Intense

The devil lives in all of us. That’s what my daddy used to say. He used to shout at us if we looked at the picture books. ‘Do something useful with your time kid’. And so we crept around mopping up dust and hiding ourselves under carpets. The house was full of feeling scared.

Daddy didn’t know many words. His favourite word was fuck. He said it over and over. The fucking dog. You fucking kids.

I knew how to avoid daddy. I screamed back and he sent me away to my room. In my room I learnt magic words. The nice stranger in the bookshop gave me special books. The pages smelt like bacon frazzles and they sat heavy in my tiny, grubby hands. I sounded out the words. ‘All bad things will disappear.’ ‘You can make anything a reality.’ I didn’t know what the words meant. We hadn’t learnt them in school. In school Dick and Jane were still going to the shop to buy milk. I liked Dick and Jane. Their mummy and daddy loved them and they wore sweaters.

I got good at the strange words. After a while I didn’t need the books to remember the words. In fact the books disappeared from the shopping bag under my bed. I checked the bag after school. In there was the broken recorder. I had it for my birthday. I loved it so much my hand was sweaty when I tried to clean it out and the mouthpiece split. I was too scared to tell mummy or daddy so I hid it. Like I hid myself. I didn’t tell mummy or daddy about the boys who threw stones at my feet as I walked home from school. I learnt to run and asked for boots when my feet grew.

After a while I no longer said the magic words. I just thought them. Then I didn’t need to think them. They were just inside me. They grew as wild as my hair grew. As I became a girl. Not the boy my daddy wanted. One day mummy was at work. I made tea for daddy and called him from the garage. Daddy shouted. He did not say thank you. He did not say well done for opening the pilchard tin my daughter. That made me sad. As I tried not to cry daddy disappeared. One minute he was in the alleyway. The next he was gone. At first my heart skipped. Then I looked at the stinking fish in the oven tin and smiled. I washed them away down the sink. As I did something strange left my lips. A song. A child’s song.

The house was nice and quiet and I went to my room and got my colouring pencils and my book and I drew and drew until the sky went dark. I loved my pictures. When it came to bed time I cleaned my teeth and got ready for bed. I got under the covers and the dog came and lay beside me. He sighed and nuzzled me. We slept a deep, deep sleep.

In the morning there was no shouting. I woke up and smiled. I already knew the next page in the book. I opened my bedroom door and the smell of toast and butter filled my nose. I tripped down the stairs. ‘Morning mummy. Morning daddy.’ And they said the best thing in the world. ‘Good morning Darling.’ Just like in Dick and Jane. And I just knew that I would never need any more strange words. Any more strange stories. This was the perfect ending and I was happy.

Good

Once half becomes normal. One becomes all. It consumes you. I didn’t notice the changes at first. But there are moments. Moments when I feel my brain trying to work. Moments when I can see how easily I will become the man at the bus stop in piss-stained jogging bottoms smoking paper. Oblivious, if not proud, of stinking. Of falling from existence. At first I didn’t accept being here. I protested ‘I don’t belong’. Nobody believed I was scared. But I felt fragile at every noise. Every commotion in the hallway. Every policeman climbing the stairs. It is not the place that scares me. It is the dead end of my being that is stacked in every beige brick. But it soon becomes normal. It became home. There is no other place left to go. If only I could click my heels three times and be somewhere better. Now it’s three swallows and the place doesn’t look so bad. But it is not right. The uneasiness is rampant within me. I want to scream like the lady next door screams. This is not what was meant to happen. I am not supposed to be like this. But there is nobody left to hear. Screams fade down the hallway like cheap lager flushes down the pipes in this building. That is the cruellest trick of my life; that I have made every good thing disappear. I killed hope. The one thing nobody could steal from me. That is the torture most deadly to my existence. I killed the good in me. I was once a good girl with bad thoughts. Now I am all bad and I am so consumed I cannot stop the tremor. One turns to two. Two to three and three to four. Then they find me in my pissed stained jogging bottoms. Two to three to four weeks. If they find me at all. Nobody chooses to leak through their neighbour’s ceiling. In that body. Under that cheap fabric. Was somebody trying to be better. A good girl. A good boy. Somebody who could have been.

Curious

My body was taken under blue lights. It was an easy theft. Nothing more than an exchange of gases and air. They had been stalking me for thirty days. It was my fault that they caught me. I was so tired I couldn’t stop the thoughts from coming. When the thoughts came so they found me. I could do nothing as they laid me flat and carried me away.

They inserted the tube and I felt the wrench of my lungs slowly collapsing. My body bucked against the pressure. Choking. Gasping. Trying not to swallow the fluid. My body slowly quieted. Adapted to the pain. Resigned itself. My eyes kept looking however. Curious to see the last sights. Searching for some comfort. Some understanding. They rolled like doll’s eyes as I was moved from hip to hip. I felt the warm flow of blood gathering on the back of the paper gown they had dressed me in. When they were finished I was returned to my back. There I heard the descending click of the heart monitor. My pulse counting down. I became dizzy. The room became grey. My head overflowed with the chewed-up fuzz of old thoughts.

I had to see the monitor. As if it would help. I turned my head and felt the breath leave my mouth. I saw a green line. A few numbers. Forty-five. Forty-four. Forty-three. Watching the descent was almost calming. Like I was in control. Underneath the pulse there were smaller numbers. 18.30. 31.10. I smiled. Recognised the number. I imagined my body a hollowed-out lantern. Like the one I made with Kevin when he was six years old. I felt warm imagining the weight of his tiny body across my chest even though my teeth were chattering. I smelt the autumn morning on his hair even though my nose was filled with the smell of my body emptying. I remembered his lips busy with chocolate. Kevin’s face glowed in the light of the lantern. He was making this ok. In his tiny voice he asked me the same question he had asked at this exact time ten years ago. Just before he answered the door and they took him.

‘Trick or treat mummy.’ And I answered him softly the way I did then. ‘Always choose the treat Kevin. Always choose the treat.’

The Geese

The Canadian Geese are back on the river. They duck their heads in and out of the water. The sun shines around their bodies. A little shimmer of ripples catching the light. She wonders why they would choose to come here. What internal flight plan brings them back to this empty place year after year? The same thoughtless flight that brought her here perhaps. Except she cannot fly away once the weather turns. She is stuck. Looking out the window for signs of life. Drinking pink wine which swills in her stomach with the painkillers. She is too ashamed to buy alcohol which will make her drunk but not sick. Pink wine is fit for ladies. Decent people who share meals with their friends and talk. As she drinks it down like medicine she sees bodies behind windows. Their size ballooned by the effect of orange lights behind them. She wants to speak to the bodies she sees. But she doesn’t talk. Not to anyone. The words inside her are knotted-up in an immense lump that she will never bring up. They held her arms by her side and kept her behind a locked door. They asked her if she wanted to leave the small room and she said no. She was scared of anything bigger. Her whole life is closed up inside a locked room. Barren. She walks and walks but never finds anywhere to be. She takes a moment to look at the river. She huddles up in the little cotton coat that barely keeps the wind from her ribs. Fluffs herself like the geese. Roots herself against the unending cold of winter.

Harvest

She gathers up the words they throw at her. She remembers every label. Every story they tell about her. So many years collecting. Like a harvest of letters. She has disappeared under the weight of everything they call her. Every meaning they have fixed to the things she has done. She sits confused at night wondering how she got lost. How she became a parable not a girl; a warning to others but lost in herself.

She knows why she is a story. They no longer know what to say. She confuses them. Faceless yet present. They scrounge around for words. Ways to deflect her when all she wants is for somebody to come close.

She sits in the office with the paper in her hand. Today she is barren and isolated. She smiles and nods. Inside she is in another place. She is always in another place. She has many rich places to go.

But this magical thinking is no longer magical. She is getting tired and so old. Even closing her eyes to find friends makes her ache.

The weight of words is killing her. Each one pounds inside her head until the only place left to hide is sleep. There the words can’t hit her. She is just asleep. There is no meaning in the darkness for them. For her it is a beautiful pause. A pause they always disturb.

If only they would let her sleep. Left alone in the quiet and the dark she would follow the trail of words and pick them up like candy. Left alone in the quiet and the dark she would find her way out of the forest and just be.

The Wall

The girl sits on the wall. She takes a photo of the bag between her feet. The button on her phone clicks a hiss of confirmation that the moment is recorded. She likes the bag. It is green and yellow. The young girl in the shop gave it to her to put her wet umbrella in even though she didn’t buy anything. The girl likes that. When she is bouncing around the beige room they try to take the bag away from her. She shouts for it. She would not put that bag over her head. It was full of somebody being kind.

In the bag are the girl’s calculations. She remembers when she miscalculated and the clock went backwards. She saw her body from above stuck like lead-weight in the corner bed watching the moment over and over again. She would not like to be stuck on the ceiling again. The thought of it makes her heart pound.

The girl bought two bottles of apple juice. She gave the exact money to the cashier. As if being perfect would absolve her. Water makes her gag. If she has to drink it she moves her feet when she swallows. That stops her throat from convulsing.

On the wall she looks at the bridge. Always in the hope that it might lead somewhere. She wonders how things would look from the other side. If she would still be stuck no matter which way she was looking.

The girl looks at the photo of her feet and her bag and thinks this is ridiculous. I am ridiculous. Who carries a tiny carrier bag full of the unbearable weight of Wednesday morning.

She thinks of how they will ridicule her when they strip off her shoes and clothes. The shame makes her go behind the brick wall and snap the lid off the first juice. She retches thinking ‘now I will hate apple juice.’

A man in a green T-shirt walks by with a red dog. She has lost her place. She smiles but feels like crying. He walks by but looks back. As unsure of the picture as she is.

The girl would have liked to have told the man in the green T-shirt that she was in trouble. But she didn’t have the right to do that. She didn’t have the right to ask anyone for help.

The girl runs out of juice. Next time I will need three bottles she thinks.

The story has become as inevitable as sitting on the steps waiting to disappear. Expecting the concrete and strangers to hold you.

As she tells the story she realises. The green and yellow bag. The man in the green T-shirt. It is the colour of an ambulance.

Essential

It is essential to remain calm in a crisis. She remembered this as the smoke started to fill the room and people began to squeal. Fat Pete the photocopy-man was first out the door. With some relish he put on the yellow tabard and blew his whistle. Wet-Emily and Soppy-Sarah made it first to the exit. They had been on the hockey team and knew how to sprint. They held hands and sobbed. What fuckers she thought. She pictured them sitting on the back of the ambulance in tin foil blankets recounting their near-death experience to the best looking paramedic. Some things never change. The middle-aged ladies (none of whom warranted comedy names they were so amorphous) gathered handbags and photos from their desks. She felt the groan of the floor under their combined weight as they walked away. She sat at her desk. It was strange. It was just as she expected. The story ran in a perfect arc right from the moment she bought the kerosene and matches. She knew she would be left in the flames but just a little part of her hoped somebody would have finally seen her.

The Door

The sun bounced off her hair and made a golden sheen. It was six o’clock. Leaving time. She was running late. They had watched each other for months. Occasionally they talked. He hinted. She tried to hint. They were a history of missed connections and awkward glances. My god, just ask me she thought day after day as she followed behind his titan frame. The mouse pursuing the lion. Yet only his smile was bigger than her. And neither could summon up their lust. Then, on this day he stood in the electric door with his mobile in his hand and said ‘Julie, I have to ask you a question.’ This was it. She knew. She let the sun soak her hair for every inch of its life. Come on, come on, say it. As his lips formed the shape of the next line of words the door clicked. That annoying little mechanical grunt when someone was hovering in the middle. He knew it. She knew it. He had a second to decide which side of the door to be on. She worked the sun. He looked at his shoes. Then – bang. He was on the wrong side. Gone; and the sun dripped of her hair onto the floor. A bleeding puddle of what could have been.

Flashback

When I first went to the new world I carried with me two pairs of trousers and one pair of beige shoes. The trousers used to be black but I had worn them since school and they were now a dusty grey. They hovered inches above my ankles. Not long enough to cover the little shoes which pinched my toes and offered no warmth from the biting winds and gusts of grey smoke that whistled up the vertiginous streets.

The first evening I slept on a metal cot. I was so tired that even the poking springs couldn’t stop me from sleeping. I had one of those dreams where you drop from the pavement and wake up with a bump on the mattress; where you actually feel your fall. I knew what it meant as soon as I woke up and looked out of the twenty-fifth floor window. I was living above myself.

I remember trying to find food. I left the room and ventured out at 7am. I found a deli. It was full of boxes and cans that were strange but instantly identifiable. I knew what was in the boxes and the cans but the pictures and colours weren’t quite the same as from back there. The discrepancy unnerved me. I chose to eat an apple. I ate and walked. The taste of an apple is apparently not universal and I tossed half of it away in a scrumpled-up napkin the deli-man gave me when he said ‘enjoy your breakfast’. As if I could.

When night came I got on a bus. It was the only thing I could think of doing. I had no fixed place to go. We circled the streets. The lights trailing in an orange blur. Nobody spoke to each other. I had a camera. I was too scared to hold it up to my eye so shot from the cover of my bag. Pressed the button as we motored by buildings that I thought I should remember. Places that may be important later.

I lasted five days in the tall world. Then I had to move on. I rolled up the paper-thin trousers and winced as the shoes gripped my feet again. There was much further to go. When I got to a quieter town I went to a chemist and developed my film.

I have kept the pictures. There are thirty shots of blackness and trailing lights. A flashback of time. Places I have been but never quite touched.