Peter Campbell Falling

The first thing he noticed once he got up there, other than the wind whipping him in the face, was the way isolated noises would work their way up and free of the crowd of sounds on the ground, so that, every so often, the sound of a joyful child shouting through laughter or the chorus of a birdsong from the trees in the park; the acacias, beeches and the other kinds that he didn’t know about. It was beautiful, thought Peter Campbell, and that should have been his first inkling that his plan, the one that he had given birth to, nurtured against his will and let fester like a tortured child trapped at the bottom of a well, somewhere deep in the recesses of what he imagined was his true self; the one that he tried never to let anybody know of or see, was not going to be something that he could execute.

Up there, he stood and looked down, standing on the flapping grey asphalt strips that sat atop the two looming brown towers, with their jutting balconies, two each side of the building on every floor, all the way up, each one long since coloured grey from their original white, the cumulative build up of exhaust fumes that silently work their way around the world and up into the atmosphere long since having forced a repaint upon those who lived within. The wind was fast up there; it hit with force from every direction, so much force that nature threatened to push its own agenda and, with it, Peter down, past sixteen floors, down and to his death on the paving slabs and on the faces and clothing of those unfortunate to be stood too near the spot that gravity would deign fitting for his exploding end. His green denim train driver’s hat - which, he had always suspected, made him look pretty ridiculous anyway, trumpeting out loud the unease he felt in his heart and mind at having been born at this time, with these people and this way of living that left him withered up inside and alienated from everything and everyone in his life - blew away from his head, leaving his matted brown hair exposed, lifted up and pushed down and from both sides simultaneously from the strength of this wind.

“If I’m not going to do it, I may as well go home” he thought as he, again, looked down. “Or, maybe, to the National Gallery to look at the girls”

Peter Campbell often made his way to the National Gallery to look at the girls. The girls came from all around the world, he imagined, and they would leave the gallery, having stood before the art and appreciated it in ways alien to Peter, and walk to a coffee shop or a nice café, where they would write in their journals or work on their own art, perhaps taking off their scarves in winter and resting them over the back of a comfortable chair, fit to sit in for hours and do whatever it was beautiful women of culture and sophistication did. He imagined. Peter Campbell imagined a lot but, mostly, he imagined he was happy. He imagined he was happy in the arms of a beautiful love; a lasting love that offered him a new life, maybe far away, maybe in the same town but a new life, nevertheless. Find the girl, get the girl and the life would follow; that was another plan of Peter Campbell’s and, like all of the others, its execution remained beyond him.

He had, almost straight away, chanced himself into and perfected a certain routine. He would wake up in the morning, disconsolate and unknowing on the days wherein his mind would turn against him and compel him upwards; up to the top of one of those two brown and grey towers, neither of which he lived in. Upon reaching his summit, the highest point he would reach in his life, he would take from his pocket a letter. These were letters he addressed to unknown and unobtained lovers; the girl from the coffee shop with the Japanese design tattooed on her back, the woman from the train who had locked eyes with him and, he had felt, understood and accept his entirety, or the woman with the brown eyes who crowded his dreams by herself. Reaching the top, he would take the letter and, knowing them to be forever undeliverable, tear them up and return them to sender; the cruel world below, bit by fluttering bit.

How would they fall in love with him, these women? How would he move from casual observer, he imagined – the reality resembling more “strange man staring”- to lover, friend and confidante? This was the fatal flaw in his plan and it was a fatal flaw that, day by day, edged him ironically closer to successful execution of another one of Peter Campbell’s plans; the plan that had led him to be standing here and now, on the asphalt, atop one of the two brown and grey towers. Not today though. He knew it wouldn’t be today.

Peter was sure that there was something wrong with him. At some point in his life, he was sure, something had happened to him and he had split in two. He sometimes thought that he must be crazy, since he knew it wasn’t normal behaviour for a man of his age to regularly make his way up, via a piss and graffiti stained lift, up one flight of stairs, pushing through one fire escape door and up and out to stand on top of one of two brown and grey towers that cast shadows onto the nearby park. One of those two towers, neither of which he lived at but which, he felt sure, he would eventually die at. It was the behaviour of a crazy person but, before he could get himself comfortable with his new crazy person persona, Peter would remember that he had never jumped and then he would feel like he would never jump and then he would feel that he wasn’t crazy. And he wasn’t crazy, not really; he was something else altogether. Peter Campbell was sad. He was sad and he was lonely and it was more than he could bear to think about but it was all he ever thought about.

When had it happened? He could never pinpoint any specific moment or time when these feelings had started. He knew that he had been happy once or, at least, he had not been miserable. What precise moment, what second had it been that he had switched from being a happy person, oblivious to the world through sheer force of quiet joy, to the man he was now; stood on flapping asphalt, on top of one of two brown and grey towers that loomed above the ground and cast shadows on the park nearby, looking over and wondering. Wishing. But never doing.

Whenever these thoughts came to him, Peter Campbell’s mind was suddenly awash with snapshot images of a life once lived. There he was again in the arms of his lover, Emily, laying in the sunshine at the park in which they had often gone to feed the ducks. How curious it was that the simple act of throwing bread to ducks, who would eat anything, could bring such joy to a man’s life that the imagery should be permanently embedded in the depths of his psyche and ready, at any time, to rise up and torment him. There he would be again, underneath a white sheet, bathed in light, naked with Susanna.

These moments were unbearable for him. The memories of love brought with it, just as suddenly, the memories of loss. Peter felt betrayed by his own brain and wished over everything else that he might one day escape it. It was this wish that, in turn, gave rise to that plan that led him here to now, yet again, stood on flapping asphalt, atop one of two brown and grey towers, neither of which he lived in, looking down and hoping to be able to jump this time.

His worst fear was perpetual reincarnation of the same soul, the same mind; battered, bruised and broken and locked inside a new way of being; starting out on a new journey through youth to misery. Peter Campbell felt sure that, if there were such a thing as perpetual reincarnation, this was to always be his pre-destined lot.

How had it happened? He didn’t know and, stood on the flapping asphalt, atop one of the two brown and grey towers, neither of which he lived in, feeling maudlin and insignificant; a place and a feeling that he now knew with all the familiarity that he should have been sharing with a lover, now it seemed as if none of it mattered much at all. Insignificance is a challenge to a mind like Peter Campbell’s. A challenge he often felt he could rise or, rather, fall to with great aplomb and splatter on the pavement below like a falling bomb. But he wouldn’t. Not today.

And so began the descent. As routine as the climb to the top, with all its attendant feelings of certainty and dissonance; isolation from and internalised confrontation with a world that, Peter would imagine, sneered at and rejected him but, in reality, never noticed him; another miserable face in a miserable crowd. Peter Campbell wasn’t hated, he was ignored. He wasn’t despised because he wasn’t even there. The thoughts he thought and the feelings he felt were not unique to him and he was breaking no new mental frontier for mankind in happening upon them; they were, for a lot more people than he had ever appreciated, simply the way it is; the human condition we have been conditioned to accept and to suffer with in silence. Were that silence to ever be broken, were everyone to drop their guard and to say out loud, to eachother “I’m not coping”, would it even bring the Peter Campbells solace? Would it do them good to know that, rather than suffering in isolation and silence, they were all suffering together aloud? No, it was the hope that sustained them all; the hope that, one day, they might wake up and be free of the invisible chains that held them inside themselves; the hope that one day they might be somebody else. Somebody normal and un-tormented.

“What goes up, must come down” Peter thought to himself as he descended the floors in his piss and graffiti stained vessel. The trick, he thought, was in coming down hard. Hard and fast. Make gravity do your bidding, make it a slave to your will, an accessory in your demise. All this thinking. All this thinking on one theme and no respite, no release. Was he, Peter Campbell wondered, destined to spend the rest of his life trapped in this cycle? The thought was yet another thing for him to enter onto his list of things that made life unbearable.

Down the lift went, past floors of doors and nothing more, open them and find diversity; each door revealing and interior reflecting the tenant’s creativity, devotions, triumphs or poverty. Behind those doors life played out to a soundtrack of clunking feet and over loud televisions and stereos. It was there in various ways, news of dissent and dismay or loving and laughter carried through the thin walls and ceilings and, in winter, those sounds were joined by a hacking cough that spread from one wall to another, up and down the blocks.

Ping!

The lift came to a halt at the ground floor and the battered steel doors opened to reveal a vision in black on the other side. She stood about 5”3, 5”4, which Peter had always felt would be the perfect accompaniment to his 5”7, 5”8; she had big, brown eyes that dominated her face as she peered up to look into Peter’s blue ones. She had her black hair cascading down into curls that Peter instantly imagined unravelling and re-twisting and her skin was olive to contrast with his white. On top of the curls, she wore a black beret, an accessory that, until now, had always seemed to Peter to be the absolute height of pretentiousness in women’s fashion was suddenly transformed into a marker of sophistication; any idiot girl wearing such an item was as guilty of impersonation as the man who, pretending to be a doctor, performs surgery and accidentally kills a man. Peter was prone to exaggeration, maybe, but this woman, little more than a girl, that stood before him was, undoubtedly the single most beautiful woman living now or who had ever lived. In her 5”3, 5”4 frame, she carried all of the answers, comfort and reassurance that Peter had been seeking his entire life. He resolved right then and there that he would never again journey up to stand on the flapping asphalt and look down. He was going to love her and roll around in parks with her, be naked under white sheets with her and create new memories all of their own together and, eventually, create new minds and devote their lives to giving them the very best of memories.

The doors began to close. Peter snapped back. Why hadn’t she gotten in, he wondered? She hadn’t gotten in because he hadn’t gotten out. She, Sabine Patulea, regarded Peter curiously. She wondered why he hadn’t gotten out of the lift, mainly, but, also, there was undeniably something that had struck her when the doors had slid open and she had seen him standing there.

He was a nice height, this man, Sabine thought, and she had liked his tousled brown hair that fell in different directions, his blue eyes and pale colouring. She had even found it endearing, the way that he had been startled by her, but now she wondered if she could get into a lift with him, since he didn’t appear to be getting out. Instinctively, she jammed her foot in the door when he made no effort to pass her and, instantly, she regretted the decision. The regret was difficult to fathom, however. She shared this lift, soaked in piss and covered in graffiti every day; with Mrs Patel from the floor below and the fat man who never wore a shirt, always stank of sweat and carried strong beer with him in a can. Why had this most depressingly mundane setting been transformed into a moving den of awkward intimacy?

Now, his life could split in two again or, rather, the two disparate parts would be reunited. She had the power. She stepped into the lift and pressed 4. The lift doors sealed themselves and fate.

Movement began and the 2 in the dial of numbers, rising in twos, lit up momentarily, to be replaced by 4 a few seconds later, then 6, then 8, then 10. Still silence. Since the initial reveal of the steel doors, no further eye contact had been made. The tension in the air was palpable but equally misinterpreted by both parties. To Sabine – not her real name; she’d changed it from Suzanne which, she had always felt, was the name of a spinster, a name to grow into and fall back on if all else failed – the tension was alien and slightly bizarre; she felt it just as keenly as Peter Campbell, but she could not put a name to it. Peter Campbell could and the name was “self loathing”. Here he was, stood next to the woman he was sure was to be his wife in every conceivable sense and yet…and yet…not this time.

“I’m Peter” he finally said, in a voice that croaked rather than spoke past the point of “I’m”.

“I’m sorry?” Sabine replied tentatively

“Sorry” began Peter “I said I’m Pete…”

“Ping!” cried the lift

“…r” finished Peter

He looked up at the row of illuminated numbers, now a full set. The last one said 16.

“Fantastic” thought Peter

The doors slid open. Sabine stepped out. Peter looked down, crestfallen. That had been his window, his doorway to another life; the life he had planned and wanted. The doors began to slide shut again as Sabine prepared to walk out of his life. She stepped out of the lift and his head fell down low. The doors were sliding. They slid. Right until they hit a foot.

“Peter?” Enquired Sabine

“Yes?” squeaked Peter, before he cleared his throat and croaked “yes?”. Because that was way cooler.

“I think I would like to know you” she said. Sabine’s voice lilted in the middle of all of her sentences, which gave her the air of an ingénue or some kind of pixie. Peter didn’t know what the hell he was thinking about; he never normally thought words like ingénue, because he wasn’t certain how to spell or pronounce them properly. He was reasonably certain that Sabine sounded like one of them though.

He was still in the lift. The beautiful woman he had fallen in love with before a word had passed her lips was outside of the lift, saying she wanted to know him, and Peter Campbell was where he had been and as silent as always.

Sabine stepped back. The door slid closed whilst Peter stood in silence. He looked up as it was closing and caught a direct glance into the brownest, most beautiful, biggest eyes he had ever seen and they shook him out of his torpor. But the lift was moving now, in the only direction it could; it was heading downwards and away.

“Ping!” said the lift, and the number 12 was illuminated.

“Shit!” thought Peter, as he pushed his way past a startled Mrs Johnston, a Scottish woman in her 50s with an alcoholic husband, neither of whom Peter would ever know, because he was away. Away and up the flights of stairs. Up and round, up and round at the top of every flight; up towards that asphalt roof he knew so well but where he intended to stop short of for today and forever after this one.

Up one flight he ran, grabbing hold of the banister to use his momentum to push him halfway up another before he even really thought about it, then another, and another and more and more until he reached where he wanted to be and who he wanted to be with. Floor 16. Where this girl lived. Who’s name, he realised, he did not know. Peter pushed open the door that separated floor from doors in a hurry and, in doing so, the back of his forward right foot caught the front of his trailing left foot and caused him to trip. He stumbled forward at first for a few steps until he lost his balance, fell forward and smacked his head against the front door of number 64 and sprawled out on the floor in a heap. He didn’t see Sabine – who’s name he still did not know, but she knew his – anywhere. Until the sound of the smacking head against the wooden door brought an answer. The door opened in on itself, Peter looked up, Sabine looked down. Peter had found Sabine and Sabine had found Peter. Reunited, though they knew nothing about each other whatsoever at this point.

Sabine had heard a knock at her door and had come to investigate. Perhaps a knock was the wrong word, since “a knock” always brought with it the promise of another knock and another and another until the door was opened. This was not a knock though, this was more like a thump. And, so, a single, solitary thump at the door had caused Sabine to turn on her heels, having discarded her beret, checked her face in the mirror and, in doing so, she looked herself right into those big, brown eyes and missed Peter; the man she had never really met.

Sabine walked down the hallway, along stripped back floorboards that she had painted white herself and up to the heavy front door, which she had also painted white. She allowed herself one further glance in another mirror that she had placed just to the right of the door and left with its original black colouring. Sabine opened the door and met Peter, the man she had never met but who she had wished, without even realising it, would be the source of the single knock against her door. Possibly, it had been more of a thud.

The door opened up and Peter, all at once, knew how it felt to be the man who discovers that he has won the jackpot on the pools draw in one letter and learnt that he has terminal cancer in another. He had hit the right door, the girl was there and this was a source of immediate and intense joy to Peter. The difficulty was that he was sprawled out on the floor and that his head, which had been resting against the door, had fallen forward when it opened, where it opened and had now come to rest in between the girl’s legs. This was pretty over familiar stuff on his part and Peter knew it. As instinctively as he had felt that this girl was someone special for him, he knew he had blown it. There was unlikely to be any coming back from this.

Sabine looked down and saw a head looking up from between her legs. She felt no threat at all and couldn’t help but let out a giggle, which she hoped would not be interpreted as assent. It was, after all, highly unusual for a man she had never met to be laying between her legs; she couldn’t really see how the situation had come to be, and yet, here he was; sprawled out and looking up at her.

“He has pretty blue eyes” Sabine thought to herself, as she opened her mouth to speak

“She has beautiful brown eyes” Peter thought to himself, as he maintained his gaze into her face, terrified to look anywhere else for the potential legal ramifications such a glance could provoke. There it was again. Her sing-song voice, which lilted in the middle of her sentence again, as if to prove that how endearing it had been before had been no accident. She was like a dealer in fine loveliness.

Here was a hand being extended to him and, with it, a world he had given up on believing in. Here was a face much closer to his as he rose and now was a shock that induced by his logical left brain being shouted down by the flighty right. Almost every bit of Peter Campbell was a man who allowed life to pass him by on the riverbank whilst he was sucked under by the current. Almost every bit of Peter Campbell was reconciled to a life devoid of love. Almost every bit of Peter Campbell had wanted to die before and protested his foolishness now. Almost every bit. Almost. There was one bit of Peter Campbell left, maybe that flighty right brain, maybe his big left toe; unaware of the internal conflict, Peter Campbell cared little because, for Peter Campbell, there was no conflict. Peter Campbell was already engaged in the act of slowly turning his head to the girl as he rose. Peter Campbell was already engaged in the act of parting his lips and bracing for contact. Peter Campbell was still alive. Peter Campbell was in love.

Sabine was unaware of all of it, of course. She had her own process to manage and it was all she could manage not to start weeping. She felt such sadness radiate from this man on the floor at her feet. Empathy, the likes of which she had never known, hit and overwhelmed her like a tsunami, devastating her defences and her standard practised social convention. She had heard of love at first sight before now, of course, but she had been in love before and this was different. This was powerful. And she could feel it changing her life, even as she extended her hand to Peter Campbell, even as he rose. Even as he turned his face to his and she could see, for the first time clearly, the lines and imperfections that mapped out his face and made him beautiful. Even as his lips moved closer to hers. Especially when their lips collided and Sabine Patulea was in love.

Once more, Peter Campbell felt as if he were forced along by a current. It carried him into the arms of the girl he had just met, pushed his arms around her body and his momentum carried them both backwards and into her small flat. On the wall by the doorway hung a framed poster of a black cat with some French writing on it; a stylish oasis in the otherwise culturally bereft green hallway. Backwards they were pushed, past that black cat and along the green hallway to a white door. Their mouths still locked together, no further words exchanged between them, Sabine broke partially free of the embrace to fumble behind her back until she hit upon the handle and the door gave way and then backwards they were pushed, past that white door. The white door had given way to a white room with a wide double bed inside and little else. The bed had yellow sheets, yellow pillows and a crumpled yellow duvet resting on it. On the wall, there hung the print of a Hokusai tsunami that Peter had seen many, many times before. He had never been affected by it before, seeing it as merely ornamental and considering its purpose to be purely aesthetic and cosmetic; there to break up the monotony of a million student walls that would otherwise go blank. Now, he felt the full force of that wave crashing over him, drenching he and Sabine in frantic, kinetic love so that they were both mere vessels, carrying out a pre-ordained destiny and, now, for the first time, stood against that yellow bed, with its yellow sheets, yellow pillows and yellow, crumpled duvet, now, Peter Campbell was finally falling down. Now he was not alone and he was thankful for his prison cell mind that had rendered him incapable of leaping from that lonely, familiar spot on that flapping asphalt roof, on top of the grey and brown tower, wherein lived his love. Now he was happy.

That night they made love and each one knew at last, after a lifetime of false dawns, what the expression meant. Over and over, they locked themselves together and, when it was over, they held onto eachother tightly and found to their mutual delight that their bodies fitted and locked together perfectly, as each one told the other how they came to be laying there. Sabine told Peter how she had come to England from France, how she had felt herself a stranger in that land and in this until the time she saw the hurt in her eyes and knew, instinctively, that this was the force that had driven her here and she was to be his salvation as he was to give her purpose. She cried as Peter cried, as Peter held onto her tighter than before and told her everything; all the reasons he had had long, lonely hours to identify as the cause of his malaise and exclusion. He told her of the women he’d known before and the ways in which he had frozen and they had left him, he told her of the feeling he had had that had kept him awake in the nights and consumed him from within with acidic self loathing, how he, too, had felt on the outside of his own life looking in, completely powerless and how it had led him, so many times, to travel, with his crumpled letter in his sweaty pocket to the summit of one of those two brown and grey towers, in one of which they agreed that night he would now live so they need never be apart, onto the flapping asphalt, to peer over the edge.

Te next morning, Peter Campbell made his last trip to the summit of that grey and brown tower, in which he now lived. He made his way over to the piece of asphalt and he took his crumpled letter from his sweaty pocket. He looked down into the shadows cast on the park nearby and he heard the sound of childish laughter. He tore his letter into as many pieces as it could bear and he threw it down to the ground and the world below. It may never be his world, Peter Campbell thought to himself, but he was not afraid of it any more. As the pieces fluttered to the ground, Peter Campbell took the hand of the woman he was in love with, who he now had the rest of his life to get to know inside and out and to plant seeds within, the woman who had been stood with him the whole time and who would nurture him and comfort him when, as he was certain would happen, the darkness would, from time to time envelop him once more. She gladly accepted his hand and, together, they made their way down.

Icarus Rex

Icarus Rex

I nearly
gave up I
never forgot
how to fly
just didn't think
it worth
doing

this maze of streets
suffocates in summer sweat
slides down spines
air choked with scents
of gently burning value burgers
and brittle forced bonhomie
later thoughts will turn
to the watering holes of the "Gaza" Strip
the waterfront apocalypse
of chain pubs and pointless kickings
angry minotaurs stalk the bars
slurping down their stupid suds
somebody else's accident
waiting to happen
this
is the 21^st century
incendiary lifestyles
for emotional cripples
and social chameleons

there will be casualties

and Gibbo moves with all the grace
of a knife fight in a phonebox
stares
at shiny faces
families
in new saloons meandering
along the beaten seafront
knowing it's too big a gap
to cross between them and him
they see
one of those funny chavs
you read about them all the time
tonight Matthew I will be
compartmentalising
dehumanising
who's afraid of the big bad dole boy?
if you laugh at what you're afraid of
it might go away
(shamefully
I do it, too)
Gibbo feels but could never articulate
an imaginary conversation
between these people and himself
I'll stay out of your dreams
if you stay out of mine
but even these car radios blare
In every dream home a heartache
into this anodyne world

where any kind of fame
is more sought after and celebrated
than any sort of kindness
or happiness
commodity over community
possession is 9/10
of the new lore
in the Iron Pyrite dreams
of this proud new millennium
glittering prizes to
own own own
which bleeds into
self self self
here's a new chest freezer
you don't really need it
but join us and you've made it
love the higher power
all on hire purchase
subliminal product placement
and blatant hard sell
hello hello
this is a good buy
time to get that 2^nd motor
for your neighbours as much as anyone
free to do every bit
of what you're told
like a good consumer
we are the champions
no time for losers
this is how the world ends
not with a bang
but a whisper
of a sale

capitalism:
the gentle holocaust
a subtle strangling

there will be casualties

I only drink so much
so I can stop the ticking
for a little while
of what the French call
La Tristesse de la Vie –
the sadness of life
and also because these days
I write best
with a hangover.

This will eventually kill me.
But anything can kill you:

A mother and her 12 year old
autistic son were feared dead
yesterday after they disappeared.
She left a note saying she thought
she'd failed as a mother and
her and Ryan were going to the bridge
so the family wouldn't have to worry
anymore. She hadn't taken
her medication with her.
CCTV footage taken at
3 pm yesterday appears to show
two figures falling from the 150m bridge
eight seconds apart

and what must she have felt
standing in the light
for the last time
before that forever drop
into darkness
she had balls
and a lot of heart
but in the end
it wasn't quite enough
and did she pray
for no life flashing
behind her closed eyes
in the rushing silence
all those years
drowning in the sun

I listen to other people's conversations:

- she's so fat
- yeah but I bet
she sweats when she fucks
- I bet she sweats
when she eats
- I can't believe
it's not Buddha

sometimes the apocalypse
can't come quick enough
sometimes
just an ordinary gull
wheeling overhead
can lift a day
the miracle of flight
of wings and hearts
let the missiles fly
and turn them into
circling birds
then I might
believe

but tonight
this sopping club
is holding
far more gurning
hatchet-faced simpletons
than seems possible
a real retardis
everybody
fired up
pilled up
the music can't be
loud enough
every desperate
flailing dancer
chasing that mad rush
when the bass kicks in
and takes your head
clean off we're
chasing ultimate highs
and maybe
this is love
chasing anything
except
tomorrow morning
then the lights are on
music dies
disappointed silence
and out
into the heart of town
the heart of darkness
tell me who prays
for the soul of a taxi queue?
one couple waits
slumped against
wet brickwork
her eyes are
almost open
staring past the world
in an alcopop reverie
his head in hands
laces undone
and puke on his shirtfront
a private apocalypse
in this public hell
someone in line
sticks the nut on someone's mate
and it all kicks off
stay still
don't catch anyone's eye:
the opposite
of all you've done
this evening
you don't even
breathe out
until the cab is
speeding you
from all that darkness
and into
the welcoming night

nothing in the battered
paracetemol packet but
instructions for use
and throbbing nothing
but holes in my pockets
sometimes hope can fall
right out of your life
as easily as
anything else
this painful pulse
the only way I know
I'm awake
and arguably
alive
I watch the second hand
go round and round and round
and wait for nothing to happen
and nothing does

I listen to other people's conversations:

- Get to the fuckin bar cunt
ah'm spi-ing fevvuhs

the time I felt most alive:
in the open space
of the grey heath in New Cross
with fast friends
watching
the grandmother of all thunderstorms roll in
forks tearing down the sky
chewing through burning ozone
drunk and exhilarated
standing on the bench
arms wide
as the storm came
holding bottle and cigarette
screaming
come on come on come on
urging the world louder
the rain faster
waiting for
a perfect death
and ready to defy
god himself

I've felt shivers of wonder at the alien spires
of the Church of the Sagrada Familia
I've seen a grown man punch a five year old
square in the face for dropping an ice cream
I've drunk tequila sunrises at 5 pm on a pub bench
winking at the businesswomen
I've spoken with the ghost of Primo Levi
and asked him how he made it and he said I didn't
I've chased a sunset for hours on a plane to New
York while trying to forget I was on a plane
I've seen the news every day every day every day

I have loved the stars too well to fear the night

At the wake
my grandma thanked me for coming
and said how smart I looked
in my suit. Smiled
as she said she hoped
I'd come to see her again
like we were arranging something
out of the ordinary.
But on the way out
her face became desperate
as she held on to me
and she said
- I keep sitting in his chair
so I don't have to look at it
and for once in my life
I didn't have anything to say.

I listen to other people's conversations:

- She had a cunt like a kebab
that's been kicked all the way home

I must stop listening to other people's conversations

What to make, then
of this ever-subtle
maddening sensual
fragile frame
which houses the muscle
that can move the world?
That conjures
symphonies and sicknesses
births dancehalls and Dresdens?
The only thing I can do
is make garlands of words
and hang them around the shoulders
of everyone I meet
forever
because in the end
I'd rather go down
burning and laughing
than trundle tamely
into that goodnight
a static prisoner
of the days and years
I'll take
a run at the sun
ripping at the darkness
with a pen and a smile
it's the only way to
fly.

In fairness I had not been expecting much. A fog of formaldehyde was the first of my memories.

The preservative fluid was not so much for me but for my steel eyed observers. Oh those, those were the days. I was no curiosity but a medical study for Doctor Rose, the only female doctor interested in me. She undertook her duties with an air of sadness.

A slight woman, cloaked in white and bespectacled, a long black mane tied back severely. When she had finished with the probing needles and the scraping samples I saw her wipe away a tear for my fate, so cruelly ripped from a life that was not the existence of a jar bound genius. And genius I am. I’ve perhaps a dozen off hand ideas that would galvanise society and science itself.

But I am cursed to remain here in this foul fluid tap-tapping against a glass wall I can never breach.

Once, just once, she removed me from my transparent cage. Brushed back my hair and whispered a small apology as she scraped a sample from my eye. Delicately I was returned to my jar and then to the shelf as the laboratory lights were extinguished one by one.

I began to scheme. Perhaps, despite my jar-bound existence I could possibly exert my force of will. I could concentrate my intelligence to a preternatural extent, my vast psyche might pull in some foolish humans and bend them to my simian will.

The problem, of course, is bending the right human to my will. As a monkey foetus I had no practised wiles or focused psychic dominance methodology. However this did not deter me from the cause I had discovered, no, embraced. I knew that worship was my due and I set about securing it.

Soon enough my usefulness as a biological sample was outworn. My raven-haired benefactor saw me to the furnace with that same sad air she always carried but despite the inevitability of my fate I had hope. My vast will exerted by desperate circumstance made mincemeat of mere human understanding, they decided to sell me as a curiosity. Or so they thought. I had managed a coup of sorts, and those white coated philistines would needle me no more.

I am not privy to the mechanism of human currency nor do I care to think upon such irrelevance but I am sure a vast sum of money made possible the transference of ownership. In my glassy prison I rejoiced! No more needles, no more white coated fools who await a harsh judgement come the day of my ascendancy!

Oh such an idiot was I. The bending of my mind unto the laboratory assistants did not have complete success.. I was sold, yes sold,(and what insult can rival that) to a travelling showman. A purveyor of tricks and fairground nonsense. To be exhibited before inbred fools who thought a man stuffing a ferret down his trousers worthy of laughter. I was not even the star attraction. Just a sad monkey in a jar to amuse the gap-toothed country fair bastards.

I shared my horrors with a fine gentleman tiger, they took his claws but never his spirit. Not one to speak often he told me ‘fuck them, they’ll get what they deserve someday’

One of natures stoics, but his earthy wisdom saw me through those dark, dark times.

And then, one day, people stopped coming to look at me. Times had changed and this new thing called the internet meant one could view all the disgusting oddities one wanted without leaving your chair. I was consigned to a dusty shelf and forgotten. But I still schemed. When the time came some humans dug me from obscurity and I managed to inveigle them in my world domination scheme. I have myself a shrine and a plan. Do not fear my plans. Just anticipate them.

Saving Little Lucas

Lucas’ head thumped against the wall. It righted itself momentarily, wobbled vaguely and then deposited itself firmly against another wall with another thump. Another upright interlude and the whole thing repeated itself. Lucas declined to wake up, presumably because the process would not have been a pleasant one for a conscious person. Devon’s stomach wavered back and forth too, but with a split-second time lag relative to her brother’s head. She felt that it was this very time lag that was making her feel nauseous rather than the motion itself, the unforgiveable asymmetry of it all being wrong on a more fundamental level than that upon which anything ever managed to be right.
‘Muuuum,’ she wailed, ‘this boat is fucking shit.’
Devon’s mother had long since given up trying to shame her nine-year-old, ringlet-haired, sparkle-eyed princess out of using such language. It was her own fault, she realised, for cramming an ordinary child into a princess-shaped mould and baking her on a low heat for some 100 months. The child she had paid so much less attention to was doing so much better, even if in the current instance he had manage to fall asleep in an awkward corner of the little cabin in the extremely precise orientation required for his head to repeatedly hit the walls in sympathy with the rolling of the ship itself. As to Lucas’ failure to wake up in spite of such punishment, that coud only be some sort of superpower. It could also be some sort of concussion, the mother realised a split second before she noticed something even more worrying; namely that the inner wall of the cabin had vanished and been replaced with some peculiar cross between a bubble, a nightmare, a patch of oil slithering across a puddle and some sort of B-movie end of the universe. The last thing Devon’s mother had time to do before the apparition consumed her soul and scattered her organs was to glance across at her daughter and mutter two words to herself; ‘thank fuck.’

‘Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. Sorry to disturb you but we’ve encountered a small problem. It seems that a creature of some sort has materialised in the ship’s engine room. This creature is a being of such undescribable horror that I will be commiting suicide immediately after I have concluded this short announcement for your safety and reassurance. The creature appears to feed upon humans. It prefers their life force to their actual flesh, which is deposited more or less intact once the feeding process is complete. Intact according to an auditor’s definition at least, if not actually provided in the correct order. Feeding takes place via trans-dimensional projections of the creature’s energy matrix which materialise more or less at random throughout the ship and consume the nearest individual before disappearing again. There is no warning. There is no escape. There is no sense in running. If you can, find youself a strong drink and try and summon some happy memories to cling to while you wait for the end. I wouldn’t advocate any attempts to draw excessive comfort from these memories however, as any life lived in the same sphere of existance as the thing in the engine room, no matter how joyous or noble it may have been, amounts to little more than an attempt to cover over a black hole with some plaster and a lick of paint.’

‘Is that it then?’ Devon demanded as the speaker fell silent.
‘I think I heard a soft sort of sound at the end there,’ the newly awakened Lucas pondered, ‘could have been him cutting his wrists off.’
‘Not cutting his wrists off you idiot, he’d just have been cutting his wrists. Or cutting his wrists open. You cut your wrists open or you cut your hands off. You don’t cut your wrists off though, that would be absurd,’ Devon said without looking at her brother. The spot where her mother had been standing persisted in it’s refusal to contain her mother. It contained any number of organs and a diverse and colourful selection of fluids, but no mothers. This situation struck Devon as unforgiveably silly.
‘So the monster thing has taken mum then?’
‘Sort of, she’s still here but he’s unlikely to be of much use to us.’
‘Is she asleep?’ Lucas asked, his voice heartbreakingly innocent.
‘Why the fuck not, yeah she’s asleep. She’s asleep in that little pile of entrails there on the floor look, she’ll be up and about any minute to take care of the monster for us.’
Lucas did as he was told and peered over the edge of his bunk. Well conditioned by his big sister, he didn’t cry. He took it in his stride, as anyone who doesn’t want a kick in the shins invariably must.
‘So what about the monster?’ he eventually asked after enough time had passed to make it seem as though he hadn’t been giving the matter excessive thought.
‘Well it’ll have to be stopped obviously.’
‘Will the captain stop it?’
‘The captain has taken the coward’s way out.’
‘A lifeboat?’
‘Why the fuck not, yeah a lifeboat.’
‘Can we stop it do you think?’
‘No.’
‘That’s a shame.’
‘I can stop it.’
‘How do you know that? The captain didn’t even say what it was. It could be a shark even,’ Lucas whimpered.
‘I don’t care if it is a fucking shark. I don’t care if it’s the big fuck shitface king of the fucking sharks I’m going to fucking kill it.’
‘Don’t go out there Dee Dee, someone else will sort it out. A grown up will do something.’
‘Grown ups can’t stop it kiddo.’
‘Why not?’
‘They haven’t got little shitface brothers that need protecting.’

Andy Andrews, the ship’s cook, had a soft spot for pirates. He possessed a selection of fine pirate clothing, a fine pirate accent and the least pirate name in the world. Whispers (albeit suspiciously adamant whispers) amongst the ship’s kitchen staff maintained that Andy had been known to pay his rent boys a little extra for certain pirate-related services the details of which posterity has no need of. Andy would have been the subject of much mockery in a world where he wasn’t 6’ 6” tall and some 25 stone in weight. Legend had it that Andy could bench press cattle. It is an advantage delusional souls posess that they need not despair in the face of hopeless odds. Sea monsters were par for the course to Andy, even though he’d never actually encountered anything more fearsome than a seafood salad in what other people always insisted on calling the ‘real’ world. He didn’t even feel vindicated when this current monster showed up, it was obvious to him that something along these lines was going to happen sooner or later. Even if the monster was of a kind Andy might describe as ‘existential’ (Andy had read a lot of books, and understood nearly some of them) it could doubtless be dealt with in the time-honoured fashion, namely a cutlass to the squishy parts. It so happened that Andy had a selection of cutlasses in his cabin. Taking no chances, he eschewed the more ornate models and selected the two very pointiest instead. Eye patch and limp strategically discarded, Andy Andrews ran for the engine room.

Devon had no plan. She did have a pair of cutlasses though, she had found them protruding from a very large pile of entrails in the corridor just outside the duty free shop. Devon had no plan, but she knew everything there was to know about being dramatic. The duty free shop was sealed off by a padlocked shutter but the padlock proved little match for a cutlass and some skillfully applied leverage. Devon tore open a carton of lucky strikes and withdrew a single pack. She perused the selection of expensive zippos and helped herself to one with a German flag on it. The German flag was actually Belgian but Devon didn’t know this because her teachers were total fuckers and they talked a load of old shit and everyone knew that. If anyone asked, Devon had been smoking for years. If anyone checked, she’d been smoking since last week when she had stolen a pack from a year 7 kid, smoked three in a row and vomited into a hedge. Drama required cigarettes though, everyone knew that. Devon lit one and tried not to breathe. Down the corridor ahead of her a man burst from the door of the gents. He ignored the little multilingual sign and tripped over the little step, stumbling forward into the bubble-ripple-nightmare-tentacle which appeared just in time to catch him. Because of the momentum he had gained from falling forward, the man’s components managed to hit the opposite wall in something broadly simillar to the outline of human form. Some of them bounced back. Devon carefully selected the opposite direction and ran.

Little Ahmed lurked. He hadn’t heard the captain’s announcement, he was in the engine room, and it was far too loud in there to hear anything. The engines themselves were silent, what was currently deafening Little Ahmed was the screams ringing inside his own head as he stared at the beast. It rippled and it pulsed and it sparkled black sparks. The beast rumbled and it roared and it shuddered with laughter each time a scream rang out somewhere else on the ship. Little Ahmed didn’t know about the tentacles appearing and vanishing throughout the ship, none had appeared in the engine room itself, but he did know that people were dying. The creature radiated death, it stank of it. The beast hadn’t seen Little Ahmed, or it simply didn’t care that he was there. Little Ahmed could think only of finding some way to kill the thing, or rather he could only think of it. Little Ahmed was paralysed by fear. Thinking was all he could do, at least on top of the mammoth effort needed to keep his heart from exploding in his chest. Everyone else had fled. Everyone else was dead. Little Ahmed, somehow, turned his head.

The decks were lined with passengers and crew alike, fighting each other for the chance to leap overboard first. Tentacles claimed a few, the sea claimed more. The lifeboats had all been launched already, none full and one completely empty save for a single former human who had just about had time to look on at the people stranded on the deck and assume that he at least was safe. Devon didn’t stop to survey this scene for long, she lurched and tumbled her way down the big double staircase into the belly of the ship, cutlasses rattling in time with her bones as she went.

Little Ahmed hauled himself away from his hiding place and grabbed the fire extinguisher from it’s rack on the bulkhead wall. He crept back towards the creature, slowing with every step, knowing that soon he would have to announce himself as the creature’s mortal enemy and not looking forward to the consequences. He raised the extinguisher’s hose and removed the safety pin. He paused to speculate upon the futility of attacking a beast which had probably come from the sea using only water, and then Little Ahmed attacked.

A roar shook the ship. Devon, now heading down what she thought of as the poor people’s deck. Standard class, even in her head and even drowning in fury and fear she could still spit the word ‘standard’. There was always time for contempt. There were plenty more dead people in this corridor. They were only standard dead people though, unlikely on balance to be greatly missed by anyone of a higher standard than standard. The piles of human rubble could clearly sense Devon’s disapproval, as they were retreating down the corridor. Devon felt suddenly quite sick. Devon realised that the stern of the ship was rapidly dropping, or the bow rising, or something which was turning the corridor into a lift shaft at any rate. She fell to the floor while it could still be described as such, slid her cutlasses underneath the ancient blue-grey carpet lining the corridor and rearranged her grip on the handles. The blades were sharp, but Devon didn’t weigh much. She fell just about slowly enough to avoiding hitting the wall/floor before the ship levelled out again. There were a couple of seconds for her to feel very confused and very lucky before a tentacle-bubble appeared in the corridor. It wasn’t close enough to get her. But it could, and she hadn’t considered this before, move towards her. Devon hurled herself down the next staircase and ran.

Little Ahmed had long suspected that he was never going to have an easy life. He also felt that the current situation was taking matters a little far. Just when he thought that he was never going to encounter anything so evil as his first wife, the universe plays yet another trump card. Just when he thought he’d been beaten up enough times and in enough novel ways, he gets thrown against a large metal wall adorned with lots of very uncomfortable pipes and valves. Then a fire extinguisher lands on his head. But the greatest injustice of all was that Little Ahmed was still conscious. He’d watched the feeble jet of water pass right through the creature and do nothing but splatter on the deck beyond it, he knew he was helpless and doomed along with everyone else on the ship, he was in incredible pain and he couldn’t even be permitted to lose consciousness. Then the ship righted itself, the creature’s revenge complete, and Little Ahmed was thrown back onto the deck. The fire extinguisher landed on his shin this time.

Devon didn’t see any point in looking back to see if the tentacle was gaining on her. It wasn’t as though there was anything she could do about it either way, she was already running significantly faster than a human being had ever run before. She wouldn’t have been able to run so fast if she still had her cutlasses, and she probably would have stopped altogether from the shock if she realised that she had left them behind. Another thing she didn’t realise was that she had no idea where she was going, and this was probably for the best as well. This new corridor was not a public one, no carpets and no patronising signs. No maps of the ship either, nor any time to look at the maps which were not there in any case. Devon was actively fighting off these various revelations by the time providence intervened in the form of a door marked ‘engine room’. Providence gives you nothing for free though, and the door was jammed shut.

Little Ahmed drew himself up, albeit only as far as his meagre frame would allow. He dragged the fire extinguisher off the floor and held it up above his head. He considered a scream of some kind, or a one-liner, but he soon realised that he wasn’t actually in a film, if only because films have to make some kind of sense. He launched his battered bones forwards into some kind of run and hurled the extinguisher with all his limited might. It hit the target, passed through the target as easily as the water had and bounced off the door in the opposite wall. The door sprang open with a comical clanging sound as Ahmed tumbled gracelessly to the floor. It was now the turn of the beast to draw itself up, and in order to better loom over the defeated deck hand it began to levitate some three feet above the deck. The black spraks grew blacker, the pure sonic oppression that passed for its voice grew deeper, the peristatic pulsations grew faster and yet more hideous, the entire ship began to shriek and crackle as the creature’s growing power pulled at every weld and beam and panel. And still little Ahmed could not close his eyes. He saw the tiny girl in the ridiculous dress hurl herself into the room and stumble towards him, looking not at the beast but at the rippling bulb of distorted space which pursued her. He watched as she turned to face the source of the sound which crushed her soul is it was crushing his, he saw her slip on the puddle left by his first failed attack and sprawl forwards, following the trail left by the water when the deck had briefly been the wall. His throat closed up in horror as he saw the terrified child sliding towards the beast. His mind didn’t hold out quite long enough for him to see the tentacle fly over the head of its fallen quarry and strike the beast itself. Only Devon was left able to hear the creature scream as it folded and tangled itself away into nothing, belching beams of light and bolts of static in al directions as it did so. She saw the thing shrivel and fade and heard the screams whither away and felt the ship exhaling in relief as its tortured frame was released from the unholy grip of the beast. She took a moment to congratulate herself before getting to her feet, and then she revived Little Ahmed in what seemed to be the most sensible manner. She fetched the fire extinguisher, aimed it into Little Ahmed’s face, and fired.

Lucas, unsure of what else do after his sister had left to fight the beast, had slept through the whole thing.

There were some forty survivors. Everyone was rescued by mysterious men in black helicopters who explained to them that the ship had suffered an explosion in the engine room and sank and that they had all been plucked out of the water by the coastguard. Then the helicopters fired some missiles and sank the ship themselves. When everyone was back on dry land having the revised version of events explained to them one more time, together with the penalties for failing to recall it accurately when interviewed by members of the press, Devon found the head mysterious man.
‘I know none of this happened,’ she said as innocently as she could, ‘but you should know that that man over there on the stretcher, he saved all of us. The whole ship.’
Devon explained to the man all about how Little Ahmed had tricked the monster into eating itself, putting himself in mortal danger in the process, and how they should find some secret way to give him a medal. The man said that he thought they could do rather better than that and wandered off towards Little Ahmed where he lay amongst a circle of medical staff. Devon heard the words ‘unique opporunity’ mentioned, and she saw Ahmed just about managing to smile.
‘Why did you do that?’ Lucas asked, having appeared from nowhere the way small boys do.
‘I just wanted to do something nice for him.’
‘But you have no idea who he was or what actually happened back there,’ Lucas protested.
‘I saw him there lying on the floor right where the monster was before it vanished. He was out cold, no idea of all the chaos around him. I suppose he reminded me of you.’

He sails. Velvet night like some soft glove, a womb. It encompasses the totality of existence between feeds, re-runs of comedy shows and the checking of the caskets. No one asked him to caretake for this long, no one expected him to watch them for a lifetime. But these are interstellar gulfs and he is it. No one factored janitorial money into this trip.

This trip was a fast-becoming-standard cheap raft. Hab modules scavenged from the usual sources and lashed together to provide a living space for whoever was woken for watch duty. A vast accretion of modules bolted together to provide a living space for the 3 months rota. Only nobody woke to relieve him. After four months he began interrogating the dumb terminal with stupid questions, expecting answers other than ‘data insufficient’

Only when he began to read logs did he realise. The first clue came from sheer volume of data.

It was the fifth week of his caretakership. The routine was as always, breakfast with Marylin Manson and Nine Inch Nails. Fuck you void. Fuck you. Then the size of the log caught his eye. A computer system designed to take near a million terabytes of information, nearly full?

He finished another rehydrated breakfast of egg and corn bread before preparing for the free-fall section. The euphoria of free fall was matched by the apprehension of knowing gut deep that something was wrong. Back in another spun hab, through a complex four lock system of airlocks he finds a hydroponics lab he could call ‘angola’. The system is wrecked beyond control. But he ventures forth enough to raid a tomato plant, some green bananas and the roots of potato plants.

Back on hab module he fights tears. This was never his job. Caretaker, three months. That was the deal. Pay the fee, do the duty. A new life awaits you in the colonies!

Interrogate the computers again. It has become a daily ritual. Nothing new. Starcharts he never had a chance of understanding. Read-outs on the caskets. The only time a red flashed up he rushed to the sealed deck to claw and scream hopelessly as she did the same. A death for a caretaker who never wanted this. They didn’t design it for no personnel. Where are they?

He spends his waking days obsessing over what could have happened to the overseers. His was only ever support role, a helping hand that gained a discount on flight cost.

He watched, like a Noah, over fully 50,000 caskets. Each one with a person interred, expecting to be awoken and ferried down to the colony world. Why live the journey? Chill out and thaw out on delivery, let physics take the stress.

Nobody asked for more than three months. Nobody asked for anything other than support staff roles.

Nobody asked a man to watch a colony ark on his own.

Self-pity can only last so long. After the fourth dejected trip to the jungle of a hydroponics section he floats further. Deeper. To a section that has no designation, hidden behind hydro and an engineering module.

Freefall is what he has now. The comedies have grown stale, repeat after repeat. The simple pleasure of a well prepared meal is just that. Simple.

So in the weightless gloom he spins and plays, gaining the grace and elite-unite movements a Marine would envy. A quick twist-flick of the heel bounces him from secondary hull to gantry, a brief twist grip of the rail sends him to the hydro hab and another piston push from the legs sent him sailing towards the dark hab module. The whispered cargo, glorious enough to launch but shhh!

The Tax

The cleaver hit bone and jammed fast. It was smeared with juices from the meat. His grip slid down the handle, the blade nicking his index finger. He winced. The boy looked up.

“It’s nothing,” he said and smiled.

The boy fidgeted and looked to his sister. She was sewing up the hole in the sack.

“It’s nothing,” said the man again. He was tired. They hadn’t much time. “Get back to work.”

The boy picked up his stick. He had whittled it down to a fine point. A little sharper and it would be ready for curing. He held it up and pricked his finger. A small point of blood appeared, lit by the light of the stove. He licked at the blood. The taste was salty.

His sister was concentrating hard, needle in hand, twine between her lips. He jabbed her with the stick, below the ribs. She yelped, dropping the needle and twine, darting forward with hand raised. The boy scrambled backwards, laughing, dodging his sister.

“Stop it,” said the man. They froze, looking at him, the boy cowering.

“We haven’t much time,” his voice was low with anger and exhaustion. “Stop; if you want to eat tonight.”

It had been days since he had slept more than a couple of hours. He put the cleaver down and leaned back in his wheelchair, resting a moment. Sometimes he struggled, more often now than in the beginning.

He rubbed his eyes and set his grip back firm on the handle. With a thud he brought the blade down, opening up a deep fissure above the thigh. Juices spattered onto his shirt. It had been dirty longer than he could remember.

The boy and the girl were still looking at him. The boy was close to tears.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to…” he said. He had never had children of his own. Even after seventeen months the boy was still scared of him.

“We haven’t much time,” he said. “Let’s get back to work.” He smiled and the girl smiled back. The boy tentatively picked up his stick and began whittling away again.

The man had never been a butcher and the practise hadn’t improved him. Whenever he came up against something hard he hacked around and levered it out. The soft stuff went in the sack. He kept the bones and scraps for soup. It was all they had eaten for months now.

A little while later he took a break. He wheeled himself over to the curtain that hid the window. He had cut it from a carpet. It hung heavy from five large nails he had hammered in. He pulled it back a few inches.

Out in the gloom were the silhouettes of the trees beyond. Behind them the last of the light was dying. They would be here soon.

He let the curtain fall back. It slapped heavily against the wall. The man looked to the children sat by the stove. The boy was watching the girl sewing. She was a year older. The man felt sorry for the boy. He still hadn’t learnt enough. In a year maybe they’d both be ready.

A shrill blast came from outside.

The girl shot him a glance. He wheeled himself over to the table.
“Get the sack,” he said in a low urgent voice.

The girl clambered up. She still had the needle and twine in her teeth. “It’s not ready. The hole’s not closed,” she said.

“Bring it here.”

“But it’s not…”

“Open it up, bring it here,” said the man.

The girl came over, holding it open. “Look, here, it’s still…”

“No, that’s not going to…” the man said, running his fingers over the gap, “come here,” he said to the boy. The boy shuffled over, chewing his lip. The man held the sack open. “You, hold it here, like this,” showing the boy how. The boy placed his hands where the man showed him, “now hold it open, tight. Really strong. You can be strong, right?”

The boy nodded, eyes full of fear.

“It’s important. Hold it tight. You can do that, yes?” said the man.

“Yes,” said the boy quietly.

The girl was sewing up the sides, concentrating hard on the hole she had to close.

“Good. Now you keep on. I’ll fill it up,” he said to the girl. She nodded.

Another shrill blast.

They all looked to the door. From outside came the crunch of snow on the path.

The girl’s voice broke. “Come on,” she said, “they’re almost here.”

The meat glistened on the table top, lit by the fire of the stove. He hurriedly scraped big clumps into his arms, sweeping it into the bag. It hit the bottom of the sack with a thud. The boy held firm. The man swept another armful into the bag. A few scraps spilt over. One clung to the boy’s face. The man flicked it off. It left a stain. The man piled more into the bag.

The crunches came louder and louder up the path. Then, just outside the door, they stopped.

He frantically swept in the last. He held the sides of the gap. She sewed it up tight.

A knock came at the door, deliberate and hard.

“Go on, go on, get it over, go on, be quick…” said the man.

Two more knocks came, loud and quick.

The girl heaved the sack up onto her back. It was soaked through and slipped down.

The boy rammed his shoulder up underneath and they staggered over to the low door.

“Quick, get on with it, quick, before they come in…” said the man, leaning half out of his chair.

They were by the door. The girl’s grasp slipped.

The handle turned. The door opened a crack.

The sack slid out of the girl’s clutch and flopped to the floor. Meat spilled out.

The door opened a little further and a burst of cold air swept in.

“Now. Go. Go. Get it out. Now…”

The boy snatched up the meat that had spilled out and thrust it back into the sack.

Four long fingers with old, purpled, veiny skin clasped the edge of the door. The nails were black.

With a heave the boy shoved the sack up against the opening.

The fingers snatched down. The boy gave a shout. Part of his shirt had been caught.

The girl screamed and darted forward. The sack slipped out through, the boy following. The girl lunged after, grabbed his feet and pulled. With a heave the boy came hurtling back in to the room.

The girl rammed the door home and turned to her brother. He was shivering and crying. The man wheeled over.

“Are you OK?” he said to the boy.

The boy didn’t answer him.

“Leave us alone,” said the girl.

The man looked down, unsure of what to say.

The girl held the boy tight and looked at the man. “Leave us alone,” she said.

The man wheeled himself back over to the table. He picked up the cleaver, examined the handle and brought it down hard, cracking one of the ribs.

Cisplatin Dreams

Three people share the ward with me. In the opposite bed is Mr A. He is dying, nurses hover round him and his breath rattles in his throat. He hardly ever wakes up and when he does the only sounds he makes are agonised groans and deep, gasping sighs. No-one, other than the teams of abrupt doctors who chatter around him and sometimes draw his curtains to hide their poking and prodding, has come to see him.

Mr B is trying to work out what’s going on. I think he is trying to be strong, but he hardly knows where he is, let alone what he is capable of. He wants to be able to take a shit for himself, but the difference between the floor and the toilet is hard for him. In the night he calls out constantly; ‘nurse… Nurse! NURSE!’. They come sometimes, but as soon as they leave he starts again and they ignore him, they have to really. Sometimes he tries to get out of bed, they do come then, to haul him back in. He’ll try a few more times before he goes back to calling for them.

Mr C is middle England personified, a copy of the Daily Mail by his bed he is oddly reassuring. His wife turned up today. I feel like I should laugh at the brown skirt, grey cardigan and severe, librarian glasses, but they are kind, they talk to me about their children in Australia, their marriage. They ask me to fix their computer, I say yes of course, but I know I won’t.

It’s evening already, I held off coming in for as long as possible, so the nurses put the cannula in my arm and start the first drips. It’s odd how your body manages to cope with a needle stuck in your arm overnight, some kind of innate response that tells you rolling over would be a really, really bad idea at the moment. Eventually, despite Mr B’s efforts, I sleep.

We are on a narrow boat that drifts slowly along past fields of grass. The light is a greasy yellow and something is wrong. I wait to find out what, but we just drift onwards, everyone else seems purposeful and resolute and I cannot question them. Eventually we reach a city, belching thick clouds of sulphur into the noisome air. Twisted, gigantic factories sigh with human voices and something draws us down into thick brown water. I cry out and everything stops. They point at me and we are back in the fields, and I forget why I am here.

My friends are sitting in front of me, a million miles away. They chatter about somewhere else, voices occasionally hushed as they remember where they are. One of them is looking at me and comforting, she smiles and turns back to the other. I say something odd, sluggish mind always a few steps behind. A smile tainted by confusion responds, a pat on the knee, pity. Once they have left I haul the tubes of toxins through this hollow, pastel coloured world to a toilet that stinks of disinfectant.

I stand in front of it and glare at my dick, which, against all rational expectations, is hard. Its cause is dripping steadily into my arm, a saline solution flowing cold in my blood. I try to take my mind off it, if I don’t think about it, it might slink away so that I can seize my moment. My mind wonders through the stock images of compromised politicians and Barney Gumble. The erection remains, impassive. There is nothing for it but to angle my body towards the toilet bowl, a half tilt that gives the correct angle for a perfect strike. I am good at this, an art every man who drinks too much must train in, but which I have honed over the past few days. The lovely warm glow of release is marred slightly by the less pleasant warmth of piss on my hands, but mostly I have been on target. I retreat to my bed, knowing that I will be back here in a couple of hours.

On the way back I pass the private room I had when they started my treatment, they’ve put up a whiteboard across the doorway which reminds visitors that the patient is vulnerable to infection, an epitaph in marker pen. In bed I read for a while, I’m not feeling too bad yet, my mind is fuzzy but one or another of the drips and pills is holding off the nausea and there hasn’t been time for the full effects to kick in. My head to the wall, gradually I drift off to sleep.

I am trapped. My hair has grown long over ages of waiting and they have tied each strand to some strange, black device. Slowly, carefully I begin to untie them. The work is exhausting, my muscles have almost wasted away and I can hardly see any more. After I have worked for a few hours, the machine screams at me. The knots are restored and I start again, the same pattern stretching over millennia.

I wake up more tired than when I went to sleep. My body is covered in sweat and my mouth hurts, hard with a thin film of mucus at the back. Breakfast and blood tests come around, and they hook up some new drips. Antibiotics today, they feel hot, tingling under my skin. I try to read, but I can’t focus properly, it’s an odd feeling; detached, out of sync with the world around me.

Mr C tells me he is going to die soon. He was asking about my treatment, I told him short but intense, I’ll be fine. Almost as if it was an aside he told me they think he has six months left. I know I should feel something, but it’s hard to think. I just want to sleep now, although I know I’ll feel like shit all night.

A cold empty plain and a mountain. I walk through tar trying to get to something at the top. It takes days to get there and I stare out at a cold, empty plain and a mountain. I walk through tar trying to get to something at the top. It takes days to get there and I stare out at a cold, empty plain and a mountain. I walk through tar trying to get to something at the top. It takes days to get there and I stare out at a cold, empty plain and a mountain...

I move up though a fog of sleep, sluggish and sick. I try to work out where I am, I feel awful. The taste of yesterday’s Thai red curry lingers in my mouth and I know I won’t be able to eat it again. Fresh, gorgeous, unappetising fruit lies by my bed, brought by mother and uncle yesterday. I wasn’t looking forward to that, thought it would be awkward, full of pity. They are both used to dealing with people who have cancer though and just chatted quietly about architecture and design. Reassuring.

I climb out of my bed, open the curtains and realise Mr A died last night. No-one says anything of course, but the bed is empty and the sheets crisp and new. Later Mr B tells me they took him to one of the private rooms, I ask if anyone came. They did; a small queue by a whiteboard tombstone. I hope the morphine stopped his dreams.