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)