My Glass is Runn

By Die Booth

Some things are worth the risk... A reclusive genius builds a menagerie in the woods. Two greedy generations fall foul of a family curse, and Bertie discovers just exactly what is at the bottom of the ball pit. An underestimated fashion model becomes the architect of her own eerie design. The only survivors of a modern epidemic are the ones who can’t hear the voices. Hypnotherapy removes Bill’s fear – or so he thinks, until he realises it’s been replaced with something worse. And is Carmen Bren’s best friend, or a symptom of his addiction?

From the Cheshire Prize for Literature finalist and author of Spirit Houses and 365 Lies, come fourteen creepy tales for grown-ups who never grew up. Make sure you leave the light on – and whatever you do, remember to check under the bed...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Die Booth
• Release date: Jun 15, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005583408

Die Booth

Die Booth likes wild beaches and exploring dark places. When not writing, he DJs at Chester’s best (and only) goth club. You can read his stories in places like LampLight Magazine, The Fiction Desk and The Cheshire Prize for Literature anthologies. His books ‘My Glass is Runn’, ‘365 Lies’ (profits go to the MNDA) and ‘Spirit Houses’ are available online and ‘Making Friends (and other fictions)’ is due out on 21st September 2021. He’s currently working on a collection of spooky stories featuring transgender protagonists.

Book preview

Mad Doctors of Literature

My Glass is Runn

Copyright ©2016 Die Booth

Cover and illustrations by Die Booth

First published worldwide in 2016 by Mad Doctors of Literature.

Second edition 2021.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted without the prior consent in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any other form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published.

Typeset in Cambria by Mad Doctors of Literature.

Titles in Aquifer by JLH fonts.

www.maddocsoflit.com

www.diebooth.wordpress.com

For Mum and Dad

Contents

- Copyright

1 The Audsley Chimera

2 Hearts of Gold

3 This is the life

4 The Dust Bunnies

5 To be Heard

6 Play Ball

7 Waifs

8 The Ghost Bride

9 Sphere Music

10 Life Skills

11 Don’t be Afraid of the Lights

12 Twice a Day with Water

13 Maketh the Man

14 The Fourth Ape

- Also by this author

- Content warning

- Acknowledgments

- About the author

The Audsley Chimera

Dad, when did unicorns go extinct?

I can remember asking that question.

Dad said, They’re not extinct, they’re a made-up animal.

I think I stopped listening after ‘they’re not extinct.’

Like seahorses? I asked. Dad laughed.

Seahorses are real, you daft-head. You know that, we saw some at the Sandcastle last holidays.

Oh yeah.

I thought about seahorses. I thought about seahorses a lot. My version of seahorses were man-sized and foaming white as wave-crests, wild kelpies that rode the tides and dragged grown men back down rivers to the sea; something of a stallion with a whale-tail where its hindquarters would be. The mild, invisible-coloured wafers that sank sadly in aquarium tanks seemed an unlikely interpretation of ‘seahorse’ to me.

Are pegasuses real too, then?

Really, I knew the answer, I just wasn’t too sure of its authenticity.

You’ve been watching too many films, said Dad.

I’d been thinking a lot about Pegasus too. "But they could be real. You could get a horse to have babies with an eagle…"

It doesn’t work like that, Nicky. I remember Dad frowning, but he looked rather pleased too, as if he’d secretly thought the same thing but knew he couldn’t voice it.

An owl? No? A swan? I tried to think of a bird big enough. Why can’t you just sew some wings on a horse, then?

Dad insisted it wouldn’t work. He couldn’t quite say why, not to my satisfaction. He just said it would be a bad idea. I suppose he couldn’t think of a way to explain species compatibility and tissue rejection and ethics to a nine-year-old boy. I presume he didn’t want to present to me a picture of animals in pain. Or maybe he just knew all along that it had to be possible and he didn’t know how to deny it.

Dad was always trying to protect me from reality.

Come home by the main road, Nicky. Stay on the pavement. Don’t go into the Wedge on your own, not even if you stay on the path. The Wedge was an anachronism of woodland that embarrassed suburbia for two square miles in the middle of our Audsley housing estate. Ancient woodland, other-worldly and rare: everyone said how beautiful it was and then never visited, like unto a silent film star who went insane; for all its charms it was antique and out of place and it made people uneasy.

They said it harboured vermin, and perverts.

Dad said children shouldn’t speak to strangers. Children shouldn’t go off with strange men, because the men would do things to them. Like his ambiguity about the realisation of dreams, Dad couldn’t elaborate on what the things were. Bad things, he’d say. Bad, like growing wings on horses. Mysterious things, I thought, exciting.

Some things are worth the risk.

*

This boy is too young to walk in the woods alone.

He's a small child, slight; his fingers delicate as feather shafts. He can't weigh much; a slight puff of wind might carry him away like dandelion fluff. A fair child, almost divine: he is perfect.

The boy's trudging without purpose; swinging an ash branch from side to side, looking for something to break. The stick scythes through the foxgloves, disturbing something in the brush. The boy freezes. When he hears the kitten's cry he relaxes, wading through the bracken towards it. He crouches and peers. He still has his broken branch; he might hurt a cat for fun. With one recherché hand, its nails pearly, he parts the ferns: surprise, confusion, fear and delight carousel across his face.

*

When I was little I loved the zoo.

Aunty Gill used to work at the zoo. She’s not really my aunt, but an older cousin: she just liked me to call her that. I haven’t seen her in a very long time. She wasn’t anything glamorous like a zookeeper, instead she waited tables in the café and got to wear a pretend Victorian maid’s outfit which in her eyes was ten times as glamorous for starters, but she could still get me in to see the animals for free whenever I asked.

At first Dad would take me, but as the visits grew more frequent he became exasperated and lost interest. He did try, I know he did – I can't really blame him. Every Saturday I'd run to the railway station and hop onto a train. I knew how to watch for the inspectors, leave by one set of doors and re-alight via another whenever we stopped at a station, to avoid buying a ticket. I knew how to be invisible even then. The zoo had its own rail stop, with smiling cartoon animals coexisting peaceably on the pocked metal sign. Eventually the staff at the ticket office got to know me by name and I didn't even have to ask for Aunty Gill to gain my free entry.

The floor of the cat house was littered with the rainbow of my crayons. I sat cross-legged on the rubber-smelling faux jungle floor, matching big cats in technicolour halves in my sketchbook. Visitors stepped around me with disdain but the staff fed me kind words and toed back my felt-tips when they rolled out of reach. The beasts on my pages had eagle wings and the tails of snakes. Pacing behind the glass before me, the noble tigers and spotted cats spoke to me with lantern eyes. They said, Let me out of here. They said, Let me fly.

*

There's a hiss of grass as the ash branch falls from the boy's hand, reclaimed by nature. The kitten totters, mewing angrily: a tabby with yellow eyes and, arcing improbably from its tiny shoulder blades, a pair of tawny wings. The boy: stunned into silence. His expression is almost comical. Then it dawns into a smile. The kitten spreads its wings, the flight feathers fanning, but it's too weak yet to flap.

I'm working on that one.

*

I started with insects. I spliced them together using the craft blades from my model-painting kit: if all children pull the wings off flies, then pulling the wings off flies and grafting them onto caterpillars is no worse.

They died, of course.

Maybe I would've given up if it wasn't for seeing, just once, a sign. I was at the end of the garden path, in the part where grown-ups didn't go. This was my kingdom. Behind the unruly barricade of pampas grass that unzipped red crosshatches on your skin, a stack of old bikes rusted comfortably against the shed door. The cracks in the paving were delineated by moss. I lay on my stomach on the warm flagstones and watched a worm take the weight of its distended body onto its new spiders’ legs and stand. Those few seconds before it curled and died, I knew my calling: not to destroy, but to transform. I don't care what anyone says. I was just a normal child. Every little boy loves animals. Any little boy would like to come with you to see some puppies….

*

He picks it up, of course. Everybody likes to touch; nobody can help that. The boy cradles the brindle-winged kitten to his chest and looks around for someone to show. There is, naturally, nobody. This is the middle of the woods; children beware. Ploughing on through the ferns his feet drag against tangled roots, foliage as high as his waistband leaves rainwater swipes across his tracksuit pants. When he breaks into the clearing he stops, blandly assessing the scenario: a little house with nets at the windows; a homemade fence around a cleared lawn. Who would live in a house in the forest? But children don't read fairy tales anymore. Children have no use for myths. I let the nets fall back into place and go to open the door.

He doesn't sound too cautious, but I can tell he's not stupid. Is this your cat, mister?

I lean against the doorframe and smile. Let me see; that depends if he has wings or not. The boy proudly holds the kitten up. It wriggles, outraged, in his grip. Icarus! You found him. I've been looking all over the place for him.

What’s he called? asks the boy suspiciously, taking a step into the clearing. I open the door a little wider, so he can maybe see the cages inside. I tilt my head to one side.

Icarus. Like the Greek myth.

What’s a myth?

What’s a myth. We are our own gods. We will be legend.

I say, It’s a type of story. Never mind. Thank you for finding him.

The boy reaches the door. Icarus’s claws snag in the fabric of the boy’s shirt as he reluctantly hands him over. He unhooks them carefully with one hand. I shake my head. It looks like he’s quite attached to you. Maybe you should keep hold of him. Would you like to meet his brothers and sisters?

You got more of them?

I nod. Oh, yes.

Have they got wings?

Some of them. The boy peers past me at the wall of cages in the shadowed living room. At the jewel-hued feathers and striped fur. Hugging the winged kitten, he steps eagerly through the door.

What's your name, son?

Michael. His eyes brighten at 'son'. Perhaps he never was one before.

Hello, Michael. I'm Nick.

Hi. Learning my name has prompted his first indication of shyness. Still, Michael gazes into the cages with undisguised delight and I watch over his shoulder as the rabbits sharpen their tusks on the bars and the parrot asks him for a biscuit, holding out its paws imploringly.

I will not call them experiments. There's nothing experimental about them. In the beginning, I picked them up from rescue centres – the last chancers on doggy death row. Animals with no future – I gave them a future. I saved them from the needle with the knife. Of course it was hard work. I was a pioneer. They found me out when I was seventeen and I was sent to a psychiatrist. It didn’t end happily. I had to run. An idea is all you need – sell that idea and money breeds money. My first success was all it took: he was a dog I named Trojan; a bull mongrel with horns, sad thing. I sold him to an underground crime lord and my reputation was made. Now my research is funded by sultans and drug barons, eccentrics and magnates, and the ordinary world remains none the wiser. It's easy to become invisible if you have money. They get their exotic pets; I get my anonymity. Wings are my favourite: I waste no materials. A four-legged owl; another winged kitten, an illegally imported capuchin; a cat with hands. I swap and change, improving nature, recreating legend. I want a gryphon. I want so much more. Perhaps the greatest medical talent of two centuries: I can say that without bragging, but I have to hide. Beneath the trees, the bones of failed operations soften in the dirt.

Michael stops in front of the last cage. His fingers circle in the fur behind Icarus’s ears: eyes slitted closed, the kitten reverberates a mechanical purr. What's that?

A swan.

A magic swan? His tone is that of a child so entrenched in reality that he can hardly dare to hope.

No, just a normal swan.

The boy looks resigned. The Queen owns all the swans, he says. I'm charmed.

Now, however do you know that?

I saw it on telly. He looks around without disguising it. Can I feed the bird cat?

You certainly may.

Can I have something too?

What would you like?

He looks at me like it’s his birthday. Really, it is. Chocolate, he says.

Please?

Chocolate, please.

I’m not a fan of chocolate myself. The jar of cocoa I pull down from the cupboard is a good few months out of date, but I doubt that the boy will object. The milk is fresh and creamy and thickens in the pan. The ingredients twist together beneath my spoon.

I mix it sweet to hide any bitterness.

The boy has crackers and cheese as a snack. He blows on his hot chocolate to cool it, then drinks it straight down in one, his throat bobbing. Immediately, he yawns.

Are you tired, Michael?

No, he insists angrily.

I say, "I think the bird cat is tired. Will