The Sub-Editor - Nightmare

NIGHTMARE

I am awake, but I can't move.

I want to scream, but I can't.

My voice is stuck in my throat.

I see her there, in the corner of the room, surrounded by dust motes or something celestial.

But I am petrified: totally paralysed.

I know she is dead and I think, perhaps, I am too.

The Sub-Editor - Night Walking

NIGHT WALKING

I dream of a place where I once felt at home; a place of cobbles and rock and stone, built into a hill.  All roads led up to an open moor, wild and raw from the relentless winds that rattle and ravage it, sweeping the landscape and taking your breath. And, after a while, a broken quarry takes you down to earth again.

I dream of a place that is covered in snow and held together with ice. Where silver lights hang from trees and orange candle flames flicker in windows. I think there is music playing there, too.

The pull in my muscles as I head up the hill; tightening in my thighs and aching in my calves. My back is sore from bending forward.  My jaw is fiercely set.  But I can no longer feel my fingers and toes, and my mind is somewhere else.

I have devised a circuit and, every night, I walk it. I always leave the house at ten. Ten pm when the TV news is starting. I learn what I need from the radio (and I'm thinking of getting the paper delivered to the house).

I live on the outskirts of town, a cul-de-sac. If you look at a map the road goes nowhere. But, there is a footpath that crosses an industrial estate, a playground and a public park, and leads directly to the 24-hour Asda.

I walk for a couple of hours each night, till midnight. I walk through well-lit streets and pitch-black alleyways. I walk across tarmac and gravel and grass. I walk under the moon and the stars and the galaxies, but I never escape the sick-thick glow of the neighbouring city's light pollution.

I'm wondering: would it be cheating if I shopped at the supermarket late at night? If I kept my head down and used the self-service tills? The organic supplier doesn't stock all I need.

The Sub-Editor - Back Scratching

BACK SCRATCHING

Ten days inside and I'm itching to get out.

Skin itches and creeps. I scratch my back in my sleep. Flecks of blood on the bed-sheet where I've scratched and bled.

Scratched at my back like a cat with fleas, or the pin-like poisoned claws of domesticated vermin. There's a mouse a-chawin' on the pantry door.  When he gets through there he's sure goin' to be sore. I used to love that song.

My sister used to sing along. When she wasn't reciting nursery rhymes or trying to read the cereal packet. Give her some scissors and she'd cut up the boxes. Scissors and paste, that's what kept her quiet. And scribbling on the skirting boards with thick wax crayons.  Our Grandmother interpreted these hands-on activities as expressive gestures; my sister, she said, was destined to be creative. Bold, bloody and resolute, she called her.

And I was always described as shy.

Old Mother Hubbard went to the cupboard... and, boy, is the cupboard bare. I'm running out of food but I've yet to decide which company to order from. I like the idea of an organic-vegetable box; the produce is local and comes covered in mud. But, Tesco would be cheaper and work is currently slow.

My scalp is raw from scratching, too, so I'm thinking I might start going out at night.

Night walking with the foxes and my shadow.

The Sub-Editor - Breathe and Be Honest

BREATHE AND BE HONEST

I haven't aired the house for a week and condensation is forming on the windows. I can no longer see out.  Not clearly.

Condensation on the windows, and the hems and linings of the curtains are damp to the touch. The delicate form of a dead moth has disintegrated into dust; a soft, brown dust on the smoke-stained gloss-painted windowsill. As soft and silky as face powder.

Outside: a flurry of snow settling on flagstones and leaves, car-bonnets and dustbins lids, further obscuring any chance of seeing clearly.

The condensation accumulates as I breathe in and out; and I haven't been out for a week.

As a child I often held my breath, as if under water. And, as an adult, I learned to hold my tongue; so sharp it will cut me, my mother always said. I think, if I hold my breath and say nothing, nothing bad will happen. So, I hold my breath and my tongue and believe nothing will go wrong.

I used to pray to God, and then I stopped. Too dangerous to wish for something without understanding the consequences. So, now, I never pray, in case what I wish for in the present results in some terrible long-term outcome.

To wish for change is a terrible risk when survival is merely a desperate clinging-on.

The Sub-Editor - At Home

AT HOME

Make yourself at home; that's what people often say. So, this Christmas, I decided to give it a go. Of course people ask you to make yourself at home precisely when you're not; when you're away from your home and in somebody else's. But, before I can make myself at home somewhere else, I need to make myself at home where I live. I need to make myself again, because it seems sometime ago - a time I don't seem able to remember - the self I'd created (the self-made me) melted into air. 

So, this Christmas, I decided to give it a go. To make myself while staying at home. 

I found an old, synthetic Christmas tree in the attic. It was cold as death up there. Breath escaped my lips to form an ectoplasm in the black-iced air. My teeth ached and my fingers felt like bone. But I knew if I continued to search I'd find some Christmas baubles too; in two shoe-boxes, and each glass-ball wrapped in a thin skin of white tissue paper that crackled with age when touched.  

The coloured lights worked once I'd tightened each bulb in its socket. I switched them on in the dark. Icicles of pink blue orange purple and green piercing the gloom and, for a terrible moment, I was blissfully melancholy: achingly so. I wonder, is this what people call 'happy'?  Christmas past present and future converged suddenly. It was then that I properly devised my plan.

An old woman once said to me, 'perhaps if you could be yourself with other people you wouldn't be so weary in company'. I thought her both rude and mad.  The teeth in her mouth were like tombstones:  large blocks of weathered granite inscribed with a life already exhausted. I could see the blood in her veins pulsating through her liver-spot hands, but her cavernous mouth made me think of a corpse.

That was a long time ago, and I am truly weary now. So, this is the plan I've devised. 

I plan to make myself at home; away from the company of any kind of society. I will live my life within the confines of this house - which, as far as I can see, merely amounts to my property. I will live my life within the confines of this house until I've made myself again. I will exist in isolation: solitarily confined. The internet makes it possible: to work and to shop and to maintain the relationships one's obliged to sustain. 

I give myself a year: a new year's resolution.  Starting today.

Semiotics Of Photography: Z

Z is for Zero

(Or, Where On Earth Do The Dead Go When They Die?)

Semiotics Of Photography: Y

Y is for Yeah (Yeah Bitch)