THE CLAW

Christine and I have a new post on Hijacked Amygdala.

hijacked amygdala

Image by Christine Renney

I have become so adept at it, the getting close and yet maintaining a space, a divide. It is flat here, a desperate patch without a roof and no walls. Apart from the one I have built and that is sturdy enough and tall. But there is the slightest of cracks and I can see through and if I press my ear against it and concentrate I can hear.
They tend to the old woman, bringing her food but mostly drink. Cans of “Super Strength” lager. One of them opens a can and places it in her hand. If she would allow it, he would help her to drink from it, steadying and guiding her head, in order to limit the spillage. But she won’t be helped and motions for him to back away, which he now does and, at a safe distance, he sits and…

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GHOST LETTER 41

Image by Christine Renney

To say I have completed the circle and made my way around again would be going too far, and yet these city streets that I frequent and where I linger they form a block and it has become somewhere. A place I can’t help feeling isn’t so unlike the one from where I began, the one from which I fled.
Each morning when I begin walking this block, I pass a man who works for the city along the same stretch of pavement. He is a street cleaner and glancing back I watch him at his work. If and when he isn’t there I am thrown. It seems, fleetingly, that the structure of my day has been tilted a little.
But I keep moving, pushing toward the familiar until I hear the City, or at least this small part of it, coming around and waking again.

HAIKU VII

Image by Christine Renney

There is salt
in every lie

CHEAP HOTEL

Christine and I have a new post on Hijacked Amygdala .

hijacked amygdala

Image by Christine Renney

I lay back on the unmade bed and stare up at the ceiling. I trace patterns in the damp, find faces in the decay. Alien and immobile they stare back.
I have lost track of time and am unsure how long I have been here in this room. How many days have I managed to lose, writhing on the thin white sheet, trying and failing to grip the mattress beneath.
My mind is a cavernous blur and in my listlessness I have left no markers. I haven’t been reading and can’t add up the pages or count the stories.
I realise I am hungry, painfully so. I push myself up and, twisting around, I sit on the edge of the bed. I place my feet on the ground and clutching my stomach I gaze down at the carpet. But it is a good thing – this…

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GUNSLINGER

THE ERASER #11

Image by Christine Renney

For Tanner, each name as it appeared on his list was merely a statistic, albeit one it was his job to render obsolete. He was all too aware that there were levels and some of them had sunk deeper into the quagmire than others. But he had always believed it was important not to make a distinction and that the guilty were guilty.
But was Tanner still so sure it was as simple as that?

When disappearing a life Tanner was often struck by how bizarre it was, this occupation of his. He always began at the very end of the trail and worked his way back toward the beginning. As he did so he discovered just how far each individual had fallen and for how long they had gotten away with it. Opposing the System and spreading the lies and helping to keep the rumours alive. Because that is all it was – the subversive’s idea that there was another way and it could be different. It was just a rumour.

Trawling down the years Tanner often wondered at which point they started listening to those lies and believing in that idea, in the rumour. But there was of course no record of this, no hard evidence that Tanner could take in his hands and rip into shreds. Or if there were it was too well hidden amidst the minutiae, too deeply entrenched within the mundane facts that help to make all of us tick.

HAIKU VAULT # 2