Missing

She isn't there.

In the morning, I roll over and half-smile in
reflex
before reality creeps into my too-cold bones and reminds me

It's too quiet in the morning
and there's no music

she took it with her

so I dredge my memory
pull up the sunken places and forgotten days
polish them all off
build a fiction of her from spun thought and the dawn's light

she is far less fascinating than the real thing
and she doesn't make me giggle
snort into my cola and bang my teeth on the edge of the glass

when she is gone
i lose my laughter somewhere secret.
She takes it with her.

I'm so glad she's coming home.

Sunshine diaries: Part 1

The following is an excerpt from an old journal I bought at an Oxfam shop. I fiicked through it in the shop and I thought it was empty, but after buying it I found out that some of the pages have been written on. I’ve concluded that it’s just an elaborate fiction- my own test data and notes will be interspersed throughout the transcribed text- but it certainly entertained me.

This excerpt starts on the 4^th page of writing, which itself is the 122^nd page of the book. It'll take me a few posts to get through it all.

Going through Uncle Jamie’s stuff again today with Lucy and Dad. He was such a hoarder! Dad’s said we can keep anything we like and everything we aren’t willing to take back to our houses gets thrown away or taken to the charity shop if someone can get any use out of it. So far I have collected:

creepy monkey doll with clapping symbol hands (crimbo pressie for Danny)

set of nesting dolls painted like smurfs, because why would you ever throw that away

this journal with the purple cover- Lucy took the red one

probably a whole bunch of secret diseases

Dad’s here!

----------

So tired! Thank god term doesn’t start for another week. Got good stuff in yesterday’s haul but dad says we’re taking the day off today and I can’t blame him. The kitchen was a mix of never-opened high-quality kitchen stuff and rotting foulness tucked in the back of cupboards; we ended up doing a thorough clean as well as hauling all the heavy stuff out. Lucy freaked out because she thought there was creepy writing behind the fridge, but when we checked it just said

This fridge was put here in 1995, future Jamie! How the hell did it take you so long to replace it?

In Uncle Jamie’s handwriting and that was more sad than anything. In any case, I got a new set of wicked sharp kitchen knives and a new masher. Still can’t believe the old one bent! Who the hell makes a masher that can’t mash potatoes?

----------

Masher and knives combine to make Shepherd’s pie! Om nom nom. Can’t believe how crappy my old knives were in comparison.

----------

More creepy writing at the house today! Poor Lucy got a real shock with this one. We’d cleared the front room enough to pick up the rug, and when Dad and I were rolling it up she say another bit of writing on the floor. She thought it was another on of Uncle Jamie’s notes, but it said

sunshine sunshine sunshine

instead, and it was like it had been typed into the floor. It kinda spooked her and we went home soon afterwards. Dad said Jamie was always playing weird pranks as well as leaving himself little notes- this was probably part of some elaborate joke that Dad never heard about.

obviously that’s not the case

Note- worth mentioning at this point that the font on the page is painstakingly correct. It really does look like it’s been typed right on.

----------

Have decided in honour of Uncle Jamie’s weirdness to christen this journal the Sunshine Diary! Lucy seems to think it’s a joke at her expense and has been sulking all morning. Uncle Jamie is getting a diagnosis: weird as hell. Today we were moving his bedroom stuff and found some things we expected, some things we didn’t and some things that make no sense at all.

We expected:

four toothbrushes

bedside literature (hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy- totally mine now)

eleventy billion unmatched socks, which I think was about to make Lucy cry (she spent the afternoon matching them)

We did not expect:

what was once half a cheese sandwich and is now a primitive nation

ants, I am not kidding, in his pants drawer

really ancient porno mags under the mattress (Use the internet, Uncle Jamie!)

These things made no sense:

circle of white paint around each bed leg, with sunshine written around the outside of each circle so many times it was barely legible

a copy of National Geographic that was rolled up really tight, tied up with twine or something, that was the only thing hanging from the bar in the closet

a bunch of individual letters literally filling a drawer that seemed to have been cut out of the many, many National Geographics that littered the study

I checked out the Nat Geos and found out every single one had exactly four letters cut out of it. It’s kind of sad finding out that your fun weird uncle is actually your kind of mentally sick sad uncle, and I think Dad’s more upset by the state of Uncle Jamie’s house than he’s letting on, but at least it throws what he did into perspective. Sometimes crazy people do stupid things, and it looks like Uncle Jamie had crazy down pat.

Oh! I checked the Nat Geo that was hanging up in the closet- I had to use scissors on the twine because the knots were so tight- and every word in there is missing. All the pictures are there, but the dark ink’s been leeched out of them. It is pretty freaking creepy! Here’s a photo so you can see the effect:

Note- the photo was glued into the journal, I’m including a scan here. It’s printed on the same sort of paper used in the National Geographic magazine, that thin, shiny sort- I’ve peeled it off the page and the back side is blank.

So yeah. Hypercreepy.

Lucy thought the individual letters were weirder- they’re so tiny, and when we opened the drawer they got everywhere. I’ve still got som

this is the place where i said hello and he totally lost it

he closed the book and didn’t open it for a few days

Hello?

i said hello again

and that my name is sunshine

and he got scared again and took an hour and a half to open the journal back up

Are you talking to me

i said yes and this time we actually had a conversation

what’s your name

i told jim my name was sunshine

and now i’m telling you

my name is sunshine

hello

Note- this is transcribed directly. While the ‘owner of the journal’ character (apparently named Jim, presumably for his uncle) writes as though the journal is writing back to him, the responses by “Sunshine” are aimed not back at Jim, but at some future reader of the text. The time and effort that has gone into making Sunshine’s text look like typewriter text is still astonishing.

holy crap

Danny, are you doing this?

okay sunshine

what are you?

i told him i was a logomorph

that’s kind of a creepy title.

i don’t know why he said that

a logomorph is a living word

maybe he got confused

so i just said okay then

so what does a logomorph do?

Note- here, the word “logomorph” is slightly warped, since it is written over a different word or pair of words in a fashion that almost completely obscures the words beneath. I can make out a “k” underneath the “l” and the loop of a “g” coming out from under the “m”, but the rest is obscured. I think the first word could be “knowledge”, which leaves space for another word. This is the first time I noticed that the ink used for the typewriter font was substantially different from the ink that made up the rest of the writing (which appeared to be done in biro).

i told him a logomorph knows lots of things

i told him i could tell him things if he told me things

about anything

okay, I’m getting into full on Uncle-Jamie-crazy mode here. Enough. I’m going to show this to Danny.

i told him that would be okay

i told him danny was a good man

no

i told him yes absolutely

and that i would like to meet him

no okay that’s okay i won’t show anyone

Note- “Jim’s” handwriting here is extremely shaky.

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