A long time ago...
How we met is a foggy memory, fractured pieces that never quite add up to a whole, shifting perceptions of how long ago it was and where it happened. What I do remember, the piercing single aspect of clarity is that it was dark and the shadows didn't quite sit right.

At first it was amazing, we would stay up for hours talking about how we would right the world. We would go to the middle of nowhere and eradicate the isolation of the outside world by being completely enveloped with each other. We would curl up on the sofa and drink beers watching awful films because neither of us wanted to move for fear of spoiling the feeling of utter content of lying in each others arms.

Time passed, as it is so fond of doing, and the colourful aspects of our relationship faded into washed out shades of grey.

Silent creepers twisted their way around the conversation until it became choked and strained. Contact dwindled off until a mere brush of him against me sent cold shivers running through my body. The vultures were circling the relationship, waiting for it to finally admit defeat and lay down to die so they may feast upon the shattered remains of happier times.

For some reason neither of us wanted to raise the subject of going our separate ways. Maybe it was a refusal to separate from the physical reminder of the happier times, or maybe a simpler act of denial praying that the bleakness should be magically erased and things would be restored to how they once were.

Having a smoke on the patio one warm evening I noticed the curling smoke seemed to be darker than before, that the warm breeze had been chased off by a chill in the air that danced down my spine. Sensing a presence behind me I turned to see the answer to all my problems.

A couple of weeks later I watched as my, now official, ex walked slowly, crying whilst escorted to the van by the two sturdy men beside him. The relief that washed over me was enough to erase the shades of grey and to forget the nights of screaming and paranoia, the cries that there were ghosts taunting him, the belief that things were crawling under his skin, the tests for narcotics, the plans to build a secret underground bunker to be protected against "them", the turn against me and my allegiance to "them".

His last words to me were the sweetest ones I had heard in a long time, "You're with them - it's not going to work out". I had to sell my soul to get them. But it was worth it.
( TGB checking Off Topic is still shit at, Thu 5 Jun 2008, 15:21, 4 replies)

wtf
i'm sorry but i didn't quite understand the ending to that....did you put some bad medicine in his spliffs?
(Cancer Joy was short lived, Thu 5 Jun 2008, 15:50, closed)

wtf
Seemed like a well written start but I can't but help think there's a chunk missing somewhere.
( mistaspakkaman and the inedible shifting caterpillars, Thu 5 Jun 2008, 20:15, closed)

This
is like pulp detective fiction from the 50s. except without the guns, crime or mystery.
(Hippo_of_Doom, Thu 5 Jun 2008, 20:45, closed)

I reckon I got it
But tsk for turning from the light, my child.
(tweebianmonkey Should be known as Widget, Fri 6 Jun 2008, 11:08, closed)