The Dreaming House

You descend the stairs to a room filled with feathers, each as soft as clouds, so thick the floor is barely visible in the spaces between them. There are no walls, only bars on either side of you that outline a winding corridor, like the bars of a large birdcage.

You continue down the hall, where the feathers and metal converge to a door. Through it is a room filled entirely with evergreen trees, each as silver as tinsel, glowing as though lit from within. Their light is a ruler that measures your shadow.

You catch glimpses of figures, here and there, flitting from tree to tree. A blonde pig-tailed girl in a muslin gown, an old man holding a pipe, wreathed with smoke. A young woman with a handkerchief soaked in blood. An adolescent with short cut hair and a soft face who is not masculne, but too boyish to be a girl. You do not catch a glimpse of the same person twice.

Beyond the line of a group of trees is a wooden door, set between two trunks, and beyond it a room of such lightlessness that you are blinded. There are no walls that you can feel, and were your feet not firmly planted on the ground you might believe that it does not exist either. It is not until the first of the stars reveal themselves that you realize you are in an open space, as vast as a desert. It is, in fact, filled with sand, soft beneath your feet, white as snow. There is no door behind you.

You follow crest after crest until you fear there is no end to this desert. Perhaps you were wrong to choose that door in the trees. Perhaps you were wrong to leave the birdcage-hall. But in the dip between two hills is a trapdoor, and beneath it, a ladder made only of playing cards.

You fear, as you descend it, that it will break, but it holds steady until you stand in a hallway lined with mirrors. They are pieces of glass, of all shapes and sizes, framed and unframed, circular and triangular and in lines and jagged mosaics. Each one is different, you realize, as you pass them. In some your boots dissappear, in other they reappear, with extra buckles or without. In one mirror there is a hat on your head, in another it is gone. In one mirror your shadow has vanished, only to reappear in the next.

In one mirror a hand is on your shoulder, but when you turn to see its owner, you find nothing.

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Art by Anonymous

The Price Of Decadence

"Life is like a box of chocolates," are some of the lady's first words to him.

The boy watches her swallow a chocolate after she speaks. She has a pleasant face. She has pleasant lips too, he notices. Carnation-pink, smiling widely.

"Oh?" he says, and takes a chocolate of his own. Hazelnut prailine. She turns the smile on him and he feels himself flush, deeply, in places he's never flushed before.

"A simple bite of the wrong one can put you off forever," she continues and licks her lips. He follows the path of her tongue across her teeth.

"And the right one?" he asks. He bites into his second chocolate. Coconut. Not his favourite, but he is hardly paying attention.

She pauses with a chocolate halfway to her mouth, lips pulled back, teeth poised to take a bite. "The right one can be worse. Addiction is a most dangerous poison." She sinks her teeth into the chocolate.

"I suppose it depends what you're addicted to." He reaches for another chocolate but a slender hand rests atop his and he pauses. There is a clash of instruments in his head, a sonata accompanying the loveliness of the face in front of him. The music dims when she leans close.

"Not that one," she says softly, pulling his hand toward another row of chocolates. She plucks one from its mold and places it in his fingers.

This one has a sweeter taste, tart like raspberries, bitter like wine, bubbly like champagne, rich like dark, dark chocolate. He tastes sunlight and shade and long nights and velvet and whispers.

She is whispering. Running her tongue across her teeth. She is close. He feels her body heat. Her face swims in and out of focus. Perhaps it is her nearness that makes the world appear as though it were on the other side of a distorted glass. Perhaps it is his vision that makes her teeth appear just a little too sharp.

The discovery of her breath on his neck arrests his thoughts.

"I am addicted to life itself," she says. Her voice is the most decadent thing he has tasted all night. His sudden sharp breath is the last thing he will taste, and the first thing she will taste of him.

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Art by Ludovic Jaqcz

Bell Minders

Now that I think about it, it all began with the bells.

Silver and tarnished, found in the back of an antique shop for less than three pounds. The shopkeeper couldn't seen to remember when they had appeared, or where she had aquired them. We asked if she had ever seen anything like them and she had shrugged and given us our receipt and wished us a good day.

We hung them first on our porch, where e suspected the wind would draw sound from them, like a musician. They looked old, like dust and forgotten things and sad stories. But they were as silent as if they lay still in the back of the antiques shop.

Soon we forgot about them, except to duck our heads and we left the house. "Mind the bell," we began to say, until the word lost all articulation. Mindthebell, it became.

Grandmother came to visit and stared at them for a long time. While I poured our tea in the kitchen she nodded toward the front of the house. "Bell like those cause trouble. Mark my words. When they start ringing, you'd better run." Grandmother said some weird things, so I nodded and promised her I would and offered her a biscuit for her tea.

I shared the superstition with a neighbour, who shared it with other neighbours, and soon a common greeting evolved. "Those bells ringing yet?" "Don't worry about the bells, they're quiet as mice."

The bells began to ring yesterday. I'm not sure I believed grandmother, but I began to run. So far I'm the only one who's got away.

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Art by Anonymous