Clarke My Words

First love

2012-02-08T05:38:00.000-08:00

Kenny would always remember with perfect clarity the first time he fell in love. He had been fifteen years old and walking to the bus stop one morning on the way to school with his friend Maggie, who had lived down the road from him where he grew up.

It was a strange and memorable day for a number of reasons, not least of which being that the pair were only just returning to school after their town had been lashed by the tail-end of a hurricane a few days before.

Though much had been done to clean up the mild devastation, there remained plenty of evidence of the weather system’s passing. Absent tiles marred the uniform roofs like missing teeth, while light-coloured strips below their lips spoke of gutters ripped away. Too many twigs and branches littered the ground, and the crushed iron railings at the edge of the park spoke of fallen trees that had since been removed.

All the way to the bus stop he and Maggie had talked in hushed tones, paying unconscious reverence to the subtle but fundamental change that had roughly intruded on the golden inviolability of their childhood haven.

Half-finished repairs could be seen throughout the neighbourhood, disrupted by the return of the normal working routine in the wake of the storm. Kenny’s father had huffed and puffed, grim-faced and quietly muttering, through all of the most essential repairs over the preceding two days. Kenny’s mother had looked on, her watery eyes flashing uncertainly over well-chewed fingernails.

Both were houseproud in their own ways: his father was a stern general protecting his fortress; his mother was a hostess with an exacting desire for order, cosiness and doilies. They had each been shaken by nature’s furious attack on their home, shaken in ways that they each mistakenly believed the other would not understand.

It had been a blessed relief for Kenny to finally get out from under the cloud of frustrated tension at home and the lightning-flash arguments that accompanied it; brilliant, thunderous and momentary. He gladly left behind his father’s seemingly incessant hammering and the arbitrary incursions into his room as his mother tidied unnecessarily around him before staring absently out of his window into the back garden and the shards of the shed and back fence that littered it.

At the end of the road, where Kenny and Maggie would usually turn in to the park to cut across to the bus stop, Kenny had noticed that old Mr Barker from 37 (for some reason he had never heard the man referred to solely by his name, it was always accompanied by his house number and an allusion towards his age) had replaced his front gate. It was a simple gate made up of six vertical pointed planks with two horizontal lengths of wood studded with antique look iron bolts, and a diagonal between the two.

The latch and hinges were made from the same black, wrought iron that held it together; the latch, a simple lift and drop mechanism and the hinges, solid cylinders leading to long, thin, delicately scrolled triangles grasping the pale wood via the incongruous silver gleam of spotless nail heads.

There was a dusty innocence to the gate as it waited patiently for stain and weather-proofing with flecks of wood splinters and sawdust littering the ground in front of it, fresh from its installation. Kenny remembered thinking how it was a shame that the striking contrast of the light-coloured wood and the stark black iron details would be lost when the stain or paint was brushed over the wood’s pale, porous, thirsty surface.

It was at this point that Maggie had finally managed to get his attention, reminding him, with some irritation, that they needed to get to school. The way she told it, he had stopped walking, unnoticed at first by her, and then stared at the gate for a solid five minutes. He had dismissed the talk of five minutes as hyperbole.

Their journey to school and the resulting day had been uneventful. Fun was had catching up with friends after the impromptu break and disappointment vocalised as horrifying levels of homework were assigned, but whatever was happening throughout the course of the day Kenny had often found his mind wandering inexplicably back to old-Mr-Barker-at-37’s new gate.

He couldn’t say that he had noticed any previous fondness for gates that might have fuelled this sudden fascination, nor could he pin-point any particular aspect of the gate that had so magnetically drawn his attention, but still the image had drifted nonchalantly to the forefront of his thoughts time and again throughout the day. Maths, science, geography; the subject made no difference.

This bizarre contemplation had been accompanied by a strange sense of trepidation within himself that he found difficult to explain. He felt acutely aware of himself despite his mind being elsewhere; he monitored the symptoms of slight nausea, shallow breathing and the tense sensation of an indefinable lack, and had noted them all with frustrated incomprehension.

On the journey home that afternoon, his nerves had grown steadily more ragged until his fiercely snapped evasions had finally driven the notion of concern from Maggie’s mind and she'd left him to cross the park alone. He'd regretted upsetting her, he was rather fond of her, but ultimately he had been relieved to have the time alone to think about the feelings that had plagued him since the morning. He had kicked his way despondently through the twigs and leaves that littered the paths of the park, his pace gradually slowing almost unconsciously until he found himself approaching the gate that led onto his road.

If anything the second time Kenny had laid his eyes upon that gate, at a distance and through the park entrance, would come to be fixed even more indelibly in the mental scrapbook of his life's pivotal moments than the first. Having been given a few moments to gather itself, and with plenty of forewarning, his sub-conscious had up-ed its game and perfectly captured the moment in preternatural clarity.

His memory of that moment had forever been locked in as a kind of 3D map of the gate and the intervening space. Leaves had been captured in mid fall, scudding clouds hung motionless in the stilled breeze and the gate somehow conveyed the notion of swinging gently backwards in the snap-shot stillness.

A lump rose in his throat and, realising that he had not done so for an uncomfortable stretch of time, Kenny took a breath and started walking forward again. He had wanted more than anything to just turn his head away and ignore it, but it was like an itch that he could never tire of scratching.

Somehow being able to gaze upon the gate provoked a sensation in him like cool water after a long run in midsummer heat. It hadn't been the case that he couldn't look away; of course he could, it would be ridiculous to suggest otherwise, it had simply been that he didn't want to, perhaps would never want to.

With no one around to remark upon the odd behaviour, he had decided to approach the problem straight on and edged slowly toward the gently swinging gate. He would never know just how long he spent pigeon-stepping towards it but time seemed to lose any kind of meaning as he put one foot in front of the other, drinking in every detail; the swirling patterns of the delicately coloured grain, the roughly and arbitrarily faceted heads of the wrought iron bolt heads, the teasing rise and fall of the latch handle as it bounced just too gently against the catch to lock.

Finally Kenny had found himself stood in front of Old Mr Barker's house, number 37, staring with a kind of reserved panic at the gate, large as life, right in front of him and feeling his heart hammer in his chest. It had seemed at once mundane and yet overwhelming, extraordinary. It felt to him at the time as if something like this shouldn't exist, like there was no place in the randomness and indiscriminate chaos of existence for something so sublime. It was as if the very idea, the perfect unblemished concept of a gate had been plucked straight from the realm of imagination, as if there was no way in which this thing could have been made but rather that it had sprung fully formed from the ether, straight from conception to reality and side-stepped the vulgarity of construction.

Of course Kenny hadn't been able to express any of these ideas at the time, young and enraptured as he had been, but his retrospective rationalisations would gradually try their best to chip away at the abnormality of his reaction, of his fascination, of his feelings.

He remembered flicking his eyes up and across the windows of the house, hunting quickly for any sign of movement or surveillance from within.

Finding no watching eyes, Kenny had returned his attention to the gate for a moment before gathering his courage with a nervous gulp. He drew in a deep and shuddering breath, running his eyes languorously over the gate from his high angle and tremulously lifted and stretched out his hand.

His fingertips had brushed over the top of the centre-most plank of bluntly spiked wood and a thrill shuddered through him. He pulled his hand back slightly from the course grain and the soft, sandy sawdust-covered feel of the wood with a confused half-smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. Slowly he had lowered his hand again and settled it gently over the top of the gate with a shuddering sigh.

The sensation of wholeness, of relief, had been almost too much to bear. In his recollection Kenny would never bee sure whether he had, in fact, started to moan softly but he knew for certain that he had begun to raise his other hand and had closed his eyes when he felt the hand grasp his shoulder.

Kenny had turned quickly, panicked and disoriented, to find himself looking into the smiling face of Old Mr Barker from 37.

"Do you like my new gate, Kenny?" Old Mr Barker from 37 had asked with a proud smile, "I put it up myself."

Kenny's body had been flooded with testosterone and confusion, and consequently his panic had suddenly risen to wildly inappropriate levels.

"IT WAS SWINGING OPEN!" He had roared in Old Mr Barker from 37's face. The unexpected outburst caused Mr Barker to pause and the thin skin of his face had concertinaed into a map of confusion. Kenny remembered feeling the grip on his shoulder tighten ever so slightly, stoking his desire to break free and run away before he was found out.

"TELL IT TO THE JUDGE!" He had roared before starting to run. However, as he was still facing Mr Barker from 37, he had bounced straight back off the man's stomach with a justly surprised exhalation from both parties. After looking around for a moment in glassy eyed panic, Kenny had turned and dashed into the park.

"Kenny?" The call had come after him.

"I WASN’T TOUCHING IT!" Had been the shrill, quavering reply as Kenny disappeared into the trees.

Full HD

2012-02-01T05:32:00.000-08:00

Ted could hardly believe his luck when he spotted the camcorder at the car boot sale.

He'd been keeping an eye out for a Full HD device for months and had seen the Acorn H3 on a couple of websites. It had always been way beyond his price range but suddenly there it was, sat innocuously between a grimy TV/VCR combo plastered with Alf stickers and a tattered and sun-faded VHS Thorn Birds box set.

A Post-It note had been taped to the side of the camcorder with one hastily scrawled word. "Defective".

"What’s wrong with it?” he asked the woman stood behind the table. She leaned in closer to Ted and brought with her the sharp aroma of cheap perfume coupled with a musty tendril of last night’s wine.

“What’s that, sweetheart?”

“The camcorder. What’s wrong with it?”

She looked at him blankly for a moment and then followed his gesture.

“Oh that,” she said pursing her lips in distaste, “that thing never did work right. My Dale was forever fiddling with the damned thing, saying we’d spent too much money to throw it away.”

“Right, right.” Ted said with no particular interest as he checked how much money he had in his wallet.

“If it had been completely buggered it wouldn’t have been so bad. The thing was, it would always show you a picture, it’s just that sometimes it weren’t a picture of the thing you was pointing it at. You know what I mean?”

Ted nodded sagely, certain that this far-from-tech-savvy woman was describing playing a video while trying to record one.

“Used to drive my Dale crazy it did.” She continued.

“Oh yeah, I’ll bet it did. So how much are you selling it for?” She looked at him quizzically.

“I ain’t gonna give a refund or nothing when you find out it actually is knackered, you know?” she said ominously. He smiled.

“I appreciate your candour. I think I might be able to fix it. How much?” She picked up the camcorder and cast an appraising glance over it, then looked up at Ted.

“Forty quid?” she suggested carefully. Ted raised an eyebrow.

“For a camcorder that doesn’t work?” he asked. She grimaced at him.

“For a bloody expensive camcorder that doesn’t work.” She said firmly.

Ted sighed and, after a moment, nodded.

Ted soon realised that the woman had been right about the camcorder. Something was very odd indeed.

After he’d charged the thing he sat down on the couch and turned it on for the first time. All seemed well. He could see his front room on the fold-out screen and he started recording and swung the shot around the room before spinning the camera and flipping the viewscreen to record himself.

“Hello shiny new toy,” he said with a grin, “welcome to your new home”

He stopped the recording and pressed play to take a look at the playback. The screen flickered into life with a shot of the wall in front of the sofa and then panned slowly left and right zooming in and out arbitrarily where he had decided to test the features. A smile spread across Ted's face as he congratulated himself on an absolute steal. He almost felt guilty and was glad now that he hadn't tried to haggle the woman down. The image on the screen flipped round to a shot of the couch and then of the wall behind the couch from an oddly low angle. Ted's smile faded.

"What the...?" he peered closer at the screen. Wasn’t he supposed to be in the recording at this point? After a moment the video finished. This didn't make any sense, Ted thought, he had definitely recorded himself. He'd had the viewscreen flipped round, seen himself on it, he'd been looking down the lens.

Pushing record, Ted set the camcorder down on the table next to the couch and stood up in front of it.

"Hello, you buggy piece of crap." he growled testily waving wide circles just in case it had some kind of screwy lens angle, "Here I am. I exist and everything.".

Watching the playback he found that it was the same story. The room was right, the different angle on the room was right, but he simply wasn't in the shot. It didn't make sense. He was about to switch it off in disgust when the door in the recording's background opened with a sharp squeal and there he appeared. Another Ted. This other Ted sipped from a mug as he entered the room, spluttered slightly and then stopped and looked right into the camera. The recording stopped.

"What. The. Fuck." Ted was officially freaked. He got up and started recording again sweeping the camera around the area of the door for a few seconds before hurriedly flicking to the playback. The door in the recording now stood ajar whereas, in reality, it was actually closed. Also, right at the bottom of the shot, there was an unusual darkness to the carpet with angular flecks of red. Looking up from the camera, the carpet in front of him was virginal in its cleanliness.

This was all getting a little surreal. Ted took a deep breath and decided that in order to fully compute whatever the hell was going on he would require tea. Lots of tea. Leaving the camera down on the table, he made his way through to the kitchen.

As the kettle was boiling Ted's phone buzzed.

"Hey Allen," he answered, absently scrubbing the side of his face with his free hand, "how's it going?"

"Not bad mate, not bad. Everything alright with you?"

"Yep, yep, all good here."

"Uh huh,” Allen said dubiously, “It’s just, you sound a little frazzled."

"Picking that up over the phone are you? Yeah, no, it's all good, just having a little gadget trouble."

"Ah, say no more, man. Listen, I know you bought a load of weed killer recently and I was wondering if you might have some left that I could steal off you for this weekend's garden reclamation effort. Is now a good time? I could take a look at whatever that doo-dad is that's giving you trouble..."

"Yeah, absolutely, there’s loads of the stuff left. Come on over."

"Sweet. See you in a few."

Ted sloshed water into the mug and began to mash the teabag with his spoon. It didn’t make any sense. Could it be some kind of elaborate prank? Finally satisfied with the colour of his tea, he flicked the teabag into the bin, plopped a swift splash of milk into the mug and made for the cupboard.

“To biscuit, or not to biscuit?” He muttered to himself rhetorically. He scooped up a digestive in a swift and definite motion, split it in two and dunked with practiced efficiency.

He munched thoughtfully while staring out into the back garden. A gloomy dusk was settling and the shed door was swinging idly in the listless breeze. The peculiar grey-orange colour of the brooding clouds above suggested that it might rain at any moment and if it did, it was going to be a doozy. Wait, the shed door was open? It didn’t really matter, he’d have to head out there in a minute to get the weed killer for Allen anyway.

“But first, tea.”

Ted strolled back down the corridor throwing the last of the biscuit into his mouth and swinging the door to the lounge open. The metallic squeal of the hinges set his teeth on edge for the umpteenth time that month. He’d really have to sort that out at some point. Stepping into the room he slurp airily at his tea and accidentally inhaled a combination of liquid and crumbs. He spluttered.

A sense of deja vu seized Ted and he looked up at the camcorder sitting on the table by the couch. His mug slipped unnoticed from his hand to shatter on the floor.

“No fucking way.”

After a moment's pause he carefully sidestepped the jagged shards of his broken mug, he’d pick them up later, strode across to the couch and snatched up the camcorder. He glared at it for a second as if hoping to stare out its secret and then looked up at the clock on the wall furthest from the door. There was one surefire way to confirm or quash the insane suspicion that was blossoming in his mind. He started recording, pointing the camera at the clock. The display showed the time just as it appeared on the wall. But it wasn’t the viewfinder that was producing unexpected results; it was the playback. He stopped the recording and, after a deep, preparatory breath, pressed play.

The clock on the recording was a little more than five minutes ahead of the clock on the wall in reality. This stomach-churning confirmation of his suspicion was compounded by an unexpected sound in the background of the recording. A sound from five minutes in the future. A scream. The audio piping out through the camcorder’s tiny mono speaker was heavily distorted but Ted was certain that the person he could hear was himself. That terrible, gut-wrenching scream was his own. Or rather, was going to be his own.

Fumbling, Ted started the camcorder recording again and swung the shot around the whole room before hurriedly pressing buttons to view the playback. He immediately wished that he hadn't rushed as the picture jerked frantically around, covering the whole of the room but leaving no time to pick out specific details.

From what little he could make out it seemed that the door now stood wide open and the remnants of his mug lay on the floor next to a tea stain that was lighter in colour on the screen than it was in reality. A vase had disappeared from the chest of drawers a little way in front of the door and prone on the floor in the middle of the room Ted saw himself in a black waterproof coat with the hood up and blood pooling on the floor around his shoulders.

Ted felt his heart hammering in his chest as he watched the short recording again.

“Five minutes.” He quietly gave voice to the thought screaming through his mind.

He'd leave. He'd make sure he just wasn't at home in five minutes’ time. Allen could buy his own bloody weed killer.

Or, wait, the shed! Yes, that would be an even better plan.

Hearing the promised downpour tapping against the lounge windows, Ted made his way instinctively to the cupboard under the stairs and fished out his olive oilskin jacket before hurrying out into the garden. As he ducked into the shed he noticed that the rain had crept inside the open door forming a small dark semicircle at the entrance. The piles of tools, old furniture and general scrap might have defied any semblance of order to the uninitiated but Ted had dug through this haystack often enough to have a good idea of where his needle was to be found.

He stepped carefully through the jumble, hopped a lurid green canister of weed killer, straddled a rust-spotted bike that he hadn't ridden for years and leaned into the back corner of the shed to shift an old ladder-back chair to one side. There it was, right underneath, just like he remembered.

He leaned further forward bracing himself against the bike and, at full stretch, teased the haft of the tool into his grip. As his hand closed firmly around it, he shoved himself off the back wall of the shed and teetered back to a standing position. He let the haft slide through his hand until the head of the hatchet bumped softly to rest on his thumb.

Heading back out into the rain he threw up his hood and swung the shed door shut before hopping puddles back to the house. As he reached the back door he heard the unmistakable sound of a muffled cry within. A shout from within his empty house. Ted froze with his hand on the door handle. He could slip around the side of the house, catch a bus, stay with a friend, leave events here tonight to unravel without him.

No. He took a deep breath and gripped the rain-slick hatchet with both hands. I’m in control of the situation, Ted thought. This is my home and I won’t be chased from it by visions and mysterious noises. He had to find out who was in his house. He had to take control of the situation. He would not leave some burglar free reign in his home. All his stuff was there. He hefted the hatchet, reassuring himself of his power.

Ted slipped noiselessly into the kitchen and crept into the gloomy hallway. A muffled thud and a snarling voice sounded from the lounge. As Ted sidled up to the door the words became distinct with the unseen speaker nearing the hallway on the other side. The door stood slightly ajar and a huge shadow fluttered and filled the opening, plunging the unlit hall into deeper gloom.

“...my hands on him, I’m going to fucking kill him.” The voice swore vehemently.

Oh God, it was all true, Ted thought as colour drained from his face. The door began to swing open bathing Ted in light from the lounge. Already too late to run; far too late to hide. The scowling figure, silhouetted to a towering threat, lurched towards him. Ted stood helpless, frozen like a rabbit caught in headlights.

A rabbit with a hatchet.

Instinct took over and his arm jerked clumsily up and out, thrashing the weapon towards his would-be assailant. Stunned into submission by the last half-hour’s cascade of surreality, his rational mind could only observe as his mortal fear congealed into a single moment of fight or flight action. Time seemed to slow to a crawl as the hatchet whipped from where it had been resting against his leg and arced up in a diagonal streak through the air between them.

Their eyes met and Ted realised with a clinical detachment that the man in front of him was his friend, Allen. Everything fell in to place with sudden clarity. Allen had let himself in on account of the rain. He had taken his shoes off at the door, as Ted had been demanding of him ever since the new carpets had been installed. He had stepped on the shards of the mug just inside the living room door in his stockinged feet. That lurching movement had really been a limp, and the shouting and cursing had been on account of the pain. It was all so hum-drum, so ordinary and so unworthy of this tragically violent finish. But events were in motion now and there was no stopping them. All Ted could do now was watch, soaking in every millisecond in horrifying crystal clarity.

As the hatchet swept up, the haft started to slip with a sickening inevitability from Ted’s hand. He observed dispassionately as the head of the small axe pushed almost effortlessly through the front of Allan’s throat and noted the widening of his friend’s eyes. The hatchet ripped free of Ted’s hand. The haft swung around and, even as Allen raised his hands to his throat, the butt caught him a glancing blow round the side of the face.

Time caught up all of a sudden as Allen spun away in a spray of blood and hit the ground face down, the hood of his rain-slick black waterproof dropping down over his head with a damp flump. The hatchet flew across the room and swept a vase that Ted’s mother had given him from a chest of drawers near the door. The high-pitched crash of breaking porcelain tinkled in Ted’s ears for a moment, like tinnitus, before an oppressive silence settled upon the room.

Wide-eyed and pale, Ted stared down at the horribly familiar scene. Through his own eyes and with time to consider it was clear that the figure on the floor could never have been himself. It was bigger than he was; taller and broader. Why hadn't he noticed that? And the coat. It was black. Ted's own coat was olive green. How could he have been so stupid?

Tears spilled unnoticed from his wide, unblinking eyes. What had he done? Because of him Allen was dead and Ted was totally fucked. As bad as he felt for killing his friend and neighbour, done was done, and Ted felt a greater swell of sympathy as he watched his own life fall apart before his eyes. It was all so stupid. All because of an instinctive act of self preservation, an animal reaction, an honest mistake.

Suddenly he found it just too much to bear, just too unfair. A roar of frustration ripped forth from him; unstoppable, primal and cleansing. And again there was silence. He gasped for breath and brushed unshed tears from his eyes. He was still for a moment, pensive, before his face set into a mask of resolution.

Well, he thought grimly, it’s a good thing I’ve got my waterproof on, because I’m going to need my shovel.

Give me the sunshine

2012-01-25T10:15:00.000-08:00

It can be quite difficult moving to a new town, particularly if you don’t know many people in the area. When I first moved to the city I quickly realised that because I had so few companions to call upon, I had inadvertently become something of a commuter hermit. I would scuttle from my flat to work and then right back again at the end of the day with very little deviation.

In a bid to break out of this downward spiral, I developed a morning routine that initially made me feel wonderfully metropolitan but soon grew to be a tiresome waste of time. Rather than eating breakfast at home of a weekday morning, I would head to a cafe somewhere near my place of work for a cappuccino and a muffin.

In order to keep this routine spontaneity fresh I changed the cafe I went to every week and after a couple of months settled into a rota after returning to the very first cafe I had visited. After all, there are only so many eateries within walking distance of work.

This comfortable rut had an unforeseen impact on my working week. Because I knew the cafe I would be going to every morning, each week was tinged with its own specific emotional shade depending on whether the prospect of visiting Dave's Cafe and Deli and its ilk would fill me with delight or dread every morning.

I was in the midst of a particularly bad rotation at the Mutt's Nuts Cafe opposite the park near work when the incident occurred. The place was aimed at the dog-walking crowd, a market it had cornered with an efficiency indicative of a Machiavellian mind at work. A mind sorely wasted on the minutia of coffee vending and the preparation of delicious delicacies.

The cafe itself was actually quite pleasant. My weeks frequenting Mutt's Nuts would have been regarded as something of a treat were circumstances different. Unfortunately the fact was that the place was invariably packed with dogs. Panting, whining, slobbering dogs every morning.

I sometimes wish I were allergic to dogs so I could have a valid and indisputable argument ready for people who challenge me on my supposedly irrational hatred of the species. "Even the puppies?" they often say incredulously, pouting and scrunching their faces up in what is presumably meant to be an approximation of a puppy's face. Especially the puppies, I always think to myself.

Dogs are just so painfully stupid. Stupid, needy and heedless of their surroundings. They remind me of those rich, spoiled and handsome people you sometimes come across. People who aren't in and of themselves bad people, but end up being insufferable simply because they've never been in a situation where it really mattered if they were nice to people or not; for one reason or another, people would go out of their way to help them.

The only thing worse than dogs are dog owners. People who will stare moon-eyed at their overgrown rat as it tremblingly pushes out one of its fetid little turds and, instead of being disgusted, will reach eagerly into their pocket for a plastic baggie, all the while congratulating their ridiculously named love-placebo.

I remember looking up from my book one morning (I like to read while I break my fast, I find it aids my digestion) to find a great shambling mutt with its filthy paws up on my table, finishing off my barely touched breakfast muffin. The owner looked up at my cry of distress.

"Oh Marmaduke," she clucked in friendly vexation, "you are a little terror." I decided to ignore the lazy name she'd given her Great Dane (but honestly, she might as well have called it Scooby).

"Marmaduke just ate my breakfast." I observed with pointed politeness. She clucked some more shoving the dog's giant head around with what seemed to me to me a reckless disregard for her own safety.

"What a silly sausage you are. Aren't you? Aren't you? Yes you are, you silly sausage. You say sorry to this nice man." And with that she directed the slobbering brute up onto my lap where it dutifully began to lick my face (presumably for the crumbs from the few bites I had taken of my muffin). They left soon after. If it had been a child and not a dog it would have received a firm scolding and I'd have received a replacement muffin, not to mention considerably less face licking and dog breath. As it was I had to lean heavily on my Elevenses treat to see me through to lunch.

Though I dread the place, I have worked out a system for making my food inaccessible. I take a table by the wall and then slip a surreptitious saucer of coffee under the table. Not only does this keep their mind off my food, but I like to think that it also deals a little justice to those dog owners lacking the decency to prevent their mongrels running around unleashed by hitting their precious pups with the caffeine double-threat of hyperactivity and incontinence.

In any case, on the morning in question I ordered my cappuccino and selected a blueberry muffin that happened to catch my eye. I generally can't resist the look of a blueberry muffin; the way the berry juice always bleeds into the cake, it simply looks the most fun you can pack into a muffin without artificial colours.

I had taken my seat and found my place in my book when I heard a quiet voice floating up from somewhere nearby. I dug my phone out of my pocket and checked to make sure that I hadn’t pocket-dialled anyone but found that it was still safely locked. Shrugging, I returned to my book. When the noise reoccurred, I moved my book aside to look down at the tiny plate where my muffin sat in all its wholesome yellow, brown and deep violet beauty.

I studied it for a moment, not entirely sure exactly what I was looking for and was about to return to my book when I noticed a movement just under the lip of the muffin-top. I pulled away sharply in disgust and, once I had regained my composure, leaned forward carefully to take a look at whatever was causing my baked treat to move. I flinched as the movement came again, accompanied by a small sound, but managed to stand my ground. Baffled, I moved closer and the sound grew ever so slightly more distinct. I edged closer still.

"Gimme the sunshine" it seemed to say.

"What on Earth?" I said peering closely at the muffin.

"Is, uh, is everything alright, sir?" I sat bolt upright and looked at the buck-toothed waitress stood next to me. She was absently fending off the attentions of a playful Golden Retriever. Now, if that had been a child it would have been pulled off the woman with nary a delay. I really don't understand it.

"Uh, hello." I stammered, a little thrown by the situation. After a moment of indecision I decided to confide in her. "The thing is," I said leaning towards her in a needlessly conspiratorial manner, "my muffin seems to be talking to me." She smiled a weak, uncertain smile. The smile of someone hoping for, rather than expecting, a punchline.

"What's it saying?" She hazarded. I remember being oddly charmed by this response.

"That's the strange thing," I replied drawing her further into my confidence (I honestly don't know what was going on in my mind at this point in time), "it seems to be saying 'Give me the sunshine'." She looked at me for a second. I noticed that the badge on her breast pocket said Deborah.

"Would you like me to get you a take-out cup and a bag so you can take your muffin out to the park?" She asked with laudable self-control. I nodded with a thoughtful expression.

"Yes, thank you, that would be lovely, Deborah."

"My name's Alex," Alex corrected me gently, "I'm just filling in for Debs." I made a small pleased noise.

"Is that right?" I said, "Well good for you, Alex. You wouldn't know Deborah was missing. Well done." She looked at me for a moment before thanking me and walking back towards the main counter. I turned my attention back to the muffin. It was still for the moment. I took a sip of coffee and sat back.

Alex returned a short while later with a brown paper bag and a large paper cup. I noticed that she had been thoughtful enough to drop the cup into a heat-guard sleeve and thanked her warmly. She nodded with a smile and turned to go.

"Alex," I called with some urgency. She stopped with an almost imperceptible sigh and turned back to me. "Would you mind terribly putting the muffin in the bag for me?" Her expression darkened ever so slightly and I'm sure I detected some edge to her voice as she asked, "And the coffee?"

"Oh, no," I assured her, "I can take care of that." She nodded and dropped the muffin into the bag with clipped efficiency. I'm sure I heard a quickly muffled squeal of shock and, more tellingly, I do believe I saw a flicker of surprise cross Alex's face. After what may or may not have been a pause she held the bag out towards me.

"Enjoy your muffin. Make sure you give it the sunshine." She remained straight-faced as she said this. I nodded and turned to leave the shop, stepping carefully over an awkward pile of King Charles Spaniels who had managed to twist their leads tightly around each other while their broadsheet-flapping owner sat blissfully unaware of their predicament. Honestly, with the seemingly constant whip-snap-rustling of the reading material, I’m amazed that the man had managed to make any progress through his paper whatsoever.

As I walked out of the shop and into the mid-May morning glow, I could have sworn that I heard the muttering from the bag become more insistent, excited even, as the late-spring sunshine
warmed the brown paper. I even thought I felt a movement from within and shuddered slightly at the thought.

Really, at this point, I should have been turning right and making the five minute journey to my work at a brisk, though far from hurried, pace. However, I had left the cafe a full fifteen minutes ahead of time and, as I mentioned, all this early morning commotion had left me feeling somewhat disoriented. As such, I pressed the button at the pelican crossing and followed the illuminated advice to wait as rush hour traffic pushed past in an impatient line.

The noise and movement from the bag seemed to grow louder and more insistent. I tried to ignore it while a creeping panic blossomed and rigid tension spread through my ram-rod-straight arm to the locked muscles around my shoulder. A bead of sweat grew to a trickle just below my hairline and I started to wonder why I hadn’t just thrown the muffin away. The reason seemed to be a confusing mix of ethical angst, morbid fascination and persistent hunger. Whatever happened from here on out, full satisfaction didn’t seem a likely prospect.

As a grudging and shrilly announced break in traffic appeared, I trotted over the road and through the ornate wrought iron gates into the park. Muscle-memory pulled me toward my lunchtime bench on the far side of the boating lake and, for want of a better idea, I let my feet lead the way. Up the path ahead of me I saw a runner I had come to recognise as regular feature of my journey to work.

His overly lean body had an angular and asymmetric running shape that always gave him the look of an octogenarian health fanatic despite the fact that he couldn’t be much older than 30. He would run with his left forearm held horizontally before him, his elbow shifting forwards and backwards in tiny oval motions, while his right arm pedalled camp circles in front as if clawing the air to pull himself onward. Sometimes I liked to imagine that he was patting the head of a child stood to his right and nudging someone stood to his left in a constant loop. Pat-pat. Nudge-nudge. Pat-pat. Nudge-nudge. Well done you. Hey you, look how well this kid did...

The bench upon which I like to lunch on those occasions when the sun shines is deep enough into the park that any of my co-workers tempted outside by the picnic atmosphere will slump onto a scrap of grass long before they reach me. For additional security, the area is heavily shaded by a small copse of willow trees following the path around the water’s edge. It usually makes for a peacefully dappled experience but, being that it was still early morning, the low sun beamed in under the boughs of the trees and light bounced up off the still water a few metres in front of the bench, bathing the bench in an otherworldly golden glow that chimed oddly well with my generally discombobulated state of mind.

After absently dusting off the bench I sat and placed the bag carefully beside me, making sure that the muffin was resting on its flat base within the bag. Even this caused my skin to crawl as I was sure, almost certainly psychosomatically, that I could feel it squirm as I did. There was possibly even an accompanying giggle. My mind shied away from this possibility.

I was quite certain that I wouldn’t be able to face the prospect of lifting the muffin out of the bag so I made a decision and started to carefully pull a vertical rip through the side of the bag. The sound of the muffin grew louder as I ripped, I think both because it was becoming less and less muffled, and because it was growing excited. I felt slightly sick.

As the rip reached the bottom of the bag I heard, quite clearly now, a high-pitched sigh of delight, “Sunlight!” and with that, it was free. The muffin sat motionless within the remains of the brown paper bag that rose around it like some kind of reverse cape. There was no movement, but the air around the blueberry delicacy seemed to shimmer with an aura, a tangible feeling that something was about to happen.

I watched the muffin closely, my body coiled and ready to fight or take flight, like a soaped-up arachnophobe surveiling an unexpected shower guest. Finally the muffin seemed to wilt slightly and I felt the feather-light breath that accompanied its contented sigh. Finally I saw, with no small amount of revulsion, the pastry peel back across two blueberries, blueberries which swung towards me in a nauseating approximation of eyes. The lip of the muffin started to move again as the little cake tootled a series of noises that sounded like voice exercises before bursting suddenly into song;

"Thank you, thank you, thank you kind one
You picked me out and made me your bun
You heard my call and chose to help out
You heard me call, though I could not shout.

I asked for the sun and you gave me the world
In a land full of oysters, you were my pearl
Though hungry, you spared your breakfast dish
And so I’m delighted to offer a wish

Will it be riches or will it be love?
Will you seek peace, to be the world's dove?
Whatever desire, whatever your whim,
Speak it now and I will not skim...p"

The last word rang like a mistruck note, the final sound spat out with a sense of surprise and mild disappointment (as well as a small crumb that I tried not to think about too much) but the shrill and jaunty song had otherwise held me entranced. Now an odd silence descended between the two of us as its blueberry eyes bored into mine and I could have sworn that it was holding its breath.

It took a few moments for my shock to subside sufficiently to give any serious thought to the concept of a wish. What would I wish for, if I had one wish? I toyed with the idea and ran through a couple of concepts in my head. I became so absorbed in my deliberations that I managed to forget the base insanity of the situation that I found myself in.

Eventually I came to a decision. "Wealth," I said resolutely, "I wish to be ridiculously wealthy for the rest of my life"

The muffin considered me gravely for a moment in silence. I have no idea how it managed to convey any sense of emotion whatsoever: aside from the blueberry eyes and what may or may not have been a mouth moving beneath the lip of its muffin top, it had no other features to speak of; it was simply a common-or-garden muffin. Nonetheless, I felt an odd maturity in its silent consideration. It bordered on humbling in its intensity.

"So shall it be." The muffin intoned eventually, its shrill cartoonish voice jarring harshly against the gravitas of the sentence, "Our deal shall be struck just as soon as you have eaten me."

The muffin's cakey eyelids pulled slowly down as it assumed a martyr-like air of serenity and preparedness. I blinked.

"Wait. Wait, what was that? After I...after I eat you? Is that what you said?" There was a quick almost movement from the cake, which I took to be a sharp nod of confirmation. "Right" I continued, "Right, I'm not going to be able to do that. To eat you, I mean. I think we put paid to that possibility when I started talking to you. If I’ve had a conversation with it, I can’t eat it. I think it’s safe to assume that it would do my digestion absolutely no favours."

"Whatever your objections, sir." The muffin pronounced, "In order for your wish to be fulfilled you will need to consume me, in my entirety." I gagged slightly at this point. "I am ready," the muffin insisted.

"That’s as may be, but it's not really the point." I replied. I looked at the muffin, this muffin that was now looking back at me with a curious expression (again I can't really tell you what about the muffin conveyed this but it was clear as day to me at the time) and considered my wish.

Wealth. Lucre. Bunse. I could have everything I ever dreamed of, never have to work again, and all I had to do to make this a reality was consume an anthropomorphic blueberry muffin with an annoying voice.

I took a deep breath and was reaching out toward the muffin when suddenly, with a mournful and tearing scream, a seagull swooped seemingly out of nowhere and knocked the muffin onto the ground, gouging a large portion out of the top with a sickening spray of crumbs and what I will assume, for sanity's sake, was blueberry sauce. I could hear the muffin's shrill scream painting his terror and terrific pain in broad, heartbreaking sonic strokes. Four more gulls swooped in and joined the blue slaughter.

It was over in a matter of ten, maybe twenty seconds leaving five seagulls stood in front of me, bodies splattered with an inordinate amount of thick blue goop. It was a matter of seconds but watching the awful scene unfold, it felt like minutes, hours, eons. What I saw sickened me, emotionally, physically, and haunts me even to this day.

So, in summary, son, that is how seagulls learned to open crisp packets.

Broken Heart

2012-01-18T05:53:00.000-08:00

[Just a quick note to preempt any confusion, this short story was written to be a part of the Machine of Death Volume 2 anthology. Unfortunately it didn't make the cut so I thought I'd publish it here. Enjoy!]

To whom it may concern,

I remember once hearing a story about a man whose cause of death slip read “Ripcord Malfunction”. This man had never been near a parachute before he received the prediction and had had no real plans to go looking for one in the future. His father clapped him on the back and laughed, “that should be easy enough to avoid, eh?”

The story goes that this man, still just a boy of course, retreated to his room and thought long and hard about his prediction - I mean, who doesn’t? He thought about all he would need to do to put off his death by keeping himself away from the possibility of a “Ripcord Malfunction” for as long as possible. Basically, he would have to stay away from planes. And also lawnmowers. For that matter, any petrol-driven power tool. The more he thought about it, the more ripcords came to mind that would have to be avoided.

The world, which had once seemed an open road of dizzying possibilities, was suddenly reduced to potential perils to be avoided and an inevitable end that waited just over the horizon, behind the door or around the next corner. He hadn’t had any specific plans to travel but he had always had a faint suspicion that he might see the world at some point and all of a sudden he was hemmed in by the arbitrary and inescapable hand of inexplicable fate.

He pondered his predicament and eventually came to a surprising decision. He arranged to go sky diving. He got on a small noisy plane, was strapped to an experienced sky diver and with nary a moment of hesitation hurled himself from the plane. He had decided that he would not cower, he would not hide and he would not let the eventual cause of his death dictate the manner in which he lived his life.

Though I have my suspicions that this story might be a cunning example of pro-Machine propaganda, it always used to give me hope. I’ve heard a few versions of the tale in my time and in some the man goes on to become a professional sky diver (this, I think, is a little much). Another version has it that many years later, as he’s taking a walk in the park on a bright and sunny Sunday afternoon, he is hit and killed by a sky diver whose chute has failed to open. I assume the sky diver is killed too, but I’m not sure if this was ever made explicit.

When my time with the machine came, I was given one of the more bizarre predictions I’ve ever come across. I had it framed and I’m looking at it even as I write this. I can still make out the faded brown-orange smudge in the top left corner, where blood from the machine’s finger prick stained it in my haste to confront my own mortality. When I saw what it said I immediately wondered if someone was playing a trick on me.

“Broken Heart” it said. “Broken Heart”. I was young and strong and healthy and, whereas some of my friends’ slips were horribly graphic, my slip seemed so ambiguous as to be almost meaningless. Let me assure you that “Broken Heart” is a much easier cause of death to brush aside than, for example, “Choke On Toothpick”. Poor Lenny.

So I didn’t concern myself too much with what I deemed my fairytale demise and set about doing the things that boys do as they try to become men. I finished school, borrowed the car, went to parties, went to university; I drank, I danced, I worked, I chased and I lived. And there came one fateful night when my destiny started clicking into place. The night I first met Julia.

I say first met, inevitably it’s more needlessly complicated than that. She was the friend of a friend of one of my housemates in second year so I’d seen her around and knew who she was. It really doesn’t matter. The point is that we had never really spoken until we met in the smoking area of the Union.

It was a cool night and the heat-lamp-lit area was almost deserted as a particularly odious crowd favourite had just come on, drawing many to the dance floor. There was an air of serenity in the darkness, oddly underpinned by the muted sound of the music thumping from the Union in grubby waves of sweaty noise.

She asked me for a light and then asked me how my night was going. She waited for me to finish answering, her huge brown eyes focused on mine with an almost uncomfortable intensity, then lit her cigarette and began talking about some of our mutual friends. It’s strange, isn’t it? Those little things that your mind clings to. I couldn’t tell you now what she was wearing that night but, God, how I remember those eyes of hers and my surprise that she actually seemed to want to hear the answer to her question.

As I say, I had seen her around and certainly found her attractive (out of my league if you were to ask me) but as I spoke to her that night I remember becoming more befuddled, awestruck and horrifically nervous than I could ever remember being. Those limpid brown eyes kept sucking me in, that stare of hers consuming my thoughts until her eyes were the only thing left in the world. I’m sure she must have thought I was a drooling moron by the end of the night but nonetheless she gave me her number.

We met again and talked for hours as we wandered around the campus. She was a theology student and had opted out of reading her cause of death slip, entrusting the knowledge of her fate to the hands of medical researchers. I don’t know why I put those facts together, her objection to knowing her COD wasn’t religious as she explained to me once with a shrug, “God must want us to be able to know how we die, for whatever reason, I mean, where else is the information coming from?” As a devout atheist I had a few theories but I was much too enamoured and insecure to challenge her sure-footed intellectual faith.

She chewed on her lower lip squinting into the distance and continued, “I just can’t see how my life would be improved by knowing how it ends, you know?” She regarded me carefully for a moment, “I can only see how knowing that would make things worse. Would make me be afraid. Ultimately,” she adopted a charming bolshy tone, shaking off the topic like rainwater, “it’s something I’d really rather not think about until it’s already happened, you know?” She flashed a big grin at me and hugged my linked arm closer to her. “So how are you going to die?” She asked with a mischievous twinkle. I told her that she was going to break my heart and she stopped, hit me with that stare and, with a soft little smile, said “That doesn’t seem likely.”

Our relationship blossomed quickly and with the fierce passion of youth. For me it was like the world had a new colour, like I had been half a thing and was now unexpectedly whole. As sappy as it might seem, I could finally appreciate the sonnets and the serenades whose techniques, allusions and references we would catalogue in such dry detail in our dusty lectures and hung-over seminars. And as my affection grew I found myself looking more and more often at that framed slip of card and those two terrifying words, "Broken Heart".

It became clear to me day by day that this woman was going to be the death of me. And, daft as it may sound, it wasn’t the death that concerned me so much as the manner of the hurt. A broken heart. Betrayal perhaps? The thing didn’t bear thinking about. In fact, the mere thought was unbearable. If offering your heart to someone is the scariest thing a person can do (and it is), then imagine that it has been predetermined that this reaching, this perilous and painful need for the person you love to reciprocate, was fated to end in a misery so acute that it would actually be terminal. Part of me wanted to take hold of that ripcord and throw myself off the plane regardless but I was too young, too proud and much too deeply afraid.

I broke it off after graduation. She had seen it coming. I had distanced myself from her in an effort to convince her to break up with me. If it hadn’t been for the fact that she had still been in my life, I might have called those the worst months of my life. “So this is what you call living then, is it?” She had asked, her fierce expression blotched with crying, staring straight into my eyes, “Well, I hope you have a long, miserable life, you stupid bastard.”

I wandered through the next few months in something of a haze; often drunk and always numb. I fell into a job which slowly crystallised into a career and I eventually started dating again. Girlfriends came and went as relationship after relationship fizzled before the ever-increasing time constraints of my occupation. Obviously it was more than that though. The fact was that I had hardened in the aftermath of my relationship with Julia. Some of the women I dated appreciated what they saw as my “laid-back attitude”. Safe in the knowledge that I wasn’t going to get clingy we had fun for a while and cheerfully called it a day when it had run its course.

Some were more frustrated by my apparent lack of interest in the future and there were several occasions on which the ball-shrivelling question “do you love me?” was uttered. That was always a guaranteed relationship-ender. I may be a damned fool, or as one of my ex-girlfriends, Sally Ross, once put it, “an emotionally stunted man-child shithead” (she actually continued beyond this point but it became so shrill that comprehension was all but impossible), but I am not a liar. Certainly not about something like that.

It was a full thirty years before I saw Julia again. By this point she was married and had two children. We met at the 50th birthday party of a mutual friend from university and, after some tense scenes, began talking. Soon we stole away from the party and strolled through the quiet streets of the commuter suburb around the house, shared a cigarette and talked for hours, just like in the old days - although sadly absent of the touching and kissing.

After a while it became clear to me that there was something that she was holding back, something that was bothering her, so I urged her to tell me what was on her mind. She smiled that old wry, mischievous smile and shook her head, “Not even Rory has asked me that.” She began with a sigh, “Of course I think deep down he knows he wouldn’t like the answers to a lot of the questions that he’d like to ask me.” She looked down for a moment, chewed on her bottom lip and rubbed the knuckle of her index finger down over her cheekbone. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the band of gold a couple of fingers down her hand.

She sighed, closed her eyes tight for a moment and then turned to look me straight in the eyes, “I’ve been diagnosed with stomach cancer.” She said in a quick, controlled burst of information. “The doctors say I only have a couple of years left to live.” My heart dropped into my stomach and a rushing silence enveloped me as I held her gaze. It was cool, dark and quiet. Stars twinkled obliviously in the impossible, unknowable darkness above us and she waited, staring at me. I didn’t seem to have enough air in my lungs to talk. There didn’t seem to be enough air in the world.

She pulled her eyes away and looked down as she ground out the cigarette she had been holding. “You know what the funny thing is?” she asked with a sad little smile as she lifted her eyes to meet mine once more, “It’s almost like a reversal of where we were thirty years ago. Now I know how I’m going to die and you’re so closed off I honestly believe you might live forever” she patted my chest fondly as she said this, presumably to let me know that she didn’t mean to rebuke me. Her words hurt nonetheless. Granted it was a paper-cut next to the cannon-hole of her announcement, but the words still hurt.

Her hand moved absently to the lapel of my jacket and then up to pat my cheek softly. “We had some good times, didn’t we?” she asked rhetorically. I nodded with a gulping croak and it was only as she wiped my tears away with her thumb that I realised I had been crying. “I’ll see you inside.” She said softly, turning back toward the house, “Take your time.”

I found a bench a little further down the quiet suburban road and sat to smoke another couple of cigarettes as I tried to compose myself. Smoking, my university affectation had become a somewhat unfortunate emotional leveller and I definitely needed time and nicotine in equal measures to deal with what had just happened. It began to dawn on me that somewhere, deep within my sub-conscious, there was a part of me that had taken comfort from the fact that she was out there, somewhere.

I also slowly realised that the meagre hours we had just spent together had eclipsed some of my happiest moments from the last thirty years. This was a real shock. I had thought I’d shaken her; gotten her out of my system. There had been long stretches of time over which I’d managed not to think about her at all but right now, in the fading afterglow of her presence, it felt like I’d simply gotten used to the cold.

I returned to the party to find her saying her goodbyes to our mutual friend. I asked to have a word before she left. Our friend raised her eyebrow at Julia and, with a knowing smile, advised her to behave herself. I stuck my tongue out at this and led Julia outside. She laid a finger across my lips before I could say anything and filled the noise of my name with such regret that it made my heart ache, “I think I know what you’re going to say” she continued, “and it’s not going to happen. We had our time and, I’m not trying to be cruel but, it was your decision to end it.” I tried to interrupt but she stopped me again, “Please, let me finish.”

She laid her palm against my chest and looked down at my feet, gathering her thoughts, “I didn’t tell you what I told you tonight...” she took a deep breath and looked into my eyes, “I didn’t tell you that to try and...restart...us.” The palm against my chest balled into a fist, “That’s all done with now. It’s ancient history and we’ve both moved on. I’ve got children now, a husband even.” The fist against my chest started punctuating points with soft thuds. My body thrilled at every touch and all I could do was stare at her, enraptured, drinking in her presence and her touch with a desperation stirred by the horrifying knowledge that she could turn and leave at any moment.

“I just needed someone to talk to. I just needed you, someone, to understand. I just...” she trailed off and her forehead thumped against my sternum next to her fist, “I’m just so afraid”. I stood for a moment looking down at the top of her head, feeling her body shudder against mine before she looked up at me with a tear-sodden chuckle, “For God’s sake, man, would you just hug me already?” I quickly acquiesced and, wrapping my arms around her, felt her melt into me with a sigh.

She muttered something into my jacket. I felt more than heard the muffled comment and asked her to repeat, loosening my arms around her to take a loose grip of her shoulder blades. She looked up at me, arms still looped around to the small of my back. Her expression was much more composed now as she stared her serious stare and said, "I still think you're a fucking moron by the way." I thought about this for a moment before agreeing that that made two of us.

I offered to walk her to her car. She looked at me for a second before giving a sharp nod and breaking away from me. In a flash of disappointment I toyed with the idea of taking her hand but it seemed to me that the moment had a butterfly-like fragility to it, so I plunged my clumsy hands into my pockets and followed her down the car-filled gravel drive. I wondered idly where all the designated drivers had been hiding out - I hadn't seen many sober faces inside.

I walked half a step behind her, not knowing which car would be hers. Soon enough the lights of a nearby Volvo flashed, machinery whirred and two blips sounded in the darkness as she spun to lean back against the driver’s-side door with her arms spread wide. She grinned impishly and asked, "What do you think of my ride?" I whistled appreciatively and told her that it was the finest balance of sex and safety that I had ever seen. "Is that all you ever think about?" She laughed. I told her that safety was important.

"Do you need a ride anywhere?" She asked me, her eyes unreadable. Fortunately I had already made my mind up on this point. I told her I was alright for a ride but that I would definitely need to see her again. Her eyes widened slightly and she looked away from me, chewing on her bottom lip. Eventually she nodded her quick little nod. "So will I." She said, her voice cracking slightly, “God help me, so will I.” We stared at each other for a moment. A soft breeze pushed a few strands of hair across her face and she lifted her hand to tuck them back behind her ear.

She looked down coyly for a moment and then met my eyes with that mischievous half smile that always used to make me melt and harden at once. It had lost none of its potency. “Come here” was all she said. I stepped forward, moved in close to her and slid my hand up the back of her neck. Then I leaned in slowly, feeling her quick breath on my face, my heart trying to pound its way out of my chest. My thumb caressed a spot behind her ear that I knew drove her crazy and our lips met.

Soft and careful yet firm and passionate, the sensation of it surged through me like a water on parched soil. It overwhelmed me, threatened to consume me and revived in me a thirst I thought I’d forgotten. When it was done we found ourselves gazing at each other, lost in the moment, until a party cracker snapped through the quiet night from the house above. We jumped and smiled foolishly at one another.

“I’d better go” she said, pulling open the door to her car. “Don’t call me, alright? I’ll get in touch with you.” Her tone left no room for argument. I nodded and asked if that was a promise. “That’s a guarantee.” She said softly and closed the door. I followed the car a little way down the drive and watched as she waited to pull out. I waved, whispered softly that I loved her and was turning to go when a heavy goods vehicle barrelled into the driver’s side of the Volvo at 60 miles an hour.

Killed on impact was the paramedics’ conclusion. I know this to not be the case. After about 10 seconds spent trying to get my head around what had just happened I started sprinting towards where her car had been flipped onto the verge on the other side of the road. I remember noticing that the music back at the house seemed to have stopped. I ran as fast as I could, reckless and heedless across the dark debris-strewn road, as if my speed alone might save her. I’d seen the impact, heard the thunderous crash - felt it even. Deep down a part of me knew there was no hope. But I had to try.

There was so much blood and, above the sound of creaking metal and tinkling glass, there was a high-pitched whistle. I’ll never forget that sound. The car had caved in and pinned her to her seat, clamping around her chest. Had she been free of that restriction, that shrill whistle would have been a torturous and constant scream. I frantically scrabbled for a way to get her free. I told her that everything was going to be alright, that I was going to save her. She called my name and said, “It hurts so much.” Then she died.

I’m told that people from the party found me a few minutes later clawing at the car door and howling, hands covered in Julia’s blood as well as my own from where I had been scratched and had ripped my nails off trying to pry the door open. I don’t really remember much beyond her last words and that terrified look in her eyes, those big beautiful brown eyes, as the light faded from them.

After 30 years, 30 years pointlessly spent without her, I had realised my mistake, had realised what she had tried to tell me all those years ago. And it was too late. Almost the split second that I had allowed myself to love her, she had been ripped away from me, like some kind of sick cosmic prank. So now there is no colour, no truth in sonnets and I am only a half of a thing that knows it will never again be whole.

Though my cause of death slip would perhaps have been more accurate if it had said “37 sleeping tablets washed down with Scotch” I can’t fault the poignancy of the statement. In truth I died that night with Julia. If I’m honest, I’d always found the prospect, though obviously terrifying, to be slightly romantic. “How did he die?” people would softly enquire. “It was a broken heart.” would be the gentle response. “Oh my!” the inquirer would reply, “how dreadful.”

“That and an overdose” the respondent would then clarify. Because it’s nonsense really. There are no noble deaths, they’re all pointless, ugly, arbitrary and we all shit ourselves at the end. Most are lucky enough to never see it coming. But not me. No, today I die overwhelmed by my broken heart, hoping that I might get to see Julia again. Objectively I don’t believe I will. Either way, it’s an end to it.

Yours faithfully,

Not watching you sleep...

2009-07-14T05:11:00.000-07:00

The early morning light seeped gently into the room granting the scene a dappled luminescence that seemed almost magical to him.

He hadn't been able to sleep, which was unusual for him. He usually slept like a rock for a solid eight hours a night. But tonight had been different.

Tonight he had felt happier than he could ever remember and had lain awake willing time to stop, listening to the deep regular breaths beside him.

In a slow and controlled movement, keen not to wake her, he turned and raised himself slightly to look at her.

All that was visible, burrowed into the duvet as she was, was her nose, mouth and her right eye. Even this much was partially obscured by rogue strands of her shoulder-length brown hair.

He reached out a hand and delicately brushed her hair from her face. She flinched slightly and retreated further into her sleep-hollow.

"You're not watching me sleep are you?" she asked without opening her eyes. Her voice had only the slightest trace of grogginess and he could only assume she had been awake for a while. He grinned widely even as his cheeks flushed red.

"No" he replied with mock indignation, "don't be stupid. Why would I do that?"

She opened one eye and fixed him with a curled half smile. God, he loved seeing that little smile."Because you're a certifiable psycho and I should throw you out of my bed?" she suggested. He snorted dramatically.

"Right, first off," he began, brushing her hair from her face, "this is my room, and if anyone's drifting a few miles south of sanity, it's you, you crazy bitch." he bent down to kiss her and was rewarded with another curled half-smile. Even lying in bed, his knees felt a little weak.

The light in the room flickered for a moment. The colour drained from his face.

"No," he whispered hoarsely as the scene started to fade, "No, it's too soon. It's not enough time." Surprised, she rose from the pillow and reached to touch his cheek, to calm him. He felt the feathery touch of her fingers as she drifted out of reality.

"It's not enough time! Bring her back!" he roared, transfixed on her face, willing her back into existence with every ounce of his being. He reached up to his cheek where he could still feel the ghostly touch of her hand. His fingers hung there for a moment before he slumped to the bed.

"Adam." The voice was familiar, gentle and concerned but had a touch of steel to it. Adam looked up at where his friend Joseph stood, hand resting on the now-inactive adaptive simulator.

"Adam," Joseph sighed, "please, you can't keep doing this. She's gone man. You can't keep bringing her back like this. Plus, you," Joe raised his hand to form speech marks with his fingers, "borrowed this like two weeks ago dude. I've got shit I wanna watch too."

Adam heard but didn't respond. He lay on the bed gently shaking with grief. Joseph sighed again, unhooked the device, and tucked it under his arm.

"I'm taking it back now, ok?" He waited a moment for a reply before leaving and softly closing the door.

He stood in the hallway outside the room for a moment with his AS player before heaving a despairing sigh.

"Jesus," he swore, rolling his eyes, "some guys just can't get dumped."

Timmy the Inquisitive Gopher

2008-12-16T14:22:00.000-08:00

There once was a young gopher named Timmy whose bright, eager eyes saw nothing but beauty everywhere he looked. He had an insatiable thirst for knowledge and loved nothing more than to go for long walks with his mother, discovering more and more about the forest.

One day, because Timmy had been very good and had kept his room nice and tidy, Timmy’s mother agreed to take him on a walk. Timmy was overjoyed and practically dragged his mother away as they said goodbye to papa and set off from their den.

As they walked, the young gopher chattered at his mother with a seemingly endless stream of questions about the oaks and the dandelions, the butterflies and the reeds.

He eventually broke away from his mother who, weary of being tugged this way and that by her excitable little boy, let him go with a quiet warning to stay where she could see him.

Deeper and deeper into the forest they went, Timmy scampering gleefully back and forth around the comfortable amble of his mother. He would run to the limits of his restriction but was always very careful to keep his mother in sight.

Spotting a ladybird, Timmy dashed forward but stopped suddenly as a sound caught his attention. He could hear a distant sweeping hiss unlike anything that he had ever heard before. As he had been listening his mother had caught up to him.

‘Now Tim-Tim,’ she said, ‘we should be heading back. Your father will be getting worried.’

Timmy protested and insisted that he needed to discover the source of this mesmerising sound before they could go home. His mother relented and so on they walked.

The sound grew louder and louder until Timmy saw a bright break in the trees up ahead and could restrain himself no longer. He bounded forward, oblivious to the calls of his mother as she waddled after him as quickly as she could.

As Timmy broke through the tree-line he found himself standing on dirt that was soft and yellow and like nothing he had ever seen before. In front lay a great blue band of water that Timmy guessed had to be at least three, maybe four times as big as the river near their den.

He ran forward and found at his feet vast swathes of slimy green, ribbon-like leaves, which he simply had to play with. His mother finally caught up and, remaining near the tree-line, shouted for her son to come home now, dinner would be ready.

‘Just a few more minutes mummy’ Timmy pleaded as he threw the wet green leaves up into the air.

‘No Timmy,’ his mother insisted, ‘You get back here right this instant’

But Timmy was having too much fun to hear his mother as he grabbed handfuls of the soggy weeds and draped then around himself gleefully. Now it was a head-scarf, now it was a sash, now it was a belt. Timmy could not contain his laughter, he was just having so much fun.

And then a whale landed on him.

Friendly Drinks - Part 2: Rendezvous

2008-12-16T13:54:00.000-08:00

Ok, so what now? The train is quite literally leaving the station. And so am I.

I’ve been thinking about this meeting for, like, the last five days now. I’ve been trying to decide what I want to say to him for five fucking days and here I am, closing on these turnstiles, still as clueless as I was when...oh shit...where did I put that ticket?

Right, this is going to take a more thorough search than first thought so let’s move out of this queue. Don’t you sigh at me, you dick. How much of a hurry can you possibly be in that this six second delay to your day has put you out? Especially since you cruised up the escalators, you fat prick.

God I hate digging through this thing. How much of the crap in this handbag do I ever even use? Better safe than sorry I suppose. Oh, there it is. Right where I’ve never once put it before. That makes sense. I didn’t even know it had that pocket.

Ok, take a breath, calm yourself, regain your composure. You’re back on street level now and the pub’s just round here - but I’ll just take a seat for a second. There’s no rush. He’s probably not even there yet and this is definitely not a scenario I want to approach without sufficient nicotine in my system.

Light, draw deep, exhale slowly...it’s not helping, not even a little bit.

How did I get myself into this situation? How do I always seem to get myself into this situation? I like him - that’s not even the issue, of course I like him - but...but there’s always that ‘but’.

If only we could just go back, go back to when we just liked each other. Before...

‘You got a light, sweetheart?’

‘Uh, yeah, sure.’

This is as good a time as any to head on. I get my lighter back and head round the corner. There it is. Just head right in there now, suck it up.

It’s not too busy, shouldn’t be too hard to...there he is. And he’s spotted me. No way out now. Do I want a way out?

His eyes are wide and he actually gulped as he stood up to greet me. Good grief, who gulps nowadays outside of cartoons? God, he really can be adorable every now and then. I kiss him and step back, his voice cracks slightly;

‘Hi’ he warbles.

Ok, deep breath. Here goes.

Read part one here

Sympathy for the devil

2008-12-15T15:40:00.000-08:00

Every day I sit here and I watch him.

The same time everyday, he goes to the same bench, in the same park and he just sits. Lord knows what he does with the rest of his day, that ain’t my business.

Hell, I suppose this here ain’t neither, but damned if I ain’t been watching his sorry ass for so long now. It’s got so as the day just wouldn’t seem right without him.

I ain’t never said nothing to him. I don’t know if he even realises that I’m here. Maybe I’m afraid of him, sure, but that ain’t the reason I ain't ever spoke to him. It just wouldn’t seem right to I guess.

He sits there, hunched forward, all intense like. Nobody ever talks to him. People give him a wide berth as they walk by. Most don’t even seem to know why or, in some cases, realise that they’re doing it at all.

He says nothing. Does nothing. Yet always there’s this feeling from him, a sense, like as if fire and fury were rolling off of him like I ain’t never felt before.

I remember one time I caught his eye as he was getting up to leave. He barely noticed me looking, didn’t seem to give two hoots anyhow.

But when I saw those eyes of his, it damn near chilled me right to the bone. Nary a frown to darken that face of his and still I ain’t never seen rage shine so clear.

But you know what the crazy thing of it was? I felt sorry for the guy, you know? It was like I could see, clear as the morning sun, that he had lost something. Something that he had loved so much, so fully, so completely, that when it was gone he was left with nothing.

He had nothing left but the emptiness and anger and hopelessness – knowing that, because of his all-encompassing devotion, he could never again be whole.

So he comes here and he sits and he stares out ahead of him, dead-eyed, sombre and intent.

Who knows what he does with the rest of his time? Hell, who knows what he does when he sits on that bench? What he’s thinking about and such.

I’d like to think that maybe, if I’m right about any of this (though I am just another guy on a bench here), I like to think that maybe he tries to remember the good times. Tries to put the loss out of mind for a heartbeat.

I’d like to think that, but hell, if I am right about any of this then I honestly don’t believe that the poor son-of-a-bitch ever could.

And so every day I sit here and I watch him. What else have I got?

Friendly Drinks

2008-12-15T15:17:00.000-08:00

Ten minutes late as I step off the bus. Right. That probably means I’ll only be waiting about fifteen minutes. Could be worse.

Might as well enjoy a cigarette now before I get to the pub. Or should I check in there first? Probably best to check first. Could head off unnecessary problems if the unthinkable has happened and she’s here on time.

Screech of brakes. Jesus, where did that car come from? Apologetic wave, consolatory jog out of the way. Let’s see what we can do about not getting killed today shall we? I’ve got to wake up. Snap out of this. Focus. Right, there’s the pub.

Pat the pockets. All present and accounted for. Let’s have a look-see at the money situation. Excellent, a couple of crisp Darwins and change, so no hunting for the elusive non-rip-off cash machine and no card at the bar. Everyone’s happy.

Entering a pub just hasn’t been the same since the ban. All so sterile and stark. Time was when all these fugly-ass people would be shrouded in acrid mystery. Still, no use crying over spilt milk. Focus on the recon.

No hidden corners to check so we can just let loose Meerkat-style, crane neck, slight tip-toes, don’t go nuts. Don’t make eye contact randomers, nothing to see here, I’m searching for a specific person. Ok, she’s not here yet. To the bar.

Let’s check the taps. Ah, that’s the one. Friendly tone. Don’t strike up any small talk, you’re too distracted not to end up seeming rude. Cheers, pay, cheers for the change, take your seat.

Maybe I should have sat at the one with the paper on it so I can pretend to read it and not look like such a loser. Too late now, you’re sitting, it’d just look plain weird to change from one empty table to another. Just do what you always do, take out your phone and delete old text messages.

Ok, that’s that done. Where is she? Stop drinking so fast. What am I doing here anyway? What’s the best that can come of this? ‘I’ve made a mistake’ she’ll say, ‘I want something more.’ And then what? You cave like the dick that you are and experience two more weeks of emotional Yo-Yo hell. Fantastic.

Or you could grow a pair and say all the things you wanted to say to her when the dreaded ‘Let’s just be friends’ ball-shriveller was wheeled out last time. Or, more accurately, the things you wanted to say twenty minutes after that happened, as you muttered and fumed your way home.

Crap, there she is. God, she looks good. Stop that. Ok, rise to greet her. What’s going to happen here? Kiss? Hug? Go for the hug. There it is, there’s hugging but she kissed you on the cheek on entry. No matter, you walk away looking daddy-cool. Great. Score one for the hero. So here it is, game face, friend-smile, let’s go.

‘Hi’