I wrote this at 4am in the dark because when I turn on a light Julie throws things

Sharing a bed with Jack is like sleeping alone but for the occasional shuffle of pages turning. I don’t even hear the noises he makes when he sleeps anymore. The pills erased them too. I can stretch and toss without ever touching him. At home I had my own little lonely room. I had to listen to my brothers laughing in the room next to me until three in the morning. When I was around fourteen and James was sixteen we became inseparable. He’d sit on my bed talking all night. When we started to drift off he’d crawl back to his own bed but soon we had too much to say and we’d fall asleep together with words still tumbling out of parted lips.

Sharing a bed with James was like sleeping alone but enhanced. He was tucked in so close he became an extension of my own body. His knees locked tightly into the back of mine, his nose slotted into the curve of my neck and his hand fit perfectly between my belly button and the waistband of my pyjamas. In his dreams he spoke nonsense into my hair and traced patterns on my skin, fingering the elastic until the beating of my heart and his matched the tick of the clock on the wall. I measured time this way until morning.

I am reading Starfish at the moment, because it’s free and curiously captivating. It’s a bit dramatic without feeling dramatic if you get me. Anyway the story is a bunch of crazy people living at the bottom of the ocean. That’s what I’ve got so far. It’s an example of a successful way to include a bunch of technology without it reading too much like you watched Blade runner a bunch of times and EVERYONE IS A ROBOT OF SOME KIND HANG OUT WHILE I GET MY GUN WITH A NAME I JUST MADE UP BECAUSE IT IS IN THE FUTURE. Instead it’s a little disorientating but not jarring which is the best way for the genre really. And there’s a bit about the ocean being full of stars that was rather pretty.

I love playing the not-study game.

I haven’t written anything in a while that isn’t part of something bigger apart from a very short piece on the dangers of doggy style and almost an essay on menstruation and defining womanhood that I doubt I’ll upload anytime soon because I’m not sure there’s a point to either of them. I pitched a comic idea to Julie but she’s still at school and has become almost famous in certain circles of the internet. She’s on a delirious high and only wants me to play video games while she replies to her adoring fans. It’s a frustration I can’t satisfy. I want to produce something more tangible than words, something that can instantly connect to somebody. It’s hard to explain because I’m too lazy to try.

I found a link to this site for swapping books. You put up a list of books you don’t want and other members can request them. You then get points for sending books out to them and with those points request books from other people. It’s a neat idea although I don’t really have a wealth of books I don’t want but I like to know these things exist. And sort of on the subject of comics which finished I read the archives of A Lesson is Learned But the Damage is Irreversible for oh the third time I think it is now. It is generally pretty great. I have to study why we shouldn’t play with bits of the ancient dead. Archaeology is no fun. I am seriously considering picking up English again. I’ve been looking at careers in editing and publishing because I’ll be damned if I can think of anything else I can do. Seems kind of pointless to try to enter a dying market though. On the theme of publishing I found a link to a book called John Dies At the End. I’d never heard of it before but according to his site it’s being made into a film. Now I have tried to read this twice but never got past the first couple of pages (and it’s white text on a black background, makes me go blind). I only gave it the little chance I did because it claims the riddle reveals the awful secret behind the universe. The riddle is just a rewrite of an old one about a boat. There are one or two lines that stuck in my mind but the rest was like bad jokes and clunky dialogue that tries too hard to stick to real life. I’m linking it for more reasons than to slag him off. I’m linking it because it is so typical of the type of writing a lot of young guys adopt and it annoys me every time I read them. I don’t know who they’re trying to imitate (because most of us are trying to imitate somebody) but bleh. And of course the ultimate reason is that I’m bored and pretending not to be hungry for there is no food in my house.

I always meant to read Rice Boy but whenever I would start reading the archives something else would distract me. I think it might have been linked on Pictures for Sad Children, can’t quite remember now, but I found a link somewhere last night saying it had ended. So it seemed as good a time as any to check it out. Plus I was still a little buzzed from alcohol and didn’t fancy sleeping. Now I’m linking it here rather than my blog because goddamn if it wasn’t a good story. I’m not entirely sure what really happened in the end but I did read it at 3 in the morning. Check it out, it involved a prophecy and didn’t bore me. This a pretty big thing for me when it comes to predetermination!

I wrote a story today

a fairy tale that would make you smile and dream. It began as all stories should and ended without revealing too much.

But I wrote it on a newspaper and stuffed it down the side of my seat on the bus. I kind of like the idea of traveling tales.

I have a bruise of ink on my middle right finger. 

The writing on my skirt has all but faded away in the wash. I’m scrawling something new over the top. It can represent how all our words are dust like our bones are dust and the world is dust.

Or I’m just really fucking bored.

il etait une fois

There’s a moment when my eyes adjust and I don’t see the frames. For a dozen steps I’m not aware of the glasses. Then I blink and there’s a grey flash and they’re back.

There’s another moment when I find a letter with my name on the label. I hold off slicing it open and bring it up to my face instead, for a think. There’s a smell and a feeling.

I had a thought as I woke up one morning. A gust of wind blowing my hair and I laughed at the sky as the world blew up and died. 

And I want to write it all down. All the ridiculousness and the drama and the quiet moments before you fall asleep. I want to write something true but my fingers curl up on themselves and itch when they clutch ink. I almost have to trick myself into writing. I had one weekend flurry. No sleep, no thought just black scratching itself onto notebook pages. All I can do is hope it works.

I want to write truth so I build a lie and hide in my monstrosity. 

One last thought before I go. I think of all these little moments and I form all these new scenes to hold them and then I stop and laugh. Because it can be so very pretentious. The word novel makes me flinch. I say the words ‘I am writing a novel’ in that voice of mine I dislike and nod my head in a way that some found cute when I never wanted to be cute. Like a child pretending. I’m a writer pretending to live but better that than the other way round. It’s like a detachment. 

I had a dream a girl wandered through the park and found note after note that slowly told the greatest story ever told. But all I can remember is the once upon a time.

Update I got bored of waiting for an actual response. I am currently in talks with Julie to do something. Something with pictures. My working title is Perhaps the world has ended.

I have the strangest urge to write a choose your own adventure story. I used to have the best Goosebumps one although I always cheated. Oh I appear to have been eaten by a mummy, lucky that was a test selection now to go back and claim my cursed treasure.

If I did one would you guys want to choose your own adventure? There’s not much point in writing one nobody wants to cheat on if you get me. Granted I should actually be studying but last time I did that I got a C. Pfft to studying says I.

and the coloured girls they go doo do doo do doo do do doo

Jennifer draped her arms over her legs and pulled up the grass beneath her knees. The green dug deep under her fingernails as she tugged and snapped up great clumps. From these piles she’d select a single blade and slice it delicately with the edge of her thumbnail, carving away the lighter sides of green. The cat was pouncing after moths. The kid was following, copying. Inside the shouts were getting more indiscernible. Insults were becoming noises broken by the occasional rattle of the walls and smash of something priceless. By the time she counted out the fifteen stamping footsteps to the bin and the thunk of birthday cake on top of the week’s garbage Jennifer was done listening.

The sky was massively blue. She hoped the city wouldn’t take that colour for granted after month long trawls through brown streets in freezing greys. The grass prickled through her shirt and tickled the back of her neck under her shorn hair as she lay down. Arms reached through the green tangle and fingers dug down deep into the ground. The cat pounced on her hand. Its wet nose collided with her knuckles as pinpricks of claws scrambled to hold the silvery moth Jennifer had inadvertently trapped. The kid fell on top of the pile and ran in wailing when the cat reacted angrily at the apprentice stalker. The couple inside paused for a moment. Plasters and kisses and cold shoulders. It was quiet at least.

The moth was crushed into crumbs and the cat stared patiently at its prey, waiting for the chase to begin anew. Jennifer lay staring at the cat, waiting for it to tire of the game. The sun made four pairs of eyes squint until finally both stretched out bored. She watched clouds drift by through the orangey filter of skin. She frowned as the neighbours’ boy started the lawn mower with a grunt and a growl. The gravelly hum shattered the belief that she was alone. With her hair positioned just right, her peripherals were compromised leaving only blue and white cotton but she couldn’t shut out the sound.

A bee nearly collided with her nose and the cat leapt up and scrambled through its jungle having spotted a new target. Jennifer reached a long hand into the pocket of her shorts. There was a ball of twine she’d found in the cupboard that morning. The man down the road used to work in a twine factory, she thought so anyway. Every new year he brought a fresh ball as a present. Usually it was a different colour every time. He hadn’t been round in a long time now. She wondered idly if he was dead as she unwound a length and watched the pattern unravel. It was bluish greenish white. She tossed it high above her head and sighed every time it fell back to her feet. She wanted to catch the end on something new. Leave the garden behind as she heard a voice tell a moan that it had all been a mistake. She lost count of the attempts before she let the ball fall between her legs and she pulled a carton of cigarettes from her other pocket. The lighter refused to light despite her best attempts with different angles and frantic shaking next to her ear. It was empty.

“Those things will kill you,” the voice belonged to the hand thrust between the slats of the fence that held out a flame.

“So why do you carry a lighter?” Jennifer sighed and lay back on the grass waiting for the explanation.

“To make pretty girls smile.”

She snorted and shut her eyes. The boy leaned on the splintering wood separating them. 

“It’s warm today.”

“Uh huh.” She tossed the ball of twine from one hand to the other. He watched the flex of her arm and the bend of her wrist and pressed himself closer to the fence. 

“Do you want to come over for a drink or something? To cool down.” He licked his lips and his teeth caught on a piece of skin. He worked on it while Jennifer propped herself on one elbow. The back door rattled against the pressure of a bag full of clothes.

“Sure,” she smiled, shading her eyes against the sun behind his head. He bit through his lip.

Her hands slid down the dripping wet glass and fingers twined around the straw. He babbled about the weather and school and his parents. She smiled at something beyond him and lit five new cigarettes in a row. He didn’t notice the trembling in her hand or the worry in her eyes. He was preoccupied with the way her breasts filled out her halter-neck and her lips shone from the lemonade. He kissed her once and apologised. He kissed her again and pushed her to the ground. He apologised as he fumbled with the string behind her neck. She forgave him with a hand down the front of his boxers.

He tossed the twine between his hands as she buttoned her shorts back on and tore up piles of grass under her legs. He choked on grins as she sighed.

“I want to get away from here. Do you ever feel like that? The desire just to run away and never come back?”

“Yeah,” he watched the shapes she made to speak and the slouch of her shoulders over her knees. He threw the ball up high and she flinched instinctively for the fall but it never did. He wrapped a length of twine around her waist, smelling like sweat and grass and something sweet. Their noses brushed as Jennifer was dragged from the ground and far away from the squares of grass of her neighbourhood. She watched him fade below her feet and he shouted something she couldn’t hear.

Then the sun burned away her surroundings and her world became a sea of cloud and endless blue. She hoped nobody in the city below her ever took the colour for granted. 

If you write as good as you talk nobody reads you.

Melodrama found under the bed

“It’s just some stuff of his I don’t want anymore. I’ve been meaning to come by for a while now, just never got round to it. Is he in?”

Suzie shook her head at the wisp of a girl before her. “I’ll give it to him when he gets home.” She stretched out her hands to take the box but the girl seemed reluctant to give it up. She was chewing on her bottom lip, twisting her mouth into doubt, until a crooked half-smirk bloomed on her pale, drawn face. 

“Thanks, Suzie.” There was an emphasis on her name that Suzie didn’t like. She felt incredibly uneasy under her gaze. She’d never seen eyes so wild but she couldn’t hurry her away. She felt too sorry for her. Ryan had tried to break up with her in the nicest way possible but he could be so very tactless at times. He had chosen that moment to be truthful. Nobody wants to hear the words “I don’t love you anymore” and certainly they don’t want it followed by “maybe I never did.” The poor girl had been devastated. She called at all hours of the day. First to beg him to come back. Then she got angry. Then she was convinced she had left a book at his place. There were weeks of reminders to look for it and demands for the return of her property. There was no book they could find. Eventually she left him alone. Suzie supposed she’d found a new obsession.

The box was relinquished into the hands of the new girlfriend. Skittish and shaking the girl refused all civilities of cups of tea and almost ran down the path. Suzie shut the door a little dazed and inspected the box. In large uncertain letters was written ‘With Love’. It struck her as an odd thing to write on a box of his own things.

“Maybe it’s some sort of farewell present.” She shook the box to her ear. There was a dull thudding from side to side. No giveaways. She set it down on the table and left the room to avoid temptation.

An age passed until she finally heard the click of Ryan’s key in the door. She heard him sigh as he recognised the handwriting on the lid and carried it to the bedroom. The door was left ajar so she followed him in.

“Did she send this?”

“She was here around lunchtime. She said she was returning your stuff.”

He frowned. He hadn’t given her anything worth returning. Slowly he lifted the lid. Strong perfume wafted into the room along with several dried rose petals. Inside were more petals and the rotted stem of the rose he had given her one Valentine’s day. There was a tattered black diary with his name scored several times into the cover. He flicked through it, noting the photos and the souvenirs from days they spent together and flincing a little at the scrawl of possessive thoughts. Under the book was his old tshirt she used to sleep in so ‘he could always be with her.’ It was wrapped around something. Tentatively he peeled back the dark cotton to reveal another package of sticky pink tissue paper. Tired of the matryoshka doll game he tore through this to finally reach his present. He let out a shout and dropped the whole box to the floor. Suzie went to him but he pushed her aside and dashed to the bathroom. Alone, she crept to the offending present on the floor. Nestling in the damp shreds of tissue and petals lay a perfectly formed child, so small Suzie could have held it in one hand easily. Tears pricked her eyes and her hands moved to pick it up, hold it and comfort it even though it couldn’t possibly be real. Her fingers were inches away from its head to determine its reality when Ryan returned. He slammed the cardboard lid on, buckling the sides, and threw the lot in a black plastic bag before storming back out. Suzie winced as she heard the bin slam outside. 

She had gotten her revenge.