The man in the yellow shirt entered the elevator and pressed the lowest button, which was marked 'B3'. The light next to the word 'DOWN' lit up, and down we went.
"Down?" I exclaimed in confusion. "I don't want to go down. I want to go up. I pressed 31. Why is the elevator obeying you and not me? I was here first."
"It likes me better," said the yellow-shirted man.
"Why would it like you? You're ugly looking and your shirt is stupid."
"How do you know what an elevator thinks is ugly? Maybe it likes my shirt."
I...
Drip. Drip. Drip. The blood plopped to the concrete floor like a leaky faucet. He contemplated about the throbbing pain he felt with every plop.
He enjoyed that feeling. Concentrating so much on one pain over and over again. The first time he asked his boyfriend to blindfold him and punch in him the face - his boyfriend thought he was being dirty.
"You like it rough..." he had coyly responded.
The problem was it stopped being about the pleasure and more about the pain. He wanted to feel the warm liquid glop from his mouth and puddle to his...
She leaned over, sideways from her stool, all tits and lips and curly hair falling in his direction.
"Got a light," she asked, sticking a cigarette in the corner of her painted mouth.
He set his beer down, just foam left and dug into his right pocket. Pulled out a lighter and slid it across the plywood painted like mahogany bar. She looked at the lighter, and moved her lips into a pout. Leaned in even closer and said "A gentleman would light it for me."
"You're in the wrong place if you're looking for gentlemen," he grunted, looking straight...
The waves crashed and slapped at the stones, slurping up mouthfuls of sand and dragging them back to the deep. Elk stood out on an outcropping, the letter held tight in his hands. He didn't need to read it again, had read it fifteen times already this morning. And besides that, he wasn't an idiot and knew what was happening..could see the signs pointing at the end.
The waves frothed and slapped at the sand and stones.
But a letter was for cowards. Dash a note and sneak out the back window and then move on with your life.
No...
Nothing made sense.
Her eyes ached - the more she studied them, the less the words made sense. The words weren't working, they weren't doing their duty, they were just shapes on the wall. They blurred out of focus - was she just tired, was it her eyes?
Or were the words willfully confusing her? Was it deliberate? A merry dance they were leading her on?
She traced them with her fingertips - that couldn't be right, they were letters carved into the stone, they couldn't shift (ink, she could accept, could flow, could shift, but these were stone words,...
Majestic words like maelstrom, preponderance, warbling swirl through my creative whirlpool, pulling in pieces of conversation, tail-ends of admonitions, the lilt of swearing. I live by the calendar, fitting my days into the squares, x'ing the boxes at midnight.
Friday is the wave that crashed but hasn't withdrawn to the sea. I'll compose this in the spiked surf.
Waves. Waves lapping at the scarred coast line, the sound of gulls cooing above, the smell of the salty seawater.
The therapist had told her to imagine her happy place, every time she felt a panic attack coming on. Every time she felt stressed, which she was prone to, she came back here.
Her happy place.
She was nine years old, her strawberry blonde hair in pigtails, her jade green coat pulled tight to keep out the bitter wind. Balancing atop a weather warn log, she had pretended she was walking the tightrope at the circus.
She had always dreamt...
I used to feel like a bird in flight
I would cut between the trees
and see the clouds from upside-down
I would pull up to the top
of skyscrapers and hop
along their ledges
My silhouette against the moon
My reflection in the harbor
Yeah, I used to feel like a bird in flight...
"And they thought that was porn?"
"I don't think they would have called it that. Erotica, maybe. But...yes. There's something so innocent about it, isn't there? I love the kimono on this lady here."
"I can't believe you're looking at the kimino."
"This isn't your late-night shocker, this isn't your gorey pop-up nonsense. This is - I suppose it isn't classy as such, but it's... There's something about it. It's old fashioned. Charming in its way."
"They had very different ideas then."
"The world wasn't sexualised, I suppose. Seeing half a naked woman was shocking enough. We're just looking for...
The dream had been wonderful, yet it would never be real: she knows, even as she wakes, in the taste of bitter almonds at the back of her throat.
She tries to still herself completely so she can relive it in the morning haze. There was a boy-- no, a man-- and he had called her somewhere, taken her somewhere--
She breathes. In, out. In, out. Maybe there's something in dreamcatchers after all.
There had been a man in the dream. That is certain. There had been a man in the dream, and he had--
The fan drones incessantly. She...