He was my stars. It sounds cliche to say but it's how I felt. He lit up my night sky and made it shine, he sparkled across it, every aspect of who he was blazing individually in the abyss that every other component of my day-to-day created. He was the sun itself too, the darkness rose like a tidal wave above me in his absence, crushing me under it's oppressive weight and holding me there like a submissive prisoner until he returned to explode through it and make his way back into my arms. I never thought of him as damaged. He was perfection embodied to me, a blue-eyed angel with dyed black hair. I couldn't see past his resplendent smile, and into his fragmentary heart. To me the boy was the center of my barely-spinning universe, there to revolve for - to get out of bed for. He was a drunk conversation on a Saturday night that turned into the person that defined me, the name that followed the 'and' after mine. He was everything, and he was alive.
And then he was gone. In the blink of an eye he crumbled and fell, like the empire of Rome my love became obsolete a mere memory of something once so grand, so impenetrable. Sometimes I wonder, late into the night, if it was my darkness that got him - my pain. Did it seep in from over-exposure to my toxicity. But he screamed through his own gloom, battled his own obscurity. I saw it, in the depths. Behind the speckled iris of his perfect eyes. Beneath the musical chortle of his lively laughter. Hiding in his pearly smile. Lacing all his perfect words, poisoning them with inevitable demise. If I hadn't been so dependent on him, maybe i'd have voiced my concern. Maybe, if it wasn't for my demons to distract me, I'd have noticed the skeletal form of his. Those dancing imps, come to taunt from Satan's nursery, to prey on the minds of the innocent, deforming their dreams from celestial wants into ineffable horrors. Without them, i'd still have him.
I do what I can to forget him, to be rid of his formidable presence. But there are things that don't go away. The memory of his cautious touch - that hits me on the first day of summer. The air changes and as I inhale the heat I think of his almost accidental brush of my flushing cheek on the evening of our first encounter. In the winters I taste him on my lips, dry blood and lip balm - that season's memory cocktail. The thought of never seeing him again no longer haunts me, as with every slowly ebbing second I run closer to him. To one day greet him in the comforting arms of death. Sometimes, if I ignore reality and hole away with the memory of him, he feels so close I can almost taste the chemical sting of his skin on the tip of my desperate tongue. It's then that I struggle most, when I can almost deny that he's truly gone. Everyday when I first awake there's a second I cherish. It occurs just before I open my eyes. In that beat of my struggling heart he is still alive, and we're sickeningly happy again. My sky's restored and my planet isn't orbiting blind.
But then the moment passes, and the grief holds me once more. Tighter than he ever did. They say pain can't be remembered.The sensation can be recollected, but the sensation not mirrored. It's simply ghosted, a phantom reminiscence of something agonizing. But in that moment I feel that pain, it shoots through me like the day it happened, just as sharp and just as harrowing. Constantly I live through that knowledge that it will come again, and as I close my eyes at night I dread the rising sun, dread the day ahead. Sleep taunts me with it's necessity - I curse it until with exhaustion it beats me down, until the dreams of him begin.
Even in the wake of happiness I feel that brush of pain. Every laugh, every smile, is laced with something sinister; because I survived - and he didn't.
Wednesday, 24 April 2013
Monday, 22 April 2013
Jackals
The prairie was darkening. He could feel the change of season in the air, his skin prickling with goosebumps like tiny mountains erupting all over the plains of his forearms. His hairs stood on end and the orange sun blazed over him like a molten wave, drenching him in it's soft, inviting light. He squinted through it's marvel and focused on the eclipsing horizon. This would be the last sunset he ever saw round these parts. He stared straight into the sun, daring it to burn him alive, to turn him into ashes so he could join his beloved prairie and dance in the tornadoes of the land he cherished.
Every one of his exhales had the strength and emotion of a repressed sigh. It was if his respiratory system couldn't quite hold the weight of his heavy heart. His soft brown eyes and rough black hair caught the glow of the sun, making them shine in crescent forms. His hair, a sickle atop a meadow - his eyes, segments of a dying moon. His face was dark from constant exposure to the midday heat and the aggressive sun. He tipped his hat further down his worn face, harnessing shadow to shield his pensive eyes from the unforgiving flare. He was a rider, he herded the cattle across to safety and that's all he'd ever known. That and the relentless howls of wolves and coyote all out for a lick of his rich blood. He watched them circle at the edges of the horizon where the dusk lived. They were inexplicably terrifying, and hauntingly beautiful - bounding and falling in playful taunt.
He kicked off his boots to feel the hot dust and dying soil of the dehydrated pasture beneath his callus toes. He swept his eyes across the land, taking in every grain of sand, every shadow pressed against the blazing sun - dancing and leaping forms of deer and hefty patient cattle roaming freely with no thoughts beyond the grass in their mouths or the milk in their udders. He held his gaze over the feeble glow of stars beginning to emerge through the dulling expanse above him, fighting through the stubborn last day of his world. The battle of the future and the past, commencing silently just above his head.
He thought of the girls who'd walked beside him down these parts, and the men who'd rode in front. He thought of Evangeline and her soft lips. He thought of how they laughed as he beat the dust from her bonnet after their desperate tumble under the cover of night in the summer heat. He thought of the fiddle's playful tune soothing him to sleep in those cold merciless winters. And then he thought of the concrete, of the trains and the automobiles, of the fast approaching rape of his virgin prairie. The death of it's innocence. The destruction of all that it, and therefore he, was.
The sun had really set now. The darkness consumed him like a hug at a funeral, cold and shrouded in black. The stars above him cried, dripping tears of phosphorescent beauty to replenish the gasping ground. The chorus of crickets was his lullaby and his eyes began to droop. He wished to stay for eternity, to trap the miracle of this moment in the back of his mind - to revisit whenever he dared to dream.
In the end the jackals edged first, snaking towards him in silence, bounding lightly around the cattle. He held his gun close, ready for the pounce. But all he wished for was to jump, to skip toward the jackals as they morphed out of the darkness and began to stalk their victims. He watched them move, their doe-like legs bounding and jumping, bushy tails waving playfully in the air. Every movement enchanting, captivating - deadly. He longed to be chased, caught, and ripped apart by their beautiful mouths to dwell in their strong anatomy until expelled out onto the tundra where he'd melt into the grassland forever. But his terror was too much. He feared death more than he feared change. He could no longer pretend the world wasn't moving too fast for him and in the morning the contractors would come, and they'd pave roads across his ethereal barren home.
The strays reached the cows but it didn't matter anymore - they were no longer needed, not in this new world. He heard the jackals scream as he turned his back on all he'd ever known - and he wondered how they knew, exactly what he was thinking.
Every one of his exhales had the strength and emotion of a repressed sigh. It was if his respiratory system couldn't quite hold the weight of his heavy heart. His soft brown eyes and rough black hair caught the glow of the sun, making them shine in crescent forms. His hair, a sickle atop a meadow - his eyes, segments of a dying moon. His face was dark from constant exposure to the midday heat and the aggressive sun. He tipped his hat further down his worn face, harnessing shadow to shield his pensive eyes from the unforgiving flare. He was a rider, he herded the cattle across to safety and that's all he'd ever known. That and the relentless howls of wolves and coyote all out for a lick of his rich blood. He watched them circle at the edges of the horizon where the dusk lived. They were inexplicably terrifying, and hauntingly beautiful - bounding and falling in playful taunt.
He kicked off his boots to feel the hot dust and dying soil of the dehydrated pasture beneath his callus toes. He swept his eyes across the land, taking in every grain of sand, every shadow pressed against the blazing sun - dancing and leaping forms of deer and hefty patient cattle roaming freely with no thoughts beyond the grass in their mouths or the milk in their udders. He held his gaze over the feeble glow of stars beginning to emerge through the dulling expanse above him, fighting through the stubborn last day of his world. The battle of the future and the past, commencing silently just above his head.
He thought of the girls who'd walked beside him down these parts, and the men who'd rode in front. He thought of Evangeline and her soft lips. He thought of how they laughed as he beat the dust from her bonnet after their desperate tumble under the cover of night in the summer heat. He thought of the fiddle's playful tune soothing him to sleep in those cold merciless winters. And then he thought of the concrete, of the trains and the automobiles, of the fast approaching rape of his virgin prairie. The death of it's innocence. The destruction of all that it, and therefore he, was.
The sun had really set now. The darkness consumed him like a hug at a funeral, cold and shrouded in black. The stars above him cried, dripping tears of phosphorescent beauty to replenish the gasping ground. The chorus of crickets was his lullaby and his eyes began to droop. He wished to stay for eternity, to trap the miracle of this moment in the back of his mind - to revisit whenever he dared to dream.
In the end the jackals edged first, snaking towards him in silence, bounding lightly around the cattle. He held his gun close, ready for the pounce. But all he wished for was to jump, to skip toward the jackals as they morphed out of the darkness and began to stalk their victims. He watched them move, their doe-like legs bounding and jumping, bushy tails waving playfully in the air. Every movement enchanting, captivating - deadly. He longed to be chased, caught, and ripped apart by their beautiful mouths to dwell in their strong anatomy until expelled out onto the tundra where he'd melt into the grassland forever. But his terror was too much. He feared death more than he feared change. He could no longer pretend the world wasn't moving too fast for him and in the morning the contractors would come, and they'd pave roads across his ethereal barren home.
The strays reached the cows but it didn't matter anymore - they were no longer needed, not in this new world. He heard the jackals scream as he turned his back on all he'd ever known - and he wondered how they knew, exactly what he was thinking.
Tuesday, 16 April 2013
Dream
I have this dream, maybe once or twice a month - always the same sequence of events, always the same outcome. I'm sitting in a dinky corner of a desolate warehouse, the pungent odor of urine consumes me as I awake spluttering as if I was trapped under five feet of ocean spray. I look around but there is no light at my level of vision. I avert my gaze to the ceiling where a slither of light is visible. My lids squint protectively over my burning pupils as they just can't handle the pathetic glow from the dirty window. Like snails into their homes when met with a salty foe I struggle to coax them out of their hiding place, to once again search for me within the bleak nothingness surrounding my entity. I do not feel fear, although I can feel my palms sweat.
My eyes slowly begin to adjust to the darkness and I can make out multiple slumped shapes dancing like mirages in the heat. They are squirming on the floor like they are struggling to move and as I squint closer I notice they are human beings. Chained to miscellaneous points around the room. Some are missing various limbs, others extremities, some are just badly bruised and cut. All are crying, howling in pain and screaming with unfortunate rage. I feel a desire to go to their aid, but it is quickly extinguished and replaced with a mild curiosity to discover how they came to be there.
I am hit by a memory. A monstrous, sickening being, disproportionate in girth to height, it drags itself along the floor of the warehouse through what appears to be the orange glow of an evening sunset. I can not focus my vision on this creature, it is masked in a shadow that moves with it where ever it travels. It leaves behind a trail of human blood, dripping from the fragments of bodies I can see dangling from it's tilted, razor sharp mouth. It's face is curled in the shape of a jagged smile and it's eyes are black. Pinks curls of thin venules swirling through their iris-less mass like toffee swirls on a molded sundae. It's skin is the hue of a cancerous tumor, translucent and pale. It's black veins pound beneath this thin skin and make sickening churning noises with every pump of it's vacuous heart. Still I feel no fear, I look on imbued with a curious sense of longing to solve this puzzle, unmask this enigma. The creature moves around the warehouse towards me and as it's eyes lock with mine I am transported back to the darkness, to the present time.
Only now I can feel my extremities and the room is clear in the dark, I can make out every screaming face, every fragmented nail, every smear of menstruation on the discarded rags in the corner, every crack in the ceiling, all the furniture scattered across the room. I begin to walk, stifly at first then fluidly, towards a cracked mirror above the decrepid sink to the left of the whining bodies. I place my hands either side of the porcelain china and I look up at the smudged, honest mirror.
And in that moment I am struck with more horror than I have ever experienced in this warped and unending dream realm or in the candor of the real world. But what is real? In that moment the marrow in the depths of my bones freezes and my blood stops stagnant in my veins. In that moment my heart beats so hard it slams into my ribs and I can hear them straining to contain it. Cracking under the pressure, blood pooling within my chest. In that moment I sweat more profusely than I thought possible, beads running down my face and a cocoon of damp warmth kissing my cold body. In that moment a sickening bile rises from the pit of my stomach and cankers acidically against the back of my dry, screaming throat. The screams pierce through the silence surrounding my previously peaceful sleep. I shriek and shriek as I try desperately to open my eyes - to make it all stop. Because, in that moment, in that mirror, that monster - was me.
My eyes slowly begin to adjust to the darkness and I can make out multiple slumped shapes dancing like mirages in the heat. They are squirming on the floor like they are struggling to move and as I squint closer I notice they are human beings. Chained to miscellaneous points around the room. Some are missing various limbs, others extremities, some are just badly bruised and cut. All are crying, howling in pain and screaming with unfortunate rage. I feel a desire to go to their aid, but it is quickly extinguished and replaced with a mild curiosity to discover how they came to be there.
I am hit by a memory. A monstrous, sickening being, disproportionate in girth to height, it drags itself along the floor of the warehouse through what appears to be the orange glow of an evening sunset. I can not focus my vision on this creature, it is masked in a shadow that moves with it where ever it travels. It leaves behind a trail of human blood, dripping from the fragments of bodies I can see dangling from it's tilted, razor sharp mouth. It's face is curled in the shape of a jagged smile and it's eyes are black. Pinks curls of thin venules swirling through their iris-less mass like toffee swirls on a molded sundae. It's skin is the hue of a cancerous tumor, translucent and pale. It's black veins pound beneath this thin skin and make sickening churning noises with every pump of it's vacuous heart. Still I feel no fear, I look on imbued with a curious sense of longing to solve this puzzle, unmask this enigma. The creature moves around the warehouse towards me and as it's eyes lock with mine I am transported back to the darkness, to the present time.
Only now I can feel my extremities and the room is clear in the dark, I can make out every screaming face, every fragmented nail, every smear of menstruation on the discarded rags in the corner, every crack in the ceiling, all the furniture scattered across the room. I begin to walk, stifly at first then fluidly, towards a cracked mirror above the decrepid sink to the left of the whining bodies. I place my hands either side of the porcelain china and I look up at the smudged, honest mirror.
And in that moment I am struck with more horror than I have ever experienced in this warped and unending dream realm or in the candor of the real world. But what is real? In that moment the marrow in the depths of my bones freezes and my blood stops stagnant in my veins. In that moment my heart beats so hard it slams into my ribs and I can hear them straining to contain it. Cracking under the pressure, blood pooling within my chest. In that moment I sweat more profusely than I thought possible, beads running down my face and a cocoon of damp warmth kissing my cold body. In that moment a sickening bile rises from the pit of my stomach and cankers acidically against the back of my dry, screaming throat. The screams pierce through the silence surrounding my previously peaceful sleep. I shriek and shriek as I try desperately to open my eyes - to make it all stop. Because, in that moment, in that mirror, that monster - was me.
Routine
I've been getting the same bus every week day for three years. It's an odd thought. Not in the sense that it's unusual to human behavior, i suppose most people have a vigorous routine. But it's odd because i've never noticed. Same bus. Same route. Same time. Same stop. For five out of seven days a week, rain or shine - same old. I only started to notice the unyielding monotony of this experience when it was broken - when she started sharing my bus. Numb to the ins and outs of commuters in London I no longer feared nor revered interactions with travelers. The endless babble of mothers with prams, droning on and on about bottle feeding and zumba fitness. The gaunt faced man with the brown paper bag - mumbling to himself because everyone else has stopped listening. The 'this suit is Armani' commuters paying all their attention instead to the aggressively loud top 40 hits blasting out of their iPhones. All these people were typical, predictable I knew them in greater depth than I knew the tube map. This girl was different.
She drifted in on a breath of air. The mechanical doors screamed open and the summer breeze sighed and she came with it. Entering the vehicle in a swirl of blossoms and a gust of summer. Her skin embodied the sun, it was a flawless example of the season itself - iced coffee with chocolate flake freckles. She sat down opposite me. Her hair was a brown cloud, toxic candy floss floating just above her hair line. Defying graity. Her eyes shone out of her face, their emerald contrast gleaming like soft glass embedded in a sandy shoreline. She averted her gaze from my frozen stare and redirected it at the passing brick and mortar scenery as if it was the most wondrous sight in the world - her eyes racing around her sockets, pupils expanding and shrinking, swallowing to breathe it all in.
She did not look at me again. Her expression may have remained stony, uninterested - dead. But her irises exploded from the whites surrounding them like mercury reacting to it's chemical nemesis. It was like she was my atmosphere. As I marveled at her unyielding beauty I became lost within it. I tasted the delicious nectar of her unspoken promise, I danced amongst the butterflies on the breath of a breeze, bounded among the flowers only to be caught up in the beams of a relentless sun and burned into ashes. My death within her was just as wondrous as she, perfection finality - yet at the same time it couldn't even compare. I was the pauper and she was the queen. Our class divide monstrous yet she was immune to this. She collected the ashes, exhaled them into that sigh of wind and we became one, circling together until we disappeared into cloud.
I knew behind her cemented expression she was soft to the touch, like a human tootsie roll. I must lick away at her exterior, to get to the beauty within. My love, wholly mine. Her eyes champagne spilling over when I smiled at her, a celebratory oxidized beauty trapped within her - a surplus of it bubbling from the depths of her stomach, regurgitating through her organs and spewing from her mouth like a shower of glee. My love, eyes of wine. Deep rich hues laying flat, swishing within those irises, trapped stagnant during my absence. A vintage merlot, growing ever more delectable with age. The creases around them deeper than those around mine, wisdom beyond my own years. I still relished those eyes though, they would be mine for eternity. She leaned forward and her knee almost brushed my hand. She picked up her satchel and held my gaze and as she exited the bus I saw the ghost of a smile beginning to touch her lips, they curled at the edges like a plastic sheet over an open flame, rapidly deforming into the most tragically beautiful thing I'd ever seen.
It was at that moment I knew I had to kill her. That smile must only ever belong to me, I'd make sure of it. I'd see her again some day, and then I'd break the routine.
She drifted in on a breath of air. The mechanical doors screamed open and the summer breeze sighed and she came with it. Entering the vehicle in a swirl of blossoms and a gust of summer. Her skin embodied the sun, it was a flawless example of the season itself - iced coffee with chocolate flake freckles. She sat down opposite me. Her hair was a brown cloud, toxic candy floss floating just above her hair line. Defying graity. Her eyes shone out of her face, their emerald contrast gleaming like soft glass embedded in a sandy shoreline. She averted her gaze from my frozen stare and redirected it at the passing brick and mortar scenery as if it was the most wondrous sight in the world - her eyes racing around her sockets, pupils expanding and shrinking, swallowing to breathe it all in.
She did not look at me again. Her expression may have remained stony, uninterested - dead. But her irises exploded from the whites surrounding them like mercury reacting to it's chemical nemesis. It was like she was my atmosphere. As I marveled at her unyielding beauty I became lost within it. I tasted the delicious nectar of her unspoken promise, I danced amongst the butterflies on the breath of a breeze, bounded among the flowers only to be caught up in the beams of a relentless sun and burned into ashes. My death within her was just as wondrous as she, perfection finality - yet at the same time it couldn't even compare. I was the pauper and she was the queen. Our class divide monstrous yet she was immune to this. She collected the ashes, exhaled them into that sigh of wind and we became one, circling together until we disappeared into cloud.
I knew behind her cemented expression she was soft to the touch, like a human tootsie roll. I must lick away at her exterior, to get to the beauty within. My love, wholly mine. Her eyes champagne spilling over when I smiled at her, a celebratory oxidized beauty trapped within her - a surplus of it bubbling from the depths of her stomach, regurgitating through her organs and spewing from her mouth like a shower of glee. My love, eyes of wine. Deep rich hues laying flat, swishing within those irises, trapped stagnant during my absence. A vintage merlot, growing ever more delectable with age. The creases around them deeper than those around mine, wisdom beyond my own years. I still relished those eyes though, they would be mine for eternity. She leaned forward and her knee almost brushed my hand. She picked up her satchel and held my gaze and as she exited the bus I saw the ghost of a smile beginning to touch her lips, they curled at the edges like a plastic sheet over an open flame, rapidly deforming into the most tragically beautiful thing I'd ever seen.
It was at that moment I knew I had to kill her. That smile must only ever belong to me, I'd make sure of it. I'd see her again some day, and then I'd break the routine.
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