I wrote this for a competition, it's longer than most of my stuff, and I'm still not sure I like it, but it's had such mixed reviews! Take a look and see what you think!
The room seemed nice enough, no luxury penthouse,
but it had all the necessities I needed for the two months or so that I would be living
here whilst waiting
for my next official place to be ready. It would be odd, what with most of my stuff in storage, and using someone
else’s cheap furniture,
but, as I had decided,
I was going to treat this whole time as a big adventure.
I was sharing the house with three others,
two of whom I saw rarely, we spoke seldom, and would only bump into them occasionally in the kitchen
or the halls and exchanging
an awkward hello.
The third, however, I never saw. I only heard them moving in the room above me. It was a seven bedroom house,
however, and I was the only person
to have a room on the middle
floor. This suited
me fine, and meant I had more privacy than I’m accustomed.
I set up a small work area in my room; I laid my sketch
books and journals
on the cheap plywood desk supplied in the room. Everything
was laid out in an ordered
chaos, as I liked it. This had to be done on the first night, as my work as an artist
relied on it. Secondly,
I had a compulsion to write in my journal
every day, this was something
I had to do at a designated
“work” area, where ever
It may be. It
was a modest comfort to me, especially in unfamiliar surroundings.
It was early
in the evening as I sat down to write my first entry in this new place,
and I could see the shadows of the houses
stretched long into the gardens
below me. Out the window
there was no one to be seen, not a single soul at all. The heated
summer air, almost
still carried with it the scent of barbecue smoke,
from some family
gathering out of sight and out of ear shot. I let out a contented sigh and take a sip of my water, the ice clinking
in the glass as I put it back down. I put my head down and start to write on a fresh clean page. I make sense of the jumbled
garbage in my head, just as I did every day. It would always
calm me down, no matter
how stressful or chaotic.
I often find when writing in my journal,
that I seem to enter almost a trance-like state.
All sorts can go on around me and it simply does not register,
my old housemates
often showed concern that it
may end
in me getting
in trouble somehow
one day. I always joked them away, saying I’m sure I’d notice a fire in time to save my books. However,
something this evening
broke right through
my concentration, like a vase hitting a marble floor,
shattering what delicate
design it had into a million disordered
fragments, a mess of broken,
sharp edges; It was a long loud moan, and it repeated
itself, over and over, the source, although
certainly in one of the gardens close by, was invisible to me. I had an instant recall
to the time when my Mother worked
at a psychiatric
ward. Occasionally she would have to drag me along with her to her work for some reason,
not for long, presumably to pick something
up, but I never remembered.
These brief, unexplained
visitations had left me with some vivid memories of the contorting,
and the drooling,
the shouting of obscenities and those indecipherable noises.
As a small child, I saw them as the monsters and trolls of the fantastical
stories Ii would have my parents read me. I saw them as soulless
monsters who would think nothing
of killing me, or eating
me whole. These visions haunted
my childhood, but as I grew, so did my views of these poor people. I came to the conclusion
that they did indeed have perfectly intact
souls, and it was the housing that was in some way deficient. This view turned
it from plain horror to one of abject despair
for me, and I would forever be taunted by dreams of the meaningless
sounds they would make, wondering
if they meant anything to the maker.
To have such a noise at this proximity and from within
my own “inner
sanctum”. To have it made by some invisible phantom
sent the most soul shattering
jolt of pure shock and terror right through me.
All the while through
this barrage of vocal garbage,
I just sat there and stared into the mid-distance.
I had been knocked out of my calm trance
of writing and propelled into a sort of waking
nightmare. When people
say they felt like something
went on for hours, I think this is only applicable to those moments
of extreme dullness
and mundanity. This moment was one outside
of time, during
it I felt as if there had been no start and no end. It was just me and the noise forever
in our own universe, one without time. That was how it felt anyway,
in truth, it probably lasted
no longer than a few minutes, and then it was over. There was no sound to prompt
or follow it. It just stopped. The abrupt finish
although unsettling, was a comfort
compared to the noise.
I closed
my journal, mid sentence, and lit a cigarette, while making my way to the kitchen.
I made a cup of tea to steady my nerves.
My sleep that night was sporadic
to say the least. The heat and humidity of this Indian
summer was making
me sweat just enough to make the bed sheets
sticky and cling to my bare skin. I could feel every spring from the cheap mattress jutting
into my flesh,
probing my every move. When I did sleep it was not nightmares that played in the space behind my eyes, just an empty soundless void and I would wake to the same reception
in my room on multiple
occasions that night.
I grabbed
for my watch,
apparently it was approaching 5am. I decided
to give up on sleep.
I stood under the shower
to try and wake myself
up; the water spluttered out. Luke-warm, I
had to wonder
if it had any other temperature. I did not find out. I dried myself off and made myself some instant coffee,
I winced at the bitterness,
wishing my two vices, cigarettes
and caffeine, did not taste so foul. I looked
out the kitchen
window at the half wild garden and wondered what to do so early.
I did not want to waste another
day on my laptop, and I could never work in the morning anyway.
I sat on the rotten
wooden bench in the garden
and watched the sunrise over the houses,
its pale rays refreshed me a little.
I decided to take a walk in the forest,
opposite the front of the house on the other side of the main road it was on.
The dew was still fresh on the grass and I decided to take off both my shirt and my shoes and revel in the soft grass and loamy soil beneath
me, and the warm morning
sun on my back.
I was amazed at how extensive
the wooded network
was. I still tried to make sure I had a vague remembrance of which way the road was. I found many things on that walk; a still pond,
in a secluded glade.
I picked berries
from a bush and had myself a very relaxing
time. Last night was far away and long ago. After a while, I thought to look at my watch,
I realised I had been wandering for well over an hour. I decided
it was time to make my way home and start to organise the rest of my possessions.
That way I could feel more settled
and safe in my new environment.
Didn’t
bother to rush back, I had the entire day to myself
and it had only just gone seven anyway. I strolled back eastward towards
the road the house was on, the path I was following
seemed to have seen plenty
of use, it was straight
for the most part, with tire tracks
at the side. I did have to turn a corner at one point,
and in doing so was greeted by police tape blockading the entire path and a great deal around it as well. There were officers in uniform and men in suits crawling
round everything, several
vehicles dotted around
the place too. They had obviously only just arrived
there; there was a body just off the path, sprawled out there partially
eaten by scavengers.
It had not yet been given the dignity of any coverings
by the police.
Thinking back on it I believe what I am about to say is impossible, but it is none the less what I remember;
the smell hit me. It was a smell I could recall
from a time before, when I had gone on holiday for a week, accidently leaving
the door of the fridge
open. The smell off the rotten meat and vegetables,
the blue-green mould that had made its way to the kitchen
floor.
I started
to reach, but there was little to expel, the mixture of the sweet fruit mixed with that of the bitter coffee
and bile spewed
into a pathetic
puddle on the ground. The taste would not leave my mouth as stinging
tears welled up in my eyes and I doubled
over again. I think it was the commotion I was making
that alerted one of the policemen to my presence.
He rushed over, ducking under the black and yellow
tape, some part of the back of my mind reminded me of my unnatural hatred
of the colour
yellow and I start to reach again.
The puddle gets bigger. He comes over to me, putting a comforting arm around me, realising this must be a huge shock to me.
“My God! I thought
the whole forest
had been sectioned
off for the investigation. How did you get in?” His voice somewhere between
apology and confusion.
I explained, after he had taken me out of sight of the carnage,
that I had been walking
in the woods for some time. Presumably
I had started
before they had begun their work. I also explained
that I was new to the area and just exploring. I could tell from his eyes, a warm chocolate
brown, that he believed me. I truly think that what he said was almost as upsetting for him as it was a shock for me.
I returned
to my home that evening
exhausted both physically
and mentally. I had been at the police station
the entire day. They had questioned me extensively about the victim,
the area and how long I had lived there,
people I knew and the forest. I’m sure in most circumstances
it would have been easy to confirm
al I had said, but I had been living
off the radars
since leaving university.
The few they found were not enough
to prove anything.
Finally, I remembered
my library card, and funnily
enough, the constant
withdrawal of books from a different county
was enough for them. So, eventually, after being moved from one interview room to another,
having my prints
taken by some ghastly machine
and finally my mug shot taken, I was permitted
to go home. The hour long journey
on the bus I couldn’t
afford felt almost
like a dream.
I finally reached
my front door at around
nine that evening,
just as the sun was disappearing beneath
the forest.
I did not feel like eating,
despite only being fed a warm sandwich
at the station,
one of wilted
lettuce and sweaty,
flavorous cheese. I made my way to my little
room and remove
the boxes from the bed to the floor, and without even getting undressed,
I collapsed on the unmade
bed and fell into a deep and uncomfortable sleep.
That night my exhaustion
pretty much beat the heat and the sorry excuse
for a mattress.
However, I awoke at 4am to a sound so invasive, so alien, that I sit bolt upright
in my terror.
Not this time the distressing
moans of the mentally ill. This tie, what sounded
to my ears like some great guttural
beast! Multiple noises
emanating, in my mind, from the same guttural maw. The sound of worlds being torn apart.
After the initial shock,
my brain finally
awake enough to make the connections and come to a rational
conclusion, realised it was only dogs, one probably roused
and the others
in the neighbourhood
following suit. One of the ones nearby
must have been of gigantic
proportions, the noises
he made were deep and low, I could almost
feel the bass of him running through
me. I decided
to have a cigarette whilst
I waited for them to calm down. I did not bother
to turn the light on, my eyes now accustomed
to the pre-dawn
haze. I watched
the blue-grey smoke trail towards
the window and the orange
ember glowing. The dogs eventually
calmed down and for the briefest of times all I could hear was the faint crackle of the burning
tobacco as I took the last drag before flicking
the last of it out the window.
As if it was a signal, a bird heralded
the overture of the dawn chorus. I grunted and decided to go back to bed.
I did not sleep for long after that, an hour at most. I did however have the most vivid dream;
I was a corpse, rotting
and putrid, and I was being raped by a disgusting beast.
A vile anthropomorphic dog with a gigantic jaw, making the noise of a hundred
of its kind, which was at the same time a heaving
mass of all of my mother’s patients,
their noises and their groping,
strangling and thrashing
limbs all over me. It was not a combination
of these two things, but both individual
entities at one and the same time, in the way things
can only happen
in a dream.
I, being a corpse, was unable to do anything.
My genderless body rocking to and fro on the interview table with the movements of my lover/violator. It continued until I had completely decomposed.
That morning
I woke in a foul mood which was only worsened by the later heat.
The next two weeks were uneventful,
I unpacked my belongings and the police
visited a few times, but only in my facility
as a witness.
The heat persisted
and worsened. I rarely went out of the house as I worked from home anyway
and I declined
all invitations from friends, my excuse being I lived too far out from the town centre. I became a hermit.
One morning,
I was sitting
yet again at my desk. Iced water in hand. I was sketching out a commission
that I had been given a substantial
down payment for. A picture
of two lovers
in a forest,
it was to be painted
on canvass for someone to give there wife as an anniversary
present. I foolishly
used my memories
of the local forest for inspiration, and of course
my mind kept going back to that morbid and surreal encounter
there. There were insects flying
around the room, and I realised much like around
a corpse. I could feel nausea creeping
up on me once again,
but I chose to ignore
it and continued
to draw. I kept seeing
things in the sketch that I had not intended
to put there,
a tree had the face of a rotten corpse,
a severed hand in the undergrowth next to the lovers. I could cope with it no Longer.
I closed my sketchbook and put it too one side and grabbed for my journal.
It was not, however, in its place!
My lifeline, my touchstone. It had vanished
from the place I always
kept it!! I searched franticly
for where it could be; my bookshelf,
on my desk again, what little there was on the floor,
even under the bed sheets.
Eventually I made my way out of my room to the communal areas of the place, searching
like a man possessed. I could not find it. I stormed
back into my room, a red hot lump forming
in my throat,
my face red from anger and the refusal to cry. I sat down at my desk, grabbed
my cigarettes and lit one. After the release of the first drag, I saw it, lying in its usual place; its plain leather
bound cover looking
as innocuous as ever. My journal. I did not understand, but the initial
confusion was soon swept away by relief.
I grabbed it, stubbed out the just lit cigarette
and started to write. I wrote for an hour or so before I was interrupted.
The building
was an old one, the single glazed
windows had still not been replaced, and they were old and brittle. When the magpie
smashed through them, shards of glass showered
the room. The whole thing appeared to be in slow motion.
The morning light was reflected
and refracted in the splinters
as they arced across the room. The bird, a mangled parody
of an angel,
appeared to glow as it covered the golden disc of the sun.
That brief and beautiful
moment came to an abrupt
end as I held my arm up to my face to shield my face from the myriad
of tiny razors.
The bird itself
landed with a thump on my journal,
in the centre
of the blank page opposite
the one I had almost
filled up with half legible
scrawling. It was still alive.
It made a feeble attempt
to caw at me. I just stared
at it for a very long time, my brain,
once again, having
shut down. I realised I had to do something
only when it stopped with the racket
making and was pathetically trying
to shuffle off the page and make for some sort of cover. It occurred to me now that it only had one eye, where the other had been was now a bloody pulpy mess; obviously
the glass had done its work there.
It occurred
to me that the creature
had no hope. Even if I did care for it, it would just prolong the suffering and slow the dying process.
It would be cruel to let it live. I grabbed its body firmly
with one hand and its head with the other,
its feathered neck resting in the space between my index and middle finger.
This was not without come struggle; the bird took a sizeable
chunk out of the skin on my hand. With my blood dripping over it, I gave the neck a sharp yank. The crack that followed
was one received
gratefully by my ears, and it coincided
with a click in my brain. I sat there,
bird in front of me, shattered glass all around
and on me. I was at peace.
As I felt the sensation
sweeping over me, the loud, now familiar,
sound of moaning
began. It bothered
me not. Whatever
condition that person
was in, was not, and never had been, my concern.
The action
of suicide is not as difficult as people make out. If the intent
is truly there,
it takes barely
anything at all. People who fail at suicide are never truly serious, Hanging
is too complex,
and drowning seemed
pointless, even if you never learned to swim, instinct
kicks in. For those methods
to truly work, you need vast amounts
of willpower along with the aforementioned intent.
No. I just knew what I needed
to do. I took a month’s worth of my medication. I am writing
this, my last ever journal
entry in the book I was saving
for when I finished my old journal.
I suppose the magpie did that for me, its blood has probably soaked
through. I’m going to have a last cigarette, and finish this sketch. I’m going to finish it how it wants to be drawn.
That is, for as long as my body will hold out anyway. Then the magpie
and I will fly out together.
Two for joy, I believe is the phrase.
Perhaps it was lonely, and sensed I was too.