Strong

Ha. Super.

Because it's a word that gets thrown around a lot with people like me and I don't like it. I'd like to be the guy that can bench press a bus, not the super-strong guy. I'd like to be the guy who only gets bruises from point-blank gunshots, not the super-tough guy, you know? I'd like a lot of things, though.

The problem is that it sounds like it's all upside. You're not just regular strong, you're super strong! It doesn't put it into context, it doesn't include the downsides and it doesn't let people compare things right. Like that little dude, the Cricket- he's really strong, really tough. Can jump a hundred feet in the air, land badly and still get up, right? But either he gets called a super-jumper, which is one hell of a nonsense word, or he gets called super-strong like me. Which is like lumping a blue whale and a housecat in under the name "mammal". You get a little but you don't get the whole picture.

The Cricket's not going to hurt anyone he doesn't want to. He gets to do stuff like cook an egg or hold his sweetheart's hand. He's strong enough for it to help but he's still got the full range of it, yeah? I can barely even dress myself in here, I just rip this cheap crap up.

I had a guy. He made me a really tough outfit.

I don't want to talk about Billy.

Because you don't get it. You won't get it. I don't even think you can get it, and I know you're being nice and I know you want to help. I want to be helped, you know? That's why I'm still here.

Don't act like I couldn't be out of here in a heartbeat. This is strictly voluntary.

When I do my morning push-ups I leave palm prints in your damn hyperconcrete. If you think you're actually restraining me here- Look, I'm not going anywhere. I want you lot to help me out.

I don't know. Get working on a cure or something, maybe. I gave you blood samples and skin samples and stuff.

Then I'd just stay here anyway. The walls don't matter but the security protocols here are solid. No-one gets within arms reach of me. I can't guarantee that anywhere else.

Something like that.

Because the kid was a good kid. He could do tech stuff like the villains can. He made little anti-fire swarmbots, a telepathy headband, little things he strapped to his wrists that could punch a hole in a steel plate; all kinds of tech. Way over my head. We made a good team and he was a good kid. I don't want his name attached to mine every time like he's some sort of bit-player, some sort of sidekick.

I know that's the name he went under, you stupid- it was a joke, okay? It was his own little joke. Honestly I think he wanted to be the best known hero in the world and still be called Sidekick.

We did a lot of stuff together, you'll have to be more-

Yeah. Yeah, I knew that would be the one, I was just-

Fine. Fine! We were fighting this asshole, the woman with the water powers who keeps making a play for the downtown banks- whatsername-

Yeah, that's her. Hydra. Anyway she's bust up a water main, we're standing close together and she fires this big damn telegraph-pole size spear of ice at us. At Billy, I mean. So I went to push him out of the way. Didn't think about it for a moment.

I pushed- I went straight through him. Like gouging soft cheese. I didn't even feel his ribs go- I just went to shove him and bam, my hand went right into him, right out the other side, pushing out all the stuff that should have been inside him. I went to catch him as he collapsed but I guess I misjudged that too, because when I grabbed his arm it just fell out of the socket. Like when you've got a really good leg of lamb, you know? The bones just fall apart. Then I stood there like an idiot. Hydra didn't move either. She could have got away easy but I think she was as stunned as me. I don't think she'd seen a death like that before and I sure hadn't; the kid was everywhere. Bits of him had gone nearly twenty yards. We just both sort of stopped until the cops showed and rounded us up. So. Yeah.

How do you think it makes me feel? I'm dangerous, damn it! I killed a nineteen-year-old boy! It was a good conviction and a good trial and it was the right outcome. So now I'm here and now maybe you can help me out some, get the poison or the curse or the whatever-it-is that's made me like this turned off.

You'll damn well find a way.

Lady, I'm a walking threat. Get used to it.

A Path Less Travelled

"There is courage in him, Rufus."

Erica stroked the young man's hair, brushing it away from his flickering eyelids.

"It's a fool's courage. I'd wager he's never been afraid before." Rufus pulled his sheepskin tighter around his shoulders, thick fingers bunching into the soft wool, and stared down at the twitching youth with hard eyes. "Now he is very afraid. His courage will not stand in for the scars he ought to have."

"Perhaps it will not. But perhaps he will be brave enough to trust himself to be brave. He came to this place, after all." Erica plucked a gladiolus stem from her hair and carefully wrapped the young man's soft, grasping fingers around it.

"Bah. It's not as though it's difficult to get to." Rufus waved one calloused hand in dismissal, and his sheepskin fell off his broad shoulder. He shivered for a moment as he pulled it back up, critically eyeing the dark entrance to the cave.

"It is harder in this sort of weather, I suppose," he muttered. "It's damnably cold outside."

 "You can judge that better than I," Erica said as she tugged the young man's waterlogged sandals away from his feet. "Walking the path here isn't the hard part, Rufus. You know that. He's followed my call here, my labyrinth-thread. It's the finding out about it that's difficult."

"It's not that difficult. I found it."

Erica looked at Rufus with such pity that he had to turn away.

"You helped him here," she said to his broad back. "You saw him falter from your window and you ran out into the tempest to save him. You brought him here instead of taking him home."

"Here was closer!" Rufus snapped.

"There is a fire in your hearth, Rufus. There is a loaf of fresh bread on your table, meat hanging in your larder. There are healing herbs in labelled jars and more than enough space for this boy. There could have been nothing here and it's still where you chose to take him."

"It was closer," Rufus said as he turned to look at the young man. His voice was calmer now, softer. "Do you truly think him a boy? He seems old enough to be carving his own space in the world."

"You and I both know that age is not measured in years. Why did you bring him here, Rufus?"

"I suppose you have the truth of it there." Rufus looked at the palms of his hands, the familiar patterns of callous, the scars that told his stories. "I feel like a younger man. Wrapped in an older one and driven by one older still."

Rufus didn't look up from his hands for some time, and when he did he could feel a vast sadness upon him, grey and smothering.

"You cannot be real," he heard himself say. "You cannot be here, in this storm, in this season, with those flowers in your hair."

"Why did you bring him here, Rufus?" she asked again.

"He must have tried so hard," Rufus said, reaching out and almost touching the youth's skin. "He must have walked the whole way in this storm. He was so close to this place and had such good reason to turn back. Such good reason not to walk this path at all, in this storm, wearing a summer cloak and broken sandals. He did not turn back, do you see? I could not turn him back myself."

"You turned back," Erica said. Rufus felt as though she had known him once as a girl, and he had spurned her affections.

"I did. I was not- I was not prepared for my journey. I got sick in the rain."

"You got better, Rufus. Why did you not come back sooner?"

"I was afraid you would be here. And afraid you would know my cowardice, and afraid you would see the cowardice in that, too. I was afraid."

"You put your fear aside for him," Erica said, glancing at the young man. His breathing was shallower now, Rufus realised.

"He's younger than I. I wished, sometimes, that I could come here again for the first time. That I would not falter. I saw myself in him." Rufus spread a hand across the youth's chest; his skin was clammy and warm.

"He is braver than I was. But I would wager that he is very afraid."

"Of course he is," Erica said. "He may be dying. He has finished his journey none the less. What did you believe, when you read of my cave? What did you imagine you would find?"

"I don't know," Rufus shrugged. The youth convulsed violently the moment Rufus lifted his hand from his chest, slamming his heel violently into the stone, and Rufus quickly replaced his hand on his fevered skin. He looked up at Erica with panic and a question in his eyes, and she shook her head.

"His time grows short. What did you want to find here when you came the first time, Rufus? Quickly, now."

"Hope." Rufus' voice came out almost silent, underneath his breath. "I wanted to find hope. I wanted to know I could be something magnificent instead of just me."

"So you read of an ancient cave and believed. You researched a forgotten goddess and sacrificed to her. You left your home and travelled halfway across the known world. You walked until you collapsed, in a winter storm and a summer cloak, to find me and ask if you could ever be someone extraordinary?"

"Yes." Rufus sagged as he understood.

"You helped him on his last few steps, Rufus. You are the part of this young man that he needed to walk his path. My gift to him is you."

Rufus nodded in silence before standing, ignoring the sudden stillness of the boy on the stone floor.

"Can I leave him the sheepskin? He'll be cold otherwise."

Erica smiled then, really smiled, and Rufus felt midsummer's warmth.

"Of course you can," she said, and kissed him full on the lips. He felt his life flake away as she pushed him gently down to the floor, as his wrinkles unfolded and his scars vanished, as the callous on his palms became soft as a scholar's grip.

He was not surprised in the slightest when she rolled him into the youth on the floor, not alarmed when they seemed to share the same space for a moment. There was no fear at all. He did not have to be brave.

How to make bread in 55 easy steps

The Bloomer

Ingredients:
500g strong white flour
40 ml olive oil
1 7g sachet of Instant Yeast that feels faintly like cheating
10g of salt measured on scales that are used to telling the difference between one kilo and six on a good day
360 ml water
Feeling of boundless confidence
Recently purchased video game series (I use the Prince of Persia games in my recipe but it's really a matter of personal choice)

Process:
1. Put the flour into a bowl. Put the salt and yeast in the bowl on different sides so the salt doesn't kill the yeast. Feel faint glow of professional competence. Treasure that, dear reader. You will not feel it again.
2. Add the olive oil. Note that the yeast is brown, not a mustardy yellow. Ponder why you expected it to be yellow.
3. Add three quarters of the water. Using one of your hands in a claw shape, because the book tells you to make a claw shape even though it feels a bit silly, begin to mix the water into the flour and salt.
4. Worry that when you added the water you washed all the salt directly into the yeast and ruined everything. There is no way of knowing. Press on regardless and pretend you are treating this as a fun culinary experiment instead of as evidence that you are a good and capable person.
5. Mix it in until everything looks a bit dry and isn't quite coming together.
6. Mix in a little more water. Not that much. Actually that seems okay. Phew.
7. Ask yourself; does this need more water?
8. Decide it really looks like it needs more water.
9. Add remaining water oh FUCK it's gone really sticky
10. Check the book. The book says that sticky is okay so long as it's not soggy. Nice.
11. Ponder the difference between soggy and sticky.
12. Decide bread is just really really sticky.
13. Remember the pasta debacle. Decide to press on regardless.
14. Now it's time to knead the dough! Try to follow the instructions in your book.
15. Try to fold the dough.
16. Really try.
17. Perform kneading action as learned from seeing people on television and in films knead dough.
18. Wonder, idly, what films you learned this from. Worry that it was Ghost and that you are subliminally trying to make a pot.
19. Further kneading.
20. The dough ought to come smooth after 5-10 minutes, longer if you are a beginner. Continue for 20 minutes.
21. Maybe it WAS soggy.
22. Wait until it looks pretty good and is feeling less sticky and more stretchy. Check the book to see if the dough looks right.
23. That looks amazing. Yours will not look like that. Put it in a box to rise anyway; it ought to take between 1 1/2 and 3 hours, and should triple in size.
24. Watch a little TV and have dinner. Consider that Jonathan Creek has really nice shoes.
25. After 1 1/2 hours, check on dough. It will not look very much bigger at all. Bah.
26. Play Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.
27. It's still really good!
28. Scale the tower of dawn in a safe and secure fashion.
29. Complete Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.
30. Load Prince of Persia: Warrior Within.
31. Suffer severe mood whiplash. How were these games even developed by the same company? Wonder if OH HELL MY BREAD
32. Your bread should now have been rising for about 4 or 5 hours.
33. It'll probably be okay.
34. Reshape your dough into the form of a lumpy loaf of bread. Consider the lumps. Shrug.
35. Leave bread to rise for a further hour. Really.
36. Pre-heat oven to 220 degrees. Put a pan in the bottom.
37. Try to play Prince of Persia: Warrior Within until bread finishes its second rise. It is not very much fun. Bah.
38. Using your sharpest knife, cut lines in the top of the dough so it will rise and bake properly. Pretty professional.
39. Realise your knife is not all that sharp.
40. Sharpest thing in the house is a straight razor. Seriously consider it.
41. Decide it is a little too metal to make bread with a straight razor. Persist with knife.
42. Regret your decision. I prefer to regret things in the traditional Italian way, with a glass of red wine and a slow, broken stare to the right of camera, but the Belgian and French methods work equally well.
43. Put the bread in the oven. Put boiling water in the hot tray; the steam will create a lovely glaze on the top of the loaf as it bakes.
44. OH GOD STEAM
45. Hyperboiling water is a serious safety hazard. Stand well back and recheck your recipe book; confirm that the water should just have been from the cold tap.
46. Close the oven door with a broom handle.
47. Go into the front room and continue regret for 25 minutes, or half a bottle.
48. Lower the temperature of the oven to 200 degrees Celsius, and risk looking in the glass.
49. Against all the odds, your bread will look like real bread. Take that, baking conglomerates! Experience heady rush of confidence.
50. Wait ten minutes and remove the bread from the oven. It will look pretty good. Hold the loaf in a tea towel and tap the bottom to see if it sounds hollow.
51. It does! You have achieved bread! Leave it to cool completely overnight, since it is now almost midnight.
52. Eat the bread. It's pretty good.
53. Declare that you will attempt a savoury brioche couronne tomorrow.
54. On second thought, realise the bread was a little bit chewy.
55. Do not attempt the brioche.

Hylas

Content Note: Sexual imagery and a whole fucking bunch of bad language.

Social

You wrote them out those parts of you
that make you tick and make you sick
and make you hope those parts of you
would never grip the slick unstable
edges of your quick and stable
brain

it's all the same refrain
what's yours is mine
of course it's mine
I've opened all your doors to mine your unsecrets
laid out to for me to find
you wrote them out for me
you showed me what you're made of
all these fragile things
digested magazines
and daily scenes
churned up inside your dreams
hurled at the screen
they catch my eye
it's not that I
am stealing pictures from your mind
you're screaming secrets
dreaming
it's just normal
and it is
it's broken normal

there's no part of you inside
your secrets should be there
but where I stare it's empty
there's no part of you
that's at the heart of you
it's on my screen instead
you're broken in the head

I'm broken too

Funny Peculiar

The purpose of a clown is not to be funny. It is to make you laugh. They can achieve this by being funny, scary, unsettling, or- at their best- all three.

What’s the difference between a scary clown and an unsettling clown? Scary clowns spring up out of nowhere and give you a quick fright, get your blood pumping. Unsettling clowns seem to be playing by a set of rules that keep changing and that you don’t understand. That becomes unsettling instead of funny when you’ve got the sneaking suspicion that one of those mercurial rules is about how much they can hurt you.

I have this theory that basically everyone who’s ever gone and done something illegal is pretty much being a clown. You’ve got your funny clowns, dragging you along and getting you into all sorts of scrapes. You’ve got your scary clowns, who lose their tempers and then make no effort to find them again until they’ve been restrained, suddenly confused by missing teeth and bruised knuckles. Then, finally, you’ve got your unsettling clowns, your creepy clowns, the clowns that live not under your bed (that’s scary clown territory) but at the end of a dark hall, standing stock still and staring at you. My unsettling clown was called Richard Williams, and I knew him when we were nine years old.

Richard Williams was a Will, not a Rich or a Dick or a Richie, on account of having an older brother who was also called Richard and who answered to pretty much every variant on that name he had yelled at him. On first glance he looked like me, like an average little white kid, with a couple of milk teeth gone and that aura of scruffiness that seems universal among children of that age.

There was something wrong with Will, and every kid on the playground knew it straight away. It’s almost like there’s some sort of smell to psychopaths that adults can’t really sense, or at least can explain away better. As a result, he didn’t really get picked on and he didn’t really have any friends. The bullies just rolled their eyes at him when he was doing something weird, something that would normally scream for a beating or a round of solid mockery, because they just knew he wasn’t worth it. He was the sort of kid who would bite and scratch and worse, the sort of kid who didn’t know the difference between fighting back and gouging your eyes out. So they never got into fights with him, never provoked him. Everyone just sort of knew Will and didn’t want to know him any better.

We just knew.

I remember when I was proved right, though. Will had been a twitchy little bag of energy all day, so unable to keep still everyone thought he was going to wet his pants. After class finished, most kids had their parents come and pick them up, but I lived close enough to home that I walked. Will did too, but thankfully in the other direction, so we never had to spend any time together. I’d just turned out of the gate when he finally piped up in his squeaky little voice.

“Hey. Come with me.”

“I gotta get home, Will,” I said. I was lying, of course. I’d intended to take the long way back, looking for magpies to count. Now I’d said it, though, I was going straight home. It didn’t feel safe to lie to Will.

“No, come on.” Will picked up a stick from the ground, almost absently, but there was something contrived to it. He’d not just seen the stick, I realised- there was something too casual to his movements. I think he’d found it earlier and left it by the gates, so he could fetch it now. Will did stuff like this all the time, “discovering” things in front of you, or having a bunch of facts about frogs to talk about the day someone- and the school administration could never prove who- had jammed a frog behind the radiator. He performed his conversations like he’d rehearsed them.

It was a pretty big stick.

“It’ll be fun. I want to show you something.”

“My mum’s going to be waiting-“

“It won’t take long. Don’t be a baby.” His voice was unnaturally high-pitched even for him, excited to the point of breaking. He trailed the stick along the railings, and his knuckles were white where he held it. 

"Okay. Sure. Lead the way.” If I ever have to write down a list of regrets- actually, I suppose that one won’t make the cut. Whatever Will wanted to show me didn’t freak me out as much as the idea of telling him no and going home. I’d have to turn my back on him. He grinned, too wide and too long. He’d never learned to smile properly. It doesn’t sound like something you actually have to learn, but that’s just because if you’re normal you learn it so early on that you forget. You learn to smile in the way other people like, in the way that makes them smile back. Will didn’t smile for anyone but himself- when he smiled, it was a raw expression of his personal joy. I’d only seen it on him before when he’d got a magnifying glass and a line of ants.

“It’s this way. Keep up.” He started out in the direction towards his home, and I trailed after him. Will walked like he was gliding, no up-and-down to it. He slid his feet just above the ground, silently and carefully placing them on the pavement in a neat line like he was creeping up on someone. I was about to say something to break the silence when he started dragging his stick noisily on the pavement and after a few wordless minutes he took a sharp left through a crack in the stone wall, into the field on the other side. I caught up and when I turned the corner he was waiting there, standing in the crack in the wall, staring at me. 

“I like you,” he said, thoughtfully. He was holding the stick in both hands. “I don’t think you’ll tell anyone about this. It’s my special place. If you tell anyone about it I’ll know, because you’re the only other one who knows.”

I let out a nervous little giggle and tried to convince myself he was just being nice in his own bizarre way. He turned around, sharply, and walked out across the field towards the thick, overgrown hedge on the other side. As he went, he twirled the stick, rolling it over the back of his hand and catching it again in one smooth motion.

“Hey, that looks really cool,” I said, and I meant it. It was a neat little trick. “Can you teach me how to do it?”

Will stopped without turning around and I swear he thought about it for a moment; thought about spending an afternoon playing normal kid games and teaching me how to roll a stick over my hand. Then he set off again, shaking his head and twirling the stick from hand to hand.

“You wouldn’t think it was cool if you knew how to do it. We’re nearly there.” We were aiming for a thick knot of undergrowth where the hedge had grown out into the abandoned field, and as we got closer I could smell a weird, sweet scent that made my lunch rise in the back of my throat. That was enough for me to finally ask.

“Will, what’s that smell? What are you showing me?”

“Don’t be a baby.” He said it exactly like he had before, delivering it in one sing-song breath as though it were a single word. I don’t think he really thought about what it meant- I think he’d learned that you could use it to make people do what you wanted them to.

“You have to see it. It’s through here.” He ducked under a rough hole in the hedge and waited for me to follow him. I didn’t want to and when I did the thick brush of the hedge grabbed at my hood and backpack. I had to force my way in past the outer layer of growth, and inside there was a space between the hedges, dead leaves soft on the ground and nearly enough room to stand up. That sickly sweet smell overpowered everything else there and I thought Will would be mad that I looked so disgusted, but he didn’t seem to notice.

“It’s just through this bit,” he said. He smiled his broken smile again and indicated a direction with his stick. I was evidently supposed to go first and I couldn’t think of any way out of it.

So I went first.

I think I’d known what it was going to be as soon as I smelled that putrid sweetness. I’d just hoped I was wrong. I wasn’t, though. It was a dead old man, ripe in the late summer heat, yellow vomit caked in his ratty grey beard. His clothes were old, torn and filthy, and the stale sweat mixed with the rot made my stomach roil.

“I found him,” said Will from behind me, and there was real wonder in his voice. “I found him here, in my special place. For me.”

“You’ve got to tell the police,” I said, my head spinning. The dead man had a blue spiderweb tattoo between his thumb and forefinger, faded with age. “You’ve got to tell them you found a body.”

“I don’t got to do anything. This is my place. I’ll tell the police when I want.” Will’s voice was cold and quiet, much lower than normal. I didn’t want to turn around and see his face.

“Don’t you think it would be better,” Will said in his new low voice, “if he was a criminal? Maybe he found someone and killed them first, before he died. Then I’d be a hero for finding him.”

He rested the tip of the stick on my shoulder. 

"Who do you think he might have killed?” he asked softly.

“Will, I-“ I turned round and threw up, spattering the ground and his shoes and my trousers with the damp remnants of my lunchtime sandwiches.

“No!” he screamed, and his voice was high again now. He grabbed me by the hood of my coat and pushed me back towards the exit from the hedge, scratching my face on the branches when I stumbled.

“You’ve ruined it! You’ve ruined everything!” He shoved me out into the field before stamping through the hedge after me, all his practiced grace forgotten. I pulled myself to my feet, shaking and terrified. There was lightning in his eyes but even when he tightened his grip on the stick I remember thinking that at least he wasn’t using that awful low voice any more. He was just shudderingly angry, impossibly angry.

“Go home. Just go home, you puking cunt,” he said, spitting the word. I was more shocked by that than I would have been if he’d hit me with the stick; it was an impossibly rude word, one I’d heard only once or twice and knew was at the very top of the list of bad words that lived in the back of my head.

I didn’t need to be told twice. I was on my feet and running for the crack in the wall in seconds. Behind me I heard a horrid, sharp crack and for a moment I thought he’d caught up to me, that he’d hit me in the head with his stick, and I looked over my shoulder to see that he was shouting incoherently, smashing the stick against the ground again and again, splintering it into pieces with the full force of his frustration.

I went home the short way, but I had to stop for a rest halfway there. I was sobbing and running so hard I was breathless, and my body couldn’t tell whether I was exhausted or terrified or really amused. After a while I couldn’t tell either. It took a long time to calm back down.

When I finally got back, I was swept into a rush of activity. My mother was waiting for me and knew that Will and I had found the dead man. Will’s parents had called her after Will had solemnly shown them the dead man in the hedge; he’d been showing me his special hiding place and we’d found a body there and I’d thrown up and run away home, I found out. Everyone was so glad to have me home and safe and I just went along with it. It turned out in the following days that the man had been homeless and sick, that he’d gotten too drunk and he’d crawled into the hedge to die the day before Will showed him to me. I felt sorry for him after we found that out and he stopped playing the starring role in my nightmares. I went back to school after about a week.

Will stared at me at breaktimes and lunchtimes for a few days, and then started to ignore me. For the most part. Sometimes we’d all be working quietly and I’d look up from my book and he’d be glaring at me, eyes like thunder, and I’d have to look away. Three months later his dad got a new job and his whole family moved to Nottingham, and I breathed a huge sigh of relief.

The problem is that it all happened a long time ago, and Richard Williams is not an uncommon name. I don’t really remember what he looked like. I just remember the broken grin, the warped voice that was too squeaky or too low, the silent, careful footsteps. So every time there’s a Richard Williams in the paper, every time there’s a Richard Williams on the board of directors or at my dentists or on the PTA I wonder.

I wonder if he’s standing out there, stock still. I wonder if he’s staring at me.

Wet Dreams

Content note: Disturbing/violent sexual imagery.

Sunset on the Beach

The tide's coming in and I'm lying here on the beach without a care in the world. It won't last forever- nothing does- but for a little while I can just rest here, tasting the remains of my fourth pina colada and feeling that pleasant, chemical numbness relaxing every one of my limbs.

The tide's at my toes now, warm and pleasant but still enough to wake me a little from the stupor I'd fallen into. I creak my eyes open- one of them can see sand and the other, if I pull it hard to the side, can see along the beach. The sunset's coloured the beach a vibrant orange, so intense it's hard to pick out the pretty seashell I found earlier. It's right in front of me now. My face is pressed into the sand like a pillow, the weight of my head crushing my nose to the side. I have to breathe through my mouth.

The tide's past my knees and I'm breathing fast. My heart's running like a jackhammer and my fingers twitch with the desire to pull forward and push me up. I don't know why they won't. I can see the tide line on the beach and the water's going to come past me if I don't move. Why can't I move? Four pina coladas should not do this to a grown woman, I used to have six and think nothing of it and even if four made me a little fuzzy I went for a walk to clear my head so why isn't it clear? My left hand throbs. I think I cut myself on that seashell and then- and then what?

The tide's up past my belly and the more adventurous waves are starting to tickle the bottom of my chin. The foam's getting in my nose and I feel like I can almost move my legs; the water makes them light and I think if I can flip over I can float. I can flip over. I'm sure of it. I can just get this right, wiggle my toes and my fingers so I rock onto my back. It can't be that hard. I take a deep breath and it's half sea foam and I lose track for a moment

The tide's at my mouth and I have to breathe slowly or I just suck water into my lungs. Sometimes a big wave washes over me from head to toe and I feel like I'm sinking further into the sand. It stings my eyes. Someone's coming, right? Someone's coming because it's a busy beach, people walk around and you'd be able to tell I'm not doing well. It takes two minutes to drown. I read that once.

The tide's over my mouth and pouring into me and I can't stop it. I can't breathe. One minute and forty seconds now. Someone's going to find me and I'll flip over and I'll be fine. One minute twenty. Everything's blurry from the salt and I don't need to breathe, I don't need to, I can breathe out slowly and I can breathe in when someone comes to get me, come and get me, where are you

I can breathe in when someone comes to get me

I can breathe in when

Oh god it's not painless it burns your insides like fire and now I'm twitching all over, convulsing and shaking and god why couldn't I move my back earlier because now I'm arching and retching like a cat and there's still no air just another burning breath of salt and vomit help me come and help me please PLEASE

Vermilion

They came on a Tuesday
in the papercut between last night and this morning
on the corner of every street.

Ours was vermilion and puce
even though I did not know those words before.
They spoke when you looked at them and I knew
~
this is an artichoke
this is wind howling under membranous wings
this is a Fourier transform
this is vermilion 
and puce
~
in the brief instant when I looked at it
and had to turn away
and painted the concrete with my breakfast.

They spoke so fast.

Within a week I knew
~
this is an embrace
this is somewhere new
this is courage
this is better
and yours
~
and people had started to go away.

I saw the man from down the street make his decision.
He stared at it longer than I had seen anyone stare
without the glasses the government had first recommended
and then provided with astonishing speed.
It was speaking to him
and then he embraced it
roughly, like a brother
that you know is healthy and hearty and returned to you
fierce love shouted in the clasping of arms
and then he was gone away.

Now, no-one has gone away for a long time.
The people who stayed
are the sort of people who stay
so we don't look at them any more
except
even through the glasses
they still whisper
~
this is courage
~
and I wish I could know it
like vermilion
or puce

Company

There was a man in my house last night.

At about three in the morning I woke from a dream of storms to find I desperately needed the toilet, and after I was finished I realised that I needed another drink. Dry mouth makes my throat click when I'm trying to fall asleep and it's every bit as irritating as a mystery beeping or a distant car alarm.

I wandered down the landing and went downstairs without turning on the lights- I never turn my lights on when I get up in the night. Yeah, it means I have to sit down when I pee, but my night vision's pretty good and it keeps me from blinking all my sleep away with the flick of a switch. I went down the stairs and into the kitchen, and when I passed the living room something spiked a little note of worry in the back of my head. I didn't realise what it was until I was on my way back with the glass- I'd left the television on, and it was flooding the room with the weird dark light you get from a black screen. I opened the door to turn it off and there he was.

He was sat on the coffee table, his boots pressed together neatly on the floor. He was facing away from me, looking at the TV. I can't remember much about what he looked like; he was average height, average build. I do remember that he was sitting very still, so still that my first thought was that he was a mannequin one of my friends had put there as a prank.

"Hello," he said. His voice sounded familiar and for a moment I thought he was my brother, until another shellshocked neuron reminded me that Bill lived four hundred and fifty miles away.

"Hi there," I said. I don't know why. Something was really wrong with the whole situation; there was a smell I couldn't place, a pattern to this that was clawing at the back of my mind and telling me to be very careful indeed. I remember thinking very clearly that I could go into the hall, get the five-iron out of the closet and tell him to leave but I immediately discounted it as impossible to the point of ridiculousness. I wouldn't make it three yards. I don't know why that seemed so obvious.

"Could you give me a drink please," he said and again I felt like I could almost place his voice. I almost stepped forward to give him my water when I noticed three glasses next to him on the coffee table. I'm not a neat freak but I keep that table clear. One of the glasses was half full.

"Yes," I said quietly. "I'll go and get you one."

I stepped out of the room and closed the door. I walked backwards up the stairs, looking at that door, skipping the fourth and sixth and twelfth steps so that they didn't creak. I was at the top of the stairs and could only see the bottom of the living room door when it opened without a sound.

I turned the corner and kept walking slowly towards my room. I don't know how I knew the rules, but I knew them; no loud noises. No running. No looking away. I reached behind me and fumbled with my door handle when he came into view at the top of the stairs. I hadn't seen him move, hadn't heard the trick steps creak. He wasn't looking at me yet.

The door finally came open and I stepped through as quietly as I could, holding the handle down as I closed the door so as not to make a sound. I turned the lock in the doorknob and the lock clicked on, almost obscenely loud.

Something heavy slammed against the door, hard, and it bent slightly under the impact. For a moment I thought it was going to splinter and I dropped my glass. It shattered on the hardwood floor, too loud, and I danced back around the shards onto my bed and wrapped myself in the blanket, staring at the door. I heard a scratching sound for a moment and then a snuffling, like someone with a cold. Then a sound I didn't place until the next morning. I tried to stay very still.

Five hours later and when the sun had fully risen, I found out I'd cut my foot on the glass. The water had mixed with the blood on the floor and washed it under my bedroom door, leaving a sticky sheen across the floor. When I sighed at the sight of it- blood's a real ballache to clean off anything- I felt brave enough to open the door again. I bandaged my foot and it seemed practical to fetch the mallet from the camping kit under my bed, reasonable to shout about the police before throwing the door open. There was no-one and nothing there, of course, but the blood and water had been carefully wiped away where it had seeped through the crack under the door. I investigated the whole house as thoroughly as I could; the only things out of place I found were three of my best glasses washed and stacked in a neat pile on the kitchen table and a twist of kitchen roll with something wet inside on the coffee table. I put my gardening gloves on before I threw them out and tried not to think too hard about the TV, happily powered down in the living room. The whole place smelled of lemons, nothing like it smelt last night.

I was cleaning the blood later on when I placed the sound- it's the sound of a cat licking butter off the floor or your finger, a rough sort of scraping noise.

I've bought some new locks.