The newspapers called Janie “Death’s Valentine”. They feasted on her demise like vultures. They were in the town within a couple of hours, and her blood was still pooled on the ground in the courtyard outside the main building of Groswell Prep. After the press got there, they didn’t leave for a fortnight. I suppose what made them stay was the mystery of it, that and the fact that there wasn’t really any need for them to embellish or sensationalise the story because the truth was already so remarkable in itself. Four-hundred students had seen Janie’s body on the ground; everyone in any of the classrooms facing the courtyard heard the thud and the crack and they all ran to the windows to witness. It was easy for the story to swell and fester because Janie had always been pretty sad. There wasn’t a single person in Groswell who didn’t have something to say about the girl, and the more they talked, the greater the gaggle of journalist-vultures grew. What was worst about the whole thing was that most everything they said was true, and they turned Janie into a circus freak for the whole word to point and laugh at, ostracising her in death even more than they had done when she was alive.
George told me that he saw her final moments, as she fell past the window of the fourth-floor classroom. No one else had been watching; it was a warm, sleepy afternoon in the middle of spring and all heads were on desks or huddled together exchanging whispers. She must’ve flown by, so quickly that he might’ve thought he’d dreamt it. But what George told me I could never forget, though I scarcely believed it. He said that as she passed, she smiled and she waved, or she was already waving, a jolly gesture that said “farewell, I’m off”. I always preferred to imagine her like that, waving as though she was popping out for a breath of fresh air or going home. And I guess, in some perverted, romantic way, she was.
Inspired by the word “Direction”
I am infinite, forever, a constant.
As I think to part my lips to speak I feel it stirring in my gut, a light. Raw as the blood of a fresh kill, depraved as the hand that made it bleed. It burns with a torrid lust for release; a muffled whimper passes my lips. It’s pure light, sunlight, starlight, rushing up, rushing out, aching to pour forth from my mouth. I am bright, aglow, ablaze. I am incandescent, a thousand stars at once, a galaxy all my own. Everything becomes so extraordinarily clear, I see it all. I am divine, the world spirit, the absolute being, the energy that flows through my veins is the creation of all things and simultaneously the end. Yet it hurts, I am not enough, I feel heavy and too much. It moves me to tears, and with each sob I feel lighter. It unfurls around me, like a lioness stretching as she shakes off the dregs of slumber, so bright I’m forced to close my eyes. It leaves with the wind.
I feel light, as a feather and not so much a flame. I am instant, a stop, a while.
Your butterfly hands, like counterfeit wings, make a counterfeit wish for your counterfeit dreams.
I’m sick of ‘lovely’ things and I’m so tired of ‘pretty’ things. However, that’s not to say that I would like the opposite. On the contrary, I would like the loveliest and the prettiest, so lovely and pretty that it couldn’t even be described as such. I want loveliness to such a large degree that it would become ‘brilliant’ and ‘fabulous’, ‘simply marvellous’.
“I knew I could never do what I hoped for as a little girl. It was not what He intended me to do. He did not intend this for me either. Neither did I. Alas, this is what I am. I am a quivering mess, a tangle of nerves and emotions for which there are no words. The building upon which I stand is so very tall and the street below is very far away. People are beginning to turn and look now. I think my red scarf must have caught their eye. The concrete will be hard, but I will not know it. I will only know the short fall to my Eternal Salvation, to Him. I suppose you think I mean some sort of deity. I do not. He is not a god, and it is five years since He last was called a man. He is lost in some lonely void between this world and the next. I hear Him call, I feel His phantom touch; and so it is there I must go.”
The 242 had become an animal; a towering majestic beast with a thick red skin, hard as iron, and two incandescent yellow eyes. Each new wound, seeping with royal blue blood turned thick and grey at the touch of oxygen, caused her to screech with such ferocity that the sound echoed for miles. At every turn the gargantuan beast would slow for a moment but soon regain her lost speed, hurling herself forward with a doleful groan. The little girl could hardly bear it; the sheer determination – or was it indifference? - with which the 242 soldiered on was both awe-inspiring and utterly heart-breaking. The beast slowed to a halt and looked towards the distant horizon where the sun was just beginning to rise. The 242 bent her head downwards and opened her great mouth, allowing a little girl’s tiny figure to step out, clutching her mother’s hand. The beast turned to the forthcoming sunrise again and the girl followed its gaze, stumbling as she interrupted her mother’s hurried pace to watch the light pour out over the sleeping city like an intangible golden rain. A silent alarm sounded and the city awoke.
Loneliness
There’s this room, full of people. People talking and touching and laughing and clinking glasses and making small-talk. Somehow I am standing in this room, amongst all these people, yet I remain separate from the entire scene. As though that is a two-way mirror hanging on the wall opposite and I am standing behind it. The unseen observer. I watch all these people, with their meaningful words hiding behind their meaningless small-talk. A collective tipsiness begins to settle across the room, as though it’s being shaken from the cobwebs in the corners of the ceiling. Children settle into armchairs and curl up on the carpets while the housewives who’ve looked forward to this gathering for the past fortnight grab a hold of the mantle in an attempt to steady themselves. The lights look a little too bright and squinting becomes the new fashion. The imported Italian liqueur is beginning to make all these niceties sound a lot like “I hate you.” I notice all these things but I don’t, I can’t, experience them. I watch from behind my imaginary two-way mirror, hearing nothing but white noise and feeling everything sharper than before.
“it’s that feeling again. that one you get when you feel like you’ve got nothing in the whole world, you’ve got no one and not a single shred of anything to hold onto. and you can’t even remember who you are or how you got here or why everything is so totally fucked. it’s like there isn’t a world outside of that window, you feel like everything’s stopped and you’re totally alone. and really, what good is an entire world if you’re the only one in it? so you take the kitchen chair and you tie a rope to the ceiling and you push your head gently through the hangman’s noose. and then, i suppose, you jump.”
“i wonder what’s inside the box?” said thomas. he circled it two and a half times with his head cocked to one side and his hands on his hips, staring at the wooden chest with a very stern look. pandora held her hands behind her back and swayed back and forth, rolling her feet from ball to heel, ball to heel.
“oh, i wouldn’t open it if i were you,” she replied, but her lips curled into a mischievous little smile and the way her eyes seemed to catch fire made thomas very curious.
it’s all a game of
who can talk the loudest
who can run the fastest
who can jump the highest
but really
they all want to see each other
fall
just to see each other fail
it’s the cruelest game of all
they want to tempt you from your ledge
knowing it’s a long way to the ground
think you should’ve stayed in bed today?
well don’t let it get you down
