As part of London Writers Centre’s 30th Anniversary celebrations, we commissioned three London-based LGBTQI+ emerging writers to create a short original piece of work.  The commissions were open to London-based LGBTQI+ writers aged 18+, writing poetry, fiction or narrative non-fiction.

Eight by Finn Brown

Under the stark lights of Noreen’s kitchen, the octopus looks ugly. She has dressed it in olive oil and lemon juice, thinking this would make the octopus look freshly surfaced, wet with ocean, brined.  

Less dead.  

It is only the third time she has cooked an octopus. The first, 16 years ago. She was the last of the group to go. And then again eight years after that.  

Rummaging around under the sink, she finds sticks of thick green candle that she’d bought when she and her ex-husband were trying to save their marriage; those last ditch attempts at romance. (Oh, aren’t marriages long. Even the short ones.) She lights them, now. Places them around the octopus and turns off the overhead lights.  

The octopus glistens: better.  

 “We are here to remember. We are here lest we forget.” The candlelight cuts off at Sam’s throat, leaving her face in darkness, the octopus an orb in front of her, Caleb across the table, solid as a stone. “We are here that what was done may never be done again.” Sam’s voice falters. “We are here to eat our sin.” 

“Couldn’t you give it a little more life?” says Quinn, fingering his cravat, hand on his diaphragm, stage-ready. 

Sam glowers. “I don’t like being the first one to speak.” 

“You did great, Sam,” says Eva, with that voice smooth as butter. Eva showed Noreen her therapy room once, a horrible room, all duck-egg blue and floaty, nowhere to put anything. Quinn rolls his eyes. Usually he is the only one of them to enjoy this annual ritual somewhat. It appeals to his love of ceremony. 

The silence is sticky. Has been since Frankie arrived, a surprise in that too-slinky dress. There’d been an odd burst of conversation as Frankie had found a seat, about the weather and traffic on the way over. Everyone had looked at Frankie and tried to pretend they were not looking. What a dress, what a thing to wear, what a change. 

“Well,” says Noreen brightly. “Dig in.” 

And so they reach forwards. Each of them approaches the leg closest to them. Each of them severs their first bite from this thing that once was whole. Then it must begin. 

“I met Marty first,” says Noreen. “We were paired up in biology and Marty understood all sorts of things that I didn’t. Useful. And then, interesting too. That’s when I introduced Marty to the rest of you.” 

“Behind the bike sheds, weren’t we? Something of an audition,” continues Quinn fondly. “Oh how people wanted to be part of what we were.” 

“Lonely people,” says Sam. “Only lonely people wanted what we had.” Thick as thieves they’d been from the off, Marty and Sam. Noreen had been jealous of that, of the flipbook Marty had made Sam for her 18th birthday – the octopus changing colour, the texture of its skin solidifying and softening as you flicked. 

“Anyway,” says Simran. “We liked Marty, didn’t we?” 

“Until Marty -” says Sam. 

“Not yet,” says Caleb. “Don’t need to tell it more than once tonight.” 

The room settles around Caleb’s voice. In Caleb they trust. As one they move back towards the platter, cut themselves their second bite, bring the marinated suckers up towards their lips.  

“And so Marty was one of us,” says Eva.  

“But when Marty began to change it was difficult,” says Simran. 

“Especially for me,” says Sam. Noreen had been asleep when Sam had knocked on the window, rolled through the sash, confessed. How Marty had singled her out, spoken as if she was a person who would understand. I knew you’d get it. I knew you would. So what could Sam do? People are what they are, whether you like it or not, Sam’s mother used to say to them both. Life, like a trap.  

“We weren’t equipped,” says Eva, “that was the thing. It was a different time.” 

And they’re all looking at Frankie again. Everyone is quiet. They know this story. The words, years later, are firmed up. There is a script to cling to, followed more closely than the truth. But now Frankie is a woman. Is it too late to recast? 

“The change,” says Simran, because this is what they have always called it.  

“Marty’s coming out,” says Frankie so smoothly it is possible not to hear that she is correcting them.  

“But it wasn’t just that. It was after that. It was when Marty started wanting -” says Simran. 

“Me,” says Sam, raising her hand like a schoolgirl. 

Another mouthful required. Noreen juices extra lemons, redrizzles. Their centrepiece gleams. Its tentacles are stumps now, clumsily chopped, butchered.  

“And Sam didn’t want Marty,” says Caleb. “So that night, when we saw the two of them by the water, we had to intervene.”  

“And then of course it was all very fast,” says Eva. 

“The lot of us surging, the circle, the push, the water that was too close,” Noreen says too quickly. 

“We weren’t to know,” says Quinn. “Marty was a strong swimmer. We weren’t to know about the rock, the head injury. Too dark to see the blood in the water.” 

“Yes,” they all agree like some kind of chorus. “Yes,” they all say, like this will make it true. 

And they are reaching for their next bite, forks skewering limb/brain. Glad to be past that, the worst of it. They are unburdened by their mutual confession. 

All of them, except Frankie. Scaly Frankie does not eat. She watches them. Impossible, Frankie had said to Noreen, after Marty had told the group. Sam had already told the rest of them, but they pretended their decided silence was natural. Even after the lovely speech Marty had made, read off a piece of paper, biroed down. They wanted to feel the way they felt in water, body-less, gender-less, light. If it was that easy – Frankie laughing tightly – impossible.  

“No,” says Frankie now and the other mouths around the table pause. Throats swallow. “What are we doing?” 

“Remembering,” says Simran, confidently.  

Nods around the table, certainty, relief. 

“This is sick,” says Frankie. “Doing this – like it absolves us of killing someone.” 

Cutlery crashes. “Woah now,” says Simran. “I didn’t kill anyone.” 

“We pushed them into the water. We left them to die,” says Frankie, and these words suck the room dry. Their explicitness. A shroud is lifted and beneath it everyone is found to be ugly and bloated, the way Marty’s body was when it washed up.  

The table drops its jaw. 

“But what if Marty had tried to rape me?” says Sam. And the word ‘rape’ is all teeth and justice in her mouth. Because this is how they have always thought about it. She’d told them again and again about Marty wanting her, that drunken confession of feelings. People had all sorts of questions. Are you scared? Oh yes.  

No wonder they ran to Sam, when they saw the two of them close together next to that black water that Marty loved so much. Isn’t it any wonder? 

And slinky Frankie rises. “But Marty didn’t try to rape you, Sam. They just told you they had feelings for you.” Sam’s mouth opens and closes like the mouth of a fish. “And  –“ 

“I remember their body in the water,” says Quinn. “It wasn’t dark, not at all.” Noreen knows this too, they all do. The moon that night was a screaming thing. They’d run, the lot of them, away from the bank. They’d got themselves to the bridge. And beneath them there was Marty, travelling on the current. They had a scarf on and from above the two ends of it looked like extra limbs. Almost octopus. “I think –” Quinn pulls at his cravat, “I think we could’ve saved them.” 

“Shut up,” says Caleb at the same time as Sam says, “Don’t say that.” 

“It was a different time,” says Eva again. 

“It was a life,” says Frankie, which settles it. “And I am trans. Like Marty. I am trans like them.” 

 Noreen stares at the head of the octopus, alone with it at last. Gone, all of them. 24 years of this penance, 24 octopuses. They won’t do this again. They won’t see each other again.  

“I left my jacket.” Frankie’s in the doorway. 

“The octopus,” says Noreen. “Will you help me?” 

Noreen lifts the octopus’s head carefully. Places it in the sink and washes it, her hands massaging the sites of injury. Then she lays out one of her nice tea towels and places the octopus inside it, wraps it up. She gives Frankie a pair of wellingtons and opens the door to the garden. By the time the two women have dug enough they are sweaty and dirty. “Won’t you?” says Noreen, and Frankie goes inside, collects the wrapped octopus. 

They kneel, the pair of them, and Frankie places the octopus into the ground.  

“You ought to say something,” says Noreen. 

“Marty,” says Frankie, deliberate as a eulogy.  

“Well then,” says Noreen. 

About Finn Brown

Finn Brown’s (they/them) writing lives in publications including Queer Life, Queer Love 2 (Muswell Press), The Raven Review, Booth Journal, Annie Journal, Meniscus Journal, The Bombay Review, The Bittersweet Review and Snowflake Magazine. Their writing has also been shortlisted for the Creative Future 2024 Writers’ Award and commended for the Moth Short Story Prize 2025. They are an editor, curator and designer at queer and trans-led press t’ART. 

Finn said:  

“I feel incredibly honoured to have received a commission to write a short story from Spread the Word. This is such a brilliant opportunity not just to write but to develop as a writer under mentorship, and I can’t wait to make the most of every bit of it. Thank you for supporting queer writers, and for offering us the space to grow.” 

All work (C) Finn Brown 2026