Fungi.

The world's largest living organism by area is the Honey Mushroom Fungus. It's indigenous to the blue mountains of Oregon. It covers the area of 1,220 football pitches. It grows underground in the shape of a twisted smile. My smile was that fungi by nature, always twisted. It snaked through my lips like an anaconda weaving across a soft pale sand. Snapping at fragments of you it could steal for a level up. That crafty thieving smile - comely shining my contentment across to you. Our dalliance was one of erstwhile but it's stayed with me ever since, haunting me with fugacious felicity. Our love a pyrrhic victory that lead to the loss of you. The vestigial chatoyant gleam of my emerald eyes ceased on the day of your departure. You watched it carefully as it faded, believing that every unwilling blink of my exhausted lids was sapping the light from beneath them. But that wasn't the case, that glimmer was for you alone and you destroyed it that day, gave it a clear pathway to nonexistence. It flitted away so softly I was unsure if it had even been there to begin with. If it wasn't for the melancholy longing it imbued within me I could have denied it, but alas it stuck with me - captivated me. 
We met at the usual place, the sun hid behind the horizon, leaving the cold sky an oppressive grey. The branches of the dead desert trees stretched across the achromic clouds like stagnant veins over wan organs. Oregon never seemed so desolate. The surrounding areas bore no witness to the crime you were there to commit. You sat me down on a mossy bench and told me it was over. I tried to find the joking nature hidden behind all the sincerity, but alas. Your stare was metallic it let nothing through, you words forming an iron gate around what was once my fruitful home. I closed my eyes. Hoping against hope that without seeing you I could keep you, desperately fawning over your fragile memory, like stroking the crooked wing of a fallen lark. Despite it's ephemeral nature there was a sheer serendipity to our entwined fates. I always relished it as a positive splicing but as I gazed at your evil, monstrous, fearful face - I knew our path was a darker one. I rose to my shaky feet, as did you. We turned to each other and before I could entirely comprehend my senses we were on the ground, my large fist colliding with your divine features. 
Each collision producing a sound not unlike that of a large work boot on wet gravel. I watched your face break, your bones cracking and deforming beneath my wrath. The squelching of your veins as they ripped open didn't faze me. My screaming queries masked the sound; How could you do this to me? How?
Hit after hit after hit I focused on but one thing, one colossal cynosure mocking me - your closed eye lids. I prayed for their opening, prayed for the pupils within them to acknowledge me, but my prayers went unheard. I saw one flicker, a scintilla of the creases surrounding it, and poised my fist - ceasing my weapon hovering above your beleaguered self. A gossamer of spittle extended from your swollen mouth to my still-balled fist. You gargled, blood cankering at the base of your throat and then rising like vengeful lava to spew over your acne-scarred cheek. It was repulsive. You were repulsive. It inured me. I wept above you my tears creating ripples in the pools of fresh blood they landed in. Slowly my body sank so my face was buried in the nape of your furiously spluttering throat. I sobbed against that lissome spot for a few moments, trying to retrieve a halcyon memory from my crazed mind in order to forget my surroundings. The scene was bucolic around us. We tarnished it with horror, and it was spreading, seeping like the blood from your wounds towards the innocent desert. To defile it with it's supreme atrocity. I had to stop it, I couldn't take it anymore. I dug out the pen knife from my damp jean pocket and flipped out the sharpest, surest blade.
And with that I breathed you in for a final time, the sickly haze of your cheap perfume puppeteering my senses, steering them towards malfunction. I brought the knife down, landing it surely between my heaving ribs. My nose accepting the metalic burn of our mingling blood amongst the petrichor aroma nuzzling beside it. Your delicate lifeless body trapped beneath my outstretched arm forever, your smile now as twisted as mine, the ghost of it dashed across the barren ground - both to inevitably seep into the thirsty dirt and join their fungal brethren.

Zippo (uncompleted)

Ben.

When I was a teenager I had a friend who liked to set fire to spiders. He always stored this rusty Zippo lighter in his worn, darned tube socks, concealed efficiently by his never ironed ankle endangering chinos. His old man had given him the light before he took off. It was a fine silver thing, not real silver of course and half the paint was chipping off at the corners, exposing the black under-layer ever so slightly, but it was still impressive to us. He used to find the spiders between the pipes on the science block and use the lighter to burn off their legs. He said it made a very satisfying noise when their bodies succumbed to the flames. I never much liked watching him do it, always gave me chills, but I never much worried about it either. 
     Tom, my friend, had these scars on his face. At first to me they looked like pink, wrinkled enlarged freckles. Later on, circular burn marks. He used to make up a story every time anyone asked about them, a prank gone wrong or a 4th of July accident, I even once heard him telling Kim Michel that he'd gotten the scars rescuing a puppy from a burning building. It used to bug me that I never legitimately knew how he'd really come to have such a blatant disfigurement. As I half-watched him torturing those arachnids, my eyes glazing over as they did so often as I was growing up, I'd notice something different about Tom. His eyes never seemed to focus at all. 
    We were camping out and sipping on a few brews once a few years later and I asked him about the scars. Face set like concrete I tried to seem genuine, in the hope I’d see the same courtesy back. He sat quietly for a moment - his expressionless features studying mine with a look of curious amusement, and then he began; 

'When I was a baby my mum used to burn me. She'd light up a cig, inhale, and then she'd walk over to my crib, stare me in my tear-filled eyes and stub it out on my face. She assumes I don't remember this of course, thinks I repressed it all to protect my psyche I suppose, or maybe as I was just too damn young. But I do remember. And now I have these scars as you can see, these perfect stamps of psychopathic evil all over my face, leading down from my eyes like fiery tear tracks. They’re constantly reminding me of the insanity hidden within my family - shamelessly exposed on my face. Sometimes when she's pissing me off I think about how it would feel to pin her down and burn her, let her see what it's like. I can just imagine her hysterical screams. I imagine she'd cry, she cries at most things anyway, and then I could place the burning butt over her fallen tears, like she used to do with me. I'd make a game of it, all the while humming to the tune of her absurd howling. It's a shame I don't smoke really.'
    He was like this, Tom, well-worded, calculated - insane. I knew it from a young age but I lacked something vital to make other friends; a personality. So I stuck by Tom until we were 18. We had a brief fight over a girl in the tenth grade which obviously he won, but aside from that people called us best friends. I didn't see Tom after I went off to college until he was arrested. The police called me on the morning of the 17th of December and asked me to come into the station, the station of my old town in Maine. I arrived two days later having needed to wait for the weekend to avoid being in trouble with my firm. After I arrived I remember walking up those stairs in a frenzied panic, running over parking tickets and tax aversion and pens I'd occasionally stolen from the bank, trying desperately to figure out just what I'd done wrong to be there. I never would have guessed the real reason.
   Maine had been in the news a lot in recent months. There was a serial killer they referred to as 'The inferno' going around burning women alive. I suppose in a way I should have put the two together; Tommy, The inferno - but my narcissism prevented me from seeing the connection. 

'I'm here to see Officer Creed.' I announced to the receptionist. She looked listlessly at me and asked me my name. When she spoke I could see smeared lipstick on her over sized front teeth. 'Ben Candy' I stated shakily. She pointed me in the right direction and I walked down the desolate hall full to the brim with nervous fear. 

'Ah, Mr. Candy - do take a seat.' Officer Creed was a man about my age, with a short buzz of ginger hair, the same on his face. He motioned at me with a steady hand to take a seat in the uncomfortable looking office chair sat across from his padded swivel. I lowered myself into the seat cautiously, not entirely certain I wasn't about to need to escape from it sharply. I tried to settle but my leg was going rapidly, as it always did when I was on edge. 

'If you don't mind me asking,' I spoke gingerly 'Am I in any kind of trouble?' I surveyed his eyes carefully, looking for the judgement I would surely find in them. 

'Oh no no,' he chortled gruffly 'No.' his face grew serious and he lent towards me slowly 'I'm here to talk to you about Tommy Glint' I sat stunned, I had not seen Tommy in over 15 years, I could not see why suddenly I'd been called away from my comfy, monotonous life in Manhattan to sit across from a man I didn't know, and discuss Tommy Glint. 'I can see by your face you haven't heard?' He sighed and carelessly pushed a newspaper article towards me. Inquisitively, I picked it up; 'Have they put out The Inferno?' The title read, I moved my tired eyes back to Creed unsettled, but finding nothing of comfort on his rugged face I returned my gaze to the article; 

A Caucasian male of 34 has been arrested in the tri-state area in connection with the stream of Inferno murders plaguing Maine since 2011. The man was escorted from his home in East Old Town and taken into police custody early Tuesday night. Officials refuse to give statement but our sources tell us that recent evidence has come about placing him at a minimum of three of the confirmed crime scenes. 

The article cut out there. I reread the segment three times before gently placing it back on the jaded oak table and returning my attention to Officer Creed. 

'Right...Well I suppose good news never travels quickly.' I breathed 'What does this have to do with me?' Creed coughed lightly and shuffled awkwardly in his chair, he lent to me once again and pointed somewhere to the right of him.

'Well that man is Tommy, Tommy Glint.' my heart sank into the pit of my stomach and my head reeled, everything around me seemed to become 2-dimensional and I felt like I was falling into an emotional sink hole. I thought about our nights sleeping over at mine playing video games. Thought about him carrying me home from Amy Nish's 17th, when I'd downed an entire bottle of my dad's Disaranno and thrown up in a girl's mouth. Thought about the day we met and he talked my ear off about 'the great questions of life' for 6 hours. 
   'Thing is...' Creed continued, alerting me to his forgotten existence once more 'Tommy's trial's next week. We've got him in there claiming that as children you two were somewhat chummy and he tells us you wouldn't mind standing in for him and telling everyone what he was like as a child, how, you know,' he cleared his throat stiffly 'not psychopathic he was.'

'But, I haven't seen the man in sixteen years, how am I supposed to know whether or not he's guilty?' I said, my voice shrill with confusion. 

'Well that's the point Mr. Candy - you don't' 
   There was a long silence in the room, his last words hanging like a noose above our heads. 'Would you like to see him?' I weighed it up in my mind. On the one hand; the man in the cell next door could be a killer, a grotesque monster capable of rape and torture. A human so twisted they found enjoyment in humiliating and mutilating middle aged women. On the other hand; the man in there was Tommy. My best friend. The only friend I'd had as a boy growing up and practically since. A shy and inept child I'd never quite been able to strike up a conversation with a stranger, never been able to talk to girls, never been social. Tommy had practically forced his friendship upon me the first day of middle school. Erratically talking over my dreary shuffling and alexithymatic disposition we formed a friendship based on him leading, and me following half-heartily behind. I never dreamt I'd be here, sitting in front of someone who was telling me that Tommy - my Tommy - may have done such a disgusting thing. I knew he was a little off, he always had been. He laughed at the scene in the lion king when Mufasa dies; he always took fancy to older women and of course, his icy unfocused eyes. But I couldn't believe he was capable of this. I could feel something in the back of my mind calling me, screaming at me, trying to proclaim my idiocy - I ignored it. Rising to my feel I felt lighter than usual. I wasn't sure of myself anymore, foolish decision clouding faux emotions. 

'Yes.' I spoke, voice like nails. 'Lead me to him.'  

Tom.


The space was oppressive. With its pastel colored corner-less furniture and dull wall paper it resembled a psychiatric ward; everything designed to inspire calm but equipped to deal with the opposite. I remembered the child psychiatric. I used to get sent there for all manner of reasons; 'Tommy has nightmares' 'Tommy cuts himself.' 'Tommy threatens us.' Every adult in my life since I was old enough to talk developed some kind of psychological qualm against me. I'd sit on the scratchy padded furniture, alone, and imagine I was in a movie. I'd see myself how the camera would view me; cinematic and poised. The perfect little actor to play this warped character in the horror flick that was my life. I used to scratch at myself to pass the time, using my trigonometry compass and one of the larger holes in the pocket of my goodwill jeans. I'd scratch until the fabric soaked red and then i'd scratch some more, seeing how many strokes of my weapon equipped hand it took for my threshold to break. Usually the pain continued through my determined tears.  

   I'd always known how to hoodwink the therapists, lead them into believing I was not deserving of the labels they bestowed upon me. I found it so obtusely effortless to coax people into believing me, loving me. I knew my mother had hated me as a child - she'd resented my very existence and made it painfully clear. But as I grew and my mind developed, I found her love could be earned with a strategically personalized routine as could any creature's.     
    That is how I knew Benny would come. I felt no relief, no excitement, the second I saw his ceaselessly worried features peering into the visitor's room. I'd known all along he would come. It's a pleasant feeling, having assurances. For example if my mother hadn't relinquished herself to the heinous hands of death years ago I have no doubt she would have been standing before me too, wearing the same vexatious expression of fear and confusion as Benny displayed. 

'Hello friend.' I chuckled, extending my chained hand to him. He flinched.I feigned hurt and repossessed my friendly gesture. 

'Tom.' He spoke. Mild excitement was being born somewhere inside my vacuous heart, I got the feeling Tommy may have come to tell me to go fuck myself, maybe the big city had changed queer little Candy - hardened up his toffee exterior and made him into a real man. However he then proceeded to lift the cold metal seat in front of mine and tentatively he sat down. I breathed an irksome sigh and then thrust my perfect smile at him. 
'How have you been Bennyboy?' I laughed, chains rattling with a curiously cryptic effect. 'Missed me?' His right eye was crumpled slightly in his usual look of apprehension. He coughed nervously and I noticed with amity that his leg was still shaking wildly, just like it had done when we were children. I reached my hand forward and placed it on his tumultuously quavering knee. 
'No touching!' A voice boomed out from towards the door. I cackled manically again. 
'Sorry officer!' I sang, raising my hands above my head 'Just can't keep my hands off him can I' I offered the uniform by the door a sly wink and he blushed and averted his gaze from the pair of us. 
'If you really want to know Tommy' Ben spoke, his reaction over slightly delayed. I assumed the shock of the unwanted caress had probably been enough to astound him into vocalizing his minimal thoughts. 'I have been fine.' ''Fine'' - a word I detested over all others. So bland, so insipid, so... fine. I cringed at the word and then once more plastered a smile to my face. 
'Well that's good to hear. You married? Got yourself a girlfriend yet?' I chuckled to myself, primarily aware of the answer. If he had a life, anything solid to cling to, he wouldn't be here. He twisted his hands as he always did when he was conjuring up a lie, such an artless magician. 
'Yes I am seeing someone.' he mumbled, eyes averted. I chuckled under my breath at his deplorable fables.
'Okay Benny.' I cooed, batting my eyelids at him. He looked uncomfortable once more and began shaking the other leg. 'Not that it hasn't been great catching up...' he was looking at me with fear etched into everyone of his pudgy features, he also looked as if he was about to vomit. 'Well we both know why you're here. Will you help?' 
  There was a bubbling in his chest, it rose up through his throat like a raging lava, spewing from his mouth and soaking me - laughter. Uncontained, manic, insane - laughter.
'Alright Ben, I was only enquiring.' but my words made no impact on him, he still lay hunched over the desk, shaking with unstoppable laughter. 'No need to be a dick.' I mumbled angrily. At this point I feared he may have been having a stroke, his howling reached such a loud volume and his eyes bulged from their sockets. But he calmed down after a few patronizing moments and once again sat adamant in his seat, looking at me. I tried to smile at him, but his irksome display had shaken me too much. 
'Well Tom, that's the first genuine thing you've said since we've been in here. Now if you want my help...' he coughed a giggle over the word once more 'Then stop acting like you're in 'The silence of the lambs' and talk to me.' I smirked at him through my vexation, impressed by his new found moxie. 
  'Why do they think you've done this - Tom?' His voice cracked on the last word, whether due to fear or sorrow I was unsure, but the display of emotion unsettled me. It was my turn to shuffle uncomfortably. When I moved it sounded like a gentle breeze had hit a happy wind chime on a summer-touched porch, the evil chains holding me shivering with my movement. I wasn't sure how to tell Benny. This boy I held so dear, the only friend i'd ever valued. His lips shook as he gazed at me, awaiting my confession. Maybe I should tell him the story of my scars again, or maybe I should make up a new story. Maybe I should tell him the truth - how alive I felt as I watched them die. How it was the only time in my entire shambles of a life that I've ever felt anything real, anything worth of being called a feeling. Sure I'd had impulses before, wants, general needs - but this was a genuine feeling. It was as if my entire life had been one long sleep, as if I was living in a vegetative state until the moment I heard the screams of that first woman, felt them wash over me, making my body shake. As I'd watch the skin bubbling on each victim, their eyes melting in their sockets - I'd feel as if it was my skin on fire, my blood boiling - my feelings. And with that i'd leave the stupor, be cast forward into a state of ecstasy. I'd never felt it before, nor since. But I could not tell him that, so I simply shrugged. Maybe saying nothing would be enough. 

Ben.

Tom just stared at me blankly. My question to him clung to my tongue, dangling from my mouth waiting to be answered. He looked sheepish, the glaciers of his irises melting into me. I repeated myself firmly;
'Why do they think you've done this?' he remained adamant in his silence so I added an air of pleading to my inquest 'Tom, please'
'Ah Bennyboy.' he waved a hand at me as if sweeping away my query. 'Why do people think anything? Why is the sky blue?Why is the grass green? Why does it matter?' he slammed his balled fist down on the cold metal table, it left a frosty glazed imprint like the ghost of a sea urchin when he lifted it. 'All that matters in this instance Ben is that I didn't do it.' I held his gaze, trying to fish out the truth from his ambiguous features. 'I didn't do it.' I was unsure whether he was trying to convince me or himself now. I told him I believed him, not certain as to wether or not that was true. We arranged certain necessities; the inquest, the trial - my statement. Then we began to talk of past memories, of girls and parties and concerts and drugs. We spoke of our youth like two pals catching up over coffee, forgetting our abysmal surroundings. When the conversation ran dry we just looked at each other, surveying the places on each face age had touched and mutated. Eventually I stood up to leave and just as I was turning to exit I heard Tom mumble something incoherent feebly. I turned to him once more and as I looked him over again, my eyes lingering on his heinous scars, he said coldly;
'Don't fuck this up Ben.' And with that, I left.
The entire duration of my journey home I cast Tom from my mind. Unable to focus entirely on the issue my mind just kept panicking, racing over each arduous detail. I felt tight in my chest, a fight-or-flight sensation I hadn't experienced in much substantiality since I left college. I forced myself to take interest in the mundane surroundings flashing before my eyes as i drove. The nocturnal cars passing by in the midnight dark, basking momentarily in the orange glow of the feeble streetlights, their haze losing the battle against the consuming blackness.
When I got home I marked the date of the trial in bold red pen on the bland 'sceneries' calendar that hung over my kitchen sink and immediately retired to bed. I dreamt of Tom that night, not for the first time since our parting of ways in '82 and definitely not the last. There he sat, so proud and still, atop a bobbing rowing boat. He was smiling at me. His smile seemed crooked somehow, like only half of his face was committing to its existence. He was calling me, beckoning me to join him. I knew I was swimming although I couldn't feel or see my body thrashing around in the icy water. It seemed the more I tried to reach him, the further away he became - all the while cackling manically at my pathetic attempts. I began tasting salt in a mouth I hadn't been aware of before then. After the mouth followed the lungs. Searing and seizing in an attempt to locate and consume sweet oxygen to no avail. I felt my body, finally, as it was submerged beneath the crashing tide. Tom disappeared from view. My head began to mimic my lungs, shreiking at me in a pulsating desperaion, the pain of both increasing with every breath. The world went black and nothing existed anymore. I knew what it meant, I knew it was a warning. I was the water as Tommy was the fire. If I allied with him I would surely succumb to the extremities of my element. And just as I became aware that I had drowned - I woke up.

Cliff

He lifted up the branch to let her through. The place where his finger pushed against the sadistic bramble split open, drawing blood. He let out a gasp and pulled the wound into his mouth and sucked hard, the metallic flavour covered his taste buds. She climbed under his outstretched arm and extended him a lazy smile, her eyes squinting in the setting sun. It's molten fury sat purposefully atop the dark shadows of the forest, burning intensely. As she passed him her 'Smiths' t-shirt caught on one of the patient thorns and ripped slightly, revealing the taught skin of her sun kissed stomach. He smiled softly back at her, and breathing in her flowery scent (one once so repugnant to him), he followed her. They walked silently for the majority of the journey, occasionally exchanging quiet, carefully chosen words about their surroundings. He noticed a lone spider resting delicately on a pure white web. Droplets on rain sat amongst it like friends at a table, all patiently awaiting their victimised dinner. The way the web pulled and pushed in the gentle spring breeze made him think of it as an organism breathing softly, inhaling the sweet air. The serenity surrounding them was so soft he felt that speaking would break it, shatter it into a thousand pieces all ready to cut into him. So they walked in wonderful silence. When they reached the drop she turned to him with tears in her eyes and beckoned to him to join her on the ledge, he followed her. They stared at the glaring inferno as it began its decent into the unknown, to journey to provide light and warmth to the side of the world currently dwelling in darkness. He didn't know why she was crying, he didn't ask either. She reached towards him and weaved her fingers between his, he was shocked at how frail they felt constricted by his desperate grip. He wanted to kiss her but he knew he couldn't, the understanding tore him apart. He remembered how she tapped her feet to the melancholy guitar riffs the radio offered them on the way here, her head listlessly bobbing along to the beat. He looked at her and smiled once more. The perfection of the moment consumed him suddenly and he too began sprouting tears. They trickled down his face silently and he made no effort to wipe them away, he simply allowed them to fall beautifully down his porcelain cheeks. Their translucency caught the sun and shone with it like matchstick fires cascading from his eyes. She squeezed his fingers as they wept together, neither one even pondering as to why. She turned her crumpled face back to the sun and began singing, a sorrowful lament about lost love and a wasted life. He listened intently and wished with every fibre of his being that the tune would never cease, but alas, she belted the last bar and released his shaking hand. Screaming at the top of her lungs she ran full pelt over the edge of the steep cliff, and wincing in fear, he followed her.

Stage

Her body twists, the sweat kissed skin of her bare legs glistening in the dull light. Wrapping a calf around the cold metal she spins, tilting her head back and closing her eyes. Her auburn hair cascades down her back like liquid fire, shimmering with every rotation. She places her hand at the front of her bodice and with one swift flick of her well-practiced wrist she releases the clasp. She notices that his eyes are still on hers. With her breasts exposed she finds this strange. She moves around the stage fluidly, every step carefully rehearsed. She lifts the cheap fabric of her minuscule skirt ever so slightly, just high enough on her thigh to inspire temptation but still allowing enough concealment to retain mystery. Every lift, every blink, every step, every touch - a practiced art.
When he walked in she didn't think anything of it, just another set of eyes to please, another mind to exploit - another wallet to plunder. That was five hours ago. He hasn't moved from his chair at the back, hasn't ordered a drink, hasn't averted his gaze from her the entire time. She's used to creepers forming perverted obsessions with her, but this feels different. She feels like she knows him, she's certain they've met before. She runs through lists in her mind, crossing off every mundane place where this man could have made an impact on her life. She glides to the front of the stage as her solo cue music starts, by the end of the first verse of jazzy chorus she's down to just two pieces of fabric barely covering her modesty. Her narrowed eyes bore through him as she loops a finger under each section of lace, all the while gyrating her hips in time to the rhythmic horn. With a daring raise of the eyebrow she begins to pull at the delicate bow holding the fabric up. And she's exposed, entirely exposed. Yet his eyes never wander beyond hers.
She returns back to her pole at the left of the stage and continues to dance, as she does every night in this dingy STI-riddled cesspit. The applauds starts, every clap stabbing through her like a shame poisoned dagger. She flicks her eyes to him and the look on his face catches her off guard, his features are twisted into what she recognizes as disappointment. It's the same look she got from her mother when she left college to pursue her career as a dancer and subsequently every visit home since. This was not what either of them had in mind. The money starts flying her way and she scoops to retrieve it, all the while being careful not to bend too far in either direction. She can feel his eyes on her. searing her flesh as if his vision is burning her, charring the skin where ever it falls. She considers getting the manager to be rid of him, but the girls always say not to anger the 'creepers'. That's what ends you up like Mary-lou. She was found with her breasts cut off and her skull bashed in around July last year. Rumor has it she got a guy thrown out who'd been stalking her and he waited the 6 hours for her shift to end, raped her, killed her, and then took with him the part of her he liked best.
The song ends and she gathers her clothes and heads backstage for a costume change. Entering her cool dressing room she shoves on her tacky, bright underwear in a rush - she only has 30 minutes. She stares at herself in the mirror as she allows her heart rate to return to normal following the vigorous activity on stage. She has to blink to know the face looking back at her is her own, you can barely make out the girl underneath all the garish disguise. She hears a knock on her dressing room door shortly after taking off her false lashes. Grabbing a terrycloth robe she steps towards the sound, tightly wrapping it around herself as she does so. She opens the door, smile plastered to her heavily made up face, and there he stands. Tall and brooding, the crease between his eyes deep, his brow furrowed. He looks her up and down apprehensively and then growls almost begrudgingly;
'May I come in?'. His iridescent irises gleam in the hall's fluorescent light.
'Yes.' she breaths. She's unsure of why she did so, it was like he was the hammer and she was the knee. She notes his broad shoulders and his large hands as he passes her in the cramped doorway - he smells like rain and something sweet she can't quite place. He shuffles across the room and stands awkwardly by her clothing rail, his eyes flicker quickly to the array of undergarments hanging frivolously there, then they immediately flick back to her and his face turns a peculiar shade of red. She starts to warm her heart towards this awkward, strange man. He's dressed incongruously from her usual clientele in a fine suit and is holding a rain-soaked anorak in his shaking hands.Taking in the salt and pepper dashing trough his slick-backed mahogany hair she would place him at about fifty, a possible three decades older than her. She's used to older men coming back to speak to her, to gush over her. They bumble and fawn in the most repulsive manor, like starved dogs in the presence of a prime steak. This man is different. She feels comfortable in his presence, he has a calming air about him. His deep breathing reminds her of a breaking shore and his eyes have lines around them that she's certain were made by smiles, not frowns. She herself smiles softly at the thought and offers him a seat - which he rejects.
'I can't stay.' He looks up and their eyes meet again, but this time it's different. She becomes very aware of the small space between them, of the lack of other human beings around, again of his broad shoulders, his large, rough, hands. In spite of his great stature and his gruff voice she believes he'd be a gentle lover. As she leans against her dressing table, leg bent and garter showing, she decides she'll let him sleep with her. She knows that's why he's here, that's why they're all here. Never before has she let a costumer into her bed, but there's something about the awkward mannerisms of this stranger that charms her. She illogically feels she can trust him.
'What's your name?' she coos, cocking her head.
'Charles.' he replies. He clears his throat. 'Charles Linton'
'Well Charles' she begins taking off her robe, and soon she is standing in just her underwear once more, the terrycloth softly dangling from her elbows. 'What can I do for you?' He looks at her and he winces. Taken-aback she lets the robe fall completely to the floor.
'Nothing.' he says flatly, his eyes on hers once more. His face tells her nothing. 'I should never of come.' he walks briskly to the door and yanks it open. He stands in the door way for a second, fumbling with something in his pocket. He turns and places a dirty envelope on the floor by her feet. He does not even glance at her before he exits through the chipped wood frame. The draft from where it's left hanging open hits her bare skin and goose bumps appear all over it but she does nothing to heal them, she just stands in the same spot, confused. She tried to comprehend what just happened, how quickly and bizarrely the mood shifted. Eventually she shivers - bringing her back to earth, back to this dingy dressing room, back to the life she's trapped in. She goes to the mirror, reapplies her lashes and touches up her liner. She looks at herself and is filled with hate. It bubbles up inside her to such a degree that she feels she may just explode all over this boxy room. How dare he? she thinks, How dare he reject her so, and then he has the nerve to leave her money? No, it wasn't right.
'No!' She screams at her reflection and her reflection screams back. She lifts a balled fist and jabs at her face in the mirror. The glass shatters and she recoils in pain, blood spouting from her tarnished knuckles. She falls to the floor on bent knees and howls into her lap, tears falling onto her naked flesh. As the mascara enters her weeping eyes they sting with an intensity to match her throbbing hand. She squeezes them shut to stop the pain. As she lays foetally balled on the floor she runs over the day in her mind and suddenly it clicks. Her thoughts reel and she feels as if she is melting into the nylon carpet rubbing harshly against her skin. The smell, the feeling, the name. She rises to her feet and runs over to the envelope on the floor. She rips it open desperately, pain searing from her wounded fist. Inside is a wad of cash as she anticipated but snuggled next to it is a small neatly folded note. She unfolds it and reads it and sinks down onto the floor once more. The blood on her hand is drying at a rapid pace. The lights blink twice and the bell goes, signalling it's time for her to go back to work. But she just stays where she is. Her head spiraling in a sick, shameful rage. She'd known his name since she was small how could she not have made the connection. Her lecherous desires had prevented her from exercising basic common sense. She wants to cry for him, to beg him to come back, to scream she's sorry and she misses him - all the things she'd ever wanted to say to him. But it didn't work when he left her the first time and she knew it definitely wouldn't work now. Not now he'd seen the damage he'd done, seen what leaving had done to his little girl - seen what she'd become.

Moon fire

In the dark everything looks different. Trees become sinister characters, towering above you ready to strike. The soft wind becomes vicious whispers, merciless threats against your life. The throbbing flicker of a streetlamp is the warning glare of a UFO, coming to claim your shaking body for alien science. Everything can adopt a malevolent nature, in the dark. 
 There you are, sitting alone at the isolated bus shelter, back hunched against the wind assaulting you from all angles. The amber glow of a solitary streetlamp half illuminates your bleak expression, a menacing shadow shrouds the other section from sight. There's rain kissing the road, reflecting the artificial haze above you, patterns dancing across it making it molten. You roll a cigarette, your frozen hands fumbling to collect the last dregs of dry tobacco from your worn out tin. Post- ignition you inhale deeply, throat burning. You are the only person at the stop. The road stretches before you in both directions. It has no bends, just barren concrete, an industrial invitation for adventure - or demise. Trees swaying gently in the frosty winds surround you, their melancholy rustling creates a lullaby that lures you into the dangerous familiar arms of sleep. You close your eyes, just for a second, just to rest them. But sleep grasps you, it takes you by the hand and leads you into the further - into the subconscious of your own mind, it guides you through your repressed memories and over your empowering secrets and dark sexual fantasies. You float around in the valley of sleep for a while, only to be brought back down by kittens scratching your face. You open your sleep encrusted eyes to tell them to go away, to fend off your furry foes. However you are not met by the small adorable faces of disgruntled cats, but a mossy tree branch. You're on the dank floor of the woodland that lay behind you at the bus stop. 
You have no memory of walking there, no idea how you got to be there. You sit up, heart pounding. You think you can hear footsteps fast approaching to the right of you, so you rise to your feet and you run. As you run the footsteps increase, pounding all around you, throbbing closer and closer like an agitated heartbeat. Branches are grabbing at your clothes as you flee, cutting into your skin and grazing your face, making attempts to catch you, to hinder your escape. You don't know where you're running, with no path and no clear idea of what you're running from every direction change is thoughtless. It's almost as if your destination is running to you. You hear an owl screech somewhere behind you, vocalizing the lamented anguish you're too afraid to express. You want to call out but you're unaware and apprehensive as to what may answer your plea. As you speed up, so does your apparent stalker. You slow, the cold air searing your tightened chest. The footsteps subside, and as you stop - they cease. You realize in a moment of shameful recognition that you were evading yourself, your own heinous blood pumping throughout your imbecilic body. You trudge forward, now just hoping you make it back to the stop so you can put this whole incident behind you. But you're so lost. You continue to walk through the cryptic forest. Devoid of the immediate threat of death you now begin to notice how beautiful your surroundings are. The towering moss riddled trees obscure your visionary pathway to the sky above you, you crane your neck and catch a glimpse of the moon. Wide and lethargic it sighs light at you through the murmuring leaves. 
You come to a clearing. There's a woman standing before you. You stare at her in awe, unable to believe her solid presence in this desolate place. But is she solid? Her straggly hair falls over her petite bosom, perfectly encircling her undersized mounds. She cocks her head to the side and you hear her neck clicking mechanically.The sound of it is years of discomfort, the release of eons of deformed tension. It sickens you. She reaches towards you. The bluish tint of her water logged skin shines with the moonlight- reflecting its lonesome purity. You notice her veins are black, the blood in them long stagnant. Each iris an abyss, her eyes freeze into you, boring down into your mind and thieving the part of you that you weren't conscious of since you were sat at that bus stop - your clarity. You fall into them as you gaze, seeing in them everything she has seen. The augural nature of all you find beneath her lids imbues into you a beautiful fear of a magnitude you never thought you could experience. You begin to scream. Her solidarity breaks you, bringing you to your knees. The desperate longing on her rotting face lights you up, igniting you from the inside so you burst, warmth spreading to the very tips of your extremities. How tingles race through your body like moon fire, forcing it into convulsion. She beckons you forward. You join her in the sea of lunar light, your peach skin flourishing as it's placed against her decaying tissue - the contrast monstrous. She extends a long purple tongue and places it against your cheek, you feel a stomach churning pain as the two make contact. You can smell your skin decaying, her saliva burning you like acid. You go to pull away but then you remember her stare, the worlds you saw consumed within her pupils. Dark mythical haunts where the people were all like her, infinite beauty exploding from them. You long to be like her. You shut your eyes, screw them closed so tightly you can feel them twitching manically with the strain of it all. You hear the owl again and somewhere in front of you a harsh, unforgiving voice;
'Mate, you getting on or what?' 

Snow Angels

Red on white. The colors of her quirky polka dot dress. Every singular blob of crimson merged together to form assaulting hazy lines as she span around the room, humming whimsically under her breath. Brandy in hand she never spilled, even as she span. 
   In he came. Red on white. A festive tie resting fluidly on a crisp white shirt. He reached a deliberate hand forward and took hers, pulling her into him with a soft longing in his burnt chestnut eyes. He bent forward and placed a kiss on her slightly parted lips, a kiss that spoke of assurance not lust, they shone like pearls where he left it. 
   She was hanging baubles on the tree. Red on White. Metalic shades of weath.Their reflective paint gleamed at me, beating me down with a mocking grin. From where I stood I could not make out her eyes. I knew they were there, of course. Wide and infinite, deep pools of blue consuming her pupils. I'd seen those pools overflow too many times. That's how they looked when they poured through me for the last time, waterfalls cascading from them, lips shaking, accepting the fallen drops. 
   My heavy breath was fogging up the window where I stood. I tried to stop it, to cease my bitter inhales, but they only grew mightier. I could feel my own hot breath hitting the frozen glass and rebounding back onto my frosted features - thawing them. 
   I readjusted the handle being grasped tightly in my mitten coated fingers. I was clutching the wood so tightly I heard my knuckles clicking in protest as my grip tautened. Red on white. Woollen gloves in patterns of men with beards and hats. 
   I rose to my feet, my extremities burning as the blood rushed back into them, a tingle ran through me as I walked briskly to the oak front door. I noticed my large footsteps leading from the mulberry bush i'd been concealed in, making ghost tracks in the virgin snow. 
   I could no longer see them, the window into their paradisiac life now too far behind. I could hear them though. Their musical laughter muffled by the protective solid structure between us. I thought I could smell her,the impossibility of it eluding me. To me her smell was home, and in a way that's where I was, even though I'd abandoned it months ago. 
   I placed my rusty key into the trusting lock and turned. Walking into the house my cheeks seared, the sudden temperature change catching my body off guard. I strode into their perfect living room and watched the color drain from each of their faces, mutating them into standing corpses.
  That's when her screaming started. I thrust myself at them, dragging them with me. Ripping them from their suburban utopia, like a premature baby being torn from the warmth of his mother's womb. I threw them out into the cold. I don't remember what happened after that, I was just so ardently happy. 
   Red on white. The phantom etchings of their struggle making angels where they lay.Their guilty blood staining the perfect snow.

The B

We used to call him 'Big Backwards Buck'. This was due to his obesity, the fact his shirt was always backwards or inside-out and his oversized teeth. No one was entirely sure of his real name, he was 'The B' to us all. We had our suspicions; Bobby, Bill, but no one ever really asked. We made a game out of the different misshapen features of his face, scoring points for each time our miscellaneously selected objects would collide with them from across the class; erasers, balls of paper, shoes. It wasn't a particularly challenging games - he never reacted, never even scowled back, he'd just sit there taking it all - but it passed the time. I remember one day, in tenth grade, Liam Hiller managed to convince which ever grade-below girl he was dating at the time to go over to The B and lightly rub her abnormally developed breast against the arm he was resting in front of him. as he tried frantically to solve a basic maths equation. We immediately saw the blood rush to his face, but the tale dictates, the blood didn't stop there. The B stood up and shuffled out the room like a constipated penguin, waddling and tripping as he went.  One more 'B' to add to the coincidentally alphabetizable list. I suppose it should have come as no surprise to us how we found him that day. The lonely old oak standing mightily still, bearing the weight, not even creaking. Shiny black leather glinting like a smile as it danced in the sun before us, tightly wrapped around a stocky, pale neck. Ever backwards label of an ever backwards shirt to us, then from us, to, from, to, from - turning with the wind, a dissipated carousel in the breeze. Stagnent line of drool hanging from the corner of a gaping mouth, coagulating further as the seconds ebbed on.    
The note he left itself gave us no precise indication it was our fault. There was no finger-pointing, no arduous and detailed account of every incident of wrong doing, no names -not a lot of anything really. In fact I would have gone as far as to say he did not blame us in the slightest, from what we could deduce from the note itself. It was a snivelling collection of cliches about how he was sorry to his mother and why the world was not fit for him - all the things a hormonal premenstrual girl writes in her diary after a pathetic vexatious breakup. And yet I still take these meds; anxiety, depression, sleep. Whenever I close my eyes I still see his lolling tongue and his fixed, bulging eyes staring at me as they circulate, dangling from the stumpy branch. Swaying softly like dice from a rear-view mirror. And every time I try to escape these apparitions  to find solace in other corners of my subconscious mind- there he is - his eyes fly open and so do mine as I scream and scream, cold sweat covering my body. I struggle so furiously against the images burning into my dream, fiery visions from Satan's own picture house - but they fight back, body spinning at the speed of a hydraulic drill - threatening to fly from it's suspended eternal stance by that oak tree and crush me where I stand. I still have to check each corner of my room five times over for his ghost, I'm still afraid of my own shadow and those all around me. I rue the day I ever laughed at his obesity, his backwards shirts and his bucked teeth. All because of how he signed that apologetic, travesty of romanticized garbage, that trivial scribbling. An almost illegible afterword at the back of an envelope haunts me, freezes the very marrow in my bones if I ever dare to think about it; 'I'll get you. - The B'