We kill the cure
Condemn the curse
We shout and spit
As though it fashion
Is it!
The words we use
No smiles, all eyes
And fingers pointing
‘That’s what they’re for’
Are they!
A reckless adventure
Inferno in waiting
Made for decay
Meant to delay
Does it!
Prefabricated values
Shoved down throats
Gagging, we choke
For the wordkilkers
It hurts!
And I sit, write
Hide and worry
Wondering, just wondering
Have they won?
Lord no!
Please no
Cant have
I’m begging
It lay in the street like a puddle of blood. A soft liquid, downy, not right, I approached this small death with tentative steps. The blood shifted as if to pour away.
Startled, I recoiled.
Though detested by this fear of something so small, this unexpected disturbance, I regathered. My breaths steadied to a pulsing fog in the cold winter morning.
The scarlet pool appeared unbothered, too, resettling like an agitated baby rocked to sleep.
If the frost was finer, the dawn warmer, the effect would’ve lessened, but red on white like a Crusader’s bold announcement of the purging victory to come, gleamed. How dare it! How dare it ruin my morning?
I made to walk around the thing but life intervened. A city fox so alive as to dismiss extinction ran out of a hawthorn bush. The creature lowered its head as if to lap at the pool.
It was wrong, this I knew. Nothing could’ve turned my stomach more.
So what did I do this disenchanted morning when one of God’s creatures required my aid? What did I do when the devil in a fox fur coat came to finish what nature had started?
I let it.
#
There are many kinds of sin but none so great as indifference. One might say it the cardinal sin, yet we bask in its crimson illumination gladly.
This jagged smile she plays for fun
An indelicate balance tilted in her favour
Such an exact science, applied and described
Crimson painted, plum or sea blue
It matters not
Styled for the moment, smudged with a wave
Exposed is an exposure kindly received
Works both ways she says
And I believe her because she’s grinning
It can only be glee, can’t it?
Trap set, locked and straining
The night vibrates with palpable anticipation
She closes. We close. They close
The next stage of a plan planted
Grown in a place where the sun don’t shine
Tended with steel wool and polish
Scrubbed to angelic perfection
Just awaiting the clack of horizontal gates closed
Where glinting blinds
So eyes are closed
The chink of twinned metal resonates through my spine
Pull away, but I can’t
Free yourself, but I won’t
And she has me, as she’s had those many others
Those tin soldiers, smelted and melted
Reduced to puddles of oozing goop
Sucked through barbed wire lips
With a straw for a tongue
I’ve lost. She’s won. All over
But the night is long and I own pliers
So perhaps I’ll try again tomorrow
So that’s his game!
The old man sat there with a brick for a phone pressed to his hairy ear. He squinted, strained to hear whoever he talked with, mouthed spittle-infused words.
Oh, he was good. Really good. But it was an obvious ruse.
He turned and gave me that glassy-eyed look only the elderly could, his comb-over blowing in the speeding traffic’s wake.
He knew I was on to him.
Across the road, the last chocolate torte glistened in the bakery window like an Olympic medal.
He wanted it, but I wanted more.
Red: A wiggle and a shake.
Red and amber: I checked my trainers laced. Come to poppa.
Green: He was off.
Goddamn! He was already halfway across the road!
I swerved through the milling pedestrians like a serpent through grass. I’d show the old buzzard!
Bursting onto the pavement, I dodged an old woman with a mop for a dog and leapt through the open bakery door, chest thrust forward. Winner!
With no time to gloat, I got straight down to business. “Onechocolatetorteplease.”
“Pardon?”
“One chocolate torte, please.” This time slower.
“Sorry,” said the girl behind the counter, “we’ve just sold the last one.”
“The one in the window?”
“That’s the one.” She beamed an inoffensive smile.
I panicked, after all, she was pretty. “But I was here first,” I whimpered.
The girl shook her head and pointed over my shoulder, her bangs smacking a drum ‘n’ bass rhythm against her rosy cheeks.
I turned so slowly, my hips ground.
He sat there in his buggy smug as you like, his eyes watering and his few stray hairs a mess. His dentures were missing as though he’d rushed to beat me and hadn’t had time to put them in, his hitched-up slacks revealing the argyle socks beneath — beige, of course. But worst of all, worse than anything, he had something to say; his lips frothed with the effort.
“You’re fast,” he said. “Really fast, son.”
I glowered.
“Whilst I’m old and slow.”
I gave him one of my best sneers.
“But I have this.”
He held his black brick aloft, or as aloft as his ancient limbs could manage. This, he waggled.
“Same tomorrow?” asked the girl behind the counter.
The old man cupped his ear.
“Same tomorrow?” she bellowed.
He waggled his archaic phone one last time; it might as well have been a cup and string.
“I’ll ring ahead,” he replied, then reversed over my foot and sped off.
You’ve won this round, old man, but I’m off to buy a new charger.
Truth was, I’d rather have had the torte.
When loving ghosts, one must make allowances, for their intangible nature prohibits touch, physical warmth, passion. They mire in sadness regardless of kind words, a warming sun, a lover’s wistful look. To struggle is in their make-up, their very essence. Like drifters on a highway, they patrol the ley lines you may not tread. Not yet, anyway. Not until the blue fades from your lips, too.
This insipid cold, if you will, does not make them cruel, nor inconsiderate just unable to yield to the pleasures of flesh and blood. Though they would if they could. They remember them, distant though they may be. They recall them, as the echoes of memories lost. Like violin strings plucked in a dream, they would hear this music called life once more.
So, how should one treat them? How should one appreciate these gentle spirits of the night? How does one love a ghost? Simple, my friend. Remember them. Remember them all. But most of all, and here I beg, remember me.
“Call me old-fashioned but I like my pants clean, pressed and swishing.”
“You’re old-fashioned.”
“Thanks.”
“You’re very welcome, gramps.”
“There’s nothing wrong with looking and feeling smart.”
“And there wasn’t in the seventies, either, eh?”
“Cheeky sod.”
“Look, I’m telling you this as your friend, purple velour pants and an orange crinoline shirt’s only gonna get you one thing.”
“A date?”
“A beating.”
“So you’re saying I should compromise.”
“I’m saying you should change, it’s different.”
“But this is me.”
“I refer you to my previous statement.”
“You said you liked them.”
“On a muppet.”
“Goddamn it!”
“No need for that. We can soon sort you out. I’ll lend you something fabulous. Something of mine. Top draw stuff.”
“But I don’t want to look like you. And stop winking.”
“Kid, you’ll never look like me.”
“I’m a year older than you.”
“Potato potahto. You leave it to me.”
Fifteen minutes later
“I love it.”
“Black leather never fails. The bright red Nikes set them off, the gold chain finishing the ensemble. You’re a babe magnet.”
“You think so?”
“Sure do. Where’re you going, anyway?”
“Seventies disco.”
They say a scream is a scream is a scream. Hurt is hurt. Pain is pain. That both subside with every unfulfilled second. They say many things. But what do they know? What do they really know?
The mind is a curious container, delicate even. If the mind were glass, one might shatter it with a scream, which I suppose you did.
Wordless moments, memories birth from open mouths. Memories! Too loud. Too raw. Reflections of moments past until wiped clean by sound. Until…
My everything you were and ever shall remain. My heart cannot beat without you. These romanticised lines of obvious affection. This sentimental twaddle. I wish to silence this scream called us. I wish to close these lips and sleep.
After tonight, maybe I will. Once I tear the secret you’ve kept from your overworked larynx.
I still have the key I copied. I have many such copies. You can never be too careful where safety’s concerned.
The latch lifts with a click like a match struck on once love. We did love, I think.
I’m in. Nothing’s changed. The same lavender stink to cover the cat litter. It assails my olfactory senses and I almost gag. Almost. Ginger, said cat, stops purring the moment I enter. He always hated me. I lurch forward but the cat’s quicker. He leaves without a handful of hair, whilst I’m left with a sergeant’s stripes across my skin. If only I’d closed the door! So, I do.
I let the light rest. I know the way. Darkness is good, it hides a multitude of sins. The mirror in the hallway remains empty. The photo on the telephone desk goes unseen. And I wonder, is it still there?
A sudden urge to sit on the sofa, turn on the tv and watch football, open the fridge and steal a beer. It’s fleeting but there.
I shake my head so hard my eyes rattle.
The first step creaks so I seek the second. Silence. I want to shout COME ON! I don’t, but I want to.
Stopping halfway, I take a seat. One last memory I think. A sigh. An aimless three-sixty. The darkness deprives as the lavender stink prods. I’m back on my feet and climbing before I realise I’ve sat.
Everest climbed, I have a desire to pee. The bathroom door stands open, so I do.
I take a certain devilish pleasure in peeing on the toilet seat, in the sink, bath. Small victories and all that. She’ll never see it but her mother might.
Once relieved, I’m back on the case. First door, second, third… I stop.
There’s a lump in this once-home made a prison. There’s a someone, a certain someone I know. Not for long.
The rage rises.
Her former rebukes, my dismissal, return like a needle shoved into my eyes. And I strike. And I strike. And I strike.
Everything she made me leave behind, the untold secret and more besides, stick like a lump in my throat. But I’ve got her. At last, I’ve got her.
“What have you done!”
A voice.
Her voice?
Her voice!
The landing light flicks on behind me.
I see my crimson creation and turn away retching out my innards.
She comes at me like Ginger on a bad day. She screams and screams and screams. But this is my dream and she can’t hurt me.
Only when she stops do I hear her. Only when she stops and crumples in a heap whispering the same words over and over again, do I understand what I’ve done.
“Our daughter. She was our daughter.”
And the cold steel I’ve spent seven years polishing finds a nice warm home in my chest. I smile.
My ex-wife screams again. This time, it’s not for us.
The End.
Celeste radiated something akin to love, a certain lukewarm appreciation.
Mama called this cunning — Celeste prickled behind her eyes.
Papa said it smarts — Celeste upset his oversensitive gut.
Me?
Celeste melted my heart.
Was I suspicious?
Never! Celeste could have bought and sold us. Our secret, until after the wedding.
She kept a bowl of flowers on the sideboard I never once saw wilt. Regardless of the time of year, weather, or the close attentions of her ginger cat named — unsurprisingly — Ginger, the flowers thrived. They were pink, pretty even, but never worth more than a cursory glance.
I passed those flowers every day for the three years we lived together. Not once did I water or maintain them, and to my knowledge, neither did she. I prayed they’d keel over just to prove they weren’t plastic, or, at least, not as false as me. Once, I even tugged their petals, but we’ll keep that to ourselves. Obstinate flowers still didn’t fall.
The day I left, I paused at the door. “At least tell me their bloody name, I’ve looked at them all this time and still have no idea what they’re called!”
“Same name as me,” she replied, her eyes wet and weeping.
So, I still don’t know.
We waddled to the lakeside like two overstuffed penguins, laughing and joking, discussing the past. There we watched the sunset, a tangerine moment that made us cry. We looked at each other like once lovers, then jumped, or, rather, plunged. Our concrete filled boots did their job. It was bliss.
