Shelved Dreams

Solitary Wanderings

2009-06-27T14:02:00.004+01:00

The first part of this piece started life as an independent entity, written while sitting on the pebbles of a sunnyish Brighton beach. You can find it by itself in it's original form under the title of 'Coasting'. However, I ended up liking the narrator so much that I added the later parts to keep him alive for a little longer, to give him a chance ... and so this was born.

Solitary Wanderings

The morbid attraction of a coal black shell, skeleton of amusement, draws more than lonely sea birds. Sit on the sea-worn, sea-warm, stones and scribble an elegy in black. Trudge noisily the oak dark legs that lean toward the water, touch the harsh bark of dead man stumps. Admire the isolated, naked, arching of bones that rise from the sea to the sky and fall back forlorn. Once vibrant and strident with life, now the only sound is the slapping of the waters against echoing iron.
And watch the people, always watch the people.
The solitary readers pinning papers against the gusts, the art students sketching in charcoal. The lovers, lying, loving, the newly weds sculpting imaginary futures from the sea breeze. The elderly married couples huddled together clasping cool cups of plastic tea, the man married only to his metal detector, pacing, and digging, and pacing.
Always watch the people, always watch the sea.
Gun metal horizon, foaming, turbulent surf, freshening spray. Count that mystical ninth wave break. Bright flecks of worn painted wood drifting, the funeral smell of shore wrecked seaweed, crisp and salt as the sea itself. Behind you, feel a city bristling. Smoke a Lucky Strike, watch the smoke drift across the water, as the smoke from the pier did.
Watch the sea.

He ambles down the sea front, watching waves thunder onto the pebbles. The wind lifts a mist of spray that frosts his eyelashes. The wash of retreating water makes a staccato skin over tumbling salt stones. A man lies sprawled in a dark coat, uncaring. He turns the damp pages of a newspaper and spits heartily. Midnight crows mingle over the tidal refuse, jostling snowy gulls and bullying slick pigeons. This beach, it seems, has everything.

He passes a living pier of lights and its skeletal twin, solitary old men watching the sea from the safety of benches and hippies communing with the surf. Like everything else the pub is shut. Mondays are a slow day at the beach. Couples walk small dubious dogs, all fur and no substance, unsteadily on the shifting stones. A desolate volley ball court, the only sand on this shore, lies empty. He wonders if the deserted sand hides needles. The rotting grandeur of a bandstand forever awaits refurbishment. In the playground a child and young father play at football with a spinning red ball. Reminiscing on his days in a Sunday team the man kicks too hard. The child howls and holds its bleeding nose in shock. Dad runs over, “Oh shi…”.

The wanderer would like a drink but fears the classy hostility of the glass fronted hotels that crowding the seafront. He weighs the pound coins in his pocket and heads up into the town. He’s uncertain exactly which town he’s in now, they lean together like drunken tramps, blending shabbily. It’s cold, but walking under his heavy coat his forehead is damp with sweat waiting to bead. Shop signs fight for place, new ones painted palimpstuously over old. He’s rather fond of this word. Overhearing it in a bar he went to look it up in his father’s battered red dictionary. He feels he has earned the right to use it. He finds himself dropping it into conversation. Once after he’d explained it, someone had said it sounded profound. The last time he’s told someone that what they’d said was profound they’d looked at him as if insulted.

In the shopping streets he hears ten different languages in as many minutes. It makes him feel alienated, he has trouble enough identifying with others who speak his own language. He really needs a drink, or two. From a cash machine he draws a crisp monopoly note and goes across the street to spend it in a dingy pub. Putting his pint of old whatever on a sticky table top in a reclusive corner he takes a mouthful of the bitter hoppy brew. Lighting a cigarette with an ugly purple lighter he draws smoke down into his lungs. Relaxed at last he takes out a battered and stained grey notebook and a much gnawed biro and begins to write.

I’m in the car, flying down unlit roads over the downs, the headlights my only company. I’m heading out to Beachy Head. It’s been a troublesome journey so far. The car wouldn’t start. It made a noise as it turned over as if the engine was filled with beach pebbles and a child's firecrackers. The RAC came out, prompt and efficient, and ‘Sir’ed’ me until I felt special and the car started properly. Driving away from the city all I can see are silent silhouettes of tumbling hills, that and a little road. There are no lights out here, and I’m thankful for it, there's nothing I really want to see. I need to get some fresh air in my lungs, to feel it blow the smoke from my skin and wash the dark stain from my mind. Heading out to Beachy Head. It's almost become a part of the local slang. To some it means that you’re on a one way trip. A suicide trip. Out of the car I’m battling against the thick coastal wind, scarf whipping out behind me like I’m startling to unravel. I can feel the open sky above, stretching out over land and sea. It’s slippery going walking to the cliff edge in the dark. Unable to see the path I stumble in slicks of mud. The landscape feels like its melting beneath me. Before long I can feel the mud starting to seep into my socks. I step cautiously nearer to the edge, the surf sounding softly far below. I cling to the cold thin wire fence that divides the living from the sodden dead. It bites into my hand, but I won't let go. Holding onto the wire I lean out over the precipice. Down below is the swinging light of the lighthouse. It looks small. Someone has placed a bunch of funereal roses at the foot of the last fence pole. Heading out to Beachy Head. The wind gusts and pulls at me suggestively.

Guilt Drive

2009-06-27T13:58:00.001+01:00

A crazy, stream of consciousness, story. Great fun to read out loud to others, written to be read out loud.

Guilt Drive

Square eyes, television glasses, the headlights on glass frames make little squares of light framing my world. Makes it hard to drive, distracting. Mum always said that if I sat too near the screen or watched tele too much I’d get square eyes. Ruined it for me, made me a guilty child, couldn‘t just let me enjoy anything. Why’s it never Dad that makes me feel guilty? Absent in my head, that’s why, never there. Never escape guilt, shadowy cloud felt over the shoulder. Ruth made, makes, still makes, me feel guilty. Fucking Ruth. Pitied and looked down on my smoking and drinking, looking down that eagle nose. Always joking whether it would be the fags or drink that would kill me first. Bitch, bitch, bitch. If she could see me now, ha, this’ll, this’d piss her off. Been smoking and drinking all night, was light when I went in, but it’s dark now. Just a few ales, officer. Very dark, must drive carefully in the dark. Drive better after a few drinks anyway, more careful, more aware. Shouldn’t care, shouldn’t be thinking whether she’d approve, my own man now, mother, girl friend, scorning God. Making me feel guilty, bad little boy. Fuck them all, fuck what everyone thinks, do it because it makes me feel good, enjoy smoking, don’t care if I’m hooked, I don’t want to quit, could, but don’t want to. Trees flip past in my headlights, flick, flick. My lights, my light. Strong, light in darkness. The light makes the darkness, the darkness makes the light. Click. Off, dark. Click. On, light. Click. Full beam, let there be light. I’m my own God. Might be a cow but I miss her, hate missing her, hate myself missing her. Will get another girl friend, no Brad or Cruise, chiselled plastic midget bastards. But everyone says plenty more fish. If fishes were wishes we’d all…do something, what? Hot, can feel it inside my nose, prickling, dry heat. Tower and Trunk, good pub. Why am I thinking of that? Spiced ale inside and winter outside, roaring fire and comfy leather armchairs, hot and dry, like my car. Smells like a pub in here, fags and drink, it‘s a good smell. If it was a colour what colour would it be? Brown, brown of worn, sat on old leather. We used to drive out there for a drink, me and the lads, Christmas ale, look down through the glass cover at the twenty foot, thirty foot, deep well set in the floor near the bar. Stand on the cover if you’re brave, suspended over the drop. Need a cigarette, careful. Tricky lighting and driving. I can’t see the flame, the fag and the road at same time, perspective gone all wrong with the drink. Don’t want to burn the middle, don’t want to crash. Flame’s bright, leaves colours on the eyes. Shit. Drifting, thump thump, little cats eyes, squish the cats, twitch left, back in lane. Corners, twisty little country lane corners, foot down, pushed back in the seat, feel the gees. Hate my name, Derrick not a good name in my profession. What’d you do? I’m in admin for a debt collection firm. Derrik. Derrik the debt collector. Ha, ha, very funny, catchy. Bastards. Not a hero, super hero, superman, an anti hero, anti man. Literative, very clever; I hate you all. Literative, a literative? Illiterative, sounds right. Hate my job, counting all the little numbers, rounding decimals. Hate debts. Shouldn’t work in a debt collection place. Got a secret, don’t let on, pretend it’s ok. I’ve got debts. But everyone’s got debts. If I ever see my name on the screen, computers sending bailiffs to collect what’s due, I’ll burn the place down, shoot the lot of them, shoot myself. Leave Ruth a note, a suicide note. It’ll say, ’Sorry about the mess’, very funny, very ironic. I miss Ruth. Ache. Soft and warm, creamy skin. Always smelt good, tasted good. Would be nice to lay her again, even just to kiss her again, would settle for even just hugging her again.

Later that night the police found Derrik and his car wrapped in a drunken embrace with a tree.

Twelve o'clock.

2009-06-27T13:51:00.002+01:00

A strange little nugget, sparked, I think, from the natural evolution that you get in a writing group, when each week, whether you like it or not, your writing is shaped by the ideas being thrown around. I am half tempted to think I wrote it in order to be able to throw a little haiku out into the world.

Twelve o'clock.

It was twelve o'clock on a Monday when the first text message from an unknown number arrived.

Troubled waters will
Mock the tranquil ear, he who
Sinks beneath waves feels calm.

Dan Stevens looked down at his mobile vibrating on the desk. He picked it up and read the text. He looked up and then around the office. He read the text again. He couldn't understand it. What the hell? Was it meant to be a riddle or a joke or something? Maybe it was one of the pranks he and the other men often played on each other to liven up the long, boring, air conditioned hours sat in front of a computer screen answering the phone to irate customers. If it was a prank, it wasn't a very good one. Not a patch on last week when he'd slipped two constipation relief pills into Samuels’ coffee before his promotion meeting with the boss. Now that had been funny. Samuels had worked out who had done it though, and had confronted him, face livid with accusation. Dan had just laughed at him and Samuels had eventually walked away, shoulders hunched in defeat. Dan didn’t care, Samuels was a prick anyway. As one of the older men in the office he always acted as though he was Dan's superior, despite doing the same job as him. He was asking for it. His prank had been funny. This, well, this was just plain odd. He sat up in his seat, peeking above his cubical wall, and scanned the office again. Everyone sat slumped at their desks in the usual Monday manner. No one seemed to be looking over at him. He sat back down and, with a shrug, pressed delete.

Summer sat on the sofa, curled up with her knees hugged tightly to her chest. Her face was puffy and her eyes felt raw from crying. On the coffee table, next to a large mug of hot chocolate gone cold, her mobile played the first few bars of Beethoven's Fifth in crude notes. She hated the annoying message tone but never seemed to get around to changing it. It was probably Simon. Despite having broken up with her last night, he was probably texting to see if she was alright, and to ask if they could still be friends. The predictable bastard. She’d known that something was wrong as soon as he’d called to say that he’d booked a table at Carlucio’s. It was just like him to take her somewhere nicer to break up than he’d ever done while they were together. It had been horrible. He'd smiled wanly at her over the shared starter of scallops with fresh garlic mayonnaise. He’d told her it wasn’t working out, as the waiter glided over with the main course. She’d had the grilled chicken breast and purple asparagus with mango sauce drizzled on the side. He’d had an exotic mushroom tagliatelle with basil and wild pine nut pesto. She’d wanted to scream at him, lean across the table and slap him as hard as she could in front of the restaurant full of well presented diners. But, of course, she hadn’t. Instead she’d forced down a large gulp of wine, the glass shaking in her hands. After that she had sat and listened to his disgustingly rational excuses and reasoning. Didn’t she think this was for the best? Could she see a future for them when they couldn’t afford a decent place together from which they could both commute to work? Feeling trapped in the rigid confines of politeness she’d eaten quickly, the food dry and tasteless in her mouth, trying not to hear all his reasons why it would be better to break up, why he was doing her a favour. Outwardly she appeared calm, if a little pale, yet on the inside she ached hysterically; something snagging unbearably deep within her with each breath. She knew that he’d only brought her here in the hope that she wouldn’t make a scene somewhere so public. She hated him for being right. They’d split the bill.

The mobile vibrated around on the tabletop, dancing to its own music. She pulled a limp tissue from the sleeve of her jumper and blew her nose with feeling. She’d known all along that Simon hadn’t been right for her anyway, but after a long period of loneliness she’d needed someone. And Simon was just there, so it had been him. He’d seemed like a decent bloke to begin with. Well, she thought, she was better off without him, he‘d been right about that at least.
‘Fuck him,’ she said out loud to the empty room.
Picking up the mobile she decided that whatever he said she’d play it frosty; she wouldn’t let him know that he’d gotten to her. She pressed a button and read the text. Then she read it again.

Dan lay on top, muscles tensed, panting with the exertion of his efforts. Beneath him on the bed Jen made sympathetic noises in the back of her throat, occasionally sneaking a look at the clock on the bedside table when he was distracted. Almost twelve. She had to be at work in half an hour. She thought it over. Five minutes for a shower, another five to get dressed. A fifteen minute taxi ride across the City if she was lucky. He’d better hurry up. She wasn’t going to let herself be late again. She moaned a little more emphatically in his ear. He duly sped up in response. On the bedside table his mobile started vibrating and flashing, intermittently lighting the darkened room with its insistent blue light. Dan looked towards the buzzing little machine. He started to slow.
‘No, please, don’t stop,’ pleaded Jen.
Misunderstanding, he turned back to the task at hand, trying to forget about the mobile. But the buzzing continued, drilling into his head, totally ruining the moment. With a curse he pushed himself off the bed, grabbed the mobile from the table and strode naked into the hall, slamming the door loudly behind him so that it shook in its frame. Not knowing what else to do, Jen got up, glanced at the clock, and went for a brief shower.

Difficult endings,
Push spring shoots softening kiss,
Dead leaves will not hate.

Dan put the cigarette to his lips and inhaled deeply. Exhaling luxuriously, he knocked the ash into the half full ashtray in front of him. Samuels thumped a pint of lager down in front of Dan, spilling a little. He reached over and took a long draught without acknowledging Samuels for buying the round. He tried not to smirk as Samuels lips thinned in anger. Dan and the other men from the office had knocked off early for lunch, as they always did on Wednesdays. They sat around a table in the ‘Crow and Gate’, trying to get in as many drinks as possible while they waited for the food. The boss didn't like that they always came back to work a little drunk, but restrained himself to frowning glances through the thick glass wall of his office. Dan, Samuels, and five others sat around a large table, all heartily smoking and drinking. Amidst the shredded crisp packets, lagers and ashtrays each had his mobile phone out on display; each trying to show off the latest razor thin and feature packed model that had cost half a week's wages. They stole sidelong glances at the others' phones, trying to gauge their worth against their own. On the table Dan's ultra slim matte black number began vibrating among the fag ash and sticky glass rings.
'You going to get that?' asked Samuels with ill humour.
Dan picked it up and twisted it open with a complicated flick, feeling his mouth go dry as he glanced at his watch and realised the time. He quickly scanned the cryptic words, making little sense of the strange text. He snapped the mobile shut, put it back on the table, and took a long gulp of lager.
'What, your bit on the side finally ditch your arse?' quipped Samuels, noting with delight the look on Dan's face.
'Shut up,' retorted Dan.
'Or maybe it was your Mummy asking how her baby boy is? Let's see,' said Samuels, making a grab for the mobile.
Reacting by instinct Dan shot his hand out to get the phone first. In the brief scuffle that ensued several drinks were spilt onto the laps of their unhappy owners, cigarettes dropped, and cries of protest voiced as men stood to vacate the suddenly sodden table. Dan, once again in full possession of his mobile stood up and pushed past Samuels and the others. He shouldered the door open just as the barmaid brought the food over.

Over the next week Dan and Summer both received a text at twelve each day. For Dan it was something he came to dread. Certain that it was a joke at his expense that he didn’t understand, he became more hostile than usual to his co-workers, searching for some hint of conspiracy in their chatter, snapping at customers over the phone. By Thursday his boss felt the need to have a ‘quiet word’ with him about the virtues of team work and accepted methods of communicating with customers. Dan had to try hard to not start laughing at him. As if that all really mattered with this going on. After that he started responding to each text with an increasingly abusive reply. He used the word fuck a lot, in the way that only a very angry and inarticulate man can. He cast aspersions on the unknown sender’s sexuality, calling him a faggot, a poof, and all the other dirty words he could think of. He suggested that their mother’s sexual preferences hadn’t been confined to those of her own species exclusively. When he met Jen again on Friday for their regular session, he found he couldn’t perform knowing that even with the phone off he would be receiving another perplexing and inexplicable message. When she smiled encouragingly he called her a frigid whore, questioned her sexuality too. He knew he wasn’t making any sense but couldn’t contain the confused rage within him. He left her uncomprehending and naked on the bed, arms folded and legs crossed in an attempt to preserve some modesty.

Unlike Dan, Summer woke up each morning looking forward to midday. Stirred by vague memories from her time studying literature at university, she’d dug out some old books she’d never got around to throwing out. When she realised that each text was a haiku, a poem in miniature, she started trying to decipher the message each day. Sat in her flat she spent idle hours pondering what the unknown poet was trying to tell her. After a couple of days she hardly thought of Simon, and if she did it was only as some dark cloud from under whose shadow she’d managed to escape. When she went for coffee with friends they talked over steaming mugs about whether it was a secret admirer sending obscure messages of affection. She was inclined to think so, there seemed a certain warmth in the texts, for all that they were cryptic, that made them cheering. Still, despite all of this, she couldn’t bring herself to reply to them. What could she say to someone so obviously eloquent, someone who treated words as living and beautiful things. Nothing she could think of seemed a fitting echo to the daily message of affection that she gladly received.

When the expected text did not come on Saturday it shocked them both in different ways.

Dan continued feeling haunted by those messages, more so now that whoever was overshadowing his life was doing so in even more absolute anonymity and secrecy. At least, before he had known how the unseen presence was reaching out to touch him, now he was left unprepared, not knowing how the cryptic spectre would next strike. He, of course, wouldn’t have expressed it in such a way, but his actions infer such a description. His behaviour became erratic. He had trouble sleeping at night with the mobile in the house. He became increasingly hostile at work: paranoid, confrontational and withdrawn. His boss told Dan he was going to have to reassess whether or not a career with the company was what was really in all their best interests. Jen wouldn’t answer his calls, and in some way he was relieved, having unmanned himself with her so totally.

Summer, on the other hand, came to miss the daily text, her modern love letter from that unknown hand. While she continued to feel the absence, she did not mourn it however. The texts had brought her through the break up and left her feeling exalted and cared for. That she would never know her secret poet only heightened the feeling that the poems were a sign of the general warmth of the world towards those within it. She felt certain that one day her admirer would reveal himself to her somehow, but until that day she would face the world with open arms and a smile.

On the following Monday certain newspapers announced the death of a noted poet. On Saturday, they reported, his publishers, an esteemed firm based in Soho, had received a suicide letter signed by the poet. It explained that, following a long disillusionment with the future of poetry in an increasingly depersonalised and virtual age, the poet had embarked on one final project. The details of the project were unknown but had apparently involved reaching out to a readership via a virtual medium, trying to form a connection between poet, poetry and the modern reader. The letter stated it to have been an utter failure. While a relationship was established with one reader, the poet reported it to be an unfruitful one at best. The other reader contacted had failed to respond to the poetry sent to them all together. This, the letter noted, was by far the greater failure of the two; a failure that marked the end of the project and of the poet’s life. The publisher had since tried to contact the eminent poet, but had not been successful. The newspaper stated that several reliable eye witnesses had reported seeing a well dressed man in a suit and trilby hat matching the poet’s description on the Sunday. The newspaper stated that the man was reported to have last been seen walking into the sea from a cove near Beachy Head.

Denied

2009-06-27T13:44:00.001+01:00

Bubbling up from the depths of time, I can't even remember where this one comes from or when it was written. A little piece of amber frozen poetry, from a different time, place, and person.

Denied

Standing upon the cobbled streets,
Fingernails torn and bleeding feet.
Invisible to the passers by,
There are none who meet his eye.
Here stands a man denied.

Sitting in his frame of steel
His crippled legs do not feel,
A harrowed look on his war haunted face
As he glides around this lonely place.
Here sits a man denied.

Lying among the fallen leaves
An unmarked grave where no one grieves,
Slain for some imagined sin
Because of the colour of his skin.
Here lies a man denied.

A Love Yet To Be

2009-06-27T13:32:00.003+01:00

Written many years ago for, and inspired by, a friend of mine. I also used lives from this as chapter sub headings in 'Diary of a Heretic'. Here it is in it's un-butchered original form. Enjoy.

A Love Yet To Be

Sitting alone, at a desk in the dark
She sits and dreams of a love yet to be.
Candle light flickers, her face is hard to see,
The shadow of a man, runs his fingers
Through her silken brown hair, a fluid jewel.
He caresses, leaving on her cheek an ethereal kiss,
Never have they met, and yet she does miss
His lingering touch and burning glances.
Raising her head she stares deep into the glass,
As invisible tears streak down the mirror of her soul.
Her hazel eyes search, like a clamorous toll,
Within their deep beauty, she is never alone.
She sits and dreams of a love yet to be.

Caroline Jane Something

2009-06-27T13:28:00.001+01:00

A tiny verse, written to capture a sparkling moment of not-quite, shouldhave-couldhave.

Caroline-Jane Something

The tennis lot marched, rackets held to attention, flanked
By the pony set in svelte formation. By the numbers,
And double-time. With wine we sat, while between your
Knee and mine, they paraded imperially.

Wild Rice

2009-06-27T13:23:00.002+01:00

Inspired by the eco poetry of 'Earth Songs', from one of my Sussex tutors, the remarkable Mr Peter Abs. I'm quite happy with this one, written in a tiny, dark, room in my Brighton houseshare, it encompasses everything I was longing for.

Wild Rice

In paddy fields lines of men sprout,
Growing out of mirrored water.

Wilting hats catch the sun’s dying
Rays, following its fall.

Winds whipping over hills
Bend them bobbing to touch silver,

To pluck at wild rice.

I sit wrapped in the cloth
Of this distant city’s acrid

Smog. Crowded horizons and
Streets meet in dislocation.

I sit and try and fail and
Find myself

Unable to picture their vegetable
Harvest.

Reflection on Brightness

2009-06-27T13:05:00.003+01:00

With the purges and decimation of the old order in favour of the new still in full swing, here's another little survivor struggling onto the Shelves for all the world to see.

This was written, I think, for a writing group whose weekly theme was dreams. Fortunately I'd had a particularly vivid dream that week, one of those that proves something doesn't have to be a gore filled nightmare to be extremely disturbing.

Between that dream, these typing fingers, and a strange mind, this was born.

Reflection on Brightness

Slow expansion of consciousness, awareness of light and feeling. Peeling off the sheets I swing my legs off the bed onto soft grass, enjoying the feeling of soft blades green underfoot. Standing in a forest glade bright sunlight trickles through leaf and bough, while a gentle breeze moves dancing branches, whispering, tugging my vague clothing but not touching my skin. A grassy path cuts through the scene, distinct. I follow it. The act of walking has little effect on distance and there is a sense it is the woodland moving past me and not I through it. Turning. A curve in the path reveals an opening in the trees. A green hill sits above a three way splitting of the path. A signpost at the bottom of this. Two white terriers sit on the hill, which sits on the path, one large, the other half its size. The wooden signpost points to two of the paths. Following these with the eye I note one disappears into a broken valley and the other to a distant hilltop town, roofs sparkling in the moonlight. Back under the sunny hill the signpost names these nonsensical places with nonsensical names.
The larger dog speaks. "Follow us."
I glance from the black eyed dogs to the midnight town. I follow the dogs along the unnamed third path into the forest. Trees thicken. The path dies, darkness seeps down. Through the dense foliage and gathering darkness I catch glimpses of the dogs walking side by side. The small one looks back at me with a look of infinite sadness. The dark thickens palpably. The trees start to catch and tear into flesh, thorns burning. Stones cut feet. And always that indescribable sadness in the black eyes of those I cannot follow.

An Evening Of Expectations

2009-06-27T12:58:00.003+01:00

Recently I've been trying to get my life in order, and a large part of that involves getting my writing in order too. As I was delving through old files and scraps of paper I stumbled over this piece. Pulled from the dusty recesses of my hard drive, polished up, it's another little something for the Shelves.

An Evening Of Expectations

The evening had, I thought, started out rather well. Sitting alone in Jake’s nursing a scotch, idly making shapes in the puddles of spilt beer covering the greasy bar, I wondered which club to go to later. The Ice Club was a better place to meet people, but the music of The Edge was in a league of its own, extreme washes of independent sound melting glacially together. I decided on The Edge. Mainly, if truth be told, because the drugs I had taken before leaving the flat wouldn’t blend well with the more sophisticated atmosphere at The Ice Club. I would get tense, nervous, sweat constantly, crack, twist, just fucking lose it. No, the relaxed insanity of The Edge it would be, my eccentricities hidden in the swirling mass of the intoxicated. While I sat there abstracted thus, staring down into and through the rough grain of the wooden bar, someone came and sat on the bar stool next to my own. Without looking up I could tell it was a woman, her overpowering perfume swirling like a purple cloud around her. I thought it odd that in the near empty bar she had come and sat next to me, and even odder that she was alone, Jake’s wasn’t the kind of dive most women would think of coming to, not alone, not without a reason. I swung my head to look at her and asked, ‘Can I get you a drink or something?’
She had a narrow but pretty face, thin lipped, no lipstick. Her fringe cloaked eyes seemed to have difficulty focusing, her erratic multicoloured shoulder length hair and a mish mash of eccentric clothing, almost all black, created a striking image. She carelessly brushed her hair back from her face with a black tipped and lazy hand, revealing an ear with a plethora of piercings. I felt proud of having thought of such a articulate word. Through the haze of the drug, thinking had become a distant act, conscious and unnatural; advanced vocabulary represented a lucidity of mind that was both surprising and encouraging. Just as I was about to say something witty, or attempt to, she turned to face me and replied with a confident, ‘Sure.’ I nodded at the obscure barman and he weaselled over.
‘Whiskey on the rocks, and…’
‘The same.’
I nodding my approval flung a ten at the man and he returned some change with equal disdain. We shared numerous drinks and less small talk, until eventually she announced she had to, ‘Go to the little girls room. For a fix’.
Feeling slightly unsteady by this point I simply nodded and muttered a vaguely coherent, ‘Enjoy’, at her retreating back. Even sat down I could feel the waves of alcohol and narcotic threatening to sweep me away in their chaotic tides, swallowing me in a sea of fluorescent clarity. The bar stool legs seemed to have become made of rubber, tilting at random, making it increasingly difficult to stay upright. I slowly finished my whiskey and stood, noisily kicking my treacherous stool aside as she wandered back across the bar, receiving hard stares from several of the occupants of the shadowy kiosks littering the walls.
‘Want to come to The Edge?’
‘No.’
Having expected this, I merely shrugged my shoulders and started to turn away.
‘Let’s go straight back to mine.’
I stopped and turned back.
‘Sure. Whatever.’
So far, so good, I thought.

Her place turned out to be a two room flat squatting above a betting shop in one of the seedier areas of downtown. Opening the door we stepped into darkness lit only by the red neon sign of the shop below, making the room appear disturbingly organic and vague, the only easily discernable shape was a door in the far wall with a dim light showing beneath it. A wave of hot air hit me like a fetid slap as we stepped into the room. The sticky warmth and dull taste of second hand air in my throat made me feel soiled. Sweat started to bead on my brow. There was, it seemed, no air conditioning.
‘Electricity’s out’, she explained.
‘Doesn’t bother me’, I replied in what I hoped was a casual manner, wiping sweat from my forehead with the back of a hand.
By this point I was finding it a little hard to keep a grasp on the situation, let alone be casual. The red neon filtering through the grimy window seemed to pulse in time to my heart beat, a primeval pulse that I could both see at the edges of my vision and physically feel behind my eyes. Prickling sweat began to make my whole body feel wet beneath my clothes. The walls seemed to curve in at the corners, taking on the transparency of veins, and I, a red blood cell, oscillated in the warm wet comfort of blood, thrilling in time to some universal heart beat, content to just exist. The whiskey and drugs were starting to make the world seem more than a tad surreal. I slowly began to notice that the dull thudding that had been filtering into my brain since we’d entered, sometimes speeding up, sometimes slowing down, wasn‘t just my imagination. The rhythmic thumping seemed to be coming through the closed door to the other room. I asked about the sound.
‘Probably just my boyfriend.’
‘Ah. Ok.’
The tone of her voice suggested that this was perfectly normal and I began to wonder exactly who this woman was and what I had let myself in for.
‘Janine.’
‘Nice name,’ I stammered.
Was it a coincidence or had I actually spoken? Was she reading my thoughts? Maybe we’d taken the same chemicals and somehow fallen in telepathic sympathy with each other. Perhaps it was best to try not to think.
Peering around at what little I could make out of the room, my wandering gaze settled on a silver trophy of a horse and rider gleaming in the rose light.
‘Do you ride?’, I slurred.
‘No. I stole it from a jockey I went with once. I took it as payment for some of the weird stuff he made me do,’ she said without turning to look at me.
Vague images of very short men with riding crops started swirling through my head. I opened my mouth to ask what could have been so bad as to make her steal such a thing, but limited myself to a worldly sounding, ‘Hmm’, instead. For my own peace of mind I'd decided I really didn't want to know.
She slung her coat over a dimly lit piece of furniture. An excited screaming, rising in pitch, started from the next room, muffled only slightly by the closed door. The thudding increased in pace.
‘Drink?’
‘Please.’
She walked over to an unseen cupboard, took out two bottles, one filled with amber liquid, one with clear, and two glasses and filled one from each bottle and handed me my drink, leaving the other on the side. She then walked through the door from which the thudding and screaming was coming, slamming it shut behind her. I took a sip of my drink, was pleased to find it was once again whiskey, but thought it could do with some ice. I peered around for a freezer and finding it, pulled the door open. The thudding and screaming stopped from the other room. No ice. Disengaged thoughts sought for some kind of correlation. No electricity. Freezer. No ice. Raised voices momentarily replaced the silence but stopped as abruptly as they had started. Disappointed, I closed the freezer again. As I turned, Janine walked back through the door, picked up her glass and slugged the contents back in one motion. The thudding started up again, not the rhythmic sound whose echo had before reflected back from inside of me, but now a erratic pounding hammering discordantly against the inside of my skull. I stood wincing. The screaming started once more, like nails down a chalk board to my ears. I walked over to Janine, who was staring vacantly at the ceiling, picked a kitchen knife from the block, excused myself and went to the closed door. With only a seconds hesitation I gently turned the handle and went inside. It was dark, but I could vaguely see two shapes moving together, one shape in actuality. By the time I came out the thudding had stopped echoing through the walls. The screaming had lasted just a little longer. The kitchen knife glistened crimson in the neon lighting, as did the sweat dripping on my forehead and down the front of my shirt. I was beaded in fluorescent scarlet. I once again vibrated in time to my racing heart, not this time a constituent cell, but the unified whole itself. I dipped the knife into my refilled glass. Stirring the drink I raised the glass in a toast. The swirling liquid glowed crimson in the organic light slipping coming through the window.
‘Bloody Mary.’
I raised the glass to my lips and drained it. All I could taste was myself. Mirroring me she emptied her glass in one swift gulp, stepped in closer, wrapped her arms around my neck and passionately kissed me. And that’s when the night got a little weird.

Epilogue

2009-06-11T15:18:00.000+01:00

Metropolitan Police Department: Evidence Form

Date of offence: 12/09/05

Case Number: 3174273163

Offence: Murder

Exhibit Number: 1
Exhibit Description: Hardback black notebook
Location found: On suspect

Crime number: 2976347

Method of disposal: Incineration

Status of case: Closed

Elevation (Chapter 7)

2009-06-11T15:14:00.002+01:00

The Diary of a Heretic

Nicholas Cockayne

Elevation
(Chapter 7)

She sits and dreams of a love yet to be.

Gradually the purple and black swirls resolved themselves into vague shapes. I’d assumed my eyes were shut, but instead they’d been open, I was just too spaced out to distinguish between imaginary and real; what I’d thought the wash of drugs behind my eyelids were actually the surrounding bushes, swaying gently in the breeze. A slight rustling brought me further into focus, and I realised that I was looking at two small eyes staring back at me, reflecting the moonlight in that eerie way that only animals eyes can. The eyes belonged to a darker shadow among the dimness of the bushes, a sleek shape neither tensed to run or in the welcoming stance of something broken and domesticated. Instead the eyes seemed to come a few steps closer, regarding me with something approaching amused curiosity. The fox, I supposed it a fox as I dimly recalled that badgers were meant to be bigger, seemed entertained that some dull human had stumbled across one of it’s nightly haunts. It was right to be amused, perfectly designed for and at ease in its natural environment it had stumbled across one of the slow lumbering humans that would normally pose such a threat, shivering and cramped pathetically beneath a bush. The comic irony of the situation struck me, here I was huddled in my bush hiding away from cruel hunters looking to torture me for their own pleasure, while the fox had the total freedom of his night time domain. What made all this the more poignant was that it was my own kind hunting me, but for no more reason than men would chase a fox. I smiled through my drugged stupor, feeling a ridiculous camaraderie with this seemingly wise night stalker. The eyes suddenly vanished, only the gentle rustling of dead leaves betrayed the fox’s retreat; obviously it had had enough fun for one night and now had more pressing matters to attend to. In the darkness, the branches of the bushes that surrounded me sang quietly to themselves as the wind danced among them. Despite being cold, cramped, bruised, hunted and extremely stoned, an unexpected wave of happiness filled me. All the sadness, all the depression, all the self-torture, in short all the shit that had happened to me in the last year, I suddenly knew where it had all come from. Me. Despite railing against it, I’d let the modern world become a huge part of my being. Slowly creeping into my soul from childhood it had poisoned me, turned me against myself and against everything natural. That innocent magic from childhood that could transform a disused building lot into a fantastical kingdom complete with forts and armies, that tinged the summer days with a brittle gold, it had only begun leaving me when I’d started letting the world twist its subtle way into my heart, replacing a world of magical possibilities with the dry dead logic of the adult world. The madly coloured nights on fragrant drugs, the degenerate days lost in the blur of drink, all the time I’d been trying to hide from the cold realities of a life that had lost all real meaning. Even my poetry had become tainted and infected with the ideals of a cancerous society. The blood on the poem, life, that was what I should have aspired too. Those first poems were always the best, the ones after mere pale imitations trying to recapture that sparkle in the words and physicality in the imagery. I’d lost what had made my poetry special when I’d lost what had started me writing in the first place, pleasure; simple pure pleasure, the enjoyment of carving something beautiful from the tangles of thought and capturing its essence in words. After that first publication I’d become too entrapped in my own sense of the literary, caught in the attempt to fulfil the image of the poet. Was my style appealing enough to the readers, how could I please the editor and myself at the same time? Getting bogged down in the mundane, I’d lost the life behind it all. The blood on the poem. You. Even what I’d done, what we’d done to each other didn’t seem truly our fault. No, the fault wasn’t ours’, it was the sick world around us, subliminally warping something that had been so pure that at times it had almost physically hurt. All those evening walks through the park, carpeted with shadowy velvet, all the brightness of a whole afternoon spent lying beneath the green shade of a tree, slowly exploring and teasing each other’s bodies with our fingers. That was pure, that had been real. What had followed, your cheating, our fight, my slapping you; none of that was us, not truly us. Maybe you’d cheated on me because there was something you were unhappy with, something we could have talked over, made right in the intimate darkness of a shared bed; but pride and self-doubt had made it easier to do something more dramatic, something that screamed “Look at me, I need attention”. Or maybe you’d just been doing what you thought people did, promiscuity was certainly the fashion amongst those in the Purple Rose crowd, another way to say ‘fuck you’ to modern society and its hypocritical morals. The fight suddenly seemed nothing more than our refusal to open up to each other, anger masking a fear of really letting someone else into that secret self kept hidden from the corrosive ambivalence of a throwaway society. It hadn’t been me that had hit you, that had killed you. It had been my perception of what it was to be a man, to be manly, to confront insults and slurs with a violent denial of emotional hurt, of weakness. A perception of manhood born from a million septic adverts showing a million chiselled featured cattle sporting impossible six packs, a lifetimes worth of tough guy action heroes who always killed the bad guy and got the woman. I had become the good little consumer that I’d always loathed, albeit as rebellious and alternative as youth would allow, as youth had always allowed. Who the fuck was I to think I was unique? No, I’d just been following in the worn footsteps of every other rebel and outcast for the last forty decades. I’d thought myself different with my poetry and my drugs, but really I’d been the same as a million others, hating the system but embracing it through our apathy.

Sitting beneath the moon and the bushes on the soft soil, leaning against the tree, watching their dark shapes sway across the black canvas of the night and feeling the wood around me through every pore, I knew that with my revelation I’d shed that old self, left it among the burning, destruction, piss and idiocy of the clearing where I sat. I would be like the fox now, wise but innocent in my simplicity. I’d come here to the countryside thinking I was searching for something, something deep and meaningful, but really I had just been running away, unable to see the future because I’d been too busy looking over my shoulder at the past. The past would always be there, lurking like some dark nightmarish beast behind me, but now I’d be looking ahead, looking forward instead of back. I sat there beneath those bushes all night, ignoring the cramp and the cold, warmed by something deeper inside that nothing could touch. I watched the sun slowly rise through the barcode of the trees, driving away the darkness one shadow at a time, illuminating the life in every twig and leaf. If I could just hold onto that sense of life, that realisation of the beautiful simplicity of the world away from all the unimportant distractions of modern living then I knew that I’d be all right.

***

Sitting on the train I once again watched the countryside slip by, this time welcoming me towards the City rather than speeding me away from it. Walking slowly out of the wood and down the hill, stretching the stiffness from my body with each step I’d known I couldn’t stay. These few days in Arlington had been a break from reality, not reality itself; it was only back in London, the place I’d become lost that I’d be able to find and rebuild my life. If I’d have stayed it would always be with the grey faceless bulk of the City threatening in the background, a huge hostile place I’d been forced to flee from, I wouldn’t be rebuilding my life, instead I’d be hiding away from it. Using a crumpled up piece of paper and chewed biro from the bottom of my backpack I’d written Jackie a short note and posted it through the B ‘n’ B’s letterbox on the way to the station platform, as the last of the night faded from the golden light of the rising sun. In my spidery writing I’d told her that I was fine, I hadn’t got hurt last night and was heading back to London today. It also said that I’d found more than I’d ever come looking for, that I loved her perfectly and always would and that if she should ever want to find me I’d left her the address of my publishers who would know where I was. I finished by saying that I knew that she would be ok, because she was beautiful in every way, and had signed it “with love always, Nathan”.

I sat looking out of the window at the world blurring to nothingness beside me, smiling to myself as I ran over a few ideas for a new collection of poetry, something that would capture this new self and share with the reader how beautiful they and the world around them truly were. To criticise the society I lived in seemed pointless now, instead I would offer people poetry to make them realise there was an alternative to living in fear and pain, without trying to dictate what this was. My contented reverie was broken by a small furtive looking man with deep sunken eyes and several days worth of stubble, tugging gently at my arm.
‘Haven’t got a spare fag, have you mate?’ He asked in a voice both apologetic and insistent.
‘No, sorry I don’t smoke.’
As I replied I couldn’t help but grin, not at the man, but at myself. Evidently he didn’t realise this, as he shuffled down the carriage in search of a cigarette I could hear him mutter, ‘prick’ without turning to look back at me. Relaxing back into the seat and looking once again out of the window at the life flashing past me, I smiled again.

***

I will end this diary now, leaving you with the image of me sitting on the train, contentedly rushing towards a new life. This is how I’d like to think of it, not as an ending but instead as a beginning. Your death, those dark months that followed, the days spent in Arlington with Jackie, they all belong to someone else now. This diary will remind me of what I was, and hopefully ensure that I never wander lost in the darkness again.

The Harrowing (Chapter 6)

2009-06-11T15:12:00.000+01:00

The Diary of a Heretic

Nicholas Cockayne
The Harrowing
(Chapter 6)

Her hazel eyes search, like a clamorous toll,
Within their deep beauty, she is never alone.

Jackie’s head shifted gently on my chest, her hand dropping to softly stroke the soft black hair running down from my navel to my groin and back again. I looked down at her. I’d guessed she was asleep but, perhaps, she’d just been dozing, thinking, remembering, like myself. Had her thoughts been as depressing as mine? I really hope not. Her caressing fingers drew me gently from my tortured reverie back to the physical. For the past months I’d sought drink to drown my thoughts in, or drugs to twist them beyond recognition; but here I was lying in the playful sunlight of a wood and Jackie had done what neither drink nor drugs had fully managed, with a simple act of human contact.
We decided that I couldn’t stay at the B ‘n’ B any longer; or rather I’d decided and persuaded Jackie to agree. I didn’t feel right violating Ellie’s seemingly naïve trust, but also at the back of my mind I knew that my money was running out and that if I meant to stay in Arlington long enough to get to know Jackie I’d need to conserve my meagre cash. She’d suggested that I stay in the wood when I told her I wouldn’t stay at the B ‘n’ B any longer, there was nowhere else I could stay, and anyway I’d come fully prepared for roughing it in my tent. It made some kind of sense, we’d made the place ours and I’d only be staying there until we worked out something better. I didn’t mind camping out in the tent, I had enough food to keep me going for a while, a small wood’s worth of firewood and up on the lonely peak among the trees no one would bother me. I needed to get my head straight and the solitude of the wood would give me a chance to do just that, over the last two days my life had changed in unpredictable ways; it was going to take some getting used to.
During the late afternoon we returned to the B ‘n’ B, after cleaning ourselves up as best we could. Despite our efforts, Ellie cast a suspicious gaze over our dusty clothes as we went to our rooms. Just turning the corner into my room and glancing back to watch Jackie disappear into her room, I noticed Ellie crossing the downstairs hall, heading for the kitchen to fix dinner; wearing a smile that seemed far too big to have anything to do with the prospect of cooking. Over a meal of sausage, creamy mash and milky tea that made me suddenly regret my decision to camp out, I told Ellie that I’d be leaving tonight, but probably staying in the area for a bit longer. She pressed me on where I’d be staying and I had to resort to trying to look even more intent on my food, if that were possible, and mumbling something about a friend living fairly near. Looking far from satisfied with my answer Ellie looked over at Jackie, who just shrugged her shoulders and suddenly became preoccupied with a slice of sausage. Ellie seemed far from satisfied, but to my relief didn’t press the subject further.
After dinner I politely refused the dessert, cheese and biscuits, coffee, tea and various of Mr Kipling’s baked goods offered by Ellie; I needed to go get my things together from the room and set up the tent. While the meal had once again been fantastic, it had seemed to drag out forever, each time I had looked out of the kitchen window the sky had seemed noticeably darker. Knowing that I needed to get to the wood and set everything up before it got to dark to see, I’d rushed my food and perhaps been a little too quick to refuse Ellie’s well meant hospitality. When I came down from my room with the battered old canvas backpack over my shoulder to say my goodbyes, Ellie, however, didn’t show the slightest sign of having been offended. She came out from the kitchen and stood facing me across the hallway with Jackie leaning against the doorframe behind her.
‘It’s been lovely having you stay with us dear.’
I saw the genuine look of warmth on Ellie’s face and realised that the feeling of contentment that had been creeping over me the past two days was at more than just having escaped from the City and my immediate troubles. I had really come to enjoy being here, sharing myself with Jackie, gradually getting to know her, accepting each other for what we are, the motherly warmth of Ellie and the home comforts of sharing a living place with two people I had begun to care for.
‘I wish I could stay longer, I really do,’ I replied, trying to convey as much of my feelings in the words as I could. Then Ellie did something that took me totally by surprise, so much so that I nearly dropped the backpack. She took a step toward me and threw her arms around me in a hug. Hesitantly I put my arms around her and returned the embrace, looking to Jackie over Ellie’s shoulder for guidance. Jackie just stood leaning against the doorframe, one hand raised to half cover a sad smile, watching with teary eyes.
Leaving the B n B and walking out into the darkening evening, I tried to push myself as fast as the weight of the backpack dragging me backwards would allow. Ellie and Jackie stood and watched me stride down Arlington’s one road, waving their goodbyes. Despite feeling a touch sad for leaving the B ‘n’ B, I tried to push it to the back of my mind; after all I’d be seeing both Jackie and Ellie again soon enough, in Jackie’s case very soon, we’d arranged to meet at the Squire’s later, after I’d got my little woodland retreat set up. I turned off the road to climb the hill to the silent wood at the top, the sky behind the dark mass of trees glowing with the last dying warmth of the day. Crickets mourned the day’s passing in the long grass around me as I slowed under the weight of the backpack and the incline of the hill. Throwing the backpack over a stile and resting on the top, feet just brushing the top of the grass below, I paused to regard my temporary home. The wood ahead stood ominously black and indistinct, and yet, as I reached the edge of the trees and stepped under the living canopy, that same shadowy darkness seemed to welcome me. I imagined myself some strange animal, returning after a long exile in a corrosive wasteland to the gently breathing wood, returning to dig down deep into the soft leafy earth and carve out a hiding place in the living roots of the trees, to hide in the shadows and heal, let old wounds close and try and work out who I really was. I found the clearing overlooking the valley, where Jackie and I had so intimately spent the afternoon. In the fading light it seemed less inviting than it had earlier, too exposed to any inquisitive eyes from below. Turning my back on the rolling fields I decided to make camp further into the wood; as far as I was concerned the further from people I stayed, the better. After a bit of looking about I found a perfect little clearing a few minutes walk into the wood. I’d chosen the spot because of a large bush growing like a wave about to crash onto a beach, the branches growing upwards only to curve back down to leave the tops touching the earth, creating a hollow. I shucked the backpack off and slung it under this little hollow, at least that way if it rained while I set the tent up it wouldn’t get soaked. I set the tent up a couple of metres away, facing the bush and backpack. The idea was that later I’d be able to sit under the arch of the bush and relax in front of a hearty fire, comfortable, safe from the rain and with the added bonus that I wouldn’t stink out my tent with wood smoke. I added a few extra touches to make the place that bit more luxurious, or far as camping in a wood could be at least. Sticking two pairs of branches firmly in the ground about a metre apart, I spent a while collecting dead branches, dropping the armful that I could find without wandering off to far in the centre of the camp. Picking out the straighter branches I wedged them between the two vertical pairs to form a small wall just over a foot high. I’d read about doing this kind of thing as a kid, back in the indistinct past before my parents had moved the family into London in search of better jobs. If I lit the fire next to the makeshift wall, but not close enough to set it on fire, it would reflect back some of the heat, keeping me warmer; or that was the idea at least. Even if it didn’t really work, at least the wall would hide the fire from anyone looking to closely into the wood. The last thing I wanted was to be woken up in the night by an irate farmer or country type waving a shotgun in my face and yelling about “trespassing”. After piling up the left over branches, so that I wouldn’t need to go rooting through the wood in the darkness later for firewood, I took a step back, brushed my trousers clean and admired my handy work. Despite the small scale of the camp, I felt satisfied. Here I was in the middle of the countryside fending for myself, building my own camp. I man, look what I make. Maybe tomorrow I’d build a shelter or try and trap a rabbit or something equally outdoorsy. Perhaps I’d found my vocation in life I thought, a modern day Robinson Crusoe stranded in the wilds of the English countryside, beset on all sides by ravenous badgers and shotgun wielding farmers with only my wits and the love of a good woman to save me.

Walking under the jolly caricature of the Squire’s sign gently swinging in the evening breeze I noticed through the distorted pebble glass windows that the pub seemed busier than usual. Pushing open the door revealed that it hadn’t just been the glass multiplying the pub goers. Jackie sat at one end of the bar, looking great in a plain black t-shirt and camo combats. Next to her leaning against the bar, in what they probably thought a nonchalant pose, were two twenty-something blokes wearing shiny white designer trainers, tracksuit trousers and matching sports brand t-shirts, topped off with caps that looked dangerously tight and enough moody gold bling, one even had a gold nose ring, to look like they’d just come from robbing a back street goldsmiths. They appeared to be trying to chat up Jackie, spurred on by another three dressed in identical uniform sat in a corner, and considering Jackie was sitting facing away from them with a bored look on her face, rather unsuccessfully. As I walked over all three turned, Jackie with a smile, the other two with calculating looks and attendant frowns that suggested they didn’t appreciate being made to think even that hard.
‘You took your time,’ she said to me, and then turning to her two would-be suitors, ‘now will you just fuck off?’
With what I assumed were meant to be threatening backward looks, the pair took their alcopops and retreated back to the corner, muttering ‘fucking faggot’ and ‘dyke bitch’ less than quietly under their breathes. I took a stool and ordered a pair of pints. Nodding my head at the barman as the beers arrived, I pointed over my shoulder at the primates muttering in the corner.
‘What did that lot want?’
‘As far as I could tell, just a quickie round in the toilets,’ she replied sipping her beer. ‘Couple of times a year we get ‘travellers’,’ you could hear her insert the verbal quotation marks, ‘passing through the village. They always cause trouble, act like they own the place and try and nick things until the police finally get out here and move them on. Actually, it was probably them who took our B ‘n’ B sign. They’re not real gypsies or whatever, just pikies whose houses happen to have wheels.’
She put down her beer and turned to me with a contemplative expression.
‘So, how long are you really staying for?’ she said in a tone both accusing and sad.
‘Hey, if you want me to go…’ I let the sentence hang, really just putting off having to make a serious response.
‘Seriously.’ She replied ignoring my frivolity.
‘For as long as I can, I guess.’
‘Haven’t you got somewhere to be going? Someone waiting for you someplace?’
‘Nope.’
At this she smiled but tried to hide it by taking a swig of her pint, although the glass only served to magnify the smile to unnatural proportions.
‘I like it here.’
She raised her eyebrow sarcastically.
‘Ok then, I like you.’
Again the smile.
‘So I’m gonna stay in my rustic mansion, roughing it, getting back to nature and all that. And, if you’ll let me, I’d like to get to know you better, spend more time with you, share more time with you.’
She put her pint down and rested her hand on my leg. She leant in and smiling, kissed me deeply.
‘I’d like that.’

We sat talking at the bar all night, hardly drinking, much to the chagrin of the landlord who, from his surly manner, seemed to take this as a personal insult. I’d stopped in the general store on the way to the Squire for smokes, but they hadn’t had anything as exotic as Lucky Strikes, and when I’d asked the old dear behind the counter she’d informed me apologetically that she didn’t stock any scratch cards. It didn’t matter anyway; spending the night talking to Jackie it felt like I needed nothing else. It wasn’t until the landlord half-heartedly rang an old maritime bell to announce time at the bar, that I realised I hadn’t felt the need for a smoke or even to get drunk. I nodded in the direction of the gents as Jackie and I stood to leave.
‘I’ll wait for you outside,’ she said looking over at the five pikies sat in the corner. They’d become increasingly animated throughout the evening, fuelled by alcopops. By this time they were now gesturing violently at each other as they attempted to communicate loudly; ‘fucking’, ‘bastarding’ and swearing at each other, every normal word bracketed by three or four expletives. Watching them from the corner of my eye I suddenly realised in their exaggerated arm waving and almost guttural speech just how closely related to apes we are; some apparently more so than others. Sitting in their customary seats by the fire, intent on their seemingly never drunk beers and pipes, the two old chaps who I’d seen in here every night seemed as oblivious to the bell for closing time as they had to the gradually increasing commotion from the prats in the corner. While the barman glowered drunkenly at the group he seemed as regardless of the old blokes as they were of him; evidently over the years they had become as much a part of the background of his pub as the battered furniture. In the toilets, while wondering whether we’d go back to hers or ‘mine’, I tried to rush myself as much as possible while trying to hold my breath. Judging by the general filthiness of the urinal trough it was unlikely to have been cleaned since the last World War and the smell rising from it was far from pleasant. Zipping up, I wandered over to the washbasin, concentrating on not slipping on the dubious puddles covering the red tile floor. After a quick look I decided that on second thoughts it would probably be more hygienic not to wash my hands, the taps looked like they could each hold the entire contents of a military germ warfare lab. Gingerly opening the door with one finger where the handle looked least dirty and stepping into the bar I noticed that although the ancient regulars remained, the drunken travellers did not. Without acknowledging the landlord’s slurring ‘’ave a nice night’ through his moustache I quickly crossed to the outside door with a tight feeling starting to twist my stomach. Swinging open the heavy wooden door the scene before me brought me to a faltering halt. Two of them held Jackie roughly by the arms while one of the two from the bar, the one with the nose ring, advanced towards her, encouraged by the last two yelling, ‘Go on man, do the bitch’, ‘not so frigid now are you, fucking cow’. Jackie herself was in the middle of the group, struggling violently against the two holding her, screaming at the top of her lungs, keeping nose ring skipping back from her flailing legs, which despite their violent efforts the two holding her couldn’t pin down. Without stopping to think I lunged in, fists flying, hitting nose ring in the back of the head with a haymaker and the guy on his right with the retracting elbow. Nose ring fell forwards stunned, falling first face into one of Jackie’s frantic kicks, while the second bent double and fell to his knees screaming and clutching his ear with both hands. As the other three turned, realising the attempted rape had been interrupted, I dived straight into the nearest one holding Jackie, falling together in a mass of tangled limbs and fists. Between twisting, straining, punching, kneeing and butting against the bastard I looked up to see that Jackie had pulled herself free. Looking up cost me an elbow to the chin, but trying to block out the sudden dizziness that filled my head I punched down catching his eye with a knuckle. With the fucker distracted by the punch I took the chance to look up, only to see that as intent as the remaining two had been on raping Jackie, now they looked just as determined to kill me. She stood pale and indecisive, looking from me struggling on the floor to the two men standing over me looking for a clear opening to put the boot in. She stood there, unable to move, emotions warring across her face, until I yelled at the top of my voice.
‘Run!’
Still she stood, seemingly unwilling to leave me. A fist exploded into my stomach, forcing all the breath out of me in one gasping cough.
‘Run!’
This time it was more a wheezing splutter than a yell, but finally she took off, sprinting awkwardly towards her house, arms and legs stumbling and uncoordinated. A jagged pain ripped through my arm as the bastard managed to bite into it, the pain bringing all my attention back to my own problems. Years of dirty fighting learnt from growing up in London’s rough streets and pubs surfaced instinctively. I kneed the biter in the groin, instantly making him let go of my arm. Rolling free from his suddenly feeble grasp I looked up at to see another one standing above me, blocking any hope of escape. With the adrenaline hammering through me it seemed that from the corner of my eye I sensed more than saw that the other two were on the opposite side of the now foetal and moaning man I’d just kneed and had been waiting in the scuffle for a clear kick at my head. The one standing directly over me must have been the rapist I’d hit from behind, nose ring, blood ran thickly, dripping onto his chin from his swollen and torn nose and I couldn’t see the ring anymore; standing by my legs he had been about to pull me off his mate. He bent down to grab a leg, unaware I was now free, intent instead of getting me where the other two could stomp my head. Filled with pumping adrenaline I launched a savage kick at his groin but missing connected instead with the side of his knee. With a sickening snap I felt something give sideways beneath my heavy boot and with a scream he fell, a scream that rose to the unnatural pitch of a wounded animal as he landed knee first on the tarmac. Scrabbling frantically, aware that the two behind me would be on me in a second, I pushed myself up on my hands and started at a sprint, nearly falling over myself in my desperation, in the only clear direction, away from the pub and away from the town. I ran, breath ripping from still winded lungs, arm throbbing continuously, on legs numb and alien from the adrenaline. Risking a glance behind me, I looked over my shoulder long enough to see the two still standing bastards kneeling by the one whose leg I’d broken, as the other injured two struggled to their feet, reaching inside t-shirts and trousers to pull out slivers that seemed to glint in the yellow light spilling from the Squire’s windows. I looked ahead, pushing my senseless legs, trying to run faster. I didn’t bother to look back and see if the whole gang of the fuckers, now armed with knives, were chasing me; I knew that if they needed to they’d spend the whole night hunting me down.
My lungs felt like they’d been filled with hot iron and my legs were ready to give under me, as doubling up and fighting for breath, I finally came stumbling to a stop. A few metres in away was the path that would get me off the road and up the hill, into the wood and finally my camp. Squinting into the darkness back along the road to town I couldn’t see anyone moving, perhaps I’d been fast enough to get away, or perhaps, less likely, the fuckers I’d thought chasing me had simply given up? The pain and light-headedness made everything seem to sway uncertainly, but I knew that I still needed to get off the road and up the hill to be really safe and out of sight. Dragging myself up that hill was maybe the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. Gasping for breath, legs weak and stiff, arm throbbing from the bite and body aching from punches I’d not even felt in the rush of the fight I staggered up the grassy path. Despite the gently incline, in the darkness, with head swimming and every part of my body simultaneously clamouring for my attention, that hill might as well have been Mount Everest. I more dragged myself up the path than walked, so bent double as to be almost on all fours, the tall grass brushing my face like tiny arms seeking to drag me to the ground. Reaching the base of the stile I knew there was no way I could climb it and instead had to pull myself to the top and then let myself fall onto the hard ground the other side, winding myself still further by landing sickeningly on my ribs. Almost crawling to the entrance of the wood I lay at the foot of a tree, sucking in huge ragged gasps of breath that seemed to scald my throat all the way down to the very bottom of my lungs. I lay there for what seemed like hours, gasping in the chill air like a landed fish, leg muscles cramping, aching in what seemed every single nerve at once. After some time I finally felt able to stand without my legs giving way beneath me, and pulling myself up by the branches of the tree turned to look out over the valley beneath me. In a growing wind the fields undulated darkly between the lines of inky blackness that were hedgerows in the weak moonlight, the moon itself was visible only as a patch of wispy cloud illuminated faintly. Suddenly a shout from below split the silence of the night, echoing faintly across the valley. Dim shapes moved and faded into each other at the bottom of the slope where I guessed the road to be. With another shout the shapes grew larger, separating into individual outlines as they started moving up the hill with alarming speed. Tree branches scratched at my face, roots threatened to trip me as I limped into the wood, desperate to escape. The knowledge that they weren’t now looking to give me a beating, but almost certainly to kill me, brought a wave of fear followed by another burst of adrenaline that left a cold sweat all over my body. If the night had been dark at the top of the hill, inside the wood it was like stumbling through pitch. I had only a vague idea of where the camp was, in the blackness turning left and right where the undergrowth was too dense to fight through, falling over branches and roots, having to cover my eyes from the scratching twigs, I could have been going anywhere. The only guide I had was that the shouts were getting louder now, but at least coming from behind me. Turning my head without stopping my stumbling dash, trying to see if I could make out my pursuers against the edge of the woods, pain erupted in my right knee and I fell heavily to the floor, landing face down in the cool earth but hard enough on something under my chest for it to feel like I’d been hit in the ribs with a crowbar. Shit I thought, they’ve got me, I’m fucking dead. I lay there for a few seconds, not even daring to breathe. Nothing happened. No sharp pain of knives piercing my flesh, no dull pounding of stamping feet. Sitting upright and spitting out rotting leaves and dirt I fumbled around behind me, trying to work out who, or what, had floored me. Under my searching fingers I found first one log, than another, stacked on top of each other. It took a few seconds for the realisation to hit, but then suddenly it all made sense; this must be the firewall I’d made earlier, and what I’d landed on so painfully the firewood I’d piled earlier. I stood up shakily, trying to get my bearings. A whooping shout from the one of the hunters sounded close behind me, followed by a flickering glow waving from side to side that got brighter, and brighter, until it illuminated a silhouette only about thirty metres behind me. The light was near enough for me to make out that it was burning branch, but now I could also start to make out distinct shapes; what I’d thought a large bush turned out to be my tent. I knew with the murderous travellers so close behind and now able to see in the darkness that there was no way I could just roll up and hide in the tent. No, they’d see that straight away and there was no way I was going to let myself be cornered. They’d probably burn me alive in my own tent, the very thought of that agonizing death alone almost brought up the contents of my stomach. I somehow knew that these scum would be the kind of person who’d enjoy seeing me roast alive, helpless to escape, the kind of sick bastards who’d tortured cats for fun as kids. I knew I had to hide, but where? It had only been because I’d ducked back down behind the wall that I’d not been spotted straight away. Keeping bent low to the ground I half crawled, half scrambled, away from the tent to the little hollow cave in the bush where I’d hidden the backpack. Fumbling in the bush for the canvas straps, aware every second that the light behind me was growing brighter as the hunters got closer, I finally managed to grab a strap just as my worst fears were made reality.
‘Oi! Over here!’
I froze, praying that if I stayed perfectly still maybe, just maybe, I wouldn’t be seen. Clumsy footsteps became audible close, too close, behind me, followed by the sound of someone violently thrashing their way through a bush from behind the tent on my left. The tent! I could only hope that’s what they’d seen. Maybe there was still a chance to get away? Knowing that to stay here exposed would mean being caught, I pushed my tired and battered body forward, deeper into the bush, dragging the backpack behind me. Twigs scratched at my face and hands, every muscle seemed to tense uncontrollably at the slightest noise, but somehow I pushed myself a few metres into the bush and finally out the other side. The firelight was weaker here, blocked by the dense bush, but looking around I could just make out that I’d come out into a miniature glade. Bushes all around arched up to form a living roof just big enough to sit under and in the middle of it all, rising like a column, grew a small tree. Quickly I crawled forward, trying desperately not to shake the surrounding bushes and alert my pursuers, and pulled myself around the tree so that I could sit with my back against it, backpack cradled in my lap, hidden behind the trunk from the camp. The warm firelight from the crude torch had stopped moving, now shining brightly enough to dimly penetrate through the bush to where I hid.
‘Hey, look at this!’
The voice from the clearing was worryingly only a few metres away, near enough to make me try and curl up as small, or preferably smaller, than humanly possible. The sounds of violent thrashing from the bushes behind the tent finished and two more voices joined the first.
‘We’ve found the fucker’s tent!’
‘’Ave a look round, maybe he’s still here.’
For the next few minutes the noises of bushes being vigorously poked, the tent searched, and drunken banter filled the air. The light had started to fade a little as the thug holding the burning branch went to search the bushes on the opposite side of the clearing. Breathing quickly with suppressed adrenaline, I decided to risk a brief peek around the tree to see just how many of them were after me. Had one of them stayed with nose ring and his broken leg, or had they left him where he lay and all come to share in the revenge? Very, very, slowly I cautiously peered just far enough around the tree to make out what has happening. Being on the ground, and with the curve of the bush blocking most of the scene, all I could see was two pairs of legs checking the bushes. The one with the burning branch seemed to be stupidly poking it into the bushes, trying to see if I was lurking in them. Suddenly the fear of being burnt alive once again brought a lump to my throat. It would be cruelly ironic to have managed to escape and hide from these chimps only to be accidentally burnt to death, caught in a forest fire these fuckwits had unwittingly started. Footsteps suddenly sounded very close to my hiding place, making my heart miss a beat. The precarious reality of my situation hit me, sitting behind a tree in a bush a few metres from the people wanting to kill you really isn’t the best hiding place. A pair of legs staggered unsteadily into view, right in front of me, and without warning their owner fell heavily to his knees and started peering into the bush from beneath his baseball cap. Staying perfectly still, unable now to pull my head out of view, praying that the dimming light from the burning branch and the thick shadows of the bush would hide me, I could only hold my breath as the drunk peered into my hiding place. Unwilling to move even a fraction of an inch my entire body felt tensed fit to haemorrhage, I thought that surely he must be hear the deafening drumming of my pounding heartbeat that filled my ears. For what seemed ages he peered into the bush, turning his head this way and that with a frowning and slightly puzzled look, clearly utterly drunk. The dust from the tree bark pressed against my face made my eyes water and I could feel what I only hoped was a spider crawling over my left hand, but I still didn’t dare to even blink for fear that I’d give myself away to the drunk seeming to be staring straight at me from just a few metres away. To my silent horror the firelight started to get brighter again as the one with the burning branch walked to the centre of the clearing, apparently content that the opposite bush was empty. His white trainered feet turned to point in the direction of my own bush. This was really it I thought, now I’m screwed.
‘Hey, what you doin’ there?’
The one squinting into my bush turned his head.
‘I’m lookin’ for the guy, what’d ya thin…’
‘Get out of the bush and stop trying to harass the fuckin’ badgers. It’s obvious he’s not here, is he? Not even a stupid fucker like you would lead us right to his own campsite would he?’ Silently I was inclined to agreed. Despite the fact that he was just as drunk as the rest, this one had apparently decided that he was the intellectual and natural leader of the three. The kneeling guy took one more long suspicious look into the bush and stood up to walked back to the centre of the clearing. It seemed the dying light hadn’t just been the branch being carried further away, the branch itself was going out.
‘He’s not here, but we can still give him a nice surprise to come back to,’ said the leader.
Supposing that I’d got away, instead of being sitting hunched up in a bush right next to them, they obviously didn’t want to let it all have been a wasted trip. All three pairs of feet gathered around the small wall that I’d fallen over and the pile of firewood I’d fallen onto.
‘What’d ya think the lil’ wall’s for?’
‘Burning.’
With that the feet kicked the pile of firewood up against the wall and a hand pushed the burning branch into the bottom of the sticks. Within a minute the whole lot was blazing brightly, lighting the destruction that followed.
‘Anythin’ in the tent?’ asked one pair of legs to another.
‘Nothin’ much,’ came the reply. All that I’d left in the tent when I’d gone to the pub had been the sleeping bag and food, the rest of my possessions were safely nestled in the backpack in my lap.
A loud ripping came from the direction of the tent, and taking a risk I leant further from my hiding place to see what was happening. In the minutes that followed I watched as my tent was first cut to ribbons with knives, the poles snapped over knees, the entire sorry mess pissed on and then finally burning logs thrown on top in an attempt to burn the lot. The soggy mess refused to burn however, and the burning logs merely smouldered, filling the air with a foul smell of burning canvas and piss. I watched them finally leave, finding nothing else to destroy they quickly got bored with kicking burning logs at each other and wandered drunkenly back in the direction of Arlington. I could hear their triumphant swearing echoing through the trees for a long time.
Even when the voices had faded to nothing, I didn’t move. I sat clutching my backpack, all that I now had in the world, without moving for what seemed hours. I wasn’t worried about them coming back to find me, after having trashed the camp why would they bother? I just had nowhere to go. There was no point going to find Jackie, I felt fairly certain she’d got safely home and if I went into the village I’d only be risking running straight back into the very people I’d just luckily escaped from. The smouldering logs went out, leaving nothing but a hazy purple afterimage playing across my sight in the darkness. A total feeling of emptiness overwhelmed me, was there anything that petty minded violence and idiocy couldn’t ruin? Why whenever something was going well would the world come along and, literally in my case, piss all over it? I have no idea how long I sat there, negative thoughts swirling through my mind, but eventually when my legs began to cramp, I decided I’d had enough. If this world, this life, was such a gigantic shithole, then fuck it; I’d get away from it all, if only for a while. Reaching into the backpack I took out the plastic bag that held all the makings of oblivion inside, and slowly but expertly rolled a joint by touch alone. I smoked quickly, ignoring the burning at the back of my throat, eager to escape, rolling the next joint as I finished the last. The first one soothed the aching cramp in my legs into a dull background warmth that was almost pleasant. The second, even stronger than the first, blew the night away. The bushes overhead, the leafy soil, even the tree I was propped up against all faded away, leaving me feeling disembodied, floating in a blackness of which I was just a conscious extension. The third and strongest one brought unbidden thoughts swirling through the blackness, neon undulating shapes that danced only as long as I looked at them and then melted into the shadows. Suddenly what had been a flight from reality became an uncontrollable screaming nosedive straight back at it. I couldn’t escape the thoughts that rose accusingly, undulating around me, stabbing into me with bitter shafts of frost. If only we’d left the pub earlier. If only I’d gone outside with Jackie instead of to the toilets. If only I hadn’t stood up on the hill at precisely the wrong moment, if just I’d lain there for a few seconds more they’d have passed by and everything would have been fine. If only I hadn’t hit you.

I’d woken up in my flat, sprawled across the floor, stiff and aching in every joint. For a few blissful seconds I just lay there, awake but unaware, happy in my ignorance. Then everything came rushing back, even more painful than the hangover suddenly threatening to make me loose the weak bilious contents of my stomach. Looking back on it now, it was those first two nights, those nights of alcoholic escapism that started my downward spiral. First it was drink, lots of it, but later it was drugs too, things I’d only ever experimented with before now became a regular feature of my tired existence. Ups and downs, pleasurable forgetfulness followed by soul crushing depressions. In a way you got your revenge on me, you ruined my life, twisted it into something that mocked what it had once been, once meant. Even the poetry that had been so large a part of my life became bitter and twisted, everything I wrote just spoke to me of my own hypocrisy, spelling it out on the snow-white pages in stilted clichés. A few hours later, once my hangover had eased a little and I’d worked up the courage I headed back to your apartment, taking the bus again. It was less crowded than the day before, but somehow, to me, infinitely fouler. I stood again, not wanting to sit next to the people that suddenly filled me with loathing. Each person I saw looked more like they came from the sick mind of some stereotype obsessed marketing executive than the last. A pink and white tracksuit clad single mother who couldn’t have been any older than myself sat staring out the window at the passing streets, her baby held in her arms like it might as well have been a handbag; a chore to carry around but too valuable to forget. A grey suited businessman sat in a front row seat pretending to read a broadsheet, exuding hostile indifference, clearly intent on having nothing to do with those around him. A weathered looking old man sat wrapped in a dirty brown coat despite the heat, his lined black face staring unseeing from beneath a woollen hat. Suddenly I felt the urge to get out, to stop breathing these people’s second hand air, to feel the wind on my face. Jabbing the button to ring the bell I jumped off the bus as it pulled up against the curb, onto the refreshingly empty street; even the dirty wind of London seemed heaven sent after the sticky interior of the bus. I walked the rest of the way to your apartment.
Stopping outside your building, I leant up against the concrete wall, needing both a smoke and a minute to gather my thoughts. Sliding a Lucky Strike from the packet as I lit up I ran over in my mind what I’d say to you. Knowing that there was no way you’d open the door to me, not after I’d hit you, I’d brought the spare key you’d given me. Although this would no doubt only make you angrier, I had to see you, to make you listen to me. If we could only talk it all over, if you knew how sorry I was that I’d lost my temper and hit you, that I forgave you for cheating; then surely it would all be ok. Taking a last deep draw I dropped the cigarette, brushed the hair from my eyes and pushed open the door. In the lobby the little old woman sat motionless on her chair, watching me suspiciously as I walked past, reply to my ‘hello’ with a venomous look. Outside your door I stopped to catch my breath.
‘It’ll all be fine. It’ll all be fine,’ I muttered to myself.
Knocking loudly, I put the key in the lock and opened the door. Taking two steps into the room it took a few seconds the scene in front of me to register. The pottery vase lay shattered in hundreds of pieces across the wooden floor in a puddle of spilt lilies and water; but the water wasn’t the only thing pooling on the floor. Swirls of a darker liquid lay in the water, like oil on a puddle, smearing the perfect white of the lily petals. I took a few steps closer. Something had dribbled down the table leg into the water and the lilies, it coated the corner of the wooden coffee table, something dark, almost black. I bent down and dipped a finger into the thick residue on the table corner; it stuck to my finger. Blood, drying blood. Looking in horror from my finger to the floor, I noticed that the puddle of water wasn’t all that was on the floor. Running in a congealing smear, like a sluggish river delta flowing into the sea of vase water, the smear of blood ran to the sofa and appeared to go round the corner behind it. I started to wretch. In the middle of this grisly dark crimson smear, just before it disappeared behind the sofa, a book lay open. Trying to hold down the waves of nausea rising up my throat I took a step forward and went down on one knee to look closer. It was a book of poetry. ‘Footsteps in the Rain’, my book, my present to you, the only thing I’ve given to you that you ever treasured. It lay open at a well-thumbed page. The poem was ‘She sits and dreams of a love yet to be’, your favourite poem, the one you always asked whether it was based on you or not. The page was soaked in blackening blood, the text barely readable. From the central crease a tiny bookmark stood erect. I tilted my head to look. It wasn’t a bookmark, it was a passport photo, a passport photo of me. I remembered the day I’d taken it. You were always pestering me for a photograph, complaining that you didn’t have any of just me by myself. What if you got run over by a bus tomorrow you’d joked, how would I remember you then? I’d always said that you shouldn’t need something like a photo to remember me by, jokingly I’d said if you really loved me you’d remember me for ever. But one day I’d gone to a photo booth in a tube station and taken four photos, one I’d given to you, the other three I’d thrown away. I stared at the miniature portrait smiling blankly at nothing, smeared blood caking its surface red-brown. Standing slowly, staring at my words mixed with blood, a sob racked my chest. True poetry held life itself, and now so did mine, someone’s dark, drying lifeblood infusing it with all the bitter irony of the world. Another sob rose from deep inside, painfully urgent, bringing unbidden tears to my eyes. Staggering over to the window, gripping the rail tight with numb hands, I looked out over the street through blurring eyes. People walked along, scurrying about their business like everything was ok, like everything was normal. Looking through tears at the endless distorted tops of the buildings rising forever in a city eternally growing, I thought, maybe this was normality? If I smashed the window and screamed down to them, would they care, or would they hurry embarrassedly down the street, heads down pretending not to hear? Blood on the floors, tears on the windowpanes and lives in the gutter; in the general scheme of things, in a faceless and uncaring city, this must pass for ok. Tears. I could feel them dripping warmly off my chin but couldn’t remember having started to cry. Forcing my eyes to refocus I once again stared blankly at my own face, framed this time with the tracks of tears rather than an awkward smile. Faced with the blank impassivity of the city I couldn’t find it in me to keep crying; life is just like the reflection in the window, dim personalities pasted onto a concrete backdrop, fading as the sun goes down. From the corner of my drying eye a shape slowly emerged from the shifting swirls of colour, a long strip of black next to a bulk of creamy white reflecting in the window. The white mass was clearly the sofa, and turning I realised what lay next to it. Stretched out on the floor, toes curled on pale bare feet in one direction and one arm extended towards the wall in another, grasping blindly for but never quite reaching the phone cord hanging down, lay a body. The ragged tears in the jeans had soaked up the blood, framing the pale flesh of your knees like crimson mouths. The long black hair you’d been so proud of lay like a silken wave across your shoulders, hiding your face; clumps and knots matted together with dried blood shrouding your head like a beaded curtain. Your head. A large hole gaped in the back of your head, bloody fleshy edges exposing a softer paler mess just visible beneath the dried blood that caked your hair and left a pale brownish stain on the back of your marble white neck. The bile suddenly rose in my throat, flooding my mouth with a thick bitterness. Staggering away, dropping heavily to my knees, I threw up violently in the wicker bin in the corner. Cramps twisted my stomach as I wretched again and again, until my entire body felt empty, but even then it didn’t stop, I continued to dry wretched miserably, spitting out thick saliva and tasting my own bitterness on my lips. I knelt there, hunched up, shaking, tears again rolling down my face, unable to stop my mind morbidly turning over what must have happened. You’d been standing next to the coffee table as we’d argued, yelling at me. I’d slapped you open palmed and hard across the face, turned and stormed out, slamming the door behind me. I saw it all in my mind in slow motion, hurting myself thinking about it but unable to stop. You fall backwards, one hand half raised to your burning cheek, the other arm whirling, trying to get your balance. Your flailing arm smashes the pottery vase into skittering pieces on the wooden floor and knocks the poetry book from the edge of the table where it lands open on the floor. I can see you, caught in a photo freeze frame, diagonal in the air but falling, eyes staring at the ceiling unable to see the door as it closes hard enough to shake the door frame. Falling, a look of mild confusion on your face, your head hits the hard wooden corner of the table, the fragile eggshell of your skull punctured with a wet crunch. As the bone is pushed into the soft matter beneath and the first hot scarlet splash of blood gushes from the hole, your eyes roll upwards and your eyelids flicker like frightened butterflies. Hitting the unforgiving wooden floor hard, your eyes snap back into focus. As I’m climbing down the stairs, taking them two at a time, mind raging furiously, your blood is streaming from the wound, and you start dragging yourself across the floor, weakly kicking with your legs and pulling with your arms. You smear blood beneath yourself in a gory red path as you claw at the floor, breaking your nails as you scrabble for grip, your head is a deep burning pain with each throb of your heartbeat. The phone, you think. I must reach the phone. You pull yourself over the book, behind the sofa, getting weaker with each second. You can see it now, the cord dangling tantalisingly from the wall in front of you. Blackness starts creeping from the corners of your vision, the warm iron taste of blood starts filling your mouth, you can’t pull yourself any further. Your arms scrabble weakly against the floor, fighting for purchase, but you can’t move. Blackness overwhelms you, the pain in your head fades with your vision, with the lifeblood leaving you, you make one last dying effort and stretch your arm blindly towards the phone. Exhaling slowly you slip into the welcoming darkness.

***

The next few days, weeks maybe, I can’t remember, passed by in a blur. Living in a kind of dull trance, I sat for days in the flat, drinking and smoking myself paralytic several times a day, desperately avoiding thinking. Drinking started as soon as I was awake enough to reach for one of the bottles scattered around the room. The TV sat untouched in the corner, the radio silent on the shelf; I didn’t want to know if you’d been found, if the police were looking for me, I cultivated the absence of thought, the absence of being. I left the flat only occasionally, when I remembered to be hungry, or when the bottles ran dry. By the time I realised what was happening I was already racing headlong in a self-destructive downward spiral, one I didn’t want to stop.

Idyllium (Chapter 5)

2009-06-11T15:09:00.000+01:00

The Diary of a Heretic

Nicholas Cockayne

Idyllium
(Chapter 5)

Raising her head she stares deep into the glass,
As invisible tears streak down the mirror of her soul.

I awoke. The bright sunlight of a warm autumn day pushed in through half closed curtains that I’d forgotten in my nocturnal inebriation. Slowly stretching stiff muscles, I lifted my arm from where it had lain across my face as I’d slept, covering my eyes from the growing light of morning. It’s strange that even while asleep we’re never fully unconscious, the body protecting itself by instinct. Pushing aside the covers, the cold kiss of the chilly room brushing aside the last vestiges of sleep. I rose and started to dress, pulling on my creased jeans; it probably wasn’t a good idea going to the bathroom wearing just my underwear. Of course back at the flat I’d always just worn as much or as little as I’d liked, even staying at your apartment we both walked around naked when it was more convenient. It seemed I needn’t have worried through, for as I padded quietly across the landing to the small bathroom I could hear both Ellie and Jackie talking in low tones from downstairs. Trying to quickly complete my ablutions with the cold tiles biting into my naked feet, I rapidly scraped the worn bristles of the toothbrush around my mouth, briskly removing the filmy taste left behind by the nighttime joint. Cursing how long the water took to warm, I quickly lathered soap onto my face and using the dull razor that I had meant to replace for so long, scraped the raw stubble from my chin. As the still cold swirling water washed the bristles and foam down the sink, I dried my face with the fluffy white towel that had appeared outside my door this morning and took the chance to look at myself in the mirror. The cuts and bruises seemed to be healing fast, the cut on my cheek was still an angry crimson but the swelling had died down, although my jaw still throbbed when I touched it, likewise my eyebrow seemed much better. With any luck the cuts wouldn’t scar. Things seemed to be looking up at last.
As I came out of the bathroom, feeling infinitely more human after a decent wash and shave, and crossed past the stairs to my room, Ellie’s head appeared around the kitchen door, as though some motherly sixth sense had alerted her to my presence.
‘Sleep well?’
‘Yes thanks, best nights sleep in ages.’
I wasn’t lying, despite the need for a sneaky smoke. When I had finally got to sleep, it had been a deep dreamless sleep, something that over the recent months I’d have sold my soul for, and I’d not stirred until late morning. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had such a peaceful sleep, untroubled by dark dreams.
‘Well, once you’ve put some clothes on, there’s breakfast waiting for you in the oven love. Jackie and I always have ours early so I’m afraid you’ll be eating alone.’
At her words I realised with a flash of self conscious embarrassment that I was half naked and this probably wasn’t polite, Ellie was probably used to a little more discretion from her guests. Quickly opening the door and stepping into my room I stuck my head back around the doorframe.
‘Thanks very much, I’ll be down in a minute.’
‘No hurry dear.’
As Ellie’s head drew back into the kitchen I thought I caught a quick flash of a smile cross her face. It was disturbingly alike to Jackie’s own cheeky smile.
Hauling my clothes on as quickly as possible and combing my hair into some semblance of order with my fingers, I was downstairs in just a few minutes. Jackie sat at the small pine table in the centre of the kitchen with her back to her mother, who was washing up in the sink, cradling a large mug of coffee in her hands. She gave me a warm smile as I came in; luckily Ellie’s back was turned at this point, engrossed in the slopping suds of the washing up.
‘Breakfast’s in the oven, hope you like a fry up. Sorry that we didn’t wait for you love, but we’re both early birds.’
The look Jackie gave me, eyebrow raised ironically, and the way she held the coffee tightly in her cupped hands, seemed to suggest this wasn’t by choice. As Ellie spoke she pointed with one pinkly marigolded and foam crowned hand to the chipped enamel oven in the corner.
‘I would get it out for you, but…’ she said as she lifted the other gloved hand from the sink with a shrug.
‘Don’t worry, I’m more used to doing things for myself anyway’.
Pulling the plate out, only mildly singeing my fingers, I sat myself opposite Jackie, who, despite obviously not being a morning person, still somehow managed to look glamorous in an old dressing gown; well, to me at least. The thought crossed my mind that I might be letting myself in for a fall.
Despite the large meal last night, the ample portions of sausage, bacons, beans, mushrooms and eggs heaped on the plate had my mouth watering in anticipation. I could really get used to this kind of treatment, hell I probably needed to. The figure that looked back at me from the bathroom mirror this morning hadn’t been the muscular physique of a few months ago, instead it was whiplash thin; still muscled but in that peculiar way you see in documentaries of tribal hunters or prison inmates, seemingly without a single ounce of fat.
‘So isn’t there some nice girl back home who cooks for you? Or are you one of these modern couples who share it all?’
‘Mum!’
‘No, it’s ok,’ I replied looking at Jackie, ‘there’s no girl back home, not any more.’
‘Ah well, handsome lad like you’ll find someone soon.’
I covertly looked up from my plate to Jackie, who was smiling at me with such mischievous affection that I couldn’t help but smile back.
‘So, have you any plans today then Nathan? Will you be staying with us for another night?’ said Ellie without turning from her foaming sink.
‘Well...’ I said, mouth half full of sausage as I struggled to swallow.
‘I’m showing him round the village, and maybe some of the walks,’ broke in Jackie before I could swallow my mouthful of sausage and reply. I looked at her quizzically, trying to work out where she was going with this.
‘Really?’ asked Ellie as I tried to look unsurprised when she glanced suspiciously over her shoulder.
‘Erm, yeah. I asked down the pub last night if she wouldn’t mind showing me the local sights while I was in town. After sleeping so well, I’d almost forgot about it.’
As Ellie turned back to her dishes I shot Jackie a questioning but pleasantly surprised look, she replied by mouthing what seemed like ‘Tell you later’.
As Jackie and I left the house, despite it being earlier than I usually cared for being conscious, the warm sunshine, gentle autumn breeze and a full stomach created such a feeling of contentment that at first it didn’t register. As we strolled in amiable silence down the road towards what passed for the centre of town (as Jackie put it), I split my attention between the swaying, whispering, treetops, the feeling of sun-warmed skin, and admiring Jackie’s graceful figure in a short red skirt and tight fitting white t-shirt. In an unexpected rush I realised that I wasn’t just content, I was happy. The feeling was all the more surprising because I’d almost forgotten what it felt like, after months of lonely solitude and melancholy so poignant that there were days when I couldn’t face leaving the squalor of the flat and eating seemed pointless, this seemed almost blissful. The brightness and sunshine seemed to almost push the memories of those painful months from my mind, the long days when the only reason to get up was to fall into another intoxicated depression, and the recollection of happiness only brought with it the agony of something forever lost and unattainable. I thought perhaps those poets I’d studied in another age, unorthodox Blake and eloquent Keats, really had been onto something after all, maybe the countryside did hold an intrinsic beauty that could change a man. But even these half remembered wild exclamations from long dead poets couldn’t account for the feeling of satisfaction that welled through my body. Just walking along with a woman whose beauty reflected in everything around her filled me full of thoughts and feelings I’d thought irreparably lost. Even as I write now I’m aware that my words fall so far short of the essence of the moment that, perhaps, it were better not to try to capture something so indescribable at all. But then this is a record of the self, and I’d be deluding myself if I thought for one moment that something like this hadn’t forever changed me in some inexplicable way. Perhaps it’s all something so individual and ethereal as to escape identification; try asking a heroine addict or LSD fiend to describe that unique hit, mind bending push, and maybe they’d splutter out some similar inarticulacy.
‘Thanks.’
I turned to look at her as we walked, the breeze playing her short hair gently across her face.
‘For what? I haven’t done anything.’
She shot me a smile. Despite the fact I should have got used to that dazzling smile by now, I almost missed a step and tripped. Subtlety never was my forte.
‘You’ve just got me out of doing all the lame household chores. If I’d stayed home, Mum would have had me cleaning and tending her precious garden. So you’re doing me a big favour, even if you don’t realise it.’
‘So you really want to show me around the fascinating sights of Arlington?’
‘You being serious? I thought you’d stay for just one night, don’t you have somewhere you were heading to? You must have something planned? People don’t just come here randomly; sometimes they drop in for a night on their way up north, but never just for the hell of it. So what was it?’
‘Nothing I can’t cancel.’
There was a long, slightly awkward, pause as we walked along each thinking our own thoughts. Just as I was about to say something hopelessly stupid, about the weather or seasonal sheep rotation, just to fill the silence, Jackie spoke first. I let out a mental sigh of relief. We seemed to be getting along great so far and I didn’t want to anything to ruin the mood of the day, especially not something stupid I’d said without thinking.
‘To be honest there’s not much else to do round here. I help out with the house during the day and sometimes persuade Mum to come for a drink in the evening, if not I go down the pub by myself with a book or something and drink until I can’t remember what I’m reading. You might not have noticed, but life’s hardly exciting hereabouts.’
‘Well, I didn’t want to say anything but…’
Sarcasm obviously wasn’t the best tactic, all it got me was a small push from Jackie that had me walking in the gutter for a few steps.
‘Don’t joke,’ she said looking straight ahead. ‘Try living here a few years. It gets lonely. You’re the first person that’s stayed in the B ‘n’ B who’s not been some knee socked hiker or lycra clad pensioner on a cycling tour. Try being the only person our age in the village, unable to leave because your mother might have a breakdown. It’s not like I can get away from here, not even for one night. What would be the point? The other villages near here are just as small, or smaller, than Arlington; I’d be stuck in the same rut, different place. My idea of a good night out is one where some lecherous old farmer doesn’t try and get into my knickers, and I can drink myself stupid in peace. Sometimes I wonder what’s the point of it all.’
My right hand brushed over my left arm, gently feeling the scars underneath the long sleeved t-shirt. Maybe I hadn’t heard that kind of speech before, but I certainly recognised the sentiments Jackie expressed. I turned to look at Jackie as we walked, there were no welling tears in her eyes but she had a look of confined sadness that was terrible to see and made me want to reach out and touch her tenderly. With an effort of will I kept my hands by my sides.
‘I know what it’s like to be alone.’
She turned to look at me and a small sad smile brightened her face. We walked on in silence.
Just before we came to the weathered frame of the Squire’s Drop, Jackie turned off the dwindling pavement to her left, grabbing my hand and gently pulling me into an overgrown lane I’d not noticed the previous evening. Ducking low hanging tree branches and sidestepping brambles that caught like beggars at the tears in my black jeans, I followed her as she walked briskly down the musky lane, sometimes taking long strides in order not to let go of the hand that held my own so tenderly. As the lane opened out I swatted the last few delicate flies repeatedly making strafing dives at my eyes; trying to get at the moisture and salt, I remembered reading from some dog eared copy of the National Geographic in a dentist’s sterile waiting room. Before me was a dilapidated country graveyard bordered by tall bushy dark evergreens, the rows of moss and ivy covered gravestones pointing at the sky like teeth in a rotting jawbone. The graveyard was small and without a church; it seemed barely two hundred meters across, but crammed so full of ancient gravestones that listed madly or lay prone at the base of the small untamed trees whose roots had dislodged them, that it took a minute or two to reach the other side. At first as we crossed the tumbled stones whose owners’ names had long ago eroded beyond recognition, I attempted to avoid walking directly on the graves, or the little brown piles that lay over some, which I could only assume had been last years cut flowers. Then I noticed that Jackie used the fallen gravestones like stepping stones, lightly skipping from one to the next to avoid soaking her shoes in the dewy long grass that grew between. Suddenly I felt stupid; here I was, self-confessed cynic and atheist from the Big City, trying to avoid stepping on graves like some superstitious country bumpkin worried about offending the dead. Did they still have bumpkins out here, or had they all died out? I made a mental note to ask Jackie later.
Five minutes later found us sitting on the long low stone of one of the oldest graves in the furthest corner of the cemetery, the tall dark evergreens rearing up behind us, not quite able to cast their menacing shadows over us. We sat sunning ourselves in the morning sun as it burnt the small jewels of dew off the wild thick bladed grass surrounding us. I sat hunched over, head between my legs, as I studied the small white and impossibly delicate flowers that lifted their tiny heads between the dense riot of coarse grass surrounding the grave. Jackie sat back with her palms spread on the warming stone behind her as she looked around, taking in the whole cemetery.
‘I like it here,’ she said without looking at me.
‘Me too,’ I replied turning my head to look under my left leg at her. She turned briefly to me and let slip a small laugh that was almost a giggle at the slightly ridiculous sight I made, as I appeared to be about to try, as the colloquialism goes, to kiss my own arse. I pulled a face at her and went back to studying my flower, which now had an ant ascending the stalk. I was curious whether the ant would eat the flower or not, knowing next to nothing about insects. Well, apart from cockroaches.
‘When I come here it’s so peaceful I can sometimes just forget that I’m anywhere, you know? I just forget that anything outside this graveyard exists and pretend I don’t either. No bed and breakfast, no needy mother, no bitch sisters, or suffocating village. That’s when I’m the happiest, I guess, when I just pretend I don’t exist at all.’
I looked up from the ant madly spiralling up and down the flower stalk in frantic confusion when I blew on it. The serene but sad look on Jackie’s face worried me, I knew she was mainly talking to herself, but she seemed to need some kind of response.
‘For what it’s worth, I’m glad you exist. I really am.’
Jackie turned to look at me then, a smile which I told myself seemed genuine, breaking through her melancholy. I lifted her pale hand from where it rested on the rough stone and slowly, gently, kissed her contoured palm.
We walked past the Squire’s Drop and out into the open rolling greenery of the hills. Leaving the meandering road we walked through fields and climbed stiles in rarely broken silence, savouring the song of the birds and the feeling of the wind blowing over skin and ruffling through hair. Gradually we began to climb the steepest of the nearby hills, one topped by a dark wood that ran along its crest and disappeared over the skyline.
‘Where are we going?’
‘Well you wanted to see the sights, didn’t you?’ was Jackie’s playful reply.
She continued striding up the hill and I, shrugging my shoulders, followed her.
The crest of the hill peaked a meter or so into the fragrant trees and the small wood continued down the back of the hill into a shallow valley. We sat on the leafy soil, resting our backs against a tree trunk, cradled in its roots we were able to look out over the houses and gardens of Arlington and the surrounding hilly countryside patched irregularly with golden, green or brown fields, shaded by the rhythmic movement of light and shadow of the swaying branches above us from the brilliant sky. Birdsong sporadically broke out around us and the whisper of the trees in a gentle breeze only accentuated the sense of stillness and silence that surrounded us. As the sun dried the dew from my boots I contentedly reflected that Arlington really was a million miles away from London. Sitting surrounded by the tree roots Jackie and I were close enough for me to hear her breathing, and I knew that I wanted to hold her, share a kiss again, but I also realised that today she was as melancholy and withdrawn as she had been teasing and flirtatious last night. Seconds slowly melted away as we both just sat staring out across the countryside while the shadow patterns of leaves played about us. I knew I had to risk it. To let a moment like this pass and forever wonder about what could have been would be to waste something irretrievable. There was so much I wanted to tell her, so much that words could never really express. I gently slid my arm around her shoulders, feeling her sun-warmed skin against my own, and leaning in kissed her cheek tenderly, almost just brushing her face with my lips. Before I could move, she turned suddenly, grabbing my face with her hands, kissing me so passionately that it hurt. Frantically I wrapped her up in my arms, pulling her against me, feeling the heat of her body melt into mine, returning the kiss with the same ferocious intensity. Our tongues intertwined, she pulled and bit at my lip while she tugged at my t-shirt, only breaking off our kiss to pull it roughly over my shoulders. We rolled to the leafy ground, her astride me, hastily pulling off her white t-shirt and flinging it aside to surprisingly reveal she wasn’t wearing a bra. I awkwardly tugged down my trousers and boxers. Pausing for only a second, she put her hand inside her short red skirt, untying a bow in the side of her lacy white underwear to let it drop to the ground without removing her skirt. Cupping her small pert breasts in my hands, with a swift intake of breath I pulled her quickly down onto myself, pushing a small moan from her open mouth. As we began to make frantic, desperate, love I remember clearly the leafy shadows and scraps of light dancing liquidly across our skin; then she leant down to kiss me once more and I closed my eyes as her lips met mine.
The first time it was needy, fast, rough and passionate. She scratched, raking at my shoulders and chest with her nails, she bit, leaving imperfect little red O’s across my shoulders and neck, she pulled at me with a physical need that surprised me with in its intensity. Afterwards we collapsed side by side, filled with a euphoric mix of bliss and exhaustion. It was a long time before either of us spoke, we just lay panting heavily, staring upwards through the gaps in the branches to the shifting sky above us. Eventually she rolled over, laying an arm across my chest and a leg over mine as she nestled her face into my shoulder. I didn’t want to ruin this moment, but I knew that if there was going to be a time to talk about what I’d seen, it was now.
‘The scars on your legs, how’d you get them?’ I didn’t look down at the little red lines ridging the top of her thighs; I just kept staring up at the uncaring sky.
‘I did it myself,’ she said without looking up at me, an edge of anger in her voice. Then she sighed, and in a small voice that sounded younger than normal said, ‘Sometimes when things’d get the worst and I think about what it would be like if I just took myself away from all of this, I’d cut myself. I did it on my thigh so no one’d see, it’s not a cry for help or anything, it just makes me feel better, releases something inside me. You probably can’t understand.’
I felt her shift slightly on my chest, as if somehow withdrawing into herself.
‘Look at my arms.’
I felt her head turn downwards to look at my right arm and I brought it across my stomach to let her see better. She took a deep breath and slowly exhaled it in a sigh very different from the last. Her arm across my chest slid down to rest across my stomach; she gently brushed her fingers over my arm, across the mixture of raised angry red recent cuts and the flatter purple lines of bitter old scars.
The second time it was slower. I lay on top of her, stretching her gently, while we watched each other with intimate eyes and kissed with heavy lips.
In that second sensual doze I allowed my mind to wander. I was exhausted once again, but this time the pleasure had felt somehow more intense, like there was something deeper to it. I allowed myself to be washed away on the tides of thought, sun dappling across my closed eyelids. I thought of you, and, despite everything, it didn’t feel like a betrayal, not of you, nor of Jackie.

The morning after the Purple Rose, I woke with the sunshine from my uncurtained window blindingly bright in my eyes. Groaning as the full force of my hangover hit the back of my head like a crowbar, I swung my legs over the side of the bed and sat upright, naked in the daylight. My stomach felt weak and hollow, the dregs of last night’s booze still swilling malevolently. I vaguely remember that after leaving the Rose I’d wandered Soho’s damp streets in a daze, so angry that nothing really registered, not the sultry advances of fleshy hookers nor the calculating looks from hard men sitting outside red neon doorways. One thing that did register though, was the dimly light sign of a small, filthy, all night bar down a narrow side alley filled with refuse, one of those so far out of the way and so disreputable that the police never bothered to enforce closing times. Inside the bar the low ceiling and ancient lighting meant that it was so dark that the other customers appeared little more than shadows hunched in distant booths, intent on their drinks they were oblivious to my presence, not a single person looked up as I entered; this was obviously the kind of bar people went to when they wanted to fade into the background, forget themselves and their pasts. The barman had a lifeless face the colour of nicotine and needed a shave, the stubble contrasting blackly against the waxen skin. He shuffled over to face me then coughed and hacked so violently before he spoke, that I almost had to look away. Hocking and spitting something almost solid into a corner behind the bar, he turned to me again.
‘Drink?’
I peered through the darkness at the greasy bottles behind the bar, most were so filthy I couldn’t make out the labels and many more simply didn’t have any. I choose the only two that I could be certain of.
‘Give me the malt, and the Jagermiester.’
The barman started to pull smeared glasses from beneath the bar. I threw down thirty pounds in crumpled fives.
‘Give me them to go.’

As far as I can recall I’d spent the rest of the night in the main room of my flat drinking and thinking, a combination whose results were all too apparent in the discarded fag ends, screwed up balls of poetry drafts and broken glass that littered the floor as I gingerly left the bedroom the next morning in search of water. I’d sat slumped on the sagging sofa, alternating straight half glasses of malt with the sticky sweet Jagermeister and periods of intense introspection with uncontrollable drunken rage. The reek of spilt drink filled the room, making my head spin and stomach tremble. Inching my way barefoot through the mess on the floor I headed for the sink, desperately in need of some water to combat what looked to be becoming a raging hangover. I turned the tap, but all that came out was a faint clanking noise. I pulled the empty bin over and turning it upside down stood on it to look on the pointlessly high kitchen shelf at the spot where I’d normally have a large pile of unopened letters and bills; which was ominously empty. Through the haziness of the hangover I could vaguely recall having thrown the entire foot high pile out for being unimportant or unpayable while drunk a few weeks earlier. Climbing back to the floor, feeling steadily worse, I resigned myself to the fact that the water had finally been cut off. What I really craved now was a bottle of chilled mineral water, or failing that water, any water at all would do. After a few minutes of half hearted searching I came to the depressing conclusion that the only water left in the flat was a couple of inches in the bottom of the cheap white plastic kettle. Lifting the lid did nothing to make me feel better. The bottom of the long disused kettle sat almost an inch deep in thick lime scale, and I doubted water that had sat in that for weeks would make me feel any better. But desperate times and all that, but at least I didn’t have to drink it as it was. I reached over for the coffee jar.
Sitting on my sagging sofa, feet dangling over one end to avoid the broken glass on the carpet, sipping my coffee, I felt truly ill. Every time I closed my eyes I lost all sense of balance, the sofa beneath me swayed and I seemed to be about to fall to the floor, but when I opened my eyes the light coming into the room through the grimy window kept me blinking and seemed to burn through the back of my retinas to create a searing, throbbing ache in my brain. Slowly standing, leaning against the sofa, walls, doorframe and anything else that helped to keep me upright, I edged my way through last night’s debris, heading for the promise of the slight relief from my headache that a cold shower might bring. At least there might be enough water left in the separate shower tank for a brief shower. Standing in the tiny cubicle, still sipping my rapidly diluting coffee as the cold water ran down through my hair and across my face and shoulders and down into the chipped cup, I thought about what I’d seen last night. The kiss. Your playful flirtation. My stumbling exit. The unceasing parade of pale hooker’s flesh, the dirty bastards and drunken scum of back street Soho. The kiss. The desire to talk to you solidified inside me like the most intrinsic physical need. I’d go round to your place later, I’d confront you, we’d talk it over, you’d apologise in tears, I’d see the genuine sorrow in your eyes. Everything’d be fine.
During the bus ride to your apartment I’d tried not to think. The weather was at odds with my mood, unseasonable sunshine and a muggy heat made the buildings seem to lean in closer, making the wet air seem all the more stifling. I’d have preferred a fierce autumn storm, dramatic rolls of thunder and sheets of rain washing away the scent of the over warm streets, leaving behind only a invigorating freshness. Amid the sticky warmth and shaking of the bus, I’d just stood holding tightly to a rail, staring with unseeing eyes at the City rolling past outside the window. Other passengers pushed and pressed past in the confined aisle, leaving the ghosts of their smells in the air and their moist warmth as they rubbed past my side. A fat black woman with a patterned headband pushed close against me as she waddled off the bus, her heaving breasts and stomach pressed into my back as the scent of a hundred rotten coconuts made me almost gag. Other people nudged and excused their ways past me, while the bus passed more trees, islands of green in the sea of asphalt. The bus was moving into one of the more opulent areas of the City, only a few minutes from your apartment building.
Inside the building the air conditioning made the air seem chill compared to the damp heat of the street. As usual the lobby was shining and spotless, without even a hint of dust on the leaves of the potted palms growing around the fake marble fronted columns that rose fastidiously to the ceiling. The ageless little woman whose very presence seemed to maintain this state of cleanliness, although I’d never seen her actually do any cleaning, gave me her usual small nod of acknowledgement as I walked past the chair in which she always seemed to be reclined and on towards the stairs. That little nod always made me feel tolerated but never welcomed, a somewhat unwanted visitor from the less desirable areas of the City. I wasn’t sure whether she lived here, was a cleaner, or even maybe owned the building, but her presence always added to my sense of discomfort when I went to your place. Gently running my hand over the cool rail of the iron banister, I unhurriedly climbed to your floor and stood outside the door, hesitant to knock now that it came to actually confronting you. I rapped the wooden door slowly three times and saw your shadow fill the circle of the spy hole, before the deadlock noisily slid back and the door swung open. You stood, hands on hips, wearing a ragged pair of old jeans, a tight black top and what seemed a welcoming smile.
‘Wasn’t expecting you round today. Want to come in, or are you taking me out somewhere?’
‘Yeah, sure,’ I replied vaguely, suddenly unable to think, suddenly just wanting to be a million miles away.
The apartment was as it always was. The expensive three-room apartment was sparsely but elegantly decorated, on the polished wooden flooring of the main room a white linen covered sofa faced a paired armchair across a small wooden coffee table on which sat a tan pottery vase full of lilacs, your favourite flower. Always buying lilacs was one of the ways you treated yourself, with the apartment a gift from the wealthy parents, you were free from the crippling cost of inner city rent and could afford to indulge some of your more impulsive tendencies. Before yesterday I’d never have guessed just how indulgent, or impulsive these were. Walking over to look out of the floor to ceiling windows at the pleasant street scene below, I glanced down at a much-read book lying on the coffee table. It was one of mine, ‘Footsteps in the Rain’, my first collection of published poetry. I’d always wanted to call it ‘Reflections on a shadow’, but my publisher had eventually persuaded me otherwise. It was “too negative” he’d said and would have put off potential readers; personally I hadn’t cared if it would or not, but desperately wanting to get published I’d had to accept the alteration. I’d given it to you as a gift when we’d been seeing each other for a few weeks, you’d always prized it more than I would ever had expected. To someone with money to spare maybe sentimental gifts meant more than material ones? I’d always wanted to think that, but judging by the actions of the majority of the world I doubt it’s true. Below me people wandered along the street, moving sluggishly in the heat. I could see you in the reflection of the window, lounging against the back of the sofa, watching my back.
‘Do you want coffee? I can put some on.’
‘No, thanks.’
I watched you regarded me with a calculating look.
‘Where’d you go last night? We were meant to meet up and go for a drink,’ I said without turning, still watching the people below go about their mundane tasks. I turned to look at you at last. You looked beautiful standing there in the sunlight slanting in from the windows, hair falling down your back and a look I’d never seen before and couldn’t read on your face. We faced each other, neither looking away.
‘The boss needed me to cover, Dan’d called in sick. I worked late. If you’d just get yourself a mobile like anyone else, I could’ve called and let you know. Did you wait around long?’
I stood there, watching you lie to me, suddenly seeing an ugliness that went deeper than looks. I felt sick and angry all at once. I was amazed you couldn’t read from my face the feelings ripping me up inside. Or maybe you could.
‘I went to the Rose. I saw you kissing that fucking ladyboy. You didn’t work late.’ I forced my voice to stay level, betraying none of the hurt and anger welling inside of me.
‘Well, why the fuck did you ask me where I was then!’
Suddenly you were shouting at me furiously, spitting bitter words in a rage that took me totally by surprise, fists clenched at your sides and face twisting with anger. How fucking dare you turn this all on me! Like I was the one at fucking fault!
‘Did you fuck the bastard?’ I yelled, suddenly losing all control. You crossed the room in a few strides bringing your face right up to mine, thumping my chest with both hands in frantic, hateful downward blows.
‘Yes!’ You screamed inches from my face, teeth bared, hair in your face, and punctuating your rage with blows to my chest. ‘I fucked him all night long, and he’s twice the man you’ll ever fucking be.’
‘What the hell can you see in that prick?’ I yelled back, losing it, unable to think, only to react.
‘His name’s Alix, you bastard. A licks.’
And that’s when I hit you.

Enlivening (Chapter 4)

2009-06-11T15:07:00.001+01:00

The Diary of a Heretic

Nicholas Cockayne

Enlivening
(Chapter 4)

Never have they met, and yet she does miss
His lingering touch and burning glances.

Despite its name, The Squire’s Drop was far from luxurious. The barstools were worn affairs, as were the few cracked red leather armchairs placed around the open fireplace. The old wooden beams protruding from the ceiling meant that being somewhat taller than average, I had to occasionally duck to avoid a concussion. However, somehow despite the old horse trappings and ancient threadbare colourless carpet that gave off a smell of old fags and spilt beer, The Squire’s Drop was actually a great pub. The decorations and oddities hanging from the walls would have been fake and obnoxious in any pub in or even near London, but out here it gave the place a comforting atmosphere. The Squire’s Drop didn’t need to pretend to be a little old country pub; it was the real deal, dimple pint glasses and ancient dog sniffing arthritically around the bar and all. The landlord was something of a character and judging by his vein riddled nose perched on top of a white bushy moustache and somewhat slurred greeting, might well have been his own best customer. The only other occupants of the pub seemed to be two old boys huddled down in the sagging leather armchairs in front of the fire, obligatory flat caps pulled down low over their faces as they rejoined a low and somewhat incoherent conversation involving much gesticulating of pipes, that had broken off as we had entered. As I ordered the first round, taking Jackie’s cue and getting two pints of Friar’s Folly, an ale apparently from a local brewery, notable only for it’s strength, followed by two chasers of house whiskey, we agreed to stay sat at the bar, partly because of the proximity to the booze and partly because it would give us something to prop ourselves up against later. Jackie said not to mind the landlord, he’d only bother us when we bothered him, and she seemed to be right. So intent was he on the involving business of continually pouring and drinking rum and black, it was sometimes only by leaning over the bar and waving an arm at him that we could get served. Taking a large swig of her beer and licking her glistening lips Jackie turned to me.
‘So what’s your deal anyway?’
Pulling a packet of Lucky Strikes from my pocket I asked, ‘Do you mind?’
‘Not at all,’ she replied taking one for herself and placing it between her moist lips.
She leant in close as I lit her fag, so close that I could see the flame reflected brightly in her dark eyes and smell the fruity fragrance of her hair. I found myself beginning to like her, not just for her good looks and seductive figure, but also because she had an original spark totally unlike the misery kids, and suicide goths I usually found myself surrounded by at smoky underground clubs, or the boho literary students so desperately trying to break from their middle class backgrounds that I had known a few long months ago. Taking a long appreciative pull on my fag I felt the friendly burn of the smoke fill my lungs before I slowly exhaled. I looked through the slowly billowing smoke at her.
‘Me? I’ve got no deal. What you see is very much what you get.’
‘I don’t believe that for a second,’ she replied smiling at me as she took a quick swig of the amber whiskey. From the slight grimace on her face as she took the glass from her lips I could tell it was rough and would pack a hell of a kick. ‘You turn up at our bed and breakfast looking like a singer from some rock band who’s had himself a run in with a knuckle duster or a police truncheon. What’s more you’ve manners and what might well turn out to be a half decent sense of humour. This is Arlington, it’s not fucking Las Vegas or somewhere, people don’t just drop by to see the sights.’
‘What can I say”, I said as I took a mouthful of whiskey, the smell alone enough to make my eyes water. ‘I was just passing by and thought: hey, Arlington, sounds cool, might as well give it a visit. How was I to know there was going to be some gorgeous but irritatingly inquisitive girl waiting to give me the third degree? If I had, I’d have stayed on the train.’
She gave me a strong punch in the arm for that, thankfully not the one holding the pint, and treated me to a smile that contended with the whiskey to make my insides glow. I wondered whether the punch was for the sarcasm or the diluted compliment.
‘It should be me who’s asking you what you’re doing here. Can’t see this as the kind of place for someone as obviously cool as you are.’
At this she gave me a long hard look.
‘You taking the piss?’
‘Thought never crossed my mind.’
‘Yeah well,’ she answered after a long pause, ‘Mum’s been on her own since my Dad died a year ago. My sisters’ all fucked off wherever they are now and couldn’t give a shit about Mum anymore. If I hadn’t stuck around she’d pretty much have nothing and no one. So I help out at the B ‘n’ B, not that there’s been much to help out with recently, as you could probably tell.’
‘And there was me thinking you were here for the amazing Arlington social life,’ I said as light heartedly as possible. No one had talked to me this openly for a long time and this was beginning to border on the intimate. I really felt I was starting to skate on thin ice. Something was needed to stop this getting too deep and serious, after all I didn’t want to spend my one night here acting as someone’s counsellor.
‘Another drink?’
‘Sure, but it’s my turn this time,’ she replied as she flagged down the slightly swaying bartender.
‘Another two of your finest, and cheapest, whiskey on the rocks barkeep.’
She raised her eyebrows at me questioningly, I nodded my acquiescence and she turned to smile at the landlord. However even her iridescence smile couldn’t seem to elicit a response from his drunken haze. Without waiting for him to state a price she put a note into his hand and almost automatically he pushed some coins back to her across the sticky bar. Passing me the amber liquid she turned her smile back on me.
‘So really, what is your deal?’
‘You really want to know?’
“Yep, otherwise trust me, I wouldn’t bother asking. I’d just get you drunk and abuse you.’
‘Hey, sounds good to me.’
‘Ah come on.’
‘Ok, you really want to know?’
‘Yes. Really.’
‘Fine. But it does sound pretty ridiculous.’
‘Quit stalling.’
‘Well, I’m basically a fuck up from the City. Used to be something of a writer and poet, or at least thought I was. A few things published here and there, back alley publications too underground for the money to be good. Things were beginning to look up though, people starting to take notice. And not just the usual art house freaks, some important people. Then I met this girl. Fell for her really badly. Terminally in fact. And when it finished, it fucked me up bad. Things that used to be just a bit of fun, drink, drugs, they became a way of being, a way of avoiding it all. These cuts and bruises, they’re not from a fight, they’re just from being me. Half the time I’m too messed up to write anymore, the rest of the time I’m hurting too bad to want to. If I think about any of it, it just rips the wounds back open again. Guess it’s all changed me, feel as cynical as a razor blade now. So, I just decided to get out of it all, go on a journey, try and find something, someone, myself, maybe. I don’t know. And that’s why I’m in Arlington, I just followed the yellow brick road.’
Right, this is where she gets up and leaves. Fuck, wouldn’t blame her if she did. I sound like a goddamn crazy person. What the fuck was I thinking?
‘Wow.’
‘Yeah.’
Goodbye, so long. It’s been fun.
And that’s when she gently took the glass from my hand, knocked the fag from the corner of my mouth to the floor, pulled my head close, and kissed me. It was the softest but most lingering kiss possible. Our parted lips melted together, the whiskey making them tingle and the soft swirl of her breath seeming more intoxicating then any liquor I had ever tried. At the same time as she kissed me so gently, she tugged fiercely on the tangled hair at the back of my head as the merest tip of her burning tongue glided between my parted lips. As we slowly separated and I opened my eyes I found myself looking into hers, eyes that held no pity, nor contempt, just understanding, or the wish to, another spirit adrift in an incomprehensible world in which we’d never quite fit in.
Lying alone in bed later that night I couldn’t stop thinking. It felt like my mind was spinning at a furious rate within its thin bone cage. My body was desperately aching and tired, alcohol soaked tissues humming with a warm golden haze, but I just couldn’t stop thinking everything over, images and voices swirling in an unstoppable cascade. I thought about the walk back from the pub with Jackie. Hand in hand, a small nest of warmth growing between us, swaying more than a little, but holding each other up when we tilted too precariously, we walked laughing and talking loudly, the night seeming an endless playground built for us alone. Through the clouds the moon shone down brightly, turning the edges of the clouds midnight purple as they glided near it’s cold face. The stars glimmered down at us when we looked up, viciously sharp pinpricks in the soft velvet of the night sky. We stared up as we walked, talking nonsenses of infinity and forever, feeling dwarfed and yet intimate with the void bearing down above us. All too quickly we came to the B ‘n’ B, standing awkwardly on the doorstep as Jackie struggled with her keys. As the lock gave a click and the door opened she turned to me. Looking into her eyes I tried to read in those dark pools what would happen next. Suddenly breaking the frozen moment Jackie pushed herself against me hard, the smoky fruity scent of her hair overwhelming, as she hugged me with a fierce passion. The heat of her body pushed the chill of the night away, and awakened the beginnings of a different kind of warmth, one that started slowly spreading from my groin up to my stomach. Just as I was putting my shocked arms around her, she quickly pulled back, smiled that electric smile, and lithely ran inside and up the stairs, pausing only long enough to whisper back, ‘See you tomorrow’, as she disappeared around a darkened corner. I turned to look back outside again, savouring the fresh night air and soft darkness of a night so perfect that it seemed inconceivable that it could also belong to the London a world away, a city so entrapped in it’s own decaying semi-organic embrace that the night sky was never more than a shallow orange glow that seemed to catch and tear on the top of tall buildings. I went inside, closing the door as softly as I could behind me, and climbed the stairs to where an empty room waited for me.
I tried to think how you’d feel about all of this. Would you mind that it was possible I could find happiness again? Guilt that I hadn’t thought of you sooner, clenched my stomach in a black twisting grip. I lay in bed feeling the chill darkness sinking its tiny hooks into my exposed flesh. I wondered about our last day together, what that day had robbed us of; the entirety of the future.

I stood outside the bar you worked in, lighting myself a new cigarette, feeling that friendly warm haze fill my lungs as the mild autumnal evening pulled in close around the narrow alley leading to The Purple Rose. The alley itself lay off a small and unusually empty road in the back end of Soho, far removed from that celebrated squalor of the tourist area, one end opening onto that darkening street and the other ending in a grimy brick wall, encrusted with the graffiti and exuberances of a thousand drunken nights. The door itself, was of ancient black iron set anonymously into the dark brick of the two storey building leaning in over the alley, it opened heavily on creaking hinges and once opened for the evening, left so all night. No signs advertised the presence of The Purple Rose, but it was always crowded; known to many of those who followed the numerous unsigned bands that played there, each dragging its own following of the misery kids and the alternative scene within the smoky gloom of the club. Walking down the barely lit short flight of twisting steps to the underground bar I wondered for the hundredth time what lay on the two storeys on and above ground level, even the people who worked here who I’d drunkenly questioned one night didn’t know, although they’d had plenty of suggestions, a brothel, the apartment of a recluse painter, a secretive drug den that band members frequented after the shows. Rounding the last turn of the stairs, leaving my echoing footsteps to rebound forlornly behind me, I stepped into the darkness of The Purple Rose.
Despite being relatively early in the evening, or at least early for the Rose, which seemed to close only when the last punter had staggered out, the floor was crowded. People stood in clusters leaned up against the damp walls, talking quietly of whichever band would play later or just listening to the grind of the music playing from hulking speakers, or singularly, hunched in on themselves, taking long swigs of their drinks and staring around. Not everyone came to socialise, some didn’t even come for the music; many came just to escape life, blend into a friendly and undemanding crowd. As usual most of the crowd wore black; black leather coats, black lace, black leather bracelets studded with silver, ripped jeans, pale faces with eyes hidden beneath dark smudges of make up. The alternative ‘alternative’ crowd, came here to drink, escape the faddish scenesters, get away from life for a few hours of freedom from the hassles inflicted daily on them by a morally indignant society. In the Rose no one stared, pointed or muttered ‘freak’ as they walked past. Goths, misery kids, angry and bitter hardcore moshers, bleeding heart emo children; the Purple Rose accepted them all lovingly into its smoky warm embrace. Leaning against a wall near me on the left were kids no more than fifteen years old, dressed in black t-shirts with obscure band names written in flowing script across their chests, drinking Jack Daniels and lemonade, silently staring at the small stage where the band would later appear. I weaved through the crowds, slowly nearing the bar, trying to see you through the throng. After a few minutes I finally managed to slide onto a sticky leather barstool, hedged in on all sides by pale figures in need of a drink. Leaning forward I tried to get a glimpse of you, to get your attention, but you were busy serving someone else at the corner of the bar, too engrossed to notice my presence. You looked amazing, long black hair sliding sinuously down the back of your sleeveless black t-shirt, figure hugging jeans that flared at the bottom accentuating the slender grace of your legs. Your elegant simplicity seemed all the more beautiful compared against the over dressed figure you were serving. It took me several seconds to realise that the figure was actually a man, and not as I had first presumed a woman. His heavily made up face seemed young and almost androgynous, pale skin, dark eyes and highlighted cheekbones, all framed by long dark purple hair trailing over a black lace shirt and leather choker. Being only a couple of people away I could just hear you over the blaring music. You were half turned away, leaning in to catch what he said.
‘Can you help me with my blusher? I can’t do it, the toilets here have no mirrors.’
You laughed and taking a small compact from his hand, leaned closer in and lightly brushed the powder over his face, highlighting skilfully the already prominent cheekbones. All the time he stared intensely into your eyes.
‘You obviously need more practise.’
‘Thanks’, he said as you leaned back to admire your work.
‘Very pretty.’
At this he gave a wide smile and leaned in closer. I strained over the bar to catch what he said next, getting annoyed looks from those next to me who supposed I was trying to jump the queue for a drink.
‘It’s my birthday today, my eighteenth.’
‘Really? Well, happy birthday’, you said with a glorious smile.
‘How about a birthday kiss?’
The hopeful lust in his shadowed eyes kick started me into action. I stood up, meaning to go over and make my presence felt, maybe even smack this cross dressing kid foolish enough to be trying it on with my girlfriend. But what happened next stopped me in my tracks, frozen with an uncontrollable morbid curiosity. You leaned in close to him and kissed the cheek you had just powdered. As you pulled back, wiping make up from your lips, he smiled again, a half grin I wanted to sink my fist into.
‘Aww, come on, you can do better than that.’
I expected you to slap him, or at least tell him to fuck off. But instead you bent in and kissed his black lipsticked lips. A dark empty aching from the gut pulsed up through me as I struggled to accept what I was seeing. He pushed his face into yours. And after a split seconds hesitation, you pushed back. I could see his tongue entering your yielding mouth as you tilted your head to allow him to slide it in deeper. You passionately kissed for several minutes stopping only to come up for air. Your face looked flushed, normally pale skin rosy with excitement. Then you licked your lips and flashed that cheeky slanted smile that, until now, had never failed to make my insides melt. Instead a chill spread to every part of my body.
‘Mmm. Salty.’
A sick despair tinged with anger flared through me. I pushed myself from the bar and headed towards the door, oblivious of everything but the desire to be a long way away. I pushed and shoved my way through the crowd, upsetting drinks and knocking cigarettes from hands, getting increasingly violent as the crowd seemed to press in, catching and blocking my every move. A large bald and bearded guy who I’d just elbowed in the back turned around, a frown marring his pierced face.
‘Hey man, watch what you’re fucking…’
Seeing the look on my face he trailed off, thinking better then to get involved with the burning pain in my eyes, letting me continue to bump my way through the leather clad mass and finally push free, almost falling face first at the sudden lack of resistance, and run up the echoing stairs into the night’s embrace, which had become darker and blacker then any before.

Rolling over in the sweaty, tangled sheets, tearing them off, I groped in the dark for the rough canvas of my backpack on the left of the bed, the chill of the room thrilling across my overheated skin. Finding it, I flipped the top open and pushed my arm up to the elbow into the jumbled contents inside, delving deep into the bundle of clothing until I felt the plastic bag nestling in its centre. Dropping the backpack heavily, I sat up and slowly, by touch alone, began to roll myself a joint. I packed the weed in tight adding very little tobacco, knowing that tonight it was the only thing that would be able to unravel my thoughts and push them to the darker recesses of my mind, far from the waking conscious. Finally, with the small cylinder held lovingly between two fingers, I got up from the bed, pulling the lighter from my discarded jeans and moved to the small window. Opening the window the bitter air washed over me in a welcoming wave, goose pimples rising tightly across my arms and chest. Pushing hair back from my eyes I shielded the joint against the wind with my cupped palm and with a rasp of flint lit the end with a gentle, deep, intake of breath. The hot smoke rasped affectionately into my lungs, as I leant against the windowsill and with the rough wood digging into my arms, stared out at the sleeping garden. Bushes and flowerbeds that had been awash with colour during the day had dissolved into soft lumps and shapes, a sight somehow more welcoming in its gentle anonymity than all the gaudy whoring of the daylight. The night seemed to draw me into its embrace, as the cold but gentle breeze played across my body and the slowly undulating shapes below seemed to whisper words of friendship and comfort in their rustlings. Amongst all shifting clouds of shape something seemed to be moving slowly across the garden, a sleek shadow that could have been a cat but seemed bigger. By the time I tried to focus on it the shape had disappeared again, leaving me wondering whether I’d really seen anything at all. I stood there, vacantly staring out at the formless garden and sharp stars, clouds of fragrant smoke pulled away on the wind, until I felt the glowing cherry of the joint begin to heat my fingers to a needling pain. After letting the dead butt roll down the roof into the gutter I closed the window, carefully taking the few paces to the bed, mindful not to fall over my discarded clothes or backpack and wake the others. It felt that with each step I was pushing through clouds of smoke, and when I lay on the bed, the sheets that had previously felt coarse and uncomfortable now felt more warm and yielding than the softest embrace. Lying back I felt my hair stretch out lazily over the pillow and my arms and legs sink into the bed, alternating between numbness and exquisite sensitivity as I thought or forgot about them. Unable to tell whether my eyes were open or closed I looked towards the ceiling and let the slowly dancing patterns and intricate colours lull me to a deep dreamless sleep.

Exodus (Chapter 3)

2009-06-11T15:04:00.001+01:00

The Diary of a Heretic

Nicholas Cockayne

Exodus
(Chapter 3)

Through her silken brown hair, a fluid jewel.
He caresses, leaving on her cheek an ethereal kiss,

The door of the flat I left open to swing in the breeze, rusting hinges softly creaking. That place had become my tomb, a vault of memories crowding down, suffocating. After being buried there, dead so long, I figured I was due a resurrection. I told myself over and over again that I wasn’t running away, just seeking after something that my life was missing, something I could never find trapped in the four mildewed walls that had slowly become my cell. It had been so easy to just walk away, but then it always is.

And so, after jumping barriers and avoiding lazy station guards I found myself sitting on an outbound train nursing a hangover that felt too large for my head, as the city quietly bled away like a dull grey disjointed river into an ever-rising sea of greenery. Life. The stream of it flashing past the window soothed and slowly pushed back the layers of reality into the liquid flow and ebb of memories. Your face stared blankly back at me from the reflection in the window, keeping pace with my hurtling flight from the hostile landscape of London like some pale guardian angel. I tried to capture the image for eternity, imprint it into my soul, make it a part of myself. As my eyes focused, the illusion shattered like a brick dropped into the calm surface of a pond, leaving me staring at nothing more than my own gaunt and bruised face. Resting my head against the window, the cool glass and the ceaseless rocking of the train lulled me towards sleep, towards dreams of you that seemed more real than memories. A sudden blast of noise, the blaring train horn signalling an approaching station, woke me, tearing me back to reality again. With a start I sat up, looking uncomprehendingly around, finally moving a seat further away from the now invisible angel in the window.
Sitting on the train watching the country thunder past went from relaxing to tedious within two short hours. As always I sat facing the way the train was moving. I hated the idea, and still do, of being dragged along anywhere backwards; the idea of forward movement is somehow just more satisfying. Taking out my Zippo I idly turned it in my hands, remembering how you’d once told how each was individually marked. In America, that land of dust and broken dreams, prisoners are made to manufacture Zippo lighters for their crimes, evidence (as if you needed it) of the all pervading nature of capitalism, and if you pulled off the outer casing, inside, nestling into the metal, is each prisoner’s private message to the world. Date, state, and time left to serve. No name or prisoner number. A message not so much in a bottle as in a metal coffin. Putting the lighter back in my pocket I idly gazed around the lonely train wondering for maybe the hundredth time what my personal inmate had done to still have twenty years left to serve. Rape? Murder? Or maybe just being caught smoking a joint in the self righteous Bible Belt? Despite the privacy the near empty carriage afforded, it also meant I was short of anything to interest me, to offer distraction from the mundane nature of modern travel. Discarded newspapers, left due to their previous owner’s laziness rather than any altruistic desire to provide a free paper for another passenger, offered little more than formulaic war and death, cut and paste genocide and racial hate. Hung over and in a fragile good mood, I wasn’t inclined to read them; there’s enough pain and misery in the world without actively seeking it out. I resorted to watching my few fellow passengers, wondering from where or to what they journeyed. Births, marriages and deaths, did they speed from them or to them? Observing people has always fascinated me in a strangely morbid way. Our mannerisms make us but a cell of the social animal, robbing our actions of any individuality. The guilty manner in which a middle aged and darkly pretty woman with long curly hair two rows in front of me readjusted her bra caused me to break into a rare smile; making my split lip give a brief twinge of pain. I tasted blood. Although she knew she was the only the passenger on her row and that those around her were also vacant, she still glanced to either side of her, like a pet expecting to be scolded from on high, before unceremoniously lifting her pendulous chest to fiddle with some unseen strap or scaffolding before settling her breasts more comfortably in their caging. I have never understood things like this, why no matter who it is, a man scratching his foot, a woman rearranging her breasts, or even why I always pissed in my now empty flat with the toilet door firmly closed when I lived alone, why we all act and think as if constantly observed by society’s moral guardians, always waiting for the punishment that never comes.
The train began to slow, stopping at one of those smaller country towns that unceremoniously litter the English landscape away from London. A single unroofed platform and an aging kiosk shedding paint constituted the entire station, with not so much as a sign to tell me where we had stopped. The buxom woman stood and then bent to retrieve her large brown leather handbag, her low top exposing a cavernous cleavage. Seeing my sole source of amusement departing and no new passengers embarking, I looked out the window and seeing no vigilant railway staff decided it was time to alleviate my boredom with a change of scenery, if only for a few hours. When you have no idea where you’re even going there’s really no rush to get there. Heaving the backpack onto my shoulders, I left the stifling warmth of the train for the pleasant autumn breeze of the station, washes of falling leaves dancing across the already strewn platform, piling into delicate mounds against fence posts and hedges. Leaving the platform by the only exit, I glanced along the quiet road it joined, failing to spot my fellow passenger. The road nestled like a small valley between two small tree crowned hills whose green coverings whispered incessant and soothing nonsense. Listening to the wind in the trees I realised something that had been nagging at the back of my mind since I’d left the train. It wasn’t just the sounds of the rustling trees, but that I could actually hear them; a total absence of the low mechanised background growl of London made me feel exposed and uncomfortable. Lining the road the old-fashioned houses, all neatly trimmed hedges and colourful spacious gardens, gave no indication as to which direction the centre of the town lay. As I stood there, indecision colouring the air around me, a yellow bus noisily went past to the right, rattling its few elderly passengers around as it slowly took a bend in the road, accelerated, and disappeared. Taking this as some kind of sign I turned to the right and started walking. Passing the identical hedges that separated each elegant house and garden from the mundanity of the pavement, I followed the now fading echo of machinery left on the gentle wind, feeling like a somewhat second rate Dorothy seeking the wizard. After the rattle of the bus had faded into the constant background rustle of reverberating greenery, I began to realise I could very faintly hear the tinkling strains of that irritating tune that only ice cream vans play. Telling myself that it was getting louder, I turned around every few steps expecting to see the unmistakable pink and white shape of an ice cream van appear along the road beneath a comically large plastic cone; as if the music alone wasn’t enough to indicate what is was. Several minutes later, still vanless and with a growing crick in my neck, I decided to stop looking back for it. The tune however, refused to fade into silence and I found myself nodding and humming along in time as I walked, catching myself only when I realised that the song had, if it was ever actually there, faded and that I was now nodding along to the tune in my head like the village idiot. Deciding that as I’d only just got here, that a residency as official idiot was somewhat premature, I promised myself that I’d find the ice cream van later, partly as a reward for this long walk, and partly to assure myself that the song had actually been playing and I wasn’t beginning to lose it totally. But if this were, as it seemed, the only road through this little town, where in the hell had the ice cream van gone, surely it would have passed me? Yes, I thought, I’m losing it. I’m deeply worried about an ice cream van. Had I missed the sign warning me that I was entering an Enid Blighton novel? Would I feel the sudden need for ginger beer? Was I still tripping?
After ten minutes of hopeful walking the houses abruptly ended and the pavement faded to a worn track in the grass at the side of the road, while the formerly obsessively neat hedges began to rear above me. Dense waving branches transformed the road into a living tunnel fading into a green dimness, all in all a tad more rural than I cared, or was prepared, for. Shit, I thought, why hadn’t I remembered to pack my handy axe and lumber jack hat? Shaking my head slightly at the utter lack of road signs, I turned around and began the walk back towards the station, the direction, which, I fervently hoped, lead to the centre of the town, muttering under my breath that ‘at least there was no flying fucking monkeys.’ Shaking my head again, this time to clear it, I wondered how much of last nights weed and other unnamed toxins were still buzzing around my system. As I backtracked, the houses once again remained anonymous in their English gentility, the neat gardens and tastefully modest curtains blocking out the world. I got the strange feeling of walking not along a living street but through some weird museum of English quaintness; houses and occupants all safely vacuum packed for storage, protected against the corrosive reality of the modern world bubbling up not a hundred miles away. Five minutes of pleasant walking later I passed a small post office and a few small shops all clustering together amidst the trees surrounding them, thinking myself to almost be at the centre of the town, encouraged by the sudden increase in urbanity. Eerily, for someone unused to such quietness, the lack of passing traffic or town’s people in the street added to my growing feeling of having stepped off the train into some strange other world. Within a couple of hundred yards, however, my expectation of nearing some significant centre of civilisation was shattered. As I passed a sprawling old pub called the The Squire’s Drop with it’s sign, showing some merry looking lord as drunk as one, swinging in the incessant breeze, beyond this only open countryside greeted my gaze; the crops rolling softly like waves between the banks of small hedgerows on the gentle hills, lakes of glowing yellow and soft greens. Standing here gazing out at the picturesque landscape, I suddenly found myself wondering if you would have liked it here? A day visit perhaps, no more. A chance to walk together in the fresh country air and wander arm in arm down small lanes and through the coolness of shady woods, lie together on the fragrant earth, exploring each other’s bodies with gently stroking fingers and warm tongues, hidden away from the world. I turned my back on the undulating landscape of fields before me and wearily retraced my steps once more.
Describing this place as a town showed me how little I understood this obscure countryside, finding myself as much an alien here as an ice cube in the Sahara. Realising that the place really did consist of a single small road, a couple of dozen houses, four tiny shops and a single lonely pub, and that it could only just merit the title of village let alone town, left me unnerved. Retracing my steps once again to the few shops that appeared to lean eagerly towards the road, their backs fenced in by tall trees just beginning to lose golden and brown leaves, I began to feel tiredness stiffen my legs and make muscles ache under the straps of the backpack pulling uncomfortably at my shoulders. To top it all off my bruised jaw began to throb again. I obviously hadn’t quite recovered from the previous nights insanity and needed to be leaving this surreal and slightly unnerving little place and finding somewhere to spend the night. I crossed the road and opened the door of what seemed a small general shop, the misleading title the ‘The Arlington Supermarket’ painted in peeling letters above the door. At least, I told myself, you know where you are now. Arlington, England, the middle of bloody nowhere.
As I opened the door, stepping into the musty and warm interior, a bell tinkled sharply above my head making me start, however, my surprise was nothing compared to that of the old lady sat behind the wooden counter covered with Fishermen’s Friends and ancient bubblegum displays. She had obviously been asleep judging by the small squeak she emitted jumping to her feet. Giving the startled woman a few seconds to collect herself, I turned and had a quick look at the shop. Wooden shelves lined every available wall space, offering everything from flour and oven gloves to chicken wire, giving the place a crowded look, which along with the motes of dust that glided sparkling in the air, illuminated by the grimy skylight catching the last of the afternoons sunshine, made it clear that despite being the only general store in the village it was hardly a thriving centre of commerce.
‘Can I help you love, what are you after?’
The sound of the elderly woman’s voice made me turn back quickly and for the first time I properly took her appearance in. Her well lined face was crowned by tightly pulled back white hair and her nose sported a pair of red rimmed glasses which along with her kind voice gave her the endearing look of someone’s favourite grandma.
‘Actually I was wondering if you knew what time the next train leaves the station? I’ve kind of got off here by mistake,’ I awkwardly replied, feeling as I
did so, that I was making myself appear at least a bit simple.
‘Sorry dear, we only get one train here a day and that would be the one which you came in on.’
‘Is there….’
‘That’s the only station roundabouts dear,” she cut in quickly. “Not much need out here you see? Arlington’s not that big a place really. The other towns round here aren’t really much bigger, no stations there either.’
She turned to look at an ancient clock hanging above the counter.
‘And you’d have missed the last bus by now, I’m afraid, it only goes twice a day. Big yellow thing, can’t miss it.’
‘Right.’
Well that explained the misleading bus at least. The last thing that I wanted at this point was to have to stay in Arlington any longer than I really had to, I had left London to escape my inner turmoil and being stuck in a dead end village cut off from civilisation definitely wasn’t going to provide me with the distraction or relief I desperately needed.
Standing there trying to think what to do next, the old woman clearly saw me as a chance to expound some of her jealously hoarded local knowledge, or maybe just as a chance to talk with another human being.
‘Got anyone to stay with? There’s a lovely little B and B just along the road dear, nice little place, very cosy, I’m certain they’d have a spare room for you love, it’s run by Ellie, nice girl, her youngest daughter Jackie too, such a shame, all the other daughters are long gone, had three or four if I remember rightly, got themselves husbands or gone and run off to work in the city. Disgraceful really. Women all want careers and this and that nowadays, used to be as all a girl would need was to find a nice young man and settle down. Not many care about their families anymore. Not many want to get married and stay round here these days, all run off at the first chance. I remember one girl, Vicky Lane it was, well she…’
I nodded and made agreeable noises about the youth of today, whilst pondering my predicament. It seemed I couldn’t escape this village by train or bus, and from what the talkative old girl was saying there wouldn’t have been much point trying to walk to freedom, after spending hours hiking across the countryside I’d only find another dying desolate little town and one without a station at that. How could these people stand being so isolated all the time? It seemed I would have to stay overnight and head for civilisation first thing tomorrow. At least there wouldn’t be any problems avoiding buying a ticket or outwitting zealous station officials out here, I could merely wait for the train to arrive and make a dash for it from the street. That’d leave any station guards gawping miles behind me in surprise as I made a speedy and more importantly free exit. Not that there was likely to be any railway employees in a place like this anyway, but the possibility and a weakness for the melodramatic made it an attractive option. In an ideal world I’d have thrown myself on the train through the closing doors with a Jackie Chan style diving roll, forever impressing the pursing dozen or so fascist railway officials. But alas it wasn’t to be. Bringing my imagination back to the present problem, I guessed I could always find some quiet wood or field, somewhere away from prowling inbred farmers, and pitch the tent for the night. But after sleeping rough last night I figured my aching and battered body deserved the luxury of a soft bed not to mention a roof over my head. I just hoped that the B ‘n’ B wasn’t going to eat into my limited cash too much.
‘Was there anything else that you were wanting?’ chipped in the old lady in a hopeful voice, starting me from my thinking.
Her urgent tone made me slowly aware that if she had indeed once been someone’s favourite ancestor then they must have forgotten her a long time since. The faded blue woollen jumper she wore was far from new and the thinness of her wrists sticking out birdlike from the sleeves made me even more aware that the shop must be far from successful.
Walking from the shop with a newly purchased bottle of cheap scotch resting in the top of my backpack, feeling the small glow of altruism in my stomach, I wandered wearily down the street in the direction the old woman had pointed, searching the passing houses for number 34. Number 34 turned out to be a house much like any of the others on the street, impossibly well kept, surrounded by a lush lawn of well trimmed grass, in fact the uniformity of the house was such that there wasn’t even a sign to indicate that it was a bed and breakfast let alone whether there were any vacancies. I stood uncertainly at the gate for several seconds before plucking up the courage to sully the immaculate lawn with my heavy boots and lift the brass knocker on the ivory painted front door. Against the unnatural quietness of the street the impact of the knocker sounded like a gunshot, yet nothing happened. I began to wonder if I had in fact got the right house or whether old age and the encroachment of senility had caused the general store woman to give me the wrong house number. The longer I stood there the more certain I became that there must have been a mistake somewhere; I just hoped it hadn’t been on my part. It must seem to the occupants of the house, that I was one of those “shifty” characters that the media constantly warn people against opening the door to; my scruffy appearance, bruised face and well worn backpack making me appear more like a begging vagabond than someone seeking lodgings. No doubt they were more likely to be hiding behind and peering through the lace curtains than to open their front door to the likes of me. With a shrug I turned away from the door and was halfway across the perfect lawn, wondering where the hell I could pitch my tent for the night safe from harassment, when a voice called out, ‘Hello?’ from behind me. The owner of the voice was a woman probably in her early fifties, not quite the “nice girl” I’d been expecting, well dressed in a blue frock with incongruent pink fluffy slippers on her feet and evidently once quite attractive.
‘Hi, I was looking for the bed and breakfast, are you Mrs…er...Ellie?’
‘It’s just Ellie, were you after a room?’
‘If there’s one available. Thanks.’
‘Of course love. At the moment they’re all free. Come inside, come inside. Sorry I didn’t come to the door straight away, I was out back in the garden tending the roses, didn’t hear you knocking at first and my daughter Jackie’s probably in the shower upstairs.’
‘That’s ok. I wasn’t sure that this was the B and B that’s all, thought I’d managed to get the wrong place.’
‘Ah yes, I’d forgotten about that, someone stole our sign from the garden last night,’ she said pointing to a spot just near the gate.
Turning I could just see a small square hole in the uniformity of the lawn, smiling up at me like some gap toothed child.
‘God knows what they did with it, probably drunk or on drugs knowing some of the types round here. Might ask Pat across the road to make me a new one. Anyway enough of my woes, it’ll get sorted out one way or the other. Let’s get you inside and sorted out.’
Following my new host as she bustled into the house, the first thing that struck me was how violently quaint the place was. Everything in the hall from the flocked patterned wallpaper to the brown carpets and ornate flower like lamp shades looked like it had been chosen from some desire to enforce the sheer Englishness of the place upon any visitors, to impress how normal the house and its occupants were. This was England at its most disturbing. At any moment I half expected to see a bunch of red nosed and red coated inbreds on horses speeding past a window with shouts of ‘Tally Ho!’ and ‘Good show old bean!’ echoing behind them. The house seemed to waver on the thin line between old fashioned and eccentric, and I couldn’t imagine anyone even vaguely in touch with the modern world living here, even if Ellie did admittedly seem nice, so far. The decoration was, to be blunt, not to my taste. Obviously whoever had selected the décor hadn’t expected their visitor to be a cynical toxic burn out, so far removed from social norms that they no longer existed for him, beaten, bruised and sporting one hell of a hangover.
Opposite the front door the hall continued down to open onto two doors on the right and one on the left just before a narrow flight of stairs to the second floor.
‘You can put your pack down there next to the shoes if you want.’
Looking down I saw four pairs of women’s’ shoes in neat rows like soldiers on parade, toe to toe under a small wooden telephone table. Feeling all the more untidy for the state of my backpack and clothes among this haven of middleclass respectability, I carefully put it down and turned to find Ellie, who had disappeared into a room on the left of the narrow hall.
‘Would you fancy a cup of tea love?’ came the call from what must be the kitchen.
‘Please,’ I replied, feeling more than a little out of place. I half expected her to come bustling out of the kitchen at any moment, carrying a tray full of her best bone china and a little plate with a variety of posh biscuits on.
‘Milk and sugar?’
‘Yes please, two, thank you,’ I ritually replied, trying my hardest to remember how to be polite. I certainly didn’t want to lose my only chance of a good bed by offending Ellie, although she seemed so full of matronly sensibility that I would probably have found it hard. While Ellie brewed the tea for what seemed an age, I was left to stand awkwardly in the hall caught in the kind of social limbo I’d only ever read about in Henry James novels. Attempting to look casual, I walked around inspecting the framed and faded prints of unattractive rural scenes that periodically adorned the walls. Surely no one could consider these to actually make the room look better? Whoever was guilty of putting them up must just have done so out of some misguided sense of tradition; halls, paintings, paintings, halls. It was beginning to dawn on me that despite London and Arlington being in the same country, they were actually several worlds apart. Pictures that would have been burnt by any sensible house owner in London were considered fashionable out here. But more importantly I reminded myself; despite my ragged appearance Ellie had happily invited me into her house without question; a hospitality and sense of kindness I had recently found singularly lacking in London.
Hearing a loud creak from behind I turned, to be totally surprised by the sight before me. Coming down the stairs was a young woman I can only describe as gorgeous. Understatement of the year. Wearing a silken red Chinese bathrobe she slowly descended, her short wet brown hair waving about her neck while the jaw droppingly short and clinging robe revealed slender legs and hinted at a figure that was lean but shapely. But it was her face that was the cause of my surprise. Although not beautiful in a fashion catalogue, cocaine and cigarettes, kind of way she was still strikingly attractive with prominent cheekbones, a small silver nose stud and a friendly smile that only highlighted the depth of her large brown eyes. Whether I took all this in is questionable, but that’s the way I’d like to think it was, rather than me standing there like the gawking idiot I probably was.
‘Saw you admiring the pictures. What d’ya think?’
‘I think they’re very...’ I haltingly replied, unable to think of a polite response, desperately trying to collect my scattered wits and appear indifferent to the presence of such a beautiful woman.
‘Ugly as hell aren’t they?’ she said with a wink as her smile widened to a cheeky grin I couldn’t help but return.
‘Did I hear Mum say there was tea on the go?’
Before I could reply Ellie walked around the corner bringing with her a steaming mug rather than the bone china tea set I had dreaded.
‘Here you go, that’ll make you feel more at home,’ she said handing me the mug without spotting her daughter standing tantalisingly on the bottom stair. As she turned back to the kitchen, the young woman decided to make her presence felt.
‘Can I have a cuppa too?’
Ellie jumped at the sound of her daughter’s voice as if she’d been stung.
‘God Jack! You nearly gave me a damn heart attack! Oh, excuse my French. Of course you can have one, just go put some clothes on will you, don’t stand there like that in front of our guest, what will he think?’, she said, some of her matronly authority returning as she moved from surprise to motherly chiding in a few heartbeats.
‘Put something respectable on for dinner will you? You’ll be eating with us won’t you Mr….’
“Nathan, just Nathan.” I smiled at the thought that anyone could think of addressing me that politely, especially considering how I must look. ‘That’d be great, if I’m not intruding that is?’ As well as being tired I was also incredibly hungry, not having eaten earlier as I hadn’t trusted myself to be able to keep anything substantial down for long.
‘Of course not! We don’t normally do full board for the guests but seeing as it’s just you at the moment, cooking a bit extra isn’t a problem. To be honest it’ll be nice having someone other than just the two of us at dinner for once, won’t it dear?’ Jackie smiled warmly. ‘Now for heaven’s sake go put some clothes on Jack, you’ll catch your death,’ she said turning once more and retreating to the kitchen.
With another quick smile Jackie turned and gracefully ascended the steps, I found myself trying with little success not to follow her shapely progress as she headed upstairs. If anything could cause my new landlady offence, surely staring like an incredulous teenager at her gorgeous daughter with barely concealed admiration and lust would do the trick.
‘Show Nathan where his room is Jack,’ chimed Ellie’s musical voice from the depths of the kitchen. Jackie nearing the top of the stairs turned, the swaying of the silken robe revealing even more toned calf, and with a cheeky smile and an irresistibly coy look, beckoned me with a finger to follow her upstairs. It took what little wits I had left to remember how to breathe and walk at the same time, and grabbing my backpack in a clumsy hurry, I followed her obediently upstairs.
When Jackie had silkily glided off to her room once more, I finally had a chance to catch my breath and inspect the room. It was small but comfortable, the wallpaper was a pale green, the carpet likewise, the furnishing sparse but tasteful, or at least normal, a pine chest of drawers and a single bed with a large wooden headboard dominating the entire room. On the wall hung an incongruously ornate metal mirror whose mercurial surface reflected the bright greens and yellows coming from the window opposite. From the window itself was an enticing view of the garden in all its ornate and well-tended splendour. Seeing as business wasn’t exactly booming for the B ‘n’ B, it seemed Ellie must spend a good deal of her time cultivating the many different coloured plants, dominating them with wire and knife, training natural chaos into the orderly conformity below me. The variety of different flowers and plants filled me with questions, I’d never seen anything like this back in the city, at least not owned and tended by a single person. Could time, effort and love truly achieve so much? A few short months ago I’d have said love could make anything possible. Now love seemed something for the naïve, merely a different kind of obsession; one advocated by an entire species. Maybe I’m still jaded by it all, love and blood intermingled. I guess I’ve changed more than I’d ever thought possible since that night.
Dinner went surprisingly smoothly. Ellie and I made small talk, or rather she made it at me, while I whole-heartedly attacked my food with the occasional ‘hmm’ and ‘yes’ making do for my side of the conversation. Chicken pie and gravy, with sweet corn and carrots. To someone who had lived mainly by frying whatever meat was going cheap at the nearest corner shop and eating vegetables and fruit only when loosening teeth warned of the onset of scurvy, this was the stuff of dreams. It was all I could do to force myself to slow down and chew as I ate. Jackie looked amazing sitting opposite in a tight green t-shirt and cargo pants, large colourful beaded bracelets covering half her right forearm while on her left she sported a single silver torq whirling across her wrist in Celtic intricacies. She said very little throughout the meal, but between rapidly eating and sparingly answering Ellie’s inane comments I occasionally stole a glance across at her, often disconcertingly finding her deep brown eyes regarding me with a look I couldn’t quite read. Ellie didn’t appear to notice. She also, much to my relief, didn’t quiz me about my battered appearance, which although now causing little pain was still pretty visible. I had been dreading having to lie about it, nothing to do with any half arsed morals, I can lie particularly well actually, I’m almost proud of it; but the idea of lying to two people who had been so kind didn’t sit well, they deserved a little better than that. Right at the end of the meal, after I’d had to refuse some treacle pudding and custard, no matter how tempting it was for fear of being sick, when Ellie was busy shuttling the plates to the kitchen, accepting no help; Jackie quickly looked over her shoulder to ensure her mother wasn’t there and leaned across the table with a mock serious look.
‘Fancy going down the pub then?’
Once again I tried to feign casual indifference. Badly.
‘Sure, better then sitting around here all night,’ I replied automatically. Shit. Real smooth. ‘No offence intended, but I’m just not the sitting around watching TV with a cup of tea type that’s all.’
‘Yeah, you don’t look it.’ She openly glanced for the first time at my split lip and the bruised cut across my cheek. I smiled back.
‘Neither do you.’
‘Fair point,’ she grinned. ‘Let’s go get fucked.’
I don’t know whether it was her ambiguous choice of words, the warming look in her eyes or just the prospect of getting wasted after a fine meal, but suddenly the evening was looking infinitely better.
The decision made, we made a rapid exit with Jackie yelling a quick, ‘Just off to the Squire,’ to her Mum in the kitchen and me calling back a belated, ‘Thank you for dinner,’ remembering my manners just as the front door clicked closed behind us.
‘Very well mannered, aren’t you,’ Jackie quipped at me as we walked down the garden.
‘All down to breeding and good upbringing don’t cha know,’ I replied in aristocratic tones, my pretence to be some vagabond lord eliciting a giggle from her.
‘In that case kind sir, the first drink is on you,’ she said through her laughter.
‘But of course my dear, of course, wouldn’t dream otherwise.’
‘Were you really brought up in the lap of luxury?’
‘Fuck no.’
‘Ah well, but you’re still buying the drinks though.’
With that she put her arm through mine and we strolled down the road through the chill night air, laughing and joking all the way to the pub.

Illumination (Chapter Two)

2009-06-11T14:57:00.002+01:00

The Diary of a Heretic

Nicholas Cockayne

Illumination
(Chapter 2)

Candle light flickers, her face is hard to see,
The shadow of a man, runs his fingers

I had to escape, get away from it all. The grime encrusted buildings of rotting grandeur I saw from my curtainless window every morning as I woke, hulking obscenely across the street, decaying monuments to forgotten industry looming tall while the endless throng of the faceless masses walked blindly below. There had been no fuss, no problems. All the possessions I thought worth saving now rested in a worn canvas backpack across my shoulders. I had packed the few items of sentimental value I still had, the thin silver necklace, the first collection of poetry. As well as these I packed some more practical items, my old tent, a folding cooking pan and sheaf knife along with some tinned food and the majority of my clothes, rolling my stash deep in the centre of them away from prying eyes, having no idea when, or if, I’d return, or where I’d end up. The rest of my things lay scattered like leaves across my now vacant flat. During the packing, while looking for a discarded shoe, I had come across a small wooden cigar box under the bed, long forgotten and dusty. On the lid of the coarse aromatic wood the word “Photos” had been half scratched half scrawled in biro. Your handwriting. Continuance. Pain. I had long since rid myself of anything that reawakened your memory so physically. Feeling numb I sat back against the cupboard opposite the bed staring at the little wooden box. Bending down low I stretched my arm under the bed, keeping my face averted from the thick dust my grasping hand raised. Slowly sliding the box from under the bed I held it in my hands, weighing it, feeling the texture of the wood grain rough against my palms, gazing blankly at the solitary word signifying so much. The desire to open the box and revel in the lost past inside crystallised within me, becoming an ache, a desire. But where would that lead? An hour’s happy reminiscence perhaps, and then the inevitable darkness; I felt like a man standing at the edge of a cliff, the gulf beneath me calling temptingly. I’d let it slip, the fragile hold that I had on it all; all of the emotions and black thoughts would well up in an uncontrollable tidal wave that would wash my fragile barriers away. Standing and walking to the sink as though dreaming, I lifted my Zippo from a pocket. The cool metal and weight of it reasserted the real, pulling my mind from the dizzying heights it had been occupying back down to somewhere near normal. Taking the photos from the box without looking at them, slowly, one by one, I lit each with a flick of the thumb, a rasp of flint and a hiss of flame. As the photos fell spiralling from my fingers to the sink full of water, flaming like failed angels I caught glimpses of us. Pictures floated down, falling, always falling, to land with a hiss in the water. The smell of burning plastic stung my eyes to tears as a small wisp of black smoke arose from each flaming scene. As the silent parade ceased I looked down to see you staring up at me, as though through a pond full of charred lilies. I turned away.

Finding the photos of an extinct past had not been good for me. Drinking had started even earlier than usual and I’d set to it with an unusual vivacity, feeling the acute need for oblivion. The Asian off license owner with his fantastically long grey streaked beard had grinned as he saw me enter his shop earlier; maybe I’d been stuck in one place too long? When local drink merchants start calling you by name and metaphorically rubbing their hands when you enter the shop, perhaps its time for concern. Back in the dimness of the flat, knocking back Scottish whiskey, cheap, strong and painfully rough, doubting it had ever been further north than the Watford Gap despite its pseudo Celtic name, I sat back against the bed, comfortably numb, faintly feeling the metal frame digging into flesh of my back but not caring. Non-descript lager washed the whiskey down, replacing an acidic burning of the throat with an unpleasant sour taste on the tongue. An empty can noisily joined the dented pile flung in the corner, scoring three points for bouncing off both walls. A small trickle of residue from the can slowly dripped onto the already sticky carpet. A laboriously constructed joint rested in the filling ashtray balancing on the torn knee of my jeans, filling the room with its sweet exotic scent, the fat cylinder releasing slow lazy smoke that danced intricately towards the bare light bulb and through which I stared at the ceiling. I looked down, staring at the ashtray, bringing my head nearer to focus, trying to count the joint butts, surely I hadn’t already smoked that much? After several failed attempts I went back to staring at the mazy cracks on the water stained ceiling. I could feel the weed’s effects pulling my mind back, baring it to the burning air, peeling back skin, moist tissue and thin fragile bone, separating thought and action; giving thoughts precedence over sight. Memories and fantasy started sliding before my eyes, more realistic and logical than my own lying senses. People half forgotten and places little visited paraded past, mixing incongruously with dancing colours in an internal Mardi Gras, while all the time my nerves and muscles seemed to melt further from my bones, creating a lightness that is impossible to describe or understand unless you’ve felt it. I could feel myself losing my grounding, spacing out, a victim of my own treacherous thoughts. Death by consciousness. Isn’t that always the way?

I woke up with my knees held tightly against my chest, feeling cold, wet, foetal and pathetic. As I reluctantly opened my eyes, my knees showed through the tears in my jeans, filling my vision with a grazed and pocked landscape embedded with grains of grit and dirt. I gradually began to take stock of my surroundings and myself. The cuts on me knees weren’t deep but they were dirty as hell, as my senses flowered I could feel the pain starting, stinging, more irritating than absorbing for now. My entire left side felt damp and chill, t-shirt and jeans clinging to my frame. My palms felt raw, looking closely I could see gravel and grit pushed under the skin, bloodless pink holes pushed into the rose petal folds of raw flesh. A deep throbbing burrowed through my head making me move my hand gently, cautiously, to my face, anxious of what I would find. Under my finger tips I could feel the warm swell of a bruise on my right jaw, crowned by split skin that stung when I touched it; a cut in my lip opened and began to gently bleed as I explored further and my eyebrow felt swollen and warmly wet.
‘Shit,’ I muttered to myself, immediately regretting it as the cut in my lip opened further and the bruise on my jaw caused my mouth to feel alien and displaced. Slowly getting to my knees I pulled myself out of the greasy grey puddle I had been lying in and looked around the alley in which I’d spent the night, or at least part of it. Blackened brick walls lined by black and green wheelie bins paraded down the alley until at the far end it opened into a bright street. I slowly staggered along the alley, pulling my legs through the grey muck and discarded plastic bags, stopping twice to lean doubled up against the stinking bins as waves of nausea threatened to make me wretch. Finally, after several minutes of noiseless and painful gagging my stomach had settled enough for me to keep going. At the end of the alleyway I stopped in the warmth of the growing sunlight and looked around the large residential street with its big clean looking houses that opened out before me. Pulling a soggy packet of Lucky Strikes from one pocket and my Zippo from the other I tried to light up while looking around. A minute later I threw the useless sodden cigarettes over my shoulder and returning the lighter to the damp recesses of a pocket decided to go left, the high rise buildings in the distance signalling better than any road sign the direction in which I lived. Walking along the pavement proved surprisingly easy as few people were out, making it most likely a Sunday morning. At least it meant I’d only been out one night and not on a longer trip of self-destruction. Those few that did walk the morning streets kept their distance, taking me for some dangerously unpredictable tramp or junkie, some degenerate from the fringes of society. Looking up from the grey pavement that filled my vision, I saw a clustered congregation of pensioners and parents with young children wearing their Sunday finest coming out of a small but prosperous looking church and getting into cars some way ahead of me. By the time I reached them, most had crossed the road to the right and disappeared into shining cars which hummed noisily as they gathered speed, and the minister or vicar was biding his last parishioner, an elderly women in a blue dress and matching hat, a benevolent goodbye. Up closer the holy man looked older than he probably was, his faced aged by either worry or piety, his hair greying and thinning, lending his face, and particularly his eyes, an almost unnatural prominence against his starry white robes. He looked up as I neared, the shock at my sordid appearance clear on his face as he quickly took in the state my clothes and face. I gave him what I hoped was a defiant smile, causing blood to start slowly dripping from the split lip down to my chin. Quickly he turned and walked back into the dim recesses of holiness hidden behind the studded wooden church door, clearly hoping I would not follow him inside. In the nicer areas of the City mercy and compassion were clearly reserved for those who could afford it. My more mischievous side tempted me to enter the church and sit for a few moments to recover, but balanced against this was the probability of human contact and the inevitable questioning from someone with what they thought an understanding expression, something that at this moment I didn’t feel able to endure. I turned back to looking at the pavement before me, and wiping my bloody chin on a dirty sleeve, continued in the direction of the flat.

The Diary of a Heretic (Chapter 1)

2009-06-11T14:52:00.002+01:00

The Diary of a Heretic

Nicholas Cockayne

Ritual Sacrilege
(Chapter 1)

Sitting alone, at a desk in the dark
She sits and dreams of a love yet to be.

Brilliant shafts of light stab through the jail bars of eyelash to form a barcode of pain on the inner wall of the eye. The minute flash of bioelectricity increases between synapses, slowly connecting and growing, an intricate web of flickering consciousness. The world swims into focus. The base growl of constant traffic filters through the grime dusted window. Another beautiful day has broken.
Empty cans and bottles rain from the sour bed as I lurch upright, last night’s therapy hanging as heavily upon my head as the dyed black hair. Flicking this from my face, I stagger towards the kitchen-come living room-come rest of flat. Ducking to avoid the voiceless wind chimes hung like criminals from the ceiling, waiting for a breeze that will never come, visual rather than aural decoration, I walk past the empty flaking door frame. Toes dig into threadbare carpet, providing little warmth to my chilled feet as I cross to the fridge. The fridge light flicks on with a grudging click as the door swings open, the illuminated interior giving me little hope of satisfying my hunger. Fridge contents: one carton of milk/butter, and a lone pot of yoghurt. The fridge light gives a pathetic pop and dies; caustic yellow light to darkness in a blink. A sigh racks my chest. Breakfast out then.
I check the pocket of my slept in faded black jeans for silvers, feeling them nestling around the coolness of my pocket knife. I glance down at my feet to check for trainers. Stopping at the top of the treacherous stairs to pull a Lucky Strike from a battered pack and light it, I pause to consider whether to lock my much abused door, and the origins of a seven-inch gash along my right forearm, which I can recall, with a fair amount of certainty, as not having being there yesterday. Neither of these details are worth the thought wasted in consideration on them. If someone, for reasons unknown, wanted in, then the door wouldn’t stop them for a moment, and what’s one more scar? Not wishing to draw any attention to myself I roll the sleeve of my limp black jumper down to cover arms, wrists and half of my hands. I start to descend.
Entering the street is akin to stepping into a different world. I survey the endless stream of passing flesh from the last step of the stairs, people moving as blades of grass harried by the breeze. Watching this passage of suited cattle, people whose clothing makes them walking advertisements for social mundanity, makes me feel the cheapening of existence, the denigration of individuality. The ceaseless cascade of faces portrays the full spectrum of emotion, making me question the value of my own. A young couple holding hands constantly glancing at each other, the stony face of a businessman yelling into a mobile phone, an overweight teenager eating a packet of crisps staring disdainfully at a dishevelled tramp sitting against a concrete wall nursing a polystyrene cup; all revealed as a conditioned reaction to external stimuli. A driver beeps angrily at a speeding car. How many others at this instant do the same?
With an apprehensive intake of breath I plunge into the rolling melee of the street. The crowd presses round, carrying me as a river does a leaf towards a waterfall. A large sweating man with a double chin presses against me from the right, jostling me with his expensive leather suitcase. Burning spikes of pain climb my arm as the heavy suitcase catches the edge of my hidden gash. Trying not to grimace, I take a step to the left, but the imperially held black umbrella of a prim looking young woman in a garish red dress prevents any intrusion into her perceived personal space. Wasted plastic bottles occasionally crunch underfoot while discarded newspapers tangle around the ankles; the pressure of combined humanity weighs down upon my head. Unspoken social rules, unbidden flock of thoughts. Loneliness in the crowd. Nervously I cough, raising a hand to cover my mouth, the jumper slides halfway up my arm to reveal the now gently bleeding cut, throbbing in time to my heartbeat. A man in an expensive suit in front of me turns his head at the sound, disdain at my appearance marring his thin features. Catching my eye he quickly turns back, walking slightly faster than before. I turn, trying to cut across agitated lines of people, forced to push against impatient bodies pressing in from all sides, sliding past overweight stomachs and pointed elbows. Exclamations of irritation follow me, and quickly I push through into the relative tranquillity of a cafe. The aroma of fried breakfasts and old coffee, musty and full, makes my stomach give an involuntary growl. Quickly crossing the black tiled floor I sit in a plastic chair, resting my hands on the scratched and stained red and white checked tablecloth, counting the silvers out of my pocket. Around me people cough and slurp their way into another glorious day, half heartedly browsing newspapers stuffed full of the suffering of others, placing a protective neutrality between the psyche and the bitter war zone outside. I envy them this ability. It is something I have never been able to do. Since childhood every stare, every seething look has branded itself into me, carved my personality into the graven image, acidic sculpture, that stares back every morning from the mirror and makes my life it’s own in my every action. What I would give to live in the white padded world of these people, not to fear yourself or the sanctimonious act of thought. I would give it all, and at once give nothing to be alive. Affluent drones in air-conditioned, designer label cells, walking poster boards of consumerism living lives entirely not their own but reproduced on a minute scale from television adverts and glossy magazines. You are happy because we tell you, you are happy. We tell you what you desire and offer it on credit with no interest for a limited time only. People who sell a small part of themselves with every media induced purchase, thinking themselves to have somehow got one over on the rest of the world who don’t yet own product X, although they all soon will. Second hand dreams, socially induced idiocy made acceptable and praiseworthy by mass participation.

Sitting here, alone in the anonymous crowd I plunge into my memories. The autumn days of our love, the mirage of you that will never fade. That day spent walking together, hand in hand through the brilliant streets and parks, ageless and carefree. The crisp imprint of a golden leaf upon the fresh grass, the way you delicately stepped over it. The hours we spent together, sitting on benches with peeling paint, talking of intimate absurdities and fantastic possibilities, but not caring. Your hair flowed like the night about your shoulders. The brightness of your eyes, the bottomless depth of their hazel waters in which I could see myself reflected.
‘Do you love me?’
‘Do I need to say I do?’
‘No.’
A slow kiss shared as we held each other close, the wind playing your hair about us. The silent torrent of leaves descending into a pond, the ripples of invisible fish as they glide effortlessly under the sun kissed surface. Evening slowly descended and the cold pricked its small hooks into our arms, faces and made our breath smoke. Kisses left circles of heat to melt goose bump skin. A shared unspoken reluctance lingered in the air around us, reluctance to leave the insular landscape we had carved that day. Eventually we stood, any sadness at leaving lost in the warmth of holding each others’ bodies close as we walked through the darkening park, the bright grass of the day turning to a half seen carpet of dark velvet around us. Your arm squeezed my waist tightly as your hand slid up under the t-shirt to stroke the small of my back with icicle fingers, and you huddled closer under my jacket. We talked together as we walked, small jokes and small laughs, as if language had been made uniquely for us, something private beyond the grasp of the outside world. I remember smiling into the twilight, wondering if you were too, thinking ahead to the candlelit hours we’d share entwined together before sleep claimed us. All I want now is to wake with you in my arms, and the life in your eyes.

I went to that park again, after we would see each other no more. I followed us through inexplicably altered streets and lanes, feeling like my own stalker. I sat at our bench, and looked out over the lake. I cannot tell you how different it seemed. The grass was just as green, the sky the same endless jewel it had always been. And yet as the sunlight gleamed through the leaves and grass, there was no joy. The fish swam, not small creatures full of life and flashing light as they had been, but mere animals, collections of instincts and bones, trying to avoid starvation and death. The fallen leaves had become the symptoms of our death. That transcendent glow we had half seen together, that life, it was no longer. I sat on that bench for hours and felt your remembered caress burn my skin like a brand. I am forever marked with our love, the thoughts we shared, we two alone among the milling leaves and wash of winds. I see your beautiful face in its absence on the faces of others. Everyone I see is not you; all that they see is not me.

A mug is placed with a thump in front of me, spilling the steaming contents onto the already stained tablecloth. I raise my head guiltily, startled from melancholy reverie; coffee, just another way to kick start into yet one more meaningless, pointless day.

Peeling back the layers

2009-06-11T14:33:00.002+01:00

Hello dear Readers, pull up a pew, and let's get reacquainted.

It's been a dreadfully long time since I've updated the Shelves, but it's not because I've forgotten it. Far from it, the Shelves have often been like a guilty itch in the back of my thoughts.

After returning from travelling there were some drastic changes in my life, changes that held me back from writing, undermined my confidence, and stopped me in my tracks. That's all in the past, however, and it is time to look forward to the future.

For far too long the meaning of Shelved Dreams mutated from what it was originally intended to be. Instead of a collection of small wonders, it came to mean the postponement, storage, and stalling of those dreams. The Shelves became a darkened room, and the door was locked.

But no longer. A wind has come. The door is thrown open once more, the dancing curtains letting in a dusty yellow light, and the swirling collections of thoughts and dreams are once again shining gently like bonsai universes in their jars.

This latest post is going to be something that was very near and dear to me for many years.

Over my teenage years and beyond, I wrote a short novel. This in itself is not unusual, but what is odd about it is that instead of simply throwing it away in disgust, my adult self still likes what the spotty awkward and lank manchild was thinking at the time. Add to this the fact that over the years it's been edited several thousand times, and what I'm left with is a bridge between my adolescence (a time when the world was full of strange possibility) and now (when I'm trying to shrug off my world weariness and recapture that feeling) that is oddly readable, I hope.

So, here it is in all it's tarnished glory. I warn you now, it's darkish, largish, and contains an unhealthy amount of it's author.

Enjoy.

Everything Must Go

2008-07-13T23:15:00.002+01:00

Written in a park in Boston, under the willows.

Everything Must Go

On the sun warm pavement of the artist's row, in a faded deck chair sits a skeletal figure, tiny beneath a colourless cap and shirt. The dust dim glass of the gallery shines behind him and in his gaunt lap nestles a sign written in a shaky hand, 'Closing Down Sale'.

Behind the dirty glass long strips of dried flesh twist in the slight breeze like strange wind chimes, fragile and translucent as pink veined Autumn leaves. On this one the bright eye can catch the tracery of a faded seaman's tattoo, on that, the stretched scar of a childhood trauma. A lifetime's worth of physical experience in pirouetting ribbons of tissue, all at bargain prices.

Some of the occasional browsers smile, thinking they see the trick of it. Others look at the seated figure, seemingly whittled thin by age, and wonder.

None see the backroom, behind the disused counter, where the Artist keeps his feelings. Faded photographs of sunshine days spent under willows, surrounded by the memories of daisies turning to dust. The salt tang of jam jars full of sea worn pebbles, inside which a small boy runs slow, legs splashing through the surf. Surrounded by sweet scented votive candles, bitter jars of tears wept over lost loves sit side by side with the faded shapes of shelved dreams. On these pieces there is no price tag, for the Artist cannot decide their worth, if worth they have. In some ways the price has already been paid, paid in remembrance.

The Artist sits, the remains of his flesh thin on stark bones, and enjoys the warmth of the dying sun. He clutches his sign in a frail hand and smiles, watching the close of the day, knowing with the wisdom of age that everything must go.

World enough and Time

2008-07-13T23:09:00.002+01:00

I know I've been neglecting the Shelves since I've been travelling, but rest assured I've not stopped writing. I've been focusing on some commercial pieces recently, notably a series of articles on how to win short story competitions, and a large commission to write a guide for men buying women's underwear as gifts, of all things. But bill paying work aside I've still found time on my travels to indulge my fictional side. I've made a start on the fantasy novel (especially for you Mike, promise I'll have something for you to proof read very soon) which has been brewing in my head for so long, a piece that I hope will prove worthy of publication.

Today, sitting in a park in Boston, roasting in the sunshine while admiring the lake and willow trees and thinking about artistic merit, I wrote a little something which may be worth putting up here for people's consideration. A short piece, just a taster, to let everyone know that there's still plenty of little treasures on the Shelves yet to be uncovered.

Devine, Anna, Jamie.

2008-06-02T21:26:00.006+01:00

Another personal short. Written in Room 302, HI Central, Vancouver.

Devine, Anna, Jamie

Together with one other, they sit in the sulphurous waters of the hot springs pool, brought together by chance and tourism. He is twenty, a German student, they are are twenty two and made infinitely older by their sophisticated French accents. They lie in the pool together, resting as best they can, the submerged rocks slick with algae, taking in the warming waters and at least, on the surface, relaxing.

Devine feels like he is sixteen again, and a long way from home. It is not just the the warmth of the springs that bring spikes of heat out all over his chest ad face. Everywhere he looks he can see pale nubile flesh beneath the water. Thighs, shoulders, stomachs, the side of a breast beneath a blue bikini; even the perfectly formed ranks of their toes are erotic to him. Speech spills from him, torrents of inanities ad unfunny jokes which make the girls from; all bubbling up out of him like the spring from the rocks.

Anna and Jamie (although, in her thick accent, she pronounces it Gem-y) resent this gabbling manboy and his quick, uncomfortable, glances; the way his obvious embarrassment is covering the pool like an expanding oil slick. They shut their eyes against him, pretending to relax, but they cannot shut their ears to the speech welling from his mouth. He makes them feel awkward in their skins, white and naked beneath the water, self conscious of their bodies, the fluting and twisting of muscle and bone, when all they want to do is relax. His embarrassment paints them as he sees them, daubing over their delicate self portraits with crude erotic graffiti. For this they hate him.

When their times is finally up all three are glad to leave the pool, treading carefully barefoot across the rocks, feeling something more rotten than the vague sulphurous smell of eggs to have sunk under their skin.

Chris

2008-06-02T21:13:00.004+01:00

One of what I hope will be a series of character driven shorts that will build into a collection. I know that until now my writing is often impersonal, mainly because of a fear of being unable to accurately portray the complexities of a character. These shorts focused heavily on character, but written third person is an attempt to redress this.

Written in Room 302, HI Central, Vancouver.

Chris

He walks the grey sands, stopping at each rock pool to stare at the fluorescent starfish and anemones and the tiny near transparent alien creatures that flit among the weeds. He runs down the empty beach, filling straining lungs with wild air; a carefree child once more. When he heaves and pants to a stop he lifts his face to the sun and cries, tears streaming down the crevices of his life-worn face.

In the stale sunlight of the kitchen, the air had tasted thick with the resentment and anger of years. The silence stretched between them, a spectre hanging mutely. When he came home from work, weary tread heavy on the stairs, his son would hide in the cupboard, wishing himself out of existence. Chris always knew, hearing the closing of the cupboard door and the scuffle of a small body settling among discarded shoes and boxes, but he pretended to be fooled.

Gasping in the living flavour of the forest and the tang freshness of the sea he cannot understand how two such different places can co-exist.

He gets himself a room, a job, a new car. Life here is pretty sweet, he tells anyone willing to listen in the bars. He tells them his story. He tells me his story. He takes long walks down the beaches, into the forests, up the mountains; immerses himself in this new life.

Every day he calls his boy from the phone booth on the corner, filling the silences on the other end with promises. 'When you come to visit we'll go to the beach every day, we'll dig holes and build sandcastles, we'll watch whales, go biking, fishing, camping.' From the mute phone an insidious fog of cloying guilt seeps out to fill the booth, making it hard to breathe. It follows him like a stray dog through the streets, growing until it fills the beaches and bars, until it smothers the coves and forests with its sickly sweet scent, until it feels like paradise is choking him.

My Cool Love

2008-06-02T21:07:00.002+01:00

A poem written in Stanley Park, Vancouver, in response to 'Bone Flames' a collection of poetry from the gifted Colleen J. McElroy. More or less complete.

My Cool Love

A sister once said that flesh was the thing,

Eros' gift, yielding and warm.

I find flesh but wet ropes, gaudy tatters,

soft sacking of liquid organs that gently fail

day by night by day.

My love is cooler, the prison and warder,

the sickle cage of rigid ribs that embrace

breath and heart.

Your love is the gilded facade that sags and

slides under the immense weight of age.

Your love is measured in years, but mine in ages.

When Death tenderly strips away your love,

mine will be revealed beneath.

MIA in Canada

2008-06-02T21:05:00.002+01:00

I'm currently dragging myself across Canada on a two and half month adventure, so the posts have been a little slow I'm afraid. But fear not, I'm still writing, albeit at a reduced pace. I've managed to sell a few articles through Constant Content while I've been travelling, and Canada have proved to be absolutely inspiring. Here's a little taste of what I've been working on ...

The Rat Princess

2008-05-12T11:33:00.000+01:00

The Rat Princess

Once upon a time there lived a man called John. John was an average kind of an Englishman, with short mousy brown hair, surprisingly warm grey eyes, and a gently lined face that told that he had once liked to laugh. John lived alone in a big house in the country. The house had once belonged to his father but he had died; and the dead do not own anything, least of all themselves.

One day while clearing out his father's clutter from the cellar John saw a large rat with dark sleek fur scuttling around forlornly among the broken chair legs, dented boxes and rotting newspapers. John was a naturally kind hearted man and felt sorry for the rat, so he went back up the cellar steps and returned with some stale bread and a saucer of milk from the kitchen. Putting it down in the middle of the cellar floor and backing away, he knelt down and watched to see what the rat would do. Jet black eyes regarding John curiously, the rat hesitantly scampered towards the food. Pink nose twitching warily it finally picked up a scrap of the stale bread that John had torn into small pieces, for he was thoughtful as well as kind hearted, and daintily nibbled the morsel held between its forepaws. It ate the scrap of bread, then another, and then another. With the bread gone the rat started lapping up the milk thirstily. Once it was done the rat wiped it's whiskers clean with delicate paws in a dignified manner, and with one more curious backward glance at John, who had watched all this in silence, it vanished back among the shadowed piles of junk littering the cellar. At an insistent rumble from his stomach, John decided that it was time for his supper too and climbed the stairs to the kitchen, locking and bolting the cellar door behind him as his father had always told him to at night.

That night John lay painfully awake in the bed that had been his father's, unable to sleep, tossing and turning, slowly beginning to drift off before waking with a jolt and starting to toss and turn all over again. Lying in bed like this, John gradually became aware of a scratching noise, somewhere in the house below. Putting his trousers on and pulling on a shirt, for even fictional Englishmen like to be properly attired, no matter the time of day, John crept downstairs to the kitchen. In the kitchen John carefully lit the lamp on the kitchen table and stood still, tilting his head to listen. The insistent scratching was louder here, and clearly coming from the heavy oak door that led down to the cellar. Thinking the rat had returned and was trying to claw it's way into the kitchen, John slung open the bolt and turned the large iron key in the door, hoping to scare the rat away with the noise and sudden light from the kitchen. Flinging the hefty door open John started in surprise. Standing face to face with him was a women with sleek dark hair standing on the top of the cellar stairs. Wide eyed he took in the delicate beauty of her face, her large dark eyes, the lustre of her hair, her slender fingers and long nails, and the thin white gown she wore that barely concealed the willowy body beneath.
Stuttering and wide eyed with the shock of finding a beautiful and thinly clad young woman on his cellar stairs John struggled to regain some degree of composure.
'Erm, my, er, my name's John.' he at last managed.
The strange young lady smiled in return.
'I am a Princess.'

The Princess came to live with John in the country house, and, as people do, they fell in love; she with the kind hearted man with grey eyes and he with his mysterious dark haired Princess. As people in love are wont to do they shared more than just warmth in bed at night and after several happy months the Princess' figure was no longer willowy but rounded and heavy with child.

One night, lying in bed with a protective arm across the Princess' swollen stomach, John heard a scratching noise coming from below. Careful not to wake the Princess he stole from the warmth of the bed and padded barefoot to the chill kitchen below. The noise was much louder than he remembered from before, louder and somehow thicker. With his hand on the bolt, ready to throw it open, John hesitated, a movement from the corner of his eye making him spin round. Descending the stairs to the kitchen the Princess, with her white nightdress pulled tightly over her stomach against the chill, looked at John solemnly with her large black eyes.
'Please,' she implored in a small voice, 'do not open that door.'
He looked from the Princess, large with his child, to the door and back again. The scratching was louder now, so ferocious that the door itself began to shake. Remembering how he found her, and curious as to what treasures could now be in his cellar, he gave her a guilty glance and slung the bolt back with a harsh metallic bang. The door was slammed open as hundreds and hundreds of rats poured out. Grey rats, brown rats, black rats, all swarmed into the kitchen in a deluge of fur, whiskers, and claws. John wanted to run upstairs, but couldn't make himself move; the idea of standing on the rats, feeling bones break beneath his bare feet was more than he could bear. As the rats scampered all around the kitchen, darting between John's legs, and into every corner, the Princess stood unperturbed, fixing John with a sad gaze. After a few seconds, and to John's surprise, she stepped down into the kitchen, and started running around after the rats, bent over as best she could and waving her arms, saying, 'Away, away with you now!' To John's further surprise the rats started running from her, as geese before the gooseherd, pouring back down the steps into the cellar. As the last pink tail disappeared into the dark with a wriggle the Princess shut the door, drawing the bolt across and without a single word took John's hand and led him back to bed.

Later that night, as John and the Princess lay in bed, holding each other as if they would never let go, there was an almighty crash downstairs. Together they left the bed, and holding hands, they descended the steps into the kitchen. In the middle of the kitchen a rat the size of a large dog, with bright silvery fur stood in front of the splintered remains of the cellar door. John felt the Princess' hand squeeze his tightly and turned to see a look of fear and recognition on her face. When he turned back the rat was gone and a regal and terrible old woman with shining silver hair stood in its place.

'Come with me, back to the world Below. You carry a future Princess in your belly, it is time.' she said, her voice hard and commanding.
'Not without John, I won't.
'Very well.'
'Please,' said the Princess turning to a bewildered John, 'turn around.'
John did as she asked, if only a little hesitantly, and when he turned back the two women had gone, and two huge rats, one with sleek dark fur and one with silvery fur stood before him. Together they pattered into the cellar, and John had no option but to follow them. As he stepped off the last step into the cellar, John felt his world shake, change, shrink down upon him. His legs went to jelly, black crept into the edges of his sight, and that was the last he knew.

When he awoke, with many a groan, John found himself in a dimly lit cavern, and the Princess and the silver haired Queen, for that is what she was, standing in front of him once more. From the darkness that swallowed the other end of the cavern a shape slowly and unsteadily began to emerge. As it stepped into the meagre light John saw that it was a man, man with a vacant gaze and wild and unruly hair. His face seemed etched with lines, and the grey eyes were blood shot. It was only when his absent gaze wandered to the Queen that his face lit up with a weary smile, and then only for a second as his gaze slipped away from her again.

'You say that you will not come without this man?' said the Queen. 'Very well. But know that if he stays then this', she pointed to the absent faced man with grey eyes ,'this is what will become of him, slow madness creeping up on him in the darkness, no matter how much you love each other. This I know for sure.' As she said those last words her regal tone vanished for a moment, replaced by something more understanding but harder.
'I will stay,' said John bravely, 'for to be parted from you would drive me insane anyway.'
At this the Princess black eyes filled with love and pride.
'No, you must go back Above, for surely, seeing you go mad and seeing what I love in you slowly destroyed would kill me.'
The two lovers looked into one another's eyes for the longest time, and then John began to feel his legs weaken, his sight darken, and he gently slipped into unconsciousness again.

For a long time, years in fact, after waking up alone on his cellar floor, John was broken hearted. A bright ache for his Princess encircled his heart and crushed it in a sharp grip. He lay awake in bed night after night, straining in the darkness for any noises from below, of which there were none. And he never bolted shut the cellar door again, hoping that she would return to him.

As the years slowly rolled by John became accustomed to the pain, so that if he tried not to think of what was lost, it was only a dull ache at the back of his mind; but for all of that, he never stopped loving his Princess. As happens, John found comfort and company again with another woman, and married and had a child with the accepting woman who never questioned the hurt hidden behind his eyes. They had a child, who had his father's eyes.

Many years passed, and the woman died, which saddened John for he had felt real affection for her. Their son left the country house. All that time, to the puzzlement of his now dead wife John would never shut the new cellar door.

One day when John was old, and his hair matched his eyes, he heard a noise coming from the cellar as he prepared his evening meal. Going down he found a large rat with sleek dark fur streaked with grey standing quite silently, inspecting him with its large dark eyes. Slowly John turned around, and when he turned back the rat had gone. In its place was the Princess, although she was a Princess no longer, for now she was older and a Queen, and there was a new Princess. Both looked each other over, saddened to see what time had done to their love. Taking her hand John led she who was once a Princess upstairs. They shared a meal of bread, cheese, and milk together, and then later shared a tender, melancholy, lovemaking; all in silence. Afterwards she stood in front of the window, and he sat on the bed, and they both look out through the dark glass at the stars shining brightly in the velvet sky.

'I would have stayed with you, you know. Going mad, just to be near year. Over the years I tried again and again to get back Below, but I never could find out how.' said John quietly.
'I know. I have to go again now, and I can never come back Above again.'
She turned to leave, but John reached out from the bed and took her hand and asked her to wait.
'I have one last thing to ask of you,' he said, 'you who has given me a daughter I have never seen, and you who I have loved my entire life. Please, kill me.'
There was nothing but love, sadness, and acceptance in John's kind grey eyes, and she loved him and could refuse him nothing. Quickly she slashed her long sharp nails across his neck, leaving behind a growing necklace of liquid scarlet. Sitting there on the bed he watched her as his life slipped away, savouring his last look at his Rat Princess.

After a time John lay still, grey eyes kind no longer, but empty. The woman who was a Princess, and a Queen, looked out of the window at the gently twinkling brilliance of the stars, which smudged in her vision.. She watched for a long moment longer as those cold glowing points blurred together in the pitch dark sky, and then she left.

The cameraman stops filming, capping his lens carefully. The director says something tired and clichéd. The production staff bustle off importantly. Only the man who was John and the woman who was both a Princess and a Queen are left, alone together in the flimsy walled, three sided, bedroom. She turns slowly from the blank window to look at him sat quietly on the bed, his neck wreathed in scarlet.
'What will you do now?' he asks quietly, like a man afraid to hear the answer.
'I'm booked to go touring Europe with the Ania theatre group,' she replies. She looks into his warm grey eyes. 'I could get you a place, you could come as well.'
'No, I couldn't. I'm no actor, not really.'
'Of course you are,' she replies quickly, 'this might be your first film, but you're acting is great.'
No, I wasn't acting. I was just playing myself, how I would have been, if I was John.'
'You could still come with me.'
They look at each other.
'We both know I couldn't.'

Two years later, she who was a Princess and a Queen, and in some ways still is, watches over that film while her latest celebrity boyfriend is away on a shoot. Afterwards she switches off the tv and sits alone on the scarlet sofa in the quiet room, watching the stars through the darkened window. She sits, and stares, and thinks of the grey eyes of John losing his Princess in the film. She remembers the sad and accepting eyes of the man who was John, as they talked on that last day of filming, and she knows that he was right; he couldn't act.

Finally, The Rat Princess

2008-05-12T11:31:00.003+01:00

This is a little hurried I'm afraid, as I finally finished the story off (it may be a little rough and ready) just half an hour before I leave to jump onboard a plane and fly off to Canada for two and a half months. I'm actually really glad to have got it out the way, talk about being haunted by a dream you just can't forget; well for me it was one I just couldn't write down.

It's a strange combination of surreal dream, fairy story, and something else all together. Don't dismiss it straight away, it's a little more than it appears, so bear with it to the end and you might just be pleasantly surprised.

Anyway, here it is, The Rat Princess.

See you in a few months!

Signs of the Times

2008-05-10T15:07:00.004+01:00

Which country do you now travel?
What foreign lands do you walk?
We will greet you soon, and
The others who in whispers talk.

Life has been a little hectic of late, leaving little time for dreaming. The demands of preparing to travel around Canada for a few months (I'm leaving in two days time), finding a flat with my love, and generally living have left me yearning to write but unable to.

However, things have been occurring. I've been adding slowly but steadily to Helium, and Constant Content and have finally been rewarded for my patience. Somebody choose to buy a throw away little satirical piece I'd written. Admittedly the money involved amounts to little, but there's a real rush to knowing that someone likes something you've written enough to pay for it. Even better is the reaction of 60 or so comments the article received at it's new home.

http://listverse.com/humor/5-signs-that-you-are-turning-into-a-dictator/

The nice thing about it is that because of the non-exclusive license it was sold under, the article is still available for anyone else to buy and use if they like. If you'd like to take a look at this and what else is on offer, take a look at the Constant Content or Helium links on the sidebar.

As for 'The Rat Princess', I'm going to finish it tonight, I can't bear the thought of it hanging over me unfinished while I'm away in Canada - keep a eye out for it appearing later today.

Scribbling Still

2008-04-15T21:08:00.004+01:00

Under it all, the water runs still, softly brushing our sleeping minds.

Slip into something a little more comfortable, turn the lights down low, put on some soft music, and enjoy.

'The Rat Princess' is still in the works, fulminating slowly, round and round, in the dark recesses of my obscure little mind. One day soon it will come to light, yep, any time now. Or at least before I leave for Canada anyway.

Instead of that I've been playing around on a new money spinning idea. I've signed myself up for Constant Content.com, a site that profiles your writing and allows you to write for publisher requests. It's a bit more crude, and definitely less welcoming than Helium (which has just given me a nice $70 odd payout today) but the potential for earning is far greater. So yet again I'm prostituting my meagre talent for money. When instead I should be working to finish my pile of demi stories, get on paper my two novels that are sitting fully formed in my head, and generally get on with my life.

It'll come.

Captured Dreams

2008-04-02T19:54:00.005+01:00

Take a peek among the captured dreams, shining dustily in their thick glass jars, tiny universes waiting to be unravelled.

As you may have noticed there have been a few additions to the Shelves recently, all of which can be found through the various links on the side bar.

Short stories: I've added a few of my older texts, here's the stories behind the stories.

Coasting: Written on Brighton beach on a windy day and finished half an hour later over a pint of ale in the pub Steve Aylett apparently frequents. The original had a quick sketch next to it in my notebook of the ruined pier it describes. Essentially a prose/poetry exercise in people watching by a morbidly curious writer.

Early Memory: Written as an assignment for Peter Abbs' autobiography module on my MA. I fear it is much more evocative and meaningful for me than for anyone else. I fear all my writing is.

Autoform: Again, another assignment for Peter, based a little around the first but tying strongly into the post-modern reading we were doing at the time. Read aloud to the group over the whirring of lawnmower blades in a room overlooking the campus lawn.

The Land of the Dead: Written for Amber Jacobs' Creative Writing Group based in the room without windows. A criticism about modern living that became much more about the lonely character of Tuaska as I fell in love with his plight. To my embarrassment it was only when reading it aloud that I realised the name of the tribe sounds like an expletive. Look out for Tuaska sneaking into other texts of mine.

Co-Writing: A story about stories and writing, wrapped up in the packaging of a relationship; featuring two of the saddest characters I have yet met. Depressing and disturbing to write, I found myself disliking the characters as I looked at the world through their eyes. A longer short story.

A Selection of Articles: A quick and almost random selection of the articles I write for Helium, aimed at showing a few of the ever expanding styles and topics I cover there. Take a peek, there's quite a variety to keep you entertained.

Linkage: Just one quick addition to the Shelves linkage, the professional photography site of my very talented friend Mr. Jeremy Chichester-Miles.

Coasting

2008-04-02T19:50:00.000+01:00

Coasting

The morbid attraction of a coal black shell, skeleton of amusement, draws more than lonely seabirds. Sit on the sea-worn, sea-warm, stones and scribble an elegy in black. Trudge noisily the oak dark legs that lean toward the water, touch the harsh bark of dead man stumps. Admire the isolated, naked, arching of bones that rise from the sea to the sky and fall back forlorn. Once vibrant and strident with life, now the only sound is the slapping of the waters against echoing iron.
And watch the people, always watch the people.
The solitary readers pinning papers against the gusts, the art students sketching in charcoal. The lovers, lying, loving, the newly weds sculpting imaginary futures from the sea breeze. The elderly married couples huddled together clasping cool cups of plastic tea, the man married only to his metal detector, pacing, and digging, and pacing.
Always watch the people, always watch the sea.
Gun metal horizon, foaming, turbulent surf, freshening spray. Count that mystical ninth wave break. Bright flecks of worn painted wood drifting, the funeral smell of shore wrecked seaweed, crisp and salt as the sea itself. Behind you, feel a city bristling. Smoke a Lucky Strike, watch the smoke drift across the water, as the smoke from the pier did.
Watch the sea.

Early Memory

2008-04-02T19:48:00.000+01:00

Early Memory

My childhood. Sometimes, walking across campus lawns, I catch an elusive scent on the stiff January breeze or a patch of brighter green in the yawn of a hollow bush. A tantalising thread just ungraspable that leads back into the past.

The exuberance of breathless twilight games played in lamp lit streets, always running away from the grabbing fingers of another. Carefully hoarded pocket monies, a secretive trip down the shop, the crinkle of sweet wrappers and the sparkle of lemon sherberts.

Death. Death was something that happened to other, unknown, people. Those foolish enough to get caught out in some incomprehensible game. Tag. Gameover. I would never get caught because I could run faster than the others and hide better than anyone I knew.

And then great aunt somebody died. A half remembered Christmas face of lines and smiles. The smell of lavender on wool. The house was full of black suits and tissues, for a day. I felt a confused sadness at my parents’ grief. A petulant anger at not being the centre of attention. A hug. In the tight embrace, there came a sudden awareness. My father sobbed violently. Awareness, in the cloistered warmth of his starched suit jacket, that he clung to my life, hugging in gratitude. Thankful for my very being. I too could die.

I remember this thought clearly, the stark ending of my childhood, as my father’s tears wet my neck.

Now childhood is just a memory glimpsed on a passing breeze.

Autoform

2008-04-02T19:47:00.000+01:00

An autobiographical piece on a formative moment? To relate a formative moment of my own, not just accurately, but truthfully? Frankly I’m not sure it can be done. Metaphors present themselves to justify this impossibility. If a life was captured on film, each split second frame would imprison a distinct character frozen in that instant; no two are ever the same. It is only when sped up for our viewing pleasure that these frozen selves blur together to become one unified, fluid, person; the single self is a perceptual fallacy. Never the less, the gauntlet had been thrown down, the challenge set. An attempt must be made, and post modernism be damned. One memory does spring instantly to mind, a formative experience unique and unrepeatable. But it’s nothing I’d want to share, and nothing others would want to be made to read. I‘m certainly no Rousseau, and have no intention of becoming so. Another suggests itself, a more palatable memory, a memory set palimpsestuously over the first, like a double exposed photograph.

My childhood ended the day my parents told me what to do if they should die.

This surprised me at the time and still does. I had thought myself a man for many years before this, ever since finding that there was something better than coarse vodka for keeping warm on a frigid autumn night. Trying, I find I cannot remember exactly when either of these events happened, or even how old I was at the times. But this is of no consequence. It is the impression they left that matters. I can for instance, taste my childish dislike for the brittle edged white furniture in my parents room and picture the wind plucking at the leaves of the tree in the front garden - seen through the window as my mother spoke - but I cannot remember the look on her face, let alone the date it all occurred. Like Jung, my life is composed of a patchy tapestry of internalised occurrences and memories; that these occasionally attach themselves to a particular date or year is, at best, a happy coincidence. Sometimes, when someone reminds me of a noteworthy moment in my life, one which I had myself forgotten, I cannot recognise the person they describe. It’s certainly not me now, but was it me then?

I find I do not know how to write this. To simplify and fictionalise the internal self would make the task an easier one, but would this be truly autobiographical? I almost hope not, it would cheapen life horribly. Shall I write of an event as I remember experiencing it at the time? Is this in itself not false, as who we are now affects the memory of who we were then? I can vividly remember having felt, pride, guilt and sorrow at different times in my life, all over once swearing at my mother. Which is the true emotion, or are they all? I know I’m digressing from the subject, but maybe that’s the point. Are the thoughts that the memory, or the act of remembering it, throws up any less valid than those experienced at the time being remembered? I seem to be in the grip of perseveration. That crafty post modernism throws up an endless stream of questions but offers no answers; I’m beginning to both admire and loathe it.

The back of a photo frame hides this, a strong box that. If we die abroad, bring us back, back home. It’s all in the will. Look after your brother.

These words had an understandably profound effect on the younger me, and not much less of an effect when I remember them now. Suddenly plane crashes, car accidents, carbon monoxide poisoning, disease, all of these things became tangible possibilities. I was impatient for my mother to finish talking about this nonsense, these things that wouldn‘t happen, to let me escape what she was forcing me to consider. Simultaneously I was also angry, I realised the truth of her words and that my childhood had now ended. Or, at least, had left behind the feeling of being a child, an adolescent; how much we ever truly leave behind these discarded selves I don’t know, perseveration again. Before I had been playing at being a man, now I had become one. When you know that at any moment you could inherit the shattered remnants of a family and become responsible for it, it’s hard to think of yourself as you did before. Responsibility, it would seem, is what makes a man. When she had finished I returned to my room to read, my habitual escapism. My eyes read words on the page, but they did not register in my mind. I couldn’t stop thinking about what I would do if I suddenly inherited the house, the money, the family. Could I arrange a funeral? I hated myself for these thoughts. I think I still do. I had finally become a man, and tasting adulthood, I found it sour.

The Land of the Dead

2008-04-02T19:46:00.000+01:00

The Land of the Dead

Tuaska climbed the jagged grey crag, lithe brown body pressed against the cool rock, stalking the wily old mountain goat as it clambered up sheer cliffs and thin ledges. An undulating hunting yodel echoed off the surrounding boulders and knife edged precipices; his hunting mate, Yasze, sighting the elusive creature somewhere above. Tuaska grinned widely. Bearded old goat is canny, but Ashyt hunters cannier, he thought, sharp spear will bring you sleep among the bones of the world. Far below the mist shrouded jungle laid spread out like a verdant carpet, and all around the rising wind shrieked through narrow canyons, blowing thickening wisps of cloud that chilled his hairless arms as he climbed. Tuaska revelled in the hunt, scaling the rough peaks with ease, just as his ancestors had for generations innumerable. The wind gusted more violently now, trying to tug him free of the rock. He clung harder with strong hands and feet. With the wind came sudden billowing clouds, clouds that instantly enveloped him, obscuring all but the rock in front of his face. Yasze’s keening call sounded again, muffled in the dense cloud, seemingly coming from everywhere and nowhere at once. The wind tore past faster, unbelievably fast, vapour whipping between him and the rock face. Cloud and wind ripped past in an unstoppable torrent, making the stone itself seem to ebb and flow, changing before his very eyes. Tuaska froze as something whistled furiously past his head, invisible in the roiling cloud. A loud crack sounded somewhere above. He looked up just in time to see a shower of stones and grit, followed by a fist sized rock, come hurtling from the cloud above. It struck the side of his head with a sickening jolt and dropped into the whiteness below. Head reeling, vision purpling, he felt his limbs weaken, and then numb. Through a haze of pain he saw the rock face fall away as, spread eagled, he plummeted backwards into the waiting fog. The last thing he saw before darkness took him was the crag receding, and then disappearing, into a bottomless mass of foaming cloud.

Fiery agony lanced through Tuaska’s head as he reluctantly opened heavy eyes. Every bit of him simultaneously started to ache distinctly. Squinting with the pain he couldn’t at first believe his eyes. Green light shone down from above, spearing through a thin mist sidling over his face. With a jerk he tried to raise his head. He moaned as pain pulsed into his skull like a hot ember. Black shadows crept into the edges of his sight. He lay back down until he no longer felt like he would die that instant.

Staggering from tree to tree, hands clinging at rough bark, stumbling as his feet caught on twigs and plants, Tuaska pushed through thick fronds of leaves in the weak jungle light. Hair matted and face wet with dark blood, half blinded with pain, he shuffled forward, not knowing where to, just that he must keep walking. The air felt thick and strange in his chest, tasted wrong as he gasped it into his mouth. Legs weak as a newborn’s threatened to collapse under him at any instant. Yet he forced himself onwards. Through a pain dulled mind he remembered the stories the withered tribal Elders told around the cooking fires. Stories about the strange poisonous beasts and dangerous men with magic sticks, that boomed like the crack of a falling boulder and struck men dead where they stood, that lived in the twilight land beneath the tree tops far below their mountain homes.

He didn’t know for how far or how long he walked. Eventually his legs gave way beneath him. He crawled torturously forward then on clumsy knees and arms until the green and brown shapes finally blurred before his eyes and the ground rose to welcome his tired face. With one last desperate effort he raised his head from the soft earth. His vision swung this way and that, a miasma of colour and shapes. The trees and bushes cleared before him, revealing strange round brown shapes scattered on yellow earth, impossibly tall pale people gliding between them. Beyond that what seemed a small upside down mountain peak rose and sank in an impossibly vast expanse of water bluer than the sky above it. It was then that Tuaska knew he was dying.

Hands grasped him roughly. Strange rolling sounds.
‘Take ... leg ...’
‘Concus ... fracture... sk ...’
Soft darkness.

White. Light.
Through fluttering eyelids Tuaska saw a tall pale figure dressed in white light towering above him. The monstrous figure had milky skin and no mouth; instead a huge animal growth of hair erupted from below his nose and the bottom of his face. The figure sang slow strange words down to him.
‘Easy, there.’
The spectre bent down and shone his brilliant white light into Tuaska’s eyes once again.

Tuaska rose from his bed of pelts and stretched luxuriantly, knowing that he was dead. It had been a handful of days since he'd escaped from the ghosts that had carried him across the water to land of the dead. He remembered little about that time. Waking fitfully from dark dreams of falling through thick mists, he had found himself staring up into a burning white light. Sometimes when he woke the strange ghost would be standing over him, speaking slow alien words through the bristling hair hanging from the bottom of his face and touching Tuaska’s head with large dry hands. Often waking terrified Tuaska would try to jump up, to escape, but found himself unable to move his body, his arms and legs unresponsive logs of dead wood. Tuaska rose from his bed and walked slowly, stretching his legs appreciatively, as he went to the small mouth of his cave. With a small smile he watched the dawn sun, so much weaker here than in the lands of the living, rise above the strange mountains of this place. He hummed his tribes’ welcoming song to the dawn sun, a deep thrumming that climbed higher as the sun rose above the little mountains before him. It had taken him a while to get used to the strange shapes of the mountains here, so many of them and so small and even. Sometimes during the days he would sit and listen to the dull roar of huge multicoloured beetles crawling in lines between the canyons. He would watch the many tall bustling pale ghosts gliding around on the ground far below him, or appearing briefly in front of the hundreds of small cave mouths in the taller mountains. It was all as the Ashyt Elders had always said. The souls of the Ashyt truly did fall from the mountains, rolling down to the great water and from there float to the land of the dead. He knew now that this was what had happened to him. And the ghosts of the dead really did live buried in the mountains themselves. Tuaska knew he was dead, but with a hunter's ability to adapt to changing terrain he had fast become used to it. Being dead wasn't as bad as he'd always thought it would be. The game was plentiful. During the first chill hours of the day he would scale the little mountains, always taking care not to let himself be seen by the few ghosts moving below. At the peaks he would surprise nesting birds, big fat things, oily but good, catching the drowsy birds with nimble hands. Then he wrung their necks and sucked the eggs. At dusk he would stalk along the lower ridges, a thin brown shadow in the dark, hunting the tiny mountain pumas with a metal spear he'd found and sharpened. When he got back to his small cave he would skin them, keeping the strange neck ribbons with shining metal circles that caught the firelight so prettily to decorate the walls. Then he would light a fire and roast them sizzling over the flames. The furry multicoloured pelts he kept to line his bed.

Every day he would climb to the top of the little mountain he lived in. At the top he sat looking away from the small mountains, back out over the great water. From his vantage point he could see many of the strange floating peaks like the one that had carried him to the land of the dead. All day they floated in and out, coming and going in different directions. Everyday Tuaska would sit and watch, never knowing which was the one that could carry him back to his mountains in the land of the living. Back in the mountains of the Ashyt they sung the sun to sleep beneath the earth each day. Here Tuaska did not sing to the sun, because the sun never slept. When it went below the horizon in the distance, it went into the ground, coming up through the tops of the strange hard, cold, trees that grew in long lines below the small mountains. Tuaska knew that it was the sun shining out orangegold from these trees because one night he'd shinned up a smooth trunk and felt the small warmth from the tree’s single large sunbud on his hand. It hadn't been as hot as he'd imagined the sun would feel.

As dusk fell Tuaska climbed the now familiar cliff face of his short mountain. At the top he sat on his haunches, looking out over the sun's rays falling weakly on the great water. The land of the dead might be a good land, but to him it felt strange. He was wary of the masses of pale ghosts shuffling along the ground in their peculiar clothes. The mountains were too short and straight, full of caves with more pale ghosts inside. The air was too thick, smelt of wood smoke, and stuck in his throat. In the days he hid from sight, and in the nights he was alone. Tuaska missed the mountains of his home, their rough peaks rising above the clouds far into the open sky. He missed stalking the wily mountain goats among the heights. He missed the other Ashyt. He missed Yasze.

As the fat golden disc of the sun fell slowly into the great dark waters, Tuaska rocked slowly backwards and forwards on his haunches, yodelling a high, undulating, keening, song. Tuaska's strong voice reverberated out across the water, no lullaby for the setting sun, but a sorrowful dirge for his lost mountains, lost friend, and lost life. The dying rays of the sun shone on Tuaska, crouching alone high above the land of the dead.

Co-Writing

2008-04-02T19:14:00.001+01:00

Co-writing

Summer sat in the living room, palms resting on the taut flesh of her stomach, the open windows bringing in the crisp scent of spring. She imagined her baggy powder blue jumper as a monotone sky encapsulating the warm globe beneath, her hands the winds massaging the life concealed below them. Her fingers pressed gently down, into the baby's chamber below; she felt soothed by the physical contact with something so undeniably alive. She recognised it as a strange thought, feeling calmed by touching a life that was hers and yet wasn't; but it felt right. It was moments like this that she wished Nathan were here to share. It didn't matter whether he could truly relate to what she was going through; it felt good just having him around. She leant forward and stretched an arm towards the large mug of hot chocolate on the coffee table. No matter how she strained she couldn't roll herself far enough upright to grasp the handle. While people might say it was a beautiful thing to be eight months pregnant, at times she thought it anything but. She lay back onto the sofa with a weary sigh. If Nathan were here he could've helped, made himself useful. Or perhaps not. She loved his absent mindedness, it was one of the things that made him seem an innocent to her. She liked to think of him as a man with his feet barely touching the ground while others trundled blindly along without ever noticing the beauty of the sky. In that way Nathan was the complete opposite of her last boyfriend, the pragmatic Simon. Simon who'd lacked any sense of romance, or an imagination. Nathan had both in abundance. But at times it could be annoying. She might struggle to put away a dried plate, one hand cradling her stomach against the exertion while the other gingerly inched it onto the top shelf. Nathan would be stood with his back to her, hands immersed in the bubbling sink of washing up, mind drifting somewhere out of the window; following a flock of birds wheeling above the TV antennas or some pedestrian ambling along the pavement below. Yet this often only served to make his small acts of kindness - bringing her daffodils when she felt too tired to walk to the park, getting out of bed to make her a cup of tea when the morning sickness hit - all the more touching. His latest project had put an abrupt halt to all this. She missed the hours they used to spend watching films together, lying on the sofa, her head in his lap, his fingers running through her hair; hours spent talking together, joking, half ignoring the flickering screen. Some small show of affection was what she needed just now. She found herself worrying once again about the baby. Was it damaging to try straining forward as she just had? Would it compress the baby’s already tiny world further, putting pressure on fragile skeins of flesh; perhaps making them grow abnormally? Taking several deep breaths she calmed herself with an effort. She’d read that the baby could sense stress, endorphins in the blood stream, bad karma; she was certain enough about that at least. She didn’t want an ill tempered child. She just wanted Nathan to hug her, to reassure her, to tell her she was being silly, that the baby was just fine. But of course Nathan was not here. Instead he was entombed in his study, working on his latest novel.

Nathan sat at the desk in his study, staring blankly at the laptop in front of him; the dull glow of the screen the only source of light in the thick dimness of the windowless room. The surface of the desk, the carpet, even the walls were covered with the scrawl of his handwritten notes: blue tacked, pinned, stacked, and occasionally thrown. A mug of coffee stood cold on a pile of papers, an ashtray full of dead butts peeked out from beneath another. He looked at the blank white screen without seeing it, looking expectantly somewhere through and beyond it. Every time the screen saver kicked in, he would tap the keyboard, kidding himself that now he would start writing. He'd been sat like this for hours, feeling himself an empty cavern, waiting to be filled with thought, creative energy, to be inspired.

When they had first met, she had loved that he was a writer. It spoke to her of someone elevated above the trivial drudgery of the nine to five, someone who could maybe truly understand her. Nathan was utterly different to all the other men she'd had relationships with. Most of those others had been decent enough in their own way, but they had all seemed preoccupied with proving their unbounded masculinity to her and the rest of the world. As if projecting an attitude of being emotionally stunted, religiously following a chosen sport and indulging in one up man-ship were a virtue. Nathan on the other hand was emotionally open, he wasn't afraid to show his feelings, he couldn’t care less about sport; he didn't give a damn about how others perceived him. But it was more than just that.

He ran character ideas though his mind, waiting for a tiny idea to bud and multiply, evolving into something greater; waiting for a moment of brilliance. In the back of his mind he knew that something didn’t feel right. So far none he had thought of that morning were really anywhere beyond stock characters, hackneyed clichés drawn bit by bit from the well of modern literature. He always found forming a real character the hardest thing in writing. The ability to watch, listen, and understand others; that was the writers’ real skill. Too many writers let their egos get in the way of writing real characters; they just spewed out shadows that were nothing more than thinly veiled aspects of themselves. Vanity writers. He knew some might think it effeminate, but he still held that empathy was what allowed a writer to create really great characters. To slowly form a living, growing, personality on the page; that's where the true creative spark lay.

One night, after they’d been seeing each other for around a month, Nathan had taken her out for dinner. She felt certain now that it had been the night that the baby swelling inside her had been conceived. It'd been a warm, summer evening in the City, one that reminded her of hitchhiking years before through the dusty back roads and rural townships of Spain. Walking hand in hand through old streets radiating heat from the day warmed bricks of decrepit houses, she’d told him as much. He’d taken her to a tapas bar for jugs of sangria, chilli olives and sombrero de setas.
Over dinner they laughed at the faux Mediterranean decor.
‘Why’d you bring me here, I know you hate these phoney places. Wouldn’t you rather have gone somewhere classier?’ she’d asked.
‘If a restaurant's going to be pretend to be authentic I'd rather it was corny and a little tongue in cheek, like this place, better that then being able to smell the money thrown into a real lie. That, and the sangria’s pretty good here. Anyway, I thought you’d enjoy it. Thought it might remind you of the real thing; it’s important to keep old memories alive.’
Later, tangled in a knot of limbs on top of the clammy bed sheets, covered by nothing but an unseen sheen of perspiration, they’d talked long into the darkening of the cool night. The open window brought the muffled sounds of the night time city blowing in on a gentle breeze. She had whispered her life story to him, opened herself up to him as she hadn't before. Throughout this Nathan listened intently, asking questions occasionally, but mainly absorbing it all in silence. When she came to ask him about his past he was reluctant to answer.
'You know how we talked about how it's important to hang on to memories?'
She nodded, a gesture he felt rather than saw.
'Some memories are better buried and forgotten.'

Summer didn't know why Nathan wouldn't confide his past to her, it often annoyed her, but secretly she also enjoyed it. The mystery she saw surrounding him only added to his appeal as a somehow otherworldly figure, some rare creature that she had managed to half tame. Still, at times she found herself questioning how well she knew him. With the baby on the way she wished she knew more of its father. When she'd asked him why he always wrote under a pen name he'd muttered something about legal troubles in the past and had retreated to the sanctuary behind the closed door of his study. She'd looked up one of his old novels on a website specialising in out of print books. On a whim she'd called up the publishers and had found out from a bored and talkative secretary that although the book had looked set to become a best seller at the time, they'd suddenly taken it out of print a couple of years previously. The secretary hadn't known why, she'd only recently joined the company. Phone calls to the company director and editor only resulted in curt rejections: they were in a meeting, no they wouldn't be free to talk for the rest of the day, or the next; they were out of the country on business all the next week. After that'd she'd given up, worried that Nathan would somehow find out about her prying behind his back. She didn't know how he'd react to that.

***

As the final month of her pregnancy wore slowly onwards, Summer found herself becoming increasingly frustrated with Nathan. While she knew that he had to work, she still began to resent the long hours he spent locked away in his study. Bored and lonely she would waddle around the flat looking for things to occupy her, chores that needed doing. Dusting, cleaning, polishing; she hated them all, but hated doing nothing even more. Day time TV made her want to scream. After exhausting every task she could think of she would loll on the sofa, spending slow drawn out hours reading colourful magazines that littered the coffee table. Flicking through glossy pages, she would hunger for silky dresses, hating both the toned models wearing them and her bloated self for no longer fitting into them. She scanned opinion columns on how to recognise a negligent spouse, ten ways to treat yourself, how to alleviate stress. Sometimes, when he came out of his study after many hours, knuckling his weary eyes, Nathan seemed almost surprised to see her in the flat. In the lonely moments when the constant tiredness, back ache, and swinging emotions depressed her, she felt like she was going through the pregnancy alone. Hurting, feeling swollen and unwieldy, the constant need to pee. This wasn't how she'd imagined it at all. Occasionally Nathan would still take her out for an expensive meal as a surprise, but the effort of getting to a restaurant, even in a taxi, and then finding that even the thought of food made her feel sick made it more of an ordeal than a pleasure. She always felt ugly and conspicuous in her baggy maternal clothes in front of the other well dressed diners, especially the elegant and fashionable women. The last time, Nathan had been reluctant to leave the restaurant straight away.
‘I’ve paid for two full set meals, Sum. At least wait and see if you feel any better in a while.’
‘I don’t feel good, I just want to go home.’
Just then the waiter chose to glide over, two bowls of spicy crab soup balanced on the crisp white linen draped over his right arm. Summer’s face paled at the pungent fishy odour rising from the steaming bowl placed in front of her. Nathan nodded his thanks to the waiter. She felt her stomach roil sickeningly, hot tears begin to needle unbidden behind her eyes.
‘Nathan, can we please just go? I’m really feeling sick.’
He looked at her hard across the table.
‘Fine.’
He’d left the money on the table and they caught a taxi home. As soon as they got back to the flat, he would stalk into his study without saying a word to her, shutting himself away for the rest of the evening.

***

Letting her mind wander as she did the ironing in front of the window one day, slowly moving the iron up and down the board, letting the hot weight of it do the work, Summer realised that she wasn’t sure that she actually wanted to have this child, this boy, she reminded herself, with Nathan anymore. It wasn’t just that she still knew so little about him, but that what she did know no longer put her mind at rest. The romantic image that she’d had of him as a writer had tarnished over the months, becoming exposed and corroded by the everyday reality of her situation. The dashing mental images conjured up when studying Keats and Wordsworth at university, so many years ago, had always attracted her to the idea of being in love with a writer, being his muse. Now experience had disabused her, showing the fantasy naive. She needed somebody grounded in this world, not forever absent in a daydream. The long awaited realisation that she had been in love with the image of him that she’d created for herself, not with Nathan himself, hit with a shocking clarity. She put the iron down carefully on the board, and stared out of the window. She rested her hands on her full stomach. Nathan might be a good writer, but adrift with his head full of dreams he'd never write something as real as this child growing within her. She had formed it from herself, nursed it with her wet warmth, whispered secrets to it through thin skin. When he was born he would be a blank slate, then she would shape his character with guiding hands, just as she had moulded his body from her own. This was her baby. Nathan would never really understand this, no one was as real to him as the imaginary people he built from fleeting words tapped onto unreal paper. He was, and could only ever be, a co-writer of this baby at best. When Nathan shuffled, blinking, out of his study he found Summer standing at the window with her back to him, an unseen smile playing on her lips, as she stared out into the sky, hands cradling her unborn baby boy.

Filling the Gaps

2008-04-02T18:09:00.004+01:00

Come in, come in, get yourself into the warm and leave the world outside.

I've recently been pretty busy working on some articles for the Helium Marketplace that should with a little luck provide a small income and so haven't had much time to work on my short stories. Somehow writing articles for publishers who actually pay is less satisfying than writing for your own amusement, but it does pay the bills slightly better. But worry not, I'm dead set on getting 'The Rat Princess' finished off some time soon, just bare with me a little longer ...

To fill the creative void a selection of a few of my older short stories and various other pieces will get stored away on the Shelves, giving you something to have a browse through, if you feel so inclined. So be warned, there's going to be a sudden sharp deluge of short stories to fill the gaps on the Shelf. I hope you enjoy them, and if you do, (of even if you don't) don't be shy and leave a comment or two. We don't bite here at the Shelves, or at least, not too much.

Rodent Dreams

2008-03-20T22:18:00.003Z

"Our eunuch dreams, all seedless in the light." - Dylan Thomas.

Yet, if I dare contradict my friend Dylan, not all dreams are barren waste, idle fancy and impotent flights. Yesterday I finally got my laptop power cable back and have since been working on the pile, nay, the mountain, of unfinished, half finished and gestating short stories that have been so long denied me. Which gave me the chance to dive into a short story that has been playing on my mind for a couple of months now.

'The Rat Princess' (a working but fairly firm title) was one of those stories that came to me in a dream about half a year ago. Caught in that strange place between sleeping and waking where dreams are utterly vivid but under some measure of control, I watched/told myself/was shown a strange and twisted fairy tale about a quiet princess and a gentle and kind man. Neither is what they seem, both are trapped to some degree, and the twist at the end takes a simple story and makes it into something else altogether. A strange but, to me, compelling and moving story, it remained with me when I woke and I desperately tried to scribble it all down before it slipped from my groggy early morning mind.

I've been working on it for some time now because of the difficult mixing of narrative tones it employs, fairy tale and modern romantic, and it has been pretty hard to get the story on the screen to live up to the story in my dream. But it's nearly there, hopefully tomorrow I'll finish it and possibly even post it up if I'm happy with it. I look forward to sharing it.

Growing Pains

2008-03-19T00:14:00.003Z

Pull up a chair. Take a pew. Make yourself at home.

Today has been one of those Not Quite days. As in, between working two different part time jobs and finding time to eat, I've not quite managed to get any of the writing done that I promised myself I would.

I truly dislike Not Quite days. They make me feel like I've somehow been cheated by time slipping round the corner when I wasn't looking, been bamboozled by life, interrupted by reality.

And I had an idea I so wanted to work on, a poem inspired by the recent bout of storm winds that scoured my lovely little island until it was quite wind swept and out of sorts. Instead I shall have to offer an old poem instead, one written a little while ago for my creative writing group in Brighton, one which my incredibly talented musician friend Omar has shown some interest in putting to music.

Tree’s Song
She asked if we could have a baby.
And I said that one day, maybe, yet not
Today.

I tried to explain.

You are brilliant, but brief; like a
Fluttering leaf, gusting upon the wind.
Full winged and full of colour, flittering
From stream to bough and back, tumbled
By the Earth's trembling breath.

I need to grow, before I scatter seeds.

To stand static, caressed but unmoved by
The wind.
To twist deep in a slow underground
Explosion of root.
To grow old, gnarled and knotted, a
Shelter to transient things.

I tried to explain, but, being a bird, she
Could not understand my slow wooden
Speech.

So instead of a new piece and some structural additions to Dreams, I can only offer this little something to fill the gap, plug the hole, and whet the appetite. Bare with us. We're young here at Shelved Dreams, still trying to find our feet, growing pains are only natural.

Keep an eye out for linkage additions and various little odds and ends as I work on the blog and post up a few old pieces for perusal. We may be small now, but we're steadily growing.

Technical Limitations

2008-03-17T23:48:00.003Z

Welcome back to my little corner of the virtuality. Do you like the wall paper? I stole it from Oscar Wilde while he wasn't looking. I hope he doesn't notice.

At the moment I've been writing fairly steadily despite the time sapping commitments of two part time jobs. Any progress is always great, but at the moment I'm really, frustratingly, limited in what I can write.

Unfortunately the power cable on my laptop broke, and not wishing to pay £100 for one from the UK I had one shipped from China instead for a tenth of the price. So having a powerless laptop full of half finished stories and a power cable which, judging by the shipping delay, is currently being carried across the oceans by a man on an inflatable dinghy, I find myself technically limited in what I can write.

No fiction, no finishing my pile of incomplete short stories, or almost-but-not-quite-there poetry. It was all stored on my now defunct laptop. It's all non-fiction for me now.

So the past few weeks have been spent labouring out articles for Helium, seeing as it is all online and I don't have to rely on any pre-saved drafts. I've managed to boost my article total up to around 53, which is quite pleasing, although I'd still like it to be gaining momentum a little faster.

Still, it's not been totally un-enjoyable, and at the moment I've got a couple of articles up on the Marketplace with a good chance of being selected for publication. If they are chosen the financial reward isn't massive, but it is gratifying to write articles that publishers want and to get your name out there in the literary world.

For a change I decided to write to topics on Helium I normally wouldn't touch, medical issues, and have found it all very time consuming but magnificently rewarding to go through the process of researching, writing, editing, and so forth that goes with writing about something you previously had no clue about. It reminded me why I used to love reading and writing in the first place: you gain perspectives and learn things that otherwise you would never have thought to find out. So it's not been a total disaster losing my laptop. Every cloud has a silver lining, as the cliche goes.

Now where is that man in his dinghy?

The Great Big Opening Post

2008-03-17T20:28:00.005Z

Hello, hello, hello and welcome to the first 'Great Big Opening' post on Shelved Dreams. I'm very glad you could make it. Have something to drink and make yourself comfortable while we spend a little time talking together, I've got an idea I'd like to tell you about...

I've decided to start this blog in order to keep readers and anyone who may be interested up to date with what's going on with my writings and various literary type projects.

As some of you may already know I also tend to do this on my other blog, but thought that I should start a whole new little corner of the virtual world specifically for the task. This doesn't mean that updates will stop being posted to the other blog, far from it, just that Shelved Dreams will function solely as a blog for my writing, a place for a little reflection and gentle reading far removed from the stresses and grubby realities of everyday life.

I thought this was a good idea simply because the people who may be interested in my writing and those who are interested in the to'ings and fro'ings of my life are not necessarily one and the same. It seemed a bit cruel to subject one group to my fiction and articles and so forth when they just wanted to keep in touch with me, and to inflict the details of my life on the other, who really have no interest in it whatsoever.

So Shelved Dreams is the solution to the problem, a space reserved solely for written endevours, while The Blog of Lone where you can find the sordid details of my existence is reachable through the Linkage on the sidebar to the left.

Ah, new beginnings are to be savoured.