September 2025 

First Prize

Other People's Hands by Stuart Rathe, Prenton, UK

Second Prize

All The People I Almost Loved by Jessica Merrick, Lakeland, Florida, USA

 

Third Prize

The Scarlet Slipper, by Gillian Brown, Peyriac de Mer, France

Shortlist

The Scarlet Slipper, by Gillian Brown, Peyriac de Mer, France

The Last Straw by Glyn Matthews, Congleton, UK

Other People's Hands by Stuart Rathe, Prenton, UK

FedEx Delivery by Rebecca Hurst, Bristol, UK

Death Gets Dead Miffed by Sheila Gove, Sidmouth, UK

All The People I Almost Loved by Jessica Merrick, Lakeland, Florida, USA

 

Longlist

The Woman in the Courtyard by Ali Nicholson, Wokingham, UK

The Scarlet Slipper, by Gillian Brown, Peyriac de Mer, France

The Last Straw by Glyn Matthews, Congleton, UK

The Burning by Elizabeth Gorman-Tysoe, Barnard Castle, County Durham, UK

Other People's Hands by Stuart Rathe, Prenton, UK

Jordan Falls for Carly by Richard Smith, Newcastle, Staffordshire, UK

In the Book Shop by Judith English, Wallingford, Oxon, UK

Greek Tragedy in Queens by Michael Thompson, Amble, Northumberland, UK 

FedEx Delivery by Rebecca Hurst, Bristol, UK

Death Gets Dead Miffed by Sheila Gove, Sidmouth, UK

All The People I Almost Loved by Jessica Merrick, Lakeland, Florida, USA

Other People's Hands by Stuart Rathe

My A-level art teacher, Angela, once told me how other people’s hands filled her with sadness. But this was many years ago, and now her words slip from me - nebulous and blurry. She found the hands of murderers and rapists especially poignant, I think: the placement of a thumb or the upward turn of a palm in the dock of the courtroom. You have a thumb just like mine, she might say to herself. Your palm is not to blame for your actions. Something like that, anyway.

 

A few years later, at University, I developed a brief fascination for German Expressionist cinema. There’s a hazy memory of me and my friends, watching The Hands of Orlac in an F-block bedroom. In the movie, a concert pianist loses his hands in a horrible accident. Surgeons give him a transplant, but it turns out the new hands once belonged to a serial killer. Orlac convinces himself that the murderer’s desires live on in him. As orchestral music swells, the potential energy of a kitchen knife torments him, like Macbeth’s dagger, hovering in the thick air at Dunsinane.

 

Twenty-five years on, I’m still not sure who I side with. Angela or Orlac.

 

***

 

My own hands are older now, of course. Back then, if you pinched the skin on the back of them, it sprang back instantly. But when Anton pinched the skin on the back of my hand that August two years ago, we laughed as the folds puckered and fell inelegantly back into place. Collagen and elastin. Breaking down. Ageing slowly.

 

He had the most beautiful hands I had ever seen.

 

I first touched Anton’s hand nine summers ago, on the TransPennine Express, of all places. I was travelling from Liverpool to see a play in Stratford-upon-Avon, and he was en route to an education conference in Birmingham. For a long time afterward, we called ourselves Jesse and Céline after Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy’s characters in Before Sunrise. We didn’t end up discussing life and love on the streets of Vienna, but I did miss my Moor Street connection to grab a bite at Caffè Nero. In my book, that was just as romantic.

 

The touch itself was accidental. His coffee slid across the table as the train pivoted a bend, and we both made to catch the tumbling cup. We looked at each other, laughed at the near miss, and began to chat – tentatively at first - about work, friends, family. By the time we reached Birmingham New Street, I was close to convincing him that Abba’s The Visitors was the greatest pop record of all time, and he was rhapsodising passionately on the novels of Kazuo Ishiguro.

 

***

 

I know this will strike you as odd, but five weeks ago, I began riding the London Underground every day. Each morning, I’ll grab the coat with deep pockets and step out into the London streets. At first, I’d choose a line at random and go wherever it took me, for as many stops as I felt compelled. I’m like Agnetha Fältskog in the video for The Day Before You Came – observing life’s banality with a cool, outsider’s gaze.

 

I notice hands on the Underground, too. A slim-wristed young woman's hand. A thick-knuckled older man. Once I've made my assessment, I glance furtively at their faces to check it's a match. I imagine her delicately painting in watercolours, or him with a wrench, under the bonnet of a car. It's comforting to me. Reduction. Simplification. Erasure.

 

After three months of dating, I suggested to Anton that we move in together. We were both working in London at the time, so we rented a tiny studio apartment not far from Brick Lane, and it became our home for the next five years. We were happy there. At first, glued together: kissing, laughing, fucking. Later, his arm warm in the small of my back at parties or smiling across crowded rooms. Later still, fractious moments in hallways and ropey Netflix Originals.

 

That was us, I imagine. Content. Ordinary.

 

***

 

I wasn’t telling you the whole truth before.

 

About my travels on the Underground.

 

I don’t really think I’m Agnetha Fältskog in The Day Before You Came. Mournful. Reflective. Inert.

 

I’m Debbie Harry singing One Way or Another. Three in the morning.

Determined. Steely. Dangerous.

 

***

 

Six days ago, on the Metropolitan Line, I found who I’d been searching for. Once before, I thought I’d glimpsed him on the night tube. At last, now, this was him indisputably. The five-point crown tattoo, inked between thumb and index finger on that slender thirty-something hand. Blood stiffened in my veins. My eyes moved upward from hand to wrist. From wrist to forearm. But not his face. I couldn’t look there yet. I felt deep in my pockets for the embroidery scissors instead, spreading their blades apart and running fingers along sharp edges.

 

The carriage shook with the underground’s furious song, and my resolve hardened. But it proved no match for the too-large gap between us, so try as I might, I could not reach him. He left the train at Liverpool Street, though. And that may be of use to me.

 

***

 

I think I can make the words come now.

 

Let me tell you about the night Anton left me.

 

It was two years ago, on a Friday in September. A quiet night in with takeout food. A five-minute walk to our favourite Thai restaurant, and it was Anton’s turn to make the pick-up. He shouted something to me as he left. I don’t remember what it was, or if I said anything in reply. Maybe I was in the shower or fixing myself a drink in the kitchen.

 

I didn’t realise he was about to leave me, so why treat his going as anything special?

 

Forty-five minutes passed, and I began to wonder where he was. His mobile went straight to voicemail. I called the restaurant, but they told me he’d picked up the order half an hour before. Another twenty minutes passed, and there was a knock at the door. It was two police officers, and it turned out Anton was dead.

 

In the weeks and months that followed, I dreamed I had been there to see it unfold: a careering car - brakes screeching, windshield shattering. Anton lifeless on the tarmac. The kind police officer told me it was likely quick and painless. Later, in the courtroom, I sobbed as a medical witness pronounced cold phrases like “catastrophic damage.”  

 

I was in the public gallery when Anton’s killer was sentenced. He’d argued with his girlfriend and had too many drinks. Fraught and angry, he’d sped away. Didn’t see the lights change. Didn’t spot the man on the pedestrian crossing - my Anton, with his beautiful hands.

 

Daniel Medlock’s face was a hollow blank, his eyes flat and sallow. Unreadable. So – like Angela all those years ago – I concentrated my energy on his hands in the dock; the placement of his thumb, the turn of his palm, and the delicate crown tattoo etched between thumb and forefinger. But where Angela felt empathy and pity, I felt nothing.

 

And five weeks ago today, I learnt that Daniel Medlock was a free man again.

 

***

 

Tonight, I dreamed a feverish, transcendent dream of love and death: that if two people cared deeply enough for one another, their lifeless organs could reanimate. Heart, spleen, and liver revitalised. Anton and I. Together once more.

 

At 3 a.m., I woke in a confused sweat, and with that visceral compulsion I’ve felt since his release. Grabbing my long coat, I checked its deep pockets and tore out into the raw November night. Destination Liverpool Street.

 

As I made my way through deserted streets, grainy images flowered in my mind: Orlac and the kitchen knife, orchestral music swelling. Macbeth in the bitter gloom, ghostly dagger hovering.

 

What about now?

 

Impossibly, I have found him. By providence divine, he is delivered to me on the Central line. No surging crowds. No lurching bodies. Just me and Daniel Medlock. An empty carriage on the night tube.

 

He wears a green-check shirt, slim-cut jeans, and a tired raincoat. Bent low over a book, his face dissolves into shadow.

 

A strip-light buzzes. I grip the scissors tight.

 

My mouth is thick and clumsy as I speak.

 

“Excuse me,” I manage. Unsteady and weak.

 

He looks up, and I see him for the first time since the courtroom. His face is pinched and hollow now. Cadaverous. Below too-sharp cheekbones, his pallid skin collapses into lines and furrows. His hair is buzzed short, and an untidy beard whispers about his slender jaw. His eyes are sallow still, and stony.

He holds my gaze and seems about to speak, but hesitates instead and turns away.

 

“We know each other, don’t we?” his voice is thin and halting when it comes at last. He is up slowly from his seat now, moving painfully towards me. I am the flame, and he the moth. But is it me or my anguish that beckons him?

 

As he approaches, I examine him further – my specimen: his slender frame folding in upon itself, eyes brimming – like dark, inscrutable pools. I recognise this stricken gaze. I’ve seen it in the mirror too.

 

I grip the scissors firm. Reject his pain.

 

Instead, I close my eyes and see my Anton crumpled in the street.

 

But now I hear his voice inside my head. I see you everywhere, he whispers. Everywhere I go. At least I think that’s what I hear. Perhaps he does not speak to me at all. These soft and mournful words I hear are mine, perhaps, not his. Vacillating. Yearning.

 

And so, I search for other words to spike my mind. Courtroom words. Words that stab.

 

Aortic.

 

Pulmonary.

 

Rupture.

 

With fresh resolve, I try to grasp the scissors tight. But my little hand will not comply, and fingers fumble loosely. For, under the fluorescent lights, my man is not the monster that I’ve searched for. He is, instead, a looking glass. A flickering shadow. Half defeated. Eyes desperately seeking. Hands reaching out.

 

One is on my shoulder now. The hand with the crown tattoo. The touch is light. As if I were an animal he’d scare with too-quick movements. Or he himself the animal, frightened and forsaken.

 

My body tightens - steel cold against my fingers.

 

His body trembles - arms folding me toward him.

 

He sobs and pulls me in. Says something urgent that I do not catch, head stooped and buried low. He cradles me, it seems, as I do Anton by the roadside in my dreams.

 

In fragile peace.

 

In dormant rage.

 

Deep in my pocket, the scissors vibrate with a strange, warm energy. Hands falter and slacken. I let them drop.

 

***

 

At least for the moment.

 

Nine years ago, my hands touched Anton’s with electric shivers. Now, I rattle through murky tunnels with his killer. In the underground caverns of London, my tangled mind dances. Stick or twist? it asks. And the scissors nestle in my pocket – cold steel again for now.

 

***

 

EPILOGUE

I am in my little room with its courtyard garden view.

 

I am studying the shape and contours of my hand, just like I did once on the Underground. Making up stories.

 

But I already know the story of these hands.

 

These are the hands that brushed against Anton’s on the TransPennine Express. That held his insensible body in my dreams. That reached for scissors in deep pockets. That wavered. And finally made a choice.

 

They are not the same hands as they were all those years ago. How could they be?

 

They will be calling me for dinner soon.

 

Absent-mindedly, I pinch the skin on the back of my hand and watch the folds pucker once more.

 

These hands are mine. Not Orlac’s menacing instruments, or Angela’s palms and thumbs. Not piteous. Not to be feared. They are simply hands.

Like other people's hands.

 

All The People I Almost Loved by Jessica Merrick

 

They show up sometimes, when I least expect it.

 

In checkout lines, at red lights, in the middle of folding laundry. In dreams that start off innocent but twist into something familiar and unnameable. I don’t know what brings them—maybe a song, maybe a smell—but there they are: all the people I almost loved.

 

The first was back in ninth grade English. Alphabetical seating landed me near the back by the windows. The classroom always smelled faintly of chalk dust and pencil shavings, and when the heat kicked on, a metallic tang clung to the air. His name was Anthony Gomez, all elbows and too-long hair. He sat two rows ahead and passed me a dull pencil one day when mine broke mid-test. A week later, he slid me a battered book of poems. He’d folded down the corners on half the pages and scribbled “line seventeen” in the margins with no explanation.

 

I read the poems like they were a code, searching each seventeenth line for what he might have meant. Some were sharp, some tender, some cryptic enough to make me restless. Was I supposed to see myself in the words? Or him? After winter break, his desk was empty. No explanation, just gone. They said his family moved, maybe back to Puerto Rico. I kept the book. The pages still smell like highlighter and cheap cologne, and sometimes when I’m cleaning my shelves, I pull it down just to run my finger over the worn cover.

Years later, working a summer filing job at a law office, there was a girl across from me who chewed bubble gum like it was oxygen. The sound drove our supervisor mad, but I found it hypnotic, like a metronome for the monotony of stapling and hole-punching. She wore her hair in messy buns that sagged by lunchtime and painted her nails a rotation of neon colors that chipped by the end of the week. Once, a flake of hot-pink polish landed on a stack of legal briefs, and she laughed until tears streaked her mascara.

 

We never touched, not even by accident. We just traded knowing looks when the copier jammed for the fourth time in an hour. When she laughed, the office seemed to crack open, the gray walls suddenly less suffocating. By the end of August, she was gone, her desk empty, her gum wrappers swept away. I pretended it didn’t matter, but I still catch myself leaning toward the sound of laughter in crowded rooms, hoping for that exact pitch of joy.

 

There was the man on the train who read The Bell Jar. He sat across from me, legs crossed, glasses slipping down his nose. I was twenty-two, exhausted from my first real job, riding home with aching feet and the smell of subway metal clinging to my clothes. He caught me staring at the book cover. Instead of frowning, he smiled, like he’d just solved a puzzle.

 

“Have you read it?” he asked.

 

I shook my head. My voice snagged in my throat, though I wanted to say yes, wanted to say something clever.

 

He tipped his coffee cup toward me. “Want a sip?”

 

I laughed nervously, shook my head again. Too quick.

 

He nodded like I’d confessed something important. Three stops later, he closed the book, tucked it under his arm, and stepped off. I watched him disappear into the crowd, feeling like a door had shut on a room I hadn’t even walked into yet.

 

During a blackout one summer night, my upstairs neighbor knocked with a bundle of candles and mismatched blankets. Her name was Elise, though I only learned that much later. The hallway smelled like melted wax as she handed me a taper candle already dripping down its side.

 

“Thought you could use some light,” she said.

 

We ended up on my living room floor, playing cards by flashlight. She told stories about her family in snippets—her brother’s motorcycle crash, her mother’s obsession with orchids, the boyfriend she almost married but didn’t. When the lights flickered back on hours later, she blew out the candle with a sharp breath, and we both smiled too wide, pretending it hadn’t meant anything. Three months later, a moving truck pulled up, and I never saw her again.

 

At a wedding, I met a woman who danced barefoot, her champagne glass catching the glow of the twinkle lights overhead. She told me she believed in reincarnation, that love was recycled, passed down like heirlooms. I said I didn’t believe in any of it, but when she touched my wrist mid-sentence, I wanted to. She leaned close, smelling of gardenias and sweat, and whispered, “Some people we meet again and again.”

 

I wanted her to be right. I never saw her again, but every time I walk past a hotel ballroom, I glance in, just in case.

 

Then there was the barista at the coffee shop down the street. She wore chipped black nail polish and always drew little hearts in the foam of my lattes. She learned my name before I learned hers. She asked questions that felt too big for the line between orders. “Do you think people can ever really know each other?” she asked once, sliding my drink across the counter.

 

I told her I was moving away. She just nodded, like she’d been expecting it. “Of course you are,” she said. I still don’t know if that was resignation or prophecy.

 

I didn’t love them. Not quite. But I almost did.

 

Almost-love is a ghost. It lingers in your peripheral vision, showing up in a gum wrapper, a folded book spine, the sound of someone laughing two tables over. It’s unfinished sentences and unkissed mouths. It’s a version of me that only existed in the possibility of someone else’s story.

 

They taught me things, these almosts. How to listen. How to ache without answers. How to want without asking.

 

Sometimes I imagine them all in a room together—Anthony with his folded book, the gum-chewing girl, the barefoot dancer, the barista. They’d compare notes, laugh about the way I lingered but never crossed thresholds. Maybe they’d toast to missed chances, clink glasses to all the what-ifs.

And me? I’d probably just stand in the doorway, smiling like a guest who showed up late to their own party.

 

I keep them filed in the drawers of my mind, categorized by season, by smell, by song. Some days I take them out, like postcards from a life unlived. Not to dwell, just to remind myself that I was paying attention. That my heart was practicing, even when I wasn’t ready to commit.

 

Almost-love isn’t failure. It’s a draft. A rehearsal. Proof that sometimes the act of leaning in—even halfway—is worth something.

 

And maybe—just maybe—the practice was the point all along.

 

 

The Scarlet Slipper by Gillian Brown

 

When I first catch sight of The Scarlet Slipper, I wonder if I have the wrong address. I’ve never visited a brothel before, but its rose-coloured shutters and matching tin roof make it look more like a place to sip tea and eat cake, rather than…you know what. But once inside, everything turns to scarlet. In theme as well as colour.

 

The madam who owns the place asks nothing about my past or why I want a job. She has a chat to check me out, to see if I’m trustworthy, I guess. Once satisfied, she hands out advice and practical details. “Set your own limits,” she says. “I take half the basic hour’s fee from you. Any extras that you arrange with your clients are yours.” She seems kind and fair, as if she understands the trauma I’m going through. “We’ll call you Lisa. Okay?”

 

None of it is okay, but I have researched every other job option. Time is running out for me on the legal front, and this pays best. I have no choice. And a different name helps hide my shame. My alter-ego is born.

 

On my first night, the other girls act friendly. “How’s it going?” No-one asks more. They all seem normal young women. Like me. Seen on the street, nobody would guess our guilty secret.

 

Besides, in Kalgoorlie, anything goes. People don’t ask questions. Everyone comes to this outback West Australian town because of the gold. Desperate men have one highly-paid solution – mining. Desperate women – another. It may be the emancipated ’80s, but little has changed here since gold was discovered, almost a century ago. Except for the size of the rewards.

 

I slip into the dress Madam provides. More like a G-string with shoulder straps. As instructed, I make my way to what are called ‘the starting stalls’. These are the rooms lined up behind the now-open pink shutters I saw earlier. I am to meet and greet potential customers here to tempt them inside.  

 

“Reinvent yourself,” is Madam’s advice. “Leave the real you, Sarah, at home. Neither think nor feel. Act if you have to. Just get the job done.” I step awkwardly into Lisa’s skin and summon a sexy smile, practising in front of the mirror, shaking like a frightened bandicoot. You are now Lisa, I tell myself, finding it hard to like her. Sarah is on hold until I have proof of sufficient funds to support my Court Appeal. I contrive a pose – head tilted, hand on hip – and wait. My lips quiver. My heart thumps. I concentrate on why I’m doing this and grit my teeth.

 

A young miner chooses me. I lead him to my room, a shadowy affair decorated in fifty shades of red, with lighting to match. As I force an inviting smile, I squirm inside. They say the first time is the worst.

 

Men come. Men go. Most are polite, some shy and pitifully young, as if who they really need is their mother. Some I suspect are men of the law. How else could Madam keep them on her side? I can always spot a cop. My uncle is one. Others are rough, often a bit drunk, but at the slightest aggression I can ring Madam’s bell and she throws them out. No refunds given. She demands respect for her women. Word travels fast amongst these gold miners. Although some are earning money they’ve never dreamed of, it may be they are as needy as me and can’t afford to throw it away. They soon learn the rules.

 

“Lisa?” A newly-met client walks in, awkwardly twirling his Akubra hat in his hands. There’s something about him. Whoa, I remind myself. The constant refrain rings loudly in my head, ‘You are Lisa, not Sarah.’

 

I quickly slip back into professional mode. “That’s me.” I smile, giving the bed a welcoming pat. “Come over here.”

 

The young man sits down but doesn’t attempt to touch me. His eyes are piercing yet gentle, his hair dark and thick.

 

“Did Madam explain?” I say. “We can agree any extras between ourselves.”

 

He nods and I give him a suggestive look. It falls like a brick to the floor. I detect a slight reddening in his cheeks.

 

He digs in his pocket and hands me $100.

 

I steal a deep breath. “So…what would you like?” I rattle off a list of possibilities, all of which make me shudder. As Lisa I can perform them. Needs must. I’m desperate after all.

 

He holds up a hand. “I just want to talk.”

 

Instead of feeling a sense of relief, or even being taken aback, my interest grows. I find myself looking closer at his hands. They are broad and strong-looking, but his ring finger is bare.

 

“Is that okay?” he says.

 

There is a musky smell to him. More natural than chemical. Enticing. I bring myself back to business. This is not a date. “Of course.”

 

He looks me straight in the eye. “What brought you here?” 

 

His blunt words send an image flashing before me. A sharp pain crosses my chest. I swallow hard. “Madam has forbidden us to mention our private lives, for our own protection.” He bites his lip, clearly disappointed. I hasten to reassure him. “But we can talk about you or any other topic.”

 

We discuss many things, but never anything about him. Strange. Not even his name. It is not my job to ask. We discover common interest in several subjects, starting with this town’s history, before moving on to anthropology. We both have a passion for the night sky – thus astronomy. Somehow, this leads to photography. Then modern art. And so on. I forget where I am and why I’m here. Time streaks by.

 

After an hour, he hands me another $100 bill, jerking me back to reality. I take it. I need the cash. We talk on, hour after hour. Like soul mates. I never mention my past life or why I’m here. I sense questions on the tip of his tongue, but he doesn’t ask again.

 

He leaves as dawn peeps through my window, and I’m several hundred dollars richer. I wonder if he will come back.

 

He returns that night and every night after that. Every night we talk. Nothing more. He pays. I accept. But being Lisa is becoming more and more difficult. Sarah is jumping up and down inside me, clamouring to break out. Madam’s words clang in my ears: ‘Never get emotionally involved.’

 

One night, he doesn’t come and I feel physically sick. Nor does he come the next night. Nor the one after. Other men come and go. I try to hide my distaste. “What’s going on, Lisa?” Madam asks. “I’ve had some complaints.”

 

I’ve lost my sexy smile. My embraces are stiff and workmanlike. Any man could tell that Lisa has lost her touch. “I’m not well,” I say. “I need some nights off.”

 

She frowns, as if she guesses I am lying. “All right. But only two.’ She needs the money as well.

 

It’s no good. Being alone in my room, my thoughts return to what I’ve left behind. My heart twists and writhes in pain. At least this hateful work blocks it out. On the second night, I resume my duties. Sarah, my real self, needs money to sort out her problems. The quicker I roll in the dollars the better. Falling for that stranger was a mistake. I must forget him. I need to work. Put my armour back on again. Remember why I’m here.

 

Before the customers arrive, Madam hands me an envelope. “A letter came for you.”

 

“But no-one knows I’m here.” Thank God! It’s a secret I’ll keep for the rest of my life.

 

She shrugs and wanders off.

 

A sudden hope swells inside me – far too big for its boots. My heart skips several beats. Of course, I’m dreaming. Still, I rush to my room and close the door, clutching the letter tight.

 

Lisa is beautifully handwritten on the envelope. Below: c/o The Scarlet Slipper, and the correct address. But when I tear it open, I’m in for a shock. Dear Sarah, it begins. My hopes shatter. It cannot be him. He doesn’t know my real name. I read on: First, the truth about your so-called client who only wanted to talk. My name is Brian and I work for the Social Services and Child Welfare Department. I gasp. They traced you to Kalgoorlie and gave me your photograph. I was sent undercover to find you and evaluate your intentions. Where I found you was a last resort... The words blur.

 

A burst of anger tears up my throat. I crunch the letter into a ball and throw it at the wall.

 

I work with a strange intensity that night as if my life depends upon it. Or perhaps to obliterate my real emotions. But they rage on.

 

Later, I flatten the page of the letter out on the bed and read the rest: The first time I saw you, I wished I were someone else. I wanted to confess. It was Sarah I came to see, the single mother with a child in social care. Not Lisa. My boss kept pestering me for my findings. I invented excuses not to return to Perth, keeping the details to myself. Finally, I had no choice.

 

My breath comes in spasms. My hands shake. Half desperate to know the outcome, and half not, I read on: I have completed your case report. In my own words: ‘She is earning good money in the hospitality industry. She is capable, caring, and now financially able to support her daughter.’ Written proof from you of sufficient funds to care for your child should guarantee her return.

 

If you can ever forgive me, please call me at my home number below.