The chair on the flat roof has created an indent on the melting tarmac during the heatwave. The chair is sinking. I sit on the chair and read most weekday evenings. We are sinking: me, the book, the chair. We sit and watch the foaming London sunset; tiny blotted clouds in a row like the imprint of beach toes.

I have taken to sucking frozen skittles after work in my dressing gown. My favourite skittles are the red and purple ones. They dye my tongue acid plum. I stick it out in the mirror afterwards and growl from my throat until it burns.

I’m seeing him this weekend, Bobs, to tell him I’m leaving and thanks for the couple of months where not much happened except having to budget for Canesten Duo. It has been a consistent itch, creeping like an electric car. 

I have to tell my landlord Old Brian and his epileptic cat Marvin I’m leaving too. He boils his dentures like eggs, clean hard. It’s been cheap rent. I just have to sit and have a chat with him most evenings and feed them both. Boil his vegetables then roast them until crispy. Over season with Oregano. I cook mistakes well.

I’m leaving for the Arctic Circle, to join an initiative called Coolag. Sounds like gulag, but it’s not a gulag. It’s Coolag. I came across it on a podcast about alternative living and have been liaising with them ever since. We have agreed I will be a volunteer for six months on their outreach programme. I told work as soon as I could. They gave me a goodbye card signed by everyone including the wifi installer. I’ve barely told anyone otherwise.

Susie introduces me to her new boyfriend as soon as I arrive at her birthday games night. I ask for his name. She says it doesn’t matter. I was expecting white wine and half-hearted Monopoly but it’s pills and noun inclusive Scrabble. No one is playing. I talk to some men who explain marathon running to me. I tell them I run too. They smile cautiously. 

I realise I’m sweating through this cheap satin dress, dark green patches flooding beneath my armpits. I keep my arms crossed and slide past a limp echo I kissed several years ago after we shared a chapati and cab home. I hear a choir behind me discuss their ADHD tendencies with Susie who keeps trying to interject about her PhD in Venetian Antiquity.

I’m caught by Monika who reassures herself to me she is only friends with her ex, who is here–she points him out–and says he’s still her biggest cheerleader. The break-up was very amicable, she tells me, still pointing at him. Her finger is long and shaking with cigarette ash caught on the nail. I look at her feet and realise I do not like her sandals and prefer the look of her ex-boyfriend over by the bookshelf. 

I watch Lee, an old friend, spit at a crow from the open window, rolling a cigarette, solo. I text Susie I have an incoming migraine and scoot within the hour. I don’t tell her I’m leaving for the Arctic Circle, she’ll tell everyone. Lee sees me out and tells me to take care of myself. 

Bobs texts me when I get home. I don’t look and mash up Marvin’s epilepsy medication in his food. I still don’t look and google ‘sensitive eye cream’ while watching a documentary about a Mormon murderer who wanks to birdsong. Old Brian is in bed. Bobs texts me again. I look. He announces proudly in caps he is at a LATE NIGHT COMMUNITY SAUNA SOUND BATH. He sends me a picture of his sweaty nipple. It is at first underwhelming, but then I get angry. The male nipple, as a communicative gesture, feels lazy. I don’t reply. I realise I forgot to give Marvin his food, he is pounding the de-humidifier with his head. I give Marvin his food. His left eye twitches. He is pleased. I twiddle his whiskers before giving him a kiss on the belly and head up to bed. Bobs sends the alternate nipple, just as sweaty. I wake up on Sunday realising Bobs has no talent for anything. 

The underground map peels off the tube like a badly kept secret, a creeper in the heat. I am on my way to tell Bobs I’m leaving. He is sitting outside the church in his linen two piece. Hey Bobs, I say, looking swell, before I go into my prepared speech. 

He takes it well. He asks why such a drastic change, and I tell him the truth; I’m finding it difficult to care anymore, and it’s getting too hot. He tells me I’m running away from a new stage of my life and to embrace possible childlessness but that’s not for him to say, he says. Well you just said it Bobs, I reply. We leave it amicably, and I realise I’ll miss his despondent face snoring intermittently on my pillow most weekends. I remind myself he is a man, not a pet. I remind myself I cannot stand his mates or his Massive Attack tribute band and feel a little better. 

Two days later. Tromsø, Norway. 3.34pm. 

The plane landed four hours after it was expected to. We were delayed in Oslo due to consistent westerly winds. I feel excited, I am excited. I am told there is no black ice this early in the year but to expect a sheath of frost once I depart the plane. The Coolag only allows you to bring one large suitcase to keep space equal and shared. Old Brian let me keep things in his attic, in case I ever wanted to return. He will not replace me just yet, although I reassured him I was seriously committing to what is in store for me here. 

I text Lee I have landed. 

The airport is sparse. Only twenty of us were on the flight north. I was told I would be met by a woman called Jeanette and it would be easy to spot her. I go to the single toilet by the arrivals desk and wet my face. Water droplets stick to my hairline, and I count them like stars. 

I leave the toilet and spot what must be Jeanette. She is in her fifties I assume, and clings to a cardboard sign with my name written on, held between bitten nails painted a shimmering turquoise.

I take a breath. I approach her with my arms out. 

She is wearing a papier-mâché style shark fin attached to her back. As I get closer, a t-shirt saying ‘Live, Love, Penguins’.

There is a papier-mâché shark fin on her back. 

“Well hey my little DeeRoo!” Jeanette says very loudly towards me with a distinct mid-American twang, “aren’t you just the sweetest thing to fly north of the Hebrides!” 

“Hey, I say, “you must be Jeanette I assume!”

“Absolutely lemon cutie! The van is parked outside, lets hustle motherfucking hustler and get some fish soup down your throat.”

“Nice. You like penguins?” I ask, nodding to her t-shirt.

“Oh we’re more like them than the monkeys really,” Jeanette says, “all we want is our tribe to keep us warm.”

As soon as the van’s engine is clicked into gear Stevie Nicks warbles from the tinny sound system. It is a van that can seat ten, but it’s just me and Jeanette. I sit behind her as she swoops the vehicle out of the airport car park, clipping the pavement curb as she passes the bus stop. She lets me know that they’ve been so excited to have a new volunteer and the Patron is pleased. I ask who the Patron is, and she says that is how they refer to Jerry, the founder of Coolag. 

“He is our Patron fresh dumpling,” she says, turning to wink at me. 

“Ah of course, I’ve emailed with Jerry,” I tell her. 

“Patron, honey, Patron,” she reminds me, clicking to the bridge of Silver Springs.

I should be staring at the tundra of wild green ferns tenderly clasping the first frost as we drive further from Tromsø and into the mountain plains, but I can’t stop staring at the homemade papier-mâché shark fin Jeanette removed from herself when we got into the van. It sits across the aisle from me. It is haggard, painted a grey blue. I want to ask her about the outfit addition but don’t know if I should already be aware of the reason she was wearing it. I shouldn’t be bothered by the shark fin, but I am. I am really bothered by it. She hasn’t referred to it at all, it’s just there, like an anonymous urn. It has two straps attached to the top and bottom so she wears it like a backpack. They have been re-stapled on, many times.

The wind circles the trees. The seasons can’t decide what is next. It is shockingly cooler, and my skin feels like it can breathe again. We turn into a driveway leading up to a concrete block. There are no gates, just a long thin track with a string of fir trees to the right. There are windows, puckered with tape and shimmering foil. I think of Marvin and how he would react to the unpredictability of light here. There is a woman at a glass door. As we get closer, I realise. 

I realise as she turns round to keep her foot in the door. Another one. She too, is wearing a shark fin, backpacked, just like Jeanette. Disembarking the van Jeanette puts hers back on. She introduces me to the woman, Charly, a little bit younger than her. They welcome me, and escort me with their papier-mâché shark fins along a bare, white corridor. It is sterile except for the butter yellow laminate floor. Jeanette sees me look at it, and tells me it’s their very own yellow brick road.

“No place like home now,” she says.

I can’t see anyone else. I notice Charly’s shark fin is pink. It is white and pink, striped. She has a rose pin badge attached to one of the straps. 

A man comes out to greet me from a door on the left with a sign above saying ‘Mountains Roam’. He bends beneath the door frame. 

He bends not because he is too tall, but because he too has a shark fin, but he wears it upright. His shark fin is a hat. A papier-mâché shark fin attached to his head with a strap that goes beneath the chin. It is bright blue. 

This is Jerry. 

Fuck, this is Jerry. 

I recognise his face from searching him online. He went to Stanford in the US but is Danish by birth. He left data mining for the thing on his head. I can’t smile because I’ll cry. He has an earring on his right ear that wasn’t in the online photo. He is older than I thought. His face is weather worn but still earthy handsome. I can’t smile at him. I can’t speak. Charly’s nostrils start to flare and she goes red. She stokes her stomach with a flat palm.

“So my pony ride junkie,” Jeanette begins, “this is our Patron! He’ll teach you everything you need to know about what we do here at Coolag heights! Patron, this is the very lovely Dorothy!”

“Patron so good to see you before the solstice rings,” Charly says, quickly whispering through her lisp, bending a knee to attribute a subtle bow. 

“Welcome, Dee,” Jerry says with intensity, holding out a hand covered in Sanskrit type. There is another tattoo on his forearm. Surrender, it reads. 

I cannot smile at him. 

---

Lucy will be reading at the minor incident Berlin weekender on the 16th-17th of October. Details here.

Lucy A. Kulwieć is a writer from London, UK. She has been shortlisted for the Scratch Books A4 Short Story Competition 2026, Longlisted for the Desperate Literature Prize 2026 and for the Myslexia Short Story Award 2025. Her short story Solar Blue was one of two chosen by Press 11:11 for their inaugural series Nothing Exists Alone, seeking to explore fresh perspectives on climate change.