I begin tunnelling, through rock, clay and gravel, cutting through the streets of London. A link from the King to his Knights of St. John. Covered over with arches of bricks. Down the line two dummy house fronts act as camouflage. Engines grind through the bowels of commerce, rattle homes, disturb lives. Yesterday travel around…
The gnawing started as soon as night fell; incisors clicking, toes scurrying over both the dead and live bodies. The rats feasted. There wasn’t much you could do about it. The living had nowhere to escape to anyway. Their living quarters were awash with mud, corpses and spent bullet cases. There was no colour anywhere….
The warm breeze plays xylophone along his exposed ribcage. He stretches, finally able to roll his back in one long motion, sinuous without sinew, the vertebrae clicking to the tip of his tail. Ahead, the neon glow of the tube station and London’s boulevards beckon. Behind, the grand Victorian façade of the museum he has…
One by one, my ravens come. Their blackened talons scrape a shiver of anticipation up my ancient spine. Trapped down here, they are my eyes. I gave them human skin. I had only the power to create a thin illusion. A closer look would reveal a flash of black beak and oily feather. But the…
The elegant tap of her designer pumps brightens the sound of the working morning. One hand clasps a sleek umbrella and the other, a piping hot coffee. The blonde bob resting on her shoulders bounces with every graceful step and her plump red lips smile at her admirers. She is something out of an advertisement,…
London Bridge isn’t falling down yet. It’s a prime piece of real estate that I’ve recently acquired – with full rights. There’s an old tale about an American buying the edifice believing it was that Victorian mechanical wonder Tower Bridge and then being disappointed that his shipped-out structure didn’t do any tricks. No, I’ve bought…
The north end of the Piccadilly line sounds so bucolic – Wood Green, followed in short succession by Bounds Green, Arnos Grove, Oakwood. So perhaps it was just a transformation waiting to happen. A surreal end to a no-longer-normal working day. I blame the international flights at the other end of the line – something…
I, Hardy in name, hardy in nature, a proud political reformer, servant to working men, craftsmen, stumble through London. A waft of diseased mud from low tide tries to hold onto me with afflicting memories, my lost progeny, six lost tots. I fly along Watling Street, up Ludgate Hill, drunk with hope. I, the shoemaker,…
You turn my key; a rough edge scrapes my mother-of-pearl escutcheon. You run your index finger over the small abrasion. The spoon slips into the dark curled leaves, wrinkled and dry with the faint aroma of bergamot. They will not come alive without the scalding water from the kettle. It hums and purrs, poised to…
We stopped for coffee and discussed our purchases: shoes, dresses, tops, frilly knickers. ‘Perfect,’ we told each other, sipping our lattes. ‘You’ll look terrific in it,’ we said. We had been saying these things for decades. Sometimes they were even true. Traffic whizzed round Marble Arch, with its towering sculpture of the horse’s head, chopped…
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Text & stories © Joanna Sterling
Stories © various authors
Editing by Joanna Sterling & Alyson Faye
Audio by Menna Bonsels
Brooch photography by Mark Colliton
Website by Brighton WEBtech