1. I walk down
greasy steps, dark and spidrous concrete roughly set, collarstained rats and
scabrous bone, patterned with the chaos of half-witted Friday Afternoon
accelerated idleness. My hand grips the lightermelted formical rail that is
ripped off from the cold and rusted iron clasp. I walk down these steps, coming
away from a meeting, or a party, in dusk and nervy of the rectangled dimtodark
below.
I sense behind
me another who walks in my footsteps so I speed my solefall and breath, dare
not to look back and whisper to myself tuneless minutesoaking distractive
parodies of dull tuneage.
I reach the
first cornerlanding and as my pace once more quickens I feel the thudding
follower’s five-yard backstare, so I step to a jilted job and through my mind
sneaks the proposition of being followed, and though I shrug it away I can feel
fear stronger than my feeble faith. I twitch a look back and eyes flash back at
me in smirk of shared knowledge of my lies of my transparency, of my
spud-doctor spasticity, bared translucent to my liver I jog faster and down and
launch round the next corner with my shadower solidifying into a demon and the
faster I run the more solid and horned he is but I jump not run now with my
biceps straining to pick my too-hefty body round and down as the light of freedom,
of daytime is tantalising through a door I fear not to reach.
One more flight
and now I am exhausted, a spinning threnody of unbreathable danger and terror
as my ghost saps from me all energy all confidence all hope my sandbuilt career
and turtleneck gesturing presumptuousness.
I sense the last
corner is near and can see the Exit Door ajar where sunlight winks but in sight
of freedom I am caught by my shadow my ghost my past the figure the form of my
doubledealing, ignorant, posturing watertreading gelatine past and present and
I feel in this moment that I know I realise that I’ll never reach the daylight
break into freedom burst past myself because the terror of the past assaults
the present and I scream silently one two three times and though I am now awake
I cannot draw out any noise more than a gargle.
And my room is
filthy, dark, the neon numbers of the alarmclock are a jumble and I shiver and
I swear because I can’t won’t give way give myself away to this finality
because somewhere I still hold on for the exit door all the while.
So I chide
myself and turn on my side and do not turn on the light because it is too easy
and I have to conquer these shadows and I try to drift away but am mortally
scared to look over my shoulder for fear that another shadow is forming in a
pernicious heart spotted rotten hell.
2. I am in a
dance club, and I’ve been here a while, and it’s great, and the drink is great,
and it’s chilled and energetic at the same time. I walk around alone though my
mates are here somewhere, but soon I realise I’ve lost everybody and I have no
hope of finding them. So I decide to go to a different club but before I leave
this one I buy some Ecstasy from a dealer who refuses my money with a shake of
his head and a too-wide-boy smile that I take initially as friendly but is also
somehow sinister.
I neck the pills
and start to walk up the hill toward the new club with a small crowd of people,
jiving with myself ‘this is cool, like Glastonbury’ as people queue for
cashpoints and shortcut through fields. Two of us take a new shortcut and
stumble, arms round each other’s shoulders, over a stile. In the distance two
massive hounds of hell are circling; but they are far away and their hoary
sillhouette fierces with the treelined hillscape as my new mate runs ahead to
get us tickets for the new club which we can now see is not so far away.
As I reach the
hilltop I can see and hear the slavering wolfdogs running closer and closer as
my heart races and the world itself shifts to shit and scrub as I start to feel
the swift and malignant drugs take hold. The black feral fuckers are very close
now and are superrottweilers, horrendous, spiky-backed insectdogs, mutant
woodlice, bloody of eye and dribbling from coarse-tongued, black-breathed,
scum-yellow talon-teeth andI realise I can’t escape them the way I came, and I
pant and slide and my brain siezes and shakes andjumps inside my sprocketted
skull as it tries to find an escape from htis poisoned protoplastic skeleton. I
try and snide away down a different part of the hill but the devils and
cackling barking shitting spiderlice spin on six-legged lice-limbs and follow, and though I scrabble and scramble
to hide in tawny trees one of these irradiated monstrosities is now a
woodlousedogsnake which is black and red and luminous green with eyes that have
no pupils or pulse, and I kill it before I kiss it.
