Peripheral
Leicester, 1992
Somewhere beyond the
trees.
I’m weightless in the
shadows of the abyss, the darkness keeps me balanced as I bounce softly between
our world and theirs. There is no noise but the sound of nothing, the feeling
of eternal space around me as I continue to float in the black air. I don’t
want to go back, I like it here, I don’t want to, no one can make me! I won’t!
It’s calming really,
the translucent yet earthly tainted roots keep my physical being anchored
firmly to what I think is the ground with slight movement, refraining any
danger to myself or others.
I like it here; I wish
you could join me. The obvious answer would be a no, I get that.
I never wanted to be
lost within myself, with what makes me so worried and anxious yet malevolent to
myself with a self destructive inner core. I’m safe though, I’m safer alone
without anyone trying to understand my complex self-torture, this is safer for
everyone to stay away as I can live with my shame.
What is imaginative to
me seems so real, almost a physical desire of letting go to divulged into what
I enjoy to others would repulse and grotesque. I really don’t care, I live a
solitary life without letting anyone else in, if people could see what was
inside would fill me with complete dread. I don’t really have any friends as
they wouldn’t understand, my head is tightly closed like a flower with no
access. If someone was to tear back the frigged petals the more naked I feel,
the sickening thoughts on display for everyone to see. The dark thoughts I
enjoy that keep me somewhat sane and calm without spiralling into chaos, no one
would understand.
As I continue to swim
around in my thoughts with nothing be my eyelids separating me from the outside
world, specs of light seep though fading from fluorescent pinks to hellish
reds. The feel of cold earth and rotten flesh pressed against my skin cools the
burning fires that seem to ignite themselves within me are just the beginning.
Sometimes I get too carried away, the sweating from my forehead to the palm of
my hands make me fidget with uncontrollable spasms. It’s as if my body knows
this is wrong, fighting with my mind to seek harmony in this fantasy world.
Surrounded by dirt in the set undergrowth I become stuck and unable to move,
I’ve churned up the earth. I’ve dug my own grave. The loose dirt has compacted
me, pressing on my chest as it pushes the air from my lungs. My heart is a
persistent fist pounding against my chest cavity racing to stay calm, the mud
changes form, it knows I’m scared, it can sense the fear, they can smell it.
Like a vice grip around my neck it takes the form of something which isn’t
clear, I shake my head vigorously with what seems to be a bead of snot that
leaves my nose and a single tear from my eye. I’m consumed, I can’t breathe,
I’m theirs.
Gasp! An irregular
inhale to a long sigh of relief. I must have blacked out again.
These apparitions
plague my mind yet these are my only true friends, they have attached
themselves to me for some reason. They leak out of sight and move in ways I
cannot describe, their lucid like movements make me double take as I see them
in the corner of my eye. Fluid black entities without a backbone tormenting me
from day to day that bleed over objects or stand in doorways watching me,
always watching.
The pills don’t work,
the doctor said they would but there no use, just another patient on his of
false diagnoses to keep him in a well paid job, what a prick. Maybe I should
take them, what will they do really as the reality of dealing with reality is
daunting to say the least. I blacked out in the woods again for the second time
this week, eurgh… the scratches on my wrists must have be forced up against the
exposed roots of that larger tree, it looks nasty but oddly satisfying. What am
I doing, I can’t keep doing this, I cannot keep blacking out.
Ok, Ok… everything’s
normal just keep walking nobody is looking at you, they don’t know you so they
can mind their own fucking business. (sniffs) What is that smell? I must have
fallen over into something unpleasant, I must have been knocked out for a good
hour! What would she think of me? Definitely a loser yes, but a monster of
unfathomable behaviour I couldn’t imagine the look on her face. She’d never
want to be with me if she could see me on the inside, she would be the only
person I’d want to let in.
Go away! I’ve done
what you’ve asked! Leave me alone… Ahhh!
The woods are the
place, the place of my internal sickness that seems to be the result of my
infatuation with this other world I’ve become so accustom to. I don’t know
which part of me loves it or loathes it, control is the key, with control over
myself I’m the master of my actions and without it I find myself back here time
and time again. These things I can see have personalities to degree that I can
define them from each other, yet reflective of my behaviour, you could say they
are extensions of my true self. I know it sounds completely ridiculous to
everyone but if you were to translate what I could see, I would be in a padded
room by now completely white which would send me crazier. A restrictive jacket
wouldn’t be necessary, definitely a bit too harsh on my part as I’m not totally
insane but I’d be bored. My mind is too extensive to be confined to such a
small space, I’d feel the need to grow extra limbs to push walls and ceilings
just to fit. But when I close my eyes I ‘am infinite, space and time would be a
pathetic concept. Breathing in sends me climbing to ungodly heights to a point
I can look down on my problems within this amplitude I can grasp with one hand
and crush to splinters. This is a place where they can’t consume me, nothing
here can. You don’t get it, fuck you all.
Ah, home at last. That
was a long walk, well, it seemed like it anyway. Its only few rooms that I need
to live that’s my safe place, my fortress of solitude just for me.
‘sssssssss’
The showers have to ne
old as my blood runs hot, the slow trickling water puts out the last embers in
my brain after a blackout.
Inhale, exhale….
I close my eyes to
allow the water to fall freely over my face, its all dark but the light
persists to pierce through but I don’t let it. I screw my eyes tighter to black
but the fragmented psychedelic shapes merge into balls of fire, flickering in
time to my clenched facial muscles. With a pupil at the centre encapsulated
with flame starring back at me I feel trapped within its gaze, the fire burns
bright and impossible to look away.
The mud and dirt
rushes down the plug hole as I now watch it spiral away, I watch the toe height
typhoon until it runs clear, dust, dirt and debris fall out my hair only to
ride the rapids as well. My palm is firmly pressed against the tiles keeping me
supported, my head is hanging low while the water cascades down the bridge of
my nose and rolls of my cheeks. I pick dirt from under my nails and flick it
away, I use beads of water that rifle through my hair as cleaning bullets to
blast away the remaining silt. I’m in control.
Sigh.
Its all in my head of
course, someone like me could only conjure up scenarios like this, is it
desire? Is it fear? I can’t escape these thoughts that mix with self diagnosed
anxiety, paranoia and OCD, not to forget the peripheral companions I feel so
connected to.
The bathroom is quiet,
after a shower I try to relax in the bath before work, sinking my ears past the
waterline drowns out the city pollution and the occasional police siren. The
softened noises become exceptional through the water, forming a theme tune to
my thoughts. I guess they are desirable thoughts; they are their thoughts too
which makes us the same person as they want me to see, I want to see, I want to
know who ‘they’ are.
The bathroom is too
white, white bath, while tiles, walls… everything. It’s a complete contrast of
colour to my thoughts, or should I say the existence of no colour. There’s a
window of silence, a drop of water breaks it, I open my eyes to feel pressure
building up on the back of my head form the hard fibreglass bath. I tilt my
head forward to relieve the throbbing, twisting it from side to side and
rubbing the pain away. I plunge myself back into the water, now I can
concentrate.
The feeling on the
other side is similar to floating in water, your physical body becomes
irrelevant, a hollow shell I can escape from. My breathing staggered as I try
not to drown, my nostrils slightly above water taking in small amounts of air
with my heart rate dropping. All I can hear is the blood flow through my veins
like a faint channel of air, I sink in deeper as my lifeless corpse sticks to
the bath. My soul is there, I let go… I’m home.
There’s no direction
in the darkness with no corners to hide, just endless nothing. I feel blind
with no purpose of why I’m here but it’s a somewhere I can go that no one else
knows. I don’t know how to control this, it knows when I’m scared, things will
manifest according to my emotions. There is a gust of wind all around with
unidentified fragments scraping past me, brushes of finger tips and subtle
grazes across my shoulder. Faint voices travel through the air, I can’t make it
out. What the… ah!
AH!
BEEP BEEP BEEP!
Rapid breathing, hyper
ventilating, calm… slow.
Shit, work alarm and
I’m still trying to rinse away the filth, literally, its mostly internal but it
feels so external clinging to my skin like layers of mucus for the world to
see. Urgh, I better get my shit together.
The rain is heavy this
evening with fine rain that coats you from every angle, ill be soaked through
when I get in. I do enjoy the walk as I put on my headphones to block out
people’s voices and their boring conversations. I like the rain, especially the
smell as it seems to put everything into perspective. The concept of rain makes
everything seem real in a world where everything changes, you can’t change the
force of nature. An element from the beginning of time which will continue when
were long gone, rotting worm food or biofuel for future robotic spaceships or
some shit like that. Whatever becomes of this world in thousands of years,
it’ll still fucking rain.
Flickering open sign,
open the door, bell rings.
"Dude, your
drenched! The weathers shit tonight; I'll grab you towel from the back"
"Thanks, I have a
spare shirt in my bag I'll put on"
"There's a few
stacks from last night and this afternoon returns, oh there's some out of date
popcorn i can't sell... help yourself"
"I'll grab some
later. Yano, I think I've seen more movies backwards than forwards, how many
people can say that"
"Your one of a
kind Alex, I'll make you a name badge, Alex... Mr rewind... happy to help,
haha"
"It would be
helpf...
Bell rings, customer,
"excuse me"
"Sorry Alex, 2
seconds. Hi how can I help"
"Yeah sure, I'll just carry on with
these... yeah... cool"
Sigh.
Helen's my work
colleague, she likes to think she's the boss. We get paid exactly the same but
she takes it all so seriously, I mean look at her rearranging the chewing gum
and putting the crisp packets in colour order... fuck that. She does have the
keys to building so I guess management trust her more than myself, just not
enough too pay her more... ha. I just rewind back tapes and occasionally take a
beer from the fridge while she's fucking about reapplying her makeup in the
bathroom. I don't know why, nobody hardly ever comes in, only to use the toilet
and the odd freak that stares at Helen's chest asking her when she gets off
work. She never acts on it but eats up the attention like easy prey to a
lioness.
I pull out my chair
and slam the stack of tapes on the desk, my elbow grinds on the table as I
support my forehead with my fingertips. I pause for while before I start
rewinding tapes, the magnitude of stickers we put on the cases that say, 'be
kind, please rewind' never work, there stuck all over counter instead. There's
no edges to them which makes that harder to scratch off, the plain looking
smiley face would always get scribbled on. Sunglasses, teeth or a humble
message of fuck you or, 'nope' would always keep me entertained. I switch on
the TV to instinctively wipe away the static, the prickly sensation is
addictive and swarms of bees keep me mesmerised as my pupils dilate.
Ah… Aliens I fucking love this movie and yep
this one is completely to the end, fuckers. Ill let them off as what could be
better than watching Aliens? Aliens in reverse! Its blurry as anything but you
get the idea of what’s going on, I like to think most movies could work
backwards in some kind of context. The fast pace flickering alongside the
shriek of the tapes sends me mad most of the time but after a day like today
its louder than ever, as if I’d taken a band saw to the table or something of
equal decibel. My temples are pulsating with made up stress, they feel like
fault lines in the earths crust waiting to erupt, a warm gooey like substance
all over the quivering screen. As if the movie had come to life in this tiny
room where I’d been shot in the head, or the Xenomorphs inner jaw had burrowed
a hole through my brain. I stand up and move away from the screen, I turn my
back to the shelf behind me to arrange the newer titles from past releases
ready for tonight’s ‘customers’. I slot the correlating tapes amongst each
other and snigger at people poor taste in movies, I mean come on, over 10 years
now and they can not top the first Jaws, who’s still watching these anyway?
They blew the fucking shark up in the first one?! What now, his buddy who got
killed in the second one’s buddy is still pissed about it? I can’t keep up. Ah
Alien 3, Now this I got need to see as its got to be pretty good to top Aliens.
The brighter scenes
from the TV behind me reflect my silhouette onto the shelf in front of me, each
passing frame of light illuminates my distorted shadow in different strengths
as I move back and forth. I grasp one of the high shelves with my fingers and
stared at my feet, my body was trembling as I could feel something was watching
me. I continued to stare at the ground and slowly anchor my head up, following
my shadow up the shelf as it bent within the contours of the empty space, I
felt a presence. My shadow became ever denser as I got closer, my hand still
hanging onto the ledge as my energy disappears in an instant. I close my
eyes... Oh no…
BANG. (collapses on
the floor)
His shadow still
remains on the shelf with the glare from the TV, staggers towards him and leers
over him. It lays beside him as he regains consciousness. He turns to his side
as his shadow becomes a black mass stretching out and crawls up the walls. The
sound of breathing echoes to which he places his hand over the darkness. Black
smoke curls around his fingers, something heavier than smoke pulls his hand
into the darkness as he falls into the unknown. He vanishes. Gone.
“Hello? Is anybody
there?”
*Irregular throated
breathing*
Silence.
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