Post by Exo-Happiness on Nov 29, 2009 21:38:40 GMT
A story I wrote about 4 years ago now. It's shit. But I like the immaturity and naivety of my writing. Tell me what you think... If you read it all. 
----------------------
Black is the disease of all emotions. It is the expression of desertion and despair. It is invincible against any of our defences. No matter how fast you run, it will always catch you. Trip you. And as you fall into its grip of melancholy, it smothers you, slashes you hard with apprehension.
Love is black. Hate is black. Happiness can be black, and depression always is. Family, friends and people in general all have an essence of black. The one flaw is that it is invisible to the naked eye. It is invisible to the mind. Like a ghost. You don't notice that it is there until you sense its presence. By then it's too late. Once you've seen it, felt it, experienced it, only black days lay ahead. Days of hate and dejection.
On that day, the Friday was red. Strawberry red. But not a content one. More like a berry on the turn of mouldy, a dark shrivelled red. As soon as my house awoke, I knew. I could taste the lemon in my mum's voice as she screamed at my sister.
The musty heat coiled through my room, a serpentine smell. The feeling of someone sitting on my chest. As my lungs absorbed the same air over and over again, I retreated to my window seat. The same spot, the same cushion, the same place. I had not moved for days, only to undertake the bare minimum to keep me alive. If only dad hadn't left. If only mum would stop shouting and answer the phone. If only Laura would care. Maybe, just maybe, one of them would have noticed the door hadn't been locked for weeks and my homework diary had gathered a layer of dust. If only they would take the time to listen to the forgotten son. It might not have happened.
I heard the door slam, the thwack of a fist against the wall and Laura storm upstairs. I could hear her acidic aura as she reclaimed her bag and went off to college leaving behind a trail of acerbic footprints.
It seemed the only way to escape the blackness of your life was to accept it. That's what I did anyway. Fighting it only strengthens it, it can never be trained and every now and then it rears its ugly head. Today was one of those days.
For the last few weeks, I had lived my life in misery. A triangular misery. One such emotion that controls your life from all perspectives. The one thing that has kept me going is the photo. But even that is beginning to fade, along with my faith. I don't know if you know how it feels to have your life controlled by a colour. I've known people who have been controlled by work, by play and by other dominant beings. But by a colour? I'm on my own in this one. Not that it makes any difference. I try to put it into words but they just make no sense. I try to write letters to mum, but the computer just inserts green squiggly lines beneath every sentence.
My room had become a desolate place. A cylinder of darkness. The last person to enter my room, bar myself, was James and that was over a month a go. Even my friends had given up on me. Could I blame them? The only thing James said before making a lame excuse to leave was, 'wo, man, what's happened to you?' and then he left. All he could stare at was the backs of all the frames, the back of my mirror, the backs of my posters. I didn't want any one looking at me. Not even myself. I felt the only way to flee the staring eyes, was to force them to look at the wall. Even my poster of William Harrell, the most talented musician I knew. His music was a frightened square in my eyes. In it, I could taste that little bit of sweetness in every bitter evil. He had had a rough life; he described it as 'P'. An orange letter. Everyone thought he was ill, sick in the head. I didn't. I could relate to him. 'P' is the most amazing letter of the whole alphabet. Even though it is a black letter, a letter full of hatred and despair, it continues to amaze me. With one single line, you can turn it into a blue letter. 'R'. 'R' is a lot more joyful; 'R' is the letter of love. But as easily as you can draw the line on 'P', you can erase it. Just as easy can you fall into love, as you can fall out of love, or be heart broken. That is why I tried to steer well clear of these letters. I tried. I tried.
Agoraphobic. That's what I'm not. The dictionary definition is 'the fear of leaving the safety of the home or a room.' I wasn't scared of leaving, I just didn't want to. No one else seemed to care, so I didn't see the problem. I didn't see the problem even when it stared its rancid black eyes into mine. It started out as an 'R' problem. But as soon as the blackness began to interfere, it changed. It transformed from a blue, orange flavoured pentagon, to a repulsive, deep purple jungle of shapes.
I wandered down the steep, opal stairs, the stairs that once my dad used to carry me up, when I had fallen asleep on his knee in front of a film. I pined for him. He was my solid, green emotion. He was merely an emotion to me. He wasn't like a being. He didn't exist, he was just there. Always there. There for me. I walked down the memories still clutching the photo. The fridge was the furthest I'd been. It was here I went again. Still pinned to it, by clichéd magnets were ancient notes. Ones that were not dared removed. Ones that reminded us all of the old times. The times where people cared, where the world was not just an abyss of dejection. A void of anguish. I opened the fridge, empty, as usual. I settled for a shrivelled apple. The fruit of life. I bit into it; I could taste the bitterness of the irony as my mouth filled with the smell of keratin.
I retraced my steps, my eyes closed to avoid the ghostly look of the boy I'd meet at the top of the stairs. I always turned the hall mirror to the wall. Mum always turned it back. She never said a word but left fingerprints, fingerprints dusted with anger, frustration and abscond. I'd given up on my attempt to free myself of my own reflection and squared with my eyelids. The darkness was somewhat comforting. It had no colour attached to it. I liked this. Everything had a colour, a smell, a texture or a taste. Even the wind was a jade hexagon. I longed to be darkness. To be free from all senses, but I knew it would never happen.
I glanced at my clock as I returned to the window. Only a quick look. The time was 10.67. Seven minutes past eleven. A futile time. Seven was my least favourite number. One of my enemies. It was allied with the letter 'P'. Together they created a bind too strong to imagine. A fugitive yellow. A link with consequences to worrying to even think about. It was always 10.67.
At first the pull was small. It distracted me from my nutrition, but only for a brief moment. I thought it was the pull of the black. I knew it was there. I had accepted it. But I ignored it. Pushed it to the back of my tangled mind. There it fed off my memories. Eating away at my emotions. It grew, the power was unbearable. The putrid pressure was pilling temptations into my conscience. I forced them down. Their teeth baring, dripping with black tar. I clutched my head in pain and the throbbing began to die away.
It was then that I realised it was taking my mind and my sanity with it. I challenged the monster. The malevolence took the bait and came back fighting. The blackness detonated a bomb inside my head and I gave in. Just as I had done so many times before. I watched as my ginger smelling pride flew out of sight, companioned with my last remaining hope. All that I was left with was the stench of fiery regret and the taste of bloody, black tar.
I knew, as soon as I had given into the force, that black days lay ahead of me. I only knew of one way to cope with this deep purple emotion, was to follow it. I followed the slug smelling wasp. I traced its taste on the air. A mixture of greed and fury. I followed it. All the while I had only one image, 'P'. That was it. A hideous orange 'P'. Outlined in black.
I pursued the deluded entity. Unsteadily it led me on. Up the second flight of stairs. Those which I had not ventured up since dad had left. Up these stairs was his room. It was his room. His room. I didn't want to go up there. I forced myself not to. But I no longer had any control over my body. Not only was my life controlled by colours, my whole life, my body, my senses, my emotions were now all controlled by black. Black. The only energy that I could claim as my own was all compressed into the muscles of my left hand. The weakest. I hated my left hand. It had been poisoned long ago by the taste of love. A soft smelling texture. That of my Dad's hand. But, along with the rest of my body. It had been abandoned. Abandoned was an emotion no one wishes to feel. One that haunts you for life no matter how weak it is. A feeling of indigo and a taste of wood. It was a rough, studded texture. An emotion no one wishes to feel. My left hand, the only part of my body left for me, was clutching the photo. The photo that had not left my hand since I'd smashed the frame. Even this picture had got too much for my eyes. It was crinkled. Exhausted from handling and stained with sentiment. I was not letting it go.
Dazed, I progressively climbed the forbidden stairs. It was against my will. Against all my laws. Rules I'd given myself. Rules that controlled my life. Rules that were a failure. They had failed to keep the black out of my life. They had failed me. I had failed myself.
Reaching the top of the stairs, I hoped, on the picture, that the fiend would not lead me into the room. The room that belonged to my dad. I knew my fate though. As I entered, a charge of memory shot through me. Leaving harsh, tea-stained wounds behind. My head was throbbing from the overpowering sensation of pleasurable memories. These, mixed with my current life, congealed harsh, painful crunches. Senses full of mixed emotions. Hatred, love, happiness, depression. Feelings from my old life, mixed with the current. I collapsed on the floor. Tears of torture burned flesh lesions into my distressed face.
I stayed, curled in a ball, for hours. I heard Laura come and go. Mum returned, got changed and left. Neither of them noticing me, wondering about me, concerned. Nothing. It made me stay there. I was intent on them not finding me. Not that there was the slightest dandelion yellow chance that they would. The phone rang, I ignored it, there was a knock at the door, and I ignored it. I heard an ambulance pass, I didn't think a thing.
After an age of nothing but black thinking, I regained my conscience. The feeling began to come back into my body. My sanity and emotions came rushing back. The feeling was red. Not a mouldy strawberry red, a felt-tip red.
However, this was followed by the enclosing feeling of claustrophobia. I didn't want to be regulated by colours. Nor by shapes, textures, smells. Nothing. I wanted to be free. The time was 10.67. It was always 10.67.
Standing up, I toppled slightly, the taste of bile filled my mouth and as I swallowed it back down again, it sent a burning sensation down my throat. A sensation that smelt of lettuce and felt polar white. Again it was the colours. The colours I had endured for as long as I remember. Dad had them too. He could cope. I could cope with him. I was a freak. No one understood me. He was a freak but we understood each other. We were different together. Without him I am truly alone. Alone with my colours, alone in my black empty life. I was dying inside. I couldn't stop it. But I didn't want to.
I was completely unaware of my surroundings. I always was. Walking over towards the desk I could feel the invisible barrier of my silver conscience telling me to get away, telling me to return to my window where I belong. I wasn't going to listen anymore. I abandoned all my rules, my guidelines. The things that had kept my emotions under control since he left. The things which had kept me alive.
I looked through the desks and rifled through papers. Invoices and tax returns were spewed everywhere. All of them headed with R. Ploom. Richard Ploom. R.P. I had tried to stay away from these letters. Tried to block them from my life. I had tried. Failed, once again. The line had been drawn on the 'P' when my dad first held me as a baby. He fell in love with me, I returned that with adoration. But just as easily as he had drawn that line from the 'P' to the 'R', he stole it back. He didn't take it softly. He ripped it from me. My heart with it. He killed me inside. It was only the photo that kept me going.
I put the photo on the desk. I let go of my remaining faith. I put it down and flattened it out. Eyes were staring back at me. Four sets. And happy, smiling faces. The photo was full of happiness. A fringed, grape green emotion that I had forgotten about. A feeling I had pushed out of my mind. Locked away in a box covered with ivy flavoured secrets. Filled with memories I never wanted to experience again. Ones that had once filled me with the taste of laughter and felt like warm, autumnal smiles. Ones that now made me sick.
Looking down at the eyes of my lost family, the box sprung open. Samurai's of blissful days sliced my head. Followed down my nerve system, puke-up pink keys opening every locked door. Triangles, circles, hexagons. All decomposing my body bit by bit. Riots of fire and wing-spread flames burned through me. I choked on the fumes of smoke and once again fell to the floor. Ash flavoured fingers poked me, smoke smothered feet kicked me. I was suffocating. Inhaling the smoke, I reached for the door-handle. The closer I got, the further it moved away. The feeling was intolerable. All the colours washed through me, bouncing off my tongue as they went. I could taste everything from toffee apples, to blood-filled dishearten. I could feel everything from forgotten bluebells, to well-loved teddies. All my senses were muddled, I was tasting things I should be feeling, and I was hearing things I should be smelling. I could smell screaming, and taste fear. I could hear the smell of moth balls. The dust from under the desk was green and had wasps flying around it. I flapped me weakening hand at them. Trying to get them to fly away. My hand was leaving behind floral lines as it moved. They wouldn't disappear. I couldn't reach them. They began to fade. Everything did.
Then it stopped. Just like that. It stopped as suddenly as it started. I couldn't hear, see, smell, taste or feel a thing. I was surrounded by blackness.
Slowly, I came to. So did my senses. My head was throbbing, but I had a sense of freedom. That's all it was. It wasn't green. It didn't taste of pears and it didn't feel like a plump cushion. I was free. Free. In the distance I could smell a faint drift of smoke. Ordinary wood smoke, with a slight taste of ash. I could hear sirens too. The noises and smells and flashing lights drew closer. Closer, until they were touching me. I could see panic and fear. There was water everywhere, it was raining. No, it was the hoses. There was a huge fire. A house fire. An old house that looked vaguely familiar. It was Victorian and had a sense of neglect. Shabby from the outside and the garden was overgrown. Smoke plumed from the windows. There was security tape running between the gate posts. Being help back by the police were two women, one young and the other old and exhausted. With them was a man. A man with a solemn, regretful look about him. The women were crying out. One screaming, 'my boy, my boy.' The other just crying, tears of lament. I knew them. I knew them so well I couldn't place them in my memory.
I looked down to see what was happening. There were more than three fire engines at the house. Men in yellow protective wear. Men holding hoses. There was one man up a ladder, reaching into the third story window. He was shouting instructions to a hidden man inside. 'He's behind the desk! On the floor, behind the desk.' I wasn't sure what they were shouting at. But the voices, the sounds and the smoke, it all seemed to echo in my mind. Like a memory locked in a box, in a box covered with ivy flavoured secrets.
At least now I was free. Free from everything. Free from colours, shapes, tastes. Free from restrictions, emotions, memories. Wherever I was the blackness couldn't reach me, not now.
----------------------
Black is the disease of all emotions. It is the expression of desertion and despair. It is invincible against any of our defences. No matter how fast you run, it will always catch you. Trip you. And as you fall into its grip of melancholy, it smothers you, slashes you hard with apprehension.
Love is black. Hate is black. Happiness can be black, and depression always is. Family, friends and people in general all have an essence of black. The one flaw is that it is invisible to the naked eye. It is invisible to the mind. Like a ghost. You don't notice that it is there until you sense its presence. By then it's too late. Once you've seen it, felt it, experienced it, only black days lay ahead. Days of hate and dejection.
On that day, the Friday was red. Strawberry red. But not a content one. More like a berry on the turn of mouldy, a dark shrivelled red. As soon as my house awoke, I knew. I could taste the lemon in my mum's voice as she screamed at my sister.
The musty heat coiled through my room, a serpentine smell. The feeling of someone sitting on my chest. As my lungs absorbed the same air over and over again, I retreated to my window seat. The same spot, the same cushion, the same place. I had not moved for days, only to undertake the bare minimum to keep me alive. If only dad hadn't left. If only mum would stop shouting and answer the phone. If only Laura would care. Maybe, just maybe, one of them would have noticed the door hadn't been locked for weeks and my homework diary had gathered a layer of dust. If only they would take the time to listen to the forgotten son. It might not have happened.
I heard the door slam, the thwack of a fist against the wall and Laura storm upstairs. I could hear her acidic aura as she reclaimed her bag and went off to college leaving behind a trail of acerbic footprints.
It seemed the only way to escape the blackness of your life was to accept it. That's what I did anyway. Fighting it only strengthens it, it can never be trained and every now and then it rears its ugly head. Today was one of those days.
For the last few weeks, I had lived my life in misery. A triangular misery. One such emotion that controls your life from all perspectives. The one thing that has kept me going is the photo. But even that is beginning to fade, along with my faith. I don't know if you know how it feels to have your life controlled by a colour. I've known people who have been controlled by work, by play and by other dominant beings. But by a colour? I'm on my own in this one. Not that it makes any difference. I try to put it into words but they just make no sense. I try to write letters to mum, but the computer just inserts green squiggly lines beneath every sentence.
My room had become a desolate place. A cylinder of darkness. The last person to enter my room, bar myself, was James and that was over a month a go. Even my friends had given up on me. Could I blame them? The only thing James said before making a lame excuse to leave was, 'wo, man, what's happened to you?' and then he left. All he could stare at was the backs of all the frames, the back of my mirror, the backs of my posters. I didn't want any one looking at me. Not even myself. I felt the only way to flee the staring eyes, was to force them to look at the wall. Even my poster of William Harrell, the most talented musician I knew. His music was a frightened square in my eyes. In it, I could taste that little bit of sweetness in every bitter evil. He had had a rough life; he described it as 'P'. An orange letter. Everyone thought he was ill, sick in the head. I didn't. I could relate to him. 'P' is the most amazing letter of the whole alphabet. Even though it is a black letter, a letter full of hatred and despair, it continues to amaze me. With one single line, you can turn it into a blue letter. 'R'. 'R' is a lot more joyful; 'R' is the letter of love. But as easily as you can draw the line on 'P', you can erase it. Just as easy can you fall into love, as you can fall out of love, or be heart broken. That is why I tried to steer well clear of these letters. I tried. I tried.
Agoraphobic. That's what I'm not. The dictionary definition is 'the fear of leaving the safety of the home or a room.' I wasn't scared of leaving, I just didn't want to. No one else seemed to care, so I didn't see the problem. I didn't see the problem even when it stared its rancid black eyes into mine. It started out as an 'R' problem. But as soon as the blackness began to interfere, it changed. It transformed from a blue, orange flavoured pentagon, to a repulsive, deep purple jungle of shapes.
I wandered down the steep, opal stairs, the stairs that once my dad used to carry me up, when I had fallen asleep on his knee in front of a film. I pined for him. He was my solid, green emotion. He was merely an emotion to me. He wasn't like a being. He didn't exist, he was just there. Always there. There for me. I walked down the memories still clutching the photo. The fridge was the furthest I'd been. It was here I went again. Still pinned to it, by clichéd magnets were ancient notes. Ones that were not dared removed. Ones that reminded us all of the old times. The times where people cared, where the world was not just an abyss of dejection. A void of anguish. I opened the fridge, empty, as usual. I settled for a shrivelled apple. The fruit of life. I bit into it; I could taste the bitterness of the irony as my mouth filled with the smell of keratin.
I retraced my steps, my eyes closed to avoid the ghostly look of the boy I'd meet at the top of the stairs. I always turned the hall mirror to the wall. Mum always turned it back. She never said a word but left fingerprints, fingerprints dusted with anger, frustration and abscond. I'd given up on my attempt to free myself of my own reflection and squared with my eyelids. The darkness was somewhat comforting. It had no colour attached to it. I liked this. Everything had a colour, a smell, a texture or a taste. Even the wind was a jade hexagon. I longed to be darkness. To be free from all senses, but I knew it would never happen.
I glanced at my clock as I returned to the window. Only a quick look. The time was 10.67. Seven minutes past eleven. A futile time. Seven was my least favourite number. One of my enemies. It was allied with the letter 'P'. Together they created a bind too strong to imagine. A fugitive yellow. A link with consequences to worrying to even think about. It was always 10.67.
At first the pull was small. It distracted me from my nutrition, but only for a brief moment. I thought it was the pull of the black. I knew it was there. I had accepted it. But I ignored it. Pushed it to the back of my tangled mind. There it fed off my memories. Eating away at my emotions. It grew, the power was unbearable. The putrid pressure was pilling temptations into my conscience. I forced them down. Their teeth baring, dripping with black tar. I clutched my head in pain and the throbbing began to die away.
It was then that I realised it was taking my mind and my sanity with it. I challenged the monster. The malevolence took the bait and came back fighting. The blackness detonated a bomb inside my head and I gave in. Just as I had done so many times before. I watched as my ginger smelling pride flew out of sight, companioned with my last remaining hope. All that I was left with was the stench of fiery regret and the taste of bloody, black tar.
I knew, as soon as I had given into the force, that black days lay ahead of me. I only knew of one way to cope with this deep purple emotion, was to follow it. I followed the slug smelling wasp. I traced its taste on the air. A mixture of greed and fury. I followed it. All the while I had only one image, 'P'. That was it. A hideous orange 'P'. Outlined in black.
I pursued the deluded entity. Unsteadily it led me on. Up the second flight of stairs. Those which I had not ventured up since dad had left. Up these stairs was his room. It was his room. His room. I didn't want to go up there. I forced myself not to. But I no longer had any control over my body. Not only was my life controlled by colours, my whole life, my body, my senses, my emotions were now all controlled by black. Black. The only energy that I could claim as my own was all compressed into the muscles of my left hand. The weakest. I hated my left hand. It had been poisoned long ago by the taste of love. A soft smelling texture. That of my Dad's hand. But, along with the rest of my body. It had been abandoned. Abandoned was an emotion no one wishes to feel. One that haunts you for life no matter how weak it is. A feeling of indigo and a taste of wood. It was a rough, studded texture. An emotion no one wishes to feel. My left hand, the only part of my body left for me, was clutching the photo. The photo that had not left my hand since I'd smashed the frame. Even this picture had got too much for my eyes. It was crinkled. Exhausted from handling and stained with sentiment. I was not letting it go.
Dazed, I progressively climbed the forbidden stairs. It was against my will. Against all my laws. Rules I'd given myself. Rules that controlled my life. Rules that were a failure. They had failed to keep the black out of my life. They had failed me. I had failed myself.
Reaching the top of the stairs, I hoped, on the picture, that the fiend would not lead me into the room. The room that belonged to my dad. I knew my fate though. As I entered, a charge of memory shot through me. Leaving harsh, tea-stained wounds behind. My head was throbbing from the overpowering sensation of pleasurable memories. These, mixed with my current life, congealed harsh, painful crunches. Senses full of mixed emotions. Hatred, love, happiness, depression. Feelings from my old life, mixed with the current. I collapsed on the floor. Tears of torture burned flesh lesions into my distressed face.
I stayed, curled in a ball, for hours. I heard Laura come and go. Mum returned, got changed and left. Neither of them noticing me, wondering about me, concerned. Nothing. It made me stay there. I was intent on them not finding me. Not that there was the slightest dandelion yellow chance that they would. The phone rang, I ignored it, there was a knock at the door, and I ignored it. I heard an ambulance pass, I didn't think a thing.
After an age of nothing but black thinking, I regained my conscience. The feeling began to come back into my body. My sanity and emotions came rushing back. The feeling was red. Not a mouldy strawberry red, a felt-tip red.
However, this was followed by the enclosing feeling of claustrophobia. I didn't want to be regulated by colours. Nor by shapes, textures, smells. Nothing. I wanted to be free. The time was 10.67. It was always 10.67.
Standing up, I toppled slightly, the taste of bile filled my mouth and as I swallowed it back down again, it sent a burning sensation down my throat. A sensation that smelt of lettuce and felt polar white. Again it was the colours. The colours I had endured for as long as I remember. Dad had them too. He could cope. I could cope with him. I was a freak. No one understood me. He was a freak but we understood each other. We were different together. Without him I am truly alone. Alone with my colours, alone in my black empty life. I was dying inside. I couldn't stop it. But I didn't want to.
I was completely unaware of my surroundings. I always was. Walking over towards the desk I could feel the invisible barrier of my silver conscience telling me to get away, telling me to return to my window where I belong. I wasn't going to listen anymore. I abandoned all my rules, my guidelines. The things that had kept my emotions under control since he left. The things which had kept me alive.
I looked through the desks and rifled through papers. Invoices and tax returns were spewed everywhere. All of them headed with R. Ploom. Richard Ploom. R.P. I had tried to stay away from these letters. Tried to block them from my life. I had tried. Failed, once again. The line had been drawn on the 'P' when my dad first held me as a baby. He fell in love with me, I returned that with adoration. But just as easily as he had drawn that line from the 'P' to the 'R', he stole it back. He didn't take it softly. He ripped it from me. My heart with it. He killed me inside. It was only the photo that kept me going.
I put the photo on the desk. I let go of my remaining faith. I put it down and flattened it out. Eyes were staring back at me. Four sets. And happy, smiling faces. The photo was full of happiness. A fringed, grape green emotion that I had forgotten about. A feeling I had pushed out of my mind. Locked away in a box covered with ivy flavoured secrets. Filled with memories I never wanted to experience again. Ones that had once filled me with the taste of laughter and felt like warm, autumnal smiles. Ones that now made me sick.
Looking down at the eyes of my lost family, the box sprung open. Samurai's of blissful days sliced my head. Followed down my nerve system, puke-up pink keys opening every locked door. Triangles, circles, hexagons. All decomposing my body bit by bit. Riots of fire and wing-spread flames burned through me. I choked on the fumes of smoke and once again fell to the floor. Ash flavoured fingers poked me, smoke smothered feet kicked me. I was suffocating. Inhaling the smoke, I reached for the door-handle. The closer I got, the further it moved away. The feeling was intolerable. All the colours washed through me, bouncing off my tongue as they went. I could taste everything from toffee apples, to blood-filled dishearten. I could feel everything from forgotten bluebells, to well-loved teddies. All my senses were muddled, I was tasting things I should be feeling, and I was hearing things I should be smelling. I could smell screaming, and taste fear. I could hear the smell of moth balls. The dust from under the desk was green and had wasps flying around it. I flapped me weakening hand at them. Trying to get them to fly away. My hand was leaving behind floral lines as it moved. They wouldn't disappear. I couldn't reach them. They began to fade. Everything did.
Then it stopped. Just like that. It stopped as suddenly as it started. I couldn't hear, see, smell, taste or feel a thing. I was surrounded by blackness.
Slowly, I came to. So did my senses. My head was throbbing, but I had a sense of freedom. That's all it was. It wasn't green. It didn't taste of pears and it didn't feel like a plump cushion. I was free. Free. In the distance I could smell a faint drift of smoke. Ordinary wood smoke, with a slight taste of ash. I could hear sirens too. The noises and smells and flashing lights drew closer. Closer, until they were touching me. I could see panic and fear. There was water everywhere, it was raining. No, it was the hoses. There was a huge fire. A house fire. An old house that looked vaguely familiar. It was Victorian and had a sense of neglect. Shabby from the outside and the garden was overgrown. Smoke plumed from the windows. There was security tape running between the gate posts. Being help back by the police were two women, one young and the other old and exhausted. With them was a man. A man with a solemn, regretful look about him. The women were crying out. One screaming, 'my boy, my boy.' The other just crying, tears of lament. I knew them. I knew them so well I couldn't place them in my memory.
I looked down to see what was happening. There were more than three fire engines at the house. Men in yellow protective wear. Men holding hoses. There was one man up a ladder, reaching into the third story window. He was shouting instructions to a hidden man inside. 'He's behind the desk! On the floor, behind the desk.' I wasn't sure what they were shouting at. But the voices, the sounds and the smoke, it all seemed to echo in my mind. Like a memory locked in a box, in a box covered with ivy flavoured secrets.
At least now I was free. Free from everything. Free from colours, shapes, tastes. Free from restrictions, emotions, memories. Wherever I was the blackness couldn't reach me, not now.