house of 1000 stories

This all happened an awfully long time ago. For my latest blog (fickle? Moi?) go to:

Biography of a Beatific Beatnik: Positively Positive about Everything (Probably).

For my older stories and posts, follow the links on the bottom right of the screen.

Labels: THE FUTURE

National Novel Writing Month

So yeah, Ii'm participating in NaNoWriMo this year. And this year, I'm going to actually do it. 2,000 words a day is fuck all, when you're unemployed.

CHEKKIT, it's bollocks - I have no plot or anything:


Out of the closet and into the fire - a shit novel by someone who doesn't care enough about anything to be anything else.

Wishing to avoid overusing the word (or should that be letter?) I – but wanting to tell my own story is a bit of a downer. There are so many of us who don’t have a clue. I don’t know what I thought would happen. I mean, there are thousands of things all around us that tell us how to be a kid, how to be a teenager and how to be an adult – but nothing about that transitional period. Nothing that says we don’t graduate from university with a decidedly average degree and slip straight into a job and city life with the one bedroom flat – that’s flat spelt A-P-A-R-T-M-E-N-T, with a Cat and a gay best friend and lots of hilarious dates and shenanigans being an oh-so-liberated twentysomething.

There’s no handbook anywhere that says when you’ve put yourself through uni, worked every hour of every day that you’ll even be able to resort to shitty call centre work. There’s nothing that tells you how to feel when your work in-experienced boyfriend goes and lands a job before you do, his A levels, degree and CV are inferior but seemingly better than yours.

Your cynical best friend living across the hall (in a shared we-still-wish-we-were-students house, we established earlier that you don’t get the A-P-A-R-T-M-E-N-T flat and we must remember we are neither Monica nor Chandler) assures you in his sarcastic yet somehow caring roundabout way that you are overqualified, and that you will both either run away and open a bookshop, quaffing wine all day in the style of withnail and I, or you’ll flit to sunnier climes to start a new life away from life in a norther town. But your belief in this is hindered somewhat by the very point that started your whining, that you don’t actually have a job, and the chances that you can escape to anywhere without your landlord, Mr. Husein (no relation to one time Iraqi dictator turned convict Sadam, although the similarities are quite scary) being able to find you are about as thick as, well, my body of work.

And then the phonecall comes.

That first rejection. That stinging, stupidly acute sting of normality, of the idea that I’m now just like everyone else, just like I always thought I wouldn’t be. I don’t know if any of this is any good, or anything, I don’t even have a concept to work with. I’m really just starting from scratch.

Okay, so this is not my first attempt at writing. I sit here all day, staring at the same old pages on myspace and livejournal, refreshing and reloading all day. Now my housemates have all got jobs, I get quite a lot of time to myself, to (ahem) write and to look for jobs. Of course, in reality what I do is sit around all day wishing for something amazing to happen. Something to rival the fantasticality of Labyrinth, something to out-wonder Terry Prachett’s Discworld.

Today, wake up, as always. Well, not really as always. I was a student for four years, and old habits die hard – some days I won’t make it out of bed in time for Neighbours, let alone get up in the morning. Today though, is not one of those days. I’d love to say it was a day where I awoke feeling different, where I knew today would be the day when something changed (which also coincidentally happens to be the first day of this novel, but I’m not that lucky). Also, I’m not quite late-twenties enough yet to wake up with a cat licking my face or something equally pathetic and Bridget Jones-like. So I wake up alone, again. With my boyfriend in the room downstairs, again. I stick my feet into my slippers (shaped like huge candyfloss monster feet and about five years old, off the market, of course) and half pad, half stumble down the flight of stairs from the third floor into the bathroom.

The joys of sharing a house with three boys. Fuck me. I manage to somehow dodge the piss-soaked carpet around the toilet and kind of hover over the 1920’s vintage (read: old and shit) porcelain toilet for long enough to relieve myself of the night before’s excessive tea intake. Of course, there’s no toilet roll – when is there ever? – so I do the old shake, rattle and roll and then hop over the piss again to the sink. Thankfully, the bathroom isn’t as disgustingly full of mould now I’ve painted over it. Oh yes, none of this cleaning malarkey. Gloss over what doesn’t work, that’s my motto. That’s probably also the reason that I don’t have a job or anything as well, I muse as I extract my toothbrush from the grime on the top of the bathroom cabinet and excavate a few old slivers of toothpaste from the flat, rolled up tube. I’ve got nice teeth. Through the toothpaste flecks on the mirror, I can see that. Shame about the rest. Oh, you’ve heard it all before. Protagonist female of any contemporary work of fiction. Hair just a little bit too straggley, just the wrong side of being brown. Just small enough to be cute and tough, and not so skinny that’s she’s not going to come across as a ‘real woman’. Yep, you’ve heard it all before because that’s what – in my experience – 90% of women aged over 21 look like. That’s why we like them to be the heroines of our literary fiction. We don’t want to read about some skinny blonde with massive tits getting her own way and writing a stunning novel to mass critical acclaim. Oh no. We want someone who’s failing as bad as we are in life. We want someone we can identify with.

So, here’s hoping I’m failure enough for you. I seem to be doing a pretty decent job of being crap at everything I do, lately.

However, I’m not going to beat myself up about this new sensation that people are calling rejection. I pop into the room over that hall from the bathroom to say hi to Jack, only to be greeted with an empty room. Ah, so it must be a weekday, then.

Which means I have the house to myself. Again.

Plodding down the second set of stairs, I flick the kettle on. I’ve got to do something today. I can’t face another day of being out-camwhored on the internet by skinny sixteen year olds. I could go into town, but then again, what for? I have no job there, I’ve asked in every shop from Forbidden Planet (“not cool enough”) to BHS (“too cool”) and so by default, I have no money to spend there. Finding, by some miracle, a clean cup and pouring the water over it, I muse over my options.

Go for a walk - Don’t fancy a walk.

Go on the internet - Bored of the internet.

Write some of my novel - Can’t write anymore.

Clean the house…

Now there’s a thought. I could always clean. The house is a shithole, to be fair. And if I clean up, then I won’t feel as guilty about not going down to the jobcentre and trying to find somewhere to work that doesn’t involve sitting within 20 metres of smackheads and teenage mums (Gotta love the jobcentre).

Cleaning it is, then.

As luck would have it, when I moved in with Jack, Ian and Rob, my mum must have has the premonition (or the good hunch, judging by both their sex and their previous abodes) that they were a bunch of scruffy bastards. Which is great news for me, because she’d kitted me out with the failsafe MUM KIT OF CLEAN which involved everything from washing up liquid and bleach, things which I am quite comfortable and pretty well accommodated with – to things that I would never dream of picking up in a million years including a bug bomb (why would I want to bomb my own house?) and some elaborate canister with a long protruding plastic snout that looks quite sexual. I still haven’t figured out what that one’s for. Some of the pieces of The Kit are just downright exciting, they look like they could do some real damage, or even suffice if you run out of vodka and happen to have some spare mixer lying around. Cillit Bang! Sounds like something you’d get down at one of the posh new bars in the city centre, six quid a drink and bound to make you choke on your own vomit by the end of the night. Amazing.

I reckon it’s time to get kitted out. So what do I do? Let’s see…outfit. I go back up the stairs to the third floor and into Ian’s cupboard. There’s a huge white shirt in there, that I’ve seen him wear once, for his graduation a year ago, so I figure that he won’t mind me borrowing it on my mission. I get down to my bra and big old granny pants and button the shirt up. Next, into my own pit of a room to root around a bit for a pinny, or something that will suffice as one. I worked part time in a coffee shop for three heady, glorious years when I was at university, and the uniform there included pinnies. Scrounging around in the back of my wadrobe, I notice a little hole with a chink of weird light coming through it. I say weird light, because the bulb in my room has been blown for as long as I can remember, and my window....

TO BE CONTINUED.

Right, my latest effort, which isn't great, to be fair. Needs a lot of work.

A Lack of Colour
Extract from a novel
CHAPTER ONE:
In The Beginning

Do you ever get the feeling that you’re not alive anymore? I don’t mean that you’re dead – but simply that you’re not living – you’re just existing? I know that sounds like a load of philosophical bullshit, I know that it’s opening the can of proverbial worms. Maybe it’s a bit pretentious. But I suppose when you’ve trawled yourself through the wasteland of university life that is sparse and poor, dotted only with foreign films, fancy complicated theories and chats about books in coffee houses, then this is where you end up. A little bit fancy, a little bit complicated, a little bit pretentious.
My entire existence rests in this room, everything in it washed over in a kind of grey sense of defeat. There is no faith, no hope, no light to be gleaned from this bedsit. The light filters through the grime on the window, passes through the green of the empty bottles and hits me, dim and dull, hangover like a club to the head.
As I tilt my head to one side on the pillow, I feel the accumulation of three years of university life style slide, like acid rain from one side of my brain to the other. Last night’s red wine bottles sit devoid of content, like Catholics after confession. Two on the table, one empty and spent on the floor of my bedroom. I should get up and make coffee. I should sit at my computer and type reams and reams of genius fiction, but for now, all the hangover will let me do is roll my head from one side to the other, trying to find a cool spot on the pillow, in the close heat of the bedroom. Outside, it could be January, it could be June. But inside, the warmth of the night’s wine and the girl sharing the pillow make it impossible to find a cool spot prevents my morning-after state of mind from even knowing what day it is. The light on the answering machine in the corner flashes red. Messages. From who, I don’t know. In my mind, as the girl sleeps on, I wonder who it could be. People don’t call me. I’m not the kind of person who gets calls. Whoever it is, I decide then and there that I will not call them back. If I can haul myself into the kitchen without waking her, I can make a cup of coffee and maybe even have a shower, and then she’ll leave and I’ll be able to write. It seems selfish. She’s a nice girl. No angel, but nice none the less. But nice girls do not muses make. Nightly, I will sit, crying into my keyboard, tears trying in vain to ruin the few vague etchings I’ve managed to make in pencil. Then comes the wine, always the wine. Living in a slum bed sit above an off license in Leeds isn’t exactly the romantic picture of a struggling novelist that you would normally opt for; where’s the candles, the Parisian night, the rooftops of Notre Dame Cathedrale? Where is the absinthe and the beautiful girls ready to inspire such creative genius as I’d like to think I was? It lies to me to spend my evenings drinking cheap red wine, normally costing about two quid and labelled ‘Dionysus’ from the off license downstairs. The wine is almost inevitably followed by ending up in bed with some random girl that I’ll phone, maybe a friend from a while back. The girls are all too willing to come over to the flat, ring the bell whose chime is almost a death knell by now, ascend the stairs that shake with every step, put fist to cracked paint on my door, turn the tarnished brass handle and join me in red wine, self pity and sex. Join me in worshipping at the alter of self-destruction and then leave in the morning, never to be spoken to again. Or at least until the next time.
The hangover is still managing to make my brain too big for my skull, luckily this time no nausea ensues. I swing my legs out from underneath the bedcovers – they part from the bed like tarnished rain clouds making way for rays of sunshine – the air is still warm, and when I look over to the window – the curtains remain unclosed, they are never closed, I don’t like to shut out life, however much I seem to despise it sometimes. The filth on the window glitters with early sunshine. The clock perched next to the computer, like a little bird; eager to sing it’s song on the mornings that I allow it, that is when I set my alarm, which rarely happens – reads a quarter to nine in the morning. I almost smile, but the ache in my cranium will not allow it. The knowledge that the girl has to be at work at nine gives me excuse for freedom.
I turn back to the bed where she sits, her eyes wide and shot with veins from the excess of the previous night. The scared look of uncertainty. The glance at the bird clock hopping by the computer. The utter of expletives. She is out of bed and into her jeans in a movement that seems almost fluid. Dancing out of the room with something that is just a little bit less than grace, she flings her farewell out behind her, the words are tin cans tied to a ‘just married’ sign on a car. She knows I won’t be calling her. She’s not that kind of girl. This is about inspiration, this is not about romance.
I am still uninspired.
I let my feet carry me across the tiles, down the hallway. Some tiles are cracked; some are just so dirty you wouldn’t be able to tell if they were cracked or not. In the kitchen, the kettle is hiding, nestled between piles of cups and plates that have been in need of cleaning for what could be weeks. Time seems irrelevant at present. There is nothing more important than starting to write, than sitting down and letting the words be as cathartic as confession. I see the kettle, almost shying away from my hand, curled up tight and wary between the dirty dishes. I catch it eventually, and manage to fill it with water and make a cup of coffee. Luckily, I have milk. Back up the hallway, my bare feet almost sticking to the floor with every step, I leave the coffee by the bird clock and the computer and the unused pencils and detour towards the bathroom.
The one redeeming feature of the flat - if you can imagine redemption is able to be found in such a place - is the shower. It’s kind of the only place in the building where everything seems okay. It’s not a mess like the kitchen is. My bathroom always seems sparkling. White and almost divine, the shower being my makeshift church, the water is my religion. Somewhere I can go to wash away the sins of the night before, and emerge from clean and refreshed, and filled with hope that by the time I return to the bird and the computer and the pencils, I will be inspired, I will be able to write. The redemption room deems it so. This optimism, this hope that is born with every new day will no doubt be the downfall of me.
I am not the kind of person to get ground down by things. Of course, in the dark, in the night, enveloped by the sheer scale of this ten hour secret of nightfall – I will despair, I will try, I will lose hope, I will drink, I will fuck, I will forget to let hope prevail. But then morning comes, and I see it as my new chance. As my new day. And my hopes will rise as high as I got the night before, when the red wine of my sins has been washed away in the church of the bathroom, I will sit at my computer, ready to pour out my soul into some great literary work, but it never comes. The bird clock sits and laughs, at first I think with me, then at me, and then the hours towards nightfall are slipping by so fast that he is just downright mocking me.
The phone rings.
My first feeling towards this is sheer, absolute terror. The message on the answering machine is still there, I have not listened to it. I never give my number to anyone. Ever. Not the girls, no one. The only person who ever calls me, and very rarely at that, is the Landlady. On the realisation that this is who it must be, my second feeling is panic. I have to answer it. I’ve been avoiding the issue of my overdue rent for weeks. There’s only so much that sex with your landlady will do, only so far it can get you before hard cash becomes the only option. The only option that is not available to me at present. What will I say when I do finally pick up the receiver?
A day stretches past as my hand - longer and whiter than usual - reaches, ghostlike for the phone. Almost as if I’ve become a ghost myself, I half expect my hand to simply slide through the instrument which vibrates gently against itself, an electronic baby shaking and crying in it’s digital cradle. My ghost picks up the baby, and like an estranged father, or indeed the ghost of a father, it does not know what to do. Or what to say. Shakily, pressing the grey plastic offspring to his mouth, the ghost-dad tries to speak. My voice, gravely with sleep and lack of coffee, grates against the smooth that greets me.
“Tom? Good morning,” The voice on the end of the line is smooth. Steady and consistent like the surface of a lake, it trickles out from the telephone baby, it soaks through the receiver into my skin, filling in the ghost parts and making me very aware of myself, of my movements and my expressions, although no one is here to see them other than the mirror which hangs by the door.
“Yes? Go-good morning,” Splash. My gravel breaks the calmness of her lake, a thousand tiny holes appear in the smooth surface.
“We need to talk,” The Landlady. The only woman to frequent my flat and to leave unscathed and un-violated. By me, at least. She’s the one violating me. She’s the one doing the scathing.
I acknowledge the need to talk, and she proceeds to smooth over the surface of the lake, now I’ve dived into it. I’m under the water, under her, and I don’t want to come back up, don’t want to break that perfect surface. I try not to, for so long, making noises with my breath just enough to keep her talking, keep her flowing, keep me drowning and sinking under this lake of a woman.
I can’t hold it any longer.
I break the surface of that lake like a missile fired underwater. I shoot out straight away, breaking her, destroying the calmness and the sereneness of the lake.
“I’m leaving. Can’t do this anymore. Can’t stay in this shit hole a day longer. I’ll drop the keys at yours, I’ll be out by tomorrow,” I swear violently as I throw the baby back into it’s cradle. I’m the ghost again. The lake can dry the fuck up for all I care. I’m having vodka in my coffee and it’s not even nine-thirty. Jesus.
Reaching into the recesses of my cupboard, the large walk-in one in my bedroom, I try in vain to search for the battered brown suitcase that I came here with a year ago. Or was it two? So little has happened, it’s hard to tell. The non-event that was my life here is stocked in this cupboard. We start with good intentions, the checklist of my soul ready for this stock-take heartbreak.
The cupboard could be a well, or a mineshaft. I’d throw myself down it in a second if I thought it’d get me anywhere. Bring on the seventh level of Hell, I’ll pack my suitcase and start the journey there myself. The suitcase, however, has gone AWOL, and so I drag out a battered old hold-all, the paint crumbled off it so it says ‘didas’ due to the flaking of an ‘A’; I throw whatever I can find into it. A couple of shirts, some CDs, a tape that I made in sixth form. Whatever I’ve left, I don’t care. All I can think about is getting out of there. Forget the now. Forget the blonde haired girls and the sex in place of rent and the empty whiskey bottles. Just start new, start again.
Shake it off. Fuck it.
Straining to hold back tears for the fiftieth time this week, I walk down the crumbling stairs to the street, throwing the flimsy door back into it’s frame as I leave. It rattles; the glass might have cracked there and then if it wasn’t already shattered in a pile on the floor.
Hating my writing, myself, everything, I head down the road, avoiding piles of dog shit and cracks in the pavement, stepping over broken glass and what might have once been a kid’s pushchair, but is now a burnt out frame. Grand theft pram. God, I love this neighbourhood. I swing around the corner, and then there it is.
My salvation.
Shining gold from it’s huge dirt-stained glass windows, the doors thrown open, welcoming one, welcoming all to come in, forget their troubles and worship. Benches thoughtfully placed in the greenery surrounding the majestic building, it’s old stone walls offering comfort, salvation, redemption to everyone who enters it’s doors. I push through the heavy oak doorway, smoke hangs in the air inside like incense. A low hum, a chant of some kind rises from the back, strangely comforting and filled with passion, a group of voices rising and falling in elation and disappointment at the sermon being testified to them by the big-screen TV. The commentator on the football match is their preacher. I walk up to the altar, lined with pumps and glasses to cleanse myself of my sins. I’m here for communion, for the weekly forgiveness. Give me the communion wine, in a pint glass. Pour it out for many, for the forgiveness of sins. Give me the bread that is your body; make it salt and vinegar flavoured in a packet. I’m here to confess all, to be forgiven my sins and make it all go away.
I’m praying fucking hard today.
I’m here to meet my maker, so to speak. I’ve never met him before, in fact I’m not entirely sure he exists, or whether he knows if I do. I’ve got a good idea though, that the man in the corner, almost invisible, is my maker. Not my God, but the man I would have probably called Dad if he’d been around when I was a kid. Looking at him, it’s hard to deny that we’re connected in some way. It’s not unlike those endless nights spent sat drinking at the bar, my only company being whatever of my reflection I can see nestled in between the bottles of Pernod and Blue Bols, the overly-ambitious cocktail ingredients sat as redundant and lonely as I am on the shelf.
Only this time, it’s not my reflection, at least not in the way a mirror might reflect. I’m looking at myself in twenty years time. My age, doubled. I wonder if my Mother would care that I was trying to find Him. I think about her last correspondence, a drunken garbled ‘Happy Birthday’ answer phone message two years ago and I decide that she wouldn’t mind. From my spot at the bar, I see my senior self lift his pint glass in the way that I do, his left hand gracefully encircling the drink, his little finger raised slightly, an out of place gesture, a faux sense of posh. Diamond in the rough, I’d call him, if I was one for clichés. Papa was a rolling stone. I’m not a diamond, but if geological metaphors are called for, I’m my own headstone, my fate yet to be read by others but etched deep into myself already.
I wonder if I’m clinging to things a little bit too much. I pick the label on the beer mat which houses my pint of piss-weak lager, the cardboard coming away underneath my fingernails, too long from neglect – or unbitten from lack of worry or care. I don’t see how we both ended up in the Royal Park pub in Leeds. We’re not from here. There’s nothing to make us gravitate towards this city. Our home is in Sheffield. The Steel City. The lack of steel, or rather the lack of jobs for people making steel was probably what had caused him to leave. My failed attempts at trying to get a degree were what dragged me kicking and screaming into West Yorkshire. That fizzled out quickly. Two years later I’m still sitting in the same pub, threatening to walk out of the same flat, still shagging the same old leather faced landlady to keep my head under some kind of roof, even if that roof has more holes than the stories we used to get told at Sunday School.
Two years and one phone call from my mother. Two years and two hundred sightings of what has to be my father. I can see how he could fail to recognise me, his vision skewed by ten pints a day. I mean, my own sight is focused by lager most of the time, but he just takes the piss. He must be in the pub from opening till closing. This is the same merry-go-round I ride every day I visit the pub. The horses painted with curiosity, regret, dread. I don’t think I’m going insane. I will talk to him one day, even if it’s only to prove that he exists, that he’s not just some company I dreamed up in my drunken haze to make me feel less alone. I drain my pint and nod to the barman.
“Same again, mate?”
My head sort of tips downward, more looking at the scratched counter than agreeing with him. I wonder if five pints is too much to have drank by two o’clock in the afternoon, and I decide that I don’t care.
Scratched into the bar, immortalised in chipped varnish and cheap wood are the words
‘LUFC’
‘BECKI LUVZ GAZ’
Profound. The pub suddenly strikes me not so much as a church, but as a schoolroom. The schoolmaster is looming over me now. It’s Maths. I hate Maths.
“One eighty please,”
Is he asking me a question? I don’t know the answer. I fish in my pocket to pull out some coins, my dinner money, but all that’s in there are what could be a conker and a couple of marbles.
“Slate?” I ask hopefully.
“Nah, mate. Sorry,” The teacher takes my pint away and reckons to pour it down the drain. I’ve got a feeling I’ll be in detention if I don’t make tracks soon, and besides, I have a hangover settling in from the night before. I wonder if Matron’s office is on my way home. Scraping my chair back across the stone floor, I hit something solid. Well, I say solid, I hit something that kind of gives way when I slam my chair back a little bit too hard. The action isn’t even from embarrassment at having no money to pay for a second pint. I’m way beyond embarrassment. The blockade to my chair-swinging antics turns out to be, in fact, extremely solid. The thing that was giving way was a huge beer gut. The solid part kind of hits home when this six-foot-something slab of man shoves what I first take to be an entire ham, but what on second glance appears to be his hand, into my chest.
“Got a problem, Faggot?” He asks me, polite and to the point.
I never know any better. I know I’m in the shit now; I’ll end up in detention or the Headmaster’s office for sure now. Fuck it.
“I think it’s you with the problem, darling,” The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them. I’m literally half his size. I’ve been living on cuppa soup for the last month due to actually having to pay rent this time, as I’ve been consistently too drunk to get it up for the landlady.
There’s one crack to my ribs that I remember, and then probably more. The man who probably gave me his y chromosome sits, wizened to bar room brawls. His eyes barely register it anymore. I kind of feel something clonk me around the back of the head, and then my insomnia seems to be a bit cured. I remember being asleep for a while.

* * *



CHAPTER TWO:
His eyes red with wine, and his teeth white with milk

I never, ever wake up feeling nice. I know ‘nice’ is a really crap word to use, but it’s sometimes the only feeling that you want. Whenever I wake up in the flat, I’m either freezing, or wet from the leaking roof, or I’ve got some little slag next to me, taking up the space in the bed and quite possibly rendering me infertile with some hideous disease, not that I care about preventing catching one enough to use a condom. Usually, there’s some creditor banging on the door, demanding I give them money that I simply don’t have. Or it’s the landlady, wanting her piece of me in exchange for this piece of shit room.
Every morning, my bones creak like a seventy year old, not someone in their twenties. My body aches like I’m a heroin addict who needs his next fix to get out of bed, only I don’t know which drug would fix the way I feel every day, if any. But today is different.
I open my eyes with caution, all too familiar with the searing pain that often accompanies my head after a trip to the pub and a disco dance with some bastard hooligan waiting to take out their football frustrations on the nearest ‘faggot’ which, to be fair, is usually me. I let the light slip between my eyelashes and get ready to groan at the aching. But it doesn’t come. I feel rested. I feel really, really nice. This feeling worries me somewhat, and I close my eyes again. I’m warm, dry and tucked up like a nativity play doll in a manger. My bed feels different. I feel different. I decide to give the light a second chance at sneaking past my eyelash gates. It does, and the light is sunny and golden. The light in Leeds is never sunny or golden. I feel the start of a wave of panic. Am I in jail? It wouldn’t be the first time I’d ended up in the cells. The worst part about being arrested is that I have no one to ring when it comes to my one phone call. It’s embarrassing. I think that’s why they just let me out, half the time. They pity me. It’s a horrible feeling, people pitying you. I don’t feel pitied at the moment though. And this bed’s too much like something you’d expect to sleep in at the Hilton to be a jail one. I finally open my eyes and look around. Oh God. It’s different to anything I expected.
I’ve woken up dead.
It’s the only conclusion that seems to make any sense. It’s not a thought I’ve ever had before, but I just seem to know that’s what’s happened. I’d think I was in a hospital, but – as I’m sure you can guess, yes, I’ve been there before and NHS emergency wards do not look like this. For a start, mine is the only bed in the room. It’s crazy. I look around, wondering if I’d stumbled across some LSD on the way home (wouldn’t be the first time for that, either). I appear to be still living in my flat, well, my bedsit, but it’s no longer a shit hole. The grey that washed over my bed the day before is gone. For a start, everything appears to be white. I just take it in and accept it, I don’t question it. I’m scared of what the answer might be if I do.
I’m in my flat, in my bed, but it’s all perfect. I swing out of bed, I’m naked. So I make my way over to my wardrobe, and all my clothes are there, just like before, but they’re all white too. It’s crazy. It’s as if someone has been down to Netto and bought them out of economy bleach, and then used to cover Leeds. All of the colour is gone, all the dirt and shadows are washed away and all that’s left is a clean white space, a newness and a simplicity that always seemed to evade me before today.
I have a bit of a wash, and get dressed. Even the crack in my mirror is fixed, and I look the healthiest I have since, well, since I discovered drink, drugs and sex. I’d love to say this is a dream, but I can’t. There’s something about it that just tells me it’s real. I pick my wallet up off the dresser, to find that it’s stashed full of twenty pound notes. My stomach sinks when I think what I might have done to get the money, but something about the crisp newness of the notes reassures me.
So, I’m dead, apparently. First day in heaven, what do I do?
Go down the pub, of course.
Walking down the street is unnerving. Never before have I not been in direct danger of skewering my foot on a broken bottle, or slipping in a pile of dog shit, or had to avoid someone begging for change. There are people around, but I don’t recognise any of them. Some kid throws a stone at me, that’s arched in the air perfectly to hand smack on the top of my head. It hits, but I don’t feel it. The kid laughs at me, but it’s not malicious, or even mischievous. I’m confused. I don’t feel uneasy as such, but I know that if I don’t just accept what is happening, if I don’t just carry on as normal, I’ll most likely lose it all. I make my way around the corner, ready to pay my respects in the pub.
Salvation, the pub usually offers. Today, there’s something different about it. It’s not going to save me. The white exterior of the pub is crowded with people. Everything is shining, clean and white, but there is a buzz about the place that is hard to define; it’s the kind of uneasy feeling you get when your mum drops you off on your first day of school. An ambulance is parked outside, and the whole area is cordoned off with white tape. I feel a kind of sick panic begin to make it’s way past my stomach and rest in my throat. In my head, I the events begin to slot together like bricks in a game of tetris. I begin to see what’s happened. I want to turn around and run away so much, but it seems that although I may have died, my human nature has not. Like a rubber-necker at a car crash scene, I can’t turn away. Something is propelling me towards the pub, and for a change, it’s not just the lure of beer.
I make to push my way through the throngs of people straining themselves in voyeuristic pleasure, but I didn’t need to. A woman turns around, and looks me straight in the face. If I look like I’ve seen a ghost, that wouldn’t even begin to hit the tip of the iceberg. The crowd seems to part for me and before I’ve even realised I’m walking, I’ve reached the tape across the door of the pub. I look in, I can see the bar, complete with it’s redundant cocktail shelf. It seems that no one in Heaven takes too kindly to exotic drinks either. From what I can see, everything is the same, only whiter, cleaner, brighter.
The big screen is up; a football match plays to a room full of officials who don’t notice the score. They’re too busy dusting for fingerprints and taking crime scene photographs. I see myself, stark and bright in Technicolor against the bright white of the floor. My body, laid dirty and broken in a heap, a pool of red around my head, spreading out to cover the chair leg which hit me around the back of the skull. My vision is blurred, not for the first time in this pub. I can hear sounds. A gasp. Vomit splattering spectacularly on the floor. A dull thudding sound. The whiteness of the place only makes it worse. I close my eyes and the same image of myself swims in the red behind my eyelids. I steady myself against the doorframe, my hand gripping the oak so tight that splinters start to come away an force themselves through my skin. I don’t feel them.
I can see the big chunk of meat hooligan, on the floor, I’m confused as to why he’s there, I was sure that he hit me and…won? Craning my neck around the door, I see I’m wrong. There’s a pool of red around him too. My empty pint glass is smashed and stuck into the side of his neck.
If there was any blood running through my veins, it would have run cold by now. The thudding in my ears races faster and faster, the red behind my eyes no longer blocking anything out. I turn, and look around at the gathering crowd. They’ve backed off, leaving about a metre circle around me. I see a police car behind them, in the back, head down and handcuffs on, is Meat Man; all white and most certainly as dead as I am. I panic; there is nowhere to run to. I try to blend back into the crowd, but to no avail. A tall, black police woman, her uniform so clinical and white, only asserting her official status further, comes over to me.
“Thomas Harrison?” She enquires, curt and brisk.
My mouth is too dry to form an answer. I don’t need to. Her colleague, a short man who despite being in heaven still has halitosis, snaps his handcuffs onto me and I’m lead to a second waiting police car. The police woman turns to me.
“We expected you sooner. You do not have to say anything unless you wish to do so but anything you do say may be taken down and used as evidence against you in the court of Heaven”
I don’t even know what to say. I let my head rest against the car seat as we pull away from the pub. Trust me to be in even more shit in Heaven than I am in real life.
To say I don’t know how to take it is an understatement. Everything here is identical to how it was yesterday, only everything is white. I don’t see that there is anything different about Heaven at all compared to…home? Earth? I don’t even know what to call it. You’d think they’d give you some kind of induction into Heaven. Assuming that’s where I am, of course. I can’t see as it would be anywhere else. I want to second-guess myself, to kind of stop and think about the absolute insanity of everything that’s going on. It’s not every day that you wake up dead, find out you’ve gone to Heaven, find out that not only is Heaven not a paradise, but you’re in trouble for quite possibly killing a man in a bar fight. I think if I just go with it, and don’t question it, my head might just stay intact.
“You new round here then?” The bad-breath bobby addresses me in a thick Yorkshire accent as he drives the Police car. I nod.
“Yes…well, no, well yes. I mean, I’ve lived here a few years, but not when it was all…white. Not when I was…” I trail off mid-sentence, not quite wanting to admit my posthumous state. The officer finishes my words off for me.
“Dead?” He gives a little dry chuckle. “You’ll get used to it. You’ll have to; you’re here forever now. Didn’t you read the Handbook when you got here?”
I hadn’t really been listening but at the mention of a handbook, my ears prick up.
“Handbook? I knew it! No, I didn’t get one,” I am somewhat triumphant in the knowledge that things are looking up, and there is something that’s going to help me get my head around whatever mess I was in.
“We’ll sort you out with one at the station,” The tall woman officer is frosty in disposition. She doesn’t even try to make conversation. This cuts the conversation somewhat dead, for want of a better word. The car pulls into the forecourt of a somewhat old and crumbling Police station, which is a veritable ant’s nest of people. As my door is opened and I swing my feet out of it’s door, I notice that the gravel itself is white, and somewhat sparkling. There doesn’t seem to be an ounce of darkness in this place, yet the feeling is one of unease, of a kind of sick expectancy, and I can’t quite put my finger on why.
This is meant to be Heaven, isn’t it?
My feet crunch on the gravel, I can’t help but feel my heart sink, as I’m lead towards the doors of what has to be the police station. Above it, words are suspended in what I can only describe as the trail that a kid might make with a sparkler on bonfire night, spelling out Fiat justitia et ruat caelum. I have no idea what that might mean. Something about justice?
I’m too busy worrying about my current situation. Not only am I apparently dead, but I’ve been arrested, I have no idea what’s going to happen to me, and just in case I was letting myself get comfortable in my confusion, Heaven (if that is where I am) is definitely not any kind of paradise. Officer bad-breath pushes me forward, he is not gentle, but not cruel either.
The ant’s nest of people in foyer of the station is beyond confusing. Women lounge against doorframes, their fishnet and leather uniforms bleached white by the celestial atmosphere. A man sobs over a picture of his family, the colours of the picture stark against the white of the room. The colour, or rather the lack of it, implies purity, but this room is anything but pure. There’s a sense of desperation, of destitution. The feeling that hangs in the air is one that is kind of tinged with a sad hope, a longing for something that will never arrive. A veritable air of Miss Havisham enshrouds the station and it’s patrons.
The people here all seem to know something I don’t.
Bad-breath returns and thrusts a thick booklet into my hands. I look at the cover. Inscribed on the front in gold lettering that wouldn’t have looked out of place on some kind of invitation to a royal function, are the words Fiat justitia (et ruat caelum) again. I still have no idea what they mean. I turn to ask Bad-Breath if they have an English edition, but by the time I do, he’s already disappearing into a door at the back of the room.
I give up.
Really, I do. I take a white cracked formica seat next to short, cockney fella white jet black hair. Again, something unpleasant surrounds the contrast between his hair and the world around it. He pulls long and hard on a cigarette as he sits next to me. Breathing the smoke in through his teeth, he exhales into my face.
“Latin, mate,” He informs me, tapping the book like an old pro.
“Oh, right” I’d already worked that out. I just didn’t know what it meant. I’m not catholic, I didn’t study the classics, the only Latin I’ve ever needed to know in my life was Carpe Diem – the name of a pub in town that I’d frequented at one point.
“Means ‘Let justice be done,’ innit,” It makes sense. This short cocky Londoner sitting next to me, pulling hard on a roll-up and speaking out of the side of his mouth without eye contact – a habit born of years on the tube in London’s cold and miserable streets – seems to be able to offer me at least some answers. He finishes the scrag-end of a cigarette and stamps it out on the floor. The ash is white, the floor is white. Within seconds, the mess has merged to become white glitter once again.
“Makes sense,” I say, the notebook in my hands still unopened. I turn the first page gingerly, hoping that it’ll be written in some way that I can understand. It isn’t. I suppose the sigh that escapes my lips is a lot heavier than I’d intended it to be because the cigarette guy turns to me and raises a thick black eyebrow. I feel like I should apologise for some reason. Instead, I just shrug.
“It’s all in…Latin,” I’m surprised how close to tears I am. Cigarette guy’s eyes light up in amusement.
“You can’t read Latin? How long you been here?”
“About eight hours, I think,”
A low whistle accompanies the smoke from a fresh cigarette on it’s dance out of cigarette guy’s mouth. The bushy eyebrows are raised at me.
“Faaaackin’ ‘ell mate. They got you in quick, didn’t they? I’ve been hanging around here for months! What you done? Why you dead?”
The absurdity of it all kind of wraps around me. Not in such a way that I feel suffocated, more in the way that I feel warmed and calmed by it. Everything’s so crazy and messed up. Everything’s changed. I know I just have to sink into this absurdity or I’m just going to end up cracking. Sink or swim.
“To be honest, mate, I’m not sure,” I tell Cigarette guy. “I was alright, in the pub, then some bloke smacked me round the head with a bit of a chair. That’s the last thing I remember,” The only thing that helps me steer clear of how surreal this all is, is how I keep focussing on the smoke coming from in-between Cigarette guy’s fingers. It curls up, and doesn’t just hang in the air like it does…down there. It doesn’t just blow away or disappear. It kind of pops, when it reaches a certain height. The smoke itself just pops into nothingness. It’s quite beautiful.
The low whistle comes again.
“You bin murdered, aintcha. That’ll be why they got you in so quick. I just got the cancer, didn’t I. They’ll take another year before they look at me, I’m gonna be here a while,” He flicks ash down to the glitter floor. “Mind you, it’s still normally a good week or so before they get you in for murders. What’s so special about yours? Who was this guy you hit? The pope?” His chuckle at his own bad taste descends into a hacking cough.
“Just…a hooligan. Some guy from the pub, Carl Parish or something, I think. I don’t know him, I just know of him. He’s up here too you know, went in just before I did,” Cigarette guy’s face whitens, even more than the room around it. I see his body kind of stiffen and he drops the cigarette end to the floor almost unconsciously.
“You…killed someone? You killed Carl Parish?” His voice is low, throaty, and not because of the smoke.
“No!” I go to defend myself, but with words, not a pint glass. This time at least. “Well, I don’t know. I don’t think so,” I pause, more sad than scared. “I don’t remember,” I add, my voice is a marshmallow dipped in a fondue made of guilt and shame.
“Mate, Carl Parish is the son of one of the head guys up here. Constable Michael Parish,” I notice how he puts particular emphasis on the first syllable of Constable. He continues; “Mike Parish basically runs the deciding up here. Carl’s been fucking things up down there for years. He’s already killed three men before, but got off on it, on account of his friends in high places,” Cigarette guy leans in, punch line at the ready. “Thing is, the reason he stayed free down there was on condition that when he gets here he doesn’t go to Heaven. He goes…down there. You don’t want to fuck with someone in charge of deciding,” Cigarette guy leans back, satisfied at his performance.
My head goes into overdrive. This does not make sense. I’m dead, but I’m not in Heaven. I’ve killed one of the top bosses’ sons around here. I’m basically for the high jump. I have a million questions for Cigarette guy, but when I open my mouth, all that comes out is:
“Runs the deciding? Deciding what?” A loudspeaker crackling to life drowns my last couple of words out.
“Number ten-sixty-three-forty-two-zero, door C,” Cigarette guy coughs nervously and gets up.
“That’s me,” He taps my book on the cover and makes his way through the throngs towards the door marked with a large gold C. I don’t know what to do, or where to look. I glance down at my lap, at the book. I see where Cigarette guy tapped it. There’s a number. That must be me. I’m 10-63-42-5. Only four more people to go. I wait. Listen to their numbers being counted down.
Waiting for God, I amuse myself by thinking up little explanations for my situation. It’s a good job I don’t have anything to worry about back down there. No one waiting for me. No one I’ve left behind. I imagine that’d be worse. You die, and they all cry for the loss of one person. You mourn the loss of everyone you’ve ever loved. All I have to worry about is the fact that there’ll be no more red wine slurs, no more brawls in bars, no more bottle blonde landladies, for my whole eternal life. Make things seem a little bleak, if not easier to deal with.
Only it’s not easy to deal with. There’s nothing easy about dealing with the fact that you’re dead, and you seem to have arrived with a front-row ticket for your own Judgement Day. I can’t even bring myself to call it that. I don’t know what to call it. The loudspeaker has once again called someone else into their own day of reckoning. I think there’s only one person left to go before it’s my turn. I swallow, hard. For some reason, the fact that I don’t know what’s on the other side of door C is more comforting than if I had known.
I could try to look in the book, try to figure something out. But I’m not sure. It’s strange, normally I’ll read anything. It’s the writer in me. If I’m in the bath, I’ll read the back of the shampoo bottle. If I’m in Spain, I’ll read Spanish graffiti, even though I’ll have very little idea of the meaning. But for some reason, I’m not even looking at the book on my lap, let alone reading it. I think maybe I don’t want to know. Maybe ignorance really is bliss.
I know that my number’s up before the voice even comes over the room. I see people who’ve been waiting there for an age look around and ‘tut’ at me as I make my way to the door, a reflex action born from years of having to queue up. A kid, about six years old, is asleep across a chair, his mother stroking his hair. This place reminds me distinctly of an airport, in more ways than one. For a start, everyone’s waiting to get somewhere. And the faces that surround me, some are joyous and excited at the prospect that they will most certainly be going to heaven, some faces are anxious and tinged with a slight fear at the fact that they are uncertain of the nature of the journey that awaits them, whereas others look downright miserable, as if their holiday as come to an end and they’re off to somewhere that is definitely less pleasant than this waiting room. I don’t even want to think about the place that those people might be ending up in. I don’t know which category that I’d fit into. I don’t think that the dread sloshing around in my stomach is a good sign, though.
I finally reach the door, I stop, ready to take a deep breath and gather my thoughts, preparing myself for whatever lay behind it, but just as I’m about to breath deep, the door swings open and I’m pushed? Sucked? Pulled? Through it. Free will appears to be suspended. Great.
As soon as I hear the door bang shut behind me, it strikes me that something big is happening. The room itself is indication enough for that.
I’m in court.
There’s no mistaking that. I’ve seen enough celebrity trials on television for me to know a courtroom when I see one. OJ, Michael Jackson, I’ve been through the lot. Only this is slightly different. The one thing that was reassuring about being in this place was the sense of familiarity. Everything was the same, even the people, aside from their lack of colour. Now, I can see I’m in a whole different ball game. For a start, the guy on the podium to my right has wings. Wings, for fuck’s sake. There’s a jury to my left, they have halos. A couple of them seem to have the starting signs of wings too. The whiteness of the police station was nothing compared to the courtroom. It literally hurts my eyes, my head and seems to flush it’s brightness right through me, making me weak and feel faint. The rest of the courtroom is full. With who, I’m not sure.
“Order!” The winged judge next to me bangs a gold gavel against the podium, which makes a solid and sweet note, the room falls silent. I have no idea what to expect. The judge picks up a piece of paper.
“Tom Harrison, you are charged with the murder of Carl Parish,” Smack. My head feels twice as bad as when the chair leg wrapped itself around the back of my skull. Only this time, the only thing that’s hit me are the judge’s words.
“How do you plead? Guilty or not guilty?”

* * *

by me - Gemma Critchley. (it's fully copyright and shit, so don't even think of stealing it) before i start, can i just say that i'm really proud of this, a lot of hard work went into it. of course, i have a long way to go but if you could leave your comments by clicking on here:

sign my storybook

i'd like to hear what people think, even if you hate it. thanks for reading!

Novel
Monopoly:
An extract: the beginning of a novel.

CHAPTER ONE – CHANCE

There’s a lot to be said for living in London. There’s a lot to be said for living at all, come to think about it. There’s a lot to be said, but not much of it’s good, or even worth saying. But I suppose that when you’re homeless, you’re on the streets, on your last quid, on your arse, then there’s a lot more time for thinking and saying; more so than in normal life, anyway. I can call life off the streets ‘normal’, by the way. I’m on the streets now, and I’ve lived on the other side too. That gives me objective enough to call life what I bloody well like. I think it’s rough now, but it’s nothing compared to when I was back home.
I come in from working all day making parts for radiators in some shitty factory for minimum wage, and come home to my mum and dad getting on my back about my girlfriend. My mum in the nicest way possible, of course. Well, as nice as you can be when your only son’s girlfriend has spent the last hour shooting smack in the spare room of your nice cosy semi-detached slice of suburban utopia. Dad’s another story. My bags are packed, thrown onto the driveway. My girl stands there, screaming abuse at my mum, and my dad, and even at me; and I just stand there dumbfounded. Rendered mute by the whole horrible scene. I knew she was off the rails a bit, but she promised to calm down when I offered to let her come and live with me and my parents after her mum kicked her out for about the fiftieth time this week. She’s still throwing a tantrum, and now the neighbours are starting to twitch their curtains, take out their pets, clean their cars, anything to exercise that disgusting voyeuristic pleasure that is intrinsic to human nature – anything to ogle the Morrisons at number twenty five, and their delinquent son and his junkie girlfriend. I’m still dumbfounded as my dad finalises my ousting by throwing the front door into it’s frame, cutting me off and muffling my mum’s sobs only a little. The world keeps turning, but I feel myself buck against it’s movement for a second, and everything is shifted just a fraction out of rhythm. My girlfriend grabs a couple of the bags off the drive and stalks off, her parchment-covered skeleton bending under the weight of a decrepit Reebok rucksack and a bulging Tesco carrier bag that helpfully suggests we recycle it when it’s done with. Autopilot on, I collect the rest of my belongings and follow her down the street. Somewhere between suburbia and the ghetto, I manage to ask her,
“What are we going to do?”
She doesn’t answer, just sucks heavily on a cigarette that she’s liberated from the side pocket of the rucksack and keeps walking.
Half an hour later, we’re surrounded by everything that’s wrong with twenty first century Britain. Burnt out cars, stray dogs, kids running around in broken glass with no shoes and dirty faces; not knowing what school is. Teenagers cradling bottles of white cider, caring less than I ever thought possible about the fact that their lives are going nowhere. Concrete giants penetrate the sky, blocks of flats looming out of the wasteland like modern day sphinxes, people of the estate flocking to them for answers. Then it dawns on me. I know where we’re going. She’s going to the Sphinx to get her prophecy. To know that everything’s going to be alright. She’s going to her dealer, to get whatever amount of heroin she can for whatever lurid act the dealer is going to demand. And I have an Epiphany. I’m moving away. I’m not going to follow her down this road.
“I’m not coming,” I shout to her retreating back. “I’m moving away, you’ve fucked me over for the last time. That’s it,”
Her step falters for a second, and for that moment I fantasise that she’s still the girl I loved, who wanted to be a teacher, who worked hard and played harder, and didn’t have a class A narcotics dependency. Then I realise she just has the heel of her boot caught in a crack in the pavement, and I drop my bags and turn around.
I have no idea what I’m going to do or where I’m going to go as I walk out of the estate. My mind is sort of clear, as if it’s been wiped clean. I don’t feel empty, I just feel as if my head was an etch-a-sketch that had got all messy with squiggles and lines and blots, and it had just been shaken free of all that, ready to start again. That said, I do sort of start to cry. Not out of sadness, but more out of relief that I’ve realised where I was going wrong. Clarity turned on the tap, that’s all.
I walk right up to the street where my mum and dad live, and I really do think that everything’s going to be okay. They’ll take me back. I stop to give them time to calm down, and wait to go back and say sorry. After about three hours and nineteen cigarettes, I leave the thicket at the end of the road where I’ve been sitting, and make my way up the road to twenty-five, Player Close. It’s an optimistic journey. I’ve made up my mind that I’m through with the drugs, the trouble, the problem girlfriend. I know my mum will hug me when I walk through the door, call me ‘love’ and make me a cup of tea. I know my dad will be mad for a bit, but soon enough we’ll make up and go to the footy together, or something, like when I was a kid.
What I don’t know is that my house is surrounded by three police cars, darkness crashing down on my mum; a forty year old little girl, stood lost and shivering on the steps that lead up to the house. My dad being carted into the back of an ambulance on a stretcher, his face painted like the sky on bonfire night, an explosion of red and purple. In the police car, my girlfriend sits handcuffed, her lips constricting any words she might have had for me, her eyes denying that she has anything to say at all. I want to stop and ask questions, I want to be in three places at the same time, finding out what happened and what I can do to make this right. But I don’t need to. I already know the answer. I can hear the sirens of police cars giving chase into the estate. Daring to raise my eyes to meet my mum’s, I know that I can never come back. It’s never going to be okay. Her voice is deep with grief and laced with hatred as she fixes me with a look I hadn’t thought she was capable of.
“Get away. Stay away. I never want to see you again,”
Her voice wavers in pitch on the last word, hysterical high notes escaping from under the controlled rage that she regulates and focuses on me. I feel my shiny clean etch-a-sketch mind get scribbled over with black lines, tangling together to preserve this royal mess for posterity. Some divine power is turning the knobs and really fucking up the clarity of it all. I don’t know what to do. I really don’t. I turn around and kind of run, crying for real this time, and out of sadness, not realisation. Crying is funny like that. It can happen for all kinds of reasons, but the etch-a-sketch mess up kind of crying is the worst of all.

CHAPTER 2 – OLD KENT ROAD

Watching your family and pretty much your whole life take a leap off the high dive into a big pool of shit doesn’t make for the best viewing. It’s no fun to see that everything you ever knew has now been shaken up until it disappeared; etch-a-sketch style, leaving just a few faint lines that can’t be erased, the rest of your past just rattling around, empty and in pieces. I walk around small-town Essex, carrying my etch-a-sketch head and my cigarettes, and I realise, I need to get away. I need to leave this place and start from scratch again, get myself a new etch-a-sketch. I’ve never been the kind of bloke who sits and moans when I’ve got a problem. I like to think I’m quite good at being my own counsellor. When I was in school, I think I was about 13, they sent me to see a real counsellor. One that gets paid loads for nodding his head and looking like Julian Clary in tweed. He said I had a problem with authority, and that I basically needed to get my head down and start working hard or I’d end up on my arse. Hey ho, he was right. I never did get my head down, really. When your head’s an etch-a-sketch, you don’t really need to put it down. You can write all you want to just by thinking. So my head stayed high. But I must admit, as things stand at the moment, that shrink was right; I’m quite close to being on my arse.
I walk down to the shopping precinct and find a payphone. Someone’s in it already, a women whose face is so covered in make up that it’s stiff. I lean against the glass and she turns her back on me. Breathing smoke rings into the air, I fish out a couple of twenty pence pieces from my pocket and wait for the lady to finish. She finally gets off the phone after about twenty million years and I pull open the door and go inside; Eau de Phone Box hits me in the back of the throat as soon as I’m in there. Stale piss and old kebabs, with a hint of tramp. I add to the aroma by blowing out my final drag of cigarette and stubbing the tab into the advert panel. It melts the plastic a little bit, so it now reads ‘Sofa, So God’ instead of ‘Sofa, So Good’. Deep. Working one of my twenty P’s into the coin slot, I pick up the receiver. It takes me a while before I can think of anyone to call, to be honest. After a few minutes, I punch in my mate Pete’s number. He went to uni in London, to study Fine Art. I thought London might be a good place to start over – it’s not quite the big apple or the land of opportunity, but it definitely beats sitting in the cold in Essex. No one knows me there; I can sort myself out and try making a go of things. As the phone rings, I fantasise that I’ll get there and be snapped up by some sort of fat cat business man who wants to pay me for my thoughts, who’d want to put me in newspapers, and not The Sun or The Star either, but the big ones that people read on trains, like The Guardian or something.
The phone had been ringing for about fifteen hours, and some little kid is letting his dog take a dump against the window of the phone box; I’m just about to hang up when I hear a voice crackle down the line.
“Hello?”
“Pete? ‘S Joe,”
“Oh…Hi. What’s up?”
“Well mate, you’ll never guess what’s happened,” And so I go on for twelve pence worth of credit telling Pete about my girl, and my mum and dad, and about me being on my arse.
“So, the thing is, Pete, I kinda need to get away for a bit. Sort myself out. Wondered if you could put me up? Only for a bit, like. I’ll pay you rent and everything,”
My voice is cool and a bit nonchalant, but it feels like there’s a tiny soldier in my chest, firing an Uzi into my ribcage; any second the bullets are going to burst out and maim the ‘Sofa So God’ sign. There’s a pause for a few seconds.
“Ah, Joe. So sorry mate, I’m off travelling for a bit. I’ve rented my place out. But there’s loads of flats and stuff in my block that haven’t been let out yet. It’s not too pricey either. Bet if you came down, you could get one straight away,”
The soldier stops firing. He dissolves into egg yolk and dribbles down into my belly.
“Right, ok. Cheers anyway, Pete. See ya,”
I hang up the phone and bite down on my sleeve, a bit of a habit from being a kid, I suppose. It’s dark outside by now. I’m not far from the train station, and I’ve got my wallet. Should be enough to get me to London. Blowing out my breath in a long stream of smoke, I make my way to the 21.43 train to London Kings Cross and try to not concentrate on how bleak things are.
I end up getting of the train at Petticoat Market. Miles from the centre, in the south east end of the city. I didn’t want to, but some old perv started trying to touch me up. So I lashed out at him, and the guard threw me off, when it was the perv who was causing the trouble. No justice in the world. None whatsoever.
I get off the train and I have no idea what I’m going to do. I decide I might find an all night café or something and buy a paper, see if I can find a flat and a job. After a trip to GT news, and an hour’s worth of aimless wandering down Old Kent Road, I come across Donna’s Caff; if failure was a room, this’d be it. The nicotine stained wallpaper, the sticky hum of grease in the air, the flickering neon sign that read ‘Open 2 hours’. It was trying to say ‘Open 24 Hours’, but the flicker meant it didn’t quite manage it.
The woman behind the counter is Donna, I asked her. I can get a bit nosy like that. My mum’s sister said I’m obnoxious, but I’m not, I’m just curious - I like to know where I am with people, because you can’t always trust everyone. Donna looks like you could trust her. She looks a bit tired and a lot older than what she should. She has the kind of hair that you only get from working in an east end greasy spoon Caff, blonde and straggly, half heartedly shoved back into a scrunchie. Her face has lines from laughing, and her eyes have bags under them from lack of sleep. There’s an ironing board next to a pile of baby clothes that suggest she lives, eats, sleeps and breaths greasy spoon, twenty four seven. But you can tell she’s nice.
Donna puts the coffee machine on to brew and chats to me a bit. She’s got a baby called Chloe, but the dad ran off a long time ago, so Donna works in the caff so she can look after Chloe and get a bit of money at the same time, without having to pay for a childminder or anything. I suppose that’s when Donna’s etch-a-sketch got shaken up. I think everyone must have their own etch-a-sketch that gets shaken up sometime or another. The grainy bits in mine are still rattling around, not quite settling. I don’t tell her what happened to me, I just tell her I’m in London visiting friends, and I’m waiting for them to arrive. It’s not that I want to lie to the lady; it’s just that I can’t really be bothered to tell the story again. After a bit, Donna goes to check on Chloe and I sit drinking my coffee and looking at the small ads section of the East Free Press, looking for somewhere to stay that doesn’t cost four million quid a week. I can’t find anything. I shout thanks to Donna through the beaded curtain that leads into the back of the caff – her home, I suppose – and step out into London.
I don’t reckon much to our capital city, to be honest. It’s cold and dirty, but not in the sense that the temperature is that low, or that the streets are full of litter; more that the actual atmosphere is unclean; the faces on the streets are hard and condemning. I walk around a bit more – I’m getting quite knackered, to tell you the truth, but I keep on walking, probably because I’ve got nothing to stop walking for. It’s starting to get light now, so I meander down to a sort of market place, and think I might sit on one of the stalls and maybe rest my eyes for a bit. I find a stall that’s sort of hidden from the view of the dirty and cold population of London and sit on it, resting against a metal post. It’s the worst bed I ever had. I close my eyes, but I can’t sleep. I open my eyes and try my hardest not to think about what happened before. I know I’m in the shit. You know that feeling you get? It’s kind of a feeling that you know you’ve done something really wrong and you haven’t quite paid your dues for whatever it is you did; but you know that sooner or later, fate or destiny or whatever is going to creep up on you and fuck you over, big time. That’s how I feel this morning. The sky is getting lighter and lighter, but instead of making me feel better, I can’t help but feel like the game is just starting, like I rolled a one and someone else rolled a six, then I got shafted by every unlucky square on the board. I’m not pessimistic or anything, but I suppose that post-etch-a-sketch, you become a bit more wary. Biting down on my sleeve again, I look around the square.
There’s a dog with his arse in the air and his head in a bin. I’m not too up on dog knowledge, but I think it was some kind of bull terrier or something. I watch it for a bit, wondering if it’s in the same predicament as me. I can see it doesn’t have a collar. The dog is searching through the pile of rubbish that he’s dislodged from the bin with the efficiency of an office filing clerk. It knows what it’s doing. After a while, it comes and kind of sniffs around my feet, then cocks it’s leg up and pisses on my trainers. It’s a he. I’m more dejected than angry when this happens, but the anger’s in there somewhere, I kind of half-shout, half-hiss at him for what he just did. He looks at me, unfazed. I sit for a bit longer, watching the day get more and more grey as the sun lends a reluctant glow to the market place, hoisting itself into the pallor of the London sky; and the dog sits with me. I’m quite starving by the time the first market trader arrives to set up his fruit and veg stall, and I feel like I need to pretend that I haven’t spent the night sleeping rough and crying and getting covered in dog piss. So I decide to go and find something to eat. The dog comes too.
I won’t bore you with what happens next. It’s basically the same for the next few weeks. I tried to get a job, really, I did; but you can’t get a job if you don’t have an address, you don’t have an address if you don’t have a flat, you can’t get a flat if you don’t have a job, not just a vicious circle, but a veritable rabid, slobbering, biting vicious circle. A couple of homeless guys tried to talk to me about going on the rob or something, but I wasn’t up for it. Stealing stuff just isn’t me, I suppose. The dog stayed with me. I call him Bud. I know it sounds strange, calling a dog your mate, but to tell you the truth, he’s the best friend I’ve got right now.
I tried calling my mum a couple of times, but the first time my dad answered and basically just told me to fuck off, and the second time, they’d changed their number. So now I’ve given up trying to get in touch and have sort of resigned myself to being, well, homeless, I suppose. Jesus, that sounds bad. It’s not forever though. So yeah, it’s been about a month. I’ve been scraping by. Begging, if you must know. It was fucking horrible at first. But most people in London are complete bastards, so after a while you don’t mind asking them for their spare change; I consider it arsehole tax.
Me and the dog have been keeping each other company for a while now. We sleep in the market place. It kind of reminds me of when I was little, sleeping rough; like when my mum dropped me off at school, I used to get that feeling in my belly. You know the one, like dread was pitching a tent in there, hammering things into my insides to make me feel bad, like I was being left all alone. That’s what it’s like when you wake up and actually realise you’re homeless. But yeah. That’s how I dealt with it, by hanging out with Bud.
Okay, so I manage to scrape about £1.40 this one day in February. It’s really been pissing it down with rain all day, the streets all slick like the surface of a record, a really bad record, like an old Iron Maiden one or something, a rubbish one that never gets played and so is still really smooth. I’m freezing my arse off, and all the Shelters are full for the night, so looks like I had ought to get some food in my belly at least. I know can get a burger or two from McDonalds for the cash I’ve got, and I can see those bloody golden arcs reflecting in the Iron Maiden record pavement from across the road. The road is absolutely chocka. It’s dark by now and the traffic is snaking it’s way out of the city in the slow motion dance of rush hour. The traffic lights keep on changing, so I reckon I can make it across the two bus lanes and the traffic lanes if I just keep my eyes open. I pull my coat around me and stand in the rain, waiting for the traffic lights to do their thing and give me and Bud chance to get across.
Red Light.
The cars squelch to a reluctant halt in the rain, me and Bud trek across the bus lane and the first lane of cars.
Green Light.
Bud dithering next to me, it’s our turn to skid and stop as handbrakes are lifted and cars groan into action, a thousand bad backs squirm in the seats of their Vauxhalls and their Rovers and their Volkswagens, fingers fumble to find Chris Moyles on radio one. Rubber farts against tarmac and the cars roll on home to their families.
Red Light.
The change in traffic lights is as inconvenient as a power cut in the middle of Eastenders for the drivers, as Bud and me run for the safety of the pavement and the warmth of McDonalds, through the estate cars and across the other bus lane. I reach the other side just in time to see some huge silver wide-boy-mobile come hurtling down the bus lane; driver on his teeny-tiny Nokia picture video phone, the best banging Ibiza club anthem choonz ever volume 59 blaring out of some jumped up top-of-the-range stereo, personalised number plate reading CH4Z. I pity blokes like that, really, I do. I know I’m on my arse and everything, but I doubt I’d ever want to be a wide boy, even if you paid me. It’s just offensive. I just turn to kind of tell Bud that I’m going into Maccy’s and I’ll be out in a sec, when the wide-boy-mobile skids halfway onto the pavement.
A there’s the inevitable soundtrack to rush hour disaster: the tires uniformly screech against the wetness of the Iron Maiden floor, making a bored hiss rather than banshee’s wail; there’s the metallic thus of a car hitting something, the almost-audible cracking of elbows as the hands stop tuning in radio one and move to thrash their car horns in unison. A veritable check-list of a traffic accident. I want to yelp or cry out, but I can’t. I just stand there, as Bud lies in a still heap on the Iron Maiden asphalt, his slick black fur blending with the shining surface of it.
I’m blindsided.
People say that when a tragic event happens, things seem to play themselves out in slow motion. For me, there is no motion. I close my eyes and I can feel the tiny bit of etch-a-sketch that I have left is being fucked up into a million pieces. I must have really done something to piss God off, I swear. I can hear abuse, I can hear sympathy, I can hear the dropouts in McDonalds asking if someone would like fries with that. No thanks, I’d like the last five minutes of my life re-winded, if you don’t mind please.
“Jesus Christ, mate, y’alright?” Public schoolboy raked over with mockney. Jamie Oliver in an Eton uniform. Of course I’m not fucking alright. But I think I just kind of nod, and watch someone wrap Bud in one of those picnic blankets that you take when you go for a daytrip with your parents. It looks like a kilt that my uncle wore for a wedding once, and I can’t help but think how itchy it looks. Bud is kind of moaning softly through his teeth, not quite growling, but if he hadn’t been mangled by the wide-boy-mobile and some stranger had tried to wrap him up like a St Andrew’s Day mascot, he’d do more than growl, I’m sure. As things stand now, he just sort of closes his eyes and breathes heavy, like a sleeping football hooligan after ten pints and a post-match fight. I’m still just standing there, getting more and more wet, when Lord Jamie Oliver gives me a bit of a gentle shove into the back of his wide-boy-mobile and someone puts Bud on my lap.
Bud smells like the inside of a rabbit hutch in the magic-tree atmosphere of the car. The air freshener suddenly makes me very aware that I haven’t washed in days. I’m too proud to be ashamed, but I know my mum would be mortified if she could see me now. It’s bad, but Lord J doesn’t seem to mind, he keeps on prattling about how accidents will happen and how he’s ‘Most dreadfully sorry”. At least he’s had the decency to turn off his bloody music. I put one of my hands on Bud’s head to try to make him feel better, not sure if it will or not, but he seems to not mind when I do it, so I leave it there. I look out of the window as we turn down a side street and into a car park and I sort of have a little bit of a cry and think to myself that surely one of the knobs must have fallen off my etch-a-sketch by now.

new year. new gemma? we'll see. a lot has happened over the past few weeks, and indeed, the past few days. some things that have made me spiral out of my mind with elation, and others that have rained a bit of grey on my parade. i suppose i could sit here all night and tell you about everything that's happened, but there's not really a lot to say; not a lot has happened. Most of it, as with so much in my life, is in my head. Ox-y-gen and Car-bon-di-oxide. it's the busses theory, but i want to slam a different analogy on it. let's think.

Today is my 21st Birthday...am I elated? am I older, wiser, more focused, more content? I don't know. I still feel the same as I did yesterday, kind of. Well, today I'm not on a big psychotic spin out, and I feel kinda level...so maybe hitting 21 really does grow you up some. or it could be that i just finished reading Vernon God Little, and my life seems so less full of shit in comparison. something to thing about at least. but for now, raise a cheer, have a beer, shed a tear...i'm a lady. bye bye gems, girl of the past. hello lady gemma, welcome to the future...

oh, heck. have another. i'm feeling generous.

Short story draft

Animorphic. An-i-mor-phic. Could these stones really have such meaning, such life?


Kate stands with her face resting against the cool grit of the sandstone wall, breathing hard. It’s dark in the tunnel, and no one else can see her. No one knows where she is. She turns her head so the back of her skull makes a dull clunking sound against the tunnel wall; her eyes swivvled so far to the side in her head that should anyone else have been with her they would have only seen the whites.
Kate is watching.
The shaking of Kate’s hand is barely perceivable as she presses a cigarette to her lips and takes a long draw from it. Blue smoke is blown sideways into the night air as Kate keeps her gaze fixed on the inside of the tunnel. She dare not go in too deep; she doesn’t know what lies in there. Junkies, probably. Or monsters. Or both. Either way, all Kate wants to do is meet her match. Meet the guy who’s been on to her for so long. The letters had started back in September: nice enough at first, general ‘I’ve seen you around, can we go out sometime’ letters. It was now November and the epistolary tales had been growing more and more desperate and confused over the months. This guy wasn’t in love. He was in trouble. He told Kate he had no one else, no one in the world to help him fight his demons and solve his problems. Over sixty letters, you get to know a person. Kate hadn’t been replying to the letters, he never asked her to and she never offered. She’d seen him before, from a distance, dropping the letters through her post box. Tall, thin, hooded sweatshirt, hat. He didn’t have claws or scales. No fangs to speak of. He just seemed in need of a friend. Kate was a sucker for the little boy lost act. Her mother had said it would be her downfall. In the cold November air, Kate began to think that her mother might be right.
The tricks that a mind can play when left to it’s own devices are astounding.
Ten minutes dragged by. Fifteen. Thirty. No sign of anyone. It was really dark now, save for the spitting, flickering neon strip at the end of the tunnel. Torn between not wanting to enter the tunnel for fear of what she might find and not wanting to venture onto the street for shame that she might be seen in this squalid, degenerate end of town, Kate crouches in the mouth of the tunnel, eyes never moving from her vigil, skin contracting and dimpling with cold. Kate doesn’t know how long she’s been waiting when she hears the crunch of boots on gravel coming from the other end of the tunnel. The steps advance unevenly, sometimes an ancient, creaking shuffle, sometimes a proud thundering stomp, sometimes a childlike patter. Kate doesn’t dare to breathe, although she can hear her insides pulsing with adrenaline; her blood dancing out a crazed staccato rhythm under her skin.
Is this him? How can I help him? Kate thinks helplessly. She isn’t even sure what he wants from her. His letters say that he knows Kate’s secret. He knows about what she can do. And he needs Kate to use what she knows for him. She doesn’t know why she’s so afraid. Or if what she’s feeling is even fear at all. It was definitely anticipation. The sound of footfall grows louder until Kate is sure that he must be almost on top of her by now. And they stop.
Flicking her eyes about the tunnel, Kate forgets about the silence. She is afraid now. She can hear him breathing, feel him in front of her. But she can’t see him. Scrambling to her feet, Kate whips her head around. Her breathing is rapid, expelling itself in hard, short bursts. She holds aloft the package of letters she has been carrying.
“These are yours.” She cries, her voice wavering on the final word. “I have your letters”
suddenly, the silence around her conveys more fear into her veins than she ever felt from the sound of him being near. Kate knows he hasn’t gone. She can feel him.
“I know you’re here,” Kate ventures. “I can see you…”
The last line is an unconvincing bluff, Kate’s voice echoing off the walls of the tunnel, her head whipping from side to side, her eyes flicking up and down the stone passage. She could run if she wanted to. She could fight too. But neither of these options seem appropriate or even feasible at this moment.
There is a scuffle, and Kate feels him close to her again, although in the half light of the tunnel, she can’t quite make him out. Kate is intrigued. How does he know about her secret? And how could this secret help him?
“I can help you” Kate bluffs again, her voice stronger this time, her energy concentrated on getting through to her visitor. “I can help you get home, if that’s what you want.” The scuffling stops. If Kate can’t hear him say ‘yes’, she feels it just the same. Moistening her lips with the tip of her tongue, Kate nods. She’d suspected this all along, but hadn’t dared to quite conclude the suspicion. Bending down with careful urgency, Kate unclips her small rucksack and takes out what she needs. A bible, some holy water, a candle. Her throat dry, her voice escaping her lips in a barely audible croak, she flicks water about the tunnel, uttering the words necessary for the exorcism. Within seconds, the tunnel is cold. No one else is there. Kate turns her back on the tunnel and steps out into the icy clarity of the night.

sorry, been absent for a while...not like anyone reads this enough to even care, but hey. yeah, so i have the most heinous amount of uni work to do, and i'm trying to write my novel at the moment too...that's a bit of a no brainer right now, i only have about 2000 words. i'm in a creative ditch at the moment, i can't seem to write, no matter how hard i try. and it's my 21st birthday on monday. had a wonderful party last night, felt like a princess. cool. anyway. so you wanna hear a story? i have a couple, but i'll run one past you for now.

It's a small world.

‘It’s a small world.’
That’s a saying you hear again and again. You hear it when old companions meet in the street, when mutual acquaintances realise they share a friend, when you meet someone on holiday who’s from the same town as you. This saying is not only over-employed, it’s also completely untrue. It’s not a small world at all. In fact, it’s a huge world. There are billions of people living in it. What people mean by the phrase ‘it’s a small world’ is actually ‘it’s a huge coincidence.’ Now that’s something a bit more believable, and a bit less of a blatant lie. Okay, it’s only semantics, and one shouldn’t get in such a fluster about linguistics and society in general: it’s fruitless and quite frankly, a waste of time. But being a student of Linguistics and Sociology at Sangford University, it’s more or less what I’m meant to do. I’m not meant to be stood behind a bar, plying pissed up students with cheap and nasty vodka, well, at least not ‘meant to be’ in the destiny or fate sense of the word. It isn’t what I’m meant to be doing, but it’s what I’m paid to be doing.

“Shhame again pleashe, mate” Danny Borrel slurred to the barman behind the well worn counter of Sangford University’s student union Bar. The bartender, barely eighteen years old with a scruffy apron and even scruffier hair begrudgingly poured out two double vodkas and cokes, consoling himself with the fact that this drunken idiot who’d been propping up the bar for the last four hours would have a monster hangover in the morning. Danny chugged his double vodka in one, his eyes crinkling and his mouth twisting in the involuntary spasm that always occurs after consumption of alcoholic spirits. Wobbling his head from side to side, he turned around to offer the other vodka to his friend Sketch, but Sketch was no where in sight, so danny focused his attention on drinking the his friend’s vodka.
“Danny!” At the sound of his name, Danny swung drunkenly around, struggling to focus his eyes on the space where the call had come from. After a good few blinks, he managed to see four girls heading towards him. Four very hot girls. As the group neared him, and his eyes began to slide into focus, he began to realise that there was, in fact, only one girl. ‘Shit, must be more pissed than I thought’ Danny thinks to himself as he tries to fix the girl with what he hopes is a suave, seductive smile.

Sarah Southwell is late, as usual. Hurrying along the cold streets of Sangford, she pulls her black furry coat tighter around her and wills her feet to go faster. Turning a corner, she sees that the brightly lit Student Union bar looks almost festive in the September gloom. BEEP BEEP. Sarah’s mobile phone vibrates against her hip, telling her she has a message. It’s from Callie, the girl she was meant to be meeting in the bar. Sorry chick, I’m running late. Will meet you in half an hour. Callie xxx. Sarah sighs and rolls her blue eyes. She needn’t have rushed, after all. Entering the welcoming warmth of the bar, she looks around to see if there might be anyone she recognises. Although due to the fact that it is Fresher’s week, Sarah knows that the chance that she’s going to bump into anyone is slim. She’d love to have at least one friend in the city from back home – or her ex boyfriend Danny. They’d split up before coming to university, he had intended to go travelling around Asia and they decided the distance would be too hard to bridge. Even though the decision had been mutual, she kind of wished that he was here now to cheer her up. She takes in the sights of the bar, orientates herself a little, then turns to get a drink. Her jaw drops as she stares at the guy in front of her. Almost involuntarily, she cries “Danny!”

Callie McCormack stubbed out her last cigarette and spat heartily onto the pavement. It was starting to rain, and the bus showed no signs of arrival. She knew she was going to be late to meet Sarah, a sugar-sweet eighteen year old who she’d met at the university induction day. Callie dug around in her army surplus rucksack for her mobile phone and tapped out a text message to Sarah, saying she’d be late. Callie tugged absentmindedly at one of her bleached blond dreads and sighed. She hadn’t wanted to disappoint Sarah. To disappoint such a nice girl was somewhat a travesty, in Callie’s eyes. Callie hitched up her combat skirt and made the decision to walk to the student union bar, despite the rain that had begun to fall spitefully onto the pavement, making it treacherous to navigate in the unpractical furry boots that Callie was wearing. She reached the doors about fifteen minutes later, only to be accosted by a drunken fool of a boy toppling into her and knocking her down the few steps that led into the bar. Callie shoved the lanky drunk away and strode into the bar, thinking Fucking Men.

Simon Walker, or sketch to his friends, wishes he hadn’t had that last vodka and coke. In fact, he wishes he hadn’t had the last eight vodka and cokes. He stands in the rain, hands on knees, bent double in a retch. Sick, all over his sneakers. Nice one. What a great way to kick off university. Sketch muses that his sick is yellow, despite having drank brown drinks all night. Struggling to stand, he grabs out for what he thinks is a wall. What he feels is not a wall. It is a girl. A girl who has somehow begun to fall away from him, and he begins to fall with her. They reach the bottom of the steps and stand up, staring at each other. She is glaring at Sketch with contempt. Sketch, however has gone misty eyed as her regards this beauty in front of him. The beauty shoves him away. Sketch turns around and makes his way up the steps, wobbling. He finally gets back to his halls of residence an hour later, after walking for 40 minutes in the wrong direction. He doesn’t care. He’s in love.