Rant - Mollie

The laundry list of things that annoy me is long and filled with small details like WHY DID YOU PUT AN EMPTY ICE CUBE TRAY BACK IN THE FREEZER? Seriously. That is near fascinating to me.

Protection - Alex

You didn’t ask me to stay (how could you?). In fact, you encouraged me to leave, with a silence I misheard as the promise you would be there upon my return—whenever that may be. We would both be different, but for the better. I would slide effortlessly into your open arms, and after a little reacquainting, we would pick up where we left off. It was the kind of foolish that only the luxury of confidence and contentment can buy. 

You slipped away. Slowly at first. And then completely. I barely even noticed, distracted by self-indulgence, separated by space. Until it was too late. 

Sometimes, I wonder what we would be if I had never left. You: the sun, warm smiles, barbeques, book clubs, covered in paint, tickled with laughter. Me: full and happy enough to breed the arrogant assumption that my absence would have only but a slight effect. We are an energy magnified by memory.

Here, there is nothing—not a voice, not a street, not a picture. It’s like you are a ghost, something fictional I made up; your greatness, a rose-colored hyperbole, red-hot, iron branded onto my brain to make myself feel worse about who I am, where I am, and who I am with. Would you even recognize me now? I am a shell, walls cracking from within.

So, I protect myself. I play with him, I brunch with her, I drink. I surround myself with to-do lists, friends and tedious details to forget that you ever existed, that you are presently, constantly missed. I drink. I dream. I make jokes and laugh if others do the same. I follow suit; I am a good girl. And, I drink. 

Sometimes I catch myself laughing so hard my eyes shut out everything, and in these moments, I am able to forget you. But as soon as my eyes open and the corners of my mouth fall back down into place, I aware of your absence tenfold. I am aware of what I happily—no, eagerly—forfeited for something better, something different. 

What would we be? Whom would we know? Are we really that much better? Are we really that much worse? 

I am angry. You cripple my every move, my every advance. The memory of you belittles every victory, seems to spoil every achievement. You are a constant plaguing eclipse. However, it is far too much to pretend you did not exist. I am who I am and where I am because of you. 

I miss you. I love you. And at times I may want you back more than I can stomach. But mostly I just want to move on. 

If I could take a pill and erase every step, I think would swallow the entire bottle. I wouldn’t wait for water; my mouth dry, throat sticky. But then, I would wake up in bed with you again, staring out the window, wondering what I was missing. 

We had our time together, it was great, but it’s over. 

Now, right now, 

we can be whatever we want;

We are something new. 

And instead,

I’ll drink to that.

Protection - Mischa

There was more I could have done. There always is. It’s like the perfect comeback to that cunt on the bus or on the train or inside or outside the pub that you always think of way too late, after the incident’s over and they’re gone and you’re never going to see them again. This was the same. I should have done more. But it all happened so fast that the cliché is true – it was a blur. I don’t remember how old I was but I think I was probably in my early 20s, because you died when I was 24 and it was towards the end of your life. At least, I think it was. Maybe I was younger, in my late teens, but I don’t think so. It doesn’t matter anyway. The point remains the same. Every time we walked past this one house round the corner from mine, on Mandeville Road’s curved trajectory, these two dogs would yap crazily from behind the double-glazed window of their living room and press their noses into the glass and bare their teeth. It never bothered you but it annoyed the hell out of me. One afternoon as we walked by, the front door to that house was open. I didn’t think anything of it, until we walked closer and I heard the feral growls of these two dogs louder than usual. Before my brain realised what was happening, they’d set upon you, plunging their teeth into your stomach, because these little fuckers were smaller than you and they got underneath your legs –or one of them did, anyway. And I remember panicking as this silent fear rose up inside of me, manifesting itself in goosebumps and shivers because I was fucking scared and I didn’t know what to do. I remember shouting and yelling to scare them away, but at least one of the dogs still had its teeth plunged into you and you were squealing with pain. I don’t know how long it had been – mere seconds, probably, but everything that happened in fast-forward blur also took place in slow motion so it felt like minutes – but I heard you whimper and I saw the dog beneath you and I kicked that motherfucker. I didn’t connect properly but it did the trick and the dog – I don’t even know what type it was; I think a terrier of some sort, but looking at pictures of them on the internet now they look too cute, so maybe they were Chihuahuas, that most redundant and repugnant of breeds – yelped in semi-pain and ran back inside, followed by the other. Luckily, you had so much fur, their teeth didn’t do much damage, but as I walked past the house I was fuming. But I didn’t have the guts to confront the owner, who was just standing there. I don’t know. Maybe he didn’t hear or see what happened. But I did. And I should have given him the hell he deserved. Even today, the thought of it makes me wish I’d crushed the skulls of those little cunt dogs. It makes me want to strap their owners in a chair and stomp the life out of those dogs in front of their eyes and then burn that fucking house down and hear them scream in agony and watch as their skin charcoals and their bones become powder and ash. Because you were always there for me – unwavering in your love from the moment I held you in my lap on the long drive back to Canterbury from the kennel in Norfolk – and, eight years later, I still love you and miss you like hell and I can’t help but feel that, that day, I let you down. I’m sorry.

Prompt 4 - Rant

Hi all,


Sincerest apologies for my lack of postings, I hope to contribute much more to this blog as we move along.

I'd really like to hear about one thing that really irritates you and why, in rant form.

500 words or less, be descriptive.

Cheers!

Josh

Protection - Josh

Looking back on that faithful summer night nearly a decade ago, he believed it was the way the setting sun dipped lugubriously beneath the vast skyline of palm trees that did away with the remnants of the melancholy and restlessness that often formed during the sweltering months of frivolity on ‘the island of American exceptionalism’, as he called it.

He floated silently a hundred yards east of the hard clay, ears submerged to the chaos that raged beneath and in an instant, felt with his eyes and heart the tranquility and contentment that had been foretold in his studies of Kant (and subsequently translated by his own system of checks and balances), but never actualized at any time during his then lithe, self-serving existence.

Gently ebbing amidst the cradle of rolling waves, it was as though his mind were as open and fervent as the murky chasm that lay beneath and, if only for the briefest of moments, he no longer required the approval of each and every person he knew but would cease to remember in less time than it took to think of reasons not to like them. Along with this came a sharp prod of deja vu, as though he were looking back on this moment with pensive nostalgia as he passed listlessly through dense crowds in shadowy cities where none of the signs made sense and sense itself was a luxury he couldn’t afford. He sensed that he’d experience intense joy pouring his heart into letters and finally know in his mind that ever illusive sense of connectedness he’d so longed for, and appreciate it just the same - even if it meant returning with nothing but longing, and a hazy blend of emotional dendrites that made about as much sense as sending a letter to someone - for he now knew that longing was but a construct one places on oneself and by no means a required function of one’s reality. And it was there, enveloped and stirred by the sublime rhythm of the summer sea, that this man’s future was no longer limited by fear and the status quo, and the simple act of softly steering oneself toward contentment was suddenly not as drastic a measure as an imperfect man is often lead to believe.

Protection - Ian

When the condom breaks, it’s the first in a long line of things to break.  The bough comes next, followed shortly by hopes, dreams, that holiday you wanted to take, any license to excusable immorality and derpavedness, a full night’s sleep and disposable income.  Or so I imagine anyway.  This is the Left Behind narrative, the survival tale that plays spin-art on my mind the moment when, grunting coarsely into her neck I feel the latex peel back.  I bet if I could see the rift form and the material recede from the site of the break, the flesh emerge, the scene would bear a strange symmetry to the birth which, in my head is now inevitable.  But that’s not where condoms normally break, I tell myself.  Not at the top. They tend to split at the sides.  This realization buoys me momentarily, floating me just enough above 'Oh shit!' that I can act.  Immediately, I freeze. 

The board game Operation was first launched by Milton Bradley in ’65, but the rights were later acquired and it’s now produced by Transformers outfit Hasbro.  The game was originally based on a fun fair skill game popular at the time.  The goal of this game was to maneuver a metal ring up and off of an electrified metal spiral without touching it.  If the metal of the ring came into contact with the metal of the spiral, a circuit was completed and a tiny electric buzzer would sound.  To make things more interesting, the spiral itself would spiral, corkscrewing around and around to play devil with even the steadiest hands. 

Pulling myself and the broken condom out is like continuously losing this carnival game while trying really, really hard.  I can’t help but touch the metal spiral.  I am completely wrapped up in metal spiral.  Except in my mind, the tinny hacksaw of the electric buzzer is instead the screaming of a baby.

“What’s the matter?” she says.

I raise myself up on my elbows and toes, planked enough above her to come completely out.   I look down into the space between our two bodies and see the soft rise of her stomach.  I don’t think it at the time, but since I have wondered whether the distance between us then would have been enough to clear the bump.

“Uh, I think it broke,” I say.

“Oh, “she says.  “Get another one.  I’m on the pill.”

Resurrection- Shay

I can’t breathe, I said.

 I’ll take you to the beach, she answered

I had a secondhand red bikini and wanted to swim.

Surfers stood looking out at the breaks, wetsuits down. The last one came in, blue-lipped and goosefleshed.

I have to swim.

That’s my girl.

I kicked hard to warm up, under each crest.

I stayed in a long time, came out slow.

The surfers applauded

You’re making us look bad!

She was grinning, wiping away tears when I reached her.

This is the first time I’ve seen you smile in a month.

I raised my arms, laughing.