The Haar

by David Sodergren

So aye, it’s fair to say it took more than a little blood to turn Muriel McAuley’s cast-iron stomach. In fact, the only thing Muriel couldn’t abide — that really, truly nauseated her — were stuck-up wee arseholes in suits telling her what to do.

“My cock!” he shouted. “My fucking cock!” As last words went, they may not have been profound, but they were certainly appropriate.

There is a God, thought Aaron, and then the creature yanked hard on his skin and turned him inside out like a revolting fleshy pillowcase.

Billy swam towards her, layering his slick body over her chest and shoulders in an approximation of a hug. Muriel closed her eyes and thought of Patrick Grant’s smug face, of his son Conor kicking her to the ground, of the woman with the perfect teeth… She thought of them all, and she smiled. “I don’t fear death,” she said. “But they do.”

He was rich, and she was poor, and that was all that mattered. The wealthy can get away with anything. Murder, even.

Muriel lifted the woman’s severed head by the matted hair, the mouth locked in a grisly snarl, eyes bloodshot and terrified. It was surprisingly heavy, but then, it had been many years since Muriel had held a decapitated head.

“If you love someone, tell them. Tell them every day. Never let them forget. And if they go away for a while, never forget them. They can come back, Jack. They can come back.”

At the time, it hadn’t seemed particularly significant. But that was always the way with life-changing moments, wasn’t it?

know it would make her immensely proud to think that people from all across the world had read her words, and so I present to you, dear reader, the life of Constance Sclater Jamieson. I’m just sorry it had to appear alongside a story in which a boy’s penis is dissolved by a sea monster.