GALLEY BEGGAR PRESS SHORT STORY PRIZE 2025/26

ANNIE HAYTER

 ‘A Devil’s Alphabet’

ONE OF THE MONKS IS PREGNANT AGAIN. Brother C came to tell me as I was ringing the dawning bell. That sickness is upon us once more. We must search the beds and put an end to this pestilence of babies. How this one got in I do not know. But it must have crept its way through the gate, snuck into his belly without warning. It is his burden to carry now, till the time of bleeding water comes.

*

Brother M is big now, and that belly is a swollen horrid thing. I do not like to look on it. A sow would be envious. The baby will arrive soon. There are three more squalling in the barn. Brother A tasked me to attend to their morning feed. They are not even ugly, so it is hard to be unkind to them, little parasites. Big eyes and wide mouths, but always crying, crying, till you feed them dripped milk, or sing a slow song. I cannot think that I was so small once. I could fit one of their tiny heads into my whole hand. A miracle that we transform from so little into so long over years of growing.

*

That rude fox got into the hen house again and the last chicken is dead. No eggs and no meat to hope for in this heat. Only Pig is left, and his place is on the table in the end. I am so hungry I could eat one of the babies, though they are all so sweet-looking, I fear the flesh would taste bitter in my mouth. When I feel very bad, I go over the stream, quickly to the oak tree, behind the baby-barn at the end of the field and hit it twenty times. We are usually both quite battered by the end – the trunk and my hands – but it is better to get the devil out of me before he sinks his claws into my stomach.

* 

At the weekly pleasure, I do not eat the mushrooms with the rest. Brother A is displeased by the look on my face. He can tell I am possessed with wickedness, that I will pollute the ritual. He gestures with his birch rod. All the monks point at me, the foul glint in my eye, like I am one of the last animals. As they open my jaw, I cannot help but chew.

*

When they put me at the bottom of the dry well and take the ladder away, I discover it is echoey. Though I should be reflecting on my foulness, and it is terribly stoney, the sound is delicious.

I sing to myself like I do to the babies when they are sad. I do not often get so long to myself alone, so I resolve to practise my wicked face so I can return to the well again.

*

The salt must be thrown carefully, speckled in a line around the rim of our land to protect us from babies. None for a while now, with their hungry eyes and shaking fists, trying to steal what is ours. We are thorough in our nightly watch. Brother F is the best at chasing them away. Still. I feel dizzy in the dirt after the salting. They check my body for babies, but there is nothing, only the usual blood. They carry me on their shoulders to the sleeping house. I lie as everything shimmers around me, floating into the sky on a bed of hands.

* 

Back in the well again after stealing an apple off the tree for Brother M, who was weeping with the weight of baby-belly in the fields. It is hard to see him so worn. I hope Brother M did eat some of it, because I fell getting off at the final rung and clonked my head sorely. Noone responded to my wailings. There will be no sweet mouthfuls for me. I am already feeling signs of an eggy lump.

*

The well is dark, but I am not alone. I have conversations with myself in different voices. Say, aren’t you nice, Brother O,or isn’t your singing voice sweeting, as if a bird fell out the sky. I run out of my words. Sometimes, I am not kind to myself. But the world is not kind either.

*

In the orchard, fresh fruit grows on dead trees – babies, sprouting from the branches, then falling before me, with greedy looks and sharp teeth, and my belly is bulging round, and the babies are coming now, their mouths are gaping and—

*

Awakened by a hard slap hitting my stomach. This is a blessing, for I hate the mushroom fever. When I scrabble around and feel the half-chomped apple, it seems miraculous. I do not know which brother blessed me today, but I relish every bite, damp and crunchity. I spit out only the pips for their poison and rejoice if I hit the wall across. So it is not so terrible in thiswell, except for the smell of stale old shit down here, worse than Pig’s pen, and he rolls in it. Brothers don’t think to bring their dried deposits out and up the ladder when they leave. Now I am stuck with it for company.

*

I hate it worst when the devil comes creeping through the bed rows at night. It splits me in two. I writhe and bite, but it makes no difference to the devil. Even if I put wild garlic there, or other foul-smelling things. Even if I piss. Still. I wake to damp. I cannot scream out for the brothers, or they will think me rotten. I hold my tongue between thumb and finger, stop it chattering.

*

Brother A said I have shown my goodness this week, and I am old enough now, so I deserve to join the ritual. On the altar, Brother K cuts my eyelashes and shaves my brows, skull and limbs. I am blank before God. Like the rest. Apart from the babies, that is. They are too little, and we don’t have snippers small enough for them. I have to bite their fingernails. When we are all clean, we go to the low ground and dig a plot especially for me, ten feet deep. I will be ready when The After comes.

*

Older brothers have said the well once flowed. When the rain stopped coming in summer, the barrels went empty. We rely on the trickling stream. Our throats are gnarled things. But we have water to drink at night. And our land is green, not like the outside, where devils roam the island. We have everything we need. But the devils would take this from us.

*

When I tell Brother A about the devil visiting me again, he takes me to Pig’s pen. He explains that we all have our trials. I must prove my goodness by enduring these tests.

But, I beg him, I have truly tried.

Then he used many words to explain, perhaps a week’s worth. At first, I did not understand. But I have turned them over to myself, whilst reaping the harvest and feeding the babies. And I am sure that he said this.

To deny a devil is to deny yourself. Even devils must have their pleasure sometimes.

I did not remember this knowledge from The Before. I thought devils were to be avoided at all costs. Pig was surprised too, for he looked up sharply from the trough.

You do well to be a sacrifice for this flock. He smiled. Do not share this burden with anyone.

I tried to meet his grin, but it was tight on my lips. A stone face. Then he took my wrist for a while and traced a circle on the clean underside.

An O is an infinite round. He told me. Brother O, be a lemniscate, an endless cycle, consistent as the sun waking and dying every day for our sins.

I do not think I am noble as the sun. I shall regard it with more respect in the morning.

*

Brother M gives birth in the barn at dawn. The screaming is death. His birth was the loudest I have heard, louder eventhan mine. None of us could sleep, so we huddled around him and sang slowly, using up all our words, hoping the babywould come out easily this time, but there was such blood, we couldn’t stop it up, not even Brother A. There are two more babies now, and no more Brother M.

*

A fine meaty stew for the meal, though my extra heaping tastes bitter to my mouth. A struggle not to vomit it up again, but then his sacrifice would be for nothing. I think of the babies, and swallow.

*

Not enough letters left, so one of the babies will have to go. They told me I must choose by the end of the week, but it islike cutting off a limb. I close my eyes, spin and then point, but when I open my lids, the babies are smiling, smiling at me,and I haven’t the throat to tell them what will happen. I know them by their ears.

* 

Can’t quite imagine which one came out of my belly. I remember the squalling, but not the face. They are all mine now, to feed and sing to. All they know is my milk, divided sorely between them. Perhaps I must offer myself instead. But would the babies do without me? I remember when we removed Brother D’s right foot with the hacksaw, after he ranaway, then came back begging at the gate. The outside is a sad land. But he is old. Not fast like me. I am practised from going mushrooming over the fields, from mowing down our paltry crops with the scythe, even when my belly was enormous. Brother D didn’t eat with us that night.

*

I steal the pair of scissors from the kitchen. Brother W will not check the tools until counting tomorrow. Fold them into my robe quickly, in case the devil comes for me again tonight.

* 

When I feel the shadow approaching, I hold the scissors tightly at my low place. As the devil breathes over me, I attack, I grasp the thing ahead of me and S N I P  with the force of my fingers, I rend this flesh and pull, tearing something off, and the devil shoves me down with a lowing sound and skids away, trailing nastiness. There is red on my fingers and a lump of wet flesh in the morning. Devils are perhaps not so different to men. I bury it with the dirty things, in the pit by the baby-barn, and hope that it will not spring to life again, horned and clutching. The scissors I return for the count.

*

Brother A was taken unwell and is swaddled. He was attacked by the same devil as me in the dark and suffered a death-wound so vile, it is unspeakable. Only the strength of his holiness let him survive it. Brother A said only Brother B is allowed to nurse him, for B is second purest. Brother B is quite shining with this new purity. I never noticed him to be so pure. The sound of him slurping gruel of an evening does not incline me to the thought.

* 

Brother J died unexpectedly in the night. He was very old, at least forty. I am sorry he is dead, because he was best at preparing gruel, and made the mixture sing better with the same stale ingredients. I asked what he did to make it so delicious, but he just winked. At least I do not have get rid of one of the babies. The new Brother J has the sweetest hairy head. A shame to shave it when he is grown.

*

Brother A is better healed. He calls a summoning. We kneel in the order of our tongues and put the masks of joy on. He asks if one of us is the devil, hiding in a stolen human skin. He demands the devil show his face. We are all begging for forgiveness after his birch rod takes flight. I wonder if I am a devil after all.

*

Squatting to wipe the blood off me in the unclean place, behind the barn, when I see two dark eyes looking through the outer gate.

Help me, my love, calls a gentle voice.

It was not like any devil I have seen before, not anything like the night visitor, and far too big for a baby. But how can the devil love me? Better to offer its hate. I drop my cloth in the dirty pile and turn away.

*

The eyes were at the gate again. Begged me for food, with many loving words. A beautiful thing, with dark curling hair and a gaze undeniably bold. Arms bare as stars, and a leathery robe that shows a swollen chest like mine. I hurled an apple-half through the bars; one I had hidden in my robe, then ran before I could be enthralled.

I have not told Brother A. Any further associations with probable devils and I will be done for.

*

As I was weeding the fields, it crawled through the hole of my mind again, to remind me of hips and soft mouth andelbows covered in darling hair. I worked hardily to sweat the longing out of my body. Wrested the plants from the soil,quicker even than Brother H who is a proper donkey with the plough. It unfurls inside me, the devil’s love. Perhaps I am a devil after all.

*

At the gate, it is dragging its leg behind and has a great scar across the face. Still so shining of eyes, though, I nearly weep to see it so wounded. I wonder what scathing ritual it has survived outside, on the island of devils. It asks me my name, but I cannot speak. It murmurs other things, then, strange things about the outside, about crossing a great dried-up seaand a plague of the dying and rumours about a green place where streams run and people grow big again – and I stop up my ears, lest I be tainted by these words. Still. They crawl slippery down my throat, then humming up and out, till I must smother my mouth.

*

I cannot help but return. A nightly ritual to slip part of my meal into a sleeve, to share later. Perhaps it comes only for the food I bring. Yet, it always leaves, when I ask. Knows not to tempt me with words again. Never tries to touch me. Never begs to be let in.

* 

We have met many times now. And somehow, words pour out of me: the night visits, the battering tree, our hungry alphabet. Many words more than I am allowed, when I should be singing to the babies. But it listens to me, nodding carefully. Pushes something through the bars to me. A small grey knife, carried across the sea.

Scratch the night devil with your letter, somewhere visible, it says softly. If he’s among your brothers, you'll know him.

*

When the devil comes for me this night, the knife is in my hand. As it thuds atop me, I stab the blade right in its throat, where I know the vein to be and the devil squeals so loud that I fear my brothers will wake, so I drive the knife along its gullet like I do to the chickens and tear along horribly and the devil gurgles till its body slumps heavy and bloody over meand I must push the terrible weight of it off with a shove. Strange that no brother stirs in the sleeping house.

*

When I wake at dawn to tend the babies, I find the devil on the floor. At first, just his foot peeking out of the red. I prod him to see if he is lively. But he does not quake or muster a sound. He looks almost happy to be dead. He resembles Brother A. He even has the same robes.

*

At the gate, my love is waiting. I open the gate. Explain with jagged words. We go across the fields together, to thesleeping house. No brothers are yet woken. Quietly, we grab those devil legs and drag that body to the well, squishing andthudding in the growing light. Like a sack of babies he is, worse than turnips. We are tired to breaking after a time of tugging his cold feet. I pull his thick robe off over his broad shoulders, then we shove him baby-bum-bare down the well. He slabbers to the bottom with a great thump. I was worried he would take me down with him. But there is no ladder for him to crawl up. And my love is with me now, putting on this new robe, looking so queerly at me, with such a shining face, that my heart stumbles and the whole circle of my being is spinning.

*

Together, we ring the dawning bell. Announce to the flock that the devil wore the face of the old Brother A all along. That he is lying in the well. Better than lying to us above the ground. There is testimony from many of our brothers. I was not the only to have night visits. Our words are unlimited now. There will be a new order, and another Brother A. One who will teach us more of what the outside holds. One who has held my longings.

I am Brother O. I am the endless cycle. There will be no devilish visitations in my order. There will be no more babies. I am sure of it.