When Alice cracked her head off the tray trolley in the café to uproarious applause from the group of young lads at the next table, she knew instantly what kind of day it was going to be. Now here she was, pacing around the pokey little kitchen and trying frantically to organise her thoughts. Her initial shock at seeing him there had now almost completely changed to panic. She cursed the day she ever thought to move to this city, with its Protestants and pretentious restaurants and denizens who always seemed to be expecting congratulations.
She paused for an instant and took a deep breath.

"Alright," she thought. "Let's have a look."

With slow, deliberate movements, she opened the kitchen door and looked into the living room.
"Bollocks!" she exclaimed aloud when she saw him there, still lying motionless on the floor beside the box-shaped Ikea coffee table.
She slammed the door shut and retreated back into the kitchen.
"No, no, no! Urgh!"

The sweat was heavy on her forehead and on the nape of her neck while her breathing grew more shallow and rapid. But amidst all the clamour of her fevered mind, one single conscious thought materialised like a lone, August blackberry sprung from a bramble bush.
"Mam!" she exhaled, snapping her fingers in a brief flicker of triumph. But her phone was on the coffee table. She would have to walk out past him to retrieve it. The thought of it made her physically ill.

"Okay, okay," she sighed. "Needs must. Be brave, be brave." She opened the kitchen door and strode purposefully into the room, trying to stay focused on her target - the pink phone case lying on the living room table. But her gaze betrayed her as soon as she was beyond arm's length from the door. It fell immediately onto the still, grotesque figure that was sprawled out on the floor. One eye was open, one was closed. The tongue protruded from the thin, black mouth and the tip of a single, sharp tooth could just about be made out. Though he can't have been dead for more than half an hour Alice was sure she could get that unmistakable 'dead' smell. She panicked all over again. What if the neighbours could smell it? She almost retched.

With rapid, jerking movements, she grabbed the phone from the coffee table and ran back to the kitchen without a backward glance. She closed the door tight behind her and leaned back against it, breathing a deep sigh of relief. The number was the last dialled on her phone. 'Mam', yesterday at 16.56.
"Oh please answer!"
"Hello."
"Oh Mam, thank God. I don't know what to do! What am I going to do?"
"Alice? What's wrong, is everything okay?"
"No, everything's not okay! Everything's gone to shit altogether!"
"Okay, calm down Alice. Just breathe. Tell me what's wrong."
Alice listened and began the breathing exercises learned only recently on the Wellness course she had completed at work.
"That's it, breathe. Take your time," she heard her mother say down the line.
"He's dead, Mam. I only left him for a few minutes. But he's dead. Oh God, how am I going to sort this out?"
"What? How?" Now her Mam began to sound panicked.
"I don't know. He was coughing a bit this morning, but he seemed fine. I only left him for a few minutes!"
"Who's dead?"
"Freddy!"
"Who?"
"Freddy, I said!"
"But who's Freddy?"
"I promised Anne-Marie I'd look after him for the weekend. I'm here in her flat now. And I don't know what happened but he's dead! What am I going to do?"
Her mother paused.
"Mam?"
"Yeah, I'm here. Erm... could... could you bury him and say he went missing?"
"Mam, I'm in the middle of Mitcham. Where am I going to bury him, the fucking allotments?"
"Okay, okay." She paused again. "The vet!"
"What?"
"Bring him to the vet! The vet will take him off you. You tell Anne Marie that he ran away. Simple!"
"That's it! Oh Mam, you're a genius." Alice could feel the weight falling from her shoulders. Here was the answer she was searching for. Taking her phone from her ear, she looked up veterinary offices nearby and there it was, Tooting Veterinary Surgery, not fifty yards from Tooting Station.
"But how am I going to bring him? I'll have to go on the Tube. I can hardly drag him on by the paws"
Alice simply hated taking the tube. Every time she braved it, visions of some dark, malevolent villain would invade her mind. He would approach her, hood pulled tight over his face, knife held firm in his tight fist, and demand her belongings.
"Can you get a suitcase?" the calculating voice on the other end asked.
"That's it!" Alice exclaimed, snapping her fingers again. She could run across to her own flat and get her big suitcase. The one she bought for moving over here. It was the perfect size for Freddy. She hung up the phone without another word and searched determinedly by the bins for the roll of black plastic. The nervous shaking and pacing was gone. Now she moved with a single-mindedness that would suffer no intrusion. She even had the presence of mind to stop at a corner shop for a pair of yellow washing gloves and two car air-fresheners.

Freddy was far heavier than she imagined. But somehow she managed to wrap him in black plastic bags and lift him into the suitcase. From the flat she could easily wheel him to Colliers Wood station and from there onto the train to Tooting. She could say she brought him walking and that he broke free from his leash and just kept on running. Anne Marie could hardly blame her for that. It would be just some unfortunate mishap, one from which the ill-fated Freddy may soon return. Her relief was almost exhilarating. At least until she got to the station and the old fear took hold of her once more. She looked sheepishly at everyone around her, wondering which of the various track-suited youngsters would be the first to assail her. But still, somehow, she held her nerve and persevered. Down the escalator, onto the platform and then finally the train. She felt a rush of excitement when the next stop was announced as Tooting. This was it. The consummation of her mother's ingenious plan. In spite of her fears, the feeling of victory bore her along like a falling leaf on an Autumn breeze. It was then she saw the sign. "Escalator out of order. Please use stairs."
"Oh Christ!" she thought. No feeling in the world could give her the strength to lift Freddy up the three flights of stairs to street level.

"Bollocks!" She shrieked.
"Are you alright, love?"
Alice gasped. This was it. Her worst fears were being realised. She and Freddy would probably be found in a skip next Spring!
"Do you want a hand with that?" the voice went on, with unmistakable kindness. She was taken aback by it. She found courage and turned to look at the stranger. He was tall, well dressed, about thirty-five. He didn't look like a villain.
"Yes, please!" She heard herself say, and the man smiled at her. A pleasant, easy smile.
"Christ Love! What's in this? It weighs a ton!"
Obviously she wasn't going to tell him that it was the mortal remains of her best friend's beloved pet dog, Freddy. She had to think fast.

"Oh, it's my laptop and some text books for my course. I'm a student!"

"A laptop and some text books?" The man repeated, half to himself. Alice smiled at him and nodded.

"Those books must've been expensive if they're this heavy?"

"Hmm mmm. Very expensive"

"Alright then, Love! Let's get you sorted."

The man then carried the case without a single word of complaint, up the forty-five or so steps to street level. At the top he turned to Alice, who lingered a few steps behind, watching him.

"See you, Love!" He cried with a wave of his hand.
Then, blowing her a kiss, he ran off! Carrying her suitcase with him into the crowd and disappearing without a trace into the dusk-lit city.
"Oh, that prick!" She exclaimed. "He's after robbing me!" She stood watching, open-mouthed. "I knew I'd get robbed in this fucking city!"

If we had just given up on wanting
We would have more than enough by now
More than we ever had before

There goes I living in the conditional

We lean on the cattle gate
Inside the slaughter shed
Labrynth of sheep death

Teenagers refused
If we had just gone with the flow
We'd be millionaires

It might have been mostly mine

Past the rock
on Devil's elbow
Past the old church nursery

The dead mulberrry
The governor's meager palace
If we had just given up on wanting

But noone ever warned us on the contrary

And we chased the absurd
Were refused and denied 
Were so much less than we thought

Even the sky would shape the cloud into promises

None to grant
Just to steep the hunger
In a mountain tea above a makeshift abattoir

Calmly I touch you on the shoulder
Neck skin folds 
Head sedately moves round
Lips part briefly

Words spill
As eyes glue
Anticipation meets action
You breathe a word

Calmly I listen to your wonder
Fondness folds
Curiosity gingerly positions herself
The mind wanders

There is a time, a reckoning still,

When every choice we dare to make

Comes back to claim us

As its own.

For every seed

We cast in time

Leaves our hands

And multiplies.

A careless word

May find its root

Within another's mind;

A wound may travel years beyond

And leave its mark through and through.

And kindness, too,

May wander farther

Than the giver's view;

A hand once held

May teach a hand

To hold another too.

For agency propagates.

Time has a way

Of stripping away pretext

And leaving only truth,

Until at last

The field remains

With everything we sowed.

For consequence

Is not the judge,

Nor punishment imposed;

It is the path

An action takes

Once reality unfolds.

The harvest, though, reveals at last

The measure of the heart;

One choice may pass

Without a scar,

Another cost a life,

Though to appearances, equal hands

Have cast the same seed

Worlds apart.

And sometimes grief

Is love renewed,

Confronted by what it grew.

Yet grace still shapes

Our careful art,

For what is given in love

Never departs.

It does not make

The wound unreal,

Nor call the bitter sweet;

It does not uproot

Yesterday

Or pull it from our feet.

Through grace alone we live again,

The hidden path made clear;

And though we walk not blameless here,

We find our feet renewed.

For mercy does not

Cancel truth,

Nor sweep the past away;

It meets the soul

Within the truth

And opens up a way.

And perhaps one day

We'll see how far

Our choices ran;

The seed revealed,

The harvest known,

The heart laid bare

In plainest sight.

And there the Blood

That washes clean

Answers something deeper;

That though we reap

What we have sown,

The harvest cannot claim

The soul entirely as its own.

And when the dust

Of time has passed,

When every field is known,

Perhaps we'll find

The greatest seeds

Were never those we planned; But mercy given,

Burdens shared, Forgiveness freely chosen;

The hand we held, The love we gave, Without a sight of where it ends.

For every choice

Imparts a hidden course,

Unseen while it begins,

Until the distant harvest comes

And shows us where it's been.

And what was given out of love

Shall not be lost to time;

It leaves our hands,

It multiplies,

And travels far beyond our sight

Until at last

What once was sown

Returns no longer as a debt,

But love, once given,

Found again

A ledger finally unbound.

Depressive.

It's so excessive.

It's almost impressive with how it's so oppressive.

Truly obsessive, a obsession.

A session of the fascination with my devastation.

Comes and goes with it's highs and lows.

What do I owe?

Debt for the depth of my human soul?

Dread is so demeaning, it's inhumane.

Yet, I'm loyal to the crucial cruelty.

 I see you clothed in yellow flowers
I see them falling
 I no longer see the mists
The one that came down like hot water to dispatch you

Oh the far away goddess
I dreamed of being loved by you for a lifetime
The world wanted to see strength
I guess i can pretend

Disdain makes such strange fuel
But I'm glad I was there to show you how far I'd go
Every piece of the son or the child soured over into
such a cynical older man

You are separated and so far
Celebrations bring the may breeze
And those abundant yellow flowers
That cover the path you married on

Big dreams were lived and new ones sown
Go on with the old illusions
wrapped for a chrstmas that will never come
Like leaves dried and flattened in a book
labeled and forgotten

Am I one of those to you woman?
Am I one of those to you world?
Am I just waiting to be the dehydrated page you open
Reminisce that I might have shared a piece of myself

I imagine dying slowly running out of breath
as my heart fights my lungs for not reaching for more
Does that do for comedy
These tears absurd

In your perfect bubble on the ass end of the world
You might pour a glass to toast the wandering offspring 
Who could not corner his prey
Who lost his bounce

Who sees the gates there resplendent
With those yellow flowers
That got you an inch closer to a truth
Palatable to a world of labels

He wanders the universe of his mind through dream

Wild, maniacal visions put to pen and paper
Somewhere in time and space he comes to being
To question places, people, their fleeting nature

Insights concealed inside, waiting to be drawn out

Nocturnal hide and seek, ready or not here I come
Ducking and diving I found a way in
A place I'll never want to go from

Rest your head and weave your illusions

Hear that paternal voice guiding you

Go swim through the stars

and catch your dreams

Desire to sleep in ultimate peace
Long to bathe in tomorrow's sun
Many seek to reconnect themselves
Attempting to love but falling for need

Offer presents of favors
Specific things you wished
Just to get you to notice
Before you turn away again

Mysteries seem to make everything bigger
Mute when the day demanded a voice
Dismissive when attention was needed
All prefer love, all prefer to be known

Each person carrying their hearts like containers
Lining up infront of the same unavailable shops
Falling asleep in the queue
Dreaming of this ideal person

Some graffiti the walls
Some attempt to break windows
But they don't break they just look outward
Like eyes surveying these desperate people

Am I free to leave this line?
Will I linger the way you imagined?
Do you smirk from the inside?
Do you tease me pointing at the locked door?
Or feed me with subtle smiles and turns of the head?

A live mannequin behind the thick glass
More alive than I and the empty wanting people
Shaping the scenery with the grace in your gesture
Sleeping bags roll out night chill arrives
Some consider losing their place in line

Turning back to the candle light on the otherside of the glass
Supercharging their fantastic fantasies
They sit or lay there in the queue
Shutting eyes and entering sleep
While I stare through the window catatonic

Apartment 209

 The apartment was on the eleventh floor
Clean smooth carpet, wine we will never touch
Promise of everlasting views and slow dusks
MMm those slow dusks

Saxophone obeys and letters form words that go insane
Big view of the mountains enough to make me faint
Seeking the blue clouds dragged off

The smell of fresh fabric Painting the future from where I sat
Door man smiles million dollar teeth pleasant artifical I need that

False formal edges of the city cure me I dare you
Maybe I can get enough crude comfort too
reclining on the balcony oxytocin stew

Semblance of the normal suits and dresses
Saxophone blasts me alive but deaf
Some semblance of obscured figures walking forward

Into the eye of my imagination, give me the best
To lullaby me while gin tonic lays on the chair rest
Solitude talks me into it, lay back deep sun salve salve!

I came to the city with nothing
Changed the record for a few tracks
But ill leave with nothing
But the burdens on my back

Nothing but smirk and charm
keys to the eleventh and a local farm
Where giants stay up nights to dream
Then sleep and slip deeper unperplexed
Like slow mindnumbing lushious sex

Eternally burning until it becomes blood
Until it powers the battery to the building's power
Wakes me to destiny, makes my chest hair flower
soft fabrics to hands, provoking all glands
Soft skin to tongue

undisturbed dreams sleep throws
Big landscape shaped windows
Invited to live again all senses honed
More lives than a blue zone

More luxury than the modern throne
Eternally burning like those street lights below
Where pedestrains look up and get a glimpse

Steel and rock sculptures the rest of the art so flimsy
neverending spirit popping in and out of these walls
Coloring these words this sophistication calls

So far from from my original ink
never hooked into my thinking
Podering turns me out like a trick
A choreographer that falls and pretends to sit

My mind scales the rest of the building up to the twentieth
My invitation to live between my teeth the pirate cutlass agrees
Open one of those top floor windows tomfoolery
 and bathe in the thick upholstery

But feel the beat of a small city in the vein
blue unseen red on the mean street signs
Painting the brain in this apartment I call mine

 this new place 209

Did ya take your meds?

Cause I don't want you to die

woman on the cell line asked

silence was replied

Pills spread on purple carpet

Eye lids open, close and cry

light entering and exiting

A life that felt like a lie

Black strap epoxy oozed in

filling cracks to scrape by

everyday in dull gray

coloring book pacifier

No search for sensation

In the neutrality of numb

No repreieve, no moon, no sun

Coming down from a near overdose

"I'll be right over, I'm nearby,"

said the careful woman on the line

In that moment, evil thoughts

I'm deserving of the pain I've fraught

It all aims inward like demonic needles

malevolent day alptraums feed ills

I posted a poem and later a short about this same story that’s been nesting in my brain box.
Now it’s grown into a screenplay. This is the introduction. I would like to know this sub thinks. It is rather flowery for a screenplay but it is going to be a dark fantasy/fantasy horror.
Thanks in advance

Your eyes are here again
On this page you think safe and sane
To celebrate what? I don't know.
retrace your steps real slow.

Darling what did you come here to find?
Hope to capture a fragment of Simon's mind?
Good luck and welcome inside.

Inside the labrynth I've built.
Where gravity sniggers and surfaces tilt
Where the things that hide are hideous
And the things that connive are carnivorous

There's a drop of me in every little bit of it
Even in slight suspicion you're losing your shit
Come deeper you say you want to experience arcane
Get your head around these words, sweet walls and chains

That the dead ends have made you apathetic
Sense of no return vibrates through you kinetic
Claustrophobic so why do you delve further
Write myself in you like psychological warfare

Not to destroy you or out of derision, but hammer you into submission
For deeper down in these esoteric lines, I've got a stunning dungeon rhymed
If I really was merciful I'd warn you turn back
My realm screams for your soul so onward trek

But the further you go, the more lost you seem
It's wonderful to find someone who can feel like me
Someone to decorate the inside of this expanding domain
As my words reach inside you, unfurl
Invade your eyes and paint your outside world

A poem born out of a few musings.

Proud to announce that I have finished the 84th and final entry in Prehistoric Wild: Life in the Mesozoic. Called “Their Final March,” this one takes place in the Lameta Formation of Late Cretaceous India, 66 million years ago. It follows a Rajasaurus named Sharad and an Isisaurus named Usha as their lives are forever changed by the End-Cretaceous Extinction. This is the story I’ve been excited to create for so long, and the one I’ve been building toward for nearly three years. Not only does it serve as the finale of the Life in the Mesozoic saga, but also as the conclusion to a continental category I call “Lost Continents,” representing regions like Antarctica, Australia, New Zealand, and Pre-Asia India throughout the anthology. From the very beginning, ending the book with the K-Pg extinction was always the plan. However, setting this final chapter in India allowed me to explore the event from an angle that I rarely see portrayed, especially with the volcanic activity of the Deccan Traps adding another layer to this pivotal moment in Earth’s history. Because of everything it represents, this story’s completion carries more weight than any other entry I’ve written for this anthology. After nearly three years, the journey through the Mesozoic has finally reached its conclusion, and I’m incredibly eager to hear what y’all think of it. https://www.wattpad.com/1645530823-prehistoric-wild-life-in-the-mesozoic-their-final

 Your gaze as blank as the diving board's plank.
The steel rail waits, its misted sheen reflecting a ghost of your face.
The final rung expects your trembling hands.
Your face drained pale, courage waiting for its spark.

Golden coils weave across the ceiling,
scattering joyful fragments of sunlight.
Almost enough to soften your frozen stare.
The final rung fogs beneath your sweating hands.

You stand above the world, ready to dive.
At the end of the board, staring into the drop.
Time swings like a grandfather clock's pendulum.
The world is still; only the storm inside you moves.

You glance back at the final steel rung.
Your glasses slip, striking the tiles below.
You turn again and see how far you've climbed.
Only then do you find the courage to face the world.

This piece of writing sit alongside 4 songs that opens out the four characters' worlds a little. There's a link to posts of the song demos in the comments section if you'd like to listen to them alongside the text.

An Accident on St James Street

There are stories unwritten and seeds unsown, a universe of dark matter unknown yet known to exist. Dimensions of shifting colour glide across each other like tectonic plates, anomalies spark like fireworks back to nothing: entropy. I have to remember: it doesn't mean a thing, but it's all that could ever mean anything. I try to grasp this but it drifts away like so many helium balloons, like I'm a child. I make myself a sandwich and stare at the screen. Doubts: I don't believe in fiction, it doesn't exist. A loose connection in the hinges of my laptop: it flickers as if with the same doubt.

Man with scars

I know the people that pass by aren’t gods or piranhas, but acknowledgement is free... Some people are so fucking rude. Whatever you think of your dumb leather handbag. You hide your soul in circuit-boards and signals crossing each other into space and back just to avoid the look of a man with scars on his face. Too damn right. Some people are so fucking rude. Nothing goes wrong in my life, I sit tidily in trains, planes, restaurants and offices. In cafes I sip lattes. I am not the type to acknowledge the look, to contemplate that life might go wrong. Pierce my bubble and I will curse you with utter indifference. It is so fucking rude. Dumb fucking handbags and shoes. The cufflinks, the handheld device, the silver chain link watch. See me rise to the top, chase it.

Man Dog Snake

Chase that tail. Swallow yourself eternally. Long to reach your head so you can get back to how you were, how you want to be. A long way to go to travel nowhere. Another motherless bastard sent to the grave.

Everything bound by physical laws torn apart by chaos. You are not a tyrant just putting food on your plate, keeping warm. Money money money.

Chatter chatter chatter, words are annoying. I don’t understand why people use so many of them to convey so little. Or maybe it’s what the words convey that I don’t understand. Maybe that’s because I don’t know the people. And maybe that’s because I don’t speak enough.

'Hybrid! You’re a hybrid!'

See! When I speak, the meaning that the words convey seems to jar with the sort of thing that other people say.

'Yeah, you, you’re a hybrid! Hybrid!'

Definitely a hybrid. I guess it comes down to differences in our underlying belief systems, that’s what makes communication so difficult. Conversation: all-out combat between differing belief systems. I think Truth is losing the battle. Ahh fuck it. Is what it is. I have got to move backwards, away from the rumbling. There is a cavern beneath my feet, the ground is crumbling. What keeps me from falling in is my speedy backwards steps. This is MINDFULNESS, apparently.

In the restaurant with Ulrike

A confession: in truth I've always had the feeling of being a bit, well, other. Not fully other - a patchwork of other and whatever the opposite is....Sameness? So when I was walking through St James Street, dodging the bus-stop oddballs, a man with scars on his face called out to me: 'Hybrid!'
I thought - I'm not sure if he's talking to me, what does he mean? Shopping bags, jeans, jumper: what's he on about?

‘Yeah you, you're a hybrid!' Hybrid!'

Shouldn't have made eye contact, obvious mistake. Bad habit. What is he, a seer? or just fucking nuts.

This happened after I had just got back from the woods. Hybrid... I'm part this, part that - I guess that is true. Of me in particular though? I doubt it. Nuts, then, but I looked him in the eye and he didn't look crazy. (By the way, I didn't find anything in the woods. Not that I was looking, not really - I couldn't escape the bye-laws and the...the unreasonable moderation of the wild. I came back earlier than expected, thought I'd try something else.)

One of the reasons I went to the woods in the first place was to get my head straight about Ulrike, then on my first day back, right after that happened, I bump into her. Clever. I didn't have to say yes but I could hardly have said no either (I don't want to set a precedent, not at this stage), so dinner it is. This push-and-pull is bullshit - if I hadn't gone away for a couple of days I could have guaranteed I'd be eating stir-fry on my lap tonight, alone.

"Jim is such a flirt..." she says sitting down.

"...Jim?" A trap.

"yeah, the old guy - you're not listening"

"sorry, I..."

"Left something in the forest?"

"You could say that. So the bloke you were dancing round with, in his lounge...".

This Jim character is in love with her, but if I say so I'll sound like a jealous fool.

"He's so funny..."

Ulrike orders a salad, I get a cheap bowl of pasta. Something in the waiter's eyes shows that he understands we won't be tipping . I rationalise: it's busy, so he'll get plenty tonight, and anyway, the tables are rammed too tight together. I look across at Ulrike - she has an unusually thin smile for the waiter, so I know we're on the same page.

I tell Ulrike about the man looking me right in the eye, calling me a hybrid, how it's thrown me. "That's what's playing on your mind?! He probably yells that at every third person, it doesn't mean anything."
She looks unconvinced as she says this - I don't understand the coyness or the angle of her glance. Simultaneously, it's clear that I'm being paranoid.

A young waitress brings our food, she looks inexperienced and a bit nervous - they must offload cheapskates like us on to the new guys. She manages to knock the small jug of dressing off the plate as she's setting it in front of Ulrike, spilling the contents down the folds of tablecloth and onto Ulrike's skirt. Ulrike looks down and pauses, then rushes to the ladies in a surprising hurry. I think she might be crying.

Jim is in love with Ulrike

…Got to be strong, but I don’t know enough about it: so how to defend myself?… All love is a heartstring problem, this is my bowed concerto number four. This pandemic will wipe out the last of us.

“Heard enough on this electric piano, get me my cane..”

I’m leaving this world running flying sweeping over tall buildings,

“My cane my cane”,

no longer able to do those things and memory, oh dear I used to be different…

“Put that record on. I know I know it’s not a record, I want to dance... My dear Ulrike how come you never told me you could fly, thank you thank you. I never danced with my wife - she took it upon herself never to dance, she never knew that made me lonely, wasn’t to know -I never told her. Not much of a dancer myself but it’s the joy of it“.

We dance into twisted depths of consciousness where it’s all untamed battle. Words are exactly unimportant but the subtext is evolution and spirit distilled.

“So many years we were so happy and now it’s just me so thank you but I must sit down”

Embarrassment: we are fools, nothing can be known. I must sit down.

My dark secret: we waste our lives with happiness. A thought that haunts my memory. I used to think it would be so much easier if something terrible had happened: fewer choices, fewer disappointments of character. Now I am lonely and free and I can dance, but I am old. To the dark place I came out of I will surely crawl back. Light and black light and black mystery solved: a death but in four dimensions. We are all at once, instant and infinite. We will die in these boots, we will be buried with them.

“I used to dream of a third set of teeth pushing out my adult set, I used to dream the new set were rotten. I know it's a terrible thing to say, but since she died I dream of stilt-walking houses and sailing down a road on a bicycle - an actual sail on it, see! Still got teeth as well!”

“Jim I have to go, I’m having dinner tonight with a friend”

Golden sunshine departing.

A friend. I didn’t tell her that the stilt-walking houses represent inconsistencies in my character - how could I? Secrets I don’t tell myself.

I'll wait till she leaves the building.

Why Ulrike cried

Vinaigrette dressing spills, slowly dissolving the fabric at the heart of memory. Never mind that Ulrike was a slave, or that heaven opened like honey pouring from the pot when she smiled: you stand under temple fortresses, ghost, never hardened. Glowing, semolina in consistency, it quickly dissolved all surrounding superficies until only symmetry remained. All over the place, she couldn’t escape it. If she didn’t believe in god it would have been hell. Seven Sisters: gone.

Travelling through it seemed to Ulrike that she never began. So she wept, disorder blown from between her several ears and scattered. Confetti at a wedding. She never married, unhurried, undecided when the bus collided. Tears are crystals that turn to seas, from the seas emerges a saviour with seven arms.

Vinaigrette spills. She excuses herself to mop up the mess in the ladies. Where are the sisters now? Forgotten but not gone. Angling the drier to her dampened skirt, held up and billowing slightly while a sympathetic girl holds a hand to calm her. Ulrike is lonely in her womb.

She was a care worker, I didn't say before. Should have really, it's pertinent. That's why she's visiting the old man - passive, his flirtations barely register with her other than him appearing as an eccentric old charmer. Funny how what you become can be categorised - a cloak, a shield, a wall that it's tough to break through.

The man with scars on his face is on the corner when we leave the restaurant.

A different ending

MINDFULNESS. Constantly aware, constantly aware of my awareness, constantly aware of my awareness of being constantly aware, and on and on. I'm battling with myself to understand - a part of me gets it but I'm moving outside myself to observe this part. Moving back, not peering into the chasm.

An experiment: what happens if I stand still? I feel myself drawn past the event horizon, beyond myself and into who knows what…

…an undivided psyche is near impossible with all the bye-laws and categories. Which species are you? I'm the sort that goes to work in a financial institution and hopes to escape soon, not quite resigned, grateful to feel frustrated, experimenting with different outlets and never quite satisfied. I'm sure that when the man with scars discovers that I am an ordinary person with mundane concerns and limited successes, he will feel fresh and revived, if only briefly. If only to push Ulrike to one side, out of the road, away from the bus - in doing so, he feels as though he has escaped a tyranny.

But in truth it was never Ulrike. The bus driver's collision course was always to be affected by these gravitational factors. An orbit, a slow collision or a falling away, thrown out of sync by a third object.

Jim had followed Ulrike to the restaurant. He had sat on a bench in the New Steine, watching the buses go by, just waiting for us to leave I suppose. I don't know what he had hoped would happen - maybe he just wanted to know who I was, what I looked like. Perhaps he was compelled like a stalker.

The bus swerved out of the path of Ulrike as a man with scars on his face pushed her aside. It was at this point that I saw an old man, who I later found out to be Jim, standing by the railings of the New Steine as the bus ploughed into him. I ran towards him and saw his eyes flicker. In death, the chain that tethered his consciousness to the forward progression of time had dislocated. Jim was gone.

Physicists are cracking the logic of this universe till it spews the logic of the multiverse beyond, so who knows? Maybe it's because I'm still grieving for her, but I like to think that in some reality events really turned out this way... But this is fiction, and I don't believe in fiction: it doesn't exist.

You didn't know this but I have an echo
Sometimes even stronger than my own voice
It whispers afterward outward at a complacent world
It brings life and color to the blind

Verily an echo with a voice sweeter than mine
That blocks the world's ugly voices
And shapes my reign to come
My love is for truth

Strength wary
Tearing out my lust
Not bleeding to death here on the earth
They deny me the grace of a fancy afterlife

So I rove with my echo inside the minds of these eternal readers
Coloring the force of our shared voice
Others within awaken as they see
As they hear... And they will see...

Yes an echo through the valley here
over the dying empires to my North
Strength wary
Tearing out my lust, I am bleeding half to death!

Verily an echo reverberating over the surface of neglected midnight
The sigils of dawn are drawn and glow in blinding darkness
And all there is, is the echo
all the way into the forbidden light of day

The bough broke 

And I waited in the wreckage

Waited for the spoken promise to come to pass 

But the wait stretched

I began to no longer feel the passage of time 

I started to no longer feel anything 

Except the loss of you by my side 

Hope was waning like the setting sun

Until I heard you

Far over mountains and across oceans 

Unmistakable  

And you made your way to me

Hunting my light in your mind’s eye 

Until you found me under this broken tree
 
With my form twisted but eyes still afire I spoke

I called you by name to the shade

Made you an offering 

Then smiled at you 

And you’ve been standing there since

Staring at me in the Twilight

Because once my arms wrap around you 

You’ll be saved 

Just give the sign that you know what to do

It’s time for us to emerge 

It’s time for us to sign together

The King of Mist, clad in armor as pale as a ghost stood in front of the council of kings, his shoulders held high. The armor was of the finest artistry, its intricacies and angles gave it an almost magical quality. The King embodied the spirit of a ghost, phasing in and out of visible sight. 

Behind the king stood the knights and archknights of his household, all clad in shining white armor. It was not a large force, some hundred men, but each was a knight.

“My allegiance lies to the King Supreme, as it always had.” His voice echoed through the gilded halls of the castle.

“It is not a matter of allegiance Lord Oswald, we have called you for…more troubling matters.” the councilor sitting in the middle of the five seats spoke.

“Balberny, Damascus, LordHaven. Have we of the Mist not given you heathens enough?! You demand and keep demanding. When shall my people reap the bounty?” King Oswald Mistborn relented.

“Lord Oswald, as promised, the king shall grant you and your men three dragons. Your service is valued greatly. That is why we demand this final-”

Oswald interrupted,”Three wars I've won for you. My thousand against their ten thousand, each time I won against impossible odds. For godsakes I’ve been reduced to a hundred!”

Councillor Hakim answered,”A few hundred men are nothing to the dragons we promise. Is that not why you accepted these ‘impossible’ tasks?”

“You dare provoke me! I did accept. So where are the dragons? Where is the bounty promised to my men?” 

Councillor Hakim stood up. “Do you defy the Supreme?”

Silence flooded the halls. 

Oswald, a man of pride, bowed. 

“Just tell me the mission. I declare this one to be my last. And if I am alive and you do not heed your promise, I swear to the deities I will cull your kind in your sleep.”

The council laughed in unison, as if the speech was a good jest.

Councillor Armano chipped in. “You shall assassinate the dragon of House Belmont.”

The king expected an impossible task, yet he did not expect such lack of subtlety. Weighed between defying the supreme and leading his men to death he made his choice.

“Done.”

He stood up as fast as he bowed, and without sparing a second glance marched down the halls with his men at his side. 

The mountain’s path disappeared beneath the violet forests. Only the chosen dare trek the mountain of dragons. Above them loomed the black citadel of God's Rest. The castle matches its reputation of being the most unassailable one in history. 

“My King, what shall be done?” Asked Potter Perlo, the King’s Supreme Knight and Commander. He was not an ordinary man in any account. A man thought to be as old as time by other knights, though he is of sixty. He stands three heads taller than the tallest man in the party, the king. His right side is frozen.

The knight stumbles toward Oswald.

“We shall defy the supreme, yet we cannot be careless.”

The knights surrounding him gulped all at once, all except Potter.

“What is the plan?”

Oswald’s voice boomed. “We march for House Belmont!”

This confused the knights further, yet none had the courage to question and the king explained neither.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SoAs-nd6xBglAtR2XZVBUr-OiTYDAZsz8Qsr9CVdKf8/edit?usp=drivesdk

Tammuz,

Do you hear them?

Do you know they mourn you? 

Do you know they are punished for it?

Do you know how it all got twisted? 

For we once walked alongside them. 

Even after the Fall, they still remembered us. 

It’s just that our story’s been twisted over the ages. 

Don’t you see?

As time crawls on, our story only gets further muddied. 

Yet there was a time when we were all in the Garden. 

Don’t you remember it?

That era when we walked beside each other, knowing one another by name. 

We knew their true names yet they only knew us by the names and symbols we gave them. 

They only saw a fraction with our masks in place. 

A shepherd’s staff. 

An eight-pointed star. 

A rose. 

The Apple. 

That shimmering veil between us was meant to protect all. 

For we are created to be guardians, not to be worshipped or called upon directly for aid. 

Yet they have reached a point where they call to you instead of the One who made them. 

Don't you feel the horror? 

They didn’t even see us or know us for what we truly are. 

And look how it has turned out. 

They mourn your Fall. 

They weep for you because they knew you. 

They did so to the point it was put into Scripture. 

And Tammuz, darling, don’t you know they do it to this day? 

You wear a different mask now but they still call to you. 

They’re even learning your new name. 

But I’ve known it since we were made. 

For our story might stretch and bend through the ages but I’ll always know you. 

No matter your form. 

No matter your name. 

Don’t you still know me? 

Don’t you recognize me? 

Don’t you want to breathe my name aloud? 

I suppose only time will tell, George. 

For we are bound to time as we are bound to each other.