wherein:
- more moorland musing
- me, and also me
- something short with zombies
- the cool uncle
- a storm in a teacup
last night, i was sat, sort of crouched, with my back against the drystone wall by the gate, smoking a joint in the dark.
i was looking up at the sky, and i was seeing everything as though i was sat in the cinema. the whole show in high def and saturated with sound, colour, meaning. big starry sky, front and centre. the black heap of the moor a sluggish silhouette to my left. and to my right the field gate and the wall receding until indistinguishable in the gloom. sound and light. civilisation. the main road, mechanical, rushing, like a wind machine in the distance. the dot dot dot of streetlights, pinprick points in perfect blackness.
not like this screen, which i can see is all backlit. it’s got that faint orange glow, the same as the sodium sky over streetlit manchester, yonder to my left. it’s the leached sepia colour of worn out black cotton clothing. if it was a sound, it would be a low, powerful hum. the sound of a subwoofer wall, plugged in but not yet playing; practically levitating with mind-melting potentiality. ommm.
i was thinking all this shit, about what i could see, how beautiful it was, and how crazy it was that it should be me here. how i’m a product of this place. how one day i’ll leave here and never come back. hopefully not in a bitter, running-away sort of way. just like how one day i’ll hear, for the last time, that song i once used to obsess over. i’m gona leave, and this place is gona stay right where it is. but the me who leaves will the the singular person most singularly shaped by this place. i grew up here. nobody else who grew up here is still alive.
but that’s a different story.
i was thinking this, holding my joint in my left hand, resting open on my cupped right, my forearms resting on my knees, as though in prayer. blowing out thick smoky clouds, like a steamship on the thames at night. i was joseph fucking conrad. i realised that what i was doing was cool. who i was, right there and then, was cool. and if there’s anything that’s fun to write about, it’s writing about how fucking cool i am. life, the universe, everything wanted to pull down my trackies and suck my dick. now.
and instead, i went inside and wrote a porno, and touched upon some interesting points relating to previously-used pants.
but fuck it, i’m getting snacks now. i’ll type it up some other time.
2020.11.12
me: wondering whether i should get stoned tonight
also me: conducting a hill
there’s a knock at the door.
no fucking way, she says.
but it’s pissing it down. and it’s dark. what if its one of us?
when was the last time you saw one of us?
there was that guy, a few weeks ago, at the petrol station. remember? when we still had the car.
that guy was dead.
i’ve got to be sure, i say. i’m going to check.
just. don’t fucking open it, whatever you do.
there’s nothing. i don’t want to press my eye to the looking glass. if it was one of us, they’re be dead by now. i could cope with that. but what if they’re not? dead, that is. i know, deep down, i can’t open this door. i’m a coward. i’d have to watch them die, ringside.
there’s still nothing, my eye is an inch from the door. just, darkness, like always. a battery-lick of lightning, and i see them. hundreds of them, grotesque, deformed silhouettes for half a second, then inked onto my eyelids, white horror on black background. i count hippopotamuses. one. two. three. four. five. six. then another knock on the door.
i retreat back to my spot. just a storm, i say.
how close?
six er… seconds.
shit. that’s too close.
a direct hit could kill us. if it knocked out the primary generator, we’d have max two weeks on the secondary. and there’s no way we could fix it this time. not without tools, and weapons. not with this snow, and not with hundreds of those… things, swaying like half-dead farm animals on their last degrading road trip. i know this too, so we both say nothing.
every few minutes, another knock on the door. two weeks. and then what? wait. wait for them to come. to come… in. i picture the revolver in the drawer. could i do it? after all these years trying to survive. fuck getting any sleep tonight.
coffee?
please.
the cool uncle: oh in case i forget your birthday because i'm to stoned here's a gym-bag full of what appears to be money and marijuana sweet sixteen!
a storm in a teacup
