Today has never happened (I’m blaming the C in history on this)

Fat white circles erase the night into a heavy blur. I don’t dream nor do I think. Swallow down salvation and begin anew the next day. There’s an eternity after the water flushes the pill down my throat and my eyes slam shut. That eternity melts the edges of the room into your face and your words run down the walls. Objects close to me loom larger than lifesize but the door and the end of the bed shrink away from my reach. I’m Alice by night. The tiny black lines of information on the bottle swarm furiously into Eat Me, Drink Me and my room turns on its head. Size is flexible. Time is fluid. Then I follow the white rabbit down that impossibly dark hole and wake up in a world full of nutters.

I stared blankly at the red welt the kettle had left on my arm. Setting aside the carton of milk, I held this new wound under the tap until the shock of the initial pain was replaced by a pleasant dullness. I picked my way through the piles of clothing waiting to be washed or ironed towards the cupboard where I hoped I still had some supplies from the First Aid course I never completed. One secure but not terribly tidy bandage later and I began again with breakfast.

The tea was far too weak but I swallowed it down anyway and watched the steady drip of the tap. The dripping only began when Jack took a shower and I was sure the two were connected somehow. Water pressure maybe. I didn’t know. I leaned over the breakfast bar, swirling the dregs in my mug as the tap dribbled over last night’s dishes and it bothered me that I didn’t know. Water pressure, thermostats, the location of the gas meter, what that tapping sound the boiler sometimes made meant. I’d always assumed that once I had my own place some sort of homemaking instinct would kick in. I’d step into my new home and transform into the perfect woman; domesticated and wise. Instead I still relied on other people to clean up my mistakes as I muddled through the day-to-day tasks of running a household.

Jack thundered out of the bathroom, clouds of steam following him like some cheap effect and the tap dried up instantly. 

            ”Where’s my shirt? The white one. The good, white one.”

I ignored him and poured honey onto my toast in sticky swirls. He repeated the question twice before he stamped through the kitchen, smacking my protruding ass when he passed me.

            ”It’s not in that pile,” I told him as I sucked honey off the side of my palm.

            ”Where is it then?”

            ”Dirty pile.”

            ”Balls.” Jack grit his teeth as he pulled a white sleeve from the jumbled tangle on the floor. He thrust a crumpled handful in my face. “Smells alright, don’t it?” You couldn’t give it a quick go over with the iron, could you? I’m running late.” He stole a slice of toast and gave me a smarmy lop-sided grin that I couldn’t refuse.

My left arm, the one I had burnt earlier, throbbed in fear whenever I came too close to the hissing iron. I kept my attention on the dance between the buttons and remembered watching my mother as she stood for hours pushing the creases out of an endless mound of tailored shirts. Too many boys, all of them just as hopeless as me. The windows would steam up after the first hour and I would draw stories with my pinkie when my mother wasn’t looking. One day the phone rang, interrupting the routine and when she didn’t return right away I decided to help her. I was six, maybe seven. I missed the board when I tried to set it down and dropped the iron on my foot. I keep finding adorable little pumps these days. I always buy them without thinking and it’s only when I get home and see that thick pink wedge snaking along the top of my foot that I remember. I never have the heart to taken them back. I have a chest full of unworn shoes losing their shape and colour as time goes by.

Two hands slid around my hips and down the front of my shorts as his nose assaulted my neck. I leaned back as he nuzzled round my collarbone. He asked about my arm but I brushed him off and pulled the shirt over his shoulders. 

            ”Stay home today.” I didn’t look at him as I buttoned away his nakedness. He’s put on a little weight over the holidays; it suited him but I kept my mouth shut knowing he wouldn’t take it as a compliment. “We could go away. Drive up North somewhere.” Jack stopped my hands at his chest. 

            ”I’m late. I’ll be home for dinner.”

 

I didn’t realise he’d kissed me until I was in the bathroom looking for aspirin. On the top of my head like my father used to when I was wee. I never seemed to notice when Jack kissed me there. I’d remember later and wonder if I’d simply imagined the dim feeling through my hair. It was impossible to be sure and too ridiculous to ask him to clarify. 

The bathroom was still recovering from his shower. My hair began to frizz and my cheeks to burn from his deodorant that choked the air. I sneezed into toilet paper that wilted into my fingers. The only way to open the window, unless you were taller than five foot two, was to balance one foot on the side of the bath and bounce up to get a grip of the ledge to pull the latch. Then the window would usually swing right open and release the heat to the garden. My hand sliced through the air and grazed the place where the latch should have been but wasn’t. It was turned the wrong way and my left arm smacked off the unforgiving windowsill with the momentum. I squeezed my eyes shut on the tears that stung and bit down so hard on my lip that the imprints of my teeth distorted my mouth. 

I sat in the empty bath and searched through the pills I’d grabbed blindly from the cupboard. There was a month of the combined pill, a pack of supermarket brand paracetamol, which a glance told me there was only one left and closer inspection confirmed my disappointment, and the sleeping pills. One a night, half an hour before I wanted to sleep. I don’t know why I bothered to pick them up. The loud tick of my watch scrambled the numbers a little but I figured it was about quarter to eleven. Maybe the dirty beige of the label had promised healing in a shade befitting the doctor’s waiting room walls or in my desperation I had clung to the one thing that worked in this house. I stared at my hand-held pharmacy and dropped the lot between my knees in disgust. All useless.

With a sudden noise a section of unstuck wallpaper cascaded towards the floor. It was the same piece every time and I knew if I didn’t fix it right away I’d only have more hassle later. I stayed motionless. The bath was cold against my neck and I pulled my hair up to take full advantage of this. I was tired. Nothing here was mine. I had not chosen the rebellious wallpaper, nor the suite with the too-short bath. My toes stuck out when I stretched my short legs out in full. Nothing substantial here was mine. My hair clogged the drains and the colour ringer the virgin porcelain in copper red. It’s the weakest of dyes. Blonde and black molecules bond tighter than red. No sooner have I applied the thick paste than I’m rinsing myself back to mousey. My underwear, both dirty and new, littered at least three of the rooms and everywhere books lay abandoned on whatever page I had lost interest on. My father’s glass ashtray was another fixture of mine, the only thing of his I possess now. Jack always hated it. No matter how many times I washed it, the stench of old cigarettes never quite left.

Somewhere a phone was ringing but I wasn’t sure if it was ours or the next door’s so I left it. It kept ringing and ringing and ringing. I was suddenly very tired. The bottle had rolled down my leg and with some maneuvering I kicked it to my hand. The lid flicked open with a satisfactory pop and I shook too many pills out the first time. My watch seemed to tick even louder now, reminding me it was still morning but I was tired now. I couldn’t wait for the rigmarole of bedtime. I swallowed one down with water from the tap and the bath supported my bones as I drowned in something soft.

The important thing

                                    was

                                                to

                                                            re-

                                                                 mem-

                                                                           ber

 

I hate supermarkets. They intimidate me almost. It’s strange because I used to love it. Fighting for control of the trolley or the best seat if James, the middle and favourite brother, was pushing. I liked all those names and fonts staring out at me from their neat positions on organised shelves. I liked comparing brands and seeing what other people preferred and wondering why we picked Ariel over Bold. Now the letters engulf me with buy one get one frees and new lower cholesterol. Cheaper than that other leading supermarket. Spend a little, every little helps, try something new. A woman hands me a leaflet outside of a Tesco. Globalisation, it screamed. The supermarket was driving local businesses out of, well business. I couldn’t remember ever being in a grocers. Our old neighbourhood had a tiny bakery and a butcher that terrified me. He was still there, with his fat grin a little more weathered. Globalisation. It just sounded like a made up word. Once inside the constantly shuffling doors I’m not so certain.

Supermarkets are all the same. Same white floors with grey lines swirling over the top. I’m suspicious of those floor tiles. I have to keep my eye on them for fear there is something tangled in that grey. I slump down on the trolley handle and walk slow to keep the wheels straight. We needed eight pints of milk. That’s two four pint bottles. I’m never sure how much this will cost even though I do this often enough. I don’t know how we manage to drink so much between the two of us. I’m not even that fond of milk.

It was quiet. It was too early for the mothers and the elderly weren’t quick enough to move past the fruit stalls at the front yet. I kicked off and tucked my feet above the wheels. With a clatter and a shudder I crashed into the fridge. There were no four pint cartons. There were two pints and six pints but the six pint bottles were large and unwieldy. My shoulder sagged just carrying it to the trolley. It was returned. I counted out the number of twos I required. For eight pints of milk I needed two fours and thus four twos. I had to crawl into the fridge to collect that many. I trundled back towards the front to the tills and I panicked. I hadn’t checked the price. I had to match the pound coins to the ticket before I joined a queue, the cashier was too close to my age to sympathise with a monetary mistake. While I did this I wondered if maybe I should have taken the six pint. There wasn’t much room in the fridge and Jack could lift one easily. He was the one that drank so much anyway. He should be the one pushing the trolley. He should be

            ”Can I help you with anything?”

The smiling blonde in a green poloshirt bent her head round to catch my eye. As I stared at her, wondering who on earth she was, and if I knew her and what she could be wanting I saw the regret flash in her face. It was a twitch of her eyelid and a sag of those glossy lips that taunted me. Could she help me with anything.

            ”No, yes. Yes.” I swallowed the stiffness and focussed on pushing the syllables out through my teeth. After far too long a pause I rushed: “Where are the biscuits?” I didn’t listen to her and nodded too enthusiastically at her pointing arm before pushing off in the opposite direction. I couldn’t relax until I had dumped the plastic bags, so harmful to the environment, on the kitchen counter. She had been at my school. I was certain. She was a theatre darling. She worked in a supermarket. Was that still worth laughing at?

My fingers are always the first to leave mere minutes after my nightly dose. I slowly shrink into my core losing limb after limb. My head and my heart are last. I sink with last thoughts of thoughts and hopes and goals and dreams. There are no dreams when I sleep so I create them in these moments. There’s a man and a tree. I have to carry him up there. He’s dead but it’s ok because I’m dreaming so he’s not really dead. He’s next to me, reading my books and sighing as I twitch to check the progress of the 

 

[And that's all I have so far.]

 

Machine of Death

Marianne sat across from me cupping her mug of cold coffee with both hands, her eyes seeking solace in the murky liquid. Little lines scored her usually smooth forehead as she planned her next sentence carefully. I knew what was coming but I let her find the perfect words-Marianne was like that. She wanted something that just didn’t exist in real life. She longed for a deeper kind of life where every word and action was dripping with hidden meaning, a movie kind of life. A life in which, it seemed, my role was no longer of use to her.

Suddenly I didn’t want to humour her anymore. I was tired of agonising silences while she wrote the script for our relationship. I wanted away from this flat that had been so quintessentially ours, Marianne’s and Jack’s. I wanted far away from this too-small kitchen in which we had disregarded all design sense and painted the walls bright red. Our friends had laughed at us and I had to admit it was garish most of the time, but there was a certain time of day when the sun would hit the blinds just right and bathe my Marianne in an ethereal glow; her long hair glistening in copper waves. It was magical. My gaze settled on the handprints on one of the cupboard doors. She had slipped and thrown out a red hand, ruining the new wood. My own print had been added to banish the disappointment, to make it special. Make it ours. I just wanted to get away. It was too late to stop the inevitable but at least I could avoid the theatrical speech. I stood up slowly but my stool still scraped harshly along the tiles. Marianne winced slightly but did not look at me. I kissed those little thought lines and stroked her hair.

            “Goodbye, Marianne.” She leaned her head against me for a moment and murmured: “Jack,” I walked away before she could finish.

My bag was packed and ready at the door. It had been waiting for me for days now to pick it up and carry it out of our life. I forced myself not to hesitate, not to wait for her warm arms around me giving me that final kiss that always broke my resolve and pull me back in. I opened the door and walked away from the tears that had always held me.  No. I let the door swing shut behind me. This time I would not give her that chance.

(I’m blaming the C in archaeology on this and Joe for the idea in the first place)

Maybe it was the whisky addling his senses, maybe it was the giddiness of the night’s events taking its toll or maybe, just maybe, he had finally lost it but Jack swore the notebook had moaned when his pen caressed the creamy page. The opening sentence trailed off into a dirty smudge as he rubbed the bridge of his nose and tried to sober up. He flicked through the pages but found nothing unusual between the binding. The pen, too, held no explanation inside the clear plastic casing. Jack stumbled to the kitchen and drank straight from the tap. The water chilled his teeth and eased the heavy pressure in his head. Armed with a further glassful and a hunk of bread, he started over with a fresh page.

            “Mmm, I knew you’d be back.”

            “Aw, fuck,” he muttered in response to the disembodied sultry tone.

            “Don’t stop now, baby. That sentence was just getting good.”

            “This is your fault,” Jack thrust his pen in the direction of an empty bottle on the windowsill. “S’always your fault,” he slurred.

            He had spent the last of his wages on this book, so tantalisingly clad in black leather with a thin red ribbon snaking down seductively down the middle. Jack had only wandered into the bookstore to kill some time and left with a bag clutched between uncertain fingers. He had almost turned back at the door but it was too much to ask for a refund mere minutes after purchasing the unwanted item. Susanna had tactfully covered his round at the bar. That made three he owed her now.

            And now he had ruined two pages of a perfectly good, albeit extravagant and inexplicably horny, journal. It seemed a waste to leave that sentence unfinished now there was no chance of getting his money back. The voice was right, whatever and however she was, it was getting good. A scene unfolded in Jack’s mind of a girl and a gun. A goddamn masterpiece. He frantically scrambled to write everything that played out in his imagination.

            “Oh god, yes. That’s so good. Yeah, baby, extend that metaphor. Extend it! Little more, that’s it. Oh, that’s it…”

 

            Hours passed and Jack’s hand seized with cramp from gripping his pen too tightly. His clothes had long since been discarded despite initial reluctance to having his own words turn him on. The red ribbon was fully exposed, dividing the book into what was complete and what was yet to manifest. The two of them paused, panting and spent in the morning light. Drowsy post-climax happiness and the long hours of the past week were creeping up on him and Jack’s limbs leaned towards his bed, drawn by some magnetic pull of sleep.

            “God, I can’t get over the juxtaposition of your last sentence. You’re amazing. Best I’ve ever read.”

            “That’s nothing,” he smirked, shrugging off the weighty tiredness. Ink smudged and smeared into imagery and symbolism as Jack poured his every thought onto yielding paper, one-handed with his cheek pressed flat against the cold wood of the desk.

 

            Susanna’s face betrayed nothing as Jack forced his hands still and waited for her verdict. She shut the book with a sigh and closed her eyes to pick her words carefully:

            “It’s bloody awful. I’m really sorry but it is.”

            “But. I spent two days writing non-stop.”

            “Well, I don’t know what else to say. You told me to be brutally honest.”

            “Because I thought you’d like it! It’s just she loved it. I mean, that voice and, and those moans…”

            “Whose?”

            “The notebook.”

            Susanna raised an eyebrow and set the book down on the coffee stained surface before making her excuses. She was not in the mood for one of his games. “I think you need some rest,” she said as she pulled her jacket over her shoulders. “I’m sorry I didn’t like your novel.”

            “No, no. It’s fine.” Jack was dazed. “Thanks,” he added almost as an afterthought causing her to pause at the door.

            “Maybe she was faking it?” Her laughter echoed thinly in his ears as he glared at the silent black rectangle before him.

            “Lying bitch,” he muttered before storming out of the café after her.

The story about a man called Ian.

He was my father’s best man at his wedding and one of the few people my parents have ever spoken about fondly. My parents rip the piss out of everyone they know. Not in a malicious way but people in general are rather daft.

Things I have always known about Ian:

 

• he was attractive
• he was hilariously funny
• he could blag his way through anything
• he was a fair bit older than my parents but didn’t act like it
• he was the editor of our local paper
• he died young

 

I’m told he doted on me. He used to talk to me like I was an adult and bounced me over the keys of his typewriter making me laugh hysterically. I was too young to remember. I wish I could remember. I have the image in my head from the story being repeated so often. It’s almost as good as a real memory. Teeny tiny little me crashing over letters, writing nonsense and amusing a grown man. The romantic side of me likes to think I was always meant to write.

Ian gave me a present when I was born. Plonked amongst the teddies and babygrows and other practical gifts for first time Mums and Dads stood his gift: a wooden box containing a bottle of port. It lasted longer than the toys I’ve lost. I’m a little afraid to open it really. One because I’ve never tried port and I want to try it before I try his. Two it might evaporate before my eyes.

I’m not sure when I found out he was gay. It would have gone hand in hand with the revelation that he died of AIDS. It explained why my mother let me swear and curse and fight my sister until we drew blood but the minute I dismissed something as being gay I was in for a lengthy lecture. The lectures faded as the word dropped out of my annoyingly frequent vocabulary (it’s cunt she objects to now). Instead she tuts and sighs over the fashionable way everybody is gay to some degree or another. She’s accepting; the most open-minded mum I could ask for just so long as I’m happy. 

Except smoking.

Cigarettes are a no.

But casual flirtation with sexuality makes her eyes roll.

I think it is simply because Ian had to hide his and they couldn’t even be open with the cause of his death. He was the editor of the newspaper after all. Mustn’t upset the readers.

He was a fantastic writer so I’m told. He wrote a story about the time my dad got his leather boot stuck on his foot and had it published in another newspaper full of in-jokes and pop culture references I don’t get. I’m told he could have written for the big papers, he could have written novels and hard-hitting articles and made a name for himself but he never did. 

He died at thirty-seven and I have never read a word he wrote.

My high school gives out an award in his name. I never knew the two Ians were the same man. They say nothing about him. The sort of nothing you find before novels. A list of achievements and the briefest of biographies. In his case we learn his name and that he was the editor of the newspaper and he is dead. Even you know this much already.

I’m not sure why I’m telling you this story. I could argue that the point here is merely to appreciate life but I’d have to try awfully hard to avoid sounding corny. There’s a point about leaving something behind, striving to achieve potential always but the memory my parents always impart of Ian is full of laughter. Hard to call his life a waste when he was so happy.

Perhaps as I read over the familiar words on the dusty port bottle and stare at the smiling man next to the younger version of my dad, I just wanted to commemorate a man I never knew. Purely because he makes me smile when my fingers hover over the keys of my dad’s typewriter and write nonsense in shorthand in old notebooks.

I’m not sure if you can miss something you never had but I miss him.

 

for love is a duel (thoughts on the number 16)

Back to back and heel to heel we’ll step out a dozen paces. Don’t turn until you reach your mark. First to shoot doesn’t guarantee a victory but when you fall, and you will fall, you won’t see my smiling face. I’m not sticking around to watch you bleed. So take your time, line up your shot and maybe you’ll get lucky.

Or as lucky as you can get firing blanks.

Didn’t see that coming didja, cowboy.

Lucidity is a word I keep finding lately

slippery. I can’t keep my tongue off them. I must look ridiculous. stumble to the bathroom, check in the mirror yes I do. I look ridiculous. My eyes are huge. I pull my eyelid down and stick my tongue out at my reflection. Cold water on my hands and face wake me up properly. With a crash I walk straight into the door and the handle deadens my arm. I hiss through my teeth, there’s too many sleeping bodies to wake to excuse my cursing. It’ll be another bruise, that’s all I know. I swirl a mouthful of warm red wine around my gums and instantly regret it. I gag but it stays down. Good.

The bedroom is littered with empty bottles, cups and people. A stinking pile of cigarette ends is overflowing from the windowsill. I tip them out and shut the window tight. It’s not my garden I’m littering. The tv is dull but still on. A bouncing circle that changes colour as it hits the sides like pong. I don’t remember what film we had on last. Maybe I was asleep by that point. 

“It’s over there!”

I freeze, a bare leg on either side of someone’s head. I really hope they don’t wake up. I adjust my pants even though I know I’m fully covered. Part of me kinda wants him to wake up. The voice came from behind me and carefully I turn but with a violent jerk the murmurs turn back to grunts and I’m free. Free to pick my way through these  sleeping lions. A wrong move will send me flying.

My spot is closest to the door and furthest from the majority of drunken snores. A chill numbs the backs of my knees and my toes but my blanket is trapped. I tug and I tug but I still can’t quite free enough of it. An odd shuffling noise takes the fleece out of my cold fingers.

“Go t’sleep now,” Paul’s breath tickles my nose and he wraps the both of us too tight and too close and tries not to shrink away from my frozen skin. “Goodnight, Ana.”

“Night,” I whisper the first word I’ve spoken in hours and now that it has left my lips I want to say more. I stare at Paul’s face for the longest time, trying to work out how asleep he is. It’s difficult to tell. The twitches of his lips could be hints of snores or laughter. I have this ridiculous urge to kiss him. I never have this urge when he’s awake. But right now I could stretch over those last few inches of cold between us and

He scrunches his nose as my hair assaults his face and I’m pulled into a hug tucked under his arm.

“Paul?” My voice can barely be called a whisper and as such he does not stir. “Paul,” I hold my breath after this in case I miss his quietest answer. I slump against his chest and listen to him breathe. He’s not awake and sleep replaces romance. That is until until he rolls his face down to mine and brushes his mouth against my eyebrow.

“Go t’sleep now,” he says in one long sigh. I yawn and arch my back making my toes crash into his but he doesn’t flinch away. If I could stop thinking I could sleep, curled up happy with Paul’s bad breath burning my hair away. My edges are ebbing away the longer I lie here with just the infuriating middle sharp and alert. But even it is lessening with the heat and the stench of his deodorant. Nose falls deeper into his chest, throat tickles itches with the fragrance a tongue creeps over my lips, dry and cracked saliva is better than any gloss. teeth are so

Stop me if you think you’ve heard this one before

Ten-fifteen on a Saturday night. The band was playing in a bar across town. Ziggy played guitar. I was his groupie and just as famous for being so as the band themselves. Dan, the bartender, had my order ready by the time I arrived. Two shots of whisky and a beer chaser. He shouted something to me over the support band. I leaned in to hear him better, my hair trailing in the sticky puddles between us.

“Must be great dating a musician.”

I rolled my eyes and stretched my stiff neck. I had to ride in the back of the van with the instruments like I was part of the set.

“Glamorous indie rock and roll. It’s all I need.”

I raised my glass to Dan and weaved through the gathering crowd to my place in front of the stage. The support act weren’t bad, studenty and a bit obvious but the beat was good. I was tapping along politely when I noticed Ziggy dancing with some blonde by the bar. They were dangerously close to one another. The perfume burned his eyes, holding tightly to her thighs and something flickered for a minute and then it vanished and was gone.

The support announced their last song and he put his arms around me and let me believe that he was someone else. It took me back to the first time we were together.

I’d seen him around before. We both drank at the same bar regularly enough to say hello to each other. One day he asked me to dance and we swayed all the way back to my flat. He had kissed me at the door and whispered hints of romance.

“I’m thinking it’s a sign that the freckles in our eyes are mirror images and when we kiss they’re perfectly aligned.”

He bewitched me into bed and sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.

The blonde waved coyly to the man who held me. I wheeled round to face him but he shrugged off my accusations.

“She turns me on but I’m only dancing.”

He jumped on stage and launched into our song. He had written it in my bed one night while we watched the rain bouncing off the skylight and we planned our future. Ziggy sang to me, his eyes begging me to forget, forgive. He moved his mouth, shook his tongue. He vibrated my eardrums. He said words but he knew I wasn’t listening. I went home instead. The cold air blew away the pain in my head. I thought maybe if I sobered up I could stop pretending that love is forever. I wished things could go back to the way they were at the beginning. I was happier then with no mind-set.

But my bed was oh so cold. My hands felt empty, no one to hold. I couldn’t sleep until he was resting there with me. My room was a shrine to that man. His clothes littered my floor; broken strings lay like traps between the folds. This land was mine but I let him rule and he invaded me, conquered my space. My pillow held the memory of his sweet head. It drove me insane.

I didn’t hear him come in but there was Ziggy inches away from my face.

“Hey blue eyes. I just wanna sing a song with you.”

I wanted to resist him but feeling good was easy, Lord, when he sang the blues and feeling good was good enough for me. I welcomed him into my bed where he belonged on one condition:

“Make love to me forever.”

He made me feel like the one.

Later when we were still, the fear crept back in again and I woke Ziggy up.

“These songs that you sing do they mean anything to the people you’re singing them to?”

I had to push him before he would answer and when he finally did his voice was thick with sleep.

“Yeah, right now, but not that often.”

Open the curtains and let in some sky

Our apartments all had these tiny balconies. A mere step held by a black, iron balustrade. During the summer the girl next door set up a chair by her window and squeezed her white legs out to tan. Ten toes tapping to the thin sounds of a far-off radio. I watched her skin burn just like I watched the clouds of billowing smoke float from the end of her pink cigarettes or her towels cascade over the iron bars as they dried after one of her long steamy showers. It was a Monday night the first time I saw her. She wasn’t conventionally pretty; you wouldn’t see a girl like her spread on a billboard anywhere or her face staring out at you from any magazines. But there was a certain beauty in the way she held herself, the way her mouth twisted when she spoke and her eyes shone when you called her name. Isabel.

It wasn’t love at first sight. If I’m honest I’d seen her plenty of times before that Monday but honesty never made for a good story so you’ll forgive my more romantic notions. If I’d been a lonely guy I would have been captivated from the start but Lisa demanded attention and for months I barely noticed any other female. Something was different this Monday. Lisa had come and gone, quite literally. She never stayed the night during the week, unless it was a big occasion. It ’skewed up her routine’. I lay in my sweat-rumpled sheets and stared at the rain as it hammered in through the open window. In a post-coital daze I staggered across my room and pulled the soaking handle back inside. A flash of green caught my eye as two welly booted feet wriggled in time to the music I could just hear through the walls. I pushed the window back open and stuck my head out a little. Just enough to see the legs the wellies belonged to. They were bare and shivering. My foot slid into a puddle as I lost my grip on the handle and fell forward into my balcony.

“That is why the wellington boot was invented.” Her voice was silk against my skin. She laughed at me as I mumbled curses and hurried back inside. I wasn’t sure of the angles of our respective balconies so I couldn’t be sure how much she had seen until the window was pulled over behind me and her voice rang out, taunting over the monotonous drone of the rain.

“They also invented underwear a while back. Maybe you should invest in some.” Her laughter pealed through the glass and mocked me back to bed. From then on I was obsessed.

The thing about embarrassment is that you always feel better when someone else does something equally stupid. Preferably more shameful but that unevens the score again and begins a cycle of blushes and hidden eyes. I had been caught spying on my neighbour and I’d been naked. I wasn’t sure how she was going to top that when we didn’t spend any time together other than those brief snatches of conversations at the front door. Scenarios played out in my head for weeks but I couldn’t work out how to make them happen. Those legs popped up on my computer screen at work, distracted me in meetings and teased me in my dreams. I asked Lisa if she ever wore wellies when it rained. She gave me a funny look and informed me that only little kids, hillwalkers and silly college students wore wellies. But Isabel was none of those things and more than anything I longed to see her legs again. The weather stayed mild; too dry for boots and too cold for sunbathing and I drove myself insane trying to find a way. In the end I didn’t have to do anything. I’d learn later that she didn’t wait for anyone.

It was another Monday night. Lisa was staying after a week’s worth of planning for our six month anniversary. She was fast asleep beside me, turned away and curled up tight. She would only let me hold her until she wanted to sleep. Then I had to pull my arms out and leave her alone. It made a lot of sense, I couldn’t argue with the practicality of her argument, but she might as well have gone home. A rattling at the window dragged my eyes from my girlfriend’s sleeping form to the dark figure outside. Isabel waved from my balcony. I started to get up but she signaled me to stay. In one deft movement she pulled her dressing gown wide open and revealed her perfect white body. After far too short a moment the thick toweling shielded her flesh from view and she pressed a piece of paper to the glass. “Now we’re square,” was written in fat green capitals. With another wave she climbed back to her flat and left me spinning.

Isabel invaded every thought in my head. It was hard to concentrate on anybody else. Whereas before I’d do anything to avoid going home to my empty apartment now I found myself cutting short my nights out and making excuses to ensure I was there just in case I missed something. For a month the most I saw of her was a hand holding those pink cigarettes and a flash of a mouth as she breathed out clouds. I couldn’t risk moving closer to the window so I had to be content with glimpses from my bed and torturous thoughts of her so casually bare. I couldn’t tell if she’d embarrassed herself, I barely knew what kind of a girl she was. After all, I’d only seen her naked, a fact that kept me up all night. One such sleepless night it struck me that the reason I hadn’t seen her wasn’t because she was ashamed. It wasn’t because she didn’t like me. It was simply my turn. It had to be a Monday. I got home early and waited for the familiar sounds that let me know she was home. The crash of her keys, the two thumps of her boots hitting the skirting as she kicked them off, the squeal of the kettle as it boiled. Before she could make it to the window to light up her first cigarette of the evening I ran to my balcony. It was pitch dark already outside, and the moon was almost full. The sunglasses rendered me blind and my chest shrank from the icy wind but I sat in my deck chair with a stupid grin on my face and waited.

“What’s that you’re doing?”

“Moonbathing,” I told her proudly.

“Looks more like catching a cold,” she sounded flat and bored. I looked over my glasses and my heart fell at her critical stare. I was a fool in green swimming trunks. She stubbed out a pink butt and tossed it over the edge before eyeing me up thoughtfully. “Fancy a coffee?”

The walls of her apartment were plastered with souvenirs. Photographs of smiling faces stared out, happy in their frozen moments. Letters and notes scrawled on the wallpaper. Toys, feathers and strange shapes of plastic. Isabel decorated her home with her life. I felt like I was prying just by standing there. She handed me a chipped mug, her nails scratching my skin lightly. I didn’t taste the coffee. I tasted her perfume, her cigarettes and something fruity that might have been from the orange candles that dotted the shelves. She narrowed her eyes as she watched me, weighing me up in her mind.

“Do you wanna know what I’m thinking?” Her fingers were playing with her lips as she spoke. I almost couldn’t work out what the words were.

“Of course.”

Isabel made the slightest sound as she smiled, like she found the situation hilarious but didn’t want to laugh and take us out of it. “I’m thinking we have two options. You can finish your coffee; we could talk a little, maybe learn a few things and then you’d go home and wait for my move. Or you can put down that mug and kiss me. Problem is I can’t decide which would be most fitting.” She looked genuinely torn. “I mean on the one hand it is my turn and having you kiss me, well that could ruin the whole thing. But on the other,”

I kissed the other out of her and she sank into me with a sigh. I filled my hands with her dark hair, her body was compliant against mine and I lost myself. She pulled away first and I was very aware that I was still only in my shorts. The glint in her eyes made me bold.

“Now you owe me two turns.” The laugh that teetered on the tip of her tongue toppled out of her mouth and I kissed her again.

The world looked different from the other side of the balcony. From her bed I could see my little beach scene melting in the morning rain. The umbrella was balancing dangerously over the balustrade, red and yellows swirling wild in the wind. There was something moving that I couldn’t see. I’d catch glimpses that were enough to worry me but Isabel sleepily called my name and pulled my attention back inside. I buried my face in the brunette tangle on the pillow. I knew who was standing on my balcony and I betrayed her one more time as Isabel turned her face upward to meet mine.

 

Our affair lasted eight months. We invented a complex system of signals: different coloured towels letting the other know if it was appropriate to jump the thin barrier between us. On my birthday I came home to find my window plastered with tiny cut-out stars and a smiling moon of tin foil. There was glitter strewn over the stone floor and tinsel wrapped around the railings. She’d left a pair of oversized sunglasses on my desk. At midnight a red flutter outside the window bade me leave my sleeping girlfriend behind and join Isabel for a picnic. We curled up on her divan and stared at her pretend night sky in perfect silence. Valentine’s Day I left her roses on her pillow and wrote a poem, crude but heartfelt, in red peelable glass paint. She woke me at 2am, naked at my window and we made love on my cramped balcony while Lisa slept oblivious behind the glass.

It couldn’t last. These things never do. There came the day where the red flash barely registered in my mind and I rolled over and went to sleep alone. Then Isabel wanted me to take her out for once, for us to be a proper couple, but I already had a girlfriend to parade outside of my flat. The simplicity was gone. It was no longer enough to surprise the other in the dark of the night. Ideas ran dry; the relationship grew stale and dwindled away to nothing. I started noticing all those little imperfections that I’d found charming before, like how her eyes were too far apart and the way she sucked her teeth when she read, and she annoyed me. I met a girl in a coffee shop with pink spotted wellies. She was an art student. From her bed all you could see was sky. An endless stretch of blue that flooded her loft conversion and illuminated her yellow hair as she rode me.

 

I still watched Isabel out of idle curiosity. She cried sometimes. A soft sound that wasn’t enough for me to regret leaving. For a solid month after the crying stopped she brought a string of guys home and made sure I heard them if not actually see them crushed into the tiny space outside. But soon she gave me hints of smiles at the door again and idle conversation crept in. On what would have been our anniversary I tied a fat green balloon to the railing and she woke me up with a tiny tapping at the window with news I hadn’t anticipated.

“I’m moving.”

 

From my bed I can see a good half of the balcony next door. It’s littered with race cars and superheroes. Every morning I’m woken by the screams of a boy who refuses to brush his teeth and the sighs of modern parents. The day after Isabel left I bought a blind. Now every night I shut out my neighbours and the world outside and dream of surprises and rainy days.

I just wanted to play with colour

Ink bleeds into the pores of my skin. I drag the pen lightly to keep my letters from running into themselves. I will trace over the deliberate shapes once the first layer is dry. I prop my leg upon your shoulder to get a better look at my work. A masterpiece of skin. I twist your heavy arm to catch a glimpse of the time around your wrist. It’s twenty to one, or two I’m not sure. I almost wish you’d wake up. I remember when I loved to watch you sleep. That serene smile was what I liked most about you. The way your nose wrinkles when you dream and your fingers curl in my hair. So perfect the two of us intertwined. That was back when the very thought of you beside me was enough to keep me spinning. I had waited so long for that moment. To lie in your arms with whispered kisses. Long ago when we were in love that was all we needed. I think it was after your father left that everything went wrong. You were never the same. At least it seems that way when I look back but at the time we thought we were strong enough to carry on.

Today I have you but tomorrow you’ll be gone so I must chronicle our story as fast as I can. But the ink takes too long to dry and I’m afraid the edges will smear if I rush my work. The curtains block out the sun to keep my words from fading and while I wait for a layer to sink in I watch as your rabbit washes her face, pulling each ear down to reach it better. Your foot twitches at my touch but I have run out of my own flesh and there’s still so much to say. You feel so cold beneath my hands; all the better for writing, and the indifferent pen scratches my every thought onto your pale skin and though the silence bothers me, I pray you won’t wake up now. Not while I’m in the middle of such perfection. Every letter must be finished in an immediate flourish in case it is my last.                                   

Hours slip by and you have not stirred. There’s an ethereal peace behind your heavy lids and a glow about your body. The rabbit is stretched out flat on your rug, basking in the sun that bursts through and casts a halo around every item in the room. It is a gorgeous scene and I wish, I really wish you loved me enough to open your eyes. Hold me and need me and stop me.

 

Your body is askew across the bed, like someone dropped you from the ceiling. The crumpled sheets form wings behind your sculpted shoulder blades and under my gaze I fancy I saw your eyes flutter awake. My pen freezes above your skin and my fingers itch to finish so I count to fifty and you show no further sign of consciousness. The nib falls back to meet your skin once more and as I cross a forgotten T doubt seeps in like too much ink on paper. I take a deep breath and clear my throat to call your name but your beautiful face is unchanged and your bones lie still. My panicked fingers find no pulse and my ear on your chest can’t hear your heart pound like it used to. I can’t help but find the romance in the situation and I look to the rabbit for confirmation. Her ears twitch interested as I voice my worries. It is true; you make a remarkable corpse.

For you are dead and I am not surprised merely disappointed. The pills were too strong and between redrafting my story and seducing you back to bed I must have misread the dosage. I arrange your limbs into a more attractive position, draping the sheets across your flesh and brushing the hair out of your face. At the sound of the phone ringing my heart sinks. I must have misjudged the timing for the latter half of my plan has collapsed. At the very least the majority of my words are complete and I suppose this will have to do. I’m afraid I have been a disappointment in every way and I’m sorry I couldn’t end our relationship as perfectly as we deserved. The voice on the other side of the phone will be your mother meaning it is four in the afternoon, the same time she always calls, but I do not answer. She won’t remember who I am and will accuse me of crimes she doesn’t understand in her addled old mind. I crawl, instead, to my bag and its contents strewn along the floor. I don’t know how I managed to mess up the most vital part of the plan. All those months of meticulousness for nothing! It was absurd how such tiny little tablets could ruin everything. I used to be so careful, triple checking everything I ever did. But you were so critical. Encouraged me to take risks. And now you are dead.

This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. Your rabbit nuzzles against my bare legs. Her black eyes forgive me and I take some comfort in her affection. But I can’t ignore my mistake and you taunt me from your coffin of sheets, still always right. Still always better than I can ever be. The bottle shakes in my hands and the pills spill onto the floor. I love you with every guilty swallow. The rabbit sniffs suspiciously at the ones that roll towards her inquisitive nose, but I’m not sure if she eats them. I truly hope she doesn’t.

Things I read on the internet today (another file on my desktop)

question is, simplistic, do you wanna get smeared with my lipstick?

You shouldn’t let poets lie to you.

She threw her head back and rolled her neck, bringing her eyes down to meet his and biting at her lip. “Got an idea. Let’s have sex.”

Solemnly, he raised a hand, and she high-fived it.

I lost my ideals when I lost my eye on the Russian front!

Instead of Dinosaur Comics I could have had 6 2/3s children in that time, assuming I had one very willing wife!

Would you settle for binquisitive?

Divide yourselves into boys and girls and work out who you want to kiss, school disco style. It will be fine.

Every morning upon awakening, I experience a supreme pleasure: that of being Salvador Dalí, and I ask myself, wonderstruck, what prodigious thing will he do today, this Salvador Dalí

my femme fatale my darling fraudulent angel

once caught her changing the batteries in her halo

receipt for her wings and everything that she paid for

and the address to the factory where they made those

scientist said she’s all inside my mind

all the king’s doctors and all the king’s pills couldn’t make Frank’s waking nightmares go away.

“Dave? This is John. Your pimp says bring the crack shipment tonight, or he’ll be forced to stick you. Meet him where we buried the Korean whore. The one without the goatee.”

That was code. It meant “Come to my place as soon as you can, it’s important.” Code, you know, in case the phone was bugged.

“John, it’s three in the-“

“-Oh, and don’t forget, tomorrow is the day we kill the President.”

*Click*

He was gone. That last part was code for, “Stop and pick me up some cigarettes on the way.”

I suppose I’m a little high on heroism at the moment.

. Let all the different shades of that colour, except that single one, be placed before him, descending gradually from the deepest to the lightest; it is plain, that he will perceive a blank, where that shade is wanting, and will be sensible, that there is a greater distance in that place between the contiguous colours than in any other. Now I ask, whether it be possible for him, from his own imagination, to supply this deficiency, and raise up to himself the idea of that particular shade, though it had never been conveyed to him by his senses?