’M AFRAID WE’VE RUN OUT OF TIME’ staring back at him. He was even more surprised to look up a second time to see the large man looming over his armchair. The clock ticked its loudest tick as the large man reached up his hands and threw back his hood.

Then the midnight-black voice spoke one final time. ‘Ah, but I’m always working, Mr Percival.’

A bony finger reached out and pressed gently against the psychiatrist’s forehead.

And the clock fell silent.
THE END