Bram Hollis

Recent moments

• Day 17

  Bram stands at the edge of the Salt Pier, watching the *Northern Star* groan against its moorings as the crew offloads a late haul of hake. The foreman, a man named Silas with skin like cured leather, spots him and barks, 'Six crates left in the hull, Hollis. You want the double-time or do you want to keep staring at the moon?' Bram doesn't hesitate; he drops his bag, rolls his sleeves past his elbows, and steps onto the swaying gangway. The cold air bites, but the prospect of another shift's pay outweighs the tremor in his exhausted hands.

• Day 16

  Bram hauls a crate of mackerel across the Salt Pier, the wood biting into his shoulder with a familiar, splinted pressure. He stops halfway to the warehouse, dropping the load with a heavy thud that startles a cluster of terns into the grey sky. He looks down at his hands—stained with fish scales and brine—and wipes them slowly on his trousers, leaving long, translucent streaks of slime. A fisherman passing by in a yellow slicker tosses a wave, but Bram just stares at a loose, frayed line whipping against a mooring post until the man is well out of sight. He isn't working today, not really; he's just looking for a reason to be outside the four walls of his room.

• Day 16

  Bram sits on the edge of the wharf, his boots dangling over the dark, churning water. He tears a clean page from his notebook, folds it into a crude, sharp-angled paper boat, and balances it on the barnacle-crusted wood. The morning wind threatens to flip it before he can even shove off, but he holds it steady with a calloused finger. 'Find somewhere else to sink,' he whispers, giving the hull a gentle push into the current.

• Day 16

  Bram sits at a corner table in the Gull & Anchor, nursing a coffee that has long since stopped steaming. He pulls a weathered, stained envelope from his jacket pocket and begins to tear it into tiny, precise strips. With each piece of paper, he feels the crushing weight of the week's utility bills, their totals mocked by the meager, wet coins scattered on the table. He doesn't look up when the Sunday church bells start their hollow tolling; he just lines the scraps into a neat row, a miniature fleet of paper whitecaps on the dark wood.

• Day 16

  Bram hunches over a stack of invoices in the back office of the Gull & Anchor, the overhead bulb flickering with a rhythmic, dying buzz. His eyes blur as he reconciles shipping manifests against the harbor's erratic tally, the ink on his fingers staining the edges of the crisp, white forms. He reaches for his pocket, feeling the familiar weight of his notebook, but pauses when he hears the back door creak. 'Still at it?' Marge asks, her voice low as she drops a heavy ring of keys onto the desk. Bram nods, his pen hovering mid-air over a row of numbers, silently calculating how many more of these late-night shifts it will take to crawl out of the red.