This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end.

Opravdu jsem chtěla, udělala jsem úplně VŠECHNO, co se dalo udělat. Chtěla jsem být lepší, snažila jsem se. Už se nebudu omlouvat za to, kdo jsem. Tohle není pohádka, princezna se může snažit sebevíc, může se vyhýbat trnům, a stejně se nakonec píchne.. A to pěkně bolí!
Myslím, že jsem mlčela už dlouho, nemůžu takhle dál, nemůžu žít s popíchanýma rukama, protože jednou vykrvácím a nebude tu nikdo, kdo by zavolal 911, protože jsem celou dobu ani nehlesla.. V životě jsem z úst nevypustila slova “mrzí mě to”, to přišlo až když přišel i on. Takže, jak je možné, že jsem dosud tady, pořád na té samé křižovatce? S rukama potřísněnýma krví, bez prince, bez naděje na záchranu…? Chtěla bych věřit na zázraky, ale nejsem si jistá, jestli to zvládnu.
Prej je to jako příklad z algebry, ale my bereme stereometrii. Já mám hodně dobré prostorové vidění, opravdu. Ale zdá se, že tahle krychle mého života je postavená úplně nakřivo. Mám špatně zvolené body a na špatných základech se nedá postavit stabilní krychle. Přitom jsem se tak snažila, vykreslovala jsem si každý bod, každou čárku. Nesnáším gumování, protože ten kus pryže stejně nikdy tak úplně neodstraní původní nákres. Vždycky tu bude. Zdá se, že budu muset použít úplně nový papír… At least I can say ‘I tried’.
Tohle je konec kapitoly.

A ty si to uvědom.

It’s been a good run. I won’t take down the blog for a few days, but the blog is ending- it’s just time, ya know…

It began on 4-3 and it’s ending on 11-29 so those numbers don’t match up at all, but that’s ok.

Also- to my very small readership: to those of you creepy internet people who read and never ever commented…. you will always be a cyber mystery (to me). and you will always remain a real life creep.

One last Happy Birthday shout out to the Muse today; the initial inspiration and the blog you should continue reading. LINK

Bye Bye Blogger

I’m not gonna tell you what it is, of course.  You’ll have to wait to get the book.  But isn’t it nice to know it’s all finished and only needs some tyding up to get submitted and then published?  I thought you’d like to know that.  I feel (if you’ve read all the goodies on this blog) that you may have found something that peaked your interest.  That was the plan anyway, send me a comment and let me know if I got it right.

PURE Nightclub in Las Vegas is hosting rapper 50 Cent (aka Curtis Jackson) to get 2010 off to a great start. 50 Cent’s rise from street hustler to rap superstar is legendary in the rap industry and was the basis of the hit movie “Get Rich or Die Tryin’,” in which he portrayed himself.  The movie album shot straight to number one and sold 1.5 million copies in its first week and a half of release, the highest ever for a debut album. His hits include the smash “In Da Club,” “Candy Shop,” If I Can’t” and “Just A Lil Bit.” 50 Cent continues to rap either solo or with his group G-Unit.  50 Cent expects to expand his showbiz career to act, write, produce and direct in true superstar fashion. 

Down the Las Vegas Strip, LAX Nightclub will welcome the Grammy Award-winning The Black Eyed Peas to help Las Vegas ring in 2010. The Black Eyed Peas, who are comprised of will.i.am, apl.de.ap, Taboo and Fergie, have become a music phenomenon since their album “Elephunk” debuted in 2003. The group’s hip hop and dance-oriented style has catapulted them to music stardom, as the group has sold an estimated 20 million albums worldwide and 13 million singles. Their most recent album, “The E.N.D.” includes hit singles “Boom Boom Pow” and chart-topper, “I Gotta Feeling,” which was the number one US single for 26 consecutive weeks, more than any other song in history. 

Tickets for both performances begin at $150 and will be sold exclusively at Vegas.com.

Omg! Me and Windyy1 have thought of deleting Windyy1’s site for long. Well We wanted to delete it today. I had my account on and it deleted my blog. I made this site just in case if anyone can’t get my site back. Please help me guys. Man, now I really need those wp credits. Hope you can get my site back somehow, or at least my hits.

Please help me…

Today seems like a good day to stop. Enjoy summer.

fast fingered fiends fall
prey
to this failsafe that is colder weather
and away
from a “together”

wind smacked smiles fade
within thickened air
crowded with leaves

oscillating like October
spinning towards her full moon exit

fiending & freezing
lips stick
hearts tick

like two adjoined months
to and for one another.

Dagens tips: Ta en låt som du tycker om och som du har lyssnat på så många gånger att den nästan, men bara nästan är uttjatad. Lyssna på den än en gång, men ansträng dig att inte lyssna på texten eller den musik som hörs bäst (t.ex. huvudgitarren). Lyssna istället på resten av musiken, den som man sällan lägger märke till i vanliga fall. Du kommer upptäcka nya delar av låten som förhoppningsvis gör den ännu bättre och mer intressant.

Jag gjorde detta med i princip hela Beatles-albumet Abbey Road på bussen idag och alla låtar blev direkt snäppet bättre, trots att de redan innan har varit bland det bästa jag någonsin har hört. Jag trodde jag hade tjatat sönder Gloden Slumbers/Carry That Weight/The End under alla repetitionstimmar i slutet av 9:an. Men icke! Nu hörde jag en massa fantastiska basgångar som jag inte hade någon aning om innan (lyssna bara på You Never give Me Your Money, Carry That Weight eller Here Comes the Sun så förstår du vad jag menar). Och jag fick också flera bevis på vilken betydande roll Ringo hade (vilket jag redan visste eftersom jag inte är dum i huvudet). Så alla där ute; underskatta aldrig en trummis! De är en viktig del för all musik som görs!

Ett annat tips är att lyssna på ett helt album från början till slut istället för att slumpa fram låtar. I många fall kan man följa en handling. Många låtar blir mycket bättre då

För övrigt är det helt underbart hur I Want You (She’s So Heavy) övergår i Here Comes the Sun på det nämnda albumet. Ville bara få det sagt.

There is an incredible feeling of relief when you type ‘the end’ on a story. That happened for me yesterday but it wasn’t an easy writing day. The words didn’t come quickly and I got distracted very easily. I spent way too much time twittering.

Actually, while twittering I discovered another writer stuck at the same place and having the same issues. Now, we were both writing sex scenes – how hard can it be right. (I really thought about changing that line but … it stays.) She thought we might be writing the same story. What are the odds? (Yes, if you do know you can tell me.)

What a week it’s been in blogland. The internet has zinged all week with Harlequin’s change of direction and the repercussions of their decision. I’m not going to voice an opinion – enough has been said by minds more informed than mine. I’m still learning and the arguments have been fascinating.

Just for laughs this week I’m posting a link to Jess Dee’s blog. I do hope I’m not jinxing myself for computer troubles.

But the best news of the week is that one of my crit partners, Jerrica Knight-Catania, had a fantastic regency romance published this week. A Gentleman Never Tells is a great read! Check it out!

I’d like to think that at this point I would say something fabulously witty and incisive (even if it only appears so in my head).  This is how I like to cope with these things.  Like at the meeting where we were earnestly thanked for our contribution and repositioned and sent on our way and I suggested it might be nice to have Christmas off for a change.  Or that thing we did with the empty cat box as we left the vet that provision of details would make you think less of me for.  There is, you see, no problem that cannot be trivialised by some glib, lame remark, and if something can be trivialised then it sure does not seem so big a deal.

So glibness has been a prominent visitor of late.  Largely I confine it to customers, especially those who ask where we are moving to.  I suppose I should be grateful the abundance of fluorescent signage has registered and some import of the immediate commercial surroundings has been conveyed.  But, really, how many shops do you know actually move?  And, compared to them, how many just disappear altogether amidst a welter of abbreviated column inches in the sidelines of newspaper business sections?  So, if the customers really want to know where I’m moving to they are told: the job centre.  Similarly they assume the closure is entirely down to the internet and are somewhat non-nonplussed when I reveal the truth: bad management – having the CEO repeatedly admit to not being interested in the stores, not investing in them, not marketing them, not buying for them, not paying their bills, not even acknowledging their existence – what else could that be but bad management?

Perhaps its my candour, the idea that, in the face of unemployment, suffering the indignity of being ejected from a job I really ought to have left long ago under my own volition, and the underlying sense much of my working life to date will be amounting to nothing, I might not be excessively perky about it, or gregarious enough to endure lengthy discussion of the matter.  The novelty wore off long ago, leaving a hard nugget of the frankly tiresome.  It’s nice that people think it’s a shame, and the end of an era, and that there’s nowhere decent in a two minute walk; it’s sweet that they wish me and everyone else luck (as we will need it, they like to remind us, in case we thought unemployment was shits and giggles), but there’s little to be said other than perhaps a thank you, or a shrug.  Glibness, and sarcasm, and carefully selected rude words, are tools, useful for mixing things up a little, permeating well worn moments of cliché with a delicate frisson of awkwardness.

I do refrain from indiscriminate practice of this.  Some people have been genuinely concerned, at least one violently outraged (I guess someone should be).  A more measured approach is required – no less truthful – with much self-evaluation and the disclosure that it’s probably a good thing, in that made up bigger picture we fall back on in uncertain conversations, and that matters could have been far worse.  They leave feeling much better about the situation, relieved that we are not succumbing to a mentality of defeat and abject uselessness.  Our attitude is commended.  Everyone feels better.  Although it is nice that some people do care (I guess, once again, that someone ought to).

But it’s been going on for an awful long time now.  There is nothing else to say (not readily obvious given the degree to which I dwell upon the matter).  When people find out you’ve just been screwed out of a job and they really feel quite awful about it and they apologise profusely, repeating I don’t know what to say, it is maybe because there is nothing to be said (see previous parenthesis).

Silence, however, is unpopular.  Nobody likes silence.  Something has to be said.  Sometimes it is important for something to be said.  And that’s what I originally intended to talk about here.  Glibness and sarcasm and defaced pictures of the CEO are useful in their place, as are platitudes and the uncomfortable mumblings of polite-minded people suddenly presented with small talk laced with too much honesty.  Alarming reports in the organ of the trade, bitter diatribes with poor punctuation, character assassinations, stale arguments, the greedy scooping of the media fluffing the mood of collapse and failure they’ve been toying with for the last 12 months – all have their place.  But they are not a substitute for real communication.

When everyone is saying your company is falling apart, and your company is saying absolutely nothing, you do wonder how much has fallen off already and whether any of it is salvageable.  Throw in a retail sector that operates at both extremes – persistent pessimism and delusional optimism – and there’s a heady mix of wild speculation, assumed outrage, and a hugely glaring absence from the people who we all know could – and should – be doing a better job of managing the situation.

Sometimes it is important for something to be said.  And before long a cack-handed and hollow attempt will be made, provoking more sneers and outrages and heavily edited comments throughout this tiny world.  But it has not been said yet.  So what can I say?

Today was the last day of rolls for the season… bittersweet for me.

I really want to do well but I don’t seem to be able to get my line down as good as I want it. I think I’m still a bit scared because of my last crash. I’ve been able to do it a few times but I would have to break while going into the chute… I wish I was able to go down properly without having to do that. But lately there’s been problems with the buggy. =(

My goal once the spring season starts up again is to be able to get through consistently without breaking. Winning my race would be an amazing birthday gift to myself.

Just when you think it can’t get any more ludicrous suddenly the entire business is for sale in the want ads of a newspaper.  Let’s ignore the fact that this may well be a sound business practice and not at all a last ditch attempt to stave off a long overdue, unstoppable (and, admittedly, for the majority, ill-deserved) plummet in to administration; could it get any more tacky and tawdry?

I thought the chav scum jewellery boxes were bad enough, which would not be so awful were they not packaged in shining boxes made from paper and spit and the cellophane of envelope windows.  And then came the plates, and the teapots (limited edition!!!) and the mugs – although the mugs I could see selling, and they have, but everybody needs mugs, especially certain members of staff who, like Tim Westwood and his fresh white T-shirts, need a fresh new one for every coffee.

[Pottery, incidentally, is very hard to merchandise on your average book shop bay; how foolish shop-fitters were in not foreseeing the abundance of James Martin seconds to come in the dying days.]

Then there’s the effect of luminescent point of sale, staple-gunned everywhere, blocking the windows, hanging from the ceiling wherever there is not a broken light, billowing in the wind, and all clearly out of sight for people still somehow do not seem to comprehend the message that the store is closing, all stock is being liquidated and that everything must go.

Not much of an enjoyable experience unless you enjoy the discordant mooing of cows made by gimmicky bargain stock when depressed by the fat, insistent fingers of those who feel the need to press every button they come across.  But I’m not the type to become indignant over these things.  Granted, its not ideal, but little about redundancy is or is meant to be, at least until someone comes along and rebrands it as Opportunity^TM, but I shall refrain from bemoaning the devaluing of the book shop or drawing specific attention to poor leadership, the dearth of commerciality or the abundance of utter buffoons whose turds know more than they do.  There is no longer anything I can do, and really there never was but I know now not to pretend.

But even with the end nigh, the embarrassments are heaped ever higher.  The Friday afternoon emails are still being sent out, sparse in detail, gorged with either outright stupidity or deliberate misinformation.  The latest spoke of unsolicited offers and media speculation.  Clearly unsolicited is one of those words that can, at times, mean its opposite; to use – not for the first time – a vulgar analogy, a hooker can be said to be in receipt of unsolicited offers when the car drives up to her and the window is wound down, for she may just happen to be there.  Although it is unlikely.

To finally face down the ultimate effects of years of cumulative neglect, disarray and repositioning – be it deliberate, unintentional, inevitable or preventable – is one thing.  For it to continue, for it to even worsen, is just plain embarrassing.  And for unsolicited offers to come from an advert in a newspaper and to be expected to believe that is just plain tragic.

Once again we find ourselves in that curious state of Schrodinger’s Book Shop; in the box, both alive and dead and yet neither, waiting to be observed and our state determined.  This week should at least be interesting, but then these days when is it not?  One way or another I will at least not be working for this company much longer, and that can only be a good thing.

“If you want to know the end, look at the beginning”

- African proverb

……….TOO INTERESTING…….

One year ago on a grey november day I started this blog. I didn’t do well at this time, I had a lot to thing about and needed a place to sort out my thought.

Now a year later I’m doing much better. I finally let go of the past and now it’s time for a new chapter in my life. And therefore I will stop blogging. I won’t delete this blog because I’m sure the time will come in which I need it again

So, I will take a leap in the dark without Mr. Perfect because he is my past and without Mr. X because he… (sorry, but I don’t understand his reason…) but do you know what? I’m happy with it. Life is too short to cling to someone who do not love you how you are.

Least but not last I’d like to thank all the people who went by and read my blog. Many thanks for the encouraging and supporting comments.

Take care of you

Slow down and enjoy life. It’s not only the scenery you miss by going too fast – you also miss the sense of where you are going and why

And it’s over. Neither of us wants to try anymore and this time it feels permanent.

It’s not the first time he’s worn me down to the point where I think I’ll be happier without him in my life, but I like to think it will be the last. This time feels different because this time he was the one to say he didn’t want to try any more. Both the other times I was the one to give in first, and I eventually felt guilty. Our friendship was a big deal, so why was I giving up on it? Wasn’t it worth a little effort?

And of course it was worth the effort, but I’ve been struggling through the same problems for over a year now and there’s been no change on his part. We’re looking at the same situation, but we’re perceiving it in irreconcilable ways. I feel that he is treating me differently, and not for the better; he feels that nothing has changed and thus there can’t be a problem. I’m not sure if that’s how he really feels, or if that’s just easier for him than attempting to work things out. Either way, the cognitive dissonance of feeling something that someone else is trying to convince me isn’t there took a heavy toll on me. It’s an immense relief to be free of that.

I’ve thought about this nearly every day for over a year. I have failed to solve this problem over 400 days in a row. I’m exhausted and I’m relieved to no longer have the burden of trying. It’s been especially frustrating because it was obvious that I was the only one who felt that burden. The crux of the problem was that I felt our relationship was far too one sided, and that was just one of the ways that problem was exemplified.

So, nearly seven years of progressively deeper friendship and over one year of both long stretches of silence and tense attempts at reconciliation. Was it worth it? Oh, it was. There are probably a hundred ways that he helped me become a better and stronger person and I am grateful for it. This was easily the most important relationship I’ve ever had and it was full of amazing moments. It was hard to watch as we stopped creating the good things and they transitioned from things we did to things I remembered, but for a long time they really were there.

I don’t know what happens next. We still have a large group of mutual friends (about half my friends and the majority of the people I’m close to are also friends with him), but I’m over 2,000 miles away. I’ll be in town for a week in January, but avoiding him shouldn’t be that hard. We might just fade out of each others’ lives until it’s nothing but memory. It’s also possible that a few months or years down the road I’ll find myself missing him badly enough to call. It wouldn’t be the first time.

Something is different this time though: this time I have witnesses who love me. When he listened to me this afternoon, he seemed sad to hear things worked out this way. It will be nice to have someone so solidly on my side (he’s never met Claytor) to help me find perspective if I start to feel differently about this. Our mutual friends understandably don’t want to get too involved, so we tend to leave them out of it.

I will say one thing: I’ve never had healthier arguments with anyone than I did with him. No matter how bad the situation was, or how angry we were, we always chose to fight right.

Have you ever met one of your heroes? As a teenager I was a huge Beatles fan. I knew all the songs, all the lyrics. In fact I was so nerdy I could have told you the track order of every single (British version) album they produced between the years of 1962 and 1970. I was an uber-Fab Four geek. The inspiration of their incredible songwriting led me to write and perform songs of my own. Of the four, John Lennon was my biggest hero but I was well aware that all four of them made the band what it was – take any of them away and I do not believe their career would have been quite as successful.

In 1990 the guitarist in my band, Niall, offered me a ticket to see Paul McCartney play at Wembley Arena. This was his first major tour in some time (possibly his first since having ditched the ‘Wings’ format of his ever-changing backing band) and punters were told to expect plenty of Beatles songs. Niall’s brother-in-law was McCartney’s press agent at the time, which meant that we not only had tickets, we had backstage passes (which explains how I met Donald Sutherland backstage at a McCartney gig).

I spent weeks anticipating the fact that I was going to meet one of my childhood heroes. Yes of course I’d have loved for John Lennon to still be alive and to be able to meet him (meet him? I’d have put super-glue on my palm before shaking hands with him in order to get plenty of time to chat to the guy!). What does one say to such an important, if distant, figure in their lives? “Your music changed my life, Paul.” Hmm, bit corny and probably something he’s heard his whole life. “I love you.” Me and several million other people. I couldn’t work out whether there was anything worth saying and decided to just realize how lucky I was to be able to be in the same room as the guy.

As it turned out, even if I’d had a perfect speech planned to harangue the man with, I wouldn’t have been likely to get it out as when he was suddenly stood in front of me (Linda by his side), my tongue stuck itself to the roof of my mouth and it was all I could do to mumble “Hello” as we shook hands. In my defence, as he entered the room he really did bring that superstar presence into the place. This was one of the most famous people in the world and I guess if I was going to be reduced to a speechless buffoon I’d rather it was by a Beatle than by anyone else in the world.

The gig that evening reduced me to tears of joy so many times. ‘Live and Let Die’ was amazing, as were quite a few of his solo classics (even ‘Ebony and Ivory’ took on a poignancy I’d never credited it with before). But it was hearing Beatle’s songs live that brought the tears to my eyes again and again: ‘The Long and Winding Road’, ‘Hey Jude’, ‘Yesterday’ and then the entire medley from the second half of Abbey Road, concluding with ‘The End’, fittingly the last thing his former band ever recorded. By the end of the night I was practically speechless again and I’d realised something. The middle eight of ‘The Long and Winding Road’, which I’d always felt was ‘mine’ as a teenager, do not apply. ‘Many times I’ve been alone and many times I’ve cried’? Actually, despite the many times I had cried in those formative years, I’d never been alone – I could always stick a Beatles album on the turntable and let their songs chase away my loneliness.

More Gratitude

Today someone I work with asked me if I’d ever been to People of Walmart. My reply, “Of course — where else would I go when I want to feel superior to others?” She responded with a slew of reasons that I could feel superior to others. (Stunning and classy stuck out.)

That was so, so what I needed. This thing with Claytor always does a number on my self-esteem. If of the people who knows me best, and who has a history of loving me cannot or will not treat me in a loving, or even respectful manner, why should anyone? It’s ridiculous, I know, but those thoughts are always in the back of my mind when we’re fighting over this shit.

Why? Because I am fan-fucking-tastic and now is an amazing time to know me. I am happier than I have ever been and more focused, more balanced, more assertive (hence the problems). I am using this time to build my foundation. This is where the rest of my life is coming from, and I’m not settling.

I’ve always assumed he would be a permanent part of my life and I still can’t quite believe that’s not what’s going to happen. I deserve better than what I am getting though; I deserve people who look for reasons to tell me how wonderful I am. I am grateful I have those people in my life, and I am grateful I have people who recognize what I am trying to do and who unfailingly offer their support and affection.

There is something seriously broken inside my head.

I leave the late-night premier of the GLEEM commercial with a makeshift smile on my face, but the moment I step out the door, it cracks like over-applied paint. I think I cry my way back to Bunkroom 1, Buffalo Springfield playing every step of the way in my head.

I’ve been here before so I know all the warning signs. It starts when you look in the mirror and see somebody else staring back at you. It quickly spirals into a prolonged bout of insomnia, which itself adds fuel to the fireflower of paranoia growing up through the dirt of your chest. I grab a towel and head upstairs for a shower and a shave, need to clean up before I do whatever the fuck it is that I’m about to do. I remember something about the girl’s washroom being locked, so I knock gently on the door and get no reply. Maybe there is someone locked in there that can’t get out. Maybe they’re dead. ‘Hello?’ I shout. ‘Is there anybody dead in there?’ Thankfully there is no answer, so I give up and push inside the boy’s room. Stand like a statue in the shower cubicle, head down for a lifetime while the water cascades against somebody else’s skin.

Back to Bunkroom 1, I change into clean boxer shorts and kick my grubby blood and volcanic ash-stained Company football kit into the corner of the room, light a cigarette and reach inside one of the mattresses leaning against the wall, pulling out the red leather suitcase with the navy blue handle. I drop it onto the floor and sit down on it, smoking the cigarette to the bitter end, contemplating the hole that I’ve gotten myself into.

The paranoia I can handle, it’s the overwhelming sense of guilt that I’m struggling to come to terms with. It’s like I am two different people sometimes. On the one hand there’s a Smally with boundless energy and enthusiasm for everything, just crashing headfirst through every barrier and obstacle in his way and accidentally dragging beautiful people like Simon and Becky along with him. And on the other hand there is this Smally, completely burned out and defeated, closing the factory gates for good, so disillusioned with everything and so many people I thought I could count on. I seem to flicker between them at increasingly frightening intervals, never quite sure which of them I’m going to be, and sometimes they feel so polarised that I wouldn’t be surprised if one day the reflection and the reflectee start moving in opposite directions. What the fuck is going on? Have I fried my own brain with the time travelling? Is this really happening?

I kick out at the ukulele and it crashes against the faraway wall with an unhealthy sounding “twang!”

I need to get out of here. I need to find a way of going back and starting again. Get my old life back. My old brain back. I’ve got to find a way of somehow glueing the schism back together. I need to track down my wife and kid and show them that I’ve irrevocably changed, sail back to Bounty Cove and apologise to Chase. Get down on my knees in front of Bernie Bedlington and beg for forgiveness. Return the Laika exhibit to the Russian Space Exploration Museum. If I could, then I’d resurrect the Jazz Monk. And if I could then I’d unimagine The Mardi and everyone on it, before somebody else gets hurt. Or worse, before it whimpers out of existence. I stub the cigarette out on the carpeted floor and walk across to the telephone and punch in the numbers.

An eternity passes and eventually Slight picks up. ‘Hey’, I say, leaning against the wall with my elbows.

‘Smally? Is that you?’ he asks. Sounds like he is in a bar of some kind, a hubbub of chattering voices and loud music behind him, the floating cacophony of unconscious happiness.

‘Yeah’, I tell him. ‘I just wanted to… I just… it’s just that…’

‘Smally, I can hardly hear you’, he tells me, then to someone nearby he says quietly, ‘Yeah, it’s Smally.’

‘I’m sick’, I tell him, ‘I don’t know what is happening to me…’

‘I still can’t hear you’, he shouts, ‘…are you still on your ship?’ I’m painfully aware of a roar of laughter in background when he asks me this.

‘Slight, I want to come home’, I shout, ‘if I don’t, then I think something terrible is going to happen.’

There is a silence, just the ongoing chatter of voices in high spirits and the clanking of glasses, before finally he says to someone ‘Yeah, I’ll just have the same again… sorry Smally, what did you say?’

A girl’s voice, sounding like she is shouting across the table says, ‘Ask him if there is anyone real left on the ship, or if it’s just him and some imaginary friends?’ Her question is followed by another burst of raucous laughter.

‘I said I want to come home! I want to see my son again. I quit Quixodelic man. I just can’t do it anymore. Slight? Can you hear me?’

The noise in the background recedes like he has stepped away from the table and he says, ‘What do you mean come home? Where are you going to go? They’ve gone man. America I heard. Maybe Canada. You’ve got to let it go. It’s too late. Look Smally, now’s not really a good time to talk. I’ll have to call you back later.’

‘Who’s there?’ I ask him, ‘Moppy and Tin Pan?’

‘Everyone’, he says. ‘I’m sorry Smally, but I really need to go…’

‘Slight… Slight! SLIGHT!’ I shout, but I am shouting down a disconnected line into the Void.

I place the handset back on the wall and listen to the sounds of The Foo Fighters blasting out from the bunkroom next door accompanied by shrieks of girlish excitement. Too exhausted to think about banging on the wall, I light another cigarette and unzip the suitcase. My eyes goggle in my skull when I see what’s inside.
On top of all the stuff is a plastic wallet containing two sheets of LSD, with little caped cartoon supermen flying in symmetrical rows. I unbutton the packet and pull a sheet out remembering to try and not let too much of it in through my fingers. And then I get a surge from somewhere. Like wanting to swear in the middle of a church service. Or to suddenly stand up on a packed commuter train and start singing at the top of your lungs. And before I know what has happened, my hands have crumpled the Acid into a paper ball and have shoved the whole thing into my mouth. And I’m chewing it.

I toss the remaining sheet still inside its plastic wrapper into the cloud coffin and with bulging cheeks delve back into the case. Next thing I find is a big bag of sugar. I lift it out and tear it open, puffing a white powder cloud accidentally onto my arms and belly. Speed. Still chewing, I hover my face above the bag and snort as hard as I can, head flies back sneezing, eyes on fire, nose hairs burned out of existence. This is quite possibly the most brutal bag of amphetamines I have ever had the misfortune of sticking up my nose. I go back for a second hit and feel the chemicals sliding down the back of my throat, little shivering waves of potential pricking up the hairs on my skin. Placing the bag to one side, I proceed to lift out a carrier bag of bottles, peeking inside count three bottles of absinthe, one bottle of gutrot, and one bottle of vodka. I unscrew the lid from a bottle of absinthe and start to wash the paper mush down my throat, swallowing with lungs on fire.

If you live with a loop for long enough, then eventually there comes a point when you barely even notice it exists anymore. As I swallow, I am suddenly aware of my own voice in the background saying ‘Dreaming? All I can think of is make sure and find a safe place to fall asleep…’ I pick up an unopened bottle of absinthe and hurl it across the room at the wall socket, watch it shatter into a million shards of glass and globules of thick green liquid, the dictaphone squealing into silence. Stubbing the cigarette out on the open bottle’s lid, I take another drink washing the last trace of the Supermen down, and pull out a CD of The Beatles ‘Revolver’ from the case. I turn it over in my hands and throw it casually over my shoulder, hear it crashing against the wall behind me. I gave up The Beatles months ago.

Next out is a blow-up doll, still in her packaging. She looks fuck all like Winona Ryder, but I blow her up anyway, liberally rubbing handfuls of white powder into my gums in between puffs. As her “Oh’ing” face inflates and toeless plastic feet pop into place, I feel a sudden nauseous wave of dizziness and resolve to stop smoking, stop swearing, and stop taking drugs at the earliest opportunity. More absinthe, a little more absinthe, some more absinthe, and then I light another cigarette, throwing the fully inflated Winona into the cloud coffin. ‘No sticking those supermen up your ass when I’m not looking, okay?’ I tell her, making sure she knows I mean business.

She doesn’t reply. ‘Yeah I get it. Playing it cool’, I say, ‘I’ve met women exactly like you before though… well, not exactly like you. I mean, they were obviously made of skin and bones. I’m meaning more – never mind, you’re not even listening are you?’

I lift a crossbow and a bundle of taped up bolts from the suitcase. ‘I’ll take that as a no then?’ I tell her, clumsily pinging the empty bow. I really ordered this? Fuck, that is frightening. What possible use that won’t end in tears could I have been dreaming up with this one? I’ve never fired one of these in my life before, peeling the tape from the metal arrows letting them fall onto the carpeted floor. Maybe later. More absinthe required. Ah that hits the spot.

What the fuck is this? A signed copy of Roald Dahl’s ‘Fantastic Mr Fox’? Man, this has got “gratuitous” written all over it, no matter how fantastic it is. I lob it into the cloud coffin with Winona and the Acid, and tell her ‘Here, have a read of this. We should get tails. I’ll make us some tails… in a bit. But first I’m going to have another cigarette – oh wait, there’s one here in my hand. But it’s not lit. No, wait a minute… it is lit… it’s just that nobody is smoking it.’

I stare at the smouldering cigarette, the drooping head of ash teetering on the brink. ‘Didn’t I just say that I was giving these up for good?’ I stub it out beside the previous end on the bottle lid thinking it looks like a tiny ash-tray. Or else giant cigarette ends. Peer into the case, eyes momentarily fogging over. ‘What’s this?’

It’s a hat. It’s a hat for a cat. It’s the hat of the cat from the cat in the hat. ‘Well what do you think about that?’ I say to Winona. But she’s too busy trying to get her fingerless hands around Fantastic Mr Fox to answer. So I put the tall red and white stripy hat firmly on my head and light another cigarette.

I don’t know what this thing is. Some kind of needle or gun, with a really sharp tip and a capsule of red ink taped to the side of it. ‘I’m guessing this is for tattoos’, I tell Winona, ‘and I’m also guessing that you’re not going to be up for getting one… maybe you could tattoo me?’

What could I possibly have inked on my body that I wouldn’t mind waking up to for the rest of my life?

‘How about a giant puffin behind some clouds, with some ylfnogards zubbing around, and a big ship, like The Mardi only not like what it is now, but what it was like before, pre-toadstool with little faces at the windows in skull masks – speaking of which, where the fuck is my skull mask? I haven’t seen it since… since…’

A sudden head-rush.

‘Woah… what was I saying Winona? Winona?’ I drop the gun, and lift out a small paper bag filled with hard-boiled spherical sweets of assorted colours and sizes. I pop a little white one in my mouth and it tastes revolting, like battery acid. I need some weed.

‘I need some weed Winona… don’t go anywhere, I’ll be right back’, I tell her, staggering to my feet knocking over the bottle of absinthe watching the green seeping into the cream carpet like bug blood finding its way through veins. My head is spinning pretty hard and I feel a bit breathless. Did I just eat something? My tongue feels like it is coated in foam. I need to find a mirror. No I don’t. I need to stay away from mirrors forever. I swoop and pluck the gurgling bottle from the cream green carpet sea and gargle it around in my mouth, feeling my taste buds do little Mexican waves on the tip of my tongue. And swallow. Why did I just stand up?

I sit back down again, spilling the bottle for a second time muttering ‘Fuckety fuck’, remembering that I was going to stop swearing. And smoking. Why am I still smoking? I drop the end into the bottle of absinthe and it fizzles like O’Flanahanaman diving into a purple pool of lava.

‘Did that actually happen?’ I ask aloud. It seems so strange that I can’t help but feel like it must have been a dream. Or a dream of a dream. My eyes are heavy. There must be something stuck to my eyelids. I check my eyelids but there are only eyelashes and reach into the suitcase again pulling out a small bearded head on a stick. Jesus.

No, not Jesus. I revolve it in my hand. ‘What the fuck is this for?’ I ask myself. It reminds me of a toffee apple, so I try to bite it, but my teeth crack against the plastic skull. ‘Who are you?’ I ask the head, looking deep down into its miniature black painted eyes pulsing. I stick it upside down inside the bag of Speed. There is something deeply disturbing about that head, but I don’t want to give up on it just yet. Hey, wait a minute. Didn’t I have a cigarette? Can I smell burning? No, no burning.

‘Aha! Now that’s what I’m talking about!’ I shout out inside my brain, grabbing the packet of fake moustaches from the bottom of the case and ripping it open. They are the furry ones with plastic backing that you peel off and stick to your face, five black and one ginger. The ginger one reminds me of Hank. Did Hank have a moustache? I should order another pizza from him. I glance at the phone. It feels like it is very far away. I pull the head on a stick out of the bag and lick it all over, dip it back in the bag, revolving it around, making sure it is thoroughly coated and lick the powder off with my tongue. The Mexican wavers wail and duck for cover beneath tambourines of saliva.

‘Tambourines of saliva’, I say. ‘Did I just say that?’ I pick a black moustache randomly and after several attempts peel off the protective film on the back. ‘Mexican!’ I say, ‘I fucking knew it!’ and slap it onto my top lip. ‘Hey Winona… what do you think? Winona?’

She doesn’t answer. For a fleeting moment I’m tempted to give her a moustache of her own, but then I feel the tears welling up in my eyes and start furiously licking at the head on the stick again, giving it another dip for good measure. I honestly can’t tell at this stage if the Supermen have kicked in, or if this is still just me. I burst out laughing and make to wipe my tears on my sleeve, but see that I am sitting there in just my boxer shorts. I need a sleeve. No I don’t. But I do need some weed to take the edge of this. I glance at the phone. No Smally, that’s not right. For a start you should never refer to yourself in the third person. It smacks of arrogance. And secondly, the weed is next door. ‘Who said that?’ I ask aloud, but nobody replies.

Whoever it was, they are right. Warchalking always has weed. I struggle to my feet again with deja-vous coursing through my veins, bend down and pick up the absinthe, a shot to go, take a swig and taste the horrible ash magnified as Mexican wavers freak out like tiny Plum Islanders beneath volcanic rain, frantically running around. I drop the bottle and somehow make it to the door. I have no recollection of the making it. I reach for the handle, a million miles away and open it slightly, peek out into the corridor. It is empty.

Well of course it’s fucking empty. So I step outside and scurry to the door of my old bunkroom. Stare for a handful of moments at the graphic ‘DO NOT DISTURB’ sign and the ‘SMOKING’ sign I stuck up there so long ago. Behind the door, Oasis play. Or maybe it is Status Quo. High pitched voices squeal in unison ‘Not on the hair of my chinny chin chin!’ I knock once loudly.

A few seconds later the door opens, with one of those metal chains across it on the inside and one of the twins’ faces appears, flushed and smiling. ‘Who is it?’ shouts Warchalking from within the room.

‘I think it’s a Jehovah Witness in a big stripy hat’, says the twin, eyeing me up and down, tongue flickering suggestively between her teeth. For some reason she doesn’t recognise me. Perhaps it is the moustache.

‘Tell them to try Smally in Bunkroom 1′, he calls, ‘and then get your little piggy ass back over here so as I can blow your house down.’

‘You heard the Big Bad Wolf’, she says, giggling and closes the door in my face.

I look both ways down the corridor. I have completely forgotten what the fuck I am doing here. So I do what the Big Bad Wolf said and try Bunkroom 1. Knock on the door. No reply. A phone starts ringing inside. I try the handle and it is locked. Is this my room? I look back down the corridor, swimming colours, oscillating like a tunnel of soundwaves. Yep, the Supermen are at work. I can feel them rocketing around in my bloodstream. I try the only code I can think of on the lock and it opens. This must be my room. ‘Hello?’ I say, stepping gingerly into it, scanning the junk and recognising it as somewhere I have been some time ago. How long have I been away? It feels like hours. Where did I go? Just next door. Stop talking to yourself and answer the phone.

I crash across the room and pick up the handset. ‘Slight?’

A girl’s voice giggles. ‘No silly. Guess again.’

A name from somewhere in my subconscious appears in my green ash-tainted mouth. ‘Kimi?’

‘Close’, she says, ‘but no cigar.’

‘Who is this?’ I ask her. ‘Do I know you?’

‘No, but I know you. Come and get me, I’m in the room at the end of the corridor’, she says.

‘The end of what corridor?’

‘This corridor silly. Just come and get me, okay?’

‘Okay.’

She hangs up and I stand there staring at the handset. I fumble around for my cigarettes and light another. How many cigarettes have I got in my mouth now? One or two? I can’t tell. One I think. Stagger back in the direction of the door. I’m getting the hang of this walking business now. Out in the corridor I decide to try and run. I make about six steps going full pelt and fall flat on my face landing on the soft rubber floor. I never noticed the floors were rubber before. I always thought they were metal. Or wood. I place my cheek against the cold surface. Definitely rubber. Or plastic. Definitely plastic. I tilt my head and gaze up the corridor to the door at the end. It might as well be continents away, so I crawl. On my belly like a worm until I reach the Aft Hold, pull myself up on the handle, and step inside.

A gallery of framed pictures stare down at me. ‘Right, which one of you fuckers just phoned me?’ I ask them, still holding onto the door handle to keep myself upright, possibly one, maybe two cigarettes billowing from my bottom lip. A tiny voice giggles from the furthest end of the room. I walk up the row and it is fucking freaky. All these mighty eyes watching me. And it’s like I don’t belong there. ‘Excuse me. Excuse me. Excuse me…’ I mutter until I reach the very last painting and look at the picture of Bjork. ‘Eh… I’m pretty trashed, but I think you just called me?’ I say.

For a second I think I might have gone completely insane as she doesn’t flinch, framed in that pose holding the telephone, but then slowly I watch a big grin creeping over her face and she turns to me, says ‘Boo!’

I just stare at her, my eyes shifting to the map in the picture behind her, trying to imagine a series of red pins charting the haphazard path of The Mardi. ‘You’re not frightened?’ she asks me.

‘Of what?’

She giggles again. I like that giggle. It leaves the picture in a string of blank bubbles. ‘Of a picture talking to you…’

‘Oh that…’, I say, nodding my head. ‘I’m tripping. This is pretty much a standard hallucination… isn’t it?’

She shrugs and pulls a face. ‘Will you take me with you? On your trip?’

‘Uh… okay’, I say, and pull her picture down from the wall.

I shuffle carefully back along the row with the framed Bjork picture tucked under my arm, repeating my Excuse Me mantra and step out into the corridor. And that’s when I really do get a fright. The corridor is under about two feet of dark green water, running down the metal stairs at the far end of the room and swelling this way, rushing around my ankles. But that’s not even the scary part. The scary part is the weird Mexican woman who is standing right in front of me in the doorway, having materialised magically out of nowhere, standing so close to me that our noses are almost touching. ‘Are you… one of my taste buds?’ I ask her.

‘NOOOOOOOOOOO!’ she screams, rearing up in front of me, about ten feet tall, the water seeping up the walls all around us, turning everything green. ‘WHAT DID YOU DO WITH IT?’ she roars.

‘With what?’ I gulp, looking upwards at her terrifying black eyes and cracked olive skin, greying hair flying out in an electrified mane all around her head.

‘SIMON PILER’S HEART!’ she screams, her breath like a hurricane spilling frazzled dead green moths that fall to the watery floor, stretching the skin of my face and causing my fake moustache to spasm against both my ears.

‘Uh… I’m sorry, I don’t know what you mean’, I tell her. (This is true. I really don’t know what she means).

‘IT WAS IN A BOX! IN THE SAFE!’ she howls in astonishing agony. ‘MY GREEN SAFE! WHAT DID YOU DO WITH THE BOX?’

‘Oh… you know about that?’ I ask her, chewing nervously on my lip. I vaguely remember asking someone to remind me to remember something. But I can’t remember who I asked. ‘Just out of curiosity, how did you find out that I took the box from the safe? Assuming that is what you’re asking me?’

‘THE RAT TOLD ME! NOW GIVE – ME – THE – BOX!’ She is so tall now that she is hunched across the bottom corridor ceiling, her giant green fingernails curling into menacing barbed hooks. Were this not just an almighty hallucination then I would be so petrified that I would simply drop dead out of fear there and then on the spot.

‘Ah Buckley’, I say, thoughtfully. ‘I forgot that he knew about that….’ I realise that the cigarette in my mouth has gone out, go to search my pockets for a lighter but remember after a few seconds of searching that I am still only wearing boxer shorts, a fake Mexican moustache, and a big stripy hat. For a moment I consider asking this apparition for a light, but quickly think better of it and shrug. ‘Truthfully, I don’t know what happened to that box’, I tell her.

‘YOU LIE!’ she screams, her face swelling like a giant balloon before my eyes, contorted with rage, skeletal and so vividly real that I feel like I could reach out and touch it.

‘I’m not lying’, I tell her. ‘I gave it to Jonny to keep it safe when I went to the moon. Actually, when I say that I don’t know where the box is, what I really mean is that I don’t know where Jonny is. He left apparently. I think it all got too confusing for him.’

While I talk, I watch her eyeballs bulging, wilder and wilder in the big balloon face, like someone has grabbed her giant body and is squeezing all the organs and air and life up into her skull. She looks like she is about to explode. I back my own head away gently, bracing myself in case this actually happens and hear Bjork’s little voice from the picture under my arm whispering urgently ‘Smally, close your eyes!’

So I close my eyes while all around me the corridor erupts in with the most incredible and awe-inspiring howl of pain, rattling my bones and shaking my blood, ripping up the water all around my legs into waves, battering the ship so hard from the inside that it rocks violently from side to side. The howl lingers in the air for several seconds before receding, the water washing away and eventually I open my eyes, one at a time. She is gone. No sign of her, or the water that only moments ago was swarming in the corridor. ‘Fucking hell, that was pretty intense’, I say to nobody in particular, hearing a loud bump from behind the closed door on my right.

Stomping footsteps in the room behind the door and seconds later it opens, a human-sized walrus standing on its hind legs staring at me. ‘Smally! What the fuck are you doing? What’s all the screaming about? It’s the middle of the night. At least for me it is anyway. Where are you going with that picture?’ the walrus asks me.

‘This picture? Uh… nowhere really’, I tell it.

‘Well can you go nowhere a bit quieter?’ it asks me, looking me up and down curiously.

‘Okay’, I tell it, suddenly wondering if it really was me standing screaming here for no reason. Bjork giggles under my arm.

‘What’s so funny?’ asks the walrus.

‘Nothing. I didn’t say anything’, I tell it.

‘Hmmm…. well, goodnight then’ it says, closing the door with a click

‘Goodnight walrus’, I say, and slope back up the corridor to my room.

I place the Bjork picture against the wall of the bunkroom, locate a lighter and drink some more absinthe. I’m starting to acclimatise to these stratospheres, going back into the case and pulling out a golf club and a carrier bag of balls. ‘Smally, you should like totally start a circus!’ says Bjork, still clutching her telephone in the picture.

‘What do you mean?’ I ask, swinging the club with jelly arms around my head and accidentally smashing the phone off the wall with a ‘Fuck!’

‘Like with clowns and acrobats and lions!’ she says.

‘Why?’ I ask her, going back into the case and pulling out what appears to be a tarantula in a jar of pickle.

‘Why not?’ she asks me, winking.

I unscrew the lid and sniff the jar. Yeah, definitely pickle. I stretch my fingers in and lift out the dripping tarantula, hold it up in the palm of my hand. ‘I guess’, I say, and bite off one of the spider’s legs. ‘Hairy and a bit chewy’, I say, washing the leg down with more absinthe. ‘Want some?’ I ask Bjork, offering her the seven legged pickled creature.

‘Ew… no thanks’, she says, screwing up her nose and we both laugh.

All that is left at the bottom of the case are five tins of paint. Red, yellow, blue, black, and white. I prise them open with the small bearded head’s stick. ‘You might want to stand clear for this’, I tell Bjork, carefully placing the framed picture inside the mattress. She tries to reply something, but it is too muffled. The dictaphone in the corner begins to play on its own accord…

Transport, motorways and tramlines, starting and then stopping, taking off and landing, the emptiest of feelings, disappointed people, clinging onto bottles, when it comes it’s oh so disappointing…

Everything is in slow motion. I wheel and whirl with the paints splashing the colours across the room, covering everything, crying and laughing at the same time while the song sings from the unplugged machine. I pad in paint, cigarette billowing footprints across the carpet, sky on the floor, hands tracing tracks on the ceiling throwing paint with the miniature head, great splashes that run together into muddy technicolour, filling the cloud coffin with black, Winona silent in the shallow pool of darkness. Thoughtlessly my mouth moves but I don’t have a clue what it is saying anymore. Quicker, faster. I slip in a twirling rainbow of mistakes and land on my back while the colours drip like acrylic teardrops.

Life is like a game of chess that you cannot win. Inevitably you must at sometime reach out and topple your king. And the phone is ringing. I swim across the paint thick floor trailing colours on my belly and answer it. ‘Hello? Slight?’ My mouth feels numb, my eyes like bottomless craters.

‘No, it’s me’, says the voice.

‘Who’s me?’ I ask.

‘Who do you think?’ it asks impatiently.

‘Me?’ I ask it.

‘It’s time’, says the voice.

‘Time for what?’ – extending my arm and grabbing at a painted packet of cigarettes.

‘Now I know you already know the answer to that. It’s all over…’, says the voice.

I drop the phone into an oily puddle of red and sit up. The room looks like a Jackson Pollock tornado has hit it full force leaving no stone unturned. I crawl through the paint and am sick in the empty suitcase. I zip it shut and pick up the crossbow, fall over the edge of the cloud coffin and say to Winona, ‘So this is it. Do you want to shoot me first, or will I shoot you?’ picking a congealed lump of black from between her lips. ‘Suit yourself’ I say, and lift her out, dripping more black across the carpet and propping her up against the wall beside the small round port-hole.

I pad back through the wreckage and find a sticky bolt, dizzily turn, unable to see straight, zigzagging outlines of objects running into objects and the dictaphone is still playing that song. I raise the bow and draw back the arrow. ‘Any last words?’

‘…’

‘I didn’t think so’, I say and release the arrow, spraying across the room in a spectral whorl, watch it thud into her plastic forehead, hear the fatal hiss of air escaping, watch her crumple and topple into a heap. ‘Okay Winona, your turn to shoot me. Winona? Ah fuck…’

When I was young and ill, I used to climb suburban willow trees under the moon in my boxer shorts and jump from them onto lush manicured lawns. Each time I climbed a little higher and jumped a little further, until eventually I was jumping from the top of the highest tree in the estate. I can remember swinging on the narrowest of limbs one windless night before leaping, plummeting down and landing on my back, blinking up at the stars. I think I was thinking ‘What the fuck are you doing?’

I grab the golf club and the bag of balls and stumble out into the corridor where three monkeys are waiting for me. The first monkey wears glasses just like mine, a fake moustache just like mine, and a big stripy hat just like the one I am wearing. He is carrying a clipboard. The second monkey wears her heart on her sleeve and looks quite alarmed when she sees the state I’m in. The third monkey wears a green tracksuit and is vigorously doing press-ups on the floor. I’m not even sure if he is aware that I am there. The monkey with the clipboard clears his throat and says, ‘Smally I presume. My colleagues and I are here to interview you in connection with the disappearance of one J. Monk, with a view to apprehending you should the charges stack up.’

‘Charges?’ I ask, closing the door carefully behind me and trying to lean innocently on the golf club.

‘Are you all right?’ asks the female monkey. ‘You look… very ill to be honest.’

The monkey in the hat and glasses gives her a annoyed nudge with his elbow. ‘ARE you Smally?’ he asks me.

‘No’, I tell him.

The girl monkey’s face washes over with relief. ‘Do you know where we can find him?’ she asks.

‘Yeah, this way’, I say and start shuffling down the corridor trailing paint as I go, and peering down my nose at the painted unlit cigarette in my mouth. ‘Any of you kids got a light?’ I ask them.

The third monkey who is jogging along beside me grins and shakes his head. I lead them up past the framed pictures through the hole in the Aft Hold ceiling into the Sick Bay and point at Bobby, motionless in the hammock. ‘Here he is… that’s Smally’, I tell them.

I listen to the first monkey run through his little spiel again, and walk quietly to the shelves inside the door to pick up some of the pots of jam. I try a little “CURE FOR APATHY” and “EXTREME FLAVOUR” by dabbing my fingers into the jars, and while the monkeys slowly realise that Smally is a catatonic wreck, I shout ‘Holy shit! This stuff is amazing! It tastes like enormousness! With a zap of psychosomatic strawberry! You’ve got to try it!’

Slightly freaked out and feeling like I’m going to throw up again, I drop the jars on the floor and they shatter on top of my footprints causing the monkeys to jump in unison. ‘Yeah, he’s fucked’, I tell them, pointing at Bobby again, and falling against the wall, the floor undulating like waves of

what is happening

there is a big white space

Bobby’s voice in my head. ‘Thought school would bring me outta my shell, but I think it’s thickening it. Getting straight A’s, and I’m wondering how.’ I look up from the floor. The monkeys have vanished, and our cook is still sitting there in his cosmonaut costume and shades, motionless.

‘Bobby?’ I croak. ‘What did I do wrong? I can’t fucking figure it out…’ But he doesn’t answer me. ‘I used to know a girl you’d have really gotten along with. But she’s a bit punctured…’ I tell him.

I pick up the golf club and bag of balls and head up into the Quixodelic Record Store. Elvis looks up at me from the hot tub and growls. ‘Why do you hate me man?’ I ask him. He lowers his antlers and starts hoofing it across the room. Oh shit. I jump out of the way as he rams into the wall behind me splintering the wood. I run for the corridor before he gets a chance to wheel around and slam the door of the Communications Room closed. Directly in front of me little Sam Tharkey is sitting tapping away on a keyboard while rows of data spool across Niko’s monitor. ‘Sam! Didn’t you…?’ I try to say.

He grins. ‘I sneaked back on board’, he says, not looking up from his fingers racing across the keys.

‘Oh. What are you doing?’ I ask him.

‘Fixing Niko’, he says.

‘O-kay. Fixing him how?’

‘He’s riddled with viruses you know. I need to clean him before symbiosis’, he says.

‘What’s symbiosis?’

He smiles and looks at me, eyebrow raised. ‘You’ve seen me run, right?’

‘Yeah…’

‘So you know I’m not human. I’m a robot. Human beings don’t run that fast do they? I thought everyone knew this?’

I slap myself hard on the face. It stings.

‘Anyway, I’m going to upload Niko to my main frame. So as he can move around. Oh, by the way, there’s a rat strung up in the corner over there’, he says, waving over to where Buckley is dangling on a string tied around his tail, hanging from a nail in the wall.

‘Buckley!’ I shout, tripping over myself and carefully untying the rat. I lay him on the desk while Sam continues to hammer away at the keys in the background. ‘Buckley, are you okay?’

The little rat wheezes and groans. ‘She made me tell her Smally. I’m sorry…’ he manages to get out.

‘What are you talking about?’

‘I’ll be fine’, he croaks, shaking a little paw at me. ‘I could really do with a cigarette though…’

I lift the painted half-smoked cigarette from my lips and wedge it between his ratty gums. ‘Cheers Smally. Have you got a light?’

‘No I don’t. Buckley, who did this to you?’

‘It’s okay, I’ve got one here I think…’, he feels around inside a pocket of fur on his underbelly and pulls out a
miniature lighter, sparks up and inhales with a sigh. ‘That’s better’, he says. ‘Don’t worry about me. I’m sure you’ve got stuff to be getting on with…’

I look down at the golf club and bag of balls hanging limply in my hands. ‘Not really’, I tell him.

He peers at me with one rat eye, the cigarette crackling away as he inhales. ‘Since when have you not had something to do? Nice moustache by the way.’

‘Thanks. It’s fake. I think.’

He laughs. ‘Go on. Go and do what you’ve got to do…’

I pause for a moment, feeling my heart swelling and ebbing, my brain bursting tiny signals that fail to spark, my bare toes curling up on the cold wooden floor. ‘Well I guess this is…’

He shakes his head. ‘Don’t say it.’

‘Thanks Buckley. Thanks for everything’ I tell him.

‘It’s been a pleasure’, he says, head softly falling back against the desk.

I hover there for a few seconds before finally asking. ‘Buckey… are you dead?’

He lifts his head again and says, ‘Of course I’m not fucking dead. What are you talking about?’

‘Never mind’, I say and push through the door, out onto the moonlit deck.

I climb the main sail in the gentle breeze, my black feet and fingers gripping tight to the mast. I reach the toadstool at the top, and pull myself up onto the cold plastic roof, precariously balanced, and edge my way up to the chimney pot. I stand in the moonlight, trembling and smack a few golf balls out into the ocean, watch them land with cascading ripples. I post the club and the balls down the chimney pot and sit down. There is nothing left to do.

There is nothing left to do but jump and end it.

I just need to be patient.

Above my head is a great big question mark of stars that I think they call “The Plough”…

I’m so sorry.