LaceOverSand

Through The Broken Gate

For the getwriting saturday flash challenge. I sit down to write and I have no idea where I'm going.

***

In his head. He thinks, and there's a space, there's a place where he could go. He could see it clearly, but he never quite makes the decision to walk through, walk there, to see. There's a whole world out there, or in there, in his head, but he never quite sees it and he walks past everyday.

His shoes scuff and his stylised jacket hangs from shoulders that don't quite manage to be broad. It's long, his jacket, a treasured possession. He allows it to define him sometimes, or, he wishes it would. The leather isn't new because he couldn't quite afford new, but unfortunately it's not quite old enough to have that worn look of cool. His shoes scuff and his jacket hangs above his ankles as he kicks up dust, walking past. In his head.

There's a book, in his head, and he reads it like an A-to-Z. A lost A-to-Z that never managed to get listed. He lives from it, wandering, checking it next to constantly. It has clean pages. A map of white blank places that have nothing in them that he must work out how to get to. He always walks, he never drives, but it's all about pollution and how to get from one place to another just to besmirch. White blank spaces are the answers he finds, and every question's in there for him, thumbing clean pages between the worn covers, looking for the delineated shape of appropriate answers.

Yes, Ana, he did remember to empty the washing machine.

He passes the gates every day, and he's never turned to the page where he thinks they lead. They're blank and white and white and blank and he never wants to look closer, doesn't want to see because maybe they're engraved or maybe they got dirty, and that would be disruptive. He doesn't think about them; he has to make effort to make sure he doesn't, but he keeps them away from his thoughts in his head. The gate in his head not in the thoughts in his head. Are they smooth, do they clink? Would they spin, should he... what?

They feel like paper. He doesn't know how he knows this, but they feel like the paper of his A-to-Z. As far as he's aware he's never touched them, never even brushed up against them. They're crooked a little and he walks past every day, making a point of not looking. Everyday on white pavements, map in his back pocket and laptop bag computerless, stuffed full with papers. He'll have to get the strap replaced, and his tied doesn't match the shirt his mother bought him last birthday.

So the gates are broken and he's never looked close enough to find that out. It's written in childish pencil, scribbled in the cover of his A-to-Z next to the phone number of the last hairdresser's he went to.

They didn't cut it right. Too long at the back.

The gates are broken and if he pushed, even a little or a bit or at all, he could walk through or climb over or a combination of the two. He doesn't want to, he's never going to. And he doesn't look closely, because he doesn't even want to know about the space where he could go.

Maybe he put the gate up. Maybe he knew enough to break it. So that, if he were to look closely he couldn't help but see through to the space behind it. Never going to. It hasn't always been there, but it's been long enough that he knows not to walk through. Walk through the gate, incorporeally, large heavy spikes staring up at the sky of his mind way above his head, wide and imperial. Something solid him walking through, in his head.

He stands in the street and sometimes the rain hits, sliding disconsolately down his slightly greasy hair. Not offensively greasy, just the natural oils. The neatly ironed folds of his suit start to hang themselves out, and his one piece of rebellion, his out-of-place jacket is a dark spot against the suburban gardens adjacent to the bus stop. Number 40 arrives and he steps on, weak ineffectual hand discreetly caressing the handrail, needless firm and self-assuring.

Maria is a pretty girl. She's only 5'1", curvy and mouthy. She has shocking dark hair and a small turn-up nose, and she gets the same bus everyday. Somebody won't talk to her, won't ever say hi. But she's a very pretty girl.

Standard Form

Wanted to write, put
Words in some order, maybe.
Out of time, got stuck.

And then there's always that little bit extra you just have to mention and it never quite fits just a little bit over no that's a lot over and it carries on and on because there's always that little bit extra making you wonder just a little bit extra why does it never fit and I only just found out about this so maybe I'm excused and the extra doesn't matter but that might be asking too much and I hate this stupid fucking questioning poetry that makes me think and remember and I stopped writing this stuff for a reason dear God the little bit extra winds on and never stops and I'd like it to stop but it's about balance and discipline and I got the syllables right I know I did that bit right and the extra's got to end some time so maybe this is payback and it's got to stop soon now yes ok 'now' I say.

Fingers on pale keys
Unblunt nails waiting for words
That come and leave quick.

Dead Butterflies

For the getwriting friday flash challenge.

***

Dead butterflies crumble in her hands, spiky and fine. They rest, paper-thin in her chubby child palms before she crushes, watches them fade into dusty nothingness until she can't see anything of them anymore. They become a part of the room's carpet and a part of the air, an almost random distribution of minute organic particles. Dead beauty: lost the way it was always intended to be lost. It's not lost as long as she knows it's there, though, and spinning and twirling and watching pretty skirts flare out about you takes on special meaning when she knows she has butterfly parts swirling with chaos and magic about her.

She gets in trouble when she crumbles dead butterflies, leaving empty spaces in lazily unpolished cabinets. Their hinges are rusty and the glass is only just translucent from the accumulated neglect, but still she gets in trouble.

Live butterflies don't crumble at all, they flutter before they squish, and dead butterfly parts aren't nearly as special when they're in pieces rather than powder. They twitch a little as they end to lay limp and murky, and they have no beauty when they're broken this way. It's lost, and she can never work out exactly where it goes as she prods and pushes. The remains refuse to move, they stick a little stubbornly, and when she goes inside afterwards she has to wash her hands with the flowery liquid soap in the downstairs bathroom.

She stirs the muddy water, pondwater furtively acquired from beneath the netting put up to protect the goldfish from nextdoor's pussy cat. She doesn't think she got any pond- skaters this time, but she did add twenty-two blades of grass and the special stone that shines from behind the shed. She plucked three underripe gooseberries and in they went, each wrapped in a geranium leaf. She stirs, and scrapes in dead butterfly, lost beauty for potions.

An Acre Of Grass

For the getwriting wednesday flash challenge.

***

I wait for the kettle to boil and line up the mugs. They stand fidgeting behind me as I dole out the teabags, excluded observers that they are. The water rumbles.

"Yes, but what am I supposed to do with it?"

I shake my head despairingly. I like my comfortable flat with its tarmac parking space and catalogue kitchen. It's naturally shiny and somehow manages to implicitly resist grit and grime and any kind of unhygienic lived-in properties. I've not quite worked out how it does that, but I have a feeling that the overwhelmingly modern decor helps immeasurably. Don't get me wrong, it's not unpleasantly unlived-in, it's just that the evidence of my habitation only tends to manifest in neat piles of random books and clinical post-it notes attached to the fridge.

"It's a garden, Terri, you don't do anything with it."

Click. Pour. Spill.

Apparently, a garden is the next thing on the list. The latest requisite, indispensable if I wish to progress in life. My friends aren't unbearable stereotypes, they're not the cutesie couples that believe that singleton me is existing in a meaningless torturous existence. But they do seem to have decided upon a certain direction down which to unsubtly nudge me, and now that the unsubtle nudging has been pointedly ignored for several months, they have unspokenly agreed to collectively attempt to handcuff me to a metaphorical and sabotaged steering wheel, so to speak.

"I don't really need a garden. I have a balcony. And potplants."

Wipe surface. Poke sugar pot. Sniff milk.

"Besides, I wouldn't do anything with it, it would just be lawn. Then what would I be left with, grass, however many square metres it was of grass."

I stir, and pass on the teaspoon for them to sort out their own damn tea specifics.

"How big was it, again?"

"An acre."

I'm still busy being pleased with myself for having found an apartment building with a stairway that doesn't stink of urine. There are of course many such buildings, but it takes a certain wage-bracket and lifestyle to gain access to one. I'd really rather just bask in the light glow of my own personal acheivement for a little while longer, and possibly the more indefinite future.

I pause. "Isn't an acre rather big for a garden?" I pick up my tea let them follow me with theirs out of the kitchen to the sofa. "How big is an acre?"

"It's, I don't know, big."

"But not too big, you'd love this place, it would be perfect for you."

They continue, voices ringing with social confirmation. I sit down with my tea and resolve to wait out their ever so convincing contestations.

A Blog Waits (Or Not)

The room is clinically untidy. The floor is shiny but littered, the seats unforgiving but cleanly painted. It is a place for mindless sitting, of checking watches and keeping an eye on departure time display units. The scratched handrests glisten dryly. As a bin there is a crinkled plastic bag stretched over a rigid frame, it's see-through and only half empty, and there's a carelessly compressed Ribena carton caught in the folds.

LaceOverSand watches, I don't think she ever really bothers waiting for anything. She sits on the windowsill, self-entertained. Her hands rock, playing cats' cradle with spare bootlaces tied impetuously together, and as her fingers weave one over the other she spares a thought for the overweight and slightly balding man sat in the corner. He has a half-drunk bottle of Sprite and might just be peaking out from behind his briefcase to watch her seemingly boring routine. Finger over, duck, catch the thread, hands part.

Her boots should be muddying her jeans the way she sits cross-legged, feet tucked up under thighs. The arrangement should be too oversized for the improvised window seat to be comfortable, but somehow she's perfectly happy.

She ignores the girl with the torn carrier bag and over-priced water bottle.

A Blog Awakes

She doesn't roll over, because she slept flat on her back, horizontal solidity seeming to unnaturally straighten her spine until it feels surrealy extended, beautifully perfect. She spreads out her arms to her sides, her pale white flesh scraping past the slightly cool surface. Stretching out her palms and fingers she feels the air about her. It's fresh, but painfully bright, and it occurs to her that it might be less painful to look than to feel. Her eyes flicker open, lashes slightly jammed and seemingly directly connected to her now parted lips, slightly chapped and floating purple above her delicately pointed chin.

The black peels away to leave more black, and the colour etches in as gradually as could be wished for. There's a deep darkness tinted green off somewhere to her left, maybe also to her right but still waiting to emerge from the earthy brown. It all skirts on the edge of her vision, like some delicate trimmming to the muslin expanse of disc that the night sky forms. So many bright lights, so many tiny lost ones, some so invisible they seem to be missing when looked for a second time. Far off, miniscule dots, cascading through existence.

LaceOverSand blinks, resplendent in the lethargy of her features. She flickers away the sleep, and wonders what the fuck happened to the ceiling.

A Blog Introduces

Brain is dead. In as much as the blog follows where I lead, it may be on the critical list. My head hurts.

I was trying to work out what to write about here, and went through a variety of options aimed at either pathetically excusing myself, or getting me writing again. Both of which are probably self-flattering annoyances to... pretty much any reader I can imagine that isn't my mum. Actually, my mum would probably skip it too.

I thought I could talk about how a blog requires me to have some kind of life to write about, either online or in the (dreaded) RealWorld. This is probably partly why things aren't working out too well right now. I live online currently, but in an online virtual 1920s Chicago rather than anywhere that I could legitimately write about. Actually, now that it occurs to me, I might start writing more about that wonderful place I keep going to in my head, and I might even post some of it. But not right now, and not necessarily here.

It also occurred to me that I might link to various other people's reasons for slacking around with regards to their blogs. That link rings particularly true, because I am feeling the need for more direct and trivial chat than ever before. But in contrast to that link, online rather than RealWorld, and I am still writing, just not in the 21st century, as previously mentioned. Chat feels rather exceptionally lifeline-like at the moment, and forming more coherent thoughts suddenly seems like such hard work.

As I've been falling apart I've been retreating more and more into my comfy dreamworld, and to be honest I'm really quite happy there for the present.

Anyway, so I was going to angst for a bit about why I'm not blogging. It's really quite dramatic, full of repressed emotions and self-hurt. But, this is what I hate about life commentary, it's really far too interesting and melodramatic to actually make credible reading. I could possibly write quite a good autobiography of the first 18 years of my life, but I'm such a cliché I don't think it would be anywhere near readable. Such a tragic waste of spurious material.

The other option was to get me writing. Having spent the last six months attempting to get Cathy writing regularly again, I figure I can hardly be a harder case than her. And I'm going to keep insistently mentioning her here until she does start those typing fingers up again, because, well, just because I can. So, what to do about me?

An opinion of some kind? I'd have to read something and think about it for long enough to form an opinion on it before I could do that. I really can't be bothered. I just clicked "mark all read" on my bloglines account, and I'm tired and currently far too mellow to get worked up about anything. I'm busy enjoying my lethargy, and I don't intend to ruin it for anything very much at all.

I could go dig up some good links. It's been a while since I fed this thing links. Once more with the effort and the apathy.

Childhood anecdote? There was that time when I skipped church to go watch the Chicago cubs play the pirates back in '11 and got caught by my suffragette mother, pulled out of school and sent to work at the meat-packing plant. Oh, wait, dreamworld, check, gotcha.

So that leaves me with projects. Stunt-style antics. And I'm going to ignore that collective groan I think I just heard. The fact is that I'm always thinking up blog-based pranks to play that just aren't practical for a blog of this size. Maybe one day I'll email off some of these crazy notions to some of the proper big-time bloggers, but for the moment it's time to think a little bit more within the box. I thought I'd start another drabble series, but a sci-fi one this time, because I'm bored and feel like pissing off some genre. But that would be silly. I wouldn't ever want this blog to be accused of being silly.

So I thought to myself, what would this blog like me to write? Not what would the readers of this blog like me to write, because I hate to be the one to break it to you, but you really are not the point of the exercise. What would this blog like me to write? If LaceOverSand could slap me around the face and tell me what to do with myself, how exactly would he/she/it go about the matter?

And then of course that was it, the blog-bunny had bitten. Annoying excuse for a rodent. In the spirit of self-obsession that is the blogging habit itself, it had to be written.

A Blog Introduces

A fairly normal shaped girl of fairly normal height in a fairly normal church hall walks smoothly up to a set of unimagintively arranged stage blocks. She looks maybe early- to mid-twenties in age, and has bright green hair, slightly frizzy and tied back with elastic to form a somewhat electrified bundle. There are a few bemused friends and relatives watching, and only one of them could be described as overtly encouraging. Someone coughs in the dusty air at the back of the hall, a stranger in an overcoat, there for no reason immediately fathomable. LaceOverSand reaches the spotlight, and shuffles nervously in platformed black techno boots, all buckles and catches. This is the only obvious sign of her nerves and her shoulders hang loosely balanced as she studies a tatoo on her forearm, reading cryptic notes made for her perusal only. She smiles directly and taps the microphone nervously, hoping her software is not cancerous.

Clearly, she speaks, echoing out her thoughtless "testing" comment. Please work, she thinks, please please please work. She smiles smugly and knows there is no reason to worry. She calms her inner blogger, such an inexperienced child in her world, and sets to work.

As The Bells Chime

I listen to the bells chime the half hour, and remember how I counted with mind-wandering reflections when the hour passed just 30 minutes ago. It's so tiring, and I want to sleep. I want to write this bit first, though, just this little bit. It could be so perfect, were I to get it right.

I chew at my lip. The upper is slightly dry, and I should probably buy myself some greasy balm to use. I know I won't, I hate the stuff.

There's so much to write in these next few seemingly vital words. I could put so much in, but it's important it stays short. Every word needs a purpose, every action some realism and relevance, and every phrase must be exactingly within order.

I want to get this right, but I'm so tired. I listened to the bells with my head only barely off the keyboard, resting, eyes closed. The world drifted in blackness behind my eyelids, and it could have been peace.

I will write this before I sleep, and I know that it will be worth it.

Geek? Me?

Gandalf stands by the showmasters' forum lounge, stalwart and unmoving. His gaze pierces and surveys the passing assortment of an intriguing cross-section of a population.

Middle-aged trekkies mingle with pre-teen fangirls. Housewives glide past in full hobbit costume chatting amiably with pvc-clad goth girls with unholy hair and corsetry.

So far he's counted 15 Eveningstars and 12 One Rings.

Opposite him on a stand is a signed Will Turner photograph, and the Smeagol standee just in front of him is bad company indeed. Just as well he's being sold to already overladen fans, chubby cheeked and eager for just a slice of the fandom pie.

They snatch up dear Sméagol, and Gandalf can't quite bring himself to mourn the loss of his demented presence. Maybe he's off to get signed. His alter-ego is up to ticket number 240 on the autographs, but Gandalf's heard rumours of Grease songs warbled in a throaty Gollum voice.

Who knows what's in store for a Sméagol standee?

You're the one that I want... ooh ooh ooh, prescioussss.

When Key-Rings Let Loose

A sequel, of sorts, to The Aftermath (October 26th). Meaning that they threw another party. Other oppurtunities, indeed.

Waking up shouldn't be this difficult. The mattress is comfortable, the sleeping bag more than adequate, and most importantly both are unshared. Waking up shouldn't be this difficult, but disturbing dreams can be annoyingly clingy. They whisper, and morph into actuality, and then it really is time to get up.

Toilet first. Pilfered hairbrush second. Café breakfast. Orange juice. Then tidy up... later.

You make your way outside with a blended sense of despair and purpose. Someone thoughtfully put a board down over the mud last night, and you are grateful, as you are sure you heard somebody go for a piss out here during the early hours of the morning. Amidst the smashed vodka bottle and the punch-laced polystyrene cups. Maybe it wasn't the early hours of the morning. If 1-2 are the early hours, then 5-7 must be the in-the-middle-on-time hours, and you doubt it was much before 5 when you were having the drunken debate on pacifism. Around another bonfire.

The ashes are white and beautiful, and this is what you came outside for. Apprehensively you search for an appropriate stick, for your visitation of the remains was not one of idle appreciation.

Fellow housemates have got themselves locked out before. None of them has ever lost their keys before. You know others that have, and it wouldn't be so bad if that was all that had happened. But resignation to dispossession of house keys by bonfire is a little hard to come by.

You poke at the shallow mound urgently, batting aside the charred, brittle beer cans. There's a flash of hope as you unearth a flat rectangular piece of metal, but you realise quickly that it's merely a fixture point of the bed that got thrown on. That must be where all the nails have come from as well.

It seems like a hopeless task, and you take a step back. Nobody thinks you'll find them, you don't think you'll find them, and it's tempting to give up. You could be focussing your energies on hounding the drunkard that threw them in in the first place, because if you have to get a new set of keys cut you're sure as hell going to make him pay for them. Instead, you start to sweep and sift with your spindly stick systematically, starting with the right-hand side furthest from the house.

When you get to the middle, the ash clings to some kind of form, black on the underside and still warm. The larger logs from the more mature hours of the morning still look like they might be able to give up a bit of the glow, and they're certainly heated and heating enough for the cool, clear, sunny morning.

A hoop. A spiral of metal. A surge of excitement and joy, you've found them. You hook them on the end of your stick, and give a victorious wave to those in the kitchen.

A little WD-40 later and they're perfectly functional, albeit still slightly warm. The number on your mobile is saved as "Drunk Guy" and you know that somewhere across town the poor bastard is waking up alone to find a moustache drawn on his face in permanent black marker. You'll leave him be, your keys are fine, risen from the ashes so to speak, and you now have a most treasured and unique variation on a key-ring.

Neon Dreams

The night is fairly mild, and I walked home happy. Very happy, and I probably shouldn't be writing, as I'm sure to write something daft. At least I'm not cooking. I'm fairly sure stir-frying wouldn't be the wisest activity upon which to embark right now, considering how much I've drunk this evening.

It was spitting earlier, when I went out. Spitting from the sky, and there was a conversation as to the exact frequency at which drops descended. Three per second was suggested, but quickly combatted with four per second. It doesn't matter now, and arguably never did, but the paving stones are damp and riddled with water without containing actual puddles.

The world doesn't spin, but it bubbles with effervescent good will. Some drinks are too colourful and wonderful to seem real for everyday sobriety, but I can't help but want more.

I'm struggling to manage not to wake up tomorrow with an imprint of my keyboard upon my forehead.

Tonight was a good night, and even as I wish it had never ended, I dwell upon the pleasure of its acquisition, of the choices and events that led to my happy time passed. Most predominantly I dwell upon the choices and events of the evening itself. The magnificence of the precipice of closeness built.

Even as I farewelled friends and more significant friends at the street corner I turned to watch goodbye, but a large car drove in front to obscure my vision in the dark. I walked home in the mild damp, and for some reason a randomly drunk girl was pulling her jeans up over her bare bottom, leaning precariously upon a red car of some kind. Her friends seemed to laugh at her as I passed, and presumably she continued staggering for quite some distance as I turned into my street and spotted out the friendly glow of my kitchen.

There's always a light in our window, no matter how empty the house. The key seemed easier in the door than it usually did, and the stair trivial. I tripped over spare blankets as I walked in my room, but I wrote this whole entry whilst walking down the street.

The Perfect Christmas Lunch #1

Christmas lunch was perfect. The six housemates sat at the table and surveyed the delights spread before them, sparing a considerate thought for the two absentees.

L. had gone home, as she did every weekend, to enjoy mother-cooked food and a boyfriend. E. was stuck at a till in tescos, only just having recovered from the staff party the night before.

They were about an hour behind schedule, but finally they were sat down on the uncomfortable office chairs that the house came furnished with, and the turkey sat on the sideboard, half inexpertly carved using a pair of slightly blunt bread-knives.

No two plates were the same. No two sets of cutlery were even the same, and although the semester had begun with over 10 wine glasses in the house, there were now only two, and the rest of the housemates sat drinking their Jacob's Creek out of assorted tumblers.

There was little ceremony as they all tucked eagerly into what they had pulled together so perfectly to produce, and there was much merry banter as they squabbled over the gravy. The roast potatoes were browned and crisped exactly as any of them might desire, and the carrots and parsnips were agreed to be just right. There was a general consensus that substituting peas for brussel sprouts had been a true stroke of genius, and the instant gravy was decided to be quite adequate. D. had bought some beef stock with which to make gravy, but everybody had quietly been far too squeamish to go anywhere near the giblets that had been plucked at arms length from out of the turkey in order to make something authentic enough that it needed to be sieved.

The turkey had been named Terrence by both M. and C., and J's mother had mailed them a voucher for some money off the bird to help pay for it. It had sat in the downstairs shower for a day and a half defrosting, and although the details of the cooking procedure had been highly speculative, a phone call to C's mum had proved reassuring confirmation of what they had already been doing. D's experience in the fast-food industry had proved almost indispensable, although J. felt that her time in the sink of her local bar had failed to appropriately prepare her for the solo experience. M. maintained his status and reputation as house Domestic Goddess.

The juices ran clear, and the meal was declared a success, with more than enough turkey leftover for E. to be able to return to turkey sandwiches come that evening. There were two chocolate yule logs awaiting them in the now far emptier fridge, and more than enough alcohol to be carrying on with. L. was generally in charge of the alcohol, on the basis that he poured the most generous drinks, but no one was really worrying about this at this point, preoccupied as they all were with the glorious stuffing and wonderful chipolatas.

The one-pound bargain fairy lights twinkled cosily in the window, highlighting perfectly the array of paper snowflakes selotaped to the glass. It might have started to rain quietly outside, but the happy housemates were too busy eating to notice. The newspaper paper-chains of irregular thickness hung embracing above the scene, and it was the perfect Christmas lunch.

The Aftermath

On a road near a railway there is a house. A house with a shiny white door, opposite a church of roughly the same description, on a road that leads to a 24hour tescos, several charity bookshops, an iceland, and numerous fried chicken take-aways. Apart from the shiny white door, there is little within the house that still manages to look new and shiny and at all presentable. The two giant cookers are still quite new, and impressively operational, but they no longer look it. Everything in the house is old and worn, and repaired and rebroken many times over. It is a gloriously lived in place.

In the kitchen is a dramatically yet off-handedly balanced pile of washing up, the output of a well-eaten cooked breakfast. Tesco value baked beans (9p per can), Tesco value sausages (79p for 20), bacon, eggs, salami, mushrooms, tomatoes, toast... Someone even ate some of the bombay mix leftover from last night. The floor is still sticky from spilled drink, and especially so by the cupboard where the bin bag split from the night's empty beer cans. There are a few pages of the Yellow Pages floating around.

If you follow the yellow page trail (follow follow follow follow follow the yellow page trail), you will pass a matress with a thin blanket, just next to the fridge, upon which various bits of dessicated coconut can be found. Past this there is a failed Yellow Page paper aeroplane, and a paper boat, and two of those origami fortune telling children's games. The rest of that illustrious reference directory is spread out in pages accross the living room floor, and various pages can be seen poking out the back of the sofa. 5 stained glass window specialists. A whole page of indian restaurants. Mortgage specialists. Church suppliers. It started the evening in a box on top of the fridge, and several pieces still hang from there. It is impossible to decide if the effect is more cosy nest, or leans closer towards hamster cage bedding.

Head out the backdoor, watch the broken glass, walk around the side of the house, be careful not to trip up over the discarded suitcase. There are three defunct refrigerators, some less than vertical. They may be awaiting collection, they may have been disregarded, it may be a task being passed around. Irregular blocks of concrete balance precariously amidst builders' furniture rubble. Crawler plant ivy strangles the rest of the paved garden, bushing up to chest height in places. Progress carefully, keeping your mind alert for seesaw terrain, but walk forward to the white ashes and blacker embers as yet undoused in the little cleared space. Apparently the garden is less strangled this morning than it was last night. Two resentful karate training axes lie in neglect at the edge of the clearing.

Back inside in the hallway there is an arrangement of electrical tape thrown carelessly to the floor. Fluff from clothing, as well as bark from a tree, are still attached to the clump. It's difficult to tell, but it might be a little singed at the edges as well. Someone got taped to a tree last night, and then mutilated the whole by ripping free. It is easy to see the gothic pierced boy walking around all night with a pair of angry twisted tape fairy wings in some drink resistant mind's eye. Walk up the stairs, feel the matted red carpet like felt beneath your matted white sports socks. The top step gives a little, and there's a gorilla suit lying casually to the right on the landing, halfway through a doorway.

Carry on down the hallway. The toilet door doesn't shut properly unless you make sure the string to turn on the light isn't trapped in the doorframe. The bath needs cleaning, and there's no toilet roll left amongst numerous cardboard cylinders of finished rolls. There are some dated gadget magazines and a copy of an anthology of The Far Side, though.

Return to the gorilla suit, walk through the door. On the wall are two empty nailed slots, and just above that rests a samurai sword, or at least a training one, along with some other weapons recognised only from the movies. To the side is a metal armour breastplate, and next to that a piece of discworld related art. There is some red wax splashed down another wall, and next to it a crooked wall candelabra with two half-burnt red candles in, although there are placings for three. The samurai sword looks felonious.

In a small few square inches of the floor there is also a large square white candle with three wicks, long since gone out, crammed in amongst the debris of broken plastic cups, more spilled drink, and roll-up papers. The rest of the floor is covered in large thick pieces of industrial foam, with a mismatched variety of blankets thrown over them. Interspersed upon these are sleeping people, some between the foam and blankets, and some who never bothered with that extra bit of effort. If you look carefully at the people, and most specifically at their forearms, you'd see burn marks on some of them. Little fine dark red dots and lines littered from the wrist to the elbow. Somebody's key has a slightly altered electronic structure this morning, and a now misplaced Lightening Ball got good use well into the morning. At least someone remembered to turn off the Fibre Spray. These people have missed breakfast, but their priorities are appealing.

There are many other rooms in this house; indeed, there is an entire other floor. The urge to have a quiet explore whilst the house languors is strong, but instead you go and find a rake to start clearing up the Yellow Pages as part of your contribution to your friend's cleaning offensive. There'll be other oppurtunities.