Cracked screen

She whis­pers to his naked form. Stand­ing over him, press­ing her worn and wrinkled heel into his fore­head, push­ing too hard against his skin and flimsy bone. Her mind is fuzzed by the gut­tural wrench of the voice she stole on an autumn after­noon, ripped from the throat of some singing, snort­ing drunk­ard in exchange for a single coin. She won’t give it back; she enjoys the burn­ing of the cheap alco­hol in the back of her throat too much for that.

Every­one needs to wake up now, to be the ador­ing audi­ence and watch as these spe­ci­mens ema­ci­ate for your enter­tain­ment — live and dir­ect, grainy and green-lit on closed-circuit tele­vi­sion. Bring your slav­er­ing beast-dogs to watch too, the more the mer­rier. Observe the scream­ing and shout­ing. Encour­age their debase­ment for your amuse­ment. Applaud as these once-humans shed them­selves com­pletely to merge into the painted wood­work and live as house­hold insects, suck­ing on dirt.

He’s beat­ing on the piano, using his ragged fists against the ivor­ies to avoid using them against him­self or on the body of another, close to hand. He’s all slow motion aggres­sion and heav­ing gasps for air, all flak wounds and thoughts of for­nic­a­tion. His head is made up of noth­ing but frenzy: beads of sweat, sick in his mouth and a single intox­ic­ated desire. He doesn’t move his leg when a tired hand grips his ankle. He feels his calf muscles tighten, but he no longer knows how to kick against a want or lash out against a need.

She turns up the volume, the speaker crackles with inter­fer­ence and static hiss. He plays even louder, the chords fall­ing through the gaps in the floor to clat­ter over the city below. Night, ham­mer­ing on walls, no sleep. The smell of semen and the stench of viol­ence, laced with one or two drops of for­give­ness on the tongue.

Complete write-off

For those of you keep­ing track of my vari­ous activ­it­ies across the inter­net — which I appre­ci­ate is a rap­idly declin­ing num­ber, thanks to the incar­cer­a­tion of most of my devoted stalk­ers for their own safety and men­tal health — you may be inter­ested to know that Writers’ Bloc, the site I notion­ally ‘edited’ and where writers wrote about writ­ing (oh, be quiet, it seemed like a good idea at the time), has shut up shop. You know, because. Because it’s the inter­net. Because, whoosh. things change. I prom­ise that the site went quietly and will­ingly, without com­plaint, and suffered no pain. I didn’t have to put an imit­a­tion fire­arm to its head and say “Bang!” very loudly. I reserve that dubi­ous hon­our for other trouble­some areas of my life.

Go and read some of the mater­ial in the archives, if you get a chance. From art­icles to stor­ies, from inter­views to flash fic­tion and poetry, there’s some insight­ful, cre­at­ive and enlight­en­ing takes on this down­right pecu­liar activ­ity of put­ting words together in a sup­posedly artistic fash­ion, which some people still con­tinue to do in this day and age even though they could be — oh, I don’t know — going out and meet­ing people. Strange. Very strange.

Harold Pinter, I love you, marry me

No longer shall I shield myself from the plain and some­times harsh truth. Instead, I am going to cel­eb­rate it and shout it from the rooftops. Ladies and gen­tle­men (but not chil­dren), pre­pare your­self for a rev­el­a­tion. I am a bit­ter, cyn­ical and utterly hate­ful mis­an­thrope. ENJOY! (Ugh.)

May cause drowsiness: day 31

So. End. Start. Whichever. Rico­chet. Start again.

Empty-minded. Come here empty-handed. Choose at ran­dom. Clean slate. Wipe-clean sur­face. It worked out. It didn’t quite work. Write up the exper­i­ment. Describe what happened. Describe what we expec­ted to hap­pen. Aim and out­come. Aim and fire. Cause and effect. Now cease and desist. What did I dis­cover? What did I already know? What have I learned? Has this been a learn­ing exer­cise? Have I achieved per­sonal growth? Have I found? Lost? Found again?

Bul­let point. Anim­ated graphic.
Bul­let point. Pos­it­ive state­ment.
Bul­let point. Conclusion.

Buzz buzz buzz. Word. Words. Wordless.

You. You could never get lost, could you? You could never wander off into the fog, aim­lessly trail­ing skin debris and crumpled paper in your wake. No. Avoid the forest, stay on the pave­ment under equidistant street lights. Catch a bus because it’ll take you exactly where you’re going. Even if you miss your stop you’ll still be able to press your face to the win­dow and watch the des­tin­a­tion you dreamt of simply flash by. There, there, and gone. Bet­ter for you to be sur­roun­ded by people, fel­low trav­el­lers also miss­ing their stops and nar­row­ing their eyes, cran­ing their necks to scan the faded route map. That’s where we are, and that’s where we want to be, but we’re here. Which is some­where. We know where it is, and the name seems reas­sur­ingly famil­iar. Com­fort­ing. We can just cross the road and get a bus back in the oppos­ite dir­ec­tion. No chal­lenge. No upset. Don’t go out of your way to lose your way, will you?

None of this helps you to become lost, to be gone, to dis­ap­pear. To step off the trampled path. To fall into bushes or throw your­self against a wall in the hope that it might just be a false front­age, a film set, and behind it noth­ing but a sud­den col­lapse of sur­face, a lack of where­withal, an absence of being, just a dis­persal of cells.

This is how you go. You go like this.
You go like this, so that you can return.
You go like this, so that you can file a report.
You go like this. This is your wit­ness state­ment.
This is how to dis­be­lieve every word you ever said.
Fin­ish on a pos­it­ive state­ment. Fin­ish on forgetting.

So. End. Start. Whichever. Rico­chet. Start again.

May cause drowsiness: day 25

She jokes — nervously, via an exhal­a­tion of faint, scat­ter­shot giggles — about her para­noia that she might leave a smudged imprint of lip­stick on the rim of the wine glass. Human remains that would enable him, with the aid of forensic sci­ence, to track her down wherever she chose to hide, whether it was in the imme­di­ate world or bey­ond. He reas­sures her. The faint lines of a person’s lips aren’t as unique as a fin­ger­print. No one would be able to make an iden­ti­fic­a­tion based only on tell­tale cos­metic traces. She smiles at him for dis­trac­tion — his rather than hers — while widen­ing her grip out­wards from the stem to the bowl, press­ing the soft pad of her index fin­ger into the dark red stain. Leav­ing a mark to tell a story, to make an impres­sion, even to offer proof of her exist­ence in this place, on this even­ing. She hands him the glass as he stands to go to the kit­chen. Tells him not to wash it, to never wash it. Alone for a moment, he mur­murs and allows him­self a flicker of con­fid­ence amidst so much uncer­tainty. He upends the glass, shakes the last resid­ual drops of alco­hol into the sink, and places it care­fully in a cup­board. The sev­enth glass, along­side six oth­ers that already bear wit­ness — if not admiss­ible as evid­ence — to each shade she wears when they meet. Tomor­row, her mouth will be scrubbed clean and raw.

May cause drowsiness: days 21 — 24

Con­sider this an abridged omni­bus edi­tion. Or con­sider me lazy. Whichever you prefer. In sum­mary, how­ever, this means that I have failed in my grand but pos­sibly fool­hardy inten­tions to pro­duce 31 pieces of writ­ing dur­ing the month of May, and won’t even be sat­is­fy­ing my OCD nature by going back to try and fill in the numer­ical gaps. My only con­sol­a­tion is that, sur­pris­ingly, I did at least man­age to make it as far as twenty entries before feebly throw­ing in the towel. Woe is me, etc.

In defence of my fail­ure, how­ever, I offer you the fol­low­ing. It is hot. Very hot. And I am Brit­ish. Very Brit­ish. Though not Brit­ish enough to join the throng of blokes wan­der­ing the streets and parks in shorts and san­dals (but, sig­ni­fic­antly, no shirts), proudly mod­el­ling the charm­ing raw-skinned lobster-red look that seems to always be in vogue on these shores. Well, I’m not get­ting my flab out for any­one, baby. I am stay­ing indoors, cur­tains drawn and out of the sun­light, top­ping up my unhealth­ily grey Eng­lish com­plex­ion and per­spir­ing a lot.

Also: my words are simply ill-suited to sum­mer. I am an autum­nal writer. At times, I verge on being pos­it­ively wintry. If you don’t believe me, you haven’t been read­ing long enough. If I ever make it into print, I don’t fore­see my books being bought in air­ports by Hawaiian-shirted hol­i­day­makers look­ing for some­thing frivol­ous and escap­ist to read while soak­ing up skin can­cer on the beach. “Him? Oh no, dear. Far too maudlin. No sex, either. How about this six-inch thick bonk­buster with the shiny reflect­ing cover?” I don’t see my read­er­ship — that means you (sin­gu­lar, prob­ably) — as the type who reclines on a sun loun­ger in shades, sip­ping a cock­tail. No, in my mind’s eye I see the aver­age Unre­li­able Wit­ness fan as being someone shiv­er­ing in a depress­ing inner-city bed­sit in the depths of darkest Decem­ber, wrapped in a heavy over­coat and hunched over a one-bar elec­tric fire for mea­gre warmth, with their only com­pany provided by a syr­inge, a razor blade, and a bottle of wretchedly cheap gin. It makes me so proud.

If the puddle of sweat doesn’t suck me away forever, I will endeav­our to get back on sched­ule. Not that I’ve been com­pletely indol­ent. Some­where back there, I man­aged to write another piece for the new, eagerly keen and las­ci­vi­ously thrust­ing ‘Other’ magazine. It’s another thought­ful piece about an aspect of lit­er­ary style, but delivered via the sort of bad-tempered rant that I’m becom­ing known for in my advan­cing years. Some­what incred­u­lously, it comes adorned with a pho­to­graph of Brit­ney Spears, so even if you can’t stand my writ­ing, it’s worth going there to find out how America’s faded teen queen and I are inex­tric­ably linked.

May cause drowsiness: day 20

Twenty ways about you, twenty reas­ons to breathe in and out, twenty small mouths to feed, twenty words to write down on twenty scraps of paper, twenty strings to cut, twenty strings to your bow, twenty strings to pluck, twenty strings to tie, twenty tiny pack­ages, twenty pas­sen­gers overboard.

Too per­fect, too roun­ded, too eager to please. In need of more.

May cause drowsiness: day 19

Spit. Shit. Piss. Mucus. Blood. Pus. Ham­mer blow. Jack­boot on face. Torn hair. Scarred flesh. Gouged eye. Broken bones. Gap­ing wound. Jack­boot of his­tory. Foot­print. Your dic­tator will see you now. Your dic­tator will own you now. Your dic­tator will bury you now. Your dic­tator will dis­ap­pear tomor­row morn­ing. Your dic­tator will live abroad, in dubi­ous exile. Your dic­tator will live for many years, examin­ing your query­ing face.

[Whis­per] —
Is this what you want? —
Yes —
What you want to hap­pen? —
Yes —
It will hurt —
I know this —
How do you know this? —
Because it repeats —
Repeats? —
Yes. It repeats. It con­tin­ues —
[Breath] —
You need to say the word —
The word? —
Just once. I will hear it —
Word. Two words. How­ever many —
Yes. All of them —
[Unin­tel­li­gible speech] —

Dir­ec­tions:
1. Ensure fig­ure is kneel­ing.
2. Ensure figure’s hands are tied behind their back.
3. Tell fig­ure to avoid blink­ing.
4. Place right index fin­ger under figure’s chin.
5. Gently raise figure’s head to a forty-five degree angle.
6. Order fig­ure to look into your eyes.
7. Order fig­ure to reg­u­late breath­ing.
8. Wait for fig­ure to acqui­esce.
9. Fig­ure will acqui­esce.
10. Continue.

Very soon, an attempt will be made at restor­ing lines of com­mu­nic­a­tion. One line. No words. A tele­phone call. Answer it. Do not say any­thing. Just listen. You will hear trains. You will hear noise. You will hear a city. You will hear beat­ing. You will won­der if it is a pulse, if it is a heart. The tele­phone call will not answer your ques­tions or put an end to your doubts. You will replace the receiver. You will be unsure of all that you heard. You will not trust your­self. You will bend and flex your right index fin­ger. You will place it under the chin of a kneel­ing fig­ure and raise their head to meet your gaze. You will whis­per to them, but you will mouth the words in an exag­ger­ated fash­ion. Your face will appear grot­esque. You will be grot­esque. You will extend your left hand and help the fig­ure to a stand­ing pos­i­tion. You will turn the fig­ure away from you to face the wall.

They will not recog­nise the wall. They will have no idea of the room they are in, yet they will be calm and rel­at­ively at ease in their sur­round­ings, which you will have fur­nished com­fort­ably. This will be their home. They will hear a door close behind them. They will not know when you are com­ing back. Or if.

May cause drowsiness: day 18

I am a liar and a cheat, but only to myself. I can’t help won­der­ing, how­ever, if I am even lying — to myself or to you — if no one is mon­it­or­ing these air­waves and tun­ing in to the dis­tant num­bers sta­tions broad­cast­ing through the bewil­der­ing inter­fer­ence, hiss and garble that we have cre­ated for ourselves.

Tree. Falls. Forest. Sound. Et cetera.

I am also a neat­ness freak, bor­der­line obsessive-compulsive. Ord­nung muss zein. It would keep me awake at night to know there was a miss­ing digit here, a blank space amidst the white­ness, an 18 that lost out on its chance to become an adult and do all the fun things in life that it was pre­vi­ously denied by law. I would worry. I would toss and turn and tie my duvet into a knot, beneath which I would lie — ter­ri­fied, numbed — like a nightshirt-clad crucifixion.

So. Kill me. Do it slowly. Lots of blood. Please.

May cause drowsiness: day 17

a door bolted with
one thou­sand dead­locks
can remain ajar

               this.single.purpose

two pin­pricks of light
a space — a pause
spar­ing words for
a nervous approach
lower­case plat­it­udes
an uneasy full stop
a hanging ques­tion
a pause — a space
two pin­pricks of light

               this.single.purpose

intoned in grey so
as not to waken
the merely sleeping

Otherwise

‘Other’, the new site that they (who­ever ‘they’ are) are call­ing “the best thing since a pip­ing hot Greggs extra large saus­age roll”, con­tin­ues to pub­lish qual­ity pas­ties and excel­lent pies about all man­ner of writerly, artistic and cre­at­ive endeav­ours. (Oh, some­times I am so hifalutin that I amaze myself.) It appears to be becom­ing a second arena in which I can act my age (read: old) and exer­cise my char­ac­ter­istic moods (read: mostly bad-tempered and sar­castic). Hav­ing writ­ten this on the vir­tu­ally non-existent Brit­ish ‘indie lit’ scene (I must wash my mouth out with car­bolic acid), I have now writ­ten this on the pop­u­lar trend for fea­tur­ing product brand names in con­tem­por­ary fic­tion. All in all, then, this is prov­ing to be another sat­is­fy­ing step towards my ulti­mate goal of becom­ing the most unpop­u­lar per­son on the internet.

May cause drowsiness: day 16

“What age am I? What age now, exactly? That age? That age of. Rage or not rage. That age? Can you say what age I am? Age of reason? Age of chance? Age and a half? What age am I now? What age are you look­ing for, sir or madam or whichever you prefer? You prefer me? Oh, me. What age do you want me to be? What age? Can I play every age? No. Can I play any age? Yes. I can be all ages. Shall I be the age of a sweet baby sleek babe sweet baby or babe baby babe baby maybe or maybe not baby? Baby? Or I could appear as a wide-eyed inno­cent child turned wild-eyed less inno­cent child turned wild child seen it done it been there and all and wilder and wilder and split child torn ripped child? Sorry? Asun­der? Asun­der, then. Maybe you want me as a ram­pa­ging teen: ram­pa­ging hor­mones, ram­pa­ging moods, ram­pa­ging skin and body and sought hands and feet and other places? You shouldn’t. You do? No, that never, will never. Would never do. Older? Wiser? Worldly or not seen so much of? Twen­ties, the whole wide world? Two oh one and two and three and more. Or twenty more. No more. More and more and more and again again again. Jump­ing in and out of. Lie down, get up. Skin and bod­ies and don’t look down, look up. Look up and at. Not down. Look and look and look. Is this what you want? This the age you want? Is this it? This it? This is it, sir or madam or whichever you prefer. Don’t touch. But maybe touch and noth­ing else. And switch on. Turn. As if I have a switch to turn on. Turn me on. Just there. There. Like that. No, not like that. Do I have a switch? Why should I? I’m real. As real as you are. Skin and bone and shit and piss and swal­low and excrete and cells within cells within yet more cells within a single cell. I can blink and mouth and lick and whis­per and arms and legs and hands and feet and grow up, grow up and out and grow everything every­where, every­where else, for every­one else, for you and me and him and her and breasts and but­tocks and cock and cunt and teeth and nose and breathe. What? What? What? Yes, I heard. I’m here. I can hear. Yes, ears to listen and learn. That’s how it goes on from now until, but harden­ing and wrink­ling and leath­er­ing and weak­en­ing until then. So does this age match? This age of me? Of mine? Of yours and all yours? All yours, sir or madam or whichever you prefer, whatever you desire, who­ever you want me to be. I’m all yours. l’m all yours. I’m all yours for a moment or for a year but no longer, no longer, and no one else, and no one else’s.”

May cause drowsiness: day 15

Words must fall apart. Language must cease to be. All notions of sense and understanding must be exploded, left scarred, a bloodied victim at the side of the road. Sen­tences must be robbed out like so many bricks and girders, beams and fix­tures stolen from the debris of collapsed buildings, leaving only the ghostly echo of what stood so proudly before. The only way to rein­vent, to rein­vigorate, even to resus­citate is to destroy, destroy and destroy again. Phrases and meaning must be kicked and punched, beaten raw and abused, even touched, stroked, aroused; whatever it takes to leave their bodies gasping, pleading, scratch­ing desperately for release. I start slowly, sliding a knife under the keys and carefully removing let­ters, one or two at a time, to see what lies underneath, what lies within. To see if I’m in there, look­ing out.

May cause drowsiness: day 14

Words must fall apart. Language must cease to be. All notions of sense and understanding must be exploded, left scarred, a bloodied victim at the side of the road. Sen­tences must be robbed out like so many bricks and girders, beams and fix­tures stolen from the debris of collapsed buildings, leaving only the ghostly echo of what stood so proudly before. The only way to rein­vent, to rein­vigorate, even to resus­citate is to destroy, destroy and destroy again. Phrases and meaning must be kicked and punched, beaten raw and abused, even touched, stroked, aroused; whatever it takes to leave their bodies gasping, pleading, scratch­ing desperately for release. I start slowly, sliding a knife under the keys and carefully removing let­ters, one or two at a time, to see what lies underneath, what lies within. To see if I’m in there, look­ing out.

May cause drowsiness: day 13

Her mewl­ing babe nears forty years emerged from the womb. Kept and alive, but not kept. She kneels in the eye of the fam­ily mir­ror, under the accus­at­ive point­ing of the clock.

Girl turns to woman, but stores child-like rhymes in her head, stays sing-song under her breaths. Spreads brick red lip­stick care­lessly over her mouth, scratches dead skin from behind her left ear, catch­ing small flakes on her palm, examin­ing them for pat­terns of mean­ing. She wishes that each uncer­tain shape could map her exist­ence, her grow­ing. Brushes the remains of her­self away, agitated.

She is impa­tient for old age. She wants to dream of want­ing. Dresses for birth, dresses for rain, dresses for water engulf­ing her up to her waist. This body has worked against me, she thinks. Throws a last mur­der­ous glance to the mir­ror. This face has worked against me, it replies.