I

Once I lived on a commune made up of around fifteen to thirty households, depending on the season, repopulating a small rural town in the Midwest. We were not on the same wavelength as most of the original inhabitants and they often let us know it, but some of us were friendly with some of them, and the dropout hippie heiress who funded the commune actually owned the whole town, so there we were.

I lived at first in a house that had been built from one of those four room Sears Roebuck mail order house kits that people used to be able to purchase from a catalog. The bundles would arrive by train, lots of bundles all clearly marked, including plans and everything that was needed to build a simple house, or even more bundles and fancy stuff depending on what size house you could afford.

This was a simple little four room house with no plumbing. Its front porch was a concrete slab with a little roof over it, held up by two big turned posts, posts that Willie later painted with trompe l’oeil climbing vines. The property was shaded by an omnipresent three hundred year old oak tree, the biggest, fattest, most wonderful tree for miles around. It had an artesian spring down the hill in back, a cool shady crack where watercress grew and time stood on tiptoe and the opinions of birds took on extra significance.

In the surrounding few miles, every formerly empty house or empty field was filled with the serious or frivolous, musicians and farmers, dirt poor scrapers, Vietnam vets, fortunate heirs, students, politicos, magicians and seekers after stuff on every level.

People built more houses, put up tipis, parked buses, planted crops, made babies, and pretty much got along.

I lived in that little four room house next to the big oak tree. I lived with Lucas, who was almost two years old, and five or six other people. My mother came to visit. She liked to let me sleep in the morning, and she’d take Lucas outside and sit on the edge of the porch, watching him play in the sunshine, keeping him out of the road. It was high summer, when the locusts never stop their song, and silence is an unimaginable thing, and there is so much green green green that you just want to turn green too, and welcome the inevitable.

Faintly, from among the sounds of the early morning woods, half dreaming, I heard a strange “dank-dink-donk” –ing sound over and over at regular intervals. The sound came closer gradually, and with it the noise of slowly moving trucks, and men’s voices.

I put my fingers in my ears and went back to sleep.

My mother sat on the porch hanging on to Lucas, as a curious procession wound slowly past, down that narrow country road. Several vehicles formed a line, with the Willys Jeep at the end. Bosco stood in the Willys, wearing nothing but his overalls, big curly hair flying in all directions, banging on the bottom of an old sauce pan with a big wooden spoon, ultimately commanding the attention of a young buffalo. This orphan buffalo was somehow entranced by the “donk” sound of the spoon hitting the pan, and all the attention and parental guidance from a slowly moving herd of old trucks and skinny half-dressed hippies.

This was the round up, pardner. They were heading home. Everybody waved, and mom and Lucas waved back, “dink dank donk” past the house, and the oak tree, six o’clock in the morning, disappearing down the road.

II

This house was a little house, but it was like the house in your dreams where there is always some extra space that you have never seen before…and more things fit in it than ever could fit.

Herbie came to stay, from somewhere far away, I think. He was dark and slender and Syrian or Greek or something. He had a big black mustache and he was gentle and intelligent and quiet and funny. I think he stayed in Jim’s room. That’s the kind of house it was. It only had four rooms, but I never could figure out where Herbie stayed. Jim sold occult books from a little shop up at the crossroads, next to the gas station and general store.

That fall I went away with a big caravan of buses, fifty vehicles, all made into gypsy houses. Eighteen people slept on our bus, mostly on the floor. There was exactly enough room for everyone to lie down at night.

I got mononucleosis, and Lucas and I went to the city to be near my mother.

In the early spring we came back down to the little town and moved in upstairs at the general store, waiting til it got warm enough to go live outside in the woods. The buffalo died that winter and its skull stood bleaching on a pole outside Seth’s tipi.

I like square buildings, I like to sleep in a corner. I like to make an altar on every wall, four directions max. Above and below are constant, whatever shape house you live in.

They were good people in that house. Larry Lawrence lived there. He’d brought a lot of window pane LSD to sell. This acid was so pure that if you put your hand on the outside of the cardboard box it had been UPS’d in, the light in the room would change. It was so good you could almost see through the box. It was highly molecular.

For the first time in my life I had enough money to give some away. Sarah came up and asked if she could borrow five dollars and I went and got her five dollars and told her, “Don’t ever give it back”. Sarah and her husband had twin boys, and two years later they had another boy born on the twins’ birthday. It was a heady feeling to give that money away, and I really hoped she wouldn’t mind if I gave it to her. That five dollars has come back to me a thousand times. It was obviously one of those serendipitously sound investments.

III

Herbie knew about a scheme where you could breed black widow spiders for the U.S. Government and they would pay you handsomely for your contribution to the whatever-it-was effort. He thought that sounded like a legal, easy way to make money growing something at home, and he was talking about it to anyone who was interested.

He still lived in the little Sears Roebuck house, next to the big oak tree, with a lot of other people, including an odd and beautiful girl named Susan.

Susan had pale skin and long thick dark hair, and a curvy womanly body.  She didn’t always finish her sentences, which didn’t always turn out to be about anything anyway, and it was hard to tell if she really liked you or not. But she was trying very hard to space in, from a very long way away, and she was beautiful, and really those two things combined can make a person perfectly worthwhile.

There were some of those kind of rural pink and grey Christians who lived in their own community nearby. They made friends with Bosco’s wife by successfully helping to wean her little girl from the breast. That child was difficult, and no doubt it was a kinder and more deeply Christian effort than those good-ish people realized, for creating a situation wherein an exhausted mother can get a full night’s sleep is some fine bread cast upon some excellent waters.

Once they had Bosco’s ear these Christians mentioned their chief concern about what was going on in our little community. Not nude swimming or left wing politics; not fornication, or the rampant use of marijuana.

No, it had to be witchcraft, proven by two obvious cases: one being me in my little room with the pictures on the walls, holed up in there, and then walking around the woods quiet for hours on end.  The other was Herbie who, it was said , kept a room full of black widow spiders.

Bosco assured these good people that they had nothing to worry about and suggested at a community meeting that both Herbie and I might want to keep an eye out for marauding Christians.

IV

One night in the cold early spring I woke up suddenly in the dark upstairs at the general store. The upstairs was quiet and deep asleep. The night was under the trees, out-in-the-woods, no electricity dark, still and empty except for some little breathing sounds and a gentle faint murmur of voices carrying from the room below. I stood like a sleepwalker and found my way to the top of the stairs, probably by the gentle glow of that box of window pane acid. I stopped and put two tiny crystals under my tongue. Slipping silently down the stairs, still half-dreaming, to share who knows what with who knows who, in a curling gentle baroque night meeting.

In the warm fragrant room below, by the light of one candle, Robbie and Ellen were keeping their own vigil and tending a fire in the big wood stove. They greeted me, and I sat quietly in my nightgown in a chair close to the stove, and went back to sleep.

I woke up suddenly again.  They both looked at me, and then they knew, because they were both people who knew things easily, and Ellen looked at me and said, “What have you done?” and I looked at her and she said, “When did you do that?” I smiled a little more, I think, and then no more questions, just the kindness and ease of friendships forged through the eons and momentarily touching in time and space. They made me put on a sweater. At some point Ellen blew out the little candle which had been our only light, “to see,”  she said, “what would happen.” With no light, the only source of illumination was the little red shadows outlining the door of the woodstove. The shadows began to roll and breathe, and soon filled the room, revealing the floating body of a big dark dragon, fifteen feet long, five feet high, circling the woodstove about three feet off the ground. It filled every air space in the room, with its head near me, floating hot and so deeply Saturnine, as to be almost malevolent. Perhaps its heat came from the coldness of its eye. It was mine, though…not bad, not good; it was there for me, maybe a guard or a guide although I got some feeling that I could be sizzled at any moment. It was wonderful and scary and just as I began to get worried, Ellen quietly lit the candle again, and all large unusual beings vanished, and Ellen and Robbie looked at each other and said, “Hmm, that felt kind of strange,” and I  didn’t say anything. When I finally spoke, I said, “I’ve got to pee and there’s too many wild dogs out there, somebody’s got to go with me.”

So Robbie went out in the night with me where the air was cold and clear, and there was a bright wet spring frost on the ground, and there were no dogs. We stopped by the side of the road halfway between the general store and the three hundred year old oak tree. I squatted to pee on a slight rise in the ground, moving my feet apart so they wouldn’t get wet.  It was deep deep night and as quiet as frost and starlight and acres of trees can ever be. I stood up billowing slightly in the old sweater and my white nightgown and a pair of someone’s big green rubber boots. We stood in silence for a long moment.

Then I thought of Susan. Susan who I couldn’t understand.  Susan who wanted to be with us so much, but was so far away in her mind. Susan, dreaming, in the house just down the road by the oak tree.

I looked wild at Robbie. He put his arms around me and I began to cry. I wept hot and pure, from my deepest heart, and when I pulled away I looked into his eyes and they became Any Eyes Will Do, and I looked into his eyes and said, “I love you Susan; I love you, Susan, I love you, Susan,”  through his witness, but all for her, “I love you, Susan.”

V

Susan and Herbie fell in love. No, I think they arose in love. Susan adored him. He adored her. She began to speak in complete sentences. She floated; she was beautiful. He had to get a job and he was responsible. She was pregnant and they got married. They went to live in the city and they took a small apartment on the second floor of an old brownstone. Herbie went out one winter evening to get a quart of milk at the corner store. A man came in to rob the store, and stabbed Herbie with a knife. He died. Herbie died before the baby was born.

We love you, Susan.
We love you, Susan.

VI

Ellen went to Europe with an international drug dealer. Robbie went to jail for three years and then moved to Hawaii. Bosco got rich building  RC aircraft in Humboldt county. Willie played accordion in the Tom Waits band. Seth still has the buffalo skull. Sarah died in a car wreck. Her boys joined the Marines. I went to live in England, and then came back.  Susan disappeared.

Lucas bakes bread and lives in a house with lots of people. I think it’s one of those houses you see in your dreams…the one that has more room than you ever knew, and more things fit in it than ever could fit.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Jessica Ruby Radcliffe is the child of a Spanish aristocrat and an Irish gypsy. She attended l’ecole duTap Dur worldwide and maintains that her life has not been lived to be described in prose. (Photo by Amzie Adams.)

The smell remained. Antiseptic, flowery, invoking hospitals and hospices. He looked down. A sticky film enveloped the glans of his penis. Purple and mottled red, it winked back at him knowingly. Fail. He had failed. She was up for it – his girlfriend, that is. After months of pleading and wheedling, he’d managed to get her to agree to anal sex. He’d bought the lubricant – not KY, too expensive – but a Boots own-brand version. What could be so different about them? Earlier that day, he and his girlfriend had had ‘normal’ sex – he on top, she on top, at the side, from behind – he knew all the names – missionary, cowgirl, reverse cowgirl, doggy. Before he climaxed, he had pulled out, hopped across the room, taken the lube from his bag, opened it and applied a drop or two to the tip of his cock, the index and middle fingers of his right hand, and the starry entrance to the target orifice. His girlfriend – head on the duvet, arms outstretched as if skydiving, legs spread, arse in the air – gave a gulp and an intake of breath, but had then relaxed into it as he slid first his index and then both index and middle finger slowly into her. Her anus had seemed to pull him in, like a tractor beam, like Thunderbird 3 he remembered, and then shook his head and concentrated on the task. Distal, intermediate, and proximal phalanges Go! His girlfriend had cried out a little as the metacarpals pushed into her heat and clutch. His cock had lost something of its rigidity but that was probably a good thing. He had pulled out his fingers, sticky with lube and juices, taken his cock in his hand and aimed it towards the spot, now slightly dilated. He had pushed gently. It’d slid around and veered off to the side. He had pushed a little harder. It had dipped down and entered his girlfriend’s vagina as if seeking its natural home. He had pushed harder, slapping it on her perineum to stiffen it some more. His girlfriend had looked around, impatient maybe, annoyed somewhat. He had pushed even harder, the glans marbled mauve, angry, the foreskin rolling back to reveal swollen veins and arteries. He had stood on tiptoes and used his weight to push down and in, but the sticky stuff meant his cock slid all over her right buttock leaving slimy snail trails of lube and Cowper’s fluid – he’d looked it up the day before – pre-cum. ‘Fucksake,’ his girlfriend had said, looking up from the yeasty duvet. ‘It’s not like this in the movies,’ he had said. ‘What movies would that be?’ His girlfriend had replied, ‘Dumbo? Bambi?’ I was thinking more, ‘Anal Housewives 4,’ he had said, his cock now limp and embarrassed. ‘Maybe we should try a different position.’ ‘No,’ his girlfriend had said, ‘I’m not in the mood now,’ and had turned over, cocooned herself in the duvet and turned her back to him. 15 minutes later, she had pulled on a pair of clean knickers, wrapped a towel around her warm body, and humphed off to the toilet. While she was gone, he had looked at the anal category on goldporntube.com and tried to find out where he had gone wrong. It all looked so easy, so accessible, so… well, natural. And he had had to admit, the men had bigger cocks, thicker cocks, sleeker cocks, shinier cocks – maybe it was the pubic hair he had growing in abundance down there, unlike on the rest of his body, where you would want it to grow – the chest, the head – his pubic hair was like Kitchener’s moustache, like Sancho Panza’s, like Lemmy’s. He had heard the toilet door open and his girlfriend go into the kitchen and fill the kettle. He had gone into the toilet, locked the door, and breathed in deeply. He loved the ripeness of her stink, the heavy metal odour of her shit, the fecund gasses. He had lifted up the lid and seen two skid marks in the bowl, a confetti of unflushed matter. He had knelt and inhaled, his cock stiffening, his breath catching.

​Now he stood in the toilets of the 12 Bar Club café inhaling the smell of his failure. He put his penis back into his underpants, buttoned his black Levis jeans, wiped the piss-spattered toe of his Converse on the back of his leg, and stepped out into the café, nodded at the guy behind the counter, and walked out onto the litter-strewn pavement of Denmark Street. Tin-Pan Alley. As he turned right along the road towards Wunjo Guitars, he tripped over a sodden cardboard box, kicking it into the street. Underneath, he saw a half-eaten kebab and, feasting on it, one of those mythical London beasts a third rat, a third pigeon, and a third greased Teddy Boy duck’s arse. Shuddering involuntarily, he blanked his mind from the monstrous thing by closing his eyes and reciting his mantra, ‘Three-colour sunburst! Three-colour sunburst! Three-colour sunburst!’ Nearly colliding with a passing cycle messenger, he knew because the guy had shouted, ‘Watch where you’re going, you fucking hippy cunt!’ he reached the store and stood, mouth agape, staring into the window filled with guitars.

​He had his eye on a Fender American Vintage ‘62 Jaguar with three sliding pickup selector switches, upper bout rotary volume wheels, chrome hardware, a tremolo lock, a removable string-damping device, rosewood fretboard and – the clincher – a three-colour-sunburst body. Perfect. An original as well, not one of those Kurt Cobain clones. He looked at the price tag as he had done every week for the past three months – £1599 – and it never changed. He had willed a decimal point between the fives but it refused to appear. He thought about it. The infinite blackness of the dot, like the opening to the deepest tunnel, one connecting moments in time, a space portal, a back hole leading to nothing, to nowhere, to everything and everywhere. Like the pupil of an eye. Like the opening to his girlfriend’s anus. Like a full stop at the end of a sentence. He blinked. The tag read £1599. Fuck it, he thought.

​He looked along the street towards Charing Cross Road. There were others like him. Men staring through shop windows at their dreams, their memories, their passions. The sad and the lonely, the frustrated and the foolhardy, the wannabes and the wannabeagains. Fuck it, he thought. He walked to the cashpoint outside Foyles, read the warning message, punched in his PIN and checked his balance – £1595. Bollocks, he thought. Bollocks. He checked his pockets. £1.31. Fuck. He shouldn’t have bought that fucking Stella. But, he had a tenner earlier, he was sure. An Ayrton. A Hugh. Fucksake, he thought and checked his other pockets. What’s this? A piece of paper. A fiver. Please god. A lady. A deep-sea. A MacGyver. He closed his eyes, unravelled the scrunched up piece of paper. Please god, please. He imagined himself in his back room, the Jaguar slung low, the opening chords of ‘Jail Guitar Doors’ absorbed by the painted-grey egg boxes. He opened his eyes, a receipt for £4.99 – Boots’ own-brand lubricating jelly. And he remembered the warning on the back of the tube, below the instruction to squeeze a small pea-sized amount on to your finger – THIS IS NOT A CONTRACEPTIVE.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Steve Finbow’s critical life of Allen Ginsberg will be published by Reaktion Books summer 2012, his crime novella/poem Nothing Matters likewise by Snubnose Press early 2012. He’s currently working on a play and wondering why he’s finding it difficult to settle back in London.

Christopher Christopher, known to most as Twice Christopher, to his friend Bartholomew Barty as Christopher Chris and to Mum and Dad as Christophers, makes his way down an elongated pavement of many shops and little charm: an ordinary street in an ordinary town populated by ordinary people: pallid persons gyrating in grey plastic raincoats and lazy arsed elasticated bottoms. On market day you might find an oversized dwarf on his vile tummy blowing a woman’s Adolf away from under her nose. Not anyone’s idea of entertainment but a crowd will inevitably collect around them as there is little else on offer. In such a barren environment Christopher Christopher stands metaphorically alone: a towering Masai amongst the crouching Pygmy. For Christopher Christopher is an intellectual: a lyricist, lute player and self-proclaimed laureate of the singsong. A Renaissance artiste no less, forced to walk amongst the idiotic in a fruitless search for inspiration and appreciation; a thwarted thespian condemned to be understudy in a medieval pantomime of farted manners and belching verse.

‘Oh, lank-haired beauty, will you be my booty?’ inquires Christopher Christopher in lyrical accompaniment of his lustful lute.

The hag-like harridan he addresses with his lovelorn song is sitting on what appears to be a pile of rat dung.

‘Sell you some for a smile, kind gentleman,’ she yells.

‘Your voice is like a chattering chandelier in a dark, dank tunnel,’ sings Christopher Christopher.

‘Want some shit or not?’ she replies.

‘No, thank you. Not today,’ he says and makes his way down the street, chiding himself in whip-like whispers for wasting his art on such a baleful beast.

‘Lust must not get the better of me,’ he whispers. ‘I must save my verse for my one and only, the one who has not yet made her entrance onto my sorry stage.’

Just then Christopher Christopher spots the oversized performing dwarf walking alone on the other side of the street. Now Christopher Christopher has seen dwarves fighting on late night shows and so knows to be wary. Nevertheless he is also something of a friendly philosopher and decides to offer the hand of corrective, fraternal friendship to the squat little fellow.

The dwarf gives a typically angry dwarf-like response: ‘I don’t know what you’re fecking on about, philosopher ponce.’

‘I am beseeching by way of philosophical musing that we are neither fish nor fowl, mineral nor base metal. Though we are none of these, we are also all of these for we are human and the unity of binding blood pumps under our skin. You and I despite appearances, little man, are one and the same.’

‘Feck off,’ shouts back the dwarf.

‘I will not wrestle with you. Your language is limited and offers no respite from the ugly realities of life. I offered you a flower and you spat poison back at my mouth.’

‘Never touched your mouth and you never gave me a flower,’ shouts the dwarf.

‘I speak figuratively.’

‘Figuratively? What mouthy manure.’

‘I bid you good day.’

‘Feck off,’ yells the dwarf at Christopher Christopher’s retreating figure, ‘and take your fecking figurative flower with you.’

‘Little body, little mind,’ whispers Christopher Christopher to himself.

‘Oi, I heard that,’ says the dwarf running after Christopher Christopher with a dementedly determined expression and his tiny fists waving in the air.

Though the dwarf has unusually acute hearing, he is not a competent runner and our philosophising hero is able to make a speedy enough retreat to safety. Behind a tall wall he waits until the budding mini pugilist gives up and wobbles his way home.

When the dwarf is out of ear shot Christopher Christopher breathes a large sigh of relief. As he does so, he turns round to find the young moustachioed woman who he’d seen in performance with the dwarf, sitting against a tree staring at him. Christopher Christopher is overcome with a strange sense of pity and affection for the lightly whiskered young performer and feels compelled to offer her some advice.

‘Young woman, why do you let the angry oversized dwarf blow an Adolf from under your nose? It demeans you and gives encouragement for vulgarity to spread amongst those who watch.’

The young woman slowly peels the thin moustache away and lets it fall like a hair-slug onto the ground – and her beauty is revealed as if by a magic spell.

‘Do not judge a book by its cover, Chris. Do not let your lute lead you into quarrelsome ways. And try not to discriminate against public performances involving dwarves called Andy and women with false moustaches.’

‘No-one has ever called me Chris before,’ says Christopher Christopher with a look of happy dismay.

The young woman smiles and Christopher Christopher feels his heart swooning and his cheeks redden. And so he pulls out his lute and starts to sing:

‘Feel my what?’ asks the young woman.

‘Your elemental; your fundamental; your beauty in and out,’ exclaims Christopher Christopher.

‘Chris, thank you for that,’ she replies.

‘No, thank you,’ replies Christopher Christopher, shutting his eyes and leaning forward to kiss her. As his lips part and his tongue rolls out, he falls through space and onto the ground; the young woman is gone. He rubs his head and opens his eyes, and the grey clouds and dirty day are replaced by sunshine, sweet scented climbing flowers, and a rainbow arching the sky like a horseshoe on a giant flying unicorn. And lying next to him, wearing her fallen Adolf and snoring like a bassoon, is the dwarf named Andy. Christopher Christopher pulls out his lute and begins to play.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Dogsbodies and Scumsters, a collection of Alan McCormick’s stories and Jonny Voss‘ illustrations, is available now on Roast Books. See more of their work at Scumsters and Dogsbodies & Scumsters. ‘Three Lessons for Christopher Christopher’ was written by Alan McCormick and illustrated by a friend of Alan and Jonny’s from Berlin, Stefan Wiese.

Jenkins fucked me on a beach at Dungeness and my knees carried the indents of pebbles for days after. I’d seen him the night before in a drag pub in Brighton, talking with some men at the bar. In a tight fitting blue T-shirt and jean jacket he was just my type.

I was eighteen, studying art at the Poly, and already drunk from a show when I arrived alone at The Mermaid that night. Jenkins told me later that he hadn’t seen me come in, though I couldn’t keep my eyes off him from the moment I got there. Watching him talking and smiling, inhaling on his cigarette, everything in my mind racing, telescoping towards him; but that may have been down to the tab I’d just dropped. He was so at home with his casual, sly mannerisms, the hand on the shoulder of the man next to him, the gentle leaning forward to whisper something in his ear.

Jenkins said he only noticed me when I got up to do my karaoke Nothing Compares 2 U, my party piece, but the Sinead O’Connor version, not the Prince one. He said I was like a siren, but he could hardly fail to have noticed me, I was singing it six feet from his body, all the time staring straight into his eyes.

We got talking and within five minutes his hand was on my knee, his fingers travelling slowly up my thigh. I asked him about the blue anchor tattoo that lay on the soft crescent of flesh between his thumb and finger. He said he’d got it done in Amsterdam when he’d lived there in the seventies; but then he also said he was thirty-seven.

I talked so much, maybe it was the drugs or drink, but I just couldn’t stop. I told him about my real dad, a painter, who disappeared in the sea off Greece, and about my stepfather who liked to chase me round our kitchen. My mum would stand there, staring blankly as if she was watching television. I described the day when she did nothing to stop him, and how I left the house the following morning, never to return. Jenkins said nothing, but his eyes took everything in. They sparkled, a crystal blue, like the sun raining on the Aegean Sea. We shared a cigarette, and kissed.

I talked about my tattoo, a heart floating in a pool of sea, a pearl in the milk of its own shell, and how it lay secreted from view. I whispered that, if he was good, he might get to see it one day. He pushed his hands up between my legs and whispered that he had a thing for the gamine. ‘What?’ I thought. He said I reminded him of Jean Seberg. ‘Who?’ I said. That he loved my ash blonde wig and was turned on by the tiny rabbit hairs above my top lip. He said he could just imagine them when I got to sucking him off, and how talking about it now made him as hard as stone. All this should have jarred many things inside me, set off all kinds of alarm bells, but the truth is it didn’t, it turned me on.

After the pub we went to a club by the seafront, but the queue was too long to get in. The acid I’d taken earlier was beginning to wear off and I felt tired. The bright lights of the pier all of a sudden went grey and dim. All I wanted was to do was to lie next to him, to feel the warmth of his body, to feel his skin on mine. I was shaking and could barely walk, but he steadied me along, his arms around me all the time.

I’m not sure how it was decided but I ended up on the back of his motorbike. He had a spare helmet, ready I guess for just such an occasion. I bet there had been many others. I liked that idea; it made me feel safe, even when he drove like a demon.

I could barely make anything out as we clambered the night up into the Downs, somewhere between sky and sea. Every so often, the forced revving of an engine groaned from behind climbing a hill, attempting to catch up, but no car ever passed us. They screamed by in the opposite direction though, their lights dazzling. I don’t know how he could keep control, let alone see the road. Brighton had long disappeared from view, its ragbag of urban lights and fumbled memories blown from my brain.

Then nothing, but the numbing sound of the motorcycle engine, my helmet compressing against my head. As we drove on there were fewer cars on the road, and those that were signalled themselves with soft splayed out torches of light from high and afar, winding in and out of view along the hillside bends until they suddenly appeared in front of us, eyes of light beaming, then casting out shadows on the road, blackness enveloping us once more.

We drove for ages and I began to feel cold. I pulled my body closer to his, wrapped my arms tight around his stomach, my hands slipping into his jeans. I slid them down further and felt. He let me but showed no reaction in his body, no shudder, no little look round, just the occasional and sudden twitch of his cock. Each time it moved it made me laugh.

There were times that I thought I might fall asleep, and others when I felt like jumping off as fissions of electricity surged through me. A bolt of energy climbed through my body, the chill of night and ice on my nipples so exhilarating I thought I might never feel this good again; I just wanted us to stop and fuck.

At Dungeness, I got my wish. Nothing was said. We just went at it, roughly at first, then more gently, and I didn’t suck him off once. We lay up close, he inside me, and moved slowly as the waves lapped and dragged themselves up and down the pebbles, then back into the black of the sea.

As dawn arrived, in its thin grey light, we could make out the faint yellow beams of fishing boats on the horizon. As we craned our heads we could see a small blue boat chugging out from the beach. One of the fishermen saw us. He told his mates and they waved and whistled. We were naked, entwined. I got up and stood on a rock and waved back. Jenkins seemed not to care; he handed me a drag of his cigarette and looked away.

We got dressed and walked along the beach, skipping stones, and picking up driftwood. A man came near with a dog. Jenkins spoke to him. I petted the dog, the smell of seaweed on his fur reminding me of my dog, Charlie, that I’d had when I was a child before Dad ran away. I felt sad. Jenkins noticed, and when the man left, he pulled me close to him and kissed the back of my neck.

We came across Derek Jarman’s wooden beach house with its strange natural, sculpture garden. Jenkins said he’d met him once, that he’d been something of a local character. I was eleven when he died, and I remember his film, Blue, being shown on television: a beautiful blank Klein-blue screen with only his commentary for explanation. My mum had turned it off saying it was ‘filth’, my stepfather adding that it was ‘a waste of a fucking licence fee’ – his words. ‘It’s channel fucking four, actually’ – my words as I climbed the stairs to my bedroom, leaving them to their whisky and shouting. I lay on my bed, sinking my head back into the pillows to drown them out, and looked up at my poster of the southern oceans, and dreamt of swimming, swimming way out to sea.

We drank tea in a cafe in the nearby fishing village of Winchelsea. Jenkins said he’d never seen anyone put so much sugar in their tea before. ‘Eight’s my record,’ I said. ‘Six is being boring.’ He smiled and gently pushed something across the table towards me. It was a stone from the beach. He must have found it when I wasn’t looking. It was ivory smooth, long and beautiful. ‘Does it make a noise when it goes off?’ I said, picking it up. He didn’t laugh, just wrapped his hands around mine, and the stone I held, and squeezed lightly. This was my moment, and though I knew he meant it more as an ironic, erotic keepsake to remind me of him, I just didn’t care, I’d never felt so wanted.

We got back to Brighton later that afternoon. Jenkins said he had to work. He didn’t tell me where. We kissed and when he left, he didn’t look back.

Every Thursday after then, I went to The Mermaid in the hope of seeing him. I asked the men at the bar if they’d seen him. I described him – the motorbike, the small tattoo on his right hand, his pale blue eyes. ‘But what’s his name?’ they’d say. I shrugged my shoulders; Jenkins was just a name I made up for him. Jenkins was originally the name of an art teacher who touched me at school. He got sacked, and looked a bit like my seaside lover, that’s all.

A few weeks later, I went back to the Winchelsea cafe, and walked along the beach to a spot where a blue fishing boat had recently sunk. There was a circle of marker buoys, and in the distance was Dungeness with its ugly concrete power station, shadowy against the sky. I stared at the waves and imagined Jenkins below, his slim body resting at the bottom, the small anchor on his hand settling slowly in the sand. I fantasised for a second of diving in and swimming down to join him, then thought about the sex we’d had on the beach. I felt inside my pocket for the stone he’d given me. I squeezed it hard; then threw it as far as I could out into the sea.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alan McCormick’s stories have appeared in many places, including the Bridport Anthology, Matter, Aesthetica and Litro, and on-line at DeadDrunkDublin, nthposition and Pulp.net. Dogsbodies and Scumsters, a collection of Alan’s stories with Jonny Voss‘ illustrations, is available now through Roast Books, and you can see more of their work at Scumsters and Dogsbodies & Scumsters.

Due to holiday absences and a shift miscalculation, I’m now covering reception as well as cleaning out rooms, getting them ready for guests, data entry, photocopying, running out for milk and anything else The Meadows Hotel can legally get away with making me do. Reception is like having a lobotomised conversation. Think of the money, my mum tells me. I need to save up for my deposit and there’s only thirty more 6am starts when questions of ‘what for?’ go unanswered.

Mr. Conran complained about noise disturbance again. It was the fourth time so I went to his room to listen. We sat on the edge of his bed. The mattress, he said, sagged in the middle and contorted his spine into unnatural positions during the night. I couldn’t hear anything. He asked me, what kind of service are we providing here? At a loss, I told him to speak to the manager. He muttered something about not being dismissed. The corners of his mouth remained sealed shut as the middle opened and closed, making him fish-like. At the end of my shift he came down to the desk and handed me a note that the manager had signed. It said he had good reason to believe there were rats in the walls and that a full inspection had to be carried out in case there was an infestation. While I was on the phone to the exterminators, Mr. Conran’s eyes stayed on me, as if he thought there was a conspiracy of rats that I was trying to keep hidden from him. Can’t wait ‘til he checks out.

Threw up over next door’s shrubbery last night as a result of drinking spirits at Sarah’s until 3am. Today was horrific. Ms. Pearson checked out in the morning. God knows what she did in her room, but there was some kind of condiment stain on the wall which took until midday to remove. Hangovers and cleaning products don’t mix well so I dry-heaved for a while and noticed a gold ring with a big ruby in the middle of the bathroom floor. I bet Ms. Pearson was a goer in her heyday. The ring’s probably worth a bit. Her daughter doesn’t want any of her stuff, something about it hindering the mourning process, so the ring went to the gift shop. Perhaps someone on a drunken or sentimental whim might buy it. Even so, it’ll most likely end up back at the shop again and be on permanent rotation.

Five hours straight of data entry because of six new check-ins on Monday. Inseparable minutes just kept continuing to occur. Time is my enemy. There’s a young couple coming. The double sheets haven’t been washed in ages. That’s no way to run a hotel. And Nigel, the manager, came to me and said I’d made a mistake. Under Reason for Stay for Ms. S. Ackroyd I put I have no reason to instead of I have no reason not to. This, he said, was the kind of error that puts the entire establishment’s professionalism into question. Reason for Stay is one of the most important pieces of information that we have to record. If, Nigel said, I was finding it too difficult to read and copy data, then he would arrange for me to have extra training after my shift. Nigel can go fuck himself.

Obviously some people vacillate more than others, but the period of stay can’t be indefinite so there’s a review in regard to Mr. Conran. He’s never going to leave. The other day he said he could still hear noise. He said it could be cockroaches and I said there’d have to be an awful lot for that to be the case. I told him that pest control would’ve noticed cockroaches when they were here looking for rats. They’re very different creatures, rats and cockroaches, he said. Yeah, but you’d know if you saw cockroaches or if you didn’t, I said. He looked at me as if I’d confessed that I used to be an insect myself and just stared with that fixed gaze for an interminable period and then said, what makes you think you’re qualified to make that distinction?

Absolute chaos. When the new bookings turned up there was an extra one that the agent neglected to mention. Of course everybody thought it was my fault. Nigel panicked and had me constantly repeat what was already in the system in the hope that after x amount of times the information would suit our situation. When it didn’t, he resorted to swearing at me. The night before I’d barely slept at all because I began to worry about my end of year results. The space behind my eyes was torched. At one point, I was on the verge of tears but that would have been a mortification too far and hardly worth the liquid loss. To be fair, the unaccounted for guest, Mr. Mason, was very good about it all and said he didn’t want to cause a fuss. We had to ask Mr. Davis if he minded checking-out a few hours early. He just shrugged and said there was no point delaying the inevitable any longer.

I got a mid 2:1. Not bad, given how little I worked. Found out that Mr. Mason also studied Philosophy and seems like a pretty interesting guy. I guess he’s about thirty-five. We were in his room with Mr. Conran to see if we could hear the noise. There was a copious silence. You’ve got no choice but to hear your own thoughts. In 1992, Mr. Conran started, I stayed in a B&B in Anglesey that had bats in the attic. We waited for more. Then, after an unsociable muteness, Mr. Mason said the thing about bats is that you can’t get rid of them. Once they’re there, they’re there forever. Mr. Conran looked up at Mr. Mason, the two of them hardly able to share the same air, and bunched up his squat shoulders to reply that they could’ve just gassed them and not told anybody. That would’ve been a proper solution. He said he was going to start keeping a ‘noise journal’.

Sam, who was supposed to be on check-out duty all week, has the flu. Nigel believes this is a lie and Sam is actually at a music festival in Norfolk. Either way, it means I’m on evening entertainment while Nigel covers Sam. I would’ve done check-outs if they’d offered to pay me what the others get for doing it. Yes, there’s a bit more to it than making beds, but not having a clue what I’m doing is a major feature of this job and, anyway, I feel I’m almost qualified to run the place now.

Wednesday night: Beetle Drive. Slitting your wrists is more skilful than this game. There are tables of four with a shared die. You need to get a six to begin with so you can draw the body of the beetle, then you continue to roll for other numbers so you can complete the insect and shout ‘Beetle!’ The person with the most beetles at the end of the night wins. It was slow going to start with. Lacklustre rolls kept producing ones and twos (why, I don’t know) so for a while the sound of plastic thrown against plastic was all that was audible. Perhaps underscored by the clicks of mastication. Then the first six spurred the others on, until the communal wrist movement became so frenzied I worried there’d be mass complaints of sprain. It almost turned violent during the last game. Ms. Stevens was getting near hysterical at what she called ‘a morally repugnant lack of sportsmanship’ because she believed Mr. Hall was cheating. She said this was her last chance to win. He said that she was only thinking of herself, her own circumstance. Just before she swung, Mr. Mason held her back and calmed her down. I honestly don’t know what I would’ve done if he hadn’t. Something paralyses me in those types of situation, the ones where other people can no longer mitigate their actual feelings for the sake of everybody else. Afterwards, I thanked Mr. Mason and he said, that was nothing, he’d once been at a Beetle Drive with his aunt where an 86 year old woman broke four ribs. It’s serious stuff up in Wigan, he said. And then he said it’s a shame that the evening won’t end now, right at this moment. This would be the perfect time to lose consciousness. But, he said, there’s still many hours of darkness in which any little triviality becomes a predator. Actually, I said, I won’t need much rocking tonight. I’d just noticed, too, as I said goodbye, that Mr. Mason’s not bad looking.

Most of today was taken up with a problem in the check-out room. Nigel came out at 10:30ish, sweating and panting, and told me to call external services. He’d been trying for an hour to get Ms. Stevens’ body down. Apparently, the rope was wedged inside the folds of her neck and she was too heavy to hold in position. I offered to help, but I think Nigel thinks I’d demand extra pay for it. Eventually, it was sorted and the body sent off to the morgue. Ms. Stevens had requested that nobody be notified after she checked out. Her room was full of cellophane. It was possibly from things she got at the gift shop, like the Russian dolls and the miniature car set, but that didn’t account for the rest of it. Slithers of the stuff kept attaching themselves to me, and whenever I took one piece off, another immediately replaced it, as if they were asexual organisms hellbent on reproducing no matter what the outcome or the point.

Friday disco. 80s night. Grim. The dance floor was an axiom of malcontent. About nine people showed up, two of whom were the young couple. They sat across a table from each other, looking at the floor, which, as floors go, wasn’t that bad a thing to spend time observing, and then danced to Careless Whisper, his head on her shoulder, their feet piling on top of each others’. In the far left corner, Mr. Conran sat next to a speaker, sipping the same pint for the whole duration. When it was over, he got up and walked past me without a word. Disappointingly, Mr. Mason didn’t show up like he’d promised.

Done. Over. I’m free. Last day was manic. Nigel had a showdown with Mr. Conran about when/if he was ever going to check out. Hotel policy states that once he’d agreed to the conditions of stay, he had a six month maximum. He tried to argue that the noise disturbance had ruined his stay and he should be compensated with an extra month. Nigel relented, as, he said, Mr. Conran’s family have plenty of money. But in three weeks, Mr. Conran is definitely checking out. He wants to hang himself, but after the incident with Ms. Stevens, there’s a review to decide if hanging should continue to be an option. Ideally, guests would check out by means of injection or pills. Hanging’s considered to be an archaic indulgence that’s hardly suitable for either the guest or the establishment. Mr. Conran’s adamant, though, and I think he’ll use that to extend his stay as much as possible. Whatever. It’s not my problem anymore. Mr. Mason checked out before I got to say goodbye. He left a note that thanked me for making his stay as pleasant as possible. No one ever leaves notes. At least someone appreciated me whilst I was here. I’m not going to miss a thing about this place. And now I’ve got to deal with the fucking house. Turns out the one in Clapham fell through which means more viewings and arguments. Dread.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Cassandra Moss works as an English Language teacher in Central London. She has been published in Succour Magazine and has contributed to the Genius or Not online literary project. She is currently working on a compilation of short stories.

My car had been written off, I had started cycling everywhere and that was all right with me. It was summer and most of the time the weather was good. At least, that’s how it seems in my memory. In my memory, most of that year was golden.

The day of Bill’s party was actually one of the few when it rained, but by the time I set out the sky was clear again. Everything felt fresh and clean. There was the smell of rain coming off the warm tarmac and there was the sweetness of new-mown grass in the air. A few tractors were still moving up and down the darkening fields, gathering silo. Otherwise, the world was empty and almost silent, but for the whisper and shush of the breeze in the trees and the whir of my tires on the road. I went fast, stopping only at the top of Spindle Hill to catch my breath and look at the sun sinking into the bay. For a minute, the water looked like blood.

Soon after I set off again, there was rustle in the hedge. A stoat shot across my path and I swerved, feeling my gut in my mouth for just a second, before regaining control, and speeding on until the hedgerows gave way to houses and I was freewheeling down past the shops and pedalling hard again to take the last hill past the castle. Over the crest lay Keats Close and Bill’s house.

I stepped in from the quiet night to music and light, and dozens of faces rushing at me. Everyone seemed to be talking at once, gabbling about back garden snogging, and audacious feats of drinking. Ross was already partied out, I was told. He was asleep on the upstairs landing, puke all over the front of his dress.

“His dress?”

“Alice made him wear it.”

“I just wanted to see what he looked like. He’s got such lovely eyes that I thought…”

“So it’s your dress?”

“Yes.”

“Gutted.”

Now I was tuning in and faces were starting to take on shape and substance. Phil was there! Dan was there! Mary was there! Bill was there! Of course Bill was there — it was his house.

Bill had milk in his beard.

“I’ve been drinking White Russians,” he explained and passed me his glass. I drank it down and passed the glass back. It was just milk and vodka. It was disgusting.

“Did you make it yourself?”

“My own recipe.”

Phil came up. and pressed a beer into my hand.

“Here you go our kid,” he said. “That should wash away the flavour.”

Bill looked hurt and so I told him that I’d actually I’d quite enjoyed it. And I regretted it immediately, because he went off to get me another one. Phil raised an eyebrow.

“Well, I need to catch up,” I said. “You lot are steaming.”

“You’ve seen Ross?” he said.

“I’ve heard him snoring.”

“That’s what those White Russians do to you.”

Bob came back and I drank another one. It tasted better second time around.

“You’re wearing a tie,” I told Phil. “You do know only bassists can wear ties?”

“I think he looks fit,” said Mary.

I felt a quick stab of jealousy, but put it aside. He did look smart. Black tie, black jacket, crisp white shirt, quiff just right. I thought he was pretty cool and thinking thought felt good. I was at that age when I wanted all of my friends to be heroes. When I thought they were heroes. We were all in a Kerouac novel together. A novel that only got better if we wore the right strides. I felt a flush of pride.

“He looks like he’s going to a funeral,” I said.

“Your trousers are tucked into your socks. They’ve got a hole in the knee. There’s egg stains on your t-shirt. Your trainers are falling apart and you still haven’t taken that ridiculously phallic bike hat off,” said Phil.

“Looking good then?”

“Not bad for a dickhead.”

I was starting to feel fine, but I quickly made my first mistake. I walked into the front room before checking what was happening in there. And what was happening was that Neal’s new girlfriend was sitting on the floor playing her guitar and singing a song by Courtney Love. There were rumours that Neal’s new girlfriend had a record deal and was going to play the Reading festival that year. That was why, instead of telling her to stow her gab, a little group of lower sixth formers had gathered around her, listening quietly. She caught my eye. There was no escape until she’d finished the song. We even had to clap.

Things were better in the kitchen. Dan was there dipping glasses into the plastic bucket containing Bob’s White Russian mix.

“No thanks,” I said.

“Help me out here,” said Dan.

“I don’t want to do a Ross.”

“Yeah, but,” said Dan, “he actually drank some.”

Now I was close to him I saw that his face was red and his eyes were slipping in and out of focus. Someone had drawn hairs on his chest in black biro where he’d loosened the top four buttons of his new crinolene shirt.

“You’re pissed,” I said, correctly.

“Are you,” he said “going to take your medicine, or am I going to have to do it myself?”

“What?”

“I need to get rid of this milky crap.”

“You just warned me not to drink it. Why don’t you just empty it down the sink?” I asked.

“Don’t bring logic into this,” said Phil, who’d drifted in with Bill, hunting more booze.

“You can’t waste good alcohol,” said Dan. “Even if it’s bad.”

He didn’t look in the mood to take further argument, so I asked him what he was making.

“Black Russians,” he said.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Vodka, Kahlua and Coke.”

“That sounds disgusting,” said Bill.

“That’s ripe coming from you, milk boy,” said Phil.

“What’s so wrong with my White Russians?” demanded Bill. “What have you got against them? It’s a fine drink.”

“Ask Ross,” said Dan.

“Ross is a lightweight,” Bill said. “Besides, he was mixing it up with red wine. That was asking for trouble.”

“In the same glass?” asked Dan, but Bill didn’t answer. He was staring out into the hallway. Elise had just arrived.

Elise had dark eyes, and a deep cleavage. She could skin up one-handed and she read French novels. Her real name was Jane but she had changed it because of The Cure song. She was mystery and wonder. We were all in love with her. We’d all tried to make her at one stage or other too. We’d all failed. But that didn’t stop Bill from repeatedly trying.

“Hang on,” he said and thrust his glass into my hand. He caught his shoulder on the kitchen doorframe as he swayed into the hall and stumbled right into Elise. It almost looked accidental.

“Fancy bumping into you here,” he said .

“Cheesy line Bill,” called Phil. Elise started to shout something back but Bill knocked the kitchen door shut.

We howled.

He stuck his head round the door.

“Now then children. Behave,” he said. “I’m trying to talk to a lady.”

As he closed the door again, we could hear Elise laughing — the new breathy laugh she’d been developing lately. Phil called it her wind chime laugh. He said it was because it was hippy nonsense. But I knew it was because he thought it was like music and nature and the sweet breath of spring.

“No,” he said. “That’s what you think.”

It was time to change the subject.

“Are you going to make those Black Russians then?” I asked Dan.

“We all are,” he said and began cleaning out the bucket, setting up a chair for it to rest on and issuing instructions. In the absence of Kahlua, Dan proposed the use of instant coffee. This immediately kicked off a loud argument. Dan emerged victorious, mainly because he circumvented any more discussion by upending a whole jar of granules into the bucket. Then we poured in equal measures of vodka and coke, a few splats of molasses “for texture” and stirred it all up with a wooden spoon. It tasted surprisingly good.

I can’t remember what we were talking about when Elise came into the room. Just small talk, in all likelihood. I do know that it got smaller though. Someone even started droning on about the weather, and what a lovely evening it had been. That was me. I also started telling Elise about the stoat that had run across my path, God knows why. Perhaps I wanted to show her my feeling for nature and let her look into my soul. She said she loved stoats.

“Me too,” I said. I looked around desperately, realising I’d already mined that vein of conversation to exhaustion. But I was surprised to realise that everyone else was filing out the back door, even Bill.

“Where are you off,” I asked.

“The back garden,” said Bill.

“Ask a silly question,” said Elise. Then, terrifyingly, we were alone.

“What’s that?” she asked, indicating the bucket.

“Black Russian,” I said.

“Is it one of Dan’s concoctions?”

“Afraid so.”

“You better give me one anyway,” she said and when I did, she knocked it back in three gulps.

“That,” she said, “was disgusting. Give me a bigger glass this time.”

I handed her a pint glass.

“What is in this shit?”

“Do you really want to know?”

“Not really. I suppose,” she said. “Why don’t you tell me how you are instead?”

“Better,” I said, “for seeing you.”

“You’re sweet.” She wrapped her shawl in tighter, covering her breasts. I didn’t think I’d been staring… Maybe I was getting too drunk. I decided to switch to water.

“And how is Elise?”

“Better for this drink. And for seeing you,” she added, loosening her shawl again. Maybe it had just been my imagination. “That goes without saying.”

“You’re sweet too,” I said and fell silent, awkward. I wanted to follow Phil and Dan and Bill and everyone else outside.

She must have seen me looking out the door, because she said, “You’ve got party paranoia.”

“How do you mean?”

“Worrying that everyone who isn’t where you are is having a better time than you are. Worrying that you’re missing out on some important bit of action. That you have to find the centre of things.”

“No…”

“You’ve got to look out for party paranoia. It’s a trickster. Makes you spend the whole night traipsing from room to room, talking to no one. You end up being a spectator. And besides the action’s here. We’ve got Dan’s medicine… We’ve…”

She was staring straight at me. Those eyes. I thought oh God, my chance has come at last. I stepped forward and straight into the bucket of Black Russian. It emptied brown liquid all over the hem of Elise’s long flowing skirt, leaving the white pleats sodden and brown and a puddle around her feet. For a second, she looked as if I’d punched her in the gut. And then, to my relief, she laughed.

“Never mind,” she said. “It’s just a cheap dress. I was starting to worry that it looked like a Stevie Nicks knock-off.”

“It looks even worse now.”

Then she threw the contents of her glass over me.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Me too,” I said.

“Maybe we should go outside after all,” she said.

And that was that.

Outside, the air felt cold against my now wet t-shirt. Bill, Phil, Dan, Mary and Alice were sitting around a bench. Neal was on the grass with his new girlfriend (whose name I never did learn, even though I saw her face on the front of the NME, years later). They were both looking at the stars and whispering to each other. I gave it two weeks.

Ambient music trickled quietly out of the CD player. Bill had the volume down low. I guessed he didn’t want to annoy the neighbours — or didn’t want to attract their attention — because when I squeezed onto the bench with Elise, I noticed that he was skinning up.

He wasn’t doing a good job. The rizzla looked awfully rumpled in his hands and half of the mix fell out before he could even lick the glue.

“I knew that would happen,” said Dan.

“Me too,” said Phil.

“And me,” said Alice.

“It’s these papers,” said Bill, as he scraped up the mess. “Neal, your papers are shit.”

“Yes, Bill,” said Neal and sat up. “It’s the papers. Not you Bill. The papers. Would you like me to skin up?”

“No.”

“You’re going to fuck it up again,” said Dan.

“It’s my weed. If you want to smoke it, shut your cake-hole. If you don’t, carry on putting me off…”

Everyone fell quiet after that. Bill managed much better this time around, building a nice big cone with steady hands and glueing it down tight and smooth. When he was done, he stuck it in Dan’s mouth, struck a match, lit it, and left.

Dan took a toke. “What’s up with him?”

“I think he’s on his period,” said Neal. “He’ll be all right in a minute.”

Neal’s new girlfriend hit him. Alice, Mary and Elise and Dan all said he wasn’t funny. Phil and me agreed, only a little too late. Neal grinned and took the spliff. And then we remembered Bill.

“Is he going to smoke this,” asked Neal. “Should I save it?”

“Save it,” said Dan. “The moody get will want some. I mean, maybe I went too far. It’s not like he doesn’t give it twice as much lip when anyone else fucks up. And not like he doesn’t normally roll much better. Why’s he so bothered? Maybe I went too far.”

“Maybe you’re getting stoned,” I said.

“Maybe you should go and see if Bill is all right,” said Elise, looking at me, with those hot dark eyes. I was on my feet before I even began to wonder why she couldn’t just go herself.

The lower sixth formers in the front room said they hadn’t seen him, so I went upstairs, calling his name as I went, self-consciously and quietly. I wanted to attract him — but I didn’t want to attract too much other attention. All the same, someone else answered.

“He’s not here.”

It was Ross. He was sitting up on the landing, drinking a glass of water and looking surprisingly fresh for someone who’d just been sleeping in a puddle of his own puke.

“Are you sure?”

“Just went out. He was looking pretty upset. He woke me up, in fact. He tripped over me and then started banging around in the bathroom… I would have gone out after him, but…” He looked down at his sick-spattered dress. “I was just drinking this and trying to get it together a bit before I came down to tell someone… I think someone should follow him.”

“Dude, that’s the most I’ve heard you say for months.”

“Even so.”

“Okay. I’ll go.”

I didn’t feel inclined to hurry. It was a bit too much like chasing bad news. So I looked in the bathroom. The mirror was smashed and there was blood on the sink. Not a whole lot of blood. Not enough to make me think that Bill was in big trouble. But enough to make my legs feel suddenly weak. I stumbled back downstairs. The booze and the milk were curdling in my stomach but I was out the front door before I could think about being sick. I jogged down the drive, shouting Bill’s name, not caring who I disturbed now. Nobody answered.

But it didn’t take long to find him. There was a wet spot of blood on the drive, a bloody tissue on the pavement and then more spots leading out of Keats Close. The trail would have been harder to follow on the main road, where there were fewer street lights, except Bill’s blue t-shirt was lying just inside the entrance to the next cul-de-sac. And then, there was Bill, sitting on a bank of grass, with his head between his knees and his long blonde hair brushing against his trainers.

I sat down beside him and said hello. He still said nothing.

“Bill?”

Nothing.

“Are you okay? You’re bleeding. Why did you take your t-shirt off?”

Nothing.

“Where are you bleeding?”

Without looking up, Bill turned his wrists out. There was quite a lot of blood on his right arm. He let me take hold of it and begin to try mop it down using his discarded T-shirt. It was clear he wasn’t in any danger. It was only a small cut. He’d run whatever it was that he’d used parallel to his veins instead of going across them. He couldn’t have really meant to really hurt himself. But I wish I hadn’t mentioned that to Bill. Given what happened later, and how it upset him at the time.

“Do you think I’m kidding here?” he asked.

“Well, no Bill, but…”

“I’m not fucking kidding,” he said.

“I know.”

I tightened the t-shirt around his wrist to staunch any remaining flow.

“You think I’m fucking kidding don’t you?”

“No, Bill, I just…”

“Well I’m not kidding. She knows that.”

“Who?”

“She knows who.”

The words hung in the air. I guess I knew who too.

“Well you can’t blame her can you? It’s not her fault that…”

“Mary told me she saw that you just tried to snog her in my kitchen.”

“Oh shit. I didn’t. I mean…”

“And that she threw Black Russian all over you.”

“It wasn’t quite like that.”

“Sure.”

“Really. That’s not how it happened”

“Well if you want to tell it different, tell it different. But I know what Mary told me. She said she saw it all from the doorway. She said it was pretty damn funny.”

“It was pretty gutting, truth be told.”

“I know how you feel about that at least,” he sighed. “Did she string you along first?’

“No, she… She’s not…”

“Well, that’s what she’s been doing to me all this time.”

“You can’t blame her. She didn’t want to…”

“What?”

“Well the truth is…”

“The truth is that she likes older men. And that we’re boys.”

For the first time, Bill looked up. His eyes glistened with unshed tears. He looked away again.

“I wish you wouldn’t stare at me. It’s hard enough as it is, without you staring at me, like you’re my friend and you’re all worried…”

“I am your friend,” I said. “And I am worried.”

“Really?”

“I’m your friend,” I said.

“Then why did you try to kiss her?”

“I didn’t think you were…” The lie died in my throat. “And I didn’t think… It wasn’t anything you wouldn’t have done.”

“Clearly,” he said.

“I didn’t know you were so cut up about her.”

I felt bad about that. Especially when I giggled.

“I’m sorry dude. Wrong thing to say.”

“Oh please fuck off,” he said. “Just leave me alone.” But underneath that curtain of hair, I could see he was smiling too. So I carried on with the puns.

“Anyway, my attempt was a total washout,” I said.

“I could have told you it would have been.”

“Best thing to do with that Black Russian of Dan’s, mind you.”

“That much is certain.”

“Why don’t you come back in?” I said. “You need to clean that cut and it’s cold out here. Especially since you took your t-shirt off. Why did you do that?”

“No.”

“Bill?”

“No.”

“I really want you to come in.”

“Well I really want you to fuck off.”

“I’m not moving until you come with me.”

“Fine.”

We sat there for a long time. I’d like to say that I persuaded Bill to come in through mutual warmth and conversation, and that we became friends again. But that’s not quite how it was. We were silent and hopeless until a car drifted into view and the driver stared at us, like he was wondering what the hell we were doing sitting on someone else’s lawn, with our long hair and big trainers and if he should call the police. He slowed right down as he passed us and we became self conscious. So we trudged back to the house.

I made sure the hallway was clear before Bill followed me in, took him upstairs and helped him get cleaned up. I found a big plaster for his wrist and made him put on a long-sleeved shirt so he wouldn’t have to answer awkward questions. By the time we came back outside he was smiling and we all just pretended that nothing had happened. Even Elise managed to play it cool, although she did make a point of handing Bill the first joint she rolled. She lit it for him too.

For a while, we all tuned out, watching the stars, listening to Exile On Main Street, which was now playing on Bill’s little CD player. ‘Tumbling Dice’ came on, and that’s when it hit me.

“I’m not ever going to be Mick Jagger,” I said.

“What?” said Phil.

“I’m 20 years old and I will never be Mick Jagger,” I said. “Nor will you. We won’t even be the rest of the Rolling Stones. We won’t even be Bill fucking Wyman.”

“So?”

“It’s too late for us,” I said. I felt like I had been dropped into the middle of a vast dark sea, that I had to swim to land alone and that I didn’t even know where the shore was. The thought was exhausting.

“You were never going to be Mick Jagger anyway,” said Bill. “You sure as shit can’t dance like him.”

“I know,” I said. “I just hadn’t realised what that meant before.”

“What does it mean now?” asked Bill.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m looking into the future and seeing door after door closing.”

“Poor Adam,” said Elise. “He’s mortal.”

“Poor Adam, he’s stoned,” said Bill, but I wasn’t.

I went home soon afterwards. And that was that.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sam Jordison is a regular contributor to The Guardian. He is the author and editor of several books including Sod That: 103 Things Not to Do Before You Die and Crap Towns. He still hasn’t written a novel.

Kiki turned grey and blue and then finally a translucent purple as her mouth dropped open and her eyes widened.

I’m standing next to her bed. Staring at the entryway where Kiki died. There are still hypodermics on the floor where the four paramedics worked persistently, shooting more than one into her small body at once. I see near thirty pumps left behind. They tried to resuscitate her for fifteen seconds before they temporarily forced her heart to work with electricity.

She hadn’t finished talking before she fell down. Kiki fell down.

I do more of this powder, this other row. I need a drink. I do the remaining of the second baggie.

She did well bartending the graveyard shift at the bar on the next block; it’s the only way she could pay for her tuition. “Each thing in my life is fucked up James,” Kiki had said. “I’m drinking so much during the time I work behind the bar. Every night I work, I get tipped with lil baggies of cocaine and I snort the coke all night. Then I go to class all day until four p.m., sleep for five hours then start all over. I’m so sick of everything in this town, I can’t take this anymore. You said over the phone that since you were out fishing with Albert last fall you quit drugging?”

I told her I hadn’t quit drinking, all fishers drink I reminded her. I had not done any other drugs. Now that I live in the city again a bit of coke is okay. “Please take this and this,” Kiki said as she handed me two plastic baggies. “I get tipped this, from one of the regular customers I’ve told you before. I need to back away, please, for now, take this and tomorrow morning when I get off work, more, have fun.” And for the last four days Kiki gave me these inch sized, square baggies of cocaine.

My friend Albert grew up outside the city near the bayous. His family are fishers and woodworkers living near a lake that leaks from the bayous that ultimately pour from the rivers and the lakes spilling from the Gulf of Mexico. Albert visits New Orleans during the summer, “when there are not so many people.”

I had met Albert at the bar Kiki tended. I had asked him to teach me how to fish. So, the previous harvest, Albert had gotten me a job on one of his fish-boats trawling the marsh waters outlining the Gulf of Mexico.

The early part of this summer, oil gushed from a pipeline that had exploded and left the water with the presence of death, much like this flat. The oyster beds are normally ready to be harvested now. The beginning of October. But not this fall and probably not the next.

During the time Albert and I worked, we frequented a local honky-tonk near the waters. I later found out that Kiki passed a good time there on an occasion. We met. Before then, she and I had only spoken briefly at her job. We jitterbugged through the night until the sky turned orange and yellow with the vastness of blue as the sun rose.

I know, I was sober. I don’t tally a drink or two of bourbon against my sobriety. The last month of the oyster harvest, April, Kiki and I had made plans to move in together. Four days ago I arrived; I was to share the cost of our communal living during the time I stayed here in this rundown flat, until we could pay for a better place. One a fisher could help afford. We were looking to find a large shot-gun cottage to lease, while she went to school and I sought oysters. She loved me.

It is easier to be sober when I hunt. I guess because the limitlessness of the water around you is an escape.

I don’t want my friends to die before they reach their thirtieth birthday. What kind of respect, when I snort all of this white powder that I was to get rid of? Receiving a rush and getting away without consequence, but blemishing the surroundings. Unaware-of-the-nearby is escapism.

Her pants I’ll just leave on the bed. Kiki held these pants at the waist displaying a tear where she had many times stitched. We talked about her patching them regardless of the size of the rip; her question: If the pants were worth the effort of patching once more. As I reassured, Kiki’s eyes gleamed with hope and her lips formed an open circle. As she turned towards the doorway the pants fell. She collapsed.

No more time to reminisce. Okay, I’m leaving the pants; my bag and clothes are near the bed like she wanted when I arrived four days before. Her sleeping whichever position our bodies both fit and made comfortable. I walk through each room again and turn off the lights.

I don’t know why.

All is dark except the sky’s shadow reaching from Kiki’s bedroom window. I walk out of her apartment. Down three flights of wooden stairs that narrowly curl like a snake. I’m going to walk down Lower Decatur Street. The door to the apartment building is at the bottom of these steps. I come to. I open it.

I don’t see anyone. Stillness. It is Tuesday morning. Five a.m. and the sun is rising. Almost. I want a drink. I want to talk to other people.

Charlie’s bar is three blocks away; what else? I think the door locks behind, but I still have the keys she gave me when I arrived. No one, it looks static, I’m high, I got a rush from that powder. I told her she didn’t have to use all of the cocaine. But now, I use. I got rid of that evidence. Sure did. I’m walking in the middle of the street towards Esplanade. No cars or people going along. The old US Mint looks all closed up. It always looks closed. The sun may rise, soon. No one. I walk, walking.

I walk until I’m standing under the red light on Esplanade. I can walk either left to the park, or right towards the river. Walk to the river? Walk to my left on this Avenue; time doesn’t matter. It has stopped. I’ve escaped it. I’ll walk clear to City Park.

Wait.

I’m in the middle of the street.

I want a drink. Charlie’s is across the way. I can hear Hendrix: Waterfall, but the door is closed. I’m going there. Okay, I’m on their sidewalk. At least now I won’t get hit by an auto.

The bar is open 24 hours.

A woman is sitting on the sidewalk outside the bar’s door. She looks homeless, or just patchy. No, she’s dressed well, just dirty, not like train hoping transit dirty, no, like on a four day bender dirty. A December-thick, blue dress matches her short leather boots, revealing dusty and grey sections of her pale bruised legs. She is sitting under a sign, her head straight and eyes looking out, out to nowhere. The sign reads: ATM INSIDE. OPEN 24 HOURS.

I know her. No I do not.

“Hello, you want a drink? I need a drink.”

In a soft low voice she says, “Okay.”

“A drink with me?”

“Sure.”

“We can have it in there.” I point to the barroom’s door next to her. “Have you been inside?”

“Yes, for hours.”

“You want to go in again? You are out here at five a.m. sitting on the sidewalk. Come to my friend’s apartment I’m staying?”

“But I want a drink too.”

“I have a liter of vodka at my friend’s.”

“May I have some?”

“Yes of course you can.”

“Okay let’s go. But you have to share your vodka.”

“I might even have powder somewhere.”

“But I have to go inside and tell someone.”

“I’ll wait here.”

Placing the palm of her hands down on the cold cement she says, “I only need a minute.”

I watch her get to her feet, sway to her left then right, before she maintains a balance. She pushes her blue plastic eye glasses straight. She is pretty. I like her waist length brown hair, tangled but luminous, and seemingly soft. I look inside as she opens the door. A stale smell of cheddar burgers and grease fried potatoes. There is a barkeep and two others sitting on barstools, sleeping in place it almost looks like.

Why was she sitting out here? She doesn’t look the type to sit on a sidewalk at five a.m.

“Cool,” I say to her as she walks back out. “Are you ready?”

“I need to go to my car and see if it’s, if it is still there.” She looks contemplative, as she pushes her eyeglasses straight again and pulls a wisp of hair from the corner of her mouth.

“Still where? Where is your car?”

“It’s… across the street. Well, I had parked it there a few days past. I have to get back home tonight.”

She pauses, looks and points across the way. “There it is.”

As we walk up to her car, I ask, “You don’t live in this city?” She looks like she does.

“I do sometimes,” she replies, “but I have to get back to my job tonight; I was scheduled the previous Sunday.”

“I know, today is Tuesday. What is your name? I’m James.”

“Sarah.”

She walks to the car and removes her keys from a small backpack she has been carrying. She stands as tall as I am. I see how Sarah could be confident this is her car; no one else recognizes each scratch, busted light, two, maybe three places where this car has been sideswiped. The back seat is littered with left behind clothes: a small black bra, jeans, undergarments, many different types of shoes spread between the floor and the seat. And fast food containers. And, it looks like, school books. A mildew smell rises as the door opens. Sarah grabs a bottle of aspirin from the glovebox.

She turns only her shoulders slightly back towards me as she closes the driver’s side door and says, “OK, I’m ready.” She appears melancholy.

I grind my teeth.

Walking back toward Kiki’s apartment: it must be near six in the morning, everyday work-traffic is starting to hurry, there is light. The sun makes my head and eyes hurt. I think of the white powder. We walk a solid pace till we get to Kiki’s apartment building. I unlock.

We climb the stair’s twisting three flights.

I unlock the apartment door. We step through the room. A sinister light from the computer screen guides our path through Kiki’s home. Sunday’s local paper is folded on the dining table next to a half full glass of warm milk. We walk further and from outside in the hallway I turn on the light. Sarah doesn’t mention the needles lying on the floor at the entrance to the bedroom, but steps over. I also step over.

I tell her she may sit on the bed. She does. I lean down besides the bed and take out one of the bags I’ve been traveling with, half as long as me, but sturdy leather, stuffed with my belongings. Many pockets on the inside front and rear. A rear pocket I unzip. I take out the remainder of the coke, enough for each to have two bumps, enough to keep us awake. I reach in the bag’s middle around my jeans and underwear and pull out a liter of vodka. Sarah takes from my hand, shifts her brown pensive eyes towards me, then remembers to be casual. She easily gathers hair away from her eyes then turns the bottle upside down; her red lips make small motions. She leans forward, and then hands it back. I tilt my head and raise the bottle to my mouth and look up toward the ceiling as the bottle’s clear liquid spills down my throat.

I go over to the bed and lie down. Sarah stands up and away from the bed and then takes off her small golden sweater and slips off her blue winter dress. Her skin is a milky white, except the grey and black bruises around her knees, ankles and arms. She wears white cotton underwear that matches her small cotton bra, flowers. She gets in the bed and lies next to me. Her nape and down her shoulder smell of a sweet jasmine musk.

“My friend died where all those needles are, a few hours ago.”

“I know,” Sarah says.

I kiss her rose colored lips. “Where is your work later?”

She hesitates. “I have a Psychology degree, but I found a job working graveyard. I’m a crisis-management-operator. I answer phones and talk people out of committing suicide.”

I awake and she is gone.

What was her name?

I gather Kiki’s pants. I put them next to my face. They smell nice. I stuff her pants in my bag in place of the bottle of vodka. I see the empty liter on the end of the bed. I fall back asleep.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Clark Theriot lives in New Orleans. He studied zoology at LSU and has lived in Texas, Florida, California and Oregon.

I staggered down the metal stairs of the fire exit, the cold night wrapped its foggy fingers around me, pulling me from the hot energetic fug of the club, and into the heavy night air. My head still buzzed from the thumping bass, muffling my ears to the sharp sounds of a Saturday night in the city. It had been a heady night of beer and girls, a night that gets the adrenaline pumping through the veins, an antidote to the drudgery of the week. The alcohol reinvigorating life, invincible you command the night. And invincible I had been as I had surveyed the floor, mine-sweeping for drinks and scouting for girls.

But the night had waned, and now I walked down the dim alley, the night slowly absorbing the alcoholic haze from around me, rediscovering my senses, and reviving my mind. I stopped with a jolt. He wasn’t with me. I looked around, He couldn’t have come out with me. My mind scanned back through the night. Had He even been in the club? When had He last been tagging along? The night stretched in all directions, the fog sucking clarity and muffling sound, but it was clear. He wasn’t with me.

A small group of Saturday nighters demerged from the fog, a lads words coiling in hazy breath around two girls. I stood and watched as they tottered past, the girls’ tight short skirts restricting them to pigeon steps, their heels clacking unevenly along the cobbled street. The girls talked between themselves, around and through their oblivious but obviously unwelcome chaperone, stoically ignoring his insistent flirtations. The group passed by, the mist rapidly swallowing them up and muting their garbled chatter.

How could I have lost Him? All my life I had been told to look after Him. Parents, teachers, relatives, it seems everybody had taken it as their right to tell me to go easy, make sure He was safe, bring Him home, look after Him, a never ending stream of cautions and advice. He had been there all my life, grown up with my childhood friends. Whilst they had melted away through age and time like the thawing snow, He had remained. But with each year that passed He had become more of a burden, and the constant reminding and chastising had grown to irritate, a thorn in a festering sore. He had become a burden, a yoke, a duty from which I wanted to rebel. I was sick of the responsibility, why was it down to me to look after Him, couldn’t I be free to live my life unhindered, couldn’t someone else look after Him? What did I care what happened to Him?

But as I stood, with the realisation of being alone, a numbness fell over me. I had mislaid Him in this foggy night. He could have been gone minutes, but He may as well have been gone forever. His absence left an empty void. How had I let Him go, how could He have slipped away, how could I not have noticed that I was l running the night alone? All the words of wisdom thrown at my ears now reverberated around my thick skull. I stood lost and alone, but for the first time I was not completely blind to my guidance. I resolved to find Him.

I started down the street, the fog already poking its cold moist fingers through my thin coat, my alcohol infused body registering the bitterness of the night. I headed up the street toward the Blue Bar. I stood outside, the tall condensed windows dripping warmth, the babble of voices and the buzz of bass, luring me into the thick gaggle of drunken revellers. But for once I was strong, I resisted the temptation. I could have justified a quick drink, even to myself, just a quick harry around to see if I could find Him. But how would I find Him in that pressing throng, even if He was at this moment stretching across the crowded bar, claiming his pint and chaser. I could not look for Him here. This was exactly the kind of place where I had lost Him.

I walked briskly along the street ignoring the beckoning neon lights of it numerous bars. I avoided the queues outside the brightly lit take-aways, offering the savoury smells of kebabs into the night air, and periodically spilling out another group of drunken youths clutching hot paper parcels, and cramming handfuls of greasy chips into their boisterous mouths.

He wasn’t here, I was sure. It did not seem a likely place to find Him. But where could He be, where would He go, where could I find Him? I wandered around the city streets, unsure of where to go next, unsure where to search. I walked along the main street, the bright retail lights still beckoning consumers to gawp at the goods now partially hidden behind the night time’s security grills. Every so often a polished shop entrance would reveal a mound of dirty blankets, with a rough sleeper trying to keep their meagre warmth. At each one I stopped and peered, might He bed down and try spending the night here? He may be feeling so hopelessly lost that bedding down for the night could seem an option. But hope stayed, this wasn’t Him.

I continued my directionless journey, a hopeless search. Somewhere out in the night He was there, but I didn’t know where to start looking. The city stretched in all directions. I crossed the main road, its lanes almost devoid of the busy traffic and queuing buses that jammed it during daytime. The character of the city changed as I headed into and the darker, narrower lanes of the old town. It was no longer bright and brash, the older streets held a more measured presence, the wisdom of our ancestors cemented between the stones, a library of masonry, in which you may research and discover.

I headed up the hill away from the river, the fog thinning, but the cold of the night biting deeper. The Saturday night was quietening, the revellers thinning as they made their way back homeward, the fog muffling the last exuberant shouts, bringing a peace and calm to the city night. Head up I surveyed the city around me, its muddle of grey buildings, haloed streetlights twinkling randomly in the night. And in the middle one building stood out, the tall spire of the cathedral standing floodlit and proud. Separate from the city, it had a grace and dominance; it looked down upon the grubby city below and proclaimed its sanctity. It shouted come and worship me, repent your sins, for mine is the power and the glory. It called to me and I followed, it promised to find, to replace what I had lost, it spoke to me of Him.

I followed the pavement, each step now sure of my direction. The fog hung around me, but the spire stood tall and true, a light house guiding my path through the night, giving a sense of purpose. My route was defined, my path was clear, this was My journey and it would take me to Him. I followed My path onward, across the deserted city roads, down the alley ways, until at last I stood at the stone frontage of the cathedral. It soared above me, a column of sandstone, an elegantly carved edifice, delicate stained windows, silently gazing statues of kings and bishops long gone, leering gargoyles and the surety of the spire reaching forever upwards.

I pushed at the tall solid oak door, and felt the heavy hinges yield, squeaking complainingly with my intrusion. The cool dark mustiness of the cathedral enveloped me, pulling me into this sanctuary from My life. Was I desecrating this sacred place with My presence. Did I deserve its sanctuary or seek its scorn? My footsteps echoed down the aisle, around the cold hard stone, each one reverberating around the volume of the church, it could have been one person, it could have been a hundred, it could have been Me, it could have been Him.

I could feel His presence, He was the volume of the air, He was the fabric of the building, beside Me, engulfing Me. He was the figure prostrated upon the cross, kept in torture for posterity. He was My blood and My pulse. I gazed down the solid lines of pews, straightened in their hard wooden penitence. There at the end of the line I could see Him, He was here, flesh and blood. Lying in a foetal drunken heap covered by a thick winter coat, the gentle movement of breath the only sign of life in that bundle of intoxicated jumble. I sat down heavily, My body collapsing into the seat, My head fall into my hands, the worries of My world slipping from my shoulders. I had found Him.

I sat and watched His laboured breathing as He lay there, the alcoholic smell of a night misspent in clubs tangible in the air, unappealing as it mingled with the consecrated mustiness and lingering incense. I looked down at Him. He was flesh and the blood. He was a sorry sight. I could pity Him. But could I accept Him? Could I love Him? Was He found or was He lost? He was everything, and everybody yet He was nothing and no-one. My mind tried to grapple with the enormity of My questions, but the excesses of the evening left My brain function unable to juggle the enquiry, let alone mould any resolution. The chill of the night sank further into My bones, but a weariness still managed to begin to creep over Me. Did He matter, could He matter, did I need Him, had I found Him? Was I lost? Was I found? I brought my knees up, and lay along the seat, giving myself to the unforgiving pew. Sleep stalked and I let it take Me.

He could find Me.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michael Wagner has written for a number of journals and publications in the energy industry, and in recent years has begun writing short stories. His fictional short stories explore the challenges and contradictions of contemporary life, with thought provoking observations and intense prose.

I’m not sure what to do with it, I said.

Don’t look at me, said Frank.

What’s with your name, anyway?

Frank?

Right.

Just a name.

Bit dull.

And yours isn’t?

Mine doesn’t sound like an honest retort, a stamp machine, or some dog-torching throwback song from a road-movie.

So, anyway. The thing.

I dunno. Could just leave it here. Close the door. Pretend it’s not there.

Hope it’ll go away.

Exacto.

It ain’t gonna go away.

Someone might take it.

It ain’t gonna go away.

I swear it has nothing to do with me.

What’s Mayumi say?

Mayumi?

Yeah.

Mayumi says what Mayumi says, you know that.

You shown her?

Not so’s you’d notice.

She here?

In the bedroom curling her eyelashes.

You best tell her.

I can holler.

Holler away. This thing ain’t shifting.

Mayumi sits before a mirror framed with light bulbs. Four blown. Dusty grey, holding in their coldness a broken thing that looks a bit like an insect but is a wire filament with attached contacts. Mayumi’s small mouth pursed in concentration. Her eyes wide as if she cannot decide if it’s fear or embarrassment she is unable to feel. Her hand – the shadow puppet of a snapping turtle – holds the eyelash curler. Squeeze and curl. Squeeze and curl. Tweezers, scissors, nail clipper, cuticle pusher. Leaning against the mirror, a furry gorilla with a pink belly leaking kapok. Traces on the tweezers, on the scissors, on the pusher.

Mayumi!

Louder, man.

May!

Louder.

Umi!

She’s not hearing you, guy.

She doesn’t wanna hear, Frank.

Try again.

Mayumi!

How far away is she?

Back in Japan, man.

Really?

Nah, man. She spaced.

It’s that eastern mysticism.

Nah, she a bit slow. You know?

Yeah.

She mash up my mind.

Innit.

May!

——

Umi!

——

Mayumi!

Want me go get?

Nah. She be right.

Brew?

Do.

Mayumi stands, leans forward, nose nearly touching the mirror. The unblown lights highlighting skin pores, forming hillocks and mounds, depressions and valleys. Network of veins, underground river systems, the unique flora and fauna, her own ecosystem. Hair bobs elastically in two pigtails. Her reflection pouts, her red-tinged lips. White cotton slip rides up over boyish buttocks, pale pink panties stained with blood the colour and shape of burgundy-blot pansies. In the mirror, on the bed behind her, or in front of her as she looks, teddy bear without a head, pink rabbit minus an ear, calico cat missing a hind leg, droopy dog snoutless.

Mr Fritzl?

Eh?

Uri?

Eh?

Stella?

Oh… Yeah… Cool.

It’s making that noise again.

I hear it.

You gonna do anything?

Like what?

I dunno, maybe call someone.

Who’m I gonna call.

——

Don’t.

Just sayin’.

Well, just unsay, Frank.

You could call the police.

Ain’t calling no police.

What about ambulance?

It’s not sick, Frank.

How d’you know.

You seen it?

Yeah, you showed me.

And I ain’t calling no fire brigade either, neither.

What you gonna do?

Have another beer. Think on it.

Uh-huh.

Mayumi lies on the bed surrounded by de-articulated toys. Pink panties sopping with blood. Duvet beneath her absorbing, cotton density forming patterns, land-locked country, cityscape, child’s drawing of a spider web coloured in with maroon and crimson crayons, watery salmon red in exurbia, the borderlands. Hair upon the pillow like swiftly drawn rubber-insulated cables. Probes her teeth with her tongue, finds threads there, pieces of leather, gums bruised purple, teeth aching. Looks down toward the end of the bed, over swollen nipples showing beneath translucent slip, sag of belly, engorged mound, knock-kneed legs, pigeon-toed feet, spectral glow of toenails.

Thanks.

No problem, Frank.

Cheers.

How long we known each other, Frank?

Dunno. Like years.

Have I always called you Frank?

Far as I remember.

You never had a nickname?

Not so’s you’d know.

Umi calls you fatcheckshirt.

Yeah. Sounds about right. She got a name for you?

Sometimes calls me Tako.

Taco? Cos you like Mexican food.

Nah – Tako with a K.

With a K.

Yeah, as in takoyaki.

Like pachinko?

No, fool. Means octopus balls or some shit.

Ain’t saying anything.

They’s her favourite food.

Uh-huh. Making that noise again.

Hold this.

Mayumi’s sparkled eyelids quiver. Sweat-wet glitter on her cheeks. Lipstick on her chin. Slip completely see through. Panties grown into disco shorts. Duvet aching with cat hairs and heaviness. Beneath the bed, with the dust bunnies and tumbleweeds of black and pale brown hair, two used condoms, wads of tissue, balled towels sit like abstract sculptures kept in museum basements, unwatched, unthought over. Wastepaper basket – two plastic loops cut into straight lines attached to cardboard labels all pink with clouds and ponies. Mayumi’s eyes close, a chill as smooth and as longed for as Malibu on ice creeps up from her rainbow-coloured toenails, along her legs, into her pelvis, her organ tree raspberry ripples, tutti-fruttis, clusterfluffs.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Steve Finbow is between cities, straddling hemispheres. He is the author of the short story collection, Tougher Than Anything in the Animal Kingdom (Grievous Jones Press, 2011). Reaktion Books will publish his critical biography of Allen Ginsberg in 2012. He is working on a cultural history of necrophilia for Creation Books and is failing to keep quiet.

“Dave! Dave? Are you there?”

George was in bed, sweating. He was desperate for sleep to take him, but that shouting was making it impossible. Just impossible. He couldn’t take it much longer.

“Dave! Come on Dave. We want to play with you!”

“Dave!!! Please!!”

Each word was punctuated by loud raps on a metal knocker. And each loud rap made George flinch. George thought there were three of them out there. The worst was the girl. She was shrill and loud. She had one of those famous voices, drilled on Home Counties fox hunts to terrify small mammals on the other side of vast fields. Was that what someone said once? His thought was interrupted before he could remember.

“Where are you Davve? Dave? Dave! Dave-Dave-Dave”

He could feel the springs of his mattress digging into his arm and into his shoulder. The bed sheets were wet with his sweat. He pushed them off and leapt to his feet.

“Wake up fuck nuts!” shouted the girl, even louder.

George didn’t enjoy the irony. He moved over to the window. There was the sound of glass smashing. Then laughter. Such needlessly loud laughter. The girl even stopped shouting so she could laugh. He couldn’t see her yet, but there were two young men stood on the path of the house opposite, doubled over in hysterics.

“You Deacon. You’ve messed up Dave’s drive now.”

“He doesn’t care the cunt, he’s not even in.”

“He fucking is.”

George opened the window and put his head out. Now he could see the girl’s wide backside sticking into the air as she peered in through the letter box.

“Have none of you got his phone number?” asked the taller of the two men.

“Fuck off! We’ve called him fifty times now.”

“Are you calling the right number?”

“Well it was the right number when we arranged to come here.”

“No need to get clever.”

They were shouting their entire conversation. Why? Why did they need to shout?

“Dave! Dave! Dave!” The girl was off again. “Dave! Dave! Is Dave there?”

“No he fucking isn’t,” shouted George.

For a moment, the street was quiet. The tall man let go of the knocker and the girl pulled her nose out of the letter box.

George’s voice swelled to fill the silence. “What will it take before you realise he isn’t there?” he said. “Or that if he is there, he doesn’t want to talk to you.”

That felt good. He imagined all the other neighbours who had been kept awake silently thanking him and preparing to finally get some restful sleep. Meanwhile, he was enjoying the fact that he had the complete attention of these young people. Momentarily, they were in his power.

“Please do me a favour,” he said, “and fuck off.”

They blinked up at him. The man nearest to the garden gate took a long drag on something that George thought looked suspiciously like a jazz cigarette. The man’s dark shadowed eyes were fixed on George, his mouth was tight as he blew out the smoke. Eventually he spoke. “Put some clothes on, you dirty old bastard,” he said. “That’s disgusting. I don’t want to see that.”

George pulled into the room quickly. The curtain dropped back. He stood behind it for five heartbeats, climbed back over the end of the bed and lay down. The sheet was shaking in his hand as he lifted it over himself.

“Don’t worry about those idiots, darling. Try to get some sleep.”

So his wife was awake. She had witnessed his humiliation. She kissed him gently on the cheek and he felt the knot in his stomach tighten.

He could still hear voices murmuring outside, but he tried to let his mind drift. It was no good. All he could think of was things he ought to have said to that clever, clever bastard and how different it would have been if it had occurred to him to put on his underwear. He looked at the clock. Three a.m.. He had to go to work in less than five hours.

When he heard the knocking start again, he sprang out of bed.

“Stop it George.” Her voice was groggy. “Let sleeping dogs lie,” she added in a quiet murmur.

“What does that mean?” asked George. “Nothing. Nobody’s sleeping round here. Nobody can.”

He rummaged through his drawers. The banging continued.

“I’m sorry sweetheart, but, I won’t have it,” he said, half to himself, as he pulled a pair of boxer shorts around his ankles. “I won’t have it.”

“There’s nothing you can do. Just take a couple of the pills. Just tonight.”

“They’re too strong.”

“That’s why they’re so good.” She pulled one out of the bedside drawer. He shook his head. So she swallowed it herself.

“How many have you had now?”

“Not enough,” she said. “Otherwise we wouldn’t be having this conversation.” She went for another one.

“Janie. Seriously.”

Outside, the knocking and the shouting grew ever louder.

“Just tonight,” she said. “Just to get through tonight.”

“The noise is going to stop,” he said. “It’s going to stop right now.”

“Darling, I wish you wouldn’t,” she whispered.

But now he had the shorts on. When he found a t-shirt, he went back to the window and stared out across the street.

“That’s enough,” he shouted. “I’m asking politely, one more time.”

The noise stopped. The three of them turned from the door to look at him. The man who had spoken to George before raised the bottle in his hand in a mocking salute. A smile split his bony face. Then he went back to the door, making a pointed display of knocking even harder, lifting the brass handle right up to the top and slamming it back again as hard as he could.

George bounded downstairs. He fumbled as he tried pull his trainers on in the dark. He had to undo the laces. Everything was against him tonight, He could feel where the cloth backs of the trainers were ripped, much more noticeably than normal - but he soon stopped thinking about his feet, slamming the door behind him and squeezing between the cars to get to the other side of the street.

He started off with exaggerated calmness. “There’s decent people trying to get some sleep here,” he said. “Good people.”

He was standing by the gate now, close enough to smell the spilt beer and the musky smoke the joint.

“I’m not trying to be a square.”

“Yes, you are.”

George swallowed. It was the same man again. The cretin.

“I’m not trying to be a square,” he repeated. “I’ve got good reasons to want not to be disturbed.”

“Well we’ve got good reasons to want to find our friend.”

“What am I going to tell my boss? That I’m late because a load of posh junkies couldn’t rouse their smack-buddy?”

“What?”

“That’s what you’re after, isn’t it?”

“What on earth are you talking about? What are you talking about, you crazy man?”

“Actually, I’d rather not know about his sordid fantasies,” the girl broke in. She swigged her beer, slopping liquid down her white t-shirt as she did so. She scowled at her giggling friends.

“It’s not funny,” she said. “It’s Gucci, you know. Dave bought it for me.”

“Flashy is he?” asked George.

Suddenly, the tall one wasn’t laughing anymore.

“Shut up old man,” he said.

George could feel the blood pumping around his head. He felt hotter than ever.

“I’m not so old,” he replied.

“You are. And shrivelled. I saw.”

“I’m still young enough to give you a beating.”

The threat hung in the air.

The tall man placed his bottle on the ground with slow, deliberate care. He didn’t move any nearer to George. He turned his back instead. He walked back up the path towards the door. Just as he reached for the knocker, George sprang for him.

That’s when it happened.

His elbow thumped into the girl. She dropped to the ground. George was so intent on getting to the man at the door that he didn’t even notice that she had fallen. Until she started to scream.

“I’m sorry,” said George. “I’m sorry.” But no one could hear him above her shrill yells. He moved towards her, gingerly picking up the base of a broken bottle. It had cut into her side.

“God. I’m sorry. I didn’t..”

The others looked on in horror as he slowly lifted her t-shirt - Gucci - now covered in blood and mud as well as beer. He pulled it up from her waist, away from the wound in her stomach. To his relief he saw that, although the blood was flowing steadily, the cut wasn’t deep and it was clean.

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” said George quietly, looking into the girl’s frightened eyes.

“Get off me,” she snapped. “Get off me. Now!”

Rough hands grabbed George and pulled him away. He was dragged backwards across the path. One of the men was shouting at him. Then he felt a fist crash into his ear and he lost balance and he fell. His face scraped along the tarmac. His eyes filled with blood. He took a blow to the stomach. He braced himself for the next one. But it never came. Instead, somewhere out in the red fog, George heard another voice:

“What the fuck is going on?”

“Dave!” said the tall man.

“What happened to Lorna?”

“Him. This pussy here..”

Another kick landed on George’s stomach, knocking the wind out, making him wretch.

“..this pussy fucking whacked her.”

George was gasping for air. It stung him to breath. Someone was leaning over him. There was a pair of boots level with his eyes.

“Jesus, you better stop. Who is this guy? Have you all gone mad?”

One boot pulled back.

“No!” said Dave. “Fuck. Leave him.”

George felt one more kick to the stomach. Not from the boots. Trainers he thought. Then he could hear them all moving away, up the path towards the door.

“Daaaave where have you been?”

“I was trying to tell you when the phone ran out of batteries…oh Christ. We better get you inside.”

George lay still the men helped the girl to her feet. Dave opened his door. There was a bit of shuffling, it closed with a thud and then there was silence. Or rather, there was only the sound of birds singing. It was dawn. Slowly, George dragged himself to his feet and across the road to his own house. Instinctively he felt for his pocket. But he was only wearing his boxer shorts. The keys were inside, in his trousers, by the bed in which his wife was sleeping a heavy drugged sleep.

George took a deep breath and reached for the knocker.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sam Jordison is a regular contributor to The Guardian. He is the author and editor of several books including Sod That: 103 Things Not to Do Before You Die and Crap Towns. He still hasn’t written a novel.

Not in the nearby psychiatric hospital. Not in the cells of the local police station. Not in the grubby terraced housing by the railway station. Not in the condemned block of flats encircling the car park. But in an unnamed district on the outskirts of a city, to the north by the motorways, in an empty bar of a pub, I sit at a table, a half-empty pint of Stella before me, an open paperback novel, the cover showing the pages of a book cut into with a sharp blade to reveal more pages underneath, cut into again in ever-decreasing rectangles as if the cover of the book has been designed to hide ever larger guns, but not because the special-effect of depth is made so by perspective and shading, but because the book holds nothing more than words and numbers. Alongside the paperback — spatchcocked and turning yellow with spilled beer — a notebook, black and rectangular, its pages marked with indecipherable scrawls, arrows, and brackets, strings of numbers without names written above them to mark their provenance, plus circled codes, drawings of stick men, maps and lists. These objects belong to me, purchased with symbols of my owned time, the people who provide me with these signifiers of exchange also own my time. I occupy space, incrementally, indifferently, I look up from the notebook, trace a sight line along the canopy of the bar as if I’m following the trajectory of a fly, and then I rest my gaze on a painting hanging by a door marked PRIVATE. This is my problem. Although the sign is perfectly understandable — gold letters on a black background indicating my banishment, my exile from the secret world beyond: anteroom, attic, basement: the painting — showing a cart in a pond with a house in the background and a cloudy sky — I cannot see, I do not comprehend. The house is a series of convex polygons, rhomboids, and kites; the cart an accretion of parallelograms, ellipses, and radial triangles; the sky a succession of arcs and orbits. I cannot see what I think nor think what I see. I stare at the painting. The things I see become indistinct, inchoate. The shapes form into cats’ heads, gallows, knuckles, discarded scarecrows; the dog on the shoreline an anamorphic skull. The representations of people — two men and a woman — lead me to feelings of hurt and shame, violence and regret, yet never are they the things they are meant to be. I finish my pint in one long swallow, place the glass in the centre of a beer mat on the bar, put my notebook and novel into my shoulder bag, lift the strap over my head, settle the weight on my right shoulder and walk towards the painting. The frame is gilded, sculptured with gold roses and curlicues, the glass plate protecting the painting is dusty, a sticker has been affixed to and then raggedly torn from the bottom right corner. I see my reflection in the glass but focus through it to the painting itself, specifically the cart, but more specifically the men in the cart. The figures, small, unremarkable, a matter of blurred lines and strokes, the creation of brush and pigment, an aggregation of chemical and light and then I realize that this is, of course, a print, a copy of the original, maybe a copy of a print of a copy of a print, and the men in the painting are a blur of multiplication, a buzz of fading colour, and I sit down at the nearest table, take out my notebook, open it, and am surprised that the words there remain in the correct order, still fixed, amazed that they have not bled together, separated out, dribbled from the margins, the pages drained of letters washed into the rushing gutter of the spine, leaving the notebook blank, the pale blue lines pristine, the page edges unsullied by my hands. I walk towards the exit. The barman concentrating on his crossword ignores me. Something has drawn a hot yellow line under the moon. To get home from here I will need to go underground. A concrete staircase leads down to the subway and there I will hope to not think but feel and move through fatigue, through torpor, to tedium and on again.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Steve Finbow is between cities, straddling hemispheres. Reaktion books will publish his critical biography of Allen Ginsberg in 2012. He is working on a cultural history of necrophilia for Creation Books and is failing to keep quiet. The above story is an extract from Steve’s new collection, Tougher Than Anything in the Animal Kingdom, which you can purchase here.

Carina watched as the silver trail of smoke from her mouth fogged up the windscreen of Terry’s 1977 Sedan. The Jersey skyline was now almost completely obscured and all that could be seen from inside of the car was the starkly lit pier and the big black of the River Hudson. She passed the tightly rolled joint back to Terry’s waiting fingers and watched as the plastic Virgin Mary on the dashboard gazed at them disapprovingly. The conversation had run out but it was alright, the pot was making Carina’s mind go backwards not forwards. She had finished her 8 hour shift an hour ago but she didn’t want to go home yet, Todd would be at home, sleeping in their bed and she hadn’t worked out how she was going to break the news. Carina noticed two shapes walking along the pier. She could see that they were holding hands, a man and a woman she thought. They walked for a few meters and then without any warning, stopped and the larger shape leant down and kissed the smaller one. Carina felt like a voyeur, watching this private moment. As they held each other, she wondered what it felt like to be the kisser, not the kissed? She had never instigated a kiss before, Todd had been the only boy to kiss her. What would happen if you leant in to kiss but you both closed your eyes at the same time? What would happen if your lips never met?

“Tell me again,” said Carina to Terry, whose face was hidden in a cloud of smoke by the steering wheel.

“What did you say about love when I was cashing up? How did you know that you were in love, when you were?”

“Well…I said that there were 3 types of connection, Carina. The physical, the intellectual and the emotional. For love to happen, there needs to be all three. You might have a bit more of one than the other, but there needs to be a balance. That’s when you know that you are in love Carina.”

“I see” she said wistfully.

“Why do you ask?”

“No reason.”

Terry looked at her again and then turned her face back to the rolling River Hudson as the light from the end of the joint went out, leaving them both in complete darkness.

Carina and Terry had been coming to this same spot every Saturday for the last 4 weeks. Terry would meet her at the Pizzeria in which she worked, and when her shift finished they would drive to 11th avenue and park the car by the Hudson River Park on 15th street. Without fail Terry would then spark up a joint and they would sit in the car, sometimes talking, sometimes not. Terry was paranoid about patrolling cop cars so they did not open the windows and even though their hair and clothes would always smell like pot, Carina didn’t mind. It felt like they were in a cocoon, sealed off from the rest of the world, a space of their own, where nothing else mattered. But today something was different. There was something on Carina’s mind that no amount of marijuana could make go away. Earlier this afternoon she had found out that she was pregnant. It had not come as a surprise, though, for she was 5 days late and usually she was as regular as clockwork, but she still needed to be sure. So, on her lunch break, Carina walked the four blocks to 17th street Duane Reade and bought the OV Watch Midstream Pregnancy test. As she walked back, she thought $19.95 was pretty expensive for something that she was only going to use once, but this was not the time to be worrying about that. In the restroom, at work, she read the instructions as she sat on the toilet. It felt like there was some sort of force propelling her whilst she took the test; like she was watching herself from outside of her own body. And as the two red lines appeared in the viewing window of the applicator, her mind came sharply back into focus.

“Hey”, said Terry with an abruptness that snatched Carina from her daydream.

“Did I ever tell you that I had a twin? He died when I was born.”

“No,” replied Carina, quietly. She wondered if somehow Terry had read her mind and could see little babies crawling around in it.

“Yeah, he was still born. Hold on,” she said as she picked up the joint from the dashboard. She brought it back to her lips and lit the end with her lighter as she took a long deep drag. Yeah, I’ve been thinking a lot about that recently, I don’t know why. She told me this when I was 12.” She paused before adding “I kinda wish she hadn’t but I think it kind of explains a few things.”

“What sort of things?”

“Just things, Carina.” Terry smiled as she said this, a smile that was as tender as it was firm. It meant “please don’t ask.” It was the same gap-toothed smile that had hypnotized Carina almost 2 months ago at the Creative Writing class in Midtown.

On the first day of the course, she had been so nervous walking down 8th avenue that it felt like her feet were going to buckle from underneath her. She arrived in the classroom on the 14th floor and took the furthest corner seat. All the other class mates introduced themselves by name but she kept her head down and pretended to jot things in her notepad. Why was she even here, she wondered? Todd had not wanted her to join this class, “$400 is a lot of money” he said, “and you don’t even like books, Carina” but she had carried on regardless, she needed to do something for herself, serving pizza was not enough. But as the days got closer, she was starting to doubt herself. She didn’t know anything about writing and she had hated school at the time, was this a whim that she was just going to regret? She started to wonder whether it would be too late to get her money back when the door opened and in stumbled a tall olive-skinned girl, with a mop of sun-kissed curly brown hair underneath a battered backwards Knicks cap. She was over 20 minutes late and clearly out of breath, “Sorry, I’m late y’all” she said, in a breathy southern accent that Carina could not quite place. The girl walked the whole length of the room, passed all the vacant desks and sat down directly next to Carina. She smiled at Carina as she got her notepad out of her bag and that was the first time Carina noticed the slight gap in her front teeth and her heart-shaped bee stung lips.

There was something different about this girl, Carina knew this immediately. She seemed almost perfect, not perfect in the way that all the other girls she had met in New York had been perfect, with their perfectly accessorized handbags and their perfect false smiles. No, she was perfect in the way that she seemed so effortless, so fully-formed, like she had just gotten out of bed wearing that men’s shirt and paint-splattered brogues on her feet. It felt like she wasn’t even trying.

As the lesson proceeded the teacher read out notes on character development and plot arcs. Carina felt a sharp nudge on her side.

“Hey” whispered the girl. Her voice was raspy and velvet-like, like Carina’s aunt Vivian that smoked a 10 pack of Marlboro Reds a day.

“Hey” whispered Carina in reply. The girl’s eyes were so green that they made Carina feel that she was riding through the Greenhill countryside at the height of summer. She suddenly became self-conscious.

“I don’t mean to bother, do you have a pen I could borrow?”

“Sure I do!” Carina reached into her bag and pulled out a black biro. As she handed it to her, she wondered what sort of person would not bring a pen on the first day of class. Someone with other things on her mind, Carina imagined.

“Thank you, I’m Theresa by the way, everyone calls me Terry.”

“Nice to meet you Terry, I’m Carina”.

Terry smiled again and turned her head back to her notebook. As she turned Carina caught the smell of her hair: it smelt like pot.

They sat next to each other every week as the classes went on, and after classes they would go to the diner on 32nd street and eat chilli fries with milkshakes. Slowly Terry started to open up about herself. She was writing a book, it was going to be the next great American Novel she assured Carina, “up there with Huck Finn and the Great Gatsby“. The self assurance in her voice was so convincing, Carina had no doubt that it could not be great. Terry told her that she was an artist, she made light installations and Carina wondered what light installations were. She had decided to take writing classes to help her with her book. It was a love story, she said but that was all she was willing to tell Carina. Over the weeks that they hung out, in the diner and in Terry’s car, Carina found out that Terry could be secretive. She didn’t like to talk about herself and when she did there were lots of gaps in her stories. As she didn’t work a full-time job and as far as Carina was aware her art had not been sold anywhere, she wondered how Terry made her money. She imagined that it probably had something to do with the pot she always seemed to have on her but she knew better than to ask. Terry was different when she smoked pot. It was as if her guard was down, Carina thought. Sometimes in class she could be loud, bullish even when stating her opinion but when they would get stoned in the car together, she became tender and her voice became delicate and sometimes distant. The first time Carina got into Terry’s car she asked her about the Virgin Mary on the dashboard. “It was a present from my mom,” was Terry’s response, and for the first time ever Carina felt she heard a faint trace of sadness in Terry’s voice.

Carina never knew why Terry had left home as a teen but she did learn a few things by accident. Her father had been a Minister in Virginia and she had 3 older brothers; she was the youngest. Something in Carina clicked when she heard this. Sometimes speaking to Terry felt like she was talking to a boy. Her mannerisms were slightly more masculine, like the way that she stood or the way in which she argued in class. She even walked like an athlete, Carina thought, not graceful but powerful, like she could spring into action at the drop of a hat.

Carina felt supported when Terry was near, she was always giving her advice. “Pay more attention to your surroundings, It’s the first step to being a good writer.” Under Terry’s guidance, Carina started to carry a notebook with her and she would eavesdrop in the line at the Gristedes and on the subway. For the first time she noticed that there were subtle cadences in the way people would speak, affecting the meaning and the intention. There was a difference between the things that were said and the things that were really meant. Before the class started she had never really thought about the mechanics of writing, but thanks to Terry, her world was opening up. She was starting to see all the starts of stories in her notebook and hoped that one day she would finish them.

“Earth to Carina! What’s going on in there?” Terry hit her lightly on her arm.

“Nothing, I was just thinking.”

“Well, enough thinking. Tell me something about your day. C’mon, what was the best thing about it?”

“Hmm, the best thing about my day? It was kind of a quiet day today.”

“Well, there must have been something,” said Terry, not willing to let go of the thread.

“Well, there was one thing that happened. I had a funny conversation with Angelo. Have I told you about him? He’s this older Dominican guy that comes in every week and orders the same thing, a slice of Sweet Sausage with extra cheese. Beppe doesn’t like him because he talks too much, but I don’t mind that. I can see that he’s lonely and he’s nice, so, whatever, right? Anyway, today he was telling me this story about a raccoon that climbed through his living room window earlier this week.”

“I didn’t think that we got raccoons in New York,” said Terry.

“Neither did he, he thinks that he came down from upstate. Anyway, Angelo didn’t know what to do. Raccoons are quite territorial, so he didn’t want to upset it, but he had to get it out because his cat Picassa…”

“Picassa?” Said Terry in disbelief.

“Yeah, Picassa, I know right? anyway, Picassa was in the other room trying to get out. Can you imagine? It would have been a fight to the death!”

“So what happened?”

“Well, he called the cops, he didn’t know what else to do. He sat watching the raccoon in silence for 30 minutes, just watching it — him and the raccoon — making sure it didn’t freak out. But get this, as soon as the cops pressed the buzzer the raccoon got scared and pee’d all over his sofa before climbing out the window. Apparently, the police officers were good about it though.”

“Yeah, I bet they were just glad that they didn’t get peed on!” said Terry, and they both laughed.

“Hey, what time is it?” asked Terry.

“Its gone 2am,” replied Carina looking at her watch.

“Shit, we need to get you home girl. Todd is going to freak!”

“Maybe, I don’t know,” said Carina. She had almost forgotten about telling Todd.

“What do you mean I don’t know? What’s wrong with you today, girl? You’ve been spaced out all day, is something going on between you and Todd?”

“No, it’s just been a long day, that’s all.” It felt hard putting on a brave face, when there was so much she wanted to say.

“Well, relax! Tomorrow is a brand new day, girl.”

Carina knew that Todd would be over the moon and he would make a great father too, but this moment was a sad moment for her. As the engine started, Carina heard the sound of two fog horns coming from the river. Ships that were passing in the night. Their mournful tones, one after the other, resonated throughout her body, making the blood rush round and her cheeks feel hot. As Carina watched Terry starting the engine, a wave of sadness hit her. This would be the last time she would sit here with Terry: Todd would make them go back to Cincinatti as soon as possible and whatever this had been would be over. He had never wanted to come to New York, she had to bully him into accepting the job driving for the Brownstein’s and now he would have his way, just as she was starting to find her feet. It didn’t seem right, like a flower being clipped just as it was about to bloom.

“Wait!” shouted Carina as she put her hand over Terry’s hands on the steering wheel. “Please,” she added softly.

“What’s wrong Carina? What’s going on?”

Carina paused and took a deep breath, she knew it was now or never. Her hand remained on top of Terry’s. “I don’t really know you, do I Terry? I mean, I know what you tell me, but there is so much that you don’t tell me and, I need to know…I don’t know.”

She knew the words were coming out all wrong but she had to keep talking. It would become clear to her, even though it wasn’t clear now.

“When I first met you, Terry, I thought you were so fearless. But now I see that there is something else inside of you, something that you rarely let me see. I think that there are some things that you are scared of Terry.”

Carina looked over but she couldn’t read Terry’s face. She wasn’t sure if she was angry or if she was going to start crying. She waited for her to say something.

“Like what, Carina? What am I scared of? You tell me.”

“Just things, Terry” she paused before adding, “just things”.

At this point, Carina took her hand off the steering wheel and rested it on the top of Terry’s thigh. They looked at each other eye to eye, neither of them saying anything as Carina left her hand on Terry’s leg.

And for the second time today, a force overtook Carina as she watched her body from afar. She closed her eyes and hoped that Terry would do so too as she leaned in and wondered what would happen next.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kele Okereke lives in London and New York. He is the singer/guitarist of UK British indie band Bloc Party. He has had stories printed in Punk Fiction, Five Dials, and Attitude magazine. He is currently writing a collection of short stories called Midnight on a Bicycle.

His house wasn’t like I expected. When you read about these men in the paper, you always somehow imagine them living in filth and squalor. Victorian bathrooms with green mould around the plugholes. Cracked and dirty toilets. Furniture with the stuffing coming out. Kitchens with 1950s fittings and cupboards full of bad tinned food. You imagine that the place they live in is as filthy as the inside of their minds.

Actually, Mr Coulson’s house was quite pleasant. I was surprised at how much I liked it — and also surprised that I even noticed. Given what we were planning and all. But there it was: a nice old black fireplace, stripped wooden floorboards and some kind of Picasso-style art print on the wall. The room smelled good too. It smelled of fresh coffee and flowers.

I’d been holding my breath, I realised. Expecting something acrid. Or, worse still, sweet. But it was just coffee. He offered us one.

“Now fellows, can I get you a coffee?” he said.

It was funny because he was trying to act like he was the reasonable one. Like he was calm and rational and it was us acting strangely. But his hands were trembling. That was the thing that gave him away. He knew why we’d come, even if he was trying to pretend not to.

I looked at Jonesy and I could see that he was boiling. All the while we’d been talking about going over, Jonesy had been heating up. Getting himself in the kind of mental position that could allow him to do what we had to do. That offer of coffee was just what he needed to get properly steaming.

“Fuck off, do I,” he said. We’d already shut the front door and now Jonesy drew the bolt. “I’d rather drink spunk than take anything from your house.”

I know. I know. Jonesy says the daftest things when he’s drunk. He wasn’t laughing though. Today he just got madder and madder. He gets this crease in the middle of his forehead when he gets angry — and it got deeper and deeper.

“Fucking hell,” he said. “You fucking pervert. You make me fucking sick.”

Mr Coulson just stood there.

“Don’t call me fellow either,” said Jonesy. He stepped forward.

Mr Coulson flinched, but stood his ground.

“Now then,” he said. “I think you need to calm down.”

“Don’t you fucking tell me what to do.”

“Why don’t you sit down.”

“I’m fucked if I’m touching anything in here.”

“What’s this visit about gentlemen?”

“You dirty fucker.”

Jonesy hit him then.

“You dirty fucker,” he said again.

It’s funny, watching someone really hit someone else. There’s no thwack, like in the films. Just a soft fleshy flump. This time, there was no kind of instant reaction either. Mr Coulson didn’t fall over. He didn’t start bleeding. He barely moved. He just looked scared.

“Please don’t,” he said. “Please.”

“Is that what they fucking said to you?” asked Jonesy. “And what did you say to them when they said that?”

“It made him want to do it more,” I said.

But that took the wind out of Jonesy’s sails. He looked like he’d been hit too.

I took charge. I made Mr Coulson sit down and told Jonesy to watch over him.

I shut the curtains and went looking for a newspaper. I know this is just going to sound daft, but I didn’t want to make a mess on that nice floor. It didn’t take me long to find some. Mr Coulson, it seemed, was an avid reader of The Guardian.

That’s right. The Guardian. There was a big pile of them. A week’s worth. They’d all been read too. All the pages were loosened and creased. I have no idea how he squared it all in his head. He was very worried that public sector workers were not getting all their pension rights. But he had no qualms about what him and his little circle of “like-minded friends” got up to at the weekend?

I was raging as much as Jonesy when I came back. I’d brought a dining room chair in with me and just threw it at Mr Coulson.

It was a bad throw. It kind of bumped across the floor and hit the arm of the sofa, instead of Mr Coulson. But his face went white enough.

I spread out the newspapers out on the floor, stood the chair up again, in the middle of the square of sheet, and told Mr Coulson to sit down.

He sat down.

“No, hang on,” said Jonesy. “Stand up.”

He stood up.

“Take off your trousers,” said Jonesy.

Mr Coulson was silent. I don’t think he’d said a word since Jonesy hit him. He just stood there.

“Take them off.”

Mr Coulson shook his head.

“Are we helping you to understand how it feels?” I asked.

Mr Coulson didn’t say anything. I really didn’t want to have to take his trousers off myself.

“Take them off,” I said.

“Fuck,” said Jonesy. “I don’t think I can do this.”

It’s funny, because we’d both been drinking when we were nerving ourselves up for talking to Mr Coulson. But now I felt sober as a headstone. It had all seemed so easy when we were talking about it. It had all seemed like just the right thing to do. It was the simple way to stop Mr Coulson hurting anyone else. We’d talked and talked about it. We knew that next to nothing would happen to him, otherwise. He’d get five years and then he’d be going out there doing exactly the same thing all over again. He’d say he couldn’t stop himself and it was an illness and why couldn’t society understand him?

But it was hard to see him as a monster when we were standing on his carefully sanded floorboards, in his flower-filled living room. He was one though — a monster. It wasn’t just that he was weird. That he had some awful kink. I know that the mind can be a dark place. I’ve been mates with Jonesy for long enough for that. But while Jonesy may say bad things, and thinks them, he would never…

Thinking it and doing it are very different. Especially that kind of thing. If you do it and you know that by doing it you are destroying a life? That’s what sickens me. That selfishness. That cruelty. That’s why we thought we should go round and talk to him.

When I say ‘talk to him’ I mean, we were going to go round and cut his balls off with pliers.

Mr Coulson was just looking at the floor.

I had the pliers in my pocket. I’d been trying not to think about it, but it all filled my head then. What it would be like? I kept thinking of cutting up sausages with scissors. I didn’t know whether to laugh or blow chunks. My stomach decided for me. I was sick.

“You fucking muppet,” said Jonesy as I coughed and wretched. “We’ve fucked this.” He started patting my back. That wasn’t like him at all. Normally he’d have been pointing and laughing.

I was so sick that I had tears in my eyes. Most of the gubbins landed on the newspaper, luckily. After a while, I felt fresh air on my face. Mr Coulson had opened the door.

“Will you two drunks get out of my house,” he said. “Get out and we’ll forget the whole thing.”

So we left. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t still want to kill the fucker.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sam Jordison is a regular contributor to The Guardian. He is the author and editor of several books including Sod That: 103 Things Not to Do Before You Die and Crap Towns. He still hasn’t written a novel.

He lowered himself down from the park’s green edge onto the grey rocks that spilled into the river. The river was lower during summer.

He was farthest away from any other person in the city when he climbed down to the edge of land meeting water. He found a large rock to sit on as the muddy water flowed.

From his backpack he took out a pint of bourbon, cracked it open, and poured a swig of the warm liquid down his throat. He discovered a small breeze leading in from the nearby gulf. Ships of all sizes floated and propelled commerce from different reaches of the world. The air always carried a putrid smell.

His cell phone lit up playing “Moon River”.

“Hello?”

“Eight years I’ve been working under florescent lighting, inside a tiny cubicle, alongside corporate imbeciles,” Brooke said. “All the while developing a BRAIN TUMOR. My insurance paid them twenty-eight hundred dollars for my CT scan.”

“You called because…?”

He held the cell phone further from his ear.

Brooke had moved back to San Francisco five years ago.

“I date Bill now. We live together,” she continued.

“Your boss?”

“At least I don’t live in the ghetto, reading, smoking pot and drinking bourbon day and night, like you and your new friends.”

James wondered how a woman so far removed from his life remained so relevant to it.

This was a dream from his past, but still recurring. He had fallen asleep by the river–his backpack under his head for a makeshift pillow and a pint next to his feet–again. He stood up on the large, flat, rock he was sleeping on, picked up the empty bottle, and stuffed it in the backpack and made his climb back to the city.

Brooke? What the hell. Damn it.

This all came to happen when he didn’t have a job. He had been unemployed for a long time. There had to be some job–doing something–where he could mind his own business and work a few days a week. He liked to work. But he hadn’t enjoyed working with others. He needed more than a one-day job; not like the odd-end jobs he’d taken when they came the previous twelve months. But odd jobs that continued through the week. He searched for a continuity of small jobs that would keep the money flowing in.

James had been evicted from his apartment, unable to pay the expenses. Drinking until his money ran out had gotten him here. For two weeks he lived on a friend’s couch. He solved the need for a place to live during the first week of August.

The fifth day of August he was out of money. He could house-sit a friend’s apartment. This friend’s place had no electricity or gas; it had large bills three months past due from each. James would do without. And his friend, Michael, would send money directly to the landlord from his military check to keep up with the rent on the apartment until he came back “with a fresh look about things;” but other than that he would not be in touch until the end of October. He told James where the keys were. James moved in.

James awoke on a damp mattress and stumbled to the back room, the kitchen. He pulled up a chair from the kitchen table that was next to a side window and sat with a warm glass of water, the night before bourbon and coke, cigarettes and a book. He pushed his glasses up his nose sliding the rim against beads of perspiration. He sipped the water, then the bourbon and began reading from light that poured in. This wasn’t so bad. He figured things could be worse. Even now, after living in New Orleans most of the past fourteen years–besides the two in California–he still expected a breeze, but there was none. He sat and read with both elbows on the table. A voice carried through the thin dividing wall: his neighbour, Vanessa.

“YOU piece of SHIT, get the fuck out…so I’an pay mah bills.” She went on, “I can’t make a fuckin’ nickel witya ass here! This ain’t no drunk scene honey let me tell you dat.” A moment later, she started up again, yelling in the same drunken lisp. “I don’t even like fuckin’ you! I think you like the boys more than you let on. WHEN I call the cops, they’ll send your ass back to prison,” she yelled, presumably to her younger, common-law man. “You are gonna wish all you had to do was anger management classes. Call your MAMA to come get yo-ass before the next hour or I’m gonna call the po-lice. Get a job, you piece of shit.” Her lancing cries subsided leaving nothing but thick, silent air.

James wondered if the neighbours argued often like this at five in the afternoon. No telling. He had only half of the book’s three hundred pages left to read.

“You better call your mama. Honey don’ worry about me. I can make it on my own.”  She paused. “BITCH!”

James thought he heard glass shatter against the wall.

He imagined a green, thick-glass ashtray, the kind in seventies films… smoky rooms, empty liquor bottles lying around. He picked up the glass next to his notebook, and drank the rest of last night’s bourbon. “This heat is already getting to me,” he said out loud. Loud enough for the neighbours to know someone could hear them also. He stood up and faced the bathroom door. Before James turned on the water, he scribbled across the inside of a notebook.

During late summer days…

New Orleans temperatures rose so that outdoor pools felt like just-used bathwater

Underground water pipes dispensed warm showers

James quietly moved away from the table, walked to the dresser in the adjoining makeshift bedroom, turned and looked around. Across the narrow room there was a dusty blind closed and the depressing sight of an unused air conditioner that sat in the window. Off. And next was the adjoining wall from the kitchen, which had a stack of boxes in the corner and then a tall bookcase, stuffed with books. Old books: green, amber, black and a few brighter smooth-covered modern ones, all with an appearance of having been reread numerous times.

The room was shadowed. Three separate photos of Michael’s eight-year-old son hung on the wall. Each wall had an eight by ten inch picture, except the one with the air conditioner in the window. The boy with his dad seemed happy and excited in each of the pictures.

There were boxes full of Michael’s personal things piled in one corner, the closet full of his winter wardrobe. There was little sign of Michael ever coming back. Michael’s friends had understood he needed a break. He needed a break from his everyday, all day, life-frenzy of intoxicants.

Before he left the apartment, Michael had said, “Idunno ift the glass is full when I go to sleep or if it’s empty. Or if I wake up and drink all of it. But don’t refill the glass before I fall back to sleep. Or did I wake up in the middle of the night and refill after I drank and then I wake up and it’s full? It’s the same picture day afta day, I just hafta leave, get.” But he had quickly added, “I’ll be back; New Orleans is my home.”

James walked back to the kitchen, then into the bathroom.

The bathroom was a small add-on to the back of the house consisting of an enclosed shower with tub, toilet and sink. It was a small square of a room. Along one wall were three white shelves that James had spray-painted the day before. Something to brighten up the place, he’d thought.

Once he entered the shower he felt released. It was simple; he didn’t need to make a decision on which knob to turn for the correct temperature. There was only one temperature with the gas disconnected and that was warm. The outside sun heated the underground pipes like lights do in a heated-pool. He turned the knobs until it was enough. If he would make one last decision, it would be this one, to stay in the shower until they came to shut off the water along with the already turned off power and gas.

An opened window continued narrowly toward the ceiling. James could see outside through the screen, lavender and violet colored flowers that crawled from hung pots, yellow flowerbeds–one on each side of a slender walkway–across from two front doors of another apartment double, a trimmed blue and white-shingled building. He smelled fresh air and relaxed. In apartment C were two men said to be in their early twenties (but looked older James thought) and next in D, the landlord Claiborne who lived with a younger man. He wondered again if the neighbours argued often at five in the afternoon. He let his thoughts drift as he stood under the steady stream. The pulsating water had cooled his shadowed extremities as a ray of sunlight flowed down, reaching his midsection. The light ended suddenly a bit past his navel, reflecting on a line of tiny curled hairs the water trailed. Water splashed off the nape of his neck as he gradually rotated his shoulder muscles while he stood behind the clear shower curtain.

During this month of August he looked forward to the shower with a window through which the moisture easily floated.

James didn’t involve himself with the neighbours. But one of the guys in apartment C explained he and his partner would let James run a cord from their apartment to his. This seemed neighbourly he thought at that time. The power cord he used to turn on the floor lamp next to the kitchen table and also plug in a circulating floor fan that blew mild air while he slept at night.

He turned off the water, stepped out of the tub, and walked back into the kitchen.

This room had a counter along one dark side. Two feet from the bathroom door, a round, black, Formica-topped table with sloping silver legs. He liked the table. He had room for the novel, a notebook and an ashtray next to his black ballpoint pen, his glass of liquor and his glass of water with space left over.  A tall shadeless floor lamp stood in the corner next to the back outside door where the power cord entered; it left a crack in the door.

James sat on a chair at the table with a towel wrapped around his waist and dripped water. He stared at the wall in front of him and then, turned his head slightly to see out the window on his left. He could see the sun shining or the rain falling. He had the tall window open, but there was no breeze. Then a surge in the still, damp air pushed into the kitchen. He had begun to read the novel when an oily haired, blotched-skin man–the landlord–barked through the window.

Claiborne asked, “Why you run-around the apartment with no shirt all the time?”

Instead of answering, James nodded his head, creased his mouth upward, took a sip of bourbon, and lowered his head to his book until his eyes met only the rhythm of the sentence. It seemed less rude. James thought this situation was odd. Not the being trapped for a few minutes with your landlord standing near your window trying to engage you while you are mostly dripping naked.

No, it was the longer and recurring entrapment following disillusionments. It was escapism, one kind or another. In his life it was alcohol, but in the end, it was anything that helped one ignore normalcy. Acting or being oblivious to reality while living for only short term moments.

James lived alone after failed relationships. The woman he had dated last and had felt he loved once, asked him one late morning during one of their many drunken conversations, “Why doesn’t anyone make intellectual porn? There’s definitely a market for it.” He remembered how beautiful she still looked at five a.m. that Christmas Eve, wearing a black silk cocktail dress with matching short-heel sandals. They had stopped at one more bar on their way home. She always had to have one last drink. Her large brown eyes watered, but were still, wide open, and stared blankly. Life for James had changed. R. would never date him now, he’d thought. Instead of a young man bursting with potential when they both awoke with glazed eyes, he was nearing middle age, and now, only a successful drunk.

He wanted to be just left alone to have a drink, read and maybe continue to write fragments describing how hot he was in the New Orleans summer heat. Now he only welcomed old friends into his life; most of the time he liked it alone.

After Claiborne walked on, James pulled on a pair of brown cotton cargo pants. He poured a glass full of drink and read until later that night when the neighbour Miss Vanessa knocked at his front screen door, which was only three feet from her own. He heard her voice as it drifted from the front all the way back to his kitchen.

As he walked to the front to meet her, she gestured with drink in hand and cheerfully announced, “Hey James, let me tell you sometin’, don’ worry about Philip, ain’t here, he went to his mama’s or somewhere, I can givashit.” She gestured with the drink in her hand that she lifted toward him.

“Would you like a cocktail? I have vodka and fruit punch or I’an make you a Bloody Mary. It don’ matter honey I got plenty of both. I fix you something, with your poor thing living in that house with no power; you are going to burn up boy-you-r-crazy! Anytime you need food or sumpin you let Vennessa here know, I’ll help you out baby, I can see you are good people and Michael wouldn let just anybody stay in his house. Which would you purr fur? Tomato or punch with ya’ vodka…”

She had air conditioned rooms right next to his sweltering walls. He had to take the unwise chance of being sociable and also the chance that her live in, the quiet but boiling Philip, wouldn’t be home soon.

“The fruit punch…sounds good, ma’am.”

In the front room he sat in a red-covered chair as she made his drink. She talked unintelligibly from the kitchen. He stared at the TV with the volume turned down, then looked about the room. Pictures and bric-a-brac covered every inch where there wasn’t furniture.  He slightly stretched a leg but kept the other near the bottom of the chair. After careful scrutiny, he’d decided it must have been one of the larger ornaments that was slammed against the wall the previous night. She handed him a clean, cobalt blue ashtray and walked back to get the cocktails.

He watched her spent figure walk again towards him. He noticed the silky movement of her hips as her aged face smiled happily. She carried two over-filled drinks that had different shades of red condensation on the glass. Ice made the frosted vodka cooler. As Vanessa talked, he could easily see her in the stories she told. A time long ago when she was the age of twenty-something, she was the favorite mistress of one of the wealthiest men in town. She had claimed to be a lady of the night the best years of her life.

“I had everything paid for, including an apartment with a balcony in the French Quarter. His name was Gerald, he gave me so much allowance, I had plenty left over let me tell ya, I saved some but it didn’t matter, he had bought me shares in Exxon and I sold dem after my shares split four times and before that Valdez fuck up they had done, I live off the interest alone, honey I tell you what, he bought me a piano because I wanted to learn piano, but I didn’t stick with it, because I wanted to go to the state school, but before that happened, he put me in rehab, for the eight time.”

“There aren’t prostitutes of the world or maybe we all are,” he stumbled his words as he tried to explain to Vanessa but more to himself. “In some way everyone does something for the betterment of their lives and makes a decision to not acknowledge the parts that are unattractive. Everyone does something and if that is prostitution, then we all are,” he finished.

She’d walked next to his chair and looked at James until she caught his eyes.

“Honey, I’ll give you some work. Hell I’ll give you a hundred dollars if you let me and you get acquainted better.” She chuckled with a wicked smile as she moved her dark-brown eyes and many-lined chin slowly down then half-circling slowly back up.

“You are a flatterer, Vanessa, I tell you what.” He pulled back his extended leg to the chair then he leaned back and shifted his seat position slightly. She moved back to the arch of the doorway, leaned there, and stared at James as he sipped from his cocktail. He couldn’t believe he was even entertaining the idea–thinking he could use the money. He finished his drink and then stood up in haste.

“Gotta go, Vanessa,” he said as he walked out of her house and then into his own.

James felt it stood in accordance with her life, her now, being the provider, turning the tables in the last years of her prime. Vanessa had invested well in the years past. He walked through his house as he went over in his head what she had implied.

He didn’t want a sexual part of anyone but still wondered if he should’ve; he still had needs to be taken care of. Still had desires. It was late, so he went to bed.

He kept a gallon of bottled water next to his mattress on the floor, to stay hydrated. He woke up through the night to take large gulps from the plastic bottle and a river of water flowed from his skin. He slept on top of three light cotton sheets and rotated the sheets by day, to keep the mattress from mildewing.

After he’d awakened, he gathered the sheet and draped it over the otherwise useless air conditioner to dry. If he didn’t, it would smell like sour bourbon later that evening when he’d returned from his job hunt. He’d decided not to have a drink this day, but instead to find employment.

This thought suddenly left his mind as he poured only a splash of bourbon in his empty glass. He set it down in front of him on the table for a minute then picked it back up and after gulping a mouthful, set the empty clear glass down. James filled the glass with the clearish, brown liquid. His fingers stopped trembling and both his hands became calmer.

It was past hot inside and certainly worse in the direct sunlight. He decided to shower and maybe masturbate. It could only cool things after. Maybe he was storing pent up heat. He sat on the lid-closed john, took off each sock then slid off his briefs and piled them on the floor.

He lifted one leg over the tub, then the other and turned the knobs until he had the shower’s water pressure balanced just so. Out the window he saw the sky had turned grey with dark almost black clouds gathered near. This room felt the most private. The only other time besides at the river that he hadn’t felt smothered by people or the summer. He let the water cascade over all his thoughts as the steady stream cooled his mind.

The day was already spent. It was now late afternoon, and he must have poured more than one drink. James read and had drinks until he couldn’t read anymore then passed out on the mattress next to the fan.

He awoke to stale humid air; he looked over at the clock on the dresser. It was past seven in the evening. His first thought being about taking a shower. That the shower made the house feel cooler was his excuse. It became darker in the house, so he turned on the lamp in the kitchen and opened the bathroom window blind higher.

James saw the back neighbours’ porch light come on and used the light to locate his glasses. He put on the thick bifocals. The man in apartment C, who had lent him the extension of power, stared at him and wouldn’t look away.  He turned off the water, stepped from the tub and then dried himself with a smallish red towel.

He went into the kitchen to put on his linen shorts then went to the bathroom and closed the blind all the way shut.

“The nerve of these people,” he muttered to the still quiet-thick air. This wasn’t a peep show.

He began to read the half-finished book. It wasn’t what he had expected when he first picked it out. There had been hundreds of books with other titles but he felt a kinship to this one. It was a story about a family’s life through three generations and each character’s struggles during this long span of time.

But James felt he didn’t have any struggles, besides with other people. When he first picked up the novel he did it to help him become easily entertained a few days, but instead he was still carrying this one around. He slowed his reading and would read over again a beautiful sentence. He filled his glass with the brown liquid and a splash of water, took a large gulp, then turned off the lamp, made his way to the double mattress on the bedroom floor, and passed out next to the fan and plastic jug of water.

The next morning he awoke by noon. The fan wasn’t blowing. His mattress, sheet and underwear were drenched in perspiration. He put on his pants and went out his front door. He walked to the back.

He knocked on the door. The guys that lived in apartment C did not answer. Later he knocked again, but no answer. He would smother for sure. The heat grew intolerable and James’ brain schemed nonsense about breakfast cereal. No milk for his cheerios gave him more excuses to drink bourbon. Life wasn’t so bad. Damn those guys in apartment C, they were home but didn’t answer their door. The heat had now worked on his thinking and he’d only three liters of bourbon left, which would only last him two more days. He guessed the men in apartment C had decided they didn’t care to live up to their agreement.

He went to the bathroom and turned on the shower, opened the window blind three-quarters of the way.  He stood in front of the window as he pulled his blue cotton shorts off the hipbone, and slid them past his knees as he lifted one foot off the bathroom floor, letting the shorts fall away. A stretch, for good measure, then with flaccid penis bobbling around, he entered the shower. The sun shined in through the window. He told himself no one watched as he carefully applied soap over his entire body. Small bumps covered his wet skin, as if there was a slight chill in the air. He questioned everything while his mind fluttered with confusion. After a long shower, he turned off the water.

James walked into the kitchen at the same time the fan came on. He felt he was now stripping for the trade of an electrical cord. He picked up the towel from the chair and wrapped it around his waist as he sat down and completed reading the novel’s final chapter. In the Hope Of Rising Again was the title of the book. He’d been drawn to the title.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Clark Theriot lives in the Saint Claude Arts District of New Orleans. He studied zoology at LSU and has lived in Texas, Florida, California and Oregon.

Monique had balls. Truly and literally. And a nice pair of tits, all wrapped up in a silvery, clingy, sequined number that made the night feel hot under the collar. I’d seen him at the Stardust before. Sometimes he would sit at the piano and tinkle out an old Liza Minnelli tune. Other times he’d ride a stool at the dark end of the bar sipping an endless stream of banana daiquiris and sniffling quietly. A broken off love affair or too much coke, I was never sure which.

Tonight he sashayed up to me, threw his arms around my neck and kissed me on the mouth. Standing back he fluttered his kohl-blackened eyelashes at me like a bat caught in a bank of floodlights. I never knew he had the hots for me.

How did I react to this sudden confession?

For a second or two I actually considered taking a tumble with him. Just for the experience. A scientific experiment.

Or I could have kicked the living shit out of him.

But when the barman set my Jameson’s down on the bar in front of me, I thought better of both options, tossed back the whiskey and with a smile and a wink said, “Another time, mate.”

The night was still young.

Down the road apiece, down by the beach where the fogs roll in in early Fall, resided The Cheshire Cat, a rowdy night spot reeking of cigarette smoke and raging pussy.

I pushed my way to the bar, where I caught the barman’s eye and ordered a whiskey neat. The Cat was crowded with sailors, salesmen gay and straight, lawyer types, an ad man or two and a quandary of hot, buxom nurses and free love blogger chicks. Honky Tonk Woman pushed up the decibels.

That’s when I saw her. At the opposite end of the bar. Shiny black hair, plum-colored dress of some languid synthetic material, skin the creamy white of thick cum.

A wave of lust oozed over me like the melted cheese from a perfect enchilada.

The woman’s green insect eyes flicked upward; caught me staring. When our eyes met, her mouth twisted in the cynical smirk of a high school English teacher who’s caught the class president scanning up her dress.

On further consideration she was exotic but not that pretty. A thin thirty-five year old face with a soft Asian nose and thick dark eyebrows in a crowd of younger faces. And as narrow a pair of lips as had ever sucked off a cock. But her almond shaped eyes held me. They were alien, mesmerizing, holding my destiny in their limpid sea-green depths.

I had to buy this woman a drink. Make small talk. Listen to her ironic, post-modern laugh.

But it took me a while to edge and elbow my way to the rear of The Cat through the throng of sex crazed Friday night drinkers. For my efforts all I found was an empty barstool and a lipstick-marred cocktail glass with salt on the rim.

Oh, and a cocktail napkin with a phone number bled into it in blue ink. Scribbled in the upper left hand corner, a crude rendering of a cock and balls was vectored at the phone number.

Was she a pro, a nympho or a slumming angel? Whatever the answer, the napkin scribble had jacked up the night’s prospects. My heart went pitter-patter. My apparatus went apeshit, a berserk orangutan trying to bust out of its cage. Feverishly I tapped the digits into my iPhone and dialed.

On the third ring, a female voice answered “Hello.”

“Where are you?”

Her voice came at me like dry salt rubbed into a wound. It was a medium voice. Not too high. Not too low. But snarky as hell. “Who the fuck is this?”

I told her my name and explained that we had seen each other across a crowded barroom but had not exchanged words because of her sudden exit. But I’d found the graffiti drawing she’d left behind. I was curious to discuss her artistic intentions one on one.

“Don’t push your luck,” she said and hung up.

When I dialed back, the call went directly to voice mail with no message.

I went wild. This sort of thing didn’t happen to me. My face may not be instantly recognized by the toiling masses like W.’s or Saddam’s or Jon Stewart’s, but when I tell people my name, I’m a known quantity, a highly successful and very wealthy L.A. businessman in the social media arena. Women didn’t turn me down.

Wild-eyed I searched the bar crowd for her, even stuck my head in the ladies’ shitter but she had flown the coop.

The forbidden is the most desired.

After that introduction, I haunted The Cheshire Cat nightly. But in vain. The phone number, when I tried it the next day, was disconnected. My life was in crisis. I fired my Chief Operating Officer for no good reason, acquired two speeding tickets doing in excess of 120 mph on the Pacific Coast Highway and made a scene over the seared tuna and truffles at Spago’s.

Miraculously on Friday night a week later like a bad penny she reappeared at The Cat.

I was leaning midway along the bar fiddling with my almost empty cocktail glass and feeling dog eared and dejected. Suddenly she was there, standing at the street-side end of the bar, and wearing the same plum-colored dress. She was talking to a forthright-looking lawyer type dressed in a navy blue suit and smiling.

Instantly I stepped backward into the crowd, ducking behind a blonde rehab job in a boob-gripping T and camouflage capris. What my father used to call clam diggers. The blonde eyed me suspiciously. Was it my intention to goose her in the ass? Or grab her Prada handbag and bolt for the door?

Following Plan A, I slipped quickly down the back hallway past the pissoirs marked His and Hers to a locked door painted black. A stolen key did the trick and I stepped into a foul smelling alley. A hot dry Santa Anna wind whipped between the buildings, sending a Coke bottle banging and clanging down the alley. My nerves sizzled. My bladder throbbed. I unzipped and peed. Moments later I eased relieved into the driver’s seat of my cobalt blue Maserati parked cattycorner to the front entrance of The Cat.

It was midnight when she and the lawyer left the bar. Her pale skin seemed to pulse in the high-sodium streetlights. A cab dropped them at a bleak complex of stucco apartments over which loomed a thick carapace of fog that had crawled up from the beach.

I parked and followed on foot, almost stumbling into them where they had stopped to kiss and grope in a narrow passageway between the buildings. From the shadowy end of the passageway, I watched them skirt a wind-swept swimming pool in a central courtyard and disappear into the coffin-shaped doorway of a ground floor unit.

I hung in the shadows as the night ticked its way to dawn. The lawyer left at first light.

The next day I rented an empty second floor apartment with an unobstructed view of both the front door and bedroom window of Jade Travail’s apartment. That was the name on her rental agreement according to the super. I’d slipped him five twenties to grease the skids. The name sounded phony.

My deal with the super was month-to-month in cash paid in advance, no paperwork, no questions. The only furnishings I dragged in were an aluminum patio chair with Day-Glo-striped nylon webbing, a small fridge and two pairs of high-powered binoculars, one for daytime, the other night vision.

With a supply of Amstel light in the fridge and flip-flops on my feet, I settled in for a period of observation.

The Beach View Apartments was a dreary place. In daylight the stucco was cracked and crumbling, the walkways and pool deck marked with gum smears and other more sinister stains. An odor of dog poop and crotch rot hung like a heat inversion over the four wings of the complex. The Santa Anna wind whipped scraps of newspaper, condom wrappers and orange peals into the algaeous swimming pool.

At dusk, like a vampire, the woman of my dreams appeared. A glittery sea green dress recalled the skin of a sea snake. As she crossed the pool deck toward the exit, I stepped out onto the balcony of my apartment into full view. She pretended I didn’t exist, or worse transmuted me into a deformed dwarf with an erection.

When I followed her in the Maserati, she made no attempt to have the taxi driver throw me off the scent. One night she went to the movies. Alone. Other nights she wandered aimlessly through the mall or worked out at a sports club. She met no one.

I maintained a discreet distance. As if some alien force field kept me at bay, I held back from confronting her, blurting out some mad blather about love and lust and destiny.

Each day for a week I ordered three-dozen red roses delivered to her apartment. The next morning they floated like dead birds in the pool.

Friday night she returned to The Cat, where the young lawyer waited expectantly at the bar. Again at midnight they emerged and hailed a cab back to her place.

By the time I got up to my apartment and into position with the night vision binocs, the only light in Jade’s apartment was in the bedroom. The bitch had left the curtains wide open. Except for the mattress on its metal frame, the room was bare and featureless, empty of any personal human touch.

She and the lawyer were naked as jaybirds and as wild and uninhibited as a pair of copulating cats on crack. Their rutting was relentless, gymnastic and rococo.

After a while I could hardly stand it. Sweat poured down my face. A burning rash erupted on my chest and arms. My head throbbed. My eyes burned. I couldn’t stop watching. I couldn’t bear what I saw.

With a final seismic tremor the lawyer shot his wad and collapsed on Jade in a bramble of limbs and sweat-drenched flesh.

“Bastard!” I screamed. He hadn’t used a condom.

I rushed from the apartment, barreling down the stairwell in the empty night, and raced around the pool to Jade’s apartment door. The door was locked. I pounded on its metal surface until my hand ached. But no one answered. Finally I crept back to my observation post and, to the sound of the wind whistling and whimpering around the hard angles and through the narrow passageways of the complex, fell into a dreamless sleep that might have lasted for days.

The next evening, when as usual Jade left her apartment, I didn’t follow her. Our relationship was at a crisis point.

Another hundred dollars in folded twenties secured the super’s passkey.

Jade’s apartment was as empty and dour as a roadhouse bar on Sunday morning. Off-white walls painted so long ago as to be beyond memory. A cheesy chrome and Formica dinette set in the dining nook. An electric kettle next to an open box of green tea on the kitchen counter, dirty mugs and spoons in the stainless steel sink.

In the bedroom a mattress and box springs on a cheap metal frame were the only furniture. A dozen glittery cocktail dresses hung like exotic skins in the closet. The bathroom counter was strewn with makeup containers and applicators.

I went from room to room turning off the lights. The glow of the city cast a dull, empty luminosity across the snarled sheets that testified to the previous night’s frivolities. I crawled into the closet and pulled the sliding door closed. It was as if I was enclosed in the timeless, dimensionless eternity of the womb. Odors of female sweat and eau de cologne crept up my nose like ancient memories. I waited, suspended in embryonic stasis.

The clank of the deadbolt lock snapping open startled me from a half doze. High heels tapped like a blind man’s cane across the tile floor of the living room.

The bedroom light flashed on. Next instant the closet door flew open with a bang. A long barreled revolver pointed directly at me.

“Don’t shoot,” I said as I stumbled out of the closet, my hands held up and open at shoulder level. “It’s only me.”

She motioned with the gun. “Get the fuck over there against the wall with your hands raised. If you move from there I’ll blow your dick off.”

I obliged. We stood maybe three feet apart, me with a quiver of fear shaking my body, she with an ironic smile twisting her lips.

“All I want to do is talk to you,” I said. “Find out why you left your bedroom blinds open last night when you knew I was watching. Find out what makes you tick.”

“What you want,” she said, “is to fuck me silly.”

I couldn’t deny her conclusion. Tonight she wore a silvery bit of nothing that barely caressed the tops of her thighs. Her jet Chinese hair was teased into an exotic pouf.

“You’re strangely beautiful. Impossibly erotic. The girl of my dreams.”

“I know who you are,” she said. “I Googled your name.”

“Then you know I’m rich.”

“I know you’re a genius at business. A great white shark. I’ve been looking for someone like you.”

“Well then…” I started to lower my hands.

Oomph. Without warning her foot shot out in a Taekwondo slider kick to the gut that left me bent double and vomiting.

“I told you not to move.”

While I moaned and messaged the pain from my stomach muscles, she set a small plastic container with a screw top on the floor in front of me and stood back.

“Take down your pants,” she said.

“What?”

“Take down your goddamn pants!” Jade waved the pistol erratically.

Moments later my pants and Jockeys lay scrunched at my ankles; my cock hung limp and shriveled.

“Now masturbate into the cup.”

“You must be kidding.”

She wasn’t. But hard as I tried, I couldn’t get a hard-on.

“Maybe this will help,” Jade said. She sat on the edge of the bed and spread her legs. After a little fiddling she eased the barrel of the pistol deep between the flaccid lips of her cooze. I grew instantly rigid and seconds later spurted into the plastic jar. Simultaneously Jade moaned, her body shivering in ecstasy.

I stood there holding the little container of my jizz, my cock in retrograde, my cheeks flushed.

“I’ll take that,” she said. I handed her the container of cum.

“What is this? Some kind of science experiment?”

“I’ve a client who’s been looking for a sperm donor with a history of brilliant but ruthless business acumen. You fit her specifications perfectly. She’ll pay a fat bounty and a bonus.”

As I fumbled with my pants, Jade stepped close and jammed the end of the pistol barrel under my chin, pushing upwards until I was starring at the ceiling.

“When you leave here I want you to get in your car and go home. Don’t try to follow me and don’t hire anyone to look for me. If I find out you’re doing that, I’ll kill you.”

When I was back on the street, the hot Santa Anna had died down. It was late. No cars passed along that lonely street. A swath of ice-cold stars stained the night sky, the lifelessness of deep space.

But I was alive. And in the days ahead my stolen DNA would be inserted into an egg deep within an unknown vagina and would grow into a person that might actually look like me, a person over whom I might pass a disinterested glance in the midst of a crowded café or while sitting reading a newspaper in an airport lounge waiting for a flight to Tokyo. I felt the lightness of immortality tingle my nads.

Turning in the direction of the beach, I began to run. I was born anew, raised up from the ashes of love.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jonathan Woods is the author of Bad Juju & Other Tales of Madness and Mayhem. When not writing he works part time at a small art gallery: Dahlia Woods Gallery.

Read Part One here.
Read Part Two here.

Part Three: Man Down

In some cultures — or so I’ve read as part of my healing process — it was customary to make a small incision to the male genitalia while on the brink of orgasm, just before engaging in a sort of vampiric fellatio.

The blood rushing to your head, as it were, the ritual rendered altogether more thrilling — for both parties; heightened, or so they say, by visceral passion, blood lust, and a very real sense of danger.

It’s thoughts like these that preoccupy me now, on my way to the house off Brewer Street, where I first met the Brazilian.

Revenge, or so they don’t say, is a dish best served hard.

My mother is dead. I’ll admit that much.

I lied about the hospital, the sleeping in the lounge, the waking up with her at my bedside — even the grapes; all of it, a lie. Somehow, it was easier. Simpler. Somehow, it was all just a lot more fucking convenient. Losing her, in that same hospital, felt like falling flat on your face with your hands in your pockets.

This time, I didn’t want to fall alone.

The house is sandwiched between an oyster bar and an off licence. I remember the door: red, with peeling paint, a letter but no number; simply, ‘K’.

I buzz and wait, bullied and bruised — no wait, exposed — after my ordeal with Sandy at the club. Then the door opens, a face appears.

It’s the boy.

He doesn’t know me — not even the faintest flicker of recognition — but I still want to scream at him, to further impregnate the pause, ‘It should have been you!’

But I don’t.

‘I’m…erm…John,’ I say, avoiding prolonged eye contact — just in case. ‘I’m looking for someone.’

I can feel his eyes on my body, looking me up and down — the flirt. I don’t know whether to be flattered by his glare, or offended that he clearly doesn’t remember me; worse, that he has no idea just how lucky he is to be standing there, perfectly formed. Intact.

‘Oh yeah?’ he answers, smirking. ‘Looks like you’ve found someone…’

‘The man I’m looking for is Brazilian,’ I interrupt, ignoring his come-on then realising something. ‘Actually, he could be Portuguese…’

There’s another pause, as the boy goes pale. Now he remembers.

‘I’m sorry but you have to leave —’

I wedge my foot inside the door frame before he has chance to close it, then push my way inside.

‘Look, boy,’ I growl, taken aback by my own brutality, as the boy is my shove. ‘I need to know what you know. And I need to know, now.’

The doctors think that they know everything. That they have it all figured out. That they can simply diagnose what’s wrong with me — or not, as is apparently the case — then send me off with some pills and a course of therapy.

When I regained consciousness, after that night, they told me that everything would work out — even, that I’m fine.

‘You’re fine,’ they said, specialist after specialist — all in agreement. ‘And you’ll be back to normal in no time.’

What they don’t realise, what they have so far either ignored or simply failed to comprehend, is that I was never normal to begin with.

The Fitness First in Victoria is one of London’s most notorious haunts; a bastion for men of all ages, straight and gay, to come and cum and come again — without recourse to admissions of embarrassment, regret, or guilt. What happens in Fitness First, stays in Fitness First. Or so they say.

My first experience with a man happened in the sauna, but I haven’t been back for years. Until now, that is; all alone — save, of course, for a familiar face.

The boy told me what I needed to know. That I’d find the Brazilian, who is in fact called Steve and decidedly not Brazilian, in only one place this time of night.

It is a Monday, the new Friday; at least, it’s that for serious gym-goers like the Brazilian, who’s free to work out, sauna then shower, without the distraction of all those men working out on each other.

I should’ve known it would end this way.

He’s on his back, a towel draped low and loose on his hips. I’m directly opposite, legs crossed to conceal my weapon, biding my time.

I’m waiting for the steam to rise, fill the room just a little more — before I strike. But I’m growing restless, too, worried that someone might enter, even though there’s nobody in the changing rooms.

‘You don’t mind do you?’ I say, after a mere moment.

I’m now starting to quietly panic, enveloped by sauna sweat, choked with anxiety; every sensation at once, I sense that the time is now, roused and rallied by the pressure.

This, as they say, is it.

There’s no reply from the Brazilian, but I’m already gliding towards the heat and pouring another bucket on the stones, a sizzle of steam my accomplice as I swiftly lock the door from the inside — a faux pas in any sauna but this.

Invigorated by what’s about to happen, what I know must be done, I feel my nipples harden, my eyes begin to water, as I unleash and unveil — my truth, my beauty, my revenge. Then, at the climax — cocked and ready to take from he that which was taken from me — a stir.

Turning to face him, a sharpened blade to allay, my towel drops, and I gently sway.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Gavin James Bower is the author of Dazed & Aroused. He is interviewed in 3:AM here.

Having been wiped clean, reconfigured and deemed healthy by the hospital, I have now, as they put it, been discharged. The smell of antiseptic hangs in my nostrils making my mouth taste like toilet, so I chew bubblegum to mask it and delight in the sugary pinkness of repetitive motion. I step into a familiar scene, a tree lined street, shop windows, pedestrian crossings, post boxes, people interacting. I am the unfamiliar feature in the landscape. I decide to perform an experiment to which I have no hypothesis. The plan is simply to enter the first shop I see and interact with the surroundings, curious to see what will happen now that I have - recuperated. It is a clothes shop full of fashionable and fashionably unfashionable items; labyrinthine displays of ties, bags and shoes arranged spectacularly amongst skirts, dresses and shirts in colourful circuits all competing for attention.

Amongst them is a face, a brutal face between ears pierced with metallic blue hoops from top to lobe. Proudly decorated youth. A real individual. The protruding eyes are lined in thick green goop that only brings out the too-thin skin and squirming blue veins of the eyelids. Like daffodil bulbs planted in the earth, bald and young and round. I think of the stringy roots holding them in wet soil I would find if I pulled them out of the face. Huge nostrils. Swollen lips a shock of fuchsia, red-orange frizzing hair pinned at random about her head, an orange being torn open. The spaces in between the petals of the rose woven into the hair behind the ear open into an obscenity. I flirt with leaving but am strict enough to stay. Even her skin, freckled all over, exclaims itself ridiculously. An intricate black tattoo sleeves the upper arm in concentric circles, the white skin highlighting the blackness of the circles that continue irritatingly along the length of the arm. But I must remember, mine is the reaction of an unhealthy person.

The face asks if it may help me. I hear the voice as if one of us is underwater, the motion of the mouth not matching the sounds of the words. I see teeth. I imagine her, who I name Red, picking the fine bones of fishes from between them with her pink and pointed fingernails. I decline. Red’s flesh pushes over the restraints of clothes, waistbands and bra straps, things spilling out and over. If flat in one place only to be bulging in another. I think of the gapped teeth again, of her running her tongue around them, delving in between the gaps, dislodging food pieces along its way, ready to be chewed again and swallowed. I remember the feeling of holding vomit in my mouth before letting it out.

I duck into another room before Red can speak again, my stomach turns and I realise my distance from the door. The room is devoted to skirts and dresses gently swinging on their hangers. Green catches my eye. Knee length. Bright. The light catches in the folds and I think of emeralds, of cool green bliss, of dawns and twilit walks through imaginary and verdant landscapes. I unzip it from its hanger and hold it against my body. It appears grotesque over my long woollen coat, the middle part of me shines light but my head, neck and feet are still dull. I feel at once very close to myself and very far away, as if I am receding at such a pace that the recognisable facets of my face and my body are blurring as quickly as if I had been driving quickly past myself on a motorway. This is the potential they told me about, the health they gave me.

My reverie is interrupted by the ding-dong of the door swinging open to reveal a smiling man backlit by the bright day. He has black hair and a wide smile that chimes with the bell creating a well-timed television ting. Again something in my eye, this time with the feeling of tin foil touching a filled tooth; a sharp, bright streak, from the back of my jaw to the edge of my eye. Whitely burning like magnesium in school science lessons. He speaks to Red, she nods and shows him behind the counter. He asks her questions and she shows him pieces of paper. He looks pompously about the shop, surveying it, disappointed it is not bustling with women.

He spies me and comes closer. He seems full of the light-footedness that comes from having done something. Taking his place in the room: he seems to extend, or be extending his entire self all around. He is not ugly but certainly not attractive to me. His eyes are too far apart, they seem almost placed on either side of his head, as a rabbit’s would be. Yet there is nothing prey-like about him. There is something more of the hunter’s eyes about them, but lacking the cruelty of necessity, not as fierce, they droop embarrassingly in the outer corners, and their colour is neither fascinating nor deep. His mouth too, as he comes towards me, smiling, seems also to push his face physically to its limits. Stretching it, almost as if it would wrap around his entire head and split it in half. The lips are so chapped that their skin is visibly peeling off – white dry flakes crack with his smile to reveal the red-pink instances of his mouth. Perhaps the skin would be shed and left in the curled shape of the body and its shadow. Each time it was shed, he would come closer to borderlessness. I focus on the thin line of sweat on his upper lip and the deep black pores in his nose and cheeks. This is what I imagine in the moments it takes him to approach. Closer still, the top button of his shirt is broken but held together by the stitches through the holes connecting one half to the other. His build is grand, thin but not without strength, no superfluous mass or excess, his body seems simply the entire and concise point. Me, my breasts shake when I brush my teeth. There is no barrier between his body and the air around him, he moves and breathes easily, as if it were made for and of him. He has no need to suck desperately at it with straws, me, I am constantly at odds with my breath. His face is set in an expression, which seems selected from a slim array of other possible expressions. I assume this one, this expression of gentle persuasiveness, is aiming for nothing less lascivious than charm.

He signals at me to try on the dress. He is confident and complete; words simply arrive, looped together with a few fluid flicks of the tongue. He does not notice that he is diseased by his own sense of self. I pop another piece of gum into my mouth to refresh the fading tutti-frutti flavour as he ushers me into a cubicle. I stare until my reflection doesn’t make sense anymore. Dots and dashes, moving planes and broken lines, shifting facets, overlapping lopsided shapes. This is how I know I’m still alive despite what they told me. I take off my clothes and try on the dress; it zips snugly up at my back. I cannot break through my skin, but I can travel all around its edges and run my fingertips and mouth along the surface of it. This dress shows my arms, knees, shins and ankles. It circles gently around my waist, like hands in a dance or embrace. It skims the shape of my thighs and hips and is as soft as a second skin. It catches the light in the changing room coming from the neon strip above my head, it folds the light into it and shakes it, making it sparkle. My reflection unites.

I hear a voice. It comes clearly and fluently. I can mimic it perfectly. It rings sharply in my ears, a clear short note. A woman’s voice to adopt, adapt. Charming. It moves up and up, fireworks, ending in points won, arguments, debates, applause. But it is not my breath in it, it is not the harsh straining rhythm of my two lungs, it is an adoption. The planes and lines, facets and shapes are tied together in this dress.

An advert for an airline company on the back of the cubicle door: dots and lines cross the entire projection. Each place potentially connected to each other place and the small map is filled predominantly with red dots and lines opposed to the world underneath. Territories blur and borders tremble. Come to Greece, and a picture of a happy couple beside the Acropolis. Deserts of space. I cough and recognise the sound. It is nowhere near breath, it tastes like blood and bones and stretched and folded sinews. The reflection begins to splinter as I cough. Cacti bloom in this space and the sand sinks beneath my feet forcing me to keep moving. The effort of putting one foot in front of the other sends menacing pain through my muscles. Soon I am sweating, I have no water and the heat mounts. The sand blows up in spirals around my feet and whips my face as it rises. I wrap my clothes around my mouth and nose and continue walking. The landscape spreads on, exactly the same all around; I look down at my feet and check they are moving. The cough roars and splutters and Red bursts into the cubicle, the man lingering behind her. I keep coughing and tears stream down my face. She helps me out of the dress, the angles and colours of her face bursting into my vision when I can open my eyes between heaves. The gum shoots out and sticks to the mirror before sliding stupidly down leaving a thin wet trail for posterity.

I push past Red and the man, pulling my coat back on, and rush out of the shop. I can feel their stares. I should be ashamed of myself, I am too old to be sick, I am too old for my hair to be so long. I crouch down and hang my head between my knees on the pavement, following the pictorial advice from in-flight safety documents that have somehow been burnt into my brain. But I am not crashing. I am not even sick. There was no illness. The wet, fleshy alive seeming pink gum is finally out. But still, there is no cure.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mira Mattar is a tutor, freelance writer and reviewer for the TLS and other publications. Her fiction has been published in Spilt Milk Magazine and Melusine and is forthcoming from Dog Horn Publishing. She is also one third of Monster Emporium Press. She lives in South London where she is currently working on her first collection of short stories. You can read her here.