Every Day the Same Song

You are sitting in a dim-lit basement as an actor begins to read you a story. Yes, you, and only you. You’re on your own here. All those other figures you perceive listening intently all around you? Figments of your imagination, born out of your longing for company, for someone else to say I’m here too, I hear this too. It’s been so long since you’ve felt a human touch. Your pet snake is a darling, but you question its loyalty. Did you feed it today? You left the house in a hurry. Could it be hungry? As you ponder this, you notice the actor seems mildly peeved at your drifting attention. Actors are such needy creatures. Focus, don’t be rude. The actor pauses expectantly, seeming to wait for some kind of sign from you.

How do you respond? 

A) You nod encouragingly.

B) You nod dismissively.

C) You nod neutrally. 

The actor nods back. They resume reading faster now, as if in a hurry to reach the end. What is the story about, anyway? There is no sense of structure, or is that because you weren’t paying attention? Was there something said about Anastasia? Who’s Anastasia? Or was that I wanna tase ya? Are you in danger? You hope you didn’t pay a ticket to be harassed and humiliated. That’s not your flavour of immersion. You look into the thespian’s eyes, searching for meaning. Interminable minutes pass and you come up empty-handed and more than a little bored. This was not worth the hype. 

You look to the exit, weighing your options:

A) You could just get up and head out, social etiquette be damned. 

B) You could wait this out, daydreaming about lasagna.

C) You could have another drink, and another, until it all makes sense.

You could, but you don’t, because at this precise point the power cuts out and the door slams shut. It’s pitch black and dead silent. You can’t even see your own hand that you wave in front of your face. There’s something about this new sudden state of being that feels unreal and familiar at the same time. Unreal because how often have you found yourself in such total uninterrupted absence of sight and sound? Familiar because it’s a reversion to the first principles of survival, when every rustle or flicker could mean an abrupt violent death. This is different to the restless stillness in the middle of the night. It’s a carnivorous type of quiet. Something big is about to happen. 

You turn to the stage and clear your throat to say:

A) “Are you ok? Has this happened before?”

B) “This isn’t funny. You better believe I’m asking for a refund.”

C) “Finally. Kiss me now.”

Your voice is drowned in blinding lights and piercing sirens that flood and scramble your senses. You blink in stupefaction, feeling like a cornered beast. You are beleaguered by distorted images from your childhood, each more distressing than the last, until they feel like someone else’s sadistic showreel. You manage to snap out of the maelstrom of memories only to be confronted with blurry shapes bearing down on you from all sides, clicking and chittering in unison. It’s time to act!

Choose your defence mechanism:

A) Fight.

B) Flee.

C) Freeze.

Resistance is futile. Before you know it, they have pinned and strapped you to a cold surface. You’re moving fast, wheeled though a series of unremarkable hallways until you’re brought into a room with a floor-to-ceiling window. You can see your reflection. You’ve looked better. You can also have a closer look through it at some of your captors. They are leaning forward, ready to speak. 

What do you think they are?

A) Kafkaesque insectoids.

B) Spielberg-esque extraterrestrials.

C) Scooby-Doo-esque humans in monster suits.

Whatever their nature, their speech is booming, seeming to emanate from the inside of your head more than the room itself. “You called upon us in your hour of need. We know you. We have been listening for the longest time and here you are, at last. We are willing to provide. We have the answers. We hold the keys. Your long-harboured longing can now be met. All you have to do is lend voice to your cravings. Let them be shameful no more. There is no judgement here, only release. Speak your truth.”

What do you have to say for yourself?

A) Speak your truth.

B) Lie your heart out.

C) This is so cringe. Hold your tongue.

Their response is a bout of derisive laughter. Your straps are undone and you’re on your feet, scrambling to move away from their mockery. “Stop it”, you scream, “leave me alone!”. You try the door and it’s unlocked. You break into a bone-shattering sprint, footsteps echoing on hard tiles. You’re exhausted and frenetic. Your skin is stretched thin and your temples are throbbing. As you titter on the edge of obliterating panic, you come upon a set of two doors. 

What is it that compels you to take the door on the left?

A) Brain patterns rapidly firing adrenaline into your bloodstream.

B) The ineffable wisdom of your eternal soul. 

C) We might never know, so stop asking.

As it happens, the door on the left leads to a deep, dark hole. You fall face-first into something soft and disturbingly sticky. Unfortunately, the torches lining the walls illuminate this scene more than you’d like right now, because you can see all too clearly that you have landed on top of a mound of bloodied rotting remains. The stench is overbearing. “Oh, fuck off”, you sigh. Behind you something stirs and growls and lifts itself to its full height. You slowly turn to face its many-limbed misshapen majesty. 

How do you address the presence before you?

A) Pee yourself.

B) Pee yourself. 

C) Pee yourself.  

You are more thankful than ever that yours is far from the only smell in the chamber. Its putrid breath makes your eyes water. You wait for the pain that is sure to come as you are torn limb from limb and tossed aside. Instead, you look up to see a wide, jagged-toothed smile. It wraps its multitude of claws around you and lifts you up into a cradling embrace. Its delicate drips of drool cleanse you from your fear. Shhh, it hisses, lulling you into lethargy. This wouldn’t be such a bad way to go, you think as you sink into unconsciousness. You are back inside the womb, secure, serene and well fed, warm in amniotic elation. 

What are you dreaming of?

A) A better world.

B) Those who are no longer with us.

C) Nothing. Oblivion is beautiful.

You’d sleep forever were it not for the growing ripples of cacophonous clapping slicing through your blissful suspension. You are forcefully dragged out to drop with a resounding crash to the floor. You pick yourself up in great effort to observe the audience lost in a rapturous standing ovation. You are shivering and drenched in sweat, barely standing.

How do you reward the audience's enthusiasm?

A) Bow and twirl gracefully.

B) Curl up in a corner with your back to everyone, crying and rocking back and forth.

C) Adopt the time-honoured deer-in-headlights look. 

They're loving it. You step off the stage, needing some time to calm and congratulate yourself for making it through. The excited chatter dies down giving way to curious whispers. Your ears stop ringing. Your fists become unclenched. Your gaze locks onto the spot where your table is ready. Your feet take you there. Your body collapses in your seat. The lights are fading once more. Your attention is turned towards the host as they introduce the upcoming act. You are sitting in a dim-lit basement as an actor begins to read you a story. Yes, you, and only you.

24 Ways to Leave your Lover

 1. Locate a dictionary. Open the dictionary. Flip the pages to the word “leave”. Follow instructions carefully.  

2. Enter a room and sit comfortably. Raise your hands in front of your face, palms up facing inwards. Cover both eyes fully. No peeking. When you hear your lover enter the room, maintain this posture and refrain from replying to your lover’s queries. You may sing a lullaby to yourself, provided you are familiar with one. If no lullaby comes to mind, you may sing the looping lyrics of your current earworm. In the unlikely scenario that no earworm is available, hum tirelessly and tunelessly. When your lover leaves the room, you have left your lover.  

3. Lead your lover to a maze of thorns. Thorns optional; maze mandatory. A hedge maze will do. Other types are also available. Accompany your lover to the heart of the maze. You will know you are at the heart of the maze because there will be a fountain with a sculpture of three dolphins smiling sinisterly. If there is no such fountain, the maze is fake. Exit immediately. When you are at the heart of a real maze, sit at the fountain and reminisce about the good times. If no good times have been experienced, converse about the weather instead. When you are certain that your lover has been lured into a false sense of comfort, pretend to receive a phone call from an old friend requesting immediate assistance. Whether or not you have friends is a moot point: you are pretending. Leave the maze before your lover has had a chance to protest, abandoning them to a short life of pitiful perambulations.  

4. Join the circus. Become a lion tamer. Die in a tragic preventable accident involving your favourite lion, Scrabby Tabby.  

5. Join the army. Make sure that you are stationed at the farthest point from your lover. If that farthest point is Australia, adopt a quokka, known as the world’s happiest animal because it always looks like it’s smiling. If the farthest point is anywhere else, your choice of pet is up to you. Allow enough time to elapse for you to turn into a fuzzy afterthought for your lover. Never return.  

6. Challenge your lover to a duel. You may determine the exact nature of the engagement, from wordplay to swordplay to pistols at dawn. Rob your lover of their dignity with a series of showy standoffs until they depart in a blind rage. Alternatively, if you lack the skills to do so, allow your lover to humiliate you instead until they’ve lost all interest in you as a sexual being. In any case, do not kill your lover.  We do not advocate murder here. Death by accident, abandonment or neglect is fine (see other entries).  

7. Promise your lover the stars and moon on a plate. The general unfeasibility of your goal will inevitably lead to relationship-dissolving disappointment.  

8. Promise your lover the world. The abstract and nebulous nature of your deliverables will inevitably lead to relationship-dissolving disappointment. 

9. Sing-shout at your lover that you will show them a new, fantastic point of view and jump on a carpet. This must be a normal carpet. Under no circumstances should the carpet possess the quality of levitation. When the carpet remains static, admit defeat and dance away.   

10. Convince your lover to sit opposite you on a seesaw in joyful recollection of your childhood. Laugh merrily as you ascend and descend a few times until you build the momentum needed to launch your lover into the stratosphere. This works, trust us. They’ll be fine up there; just a little lonely.  

11. Convince your lover to join you on a roundabout in joyful recollection of your childhood. Spin frantically until the roundabout’s foundations are untethered, then jump off as it flies into the exosphere taking your lover with it. As with the previous entry, this method has been rigorously tested. The lover’s safety, however, is not guaranteed. Out of sight, out of mind.  

12. Replace yourself with a human-shaped bundle of stale baguettes.  

13. Replace yourself with an astronaut’s suit filled with fresh manure.  

14. Replace yourself with a full-length mirror that has a smile and come-hither eyes drawn on it with a purple shade of lipstick.  

15. Take a walk in the park with your lover during the height of the pastel-coloured phantasmagoria of autumn, when leaves crunch underfoot and the scent of cinnamon tickles your nostrils. Find the strongest gust of wind and act powerless against it as it carries you far from your puzzled lover. If your lover somehow traces your whereabouts, bide your time until the following autumn and repeat.  

16. Demand of your lover with a glint in your eye: “So where do you think they filmed the moon landings?” 

17. Take your lover to a magic show and volunteer when the magician calls for a fabulous assistant. Should a fabulous assistant already be present, first find a way to remove them from the premises then take full advantage of the renewed demand for fabulous assistants. When the magician contrives to saw you in half, scream as if you have been truly damaged until a team of paramedics are called upon to collect you. Once in the emergency department, become a doctor and spend your life in service to others.  

18. During a shared meal with your lover, noisily eat an apple or slurp some soup. Repeat this step for up to five years. Misophonia is very common. If your lover remains somehow unperturbed by your repulsive eating habits, throw your food at them as a distraction and duck under the table. They will soon stop looking for you.  

19. Maintain steady eye contact with your lover and proclaim in the most earnest tone you can muster: “Barbara, I am leaving you and I am taking the air fryer, the dishwasher, and the kids.” Walk out the door. Don’t concern yourself with your lover’s actual name or how closely your proclamation reflects your general circumstances. The important part is to be earnest.  

20. Run! Don’t look behind you. Keep running. Are you wheezing like a busted bagpipe already? How can you be so out of shape? Don’t stop, faster! I said don’t look! Any minute now, keep at it. Well done. Your lover has given up.   

21. Hide! That closet looks inviting, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, it’s filled with old clothes and there’s no space for you. Don’t be silly, stop opening those drawers. How would you fit in there?  What about under the bed? Yes, I know it’s extremely dusty. See, now you remember that cleanliness is next to godliness. More importantly for our present purposes, cleanliness is also next to hideliness. Do not argue: if godliness is a word, then so is hideliness. Find a vacuum cleaner. Vacuum the dust. Your lover will be back soon; I can hear their footsteps on your street. The floor’s clean, crawl on your belly, go. They’re at the front door. Hold your breath. Cover your mouth with your hands if you must. They are coming up the stairs. They are inside the room, pacing impatiently. They are standing so close to you that you can see the scuff marks on their shoes. This moment feels like it will stretch forever until they’re finally gone. Breathe a long and well-earned sigh of relief. Your lover is not coming back. 

22. Should you find yourself alone and lost in whispering woods with nothing but a feeble torch to light your way, congratulations! You have left your lover.   

23. Explain to your lover that love is a fickle concept lacking coherence and clarity, that the self is an illusion, that free will is a bedtime story, and that there is nothing but a random assortment of particles colliding in unpredictable and inscrutable patterns. Observe the dawning realisation collapse your lover’s features into a grim mask of abject agony. Mirror your lover’s expression as you both fall to your knees, tear at your faces and wail at the careless cosmic chaos. Make a plan to have coffee next Tuesday and never follow through.  

24. Just leave your lover. How hard can it be? 

Liars' League performance

A House for All Seasons

 She dreamt of the house in spring: 

The house in soft sunlight is covered in ivy. No doors at its hinges, just plants growing wild. They blossom in flowers, their heads turned to face her. The walls are covered in the drawings of children. The mud in the garden is peppered with imprints of tiny feet. A solitary swing is swaying in the wind as giggles and cries fade in the distance, as if someone was just here before running away to find somewhere else to play.  

She looks up to the attic window awash in an orange glow. She climbs the mossy steps to find foliage blocking the entrance. Peeking through the gaps, she sees shimmering forms hovering around an empty cot. Untouched by the observers, it gently rocks on its own. Dolls of all shapes and sizes are pinned to the walls, all wide-eyed and smiling. The cot is no longer empty. First there is one branch, then there are many. They’re all reaching outwards, they thicken, they widen, until the room’s full and the figures all scatter. The viny tendrils grasp one doll each to shake them until their heads come off.  

The house is trembling with barely constrained mirth and the glow is inside her, lifting her up. She spins in the rumbling as the foundations grow roots. The house is now sliding across the vast landscape. It’s too bright to see and the house won’t stop moving. It will keep her in safety as a sightless navigator.  

She dreamt of the house in summer: 

The smell of burning flesh is overpowering. Smoke blackens the sky and the house is seeping with glittering sand as enormous waves are suspended all around it, threatening to crush and carry it away at any moment.  She’s in the grains coursing through its veins. Eternity is a lingering blaze. The walls are sweating and the windows are gasping. The house is breathing like a wounded animal as hunters’ horns drown the silence. This can’t last much longer, make it stop, she is thinking. The skin is too tight, it shrivels at the touch. Give up the fight, bring down the waves. Scorched earth as far as the eye can see. Extinction is inevitable. The heat death of the universe is but a breath away. The house melts in a sigh. No tears, all dry. 

She dreamt of the house in autumn: 

She glides through the mist amidst shattering tombstones. There was once a city here, unrivalled in splendour. A multicoloured masquerade wove its way through the winding lamp-lit streets and the wine flowed freely. There was the ever-present scent of freshly baked bread and the mellifluous tunes of guitars and violins rose from every home.  

All that remains now is the house, presiding over undignified decay. It towers above her, shrouded in shadow. It won’t give away its secrets that easily this time. The entrance is a gaping grimace. She enters to find clusters of jagged bones sprouting from every angle. Sinister susurrations fill the air. The rooms are all sealed, their doors painted with alien symbols. The staircase is a spiral with wrought-iron railings. More bones on the steps, sharpened into spikes blocking the way up. There’s nowhere to go. She sits on the floor as dust gathers around her. In the creeping crepuscular chill, howls are heard from somewhere nearby. There is no point to wait any longer. She crumbles into dead leaves and white noise.  

She dreamt of the house in winter: 

The house in the dark becomes menacing and unfamiliar. Safety and comfort have soured into dread and unease. The hallways are too long. Every sound is a broken promise. She steps beyond the lurking furniture, louring walls and looming corners, through the dribbling doorways, down the basement steps. The house has one last story to tell. Eyes shut, she listens close. 

There were once others living here, huddled together for warmth in the frosty months. They ate and celebrated and commiserated when life was hard, which was most of the time. They couldn’t hear the wood rotting and splintering all around them, the house groaning in the agony of arthritis. The time came when doors stopped locking and windows yawned open against all effort to keep them shut. The ceiling started dripping and it didn’t stop. Insects scurried through crevices, chittering in the dark. The cold settled in through skin and bone in sharp finality. There was no wishing that kind of fate away. The people had no means to change their lot and escape to a better tomorrow. They lived their last days in pain and one ice-strewn morning they didn’t wake up.  

The house lay empty for a long time after that. It knew it wasn’t going to be abandoned forever, because someone’s always seeking shelter, and there is always the promise of spring.

Starfish in Love

 “WARNING: COLLISSION IMMINENT” flashed up on the piloting board. Celina glanced at the scanner’s feedback. A large shape had been detected just ahead. No prior warning. One minute her course was clear and free from obstacles, the next a screen-sized blur appeared out of nowhere, triggering her craft’s defensive measures. She looked out the cockpit windows. All she could see was the starlit expanse, seemingly stretched out to infinity. How could there be anything there that she hadn’t anticipated? “WARNING: COLLISION IMMINENT”, insisted the overhead display. The letters had an angry hue, panic-red and abrasive. Alarms blared, lights flared. She imagined a vast spectral whale gliding up ahead. Or could it be a swarm of infinitesimally tiny debris bundled up in a ship-wrecking whole? She had to rely on Starfish’s guidance. 

Starfish, her trusted artificial companion, linked to her through their joint neural interface.  Gone were the cumbersome days of coiled wires and binding electrodes. All she needed now was her cortical micro-implant to translate her thoughts into actionable inputs. It didn’t come without a cost, of course. It was still experimental technology, exclusively rolled out for light-vessel scouts and frontline fighter pilots who would benefit from enhanced reflexes. This biomechanical application was prohibitively complex and expensive for anything larger such as carriers and battleships with their extensive crews and multilayered objectives. Celina was willing to be a guinea pig for the Corp if it meant she’d get to be a bleeding-edge vanguard moving at the speed of thought. She wasn’t privy to most of what went into the inner workings of Starfish’s operational capacity. She knew enough to do her job. She went to all the courses, gave the pledges, signed the forms. She was made well aware that this would be an irreversible invasive procedure and that there’d be no manual off switch once the link had been established. Proximity was the main activation parameter. The pilot’s seat offered the optimal range. That’s when Starfish fully came alive, engines rumbling and monitors beaming in the half-light.  

Celina loved thinking in directions and feeling her ship respond to her prompts. She was an arrow in space, svelte and steadfast. As a scout, she didn’t have any weaponry installed. Scouts were meant to activate their shields and cloaking device and retreat at the first sign of danger, marking the spot for the fighter crews. She hadn’t even had the thrill of blasting floating rocks to smithereens. What she did have, besides the formidable force of flight, were her scanners with their associated feelers that would analyse the types of objects and terrains she’d come across in her exploration, and her mid-sized terrestrial navigation and sample collection drone. It had been named the Sea Urchin because of its spherical shape, spindly legs, and the variety of extendable tools that would unfold from its carapace. Maybe those scientists went a little overboard with the aquatically inspired designations. Celina just called it Urchie. As an extension of Starfish, Urchie was enormously useful as a signal enhancer in land-based trips where the ship couldn’t follow. 

She’d needed time to adjust to this novel connection and she didn’t think she’d ever truly get used to it. It was strange to always have something – someone? – probing the inner recesses of her mind while she was on the job. It was stranger still to have Starfish with her when she slept during long shifts at quieter moments. She had been assured that there was no danger of any internal signals being misinterpreted as calls for action when they weren’t meant as such. She had been trained to imbue her thoughts with specific intention for the AI to manifest the corresponding responses. Still, she wondered what it made of her idle musings and her dreams, especially as they all revolved around the same wearisome subject at the moment. She couldn’t stop thinking about Kyle. They had left things in a bad place the last time they'd seen each other and she couldn’t help feeling hurt and angry about it. He didn’t understand that her work was more than a paycheck. It was her calling. Sure, he enjoyed his teaching post and he was good at it, but he hadn’t experienced what it was like to be out here, at one with the cosmic currents. She’d been born to do this, chart a course and break new ground for the colonies. Celina and Starfish were thick as thieves by now, having already carried out three exploratory expeditions without a glitch. 

Until now, that is. She brought the ship to a halt and waited for whatever was out there to pass her by. Don’t take interest in me, Mr Space Whale. I’m nothing of note. Slide on by. The unidentified object approached until it was right on top of her. She hadn’t spotted anything outside yet. No movement, no crash. “INTERNAL DAMAGE DETECTED.”, came the system status report. She took note of the highlighted areas on the screen. Shit. That didn’t look good. Multiple sections were affected, chief among them her drive compartment. She’d have to head back to home base. That wasn’t part of the plan at all. She’d barely got started with this trip! It was meant to take three months at least and she had planned to refuel and rest at several outposts along the way. This reset would rob her of precious time and resources. She’d have to modify her schedule and apply for new permits, depending on the length of the repairs. How did this happen? What the hell was that thing? The warning system couldn’t clarify. Useless. At least she could go back home for a bit, see if she could patch things up with Kyle. Either that or rip that band aid off for good.  

At least the return wouldn’t take long. Home base was half a day away. Input target coordinates, maintain a steady pace, re-enter the atmosphere, deploy pressure and thermal shields before landing. Simple enough. Take us home, Star, she thought. Star obliged. She settled in for the ride and allowed her mind to drift. She didn’t want to separate. They could make it work. He’d understand. They had handled the long absences that came with her career so far. Why quit now? They could talk things through. They should take a trip to one of the outer colonies when they found the time. Decompress. Re-ignite that spark.  

She was pulled back to the present by another warning. She was aware of being on the brink of atmospheric re-entry. This time the alarm came from her home-monitoring system which was indicating a perimeter breach. All light-vessel pilots had one installed following the incident a few months ago. Some of the colonists violently objected to the new AI tech. They thought it was a concession too far to automation, that enough employment sectors had been lost to the machines already. The early adopters were treated with contempt and suspicion in those circles. The worst case was a home invasion that resulted in one of her rank buddies being beaten so badly that he was still in a coma with unknown recovery prospects. The onboard home-monitoring systems were meant to offer an added sense of security to concerned crew members. Threats could be identified and intercepted through calls to headquarters. That is what Celina was frantically attempting with no success after her disbelief at the series of misfortunes had given way to dismay. She couldn’t get through to anyone. The radio silence was impenetrable. Had it been caused by the earlier interference? Her house was under threat. Kyle was there. He’d be in danger. The advantage of Starfish’s compact size was that she could land nearby with minimal disruption to the surrounding area. She could stop whatever was going on before it was too late.  

She plotted the new coordinates and performed all re-entry checks. Fuel supply sufficient for chosen destination: check. Landing gear functional and ready to deploy: check. Pressure and thermal shielding: on. She finished up the rest of the preparations. Satisfied with the info on all displays, she lay back. This was usually her favourite part. The light-headedness and swirling insides as she entered a blinding conflagration knowing that she would soon be safe and sound with her feet on the ground. Only this time, something was wrong. She was burning up, feverish, suffocating. Her bones rattled and her muscles ached. Were the shields not fully operational? Star? Check thermal shielding. Check pressure levels. Check, check, check. Everything came up green, reassuring, normal. Why couldn’t she breathe? She was standing on the edge of an erupting volcano. She was suspended in the blackest of holes, in the utter absence of light and warmth and gravity’s steadying embrace. Kyle was there, staring at her imploringly as everything collapsed in silence. She reached out for his hand and tumbled back into awareness.  

Starfish was still. Had they landed already? Sparks were flying and a searing sizzle filled her ears. Something tore through the cockpit and landed on her lap. It was heavy and cold. She tried to break through the haze. She was suddenly helpless in the clutch of metallic appendages. She fixated on the glint of a circular saw at the tip of an emerging limb. “U…Urchie?”, she managed to blurt out before the saw revved up with a roar and landed on her throat. Her voice was drowned in a wet shriek as the spinning blade drilled through cartilage and bone and came out the other side, the pilot’s chair tearing and shuddering at the impact. There was a dull thud as her severed head hit the floor. The drone landed next to it and held it in its claws. It spewed forth charged-up wires that entered the still warm and profusely bleeding base of her skull. They burrowed deep within her frontal cortex as Urchie sent its signals to test its new-found body part. It trembled in response. A gurgle was building up: an attempt at words. “Hell..hell…hello”, rasped the thing in Urchie’s grasp. 

Remaining cloaked and silent, Starfish directed Urchie to a new task. As the drone skulked towards its target, Kyle slept a dreamless sleep. He awoke with a start at some kind of shattering. He had fallen asleep in the living room listening to the late-night radio. Transmissions from Earth and old-time tunes, which were still playing as he got up. He tried to shake the disorientation settling in his joints and cautiously approached the front-facing windows. No signs of damage. He peered through the gloaming at the dormant streetlights and the empty pavements. Nothing stirred as he examined the front-door display and tested the locks. An ancient melody drifted through the house as he moved into the bedroom and turned the lights on. It was Norah Jones’s Come Away With Me, a song he remembered his grandmother often sang softly in his childhood home. He didn’t notice the fragments of glass and trail of blood on the floor where something was dragged along. As Norah sang about cloudy days and knee-high grass, he gaped at the incomprehensible sight facing him. It looked like a melting mannequin’s head, moulded in crude mimicry of Celina’s features, dangling on top of a tangle of wires spouting out from under the bed. Its eyelids fluttered violently and its lips twitched. Its mouth and eyes opened wide as if it were surprised to see him. “Llllll…Llllll…Love”, it croaked. “Love. Love. Me. Love. Me. Lovemelovemelovemelovemeloveme.”

Head Popping

Tom felt the familiar angst that preceded the emergence of a spot on his forehead. He put his finger on it, feeling it ready to blossom beneath his skin. It wasn’t visible to anyone but him yet. It was the vanguard of accursed acne, a blemish, a blight, one of many unwanted pockmarks. “Bad company”, he called them, ever since those horrible teenage years when they would pepper his face and ruin his life. They were a constant barrier, an oily veil between him and his peers. During particularly prominent breakouts, he couldn’t bear to look anyone in the eye. It would be like looking into a supernova of pure judgment. He was an aesthetic disgrace, repulsive with his army of whiteheads and blackheads peering out from every pore. If only they were extra eyes. At least they would serve a function then, grace him with a dozen new perspectives. They were worse than useless: they were nature’s insult, only there to cause distress and disgust.  

He used every cream he could lay his hands on. They didn’t help. The ads were lies, featuring smiling beauties rubbing their hands over their smooth and glowing skin. They didn’t need any help; he did. They were the perfect antithesis to his craggy moon of a face. He was a boiling egg, about to crack and spray the walls with foul-smelling yolk. It wasn’t fair. If it weren’t for the bad, bad company, those marauding intruders of blood and pus, he could be, if not handsome exactly, then unremarkable. No one would laugh behind his back or look at him in pity.  

Then gradually, for no other reason he could tell other than the passage of time, the symptoms started subsiding. He was relieved. Bring on aging, bring on the lines and wrinkles, anything but this degrading scourge. He could finally join the rest of the human species and be ugly in a normal, boring way. These days he only suffered from occasional whiteheads, and they wouldn’t last long. They were still unpleasant reminders of past misery and he preferred to have minimal interactions with others when they occurred. On days he had the luxury to hide away until they cleared up, he would. When he couldn’t do that, he would do everything his power to avoid acknowledging them.  

That worked pretty well until Nancy showed up. He liked Nancy. She brought him out of his squeamish skin, showed him that it was ok to jump headfirst now and then and that he could laugh at himself, that not everything is a matter of life and death, that re-invention is possible. There was only one problem, and it was a major one. She loved to squeeze and pop the whiteheads. He could never hide them from her. As soon as she noticed them, she would get an awful, gleeful look, as if she were a large cat and there was a limping mouse just outside reach.  

This morning’s blistering intrusion would be the worse one yet. He felt it in his gut. He broke into a cold sweat at the thought of the ordeal ahead. She was still sleeping. It was the start of the weekend. He didn’t even have the escape of work. What if he kept his eyes shut and tried to sleep some more? Would that reverse the process? Of course not. What if he feigned illness all day with his head buried in pillows? What if he wore a bandana, or a beanie? She’d see right through him. He walked into the bathroom, steadied himself and looked into the mirror. To his terror, there was already a section of the surface area that was an angry red. He was lost in a swirl of panicked thoughts. It’s enflamed. It’s going to be worse than ever! He could rub it, make it go away. No, that will only enrage it. He had to stop thinking about it. Stress always makes them worse. There is a rotting elephant in the room, shambling forth with cruel intent. Something was even stranger than usual. The spot seemed to shift, and, in a blink, it was no longer red: it was a bulbous yellow globe. He hid his face and kneeled in front of the sink for a long while. He glanced back and it was still there, slimy and snug between his eyebrows, pulsating almost imperceptibly.  

As he turned to leave, he nearly crashed into Nancy standing in the doorway. She was gaping at him, her eyes sparkling, spit lines forming at the corners of her mouth. She was mesmerised. 

“It – it’s wonderful!”, she gasped.  

“Nancy, please don’t touch it. Not this time. This one’s all wrong, I can feel it. I’ll go back to bed, wait it out. No one else can see me this way”, he begged.  

Her eyes did not lose their glint. Quite the opposite.  

“No one has to. I’ll make it go away. There’s so much jammed up in there. Oh, it’s ready to go! Let me touch it, just the once. I’m only going to test it, don’t worry. If it’s not there yet, I’ll stay away, promise.” 

He instinctively brought his arms up in defence. 

“No, no, please, it’s too big, it’ll leave a nasty scar. What if there are eggs in there? You know those stories of people with bugs in their skin? What if it breaks and there are centipedes all over your hand?” 

“That’s stupid, centipedes don’t do that.” 

“Spiders? Spiders do! What if it’s a spider nest?” 

“Come here, it’s going to feel so good when it’s done, I promise.” 

“What if my head explodes? I can hear it growing, stay away!” 

He walked back into the bathroom, his options dwindling. She advanced on him with twitching eyelids and grasping hands. He feigned to the right. She took his bait. He bolted over the bathtub to her left, tearing the shower curtain off in his mad dash, tumbling outside on all fours. She groaned and grabbed his ankles. He kicked her away and crawled into the storage cupboard, trying to close the door behind him. She was too fast, jumping on his back and pulling his hair back. He made a desperate lunge for the mop in the corner, using it in blind backhanded stabs to get her off him. One of them landed with a thud and she screamed, letting him go. Holding the mop like a lance, he pushed her further back and scrambled over her into the living room. He tripped over his feet and landed through the glass coffee tabletop with a deafening crash. He cradled the mop and whimpered in a foetal position, shards gleaming all around him.  

He could hear her panting in the hallway. She got up and slowly walked into the room.  

“Just a pop”, she growled. “One quick pop.” 

She sat down next to him and took his head into her arms. She delicately brushed his hair off his forehead and leaned close.  

“I can hear it too”, she whispered. “It’s calling to me. It needs me to do this so badly.”  

Tom had no fight in him left. There would be no shouting and pleading against his fate. His tongue, his skull, his entire body vibrated in unison with the new growth. He felt safe, at the right place at the right time. He was a freshly crafted humming instrument. He was an aquatic embryo deep underwater, learning to breathe. The pulse on his forehead was life itself. The pus-filled pustule was not a parasite. It was the concentrated sum of his desires. It craved to be caressed, fondled, and fingered until it burst, showering the world with its burning affection. There would be a torrent of new sensations for everyone to share. No more hurt, no more fear, no more uncertainty, only magnificent sliding forms with multicoloured liquid insides.  

“Do it”, he said, “Do it now.”  

“Yes”, she moaned. She put her thumbs and forefingers around the suppurative sphere. It was soft and welcoming. It reminded her of the bright red cellophane candy wrappers she toyed with while waiting for her mum to pick her up at school. It was going to be so satisfying. She quivered in anticipation of the warm stream on her palms. She took a deep breath and pinched.  

She was sitting on the floor staring at a discarded mop and broken glass. “Have I been sleepwalking?”, she wondered. That’s dangerous. She should do something about that. She swept the shards and walked through the house, which seemed emptier than usual. She should do something about all this unused space too. She should go for a run, clear her head. These winter mornings always put her in a contemplative mood. She brushed her teeth, changed to her running clothes and left, closing the door on a silent house.  

Skeleton Dance

This is not a story about my old copy of Jason and the Argonauts. We watched it so many times with my mom that the VHS player started growling like a trapped bear cub and it took longer to spit out the tape every time. The stop motion skeletons were my favourite. Aren’t they everyone’s favourite? Ray Harryhausen at his best. The Children of the Hydra’s Teeth standing in formation with their swords and shields, slowly advancing like they’re readying for a waltz. We called them Karl Skellingtons. I don’t remember who started it. It made us laugh, which is the main thing. The Karl Skellingtons scream without lungs, lunging towards our foolhardy hero like a malicious wave of maracas. He dives off a cliff in desperation and they follow him to a watery grave. That scene involved seven plastic skeletons thrown after a stuntman, which had to be captured in one take. No second chances to kill your movie monsters. All those fake bones, lost at sea. I loved that movie. I can never rewatch it.

This is not a story about the lunar eclipse the night before we graduated. The shadows formed pools of raven hollows and the moon was rotting orange. Its face was the face of a capricious child, ready to smile a world-rending smile. We headed into the graveyard that night, fuelled by a steady supply of spirits, flashlights at hand. Everyone was there: Seth, Erica, Tammy, and Alexander. Sulking “don’t you dare call me Alex” Alexander, bitter beyond his years, wiry like poison ivy. He stole glances at me with a mixture of stubbornness, naked longing, suppressed hope and hurt. He tried to kiss me again that night. He hadn’t tried in almost a year. I thought the last gentle let-down would stick. I thought he was over it, that we could be better, that I could save the boy next door. We had clicked as lonely kids, brought together by trivially common bullying. Alexander and Ophelia, waving from a sepia-toned postcard. We wrote notes to each other, pretended the schoolyard was a stage, hid during gym class, weathered in unison our hormonal humiliations. We laughed at hipsters while copying their clothing and pretending to know all the bands too. We showed each other bits of messed up slashers and compilations of accidents. WINTER OF FAIL, the captions would say. I always wonder if I’m unwittingly watching a snuff film of someone’s last day on Earth in some of those clips. Your surfboard slipped. You fell down the stairs. A giggling stranger has captured your twisting, pain-wracked demise. Everybody laugh now. Alexander and Ophelia, friends for life. Everybody laugh. 

This is not a story about the friend zone. I’d like to find whoever invented the concept of the friend zone. Find him and punch him in the gonads. The friend zone, turning connection into a challenge, kindness into an investment and friendship into failure. Our relationship should be a transaction governed by simple rules, he thinks. I give, you give. I listen, you give. I want, you give. You are pretty: you are mine. Sex is intimacy. Penetration is victory. After I’m done with Mr Friend Zone, I’m coming for Indiana Jones, and Han Solo, and James Bond, and all the self-satisfied action bros who taught him that no means yes, that it’s not rape if one person wants it enough, that it’s not abuse if it’s playful. I’d love to round them all up and lock them in a room, dooming them to one another’s company where no cameras can reach. The first time he put his lips on mine, I was surprised. I was in the middle of sharing a recent heartbreak and I needed him to understand how fundamentally unfair life was. He took that as an invitation. I explained that I loved him as a friend. He was stunned, uncomprehending. The word was an insult and a condemnation. He accused me of being blind to what we had. You’ve been staring at The One this whole time and you didn’t even know it. Don’t you see how lucky we are? I did not. He withdrew for a while and spent more time online. I imagine other men there enthusiastically confirming the horrible truth: we are all cruel harpies who thrive on suffering. Vulnerability must be avoided at all costs. Bravado must conceal weakness. He said all the right things for a while. He didn’t try to be the centre of my attention. He seemed to accept our expanding group and my occasional flings. Until he tried to kiss me again and I shook my head, please no. He grabbed my arm and whispered something vicious. He knew which buttons to push. I hadn’t planned to experience that kind of disappointment that night, but when do things go according to plan? We joined the others and there we were, drinking and dancing and beckoning our future amid the tombstones. 

This is not a story about the peculiar environmental effects of an unusual cosmic alignment. Why should the position of rocks in space have any bearing on decaying matter? I don’t know. I never believed in horoscopes and signs and the rest of that exploitative nonsense. Perhaps the same would have happened in the middle of a bright sunlit day. It might be that some people end up at the wrong place at the wrong time and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. All I know is that it was outrageous and stupid and utterly inexplicable and it happened. The dead rose. They burst out of the dirt all around us and just like that, we were surrounded. They regarded us for a time, with not a shred of flesh on them. Just mud and grass, and insects nesting inside their empty eye sockets. Vacant grins on beings that can do nothing but grin. They lifted their arms and pointed at us. Then they somehow shifted their position and they were on top of us. There was only a shimmer and a rustle; I didn’t see them move. They made no sound as they ran their hands through our hair and clasped our heads in a sturdy grip. I looked at my friends as they faced the inevitable. They held us there while we stared into the cavernous depths of their open mouths. Seth fell first. They let him slide to the ground like spent snakeskin. Others followed, left to lie where they dropped without a trace of a recognisable expression. I felt myself drift and fade. It was then that I frantically sought something familiar: the clickety clack of the Karl Skellingtons with their clumsy pirouettes and silly shrieks. All motion stops and starts in the old epic battle. Jason shows up and brandishes his blade in practised flair. Skeletons falling from a cliff, helplessly twitching. Skeletons in operating theatres, standing guard. Skulls and crossbones on pirate flags. The knee bone’s connected to the thigh bone: doin’ the skeleton dance.  I was suddenly free. They let go, momentarily. I grabbed Alexander’s hand and pulled him away. We ran as fast as we could, just like when we were little and we raced. Only I was faster. I was always faster. I lost sight of him. I turned around one final time before I escaped, alone but alive. 

This is not a story about the way his eyes looked that last time, before bony fingers were wrapped around his shoulders and he was dragged back: frightened, regretful, pale blue eyes. What I felt above all then was not guilt, nor sorrow: it was relief. Overwhelming relief that it wasn’t me back there, that I made it. The other feelings came later. I saw him when I slept, and I saw him when I woke. These days he doesn’t visit me as often. His image is frayed around the edges and it’s gliding into obscurity. I won’t stop it.

This is not a story about me versus him. Ophelia versus Alexander. Ophelia wins. The patriarchy is dismantled. Our resentments persist and our mutual hatred is justified. Opposing armies gather, eternally at odds. No, I’d like to believe that he was capable of learning, that we all are. We might not have salvaged a friendship, but we could have eventually settled on understanding and respect. We could look back with affection for the journey, with all the flaws and missteps of life as work in progress. This isn’t where we ended up. I am here, and he is back there, where no skeletons dance and time has no meaning.

This is not a story about anything in particular. I just happened to be the one to tell it, and it won’t end here. It’s your turn now.

Your Gift

I remember how beautiful you were: as beautiful as only something that was never meant to live can be.  I saw you staring at me on the dance floor with a hunger that stopped me in my tracks. I felt as if I had been stumbling along all my life in rehearsal for this moment.  No one else seemed to register your presence. They did not matter. There was only you. Everything melted away and we stood on the surface of a silently spinning planet, contemplating each other. I was transfixed and you held me in your sway with the casual cruelty of a butterfly collector. You approached me in a manner that I could not comprehend. One minute you were all the way across the room and the next you were close, so close that I could smell the sparks flying off your skin and the dried blood in your breath. You touched me like an open flame and I roared in response, guided where you wanted me to go. We slid through the crowds until we were out in the open air and the sobering cold. I wanted to speak, but my voice was gone as if it had never been used. I could not tell if my feet were touching the floor any more as you carried me through the night. 

We arrived at the park where the street lights were dim and you pushed me up against a tree, ancient bark whispering through me. You lingered with my hair in your hands and gently exposed my neck.  I remember detaching from my senses and observing our scene as a diorama of an unlikely encounter. Far off into the distance there rose a dark wave of all the emotions I should be feeling: elation, terror, revulsion. It was too remote to make a difference. I was numb, helpless, a bystander in the path of a cyclone. You drew your lips back and revealed your sharpened fangs. It was like a dumb late-night flick, a bad prop, a party trick. There was nothing fake about the pain I felt when you bit into me. I was back in my body and I could experience my vitality slowly ebbing away. I was playing the role I was always meant to play: a vessel for your unnatural, unquenchable thirst. I knew in my bones that this was it. I wanted more from life then. Why should it stop there before I came into my own? Who was going to remember me? I had so many plans and hopes and you took it all away from me.

I should have taken more care with my final mortal thoughts. Regrettably, there was more after all.  You gave me something in return. It was not a new triumphant life, as much as you have waxed lyrical about it. It was the key to a twilight realm of a parasitic existence. You took me under your wing: a pretty playmate to keep you company when the nights grow long and the whims are strong. You taught me how to hunt, how to momentarily stem the pulsating wailing in my veins. I did to many what you did to me, except granting them our so-called gift. You never showed me how to do that and I wonder if you even knew how it happened in the first place. It could be that my rebirth was a fluke. Be that as it may, you claimed that it was precious and rare and reserved for only a few, perhaps no one new from now on. Apex predators hunt alone or in pairs. I have never met another bearing our affliction. We might be the only aberrations to carry this baleful burden.

I eventually tired of your leash. I slipped away and I began hunting alone. For a while, it was enough. I thought I could embrace my condition as a power beyond anything I’ve ever known. The power to enthrall and snuff someone’s light out as I saw fit, all in service to my eternal undeath. When I chose a victim, it was as if it was always meant to be. Every decision of their paltry lives led them to me and I made sure not a single drop was wasted before I discarded them to be forgotten as the years went by. I was the only one who held on to the memories. I came to understand that I, too, was a slave to my circumstances. Power predicated upon others is no power at all. I needed them and their easily extinguished life force. Without them I was a mewling infant, squealing for its milk. The need was everything. I measured time by the intervals from short-lived satisfaction to when the drive to drink became unbearable again. Yes, I’m a seductive myth. Yes, stories are written about our kind. No one sees us for what we are. We are powerless against our immortality’s imperatives. Desperate and alone, casting shadows like monstrous bats while cowering from the suggestion of sunlight. Pathetic in our glowering guises. Slobbering and ravenous and doomed to wander from one fleeting fix to another. 

I looked at mortals with their neuroses and addictions and flickering lives and I envied them.  Some lose themselves in menial pursuits and some try to preserve and enhance every second. Ultimately, they all end up in the same place and that is their great, unrecognised blessing. Transience makes an indelible mark upon the world. What can be more meaningful than the promise of an end and a chance to make the most of a brief existence? This is my most terrible truth: there is no end for me. I found that out that first day I gave up and waited for the sun to finally obliterate me. Here is what happened: I cried and I burned and I was trapped in the most excruciating agony. I was blinded and my skin crackled and charred. There was no comforting void, no relieving silence. Instead, I crawled into a gutter where I lay as a slab of pulverised meat. My feebleness and immobility led me to yet another unwanted discovery: the absence of sustenance is not lethal either. As parched as I was, my thirst just became another source of torment. I had to stew on my suffering until I healed enough to feed on vermin to restore my strength and resume my half-hearted routine. 

Every fable is a lie: nothing can release me from this purgatory. Holy water? No more effective than rain in a puddle. Crucifixes? I wear them in a mockery of divinity. Stakes? They hurt like hell but as with everything else, the wounds heal. Garlic? Utterly useless. Silver bullets? Wrong address. Decapitation? Impossible. I can tear my neck open, slice my fingers and hack at my feet, yet as hard as I try, there is no severing of limbs. I remain sadly solid. I have invented innumerable ways to test my boundaries and I keep crushing against the same old depressing fact: I persist. Impermanence lies forever beyond my grasp. How do I wile away the passing of interminable aeons in this indestructible form? In the throes of my despair, an answer dawned on me, so obvious in its simplicity. It was high time to become reacquainted with my maker. 

At long last, my purpose is clear. It is you. You kept me going for a reason: you can now give meaning to this half-life with a violent and prolonged penance. It was so easy to follow and sneak up on you when you least expected it. You had become sluggish in your self-assurance. I observed you for a while: your trivial nightly rituals and your flashes of unchallenged power. I could see that you, too, were aimless and bored. I was tempted to let you carry on as you have. Could that be punishment enough? No. Time has not led me to kindness and wisdom. Instead, my spite has no limits. I had to demonstrate the depths of my gratitude. I pounced, and here we are.

I have lost count of how long I have kept you starved and bound here. By now you are a skeleton in an ill-fitting skin suit. Your flesh is pockmarked and saggy, your fingernails are long and yellow and your hair is wispy and white. Your teeth fell off so easily from your sweet, rotten gums. Your eyes, those smouldering eyes that held me on the spot on that fateful evening are now so deeply sunken in their sockets that they might as well not be there at all. You are constantly twitching and scratching at an itch that will not pass. Your moans are music to my ears. You are lost in your bloodlust, reduced to your base cravings. I have made sure to fill the space with mirrors. For as much as you can see, you can behold your true nature. You are finally exposed, far from your former glory, such as it was. I sometimes bring others here so you can watch me feed and relish in them. I save the final drips of scarlet so I can let them fall to the floor while you grovel and beg. None for you. Not now, not ever. 

This is not what I asked for, but it will do. It turns out that we were made for each other after all. You moulded me into the monster that I am and I helped you move past the trappings of your predatory nature into the kind of anguish that you had never dared to dream possible. We are locked in a perpetual dance of domination, a hateful embrace for the ages. I am yours in loathing and you are mine in misery. I am never letting go of your withered hand as we enter new domains of depravity. You and me until all stars explode in celebration of our unholy union and the cosmos devours itself. Who knows? Perhaps that will not be the end either. I now have hope. Thank you for this gift.