“I saw him in the shadows, Sir.”
The man Scar spoke with had alcohol on his breath, fingerless gloves on his hands and his dirty fingers shook and poked at the wall they stood beside. “I saw him a few times, I should have followed. But, I never could be that man, Scar.”
Scar was named so because the entirety of his left face was scarred round the edges of a tablet screen. The tablet screen just looked to have been shoved into his face willy-nilly, but it was surgically put there. His face constantly glowed on that one side, the screen full of scratches and cracks. This was the only source of light for the two men as they stood in the alleyway between the pub and the backs of poor filthy houses. “I was supposed to follow.” The man repeated, shaking even more. “I couldn’t do it.” A tear streamed down his dirty face.
“The truth is we chose the Devils way.” To prove his point, he scowled over at the street sign that read, ‘Djinn Avenue.’
“He was God, and we could have followed.” The man bellowed.
“God isn’t that powerful, neither is the Devil. It’s just Good and Bad. Beauty VS ugly. Dark VS light.” Scar said.
“You deny the shadow we saw in the mist?” The man asks, wiping a tear from his eye.
“I don’t deny the shadow. I deny his power.”
“Is that why you didn’t follow him upstairs?”
“I’ll go upstairs when I damn well want.” Scar’s face appeared to glow all the brighter as the irritation showed itself in his stance, and the other side of his face grimaced.
“You said you couldn’t be like him, that you wished you were.”
“The shadow is courage I never had.” Scar says sadly, “The shadow is only God because I never had the courage to go upstairs.”
The man started to pace, “I’ve seen the obscure man, the one with the…”
“Mirror?” Scar asked knowingly.
“Yes.”
Scar smiled for the first time, “Both the Shadow and the obscure man have mirrors.”
The man looked dumbfounded, “There are no mirrors upstairs.”
“The mirrors only show us what they want us to see.” Scar said matter of factly, almost like he’d rehearsed that line.
“What,” The man’s voice shakes a little, “What happened to your face?”
Scar smiled, but it was a smile upheld by sadness, “I wanted to be emotionless. I tried to become a robot.”
He laughed, “Insane, right?” He pointed to his glowing face.
“I can’t say it’s anything other, I’m afraid, sir.”
“I thought I could follow God easier as a robot.”
The man lit up a cigarette and looked at Scar, took the sight in as he inhaled a big hit of smoke. “You talk in a very confusing way. Do you believe in God or not?”
“God is merely a word that is interchangeable. God isn’t some spirit in the sky, it’s not some creator, it’s not what we’ve been taught.”
“What is God then?”
“God is an anthropomorphism of courage, of kindness, of natural events that bring joy.”
“So who or what is the Shadow?”
“The shadow is who we wish to be. We don’t follow the shadow actually. We become him, and he ceases to be a shadow, we live with courage.”
“So who is the obscure man, who always stands at the end of Djin Avenue?”
“The anthropomorphism of bad deeds, evil, natural disasters.” Scar carries on with himself, “We lack courage, so we don’t become Gods of our lives”
“Why would I want to become a shadow?” The man frowns, “you make no sense.”
“You don’t want to become a shadow. You want to become courage. Courage or God whatever you want to call him, is only a shadow because you, we, haven’t realised his potential. That is, we haven’t become the courage we sought.”
“Are we the obscure man?”
“Yes. It is us standing at the end of Djin Avenue.”
Therapy. Version 2. Or Crack.
“I see you’ve cracked.” The therapist says, tilting her body on the big computer chair.
“Haven’t we all?” I ask
“No. Do I look like I’ve cracked?” She asks, tilting herself forward and spinning in the chair to show me her entire body.
“The night is young. I can crack you if you want.”
“And how would you do that?” She asks.
“Headbutt you.”
“Then you’d crack more and we’d both just be a gooey mess.”
We both draw smirks on our shells.
“You are being inappropriate perhaps, Miss Therapist.” I etch a grin on my shell. “Do you remember when we all had cracks, out of the virtue of being human?”
She draws another smirk on her face, “Are you using a euphemism?”
I draw raised eye brows on my face, “Well the euphemism sure was implied. But I also mean metaphorically.”
She tilts her body forwards and looks…
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Gorilla asks again
Some religious humans can be heard saying things that question whether a person can have morality without believing in God and lessons in the Bible. But doesn’t that say more about their moral values, if they need a book and the threat of hell to give them their moral values, rather than just having them on account of being a good person?
Therapy. Version 2. Or Crack.
“I see you’ve cracked.” The therapist says, tilting her body on the big computer chair.
“Haven’t we all?” I ask
“No. Do I look like I’ve cracked?” She asks, tilting herself forward and spinning in the chair to show me her entire body.
“The night is young. I can crack you if you want.”
“And how would you do that?” She asks.
“Headbutt you.”
“Then you’d crack more and we’d both just be a gooey mess.”
We both draw smirks on our shells.
“You are being inappropriate perhaps, Miss Therapist.” I etch a grin on my shell. “Do you remember when we all had cracks, out of the virtue of being human?”
She draws another smirk on her face, “Are you using a euphemism?”
I draw raised eye brows on my face, “Well the euphemism sure was implied. But I also mean metaphorically.”
She tilts her body forwards and looks at me curiously, “Explain.”
“Do you remember your first heartbreak, Miss?”
She nods her body to gesture yes.
“So do I. That was a crack on our psyche. But then we moved on, perhaps we were even stronger afterwards. You know when all was said and done.”
“I guess.”
“We used to crack inside and sometimes we had wounds to show for it outside. But we stitched ourselves back up.”
“We did.” She agrees.
“But the generation just after me, hell probably even my own age to some extent, crack and never get up again.”
“hmm.”
“We’re more fragile than we ever were. While trying to be stronger than we ever were.” I knock on my shell, and another crack appears, “See what I mean?”
“You are so cynical, Sam.”
“What you call cynicism is just the truth, Miss.” I lean my body forwards, “It’s also just evolution.”
“I’m supposed to help you.” She leans forwards and replaces her current default expression with a sympathetic look. “But honestly, I don’t think you can be helped.” She etches a sad face on her shell.
“I know.” I agree. “Our shells are just too fragile.”
“But they’re so full of calcium.” She says with the scripted optimism therapists are given.
“Which is certainly good for the birds.”
She looks at me puzzled.
“We can feed ourselves to the birds.”
“Very morbid.”
“Perhaps it’s time for the dinosaurs to rise again.”
For more like this:
Therapy
Therapy
“So, Sam how are you feeling today?”
We both glow brightly in the dark room, I want to touch my face, but I’m afraid I’ll accidently press a button. “I’m feeling an emptiness that is full.”
My therapist changes position slightly in her chair; she’s trying to tilt her head in that human way therapists used to do. “Uh huh. Tell me more.”
That’s in the therapist’s script or dictionary or whatever. “What can I say. It’s everything, and it’s nothing. But there is no connection.”
“Connection to whom?” My therapist asks curiously; I imagine she’d be raising a brow if we were still human.
“To the world, to life, to humans. We think we’re connected, but then we come away empty, don’t we? Just a screen full of emojis.”
“What emoji represents how you feel right now?”
“None can adequately portray anything.”
The therapist nods her body. “Yes, Yes. But you’d probably say the same about words, right?”
“Yes. No words, no emoji’s, hell even no action can quite express what I so often feel. That’s why, no disrespect, therapy is bullshit.”
Her cartoon like legs dangle off the chair, “I think the problem we have is many people have been comfortable putting their brains into their phones, but you’re not quite there yet.”
“Nobodies quite there yet.”
“Isn’t that a massive assumption?”
“No. The evidence is right here. Have you been to Tumblr?”
The therapist looks sad. “Yes. I’ve seen it.”
“They’ve put their brains in electronic devices, miss. And then they’re looking for a reason and well let’s be frank, there is none. So they’re fighting for causes some of them have a grain of truth, but they’ve mutated the grain.”
My therapist nods her body again. She is also reluctant to touch her face, just in case she too accidently touches a button.
“We’re dotting our I’s, Miss.”
She shows me a confused emoji, then says, “Like,” and shows a cross-eyed emoji.
“We’re dotting our I’s because we can’t quite capitalise on individuality, though we’re trying harder than we ever have before.”
The therapist’s screen shows moving dots as she considers this. “I can’t say I understand the way in which you express yourself.”
“That is nothing new, Miss.”
“Sam. You’ll never be happy living like this.”
I glow my full body towards her, my cartoon like legs dangling also. “Happy wasn’t ever a constant or ever will be. There is no such thing as a happy life.”
“That sounds very cynical.” She shows an emoji with a flat expression.
“Perhaps what you call cynism is just the truth.”
She ponders a moment, her legs kicking out underneath her like a child’s on a stool that is too tall for her, “How can we end this therapy session?”
I bend my body, so I glow towards the floor, the light reflecting from the ground back to me, making it too bright to exist. “We can’t.”
All in the head
I forgot I’m not supposed to go on rollercoasters. Still here I sit like a beer glass on a coaster, I’m shaking inside my teeth are chattering. It’s not cold. I’ve got adrenaline through my viens 10 times a dozen. I’m about to have a heart attack. I’m fizzing up, I’m frothing at the head and I’m running over like a liquid. The rollercoaster goes upsidedown, everything looks right this way down. I throw up my guts over some innocent person just walking along minding their own business. “If my head falls off,” I start, to the stranger beside me, “It’s okay.”
“Um.” He shifts his eyes from side to side.
“Your eyes looked better where they were originally.”
“Um…”
“The doctors say everythings in my head anyway.” I grin, sick smeared round my mouth.
Muted
Yellowing fluorescent strips of light line the ceiling, a sickly smokers hue emanates through the entire building. The walls are grimy with trails of dirt trodden in from hundreds of different pairs of feet. The corridors radiate the smell or rain covered backpacks and hair. One kid smells like he’s used his dad’s entire aftershave and deodorant in one go; his attempt at playing adult. Piss flavoured laughs match the yellow hue that surrounds us. We’re crowded like sardines in a tin, I barely have to move my legs to move through the corridors to my classroom, I just get pushed along in an ocean of sweaty, smelly teenagers. Lord help us, these are the future. We’re the fucking future. When I finally reach my classroom 1A, I then have to wait in line for the inept IT teacher to turn up. He has bad B.O. Wears round glasses and looks like a serial killer. I want to kick him in the balls. The other kids are nattering away, some of them turn to look at me, laugh and whisper amongst themselves again. And some lads throw a football at the wall, right next to my head. The idea is, they make it look like they’re heading for my face, but actually, they’re just gonna hit the wall. It’s funny because it just is okay? Especially because it means my wooden stance might just slightly quiver and my face might show some expression that I usually try to keep so locked up and out of sight of anyone. No one wants to see my face making appearances of a normal human being, I learnt that long ago. “Oh my god, don’t smile if you’re gonna look like that.” Is a common thing I’ve heard throughout my life. They laugh as my nerve endings send signals to my face that I can’t stop, the little minuscule expressions portraying my anxieties of the ball maybe hitting my face. It’s a reflex. I’m not human enough to have reflexes, it looks funny on me. I’m wincing, and I can’t help it. I turn my wooden frame, so they’re greeted with my side on profile. They roll the ball along the floor towards my feet, I’m supposed to kick it back. But, I’ve also learnt that any action I make is just a cause for derision. I want to kick it back. I tell myself, ‘Kick it back, they’ll laugh at you either way. Don’t you get that yet? They’ll laugh at you whatever you do or as the case is, don’t do.’ I know I can’t win, but I’m frozen inside. I will not kick that fucking ball. It’s at my feet. They stare and laugh. I stand woodenly. This is my life. My sister walks past, her face blushing at the sight of me. She knows I sort of resemble her, she knows it’s clear we’re related. She blushes, and I see how embarrassing I am to her. I ignore her like she wants me to, she goes by quickly. I can almost hear the thoughts in her head, ‘please God, no one pick me out as being related to that thing.’
I’m in a piss-stained school, with teachers that smell of piss. My education is hard with stale piss, it’s useless it’s pathetic.
“Cat got your tongue.” A girl says, giggling.
I want to reply, “No. I got a new tongue from the body shop.” And then I pull my tongue out of my mouth, take it out, and wipe my face with it, it foams up and smells of red berries.
The answer: White Noise.
When you ask me what I want, all i hear is white noise in my head. And it’s funny because if you hadn’t asked i’d be able to obscure the white noise with more white noise. But you insist on asking me what I want, or worse still, asking me what I want to do. And the answer is in the white noise. I don’t want to do anything. I think I just want to go to sleep and never wake up.
Grinding gear
I don’t wanna be at the top of the tower
I don’t wanna live in a tower at all
I just want to find peace in my mind
But that’s just another lie
I’ve been sold, to believe
That I could one day achieve
Peace on earth inside my mind
But there is nothing peaceful
About human kind
Or any other animal
Cause the world is sick and cruel
You won’t catch me saying it’s beautiful
I don’t really want a place in this mechanism
I don’t want to be a grinding gear in this
I don’t want to be mechanical or animal
I don’t want to be in this chain of command
I don’t wanna choose life, choose a fucking widescreen TV
Or a fucking wife with a picket fence
To fence us in suburbia
I don’t wanna give an inch
Fuck it
I don’t even wanna be the grinding gear
With pen to paper, I don’t wanna be here
Thought Grime #2
“Park here, will you.” The chief detective ordered, flicking ash out the window.
“Sir.” Hugh nodded his acknowledgement and parked up neatly.
The man that answered the door to them had puffy eyes hidden behind his glasses, peering out from behind his door, “Hello, what do you want?” He said in a shaky voice.
The chief detective held up his badge, his foot already on the man’s doorstep, “care to let us in?” It wasn’t a question it was an order. The man stepped aside and opened the door further for the two men to come in
“Care to tell me your names?” He asked, hobbling to his armchair.
“This here is Hugh.” The detective pointed towards Hugh.
“And you are?”
The detective loosened the buttons on his coat, “people call me Grim.” He tried a friendly smile, but his scarred face and piercing eyes gave off a sinister air whatever he did with himself.
“That’s a nice name.” The old man said, not convincingly.
“It’s pretty grim.” Grim grinned, showing white teeth with just a little yellowing.
“Are you here about the…” the man dared utter the word.
“The?” Grim asked, determined the man should ask for himself.
The man’s eyes shifted behind his puffed up skin and bit his bottom lip nervously, “you know,” he looked embarrassed, “the marijuana.”
Hugh looked towards Grim, and Grim returned a glance, both their lips quivering into faint smiles, “no, but now that you mention it,” Hugh smiled at the man, “where is this marijuana you speak of?”
The man slumped down in his seat, and shook his head in a fast shaky motion, “no! No! No!” He slammed his walking stick on the carpet, “please,” he began to plead, “don’t take it from me.” He looked up at Hugh, who was still stood, “please, it’s all I have to take the damn pain away.” He held out his hand before Hugh and spread his arthritic fingers out, “see,” his hand tremored, “so much pain.” He cried.
Hugh smiled sympathetically at the man, “don’t worry, I was only asking in case you had enough for us to have some.” Hugh winked.
The old man startled into silence for a moment started a throaty laugh, “don’t trick an old man like that!” He wiped his mouth and continued laughing.
“So you haven’t heard?” Grim asked, sceptically.
“Heard what?” The old man asked, appearing genuine.
“We’re here because there was a gruesome murder last night.”
The old man slumped back in his chair, closed his eyes tight behind his glasses, his shaking hand on his lips, “murder?” He asked, his tremor had since worsened. “Murder?” He repeated in disbelief, “round here?”
“Right in this neighbourhood,” Grim confirmed.
“What, right here?” The old man pointed outside his window, “so close to my house?”
“I’m afraid so,” Grim crossed one leg over the other, “I’d be right in assuming you didn’t hear anything last night?”
“You’d be right; I go to bed at nine sharp!”
“And so it’s safe to assume you didn’t witness anything?” Hugh asked, running his finger across a dusty shelf and inspecting his finger.
“Yes, you’d be right to assume that! What happened? Who was killed?”
“We’re still figuring out the first question,” Grim answered.
“It was a Frederick Archer.” Hugh finished.
The old man was visibly shaken by the name, tears pooling at his puffy eyes, “not Frederick.” He slouched forwards in his chair and sobbed loudly. “Not Frederick.” He wailed.
Grim and Hugh shared a glance, “you knew Frederick then?” Grim asked.
“He brought me my shopping, he..” the old man gulped, took off his glasses and wiped at his face, “he did everything for me.” He looked out the window, something about looking outside only set him off more, “no,” he shook his head, “it can’t be!” He turned to look at both detectives pleadingly, “it can’t be!”
“We’re sorry for your loss,” Hugh said softly.
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