WERRRLD CUP

England have actually managed to score a goal. It’s all the city needs in order to poison itself further than it needs to, and every street corner is being propped up by a bleary eyed disheveled football fan pissing on his own shoes.

A weak retaliation to World Cup events features the involvement of taping bin bags to windows like a teen goth blotting out the World, and projecting a movie onto a white sheet in the office until all the unpleasantness outside dies down.

Which is doesn’t. Obviously. It’s England, for fuck sake, and as thus everyone decided to skive off work early, get on the bevvies mid afternoon and watch some overpaid ignoramus’ boot a ball around a bit of grass in a bleak fit of faux-patriot flag waving.

We’re in a noodle bar. 10pm. A pissed up scouse couple bounds in addressing each other with slurs and the kind of volleying pent up insults which must develop months into a relationship with a person who thinks a noodle ‘is like spaghetti but with, like, chinese stuff on it’. Christ.

The waiter approaches them, he talks in broken English - as do they - but for very different reasons.

The only comprehensible part of the exchange is that they want two beers.

No beer. Ran out. Have tea. Water.

YER’VE RAN OUT OF BEER?

Yes. All gone. Sorry.

YER SERIOUS?

Yis.

ALRIGHT THEN. FUCKIN’ELL. WE’LL HAVE TWO...WHAT DID YOU SAY YOU HAD? FANTAS? WE’LL HAVE THEM.

He brings over two generous glasses of tap water, and returns to the counter with a look of worry on his face.

Eh love, what the fucksthis?

FANTA. ALL THEY HAD.

Why’s it see through, like?

MAYBE ITS ‘OW THEY MAKE IT OVER THERE.

Over where?

YOU KNOW. CHINA LIKE...

The waiter is passed a tray from the kitchen. I busy myself with a mountain of noodles, pretending to have some control over chop sticks, but two pints in and I’m inexplicably bloody drunk. There’s soy sauce everywhere. I want to turn around to watch, but fear getting a glass of ‘china-fanta’ thrown over me head.

I hear him put the tray down.

WHATS THIS LOVE?

Starter. Sea-weed.

OH RIGHT. YER. TAAA....

They dig into it with cluttering, clattering, cutlery which sounds like it’s being used by a donkey wearing boxing gloves.

The waiter hasn’t even got back to the counter when...

WHAT THE FUCKS THIS? EH! WAITERRR!

His shoulders drop and he returns to the table. The noodle bar is silent.

THIS SPINACH IS DEAAD SALTY, LAD.

Seaweed. Dish are seaweed, not spinach.

YER WHA?? SEA WHAT? IT’S FUCKING SALTY.

It normal. Seaweed salty.

IT’S FUCKING DISGUSTIN’ MATE. TAKE IT AWAY, THAT IS FUCKIN - UUURGGH - VILE, THAT.

He returns it to the counter. There’s a hubbub about in the kitchen. Someone is shouting.

Back at the table, the couple are fighting again.

WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOUR FUCKIN FACE?

My face? What’s wrong with your fuckin face? Pyaar sour mug on you, gerrl.

FUCK OFF. IM TEXTING SOMEONE.

Who? Who yer fucking texting at this hour?

NONE OF YER BUSINESS, IS IT? GET YER GRID OUT OF ME FUCKIN FACE.

Shut the fuck up. Yer doing me head in tonight.

I’M DOIN YOUR FUCKIN HEAD IN? YOU’RE THE ONE THAT PISSED ON YOUR FUCKING SHOES EARLIER, YER GOBSHITE.

The waiter returns, sheepishly.

You leave now, sorry.

YER WHA?

You leave. No charge. Just go, please.

YOU ARE NOT FUCKIN KICKING US OUT!?

Please, no swear. Go now.

He opens the door. The girl stumbles up, sways for a while, swallows a small bit of vomit by the looks of it and looks at her boyfriend who’s attempting to tie his laces for the journey outside.

FUCK OFF. WHATS A FUCKIN NOODLE ANYWAY? WOULDN’T WANT TO EAT ‘ERE. CMON BABES, LET’S FUCKIN GO.

She slides out of the place in a diagonal motion - her head closer to the floor than her fucking shoulders.

Her boyfriend finally staggers up. He shakes the waiters hand and pats him on the back.

Alright lerd, alright. Going now.

A fork falls out of his pocket.

Shit.

Him and the waiter stare it at for a good five seconds, then stare at each other, and then back to the fork, all in complete silence. The man surveys the rest of the gawping customers in the restaurant and then stares back at the fork. He picks it up and puts it back in his pocket as though no-one can see him.

I’ll just take me fork, and leave, lad.

The door slams after him like a forced applause following a bad joke.

The waiter does a small victory dance behind the counter and smiles at everyone.

Fuck England.

Trash

It was one stain on the floor.

One crimson blush.

It wouldn’t budge.

She’d used every commercially celebrated cleaning apparatus on the market - if the kitchen had been a body, it would have been scrubbed and exfoliated in such harsh detail as to draw it down to the bone.

She could see her reflection in every veneer.

Except for the crimson blush on the fucking floor.

He was out in the shed. His fingers had fallen off by now. His toes gnawed by fuck knows what, probably rats, possibly decay. His face was gone. His mouth hung off. It had been raining a lot. Who knew what the fuck went on when you were buried in a place like that.

He’d crept in through the window a month ago. She knew him. A little. Enough to share a moment of questionable merit between the both of them when he’d woken her up, blind drunk on whatever, tripping over the mantle.

Initially, she felt humiliated. It was a ridiculous impulse, she knew. Of all the things she could have been scared of or worried about in that moment, it was the state of her bedroom, the underwear she was sleeping in, the dried up make up on the pillow - which bothered her the most.

She hadn’t cleaned for months. There was a breadcrumb path leading up to the bed of old, crusty underwear torn off in the midst of misjudged dalliances, used johnnies, shredded stockings.

There were books left open at pages which declared boldly her mindset, her gnawing ache.

There were half eaten sandwiches, abandoned mid bite.

There was a belt still buckled to the steel headboard where her wrists, neck, and ankles had been shackled and snagged. She always picked the men who would willingly abandon her. And like Houdini, she’d wriggle free, course with the stench of a used companion, and sit on her bed contemplating what to do now she was free.

And now he was in her room. And he was standing there. He saw everything. And she was humiliated.

He was rotten from rain. Decayed, like a soiled notebook.

It was a challenge, like the moment an opponent pulls out the first fist, and you have a split second to choose whether to dive out the fucking way or duke it out.

She did nothing.

It was the most romantic thing she could have imagined.

He merely walked over. His stench infusing into every one of her senses, even her fucking sight was watered by it, her hearing dulled by the pounding of her sickened heart.

He dragged his nose across her thighs. Her stomach. Her tits. Her ribs. Her neck. Her ears. He settled between the frozen applause of her snatch, sniffing like a dog finding a discarded crumb of a dinner round the back of the bins.

She stroked his scalp, sticky and wet, she found his face, half torn and flaking, his vacant eye socket. She shoved a finger inside and he purred with approval.

She was bleeding herself, and he began lapping it up.

She pulled her foot under his t-shirt and found a gash by his ribs, and probed her foot the whole way through. She found his still heart. His weeping chamber of what used to be.

She knew him. He lived in the house at the back of hers, and at night he’d sit by the back window and stare out.

She never closed the blinds.

He never closed the blinds.

Every act in that room of hers was a performance, and he saw every movement.

But she was still ashamed to have him here, like a fan stepping foot on the set of the movie they knew every mechanic of, she knew the illusion would be shattered. The fantasy over. It was all lighting and scripted and propped and caricatured to fucking perfection.

She couldn’t judge him in his current state. We all went this way eventually, she realised, and at least he’d managed to crawl back through death and offer himself to her, finally.

She wished she had a cock to shoot herself up into him with - to solder his insides with every volume of her lust.

He was fascinated by the beat of her body. The orchestral thrum. She was a funeral march.

She pulled at his skin. She sucked at his fingers, until his index dropped out in her mouth like a refrigerated pacifier. She peeled the flesh from his shoulders and carved her name into the bone.

She gave head to his hollow eye socket, and nibbled at his lips - spitting out fragments of pout and blush.

He made love to her the only way he knew how - by inhaling every inch of her that he could, by digesting every fluid, by petting everything which strutted out the life which he’d now lost.

But everything has it’s expiry.

His was long before now, but theirs was this instant, in a bouquet of projectile, gory crimson, like a bride tossing the flowers out at the next in line for matrimony.

He convulsed and withered. He stopped.

She dragged his body downstairs like a bag of trash. A trail of innards and flesh and blood and loss, curdling against linoleum.

Exhausted, she left him on the kitchen floor and sat up on the counter top. She found cigarettes. She lit a few. Smoked a few. She stared at the body. She stared at the blood on her foot. She could still taste him.

She missed the fuck out of him.

She fell asleep on his caving chest - his decaying steeple of ribs pillowing her fractured rest, before throwing him in the shed amongst the rest of the junk she’d accumulated over the years and never looked back at.

No-one could ever know.

It was fucking romance, and it was gone.

Friday Night On The 82 Bus Home

Piss-ant stumbles aboard. Can smell his cider potency from the middle row of seats I've stumbled myself on.

The man in front of me keeps sneezing and wiping his germs on the back of the seat in front of him. I keep my hands to myself. I levitate off the seat, just in case I catch anything. I'll levitate the fuck off the bus later, too, just to be fucking sure. The 82 is riddled like an auld rat.

Piss-ant sits in the disabled seat, facing the rest of the bus, like a burnt out performer taking to the stage and re-living his glory years of packed out dive bars and high fives and cheers.

EH, DRIVEERRR! CAN YER GIVE US A SHOUT WHEN WE'RE NEAR THE 24 HOUR OFFY, LAD?

The driver slows down the bus. What was that lad? 24 hour? Yer mean on Park Road, yeah?

YEEAAH, SOMEWHERE.

He scans the faces in front of him, realising everyone's clocked him in his scruffiest hour. His binge peak.

'OOO WANTS A DRINK? COME'EAD.

He pulls out a Tesco bag with a bottle of wine inside and takes a big gulp.

The germ fest in front of me, shakes his head in dismay, and pissed out of his skull himself slurs: Aaah, lad, put it away lad. Don't be doing that to yourself. Don't be...err...put it away.

He punctuates with belches. The piss-ant gawps at him and spits some wine out all over himself like a try hard punk arriving in London twenty years too fucking late. Get off the fucking stage, lad.

PUT IT AWAY?? NARR LAD. DYER WANT SOME YERSELF, DO YER? he starts punching his own head WELL THEN CRACK ME OPEN. IT'S ALL LIQUID IN 'ERE. he continues bashing his head in AAAALLL LIQUID!! He screams, laughing.

A woman with a Marks&Spencer bag at the front of the bus gets up and moves to sit at the very back. Must think she's the fucking queen.

The piss-ant curls up into the corner of his seat and starts singing to himself. His words stagger listless points of thought which sound like they're rumbling round his liquidated brain like a pinball with no-one pushing the flipper.

THERE MIGHT BE A KEBAB SHOP OPEN. YER. KEBAB. BIT GREASY THOUGH. BOSS THOUGH. FIVER THAT. CHICKEN KEBAB! YIIIRRRSE. GET A CHICKEN KEBAB. he laughs to himself CH-CH-CH-CHICKEN, CHICKEN-LICKEN. LITTLE CHICKEEEE. IN ME BELLIEEE.

Germ fest in front of me staggers up for his stop. He shakes the hand of Piss-ant as he's leaving.

Y'alright lad. You take it easy, yerr? Have a safe one.

YOU TOO LAD. YOU TOO.

He get's off the bus and cracks open a can of Super Tenants. Fuckin hell, everyones on it. This is how the World ends. Friday night on the fucking 82 bus.

Eee'yarr lad. The offy's coming up.

MEGGAAA! TA DRIVER.

Piss-ant quivers up from his seat - a walking turd - and stands by the door. He spots the offy - it's nearly midnight and it's got a bigger queue than was spotted on the same street not too long ago for voting.

THERE IT IS! OFFY!!

The bus drives a little while further to get to the bus stop, piss-ant panics.

WHERE YER FUCKIN GOIN, LAD? LET ME OUT!! YER GOIN MIIIILLES OFF! FUCKSAKES.

The driver stops and piss-ant jumps off and starts running like a kid spotting an ice cream van after school.

The bus is silent and still, and all I can smell is the booze on my own breath.

The Hangover

Three day binge. Inexplicable unplanned binges, cross-firing into each other.

It’s morning now, somewhere in deep, silent vaults pertained in my skull is a bunch of brain cells licking each other back awake, and cursing my fucking name. They’re all mush now. Hollow. They’re skins without substance.

Coffee, I think, coffee will fix everything. Come on fellas, stop punishing me.

Sitting then in a greasy spoon, staring directly through the steamy vapors cradling my limp, greying face and into the black cavern of optimism, of comfort, of muddy caffeine.

Somewhere near the counter a woman can be heard abusing the waitress for not putting any cream on her mocha.

We don’t have cream, the waitress tells her.

The woman turns on her heels, swears, and then turns back as though nothing has happened.

She asks for a white coffee instead, Can you manage that? She spits at the poor, scrawny underpaid cow behind the counter.

She walks past my table. I cower.

It’s 11am and she’s wearing stack heels so large they resemble murder weapons for the feet. Her hair is bright purple and short. She’s also wearing a cut off denim jacket which she probably bought ready-cut and grungey looking. She probably paid a lot of money to look so fucking awful.

I suddenly catch a whiff of myself - three day hedonism. A stench potent with shameful things, burnt things, mysterious things, unclean things, chemical things, lusty things, sleepless things. I can’t judge anyone.

I sip at my coffee and watch a pigeon trying to eat a bee on the pavement outside.

The purple woman returns to the counter.

Wheres me coffee, love?

It coming. Being made now - two minute, sorry promise.

Oh is it now? Bloody ordered that before anyone else in ‘ere.

She starts pointing around the place - Before him, before her, before this one ‘ere - she throws a finger at me. I have a minor stroke and feel a flush of sweat engulf me.

It coming miss. Two minutes.

I NEED it now, girl. Do understand that? I fucking need it, NOW. I’m not leaving this counter until you fucking pass it to me.

Fine. You wait.

The scrawny foreign waitress escapes to the back and rants something in an indecipherable fast paced language. She brings out two full English breakfasts and walks past the silly cow stood at the counter.

Eh, love. Are they our breakfasts? She storms over to the table the waitress has just slammed the plates down on. Make sure you bring that fucking coffee over, she says sternly shoving her face so close to the waitress’ that their noses nuzzle for a second.

The coffee comes over.

The purple things friend is kicking off now. She’s from Yorkshire and her voice sounds thick with the experience of a woman who’s probably broken more than her share of teeth, jaws and noses in her time.

She’s wearing a maxi-dress which she probably bought from the market, but will proclaim it’s designer to anyone who dares fucking ask.

The Yorkshire one is unsatisfied with her breakfast. Fuck knows what she was expecting, but apparently the beans are touching too much sausage, the sausages ‘look funny’, the bacon looks too fatty and it has a fried egg rather than two poached eggs as requested.

She walks up to the counter. She’s also wearing big heels but in the disguise of a gigantic wedge which bellows her arse out like a prize ass (the animal, not the body part).

The service ‘ere, love, let me tell yer - she puts her hand on her hip - the service ‘ere is fucking disgusting. Yer food is bloody disgusting. And you are a poor, poor, excuse for a bloody wage, aren’t yer? Listen love, tell yer chef behind there, yeah, to fucking just throw an egg on - a decent bloody egg - he can even scramble it if his fookin GNVQ cookery class hasn’t covered poachin’ yet.

Two minutes, she scowls, any longer than that and you’re gonna have a bloody problem.

She marches back to her purple state of a mate, and the two of them discuss how incredibly, soul destroying and offensive the greasy spoon they chose to eat in has turned out to be. They change the subject to talking about Sex And The City and how it taught them ‘a lot about love an’thaaa’ when they were young girls.

My coffee’s running low. I watch them out of the corner of my eye stuffing sausage, bacon and toast into their mouths in massive mouthfuls and hope to God one of them gets it lodged in their throat - if just for a minute.

I contemplate gagging them with my own putrid, stinking socks but think better of it. It would mean having to walk home with my feet rubbing inside my shoes, and today will be hard enough as it is.

Their eggs haven’t turned up. They’re furious.

My phone keeps going. Text messages pile up and crash together the way traffic jams do when a rogue car slams into the back of it. Apologies. Pleas. Begging. Seduction attempts. invitations to suspicious parties. Frightening anecdotes. I feel bile rise. Flashbacks hit me.

The purple thing and her donkey mate throw their napkins onto their half full plates. They take a sip of their coffee each and both look at each other with dramatic disdain. They charge once more at the counter and with juvenile, disturbing synchronization hurl a shit storm of abuse back at the waitress.

They grab their faux-designer bags and totter out the place. I think I remember an episode of Sex And The City when Carrie Bradshaw did the exact same when leaving a greasy spoon, but then realise it was actual an episode of Street Crime Uk involving a jewish trannie called Minnie who wasn’t served kosher meat.

Fuck.

The waitress starts sobbing.

I grab a few napkins out of the table dispenser and run to her aid, dabbing her face and apologizing on behalf of half-cut, badly dressed northern women every where.

They’re so rude, I say, grinning shit at her.

And then just as planned she smiles at me, says her thanks, and makes me a free coffee.

She squirts cream on the top of it.

We had it the whole time, she says, I just didn’t want to give it to them whores.

Untitled

It was perhaps one of the only times he’d ever felt this way – invincible, almost. Which was ironic considering this was the day James chose to hurtle himself, messily and slowly, towards death.

There’s nothing like slowly killing yourself to make you feel more alive, my good man, he tells the cashier, who’s nervously scanning the bottles and cans he removes from the overstocked trolley. He nods appreciatively – if anyone understands the merits of slowly killing oneself, it’s a person who scans barcodes for a living.

In the trolley is a small crate of medium strength lager, two large bottles of premium strength lager, a litre of vodka, and a quart of whiskey, gin and rum, respectively. There’s also two bottles of champagne, one bottle of sparkling wine, and a bottle each of white zinfandel and cotes du rhone.

You throwin’ a party…? the cashier asks, deadpan, whilst waiting for news on a price check on the crate of medium strength lager.

James smiles and a small wisp of a laugh creaks out the side of his mouth only to crumble sheepishly back into his throat.

No, not a party… he takes his sunglasses out of his pocket and pushes his unwashed hair back with them. He stares at the cashier warmly but inquisitively, as if taking stock of how much he can actually trust him.

You ever have something bad happen--and, like, people just stare at you like you’re an idiot and say ‘it’s not the end of the World…’?

The cashier nods. He’d been told that the loss of his job at a local supermarket was ‘not the end of the World’, and then again he was also told that being hired for the same position for a different supermarket was also ‘not the end of the World’. And unfortunately for him, they were both right.

Well…

James smiled broadly and pushed his glasses onto his nose

It’s the end of the World, my good friend.

He handed over a bundle of notes to the cashier, who scanned the last item and processed the transaction.

Here-- he says You’ve given me too much…

You keep that…I won’t be needing it.

And with that James starts whistling and pushes his little trolley of death ahead of himself and into the car park.

The cashier cannot accept tips. He looks around himself at the empty aisles and stuffs the notes into the front of his trousers. He rings a bell and talks into a microphone above it.

Margaret – I’m going to go on my break now.

James is driving more carefully than he usually would – his path from here on in has been so specially crafted that it would be a shame to die now. He wouldn’t want for that cashier to turn up at his funeral and say It’s okay guys, he told me he was going to kill himself that night anyway, so it’s really not a big deal.

Because it needs to be a big fucking deal.

There needs to be the right outfit.

Books need to be open at certain pages, with particular lines highlighted.

An album needs to be put on repeat.

In fact his entire apartment needs to be as meticulously arranged as a film set. Mise en scene suicide.

Fire engines and police cars hurtle past – their sirens blare into a mess of decibels which make James thankful he’ll be dead within the next 24 hours. And then he wonders where the vehicles are headed, and a terribly familiar feeling sinks into his stomach.

If the events of, well, his entire life (and the lives of the people around him) were anything to go by – those vehicles would be heading to the block of flats in which he lived.

He turns the corner and laughs for lack of a better reaction – BINGO.

The flames are pretty much out now – in their place are black, crumbling, smoking debris of misfortune.

He stops the car. Walking smugly alongside it is Stacey. She leans against the window of the driving seat and puckers a kiss up against it. James rolls his eyes and dejectedly winds it down.

Stacey…?

James.

She smiles warmly. She pulls a cigarette out from behind her ear and pulls a lighter from out of her bra.

I didn’t know you smoked, he states suspiciously.

I don’t, really, her smile broadens.

- I wasn’t going to just let you kill yourself.

James stares at the three crew of firemen struggling to put the flames out and nearly cries in frustration.

I really don’t think that it’s something for you to worry about, he takes the cigarette out of stacey’s hand and starts smoking it. He pauses for a second –

What made you think I was going to kill myself anyway?

She laughs – a sweet, childish laugh which is perhaps too innocent for its own good.

Pillow talk…

Pillow talk? he thinks back to a fortnight ago and drinking whiskey at the Hades-A-Go-Go, walking Stacey home and then inadvertently sticking his cock in her several hundred times.

…oh yeah. Pillow talk…

Can I get in? she gestures at the seat next to him.

I don’t know, Stace.

Well, listen – my apartment was directly below yours. Looks like were both homeless…so I think you’d better offer me a seat.

Wait a minute - just what exactly’s happened here?

Set fire to your apartment. But it was either that or I let you kill your—

Stace…?! Are you being bloody serious?

Were you being ‘bloody serious’ when you told me you wanted to ‘take the reigns of death and ride them to the afterlife’?

Did I actually say that?

You did.

Fuck. I sound like a dickhead.

You are a dickhead.

Okay then, he stares at her, Get in. Were going—somewhere, I guess.

He stares at his home. Everything he loved - or presumed to have loved - was gone. Scorched. Blackened. Curling. Done. Bye!

Childhood relics. Photos. Love letters. All that shit was cremated. A sudden swathe of relief curdled lovingly inside him - a feeling followed swiftly by ardent jealousy, as though his life had given up on him and bolted before he had the chance to do it first.

It was like those relationships were you pick up the phone to break up with someone, only to discover them on your doorstep about to do it first.

He was to be found covered in his vomit, yes, but surrounded by all of his lifelong achievements - a puzzle scene, a portrait - people would have looked between his corpse and his home and interpreted his demise in the same way that someone would an art piece.

If he were to kill himself now he’d be the bloke who’d lost everything in a fire, people would say Well, no wonder he bloody killed himself if his home got burned down - because people were fucking stupid like that and always making lazy assumptions without bothering to stare at a bigger picture.

You couldn’t have waited until I was inside the the fucking flat before you set fire to it?

She looks sternly back at him. She hopes to burn a hole through his temple with all the love she feels for him - she narrows her eyes, imagining the space between a gun trigger and a finger is the same amount of space between her eye lids - bang! bang! Shot down.

She’d mount him on her wall.

She’d mount herself on him.

Stop looking at me like that, he mumbles.

He’s counting cats eyes. He’s wondering how fast he needs to go to cause enough trouble to make the car kaboom-boom. He says it out loud, ‘Kaboom-boom’ and imagines what it would feel like to die with your flesh soldered to twisted, burning metal. To feel limbs tear off emphatically with the explosion of machinery.

Not something he’d like to happen.

The motorway is edgeless. To drive down it for long enough is like walking around in a circle, or more accurately walking up a set of spiralling stairs which lead back to the start of the stairs. Or, more accurately, Hell.

He’s only just wondered what will happen when the petrol runs out. He hasn’t any money left. Stacey wont have any. Never did do. Lazy fucking kid.

How old are you, anyway?

Fourteen, she smiles.

Christ. He thinks to himself. Why did I even have to ask that? I could have been dead by now. That bit of information would never have been made known to me, and now I have to die with that on my fucking conscience.

Fourteen?!

Fourteen.

He thinks about the cashier in the supermarket. Maybe he should go back to the shop and demand his money back of him.

-

They sleep in a car park. Occasionally, James drifts off to sleep, but for the most part he’s awake. He hears his heart-thudding through his ears as though he’s wearing sea-shells. He becomes aware of his shallow, half-arsed breaths. Aren’t breaths automated anyway? Even his lungs couldn’t be fucked enough to process properly. Great.

Stacey sleeps upright, her head lolling against her chest. Occasionally it recoils as though someone has her on a pulled piece of string, but it soon lolls back down again.

There’s no waking her. James smokes. Coughs. Farts. Screams (once). Cries (more than he’d care to admit). Gropes her (barely). But she’s out cold - quarantined in exhaustion.

He should never have fucked her. Look at her. She looks fourteen. When she isn’t talking herself up, or getting her well developed tits out, or begging to suck his cock, she has the blatant naivety of a child. Tiny features. Flawless. You should never touch something like that. To touch it is to ruin it.

In the morning James’ll stare at her and remember all the women he’d forgotten the names of. All the ones he’d let out of his house in the morning and washed off as quick as a hangover. All the ones he’d pined and begged for from afar - affixing a fantasy to an aesthetic that never matched up to the one in his head. Beautiful women. Desperate women. Tortured women. Frightening women.

They drive in silence the way married couples sit at the breakfast table for years, furiously staring tea and burning their hands on coffee pots, stealing spiteful glances at each other for ruining the others life.

They drive until the petrol runs out. Until they’re stuck on a road with nothing but themselves and the resentment of running.

This was the afterlife he’d always feared.

She was right. He would have been crazy to have killed himself if this was all there was on the other side.