We are the dead.

A vous de jouer.

rathrunpredictabl:

Her apartment used to be a much bigger one, then some crafty landlord decided to put walls everywhere and partition it into little studio flats. If you squint, you can still see the lofty old apartment in the miniture new one. We sit back together on the sofa bed and pretend to stare at the ceiling far above our heads. I’ve been surreptitiously analysing her bookshelf for a while now, and I think she’d appreciate my own collection. She’s drinking vanilla-flavoured soya milk from a tall glass, with a white and blue straw. I have supermarket lemonade still in the can.

Outside the high window, a crocodile floats sedately past, attached to a hundred helium balloons with a guiding rope around its neck. The small child on its back shrieks with laughter, and cries in French for the reptile to go faster.

We look at each other. She looks at her watch at the same second I look at my phone. We look at each other again.

‘Shall we go?’ I ask.

‘Nah. Not yet.’

rathrunpredictabl:

I keep feeling my ‘singing voice’ stirring. I mean, the part of me-the-writer that wants to write important things prettily. I blame Nick Miller’s novel excerpt, and reading S.B.’s poems.

Then, yesterday evening, I spent about ten minutes staring at a blank page.

Sigh.

Advice to self: Just put the words together, and don’t be afraid.

Freewriting 2

rathrunpredictabl:

screens and places to look at things and people with bright colours and music that shines little pixels synchronised happy happy happy the effort to convince that this thing is needed i am needed buy buy buy happiness is not material hedgehog by the porch on a cool night with its foot stuck out in the cat’s waterbowl eating biscuits by the plantpot just a few more moments to absorb this feeling before everything goes dark again little creature brief life knows nothing of the world apart from the two-inch high section it peruses each night seeking out grubs and food and sources of protein keeping active and busy little warm-bodied bundle of cells and spikes then nothing void the eternal sleep drugged by a speeding car and tucked into the tarmac by a tyre the coverlet mucky red no pain any more some sort of rest and peace in the road with the endless stream of life in little boxes flying past and speeding and going faster all the time

rathrunpredictabl:

Two bus shelters and an abandoned umbrella, and the headlights flickering through the railings of the bridge.

an accident

rathrunpredictabl:

The traffic was queued up in a long stagnant stream of angry red lights. The bus too was jammed between cars, and through the rainy window I could make out cones and tape and the blurry forms of police officers. Presently the lights changed and the cars crawled forwards into a bottleneck, dipping and surging down into two lanes.

The bus glided past the junction, and we could all see the hastily closed road. Police vehicles and a boxy French ambulance had formed a loose circle. In the centre of the wet road, official people in navy blue crouched down in a tighter circle, all hands occupied. The bus was still advancing; now I noticed there was a motorbike lying to the left of the scene near the pavement, on its side with the back wheel lifted up away from the road.

The bus crawled even further forwards, and I saw an outstretched white arm, the hand loosely cupped, like a painting of a corpse. A thin tube of red blood extended from a bag one of the uniformed people was holding.

I couldn’t watch any longer. I’ve discovered I really feel uncomfortable witnessing someone else’s suffering, even if it’s through glass. I turned my head away and stared at the floor while the bus rolled past the junction, and those around me absorbed the scene. 

When I looked up again, I saw three swans flying down the grey river.

Actor

rathrunpredictabl:

He sat in the open doorway, folded up on a stool with one leg flung casually over the other. The trouser leg had ridden up, exposing a dark-coloured sock. Opposite him on the paint-stained table, the small refridgerator chunnered to itself, while behind him the rain hissed down into the tiny courtyard. He placed his left forearm on top of the pile of knees and rested his right elbow on top, the line of his arm extending up past his badly-shaved cheek and ending in the red glow of a packet cigarette. He blew smoke out of the side of his wide mouth and blinked hollowed eyes.

“Ask me more interesting questions.”