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| Author: |
Emily McPhillips interviews herself |
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Q: Who are you?
A: Emily Louise McPhillips.
Q: Nicknames?
A: Emmy Squirrel, Electro Magnetic Pulse, Emails. Many words beginning with E.
Q: Your favourite books?
A: Far From the Madding Crowd. I love Thomas Hardy. Bathsheba Everdene is a favourite heroine of mine, her faults make her very likeable, so much so that I want to open up my own cafe eventually and call it Bathsheba's; you must come! And books by Tove Jansson too - they're so wonderfully lovely.
Q: Your most embarrassing celebrity crush?
A: I'm not too embarrassed about it, but I did used to have a major thing for Angus Deayton, a little bit odd for a 13 year old girl though.
Q: Plans for the rest of 2007?
A: I desperately want to learn Ballroom Dancing, oh and take some Spanish lessons too, oh and writing, more writing.
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| Submission Date: |
| 10 Oct 2007 |
Category: |
Short story
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In Podcast and Chap-book
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freddie and anika
You don’t want to go to the ice rink, Anika had her fingers sliced off and they stuck to the ice and then Freddie came over and licked the blood up like jam from a doughnut. The medics had to cut his tongue out with a surgical knife. He signs fuck you to the kids that push him around. He has been Anika’s boyfriend for two weeks; he was round at her house when her dad caught him looking up her skirt. Freddie got kicked out and landed in a mud puddle, his arse sogging wet.
Under the billows of Anika’s skirt he watched the pleats softly sway with her nervous contractions and her protestations at his being there. He savoured each eye full; the soft fabric framing his chubby twelve year old face. He rubbed at the sensation between his legs.
He kicks stones on his walk home, kicks them at the chained up bicycles by the canal and hears them plop as they hit the water. Sometimes he watches them sink, but it is hard when the water is so murky. He thinks about the body of a thirty six year old man that was fished out of there two years before; he wonders if it was hauled up like a fisherman’s bounty of cod, and then he gets hungry and heads towards the chippy.
Freddie unwraps the parcel of fish and chips and remembers being about five years old and playing Pass the Parcel and never being lucky. He shovels food into his mouth like a necessity, letting it bypass his stump of a tongue then awkwardly directing it towards his throat where it slowly travels down and is digested. He sucks at his salty fingers and he compresses the newspaper wrapping into a ball and slam dunks it into a bin a few steps away from him.
Anika is crouched beside her bed and is feeling the heat of her father’s back-hand slaps against her calves. She bites into her mattress and runs her tongue against its alien texture. She imagines what it would be like to kiss with Freddie, her tongue winding its way to find what is left of his. Her father leaves the room and she stays where she is, beside the bed; gently swaying her hips back and forth.
She hears the television set switch on and hears its droll noise creep from the living room, creeping upstairs. Her door is closed but it still filters in. She makes her way to the window and stares out to the canal and all the buildings built up around it. She wonders what this view might look like without all these buildings and without all they hide inside. She lights up a fag and doesn’t inhale because she doesn’t really know how, and she can barely hold the fag straight because her fingers don’t take orders well anymore.
Freddie walks over to the ice rink and he sits on the wall outside. There is a constant humming coming from the inside of the building, from the coolers or some sort of machinery; it makes the silence feel human, like pleasant conversation made to break an insufferable silence.
Anika washes before she goes to bed, splashing cold water on her face because she read that it is good for her pores. She clambers into bed and her phone beeps as she receives a message; it is from Freddie, he wishes he was under her skirt admiring her with more intricate detail. She touches herself and lets him know what she is doing. He lets his hand reach down into his pants and he tugs away.
The television can still be heard downstairs and the hum of the ice rink persists.
Anika draws open her curtains in the morning and notices the green verges by the canal and a clutch of buttercups by the bike stands, her eyes skimming over the built up blocks of flats.
Freddie fell asleep in the doorway of the ice rink, nobody has called to see where he is, and he carries on sleeping there until he gets moved along by the employees of the ice rink. He tries to stick his tongue out at them and they laugh, and he laughs too, then he saunters off on his way to school.
They meet up at break time and share a toilet cubicle together, directing each other’s hands under their school uniforms. His hands under the elastic waist of her rolled up skirt, her hands under the loosened fly of his charcoal trousers. They leave the cubicle each time with guilt.
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