2010 Retrospective - The Ritual

It’s too cold. My breath mists in the air, catching the flickering of the fluorescent light. My skin prickles, hairs standing on end. Why is it so damn cold? I shiver. I’m not wearing nearly enough for these kinds of temperatures. A click, steel on porcelain. I glance behind me, but no-one is there. A squeak, the gurgling of water. I turn back again, recoil in shock. There he is. Right there in front of me, holding me with his baleful eyes. Brown eyes, just like my own. Fear clutches me, claws raking my stomach. So it has finally come to this? He looks pale, afraid, glistening with nervous sweat. But there is resolution in those eyes, behind the fear. He won’t back down.

He looks me up and down, and I examine him in return. His gaze is chilling, but there is something far worse. I know this face. That broad nose, that high forehead, those narrow eyes, that stubble-covered chin. The face of my dreams, and my nightmares. He finishes his appraisal of me, mouth twisting in disgust. Even through my fear, my roiling nerves, this hurts me. He has judged me, and found me lacking. I shouldn’t care what he thinks, I shouldn’t. But I do. We’re connected… somehow. I’ve had enough of this. Enough of the fear, enough of the judgment. I should just walk away.

I shift slightly, his nostrils flare. He flicks his arm up, one quick motion, and there is a blade at my throat. My breath catches, perception tunneling down into this one sensation. The flickering light fades away, leaving nothing but his face. Pale, drawn, unkempt. The sounds fade away, save for the fluttering of my terrified heart. The cold, that goes too, until all I feel is that burning line of pressed against the soft skin of my neck. He stares at me, mad eyes boring into my own. My guts churn with fear, my muscles ache and groan, my nerves sing with tension. My own symphony of terror. My teeth grind and the tang of metal pervades my mouth. I’ve bitten my tongue.

The face grimaces, the hand twitches, and the world rushes back to me. Every sound, every taste and sight and touch grates at my sanity; clawing at my overwrought brain like talons gouging the soft flesh of a melon. I want to puke, scream, run away, hide. But I cannot move, I’m completely in his power. I don’t want to die!

The blade shivers, then moves, slowly caressing my throat, my cheeks. He plays it over my face, piggy little eyes gleaming, reveling in my fear. Why me? Up my neck, firm enough to feel the pulse of my jugular, blood pounding just beneath the skin. He’s sick. Under my eye, then gliding playfully close to my ear. He should be locked away! Around my lips, cold and dangerous, tugging slightly on the soft skin. He should fucking DIE!

The hand jerks, and a searing line of fire lays open my defenseless throat. Hot blood bubbles out and flows down my neck, warmth against the cold. He looks almost surprised. I feel faint, my head is spinning, vision blurring. He’s breathing hard, eyes bugging out. So this is it then. It’s done. I slide into the waiting darkness…

Cold water dashes across my face, making me gasp. I squint into the light, shivering in the cold, breath misting in the air. I dab ruefully at the cut in my neck, shooting my clean-shaven reflection a wry smile. God…

I’d always hated shaving.

2010 Retrospective - Black & Blue

There I sit, cross legged on the hard floor. The other blue-belts sit in a line on either side of me. There’s not too many of us grading this year, only four, and I wonder how many of us will pass. We’ve already done our forms and kicking drills, and the impassive faces of the instructors give nothing away. We’re up to the sparring now, the black belts are just giving us a demo. Damn if they’re not fast, and precise too. Feet and fists are flying everywhere, and they’re not even using protective gear. That song about Kung Fu fighting springs to mind. Somehow though, I don’t think anyone would appreciate it if I started singing. Not only are we supposed to be silent and attentive, but this is Tae Kwon Do after all.  “Goman!” The blacks still, instantly neutral again. They bow, and move out of the ring. “P. Bennet.” The first of us blues are called up. He runs into the ring and faces his opponent, a black belt. They bow at the command of the instructors, then begin. Bennet isn’t fighting with anywhere near the expertise of the blacks, but they seem evenly matched. It’s obvious that the black-belt is holding back. One of the instructors ends the match, and the combatants face each other and bow. The head instructor rises, a 6^th Dan black-belt, and with a single word delivers the verdict. “Pass.”

Bennet sits down, happily relieved. The next name is called. “D. Anderson.” That’s me. I shout out to make sure they know I’m here, and jump to my feet. I’m still hot from the kicking, and my short black hair is plastered to my head. Settling my chest-pad, I run to the centre of the ring. My black-belt opponent steps forward. It’s Michael Donovan. Great. The guy hates me, and he’s never afraid to show it. He takes his place opposite me, glaring all the while.

“Cha-Riot!” We snap to attention, feet together, clenched fists at our sides.

“Kyong-Ne.” We bow from the waist, and I can feel his heated stare boring into the top of my head.

“Sparring stance… Junbi!” Simultaneously we drop, left legs sliding back, hands up to protect our face as we both shout a deafening ‘Yut!’ Mine is embarrassingly shrill.

“Shi-jak!” So it begins. Instinctively I jump backwards, and his foot whistles past my face. I scuttle back again, putting some distance between us. We circle each other, feinting and weaving, sounding out each other’s defenses.  A roundhouse here, a jumping front kick there. Try as I might, I can hardly touch him, but my chest is aching from all the hits he’s scored on me. I throw myself into a slipping front kick, but he’s too fast. He’s already gone as my foot cleaves the air, launching an attack of his own. He spins into an inside kick, and I can’t get out of the way in time. The impact of his foot deadens my arm as I throw it up to block him. He snarls as I drive my other fist into his chest pad. I jump back again, but I can barely lift my arm to protect my head. Sweat drips down my entire body, stinging my eyes and making my feet slip on the polished floor. He rushes towards me, and I seize my only opportunity. I step to the side, and in one fluid motion my knee comes up as my body turns over and- THWACK! A stinging blow to his rump, my face creasing in savage glee. His face contorts in rage and… What? Sorrow? He drops back into sparring stance, his face composed.

But I heard it, just before his calm veneer snapped back into place, a tortured whisper: “I loved you…”

What…the… f- The air rushes out of me as his foot slips through my slackened defenses and slams into my chest, hard enough to lift me into the air. I land flat on my back, gasping for air, my chest throbbing. The voice of the head instructor cuts through the air like a whip. “GOMAN!” I manage to stagger to my feet and shuffle back to the starting position. I’m already hurting all over.

Here we stand, opposite each other again. A blue and a black. Black and blue. He looks tired, and a little sad. I just feel tired. My chest aches from where he kicked me, and my arm is numb. I doubt that I got more than three good hits on him, no way that I’ve won. Still, his butt’s probably smarting something fierce. The face he’s wearing, almost a pout by now, is achingly familiar. Now, where have I seen that before? I’m wracking my brains, but my reverie is broken. The head instructor has stood, and is talking to us.

“Michael Donovan, you are a 2^nd Dan black belt, you know the tenets of Tae Kwon Do. Yet this match showed a disappointing lack of restraint. Nevertheless; this,” he points to me. “…1^st blue belt, managed to hold out against you, far longer than we would have expected. Thus,” and now he addresses me directly. “Donna Anderson, you have passed. Congratulations.”

The parents sitting at the back of the hall burst into applause. My legs feel weak, but that might just be from exhaustion. Michael storms off, and I finally remember why that expression is so familiar. It’s a spitting image of the one he wore when I broke up with him. Way to hold a grudge, man. That was so long ago. Oh well. I guess some guys just can’t handle rejection.

The little old man who lived at the end of the lane in the small house that was very run down but surprisingly clean

Picture, if you will, a little small town lane. It is beset on both sides by houses of various sizes that the city folk would invariably call 'cottages', despite any technicalities associated with such a label, and would proceed to exclaim over how 'positively quaint' they are. This will, of course, not endear them to the locals at all, but they will utterly fail to notice this and take the rather stiff smiles of said locals in stride as that refreshing brand of 'country friendliness'. These city folk who seems to utterly condescending would never notice the house at the very end of the lane, for it is small (closer to actual cottage proportions) and quite run down. It is also quite grey. As such, in no way does it conform to the pastoral rustic idyll that the city folk have deigned to visit the countryside to see, and thus they ignore it. But these city folk are as unimportant to this story as the house at the end of the lane is to them, and thus let us all promptly forget them. Quite conversely, the house at the lane is very important to us, for it is the abode of the man about whom this story has been written. For a clue as to how important both the house and the man are to us, notice that both of them have been mentioned in the title (for future reference, this can be an significant indicator as to the importance of things). 

The man who lives in the house of the end of the name has a name, but it is not very critical to the telling of this story. However, for expediency, for your own comfort and titillation, and to aid in differentiating him from the other persons that lived on the lane, let us call him Reginald Whittlesby II (that is, the second, for he was named after his father), or Reg for the sake of simplicity. He is is a small man, bent over by the weight of his life and by his threadbare grey coat. He has a bald head punctuated mistily by a few threads of grey hair and the occasional grey liver spot, grey fingernails at the ends of grey hands, and watery grey eyes. In fact, Reg Whittlesby is almost entirely grey, from his lips to his hands to his grey felt shoes. He even walks and talks in a manner that implies grey, a show, waffly shuffling and a slight soft wheezing. Similarly, his cottage at the end of the lane is grey also. It has grey shingles atop grey brick walls, and grey curtains hang either side of the grey door. In the village wherein this lane resides, which is resplendent in emerald greens and ruby reds, it would stand out were it not so ugly and decrepit and thus ignored universally as one tries to ignore a quietly disgusting relative (such as an aged uncle with a propensity for picking his nose). But now we must briefly depart from the man (Reginald, not the uncle from whom we shall be departing permanently) and his house, and consider the other denizens of this country lane. 

In a slightly sprawling salmon-pink house midway down the lane, with bright purple curtains and terracotta-red roof tiles lives Annabelle Jocelyn Pumphrey, who does not know how to decorate but who very much likes colours. She is currently in the kitchen, which surrounds the bright yellow back door. It is quite a large kitchen, as it was built to accommodate quite a large woman. Mrs Pumphrey loves baking, and must often sample her cooking to ensure it is of the highest quality and quantity so that it may fulfil her second love, which is feeding people. She is cheerily rotund, and is hardworking and efficient in both her chores and in gaily gossiping about the townsfolk. Currently she is mixing up a giant loaf or five of her best banana bread, which she intends to take to the Sunday Church Picnic, for Father Frombles has been looking rather peaky and thin of late, and her banana bread does wonders for both the tummy and the complexion. Being able to multitask quite comfortably, she is chatting to her friend Miss Matilda Heathery, who is currently leaning on the kitchen counter. Miss Tilly Heathery, despite being half the age, is just as cheerily florid and bosomy as Annabelle, and just as enamoured of sweets and gossip. Pursuant to our story, their conversation is about our Mr Reginald, and features a large number of dropped 'haitches'.

'Ere now, 'ave you ever been inside 'is 'ouse? It's amazing it is. Not a single mote of dust or cobweb to be seen. You'd think it would be all dirty inside, considerin the outside state of it and 'im bein a gent an' all, but there's not a single speck inside that 'ouse, I'm tellin you. I don't know 'ow 'e does it, 'e moves so slowly all the time. An everything in there is grey it is, just like 'im. Like the 'ole place has been left too long in the washbasin an 'as all just faded out. 

An 'e doesn't hardly eat anything! Why, I 'ad 'im over for tea with old Mrs Buttershop (you know 'ow we've been trying to fix them up, for years now it seems like), an despite me putting out teacakes an beef cucumber sammiches and God knows what else all 'e et was a single sugar biscuit! 'E never smiles, and 'e hardly ever speaks, an that only a whisper. It does me 'ead in, I don't mind tellin you!

At this very moment, completely unaware that anyone at all is talking about him, Reginald is shuffling about his grey decrepit living room, with a limp grey duster clutched in one limp grey hand. On closer inspection, if anyone dared to do a closer inspection of such a thing in such a place, one would find that this duster is, or once was, half an underpant. His eyes, the only part of him that is moving quicker than his known shuffle, dart from corner to corner, earnestly searching. He polishes each surface in the room, resulting in the uncanny cleanliness spoke of earlier by our Mrs Pumphrey, all the while searching, searching. At last, with a small cackle that would certainly surprise the good mistresses in their large kitchens, he spies the makings of a spiderweb. A single strand of grey, from which hangs a rather large and enterprising spider (whose name I'm sure neither you nor I could pronounce, were we even to know it) that has delightfully decided to settle here after observing the plentiful real estate through the kitchen window (which it had some considerable difficulty navigating, I can tell you). With uncharacteristic swiftness Mr Whittlesby snatches the poor unsuspecting spider from its line, grey lips peeling back to reveal a startling mouthful of strong white teeth. He crunches down on the arachnid with unconcealed relish, in much the same way that the kiddlins of the lane devour their hard candies, until only one erstwhile orange-striped leg is left hanging outside his mouth like a smear of iced lolly left behind on his lip. His vividly crimson tongue, the only part of him that retains colour (perhaps through its lack of use) flicks out and scoops up the leg. Mr Reginald Whittlesby II, or whatever his name is, who lives in the little run-down cottage at the end of the lane, smiles a rare toothy grin, and then sets about his cleaning once again. 

From the Past

Hey. It's you. 

You're back.

It's been a while.

How are you going? What's been happening in your life since you've been gone? Are you studying? Working now? Have you achieved what you've wanted to achieve? Have you found what you're looking for? Tell me everything, I want to know what you've been doing with yourself. 

Do you remember me? I hope so, surely you would. We were together for a while, after all. How do I look, after all these years? I'm older, I suppose. Perhaps I look small and petty to you now. Maybe I'm old, and frumpy, and you're glad I wasn't this ugly when you were around. Or maybe I've had some work done, maybe I'm looking better than ever. Maybe I look fresh, and young, revitalised, and maybe you're even a little jealous of whoever I'm with now, wishing I'd looked this good when you had me. Or do I look no different at all? Could I be just as you remember me, forever frozen in your memory? What do you see in me now? 

Does it matter? You're here now, and we can't change the past. 

Why are you here? Why did you come back? Did you miss me? Did you long to see me, to touch and smell me? Maybe I am so dear to you that you could no longer stay away, no matter the other events of your life, and you just had to see me. I think I would be flattered if that was the case. But maybe you came to gloat. Maybe you're here to show me how big and bad you are now, how distinguished and larger than life? Am I to cling to your knee and suck up stray scraps of reflected glory? Am I so small to you now? Or perhaps you came back out of some sense of duty, and you really don't want to be here at all, so everything you do or say is tinged with sullen resentment. Did your friends tell you about me? Did they say I needed you, and you should visit, even if you don't like it? 

Does it matter? You're back now, for a time.

Are you here to stay? Are you giving me a second chance, a shot at something new? We could try again, make something beautiful of us this time. Something more beautiful than before, perhaps. Or maybe it is I that is letting you in, and you are the one twisting your cap in your hands. You'll try harder if this is the case, no doubt. More likely this is just a rare visit. Not many return to me, after all. You won't stay, and pretty soon I'll be grooming someone else, looking for someone else. 

Does it matter? There are always others.

Who were we to each other, all those years ago? I've had so many, it can be hard to remember. Were you one of the special ones? Perhaps I piled you with with gifts and honours, perhaps I slaved to give you the very best of myself and make sure you had everything you needed. Perhaps we loved each other, and you cried when you had to leave. Or perhaps you were different, a wild one, one that I could not control nor fix. Did you break me? Did I give up to soon, and send you away rather than trying a bit harder to make it work? But maybe it wasn't like that. Maybe you found someone else, and left me for them. It doesn't always work out, and that's okay. We're always learning. Perhaps you didn't feel strongly one way or another about me? You didn't love me enough to make it wonderful, or hate me enough to make it awful. Perhaps we both just stuck it out from habit, and we ended with no feelings at all. Or maybe you hated me, but you couldn't escape. Maybe I gave you the worst years of your life, maybe you hated me and were so relieved to finally be free of me. 

You who was once my student, who are you now? Did I prepare you well for the rigours of life, or only that I was not the one to do so?

 

Did I teach you well? Did I matter?

 

Written for a friend. Seed: High School.

Devoured

Tonight's the night. I can feel it, the anticipation crackling in the air like static. I've been waiting so long for this, waiting for you to touch me, for your warmth to dispel the chill at my core. I've wanted you ever since you picked me up, ever since you seduced me away from all my friends. The door opens and you come in, utterly confident as always. You sweep your hair back from your face, jet black locks touched but lightly with glowing silver. You scan the room, your piercing blue eyes glinting in the last dusky rays of the setting sun. You see me, and a wolfish grin creases your face. We both know that I am yours, utterly and completely. You walk towards me, smugly making me wait on you, trying not to rush towards you. As you get closer I can see the sheen of sweat on your brow, smell the musky scent of you washing over me. You cup my face gently in your strong fingers, eyes alight with lustful desire. "I want you," you whisper, your voice cracking and husky. My flesh tingles where you touch me, prickling heat spreading like a fire through my body. "But not yet." You pick me up bodily, making me shiver, before setting me down on the kitchen bench. I can feel the cold gripping me again in your absence, and I long for you to touch me again. Your beautiful eyes never waver from me as you reach up and unbutton your shirt, peeling the thin fabric from your body, taut muscles shifting under your golden skin. I'm starting to sweat, the heat of your proximity driving me insane. You lean over me once again, sliding one long finger around my curves. You smile, and then plunge a finger inside me. My entire body jerks, shocked at this sudden thrilling intrusion. You slide your finger out, leaving a void in me, and slowly your gorgeous mouth closes over it. "I love the way you taste." I can hear the hunger in your voice. Suddenly your mouth is on me, rough lips caressing every surface, white teeth nipping at me gently. I feel your hot breath on me, making me quiver with anticipation, needing you more than anything I've ever needed before. Then your tongue is inside me, hot and wet, invading my very core, and I am lost. I writhe and melt under your mouth, loving every second of your attention. My sweet juices gush into your mouth, and you drink them down, questing ever further inside me, devouring me utterly. I am gone, my very essence has melted away until there is nothing left, nothing left but you.

You lick the last of me off the tub, before putting it conscientiously into the recycling. I know that you've had many puddings before this, and will have many after, but I am still happy. For this glorious day, you had only me.