Just to stick something on here, really.

An assignment for my course. No mark back yet though...



On the Last Day.

Another dreary day. It’s raining; drab little flecks of wetness land with dull thuds on the ground. Evening, so it’s dark, but the kind of darkness you only get with thousands of electric lamps shooting fake yellow lights into the sky. It’s a darkness you can see in, and you really don’t want to see.
The train platform is bathed in yellow, an insubstantial, odourless colour. It’s clinical, and almost cancels out what unpleasant smells do snake in the surrounding air. But sometimes unpleasantness is just what you need to feel, something. Bring on the stench.
A light on the ticket office flickers, tapping on and off, Morse code in its own, distinct language. It creates a little rave area to my left; I imagine mice and rats getting together when we’re gone and dancing the night away under it’s blinking glare.
I imagine allot when I’m alone on a platform waiting for a train. When I’m not alone, I imagine more. Listening in on other people’s conversations can add some excitement to a long wait for a missing-in-action train. You can embellish, edit, make them more attractive in your mind than they really are. They’re suddenly witty, thoughtful; movie versions of human beings.
But the World is dank today, and I don’t feel that anything is worthy of embellishment; I want to revel in my miserable, boring Friday evening.
I stand here everyday, or so it seems, and it never gets any better. You always hope that something exciting will happen, an anecdote for future coffee breaks. They re-paint the benches; thick green globs clogging up the once intricate patterning. They trace around the original grandeur of the bygone age of steam, then lace black wires up and down the posts to feed screens that don’t work and speakers that hiss at you. The old clock is still here, ticking away, too loud and ancient. When you’re alone on this platform, it’s all you can hear.
Someone joins me, just as I decide to ignore the World, and sits, no, slumps into the over painted bench closest to me. I lean more nonchalantly against the platform post; she’s very pretty. We’re both at the far end of the station, where the head of the train will stop.
Her face is fresh, her skin flustered with the windy night. Icicles of hair hang over her face, an absent hand fighting against them, but they still return to shield her cold, blue eyes. I can’t help but stare at her, and it seems that she can’t help but ignore me. A thick, woollen coat wraps the woman so tightly that I can still make out the delicate shape of her. Bare legs freeze below it, dangling childlike over the bench. I look away and at the screen that should be telling me when the next train’s in, but instead it just shows me snow. I don’t want snow. I consider moving to the bench, offering her my coat for her legs, something gentlemanly; but all my thoughts cast me as a Mr Hide character, leaning over her with dripping saliva while rubbing my hands. And she looks so sad, not just the cold, miserable English weather sad, but a deep, cut through sadness, and I’m no one to cheer anyone up. So I leave her.
Ten minutes, long, long, minutes, and finally an crackling announcement. The train is delayed, an accident, clearing the tracks. The worst thing about these announcements is that nobody is ever surprised; there’s just an all round tut and eye roll.
Another person joins us in time to miss the announcement. He strolls on, I never see people stroll these days; he should be holding a brolly. Not umbrella, a brolly.
He looks up at the static mess on the screen, ‘oh, right, have I missed it?’ he says out to the World.
‘Er, it’s delayed,’ I say. I too could use some editing.
‘Typical,’ he says, still not to me but to the air, himself, everyone. Then he looks at the girl disappearing into the bench. He smiles, and now I somehow know what Mr Hide truly looks like. ‘Well, missed the 5:45 anyway then?’ he says to her.
You can tell that she’s trying to ignore him, but an involuntary move of the neck brings him into her eye-line. She looks away just as quickly. He chuckles.
‘Thought you might, bit pointless running out, wasn’t it?’ Condescending is a good word to use here.
She sinks lower. The redness of her cheeks increases, and I realise that it’s probably more than weather that coloured them.
Silence for a moment, and the ticking clock is all I hear.
‘Why so melodramatic? You know you’ll be back Monday! Last day, indeed!’ He has a chipper air about him, and seems completely oblivious that the girl is now crying. He looks at me, ‘don’t you hate melodrama, such a waste! All that exertion, for what? She’ll be back, bright and early Monday morning, all sheepish like last time.’ he laughs, a jolly sound, like Mr Hide after ripping out a heart or two.
The girl won’t look at me, and suddenly all I want is her gaze. The redder her face becomes the prettier she is. I just want to catch her eye and smile and let her know that it’s all ok and she’ll smile back at me and I’ll know it too.
‘I suppose this one will be full, bustling it’s way from London.’ He says, this time to the air again.
I feel obliged to answer; eye contact with a person does that to you. ‘Oh, yes, it’s normally full. It always seems worse coming back, doesn’t it? Businessmen, all that; spilling the big macs their wives won’t let them eat. Talking too loud, clicking away at terribly important keyboards.’ I want to stop but I can’t; all the time the image of his suit pulses at me. The laptop-bag hits me in the face with every syllable. ‘Don’t normally see you here?’ I say with a questioning lilt that comes out in a squeak.
‘I’m normally on the later train but I thought I should try to catch her,’ he nods his head at the girl, whose stopped crying and is sitting very still, serene almost, and staring out towards the tracks.
‘Oh.’ I say, wanting to know every inch of her life story.
‘Yes, you’re a silly girl, Kate, like it matters, and you won’t throw it all in just because it’s not going your way!’ he snorts. Yes, snorts.
‘Um, what?’ I say quietly, hoping to move in on her on the train with some ammunition and sympathy.
The man rolls his eyes, ‘Things not going her way, well it’s not our fault is it? It’s all very sad, the death of a child, but what’s it got to do with the Company?’
I feel my entire body, mind and soul back away, but I’m not sure if it’s from the girl or to her. The clock seems set on drowning out every other sound. ‘Really?’ I say.
‘You try for sympathy, don’t you? You give them paid holiday, but really, you can’t skulk around the office for months.’ He’s speaking quite loudly now.
I’m very aware of the ticking clock and the flashing lights and the electricity of it all. I look at the girl, because I know she can hear. She’s not moved from her stare at the railroad tracks. The ticking becomes louder, the flashes more intense. She looks like she’s sitting on a set, a movie where the director’s showing off his post-modernist vision of hell.
All I want is to touch her, for some reason I want to grab her face and twist it to me. Make her eyes burrow into mine, make her understand. But that’s where it all falls apart; how can I make anyone understand when I don’t know what matters? I don’t understand. And she won’t look at me. The clock is everything, the tick is hurting me. It’s like a Hitchcock bomb becoming louder and louder and ready to blow.
‘Ah!’ Mr Hide makes a sound of elation and exclamation marks, ‘there it is!’
The train can be seen. A couple more people have joined us at the other end of the platform, and we all march towards the yellow line. The train is deafening, and finally the clock is silenced.
She stands just ahead of me, the man is moving down the platform, to avoid her carriage, I suppose. Good, I will have her to myself, we shall have to stand together by the door, I’ll smile, she’ll have to look, and we’ll talk and I’ll help her and I’ll be a good person at last.
As I think this I look at her, and she’s looking at me, and I feel my heart start, I feel the arteries pump, I feel that it will all be alright.
‘It is the last day,’ she says into a silence that envelopes me now, and she smiles at me at last, as the train comes in and she disappears into it’s path.

nanowrimo is here again.

It's November, I'm doing nanowrimo, you'll here no more from me.

Here's a little bit:

The sun is coming. I feel my skin crawl, it is actually crawling, it’s trying to leap from my flesh and hide. But it’s attached to me so it’s dragging me with it. My bones ache. I suddenly feel ancient, like I’ve been living for years and years. Every day it’s a surprise, this feeling that tells me the sun is on its way. I can’t believe that it hurts so much, every day is like a new realisation that my body can inflict the most horrific pain, only to get up the next day and forget all about it.
I can hear it. Just a slight rumble at first, like the hum of a computer on stand by, or the engine sound that filters up to the first class cabins on a ship. How do I know these things? Then it becomes louder, but it doesn’t let you know that it’s getting louder, you don’t notice it. Then you do, and it’s too late. You can’t cover your ears, although you do, because the sound is already inside your head. It no longer comes from outside but generates itself in your brain. You can’t block it out because you’re making the sound yourself. The hands over your ears only elongates the sound, like holding a shell up to hear the sea crashing into your mind. But squashing your head is all you can think to do, and then there is nothing you can think of at all, except the crashing, roaring sound of the sun coming for you. It is usually at this point that I run for the bedroom, having tried to be brave but having then lost all my senses. I ricochet off the hallway walls, my feet barely carrying me along in the right direction. Then I push the door shut and fall on the bed, crying like a child. Maybe if I understood why the sun hated me so much I could bare it better, but I have no idea what I’ve doe or why it’s looking for me. All I know is that it will hurt me and drag me into it if it ever sees me, and the pain of warning is nothing compared to the hell it’s flames would inflict on me.


that'll do. Goodbye until December!

Stephen gately, R.I.P. particularly the P.

Death almost always has a sadness surrounding it, but the death of someone young can be the most tragic of all. The sudden, tragic death of Stephen Gately has shocked everyone, at barely 33 - a year younger than me.

Here was someone who loved life and lived it to the fullest, who loved his friends and spent time with them til the final moments. Who accepted his lifestyle and found love and affection.

Here is someone to be missed and mourned. His family and friends who adored him must be allowed the time to grieve and the respect to remember Stephen as a sweet, kind man.

The 'reporter' Jan Moir has printed a disgusting article using this death of a young man as fodder for her own misled and bigoted views. The press need to decide - are they ‘news’ reporters or ‘opinion’ reporters - and rename their papers accordingly.

Google her name if you need to, then read, decide and hopefully complain.

'take a prewritten paragraph and finish it yourself.' So that's what I did...

The church clock strikes eight, so the villagers who are awake know without checking that it is six. A cock crows. A body lies across the doorstep of the church, a line of crumb-carrying ants marches across the fedora covering its face. There is a serene, momentary quiet after the strikes cease. A figure glides past the church wall, before the silence is cracked by a baby crying.
The sound sends an involuntary pulse through the body, knocking the fedora slightly to one side. The ants stop to think and listen, then return to their manoeuvres across the mountainous range. The figure halts its float along the cold, moist brick, a white gloved hand soaking up the spongy green moss digging its way to the breaking foundations. Its foot lands just shy of the bodies partially revealed face. It stoops to push the hat to the ground, splaying the ants across the body, searching for footholds in the beaten, creasing skin. The body pulses again.
‘If you’re going to be dead you’ll have to learn not to move.’ Said the figure, its gloved hand stretching out for the hat, sleeve lifting for a moments flash of red puckered skin. Its voice streamed to the body’s ear, bubbling over and through the wind that picked up to carry it away.
The body jolted, just the tiniest of flinches, and its eyelids pulled at the lashes, white irises pushing the pupils away from the sudden light. The body looked up at the figure hanging over it. Its thick, black hood confronted him and he could see within its folds. ‘God you’re ugly.’ said the cracked male voice.
The figure smiled with curling teeth. ‘God? How strange.’ It straightened up and glanced around at the mysterious lumps of stone jutting out from the fractured ground, dead flowers rotting under long lost words. ‘Why did you come here? You know these buildings are all closed, you can’t meet death here.’
The body, a man again, pushed himself stiffly up and smiled at the figure. ‘Why do you think I only got to the doorstep?’ He stood and reached out to his hat still clinging to the figures whitened hand. Shaking it and presenting it to his head, he rolled his clicking shoulders back, and placed his hands on his jacket lapel. He stood next to the figure and took a moment to look out over the graveyard. He could still remember what it was.
Sounds were raising around them, villagers were stirring, beginning, unknowing of what enclosed them now, unseeing of the ruin and rot that ate at their nights. In the distance the baby cried out again. The man shut his eyes, his mutilated eyes to the mutilating sound of the freshly made life. ‘How long shall we play this game? I haven’t breathed in years, haven’t I amused you enough?’
The figure turned to him, its face once again visible through its heavy black hood. The man couldn’t turn to look, even now feeling the heat radiating from the thing’s burning skin. The figure smiled again. ‘Until you give me the baby, my friend, I will play with you until I have him.’
The man’s shoulders sunk down again.

Talent and entertainment does not reason out rape.

Not like me to be all political, but I've just seen my little girl's face as it poked sweetly and cheekily around the lounge room door at 11pm on a school night. She's down, blue, chemicals working her body to it's last defence of rationality.

She's 12.

She's gorgeous, and that's not just my opinion.

She has shape and beauty and big brown eyes.

Roman Polanski apparently drugged and sodomised a 13 year old girl.

He's a talented director, so apparently this should be forgiven.

Free Roman, they cry.

my daughter is 12.

A crime is a crime, even thirty years on it has still been carved into memory, beaten into your Self. It has made you, shaped you, it must not be forgotten. Or forgiven by us.

I was hurt when I was 9. I thought all I had to do was get my daughter to 10 to feel better, now I feel that I have to get her to 14. Let me die without her hurt, and let my son never grow up to harm.

I don't care that I enjoyed the Ninth Gate; punish the crime that has been commited, and for once say that harm is wrong regardless of the victim's unimportance to the World's distorted view.

That's all I have. I'm still a 9 year old girl, eyes wide and terrified as I face a greying World.

Don't let the World grey for my children.

Moderate Expectations

After getting rather aroused at Dorrian kissing a bloke yesterday I am today attempting to finish Great Expectations. Why did link those?
I've got to the good bit where Pip gets tied up and goaded. This and my new fixation on James Spader movies means for some very strange imaginigs. I think I should go read some Austen, quick.
Other than this, nothing to say, nothing's been writen, and I may have a go at watching Naked Lunch tonight. That'll set me right.

Middle management and being a walking vending machine

One thing garanteed to sap your soul, stomp on it, dip it in sugar and then serve it up for £2.35 is working for and with people of low expectations at your local coffee emporium. I know, I should have done something better in my life than day dreaming and now I'm stuck there too. For now. But when they know you're not staying, and they are, they decide to use every ounce of purposless power to make your day creep by pathetically slowly, like a small, beaten animal.
Is there much worse than middle management? The Golgafrincham's had the right idea, in some respects.
On a lighter note I only work 16 hours a week, something that annoys them immensely, and I'm not back until Sunday, where the place will be occupied by college students and people biding their time until their degrees kick in. In the mean time, I write.

a Sunday, oh god a Sunday.

It is Sunday. So far a haven't washed my hair, something that leaves me feeling a strange, pulsing guilt and I don't know why, I have failed to get my son's free lego from the bloody Mirror and I have had a parking space at Tesco's stolen fom me by a man in a jeep. I also face the fact that, although my newly grown nails look nice, I can not type properly with them. Also, the music on Metropolis is nice.
I have my aching stomach back, a great sence of loss at I don't know what, and I'm starving myself again.
I want to start something but I can't, so I'm cooking sausages instead.
Hello and happy Sunday.

I have woken up from the holiday and must return again.

After the wonders of staying in bed til noon over the Summer holiday I've finally figured that I should try to do something here. My nails have grown quite long; typing is strange.

New creative writing course about to begin, along with a literature one - reading books better than mine, wonderful for my ego. I have come to the conclusion though, that Dickens talks too much.

julnowrimo begining

Finally, 14 days into it, i'm begining julnowri mo. No real idea of what I'm doing, but it's different from the story I was planning. I'm going for an idea that's been brewing for a few weeks, it's what's on my mind so here I go...

I'm back

At last! A new computer up and running and I have weened myself off the Sims 3. Prepare to write! ... something ... Eventually ...

A short story for a writing course. I quite liked it.

It’s a lovely long drive to the End of the Road.
This is how I will die.
I’m sitting in the car, looking at how, writing this all down. Why? This hadn’t been the intention, I had to scurry around the glove box to find a battered, oil-stained pad and broken tipped bic.
I took the same road we used to take to the seaside, when I would sit in the back and watch swirls of grey and green shock my eyes. My nose leaning on the window, sucking up the slowly filtering, cleaning air, the grey turning more and more green then blue then yellow as the sun caught us and followed us along. I would watch the whole way, ignoring the games the others played to hide the boredom, preferring the swirls to my parent’s merged voice failing to sooth my brothers.
I couldn’t see the swirls today. I’m driving and all I could see were red lights winking at me from the cars ahead. Stopping, starting, stopping, starting. In twenty years the road has changed. Things are smaller, more enclosed, more of everything. It’s louder too; I don’t remember such noise, agitation, shouting and anger.
Everything’s smaller now.
I couldn’t breathe. That’s where this started. That’s why I decided to take this drive again, so many years later, so many years late.
I have lived as I was supposed to; well, decently, quietly. School, college, wife, kids. Quiet, too quiet and now I need to shout. I need to scream but I can’t, because I’m not supposed to. I have lived well and now I can not breath.
You try, don’t you? you try to make everything right to make it all perfect and true and you fail at every turn seeping deeper and deeper until only your head survives, your eyes sticking out to see the destruction the quiet, decent destruction of all you had wanted and the worse thing is that you can’t even remember what it is you had wanted you just seep but keep your eyes above.
So I began to stop breathing.
It started gently enough: I’d catch myself with no breath, had to gulp in a little air for my straining lungs. It only happened once a week, then once a day, then all day; I had to think about breathing, remember to do it. And it would hurt. The air would sting all the way down. I could trace the shape of my lungs through the feel of that pain. I went to the doctor, who said I was stressed, I went to a dietician, who said I ate too much fat, I went to a massage therapist, who said I had knots.
It still hurt to breath, but I began not to mind.
I kept missing my alarm. I’d wake too late for work, and I didn’t mind. They gave me leave, and I didn’t mind. I slept through my birthday, and I didn’t mind.
My wife minded, and the kids and finally my boss.
I got up.
I went to work, and the massage therapist, and still I didn’t mind. It made no difference, there was nothing I minded anymore.
I thought about this road the whole time, this simple road, wrapping itself around bumps and buildings like a ribbon tossed across the earth. I minded back then. I minded if it rained, I minded dropping my ice-cream in the sand, and I minded my Dad telling me to get out of the sea, it was time to go home.
I used to love the sea. I would make my Dad drive us down to the ocean, even in an English spring, and he would sit on the beach wrapped in his coat, holding a towel, waiting for me to feel the cold too much and run to him. He had such big arms then, not like when he died last year; shrivelled, lost, useless and ruined. He was a strong man then and would scoop me up and make me warm and I loved him.
The excitement of this road was where it would end. It wound and twisted and slowly brought you to the edge, a high cliff with flimsy barrier and small chalk etched car-park, and below you knew was the sea. You could hear it from the car, the splashing and whooshing, the gulls crying out for you to come play, the gentle salt ringing in your nose. We had a joke, me and Dad, I’d be bouncing to say it, to make him smile and rev the engine as if he would actually do it this time.
‘Do it, Dad, do the jump!!’ I would shout and he would jolt the car forward and for that tiniest moment I could see us racing towards the cliff, just like James Bond, and flying over the edge, up into the air, then landing as a silver, sharpened bullet into the water and drive along the sea-bed. But then he would turn off the engine, and turn to me and say, ‘Maybe next time, shorty.’
Then we’d take the steep, wooden steps down to the beach, and I’d look up at the cliff’s edge, at the journey we would take in the car to the water and adventure, just me and Dad.
The others would build sandcastles and paddle in and out of the waves, but I would swim, as far as I could before I heard Mum’s voice calling me to come back to shore.
I was happy then, I think, I remember being content at least.
It must have changed, somehow. It didn’t hurt to breath back then, I didn’t consider each harsh intake.
The road gets bumpy along the way. I had to concentrate more the closer I got to the end. I never knew it was so hard for Dad to drive us down here, I never knew that he stared at blinking red lights all the way.
I went to work last Wednesday, like I was supposed to. I would walk in, and walk home, whenever I was pushed out of the door. I went where I was pushed. Always so carefully, and gently, but they pushed, and I didn’t mind.
Wednesday I walked the wrong way. I was concentrating so hard on breathing, and making sure that each foot fell in front of the other, that I forgot to point them in any certain direction. I looked up and I didn’t know where I was. I was next to a line of oppressive little shops that I didn’t recognise, with people staring at me that I didn’t know. The street was greyer then most, the sky and the clouds, the trees and the cars; all grey. My breath stopped. I did not start it again.
Then a crack, and a wetness, and a colour dripping from me onto the grey pavement. A clattering of feet around my falling body, and a slightly sickening tear of my coat pocket. I saw them running off, two little people, running with such life, they were welcome to what they’d ripped from me. I thought that would be that, my breath would no longer be an issue. But I woke up, surrounded by white now, it’s own form of grey curling at the seams. A metal bed digging into me, and blankets used on too many other people.
I had a nasty crack to the head, I was very lucky, I would be fine.
The disappointment I felt, the basic distress those words filled me with, I knew I was not fine.
So I’ve taken the drive. That drive we always used to take, before I became old and independent and started not to breath.
I’d like to be James Bond, just once.
A beeping had started half way here. A squeaky beeping designed to be just irritating enough to make you search for it. Another red light glaring at me from the dashboard. No fuel. Not enough to make it, not enough for a good run up.
A garage to my left, shining lights and signs telling me of all the things I didn’t know I needed on my road trip and how cheaply I could pick them up.
Car filled to half way, bored-eyed teenager paid at the till, and I’m driving away.
Bang.
Keep driving.
Bang.
Breath, damn it, breath, just enough to squeeze the word out.
Bang with the fist for a third time.
I wind down the window and attempt a smile, which I think unnerves him slightly. ‘Yes?’ the poultry breath in my lungs allows.
‘Alright, mate, it’s just, your tyres a bit bald.’ He says, pointing at the back of my car as confirmation.
I turn my head to where I presume the tyre is, then back to him.
‘They’re cracking down ‘round here, the police, and that road’s really bad so, just letting you know, mate.’
The man smiled, a true smile, not like my fossilised, jagged-cracked mouth, and he walked away.
Driving again, down the bumpy road. He was right, it isn’t a good road, and I’m careful. I don’t know why.
So here I am, parked in the same spot I remember my Dad stopping in one time, one of the last times we came. I had been mad at him then, he hadn’t let me bring my walkman, and I had sat the whole drive in quiet fury. I had not asked him to do the jump that time, I just sat there. I can’t truly remember, because I wasn’t paying attention at the time, but I think he sighed as he turned the engine off, a sad, acknowledging sigh just for me.
So I’m in the same space, engine running, looking at the cliff, and the battered, flimsy barrier, and the stretching, yawning blue beyond.
Who is this written to? I hadn’t planned to write anything down, I hadn’t been thinking about anything much, not until I stopped for petrol. Not until that bang, bang, bang. Not until I forced that air into my lungs to squeeze out a word.
I’m breathing. As I write these words I am breathing. Not easily, not like before, but the air is in my lungs; the gentle, clear, sea air.
I want to drive forward, I want to do what I came here for, to finally do the jump, to live as I fall, to glide as I drop, to land in the blue - sea or sky - and drift away.
But I’m breathing again.
I remember seeing that tyre yesterday, it is bad, barely hanging onto its rubber grooves and valleys. I felt the back end slip a couple of times, now I think of it.
Lucky that man reminded me, kind of him, there was no reason for him to do it.
How much money had I kept in my wallet that day? Did my wife throw out the coat that had ripped, or would she be able to mend it? Such a nice coat. such a good woman; clever, caring, has she realised I’m gone yet? She’d still be at the office wouldn’t she? Then pick up the kids, she’ll be a few more hours at least.
The engine’s still running, I’m facing the edge, I can see it, feel the waves in my ears, taste the salt in my nose.
I want to do the jump, so much. It pulls me, gravity leading forward, not down, towards the edge I’ve known for most of my life.
I want to do the jump but the tyre’s going bald, and that coat is ripped and I like it so much, I wonder if she kept it and would mend it for me? The engine is rumbling through my seat, nudging at me, the edge is there the blue is there the crash and the cold and the warmth of the sun.
Bang, bang, bang. Such kindness, such point to it all, such reason for. For what?
Breathing. It’s a reason to breath today, just today, just for now, but it’s a reason for me to breath.
I don’t know why, but I’m breathing again since I was told my tyre is going bald.
I’ve turned off the engine. I can hear the waves better now. The sound is a haze in my ears, it covers all noise and thoughts crashing around my mind. If you shut your eyes it takes over everything. Just like it used to, when I would wait in the back of the car for my Dad to come round and open the child-locked door for me; I could sit for those few seconds with my eyes shut and see the waves behind my eyes.
I may wonder down those old, splintery steps now and see the sea, I might paddle, I might wade, I might not come back out.
But then, there’s always the jump, I still want that jump, just not right now, not while I’m breathing.
You can change your mind for a day, can’t you?
You turn off the engine.
You look out of the window.
You remember a moment of kindness, someone who thought you might like to know, something they thought might help you.
This is how I will die.
Someday.

BBC short story competition

Currently I'm working on a story for the BBC competition. it's to be between 6000 and 8000 (so I've gathered) and has to be there by the 15th. And I only heard about it yesterday. Oh crap what a stupid idea.

A poem, about the only one I've done.

Dear Celia

I hope you’re feeling better,
Than you were before,
That you will cook me dinner,
Get up off the floor.

I hope you won’t bleed too much,
And the nurse won’t ask,
How you hurt your face again,
Just replace your mask.

I hope you know I’m sorry,
This time and again,
No need to fill that bucket,
I’ll clean up the stain.

I hope the wounds will heal now,
And you want me back,
To leave me now is stupid,
Just a little smack.

A random chapter from my book, 'Linea'

Chapter 8 - Mr Rock Still Needs to go to the Land Behind the Red door

Rock left the once Mr Derrik, feeling lower than when he had gone in to see him. It wasn’t the blood, obviously it was not the blood, or the dirt over his body, or even the giggle that came from his distorted face.
It was the lines.
Slightly dipped, it was true, not perfectly straight. But still, so familiar.
Maybe Linea was right.
Another one. A human one.
Rock’s final sheets were made up of jagged peeks, angry zigzags across the pages and spilling onto the floor.
He would be washed soon, his body and the room sanitised and ready.
But for now Mr Rock had nothing left to distract him, although he considered going back to the reception to talk more with Anya. But on this World you had one wife and one wife only, and he would respect that. They left you otherwise.
So instead he went back to the reception just to return the key and request a different one.
‘The Red Door? Really?’ Her eyes lit up even more. ‘You’ve found another one! Oh you are cleaver, Mr Rock!’ Obviously Anya knew more about Rock than he knew of her. Everyone knew him though, of course.
‘Well, I try.’ He said, smiling broadly at her, unable to hold back from her infectious glee.
‘Here you are, sir!’ She said, taking another key card from the computer and handing it over, making sure that her skin brushed his again.
Was he sure they only allowed one wife?
But he took the key from her and made his way to the left side of the Hall.
Through a door and down a corridor there was another set of stairs leading further down into the Mountain’s vault like innards.
This stairway could go on for ever, or it could take one flight to reach the bottom. It depended on what type of mood the Mountain was in.
Today it was impatient because it only took thirty seconds to reach the bottom. There was only a short walk down a low, stone tunnel left to reach the Red Door. Mr Rock took it as slowly as he could, but not slowly enough.
He reached out and knocked on the door.
Nothing.
He sighed and knocked again.
Nothing.
He knew, after the last twelve times, that this could just keep going.
But then the seldom used door creaked and groaned and finally let him in.
The air in this World was un-breathable. He had to rely totally on his injections to survive. But still his body tried to breath, and the air burnt and stung and bit all the way down to his useless lungs, then even more so on the way back up.
The light was ruby coloured, illuminating from a apple red sky and wine red moon. No sun, just the little, battered moon.
The ground sunk slightly with every step you took, then bounced back up to tease you from behind. It was a spongy, dirty, dark little hole and Mr Rock hated it.
This World was made up of a baron, gaseous surface, with one, solitary piece of unstable land poking up unevenly from the mist that surrounded it. In the middle of this unhinged foothold was the Red Door. You could walk all the way around it; just a lump of painted wood sticking up mocking you with a handle and a frame. But Mr Rock left the door open, always, and through it he could still see the stone tunnel and the stairway in the distance.
He really hated this place.
But what disturbed him more was the dress up game going on even here. To one side of the land, standing perilously close to the edge and an unseen drop through poisonous gasses, was a small office desk, battered and coloured a grainy yellow by the strange wind that flew through this World at unforeseen times trying to knock you off balance and push you to that drop.
The chair behind the desk was unoccupied for the moment, but he knew that if he stood and waited it soon would not be.
Next to the desk was a single filing cabinet. His Mistress seemed to have a thing about filing cabinets.
It was a grey metal with a paper label stuck haphazardly to three of the four drawers.
The bottom one remained unlabeled.
Mr Rock waited, planting himself fully onto the squishy ground, knowing that the wind would come and try to play push the living thing off the cliff again. He had almost lost at the game a couple of times already.
Then a sound cut through him, a sound that made him nauseous. His stomach clenched and his inability to breath did not help.
The thirteenth time he had seen this creature and it had still become no easier.
It was a dirty yellow colour, presumably from the wind, deformed and clumping; a thing that should not move.
It was more plant than anything, and should be growing still and solitary and away from him.
But it had been pulled, stretched, parts removed and reattached with a child’s biology set, scissors and glue.
It quivered as it moved, slowly and painfully, a completely unnatural thing made more so with stringy limbs ending in stumps.
It had been made, from scratch, and it knew it should not exist.
But still it moved, an unhappy creature, a tortured little bundle of matter, so unsure of these objects jutting out from its lump of a body and pulling it, actually moving it, along the floor.
It crept up to the chair and sat, or removed the limb-things from the ground and slumped down.
Mr Rock opened his hand with effort and pulled the Shell Thing from the imprint it had been making in his palm and placed it onto the desk. He took a step back.
The creature had no eyes, or ears, or mouth. But it moved down towards the Shell Thing and moved its lump body around it.
Normally now it wound hold the Thing into of its stumps and use the third to pull its lump over to the filing cabinet and throw the Thing into one of the three labelled drawers.
But this time it left the Shell Thing on the table, and went over to the cabinet alone. It opened the bottom drawer and tried to grab at a sheet of paper Mr Rock could see at the bottom. It tried to grab at it, to hold it between its stumps, but the pathetic creature could not get a grip, and eventually Mr Rock, either through pity or revulsion, went over to the creature and picked up the sheet himself. The creature seemed to sigh, then moved back to the desk and clumsily pushed the Shell Thing back towards Mr Rock.
He looked at the creature and the creature, if it had eyes, looked at him.
Does it want me to kill it? He wondered.
But before his mind could answer him the creature dropped back off the chair and pulled its lump of sinew and bone off the edge of the land.
As it always did.
Mr Rock picked the Shell Thing back up, and felt a vague stickiness on it that made him gag, then pushed it far into his pocket and left the Land behind the Red Door.
Only when he was safely back in the Mountain and up the stairway into the Grand Hall did he look at the sheet.

Rimmer has returned! He went away, no one knew where. Missing for months, I thought he was dead. Lister was pining, wondering around, crying for his lost brother. But Sunday Rimmer was returned! Lister is most pleased, but Rimmer is slightly wild now, and only comes in to feed.

Difficulties

My cat had pooing problems. there is no nicer way to put it, I've tried. Today I have found poo in the strangest places, squeezed into the most awkward corners, and some of it even aimed at my books. My paper, absorbing books. I like my cat, I really do, but I don't want poo patterning the walls. Other than that, my day has so far been pretty good. An episode of Bones and much keyboard tapping. My index finger is throbbing nicely.

half a day off, and still f#cking about

Somehow I managed to get out of work four hours early. I managed to walk past the cinema and get home, where I was accosted by the X-Files. Now I sit trying to write a story where the plot hasn't come to me yet. Was this a good idea?

Idented

Den Holt had sketched a map of the office, partly from memory of the childhood visit, partly from the many articles she had read on the greatest Writing company in South East-Main Division - W.D.N.E. She ran her finger around the pencilled drawing, following the path she would take that morning, when she finally began her new job as their Identer.
Den had wanted to be a writer, creating the character applications that would be fed into the Life Computer to grow and bond and become the story that existed there. W.D.N.E. had created the largest story of all the companies; it stretched through the computers main frame and pushed against the reality that held it in. Some said it was dangerous, it would grow real, but Den, like thousands of other readers, didn’t care, and now she was part of it, up-loading the character apps and maybe one day writing them herself.
This company covered four main genres; romance, horror, humour and erotica, making the day to day Life that existed in the Computer straightforward, but easily broken. The characters could be tortured, ripped apart, and then fall in love. Sci-fi and fantasy were not encouraged at W.D.N.E., this world was to be authentic.
Den left the battered Tower-top via airbus, clamouring into its protective dome from her chambers, cramming in next to a large, oval shaped woman, herself squeezed too explicitly into a blue suit. Den had dressed as she expected Writers to dress; suited but with a flair, which in her mind meant a slightly patterned scarf at her neck.
Den glanced at the applicator at the side of her seat. It was broken of course, the buses were all broken these days, bashed and bruised by their World falling around them. Nobody cared anymore, not really. But the Applicators were the last to be torn, the plug for insertion into the neck still attached, the bitten and stretched wire curling at her fingers, ready to pump more stories from the W.D.N.E Life programme straight to her brain for as long as the journey took. Den sighed at the sight of it, and glanced out of the grubby window to her left.
The sight outside was no better; broken rooftops, jagged windows, and the sky reddening more and more. Dirty clouds ringed the airbus, momentarily blinding them from the view. It could be a relief at times, as the sour fog closed in and blocked out the dark, useless streets below.
But as the airbus moved along its way, the fog began to clear, the windows began to mend, and the sparkling skyline she longed for appeared in front of her.
The W.D.N.E. building shone more than any, rising and domineering the sky. Only the top floor of the building would be used by her, or any of the other employees, the rest was inhabited by the Life Computer, and it pulsed as the heart of the company. From it wires laced underground, leading to every home, every coffee house, every detention hotel, feeding us all with the only entertainment East-Main needed, or could want. Everywhere, applicators could be pressed into the brain, lives forgotten while they watched another’s. Den felt the slit in her neck as the airbus pulled up to the glass opening. Her finger slide along it, thinking of the times she had sat, knowing the Life Computer through that socket. Before the invasive plug all you could do was see and hear the World in the Life Computer, but now you could know it, and now she would help create it; an entire, if fictional, World.
The airbus connected up with the glass doors and they slid silently open onto a long, red lined hallway. The floor was a deep carpet and the walls a deep wooden panel. The ceiling was glass, in order to gaze onto the almost clear sky that covered the south-division, slight stars stabbing through, even in the bright morning.
Through the hallway and up to the towering double doors that would lead her into the W.D.N.E. offices. Den stopped just outside, readying herself, savouring it. But a push from behind ruined the stark, quiet moment, and she was propelled through the doors and into the office.
‘Who are you?’ A voice behind her asked. It wasn’t angry or worried, just distracted, and belonged to a man who dashed past her, looking down towards a red notebook, heading towards the reception desk.
‘I’m Den Holt, your new Identer?’
He stopped at reception and leafed through some notes. Without looking up he said, ‘take her through, show her the desk, Tawler will want to see her straight away, where’s my file?’
The receptionist thrust another sheaf of papers at him and he walked off towards and through a single blue door at the left. Den was left standing in front of the shiny receptionist.
‘Hello.’ She said.
The receptionist shone a shiny smile at her, eyes all sparkle and dark underneath. She had to be a Slave Beast; the creatures from Heath with no will. Den shivered a little; she didn’t like these creatures, these perfected things made for the behest of their masters. She hadn’t realised one would be here.
‘Hello! And welcome to W.D.N.E!’ Everything she said would be proceeded with surprise and delight. ‘You must be Ms Holt! If you’d like to follow me!’ the beautiful, smooth girl stood from her chair and walked around the desk to the same blue door.
Den followed her through the door into the office. The floor was a pleasant, deep pile blue, the walls a restful cream. A bank of computers sat nestled into the far wall, and in front was a row of desks smothered in paper and pens and lounging bodies. The Writers took no notice as young Den walked in, and the receptionist-thing left her standing there without introduction or instruction.
She stood for a moment, gazing around the room she’d dreamed of, watching pens scratched across paper and keyboards tapped in time with thoughts she would one day see made into the Life Computer.
A sharp bang to her left awoke her from this, as another blue door was thrust open and into the wall. A man came out, large and quick, towering like rock and headed towards her.
‘Who are you?’ His voice was strangely controlled when teamed with his bulk, like a restrained bull stood snorting at her, scraping hooves on the ground.
‘Holt, sir.’ She recognised him, not his face but his demeanour, as Tawler, her new boss, and head of W.D.N.E.
‘Ah, Identer, good, come with me.’ he turned and lead her back towards his door, next to which was a small empty desk. He pointed at it. ‘This is yours next to my office so I can get you quickly. All Writers go through you. All characters go through you. Things must change, we can’t continue this way.’ His voice boomed, he spat out certain words; writer, character. The others in the room looked up from their papers and screens, faces a mix of worry, disgust, resignation. Den felt the calm blue of the floor rise up, and the gentle walls close in. This place suddenly didn’t feel like the home she’d wanted.
The others continued to stare as Tawler led her into his own office. It was dark, decorated for function, not comfort. His desk sat in the middle with a chair either side. He gestured to one chair and sat at the desk.
Den’s duties were clear. The Writers would create a character application, which they would give to Den. She would give it an Ident-code, the character’s identity, ready for the Life Computer, then pass it into Tawler’s office.
After a week of work he called her in to explain his first change; she would now be responsible for inputting the newly identified characters into the Computer. Den couldn’t believe it. It was an even greater responsibility than being an actual writer; to choose what character made it in to live out a life and create a story. Tawler said the others would be jealous of this young girl from the Western-Division appearing from the dirty fog to reach even higher than them. So she was to keep it secret. How should she choose from all the characters, she asked. She wasn’t to choose, that was the change, she would simply input them in to the Life Computer and they would do the rest. Never before had the creating of the stories that fuelled the city’s minds been made so randomly, it would be innovative, Tawler said. Den said nothing.
Days went on, weeks disappeared, and Den continued Identing and inputting the new characters. The others watched her; they knew something was different but they seemed resigned to it. They didn’t speak to her. They simply handed Den their papers, printed out on bright white paper with think black ink, then returned to their desks to make more. The shiny receptionist continued to smile at her, greet her and even asked how here day was. And Tawler stayed in his office. The only time she saw him was when she walked through his functional room to the main keyboard and port, where she would feed in the papers containing the characters, straight into the Life Computer. Tawler didn’t look at her as she did so.
Then one day, it changed. Den reached the W.D.N.E. office early, ready to start her solitude in the corner of the room. The first thing that was different, was the slave beast not smiling. She sat behind the reception desk looking at Den, her eyes dark, head angled down, shoulders hunching, holding her down in her seat.
‘Hi.’ Said Den. Silence greeted her. ‘How are you?’ Den tried again.
The receptionist stood, slowly, her movements so controlled they unnerved Den.
‘You’re finishing it today.’ The receptionist said, and walked away from Den and into the little room behind the desk.
As she left, Den noticed another thing strange with the day. It was so quiet. Not a voice could be heard, not even in quiet discussion or muttered ideas.
She walked through the blue door into the office and saw it empty. Desks were cleared, screens were blank and chairs sat un-lounged. Only her desk had anything on it. A pile of papers sat waiting for her to Ident them. She didn’t know what else to do. So Den sat at her desk and went through the sheets, gave them their Ident numbers from her book, then carried them through to Tawler’s office. He wasn’t there either.
She began feeding the papers into the port one by one. The final page felt different to the others, that’s what made her look. She’d come to not read the papers, but she looked at this one, printed on a smoother paper, slippery through her fingers.
‘What’s wrong? Why have you stopped?’ Tawler stood behind her, silently appearing at her shoulder, his breath just scratching her neck.
‘This one, it’s weird.’ she managed.
‘What’s weird?’
‘The name, I don’t, I mean, I know it from somewhere. It’s already a character, isn’t it?’
Tawler walked round to face her and placed his hand on top of the paper. ‘You may have heard it through the feed, it’s a subject from inside the Life Computer, something the characters themselves made up. And we’re going to make it real for them. The Computer has become real, it’s given itself a name. The things inside it breath, they grow and they’re becoming complacent. So we need to wake them up. They don’t need us to add any more characters, they’ve been making their own, as they’ve been making up their plots. All they need is this final character, one of their own making, made real for them. Feed it in, Ms Holt, and watch the story grow.’
Den looked back down at the paper, where Tawler’s hand still lay and stroked. He moved it to show the character; first name, no surname, simple and clean; Lucifer.
‘What name have they given it?’ she asked suddenly, as if somehow it mattered.
‘They named it Earth.’ he answered, as she fed the paper into the port.

a day of writing... aparently

Today I have decided to stay at home and write. I should be at college learning how to listen to people, but i really only want to listen to the voice in my head. I'd like to leave work, be a struggling writer and exist on my imagination, but I can't, can I; a mortgage, two tiny children. Reality, once again, bludgeons me over the head and drags me into the cave.

go Star Wars

and may the 5th not sway you to the dark side.

May the 4th be with you.

a rambling

off work, through illness, honest. Could face a whole day of offering unwanted muffins to superior housewives. The thought of being a moving vending machine for eight hours didn't move me today. So I'm 'sick'. I have the day to achieve all that can be achieved in a day - I can write, exercise, finish an assignment, even gardening is within my reach. And I'm wondering what's on the telly. One day, I will be all I can be, I'm sure...

Diary of a Zombie

It was the colour. Vivid orange after the greyness of dreaming. Or waking. Do I dream now? Can I still dream or will this unexplained, effortless skill of humanity be lost to me too? My arm has stopped hurting. Not in the almost healed way, but in the ‘you’ll soon be dead and crawling’ way that I‘ve observed and pitied and looked away from in considered defeat and humanity-driven distance. That word.
Humanity.
Unconsidered so many times, a part of us you’d say, a part that can be ignored because it exists and how could we not own it when it clings to us? But it slips. Desensitisation. Disbelief. Self-preservation. They can make it slip. I feel humanity now, that’s the cruelty. I feel it, looking at this shot of orange, staring at it, begging it to save me. Nothing can, can it? Can it delay, at least, this slow creeping greyness taking my limbs and sucking my mind and.
Hunger. That’s what I am due. The hunger I’ve seen in other things, other shapes left there to remind me of friends and strangers and my own form. Hunger. I feel it, you know, even now, even as the pain of my broken body clings to my sinew, blood, tissue, bowels, hair. I’m hungry. And tired. I may rest, just for a moment. The orange, its in my hand, as you can tell. I’m clutching it and pushing it deep into the paper. Humanity in this little stick. An object known and owned by most but known and seen by none, as with all our human legacies. So easy, scrape the pen across the paper and make everyone understand. Can you read this? I can. But then I thought that I could stand up. I have got many things wrong in these last few hours. I like the orange ones. There are clear ones too, thicker, same name printed erratically on the side. So cheap, so owned by us, this little orange pen. Can it slow this down? If I keep sliding it over the paper can it preserve me? I am human. I am Human. I am tired. I’ll rest, as I lie here, I won’t put the pen down, I’ll start again when I wake. My eyes are shut, does this make sense? The dreams. They’ll come again won’t they? If I keep writing, will they stop? The grey, we’re grey. But I was grey before. And hungry. And crawling. Tired.
I should be cold. My clothes are ripped and useless. The floor, I know it’s cold, it looks it, lying there beneath my cheek, telling me reality is here, that it still exists, but that its not for me, because I can’t feel it. ‘I’m cold you know, I’m concrete in the cold summer, I’m slightly moist from the growing night and rough, oh I’m rough, the senses I would burn in you, the nerves that would groan under the scraping and bruising I have left in your flesh. But you can’t feel me, can you? Because you are dead. Puff out that last breath, reach out that last, pathetic entreaty, let your hand try to grasp, let your fingers try to edge…’ the floor isn’t really talking to me, I can’t hear it talking, its not that kind of crazy, I know its dead. No, it’s not, it’s never been alive so how can it be dead? Rambling, that’s what I’m doing. I have no time and yet I ramble. As in our lives, so finite, timed, a buzzer ready to go off and tell us to lie down and rot and give this flesh back to the earth, its only borrowed, after all, passed on through dirt to each knew timed thing. I have always rambled. When I proposed to my wife, when I fought the divorce, when I gave in and gave the house, when I spoke at her funeral. When I should have run my palm along the coffin, felt it, known it, the finite wood, the grain. A body inside, rotting and preserved. She is dead, two years before all this. She forced me out here, continue my life, move on, take on challenges. You have to wonder, when it will all end with decay, what other point is there to life other than to decay? And what point is decay when all it does is feed new life which is also only for decay. Decay is our god, it seems. So lucid now, strange. I’m drifting again. I can feel when I drift, that strange, heavy floating your body does, your head lightened and anchored by limbs. But it stings, a dead, senseless sting. I make no sense, do I? I know that even now, and yet, so pretty, this orange moving around and around, different patterns in the air leave different patterns on the paper. Letters to words to sentences to
I’m walking, slopping, legs dragged, soles left on the concrete, head down and arms outstretched. No thought, so peaceful, so simple, just hunger. It makes sense. It feels right. We’ve had it all so wrong. Hunger is our god. Feed the decay. I’m not tired, I’m not energised, I’m moving. Moving. Tasting it. Catching it. Sinking near rotten teeth into it as it flails and struggles and fails to run. The only warmth, this trickle from my mouth, then a gush, I lap and slurp and bite to release it. Rip. Walk. Rip. Walk. Rip
I was dreaming, I was dreaming, such a small child, screaming, I can hear it now I’m awake, a wail, I didn’t, I’m still lying here with this pen and this paper and I have not tasted, I have not moved, the child.
But I will, this body, the thing that drags, it will.
I’m twisting. My mind’s cloudy and my fingers numbing. I must get this down, but why? I don’t know why, I never have. Do you? Whoever finds this, if anyone finds this, as long as I don’t chew you and change you, do you know why you’re reading this?
It bit me.
That simple, as it always is.
I was pitying, feeling for it, this mangled shape edging its clumsy way around the abandoned street. A thing. But we are quick, we are relentless. See the word we? Am I accepting, or just adapting? It was quick. A woman, once, possibly a beauty, possibly one I would have wanted, lusted for, fucked before regretting, as I so often did. I prided my gentlemanly side, but it slides too, sometimes, when faced with beauty writhing. It writhed then too, shattering its body down along the building’s wall, knocking into uncared for boxes and anxiously dropped suitcases and bodies lying, changing, rotting to become. It slid, bucked, shuffled. I pitied, the poor creature, this thing so unlike me, so pathetic and pointless. Do you see the point? Do you see me now, lying still on the feel-less concrete, mocking me still with my memories of touch, becoming a thing? Shall I name her? She must have had a name, before. Would you like to know my name? So would I. I must have had one. My memories cling, sucker themselves cruelty to my withering soul, but they are incomplete, and shrinking. Anna. That was my once wife’s name. That will be the thing’s name. Anna, the undead, the walking dead, the zombie, my mother now. How morbid. How we embrace it, revel, even in the face of horrors, the language of fiction, enjoy the unrealistic romance. My mother. I’m a corpse in the making, even pain has rejected me now, there is nothing left of being corporeal, except this fucking pen. I can’t feel my grasp on it now, but I can see it move, and shapes appear, but I can no longer say if the shapes match the words that still insist still to form around my mind.
A story, I think, we need a story
I am lucid, aren’t I?
I was a doctor, I was called to ‘help’ to ‘research’ to stop the government looking like fuck ups. It was their fault, of course. How could it be anyone else’s? Who else but the powerful, the strong, to make such an impact? Why be surprised when no one else could have done this. An epidemic. A weapon. No. A cure, strangely, they were trying to help, for once they wanted to make right. For votes or their souls or an ailing mother, whatever their reason it was to be a cure. I can’t remember. But it didn’t cure, and a thing was created, and got out. Carelessness, our downfall as always
Sleep again, excuse me, so polite am I, excuse me as I lie here no longer bleeding, broken bones twisting on their muscles, nerves deadened, bowels emptied over once cleaned and pressed jeans. I pressed my jeans, what a waste. My sense of smell has gone, thank whatever goodness was responsible for that. They beat me, those with their humanity left intact, they beat me and left me and who can blame them? I’m a thing now. But I’m still here.
A cure. That was the hope. And they pulled me in, to fix it. A room full of official looking people with official looking briefcases and official looking papers coming out of them that meant nothing. Hours of nothing was talked to me, hours of explanations and platitudes and threats. Oh yes, the truth, masked in many long winded words, must never get out. But the thing had, hadn’t it, a patient once worker turned stuttering corpse, bound on a track chasing its hunger like a speeding train with no breaks and a world of steam. I am an old fashioned man. I had steam trains chasing each other in my garden, a guilty, silly pleasure.
I have crawled, by the way, much in the manner my body will accept, once I have left it (oh my god, will I? Will I leave this broken mound of flesh and bone? WILL I BE AT PEACE? Or will I stay and watch through bloody eyes? Oh dear lord I had not thought of that.) no, don’t think, ignore as we all can, ignore.
I have crawled to a corner, where a building meets the giggling concrete, and I am wedged, one arm dragging, the other moving numbed fingers over this notebook. My notebook, you will find medical scribbles at the front, ignore them, it is useless. I was no help.
I said yes. Anna dead, me as useless as the skeleton under her perfect skin. She hadn’t wanted to marry me, she had made a mistake; she’d slept with me, and hadn’t wanted to be rude.
I said yes to them, so I could at last make a difference.
The medical notes, now they blew me away. The creator had been a genius, of course, a pure mind encased in flesh for the mere purpose of moving this magnificent thought. I think she has killed us all. Doctor Hector, that was her name, she is dead, run over by a drunk fifteen year old who will never comprehend.
Sleep
Sleep
SLEEEP
I’m failing.
I’m sorry.
But still the orange swirls, I will do this
The dream? No more visions, no more shared memories, as I want to believe, of past animated corpses. My imagination, surely, taunting me with what I know I will do
Shit
Fuck
I’m going
No
No dream this time, just hunger and blankness
I saw a trail, a red trail of dust or steam and I followed it, I knew, that’s all I knew, this trail is life, it is existence, it is reason, it is a person, running, crying, I know this now I am awake, running from the corpse I’ll leave (oh please, let it be that I die, don’t make me stay to stare from freshly dead eyes on what I once was and the pity I gave them too)
I tried, I could decipher her notes, not entirely, she was too much for me. And the ‘specimen’ had begun to feed.
So much, so much chasing to find first one then more then all of the, spreading, a virus in themselves, these vile, putrid creatures. I’m laughing. Cackling, is that the word? I have never cackled before. I’ve rarely laughed before. It’s liberating, yet I find it in this, jammed against a dank, moulding wall in the moist darkness turning into a thing I have chased for almost a year. It’s a long time, I did say that we failed, I failed. They multiply so quickly, if they leave you half eaten you’ll rise and join them. I’ve seen torso’s dragged by stubby arms, head lolling to one side, scull split and dug at, entrails slapping along behind.
A mother, of two I think, an office worker part time, took painting lessons at night and secretly slept with her tutor. Her body had been so broken that it could not work out how to move properly any more. They found her banging into a wall, trying to go around, through a doorway, beyond which she could smell a freshly maimed child. But her legs were twisted and her arms all but yanked from their sockets, they dangled, shaking violently in an attempt to swing her body in the direction it needed to go.
We thought we’d fixed it, contained it, locked it up in our diseased memories. But it got out. We did not know how. One day the World was better, the next, infinitely, disastrously putrefied.
She’d cut herself.
A blazon of raised flesh, puckering at the air around it. A poor office girl, rushing out to paint her life swipes too close to a metal cabinet and brushes her skin. She came back the next day, and it was out. Loosing all of us.
Will you read this? Will you have time? Whoever you are if your mind still thinks will you pick this up, this book smeared with blackening blood and stand in this street reading, learning, knowing you are lost.
Will it be over when you find this? Will it have spread to all or will all be saved?
I can no longer hold this pen. I can no longer see with my own eyes.
Will I leave this broken body? Please don’t lock me in it, please let it be a true death for the mind and animate only the flesh.
The pen slips now, my letters fail, my words are drifting.
Will you read this in the street or have you moved to safety to read it?
If you stand in the street am I at your feet?
Or am I shuffling up behind you?

preface to 'Linea'

I am Ioni.
That is all you need to know.
But I am bored, and restless, and want you to know more.
I have hidden myself in my Mountain. I have seen everything, over and over, changed things, re arranged things, over and over and over. And now I am bored of it. There is only so much you can change, dealing with living things. They have their own minds, their own will and want and need for survival. They are not fully my puppets and over the years, decades and every thing else, this has annoyed me the most.
You can not train them, you can not change them, all you can do is change the direction, change the things around them and hope they ricochet off them and into the path you wanted. They are like children, and you have to let them go.
But that had always been my problem - I do not want to let them go. I like them. I like how they look, and smell and sound and move and hate one another even though I am the enemy. They are funny things, people. Which ever world I have gone to they have amused me.
I have gone too quickly, have I not? Straight into my ramblings and no background to this volume.
I am Ioni, and the Mountain loves me.
It sits in all Worlds, in any place I wish. It links all Worlds with its corridors and passage ways. The Mountain is endless, it stretches as far as I would ever need to go, dives as deep as I would ever want to bury a thing.
The Mountain changes, re-arranges itself, when ever I ask. You could wander in to the Mountain caves on your little World and be lost, locked in time to keep you moving if I wish, or aged with in a second if I choose. Or you could be moved, directed, into a whole new World, one alien to you, or so similar it would take years of odd feelings and giddy stomachs before you realised that you are lost.
Am I evil? Are you thinking that I am cruel? Maybe. But what would you do? Be benevolent, I bet.
Sometimes I help, I do. Sometimes I try to help. I plant crops in desolate lands so to feed the starving the starving children. All that. But it goes wrong, when you try to help, it goes so wrong. Worse than if I stood back and did nothing. Worse than if I meddle. So I do not try anymore. I amuse myself instead.
It is not all me. Sometimes they ask me to intervene, sometimes they bag me, bring offerings, bring blood. Split the throats of screaming babies, defile animals in my name - what ever they consider my name to be for that millennia - starve themselves for my honour, bury their own bodies alive to feed my soil.
It is not all me.
They ask, they kill, they are the gods of each other, if the other is weaker.
Who am I to judge?
Who are you?
I have lived through life in so many way in so many Worlds so, so many times. I have lived forever a countless times already, and I will continue.
And I am bored.
So I am here, in my Mountain, looked inside the deepest part, hiding from it all.
We have fashioned a library. I stood in my mountains chasm and looked around its walls. I asked, told, thought, of what I wanted, and it appeared.
Shelf after shelf, reaching further than I could see, and higher than I could climb.
Book after book, filling shelf after shelf, multiplying, growing, deeper, longer, further than any library in any World.
Each book empty.
Each waiting.
In the middle of this new, tiny World, a World just for me inside the Mountain that loves me, a table. Small, simple, with a lamp for light I do not need, and a quill resting in a well of ink it does not need to continue. The quill, like me, will last forever a thousand fold and on. But I enjoy the feel of it, the tradition, the look.
I could, of course, have anything. The best technology that will ever be invented, the most incredible computer that will sense my thoughts and write them for me. But I like to feel the solid mass in my hand, to see the words form on the parchment pages below me, to take a book form the shelf, feel its weight in my hand, carry it over slowly to the table and place it on the wooden surface. I like to look at it a moment, to look at it, to glance at its cousins lining the shelves all around me, to see the meagre lamp light play across its deep red leather cover; nameless until I have begun. I like to wonder what will appear inside, what each individual page will feel like when I run my hand gently over it. I like to open the book at the first page, and breath in the airless room, pretend as I have for eternity to need to suck in life through my mouth. I take the quill in my hand, and begin.
Would you like to know what I look like?
Have you imagined me as you read this?
Am I ugly? Old? Deformed through my evil boredom?
I am much as I began. A few changes, but in essence, the same.
I am thirty in body and face, a young thirty I was always told, I could pass for twenty five if viewed quickly. But my body is aged thirty.
I am slim, vaguely muscular in a half hearted gym visit way.
I am beautiful, I came to terms with that. Not showy, not that you would notice. But my features are well proportioned, my eyes large ,and deep brown not too long ago, mouth full enough and easy to smile with.
My voice, though I haven’t spoken in a while, is soft, slightly accented when animated, and kind.
I was kind.
And now the changes.
My hair has grown to pass my thighs, certain lifetimes chosen to stay within the Mountain have caused it to loose its gentle brown colouring, and it fades to… caramel? Taupe? Beige? It is light, almost white, but it still clings to its colour, has yet to give up on the outside sunshine and being alive.
I am, I supposed, classed as dead.
My hair twists into large ringlets, about five of them in all, that seem to hold their shape regardless of what I do and how I move. It is elegant hair, and it does not suit who I was, but I play on it now, the look, the appearance, like the quill and the leather bound books, and the lamp whose light I do not need.
My clothes. Now this is one I enjoy.
I like history, as you can guess, I like the different ways that have changed with which to cover your skin. I did not grow up wearing the clothes I choose to wear now. But like the quill and the light and the well I used to use to fetch water in a pail at the top of the Mountain where I keep my house, I do enjoy the costume.
My dress is long, you would describe it as flowy, and it is something a novice costume designer would draw when asked to cloth actors in a regency play. I do not need to stick strictly to histories truth, I have my own. It is long but not binding. It is patterned thickly with golden thread. It dips at my chest and pushes upwards. It is green today, tomorrow I may change it, if I wish.
Tomorrow I may wear a length of silk to tumble around me and sweep the floor. I like sweeping, slowly in and out of a room, glancing back at those who would see me, and those who would not.
I do enjoy the drama.
Right now I sit, in my room, my World, alone but for my Mountain that always surrounds me, since the day it found me.
It created me because it loves me, but also because I created it.
I am still confused over that too.
It wants to live, and even after all this time, so do I.
But back to this.
I sit at this table, watching the light play with my letters, forming its own words and phrases that I had not intended, but like all the same.
My dress drapes over the chair and to the floor, pooling its material at my feet.
I minor detail I know, but whether you are interested or not, I do enjoy the drama.
This is, I have lost count. I have not even come close to filling even one shelf with books but I have lost count of the books I have filled.
Have I told you what I am doing?
How remise of me.
I am writing the stories I have created and watched.
All the plots I have seen unfold.
All the plots I have set in motion.
I am writing a history of what I have done and been witness to.
I am bored, and so I write.
I have written of many Worlds, different people. But I realized at the end of the last story that I had neglected myself. My experiments. My medalling, let us admit the word, face it and move on. I meddle.
I have conducted several experiments on varying Worlds. My experiments created me, in a way. A confusing, let us not discuss it right now way.
My Mountain bleeds. Its blood can do many things. It bleeds chemicals from its walls, from its streams and wells and pockets of plants and flowers.
These chemicals can make things. Change people. I could give you one, or a selection, they could make you strong or wither away, they could make you fast or glued to the spot. The proper selection, mixed appropriately, could make a god or kill you. Yes, kill you fast or slow or keep you alive or make you crave flesh, blood, kidneys; what ever I wish really.
The experiments were, in part, in these chemicals and which to use and mix and use. And which to leave alone.
There has only be one person ever to take all the chemicals.
Can you guess who that was?
As I said before, I can not control you properly. You have minds and will and it is very annoying.
But I can bend you, hurt you, force you, make you love me and obey me, but in every way you are choosing to obey - you are choosing to stop the hurt by doing what I say, you are choosing to obey for the woman, god, monster you love. You choose, every time.
But then I thought, in passing, nothing more than I wonder at the time - what if I made someone? I do not mean have a child; children are notoriously free willed. I mean make someone. Lots of someone’s who would have no mind to think and decide.
It was, of course, only in passing. At the time.