Is there a thread where we can post stories and stuff?
Just stories, not ones masquerading as QOTW? I haven't got the hang on this b3...oooh...new tricks.
(sirolimus, Mon 21 Jul 2008, 21:04, 7 replies, latest was 16 years ago)

I believe
you've just started one Charles :) Welcome to OT.
( fuck shit up the best you never had, Mon 21 Jul 2008, 21:11, Reply)

Oh dear
I think I put it in the wrong bit.
(sirolimus, Mon 21 Jul 2008, 21:20, Reply)

^
I've done that before

She was not amused...
(Pavlov's Frog figures no-one really reads sigs anyway, Mon 21 Jul 2008, 21:21, Reply)

Shoes
Lets try again...
Shoes.

Straightaway he said, unpleasantly:

“There’s only ever one reason why people look at the soles of their shoes”. He still let me in though, because he had to.

The carpet in his hall is the type of carpet that makes you nervous just to step on it. Thick and purple with a pattern from somewhere like Arabia on it. It’s not like the carpet I’ve got at home.

Or the carpet in our old house.

When we bought our house, at the house warming, this guy, one of those friends of friend people was there. He was probably the only person there I hadn’t known really well for years. He had an old England shirt on and was drinking my beer. I could see him looking around, at our stuff. Everyone else was really friendly, coming up to us and saying what a nice place, what a good spread we’d put on, but this guy was just standing there. Sort of looking smug, without looking smug, you know?

My eye kept catching him when I was supposed to be talking to someone else, because as soon as I’d seen him I’d known I couldn’t trust him.

Later on, I saw him talking to her. To stop her talking to him, I went up to them. As I was crossing our patio, though our patio doors and across our new lounge, I had to push through all these groups of our friends. They were smoking and drinking and laughing and drinking, and sunburnt from the garden. I could see her laughing.

I could see her face was sort of soft.

I felt crowded in by all these people, all our friends. Not mine. Ours. We used to share most everything. When I was close to them, I realised I didn’t know what I was going to say. I always have this thing when I meet people; I think of about three things to talk about, and remember them in case my conversation gets boring. It can be anything, really, football, telly, traffic, weather, whatever, work. It just calms me down to know that if there’s this pause, I know what to say. But I couldn’t think of anything. I thought about saying how everyone was saying how lucky we were, and how good the sandwiches are, but, I thought that was stupid. I wouldn’t have bothered crossing the whole room, coming in from outside, just to say that, just to her, would I? So, in the end, I just crossed over and stood there.

He was talking, anyway. He was talking about himself, I can’t remember what. I was looking at her, and him, rather than listening.

I saw him flicking ash from his cigarette onto our carpet.

I know everyone else was doing it. I’d even told everyone it was fine. It was an old carpet, we'd already said that were going to get rid of it. But, somehow, seeing him doing it without asking really got to me. I was thinking, “If he throws the butt down, he’s getting a kicking”. I could just imagine the burn mark, black on the yellow carpet. He put his fag in an empty bottle, though, and it fizzled as it hit the last centimetre of left over beer. I don’t know how I felt about that, him not putting it out on the carpet. A bit regretful, if I’m honest.

He was still talking. You could tell he was showing off about how much he knew. All these facts.

Then, straight out of the blue, this guy turned around to me and told us that there was 20 years of dead skin in the average carpet.

I was dumbfounded when he said it. Twenty years? Imagine all that skin, in our new house. Just lying there. Just fucking lying there like that.

It took me ages to question this, and when I did, it really got to me. For a start, how the hell would this guy know something like that? And why would it be 20 years? It got to me, like, I wanted to see him again, just so I could ask him, so that I could see his face look uncomfortable when he realised he’d been rumbled. I can’t stand people who boast about facts, as if knowing facts makes you clever. Like, all you need to do to be a doctor is read the back of “England’s Glory” matchboxes.

I don’t know why I thought of all this then, at this other guy, this posh guy’s front door. I was tired, I suppose, or hungry. Maybe I was just a bit scared of leaving skin on his carpet. I told you, it got to me. Even though I figured it wasn't true. It still got to me.

My arms were aching, because of that bloody toolkit. My old one was miles better. It was made out of this plastic, and was dead light. I couldn’t afford to get another one of those, afterwards, so I’d had taken this one from my Mum’s where I’d left it in the loft. I’d never taken it around to our new house, because if felt so silly. We were cramped for space. I was always going on abut her shoe collection, and there was me with two fucking massive tooloxes? She’d have loved that. But, why I’d kept it was, because, secretly, I was hoping that if she’d ever have had a boy, he could have played with it. I’ve seen all those toolkits in those toyshops I used to visit sometimes. They look like they'd fall apart the first time you touch them. The first and only fucking time.

When I stepped onto the carpet, it was so soft, it felt like, that feeling you get in the evening, when you take your boots off and put on some old trainers. I felt like I was leaving footprints, I felt so heavy. I was a bit worried, because the carpet was so soft and rich, I didn’t want to mark it. I honestly didn’t want to mark anything. You know what it’s like, right? You do.

I wasn’t worried when the posh guy said that; about my shoes. About him catching me checking the soles of my shoes for shit, as I waited for the door to be answered. That’s alright, see? People are like that; you get a new carpet in, the last thing you want is some stranger to come in, and put a stain on it which you can’t get ever out.

I still remember what it was like to have our own house, of course I do.
(sirolimus, Mon 21 Jul 2008, 21:21, Reply)

Me too
Just looked through your profile and they're rather well written :)
( fuck shit up the best you never had, Mon 21 Jul 2008, 21:49, Reply)

I like this
I like the fact you respect the intelligence of your readers and I like the fact that you leave space for them.
( chickenlady b3ta's very own Elizabeth Taylor, Mon 21 Jul 2008, 22:22, Reply)

Right, it's quiet here is teh start of a new book
I've written hundreds of stories I guess. I just delete them all afterwards. Here is the start of the latest book I am reading, I just want to flatter myself by seeing what it looks like on tinternet.


The salted watered sea slaps my chin and splashes into my open mouth so I try to open my mouth wider, but it is as open as it ever had been. As the water splashes in a sigh seeps out and then a scream. I keep walking - the tips of my shoes can just feel the sandy farewell as the coast falls from under me. I realise my arms are stretched out, crucifix like, my body even now betraying me, so I lower them and feel the straps of the rucksack pull me down. Everything goes bluey green and if I kept going, if I just kept going, there would be no difference between what my eyes see when they are shut and the black just beyond me. One step and a kick and I'm out of my depth and going down.

Or.

This isn't going to work. Or this is going to work. I can't work out which is worse. I was supposed to be in the afterlife before Deal or No Deal.

The rucksack falls from my shoulders and plummets to the floor. Even as I turn around and kick the water I think of it. The tide never comes out this far, so the rucksack with FILA on will just sit there at the bottom of the sea with the rocks and the Cadbury's caramel wrapper in it forever. If everything on earth got wiped out - every takeaway, clothes peg and cat food factory - then that bag would still be a fitting testimony to our evolution. It takes ten thousand years to fail.


Getting back is harder than getting out - always go out with nothing to lose - so by the time the water is only up to my groin I am wheezing. In my brain, the sarky voice which I call Leon the comedian says "Get fit by suicide" and the sneery voice which I call Rawlings says "You can't do anything, you fucking useless cunt". That's what he mostly says though, so we can ignore it.

On the beach I notice a woman with a dog, and her dog notices me and comes bounding along the shore. I can see the little explosions of soft red sand where the dog runs along the shore. I can feel water pouring off me and the little english waves lapping at the back of my knees, teasingly. I take big, exaggerated steps to get out of the water quickly; the woman is only twenty meters or so away now and the Labrador is already on the beach in front of me. I can see the woman clearly with her hair the wind has dared to sweep and the way the strands whip out of the headband thing she's got on her hair. She has a white raincoat on and green wellies - the depressing uniform of those tediously proud of their acumen with other people's businesses.

"I say" she says. Ten more meters and I am out of the water. I brush the tears away with my wet sleeve - it only makes my face more sodden. The wind whips along the shore. It is getting dark and soon it will be dark and darkness will descend on this beach, with the boarded up ice cream unit and notice about dog shit and my rucksack will be under the sea, just sitting there, just fucking sitting there on the shore under the sea and I bet I will think about that fact for longer than I'd choose to. The wrapper with the yellow and the cadbury's caramel on and the rocks with sand on and the rucksack with FILA on. They should have called it FAIL.

Five meters but she's there standing behind her dog. The dog looks nice in comparison with her, and every time I see a dog I remember that bastard Alsatian that my brother got when he moved into the flat above the chippy.

She brushes a strand of hair back. In the other she's got one of those things they use to throw balls for the dogs. Three steps. Two.

"You OK?" she asks.

"was just playing a game with my brother." I say. "We were seeing who could get closest to the sea without getting wet" I say

"I see" she says. She's not like Isabel.

"I lost" I say

"I see" she says, and the look on her face is like another sense. Something beyond sight.

I don't think I'm crying any more, which I suppose is something at least, and for wont of something to do, I run a hand through my hair. It feels awkward and gangly, but if I can't afford a bus unfair home, how can I get a haircut?

"Look" she says, but then she says nothing and she says it so slowly I wonder if she can tell exactly how much I have done wrong.


I wait for the 'but'. In my head, I can already hear her start "It's no business of mine" she'll say. Any year now.

"What do you need?" she asks, instead and I take one step to the right of her and sit on the sand.

I talk to her for a long time, at first I worry in case it all weighs her down but she says it isn't like that. Its not like that at all. It's more like a light that's shone in rather than a darkness cast off. I pretend I understand more than I do and I won't let her take me home and I call myself "Dave" so she won't be able to trace me. She looked at her fingernails when she talked and I could see the way they were all bitten down and I was a bit worried in case she was going to start out with stuff like "Actually, I can tell how you're feeling" When I tell her, that, really, it's fine and, really, I have to go, I go. I trudge up the sand and then the pebbles to the concrete barrier, clamber up it and then begin the long climb up the ramshackle cliffs. It's dark and I soon I will be alone - the last cars are going home with the pensioners back to their bungalows and "Thou shalt not"s and the holiday makers back to their rooms with the screwed down kettle stands and towels with all the warmth long washed out. I wait at the bus stop, crouching down behind the old stone wall to hide from the wind. Now and then I am sick over the wall, but mostly it's a hate and water chaser.

There was no notes in my pockets, just some coins and as I wait for the bus I hope I've got enough. I suppose hope is a good thing, really.
(sirolimus, Thu 24 Jul 2008, 12:47, Reply)