Your worries are over

Robbins had missed his chance and he knew it. He should have turned tail and left the minute the first unruly patients had started attacking that nurse, he should have run like hell and barred the entrance after him from the outside. But he had realized this too late and now the hospital was already overrun. He silently snuck through the door into his office, carefully making sure the door slid close as silently as possible to avoid one of those wretched creatures hearing it. He turned the key and heard the cap of the lock give a small click. With a low gasp he sank to his knees and muttered a string of virulent curses, starting with the day he was born and working his way through his job, his staff, his ex-wife and finally his Lord and Savior.

“I knew this would happened, I knew this would happen”, he mumbled to himself as he heaved himself back on his feet, gasping a little with the effort. He walked over to his desk on shaking legs, opened the third drawer, fished around a bit inside and withdrew his hand clutching a small bottle of Branded Rose. He unscrew the cap and took a large swig of the golden liquid, choked on it but manage to not splutter it all over himself and took another big gulp from the bottle. It burned pleasantly down his throat.
Suddenly there was a high shriek and something thudded loudly against the door and he started and almost dropped the bottle. He spun around and ducked behind his desk, carefully nipping his head around the corner and looked towards the office door. It was one of them, of course, he’d known they’d find him eventually. He recognized a head of grey hair and realized that the person, no, the thing, outside was his Mrs. Winlow. Or, what had once been Mrs. Winlow. The creature that was no longer Mrs. Winlow and no longer even human stared at him through the glass window on the upper half of the door and it slid its skinless fingers along the surface, leaving bright red smears across it. Its face was a bloody mash of infected flesh and one of the eye sockets was dark and empty with something yellowish and sticky-looking trickling down from it like tears.

“Oh, doctor Robbins”, he chided himself, mimicking his secretary’s voice. “You know I won’t tell, you know it, but I worry! Please don’t drink during work hours. I worry the patients might notice, I worry!” He raised his bottle to greet the drooling, howling creature outside his door.
“Your worries are over, Mrs Winlow”, he said and giggled, his voice already slurred from the whiskey. He leaned back against the wall and watched her as she pounded her bony fists against the door, watched as the spidery cracks glinting along the glass surface grew thicker and wider and when the tinkling sound as the glass broke filled the small office he closed his eyes.

In heat

Her laughter broke the silence. It was a high pitched nervous laughter and no sooner had it escaped her than she clapped both her hands over her mouth to cover up her inappropriate outburst. This was no laughing matter and from the stern look her husband was giving her it seemed he didn’t think so either.
It was only the beginning of the summer season but already the heat of the sun had burned most of their and the neighboring village’s crops and the communal well had come close to running completely dry. Outside her and her husband’s little stone house a grey donkey and a handful of milking-goats were grazing but they had been given the last of the hay weeks ago and the few remaining strands of grass that still grew there hadn’t looked green in days. A drought was imminent and the general outlook on the future was ominous. And she was laughing. Very much against her will, but still, he had heard it and now he was staring hard at her from his entrance through the house’s only door.
“Mary”, her husband said. “I will not pretend to find your reason, whatever it may be, for interrupting my work on the village well at a time like this appropriate in any way but you have been my wife for many years now and I have come to trust that you would not disturb me without a good cause. Therefore, when I come rushing home to you I do not appreciate being met by the fitful giggles of an irrepressible girl! Speak up, wife!”
Mary swallowed down the slimy lump of fear and nerves in her throat. Their marriage had been an arranged one and she had found herself bound to this man by tradition and convenience at the tender age of 13, but even though he was 20 years her senior and head of their village council, he had always been fair with her and she had come to, if not enjoy, then at least endure her life as his wife. They slept in separate beds due to her still being a virgin and he had never once tried to force his will on her, to have her as a man is always free to have his wife.
And that was why she was laughing, why she was giggling to the point of choking on her own nervousness and why she had sent for him during his work hours. She had been dizzy and nauseous for several weeks already and even though she had been blaming it on the summer heat the truth had now become impossible for her to ignore. Her chest and feet had been feeling swollen and sore and when she discovered that she’d stopped bleeding in accordance with the moon she knew what was happening to her body and she knew she had to tell him. She swallowed dryly and cleared her throat and forced her eyes to look directly at his scowling face.

“Joseph”, she said. “I’m pregnant”.

Caught

I hated walking home in rush hour traffic. Endless streams of cars honking and people whizzing past me way too fast for comfort. I stopped at a red light along with a clump of people and I sighed, wanting to just get home so I could kick off my boots and curl into bed with the latest crossword puzzles. And then suddenly something caught my eye. A face, one which stood out in the crowd. A girl. I froze and looked at her. She was… beautiful. Not in a conventional way, she had a high forehead and a substantial nose but there was something about her that made it impossible to avert my gaze from her. Her hair was long and a golden pale yellow that framed her face and fell in ringlets down her shoulders before coming to rest on her chest, bracketing the band logo on her shirt. Suddenly, as if sensing me staring, she turned her head and looked directly at me and I felt my entire body flash hot and my face blushed, burning, as our eyes met. Hers were light greenish blue with a darker circle around the iris and her lashes were black and slightly curved. She smiled and tossed her hair, the light catching it and sending glints of copper along the strands. She held my gaze.

Enthralled I moved closer and as I did so she moved towards me as well. My heart was pounding, loud in my ears and hard against my chest as I neared her. As her smile widened she wrinkled her nose and showed a neat row of small teeth and I noticed that she had a small birthmark on her right cheek, like a fleck of dirt on the otherwise so light and fair skin. She was so beautiful. We were now standing close, our toes almost touching, and she leaned forward until our faces were only inches apart.

“My”, she said. “You’re a pretty little thing, aren’t you?”

I blushed even harder and stuttered something unintelligible. She cocked her head to one side and winked at me, obviously pleased with my flustered appearance.

“What’s your name?” I asked, too dumbstruck to think of anything else to say.

“You”, she answered.

“Me, what?” I said, feeling like a moron.

She tossed her head back and laughed.

“My name is You”, she said. “Y-O-U”. She winked again and coquettishly bit her lower lip. “Kiss me”.

She moved closer still and I felt myself leaning in towards her, almost as if someone was pushing me from behind. Our bodies pressed together and a low moan escaped me.

“You’re so beautiful”, I gasped and her face fogged over. I closed my eyes and my lips parted slightly and met the cold glass of the mirror.

Kiss me

One of the rudest things you can do is kiss me passionately. I don’t do passion. And don’t even think about pressing me against a wall, making demands with your lips. This is not sexy nor is it pleasing in any way. Who the hell are you to come nibbling and nudging?

And why is it that you must entangle your fingers in my hair and pull it? Seriously, pulling my hair? Do you want to kiss me or fight me?

And stop pushing your knee against my crotch! I’m not an assailant, nor a dog, and I do not nourish secret wishes to be rocked on your lap. Just stop it.

And will you stop staring at me?! Close your goddamn eyes, this isn’t a moment you want to remember seeing nothing but the indistinct bridge of my nose. By rule of kissing, you don’t look at each other. I already know what you look like, hence me agreeing to kiss you, and even though dilated pupils was a big hit during the late 1700th century, I don’t need to look into your eyes to know you want me.

Because your palms are sweating. Don’t try and wipe them off on my shirt, that’s fucking gross! Are you trying to feel me up or use me as a napkin? Because honestly, I can’t tell the difference!

And will you stop breathing so damn hard through your nose? See, this is why we need to kiss slowly, because believe it or not, there is nothing arousing about your harsh ”passionate” buffalo snorting.

You can let go of my head now, I’m not a puppet you need to steer. Just relax, there we go. See, isn’t this a lot nicer? Our bodies melting against each other, our tongues barely gently touching. Just hold me and let my hands do the wandering. You know, when I’m at ease like this, I almost forget what a vile and bacteria riddled cesspool your mouth is. It’s so sweet. Now I can feel my knees go weak. Your hair is so soft.

Don’t stop..

Are you licking my tonsils?!

Death of my childhood

They say that your childhood ends the minute you realize you’re going to die. That you are just a mortal lump of flesh that will (albeit incomprehensibly far into a distant future since you’re only 10 and a half) expire and only leave a mere nothingness behind. That your childhood ends when you comprehend that just as outer space is infinite, you will only live once and when you die you will be be dead for infinities infinity, for ever and ever, all the way into oblivion.
My childhood ended a little earlier than that. It happened the first time someone I held in high regard let me down. I don’t mean my parents, even if to most children their parents are infallible gods, because mine had already failed me numerous times by having wills of their own and succumbing to emotional displays of affection that excluded me, so I already knew that they could be faulty and were, close to, but not omnipotent. I’m talking about my heroes, my muses, my celebrity gods who made rock that rolled and nudged my heart like a butterfly’s proboscis and who, even though I was too young to know even a word of English back then, spoke directly to me.

The Beatles.

One day I was casually eavesdropping on my fathers adult conversation with his adult friends, while watching the pickup run along the vinyl tracks of Yellow Submarine, and I overheard the words that would slay my poor innocent childhood and spit on its remains. My father laughed and said: “Yellow Submarine, huh… You’d have to be on some really mad drugs to come up with a song like that!”
My heart skipped a beat. The Beatles… had something to do with drugs? It couldn’t be. Drugs were bad, surely the great Paul Meckarty and John Lemon would know that! It couldn’t be true, it had to be a mistake, a cruel joke, a misunderstanding. My heroes were pure and knightly and would never dabble in those dangerous things that were either chemical and looked like flour or was like those star-shaped green things that grew among my parents tomato plants out behind the shed. I wouldn’t stand for talk like that about The Beatles.

“Daddy?” My jaw set but my lower lip trembling I approached him and his friends as they sat around the kitchen table drinking amber liquid that came in cans and smelled like stale bread.

“What, sweetie?” He patted me on the head and scratched me behind my ear. He always touched me as if I was a dog, not in a demeaning way, just out of the awkwardness he felt around this little being that wasn’t yet an actual real person and who had, somehow, come from him. I knew he would give it to me straight. He didn’t believe in patronizing children and had never lied to me about anything, even when I had requested information that a child’s mind isn’t yet developed enough to process.

“Did The Beatles really take drugs?” There was no going back now.

“Are you kidding? They were completely off their heads on that shit. It’s a wonder none of them died of it!”

The disappointment made it hard to breathe. I broke down crying and threw myself into his arms while his friends hid their faces behind their hands and tried in vain to stifle their laughter at my childlike despair. My father held me awkwardly to his chest and pounded me in the back with his palm (the way men always hug their dudes) until my ribs ached and my teeth rattled. Then he dislodged himself and held me by the shoulders at arm’s length.

“Listen. Don’t ever trust anyone, don’t ever put your faith in anyone. You are responsible for your own happiness and other people’s failure to live up to your expectations will only hurt you if you let it. No one is above you.”

I was 8.

Spider life and me

There’s something foul living in this body. The smell is that of something rotting. It’s the dead spider inside. She crawled in, and then she died. She laid a bunch of eggs somewhere in the uterus and they have started to hatch.

That tingling feeling when I think of you is actually thousands of tiny spider legs drumming their way through my body. The local pharmacy has no cure. Various creams that take away fungus, itch and unpleasant odours. Unpleasant odour? It is unpleasant.

My uterus is scratched where her rough body has layed pressed against the tissue walls and it’s full of swollen infected boils where she’s bitten me. They say I’m lucky.

Her children are curious little beings. When I look into a mirror I can sometimes see their sharp hairy fangs poking out through the skin, followed closely by black shiny eye beads. When they catch me looking they quickly withdraw into my head, snickering. I chase them with razors.

When I cut I see blood, my own mixed with her filthy. As her children grow bigger, they stop fitting in the smaller veins. If I’m to get them I must aim for the thicker veins deeper inside. Maybe I can kill them all before I lose too much blood. Wouldn’t that be lucky.

The water here knows all my secrets. It gets mixed up with me when I bathe or wash down pills. Through the pipes of the entire building the tell-tale water runs, whispering and laughing. When I go down to the basement the washing machines glance at each other and roll their eyes. She tried to drown herself again. Can you believe that?

I keep threatening the spiders. If I die, where will you live?! I scream at my reflection. They snicker among themselves and one or two of them whispers that dead is just as good. They say they feed off of the things I eat. Maybe they’re just trying to put thoughts in my head but I’ve stopped eating just to be on the safe side.

I threaten them with doctors. What if I should find someone who can actually help me, who can remove them? But they won’t let themselves be fooled. They know I don’t dare go outside. 

Because when I walk too fast, they start running, their little legs hammering through my veins and then I think of you.