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.
Friday, 22 May 2009
Sunday, 17 May 2009
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.
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.
Tuesday, 12 May 2009
Friday, 8 May 2009
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.
Thursday, 7 May 2009
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?
Wednesday, 6 May 2009
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.
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.
Tuesday, 5 May 2009
Monday, 4 May 2009
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...
Sunday, 3 May 2009
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?
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?
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