Update

Just a quick post to let you know the URL of my blog has changed!!

It is now purewriting.blogspot.co.uk simply because its far easier to remember and type in.

Obviously if you had made it this far you probably realise that... but just for future reference!

James

Short Story: Echoes of Darkness

Here is another short story I wrote for a competition. This time however I entered it in two separate competitions, because why not.

This first one operates through small donations such as 10p and so forth rather than votes. Obviously this is a bigger commitment than a +1 so I will be truly grateful for any donations! The link is http://contestfiction.com/echoes-of-darkness/

It is also posted at the following link: http://www.seam.tv/jam/echoes-of-darkness/, so if you enjoyed it give it a +1 on the website, it would be a great help to me!

Enjoy...

'Human skin is not capable of wearing frost like a sleeve. It was not designed to be so, we do not have the luxuries of fur and bodies covered in hair to hold it at bay, to stop it freezing our shell. We are not insulated like the animal kingdom, we are naked and weak in the face of winter. If we could only feel at home in the cold we may fear death considerably less, maybe if people knew what it truly was to be naked and alone and cold there would be nothing to fear in the sanctity of the grave, it would be welcome change to the masquerade of niceties that consist of the average human life.'

'This place breeds cynicism,' David Johnson stood before the grave, not really looking at it but rather through the slab of slate and into whatever void actually held his wife. Supposedly these graveyards emitted a sense of peace, a sense that all the loved ones you had lost were close to you, so close, and that was supposed to help the mourning process. But he knows that's not true, that is simply propaganda from those who have made it through the veil of darkness that shrouds itself around you after the tragedy, those deluded lost souls bound in a perpetual state of purgatory. No, the true emotions of the graveyard are far more byzantine than that. David had been through enough trauma in his life to know that there was no such quiet relief, it is a lie. Over the decades he had gained a quiet, yet encompassing, understanding of why the emotional loss of people was so difficult. It was because of the 'comfort' that we as people are 'natural' and therefore, as a principle, death is 'natural' as well. But we are not. He had seen enough of the world in his time to know that the reason nature, with all its outstanding beauty and intricate systems of life, is so able to shrug off the encroaching reality of death, is because it operates devoid of conscience. The reason birds, fish, insects and mammals are able to carry out the atrocity of infanticide, as an example, is because they act on the basis of the survival of their line, their species, and hold no sentimental value. The fact that the 'natural' world holds no conscience makes the very death of people, psychologically speaking, unnatural. 'This is supposed to be a day for her,' he said aloud, watching the wisps of condensed air plume around the space in front of him. At 67 David had still never been able to highjack his train of thought and steer it in the direction it was supposed to be in. Dropping the flowers in the mound of snow frozen atop his wife's resting place, David turned and left, his ephemeral footprints and rapidly deceasing flowers the only sign of recognition of the life so very cherished, and so cruelly taken.

The monotonous trudge of his journey home took its toll that day; mid-January was a relentless time to go walkabouts this far north but it had been a pilgrimage, a necessity. This would be his final day here, in this place of ice and concrete, microwave meals and documentary's, so how could he not lay the flowers one last time? He, David, a creature of relentless habits could never leave any loose ends, especially with the mourning of his wives, and subsequently his, life. Funny isn't it, how reliant we are? Like a cliché we cannot live by ourselves after becoming to intricately wound around another. But that's okay, for David did not plan on being separated from her for much longer. Years of research into mechanics and experimental physics, coupled with his true belief that we are not natural, that we are higher forms of being and therefore the laws of nature no longer applied had made contact possible. Arriving home, David threw out his habitual nature, he did not go to the kettle to make Tea, grab the newspaper and sit in his chair. He did not adjust the heating setting and go over his finances, making sure his pension was all in order. The microwave would not ding tonight for the Tesco's finest shit lasagne. Today he broke the ice on the garage door and went inside, closing it behind him, surrounding himself, other that the singular swinging light bulb, in darkness. For weeks he had been working to make something to see her again, for one last moment. In all honesty, it was nothing pretty or awe-inspiring. A bric-a-brac of left over metal and odds and ends soldiered together to make a monstrosity of a device. It was not a flashy car that would captivate pop culture for years, it had no moving parts to shunt it through the space-time continuum, no it ran on diesel oil and consisted of a few seats and a lever. But it would do. Placing himself inside his monstrosity, he put his time-machine to its first human trial.

Even under fire David's thoughts never ceased to wonder. He'd heard about strange forms of defence mechanisms but his own seemed to ultimately hinder him, especially in times of war. Whilst bullets formed and dissipated from the immense darkness of the jungle and his comrades fell around him, all he could think of was the transcendent beauty where he had found himself. This place could easily be the firmament, the way the iridescent light bounces off of the water, the shadow puppets the leaves create, fill his entire body with awe. But it is not so. Like the Sirens this place tempts with beauty, to have it thwarted by the consistent nature of death that lies in abundance here. Forgetting Nixon's bombs destruction and the Guerrilla warfare dismembering their force, even the jungle holds dangers. Poisons and disease, wild animals and critters swollen to inordinate sizes all threaten death in equal amounts to the oriental whispers that form the Viennese resistance.

'David what the fuck are you doing? Shoot the squinty eyed fuckers don't hug your gun like it’s your mother!' Screamed someone, anyone, what did it even matter? Some bulldog from up the ranks no doubt, obviously he knows he can't let men die for their country if he won't even poke his head out, but like a few more bullets are going to affect anything. He is not Achilles, his scream does not send back the tides of armies. He is David. His scream is weak and his body is frail from malnutrition. But he obeys, he shoots and he kills and he cries as men, comrades, explode around him. But he will not stand for this anymore, he has never felt patriotic, he has no family to disgrace; he is a ghost drifting through the jungle better off gone, dead, never here. He shall tie himself to the ship to hear the Sirens song, but it will not devour him.

It was surprisingly easy to desert once you had your mind set on it. After ensuring that he didn't die during the day, he simply waited until they dug in for the night, and slipped away into the darkness. The most difficult part was trying to conceal his plan; it wasn't a fantastic and intricate plan, there were no maps or building work to be hidden from guards who expected you to try and get out, but his face felt like it was wearing his guilt as a mask. He couldn't look anyone in the eye, and if a captain spoke to him he would try to avoid eye contact, but he managed to conceal his intention in spite of hating himself throughout every minute of him. Finally though he could relish in the darkness, in the beauty of the jungle, in its holocenic radiance. David, the failed student, the disserted soldier was free to wander. Freedom, pure and total, was his for as long as he had the will to survive this place. And he would survive this place.

Once his mind wandered, now his mind was caged within its infinite freedom. He was a man of the bush, a nomad of the jungle, his mind was free to fixate on anything. And it fixated on everything. In the silhouette of leaves he saw creatures, hideous creatures baring the resemblance of his squadron. In the bark of tree's he saw the face of his mother, crying, at the wretch her oh-so-clever son had become in her absence. Looking at himself in the reflection of a puddle, he was met with a stranger. Wide eyes met with pierced lips and chestnut hair became a solid mass of black mud fixed into position on top of his head. A nebula of scratches covered his body and face, showing through the patchwork quilt that once was the uniform of a proud American soldier. For weeks, he imagined, he had lived off of shrubbery and roots he was shown in his basic survival training, sleeping intermittingly throughout the day as to make sure he could ward of the night, away from prying eyes. A nocturnal hermit, how funny life is! David took his eyes from the stranger, and continued forward into the jungle, slicing away the touch of branches with his knife. Walking through, alert as ever, the overwhelming feeling of eyes on him became apparent, surveying him for his next move. He had learnt the feeling of the jungle, it always felt as if you were being watched, never truly alone; yet this was different. This was not some animalistic entity or the asphyxiation of the jungle playing with his sense, this was a human gaze that was on him, perhaps several. Not changing his stride or acting any differently he continued forward, his pistol would be little use if the Guerrillas had followed. Reaching casually towards his belt, he pulled the pin of a grenade and dropped it, acting as if it was a stone he had kicked. What a nice little performance, what a paradox of vision. Instantaneously he changed the direction he was going and burst into a sprint, allowing the cloud of mud to blind his pursuers. Eyes could have been anywhere, everywhere, he could be running towards them towards death, but that mattered not; he would not die without trying to outsmart these forest folk. Hurdling over roots and through vines, he zig-zagged frequently, but no bullets followed him. Beginning to relax and slow down, he was turning his head to check for adversary's when the forest floor opened, and grasping hands pulled him below.

He found himself in a tunnel, descending seemingly infinitely either side of him, housing nothing but stalactites of roots and the grotesque feel of insects on his skin. The forest had been dark but this place was the inside of the earth, a place not meant for human eyes - the soul of the darkness had found him. Dirt rained down atop of him as hurried footsteps crossed over the hatch, frustrated voices mixed with breathlessness let him know his pursuers had passed. David refused to turn to his saviour for some time, he knew it would be an American soldier that had infiltrated their networks, their mole hills, and was bound to turn him in. But they remained silent... the person who saved him was afraid of him, they were timid. Turning he was not sure whether to be afraid or relieved, for crouched in that desolate darkness of the tunnel was a small girl. Perhaps 16? 17, these forest folk look younger, look hungrier. She was filthy and dressed and rags, her hair was matted and physically moved with the presence of lice. Like his own, she sported a criss-cross of scratches from the encroaching branches of trees, as well as bruised and calloused hands held above her head, which with the aid of a dismembered shirt revealed the glimpse of a small pink breast. He could see through the dirt caked on her face that she had sharp cheekbones and slit eyes, exotic and mysterious compared to his aquiline nose and blunt, pasty cheeks. Amidst the filth lay a gem of a girl, strong and attractive if only you peeled away the grub.

'I keep safe, you take away,' she clearly held little knowledge of the English language, and in his blustered state David held no meaning of ‘take away.’

'You want me to leave?' he gestured with his hands, its true he felt a strange attraction towards this girl so this came with a previously unknown feeling of...hurt? No, disappointment. He was not inclined to raping and violence as some of his other 'comrades' but he would not be moved from the sanctity of the jungles veins, potential beauty be damned.

'I keep safe, you take me with you. You take me away,' stammered the girl, clearly petrified - yet commanding none the less. David gave an awestruck face at the request, the cherub gave a glint of emerald iris, and he knew he was hers to command.

*                    *                        *

'Listen all due respect but move out of my fucking way. Your who? I don't care if you own this hospital my father is in there and I will see him, rules be damned.'

'Sir you don't understand, your father is in a critical condition and..'

'I understand plenty, I understand enough to know that whether I'm here or there, he will die. I would prefer to be there, if that's okay with you?' Joe had never been a big man, but the gravel in his voice was enough to command people far above his station, even if he lacked the metal to support his authoritarian voice. Using his shoulder and the momentum from the stride he had previously been keeping, he slammed through the door to a picture no better or worse than expectation. His father lay, frail and small, underneath a blanket with various tubes and pipes attached to his body, like he was being attacked by so many snakes.

'Who found him?' he asked warily,

'The neighbour, they found him with the garage door shut - he was inside his car with his foot on the pedal. I'm sorry to say this, but it looks..'

'Like suicide. I know.' In truth Joe had been waiting for this day for some time. He could not dedicate the time to his father to help him past his mother’s death, the burden of a travelling job. Even if he could have, he doubted he could have affected him. In all his life Joe had never been able to find a love as all-encompassing as his parents.

'You know he fought in nam?' Joe desperately wanted the doctor to remain, he did not have the strength to remain in this room alone. 'It’s where he met my mother. An American and a Viennese fall in love, he deserts and they hide out from the war, escaping once the troops had departed. A true romance ey?'

'They sound like incredible people,' not sincere, but it doesn't matter.

'They were, they escaped to Switzerland after that. Remained for the rest of their lives in blissful paradise. He never got over her cancer; it took my mother, but it killed my father.'

'Sir, he is not dead yet. We still have hopes that,'

'His will is gone. He will pass soon.' Joe was not a cynic, but he knew his father. Approaching the bedside he kissed his father's forehead one last time, as David Johnson slipped into his past.

Davis Johnson yearned for his own machine into the past. But time does not allow us second grace. In the darkness of some spectral jungle, two specks of light come together engulfing themselves in brightness and heat, shining bright enough to oppose the stars for a singular second, before they are smothered by the darkness once more.

Boredom

Isn’t boredom the strangest human trait? When there is nothing going on and we have nothing to do, boredom inevitably sinks in and we find ourselves watching reruns of sitcoms we’ve seen 3 dozen times or playing video games that we should of grown out of years ago yet still cannot quite let go off. We are bored, so therefore we do pointless things that aren’t fully entertaining, but are slightly more entertaining than the nothing we were doing beforehand. Rather than curing the boredom by working for fulfilment and achievement, we work to stay in the ruts that gave birth to the boredom in the first place. Boredom is a vicious circle it seems.

We spend money we don’t have on alcohol/cigarettes/drugs we don’t want to try and kill this anthropomorphic emotion that sits on our chest. We meet with people we don’t particularly want too and piss away our time to fight it off for a few moments longer. At the time its natural, almost as natural as sleep or hunger, yet if you stop and actually think about, why do we do it?

If you watch any Attenborough documentary you never see a predator staying asleep for a few hours extra because ‘they have nowhere to be,’ so this emotion isn’t natural. It is born out of societies focalised around an abundance of everything; out of lack of necessity and fear, a lack of reason to make us stand and work for something, a lack of purpose.

Yet boredom is not only a hindrance. After feeling the sting of boredom for too long, it can be this very emotion that drives us to work for something, to make something of ourselves. The same way it can send us down the wrong path to try avoid it (you only need to look so far as the Jeremy Kyle Show to see what boredom can do to some people,) it can also spur us on to ultimately better ourselves, to drive away the pangs of boredom with success and purpose.

This being said, that is not what I do. When the work for the day is finished, I find it far easier to sign into Netflix than to continue trying to write. The lure of American drama’s is stronger than that of the sirens in the ancient stories. Wasting time doing nothing feels far more fulfilling than busting my brain trying to think any more than I have too. Yet one day, when I exhaust Netflix’s seduction and simply run out of money for Friday night drinks, I might too drive away the pangs of boredom with success and purpose. Unless the breaking bad sequel comes out before that, obviously.  

Short Story: Sophrosyne

This is a short story I recently wrote as a part of a flash competition with the theme of 'Selfies'. A strange theme, but I gave it a go! If you like the story please vote it up on this website and help me out! Enjoy.

http://www.seam.tv/jam/sophrosyne/


Few humans alive know the fear of a blind man standing in a den of wolves, surrounded by the incessant growling and the salivating of their glands at the prospect of writhing meat to feast upon. Only the few know of the stifling of breathing so too hear them all the more clearly, the squinting of the eyelids in the hope that vision may miraculously return to save them, the musty scent of their fur growing ever closer towards them. They say that in times of extreme stress, you see the happy aspects of your life flash before you, comforting you and allowing yourself peace, yet this sensation is not one that came to Henderson's mind. Visions of stuttering, of crumbling and stammering and dishonouring himself flooded the private viewing screen behind the eyes, but no flashback of happy childhood memories. No nostalgia flooded his system allowing him tranquillity when he needed it most. No, these emotions had happened prior to the actual event, writing a speech as important as this could not help but stir these emotions. As his vision from the first round of flashes began to return, Henderson stood up to the platform to look across the crowd's, before the wolves camera's flashed once more, filling his Iris's with black dots, blinding him from the crowds, allowing him only to see the void from which he had immerged.

The sound of the bell could only mean one thing; that it was again time for Joe's torturous lunch hour of hiding and masqueraded repulsion. Lunch was arduous for many reasons, the largest concern was that John Biggins would find him, the narcissistic would-be-if-he-had-the-balls sociopath that plagued Joe’s existence, the other was that his plastic coated girlfriend Christina would be with him to witness the embarrassment that was sure to follow.  He thought about seeking asylum in the library, but this once-upon-a-time safe haven for him and his friends had become the place of those who valued Wi-Fi above food and people. The computer room was tempting, but the stick he would get for going on those 'restricted computers' that blocked all of the 'useful' sections of the internet was paramount to suicide. He externally laughed at his internal monologue for even suggesting the Astroturf as a sanctuary, so all that was left was to find a nice quiet section of the corridor and settle there for the 45 minutes of ‘banter’ and false niceties before he could return happily to his classes. Yet this presented an issue - if he wanted a quiet spot he would have to go to building A, which was across the lunch hall from where he currently was. Gathering his wits and his courage, Joe began his descent through the entrance hall of Orcus, and into the Elysium safety of the corridors beyond.

Halfway through his exponentially fast descent, Christina caught his eye. Something in her mannerisms was different today, they appeared more welcoming, more inviting - the kind of mannerisms one would exhibit at seeing a friend? That was impossible, they had always ridiculed Joe for his diffidence, for his secluded nature and inward personality. He had never possessed a phone from this century, let alone one with an internet connection and that was enough to make him 'that weirdo' let alone the reputation as a full blown societal reject that he had usurped from the Lithuanian kid with a lisp that held the throne for so long. He was not on social media, nor did he care to be, and he had no prospect of trying to build bridges with them, so this random appearance of acceptance sent alarm bells running through his mind. Trying to ignore her, he redirected his route to the fire doors, hoping to avoid whatever trick was coming his way, but she moved towards him at an increasing speed.

"Come with me." was breathed into his ear as she grabbed his wrist and led him towards the back corridors, the ones nobody was allowed in during lunch. The urge to break free, to run into the courtyard and hide, or better yet run home and avoid whatever was coming his way was strong, but the entire lunch hall was here, more than a few eyes were watching this reject get pulled away by one of the monarchy. To pull off and run would fill his days with even more remarks, even more laughing and abuse. Subordinate and asphyxiated with terror, Joe was pulled into the darkness of the off limits corridor.

Joe was thrust against the wall, secluded by lockers from the sight on onlookers. Being beaten by the notorious bully was bad enough, but being beaten by his girlfriend, unable to defend himself due to her dick brained boyfriend was the lowest of the low.
"You tell anybody about this and I'll scream you forced yourself on me,' Whispered Christina, letting the warmth of her breath linger in Joe’s eardrum, alighting his senses. A grim look of confusion flooded his face before his body became a mould for clay making hands. Kisses, warm and sumptuous rode up and down his neck whilst strong hands grappled his chest, he felt the moist heat of her tongue work its way up and into his mouth, filling his entire body with unknown and fantastical sensations. He had never found Christina particularly attractive, yet he was a 15 year old virgin who had never even felt a girls touch, the strength of his will buckled and fell under the weight of sexual curiosity. Never before had he felt the breast of a girl so close to his body, time and place and situation were lost in an explosion of heat and breath and grappling. He felt himself grab onto her breast as she slid her hand under both trouser and boxer finding his erect self beneath. The flash of the wolf, a sensation he would grow accustomed too, appeared for the first time in his life, tearing down his ephemeral firmament with the click of a button. Laughter surrounded him in his vulnerable state, most vehemently emitting from Christina as camera's caught his lowest moment, making sure it could never be forgotten. The stark juxtaposition of the moment he had been in and this one could not have dazzled him more, making everything happen as if in a blur. At some point someone yelled 'Hard-on Henderson!' which caused an even more violent roar of laughter than previously. The entire school must have been aware of the prank that was about to take place, as for the first time Joe was the centre of attention, and it scared him. At some point he was knocked to ground, the colour of his blood stark against the shine of the white floor. He later found out that was from the dick-brain for 'finding his girlfriend hot.' Plaster covered faces flooded Instagram and Snapchat and Facebook next to a clearly terrified boy, with an erection extremely visible through his trousers with the caption 'Hard-on Henderson' all of that evening. Those same selfies of the damned haunted Joe for the next 18 years.

When the sheep manages to survive a wolf attack, it leaves its scars. A resentment built within Joe that he never knew existed inside himself. The narcissistic, vanity centred culture of the 21st century left him feeling cold and isolated from everything other than his thoughts. The preying on his innocence left him with enough emotional issues and fears, but the internet truly honed the beating to make sure he was forever an outcast. For the next 18 years he endured the laughs and sniggers of peers, the decline of job opportunities for his 'explicit internet content,' and all the physical and cyber bullying that the world could throw at him. The whimsical nature of the web meant that the horror would resurface sporadically, giving him the brief illusion of peace before it resurfaced his demons and begun it anew. Joe experienced the trials of puberty and adolescence alone, with no friends to help him by yet with too much pride to allow anyone else to know what he suffered.  The egomania that set across society like a plague never infected him. Casting the despondent face of depression away, he used the self-obsession of 'socialites' as fuel to propel him forward. The loathing he felt for the over-sharers, the fickle and the vain turned him into the rarity of an internal person, one whose thoughts remain a mystery to everyone except a select few. One who spent his time improving himself rather than looking at himself. One who to understand, you have to dig deeper than his live feed or his timeline. One who you have to take at far more than face value.

Joe Henderson stands before an immense crowd shrouded in darkness, the only illumination apart from his spotlight coming from tiny flashes from across the hall. The entirety wait for him to begin his Nobel speech, waiting and expecting something grand and fantastic, yet within him still remains that terrified 15 year old boy, constricted and scared. No longer does it pin him down though. His fears drip away like wax under fire, and he begins.

Do not fear the wolves. The wolves should fear the sheep that discard their disguises and stand before them, unmoving and unapologetic.

 

The Complications of Home

An unexpected feeling has become apparent now I have been at university for a couple of months, one which I never truly anticipated. University, with all its knowledge and growth, forces a form of limbo on its students that is never explained by anybody. It’s a strange feeling moving to a completely new city and knowing nobody, it’s exciting and uncomfortable at the same time, yet no matter how hard the first few weeks are, you adjust. Soon the normality begins to sink in, routine takes place and it becomes simply another way of life. The shock is that returning home then after settling in is almost as unsettling as the move originally was. The warmth of home, the feeling of family and a familiar setting exuberate happiness and safety, yet the town and its inhabitants no longer feel the same. The streets, the old walks, the nostalgia laden scenes feel like a dear friend you haven’t seen in years, a part of you, but one in which you no longer belong. The caresses of the sea breeze feel nourishing yet external, not a part of the bloodstream you used to feel connected you to this peninsula. The dissonance between myself and home that ethereally appeared is something once unfathomable, yet disturbingly real.

I am an extremely lucky student. I was lucky enough to share my chosen city of study with my girlfriend, gratefully allowing me to merge the warmth and familiarity of home with the unfamiliar, despondent face of Bristol. Yet this does not change the unsettling feeling I am left with after visiting my home town for the first time since I left. Everything is exactly the same, yet I feel different. Even after a mere four weeks.

Yet halls are far from a replacement, what is abundantly clear is that Bristol will never be my home. It’s impossible to compare them, whereas the city’s streets run white with people rushing every which way like salmon, home runs stagnant as a canal on a midsummer’s night. Selsey provides seclusion and isolation, two things I’ve always deemed essential to me, whereas Bristol provides nightlife and excitement, an abundance of midnight strangers and endless possibilities. It is new and exciting, yet I am not connected to it. It could be left in an instant without a second thought, it could never replace the docile, sluggish life of home. But it has changed me. I still retain the influences of home, yet I am no longer content to merely exist. I need movement and energy, aspiration and possibilities. As much as I love my home, I fear I have outgrown it.

Selsey, the town of my adolescence, shall always remain a part of me. The road I was raised on, the house I was raised in, shall always be mine. No doubt I will regularly return, for no matter how much I may have changed I could never, I would never want too, stop going back. The people there are far too important. The feelings that overcome me when I return there shall always be safe and familiar and happy, yet I am no longer a part of that town. It’s not true that you can build a home wherever you want, your home is given to you from birth. It is as much a part of you as your personality, it is unchangeable and infinite, and no matter how much we derogate and curse our dawdling towns that exist secluded from the rest of the world, we love them more than words can express.

Short Story: The Ghost of Glenside

This is my first attempt at a short story for a magazine in a long time! The magazine asked for a Halloween-esqe short story, so this is based off of my girlfriends university accommodation that was once a asylum for the insane. Relatively generic I know, but who doesn't look a classically cheesy horror story for Halloween? Exactly.

Click click click THUD. Click click click THUD. The monotonous beat beats on. Three taps of the knuckle, one slam of the skull. Click click click THUD. The patriotic sound of the insane asylum, the national anthem of the crazy box. Wallow knows this song all too well. She knows it will continue long after the box has consumed her, long after it has consumed everything. When every star has been devoured by supermassive black holes, every quasar of light vacuumed from every galaxy, all that shall be left is the void – and the everlasting click click click THUD; the national anthem of the crazy box.

Wallow still remembers the days before the box claimed her. Before it’s surgically dressed minions stole her from the twilight of her father’s farm, from the smell of pollen and rapeseed, revealing their dirtied souls in the process which the clinical cloaks withheld. She remembered running through the forest, feeling the tickle of branches, playing hide and seek with the invisible forest creatures, inevitably losing (for who can beat an invisible creature at hide and seek?) yet relishing in the chase nonetheless. She remembers creating dens underneath the roots of great oaks, how the walls and the dirt and the creatures made her feel so secure, so strong. It was the same reason she hid underneath shelly, the victim of a misfired shot of her father, when he came looking for her. It was the same reason the clinical minions had to drag her from her mother’s cold arms before she would be taken to the box. It was the same reason why she was a part of the box, and the box a part of her.

The box understood her, it relished her company and she relished its. When they forced her outside, to wander the grounds and watch the squirrels, hoping nostalgia and oxygen might set her asphyxiated mind straight, she would sob and screech and scratch herself until she was returned to the box, its four strong walls. No mountings, no furnishings, nothing but the confinement of space, the playground of her soul.

But one night they violated her sanctified temple. The clinical men. One night they had the audacity to interrupt her anthem. Click Click Cli.. Nothing. They dragged her out from her box. Against the scraping and snapping of nails, the biting, carnivorous and wild, would not stop them either. Kicking and screaming, Wallow was taken away, the red of her blood staining the whitewashed walls.

Before she had felt so strong, so secure, yet she knew that the box giveth, so the box may taketh away. It minions were relentless and colossal, pinning her into the chair. Screams, chants, curses – nothing deterred them. Wallow did not stop howling until the needle was lodged between her eye and into the recesses of her mind, allowing her the sweet release of lobotomised dreaming.

She can no longer find her way back to the box. The corridors get longer, the light source dims until she wanders putting faith that this place would not place something in front of her, it would not hurt her. Creeping through the endless labyrinth, she drags her nails all the way, scratching the plaster from the walls, a twisted trail of breadcrumbs.

Wallow was wrong. The box was not her protector but her captor, her puppet master. Long after the asylum was shut, long after the streams of young nurses began to move into the box to study the profession of the clinical minions, bringing with them the innocence of youth, the blessing of a healthy mind, Wallow continued to wander. Forever searching again for the safety of her confinement – her playground – leaving nail scratches, much to the confusion of the nurses, all the way.

Click Click Click THUD. Eternal and omnipresent, the beat beats on.

 

Cynicisms of a Fresher

Throughout all of my adolescent life I have heard the tall and fantastical tales of freshers. The crazy parties, the monumental nights out, the stories of experience and pleasure shown not only through the words of the person telling the tale, but through the nostalgic look that takes a hold of their face when pressed for information. The anecdotes of alcohol induced amnesia, the frivolous flings and multitude of mysterious strangers who, after a week of getting shitfaced together, become your friends for life. These were the tales I was told; the expectations I had when I arrived at uni and yet my experiences were something altogether…different. Now I’m not saying I didn’t enjoy the week, or that I avoided heavy drinking and socialising; I went out for 7 days, ate little, drunk lots and overall did everything that is expected of a child coming into adulthood – the brunt definition of a fresher. But the feeling I was left with afterwards was not that warm glow of memory, it was not the feeling that that week had changed me as a person in some irrevocable way, and improved me in some form or another. No, instead there was a grand feeling of nothingness. A void, not melancholy nor sad, but equally not warm and nostalgic – fresher’s week appeared as any other week.

 The truth of fresher’s is that you meet a lot of faces, talk to a lot of people from a lot of different places and begin to feel like you’re some kind of prom king from an American film, a popular person who knows and is known by everybody. But you’re not; for every 15 people you talk to you will be lucky to form one lasting friend, and this friend will in all likelihood not be someone who is as close as the friends you had at home. The truth of fresher’s is that these crazy stories that are created are the majority of the time born out of over-exaggerations and the anecdotes of other people. The main benefit of Freshers, and the main friends that you will make, are those of your flat and the floor of your halls. These are the people that you will most likely grow close too, not the hundreds of people in other halls and in the clubs, but the people you first meet. This is the only benefit of fresher’s, the rest of the drunken stories are either hyperbolic, or idiotic.

Now this may sound like the rambling of some 21^st century hermit, living in seclusion from the world. You may also think this is written by somebody who isn’t social and who doesn’t enjoy clubbing, and to a certain extent you would be right to think so. I go clubbing frequently, yet I would not class myself as somebody who ‘enjoys clubbing,’ and I have plenty of friends, but I am by no stretch of the imagination a socialite. I am merely putting forward my opinion on fresher’s week on the whole. It’s fun, and people undoubtedly make memories and friends by participating, but in 30 years’ time when I reach my mid-life crisis and send my mind back through the mists of nostalgia, will I see fresher’s? I think the answer to that question is abundantly clear.

Now I’m not trying to persuade any upcoming undergraduates that it’s terrible and you won’t enjoy it, on the contrary most people, myself included, thoroughly enjoy it. But it is not fundamental, you will not cherish the memory; you will most likely never forget the events, but you will not cherish them. They will be anecdotal, the same drunken stories that I myself heard and consequently built up fresher’s to be this utopian week – this ‘utopian’ week – and therefore the cycle will be repeated. Despite this, I shall not hold onto the feelings of Freshers as an epitome of my youth. What I will hold onto are the feelings of fulfilment of my adolescence; the private rooms in my head where the most precious memories rest, more valuable than any materialistic venture, more valuable than love and hate and companionship – my gold.

Freshers is unique. Filled with the mystery of new people and the possibility of new futures, yet all of this appears to be a masquerade of vanity and false niceties, with the true friends you make boiling down to those you would have made whether you threw up in their kitchen sink or not.