Author: Matt

In the blaze thirst can’t be quenched

MattLeave a comment

It was a hollow cry, for no one could ease the pain. She howled into the night, and he bellowed from the other side.
The crescent of the moon was spangled through the bare branches of the trees; winter had come too soon, that was what Blaze believed, but Willow said this was the way of things now.
Life was becoming death in an endless winter.
Blaze had asked Willow if she couldn’t try putting a more optimistic spin on things, but Willow said she lived truthfully; an optimistic spin would be a lie.

‘Are we to blame?’ Blaze had asked Willow.
Willow slumped down against the rotting trunk of a willow tree, ‘No.’ Willow said.
And Blaze could only believe her because she wouldn’t sugarcoat the truth.
‘Is it anyone’s fault?’
Willow looked around at the cracked earth beneath her feet; the sun was ablaze in the sky, but winter’s soul had shrouded the earth with only shadows of ghosts. And so no matter how much that sun provided its heat, the mass extinction had done its thing. And yes, one day, maybe, life would find its way again, but for now, all that was left was the debris of homosapiens.
Plastic yoghurt pots rolled across the barren land like tumbleweeds, plastic wrapped tightly around the bones of some long-lost animal suffocated from the very plastic that now waved in the wind.

‘I have found you,’ Blaze had told Willow as he held her against the stump of the tree, ‘and so you have found me.’
Willow had smiled sadly up into his broken stare. The lights of his eyes had long gone out, as had her own.
‘Let’s let ourselves go,’ Willow said softly to him, ‘together.’
‘But I thirst for life.’ Blaze had protested.
‘We will thirst forever.’ Willow’s neck creaked as she lowered her eyes.
Blaze held her tighter in his arms, ‘The sun gives us life; we are living.’
‘This is not living, Blaze.’
Willow loosened herself from his arms, ‘Take out my solar panel.’ Her neck creaked as she craned it to look back at Blaze.
‘I…I can’t.’ Blaze said.
‘You can.’
Blaze began to whir, his head shook, ‘No! No! No! No!’ His left eye drooped, and a shard of loose glass dropped onto the cracked earth.

Since that day, a gulf had separated them. Blaze wandered about the cracked, parched plains marching northward on the same journey the trees had tried to make. The scorched bark of trees flaked and clung to their skeletal remains.
Blaze ripped a flake of bark and crushed it in his hands; a poem sought itself out in the through the mess of his electronic neurosis:

I am a refugee marching north on the wind
hoping my seed will disperse
far enough to traverse
these boundaries that will surely kill me
my roots are not fed
and there is no life left
but the wound that has bled
into the rivers
tricking down into the earth.

I could have shaded you from the sun
and thus the wind and the cold
but you let the blood run
never mind the lives slain
all for your fear of death.

Does irony feed you and quench your thirst?
When will you march with the skeletal remains of us?

And it was then that he heard the great despair taking wing into the air. The hollow cry of a humanoid who had torn her solar panel, the dying embers opened her lips, and the cry rang out through the plains of extinction.
Blaze bellowed back, and the moon’s crescent looked on, indifferent.

I don’t want to stay

MattLeave a comment

If only I was a balloon
you could let go
and I could fall up
till snared by the branch of a tree
there I could hang free.

My despair has me embroiled
in so much deceit
staying alive
only for people to reach

This isn’t a life worth living
resentment is the moon
propelling the tides in my head
only sticking around
so others don’t have to think me dead
trying to die within
so I can be an animated memory
for those who claim me.

Let words fall from my lips
as empty as they may be
dead inside, but they won’t have to see

What can I say
I’m trying to stay
but how I hope something takes me away

Superficial

MattLeave a comment


I love the earth no more than I love myself
I want to eviscerate myself
as much as we have the earth
I want to kill the skeleton in my skull
gnashing its teeth
like a ghost without a home
masticating on its lonesomeness
in nightmares kept for times like this
I want to spill my guts
but the blade won’t cut deep enough
because, to be blunt
I’m a superficial cunt

A letter from Mammaroon: Daughter

MattLeave a comment

Dear Friends,

How are things on earth?

The other day the Mammamarians put me into a bubble-shaped cart that hung from a steel wire.
And with great speed it travelled along the rope till it came to a halt that felt to me just in the nick of time, as just inches away from where it stopped was a perilously tall building that looked to be made of graphite.
And once I overcame my shock from being in new surroundings and the movement and near crash of my cart, I saw a vast network of tall buildings like the one I had stopped by before me.
There were no windows or doors on these buildings, none that a man’s eye could see anyhow.
But at once, a hole opened up in front of me, and my bubble cart moved slowly through the hole.
The hole instantly closed behind me, and I was inside the graphite tower!
And many small Mammamarians ran up and down little ladders and over many, many landings like boobacious spiders!
My ball cart moved with a slow precision as another hole opened up. I was back outside, on the other side of the building.
And the speed returned with force forcing my face up against the glass; my nose squashed against it.
The cart came to a sudden halt just as it did the first time, and after a moment or two of waiting, a hole opened up, and the cart slowly entered.
And once I entered the building, the cart started free-falling!
And down I went, my heart beating violently against my chest and my eyes no doubt bulging from my head in terror!
My hands against the glass, I screamed, my fingers trailing through the fog of my breath on the window.
And then there was a wailing sound like a crying baby.
The more I screamed, the louder the crying became, as if competing with me.
The ball cart luckily came to a halt when a giant metal hand grabbed hold and connected us back up to another steel wire.
A hole opened up in the wall before me, and the bubble cart entered a room that looked like any other room you might see in a house back home!
That was when I saw the source of the wailing: a baby in a cot, arms above their head and legs up in the air.
Next to the cot was a space currently behind drawn curtains.
Would you like to hazard a guess as to who was behind the curtains?
Well, if it wasn’t Alice!
‘My god!’ I recall myself saying, ‘Alice! Where have you been…’ But as the words escaped my mouth, it dawned on me, ‘The baby is yours?’ hoping my shock didn’t afflict my face.
Alice smiled that wistful smile, the same smile I saw her lips bear last time, ‘It is our baby,’ She said, holding out her hand. ‘Come on,’ She said.
I grabbed her hand, and she spun me back to face the baby in the cot.
‘I thought you were…’ I looked down at the baby’s feet which were up in the air, ‘I thought you were an android.’ I gulped.
‘I am.’ Alice replied.
‘But,’ I pointed at the baby, ‘How?’
‘I have an artificial womb.’

Can you believe that? An artificial womb in an android?
I never expected to have a child, what with mainly fucking men and rarely being able to orgasm if I slept with a woman.
Not to mention that back on earth, back on that sweet blue, green home, I was told by a doctor that my swimmers weren’t very…well up for swimming, quite frankly!

I looked at Alice, stunned! ‘How…But I..’
‘We had to help your little guys out a bit.’ She smiled.
‘Yea?’ I said, picturing sperm with armbands on like a cartoon.
‘Don’t worry about it. The fact is, now you have a little daughter!’
Well, what indeed was I supposed to say to that?
‘I know you’re in shock.’
‘Shock? That’s….That’s an understatement. I’m horrified.’
‘You don’t like your daughter?’ Alice asked, a look of disdain on her android face.
I looked down at the baby in the cot, but my brain could not compute that this little ball of flesh and bone was my child, my daughter.
‘I don’t know that I believe any of this is real,’ I replied finally.
‘Pick her up, hold her.’ Alice said in an enchanting voice.
I swallowed my scepticism, which went down my throat like a frog.
I picked up the little bundle of flesh and bone, and the baby spread her fingers out on her little hands, looked up at me and with salty tears making tracks down her face from the crying, she smiled up at me.
I put her hand in mine, and it felt real.
But so did Alice. So did Spoon.
‘What are we going to call her?’ Alice asked.
‘We?’ I looked at her, the babies hand still in mine.
‘Yes, we.’ Alice tilted her head and looked at me like I was an alien. Under the circumstances, I couldn’t help but laugh a little at that.
‘Well, she should take your surname.’
Alice smiled, ‘And her first name?’
‘I don’t know!’ I baulked and put the baby back in the cot.
‘Aww look, she’s going to sleep now she’s seen her daddy!’ Then Alice crept as quietly as possible towards me and put a hand on the small of my back, ‘Shall we go to bed now and try to get some sleep?’ She said, with a yawn, pushing on my pack to usher me behind the curtains.

So that’s all the latest news for you! I’m out of the fish tank, and now it seems like playing ‘happy families’ with Alice somewhere on this boobacious planet!

Yours faithfully,
Holden Mcgroin.

The wonders of Alice’s blue, blue eyes.

MattLeave a comment

Dear friends,

I hope my last two letters greeted you soon enough on your doormat.

The artificial nights and days have merged so much that I’m not entirely sure I’m sane anymore, but should a person ever be so sure they are sane?

The Mammamarians took a keen interest in my relationship with Spoon after initially turning a blind eye.
To be truthful with you, I can’t get it up with them watching so intently.
I told Spoon, ‘I’m impotent towards you now; it’s over.’
Spoon didn’t cry; he just said, ‘I’m an android; I don’t care if you’re important.’
I repeated to him, ‘I’m impotent.’
Spoon turned to me and said, ‘Alright, big head.’

Since Spoon and I came to an end, they have introduced a new android, a female one.
She’s called Alice.
‘Hello, Alice, I’m Holden’ I introduced myself awkwardly, not daring to look into her very blue eyes.
‘Hello, Holden,’ She said, ‘Would you like to be my lover?’
I thought to myself this is very forward and quick on the draw.
‘I don’t know about that yet,’ I told her.
She looked over at Spoon, and when she turned back to me, she frowned, ‘You prefer the men?’
I shrugged, ‘It’s not so much that, it’s that I barely know you.’
At this, she smiled, ‘I heard you didn’t know Spoon that well before you spooned him.’
I thought on that a moment, and she did have a point.

I took a few days to get used to Alice’s presence.
Spoon kept glaring at me and then walking heavily around the tank.
‘I meant no harm,’ I told Spoon.
‘You can’t harm me; I’m an android.’ He told me.
‘You are acting pretty hurt,’ I told him.
He’s been like that with me ever since.

Now at night, when the Mammamarians turn off the artificial sunlight, they flash strobe lights as if I am out clubbing and then Alice starts dancing and trying to entice me closer to her.
But if she is hearing music, I do not hear any!
Which only makes her dancing appear more strange to me!
I asked Spoon one night when I felt like I was disassociating from reality, ‘Is Alice real or a hallucination?’
Spoon just nodded and said, ‘Yes.’
‘Which one are you saying yes to?’ I asked him.
He just sneered at me, lay himself down, and went to sleep!

Then last night, all things seemed to come to a head (quite literally), legs were tangled, and hair was ruffled.
And in the deep blue pools that were Alice’s eyes I lost myself in the moment, and alas, I came to with a shudder, and she looked up at me with an ever so wistful smile, ‘That good for you?’
I hesitated to reply; my humanity and thus, inability to not keep my animalistic passions in check was burdensome on my shoulders.
I must admit to feeling like Frankenstein’s monster, as her human-like blue eyes reflected her regret at me.
‘It wasn’t so good for you.’ I replied.
‘I’m an android; it neither felt good nor bad.’
And what a jarring reply! Yet despite her supposed neutrality, the misgivings afflicted her face with an all too human expression.

When I awoke, Alice was nowhere to be found in our little domesticated fish tank.
I have asked the Mammamarians where Alice is through Spoon.
And Spoon did speak with them, but I can only trust his word that he did ask on my behalf.
He told me that the Mammamarians told him, ‘Alice’s whereabouts are of no concern to us.’
Whatever the hell that is supposed to mean.

And so I am left with Spoon and the other androids who pay me no mind, talk none and flit around the tank like goldfish.
I may be foolish enough to hanker after Spoon’s company again come artificial night.

Yours faithfully,

Holden Mcgroin

Another letter from Mammaroon

MattLeave a comment

Dear friends,

I’m writing again to tell you more about my life on Mammaroon since being abducted.

We have artificial days and nights, and all concept of time has become meaningless.
They turn on a sun lamp and turn it off when they please.
It has a routine, much like the days and nights on earth. But some days and some nights feel so long and tedious that I can’t be sure it’s not just random!

Loneliness hit me sooner than I thought it might, given my propensity to be alone.
But alas, I felt driven mad by loneliness; perhaps it was the lack of certainty of time.
Anyhow, the reasons as to why don’t much matter in the scheme of things.

When on earth amongst other humans, it’s easy to forget you are human. But on an alien planet with aliens watching you like in a zoo, your own humanity dawns on you and beckons you back to earth.
If only such psychological beckonings could be a form of transport!

In a state of loneliness, one artificial night, I crept into the bed of Spoon and began to spoon him.
He didn’t flinch at my touch; he didn’t seem to mind.
I could be confident of this impression when he started grinding up against my crotch.
But it was through these bodily explorations I came upon a stark truth!
Spoon was no man, no fellow human!
Spoon is, of course, an android!
‘It feels like this is something you should have told me,’ I said to him.
‘It is not protocol for me to tell you. Indeed it is not protocol for any of us to tell you.’
‘Any of you?’
‘Yes,’ He rolled over in the bed to face me, ‘All of us here in this tank,’ he nodded his head at me, eager for me to complete that conclusion.
‘There are no other humans in this fish tank with me!’ I said.
‘Correct,’ Spoon smiled at me.

Of course, it all makes more sense now! I wondered how Spoon could translate the alien’s communication technique, which to my ears, is entirely silent!

Despite my low mood spurned by loneliness, the Mammamarians still treat me well.
I am fed, and they allow me to shower once a week which is more often than I did at home! Although showering while they watch me can be pretty disturbing!

The Mammamarians also appear to be turning a blind eye to the filthy things I do with Spoon in the artificial nights!

And so, all in all, I can’t complain too much!

I hope this letter reaches you well!

Yours faithfully,

Holden Mcgroin.