He Ate My Foot. (a.k.a July's entry for Circle)

Inspector Jason Salt was well equipped to deal with the unusual. Having lived in London all of his thirty-five years and serving with the Met for fifteen, it had left him with a weary resignation for the eccentricities of the human mind.

The most memorable incident was a call out to flat in Stratford where a tearful and bald young lady was furiously accusing her ex-boyfriend of braking into her home and shaving her head. He later pleaded guilty, claiming he’d shaved her head so that she would remain unattractive to other men. No one thought to ask what her current boyfriend thought when he awoke to find his girlfriends ex looming over him with an electric razor in hand.

The Inspector pulled into a hospital car park where his first call out of the day had brought him. Quickly running a comb through his greying hazel hair, and downing the last of his Starbucks Cappuccino, the Inspector hopped out of his car, adjusting the left trouser leg as it had once again managed to tucked itself into his sock, and headed towards reception. Stepping over the threshold, Inspector Salt was instantly hit by overly bright lighting and a smell of disinfectant, ammonia and old people musk, also known as 'That Hospital Smell'.

His newly polished Jimmy Choo shoes clipped loudly against the motlled plastic flooring as he crossed the foyer to the desk. There appeared to be only a handful of people waiting around in the foyer today, unusual for this part of town. A few glanced up, indifferent, at the sight of the Inspector, but most remained engrossed in the repeated 999 episode flickering upon the small television in the corner of the waiting room.

As Salt approached the reception desk, the young woman behind it acknowledged him with a fleeting glance before returning to her crossword. ‘Can I help?’ she asked, vacantly, tucking some blonde hair behind an ear.

‘I’m looking for a Sidney Turner,’ said the Inspector. ‘I’m here to interview him.’

The dispassionate receptionist look up at the Inspector, set down her pen and smirked. ‘Sidney Turner?’ she repeated, the grin widening across her face. ‘One second, I’ll just grab Doctor Kawase for you. I think he wanted to take you up himself.’

The receptionist pushed herself away from the desk. The chair rolled her towards a door where she stuck her head in and spoke to a disembodied voice. She glanced out and smiled at the Inspector, who smiled and nodded politely, but frowned as her head disappeared through the door once again.

A few minutes later the receptionist’s head emerged from the door and a young Asian man walked from the room, the same smirk plastered to his face.

‘Good-evening, ah –,’

‘Inspector Salt,’ said the Inspector, extending a hand towards the Doctor.

‘Doctor Kawase,’ replied the young man, accepting the Inspectors hand. ‘You’ve come about Mr Turner?’

‘Yes, we received a call from the hospital asking us to come down. They said something about cannibalism.'

The Doctors smile grew wider. ‘Not the way he tells it, Inspector.’

‘I’m sorry; I appear to have missed the punch line on my way here. What exactly is going on?’

Doctor Kawase let himself out from behind the reception and motioned towards an elevator. ‘Let’s go up, shall we?’

Both Doctor and Inspector stepped into an empty elevator. Doctor Kawase pushed the third floor button and stepped back in line with Salt, grinned at the Inspector then turned to face the front, the smirk staying firmly on his face.

‘Doctor Kawase is it? I’m sorry, but could you elaborate on what exactly is happening.’

‘I would, Inspector, but I really think you need to hear the story from Sidney yourself.’

The lift doors slid open and Doctor Kawase stepped out, looking back to check that Inspector Salt was following, and then took off down a wide, dimly light, grey corridor. Nurses and their patients bustled passed, some greeting Doctor Kawase, others eyeing Inspector Salt curiously.

Doctor Kawase stopped beside a room and motioned for Inspector Salt to enter. As Salt pushed open the door, a frail looking man looked around and beamed at the Inspector. Salt glanced at Kawase who merely nodded for him to go in.

‘Mr Turner is it?’ asked Inspector Salt, stepping into the room, pulling out a frayed notebook and a pen from his jack pocket.

‘That’s right.’ The old man extended a frail liver spotted hand towards the Inspector, who took it and shook firmly. ‘Sidney Turner.’

‘I’m Inspector Salt, Mr Turner. I’m come regarding the claims you’ve made that you were abducted and were unwillingly parted from your foot.’

‘Unwillingly parted,’ Sidney repeated, sounding somewhat surprised. ‘No, Inspector, I let him eat it.’

The Inspector blinked. He looked down at his notebook, staring blankly at the page, then back up. He blinked again. He became vaguely aware of his mouth moving, opening and closing like a fish out of water, and promptly stopped. The Inspector glanced towards Doctor Kawase who half smiled and shrugged.

‘You let another human eat your foot?’ asked Salt, looking at Sidney and thinking that this was quite definitely the most peculiar conversation he would have throughout his entire career.

‘Zombie,’ corrected the old man calmly. ‘I let a zombie eat my foot.’

I was wrong, he thought grimly, scribbling in his notebook. Inspector Salt took a deep calming breath. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t –’

‘We’d both been locked up for a couple of days and they hadn’t fed him anything in that time. I hadn’t walked anywhere for years so it wasn’t of use to me. I couldn’t let the poor chap starve, could I?’

‘I suppose not,’ mumbled the Inspector. ‘How did you know he was a zombie?’

‘He shuffled around with his arms out like this,’ – and here, Sidney demonstrated by holding his arms out at a stiff right-angle. – ‘The old chap groaned quite a bit too, and occasionally he would burp moths.’

The Inspector glanced down at the word “zombie” he had scrawled across a page in his notebook and looked back up into the old man’s creased face. ‘Are you on any medication, Mr Turner?’

‘You don’t believe me?’

‘No, it’s not that, it’s just that this is,’ – and here the Inspector paused, not for effect, but to search his vocabulary for the least offensive word. – ‘an unusual story. I’m not accustomed to dealing with zombies.’

‘Well, I don’t want you to deal with the Zombie, Inspector. I want to prosecute the bastards who put us in the room.’

‘Very well, but cannibalism is illegal in England Mr Turner so I will need to investigate these claims as well.’

‘I don’t see why that’s necessary,’ replied Sidney, waving a dismissive wrinkled hand. ‘I was merely performing my duties as a fellow prisoner. I fought in the war, you know.’

‘Oh?’ said Inspector Salt, feigning interest. ‘The second world war, was it?’

‘Korean,’ said the old man proudly, puffing out his scrawny chest. ‘No offence, son,’ he added to Kawase.

The Doctor looked up from Sidney’s chart, grinning widely. ‘None taken, as it happens, I’m Japanese.’

‘They had their part to play too –,’

‘Mr Turner,’ snapped Inspector Salt, his patience wearing increasingly thin, ‘if you could stay focused on the matter at hand. You say you let a cannibal eat your foot.’

‘Zombie,’ corrected the old man, scratching a liver spot on his bald head.

‘To physically eat your foot he would have to be alive,’ interjected Kawase.

‘Yes, but he was a zombie so, technically, he would be dead,’ argued Sidney.

The Inspector massaged his temples with an exasperated sigh. ‘Right, so, to sum up; you allowed a technically dead cannibal to eat your foot.’

The old man nodded. ‘Correct.’

Inspector Salt flipped his notebook closed. ‘I think I have everything I need to conduct the investigation,’ he said, accompanied by a forced polite smile. ‘Thank you for your time today and we’ll be in contact as soon as we have any more information.’ He turned towards the doctor. ‘Thank you for your time, Doctor Kawase.’

‘Thank you for coming down, Inspector,’ replied the Doctor, grinning.

The Inspector turned and marched from the ward. Ten minutes later he dropped into the driver’s seat of his faithful ghost of a car, jammed the key into the ignition and headed for the station, all the while looking out for a pub. He could do with a whiskey.

(Yet Another) Failed Competition Entry: txtlit.co.uk

Txtlit.co.uk

The name of the game is to write a micro-story in 154 characters or less – that includes letters AND punctuation – on your mobile (one standard message). You are given a theme by the website wizards and then left to your own imagination.

June’s theme was ‘Crime’ and this was my entry:

Her shriek pierced the still, icy night. Pinned under him, she stared up at him with dead eyes as he tore into her, stealing her spirit with every thrust.

I didn’t win, nor did I place as a runner up. I can see why, it’s quite macabre and other entries that placed were comedy gold rather than "serious" stories. Nevermind though, maybe next month!

Failed Competition Entry

Have you heard? Children are being sexualised too early.

It seems that sexy billboards, celebrities gyrating all over their music videos and lad mags too close to the bottom shelf are leaving the wrong kind of lasting impression on our children. And according to one worried Mother, Beyoncé has triggered a desire for high heel shoes in her young daughter. It’s simply outrageous, Old Boy!

As a child my parents would not allow me to own, or wear, a pair of high heel shoes, so naturally I decided to fashion myself a pair using coloured paper (for the shoe and sole) and loo roll (for the heel): that’s right. High heels Art Attack style. Needless to say, the makeshift shoes were a massive failure. However, it didn’t stop me from fantasising about that pair of sparkly heels (which I still don’t own, by the way, because as an adult I’m forced spend my wages on bills – not shoes.)

My point is that as a child I was never exposed to music videos, or fashion magazines or to vast amounts of radio, nor did I pay much attention to billboards, yet I still harboured dreams of owning entire closets full of heels and expensive dresses, with plunging necklines and short hemlines. And my dress-up box was full of them. Why? Well, because I wanted to be a grown-up like my Mum. I wanted to have parties, paint my nails, do the food shopping and drive a car. It was certainly not because I’d watched it on television or because my parents threw outrageously wild parties. It was because I’d observed this behavior whilst meandering around in the world; I witnessed this behavior from adults around me. 

For generations children have been imitating adults through play with their spooky lifelike baby dolls, their conveniently child-size pushchairs and their plastic houses. You’ll always find children playing Mummy’s and Daddy’s, Doctors and Nurses and, if you were my friend, you came to my bedroom pub and played ‘drunken child’. You always ordered the happy hour special ‘The Tit-A-Nic’ (orange and blackcurrant juice, lime cordial and water: fresh not tonic.). I wasn’t imaginative enough to invent an entire collection of drinks.

In all honestly, I think padded bras for nine year old children is appalling and Rihanna should have toned down her S&M video, but if we’re going to scrutinise the fashion and music industries perhaps we should be casting our eyes towards the child pageant industry as well. Or perhaps towards the toy industry and their perfect plastic Barbies, semi-realistic baby dolls and child-sized pushchairs.

Though when all is said and done, the government can rip down billboards, keep lads mags on the top shelf and slap an age rating on every music video under the sun, just because they can, but if your eight year old child is already bouncing down the street singing about S&M after she just heard Rihanna singing about it on the radio, well, you might consider that a battle lost.

Untitled: a.k.a Circle Entry for June

Cassandra towered over the still body, gazing down at her hands with mild surprise:  the blood on them was already dry.

She dropped her hands to her sides, allowing her eyes to see the body for the first time since she lost control. Blood had spilled from him, leaving a red pool around his body. It has started to seep through the gaps between the wooden boards. Raising a foot carefully, she hesitated, and then prodded him roughly between the ribs with her big toe. He remained motionless, his lifeless eyes fixed on a painting on the opposite wall.

Cassandra remained standing, shaking, in the pool of blood. She shook her head disbelievingly at the sight of it; did humans contain this much blood? Did they bleed this much from a single wound? It had been a long time since Cassandra had murdered.

Dropping down beside him she could see a wound on his neck. Pulling the neckline of his tee-shirt down, she saw two deep punctures on the vein and teeth marks surrounding the wound – as she had already expected. She knew what she was; she had killed before enough times to know. She studied his face where the ghost of his last desperate scream was still etched upon it. It looked as though she had caused him pain. She hoped she hadn’t, she truly had loved and cared for the dead body that now lay before her.

Cassandra lowered her head so her lips were barely inches from his ear, her golden hair falling into the bloody pool around him. ‘I’m sorry, love.’ She smiled adoringly at her husband. ‘I loved you, but you could never have me,’ she said, speaking softly, gently running fingers through his damp hair. His scalp was still warm. ‘Not really. I think you knew that.’

Ecstasy was coursing through her body, flowing through her veins like adrenaline. A smile played on her face as she gazed down upon his lifeless body. ‘You did taste good, though.’

The backdoor squeaked open and Cassandra’s head snapped up. A blunt tap sounded against the titled floor and echoed throughout the kitchen every half a second or so. Cassandra cocked her head to listen for the intruder, but all she could hear were the police sirens drawing nearer, roaring through the streets. Cassandra closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath, the intruder smelt like stale smoke mixed with Old Spice; he smelt like familiarity. She knew this man and he wasn’t human. It wasn’t the police. Not yet.

She opened her eyes and lifted them to meet the intruder’s calm gaze. He remained in the kitchen doorway studying her for a moment, leaning heavily on an ivory topped cane, before his dark eyes fell to the broken man lying beside her. ‘Cassie –,’

‘I’m not coming with you,’ she told him tersely, placing a hand on the floor, ready to propel herself up in the event of an attack. Cassandra focused her hearing but could not hear the others, his dutiful entourage, in the house.

The stranger looked up from the bloody corpse, his face blank. ‘He won’t be the last, Cassie,’ he said, stepping through the door, his cane clicking on the wooden floor. ‘You can’t control your urges –,’

‘I haven’t killed for the past three years, Reuben. The gaps are becoming longer –,’

‘This isn’t a game,’ snapped Reuben, his hand white knuckled on the cane. ‘You need blood to survive. It’s simple scientific –,’

‘We don’t need human blood, not all the time. I have proven –,’

‘All you are proving is that you can singlehandedly tear down everything we have built,’ barked Reuben, drowning out Cassandra’s argument. ‘There are some humans who already know about us and openly murdering them will only lead them to us – to you.’

‘I’m not doing this on purpose,’ Cassandra whimpered, tears springing to her eyes. ‘I’m not.’

The edges of Reuben’s eyes softened slightly. ‘I know.’

Cassandra titled an ear towards the street. ‘The police are coming.’

‘I know.’

Cassandra sniffed. ‘What should we do?'

Reuben cast his eyes over the room once more. ‘Helicia is waiting in the car to clean up but you, Cass, have two choices: you can come home or,’ – Reuben faltered. Cassandra continued to kneel, waiting patiently for instruction, staring up at Reuben. The older vampire closed his eyes and continued, ‘or you can keep pretending to be human.’

Cassandra leapt up from her position beside her wounded husband. ‘Do you mean that?’

‘You have to promise me that you’ll live right, that you’ll feed when necessary.’

‘Of course, I will – I do!’

Rueben watched her eager face intently. ‘There are no more second chances, Cass. The council are running thin on tolerance. You run the risk of exposing us to the humans and the council will execute you if this behaviour continues.’

‘I’m sorry. I promise it won’t.’

Reuben hesitated then reached out for Cassandra’s still bloody hand. ‘I’m worried about you.’

‘I know,’ said Cassandra, taking Reuben’s outstretched hand. ‘Don’t be.’

He squeezed her fingers gently and smiled kindly. ‘You need to go, the police are coming.’

‘Thank you. I promise this is the last one,’ Cassandra said, pushing herself up onto her toes and lightly kissing Reuben’s cheek. ‘I’ll invite you out for golf soon.’

Reuben snorted in spite of himself. ‘Listen, keep your head low and don’t do anything stupid,’ he warned. He took her by shoulders and held her at arm’s length. ‘Lose your clothes as soon as you can, they’re covered in blood. Stay hidden and don’t contact anyone for a while – do not ring the house. Wait until we’ve sorted this out.'

Cassandra nodded. ‘Okay. Thank you.’ Cassandra reached up and threw her arms around Reuben’s neck. ‘Thank you.’

‘Go.’

Cassandra uncoiled her arms from the older vampire’s neck and smiled briefly before darting past him and into the garden.

‘This is your last warning.’ Cassandra heard Reuben remind her as she vaulted effortlessly over the fence and disappeared into the city beyond.

Helicia promptly appear at the backdoor. She brushed past Reuben and into the living room, casting her amber eyes over the ruined room and resting finally on the body. She clicked her tongue impatiently and without turning said, ‘She’s more trouble than my grandchildren. You can’t protect her forever.’

Reuben sighed. ‘What else can I do? We brought her into this.’

‘Didn’t you execute kids like her, back in the old days?’

‘Please Helicia,’ Reuben implored, gesturing around, ‘the police are almost here.’

‘She’ll only do it again, you know she will.’ Helicia glanced over her shoulder at Reuben. ‘She’ll be the end of us and I hope, for your sake, the end doesn’t come in my lifetime because I don’t know if I’ll be able to forgive you. The humans will hate us and they will hunt us, you know that. Lua would want you to do the right thing.’

‘And you think she would want me to murder Cassandra.’

‘She would want you to protect your family.’

Reuben pursed his lips and said nothing. The pair watched each other silently, each waiting for the other to continue the debate as the screaming sirens rolled closer.

‘The police will be here shortly,’ said Reuben finally, waving his free hand at the abandoned corpse. 'We don’t have time to discuss this.’

Helicia nodded curtly. ‘If you insist,’ she said, turning to the lifeless human, rolling up her sleeves to begin the ritual.

Uninspired Poetry 4

Uninspired: Accidental Haiku on the Bakerloo

The game starts at ten.
Shoppers relish the battle
along Oxford Street.

Noah's Ark

   Honestly, I wanted to save them all. I wanted them all to be able to bring their entire families and for everyone to board with their friends. But there weren’t enough resources left to sustain everyone on Earth whilst we built extra ships.

   There wasn’t enough time.

   I can feel their eyes on me as I walk along the steel scaffolding that surrounds the ship. They are standing in absolute silence, but I know they are down there. There are no children crying for their families; there are no husbands yelling out for their wives. The weight of their silence hangs on my chest and claws at my insides. I am cowardly and I am afraid to look down. I’m afraid to look into the faces of those we are leaving behind.

   On my first day in office, a balding, pot-bellied man dropped a file onto my desk. He sighed heavily and squeezed into the chair opposite my desk. ‘Gareth-‘

   ‘Mr President, if you don’t mind, Peter.’

   Peter smiled ruefully. ‘Mr President, in this file you will find a dossier of all the work that we, your government, and President Turner, your predecessor, have already completed regarding Operation X.’

   ‘Operation X?’

   He sighed again and ran a hand through his thinning hair. ‘Gareth, there are things going on that you were never made privy too before you agreed to the job.’

    I sat up straight in my chair. ‘What kind of things?’

   ‘There are ships, Gareth, huge ships that can carry thousands of people into space and keep them alive for years, until it reaches its destination.’

    ‘I knew about those,’ I said, waving a dismissive hand.

   ‘You did,’ Peter agreed, now avoiding my eyes, ‘but what you didn’t know was that it’s the President’s job to decide who is granted passage on them.’

   ‘You mean, I decide the order in which they leave?’

   ‘No. What I mean is you have to decide who gets to leave.’

   On the first night of my first day in presidential office, as I lay in bed beside my sleeping wife, I made my first decision. It was as easy as I knew it would be. I got up and sneaked over to my desk. Without turning on the lamp, I wrote her name down on the lined paper tucked away inside the file.

   The first passenger would be Amy.

   They stopped teaching History in school when I was only a young boy. So I spent my afternoons interrogating my Grandmother about our planet and it’s past.

   ‘Why is our planet dying?’ I would ask her, creeping up to her knee and gazing up at her with innocent eyes. But she would simply shrug and grunt, ‘the war done us in’.

   She never spoke of her time on Earth nor did she ever impart any wisdom on me. The lines of her face stored stories that would have most likely frightened me senseless, but I wish she had taken the time to explain so that I could use that knowledge to try fix our world. I wish that they had taught us our History. I wish that they had let us learn from their mistakes. Or perhaps the reason they kept us in the dark was so that we would never discover for ourselves the true horror of what they had done and the world they had left us with.

    I never wanted this responsibility.

   As President I had wanted to rebuild our great country. Instead, I had spent my days hunched over a desk, pouring over endless lists of the citizens of England. I spent my evenings cataloguing those I had chosen to save and my nights dreaming of those who would stay, and perish.

   My nightmares were always of those who would die. Never of those who would survive.

    I closed the file and looked up at Peter. ‘Are there any rules?’

   ‘On whom you can save? No. You can put whoever you want on those ships. The exceptions are that you can only choose a third of the civilians alive in the country at this moment.’

   ‘What about newborns?’

   ‘The parents can chose to save their child instead-‘

   ‘That’s murder.’

   ‘Gareth, you have to understand. There aren’t enough seats to save everyone; we don’t have enough time to save everyone. If we allow everyone who reproduces to come on board we’ll have no room left to reproduce whilst on the ship.’

   ‘Then I’m changing the rules.’

   ‘Sorry?’

   ‘I’m allowing people who have children between the time of their selection and the day they board the ship, to take their newly born offspring with them. Okay? That’s a new rule. Get a pen or something and write that down.’

    ‘I’m afraid you can’t do that. You have no real powers here, Gareth. You are President in name only, a symbol to the people, if you will. This decision has already been made and it cannot be overturned.’

    I stared down at the file. ‘Now I know why President Turner shot himself.'

   ‘I guess you do,’ said Peter quietly. He cleared his throat after a moments silence and continued, ‘All passengers will have to go in pairs.’

    I looked up, surprised. ‘Like Noah’s Ark?’

    Peter nodded. ‘Like Noah’s Ark.’

    ‘I’m pregnant,’ Amy told me. Her voice was strained, her jaw was tight. I dropped heavily on to our threadbare sofa and we sat in tense silence until I could no longer stand the weight of the question between us. ‘You know what this means, don’t you?’

     Amy turned her head to gaze out of the window. ‘One of us has to forfeit our seat.’

    ‘Yes.’ My tone was expressionless. Amy continued to watch the ghostly street. I didn’t need to consider my next sentence. ‘I’ll forfeit my seat.’

     ‘You’re the President.’

     ‘So?’

     Amy turned to look at me. Her eyes were void of emotion, her face blank. ‘Your people need you.’ She leaned forward stiffly and touched my knee. ‘It’ll have to be me.’

     ‘Our child needs its mother. I will give up my seat and stay here.’

     ‘I can’t let you do that,’ she replied, her eyes softening a little around the edges. ‘I won’t.’

     I leapt to my feet. ‘You are my wife, I love you and I want to keep you safe,’ I snapped. ‘You’re getting on that bloody ship with our child.’

    There was no reaction; no ripple of annoyance across her face, no shying away from me when I raised my voice. I will take to my grave the memory of blank her expression, the lifeless gaze in her eyes. Amy simply sat there, on our horrid sofa, staring up at me, until I stormed away.

     I should’ve known what was to come. I think I did. I think that’s why I left.

    I look down over the balcony into the sea of anxious faces and red eyes full of tears, confusion and fear. A guard to my left hands me a microphone. It feels abnormally heavy in my already full hands.

   ‘This ship will depart in exactly one hour,’ I announce. ‘You are to return to your cabins immediately. A hostess will be around shortly to check that everyone is strapped in correctly and securely.’ I hesitate. I should say something inspiring, something memorable. I should deliver a speech worthy of the occasion. I should reassure the people staring up at me and let them drown me in their gratitude because I chose to save them. Instead, I simply mumble: ‘That is all. Thank you.’ and pass the microphone back.

    I walk back to my cabin and gaze down at the bundle I left on the bed. I cringe at myself for considering such an awful cliché; an abandoned child swaddled in blankets, left with only a name and a letter. But this is the only way to do it, the only way to leave answers to her questions and to explain to her what we did.

    Someone will come by soon and realise that she is alone. They will take her and look after her and she will grow up to know of a mysterious planet surrounded by space. Somewhere we once called home but is now nothing more than a derelict wasteland.

    I run a gentle finger down the envelope beside her and recite the beginning to myself, ‘My name is Gareth. I was the youngest, and last, President of England. I was born into a dying world and all I ever wanted to do, was save it.’ It’s informal, yes, but it will give her answers.

    I bend down and lightly kiss the forehead of the squirming child. She has Amy’s inquisitive grey eyes. I am sure that the day Amy told me she was pregnant was the day she decided she would end her life. After Rose was born, she left. There was no note, no ‘I love you’, no last goodbye kiss.

    She was simply gone.

    I leave the room without a glance back and take off purposefully down one, two, three corridors, ignoring all greetings from bystanders. I will not let them deter me from my destination. I leap up three flights of stairs, skipping most of the steps, and now the exit is within sight. A pot-bellied guard beside the door rolls back and forth on the balls of his feet, eyeing me wearily. I stop a mere foot away from him and gesture toward the door. ‘If you’d be so kind.’

    ‘If you get off, I can’t let you back on,’ he warns.

    ‘Good thing I’m not getting back on then, isn’t it?'

    'Mr President, I-‘

    ‘There are too many people aboard and they’re not enough seats,’ I tell him shortly. ‘Someone has to get off.’

    ‘They’ll make an exception for you.’

    ‘I don’t want them too.’

    ‘Gareth-‘

    ‘Just open the fucking door, Peter.’

    I amble through the bright-eyed, still mute crowd and they part to let me pass. Not one of them is trying to stop me. Not one of them is trying to grab for me. I don’t understand it. They should hate me. They should want to tear me apart, rip me limb from limb. They should want me to feel the pain and hurt and anger that they felt when their boarding pass didn’t arrive in the mail, and when they realised that it was too late. That it wasn’t ever going to arrive.

    I am tired, both mentally and physically. I stop and the crowd encircle me, watching and waiting. Perhaps they are waiting for an explanation. Maybe they want me to make a speech.

But before I can begin to think of the words to explain myself, an old woman pushes forward. She considers me from the safety of the edge of the circle.

    ‘Why are you here?’ she demands.

    ‘I don’t deserve to be on the ship.’

    ‘Where’s your daughter?’

    I swallow the lump in my throat; my eyes sting and my vision is blurred. ‘On the ship’

    ‘Why aren’t you with her?’

    ‘I don’t know,’ I admit. I step towards her. ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t save you, any of you. I wanted too. Honestly, I really wanted too.’

    The old woman smiles at my words. ‘Well, I don’t know why you wanted to save an old crone like me. I wouldn’t have bothered.’

    ‘We needed your experience. We needed you to tell us where it went wrong so that I could fix it.’

    ‘There’s been nothing to save for years,’ said the woman. ‘You’ve done the best you could under the circumstances. You have nothing to feel guilty about.’

    I crumble and collapse on the floor. The old woman rushes forward and catches me, her arms surround me.

    ‘You made the right choice,’ she tells me, stroking my hair soothingly. ‘It’s okay, you can rest now.’

   So I continued to kneel there, sheltered from the storm in a stranger’s sympathetic arms, surrounded by a silent watchful audience.

    And together, we wait for it to end.

Uninspired Poetry 3

Uninspired: Stress City

My last job, you ask? Oh, why yes, I was sacked.
I was found in the bathroom snorting up smack.
I once threw a steak knife; I kinda did overreact.
Don’t worry, these days I’m popping Prozac
and I did leave my manager relatively intact.