Her

People keep telling me it's her eyes. They all get lost in them apparently. Her irises compiled of trapped amber. Fossilised resin, trapping hearts like bugs for thousands of years. They tell me it's her lips. Perfect leaves of flesh, peeling back like waves from a shore to reveal her crashing swell teeth. White and sparkling like the crest of a surf. They mention her skin. Porcelain and soft in the winter, calling to be caressed and sheltered, tan and taunt in the summer, being kissed by the sun, inspiring jealousy and screaming to be claimed. They say it must be her laugh; a symphony of wind chimes, cascading down a trickling ravine. Bubbling like a champagne opened for celebration - the jubilee of youth and liberty. They tell me of her hands, delicate and flawless - tools for her every day. No, they say, it must be her allure. The way she moves to music like she's part of the air, a gust of iridescent beauty, shimmering with every change in the tune. The way she speaks with a purr, a mighty lion discreetly prowling beneath the murmur of a kitten. The way she deviates from the norm, because she's wild and she's elusive and you're never sure where her brilliant mind is at any given moment. Or maybe it's her body? Sculpted by the Gods, with her curves all working harmoniously to capture your attention. Her hair is spun gold, a waterfall of the precious metal descending to her soft shoulders. That must be it. Or perhaps it's her legs, disproportionate to the rest of her body. Long and slender, challenging a quest to discover what is at their end. It must be her personality. She of intelligence and wit. She of intrigue and understanding. She of substance. Or is it her background? Revered in social circles, she is both educated and influential. They ask me on the sly if she's a good fuck, as if she her skills between the sheets are enough to capture my heart. It must be that. She must be incredible. 

All these things, people tell me, are why I love her. They look upon her like a prize I've won, captivated and enamored by her ceaseless glamour. They look upon me with confusion. Surveying me with skeptical eyes, as they calculate my list of attributes and make the inevitable comparison. But this is their love for her. Their raw attraction and searing desire. That which gripped them the moment that they lay their eyes on her. It will stay within them fleetingly. They have to forget or they can't go on. She takes their breath away. She takes their minds away. They bumble and hush over her appeal, every aspect of her they see they compile into a list entitled 'Reasons to love her'. 

But I don't love her, not in the way I'm supposed to. Each day passes and I try to muster up adoration, as is expected of me. But she's vacuous. She's vain. She's beautiful, but she's troubled. She's needy, she's obsessive. She leaves cups all over the house and never washes up. She expects the world but does nothing to attain it. She's entitled and she never lets me chose the takeaway. She's ambitious but lazy. Granted, she is wild, but it's irksome, she never sticks to plans. I wait in restaurants for hours past our reservations to discover she's spent hours and tonnes of our money choosing a new bread maker. She never even makes bread. She never even cooks. She steals peoples heart the moment they meet her, but she's just stolen my mind. I'm beginning to despise her. Every time she's home late I cautiously hope she's been killed walking home. Targeted for her short skirt and high heels that apparently I bought. All this considered I do stay with her, she is still mine in the eyes of the lord and the rest of the world. After all she really is phenomenal in bed. 

Stress

It's all getting too much. I feel like there's a woman sitting on my chest. She's not slight in stature or doing it playfully, this isn't foreplay on a Sunday morning - she's obese and she's pinning me down with her meaty knees, her pudgy fingers wrapped possessively around my heart. And she's squeezing. Squeezing like my organ is a stress ball and she's a smoker two days into a begrudging bid to quit. I wish her chest was open, rib cage spread like legs in a brothel, so I could reach in and grab her innards; repay the courtesy. Maybe then the feeling would fade, she'd readjust her stance, relieving me for a brief euphoric moment. 

But she's set on her position, and with each passing second, each day's meals, her weight increases. I can feel myself snapping under it. Breaking slowly around the edges, creaking quietly further to finality. What relief that would be to fall into darkness, to be welcomed into the vacuous entirety of death. Free of the burden of tactile experience. But this woman is selfish, she's relentless and she's cruel. I think once I snap she'll keep my heart beating, crushing rhythmically just enough that I survive. I'll have fragmented bones protruding through my skin but she won't notice through her gluttonous rage. Too fed by the calm I give her. Then I'll be forced to keep on living, not quite sure of what I am. Of that I am terrified. 

She found me through my desperation. She smelt the desire for success as it dripped in beads from my temples, as it seeped from my pores and dirtied my clothes. She was infatuated by it and to it she flew. She stalked me, kept to the shadows, taunting me slightly at every turn until her scent mingled in with mine. Corrupting the purity of my determination and making it something heinous and daunting. Something from which I could not escape. The toxin was ripe around me and it infected my lungs, weakening me. Then, as I floundered and fell. She pounced.

I never lost my ambition. It's what she feeds upon. Gorging herself on my frenzied hope of accomplishment, a feast plentiful with choice, all birthed from the mind of a man who can't decide. She can feel the fruits of aspiration sweltering intrinsically within me, she will not cease until they're all dead, maggots writing within them. Rotten, mold spreading like a disease, devouring them. Then she will be done with me, once my riches are spent. However they are woven innately within me. Byproducts of my upbringing. The veins that run through them are extensions of mine. And my end is all that can present them with theirs.

So we will remain like this, this woman and I, entangled in a non-consensual snarl - eternally. Until by the miracle of mortality, one of us fails to take breath. My lust for life ultimately forging our coffins.

Mummy

Her depression was terminal. I remember hearing it before it really hit. Lacing a soft sigh to no one in the kitchen on the morning of my seventh birthday. That was six months after dad died. It wasn't really there in the entirety I know it today, but it was flirting with her, with the idea of her consumption. I suppose it'd be logical to assume the depression was there from the day we put him in the ground, but it wasn't. I became an expert at spotting the difference. There was anguish, and there was pain - but only sadness behind them. It was temporary, and it was safe.

At first she would cry all the time. Weeping at the dinner table, the salt of the gravy welcoming home their cousins found in her tears. Or howling into the darkness, a pillow muffling her screams. A soft cotton hand to replace the callus one that used to banish the moisture from her hot cheeks. No beating heart beneath the cloth, just downy feathers and a wash instruction tag. Do not tumble dry. Cold cycle only.

It wasn't even when the shrieking stopped that I first knew she was finite. Back then I still clung to the hope of repair. I suppose it'd be logical to assume that pain is preferable to death but it isn't. I suppose If something is in pain then at least it's alive, and at least there's the ability to feel left within it. And in her begging I could sense fight. But then came the silence. It was tortuous, even more so than the anguish because at least in the face of horror we're equipped from experience, we know how to make a cup of tea and slap on a warm consoling smile. Even though I was young I was still learned enough to know how to battle misery. But in the silence there was something else, something new, something unnatural.

The tears spilled from her eyes without provocation at awkward and frequent intervals throughout the days, it seemed like she didn't even know they were there anymore. She'd reach an absent hand up to scratch her face and be alarmed by the liquid her fingers met. She'd stare at her moist tips with bewilderment in her frown, as if inquiring how they came to be that way. I suppose she just didn't know the extent of her trauma. Like when a victim is pulled from a crash unaware that they're hurt while their blood and organs are spilling onto the pavement in cascades of crimson like a grotesque waterfall. I suppose It'd be logical to assume that then all it takes is to look down, to lock eyes onto your throbbing intestine, to know you're injured but with her injuries the wounds were hidden. Phantom pains lost within a heart made vacuous by confusion and despair. There was no band aid for her. No antibiotic.

This continued for a while, this bizarre juxtaposition; a woman seemingly healing, but a body betraying her lies, exhibiting her torment. I suppose it would have been logical to assume she was doomed but I couldn't accept this dysphoria as my own. Not me. Not yet. 
But then came the final nail in the coffin she'd spent months building. Months of solo DIY all precisely aimed at this event; she smiled. Just a brief grin, beginning one morning and lasting one day. I arrived downstairs to the smell of bacon and saw her, skipping around pan in hand with a sundress i'd long forgotten existed draped around her body. I watched her and in my youthful innocence I was relieved. To have my mother back, it was such a thing of beauty. I cherished each second she looked at me, naively ignoring the emptiness trapped within the stare. She was lucid, but she was lost. But without the grotesque hands of despair I couldn't recognize the danger. It was as if corroded fingers were previously latched onto her irises and without them I could see the blue again. That was enough for me, so deprived of happiness as I was. We merged into a family again that day, laughing like we used to before the stroke - before dad. We washed the dishes and cleaned the house, I was so ecstatic to have her again that I didn't even protest to the busy work. I soldiered on making sure every dish was sparkling, every surface wiped. She kept saying 'it all has to be clean, it all has to be clean'; I didn't care why. It was difficult to care about anything that day - because she was back. I fell asleep with fantasies of the happier years ahead, things returning somewhat to normality within our depleted family. I suppose it would have been logical to assume that no one can heal that quickly. But I was a child. I was alone. And I was terrified.

I woke in the night with my bladder screaming to be emptied so I scurried to the bathroom. When I entered my foot met a heavy liquid. I could feel the cool ceramic tiles underneath, made colder by the substance coating them. I reached for the light but when i pulled down on the slowly swinging string no illumination occurred. I stumbled forward through more moisture of the same consistency, making splashes as I maneuvered, feeling satisified with every ripple like a toddler at play amongst an october rain. I rubbed my bleary eyes trying to locate the toilet in the abyss. Then suddenly my footing slipped and I fell. Scrabbling to get up from the wet floor I reached for the rim of the bath tub. But something else met my grasp. Rising shakily my gaze fell on the bath, illuminated by the shy rays of ethereal moonlight playfully peeking through the cloud, there she was. My mother. Nude. Surrounded by a slowly coagulating pool of her own wasted blood. The smile she'd held all day still breathing across her face. I remember my first thought when I saw her.It was compulsive and I will always be ashamed for it. I wondered who would take me to school in the morning with her occupied in this manner. I couldn't avert my eyes from her, as banal necessities and responsibilities filled my mind, they stayed locked to the gaping slashes cut sideways through the creases that her elbows made. As they wouldn't move I closed them, instead picturing sunday mornings as an infant, flailing among the bubbles as she flanneled me down. I couldn't bear to open them, to see her lifeless face mock me with it's reality, to have the sinister red stain my memories of her. So I didn't. I sank to the floor, my hands and feet meeting the damp, and began to crawl back towards what I thought was the door. But I collided with a wall almost immediately. I stayed there, curling myself inwards towards the corner I had met, my back to the horror.I stayed there for 36 hours. I suppose it would have been logical to get up, to move, to remove the clothes covered in the dead blood of my grieving mother, to clean myself of each drop of her, to continue my life, to take myself to school, to go to college, to meet a girl, to fall in love, to live. But i'm still there in my head. Because I couldn't. I just couldn't move.

I couldn't get him off me. Not the smell of his cologne as it clung to my clothes. It's showy odor choking my senses and leaving them cloudy. I was lost in it, my clarity an apparition amongst it's smog. I felt hazed by it, like it was surrounding me. Engulfing me. A fog in which we both hid.

I couldn't get him off me. Not the taste of his kiss as it monopolized the space of my lips. Their desperate haste leaving raw marks where his stubble coated chin ground feverishly against my silently screaming mouth. His taste was acrid, an acrimonious cocktail of cheap beer and dead cigarettes. I held a funeral for them on my tongue, wishing each one of them peace in their ashy graves.

I couldn't get him off me. Not the ghost of his touch as it raced across my body, claiming king to whichever section it found. My skin burning at the checkpoints he established, each place where caress turned awry. Bile churned in the depths of my stomach as I received his attention and withstood his devotion. Desiring nothing more myself than to wash him away, to cleanse myself of his invasive existence.

But I couldn't get him off me. No matter how much I tried. I was stained and I was soiled. He tainted every inch of me with his thuggish embrace. I struggled and I screamed, my protests oozing from my mouth and covering me in frothed spittle. Consuming me like playful soap. But the water never ran clear. Tarnished I was cast aside. My senses drenched in all he did, they'd never return immaculate. I, a flattened animal at the side of a lonely road, maggots rotting through my besmirched flesh, unable to escape the confines of my dirty heinous reality.

I couldn't get him off me. But however I am now; abandoned and grotesque with my once virginal skin a road map of unrequited selfish lust - I know he will never wash my blood from his hands. I will stain through his membrane and color his bones. I will seep in to the very marrow and dye it sanguine. I will mingle and run alongside his blood then take home in his heart. I will poison his mind. I will lace every thought. I'll be the microscopic glass to his batch of cocaine. I will never leave him. I will eat him alive. And in time I will kill him.
Then we'll be even.

Star

'I was on top of the world for a while you know. I know you may not believe me, given the way you find me today - but it's not your validation i'm looking for. You're just as pathetic as I am.

It started with a step ladder - a glimpse of the elite - and it never stopped, I carried on climbing higher and higher. Past the clouds my ego soared, as praise and commendation flew my way. Every tongue golden with glorious praise, every lip puckered at my rear. My hairline skimmed the stratosphere and I was gasping for air as angry balls of fire flew past my eyes and burned eternally before me. It seemed I could do no wrong. I knew my time was limited as I was running out of oxygen, but with every desperate and fruitless intake of breath I grew giddier still. My vision blurred and I was high on my own narcissistic and self-righteous delusions. Within success is birthed a feeling of security. It imbues within you a false sense of being untouchable, of obtaining indemnity against frailty. You see, I wanted to enjoy my moment in the sun. To bask in it's warmth so selfishly that it burned my skin to the fourth degree, cooked me ready for a feast, allowed my blood to boil within my heart until it evaporated, becoming nothing and leaving me a hollow shell, an empty glove of a person. I wanted to indulge so absolutely that I could never return to the concrete reality of my prior inferior being. I wanted to be consumed by accomplishment, wrecked by it, to have my essence, my entity, my entire existence, molested and deformed by the hands of adoration.

Because inside I was unrecognizable. I didn't even know my own thoughts any more. They began to sound like someone else ranting inside my skull, someone I admired, someone far removed from me. Someone with a wider vocabulary than mine, a more positive outlook than mine, and even a silkier drawl than mine. That person was all I coveted, so I kept quiet. I hid in the corners watching - admiring. But the stars were charring harder now, the burns began to itch. I couldn't avoid the ache of my lungs even in my asinine stupor, it stabbed through and I gasped and I gasped. The charismatic self smirking through my eyes grew tired of me, first sighing at my endless glee, then shooting me gunshot glances full of disdain and eventually hissing venomously at me as i cowered in my corner.

So I never left. Waste piled up from my fear to migrate and I bathed daily in my own shit, piss and tears. But even my optimal character couldn't anticipate what was about to occur. As it savored the shine that should of belonged to me, we both prepared to die by it. Me; emaciated, vacuous and terminal. It; complete, prosperous and eternal. We flew together, so close to the stars, our skin began melting from our bones, trickling down their structure like desperate droplets expressing pure ecstasy disguised as tragedy. And as we flew ever higher - our lungs collapsing, straining too finally in their quest for relief - we were blinded by the glow of complete achievement. Our skeletal being was almost absorbed by the torridity of immortality, of preservation in time through unequivocal fortune and respect. I could taste the finality of it on my tongue - and it tasted sweet.

Then we began to fall. The ego I had become a prisoner to was shattered in a matter of seconds. It's smirk only a memory that caused me distress and elation in one orgasmic rush. With it destroyed so effortlessly by a string of inimical newspaper articles and noxious whispers behind important hands - I was left alone. I crawled from my corner to the front seat once more but there was no light there, just a crushing black through which I couldn't even see. I don't know how long I fell for, every time I thought I could see the ground approaching  I was presented with further dismal sky through which to drop. I was continuously teased by the alluring certitude of collision, of death. The death of a career, the death of a reputation and the birth of a life of anonymity and mortality.The thought was repulsive to me.

I hope you understand that. You with your eyes brimming with condescending judgement. When you look at me here you don't see a person. You see an addiction, you see a disgrace. I just needed something to numb the pain of falling. Just to take it away for a little while, so I could float again above the clouds. Transcendentally swim in the ghost of perfection. I don't know when I stopped needing the release and started needing the drug. It's all a glittery fog to me. I think the stars have fried my brain. People see me now and pretend they never worshiped me, they turn their gaze away in disgust - because I scare them. I remind them of the fragility of happiness. The delicate nature of status. I had everything. I was the epitome of humanity, and now i'm a sewer rat. A disease ridden stain on the g-string of existence. But jump down from your high horse darling. What have you ever had? Just remember who I was before you scorn me for who I am. I was on top of the world. I was on top of the world.'

Meds

You'd become a simulacrum of your former self. You knew it. People whispered it as you passed them on the street, your past colleagues and lovers all harmonious on the idea that you were a ghost. A phantom in a three piece suit. But their hissing was redundant. You didn't need their vindictive warnings. You'd noticed it the day you left the hospital. Things in the world once so beauteous to you, so stunning  in form and manner - well now they lacked edge, they faded into one another like watery hues dripping down an easel. They merged into blobs of mundane necessity and there was nothing left that thrilled you anymore. The foibles of the world irrelevant, those happy little quirks more impertinent still. Standing in a queue to collect your medication you would pick at the fresh scars delicately thrashing through your thin skin. You'd flick at them until they opened, until they cried tears of crimson down your shaking hand. Trying desperately to feel it - to be hurt by it. But you'd become numb. You'd swallow down the designated cocktail of happy capsules to induce such a perfectly vegetative state, never questioning it's exigency in your life. Only remembering vaguely the horror of the alternative. So as the days blurred by, the memory grew foggier. The colors less vibrant, the screaming less emphatic. Until eventually you couldn't remember at all why you were living your life in such a monochromatic haze. So you missed a dose here, and took a night off there - until you were so clean you could practically hear your blood squeaking. And that's when the voices came back. Old friends collecting in the darker corners of your frantic mind, asking you to do them favors, then commanding your service. The voices took you over and you became an imitation once more. Only this time everything was emphasized. Every little defect the universe suffered made to seem like it was swarming towards you, down a hill, in a car with no brakes, driven by a man you'd wronged. Every nicety so tantalizing and unreachable that it tormented you as you lay sodden between your bed sheet, longing for hallowed slumber. Until one day  after sleep had evaded you for nights on end, and you could barely remember your name - you were reminded of a time not long ago when medication subdued your deranged insanity, calmed it to the point of non-existence. You wondered softly to yourself, among the screams of a thousand stern voices, whether the same situation could occur anon. So as the companions you kept inside your temples urged you to desist, begged you to abstain - you drank down the bottle of abandoned tablets, and celestially closed your eyes.

Lamb

There was a doleful serenity to the spaces within her eyelids. She gazed at the world like it was a gift. Startled and awed by all that presented itself to her. Flitting and fawning between each obstacle, gingerly charmed by all that existed. She was a lamb. Soft and innocent, carefree and curious. Trotting through hardships as if she was lightly skipping through a blossoming meadow. That was before the shepherd arrived. Riding on an ethereal cloud, mighty and undeniable in his superiority. He was a beacon of hopes beyond her means and he exploited that trust, that enamoured delusion. He offered to her a hand, filled with nourishments she could barely comprehend. All the evils and wonders of the hidden world, sinister and tantalizing in their splendor. She gorged on their plenty, her mouth desperate and hungry. She ate and ate, never thinking about where the subsistence descended to after the explosion of taste consumed her. She got high on it. Ravaged by the frenzied euphoria that the treats imbued within her. But they began to take their toll. Her organs churned and her mind depleted. She began to notice the darkness in the world, she grew weary of it round the corners of her flouncing walks. Warped manifestations stemmed from her naivety and she lost her way, straying from the path of daffodils and purity and stumbling further into debauchery. It consumed her, plucked her like a bag of meat and slaughtered her. It sprayed her sinew on the sidewalk, the concrete prison that had sprung from her delicate gardens and it humiliated her. It carved her into prime segments and sold her to the hands of demons, the impish guards of evil. It ravaged her simple mind and deflowered her virgin heart.  It left her dirty and abandoned. Lost and confused. Her bright white fluffy coat of innocence besmirched and her beliefs shattered all around her, she hardened. She formed an exterior of doubt and ridicule, one she exercised readily. The only soft spot that remained, that foible beneath her heart - that belonged to the shepherd. And he would poke at it, molest it until it bled raw, deform her insides beyond repair, strike her from the earth itself - before he would let happiness sprout from her valleys once more.

Fall

His eyes fell upon the descending leaf as it fluttered to it's grave beneath his feet. Fall was here. He could smell it on the air, crisp and heavy. He could feel it's hands lightly touching his shoulders, the places where skin was exposed from his light clothing choices. He could sense it clutching at the caress of summer that had gripped his body these past few months. He could feel it's grip being loosened from around him, and he was afraid. His foot grazed the leaf, he heard it crunch under his stride. He took to a seat on a bench facing the play park. The mellifluous cries of the joyful children warmed his heart. He saw fathers and mothers standing watch, their protective gaze scanning the unknown faces around them. Like lions guarding a herd they waited, patience etched into every wizened line of their troubled faces. He stayed to the shadow of the mighty oak, being sure to remain half hidden in plain sight. He watched the golden curls of a passing girl reflect the light from the mid-afternoon sun. They shone orange where the sun kissed them, and blazed yellow where they hid from it's glow. Ever changing, the shimmer and flash of a liquid sunset mirrored within each lowly strand. He smiled as he was bathed in the luminosity. He saw to his right a young woman sat silently crying, staring with unfixed eyes at him. He knew she couldn't really see him, she was too engrossed in her own torturous thought. She wore dark lipstick, the race tracks from her shadowed eyes mingled in with her lip's lurid hue at the corners creating a tenebrous pool of black. He wondered, if not a little condescendingly, if perhaps when her outside began to match her standoffish appearance - she felt a little bit proud, as if she finally deserved the medals of  misery she wore on her wrists. He returned his gaze to the playing children, marveling in their delicate purity. He longed to be a child again, to be blessed with such virtue - to revel in his own naivety. To battle only the giants of the playground, to know no troubles but grazed knees and broken pinky-swears. But here he sat instead, a man. Whoever he was didn't matter. Only the location, the motive, and the time mattered now - exactly to the second. The lives of every person around him all intertwined in this poignant moment and they would never untangle. His past was of no relevance and his future did not exist. All that lay before him were open chest cavities, marrow freezing screams and slack-jawed mouths that would never smile again. And as the nameless man sighed and envied the innocence, he pushed the detonator that would destroy it.

Petal

I've been cursing a rose. Every morning, incessantly, it brushes against my murky window. Squeak, squeak, squeak. I lie and I dream of it's destruction as I roll in torment contained to the space between my sweat sodden sheets. I can not move to stop it, I can only dream of it's halt. I did not know the nature of what I was condemning until today, until Tanya moved the curtain too far and it finally came into my view. As she propped me up to feed me my eyes fell on the rose's tragic beauty and I lost my breath. I'd imagined it to be a twig, a lowly and feeble thing, something so ordinary and dead - reflecting my existence. But there it was, it's pink flourish mocking me, reminding me of the life once in me, now so irrevocably depleted. Tanya left me to my own thoughts, exiting through the only door, one i will never have the pleasure to walk through. I exhaled shakily, my own decrepit version of a sigh. I sat, slumped against the crackling sheet of the mattress, and tried to feel my body. I wiggled my fingers strenuously, surprised by how much such a simple act pained me. I wondered existentially if i'd ever really been able to feel my body, to sense the organs I could not locate now - enjoy them pumping in their desperate way, futilely rushing the blood around my ungrateful body. Maybe I never could. Maybe I'm mourning for a feeling i am a virgin to, coveting something that does not, can not, physically remain. Or maybe I just never noticed the activity, as I was too busy living.
    I felt a line of drool extending from my lax mouth and down my freshly shaven chin. I attempted to wipe it away, to be rid of it's embarrassment - but my arm did not complete the motion it was so instructed to. Instead it shook in protest, still confined to it's grave above my sheets. The more I tried to ruse it, the more it disobeyed until eventually a second moisture, one cascading from my bulging eyes, mingled in with drool and both fell to their deaths just above my chest. I thought in that moment of every cigarette i'd ever refused in the fear of cancer, every occasion i'd ever worn a rubber in wake of the fear of infection, ever girl i'd ever not kissed to avoid rejection, to feign off regret. I thought of these things, of the intricate and undeniable components of a dreadfully wasted life. What did it all mean now? Now my body was no longer my vessel of vigor, but one for disease and decay. They were ripe within me and I couldn't stand it. I moved my leg, struggling against the condition in my mind screaming at me to stop. I dragged it over the edge of the bed and the other followed, a dutiful pal - and I fell to the floor like a haunted rag doll. I lay in a crumpled heap, my chest heaving in panic. I turned onto my back and gazed through the somber window. My voice could not produce words, it simply rasped in an ethereal manner - it would take them hours to find me. I felt a light warmth spread from my crotch and as I heard the drip of liquid I knew my final civilized ability had left me. Humanity stripped from me I lay stagnant. Out of the corner of my eye I could make out the rose, it's hue soft and comforting - a petal fell from it as I watched it, swaying carefree in the spring breeze. Squeak, squeak, squeak.

Escape Artist

Six counts, the arrest report said, six counts of theft, fraud and eventually murder. Six counts of a sixty is all it should take me to tell you this story. 
      We drove up to that prison entirely sure of what we were going to find there, Jamie Saint. We'd be forewarned that Jamie was a sadistic psychopath, a keen manipulator and a tricky escape artist. No one warned us that Jamie was a woman. I placed her at about twenty-five, tall, brunette, beautiful. A life devoid of cosmetics suited her, as did the color orange. 
'Look after this one' the officer growled at us as he walked her to our transport vehicle. He placed her in the back of the van and shut the doors showily, I heard Jamie sigh. 
  We began the journey, six hours, mostly straight road and desert. We were scheduled to stop somewhere just outside Oregon for rest room use and nourishment. This was the time I was most weary of. It was always like that though, being a prisoner transport unit driver had it's dangers and they mostly manifested in this half hour pit stop. Aside from the possibility of being strangled through the seating divide that is, but that almost never happened. Me and Horner drove in relative silence, after months of doing this weekly we'd almost run out of things to say. He instead turned on the radio and let the gentle lament  of the Turnpike Troubadours seep out of the dodgy speakers. I thought I heard Saint tapping her foot along to the melancholy beat but I couldn't be sure. Her humming to James Taylor was undeniable however. I felt her presence to be a calming and likable one, despite what i'd been cautioned. By the time we reached Oregon I didn't have a single apprehensive bone in my body about the woman in the back of the van, the woman who'd sang along to Bonnie Tyler, the woman who'd stabbed a man to death. 
  When we drove into the service station Horner told me he was starving. This of course meant that he'd be getting food and I wouldn't, as one of us had to stay in the van with the detainee. Normally I would have argued, but I didn't mind being alone with Jamie Saint. The thought didn't terrify me at least, how it usually did. Horner exited the vehicle once we'd pulled in at the front of the customary IHOP, a chain I was repulsed by after one too many sticky toffee waffles. After he left the silence was crushing, I felt awkwardly charged - like the air before a tropical storm. 
'Hey freckles, can we get some air?' a raspy voice spoke from behind me. In my heightened state the sound breaking through the lull startled me. I assumed she meant me because of my paradoxically boyish freckles, and I was the only other person present. 
'Ugh.. yeah, sure.' I stuttered and began to clamber out of the seat. I took my gun with me. I opened up the double doors at the back of the van and she winced as they swung open. The day was torrid and bright and the dark windowless space behind our caddy was fairly dim so i'm sure the sun blinded her. She adjusted and shuffled forward, chains binding her feet. 'Sorry, we can't take those off' I blushed. 
'I'm not asking you to.' she smiled. I couldn't understand how someone so delicate could be such a monster. She was akin to a wounded bird of prey, fallen from something so mighty and tainted with the mark of her past. I could see past it, but I could understand how others weren't so open minded. We walked, or shuffled in her case, over to a picnic bench just next to where the van was parked. The sun bathed us in a glorious and intrusive warmth, she tilted her head back - absorbing it. 
'I'm going to miss this' her voice was an adult lullaby, soft and hard in one sweeping tone. She opened an eye to squint at me. 'Go on, ask.' I stared back at her in embarrassment. 'I know what you're thinking and it's okay, just ask.' I lent forward, excitement on my lips.
'I just want to know what happened, why it happened.' She sighed again and once more tipped her head to bathe in the glow of the summer heat. 
    'It happened because of love. It's ridiculous to say it was with love that I killed him, because it wasn't, it was rage and hate and revenge but there was passion alright.' She looked me in the eyes from the corners of hers, possibly to gauge my reaction, and then she continued. 'I was enamored, completely consumed by the existence of another person. My first love, my first passion. Her entity engulfed my mind and I became something other than myself, I became a component in a mechanism, I became a 'we'. The more time I spent with her the more utterly and irreversibly in love I fell. I craved her, every hour of every day. She became a physical necessity like food, water - air. She was the most uniquely brilliant person I'd ever met and I couldn't understand how i'd ever managed to be without her, or who I was before I met her.' I flinched at the word 'her', confused by it, but nothing surprising stayed that way for long that day, after a while it just became evident fact. 'Then she fell ill.' She breathed a long jagged breath and picked up an empty water bottle that was lying on the bench. It was difficult to maneuver through her handcuffs, but she did it gracefully. 
    'They'll never understand, the judicial system, I know that now. Five sessions in court, seventeen statements and they still can't see that I did it for her. She was the north pole to my south, my one absolute attraction. She was the center of my universe and she was dying. It felt like everything I'd ever known to be reality was melting around me and I had no way to stop it. Like my world was liquidizing and falling through a crack beneath my feet. I tried to clutch it, to hold on to my stability, but the liquid just dripped through. Even though I could feel it, even though I could touch it - I couldn't catch it.' She picked at the label of the water bottle, ripping it slowly with her fingernail.
    'And then, one day, someone told me there was a way. A way to freeze her, to solidify her. It was like for one magnificant moment everything was perfect again, I could breathe again. I clutched at her, grabbed every part of her I could in those hours of hope. Savored every kiss, letting the taste tingle my desperate lips for hours after we disconnected. I watched her chest, watched the rise and fall of life, knowing for certain that it would stay there. But then, they told me the cost.' She ripped the label off entirely in one swift moment, screwed it up into an angry ball and then discarded it like it was nothing. 'I was a student and I had nothing more than a pile of debt. I had no family, no one to help me and neither did she. We had each other and that was all. So of course I did what I could, of course I stole to pay for the operation. I did whatever I could to stabilize my shaken world. To keep the plates spinning. But it didn't matter, they all crashed around me in the end. I went home, do you know what that feels like freckles, huh? They told me the operation was a success so after twenty-nine hours of sitting in that waiting room for a verdict, to know whether the heart mine belonged to was still viable - I went home. When I arrived the next day they told me she'd died in her sleep. "Peacefully" they said "didn't feel a thing.", apparently her heart had just stopped beating. But what about my heart? Why was that still going? Why, when my entire world had disappeared was I still standing? What was I even standing on?' She turned her back to me for a moment and when she turned again to face me she was holding a slightly disheveled cigarette between two of her long fingers, I didn't question where she got it - I was too absorbed. I reached towards her extending a lighter and she stared into my eyes as she inhaled. It mesmerized me. 
   'They say,' She continued, her eyes still burning through mine. I dropped my hand and she exhaled. 'That when a magnet is shattered, each tiny piece, each surviving fragment, forms another two poles. I was so broken, but I still yearned for her, I still magnetized towards her but she was no where on this mortal earth for me to find. So I got trapped. Trapped in delusions of her and how we were together, trapped in a place in my mind where she still existed and this world became all that I could think about. Everything else became irrelevant because, in some form, I had her. Then when after I stopped eating, I became physically ill myself and I had to be healed. After I was nourished my mind started to work again and I could see that she was gone, I could see that I was alone. And I was traumatized. I became obsessed, consumed by the inexorable thirst for revenge. That's when I looked him up, the surgeon.' There was a soft burning to the depths of her irises, they held in them the hatred she'd felt, I did not find regret beside it. 'I could not stop myself, I was engrossed by the idea of equivalent exchange, he'd stolen her life - so now his belonged to me. My magnetism was redirected, it honed onto him. I haunted him, I tracked him down and I stabbed him straight through the heart - because I felt that was only fair, because that's what his shoddy work, his shaky hand, his inattentive nature - had done to me. I watched the life drain from him and I thought of her, how I had never got the chance to be there, that I'd never seen that flawless light leave her. So I held him, his blood drenching my body, and I wept. I fell apart completely, screaming into his hairline - demanding her. She never came. But the police did, and they took me away. That was the first time I escaped, just slipped out the handcuffs, six weeks longer to freely wander the state, lost and damaged. It made sense to keep stealing, I had nothing to lose anymore. It felt like I was being punished by the Gods, all I wanted was to be alone, to find the time to end my own life so that my soul could once again be entwined with hers. But every time I came close I was detained. I just want that freedom freckles, to leave this earth on my own terms, not rot in a jail merely dreaming of her.' I stared at Jamie, this injured beauty. This tragic eagle. I reached into my pocket for the small metal key, the key to her death - her salvation. I unlocked her ankle and wrist binds. I then handed her my gun. 
'There.' I said. 'Be with her.' The smile that spread over Jamie's face melted my heart, the joy at being able to be reunited with her soul mate. She put her finger to the trigger, inverted the snout and reached the gun in front of her. 
'Thank you.' She breathed, then she flipped, pointed the snout at me - and fired. It didn't confuse me for long though, the pain - nothing did that day. 

To Market

Market 
36a/b West Highland Villas 

LA 

90001

I'd received the note at a black tie event, the kind with miniscule brushetta and cheap champagne. It'd been pressed firmly into my clammy palm by a pouchy man in a red trilby. 'You'll thank me later' he winked. I reread it multiple times to try and jog something in my thirsty mind, but I could not produce a single correlating thought. I went about my usual business that day, I slept, jerked off, ate, read a few scripts - the usual, but from the time I viewed it to well after i'd climbed into bed I could not keep my eyes from darting to the kitchen table, to the deserted section of note which displayed the cryptic address. I decided the next day I'd find out what resided at that address. I'd go to Market. 
    After much confusion, swearing and the eventual irritated abandonment of the Sat Nav I arrived outside a towering and dingy warehouse building. It was surrounded by other such structures but all the others seemed even more extremely desolate and neglected. The door was obviously restricted by a heavy and rusty pad lock. I decided to explore the side of the building to look for an entrance as my inquisitive mind had definitely been aroused. I stalked round the side and down an alley way. Although a dead lead I thought I could definitely hear some kind of muffled voices and pressing my ear against the baking concrete of the building only proved this. 
'Hello?' I yelled, stretching my head back to gaze up the windowless walls. Force of habit I suppose. I was just turning to leave when I heard a strange snuffling to the right of myself. I froze. I felt breath moving the downy hairs on my neck. I began to turn, slowly and apprehensively to view the source. Suddenly a pudgy hand forcefully wrapped a dirty cloth around my gaping mouth. This prevented me from really releasing the scream that had risen from the pit of my somersaulting stomach. Next thing I knew - the world went black. 

'Mr. Elswood?' 

A voice. 

'Bailey?' 

I pried my eyes open, but they didn't stay that way for long, a stabbing pain travelled through the right side of my brain and I had to close them once more, to make the feeling go away. But it didn't. 

'W... Water.' I croaked, extending my hand forward, still entirely unsure of what I'd find. 

'But of course.' the voice rang again, followed by a click. I heard someone shuffle up to me, take my hand, and place the handle of a mug into it. Once again, I attempted to open my eyes, I managed to crease one open a crack. I looked deeply into my mug of water trying to determine it's legitimacy - it's safety. I determined I didn't care, I was too thirsty. I brought it to my lips and drank, it seemed fairly normal if not a little metallic in taste. My head's stabbing pain subsided to a dull ache and I opened my eyes. 

  I was in a huge room of what appeared at first glance to be an abandoned warehouse of some kind. The walls were smudged concrete, the floors followed suit. In one corner was a little divided cubical, I could not see what it contained. There was a blue chipped door with a smashed glass window to the right of where I was sitting on a rickety office chair. I assumed that to be the stairwell. In front of me were two men, a slightly wrinkled face was looming close to me. 

'Better?' he spoke, his voice was that which woke me. He had dark hair and dark eyes. I could find nothing behind them, he seemed almost corpsial in his stare, but the rest of his face was animated and riddled with concern. His face was devoid of facial hair completely except one line extending from his thin lips to the base of his chin. His eyes kept flicking to the metal door on the left of the building, presumably the one I entered through, but they always came back to me. 'I would just like to start by apologizing for having to drug you Mr. Elswood.' he smiled apologetically, cocking his head to the right. 'Its just we always have to with new custom, to check they're not from the police. Which according to your impressive resume, you are not.' He giggled. The sound sickened me. Behind him stood a boy of about sixteen, his long black hair swept partially over his beady eye. He was looking at me with utmost guilt touching his youthful features. Seemingly, he was the one with the chloroform. When I still did not respond to the man's words he lent even closer. From this distance I could make out the hundred or so little craters in his skin. Acne scars, poor man - high school must have been hell. His eyes searched mine desperately for recognition that I could muster coherency, that the experience hadn't broken my brain. I coughed lightly. He shot up.

'Explain.' I spoke frankly.  

'My name is Kazi and I will be at your service today.' He bowed extravagantly. I still had no idea what I was doing here but half out of fear and half out of curiosity I decided not to ask. 'Now for the matter of the payment you've already paid sir, we received a payment for a Mr. Elswood a few days ago sir.' I stared at him in utter bewilderment. How could anyone have known I'd be here when I didn't even know? Then I thought about the man who'd given me the card, his seedy chuckle, his seedy nature... his suggestive 'thank me later.'. It must have been him. 

'Oh well' I coughed again, awkwardly this time 'Thank him for me.' 

'No need sir' Kazi chirped 'Your happiness will be thanks enough. Now, shall we meet the women?' And suddenly I understood, I was in a brothel. It all made sense. I'd been to them before but never inside the US. I began feeling excited, the jittery pounding of my fluttering heart laced with a nauseating shame. 

'Yes, sure' I breathed. He motioned for me to get up and I did and began shakily following him towards the staircase door. Leaving the teen in our wake, we pushed through it and walked up the dirty stairs, reaching the upper floor in what felt like an eon. Upstairs was exactly the same as the previous room in structure but the contents could not have been more different. 

    There were about nine burly men occupying it, each one was accompanied by a woman - on a metal leash. The woman were all of above average weight. That puzzled me in its own right because I always assumed sex slaves would be starved. All the men appeared to be of the same race as Kazi and the boy below but there was no way to definitively find out. I put the weight of the girls down to a racial difference in appeal I could not understand. Maybe bigger was better in the east. Kazi walked away from me towards another man standing staring at the women too, except he wasn't gawking at them the way I was - confusion etched into everyone of my deceivingly youthful chemically altered features - instead he stood resolutely, his face a lost language, impossible to read. I tried my hardest, straining to get a good look at him. But it was impossible. It displayed years of practised alexithymia. Kazi spoke in what I recognised as broken and flawed mandarin to him. He nodded back and pointed at a girl in the corner, the biggest of the bunch, fair skinned with a pretty face. The kind you just knows tries too hard in the sack. I admired this man, longed for his composure, possibly due to my ineptitude to possess any in the same moment. I smiled at him shakily as he exited the room, the red headed woman being dragged behind him, he did not return the gesture. Next it was Kazi's turn to avert his questioning my way;
'Which do you want sir?' 
    I gazed dumbstruck at the gaggle of women, every one so far removed from my usual fancy. I thought if I was going to do this, I'd do it so it was incomparable, so that when I returned to my tedious monotony I'd be devoid of reminders. I noticed that one of the girls, a Latina beauty, was not whimpering softly, struggling against her chains like the rest. She sat staring up at her captor in a violent rage. I chose her. Although not my usual taste i could feel a familiar soft throb as I thought of the prospect of dominating her, of staring into those hateful eyes whilst I enjoyed her. You may say that my desire for her had something to do with how every woman I sleep with in the day to day are so grateful to be with me due to my status that there's not even a hint of real emotion. You'd be right. Although they may be beautiful, although they may fulfil some kind of fantasy, quench a raw animal urge, the woman I usually associate myself with are never genuine, they're too numbed by Botox, narcissism and prescription meds. I just long for a spark, real passion. I wanted, in that moment, to have sex without the feeling we were performing for an audition. 
    The Latina vision had beautiful yellow irises, short autumn hair and flawless caramel skin. Her body type was more Texas than LA but I didn't mind - it was her eyes I coveted, her skin, her breasts. I nodded at her and Kazi followed my eyes, chuckling in agreement. He ticked his head to the side and clicked his fingers at the guard. The girl, seeing this, began clawing and struggling against the binds to no avail. I remember the way she looked at me reminded me of a prostitute I'd enjoyed once whilst on location in Japan. That girl however was younger, more fragile. But in her eyes there was something akin, it flashed trough her in the throws, just momentarily. I barely had time to register it then, before it disappeared for good, I saw it in this woman too, in the depths of her furious gaze as she was dragged away, face set like concrete. But it stayed with her, I could survey it how I wished. I wondered to myself what about this situation was similar to consensually throat fucking a hooker, to equate the same emotion. I suppose I didn't really want to know.
'Follow me please Mr. Elswood.' Kazi turned and walked back towards the stairwell and in a giddy daze I followed him. We walked upstairs and as I turned the corner of the abused staircase I heard a clank and a muffled shriek and realized the girl was following in our wake. 
    We reached an upstairs room which was once again a replica of the first, spacious, practically empty accompanied by the pungent smell of metal and burning plastic.There was no bed. I looked around a little disgruntled, I decided the floor will have to do. 
'Right' I spoke, I caught my reflection in a dirty widow, I shook my hand through my hair, elegantly dishevelling it. I was disgustingly proud of myself today, I looked my best in a corduroy shirt and freshly pressed jeans. I thought that the bags sitting happily under my tired eyes only improved my look, giving me a haunty ambiance. My strong jaw was freshly shaven and my lips were properly moisturized  Maybe she'd want me back, if I was gentle enough. Maybe we'd fall in love. Maybe. i turned to Kazi, clapping my hands together in an awkward manner. They did not turn to leave, instead the man holding the girl said;
'Did you want us to get started?' I was even more confused in this moment than I had been throughout the entire day. 
'You?' I spluttered. The man looked at Kazi apprehensively and Kazi looked at me in happiness and awe. 
'You'd like to do it yourself?' he chortled. 
'Well... Isn't that the idea?' I scratched my head in turmoil. 
'Okay sir, it's your choice.' He clicked his fingers at the man who handed Kazi a tied up black roll which Kazi then presented to me. 'You'll be needing that' he smiled. Kazi clicked again and this time I was handed the chain that belonged to the girl. It was wrapped tightly around her wrists, making it near impossible for her to fight. Her ankle shackles impeded a speedy escape. 'We'll wait just outside the door, we're armed so if she tries to leave we'll get her. Just call for us when you're done.' he grinned broadly and exited offering me another low bow. Soon, it was just me and her. 
    I opened up the roll, wondering what it contained, and saw several gleams of silver. Knives. Knives and tape and a handgun. I began questioning why I was here. The girl I was holding saw what the roll contained too. She began to wail loudly and relentlessly in my ear, feebly repelling the chains binding her and leaning far repelled from me. Her howls cut through me. I could not deal with crying, ever since I was a child and my father left. My mother would stay up all night and cry incessantly. Her lament would travel through the entire house, cutting through the paper thin walls and overpowering the Dido CD she'd put on to cover the noise. At first her howls tore me, imbued within me a kind of desperate longing to make them stop,to heal her and dry her tears. But after months passed, after she stopped getting out of bed, after I had to grow up - to look after myself - they began to anger me. Every sob was a pebble thrown at my face, flick, flick, flick. Sob, sob, sob. They built up until I couldn't take it anymore. I ran through the house and straight into her bedroom; 'Stop!' I screamed 'Just stop!' I shook her like she was a broken clock, hit her like she was a static TV - I threw her around in the hope that it would fix her, in the hopes she'd rejuvenate to her past self. My real mother. I jogged her until her bawling stopped and then I left her, to recover alone. In the morning I found her hanging from the shower rod. In the silence that the screams had left she heard herself, heard her illness for what it truly was - and she heeded it's call.  
   That night changed me. At the age of 13 I developed a hatred for that brand of self expression. I divorced my wife for crying when she lost our baby. She always thought it was from the trauma of losing a life that belonged to us both. I let her believe that, out of kindness. But now this girl, her shrill ululating wrapping around my head and suffocating me, stealing all the air from my futile lungs. Her weeping was everywhere it was instilling something inside my chest, creating a kind of hollow vacuum, a feeling i knew from childhood - i felt tears begin to vindictively prick against my widen eyes. 
'Stop it.' I spoke, eyes to the ceiling, blinking hard. Still her sobbing persisted. I hated her for this. Despised her solely for creating emotion within me that I hadn't felt for over twenty years. 'Stop it' I screamed, my fist colliding with her screeching mouth. 'Stop it' I repeated over and over as hit after hit indented her pretty face. I thought about the people I worked with, the people I worked for. Every foster family that didn't want me. I thought about my father finding me after I found fame, I thought about how I didn't punish him for what he did to my mother, I thought about the paella we shared instead. I thought about those nights sitting by my fireplace screaming at myself in the mirror, blaming my reflection for my mother's death. When I see her face in my dreams her ghost blames me too, it howls at me, condemning me, accusing me, - haunting me. My fist flying, my brain flooded with every bad thought I'd ever had, every slash of the razor I'd endured in my teenage years, every bottle of gin I'd downed since I could afford to buy them. I thought about the years of self-medicating, to cloud the corners of my mind where the doubt festered. I drank, sniffed, smoked, to confuse my demons, get them lost on the way to the surface. I went in to acting so I could learn to pretend to be okay, before those lessons I couldn't hide my trauma. Then I learnt how to study the people on TV, to mimic their smiles, to mirror their content. Now I couldn't hide my angst, my pure fiery rage. It was a shaken bottle of a carbonated beverage, and she'd loosened the lid. Everything that had ever irritated me, angered me, upset me, came flooding back and gushing through my fist onto this girl's face. Nothing was enough anymore, I needed this to subdue the rage. Every parking ticket, every rejection, every damn bruschetta. 
   I stopped to catch my breath and in doing so my anger subsided, the feeling returned to my fist and I could feel a throbbing in my knuckles, and somewhere else, pressing against my jeans. I turned away from her crumpled form in shame and disgust. I could hear her spluttering and moaning on the ground, her face unrecognizable, only her eyes visible through all the bruising - the yellow in them burning through the trickling blood, the brow scowling at me with purest hate. I waited for the situation to subside and then I headed for the door. 
'Kazi.' I whined, regret and fear was coursing through my entire body. I ran towards the door. 'Kazi!' I screamed. I turned to see the Latina still on the floor, trying desperately to stand. Kazi appeared with his usual dead-eyed smile.
'Yes sir?' 
'What do we do, with her I mean. I can't have the press finding out about this.' I was breathing heavily, fear gripping my heart. Kazi just smiled softly and clicked his fingers once more. In walked the man who'd previously been guarding the girl I'd just disfigured. He walked straight over to her and lifted her from the ground so she was leaning on his solid form. I felt relief mingled in with the shame. Kazi picked up his cell phone, dialled and said;
'Floor 4 - Ready for disposal', a few tense minutes later with nothing but the sounds of the girl's increasingly heavy breathing to occupy my mind in walked two more beastly men. One was carrying a chainsaw, the other a plastic bag. 

     I thought perhaps naively that they would kill her before they dismembered her and maybe that they'd do so in a separate room. I was wrong. I watched her scream like a banshee as the chainsaw whirled into life. Kazi brought it down so it was almost touching her soft flesh, she was yelping like an abandoned puppy. Her struggle so impressive I once again glimpsed the fighter I'd chosen from the herd downstairs, her spirit and desire to live the very thing that had glued her coffin together.She was the unexpected re-ignition of a trick birthday candle, a happy surprise when the magic has faded. I felt myself growing hard once more. I'd become used to it by now and the riddling of guilt that accompanied it and by this point I could just enjoy the sensation. Kazi raised the chainsaw above his head and the girl winced as she saw it fly back down - her screeching ceased in mute acceptance of her dismal fate but when the pain didn't come she opened her eyes once more, perplexed, to again find the chainsaw poised above her trembling extremity. She began sobbing softly, returned anew to the extinguished tired flame she'd been previously. I despised her. Kazi brought down the chainsaw once more and the girl died a coward, not screaming through the absolute agony of the weapon wrathfully intruding her limbs but instead just quietly vomiting over her left shoulder. It didn't take long for him to divide her into equal ample pieces of taunt flesh.

He lead me into a side room. I assumed it's previous function to have been some kind of office, It was seedy in nature like the rest of the warehouse, he motioned for me to sit and then bowing low and offering me a toothy grin he exited the room. I was not the only person in there. Across from me sat on a faded and worn velour arm chair was the composed Asian businessman I'd seen in the first room. He had tears running silently down his gaunt cheeks. He'd lost his sultry ambiance displaced instead by an emotional anguish. He'd lost something else too, something us English speaking folk have no precise word for, but something the Chinese refer to as; 'tong zhen'. I watched him for a while, sniffling and sobbing and wondered briefly about my humanity, I wondered why I didn't feel this way, why my soul was still intact. Maybe it was the search for soul that had lead me here, and the absence of one that made me stay. I, a witness of lambs led to slaughter, a shepherd to their demise, an accomplice to their end. I had no qualms about it, no cracked conscious, no torn ethics. The more I thought about my lack of worry, the more worried I became. Kazi returned and spoke again in awkwardly hedged Chinese to the gentleman. He shook his head furtively and began crying even harder, a line of snot ran from his pinking nose and entered his protesting mouth. I averted my gaze, staring instead at my tensed fists. Kazi flicked his shifty eyes at me and smiled apologetically and then said plainly to the man, in English; 'You don't get your money back.' the man's sobs grew quiet and his frown hardened, his face crumpling like the note that lead me here. He morphed once more into the man I'd respected upon my arrival, he wiped his face softly with a silk handkerchief retrieved from his breast pocket, stood resolutely and followed Kazi from the room. Alone with my own thoughts I tried to retain them onto topics devoid of sentiment; dry cleaning, football, auditions. Anything but what I was doing here, how I'd come to even be here- no queries of why, who or how. Just mundane musings. To further my confusion was the undeniable question of what I was still doing here. What purpose could remain, the deed had been done - the woman was dead. Just as I was about to get up to leave Kazi returned into the room. 'It's ready Mr. Elswood.' he giggled, the sound eerie and sickening. The next room he lead me too was entirely barren of anything with the exception of a small rickety table and a lavish ruby throne cuddled up next to it facing a plate with a single steak on it. Food. I'd completely neglected it and I was so glad for it, grateful to Kazi for providing it as in my excitement and apprehension I'd neglected my body's most basic necessity. I walked over to the table and Kazi beamed like a proud mother as I sat down and placed the spotless cloth napkin delicately in my lap. I lifted the utensils and began carving away. I lifted the morsel to my desperate lips and bit down on it. Chewing on the meat I was impressed by its flavor and it's texture, I marvelled at the intensity of the spices. I smiled softly, and practically giggled through my glee, my body sighed in relief. 'Why this is delectable.' I chuckled, Kazi's smile extended so his eyes crinkled in sheer satisfaction. 'I'm glad you're enjoying her.' he beamed. Her? 'We have the best chefs in all of LA working in our kitchens, straight from Paris.' he adopted a faux french accent on the last word. Her. I gagged. I stared horrified at the remains of the flesh I'd just demolished. I stopped mid swallow so the meat had no choice but to uncertainly slip slowly down my throat, unsure of where to go - out or down. It cankered against the back of my heaving tonsils and I was painfully aware of it, it changed from a deliciously moist segment to a slimy blob of sin. I was repulsed at myself for being so stupid, for not realizing immediately. I had a decision to make. It is this moment my therapist is grateful for, this moment that signs the pay cheques I bestow to her after each session - this moment that haunts me. That which makes me heave on a fragile morning. Makes me drink on a low Tuesday. Makes me lose sleep. I swallowed. Then I began on the rest of the steak. After all, it was a free meal. I savoured every mouthful, thinking all the while about her soft skin, her amble flesh, her shining garnet eyes. Marvelling at how much better a food than person she made. I polished up my horrifying feast and left silently. Kazi walked me out, assuring me with a bow that I could return any time. On the drive home, between the monotonous drones of the chirpy Sat Nav, I couldn't keep my mind from a single invasive thought; she didn't taste anything like chicken.

Game

The game was man hunt and that's what it became. Blood stained oaks and tiny limbs shredded and abandoned under clutters of autumn blades. The harvest pallet matching the scene perfectly, golden maple sun over blood red infamy- brown trees and crisp green foliage.

'One, Two' - she screamed from the door, her voice an echo of generations before her, her eyes screwed so tightly no one could ever brand her a cheater.

'Three, Four' we all began to scatter, a late start due to our heightened excitement. Turning our backs to her booming shouts, they faded as we faded from the protective sight of the dithering adults. We became spirits, punctured by sun. Shadows cast longer and longer with every hurried step until we were celestial figures stretching to the climate.

'Five, Six' to the woods we flew, off in different directions - a solitary path laden before us, never to be tread back. I tip-toed away from her travelling holler and stalked further into the darkness of the woodland. The calm pressing down on me like pressure from an advancing ocean, so far I trod into it that it became me, imbued itself intertwined within me.

'Seven, Eight' giggles and murmurs lost amongst the timbers, their jealous leaves snatching our childish ambiance and crushing it into silent apprehension. I heard the padding of approaching feet and offered a harsh 'Shh' to the direction of my fellow. But no warning was headed. No whisper returned. The blue ghost of a moon shone above the struggle that ensued, breaking through the azure sky - an ominous prediction of the lunar glare yet to follow. A shy wave to the day, to bid it goodbye.

'Nine, Ten' A gleam of teeth and a splash of red, a hiding place is made vacant once more. 'Ready or not here I come.'

And she wandered towards the places where we once stood, so silent and serene and buzzed with vitality, awaiting our predator with gleeful innocence not morbid fear, the way we would have perceived it had we known. The dull thud of approaching paws growing louder and louder as we sat behind bark and crouched under bushes. A perfect mask of purity veiling the carnage occurring in the hush. The girl wandered through the silent woods, fleeing after every snap of a twig, her melodic twitter chasing the sinister sound. She traipsed around the  thicket for over an hour, her excitement fading into dread which stuck to her like the cobwebs she'd been collecting along her journey. They grew thicker around her and with every sweep they clung harder. She tripped and fell and the further she ventured the darker the skies became, the harsher the winds, the louder her heart beat in her own tightened chest. It was only as her eyes fell on my ravaged carcass that she gave up looking. The game was over.

He

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.

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.

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.

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.