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.