Put your heart and soul into it: A Drew and Drake story

Drew consoled himself with a packet of wotsits and a cartoon on the TV as the ambulance drove away.
‘Psst.’
Drew looked around but could see no one. He shrugged and continued munching on his wotsits.
‘Pssst!’
Drew drew himself forward on the couch, ‘Hello?’
‘Psst, here!’
Drew looked around the room, eyes darting back and forth uncertainly, ‘Hello?’
‘Here!’ The voice called again.
Drew picked up the remote with cheesy fingers, leaving a grease stain on the mute button. ‘Hello?’ he whispered uncertainly.
The cartoon moved onto adverts; a girl stood open-mouthed in fake awe of a pink plastic toy.
‘Drew! I need you to get my body back!’ The voice had panic in it.
‘Drake?’ Drew looked dumbfounded and sprung off the sofa, ‘Where the hell are you?’
‘I’m in the Dambuster!’ Came Drakes’s voice.
Drew’s face remained blank.
‘The damn Dambuster!’ Drake called out, frustrated.
‘Is that a hoover?’ Drew lurched toward the broken hoover in the corner of the room.
‘No! No!’ Drake’s voice started, and the panic heightened in his voice, ‘Air fix model plane! 1:72 Lancaster Dambuster!’
Drew found the Lancaster Dambuster model on the table next to the sofa. He picked it up delicately and put it to his ear like a phone, ‘Drake?’
‘I’m here! You got me!’ Drake replied with relief, his voice clipped and loud inside Drake’s ear.
‘Bloody hell! Turn the volume down!’
‘Or take me away from your ear!’ Drake would have been shaking his head if he could, ‘Listen, Drew! You need to get to my body!’
‘How did you even get in there? The paramedics took you away!’ Drew held the Dambuster in his right hand and scratched his balls in his shorts.
‘I put my heart and soul into this model!’ 
‘And now look at ya! You’re a damn dambuster!’
Drake sighed.

Drew raced out the door, the Dambuster in the crook of his arm.
‘Careful!’ Drake drolled, ‘I’m made of plastic!’
‘Aren’t we all these days.’ Drew muttered.
There was silence except for Drew’s heavy, lumbering footsteps until Drake finally broke it. ‘Drew?’
‘Yea?’
‘When did you become so profound?’
‘You’ve not been found yet.’ Drew replied.
The dambuster tutted beneath the crook of Drew’s arm.
‘I’ll be profound when I’ve got you back.’
‘I’m here.’
‘I mean when you’re made of flesh.’ Drew replied.
‘Alright, Drew?’ Billy stepped off the curve of the pavement to step around him, ‘Talkin’ t’ yaself?’
‘No I was talkin’ t’…’ Drew stopped and felt the Airfix model beneath the crook of his arm, ‘I guess maybe I was.’
‘Where is Drake?’ Billy asked, looking around for him before his eyes beamed on the model and with a huge grin and glint in his eyes he asked, ‘I used t’ make them as a kid! Airfix model, is it?’
Drew nodded.
‘Can I have a look?’
Drew squinted in the sun, ‘I dunno about that.’
‘Protective over it are ya?’ Billy smirked and stepped closer to Drew, Bending a little to view the plane. ‘Ya make that yaself?’
‘No, Drake made it.’
‘Wow. He’s really put himself into that!’
Drew gawped, ‘You know?’
Billy looked up from the plane with a frown, ‘What?’
‘Ya said he put himself into it.’
‘Yea. Just look at it.’ Billy snatched it from Drew’s arm, ‘He’s really got an eye for the details. The way he’s painted it to make it look rusted and old. It’s amazing!’ Billy’s eyes popped as he shook his head in amazement, ‘Who’d ‘ave thunk simple old Drake had such in ‘im!’ He grinned from ear to ear, ‘He did put his heart and soul into it didn’t it!’ He beamed, delicately running a finger along the plane’s flank and around the wing’s edges. ‘Hell, I might just be inspired to start up the hobby again myself!’ Billy made as if to return the plane to Drew, ‘You be careful how ya carry ‘er! Can’t have you breaking it!’
Drew held both his hands out to receive the plane.
‘There ya go, now off ya go. Be delicate with her!’
‘It’s a he.’ Drew was shocked, ‘Ya should know that!’
‘Nah a beauty like that is a she! Always a she, Drew.’
Billy turned and continued on his way, turning to look over his shoulder at Drew and the model once or twice before turning the corner to the next street.
‘Well that was gross.’ Intoned the Dambuster in Drake’s voice.
‘Ya tellin’ me ya got a sex change too?’ Drew asked the dambuster, his face screwed up, ‘Ya coulda told me!’
‘What? I haven’t had a bleeding sex change, mate!’
‘But he knew ya were in there. And he said you were a she!’
‘Do ya believe everything Billy tells ya?’
Drew shrugged.
‘Besides, he doesn’t know I’m in here!’
‘He said as much!’ Drew protested.
‘It’s a figure of speech to folk like him. He doesn’t realise it’s real. He says heart and soul as if they are metaphors. He doesn’t actually know I’m in here.’
‘So you haven’t changed your sex?’
The dambuster sighed, ‘That’s your concern right now? If I’ve had a sex change or not? I’m a damn dambuster! Focus, Drew, focus!’

‘Okay, so we’re here.’ Drew told the Airfix model, looking around furtively as he approached the doors.
‘What’s wrong?’ Drakes disembodied voice asked.
‘This place. It’s spooky!’
‘Spookier than a ghost in an Airfix model giving you instructions?’
Drew shrugged.
‘Time is of the essence!’
‘No. Essence is a perfume.’ Drew replied.
‘It’s also time.’ A flustered Drake replied from the Dambuster, ‘I dunno how long my body can be dead till it can’t take my soul back!’
Drew ran across the road and rattled the doors, ‘I can’t get in!’
‘You’re gonna have to break in!’
‘I can’t break in!’ Drew huffed.
‘Yes you can! You’ve done it before! It’s not your first crime!’
‘But I’ve been on a good streak!’
‘Do you want me to be a damn dambuster for the rest of my fucking life?’
Drew stopped to think about this a moment, the silence engulfing them before a car sped past. Drew tried to look nonchalant, scuffing the pavement with the toe of his shoe, hugging the airfix model close to his body.
‘Fuck sake! It shouldn’t take that long to think about! It’s obvious!’
‘Sorry, it’s just… I mean… You’re still here with me! So…I don’t mind if you’re an airfix plane or whatever else!’
‘Aww,’ Drake snapped, ‘How cute!’ He said sarcastically, ‘Listen, Drew, I need you to pick the lock. You’ve picked a lock before.’
‘No you picked the locks’ Drew protested.
‘Did I?’
‘Yea you picked the locks!’
‘Okay. But you saw me do it!’
Another car drove by, the passenger giving Drew the side eye as he whispered to the airfix model, ‘I wasn’t paying attention to you! I was on the lookout.’
‘Well..’ Drake started…
A car door opened and closed nearby, and then shoes scuffing on the pavement could be heard inching closer, accompanied by a plastic rattle.
A woman broached the corner, a plastic carrier bag in one hand, and a waft of perfume made its way toward them.
‘Time and essence.’ Drew mumbled to himself.
The woman stopped short at the sight of Drew outside the doors, clutching the Dambuster in his grubby hands.
She read his face, a look of anxious desperation.
‘Hello,’ Piercing the moment with her voice, ‘Is there anything I can do for you?’ She plopped the carrier bag down on the pavement and twisted her body to root through her handbag, fishing out a selection of keys that rang together as she pulled them out.
‘I need to get in to see Drake.’
‘Drake?’ The woman picked the carrier bag back up and walked towards the doors and unlocked them. ‘Surname?’
‘Whitlock.’
‘And what do you need to see this, erm..’ The keys rattled in her hands, ‘Mr Whitlock’s body for?’
‘Because…’
‘Halt it, Drew. She won’t believe you.’
Drew swallowed audibly, ‘Because I miss him.’
‘Tell her you want to place the dambuster with him.’
Drew held out the plane in her face, ‘I want to put this with him.’
‘Tell her he put his heart and soul into it and he’d have wanted it to be with him.’
‘He would have wanted it to be with him.’ Drew told her.
The woman looked at him suspiciously. ‘No,’ She frowned, ‘That would be a job for the undertakers. You think I can just let any random man in off the streets to come look at some mans body?’ She shook her head again, ‘What about dignity? What about respect? what about…’
As she prattled on, Drake instructed Drew to sneak in through the doors while they had the chance.
‘Hey!’ The woman stormed in through the doors, ‘Young man!’ She shouted after him.

Running into the cold room lined with steel drawers Drew pulled each one out till he found Drake’s lifeless body.
‘Now what do I do?’ Drew asked.
‘I dunno. Place me on my body.’ Drake replied
Drew placed the airfix model of the Dambuster onto Drake’s body.
The lights above buzzed monotonously and a tap dripped somewhere off to the side.
‘Psst, Drew…’
‘Yea?’
‘I…I dunno what to do now. How do I get myself back into my body?’
Drew frowned, ‘Well, how’d you get in the Dambuster?’
‘I told you, I put my heart and soul into it!’
‘Well do the same again but into your body.’
‘But,’ Drew could almost hear the expression Drake would have been pulling on his face if he could, eyebrows drawn together in a frown, ‘It’s not the same thing. I was making it, I put a lot of effort into it.’
‘Put a lot of effort into getting back into your body then.’ Drew shrugged.
The Dambuster started to vibrate with the effort as the woman stormed in.
‘What on earth do you think you’re doing in here?’ She scowled, her eyes reaching the airfix model widened, ‘What on earth is going on with that?’
She lurched toward Drew, ‘Is this some kind of degenerate sexual thing!’ She looked from Drew to the Dambuster, ‘What is that toy doing! Why is it vibrating like that!’
‘He’s trying to get back into his body!’
Befuddled the woman stepped back, ‘What? Who?’
‘Drake! He’s trying to get back into his body!’
‘What do you mean he’s trying to get back into his body?’ She asked in a shrill voice.
Drew pointed to the Dambuster, ‘ He’s in there, ‘And it’s not a toy. It’s an Airfix model.’
The woman started, ‘It’s not a toy? It’s a….’
The Dambuster started to vibrate even harder, and one of the propellers began to spin, which caused a chain reaction, and they all began to move.
‘What trickery is this?’ The woman asked appaled, ‘This is inappropriate behaviour inside a morgue.’
‘There is no trickery,’ Drake’s voice croaked.
The woman jumped out of her skin, and her body landed limply on the cold tiled floor.
‘Fuck,’ Drake spat as he got up off the metal gurney, ‘I think we’ve killed her!’ He ran over to her and checked for a pulse, ‘Shit. She’s gone.’
‘What happened to her?’ Drew asked.
‘I think I scared her to death.’
‘She jumped out of her skin.’ Drew muttered to himself.
Standing there naked over her, feeling for a pulse Drake smiled, ‘I think you’re onto something there!’
‘What?’ Drew gawped.
‘She jumped out of her skin. Maybe she’ll jump back in, in a minute.’
‘Can we go home now?’
Drake tutted and shook his head, ‘No hug for your old mate? Not even a ‘welcome back mate.”
‘Not while you’re naked like that, no.’ Drew replied.

All too human 2

Chapter 1 https://silverbackgorillapoetry.com/2024/11/09/all-too-human/

*Note* — means the same place, or area but moved to a different scene in the present.

* Means we’ve gone back to an old memory.

Chapter 2

‘It’s the bag man puffter robot!’ One of the boys hollered as he passed a football to one of his friends.
Sparks preferred it when it was he was just known as the bag man. He scrunched the top of the bag up in his fist.
‘You know,’ the eldest kid started as he kicked the ball back, ‘this ball is getting a little flat,’ He looked toward Sparks, then back at his friends with a gleam of expectation in his eyes.
The ball passed between them quickly when one of the boys said, ‘Hey! We could use that head the puffter robot carries!’
The boys all laughed.
‘How did it work?’ One of the boys said, the football stopped underneath his left foot, ‘I heard you robots are as smooth as a mannequin down there!’
The boys started to howl with laughter, ‘Do you just wet your fingers and stick them into each other’s ears?’ The boys spat with laughter, the ball rolling along the road.
Sparks quickened his pace up through the ginnel.


       The late afternoon sun shone through the windows, dust motes gliding visibly in the rays. The Holo TV spat out a news presenter in 3D into the living room. Sparks sat in an old tattered armchair with the palms of his hands flat on his thighs.
     ‘You been to the scraps today?’ Mary asked, sitting in the other armchair to the side and in front of him.
    Sparks nodded.
     The newswoman spoke of local news about a family that was looking for their missing cat.
    Mary groaned, ‘Can’t stand cats,’ She remarked; it’s probably gone to be alone to die.’ Her fingers trailed through a woolen ball, ‘I prefer dogs myself.’ Then, she turned to Sparks, ‘I don’t suppose you’ve ever cared much for either.’
   Sparks didn’t reply, going deep inside his head in memory.

*

Sparks sat outside Lockwood HQ when a stray dog ran past him. The dog was skeletal looking, and his fur was full of mange.
Sparks had called out to the dog, clicking his mouth valves to try and attract his attention.
The dog’s ears twitched at the sounds, but he ran when he saw Sparks’s tall figure.
A stone was thrown behind Sparks, landing on the pavement with a clack.
‘Psst!’ Came a voice.
Sparks turned at the sound coming from the cobbled sidestreet.
‘What are you doing here?’ Sparks asked, looking over at one of the guard droids in front of HQ.
‘It was how you left, it was…’ Sark  tried to find the words, ‘You worried me.’
‘Nothing makes sense anymore,’ Sparks told him. ‘I’m an android; I’m not supposed to have emotions.’
‘What are you feeling?’
Sparks shrugged, ‘I don’t know. I just know I’m not supposed to feel the way I do.’
Sark  grabbed Sparks by the arm and dragged him up the cobbled road.
‘I need to find that poor dog!’ Sparks protested.
‘We’ll find him tomorrow,’ Sark  said.
‘But who knows how far he might get!’
Sark  shook his head in the dark, ‘It’s okay, I’ve seen it about before. I promise we’ll try to find him tomorrow.’ Sark  gestured with open palms, ‘Besides, it won’t be too easy to find him right now.’
Sparks looked over his shoulder at the flashing street lights, then up at the sky.
‘You put yourself at risk coming here!’ Sparks whispered.
‘Yea,’ Sark  grabbed Sparks’s hand, ‘I risked it…’ He stopped in his tracks with a frown, looking down at their holding hands, ‘What happened to your hand?’

The next day Sark  stuck to his promise and helped sparks find the stray dog. After searching all morning they eventually found the dog hidden in some bushes in a little wooded area near the church where Sark  and Sparks first met.

The dog would not budge; the only thing visible was a bit of his fur and the mange through gaps of foliage. ‘We’ll leave some food,’ Sparks said, ‘I don’t think he’s gonna come out for us.’

On the second night of going to the woods to leave out water and food for the dog, they had their first kiss.
Sark  had gotten down to his knees to place the bowl, and when he turned, Sparks, for reasons he couldn’t explain, placed a hand behind Sark ‘s head and pushed his face inbetween his legs.
As soon as he’d done it he pulled back, ‘Sorry,’ he started, ‘I don’t know what came over me.’
Sark  got up and kissed Sparks desperately, their mouth valves flapping over each other.


The HoloTV spat out a different presenter. He smiled at the audience watching in all the boroughs; a picture of Malborough Plaza HQ was framed behind him.
‘Malborough Plaza HQ is rebuilding itself from the inside, hoping to prevent such tragic events as happened at Lockwood and Princeton HQ. Now we’ll go to our correspondent Neil.’
‘Yes, that’s right,’ Neil responded with the massive HQ building towering over him. ‘To prevent more of the same,’ the lights changed for a flash with images of a destroyed Lockwood HQ building and then another one of Princeton HQ before swiftly returning to the reporter. ‘Malborough HQ says they’re working on finding any and all faulty androids working within it’s walls and dismantling those that are malfunctioning…’

‘Turn it off!’ Sparks spat, his fingers curling on his thighs. But his monotone voice did not translate the urgency and irritation in which he meant it.

Mary scoffed, ‘How else will I keep up with what’s happening in the world?’
*
Sark  and Sparks eventually got the dog close enough

to grab him on a lead after a week and a half of returning to the same spot each day.
‘What are you going to call him?’ Sark  asked him as they gently pulled the hesitating dog along.
Sparks shrugged down and looked at the dog, ‘I don’t know yet,’ He placed a hand in front of the dogs nose which smelt of dog food. The dog sniffed his fingers anxiously, licked his fingertips delicately, then pulled away with a whine.
‘It’s alright,’ Sparks spoke to the dog, ‘You’re safe with me, little friend.’

                        Sparks shot up from his chair, ‘I’m going back into the garage!’
Mary turned and nodded to acknowledge she’d heard.

He placed Sark ‘s head on the little wooden pedestal he had made, the silver heart hanging down like a pendant on a necklace.
‘No one understands me as you do.’ Sparks whispered.

The house was silent but for the creaks on the floorboard upstairs as Mary got ready for bed. In the bathroom, she stood before the mirror, brushing her teeth, then picked up some dentures from a glass of water and brushed them delicately with some toothpaste. ‘We need to keep your smiled spick and span, don’t we, Walter?’ She smiled back at the teeth and kissed the front teeth as she stepped across in her fluffy slippers toward the bedroom.

Diary of a superfical cunt

I don’t think I really like nature. It’s too cruel for my soft little half-hearted pitter-patter of a beating fucking heart.

What I’ve really been admiring all this time is the individual animal, the cleaned-up looking images that make the aesthetics of nature look harmonious. That is what I’ve been chasing after, the perfect imagery of all ‘peace’ and ‘green’ and so far removed from the truth of the brutality of it all.

And I suspect that’s also what most others mean when they say they love nature. No, the truth is we only love what we wish nature was like.

People say things like, ‘isn’t the British countryside so beautiful.’ But all I have ever seen in our oh so quaint British countryside is the same greenery turning brown, over and over and over and over…A vast emptiness in which a liminal space hangs between us and the dread we’re so clearly meant to be feeling.

I’m not talking about the brown of autumn as the green slips and slides into reds, browns and yellows. I’m talking about how it looks to me throughout the year. A vast carcass upon which you all stand and talk about how beautiful it is, with the sun glaring in the sky for this one frightful opportunity of light to see a vast nothingness, a desert you don’t see because it’s dressed in shades of green.
Am I really so far removed from the beauty? Is my perception really so out of wack that we can be seeing the same damn fucking thing?

And in my quest for some semblance of life within this rotten kingdom we call united, I have looked to the woodlands (what little there is left) and nature reserves.

And this is what I’ve learnt, there is no real beauty out there that isn’t only surface deep. Underneath it all is the stark truth of an inherently godless world. And if there is such a thing as a God, it’s worse even still because that God made it this way which can only speak to their absurd level of cruelty.

The truth is British people aren’t a nation of nature lovers, we’re a nation of people who think we’re nature lovers. It might behoove us to know the difference.

And many would say this is the rambling of a mind in a current Depressive state, and I’d say I agree, but then I have to ask, am I wrong? Look at the evidence before you.

People will shriek at the idea of insects, worms worming their way underground, death and the maggots that brings with it. Yet that is all part of the natural world, as is disease, parasites and shit.

Don’t get me wrong there are people who genuinely appear to love nature, and I can only look on at them with jealousy because I sure can’t fathom it.
I thought I belonged to that crowd but the more I contemplate it, the more I fight inside my head every time I try to decide if I want to go out into that world out there, the more I’ve come to the conclusion that it truly is superficial for me.

Scratch under the surface a little, I bleed a hatred that I hold inside of me, a resentment toward nature for being so absolutely bloody, cruel and gross.


Pulled mind

Their voices always travel faster than the truth
Always found in the gutter after the lines have been run through
spark me up a cigarette and burn away these untruths
I can’t see for the smoke and mirrors
The string that keeps my mind wrapped inside has come loose
and I’m trying to tie it back together before they notice I’m turning footloose
tying up the laces, weatherproofing my boots
I’m burning up these heedless warnings
you were never meant to mean a thing
so why does my mind keep drawing these useless strings
I’m pulling at tethered threads; all this white noise and dread
stirs things inside my head
my teeth clench together, and all these neon nooses pull my neck
there is too much information
but nothing about you
I’ve been making ghosts in your image
I think you’ve been making me too
Drawing me in your visions, trying to pull me through
but I never was your puppet
even though I’m always drawn to you
but it’s all for the same reasons I’m repulsed too
this hate is closer to love than it should be
yet I have seen through you
but it’s all just white noise buzzing in my head

Their voices always travel faster than the truth
Always found in the gutter after the lines have been run through
spark me up a cigarette and burn away these untruths
I can’t see for the smoke and mirrors
The string that keeps my mind wrapped inside has come loose
and I’m trying to tie it back together before they notice I’m turning footloose
tying up the laces, weatherproofing my boots
I’m burning up these heedless warnings
leaving a trailblaze no one can cut through
I’m highly strung, wound up with no wind down
pulling at tethered threads; all this white noise and dread
stirs things inside my head
my teeth clench together, all these wires become nooses
pulling me into the void from which I had fled





Broken enough

Sometimes, I wish you had told me that the happiest we’ll ever be would be fleeting
Just a moment of lightness between the heavy blows
maybe I’d have been stronger if I had been shown
how to ride along with the lightness before it was blown
but now I just panic in the throes of it
‘it all ends in tears,’ says the voice in my head
‘don’t trust these moments you’ll never see again.’
so I keep turning away
trying to stick with what I know
this misery that sticks a lump in my throat
but it’s comfort just to know
that I belong in this little hole
where tears fill the core
till I am broken enough to feel whole

The long black train

Trying to learn to be captivated by the moment
but

All these thoughts get away from me
and I give chase
never catching the momentum of now
but all the tomorrows
like how one day
someone I love will slip away

And I want to fight against the indifference of the universe
but it wouldn’t fear me anyway
I could bend and break all the rules
But time will still etch itself onto my mother’s face
I could photograph all these candid moments
light capturing my father’s face
but in the end, even the lights paintings will fade away

and I wear a mask of calm
But these butterflies are held
each flutter pulls a different trigger
and time keeps rushing
The long black train that can’t be stopped.

In reflection, Dr Frankenstein

Keep me contained
between these beats
A contortionist
building a face
to hide the beast

Slither and writhe
under the sheets
our teeth, they grind
tongue twisted and tied

Bursting through button spines
a bloody ritual to feast the eyes
monsters created to mortify
preachers spitting to mobilise
they ‘hate’ it but, it’s time to crucify

In reflection, Dr Frankenstein
A slippery slope
phallic dream
another monster to contain
why have chains without a mob to entertain?