Fiction

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.

Neon noose

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The neon world shone through the mist, the creatures called ‘humans’ or more scientifically, ‘homo sapiens’ were becoming like the dragonfish of the deep, deep ocean. Though their physical biology refused to become bioluminescent they were compensated for this by their adaptability and creative abilities.
The mist had become an ocean in which they constantly lived and had planet earth been a sentient being it may well have regarded humanity as its greatest mistake.

Their evolution of super adaptability meant they externalised many traits and habits other animals had inbuilt. With delusions of grandeur on a mass scale, the homo sapiens had no regard for animals, despite being one themselves, the animals in their linguistic headspaces had become ‘other,’ and expendable. Some homo sapiens had come to the conclusion they were making too many mistakes, indeed in one cartoon (something they created with an implement known as a pen) that caught my eye the homo sapien had drawn a dinosaur with a meteorite falling from the sky, one dinosaur looked to another and said, ‘We should do something about that,’ and the other said, ‘We can’t, it’ll hurt the economy.’ This cartoon was supposed to be something called comedy.
The laughing matter is that the cartoon was pointing out a real phenomenon. To the homo sapiens, the ‘economy’ was more important than saving their lives. And I have wondered ever since what sort of diety this ‘economy’ must have been to them that they were willing to sacrifice their lives for it. They worshipped this God called ‘economy’ and the thought of hurting this God was baulked at more than their own demise. Perhaps they believed in some kind of afterlife. They appeared trapped in a hell of their own making, the air was dense with all sorts of stuff they pumped into it daily. But they could not or would not help themselves. I believe they were all (a term they used) addicts.

They had divided such a line between themselves and the expendable others that they ironically othered themselves as a consequence.
They had mind-bending ideas that meant they figured anything ‘man-made’ was not nature, for they were above it or in some minds below it.
But the species were so fractured that although they lived by this principle even many of the homo sapiens who purported to be ‘at one with nature’ would baulk at ‘man-made’ progress and they didn’t see how this was a contradiction.
They figured themselves enlightened and the ones who would take them back to nature and none of them stopped to question, ‘When did we leave?’
Was it when they first harnessed electricity? Was it when they first landed a man on the moon?
If it was the earth that had birthed them in the whole scheme of things, then ‘man made’ need not be excluded from being called natural.
After all, it was their evolved capabilities that naturally gave them these abilities.

Homo sapiens by my alien (alien to them) observations, were addicts who were so out of fear of death.

If Homo sapiens were just mere natural beings then they too would perish, they too came from and were part of the dirt.

The homo sapiens were to the earth what the metallic starlings were to poison-dart trees.

Homo sapiens had the disadvantage that they were harmful to all of the earth, but the supposed advantage was their tendency to be highly adaptable.

But too many chose to ignore the signs, too many chose to ignore the men and women shouting and screaming that the world was on fire.

Because they were addicts.

All for fear of the thing they only brought more of, death.


And now, in their misty neon ghettos, they try to forget their inevitable demise, looking into the halo of a neon noose.

The Tree Houses

Matt2 Comments

From a distance, it looked like a forest but upon closer inspection, you came to rows and rows of houses that became known as the tree houses not because they were the old traditional treehouses of old, but for their mimicry with their green pointed roofs.

Some people claimed the place is beautiful but I have to politely disagree. Though politeness may get me nowhere when the truth was so ugly.

Perhaps I should have pushed harder, derailed them from their illusions of utopia.

The roofs were plastic green and not a bird was in sight, the water that surrounded these damnable houses did not contain fish. There was no wildlife to be seen, and the doors of the house opened up like the mouths of monsters consuming all tenants who moved into them.

Many a house was haunted, not with the imagined ghosts but with the debris of collected psyches. The human form of the tenants may have left the houses but they were never the same, the houses had consumed them from within. The houses were tyrants and no one left them upon their own whim, they could only leave when the houses spat them out.

In one such house, an empty chair rocked, animated by a previous tenants anxieties.

Pictures hung in jaunty angles on the walls and the eyes of previous paranoid tenants peered through from behind the frame, though those men had left, their eyes never would.

The stairs creaked as you stumbled up them, or so it seemed. But that creaking sound was not the faux wooden floorboards, it was the sound of a madman. His essence, his humanity had been absorbed into the walls and his many cries and voices spoke for the house.



291 words in 6 minutes

Drew & Drake: An empty bottle full

Matt2 Comments

Water gushed from the tap and into the bottle.
Drews gaze fixed on the steady stream, mind blank.
He awoke from his trance when Drake’s voice hollered from the living room, ‘How much water do ya need!’
Drew blinked and peered into the bottle, astounded by what he found he shouted back, ‘Oh my god, I think this bottle is magic or somethin’

Drake leapt up from the sofa, ‘Ya what?’ he padded into the kitchen, his face scrunched up with scepticism.

‘Look at this!’ Drew shoved the empty bottle in front of Drake’s nose. ‘Look there!’

Drake took the bottle from Drew’s hands and peered in. ‘Ya mean you’ve…’ Drake threw the bottle at the sink and leapt to turn the tap off, ‘Ya mean you’ve wasted all that water for nothin’?’

‘I ‘eld that bottle under that tap! I’m tellin’ ya the bottle never fills up!’

Drake rolled his eyes, picked up the bottle. ‘Ya probably just got a crack ‘ere.’ He said as he turned the bottle in his hands and felt around the plastic for any cracks or holes.
Drew leant on the fridge, arms folded. ‘Go on and try and fillin’ it up!’

‘For fuck sake, Drew! I’m lookin”

‘I’m tellin’ ya it’s fucking magic, Drake!’

Drake trailed his fingers all around the circumference of the bottle feeling and squeezing for any weakness.
Drake shook his head still disbelieving, ‘Ya jus’ t’ out ya head t’ know ‘ow to fill up a bottle!’ he slapped Drew n the back of the head, ‘ya dumb git.’
Rolling his eyes again, he held the bottle under the tap and switched the water on.

A few seconds ticked by, Drew getting angsty on his feet.
A minute ticked by and the water still poured out of the tap, and the bottle remained empty.

‘Wha the actual fuck?’ Drake spat.

‘But look!’ – Drake pointed to the bottom of the sink. – ‘No water is leaking out of the bottle and down into the drain! It makes no sense!’

‘Maybe it’s bigger inside than it is outside?’ Drew offered up, palms out in question.

Drake scoffed. ‘That’s not fucking possible.’ His knuckles turned white as he gripped the tap and turned it off. ‘I gotta call Bill!’
Upon stepping into Drew & Drakes squalid flat, with a smirk on his face, Bill started, ‘Well, well what we got goin’ on with you guys this time, eh?’

‘We got a magic bottle is what we got!’ Drew said.

Drake waved Drew’s words away, ‘It ain’t magic!’

‘So why you got all excited and called me up?’ Bill asked.

‘I want your take on the situation.’ Drake started toward the kitchen, motioning with his head, ‘Come on!’

Bill followed and looked at the plastic bottle, ‘so why is it magic?’

‘It’s a bottle that never fills up!’ Drew said excitedly.

Bill did the same as Drew had done and ran his fingers all around the plastic, looking for any holes or cracks.
Finding no fault, he shrugged his shoulders and turned the tap. ‘Now let’s see,’ he muttered to himself.
The sound of the water gushed between them while a cartoon played out on the TV in the living room. Bill turned the water off, put the bottle down and tilted his head, ‘Well,’ he pursed his lips, ‘I’ll be damned!’

‘See! It doesn’t fill up!’ Drew rocked back on forth on his feet with agitation and excitement.

Bill scratched his head, ‘it makes no sense.’

‘Or it’s bigger on the inside than it is outside!’ Drew repeated

‘That’s impossible!’ Bill baulked

Drake put the kettle on and leant against the kitchen worktop, ‘It’s not the…’ an idea occurred to him as the hum of the kettle resonated in his ears, ‘A watched kettle never boils!’ he beamed suddenly.

‘What?’

‘What?’
Both Drew and Bill said in unison.

‘y’ know that sayin’? The one where if you watch a kettle it never boils.’ Drake skidded toward the sink and placed the bottle on the drain before turning on the tap. ‘Now turn around and don’t look!’ Drake checked that the water was aiming at the right spot to land in the bottle then turned around.
‘Well, that’s one theory out the window!’ Bill said.
All of them stood around the sink, looking down at the bottle.

‘I’d swear I was high If I knew I hadn’t smoked anything t’day!’ Drake remarked.

‘And I never smoke anything and it ain’t filling up for me either!’ Bill added.

Drew asked, ‘So if it’s not a magic bottle, what is it?’

Drake and Bill looked at one another than at Drew.
‘Don’t have a fuckin’ clue!’ Drake shrugged.

Sitting on the couch tired of trying to figure it out the TV kept their attention until adverts interrupted the cartoon.
‘you know what it might be?’ Drake asked casually.

‘Magic?’ Bill asked.

Drew grinned, ‘I knew it!’

‘What if it’s a physical manifestation of a metaphor!’ Drake beamed.

‘A metaphor for what?’ Bill slid to the edge of his seat, his car keys dangling from his fingers.

‘Life,’ Drake replied. No longer beaming with enthusiasm and curiosity, he slumped back on the sofa. ‘Life,’ he repeated through a deflated breath.

‘It’s magic is what it is, and I stick by it!’ Drew sat back and folded his arms.

With a sudden movement, Drake lifted himself off the couch and threw the remote at the TV.
The remote hit the screen and the picture went fuzzy over a perfume advert.

Who you tryin’ to kid.

MattLeave a comment

Who you tryin’ to kid anyway
You’re just a man, on the fray
Falling at the seams
Collecting the shards of all your broken dreams
Sharp enough to cut your wrists

You’ve got desperation in your eyes
It’s in your reflection
Who you despise
You want to be someone else
Who you are, makes you unwell

You’re dying but you figure
Everyone else is dying too
So what does it matter
If you linger
Isn’t that what everyone else is doing anyway?

Chapter 12: Dragonfish

Matt1 Comment

Dust motes glide in the split streams of light as people raise their arms over their heads in a colourful array of supposed dance moves. The music blasts and you can feel the bass vibrating through your bones.

I don’t know if their smiles are real, I project onto them the fakeness of my own smile.

I find myself walking through the crowds of people aimlessly chasing for those moments with Jasmine. Women are brushing against me and I’m trying to act like it’s the best night of my life, looking around me at all these faces flashing different colours in the lights, and I’m thinking, ‘are you listening to the lyrics?’

“Please tell me why, oh tell me why do we build castles in the sky…”

“Do you ever question your life?” Why yes, yes I do I question it all the time.

I’m drowning and you’re all living in a submarine separate from me. I can’t breathe.

“I think it’s time to talk with you…..Where is the love?”

Can’t you hear the desperation in their voice?  I want to shake these people. They call it trance music, and it seems appropriate because they’re set in a trance dancing, moving their body like hypnotised robots.

“Give me a reason, must be a reason to hold on to what we’ve got,”

I think I’ve seen Jasmine amongst a crowd of colourful dancing people.

What is the reason? Why are we holding on?

I’m spiralling. Going deeper and deeper into the depths of the ocean, I’m dying and the woman I thought was Jasmine was a bearded man with long hair.

The music is too bright to lights to loud. Existential voices sing over beats that propose promise of a good time. My mind can’t get over the contradiction.

Greenlight, arms raised, purple, pose, red, pout those lips and move that butt. Do the robot. “I don’t wanna say I’m sorry, because I know there’s nothing wrong,” But there is! Everything is wrong!

“Hold me in your arms, cause I need you so.”

I rush out of the club and throw up in a side street. I can still hear the thump of every beat inside the building, feel it shaking my bones.

“Don’t be afraid, there’s no need to worry…”

I go to a nearby carpark and climb till I reach the top floor. The music is blasting from across the road, the neon lights shining on the night.

I stand on the edge. I hear the beginnings of a song called ‘Children’ from across the road. I know they’re dancing in there like it doesn’t sound sad. It must be me and my perception. No. The world is lost and I’m drowning in an abyss. I stand on the edge. The beat the music has gotten heavier. Like my heart.

That lingering tone behind the beat, behind the melody it reeks of sadness. Or am I just too sad to hear the happiness?

I’m dizzy, I’m tired. I lean forward and open my arms to the wind.

Close my eyes.

This is it.

Blue lights. Heavy heart.

Are those blue lights part of the club?

Sirens reach out like a hand over the music.

My hairs a mess and my palms are wet with sweat.

I feel like I’ve had an electrocution to the head.

“You don’t want to do this, son.” A male voice says behind me.

The music coming from the club speaks for me. But he doesn’t hear it’s sadness, he hears it as people having a good night.

 

3 months out of hospital:

 

I submerge my face under the water and I look up at the ceiling. I hold my breath. I hear her footsteps drawing near; I lift my head out with a gasp.
Jasmine peers around the door, “The film will be starting in 10 minutes!” She tells me before closing the door behind her and sauntering off back to the lounge.

 
I’m trying to learn to be a dragonfish, learning how to be my own source of light.

 

 

 

                  The End 

 

 

Chapter 11: Dragonfish

MattLeave a comment

We walk along the beach like a couple in a rom-com, the backs of our shoes hooked onto our fingers. The sea froths at our feet and the rollercoaster from the amusement park behind us laughs its maniacal laugh as screams of its victims penetrate the wind.
“I don’t think I love you.”
Jasmine steps further into the sea so that the rim of her skirt skims the water, she looks over her shoulder at me but turns away quickly.
The hush of the sea seems to divide us further apart with only the laughing track of the rollercoaster behind. I look over my shoulder to the pier behind me where the lone figure stands watching, waiting with smoke billowing out of his mouth. ”
So,” Her words finally crack through the laughing track, the menacing tone of it seeming to stifle the breeze, “You sure know how to make things awkward,” she laughs trying to make light of the moment.
“It’s true.” I agree.
I wade through the water till I’m next to her, “Love is never enough.”
We walk even further into the sea till it’s up to our knees. The waves lapping around us. It’s hard to tell in the darkness, but I think she’s frowning
“But you just said you don’t love me.”
I look out at ahead of me at the vastness of the sea, “And I’m saying it doesn’t matter because love is never enough anyway.”
I turn to read her shadowed expression again but she’s disappeared. I look to my left and she’s not there either. My light bulb head flashing erratically, “Jasmine?” The rollercoaster laughs at my plight distantly. As a shrill scream calls out from the ride I feel a sudden weight against me and my head goes under the water, “Is this what you want?” Jasmine asks through gritted teeth, her voice sounding far off and away, “Well” She pushes my head down harder. Submerged under the water, salt water getting in my mouth on automation a panic sets in me, I try to push myself up against the resistance. She pulls my head and I spit and cough, “What…” Is all I manage to get out before she’s plunged my head back down, “You want to die?”
I gurgle under the water. All these years of feeling like I’m drowning and I almost laugh as the water takes my breath away. She lifts my head out again, pulls my head toward her and before I can cough and splutter her lips are on my mine further suffocating me. “Of course you don’t love me,” She whispers as she pulls her lips away, “You’d rather die than love someone else.”
I cough and splutter up my lungs violently.
“If I didn’t love you,” the rollercoaster laughs at this exact point and it seems appropriate, “I probably wouldn’t hate you so much.” Her voice catches in her throat.
“I’m sorry,” I splutter.
“I know you need help,” Tears break her voice, “You’re too far gone for me.”
I close my eyes and feel the water against my body, “I’m sorry,” I repeat more clearly as she wades through the water and back to shore.

I watch my trainers float away on the water ahead of me before heading back to the pier. My clothes drenched and my lungs still burning. Couples walking home after an evening out walk hand in hand, turning their heads to look at me the drenched shoeless man walking along the pavements as I head towards gates of the theme park a moody man looking me up and down with a sigh, “Really?” he shakes his head again and tuts as he rips tickets off his booklet and takes my money. My face is flapping in the wind, the clouds above begin to spit as the clown laughs at my decline, my stomach lurching at the pull of gravity my mouth gaping open from the automatic bodily horror and excitement. My heart is racing. The laughter is followed by the whooshing sound and click-clack of the rollercoasters momentum. The laugh starts up again but more maniacally as it twists and spirals and I’m upside down. It probably looks comical, just me on my own hanging upside down suspended, the moon shining down on the world as if nothing is wrong. My heart is pounding not because I’m alive but because I’m dying. I look down at all the dots walking in all directions, humans that look like ants. Apart from it all, watching, trying to be like you but always seeming to fall short somewhere.

Concerts, parties, clubs, I watch you and I can’t connect to it because I’m feeling everything and nothing all at once. A balloon about to burst.

Noticing everything, but noticing everything is as good as noticing nothing.

”I do love you, Jasmine!” I whisper to the air around me as the ride pulls to a stop.

“One more time,” I tell the tickets guy, he shakes his head and tuts which I take to be a signal for no, so it’s with a jolt when I realise he’s let the ride start again.

 

Chapter 10: Dragonfish

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A bright white light shines like a star, making silhouettes of the band in front. The middle of the floor is oddly empty; everyone gathered around the edges of the room as if existing only in the periphery.
“We’ve come all the way to Foxbarrow for this?” I ask Jasmine who stands wearing band merchandise beside me, the band’s logo on her t-shirt with a guitar going through the writing.
Jasmine smirks, “Do you like anything?”
The lead singer is singing about a dirty magazine, “Would It surprise you,” I pause to get myself psyched up to say this, “if I said this band sounds okay to me?”
Jasmine raises a brow, “Only okay?” She shrugs, “If that’s the best I’m gonna get from you then its good enough for me.”
It’s atmospheric, ambient music. My favourite kind, but I won’t tell her that. The crowd of people is slowly dispersing throughout the hall so that we’re no longer just filling in the edges. Some people are swaying to the beat of the music; others are laughing and taking tokes of what I gather to be marijuana.
“Another dirty magazine to see me off to bed,” the band sings, and some people in the crowd join in.
I pull Jasmine to the bar away from too many mingling bodies,”Can we just sit here for a bit?”
Jasmine smiles, and for the first time, it seems like a sincere, warm smile, that smile only women know how to do that spreads a warmth with it. It’s like a smile that caresses you, makes you feel cared for, for a moment.
She lights up a cigarette casually and sits down, “Sure.”
Maybe it’s the music working on us like a drug, calming our nerves.
“Do you know what my soul sounds like?” I ask her, my eyes almost half shut from feeling so mellow.
“Like an explosion.”
I look at her lips, “Why an explosion?”
“Because you’re a wreck?” She shows her teeth in a grin, trying to pass it off as a joke. But we both know it’s true.
“No the explosion is history; this is the aftermath.”
I take a swig from my drink, “No, this music.”
We sit around for another hour not doing much, just taking in the dark atmospheric guitar strings ringing out with the deep voice now singing about poisoned kisses that they’re still chasing after. It’s their last song before they start packing up the stage in front of us and the hall starts to empty.
The hall erupts into silence, and we just sit back in our chairs. Jasmine looks at me, a question forming on her lips.
“What?”
“Do you…” She seems shy all of a sudden gazing down at the table drawing invisible circles with her finger, “Do you really want to die?” I meet her eyes for one fleeting moment, both of us averting each others gazes immediately, “I’ve seen your internet history,” She explains, “All your searches about suicide.”
I get up out of my seat and look down at my laces.
“Can you just answer me this one question, Gilly? Do you really want to die?”
I shrug my shoulders, “I don’t know.”
She lifts her gaze to my face; I stare at her lip. “You don’t know?”
“I don’t know if ‘want’ is the right word.”
She draws lines back and forth with her finger now, “now that I’ve heard your soul I can’t help but feel sad.”
“But I thought you liked this music?”
“It’s good music, but it’s also sad music.” Her chair scrapes across the floor as she gets up to leave, the scratching sounds echoing through the hall. A man is stood waiting at the door holding it open for us, keeps shouting over that they have to get the hall ready for the ballroom dancing. Jasmine grabs my hand and starts running to the door; she flips the man off and giggles. The man looks crossed but doesn’t respond, just closes the door. ”What was that for?” I ask her
”Just felt like it.” She smiles as we wait for a car to drive past and then she pulls me across the road towards the pier.

The street lights wash the roads in orange like we’re living inside a tangerine. In the beginning, God made an orange. The evening breeze rustles through our hair. Jasmine runs ahead of me letting go of my hand giggling against the hush of the sea. I walk fast to try and keep up with her, the further we get away from the roads and onto the pier the less orange the world becomes, getting darker like we’ve reached the periphery of our existence. My lightbulb head flashing against the near black vastness. I can see her, just a figure at the end of pier leaning on the railings and I can smell the awful smell of marijuana before I see the smoke billowing out of her mouth like a chimney. I lean on the railings next to her, and she hands me the spliff. It’s funny to think how averse to germs, and human contact I am yet a very primal drive in me has allowed me to get past that and I’ve licked this woman out, kissed her lips! Just thinking about that at this moment when my primitive instincts aren’t currently ramped up by all the hormonal changes of sexual friction makes me want to heave. I take a deep breath; I mustn’t overthink this. I take a small drag and hand the spliff back to her. The hushing of the ocean lulls me into sleepiness. I turn to watch the lapping of the waves just visible in the dark and take a leak onto the sand between the railings, before I tuck myself away she grabs my dick,
“Here?” I look over my shoulder left and right as I feel her take me into her mouth. I’m getting hard, and into the moment driven by my primitive side again, I watch the waves blankly as her head bobs up and down on my cock, the fingers on my right-hand curling in her hair. I check over my shoulder and am stunned silent by a dark figure, who I take to be a man just leaning against the right side of the pier watching us. I pull myself out of Jasmine’s mouth in panic, but she moves forward and wraps her lips around me again before I can put myself away, “someone…” I utter through the conflict of pleasure and fear. I try to pull out and I want to hide and never be seen again.
She wipes my semen from her lips and is laughing till she peers at the figure down the pier. She stares startled then looks at me wide-eyed, “how long has he been….Shit!” She curses.
“I don’t know.” I lie

 

 

 

 

Chapter 9: Dragonfish

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I sit listening to the tick of the clock on the boiler. Tick, tock, tick tock. It’s been an hour since I got off the phone to Jasmine, she’s not arrived. I start to wonder where she is, I can hear the light breeze outside and the sound of birds singing their last songs for the evening. I look out the window at the rustling leaves and for a moment I think I see a shadow of a man watching me, only to blink and find the shadow has disappeared. Breaking me out of my mind I hear a knock at the door. I look through the peephole, take a deep breath mixed with relief and disappointment all at once but unsure why. Jasmine looks strange in the fisheye lens of the peephole, a cigarette hanging out of her mouth. “Fag out or I don’t let you in,” I shout through the door. “A hello wouldn’t go amiss,” She frowns and inhales the last bit of nicotine before stubbing it out on the corridor carpet with her foot. I open the door, my eyes immediately avert to the cigarette butt on the carpet, “You’re not meant to smoke in the corridor.” She barges past me and ignores my comment. “I thought I better come round,” ,” she heads straight through into the lounge and scans the place, “Wow,” she exhales and whistles, “I didn’t notice how empty your flat when I was here the other night!” “Don’t think we made it past the bathroom.” We both smile with hazy memories playing in our heads, whether each of our versions is different though one can never tell. She sits down on the sofa letting out a sigh as if she’s deflating. She spies the little blue flashing light on the table in the corner, “I see you still see the need for a laptop, though,” she winks, “I guess a guy can’t live without his porn.” She grins. My phone vibrates and buzzes on the arm of the sofa. Jasmine picks up the phone and smiles mischievously, “Well, well, what have we got here?” She wiggles her eyebrows, “You player, you!” She laughs. I lurch forwards in panic, to grab the phone from her and she quickly moves out of the way, “Come on!” I hiss more harshly than I meant to, “I wouldn’t nosey through your phone!” “Ooh,” She starts teasingly, “Got something to hide, have we?” I hold my hand out, insistent that she passes it to me. She rolls her eyes, “Alright!” The phone lights up my face. It’s just a message from my phone company offering more minutes. I sit back on the couch next to Jasmine and she looks at me with smile curving her lips, “So, what ya hidin'” She carries on teasing, making a beeline for me, grabbing hold of me and rolling on top of me and tickling me. “Stop! STOP!” I scream.
But she carries on, carried away, laughing. “STOP!” I shout, “Stop,” So carried away in her teasing fun my hand is at her cheek before I realise what I’m doing. She jerks upright and jumps off me stunned, “Fuck!” She hisses, “What was that for!”
I swallow, “I…I didn’t mean…I’m…” I look down at the carpet, “I don’t like being tickled.”
She sits down at the edge of the sofa, “You’re an arsehole you know that?” I shrug. She exhales with a sigh and slouches back on the sofa, “And you slap like a girl,” She grins.
“Is that not misogynistic to assume a girls slap would be weak?” She raises a brow, “Who said it means it was weak?” She winks, “Who assumed then?”
We sit in silence for a few moments, tick tick of the clock on the boiler the only sound between us until she reaches into her pocket and pulls out a spliff, looking across to me expectantly.
“You’re the type of woman my mother warned me about.”
“Me in particular?” Jasmine smirks, “Moi? She warned you all about little old me?” She takes the bobble out of her hair and lets her hair trail down her back. I think she looks better like that.
“Yes, she said something about a girl called Jasmine. Said she’ll try and turn me into a druggie.” I can smell the marijuana and think it’s not a pleasant smell at all, “You are aren’t you?”
“What?” “Turning me into a druggie?” She doesn’t answer my question, just holds the burning spliff towards me and I hesitantly take it.
“it ain’t gonna bite!” She laughs. I
inspect the thing between my fingers, turning my nose up at the smell, “it smells awful, though!”
“I still haven’t forgiven you, you know.” I hear my blinking like a cartoon in my head.
“You know, slapping me,” She shakes her head but she’s smiling which confuses me.
“I don’t understand what you’re feeling.”
She just laughs.

The laptop is the only source of light between us. Hours have passed, and it’s completely dark out though I keep checking for any human-like figures looking in. At some point I think I see a human looking figure with broad shoulders, I stare out straight at this apparent man of the night until the moment is broken by her voice, “Earth to Gilly!”
Why does everyone say that? I turn to look over my shoulder, “Yeah?” I look at her blankly. The sound of my own blinking in my head clink, clink.
“Wow,” she looks a mixture of amused and worried, “Are you alright?” Then she beams, “It’s probably the weed, it’s the first time that’s pretty clear.”
A thought occurs to me, and I laugh out loud, “You introduced me to E the other night and now weed, I think you’re doing it the wrong way around!”
She moves the laptop from her knee and places it on the couch arm, “There is something strange on your laptop,”
My heart thumps against my chest, “Whay?” My voice comes out shakily.
”Yea. You’re history is all wrong. I can’t find any porn!” She laughs and moves towards where I’m standing at the window, she looks out and then back at me, “What are you looking at?” She asks, and I finally look a person in the eyes. I look her in her vivid brown eyes, and she places a hand on my cheek. . I avert my gaze from hers quickly, “I bet you didn’t know the colour of my eyes until now.” She says softly.
“Don’t mind but I won’t look again,” I tell her.
“You’ll look again,” She says, her voice still soft. Softer than I’ve ever heard her.
“Don’t expect it much.”
She looks saddened for a moment, deflated I think. I put my hand on her shoulder, flashbacks of my awkward kiss with Sam play behind my eyes and I let go of her.
“Sorry,” I look at the floor and feel at the back of my neck.
“No,” She, touches my shoulder, lifts my chin with her fingers and kisses me.

I wake up with her bra on my head and her feet on my lap and my boxer shorts are around her ankles. She stirs and rubs the sleep from her eyes, I turn to look at her chin and mouth and a question forms on my lips before I think much about it, “Why did you turn up last night?”
Jasmine shrugs, “Felt the comedown from the E the night before.”
We sit in silence for a few ticks of the clock, “Once we’ve seen past the illusion there is no going back,” I think out loud.
“What?” Jasmine cocks her head to one side and itches her foot.
“Are you sad without drugs?” I get up from the sofa and saunter into the kitchen forgetting I’m naked. I look down to see my penis flapping about freely and instinctively cover myself.
“No use hiding now!” Jasmine laughs.
I go back into the kitchen and pour myself a glass of water, “Well?” I ask from the kitchen
”What?”
I stand between the kitchen and the living room, “Well?”
“Well, what?” Jasmine asks
“Are you sad without drugs?”
There is a silence as I gulp down the entire glass of water and pour another one. “Sad people need drugs.” I continue, “It’s the only way to go back to the illusion.” “The illusion?”
“The illusion that is life.”
Jasmine rolls her eyes, “Life isn’t an illusion.”
“What I mean is the illusion of meaning.”
“I’m not sad without drugs,” Jasmine finally answers as if there was a delay between the sound waves of my question and the vibrations in her inner ear. “Drugs are just an enhancement of life to me.”
“If I became a drug addict,” I thought for a moment and looked out the window, “I’d never stop.”
“That is what an addict doesn’t do, doesn’t stop.”
“No. I mean, no matter how many people try to break through to me that I’m killing myself or whatever, I’d not be able to stop. I know it.”
“You’d have to go rehab.”
“I’d fail rehab.”
“Well lucky you’re not a drug addict then!” Jasmine grinned
“But I will be if I keep hanging out with you!” I try to smile, “If I become a drug addict I won’t stop till I die. I know this because…” I pause and squint to try and make out movement in the bushes, “I know there is no meaning to life and life is too tedious. Drugs would fill the emptiness.” I turn from the window to Jasmine, “I’ve seen those shows where they talk to drug addicts and give them the ‘gift’ of rehab, and they’ll ask them things like, “Do you want to die?” And they always say the same thing, “No.” And then they cry. And I imagine myself in their position, and I’m thinking, either they’re lying, or I’m the most depressed person on this planet because do you know what my reply would be?”
Jasmine takes a sip of water.
“Yes I want to die!” That’s what I’d say!”
“I’ve never known anyone have such a comedown from a spliff before!”
“Oh,” I wave away her comment, “This isn’t a hangover thing, this is just me.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 8: Dragonfish

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My cheek is wet from dribbling and it’s numb, I run my hand across my skin and feel the pattern of the grooves that have imprinted on my face from sleeping with my head on the tiled floor. I run my tongue over a sore spot on my inner cheek, running my hand over my head I jerk up right at the sensation underneath my fingers. I look into the mirror with a start at my shaved head. And then it comes to me, I remember seeing her in the reflection behind me, her knickers around her ankles as she sits on the toilet. The sound of the buzzing as I took the clippers to my head and then the gushing of her pissing behind me. Remembering how I looked into the mirror feeling radiated as well as aroused. She stood from the toilet, her legs apart as she wiped herself before slithering down and taking me into her mouth. Her face looked up at me, her hair everywhere in the bath as I moved up and down on top of her, my knuckles going white as I placed my hand around her neck. Her red lips puckering, mascara running down her face. I inspect my head and face in the mirror, trying to get to grips with my new look before looking to my right and seeing her lying there lifeless in the bath. My heart pounds hard against my chest, a rush of blood to my ears pulsating and the bathroom light suddenly too bright. A cartoon plays out in my head of my heartbeat being visible in my chest and then bursting out and flinging out as if catapulted from my chest into the mirror with a splash of blood splattering all over the room and on myself. The room starts to spin, I look at her pale body until I feel the bile rising from my stomach and lurch towards the toilet bowl. I draw an O for a mouth on my light bulb head along with big round eyes that have reels of a film playing out a nightmare, all while the light flickers in and out. I breathe in sync with the flickers, gasping with horror every time the fish flashes into my consciousness. Water starts to drip down until my head is almost submerged, but the light still flashes. Blinking on then off again. It only just occurs to me as I run out of the bathroom that I’m still naked. I close the door to the bathroom and run into my bedroom and get dressed. I’m dripping wet with sweat or the sea. I’m drowning. I take a quick peek back into the bathroom, catching my breath at the sight of her before closing the door again and rushing out of my flat and off to work. Images of us having sex in the bath plague my mind, my hands around her neck. The taxi driver is listening to the radio, a song about going to church is on as if the radio knows my sin. The driver looks through his rearview mirror at me, his lips contorting into a grin I could only be dreaming up. “Are you okay?” The driver asks me. Now I notice he’s actually frowning in concern. “Yes,” I lie. The silence hangs heavy over us.

The tap in the kitchen is rhythmically dripping, filling the empty silence and my heart is pounding against my chest again, the gush of pulsating in my ears syncronised with both the tap and my heartbeat. The water and I, we’re always in sync and we’re always playing cat and mouse. My phone is ringing out in the hallway between the bathroom and the lounge. The light illuminating the hallway. The ringing and the drip, drip of the tap seem to have the same rhythm, filling me with dread. By the time I get to my phone, it stops ringing and the screen flashes a missed call from Jasmine. My fingers smudge the screen as I press to call back, “H…Hello?” I stutter. “Hello.” Her voice sounds hoarse. “You…You phoned,” I manage. My eyes darting to the bathroom door across from me, the room seeming to shrink, closing in on me. I open the bathroom door and peer cautiously over the rim of the bathtub. My heart jolts at the sight. The bath is empty. “Yea just wanted to check you were okay. The comedown from those pills I gave you, it can get pretty bad. Especially the first time.” “The comedown?” I ask blankly, still not convinced it can really be her. “Yea, the hangover is always a bitch. But you got through it obviously.” “You’re…” I take the phone away from my ear and look back at the screen, it definitely says Jasmine, “You’re alive!” I can hear a sharp intake of breath on the phone and then laughing, “What you on about?” “When I left you…” “Oh, yea!” Jasmine blurts out, “Why’d you just up and leave this morning?” “What?” I swallow, “I..I had to go to work. I…You were in the bath…” “What did you think had happened?” “I don’t know,” I lie. How can I tell her I thought maybe I’d killed her? “I think I better come up and see you.” “I’m fine, honestly,” I say unconvincingly. “Be there soon,” She says ignoring my words. “But…”I Start but she’s put the phone down.