WHAT ALBA'S MOTHER SAW UNDER THE BED

Magdalene bed number four eight six black priest from Africa’s hand hovers vacuum packed bags of morphine hooked to ship’s rails above the bed sheets stamped N H S white light dog collar fluorescent tubes at eye level last catholic in the world black hand sign of the cross your turn mother flashes red number twenty five voyage

“Whose turn? Whose next? Twenty six? Twenty seven?”

faded blue gown starch many times laundered laundered falls open on a shoulder of dimpled ham clear plastic mask pumps oxygen into side of dead wrinkled meat ribs rise and fall pumped up pumped in sunken eyes already withered portholes in another dimension on another voyage gaze past them all out of it all number twenty nine at the end of the tunnel white light black hand signs the cross and the virgin Mary disguised as archangel flaming heart Jesus last catholic in the world sits under the bed beckoning under the cream coloured frame of the electric motors coiled cables bed on the cold salmon shade fake granite chip floor in a puddle of celestial light urine drain bag leaking yellow on salmon linoleum

“Come aboard! Come aboard! Whose turn? Thirty one? Thirty two?

yellow on salmon sunset black priest from Africa my mother dying vacuum packed bags of morphine hooked to ship’s rails at eye level portholes your turn flashes red number twenty five all aboard voyage tubed up tubed out bag drip drip dripping dripping tick tock tick tock into her vein butcher’s meat on the slab and the whole god damned family audience impatient at the door of ward four eighty six clutching their little pink paper numbers for an audience drip drip dripping their turns and drip drip dripping time running out for absolutions number forty seven nephews and niece niece whose turn into the next world carry my weight away for me spitting on the light at the end of the tunnel desperately pleading the butcher for her money back where is the guarantee verbal diarrhoea not a blind bit of notice taken vacuum packed bags of morphine hooked to ship’s rails above the bed snow sheets stamped National Health Service white light frosted fluorescent tubes at eye level your turn flashes red number twenty five voyage virgin Mary disguised as archangel flaming heart hippy Captain Jesus sits under the bed beckoning through the dog collar porthole under the cream coloured frame of the electric bed sinks to horizontal at my mother’s last smile

“I’m not here any more, kids! I’m over the sea and far away carried from port by celestial sails that sing....National Health Service....on the infinite cool black breeze....

SPACE JUNK, THE NIGHTTIME BRACE

The night she failed to return, I thought nothing of it. The pillow might well have smelt of her sweat, her breath, her last glass of wine, her last meal, her toothpaste, touches of mouthwash, traces of perfume, her inhalant, but I thought nothing of it.

Two nights after she had failed to return, I found myself gazing at The Pretty Girl’s nighttime brace, surgical pink plastic and stainless steel wire, abandoned on a white tissue on the white painted floorboards next to the head of our mattress.

Every time I gingerly sniffed over it in the coming days, two days, it smelt vaguely of her breath, her last meal, her toothpaste, touches of mouthwash, traces of perfume, her inhalant. For a further two days I imagined it still smelt vaguely of her breath, her toothpaste, touches of mouthwash, traces of perfume, her inhalant. For another couple of days I managed, occasionally, to convince myself, in an argument of desperate factions, that I could catch faint hints of her breath, her toothpaste, touches of mouthwash, traces of perfume, her inhalant, but then, two more days and I was inventing the smell of her breath, her last glass of wine, her last meal, her toothpaste and mouthwash, traces of her perfume, her inhalant.

And then, it all just vanished into impossibility.

That night I slipped the brace into my mouth and lived its surgical pink plastic texture, steel wire, a torture against my bleeding gums. I made it hurt, and in spite of the hurt, all taste of her was long lost in silent arguments of factitious memories however hard I tried to suck her life back out of the ultimate souvenir of our intimacy.

The last souvenir, the one and only thing surviving that had lived inside of her that had not been flushed away or recycled into the detritus of the outside world, for, even the blood from her last period had been tasted on my tongue during hours, swallowed, and all too quickly digested, but at least tasted, more than three weeks before the night she had failed to return. And I had thought everything of it, she, nothing of it.

A HIGH PROFILE DISPUTE. (FROM THE THE BORN AGAIN PRIEST ARCHIVES)

Roses are red, violets are blue, I don’t know, how about.... Skipping chants, I could just pick out skipping songs from somewhere distant. Skipping songs in faded voices a long way away in the past, metallic echoes of little girls´ skipping songs, bad a ba da ba da ba da....bad a ba da ba da ba da....Roses are red....

After summer showers there were always what seemed like huge oily lakes all over the roads and pavements, wondrous, astonishing lakes of colours.

After this remarkably heavy summer shower there were stupendous oily puddles shining all over the road and pavement, rivers of gay colours sparkling, cascading in the gutters and into drains.

The neighbours’ pretty little golden haired girl came by and stood beside me and glanced up at me staring at our rippled multicoloured refractions, at her first communion dress, all virgin white, a silver medallion around her neck on a long silver chain. She looked down, clear blue eyes, into the waters, the silver blues sparkling off rusty browns, then stared back up at me, proud, and trusting and terribly innocent. I held on to her little pale hand just a little tighter and we both took a couple of steps forward into the gutter, red patent leather shoes and little white ankle socks sort of walking on the water.

She smiled me a sweet toothy smile, but wanted to move back, her sharp blue stare becoming more imploring, so I took her other delicate hand in my left, held both her sweet hands a little more roughly and, face to gorgeous face, jumped up and down madly in the puddle, as kids are wont to do because puddles are just such a temptation, until she was dirty soaked and her dress was just slightly oily grey transparent. She was screaming, and tears were running down her reddening cheeks, but the sound of her horror was as distant as the skipping songs from yesterday’s memories, all hollow and tinny, and I just couldn’t control my hysterical laughter.

“God told me to do it!” I got out between sobs of painful laughter, whilst, all around everyone else was saying it was the devil in me.

Now, that is a high profile dispute, if ever there was one.

DOING THE BLANCMANGE

Very, but very early, one late September morning. Heads back to front. Heads and tails back to front.

Inside out, Peter watched the harlequin jester tumble and jingle from out of his left ear into his right and back to centre stage again. She had somersaulted to a hoppity halt between the point of Peter’s nose and his backdrop of thinning, but slightly curly hair. She stared into Peter’s blue eyes and lifted two fingers that cut the stare in an insolent salute.

“Stare you out anytime, dickhead....So! Now you know! This is where it all begins and ends....”

And she stared, over theatrically, of course, around the gloomy theatre, arms outstretched, palms upwards, Cheshire cat grin and lopsided bow included.

“....Here, baby....Right here!....Not much of an infinite space, is it?....Full moon though!”

And Peter saw his eardrums hear what he had just seen, and outside, in the real world, Peter, Alba and The Pretty Girl’s grey matter did The Blancmange together, oh, ooh, aaah, so sweetly, to such strange music.

But then came sunrise and silent blindness forever.

KILLER PREGNANCY TESTERS

....pull down these peach skin jeans I am desperate dear dying to eat the fruit peel down these peach skin jeans for me to smear my lips in the juice shimmy down these peach skin jeans for me this heavenly fruit on my tongue....

....Jan Mutts had been deckchair sunbathing all day, had been a deckchair all day circus red blue and orange stripes and obese lobster pink, when he stood up, eventually, he fell headlong off the beach....

....pull down those peach skin jeans I am desperate dear dying to eat the fruit peel down those peach skin jeans for me to smear my lips in the juice shimmy down those peach skin jeans for me that heavenly fruit hides no stone....

....reach out, reach, overreach, he fell headlong off the sunshine yellow beach beach hut padlocked all clean and tidy split his lip, broke his nicotine brown bad breath teeth on a rock the size of cloud covered Snowdon overripe stone open edge slices into his bloody red tongue brown stone dead....

....stone dead....

....then his right hand hit the floorboards and the grisly curtain goes up on late morning grey housing estate condensation on grey windowpanes cigarette smoke stale net curtains hangover takeaway kebab breath digoxin dioxin atorvastatin eighteen hours stale urine and sweat unemployed unemployable unwashed unshowered spunk on the floor glued The Sun topless teenagers rage instant coffee mould in sink drains coffee cup rings ring headlines from days ago Killer Pregnancy Testers Shred Astronaut....

....the Green Knight of The Forest had just delivered us from the broad back of his huge warhorse muscular right arm for support.... reach out, reach, overreach, he and his mount, fell headlong off the sunshine yellow beach hut, padlocked, noble, clean and tidy, split his lip, broke his lighthouse teeth on an iceberg rock overripe stone open edge slices into his bloody red tongue gurgled his last words ever....

....Peter, Bug Eyed Peter you are a wanted man flyaway Peter flyaway Paul....

....damp smack sound broken bone and dry crack snapped teeth river of red blood lake brown stone dead....

....pull down those peach skin jeans I am desperate dear dying to eat the fruit peel down those peach skin jeans for me to smear my lips in the juice shimmy down those peach skin jeans for me that heavenly fruit hides no stone....

....somewhere else someone called Jan Mutts dressed in full faded Papal regalia was daydreaming of peach skin jeans but the tilt of his daydream was swung in favour of violent and obsessive musty lust rather than The Deep Blue Head love orgasms....

....pull down these peach skin jeans I am desperate dear dying to eat the sweet fruit peel down these peach skin jeans for me to smear my lips in the ripe juice shimmy down these peach skin jeans for me this heavenly fruit awaits my tongue....

....orgasms The Deep Blue Head love orgasms the three of us were hot wet and comfortable and slippery in the glass walled shower, me, Alba and The Pretty Girl padlocked in soaking it all in while the ugly fertile populations of this dimension were being cut to shreds by deep electric blue alien fleets of killer pregnancy testers tornados of bloody red rain pinkly sweet minced meat inside beach huts peppermint blue padlocked all clean and tidy....

....KILLER PREGNANCY TESTERS SHRED ASTRONAUT Sexy space strolling astronaut Major Kitty Makepeace and her three month old fetus Darian out taking their usual Saturday night galactic constitutional were briefly surprised by....

....pull down these peach skin jeans I am desperate dear dying to eat the sweet fruit peel down these peach skin jeans for me to smear my lips in the ripe juice shimmy down these peach skin jeans for me this heavenly fruit on my tongue....

....then my right hand hit the floorboards and, morning erection glorious electric blue orgasm, I thought....

....“Killer Pregnancy Testers?....I’ve just got to use that line as a title....or something....”

....then my right hand hit the floorboards....

SPACE JUNK, NONE OF IT IS TRUE

Teeming life picked out an instant of harmony from dissonance and this choir sang hoarsely and rhymed and reasoned for no reason and no rhyme nor reason rang forth. In fact, but for brief episodes of striking, startling perfection pain and pleasure, nothing of very much worth rang forth at all.

In a long abandoned cement plant, put to new, more agonizing uses, the chorus, firm muscled apprentice butcher’s boys and girls with always a crude song on their lips, or football chants, lounge about languidly smoking what smell like John Player’s Navy Cuts, no filters, choking back on phlegm obstructed vocal chords, the virus of words held in check a moment. Butchery on the front line. War film computer war game the bullets, fast silent and invisible, thud into the plaster and red brick dust bursts, and floats, then settles in their hair, on their pallid, naked bodies, his shoulders, her breasts. The smoke, blue curlicues of dead smoke rising unconcerned through settling brick dust write unread stories against the sky but it is the dripping blood that adds the punctuation.

“Wake up for Christ’s sake....Let’s go, let’s go....Move it....”

“Shit....”

“You sergeant! Get him and her up and about and get rid of that body. The domestic violence routine for this one. Here’s the address and implicate the father. There’s his fluid samples from the registry. Cut her up a bit. Use some of the bottles from his wine cellar....erm, cupboard....Just look where they live for....Oh, and lots of blood...cover up those burns....”

“Images?”

“Why not? Waste not, want not!”

“She moved....”

“You suggesting I don’t know how to do my job? Enough electricity been through her to light up....god....get it the hell out of here....”

“Tip it in the back of the lorry, you two....”

Today the sky is stunning summer blue but the aircraft are knitting an intricate weave that so effectively delineates humanity’s suffocating prison time tick tack wool over the finger tick tack tick tack prison like time grandmother’s birthday sweaters, always too tight sleeves too short too rhomboid last year’s time bright colours my universe crushed into chainmail, an adolescent body. On a sick, invisible screen, our space junk orbits high above the vapour trails, knitting at even higher altitudes, tick tack tick tack through the void, any fantasy that one day you and I will climb aboard our shiny silver Dan Dare spaceship and set off for a new world shot to Swiss cheese by all the nuts, bolts, flakes of paint, chip pans, satellite dishes and pregnancy testers tick tack tick tack tack tack.... I gaze at her out there and down here, on earth, on solid ground too.

Nettle lined path trails slip sliding down through the trees, through the almost solid shafts of summer sunlight insects flitting gaily from one to the next through the trees to the brook and polished roots trip The Pretty Girl. Cut and bloody, bruised, burnt and battered, polished roots trip her, The Pretty Girl stumbles and, yet again, stubs her toes but even that pain, after all that has been said, all that has been done to her, is a pleasure. She, angelic, floats through the woods, ghostly naked, almost not really there at all, to the stream. The brook.

The sun glints colours so gorgeous you could never even remotely imagine them, glints pure white light into her eyes from the rippling skin of the water and I understand how mightily she wants to melt into that moment of truth. You had to be there. I was there.

Through fields of poppies I flittered, and over dandelions and buttercups. I thought red and silken yellow sun hot and comfortable on my back and pollen in the air and failed to decide between buttercup here and dandelion there silken yellow and I was silken yellow on white wings sun hot on my back powder white wing flits and flickers I was in the air, pollen in the air through which I flutter and stare. I settle onto a flower, an Arum lily almost as perfect as my wings, same colour, same perfect powder white, and I flex my wings, once, twice, slowly, elegantly, again, and I gaze into the light in her eyes which blink once, twice, slowly, elegantly, again, almost nothing there, almost nothing left, but she watches me too and we are in harmony.

For a moment it little matters what she might do or what might be done to her, in this harmony I possess the essence of what I imagine her to be, a moment of truth, and she has possession of a universe and so, so do I. I can gaze at her there, and she at me too. The brook smells of sweet spring rain on grass, a moment of truth. She splashes cool water over her face. Me too.

Nettles hang over the brook.

Nettles hang over the brook. I stare back at myself in the gutter over there in some future, looks like I am praying into the drain.

Sound of a diesel engine working in reverse gear whine. Sound of a diesel engine. Silence after a diesel engine. Two doors slam sharp shut. A fright of animal shrieks. Silence after animal shrieks. Smell of diesel exhaust. Smell of death. A wiry middle aged man, a young boy and girl, all three muscular looking lager drinking types dressed in grubby white forensic overalls and heavy rubbery white aprons, come crashing down the path, come to an ugly stupid dead standstill, as does our possession of a universe. One, two, three, like some kind of beer in bottle tsunami, they swig from half full Stellas.

“Well, well well, wouldn’t you just believe what I see here right in front of my very own eyes, eh? An ashtray. Just look at ‘er!....Cigarette?”

“Ta....”

“Waste not, want not! Who said that, eh?....Ta....Cheers!”

“Mmm....Ok then, help yourselves kids. Half an hour, then we gotta dump her in her father’s place, you know how it goes!”

The gutter smells of sweet spring rain washing urine into the sewers, a moment of truth. I am praying to the drain. Scraggy nettles hang over the kerb. I am beaten. They beat me here and there. They tore my wings from me, from The Sunrise Girl. I was crushed under boot, me, my name is Alba, ground under boot heel into the sewerage.

I splash foul smelling but cool, oily water over my face and remember with a clarity that shocks, chills me to the bone, a conversation I had had some weeks before she, The Pretty Girl, was found in her parent’s flat on The Cambridge Estate.

She asked how I could write such horrible things and so I suggested that writing them down was infinitely better than actually doing them....

“....or suffering them.”

“But it’s not true, none of it is true Alba....”

“Truth! Truth is simply what works. What works for the moment! Nothing more, nothing less, and me, you, us, all of this, is just a thing of the moment and this is the moment. It functions, that's all!”

The image used to illustrate this part of the "SPACE JUNK" series of stories is a photographic collage titled "LAS HORTIGAS Y EL EFECTO MARIPOSA" by the artist David F. Brandon. Copyright belongs to the artist.Click here to see more of his artwork.

The "Dan Dare and his silver spaceship" idea was helped along by a-soma.Click here to visit his universe.

THE CASH STRAPPED CARPENTER

The Wiseman lays before his students a vision of magnificence in creativity, the arts, universes of openings, and a few ask for more. What more could he ask for? For something magnificent shall be incubated.

The clergyman gave his acolytes a vision of malignance in creativity, in the arts, gave the congregation a book of rules, creation, and a great many of them asked for more. What more could he have asked for? For them, none the wiser, something malignant had been incubated.

The cash strapped carpenter lost his comfortable furniture loving lost soul to cash on the nail instruments of humiliation and execution, and lost his son and family into the bargain.

Old Joe had strolled, lolled in lush green woods among cheerful flora and fauna aplenty, but his work drove him and his timbers into a cheerless desert where the straightforward, clear-cut trees there, two a penny, cash on the nail, bore barren fruit and their sap was rust.

LET THEM STEW IN THEIR OWN JUICES

In “The Cellar”, an underground cinema on Duke Street, near the centre of the universe.

Background Radiation. Radio Dust. Pinpoints of Past Fire recede. Dust, riding the dial, slowly accelerates toward the audience through the static. The screen flickers into light.

The scene, a hovel constructed from damp scraps of discarded wood and mouldy, faded brown cardboard, but with a distinct air of pretensions of becoming a cathedral.

Here sitteth a pantomime sorcerer wrapped in hokum-pocum costume drama drag, sham fifteenth century Spanish court slippers stained with sewage. Here sitteth, dully illuminated in the sparks of some dying embers, cross legged, amongst piles of rotting entrails, a sorcerer stirring relentlessly at a blackened cauldron of thick, sick smelling stew. Here sitteth, under the black shadow of a cathedral steeple hat reaching unto truly celestial heights, the sorcerer, who, just at this moment, all fired up by the brewage, sheds his hokum-pocum skin to don his immaculate black and white habits as becomes the High Priest of the one and only church of what must and must not, and you had better believe it sons and daughters of the One and Only John Doe, our father who art in heaven. Somewhere.

The little lambs get to climb up to the dizzy heights upon that heavenly ladder to look him straight in the eye, to be blessed by the judgements, and are instantaneously damned in his ubiquitous silver mirror shades, the mirror shades he angrily snaps on at their disgusting, subservient, brown nosing approach (Aside),-

“Sometimes you just have to hold your breath, pinch your nose.”

Crucifixes, electric chairs, lethal injection benches bellows butcher’s apron, nooses ropes chains cables carving knives and crocodile clips, hammers and nails, racks and pullies and poles to impale, a ladder and a toolbox. A ladder and a toolbox, as carpenter and metalworker, as all round handyman is he known, the son of John Doe, The Born Again Priest.

The heights are climbed and the faithless find faith in something a little more heavenly, a little more mystical, at each and every rung on the way up and so they have more faith because, sermonises The Born Again Priest,-

“Lo, hallowed be my wisdom, faith becometh the absolute truth, hallowed be thy name, John Doe, thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven, erm....somewhere.”

And it comes about that all this truth is verily rattling about in each and every skull and making a right old din.*

And it comes about that The Born Again Priest, in all his infinite heavenly love and mystical affection, spreads his arms universally wide to welcome his precious flock unto his protective bosom. And it comes about that, lo and behold, he is up to his elbows in little boy’s and girl’s shit and blood, for, as we behold, they stand before him in sublime submission, anointed in blood and faeces smeared over their otherwise milky white flesh....milky white....

Full on, full screen mirror shades reflecting cameras and lighting rig, The Born Again Priest admonishes,-

“For this is the Northern European section of The Alliance of Civilisations and we do not countenance any of those other colours fucking up this tale, do we now?”

....milky white flesh waiting in trancelike subjugation for his oration. The Sermon on The Mound, Mons Veneris for, verily, The Born Again Priest truly believes, with high religious hubris, in heaven right down here and now and he is doing his damnedest best to keep the pearly gates tight shut to the hoi polloi.

The Sermon on The Mound, Mons Veneris,-

“Suffer the little children to come unto me and forbid them not, suffer the little children to come, to come unto me for my pleasure, for, verily, of such pleasure is the Kingdom of The Born Again Priest!”

So, hardened Sheffield steel shears in one hand, silver mirror shades over his eyes, stainless steel pincers in his right hand, he welcomes the little lambs to his last judgment and, of course, they are ecstatically happy, euphoric, for they have drunk and eaten of him and of all the others and they can see what the future holds for them just where The Born Again Priest’s eyes should be, that is, submission, suffering and faith, but he, mirror shades high on his nose, he can see them for what they really are, Cuts of Meat! Cuts of Meat, for his is the power, and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen.

“For mine is the power, and the glory, for ever and ever, Amen!”

In “The Cellar”, an underground cinema on Duke Street, near the centre of the universe, THE END, and voices are heard to mumble under their breaths,-

“Amen....”

And,-

“Where we gonna find something to eat this time of the night?”

*Those who have heard voices from the nondominant brain hemisphere remark on the absolute authority of the voice. They know they are hearing the truth. The fact that no evidence is adduced and that the voice may be talking utter nonsense is irrelevant. This is what Truth is. And Truth has nothing to do with facts. Those who manipulate Truth to their advantage, the people of the Big Lie, are careful to shun facts. In fact nothing is more deeply offensive to such people than the concept of fact.

(William S. Burroughs, Ghost of Chance, 1991, published by Serpent’s Tail, 2002)


A large part of the inspiration for this piece of writing can be found in a video clip by the multi media artist A-Soma. A-Soma and the Unlightened, Draps Bruts, from the collection of songs, Dark in Space. Click here to see the clip!

A PEACH, A BRUISE, BLUEJEANS AND VIRGIN EXTRA OLIVE OIL

The Sunrise Girl, Alba, is, at this very moment, peeling the velvet skin from a dripping, sweet ripe peach with her lips, not her teeth, her lips, and The Pretty Girl passes through her fruit perfumed field of vision causing perfumed fresh peach pink womb glow tasted on her tongue, wearing tight bluejeans perfectly. Perfectly, muscles dance slow and intimate together and her right hip falls a tad and she hits a pose, innocently, and cherished skin slides sexy, moistly. Shed that skin....

“Why don’t I put my lips to your deep blue jeans, Pretty Girl? Why don’t I put my lips to your sheer white cotton Princesa underwear, Pretty Girl? Why don’t I put my lips to your ever so slightly translucent light pink olive peach skin, Pretty Girl?” Thinks she, warmly sinking to the depths inside her ribcage butterfly lust and love for beauty peach pink but olive oil small death. “Wrap that fine light olive flesh torso, abdomen in clingfilm so airtight it keeps forever peach velvet clean and fresh deep sepia frozen in my desperate memory....”

Olive oil, pour olive oil on light pink olive peach skin snakes through such fine silvery ghosts of downy hair into her neatly tied navel, slightly breathing, rising up and down gently tensed stomach faintly shivering translucent skin breath of cool sepia sex oil lake preciously knotted navel where Sunrise submerges her index finger maroon black nail varnish, tip of tongue, nose, pour some more that glides and guides virgin olive oil curls through gossamer fine velvet downy cool and down slow and easy in another virgin direction tighter curls, first pressing quivering cold pressing, calm....

“Ahí, ahí....”

The Pretty Girl, naked, rests her shoulders on the edge of the kitchen table and, chin in hands, looks, unblinking, straight into Alba’s sad brown eyes. There is a small reddish stain of eczema on the pearl pale pink olive sheen skin that Alba notices on her right cheek and such fine ghosts of downy hair that The Sunrise Girl so desperately wants to tickle and tease them into life with her breath, breathe life into them with tip of tongue luster that glides and guides virgin olive oil through sheer white cotton Princesa underwear gossamer fine velvet down cool and slow and easy in another virgin direction gorgeous tight goose pimple blush young velvet skin from a dripping, sweet ripe peach, juice on her lips.

“Intenté anotarlo todo, intenté ver mi belleza. La belleza que ves en mi.”

“¡Eso no importa Jone! Prométeme que nunca te convertirás tan sólo en otra superviviente fea, amargada y retorcida!”

In a wicker basket cradled between Jone’s perfect, gorgeous forearms, there is an almost invisibly bruised peach. The fruit, with its precious bruise from which decay would spread if they gave it half a chance, is also suddenly so much more desperately, deliciously delicate and sad and beautiful, gorgeous, for its wound.

The Sunrise Girl, naked too, dabs her index finger into a sepia pool of glinting olive oil on the clear glass table and gently rubs a little into the tiny flaking blemish on The Pretty Girl’s cheek, leans across the table, over the basket of fruit, and kisses the same spot, licks it delicately. The Pretty Girl, sublime, lightly caresses Alba’s glistening breasts, her nipples, with the still somewhat slippery palms of her hands.

“¡Sabes, Alba, que preferiría mucho más ser una bella víctima que una fea superviviente!”

“Hagámoslo otra vez....”

“Por favor....”

THE CONVERSATION

“There, there....”

“I tried to write it all down, I tried to see my beauty. The beauty you see in me.”

“Give it no mind Jone! Promise me you’ll never become just another ugly bitter twisted survivor?”

“You know, Alba, I’d much prefer to be a beautiful victim than an ugly survivor!”

“Let’s do it again....”

“Please....”

THE PRETTY GIRL PEELS THE SKIN OFF THE BORN AGAIN PRIEST

Backed into a little boy’s bedroom corner. Hugging my knees. Rocking slowly back and forth. Always looked over my shoulder. Sick and trembling. Sweating it out in the bad boy’s corner. Never ever crossed the line. All the Sunday school sin pissed into splinters. Warm then cooling out a huge emptiness. A never ending lake spreading from my crutch to the camera. Never said the wrong thing. Across the bare bedroom floorboards. Flows under the midnight net curtains. Never said anything much at all. Lens crystal clear. Never asked. Never questioned. Clear like a poison needle hitting the vein. Hypodermic index finger pointed in warning. Never got an answer. Never told her what I thought. Rusty vein rusty pain pale flowers on the faded wallpaper. Splinters. Dust. Dusted the past tense. The past perfect. Never ever really left off holding mummy’s hand. The touch of her fingers. Can’t open my mouth. Never played daddy’s sports. Never went anywhere I couldn’t get back from. Mummy please don’t die. Mummy please open my mouth. There’s nothing coherent. Never ever touched my cousin’s breasts. Choking on incoherence. Gagging on the teeth of incoherence. Never put a foot wrong. Never ever did the real thing. Nightmare teeth falling. Never said it wasn’t true. Suffocating turning blue china porcelain cheeks. Cracked blue crystal veins. Never said it wasn’t me. Let me see. Teeth. Thick bitter spittle and teeth bury my tongue. Never took a drug. Cry desperate shriek impossible to breath. Never ever catch a breath. Fingers jammed in my mouth. Lacerate fingers tearing at endless teeth splinters crucify my vocal chords. Split the corners of my mouth. Never ever ate the rotting fruit. Crucify my tongue my lips. My cheeks. Fingernails jammed between my teeth. Pain. Teeth. Bite my nails ‘till. A taste for blood. Never ever saw the snake. Sperm in my fingers. Never touched Sunday school girls lips. Split my lips. Never ever even once saw theirs if they’d see mine. Never lost consciousness. Never lost control. Never woke up bleeding and hurting in a hospital. Didn’t even ever get to sit on the fence. Never cried acid hate tears for lost love. Never ever really felt anything much. Never drank too much. Rusty needle hitting the vein. Guilty for it all. Stinging pain when mummy lifted her index finger to explain. Bit my nails. Guilty for nothing. Never understood a word. Never wrote any of it down. Bit them ‘till my fingers bled. Gnaw them ‘till my fingers bleed. Cuticles. That’s where I got my taste for blood. Sperm on the floor. Sperm in my fingers. Hugging my knees. Cold wet carpet spongy. Yellow ocean in baby boy bedroom. Stained underpants. Acid tears. Gasps roar hoarse. Throat’s burnt through. Hearse. Never ever really left off holding mummy’s hand. Mummy’s hand. Mummy hurt me. Let me see. Sick and vomit trembling. Bit them ‘till they bled. Cuticles. Cute. Let me see pretty. Let me see. Let me see.

Then The Pretty Girl stared him out and instantly peeled the skin off his rotting love.

Mummy....Mummy....Please, mummy....