The End
A brief post to say that this blog is well and truly retired. It’s largely full of rubbish and silly experiments that don’t work. I wouldn’t close it only I would live in fear of the day that a publisher might stumble upon some of it and decide my triptych of horror porn novels might not be what they want. I might start a new blog at some point and post some of the better stuff from this but we’ll see.
Thanks for all the hits, most of which were probably due to the fact that stuff was tagged ‘hipster double penetration’. Very classy.
Steve Jobs or, The Tweets of the World are a Constant Quantity but of Questionable Quality
Figure 66.1: Steve Jobs wears jeans.
At 7am I awoke. I got straight out of bed and had a hot shower. At about a quarter past the hour, Twitter illuminated me to the fact that Steve Jobs, Apple innovator, had died. Poor Steve Jobs had died.
I tweeted, as one might, about Steve Jobs. Among the plethora of “RIP, Steve Jobs,” tweets, or saccharine 140 character odes to that tune, mine was chalky.
“While I suppose I’m a bit sad for Steve Jobs and his family, I mostly don’t care. My MacBook is great but I paid Apple €1600 for it.”
Steve Jobs made the lives of people who could afford it slightly easier with functional but elegant electronic consumer products. It isn’t charity; it’s business.
Jobs led a company, drove numerous companies, to create profit. By common moral standards this is neither a bad nor a good thing in itself, but the fact that Steve Jobs led the company that developed my laptop does not make my heart beat for him.
Further irked, the more I thought. A minute later I tweeted again.
“Apple were the ‘alternative’ multinational money machine, cooler than Microsoft? Steve Jobs wore jeans and t-shirts instead of suits. Great.”
I used to have a Dell laptop. It was really good. I also had a Sony walkman at one point. I don’t hold any love for the leaders of those companies.
The Sony walkman, one of those old ones that played cassettes, that was my first bit of technology that was my own. I look back more fondly on that than any other electronic product I have ever had.
Many of my generation learned to use computers with Windows products on Hewlett Packard and Dell Computers, as the next may learn on Mac operating systems on Apple Macs.
Bill Gates, the multi-billionaire name most commonly associated with Microsoft and Windows, is not a figure of public idolatry in the same way as the unexpired Jobs was.
An interesting albeit rather obvious comparison is fit to be drawn between Jobs and Gates. Within similar fields, both are very different kinds of innovators, inventers and visionaries. Yet Jobs is the alternative choice, the underdog, undermining the dominance of the big evil, Microsoft.
As my previously half-baked opinions on Jobs found solidity, I tweeted again. It was about half past nine by this time and it was my last shout on the matter.
“Poor Steve Jobs. He made our lives slightly easier with products that we bought from his company for cash money. A true hero.”
In 1987 a charity organisation called the Stephen P Jobs Foundation was started. A little over a year later it folded having done nothing other than employ famous designer Paul Rand to create its logo.
Ten years later, Jobs terminated all of Apple’s corporate philanthropy programs when he rejoined the company. This was because he wanted the company to concentrate on becoming profitable again after a period of decline. These programs did not resurface.
I have no favouritism towards Bill Gates or any business person, but where the veneration of Jobs comes from is beyond my grasp. I don’t wake up every day and thank Adi Dassler for my shoes or Levi Strauss for my jeans, and they were pioneers in their fields.
Neither do I thank Rupert Murdoch for bringing me Premier League soccer every weekend. BSkyB innovate. They bring us Premier League coverage in new ways every week, giving us more access. Sky have directly empowered British football through their coverage, innovative branding and inventive market penetration, indirectly leading to the exponential improvement in quality of these leagues and, by proxy, our enjoyment of them.
Jobs was an innovator, but so is Jonathan Ive who has contributed just as much if not more to what supposedly justifies Jobs’ sanctity now: Apple’s innovation, invention and technological vision or, sleekly designed iPhones that are updated every couple of months rendering what they replace obsolete and the most depreciable consumer good since toilet paper.
I have no bad will whatsoever to Steve Jobs and I take no pleasure in his death. I feel bad for his wife who is, according to many sources, a nice person. I feel bad for his family and those who counted him as a friend.
The painful Twittering of millions of people in mourning over a megalomaniac business man does raise my ire though. Why this particular genius? Why not the others, the ones that aren’t the heads of multinational corporations?
A cult of personality rears its head now. Jobs may have been a genius, but he was also a man who wore denim jeans, turtle neck jumpers and (probably) endearingly tattered converse.
Jobs was his own best marketing tool. The sudden fall in Apple’s share price upon news of his death is as much a testament to that as it is to his capacity for invention.
The design team is still there. The people who developed five generations of iPhone in the space of four years – each shinier than the last – are still at Apple. So don’t worry.
The problem for us is that the same lovely face isn’t there to put the new product in our hands anymore. The ‘alternative’ guy – the lesser evil to Bill gates or some soulless Japanese technology company – is not there to keep us loyal.
But it isn’t Fairtrade iPods and iCoffee that we’ve been filling up on. It has always been the ‘alternative’ value of Apple, the Steve Jobs factor even when we don’t see him.
This tragedy means that now we have this vacancy in our lives, a lack of an intermediary between the product and our money. We’re lamenting it. The thing we associated with “innovation” and “invention,” is gone. And all we have is product, pure product, pure Apple.
And only now do we realise that the thing we worshipped all along, the thing we pay tribute to now, only ever hid our worship of the product, the consumer good that is Apple, in all its ‘alternative’ glory.
Child
Child
Placenta drips a slow three four
one two, under an exhaled three four
one two, and an inhaled
second let go for a second
three four, unhindered.
The mother in a bin, cumulus done,
sharp shark gills puffing out
and reading back in, an
exalted three four, to a drum,
baiting him in like kicking
against the naval one two,
commanding the rain outside
in. Smacking a smack one hundred
times three four,
on a wet pane to bring
him soft beat and mushy rice
from a small paddy on steps,
or a little office of cubes,
down in the grove of willows.
They swing with the cold gale,
but scrape up helpless as if a
cliff were giving out or crying out,
giving one to Waterhouse’s implicit,
the necessary but unfortunate.
Treble trembles under, and
a high string guts through the
man as placenta drips from his brow
and an unwieldy growth from his
belly, four four, threatens all
for the wave one two, could
take, beyond the wings
of a sprightly lemon lady.
Ferrari
Ferrari
You didn’t want to
but you did,
because it was funny.
You, the noble harlequin,
brought hot iron
to the end of your
own spiritual kin,
and it was all the more
poignant when you sailed
on in hellish flames,
beside another.
Missing Finger III
Missing Finger III
III
Years give grace of the good and the godly,
yet he found himself bound to his absent
appendage through the accidental gift that was
himself, to the fairer.
As an arthritic tremor informed his motion
and word of his power spread mouth to mouth,
he found himself perpetually at use, savaged ghost
curse to the bearer.
On a cold morning, early November, his heart stopped
and the lady upon him extricated herself from
his final motionlessness and went about her business.
Missing Finger
Missing Finger
I
His primary pointing finger was lost
on an otherwise pleasant day
during his fifteenth summer,
slashed by the stuttering blades of a wicked and
deceitful lawn mower that had pretended to die.
Detached and mangled digit
held in his complete left hand,
he calmly walked up to the old house
and ran the rusty tap at the back door,
letting it cough out the murky, earthy water
before washing away the blood and dirt.
Dabbing at his severed member with
the grass stained handkerchief tucked into his belt,
he quietly decided that it was beyond repair
or reattachment,
and dropped it down the open drain.
Turf
Turf
Sisyphus sat down upon the soft sod,
sinking slightly before sighing lightly,
as he felt the earth consume his hands.
Flushed with the scents of the spring flora,
he cracked worn lips that had not smiled
since time nor turf, and knew,
that as the ground swallowed him,
he could bare the world.
Love’s Theme or, The Jar or, Sisyphus
“Small Paddy.”
“Water?”
“Small drop.”
Two glasses. Seared like a pan of cider on a high heat. Necked by a large grey stone with a drinking hole and a separate mouth to create noise, permanent distraction from the permanent slurp. An old grey stone digeridoo that drank gold and spouted shite from the ropes until blown over them and it all stops.
“Do you see you there, I can tell you’re a man after me own heart.”
And he’d collapse on the bar and shout holy jaysus mother. He would. No luck yet, he’s only searing. And the pints were two, and the pints were too big for her hands. And I winked with one eye as I winked with the other, and said it’d be alright because there were two of us and two pints and that I’d get the next ones, which meant that there’d of course be next ones. And in this dark you wouldn’t know what could happen if that pink little cheek came near me. I’d bite it off in sweet love, like a maniacal butterfly, and there’d be nothing left and it’d be mine forever. I’d eat it up, or put it in a jar and admire it when I was old and searing cider in a pan for Dave and me, or just for Dave because I’d hardly get that far. He’s eighty but he’s going up, and I’m a quarter that and I’m going off, by the look of me.
Six pints of cider at the table and now I have Arthur in front of me telling me I never was such a bold boy as when I was sober. I’m more calculated then he says, like a sober calculator, and he doesn’t trust technology. It might be Arthur’s influence but I swear I’m sitting across from several women all staring at me in mild disgust and I blink and they’re gone so I decide to go home but not before a -
“Small Paddy.”
“Water?”
“A drop.”
- and a pint for the road. One for me and one for herself there with the small hands that’d fit in mine so well if only they reached across the table. Sure, to have it that way she’d need fierce long arms and the hands wouldn’t look so well. Imagine the hand of a child on the arms of a tall man, no, not at all at all. That would be too much. We’ll leave it there because he tells a story or a song, and that is about a young woman stricken by a suspicious growth on her wireless internet box. Her service provider tells her that it is nothing to worry about. It is fine madam, nothing to worry about. I know, I know it doesn’t seem like anything to worry about but there’s one on the back of the screen now. Is it a flat screen? Yes. Well there you go, that’s normal madam. But no, you don’t know, there’s one on the return key, and I think some of the other keys are springing up. Okay madam, just relax, we’ll send somebody out within three to five days, and they’ll have a look at it all. And a man arrived the next week and he found dark little lumps all over her body and her fingers stuck in her ears and her curled into a ball and she was dead but the internet connection was still functional.
Kettle Poisoning
Kettle Poisoning
I tried to stand up straight, as high as I could. There was an awful weight on my shoulders though, metaphorically speaking, and the ongoing task of improving my posture moment by moment proved quite difficult, even more than usual. I shook out my shoulders and arms, loosening myself, only for the irksome downward pressure to fall upon me once again when I settled. I found myself frustrated, not because of the anxious tension I could feel physically, that did not bother me as such, but because of my inability to stand straight and right at such a moment. I concentrated.
While I did not know very much about the clear contents of the unmarked plastic bottle in my hand, I trusted Anthony, who knew about this sort of thing. He said that he had used it before for similar pursuits. I did not ask him any more questions as he gave me a look that told me not to. He is such a character like that.
So I poured it into the kettle, gazing out through the large bay window that lit the kitchen as I did so, out into the little garden behind the house. I was a little worried that I didn’t feel particularly bad about him. Should I not have naturally occurring human empathy? I did not know him, a good man maybe, but I did not know him nor wish to know him. I could only think that a face, or even a name, would dull my resolve.
Having done the deed, I walked out of the kitchen, down the hallway and out the front door, shutting it behind me. I left the key back under the mat, where I had found it earlier, careful to leave everything as everything should be left. I felt that I had finished him. He was not dead yet, but I had planted the poison, and it was only a matter of time. I still felt no guilt, and slowly strolled away assuming that I never would.
Linus Spacehead and Target
Linus Spacehead and Target
There was no movement on the street. Everything was bathed in the orange half-light radiated by the street lamps. Linus sat stationary behind the wheel of his unmarked car, which itself sat stationary about thirty yards from the junction that sees Cyprus Avenue cross Green Dolphin Street. His left hand was tense, stuck to the top of the steering wheel. Tucked inside his pants, his right hand was wrapped around his gun, the tips of his fingers tickling his testicles.
“Target exiting The Squatty Roo alone. Target walking slowly east on Green Dolphin Street. Over.”
The ear piece hummed incessantly when there were no transmissions coming through. The chatty kid that does the electronics told him that it was the last one he had left after the budget cuts that central had enforced.
“Aw dang Spacehead, they bleedin’ me. You know I ain’t got shit else. These fools down in Central, they tell me do this and do that, but do it all with no damn money. Gotta learn them some shit about what we doin’.”
“That really is terrible. I was wondering if you could please make it work so that it doesn’t ring like that? I would really appreciate it.”
“I’ll try man, but you ain’t know what they leavin’ me with up in here. I ain’t got no damn tools.”
“Thanks kid. I really hate noises. I get migraines, you know, like really bad headaches. I don’t think I’d be able to get the job done with a migraine.”
“Target approaching crossroads of Cyprus and Green Dolphin. Prepare to engage Target, Spacehead. Over.”
Linus had been sitting in the car for more than two hours, humming different tunes from radio and television advertisements to keep himself amused. It seemed so long ago now that he had been trying to remember the jingle from the toilet paper ad with all the little puppies. They run around a lovely house in a dreamy suburbia, dragging toilet paper everywhere. Needless to say, the family that lives there are very unimpressed when they arrive home. You can’t stay mad at little dogs though, so as soon as one of the young children cracks a smile at the paper’s softness on his face, the rest of the family all have a nice laugh about the situation. Linus expects that they bought quite a lot of this brand of toilet paper after the incident, but also a gate device to keep the dogs from going upstairs.
“Target turning south onto Green Dolphin. Spacehead, prepare to engage Target. Over.”
Officer Linus Spacehead locked his right hand on the handle of his gun, his index finger around the trigger. He focused his eyes in the poor light, fixing his gaze upon Target. He matches the description given to him by The Chief earlier in the day. Written on a beer mat, it was to the point.
“About three and a half feet tall. Tight blonde hair and blue eyes. Could be wearing an eye patch.”
“Target nearing your position, Spacehead. Engage Target. Over.”
The throbbing in his head was getting worse, but Linus knew that once he had killed the little fellow then he would not have to listen to the ear piece. He would drive home, picking up Chinese food on the way. His cat, Escargot, would curl up beside him. Escargot loved watching the blue comedies that played late on television. So did Linus. They were made for each other.
“BANG!”
Linus shouted as he shot his gun, firing a bullet into the side of the little man’s head. It was very quick. He reached out the window, aimed, and then pulled the trigger. The little man toppled over with the force of the shot and was dead.
Fig 23.1: Escargot, Linus' cat.
Old Patsy in her Tiny Flat
- Happy Valentine’s Day!
Old Patsy in her Tiny Flat
“It would be very sweet of you to come along,” she says, “but I am afraid that I would not be able to hear you speak. Yes, the walls are screaming very loudly again today.” Her voice is delicate, not far from crumbling.
Paddy sits on a three-legged wooden stool beside a yellow door that is itself gathering as much dust as the trinkets that litter the shelves and cabinets of her small living room. Silver roots betray the crimson product that she has prefered for a number of years. In truth, her hair has fallen into a rather unfortunate state of disrepair recently. It hangs down listlessly, partly covering bright blue eyes, completely covering the thin black pencilled brows that are refreshed every morning with an ever shortening 8B.
“Of course not, don’t be silly. You take it easy, pet… That’s right, yes. Yes, and I’ll see you some time soon.”
She pouts after she puts the phone back on the hook, like a young girl posing for her school picture, idly thinking of the boy who sits near her in class, the one who always shares his chocolate bar with her at lunch. He is such a nice boy.
“Okay, Patsy. Don’t worry. Say ‘prunes,’ and you’ll be fine.” The photographer smiles at her before retreating behind his clunky photographic apparatus. Patsy is careful not to move, even going so far as to hold her breath to preserve the pose engineered for her by the delicate hands of the working artist. She has been holding her breath for nearly a minute now, since his forefinger softly brushed the nape of her neck and then lingered just behind her ear. She thinks of chocolate and, from a smiling start, does as she is advised.
“Prunes,” whispers Paddy. “Prunes, pruh-pruuune, pruuunes.” She picks at the cracked paint on the door, tearing off a shard of failing yellow. She examines it suspiciously only for it to crumble as she passes it through her wrinkled fingers. Remnants of pink nail polish from months past speckle nails that have been unchecked since, nails extending an inch from her digits.
The room is very small with no windows. There are two doors, the yellow one that Paddy is currently picking at, and another blue one, in a similar state of disrepair. A wingback armchair covered in plain beige material faces a table that hosts a tiny television. Shelves, bookcases and cabinets close in, heaving with sea shells and rock candy from twenty years ago, chipped china saucers, plates and cups, and picture frames bearing the uneasy faces of people who do not call anymore. That is, if they could call. Paddy had cut the cord that connected the phone to the little box on the moaning magnolia wall. It was around the same time that a note was pushed under the yellow door.
“You have not paid rent or maintenance for the past three months. It would be best for you to leave as soon as possible.” On that day, Paddy locked the latch on the yellow door. Nobody had disturbed her since.
“Come on now, Patsy. Stop doing that with your hands. It won’t look good in your picture.” The photographer walks towards her again, smiling in a deliberate attempt to calm her. She appears very nervous to him, wringing her hands like a damp cloth that will not dry. He kneels down in front of her and takes her tiny hands into his. He looks up from her knees, directly into her eyes.
“Don’t worry, its only a picture. Just smile and say ‘prunes.’ You’ll be fine, trust me.” He places her left hand onto the grey skirt that covers her crossed knees, and her right hand upon her left, smiling again reassuringly before letting her go. He slowly walks behind her and brushes a stray wisp of golden hair behind her ear. Patsy takes a breath and he caresses the nape of her neck again, slowly tracing the contours down her shoulder. The rough skin of his calloused fingers finds the hollow inside her collar-bone and she begins to wring her hands once again, squeezing her fingers and trying desperately to pull them off.
“Patsy. Patsy.”
The blue door is open, just a crack of a few inches. Paddy cannot see what might be inside. She does not remember having crossed that threshold before.
He moved around and took her hands in hers once more. He did not smile this time, but looked directly into her trembling eyes. He spoke slowly and deliberately while placing her hands back upon her knee.
“Stop that, stop that with your hands, Patsy. Please. Come on.”
Trying to pull her fingers from her hands, Paddy stands from her stool. She walks towards the blue door at the other side of the room. Behind her, she can make out a distant banging from outside, perhaps people screaming her name. The walls wail at her and she begins to cry heavy tears.
Patsy cries too. The photographer touches her cheek and says that she is a good girl, that her picture would end up looking great. Her wet cheeks allow a smile. Mum and Dad will be happy with a good picture. She thinks of Michael, who she sits beside at lunch time, and the tears fall harder because she is dirty now.
The blue door is wide open. Paddy brushes the hair from her eyes but still cannot see anything further than the threshold. She walks into the blackness and turns around to close the door. It shuts with a heavy thud. There is only the sound of the latch locking from the other side.
Fig 22.1: Some prunes displayed in a pleasant way.
Cigarette, Rope, Tweed, Knife, Woman
Cigarette, Rope, Tweed, Knife, Woman
It was unlikely that she would survive the fall. He knew that. And of course, survive she did not. What surprised him was how swiftly the event passed. His mind did not present the scene in histrionic slow motion, nor a momentary poetic silence between the instant that her trailing foot left the rope and the next, the moment that her person crumpled to the solid ground. There were screams all around him. The crowd that had silently gazed upon the majesty of her performance only seconds earlier were now an hysterical collective, some running towards the scene and some running away, climbing over what had quickly become a scattered mess of fold up chairs and novelty hats, partly consumed hot dogs and other such things. However, he only stood inanimately, pondering what she might have thought en route, if indeed conscious thought could force itself upon such an extraordinary second, and if that thought was simply extinguished with the thud, vanishing from itself.
“There is something you should know,” she had said. As soon as he raised his eyes to meet her gaze she looked down at her cigarette, surveying it from every angle. She always held it between her ring and middle fingers. She said that to hold it any other way gave her a cramp in her hand.
“I walk the highwire.” They stood together in the dark, outside an electrical store in the city. Dozens of televisions flickered in the window. There was a goal for the team in blue and they were now up by two with fifteen minutes left. A little boy was missing, thought to have been abducted as he played outside his home on Sunday afternoon. Heavy snowfall had caused traffic mayhem earlier in the day with more snow expected over the rest of the week. A woman answered correctly and advanced to the final round where she would play for the jackpot.
A man with a very thin grey moustache pushed a pair of golden frames up his nose, closer to his eyes. He hunched down and inspected her, still folded where she landed. His autumn tweed figure paced up and down her length several times, back arched in thoughtful cadaver perusal. Finally stopping at her feet, the man began to resolutely rummage around in the pocket of his jacket until he found what he was looking for. He appeared to extract a lit cigarette from those depths. He spoke, conducting himself vigorously with his right hand, the hand holding his cigarette, while taking off and putting on his glasses every few seconds with the other.
“Well, friends,” he announced, pausing to ensure that the only other soul remaining in the circus structure was listening. He breathed deeply and began again.
“It looks as if this young woman, this most beautiful young woman, has died. While I cannot say for certain what the cause of death was, I suspect that it may have had something to do with her fall from the ghastly rope above us. It looks terribly evil, all the way up there, plotting.”
The tweed man halted his wildly theatrical gesticulations to throw his eyes about the empty expanse. He smiled and put his cigarette back in his pocket.
“Well now, I should be getting off. It must be at least eight o’clock now and I haven’t eaten anything all day, bar those two digestive biscuits I had with tea this afternoon. Good day to you all.”
His first step was towards the body on the ground. He looked down at her, clicking his tongue in affectionate disapproval before spitting on the back of her head. Turning on his heel, he briskly walked away, whistling merrily as he went.
“She was carrying my child.”
The tweed man stopped in his tracks. He stepped around himself, and gazed at the body from his distance.
“My boy, I daresay she still is.”
He drifted slowly back towards the centre of the circus. The two men now stood facing one another, about six feet apart, divided by the heap.
“I’m pregnant,” she had said. She threw her cigarette into her glass of wine, a gesture saying that she would not be smoking or drinking anymore. She picked up the wine glass and stood up at the table. She raised her arm slightly, her teeth biting her lower lip, and then threw her arm downwards, towards the ground. The glass shrieked as it died and the patio upon which they were dinning became silent. The rest of the customers tried to temper the rubber elements of their necks, but to no avail. She took her seat once again and continued to eat her mayonnaise covered mushroom risotto as if nothing had happened at all.
The tweed man once again thrust himself deep into his pocket. The determined furrow of his eyebrows suggested that he was looking for something very specific.
“I asked her to leave the ropes until the baby was born. These dangerous walks killed her and the child.”
“Now my boy, you know very well that what you are saying is not exactly true. Really, you know that -”
His eyes burst into flames momentarily only to revert back to their tiny grey state within only a fraction of a second.
“Bingo! I’ve found it, at last!”
He drew a long knife from his pocket, so big that one could almost have called it a short sword. Brandishing it high in the air, as he did with his cigarette earlier, he began to conduct his own oration.
“She can’t have been long, you know, up it, as it were. Two or three months pregnant, maybe. I used to be a doctor, and an abortionist, but I’m still not very good at these things. And the child was yours? Are you sure, because you never can tell for certain with these things.
“I once had a child. I was living with a tribe of wild natives along a tributary of the Amazon. A young woman became quite fond of my pink skin and told me that I was the father of her child. Being a gentleman bound by high moral standards, I did the only thing I could do. When she went into labour I brought her deep into the forest, as was tradition with that tribe. After some time had passed, I returned to the other villagers to inform them that evil spirits had taken my love and my child. I could only communicate in basic terms of course, their language was very strange, but I believe they understood.”
Both men looked down at the heap.
“Here you go.” A tweed sleeve reached across the gap, handing over the knife.
“What is this for?”
“You, my dear boy, are going to skin this rabbit.”
He produced a white rabbit from his pocket. He held it up by the back of the neck and looked on imploringly.
“No.”
He bent to one knee and let the rabbit run away.
“No, that’s right. You are going to retrieve that child of yours!”
Fig 16.1 : The lego man should watch his step.
Snow
If anybody is still waiting for the final part of the Green Forest Blues series (Part 1 and Part 2 are already up), it’s on a break due to economic developments in Ireland. This is a story called Snow.
Snow
Paul was sick of chasing her. Had the pursuit been a literal endeavour, on a round track, his feet would be raw and the blood of his toils would be marked upon the ground, running continuously. As it were, there were no physical marks upon his body. Instead he felt heavy and as if he were slowly melting.
Of course, he was still dancing. He stared across the haze of the room, making sure to move his arms and legs in time with the pulse of everybody else, a pulse that he resented as it battered his chest. She was dancing with somebody else, or everybody else, and the pit of his stomach kept leaping up and trying to escape through his mouth. However, stoic as always, Paul maintained a sickening decorum. Halting the painful movement of his appendages to a beat that he could not engage with, his breathing became difficult. The beat was crushing his chest now and the door looked like a safe option.
The hallway was littered with snakes. Young ladies and gents flirted and laughed, standing and slouching against the walls. Negotiating the serpent pit was daunting but suddenly made easier as the front door swung open. All of the movement stopped around him. Outside the house there was a velvet blanket of white. Snowflakes drifted down from the night sky.
Paul drifted through the seemingly frozen crowd, buoyed by the pure white on black beauty of the snow against the night. As he came closer he saw a female figure in the blackness, standing upon the whiteness. There was not a single footprint around her. There she was, wearing her white dress and black tights, atop black heels. Snow gave way underfoot as Paul traversed the threshold, his first step sinking deep. He continued to move out to her. Her eyes were alight and she smiled.
Touching her hands, lifting them from her side. Paul held on so tightly. His arms now around her waist; he clutched her. He did not let go. They waltzed over the snow. There was no music but the sound of their breathing. Her breath was soft. Snow kept falling. Beneath their feet, everything was undisturbed. He pressed his lips against hers. She pressed her lips against his. They halted their dance. She clung to him as they kissed. She pulled herself more tightly to him. She rested her face on his chest. The snow stopped falling. Flakes held in mid-air, and everything stood still. A cat watched from a window.
The snow began to fall once again. She moved away. Now Paul was fixed on the spot. She took a step backwards. The snow crunched beneath her heel. She engaged Paul’s eyes. The look told him something that he did not understand. Her eyelids fell shut and her head bowed. She turned on her heel like a dainty carousel. Paul did not move as she walked away, leaving heavy red heel-toe prints in the whiteness. He followed the red drops as she disappeared into the blackness.
He was heavier than before. He raised his right hand adagio. The cold of his fingertips seared at the open flesh of the hole in his chest. He closed his eyes. The blood dripped down his body, saturating him. His black clothing fell towards an increasingly intense shade in the meager luminescence offered by the streetlights. Feelings began to fade until all that remained was the cold and a resigned helplessness. Paul melted.
The cat watched. Paul’s knees gave way and his body crumpled to the ground.
