Tuesday, October 25, 2016
What's Wrong Nothing
What’s Wrong Nothing
I think the darkness is following me
Last week I woke in the night
This week I come home in the night
And
The darkness
It is outside the window
And in the rooms where my bulbs have blown
And in the deepening bruise on my thumb
And in the helpless thoughts I have
When I can’t remember not feeling tired
The darkness
It is everywhere
I don’t know if the darkness scares me
But I still look away from it
And keep working
Because I have come to learn that there is no relief
For some of us
For some of us
There is only the unending path of persistence
And that path is paved with the darkness
The darkness that follows
Would you ask me questions through the darkness?
Are you okay?
I wake in the night — I’m fine.
Would you worry at all?
Is everything alright?
I come home in the night — Yes, of course.
Would you see right through my lies?
What’s wrong?
I think the darkness is following me — Nothing.
Sunday, October 16, 2016
This Is Not An Exhaustive List
This Is Not An Exhaustive List
Bye bye baby blue
I wish you could see the wicked truth
~ Glass Animals, The Other Side of Paradise
Anya didn’t want to get out of bed but she knew it was what she was supposed to do, and so she got out. She rolled to the side and hoisted her sleep-heavy arm up to turn off the incessant alarm on her phone. The sun was just starting to filter in through the curtains. Maybe it was going to be a nice day, but who was she to say? She knew she had a good life but that didn’t mean that every day was nice.
She buried her feet in her fluffy slippers. The light in the hallway was on — Jeff always switched it on for her when he left for work — and she flicked it off as she scuffed down the hall, eyeing the door at the end. Locked, she reminded herself. The locked door at the end of the hall.
Anya felt her jaw tighten/clench and took a sharp right-turn into the kitchen where she found the mess from the night before. That was just one of the many things that Jeff pointed out was wrong with her. At the end of the night she never wanted to clean up and though he always urged her — Jeff loved a pristine house — Anya hated being tired and cranky and restless, and then having the added chore of washing the damn dishes. So she never did it. She left them there until the morning, which was when she woke up and immediately regretted having left the mess. It was a vicious cycle that she willingly enabled and she constantly whined at Jeff about Why they couldn’t just hire someone to do that stuff, They had the money.
Just like all the vicious things she enabled within their relationship, probably most of all, the door at the end of the hall. The locked door. But she didn’t want to think about the door right now, she wanted to wash the dishes so that she could relax and make a coffee and a bagel and sit the fuck down. Anya knew her life was nothing but spoils but that never made any difference to how she felt.
What she had — the life, the things, the ease with which it all hurtled towards her whenever she needed it — was much more than the average person could have imagined. Still, she wanted more. Still, she remained unhappy.
The special order stainless steel bagel toaster hummed a buzzing tune on the kitchen bench alongside the coffee machine, who gurgled and spluttered until he released a thin but creamy stream of espresso into Anya’s silver cup; Anya had decided that she wasn’t going to wash the dishes this morning. Maybe Jeff would finally crack and they could hire someone.
With her feet up on the porch railing and the bagel smeared with cream cheese resting on her lap under the mottled light beneath the palms, Anya wasted away the morning. She had worked before — she had vague memories of diners and gas stations and supermarkets — but she couldn’t really remember what it had been like. She knew that Jeff got up every morning at sparrow’s fart and returned home every evening well after dark, but what he did in between was a mystery to her. Banking, she sometimes thought. Or hedge funds? Whatever they were. Or maybe, just like, investments? All of those words sounded as if they shouldn’t be coming out of her mouth at all. Whatever actual work she had once done seemed to be gone from her mind completely.
Her work now was to keep her mouth shut. She liked to think of herself as a silent partner who had no input and also didn’t really know what a silent partner was.
She had it made. She always wanted more and longed for something else, but she never said it out loud, because she had made it. She never did anything about her unhappiness because she had made. That was the best way to keep what you already had and to get more of the things you liked.
The new iPad with the shiny copper case that she hadn’t powered up.
The refurbished study that she never used. It was filled with an arrangement of lovely indoor plant that she didn’t tend to.
The set of chrome cookware that hadn’t seen a drop of oil or butter.
Anya lazed in her chair on the porch and let her bagel go stale in the morning sun. The golden palms rustled above her in the breeze.
She woke to the sound of a motor and looked up to see the motorcycle postman pulling into the bottom of the driveway. Jeff was going to spit chips when he saw those gouges in the front turf. Anya smiled quietly to herself. A bee in Jeff’s bonnet usually proved to be a cherry on her pie of amusement. He’d get angry and distracted and leave her alone for a while and she could pretty much do whatever she wanted without supervision.
But of course, not the locked door at the end of the hall. Never The Door.
The postman got partly off his motorcycle and leant over towards the slot of the box. Anya called down to him and shuffled across the porch, still in her pajamas, completely aware that the hard nipples on her small breasts were obvious to anyone who was looking.
Anya waved and the postman waved back. There was a moment where they just looked at each other — she with a curious eye, he with eyes behind dark lenses; eyes that couldn’t be read. That moment lasted a lifetime. And then it was over and then Anya was standing aside as the postman came up the steps of her porch and past her to the golden palms, where he gently ran his glove-clad fingers over their fronds and said nothing.
Anya ached with anticipation. She stayed where she was, next to the steps. “Is there mail for me?”
The eye-less postman turned and smiled. He held out a wedge of letters and junk mail towards her. Anya took a few steps over to him and knew he was looking at her nipples. She was immediately wet. She thought about the gouges in the lawn and that was when the sky started to darken. The morning sun disappeared, the clouds rolled in, too quickly, but the postman on her porch didn’t move an inch.
“I think it might rain,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady. “You could come in for tea?”
He said nothing. He stood still, with his gloved hand on the porch railing next to the palms.
Anya felt herself falter. Normally this part was easy for her. Normally she breezed through this part like the adulterer she was. “I’m sorry,” she said, wringing her hands together despite herself. “You’ve probably got a lot of mail to deliver. I’m sorry I held you up.”
“I’ll come in for tea,” he said, his voice even and deep.
Anya smiled. “Oh. Okay.” She felt a rush of blood to her fingertips and earlobes. This was the shit she lived for.
Inside he was not as she had expected. The thunder and the rain came down and Anya worried that she had perhaps done something wrong this time. The postman with no eyes finally took off his sunglasses and he was blind. The marjority of his eyes were white and milky and Anya immediately regretted her judgement.
“You’re looking for the key,” he said, quietly.
Anya was confused. “No? No, I mean, I don’t think so.”
The blind postman cocked his head slightly and seemed to ponder a moment. “Yes. You look for the key. And I have it.”
Anya didn’t know what he was talking about. “No, I’m sorry. I think you might have the wrong person.”
“The right person would say that. Please, he —”
He held out a small enveloped with ‘Anya’ written on the front.
She took it and watched him walk back out the door and down to his still running motorcycle. No tea was to be had, after all that. Anya stood and considered for a long moment. She didn’t get mail. She never got mail, as it were. The mail was always for Jeff.
The envelope was brown and lumpy and heavy. Anya turned it over and over in her hand listening to the postman’s words inside her head — You’re looking for the key.
Was she? Anya thought she was only looking for ways to be a cunt; she wasn;t looking for a key as far as she could think of. She had everything she needed. She had only really let the postman in because she was hopeful he wanted to fuck her, but all he had done was given her an envelope which she was guessing had a key inside. Anya continued to turn it over in her hands, feeling it’s weight, not quite ready to open it just yet, still thinking about the solid postman with the unreadable blind eyes, wondering how he would have felt between her thighs.
She closed and locked the front door. She was feeling a little tousled — the whole situation seemed off somehow. It was just as she was turning back to the kitchen that Anya felt her eyes slip down the hallway, to the locked door at the end of it.
*****
The box was obvious. The box couldn’t be ignored.
Anya bit the inside of her cheek and stared at it. The thing looked heavy where it sat, not quite in the middle of the previously locked room. Rectangular and solid and edged with a thick rim of drilled copper plate. There was a padlock on it and when Anya finally lurched forward and let her teeth disengage from the soft interior skin of her cheek, she only found that the box was, indeed, locked. She tried the key that had opened the door but it didn’t even fit into the padlock.
So much for that.
She was in the room, but now she needed to get into the box.
She looked around the room she had never been in. It was plain, painted in the same cream as the walls in the rest of their house, but in one corner there was a tall filing cabinet, taller than her and a little dusty on the top. She walked over to it and found it was locked as well. After a little searching, she found the key stuck with blue-tack to the rear edge. Amateur.
The top drawer squealed on its rails as she pulled it out. On tip toes she was barely able to see inside, so she lifted out a handful of papers. She flicked through a couple of pages — they seemed to be instruction manuals and warranty forms from a company called EasyLife. As she rifled, a small card fell from the papers. Anya picked it up.
Your unit comes preloaded with memories and preferences that are suited to your lifestyle and tastes — no need for long and bothersome setup sequences — our new XP units are plug and play :)
Anya didn’t care about this computer stuff, she wanted to know what was in the box. She needed to know.
In the second drawer she found more paperwork, tons of it. She flicked through, looking and looking, and then, at the very bottom of the metal cabinet drawer, she saw it.
A tiny gold card. A gold key was stuck to it with red wax.
Enjoy. That was all it said.
Anya snatched it up greedily and hurried back to the box.
The key worked, of course, and she swung open the lid. She found herself.
She found herself. Paper pale skin. Dull, lifeless, fragile. It was Anya — crumpled, naked, inside a box.
She found herself. Inside the box was Anya. At least, another Anya. She took a step back and realised she was holding her breath. Her heart was jungle drums inside her chest. She reached out her hand and touched the Other Anya. The skin was cold but soft — it felt real. Was it real?
There was a warning label on the inside of lid. With one eye on the Other Anya, she read it out-loud to herself, hoping the act would wake her from the apparent dream she was having.
!WARNING! Warm unit for at least thirty (30) days before use. If unit is engaged without sufficient warming we cannot guarantee a desirable interaction. Insufficient warming may result in some, if not all, of the following potentially undesirable unit traits:
• Crankiness
• Subjugation
• Screaming
• Obsession
• Infidelity
• Scratching
• Gluttony
• Denial
• Independence
• Hysteria
• Sarcasm
• Obesity
• Laziness
• Impatience
• Ambition
**Please note — This is not an exhaustive list and any other potentially undesirable unit traits that may occur due to insufficient warming time are regrettable. EasyLife is unable take any responsibility for potentially undesirable unit traits however we do offer twenty-four hour replacement should units become unmanageable due to potentially undesirable unit traits. Remember to enjoy your purchase.
Anya looked at the Other Anya in the box in the previously locked room and bit the inside of her cheek. She wondered if Jeff had waited. If he had waited for her to ‘warm sufficiently’.
She figured Probably Not.
Bye bye baby blue
I wish you could see the wicked truth
~ Glass Animals, The Other Side of Paradise
Anya didn’t want to get out of bed but she knew it was what she was supposed to do, and so she got out. She rolled to the side and hoisted her sleep-heavy arm up to turn off the incessant alarm on her phone. The sun was just starting to filter in through the curtains. Maybe it was going to be a nice day, but who was she to say? She knew she had a good life but that didn’t mean that every day was nice.
She buried her feet in her fluffy slippers. The light in the hallway was on — Jeff always switched it on for her when he left for work — and she flicked it off as she scuffed down the hall, eyeing the door at the end. Locked, she reminded herself. The locked door at the end of the hall.
Anya felt her jaw tighten/clench and took a sharp right-turn into the kitchen where she found the mess from the night before. That was just one of the many things that Jeff pointed out was wrong with her. At the end of the night she never wanted to clean up and though he always urged her — Jeff loved a pristine house — Anya hated being tired and cranky and restless, and then having the added chore of washing the damn dishes. So she never did it. She left them there until the morning, which was when she woke up and immediately regretted having left the mess. It was a vicious cycle that she willingly enabled and she constantly whined at Jeff about Why they couldn’t just hire someone to do that stuff, They had the money.
Just like all the vicious things she enabled within their relationship, probably most of all, the door at the end of the hall. The locked door. But she didn’t want to think about the door right now, she wanted to wash the dishes so that she could relax and make a coffee and a bagel and sit the fuck down. Anya knew her life was nothing but spoils but that never made any difference to how she felt.
What she had — the life, the things, the ease with which it all hurtled towards her whenever she needed it — was much more than the average person could have imagined. Still, she wanted more. Still, she remained unhappy.
The special order stainless steel bagel toaster hummed a buzzing tune on the kitchen bench alongside the coffee machine, who gurgled and spluttered until he released a thin but creamy stream of espresso into Anya’s silver cup; Anya had decided that she wasn’t going to wash the dishes this morning. Maybe Jeff would finally crack and they could hire someone.
With her feet up on the porch railing and the bagel smeared with cream cheese resting on her lap under the mottled light beneath the palms, Anya wasted away the morning. She had worked before — she had vague memories of diners and gas stations and supermarkets — but she couldn’t really remember what it had been like. She knew that Jeff got up every morning at sparrow’s fart and returned home every evening well after dark, but what he did in between was a mystery to her. Banking, she sometimes thought. Or hedge funds? Whatever they were. Or maybe, just like, investments? All of those words sounded as if they shouldn’t be coming out of her mouth at all. Whatever actual work she had once done seemed to be gone from her mind completely.
Her work now was to keep her mouth shut. She liked to think of herself as a silent partner who had no input and also didn’t really know what a silent partner was.
She had it made. She always wanted more and longed for something else, but she never said it out loud, because she had made it. She never did anything about her unhappiness because she had made. That was the best way to keep what you already had and to get more of the things you liked.
The new iPad with the shiny copper case that she hadn’t powered up.
The refurbished study that she never used. It was filled with an arrangement of lovely indoor plant that she didn’t tend to.
The set of chrome cookware that hadn’t seen a drop of oil or butter.
Anya lazed in her chair on the porch and let her bagel go stale in the morning sun. The golden palms rustled above her in the breeze.
She woke to the sound of a motor and looked up to see the motorcycle postman pulling into the bottom of the driveway. Jeff was going to spit chips when he saw those gouges in the front turf. Anya smiled quietly to herself. A bee in Jeff’s bonnet usually proved to be a cherry on her pie of amusement. He’d get angry and distracted and leave her alone for a while and she could pretty much do whatever she wanted without supervision.
But of course, not the locked door at the end of the hall. Never The Door.
The postman got partly off his motorcycle and leant over towards the slot of the box. Anya called down to him and shuffled across the porch, still in her pajamas, completely aware that the hard nipples on her small breasts were obvious to anyone who was looking.
Anya waved and the postman waved back. There was a moment where they just looked at each other — she with a curious eye, he with eyes behind dark lenses; eyes that couldn’t be read. That moment lasted a lifetime. And then it was over and then Anya was standing aside as the postman came up the steps of her porch and past her to the golden palms, where he gently ran his glove-clad fingers over their fronds and said nothing.
Anya ached with anticipation. She stayed where she was, next to the steps. “Is there mail for me?”
The eye-less postman turned and smiled. He held out a wedge of letters and junk mail towards her. Anya took a few steps over to him and knew he was looking at her nipples. She was immediately wet. She thought about the gouges in the lawn and that was when the sky started to darken. The morning sun disappeared, the clouds rolled in, too quickly, but the postman on her porch didn’t move an inch.
“I think it might rain,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady. “You could come in for tea?”
He said nothing. He stood still, with his gloved hand on the porch railing next to the palms.
Anya felt herself falter. Normally this part was easy for her. Normally she breezed through this part like the adulterer she was. “I’m sorry,” she said, wringing her hands together despite herself. “You’ve probably got a lot of mail to deliver. I’m sorry I held you up.”
“I’ll come in for tea,” he said, his voice even and deep.
Anya smiled. “Oh. Okay.” She felt a rush of blood to her fingertips and earlobes. This was the shit she lived for.
Inside he was not as she had expected. The thunder and the rain came down and Anya worried that she had perhaps done something wrong this time. The postman with no eyes finally took off his sunglasses and he was blind. The marjority of his eyes were white and milky and Anya immediately regretted her judgement.
“You’re looking for the key,” he said, quietly.
Anya was confused. “No? No, I mean, I don’t think so.”
The blind postman cocked his head slightly and seemed to ponder a moment. “Yes. You look for the key. And I have it.”
Anya didn’t know what he was talking about. “No, I’m sorry. I think you might have the wrong person.”
“The right person would say that. Please, he —”
He held out a small enveloped with ‘Anya’ written on the front.
She took it and watched him walk back out the door and down to his still running motorcycle. No tea was to be had, after all that. Anya stood and considered for a long moment. She didn’t get mail. She never got mail, as it were. The mail was always for Jeff.
The envelope was brown and lumpy and heavy. Anya turned it over and over in her hand listening to the postman’s words inside her head — You’re looking for the key.
Was she? Anya thought she was only looking for ways to be a cunt; she wasn;t looking for a key as far as she could think of. She had everything she needed. She had only really let the postman in because she was hopeful he wanted to fuck her, but all he had done was given her an envelope which she was guessing had a key inside. Anya continued to turn it over in her hands, feeling it’s weight, not quite ready to open it just yet, still thinking about the solid postman with the unreadable blind eyes, wondering how he would have felt between her thighs.
She closed and locked the front door. She was feeling a little tousled — the whole situation seemed off somehow. It was just as she was turning back to the kitchen that Anya felt her eyes slip down the hallway, to the locked door at the end of it.
*****
The box was obvious. The box couldn’t be ignored.
Anya bit the inside of her cheek and stared at it. The thing looked heavy where it sat, not quite in the middle of the previously locked room. Rectangular and solid and edged with a thick rim of drilled copper plate. There was a padlock on it and when Anya finally lurched forward and let her teeth disengage from the soft interior skin of her cheek, she only found that the box was, indeed, locked. She tried the key that had opened the door but it didn’t even fit into the padlock.
So much for that.
She was in the room, but now she needed to get into the box.
She looked around the room she had never been in. It was plain, painted in the same cream as the walls in the rest of their house, but in one corner there was a tall filing cabinet, taller than her and a little dusty on the top. She walked over to it and found it was locked as well. After a little searching, she found the key stuck with blue-tack to the rear edge. Amateur.
The top drawer squealed on its rails as she pulled it out. On tip toes she was barely able to see inside, so she lifted out a handful of papers. She flicked through a couple of pages — they seemed to be instruction manuals and warranty forms from a company called EasyLife. As she rifled, a small card fell from the papers. Anya picked it up.
Your unit comes preloaded with memories and preferences that are suited to your lifestyle and tastes — no need for long and bothersome setup sequences — our new XP units are plug and play :)
Anya didn’t care about this computer stuff, she wanted to know what was in the box. She needed to know.
In the second drawer she found more paperwork, tons of it. She flicked through, looking and looking, and then, at the very bottom of the metal cabinet drawer, she saw it.
A tiny gold card. A gold key was stuck to it with red wax.
Enjoy. That was all it said.
Anya snatched it up greedily and hurried back to the box.
The key worked, of course, and she swung open the lid. She found herself.
She found herself. Paper pale skin. Dull, lifeless, fragile. It was Anya — crumpled, naked, inside a box.
She found herself. Inside the box was Anya. At least, another Anya. She took a step back and realised she was holding her breath. Her heart was jungle drums inside her chest. She reached out her hand and touched the Other Anya. The skin was cold but soft — it felt real. Was it real?
There was a warning label on the inside of lid. With one eye on the Other Anya, she read it out-loud to herself, hoping the act would wake her from the apparent dream she was having.
!WARNING! Warm unit for at least thirty (30) days before use. If unit is engaged without sufficient warming we cannot guarantee a desirable interaction. Insufficient warming may result in some, if not all, of the following potentially undesirable unit traits:
• Crankiness
• Subjugation
• Screaming
• Obsession
• Infidelity
• Scratching
• Gluttony
• Denial
• Independence
• Hysteria
• Sarcasm
• Obesity
• Laziness
• Impatience
• Ambition
**Please note — This is not an exhaustive list and any other potentially undesirable unit traits that may occur due to insufficient warming time are regrettable. EasyLife is unable take any responsibility for potentially undesirable unit traits however we do offer twenty-four hour replacement should units become unmanageable due to potentially undesirable unit traits. Remember to enjoy your purchase.
Anya looked at the Other Anya in the box in the previously locked room and bit the inside of her cheek. She wondered if Jeff had waited. If he had waited for her to ‘warm sufficiently’.
She figured Probably Not.
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