A purple shade of sabotage

Up and over and over and out. Diving from flesh I emerged freshly spittle wrecked, chased by creatures conjured up by the warped reflection of someone I no longer regard or recall, and a someone from whom I would no longer recoil if only I had the strength. But not me, right? Never me, right?

I crashed face down onto barbed tendril wires at one minute past five on the dot. It’s the new morning, the same old morning, with dawn breaking in through mental twilight and the songbirds gasping and choking on smog, petrol fumes, even belching bleach. My eyes encrusted and my skin damp. Drenched, held underwater until I bloody well learn to behave.

My darkened dreams were once more immorally stained, pulled apart by slavering hounds on the edge of the heath. Good as gold, them dogs. Good as fucking gold. They blooded the boy, smeared him with the kill. In that moment I was unwillingly initiated into the brotherhood, the sisterhood, and most of all the silent neigbourhood that dare not speak of its catalogue of disasters. I was destined - still am destined - never to speak of what’s gone down, what’s going down, what’s slipping down, even as I try to throw it up in the shape of furballs.

I don’t have the words to describe, so I stretch out somebody else’s hands, grasp their wrists, blood them in turn to make them part of this ceaseless and circular hunt, then force their fingers to cling onto coiled and sprung nettles so they can pull me towards a clearing. I’m an uncaring bastard. I kick them aside in my thoughts. But I’m a caring soul too. I carry them on my back as an integral part of recording this existence on my dusty reel to real, preserving it in the hope of a future generation, a distant relative, who will polish it up and listen in. Rapt. Or at least vaguely interested.

Only when the clearing comes, only when I see cumulus and jet trails do I finally pause and check my oxygen supply, discovering that over fifty years’ worth still remains, and that it’s full to bursting with fierce, unforgiving intent. It’s never going to stop pumping and breathing, winding and weaving, denying and believing. And it’s never going to stop forcing me back into that defiantly purple light again and again and over again. So I may as well accept the inevitable.