Content Note: Sexual imagery and a whole fucking bunch of bad language.
Thursday, 20 June 2013
Thursday, 6 June 2013
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
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
Monday, 13 May 2013
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.
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.
Thursday, 28 February 2013
Monday, 11 February 2013
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
Monday, 4 February 2013
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
Tuesday, 22 January 2013
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.
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