Below

It's really a bit silly to be freaking out so much, when you think about it.

Once I did this experiment at university where we hooked someone up to a machine that made them re-breathe their own air, and we all had a go. Ordinarily, your system can feel that there's too much carbon dioxide in the air after a while; you start breathing really heavily. But if you put lime in the system, and you don't need much, then that starts to absorb all the carbon dioxide. Your body literally can't tell it's low on oxygen. When I had my go I didn't notice anything was wrong. When one of my group turned off the machine and I pulled my mask away, my vision suddenly widened- it was tight and close and I hadn't realised- and my brain started firing and I started gasping in these great big lungfuls of air. It was pretty calm, while I was on the machine. Not sure why this is so different. The local soil's lime-heavy, so it's got to be absorbing a lot of what I'm breathing out, right?

Ugh. I want to move my legs. How stupid is that? I've sat at a desk, practically immobile, for nearly half a day before moving, just twitching my fingers across a keyboard. Now I know I can't stretch it's all I want to do and it's making me panicky. I wonder if I'll lose it completely before I pass out. In films whenever this happens the hero always finds fingernails embedded on the inside of the lid and everyone in the audience grimaces at how awful it must be to go screamingly insane in a tiny little seven-by-two-by-one box.

The physical bit is bad, no lie, but it's not like this doesn't come with a big set of mental itches. I mean, this is not the sort of thing someone does just to kill someone. (I'm being killed, here. Huh. So stupid!) It's a big fuck you, burying someone alive, and the thing that's bothering me is I literally have no idea who hates me this much. I must have made one hell of an enemy and I don't know how. Hell, I don't even have a little list of friends and family in my head who seem a bit... off. You know. The type where you just know as a kid they pulled the wings and legs off flies, and they stopped doing it because they learnt they shouldn't but they've never understood why. I've only met two people like that, both way back in school, and it seems pretty unlikely they'd go to this much trouble for me after all that time.

Hah, I should really be trying harder to get out of this, shouldn't I? Let's see, if I can get my- my arms braced against the- the lid there, then if I push hard enough- come on- Jesus, I must be far down. I'm no bodybuilder but I'm not exactly a little guy here, I should be able to- come ON- damn it.

Damn.

Fingernails thing starting to make more sense now, hah ha haaa.

Shouldn't have pushed at the lid. I'm gasping now and there's nothing left in the air to take.

I tell you, the worst thing now is how stupid this is.

You didn't make your point, psycho guy! I don't even know who the fuck you are! Lesson completely not learnt, bucko!

I want out.

I want

come ON

I

Big Sky

Allie sat at the edge of the disc, dangling her feet over the edge. A hundred miles below, she could see the clouds, a thin white blanket stretched over the Atlantic. She sighed, and thought about how much she needed to fix her toenails (that one on the right especially, it's starting to look like a friggin' talon) and lay back on the cool, metallic surface. Above her, there were so many stars it was difficult to pick out constellations, even the ones she knew by heart. Not the real ones, like Cassiopeia or Orion, but the ones everyone knows by heart: the Big W, The Saucepan, the Wiggly Line. Like every time she looked up from the disc, she felt a sudden lurch of nausea, of awareness of her impossible location, but it passed. Fear is made in the lizard part of our brain, Allie remembered. Lizards can be frightened of drowning, but show them the vacuum of space and they'll just stare blankly at you.

Allie's shadow tapped her politely on the shoulder and cleared its throat in a meaningful fashion. Allie sighed and rolled over- the constant company of her shadow was the only thing she didn't like about the disc. She'd been coming here for a few years, spending longer and longer here each visit just to spend some time by herself, and since the very start her shadow had followed her about. It was the only thing she couldn't shake- the only thing that stopped her coming here and just letting herself unravel out into the darkness, letting all pretence of self and thought and flesh spiral off like a loose thread. Allie knows that she could unravel quite happily, if her shadow would just let her.

I Think You've Been Up Here Quite Long Enough, said her shadow. Allie didn't hear it- she wasn't that crazy yet, thank you very much, but she knew that's what it was saying. You Have To Meet Your Friends At The Bar. They Worry That You Are Becoming Distant (I am becoming distant! I'm a thousand miles in the god damn air!) And That There Is Some Awful Reason For It.

Allie knew why she'd decided that her shadow was so infuriatingly logical (still don't know where the Gravestone Headline Voice came from though) - her shadow was where she put the bits of herself that still stuck to the ground when she came up here. Her first visit was entirely accidental, a fit of bad hallway planning, running late to a lecture and misreading the byzantine campus map. She'd pulled open the door to "Observation deck 6" to ask if someone there could help her out, and stepped through while she was looking in her bag for her timetable. She'd found herself here, a thousand miles above the ocean, with a warm breeze dusting her hair across her face, and she'd fainted dead away. When Allie woke up, she panicked less- it felt dream-like, utterly fantastic. Here on the disc was a door at one side, supported by nothing, and a forty-foot wide space just for her. It gleamed in the sunlight, and Allie's boots clicked on it as she walked. There was nothing else but Allie and her shadow, and after another moment's dizziness Allie decided that her shadow could do the worrying and the panicking, and she'd just sit down and look around for a little bit. So she did.

Half an hour later, she’d almost jumped off the edge to wake up, but decided instead to drop a pencil sharpener from her case over the side. It fell realistically enough that a rush of vertigo made her lie down flat on the disc for a minute, eyes buried in the firm opalescent surface of it, suddenly gnawingly aware of the gaping chasm beneath her. After that, she went back through the door, it clicked shut behind her and locked, and she was left with a thoroughly bizarre sense of loss.

Her shadow cleared its throat again,  in an annoyingly polite way, and Allie slipped back on her flip flops and huffed through the door. Next time, she decided to herself, I am going to stay out there and my stupid shadow can come back if it's so important.

 

Brakes

I could outrun them, if I were fast enough.

They're so fast that unless I really run
they catch up with me
the moment I turn the corner, and pile back on

(this one with the claws in my shoulder is what I feel is expected of me, and
this too-tight-hug of massive arms around my chest is my asthma, and
this little guy with the suckers attaches itself to the roof of my mouth and whispers the names of the people I've had to leave behind, and)

But

if I were fast enough

I could outrun them, and I know I could because
I can outrun my wheezing lungs for fifty metres of air-light sprinting
leave my problems and my frustrations and my breathlessness for dust
just muscle on the pavement and the wind in my streaming eyes

my tiredness catches me first, but I know that she's the fastest and she's not so heavy
and it's round the corner, she and I in the lead but the pack is closing, and still I know
my depression's still finding his legs and
my fear hasn't even gotten started

Bam Bam Bam
feet slamming into concrete
juddering my lungs into submission, and here comes the front-runner in the trailing pack,
asthma
slamming into me hard and pulling me back
and then I have to slow down
to take a breath
and stop

and they all catch me and it feels like I've tripped the way you used to when you were a child, where you catch one foot with the other and go down in a spinning tangle of ungainly limbs.
They pile back on.
Hey guys.

And I know
it's a stupid thing to sprint
I know
it's a stupid thing to dance every dance until the small hours of the morning
I know
it's a stupid thing to sing every song along with the radio until my voice comes out as a
squeak

But I do it anyway
even though I can't be fast enough
because when I pace myself
they never lose their grip

Tree rings

Underneath his skin, there lives a younger man.

He knows she sees him sometimes

in the edge of his smile when he sees a certain production

which is not a play to him, but three glorious months of hell

of forgotten lines and secret kisses and never enough sleep

until he finally plucked up enough courage at exactly the wrong moment

to suggest the banality of coffee and a chat

in the bounce of a curl descending from the pristine plowed field

of his moon-and-stars hair, a coil of twilight grey

that transforms his face, wiping out wrinkle and fatigue, echoing

the midnight coil that fell from the same place on that pale afternoon

he met her

in the bunching of his muscles as he lifts his daughter

(so heavy now, he used to marvel at the lightness of this masterpiece

that sits solidly in his arms, becoming more and more her own)

and they remember- we used to row and climb and box

where now we only lift and curl and lift and curl again

in the slight, ever-so-slight, widening of his eyes

when he picks up a complex kit that promises

it will take at least a full day, even now, to put together a perfect scale model

of a jet or tank or battleship, and he can almost smell the glue

frustation and achievement and lost skin from youthful fingers

Underneath his skin, there live a thousand younger men,

concentric men that never fade away

that only grow distant

and are never quite gone.

Beast

Fairies are not to be trusted. 

We are told as children that we should not listen to the fairies, should not look at them, should not enter their rings, should not taste fairy food or drink fairy wine. Every child makes mistakes, of course. Most are lucky, and are simply ensorcelled or bewildered for a couple of days, and learn their lesson. The older a child is when they finally make a mistake, the harsher the penalties the fairies exact upon them. I made my only mistake upon my twenty-first birthday, and for that I am now locked in two cages. My newest cage is made from white elm, carved with a cold iron dagger and secured with a silver lock. My oldest is this body. My hands are black-furred paws, my mouth a muzzle of granite teeth. I can see- I can always see- the points of my oaken horns. Could I speak, I would tell two things. I would tell that fairies are not to be trusted, and I would tell the townsfolk that they have imprisoned the wrong beast.

The Bitten King

The white porcelain mask smiled up at Robert. It didn't mock the scraggle of his greying stubble or the tangle of his pale hair- it was a kind smile, a knowing one. It was a smile that made you feel trusted and respected, that drew you in and made you a friend. He leaned out and stroked the forehead of the mask with his thumb, and it was as cool and solid as it had always been.

"Put it on, Robert." The voice from the corner was difficult to ignore. It carried an expectation of obedience, a surety of command that Robert's voice once had. The speaker reached into a black plastic sack and took a dark shape from within it, and threw it onto the table.

The blue mask clattered towards Robert, and he flinched at the sound. This mask had no expression at all. It was just a dark blue oval with two oversized holes for eyes, and bloody fingerprints from the speaker's hand around the rim.

"You can't leave without a mask, Robert. Pick." Robert had been offered the blue mask once before, and it had scared him then. Now it didn't seem quite so terrible, and as he reached out for the white mask he found himself lifting the blue one instead. It was hard, even brittle, and felt like glazed terracotta.The surface stuck to his fingers like metal left outside on a winter's day, and suddenly the absurdity of what he was about to do struck him. He dropped the blue mask and snatched up the porcelain one as though it would be taken away.

The man in the corner seemed to smile, but it was always difficult to tell. He raised a blood-wet hand and pointed over Robert's shoulder; Robert turned and flinched back to reality as someone knocked loudly but politely on the bathroom door.

"Sir? Senator Ward? They're ready for you downstairs, sir." Robert raised his hands to his face for a second, as though he was putting on a mask, and shook his head to clear the cobwebs away. He quickly checked himself in the mirror- hair tidy, tie straight, clean shaved and teeth shining.

"Let's go win a debate, fella," he murmured to himself as he washed his hands. That was why he'd come into the bathroom, wasn't it? To clean his hands and get the dirt out from underneath his fingernails. Yes. That was why.

"Sir?" The knock came again, insistent but still measured.

 "I'm on my way, Bill." Senator Robert Ward opened the door, smiled that home-grown, hard-working smile at his assistant, and headed down to the debate.

It's Going Swimmingly

Your corpse clings to you, one cold hand locked rigor-tight around your ankle. Forget that leg, kick with the other one, ignore the dead weight. Ha ha ha. Stop reaching for the surface with your hands like there's a ledge up there or something to grab, make paddles with them the way you were taught in fifth grade and there's no kicking off the bottom now, kiddo.

Use paddles on water
(I don't see any water)
Use paddles on ocean
(I don't see any ocean)
Use paddles on sea
(I don't see any sea because sea is all there is, the same way you don't see europe from basingstoke)

breathe

Except don't breathe, because to start breathing here would be to start dying. Surface. Ignore the cold hand around your ankle and that blubbery little chuckle, your corpse is dead and doesn't know shit about how badly you want this. Broad strokes with the arms, a perfect curve. Kick harder. Focus on the surface and don't

Breathe

because even though you have to you can't afford the effort it would take to choke. Force the hands downwards, kick with your free leg, let frenzy fuel it, closer now close enough to see the foam on the surface let the fear in you need fumes to run on and your tank ran dry too quickly you don't want to die here and that should be enough

BREATHE

just two more feet, your hands suddenly flailing free of resistance and your head out of the water and you gasp in, one long clear breath, and you'd sob if you could but you can't. Air. Air in great, vast quantities, salty and clean.

breathe.

Kick, hard, because your death is still clinging to your ankle and won't let go. Then look around, and see nothing on the horizon, and know there is nobody coming to help you and all you have left is this weight, this weight that will pull you down if you take a moment's rest. Eventually, you will have to try to rest because when you can’t distinguish your movements from each other, when you’ve made the same hard slog of the arms and the legs and the arms and the legs so often it feels like clockwork it’s going to happen. One of those mundane little movements will prove to be too much for you and you give yourself a moment’s rest and then your corpse has you, has always had you, drags you down by the ankle and never lets you go.

At the bottom of the sea, your corpse will ask you if you want to live and you will answer that you do, and you will kick for the surface again. And again. And again.