I see this man walking across the market car park as I leave in the morning, the wrought iron staircase to my flat having the depressing advantage of looking across this vast sheet of despondent concrete. Upon leaving work late, I see him again, though we have exchanged our directions, and our encounter is made all the more brief by my sheer desperation to get home, and to eat many biscuits. Stand in the place that you work, now face North. Our morning meetings serve a greater purpose to me however as I can judge how late I am by where I see him; too far along the car park and I probably should be running and flailing, closer to the coffee shop, and I have time to cram a brioche down my throat, being careful of course not to choke to death on the chocolate bits. I see this man on my early shifts, never on the lates. I wonder if he ponders where I might be on those late days, if I have died from brioche-related issues, and so on. If I do not see him on an early morning, I too wonder if he has died, perhaps from backpack-related injuries. And though I may well see him the next day, and be relieved, I express my joy quietly so that our unspoken tradition is not sullied and our faces do not crack open from surprise at hearing the other’s voice, for it is likely that if we do, fire will rain down from the sky, and this promises to be very inconvenient.

I see this man always in the middle of his journey, though he sees both the beginning and end of mine. He is a man in the middle, a middle man, but he does not notice me, nor I him.

My own zombie film, compromising entirely of my friends and I running through the town centre covered in blood and screaming for the lives of our zombie children, and grandparents, and undead hamsters, received full marks and was shown as an example for future generations for how to kick ass in the cadaver media market, though I still cringed at the sound of my own voice wailing madly amongst the sea of blood-soaked charity shop t-shirts. Santa Claws however was visceral, gratifying… All She Wants for Christmas is a New Face. It kicked you in the stomach and tickled your jealousy hole, and carved off your skin with a rusty butter knife. It was all any of us ever wanted for Christmas, and on a warm summer day with the blood growing thinner in my veins as a result of too much, or too little, vodka, I found I was holding a spork, which was stabbed acid-deep into the belly of a fat gentleman. It’s funny to say, isn’t it, vodka? Vod-Ka.

Bags of spaghetti and red food dye came to mind as I watched his stomach contents spill over the floor, amongst the red and brown came the occasional slither of yellow, and as the fat bled out of him I couldn’t help but think I might have done him a favour. I sat next to his face for a while and watched as the mass of liquid spread to the far end of the room- the wooden floorboards helping to slide his insides along the ground, instead of just absorbing them up like carpet tends to. The occasional beer mat would begin to float along the stream and I found this desperately droll, and laughed to myself for a while, before I thought this might have looked quite insane. Plus, he was beginning to smell quite a bit dead already, although this may have had something to do with the stomach acid dribbling out of his wound. I thought about apologising both to the man, and to the management, but as he was already bleeding to death I thought it would be rude to waste his time. It wasn’t everyday that I killed someone, at least not for a while. I stepped over the body and made my way out of the pub, and into the fancy dress store.

For the rest of the afternoon I chased people. I didn’t catch many, what with them running for their lives, afterall, but for the few I did catch, we did have a great deal of fun playing the How Far Can Your Eyelids Stretch Game, and Which Appendage is the Most Useless, and Therefore May be Chopped Off Roulette. Though it wasn’t really so much roulette as it was me relentlessly stabbing my spork fingers into people’s legs (I’d call it roulette to add a bit of intrigue). I would eventually let everyone go though, I was supposed to be Santa afterall, or something. They were maimed, but they were not dead; I was kind, but I was not benign. At the end of the day when the sun was still much too warm, I stepped out into the sunshine and took off the itchy beard, and went home for a cup of tea. The police had pulled up outside of the pub and were staring in my direction. I considered drinking a coffee instead, but didn’t know what effect this would have on my insides, as I sat in the back of the police car.

As I fell towards the earth I nonchalantly felt my stomach push firmly against the inside of my skin and my eyes wobbled slightly. Barely turning my head to the left I could see where the land met the sky, the entire scene so massive that everything was hysterical and everywhere. I was suspended in an environment made mostly from nothingness, although all of a sudden I had realised that blood was gushing from my ears, both from the noise and from the shock. It ran up my cheeks as I lay flat upon my back, falling downwards, the speed of my lifeless body allowing the expelled blood to battle the logic of gravity most grandly. The sky above me was a dark blue which seemed to stretch on for eternity, and the ground itself was grey, perhaps because of the shadows from the clouds, had there been clouds. I could have been falling for a century, the thin air compressing my thoughts into nonentity. At the end of my outstretched arm a blue skinned individual appeared, someone whom I did not recognise, and he told me that I would never know if I didn’t try. I laughed in his face, and he kindly turned me over so that I could greet death face on.

Below me I could see the outlines of fields and roads. Cities spread in every direction, their faint orange street lights sprawling into the distance like gargantuan, skinny spiders. Every moment which passed, passed by so slowly. For minutes at a time I would close my eyes, but each time that they were reopened I would have grown no more than centimetres closer. I could see the sun breaking cover at the edge of my eyesight and very slowly its light would creep over the surrounding fields. My fingers, now so cold, that I could barely feel the broken bones sitting in their sacks of skin. I could also no longer feel my face, or my back, or my chest. I had been falling for hours, and as it was impossible to turn away and so I kept very still and waited for my face to smash into cold concrete. A cold ending to a cold, tasteful fall.

But quicker now, I could make out the shapes of individual lampposts and cars, tall buildings and signs. I twist my neck sideways and look above me as though I had only just started to fall, although the heat emanating from the wreckage below me confirmed otherwise. All too quickly now there are lights at windows and lines on tarmac. All of a sudden I realise that the world below me was grey only and singularly because it was covered in snow, and in the growing sunlight it sparkled and revealed its pristine and untouched condition which echoed all my fear and hatred and beauty, as I rush ever closer to the surface, and then.

It becomes more difficult to hold the stale liquid in your mouth as the minutes pass. The frequent and not quite unwelcome ideas of worthlessness hold your pathetic heart in their metal claws. You muse listlessly on the benefits of suicide, too unhappy to find another solution, too bored to run a bath and pick up the radio. Other people’s secrets are greater than yours, and the blood pumping inside your wrists is too warm to be comfortable. There is sickness in the air you breathe, or in your mind, or in your hands. It is all too literal, you find this absorbing, almost.

Strange coffee perfume lines your nostrils and you see the posters outside, refusing to dissolve in the rain, plastic sleeves protecting them from watery death. They depict visions of beauty, though of course it isn’t, though of course it is. Everything is watery death, and it raises the corners of your mouth in an alarming fashion, to the woman stood behind the counter. Another woman outside pushes the fourteenth child from her throat in the pouring rain, and an old man sits upon the concrete bench in the concrete square breathing acid into his concrete lungs. At your right elbow is a girl with a latte, reading Poe, as though greatness is obtainable and lunatics only ever take over their own asylum. How you hate her.

We had achieved nought but intrigue, and Horror. Damp finds its way onto the back of your hand and you rub it into your skin, standing in the corner, calling ‘Here kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty…’.

I faced the television, underneath the ironing board, surrounding by drapes of white fabric and damp heat. The stifling steam was somehow comforting- I knew that if I were to drop into an infinite sleep that at least it would be warm and comfortable. But death was never quite death at this point, it would be a brief fading of the daylight into the comfort of imaginings. It would hiss and spit warm water, but it would too be acceptable and quietly unobtrusive. I smiled as I thought about my dad telling me about the worms in my eyeballs as I would giggle and he would tuck me in. The worms crawl in and the worms crawl out, your brain comes trickling down your snout. The white of my textile castle around me was much like my bed sheets, and if death would mean spiders dancing in my throat, I would embrace it with open arms.

But the television stood along the long wall of the living room, though in later years it would sit in the far corner and we would twist our necks to look at it. We were watching the News; news with a capital N, because it is new, and news, and on at Six, with a capital S, and important. The kind lady in the red dress was explaining that they had found several skeletons buried in a forest, and as she casually narrated with the mildest unease, suddenly death made a great deal of sense to me. I knew about skeletons, and I could feel the bones which made up my spine pushing against the inside of my skin. In one moment worlds collapsed and hair was torched from skin. Teeth tore at flesh and nails were pulled from their beds in a fit of red and swelling. I sat beneath the ironing board and felt the steam penetrate the back of my throat. My eyes watered at the prospect of maggots gnawing at my retinas, my skull remaining in the mud as my very memory vacated the realms of the earth. My mum switched the iron off at the plug.

Ooo, eee, how happy we shall be.

‘That’s a fancy coat,’ she began, ‘where did you get that from?’

It’s cold outside, I hate the seasons here.

‘It’s from ASDA,’ I feebly commented back, aware that with my back turned towards the direction the bus would be approaching from, nought but a fireball explosion singeing the back of my head would give me enough time to stick my hand out. I would be trapped here for an eternity. I shouldn’t have left the house without my cactus this morning.

By 10 o’clock I’m back in bed, fighting the jury in my head.

‘ASDA! You would never guess. I love how it matches your trousers, and you are wearing fancy shoes aswell- just look at you, with your coat and trousers and fancy shoes.’

Yes, look at me indeed. I glanced down at my cat shoes and back up at the woman’s face. She was smiling incessantly, and my lip quivered slightly in a vague attempt to make a polite human connection. She sat down on the metal pole which coupled as a seat, and either because of the guilt of original sin, or out of utter desperation, I did too. I had sealed my fate and hated my knees with the intensity of a thousand suns.

You drive all night, we haven’t slept in years.

‘Lorraine,’ she said, ‘Lorraine- that woman off the telly.’

I nodded with despair.

We suffer mornings most of all, we saw you lying in the road.

‘WHO LOOKS AFTER HER CHILDREN? That’s what I want to know- who looks after her children?’

‘I, er…’

We tried to dig a decent grave.

‘Because she’s always in Scotland, you know. Always doing those television appearances too- she probably does it for the money.’

‘Well…’

But it’s still no way to behave.

‘People like that are always wanting more money. If I had money I wouldn’t need any more, except if I did, and then I would probably go to Scotland aswell. Have you ever been to Scotland? I would never go to Scotland, even for money. Lorraine goes to Scotland, you know.’

She laughed and I swallowed some of the saliva which landed in my mouth.

If he hollers, break his ankles to protect him.

‘Anyway, what do you think of my hair?’

I stared at her for a few moments before realising that she had actually asked me a question to which she was expecting a response. Shocked and overcome with dread I flicked my eyes up to where her hair should have been and instead was faced with a mound of hay, seemingly dipped in the blood of a several menstruating ferrets. It was red, very red, and distinctly severe against her wrinkled skin and sagging breasts.

‘It looks very, er…’

‘I treat myself once a week, you see. I go to the hairdressers and I get them to dye it all red- sometimes they do it too mumsy and I try not to flip out, but today I think they’ve done it really nice.’

Just get inside, it’s almost over.

Distinctly terrified, I attempted to slide away slightly but ended up with my right cheek pressed against the glass of the bus stop, and an old woman pressed up against my left thigh. She began to lean very close to my face and steadily pushed her hand into her coat pocket. Alarmed I stared directly ahead and felt my breath quicken underneath my ASDA coat and fancy shoes. I was teetering between the edges of horror and relief that she was evidently about to stab me in the face, and as she began to withdraw her hand, I knew at the bottom of my heart that my time was up.

But then nothing. I glanced to my left in a fit of annoyance and curiosity, to the woman who had stood up like a cerebral yeti, her arm waving at the edge of the kerb. I cautiously looked in her waving hand and saw a laminated paper rectangle flapping about in the wind.

We’ll drive them far away from streets and lights, from all signs of  bad mankind.

‘What are you trying to do, girl, make me miss my bus?’

I’ll meet you in an hour, at the car.

I looked at the octopus creature and complimented him on the blueness of his tentacles. The tedious air of the sycophantic.

He had always been a fairly benevolent cushion, and through the years of tea stains and biscuit crumbs moulded into his furry bits, had become a part of the furniture; the most revered achievement a cushion could have hoped for. He couldn’t quite recall the colour he had been at the point of being manufacturing, though it could have been a magnificent shade of striking azure, for now he was instead a nice crusty brown, and melted into the background like butter down those suspicious crumpet holes. The humans had never washed him for fear of his zip ripping open and filling the floor of their laundry room with cushion guts and the occasional small packet of cocaine, which had been stuffed there just incase by the previous owners. Despite the occasional moment of clarity, an unfortunate side effect of sobriety, whereby the realisation occurred that the flat they lived in had essentially a thin layer of shit coating each surface, the cushion was generally safe, tolerated- and thus he was able to tolerate the humans in return, and retain his benevolent stance, on a sofa made mostly out of sweet wrappers and Kopparberg bottles.

Then one cold winter’s night, when the power had cut out, either by zombie apocalypse or a lack of paying bills, a terrifying event occurred. Had the cushion been slightly less benevolent, laid-back, and cocaine filled… perhaps he could have stopped the fire. Perhaps he could have advised against the lighting of several candles around the general area of the Cushion of Malevolence, who had recently become fanatical about skinning kittens and generally burning everything to the ground. Perhaps he may also had seen the danger in lighting the aforementioned candles in a close vicinity to the improperly anchored bonsai tree, who teetered on the edge of the shelf, and mocked all with his tiny, perfectly trimmed moustache. But, he did not.

The bonsai tree looked at the spoon, the spoon looked at the coaster, the coaster wasn’t looking because it was too busy humping the mug; but the mug saw the spoon looking at him, and so looked on to the internet router, who looked at the Cushion of Malevolence and winked through it’s rather intense Stockholm Syndrome. The evil cushion looked once more upon the bonsai tree, and thus with that final look, the bonsai tree crashed to the table beneath, scattering the candles around the room. Flames snapped up at the startled curtains, the humans ran around screaming as they burned to death and in the confusion the Cushion of Benevolence was kicked through an open window and lay, defeated on the grass outside,  his friends and fellow décor pieces consumed by the blistering wrath of the flames.

He lay in mud and benevolence for several hours, and as the house he called home burned to the ground, the rain began to fall. Steadily the rain droplets pushed through his biscuit crust and he could see just beneath it… he flapped his corners around as he endeavoured to sit up and look at the colour upon his chest. He experienced a wave of surprise, under whelmed somewhat with the realisation of his inherent and undeniable plain brownness.

He lay on the ground and watched the flames lick the edges of his perspective of the night sky. ‘I could have killed those bastards myself,’ he sighed.

‘Shove that rod in ‘ere.’

‘I shoved my rod in ‘er!’

‘Waaaheey!’

I thought about it for a while before deciding that the best way to deal with this situation was to put my fist through the window. Logical and sagacious, little bits of glass fell into the road and sparkled madly in the sunlight next to the builder’s cement mixer. Insignificant ribbons of red began to appear around each tiny laceration in my skin, trickling down the back of my hand like vomit over a kerb, the end result of an electrifying and disease-ridden night out. My hand grew cold in the winter’s air, shards of glass sticking out at jaunty angles. The mildly artistic could have appreciated it’s bitter sense of irony, likely fabricated for the purpose of sharing in basements, veins full of black and bread pudding, the communal experience of existence.

‘That rod’s too thick.’

‘That’s what she said.’

I started laughing, slightly overcome with insanity, mostly genuinely, fallaciously, entertained by their indisputable comic genius. I decided to withdraw my hand from the sharp embrace of the window pane and the jagged edges cut into the brainless flesh on the underside of my wrist. Meandering over to the sofa, the trail of red behind me seeped most deeply into the fluffy carpet and promised to give the landlord a talking point, at the very least. I sat down in time to see a man get eaten by a dinosaur. Don’t get cheap on me, Dodson. A brusque voice pulled me away, to where the glass fragments lay on the street outside.

‘We’ve ran out of rods.’

‘I’ve got a rod you can use right here!’

‘Waaaheey!’

It was certainly a day to cherish, bleeding out and covered in distance.