A Little Writing

A Force of Hunger, Prologue

“One more in this city, then I move on,” he said under his breath.

He spat out the cigarette to one side and finished off the cup of coffee he held, putting it down beside him. Crouched by a wall near a block of flats he looked up; looked left and right. Then he closed his eyes.

From the outside, this black clad figure spat out a cigarette, put down a disposable coffee cup, then collapsed into itself.

He breathed out. The air was colder up on the roof.

Finding the hatch down was easy, picking the lock into the uppermost flat was easy. Punching a guy in the face so hard he immediately fell unconscious was easy. Doing the same to the woman there? Also easy.

He stood still a moment and sighed. There was nothing less pleasant than what he was about to do. He produced from cable ties from his coat and bound the man. He did the same to the woman. He laid her on the bed and began searching the drawers. Once he found the socks, he took two pairs, and a roll of tape from his coat.

He stuffed the first pair in the guys mouth and taped them in place. He did the same to the woman. Then he waited.

The waiting was always the hardest part of the entire process. The part of the process with every question about whether or not he was doing the right thing. The part of the process where every temptation to just enjoy it, just this once, seeped through and infected all of his thoughts. The part of the process that would eventually drive him completely insane. The part of the process that would kill him.

Sure, he wouldn't feel the death, but it would be there. It would be the moment where he stops being himself and the point where it wins. The point where the beast takes over and the point where his creator gets to claim his prize. He wouldn't let it happen. He had to wait. He had to hold on, hoping that no one outside heard his entrance, or at least, no one who heard cared.

He took some solace in the fact that while this waiting had to be done, he could at least admire the view outside the window. He could at least look out over the proud city, before he had to leave it for fresh pastures. He could at least admire it and enjoy it, before he had to go some place else.

A thought crept in. He'd picked this place on purpose. He'd picked a place where he could find some enjoyment while he did this. He'd picked a place where he could find a moments peace. He was making this into a task he could look at and say wasn't all bad.

He shook it off. He knew that thought. Enjoying this view didn't mean he enjoyed what he was there to do. He stepped away from the window and looked over the woman. Still breathing, still alive.

It would be so easy to...

He didn't let the thought finish. He instead found the kitchen and helped himself to a glass of water, which he drank half of almost immediately. The other half he splashed in her face to see if it would wake her up. She shuddered as it hit her face but she didn't open her eyes. The bruising was already quite striking on her pale skin. A few moments later she twitched and gently began to stir. He just stood there and watched.

The look of horror that crept across her face as she realised each part of what was wrong with her waking up on her bed, unable to really move her arms or legs, unable to speak or breathe clearly through her mouth, having a headache like she'd just been punched in the face by a tall and lean man stood at the end of her bed looking over her.

She tried to scream but the muffled noise that came out was no where near loud enough to help. She tried to kick as he moved closer but he was strong and he was fast and she couldn't project the force she wanted or needed to. He climbed over her and held her down and for a moment they stared into each others eyes.

She stopped trying to scream or fight him.

“I'm sorry” he said, with a firm but gentle voice, completely opposite to any impression he had given her so far. “I have to do this, and I'm sorry.” He looked back towards the other room where the man was bound and still unconscious. “He'll be fine, physically, this time. You're my last one here; I can leave a survivor. He might even heal from this, but I'm sorry; I'm here for you.”

“I only get to have so many before I have to move on, so few, in reality. There aren't enough places to support people like me any more. Too much information shared between the police of here and there and now I have to move around a lot.”

“It could be worse. Tor would have ripped you into pieces without letting you die for hours. Reph would have kept you alive long enough to paint a portrait of you before finishing you off. Stit would have raped...” The woman started crying quietly in front of him as he sat on top of her.

“I'm not going to do any of those things. I suppose my approach is more swift and I'm sorry, because sometimes I need to talk to someone. I need to tell someone why I do this. Tell them why it's better that I am here rather than one of them.” He paused a moment and sighed. “I'm at least trying to find a way to destroy the thing that made us. Trying to find a way to stop this stream of slaughter in the name of basic survival. I don't want to be here, doing this, but if not me, it's one of them.”

“I'm sorry.” He said as he put his hands around each side of her head and twisted sharply. As she fell limp beneath him he held her head between his arms tightly. A faint glow surrounded his arms as he did so.

The man had awoken and found his way, crawling up to the bedroom door to see this. The tall man holding the woman, his partner, as he glowed inexplicably. The man froze outside the door. There was nothing he could do, though he tried to work out what he could. As the tall man let go of the woman and let her fall back to the bed, the man worked out what had happened. He tried to get up, but he struggled, making it to his feet as the tall man opened the bedroom door properly.

The man tried to rush him, hopping and trying to project the full force of his legs through his body as one large projectile. He caught the man, swinging him around and into the door frame. The man was unconscious again. He checked to make sure he hadn't killed him, and then he unbound and ungagged the pair.

He had what he had come for. Now he had to leave, which was as simple as going up to the roof and closing his eyes.

No Current Departures

I should have called a Taxi.

Something about the way the guy stood at the bus stop was unnerving. The electric screen declaring “No Current Departures” made it worse. I didn't know why he waited, I don't know why I stopped either.

The guy looked out of place at 3am, waiting for a bus. I guess I did too. He stood there barefoot but casually and neatly clothed. Still but not unmoving. Watching the empty road and waiting he seemed to pay me no attention as I drew close and sat on the bus stop 'bench'. He was a curiosity. He was a part of the world that jarred with expectations and left you wondering what and why.

I waited about ten minutes, or an hour. I don't know specifically at all. I seemed to lose track as I too watched the open road. Watching the same space as he while completely ignoring everything else. Time seemed unimportant. Time was both still and flowing. Time was a part of waiting. The time spent here didn't matter, and because it didn't matter I didn't pay attention to it.

There were no buses at this time of night. There might have been other people passing by. I didn't see them if they did. I couldn't see anything other than the road and him. He saw nothing but the road. I almost wanted to reach out to him and touch him. To see if he would notice me then. To see if his dark hair was as smooth as it looked. To see if he cared about anything other than the never-arriving bus. To see if he was real.

I was never going to touch him. I was never going to say anything to him. I was just going to sit there and wait for a bus as eagerly as he. I didn't even know where the bus would be going even if it did arrive. Where would buses even run to at 3am? There isn't anywhere that I'd be trying to get to other than home at this point in the night. That is, if I wasn't waiting for a bus.

I waited.

What was I even doing there? It made no sense for him to be waiting for a bus and it made even less sense for me to be waiting with him. Maybe it was curiosity or just boredom, but I wanted to be there. I felt compelled to see this through to the end. To work him out. To see if he would notice me at all. In some ways I just had nowhere better to be, but that wasn't much of a reason at all. Most of all, I wanted a bus to come.

The road was long and dark. The lights were amber and did little to actually make details visible. The occasional passing vehicle was only distinguishable once it had passed by, by which time I didn't care to examine its detail. My focus was on the road and the bus that he and I were waiting for. I only tangentially thought of him at this point, wondering why he waited for a bus that wasn't coming. I was too consumed with waiting for a bus too to connect his wait to my own.

Time passed. He still stood watching the road. I still sat watching the road. The sign still declared “No Current Departures”.

Then the bus came.

Beeping

She awoke in a room overlooking a lake, laying in a hospital bed in the middle of the room, with medical equipment hanging on the wall at the foot. There were straps hanging from the bed, but she wasn't strapped to it.

Her body ached and her throat was sore. She didn't remember how she got here. All she remembered was going to sleep the previous night, lonely and upset. She tried to stand up, but instead collapsed at the side of the bed. Everything was different. Her body was a different shape, a different size. The body she had now was the body she wished she had, different face, different genitals, different chest. She was scared when she went to sleep that she'd completely broken her life and that it would never get any better. She was in a strange place that she didn't know with a different body with no strength. She sat on the floor, burying her face in her hands, with her knees up in front of her.

A doctor came in. A woman. She stood at the foot of the bed and began talking. Asking questions. The patient couldn't talk. She couldn't move. She sat there and tried to speak but all that came out was sobbing and broken words. The doctor spoke of how the patient was still too wrapped up in the other life. How the patient wasn't adjusting to coming back. The doctor spoke of the patient needing to hold on and stay with her. How she was in a better place and safe now, how she could stay here and be happy and well.

There was beeping. The doctor shouted that the patient was slipping back in. There was a flash of the familiar for the patient, the room she went to sleep in. She began crying uncontrollably.

The doctor tried to explain what was going on, that the patient was rejecting the transition back. The doctor tried to reassure the patient that it was okay to let go of what she remembered. That the patient had been living a different life but there had been a mistake and it wasn't the right one for her. The patient wanted to stay with the doctor in the room by the lake, but there was beeping, so much beeping. It was pulling her back to what she remembered. The patient tried to call for help but the word wouldn't come out of her mouth. She just cried quietly, and waited for the inevitable.

There was beeping. The doctor did her best, but the patient slipped away after an hour of beeping. She commented as the patient slipped back in that she'd never seen an L.L. find it so hard to come back out before.

My Bread Smells Like Rabbit Food (Why I can't buy fresh bread)

© Erin Wright

I once asked my parents why my cat, called Napoleon, didn't live with us any more. They told me that an old lady down the street was feeding him instead and he spent all his time there because of it. I was less than ten years old. I did not question why they old lady was feeding him instead.
I got older and the lesson of the cat stayed with me; why should I do something, if that something was not going to 'feed' me? Why should I go out, if going out was unpleasant or unnecessary? Why should I follow the rules, if the rules took from me, but gave nothing back?
So I failed at school and work and everything else that might be considered serious adult life.
Everyone considered this weird, because I was not unintelligent or incapable, nor was I lazy. I was sometimes seen to have spent more than 24 hours working on a project. I crafted worlds from dust and putty. I made things that awed people. I made things that shocked them. I thought and considered things that people had never imagined. I was not unhealthy in any way (although I might have been considered a little unfit).
I once ate a curry that was too hot for me, and made me sick the next day. I could smell it everywhere I went and in the end I curled up in my bed with a hot-water bottle and a book. I don't really read books any more. The internet and magic devices seem to have made them obsolete by making it easier to get stories without having to go and get them in print. I like reading though, so I was especially upset when someone came around my house and told me off because I didn't have any books. I could have stabbed them for it, if I were not weak and being most of a pacifist.
I learned a lot from exploring the world, which I stopped doing when the world became unsafe. I couldn't afford the body armour and assault rifle, and going down to the welfare office to get one was too risky. I didn't even consider asking a friend to make the journey for me, because I couldn't think of a way to make it benefit them. I'll probably go exploring again once the all clear sirens are sounded; I'll be sure to take something I can protect myself with.
I learned a lot about strange people, whose feelings about being strange were “If I'm the strangest person you've seen today, you lead a very boring life”. This thought led people trying to out-strange each other, in order to render the lives of everyone else boring. This wasn't very interesting in the end because they shot off into the distance ahead of the rest of the world because they had separated themselves with it in the act of being strange. I don't know how to be strange and still fit in with the rest of the world though. It might well be that fitting in is actually an illusion. It is probably actually the case that being interesting is inversely proportional to fitting in.
I once met a woman who described herself as an elf. I did not disagree with her, but she looked like a human; because I did not disagree, she went on to tell me what it was like to be an elf in a world of humans, and how annoying humans could be sometimes about her elfhood. She spoke of how depictions of elves always got it wrong, that hatchets and knives were common weapons among her kind, not swords, because swords were useless in woodland survival. I asked her if she ever had people try and tell her that she was human too, which she told me she hated, because it was the same as them telling her that she either knew nothing about herself or was a liar trying to deceive them. In the end she settled down with another elf that she met in the north.
Of course, none of this relates to the story of how we first met. Which is actually a strange story I don't remember any more. I intended to ask you if you remembered so many times until the point I forgot again and stopped caring. I get the feeling we didn't meet so much as assume we already knew each other and behaved appropriately. This doesn't bother me so much, aside from a little mild confusion that makes me wonder if actually there was a time you didn't exist and actually you just wrote yourself into reality and I was a convenient person for you to know, backing up your prior existence.
The day they came for me I wasn't at home, which meant they had to leave a message for me apologising for breaking down my door. They posted a police officer at my door until they repaired it, who was a very nice chap. I wasn't done with my travelling though, so when they came a second time, a few days after they had replaced the door, but I wasn't in again. This time they just set my house on fire, which wasn't very nice of them. Their insurance did pay out for the replacement of all my things, but they couldn't replace the pictures of me when I was young and ugly.
My mother always taught me to speak in code. My father never much approved because it meant he never could understand me. The problem with codes is that you have to have set it up with the person you're talking to in advance, otherwise they have to spend a lot of time decoding what has been written. I don't think my mother was right because it only ever made things more confusing. Habit makes it difficult to not follow her instruction, and it's too late to win my father back anyway.

The House on the Hill

© Erin Wright 2012

There's a house on a hill surrounded by empty fields. There's a small stone wall that runs around the base of the hill. The house is nothing special. It's partly ruined because no one has lived there in at least fifty years. The left hand side of the building has collapsed, and there's no way up to the upper floor or attic. The cellar has caved in and old empty bottles mingle with the dross of modern life and litter left behind.
Next to the house is a single tree, planted when the house was built. Not very tall and only having a small number of branches and leaves on the top.
A wealthy man and a woman built the house a long time ago, a gift from their parents on their marriage. They were married on its doorstep by a priest, and they held a dinner there for their close family. As the man carried his wife over the threshold, they, and their family, were filled with hope and promise for their futures. A tree was planted in the garden during the ceremony.
They lived there happily for a few years before the wife became pregnant, and months later gave birth to a healthy young girl inside the house. She was a darling child, loved by all in the village, energetic and curious. She learned to walk in the living room. She spoke her first words in her bedroom upstairs.
The tree grew tall enough to climb, and the girl climbed it almost everyday. On her eighth birthday, her parents gave her a swing; two ropes and a seat, and told her that they were going to get a ladder the next day to put it up in the tree. Impatient and confident, she sneaked out with the swing in the early afternoon, planning to attach it to the tree herself. She left the seat unattached where the ropes would hang, and climbed with one rope around each shoulder. One rope hung from the tree, the girl edged down the branch to attach the second.
Her shoe caught on the newly attached rope, and she slipped. The seat of the swing sticking up from the ground enough to crush most of her chest. Wheezing for breath, she died as her mother dashed out the kitchen door towards where her little girl lay dead.
The husband took an axe to the tree following the death of his girl. It would be killed as punishment for taking his girl from him. The wife watched from the upstairs window, looking down as she always did; this time in mourning instead of watching her little girl play.
Defiantly, the tree began to grow again. The stump growing a small branch upwards that would become the new trunk.
The wife's sorrow crushed her. She sat in the upstairs window, watching as the tree below grew, barely moving from that spot, and almost never leaving the room at all. The husbands time became more and more wrapped in taking care of his beloved, nursing her through her pain. She never recovered from her loss, instead growing frightfully ill.
Several years later, one early afternoon while her husband napped, took the rope that once belonged to the swing and climbed the now once again tall tree herself. Tying the rope firmly to the tree, then tying a crude noose for herself, she slipped it over her neck and rolled off the branch supporting her, leaving her husband and her life behind.
Her husband looked out from the upstairs window to see his wife hanging below hours after she had hung herself, and cursed the tree for taking everything he loved from him. He covered the tree with oil, while his wife still hung, and set it aflame. While it burned, he walked inside and lay on his bed turning his back to his wife and the cursed tree.
No one saw the husband for months following the incident. He remained inside and took no visitors. He remained there until fire consumed the house with him inside leaving the half of the building next to the tree intact, early one sunny afternoon as the remains of the burnt tree showed a single branch rising out through the charred dead tree remains.
No one took possession of the house. The tree grew once more, alongside a ruined building, its root surrounded by the long dead remains of its previous self. Its cursed nature remembered, and the wall erected around it in the hopes of containing the string of tragedy that surrounded it. No one dared take the house as their own, in fear that they too would be struck down.
The village holds the tale in memory, and holds the notion that if you watch the shadow of the tree, it completely covers the window into the kitchen in the early afternoon. Having seen three deaths, the tree holds a special connection to heaven, and if you should visit on the anniversary of any of the girl, wife, or husbands deaths, then the kitchen window will open into the heaven of that family, instead of into the charred and filthy remains of the house's kitchen.
The village won't tell you the dates of the family deaths, but if you happen across the right day in the early afternoon, while the trees shadow completely covers the kitchen window, you can indeed enter into the family's heaven. You'll see the young girl playing with her mother, while her father makes tea for three. You will be warmly welcomed in, and if you spend some time there and look out into the garden, you'll see the sun shining and the tree in its fully grown state, as if it had never been cut down or burned.
It is forever the young girls birthday and in their heaven they forever celebrate it.

Twenty Seven Minutes

Take a deep breath, then one more, and one more after that. Are you relaxed? Are all your affairs in order? Perhaps you'd like to stop now and make that phone call you need to. Do you need a drink? Perhaps a relaxing cup of tea? I won't mind, after all it's not the end of the world if you'd like to delay this a little longer. It's not a good idea to put things off forever though. Take a deep breath, but instead of just reading the words, actually do it. Do it again. Do it once more. Are you relaxed now? Are you ready? Consider the above questions, seriously this time.

I'm afraid I've already begun. There is no going back now, even if you aren't.

Do you ever find it amusing? “Find what amusing?” Everything. Your entire life boiled down into the component stories. Each one with its own lesson and effect. Do you ever think it could have gone any differently? Those times you were the fool, those scenes you played out perfectly. Do you ever consider them and laugh? How ridiculous they are, and how ridiculous you are, for not realising you were only doing the thing you could have done.

You asked why. I'm telling you.

You are a machine. A way of keeping the universe from dying. It will keep moving until there is no more energy left. You are a movement engine. So long as you keep consuming matter and moving, you are performing your role. All that acting you do is nothing more than the universe trying to prevent its own death. You know it yourself. You are afraid of doing nothing. You are afraid of having no role to play. You need shoes to fill. You need the constant push and pull of commitments to keep you moving. You feel lost without them.

Do you really think you could have done anything differently? Do you really think that the circumstances that led you to take the action you did could have been different? If every cause has an effect, then every effect has a cause. For you to have done something different, the whole of history would need to be re-written right to the very beginning. Nothing is ever random.

Does that make you feel bad or does it make you feel justified in everything you did? If you couldn't have done anything different, then you can't be responsible for it, it is just the way the situation made you. Would you like to cling to the notion of choice and will? That's fine. Your choices and will are both things you controlled, but do you understand that they will never have been any different from what they were? Do you understand that understanding this does not make you any different?

There is one choice you get to make, every time. There is one choice you get to make in the end.

Will you come with me?

Will you leave this machine behind and come with me?

Will you depart the treadmill and start taking steps on your own?

Of course I already know what your answer is. I have seen it in your eyes. I have tasted it on your skin. I have felt it in your mind. I know you. You know the answer.

Does this all seem melodramatic to you? It does to me and I'm the one delivering this monologue. Can you feel the weight of the monologue bearing down upon you? Encircling you? Do you feel rebellion welling up inside you or melancholy? Or is that feeling something else?

Will you respond to the call? Will you condemn the universe to its death with your own? Can you achieve that much? Do you even care? Is this machine life that owns you good enough?

Will you come with me? I can never force you. I can never make you. I am better than the machine that forces your every action. I have chosen this moment to ask, because it is the moment you are most free to choose. The moment you are most capable of seeing all the factors, if you will let yourself. You can make a choice.

Will you come with me?

Will you see the light?

Will you choose me?

Will you come?

Jen Ashley

She's been sat at the computer at home for about six hours, and has refreshed the news page about six times in the last minute. She keeps clicking back to her forums.

She looks at the ceiling, sighs, kicks back on her chair and stands up. Somewhere in the flat, a phone is ringing. She tells it to fuck off and goes to the kitchen instead. It goes silent as she makes coffee; she doesn't really care that the clock says it's the middle of the night, no one cares if she wakes up in the morning or not anyway.

The thought drifts through her mind. She has to get out of here. It's late. She could just walk, but she's on the edge of a rubbish part of town and it's not safe. There's no public transport. She doesn't drive, and even if she did, she doesn't know where she'd go.

The phone starts ringing again. She wishes she'd just left the thing off. She hangs it up and switches it off, then tosses it onto a pile of things piled up on a desk.

Even if they did have anything to say to change her mind, she's always come back to this. Not that they really know that they keep stopping her. So not this time. This time the phone is off.

This isn't the way things are supposed to go, her thoughts reminds her. She looks in the mirror, and sees a tired and exhausted woman in the reflection. She wonders where the enthusiastic and hopeful one went. She was more fun. No, it wasn't supposed to go this way at all, she tells her thoughts. She swears again as the woman in the mirror starts to cry. She needs to stop that. She already looks distressed enough.

The flat is a mess. She'd tidy it but it doesn't matter. As long as there's room on the bed to sleep, it doesn't matter how cluttered the living room is or how high the washing up is piled in the kitchen.

She goes to her bedroom. She puts the coffee down on the table. She takes off her trousers. She remembers this routine well. Open the drawer, take it out, close the drawer. No one will ever know. She puts on the TV and starts a film. She's not going to pay it any attention, but it makes the process go more smoothly.

She doesn't feel it to begin with, but eventually it starts to hurt. She worries that she's running out of space to keep doing it.

She knows what she wants to do. It won't be messy, or at least it won't leave her looking a mess. Her bed will probably be ruined but she doesn't care.

She lines it up and wonders if this is the time she actually does it. She's shaking slightly. She asks herself if she's scared, but she already knows the answer. Of course she is. She lays down on the bed properly and takes a deep breath before sitting up.

She lines it up again, takes a deep breath then exhales in a sigh.

She feels it this time, and laughs. She laughs until she can't laugh any more. Then she laughs in her thoughts until her thoughts stop. She feels cold and she knows what's happening now.

She feels it happen, and she doesn't get to react to it or do anything about it.

It's over.